Magazine – May – June 2022

SPECIAL REPORT: THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND ITS IMPACT ON AFRICA

News. Analysis. Comment.

May-June 2022

Vol.5 No.20

The unravelling of

multi-party politics

Two coups that tested ECOWAS’ resolve

Kenya: kingmaker against the kings

Cameroon: armed conflict impacts economy Eurozone 5 euros UK £3.00 North America $6.50 CFA Zone CFA2,600 Ethiopia R90 Ghana GHC12.00 Kenya KSh350 Rwanda RWF3,000 Sierra Leone LE20,000 South Africa R40.00 (inc. tax) Other Southern African Countries R35.10 (excl. tax) Tanzania TSh6,500 Uganda USh10,700 Zambia ZMK45

20

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Somalia's next leader inherits a nation mired in crisis

A

on May 15, Somalia’sNOTE lawmakers were PUBLISHER’S choosing a new leader.

S we were putting this edition to bed

The troubled Horn of Africa country was supposed to choose a new leader in February 2021 but missed the deadline as Somalia's political leaders squabbled over the election process.

The impasse turned violent when then President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known by his nickname Farmajo, extended his term in what opponents decried as an n 2018, six power of the grab.

10 fastest-growing unconstitutional economies in the world were in The president appointed his prime minister to arrange a fresh vote but the task drove a wedge Africa, according to the World Bank, between the two men, putting the vote even further out of reach. with Ghana leading the pack. With The crisis paralysed government at a time GDP growth for thethe continent projected to when stability was badly needed to confront the burning challenges at hand. accelerate to four per cent in 2019 and 4.1 Farmajo's has exacerbated per cent inpresidency 2020, Africa’s economic tensions growth between the central government and some states,continues most notably Jubaland, and there been violent2019 clashes between their Index respective story apace.

Meanwhile, thehave World Bank’s Doing Business forces. that five of the 10 most-improved countries are in Africa, and one-third of reveals The president had been accusedwere of using Somalia's security forces to further his political all reforms recorded globally in sub-Saharan Africa. ambitions.

What makes the story more impressive and heartening is that the growth violent Islamist insurgency, looming famine, political chaos, and a threadbare economy in –Aprojected to be broad-based – is being achieved in a challenging global tatters - these major crises and more await the incoming president. environment, bucking the trend.

He confronts a familiar threat that has dogged successive governments for more than a decade In Cover of this edition, Dr. Hippolyte Fofack, Chief Economist at the - athe deadly andStory persistent insurgency by the Al-Shabaab militant group.

African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), analyses the factors In March, the United Nations renewed the mandate of a 20,000-strongunderpinning African Unionthis performance.

Two on factors, in mysince opinion, out in Hippolyte’s analysis: force that has been the ground 2007 stand to support theDr. foreign-backed government in trade between and Chinajihadists. and the intra-African cross-border investment and confronting theAfrica Al-Qaeda-linked infrastructure development.

The reconfigured mission, dubbed ATMIS, calls for a more offensive strategy than in recent years with the gradually troop numbers to zero by economic the close offoray 2024.into Much has beengoal saidofand writtenreducing about China’s ever-deepening Africa, especially by president Western might analysts and commentators who have sounding Analysts say the new consider renegotiating aspects of anbeen agreement signed

by Farmajo "at a time where the Somali leadership was not focused But on security alarm bells about re-colonisation of Africa, this time by really the Chinese. empirical imperatives.” evidence paints a different picture.

Somalia's international backers have warned that prolonged infighting over the election has Despite the decelerating global growth environment, trade between Africa and distracted from the threat of Al-Shabaab, which has consolidated its rural territory and in China increased by 14.5 per cent in the first three quarters of 2018, surpassing recent months stepped up attacks. the growth rate of world trade (11.6 per cent), reflecting the deepening economic The new leader could also consider a more political approach to tackling the Islamists, and dependency between the two major trading partners. perhaps even set the mood for any possible dialogue with them.

Empirical that shocks, China’sand domestic investment hasworst become highly Somalia isevidence vulnerableshows to climate currently suffering its drought in decades. linked with economic expansion in Africa. A one percentage point increase The United Nations says some 6.1 million people - roughly 40 percent of the entire in China’s domestic investment growth is associated with an average of 0.6 population - have been affected and 760,000 people have fled their homes. percentage point increase in overall African exports. And, the expected economic Humanitarian and organisations haveofwarned that without a significant increase in aid, Somalia development trade impact expanding Chinese investment on resource-rich could soon face a famine not seen since 2011 when 260,000 people perished from hunger.

African countries, especially oil-exporting countries, is even more important.

The government has little capacity to tackle the problem on its own.

The resilience of African economies can also be attributed to growing intra-African But observers say political stability in Mogadishu would help in coordinating the emergency cross-border investment and infrastructure development. A combination of the response, and presenting a unified appeal for aid. two factors is accelerating the process of structural transformation in a continent A poor,industrial indebted country lacking critical infrastructure, Somaliashare is dependent foreign aid where output and services account for a growing of GDP.onAfrican to function. and industrialists which are expanding their industrial footprint across corporations According the World nearly three-quarters offrom Somalia's 15 million Africa and to globally areBank, leading the diversification agriculture intopeople higherlive on less than $1.90 euro) each and day. service sectors. These industrial champions value goods in (1.80 manufacturing are transcontinental with investment holdings around the Thecarrying election out delays have threatenedoperations, a crucial assistance package from the International Monetary which expires automatically May 17Asia, if a new administration does not globe, withFund, a strong presence in Europe andonPacific together account for more approve keycent reforms. than 75 per of their combined activities outside Africa. government has asked for a three-month extension to this deadline, but it has not yet AThe survey of 30 leading emerging African corporations with global footprints and been considered. combined revenue of more than $118 billion shows that they are active in several The economy grew by manufacturing 2.9 percent in 2019 andDangote was tipped to expand further in 2020. industries, including (e.g., Industries), basic materials, But it instead contracted as the coronavirus pandemic, a locust infestation andand floods telecommunications (e.g., Econet, Safaricom), finance (e.g., Ecobank) oil took theirgas. toll,In theaddition World Bank said. and to mitigating risks highly correlated with African economies, these emerging African global corporations areofaccelerating diversification of The African Development Bank forecasts growth 3.2 percent forthe 2022 - still below presources of growth and reducing the exposure of countries to adverse commodity Covid projections. terms of trade.

Improving tax collection could also insulate the economy from future shocks.

Pervasive to beAfrica! an issue as well - Somalia sits near the bottom of This makescorruption me very continues bullish about Transparency International's world corruption index, ranking 178 out of 180 nations alongside Syria.

Africa bucks global economic trend

I

Publisher Jon Offei-Ansah Editor Desmond Davies Publisher Jon Offei-Ansah

Contributing Editors

Editor

Stephen Williams Desmond Davies Prof. Toyin Falola Tikum Mbah Azonga

Deputy Editor AngelaContributors Cobbinah

Justice Lee Adoboe Contributing Editor Chief Chuks Iloegbunam StephenJoseph Williams Kayira

Director, Zachary SpecialOchieng Projects Olu Ojewale Michael Orji Oladipo Okubanjo

Corinne Soar Contributors Kennedy Olilo Justice Lee Adoboe Designer Chuks Iloegbunam Joseph Kayira Simon Blemadzie Zachary Ochieng Olu Ojewale Country Representatives Oladipo Okubanjo South Africa Corinne Soar

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Contents LEADER

6

West finally wakes up to universality of international justice

Vol.5 No.20 May - June 2022

10

COMMENT

07

Africa must now focus on self-reliance in the wake of Ukraine war

COVER STORY

10

The unravelling of multiparty politics

Election violence in Africa has been, invariably, put down to bad political leaders, but Nana K.A. Busia Jr argues that it has been more a case of bad constitutional drafting that has seen the continent backslide into anarchy from the close of the decade, in 1999, when almost three quarters of African countries were under “democratic rule” with all of them having undergone periodic elections

14

24

Constitutions needed for powersharing

In drafting Statutes to incorporate the second wave of democracy, African countries failed to devise an electoral system that would allow real representation of various nationalities within the state, contends Nana K.A. Busia Jr

ANALYSIS

16

The war in Ukraine and its impact on Africa

24

Kenyan elections: kingmaker against the kings

In this analysis of selective African countries and regions, Toyin Falola explores the continent’s economic interactions with Russia in particular and Europe in general in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war

Barely four months before voters go to the polls, the political temperature is rising as leading candidates, power barons and interest groups scramble to tie up loose ends before the big day, writes Sylvanus Wekesa

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

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Africa seeks to unlock huge untapped real-time payments potential – ACI Worldwide Report The 3rd Edition of ACI's Prime Time for Real-Time Report highlights real-time payments growth in the region and economic benefits unlocked by real-time payments, reports Jon Offei-Ansah

38

ENERGY

38

How Africa can adopt renewable energy on a massive scale and save billions along the way

Kenneth Engblom argues that ambitious renewable energy objectives in Africa are not only achievable, but they are also the soundest and cheapest strategy for the successful electrification of the continent

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LEADER

West finally wakes up to universality of international justice I N June 2010, after 10 days of intense negotiations in Kampala, parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally decided on the definition of the crime of aggression. The diplomatic gathering in Uganda was the first review conference of the Statute since it came into force in 2002.

But arriving at a definition was not as straightforward as that. First of all, it was agreed that the crime would come into force only after 30 ratifications by ICC member states.

Then delegates representing the more powerful countries argued over whether jurisdiction would apply to all ICC member states once the threshold of 30 had been met, or only to those that had accepted the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime.

Aggression was one of the four crimes listed in the Rome Statute when the treaty was adopted in 1998. However, the completion of the definition and provisions of jurisdiction were postponed for further negotiations until the 2010 Kampala meeting.

The resolution that was finally adopted came into force on July 17, 2018, on the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute, and was binding on ICC member states that have ratified the amendments on the crime of aggression. It also stipulates that the ICC will not have jurisdiction over member states, or their nationals, that have not ratified these amendments in the case of a state referral or investigation by the ICC prosecutor.

To date, 43 out of the 123 ICC member states have ratified the crime of aggression.

But, crucially, the UK and France, the only two permanent members of the UN Security Council that are ICC member states, have not done so. Yet, these are the two European countries that are pushing for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to face charges under this crime following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is where African countries have a bone to pick with the major powers.

6

They have always pointed out that the pussyfooting over the issue of the crime of aggression was down to the fact that it was these powers, not African countries, that have the propensity to commit acts of aggression.

African NGOs in the field of international law have regularly argued that countries on the continent have been “targeted” by Western powers by using the ICC against them. For instance, even though Sudan was not a party to the ICC under President Omar al-Bashir, the UN Security Council mandated the Court, which is legal under the Rome Statute, to act against him.

He was charged by the ICC with war

‘

Putin could also point at the destruction of Iraq by the US and the UK under false premises in 2003. However, former President George W. Bush and ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair could not be hauled before the ICC because the crime of aggression was not in place then.

So, the Ukraine war will be a test for international justice, something that countries in Africa have been wary of.

Indeed, over the years, African NGOs such as the well-respected Africa Legal Aid have argued that although the concept of international justice is universal, its implementation is not.

From this perspective, African countries feel that international justice

Although the concept of international justice is universal, its implementation is not

’

crimes and crimes against humanity for his government’s military action in Darfur in Sudan’s western region. Initially, the Court found that there was not enough evidence to charge al-Bashir with genocide, the third crime under which the ICC then had jurisdiction.

Three counts of genocide were later added to the charge, but these were all disregarded by Sudan because it did not recognise the ICC. Just as the major powers were saying that the crime of aggression would be politicised, so, too, was the argument by the Sudanese in rejecting the jurisdiction of the ICC and its warrants.

Russia, the US and China, the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, are not party to the ICC. It would therefore be interesting to see how the Council will traverse the small matter of charging Putin with the crime of aggression when we know that Russia and China would definitely veto such a move.

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

has always been skewed in favour of the big powers in the both the Western and Eastern camps. They use obfuscation and the double-talk to wriggle out of blatant international crimes.

By doing so, they are not setting a good example. Don Ferencz, the Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression, clearly sees double standards regarding the crime of aggression.

He told Justice Hub in 2018: “The British and the French, until they ratify, are sending a message to the other countries of the world that law is only for the little people and not for us. That’s a real problem.”

He knows what he is talking about.

After all, his father Benjamin, was the prosecutor for the US army during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

Let’s hope that the West, in light of the war in Ukraine, will finally wake up to the universality of international law and AB human rights.

COMMENT

Africa must now focus on selfreliance in the wake of Ukraine war

T

HE war in Ukraine is disrupting the world’s political and socioeconomic order. And, yet again, African leaders appear to be at a loss as to how to handle this situation.

It is not a matter of taking sides in the conflict. What is paramount is that Africa does not come out of all this in a worse state than it is now. We have seen how monumental world events in the past disrupted life on the continent because African leaders were waiting for the so-called international community to bail their countries out.

What is needed right now is for the continent to finally wake up to the fact that it is only Africans who will make things better for themselves. The world does not owe Africa a living.

For a start, in order to put things right, Africans should once and for all take their fingers off the self-destruct button. Ukraine and Russia are two European countries at war with each other.

‘

people are constantly on the move, running away from gratuitous violence. It’s just so unfair on them.

Talking about gratuitous violence, one cannot fathom the death and destruction being meted out by gangs against apparent illegal African immigrants in South Africa.

It would seem that the ANC government has handed the work of the country’s immigration department over to vigilante groups.

Overall, the continent continues to face widespread instability that the African Union finds hard to halt. The AU’s promise to Silence the Guns in 2020 failed. Now it has shifted the deadline to 2030. Will that be met, I wonder?

The problem with halting conflict in Africa is the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. There are 100 million of these in Africa, out of a global figure of 640 million, according to a 2019 Small Arms Survey. And 35 million are in subSaharan Africa.

Unity will not make us rich. But it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated – Nyerere

In Africa, there are seldom interAfrican conflicts. Instead, the continent is bogged down with intra-African wars.

Take, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It has been tearing itself apart for decades as hundreds of armed groups cause mayhem in the eastern part of the country.

The causes for the wanton destruction of the DRC are the usual suspects: ethnic disputes and political instability that have beset the country since independence in 1960.

Added to these is the gross exploitation of the DRC’s natural resources by unscrupulous foreign interests taking advantage of the state of permanent chaos in that country. The unfortunate Congolese

’

For a continent that does not even feature on the list of global arms manufacturers, these are staggering figures. Indeed, the money spent on these weapons would go a long way to redress the socio-economic anomalies in many African countries.

The main reason why conflicts tend to continue to flare up in Africa is that everything is seen through the prism of tribe. This is exacerbated during elections when ethnic cleavages take precedence over content of campaigns.

Elections are upcoming in Kenya this year, and Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria next year. The political debate is beginning to be dominated by ethnic divisions. This problem is most acute AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

Desmond Davies

in Nigeria where tribal issues always foreground the discussions.

It is very tiresome when one hears voters say: “I won’t vote for this or that candidate because he or she is not from my tribe.” This sort of mindset destroys any attempt at deepening national unity that will foster growth, development and respect for Africans on the continent and the Diaspora.

Granted, every African country is multi-ethnic, but then there is hardly any country in the world that can claim to be mono-ethnic. China, which now exercises a strong influence in Africa, is predominantly mono-ethnic, with 91 per cent of the population Han Chinese. Japan on the other hand is mono-ethnic.

But the ethnic differences between Africans within a given country should not be the reason why they should be destroying their nations. After all, Africa has been their home since the beginning of time, and will continue to be so until the end of time.

However, when one ethnic group is in power, everyone else is kept on the outside. It is not surprising, therefore, that these “outsiders” turn to their ethnic groups for sustenance.

This does not augur well for national unity because the entity that is the state is not being supported by all of the population. Thus, once people feel alienated by society, they quickly switch off and start doing their own thing.

They do not owe any loyalty to the state. This apathy has been responsible for Africa’s current poor showing in the world. And then Africans feel that it’s someone else’s responsibility to sort out their self-inflicted problems.

The late President of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, put it succinctly once: “Unity will not make us rich. But it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and AB humiliated.”

7

COMMENT

Forms are it A

LL the talk in Nigeria now is about forms. No, not about the form of government the country is running, or the form of government it is supposed to be running.

Everyone imbued with a modicum of common sense knows that Nigeria is under the throes of despotic tyranny.

Everyone not wallowing in self-deception knows that the country should be in a democratic dispensation. But, because all attempts to chart a democratic path have failed woefully, and because the man currently at the helm is insensitive to alternative opinion, little energy is now being deployed into engineering a political direction faithful to the country’s name.

The forms currently dominating national debate are those plain sheets of paper aspirants to public offices must fill to indicate to their parties the intention to fight elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) quaintly calls those typed sheets of paper the Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms. In the run-up to the 2023 presidential and general elections, there are hundreds, if not thousands of positions in the executive and legislative arms of government for which voters will troop to the polls early next year.

Foremost is the presidency where on May 29, 2023, a change of baton should put an end to the blight of ineptitude and retrogression unleashed on longsuffering Nigerians since May 29, 2015. In addition, 8

33 of the 36 governorship posts will also be subjected to the ballot box, for incumbents seeking second terms, and for those who covet the positions. Then there

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The All Progressives Congress (APC), the ruling party of President Muhammadu

not ‘Everyone wallowing in

self-deception knows that the country should be in a democratic dispensation are elections into the bicameral National Assembly that boasts 104 senatorial seats and 360 House of Representatives positions. Houses of Assembly elections will also be held in all 36 states of the Federation. All this have made the acquisition and filling of forms the in-thing in the country’s political firmament today.

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

’

Buhari, set the tone for the formal contestations by pegging the acquisition of its Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms at a princely N100 million. To fully appreciate how gargantuan this sum is, it is important to note that during the 1970s, the Nigerian currency, the Naira, was superior to both the British Pound Sterling

COMMENT and the American Dollar. (At some point 1 Naira (N1) was equivalent to $1.5. All that changed with bad economic policies and clueless leaderships that eviscerated the Nigerian currency. Under Buhari’s watch, the Naira plummeted dismally to around N580 to $1!

Still, N100 million ($240,789.79) is an incredibly large amount of money for many reasons. The national minimum wage is a paltry N30,000. Most States swore that their budgets could not be encumbered with this minimum wage and adamantly refused to honour it, leading to protestations from labour leaders that workers’ dues must be met in full. The President, meanwhile, is said to earn N1.171 million a month. For him to be able to purchase the forms to contest election for the office, he would part with his unspent basic salary for 85 months or seven years – a term of office lasts for four years. It also means that no University Vice Chancellor, no head of a statutory organisation, no municipal chief can afford the APC presidential forms without parting with their accumulated and unspent salaries for upwards of a decade.

After paying through the nose to buy two sheets of paper, the presidential aspirant will be confronted with a much steeper financial hill to climb in the name of political barnstorming? His or her expenditure would include fees for the procurement of security personnel and equipment to protect his skull from the assassin’s bullet and his convoy from the blasts of improvised explosive devices.

(We wonder how much money Mr or Mrs Politician would deploy for shifting bags of salt and bags of rice in the direction of the general electorate who, after the one-off free meals, will not again hear from the Politician until the next election cycle? Greed and avarice aside, what else could make a man or woman spend such a mountainous heap of cash in pursuit of an end incapable of providing legitimate financial and material returns?

As happens in Nigeria, every political

question has a readymade answer. APC spokespeople quickly explained that the high fee for forms was intended to deter non-serious aspirants from wasting everybody’s time, including their own.

Well, that explanation was swiftly defeated by the reality on the ground. In two weeks, close to 40 aspirants picked up the forms! An uncanny angle soon became evident in the entire charade. Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank, (AfDB) had an APC form fully paid up for in his name.

He denied mandating any individual or group to go form-buying on his behalf.

Dr. Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), also had a form picked up in his name. He did not resign his office. Instead, he rushed to the courts for “protection,” his lawyers arguing that the CBN boss does not fall into the ambit of political appointees that must resign if seeking elective office!

Another aspirant who has been the subject of enormous public controversy is Pastor Tunde Bakare, the General Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Lagos, who announced on picking him forms that

the public the evidence of their tax returns.

Neither this nor Pastor Tunde’s crippling indebtedness is of any significance to Alhaji Sulaiman Argungu, the National Organising Secretary of APC, who happily announced that his party had realised a colossal N20 billion in revenue from the sale of presidential, gubernatorial, and parliamentary forms. Now, that sum is less than the reason the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been on strike since the beginning of the year. With the strike extended for another three months to early August, it means that university students could miss an entire session of academic work.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s total debt has more than doubled to $95.78 billion (N39.56 trillion) in the space of 10 years.

Nigeria’s debt service-to-revenue ratio rose from 81.1 percent in 2020 to 96 percent in 2021 but revenue increased only 9.3 per cent to N4.39 trillion year-on-year (YoY). A hefty N4.22 trillion was spent on debt servicing in 2021, hiking 29.3 percent above N3.27 trillion in 2020. All these are from figures released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) and the

‘None of the characters

picking up forms has been asked to produce their tax returns

God had revealed to him that he would be the next President of Nigeria. Disregarding this prophecy, many asked how he came by the fees for the forms when it is public knowledge that he was indebted to Wema Bank to the tune of N9 billion?

Of all the characters eagerly picking up forms, none has been asked to show to AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

’

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). They are stupefying statistics from a country whose survival is not in any doubt, especially as it appears that burgeoning national insecurity - of which Abuja is doing little or nothing to address or resolve - has left the hapless populace in torturous resignation!

AB

9

COVER STORY

The unravelling of multi-party politics Election violence in Africa has been, invariably, put down to bad political leaders, but Nana K.A. Busia Jr argues that it has been more a case of bad constitutional drafting that has seen the continent backslide into anarchy from the close of the decade, in 1999, when almost three quarters of African countries were under “democratic rule” with all of them having undergone periodic elections

I

N the1990s most African states came under pressure to reintroduce multi-party politics.

Throughout the length and breadth of the continent, there were mass demonstrations calling on the respective states to liberalise their political systems as a way of ushering in democratic governments through general elections.

Democracy therefore became a spectre that haunted most of the authoritarian regimes. In that regard, by the close of the decade, in 1999, almost three quarters of African countries were under “democratic rule” with all of them having undergone periodic elections.

including the non-recognition of governments that come to power through unconstitutional means. And any elections that are not free and fair were not going to pass the test of having brought about a constitutional government.

The strongest case made for the reintroduction of multi-party politics was that the authoritarian regimes that the

continent witnessed did not deliver on the overarching twin objectives of postcolonial African states: nation-building and economic development. Evidence was marshalled to show that countries that had shunned multi-party politics and opted for an authoritarian mode of governance had very little to show in terms of economic development. Nor was the nation-state

The global political economic climate, in the post- Cold War era, which had since become dominated by neo-liberalism, with a high sense of triumphalism, was very supportive of this liberal democratic agenda with its concomitant civil and political rights, and, of course, the free market system.

External factors, therefore, also, contributed towards the process of the transition from authoritarianism to liberalised system through free and fair elections. Most of this external support came in the form of conditionalities as part of multilateral or bilateral relations.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU), later the African Union (AU), as the continental inter-governmental organ, had no choice but to be seen to be responding by embracing the popular discourses on democracy, good governance, and human rights.

Thus, the old notion of noninterference in the internal affairs of member states, articulated eloquently by the OAU as far back as 1963, gradually gave way to new normative standards 10

Countries that had shunned multi-party politics had very little to show in terms of economic development

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

COVER STORY project better attended to by the nondemocratic regimes.

With the possible exception of countries like Tanzania and Ghana, the latter, to a limited extent, the authoritarian regimes worsened the objective problem of the nation-building project. This they did through the politics of ethnic mobilisation, and divide and rule. Examples of such practices in some countries abound on the continent.

In fact, on the contrary, countries like Mauritius, Botswana and Senegal, that had then stuck fairly consistently with multi-party politics through relatively free and fair elections were much more able to address one or two of these twin challenges – nation-building and economic development – better than the authoritarian states.

In view of these considerations, that the authoritarian regimes generally could not deliver, the logical inference was that the multi-party election was going to augur well for economic development and the

nation-building project, and this, it was envisaged, would ultimately enhance peace and security on the continent.

The issue that multi-party politics was going to bring about peace was taken as self-evident because the presumption was that governments, by being elected, were going to enjoy legitimacy that will deprive would-be coup-makers or rebel fighters of any justification for seizing power, with

‘

colonialism.

What was certain was that at independence there was no developed entrepreneurial class to lead the processes of capitalist development. As a result, the state became the only entity within society that was institutionally equipped to embark upon economic development.

The experience of the developed capitalist countries is different: in those

Democracy became a spectre that haunted Africa’s authoritarian regimes

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the accompanying violence. Once votes are secured then this will ensure that the winner “has reached out to be inclusive”.

Has the multi-party electoral system brought about an end to political violence as it was envisaged in the respective countries of the continent? A cursory survey of the African political landscape will reveal how, since the introduction of multi-party politics, tensions and electoral violence have been unleashed, which, in some instances like in Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire in 2007 and 2010 respectively, undermined regional peace and security.

Rigging of elections, manipulation of electoral results, incumbents refusing to hand over power when they have lost elections, intimidation of citizens and a general sense of a lack of free and fair elections have compounded the political process.

In the end, elections, which were originally thought would deliver peace on the continent, have rather been riddled with violence. This has become so widespread that it is increasingly undermining regional and sub-regional peace and security.

No analysis therefore of electoral violence would be adequate without a proper understanding of the nature and characteristics of the post-colonial state in contemporary African societies. When they gained political independence, the new African states wanted to develop and transcend underdevelopment, which, they believed, had been inherited from

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

countries it is controllers of private capital that formed the state to protect their wealth. The Marxian view that the state in a capitalist society is a “committee of the bourgeoisie”, although quite exaggerated, is not totally inaccurate.

This also means that the state is the most important vehicle for individual capital accumulation. Closeness to executive power helps political parties, especially incumbent ones, to siphon off huge amounts of money from the state.

Not even IMF and World Bank policies of liberalisation, privatisation, and divestiture, whereby the state was instructed to roll back from society, have in any way diminished, significantly, the relevance for accumulation. In contemporary Africa, therefore, association with state power is still the main avenue for individual wealth accumulation, the main symbol of social stratification.

This explains the fierce contestation for political power, often characterised by corruption, bribery, intimidation, violence and, in extreme cases, using any means possible to either retain power or take it from others. In some instances, physical elimination of opponents or perceived opponents has not been ruled out.

Countries like Nigeria and Kenya, where much wealth is generated by the state bureaucracy, there is a tendency to use violent methods to get rid of political opponents. This makes elections a “do or die” venture.

11

COVER STORY Loss of power means loss of revenue that would have accrued from contracts, patronage, and so on. In this desperate quest for state power, ethnicity, religion and other primordial factors are mobilised for the purposes of winning elections at all cost.

In a 2006 article for Africa Development journal, Kwame Ninsin noted pointedly: “In most African countries, elections provide opportunity for manipulating the prevailing ethnic, religious and regional divisions to achieve victory.”

Even in instances when such power holder has left office, they still have an interest in ensuring that certain persons that could threaten their continued access to state resources do not acquire state power.

This explains why former army generals and old politicians who have officially handed over power 10 or more years previously would still want to influence the political direction of their country.

There are reformists, and, in fact, even revolutionaries, who try to capture state power to effect progressive changes and needed reforms. Depending upon the nature of accumulation and wealth of the

‘

“community’’ then it is likely their own ethnic hegemony would be enhanced, thereby improving their access to certain economic, social, and cultural rights. They want to secure benefits that will accrue

Association with state power is still the main avenue for individual wealth accumulation in Africa

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established political classes, there can be a serious resistance to any such elements with a reform agenda to capture executive state power.

from having “their own” being in power.

This is when elite interest coincides with that of society for contestation for power in Africa.

The citizens of African states are also by no means innocent bystanders, just watching the elections as political theatre in a disinterested manner. They also have come to place a high stake on the results of elections.

The multi-ethnic or national character of the African state makes it inherently plural. Any democratic dispensation has to take this into consideration in designing the appropriate institutional response.

Once the results are in favour of their

Thus, political or legal mechanism for non-violent elections has to recognise this

The African Union had no choice but to be seen to be responding by embracing the popular discourses on democracy, good governance, and human rights

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AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

COVER STORY

The citizens of African states are also by no means innocent bystanders

view that the societies are plural. Related to this is also an instructive perspective that appropriate constitutional engineering is very significant in delivering a stable state and society.

Ordinarily, federal and confederal constitutional mechanisms are vital for addressing potential conflicts that might arise among the various groups that form the state. Such arrangements, some scholars opine, were not unknown to pre-colonial African societies, and that guaranteed relative peace and an efficient mode of governance.

For example, given the diversity of Nigeria, with its multiple nationalities and other social cleavages, a federal system of government with very powerful and autonomous regional governments was created after independence. However, once oil was discovered it ceased to be a federation, and, to all intent and purposes, became a highly centralised unitary system of government.

Thus, the constitutions that most African countries adopted in the1990s, in response to the mass agitations by the masses for a return to democracy

through multi-party elections, did not take into consideration the realities of African societies. The main point was, and still is, the unfinished business of the nation-building project and how this should inform political representation of the various national groupings within the executive arm of government.

context, is the organ that is in charge of state resources and its distribution.

For reasons of personal accumulation or progressive development, one needs to be close to executive power. Logically, therefore, in terms of access to the state, the main target is the executive, often headed by a president, working with

‘ The multi-ethnic or

national character of the African state makes it inherently plural

The real power within the various African states, as perhaps elsewhere, is located in the executive arm of government. The executive, in the African

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appointed Cabinet ministers.

If peace is to ensue during and after elections then executive power is to be shared among political parties. AB

Nana K. Busia Jr is a former Senior Legal and Policy Adviser at the UN Development Programme, and currently consultant to the UN, AU and international non-governmental organisations on issues of international law The above and the next article are excerpts from a paper – one of many that he has presented over the years – at a joint ECOWAS, UN and AU conference on Elections and Democracy in Africa AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

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COVER STORY

Constitutions needed for power-sharing In drafting Statutes to incorporate the second wave of democracy, African countries failed to devise an electoral system that would allow real representation of various nationalities within the state, contends Nana K.A. Busia Jr

H

ISTORY itself, in the view of Ugandan academic Mahmoud Mamdani, has conspired against state formation in Africa. He argues: “There is little coincidence between the history of nation formation and that of state formation, between social history and political history.”

This challenge of a state without a nation, and a nation without a state was an objective problem that was inherited at independence. As a result, any responsible independent government has to manage the challenge of nation-building, which in this case will mean how a state, with its agent as the government, works carefully for the people to have a collective identity and legitimise public power within a given territory.

It is thus clear that a constitution, properly defined, plays a role in the twin project of nation-building and economic development in a post-colonial society. Max Planck attempts a definition of constitutional nation-building as “enshrining the political values of a political community in a constitutional document that ought to become the focus of nation-building initiatives”.

By implication, a constitution governing people in any given polity has to be a document that is instructed by a sense of history by that given community; that is, what has worked and what has not worked in terms of the relationship between the political authority and the governed, and among citizens themselves.

The role of the law in the process of proper constitutional formulation comes at the tail end of this process. The role of the jurist therefore is how to translate these national experiences into a legal text as codified norms.

Certainly, the constitutions that gave birth to post-independent African states, both in the Francophone and Anglophone 14

Plurality itself is not the problem, it is the constitutional system

world, were anything but home-grown norms. Most of the constitutions prior to independence were drafted by experts from the former colonial powers and negotiated or imposed on Africans.

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in developed capitalist countries, were imposed upon the respective countries whose historical experiences were markedly different from that of Western countries.

A state without a nation, and a nation without a state was a problem inherited at independence

There is the general view that the African constitutions of the 1960s bore little or no resemblance to the governance and politics of the continent. On the whole, the liberal democratic norm, as articulated

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John M. Mbaku cites the case of Cameroon to support this contention. The academic wrote: “During the construction of the first constitution for what would become the Republic of Cameroon, the

COVER STORY process was controlled and dominated by the colonial government, the French business and commercial class in the colony, and few indigenous urbanised elites, the majority of whom had been educated in France and had accepted French culture. The non-elite indigenous people of the colony were denied effective participation.

“The constitution the Consultative Committee produced and presented to the people for ratification was virtually a copy of the constitution of the French Fifth Republic.”

Small wonder then that the constitutions that were adopted by African countries in the 1960s had little or no connection to the nation-building project.

Generally, new African states were just mimicking metropolitan constitutions, which inherently were unable to speak to the realities of the post-independent African states: new colonially inherited states that were desperately in search of a nation or multinational nation that also were in search of a state under the new political dispensation.

However, in most cases, multi-party elections in the newly formed state were held once or twice at most before the introduction of a one-party state, life presidency, no party state and military regimes. These political forms entrenched authoritarianism but yet could not deliver on the nation’s state project.

The key question of the nation-building project – and how the electoral system could be created by the constitution to get

real representation of various nationalities within the state system – did not receive attention in the second constitutional drafting. There was a lack of creativity and originality of a constitution that will speak to the said contextual realities that have come to haunt African states after the reintroduction of new constitutions in the 1990s.

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president.

Consequently, the case of alleged rigging is often made about presidential elections rather than for the legislature. The reason is not difficult to fathom because it is the executive who would distribute patronage and who would make decisions on how resources are to be shared.

Constitutions adopted by African countries in the 1960s had little or no connection to nation-building

Essentially, there was no serious attempt to devise constitutional systems that recognised the ethnic plurality of the states. It is worth nothing that it is not the plurality itself that is the problem but the constitutional system.

An important way of addressing the violence that has ensued after elections is for Africans to be confident, original, and come up with new constitutions that will espouse the principles of shared power. With the end of ideology in recent years, whereby most countries have been following the neo-liberal market system, there is very little value in talking about the ideological differences between political parties.

That is why in countries where there has been a high level of political tension, legislative elections have not been the focus of violence. Instead, the violence has been concentrated on the election of

’

The case for shared power is strengthened by the examples of Kenya and Zimbabwe, which came up with a constitutional arrangement of power sharing, albeit as an afterthought, after turbulent elections. The relationship between the political parties that formed these coalitions, though, has not been rosy, but the alternative could have been far worse.

Whatever the challenges, there was a clear sense that the nationalities within the countries, through the alliances, felt that they were part of the executive and that was sufficient enough to guarantee peace. It is therefore logical to assume that had there been a constitutional provision that deliberately and clearly provided for executive power sharing, much of the violence resulting from a sense of exclusion could have been avoided. AB

The case for shared power is strengthened by the examples of Kenya and Zimbabwe

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SPECIAL REPORT

The war in Ukraine and its impact on Africa In this analysis of selective African countries and regions, Toyin Falola explores the continent’s economic interactions with Russia in particular and Europe in general in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war Egypt: deep economic ties with Ukraine and Russia

EGYPT’S relationship with Ukraine and Russia settles deep into the core of its economy. Its ties with Russia intersect with its foreign policy objectives, especially in relation to the West. For Russia, the North African country is an integral part of its anti-West policy.

Relations go as far back as the 1950s, during which Russia supported Egypt on economic and military fronts. A notable instance is the Russian engagement with Egypt on the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1964. Then, Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had joined his Egyptian counterpart, Gamal Nasser, in throwing granite rocks into the Nile.

This symbolised the benefits of a relationship that spanned several years until the expulsion of Soviet officials in the 1970s. And until the end of the Republic, interactions were at a low ebb between both parties. The reawakening of the Egypt-Russia relationship came about in the 21st century when Russia began to reestablish old friendships.

Leaders on both sides have been welcoming to each other, with a bold understanding of their individual gains. For Egypt, it is a courtship of two enemies, the US and Russia, and a play to befriend both.

However, Russia seeks to exert influence on politics in the Middle East and North Africa. They have been united on matters such as the conflict in Syria and Libya.

However, what is most interesting is the actual level of commitment that has been made. Russia and Egypt recently signed a comprehensive partnership agreement, touching security and trade relations. The pact is scheduled to last for 10 years, with automatic renewals lasting five.

To the chagrin of the US, Egypt has also instituted arms purchases 16

totalling billions of dollars from Russia.

It smoothens its military ties with joint drills as well. Notable investments in the relationship are the construction of a nuclear power plant in El Dabaa and the creation of a Russian Industrial Zone in the Suez Canal Economic Zone.

Construction expenses for the power plant run as high as $25 billion, 85 per cent of which will be funded by a Russian loan.

The Industrial Zone will also expand the presence of Russian companies in Egypt and provide an estimated 35,000 jobs for the Egyptian populace. In terms of trade, Egypt provides an excellent market for Russia's agricultural products.

Tourism is another domain in which Russia proves to be an essential partner.

Tourists from Russia and Ukraine constituted a high percentage of visitors to Egypt's historic sites in the early 2010s.

Jointly, they were almost a third of the 12 million tourists who travelled to Egypt in those years.

The importance of tourism cannot be underplayed. Research indicates that one out of every 10 members of Egypt's workforce is employed in the tourism sector. And in peak years, tourism revenue soared to $13 billion. With the sector making up 12 per cent of Egypt's GDP, the country is keen on retaining partners like Russia.

But a situation that twists the knife in the Egyptian economy is the bomb explosion on a plane filled with Russian passengers in 2015. It sent tourism into a tumble as Russia suspended flights to the country and only just recommenced operations in 2021. This, alongside the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, severely reduced the inflow of tourists.

Presidents Sisi (right) and Putin: Russia and Egypt recently signed a comprehensive partnership agreement, touching security and trade relations

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SPECIAL REPORT Employees in the sector faced a decline in their incomes, with hospitality service operators struggling to keep up with the rising business costs. Assessments by the media also showed growing disillusionment among workers as many expressed worries about their employment prospects. But as the virus waned and the government intervened in reviving the sector, hopes of an awakening were ignited.

Russia lifted its ban on flights; Egypt was implementing measures to contain the virus, especially in the hospitality and aviation sectors, and places like the Red Sea resorts in Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada held new promise for their visitors.

True to form, Russian tourists began to flock in again. In the first few weeks of 2022, more than 100,000 Russians visited Egypt. And in each month of 2021, data showed that Russian tourists numbering up to 500,000 visited Egypt.

For Egyptians, the invasion of Ukraine could not have occurred at a more inconvenient time. Even as it seems that they are finally getting a reprieve, sanctions on Russia and travel bans may create debilitating impacts on the struggling sector.

Although the Egyptian government appears to be working with Turkey (another country with a high tourism inflow) on an alternative transit route for its Russian customers, it is unlikely to witness the same flux. The devaluation of the Russian rouble threatens the purchasing power of the average Russian and will potentially influence travelling. It is also unlikely that European tourists can fill the void left by the Russians.

Besides tourism, food is a sector with serious political consequences. A hike in the price of bread by the Egyptian government in 1977 unleashed deadly riots in the country, sending the government into a flurry to remedy the situation. A similar hike led to the Arab Spring in 2011 and singularly catalysed massive political changes in the Arab world.

Bread consumption in Egypt is a nutritional culture that has existed for centuries. Aish baladi, as it is known locally, constitutes a major part of Egyptians' cereal diet and is crucial to the 30 per cent of Egyptians who live below the poverty line. In recognition of the centrality of bread to national stability, the Egyptian government avoided removing subsidies on the product in 2016, even as the IMF mandated similar measures in other areas.

President Ramaphosa. Unlike countries in North Africa, South Africa is less reliant on Russian or Ukrainian food

However, the availability of bread and the consequent price stability relies on wheat. Data reveals that Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, with Russia and Ukraine supplying 70 per cent of its total intake. Before the war, Russia had instituted a tax on exports, intensifying the situation for the Egyptian government. The country's budget for food subsidy in 2022 is $5.5 billion, with a potential increase of over $700 million as the price of wheat rises. There is also a possibility that the subsidy will be reduced, which raises concerns about a price hike. Egyptian officials are aiming to diversify import locations to manage the situation. Grain stocks are also expected to last several months, during which the government may implement buffers.

South Africa: more of diplomacy than economic THE relationship between South Africa and Russia focuses more on diplomacy than economic ties. Unlike countries in North Africa, it is less reliant on Russian or Ukrainian food.

Data reveals that the country imports 40 per cent of its wheat, but none of it comes from the warring countries. Supply centres include Lithuania, Argentina, the US, Poland and Latvia. Maize production in South Africa also positions it to exploit the gap left by the Russia-Ukraine war as local supply exceeds demand.

However, South African investments in Russia may take a hit due to international sanctions imposed after the Russian invasion. According to data, South Africa has an estimated R77 billion in investment in Russia, compared to the latter's R23 billion.

The automotive industry within AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

Africa's most industrialised country will also be affected as Ukraine supplies the bulk of the wire harnesses used in vehicle manufacturing. Ukraine manufactures as much as 30 per cent of the wire harnesses used in Europe. Russia is equally a major supplier of minerals such as nickel, palladium, and aluminium used to manufacture vehicles and electronics, necessitating a diversification of suppliers.

On the diplomatic front, the situation has become more complex. South Africa's colonial history includes alliances between liberation movements and the Soviet Union. Today, the political elite in the country maintain their gratitude to Russia for the support it provided then.

Although it is questionable whether the Soviet Union's backing was not motivated by a desire to counter Western dominance, the existence still reverberates in leadership circles. Evidence of this is seen in the country's inability to take a unified stance on the invasion. Remarkably, South Africa also abstained from a UN General Assembly vote criticising the invasion and demanding an immediate withdrawal.

A factor that further deepens the bond between both nations is South Africa's membership in BRICS, the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa economic bloc. Its relationship with some of the world's major powers, particularly antiWestern countries like Russia and China, compromises its decisiveness in actions in the international community.

Within BRICS, it periodically mediates on the border conflict between China and India, with Russia supporting the side it finds most convenient at a particular time.

However, analysts have identified a notable shift in South Africa's foreign policy.

In its early post-independence days, the country defined itself by its commitment 17

SPECIAL REPORT

UkrAVTO, a Ukrainian car manufacturer, opened a factory in Tunisia in 2017

to the recognition of human rights around the world. Its apartheid experience and struggles for emancipation made this an almost instinctive viewpoint for the country.

However, its diplomatic responses at the international level have demonstrated the opposite. Until recently, the country maintained an automatic abstention policy from UN resolutions that criticised other countries. It refrained from one such resolution on the Myanmar government's human rights abuses.

The country's political landscape also precludes definitive opposition to Russia's aggression. The South African Communist Party (SACP) has been a historic disciple of Marxism-Leninism. It demonstrates its followership by rationalising Russia's decisions, even clearly expressing its support for the invasion.

The situation is not very different within the ruling ANC. A foundation headed by the former President, Jacob Zuma, released a statement supporting Russia and lampooning the West for its hypocrisy in the conflict.

Tunisia: the most at risk

OF all the affected North African countries, Tunisia faces a severe risk of instability. The Arab Spring started in the country in 2011 and has recently witnessed a reversal in gains from that revolution.

President Kais Saied has abolished the parliament, rules by decree, and silences dissent with arraignments before military tribunals. Under this authoritarian atmosphere, Tunisia's debt was 81 per cent of its GDP in 2021 and is projected to rise to 84 per cent in 2022 and 84.7 per cent in 2023.

The necessity of subsidy removal, caused by unfavourable economic outcomes, has worsened the situation, posing a threat to national security. An 18

attempt by the government under Habib Bourguiba to remove the subsidy on bread in the 1980s resulted in riots that left more than 100 Tunisians dead.

Similar attempts between 2008 and 2009 were met by an onslaught of protests. The matter climaxed in 2011 when high commodity prices prompted riots that set off institutional reforms. But subsidy removals are also an economic imperative. Funds earmarked in the budget for subsidising food stand at $746 million, projected to hit $1.2 billion. Even worse, the country relies largely on Russia and Ukraine for food imports and sustenance of its tourism sector. Tunisia imports over 50 per cent of cereals for human consumption and 60 per cent for animal feed.

Local production is estimated at 1.5 million tons annually, less than half its import needs of 3.5 million tons. It also depends on Russia and Ukraine for 80 per cent of its grain imports and 60 per cent of its wheat. It is prevented from shoring up local production by a severe drought that has lasted for three years.

The Tunisian’s inability to adapt to such economic shocks is rooted in the country’s comprehensive welfare system. As a political solution to the protests in 2011, the government's response to the employment crisis was massive recruitment into the public service. The state employs more people than any other sector in the Tunisian economy, which puts a huge strain on the government’s finances.

With the effects of the pandemic and the surge in global inflation rates, Tunisia now struggles with paying workers' salaries. Thus, rising food and fuel prices, high transportation costs, and a decline in political freedoms may warrant negative reactions from Tunisians.

And in what may be termed a bleak prediction of fortunes, analysts submit that AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

the Central Bank of Tunisia's inflation rate of 6.8 per cent in 2022 may be moderate compared to likely increases.

Russia's relationship with Tunisia dates back to the Soviet years. Both countries commemorated their 62nd year of diplomatic relations in 2018. They have deepened bilateral engagements, with Russia supporting Tunisia on security and economic fronts.

Russia's importance to Tunisia is evident in the tourism sector, where, between 2016 and 2017, over one million Russian tourists visited Tunisia. This came at a time when a surge of terror attacks forced travellers to abandon Tunisian resorts. Moscow has aided Tunis in combating terrorism by sharing intelligence on terrorists' movements. This cooperation assisted Tunisian forces in operations against smugglers along the Libyan border.

These relations may now be affected by the war and Russia's ban on exports to support domestic supply.

With Ukraine, the relationship is more recent. Kiev and Tunisian officials signed an economic memorandum in 1992 and created a joint intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, commerce, science and technology in 1993.

Agreements in 2016 ranged from automatic equivalency for Ukrainian diplomas in sciences, apart from medicine, direct flights between the capitals of both countries, and easier visa application processes for Tunisians visiting Ukraine. The fruits were manifested in higher inflows of Ukrainian tourists into Tunisia and a high population of Tunisian students studying in the country.

UkrAVTO, a Ukrainian car manufacturer, also opened a factory in Tunisia in 2017, and subsequent agreements have extended to the banking sector, where both liaise on monetary policy and foreign exchange regulation. In 2021, Ukraine further committed to assisting Tunisia in providing training and development to its military.

However, with current events, Russia and Ukraine's partnership with the Maghreb state is bound to reduce. Both have implemented export bans to improve their food security and are focused on fuelling their war machines.

As a result, Tunisia is eyeing new horizons, particularly those that promise food. Its government has stated that it is considering Uruguay, Bulgaria, Argentina and Romania for critical supplies.

The president has also threatened to punish food speculators who contribute to the hike in prices. Furthermore, Tunisia is pressing for a $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. And as is

SPECIAL REPORT the norm with the organisation's loans, it is required to make broad policy changes that include an overhaul of its subsidy programmes and a review of its public sector wage bill.

However, problems lie in its implementation. President Saied's approval ratings, which are not what they used to be, heavily depend on his ability to pacify the discontent. His government lags in salary payments, especially those of the armed forces who protect his rule. He is also considering cutting fuel subsidy, a move that risks the ire of already financially hard-pressed workers.

Although the European Union has promised a tranche of €450 million to support the Tunisian budget and further investments over the years, it remains to be seen how Tunisia handles this.

Morocco: a more secure position

MOTIVATED by the unfavourable assessment of Morocco's human rights record by the US State Department, the kingdom sought to deepen relations with Russia in 2002. It started with a first-time visit by Mohammed VI, and the focus was the countries' free trade agreement.

There was also the subject of expanding Russian access to Moroccan fisheries in an effort to shift from the US. But the relationship has existed for far longer than this. Russo-Moroccan ties stretch as far back as 1777, when leaders from both states communicated through letters.

In the 21st century, both have expressed commitments through visits

to each other’s countries — twice in two decades by the Moroccan monarch and once in 2006 by Vladimir Putin. Though interjected by Morocco's efforts to maintain its partnership with the West, Rabat and Moscow have interacted on issues cutting across military and economic sectors.

Recently, the two nations signed 11 agreements in a single day, indicating a willingness to further relations. Moscow once offered its sophisticated missile defence system to Morocco and has also stated its intention to assist in constructing thermal power plants in the country.

Similarly, Russia expressed its readiness to support the construction of a gas terminal in Morocco's Jorf Lasfar.

The estimated spend for this project is in the region of $2 billion. And even as they continue to make strides in their energy and military agreements, the sides have progressed in economic depth.

In 2016, trade volume between Russia and Morocco stood at $3 billion. Exports from the country to Russia in 2019 were estimated at $286 million, with imports at $1.3 billion. A 20 per cent increase in Russian exports to Morocco was also recorded in the first half of 2021. Morocco, being Russia's second-largest trading partner in the Arab world, demonstrates how far they have both gone in terms of economic cooperation.

Like its North African counterparts, Morocco imports grain from Russia and Ukraine. The country, though, is in a more secure position as it possesses substantial reserves to hedge against the conflict, unlike others.

In 2020, it imported close to $300 million worth of Ukrainian grain and

$110 million of Russia's. Morocco's ties with Russia are further symbolised by the popularity of Moroccan citrus fruits. Its oranges are a regular part of Russia's new year festivities, adding grassroots meaning to the relationship.

This dynamic puts Morocco in a fix between its Western loyalties and its bond with Russia. This was evident in its refusal to participate in a UN vote to criticise Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Aside from grain, Russia's mineral, chemical, and energy exports will be affected. Morocco is highly dependent on imported energy, with 90 per cent of its needs augmented by external sources.

There is also the possibility that Morocco's car exports to Russia and Ukraine will be affected. According to data by the Moroccan Exchange Office, the sector witnessed a 12.8 per cent increase in 2021.

Yet, the situation is not utterly bleak.

Research has indicated that Morocco may gain from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Phosphate, an essential ingredient in manufacturing fertilisers, is one product the country has in abundance.

The war already limits Russia's exports, setting the stage for entry by fresh suppliers. Morocco's phosphate reserves are estimated at 50 billion tons, making it the second-largest in the world after China.

Its stock also constitutes 72 per cent of the total reserves available globally.

Morocco's position is enhanced by the presence of the OCP Group, a phosphate production giant in the country.

The company's logistical and production capabilities have been instrumental in Rabat's emergence. OCP Group recorded $9 billion in profits in 2021 and is set to increase production by 10 per cent in 2022.

The country is already receiving attention as India looks to procure more phosphate to supplement its reserves.

Algeria: ideological similarities

ALGERIA’S relationship with the Russian Federation dates back to its independence years. Algeria had fought a brutal eight-year war with France before finally securing autonomy. Since then, Moscow and Algiers have been diplomatic partners, with the Soviet Union lending billions of dollars to the Arab country.

In 2001, both signed a declaration of strategic partnership, and five years later, Algeria became Africa's biggest buyer of Russian arms. The weapons deal worth $7.5 billion in that year has expanded into King Mohammed VI with President Putin. The two nations recently signed 11 agreements in a single day

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

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SPECIAL REPORT several arms purchases in 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015. It has continued with these purchases, with a recent agreement providing huge supplies of Russian military equipment.

Between 2014 and 2018, Moscow supplied as much as 66 per cent of Algeria's arsenal. Sales to Algeria alone constitute half of Russia's entire weapons supplies to the African continent. The Russo-Algerian partnership has also extended to counter-terrorism operations, with both countries exchanging intelligence on terrorist activities in North Africa.

Algeria is not only a crucial military partner, but it also shares some ideological similarities with Russia. The two nations have a liking for authoritarian rule and are quick to deal harshly with any opposition.

The 2019 Algerian riots provide a classic study of Russia's interest in a nondemocratic leadership. While Moscow chose to refrain from direct interference, its position clearly suggested support for leaders with little regard for Western leadership principles.

Similarities can also be found in the South African and Algerian cases highlighted earlier. Due to its colonial experience, the latter consistently maintains opposition to actions violating territorial sovereignty. It is equally reactive to occasions that appear to threaten its sovereignty.

Lending weight to this principled nature is the Algerian capital's reputation as the “Mecca of the revolutionaries”.

However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has attracted reticence on Algeria's part.

The country was among the 35 nations that abstained from the UN resolution condemning the invasion. This position implies Algeria's preference for a smooth relationship with Russia.

There is also the issue of distrust of the West's intentions in Algerian circles.

The US-led diplomatic coalition against Russia is accused of double standards in its treatment of the conflict.

Still, the picture is not so simple. Even with its seeming friendliness, Algeria maintains a fair connection to the West.

An example is its membership of the Mediterranean Dialogue, despite lacking a designation as a major non-NATO ally.

Remaining in the Dialogue for two decades alongside Morocco, Israel, and other players in the Middle East is an indication that the West views it as an essential partner. Algeria also collaborates on counter-terrorism efforts but has refrained from engaging in conflict areas.

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Algeria became Africa's biggest buyer of Russian arms in 2006

On the economic end, Russia and Algeria partner on the latter's abundant energy sector. The Russian company, Gazprom, had won several contracts for exploration and development, but Russia's position as the European Union's largest gas supplier cast doubts on the potential of this relationship.

Russia singlehandedly supplies 16 per cent of Europe's gas, with Algeria trailing behind. In 2021, 83 per cent of Algeria's gas exports headed to Europe, with Italy and Spain, receiving 65 per cent of that intake.

The country has three pipelines conveying gas to Europe, out of which two are active. Transmed, the largest of the two, has a capacity of 32 billion cubic metres (bcm), with 22 billion bcm used.

The second, MedGaz, conveys gas to Spain. Algeria is one of the world's largest producers of natural gas, and it hopes to wield this position in replacing Russia in the EU. Preoccupied with war and economic sanctions, Russia's gas supply is severely impacted, leading to a surge in energy prices and forcing European nations to find new markets.

Algeria positions itself as a ready alternative and is already receiving yields along that line. Italy has entered new supply deals already, and government revenues are expected to record an uptick.

Algerian oil now sells for five times its value in April 2020 during the height of the pandemic. And to establish itself in the European market, it is moving towards a rise in production levels.

However, despite Algeria's apparent prospects, its ability to fill Russia's void is in doubt. Sonatrach, the state-run energy company, has been wracked by mismanagement and leadership instability.

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The company has had seven CEOs in 10 years, and operators in the energy sector decry bureaucratic bottlenecks and unfavourable policies.

There is also the technical aspect, wherein active extraction fields are already at near-maximum production capacity.

An increase in supply would require the exploration of new fields.

Here, again, Algeria confronts issues.

The North African region is experiencing an extended drought, and water scarcity threatens stability. Attempts by the government to explore local communities may be met by stiff resistance, one which it is looking to avoid.

In addition, local consumption of energy products has risen beyond previous levels. Between 2013 and 2018, domestic gas usage increased by 10 per cent, and the figure is projected to reach 50 per cent by 2028.

While Algeria has made advances in the use of renewable energy, these efforts are too minimal to augment local energy consumption. Nonetheless, Algeria's willingness to exploit the opening was palpable in its reaction. Before the war, the government instituted measures to cut subsidies totalling $17 billion during years of peak oil prices and planned tax increases.

The pandemic dented its revenues further, and its foreign currency reserves took a dive. But once prices began to rise, the government reversed its position on taxation and subsidies and set up a stipend for unemployed youth.

Algeria has argued that it will be unaffected by the absence of grain imports from Russia and Ukraine. Yet, there is some scepticism around this. It is expected that rising food prices will counteract Algeria's gains in the energy sector. There

SPECIAL REPORT are also debates on Moscow's view of its partner's plans to replace it in the European market.

The rest of Africa: varying impact

ALTHOUGH North Africa is unique in terms of its climate, political, and staple food peculiarities, countries in other African regions are affected in some similar ways. For example, imports provide 84 per cent of wheat demand in East Africa. Russia and Ukraine supply 90 per cent of the wheat in the region.

Therefore, like their North African counterparts, East African countries are expected to feel some of the war's impacts. However, depending on the level of dependence, impacts will vary across countries.

The situation in Kenya is likely to have a political undertone as parties settle into the election year. Citizens are forced to pay higher prices for fuel and food, and politicians will be looking to manipulate the crisis to their advantage or incite outrage for doing nothing.

Kenya's export of tea, coffee, flowers, and fruits worth around $88 million has been affected by Western sanctions on Russia. Its grain imports from Russia and Ukraine will also take a hit as the countries implement an export ban. Buyers from Russia, the fifth largest consumer of Kenyan tea, were noticeably absent at an exhibition of Kenyan agricultural products to potential export partners.

Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, has refrained from pointed criticism of Russia. Since its vote in support of the UN resolution, Nigeria has focused on evacuating its students from Ukraine. It is similarly expected to reap gains from the rise in energy prices. It slid into a recession that lasted several years after an oil price crash in 2014.

Nigeria’s economy has also been affected by the coronavirus, truncating efforts at revival. The war is expected to reflect on the Ajaokuta steel mines project, which was slated to receive Russian inputs.

Countries like Mali and the Central Africa Republic may witness a diversion of Russian attention to its war effort. In CAR, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, the private military company headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin and believed to be a state proxy, are assisting in counterterror efforts. Russia's involvement is seen as an attempt to frustrate the French,

Russia and Ukraine supply 90 per cent of the wheat in East Africa

who have been active in the region for years. There is also the ulterior motive of exploiting CAR's minerals as a quid pro quo for military backing.

In Mali, the situation is not much different. The Malian military junta headed

by Assimi Goita ousted the democratically elected government of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. And while the action has seen some support at the grassroots, there are insinuations that the coup was influenced

by Russia.

The coup leaders had been on a training programme in Russia, only to execute the overthrow within a week of their return. Regardless, the coup comes on the back of growing discontent at the presence of French troops in the country.

Locals perceive the French as reminders of their colonial history and doubt their ability to end terrorism.

Aiding this are grumbles against the use of the CFA Franc, a currency pegged to the Euro and controlled by France's central bank. This economic bond is seen as a neocolonisation effort, a continuous target of dissatisfaction.

A possible connection has also been established between the Burkinabe coup leader, Colonel Henri-Paul Sandaogo Damiba, and Goita. Both were said to have received Russian military training, and Damiba was stated to have pushed for the engagement of Russian mercenaries in the local security crisis weeks before the coup.

Africa's relationship with Europe in the context of the War

AFRICA’S partnership with Europe has been punctuated by promises and refreshed agreements for many years.

There is distrust in Europe's dedication to fulfilling its promises and a leaning toward Chinese and Russian powers is a result.

There are also stringent loan requirements that countries find difficult to meet, particularly the assessment of human rights records. A less officious partner is found in

China, whose loan terms and investment commitments over the years are viewed as outstripping Europe's.

Although Russia lags well behind investments by Europe and the US, abstentions by African countries at the UN are argued to have been informed by a desire for balance. Countries in Africa and the Middle East would rather maintain the bipolar world order than a circumstance where the US is solely dominant.

African nations are also unwilling to return to the Cold War era when loyalties were corralled to either side of the divide. Maintaining relations with the US and Russia helps secure countries' positions, preventing a reliance on one single power. However, it is notable that African abstentions dropped from 26 during the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to 17 during a full-scale invasion.

Analysts have suggested that the reasons are not farfetched; while African nations are particular about their diplomatic relationships, breaches of sovereignty are untenable to them. Many African nations possess little in terms of military might and are averse to compromising any country's territorial integrity.

A potential impact of the war on Europe-Africa relations is the diversion of critical foreign aid from the African continent. The EU will likely increase financial support to Ukraine in the aftermath of the war, and money committed to investing in Africa will reduce.

The EU also has to tackle the preexisting effects of the pandemic and the long-term impacts of the war on prices and various economic sectors. It will concentrate on reorienting its trade relationships such that dependence on actors like Russia is minimal. These efforts are certain to reflect on Africa.

Nevertheless, there are trust gaps to be filled. The stance of the US and Europe comes with a hypocritical lining. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its reaction to the Cuban missile crisis during the Cold War cast doubts on the honesty of Washington’s position.

Even closer to home is the more recent NATO bombing of Libya, from which the country continues to stagger. Many may also feel uncertain about the outcome of a weakened Russia, a dynamic that is sure to benefit no other than the West itself. Thus, in the face of an unreliable partnership, African nations have to decide what AB best works for them.

Toyin Falola’s analysis is based on discussions at the International Colloquium on the Russia-Ukraine War and Implication for Global Security, Peace and New World Order, organised by the Centre for Black Culture and Understanding, Osogbo, Nigeria in March.

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ANALYSIS

Two coups that tested ECOWAS’ resolve With the Guinean military junta announcing on April 30 a 39-month timetable to return the country to civilian rule, Issaka K. Souaré looks at Guinea and Mali, two countries where, he says, the regional body committed some strategic mistakes in trying to deal with the interference of soldiers in politics

I

N Mali, Colonel Assimi Goita staged a first coup against elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on August 18, 2020. Following regional pressure, particularly from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the military junta appointed a civilian president and another as prime minister, while Goita retained the post of vice-president.

However, unsatisfied with the transitional government’s ministerial choices in a reshuffle made by the two top civilian members of the administration, Goita staged a second coup on May 24, 2021 and arrested both the transitional President, Bah Ndaw, and Prime Minister, Mouctar Ouane. He then proclaimed himself as head of state and assumed the transitional presidency.

In Guinea, Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya, then head of special forces in the army, staged his coup on September 5, 2021 against President Alpha Condé who had forced through a controversial constitutional change in March 2020 that allowed him to stand for a third term in the October 2020 presidential elections. His re-election was followed by a crackdown on opposition politicians and anyone suspected of opposing the third term.

Based on their instruments against military coups, both ECOWAS and the African Union (AU) suspended Mali and Guinea from their decision-making organs. These instruments reject military coups, insist that coup leaders restore constitutional order as soon as possible and threaten sanctions in case of noncooperation.

Colonel Assimi Goita staged two coups in less than 12 months

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ECOWAS has held three extraordinary summits on both countries, adding Burkina Faso on the list for the third one held in Accra in March. On Mali, it was agreed that the transition would last for a maximum of 18 months, from the first coup, culminating in presidential elections in February 2022.

However, last December, the military junta organised a general gathering for “state reformation”, at the end of which it asked for a prolongation of the transition period for up to five years, which ECOWAS rejected in January 2022. It even increased the pressure by imposing an embargo on the country.

In Guinea, the military authorities announced on April 30 a 39-month transition back to civilian rule, the first

ANALYSIS time it has done so, with Doumbouya telling Guineans in a broadcast that he would refer the proposal to the National Transitional Council (CNT) that had been inaugurated in February 2022.

ECOWAS, at its extraordinary summit of March had given the junta an ultimatum to come up with a “reasonable” timetable for the transitional period within one month. But whether Doumbouya’s transition programme will be accepted by Guineans and ECOWAS is yet to be seen.

But in the lead up to Doumbouya’s April announcement, there are a few observations to explain the factors relating to this apparent “upsurge” of military coups on the continent. As always, there are multiple factors, but issues of governance of the deposed leaders constitute one important factor.

This is very clear in the case of Guinea; for despite poor socioeconomic results of his 10-year rule, Condé went out of his way to manipulate the Constitution for the sole purpose of maintaining himself in power. In the case of Mali, although Keita had just been re-elected for a second constitutionally-allowed term, his governance was characterised by corruption and nepotism against the background of increasing insecurity in the country.

But the second coup by Goita shows that there can also be other considerations that may motivate military officers to stage a takeover, including an appetite for power, safeguarding their interests, and being influenced by other cases in the region – the contagion effect.

The second observation relates to the handling of the various military transitions

by ECOWAS and the AU. On both Mali and Guinea, ECOWAS has remained principled and consistent in affirming its instruments. But the AU showed inconsistency on Chad and this has led to criticism of the continental body, and even ECOWAS, as some don’t make a difference between the two.

However, even being principled and consistent, ECOWAS seems to have committed some strategic mistakes on both Mali and Guinea. On Mali, the regional body insisted on the duration of the transition and appeared to care less about the content of the timetable or the mission and action plan of the transition authorities.

Yet, a timetable is only effective when there is an action plan that is closely followed to see where there might be

Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya has announced a 39-month transition to civilian rule in Guinea

hiccups and needs for adjustment.

On Guinea, ECOWAS was quick in announcing a six-month timetable that was perceived by the majority of Guineans as unrealistic, but also as inconsistent with the 18-month period given to neighbouring Mali.

This leads to the final observation: that is, what should regional organisations do in the medium and long-term in order to prevent such military takeovers?

This really lies in the strengthening of their governance instruments and the consistency of their application against military leaders and sitting presidents who violate them.

‘

This is because leaders, such as Alassane Ouattara in Côte d’Ivoire and Condé learned from the mistakes of Mamadou Tandja in Niger, who changed the country’s Constitution relating to elections in August 2009, less than six months before the end of his final term.

ECOWAS suspended Niger from its decision-making organs because Tandja fell foul of the protocol’s section on elections. Ouattara and Condé, on the other hand, made their moves well before the six-month limit.

Thus, the reform of the supplementary protocol, if it goes through, will transform the game for any defaulting leader who

Proposed reform to the ECOWAS 2001 supplementary protocol on good governance seeks to ban presidential third terms outright

The ongoing efforts towards the revision of the 2001 supplementary protocol of ECOWAS on good governance is a move in the right direction. This reform seeks to strengthen the protocol by, among other things, banning third terms in the region all together, instead of the current disposition that does not allow major changes to laws relating to elections six months before voters go to the polls.

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’

may be tempted to seek a third term through constitutional manipulation. At the same time, it would allow ECOWAS – and other regional blocs that might emulate it later – to have a clear instrument and mandate to call sitting leaders to order, thereby gaining the confidence of AB the various populations.

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ANALYSIS

Kenyan elections: kingmaker against the kings Barely four months before voters go to the polls, the political temperature is rising as leading candidates, power barons and interest groups scramble to tie up loose ends before the big day, writes Sylvanus Wekesa

T

HE political landscape in Kenya has shifted drastically.

The most notable scenario now is that the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta, has fallen out with his Deputy, William Ruto, who, according to previous pronouncements, was Kenyatta’s choice to replace him. Instead, Kenyatta is supporting the leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement party, Raila Odinga.

For international investors and observers following recent political developments in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region’s anchor state, the key concern is about who is likely to win the election and what policy trajectory will be followed thereafter. This comes against the backdrop of a mixed record of Kenyatta’s regime, especially his disappointing economic legacy that has led to calls for a radical departure from his borrowing spree and ballooning debt.

In the upcoming contest, Ruto has emerged as the early front-runner in the race to succeed his former boss. This

will be his first attempt at running for the presidency.

But Ruto is not a new face on the Kenyan political scene, having been playing the role of kingmaker. In 2007 he partnered with Odinga in the ill-fated election, and in 2013 and 2017 he stood with Kenyatta and they triumphed in both contests.

Now he feels it is time for him to be the king. Ruto’s candidacy raises a lot of heat and alarm in some sections of Kenyan society, especially among the old guard and elites, while to others he excites them.

Historically, Ruto is a known polarising figure. Having been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in the 2007 post-election violence, his opponents view him as a divisive, vindictive and dangerous person who cannot unite the fractious ethnic divide that is ever-present in Kenya.

On the other hand, his narrative of portraying himself as a son of a nobody who used to hawk chicken and eggs by

the roadside in the outskirts of Eldoret town endears him to the large unemployed constituency of young people who are the majority of the Kenyan demographic.

His campaign slogan of “hustlers versus dynasties” has unsettled the political class that has for the longest time held the Kenyan state and its economic affairs hostage. To the elites, such a slogan is a recipe for chaos, as it perpetuates a class war, which is like adding fuel to the fire in an already fractious society that has still not healed from the 2007 election violence.

In his defence, Ruto argues that his bottom-up approach is not a class war but it simply gives ordinary citizens a stake in the economy by recognising their efforts, and in turn this will expand the tax bracket and increase revenue for the state.

Ruto’s candidacy is a complicated venture. Despite being the front-runner, backed by the populous Kikuyu and Kalenjin ethnic blocs, there is concern about his integrity, anti-elite rhetoric, and ethnic affiliation. While his candidature has forced the elites to consolidate around Odinga as a safe pair of hands to protect their interests, Ruto’s supporters believe that his victory will throw off the shackles of state capture by a select few.

Then there is the reality of ethnic balancing. His critics argue that Kenya is too big just to be a preserve of the Kalenjin and Kikuyu hegemony. In its 58 years of independence, the two communities have ruled Kenya uninterruptedly. Therefore, Kenya is ripe for a non-Kikuyu or nonKalenjin to take over, a view that is supported by Kenyatta.

On the other hand, there is former Prime Minister Odinga who will be contesting for the fifth time. Backed by the incumbent, the Odinga candidacy has been buoyed by the coming together of the largest coalition at the moment, bringing

Deputy President William Ruto has emerged as the early front-runner

24

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ANALYSIS together close to 22 political parties.

Odinga is not known for his acumen when it comes to managing coalitions.

Having witnessed the collapse of all his previous alliances, the jury is still out on how he will manage the competing interests in the current coalition.

To cynics, the current set-up around Odinga is merely a Machiavellian power play by Kenyatta aimed at continuing his family’s control of state affairs in the shadow of Odinga. This explains why the 10-Point Agenda by Odinga talks of administrative continuity, and he has pledged to keep Kenyatta as his key adviser.

Already the Kenyan courts have dealt this ploy a serious blow by declaring null and void the Building Bridges Initiative that was aimed at making changes to the Constitution that would create, among other things, the position of Prime Minister. However, to his supporters, if the contest was about meritocracy and integrity, then Odinga would be the fifth president without a doubt.

Also, not new to Kenya’s political scene, Odinga, who is a scion of the country’s first Vice President, Oginga Odinga, has been fighting the tag, used by his opponents, of trying to perpetuate a dynasty. His defence is that his father was only vice president for two years before falling out with Jomo Kenyatta.

‘

Odinga comes with campaigning

Critics say Kenyatta’s support for Raila Odinga will be an albatross

especially on fighting corruption, bearing in mind that his key backer, Kenyatta, has presided over mega corruption scandals during his two-term regime?

To critics, Kenyatta’s support for Odinga will be an albatross, such that he cannot dare condemn the ills of Kenyatta nor castigate his poor handling of the economy. The 2018 handshake between Kenyatta and Odinga has given Ruto a much-needed opportunity to disassociate himself from Kenyatta’s failures by claiming he was kicked out and replaced

by Odinga.

In the case of Odinga winning the presidency, he will need a lot of balancing to do when it comes to addressing

Ruto’s campaign slogan of “hustlers versus dynasties” has unsettled those who have always held the country hostage

credentials, having been at the forefront of the fight against the one-party rule of the late Daniel Arap Moi. Furthermore, the current Constitution was promulgated during the 2010 coalition government between Odinga and Mwai Kibaki, and he takes credit for midwifing the process.

Campaigning on the platform of anticorruption will run his election into the headwinds. How will Odinga reconcile his agenda of administrative continuity,

’

Kenyatta’s failures, without necessarily causing friction to their newfound bromance.

There was hope that a wild card would emerge in former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, who has previously been a running mate of Odinga in the 2013 and 2017 elections. Musyoka had claimed that he had a gentleman’s agreement with Odinga to support him in 2022, an assertion that Odinga denied.

Musyoka managed to form a coalition under the banner of the One Kenya Alliance that included Gideon Moi, son of Kenya’s second president, and Musalia Mudavadi, a former Vice President.

However, due to different interests, the coalition has since collapsed, with the key members moving in opposite directions.

Musyoka, under persistent pressure from Kenyatta, has since teamed up with Odinga once again, most likely to be the coalition’s running mate. One of his former allies, Mudavadi, has joined Ruto.

Whoever wins the 2022 contest will inherit a somewhat poisoned chalice.

Kenya’s economy has been sleepwalking for the better part of the last few years.

The new president will have a huge task of reviving the economy, addressing the debt crisis and managing the ongoing fuel crisis that is gripping the world at the moment.

Security-wise, the challenges never seem to end. Despite a lull on the NorthEastern border with Somalia, the threat of Al Shabaab remains, due to the continued presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia. The bandit attacks in the Rift Valley continue to wreak havoc on the population, disrupting schools and creating internally displaced persons.

As Kenya gears towards electing Kenyatta’s successor in a tightly contested election, the stakes have never been this high. This will be one of Kenya’s most consequential elections since 2002.

Will the new president be the known kingmaker, or will the king emerge AB from another king’s endorsement?

Sylvanus Wekesa has recently completed his PhD at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, focusing on the politics of the East African Community’s regional integration.

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25

ANALYSIS

Massaquoi acquittal: what has it wrought?

Lansana Gberie, a renowned expert on the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, provides an exclusive analysis of the trial of former Sierra Leonean rebel Gibril Massaquoi before a Finnish court, and how it led to a full acquittal on April 29. He worries about the consequences of a trial that, he says, was “misguided”. And he has a suggestion to Massaquoi if he is to receive financial compensation for the time he spent in prison

F

OR any informed observer, the April 29 “not guilty” verdict by a Finnish court in the trial of Gibril Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean former Revolutionary United Front (RUF) spokesman who had long taken residence in Finland, was an anti-climax. That’s because the prosecution’s case all but collapsed during the court’s first sittings in Monrovia, Liberia, from February to April last year. I briefly attended one of those sittings, held at a small resort hotel at the outskirts of Monrovia.

cases were negligible in Liberia, so the 14 Finns at the court seemed relaxed and unhurried.

A few weeks earlier, they had conducted “crime scene” visits in Liberia’s Lofa County. There was, one felt, a purity about this dedication, something exalted and noble: Finland had granted asylum to

Massaquoi as part of an extended witness protection scheme and was now spending hundreds of thousands of euros to examine heinous allegations made against him by two non-Finnish NGOs. Yet the whole effort was steeped in bathos.

Witness after prosecution witness provided what appeared to be carefully

One of Massaquoi’s Finnish lawyers had called to ask me whether I could support Massaquoi’s claim to her that I knew he could not have fought in the chaotic battles in Monrovia in 2003 – which grandiloquent Liberian vanity had cast as World Wars 1, 2 and 3 – since I had met him several times during that period at the safe house that the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) had secured for him as a highly valued witness.

I had indeed met Massaquoi there during my research for a book on the war, but my interactions with him had been intermittent. All the same, I decided out of curiosity to observe, however briefly, the trial in Monrovia. One yearns to read the entire verdict, but it is rendered only in Finnish, a language to which I, and almost every Liberian and Sierra Leonean, have no access.

The Finns had converted the conference hall of the hotel into a courtroom with four judges, two prosecutors, a defence lawyer, a veteran war crimes investigator, interpreters and court administration officials from the District Court of Pirkanmaa in Tampere, a small city in southern Finland. Covid-19 26

Gibril Massaquoi: the not guilty verdict must not be seen as exculpating him from the heinous crimes he committed before the crimes for which he was charged were carried out Credit: Thierry Cruvellier

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ANALYSIS choreographed testimonies that had no probative value: that were indeed so improbable that anyone with some familiarity of the events would dismiss

‘

had been known as ‘Angel Gabriel’. In fact, Massaquoi had never been referred to as ‘Angel Gabriel’, and it was highly unlikely that he could have sneaked out

Witness after prosecution witness provided what appeared to be carefully choreographed testimonies

them out of hand. Absent from the scene was Massaquoi himself, left in detention in Finland and watching the hearings via video link with one of his defence lawyers.

Almost all the witnesses were excombatants who had been loyal to Charles Taylor, on whom Massaquoi had provided damning information for the SCSL. Each one claimed that Massaquoi had played a leadership role during the Monrovia battles of 2003, had been excessively brutal, and

’

of his safe house in Freetown where he was already providing vital information on Taylor and his former comrades in the RUF, travel to Liberia, lead a bunch of fighters loyal to Taylor, persecute Taylor’s enemies, and sneak back unnoticed to his safe house in Freetown.

A former Taylor combatant who appeared on April 2 walked with a limp – the result, he said, of getting shot in the leg at Lofa Bridge, some 370km from Monrovia, in 2003 on the orders of Massaquoi/Angel Gabriel. The witness testified to witnessing massacres in Monrovia only a few weeks later, in June/ July 2003, though he was surely seriously injured and even disabled from the attack at Lofa.

The witness was not cross-examined on why Massaquoi, who was allegedly fighting in support of Taylor, would have turned his guns against him – a Taylor fighter – except to make a general point about the brutality of the Sierra Leonean forces in Taylor’s command. He said he recognised Angel Gabriel to be nonLiberian because he spoke with a Sierra Leonean accent.

Like him, other witnesses testified that Angel Gabriel was so brutal that Taylor’s most notorious enforcers, Benjamin Yeaten and Zigzag Marzah, had to intervene to restrain him. It was the first time ever that anyone suggested that Yeaten and Marzah had been a restraining influence: the records of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the SCSL, not to mention research by human rights organisations and academics, all overwhelmingly cast these characters as demented murderers and merciless enforcers for Taylor.

Clearly, the Finnish investigator,

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

Thomas Elgren, who singlehandedly built this case – a voluminous file running to thousands of pages – had not consulted any expert in Liberia or Sierra Leone.

I had a beer with him at the hotel that April, and he seemed loftily unaware that this would have been helpful. He trusted the information he had gathered, doubtless with the help of those who had instigated the case in the first place, from ex-combatants, though the events they described happened nearly 20 years ago.

Some of his informants had been child fighters, often drugged, at the time that the events happened.

There was, I felt, something melancholic about what this provincial Finnish court had wrought in West Africa, the pathos of good intentions defeated by a combination of arrogance and ignorance.

This has been doubly tragic.

The few Liberian supporters of the Massaquoi trial that I know – transitional justice activists – had hoped that it would give traction to their own quest for criminal prosecutions of perpetrators of atrocities in Liberia’s sanguinary civil wars. No retributive justice mechanism has been initiated in Liberia, in contrast to Sierra Leone. The “not guilty” verdict would probably have the opposite effect: one fears that such trials would now be deemed to be an expensive and risky waste of time.

Indeed, Liberian officials who agreed to the court’s sittings in Monrovia long made sure there would be no such collateral effect. Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Frank Musah Dean, probably only agreed to the proposal from the Finns because Massaquoi is Sierra Leonean, not Liberian. Moreover, he rejected a request by the Finns and justice activists for the hearings to be broadcast live. Instead, a large video screen in a room adjacent to the courtroom in the hotel was set up for interested Liberians.

But since the venue was outside Monrovia and the location publicly unknown, interest was so low that the room was often empty. That effectively limited the trial’s potential impact on debate in Liberia about wider war crimes prosecutions.

For Liberian victims of the immense atrocities committed during the civil war, the coordinated attempt – as it seemed from the ex-combatant witness testimonies in the Massaquoi trial – to both reduce Liberian guilt of crimes committed during 27

ANALYSIS

Finnish investigator Thomas Elgren: his case was singlehandedly built without consulting any expert in Liberia or Sierra Leone Credit: Thierry Cruvellier

‘

This provincial Finnish court had good intentions but was defeated by a combination of arrogance and ignorance

the war by blaming atrocities on the few Sierra Leoneans who partook of that war, must have been traumatising. To reflect that this was perhaps done in order to undermine calls for war crimes trials in Liberia – and possibly to punish Massaquoi for having testified against Taylor – is to compound the harm that this misguided trial may have wrought.

In all of this, one potential collateral effect must be firmly resisted: that the verdict may somewhat be seen as exculpating Massaquoi from the heinous crimes he committed in both Sierra Leone and Liberia before the alleged crimes for which he was charged were committed.

’

During my interactions with him before his relocation to Finland, Massaquoi sent me via email a very rough draft of a manuscript he claimed was his personal record of the rebel wars in which he played a prominent role. It was unpublishable.

Later, after his relocation, he sent me an email saying that he was writing from a “Scandinavian country” and that his manuscript had found a publisher. I requested a copy, but he never responded.

I tried but couldn’t find the book for purchase.

Going through the voluminous pile of evidence that the Finnish prosecutors put together, I at last was able to find the book,

running to around 370 pages. It is poorly written and misleading in many parts, with important facts elided, but it is illuminating all the same. Massaquoi describes numerous atrocities committed by the RUF, including countless rapes and horrid accounts of the lives of “bush wives” – it seems all the rebel leaders were, in his felicitous formulation, “womanisers” – and recreational and revenge or pointless killings. In his account, he himself partook of none of these, of course.

I understand that because of the not guilty verdict, Finland is legally bound to provide Massaquoi compensation for his two-year detention. This could amount to hundreds of thousands of euros. One hopes that he has acquired a rag of decency during all these years of his residence in Finland, including after his arrest and detention, during which time he has been treated with extraordinary generosity and civility. He should demonstrate this by donating that financial compensation to his many victims in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Someone, perhaps his gallant legal defence team, should whisper this into his ears. AB

Dr Lansana Gberie is a historian and former journalist, and the author of A Dirty War in West Africa: the RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone, Hurst, London, 2005. He is the current ambassador of Sierra Leone to Switzerland and to the United Nations in Geneva, although he writes here in his own name for JUSTICEINFO.NET. 28

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Counting the cost of Europe’s quest to ramp up African gas supplies European countries are engaged in frantic diplomacy with North African states and other African natural gas producers to secure new gas supply contracts in an increasingly competitive market. At least $50 billion in new pipeline investments may be signed off this year. Bilateral disputes and long-time Russian affiliations are complicating such efforts and European governments will need to offer concessions on food security, vaccine manufacturing, and climate change targets to secure African support. Large African gas producers such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Nigeria stand to benefit from the global gas supply shock in various divergent ways, according to an analysis by risk consultants PANGEA-RISK

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N April 11, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi met with Algeria’s President Abdelmajid Tebboune in the capital Algiers to discuss increasing oil and gas exports from Africa to Europe to diversify away from Russian energy supplies. Algeria, which is the world’s fifth largest natural gas producer, has been courting rival bids from gas importing countries. The previous week, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI in the capital Rabat, while European Commissioner for Climate Action

Frans Timmermans visited Cairo to meet with Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly.

On April 13, Italian energy company Eni and Egypt’s EGAS agreed to increase the production and supply of Egyptian gas to Europe. Egypt is the third largest African gas producer, and its output is growing. The flurry of diplomatic activity and European outreach to North Africa shows Europe’s urgency to secure alternative sources of oil, gas, and electricity as western sanctions on Russia continue to be extended and an embargo on Russian oil and gas becomes

The Greenstream pipeline, Libya to Italy

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more probable.

According to the World Economic Forum, last year, two-fifths of the gas consumed in Europe was supplied by Russia, while more than a quarter of the EU’s imported crude oil was derived from Russia. Europe pays an estimated $400 million per day for Russian natural gas. In 2021, the EU imported $108 billion worth of energy from Russia, by far its biggest import from the country. This is however down from ten years ago, when the EU’s Russian energy imports were worth USD 173 billion in 2012. Indeed, the volume of

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Map of GME and Medgaz pipelines through Mediteranean

Russian energy the EU has been importing has fallen significantly in the past decade.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has announced a plan to cut its reliance on Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of the year. It is also fast-forwarding plans to make the EU independent of Russian fossil fuels by 2030. A subsequent ten-point plan proposed in a report by the International Energy Agency includes replacing Russian supplies with gas from alternative sources, mostly from the US and Africa. The US has since agreed to supply 15 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU this year. Much of this plan has since been adopted by the European Commission and is being implemented by commissioners such as Timmermans, who also serves as the Executive VicePresident for the European Green Deal, and Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson.

PANGEA-RISK assesses current infrastructure and export capability of oil and gas from Africa to Europe, while also examining the proposed megaprojects that are being considered to facilitate ramping up energy supplies between the continents.

PANGEA-RISK projects that the planned new gas pipelines alone would have a potential price tag of more than $50 billion.

Europe’s natural gas supplies from Africa are dominated by Algeria and

Libya, which are respectively the first and fourth largest African gas producers.

Algeria’s output currently provides about 11 percent of European gas imports. A pipeline network supplies African natural gas directly to Spain, Italy, Portugal, and as far as Slovenia. Interconnectors ensure that Algerian gas is distributed across many other European states. Last year, Italy bought 21 billion cubic metres from Algeria, making it Italy’s second biggest supplier after Russia.

of 8 bcm per year was expanded in 2021 to 10.5 bcm per year. With the closure of the Maghreb-Europe Gas (MEG) Pipeline last year, all operations will now rest on the Medgaz route for Spain to cover nearly half of all the natural gas it consumes annually from Algeria. Indeed, there are already concerns the pipeline will be unable to make up for the shortfall from the MEG closure and certainly no new gas orders can be supplied via the Medgaz route.

On his recent trip to Algiers, Italian Prime Minister Draghi requested to increase Italy’s gas imports from Algeria by about 10 bcm a year in the medium term. The Algerian gas is carried to Italy by the TransMed pipeline, which begins at the Hassi R’Mel field in Algeria and runs through Tunisia to Sicily and mainland Italy.

The indirect MEG pipeline links the Hassi R’Mel gas field in Algeria through Morocco with Cordoba in Andalusia, Spain, where it is connected with the Spanish and Portuguese gas grids. Before the operation of the pipeline ceased in October 2021, it used to supply mainly Spain and Portugal, as well as Morocco with natural gas. Following the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Algeria and Morocco in August 2021, Algeria decided not to renew the 25-year MEG operation contract, which expired at midnight on 31 October 2021, opting instead to supply Spain through the Medgaz pipeline.

An extension of the TransMed pipeline delivers Algerian gas to Slovenia. The TransMed pipeline is expected to have sufficient capacity to accommodate for the increase in gas supply to 31 bcm in coming years. Two more pipelines run from Algeria to Spain, but only one does so directly. The Medgaz pipeline also begins from the Hassi R’mel field in Algeria and the first section runs to the Algerian port of Beni Saf before it reaches the coast of Almería in Spain. Medgaz’s initial capacity AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

The MEG pipeline annually transports about 13.5 bcm of gas. Morocco gets 1 bcm in exchange for the pipeline passing through its territory, constituting about 97 percent of its annual gas needs. Algeria 31

BUSINESS & ECONOMY resorted to closing the MEG pipeline mainly to put pressure on Morocco, despite having no alternative to fulfilling its full obligations toward Spain. The closure of the MEG route was a problem for southern Europe even before the Ukraine war.

through Niger to the Hassi R’Mel gas field in Algeria. In Hassi R’Mel, the pipeline will connect to the existing TransMed, MEG, and Medgaz pipelines. These supply Europe from the gas transmission hubs at El Kala and Beni Saf on Algeria’s Beyond Algeria, the only other provider Mediterranean coast. Upon completion, the pipeline will carry 30 bcm of natural of piped African gas to Europe is Libya, which is Africa’s third largest producer. The gas yearly to European markets via Algeria’s Mediterranean coast, as well as Greenstream pipeline, which is part of the Western Libyan Gas Project, is a natural gas supply inland stations along its route. This scenario obviously depends on the eventual submarine pipeline running from western reopening of the MEG route.

Libya to the island of Sicily in Italy.

2021. The country cannot even meet its current OPEC quota of 1.72 million barrels a day. Underinvestment and other problems have also hit the gas production sector, driving concerns that Nigeria may not be a reliable gas supplier to Europe.

The second proposed pipeline is the Gasdotto Algeria Sardegna Italia (GALSI) pipeline, which is a planned natural gas pipeline from Algeria to Sardinia and northern Italy. Development has stalled since a feasibility study was conducted 13 years ago. The pipeline would start from The construction cost was $6.6 billion, Much of the estimated $21 billion the Hassi R’mel field in Algeria and run and the pipeline is operated by Italian pipeline cost will be spent in Niger, acting to Sardinia and would be connected to energy company Eni and the National Oil as a much-needed boost for the already the existing Italian gas grid in Tuscany. If Corporation (NOC) of Libya. Despite some growing energy sector and wider economy. the MEG remains closed in the medium operational problems and security concerns, It would also enable Niger to monetise its term, the GALSO would become a viable Greenstream should have sufficient capacity own gas reserves, estimated at 34 bcm, alternative and could see a green light on to carry more gas orders to Italy. with recoverable reserves of 24 bcm. Niger its development. Moreover, once the TSGP There are at least four new gas projects already has experience in driving significant project is signed off, the GALSI pipeline is energy infrastructure projects, including expected to be given a green light too at a planned to increase African energy supply the $2.2 billion Niger-Benin crude oil projected cost of $2.2 billion. Construction to Europe, allowing the continent to pipeline currently under construction of GALSI, which had been scheduled to diversify from Russia. The Trans-Saharan from the Agadem Basin in Niger to the commence in 2012, is now proposed for gas pipeline (TSGP) is a planned natural Cotonou Terminal offshore Benin.

The this year. gas pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria, which would run across the Sahara and Niger. It is TSGP is supported by the African Union’s Thirdly, perhaps the most ambitious, seen as an opportunity to diversify the EU’s Programme for Infrastructure Development and costly, project under consideration is gas supplies. A week before Russia invaded in Africa, although there are question marks the Nigeria Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP), Ukraine, the governments of Niger, Algeria, about the availability of sufficient natural which would be an extension of the existing gas from the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s oil and Nigeria signed an agreement that West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP). The production has declined in recent years, will see development resume on the $21 pipeline would run from Lagos, Nigeria, billion project. The pipeline will start in the dropping from an average output of 2.51 connecting to Cotonou, Benin; Lomé, Togo; million barrels a day in 2005 to an average Warri region in Nigeria, which is Africa’s and Tema and Takoradi, Ghana. The NMGP of 1.31 million barrels a day in December second largest gas producer, and run north would additionally connect to Abidjan, Cote

Europe-Maghreb Gas Pipeline

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BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Proposed new Africa to Europe gas pipeline infrastructure

d’Ivoire; Monrovia, Liberia; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Conakry, Guinea; Bissau, Guinea-Bissau; Banjul, Gambia; Dakar, Senegal; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Tangiers, Morocco; and Cádiz, Spain. The start year is currently expected in 2046, although fresh political and commercial pressures might accelerate this timeline.

The cost is currently projected at $25 billion, which would make it one of the most expensive pipelines in Africa. There are unconfirmed reports that construction on the NMGP has now started, and a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study received financing from the Islamic Development Bank in December 2021.

The main challenge will be coordination between these different countries and mitigating political and security risks in all these jurisdictions.

The fourth major gas project

under consideration is the EuroAfrica Interconnector. The project will connect the electric grids of Egypt and Europe via Cyprus and Greece and will also use local gas supply to improve regional electrification. According to media reports, the Interconnector would be 1,396 kilometres long and is intended to transmit up to 2 Gigawatts (GW). The Interconnector is a two-stage project, first covering the Cyprus-Egypt route and secondly the Cyprus-Greece route. The Egypt-Cyprus section is expected to be operational by 2023, at a cost of USD 2.9 billion, while the Cyprus-Greece section is scheduled to enter service by 2024.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the EU is also considering increasing liquefied gas (LNG) exports and setting up a green hydrogen plant there. Several African countries are set to become LNG producers in coming years, including Mozambique, Tanzania, AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

and Senegal. However, timelines for coming onstream are much more protracted or volumes too small (in the case of Senegal which will come onstream this year). Moreover, LNG exports to Europe also depend on sufficient liquefaction capacity at arrival. Europe’s LNG capacity is already strained as its liquefaction plants are coping with increased supply of US and Middle Eastern LNG. Resorting to African piped gas will therefore be more viable in the medium term. However, a gas market glut is expected by 2030 by when Africa needs to ensure that longer term supply deals are in place with Europe or risk losing out on the emerging opportunity. Over the past three months, since the Ukraine war and gas supply shock occurred, the country risk outlook for Africa has changed quite noticeably.

AB 33

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Africa seeks to unlock huge untapped real-time payments potential – ACI Worldwide Report The 3rd Edition of ACI's Prime Time for Real-Time Report highlights real-time payments growth in the region and economic benefits unlocked by real-time payments, reports Jon Offei-Ansah

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FRICAN nations are looking to real-time payments to help drive economic growth and financial inclusion, according to the 3rd edition of Prime Time for Real Time 2022, published by ACI Worldwide in partnership with leading data and analytics company, GlobalData, and the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research. The report – tracking real-time payments volumes and growth across 53 countries – includes an economic impact study for the first time, providing a comprehensive view of the economic benefits of real-time payments for consumers, businesses and the broader economy across 30 countries. The report covers all G20 nations, excluding Russia.

The research shows that governments that advance the real-time modernisation of their national payments infrastructure create a win-win situation for all stakeholders in the payments ecosystem: consumers and businesses benefit from fast, frictionless and hyper-connected payments services, financial institutions futureproof their business in a highly competitive environment by speeding up cloud-first and datacentric modernisation, and national governments boost economic growth, reduce the size of their shadow economy and create a fairer financial system for all.

Africa regional highlights Real-time payments in South Africa have failed to gain traction despite being available for more than 15 years, according to the report. They accounted for only 0.8 percent of the country's total payments in 2021. Transaction volumes in 2021 were 123 million, predicted to rise to 499

million by 2026 – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.4 percent.

Real-time payments accounted for $15 million of economic output, equivalent to 0.003 percent of formal GDP in 2021, rising to $183 million and 0.03 percent of forecasted GDP in 2026, respectively.

Unlike South Africa, Nigeria's decade-long relationship with real-time payments has evolved into Africa's most developed and successful realtime payments scheme.

In 2021, the country recorded 3.7 billion real-time transactions 2021 which resulted in estimated cost savings of $296 million for businesses and consumers – which helped to unlock $3.2 billion of additional economic output, representing 0.67 percent of the country's GDP With real-time transactions set to rise to 8.8 billion in 2026 – net savings for consumers and businesses are forecast to climb to $2.3 billion, helping to generate an additional $6 billion of economic output, equivalent to 1.01 percent of the country's forecasted GDP. According to the Cebr, the theoretical impact of all payments in Nigeria being real-time could add 4.4 percent of formal GDP by 2026. This does not suggest that there is no longer a place for non-instant electronic payments or paperbased payments.

Despite the mixed success from the few existing real-time schemes, Africa remains a continent of untapped potential, with 20 states absent from any real-time payments scheme as of 2021.

“Africa is in an ideal position to capitalise

Africa remains a continent of untapped potential for real-time schemes

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on the lessons learned from other countries and continents and maximise the impact and benefits real-time payments provide," said Santhosh Rao, Head of Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, ACI Worldwide. "There is a renewed appetite and enthusiasm across the continent to increase financial inclusion and use real-time payments to build the continent's future digital economies."

"Real-time transactions and growth forecasts continue to rise globally, with emerging countries like India leading the way and outpacing developed nations. As governments around the globe, especially step up their interventions in real-time payments, they are viewed as the primary enabler of economic growth and prosperity, providing consumers and businesses with cheaper, faster, and more efficient payment methods." Jeremy Wilmot, Chief Product Officer, ACI Worldwide. "In India, payments are increasingly becoming embedded into non-financial digital apps and services, with customers looking for a hyper-connected, frictionless user experience," continued Jeremy Wilmot.

"By allowing for the transfer of money between parties within seconds rather than days, real-time payments improve overall market efficiencies in the economy," commented Owen Good, Head of Advisory, Centre for Economic and Business Research. "Real-time payments improve liquidity in the financial system and therefore function as a catalyst for economic growth. This is especially important for our fastpaced and digital-led gig economies. Workers are paid quickly, allowing them to better plan their finances. Businesses have more flexible and reduce the need for burdensome cashflow management."

"Developing nations continue to drive the majority of real-time volume gains, confirming the industry trend of the strongest growth coming from economies with minimal existing electronic payments infrastructure, and therefore heavier reliance on cash," said Sam Murrant, Lead Analyst, GlobalData. "Amid all this activity, mobile in its multiple forms will shape the trajectory of real-time payments for developing markets. India provides the template for mobile wallet integration with underlying real-time payment systems. Mobile will still be the leading form factor in developed markets. However, we may see banks' involvement sitting more behind wallets."

AB

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BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Cameroon: armed conflict impacts economy October of this year will mark the sixth anniversary of the armed conflict in Cameroon - yet there appears to be no end in sight. Instead, the crisis continues to deepen and, in the process, sink the economy of the country, as Tikum Mbah Azonga reports from Yaounde

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OME recent incidents include the killing of a District Officer and a mayor by detonation of an artisanal bomb believed to have been planted on a road by separatist fighters.

The act happened in Ndian Division of the South West Region, which is one of the two war-torn Anglophone regions of Cameroon. In the neighbouring North West, which is the other beleaguered region of the country, separatist gun men are said to have shot their way into a university campus, creating chaos that scared away both staff and students for at least a week.

The most recent serious incident is the kidnapping in the North West headquarters of Bamenda of a local senator, Regina Mundi. Separatists have raised the stakes even further by declaring her release dependent upon the discharge of all prisoners held by the regime in Yaounde in connection with the crisis, as well as the immediate resignation of all Anglophone parliamentarians and senators from their executive posts in the Yaounde-based National Assembly and Senate. Prior to the kidnap of the senator, five months ago the President of the North West House of Chiefs, who is also the Traditional Ruler of the village of Bambalang, Fon Kevin Shumetang II, was seized and taken to an unknown destination. Both he and the senator remain in captivity.

Although President Paul Biya has not directly commented on these events, sources at the Presidency affirm that he has ordered that the perpetrators be tracked down and brought to book. Even so, his injunctions are likely to cut little ice with the separatists who are determined to continue the fight until it leads to the official recognition of the breakaway 36

republic of Ambazonia on which they have staked their lives and their future. It is interesting that despite the number of separatist fighters killed by government troops, the former are still upbeat about their dream of secession. Some observers have however interpreted the amount of time the conflict has lasted as a sign that it has become something like a fish bone stuck in the throat of President Paul Biya, which he is unable to remove.

Serious as this aspect of the war may seem, it should be noted that the conflict has greatly affected not just the economy of the two regions at war, but that of the entire country. As far back as in 2019, three years after the conflict began,

the economy was already in trouble as Business in Cameroon reported back then : “This sums up the situation that has been prevailing in the southwest and northwest over the past three years. Business in these regions is at its lowest and the southwest which used to be the country’s leading cocoa production basin has been dethroned by the Central region, two seasons ago. Former flagships of the agribusiness sector in the Anglophone region, Pamol Plantations PLC and Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) have ceased all activity. Such is the gloomy state in which Cameroon’s Anglophone region is currently plunged.”

A 2021 World Bank report paints the

President Paul Biya. The conflict is like a fishbone stuck in his throat

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

The conflict is devastating the economy

following picture on the economy: “The crisis has caused a significant contraction of the Northwest and Southwest regions’ economies. A historical counterfactual (or reference scenario) analysis was constructed for this study using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to measure the conflict’s shortterm effects. It shows that the NWSW crisis has prevented the Cameroonian economy from taking full advantage of the relatively favorable global context preceding the Covid-19 outbreak, which included a moderate rise in global prices for some of Cameroon’s key agricultural exports, including cocoa, coffee, and bananas. Tax revenue trends confirm this decline in economic activities, and the crisis has affected the implementation of public investments. The financial sector has also been impacted by the disruption and insecurity, and employment fell as a result of the violence and the collapse of economic activity. According to the CGE model results, the tax revenue collected by the government in 2019 was 4.8 percent lower than it would have been without the crisis. The combined effects of lower income (due to reduced employment) and higher consumer prices (due to supply chain disruptions) have inflicted a heavy toll on household welfare.”

Humanitarian Action provides further insight into the economic impact of the catastrophe: “The Anglophone crisis is having huge economic and financial

repercussions. Cameroon’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate, which was 5.8 percent in 2015 prior to the crisis, was downgraded to 3.9 percent in 2019. The Internet shutdown seriously affected Cameroon’s economic growth with an estimated loss of CFA 499 billion ($846 million). Weekly “ghost towns”, restrictions on movement, and insecurity are affecting business transactions through slowed flow of goods, people, and services. Businesses and transport vehicles that refuse to respect “ghost town” days have been threatened and targeted. The security forces have also been accused of vandalizing and burning business premises and markets.

Consequently, hundreds of businesses have been paralyzed in the region.”

The NGO goes on: “Insecurity has forced production and operational activities of the biggest companies in the region like the Cameroon Tea Estate, the Upper Nun Valley Development Authority, and the Cameroon Development Corporation, to dwindle. Exports of the major products from the region like banana, palm oil, coffee, and rice production dropped dramatically. Indeed, the Cameroon Development Corporation reduced its operational capacity to 26% and recorded a net loss of CFA 32 billion (around $55.3 million) during the 2018 fiscal year. This has huge implication for employment since the Cameroon Development Cooperation (located on the slopes of Mount Cameroon) is Cameroon’s second largest employer AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

that employs people from all regions of the country”.

It explains further: “Unemployment has soared in the region with over 30,000 more people rendered jobless due to the crisis. Cameroon’s Employers’ Association estimated that the formal economy of the region had lost around 6,434 jobs by July 2018 and a further 8000 jobs were at risk.

The unemployment rate in Buea—the regional capital of the South West Region, for instance—rose to 70 percent. The North West Region’s custom department reported revenue losses of over CFA 200 million (around $362,000) for the 2018 fiscal year and the overall losses to Cameroon’s economy were estimated at CFA 269 billion (around $489 million) for the same period. Road contractors have been attacked and threatened and their equipment vandalised/destroyed causing many to stop/abandon projects.

Indeed, more than 80 percent of the public contracts awarded in the Anglophone region for the 2017/2018 fiscal year were not executed.”

With the economy so greatly affected by the conflict, it is obvious that if immediate solutions are not found, the disaster will deepen further. Such a solution can only come through dialogue with both parties in the conflict sitting together with a view to burying the hatchet and charting a way forward. AB 37

ENERGY

How Africa can adopt renewable energy on a massive scale and save billions along the way Kenneth Engblom argues that ambitious renewable energy objectives in Africa are not only achievable, but they are also the soundest and cheapest strategy for the successful electrification of the continent

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hen it comes to building the future of energy in Africa, the decisions facing the continent's leaders today are nothing less than of historical importance. More than anything else, energy systems are the very fabric of business and society. Countries across Africa want to make good on their objective of building huge amounts of new generation capacity to anticipate on vast increases in energy demand and set the continent on the path of growth and development it deserves.

Africa knows where it needs to go. The big question is how. And more specifically, what is the most cost-effective energy mix that can be built to deliver all the new electricity capacity that is needed? Wind, solar, gas turbines, coal, gas engines… numerous options are available, but there is only one sweet spot.

For the past decade and more, engineers and analysts at Wärtsilä have tapped into their deep bench of experience in the African energy sector to answer these very questions, country by country. We have mobilised state-of-the-science, technologyneutral energy modelling techniques, and took all local technical constraints, all technologies, and natural resources into account. Multiple energy mix scenarios have been developed and compared. We ran the models rigorously and the numbers have spoken. They reveal cost differences of mind-boggling magnitude between the various energy strategies possible.

When it comes to the choice of energy technologies, keeping an open mind, free from preconceptions, is paramount.

Technologies that can be right for Europe considering its existing infrastructure, population density, or natural resources, can be wrong for others. Each country, each region, must find its own optimal way to building its energy system. Many African countries have, however, one important

dollars along the way.

It would be misguided to consider the intermittency of renewables as a showstopper. It is not, provided they are paired up with highly flexible forms of electricity generation like gas engine power plants.

To maintain a balanced system, flexible backup and peak power must be available to ramp up production at the same rate that Renewables must become the new baseload in Africa wind or solar production fluctuates, but also to match the fluctuating energy demand point in common: maybe more than within the day. The systems must be able to anywhere else, the models indicate that the respond to huge daily variations in a matter best path to building the most cost-optimal of seconds or minutes. energy system is to maximise the use of Gas engine power plants are the renewable energy. only source of backup generation that is One fact must be established once designed to do just that. They will keep and for all: the cost of renewable energy the system safe, while allowing the grid equipment has decreased very rapidly in to accommodate huge amounts of cheap recent years, and when this equipment renewable energy. For Senegal alone, to runs on Africa’s massive solar and wind take only one example, the studies reveal a resources, what you have is a cost per $480 million difference in total system cost KW/h produced that beats all other over the next 15 years between a system electricity technologies hands down. If you incorporating lots of renewables combined add to this the fact that most electricity to flexible gas engines, and a system built grids on the continent are relatively around inflexible thermal generation and underdeveloped, favouring renewable minimal renewable capacity. Renewables energy over traditional power generation and flexible gas: the two pillars of a like coal or gas turbine power plants winning energy strategy becomes a no-brainer.

Renewables and flexible gas are the Although relatively ambitious two pillars of a winning energy strategy for renewable energy targets have been set by Africa. Similar studies conducted on other governments across the continent, it does African countries indicate that this energy not always go far enough. Contrary to mix strategy will provide efficiencies worth what some industry and political leaders billions of dollars continent-wide over the may believe, maximising the amount of next few decades. renewable energy that can be built in the Highly ambitious renewable energy system is by far the cheapest strategy available, while at the same time ensuring a objectives in Africa are not only achievable, stable, reliable network. but they are also the soundest and cheapest strategy for the successful electrification of In Africa, renewables must become the continent. Making the smart strategy the new baseload. And yes, renewables are intermittent. But combining them to flexible decisions will lead to more resilient electricity systems and offer vastly superior power generation capacities will guarantee the stability of the grid and save billions of whole-system efficiencies.

AB Kenneth Engblom is the vice president for Europe and Africa at Wartsila Energy, Finland 38

AFRICA BRIEFING MAY - JUNE 2022

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REVIEW

A Promised Land

By Barack Obama £35 Viking ISBN: 978-0-241-49151-5

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RESIDENT Obama, who preceded President Donald Trump as the 44th Head of State of the US tells readers that he began writing this book as he stepped down following the end of his second term in 2016.

His objective was to offer his readers a unique insight into the dynamics of US partisan politics and international diplomacy.

Obama, like many presidents, faced many challenges during his time in the White House; but arguably more than many. The first African-American president, he assumed office at a time when the global financial crisis was manifesting itself.

His approach to this crisis was to steer

a policy of investments ¬¬¬(buying up billions of dollars of toxic debt) serving to underpin the financial sector with huge amounts of capital to reinvigorate trust in both the banking sector and US industry.

However, the fact that no senior banker was held accountable and prosecuted in the wake of the financial meltdown, largely due to their irresponsible excesses, lent

powerful ammunition to Obama’s critics.

Obama’s narrative is very gentle, often punctuated with wry humour, and lends credence to the observation that the man might have been just ‘too nice’ to hold the presidential office.

Indeed, subsequent events in Ukraine highlight another aspect of his presidential term; the US reaction to Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014.

Many critics called Obama’s handling of this annexation of Ukrainian territory as a crucial failure of foreign policy that perhaps signaled weakness and led to the 2022 invasion of yje rest of Ukraine.

Surprisingly, Obama’s book gives no further elaboration of his thinking regarding Crimea. That, in itself, speaks volumes.

Empireland How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain

By Sathnam Sanghera £9.99 Penguin ISBN: 978-0-241-445310

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HERE have been calls for this book to be on the syllabus of every schoolchild in Britain.

Because, although the British empire held sway over vast swathes of the world, there is a distinct lack of understanding regarding its legacy.

This is a powerful book, an indictment of British empire that demonstrated a belief in a God-given right to lord it over much of the world, and its natives, as it exploited resources and labour to become one of the wealthiest countries the world has ever known.

Part of that legacy is the racism that still permeates British society. Although the more obnoxious manifestations of this racism, giving rise to notices such as “no dogs. no Irish, no blacks” appearing in the windows of boarding houses, more subtle expressions of discrimination still persist.

The author, Sathnam Sanghera, is a British-born Sikh and has a first-hand experience of the pernicious racism that accompanies the very concept of ‘empire’ still pertains in Britain and many parts of the world.

Stephen Williams

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