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

Satchu's Rich Wrap-Up

Thursday 01st of July 2021

Morning

Africa

Macro Thoughts

World Of Finance

US FED ACCEPTS $991.939 BLN IN DAILY REVERSE REPO OPERATION, AWARDS AT 0.05 PCT TO 90 BIDDERS - NY FED @DeItaone

World Of Finance

Home Thoughts

Africa

Daybreak in Diani like no other...truly @magicalkenya @BaobabBeachRnS @mohammedhersi

Africa

Love lives in places like these. Diani will always be a favourite. @just_sham_it

Africa

Indian Ocean 420 South Diani Beach Kenya #Nofilter @MagicalKenya

Africa

“No matter how the official narrative of this turns out," it seemed to Heidi

Misc.

Thomas Pynchon in Bleeding Edge “No matter how the official narrative of this turns out," it seemed to Heidi, "these are the places we should be looking, not in newspapers or television but at the margins, graffiti, uncontrolled utterances, bad dreamers who sleep in public and scream in their sleep.”

Temporal bandwidth is “the width of your present, your now … The more you dwell in the past and future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.”

Misc.

“Color is not simply the color of things, it is an evolving situation, a reality which acts on the human being with the same intensity as cold, heat and sound.” ― Carlos Cruz-Diez

Misc.

Political Reflections

Law & Politics

“The original aspiration and the mission of Chinese communists is to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation.” One of Xi’s most memorable quotes @thetimes

Law & Politics

China is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and its goals for the next century #CCP100 #CPC100 @Quicktake

Law & Politics

Victor Gao: 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party HARDtalk #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

7 OCT 19 :: China turns 70 #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

“Longing on a large scale makes history.” wrote Don DeLillo and these words streamed into my consciousness as I watched the celebrations in Tiananmen Square, which were marking the 70th anniversary of Chinese Communist Party rule.
Xi Jinping and the party were seeking to project national power and confidence on a grand scale. Nothing and nobody was going to rain on this parade.
The pomp and pageantry included a parade that involved 15,000 soldiers and sailors, 160 planes, 580 tanks and other weaponry including what

Hu Xijin [President Xi’s trusted mouth-piece] described as ‘’This is the legendary DF41 ICBM. But it is not a tale. Today it is displayed at Tiananmen Square I touched one about four years ago in the production plant. No need to fear it. Just respect it and respect China that owns it’’.
”No force can stop the Chinese people and the Chinese nation forging ahead”, he said.
The President for Life was seeking to project a sense of inevitable forward motion and a fulfilment of the promise that Mao Zedong made on the founding of the People’s Re- public of China on October 1, 1949 that China would stand up.
They have “stood up.”

Xi’s model is one of technocratic authoritarianism and a recent addition to his book shelf include The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos.

Xi is building an Algorithmic Society.
“Chinese Dream,” the catchphrase embodying the party’s aim to be- come a global power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People Republic of China. In a way, this is also nothing new.
But Xi has taken the propagation of ideology and the cult of personality to extremes not seen since the days of Chairman Mao.

“Unity is iron and steel; unity is a source of strength,”

“Complete reunification of the motherland is an inevitable trend..no one and no force can ever stop it!” he added.
I am sure Xi sees Hong Kong and Taiwan like a virus and he is looking to impose a quarantine just like he has imposed on Xinjiang. The Chinese Dream has become a nightmare at the boundaries of the Han Empire.
The World in the 21st century exhibits viral, wildfire and exponential characteristics and feedback loops which only become obvious in hind-sight.

That big thing may be that he who rules Taiwan rules the world @bopinion @nfergus #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

28-MAR-2021 :: I expect China to occupy Taiwan before the end of the year #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

Former Tsinghua University lecturer Wu Qiang: ‘Party control permeates every aspect of life’ © Leo Ramirez/AFP via Getty Images FT

Law & Politics

They now turn to rule over the people by means of what could be dubbed "big data totalitarianism" and "WeChat terror." @ChinaFile #COVID19 #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

You will all be no better than fields of garlic chives, giving yourselves up to being harvested by the blade of power, time and time again. @ChinaFile #COVID19
[ “garlic chives,” Allium tuberosum, often used as a metaphor to describe an endlessly renewable resource.]
What is thriving, however, is all that ridiculous ―Red Culture and the nauseating adulation that the system heaps on itself via shameless pro-Party hacks who chirrup hosannahs at every turn @ChinaFile #COVID19

Michel Foucault describes the prisoner of a panopticon as being at the receiving end of asymmetrical surveillance: “He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication.” @hervegogo

Law & Politics

05-MAR-2018 :: China has unveiled a Digital Panopticon in Xinjiang #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

China has unveiled a Digital Panopticon in Xinjiang where a combination of data from video surveillance, face and license plate recognition, mobile device locations, and official records to identify targets for detention.

Xinjiang is surely a precursor for how the CCP will manage dissent. The actions in Xinjiang are part of the regional authorities’ ongoing “strike-hard” campaign, and of Xi’s “stability maintenance” and “enduring peace” drive in the region.

Xi Jinping is both Sun Tzu ‘'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting'' And hard edged at the same time. #CCP100 #CPC100

Law & Politics

Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 29 June 2021 @WHO

Misc.

The global number of new cases over the past week (21-27 June 2021) was over 2.6 million, a similar number compared to the previous week (Figure 1).

The number of weekly deaths continued to decrease, with more than 57 000 deaths reported in the past week, a 10% decrease as compared to the previous week.

This is the lowest weekly mortality figure since those recorded in early November 2020.

Globally, COVID-19 incidence remains very high with an average of over 370 000 cases reported each day over the past week.

This week, the African region recorded a sharp increase in incidence (33%) and mortality (42%) when compared to the previous week (Table 1).

The Eastern Mediterranean and European Regions also reported increases in the number of weekly cases.

All Regions, with the exception of the African Region, reported a decline in the number of deaths in the past week.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from

Brazil (521 298 new cases; 3% increase)

India (351 218 new cases; 12% increase)

Colombia (204 132 new cases; 5% increase)

Russian Federation (134 465 new cases; 24% increase)

Argentina (131 824 new cases; 11% decrease).

Over the past week, the highest numbers of new cases per 100 000 population were reported from Seychelles (708 new cases per 100 000 pop), Namibia (509 new cases per 100 000 pop) and Mongolia (491 new cases per 100 000 pop).

Conclusions

This week past we snapped a Trend of 7 declining weeks

Delta is unquestionably going global. In the weeks ahead, all will be red, 60%+. That tells you about the spread power of this strain. @EricTopol

Misc.

Prior variants of concern (Alpha, Beta, Gamma) never achieved global dominance.

If you have a "normal" pandemic that is fading, but "variants" that [are] surging, the combined total can look like a flat, manageable situation. @spignal

Misc.

Slight increase in cases @ global level & Upwards trend in AFRO, EURO & EMRO @mvankerkhove

Misc.

''it would be dangerous to assume that SARS-CoV-2 can’t do much better, Katzourakis says.

Misc.

“Anything that’s happened at least twice in evolution is part of a pattern,” he says. “I would be very unsurprised if we saw equivalent changes over the coming year or two.”

28-MAR-2021 we are seeing a sustained acceleration in mutant viruses.

Misc.

Each successive variant has proven to be slightly more vaccine-evading than the last. @yaneerbaryam

Misc.

“The variants are like a thoroughbred and our vaccines are like a workhorse,” noted evolutionary biologist Sally Otto.

Misc.

"we just don’t know the potential for that to be a vaccine-defeating mutation and simply don’t want to take the risk" @Dr_D_Robertson

Misc.

And the belief in Vaccine Efficacy is now bumping at euphoric levels. Folks I followed on Twitter for their epidemiological excellence now simply recite Vaccine / Inoculation data like a liturgy.

Misc.

The Virus remains an exogenous uncertainty that is still not resolved #COVID19

Misc.

This is the R values by variant calculated from a Poisson GAM fit to case data & multinomial fit to COG-UK lineage frequencies (using a generation time of 4.7 days). @TWenseleers

Misc.

This is the R values by variant calculated from a Poisson GAM fit to case data & multinomial fit to COG-UK lineage frequencies (using a generation time of 4.7 days). Last flat bit is extrapolated so prob wrong. Plus Re plot for regions in England based on Sanger Inst data.

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

Misc.

A virulent plague that “travelled through the air as if on wings, it burned through cities like fire”. The Year of the Flood

Misc.

“The coronavirus is airborne” @DrEricDing

Misc.

Dr. Fauci wasn’t square with us. @Jim_Jordan H/T @ydeigin

Misc.

01-MAR-2020 :: The Origin of the #CoronaVirus #COVID19

Misc.

What is clear is that the #COVID19 was bio-engineered The Science [and I am not a Scientist is irrefutable and in the public domain for those with a modicum of intellectual interest.

This information is being deliberately suppressed.

This took me to Thomas Pynchon

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”

“There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It is the sum total of the things they aren't telling us.”

Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World

Law & Politics

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

Law & Politics

Today only the Paid for Propagandists and Virologists and WHO will argue that there is a ''zoonotic'' origin for COVID19.

It is remarkable that the Propaganda is still being propagated more than a year later.

Those who have chosen to propagate this narrative are above the radar and in plain sight and need to be called to account.

The Utter Failure to call these 5th columnists to Account is the clearest Signal that there is no external threat because it is already on the inside.

Illusions of empire: Amartya Sen @AmartyaSen_Econ on what British rule really did for India @guardian @gdnlongread, H/T @CelestinMonga

Law & Politics

The British empire in India was in effect established at the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757. The battle was swift, beginning at dawn and ending close to sunset.

It was a normal monsoon day, with occasional rain in the mango groves at the town of Plassey, which is between Calcutta, where the British were based, and Murshidabad, the capital of the kingdom of Bengal.

It was in those mango groves that the British forces faced the Nawab Siraj-ud-Doula’s army and convincingly defeated it.
British rule ended nearly 200 years later with Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous speech on India’s “tryst with destiny” at midnight on 14 August 1947.

Two hundred years is a long time. What did the British achieve in India, and what did they fail to accomplish?

During my days as a student at a progressive school in West Bengal in the 1940s, these questions came into our discussion constantly.

They remain important even today, not least because the British empire is often invoked in discussions about successful global governance.

It has also been invoked to try to persuade the US to acknowledge its role as the pre-eminent imperial power in the world today:

“Should the United States seek to shed – or to shoulder – the imperial load it has inherited?” the historian Niall Ferguson has asked.

It is certainly an interesting question, and Ferguson is right to argue that it cannot be answered without an understanding of how the British empire rose and fell – and what it managed to do.

Arguing about all this at Santiniketan school, which had been established by Rabindranath Tagore some decades earlier, we were bothered by a difficult methodological question.

How could we think about what India would have been like in the 1940s had British rule not occurred at all?

The frequent temptation to compare India in 1757 (when British rule was beginning) with India in 1947 (when the British were leaving) would tell us very little, because in the absence of British rule, India would of course not have remained the same as it was at the time of Plassey.

The country would not have stood still had the British conquest not occurred. But how do we answer the question about what difference was made by British rule?

To illustrate the relevance of such an “alternative history”, we may consider another case – one with a potential imperial conquest that did not in fact occur.

Let’s think about Commodore Matthew Perry of the US navy, who steamed into the bay of Edo in Japan in 1853 with four warships.

Now consider the possibility that Perry was not merely making a show of American strength (as was in fact the case), but was instead the advance guard of an American conquest of Japan, establishing a new American empire in the land of the rising sun, rather as Robert Clive did in India.

If we were to assess the achievements of the supposed American rule of Japan through the simple device of comparing Japan before that imperial conquest in 1853 with Japan after the American domination ended, whenever that might be,

and attribute all the differences to the effects of the American empire, we would miss all the contributions of the Meiji restoration from 1868 onwards, and of other globalising changes that were going on.

Japan did not stand still; nor would India have done so.

While we can see what actually happened in Japan under Meiji rule, it is extremely hard to guess with any confidence what course the history of the Indian subcontinent would have taken had the British conquest not occurred.

Would India have moved, like Japan, towards modernisation in an increasingly globalising world, or would it have remained resistant to change, like Afghanistan, or would it have hastened slowly, like Thailand?

These are impossibly difficult questions to answer. And yet, even without real alternative historical scenarios, there are some limited questions that can be answered, which may contribute to an intelligent understanding of the role that British rule played in India.

We can ask: what were the challenges that India faced at the time of the British conquest, and what happened in those critical areas during the British rule?

There was surely a need for major changes in a rather chaotic and institutionally backward India.

To recognise the need for change in India in the mid-18th century does not require us to ignore – as many Indian super-nationalists fear – the great achievements in India’s past, with its extraordinary history of accomplishments in philosophy, mathematics, literature, arts, architecture, music, medicine, linguistics and astronomy.

India had also achieved considerable success in building a thriving economy with flourishing trade and commerce well before the colonial period – the economic wealth of India was amply acknowledged by British observers such as Adam Smith.

The fact is, nevertheless, that even with those achievements, in the mid-18th century India had in many ways fallen well behind what was being achieved in Europe.

The exact nature and significance of this backwardness were frequent subjects of lively debates in the evenings at my school.

An insightful essay on India by Karl Marx particularly engaged the attention of some of us.

Writing in 1853, Marx pointed to the constructive role of British rule in India, on the grounds that India needed some radical re-examination and self-scrutiny.

And Britain did indeed serve as India’s primary western contact, particularly in the course of the 19th century. The importance of this influence would be hard to neglect.

The indigenous globalised culture that was slowly emerging in India was deeply indebted not only to British writing, but also to books and articles in other – that is non-English – European languages that became known in India through the British.

Figures such as the Calcutta philosopher Ram Mohan Roy, born in 1772, were influenced not only by traditional knowledge of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts, but also by the growing familiarity with English writings.

After Roy, in Bengal itself there were also Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Madhusudan Dutta and several generations of Tagores and their followers who were re-examining the India they had inherited in the light of what they saw happening in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Their main – often their only – source of information were the books (usually in English) circulating in India, thanks to British rule.

That intellectual influence, covering a wide range of European cultures, survives strongly today, even as the military, political and economic power of the British has declined dramatically.

I was persuaded that Marx was basically right in his diagnosis of the need for some radical change in India, as its old order was crumbling as a result of not having been a part of the intellectual and economic globalisation that the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution had initiated across the world (along with, alas, colonialism).

There was arguably, however, a serious flaw in Marx’s thesis, in particular in his implicit presumption that the British conquest was the only window on the modern world that could have opened for India.

What India needed at the time was more constructive globalisation, but that is not the same thing as imperialism. The distinction is important.

Throughout India’s long history, it persistently enjoyed exchanges of ideas as well as of commodities with the outside world.

Traders, settlers and scholars moved between India and further east – China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere – for a great many centuries, beginning more than 2,000 years ago.

The far-reaching influence of this movement – especially on language, literature and architecture – can be seen plentifully even today.

There were also huge global influences by means of India’s open-frontier attitude in welcoming fugitives from its early days.

Jewish immigration into India began right after the fall of Jerusalem in the first century and continued for many hundreds of years.

Baghdadi Jews, such as the highly successful Sassoons, came in large numbers even as late as the 18th century.

Christians started coming at least from the fourth century, and possibly much earlier.

There are colourful legends about this, including one that tells us that the first person St Thomas the Apostle met after coming to India in the first century was a Jewish girl playing the flute on the Malabar coast.

We loved that evocative – and undoubtedly apocryphal – anecdote in our classroom discussions, because it illustrated the multicultural roots of Indian traditions.

The Parsis started arriving from the early eighth century – as soon as persecution began in their Iranian homeland.

Later in that century, the Armenians began to leave their footprints from Kerala to Bengal.

Muslim Arab traders had a substantial presence on the west coast of India from around that time – well before the arrival of Muslim conquerors many centuries later, through the arid terrain in the north-west of the subcontinent.

Persecuted Bahá’ís from Iran came only in the 19th century.

At the time of the Battle of Plassey, there were already businessmen, traders and other professionals from a number of different European nations well settled near the mouth of the Ganges.

Being subjected to imperial rule is thus not the only way of making connections with, or learning things from, foreign countries.

When the Meiji Restoration established a new reformist government in Japan in 1868 (which was not unrelated to the internal political impact of Commodore Perry’s show of force a decade earlier), the Japanese went straight to learning from the west without being subjected to imperialism.

One of the achievements to which British imperial theorists tended to give a good deal of emphasis was the role of the British in producing a united India.

In this analysis, India was a collection of fragmented kingdoms until British rule made a country out of these diverse regimes.

It was argued that India was previously not one country at all, but a thoroughly divided land mass. It was the British empire, so the claim goes, that welded India into a nation.

Winston Churchill even remarked that before the British came, there was no Indian nation. “India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator,” he once said.

If this is true, the empire clearly made an indirect contribution to the modernisation of India through its unifying role.

However, is the grand claim about the big role of the Raj in bringing about a united India correct?

Certainly, when Clive’s East India Company defeated the nawab of Bengal in 1757, there was no single power ruling over all of India.

Yet it is a great leap from the proximate story of Britain imposing a single united regime on India (as did actually occur) to the huge claim that only the British could have created a united India out of a set of disparate states.

That way of looking at Indian history would go firmly against the reality of the large domestic empires that had characterised India throughout the millennia.

The ambitious and energetic emperors from the third century BC did not accept that their regimes were complete until the bulk of what they took to be one country was united under their rule.

There were major roles here for Ashoka Maurya, the Gupta emperors, Alauddin Khalji, the Mughals and others.

Indian history shows a sequential alternation of large domestic empires with clusters of fragmented kingdoms.

We should therefore not make the mistake of assuming that the fragmented governance of mid-18th century India was the state in which the country typically found itself throughout history, until the British helpfully came along to unite it.

Even though in history textbooks the British were often assumed to be the successors of the Mughals in India, it is important to note that the British did not in fact take on the Mughals when they were a force to be reckoned with.

British rule began when the Mughals’ power had declined, though formally even the nawab of Bengal, whom the British defeated, was their subject.

The nawab still swore allegiance to the Mughal emperor, without paying very much attention to his dictates.

The imperial status of the Mughal authority over India continued to be widely acknowledged even though the powerful empire itself was missing.

When the so-called sepoy mutiny threatened the foundations of British India in 1857, the diverse anti-British forces participating in the joint rebellion could be aligned through their shared acceptance of the formal legitimacy of the Mughal emperor as the ruler of India.

The emperor was, in fact, reluctant to lead the rebels, but this did not stop the rebels from declaring him the emperor of all India.

The 82-year-old Mughal monarch, Bahadur Shah II, known as Zafar, was far more interested in reading and writing poetry than in fighting wars or ruling India.

He could do little to help the 1,400 unarmed civilians of Delhi whom the British killed as the mutiny was brutally crushed and the city largely destroyed.

The poet-emperor was banished to Burma, where he died.

As a child growing up in Burma in the 1930s, I was taken by my parents to see Zafar’s grave in Rangoon, which was close to the famous Shwedagon Pagoda.

The grave was not allowed to be anything more than an undistinguished stone slab covered with corrugated iron.

I remember discussing with my father how the British rulers of India and Burma must evidently have been afraid of the evocative power of the remains of the last Mughal emperor.

The inscription on the grave noted only that “Bahadur Shah was ex-King of Delhi” – no mention of “empire” in the commemoration!

It was only much later, in the 1990s, that Zafar would be honoured with something closer to what could decently serve as the grave of the last Mughal emperor.

In the absence of the British Raj, the most likely successors to the Mughals would probably have been the newly emerging Hindu Maratha powers near Bombay, who periodically sacked the Mughal capital of Delhi and exercised their power to intervene across India.

Already by 1742, the East India Company had built a huge “Maratha ditch” at the edge of Calcutta to slow down the lightning raids of the Maratha cavalry, which rode rapidly across 1,000 miles or more.

But the Marathas were still quite far from putting together anything like the plan of an all-India empire.

The British, by contrast, were not satisfied until they were the dominant power across the bulk of the subcontinent, and in this they were not so much bringing a new vision of a united India from abroad as acting as the successor of previous domestic empires.

British rule spread to the rest of the country from its imperial foundations in Calcutta, beginning almost immediately after Plassey.

As the company’s power expanded across India, Calcutta became the capital of the newly emerging empire, a position it occupied from the mid-18th century until 1911 (when the capital was moved to Delhi).

It was from Calcutta that the conquest of other parts of India was planned and directed.

The profits made by the East India Company from its economic operations in Bengal financed, to a great extent, the wars that the British waged across India in the period of their colonial expansion.

Illusions of empire: Amartya Sen @AmartyaSen_Econ on what British rule really did for India @guardian @gdnlongread, H/T @CelestinMonga [continued]

Law & Politics

What has been called “the financial bleeding of Bengal” began very soon after Plassey.

With the nawabs under their control, the company made big money not only from territorial revenues, but also from the unique privilege of duty-free trade in the rich Bengal economy – even without counting the so-called gifts that the Company regularly extracted from local merchants.

Those who wish to be inspired by the glory of the British empire would do well to avoid reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, including his discussion of the abuse of state power by a “mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies”.

As the historian William Dalrymple has observed:

“The economic figures speak for themselves. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By the peak of the Raj, those figures had more or less been reversed: India was reduced from the world’s leading manufacturing nation to a symbol of famine and deprivation.”

While most of the loot from the financial bleeding accrued to British company officials in Bengal, there was widespread participation by the political and business leadership in Britain: nearly a quarter of the members of parliament in London owned stocks in the East India Company after Plassey.

The commercial benefits from Britain’s Indian empire thus reached far into the British establishment.

The robber-ruler synthesis did eventually give way to what would eventually become classical colonialism, with the recognition of the need for law and order and a modicum of reasonable governance.

But the early misuse of state power by the East India Company put the economy of Bengal under huge stress.

What the cartographer John Thornton, in his famous chart of the region in 1703, had described as “the Rich Kingdom of Bengal” experienced a gigantic famine during 1769–70.

Contemporary estimates suggested that about a third of the Bengal population died. This is almost certainly an overestimate.

There was no doubt, however, that it was a huge catastrophe, with massive starvation and mortality – in a region that had seen no famine for a very long time.

This disaster had at least two significant effects. First, the inequity of early British rule in India became the subject of considerable political criticism in Britain itself.

By the time Adam Smith roundly declared in The Wealth of Nations that the East India Company was “altogether unfit to govern its territorial possessions”, there were many British figures, such as Edmund Burke, making similar critiques.

Second, the economic decline of Bengal did eventually ruin the company’s business as well, hurting British investors themselves, and giving the powers in London reason to change their business in India into more of a regular state-run operation.

By the late 18th century, the period of so-called “post-Plassey plunder”, with which British rule in India began, was giving way to the sort of colonial subjugation that would soon become the imperial standard, and with which the subcontinent would become more and more familiar in the following century and a half.

How successful was this long phase of classical imperialism in British India, which lasted from the late 18th century until independence in 1947?

The British claimed a huge set of achievements, including democracy, the rule of law, railways, the joint stock company and cricket, but the gap between theory and practice – with the exception of cricket – remained wide throughout the history of imperial relations between the two countries.

Putting the tally together in the years of pre-independence assessment, it was easy to see how far short the achievements were compared with the rhetoric of accomplishment.

Indeed, Rudyard Kipling caught the self-congratulatory note of the British imperial administrator admirably well in his famous poem on imperialism:

Take up the White Man’s burden –
The savage wars of peace –
Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease

Alas, neither the stopping of famines nor the remedying of ill health was part of the high-performance achievements of British rule in India.

Nothing could lead us away from the fact that life expectancy at birth in India as the empire ended was abysmally low: 32 years, at most.

The abstemiousness of colonial rule in neglecting basic education reflects the view taken by the dominant administrators of the needs of the subject nation.

There was a huge asymmetry between the ruler and the ruled. The British government became increasingly determined in the 19th century to achieve universal literacy for the native British population.

In contrast, the literacy rates in India under the Raj were very low. When the empire ended, the adult literacy rate in India was barely 15%.

The only regions in India with comparatively high literacy were the “native kingdoms” of Travancore and Cochin (formally outside the British empire), which, since independence, have constituted the bulk of the state of Kerala.

These kingdoms, though dependent on the British administration for foreign policy and defence, had remained technically outside the empire and had considerable freedom in domestic policy, which they exercised in favour of more school education and public health care.

The 200 years of colonial rule were also a period of massive economic stagnation, with hardly any advance at all in real GNP per capita.

These grim facts were much aired after independence in the newly liberated media, whose rich culture was in part – it must be acknowledged – an inheritance from British civil society.

Even though the Indian media was very often muzzled during the Raj – mostly to prohibit criticism of imperial rule, for example at the time of the Bengal famine of 1943 – the tradition of a free press, carefully cultivated in Britain, provided a good model for India to follow as the country achieved independence.

Indeed, India received many constructive things from Britain that did not – could not – come into their own until after independence.

Literature in the Indian languages took some inspiration and borrowed genres from English literature, including the flourishing tradition of writing in English.

Under the Raj, there were restrictions on what could be published and propagated (even some of Tagore’s books were banned).

These days the government of India has no such need, but alas – for altogether different reasons of domestic politics – the restrictions are sometimes no less intrusive than during the colonial rule.

Nothing is perhaps as important in this respect as the functioning of a multiparty democracy and a free press.

But often enough these were not gifts that could be exercised under the British administration during imperial days.

They became realisable only when the British left – they were the fruits of learning from Britain’s own experience, which India could use freely only after the period of empire had ended.

Imperial rule tends to require some degree of tyranny: asymmetrical power is not usually associated with a free press or with a vote-counting democracy, since neither of them is compatible with the need to keep colonial subjects in check.

A similar scepticism is appropriate about the British claim that they had eliminated famine in dependent territories such as India.

British governance of India began with the famine of 1769-70, and there were regular famines in India throughout the duration of British rule.

The Raj also ended with the terrible famine of 1943. In contrast, there has been no famine in India since independence in 1947.

The irony again is that the institutions that ended famines in independent India – democracy and an independent media – came directly from Britain.

The connection between these institutions and famine prevention is simple to understand.

Famines are easy to prevent, since the distribution of a comparatively small amount of free food, or the offering of some public employment at comparatively modest wages (which gives the beneficiaries the ability to buy food), allows those threatened by famine the ability to escape extreme hunger.

So any government should be able stop a threatening famine – large or small – and it is very much in the interest of a government in a functioning democracy, facing a free press, to do so.

A free press makes the facts of a developing famine known to all, and a democratic vote makes it hard to win elections during – or after – a famine, hence giving a government the additional incentive to tackle the issue without delay.

India did not have this freedom from famine for as long as its people were without their democratic rights, even though it was being ruled by the foremost democracy in the world, with a famously free press in the metropolis – but not in the colonies.

These freedom-oriented institutions were for the rulers but not for the imperial subjects.

In the powerful indictment of British rule in India that Tagore presented in 1941, he argued that India had gained a great deal from its association with Britain, for example, from “discussions centred upon Shakespeare’s drama and Byron’s poetry and above all … the large-hearted liberalism of 19th-century English politics”.

The tragedy, he said, came from the fact that what “was truly best in their own civilisation, the upholding of dignity of human relationships, has no place in the British administration of this country”.

Indeed, the British could not have allowed Indian subjects to avail themselves of these freedoms without threatening the empire itself.

The distinction between the role of Britain and that of British imperialism could not have been clearer. As the union jack was being lowered across India, it was a distinction of which we were profoundly aware.

Adapted from Home in the World: A Memoir by Amartya Sen, published by Allen Lane on 8 July and available at guardianbookshop.com

The Gateway of India in Bombay, a monument commemorating the landing of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911. Photograph: robertharding/Alamy @guardian

Law & Politics

An illustration of British soldiers capturing Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, in 1857. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy @guardian

Law & Politics

Calcutta in 1912, illuminated for the occasion of a British royal visit. Photograph: RCAHMS/PA @guardian

Law & Politics

Corpse removal trucks in Calcutta during the famine of 1943. Photograph: Bettmann Archive @guardian

Law & Politics

09-MAY-2021 :: Benito Modi whose hyper incompetence even the Die Hard BJP ''Deadenders'' are finding it impossible to defend

Law & Politics

Benito Modi whose hyper incompetence even the Die Hard BJP ''Deadenders'' are finding it impossible to defend positively aided and abetted the “Kumbh Mela [which] may end up being the biggest super spreader event in the history of this pandemic.” Professor Ashish Jha

“Dehshat hai. (It’s a horror.)”

Misc.

“Kumbh Mela [which] may end up being the biggest super spreader event in the history of this pandemic.” Professor Ashish Jha

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

Misc.

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

Misc.

International Markets

World Of Finance

Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ

World Currencies

Euro 1.1853
Dollar Index 92.485
Japan Yen 111.23
Swiss Franc 0.9259
Pound 1.3816
Aussie 0.7481
India Rupee 74.385
South Korea Won 1133.02
Brazil Real 4.9707
Egypt Pound 15.7008
South Africa Rand 14.27907

Dollar Index Chart INO 92.478

World Currencies

Euro versus the Dollar Chart 1.1848

World Currencies

Commodities

Commodities

Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ

Commodities

Gold INO 1776.75

Commodities

Crude Oil Chart INO 73.63

Minerals, Oil & Energy

Sub Saharan Africa

Africa

China looks to East Africa for second Indian Ocean foothold @NikkeiAsia @kenmoriyasu

Africa

News that Tanzania will revive a $10 billion port project in the town of Bagamoyo has ignited speculation that China, the project's main investor, is looking to establish an additional dual-use foothold on the East African coast, a move that would greatly enhance Beijing's strategic aims in the region.
The main purpose of Bagamoyo Port would be to ease the congestion at the country's main port, Dar es Salaam, located 75 km to its south.

Bagamoyo could also become a maritime gateway for neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, "the world's greatest untapped non-oceanic/polar minerals gold mine," according to Lauren Johnston, a visiting senior lecturer of the School of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Adelaide.
But the port could be tapped for purposes that go beyond purely commercial endeavors. It may also be used as a ship repair hub for China's People's Liberation Army Navy, or perhaps even more.

China established its first and only overseas military base in northern Africa's Djibouti in 2017.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced on Saturday that Tanzania would restart the port project, which had been halted on concerns that Chinese demands about usage of the facility were too onerous.
Indian Ocean expert Darshana Baruah @darshanabaruah, an associate fellow with the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says East Africa offers China an easier entry point to the Indian Ocean than other locations closer to the Strait of Malacca.

"China has been looking at the Indian Ocean in a more cohesive manner than I think most other nations have been doing," Baruah said.

"Any kind of an effort to build a facility or a port in the eastern Indian Ocean, whether it is Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Maldives or Pakistan, I think would have more of a reaction, or a pushback, than I think in Africa. Many nations forget to connect it, but Africa is still a part of the Indian Ocean region."

Baruah said that a second naval base in the Indian Ocean, following Djibouti, would help with China's "Malacca Dilemma" -- a phrase former President Hu Jintao used to describe the Asian country's dependence on the world's busiest chokepoint.
"Even if something were to happen within the Malacca Strait, if they would have two bases or more facilities in the Indian Ocean, they can still continue their operations in the Indian Ocean region," Baruah said.
"I'm not talking about a war," Baruah said. "I'm talking about limited conflicts or competition. Even with the Strait of Malacca interrupted, from a grand strategy point of view, they could sustain their operations in the Indian Ocean region without necessarily having to make frequent calls back home."

While Beijing's main maritime focus is in the South and East China seas, it has poured time and effort into building relationships in the Indian Ocean.

China has diplomatic missions in all six of the island nations in the region, namely Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar and Comoros. Washington has three -- in Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Madagascar -- with plans in place for a fourth in the Maldives.
"No other Indian Ocean player -- India, France or the United Kingdom -- has a presence in all six island nations," Baruah noted.
Securing a foothold in East Africa would also allow China to prepare for contingencies such as the blockage of the Suez Canal, as was seen earlier this year.

The Ever Given, the 400-meter-long container vessel, blocked one of the world's busiest waterways for almost a week.
"If anything were to happen in the Suez Canal, then the Mozambique Channel will quickly again become the alternate route, which was originally the key trading route," Baruah said.
The 400-km-wide waterway between Madagascar and Mozambique is an important route for shipping in eastern Africa.

University of Adelaide's Johnston said that for Beijing, Tanzania was "much more trustworthy than Mozambique and Kenya, both of which are more likely to be security partners of the West."

But Tanzania's independent-minded tradition could stand in the way of China's ambition to use Bagamoyo as a dual-use port.

"It's not their style," she said. "They are neutral-minded, and they are trusted by Africans for that. Housing a Chinese security port or base would undermine what Tanzania is."
When Tanzania's Hassan announced that she would revive the Bagamoyo project, she said, "We are going to start talks with the investors that came for the project with the aim of opening it for the benefit of our nation."
At an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, warned African countries to be clear-eyed about engaging with China.
"These countries ought to just go into these relationships with their eyes wide open. I think that it's possible to do business with China, but you better be on your game and have your eyes and ears open," he said.

"China is bringing a lot of investment to the continent, and I would just urge our African partners: try to take advantage of that without getting taken advantage of."

At the same event, Vice Adm. Herve Blejean, director-general of the European Union military staff, warned of China's so-called debt-trap diplomacy.

"China is tailoring its support to each country, answering immediately their expressed needs, but by doing that also trapping them in their net and establishing bonds for life that they would be unable to pay back."

There is a possibility that the world wakes up one day to find that "most of the resources of Africa, legally, belong to China," he said. "That should be a real concern."
Carnegie's Baruah predicts that bigger players in the Indo-Pacific will be competing to win the hearts and minds of small nations in the region. In that battle, geography will play a major factor.
"One example was during the outbreak of COVID-19, when a lot of countries were undertaking evacuation missions, bringing citizens back from Wuhan," Baruah said.

"Indians were the ones who also brought back students for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and others. China sent an aircraft to Maldives to bring back their citizens but they did not offer those aircrafts to send South Asian citizens who were in China."
She praised India for actions during the pandemic "to show its presence, its investments and its friendship across the Indian Ocean region."

The Mozambique Channel, located between Madagascar and Mozambique, becomes a crucial trade route if the Suez Canal is blocked. (Google Earth)

Africa

Bagamoyo, Tanzania Founded in the mid 19th cent. by the shomvi swahili clan (from the medieval city of kaole) @rhaplord

Africa

The "Indian Ocean Region" is expected to become the geostrategic center of gravity in the New Cold War @eurasia_future @AKorybko

Africa

August 19 2013 I have no doubt that the Indian Ocean is set to regain its glory days

Africa

6 AUG 18 :: The Indian Ocean Economy and a Port Race

Africa

The Indian Ocean Economy preceded the Atlantic Ocean Economy, where the Europeans only learnt how to ‘’crack the code’’ of the Atlantic winds [and a new ‘Western’ culture arose on both sides of the ocean] long after the Indian Ocean.

Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto explains ‘’The precocity long-range navigation and cultural exchange is one of the glaring facts of history’’, made possible by the ‘’reversible escalator’’ of the monsoons.
As we scan the Blue Economy it is worth appreciating that Maritime shipping is the lifeblood of Africa, with over 90% of the continent’s imports and exports transported by sea.
Today from Massawa, Eritrea [admittedly on the Red Sea] to Djibouti, from Berbera to Mogadishu, from Lamu to Mombasa to Tanga to Bagamoyo to Dar Es Salaam, through Beira and Maputo all the way to Durban and all points in between we are witnessing a Port race of sorts as everyone seeks to get a piece of the Indian Ocean Port action.
China [The BRI initiative], the Gulf Countries [who now appear to see the Horn of Africa as their hinterland], Japan and India [to a lesser degree] are all jostling for optimal ‘’geo-economic’’ positioning.
Overlay the Geopolitics and its worth noting that the Geopolitics has become much more fluid.

Africa has a coastline of over 47,000 km and 13 million km2 of collective exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

Africa

19-NOV-2018 :: The Blue Economy

Africa

Firstly, we need to define ''The Blue Economy''

The blue economy has ''diverse components, including established traditional ocean industries such as fisheries, tourism, and maritime transport, but also new and emerging activities, such as offshore renewable energy, aquaculture, seabed extractive activities, and marine biotechnology and bioprospecting''

Its always difficult to put a Dollar value on the environment but two years ago, economists put a dollar value on what our oceans are worth and came up with $24 trillion. If it were a country, the sea would be the seventh-largest economy on the planet.
More than half of the countries in the African continent are coastal and island states. Africa has a coastline of over 47,000 km and 13 million km2 of collective exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Yet, very little of the potential of the blue economy is actually exploited.

It is estimated that Africa’s coastline currently hosts a maritime industry worth $1 trillion per year, but could potentially be worth almost three times that in just two years’ time. It is estimated that Africa is losing US 1.3 billion dollars every year.

For the more than one-quarter of Africa’s population that lives within 100 km of the coast and derive their livelihoods there, climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification and rising sea levels, all present further challenges.

Fast-growing African cities are at 'extreme risk' from climate change said Verisk Maplecroft last week.

19-APR-2020 :: The End of Vanity

Africa

To quote a Chinese saying, "The ocean is vast because it rejects no rivers."

"The red rising sun will light up the road ahead."

I am confident that the baton of China-Africa friendship will be passed from one generation to the next and that China and Africa, working together, will build an even more vibrant community with a shared future.

China's Xi says funds for Africa not for 'vanity projects' Reuters #FOCAC2018

"Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene." (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))

Africa

2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit: Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the opening ceremony

Africa

In addition, for those of Africa’s least developed countries, heavily indebted and poor countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries that have diplomatic relations with China,
the debt they have incurred in the form of interest-free Chinese government loans due to mature by the end of 2018 will be exempted.

I think it’s about all those things you mention @lajohnstondr but the paramount reason is the security component and power projection over the Indian Ocean Economy towards the c21st center of gravity has shifted @kenmoriyasu

Africa

Turning to Africa

Africa

We are getting closer and closer to the Virilian Tipping Point

“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''

Political leadership in most cases completely gerontocratic will use violence to cling onto Power but any Early Warning System would be warning a Tsunami is coming

People in #eSwatini are saying that the King has declared martial law. Everyone has been given 30 minutes to get to their homes. After that, soldiers will shoot to kill anyone seen out, according to the source. @DougColtart

Africa

Internet is still shut down.

10 NOV 14 : African youth demographic {many characterise this as a 'demographic dividend"} - which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator

Africa

Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.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.

The Event is no longer over the Horizon.

Armed forces shooting civilians in Manzini. @SwaziNews

Africa

BREAKING NEWS: Eswatini Beverages where King Mswati owns shares burned by protestors.Tension is escalating in this tiny Kingdom, citizens want the King to surrender power. @SwaziNews

Africa

Is dictatorship best for low income countries? Those who argue yes, ignore low growth autocracies like #Swaziland or #Eritrea @RencapMan

Africa

Powerful photo by @finbarroreilly on the front page of @nytimes today showing crowds gathering to celebrate the departure of Ethiopian government forces and the arrival of Tigray Defense Forces @Lattif

Africa

People poured into the streets of Mekelle, Ethiopia just after dawn on Tuesday, cheering and weeping with relief after fighters retook the city @nytimes

Africa

November 8, 2020 .@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.

If TDF/TPLF were to win this conflict, it might signal the end of Ethiopia as we know it. Unlike 1991 'Tigrayans' will not 'take over' country again, but separate. @writingpolitics

Africa

Abiy Ahmed, who had declared when he sent his forces into the restive Tigray region last year that the operation would be over in a matter of weeks.

Africa

When war broke out commentators who warned that this will be a long and bloody conflict were either ridiculed or designated as TPLF propagandists. That was shortsighted. @writingpolitics

Africa

[Dissolution risk is blinking amber] A fiendishly complicated task fending off the centrIfugal forces which are tearing Ethiopia apart @PMEthiopia has lost this battle

Africa

February 1st 2021 ‘The genie out of the bottle’ @AfricanBizMag

Africa

Ethiopian army pulled out of the Tigray regional capital of Mekelle because it was no longer a "centre of gravity for conflicts", Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said,

Africa

Abiy confirmed the withdrawal from Mekelle.

"When we entered Mekelle seven or eight months ago, it was because it was the centre of gravity for conflicts," he told state media on Tuesday in a video posted on his website on Wednesday.
"It was centre of a government. A centre for known and unknown resources. But by the time we exit, there is nothing special about it except that there are some 80,000 people and those who loot people ... It has lost its centre of gravity in the current context."

On Tuesday, Getachew dismissed the ceasefire as a "joke", saying the TPLF would force its enemies "out of our territory". He was not reachable for comment on Wednesday.

Abiy has surrendered all ends up. @addisstandard Wonder how the Spinners spin this rout

Africa

Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance

Africa

WHO regional overviews - Epidemiological week 21-27 June 2021 African Region @WHO

Africa

Many countries in the African region continue to see increases in weekly case incidence and mortality.

The Region reported over 177 000 new cases and over 2700 new deaths, a 34% and a 42% increase respectively compared to the previous week.

The weekly number of COVID-19 cases has been increasing sharply since 15 May. Since then, 76% of cases and 72% of reported deaths in the Region where from countries in Southern Africa.
Aside from South Africa (103 697 new cases; 174.8 new cases per 100 000 population; a 47% increase),

the highest numbers of new cases in the Region were reported from

Zambia (19 058 new cases; 103.7 new cases per 100 000; a 15% increase)

Namibia (12 944 new cases; 509.4 new cases per 100 000; a 71% increase)

Mortality in the African Region continued to increase sharply with the countries reporting the highest numbers of new deaths per 100 000 population over the past week being

Namibia (11 new deaths per 100 000)

Botswana (7 deaths per 100 000)

Zambia (20 new deaths per 100 000)

@doctorsoumya told me. “You could end up with explosive outbreaks.” @kakape

Africa

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Africa

09-MAY-2021 Africa might be casting a weary glance over its shoulder at India and would certainly be prudent to do so.

Africa

NGS-SA worked hard to increase sequencing in South Africa. We know now that the explosive #COVID19 third wave is dominatedd by the Delta variant. @Tuliodna

Africa

08-MAR-2021 the ultra hyperconnectedness of the c21st World.

Africa

This graph shows the distribution of the variants over time in the different provinces. @Tuliodna

Africa

The third wave in Gauteng was caused by the Delta variant, @nicd_sa and @krisp_news @Tuliodna

Africa

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

Africa

Africa is currently reporting a million new infections about every 68 days @ReutersGraphics

Africa

“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder. With rapidly rising case numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet,” says @MoetiTshidi @kakape

Africa

''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics''

Africa

572,227 Active COVID-19 Cases in Africa @BeautifyData [10.04% above a record high from January 2021]

Africa

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

Africa

South Africa All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Dollar versus Rand Chart INO 14.29

Africa

Egypt's first private sector minimum wage - is around $150 - which is roughly a quarter of the level in central Europe. @RencapMan

Africa

When foreign direct investors are looking at cheap countries to produce and export to Europe (& the domestic >100m population), #Egypt is a plausible candidate

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar Chart INO 15.689

Africa

According to PwC, the Nigerian diaspora sent home about $25bn in 2018, or about 6.1% of GDP. The firm says the figure could be close to $35bn by 2023. @TheAfricaReport

Africa

Nigeria All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg

Africa

Kenya

Africa

Front page of Business Daily on 1st July 2021: @MwangoCapital

Africa

The economy has staged a partial recovery from a large shock #KenyaEconomicUpdate @AlexSienaert @MbaabuSambrian

Kenyan Economy

.@AlexSienaert speaks of a ''partial recovery picture'' an ''uneven'' recovery with significant variability across sectors cites Agriculture as a Stand Out - predicts 4.5% FY 2021 GDP #KenyaEconomicUpdate

Kenyan Economy

Kenya Economic Update Edition 23 Rising Above The Waves #KenyaEconomicUpdate

Kenyan Economy

TPS Eastern Africa, the owner of Serena Hotels plans to issue 200 million new ordinary shares through a rights issue @tradingroomke

Kenyan Economy

investors passed the resolution to increase the authorized share capital from the current KSh200 million to Kes 400 million through the creation of an additional 200 million ordinary shares with a par value of KSh1.00 each.

The new ordinary shares will “rank pari passu in all respects with the existing ordinary shares of the company,” said the company.
Serena Hotels, the leading hotel chain in East Africa, posted a Kes 1.2 billion net loss for the period that ended on 31st December 2020, the biggest annual loss in the company’s history.

The hotel chain said that although the business environment remains highly unpredictable, it expects business to pick up in the third and fourth quarter of 2021.

TPS @serenahotels share price data

N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services

Closing Price: 14.00
Total Shares Issued: 182174108.00
Market Capitalization: 2,550,437,512
EPS: -6.32
PE: -2.215

May 21, 2017 Good Morning from the sea side @serenahotels Mombasa @MagicalKenya

N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services

Monday, June 11, 2012 The Serena @SerenaHotels

N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services

MY memories of the Serena start in Mombasa years back when the managing director Mahmoud Jan Mohamed was the manager.
I was then a teenager and remember losing my heart to a girl, who would beat me at table tennis, in a bikini. That table tennis Table is still there.
The Serena brand has always been sprinkled with a fairy dust and reminds me of happy joyful carefree halcyon days of youth.

Interview with Mahmud Jan Mohamed, MD, Serena Hotels @SerenaHotels @YouTube

N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services

Williamson Tea Kenya Ltd. reports FY 2021 Loss after Tax 146.138m Earnings here

N.S.E Equities - Agricultural

Par Value: 5/-
Closing Price: 145.75
Total Shares Issued: 17512640.00
Market Capitalization: 2,552,467,280
EPS: -8.31
PE:

Williamson Tea reports FY Earnings ended 31st March 2021 versus through 31st Marc 2020

FY Revenue Continuing Operations 3.743037b versus 3.036905b

FY Loss from Operations before Tax [163.199m] versus [20.650m]

FY Increase in Fair Value of Biological Assets 74.764m versus 62.552m

FY Net Finance Income 18.372m versus 60.291m

FY [Loss] Profit before Taxation [67.269m] versus 116.994m

FY Tax [charge]/credit [65.114m] versus 30.386m

FY [Loss] Profit for the Year from continuing operations [132.383m] versus 147.380m

FY [loss] from discontinued operations [13.755m] versus [10.178m]

FY [Loss] Profit for the Year [146.138m] versus 137.202m

FY EPS [8.31] versus 7.59

FY Dividend 10 shillings a share

Cash and cash Equivalents at end of Year 756.225m versus 562.683m

*FY 2020 restated on the classification of Williamson Power Limited as a discontinued operation

Commentary

oversupply of kenya tea, insufficient demand for the over-supply

anxiety over the impact of the yet to be ratified Tea Act 2020

a complete change in how the majority of our Tea is sold from direct sales to establishing a reputation in an auction market we previously did not have a presence in

The audited financial statements and our report thereon
We expressed an unmodified audit opinion on the audited financial statements in our report dated 29 June 2021.

That report also includes the communication of a key audit matter related to the valuation and measurement of biological assets.

Key audit matters are those matters that, in our professional judgement, were of most significance in our audit of the financial statements of the current period.

Conclusions

Clearly an oversupplied market for this reporting Period.

The Balance Sheet is cash rich and hence the Dividend which produces a yield of 6.86%

noteworthy uncertainty around Tea Act 2020

Kapchorua Tea Company Ltd.reports FY PAT 7.065m Earnings here

N.S.E Equities - Agricultural

Par Value: 5/-
Closing Price: 85.00
Total Shares Issued: 7824000.00
Market Capitalization: 665,040,000
EPS: 0.90
PE: 94.444

Kapchorua Tea reports FY Earnings through 31st March 2021 versus 12 months through 31st March 2020

FY Revenue 1.445640b versus 1.134302b

FY Loss from Operations before Tax [10.758m] versus [41.065m]

FY Increase in Fair value of biological Assets 21.030m versus 21.801m

FY Net Finance Income 23.842m versus 30.588m

FY Profit before Taxation 34.114m versus 11.324m

FY Tax [charge]/ credit [27.049m] versus 8.113m

FY Profit for the Year 7.065m versus 19.437m

FY Total other comprehensive income 130.545m versus 17.980m

FY Total comprehensive Income 137.610m versus 37.417m

FY EPS 0.90 versus 2.48

FY Cash and Cash Equivalents 458.161m versus 352.800m

FY Dividend 10 shillings a share

Commentary

The global Covid -19 pandemic,weakening economies ,an over-supply of Kenya tea coinciding with weak demand from certain areas all contributed to a difficult year.
The over-supply of Kenya tea resulted in very depressed prices throughout the year.

It is however pleasing to record that Kapchorua out performed market expectations and achieved success,often outselling competitors and reaching new markets.

The future looks very difficult, with major buyers in and out of the market and with availability of tea remaining very high quantities may be purchased at leisure.

The audited financial statements and our report thereon
We expressed an unmodified audit opinion on the audited financial statements in our report dated 29 June 2021.

That report also includes the communication of a key audit matter related to valuation and measurement of biological assets.

Key audit matters are those matters that, in our professional judgement, were of most significance in our audit of the Company financial statements of the current period.

Conclusions

Dividend Yield is 11.76%

Interesting comparison with Williamson

''It is however pleasing to record that Kapchorua out performed market expectations and achieved success,often outselling competitors and reaching new markets.''

Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexPros

Africa

Nairobi All Share Bloomberg

N.S.E General

Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg

N.S.E General

Every Listed Share can be interrogated here

N.S.E General

by Aly Khan Satchu (rich.co.ke)

July 2021

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