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THE NEW SUDAN Hamdok and the rebirth of a nation
GHANA Akufo-Addo’s difficult second act
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CAN MACRON WOO NIGERIA? Trapped in the Sahel, France is trying to reinvent itself in anglophone Africa
EDITORIAL
WHEN THE LEVERS STOP WORKING
Ignore that man behind the curtain! So went the Wizard of Oz’s desperate command when his pretence had finally been exposed. It’s come to be a metaphor for the inflated self-regard of politicians around the world. Like the Wizard, there comes a time when they pull levers and nothing happens. For many governments, that time is now. The levers no longer work and the centre isn’t holding. It has taken the twin threats of a public health emergency and devastating economic inequities to make this picture plain to all. Some have retreated into nationalism; others into epochal pessimism. The latest report from the US National Intelligence Council, ‘Global Trends 2040’, describes the pandemic as ‘the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II’ in terms of its medical, political and security implications. As people sense that governments are losing their grip, they are mobilising in new ways. That portends, according to the US report, ‘more political volatility, erosion of democracy and expanding roles for alternative providers of governance’. It all adds up to an era of heightened competition between systems of governance and a ‘growing mismatch between what publics need and expect
and what governments can and will deliver’. Although these warnings are in the public domain, national leaders and international bureaucrats haven’t got the message. Public health is an area where starting with the grassroots works so much better than top-down policies. Africa’s experience in dealing with epidemics, especially Ebola, river blindness and Guinea worm, shows the key importance of local initiative. That works for prevention and sounding alarms, as well as organising treatment. Vital intelligence about health crises often comes from farmers in remote areas. It depends on trust. National and international resources are needed to manufacture vaccines and protective equipment, but they require well-informed and credible local groups to distribute them. Such life lessons from the pandemic offer a counter to forecasts of ineluctable descent into authoritarianism or government breakdown. Parallels for education, economic and development policy are obvious. Our new digital networks are joining up grassroots organisations across the globe, sharing expertise and building solidarity. Sending resources to local initiatives, especially those run by women, creates more wealth, more jobs and spreads knowledge. Widely shared warnings of global food shortages should concentrate thinking and funds on the local. None of this is to diminish the importance of getting international accords on corporate taxation, the global distribution of vaccines, or the transfer of allocations of the IMF’s reserve currency to developing economies. Those are necessary conditions for progress, but they are far from sufficient. National governments have to ratchet down the hubris. Admitting the levers don’t work is a good first step. Devolving far more resources and power to the regions and the grassroots is the next stage.
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER R 2021
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#116 / July, August, September 2021 THE AFRICA REPORT 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
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03 EDITORIAL 06 MAILBAG 08 OBITUARY / Béchir Ben Yahmed 10 COFFEE WITH THE AFRICA REPORT / Salim Saleh 12 OPINION 15 Q3 / July, August, September
48 DRC FOCUS President Tshisekedi has finally taken charge by sidelining former president Kabila. A look at his allies and his chances of succeeding with some of his key policies.
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28 INTERVIEW / Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame He talks about the country’s complicated relationship with France and neighbours in East and Central Africa. And he answers questions about freedom and the role of his family.
34 WIDE ANGLE / Sudan’s New Dawn Diplomatic and debt-relief deals are creating new opportunities for the transitional government, which has tough challenges on the security and economic fronts.
40 WIDE ANGLE / Akufo-Addo’s second-term test Political and economic obstacles stand in the way of the flagship policies of Ghana’s President, who was re-elected in December 2020.
92 NIGERIA/ FRANCE INSIGHT
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FRANCE IS A SPONSORING LOOTING AND TERRORISM
The French are always found in any African country suffering from criminal ruling cliques, terrorism, theft of natural resources and misery. This is not a coincidence. African states and world powers must kick France out of Africa totally. French support for regimes in West and Central Africa is devastating for security, peace and development in many countries. Tarig Anter
COPY AND PASTE
Alas, in many cases entrepreneurship teaching in developing countries merely copies the entrepreneurship teaching from the West. It doesn’t take into account the cultural and institutional differences between Africa and the West. In 2020 I published a book, Cross-cultural entrepreneurship and social transformation: innovative capacity in the Global South. Some
TANZANIA TURNS A PAGE
Tanzania’s late president John Magufuli laid a new foundation: one can clearly see the change in most public sectors, eg. health and government institutions. It will be much easier for President Samia Suluhu Hassan to take over as this foundation was laid. Suluhu, being a woman, may bring compassion and circumspection, which will spear the nation to a new direction. As a nation, we expect to keep the momentum going and support the new regime from Zanzibar to the mainland since our new leaders could bring a totally different Tanzania. Queen Uroki, Banker
important points: on the level of business culture/ management style there are many problems with entrepreneurial capacity: lack of customer orientation, lack of planning, overly hierarchical management. At the level of cooperation/competition between businesses there is lack of trust and a high dependency on vertical networks: important people at the top that may obstruct the business and/or grant privileges in return for favours. At the government bureaucracy level these vertical
networks cause institutional voids, lack of regulation and lack of policies that are conducive to entrepreneurship. Otto Kroesen
AFRICA’S BANKS AND ENTREPRENEURS African banks are more focused on collecting saving monies to invest and get profit from mutual insurance funds than on assisting entrepreneurs. You do all the work and when your turnover is huge, you see them coming to you. They have never
anticipated the growth of SMEs. In fact they don’t want Africa to build a strong industrial sector. That’s why you see microfinance banks holding billions dollars and reinvesting them in Europe or North America. As an entrepreneur myself and managing my own company since 2007, I don’t rely on them for the growth of my company. Our assistance and networks always come from outside the African continent. Martial Harryson Ohomon Managing director, OTC
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THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
FEATURES /
Akufo-Addo’s PROFILE
second-term test 40
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
Akufo-Addo is more popular than the NPP party he leads
FRANCIS KOKOROKO/REUTERS
Having scraped through with 51.3% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election, Nana Akufo-Addo faces a hung parliament, falling export revenues and mounting debt as he tries to push through his cherished policies By JONAS NYABOR in Accra and PATRICK SMITH
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
41
FEATURES / PROFILE / Akufo-Addo’s second-term test
S
Striding across the political scene for four decades, Nana Akufo-Addo was once seen as a rebel – a Nkrumaist at university and an anti-corruption and pro-democracy activist in the era of Jerry Rawlings and the Provisional National Defence Council. Now he has emerged as an ideal-type pragmatist with two presidential election victories under his belt. The enthusiasms for leftism and Nkrumaism are long gone. Akufo-Addo’s father, Edward, was one of Ghana’s founding fathers and followed Kwame Nkrumah as president. Today, his son embodies the Danquah-Busia tradition on the right of Ghana’s spectrum. Akufo-Addo and Rawlings reconciled comprehensively, long before the latter’s sudden illness and death last year. Rawlings, despite founding the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which is now in opposition, became one of Akufo-Addo’s strongest supporters. This was based more on personal chemistry than ideology, and was reinforced by Rawlings’s falling out with John Mahama, the NDC’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections. It has worked out politically. Akufo-Addo has been consistently more popular than his party – the New Patriotic Party (NPP), often criticised as elitist and detached from popular concerns. That has spared him the flak for some of the NPP government’s most unpopular moves: such as its botched attempt to privatise part of the state electricity company, or
42
the plan to float a gold royalties company, Agyapa, in London and Jersey. When the Agyapa plan hit a wave of hostility from civil society, the opposition NDC and the government’s own special prosecutor, it was Akufo-Addo who brokered a compromise, announcing that the plan to float the company would be deferred until after last December’s presidential elections. That election changed Akufo-Addo’s political fortunes. He won the presidency against the NDC’s Mahama but with an official 51.3% of the vote – a much slimmer margin than his landslide in 2016. A bigger problem for him is that the NPP and the NDC tied for control of parliament. The NDC gained 31 new seats and the NPP lost 32. Each party has 137 seats in the 275seat parliament. The balance of power is with an independent member of parliament. A self-described “man in a hurry”, AkufoAddo has to keep 100% loyalty in the NPP caucus and try to win over some votes from the opposition benches to push through some of his cherished policies. Without that, there is a danger that his second term could be brought low by a combination of economic downturn, mounting debts and protests by frustrated young people.
A new protest movement
Early this year, a group of young activists formed the ‘Fix Ghana’ coalition, a group that resembles the Red Friday movement that marched against corruption and unemployment under Mahama’s government in 2014 and 2015. Mobilising trade unionists, students and civic activists, Red Friday contributed to the defeat of Mahama in the 2016 elections. That might explain the panicked reaction by the NPP government to the ‘Fix Ghana’ crowds. Ministers have alternately summoned the movement’s leaders to meetings to hear their grievances and banned their marches. ‘Fix Ghana’ lambasts both parties for failing to create jobs or enough technical training as patronage and corruption flourish. The hung parliament could hobble AkufoAddo’s second term and empower the NDC. With skilful organisation, the opposition could block big government contracts, ministerial appointments and plans for more borrowing. It was clear on 6 January, the night of the new parliament’s inauguration, that there
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
A ‘man in a hurry’, Akufo-Addo needs opposition votes for his policies
FEATURES / PROFILE / Akufo-Addo’s second-term test
would be a challenge to Akufo-Addo’s choice of speaker. His preferred candidate, Aaron Mike Oquaye, lost the vote to the opposition’s choice, Alban Bagbin, in a heated contest. Tempers flared and the police were called into the chamber. It was an inauspicious start for the NPP, showing it to be outmanoeuvred by its opponents. A veteran operator, Bagbin will make the most of the powers vested in the speaker, but he insists he will be neither “obstructionist” nor a “rubber stamp”. He was one of three senior NDC politicians to excoriate Mahama’s presidency, and he has not ruled out a run for the top job ahead of the 2024 elections. After the clash over the speaker, the next contest was Mahama’s petition to the Supreme Court asserting that Akufo-Addo’s victory was illegitimate. Although Mahama hired an impressive team of lawyers headed by the redoubtable Tsatsu Tsikata, the petition failed after weeks of legal disputation. And the petitioners’ attempts to get the volatile Jean Mensa, chair of the electoral commission, to testify in court were thwarted.
Free senior high school has been one of AkufoAddo’s most popular policies
¢3bn every month and ¢36bn a year,” said the NDC’s deputy spokesman on finance, Isaac Adongo. “Quite clearly, the numbers are showing a very scary picture.” The IMF reckons Ghana’s fiscal deficit hit 16% of GDP last year, the second-highest in Africa. The deficit will stay high, at least double the 5% level prescribed in the IMF’s Fiscal Responsibility Act. Part of this is due to the government’s ¢113.7bn spending plan and a shortfall of revenue this year. This means Ghana’s external and domestic debt will rise further, after reaching 76% of GDP last year, up from 62% in 2019.
Education - oil = debt
Second-highest fiscal deficit in Africa
Since then, the opposition has picked its battles, harshly questioning some of the NPP’s more dubious ministerial nominations but focusing mostly on claims that the country’s economic hardships are due to bad policies, nepotism and corruption. Its parliamentarians point to the country’s rising debt stock, accusing the government of setting the economy on a dangerous path. “The NDC was adding an average of ¢1.15bn ($197.8m) to our public debt every month and a total of ¢13bn a year, but President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is adding DEBT VERSUS GDP GROWTH General government gross debt (% of GDP)
Real GDP growth (annual % change)
15
80
10
60
5
40
0
20
-5
0 1980
44
-10 1885
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
2020
2025
SOURCE: IMF
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Ghana’s debt level is of concern but not heading for a crisis if managed carefully, according to Professor Peter Quartey, director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana. “We can’t say Ghana should not borrow at all. We ought to borrow, but rather we need to borrow responsibly and we ought not to increase the debt-to-GDP ratio,” he tells The Africa Report. Quartey adds that the government must step up its digitalisation programmes to boost domestic revenue and find non-tax revenue sources such as dividends from profitable state-owned enterprises. Financing a free secondary education programme mainly from Ghana’s oil revenue, the Akufo-Addo government has ensured a year-on-year increase in senior high school enrolment since 2017. That has proved to be Akufo-Addo’s most popular initiative but also one of the toughest to deliver. School enrolment has increased by 69% since 2017, but the treasury’s coffers have not kept pace. “The greatest challenge of the government will be how to continue with the Free SHS programme in respect of the increasing enrolment,” says Kofi Asare, the executive director for Accra-based Africa Education Watch. “In 2017, it had 900,000 students; now it is 1.3 million. In the first year [2017] it was about ¢400m; last year it cost ¢2.4bn.” Oil revenue, meanwhile, is shrinking under the current unfavourable market conditions. As the world shifts to green energy, Ghana’s oil earnings will come under more pressure, with or without more pandemics. Nana Amoasi VII, executive director for the Institute for Energy Security, argues
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However, despite the huge demand for rice, the country produces merely half of its yearly demand - a problem local farmers attribute to a lack of buyers. Ghanaian consumers, on the other hand, attribute low patronage of domestic rice to the poor quality of the produce.
ThelocallysourcedMamaGoldpremiumJasminericewhichcomesin1kg, 4.5kg and 22.5kg pack sizes, aims to bring a choice of delicious locally produced fragrant rice to consumers at an affordable price.
In recent years, the government has taken steps to boost domestic rice production and processing to promote self-sufficiency and improve the country’s foreign exchange position. With the President leading the campaign for Ghanaians to buy and consume locally milled rice, demand for it has seen an increase in the last two years. Government interventionhasresultedinimprovedyieldsfromanaverageof2.72metric tonnes per hectare in 2016 to an average of 4.2 metric tonnes per hectare in 2019 with local production of paddy rice has increased from 688,000 metric tonnes in 2016 to 925,000 metric tonnes in 2019.
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The government’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative aims to boost rice production in the country by creating an enabling environment for better agricultural outputs through enhanced availability of improvedinputs.Theinitiativeincentivizesprivatesectoractorstoinvest in the agri-sectorto boost thelocaleconomy,increase foodproduction, promote farming as a noble and profitable business, reduce food imports and exports and job creation.
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ice is by far the most favoured of Ghana’s staple foods and every discussion around it is greeted with excitement. In addition to being nutritious, it is versatile, delicious and affordable. In Ghana, rice is the second most important cereal after corn, with a yearly consumption of about 1.3 million tonnes.
FEATURES / PROFILE / Akufo-Addo’s second-term test
NDC
Free secondary schooling will pay its dividends in the years to come
that the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) should find ways to raise output. “Ghana cannot control the international price of oil but it can control domestic production volumes. In the past three years, we’ve seen stagnation in terms of production,” he says. Denis Gyeyir, a programme officer at the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Accra, concurs: “If the government fails to invest in exploration, it is going to have production either stagnant or declining.”
Planting crops and building plants
Economic planners in Accra have other options in what is one of West Africa’s more balanced economies: oil is a recent addition to the traditional exports of cocoa and gold. But all of these, exported without significant processing, fail to meet Akufo-Addo’s test of local value-added. The government has been working with Côte d’Ivoire to push up cocoa prices, as the two countries produce more than two thirds of world production, and to coordinate on local processing. The Ghanaian government has also been investing in a wider range of crops, focusing on six tree crops as part of the its agro-industrial strategy. This is part of its efforts to deliver on its 2016 pledge of one factory in each of Ghana’s 260 districts. Akufo-Addo has been touting the establishment of a Volkswagen assembly plant in Accra as a sign of the country’s conducive business environment. Toyota and Nissan have also signed agreements to build factories in Ghana.
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Trade and industry minister Alan Kyerematen is an international trade expert with an eye on running for the presidency in 2024. Making the industrialisation policy work would greatly help that campaign, but it would need funds and some national coordination. Factories have to be planned where they have easy access to local natural resources as well as a clear route to the domestic and export markets. The government wants to capitalise on the opportunities for tariff-free commerce opened up by the African Continental Free Trade Area, which has its secretariat in Accra. As in most African states, there is no shortage of dynamic and innovative young entrepreneurs in Ghana. Ghana, however, falls short on infrastructure, particularly road and rail networks and electricity. When the dumsor (‘on-off’) crisis hit the country in 2013-2016, it was Mahama’s government that brought in a raft of power suppliers, racking up billions of dollars of debt. Untangling those commitments and working out how much power Ghana can generate on a commercial basis has tested the AkufoAddo government’s ingenuity. And, like its predecessors, it has let a cluster of heavily overpriced procurement contracts continue to drain money from the treasury. Meeting those three ambitions – sustaining secondary education, stable electric power and industrialisation – is a self-imposed target for Akufo-Addo. That was long before he had to contend with a pandemic, a weakening oil market and spiralling debt obligations. To pass the finish line, much has to be done in the next three years.
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116 / JULY-AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021
Untangling power contracts has tested the government’s ingenuity
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LAST WORD
FUN NMI ADEBAYO Digittal entrepreneur, nomad, writer, avid solo traveller, menttal health advocate, spoken word poet, public speaaker and ex-finance professional
To say I’m disappointed in Britain would be an understatement. I think for many British Africans, we have got to a point where we are either questioning our place in British identity or ready to completely denounce it. It feels to me that Britain is wedded to its nostalgia of empire. Its sense of greatness and British identity now clearly feels predicated on holding onto the delusion that it can an be a geopolitical kingmaker. ‘Global Britain’ may at first appear to o be an innocent attempt at being open to building trade partnerships with the world. On closer inspection, though, it is far more nefarious. So much so that it isn’t a sleightof-hand nod to colonialism but rather the reemergence of a new, modern colonialist venture. I am not only talking about what Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said, but rather the ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age’ government report that is a manifesto to this end. They may as well have dubbed it ‘Project Colonialism 2.0’. Johnson has laid his jingoistic intentions bare: ‘The fundamentals of this Government’s approach to national security and international policy are
146 THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 116
Britain's government sees Africa as the centre of its ‘Global Britain’ policy. The government report ‘The UK and Sub-Saharan Africa: prosperity, peace and development co-operation’ published last year is a 164-page document focused entirely on how Britain plans to engage. Its mere positioning as a power equal to four-fifths of a continent expresses its perspective on Africa. It would never so boldly publish such a report about Asia. Describing Britain’s soft power, the report defines it as, ‘rooted in who we are as a country: our values and way of life, and the vibrancy and diversity of our union. It is central to our international identity as an open, trustworthy inte and d innovative country.’ Museums are listed as central. So any hopes that the British Museum Act of 1963 will be revoked – and the Benin Bronzes returned, for example – are clearly pipe dreams. Britain’s government sees its museums as just as important in maintaining its sense of power and identity as trade relationo ships. This firmly positions war, theft and colonialism as central to the British identity. It’s important that Africans and British Africans hold this government to account and decide if the greatness of Britain relies on the weakness of Africa.
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COLONIALISM 2.0
reflected in the actions we have taken since the 2019 general election. They demonstrate an active approach to delivering in the interests of the British people: sustaining the UK’s openness as a society and economy, underpinned by a shift to a more robust position on security and deterrence. This runs alongside a renewed commitment to the UK as a force for good in the world – defending openness, democracy and human rights.’ Anybody with a decent grasp of history would shiver at this brazen declaration of Britain First ideology. British colonialism in Africa was built on this approach: that Britain’s ‘force’ for good comes with increased spending on ‘security and deterrence’ – in other words, violence.
WITH AFRICA FOR AFRICA M O B I L I T Y
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C O N S U M E R
INFRASTRUCTURE
With a revenue of over €5.8 billion, access to 46 of the 54 countries on the continent and almost 21,000 employees, the CFAO Group contributes to the growth of the African continent, its industrialization and the emergence of the middle class, drawing on its in-depth field knowledge and local expertise. The Group partners with leading international brands and covers the entire value chain – import, production, distribution – in line with the best international standards.
www.cfaogroup.com