TAR105 November Ghana ICT

DRC After Kabila, your guide to the exit plan

• South Africa: Perfect storm for land reform • Ghana: The rollercoaster slows • Telecoms: Jumia’s battle for e-commerce

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THE AFRICA REPORT

ATIKU NIGERIA ABUBAKAR

MONTHLY • N° 105 • NOVEMBER 2018

“I will make Nigeria work again”

The PDP candidate revs up his presidential campaign

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 130 Birr • France €5.90 • Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 12 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 700 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 1300 NGN • Norway NK 70 • Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 • Switzerland 9.90 FS Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW • Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

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THE AFRICA REPORT # 105 - NOVEMBER 2018

BUSINESS

COVER CREDITS: INTERNATIONAL EDITION : MORTENFAUERBY.DK; JOHN WESSELS / AFP - EAST AFRICA EDITION : JOHN WESSELS / AFP; PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP - GHANA EDITION : REINER ZENSEN/PHOTOWEB/SIPA; PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP

04 EDITORIAL Consequences of a crunch

62 MAURITIUS Offshore on the radar With plans to double the size of the financial sector within the next 12 years, the government must respond to international pressure for fairness and transparency

06 LETTERS 08 THE QUESTION

BRIEFING

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10 SIGNPOSTS 12 PEOPLE 14 INTERNATIONAL 19 CALENDAR

68 RWANDA Keeping up with Kigali 70 LEADERS Tewolde GebreMariam, chief executive officer, Ethiopian Airlines

20 OPINION Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies

72 FINANCE Nick O’Donohoe, chief executive officer, CDC Group 73 HANNIBAL

FRONTLINE 22 DRC After Kabila The country’s long-awaited elections have been set for December and national and international forces are desperate for a fresh start

POLITICS 32 NIGERIA Clashes and conflict The battle for land and water will be a key issue in 2019’s elections as herder/farmer clashes escalate and criminal gangs profit from the chaos

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82 ART Freefall and futures Daring works and critical engagement at the sixth 1-54 African art fair in London 86 FOOTBALL Ready or not, here we come 88 LIFESTYLE South African folk musician Bongeziwe Mabandla

44 ANANSI

88 TREND HUNTER Digital okadas get Lagos out a jam

COUNTRY FOCUS 47 GHANA Hope hits reality Akufo-Addo’s plans are weighed down by bureaucracy, partisan point-scoring and sums that don’t add up N ° 10 5

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78 NIGERIA The MTN muddle

ART & LIFE

42 SOUTH AFRICA Healthcare in a hurry

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74 Airtel vs. Safaricom Airtel Kenya continues biting at the heels of Safaricom, but never makes any profit. Is it fair?

80 INTERVIEW Sacha Poignonnec, co-CEO, Jumia

36 INTERVIEW Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate, People’s Democratic Party, Nigeria

THE AFRICA REPORT

DOSSIER: TELECOMS

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89 TRAVEL Dakar, the de facto chill capital of West Africa 90 DAY IN THE LIFE Samuel Muzimbi, South African shoemaker

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THE AFRICA REPORT A Jeune Afrique Media Group publication

BY PATRICK SMITH

57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL – 75016 PARIS – FRANCE TEL: (33) 1 44 30 19 60 – FAX: (33) 1 44 30 19 30 www.theafricareport.com

Consequences of a crunch

CHA I R M A N A ND F O UND E R BÉCHIR BEN YAHMED P UB L I S HE R DANIELLE BEN YAHMED publisher@theafricareport.com

S

hould any African presi­ dent suffer from a bout of irration­ al exuberance, the latest reports from the IMF and the World Bank make for sobering reading. The message, less varnished than usual, is that the economic and technological gulf between Africa and the industrial economies, and many developing ones, is widening. Without a strategy, the chasm will grow.

One set of reasons are about strategy: low investment in edu­ cation and slow adoption of new technology at the macro level lead­ ing to a rising productivity gap.

So it’s more than the gloomy headline figures, although both the IMF and the Bank have downgrad­ ed their GDP growth projections for Africa this year to 3.1% and 2.7% respectively. On average, growth per capita will rise 1% this year; then it is projected to rise 1.5% a year for the early 2020s.

On that basis, it would take until 2063 for per capita incomes to dou­ ble across the continent.

There are a raft of global factors responsible, in part, for this stasis: deepening effects of climate change on productivity and live­ lihoods; the laggardly market for many commodities; the financ­ ing squeeze and lack of access to international markets; a stronger US dollar and rising debt service costs to which can be added the indirect costs to Africa of the trade war between the US and China.

Between the lines the Bretton Woods reports acknowledge such constraints but focus on the policy and strategic actions that governments could take to mitigate these pressures. And in most cases that isn’t happening.

Slow growth and weak commod­ ity markets are causing a capital

E X E CUT I VE P UB L I S HE R JÉRÔME MILLAN

crunch, squeezing investment in infrastructure and social pro­ grammes. The consequences of this are spelled out in the Bank’s new ‘Human Capital Index’ which measures performance in terms of health and education outcomes.

Reporting some of the lowest scores for Africa, the Bank ar­ gues that lack of investment there is depressing the productivity of its economies.

The IMF’s analysis of the ef­ fects of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ sketches out two scen­ arios for Africa. First, an upbeat assessment that the technological leapfrog­ The lack of ging achieved by mass use of cellphones and investment internet access could in health be extended to other and sectors, to complement and speed up econ­ education omic development. in Africa is A grimmer scenario is that robotics and AI depressing will replace much of productivity the current workforce, leading to many of the manufacturing and service indus­ try operations set up by foreign firms in developing economies re­ turning to their countries of origin.

That would mean vast swathes of Africa would not get on that first rung of industrialisation, at least via international investment.

The IMF boffins offer caveats for both scenarios, but the dangers in their analyses are as clear as the Bank’s assessment of Africa’s progress on education and health.

With the combined research cap­ acity of the AfDB and UNECA, it must be time for these institu­ tions take up this gauntlet, focus­ ing on strategies to address the economic travails

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THE AFRICA REPORT

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M A R K E T I NG & D E VE L O P M E NT ALISON KINGSLEY‑HALL E D I T O R I N CHI E F PATRICK SMITH M A NA G I NG E D I T O R NICHOLAS NORBROOK editorial@theafricareport.com A S S O CI AT E E D I T O R MARSHALL VAN VALEN R E S E A R CH & P R O D UCT I O N OHENEBA AMA NTI OSEI RE G IO NA L E D I T O R CRYSTAL ORDERSON (SOUTHERN AFRICA) A RT & L I F E E D I T O R BILLIE ADWOA MCTERNAN S UB - E D I T O R ALISON CULLIFORD P R O O F R E A D I NG KATHLEEN GRAY A RT DI R E CT O R MARC TRENSON DESIGN VALÉRIE OLIVIER (LEAD DESIGNER) SYDONIE GHAYEB CHRISTOPHE CHAUVIN (INFOGRAPHICS) CAMILLE CHAUVIN R E S E A R CH SYLVIE FOURNIER P HO T O G R A P HY CLAIRE VATTEBLED ALICE FOURNIER XAVIER ROUSSEAU SALES A JUSTE TITRE Tel: (33) 9 70 75 81 77 contact‑ajt‑sifija@ajustetitres.fr CONTACT FOR SUBSCRIPTION: Webscribe Ltd Unit 4 College Road Business Park College Road North Aston Clinton HP22 5EZ United Kingdom Tel: + 44 (0) 1442 820580 Fax: + 44 (0) 1442 827912 Email: subs@webscribe.co.uk ExpressMag 8275 Avenue Marco Polo Montréal, QC H1E 7K1, Canada T : +1 514 355 3333 1 year subscription (10 issues): All destinations: €39 ‑ $60 ‑ £35 TO ORDER ONLINE: www.theafricareportstore.com A D VE RT I S I NG D I F CO M INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING AND COMMUNICATION AGENCY 57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL 75016 PARIS ‑ FRANCE Tel: (33) 1 44 30 19‑60 – Fax: (33) 1 44 30 18 34 advertising@theafricareport.com PRINTER: SIEP 77 ‑ FRANCE N° DE COMMISSION PARITAIRE : 0720 I 86885 Dépôt légal à parution / ISSN 1950‑4810 THE AFRICA REPORT is published by GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

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MORE INTROSPECTION FOR THE IMF

Y

TOP 200 BANKS EXCLUSIVE RANKING

Faces of Finance Abiola Bawuah, UBA; Admassu Tadesse, TDB; Laurence do Rego, Ecobank; Bolaji Akinboro, Cellulant

our interview with Christine Lagarde [TAR103 Sept. 2018] rightly highlighted the Christine Lagarde, progress the IMF has made in re-examining its traditional orthodoxies and becoming more aware of the social impacts of its prescriptions.

The fund, however, could use more introspection in its role creating moral hazard in the region; The IMF is back particularly the perceived “anchoring” effect that Fund programs can provide for governments who are then able to run up commercial debts that later turn out to be unsustainable. The rise of index investing in emerging market bonds means that it takes little policy credibility for a government to borrow in the external commercial markets.

Countries that benefit from the implicit policy backstop of an IMF programme have found it particularly easy to borrow in the eurobond market, which is ironic given how often the proceeds have not been used for economically productive purposes.

Brian Holmes, Financial analyst, UK N ° 10 3 • S E P T E M B E R 2 018

w w w.t h e a f r i c a r e p o r t .co m

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Managing Director, International Monetary Fund

A new role for the fund as spiralling debt triggers alarm

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

conditions are embracing of trust and confidence among the principals of the parties to the revitalised Agreement on The Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan. […] The great challenge facing the power-sharing deal in South Sudan is the personalisation of the political solution to the political crisis the nation is facing.

Edmund Yakani, Executive Director, CEPO, South Sudan

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 130 Birr • France €5.90 • Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 12 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 • Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 • Switzerland 9.90 FS Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW • Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

HOMEGROWN SOLUTIONS TO IRREGULAR MIGRATION

The European Union pouring more aid into Niger and other Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] members will not help tackle the root cause of irregular migration [‘Niger at a crossroads’, TAR102 July/Aug. 2018]. ECOWAS BOARDROOMS ARE NOT in political positions, I am afraid that member states need to first prioritise until we deal with these issues we will their own homegrown solutions THE ONLY BATTLEGROUND fail to move forward. It is hard to say independent of any foreign assistance, I am proud to see women represented that any gender would be better suited which will improve the quality of in boardrooms and senior management to tackle corruption and achieve life and welfare of their own citizens. positions across the continent. On economic progress, but we must build Creating a safe and conducive the other hand, I still think more can a community that holds feminism and environment would eventually attract be done to encourage feminism equality in all aspects in high regard. local as well as foreign investment, Arnold Dublin-Green, Senior portfolio which will encourage economic growth [‘A woman’s place is in the boardroom’, manager, Ecobank Asset Management and create high employment prospects TAR103 Sept. 2018]. There is still wage inequality, and women are less for the millions of young people represented in the labour force than entering the job market. So dedication their male counterparts. Beyond POWER-SHARING PROBLEMS to homegrown solutions is the best the work environment, most countries option to discourage people from still struggle with issues such as sexual South Sudan’s power-sharing deal seeking refuge in foreign countries, cannot be sustained if certain and gender-based violence, female and it will go a long way to reduce abject conditions are not met [‘The Question’, poverty and raise the standard of living. trafficking, etc. As proud as we Kokil K. Shah, Kenya TAR104 Oct. 2018]. Among the key are to see women on boards and

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To respond to this month’s Question, visit www.theafricareport.com. You can also find The Africa Report on Facebook and on Twitter @theafricareport. Comments, suggestions and queries can also be sent to: The Editor, The Africa Report, 57bis Rue d’Auteuil, Paris 75016, France or editorial@theafricareport.com

The MP for Kyaddondo East, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, known by his stage name Bobi Wine, has become an icon for opposition in Uganda with his slogan of “people power” and refusal to be silenced by thuggery.

Is Bobi Wine shaking up Ugandan politics?

Yes FREDERICK GOLOOBAMUTEBI Researcher and analyst, Uganda

During the 56 years Uganda has been independent, it has tested multipartyism, military rule, one-party rule and even no-party politics. Each time some kind of formal organisation has propelled the leadership that emerged. Since it returned to multiparty politics in 2005 there have been instances when politicians not aligned with any political party have emerged. These, however, have never had much of an impact in terms of rallying people or forcing political parties to counter them or forge alliances. Musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu, aka Bobi Wine, is the first politician with no formal links to any political organisation or party to truly shake up politics in Uganda.

First, he has managed to rally large numbers of Ugandans, old and young across the country, to his cause of seeking change from the increasingly unsatisfactory status quo presided over by 74-year-old Yoweri Museveni to a new, hope-filled dispensation. Second, his mobilisation capacity has forced parties that have long battled to remove the Museveni government and failed, to seek not only his support but also formal alliances with him in a bid to increase their chances of finally dislodging Uganda’s ageing autocrat. He may never stand for the presidency. He may even not win if he does so. However, that he has truly shaken up the political terrain is beyond dispute.

No ANGELO OPI-AIYA IZAMA Ugandan journalist and analyst

The most interesting dimension of Bobi Wine is an increasingly wider contention by Uganda and other governments of the politicisation of age and its potential ramifications. Age has been activated in Uganda before, and Bobi Wine did not invent the inclusion of young people – sometimes illegally and immorally – into political struggles. Uganda in the 1990s held the spotlight for child soldiers within the ranks of the National Resistance Movement, Museveni’s army, which took power in 1986. That tradition was infamously continued by Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Bobi Wine’s appeal is a different dimension of young people in political struggle. He may articulate their frustrations with jobs and the violence of poverty and urban fragility, but I do not think ‘People Power’ without an organisation behind it can impact the current political order in any significant way. His tool is not revolutionary struggle but rather a broadening of the political arena and greater efficiency in government services. He does not want to change the system – only the leaders – and will take to the ballot not the bullet to see it through. At most, People Power will highlight upsets in the 2021 election and deliver higher-octane pressure on the presidential poll. But it is not yet a movement capable of putting young people in charge with a different vision for the country.

He [Bobi Wine] symbolises disruptive politics which mobilises outside membership groups. I find him more of an early warning system for possible national defiance than a force that can cause large-scale defiance.

Gerald K. Karyeija Bobi Wine combines many attributes that none of the regime opponents, not even President Museveni’s closest rival Kizza Besigye, possess. For instance, he appeals to the youth, who are the majority, his music career has enabled him to capture the hearts of many and […] his ghetto background makes the poor and disadvantaged feel like he’s one of them.

He is from the Central region which is a plus because of the feeling that people from the Western region have been promoted at the expense of other regions over the past 32 years of Museveni’s rule.

Agather Atuhaire He [Bobi Wine] has no political base, no appeal in the establishment (unlike Kizza Besigye), so he cannot dismantle the behemoth that is the Museveni regime now.

Regardless, he is a welcome addition to the forces of change in Uganda, and will definitely be a considerable headache to the regime in Kampala for the foreseeable future.

Bernard Sabiti

THE AFRICA REPORT

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ETHIOPIA

The end of Abiy’s honeymoon

YOUTUBE, COURTESY EBC

Tension-buster: Abiy’s push-up challenge on TV

T

he sight of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed doing push-ups with soldiers who had burst into the executive palace demanding money in early October may have provoked smiles.

The reality – it later turned out – was less comfortable, with Abiy admitting that they wanted to kill him. It is a sign of this difficult moment in Ethiopia: full of optimism and sweeping reform; fraught with peril and the sense that things could so easily flip into chaos (see TAR 104, Oct. 2018). Abiy took power in April and rapidly launched plans to

16

SUB-SAHARAN EUROBONDS ($bn)

14 12 10 8 6 4 2

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

0

Angola Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Côte d’Ivoire Kenya Mozambique Namibia Nigeria Cameroon Rwanda Senegal Tanzania Zambia

continue our presence in [Somalia] until the restoration of full security ” ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN

Borrowing from international markets at commercial rates is a relatively new phenomenon in Africa. Eurobonds – bonds in a foreign currency – can be

“We shall

used to build infrastructure or devoted to wasteful spending.

With continental debt levels on the rise, international investors may be more wary about African bond issuances ahead.

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

DEBT EUROBOND EUPHORIA

liberalise the economy and Ethiopia’s politics. But changing the status quo has created both winners and losers.

While Abiy has repealed terror legislation and freed prisoners, there are new factors coming into play that may yet trigger Ethiopia’s old authoritarian reflexes. One of these is Eritreans piling into Ethiopia to enjoy the freedom they lack at home. Beyond the sheer numbers, a point of friction in the past has been Eritrean traders circumventing customs controls.

Another is the manner in which other ethnic groups now feel free to pursue their own political agendas

having seen what benefits the Oromo now enjoy, having thrown off the yoke of the previously dominant Tigrayans.

Before Abiy there had never been an Oromo premier. Conflict has bubbled over in recent months – between the Gedeo and the Oromo in August, and between the Oromo and the residents of Addis Ababa in September.

The government also has troubles in the restive Somali Region. Former governor Abdi Mohamed Omer, whom the government forced to resign and then arrested for mismanagement, tried to break free from prison in mid-October. A peace deal with the Ogaden National Liberation Front in late October was a sign that stability there could be improving.

The government estimates that the past year’s upheavals have displaced some 2.2 million people.

Aware of these tensions and others, Abiy reshuffled his cabinet in October, creating a new peace ministry to promote reconciliation – though analysts say the early outlines of the ministry suggest it will have too narrow a focus on security. Abiy selected former construction minister Aisha Mohammed as his new defence minister, Ethiopia’s first woman defence minister and a member of a cabinet that is now 50% female.

Ethiopia is a fragile patchwork, and Abiy will have to ensure it does not fray, or the securocrats will be offering their own solutions.

Kenya Kenya’ss President Uhuru Kenyatta says th hat, despite budget worries and the e lack of progress in defeating the Isla amist rebels of Al-Shabaab, he rem mains committed to Kenyan militaryy intervention in Somalia.

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PICTURE OF THE MONTH The ever-relevant @africasacountry on Melania’s pith helmet: ‘The bigger questions: Why is she there; what’s with all kinds of unsavory Euro-American personalities using Africa for photo ops; and why do Africans line up to welcome them so eagerly?’

TELECOMS GOBS OF CASH FOR GIGS IN AFRICA Mali Burkina Faso

Niger

AUTOMOBILES DRIVING MANUFACTURING GROWTH

Ethiopia

Senegal Gambia

Uganda

Guinea

Cameroon

Equatorial Guinea Gabon Rep. of Congo

MOBILE DATA Cost of 1GB ($) 5 - 10 10 - 20

Kenya Rwanda Burundi Tanzania Malawi Zambia Zimbabwe

Angola Botswana Namibia

0-5

Dem. Rep. Congo

Mozambique

eSwatini

20-30

South Africa

+30

Lesotho

Africa’s mobile revolution has been slow to take off, in part due to the high cost of data in many countries. Equatorial Guinea is the most expensive for 1GB of data with an average cost of $35.50, while in Mozambique the same 1GB has an average cost of just $2.10.

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AFRICAN MANUFACTURING POWER Number of vehicles produced 2016

SOURCE: OICA

Benin Nigeria

SOURCE: ECOBANK RESEARCH AND WORLD BANK

Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Ghana Togo

THE AFRICA REPORT

Getting a foothold in global value chains is a top priority for many governments. So far, only South Africa and Morocco have been able to develop a critical mass of automobile manufacturers to create an ecosystem that includes local suppliers. And while South Africa’s production dropped from about 615,000 vehicles in 2015 to nearly 589,000 in 2017, Morocco’s output has been on the rise. Recent months have produced a slew of new production deals in smaller markets, such as Tunisia, Algeria and Namibia with both Western and Asian manufacturers. Nigeria remains an undeveloped production market, and magnate Aliko Dangote and Peugeot are due to restart production at a Kaduna plant in 2019.

Chad

2015

835,937

903,568

2017

931,283

CAROLYN KASTER/AP/SIPA

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SPOTLIGHT

Tito Mboweni President Ramaphosa has called on a financial firefighter and political ally to steady the economy and return it to solid growth ahead of a crucial electoral test next year

AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

IT’S TITO TIME 16 March 1959 Born in Tzaneen 1994-1999 Served as labour minister under Nelson Mandela 1999-2009 Governor of the Reserve Bank, South Africa’s central bank 2002 Appointed chancellor of North-West University 9 October 2018 Named finance minister on the resignation of Nhlanhla Nene

RODGER BOSCH/AFP

SERVICEDELIVERY PROTESTS and high-stakes elections are piling the economic pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government, and there is a new man in charge of South Africa’s economic trajectory: finance minister Tito Mboweni. Mboweni has a reputation as a hawk from his decade of running the Reserve Bank, having hiked interest rates to tame inflation – so the markets reacted positively to his appointment. But Mboweni is now leaning more liberally, tweeting in April: ‘The state must own 40% of mining companies […] and create a sovereign wealth fund.’

The opposition Democratic Alliance’s David Maynier told local media: “Mboweni was in political exile for nearly a decade and his views on the economy may not be as market-friendly as was first assumed.

He is unlikely to rock the boat as the ANC is heading to an election in 2019.”

Since he retired from the Reserve Bank in 2009, Mboweni served on several corporate boards, including Discovery Health and AngloGold Ashanti. The Limpopo-born Mboweni was a vocal critic of former president Jacob Zuma and emerged as a key ally to Ramaphosa. Aside from politics, both share a love of fly fishing.

Mboweni is seen by many as a safe pair of hands, but there is criticism

that Ramaphosa is recycling the same people instead of giving a new, younger generation a chance to perform. Mboweni is the country’s third minister in less than a year, and Ramaphosa had not been planning on making any major new appointments before the 2019 national elections.

Mboweni has been part of the Ramaphosa inner circle as a member of the governing African National

“Nigeria will no longer accept a leadership of the mediocre ” #BringBackOurGirls campaigner Oby Ezekwesili launched her presidential bid.

Congress (ANC)’s National Executive Committee. He is part of the economic transformation committee that includes senior cabinet ministers like Pravin Gordhan and other senior ANC members like Enoch Godongwana.

Mboweni has his pulse on governance issues, having served as a cabinet minister in Nelson Mandela’s government. He was the first black labour minister and oversaw the

“Sooner or later the oppressed shall be free and they should not be scared ” Ugandan oppositionist Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (Bobi Wine) takes aim at President Yoweri Museveni.

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SOHAM EL WARDINI Dakar now has its first female mayor. El Wardini steps in after 19 months administering the city with her fellow deputies while Khalifa Sall appealed his jail sentence. She has a little more than a year to make her mark.

ELIUD KIPCHOGE

In a sign of rapprochement between Kigali and Paris, Rwanda’s foreign minister became the head of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, which unites the French-speaking countries.

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains why she speaks out as a social activist rather than “shut up and write”.

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SANI BABAN-INNA In September, the authorities arrested the aide-de-camp of Nigeria’s first lady, Aisha Buhari, a chief superintendant of police, on extortion charges. He is said to have made N2.5bn ($6.9m) trading on his employer’s name.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; CHANNELSTV; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LOUISE MUSHIKIWABO

“Art can illuminate politics. […] But sometimes that is not enough ” •

The son of Angola’s former president is in deep trouble with the new regime, which arrested him in late September on several charges of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.

With a time of 2:01:39, the Kenyan long-distance runner smashed the world marathon record at the Berlin Marathon in September. The 33-year-old challenged the younger generation to break his record.

Crystal Orderson in Cape Town

THE AFRICA REPORT

JOSÉ FILOMENO DOS SANTOS

SYLVAIN CHERKAOUI/COSMOS FOR JA; MUSTAFAH ABDULAZIZ/REA; VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

introduction of the Labour Relations Act, which allows for collective bargaining and labour courts.

Mboweni and his team face a daunting array of problems in the South African economy. It is set to record only meagre growth this year and next, as the country entered a recession in September 2018.

State-owned enterprises like South African Airways are losing large sums, and there are regular protests about the poor state of public services.

Under Zuma, most ratings agencies downgraded South Africa’s debt to below investment grade. Mboweni wants to improve the rating, but political forces on the left are mobilising over the need to prioritise the poor. Andrew Chirwa, chairman of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa told reporters: “Mboweni is hostile to the workingclass majority. During his tenure as governor of the Reserve Bank, he bent over backwards to champion neoliberal macroeconomic policies.”

Mboweni will reveal the first outlines of his strategy to shake the economy out of its doldrums and address longstanding problems like unemployment when delivering his medium-term budget on 24 October.

Mboweni owes his new job to the ongoing fallout of the government’s ‘state capture’ inquiry into former president Zuma and his ties to the Gupta family of businessmen. His precedessor, Nhlanhla Nene, resigned from the post in early October when it was revealed that he met several times with the Gupta brothers. As The Africa Report went to press, Nene had not been accused of any wrongdoing, but the South African political class is preparing itself for more bombshell news from the investigation into governance under Zuma.

ADETOKUNBO ABIRU The boss of Nigeria’s Skye Bank, in office since 2016, was not able to turn the bank’s fortunes around. The central bank took over control in late September.

Abiru remains CEO of the bank, which is renamed Polaris.

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UNITED STATES

$390bn

The expected cost of US interest payments on its debt in 2019, a close to 50% rise on 2017 levels.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that with unchecked spending annual interest payments will reach about $900bn by 2019.

4

US/CHINA

No early winners

JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP/SIPA

Washington has imposed tariffs on $250bn of Chinese exports in order to get Beijing to make concessions on trade and commercial practices, but so far there are no winners in the tit-for-tat trade war. The World Bank warns that an escalation of the tariff fight could reduce global exports by 3%. Neither side is backing down, negotiations have not been advancing and both sides will soon be faced with a choice about whether to escalate the dispute.

2

SAUDI ARABIA

Crown pariah

Protesters outside the Saudi embassy in Washington DC

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Global attention turned to Riyadh after the Turkish government began investigating the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi from the kingdom’s consulate in Istabul. Khashoggi was a strong critic of the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), who ordered the imprisonment and torture of business leaders as part of an anti-corruption campaign.

In October, reports emerged that 15 Saudis took two chartered planes to Istanbul to either kill Khashoggi or take him back to Saudi Arabia to be imprisoned – or worse. Turkish sources reported that there were tapes of the journalist screaming as each of his fingers was cut off.

The MBS administration initially denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance before admitting that he died “in a fist fight” within the consulate. Both statements were widely dismissed as countries began pulling out of international events to be held in Saudi Arabia and US legislators threatened sanctions. At risk are more than $100bn in US arms deals and the possibility that Riyadh could try to use its oil production as a weapon.

works until the global elite start to lose an election and all of a sudden the little guy doesn’t know what he’s voting for ”

BRAZIL

Um Trump sulista As The Africa Report went to press, Brazil was preparing for elections with huge implications for the country and the region. Jair Bolsonaro, an arch conservative and admirer of US President Donald Trump, took 46% in the first round. He faced off against Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad, who scored 29.3%. The PT has lost support due to corruption and mismanagement under the two previous governments.

Bolsonaro’s campaign focused on the economy and fighting corruption.

“Democracy

NANCY KASZERMAN/ZUMA A/REA

3

US/EU

THE AFRICA REPORT

Former Trump T adviser Steve Bannon n has been touring Europe to t get far-right groups to sign up u to his organisation ‘The Mo ovement’.

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A phosphate mine in the south of Togo (right).

© JACQUES TORREGANO

ADVERTORIAL

© JACQUES TORREGANO

Hydroelectric dam at Adjarala (below).

TOGO

Lomé headquarters of the BTCI, Togolese bank for trade and industry.

S

ince 2016, Togo has been

pulling out all the stops to

attract the private investment its economy needs, including implementing reforms that will encourage investors to seize

opportunities in the transport, energy, housing and agri-food

The Port of Lomé.

Investors from around the world

sectors. From the simplification of procedures and the settlement of commercial disputes to modernising its infrastructure, Lomé is steadily creating the environment expected by today’s international investors. These reforms and adjustments are beginning to bear fruit and, in the last three years, Togo has climbed nine places in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking.

TOGO

T

REBOUND IN FDI FLOWS Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows to Togo have been particularly unstable in recent years. Inflows were even negative in 2016 before recovering the following year, with a positive balance of $146 million. A constantly improving business environment and the launch of major electricity production projects are aimed at continuing – and even confirming – this positive trend, with a significant increase in FDI inflows over the coming years.

The country’s regained political stability is sure to encourage the resumption of the virtuous cycle of economic reforms and simplify the private sector’s access to the various public sector entities.

COMMERCIAL COURT The execution of contracts is an essential element in protecting investors and their interests.

Togolese company directors now have recourse to the Togo Court of Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation (CATO) to settle their commercial disputes. In a country where the courts continue to be regarded as too slow, the CATO rapidly differentiated itself and has been exemplary in its function, with all cases being examined within a maximum of six months.

Moreover, its decisions can be implemented throughout the WAEMU Zone. This institution was established as a response to the request by the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA).

More of these courts will be set up throughout the sub-region.

ogo has reported an average annual growth rate of more than 5% for the past five years. The 2017 decline, which was linked to the social context, was quickly offset and the country’s economy is expected to rebound to 5.2% next year.

This result is largely due to the government’s diversification policy and, within a few years, it has been able to revitalise agriculture,

boost the extractive industry and modernise the Port of Lomé and the international airport. This shift has had consequences for the country’s debt and, therefore, for Togo to continue to acquire the means to achieve its ambitions and pursue its public investment policy, its development has to be more oriented towards public-private partnerships (PPPs).

An average annual growth rate of more than 5%.

The upgrading of the International Airport is contributing to this result.

Model of the future Lomé International Airport.

Electricity to power the private sector

A

ccess to energy has improved significantly over the last decade, almost doubling to 40% in 2018.

To strengthen its energy independence, the country, in partnership with Benin, has begun building its first hydroelectric dam at Adjarala. It will have a capacity of 147 MW. At the same time, Togo has launched a plan for rural electrification using solar energy. All these projects involve the private sector, which is one of the first to benefit from them, since nearly two thirds of companies located in Togo are connected to the electricity grid while, across the rest of the continent, the average is just over half.

A sub-regional dimension Besides being able to rely on a financial centre recognised at the regional level with, at its core, the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) and the West African Development Bank (BOAD), Togo enjoys a strategic geographic location. Located in the heart of the Community and its market of 300 million people, the country has a key infrastructure hub to serve the entire sub-region. The Port of Lomé is now serving as a transhipment platform for the whole of the Gulf of Guinea, which so far is the only port in the region able to handle the new mammoth vessels arriving from Asia, under the partnership signed with Swiss shipping company MSC.

ADVERTORIAL

Attractive business environment

Plastics manufacturing company in the Lomé free zone.

New customs, mining and investment codes, and a reorganised free zone contribute to the industrial sector’s 9% increase each year.

© PHOTONIKO

By relying on its assets as a financial and logistical hub, Togo hopes to serve as a base for major cross-border projects that will transform the countries of the sub-region. To this end, and also to finance its own economic and social development, the country has thoroughly revised its legislative framework to create an attractive business environment. In just a few years, Togo’s government has deeply reformed its customs, mining and investment codes.

It also reorganised its free zone, set up in 1989 in the suburbs of Lomé and which now hosts some 60 companies employing more than 12,000 people. Operating in the fields of cosmetics distribution, computer assembly, timber processing and fertiliser manufacturing, these companies contribute significantly to the 9% increase that has been recorded each year by the country’s industrial sector since 2015.

© JACQUES TORREGANO

Investors from around the world

Technology to streamline procedures After merging the Customs and Revenue Administration (CRO) to improve tax efficiency and domestic resource mobilisation, Togo began setting up its Single Window for Foreign Trade (GUCE) in 2014. Designed to make trade operations across the country more transparent, it reduces the costs and delays of commercial and logistical transactions and simplifies import and export procedures, as well as those for goods in transit. It even offers access to an electronic platform that can be accessed at any time via the Internet.

A boon to new businesses

The Port of Lomé is currently the only port in the region able to handle mammoth vessels arriving from Asia.

The opening of this Single Window, along with the reduction in the number of procedures and the time required to set up a business, which is now just 24 hours, has led to a rise in the number of businesses. While 4,581 companies were set up in 2010, this number rose to 8,199 last year, after peaking at 10,816 in 2015. Government initiatives

ADVERTORIAL

TOGO Togo is counting on the ongoing digital revolution to continue increasing its banked population. To this end, it is tenaciously modernising its Internet network, in particular with a view to promoting the financial inclusion of the population. Ecobank, Orabank, and the Banque Togolaise pour le Commerce et l’Industrie (BTCI) have already established partnerships with mobile phone operators, so that their customers can manage their accounts and carry out banking transactions online.

FIGURES

to encourage people to set up businesses include removing restrictions on limited company (SARL) capital, abolishing the single business tax (TPU) during the first year of business activity and halving the cost of publishing the mandatory legal notices. These initiatives are a boon to aspiring entrepreneurs in a country where the informal sector accounts for 90% of jobs. The government has also announced that the procedures for incorporating a company will be made electronic in the coming months.

Land laws to be revised Although the Togolese business climate has warmed up significantly, there is still considerable room for improvement. One area where this is particularly pertinent is in land and its management. Obtaining building permits is deemed too long and too costly,

>4.9%

INCREASE IN TAX REVENUES RECORDED

BY THE PORT OF LOMÉ BETWEEN 2014 AND 2017

>63.2%

PERCENTAGE OF COMPANIES CONNECTED TO TOGO’S ELECTRICITY GRID

Morocco’s Attijariwafa took over BIA-Togo.

Freeing up financing

INCREASE IN FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN TOGO IN 2018

>32.5%

thereby becoming a barrier to investment.

Major reforms have thus been launched by the Direction des Affaires Domaniales et Cadastrales (DADC – land affairs and registry department) to make the legal framework more flexible and limit the costs of property transfers. By the end of 2017, the DADC had also digitised almost all of Togo’s title deeds, while a Land Transfer Office (BTP) was specially set up in 2017 to remove any remaining obstacles in these operations.

The Single Window for Foreign Trade (GUCE) has fostered a surge in new businesses.

4,581 in 2010, 10,816 in 2015 and 8,199 in 2017…

>95%

© RENAUD VAN DER MEEREN/LES ÉDITONS DU JAGUAR

TITLE DEED DIGITISATION RATE IN TOGO

Ecobank in Lomé.

Despite having become much easier, access to finance also remains a concern for investors. However, the situation will continue to improve due a banking sector that, year by year, is steadily becoming stronger. The number of banks has doubled in less than 10 years and some of the largest private brands have chosen to set up in Lomé which is home to the headquarters of pan African institutions Ecobank and Bank of Africa.

Morocco’s Attijariwafa took over BIA-Togo while Orabank acquired a stake in the Togolese Development Bank. These are all names that should significantly strengthen private investment in the country.

DIFCOM/DF - PHOTOS: DR UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.

MODERN BANKING FOR ALL

Investors from around the world

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GHANA OIL & GAS SUMMIT 21-22 November ACCRA | GHANA cwcghana.com

AFRICA OIL WEEK 5-9 November CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA africa-oilweek.com

FORUM BRAZIL-AFRICA 22-23 November SALVADOR | BRAZIL forumbrazilafrica.com

WATER AFRICA & WEST AFRICA BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION 6-8 November KIGALI | RWANDA ace-events.com

AFRICA INVESTMENT FORUM 7-9 November JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA africainvestmentforum.com

HARARE | ZIMBABWE Hosting the event this year, President Mnangagwa is keen to show Zimbabwe’s commitment to innovation. innovation-africa.com

RABAT | MOROCCO Airline CEOs delve into core issues for the industry at the African Airlines Association’s 50th annual summit. aga50.afraa.org

BUENOS AIRES | ARGENTINA G20 president Argentina has defined infrastructure for development as a priority. g20.org

DECEMBER

TANZANIA INTERNATIONAL TRADE SHOW 1-3 December DAR ES SALAAM | TANZANIA growexh.com/tanzaniatradeshow/

COP24 3-14 December KATOWICE | POLAND Named the Katowice Climate Change Conference, this 24th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) is expected to launch the implementation of the Paris Agreement, concluded at the climate-change talks in 2015. cop24.gov.pl

MADAGASCAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 7 November The final event on the African presidential election agenda promises to be a challenging one, with a record 36 candidates, including current president Hery Rajaonarimampianina (pictured), in the race for the top spot. Three former presidents will also be running, including Didier Ratsiraka, an 82-year old naval officer who ruled Madagascar in 1975-1993 and 19972002, and Marc Ravolamanana, who was overthrown in a 2009 coup. In early September, Ratsiraka questioned the legality of the electoral process and urged the authorities to postpone this year’s presidential vote. The poll is also set to become something of a family affair as relatives go head-to-head: Ratsiraka against his nephew, former tourism minister Roland Ratsiraka; and the two competing grandchildren of former president Philibert Tsiranana, Philippe Tsiranana and Eliana Bezaza.

AFRICACOM 13-15 November CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA tmt.knect365.com/africacom/

WEST AFRICA PROPERTY INVESTMENT SUMMIT 15-16 November LAGOS | NIGERIA wapisummit.com

AFRICITIES 8 SUMMIT 20-24 November MARRAKECH | MOROCCO africities.org N ° 10 5

INNOVATION AFRICA 28-30 November

G20 SUMMIT 30 Nov. – 1 Dec.

CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA awieforum.com

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LAGOS | NIGERIA The African Securities Exchange Association’s forum for Africa’s 27 bourses. african-exchanges.org

AFRAA SUMMIT 25-27 November

AFRICA WOMEN INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP FORUM 8-9 November

THE AFRICA REPORT

ASEA CONFERENCE 25-27 November

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SANDRA ROCHA FOR JA

NOVEMBER

20

Elhadj As Sy

Secre etary general, International Federation of Red Cross a Red Crescent Societies and

Responsibility for the migration crisis lies at home

E

very week, I receive desperate messages from my continent as families and friends seek news of their loved ones who set out on a journey to Europe and have not been heard from since.

“Sir, you are my last resort. Please help find my brother, hopefully alive. His wife doesn’t know if she should continue to wait or start to mourn,” says a WhatsApp message on my phone.

Others implore me to my face. “Uncle, please don’t leave us here. Take us with you, in the name of God,” called a handsome young man in my mother tongue, Wolof, as he disembarked from the Aquarius rescue ship in Valencia, in June.

“Seventy-five friends died during our odyssey, and we had to throw their bodies into the ocean.

How can I face their parents again? How can I be proud to be a survivor?” said a young Senegalese man to me, in a long monologue broken by sobs.

Why are they writing to me and pleading with me? Perhaps because I am African, and maybe because I look like their father or their uncle. But surely because they believe I might be able to help, and because there are too few others to turn to. Most of the time though, I’m afraid there is little I can do.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that this year, by 16 September, more than 1,720 migrants had perished – or gone ‘miss-

We never see flags at half-mast in the homelands of those who have died ing’ – in the Mediterranean. The figure for the whole of last year was 2,575. The vast majority of these people – our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – are from Africa, and mostly from my home region of West Africa.

We see these figures in glossy humanitarian publications. Occasionally we also see faceless photos of the dead in newspapers – though usually THE AFRICA REPORT

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BRIEFING 21

only when the numbers suddenly jump – and the papers are quickly thrown away.

But we never see official flags flown at half-mast in the homelands of those who have died. We rarely see the tears of the mothers and fathers of these young men and women, for they are shed far away, in the despair of quiet corners. And the words of outrage, of condemnation, of shame that should be

Our governments should own – not disown – their own citizens shouted out loud by the leaders in these victims’ homelands are also rarely heard – for reasons I really do not understand.

People move and will continue to move in search of new lives, as well as, all too often, in search of sanctuary. No matter the reason for their moves, this quest should never cost lives.

And we West Africans cannot expect the rest of the world to know about and care and respond to these tragedies, if we ourselves do not. It is time for us West Africans – our governments, our communities, our peoples – to ask ourselves some very serious questions.

Why, particularly in places that are not subject to conflict or serious violence, do so many young people feel that their only future lies elsewhere?

Why, having faced untold hardship and suffering during their journeys, are those who change their minds and want to return to their homelands not supported to have a dignified return? And why is home so often not a welcoming place?

Our governments should do all they can to make sure that our people have access to accurate and trustworthy information so that the decision to migrate is an informed one. No one should claim ignorance of the harsh realities of migration.

Our governments should provide better consular services to migrants in countries of transit and destination. That means giving life-saving assistance, information on legal means of migration, and repatriation and reintegration support for those who want or need it. And our governments should bring back the bodies of those who die on the migration journey. They should own – not disown – their own citizens.

These are very small requests in the face of unimaginable suffering. But they are steps that will demonstrate that our countries are not indifferent to the plight of our people.

Africans cannot leave this problem to others. Yes, world leaders – including our own – discussed these issues at the UN General Assembly in September.

And yes, the world will adopt a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in December.

But a major part of this problem belongs to Africa and will need to be solved in Africa. Many of our problems – and many of their solutions – lie at home.

Let’s stop the indifference and protect humanity.

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22

After Kabila

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

23

An end is in sight to the grinding conflict over President Kabila’s overstaying in power.

Elections are planned for December and national and international forces are putting pressure on Kabila to help the country start a new page

Voters hope Kabila is not hiding any final tricks

By Patrick Smith

OF CONGO

JOHN WESSELS/AFP

O

n 23 December, Joseph Kabila is due to make history when he presides over national elections that are meant to signal his retirement from the presidency. It would be the first time that a Congolese president has left office without being forced tobyacoupd’état,arebellion oran assassin’s bullet. The political transition in the DRC will hand a new leader the power to affect the lives of more than 80 million fellow citizens, long-running conflicts that have destabilised the region and killed and displaced millions of people, and tens of billions of dollars in strategic mining and energy deals.

Because of the vast wealth he and his family have accumulated and worries that he could face prosecution for human rights abuses, Kabila has held on to power beyond the end of his second term in 2016. But his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September sounded like an oath for departure: “I reaffirm the irreversible character of holding the elections planned for the end of this year.” The follow-up commitment was more problematic: “Everythingwillbe implementedinorder to guarantee the peaceful and credible character of these polls.”

Even those activists and politicians who were convinced that ‘Plan A’ was for Kabilatostayinthepresidencyindefinitely now suggest that regional pressure has forced him and his allies to implement ‘Plan B’: the choosing of a dauphin, who would be under strict control.

24 FRONTLINE | AFTER K ABIL A

DEVOTED DAUPHIN

Kabila’s lengthy consultations within his Parti du Peuple pour la Reconstruction et la Démocratie (PPRD) resulted in the choice of the little­known former interior minister, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, as the party’s presidential candidate. A man of the security system who is under EU sanctions for human rights abuses, Shadary lacks his own base. That much was clear in his acceptance speech on 9 August: “It is the chance, before the Congolese people, to thank almighty God for the grace he has shown us and to thank sincerely and above all the moral authority of his excellency Joseph Kabila Kabange, an exceptional man.”

Then with a nod to outsiders, such as the UN, the African Union and the SADC, Shadary added: “He is keeping his

word. He said there will be no problem and there will be no third term.” None of this suggests that, if elected, Shadary will deviate much from the Kabila playbook.

Other contenders, such as former prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo, former vice­president Azarias Ruberwa or the current chairman of state min­ ing company Gécamines, Albert Yuma Mulimbi, may have been more likely to plough their own furrows. Under

the constitution, the president has wide­ranging powers of patronage in appointments and awarding of contracts.

Shadary’s candidacy is a message of continuity. Few expect him, if elected, to follow the example of João Laurenço in Angola and turn on the family of the outgoing president. Kabila will remain president of the PPRD, and could also vie for the presidential nomination in 2023 without breaking the clause that bars

Who stands to lose?

THE OLIGARCHS

Ivan Glasenberg Glencore and its investors have a Congo dilemma. If it was not for its buccaneering style and wheelerdealing in Congo’s copper and cobalt industry, Glencore would not have evolved from a secretive Switerland-based commodity trader to a global minerals producer.

Now, it’s payback time.

First, Glencore and its fellow foreign mining houses are doing battle with the government’s resource-nationalist policies. Despite their hard-bargaining reputations, firms such as Glencore and Randgold have made heavy concessions over the new mining code.

Glencore’s second front is its battle with the US regulators, both for its ties to Dan Gertler (a business partner of President Kabila now under US sanctions), and in its own right as an operator in DRC, Nigeria and Venezuela. The US wants to see a decade of Glencore’s accounts and records of its operations in Congo to check it has complied with anti-corruption and money laundering statutes.

CEO Ivan Glasenberg announced in October that he would be stepping down within three years.

THE CHINESE

Li Chaochun Richard Muyej, governor of the copper-rich Lualaba province, put it best at a regional mining conference in June: “Everything has become Chinese.” Since the turn of the century Chinese companies have built up a dominant position in Congo’s copper industry. The key moment was in January 2017, when China Molybdenum, which is chaired

by Li Chaochun, bought the majority stake in Tenke Fungurume, which controls the country’s biggest mine.

Symbolic of this rise is the formation of a 35-strong Union of Mining Companies with Chinese Capital, whose members include China Moly and Sicomines, the joint venture between Synohydro, China Railway and Congo state equity.

Yet Chinese companies are not immune from the pressures other companies face in Congo. So China Moly and Zijin Mining joined forces with the Western-dominated ‘G7’ companies trying to secure a better deal from the reforms of the mining code. Together those firms claim to produce 80% of Congo’s copper, cobalt and gold.

Yet so far they have extracted few concessions from Kinshasa.

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BLOOMBERG; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; DANIEL ETTER/REDUX-REA

Such is the scepticism about the pol­ itical class, many Congolese still doubt the elections will take place on schedule, let alone be credible. Those doubts are rootedinbitterexperience.Firsttherewas the failure of the Commission Electorale Nationale Indépendante (CENI) to or­ ganise voter registration and elections on time in 2016 when Kabila was due to stand down. Then some opposition parties struck a deal with the Majorité Présidentielle, giving Kabila another year.

But the opposition lacked the muscle, alone, to keep Kabila to the deal. Regional pressure, from Angola, South Africa and, eventually,Zimbabwe,madeadifference.

That trio dominate the Southern African Development Community (SADC), of which the DRC is a member.

They argued that further attempts by Kabila to prolong his presidency would trigger more instability, with militias fighting in the east and other parts of the country. Adding pressure on Kinshasa was some indirect nudging from the European Union and the United States, although Kabila had declined to meet with Nikki Haley, then Washington’s envoy to the UN. Opposition politicians accuse the government of stirring up hostilities, even distributing weapons to militias, to delaytheelectionsandKabila’sexit.“Who financed these militia groups?” asked leading oppositionist Moïse Katumbi, who has been barred from contesting or even entering the DRC. “It’s Kabila […] because he doesn’t want elections,” Katumbi tells The Africa Report. “Even if Kabila does go now, he’s going to leave total chaos,” he adds.

AFTER K ABIL A | FRONTLINE 25

candidates from seeking more than two consecutive terms as president.

For Floribert Anzuluni of the Filimbi citizens’ movement, a Kabila-Shadary transition will not defuse tension: “The real problem is that Kabila doesn’t want to step down. He wanted to stay in power without organising elections.”

Kabila’s designated successor would be isolated and a poor interlocutor says Anzuluni: “He has appointed a puppet

THE K ABIL A FACTION

Joseph Kabila Politologues in Kinshasa gave Kabila at most a year at the helm when he took over. He had no support base, no political or administrative experience, his elevation to the presidency was little more than an accident of birth. But Kabila built a team of capable allies and outplayed political rivals. Kabila’s top adviser, Augustin Katumba Mwanke, orchestrated the rival factions within Kabila’s clan and negotiated all mining deals, before his death in 2012.

In the early days Kabila was befriended by Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler. Global Witness has called Gertler ‘the gatekeeper’. Companies linked to Gertler cost the DRC $1.3bn in lost revenues according to the Africa Progress Panel.

The cosy relationships with companies may be shaken up.

The head of Gécamines, Albert Yuma Mulimbi, and mines minister Martin Kabwelulu, called the bluff of the international mining companies with a tough new mining code.

As the companies mull legal action, the message from poker-playing Kabila is: “I’ll see you.”

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to succeed him – a guy sanctioned by At least 18 out of the 21 presidential the EU, a guy without contacts with the candidates reject the use of voting partners outside the DRC.” machines in the 90,000 polling stations, Some may quietly rejoice that Kabila questioning CENI’s $150m procurement deal with Gemalto, the Amsterdamhas picked a candidate with little name headquartered supplier. Critics also recognition. In telephone polls conducted by the Congo Research Group at New point to security weaknesses with the York University in September, Congolese machines and suspicions that they could be used to rig the vote. support for Shadary was running at 16%.

Katumbi warns that using voting For Félix Tshisekedi, leader of the opposition Union pour la Démocratie et le machines in the face of mass opposition Progrès Social (UDPS), it was running could trigger a boycott or worse: “A civil war could start […] people all over the at 36%. Earlier polls by the group had country are not going to agree to results Tshisekedi and other opposition figures from these machines.” Citing electoral such as Katumbi or the Mouvement de laws that prohibit electronic voting, Libération du Congo (MLC) leader, JeanPierre Bemba, far ahead of Kabila or a Katumbi says the use of the machines candidate chosen by him. would nullify the election. In a video that has gone viral on social media, Koffi Not an energetic campaigner nor a Olomide, a musical star and friend of compelling orator, Tshisekedi’s attraction to voters is because he is not from the Katumbi, is backing the activist campaign against the voting machines.

Kabila camp, and that he is the son of the legendary opposition leader Étienne POSSIBLE DELAYS Tshisekedi.Félix’sadvantageisthattwoof the other popular opposition candidates With elections looming, it will take some –BembaandKatumbi–havebeenbarred hardbargainingbetweenthegovernment from contesting the election. The other and the opposition to reach agreement leading oppositionist, Vital Kamerhe, over the machines. This latest stand-off is suspected of flirting with Kabila’s has raised concerns that the vote could side, having once been a minister in be delayed again, as UN officials and his government. diplomats push for a compromise.

On paper, the opposition candidates If a deal is struck and Kabila leaves have agreed that the best chance of beatoffice as scheduled, he would have ing Kabila and his dauphin would be earned himself a place in Congo’s hisa national alliance backing one candidate. Civic groups such as the Conférence At least 18 out of the Nationale Episcopale du 21 presidential candidates Congo (CENCO) encourage that. But a meeting of all reject voting machines the opposition parties due to be held in Johannesburg on 23 October was cancelled, as was tory, according to author and Congo an earlier rendezvous in Paris. specialist Jason Stearns. “There are many different Joseph Kabilas, although one Some in Tshisekedi’s camp may calhas the tendency to remember the one culate that he may not need an alliance to win, but that would assume optimum who is in power today,” says Stearns. electoral conditions and a neutral referee “As a 29-year-old president, he talked enforcing clear rules. Although CENCO with his enemies, invited in UN peaceplans to field tens of thousands of observkeepers and opened up the economy. ers for the elections, the group sounds These decisions had a hugely beneficial alarms on several technical issues. The impact on many Congolese and ushered in new democratic institutions and the biggest is the use of hi-tech voting first elections in 40 years.” machinesinsteadofpaperballots, and an audit showing that more Stearns contrasts that Kabila with thansixmillionpeoplecouldbe today’s more familiar version: “the disenfranchisedbecausetheir man who has benefited, along with his fingerprintsdidnotregisteron narrow elite and to the exclusion of most the biometric system while Congolese, from recent multinational another six million on the investment in the country, who has done little to reform his security services and electoral roll may be too deal with armed groups in the eastern young to vote.

26 FRONTLINE | AFTER K ABIL A

Congo, and who has presided over the repression of the opposition and the co-option of leaders of all stripes.”

China’s rise to dominance in the DRC’s economy in the Kabila era has changed the country’s landscape beyond recognition, with new highways and railways.

Chinese companies are mining some 60% of Congo’s cobalt, a key ingredient for batteries in electric cars (see page 29).

The People Who makes Congo tick?

The long-running crisis over the succession of President Kabila has groups jockeying for influence

PROSPECTS FOR PROSPERITY

Yettheelitenetworksofbusiness,political and security interests identified by a UN investigationin2002maintainawrestler’s grip over mineral riches and the contracts to extract them. This privatisation of Congo’spatrimonyhasacceleratedunder Kabila, and the state’s administrative capacity has remained chronically weak.

Civil servants are paid a pittance and they extract rents in the form of bribes and contract commissions.

Many Congolese who grew up under Mobutu would concede that the political climate is more open: opposition newspapers and political tracts circulate widely, as does trenchant criticism of the regime on social media. But there are strict limits to this, as seen in the repression of protests calling for Kabila to hold elections and leave.

Optimists about the DRC, a select group, talk about incremental improvements and the gradual building of institutions. The bigger picture is the prospect of transforming one of the richest countries in Africa, in terms of natural resources, into a modern diversified economy.

That lies partly in the country’s combination of rich cobalt reserves, copper mines and its abundant hydroelectric capacity. A still-hazy vision of that future emerged in September when a ChineseSpanish consortium announced its plans to raise some $18bn to build the Inga III dam, which could generate 11,000MW, making it one of the biggest hydropower projects in the world.

It would both provide energy and promote economic integration. South Africa has already signed a deal to purchase 2,500MW from the Inga project and energy minister Jeff Radebe says it is ready to double that order.

That is the vision and the opportunity for Congo’s transformation. But first ts political class and their partisans have to agree on how to organise credible elections this year. That is proving even trickier than raising $18bn for a gargantuan dam.

Didier Reynders

Maman Sambo Sidikou

Belgium’s foreign minister, wants to take a tough line on Kabila

Wang Tongqing

Head of the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission

Moussa Faki

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

China’s ambassador to the DRC

Thabo Mbeki

António Guterres

South Africa’s special envoy to the DRC

UN secretary general

Moïse Ekanga Oversaw Sicomines deal, now under sanctions

Raphaël Katebe Katoto The tycoon brother of Moïse Katumbi, and linked to Etienne Tshisekedi

Albert Yuma Mulimbi Chairman of the state mining company, Gécamines, close to Kabila

AU Commission chair, snubbed

by Kabila

Dan Gertler Israeli billionaire, close to Kabila, under US sanctions

BUSINESS

George Forrest Belgian mining magnate

Mazhar Rawji Chairman of leading privately owned bank Rawbank

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AFTER K ABIL A | FRONTLINE 27

Gabriel Amisi Kumba Major general, under sanctions but back as second-in-command of army

Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary Former interior minister, handpicked by Kabila for the succession former interior minister

Zoé Kabila

Pascal Kinduelo

Presidential brother, has a large business empire, from mines to hotels

Businessman close to the family

Gibril Masengo

Kalev Mutond

CLAN KABILA

Kabila’s brother, also has a large business empire

John Numbi

Head of intelligence

Marc Piedboeuf Belgian, runs Ferme Espoir, Kabila’s holding company

DRC’s only 4-star general, lynchpin of the regime

Gloria Mteyu

Jaynet Kabila

Kabila’s sister, owns 40% of BGFI Bank DRC

Kabila’s twin sister, business kingpin

Marie Olive Lembe de Sita First lady

Josephine Kabila, aka ‘Josephine Tumaleo’ Kabila’s sister

Jean-Pierre Bemba Armand Mavinga Tsafunenga

Denis Mukwege

Vocal diaspora voice, head of 3C-RDC

Koffi Olomide Superstar musician, has been singing against the voting machines

Doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner

CIVIL SOCIETY

Moïse Katumbi Marcel Utembi Archbishop and president of the CENCO clergy group

Timothée Mbuya Activist, released from prison in February after calling for an election timetable

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MLC former rebel leader; tried by the ICC, freed and later barred from running for the presidency

Olivier Kamitatu Etsu Head of the ARC, once close to Bemba

Former governor of Katanga, businessman now in exile to avoid legal charges

Son of historic opposition leader, and now head of the UDPS

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Former foreign minister and leader of RCD-K/ML militia in Ituri

OPPOSITION

Félix Tshisekedi

•

Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi

Vital Kamerhe Martin Fayulu Former member of parliament in Kinshasa

Former national assembly president.

UNC leader

28 FRONTLINE | AFTER K ABIL A

The Region A tangled web of ties The DRC’s neighbours are all keenly following the planned December 2018 elections to see how they can benefit from a change of leadership and out of fear at the instability that a chaotic vote could bring ANGOL A Angola, which has a 2,600km land border with the DRC, has been entwined in its neighbour’s politics since the 1970s.

Having backed the rebel Katangese Gendarmes, Angola joined the military alliance that ousted Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. The following year, Angolan troops blocked a bid by Rwandan-backed rebels to march on Kinshasa. In recent years, relations have deteriorated over a maritime border dispute. The instability triggered

by Kabila’s extended stay in power could spill over the border. In October, Angolan security forces expelled thousands of Congolese diamond miners.

Central African Republic

South Sudan

ver go ri Con

Uganda Congo Lake Victoria

Rwanda Burundi

ZAMBIA Long-standing efforts to promote a Central African Copperbelt alliance between Zambia and the DRC have not gone beyond conference resolutions. However, Zambia’s governments have been far more reluctant to intervene in Congo’s politics than those of other neighbours. Presidents Joseph Kabila and Edgar Lungu, both under heavy political pressure, seem to have an informal cooperation agreement.

That is why Lungu’s officials told exiled oppositionist Moïse Katumbi that his plan to cross from Zambia into Katanga to file his candidature in the elections was being blocked by the Congolese authorities.

Tanzania

Angola THE DRC’S NATURAL RESOURCES

ZIMBABWE Zimbabwe’s military has intervened in the DRC out of political solidarity with the regimes of President Joseph Kabila and his father Laurent-Désiré. Senior figures in Zimbabwe’s ruling party have built up commercial interests in the DRC through banks and the mining sector. In public, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has spoken about closer collaboration; in private, he is said to have urged Kabila to ensure the transition does not trigger regional instability.

Zambia

Gold Diamonds Tin region Copper belt Conflict zone 400 km

Zimbabwe

SOUTH AFRICA As the region’s economic and political giant, South Africa has had a key role in the DRC, starting with President Nelson Mandela brokering talks between Mobutu and his usurper Laurent-Désiré Kabila in 1997. President Thabo Mbeki led negotiations between rival forces in the DRC to create a power-sharing government in 2003. Having established a rapport with president Jacob Zuma, President Joseph Kabila is suspicious of reform-minded President Cyril Ramaphosa and has rebuffed South Africa’s special envoy, Mbeki.

AFTER K ABIL A | FRONTLINE 29

Electric cars: the future for mankind and for Congo

Kenya RWANDA Rwanda’s history is closely tied with the DRC’s. It was the sheltering of génocidaires and ex-government soldiers in eastern Congo that triggered Rwanda’s intervention in 1996, leading to the wider rebellion that overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko.

Since then, Rwanda’s tail has tried to wag Congo’s dog. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has backed several rebel movements in eastern Congo but has kept a seat at the negotiating table. Today, many of the militias and former rebels that make up Kinshasa’s Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo have historic ties to Kigali.

BURUNDI Successive Burundian governments have tried to distance themselves from direct involvement in Congo’s politics and security affairs. It was Pierre Nkurunziza’s running for a third presidential term in 2015 that triggered both an internal and a wider regional crisis with over 390,000 Burundian refugees seeking shelter in Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Activists in the DRC’s Sud-Kivu province say local men are being recruited to join the Rwandan-backed Résistance pour un Etat de Droit au Burundi and the Forces Républicaines du Burundi militias. In response, Nkurunziza’s security services have sent fighters from the Imbonerakure militia into Congo to hunt down Burundian rebels.

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COVER IMAGES/SIPA

UGANDA Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni joined with Laurent-Désiré Kabila and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame to oust Mobutu Sese Seko, but with Kabila’s son Joseph as president, the three-sided alliance fell apart. Congolese security accuses Museveni of backing Hema and Lendu militias in Ituri. Museveni backs the oppositionist Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi and accuses the Kabila government of failing to control its borders. The Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan militia based in the DRC, has been launching deadly attacks on civilians, government and UN soldiers.

Strategic minerals How electric cars are changing Congo The DRC’s control of blue gold – the cobalt used in batteries – could give it a bigger say in global trade

A

sked about the effects of the global boom in demand for cobalt – a key ingredient in the production of lithium ion batteries for electric cars – a mining expert replies: “Congo wants a cobalt-OPEC given its dominant role as a producer.” The DRC government is being more assertive and decided this year to declare cobalt a strategic mineral and to raise the royalties on its production. Global demand for cobalt is set to quadruple to over 190,000tn by 2026 from a baseline of 46,000tn in 2017 and cobalt prices have more than doubled in the past decade.

A next step might be for a new government to begin insisting that miners begin investing more in the DRC’s industrial and processing capacity so that the country can benefit more from its resources.

From the government’s viewpoint, the logic is unquestionable. The DRC has half the cobalt reserves in the world, followedbyAustraliawith17%,Cubawith 7%, Zambia with 4% and Canada 3.5%.

Congo’s use of its market dominance will work in the short term, says the mining expert, but it must expect the buyers to push back. That is already happening in rich Western countries, which are trying to diversify supplies from countries

such as Canada and Australia as well as developing substitutes for cobalt in battery production. There are strict limits on both strategies: Congo’s dominance of cobalt is akin to Saudi Arabia and Russia’s dominance of the oil and gas markets.

Work on developing alternatives to cobalt in lithium ion batteries is in its early stages. Some battery manufacturers are using more nickel and less cobalt, but there are concerns that this will cut performance, a critical matter for the electric car market. Claire Felter of the US Council on Foreign Relations writes that new battery technologies may not be ready for commercial testing for decades.

China Molybdenum and Glencore, the Swiss-based commodity trader, dominate cobalt production and the primary market. They extract the cobalt as a byproduct of their copper mining and sell it to cobalt specialists such as China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

The ore is then refined for the battery manufacturers, a field dominated by South Korea’s LG Chem and China’s CATL. China produces over half the world’s refined cobalt and more than 75% of its cobalt chemicals. Congo and China are locked in what could be a mutually-beneficial cobalt marriage.

30 FRONTLINE | AFTER K ABIL A

The Solutions Paging Dr Congo Prominent Congolese talk to The Africa Report about what is needed to fight corruption, manage the political transition, deliver free and fair elections, and ensure the country’s peace and prosperity

BRUNO LEVY FOR JA

We need a peaceful, transparent and credible election”

Denis Mukwege

Obstetrician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate “We need peace to return to Congo. I often tell the story of a woman that I met in Fizi. One day I asked her what I could do for her. She said that she did not need help, that she could farm, fish and work hard to earn a living. That peace was the only thing that she needed.

How can you speak of development when, in some provinces, a woman who goes to the market or goes to fetch water can get raped? When civilians are being killed in Beni and Bukavu?

Let’s start by recognising that there is a problem in this country.

I have always pushed for a transition in which President Joseph Kabila plays no part. His second term ran out in December 2016. For two years, our leaders have defied the people. What do you think will happen after 23 December this year? That the DRC will awake with a new president and acclaim him?

After opposition leaders have been excluded for unconvincing reasons?

We need to be inclusive. We need a peaceful, transparent and credible election where the results are universally accepted.

To continue with the unending conflicts and armed groups that grow like mushrooms, it is chaos.

My only dream is peace. I want to look after women who are having a baby, not try to put back together women who have been destroyed.”

Make mining work for the people” Jean Pierre Okenda

“1. Bring back long-term planning The DRC needs to recognise that transforming its underground riches into real societal progress takes many years.

The recent reforms in the sector reveal a lack of long-term vision: why bother doing governance reforms on one hand, while allowing officials to take stakes in mining companies on the other?

2. Create value at home The DRC needs to use incentives to create local processing of minerals.

The economic structure of the industry remains that of the colonial era. The 2015 EITI report [shows] the contribution of the sector to exports was 97.5%, but it only

NRGI

DRC country manager, Natural Resource Governance Institute contributed 20% to GDP. The DRC needs to flip that dynamic to harness mining to genuine structural transformation.

3. Inject good governance at every step Too often resource riches are squandered by implementation failure. How do we make officials accountable? How do we link this oversight to civil society?

The stakes are huge: since 2015 we are the leading producers of base betals in Africa. But between 2010 and 2012, the country lost nearly $1bn in transactions implicating state company Gécamines.

4. Attract serious investors To add value to the immense mining

resources of the DRC requires capital we don’t have. In our uncertain political context, bringing in capital can be perilous. That bumps up the premium investors place on the returns they expect and attracts buccaneers.

Only when we deliver profound political reform and create a trusted legal framework will be able to attract a better class of investor.

5. Beef up resource mapping To get those serious investors into the sector, we need to get reliable and comprehensive geological data. Not only does that help us attract capital, but sunlight is also the best disinfectant.”

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We have already agreed on a common mmon candid date”

We need to grow a new and different leadership” Floribert Anzuluni

National coordinator, Filimbi VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

Moïse Katum mbi Opposition leader

“In the opposition, we have already agreed on a common candidate, and we’re going to tell you about it soon. If we announce this common candidate now, Kabila will bring fake charges against him. So I think what is important for us is unity.

Kabila wants to create problems between the ethnic groups, those in Katanga and in the east. The garde presidentielle are not guards for Kabila, they are going to be guards for the next president. Today, those guards are suffering: they can’t even pay house rent or school fees for their children, […] it’s the same with any job in government today. Can you imagine a policeman who’s getting €60 ($68) a month? What can he do with that?

Kabila is not entitled to sign any more contracts because his mandate finished two years ago. [They] must be signed by the new government.

I think a lot of contracts will be reviewed by the new government.

If Kabila had developed Congo and created jobs, we would not have our people in Angola. The budgets in Angola are far bigger than Congo because our economy has been mismanaged. So our people are migrating to countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

If there are no free and fair elections, I can tell you that 20 million Congolese will leave the country. The international community should think about that.

These voting machines are illegal and the Congolese will not accept them. If the candidate for Kabila is going to win with normal ballot paper, we are going to congratulate him.

But we don’t accept the use of those machines to come and impose election results in Congo.”

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“We are calling for a transitional period, Right now, both those in power and where you will have non-political actors the opposition have the same way of who will have a very clear action plan, doing things. Many of them run togethstabilise the country and organise a fair er. Many of them were warlords. They election. During that period, we will have the same bad values. It is the key need to grow a new and different problem for Congo. leadership.

Just look at this election. The elecWe have hidden depths. For example, toral rolls are not transparent. Ten milthe Democratic Republic of Congo does lion voters do not have biometric idennot have the problem of ethnic strife. tification. Kabila has banned important We have 400 different ethnic groups, opposition members like Moïse Katumbut we don’t really have a high level of bi and Jean-Pierre Bemba, and he has strife between those ethnicities. organised the election with an unknown This is what is quite special in Congo. voting technology. It is the worst elecWhen the war started in 1996 with tion we have seen since 2006.

Laurent-Désiré Kabila, they tried to use We as Congolese need first to clarify the ethnicity of the Tutsis living in eastwhat we want to do, to unify our forces ern Congo to justify this war. But the and come up with an action plan. And strategy did not work. And very quickly after that, we will need to impose it. We they had to change the strategy and pivot towards the idea of the “It is because we have need for democracy and resources that it is difficult getting rid of a dictator. for us to live in peace” It is one of the only good points we can give to Mobutu Sese Seko: he did at least try to start building a nation. don’t need to ask for agreement because Since then, nobody has come back outsiders will never agree on that. with any strategy [leading to] ethnic Take the region. If I was Angola, balkanisation.

I would not be happy to see a strong This is not the debate in Congo. The Congo, as it was with Mobutu. So it question in Congo is about the resourcwon’t interest Angola. Clearly, it would es, and our internal debate is about not interest Rwanda because you are resources. It is because we have all talking about power in Africa, a strategic those resources that it is difficult for us influence in Central Africa. to live in comfort, peace and freedom.

The Chinese are only interested in The origin is not the colonial-era boundtaking advantage of natural resources. aries for us: the many wars and violence We try to talk to Western leaders but we have had since the 1960s are directly understand that it is clearly not their linked to our natural resources. priority and not in their strategy. Even All leaders since Mobutu have been [these leaders], they don’t really want put in power by outside powers seeking a strong Congo. those resources. Instead, we need to But I am confident that in my generbe using all these outside powers to ation we will have the leaders we need. our advantage – making them compete One of things we would like to do as a to offer us the best deal. movement is push for a new kind of We as Congolese need to define what political leadership based on fundamenwe want, but that will only happen if we tal values. I’m sure that if this leadership have proper leaders. As of today, we emerges, then Congo would take adare not seeing this kind of leadership. vantage of its resources.”

VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

AFTER K ABIL A | FRONTLINE 31

32

Competition for access to land has heightened the violence between herders and farmers, as criminal gangs look to profit from the chaos. With elections in 2019, will the politicians find a long-term solution?

By Eromo Egbejule in Jos and Abuja Additional reporting by Nicholas Norbrook and Patrick Smith

O

nce a promising athlete, 43-year-old James Pam Gwom ran the race of his life this year – and lost.

On the weekend of 2324 June, dozens of men armed with AK-47s and machetesrandownfromthesurrounding hills to attack Gwom’s hometown of Farin Lamba in Plateau State, central Nigeria.

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On Independence Day President Buhari said the conflict was “being addressed decisively”

officials. It is a similar story in Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states.

Most of those in the camps are farmers, like Amina; their attackers were mainly herders. In other areas, the farmers have gone on the offensive against the herders.

Vigilante groups and criminal gangs, some with political connections, are joining in, capitalising on grievances.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is on the back foot, accused of inaction. That is why he highlighted the issue in his Independence Day speech on 1 October: “The age-old conflict between herders and farmers that was being exploited by those seeking to plant the seeds of discord and disunity among our people is being addressed decisively.”

After commending attempts by state and local governments, community and religious leaders to contain the clashes, Buhari urged “all peace-loving Nigerians to reject any simplistic portrayal, at home or abroad, of this conflict as either religious or ethnic-based.”

NIGERIA

Locals suspect the attack on Farin Lamba and neighbouring villages was retaliation for the murder of four Fulani cattle traders on the road to a market in the Barkin Ladi area two days earlier. It was the one of the bloodiest episodes in the cycle of clashes between farmers and herders. This battle over land and water has become a key issue in national elections due next February.

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POLARISED COMMUNITIES

SODIQ ADELAKUN/AFP

Clashes and conflict

In two days, the gangs killed more than 80 people. Another 100 perished in the area in further clashes and reprisal attacks. Gwom could not escape the attackers, but his wife Amina and their two children got away and are living in a camp set up by the state government’s emergency agency. At least 38,000 people have been chased from their homes in Plateau State alone, say

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For Buhari’s critics, the herder-farmer clashes fit the stark categories of identity politics. They define the conflict as pitting herders from Buhari’s Fulani people, mainly Muslims, against farmers who are mainly Christians from minority ethnic groups.

Several Christian groups, from the mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches to more colourful evangelical movements, accuse Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) of indifference or worse, even providing military support for the herders.

Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, a devout member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, and other top Christian figures in the APC government, push back against such accusations. They encourage communities to settle disputes locally. In some states, village chiefs hear complaints between herders and farmers over land because the official legal system is not trusted.

Activists on both sides of the herderfarmer divide are polarising communities, casting a shadow over the 2019 elections. Buhari’s APC won control of most of the states in the north-central region in the 2015 polls.

34 POLITICS

Now the region is in play again. Two traditional chief, who will talk to the state governors, in Benue and Kwara, community leaders and then they will have quit the governing party for the eventually allow you entrance.”

People’s Democratic Party. Personal and Although there is less uncultivated policy grievances are fuelling political land in the south, the worst disputes over land use are in the north and are part of dissent in other states, and campaigners are using anger over the clashes to win a growing criminalisation in the region. more support for the opposition.

Many herders from the far north have been chased from their homes by armed Agriculture minister Audu Ogbeh gangs making billions of naira from cattle argues the matter goes way beyond politics. He tells The Africa Report: “We rustling.Someofthoseill-gottengainsare had what we called grazing reserves in financing militias such as Boko Haram Nigeria, across the country covering a and the Islamic State in West Africa. landmass of 5m hectares.”

Ogbeh continues: “We forThe worst disputes are in the got this culture, people ennorth and are part of a growing croached, the water systems criminalisation in the region in the grazing reserves went to naught, the grassing up of the grazing reserves was abandoned. [...]

Security forces have been slow to act.

The vacuum has been filled by ethnic And as climate change started affecting the vegetation, the cattle had nowhere militia among the Bachama, Tarok and to stay on these reserves.”

Berom people who claim to protect the farmers. At the same time, herder COMPLEX NEGOTIATIONS militias have joined the fray, raising the These shifts have speeded up as more stakes and casualties. people, encouraged by government Former defence minister and army loans and grants, have gone into farming chief General Theophilus Danjuma across the central and northern regions. led the charge for government critics: This farming boom in crops such as “The armed forces are not neutral. They rice, maize, sorghum and soya beans collude with the armed bandits. They facilitate their movements, they cover is driving economic growth outside of oil and gas production. them.” Speaking at a university convoBut sharing out land between farmers cation ceremony in his home state of and pastoralists means complex negoTaraba in March, Danjuma warned: tiations with statutory and traditional “If you depend on the armed forces to authorities, says Ogbeh. “We still have stop the killings, you will all die one by about 45m hectares of land uncultivated, one. The ethnic cleansing must stop. I lying wild, usually owned by commuask everyone one of you to be alert and defend your territory, your state.” nities, not individuals. So you have to Muhammad Nura Abdullahi, chairapproach the governor of a state […] man of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders who then has to help you talk to the

Association of Nigeria, in Plateau State, dismisses reports of Fulani herders as aggressors, instead talking of pogroms against them by vigilantes working with the farmers. He explains: “They start rampaging into the hinterlands, looking for Fulani villages, their cows, their children, burning houses, start killing cows, start killing people.”

FOREIGN HERDSMEN

He agrees with Danjuma that there is a cover-up. “The real killers are there, they know themselves, the security know them.They[attackers]arecoveringthemselves with black cloths so that you will not see them and identify who they are.”

Reverend James Davou of St John Vianney seminary at Barkin Ladi, who looks after people hit by herderfarmer clashes, sees a mixture of people caught up in the crisis. “There’s foreign herdsmen and also homegrown ones. […] Some are not Nigerians,” he says.

“Buhari’s government has banned the importation of foreign rice but cannot ban importation of foreign herdsmen?

Does that make any sense?”

Devou tells The Africa Report that one of the suspects rounded up by mobile police deployed to Barkin Ladi had confessed to being from the neighbouring country of Niger and part of a 17-man cell recruited on a three-month contract.

Environmental pressures are driving people southwards from Nigeria’s neighbours, according to agriculture minister Ogbeh: “Nigeria has about 20m cows and Niger probably 10m. The rest of West Africa has another 30m. So once the dry season sets in […] cows from Niger and Chad and Burkina Faso,

Africa’s farmer-herder clashes HOLLYWOOD OWES A DEBT OF GRATITUDE to herders. It was those cattle herders heading out to the American west in the 19th and early 20th centuries that gave plot lines to the movie moguls. It might be the time for Africa’s fast-growing film industry to update ‘the Western’ for a global and 21st-century audience.

It could at least help a new generation to understand the herders and what is driving their migration.

The African Union says there are more than 280 million pastoralists in Africa.

Clashes between farmers and herders stretch across the Sahelian belt to include Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia to the east. Weak land management and a lack of initiatives to fight and adapt to climate change have allowed disputes over land and water to escalate

into communal and religious-fuelled clashes.

In the US, a set of laws over grazing rights helped to bring the Range Wars to an end. Across Africa, the politics are far more complex because of the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of the communities involved. And, most of all, the climate changes that have caused droughts and desertification are more devastating than anything faced by the US herders.

As Africa’s herders move in search of grasslands, the old mechanisms for ensuring peaceful coexistence are falling apart.

Although the best systems of dispute resolution are local, central governments and business allies need to invest in water supplies and feedstock production as traditional pastures become unsustainable. That means national and regional policy coordination of a kind that remains all too rare.

P.S.

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POLITICS 35

SOKOTO

KATSINA YOBE

ZAMFARA

KANO

KEBBI

BORNO

KADUNA SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP

NIGER

ADAMAWA A PLATEAU

Abuja

NASARAWA

TARABA

BENUE

Inside Nigeria’s great land and water conflict

CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA

High incidence of herder-farmer casualties States most adversely impacted

by Boko Haram insurgency States reporting highest cattle rustling and rural banditry

for lack of grass, move into Nigeria in search of fodder and water.”

There is no easy way to accommodate that. Calls for the national assembly to establish new grazing reserves were rejected because they would usurp the powers of state governments. But some state governors refuse to concede land, or anything else, to the herders.

Governors in Benue and Taraba say that herders should pay to establish ranches. Interior minister Abdulrahman Dambazau proposes setting up cattle colonies, setting aside land for herders to be protected by rangers. It’s not clear who would pay for that scheme.

Political conditions make these solutions more difficult, according to Cheta Nwanze, head of research at Lagosbased SBM Intelligence. “First thing is the establishment of trust before you talk about grazing colonies. You can’t have a solution if communities don’t trust the umpire.”

LOANS FOR RANCHES

Any long-term solution would need a national response and hefty government investment, says Andrew Osogbo, an investment analyst in Lagos. “Government might be right when it says we need to allocate land for ranching. But looking at the North Central [region] – that land isn’t available. The most probable THE AFRICA REPORT

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What?

Clashes between farmers and herders vying for land and water are getting deadlier. More than 1,300 have died – many in large-scale planned attacks – this year, making it Nigeria’s most serious security crisis. It is dividing communities along ethnic and religious lines.

Where?

Mainly in the north-central states of Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa and north-east states of Taraba and Adamawa. Banditry and cattle rustling are spreading across other northern states.

answer might be rearing cattle in farms, then transporting feed grown elsewhere using rail.”

For that to work, the government should provide basic veterinary care and water, adds Osogbo. “The herder crisis can be prevented with proper logistics.

You can grow grass in the south and transportupnorthduringthedryseason.”

Miyetti Allah’s Abdullahi and other cattle breeders want the government to give start-up capital and loans to herders to build ranches in phases. “In Plateau State, let them allocate, say, 10 grazing ranches for this year. And we will select 10 people and train them on how to manage the ranch and then support them,” he suggests. Most of the herders will be sceptical at first, he says, but “after some time when they see you get more beef, more milk and healthy animals, they will join.”

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Why? In the short term, the causes are competition for land and water, blocking of traditional migration routes, cattle theft and crop damage. But the deeper causes are that drought and desertification dried up water supplies in the far north, pushing herders to migrate to more-populated areas in the south.

Political and economic consequences Herder-farmer clashes are a key issue for northern states in national elections in February 2019.

Opportunistic politicians could deepen the community divides.

More than 70% of Nigerians earn their living in agriculture; some 300,000 farmers have been driven from their land, disrupting production and pushing up food prices.

Solutions The government has sent more soldiers and police to the region in Operation Cat Race and Operation Whirl Stroke, as President Muhammadu Buhari and his officials met with herder and farmer leaders to encourage local settlements.

The government has launched the National Livestock Transformation Plan, which includes establishment of ‘cattle colonies’, reserving land P.S. and water for herders.

That couldwork, says Osogbo. “Money can be recouped from the grazing fees.

Herders are very organised in Nigeria, so give the funds to the Miyetti Allah and hold the organisation [responsible] for any default.”

The danger is that the clashes and criminality spread before these solutions are set in train. In Zamfara State to the north-west, cattle rustlers and bandits have been attacking communities, abductingpeopleanddemandingransoms.

Amnesty International reports more than 350 people killed there this year.

Almost every major agrarian economy has seen farmers and herders vying for land as the social order changes. But few are as complex and diverse as Nigeria, or have faced the devastating droughts and extreme weather that come with climate change. Holding back the crisis will stretch communities to the limit.

36 POLITICS

Atiku Abubakar Presidential candidate, People’s Democratic Party, Nigeria

We have to remove regulations With the business lobby behind him and a commitment to restructure the federal system, Atiku Abubakar has turned the presidential election into a battle of substance and style

T

wo candidates further apart would be hard to find. Opposition presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar is a multimillionaire barnstorming politician who, having changed his party allegiance four times, is running on the ticket of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party. His rival, former military ruler and sitting president Muhammadu Buhari, is reserved, with an obvious distaste for the manoeuvres of partisan politics. Buhari’s main concerns are pushing out state-backed investment projects and taking down grand corruption.

At the centre of Atiku’s campaign is his promise that he will make Nigeria work again – both its system of government and its people. His remedy is deregul­ ation and privatisation: getting the government out of the way of full-throated capitalism and attracting billions of dollars of investment from international conglomerates.

Information minister Lai Mohammed concedes that Atiku is the strongest candidate the opposition could put up against Buhari. “But their best won’t be good enough,” he adds. For Buhari and Mohammed, Atiku

is the epitome of the big-money politics that has haunted Nigeria since its return to civil rule back in 1999.

Based in a 10-storey building in Abuja with a team of top Nigerian and international strategists and pollsters, Atiku has been preparing for the past 18 months. A week after securing the nomination in early October, he picked as his running mate Peter Obi, a former governor of the south-east state of Anambra with a reputation as honest and efficient. Atiku’s next move was to orchestrate a high-profile reconciliation between himself and former president Olusegun Obasanjo, a decade after their very public falling out.

Although this election will be about jobs and money, the rival campaigns will be mobilising big regional voting blocs. Buhari will start ahead in the northwest and north-east; Atiku has the south-south and south-east behind him. But in the volatile north-central region and the south-west, home to the commercial capital of Lagos, there’s everything to play for.

TAR: How do you see Africa faring amid an international trade war?

ATIKU ABUBAKAR: It is certainly not a good moment for Africa.

The West colonised Africa, set up all the institutions in Africa, and eventually granted independence to Africa. Now it has been withdrawing from Africa over the years. First, they started with establishment of the European Union (EU). The moment the EU was established, the British started withdrawing from Africa, the French started withdrawing.

So they left a vacuum. Africa has never been a US destination. So Africa was left on its own, whether for good or bad I don’t know. In one sense it is better for Africa to be independent. Of course, for the purposes of international cooperation, trade and investment Africa has to look elsewhere.

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POLITICS 37

OLAMIKAN GBEMIGA FOR TAR

You say you would let the naira exchange rate be set by the market. How would you deal with the resulting inflation?

I would prefer to float the naira because I believe that will bring about a more stable exchange rate.

Therefore, foreign investors are more likely to return to Nigeria and invest as much as possible.

We have to create more incentives for foreign investment and relax conditionalities, remove regulations as much as possible.

Are you happy that China is filling that vacuum?

Loans from China have [fewer] conditionalities [than] loans from the West. When you have less conditionality, there is the tendency that the money you borrow is likely to be misapplied, misused, misappropriated.

And when the money borrowed is not invested in a sector that can make profit, then you are likely to default. With the West, they lend you money, and it has to be based on an investment schedule and there must be returns.

In the case of China, they are just giving you money – “Okay go and build an airport,” or “Go and build a railway station.” Where are the feasibility studies? What is the return on THE AFRICA REPORT

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investment? How long will it take you to repay the money?

You have called President MuhammaduBuhari’seconomic policyarchaic.Onwhatgrounds?

It’s not market friendly and because of that we have not been getting much foreign investment.

If anything, in fact, we have witnessed a flip of foreign investment out of Nigeria. Many foreign

“Many foreign companies have closed shop because of the wrong economic policies” companies have closed shop in this country simply because the wrong economic policies have been implemented.

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In an import-dependent economy, surely that will drive up inflation?

But what you forget, it has two side effects. There could be devaluation and there could be a lot of inflow of foreign currency into the country. The devaluation that is likely to result can be balanced with the relatively huge [sums of ] foreign currency that will be coming into the country.

We had that situation prior to the departure of [former president] Goodluck Jonathan. At that time, we had a pile of foreign investment in the country, and there was stability of the naira. So people did not have to go to the central bank to look for foreign exchange because there was foreign exchange in the market and in the banks. So it could turn out to be a win-win situation.

You are calling for restructuring of the federation, which means the oil-producing states will get a bigger share of the revenue.

How much?

That will depend on negotiations between them and other parts of Nigeria. But I know they can get more because in the First Republic the regions had 50/50. I don’t mind giving even 100% […], but I would tax those states to maintain the federal government.

You are in favour of giving all the oil-producing states in this country total control over their resources?

For now, it’s not advisable at this stage of our development.

Even during the First Republic there was this derivation sharing

38 POLITICS

betweenrevenuesandresources,or betweentheregionsandthefederal government. So I think we could have a middle course. It would be unfair to ask me for specifics; that will depend on negotiations.

There is an education crisis in Nigeria, with growing numbers of children outside school. How would you fix it?

There is no will on the part of the Nigerian government, at fed­ eral and state level, to see that the standard of education is improv­ ing. We introduced free primary in 2004. We omitted to provide pen­ alties for state governments that did not meet [those demands].

If I had the opportunity again, I would introduce a penalty clause, to make it not only compulsory, but if you don’t meet the target then you are penalised.

The numbers of children outside school are particularly high in the north. Would you impose special measures?

You make education compul­ sory – if you don’t send your child to school you are punished for that – and you increase your edu­ cational budget to train more teachers, build more classrooms.

I tried to do it as a vice-president because I realised how backward the north was. You know that we have an educational tax?

If you import goods in this country we charge you educa­ tional tax. We collect billions at the federal government and distribute to these states to enhance education, but they misuse and misappropriate all this money. So if you tell [these states] I will go and directly build the schools, they will sit up and do something about it.

On security, you would give state governments the power to run their own police forces?

What would happen if some state governors were to abuse those powers?

I want to devolve policing as well to the states. They’ll be free to run their own police forces.

If they cannot, they can come together, two or three states to

do it, depending on how they want [to do it].

We have the same thing. The federal government is misusing the police, is misusing the milit­ ary. So if you are talking of abuse, every level of government abuses.

“Politicians used those boys in Boko Haram to win elections and then abandoned them” How would you tackle the clashes between herders and farmers, as well as banditry and cattle-rustling?

In each province in the north, we used to have a grazing reserve.

During the season, the cattle are in the reserves. When it is off-­ season, when farmers would have cultivated all their crops, then the cattle move out to the areas where the farmers have cultivated, allowing the grass in the grazing reserves to grow.

These grazing reserves have been abandoned over the years.

One way is to make sure that we give local leaders the pow­ er to resolve disputes between farmers and grazers.

What role could economics play in resolving the crisis?

I have decided to set up a fac­ tory to produce livestock feeds in each of the zones in the northern states. I have set up one in Yola, one will be completed here in Abuja this December and another one will be done in the north-west.

There, you have all types of animal feeds. You can leave your cattle in one spot and buy enough livestock feed and feed your cattle.

You get better meat and more milk. If this business model gets you more income, wouldn’t you go for it? There are cattle rustlers all over. Even in my own herd. I have more than 1,000 heads of cattle, and cattle rustlers came and took over 200 of them and drove away into Cameroon.

Although the Boko Haram militias no longer control swathes of territory, they still launch terror attacks. How would you counter them?

ASPIRING ATIKU 25 November 1946 Born in Jada, Adamawa State, Nigeria 1982 Founded Nicotes Services (Intels) 1998 Elected governor of Adamawa State 1999-2007 Vice-president under President Obasanjo 2007 Came third in presidential elections for the Action Congress 2014 Joined the APC 2018 Won PDP nomination to run for the presidency in February 2019

I happen to know how Boko Haram came into being. They were offshoots of political thug­ gery. Politicians used those boys in Boko Haram to win elections and then abandoned them and then there were no jobs for them. It was the same thing with the Niger Delta. In 1998, I saw it myself and I warned people.

It’s going to be a multifaceted approach. It will involve nego­ tiations. It will involve military action.

Reform of the oil and gas industry has stalled. You have been advocating the wholesale privat­ isation of the state oil company.

Wouldn’t that make things even worse?

Without a stable regulatory framework, the oil and gas companies will find it difficult to invest more in Nigeria. At the time, we pushed for the passage of the new law. We expected that Nigeria would be able to export up to about 4m barrels per day, but here we are still at less than 2m per day.

You’re now saying you would sell the entire state oil company?

Or that the government should keep about 10%?

Yes, I would want to go ahead, there is no doubt about that. [The government should have] a very minor shareholding. Nigeria is in dire need of funds to develop its infrastructure and other sectors of the economy.

Yourowncompany,Intels,which provides logistics to the energy industry, is under pressure. Is it – or are you – being targeted politically?

Intels has always suffered because I have been involved in the fight for democracy since the 1980s, when the military was in power. [Governments] will pounce on Intels – refuse me one licence or the other, close me down. Even the government that I served as a democratically elect­ ed vice-­president, the president closed Intels for six months when he had a disagreement with me. […] He never found a fault

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with it and eventually opened it again.

The last three years have been the worst in the history of Intels because our turnover dropped by 70%. Oil companies and gas companies are no longer investing in that sector because of the absence of laws that can guarantee their investment.

Obasanjo’s and Atiku’s making up after their long-running feud was a very public affair

Aliko Dangote was able to build his cement production empire after your government banned imports. Would you impose more such bans?

“I don’t think there is any part of this country that wants to leave this country” I am one of the people who promoted Aliko Dangote, but I’m never for monopoly. Import bans to some extent, but certainly not for a monopoly.

As long as [a ban] is going to develop industries, which means creating jobs, as long as it is going

to develop our infrastructure. I’m prepared to privatise the development of infrastructure in the country. That will create millions and millions of jobs.

You criticise the government’s anti-corruption strategy. What would you do differently?

You can’t deploy only punitive measures to fight corruption. One way of trying to reduce corruption to the barest minimum is also to introduce e-governance. If you are applying for a permit, if you are applying for a passport, why not apply online? Why can’t we also employ preventive measures to stop corruption?

What about the grand corruption? Billions of dollars of oil money have been taken from this country.

If we have evidence against you we arrest you and prosecute you, and take away the money.

Areyouconcernedaboutthefate of Nnamdi Kanu, the pro-Biafra activist?

I don’t want to be individualistic on this issue. I reject any illegal detention, any detention that is not based on law and order.

What about former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki?

Dasuki is being detained il­ legally. It is only a court that will say whether he is guilty or not.

Would you favour a referendum for the people of the south-east, offeringthemthechancetoleave the federation?

When we get there. We are going to have a conference to discuss reconstruction. Then we will see.

I don’t think there is any part of this country that wants to leave this country. All what they want is fairness, equity and justice.

Are there any situations where where rule of law could be waved aside for national security?

No. The rule of law itself is a guarantor of national security.

Interview by Patrick Smith and Eromo Egbejule in Abuja

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The foremost international meeting for African CEOs, bankers and investors

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Government-funded Groote Schuur is a beacon of healthcare

SOUTH AFRICA

Healthcare in a hurry

President Ramaphosa’s government is pushing through National Health Insurance legislation despite opposition and complaints of lack of clarity

T

he sign ‘Leading innovative healthcare’ greets visitors to Hospital Street, the main entrance for patients, doctors, nurses and anyone using the services of Groote Schuur in Cape Town, one of South Africa’s oldest hospitals. The street, located inside the hospital, is a busy exchange – here patients who are strong enough are walking with family members, nursing staff are buying snacks at the local cafe and doctors are rushing to various wards. With the economy in recession and national elections on the horizon in 2019, issues like National Health Insurance (NHI), education and land reform are high on the agenda for the governing African National Congress (ANC) to mobilise its grassroots supporters.

The NHI is a health-financing system that will pool funds to provide access to health services for all, based on health needs and irrespective of socioeconomic

status. The NHI bill has been gazetted And this is the passion that is driving health minister Aaron Motsoaledi to and is now open for public comments. ensure that the NHI becomes a reality.

Critics of the scheme say the country On the steps of parliament, Motsoaledi cannot afford universal healthcare told The Africa Report his favourite and that the NHI will hurt the private idea – from the German philosopher healthcare sector while doing little to improve poor service provision in the Arthur Schopenhauer: “Health is not public sector. The government wants the everything, but everything else withNHI scheme to be operational by 2025. out health is nothing. You can’t have Groote Schuur is the hospital where the world’s first Half of the doctors serve the heart transplant took place 16% of the population who are 51 years ago. It has long insured or can afford to pay been a beacon of healthcare for millions. “We have had to improve our standards – the national education if people are not healthy, core standards mean all hospitals will you can’t expand the economy, you have to follow what we are doing here,” can’t take advantage of free education says the head of engineering and deputy if you’re sick, you simply can’t.” director at Groote Schuur, Denton Smith.

The statistics on healthcare access He, and others like former hospital addo not paint a pretty picture and ministrator Beth Adams, is enthusiastic Motsoaledi says the inequality in access about the NHI. “It will be challenging, to healthcare is unacceptable, with but it’s exciting,” says Smith. half of the doctors serving the roughly THE AFRICA REPORT

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POLITICS 43

ploughing money into a broken system will not address the plight of the poor and vulnerable.

South African Medical Association (SAMA) vice chairperson Mark Sonderup tells The Africa Report that SAMA supports universal access to healthcare but worries that health minister Motsoaledi has not answered the basic question: “How will we do it? We cannot talk about the NHI and we need proper leadership, the proper debate on policy.” Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa spokesman Sibongiseni Delihlazo takes a similar view: “The NHI is a big elephant – we need to eat it bit by bit. The pace we are eating the elephant is very slow, and

IT’S ABOUT PRIORITIES

The Democratic Alliance is one of the parties that oppose the NHI. They feel it would create an overly bureaucratic system and will only support some of the country’s health priorities. Shadow health minister Lindy Wilson says: “We believe that maternal and child health, emergency services, fixing broken, dysfunctional and mismanaged hospitals, building more fully operational clinics and training more doctors and nurses are priorities, as these address the real needs of the majority of South Africans.”

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right now our members are overworked and underpaid, but despite this we fully support the NHI.” The government seems to be losing the communication battle, and for many health activists, there are still too many questions unanswered: there is a lack of clarity about the funding, how medicines will be procured, infrastructure and staffing. But with health minister Motsoaledi’s passion and the World Bank calling on governments to invest in health to boost the economy and human capital, South Africa is on the path to expanding access to health services with or without all the stakeholders on the same page.

Crystal Orderson in Cape Town

ALBIN LOHR-JONES/SIPANY/SIPA

16% of the population who are medical scheme members or who can afford to pay for medical services themselves. He adds: “As far as specialist healthcare goes, 80% of specialists are to be found in the private sector and only 20% in the public sector.”

Outside Hospital Street, an unemployed father of one, Mark Booysen, doesn’t know about the NHI debates and says he is alive today because of the care he received at government-funded Groote Schuur. The 54-year-old says he has been given a new lease on life because of the care he’s received at the hospital. “I had a spinal operation and I have been given good care. The doctors are helpful and I have never paid a cent in my life.” Ragmat Dollie, 82, agrees: “I know people sometimes complain about the care they receive at Groote Schuur but I have only been treated well,” she tells The Africa Report.

There is a lot of confusion in public debates about how the NHI will work and how it will be funded. According to the White Paper on the NHI, adopted in June 2017, it will be funded through a combination of current sources of government health spending, including the removal of the tax subsidy for medical schemes, and mandatory employeremployee contributions. All these funds will be placed in a single pool that will be available to fund all healthcare in the public and private health sector.

The NHI is going to cost the government more, but it says it will improve access and incentivise healthcare providers to operate more efficiently. The treasury predicts the full implementation of the scheme will increase public health spending from 3.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017/2018 to 6.2% of GDP by 2025/26.

Aaron Motsaoledi Health minister, South Africa

The NHI is not going to kill the private sector TAR: Are you happy with the current budget allocation from the treasury?

AARON MOTSAOLEDI: Well, yes, under the present fiscal space it is better than nothing.

We do understand the fiscal space in which the country finds itself, so we believe the fact that something was given to us is good, because there are people who believe they can wish National Health Insurance (NHI) away. I don’t know why some South Africans still believe they can wish it away, NHI is no longer just a South African dream, it’s a global dream. It’s also there in the National Development Plan. It’s clearly written in clear words that we need one pool of funds for all South Africans to finance their healthcare, unlike the present system where we’ve got one pool of

financing that covers only 16% of the population.

What are the plans to bring the private sector on board?

There is always this claim, and I believe it’s deliberate because the private sector has got good quality care and the public sector is struggling, which we want to correct.

Now they use that problem to try and incite society against NHI by saying we are going to kill the private sector.

That has never been our intention. It’s not in any policy documents.

South Africa has got two healthcare systems; one private, one public.

We want the population to have access to both, that’s what NHI is all about. The NHI is not going to kill the private sector but rather make it available to all sectors

of the population. No right-thinking person can ever say that’s wrong.

I will give you an example.

There is a private hospital in Gauteng, it has more gynaecologists than the whole of Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the whole of the North West added together. Now what type of country is that?

And you are determined that in your lifetime we are going to have the NHI? We have got no option.

My detractors say and keep on repeating that unless the economy is growing you can’t have NHI. We have got good examples around the world. The British introduced their universal health coverage in 1948.

What was happening in Britain in 1948? It was three years after the Second World War. Interview by C.O.

44

This land was made for you and me

B

ack in the Wild West days of the United States economy – when robber barons still ruled and farmers and small businesses were being relentlessly gouged by ruthless monopolies – a rabble-rouser and friend of the people nearly became president. In a mesmerising speech while running to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1896, William Jennings Bryan decried the actions of the financial elites he believed were ruining the lives of the majority of the population for their own selfish ends: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

It was a turning point not just for the Democrats. It also helped to create space for President Theodore Roosevelt to fight his own Republican Party and drive through the trust-busting reforms that led to the ‘Progressive Age’. Better the devil you know than the true revolutionary…

So is it possible that the chaotic South African politics of the day may actually be pushing in the right direction for land reform? The revolutionaries are making speeches again: Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have made it a cause célèbre. “We remain a conquered nation because white monopoly capital still owns the means of production, and at the centre of that is the land question,” Malema said during a parliamentary debate in 2017. That was the year when the EFF drove the land reform question into the frontline of South Africa’s political landscape, taking advantage of Jacob Zuma’s deep unpopularity. “People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” Malema added.

On the other side of the debate lies the Democratic Alliance (DA): historically white and sympathetic to – and funded by – the land-owning class. The DA has been steadfast in its opposition to any idea that land should be taken without proper compensation. Its case is not helped by fringe group AfriForum, whose hysterical appeals for help over what they call a ‘white genocide’ are in poor taste given the generations of black men and women press-ganged to work for a cup of wine on white farms.

This debate has now come to the boil – helped by a very public and very uninformed September intervention by US President Donald Trump, who instructed his vice-president to look into the issue of land seizures and farm attacks. But, perhaps, this has given President Cyril Ramaphosa the space to act.

His first move was in July – proposing an amendment to the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation. But, in what is becoming Ramaphosa’s tradeIs it possible mark, it will go through a process that the that tries to keep all parties on board. In a recent opinion colchaotic umn, Ramaphosa said that the South African amendment would ‘prohibit the arbitrary deprivation of property’. politics of Critics will say that this is the day may Bill Clinton-style triangulation, positioning on an issue actually that sucks the oxygen out of be pushing your opposition. But others in the right say that, for a change, serious voices have entered the converdirection for sation. Professor Ruth Hall, for land reform? example, has been appointed

by Ramaphosa to the advisory panel on land reform. If anyone can transplant the pioneering ideas of the late, great Sam Moyo on deep but sensible land reform in Zimbabwe to the South African context, it is her.

What is certain is that land reform in South Africa is not working. The majority of land remains under white ownership, and just 10% of the land owned by whites has been transferred to black hands since the end of apartheid. And while the white population has remained stable, the black population has grown quickly.

After the Second World War in Japan and South Korea, governments booted landed elites off the land. Rigorous, locally determined land reform handed out 3ha plots to millions of families. The result was the largest historical boom in agricultural employment, and, over the next few decades, the creation of a huge consumer class. Perhaps, while history never really repeats itself, might it rhyme?

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47

Ghan Gh na

President Akufo-Addo has not succeeded in explaining to the people why the country was in debt, says one critic

XANDER HEINL/PHOTOTHEK VIA GETTY

Hope hits reality Sweeping to power in January 2017, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government was riding high on hopes for economic change and social progress. Almost two years later, the euphoria is over as his plans are weighed down by a creaky bureaucracy, partisan point-scoring and sums that don’t add up

By Nana Yaa Mensah in Accra

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P

romising free secondary education, a reformed national health insurance scheme and a new factory in every one of the country’s then 216 districts, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government was courting a crisis of expectations from the start. It had inherited a slow-growing and debt-ridden economy from the government of John Mahama. More than that, dissonant voices within Akufo-Addo’s own New Patriotic Party (NPP) saw its thumping parliamentary majority as a chance to push for their own interests.

48 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

8.5%

UIG VIA GETTY

SOURCE: GHANA STATISTICAL SERVICE

Business wanted lower taxes – an end to one of my suppliers, and he confirmed to the so-called nuisance taxes – while to me what many other people have been the public-sector trade unions wanted saying:thereisnomoneyflowingthrough the system. There’s a general problem guarantees over jobs in the civil service and the dysfunctional state-owned with cash payments from people who enterprises. Even with an impressive owe me, even those I’ve worked with for six months or longer. People who turnaround – Ghana’s economy grew trade are having problems at the ports.” by 8.5% in 2017, more than double Customs reforms at Tema and Sekondi the level of the previous year – the have led to loud complaints from the government is far from delivering the Ghana Union of Traders’ Associations, wider transformation it promised.

While policy advisers are an upstart rival to the estabtrying to get the reforms lishedAssociationofGhana throughthesystem,amuch Industries. And reforms by bigger matter dominates the Bank of Ghana have led to forced mergers of seven the thinking of party politiGhana’s economic Ghanaian-owned banks, cians: are Ghanaians better growth in 2017. including at least one off than theyweretwoyears The AfDB expects ago? As the election in 2020 connected to the former it to continue at this nears, that measure will rate, then fall in 2019. ruling National Democratic outshine all other issues.

Congress(NDC)–uniBank.

More upheaval is possible before the end The NPP’s 2016 manifesto offered visions of transformation in everything of the year, when regulatory benchmarks for minimum commercial bank holdfrom fuel prices to corruption. A power ings of capital reserves rise from 120m crisis left much of the country sitting in the dark between 2014 and 2016 and ($25m) to 400m (see page 60). compounded the effects of a 2012/2013 Insecurity has crept into the marfinancial squeeze. The NPP said the ket, heightened by events such as the situation would be better under an early-October crash of Menzgold. The buccaneering precious-metals dealerAkufo-Addo government: the economy would be managed effectively enough ship, led by a twenty-something “creative to finance high-quality education and arts” entrepreneur called Nana Appiah Mensah, had clashed repeatedly with the health services.

Securities and Exchange Commission, BACKLASH FROM SUPPORTERS the precious-minerals regulatory agency But NPP supporters are now among the and the central bank. All three claimed loudest critics of the government. An Menzgold was unlicensed and had no entrepreneur from one of the party’s right to operate under their guidelines.

The company hired the international founding families who owns a start-up law firm Baker McKenzie and issued a beauty business in one of Accra’s more defiant response to the bank’s directive affluent districts is blunt. “Things have ground to a halt,” she says. “I spoke today ordering it to stop trading. The Menzgold

fiasco triggered a mini-crisis, with depositors in cities rushing to their local banks, intent on withdrawing their money.

“The lack of liquidity stems from a lack of confidence in the local banks and Ghanaian institutions,” says the beauty-shop owner, who has laid off half her staff in the past couple of months.

“In the past, even if your business didn’t make sense, you could find liquidity to

Oil and gas sold short FROM QUIET BEGINNINGS, with first oil from the Tullow-run Jubilee field in December 2010, policy-makers in Ghana’s petroleum industry spoke of fending off the threat of the ‘resource curse’. International experts descended on Accra, advising that Ghana should choose ‘Norway over Nigeria’ when it came to a development strategy.

It hasn’t worked out like that. Jubilee’s development was marred by a dispute over preferential terms given to Kosmos Energy in partnership with two minority shareholders from the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the ruling party at the time.

Government revenue from oil and gas amounted to $444m in 2011; it was up to $541m the following year. Stagnation followed, due to high exploration costs and political uncertainty. Oppositionists accused John Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of negotiating its own opaque deals and rushing through the Petroleum

(Exploration and Production) Act in 2016 on terms that left Ghana with less than 20% of total oil and gas revenue.

The launch in August 2016 of Tweneboa Enyenra Ntomme in Tullow’s Deepwater Tano block seemed to offer a revenue boost. Negotiations on the Eni/Vitol-backed Sankofa oil and gas field, on the other hand, were shrouded in controversy.

Industry experts said Ghana, advised by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), had mishandled the negotiations for the $7.9bn deal. The new NPP government promised to renegotiate the deal but no details have emerged in public.

The latest venture, Springfield, in the West Cape Three Points block, is exciting Ghana’s industry-watchers. It is managed by the young oil trader Kevin Okyere, known for his deals in Nigeria in the era of oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, and is the first exploration site wholly owned by Ghanaians.

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GHANA | COUNTRY FOCUS 49

Tax breaks offered to AngloGold Ashanti to restart the Obuasi gold mine proved contentious

– a return to form after a record-breaking 14%in2011ascommercialoilproduction began under the then president John Atta Mills of the NDC. “We also inherited strategic state enterprises that lacked the balance sheet to be able to do any meaningful business,” Pianim says, singling out the case of the perennially mismanaged energy sector.

Boakye Agyarko, an ex-Wall Street banker who was dismissed as energy minister this year after a row in the government about the renegotiation of power deals, says the government is still 2.3bn in arrears on its energy sector debts and adds 60m to this debt every month. This is despite its issuing two bonds to clear legacy debt to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

ILL-ADVISED CUTS

LESSONS IN ECONOMICS

Sowah argues that people had allowed themselves to get used to practices that were unsustainable: “[GCB] deposits have been going from strength to strength. But conservatism in terms of financial arrangements is the only sustainable way of doing business.”

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SOURCE: GOVERNMENT OF GHANA

plug the gap. Now people are sitting on their cash or moving out of the country.”

She lambasts the Bank of Ghana: “The reforms should have been done quietly and in a way that does not cause panic. […] The beneficiaries of this crisis are the foreign banks, which do nothing to prop up locally owned businesses.

There’s actually a run on the banks but everyone wants to save their business so they don’t call a spade a spade.”

The state-owned GCB Bank has easily met the new capital requirements.

Managing director Ray Sowah defends the central bank’s actions: “This environment does not want to accept that business was being done in a wrong manner. They want to see it as a niche market. There’s nothing like that. If Bank of Ghana does not regulate the market, we will all have ourselves to blame.”

According to Pianim, the Akufo-Addo government’s March 2018 cut in the electricity tariff worsened the situation. “[It] meant that ECG doesn’t collect enough money. ECG doesn’t pay Volta River Authority (VRA), the power generator. Then VRA doesn’t pay Ghana Gas, which also meant that at one point the Nigerian gas distributor WAPCo (West African Pipeline Company) stopped supplying us. If we had retained the The economist Kwame Pianim, an electricity tariff where it was, we might elder statesman of the NPP, is critical have been able to start rebuilding the of the government’s approach to setting balance sheet of these strategic stateout its economic agenda. The governing owned enterprises.” party has failed to explain to people Ghana’s national gas supplier is critical how the previous government did so to plans for decentralised industrialisationunderthegovernment’sOneDistrict, much damage to the economy, says One Factory programme. Agyarko says Pianim. “It was an economy with very unstable macroeconomic fundamentals. the cabinet is not yet committed to saving But the Akufo-Addo government did on the state’s energy bill and suggests that well in stabilising the cedi some close to government and improving the macrohave a vested interest in the manipulation of the price economy, giving renewed certainty to investors.”

Ghana pays for its industriInflation shrank from al gas. It was those sorts of Savings the interests that controlled the 15.4% in December 2016 government says gas prices under Mahama’s to 9.6% in April this year. it will make from government, he argues.

The government debt renegotiating power Akufo-Addo’s governedged down from 73% of purchase agreements. gross domestic product in ment claims that its preDecember 2016 to 69.2% by the end of decessor signed way too many power 2017. However, ratings agency Moody’s purchase agreements (PPAs), and that predicts a rebound to 72.4% by the end Ghana now has too much supply that of this year, driven by the cost of cleaning it cannot use. The Accra government up the banks, and then a decline to now wants to renegotiate and cancel 68.9% by the end of 2019. some of those deals. If it is successful, it stands to make up to $7.2bn in savings The surge in growth in 2017 was powered largely by oil and mining. Ghana is on excess-capacity charges from PPAs expected again in 2018 to be among the over a 13-to-15-year period, at an estifastest-expandingeconomiesintheworld mated cost of just $520m, says Agyarko.

$7.6bn

50 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

“Cancelling all liabilities was agreed in cabinet, cleared with the attorney general, and it was left to renegotiation of payment terms with the ministry of finance,” the former energy minister says.

But this was followed by foot-dragging, he told The Africa Report in September, when terms were still not agreed.

At the Financial Times Africa Summit in London on 7-8 October, President Akufo-Addo announced that his government has accepted recommend­ ations for a thorough review of the PPAs and now anticipates making $7.6bn in savings over a 13-year period. Critics say the government will not save nearly that much and may have difficulty cancelling deals.

INFLATION, AVERAGE CONSUMER PRICES

CHEAP GOLD, EXPENSIVE COCOA

-2

20 * staff estimates 15

SOURCE: IMF

10

5

2010 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18* 19*

CURRENT ACCOUNT BALANCE (percent of GDP)

0

2010 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18* 19*

-4 -6

-10

* staff estimates

-12

our agreement to set a producer price in cooperation with Côte d’Ivoire, the situation has improved – we will lose $200 for every tonne of cocoa.”

Growing collaboration with the Ivorians also includes plans to process up to 50% of cocoa grown locally and engagement with an African Development Bank-backed programme aimed at attracting young farmers into the sector.

SOURCE: IMF

-8

Akufo-Addo’s government will face heavy pressures to boost spending in the run-up to elections in 2020. Its graduation next April from International Monetary Fund supervisionmay presage a race to open the coffers and find treats for disillusioned party supporters.

The President and his team are trying to shift the spending emphasis away from direct handouts to the faithful to general social initiatives. The Free Senior High Schoolprogrammelaunchedlastyearhas given 180,000 disadvantaged teenagers access to higher-level education, but also sparked a fierce debate about educ­ ational standards and how the system can be financed. Some are calling for means-testing so that the better off will be forced to pay fees.

On 17 October, Akufo-Addo inaugurated the Nation Builders Corps, sending 100,000 unemployed graduates into a three-year public service training scheme. With the IMF’s backing, the government imposed a freeze on publicsector hiring in 2015, pushing up youth unemployment. The Nation Builders Corps scheme is one interim measure.

Although such social inclusion programmes may help the NPP’s political fortunes, the core measures of its success will be the effect on their pockets.

As Sowah of GCB says: “You have to understand that we are dealing with a populace who don’t care about structures. They are interested in food on their table and full bellies. So you can make all the noise you want but is it really going to do much? That’s the real issue that we have to confront.”

Debates are raging about how to finance Ghana’s education system and raise its standards

CHRISTEL JEANNE/DIVERGENCE

While the NPP has been critical of the deals the NDC agreed, the opposition lambasted a May 2018 tax break worth $259m that the government agreed with South African firm AngloGold Ashanti so that it would relaunch operations at the Obuasi mine, which was closed in 2014 due to disputes over security and artisanal mining.

As a former chairman of the Cocoa Marketing Board (Cocobod), Pianim laments the government’s timidity in addressing problems in the cocoa sector.

Cocobod has an historical debt of up to $10bn, he says, accumulated by paying local producer prices consistently above the world price and exacerbated by alleged graft by past NDC-appointed officials. “We used to lose $300 for every tonne of cocoa we sell. This year, with

(percent change)

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KWEKU AWOTWI:Wewouldnot.

There was a case we could make at $55 or $60 at the beginning of the year, but by bringing on a rig you’re spending $60m-$70m for a well. And your cash flow better be able to support that. So higher oil prices have definitely made the bringing on of a second rig a much more attractive economic venture.

Kweku Awotwi

Managing director, Tullow Ghana

Local content has to be a priority The head of Tullow’s Ghana operations, buoyed by the oil price, looks ahead to a new licensing round and the drive towards domesticating the industry

I

n September 2017, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea drew a line in the ocean sands: ending a long-running dispute over the rightstounderseaoilbetweenCôte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the tribunal ruled in favour of Ghana.

“It meant that we could resume drilling – for two and a half years we had done no drilling,” says Kweku Awotwi, the managing director of Tullow Ghana, who was appointed on 1 March 2018.

Awotwi joined the company from

the Volta River Authority and has worked across the power, energy and mining sectors.

The tribunal decision has meant asharpuptickinthepaceofexplor­ ation, and Tullow has drafted in a second drilling rig. Given the needs of the Ghanaian treasury, all parties are happy. That also puts the company in a good position for the oil-licensing round in 2019.

TAR: Would you have taken another rig had oil prices been at $45 per barrel?

How often do you review these kinds of capital expenditure decisions?

Therewasadiscussionaboutthe possibility of bringing in a second rig as part of the 2018 budget. But it was put in the contingent fund bucket. So there was a thought that we could possibly mobilise a second rig, but it would have to depend upon oil prices. So it’s not something you do week by week.

We did provision for it, conditions triggered, and we were able to act.

What kind of oil price are you budgeting for in 2019?

I’m not sure it’s finalised, but I suspect it’s around $70-$75.

Ithinktheonlyguidanceonecould have is what the forward markets are doing. Right now the forward markets are fairly bullish.

Whatareyourexplorationplans?

If we’re talking about Ghana, Tullowisverykeentodevelopwhat we call the near-field areas, which are close to existing infrastructure that we may not have rights to.

So that’s something that we are pursuing quite diligently. And then,ofcourse,we’vealsosignalled that we’re going to participate in the newly announced licensing round. There are about five or six blocks in the western part of the country that are going to be up for this licensing round. I think the applications will be put in some time early next year.

GivenyourtimeattheVoltaRiver Authority, what’s your perspective on the state of the wider energy market in Ghana? Do you think that the pinch points of the past, particularly

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TULLOW

Tullow has brought in a second rig at Jubilee Field

in power provision, have company, the main one. So when been smoothed out? you put all those things together, I do think we’re on an upward more gas available, a bit more trajectory from where we were just liquidity, an attempt to be more two or three years ago. The country efficient in the value chain, I do as a whole [previously] suffered think some of the pain points of the from inadequate power capacity. last couple of years are behind us.

And some of that inadequate power capacity was really inadequate Critics of Eni and Vitol’s Sankofa deal say it costs Japan less to fuel availability, right? Whether it import gas from Qatar than it is wasnotenoughgastoruntheplant or not enough money to buy the goingtocostGhanatouseitsown gas. Is this really the best way to fuel to run the plant. I think things have significantly improved, even deal with Ghana’s energy needs? from a gas point of view, where today “I do think some of the pain Jubilee could be points of the last couple of using over 160m years are behind us” cubic feet a day between Jubilee It’s a reasonable question to and Tweneboa Enyenra Ntomme. raise. I can’t speak to the specifOf course, Eni has started up, so gas is less of an issue. Even with ics. What I can say is that, yes, it customgaspipelinesit’sproducing is expensive gas, but you have to more gas this year than it has in remember that it’s not associated previous years, I think they’re up gas [not found with deposits of to 80m-90m cubic feet a day. So the petroleum] – compared to Jubilee, gas supply picture has improved say. The economics of non-assoc­ significantly. […] iated gas are that it requires its own infrastructure. And let’s not forget The government of Ghana that for a long time we had no gas. issued a bond to pay off some […] It’s easy to query these things outstanding debts in the power when you have 20/20 hindsight. Is sector because liquidity was also there an opportunity to improve a problem. And they made some the terms and conditions and progress […] possible pricing? Perhaps there And maybe the third thing is. I don’t know. It might be helpful. worth mentioning is that they’ve also just awarded a privatisation Why do you think the previous concession to an outside utility job government’s liquefied natural manager,an electricitydistribution

OIL, GOLD AND POWER 1990 Graduated with a master’s in business administration from Stanford University in California 1998-2004 Worked as managing director for strategic planning at AngloGold Ashanti 2009-2013 Served as chief executive of the Volta River Authority (VRA) October 2017 Named chairman of the VRA March 2018 Appointed managing director of Tullow Ghana

gas and gas processing scheme was cancelled and the Russians brought in?

I have no idea. I wish I did!

What about local content?

Some boosters of local content in Nigeria will point to the 2010 Content Development Act and say we are starting to see the fruits of that with companies managing to get pretty serious engineeringjobs,finishingofrigs – a fair way up the value chain as well. Is that something you might see in Ghana?

I’m not familiar with the details of the Nigerian law, but in Ghana we have L.I. 2204 [the local content act] of 2013. That is a very important law, and I think we probably took aleafoutofthe Nigerian book.

But there is no question that local content has to be a priority for everybody in Ghana – Tullow and the Jubilee partners especially. It would be a shame if all Tullow and the partners did was produce oil without weighing capacity and expertise of the local economy and helping to create secondary industries that are locally based and supported.

Whether they are the law or not – and in fact in the Jubilee partners’ stability agreement there was a commitment to meet what at the time were our own local content targets when there was no law – there’s no question that local content is very important.

Can you point to a success story from Tullow local content?

There are many companies who started out very small that have grown up with Tullow. Just the other day I ran into a company called Conship, who do a lot of our freight and procurement, and they’ve grown over the years. They were there at the beginning and they’re doing very well at expanding and growing their operations.

But they’re just one of several companies that we’ve outsourced to. A number of local companies help us in our warehousing. There are numerous examples, and it’s something that actually we take very seriously.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

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56 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

PEOPLE TO WATCH

Taking care of business The Africa Report profiles businesswomen, a banker, a minister and a budding entrepreneur who play key roles in growth sectors of the Ghanaian economy

Alloysius Attah Farming networker

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Attah co-founded Farmerline, a start-up focused on farming and technology, with Emmanuel Owusu Addai in 2013. It has been growing ever since. Farmerline helps farmers to boost yields with improved information, finance and access to inputs.

It also collects data and improves communication between growers and other players in the agricultural sector. Farmerline has raised about $1m, now employs about 30 people and has operations in 10 African countries. Attah had created a few other start-ups before Farmerline but none had met with this much success.

Bank builder

S RE SE R

VE D

Jim Reynolds Baiden

AL

LR IG H T

The managing director of Ghana’s largest privately owned local bank needs to keep a cool head as others crumble. While several other local banks have collapsed, Baiden says Fidelity Bank will meet new minimum capital of 400m ($82.7m) before the end of the year and is also working on plans to raise 70m from listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange in 2020. Baiden has been leading the bank for two of its 11 years of existence and was one of Fidelity’s co-founders. He has big plans for Fidelity, saying that he wants it and other indigenous banks to help spearhead the country’s economic development. Fidelity co-managed a 10bn bond in 2018 to help the government solve the energy sector’s financial problems, and a subsequent eurobond.

Lucy Quist

FRANCOIS GRIVELET FOR JA

Diamonds in business and on the pitch Lucy Quist, a high-powered telecoms executive, is lending a hand to turn around the national football association after investigative journalist Anas uncovered vast corruption earlier in the year. She is vicepresident of the football association’s so-called normalisation committee. Quist is the founder of business consultancy Quist Blue Diamonds, a board member of the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre and former managing director of Airtel Ghana. Between advising businesses she has been giving pep talks to young footballers. Her recent words to fellow business leaders could be those of a team coach: “We should not look down on ourselves. Each of us is made in Ghana and therefore we should be proud of who we are, and not pull each other down but build each other up.”

Patience Akyianu Insuring success

The former managing director of Barclays Ghana takes up the reins of South African insurer Hollard Group’s Ghana operations in October. Hollard is a small player, so Akyianu’s goal is to increase its market share in the general and life insurance sectors.

While at Barclays, she was vocal about improving the banking sector, saying: “It’s not about the number of banks.

It’s about capacity, size and strength.”

John Peter Amewu Eyes on electricity and oil

With a new oil-licensing round and a series of power agreements to renegotiate, Ghana’s new energy minister is making key decisions in two sectors.

The co-founder of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy and National Patriotic Party chairman for the Volta Region took up the post in August 2018 after his predecessor fell out with President Nana Akufo-Addo about changes to the controversial AMERI power deal.

The government is encouraging more local participation in the oil sector but critics say there are few firms with the right knowledge and funds to get involved. In September, Amewu criticised companies that act as fronts for foreign firms, saying they are denying Ghanaians the right to participate in oil production.

THE AFRICA REPORT

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58 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

Nana Kwame Bediako

AMSTERDAM GROUP PUBLIC RELATIONS INC.

Chief executive, Wonda World Estates

We will cut down on importation

The backer of a new free zone outside of the city of Takoradi talks to The Africa Report about the importance of the local private sector

T

he CEO of Wonda World Estates, Nana Kwame Bediako, has joined forces with UK-based property developer and hotelier Azad Cola to create a new free zone, designed to service the emerging Ghanaian energy sector. Known as Petronia City, the planned development includes a series of industrial, commercial and residential projects located 8km from the port of Takoradi in western Ghana. Wonda World Estates has been developing apartment projects in Accra.

TAR: Why did you decide to partner with Azad Cola?

NANA KWAME BEDIAKO: We decided to come together and build an industrial platform which is going to become the last word in African industrial development, something that was supposed to be done in Africa maybe 100 years ago. We want to bring in plants to manufacture steel. Based on that, we will cut down on importation.

We are interested in producing glass, and all other manufactured goods that are being imported into Africa, which are stalling Africa’s growth. Much of this is down to inefficiency – you have to wait for eight weeks for things to arrive in Africa, before they move from bonded warehouses into the retail markets. We want to do that starting in the western part of Ghana, in Takoradi – which is

a very rich area, with over 10 different resources based in this area.

We think it is going to become the hub of West Africa, and we will be able tap into other countries, like Liberia, which have their own resources and can supply raw materials for the plants that we intend to put onto the industrial platform. To do that, we needed to apply for free-zone status, so that some of these companies who will be our partners will have tax exemptions.

We were successful with the free-zone application and land acquisition. We are the first people in West Africa to have a parcel over 1,500 acres, that’s 8.9km².

“Takoradi is a very rich area […]. We think it is going to become the hub of West Africa” Do you have partners for a steel plant?

We have a few who have given us a letter of intent. But we are doing it with our choice of partners.

We believe it is going to be the Asians. We believe the Asians are the best when it comes to hardware. They have already supplied the world with standardised steel.

But our interest is not to go straight to the Chinese. Our interest is to work with the Singaporeans because we are looking at their template of development.

Does Ghana have the administrative capacity to drive an Asian-styledevelopmentmodel?

Singapore did use a strong national government. In Africa, we don’t need to rely on the government. The private sector needs to work with the government. People think that the government can build roads, can build factories […]. The government can’t do it. If they could do it, they would have done it a long time ago. We have cut out the private sector locally in Africa. We need to build it up.

Foreign multinationals are not here to develop Africa, they are only here to extract or do business.

The only thing you can do with government is get a licence.

How will you keep freight costs low for manufacturers in your zone, given the costs of coming through Takoradi?

Youknowwhyit’shard?Because the only source of being able to get anything in the country is importation. All the containers leaving the country today are empty, there is nothing in them. It even costs the shipping lines $320 to bring a container back empty.

Therefore,oneofthegovernment’s main sources of revenue out of the port is taxes. But if you are manufacturing in-country, then you don’t have to import anymore, so you avoid the taxes.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

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60 COUNTRY FOCUS | GHANA

It’s been a tense time for the central bank, which closed down seven banks in 12 months

NICHOLAS SEUN ADATSI/GETTY

the International Monetary Fund to help it tame the country’s debt and budget deficit. The government overlooked its already strained budgetary resources and issued ¢2.2bn in bonds to GCB and ¢5.7bn to Consolidated Bank to meet the gap between liabilities and assets.

Since taking over, GCB has sacked some 450 members of staff of the failed entities, with plans to cut another 250 workers. Consolidated Bank Ghana has laid off 700 staff as part of a plan to axe 2,000 workers from the defunct banks.

These numbers compare with a total 1,400 workers who lost their jobs when the Bank for Housing and Construction and Ghana Cooperative Bank collapsed FINANCE in 2000, according to a report by PwC. The assets controlled by the troubled banks are worth $2.1bn, compared with $14m during the year 2000 crisis.

Despite the trauma and job losses caused by the In September 2017, the central bank it failure of several small Ghanaian banks, the sector now increased the minimum capital requirement from ¢120m to ¢400m,giving banks looks stronger with credit growth likely to accelerate up to the end of 2018 to comply. Finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta told reporters: hana is slowly emerging from uniBank and Royal Bank. In all cases, “It is strong individual institutions that its worst banking crisis ever. the Bank of Ghana noted negligence make a strong banking sector.” He added: Several times this year deposi“From next year we can expect to see inon corporate governance procedures stitutions that are very well-capitalised, tors massed in the branches of insolvent and/or disregard for provisions of the lower non-performing loans and higher banks wanting to take their cash, despite banking law. assurances from central bank govercredit growth to the private sector.’’

Former bank directors have been nor Ernest Addison that their money Nineteen out of 30 banks already assisting the Economic and Organised met the new minimum capital requireCrimes Office in investigations to unravwas safe. Some fixed-term depositors el the causes of the bank ment, Addison said. On 3 even approached the newly formed failures. The founder of October he added: “Our Consolidated Bank to redeem their banking system is becominvestments, unsuccessfully. uniBank, former finance ing stronger. […] The idea Panic withdrawals also hit local banks minister Kwabena Duffuor, that had not been declared insolvent, is challenging the lender’s is to position the sector Value of assets such as Premium Bank, GN Bank and closure in court. as a major growth driver of troubled banks Heritage Bank, as customers speculated While several small to support an inclusive, in the 2017-18 crisis, the banks would soon be closed down. banks have recently colbroad-based economy.’’ compared to $14m So serious was the situation that the in the 2000 crisis lapsed, the majority of the Analysts say the drive founder of GN Bank, former minister of sector has already met new to improve bank perforstate and flagbearer of the Progressive mance is paying off. Edem Harrison, an minimum capital requirements designed economist at Frontline Capital Advisors People’s Party Paa Kwesi Nduom, went to strengthen the industry. Those banks on public campaigns telling people to now have more firepower to lend to big in Accra, says: “The adoption of Basel II stop the panic withdrawals. risk-based supervision framework by the and small companies in the sectors that will be driving the economy forward. regulator this year is going to strengthen Ghana’s central bank closed down seven banks in the 12 months leading up to banks’ risk-management system and JOB LOSSES enable them to curb loan losses.’’ He August2018duetorisingnon-performing loans and the lenders’ inability to meet predicts the industry’s capital adequacy To protect depositors, the Bank of Ghana ratio could increase to 23% by the end capitaladequacyrequirements.Itrevoked named GCB Bank and the newly created the licences of UT Bank and Capital Consolidated Bank Ghana to take over of 2019, up from 19.1% in August, and Bank in August 2017, after providing a the liabilities and selected assets of the that credit growth will likely accelerate to at least 15% from an average of 3.4% combined ¢1.5bn ($310m) in liquidity defunct banks. The government has in the first eight months of the year. support.Ayearlater,itfollowedwithBeige stepped in, but its means are limited, as it Honoré Banda in Accra Bank,ConstructionBank,SovereignBank, is coming to the end of a programmewith

Banking bust

G

SOURCE: PwC

$2.1bn

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62

Mauritius

Offshore on

The government wants to double the size of the financial sector within the next 12 years, but to do that it needs to find new growth strategies and respond to international pressure on jurisdictions that help companies avoid paying corporation tax

By Kervin Victor in Port Louis

P

ristine beaches and murky accounting have long been associated with the Indian Ocean nation of Mauritius, and so it was that the transparent waters of Balaclava Bay provided a gentle reminder of what was at stake as representatives of the government launched a new blueprint for the offshore financial centre at a major conference on 19-20 September.

Improving the image of the financial services sector and driving its expansion are high

on the government’s agenda for growth. Announcing plans to double the sector’s size by 2030, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said: “The sector continues to face its share of challenges both locally and internationally. As an innovative and forward-looking nation we have to demonstrate our capabilities in turning these challenges into opportunities, while ensuring economic resilience.”

The financial sector is at a crossroads: changes to a treaty with India mean that it has to look to new markets in Africa; African

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COMPANIES & MARKETS 63

FABA/GETTY

the radar

governments want to protect their tax bases; and campaigners continue to criticise the country as a tax haven that hides beneficial owners of companies and allows firms to avoid paying tax in their own countries.

FORWARD PLANNING

‘Mauritius International Financial Centre – Forward Looking’ was the name of the two-day conference at the InterContinental Mauritius Resort, organised by the industry regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

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Prime Minister Jugnauth’s government says it wants to support the growth of the financial sector while responding to its critics and increasing transparency to meet rising international standards.

The government’s plans include signing more double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAAs) in Africa and beyond, abolishing a class of companies that attracted international criticism (for allowing shell companies and companies that do little more than move money around the world) and focusing on three main

N OV E M B E R 2 018

In 50 years Mauritius has ridden the waves of successive growth models, with finance now coming to the fore

subsectors – namely cross-border investment; corporate banking and finance; and private wealth.

Mauritius currently has 44 DTAAs around the world and is looking for new business partners.

Mauritius’s top banks all have a role to play if the sector is to double in size by 2030. According to Bank of Mauritius figures, total deposits from global business banking at the end of June 2018 represented 14.4% of total deposits, or Rs544bn ($15.7bn). The country’s biggest bank,MauritiusCommercialBank, reports that 40% of its net profit for

64 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

the first half of 2018 – Rs7.2bn – came from foreign sources.

Meanwhile, HSBC Mauritius is using the country as a platform for renminbi operations capitalising on China’s One Belt, One Road initiative,andAfrAsiaBank’sglobal business operations represented 71% of non-interest income for the 2017/2018 financial year.

ESTIMATED SIZE OF THE MAURITIUS BANKING REVENUE POOL

CROSS-BORDER SHORTFALL

Total banking revenues

$1.314bn $270m $92m

$829m

$123m

$352m

Retail

Other

Total corporate

$477m

Domestic corporate

Cross-border corporate

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MAURITIUS INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CENTRE, 2016 % of total contributions

Other Insurance 2 Capital markets 1 Private banking and wealth management Corporate banking 3

8%

8%

2%

100% = $976m 1% 5%

$178m

11,260 employees

0% 0%

1%

9%

2%

0% 1%

3%

0% 1%

25%

33% 88%

70% SOURCE: GOVERNMENT OF MAURITIUS

The government’s blueprint lays out several targets. The main centre of activity will be corporate banking and finance, which the government hopes to see grow at a rate of 9.6% per year over the next decade. That is to be followed by cross-border investment, which could grow at 5% per year. And private wealth is a nascent subsector that the government argues can grow at 6.7% per year from its current low base.

Some influential people do not agree with the government’s rosy projections. Sunil Benimadhu, chief executive of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius and chairman of Global Finance Mauritius – the apex body of private-sector financial operators – says that to double the size of the sector in 12 years will require each of those pillars to grow at a compound rate of 6%. “When we take a step back and look at the current growth rates of these pillars, it would seem that one of them, namely the cross-border investment, has over the last four years grown at around 2%. This is quite far from the 6% target,” he says.

There has been an uptick in deals recently, with international firms buying up companies to get a presence in Mauritius. In April 2018, Ocorian bought Abax Corporate Services to help it target businesses in the Middle East and Africa. Also, SGG Group acquired Cim Global Business in May 2017, and Sanne Group bought Mauritius-based International Financial Services in early 2017.

Elections in 2019 are unlikely to mean much change for the country’s financial sector, which has support from across the political spectrum. Indeed, the left-wing opposition says the government

Domestic Cross-border

Mauritius revenues before risk cost, 2016 (USD)

Cross-border investment

61%

IFC revenues

(private sector profits) USD

9.6% Target annual growth for corporate banking and finance over the next decade

SOURCE: GOVERNMENT OF MAURITIUS

Employment

Tax revenues USD

is not doing enough to support the industry. At a 6 October press conference, Mauritian Militant Movement leader Paul Bérenger criticised the September conference: “These two-day meetings have not brought anything concrete. There is zero strategy.

Already the Mauritian jurisdiction has been outpaced by the jurisdiction of Singapore concerning investment in India. And things will get worse because of the lack of strategy from the government to help a sector which is to become the most important one of our economy,” he said.

Politicians point to the financial sector as evidence of the country’s continuing ability to adapt to changing economic circumstances. At independence in 1968, the sugar industry enabled Mauritius to move from a lowincome, agricultural economy to

Nb. of jobs

a middle-income, diversified one.

From the 1980s manufacturing – mainly textiles – took over. Now, with the weakening of Mauritian export revenue, it is the turn of financial services.

Mauritius is among the few countries that have witnessed a sustained growth of its financial sector after the global financial crisis, with an average of 5% growth over the past 10 years.

The government predicts that it will account for 11.6% of gross domestic product in 2018, compared to 13.1% for manufacturing.

INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY

It will not be smooth sailing, however. Jurisdictions that provide levels of secrecy and compete with other countries by allowing foreign investors to pay lower, or even no, taxes are under fire from tax-justice campaigners

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66 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

TOEING THE LINE

With US companies like Google and Amazon in the headlines in Europe for the low levels of corporate tax that they pay, tax is rising high on the international agenda.

The OECD and G20 have rolled out the jargon-filled Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), which the OECD elucidates as ‘tax planning strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity.’

With the threat of being blacklisted by the OECD and the European Union if Mauritius does not sign up to the BEPS agreement, Jugnauth said earlier this year that the government will harmonise its fiscal regime for domestic and global business companies. “We have also brought changes to our legislative framework to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism”, he told attendees at the September conference.

Mauritius has three types of companies: domestic, Global Business Company 1 and Global Business Company 2. Previously, GBC1s, like domestic companies, weretaxedat15%ontheirchargeable income but could claim foreign

HSBC is using Mauritius as a platform to capitalise on China’s One Belt, One Road programme

SHIFT TO AFRICA

“We have to demonstrate our capabilities in turning these challenges into opportunities ” Pravind d Jugnauth Jugnauth, prime minister of Mauritius

YANN BOHAC/SIPA

and intergovernmental groups like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Alexander Ezenagu, a researcher at the International Centre for Tax and Development, told journalists last year: “Some of the most important ways of stripping profits from African countries are done through offshore jurisdictions, including Mauritius.”

While denying that Mauritius is a tax haven, the government is making moves to improve governance and address the detractors’ concerns. Harvesh Seegolam, chief executive officer of the FSC, tells The Africa Report: “The main factor that is impacting directly on the way we operate as a financial centre is to do with international developments.”

tax credit of 80%, thus resulting in a maximum effective tax rate of 3%. GBC2s were exempt from tax. With the harmonisation of the fiscal regime, all companies in Mauritius will now benefit from 80% tax exemption on specified income like foreign dividends, interest and royalties. The government also plans to abolish the zero-tax GBC2 regime in January 2019. According to official statistics from the FSC, as at end of July there were 12,039 GBC1 companies and 10,400 GBC2s in Mauritius.

For decades, Mauritius’s financial centre focused on the Indian market. But the government there complained of too much opacity and the loss of revenue from companies domiciling themselves in Mauritius to pay less tax, so the two sides agreed to renegotiate their double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA), making Mauritius a less attractive hub for investors looking for opportunities in India.

The bourse’s Benimadhu argues that India could still be an important market for Mauritius because of the knowledge developed and relationships formed: “In the light of the amended DTAA with India, there is a need for Mauritius to sit down and come up with a new value-added proposal for India.”

The government says it is currently in talks with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania on tax treaties. And Mauritius should, according to Parik Tulsidas of AfrAsia Bank – a regional bank headquartered in Mauritius –now focus more specifically on how to become more relevant to Africa. “Having advantages is certainly a must but I believe that in many ways, we have reached a ‘mature’ stage in our development as a financial jurisdiction. Hence how do we get to the next level and up our game?

This for me is more topical, especially with the recent renegotiation of the DTAA treaty with India, the decision taken in the recent country budget to discontinue GBC2s, as well as unwarranted negative press on the Mauritian jurisdiction,” he says.

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RWANDA

Keeping up with Kigali The capital city wants to plan its way to sustainable growth, but citizens and developers say their concerns have not yet been taken into account

GHOST TOWN

The push to make the city less dependent on cars – which includes other green initiatives such as ‘walk-through’ neighbourhoods – is all part of the government’s plans to cater for a population set to grow to 3.8 million by 2040, and to build a reputation for sustainable and green growth. But the car-free project has come under intense criticism from residents

and local business owners who say the once-bustling area is now a ghost town. Kayumba says the Kigali authorities should have engaged the owners of buildings in that area to include facilities and services that would attract people to the area. “For example, eateries, cinemas, shopping malls and things that will attract children and families,” he says.

CONSULT BEFORE BUILDING

Natalie Campbell Rodrigues, owner and managing director of Forrest Jackson Properties, a realestate company, concurs about the problems with planning: “The master plan may suggest a developer use a lot they own to build a residential unit of ground plus 2 [ground floor plus two additional floors], but the market is not asking for that.” She says consulting with developers more “could lead to a reduction in the number of developers who build and then cannot sell the finished product.”

Reports show that as of midApril 2018, only 142 of the 502 units in a high-end housing estate, Vision City, had been sold, despite the30%reductioninunitprice in July last year. Completed in2017andbuiltinlinewith the 2013 master plan, the multi-phase project has been excessively priced – between $179,000 and $560,000 per unit – in a country with a per capita income of around $750.

On the other end of the spectrum,themasterplanhas thegoalofremovingallslums by 2040, but that means relocating thousands of people.

Families from the Kangondo slum have complained that they are being relocated to less desirable areas far awayfromessentialservices.

Kigali’s central business district on Nyarugenge Hill. The master plan aims to decentralise the city, with hubs for business, shopping and administration

KIGALI CITY PLANNING - Population (2012) < 15,000 35,001 - 45,000

15,001 - 25,000 45,001 - 55,000

25,001 - 35,000 >55,000

GASABO DISTRICT Kigali

NYARUGENGE DISTRICT KICUKIRO DISTRICT

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V

isit the gleaming Kigali Convention Centre and its perfectly manicured environs, and you might say Rwanda’s capital – home to about 1.3 million people – is one of the greenest and cleanest in Africa. But for those who live there, the reputation can sometimes come with a heavy price tag. In 2013, the government launched the ambitious Kigali City Master Plan to guide the city’s urban development, and residents have been divided on how the plan is serving the needs of the growing population.

Christopher Kayumba, a professor at the University of Rwanda, says the government’s aim of rapidly transforming the city into a modern capital is often achieved at the expense of infrastructure tailored to the needs of the population. For example, the busy and lively Centenary House-Ecole Belge Street in the heart of the Kigali business district was designated a car-free zone in August 2015. “When you travel in Europe and North America, you find a number of car-free zones,” says Kayumba, who suggests the policy was dreamt up by a Kigali official after visiting one of these zones, “without considering the conditions that are unique to the businesses in Kigali, that reflect our purchasing power and that reflect our level of development.”

N O V E M B E R 2 018

COMPANIES & MARKETS | BUSINESS 69

any challenges they may have encountered. “The data collection will comprise surveys of 3,600 households. Our aim is to gather information on socioeconomic forecasts, housing and commercial real-estate trends, preferences on transport and to have a better understanding of the traffic situation,” he says.

The University of Rwanda’s Kayumba says more needs to be donetosensitiseandeffectivelyengage communities so that they can feel part of the initiative. “Calling people in a meeting and giving themadocumentandsaying‘What do you think about this?’ without giving them enough time to reflect […]. No, I don’t think it offers a good chance to give good views,” he adds. According to Kayumba, though residents were consulted over the car-free zone, the main decisions had already been made.

VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

VISION AND EFFECTIVENESS

POPULATION OF KIGALI BY DISTRICT (in thousands) 2002

2012

SOURCE: CITY OF KIGALI, RWANDA

500 400 300 200 100 0

Nyarugenge

Gasabo

In July, the city announced its intention to review and update the master plan. Fred Mugisha, the director of Kigali Urban Planning and Construction One Stop Centre, says ideas for the updated master plan will be taken from the grassroots community.

The review process started in June and will last for 10 months.

The driving force behind the city planning project is Singaporebased infrastructure consulting firm Surbana Jurong (SJ). In April this year, the company, which currently operates in 22 THE AFRICA REPORT

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Kicukiro

countries in Africa, inked another deal with the city authorities to review and update the master plans of Kigali’s three districts.

Nyarugenge, which contains most of the city’s businesses, is due to serve as a financial hub, Kicukiro as a knowledge hub and Gasabo, the largest in area, as the country’s administrative centre.

Philip Tan, SJ’s managing director and global lead for planning group, says the company has been engaging local communities and stakeholders to gather feedback on the 2013 master plan and

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Campbell Rodrigues, a Jamaican citizen who has been living in Kigali for the past three years, says the responsibility lies with Kigali’s inhabitants: “The master plan is referred to so often in the media that I cannot see what more the government could do to sensitise the population. At some point, interested citizens need to take responsibility and seek information. It is readily available and accessible.”

She praises the plan for its vision and effectiveness in transforming the city. “It has proven to be an active working document through which citizenry and business can know what is to be expected in terms of city planning for the city.

As it stands, the plan is easy to use and detailed,” she says.

Overall, there is optimism that the plan can work to benefit all.

Kayumba says he thinks the country is on the right track:“If you see how things have started coming together, how the road network is built, when you see how skyscrapers have come up – I say there is a lot of progress.” All that remains is to ensure that the government’s objectives and the population’s needs are in alignment.

Oheneba Ama Nti Osei

Tewolde GebreMariam Chief executive officer, Ethiopian Airlines

We are not overstretching

The airline boss talks to The Africa Report about Ethiopian’s new stakes in African transport companies across the continent and the challenges of planning for the long term

D

espite being stateowned, Africa’s largest airline by revenue and profit has long been free from government meddling. This is one reason why Tewolde GebreMariam, Ethiopian Airlines’ CEO since 2011, has survived the country’s recent political revolution. New prime minister Abiy Ahmed has purged senior staff from other state-owned enterprises, but Tewolde’s team and vision remain intact.

Another reason is that under his stewardship the company has

made extraordinary progress. Its net profit in the 2017/18 financial year rose to $233m, from $229m the previous year, while its operating revenue rose by 43% to $3.7bn – figures unmatched by any other carrier on the continent.

Vision 2025, a 15-year strategy drawn up in 2010, has been so successful that Tewolde is already working on a scaled-up successor for 2030. The fleet is only 20 planes away from its target of 120 by 2025, which would make it the continent’s largest. “It is a remarkable success,” Tewolde told The Africa

Report in his office next to Bole International Airport, which is fast becoming one of the continent’s busiest hubs. “Some of the targets we set in 2010 to be achieved by 2025 we achieved by 2016.”

Tewolde, who joined the airline in 1985, attributes its success to long-term planning. For instance, in 2008 the company put in an early order for a fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners; in 2012 it became the first airline in the world outside Japan to fly them. “To succeed in the aviation business […] you need to plan for a longtime horizon,” he says.

Today, the company is busy exporting its model across Africa, buying stakes in existing airlines in Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea, as well as setting up new ones in Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Mozambique,NigeriaandZambia.

He brushes off criticisms that such rapid expansion risks a crash landing. “We are very conscious about that,” he says. “We don’t want to do it too fast and too far.

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BRICE BLONDEL/CEO FORUM FOR JA

70 BUSINESS | LEADERS

LEADERS | BUSINESS 71

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Ethiopia but in the whole continent of Africa,” says Tewolde.

This is a reminder that, despite the recent changes, Ethiopian remains what the CEO calls a “strategic asset and a policy instrument” for the government. Its key role in logistics is designed to aid the country’s industrialisation.

Tewolde also notes the company’s role in promoting agribusiness by increasingly buying local products, such as juice, for its catering service. And it is at the same time playing a central role in developing Ethiopia as a tourist destination.

Though Tewolde is confident that the government’s “globalisation and liberalisation agenda is going to help the airline,” he admits to significant challenges operating in Africa. Not all governments are fully on board with the company’s pan-African vision, a vision which led it to take a key role in pushing for the African Union’s single market for air transport launched earlier this year.

“The main challenge is the lack of proper attention given to aviation by African countries,” Tewolde says. “At the policy level, African governments, unintentionally, consider aviation a rich man’s means of transport. They don’t consider it as an essential public service for the average person.”

The company has not been entirely untouched by the country’s changes over the past year. In June, the government announced plans to privatise a raft of stateowned enterprises, including part of Ethiopian Airlines. Many Ethiopians were highly critical, questioning the logic of selling shares in one of the country’s few reliable sources of hard currency.

Tewolde argues: “At the end of the day I understand [the idea] is to create more competition, either domestic or international, so that these state-owned enterprises become efficient in delivering products and services. That is the macro-level thinking behind the agenda. So when you see it from that perspective, Ethiopian Airlines is already ahead of the curve: it is already competitive, doing very well, growing very fast, “African governments […] being very profitadon’t consider aviation as ble and financing an essential public service” its own growth. […]

So it may not be as urgent an agenda as it is for the rest He continues: “As a result of of the state-owned enterprises.” this wrong conception you have In the long term, he says the misguided policies in most African countries. For example high taxairline may offer shares to other ation. African countries consider African countries, but mostly aviation as a cash cow. […] African “big countries, big economies countries are also not investing like Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and so on.” Non-African investors enough in aviation infrastructure […] and they are not creating are less sought-after, although the enough multi-modal logistics companyislookingformajorinternational firms as partners in some hubs which otherwise might have helped them in their economic of its other activities, suchas hotels, manufacturing and catering. development. Today in Europe the In March, it announced a cost of air travel and rail is almost the same; sometimes air is even partnership with global logistics cheaper. So I see this as a major company DHL. “We want to learn from them and the objective is challenge for the continent.”

Interview by Tom Gardner to make ourselves the leading in Addis Ababa logistics provider, not only in THE AFRICA REPORT

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FLYING HIGHER 1985 Got his first job at Ethiopian Airlines, in the cargo department 2004 Appointed head of sales and marketing 2006 Promoted to chief operating officer 2011 Named chief executive officer

Racheal Njoroge The Kenyan-born former head of information technology was appointed Cummins’ managing director for Southern Africa in early October.

She leads the power-sector firm’s activities in big markets such as Angola, South Africa and Zambia.

2012 Won the African CEO of the Year award from the Africa CEO Forum 2015 Appointed to the United Nations High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport

Ademola Adebise As CEO of Wema Bank, Adebise starts a new chapter for the mid-tier Nigerian financial institution which had been led by Segun Oloketuyi since the banking crisis of 2008/2009.

Adebise is a former Wema Bank deputy managing director who previously worked at Accenture.

Sylvia Mulinge After the Tanzanian government blocked her work visa, stopping her from becoming managing director of Vodacom Tanzania, Mulinge is back at Safaricom in Nairobi, where she worked from 2006, as director of special projects.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

We always do sensitivity analysis [and] we have a very prudent financial management system.

We make sure we are not overstretching at any point in time.”

Hecontinues:“It’snottop-down.

We do it where there is a market for it. For instance, Chad. Chad is a big country, centrally located, and there is no domestic service.

There is also no airline connecting Chad with its neighbours.”

72 BUSINESS | FINANCE

Nick O’Donohoe

CEO, CDC Group, UK

We could be competitive with the Chinese

F

ormed in 1948, the CDC was one of the world’s first development finance institutions. Today, it has a £5bn ($6.5bn) balance sheet and invests in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Wholly owned by the UK government, it reinvests its earnings back into the fund. With Britain's exit from the European Union looming, the institution – which announced it will invest £3.5bn in Africa over the next four years – is set to play a greater role.

TAR: You got dragged onto Prime Minister Theresa May’s late August tour of Africa. Did you dance?

NICK O’DONOHOE: No, I didn’t dance, and we went willingly, trust me! While the Prime Minister was dancing, the business delegation was off talking about business. The Prime Minister’s trip to Africa was a pretty graphic illustration that, post-Brexit, the UK needs to have a broad range of partners. And Africa can be a critical part of that.

So a lot of what we spent time talking about [on the tripwas the Prime Minister reinforcing how important economic development was to our overall development programme in the UK. And, within that context, how important the CDC and UK export finance are, and also the Private Infrastructure Development Group, of which the UK owns 70%.

DAVID MIRZOEFF/CDC

With Brexit on the horizon, a large UK development finance institution is looking to make big deals in Africa and support local private sectors at the same time It’s been quite a busy time for economic diplomacy on the continent. What does that tell you about what’s happening right now?

I think there is a lot of interest in Africa for a variety of different reasons. The importance of economic development on the continent has been highlighted over the last couple of years by the immigration issues in Europe. [...] We have unique relationships in Africa and unique advantages there. But I think Brexit has something to do with that, and the need to be seen, the whole ‘global Britain’ story. [...]

The most significant change over the last 15 or 20 years has

“Somebody has to be the first mover […] and take a risk on Zimbabwe” been the level of Chinese interest in investing. I was [recently in Sierra Leone, for example, and it’s very obvious how significant a role the Chinese are playing.

Many Western companies struggle to match the ability of Chinesecompaniestocomewith vendor financing already bolted onto deals. How do British companies compete?

We have world-leading technology and expertise in building and executing complex projects,

particularly in areas like infrastructure. We have export finance support, although we’re probably not as mobile or as well joined up [as China]. And I think this is not just true of us, but of the other Western countries as well.

So I think we could be competitive with the Chinese, but we do have to make sure that we are all joined up. And that was part of the reason for the trip [in August – [to show] that we’re really joined up and presenting a coherent, competitive package.

Give us an idea of some of the projects that the CDC is targeting for this £3.5bn investment.

Broadly speaking, we invest in six priority sectors: infrastructure, financial institutions, agriculture, manufacturing, health and education. I can’t really talk about specific projects that are in the pipeline and not announced.

But if you look at what we have announced in the last three to four months, you’ll see a $100m investment in Indorama: we’re building a new fertiliser plant in Nigeria.

We announced a facility of $100m alongside Standard Chartered to invest in Zimbabwe, which was the first real commitment by a private sector financial firm in Zimbabwe since the change in regime.

With the $100m you shared with Standard Chartered in

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Zimbabwe, where are you investing?

There are significant companies in Zimbabwe who are operating at 20% capacity, principally because they can’t bring in any imports.

Somebody has to be the first mover and start addressing that issue and take a risk on Zimbabwe. And we felt – together with Standard Chartered, who’s had an office there for many, many years – that we wanted to be a first mover.

So there’s about 15 companies there in the manufacturing sector, the consumer sector. They are existing, medium-sized companies. This facility, when it’s up and running, will allow them to access principally dollars, which will allow them to import, allow them to manufacture and to sell.

The cash injection a few months ahead of the July election helped the Harare regime at a critical point. Did the Department for International Development (DFID) ask you to do it?

No. In terms of investment policy, we are absolutely independent of DFID. They don’t direct our investment policy in any way and never have. [...] First of all, the CDC supports the private sector, it doesn’t support government.

We felt that there was an urgent need for capital, we recognised – both Standard Chartered and ourselves – that we could have sat back and waited until the politics had settled down. [...] I suppose some people tried to make it seem as if it was some sort of vote of confidence in the government. It was never presented that way. It was a vote of confidence in the country, in the people, in the private sector companies that exist there today.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

One belt to rule them all THE MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is China’s massive infrastructure push into 90 countries worldwide. It is larger in scope than the Marshall Plan, which dragged shattered European economies back from the brink after the Second World War. Then, as now, a major world power wanted to use its economic weight to cement other countries into its diplomatic orbit. Thus Pakistan, a thorn in the side of China’s frenemy India, is due to receive $60bn worth of OBOR investment. The $60bn number was again trotted out at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Beijing in September. But that is for the entire African continent.

Debt-trap diplomacy THAT DIDN’T STOP AMERICANS voicing concerns that the OBOR and other Chinese programmes are a debt trap for African governments. The Washington-based Centre for Global Development puts Djibouti at high risk, and Ethiopia and Kenya at significant risks of unsustainable debt from Chinese lending. Addis Ababa and Beijing recently agreed to extend Ethiopia’s deadline to pay back its loan for a railway project. Around the same time, the White House announced a revamped Overseas Private Investment Corporation, with a $60bn war chest to ward off Chinese influence. Critics of Chinese lending point to places like debt-mired Zambia, where the lack of strings attached from Chinese money has seen lavish government spending on non-productive items.

Little dragons, big hype THIS IS EXACTLY THE IMAGE THAT the Chinese government and private sector want to shake off. Beijing is lending to well-respected institutions like the Nigeria-based Africa Finance Corporation, which announced a $300m deal in October. ‘Chinese dragons – firms of all sizes and sectors – are bringing capital investment, management know-how and entrepreneurial energy to every corner of the continent’, said the consultants at McKinsey in a 2017 report that pointed to the estimated 10,000 Chinese-owned firms active far beyond the traditional oil-for-stadium trope of yesteryear. Some 12% of Africa’s manufacturing is believed to be done by Chinese companies. Companies like Transsion, a large Chinese smartphone maker, are outselling Apple and Samsung in Africa with their popular, under-$100 Tecno brand.

EXPERTISE IN AFRICAN RAILWAY MANAGEMENT www.vecturis.com

Vincent SMITH, Operations Expert VECTURIS

74

DOSSIER TELECOMS

Kenya

Airtel vs.

Safaricom Airtel Kenya is cutting prices to eat into Safaricom’s market share, but it may not have a big enough war chest and sufficient patience to succeed in knocking the Kenyan telecoms leader down a notch

By Morris Kiruga in Nairobi

S

hortly after Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore returned to work after a ninemonth medical leave in August 2018, he found himself back in the trenches. In the past two decades, the Kenyan telecoms sector has had several scuffles over consumers, often ending up in slashed costs. Airtel Kenya is using every tactic it can to get out from under the shadow of its giant rival; these range from cutting the cost of calls to seeking

government intervention in order to level the playing field.

“We are seeing a new price war coming,” Collymore told a press conference in Nairobi. Days before, Safaricom’s main competitor Airtel Kenya, a subsidiary of Indian behemoth Bharti Airtel, had slashed call rates. Airtel wants to trade revenue for market share.

So far, Collymore is insisting that Safaricom is unwilling to participate in a competition over price and will accept to see its vast market share somewhat eaten into

by Airtel, which has been picking

Price wars between the two main rivals in the Kenyan telecoms market have caused consumers to sign up with both, exchanging SIM cards according to which firm offers the best rates for calls, data and mobile money

75

up subscribers over the past two years. Airtel’s strategy will test the patience of the shareholders of its Indian parent company, as lower call tariffs will further reduce revenue. Airtel is fighting a price war in India, and is planning to list about 25% of its African operations on the London Stock Exchange in 2019 to help it deal with its big debts.

THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS

TONY KARUMBA/AFP

M-PESA’S IMPACT

Kenya’s telecoms and mobilemoney markets are still growing, especially with the uptake of mobile loans (see TAR103, Sept.

2018). Between April 2017 and March 2018, the mobile-money market moved a combined KSh3.5trn ($34.6bn), a KSh219bn increase from the previous year.

Safaricom’s M-Pesa platform was home to more than three-quarters of the total amount transacted.

In April 2018, former central bank governor Njuguna Ndung’u, told the Business Daily that M-Pesa “has generated a vibrant economy”. While the M-Pesa journey began the year before his tenure started, it was during his time that it became a household name.

The fight for Kenya’s lucrative telecoms market is dominated

by Safaricom and Airtel – the latter having had various incarnations as Kencell, Celtel and Zain throughout its history. While there are several smaller players, such as Telkom Kenya and Liquid Telecom, the competition is primarily between these two main players, with Safaricom the giant and Airtel the upstart.

As of 2018, Safaricom controlled 90% of revenue in the traditional telcom markets of voice calls and text messages.

It has 29.5 million subscribers: at least 20 million more than Airtel Kenya. In a country with an estimated population of 51 million people, Safaricom is in the lives of more than half of the country’s citizens. But most consumers have more than one SIM-card, as one cellphone-user explained during a lunch break in mid-October: “I have both so whenever one lowers prices, I

76 DOSSIER | TELECOMS

THREATS TO LEAVE

Airtel Kenya has wrested some more market share (see table) as the unit bleeds the mother ship.

It has changed strategy and chief executives several times. In 2015, its managing director at the time, Adil El Youssefi, threatened that the company would quit Kenya if the government did not intervene and solve the problem of

Safaricom’s dominance of the market. “We’ve been trying for over five years,” El Youseffi told the Business Daily, “We’ve lost over KSh50bn ($495m) and not made even a single dollar in profit.” El Youssefi eventually left to head yet another of Safaricom’s competitors, Liquid Telecom, but his successor at Airtel Kenya took up the same fight.

In February 2017, the Com­ munications Authority of Kenya debated a report it had commissioned from the consultants at Analysys Mason about competition in the telecoms sector.

The report recommended that Safaricom should be divided into two: a telecoms company and a mobile-money company.

M-Pesa’s rapid growth has been Safaricom’s ticket to success (see graph). The mobile-money platform has given a mere telecoms company a commanding role in the new ecosystem that links telecommunications and the financial industry. By offering such a compelling service – money transfers, payments and now deeper banking services – it

66% Increase in tax on mobile money introduced in September’s budget, from 12% to 20% SOURCE: KENYAN TREASURY

SAFARICOM REVENUE - Income statement - million KSh Voice revenue 84,316

M-Pesa revenue

87,368

Mobile data revenue 93,459

90,802

55,084 26,561

SOURCES: STRATEGY ANALYTICS, KENYA BUREAU OF STATISTICS, SAFARICOM

use that one, and then switch as they fight on price.”

Airtel Kenya’s attempts to innovate in Kenya have not all been successful. For example, it launched the farmer-focused Airtel Kilimo in 2013 with the hope of signing up 200,000 customers by the middle of 2014 for a service that provides weather information, advice and market prices.

Only slightly more than 20,000 had subscribed by December 2014, according to a study by the GSM Association.

Telecoms engineer Prasanta Das Sarma has been running Airtel Kenya since February 2017. He has been looking to replicate the success of Airtel Bangladesh’s major growth in customer numbers.

In its eight years of operation, Airtel Kenya has never made a profit, despite the growth of the telecoms and mobile-money markets. The company has tried to grow through acquisitions. It bought yuMobile’s Kenyan customer base of 2.5 million subscribers in 2014, while Safaricom purchased yuMobile’s Kenyan infrastructure. In early 2018 Airtel Kenya executives were in talks to acquire Telkom Kenya, which has a subscriber base of about four million, but those negotiations fell through.

Airtel Africa, the continental subsidiary within which Airtel Kenya operates, has only begun reporting positive margins recently, with its profits for the first quarter of 2018 tripling to $154.2m from $57.5m the last quarter of 2017. Airtel Africa was said to be considering selling some of its assets after a prolonged period with no positive returns, but managementhasnowdeniedthat.

9,314 FY14

32,626

95,639 62,907

41,500 21,154

29,328

FY16

FY17

36,357

14,823 FY15

FY18

AVERAGE SELLING PRICE OF A SMARTPHONE Kenya

$211

2012 2017

$115

AVERAGE PRICE OF A ONE-MINUTE LOCAL MOBILE-TO-MOBILE CALL KSh3.86

2013 2017

KSh3

has made Safaricom’s offer more ‘sticky’, in marketing jargon.

But the Analysys Mason report says that unless all existing mobile-money players in Kenya can interoperate, then Safaricom’s current position is dominant and unfair to other players. Earlier this year, a platform-level inter­ operability system linking M-Pesa and Airtel Money, Airtel Kenya’s mobile-money service, was launched in an effort to solve the problem. The question remains of how exactly the government can intervene without hurting Safaricom’s revenue or a core part of the economy.

LEGISLATORS DON’T LISTEN

In mid-2018, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya put up a united front before the national assembly, which had invited senior executives of all the telecom companies to appear before the information and communications technology (ICT) committee.

During the audience, ICT committee chairman William Kipsang took Airtel Kenya’s chief executive, Prasanta Das Sarma, and executives from other companies to task. “Why would you want parliament to punish success when one player is doing better than the rest of the telecommunications firms?,” he asked.

In a document submitted by Airtel Kenya to the national assembly, the company demanded that the government act on the recommendations of the Analysys Mason report. It said either the government declare Safaricom dominant or it must fully implement mobile-money interoperability.

The challenge proved to be an uphill struggle, partly because Safaricom is a partially government-owned company while the other five players are owned by foreign companies. Safaricom is currently majority-owned by the Kenyan government and Vodacom of South Africa, with a quarter of the company owned by the public. The laissez-faire approach to regulation has given Safaricom the chance to grow into the most valuable company

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TELECOMS | DOSSIER 77

-$59.5m (2017)

$554m (year ending 31 March 2018)

Subscribers (March 2018)

8.7m

29.5m

Market share (June 2018)

21.4%

65.4%

Market share (FY2016/2017)

15.4%

72.6%

Mobile-money transactions (April-June 2018)

KSh1.3bn ($12.9m)

KSh1.5trn ($14.9bn)

Mobile-money accounts (June 2018)

3.6m

23.9m

Mobile-money agents (June 2018)

24,533

159,726

Cost of 15GB data bundle

KSh1,500 ($14.9)

KSh2,000 ($19.8)

Cost of one-minute call

KSh2 ($0.02)

KSh4 ($0.04)

in the East and Central African regions while its competitors have continuously struggled.

Safaricom has also been more stable than its competitors, having only had two chief executives in its 18-year history. A period of prolonged growth was weakened somewhat by Collymore’s long medical sojourn. His return should re-invigorate the brand.

The question of whether Airtel will eventually make money in Kenya is difficult to answer, as the East African country enters a period of austerity and possible changes within its economy and politics. The Nairobi government is unlikely to declare one of its best assets and a significant source of revenue dominant.

The Safaricom brand has become a part of the Kenyan state, especially under the tenure of President Uhuru Kenyatta. In 2017, for example, it was revealed that the treasury paid Safaricom KSh7.5bn to install closed-circuit TV cameras and networks in Nairobi and Mombasa. The THE AFRICA REPORT

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system runs on the 4G+ spectrum, whose assignment to only Safaricom in 2015 was a trigger for Airtel Kenya’s chief executive’s threat that the Indian company would exit Kenya.

But Airtel Kenya could still seek other means to achieve

“If customers are happy, they do not mind spending more time on your network using your services ”

“I didn’t get the sense from the committee that they are looking to cut Safaricom down to size ”

Airtel Kenya’s Prasanta Das Sarma explains the rationale for its cuts to call prices.

Safaricom’s Bob Collymore on the parliamentary hearings in August ugust 2018 2018.

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RICCARDO SAVI/GETTY IMAGES FOR CONCORDIA SUMMIT/AFP

Profit/Loss

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SOURCE: AIRTEL, SAFARICOM, COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY OF KENYA

Profits, prices and market share

the same result, such as using the courts to get anti-trust laws implemented. After eight years without positive results, it is also possible that Bharti Airtel could choose to quit Kenya, and perhaps other African markets where it has been bleeding money.

For the sector as a whole, lower prices are likely to hurt profit margins as consumers become more price-wary, with increased taxes on mobile money, data and airtime. In September, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government increased taxes on mobile-money activity from 12% to 20%, while excise duty on airtime went up from 10% to 15%. In the budget proposal, treasury cabinet secretary Henry Rotich said the increased revenue would be used to fund the universal healthcare budget.

While the two main telcos are financial behemoths that can survive, their prolonged fight for market share is peaking at a time of economic uncertainty. They are unlikely to stop and sue for peace, though the government could be forced to implement the interoperability system fully in a bid to reduce tensions. But, stuck in an expensive war of attrition, the companies may be missing opportunities to innovate.

Mobile money launched more than 10 years ago – will the next breakthrough happen in Kenya or someplace else?

78 DOSSIER | TELECOMS

SOUTH AFRICA

Consumers care less about tax scandals than good service

TOM SAATER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Helios Towers on the hunt

NIGERIA

The MTN muddle

INFRASTRUCTURE

Liquid Telecom links Cape to Cairo

The central bank’s demand for an $8.1bn refund from the telecoms giant threatens wider repercussions

J

ust when the dust was settling and MTN was starting to pick up the pieces after its $1bn fine in 2016, the Nigeria subsidiary of the Johannesburgbased telecom giant yet again finds itself in a face-off with the Nigerian government. This dispute relates to the illegal repatriation of $8.1bn to South Africa between 2007 and 2015.

The string of woes and the specific targeting of MTN, a foreign entity once viewed as a model corporate citizen, is bound to dent Nigeria’s business climate. It may scare off potential investors at a time when the February 2019 elections are fast approaching and the economy is still reeling from the 2016 recession.

The current dispute, which also includes a claim for more than $2bn owed in taxes, sent MTN’s stock tumbling to its lowest level since 2009, wiping at least 36% off its market value.

MTN, Africa’s largest wireless carrier, has rejected both of the government’s claims and in September, sought an injunction to protect its assets. As The Africa Report went to press, the

36% Fall in value of MTN stock on the JSE between 28 August and 12 September SOURCE: JSE

After ditching its plans to launch an IPO in London earlier this year to raise funds for network expansion, Helios Towers is in talks with potential partners to enter the South Africa market, where only 10% of 30,000 towers are operated by independent tower companies.

The move is in preparation for a stock-market listing, which CEO Kash Pandya said could take place “as soon as the second half of 2019, depending on market conditions”.

decision by the Federal High Court was still pending.

MTN Nigeria’s long-delayed initial public offering, which was part of the 2016 settlement, now hangs in the balance. Despite renewing MTN’s commitment to listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), MTN spokesperson Mimi Kalinda said these latest events would “potentially make it complicated” for it to happen.

This is not good news for the NSE, which could use a major boost. In September, the equities market lost a total of N624.4bn ($17bn), with a year-to-date loss of about 16%. The industrial, banking and oil and gas sectors were hit the hardest.

With nearly 60 million customers in Nigeria, MTN remains very popular. Nigeria is MTN’s biggest African market, and company leaders are confident they will weather this storm. The carrier bagged the highest number of awards, five in total, at the Nigeria Tech Innovation & Telecom Awards in Lagos last month, including Telecom Company of the Year and Telcom CEO of theYear.

Oheneba Ama Nti Osei

In September, Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless Global, announced that its 10,000km Cape-to-Cairo broadband land link, part of its ‘One Africa’ broadband vision, is now live. The link runs through 13 countries, with nine connected by Liquid Telecom and the remaining four serviced by partners. CEO Reshaad Sha predicts the network will reinvigorate pan-African trade.

DISPUTE

Unitel Angola’s battles The International Court of Arbitration in Paris is expected to settle an ongoing lawsuit initiated by Portugal Telecom Ventures (PTV) in 2015 against the Angolan investors in Unitel led by Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former president José Eduardo dos Santos. PTV, acquired

by Brazilian telecom giant Oi and which holds 25% of Unitel, is suing for more than $600m in losses incurred from a $315m loan it provided to Dos Santos.

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80 DOSSIER | TELECOMS

Sacha Poignonnec Co-CEO, Jumia

ANTOINE DOYEN/LEEMAGE

Conditions were difficult for us in Nigeria The co-founder of Africa’s first tech unicorn, e-commerce group Jumia, talks about the need for patience, diversification and a strong consumer focus to win in the online world

I

nvestors in African e-commerce have to be prepared for short-term pain in order to make long-term gains. And 2017 was a rough year, with Nigerian online retailer Konga sacking two-thirds of its workforce and its Africa-focused rival Jumia reporting net working capital of negative €10.2m ($11.8m) and a big drop in earnings.

“For sure, the macroeconomic conditions were difficult for us in Nigeria, and the ones who have suffered the most are the sellers,” Franco-Canadian Sacha Poignonnec tells The Africa Report. “We built Jumia with the goal to give a platform for sellers to distribute their physical goods and services as well to the consumers, and we have 40,000 active vendors on the platform across Africa. And all of them are African businesses.”

GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD

Poignonnec believes that, for all the volatility, Jumia’s plans remain sound: “It’s a proven business.

It’s an irreversible trend that consumers buy online.”

Buoyed by the success of Amazon in the US and Alibaba in China, investors are keen to be a part of a future African e-commerce story. Beyond that, Poignonnec argues that Jumia’s geographical diversification ensures that investors have kept faith and prevented the company

story from playing out in the same way as Konga.

“A lot of time you meet investors who want to invest in Africa, but it’s difficult because a lot of companies are mono-country.

And they are exposed to only one or two geographies,” he says, pointing to the 23 countries Jumia is now active in. “On Jumia you have a lot of different physical goods which touch a lot of different needs from the consumers, and we have, of course, all those

“It’s a proven business.

It’s an irreversible trend that consumers buy online” online services around travel, restaurants, car classifieds, realestate classifieds.”

Another differentiating factor is Jumia’s strategic investors: Orange, MTN and Millicom – telecom companies from France, South Africa and Luxembourg, respectively – and Axa, the French insurance giant. This allows for joint commercial operations bringing together different consumer bases. Axa insurance products, for example, are already available on Jumia’s sites.

“It makes us stronger andmakes them stronger,” says Poignonnec, who wants to lean on their experience. “The telco industry in Africa did not exist 20 or 25 years ago,

just like the e-commerce industry did not exist six years ago,” he adds. “In a way, what is happening today with e-commerce is a repeat of the history – an adoption of a new service.”

ALL-IN-ONE APP

All that glitters is not gold, however. The financial technology revolution in Africa is “probably more blog articles” than an actual revolution, says Poignonnec. “It’s one thing to say I’m creating a wallet, but what’s the value for the consumer?” Nonetheless, Jumia has created the Jumia One app to allow customers to recharge airtime, pay utility bills and even make donations to religious bodies and charities.

Poignonnec is a former employee of disgraced audit company Arthur Andersen – which went out of business after playing a role in the Enron scandal in 2002. So he has some perspective. “It was the most respected audit firm in the world, and in six months it was gone,” he says. “It really is a big lesson for me because I realised that nothing is forever.”

So if Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos knocked on Jumia’s door with an offer they could not refuse?

“I’d be very proud that they take the time to travel to us and see it.

Certainly we would have to think about it,” says Poignonnec.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

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ADVERTORIAL

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To address these deficits, the African Heads of State and Government adopted the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) in January 2012 as the strategic infrastructure framework on the continent. PIDA improves energy supply, regional transport corridors, internet connectivity as well as trans-boundary water management and thus is a key driver for socio-economic development and intra-African trade. On the continental level, the Commission of the African Union (AUC) is responsible for the political steering of PIDA whilst the NEPAD Agency facilitates the technical implementation.

The first Priority Action Plan (PIDA-PAP 1: 2012-2020) comprises more than 400 infrastructure projects, out of which more than a third are already operational or under construction. AUC and its partners are currently starting the process to develop the PIDA-PAP 2 (2020-2030) which defines the infrastructure priorities of the next decade to pave the way for an integrated, industrialized and service-oriented Africa. In its new phase, the GIZ “Support-to-PIDA”-Program supports the AUC and the NEPAD Agency with the promotion of regional infrastructure development by designing an integrated, employment-oriented and gender-sensitive corridor approach as the conceptual basis for future infrastructure development; by supporting a consultative and systematic process to define African infrastructure priorities in the PIDA-PAP 2; by attracting private sector resources for African infrastructure development; and by improving the quality of (early-stage) project preparation. GIZ is now searching for a senior expert to support AUC with the political and strategic steering of these processes as the so-called PIDA Coordinator.

More information on PIDA can be found on www.au-pida.org.

Your tasks: The PIDA Coordinator, seconded to the Department for Infrastructure and Energy at AUC (AUC-DIE), will be responsible for the overall coordination of the PIDA-process with a focus on the following tasks • • • • • • • •

Coordinate on PIDA/infrastructure matters with key stakeholders (esp. within AUC, with the NEPAD Agency, the Regional Economic Communities, the AU Member States, the African Development Bank and other PIDA financiers, the civil society, the private sector) Facilitate the high-level political process of the development of the PIDA-PAP 2 to agree upon Africa's infrastructure priorities of the next decade Advise AUC-DIE on improved development of regional infrastructure on the continent and conduct respective actions to implement recommendations Coordinate PIDA communication activities to increase visibility and awareness on infrastructure/PIDA matters and projects Facilitate Member States and partner coordination around PIDA and regional infrastructure matters Prepare and manage related PIDA consultancies, e.g. on the development of the integrated corridor approach Support AUC-DIE Director with PIDA project management related activities, e.g. management of PIDA Unit at AUC-DIE, budget formulation, impact monitoring and reporting Follow-up and report on implementation of joint AUC-NEPAD-GIZ objectives with respect to PIDA

Your profile: • • • • • • • • • • •

At least a Masters’ degree in political science, economics, engineering or another relevant academic field Longstanding work experience in infrastructure development in Africa Work experience in financing infrastructure projects Proven track record of the coordination and facilitation of high-level political processes on the African continent Many years of work experience in international organizations; work experience within AU institutions as a clear advantage Excellent written and verbal communications skills Excellent mastery of English and French Strong computer skills (Microsoft Office, internet research, social media, other digital tools) Profound communication skills; political sensitivity, experience and diplomatic skills when interacting with political decision-makers Intercultural competence and sensitivity, conceptual and process-oriented thinking Proven organizational, coordination and leadership competency

If we caught your interest, we are looking forward to your application until 11/11/2018.

For further information: www.giz.de/jobs. You can find this job under the Job-ID P1281V071.

82

Freefall and

The sixth edition of the 1-54 contemporary African art fair in London chimed with the zeitgeist, bringing critical engagement to the fore

By Dele Meiji in London

SOMETIMES, IT’S EASY TO FORGET that 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair is indeed a fair, with a principal function of buying and selling art. Such is its power as a space for London’s African cognoscenti to meet. Six years in, and it is now an established feature on London’s cultural calendar, with the neo-classical building of Somerset

House an ideal setting for the milling about and contemplation of art.

This year’s fair had 43 galleries from countries across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America, representing 130 artists. Amongst the African galleries, South Africa was most noticeably represented, and apart from the usual suspects – Nigeria and South Africa – artists from Ethiopia, Angola, Morocco and Tunisia also made a good

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futures showing; on the whole the full range of the continent was broadly represented.

In contrast to the frenzy of Frieze, the central event of London’s art season, 1-54 is a more serene affair; that serenity is achieved through judicious curation, which has established the fair as a space where discerning interest in African art is met with an intelligent engagement with the preoccupations of the continent and a global elite interested in its art.

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Underscoring the fair’s attunement with the zeitgeist, Forum, its programme of talks and performances, was devised

by Ghanaian-British writer and curator Ekow Eshun, engaging with the motif of Freefall to interrogate ideas of blackness. As Eshun writes in his introduction: ‘Presently we are living in a period of overt hostility to ideas of multiculturalism and cultural hybridity […] it is with this historical and artistic

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ANDY STAGG PHOTOGRAPHY

Wura-Natasha Ogunji, The Proof, an Undersea Volcano, attraction, extraction, distraction 2018, 50 Golborne

reference in mind that Forum adopts Freefall as its starting point.’

In contrast to the theme of the talks, the centrepiece sculpture of this year’s fair, Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Meditation Tree, solidly occupied the central forecourt of Somerset House. Perhaps because of London’s grey weather it had a less than striking visual effect, though the artistry of the Sudanese old master’s foray into sculpture was not to be denied.

Despite the overall aim of selling, the fair was not short of visually arresting and provocative art. The delicacy and aesthetic primacy of the work of artists such as Wura-Natasha Ogunji (Nigeria/ US), Lakin Ogunbanwo (Nigeria), Mario Macilau (Mozambique), Adel El Siwi (Egypt) and Omar Victor Diop (Senegal) benefited from the architecture of the

84 ART & LIFE

rooms at Somerset House. A notable booth came from 50 Golborne (London), a gallery that is carving a strong niche representing artists whose work straddles a fine line between the ephemeral and the permanent.

CONFRONTING RACISM

The work of South African artist Anton Kannemeyer, represented by Huberty Breynegallery and exploring racialtropes with high-wire illustrations that subvert racist images, was certainly a bold choice to present in a global centre fraught with conversations about race and identity.

Identity and its permutations, both complex and ridiculous, are also a theme for South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga, whose first major solo exhibition in the UK is hosted at Somerset House in partnership with 1-54. Entitled Of Gods, Rainbows and Omissions and bringing together three seminal bodies of work, the exhibition continues until 7 January.

This was one of an expansive number of special projects, exploring a wide range of ideas, from timelessness in the works of El-Salahi to African political disunity

Tiwani Contemporary

and diasporic Africa’s religious experience in the works of British-Ghanaian Larry Achiampong. These noticeably bold and exploratory projects are inching towards what feels like a logical extension of the energy 1-54 has brought to African art globally: the possibility of a London based, Africa-focused biennale, though that is not the stated aim.

Introducing this year’s fair, which is dedicatedtothememoryofherfather,the Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui, Touria El Glaoui writes that for this edition she was‘moved to reflectmore intentlyonthe future of contemporary art of Africa, its diasporaandbeyond. NotsomuchwhatI envisage the future to look like, but rather how 1-54 can better support practices of futuring. Constructing the future(s) is an endless pursuit that requires a measure

of radical “make believe” … with each 1-54 edition we are collectively building possible futures that resonate with Africa and its diaspora, as there was a time when prevailing notions of the future did not embrace African contributions.’

With 1-54 expanding rapidly, and the second of its Moroccan editions scheduled for early 2019, El Glaoui’s distinct interpretationofthepresentandfuturefor African art will surely be embraced by all those who wish Africa’s art market well.

Ibrahim El-Salahi

Tyburn Gallery

Meditation Tree - 2018 Vigo Gallery

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Porcupine - 2015 October Gallery

Dalila Dalléas Bouzar

Autoportrait #1 - 2018 Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

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Woman in Red Dress - 2018 Circle Art Gallery THE AFRICA REPORT

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ART & LIFE 85

S Cissé Soly

L Initiés - 2017 Les S Sulger-Buel L Lovell Gallery

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Miss Azania 2019 - 2015 (until 7 January 2019)

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Yinka Shonibare MBE

Derrick Adams

Figure Walking Into The Light - 2018 Galerie Anne de Villepoix THE AFRICA REPORT

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Material I - 2017 James Cohan Gallery

CHRISTOPHE CHAUVIN AND NICOLAS MICHEL FOR JA

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86 ART & LIFE

Football Ready or not, here we come

With the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations just months away, hosts, Cameroon, face pressure to ensure a successful tournament on and off the pitch

T

he circular-shaped Paul Biya Stadium is visible the moment you drive into the moderately populated Olembe neighbourhood in Yaoundé via the Yaoundé-Obala highway. Though the lone road leading to the site was recently tarred, it is often dusty or sometimes covered in mud from the hundreds of trucks ferrying equipment and materials to and fro the construction site.

The stadium looms over a block of newly erected low-cost houses. Their

inhabitants live with the noise of the heavy machinery that toils day and night to complete the arena for the opening and final games of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). With less than eight months to the competition there are real concerns that Cameroon will not be able to pull it off.

It is not entirely the failing of the Central African nation though.

Three years into its preparations, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) decided, in a meeting in Morocco, to

adopt the resolutions of the first-ever African Football Symposium and increase the number of participating teams at the AFCON from 16 to 24.

While these changes are not necessarily misguided, the time frame provided little wiggle room for the hosts, who had to commit, on the fly, to two more stadiums – not to mention more hotels – with less than two years’ notice.

Being required to produce more bricks with the same amount of straw has raised the existential question of what the point of it all is. Hosting major tournaments has always been a double-edged sword; the tourism potential seems a very miniscule gain compared to the huge losses incurred, especially in terms of finance and infrastructural development.

Very few African nations have a yearround demand for multiple stadiums.

Neighbouring nations Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have, between them, hosted three of the past four tournaments, building six new stadiums in the process, two of which have since been completely abandoned. In the context of the economic and socio-political issues

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GRUPPO PICCINI S.A.

The $29bn Paul Biya Stadium photographed on 6 September

currently afflicting the Central African nation, can the similar waste of millions of dollars really be justified?

In the past year Cameroon has been gripped by violence after civilian protests in the country’s Anglophone minority region were met with military retaliation. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), between 160,000 and 200,000 people have fled their homes in the volatile South-west and North-west regions to other parts of the country since late last year, in addition to at least

Then, in 2017, Gabon stepped in to 21,000 who have fled into Nigeria. The replace war-torn Libya as host. unrest encompasses Buea and Limbe, two cities that will host teams and games “He [President Biya] is a dictator who for the continental tournament, and that wants to extend his 36-year rule but canhas created its own concerns. not provide safety, education, hospitals and jobs for his people,” says Puleru.

“We are under fire and siege, yet the There have been sanctions in the rest of the world keeps ignoring us,” says school teacher *Patrick Puleru who past for prospective hosts pulling out lives in Muea, a neighbourhood in Buea. at the last moment – most recently “Gunshots everywhere and you’re talkMorocco in 2015 – which would cause ing about a meaningless football event. a disastrous blow to national pride as No one here is interested. You can never the Indomitable Lions are in line to put football before lives in the Anglophone area.”

Equatorial Guinea and Gabon built The general sense of six new stadiums, two of which danger and apathy is have since been abandoned compounded by the fact that, with months to kick off, there are major worries in Cameroon defend their AFCON crown, following about the facilities, especially the their triumph in 2017. However, all is 60,000-seater Paul Biya Stadium. The not as rosy on the footballing side of readiness of the 50,000-seater Japoma things as that victory 18 months ago stadiuminDoualaandtheStadeRoumdé might suggest.

Adjia in Garoua is also up in the air.

The Cameroon Football Federation (FECAFOOT)ispresentlybeingoverseen DETERMINED TO HOST by a FIFA Normalisation Committee, the In spite of this, and the slow pace of second such intervention in a four-year work, the leadership of the CAF has – span, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport annulled the 2015 election of outwardly, at least – remained steadfast in its insistence on Cameroon, as has Tombi Sidiki as president of FECAFOOT. This sense of crisis and mayhem is rethe tournament’s organising committee. flected somewhat in the decision to “The debate on the withdrawal or not of this competition does not concern appoint Clarence Seedorf as coach of the local organising committee,” says the national side without recourse to Jean Baptiste Biaye, a member of the an interview (see box). committee. “Cameroon is determined For *Ambers Gregory, a football fan to host the tournament in its new format in Mbingo in the North-west region, and to fully comply with the terms of the political situation gives hosting the reference of CAF.” AFCON a bitter taste. He predicts it will grant the country’s president Paul Biya Critics suggest that this determination the international PR he craves: “He’s is reinforced by the desire of Cameroon’s ordering our silence and oppressing president, Paul Biya, to launder his battered image. It would not be the first us on a daily basis,” said Gregory. “The time: Equatorial Guinea’s leader Teodoro government wants to play football with our lives; staying alive is not a game.”

Obiang Nguema Mbasoga did the same Oluwashina Okeleji in Yaoundé in 2015, stepping in to host the AFCON after Moroccodemanded postponement *Real names have not been used. because of the Ebola virus in West Africa.

HAVING BEEN FIRED in his two previous high-profile jobs, at AC Milan and Deportivo La Coruña, the legendary Dutch international Clarence Seedorf seems to not be familiar with the saying ‘the man whose kernels THE AFRICA REPORT

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have been cracked by a benevolent spirit ought to remain humble’. Since being appointed coach of the national team in August, Seedorf has wasted no time courting controversy, ostracising a number

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of key players, including captain Benjamin Moukandjo and Christian Bassogog by turning his nose up at those plying their trade in China.

Seedorf’s missed grasp on the reality of African football

is almost a metaphor for how badly an entire nation is handling its shot at relevance, and how the CAF itself is sticking its head in the sand in expecting miracles to be wrought within such a small, tight window.

O.O.

CABALAR/EPA/MAXPPP

Seedorf sets out on the wrong foot

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A MAXGo customer gets ready to roll

Bongeziwe Mabandla

MAX.NG

With music that seeps into ones veins like a magic potion, the melancholic South African folk musician is touring with his album Mangaliso

TREND HUNTER DIGITAL OKADAS GET LAGOS OUT OF A JAM

What are you listening to right now?

I mostly listen to the new songs I’m working on. I just did a song with David Scott and it’s a real jam. I listen to it all the time. I can’t wait till it’s out. I have always had ideas and wanted to experiment with dance music and I finally got the chance with this song.

Which artist would you like to collaborate with?

At the moment it would have to be Petite Noir, Zoe and Samthing Soweto. I really love what they are doing. I also love their vibe and how beautifully down-to-earth they are.

Favourite place you have performed in?

Favourite has to be at home in front of the mirror. I mean, the shows I have done there have been some of my best.

I want to one day perform at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and Glastonbury Festival.

If your next album were to be a different genre, what genre would it be?

Hip hop.

What other sounds, besides music, do you like to hear?

The ocean, rural landscapes, babies’ laughter.

How do you get around Johannesburg?

I mainly use Uber.

I don’t know how to drive yet but I think it’s time I did. Uber’s great but I think I would prefer to drive alone. In fact this has been on my mind.

Interview by Lidudmalingani

LUKE BELL DOMAN

Favourite place you would like to perform at?

For years, the fastest way to move across Lagos’s notoriously congested city centre was to do so by okada. Zipping across the city, these motorcycle taxis would quickly, and often precariously, carry passengers from one destination to the next. But in 2012 they were banned across major Lagos roads for safety concerns, and confined to short journeys in a given neighbourhood.

Now, okadas are back and they are digital!

Companies tapping into the global ride-hailing economy have also addressed the safety issues. The drivers are trained and tested; both driver and passenger wear helmets; and the bikes have engine capacities of 200cc and above, meeting government standards for load-bearing on major roads.

“As at 2016, Lagos was growing at an average of 85 people per hour,” says Chinedu Azodoh co-founder of one new mobile app, MAXGo, which launched in 2017. “The infrastructure development is not keeping up. Roads are being built and rehabilitated but not anywhere near the required rate to meet the market demand.”

MAXGo has seen an increased adoption of its motorcycle taxi services, recording several hundred trips ordered on the app daily. It has also spurred competition from the likes of Gokada – another two-wheel ridehailing service which, in the last year, has expanded from Lagos Mainland to the Island.

With their extra safety measures, swerving through traffic and slithering through tight spaces, these two-wheel rides are cheaper than taxis, but more expensive than the often rickety and slow yellow danfo buses that dot Lagos roads.

Emeka Nwankwo in Lagos THE AFRICA REPORT

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Guédiawaye Pikine Dakar Rufisque Atlantic Ocean

sunday

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Dakar dreaming friday

3:00 PM

9:00 AM

Start the day with breakfast at Layu Café (2), one-half of a bohemian clothing and accessories store. Or, for a fuller, more affordable option, step out into the streets. In true francophone fashion everything comes with bread: grab a baguette with fries and yassa (thick stewed onion sauce).

1:00 PM

Senegal is home to the world-famous thieboudienne, a dish that reappears all along the West African coast as jollof rice. The Prestige Miam Miam in Ouakam serves it as a great lunch option with grilled or pan-fried fish that will set your palate alight.

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Traditional folk wrestling is so beloved of the Senegalese that heavyweights of the sport are national celebrities, whose fame oftens extends to neighbouring Gambia. You can catch a tournament at the 60,000-capacity Léopold Sédar Senghor Stadium and watch contestants drive the crowd wild, with marathon bouts of drumming and rituals by marabouts part of the show. Grab some street food at the entrance, where vendors sell dibi – skewered lamb roasted on open fires.

12:00 AM

The main parties happen at the beaches, which surround Dakar on three sides. Noflaye beach in the N’Gor area is

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12:00 PM FACEBOOK

With a brand new international airport it’s even easier to spend a weekend in the de facto chill capital of West Africa

to stay for the night, dine at Chez Thio 1974 and raise a glass to the gentle sound of lapping waves.

the place to go. There are passionate DJs, happy feet, cheap cocktails and parties right next to the water that go on all night.

saturday 4:00 PM

Buy a ticket for 500 CFA francs to explore the Ile de Gorée (1); the return journey is free – just don’t miss the last boat back at 6pm. Be sure to visit the House of Slaves Museum – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – and linger at the Door of No Return, a memorial to the millions shipped off to slavery in the Americas and Europe.

Use the rest of the afternoon to wander around the island’s enchanting and nostalgic spaces, where no cars disturb the calm of the centuriesold buildings. If you do decide

Back in Dakar, on the city outskirts is Collines des Mamelles, home to the African Renaissance Monument, a 49m-tall bronze statue commissioned by former president Abdoulaye Wade to mark the half-century of Senegal’s independence in 2010. The lift to the viewing platform costs 2,700 CFA francs, but the experience at the top is glorious.

4:00 PM

Time for an early sundowner at La Mer à Table (3), for the best of Cape Verdean cocktails. It’s a decent seaside bar with a DJ dishing out Portuguese pop alongside riddims from Jamaica, Latin American reggaeton and Nigerian Afrobeats.

7:00 PM

Last chance to try another of Dakar’s mouthwatering restaurants. Praïnha Crêperie Grill in Almadies has delightful grilled fish fit for royals.

Eromo Egbejule in Dakar

LAYU CAFÉ

IN PICTURES LTD./CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

TRAVEL SENEGAL

ALL PICTURES BY LIDUDUMALINGANI MQOMBOTHI FOR TAR

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Rubber soLE Samuel Muzimbi’s makeshift stand, hung with his self-made shoes and accessories, has been a landmark in Melville, Johannesburg, for 11 years

N

obody can make enough money from the arts in Zimbabwe and that is what I wanted to do, and so in 2006 I moved to Johannesburg.

This was 12 years ago and I have not left since. I currently stay in Auckland Park with my wife, who works as a childminder. This is where I also have my workshop, Big Fish Arts, where I make my bags, belts, wallets and shoes.

I grew up in a working-class home in Chitungwiza, a small town in Harare. We call it Chi Town. I remember growing up there, playing soccer on the streets and being a naughty teenager.

I always liked to draw. I drew on everything that I could find in the house. I do not remember ever drawing at school. Then I did not even know that art was a thing that one could study. One day I went to a market in Harare and saw a man who was selling bags and wallets. When I asked him if he had made them, he told me that he did not and that these he had imported from Johannesburg in South Africa.

I was young then but I knew that I wanted to go to Johannesburg. I did not know how to make any of those things but I knew that that is what I wanted and somehow I had the inkling that I was good at it.

I have been selling my bags, belts, wallets, shoes and paintings from the same spot on 7th Street in Melville for 11 years. My brother Sheppard helps me mind the store when I have orders to make at the workshop.

I started by making belts and then moved on to wallets, shoes and bags. Everything is designed and

sewn in my workshop at home. Some of the things I sew by hand and some by machines.

A lot has changed in Melville because life changes all the time. I have seen many shops that open and close and some have stayed for as long. Peak season for the business is really unpredictable but Melville sees a lot of tourists lately so sometimes I make good money.

LONG TIME AWAY

On a perfect day, sketching the shoe and sourcing the material to make it takes about three days. Sometimes, depending on the design of the shoe, it takes me longer to source the material. On some of the shoes I use leather for the sole and then on some I use recycled motor tyres. I prefer the recycled motor tyres to normal shoe sole as it lasts and looks really beautiful.

I take orders sometimes and that pair would be made to the specification of the customer but mostly I design the shoes myself and make them however I want.

My entire family is in Chi Town. I go back at least twice a year to see Nashe and Nyasha, our children, who are staying with their grandmother. I miss them very much but I have to work. Every time I go home I always feel as if I do not belong there because I have been away for so many years.

I love Zimbabwe but I have not thought of going back to work there because the art industry is still as it was 12 years ago, non-existent.

Interview by Lidudumalingani THE AFRICA REPORT

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