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Friday 24th of November 2017 |
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Macro Thoughts |
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Happy Thanksgiving! We are grateful to all our guests and staff. You make us Finch Hattons. #HappyThanksgiving2017 Africa |
My dearest 11 Year Old Hannah has been in a maturing phase of life and at times quite short with me. And then I interrogated her Mother and her Sisters because I was getting distraught and unhappy thinking we had lost our Bond. And all the Ladies told me No Dad its universal. So Last night I said to Hannah, BABY i was so distraught but now I am good. And then her Mum and I took her together that morning to her Pick up Point. And we started talking about her favourite poem. And her Mother said its a dark choice its T.S.Eliot's The Hollow Men.
I said ''Mistah Kurtz—he dead''
And Then we looked it up on Google and I said Go on Darling read it
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The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot Africa |
A penny for the Old Guy
I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer—
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
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The Contradictions of Joseph Conrad By NGUGI wa THIONG'O Africa |
I turned my back on reading Joseph Conrad in 1967. This was also the year that I published “A Grain of Wheat,” my third novel, which I wrote soon after reading Conrad’s “Under Western Eyes.” I could not put words to what repelled me, because, despite the unease, his influence on my work was unmistakable, and long lasting. “A Grain of Wheat” marked a dramatic shift for me away from the linear plots and single points of view of my first two novels to the multiple narrative voices and diverse temporal and geographic spaces of my later works. The difference in style was a result of my encounter with Conrad.
Achebe’s essay helped explain what I had found repellent in Conrad’s work and why I’d stopped reading him. In the novels set in the outer reaches of European empire the native characters always seemed to merge with their environment, reminiscent of the Hegelian image of Africa as a land of childhood still enveloped in the dark mantle of the night. I accepted everything Achebe said about Conrad’s biases.
And yet, I could not wholly embrace Achebe’s overwhelmingly negative view of “Heart of Darkness” or Conrad in general. Somehow, the essay failed to explain what had once attracted me: Conrad’s ability to capture the hypocrisy of the “civilizing mission” and the material interests that drove capitalist empires, crushing the human spirit. Jasanoff does not forgive Conrad his blindness, but she does try to present his perspective on the changing, troubled world he traveled, a perspective that still has strong resonance today.
In “Heart of Darkness,” Conrad’s literary stand-in Charles Marlow talks of imperialism as a form of robbery accompanied by violence and aggravated murder on a grand scale. Colonial ventures are mostly about taking the earth away “from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves.” This captures, in one sentence, capitalism’s racist roots in slavery and conquest. Conrad also anticipated a capitalist system’s capacity to dismantle societies, a point he illustrated through his depiction of Mr. Holroyd, the cynical American silver and steel tycoon in “Nostromo.” Jasanoff does an excellent job pulling on all these threads.
I suspect Achebe missed this side of Conrad because he didn’t stop to consider the diabolical character of Kurtz, the brilliant station agent gone rogue whom it is Marlow’s task to retrieve. In “Heart of Darkness,” the final image of Kurtz, the man of light and reason, is one of him hedged by human heads, capturing the horror of imperialism and the hollowness of the enlightenment philosophy with which colonialism wrapped itself. It is a scene reminiscent of Marx’s comparison of bourgeois progress to the pagan idol who drank nectar but only from the skulls of the slain. Congo was littered with 10 million skulls, the work of civilized hunters for rubber and ivory to meet the greed of King Leopold of Belgium.
The Conrad who was able to imagine Kurtz in this way is often obscured by Marlow, Conrad’s literary alter ego. In “The Dawn Watch,” Jasanoff goes behind the mask and, like Stanley in search of Livingstone, or Marlow in search of Kurtz, sets out to find the elusive Conrad by tracing the physical, historical, biographical and literary footsteps of the writer. Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, in a Poland then under the thumb of czarist Russia and to parents engrossed in the struggle for independence, he later becomes a homeless traveler of the oceans, and eventually ended up as Joseph Conrad, an English-speaking citizen of the most global of the European capitalist empires of the time. Jasanoff returns Conrad to all of these contexts, understanding what impact they had on his novels.
This is the Conrad who comes alive in Jasanoff’s masterful study. “The Dawn Watch” will become a creative companion to all students of his work. It has made me want to re-establish connections with the Conrad whose written sentences once inspired in me the same joy as a musical phrase.
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Rwanda Offers to Host African Migrants Stranded in Libya Law & Politics |
In an unusual gesture that could partly reverse a more familiar northward odyssey toward Europe, Rwanda offered on Thursday to house or help repatriate some of the thousands of African migrants being held in Libya and reportedly auctioned there as slaves.
A statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry said Rwanda was “horrified” that “African men women and children who were on the road to exile have been held and turned into slaves.”
“Given Rwanda’s political philosophy and our own history, we cannot remain silent when human beings are being mistreated and auctioned off like cattle,” the statement said. The evocation of Rwanda’s history apparently referred to bloodletting in 1994 when more than 800,000 people perished in an ethnically driven genocide.
“We may not be able to welcome everyone but our door is wide open,” the Foreign Ministry said.
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Seven years ago, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire @washingtonpost Law & Politics |
Seven years ago, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire in defense of his dignity, unknowingly triggering an avalanche of public demonstrations across the Middle East. People in the region wanted what was denied to them for almost a century — a fair order, better lives and a little breathing space.
Seven years down the road, what the people got in return is upgraded despotism and chaos.
Conclusions
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Law & Politics |
After 40 years in Robert Mugabe’s shadow, Emmerson Mnangagwa is finally stepping out on his own.
But there is more than one Emmerson Mnangagwa, and we don’t know yet which one we are getting.
There is the ruthless and cunning Mnangagwa. There is also the witty and humourous Mnangagwa. Then there is also the third Mnangagwa; the one whose efforts to reform the economy were thwarted at every turn by Robert Mugabe.
His former boss, Mugabe, recognised both Mnangagwas and deployed them accordingly. When he was Security Minister in the 1980s, he was accused of being involved in the massacre of thousands of innocent people. In 2008, Mnangagwa led Mugabe’s election campaign, and some critics believe he was involved in the violence.
When Mugabe briefly flirted with the idea of economic reform and reengaging international financiers, he gave Mnangagwa the job. With the likes of allies such as then Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, they laid out an economic reform plan in 2013 that involved cutting spending at home, refining damaging empowerment laws, and restructuring foreign debt.
One member of Mnangagwa’s team tells The Source that Mnangagwa’s toughness is what will be needed to fight corruption. But Mnangagwa himself is not clean. A 2002 UN report implicated him in the looting of resources in the DRC, calling Mnangagwa “the key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the elite network”.
But while the popular view is that he is business-friendly, he has no known successful business interests. His farm in Sherwood, near Kwekwe, is well run, but there is little else known.
Under Mugabe, especially in his final years, the Government drifted along with zero leadership. Corruption is rampant because Mugabe excused it, many times publicly. It cannot be hard for Mnangagwa to do better.
This week, Mnangagwa released a statement couched in all the right spiel about the need to build consensus across parties. His people say this is the sort of Government he plans to run. But he hasn’t been tested yet.
Once he gets power and has to use it, and defend it, we will know which Mnangagwa comes out; the Emmerson who will try to win by reforming the economy, or the crocodile who will again use muscle to subdue opponents.
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After Mugabe, African leaders wonder what next Africa |
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Hours after Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was forced out after 37 years in power, Uganda’s president, another former guerrilla in office for more than three decades, was tweeting about pay rises for civil servants and bright prospects for his army tank crews.
Supporters of long-serving African leaders dismiss parallels with Zimbabwe, where Mugabe’s former deputy - sacked during a power struggle with Mugabe’s wife - is about to take power with military and public backing.
But Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s tweets, which come amid rising anger at the 73-year-old’s attempts to prolong his rule, suggest he is one of several African leaders looking south and wondering about their own stability.
“Now that the economic situation in Uganda is improving, the government will be able to look into raising of salaries of soldiers, public servants, health workers and teachers and also deal with institutional housing,” Museveni tweeted on Wednesday.
It was unclear what improvement he meant. Uganda’s faltering economy is growing too slowly to absorb a booming population of 37 million. The number of citizens spending less than a dollar a day has surged to 27 percent, the statistics office reported in September, up from 20 percent five years ago.
President since 1986, Museveni is among Africa’s longest-serving leaders. They include Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, president for 38 years; Cameroon’s Paul Biya, president for 35 years; Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, president for two stints totaling 33 years.
The family of Gnassingbé Eyadéma have ruled Togo for half a century, and the Democratic Republic of Congo has been run by the Kabila family since Laurent Kabila took power in 1997. He was replaced by his son, Joseph, in 2001.
Still, Mugabe’s fall has sent a shiver through a continent whose northern countries saw the Arab Spring revolts tear down repressive regimes, even though many of the new leaders proved as bad as the old.
Franck Essi, secretary-general of the opposition Cameroon Peoples’ Party, said opposition movements were closely watching events in Zimbabwe.
“Leaders must put in place mechanisms for a democratic and peaceful transition that will allow new leadership. If not, sooner or later, the people who are suffocating will wake up,” he said.
A slump in commodities prices has deprived some nations of the resources they have traditionally used to muffle protests. In some cases, corruption has also emptied state coffers.
In central Africa, Congo’s Kabila has repeatedly postponed elections after refusing to step down at the end of his term last year, sparking deadly protests.
Jean-Pierre Kambila, Kabila’s deputy chief of staff, tweeted that Zimbabwe’s protests were a colonial fantasy.
“A fabricated demonstration dreamed up by those who do not accept the liberation of Africa. Other Mugabes will be born. Nothing to worry about,” he wrote.
Uganda, a key Western ally set to begin exporting its substantial oil reserves, removed term limits in 2005 to extend Museveni’s rule.
The east African nation has seen far less violence under Museveni than the two dictators who preceded him. But now tensions are rising as social services crumble and parliamentarians attempt to remove a constitutional age cap that would bar Museveni from standing in the next election.
Police have used deadly force against protesters, and repeatedly arrested the main opposition leader. Security forces dragged parliamentarians opposing the bill out of the legislature. On Wednesday, police raided a popular newspaper, detaining eight staff.
Okello Oryem, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs, dismissed any parallels with Zimbabwe, saying Mugabe’s overthrow was the result of Western interference.
“The intelligence services of the West have worked day and night to bring down Zimbabwe,” he told Reuters. “Citizen pressure in Zimbabwe can only work if and when the army allows it.”
But another Ugandan opposition leader, Asuman Basalirwa, warned that national leaders who refused to step down risked plunging their countries into conflict. Military intervention to end dictatorships ultimately leads to more repression, he said, something that many feared might be in store for Zimbabwe.
“It is time for the continent to democratize,” he said. “Those who have not yet experienced what happened in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and now Zimbabwe should just wait for their turn because it will surely come.”
Conclusions
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November 2014 "After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring". Law & Politics |
Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.
During the Arab Spring [now in the bleak mid-Winter], nearly all commentators spoke of how this North African wildfire could not leap the Sahara and head to sub-Saharan Africa. The reasons were that the State [incumbents] had a monopoly on the tools of violence and would bring overwhelming force and violence to bear.
We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000? This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.
Out of a population of 17 million people in Burkina Faso, over 60 per cent are aged between 17 and 24 years, according to the World Bank, and this is another point to note. The country’s youth flexed their muscles. What’s clear is that a very young, very informed and very connected African youth demographic [many characterise this as a ‘demographic dividend’] – which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator – is set to alter the existing equilibrium between the rulers and the subjects, and a re-balancing has begun.
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Commentary: How Saudi Arabia has overreached on Iran, Lebanon @Reuters Law & Politics |
Arab foreign ministers gathered in Cairo for an hours-long gripe session against Iran and its ally, Hezbollah. The Arab leaders accused Tehran and the Lebanese Shi’ite movement of destabilizing the Middle East, but they fell short of agreeing on concrete action.
The Arab League meeting capped a month in which the Middle East suddenly seemed to plunge toward a wider regional conflict. Saudi Arabia charged that a missile fired at its capital from Yemen on Nov. 4 was provided to Yemeni rebels by Iran and constituted “an act of war.” Saudi leaders then pushed Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri into a surprise resignation during a trip to Saudi Arabia as a way of exerting pressure on Iran and Hezbollah. “Wherever Iran is involved, there is nothing but devastation and chaos,” Hariri said in his resignation speech on Nov. 4, which was broadcast from the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He added, “Iran’s hands in the region will be cut off.”
These actions underscore a newly aggressive Saudi foreign policy, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is eager to challenge Iran more directly and has amassed tremendous power under the rule of his father, King Salman.
Saudi leaders thought that they would be able to push Hariri aside, withdraw political cover from Hezbollah, and make it easier for Sunni Arab states — along with the United States and Israel — to target the group. (After an earlier round of sanctions, the U.S. Congress is considering a new sanctions bill targeting Hezbollah and its funders.)
But after Hariri’s sudden departure, Lebanese from all political factions rallied around him and insisted that his resignation was invalid because Saudi leaders coerced him. As international concern grew that Hariri was being held captive by his Saudi patrons, French President Emmanuel Macron invited him to Paris. Hariri met with Macron on Nov. 18 and returned to Lebanon for the country's Nov. 22 Independence Day celebrations.
Tensions have eased over the past week, and it’s unlikely that the latest crisis will escalate into a military confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But while the prospect of direct clashes between the two regional rivals has eased, their ongoing proxy war is destabilizing the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is now bogged down in the Yemen conflict. Despite intensive air strikes and a blockade, Riyadh and its allies still have not been able to dislodge the Houthis from Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
Yemen has become a central arena of the proxy battle, especially after Saudi Arabia’s “act of war” accusation against Iran. The kingdom claimed that the ballistic missile it shot down on Nov. 4 en route to the Saudi capital had been smuggled into Yemen in parts. Saudi officials say members of Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps assembled the missile, and then helped Houthi rebels fire it from Yemeni territory. (Iran and Hezbollah denied involvement in the missile launch.)
Saudi leaders have since scaled back their efforts to declare Lebanon a hostile state. Already overstretched by Yemen and embroiled in a diplomatic crisis with Qatar, the kingdom cannot effectively challenge Hezbollah, Iran’s main ally in Lebanon, without assembling a broader Arab and international coalition. But this is still a dangerous moment in the Middle East. As long as Iran and Saudi Arabia view their rivalry as a zero-sum game — where one can only gain at the expense of the other — there is a risk of miscalculation that spirals out of control.
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Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last @tomfriedman Law & Politics |
I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.
Unlike the other Arab Springs — all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia — this one is led from the top down by the country’s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and, if it succeeds, it will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Only a fool would predict its success — but only a fool would not root for it.
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The difference between night and day is disappearing, scientists warn @washingtonpost Law & Politics |
The distinction between day and night is disappearing in the most heavily populated regions of the Earth, a rapid shift with profound consequences for human health and the environment, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
“We're losing more and more of the night on a planetary scale,” journal editor Kip Hodges said in a teleconference on the paper's findings.
From 2012 to 2016, the artificially lit area of the Earth's surface grew by 2.2 percent per year, according to the study led by Christopher Kyba of the German Research Centre for Geosciences. Kyba and his team analyzed high-resolution satellite imagery to measure the extent of artificial outdoor lighting at night. The study also found that areas of the planet already lit grew even brighter, increasing in luminosity at a rate of 2.2 percent per year.
“Earth's night is getting brighter,” Kyba said. The image below shows the change in the amount of nighttime lighting from 2012 to 2016. Red pixels denote increases in lit areas, while blue ones indicate decreases.
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Guardian view on cryptocurrencies: blockchain of fools International Trade |
One of the few men to get out in time before the Wall Street crash of 1929 did so – legend has it – because he was offered a stock tip by the boy who shined his shoes. He immediately sold all his holdings. If the mania for gambling on the stock market had reached down to the children on the streets, the bubble must have been due to pop at any moment. The corresponding moment for the cryptocurrency bubble will only be discernible in retrospect, but we have some pretty strong candidates already. The endorsement of one project by the reality TV star Paris Hilton has already happened. Posters have appeared on the London underground urging people to gamble in bitcoin futures on the margin. The production – or “mining” – of bitcoins now uses more electricity than Ireland or Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the notional price of the main cryptocurrencies continues to shoot upwards in a way that makes nonsense of the idea that they have any value as a medium of exchange. Even if they were widely accepted by legal merchants, it would at the moment be lunatic to exchange them for anything but real money. Bitcoin itself is trading at more than $8,000, more than 10 times its price a year ago, and more than double what it was three months ago. Since it is only widely used as a currency in drug deals or for ransom payments, there is either a huge boom in criminal activities outside the world of cryptocurrencies, or one within unregulated exchanges where these tokens are traded.
There are many cryptocurrency schemes which are sold on the same grounds as the greatest South Sea Bubble prospectus: “For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” But there is one novel element in today’s lunacy, and this is the apocalyptic hope common in Silicon Valley that it is possible to replace all messy human institutions with clean and infallible computer code. The blockchain technology underlying the various cryptocurrencies is meant to make human decisions redundant and to replace faith in governments with indisputable rationality. The delusion that this might be possible has produced one of the most astonishing outbursts of irrational exuberance in financial history. When this bubble bursts, it will be clear that so long as there is greed we will need laws to tame it.
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Angola's new leader shakes up old order after dos Santos @ABCnews @AP Africa |
Since winning election in August, Lourenco has taken steps to show that he is running a new government, even firing the daughter of dos Santos as chair of the powerful state-owned oil company.
When the ailing dos Santos stepped down, Lourenco, the former defense minister, was generally expected to conduct business as usual. But Lourenco, 63, quickly appointed a crop of new ministers to differentiate himself from dos Santos and replaced key security personnel.
"Joao Lourenco has been busy consolidating his power in Angola following the smooth transition of power from dos Santos," Alex Vines, the head of the Africa program at Chatham House in London, said by email. The untroubled transfer of power gives Lourenco "additional authority" in tackling the economic issues, Vines said
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How 'princess' of Angola lost her oil crown Law & Politics |
The top executives in Angola of Chevron (CVX.N), Total (TOTF.PA), BP (BP.L), Eni (ENI.MI) and Exxon (XOM.N) said the oil sector was being devastated by delays in project approvals at Sonangol and a backlog of payments owed by the state oil company, according to four oil industry sources with knowledge of the meeting.
They warned Lourenço that Angola’s production would decline from 2019 unless swift action was taken to tackle problems at the firm, which was headed by Isabel dos Santos, daughter of his presidential predecessor, the sources said. They declined to be named because the discussions were confidential.
Six weeks later the president fired dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman who is nicknamed the “princess” in Angola.
The oil majors all declined to comment on the meeting. Lourenço’s office and Sonangol did not respond to requests for comment.
It was a highly unusual gathering; foreign oil firms operate nearly all of Angola’s production and hold huge sway, but meeting the president as a united group was almost unheard of.
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If Lourenco successfully dismantles the dos Santos empire - and refrains from creating his own - it could be an example for others to follow Washington Post Africa |
A revolutionary anti-colonial leader who held power for almost four decades. A government rife with nepotism and corruption. A people beset by poverty. Hope for a democratic transition, but far more skepticism that it would ever happen. No, this isn't Zimbabwe — it's Angola.
Three months ago, southern Africa’s oil-rich bastion of economic inequality held open elections, its first after 38 years under autocrat José Eduardo dos Santos. His chosen successor, João Lourenço, won handily. Lourenço promised an anti-corruption drive and swore he wouldn’t be a puppet of the deeply entrenched dos Santos family, but it seemed like the standard setup for more years of strongman rule.
Yet, contrary to expectations, Lourenço “seems to be on the right path,” said Zenaida Machado, who covers the region for Human Rights Watch. Lourenço has indeed made bold anti-corruption moves, especially in forcing sweeping personnel changes at the highest levels of government.
He has fired the heads of the intelligence service and the national police, reversing the recent extension of their terms by dos Santos. He has dismissed the governor of the central bank, the head of the diamond company Endiama and the boards of all three state-owned media companies.
He also removed dos Santos’s daughter, Isabel, the richest woman in Africa, as the chair of the state-owned oil behemoth. As David Pilling wrote in the Financial Times, Lourenço has even “abolished a government communications department through which money had been funneled, via lucrative contracts, to one of the former president’s other daughters.”
These moves seem geared toward stripping the dos Santos family of its near-monopoly over state power and finances. But observers still urge caution. While hopes are high after Lourenço's initial actions, it's still too early to tell whether he is on a truly liberalizing path.
For example, as revealed in the Panama Papers, the dos Santoses allegedly transferred $4 billion from Angola's sovereign wealth fund to an account in Switzerland. Lourenço has been silent on this. Some of Lourenço’s moves also resemble what Portuguese-speaking Angolans call a “dança das cadeiras” — a dance of chairs, shuffling ministers from one office to another, Machado said.
Lourenço's political objectives are difficult to discern because he and every ruling-party member kept such low profiles during the dos Santos years. Ambition and self-promotion were regarded as threats by dos Santos. Only now that Lourenço is president are we getting any real sense of what he will do as an autonomous politician.
“All that we can be sure of is what we have seen: that Lourenço has moved quickly and boldly to remove dos Santos appointees from top positions in the economy, state security and the media,” said Justin Pearce, a professor of African politics at the University of Cambridge. “Many politicians the world over have come to power with promises of sweeping change, only to disappoint. Let’s give him credit for what he has done and remain vigilant to what is ahead.”
Given the tendency toward pessimism around democratic transitions in Africa, Angola’s is one to watch closely. If Lourenço successfully dismantles the dos Santos empire — and refrains from creating his own — it could be an example for others to follow.
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Africa |
At least two billionaire businessmen detained in the corruption investigation have extensive investments across Africa. One of them is prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, chairman of the Kingdom Holdings, which has sizable stakes in Twitter, Citigroup, and ride-sharing firm Lyft. The other is Mohammad al-Amoudi, son of a Saudi father and an Ethiopian mother, and one of the richest black people in the world. Together, Talal and al-Amoudi own investments across Africa in hospitality, agriculture, cement production, gold mining, real estate, and oil production.
The two businessmen’s venture into Africa preceded the wealthy Gulf nations’ recent interest in financing projects in African markets. Buoyed by fast economic growth, improving governance, and growing demographic and consumer trends, more Gulf money has been flowing into the continent in the last decade—not only to North Africa but also in sub-Saharan Africa. Between 2005 and 2014, Gulf firms provided (pdf) at least $9.3 billion in foreign direct investments in sub-Saharan Africa alone, according to a 2015 Economist Intelligence Unit report. The East Africa region was the main draw for Gulf investors, lured by the rise of Islamic banking, halal tourism, retail in Kenya, manufacturing in Ethiopia, and the education sector in Uganda.
In the long run, Gabisa said, this allows Saudis “to possess a juggernaut of political and economic leverage and influence over African nations.”
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Kenya Holds Key Rate as Policy Bind Persists on Rate-Cap Law @business Kenyan Economy |
“The committee concluded that inflationary pressures in the economy were muted, and inflation was expected to continue to decline in the short term,” Njoroge said in a statement emailed from the capital, Nairobi. The Central Bank of Kenya, which last cut the rate in 2016, targets inflation in a 2.5 percent to 7.5 percent range.
Inflation slowed to a 17-month low of 5.7 percent in October on falling food prices and subdued consumer demand. Growth in East Africa’s biggest economy has slowed this year as the annulment of the country’s presidential election stymied investment and farm output contracted for the first time in eight years because of a drought. The Treasury this month cut its 2017 growth forecast to 5 percent from 5.9 percent.
While the environment is ripe for a rate cut, a law limiting how much commercial lenders can charge for loans “adds a layer of complexity” to monetary policy decisions, said Jacques Nel, senior economist at Paarl, South Africa-based NKC African Economics.
Njoroge “fears” reducing rates could lock more borrowers out of the credit market, Nel said in emailed responses to questions. “If the regulation is scrapped sometime during the first half of 2018, the central bank is expected to continue the easing cycle.”
Kenya slapped banks with a law limiting loan charges to 400 basis points above the benchmark rate last year, exacerbating a slowdown in credit growth. Lending to individuals and businesses grew 1.6 percent in August, compared with 5.9 percent a year ago, according to the central bank.
Banks have resorted to lending only to their best clients to cut risk, according to Razia Khan, chief economist for Africa at Standard Chartered Bank. Njoroge may cut rates by a 100 basis points between March and May if the law is amended, she said.
“In normal circumstances, the central bank would be easing rates comfortably, providing a much-needed boost to the economy,” Khan said in an emailed note. “A cut could conceivably weaken credit growth further.”
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@StanbicKE reports Q3 2017 EPS +19.684% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 5/- Closing Price: 79.50 Total Shares Issued: 395321638.00 Market Capitalization: 31,428,070,221 EPS: 11.18 PE: 7.111
Q3 Kenya Government Securities Held for dealing purposes 35.948358b vs. 19.465077b +84.681% Q3 Kenya Government Securities Available for Sale 46.507858b vs. 35.090790b +32.536% Q3 Loans and advances to customers (net) 121.348510b vs. 106.675316b +13.755% Q3 Total assets 236.547378b vs. 229.925246b +2.880% Q3 Customers’ deposits 150.851863b vs. 139.398034b +8.217% Q3 Total shareholders’ funds 31.922509b vs. 28.594236b +11.640% Q3 Total Interest income 12.203517b vs. 13.169661b -7.336% Q3 Total interest expenses [4.432509b] vs. [4.857832b] -8.755% Q3 Net Interest income 7.771008b vs. 8.311829b -6.507% Q3 FX trading income 2.139345b vs. 2.077537b +2.975% Q3 Total non-interest income 6.198642b vs. 5.898300b +5.092% Q3 Total operating income 13.969650b vs. 14.210129b -1.692% Q3 Loan loss provision [2.265006b] vs. [1.201743b] +88.477% Q3 Staff costs [3.615153b] vs. [3.670588b] -1.510% Q3 Other expenses [2.777276b] vs. [3.249326b] -14.528% Q3 Total other operating expenses [9.588996b] vs. [8.908859b] +7.634% Q3 Profit before tax and exceptional items 4.380654b vs. 5.301271b -17.366% Q3 Exceptional items [101.760m] vs. [1.125797b] -90.961% Q3 Profit after tax and exceptional items 3.225740b vs. 2.694617b +19.711% Basic and Diluted EPS 18.91 vs. 15.80 +19.684% Net NPL and Advances 5.307794b vs. 3.746317b +41.680% Liquidity ratio 57.4% vs. 72.8% -15.400%
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