Welcome to RICH.CO.KE - Satchu's Wrapup

Satchu's Rich Wrap-Up

Friday 05th of February 2021

Afternoon

Africa

rich.co.ke

Macro Thoughts

World Of Finance

A macro orientation in time. Yellow: Gold Orange: SPY Blue: TLT Pink: TLT/DXY Green: DXY @coloradotravis

Misc.

04-JAN-2021 :: What Will Happen In 2021

World Of Finance

The Optimal Trade is to be long Dec 2021 Short Sterling or Call Options on the same contract LZ21 (Dec '21) 100.065s

I am become meme, Destroyer of shorts @elonmusk

World Of Finance

There is absolutely no life left in the US two-year rate @KarelMercx

World Of Finance

In fact I expect all G7 Curves 0-10 Years to be deep in negative territory in 2021

World Of Finance

The only game in town: @coloradotravis

World Of Finance

BOE: BANKS SHOULD START PREPARATIONS FOR NEG RATES IF NEEDED @zerohedge

World Of Finance

Most important, dictators would no longer be able to borrow, loot the proceeds—or use them to finance repression—and leave the debt for their ill-treated citizens to repay. @BrookingsInst

World Of Finance

Home Thoughts

Africa

Dieter Krehbiel good morning @rvoneinem

Misc.

A Luminous & Fairy Tale Feel

World Of Finance

Good morning world. It is -20 in Finland but I still went outside to capture the Sun with rays lighting the Moon @SvdHijden

Misc.

"You can only cruise the boulevards of regret so far, and then you've got to get back up onto the freeway again." - Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

Misc.

The ‘’Zeitgeist’’ of a time is its defining spirit or its mood. Capturing the ‘’zeitgeist’’ of the Now is not an easy thing because we are living in a dizzyingly fluid moment.

Misc.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Misc.

“I dream that I have found us both again,

With spring so many strangers' lives away,

And we, so free,

Out walking by the sea,

With someone else's paper words to say....

They took us at the gates of green return,

Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why-

Do children meet again?

Does any trace remain,

Along the superhighways of July?”

Old Town Mombasani. @Namuks

Africa

How we used to take selfies back then. #TBT @Namuks

Misc.

One a foggy morning this elephant family decided to go on a morning walk. The beauty of forest !! @ParveenKaswan

Africa

''You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

Africa

“Going home at night! It wasn't often that I was on the river at night. I never liked it. I never felt in control. In the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see — and even on a moonlight night you couldn't see much. When you made a noise — dipped a paddle in the water — you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder ... You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored, but which was always there.You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

Political Reflections

Law & Politics

"Brexit marks a seemingly decisive pivot away from Europe. This decision dominated not by a view of the future, but by a view of the past bears striking resemblance to the geopolitical blunders of Munich and Suez" @lsebrexitvote

Law & Politics

We have revoked China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) licence to broadcast in the UK, after our investigation concluded that the licence was wrongfully held by Star China Media Ltd. (SCML). @Ofcom

Law & Politics

22-JUN-2020 :: Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World

Law & Politics

“Wolf Warrior painter” Wuheqilin

Misc.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" he said "We are capable of delivering any message we want to the public - whether sweet or sour true or fake." said @AmitShah

Law & Politics

I still #StandWithFarmers and support their peaceful protest. No amount of hate, threats or violations of human rights will ever change that. #FarmersProtest @GretaThunberg

Law & Politics

Coronavirus (CV) was the top issue in both state groups – more so in “Flipped” states – and Biden carried those voters nearly 3 to 1 Fabrizio, Lee & Associates @Politico

Law & Politics

A reality TV star botched the response to a global pandemic

Law & Politics

He was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. @YahooNews

Law & Politics

22-MAR-2020 To watch the Daily Briefing is to understand that the Control Machine has a Novice, a hubristic Ignoramus in charge of the Console

Law & Politics

Weekly epidemiological update - 2 February 2021 Globally, just under 3.7 million new cases were reported in past week, a decline of 13% from last week, and number of new deaths reported was over 96 000, comparable to previous week @WHO

Misc.

the third consecutive week showing a decline in cases.

In the past week, the five countries reporting the highest number of new cases continue to be the United States of America (1 072 287 cases, a 15% decrease)

Brazil (364 593 cases, a 1% increase),

the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (178 629 cases, a 31% decrease)

France (141 092 cases, a 2% increase)

Russian Federation (131 039 cases, a 13% decrease).

Data from #Covid19 worldwide on February 03: + 519,798 cases in 24 hours, i.e. 104,390,390 in total @CovidTracker_fr

Misc.

Data from #Covid19 worldwide on February 03: + 519,798 cases in 24 hours, i.e. 104,390,390 in total + 15,619 deaths in 24 hours, i.e. 2,269,437 in total

Au Portugal, épicentre actuel de la pandémie de Covid en Europe, les pompes funèbres sont au bord de la rupture et redoublent de vigilance, alors que le pays reçoit des renforts venus d'Allemagne #AFP @afpfr

Misc.

The politicians who mismanaged the pandemic committed "social murder" and must be held accountable, writes @bmj_latest @KamranAbbasi @EricTopol

Law & Politics

Pandemics had the capacity to overtake “the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration”

Law & Politics

Merkel pronounced “You cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation...the limits of Populism are being laid bare.”

There are plenty of Merchants of Propaganda in the matter of #COVID19

Law & Politics

As Camilla Holten Moller of @SSI_dk told me: "this is the calm before the storm" @kakape

Misc.

Drinking the Kool-Aid We are not there yet. The exponential moment is still in front of us. #COVID19

World Of Finance

“Sure, the numbers look nice,” says Camilla Holten Møller of the Statens Serum Institute, “But if we look at our models, this is the calm before the storm.” Science Magazine

Misc.

That’s because the graph really reflects two epidemics: one, shrinking fast, that’s caused by older variants of SARS-CoV-2, and a smaller, slowly growing outbreak of B.1.1.7, the variant first recognized in England and now driving a big third wave of the pandemic there.

If B.1.1.7 keeps spreading at the same pace in Denmark, it will become the dominant variant later this month and cause the overall number of cases to rise again, despite the lockdown, Holten Møller says. “It is a complete game changer.”

The data aren’t reassuring. Danish scientists’ best guess is that B.1.1.7 spreads 1.55 times faster than previous variants, Holten Møller says.

It was clear by early January that B.1.1.7 was roughly doubling in frequency every week, says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at Roskilde University.

At that point, Denmark had already closed schools and restaurants; to combat the new threat, the lockdown was tightened by cutting the number of people allowed to gather from 10 to five, for example, and doubling the recommended distance between people from 1 to 2 meters.

That helped bring the overall reproductive number (R) to a healthy 0.78, according to the most recent estimate.

But B.1.1.7 still has an estimated R of 1.07; in other words, it’s growing exponentially.

Meanwhile, the share of COVID-19 cases infected with the variant has increased from less than 0.5% in early December 2020 to 13% in late January.

A combination of two epidemics: a rapidly declining one of #sarscov2 and a slowly increasing one of #b117. @kakape

Misc.

Denmark is sequencing every #SARSCoV2 infection to stay ahead of B.1.1.7. As @K_G_Andersen says "All eyes are on Denmark." @EricTopol

Misc.

This shows a steady accumulation of mutations through time with the average virus now bearing ~24 mutations. @trvrb

Misc.

Here I use data from @nextstrain and @gisaid to compare sampling date to the number of mutations across the SARS-CoV-2 genome relative to initial genomes from Wuhan. This shows a steady accumulation of mutations through time with the average virus now bearing ~24 mutations.

Drinking The Kool Aid

Misc.

Variants of concern (B.1.1.7 from the UK, 501Y.V2 from South Africa and P.1 from Brazil) possess more mutations than most circulating viruses. @trvrb

Misc.

However, this is a random process and some viral lineages accumulate more mutations than others. In fact we see that the variants of concern (B.1.1.7 from the UK, 501Y.V2 from South Africa and P.1 from Brazil) possess more mutations than most circulating viruses.

''Viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'

Misc.

In Denmark B.1.1.7 is now at 19.1% in week 4 (313/1640 genomes). Development for the past weeks: 2.3, 4, 7.5, 12.8, 19.1%. @MadsAlbertsen85

Misc.

However, mutations that alter amino acids in the S1 portion of spike protein will often be functionally relevant. @trvrb

Misc.

The spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade

Misc.

Here we see a striking pattern where variant of concern (VOC) viruses show significantly more amino acid changes in spike S1 than other circulating viruses. @trvrb

Misc.

A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Birger Sørensen, Angus Dalgleish & Andres Susrud

Misc.

Why it is vital to share #SARSCoV2 genomes publicly @NatureNews @EricTopol

Misc.

There is certainly a Fin de siecle even apocalyptic mood afoot. The conundrum for those who wish to bet on the End of the World is this, however. What would be the point? The World would have ended.

Misc.

Here is what SARSCoV2 infected cells look like over time. @_b_meyer

Misc.

International Markets

World Of Finance

Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ

World Currencies

Euro 1.1963

Dollar Index 91.518

Japan Yen 105.50

Swiss Franc 0.9037

Pound 1.3679

Aussie 0.76035

India Rupee 72.934

South Korea Won 1124.12

Brazil Real 5.4271

Egypt Pound 15.6870

South Africa Rand 14.9819

Dollar Index Chart INO 91.518

World Currencies

Euro versus the Dollar Chart 1.1962

World Currencies

Commodities

Commodities

Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ

Commodities

Gold 6 month INO 1799.00 [BUY for 2500.00 later in the Year]

Commodities

Crude Oil Chart INO 56.53

Commodities

Sub Saharan Africa

Africa

Weekly epidemiological update In past week, African Region reported over 108 000 cases & just over 4600 deaths, a 27% decrease in cases and an 8% decrease in deaths respectively compared to previous week. @WHO

Africa

Cases have decreased for two consecutive weeks.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported in South Africa (44 397 new cases; 74.9 new cases per 100 000 population; a 44% decrease),

Nigeria (9955 new cases; 4.8 new cases per 100 000; a 15% decrease)

Zambia (8760 new cases; 47.7 new cases per 100 000; a 3% increase).

The countries reporting the highest number of new deaths in the past week were

South Africa (3377 new deaths; 5.7 new deaths per 100 000; a 9% decrease)

Zimbabwe (219 new deaths; 1.5 new deaths per 100 000; a 25% decrease)

Malawi (217 new deaths; 1.1 new deaths per 100 000; a 28% increase).

They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Africa

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.

But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions

CoViD19-ΛFЯICΛ: Update: Feb 4, 2021 - Confirmed: 3 610 427 (+ 15404) Actives: 400 019 (-1548) @NCoVAfrica

Africa

Confirmed: 3 610 427 (+ 15404)

Actives: 400 019 (-1548)

Deaths: 93 081 (+ 707)

Recoveries: 3 114 854 (+ 16245)

Conclusions

Active Cases 23.073% below record high print in January this year

Update on the number of new #covid19 cases and deaths reported in #Africa. Yesterday, there were 15,462 new cases and 709 new deaths. @BeautifyData

Africa

We are close to a rebound

active #Covid19 cases record 520,000 was in January 2021 @NKCAfrica

According to @NCoVAfrica [1st wave] Peak Daily Infections was 24th July 2020 and 20,873

Africa

Turning to Africa the Spinning Top

Africa

We all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'

Africa

4 February '21 #COVID19 in #SouthAfrica • Test positivity = 12.1% • Active cases = 93 976 @rid1tweets/status

Africa

• New cases = 3 751

• New tests = 31 032

• Test positivity = 12.1%

• New deaths = 261

• Active cases = 93 976

MOZAMBIQUE 1055 new confirmed cases of #CoViD19MZ - Active cases : 16384 @NCoVAfrica [has the potential to turn into Manaus]

Africa

Total:

- Confirmed cases of #covid19: 42488

- Deaths: 427

- Recoveries: 25673

- Transfered out: 4

- Active cases : 16384

Drinking the Kool-Aid We are not there yet. The exponential moment is still in front of us. #COVID19

Africa

Africa is currently reporting a million new infections about every 40 days @ReutersGraphics

Africa

6 countries are still at the peak of their infection curve.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Professor Allen Bartlett

Africa

How Not to Respond to a Pandemic @business

Africa

When it comes to mishandling the coronavirus pandemic, Tanzanian President John Magufuli could have written the textbook.

He’s insisted the southeast African nation is free of Covid-19, cautioned against inoculations and discouraged the use of face masks, while advising his people to pray and undergo steam therapy to safeguard their health.

Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima has said Tanzania has no plans to import vaccines, and the government’s chief chemist is working on alternative natural remedies.

Gauging the severity of the pandemic in Tanzania is impossible because the government stopped publishing data in April last year, making it one of a handful of nations that doesn’t release the information.

Tallies collated by Johns Hopkins University show the nation of about 60 million people has only confirmed about 500 virus cases. That compares to more than 101,000 in neighboring Kenya, which has a smaller population.

The World Health Organization last week reminded Magufuli’s administration that it had acceded to international rules that obliged it to work collaboratively to prevent the international spread of disease and urged it to rethink its approach toward vaccines.

Nicknamed “the bulldozer” because of his combative demeanor, Magufuli has had a colorful political career. He won plaudits for tackling corruption and improving the lot of peasant farmers after taking office in 2015, but his image took a battering after the government cracked down on dissenters and the media.

While Magufuli easily secured a second five-year term in last year's elections, the opposition denounced the outcome as rigged and western governments said the vote was seriously flawed.

His unorthodox response to Covid-19 is likely to further scar his reputation.—Mike Cohen

. @MagufuliJP #COVID19 was equivalent to “Satan” and that it would naturally be defeated with prayer, since “Satan cannot reside in the body of Christ.” 27-JUL-2020 :: Drinking the Kool-Aid

Africa

Idi Amin at the OAU meeting in Gabon, July 1977. Amin: On 30th June 1977, I have been honoured by the order of the Conqueror of the British Empire..@Unseen_Archive

Africa

The government of the British which made Ugandans slaves for a hundred years have run away.

Ethiopia’s Long War @LRB @MaazaMengiste

Africa

I have a hazy childhood memory of soldiers breaking into our house. They had come to question my grandfather, who they believed was hiding someone they wanted to arrest.

It was not long after the start of the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia that would depose Emperor Haile Selassie and install a military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.

The new regime, which called itself the Derg, was hunting down dissidents deemed ‘enemies of the state’. There were nightly gun battles near our home in Addis Ababa between rebel groups and government forces.

I was standing next to my grandfather in the dining area when the door burst open and three soldiers forced their way in. I remember one of them distinctly.

He was slender-faced and young, his eyes so wild that he, too, might have been scared. My mind has superimposed his face on the other two men, so that when the memory arises, as it often does, the soldiers are identical triplets screaming at us in unison.

My grandmother shouted for me and my grandfather shoved me behind him. I was shaking and I remember his hand reaching back to steady me as I pressed against his leg. I watched the young soldier advance.

He pushed my grandfather aside and dropped to his knees on the ground in front of me. He had a downy moustache on his upper lip. He bent close, smiled, and all harshness left his voice: ‘Is there someone else here?’

There was someone else in our house, a stranger hiding in a small room that was normally used for storage. I had been forbidden from going near there, but that hadn’t stopped me.

One day, when the door had been left slightly ajar, I peeked in and – if memory serves – made eye contact with an injured man, wrapped in bandages.

I knew the answer to the soldier’s question, but I also knew that wasn’t what I should say. I shook my head.

The soldiers left and went to another house. In the silence that followed, my grandparents embraced me and assured me we were safe.

Then they both insisted we would never talk about what had happened. And we didn’t. I never learned who the man was, or what happened to him.

In the years since, I’ve tried to make sense of that moment. My grandparents are dead. My parents weren’t at home when it happened. There is no one left but me to carry the memory, which has grown heavier over the years.

I have had to wade through the many events that separate it from everything that came afterwards. The revolution swept through my family. Some relatives were jailed, others were killed.

The Derg didn’t allow funeral rites for those it called enemies. Silence and fear worked together to keep grief so contained that it was not until the summer of 2005, while driving with my mother in Addis Ababa, that I learned I had three uncles who died during the revolution.

We were stuck in traffic behind a police truck. Several young men, a few of them with bruised and beaten faces, stared at us from the back of the open bed.

‘I have seen so many of these,’ my mother said. Then she told me about her brothers and the games they used to play. Later, when I asked her to tell me more about her favourite brother, she sang a childhood song, tears running down her face.

A few years ago, I went to see the African Union’s new headquarters in Addis Ababa, an impressive building with a grand auditorium, funded by China.

It has a memorial to victims of human rights abuses, which acknowledges that the AU is built on the site of Akaki Prison, Ethiopia’s central jail, known as Alem Bekagn, or ‘Goodbye to the World’.

The date of its construction is unclear, but it outlasted a succession of rulers: fascist, monarchical, dictatorial and authoritarian, until it was permanently closed in 2004 under Meles Zenawi.

It gained notoriety in 1937 during the Italian occupation, when an assassination attempt on Marshal Rodolfo Graziani led to the retaliatory Yekatit 12 massacre.

An estimated 30,000 people were killed during these brutal reprisals. Unknown numbers of innocent people were imprisoned, tortured and executed in Akaki or sent from there to concentration camps.

The details we have from that period come from personal recollections and family stories, but these accounts were largely set aside in 1941, when Haile Selassie reclaimed the throne and the occupation ended.

He directed Ethiopians to look to the future, to forgive the Italian invaders and leave the past behind. There was no reckoning with the aftermath of the war. There was no attempt to address – and perhaps alleviate – the deep social and ethnic divisions that continued after the Italians had left and were exacerbated by each successive ruler.

Haile Selassie used the prison to hold criminals and political opponents, as did the Derg. (Meles Zenawi used another notorious detention centre, Maekelawi.)

The memorial’s website correctly calls it a ‘citadel of oppression’, but despite the decades of deaths and disappearances at Alem Bekagn there has been no attempt at reparative justice to honour those incarcerated there, only the relentless narrative of national progress and uncolonised independence.

Ethiopia has seen nothing comparable to the work that took place in Rwanda after the genocide or in South Africa under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The perpetrators of the worst crimes of the Derg era have not been properly punished. The stories from this period have been suppressed – partly out of fear and trauma, but also as a consequence of a culturally accepted unwillingness to show weakness.

The weight of historical trauma can feel overwhelming. After the Italian occupation and the Derg years, it was easier just to keep moving forward, as my family and so many other families have done.

But then in 2018, Abiy Ahmed was named prime minister and with him came unprecedented optimism and the possibility of reconciliation through political reform.

To understand the momentousness of that moment, and the disappointment that has followed in its wake, requires a confrontation with the past.

In the 1970s, early in the revolution, Meles Zenawi, then a medical student at Addis Ababa University, fled to Tigray to continue the struggle against the Derg.

He joined the armed resistance that was solidifying around a political ideology grounded in ethno-nationalism – the nascent Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The civil war lasted more than fifteen years; by the time the Derg was overthrown in 1991 the country was shattered – socially, economically, culturally.

At least half a million people had been killed. Untold thousands had been imprisoned or had gone into exile, and millions more had lived in fear, suspicion and under constant threat of violence.

A decade and a half of censorship and the total suppression of dissent had brought the press to a standstill and constrained all natural expressions of grief, anger and other emotions.

Meles, who led the transitional government set up in 1991, was prime minister from 1995 until his death in 2012. The TPLF dominated a four-party, multi-ethnic coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Under Meles, Ethiopians saw economic progress and greater freedoms. But those years were tainted by the uneven distribution of wealth, increasing ethnic strife, and government crackdowns on the media, political activists and civil society.

In the months before the 2005 elections, the EPRDF and the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy, among others, waged a vigorous and heated campaign across the country. There were televised debates, and the final week witnessed huge rallies.

Some polling sites in Addis Ababa were forced to stay open for 24 hours to accommodate the vast queues. On the evening of 16 May, while results were still being counted, Meles declared a thirty-day ban on large gatherings and took direct control of police and militia forces.

The EPRDF claimed it had won a majority; the opposition insisted it had won more seats than the official tally. Amid allegations of electoral fraud, young people in cities across Ethiopia defied the ban and demonstrated.

Protests swept the country. On 6 June, government forces arrested thousands of demonstrators, most of them students, in Addis Ababa alone. On 8 June, security forces opened fire on large groups of unarmed protesters, killing at least 22 and wounding more than a hundred.

Crackdowns continued, and later that summer, when my mother and I were stuck in traffic behind that police truck full of young men who had clearly been beaten, we were certain we were staring at political prisoners.

It wasn’t surprising that the events of 2005 should have taken us back to the Derg years, or that those young men should have reminded my mother of the brothers she had lost.

By November, at least 200 people had been killed, 800 wounded and 30,000 arrested, including leaders of the opposition.

Thousands fled Ethiopia, many paying traffickers to take them to Libya where they would try to find a way to cross the Mediterranean and enter Italy alive.

Ethiopia’s Long War @LRB @MaazaMengiste [continued]

Africa

Meles’s successor in 2012, Hailemariam Desalegn, faced a vocal and unflinching movement that demanded greater representation and rejected the EPRDF’s development plan for Addis Ababa, which would have encroached on Oromo ancestral land and villages.

The Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, have also been one of its most marginalised and politically underrepresented. The protests, led by young Oromo people, were largely peaceful; they were met with excessive and lethal force.

The government crackdown included more restrictions on media freedom. Through it all, the protesters refused to back down, their defiance gaining them worldwide attention. In early 2018, Hailemariam Desalegn resigned.

Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, was elected by parliament to become the next prime minister. The 41-year-old former lieutenant colonel (and gifted orator) was heralded as a reformist.

He released thousands of political prisoners, including journalists and opposition party members. He took steps to improve the relationship between government and opposition groups.

He increased the number of women in the cabinet and acknowledged the widespread use of torture by previous administrations.

Under his leadership, a truce was declared between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It was an unprecedented series of reforms, unfolded at blinding speed in a country that often moved at a creeping pace.

As I watched from New York, where I live, the irony of Ethiopia’s opening up politically as America descended into Trumpism wasn’t lost on me.

In 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the twenty-year conflict with Eritrea; within a year, he was in the middle of a new clash with the TPLF, a struggle between the former political power and its successor.

After gaining office, Abiy dissolved the EPRDF coalition and merged its constituent groups to form a new Prosperity Party. The TPLF declined to join.

The power of regions such as Tigray is enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution, written by the EPRDF in 1994, in order to protect ethnic groups in the event of authoritarian rule.

Elections were due to be held in August 2020 but they were delayed last May, in the midst of the worsening pandemic (they are now scheduled for June 2021).

The TPLF accused Abiy of governing illegitimately and in September went ahead with unconstitutional regional elections. Tensions grew.

The Tigrayan regional government prevented a general appointed by Abiy from taking up his post. Some members of parliament proposed designating the TPLF a terrorist organisation, though so far this has been rejected by the government as a whole.

On 4 November, in response to a TPLF attack on government troops in the Tigray region, Abiy began a military operation against the TPFL.

The date seemed familiar. I looked through some old notes and saw that on 4 November 1935, 120,000 Italian troops were advancing towards Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital.

Tigray had also been the site of the Battle of Adwa in 1896, when Emperor Menelik II defeated Italy’s first attempt at colonisation. The city – and the region – were symbolic for Mussolini.

He was determined that his country’s wounded pride should be satisfied there. The northern highlands of Ethiopia are rocky and mountainous, the population stubborn.

Though Mussolini declared victory in 1936, the war wasn’t over. Ethiopian fighters took to the mountains, living in caves and carrying on a guerrilla war that eventually ousted the Italians in 1941.

It is likely that some of the residents of the northern highlands who experienced life under the Derg would have remembered, either from direct experience or family accounts, the bloodshed inflicted by the Italians forty years earlier.

It is also likely that some of those who are experiencing today’s conflict carry with them memories from the Derg years.

To understand what is happening now requires a long lens, but Ethiopia’s pride in its uninterrupted national durée, as evidenced by references in the Bible, the Iliad, Herodotus’ Histories and other ancient texts, can be an impediment to reckoning with that history.

It is not enough simply to preface accounts of the current conflict with ancient historical descriptions.

As the fighting continued last November, refugee camps were filling up. Amnesty International reported a massacre of Amhara civilians in Maicadra by Tigrayan militia, which was followed by news of other civilian massacres, Tigrayan and Amhara.

Eritrean soldiers were said to have joined the conflict. Scattered accounts of sexual violence against women and girls hinted at more systematic crimes.

The government’s communications blackout made it nearly impossible to ascertain exactly what was happening.

In the absence of verifiable details, journalists relied on eyewitness testimony from refugees that painted scenes of horrifying cruelty and humiliation. Some of those accounts were refuted on social media.

The present seemed to be as confounding as the past. There could be no doubt, however, about the mass displacements and the terror of ordinary people caught in circumstances beyond their control.

Abiy has stressed repeatedly that this is a conflict, not a war, yet in many respects it has proceeded with all the destructive force of war.

The federal government has declared victory in Tigray and some of the one million displaced residents of the region are returning home, though others still feel unsafe.

Telephone and internet connections have been partially restored. Security has been tightened and international humanitarian convoys have begun to distribute aid.

There is an attempt to return to normal, but in the aftermath of this conflict, other conflicts simmer, waiting to erupt. What exactly is normal?

Everything is at stake in discussions of Ethiopia’s political present; not only our future, but our past. What might justice look like? At such a volatile moment, it seems impossible – and naive – to plead for multilateral discussions, to imagine the potential benefits of negotiation.

Yet it is difficult to conceive of another way forward that does not, sooner or later, include more bloodshed. Dialogue would be an unprecedented response to conflict in a nation that has built its identity on confrontation and conquest.

It would require the audacity and the optimism of Abiy’s early rule. It would require hope and the willingness and courage to delve into the past. Otherwise, what do we do with all that history – all that rage, all these memories?

A young soldier with a slender face. Bruised and beaten men in the back of a truck. The site of a prison, a plaque on a wall. A new conflict shrouded in silence. The question is not where to begin, but how.

@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.

Africa

Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed

PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst

@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.

The question now is whether the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front can sustain a prolonged guerrilla war @TheEconomist

Africa

Or alternatively @TheEconomist whether @PMEthiopia can sustain an occupation given that one suspects there are equally restive regions

Africa

The fugitive leader of Ethiopia’s defiant Tigray region on Monday called on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to “stop the madness” and withdraw troops

Africa

The fight is about self-determination of the region of around 6 million people, the Tigray leader said, and it “will continue until the invaders are out.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer

Africa

A fiendishly complicated task fending off the centripetal forces which are tearing Ethiopia apart

Africa

‘The genie out of the bottle’@AfricanBizMag

Africa

Ethiopia at risk of another long-term war @TheAfricaReport @KjetilTronvoll

Africa

Thus far, however, the core leadership is at large, and the campaign has further exposed the country’s political fragility, pushing it into the abyss of a likely long-term war.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ethiopia, other armed insurgencies are evolving. As conflict lines deepen, pressure increases on the state’s security forces and capacity.

The surge in violence worsens the dire humanitarian situation across the country, weakens the economy, and diverts government attention, resources, and funding from economic development to warring.

The Tigray war will therefore impact politics, social cohesion, and development all over the country, just like the 1974-1991 Tigrayan struggle.

The military campaign on Tigray will be remembered as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s “crossing the Rubicon” moment.

No matter the outcome, or how long it will take to reach a victory or settlement,

Ethiopia will likely never return to the status quo ante.

The conflict is not perceived as a law-enforcement operation against TPLF; it is understood and experienced as a war of annihilation against Tigray. There is thus no other option, many believe, than to fight – ‘woyane’.

While #Ethiopian authorities anticipate growth to quicken to 8.4% over FY 2020/21, we retain a more pessimistic outlook as external pressures build. @NKCAfrica

Africa

Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes

Africa

South Africa All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Dollar versus Rand Chart INO 14.9790

Africa

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar Chart INO 15.6913

Africa

Egypt EGX30 Bloomberg

Africa

Nigeria All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg

Africa

Street scene, Tokar, Red Sea State, Eastern Sudan. @SudaneseCulture

Africa

10-JUN-2019 :: The "zeitgeist" of the Revolution in Khartoum was intoxicating

Africa

As I watched events unfold it felt like Sudan was a portal into a whole new normal.

Kenya

Africa

It has been reported that Nairobi city has lost 22% of the city’s green spaces cover in the period between 1988 and 2016 @TC_Africa @Samooner

Africa

Areas covered by impervious surfaces such as tarmac, metal or concrete – have higher surface temperatures compared to vegetated land cover.

This is because vegetation provides shade and, through evapotranspiration, cools cities. Impervious surfaces such as concrete absorb more solar radiation than they reflect. This leads to a phenomenon known as urban heat island.

Urban heat island refers to when temperatures in the city are higher than those of surrounding areas that have more vegetation cover.

The effect is more pronounced at night when impervious surfaces re-radiate heat that is absorbed during the day into the atmosphere.

Through our work, we have found that an urban heat island is already manifesting over Nairobi.

Data over Nairobi indicates that average air temperatures increased from 18.8°C in the 1950s to 19.5°C in 2000s.

At certain times of the year, parts of Nairobi are already dealing with temperature increases of up to 4.8°C and are associated with increases in mortality, especially in children and the elderly

23-NOV 2015 I cannot help feeling we are like frogs in boiling water. We have created massive interference in the "cosmic tuning" phenomenon

Misc.

Indian tea production in 2020 fell 9.7% from a year ago due to heavy flooding and coronavirus movement restrictions causing prices to increase by nearly 33%. @moneyacademyKE

Africa

Buyers said to have moved to Kenya and Sri Lanka where prices didn’t increase.

M-Pesa revenues recover after charges reinstated @BD_Africa

Africa

Vodacom says revenue from the international M-Pesa business, excluding Kenya, rose 10 per cent to Sh8.5 billion in the quarter ended December compared to Sh7.7 billion a year earlier.

The performance was helped by reinstatement of peer-to-peer fees in Mozambique in October 2020 and ongoing platform adoption as customers and governments embraced digital ways of working, Vodacom said.

Kenya and other markets also allowed M-Pesa charges to resume in January, brightening the outlook for the financial platform’s revenue growth.

“Results for Vodacom’s associate investment in Safaricom Plc are disclosed on a bi-annual basis and therefore not included in the quarterly update,” the multinational said.

“From an M-Pesa perspective, Safaricom reinstated peer-to-peer (P2P) fees from January 2021. As such, all our international markets, including Safaricom, were charging for P2P transactions from January 2021.”

In the quarter under review, M-Pesa customers in the international operations increased 7.7 per cent to 16 million.

Average monthly M-Pesa transactions, including Safaricom, was $24.2 billion (Sh2.6 trillion) and represented a growth of 57.8 per cent.

In Kenya, Safaricom reinstated charges on lower-value transactions effective January 1, 2021 in a deal with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) which featured a reduction in the fees on some bands.

It now costs Sh6 to send between Sh101 and Sh500, down from the previous Sh11.

Transactions of between Sh1,501 and Sh2,500 now cost 32 compared to Sh41 previously.

All transactions of Sh100 and below continue to be free.

M-Pesa currently contributes 28.8 per cent of Safaricom’s total revenue and the share had been rising before the zero-rating policy lowered it from highs of 33.3 per cent.

Safaricom Ltd. share price data and Earnings releases

N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services

Closing Price: 35.15

Market Capitalization: 1,408,299,794,200

EPS: 1.84

PE: 19.103

I think the MPESA decline is a Blip because we are witnesssing a spectacular and even viral level acceleration with regard to Mobile Money obviously COVID19 related.