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Africa's growth plans face stronger headwinds In a much harsher international climate, Africa's economic managers are promoting regional trade and boosting investment in power and transport
Bankers hosting parties for their government friends were a little more discreet than usual – perhaps in deference to rising political and economic uncertainties – at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on 9-11 October in Washington DC. But to judge by the overflowing corridors of the discreet five-star Hay-Adams Hotel on 16th Street, they were still making plenty of deals, in Africa's frontier and emerging markets as well as in Western economies.
The assembled African finance ministers and central bankers were heartened by some of the new corporate interest in their economies that followed the United States-Africa Leaders Summit in August but there was concern about both regional and international prospects (AC Vol No 55 No 16, The science of summitry). Using its traditional lexicon, the IMF described Africa's average economic growth as buoyant and robust. It is at 5.1% this year and forecast to rise to 5.8% in 2015. Yet, together with the World Bank, the Fund warned of stronger headwinds blowing against African growth prospects.
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MOZAMBIQUE
Frelimo wins, Renamo revives Persistent reports of fraud will not prevent wide acceptance of Nyusi's victory, amid hopes of a more inclusive government
The most closely-fought campaign in 20 years of multiparty elections saw the governing party claim a decisive but controversial victory. Civil society organisations, the independent media and the opposition parties point to stuffed ballot boxes, missing electoral registers, the theft of ballot papers, restrictions on independent monitors from the Observatório Eleitoral (OE), the denial of credentials to other monitors and observers, and other abuses on behalf of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo).
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ZIMBABWE
Doctors at large The First Lady is now running in the succession race but even she has hurdles to clear on her tour of the stadium
Dr Grace Mugabe and Dr Joice Mujuru graduated together with PhDs from the University of Zimbabwe in September and were capped by President Robert Mugabe in his role as Chancellor at the same ceremony. Dr Mujuru's was a workmanlike thesis, the fruit of the required several years' research, while Dr Grace Mugabe's was apparently of such unsurpassed brilliance that her studies took her only three months before she made the grade (AC Vol 55 No 20, From Russia with love).
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KENYA
Bad time for an oil boom Rather than cheering the country's oil finds, Kenyans are pondering a mass of complications
 Like its neighbours Tanzania and Uganda, Kenya has found that hydrocarbon discoveries require complicated legal and institutional reforms to manage the resource and deal with investors. The incentives for political malpractice are already high at the centre but now, thanks to the 2010 constitution, decision-makers at the regional level want to get involved as well. Whether or not the oil regime will be marked by probity, the new power centres in the Senate and the 47 new counties will demand their share of the flow of revenue. This is likely to begin in 2019 at the earliest, making oil money a major prize for the winners of the 2017 elections. Setting up the legal and physical infrastructure is proving challenging, with skirmishes breaking out between government and companies over contracts and taxation.
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ZAMBIA
Party rivalries grow as Sata ails The President's departure for medical treatment on the eve of the country's 50th birthday seems to confirm the severity of his condition
Few believe that President Michael Sata would miss such a prestigious event as tomorrow's 50th anniversary of Zambia's Independence. And yet a State House statement said he had left the country on 20 October for a 'medical check-up'. Having made no public appearances since he returned from the United States in September, the fact he has gone abroad at such short notice has been widely taken as a sign that his condition is terminal. A political source in Lusaka said he had gone to London. The Defence Minister and the governing Patriotic Front Secretary General Edgar Lungu was left to run Zambia in his absence.
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MALI
Crisis returns as talks falter Negotiations over the future of the north have resumed without much sign of any rapprochement
Lethal attacks by jihadists on United Nations' forces and armed clashes among Tuareg factions take place against a background of another round of sluggish peace talks in Algiers. No compromise is yet in sight that might satisfy both the government and the three main Tuareg nationalist organisations, let alone other armed groups. Meanwhile, ten UN peacekeepers – nine Nigeriens and one Senegalese – from the UN's Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations unies pour la stabilisation au Mali, died in recent Islamist attacks in the north. Read this article NOW |
UGANDA
Mbabazi on the ropes The President's manoeuvres to oust his erstwhile friend as Secretary General of the NRM are accelerating
President Yoweri Museveni aims to limit possible leadership challenges from within the governing National Resistance Movement through wide-ranging changes to the party's constitution. Currently, the main objective is to unseat Amama Mbabazi – the former Prime Minister sacked by Museveni on 18 September – from his position as NRM Secretary General and so quash his hopes of standing for President for the party (AC Vol 55 No 19, Putting US aid to other uses). And, during the weekend of 18-19 October, Museveni scored a decisive victory over his erstwhile ally. Read this article NOW |
NIGERIA | ITALY
Follow the money A leak from Italian prosecutors reveals more details about the recipients of the US$800 million from the OPL 245 licence sale
Telephone taps of Italian middlemen in the deal over Oil Prospecting Licence 245 reveal extraordinary detail about the manoeuvring that led to the agreement between the Nigerian government, and ENI SpA and Shell, in April 2011 (AC Vol 55 No 20, ENI in the cross-hairs, & No 7, There will be blood...and oil). The leak from an Italian government investigation of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) reveals that ENI officials made direct contact with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and his then Oil and Petroleum Resources Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke, to break the logjam over the contentious OPL 245.
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NORTH AFRICA | ARMS
Comrades in arms deals Ever more visits by European and US military officials to North African capitals suggest old connections are back on course
The global news agenda has moved on since the attack on the Tiguentourine gas plant near In Amenas in Algeria in January 2013 and the ousting of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi this June. The BP-Statoil-Sonatrach facility was supplying 2% of the European Union's natural gas. Meanwhile, armed chaos reigned in Mali, a traditional zone of influence for Algerian military intelligence, the Département du renseignment et de la sécurité (DRS), under the veteran Lieutenant General Mohammed Lamine 'Tewfik' Medienne (AC Vol 54 No 19, Boutef's miracle return). Read this article NOW |
SUDAN | AFRICA
Next stop, Rome
Senior officials from the African Union, European Union and United Nations were at the Police Club House in Khartoum on 13-16 October for the AU's Regional Conference on Human Trafficking and Smuggling in the Horn of Africa. Yet none publicly questioned whether the venue was appropriate. Their host was the Sudan government, whose police and security organisation were accused of colluding in the abducting and torture of refugees in a February report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Read this article NOW |
MALAWI
Cashgate, gaolgate
The arrest of former National Budget Director Paul Mphwiyo and his wife on 18 October is proof that the Cashgate scandal has yet to peak, say political and legal insiders in Lilongwe. Mphwiyo is charged with the theft and money-laundering of 2.1 billion kwacha (US$4.7 million). It was his near miraculous survival after three shots to the head last October that unravelled the conspiracy to loot public funds and, later, to the arrest of over 70 politicians and public officials (AC Vol 54 No 21, Shooting triggers reshuffle). Read this article NOW |
NIGERIA | SOUTH AFRICA
Clash of the Titans
Relations between South Africa and Nigeria have plunged to new depths. South African ex-President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo are working behind the scenes to try to reconcile Presidents Jacob Zuma and Goodluck Jonathan, Africa Confidential understands. The latest row started after South Africa's May elections, with tough new visa requirements for Nigerians, now tightened further with the Ebola outbreak. Read this article NOW |
TUNISIA Coalition time
Tunisia elects a new, 217-member Parliament on 26 October and all eyes are on the possible coalitions that will follow (AC Vol 55 No 20, Critical votes and toxic loans). A formal coalition between the front-runners, the Islamist Hizb Ennahda (Renaissance) and secularist Nidaa Tounus (Tunisian Call) is unlikely: opinion polls say they will take a third of the vote each. Of nearly 200 parties, one that could help tip the balance is FDTL Ettakatol (Forum démocratique pour le travail et les libertés), which is accused of flirting with Ennahda. An influential Ettakatol member of parliament, Lobna Jeribi, told Africa Confidential her party was loath to partner with Islamists but believes Tunisia needs a national coalition. 'We are unable to make deep reforms in the context of division.' Read this article NOW |
MOZAMBIQUE
Fraud claims taint Frelimo win Early signs indicate a landslide for the ruling party, but claims of rigging are growing and there is serious potential for unrest
Frente de Libertação de Moçambique members in Maputo are already celebrating victory in the general election, even though the formal results are not due for several days. The opposition, however, and several independent local media and non-governmental organisations are already crying 'foul'. Sources close to Frelimo told Africa Confidential that on polling day there was internal disagreement in Frelimo over what percentage the party should 'win' by. Some were pushing for 62%, while others argued this margin would not be believed, and 52% would be more acceptable. Even if this talk was mere bluster, evidence of electoral fraud and obstruction of voters and observers intensified throughout polling day. Read this article NOW | |
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|  | | | | BLUE LINES | | THE INSIDE VIEW |
Africa has lost two strong independent voices in the past week: Efua Dorkenoo, the Ghanaian women's rights activist, and Ali Mazrui, the Kenyan academic and author. Dorkenoo left her home in Cape Coast and went to work as a nurse in London, where she saw the agony of a woman who had been infibulated giving birth in the mid-1970s. This prompted her to launch a campaign against Female Genital Mutilation. After she relentlessly petitioned officials, Britain passed The Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act in 1985, and most Western and many other governments followed suit. Although the World Health Organisation hired Dorkenoo as a director of its Women's Health Department, it was not until 2012 that the United Nations codified FGM as a human rights violation. Mazrui, a polymath academician with an encyclopaedic knowledge of African politics and culture, also battled entrenched interests. A professor at Uganda's Makerere University in the early 1970s, he was asked by the military ruler Idi Amin Dada to become his chief advisor on foreign affairs. Mazrui replied publicly with a searing condemnation of Amin's brutal rule, then left to take up a teaching post at Ann Arbor University, Michigan, United States. His radical, groundbreaking, nine-part television documentary series, 'The Africans', co-funded by the US Public Broadcasting Service and the BBC, sparked criticism and praise for its condemnation of both colonialism and Marxism. More recently, Mazrui remarked to a friend that his life had been 'one long debate'.
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| | | Africa Confidential In The News
Mail Online, 18 October 2014
Sudan could be arming S, Sudan rebels, says report
'Africa Confidential, an in-depth magazine focusing on Africa, concluded the documents are authentic after contacting current and former Sudan politicians.' Sudan Tribune, 15 October 2014
Sudan, Iran, the Obama Administration, and Khartoum's political vision
By Eric Reeves
'Africa Confidential began its recent brief overview of the issue by observing: Most of the Sudanese activists and officials (serving or former) that we have contacted believe the leaked reports of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) meeting on 31 August are an authentic account. Indeed, one former official has confirmed the NISS meeting took place and a serving official said the documents were genuine.' iOL, 8 July 2014
Kenyatta's game a risky one
By Peter Fabricius
'The security services reportedly ignored intelligence warnings of the Mpeketoni attacks and the journal Africa Confidential writes there have been hints of collusion between the intelligence services and al-Shabaab.' Radio Dabanga, 6 July 2014
'Sudan's military industry expanding': Small Arms Survey
'The Safat Aviation complex, 20 km north of Khartoum in Karari, opened in 2005. It includes centres and factories specialised in aircraft maintenance and the installation of aircraft parts. According to Africa Confidential, Safat also manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles with Iranian assistance.'
BBC News, 8 May 2014
Have Boko Haram over-reached themselves?
By Frank Gardner
'It is clear then, that unless – and this is extremely unlikely – this is a macabre plan ordered by al-Qaeda's leaders that has backfired spectacularly, Boko Haram are acting independently and following their own local agenda. But Gill Lusk of the Africa Confidential newsletter argues that it has not necessarily been a disaster for the group.
Although kidnapping innocent schoolgirls might look counter-productive, the aim of al-Qaeda linked movements is not primarily to be popular, she says, "but to further their politico-religious aims through terrorism, as we saw when Boko Haram attacked the United Nations headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja," in 2011.
"The school attack has given the jihadist militia worldwide publicity and from its point of view, that is a huge success," Ms Lusk told the BBC.' SW Radio Africa, 2 April 2014
Corruption riddled ZMDC gets new board
By Alex Bell
'[I]n November last year, a report by the news and analysis website Africa Confidential named the former MMCZ board chair, Chris Mutsvangwa, as being a key architect of arms-for-minerals deals with Russia and China. Mutsvangwa, who was the former Zimbabwe ambassador to China, is now the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.' BBC Radio 4 – The World Tonight, 20 February 2014
Goodluck Jonathan suspends Central Bank of Nigeria Governr, Lamido Sanusi
Patrick Smith talks to David Eades
'Many people see [Lamido Sanusi] in Nigeria as something of a crusader against corruption. so there's a big gap between the perceptions put forward by the Presidency and the perceptions of many people in Nigeria and most of the outside world.' (at 36:05) | | |
