Tar94

Olusegun Obasanjo: “Buhari is the last of the Mohicans”

• South Africa: KZN, the kingmaker province • Sahel: Searching for African solutions • Oil: Kenya’s burst pipe dream

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Raila Odinga

“We want the UN to ensure free and fair elections” Nasa push for an overhaul of Kenya’s electoral commission 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 90 Birr • France €5.90 • Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • 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

Olusegun Obasanjo: “Buhari is the last of the Mohicans”

• South Africa: KZN, the kingmaker province • Sahel: Searching for African solutions • Oil: Kenya’s burst pipe dream

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Odinga: “We want the UN to ensure free and fair elections”

• South Africa: KZN, the kingmaker province • Sahel: Searching for African solutions • Obasanjo: “Buhari is the last of the Mohicans”

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Odinga: “We want the UN to ensure free and fair elections”

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• LNG: Floating gas project for Mozambique • Sahel: Searching for African solutions • Obasanjo: “Buhari is the last of the Mohicans”

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Making it in Nigeria

South Africa

Eastern Nigeria’s industrial revolutionaries are not waiting on Abuja

COVER CREDITS: INTERNATIONAL EDITION: R. GANGALE/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - WEST AFRICA EDITION: M. COOPER/GETTY IMAGES; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - SOUTHERN AFRICA EDITION: V. FOURNIER/JA; D. ALANGKARA/AP/SIPA; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Raila Odinga

“We want the UN to t ensure free and fair elections” Nasa push for an overhaul of Kenya’s electoral commission

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

The

Kingmaker Province

WEST AFRICA EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 Por tugal €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

Proxies battle for Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma nominations in ANC crucible

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 90 Birr • France €5.90 • Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • 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

THE AFRICA REPORT # 94 - OCTOBER 2017

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

SOUTHERN AFRICA EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • 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

06 EDITORIAL Second Coming in South Africa 08 LETTERS 10 THE QUESTION

BUSINESS

22

66 THE BIG FOUR Who audits the auditors?

Corruption and state capture in South Africa expose the opaque role of top auditing firms in the engine rooms of global capitalism

BRIEFING 12 SIGNPOSTS

72 INTERVIEW João Bosco Monte, president, Brazil Africa Institute

14 PEOPLE Charles Brumskine & George Weah, Liberia 16 INTERNATIONAL

74 LEADERS Benedict Oramah, president, Afreximbank

18 CALENDAR 20 OPINION Stephen Chan, professor of international studies, School of Oriental & Asian Studies

78 SOUTH AFRICA Tourism needs to try harder 80 FINANCE Another Elastoplast and no solution

FRONTLINE

81 HANNIBAL

22 SAHEL Breeding insecurity Root causes of the increasing instability and fragility in a region already buckling under the strain of conflict and terrorism

28

POLITICS

40 INTERVIEW Raila Odinga, presidential candidate, Nasa, Kenya 42 NIGERIA Kaduna, a city divided 44 ANANSI Testing Ouattara’s legacy

COUNTRY FOCUS 49 NIGERIA Wise men in the east The country’s new industrial revolutionaries are on a quest to propel Enugu on a path to economic renaissance THE AFRICA REPORT

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82 Kenya’s pipe dream The government’s pledge to begin oil production by 2017 is in limbo, and huge infrastructure gaps will create further delay 85 INTERVIEW Jubril Wale Tinubu, Group CEO, Oando

28 SOUTH AFRICA The kingmaker province KwaZulu-Natal’s crucial role in the race to choose a new ANC president in December 37 KENYA Back in the game

OIL & GAS DOSSIER

86 MOZAMBIQUE A resource revolution delayed

40

ART & LIFE

66

90 PHOTO ESSAY A queen serene The people who travel and work aboard the Yapei Queen cargo vessel on Ghana’s Volta Lake 94 NEIGHBOURHOODS Broken promises 95 LITERATURE Writing our struggles in indelible ink 96 TRAVEL Sustainable and affordable travel options in Kenya 98 DAY IN THE LIFE Waste recycler El Haj Diallo, Dakar

“Risk?”

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6

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

Second Coming in South Africa

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

W

hen President Jacob Zuma predicted a decade ago that the African National Congress would rule South Africa until “Jesus comes back”, the party could muster well over 60% of the votes in national and local elections. Since then it has lost control of cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, and its national vote is forecast to fall below 50% in the 2019 elections.

And the party is wracked by infighting over Zuma’s successor.

These days, President Zuma, who long ago swapped Marxism for Mammon, has united the most improbable collection of bedfellows – from grassroots activists to billionaire corporate directors – to rail against his government. Still he dismisses the psephologists and refuses to row back on the ANC’s longevity.

For some, the Second Coming is utterly doom-laden. They see unfolding events everywhere mirroring William Butler Yeats’ poem of the same name, evoking the horrors of the First World War and its political aftermath: ‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world […]

The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity’. With populists and nationalists united in opportunism in the United States, Brazil, Germany and elsewhere, their South African counterparts say they know a winning strategy when they see it: a potent mélange of fake news, thuggery and crookery.

Yet others speak of a Second Coming in South Africa with a hopeful smile. They see the exigencies of the country’s serial crises reawakening the power of civic activism, a return to the spirit of the anti-apartheid movement. The latest revelations about

relations between several multinationals and the Gupta family businesses are a case in point.

Despite former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s brave inquiry into state capture, it took revelations by some of the country’s finest journalists, working for AmaBhungane and Daily Maverick among others, to force the corporates’ hands. This pioneering cooperative known as Gupta Leaks picked its way through some 200,000 One by emails tracking relations between Gerone the many’s SAP, the US’s corporate McKinsey and Swissskittles fell. based KPMG auditors and the Gupta family Then the companies. One by message one the corporate skittles fell. Dreary was: “Let’s apologias were inmove on” toned. The crassest and clumsiest of the South African staff were purged.

Then the message was: “Let’s all move on.”

There is no sign that South Africans, least of all ousted finance minister Pravin Gordhan, are ready to do that. Gordhan argues that South Africa has suffered serious financial loss from contracts between the international companies and Gupta-related entities.

The Guptas deny all wrongdoing.

Now some of these matters are heading for the courts.

Working through the rights and responsibilities of KPMG’s highly damaging investigation into the national revenue service – given it has now disowned the conclusions of its own report – will put corporate ethics on trial and test, yet again, President Zuma’s political resilience.

THE AFRICA REPORT

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E X E CUT I VE P UB L I S HE R JÉRÔME MILLAN 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 B US I NE S S E D I T O R MARK ANDERSON E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA NT OHENEBA AMA NTI OSEI R E G I O NA L E D I T O R S CRYSTAL ORDERSON (SOUTHERN AFRICA) BILLIE ADWOA MCTERNAN (GHANA) 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 PIERANGÉLIQUE SCHOULER SAMUEL BOUAROUA SALES SANDRA DROUET Tel: (33) 1 44 30 18 07 – Fax: (33) 1 45 20 09 67 sales@theafricareport.com 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

8

DIASPORANS: RUN FOR MAYOR

I

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: Behind the smile

• Nigeria A season of all the dangers • Kenya Fight of a lifetime • Google The next billion are African

t is not surprising most people believe the African diaspora has a pivotal role to play in the development of the continent [‘Diaspora Dynamo’, TAR92 July-Aug 2017]. This sentiment is supported by evidence of other nationalities, like the Indian, Chinese and Israeli diasporas, being at the core of the economic and political rise of their countries.

However, what I find fascinating is why don’t we see more diasporans return home and run for public office, after spending time understanding the local realities? And I have observed that the few times when we do enter politics, we go straight for the presidency or we are hired to become high-level ministers. Why don’t we run for mayor of a city? Or campaign to become a senator so that we are closer to the people we need to serve? A thoughtful and visionary mayor or governor can make an enormous difference and become a beacon of inspiration for the rest of the country.

Amini Kajunju, President & CEO, The Africa-America Institute N ° 9 2 • J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 17

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Diaspora dynamo

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 90 Birr • France €5.90 Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • 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

HOMOPHOBIA ON THE RISE ‘Is homophobia in West Africa becoming a thing of the past?’ [‘The Question’, TAR92, July-Aug 2017].

Sincerely, I would have been proud to respond in the affirmative and say yes. But, unfortunately, it’s not the case.

There is a little change in the attitudes of a few, but the majority of West Africans are becoming more and more intolerant, mainly because of religion, social and political factors.

The prevalence of homophobia in West Africa has increased in recent times despite efforts made by LGBTIQ rights activists in the region.

Religious leaders have misinterpreted religious texts against homosexuality,

and this has incited more phobia of homosexuals. The misinterpretation and condemnation of homosexuality as un-African and alien to our African culture has also encouraged more hate against homosexuals in our society.

Ironically, as Africans, I see we have ditched our ‘original’ African culture for what is perceived today as our culture.

In the past few years, we have seen legislators pass laws that restrict the lives of LGBTIQ people and condemn them to more than a decade in prison if caught or suspected of having any homosexual tendencies. These laws have influenced more hate and cruel treatment against homosexuals.

Abubakar S. Yussif, Solace Brothers Foundation, Ghana

THE MANY CHALLENGES FACING IPPs It is true that independent power projects (IPPs) have been, or are in the process of being, ‘debuted’ in most African countries, but this has not yet resulted in the takeoff which many had been hoping for [‘Can’t just wait for the government’, TAR90 May 2017].

Nearly all African countries are in some kind of transition phase, attempting to devise a socially, politically, financially and environmentally sustainable structure for the power sector. Nobody should underestimate the scale of the challenge. IPPs sit uncomfortably alongside financially crippled but powerful state utilities, eating away at their most profitable activity (generation); transmission and distribution networks are woefully inadequate; regulatory and legal frameworks remain in their infancy; cash does not flow effectively up the value chain and sectors generally lack either cost-reflective tariffs or sufficient subsidisation, resulting in offtakers which are not creditworthy and payment obligations not being honoured; and the ever-present problem of vested interests threatens to derail projects without warning.

All of these issues are resolvable, but only with the effective collaboration of IPPs, lenders, development finance institutions, and, most critically, governments.

Dan Marks, Senior research analyst, Cross-Border Information

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10

Several of the key Africa positions in President Trump’s administration remain unfilled more than nine months after he took office in January, fuelling concerns about the future of US-Africa relations.

Who cares if he has an Africa policy?

The solution to Africa’s problems Iie with Africa.

O. Akin-Adejumo

Does it matter that Trump has no Africa policy?

Yes IBRAHIM B. ANOBA Advocate, Young Voices

At a time when China is increasingly upsetting the US as the world’s most lucrative partner, keeping mute on a large market like Africa may be an eventual disadvantage to the US. This is especially relevant since President Trump is withdrawing America from international free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Meanwhile, Africa’s increasing integration into new global markets and the unprecedented expansion of infrastructure on the back of a thriving young population makes it the biggest economic potential the US or any other country can presently find. President Trump must be thoroughly considerate on his position about Africa as the US has more to lose economically.

At some point under President Obama, America’s foreign direct investment to Africa was at an unprecedented $64bn – a whopping 70% increase from the previous cap of $37bn. And as President Trump appears tough on keeping African migrants away from US shores, strengthening economic ties would effectively help reduce the influx.

With more US investments, there would be more jobs for Africans, a gradual increase in individual income and more local investments.

All these would ultimately rub off on economic development efforts across Africa, and the US can slowly forget about foreign aid.

No KE’AUN CHARLES Editor, Pan-African Review

Trump’s lack of an Africa policy isn’t new, and it’s not a bad thing. The last time the US had an Africa policy was during the Cold War, where it propped up dictators like Mobutu [Sese Seko of the DRC] in the name of fighting communism. Since then, America has not had reason to articulate an Africa policy. Trump’s silence is an admission of this fact. Trade between the US and Africa was about $35bn in 2015, a fraction of the nearly $5trn in goods and services that the US traded globally that year. In terms of security, American concerns on the continent centre on stopping Islamic terrorism, but this is a global policy and is not specific to Africa. Unlike Russia or China, no African country constitutes a major threat to American interests, therefore America has no need for an Africa policy. Because America isn’t officially seeking a particular economic or political objective in Africa, both sides have more flexibility in how they engage with each other, a flexibility that many countries in Asia and Europe lack.

Instead of being forced to come together, the US and Africa can choose to do so when it is in their mutual interest, and disagreements between the two parties won’t constitute a major threat against anyone’s national interests. Trump’s lack of an Africa policy might be, for both the US and Africa, the best policy to have.

It doesn’t! It's high time Africa begins to have her own agenda for the rest of the world […].

Odun Chris It is time that African people envision change and development without the West in the mix […].

Tulani J. Ngwenya No! In fact it’s a good thing […] these foreign policies seek to exploit us. @Jimmy_MoDiSe Do we want a Trump policy on the ‘country’ called Africa with its single issues and homogenous group of people? @MrsMBanjo Doesn’t matter at all. Africa’s importance cannot change on the basis of who occupies the White House. @obakeng_seageng Africa does not need nor require a TrumpAfrican policy, rather African countries ought to develop their own Trump policy. @lawakhigbe_com I truly believe the ball is in Africa’s court.

We can either invite others to come and play with us or be spectators while others play on our court. @iDreamEthiopia

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6 TH E D I T I O N

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12

TANZANIA Opposition leader Tundu Lissu was

evacuated to Kenya for treatment after being shot outside his home in Dodoma by unknown assailants.

7.9%

took to the streets demanding constitutional reforms.

EGYPT Archaeologists have uncovered a 3,500-year-old goldsmith’s tomb in Luxor. Dedicated to the god Amun, it contains the mummies of a woman and two children.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

In conjunction with GeoPoll, The Africa Report asked 138 Kenyans the following question: Was the Kenyan government right to cap interest rates on bank loans?

13.7%

TOGO 100,000 protesters

Felix says Kabila must go

H

e is the son of the historic opposition figure in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Etienne Tshisekedi. And his return to Kinshasa on 3 September may mark the beginning of a new phase in the struggle to replace Joseph Kabila, the ‘cling-on’ president who keeps pushing back the electoral calendar.

Felix Tshisekedi is now becoming a rallying point for the opposition, as one of the few remaining pretenders to the presidency.

Another heavyweight potential opponent, Moïse Katumbi, the former governor of Katanga, fled the country in May after corruption charges that he denies were filed against him.

I doon’t know N No Yes

78.4% GeoPoll is the world’s largest mobile surveying platform and sample provider in Africa, enabling companies and organisations to gather quick, accurate and in-depth insights.

To conduct your own mobile survey using GeoPoll’s easy-to-use platform visit Research.GeoPoll.com

Stooping slightly from the heavy legacy inherited from his charismatic father, Tshisekedi remains in charge of the largest opposition coalition of parliamentarians, including Katumbi’s ‘G7’ and his own UDPS. He must manage defections and mutinies, and gather a coherent force to push back against Kabila’s delaying tactics.

While he may not have the same oratorical skills as his father, he has used his return to the capital to raise the temperature. He accuses Kabila of turning the country into a “vast, open-air prison”, and calls on the opposition forces to “liberate the country by 31 December”. Nothing like having a deadline to work with.

AVIATION SAA CASH CRUNCH

KENNY KATOMBE/REUTERS

SOURCE: SAA

Last month, South African Airways announced plans to retire five aircrafts and subsequently cut its flights by 23% from the end of the year, as part of a programme aimed at returning to profit.

Felix Tshisekedi has set a deadline to “liberate the country” THE AFRICA REPORT

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BRIEFING 13

SIERRA LEONE President Ernest Bai Koroma declared seven days of mourning after a devastating landslide and flooding that killed almost 500 people.

SOUTH AFRICA

Zuma has failed to halt the ‘spy tapes case’ against him.

SENEGAL Anti-colonial demonstrations against the CFA franc broke out in Dakar after the government arrested and expelled an activist for burning a bank note.

EDWIN MJWAHUZI; PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP; KHALED DESOUKI/AFP; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA; MUJAHID SAFODIEN/AFP; SEYLLOU/AFP

“The cost of free secondary

FOOD INSECURITY NIGERIA’S HUNGER

GABRIELA BARNUEVO/AP/SIPA

school education will be cheaper than […] the alternative of an uneducated and unskilled workforce ” MOBILE BANKING CATCHING ON QUICK...

SOURCE: FAO

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo on the launch of the Free SHS Policy

Little used, or no data In a growth phase

Senegal

Mali

Gambia Guinea B. Guinea Sierra Leone

Niger

Widely used (more than 40% of the adult population)

MOBILE BANKING II ... WITH MANY USES

Burkina Faso Nigeria Uganda

Kenya

Benin

Liberia Côte d’Ivoire

58.9%

Togo

Airtime top-up

Ghana

24.4%

Gabon

Tanzania

11.8% Person-toBill payment person transfer

Zimbabwe

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Namibia

SOURCE: GSMA

Merchant payment 2.8 % More people have mobile-money accounts than traditional accounts in sub-Saharan Africa, which has outpaced the rest of the world. In 2016 there were 57 mobile payment services in 15 countries, up from 25 in 11 countries in 2011.

Bulk disbursement 1.9 % International remittance 0.2 %

SOURCE: GSMA

Cabo Verde

The Boko Haram insurgency has caused a growing food crisis in northeast Nigeria, where 5.1 million people needed immediate aid in June, growing to 5.2 million by August according to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation projections. The worst-affected regions are Borno and Yobe states.

AHMED JALLANZO/EPA/MAXPPP

AHMED JALLANZO/EPA/MAXPPP

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SPOTLIGHT

George Weah and Charles Brumskine Two candidates are leading the pack in the 10 October Liberian presidential race: a footballer with a young base and an ex-Senate president with an eye for policy AS ELEVEN CANDIDATES thunder into the final furlong of the Liberian presidential elections on 10 October, the pace and political temperature are picking up. Both Charles Brumskine of the Liberty Party and George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change are increasingly confident they will face off in a second round, the number of candidates making a first-round victory unlikely.

Those two leading candidates could not be more different. Weah is a celebrated international footballer who won plaudits at Monaco under

Arsène Wenger as a clinical finisher.

He prides himself on being able to connect to the younger generations, given his sporting past. “I can talk to them like none of [the other candidates] can,” says Weah. “Lots of kids are coming to schools unable to pay, begging people to pay their WAEC”, he says, referring to the country’s secondary school exam.

Weah’s campaign platform calls for free public education.

His choice of Charles Taylor’s former wife, Jewel Taylor, as a running mate has raised eyebrows.

In 2012 former president Taylor was sentenced at The Hague to 50 years in prison for war crimes.

Weah admitted last year to talking to Taylor in jail via a cell phone.

Brumskine is more policy-oriented.

He is a religion-inspired lawyer who has spent the greater part of his career in politics, having briefly served as Senate president under Taylor’s rule in 1997. Brumskine was forced into exile after serving for 19 months in the role, and prides himself on having passed “legislation that put more of the economy into Liberian hands”.

“Whether France likes it or not, it has an important role to play in Gabon. […] You should be able to undo what you have done ”

“Leave a legacy. You [President Museveni] have been quoting Mwalimu Nyerere, but why don't you live by his path? ”

Gabon’s opposition leader Jean Ping calls on France do more to help remove President Ali Bongo from power.

Ugandan MP Muhammad Nsereko says President Museveni, 73, should be like Tanzania’s first president and step down at the end of his term.

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SIM TSHABALALA

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DUDUZANE ZUMA In an ongoing corruption scandal involving the Gupta family, a contrite Duduzane Zuma, the son of South Africa’s president, is selling his shares in Guptaowned Oakbay and donating the proceeds to youth development.

RUTH ONIANG’O The Kenyan food security and nutrition expert is the winner of the 2017 Africa Food Prize for her outstanding effort to improve farming in Africa. She shared the prize with Malian entrepreneur Maïmouna S. Coulibaly.

South Africa’s former president Kgalema Motlanthe told the BBC that defeat is not only a possibility, but would be good for the ANC. •

On 22 August the Guinean foreign minister was on a plane to the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Maputo when she learnt a presidential decree had relieved her of her ministerial duties.

The South African banker was appointed sole chief executive of Standard Bank Group in September, ending a joint role he shared with Ben Kruger, and making him the first black CEO of Africa’s largest bank by assets.

“[The African National Congress] has to hit rock bottom, it has to lose the elections, for the penny to drop ” THE AFRICA REPORT

MAKALÉ CAMARA

DIEZANI ALISON-MADUEKE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS A

Robert Clarke and Nicholas Norbrook

ILHAN OMAR The Minnesota politician, who came to the United States as a refugee and is its first SomaliAmerican legislator, was the face on the cover of Time magazine, for its feature, ‘Firsts’, on 46 women changing the world.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

He has a long checklist of reforms he wants to push through if elected.

These include the refinancing of a defunct agricultural lending bank that has been dormant since the civil war. “We are going to diversify this economy,” says Brumskine. “For too many years, since [William] Tubman, the Liberian economy has been dependent on the exportation of unprocessed natural materials.”

He wants to pull subsistence farmers into commercial agriculture to create a new middle class.

These shiny visions may not speak to the mass of Liberians who are yet to be connected to decent road networks, but Brumskine has an answer for them, too. “We know just about every road that is broken, that is impassable during the rainy season,” he says. “We don’t have the money to make every road weatherproof, but we can cure those spots.” He is also keen to tackle the reform of land rights and to address the dispossession of Liberians by large multinationals seeking spaces for plantations.

Both Weah and Brumskine tell The Africa Report that the national healing process that has been underway since the end of the civil war in 2003 is a priority. “We have been divided,” says Weah, “we need to continue the peace process.” Likewise, Brumskine says his first act as president would be to “start by reconciling Liberians”.

Genuine reconciliation cannot come soon enough for many in Liberia who fear a return to the violence that has marred previous polls.

“We have our teams on the ground.

We have our youth on the ground,” says Weah, who is determined that no vote-rigging should be tolerated.

“We are mobilising them, training them and getting ready.”

In August, the Federal High Court ordered the permanent forfeiture of a $37.5m apartment complex on Banana Island, Lagos, which the former Nigerian oil minister is alleged to have purchased with the proceeds of graft.

16

1

PHILIPPINES

$20

Legislators in the lower house attempted to neuter the country’s Commission on Human Rights in September by voting to reduce its budget to 1,000 pesos ($20), down from 749m pesos in 2017. The commission has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, which has involved a vast number of killings and little oversight.

4

EUROPEAN UNION

Fishy fishing in West Africa

2

KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY/AP/SIPA

Kim Jong-un in a selfie that went viral

Non-governmental organisations Oceana and Global Fishing Watch revealed in September that boats from Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain fished in violation of European Union laws in waters off Gambia and Equatorial Guinea from 2012 to 2015. The groups said their reporting shows the need for more transparency and sustainable fishing practices.

The EU rolled out new fishing regulations in June to make more information about European fishing outside of EU waters available to the public and to make European private fishing agreements respect the same principles as deals signed by governments.

NORTH KOREA

Small hands on big triggers

Ahead of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in September, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that all diplomatic responses to North Korea’s attempts to develop long-range nuclear weapons had failed.

After successful tests earlier in the month, Kim Jong-un’s government says that it will soon reach nuclear “equilibrium” with Washington. China is urging that both sides seek to de-escalate the conflict, but President Donald Trump’s cabinet was said to be looking into military options either to enforce a new round of sanctions or to disarm North Korea.

Trump’s erstwhile adviser Steve Bannon disagreed, saying in August: “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons […] there’s no military solution here.” Some analysts argue that Washington’s tough words are aimed at getting China, a key ally to the North Korean government, to exert as much pressure as it can on the Pyongyang regime. Beijing does not want to see a greater US role in Asia or to cause long-term damage to relations with Washington, but as White House national security adviser HR McMaster warned: “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

CARIBBEAN

Hurricane havoc

This Atlantic Ocean hurricane season has been devastating, witth Hurricane Harvey flooding Houston, Texas and Irma cutting a ma assively destructive path through the Caribbean before hitting Florida. Co ombined, the two storms are estimated to have caused some $130bn in da amage and killed nearly 200 people. The areas hardest hit will take years to recover, and the area is still vulnerable to similar storms, such as Hurricane e Maria, which hit Dominica in mid-September, before the season ends in N November.

GRANT ELLIS / WORLD BAN NK

3

5

EU COMMISSION

“We have

to move on because Brexit isn’t everything, it is not the future of Europe. It is not the be all and end al all ” European Co ommission president Jean-Claude Juncker urges the European n Union to seize new opportunitiess in his annual State of the Union speech in September.

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At the crossroads of Africa, Asia and the Arab World

The future is on the move

A diversified economy A regional logistics and transport hub International standard infrastructure and services New tourism opportunities

A home port for investors

Š V. FOURNIER for J.A. - and DR

An environment conducive to innovation

18

POWERING AFRICA NIGERIA 4-5 October ABUJA | NIGERIA energynet.co.uk

1:54 CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART FAIR 5-8 October LONDON | UK Fifth edition of the major art fair devoted to the African contemporary scene.

1-54.com/london

REBRANDING AFRICA FORUM 6 October BRUSSELS | BELGIUM rebranding-africa.com

THE TONY ELUMELU ENTREPRENEURSHIP FORUM 13-14 October LAGOS | NIGERIA In its third edition, the forum will gather entrepreneurs, policy-makers and mentors from all 54 African countries. tonyelumelufoundation.org

IMF & WORLD BANK ANNUAL MEETINGS 13-15 October

INNOVATION AFRICA 23-25 October MAPUTO | MOZAMBIQUE innovation-africa.com

AFRICA OIL WEEK 23-27 October CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA africa-oilweek.com

LAGOS | NIGERIA Oil-trading and logistics expo. otlafrica.com

MARRAKESH | MOROCCO After the global conference in April, the first Africa Chapter of the Emiratessponsored AIM will be held in Morocco. aimcongress.com/en/aim-africa/ about-aim-morocco

AFRICAN PHILANTHROPY FORUM (APF) 30-31 October

WASHINGTON DC | US The boards of governors convene in the US capital. imf.org

OTL AFRICA DOWNSTREAM 22-25 October

ANNUAL INVESTMENT MEETING (AIM) 29-31 October

FILM AFRICA 27 Oct. – 5 Nov. LONDON | UK The Royal African Society’s annual film festival with Q&As, screenings and music. filmafrica.org.uk

LAGOS | NIGERIA The regional affiliate of the Global Philanthropy Forum held in Washington DC in April looks to change the narrative around giving in Africa, with philanthropists as catalysts for growth. philanthropyforum.org

FT AFRICA SUMMIT 2017 8-9 October

WORLD TOURISM FORUM – AFRICA SUMMIT 10 October ACCRA | GHANA worldtourismforum.net

Liberia’s richest man Benoni Urey thinks he’s got what it takes

LIBERIA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 10 October AFRICA HOTEL INVESTMENT FORUM 10-12 October KIGALI | RWANDA Connecting investors and business leaders to drive investment into tourism. africa-conference.com

More than 20 candidates are vying to replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will step down in January 2018 after 12 years as president. Vice-president Joseph Boakai of the government’s Unity Party and philanthropist Alexander Cummings of the Alternative National Congress will face fierce competition from former footballer George Weah, candidate for the main opposition Coalition for Democratic Change. Weah already stood for president in 2005, and for vice-president in 2011 on Winston Tubman’s ticket. This year’s elections will be the first time since the end of the protracted civil war in 2013 that Liberia will head to the polls without the presence of UN peacekeepers.

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ZOOM DOSSO/AFP

LONDON | UK Shifting the focus to ‘what is working in Africa’ and how that can benefit the continent. live.ft.com

Under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI

2nd EDITION

FOUR SEASONS RESORT MARRAKESH, MOROCCO 27-28 NOVEMBER 2017 THEY WILL BE EXPECTED

www.chinaafricainvestmentforum.com

Moulay Hafid Elalamy, Minister of Industry, Investment, Trade and Digital Economy, Morocco Joseph Choi, Executive Director and CEO, Hsin Chong, China Daniel Kablan Duncan, Vice President, Côte d’Ivoire

THE STRATEGIC MEETING OF CHINESE AND AFRICAN ECONOMIC DECISION-MAKERS Every year, the China-Africa Investment Forum brings together the main stakeholders of trade and investment between China and Africa for two days of conferences and business meetings to foster high value business partnerships, particularly in the industrial sector.

Register now info@caif2017.com #CAIF2017

Strengthen

industrial and commercial parternships with Chinese companies

Understand

the financial implications of the new Silk Road for African companies

Define

a new vision for African industry

20

S Stephen Chan

P Professor of international studies, School of African and Oriental Studies, UK

It might not be the opposition that defeats Mugabe

P

resident Robert Mugabe, 93, seems to be seeking to eke out his time in office until the 2018 elections as the economy teeters on the edge of disaster.

Meanwhile, the power struggle in his own party rages, barely beneath the surface, in the race for the succession.

If his own wife, Grace Mugabe, is often considered to be a candidate for the succession, she did her cause no good at all by the most unpresidential electric cord and plug whipping of a South African model who was partying with her sons in Johannesburg.

Grace had to seek diplomatic immunity to steal back to Zimbabwe – but the fact that the South Africans took three days to decide whether to grant her immunity speaks volumes. On 24 August, South Africa’s international relations minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said she had “agonised” about granting Mugabe immunity.

She had agreed to the request after taking into account “legal considerations” and the need to maintain “inter-governmental relations”. It was clear that the latter won.

But in the midst of all the speculation as to whether Grace had damaged her chances, and while the opposition tried to forge a coalition of brittle and argumentative parties – at great cost to Morgan Tsvangirai’s own core support –, few spoke of the huge elephant in every Zimbabwean room: the disintegrated economy.

There had, however, been much speculation over a ‘private’ visit to President Mugabe, at the beginning of August, by South Africa’s former president Thabo Mbeki.

What message had Mbeki been carrying? Was he throwing Pretoria’s weight behind succession candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa – Grace’s most visible rival? Or had he been laying the foundations for the inclusion of Zimbabwe in a monetary union – some kind of ‘rand zone’?

The latter kind of rumour-mongering was Zimbabwean hopefulness and conceit at its worst.

The idea that, somehow, especially in British eyes, Zimbabwe is the centre of the world – and all British foreign policy must surely be directed against the country – is matched only by the sense that somehow South Africa must find it in its interest to rescue Zimbabwe economically.

Zimbabwe brings precisely nothing to the table.

A rand zone would simply open up an area of enlarged liability for South Africa.

The government’s use of ‘bond notes’ as a form of currency, meant to bear the same value as US dollars, has been a means of plugging the gap in dollar supply. But even the government admits to a parallel market in which a dollar fetches 1.3 bonds.

In this admission, the government is being modest to the point of disingenuousness. It does not take much of an excursion to the sites of black market trading to find an exchange rate of 1.5 and, if many dollars are required in a short space of time, $10,000 can be found for 30,000 bond notes.

Talk of a ‘rand zone’ was Zimbabwean hopefulness and conceit at its worst With the hoarding of dollars by pessimistic Zimbabweans, and with nothing being done to curb imports, more bonds will be printed to fill the gap. The middle classes might be defaulting to electronic transfers, but most Zimbabweans will not have access to such a facility and the value underpinning electronic earnings and savings must be under threat.

Zimbabwe cannot produce something as simple as cooking oil at a price below imported oil from South Africa. There are both insufficient economies of scale to produce at a lower price and also an agricultural sector which still, in the wake of the unplanned land nationalisations, has not yet recovered any mass efficiency in food production.

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holding their breath for the impending season, which would normally begin in about October.

There have been more bad than good seasons of late. But another bad season would mean even more imported food, lower production of hydroelectricity – affecting not only everyday life but such industry as remains viable on any meaningful scale – and the increased import of diesel to power generators.

Saddled with a bloated public service, the President insists on employing uneducated youths who do not have properly defined jobs.

Mugabe’s outreach to the young at rally after rally, interrupted only by the need to go to Singapore for medical treatment, shows he cannot afford to alienate the youth vote. But the public service cannot accommodate the demographic growth, and any post-election rationalisation of the economy – e.g. as a condition for International Monetary Fund support – would involve a huge slashing of public employment.

Foreign direct investment is not happening on any significant scale. Notwithstanding the fact that the indigenisation laws remain a disincentive, the economy simply does not make it a viable risk to inject major funds into any Zimbabwean venture.

The news that Emmerson Mnangagwe has been friendly towards white farmers, supported by a trove of Central Intelligence Organisation documents, suggests that the G40 faction supporting Grace Mugabe is ramping up its efforts to bring the land debate – with all the poison that entails – back into THE AFRICA REPORT

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the spotlight. That may backfire if a serious land audit is launched to check who among the ZANU-PF hierarchy have helped themselves.

Beyond agriculture there are some small-scale investment activities – but those seem to be designed largely to secure a foot in the door, pending a post-election and post-Mugabe future with actual economic planning. Indeed, economic cooperation of any sort, let alone investment, seems unattractive.

The news in the last week of August that Zambia and South Africa intend to collaborate in tax administration, treasury management, revenue collection, trade, and revenue leakage prevention must surely rankle. Notwithstanding Zambia’s own economic problems and its own legends of mismanagement, its economy is stable and, above all, predictable enough for planning horizons that are essential for bilateral fiscal cooperation.

Zimbabwe has no such stability. But it means as the fervour of electoral preparation, gerrymandering, succession philandering and horse-trading in seats to secure coalitions increase, the palpable absence of any policy from any party on any aspect of the economy can only become a permanent feature of political discourse.

It will all be accusations, pie-in-the-sky promises, with nothing costed, no mention of the pain involved in recovery and a curious new image for the once prosperous and rational country: not the bird that buried its head in the sand; the bird that cut off its own head to spite the glimpse in the mirror that revealed it had lost all its plumage.

22

Breeding insecurity

Sahel

The Ouagadougou restaurant attack in which 18 people died was the worst of many jihadi attacks in the region

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By Paul Melly

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orthern Burkina Faso is under silent siege. On 14 September, an imam and a village chief were executed by Islamic militants in Soum Province. In July, near the Malian and Niger borders, a series of raids killed five people. In January, a headteacher was killed in the same province. Teachers are abandoning classrooms. For the children of the Sahel the choices are stark.

The September killings were the fifth attack in a month for Burkina Faso, following the high-profile attack on a Ouagadougou restaurant in August that killed 18 people. Across the Sahel jihadist groups continue their fundraising activities, running guns, drugs and people across the vast stretches of desert that are near impossible to police.

Meanwhile, at a diplomatic dinner in Brussels – with soft red wines, cheese and pudding – questions are thrown at

AHMED OUOBA/AFP

The Sahel: a zone of transition between the Sahara and savannah, is home to trafficking, conflict, terrorism, and a vicious circle: poverty causes conflict, conflict causes poverty.

Who is looking beyond short-term solutions?

24 FRONTLINE | SAHEL: BREEDING INSECURIT Y

a senior European Union policy-maker.

“What are your priorities in Africa?” The answer was unambiguous: “The Sahel, the Sahel, the Sahel.”

This is hardly surprising, perhaps. The Sahel – the arid zone covering parts of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – is one of the world’s poorest regions, where longstanding challenges of food insecurity are compounded by climate change and terrorism. And it is almost next door to Europe.

After Berlin, Mali was the first stop for France’s recently elected President EmmanuelMacroninMay.France,which has maintained close – some say too close – ties with its former colonies has some 4,000 troops stationed across the region in Opération Barkhane. Macron returned for a summit of the G5 – a grouping of the leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. A slip of the tongue revealed his demographic anxieties, with Macron saying investment in places where there are “seven or eight children per woman” is pointless.

WAKE-UP CALL

Emir of Kano and former central bank governor of Nigeria Lamido Sanusi argues that Macron misses an essential point, that investment is required in the Sahel to prevent tomorrow’s security challenges. Sanusi tells The Africa Report: “If there is one thing that has come out positively from all the discourses on security in the Sahel, it has been a wake-up call […]. For decades, we have known that the water reserve levels in the Chad Basin have been going down. Lake Chad has lost 90% of its water reserves. That led to desertification. It basically threw out farmers, agricultural production went and industry went. And people basically became jobless. You had a large youth bulge of people with no future. No one really paid attention to that until Boko Haram exploded.”

The Sahel is often painted as home to myriad problems, but it defies easy labels. At the Niger/Nigeria border crossing between Maradi and Jibia, both regulated and informal trade are flourishing. Students and businesspeople cross both ways, with English and French very much secondary in this broad Hausa cultural and economic space. But bump off the tarmac onto rural tracks, and there are villages where every square metre of land is farmed to exhaustion and malnutrition is common. Meanwhile, population growth

Scenes from the Sahel Morocco

When it rains...

On the outskirts of Dori in Burkina Faso, a local resident says: “When it rains, this whole area is a lake.” Well, it certainly doesn’t look like that in April, as cattle browse scrappy grass amidst the dry-season dust.

There is a viable livestock economy in this far northern town, supported by a new market, a herders’ association and lively local NGOs. And – as can be found right across the rural Sahel – a small team of government experts collecting data on animals, agricultural output and the price of cereals, to feed the data into the national system for monitoring food Gambia security. Increasingly, such data is analysed on laptops and transmitted by smartphone.

Mauritania

Senegal

Guinea B. Guinea

In the orange zone

In the Malian town of Mopti, amidst the historic mud Sierra Leone buildings, a sunny beach where laundry is laid out to dry, and the picturesque rusting hulks of colonial-era Liberia Niger riverboats, would-be guides are ready to explain and show people around. But not a single holidaymaker is to be seen in a one-time tourist destination now at the outer extremity of the ‘orange zone’ on embassy travel advice maps. Salesmen of traditional rugs are in despair, as business has almost totally disappeared. And it is not much better in Bamako, the capital, where cafés, hotels and craft traders used to welcoming European travellers now struggle to eke out an income.

Bearing witness “That’s where [former putschist Amadou] Sanogo used to hang out.” Driving through the hillside garrison town of Kati, near Bamako, everyone knows the old base from where the March 2012 coup leader held sway – until, after 10 months, a new jihadist push provoked a Franco-African military intervention. But in 2017 the former junta chief has been on trial for alleged human rights violations.

The gutted former parliament in Ouagadougou, its car park still full of burnt-out vehicles bearing witness to the popular uprising that deposed veteran strongman Blaise Compaoré in 2014, conveys the same message: that in this troubled region progress often comes in fits and starts.

rates are among the world’s highest, and social pressures are intensifying.

But if solutions – to problems like insecurity – are driven by the outside world, will they stick? The deployment of foreign military muscle to the region on such a hefty scale alongside the diplomatic engagement and strong development aid presence have led some to wonder where lies the African voice in setting strategy.

Either way, foreign military interventions rarely succeed. Laurent Bigot, a former head of the West Africa unit at the French foreign ministry, is blunt: “I

regret that the African Union (AU) does not seriously take hold of this issue.

African countries should look at the track record of the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and they will then think twice before believing in Western solutions.”

The G5 governments want to send a force of 5,000 troops to bolster military operations in the Sahel (see box). New AU Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat is supportive of the move, saying the countries of the region “do not have the resources, but they have the men.” The AU lent its name to the THE AFRICA REPORT

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Cote d’Ivo

Number of refugees

>1.5M

15K

50K

Refugee camps

100K

500K

Malian refugees

Central African refugees

Nigerian refugees

Sudanese refugees

100K

500 km

Algeria

Libya

Niger Mali

Chad

Burkina Faso Benin Togo Ghana

Nigeria Central African Republic

The balance of forces

Cameroon

340

Terrorism incidents in 2016 Population of the Sahel region 150

Algeria Chad

64 (+31%)

Mali

100

30 1950 2013

125 (+25%)

Libya

(million) *forecast

13 (+44%) 5 (-67%)

2016 2050*

Mauritania

0 (0%)

Morocco

0 (0%)

Niger

12 (-25%)

Tunisia

16 (-6%)

African intervention force initially deployed in Mali in January 2013 alongside French troops, but in general has held back from setting a strong lead on policy towards the region.

A PRACTICAL RESPONSE

With the January 2014 creation of the G5 Sahel grouping, the countries of the region have started to play a more assertive role. Originally presented as a vehicle for promoting common economic projects, the G5 soon became heavily focused on security concerns.

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Critics may see this as, essentially, pursuing a Western-led agenda. But others see it as a practical response to an everyday reality: the steady trickle of murderous militant attacks on army and police posts not only in Mali but in neighbouring areas of Burkina and Niger.

Insecurity costs lives and hampers development, and Sahel governments are under pressure from citizens to tackle it.

At Niamey airport the morning quiet is broken by the take-off roar of French jets. They appear to be headed for nearby south-east Mali where days earlier

The United Nations is deeply preoccupied by events in the region, with nearly 13,300 troops in its peacekeeping mission in Mali. China has contributed troops to the force. The US has not, but does have special forces and training teams in the region, and drones based in Niger.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini quickly picked out the G5 intergovernmental grouping as a preferred dialogue partner, and this year France’s President Emmanuel Macron has been prodding the group into a more pro-active stance. It has a plan to create a 5,000-strong regional force to tackle the violent militant groups and trafficking gangs, particularly in border areas.

militants had attacked an army convoy and then executed captured survivors.

The Nigerien army has suffered a string of such attacks over the past year, and the majority of the population seems to be in no mood for kid-glove treatment.

Many regard the presence of foreign military powers as just a necessary fact of life in the current circumstances. “It needs to be done,” says a Nigerien, as the Mirages’ exhaust trail fades into the blue of the sky.

While military hardware grabs headlines, the region already has a

SOURCES: UNHCR, IOM, ORS; IUN; INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR TERRORISM STUDIES

oire

Number of IDPs

26 FRONTLINE

long-established track record of coordination and partnership, focused on the grassroots practicalities of action to limit the risk of drought and food insecurity.

But for all the efforts that are made, all the structures and strategies put in place, the Sahel faces a troubling basic question: can the model of social and economic life that has long sustained rural communities survive?

In a region where the natural resources of water, land and vegetation are fragile, the population has hugely increased. It is on course to double in Niger in two or three decades. And while outsiders often imagine the Sahel as an almost empty space, large areas are densely populated, with villages crowded close together.

CONFLICTING NEEDS

SOURCE: UNOCHA

HABIBOU KOUYATE/AFP

In a town in the Liptako region of western Niger, an official, with his office shuttered against the 45°C heat outside, says that each year brings more disputes between herdsmen and farmers.

Amidst climate change and population growth, pastoralists are roaming widely in search of grazing areas. But of state policing and justice has sparked agricultural communities, with ever the emergence of local vigilante groups, more mouths to feed, are cultivating the koglweogo, whose version of law and new fields, sometimes planting across order can be rough and ready. Islamist traditional transhumance routes. fighting groups (katibas) sometimes There are options for the people of tempt recruits with offers of pay in the the region: they can migrate to North Africa, Europe or, above all, the cities and hundreds of euros a month. plantations of the West African coast; And disillusion with settled life can technological change and new farming more easily set in when legitimised techniques are boosting food production options are themselves so insecure and may soften environmental impacts; – animal herding or smallholder farmand the growth of cities ofing exposed to the risk of fers national employment drought or scrabbling for possibilities. odd jobs in the informal But fundamentally urban economy of a city there is huge pressure on like Bamako or Niamey. the Sahel’s essential basic On all fronts, policynatural resources. The remakers are looking into sults of climate pressure are alternative strategies to often chronic malnutrition, address the Sahel’s probinsecure incomes, the delems. The arguments over Estimated funds parture of many men and military or peacekeeping required in 2017 to youths in search of work tactics, foreign troops or help 15 million people across 8 countries and also intense social negotiation with armed pressures within families. groups, how to treat ex-fighters or when to use force do matter And it is in these troubled and presand require careful thought. Indeed, the sured social and economic conditions proposed G5 force represents an attempt that extremist ideas, jihadist militancy and violent criminality can find recruits. to develop a fresh approach, just as new Trafficking, for example, can be so lucrajoint patrols of Malian army troops alongtive that some drivers are paid in kind, side fighters from militias in north-east given their vehicles as reward after just Mali play a useful, if niche, role. two or three trans-Saharan trips. In rural September also saw Malian religious leaders, including Mahmoud Dicko, Burkina,exasperationwiththelimitations

$2.66bn

leader of the Haut Conseil Islamique du Mali, travel for talks in troubled northern and central areas to explore options for restoring social stability and bringing an end to violence. This represents genuine locally led innovation.

Buttherearefewguaranteesofsuccess.

There have been reports that Iyad Ag Ghaly, leader of the Ansar Dine jihadist faction, had put out feelers to Dicko. But Ag Ghaly later announced himself as the head of a new militant alliance, determined to continue the violent struggle.

In the face of continued attacks, governments may have little short-term choice but to reinforce the military effort in partnership with the foreign actors who can deploy air power and high-tech surveillance.

NIGER’S 3N STRATEGY

However unavoidable, the security dimension is dealing with the symptoms.

It may be a necessary holding operation, a means of keeping things stable while deeper development and socio-political questions are tackled.

Those issues present huge complexities. For example, the European officals enjoying fine dining in Brussels and fretting about the Sahel have not visibly grasped how vast EU subsidies to European farmers hurt producers in developing regions of the world.

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SAHEL: BREEDING INSECURIT Y | FRONTLINE 27

budgets with the recruitment of more head-office civil servants.

The challenge is how to enhance what is delivered at the grassroots, when resources are thin. In Mali, typically, there may be only one agricultural adviser to cover a municipality of 30, 40 or even more villages that are scattered over dozens of kilometres. Herders in Liptako say their poorer neighbours cannot afford to pay the vet when their animals get sick, spreading the risk of disease.

ADMINISTRATIVE SOLUTIONS

Mali’s National Peace Conference in March 2017 was widely seen as a missed opportunity for dialogue

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five new ones, establishing a nominated interim council for each.

But in order to secure the CMA’s buyin to the peace process, it awarded the group a disproportionate share of the senior council roles – and this antagonised factions drawn from other sections of the population who were already resentful of the Ifoghas traditional political dominance of the north-east.

A further conundrum concerns the role of the state and its ability to provide the services and administration that communities want. Even supported by aid, Sahelian countries remain massively under-resourced. Efforts to bolster the government machine run the risk of simply concentrating resources in the capital city and eating up precious

People facing food insecurity in the Sahel 35 millions

30.1 25

SOURCE: UNOCHA

Rural development is an example where progress is being made in some areas. Niger has been developing a coherent strategy that links short-term food security to longer-term resilience through the 3N – les Nigériens Nourrissent les Nigériens – initiative.

It is built around the creation of community service hubs and encourages villagers to come forward with their own suggestions for projects.

But progress is slow. Wells can be sunk and local dams constructed, but if it does not rain there is still not enough water to go round. Social tradition can obstruct women’s access to land, and governments lack sufficient staff to provide farming advice everywhere it is sought. Beyond the mining and cotton sectors, there is little prospect of job-creating foreign investment.

Meanwhile, politics presents complexities too. Northern Mali is a case study in the difficulty of devolving more power to the local level in communities that are deeply divided by the after-effects of conflict or by ethnic or clan rivalry.

Recognising that it needed to offer decentralised power to assuage the demands of the Ifoghas Tuareg supporters of the formerly pro-independence Coordination des Mouvements de l’Azawad (CMA) armed group, the government redivided the three old regions of the north into

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15 2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Yet, however basic, services are often highly valued. The CMA, so long resistant to any government presence in Kidal, has started pressing for the restoration of public services, now that the politics has been, at least partially, sorted out.

Having trashed Timbuktu’s administrative offices after occupying the city in 2012, Islamist fighters ended up agreeing to let the mayors’ association in Bamako send a manual typewriter because people were demanding that at least the civil register of births, marriages and deaths be properly maintained.

People want basic administration and services, and have a lot of respect for the technical officials who keep essential practical services, such as food security, in operation. But there is also huge popular resentment of high-level corruption in governing elites – as Burkina’s veteran strongman Blaise Compaoré found out to his cost when a people-power uprising drove him out in 2014.

Howtoresolvethisconundrum,which is fundamental to Sahelian states prospects for the future? “I don’t think you need to look for spectacular approaches,” says Gilles Yabi, the founder of the West Africa think tank Wathi. “As elsewhere, you have to give priority to creating an environment and incentives that will lead the best qualified and principled men and women to put themselves at the service of the state.”

He adds: “The other priority is to rethink the way that state administrations are deployed across their territories, by providing incentives to have competent and ethical people in regional capitals.”

Yabi is analysing a long-term problem, but it is perhaps this type of strategic development approach that is needed to gradually strengthen the Sahel’s capacity to cope with the huge social and economic challenges that fuel instability.

Security measures are essential, but will only ever be a temporary fix.

28

SOUTH AFRICA

The kingmaker KwaZulu-Natal will play a crucial role in the race to choose a new ANC president in December.

Amid a rise in political murders and growing factionalism the provincial leadership is trying to maintain unity

By Crystal Orderson in Durban

B

ulky and well-armed security guards stand watch outside Pixley ka Isaka Seme House – the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters in Durban – closely monitoring the comings and goings.

Security is on high alert.

This reporter was escorted by security officers to the second floor, where the doors can be opened only with biometric cards. There is a sombre mood in the offices. Staffers are wearing black.

A day earlier, senior ANC leader Sindiso Magaqa, a councillor, had died from injuries sustained when he and two others were gunned down in July in what looked like another political

assassination attempt. Some days before that, fellow councillor Kwazi Mkhize was killed, another apparent political murder. That makes 10 ANC leaders killed in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) since January. Many are convinced the killings are about the province’s political battles, ultimately linked to the competition for the ANC’s leadership at its elective conference in December.

KZN is the biggest prize in the ANC leadership race. It has the most members and branches, and will send the most delegates to the elective conference. Until two or three years ago, President Jacob Zuma’s writ ran unchallenged in KZN. Most ANC branches were dominated by his fervent supporters; his THE AFRICA REPORT

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29

Eyeing the main prize, the ANC Women’s League broke party ranks to push for Dlamini-Zuma

endorsement was a ticket to a post in the provincial administration or the party machinery. All that started to change when a rift developed between Zweli Mkhize, provincial premier until 2013, and President Zuma.

When Mkhize resigned as premier to concentrate on his job as ANC treasurer general,aformerteacher,SenzoMchunu, took over. Mchunu’s antipathy towards Zuma and his preference for deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa soon became evident. A Mchunu-Ramaphosa alliance would have undermined Zuma’s support in the province, weakening the chances of his chosen successor to lead the ANC. Then, as Mchunu was trying to consolidate power, he was challenged for the THE AFRICA REPORT

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chairmanship of the ANC in the province in 2015 by Sihle Zikalala, a Zuma acolyte.

Mchunu lost the chairmanship election and then the premiership.

Mchunu disputed the legitimacy of that vote in the Pietermaritzburg high court. On 12 September of this year, the court found in his favour. But that will not return him to power, at least in the short term. Zikalala’s group is almost certain to appeal and could continue to run the province until the appeals avenue is exhausted.

Above all, the case points to deepening divisions within the province’s ANC branches. There are those supporting Zikalala and Zuma, those supporting Mchunu and Ramaphosa, and a growing

A VIOLENT PAST

RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP

province

group that supports former provincial premier and ANC treasurer Mkhize.

The man who runs the engine room of the ANC in KZN is soft spoken Super Zuma, known by his clan name of Msholozi. President Zuma belongs to the same clan. Super is also referred to as noBhala – secretary in isiZulu.

Super Zuma tries to hold the ANC’s largest province together, managing the daily political ructions. He also sits on the national executive committee – the ANC’s highest decision-making body – and is privy to all internal ANC matters.

Political killings in KZN have rocked the party, concedes Super Zuma.

Councillor Magaqa was a former ANC Youth League secretary and close to Julius Malema, the leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

Indeed, Malema claimed that Magaqa was about to join the EFF before he died.

Super Zuma denies this vehemently, dismissing it as point-scoring. But political violence is likely to increase ahead of the December conference, he fears, becauseofKZN’simportancetotheANC. In the 1980s and 1990s, the province was ripped apart by violence pitting the Inkatha Freedom Party against the ANC. More than 15,000 people were killed between 1985 and 1999. Security apparatchiks working for the apartheid regime fuelled the violence, supplying weapons to Inkatha.

Super Zuma tells The Africa Report: “During the apartheid years, we were convinced it was black-on-black violence. But it was state-sponsored violence.” He adds: “We are saying look at the pattern. They are perhaps targeting KZN to destabilise the country. The pattern is not violence but assassinations done by highly trained people.”

More than 80 ANC politicians have been assassinated in the province since 2011.

Mary de Haas, an expert on political violence at the university of KwaZuluNatal, says it can be difficult to determine which killings are linked to factional violence and which to fights over local corruption. “With specific killings, it is difficult to say with any certainty what the motive is because there have been no convictions in killings since the beginning of last year,” says De Haas.

30 POLITICS

Super Zuma says the party has set up two internal task forces to investigate the killings. But he also claims there could a ‘third force’ – serving South Africa’s enemies – behind the killings: “People involved in the killings are highly trained. Yes, we must deal with internal political issues, but we think there is a hidden thing we not dealing with. There is a clear execution of a plan. If you want to destabilise the country, destabilise KZN,” says Super Zuma.

POWER AND PATRONAGE

Edwin Mkhize, a leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in the province, finds accusations of a third force highly improbable. He wants independent investigations by the police, the Hawks and the intelligence agencies.

We hear from councillors in the uMzimkulu region that they are living in fear and strongly distrust the police.

Theyareconvincedthe killings are due to party battles over power and patronage.

Membership of the ANC has fallen sharply across the country over the past five years. Although KZN is still the province with the most ANC members, numbers there fell by more than half to about 155,000 by SOUTH AFRICA 2015 from 340,000 in 2012, the steepest drop in the country (see graph p.32).

Since then, there has been a fresh membership drive. Super Zuma KwaZulu-Natal refuses to speculate about the new figures on new adherents. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has been Activist Vanessa Burger, who testitrying to crack down on membership fied at the Moerane Commission into fraud with special audits. political violence in KZN, says some of National divisions within the ANC, the assassinations are commissioned including the rivalry between President like gangland hits: “Before there were Zuma and deputy president Ramaphosa, seem to be amplified in KZN. However, degrees of political conviction, now Super Zuma insists it is Ramaphosa’s it has become an industry – a form of camp in the province – led by former employment. Many are being killed for indiscriminate reasons. You stand police minister Bheki Cele and former in my way for a lucrative government premier Mchunu – who are spreading reports of disunity. tender – bang, you’re dead.” Equally, “KZN is united! Yes, you will get some she adds, many are still being killed elements that will talk the opposite to in factional rivalries.

Super Zuma ANC secretary, KwaZulu-Natal Province

ROGAN WARD FOR TAR

The ANC will still be ruling if we correct things The provincial secretary plays by the rulebook, insisting there have been no nominations, and draws lessons from local election defeats

having are that these assassinations – these ambushed assassinations –are not a reflection of what is happening on the ground in terms of tensions.

TAR: How is the political climate, given the political killings in the province?

SUPER ZUMA: Yes, we are concerned about the killings. But when you look at the branches, there is a sense of stability in the branches. The concerns we are

Is KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) still a united province?

What is important is the unity of branches, not individuals.

Individuals who speak with the media […] they’ll have access to media, speaking as if they are commanding a particular support. Yet they do not have

support. That’s why I’m saying that branches of KZN are very much united.

The leadership nomination process has opened. Who is leading the race in KZN? There’s not a single branch in the entire KZN or any other province that has nominated any particular leadership. There will be a process after the finalisation of the audit process. At all these community meetings, you’ll find a situation that maybe 95%

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POLITICS 31

THULI DLAMINI

Councillor Sindiso Magaqa was gunned down in July; friends say he was about to expose corruption

what the majority of KZN says […] some of them are disgruntled,” says Super Zuma, who argues that individuals can give a false picture of disunity.

Cosatu’s Mkhize rejects that view, arguing that there are splits within ANC branches that weaken the party.

Mchunu’s claims of election fraud and

of those who were there in that meeting weren’t participating in the process of nomination because they are not members of the ANC. That can mislead you.

What are you looking for in the next leader of the African National Congress (ANC)?

We haven’t pronounced because we are very disciplined as the ANC. We wanted to wait for the processes of the ANC because the national executive committee [NEC] of the ANC said branches must discuss principles, not names. So we have been waiting patiently for the NEC to say: “No, branches can now start discussing names.” [When] they have done that, the opening of the process of discussing names can start.

But the Women’s League has pronounced that it wants a female president.

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the successful court case reflect those tensions, he adds.

Mchunu sees himself as trying to promote unity: “When I was appointed premier [in 2014], I appointed five members of the executive committee who were opposed to me getting elected as a [provincial] chair. I consciously

a female or a male, it doesn’t matter. You see in the ANC there is no such thing as campaigning.

But isn’t that old-fashioned?

Yeah, it’s old-fashioned. That is why we said in our policy conference, let’s discuss this issue.

I was very surprised when I was asked to stand as the provincial secretary. And I said no way because I had my own thinking.

That’s how the ANC identifies leaders. You don’t just go around and say: ‘I’m available.’

“In the ANC there is no such thing as campaigning. […] You don’t just say: ‘I’m available.’”

What about the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)’s support for deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa to take over from President Zuma?

They are going back to what they did prior to 2007, [I know] because I was a leader by that time. I was part of that leadership

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reappointed them despite the fact that they opposed me.” Rivalries and divisions in the province have been exacerbated but not caused by the coming elective conference, says Mchunu.

Cele echoes this view: “Anyone who denied that there are divisions in the government would be lying to themselves.

Jacob Zuma is creating chaos so that the elective conference does not go ahead.”

The court ruling that annulled Zikalala’s election as ANC provincial chairman raises questions for the provincial leadership. Some top officials in the ANC worry that it sets an ugly precedent. A veteran ANC insider says: “The court case has divided the party.

Tension is high. The NEC [national executive committee] has not done enough to address tensions. There’s been no leadership or strategic vision about unity.”

that was [then] saying: ‘Now we want Zuma.’ But after the national conference, we met and discussed as Cosatu and said, no it was wrong for us to do that. We don’t have to impose ourselves on another organisation. But I think they went back to that same mistake now.

Last year’s local government elections saw the Democratic Alliance making major inroads. Is there concern that the ANC will lose the 2019 election?

Come 2019, and the ANC will still be ruling this country, provided we correct things, we deal with issues. You see these municipalities that we lost […]. If you talk about Nelson Mandela Bay, it was our own-goal because of some tensions that the national leadership has been dealing with in trying to unite comrades there. You go to Tshwane, it’s the same thing. So what’s important is to correct the wrongdoings and pull together.

Interview by Crystal Orderson

32 POLITICS

ANC membership 0 thousand 100

canvas our members to rally behind comrade Ramaphosa.”

Further complicating the ANC leadership race is KZN’s former premier Zweli Mkhize. In September, he said he would “accept a nomination by ANC branches to the position of party leader.”

Mkhize is widely seen as a trusted leader. Initially a backer of President Zuma, he has distanced himself in recent years and has taken to making speeches about the need for the ANC to regain an ethical direction.

300

Eastern Cape Mpumalanga Gauteng Limpopo

MKHIZE SPLITS THE VOTE

North West Free State Dec. 2012

Western Cape

Oct. 2015

Northern Cape

Equally, Ramaphosa has come out of political purdah and knows that he must start campaigning in earnest if he is to build serious momentum before the December election. ANC policy head Jeff Radebe also joined the race in August.

Cosatu’s Mkhize confirms the federation has pronounced “very firmly and clearly” in support of Ramaphosa to become the next ANC president. “As Cosatu, we do not vote in the ANC, but the majority of our members are also ANC members in the branches. We decided we are going to engage and

Inflation rate in South Africa by province (December 2016, %) 0

1

2

3

National average Western Cape

CAN’T STOP CAMPAIGNING

Eastern Cape Northern Cape Free State KwaZulu-Natal North West SOURCE: STATE SA, 2017

Mchunu, however, is clear about his position: he is running on Ramaphosa’s slate of candidates for secretary gen­ eral: “Comrade Cyril does have support among comrades, serious support. Don’t let people fool you. He has support starting from here in KZN.” Super Zuma is circumspect, refusing to confirm that NDZ is his candidate of choice: “We are very disciplined. The NEC said the branches must discuss the principles not names of individuals.” Nonetheless NDZ has been openly campaigning in the province and has frequently been endorsed by President Zuma at ANC rallies.

200

KwaZulu-Natal

SOURCE: ANC

“This is something that has never happened before,” says Cosatu’s Mkhize. “All those things have compromised the movement. We are concerned that our province is no longer commanding the unity.”

Benedict Xolani Dube, who works at the Xubera Institute for Research and Development, argues that the province has a history of divisions and that contestations have always been brutal.

Speaking to The Africa Report before the court ruling he was confident that the provincial ANC would pull together: “There is a patronage network and Zulu nationalism that binds people,” he said.

Although Mchunu’s supporters hope that his win in court will put him back in charge, the dispute will drag on. While Zikalala’sappealgoesthroughthesystem, the party’s NEC may appoint another team to run the province, and that might include some of the current leadership.

KZN’s Youth and Women’s Leagues were some of the first bodies to come out in support of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (NDZ), President Zuma’s ex-wife and preferred candidate for presidency of the party. They defied ANC rules by nominating her and immediately started to mobilise branches to nominate her too.

A senior Youth League official confidently tells The Africa Report: “The December conference will only be procedural and NDZ will be the ANC’s next president.” Referring to some of the Youth League’s eminent leaders, he adds: “The Youth League has never been wrong when it comes to their choice of presidential candidates.

Cyril should just forget about the race, uMama [Dlamini-Zuma] is the one. She will lead us. This is what the branches want. No games – she is the one.”

Gauteng Mpumalanga Limpopo

4

5

6

7

8

9

On different platforms, Mkhize emphasises the importance of unity in the ANC. But his presidential ambition is further splitting the vote in his home province.

In June, the Alfred Nzo municipality in the Eastern Cape announced Mkhize as its pick for party president. Two branches in KZN – uKhahlamba, and Pongola in the AbaQulusi region – have also nominated him.

Mkhize has been addressing branches in the province, even attending the annual reed dance. “Zweli is eating at Cyril’s support, and it’s annoying some people. The fact is he was the architect of Zuma’s ascendency in 2009 […] so he is the dark horse,” a branch delegate says.

Super Zuma dismisses Mkhize’s tactics, saying that candidates must be nominated by branches, and reach a threshold of support to go forward.

The Xubera Institute’s Dube is no longer convinced that there will be unity come December, but says: “I still believe NDZ has the upper hand. She is going to be the power broker, or should I say the kingmaker? Remember, there are people that have invested in her campaign so they won’t let it go without bargaining with Jeff Radebe and Zweli Mkhize.”

Professor Hermann Giliomee, a political historian, told the Cape Town Press Club that Mkhize could become the ANC leader: “There is so much at stake in the ANC […]. If you cannot choose one of the two front runners […] you have to go for a compromise candidate. If it goes to Cyril or Jacob’s anointed successor, there would be a split [in the ANC]. There would be a tremendous incentive to find a compromise candidate.”

A longstanding ANC member and voting delegate in the Harry Gwala Region in KZN concurs: “We support Dlamini-Zuma but Zweli is better […].

And Zweli might just be that compromise candidate.”

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INVEST IN

Real opportunities for investors An optimal business climate

© J. AVELINE/JA

TOGO

An exceptional location

Lomé, financial capital Togo’s banking sector is booming. In recent years, several foreign banking groups with pan-African ambitions have opened their doors in the country and are supporting its economic development which has recorded more than 5% growth over the past three years – twice the African average.

In 2015, 10,645 companies were started compared

Growth in number of businesses Trade

ADVERTORIAL

3 958

577

Services

4 050 1 424

Industry

5 307

1 933

46

84

205

2011

2012

2013

with 4,581 five years earlier. A growing number of pan-African companies are setting up in Togo because, over the past 10 years, the country has invested tens 7 556 of millions of Euros in building the physical 6 152 and administrative infrastructure necessary to its growth. The best examples of this are 2 992 1 995 the modernised port of Lomé, which has become a true hub in the heart of a market 97 142 of 300 million people, and the capital’s new 2014 2015 international airport.

INVEST IN

TOGO

S

ince 1985, Togo’s capital city, Lomé, has been home to the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), the financial arm of the Economic Community, and the West African Development Bank (BOAD), common to the eight WAEMU member countries.

Lomé is also where African banking group Ecobank, the biggest on the continent by number of establishments, chose to set up its new headquarters, facing the Atlantic. This decision affirmed the credit granted to Togo by this increasingly powerful private group, especially since its establishment in neighbouring Nigeria. Orabank, the leading pan-African bank in terms of its balance sheet total, also chose Lomé as the location for its headquarters.

208

branch networks

1,069,666 bank accounts

ADVERTORIAL

On the road to the bank of the future To continue banking the unbanked population, Togo is counting on the digital revolution. The country is modernising its Internet network so that people can enjoy all the advantages of broadband, especially in terms of banking and financial inclusion. Ecobank, Orabank and the Banque Togolaise pour le Commerce et l’Industrie have already established partnerships with mobile operators in order to offer their customers the possibility of managing online accounts and carrying out financial transactions.

Ecobank is even organising the Fintech Challenge in Lomé – a pan-African competition aimed at transforming finance through innovation and technology.

ECOWAS BANK FOR INVESTMENT AND DEVELOPMENT (EBID)

In 10 years the network has doubled in size In 2005, Togo had only a handful of banks. In 2006, when it set up in the country, Banque Atlantique set in motion a trend that continued to gather momentum. Nigeria’s Diamond Bank opened its branch in 2011, Attijariwafa Bank took over BIA-Togo in 2013, Bank of Africa entered the market by opening its first agency in Lomé the same year and Orabank merged with the Banque Togolaise de Développement (Togolese Development Bank), when it privatised in 2014. In 2015, following the trend, Coris Bank International and Société Générale were the newcomers, and United Bank for Africa is expected to follow suit.

500

direct jobs created due to the third quay of the port of Lomé

A determined strategy ➜ Modernise and industrialise the country ➜ Build permanent infrastructure essential to sustainable development ➜ Promote and simplify procedures for investors ➜ Initiate new public and private investment opportunities

A competitive environment

A bank for every budget Société Générale is positioning itself to attract Togo’s big companies and the State, whose infrastructure projects it is keen to support. However, a number of other institutions, such as Attijariwafa Bank, are choosing to woo the general public, going as far as rural areas to build a clientele of private individuals, thus playing a role in improving the national banked population rate.

This year Orabank benefited from an African Development Bank loan so that it could better contribute to the financing of SMEs and projects developed by young entrepreneurs.

This ambition is in line with the Supporting Employability and Youth Inclusion Project (PAEIJ-SP).

➜ 5% is Togo’s average GDP growth rate over the last three years ➜ 10,832 companies started in 2015, compared to 4,581 five years earlier ➜ Global traffic through the Port of Lomé doubled in five years while container traffic tripled ➜The new international airport has a capacity of 2 million passengers per year

Investment opportunities to be seized ➜ 13,000 m², the size of the future Lomé Retail Park being built by French company Duval ➜ The first agri-food technology park, a PPP, financed by the African Development Bank, operational by late December in the north of the country ➜ 5,000 social housing units a year to be built by 2020

Macroeconomic Indicators (%) Real GDP growth

5,9

Inflation

Fiscal balance (% of GDP)

-3,4

2,2

2,1

1,9

0,2

6

5,9

5,5

-5,3

-4,7

-4,4

HEADQUARTERS OF THE WEST AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (BOAD).

An active and attractive market > A streamlined investment code > A law and a new agency for investments in the free zone > A new customs code that facilitates trade

INVEST

IN

TOGO

5%

is the country’s growth rate since 2014.

DIFCOM / DF - © J. TORREGANO/JA UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.

Economic growth above 5% over the last three years. A clear improvement in the business climate.

In recent years Togo has invested so that it can provide businesses with the administrative – as well as the physical – infrastructure necessary for their growth. Economic operators, many of whom have taken advantage of these opportunities, attract banking structures keen to be a part of this boom.

The political stability of a country that is expecting to reap the dividends from its investments is also likely to reassure businesses.

Encouraging ratios Bolstered by its economic development, urbanisation and increased infrastructure deployment, Togo is now seeing the emergence of a middle class and an industrial fabric with growing and diversifying needs for banking and financial services. Togo’s rate of people with bank accounts is now the strongest in the WAEMU zone, having risen from 3% to 8.5% in the last five years. According to the data of the Central Bank of West African States, the deposit/GDP ratio is 38%, well above the WAEMU zone average of 25%.

Total results

Branch network

Accounts

Orabank

479,099

36

135,310

Ecobank

345,497

24

175,110

Union togolaise de banque

236,218

45

170,501

Diamond Bank (Branch)

196,598

9

27,729

Banque Atlantique

162,240

23

53,559

Banque togolaise pour le commerce et l’industrie

ADVERTORIAL

Banks

132,551

11

57,421

Banque internationale pour l’Afrique au Togo

94,192

10

30,204

Bank of Africa

86,874

7

13,680

Banque sahélo-saharienne pour l’investissement et le commerce

59,044

13

17,182

Banque populaire pour l’épargne et le crédit

54,827

27

378,538

Coris Bank International

36,702

1

2,615

Société Générale Bénin (Branch)

29,833

1

181

Société interafricaine de banque

10,832

1

7,636

1,924,507

208

1,069,666

TOTAL

SOURCE: WAEMU BANKING COMMISSION AT 31 DECEMBER 2015

Banks in Togo

THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS

POLITICS 37

The surprise Supreme Court decision has catapulted Odinga onto the campaign trail again

KENYA

Back in the game

With the annulment of the 8 August election giving Raila Odinga a last chance to shine, battle lines have been drawn along reform of the electoral process

K

enya’s most powerful opposition leaders are sipping tea and eating doughnuts in a room on the first floor of a stately home in Nairobi’s leafy Lavington neighbourhood. The National Super Alliance (Nasa)’s presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, sits in the middle of the room, surrounded

by Musalia Mudavadi, the architect of the opposition coalition, and James Orengo, a key polling agent. The mood is upbeat and workmanlike after Odinga was unexpectedly given another chance to run for the presidency.

In a twist that had all the makings of a tense courtroom drama, Kenya’s Supreme Court shocked the world when it annulled the 8 August presidential elections, in which President Uhuru Kenyatta was re-elected with 54.3% of the vote, citing “irregularities and illegal­ ities” in the voting process. Chief justice David Maraga ordered fresh elections to be held by 31 October.

In a damning indictment of the electoral process, on 20 September the court said the electoral commission had declared Kenyatta the winner of the THE AFRICA REPORT

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The IEBC has set the new presidential 8 August presidential election without an adequate amount of physical forms to election for 17 October, but opposition back up the provisional electronic results. leaders doubt that the reforms they want When Kenyatta’s re-election was will be pushed through by then. thrown out, no one was happier than Kenyatta and the Jubilee Party want Odinga, who vowed that this new caman election as soon as possible bepaign will be the last of his long career. cause they sense an imminent victory.

“The Supreme Court did a wonderful Unsurprisingly, they do not want to job. They did historic work,” Odinga told make any changes to the IEBC or to its The Africa Report (see page 40). contracts. “All we want is an election.

In a stroke, Odinga’s campaign had And if by the expiry of 60 days you won’t been resurrected. Just weeks earlier, international Odinga is threatening observers urged the longto boycott fresh elections time opposition leader to if changes are not made concede defeat. Now the ball is in Odinga’s court. He is threatening to boycott fresh elections if have conducted the election, we will not a list of changes to the electoral commisaccept it,” Kenyatta said on 15 September. sion and voting process are not made.

William Ruto, Kenya’s deputy president, has perhaps the most to gain ELECTORAL REFORM IS THE ISSUE in this election after Kenyatta. The The run-up to the next poll is set to be a unlikely alliance between Kikuyu and tug-of-war between the opposition and Kalenjin ethnic groups formed in the the governing party over reforms to the aftermath of the 2007-2008 post-election crisis is showing signs of fraying. Ruto Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and changes to is manoeuvring to keep the country’s the role of technology in the election. governing party alive until the next

38 POLITICS

elections, slated for 2022, when he hopes to be the party’s flagbearer. “Nasa is talking about a political solution to the 17 October elections because they have sensed defeat,” he told a Jubilee rally on 15 September. “They want us to negotiate how to share power and shortchange Kenyans on the impending elections.”

The opposition has said that more time is needed to make the changes it wants to see before a new poll can be held. “No matter how long it takes, it must be right. Otherwise, we say we will not go for an election,” says Odinga.

Nasa accuses OT-Morpho, which provided tablets with fingerprint recognition, of colluding with Jubilee

CHILOBA MUST GO, SAYS NASA

Among the long list of changes Nasa has submitted are the removal of senior IEBC officials, an audit of the electoral database from the 8 August poll – which Nasa says was compromised by hackers – new ballot-printing and technology contracts, and a review of all official polling stations. In its detailed ruling on 20 September, the Supreme Court said the IEBC failed to provide adequate access to its servers and had not assuaged fears of hacking.

In the weeks since the Supreme Court’s ruling, Nasa has focused its But in the weeks since the release of campaign on the need to reform the that memo Nasa has increasingly turned IEBC, which Odinga and his coalition on Chebukati, who was once a supdeeply distrust. The electoral body is porter of Odinga’s Orange Democratic now under intense pressure to hold Movement. On 14 September, the credible polls and to correct mistakes around vote transmission and tallying. opposition alliance issued a letter to Nasa’s most pressing demand is the Chebukati slamming him for failing to sacking of the IEBC’s chief executive take steps to reform the electoral comofficer, Ezra Chiloba, who oppositionmission. “We see no evidence that the commission is making a good faith effort ists see as the culprit behind botched to conduct a fresh election that fulfills elections. Glancing up from his cup of the letter and spirit of the judgement. On tea, Odinga says Nasa does not want Chiloba “anywhere near” the next presthe contrary, your attempt to circumvent idential election. Mudavadi joins in: “There’s a lot of Nasa is demanding to see the house-cleaning to be done contracts between the IEBC before you can persuade and the technology companies peoplethattheIEBCisready for a free and fair election.”

Reform of the electoral commission the illegalities and irregularities smacks does not appear likely because the of further contempt of the Court and the Supreme Court ruling has thrown the people of Kenya,” the statement said.

In the run-up to fresh polls, Nasa has IEBC into a civil war, with one side sharpened its focus on OT-Morpho, a backing chairman Wafula Chebukati French technology company that won and the other supporting Chiloba. An contracts with the electoral commission aggressive memo in which Chebukati to provide 45,000 tablets with fingerprint demands answers to questions about scanners and to transmit and store votes electoral malpractice from Chiloba electronically. “It appears there was emerged three days after the annulcollusion between [OT-Morpho] and ment, prompting many to argue that Chebukati was trying to pile blame for the government here to facilitate rigging the electoral failures on Chiloba. of this electoral process,” Odinga says.

Nearby, Mudavadi is making corrections to the draft of a letter that the coalition sent to French officials on 8 September that urged an investigation into the role of technology in the botched elections. “The technology that [OT-Morpho] provided failed to work or was deliberately interfered with so that it failed to work,” he says. A key problem for Nasa is that the contracts between the IEBC and the technology companies were not made public.

OT-Morpho’s chief operating officer, Frédéric Beylier, told reporters on 15 September that his company had carried out an audit of the electoral system and found that it “in no way suffered manipulation of data, attacks, attempts to penetrate the system or anything of that kind.”

CAVALIER ATTITUDE

In the rush to prepare for the 17 October re-run, the IEBC is expected to singlesource a contract with OT-Morpho. Nasa has already rejected this, setting the stage for a boycott.

Butthecompanysaidon18September that it would not be able to reproduce the same technology in time for the 17 October re-run. Nasa had demanded that the IEBC’s servers, which hold THE AFRICA REPORT

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SOURCE: IEBC

RICCARDO GANGALE/AP/SIPA

election a clean bill of health, which dozens of appeals are still waiting to be is part of the reason that the Supreme heard in the courts. As the results stand, Jubilee has a near majority with 140 of Court ruling came as such a surprise.

290 seats in the national assembly, not Former US secretary of state John Kerry, who headed the Carter Center observer including parties that vote in step with mission, said on 9 August: “Kenya has them, making it easy for them to push made a remarkable statement to Africa legislation through. and the world about its democracy and the character Ruto has a lot to gain: election of that democracy. Don’t wins by his allies place him let anybody besmirch that.”

Odinga is upset that in the lead to succeed Kenyatta no observer teams took seriously his claims that the electoral Jubilee had fought hard to capture database had been hacked on the day the governorships of one of the counafter the election. “We had seen the try’s three biggest cities. Mike Sonko observers before they made their reports defeated incumbent Nairobi governor and we were surprised at the attitude Evans Kidero, making him a rising star in many eyes. The ruling party failed to – very cavalier,” he says. win in two key counties that will play crucial roles in infrastructure and oil ALL EYES ON 2022 Opposition supporters are vilifying developments. In Mombasa, the Jubilee foreign observers as accomplices to onslaught on governor Hassan Joho failed. The governing party was also vote-rigging. One observer mission unsuccessful in Turkana, where incumtells The Africa Report that it is taking bent Josphat Nanok won in a region measures to improve the safety of its that voted overwhelmingly for Jubilee. staff after receiving threats.

“The international community should To most political observers, the elecmove away from treating the Jubilee tion solidified the position of deputy government with kid gloves. They’ve president Ruto. Most of his allies won electoral data, be hosted in Kenya. “It been hoodwinked,” opposition leader across the country, placing him in the would be technically impossible to Mudavadi says. “We are dealing with a lead to succeed Kenyatta. situation where there [is] impunity [for meet the 31 October deadline,” Olivier Ruto’s potential opponents in the those] in positions of authority.”

Charles, the company’s general manager Jubilee Party have been cast aside. for Africa, wrote to the IEBC. There are dozens of politicians with In a clear sign that his star is not in Another potential sticking point is their sights set on State House in 2022. ascendency, Peter Munya lost Meru that the IEBC has said that only Odinga Governors can only hold their seat for County’s gubernatorial race to former and Kenyatta will be contesting the retwo terms, meaning that many will not justice and constitutional affairs minrun; some of the six other presidential be eligible to run for the same seat in ister Kiraitu Murungi. The early defeat 2022. With no budgets and weak powcandidates from the 8 August vote have of Peter Kenneth during the Jubilee said they will appeal this, which could ers, senatorial seats have become less nominations for Nairobi County also potentially delay the elections again. attractive than they had seemed initially. removed him from the race for 2022.

The local contests that were held on Several prominent groups of internaThe biggest casualty of the Ruto elec8 August were not annulled, although tional observers had given the 8 August toral wave was Isaac Ruto (no relation), the former governor of Bomet County.

Ruto’s defeat in Bomet was especially MPs in National Assembly, 2017 election results bitter for the opposition because he had rebelled against Jubilee, starting the Chama Cha Mashinani party and aligning it with the opposition coalition.

With sidelined political opponents at the governorship level, Ruto has enNational Super sured that he has allies in power. Three Alliance (Nasa) Jubilee governors – Paul Chepkwony, KANU Party 8 104 Joyce Laboso and Samuel Tunai – have Jubilee Party Independents 13 alreadystartedfundraisingforRuto’s2022 140 presidential campaign. “We now turn our focus on how Deputy President Ruto will Others 25 clinch the presidency and we are sure he will become the fifth head of state,” Tunai said at his swearing-in ceremony.

Total 290

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Mark Anderson in Nairobi

40 POLITICS

Raila Odinga

Presidential candidate, National Super Alliance, Kenya

The Supreme Court ruling is historic Veteran Kenyan oppositionist talks to The Africa Report about the Supreme Court’s historical decision to throw out the result of the 8 August presidential vote

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enya’sSupremeCourt announced on 1 Sep­ tember that it had annulled the result of the August presiden­ tial election that handed victory to the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta, saying there were irreg­ ularities and violations of the law.

Challenger Raila Odinga will face off against Kenyatta for the third time in October and says that he will not sit by and watch the same mistakes be made again.

Immediately after the election you said that you would not go to court. Why did you say that?

In the last elections, in 2013, the situation was similar but we did not win our appeal. We were not able to gather the evidence fast enough. Why? Because the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) refused to allow us access to their records. And the time was ticking because the period is very short. […] But this time round we had agents in most parts of the country, and we also had tallying centres.

First we wanted to give our evidence to somebody else like the Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) or the

TAR: How does the Supreme Court ruling to annul the 8 August election make you feel?

RAILA ODINGA: I think it’s for the first time, not only in Kenya but in Africa, that a supreme court has “The international had the courage to community should take come out and make this as a good lesson” a bold statement that the elections were not conducted in accordance with KenyaHumanRightsCommission the constitution. I have been ob­ (KHRC). Remember when the po­ serving elections in other African lice stormed the offices of AfriCOG and the KHRC and said they had countries, and I know that this has been happening in so many of our not paid taxes? So we said, in that case we will go ourselves.

African countries. And the observ­ ers have never had the courage to cry foul. That’s why they say that The re-run of the election is the Kenya ruling is historic […]. scheduled for 17 October. Are It has ushered the continent into you confident that the electoral a new era altogether. commission will be ready?

A LIFE IN OPPOSITION 1945 Born in Kisumu District, Kenya, son of the future vice-president Oginga Odinga 1982-91 Periods of detention without trial by Daniel arap Moi’s government 1997 First bid for president against Moi 2007 Second bid for president against Mwai Kibaki; became prime minister 2013 Third bid for president against Uhuru Kenyatta 2017 Fourth bid for president against Kenyatta; election results annulled

I think it’s not going to be pos­ sible to hold the election on 17 October because the IEBC is con­ flictedanddivided. Therearethose who really want genuine reforms so that we can have free and fair elections; there are those who are basically partisan and are basically fronting Jubilee’s position.

We think that the international community ought to get involved in this because this is something that is going to lead to a serious crisis in this country. People have lost confidence in the electoral commission or in elections as a way of changing government.

What changes do you want to see before a new presidential election can take place?

We don’t want [IEBC chief executive officer] Ezra Chiloba anywhere near where elections are being held. That’s our starting point. We want the IEBC to remove about six other senior officials.

We want an audit of the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System, including access to the servers, and we want to register properly audited polling stations.

Jubilee created more than 700 unregistered polling stations – that’s where ghost voters voted.

So the IEBC is now under pres­ sure. They are being controlled from the outside, and this is not healthy for our nation. And there­ fore we want the United Nations to ensure that a proper environment is created in which free and fair elections could be held.

Would you say part of the problem is the IEBC does not understand the gravity of the situation?

Definitely. They do not un­ derstand the magnitude of the problem, and I think it is because they are under pressure from the Jubilee side. But this matter is

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take many things at face value.

Elections are very important to any nation.

SVEN TORFINN/PANOS-REA

What are some of the unanswered questions that you have about the elections?

We have 500,000 people who voted only for the president – they didn’t vote for anybody else. What did the IEBC do with the five other ballots? They were unable to answer that question in court.

Then we have the case of the electoral database. According to the logs the IEBC gave us, results were being posted in there the day before the elections. Jubilee’s chief agent Davis Chirchir used his own account to post results in the system.

a very grave matter indeed. It cannot be sorted out in the short time allotted. Time is not an issue here, we just must get it right.

Otherwise, we say we will not go for an election where even the IEBC itself is admitting that there are such grave mistakes.

The IEBC is now torn. The chairman has basically admitted that there were mistakes and these mistakes must be rectified before we go for another election. But you can see that the other commissioners are being defensive.

They are failing to own up.

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After the election the international community was pressuring you to concede defeat. What is your message to them?

There is a Latin saying, errare humanum est, meaning that to err is human, but to repeat a mistake is stupidity itself. So we’re saying that we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This one here, of course, they messed up.

And I think they should take this as a good lesson for them and start soul-searching.

When they go for another mission elsewhere, they should not

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What about the role of the technology companies that had contracts with the IEBC? We’ve written a letter to the French government in which we are complaining about the conduct of French technology company OT-Morpho in this election process. They were contracted to supply the information and communication technology infrastructure by the government, but it appears there was collusion between them and the government here to facilitate rigging of this electoral process.

We don’t expect that this kind of thing would be done by a company coming from the European Union. That a French company can be doing this to us here in Africa, it’s something that is most regrettable. They are definitely on the wrong side of history.

You visited your friend Nana Akufo-Addo in Ghana last December and saw him sweep to power off the back of a digitally savvy strategy. Is that something that you took inspiration from?

Certainly we learnt a lot from them and sent up people who trained our people to set up our system of evidence collection, our system of tallying. We had a similar tallying centre system, so we worked very closely.

Interview by Mark Anderson in Nairobi

42 POLITICS

NIGERIA

Kaduna, a city divided

The Africa Report takes you to the seat of northern power in Nigeria, a city of great former economic strength and recent religious conflicts that holds lessons for the divisions the rest of the country faces

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Displaced women wait for transport out of Kaduna following the Miss World riots of 2002

The British under Frederick Lugard, the colonial governor-general of Nigeria, created Kaduna around 1907 as the capital of the northern protectorate.

The city grew from 20,000 people in the 1940s to a current population of more than a million.

‘THE DEPUTY CAPITAL’

No sooner had Lugard settled down in Kaduna – it was a regional capital at the time in 1912 – than he began to plan for it as Nigeria’s capital. Lugard never hid his antipathy towards Lagos, then the capital of Nigeria.

The transfer never happened, but Kaduna still achieved an unparalleled political importance in the country. It nurtured a group of young intellectuals, dogged civil servants, military officers and business tycoons. This powerful clique would come to be known as the ‘Kaduna mafia’. The term conveys a certain

larger-than-life impression of a small circle of young northern Nigerians who pursued northern Nigeria’s political domination.

After the 1966 coup that ended the first republic in Nigeria, the northern region was broken into six states, and these were further broken down into 10 states in 1976 by the military administration. Notwithstanding, Kaduna still retained its aura as the old northern region’s capital.

JUDA NGWENYA/REUTERS

aduna seems to have lost its way.

The halcyon days when the city held great influence over national politics, and its industries churned out goods, are mostly memories. But the arrival of a slew of Buhari-linked politicians may well prove to be a turning point.

During the government-driven industrial high of the 1960s, textile, auto and chemicals firms boomed, and cosmopolitan Kaduna was born.

If Kaduna is the mini-Nigeria, the Kakuri neighbourhood is a miniKaduna: all dialects of Nigeria are heard, from Efik, Yoruba, Igala, Hausa, to Igbo and Gwari. Kaduna can be loud, blaring, dirty, dull, exciting, sluggish, and fast-moving, all at the same time.

At its heart is the concept of Nigeria, a melting point of ideas and ethnicities.

But by the 1990s, the factories began to close. Men once revelling in the fruits of their labours were no longer functional breadwinners. Suicides followed, bodies hanging from roofs and ceilings, as machines slowed down and became quiet.

Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs when industries closed down without severance payments or entitlements. “Many of us have no means of livelihood and no hope for another job in a country with millions of unemployed youths,” says Adamu Maisantaki, a former textile worker. “Many have seen their children withdrawn from school for non-payment of school fees.”

But Kaduna is not just a late-20thcentury victim of stuttering industrial policy and cheap Chinese and Indian fabric. It is also a seat of power, first for the British, then for the northern Nigerians who have reigned for many of the post-independence years.

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AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

Workers’ cards in a former textile factory: the industry has failed to revive after the violence of 2000-2

This was partly because most of the assets that belonged to northern Nigeria were concentrated in and around Kaduna: the once-sprawling Northern Nigeria Development Corporation and its two huge subsidiaries, Northern Nigeria Investment Limited and Arewa Hotels; Kaduna Polytechnic; Ahmadu Bello Stadium; Radio Television Kaduna; New Nigerian Newspapers; and Kaduna Textile. Kaduna was so prominent at the time that in 1987 then communications minister Tony Momoh described it as “the deputy capital of Nigeria”.

Successive military coups by young northern officers fuelled the idea that there must be a secret cabal that ran the country. People often refrained from naming names, giving the Kaduna mafia iconic and mythic status.

nephew, was the head of the powerful Kaduna mafia. “They were expanding their sphere of influence to the extent that at a time, no northerner could hold an executive position without a note from one of them.” With Kaduna’s fall from economic grace, however, less has been heard about the Kaduna mafia.

In 2000, Kaduna was red and bloody.

About 2,000 people died, while a further 10,000 were injured in a religious crisis due to the proposed introduction of

Names associated with the group include Adamu Ciroma, Mamman Daura, Mahmud Tukur, Ibrahim Dasuki, Tijjani Hashim, Galadiman Kano, Hamza Zayyad, Umaru Mutallab, Aliko Mohammed, Ahmed Joda, Shehu Yar’adua, Abubakar Audu, Ango Abdullahi, Sani Zangon Daura, Aminu Tijjani, Turakin Zazzau, Ahmadu Ali and Jubril Aminu.

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AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

FALL FROM GRACE

Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s first act on being elected in 2015 was to make sweeping financial and civil service reforms, recovering N24.7bn for the state’s coffers

sharia law, which sparked violent clashes between Muslims and Christians.

The aftermath of that crisis was the separation of the city. Kaduna became segregated, with a Muslim north and Christian south.

In 2002, another bout of violence erupted. There were three days of attacks and reprisals after the publishing of a controversial newspaper article on the Miss World Beauty Pageant slated to be hosted in Abuja. The article said that Islam’s prophet Muhammad would have likely been OK with the event, a statement that some members of the Muslim community said was blasphemous.

A NEW ELITE

Ibrahim Abdulwase, now a practising pharmacist, was in secondary school during the crisis. As he returned from school in February 2000, thick smoke filled the skies as tyres and houses burned. “It was a terrible period,” remembers Abdulwase. The division heaped misery on a city already suffocating with sad tales.

But Kaduna is attempting to rise again.

And with it, talk of a new Kaduna elite.

The victory of President Buhari in the March 2015 election thrust Mamman Daura back into national prominence.

Adding to hopes that the city will be able to turn itself around, Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai is one of the closest governors to Buhari.

That doesn’t make everyone happy.

Eyebrows were raised when a new train line linking Kano to Daura, the hometown of both Buhari and Mamman Daura was announced.

The principal adviser on building matters to the first premier of northern Nigeria, the late Mamman Kankia, gave some advice about fixing Kaduna’s problems, and meshing with the wider concerns of the country. Having lived through years of fast and plenty before his passing at the age of 95 in 2016, he said: “We were united then, unlike now where sentiment has tore us apart.

Leaders from different parts of the north will come with their problems and solutions will be found,” he said. “There is nothing that is better than unity. It is only when we are united that we can address our problems.”

Sada Malumfashi in Kaduna

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Testing Ouattara’s legacy

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he limits of Pax Ouattara – the years of political stability that came with President Alassane Ouattara’s arrival in power in 2011 following the bloody post-election standoff with Laurent Gbagbo – are being tested. Ouattara is due to step down from power in 2020 and already chatter in the corridors of power and the maquis of Abidjan is focused on how the political class is fracturing and coalescing with no anointed successor in sight and several guardians of political power bases looking to position themselves for the future. The race for 2020 will show whether the foundations for democratic political competition put in place after the civil war are stable or shaky.

The past was on Ouattara’s mind at the September congress of his Rassemblement des Républicains (RDR) party. Reflecting on the ups and downs of his career, the former IMF official emphasised: “Never forget where we come from.” Ouattara came to power with the support of Forces Nouvelles rebel leader Guillaume Soro and Henri Konan Bédié of the Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI).

Both men’s ties with Ouattara have now become strained and could break.

The next few months will play a key role in shaping Ouattara’s legacy. A leader praised by donors for his record on economic growth, the Ivorian leader has been facing student protests over fees and a spate of mutinies. He wants to create a unified party this year – turning his Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) alliance with Bédié’s PDCI into a formal party structure.

That would help to further isolate Soro, who did not attend the RDR congress and would need his own grassroots structures if he is serious about 2020. In August, his allies in the former rebel group founded the Amicale des Forces Nouvelles, but spokesmen have all denied that the group has political aims. While Soro is a member of the RDR, his allies have largely lost the positions of influence that they held in the period following the post-electoral conflict.

Soro’s opponents say that he is behind the mutinies, a charge that Soro denies.

Back in July, Soro made a public apology

to the country for the harm done during his career, saying that he would even ask former president Laurent Gbagbo for forgiveness because Côte d'Ivoire needs to focus more on reconciliation.

But turning the RHDP into a party risks angering Bédié, who at 83 is not considering his own run for the presidency in three years’ time. Ouattara and Bédié’s relationship has been especially rocky since Bédié told our sisWhile many ter publication Jeune Afrique in are waiting June: “In 2020, the candidate for the RHDP will come from my parfor Ouattara ty.” Back in 2015, Bédié made a to provide much-criticised decision to back Ouattara for the presidency and more details to eschew nominating a PDCI about how candidate. He says that move was part of a deal with Ouattara he sees the that it would give the PDCI its succession, turn in charge after allowing he is in Ouattara two terms in office.

Bédié did not attend the RDR no rush and congress either, but said later in is seeking December that ups and downs were a natural part of the relato confound tionship. He says that he accepts expectations the principle of turning the RHDP into a party. While Bédié was not so far behind Ouattara in the first round of the 2010 election – 25.2% to 32.1% – the PDCI has fractured since then and Bédié has not gained much from his alliance.

The negotiations to turn the alliance into a new party will surely be tense, as RDR and RHDP cadres jockey for position.

While many are waiting for Ouattara to provide more details about that and how he sees the succession, he is in no rush and is seeking to confound expectations.

At the RDR congress, rather than take up the role of party president for himself, he announced that veteran politician Henriette Diabaté, 82, took up the post. She has been talking up the usual topics of unity and peace, so rest assured that Ouattara has not made his last move in the succession stakes, as unity and peace pull in opposition directions when there can only be one person to take up the reins.

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Abidjan hosts Europe for the 5th Africa-EU Summit

THE FUTURE IN COMMON There is no doubt that CĂ´te d'Ivoire made a remarkable comeback to the international arena in 2017. Having hosted the Francophone Games (Jeux de la Francophonie) from 21 to 30 July, Abidjan is preparing to host the 5th Africa-EU Summit on 29 and 30 November.

Around 6,000 people will take part in this event, which is expected to bring together nearly 80 Heads of State and Government from both continents.

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Alassane Ouattara and Dominique Ouattara, hosted by the French presidential couple in Paris.

or centuries, Africa and Europe have shared a common history which helps them face the coming challenges together. The time has come for the EU to go beyond its role as the continent’s main donor to propose a “New Deal” to its African partner. Emmanuel Macron confirmed this during President Alassane Ouattara’s preparatory visit to Paris on 31 August.

“This summit must lay the foundations for a reset in relations between our two continents”, said the French Head of State, in the presence of his Ivorian counterpart.

For the first time this summit is being held in sub-Saharan Africa. It should give new impetus to cooperation between the countries of the two Unions.

Environment, security, along with young people and employment issues will be the main themes of this edition.

The first line of Abidjan's future metro will connect Anyama to Port-Bouët.

Europe can draw inspiration from the example of France and Côte d'Ivoire, which reaffirmed their ties during the bilateral meeting. After discussing issues around immigration, education, economic cooperation and sustainable development, the two Heads of State reaffirmed the excellent ties between

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Emmanuel Macron will officially launch the construction of the future metro while in the Ivorian capital.

ri-Konan-Bédié Bridge, built over the Ebrié Lagoon by Bouygues Construction in three years, has dramatically decreased congestion in the city since it opened in December 2014. Today, it is seen as a symbol, in its own right, of Côte d’Ivoire’s renewal, illustrated by the metamorphosis of its economic

the two countries. The Abidjan summit will be an opportunity to highlight this friendship, as President Macron will officially launch the construction of the new metro, in the economic capital of Côte d'Ivoire.

To develop a project that is expected to significantly improve the mobility of Abidjan’s five million inhabitants, France has proposed an unprecedented 1.4bn euro project that combines technology from several of its leading companies. Bouygues and Keolis are associated with South Korean companies Dongsen Engineering and Hyundai Rotem for the construction of this transport infrastructure of which 37.9 kilometres, crossing the metropolis from north to south, will be completed in the first phase. The agreement and plan of action, signed by both presidents at the Elysée, provides for financial assistance from France to the tune of 2 billion Euros, between now and 2020.

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The increase in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Côte d'Ivoire since 2012; FDI exceeded $7 billion in 2016.

© R. Van der MeerenLes Éditions du Jaguar

A huge project

GDP per capita by 2020, a 28% increase in the average income of Ivorians compared to 2015.

The Henri-Konan-Bédié Bridge, symbol of technical prowess, links the Marcory and Riviera districts.

The renewal France and its companies have long led the charge for investing in Côte d'Ivoire and helping the country acquire the infrastructure necessary for its economic development. The Hen-

A new Côte d'Ivoire, illustrated by the metamorphosis of its economic capital.

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The Plateau business district is one of the symbols of a new Côte d'Ivoire.

capital underway in recent years.

Alassane Ouattara has often expressed his dream of seeing a Côte d'Ivoire at peace, on its way to becoming an emerging nation by 2020. France is not the only partner to accompany the country in his ambition. Today, China, Morocco and many other countries bring their expertise and financing to the table, convinced by Côte d’Ivoire’s economy and its 9% growth recorded in recent years. They contribute to the development of the country and its modernisation.

mou s port of Abidjan While the autonom ck along Vridi Bay is extending its docks and Sitarail is restarting its railway services, the Plateau business district is being redesigned and renovated around new esplanades offering a wide range of services. Below it, the entire Cocody Bay is being rehabilitated around a marina and shopping malls. New commercial and residential areas are planned around the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny airport, while a 60,000-seat Olympic stadium is to be built in Anyama, in the Abidjan district, to host the Africa Cup of Nations (CAF) in 2021.

It is this Côte d'Ivoire in motion that is preparing to host the Fifth Summit, at a time when the AU and EU will be taking another step towards their common future.

DIFCOM/DF - PHOTOS : © Ministère de la République de Côte d'Ivoire unless otherwise stated.

© R. Van der MeerenLes Éditions du Jaguar

The Cocody Bayy development includes des a marina, leisure areas, an overpass and shopping malls.

The program of the First Ladies On the sidelines of the official meeting between Presidents Macron and Ouattara at the end of September, Brigitte Macron and Dominique Ouattara discussed the issue of women's empowerment. They reviewed the terms of the Green Fund, set up by former California actor and governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and scheduled to be launched in November at the upcoming EU-AU Summit in Abidjan. This fund should enable women in power to take charge and have the means to run ecological and solidarity initiatives. Cote d'Ivoire’s First Lady was chosen to lead this project across Africa. She is also involved in Health care and the new Bingerville Mother-Child Hospital will open very soon.

The Bingerville Mother-Child Hospital, not far from Abidjan.

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GEORGE OSODI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Nigeria

Enugu’s champions see it competing with Lagos, where AfriOne opened a new factory in April

Wise men P in the east

How Nigeria’s new industrial revolutionaries are trying to turn Enugu back into ground zero for a new wave of economic transformation

By Eromo Egbejule in Enugu THE AFRICA REPORT

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residentMuhammaduBuhari could not have been more explicit. Speaking to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria during the body’s annual general meeting in Abuja back in September 2016, he said: “This administration is convinced that the key to our quest for economic diversification and therefore survival lies in agriculture and manufacturing.” With falling oil revenue and the desperate need to boost exports to bring in foreign exchange, factory owners dared to believe that their needs were going to be taken seriously.

And why not? Because before oil became king, Nigerian industrial

50 COUNTRY FOCUS | NIGERIA

revolutionaries did exactly that. The technocratic government of Michael Okpara, premier of the eastern region between 1959 and 1966, for example, set about making the region a hub of agricultural and industrial revolution.

Nigeria will not simply be able to flick a switch to industrialise. It will need to rediscover the powerful manufacturing bases of its past to muster some of the expertise, and lean on existing infrastructure. There are flickers of this happening in Kaduna State (see page 42). And in the east, there is a formidable hub in the making.

SOURCE: BMI RESEARCH

core of it remains Enugu, the region’s administrative capital and later that of the breakaway state of Biafra.

But long before Okpara, eastern Nigeria was the cradle of coal mining. “Enugu was originally a normal agrarian zone, before coal and then the advent of the miners who organised the government around the mining sector,” explains Sam Nwobodo, Enugu State’s commissioner of commerce and industry.

“This brought further development. And then it was the headquarters of the old eastern region all the way to Port Harcourt, Calabar […]. As such, a lot of this old infrastructure FISCAL was derived from Enugu.”

FEDERALISM The government that Nigeria’s real GDP Nwobodo serves wants Okpara made it a priorgrowth forecast ity to build infrastructo resuscitate Okpara’s in 2017 – it is expected ture and businesses in legacy. Last December to stay above 3% from 2018 to 2021 each of the nine states saw the groundbreaking ceremony for a free-trade in the former eastern zone. A Chinese firm also plans to build region – one of three regions in the an industrial park in Emene, an innewly independent Nigeria. And bedustrial cluster within the city. Emene cause each region was in charge of its already houses the Akanu Ibiam Airport, own spending – known as fiscal fedwhich accounts for a large percentage eralism – Okpara could use tax from of goods airfreighted into Onitsha, a agricultural produce to fund projects. city on the banks of the River Niger and Some of the significant ones include home to the largest outdoor market in the Trans Amadi Industrial Complex West Africa. It has flights to Guangzhou, in Port Harcourt, Obudu Cattle Ranch Mumbai and Singapore. and Resort, and the Eastern Nigeria Both projects could serve as a supDevelopment Corporation’s rubber port base for the many small-scale and palm plantations. But Okpara was textile and footwear manufacturers also one of the founding fathers of the prestigious University of Nigeria and key who already export to Togo, Ghana and to the launching of cement factories, Equatorial Guinea from their base in breweries and textile mills.

Aba, a city 176km south of Enugu city, the capital of Enugu State.

These projects were part of a blueprint conceived by him, alongside Nnamdi Azikiwe, his preedecessor, and Mbonu Ojike,, the brilliant economist who conc ceived the 10-year eastern onNigerian economic reco struction plan (1954-19644).

Both men served duri ng Azikiwe’s tenure as premiier from 1954 to 1959 in his kitchen cabinet.

Abuja Fifty years on, this work forms the bedrock of south-eastern Nigeria’s coping mechLagos anism for the effects of ENUGU ERUGU its weak infrastructure and federal neglect after the civil war. At the

2.4%

Meanwhile, next door to Onitsha is Nnewi, which has for decades been a hub of automobile parts and cable manufacturing. Producers there could link up with the infrastructure being built.

But without power, these plans will remain dreams on paper. Barth Nnaji, a former University of Pittsburgh professor of industrial engineering, and minister of power between 2011 and 2012, raised elect electricity generation to almost a 5,000MW, Niggeria’s highest-ever g generated capacity.

These days, he i putting finishing is ttouchestothe$530m ur-turbine Geometric fou Powerr Plant, an independent pow wer project designed to poweer Aba’s planned industria l revolution with an addition nal 1,125MW. As an embedded po ower plant, all power generated would remain within the city grid, with thee excess going to the overburdened natiional grid.

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there will be free movement of goods and people, to work on gas pipelines for the region.”

Given Enugu’s history of coal mining, many are arguing that the mineral should be on the front line to fire up an industrial revolution, rather than endlessly waiting for cleaner energy through gas pipelines that the federal government may never provide.

AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

COAL IS CRUCIAL

The Innoson assembly plant in Nnewi is a national success story and supplies the Nigerian army

injection from the Cairo-based Africa Export-Import Bank. Two other plants are also being built with the backing of General Electric, Orascom, and the China Machinery Engineering Corporation, as part of a plan to create a domino effect throughout the region within three to five years.

Economic Development Company (SEREDEC) to shake up all the stakeholders working for the development of the region. “We want to work on initiatives which may not easily be undertaken by a state government but can be undertaken by the region of the five states combined, and really driven by the private sector, not pivoted on politics,” says Nnaji. “We want to look at rural networks for the region, so that

PRIVATE-SECTOR PUSH

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Fuel consumption recovering after weak 2016 2,000

(total petroleum products supply from NNPC, million litres)

1,500 1,000 SOURCE: NNPC, BMI

“I can tell you that by next year, Aba will have uninterrupted power and it will be the first city in Nigeria to have that”, Nnaji tells The Africa Report in his country home in Enugu. “There’s a 27km gas pipeline completed, all the electrical infrastructure of 140km of overhead lines completed, four brand new 2 x 50 MVA substations have been completed, three existing Power Holding Company of Nigeria-owned substations have been refurbished for takeover by our company [Geometric Power]. I don’t run Nigeria’s power sector anymore, but people remember when I was running Nigeria’s power sector – how it was.”

Part of the new gang of Eastern industrial revolutionaries, Nnaji has also established the Southeast Region

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500 0 Jan.16

Jan.17

“We’re going to build power plants here and work with those mining coal for coal-fired ones,” Nnaji insists. “The Western countries built their economies out of coal, the Chinese built their economy out of coal. America produces more than 1m megawatts – 40% of that is all coal […]. For the Chinese now, I don’t know what it is but probably up to 800,000MW, and 60% of that is coal.

People will come and lecture us here about not using our good-quality coal […] I don’t know who is fooling who.”

Ufo Okeke-Uzodike, head of the African Heritage Institution, an Enugubased think tank, agrees: “Coal is crucial to reindustrialisation in Nigeria.

Nigeria is quite lucky […] we have a lot of coal. So we must use the coal.

There’s no reason why the coal industry should be shut down. And now, also, there’s a way to clean coal.”

The absence of large-scale funding for local investors to tap into is also a familiar factor in the dampening of investor enthusiasm. “There was a war, the war ended and the people struggled to reinsert themselves into the corporate Nigerian state,” says OkekeUzodike. The region’s developmental progress “in many ways has actually taken substantial amounts of energy and resource-gathering because it is not as though you can [now] go to the bank and automatically walk out of the bank with money for seed capital.”

The eastern region is also home to Nigeria’s first indigenous car assembly plant, Innoson, which has the capacity to produce 10,000 cars annually.

Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of the Innoson Group, says: “Commercial banks are not supporting manufacturers.” Talking to reporters, he said: “The only bank helping industries is the Bank of Industry, but it cannot serve all the industries in Nigeria.”

SEREDEC wants to change that. It has created the South-East Nigeria Development Fund (SENDEF) to

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

52 COUNTRY FOCUS | NIGERIA

PARTS FOR JETS

Last July, Harimakan Keita, the mayor of Bamako, led a delegation on a factory tour of Innoson’s Nnewi plant and signed a memorandum of understanding for the export of 400 of its SUVs to Mali. In March, Innoson signed a deal with the Nigerian Air Force to supply spare parts for jets to fight Boko Haram. Innoson

STRENGTH OF THE IGBO

Many members of the Igbo ethnic group from southeast Nigeria are entrepreneurial and travel in search of new opportunities. They have ended up as integral players in the development of other zones across Nigeria – especialThe former Nigerian power ly in Lagos, the country’s commercial minister Barth Nnaji has created capital. In the diaspora, too, there are SEREDEC to kickstart the region experts in manufacturing who choose to remain abroad. also has an Enugu plant that manuSo could a return to fiscal federalism factures industrial plastics, electrical and regional autonomy spark a mass return for many of them and a rise components and associated accessories.

Chinese investors, who have collaboin fortunes for the eastern states? “If rated with the federal government in rail states were allowed to drive their own infrastructure, and with states like Ogun policies, their own activities and have in establishing an industrial corridor, their own vision outside of the centre, are also converging in southeast Nigeria then I think we all would be much betin a private capacity. ter off,” asserts the African Heritage Institution’s One such project is Okeke-Uzodike. the completed Inner Southeast Nigeria is Galaxy steel Plant in Ukwa West, Abia State. where the former ruling Another Chinese firm, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is strongest, so it is Hawtai, will begin to unlikely to see burgeoning assemble SUVs later cooperation between the this year at the newly area and Abuja. Enugu established Eastern State’s governor since Vehicle Assembling Limited plant in the 2015 is PDP member Growth in value Ninth Mile area, Enugu.

Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, who expected in However, the lack of has a master’s in business Nigeria’s construction security in the region administration, is a former sector in 2017 – member of the house of has long posed an a significant increase from -6% in 2016 representatives, and said in existential challenge August his goal is “making to industrialisation. necessary and unrelenting efforts to susAgitations for the secessionist state of tain the business-friendly environment Biafra resumed two decades ago and that already exists in the state”. have picked up steam in recent years.

In the absence of devolution, adeClashes between the army and ethnic militia groups occasionally turn bloody. quate attention in the form of federal The issue of kidnapping of influeninfrastructure would suffice for a retial citizens and expatriate workers gion long seen as the springboard for keeps bubbling to the surface every a Nigerian industrial revolution. Can few months. “Some of our workers Nigeria seize the opportunity to make – expatriates from Eastern Europe – the trio of Azikiwe, Okpara and Ojike were kidnapped in the head base of beam with pride in their graves?

SOURCE: BMI RESEARCH

finance industrial initiatives from the constituent state governments and the private sector. One of those already in progress includes an industrial park on 7,500ha of land in Aba that could launch in early 2018. The park will concentrate on improving exports in the leather products industry, garment industry and the machine tools sector.

“There are so many opportunities here. And once you begin to have the various industries crystallising, a lot of our people who operate industries in other parts of the country and West Africa will want to come here to build industries,” says an optimistic Nnaji.

One of the industries already making progress is Innoson. Its car and motorcycle assembly plant in Nnewi has been churning out trucks, SUVs and saloon cars with a ‘Made in Nigeria’ seal since 2007. Some of its clients include the Enugu and Anambra state governments, which have deployed its coaches for interstate mass transit services. Innoson’s G12 series, a range of off-road light trucks, is being used by the Nigerian army in its north-east operations against the Islamist rebel group Boko Haram.

Aba a few years ago,” says Nnaji. “They were released, but we had to negotiate, pay a ransom and all that. All kinds of challenges arise [without which] we would have been supplying electricity about three and half years ago.”

Local leaders in the east argue that this long list of problems – including infrastructure, finance and security – would be better tackled at a local level. They argue that, crucially, a small increase in self-determination would provoke an influx of talented emigrants.

1.9%

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Olusegun Obasanjo

Former president, Nigeria

We must not make democracy a liability A new wave of African governments understand how to work with business, says veteran leader Obasanjo, warning that the price of economic failure is rising

H

e is the walking contradiction to the aphorism that there are no second acts in politics. A spritely 80 years old, Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo has had second, third, fourth and fifth acts. Some say he has started an entirely new play. His current role – gentleman farmer and elder statesman – seems to suit him best of all.

Diplomacy and tact were never priorities for the squash-playing former general. When Obasanjo speaks his mind, he makes waves – even 10 years after he walked out of the presidential villa in Abuja at the end of his second elected term in 2007.

That is because, more than any man alive, Obasanjo represents the continuum, its peaks and troughs, of post-independence Nigeria. Generals dominated a succession of military regimes, then some went into business.

Others went into electoral politics.

Obasanjo went into both.

He fought in the civil war, then emerged as military leader in 1977 after his friend Murtala Mohammed was assassinated.

After a tumultuous interregnum of failed civilian governments and coup d’états, the newly established

People’s Democratic Party (PDP) put Obasanjo on its presidential ticketin1999.Hewonhandsdown.

It took Muhammadu Buhari – another former military leader and also an officer in the civil war – three attempts before he won the presidential election in 2015. Will Buhari be the last general to make that transition to civilian politics?

“Oh, he’s the last of the Mohicans!” laughs Obasanjo. “Even if there will be another military leader, it will not be one of those who participated in the civil war.”

CHAMPIONING BUSINESS

Coursing around Africa, promoting a new book called Making Africa Work with his fellow authors Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst, Obasanjo makes much of most politicians’ failure to understand economics. The writers point to the need for governments to tackle the challenges of demographic growth, unemployment, urbanisation, the infrastructure deficit and technological change.

And what about President Buhari’s government in Nigeria?

Did Obasanjo have any sympathy for those businesspeople who complain the government is not listening to them? “Unfortunately, I think they are right,” he fires back with a slightly pained expression.

FIVE-ACT PLAYER 1937 Born in Ogun State, Nigeria 1975-6 Chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters 1976-9 Head of Nigeria’s military government 1995-8 Imprisoned

by Sani Abacha 1999-2007 Served two terms as elected President 2015 Endorses Muhammadu Buhari for president

“You have to have the awareness that business is the instrument of development, job creation, wealth generation – and the public sector has to provide the conducive environment.”

Although President Buhari’s close aides deny they are antibusiness, they argue that they have inherited a toxic and highly corrupt relationship between government and business. Obasanjo accepts that millions voted for Buhari because of his anti-corruption credentials: “We must make democracy an asset not a liability.”

But he adds that anti-graft policies should not block co­ operation between government and business: “If you don’t get that, particularly at the highest level of government, then you’re not getting anywhere.”

A few countries are getting the government-business relationship right, according to Obasanjo:

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Ibrahim Babangida and the late Sani Abacha. Only Abacha was paranoid enough to arrest and jail Obasanjo on trumped-up coup-plotting charges.

Obasanjo still enjoys ruffling the feathers of a wide variety of birds. On a recent trip to South Africa, he was asked whether United States President Donald Trump’s patent lack of interest in Africa would help the continent.

It was a signal, he said.

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ADVICE FROM DANGOTE

“We now have a paradigm shift in the understanding of our leaders. I know [Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane] Ouattara gets it. [Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam] Desalegn and [Rwanda’s President Paul] Kagame understand it. I know that Nana Akufo-Addo in Ghana is doing it, as [Senegal’s Macky] Sall is getting it.”

much his own country’s leaders conform to his upbeat view of Africa’s paradigm shift. Past utterances from Obasanjo on Nigerian leaders have sunk a few a careers.

His open letter in 2014 to President Goodluck Jonathan about corruption was a broadside against that government. At the time, Obasanjo was still chairman

OBASANJO THE CRITIC

“Trump has come so that America can be humbled, and we can also learn that lesson”

With a scintilla of self-deprecation, Obasanjo speaks optimistically about the forward strides by several governments in Africa. “I would say the African leaders of the first quarter of the 21st century are slightly more aware, more knowledgeable, and they have a little bit better understanding than the leaders of the last quarter of the 20th century.”

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of the board of trustees of the PDP, on whose ticket Jonathan had run.

It also greatly helped Jonathan’s opponent: Buhari won the presidency the following year on the All Progressives Congress ticket.

Obasanjo does not restrict himself to lambasting civilians.

He was a stern critic of military regimes led by Generals Buhari,

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“The fact that America can produce a Trump in this day and age, it means that Americans are as human as we are,” said Obasanjo.

“Trump has come so that America can be humbled, and we can also learn that lesson.” But the bigger consequence of declining Western interest, he added, was that Africa must take the initiative and be the “agent of its own future”.

Obasanjo sees one of his f r i e n d s, b i l l i o n a i re A l i k o Dangote, as a great exemplar of this. “Aliko now is investing $2bn in agriculture […]. He said if he had known as much as he knows now about agriculture, he would have gone into agriculture before going into cement.”

On reflection, Obasanjo says that Dangote has been able to transform agriculture – he’s due to open a fertiliser plant and oil refinery in 2019 – because he raised the capital from his cement business.

That point elicits another anecdote from Obasanjo about how he called Dangote to an earlymorning meeting after having sleepless nights about Nigeria’s cement imports. When he asked Dangote how he could persuade him to produce, rather than import, cement, the Kano trader’s responsewasdirect:“Makeitmore profitable than importing cement.”

With a combination of import bans and tax write-offs, that is exactly what Obasanjo did. And by 2010, Dangote was the largest cement producer in Africa and his company had a net worth of $25bn. That, insists Obasanjo, is the way government should work with business.

Interview by Patrick Smith

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58 COUNTRY FOCUS | NIGERIA

PEOPLE TO WATCH

Who will fill the Big Man’s shoes?

Nigeria’s next presidential elections are 18 months away, but conversations have already begun on potential candidates likely to replace ailing President Buhari

SOKOTO STATE GOVERNOR

Aminu Tambuwal Loyal but ready to step up

PICASA

The former speaker of the House of Representatives made his name by clashing with former president Goodluck Jonathan. Now the governor of Sokoto State is a firm backer of President Buhari, but is hoping that should Buhari choose not to run, his name will be high up the list of possible successors.

PDP CHAIRMAN MORTEN FAUERBY PHOTOGRAPHY

Ahmed Makarfi Tough job to rally the party With the Supreme Court finally ratifying his leadership of the PDP, the former Kaduna State governor can focus on rebuilding the party’s depleted political firepower and patching up factions before the PDP convention in October.

The PDP has ‘zoned’ the presidential flag bearer to the north. Could Makarfi himself be interested?

OBASANJO’S VICE-PRESIDENT

Atiku Abubakar Quietly preparing a bid for the top seat

FORMER K ANO STATE GOVERNOR

Rabiu Kwankwaso An ill-concealed campaign

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Having already financed the ascent of President Olusegun Obasanjo in the 1990s, Atiku knows what it takes to win hearts and minds in Nigeria. Critical to any summit attempt will be his partnership with south-west politicians, in particular APC chieftain Bola Tinubu. Should a deal be struck between them, they could form a formidable electoral partnership. The former vice-president faces an uphill challenge to become the voice of the north, given Buhari’s popularity. But he has already turned the heads of members of the cabinet, some of whom, like Aisha Alhassan, have already pledged their loyalty. And it is not inconceivable, should the route to the presidency through the ruling APC be blocked, that Atiku return to the PDP, the party he helped found in 1998.

The former governor of Kano State has launched a grassroots campaign to win over votes in Nigeria's north, banking on identity politics. Rumours swirl over attempts by the opposition to tempt him back into the PDP fold. Now a serving senator, Kwankwaso was the runner-up to Buhari in the 2014 APC primaries.

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Founded in 2001, LADOL initially focused on building infrastructure and facilities to industrialise and increase local content in the petroleum sector, Nigeria’s largest industry. As a result, the Free Zone is now home to the only fully integrated deep offshore logistics base in Nigeria and the largest ship yard in West Africa.

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CURRENT ACTIVITY AT LADOL - Ship Building: West Africa’s largest vessel fabrication and integration facility, a $270 million shipyard was built for the international oil company Total, as part of the Egina field project in LADOL Free Zone.

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- Pipe Coating: a new pipe coating facility has been established in LADOL by Africoat, this modern facility is expanding the range and efficiency of pipe coating in Nigeria.

- 50 MW Power Plant: under construction is a gas fired power plant, providing low cost, reliable power 24 /7, the plant is being built in phases.

- Training: world class training schools for welding, HSE, simulations and offshore survival are under construction.

- Personnel Support: Harbour Hotel has been operational in the Zone since 2012, this hotel is now being expanded with the addition off 300 more beds.

- Paperless and Cashless: LADOL’s new ERP IT system is being rolled out across the Free Zone, developed with the support of the USTDA.

60 COUNTRY FOCUS | NIGERIA

Bosun Tijani

MARTYN HICKS PHOTOGRAPHY/INDIGO TRUST

Chief executive and co-founder of Co-Creation Hub, Nigeria

The future is not to rely on accelerators in the US A key pioneer of the Nigerian tech start-up scene, Tijani is adamant that only local ecosystems can sustain the sector and prevent an exodus of talent to the West TAR: What is PitchDrive, and how does it help shape start-up finance in Nigeria?

BOSUN TIJANI: PitchDrive came out of working with entrepreneurs and seeing how the ecosystem worked, not just in Nigeria but across Africa, over the past five to six years. When we started, just like so many other technology hubs, the biggest challenge was finding early-stage funding for businesses.

But I think we’ve gotten over that.

Generally for most major cities in Africa, if you’re building a tech start-up and you need anywhere between $50,000–$250,000, there are quite a number of people who can fund that.

But unfortunately that then creates a pipeline of businesses that need money. Some have failed; but some are now somewhat successful and need more money at the Series A level ($2m-$10m). […] And most people who traditionally invest in Africa are above the Series A level […]. So there’s that huge gap to fill and the local investment community is not yet invested in that.

So what’s the solution?

We thought instead of just sitting down, folding our hands and complaining about it we should

try and do something, which is showcase Africa and tech in Africa to people who traditionally have invested in Africa – and that’s Europe, to be honest. I know the US is doing quite a lot, but there have traditionally been ties between Africa and Europe in so many areas.

SowithGoogleforEntrepreneurs we brought 15 top African startups on a tour of Europe starting in London on 14 August. It was hosted by Google Campus and a few other organisations like CDC and Omedia. It went from Amsterdam to Berlin and Zurich, and it will end in Paris.

The goal is to pitch to at least 50-60 investors, and we worked with quite a number of partners in each city to help us identify and invite those investors.

“If the ecosystem is entirely foreign the deals are not going to continue to flow” It seems that the private-equity interest of the past decade has hoovered up much of the venture-capital-sizeAfricantech companies and rebuilding that pipeline is the challenge now.

It is the challenge. There’s now increasingattentiononcompanies in Africa from the US, unfortunately for most of us who play locally.

While the US money is good – it’s readily available – the sad part of it is you have to become a US company. That’s not sustainable in the long term for us because the

ecosystem you’ll need to continue to inspire people locally to build businesses can’t be completely foreign. If it’s foreign, the deals are not going to continue to flow.

Because you need something that is tied to your economy, that keeps generating opportunity locally.

But if all the leading African companies are now American companies and they repatriate almost all their earnings back to the US, it’s going to weaken our ecosystem eventually.

So the future is not to rely on accelerators in the US for funding African businesses, which is the trend in the last 18 months. All the serious ones, like Flutterwave, they’ve been through the accelerators – either Y Combinator or 500 Startups. They get funding, but it has it’s negative impact, which is not sustainable for the continent.

You are saying essentially that Silicon Valley outfits are harvesting African talent, right? Nigeria has a sovereign wealth fund that is said to be $5bn, why not put a third of a billion towards financing Nigerian start-ups?

I think that’s what we would like to see. The challenge with ideas like that in Africa is […] there are so many things you can put [money] into that will generate revenue that are much better known than tech. You’re fighting against those things. And being able to justify to thoseinchargethatyoushouldput some part of the money towards this is always a headache.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

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companies: “We’re launching a $200m facility for Nigerian companies working in oil services.”

Tackling the major issues – high production costs and the criminal patronage networks that feed on overpriced gasoline imports – would be a dagger through the heart of dysfunction in the oil industry. Can Kachikwu do it?

It will take a canny operator with barrels of chutzpah. With a line in sharp Italian suits, grey-tinted designer glasses and a penchant for round-the-clock postings on social media, Kachikwu is no staid corporate lawyer.

1980 Doctorate from Harvard Law School 2003 Executive vice-chairman, ExxonMobil Africa August 2015 Group MD, Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.

November 2015 Minister of State, Petroleum Resources

KIYOSHI OTA/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

POWER PLAY

Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu

Minister of state for petroleum, Nigeria

A romance with reform

Buhari’s government is pushing several changes to fix systemic problems in the oil sector but faces vested interests and the demands of communities in producing areas

T

o go from writing an agony column for young fathers and publishing ‘true romance stories’ to running one of Africa’s biggest oil industries is quite a journey, but Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu has survived it with a minimum of collateral damage.

The next stage could be more problematic as Kachikwu, deputy oil minister since November 2015, tries to navigate febrile markets and quell regional dissent.

Not keen on understatement, Kachikwu told The Africa Report

in London that 2017 was a “turnaround year” for his country’s oil industry: “After the lows of 2016, we are up to 2m barrels a day [of production] and have plans for further expansion.” He added that he was determined to end Nigeria’s importation of petroleum products: “All our refineries will be working by 2019 and Dangote’s 650,000 barrel-a-day plant will be running.”

His other priority is to push down the costs of oil production, as well as bring in more local

Kachikwu is relying on Nigeria’s own companies, especially Aliko Dangote’s mega-refinery project at the Lekki Free Zone just outside Lagos, to join his battle. What could possibly go wrong? The powerful fuel-import lobbies are ruthless – including sabotaging state-owned refineries – in defending their turf.

Kachikwu must resolve several detailed policy issues first. Most politically tricky is the oil subsidy.

President Muhammadu Buhari – currently the substantive oil minister, a role he first took on four decades back in a military government – is a man of settled opinions. He believes in a strong national currency and thinks an oil-producing country should provide its people with cheap fuel.

Pushing down oil production costs could be trickier. Kachikwu is already in a spat with directors at the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over his target figures. He wants to cut costs to $15 a barrel at the most from what he says is their current level of more than $30; the NNPC says it has already pushed costs down to $23 a barrel from more than $70 some three years ago.

Behind the scenes, there is a power play between Kachikwu and the NNPC. Kachikwu’s new oil and gas policies, approved by the cabinet in July, speak of a paring down of NNPC’s domain,

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more accountability and a new independent regulatory body. Yet the most critical reforms to oil industry governance are still snaking through the national assembly, where they have been for a decade.

Leading the charge on oil and gas reforms there is Senate president Bukola Saraki, who has his own strong ideas. Institutional reform is the first stage, he tells The Africa Report, but the key issue will be oil prices and gas tariffs. Without a political deal on those figures, Kachikwu’s grand ambitions could still be grounded.

“We are no longer asking when we will reach ‘peak oil’[…] it’s when we will reach ‘peak oil market’, and in fact we may already have gone past that,” a senior energy consultant at the Kachikwu meeting told The Africa Report.

“And that means some really hard decisions for high-population oil producers such as Nigeria, Brazil and Indonesia.”

Nigeria’s bold plans involve pushing ahead with long-delayed technical changes to the national oil and gas companies, but also a new approach to resource-rich regions such as the Niger Delta.

This year, Kachikwu and vice-presidentYemiOsinbajohaveattended several meetings in the Delta with local politicians and community groups about how to repair some of the damage wrought by the hydrocarbons industry in the region.

Focusing on strategies that widen the distribution of jobs and profits from the industry is critical to tackling insecurity. Although Kachikwu can point to the fall off in militant attacks and steadily

REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE

Nigeria crude oil production, based on secondary sources (thousand bpd) 1,642

1,564 1,457

SOURCE: OPEC

Flanked by Nigeria’s military top brass, Kachikwu spelt out the government’s agenda for “revolutionary change” in the country’s oil and gas industry at a private meeting in London’s Dorchester hotel in late August. Explaining his strategy,Kachikwusaidhewantsto fire up economic growth with oiland gas-based industrialisation, gradually phasing out exports of crude oil and liquefied natural gas as the main driver of state revenue.

Cutting exports of crude in favour of using gas and oil to generate power and make fertiliser and plastics for economic modernisation is now a familiar mantra in oil-producing economies. Supporters of such radical change point to the bleak prospects for the oil market in the medium term as rich countries announce bans on petrol and diesel vehicles, and introduce ever more efficient electric cars.

Kachikwu wants Nigeria’s own oil and gas companies, like Seplat, to get behind his reforms and end the importation of petroleum products

Feb 17

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rising oil production this year – up to 1.8m barrels per day compared to less than 1m per day for long periods last year – serious logistical and security problems persist.

Creaking infrastructure, ageing pipelines and poor maintenance have held down production.

Someprogresshasbeenmadeat talks between the government and veteran South-South leader Edwin Clark’s Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), but there are some difficult months ahead as other groups bring fresh demands. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, whose leaders have received substantial amnesty payments from the government, pulled out of talks with PANDEF and the government in August.

Fearingawiderbreakdownoftalks, vice-president Osinbajo held a crisis meeting with Clark in Abuja to keep negotiating channels open.

Conditions remain extremely difficult in the main oil-producing states of Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta.

Wood MacKenzie, the Scottishbased oil consultants, estimate that up to a third of crude oil transiting the Delta by pipeline is being lost through sabotage and theft.

Heavy as those losses are, the biggest hits on Nigeria’s oil revenue have come from grand corruption. The government has accused Diezani Alison-Madueke, oil minister for the government of Goodluck Jonathan between 2011 and 2015, of presiding over a regime of opaque oil contracts with companies that had little or no track record.

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66

Who audits the

auditors?

COMPANIES & MARKETS 67

Scandals involving the politically connected Gupta family in South Africa shine a light on the opaque role of auditors in the engine rooms of global capitalism. If you can’t trust the number-crunchers, who can you trust?

By Patrick Smith

ERHUI1979/GETTY IMAGES

T

he book club at KPMG international auditors should consider putting Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises on their reading list. Just over halfway through they would find this telling exchange: “How did you go bankrupt?”

Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” “What brought it on?”

“Friends,” said Mike.

The decline of KPMG in South Africa was gradual, at first. For 15 years, the auditors numbered GuptacompaniessuchasLeadway and Oakbay as important clients: fast-growing with outsize political influence. Then came a tsunami of internal emails leaked from the Gupta companies pointing to KPMG’s involvement in illicit financial transfers and a political campaign to denigrate ex-finance ministerPravinGordhan.Thenthe KPMG fall was sudden. A public apology on 15 September and a culling of its management by a team sent in from London.

Iraj Abedian, one of South Africa’s foremost economists, led the charge for companies to sack KPMG as their auditors.

“You are not just talking about incompetent accounting,” Abedian tells The Africa Report. “This is a company whose actions have contributed to South Africa losing tens of billions of dollars, through ratings downgrades, undermining investor confidence, damaging financial governance.”

So who is responsible? Who audits the auditors? The Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG and

PwC) act as ‘quasi-regulators’ at the heart of the global financial system, according to researchers Richard Murphy and Saila Naomi Stausholm – yet they enjoy “significant opacity about their own operations”. In Africa, as elsewhere, there is growing recognition that the current system of auditing and accounting is not working.

The credibility of most of the big firms has been hit by a succession of scandals. There was PwC’s key role in setting up tax shelters for privatecompaniesasdocumented in the Panama Papers scandal last year. Or KPMG’s role as auditor for FIFA. Or the collective failure by the audit companies to sound alarms ahead of the financial crash in 2008.

COMPLACENCY

“There has been a swing in accounting over the past 50 years,” says Alex Cobham, chief executive of Tax Justice Network. “Then, the view was accounting was a public good. Now, it’s the capture of accounting by the market.

Everyone freaked out when Arthur Andersen went down after Enron.

But then a complacency crept in and another monopoly grew up.”

Abedian agrees that the issues go way beyond South Africa.

“Enron’s role in the US economy was tiny compared to the combined role of KPMG and the Gupta companies in South Africa.”

He is worried about the coalescing of the auditing and accounting function of the Big Four with corporate consultancy and tax advisory services. More problematic still are those auditing

68 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

companies lobbying for tax cuts.

“There’s a great risk of conflict of interest […] auditors are nothing if people don’t trust them.”

Abedian goes on to explain how KPMG’s affiliate companies in South Africa helped structure the Gupta companies, particularly their Dubai-based precious-metal trade operations, so they could avoid paying South African taxes.

He calls KPMG an “efficient enabler”ofillicitfinancialflowsagainst the spirit if not the letter of the law.

Such claims, if proven, could result in penalties to KPMG International in Europe and North America.

Already South Africa’s former finance minister Pravin Gordhan is mulling further action: “I will be seeking legal advice […]. The real issue that confronts is the significant damage to our hardwon democracy, to our state institutions, and ultimately to the South African people.”

How did South Africa get to this? It seemed clear in 2009 when Jacob Zuma became President that his friendship with the Gupta family could translate into spectacular commercial advantage for both sides.

The first evidence was a grand family wedding with a price tag of over $3 million, organised by the Gupta clan over four days in April and May 2013. What caught the headlines was that the Guptas flew their guests on a private jet into South Africa via Waterkloof Air Force Base, a heavily fortified military area.

WEDDING BELLS TOLL

A subsequent inquiry laid the blame on a hapless underling.

Since then, the Gupta wedding has become still more problematic for KPMG. A paper trail from the Guptas’ leaked emails showed the wedding had been financed from the family’s Estina farming project.

As the Gupta drama played out, the family used its ties with President Zuma to win billions of rands of contracts from state companies, expanding its influence over the African National Congress government. KPMG continued to audit the family’s accounts in South Africa and Dubai.

Jud de Fejokwu

Founder, managing director and chief analyst, Thaddeuss Investment Advisors

Protect Africans from unscrupulous auditors

T

he most disturbing business relationship is where one party compensatesanother party that is supposed to defend the interests of the wider society and uphold fiduciary principles. Company A is paid by Company B, but Company A’s allegiance is supposed to be to a larger entity that has not compensated it but expects the integrity of its profession to prevail over purely commercial interests.

Auditors are paid by their clients, but the investing public is meant to believe that audited financial statements meet the required standards of honesty and transparency. History tells us, however, that audit firms’ first loyalty is to the paying client.

Africa needs better auditors if its stock exchanges are to become developed markets, attracting substantive local investment. Africa is already on the back foot; negative news gets amplified and positive newsgetsdiminished.Theaudited financial results of its companies need to prioritise truth and accuracy, not allegiance to the client.

overhaul of audit practices for public companies in many of Africa’s biggest economies. The accounts of the following companies indicate clearly that there are serious problems – of commission or omission – but the auditors failed to identify them.

SOUTH AFRICA: African Bank Investments – Deloitte; Linkway Trading and the Gupta family – KPMG NIGERIA: Cadbury – Deloitte; Oceanic Bank – PwC; Stanbic IBTC – KPMG KENYA: Mumias Sugar – Deloitte; Uchumi Supermarkets – EY; Haco Tiger Brands – PwC; Imperial Bank – PKF UGANDA: Crane Bank – KPMG GHANA: Intercontinental Bank (now Access Bank) – PwC Investors and the wider public deserve better auditors. Here are some steps that would help:

Audited results should prioritise truth, not allegiance to the client Stock prices of public companies in Africa should be driven by substance, not speculation.

A growing dossier of accounting disputes and failing companies points to the need for a radical

I

Every African country with a stock exchange should establish a public company accounting oversight board (PCAOB) by law to operate as a private sector, non-profit company. The PCAOB would oversee the audit of public companies. The law establishing the PCAOB should include

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a restatement of the financial statements for the years where it is determined the audit firm failed in its fiduciary responsibilities.

VI

The PCAOB should bar firms for a 10-year period from auditing in any industry in which they are found to be deficient in their audit of a PIE.

VII

ERHUI1979/GETTY IMAGES

Global auditing firms (PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte) should no longer be allowed to be legally distinct from the local firms using their names. If a firm refuses, it must sever all business ties from the local audit firm and a name change must immediately be made.

After the legal distinction between local affiliate and international company is ended, potential aggrieved parties should be able to sue both entities. If an international audit firm is receiving money from the use of its name, it should also be legally and financially liable when the local firm using its brand name is deficient.

a clause blocking its repeal by successor governments.

II

explanation of the fee structure.

Audit firms would be engaged by the PCAOB to audit PIEs on behalf of investors.

Public interest entities (PIEs) should no longer be able to choose their auditors. The PCAOB should select auditors for each PIE and rotate auditors every eight years, or more frequently if need be.

IV

III

V

PIEs should no longer pay their auditors directly or determine remuneration.

The PCAOB should determine auditors’ fees on a biennial basis and pay the auditors post-audit.

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The audit firms should contribute each year into an audit malpractice fund set up by the PCAOB that will be used to fund its operations.

The PCAOB must be fully independent of industry regulators in each country and not be accountable to them.

The central bank should not be able to prevent the PCAOB from indicting a bank’s auditor, censuring a bank’s board and demanding

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VIII

Audit firms should be barred from doing board corporate governance and industry reviews involving PIEs. KPMG Nigeria regularly does rankings, surveys and analysis of the most customerfocused banks in Nigeria. Zenith Bank typically wins, and KPMG is the auditor of Zenith Bank.

When freedom is abused repeatedly, it should trigger sanctions.

Audit firms have been operating freely, and the time has come to rein them in to protect financial markets. Governments gave us prisons to protect us from dangerous people. Governments in Africa should give us PCAOBs with the powers to protect us from a network of auditors regarded as untrustworthy and unreliable. Their weakness is their dependence on rising revenues; their strength is their statutory protection.

ERHUI1979/GETTY IMAGES

70

Meanwhile tensions in the government grew between PresidentZumaandGordhan,who had become highly critical of the Guptafamilybusinesses.Arowblew upwhentheSouthAfricanRevenue Service (SARS), which came under Gordhan’s purview, started investigating tobacco-smuggling operationsandlossoftaxrevenues.

When SARS probed Amalgamated Tobacco Manufacturing (ATM), in which President Zuma’s son Edward had a major stake, political sparks began to fly. In December 2013, SARS confiscated two large consignments of tobacco products on ATM premises, on which duties of “several hundred million rand were payable.”

STATE CAPTURE

After winning elections in 2014, Zuma launched a purge. Gordhan was moved to local government and in came close Zuma ally Tom Moyane to run SARS. Quickly Moyane set up an investigation into what he called the “rogue unit” at SARS that had sanctioned EdwardZuma’scigarettecompany.

Moyane recruited KPMG to run a forensic probe into the revenue service. Several months later he announced that the SARS “rogue unit”wasacriminalenterpriseand its managers – some of its most senior investigators – would face charges. Leaked extracts from the report falsely claimed that SARS officials were running a brothel and spying on President Zuma.

These battles at the heart of government continued, with public protector Thuli Madonsela launching an inquiry into the Guptas’ political influence labelled as “state capture”. Zuma and the Guptafamily denyallwrongdoing.

As more revelations surfaced about the family’s financial clout, KPMG finally announced it was cutting all ties with Gupta entities in April 2016. It has taken KPMG another 18 months to withdraw its report on the so-called “rogue unit” and issue a qualified apology for its actions. And to take the saga full circle, Moyane announced on 18 September that he would be suing KPMG for withdrawing the report without consultation, and

$5m Money Estina transferred to two Guptaowned entities in Dubai SOURCE: KPMG

would seek to have the company barred from South Africa.

Stuck in the middle of this storm, KPMG International set up an internal enquiry and has pushed out most of its top managers in South Africa, including one seen as particularly close to the Guptas.

Andrew Cranston, parachuted into South Africa as chief operating officer, conceded at a press conference on 15 September that the company had “fallen short of its own standards” but insisted: “we found absolutely no evidence of any illegal acts or any corruption on the part of any employees or partners of our firm.”

Cranston and KPMG’s new chief executive in South Africa, Nhlamulo Dlomu, seem determined to move the company on.

Easier said than done. Some of its biggest clients – Standard Bank, Barclays Africa, Investec – are reviewing whether to drop KPMG. Already Magda Wierzycka, CEO of Sygnia, has dropped the firm.

So can KPMG International distance itself from the reputation wreckage of its South African

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affiliate? A study by Murphy and Stausholm for London’s City University on the Big Four points to their promise of being globally integrated firms, with central management organisations. On closer inspection, they are not under common ownership but only bound by contractual arrangements to operate common standards under a common name.

Such a system is designed to reduce legal and regulatory risk. For example, it raises the question about whether KPMG in London can be held liable for what happens with its South African partners. In the US, after Enron’s crash in 2001, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act tightened auditing rules again.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board it set up now appears to be threatened by the Trump White House.

Murphy and Stausholm see a paradox between the auditors’ functions and their operations: “The Big Four are central to the operation of global capitalism […] dependent upon the logic of shareholder capital being accountably used by management, which is distinct and separate from those who own the enterprise and whose actions are reviewed by independent auditors.”

If those auditors’ operations are opaque, there is a problem.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In August UKZN students protested against a gagging order on a KPMG report detailing corruption at the medical school

the US. He gives the example of a former executive director at Forte Oil, who was sacked in 2010 after he accused Deloitte of aiding and abetting account misrepresentation. “After the furore, the company changed its name to Forte Oil from African Petroleum and removed Deloitte as its auditor.”

Soji Apampa, another Lagosian who is the founder of Integrity Organization, says that some antigraft investigators are beginning to focus on the facilitators of corruption and corporate malfeasance, among which auditors

ACCOUNTANTS OF FORTUNE

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The Big Four (KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte): sources of revenue in 2016 Tax management services $28bn SOURCE: BIG FOUR FIRMS NETWORK

Others, such as George Rozvany, a former staffer at Ernst & Young (now called EY), PwC and Arthur Andersen, see a slow decline in auditing standards: “The Big Four have, under a Rasputin cloak of illusion, strayed from their original and critical role of verifying the role of financial accounts for all stakeholders to be ‘accountants of fortune’, merely representing the accounting position for multinationals and developing aggressive tax avoidance practices,” he told MichaelWest,Australia’stopexpert on transfer pricing.

African financial analysts such as Jude Fejokwu (see page 68) argue for more backing for financial whistleblowers and for all African states to adopt a system of Accounting Oversight Boards like

$49bn Total

$125bn Audit and assurance

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$48bn

Corporate consultancy

andaccountantsfeaturealongwith lawyers and real-estate agents.

“We have to understand that in most of the big corruption cases, like that of Governor James Ibori, a complex financial structure was builtthatrequiredthecomplicityof several technical experts in Nigeria and overseas,” says Apampa.

Apampa’s group has just signed a five-year contract with the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to establish a Corporate Governance Rating System (CGRS) for all listed companiesinthecountry.Onceit’s established it will be clear which of Nigeria’s listed companies are well or poorly managed, says Apampa: “There are going to be some shocks, with some of the bigger companies getting poor ratings, but our assessment criteria will be transparent.”

The project has the enthusiastic endorsement of Oscar Onyema, chiefexecutiveoftheNSE.Apampa hopes it will start to counter the idea that all Nigerian companies are corrupt – and if sunlight is the best disinfectant, clean companies will attract the most investment.

72 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

T

he head of the Brazil Africa Institute speaks with a certain nostal­ gia of the high tide of relations between the continent and the Latin American giant: “Go back to 2003. When former president Lula [who also set up the institute], said that Africa would be a priority for his government, he really meant it”, says João Bosco Monte. “He came to Africa nearly 30 times, to many places. This was the optimism.

Brazil could smell the potential.”

And, to an extent, that po­ tential was on its way to being realised, even beyond Africa’s five lusophone countries. Those trips brought over many Brazilian businesspeople. And companies like Odebrecht, Embraer and Embrapa won contracts to build roads, pump oil and farm land.

“But 14 years later, sadly, when former president Dilma came into government, she did not under­ stand how big Africa’s market was. She had no vision about how important Africa should be for Brazil. So our companies started to feel like orphans.”

It’s not just the orphan problem that has silenced the previous buzz. Brazil’s whole political elite has been rocked by a series of corruption scandals that have unseated Dilma, and censured Lula. Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested in 2015 for organising a huge kickback scheme across Latin American

João Bosco Monte President, Brazil Africa Institute

We need to reinvent ourselves Bosco Monte is working to revive the interest of Brazilian companies in Africa, a continent that was once a key priority in Brazil’s foreign trade and investment policy and African markets, and sen­ tenced to 19 years in jail, while the US Justice Department levied its largest ever fine, some $2.6bn.

“We need to reinvent our­ selves,” says Bosco Monte. “The way the government deals with the companies should be differ­ ent. It was very bad, this symbiosis between business and govern­ ment, the way they interact, not just in Africa but within Brazil, in Latin America, in China”.

EXPORTING KNOW-HOW

Butthatclosenessbetweengovern­ ment and the private sector has produced positive results, too – results that might better be emulated. For example, the gov­ ernment­run agricultural research

organisationEmbrapa:“Itsupplies research, technology and gets re­ sults. Just look at the Cerrado, its just like the savannah in Africa”, says Bosco Monte [of the vast area of Brazil that was made productive for agriculture through the addition of phosphorus and lime].

T h e B raz i l A f r i c a Institutewantstopush fur­ theronagriculture,witha youthtechnicaltraining programme starting on 9 October. Around 30 young Africans will be trained in an Embrapa facility in Brazil for two months, with a focus on adding value to cassava. “Nigeria is

Highs and lows of Brazil in Africa

The medium-sized jet specialist is excited about African airport expansion, believing the company is well-positioned to benefit from greater regional flights within the continent, something that would play to their competitive advantage.

The construction company is licking its wounds after being caught organising global kickbacks. Odebrecht is accused of organising a bribery scheme in Angola and Mozambique, and has withdrawn from the continent for now.

The mining giant is active in Mozambique, with projects such as the $8.5bn Carvão Moatize coal project.

It is promoting the Nacala corridor, an economic zone that will link Malawi to Zambia and Mozambique.

Brazil’s national oil company’s African affairs are also being probed by police. It is slated to sell off African assets, too, as part of a restructuring.

Petrobras’s joint venture in Africa was mainly involved in Nigeria’s Agbami and Akpo fields.

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SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION 1982 Brazil becomes a member of the AfDB 2003-2011 Lula da Silva visits 29 African countries during his presidency 2003 Establishment of India-BrazilSouth Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum.

Intra-IBSA trade in 2012 was about $50.5bn 2012 First BrazilAfrica Forum held in Johannesburg 2013 The Brazilian Development Bank inaugurates its office in Johannesburg

African resources. And one of the frequently forgotten aspects of China’s intervention on the continent is that it sincerely wants Africa to develop, too – in part because it needs markets for its products. Might that be the case for Brazil, too? “Don’t you think the US needs markets, don’t you think France needs markets? One billion people could be good for everybody,” he says.

But getting Brazilian businessmen to understand that Africa makes sense for them is tough.

That’s why the Institute is putting on its annual Forum this 23-24 November. It will bring African entrepreneurs and politicians to Fortaleza, in north-east Brazil, to show Brazilian businesses the opportunities. “The economy right now is not that good. So what do you do with your production?” says Bosco Monte. “Just cross the Atlantic. It’s just one river to cross! And you will see Nigeria, 200 million people. Go to Egypt, go to Ethiopia, 100 million more each…”.

That said, other businesses are seizing the moment. Angola Cables, for example, has run an undersea cable from Luanda to Fortaleza. And Brazil’s Positivo computer brand has set up factories in Rwanda, delivering 150,000 units. “The majority of the businessmen are sitting too comfortably. Every time they see challenges.Theyneedtodototheir homework!” says Bosco Monte.

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

Brazil-Africa trade

$4.3bn

2000

$28.5bn

SOURCE: BRAZIL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

CAR

LOS

A A/M SILV

PA

the biggest cassava producer in the world.Buttheylosesomuchvalue.

If we compare the cassava production in Brazil and Nigeria, you would see billions of tonnes ofcassavathatyoujustthrow away,” says Bosco Monte.

He also points to a higher-geared partnership: taking Gulf money to fund Brazilian agribusiness know-how on African land: “The Saudis lack water, so we are discussing a triangular partnership project”.

Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia appear first in line, though another similar scheme funded

by Japan in Mozambique is not without its difficulties.

One of the frequent criticisms of China is that it is after

$6.1bn

2003

2013

BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

Benedict Oramah President, Afreximbank

There is no pure protectionism The Afreximbank boss talks to The Africa Report about state intervention, the importance of investing in export manufacturing, and lessons to be learned from Chinese industrial parks

W

ith the slump in African trade finance caused by the collapse in exports of oil, metals and other commodities, the need for a robust Afreximbank is more acute than ever. The bank’s president, Benedict Oramah, wants to do more than just finance trade, however. He wants to help African countries build up their export capacities.

And while he does not hold with old methods like protectionism, he is a believer in certain kinds of ‘smart’ interventions, including active management of export-processing zones to help them meet market needs.

TAR: It seems as though the global conversation on free trade has arrived at a point where the economic nationalism of Brexit and US president Donald Trump’s supporters has had an impact – and that while

maintaining their stance on the sanctity of free trade, international organisations like the World Trade Organisation are saying that there is a role for the state in mediating the impact of free trade on jobs.

Is that right?

BENEDICT ORAMAH: Yes, because there is no pure protectionism. In fact, if you want to pursue what economists call laissez-faire policy, that would be the purest form of free trade – with governments just sitting by and watching. But nobody ever does that. The role of government is to be an enabler; an enabler means providing infrastructure at the right price to make certain activities competitive globally.

That’s where I think the state has a role to play.

And that role would differ from country to country, from one level of development to another level of development. Because you’ll find something different in, say,

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EXPORT EXPERTISE 24 July 1961 Born in Nigeria 1991 Earned a doctorate in agricultural economics from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ife-Ife 1994 Got his first job at Cairo-based Afreximbank working as a chief analyst September 2015 Became president of Afreximbank

Nigeria than you’ll find in, say, Sierra Leone because they are at different levels of development.

They have different issues.

The important point is for the government to know where they have to step back. I don’t expect the government to go and say we would be the ones producing A, B, C and D to that project. We are not going to ban the export of cocoa because we want to build cocoa-processing plants. You cocoa producers must sell your cocoa to the plant. We tried it in Nigeria – I was there – it didn’t work. Cocoa is a tradable item, so we saw smuggling.

So would you advise Nigeria to revive the Ajaokuta Steel Company today if it wanted?

Because it seems to be serious about wanting a car industry.

I think they should, for the simple reason that first of all they’ve invested a lot of money already. Because Nigeria

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How do African countries build their own competitive industries in light manufacturing, given the intense pressure from other low-cost producers from around the world?

This is part of the Afreximbank strategy, to promote export manufacturing. I’ll give you an

example. Out of the $108bn in exports from China to Africa in 2015, about 40% was light manufactures, about $43bn. And it has been over 40% for the past 10 years. Now China is trying to delocalise. And unless Africa creates a capacity to receive those industries, they will go elsewhere, so Africa will continue to import those $40bn from wherever.

But it can be done, you can create export-processing zones.

You can import fabric from China and make garments, import electronics components and assemble, and all that. It takes about 18 months to build an industrial park of 200ha.

We have seen some built in Nigeria – they have been a relative failure, no?

Because they were built by government. The government just woke up and said: ‘We’ll do export processing zones,’ you get it? They woke up and then they just go and build the infrastructure. They don’t even have a programme for investment promotion. They have not even done the studies to know whether it will be competitive or not.

You don’t do industrial parks just because you can. In China,

if you’ve been to the parks, you see some are specialising in this, some are specialising in that.

They are not just industrial parks where anything goes, as we have in Nigeria and elsewhere. So, because of that, it will fail. Take the first export-processing zone in Nigeria. They did it. The port they were supposed to use was

“You don’t do industrial parks just because you can. [Unless it specialises] it will fail” silted up, boats can’t come. You had to dredge every time, and we were not dredging it. And it’s more a park, not even an export-processing zone. There’s no focus on what that processing zone would do.

That’s the difference today, and it’s a priority for us. The approach we’re taking for our own industrialisation is port-linked manufacturing hubs. And we’re doing it in partnership with the Chinese. We have entered an arrangement with China to provide $1bn to support us [in this project].

As we speak today we are moving – in Nigeria, in Côte d’Ivoire, in Togo. And there is an expansion project we’re considering in Kenya. The Ivorian government gave us 2,000ha of land. And the government of Togo told us they will make 100ha available near the port.

Oramah and Helen Hai, founder of the Made in Africa Initiative, sign an agreement for industrial parks

AFREXIMBANK

is also at the entry level of trying to industrialise, and with big infrastructure investments steel consumption will grow.

This is where you may talk of smart intervention because we may then decide [to impose] a kind of a tariff [on] imports. The production of steel to some extent is actually the conversion of energy. So Nigeria should really be competitive. But if they are not, because of all sorts of things – they haven’t got the pipeline to bring gas, they haven’t done this, they haven’t done that – then you put a tariff. But it’s essentially the conversion of energy, it’s less [about] the availability of iron ore than [of ] cheap power […].

They have huge gas [reserves] that can be very competitive in aluminium. They can be very competitive in steel even if they don’t have ore – even if you import iron ore.

It seems that industrialisation is a particularly complicated recipe to get right...

You know, people think with industrialisation the problem is to build factories. That’s why people say that the constraint to intra-African trade is infrastructure. I don’t think its infrastructure, it is market.

Because today total African trade is about $1 trillion. That is what the infrastructure in Africa is able to carry. Why is it that intra-African trade is only 15% of that? Why can’t intra-African trade be 40%of that within the constraints of the infrastructure?

Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

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Beach huts at Muizenberg, Cape Town, where hotel occupancy is relatively high

SOUTH AFRICA

Tourism needs to try harder

Despite its great potential for job creation, South Africa’s tourism sector has been hard hit by short-sighted visa policies and a cash-strapped domestic market

W

hen you are preventing the world’s most populous nation from sending tourists to your country, you may have made a mistake.

Chinese visitor numbers took the biggest knock from the controversial and onerous visa requirements South Africa threw up in 2014. And while the industry howled in pain, the then home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba accused those who criticised the scheme of “lies and cooked-up figures and surveys that have had no credibility whatsoever”.

The requirements – which included turning up in person at the South African embassy and carrying unabridged birth certificates for children under 18 – were eased in October 2015. However, an industrybounce-back has been slow, as South Africa’s poor economy is making recovery difficult for embattled tourism businesses.

Domestic tourism has suffered most. A recently released survey

by Statistics South Africa showed a drop in domestic overnight trips from 45.5m to 43m between 2015 and 2016. Households from the lower living standard groups were significantly less likely to travel.

Foreign arrivals figures do reflect a rebound after the visa débacle. South Africa remains a cheap and popular destination, and international visitors grew 12.8% in 2016, against a 2015 increase of 6.8%. Visitors from China and India, who were particularly affected by the stringent visa requirements, increased by 38% and 22% respectively.

Residents of Southern African Development Community countries still make up the bulk (73%) of visitors. Consultants PwC forecast an increase in tourists in 2017, while hotel-room revenue will grow 10.1% to R17.5bn ($1.4bn), and then at an annual compound rate of 9.3% to 2021.

Others think the 2016 rebound may be short-lived. Martin Jansen

17,000 Number of listings in Cape Town, the biggest Airbnb destination in Africa

SOURCE: PAM GOLDING PROPERTIES

MATTES RENÉ/HEMIS.FR

78 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

van Vuuren, a director for hospitality and tourism at accounting firm Grant Thornton, says the growth in arrivals by foreign tourists so far this year has been subdued compared with last year, with arrivals from African tourists declining. “From South Africa’s main tourist markets overseas, tourism from the UK has been particularly slow, growing at just 2% so far this year, probably due to the fallout from Brexit,” he says. Tourists from Germany,forexample,havegrown 15% year-on-year so far this year, while there have been around 8% more tourists from the US. Left with a glut of available hotel rooms after the 2010 World Cup, South Africa has seen relatively little new construction. According to PwC, only 700 rooms were added between 2011 and 2016. But hotel occupancy levels have slowly edged up, reaching 61.2% in 2016, creating some interest in building new hotels. Jansen van Vuuren points out that most construction has been focused on Cape Town, as occupancies in the coastal city are over 70%, while the rest of the country is at the 60% to 65% level.

PwC expects 2,700 new rooms by 2021, just over half of which will be added in Cape Town.

US-based Marriott is spearheading new developments, with at least six projects in the pipeline – three to open in 2019 – according to Danny Bryer, a director at Protea Hotels by Marriott. “Key source markets remain the UK, US and Germany,” he says. “We do see travel coming in from Africa but the numbers remain limited. We are seeing a new trend in terms of arrivals from the Middle East and from India, and the arrivals from China and Asia are picking up again,” he adds.

IMPACT OF AIRBNB

Official figures may be misleading.

Anecdotally,therehasbeenasurge in the number of rentals through online platforms like Airbnb. “It is difficult to quantify how much of an effect, and it depends on which area,” says Pietro Calicchio, industry leader of hospitality and gamingatPwCSouthernAfrica.“In Cape Town it has had an impact,

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Andgettingthoseforeigntourists in is crucial for an industry which is finding it increasingly difficult to attract local holidaymakers. Jansen van Vuuren says businesses that are dependent on the domestic market are finding it tough. But in the long term, tourism in South Africa is still very much a growing industry, he says – and crucial in an economy with unacceptable levels of unemployment. “There is

Hotel room revenue (million rand) 30,000

South Africa Nigeria Mauritius Kenya Tanzania

25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 SOURCE: PwC

but whether it has taken away from hotels is difficult to quantify”. He says many guest houses that used different channels for marketing and bookings in the past are now listed on Airbnb, so it is unclear to what extent there are actually new rooms for rental.

For the industry, sorting out the remaining visa challenges remains a priority. “The full impact of the visachanges hasnot yet been completely reversed,” says Bryer, “but there is certainly an improvement”.

Jansen van Vuuren concurs: “The industry is still very much advocating for easing of restrictions and there has been a more lenient application of the regulation, but people are still being turned around at airports. There isn’t any clear interpretation, so, depending on who you are dealing with, you get turned around or not turned around”. He wants the country to find a better way to tackle the security issues while not turning away potential clients.

5,000 0

2011 12

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employment created, particularly for unskilled workers. Creating employmentlikethatisfareasierin the tourism industry, and for that reason alone government should be supporting the industry and removing restrictions which are limiting its growth,” Jansen van Vuuren says.

According to PwC’s ‘Hotels Outlook2017-2021’report,government is responding with increased funding, including R494m ($38m) fortourismpromotion,andR120m ($9m) to drive growth for small and medium-sized entreprises in the sector. It predicts a 4% a year increase in foreign visitors to 2021.

The growth in domestic tourism will be a little slower, at 3%.

South Africa’s broader political and economic challenges are playing a critical role in determining the growth of the country and its industries. Tourism, which is critical for jobs and economic development, is at its mercy.

Marcia Klein

80 BUSINESS | FINANCE

ZIMBABWE

Another Elastoplast and no solution As the government announces a second bond note issuance, despite the failure of the first to address the cash crisis, Zimbabweans who can are turning to mobile money

WILFRED KAJESE/AFP

W

henever he needs cash, pensioner Ernest Zadura, 65, wakes up as early as 3am to head to his bank in central Harare. Most banks are struggling to dispense cash on bearers’demand,owingtoanacute shortage of banknotes. “On a lucky day, I get about $40, but that is only enoughfor a fewdays. I can’tafford togetmypensionfromtheinformal marketbecauseit’sexpensive,” says Zadura, who is not technologically savvy and prefers cash.

Those who can afford the high rates have recourse to a thriving parallel market for currencies where they can get all the cash they want for a premium of between 15% and 20%, depending on the amount they may want.

Since 2009, when the government abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar after a severe bout of inflation, the country has experienced persistent liquidity shortages.

Thisacceleratedintheaftermath of the 2013 elections, when people begantakingtheirmoneyoutofthe country – expressing in a concrete way their lack of trust in the national leadership. The cash crunch is caused by the weakening economy, poor export performance, unsustainablegovernmentdeficits, the lack of foreign investment and a relatively strong dollar.

Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce chief executive Chris Mugaga says the cash shortages are making planning difficult.

“For businesses to survive, they have to procure funds from the informal market, where the rate

is widening daily,” Mugaga tells The Africa Report.

Efforts to find a lasting solution to the cash crunch have all but failed. Last November the government introduced a $200m Afreximbank-backed bond facility – a surrogate currency pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. The bond notes have not stemmed the cash shortages and have rekindled an informal market for currencies and increased arbitrage opportunities. Commerce now operates on a three-tier pricing system: one for dollar (cheapest); another for bond notes (the second cheapest); and the final one for electronic payments (the most expensive).

TEMPORARY RELIEF

Monetary authorities estimate that about $1bn is circulating in the economy, the bulk of it out of the formalbankingchannels,madeup of $200m of bond coins and notes and $800m in multiple currencies, which are dominated by the US dollar. To boost liquidity again, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya says the country will issue a new round of

Protesters on the streets seem to have a greater grasp of economics than the reserve bank

20%

Maximum black market premium paid for $50 and $100 notes SOURCE: TAR RESEARCH

bond notes – this time $300m – backed, again by Afreximbank.

Zimbabwean economist John Robertson says the notes only provide temporary relief. “We need much more than is being printed […]. We need the money to be earned by us and not lent to us,” he tells The Africa Report.

But while Mangudya said in August, as he has done before, that the country will stick to the multi-currency system until the economic fundamentals permit the return of the local currency, some argue that dollarisation is not good for the economy. For many, the second release of bond notes confirms that the country is very far away from finding a lasting solution to its currency dilemma.

Debates about how to end the cashshortagesandwhichcurrency to best adopt are fiercely polarised.

UniversityofZimbabweeconomics lecturerAshokChakravartisaysthe government should use the bond note as the local currency instead of the dollar: “We are already using the bond notes as a local currency […]. My recommendation is that to eliminate the liquidity crisis,

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government needs to remove the peg and let the bond note operate on its own, and that way it will be a real currency.” Others have called for the adoption of a weaker currency – preferably the South African rand – to improve the country’s competitiveness.

Mugaga says calls for the use of a weaker currency are misguided.

“The liquidity challenges we are facing are a symptom of an economy that is not functioning properly and is failing to generate income through exports, has a huge trade deficit, and fiscal indiscipline. As industry, we are very aware that it’s not the currency which is our challenge,” says Mugaga.

VULNERABLE POSITION

In an August report, international research firm BMI says even though rising export revenues buoyed by higher gold prices and a good tobacco season should narrow the country’s current account deficit to 1.8% of gross domestic product in 2018, Zimbabwe remainshighlyvulnerabletoexternal shocks because of its reliance on the dollar. The firm says a balance of payments crisis is likely if Zimbabwe de-dollarises soon.

Economists say the long-term solution to the cash shortage is in increasing the local production of goods, boosting exports whilst reducing imports, improving the political environment and introducing policies to attract domestic and external capital.

In the meantime, the cash shortages have provoked an exponential rise in the use of bank cards and mobile money. Figures from Zimswitch, a national electronic funds switch, indicate that electronic transactions increased by 597% to $2.6bn in the first six months of 2017, compared with $373m in the same period last year.

Denford Mutashu, president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, says that the use of cards and mobile money has saved many retailers from collapse. “In August last year, transactions in many shops were 90% based on cash, but now it’s 90% plastic and mobile money,” he says.

Tonderayi Mukeredzi in Harare

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Land = control If African countries are going to develop, the head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) tells Hannibal, then they are going to have to slay a few sacred cows, especially around the question of land ownership. Hannibal loves a good steak, so is all ears. “We have politicised land. Africans have decided to use land to control people. And men use land to control women,” says Agnes Kalibata, a former agriculture minister of Rwanda who now heads AGRA. “It’s a control issue, not a development issue,” she argues.

Zimbabwe’s agropolitics In Zimbabwe, controlling land for political reasons has been going on since Rhodesia’s prime minister Ian Smith broke away from the British empire. The British politician and anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain once said of Smith that his main problem was that his life revolved around “the country club and the company of other gentleman farmers”. While President Robert Mugabe did his bit to push out the remaining gentleman farmers, land remains deeply politicised. Just see how unheeded have been the calls for a ‘land audit’, to see who exactly owns what. New parasitic elements have crowded out the smallholders on whose backs future prosperity depends. So two cheers for the large tobacco crop expected this year, even if smaller farmers are finding it hard to get paid for their goods at the auction house.

Dodgy diamond deals Sadly, Zimbabwe’s diamond exports are even more politicised than its tobacco. Global Witness, an anticorruption group based in London, revealed exactly how politicised in a September report. It claims that the country’s elite has been siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from the Marange diamond fields, with members of the spy agencies among the worst offenders. The government has frozen mining activity in Marange, but the prospects for thoroughgoing reform remain slim ahead of elections planned for 2018. How the war chest will be used in those elections will be critical.

Taking food seriously One country that has decided to take agriculture more seriously is Nigeria. Shaking off accusations of an overhyped rice revolution, the country is seeing real growth in production. Despite being unable to make it to parts of the country suffering severe drought, such as Benue State, President Muhammadu Buhari has managed to inaugurate a newish animal-feed mill built

by Olam. The $150m project will also have a chicken hatchery. If they would just add a restaurant, not only would Olam be able to capture fully the egg-to-gullet value chain, but they would also neatly render the famous phrase ‘Eating is an agricultural act’.

82

DOSSIER OIL & GAS

Kenya’s President Kenyatta’s promises to turn Kenya into an oil-producing country before the recent elections have proved empty, revealing huge infrastructure gaps that will keep the project stalled for years to come

By Mark Anderson and Sophie Mbugua in Nairobi

B

y now, rows of fuel tankers brimming with waxy crude oil should have been making their way to Mombasa’s port, ready for sale on the international market. Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta promised last year that his country would win East Africa’s oil race,

beating Uganda to become the first country in the region to join the oil-exporting club.

“We have started [towards oil production], and we are not moving back,” he said in August 2016. “We want to be at the top of the pile.” And for a while, Kenya’s private-sector ebullience and administrative ’can-do’ attitude

seemed to be doing the job, with a new oil terminal designated to be built in the eastern coastal city of Lamu.

But a political impasse, low oil prices and a lack of infrastructure have poured cold water on what many saw as an overly ambitious plan, designed to win political favour ahead of a hotly contested general election on 8 August (see page 37).

London-based Tullow Oil, which holds five Kenyan licences and had planned to export crude produced during testing of its wells, has yet to reach a final investment decision about its fields. That decision is not expected before the end of 2018.

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Turkana, in Kenya’s arid north, has the most to gain from an oil economy

Kenyatta’s promise to turn Kenya into an oil-producing country before the original 8 August polls bore the hallmarks of a calculated political move, analysts say. “[Kenyatta] gains some considerable political capital if he presides over a country as it becomes an oil-exporting nation,” says Jacques Nel, an economist at NKC African Economics. “I think this is what he was aiming for.”

ROADS TO NOWHERE

Almost immediately, red flags were raised. For example, the scheme to ship the oil by road raised eyebrows when it was announced. Trucking oil is expensive and unsustainable at a time THE AFRICA REPORT

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French oil giant Total acquired a 25% stake in Maersk Oil’s oilfields for $7.45bn at the end August SOURCE: TOTAL

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when the price of oil is hovering at around $50 a barrel, a steep decline from just a few years ago.

“There are not many countries in the world that can do oil production by road,” David Ohana, group managing director of downstream company KenolKobil, tells The Africa Report. “It’s simply too expensive.” Experts say that even if the price of oil were to double to $100, Kenyan producers would be unlikely to break even.

Opting for road transport was also a convenient way of bypassing the biggest obstacle to Kenya’s oil production: a critical lack of infrastructure. To solve this, the Nairobi government had planned to roll out an oil pipeline serving

Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan. The Ugandan section was to run from the oilfields in the north of the country all the way to the city of Lamu, where a new port is being built. But that plan stalled after Uganda decided last year to send its oil through Tanzania, saying there were security concerns around the Kenyan route.

Those in the oil sector are still hopeful that the pipeline linking Kenya’s Turkana fields with Lamu will still be built in spite of Uganda’s withdrawal from the project and South Sudan’s civil conflict. “The construction of the pipeline is feasible, but further studies need to be done,”

TONY KARUMBA/AFP

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84 DOSSIER | OIL & GAS

says Emma Gordon, an analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. “Kenya needs to find someone willing to invest in constructing the pipeline.”

Another option is being championed by French oil giant Total, which acquired a 25% stake in Maersk Oil’s oilfields at the end of August. Total is proposing to send Kenya’s oil through the UgandaTanzania pipeline.

“We want to sanction this project in the first half of next year, following an inter-governmental agreement between Tanzania and Uganda earlier this month," Total’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, told reporters in August.

Tullow Oil was the first to discover oil in Kenya’s northern Turkana region in March 2012. In the five years that followed, Tullow has proven to be an active player in pushing for oil production to get off the ground.

Tullow’s country manager for Kenya, Martin Mbogo, tells The Africa Report: “We remain confident that Kenya can be a successful oil exporter at current prices.” He adds: “So far all the people involved have made huge strides in understanding this new industry […]. We are positive about the success of oil production in Kenya.”

Proposed route of the 1,410km Hoima-Tanga oil pipeline UGANDA Hoima

KENYA

Bukoba RWANDA

TANZANIA 100km

Tanga

for 17 October, extending the period of political uncertainty hanging over the country.

There are also unresolved debates about revenue sharing from oil production. President Kenyatta has refused to give 10% of oil revenue to Turkana County, the sparsely populated and impoverished area where the oil is located, offering 5% instead. In contrast, opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga said he would agree to give Turkana 10%.

“We did our

due diligence when the committee and the National Assembly passed this bill. It would be wrong if a community enriches the world and remains poor ” The member of parliament for Turkana South, James Lomenen ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Today, the country’s reserves are estimated at about 750m barrels.

Mbogo acknowledges that there is still a long way to go before production can begin. “The main challenge for oil production in Kenya is that the upstream oil and gas industry is new in the country,” he says.

Ohana of KenolKobil says “it will take 10-15 years to get oil production started if we do well”, noting that ground has not yet been broken on massive infrastructure projects. “Kenya can do it – I have no doubt,” he says.

“If the government will focus on this, they will [start producing oil].

But I don’t see the focus.”

Kenya’s politics are keeping oil in the ground. The surprise annulment of Kenya’s August presidential election means that a re-run is now scheduled

SECURITY CONCERNS

BURUNDI

A NEED TO FOCUS

Kenya’s Senate must approve the petroleum bill that is currently pending, before production can move forward. This bill will set out oil revenue sharing between the national and county governments, and local communities. But with opposition leaders currently boycotting parliament, Senate approval could take some time.

Disagreements over local content are common at the onset of production. “Kenya is experiencing the same community relations encountered in every new oil and gas country,” says Verisk Maplecroft’s Gordon. “The majority of the communities are uneducated and wouldn’t understand why the revenues aren’t flowing, which would expose the oil explorers to security risks.”

Security has deteriorated in some of the areas around Tullow’s projects in Turkana. Media reports suggest that Tullow is unable to send its staff to some areas because they have been attacked by angry locals who want a greater share of the oil revenue.

Andrew Kamau, principal secretary for petroleum, told reporters that security problems had stalled early oil shipments.

“Everything is ready, but we have a few issues with security,” he said.

“It will be difficult for us to give a go-ahead to the trucking companies because we would be risking the lives of the drivers.”

Both Kenya and Uganda have announced plans to build oil refineries. That would eliminate expensive shipping costs and lower the price of petroleum across the region. Kenya is spending about $50m a year on shipping to import refined petroleum from the United Arab Emirates. “If we have crude I think we should have a refinery,” KenilKobil’s Ohana says, adding that only one refinery would be needed to serve the region.

“The whole region will benefit from oil production because right now they have to freight it in,” Ohana says. “It could be a big boost to the economies – getting the oil cheaper. Then these countries will be flourishing.”

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OIL & GAS | DOSSIER 85

Jubril Adewale Tinubu BENEDIKT VON LOEBELL/WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Group chief executive officer, Oando

We all got a bit heady with $100 oil After reshuffling a debt mountain that had become untenable in the face of low oil prices, Oando has found a way to survive the crash by focusing on the higher end of the market TAR: Oando restructured its debt in the middle of 2016. Can you talk about what that did for the company?

JUBRILADEWALETINUBU:The first thing we did was to commit to raising approximately $350m by asset divestments. We made a deal for our downstream business with a consortium of Helios and Vitol, which saw both of them take a 30% stake in our downstream operation. We raised $410m from that. We then proceeded to cut a deal in our gas business, which saw us raise another $150m in total. We have also divested our energy services business. In all, we’ve been able to reduce our debt total by over 40%. In January 2015, we were at $2.5bn of debt, now we are at approximately $600m.

What is encouraging to us is our ConocoPhillips acquisition: by the time we started it, of that $2.5bn pile we had $900m due to ConocoPhillips for the acquisition, and that liability has been reduced down to approximately $300m in two and a half years of operation.

restrategise and readapt the business to current conditions.

Our operations are leaner. Our break-even price for oil is much lower today – it’s probably around the $40 mark.

We are also focusing on our dollar-earning export businesses, so we are talking about crude production, which has a big ad­ vantage in an environment with a declining currency. We’re also focused on our crude-oil export business: we export quite a bit of Nigerian crude and we bring in gasoline which we then sell in Nigeria with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation as our main counterpart. We feel that

“We are focused entirely up the value chain – that’s where 80% of our business is”

What might come further down the road? How are you going to live with oil prices at $50/barrel, if that is indeed the new normal?

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with this strategy we are able to ride the storm successfully, we have returned to profitability and that trend will continue.

Would you say that you have concentrated up the value chain? Are you focusing more on drilling, more on upstream?

Without a doubt, we are focused entirely up the value chain – that’s where 80% of our business is. On the production side, we intend to intensify that by carving out some fields in existing operations

and then increasing our organic production. We are also focusing on improving the quality of the security to reduce crude-oil theft from our operations.

Do you think you’ll be raising more capital soon? Will you be going to the markets and if so how much do you think you’ll need and which projects are first in line for funding?

Not immediately, no. Fund­ raising is not an immediate pri­ ority. We are focused entirely on restructuring the business, focus­ ing on the dollar-earning assets.

We could be raising capital for further expansion, but we tend to do that off balance sheets by focusing on export finance from uptake on crude. We won’t be putting that on our balance sheet in terms of raising any equity capital; most of it will focus along the lines of the partnerships that we’ve created where there are quite a number of private-equity firms that are interested in doing ring-fenced transactions they see as great value from our existing reserve base.

We have more than 450m bar­ rels of reserves and our reserve ratio is low so there is plenty of scope for expansion. We already own the assets so we need to work with partners who are providing the financing.

Nicholas Norbrook

DOSSIER | OIL & GAS

Mozambique is having to recalibrate its expectations for a gas-fuelled boom

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MOZAMBIQUE

A revolution delayed

The government began spending before its resource boom kicked in, but some gas developments are beginning to move in a climate of increasing international competition

S

ince 2010, the cycle of discovery and disappoint­ ment has been rough on Mozambique. The agreements and finance needed for the multi­ billion-dollar gas industry to take off have been hard to come by.

But in June of this year Claudio Descalzi, chief executive of the Italian oil and gas multination Eni, flew to Maputo to launch the construction of a floating liquefied natural gas plant (FLNG) known as Coral. It is the first project to develop Mozambique’s gigantic gas reserves. The second will be the Mozambique LNG Project (see graph on page 88).

The Coral reserves lie in the waters offshore of Cabo Delgado Province, in the north of the coun­ try. The deposits discovered so far contain an estimated total of 140trn cubic feet of natural gas, which makes it the most signifi­ cant discovery in the gas sector in the past decade. Areas 1 and 4 of the Rovuma Basin, where the discoveries were made, belong

respectively to US firm Anadarko and Eni. At full production, Mozambique could become the world’s third-largest gas producer, just behind Qatar and Australia.

But with the recent heydays of the oil and gas industry seeming a distant memory, Mozambique’s road to become a major gas player has been bumpy. With the gas price now 40% lower than it was a few years ago, and an increase in gas production worldwide, a recalibration of expectations for all stakeholders is under way.

Certainly, oil companies arebet­ ting on the growth of the LNG mar­ ket and are boosting investments and production across the world.

Gas has lower carbon emissions than coal and oil, and it serves as a bridging resource in the transition between fossil fuels and the age of renewable and cleaner energy.

However, there is concern that this optimism may drive a glut in the market. Some industry sources estimate that LNG supply will rise by more than 50% over the next

LNG

258MT Global LNG trade in 2016, an increase of 5% on 2015, and the largest ever year for LNG trade SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL GAS UNION

five years. Eni is investing billions of dollars to bring the huge Zohr field in Egypt into production by the end of this year. That is another reason for Mozambique to speed up developing its resources.

The country is still weathering a debt crisis that added pressure to an economy already under strain from the crash of commodity prices. It badly needs foreign in­ vestments in hard currency, like those that would be involved in the development of the LNG facilities.

The main national development plan calls for the construction of an onshore LNG facility, shared

by Area 1 and Area 4 operators, that will liquefy the gas for export.

The cost of the first phase of the onshore LNG project is estimated to be $12bn-$15bn – figures that are bigger than the country’s gross domestic product in 2016. And with weak domestic industrial and oil services capacity, much of the money is likely to be spent on major international firms like US company Baker Hughes, which has been contracted for work on the LNG and FLNG plants.

FOCUS ON CORAL

With delays on the main on­ shore plant, Eni has prioritised the development of its nearby Coral field, which is thought to hold reserves of 16trn cubic feet.

Eni signed an agreement with BP to make it the sole LNG

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88 DOSSIER | OIL & GAS

BUILDING TRUST

Claudio James, director general of Petrogas, a subsidiary of Mozambican fuel company Petromoc, says: “The final investment decision (FID) for the Coral FLNG project has changed the whole trust and belief about making such projects in Mozambique, especially because of the financial market situation. This is the first FLNG project that has gone through project finance.” He adds: “And the involvement of an off-taker such as BP, 13 commercial banks and three concessional banks shows that Mozambique has the trust of both the financial and oil and gas industries.”

The Coral development will not have a major impact on the local economy, however. Tavares Martinho, the executive vicepresident exploration and production at ENH – the Mozambican national oil company and a partner in the gas projects, points out: “The development of the sector does not depend on the FID made for FLNG in Area 4. The most important activities will appear as

Participants in the Mozambique LNG Project HOLDING:

of the low current price of gas.

The project faces competition from several other new developments in other countries. These are closer to coming online and, like Mozambique’s, are aimed at markets in Asia.

ANADARKO

OIL INDIA LIMITED

25.5%

4%

PTTEP

8.5% BHARAT PETRORESOURCES

10%

ONGC

16%

MITSUI & CO.

20%

ENH

15%

Asian companies

SOURCE: MOZAMBIQUE LNG

DOMESTIC BENEFITS

FID for the onshore LNG [is] made.

Most of the work for the FLNG will be done outside of Mozambique.”

The government will earn substantial revenue from the Coral project eventually, but only after the oil companies have recovered theircosts.Thismeansthehopefor the country to see major benefits from its gas lies with the onshore LNG plant that will make the bulk of Mozambican export capacity.

In March, Eni sold a 25% stake of Area 4 to US supermajor ExxonMobil. The stake makes Exxon the operator of the Mamba field, which shares its gas reservoir with Anadarko’s Golfinho field in Area 1. The gas will be processed in the planned onshore LNG facility using infrastructure that Eni/ Exxon will own in partnership with Anadarko. Once it settles in, Exxon could bring new momentum to a project that has been losing steam and has been plagued by delays.

Financing the LNG facility is proving challenging because

LNG traded volumes

800 Million tonnes a year 600

Number of countries 30

20

400 10

200 0

2000 05 Global regasification capacity Total volume of LNG trade

0 10 15 No. of LNG exporting countries No. of LNG importing countries

SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL GAS UNION

buyer last year, reportedly settling on a lower price to bring home the deal. Eni was then able to arrange the financing for the new FLNG facility, which is due to start production in 2022.

The grand style of the inauguration and press conference on 1 June expressed more a call for confidence than joy at fresh cash arriving. Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi admitted that, to realise the project, the country had had to sacrifice future revenue and domestic gas development, as the Coral FLNG project does not have any provisions to boost domestic gas supplies.

But Nyusi said he hopes the green light for the FLNG facility will be perceived as a vote of confidence for the country. Given the huge corruption issues surrounding the 2013 Ematum tuna bond – a case where the government borrowed money that it is struggling to pay back and part of which has been misappropriated – it is perhaps understandable that the Coral project is being feted.

At the moment, Anadarko only has an informal agreement for its Rovuma gas, and binding sales contracts seem far away.

Without guaranteed revenue and hard numbers to present to the lenders, there is not a solid base for financing. ENH’s Martinho points out that, despite progress made in agreements between the Mozambican government and the oil companies, there is “not much we can see in the coming months on the onshore LNG”.

Nevertheless, the government is trying to put in place plans to benefit domestically from the gas.

“The local industry is not well prepared, but there are a couple of initiatives that are taking place to guarantee their involvement, like a new national content law, for example” says Petrogas’s James.

The Maputo government has been working on the draft national content law, which will set out provisions for the employment of locals in major projects and for the use of local companies as subcontractors. Years ago, donor governments warned that the government needs to speed up the formulation of its national content policy or risk missing an opportunity to prepare the ground before the oil companies get started.

The government is also awarding tenders to international players to help kick-start a local gas industry so that Mozambique can benefit from domestic gas without being solely reliant on LNG export.

“Currently the government has adjudicated two projects [urea for Yara and gas-to-liquids for Shell], the gas master plan has some guidelines for domestic gas and the government is currently negotiating access to more domestic gas from Mamba and finalising the numbers for the Golfinho field,” says Petrogas’s James.

THE AFRICA REPORT

Honoré Banda

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PHOTO ESSAY

A queen se Plying its way north on Ghana’s huge, man-made Volta Lake, the Yapei Queen ferry hosts its own ecosystem as crew and passengers trade, eat, sleep, get a haircut and shoot the breeze on the two-day voyage Text by Billie A. McTernan and photos by Ruth McDowall on the Yapei Queen

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E

TA K E I T S LOW A journey on the Yapei Queen offers some of the most beautiful views of Ghana’s green and fertile Volta Region, with mountain ranges, small islands and islets along the way.

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very week the Yapei Queen chugs out into Volta Lake, its crew and a smattering of passengers ready to take the two-day trip to Ghana’s north.

With a length of 400km and a surface area of 8,502km2, the Volta is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world.

In 1961 Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, ambitiously committed to developing a lake from the Volta River.

It would serve a hydroelectric dam at Akosombo that would bring electricity to homes across the country and the region. In doing so, however, Nkrumah made a sacrifice that would potentially tarnish his image as man of the people, and literally divide the country. The project meant displacing close to 80,000 people from their homes, their land, their community and their heritage.

Branches of long-lost trees poke out of the water, reminding people of the life theylivedmorethan50yearsago.Though the ship is for cargo, a steady stream of passengers pour in at each of its stops, from the port in Akosombo through to KeteKrachiintheVoltaRegionandfinally Yeji in the Northern Region. Along the way, women from the markets in the south disembark and head inland to buy yam from the farmers ready to greet them. Salomey is one of those women.

“This is our weekly work,” she says.

Salomey took over the business from her mother who, while she is away, watches over her children. She hopes that her children will continue with their education and follow careers in other fields.

Gloria and her daughter take the ferry to avoid the chaos of the road. The trip is a day longer but with views of the surrounding mountains and the stillness of the lake it’s well worth it, she says.

The cook and her helpers aboard the Yapei Queen start preparing the morning’s meal. A mini market at the foot of the gangway pops up. The captain and his crew are well known in these parts.

An entire economy is built around the ferry and its weekly trips.

Wisdom, the ferry’s captain, beams from the bridge with pride. With his crew of 10, he is charged with remembering every – seemingly – minor turn and dip in the lake in the absence of a radar or eco sound, as the glowing lights from the nearby villages provide the only landmarks at night.

92 ART & LIFE

A H A IRCUT The journey from Akosombo to Yeji and back can take four to five days. The crew become a family, spending more time on the water together than they do the land.

O N THE BRIDGE At any given time the wheelhouse is occupied by at least two crew members. While the captain is in charge the majority of the team take it in turns to man the helm.

K EE P ING IN TOUCH With tens of women on the same mission, the yam-buyers mark their names on the crates that will be transported back to the markets in the south of the country.

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YA M - T RADER S Some of the families that were displaced during the development of the dam are now living in the lakeside villages, where farming is a major source of work. Women buy their yams to sell at markets in the south.

TICKET TO RIDEI While the ferry is predominantly for cargo, passengers also take the journey to avoid the congestion on the road. Families travel to visit relatives, bringing their own provisions for the journey.

U N D ER T H E TA R P It can take hours to load the tubers. Some crew members use the opportunity to get some much needed rest before heading out back onto the lake.

Others are in charge of making sure the cargo is packed safely.

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94 ART & LIFE

MOSHEKWA LANGA: FUGITIVE 19 Aug. – 13 Oct.

ZANELI MUHOLI: SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA, HAIL THE DARK LIONESS 14 Jul. – 28 Oct. LONDON | UK Through a series of selfportraits the photographer confronts the politics of race and visual representation. autograph-abp.co.uk

KENECHUKWU NWATU

JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA A grand homecoming for the South African artist showing his first new body of work in the country since 2009. stevenson.info

Neighbourhoods Broken promises Residents of Transit Village on Lagos’s Victoria Island are fighting the government to keep their homes

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

A

GODFRIED DONKOR: THE FIRST DAY OF THE YAM CUSTOM: 1817 22 Aug. – 30 Oct. ACCRA | GHANA Reclaiming anthropological narratives, the Ghanaian artist repaints Thomas Edward Bowdich’s illustration of a traditional Asante custom. gallery1957.com

LAGOS ART BIENNIAL 14 Oct. – 22 Nov. LAGOS | NIGERIA Lagos adds to its ever-growing arts calendar with the launch of this artist-led biennial. lagos-biennial.org

detokunbo Ademola is one of Victoria Island’s best known streets. The 1km stretch contains banks, restaurants, a hotel, laundromat, supermarket, schools, and 1004, a housing development primarily occupied by Asian expatriates. Behind this are five nondescript streets housing the 100 bungalows that make up Transit Village. The residence was designed as temporary accommodation for construction workers building 1004; today it houses civil servants.

Mornings in Transit Village start slowly.

At 6am, skinny young men from the north congregate to say their morning prayers on tarpaulin. Outside the gate more men wake up from their night spent on plastic sheets on the ground. By 7am the gates are open and residents drive in and out.

The gateman, Mr Ibrahim, and his posse man their kiosks selling snacks, water and detergent. Ibrahim has been there for more than five years. His friends, while not technically gatemen, have come to be

ALBUM REVIEW

Sounds from the other side Starboy/RCA Records While maintaining his signature sound, Wizkid has also been steadily weaving between the genres of afrobeats, afropop, dancehall and even R&B. His most recent work, Sounds from the Other Side, continues on this trajectory. With

beautiful artwork and a carnival atmosphere, Sounds is a celebratory album produced by an impressive collection of powerhouse producers including Sarz, Del B, Dre Skull, DJ Mustard and trailblazing South African DJ

Maphorisa.

On ‘Come Closer’, the album’s biggest single, Wizkid once again teams up with Drake, THE AFRICA REPORT

who features with an appropriately laidback verse.

Wizkid famously featured on Drake’s massive chart•

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regarded as part of Street 5. One of them is a cobbler, another washes clothes, one sells dates and the last is a meshai, the guy who makes Indomie noodles with eggs.

For the past nine years, the residents of Transit Village have been engaged in a largely silent legal confrontation with the Nigerian government. Mr Ibrahim recounts the history. In 2008 the federal government decided it would no longer bear the burden of maintaining residences for civil servants.

Under President OlusegunObasanjo’s monetisation policy, the residents were legally entitled to purchase the houses themselves for N6m. However the government sold the houses to the United Africa Company, whose developers approached the residents with buyout money. They refused, and in 2008 an eviction notice was served.

Transit Village resembles a stain on the moneyed reputation of Victoria Island.

Many of the houses need painting, the roads need to be refilled, a few burnt houses stand like sad totems. The residents don’t want to make repairs. They fear the fate of the residents of 1004, who in 2015 were evicted after the government sold the property to developers.

The only thing keeping them in situ is an injunction to maintain the status quo, filed by their legal counsel. Quite a few people have already moved out. Micah now rents his apartment out to young professionals who work on the Island. Others, like Mrs Awoh, have built extensions and rented them out to supplement incomes. But mostly the residents are weary, a sentiment expressed by Mr Ibrahim: “We just want the government to give us the chance to buy like they promised.”

Fareeda Abdulkareem in Lagos

South African R&B singer Bucie, is the standout cut and brings a whole different energy to the album.

The overall dynamic, daring sound of this album suggests that Wizkid’s recent success has bolstered his sense of adventure. He’s oozing confidence and the music is better for it.

Shingai Darangwa

topping single ‘One Dance’ back in 2016. ‘Naughty Ride’ with Major Lazer is a slow, winding dancehall tune that has all the ingredients for crossover success. Most of the album seems to bear similar crossover value.

The soulful, groovy and colourful ‘All For Love’, featuring THE AFRICA REPORT

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Literature Writing our struggles in indelible ink Southern African writers use the soft power of the pen so that black women’s voices are not erased

H

“

ow do you prepare a wilful In their poetry collections, black girl for a world dePutuma (Collective Amnesia) and termined to break her?”

Chisala (soft magic, Nectar) witness women in their intimate spaces Professor Pumla Gqola asked the where they are most vulnerable: audience at the launch of her memoir Reflecting Rogue. For this South the kitchen, the bathroom floor, African feminist writing is a way the bedroom and their inner thighs. to shine a light on invisible stories Their work conveys intergenerational stories of inherited pain, joy, love that together can change the way and trauma, told by their mothers history is perceived. and grandmothers.

As an activist Gqola has written and spoken at length about domesPutuma, in her poem X-Mas tic violence and the country’s rape Dinner with Skeletons, writes: culture – notably the dismissed rape case Gqola, Chisala and Putuma against President capture black women and hold Jacob Zuma in 2006. them gently in their work The chapter entitled ‘Disappearing “Madness sits at the dinner table, Women’ notes the frequency with too / saying grace with one eye open.” which South African women are The intimate nature in which murdered, abducted or kidnapped, often by their intimate partners.

Gqola, Chisala and Putuma capture Across the generations, literary black womenand hold themgentlyin voices have amplified black women’s their work creates healing texts. Like stories in the face of efforts to erase those that came before them, these them. They include veterans like poets and writers centre black womenbycontinuouslyfindinginnovative Toni Morrison and the late Yvonne and creative ways to speak to their Vera, but also the transgressive works of contemporary writers like the experiences,eloquentlyremindingus South African Koleka Putuma and that black women are not invisible.

Lebohang Mojapelo in Johannesburg Malawian Upile Chisala.

CTOELG/GETTY IMAGES

ART & LIFE 95

96

HARRY HOOK/GETTY IMAGES

TRAVEL KENYA

Richer experiences on a small purse

Forget the luxury resorts and safaris – Kenya has many affordable options which offer a cultural melting pot, and are better for the environment. Just ask the locals

B

udget hotels outside Nairobi hold a certain charm. Offering the same rates as seedy city motels at a fraction of the cost of any big name hotel chain, these small establishments offer a homely escape for weary travellers and adventure-seekers.

Come for the convenience, cost and flexibility but stay for the cultural melting pot. Backpacking Europeans, fellow Africans from across the continent and diaspora alike meet at the buffet table for the shared gamble on whether to take the instant coffee or chance the brewed tea.

In Nakuru, a three-hour drive northwest of Nairobi and famous for its

flamingos, pocket-friendly resorts such as Nuru Palace Hotel often come complete with cable TV, wi-fi and hot showers.

But the slippers may be unfashionably clipped at the back to deter sticky fingers, you’ll have to sleep under mosquito nets, and don’t expect a lift either.

Closer to Nairobi, Naivasha is burgeoning as a destination for both frugal millennials and the moneyed. With three national parks on its doorstep, it presents several mid-range options that incorporate cottage accommodation, camping and wildlife-spotting. Sanctuary Farm is a working farm where both dairy cows and wild impala roam the grounds;

Fisherman’s Camp has an idyllic lakeside location and Oloiden offers camping by the smaller Lake Oloiden.

Youngsters like to travel down for annual rugby tournaments and festivals but aren’t opposed to a spontaneous no-frills camping weekend. “Sometimes people write a post on Facebook or in WhatsApp groups and whoever wants to join comes along,” says Ian Kithinji, a young writer. Huddled around a blazing bonfire to ward off the chilly evening wind,theseout-of-townbondingsessions are a welcome break from university exams, work or job-hunting.

Local travellers looking for an escape can also benefit from the drop in foreign visitors in response to the August 2017 elections. “Most visitors plan a year or two in advance. They pay a deposit and keep saving. Now we’re seeing them cancelling bookings and choosing to go elsewhere,” says David Mwaura, CEO of Jambo African Adventures. In 2016 tourismcontributedKSh682bntoKenya’s economy. For David this came through numerous trips booked by groups of 18-20 guests seeking two-week holidays.

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FAMILY TRIPS

For a majority of Kenyans, however, there’s no place like home when it comes to holidays. A recent Jumia Travel Report confirms this. As high as 51% of the online bookings were for family trips locally and regionally. Evalyna Waweru is a primary THE AFRICA REPORT

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school teacher who cultivates a joint holiday fund with her husband. “We save up all year to take our kids on fun Easter and Christmas trips. For the last three years we’ve been exploring what Naivasha has to offer. We like places with activities for both the children and ourselves, she says.

Public holidays trigger a mass migration to the coastal city of Mombasa, the main attractions being the Indian Ocean, delectable Swahili cuisine, sunshine and the city’s easy pace. Historical sites such Fort Jesus and Old Town frequently pop up on social media feeds. The same goes for Mama Ngina Drive, a public park popular for ship watching and street-food delights such as charcoal-grilled muhogo (cassava) sprinkled with red pepper, and fresh madafu (green coconut milk).

Those seeking bigger adventures slip away to proximal towns Kilifi, Malindi

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“Guests are now arriving at JKIA and immediately connecting to Tanzania and Uganda,” he says.

The new $100 East Africa Tourist Visa has not necessarily helped. Launched in 2016 by Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, it aimed to attract more travellers from outside the East African Community (EAC) to the region, but with Kenya’s neighbours offering what are essentially the same beach, adventure and safari options it could be deflecting business away from the long-established Kenyan travel industry.

Nigerian writer and lawyer Richard Ali, whofrequentlytravelstoEastAfrica,spots chinks in its armour. “My experience has been generally smooth but there are a few issues. The most disturbing thing is the subversion of what ‘multiple entry’ means,” he says. This past March, Richard was part of the Jalada Mobile Literary and Arts Festival that went on tour across the region. At Gisenyi, the Rwanda-DRC border, he learnt that despite securing a three-month multiple entry option, he would be required to get a new visa to come back in to the EAC.

THE COFFEE COLLECTIVE/FLICKR

ZHAO YINGQUAN/XINHUA/ZUMA/REA

Clockwise from far left: A sublime backdrop and a sense of humour at a roadside café; picnic overlooking the crater of Mount Longonot, an extinct volcano near Naivasha in the Rift Valley; the East Africa Tourist Visa offers multiple entries within Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda; simple pleasures – tasting coffee varieties at the roasting mill

and Lamu, where the tourists are fewer and the sunsets fiercely stunning. Kilifi’s DistantRelativesEcolodge&Backpackers has a secret that could one-up the sky: splashing about in a nearby beach activates bioluminescent plankton that sparkle in a lovely blue hue.

Car, bus and flight options are always preferred ways to arrive at your destination. But the snaking railway lines and carriages of yore – which had their own charm as you rattled and wobbled across changing terrain – have since been replaced by a shiny new standard gauge railway, resulting in a surge in travellers to Mombasa and the rest of the country.

The United Nations has declared 2017 the ‘International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development’. It recognises the importance of tourism in creating an awareness of the rich heritage of different civilisations and cultures in order to strengthen peace in the world. Indeed, excursions beyond the familiar can be deeply rewarding. Be it discovering the kitschiest Kisumu cutlery, striking up conversations with strangers in a shared tuk tuk in Malindi or getting spectacularly lost but gaining an awesome tale in Kakamega. Those are the small delights that make travelling worth it.

Wanjeri Gakuru in Nairobi

ALL PICTURES BY RICCI SHRYOCK

98

One man's trash In Dakar, El Haj Diallo has been digging in other people’s rubbish for over 50 years.

A former ‘bandit’, today he strives to improve safety at Mbeubeuss landfill

I

was very young, just 9 or 10 years old, when I realised there was a landfill just behind my school at Hann Bay. We would go looking for little gifts there.

At that time we didn’t know that waste had resale value. Back then no one bought the iron or bottles.

We only took the things that we could repair. You could find a bike or something like that.

I studied carpentry when I left school at 14 but I was still working at the landfill. I would empty the trucks from the company that made cigarettes and they paid me 2,000 CFA francs. I would take that and buy some marijuana to sell. I was just a boy, but I was a rascal, huh. I was selling drugs.

There was a truck from the French army base. In this trash there was alcohol that was still there and I would drink what was left. And I would eat all kinds of meat that was in the truck. Sometimes you would find chicken that was really, really good. That was 1978.

If the police came I would leave and go back to my parents’ house. I preferred to be hit by them than go to the police station.

I would sell the liquid that was left over inside the cans and bottles. I knew a guy who found a bottle with

a little liquid in it. He didn’t know what it was and he drank half of it and gave the rest to a guy next to him who finished it. They both died right in front of us.

I even buried a guy here in the landfill. The man was too decomposed, so the firemen brought him to us. Because people got rid of fish right behind where he died no one could smell his body. The firefighters didn’t want to take the risk of burying him so I did it with my friends, we prayed in front of his tomb here.

I’m trying to add value to the waste industry. When I say add value, I mean protection for the workers. But we cannot do it because everyone works for themselves.

It’s not very well organised. Twenty million CFA francs ($36,000) passes through Mbeubeuss each day. About 3,000 people work here. And it’s more than that because those numbers are from 2005. At first, Mbeubeuss was just this little space. Now it’s 4 or 5 km across.

I know there is a bulldozer buried here somewhere.

I forgot the exact place but I know it’s here.

We have found that 60% of the trash will leave and be transformed and be found back in the houses of people in Dakar, so I’m not worried about the environment. What worries me is the work conditions. The work conditions are not safe here – skin conditions, respiratory infections; you can open a sack and find a dead baby, you can find the worms that have eaten him.

Me, even I know that someone who works with the trash is a crazy. The people here are crazy.

The Ambassador of France came here because they have a partnership with French Development Agency to look into renewable energy to make energy out of trash. First of all I know that waste can make electricity, there is fermentation of biomass and biogas.

We have our secrets here, too. I can’t tell you all of them.

Interview by Ricci Shryock THE AFRICA REPORT

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The world is small.

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