It’s Time for International Development in Africa to be Decolonized

By Amma Gyampo

IN RECENT YEARS, there have been growing calls for more diversity in international funding destined for Africa. There has also been debate over how the continent can encourage more local African asset owners to invest in impactful, sustainable, and profi table sectors of the productive economy, like its burgeoning tech ecosystem.

According to Devex, “organizations led by Africans tend to get less money—with more strings attached—compared with those led by others.” For the African tech sector alone, insights from TechCabal illustrate that “only two out of

10 investors who participated in VC deals in Africa between 2014 and 2019 were local.”

This rolling conversation has been sparked by the notoriously high proportion of venture capital that goes to white founders operating in Kenya, for example, and due to the controversial positioning of companies like Jumia, as “African.” Furthermore, there has been a lot of pushback against a heavy-handed reporting culture of mistrust which, in practice, constrains rather than enables the recipients of international grant funding from big philanthropy and development financing, hindering their ability to run their innovative initiatives and interventions.

Despite the essential nature of the services provided by African NGOs—which themselves often lack the business capacity to execute sustainable projects – and local private sector intermediary fi rms, such organizations are unknowingly exposed to highly politicized and opaque bid processes which result in applications that have little to no chance of succeeding.

What we see is a huge disparity of funding in favor of advisory fi rms from the Global North, to the detriment of local expertise from the Global South, with a clear proximity advantage.

During a recent event discussing angel investing, Frank Aswani, CEO of the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA), made a case for foundations and donor agencies to become more “innovative, catalytic investors—instead of just giving money away as grants.” AVPA has been at the forefront of promoting innovative new approaches to development fi nance such as venture philanthropy and blended fi nance.

Countries that have achieved middle income status, like Ghana, have seen international funding cuts but have not been immune to the economic shocks of the pandemic as such leaders from the worlds of philanthropy, development fi nance and corporate sustainability are under pressure to do more to help regions like Africa on their way to economic recovery. This is an opportunity for leaders in these fi elds to take on a more entrepreneurial and radical approach to funding ambitious, radical, creative and self-sustaining development initiatives.

A good starting point would be to adopt the role of social investor, supporting the local private sector to build capacity and prosperity through what microfi nance pioneer, Nobel prize Laureate, Muhammad Yunus calls “social businesses.” International development funding would go further by, in eff ect, seeding viable social business models that can be scaled to sustain hundreds of thousands of women and youth.

Furthermore, if Africa is to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, there must be more intentionality around getting global funding resources to filter down to intermediaries, experts, and advisors on the ground and close to the action—not thousands of miles away from developing regions. https://fi nance.yahoo.com/news/time-internationaldevelopment-africa-decolonized-084027668.html

Source: https://qz.com/africa/2024100/its-time-todecolonizing-african-international-development-aid Image credit: smallbizgeek.co.uk

Kenya’s Long-awaited Lamu Port Becoming Operational

By GCR Staff

BEING BUILT BY China Communications

Construction Company (CCCC), the port is part of Kenya’s bid to become the principal trade hub in East Africa.

It is also part of LAPSSET, which stands for the Lamu Port South

Sudan-Ethiopia Transport

Corridor. If all the proposed schemes are built, this will include roads, oil and fi bre-optic lines, a 1,500km railway, an airport and a refi nery, and will require investment of around $24bn.

Bernard Osero, KPA’s head of corporate aff airs, said the government had prioritised Lamu as the means of linking east and west Africa by road and rail.

“Lamu port will specialise in handling containers and oil cargo between the east African hinterland and the rest of the world … and will enable Kenya to become a gateway of choice

for Ethiopia, South Sudan and

Somalia,” he said.

When originally conceived in 2012, Lamu was to be a massive, 16-year scheme that would require around $3bn in investment to produce one of the biggest ports in the world (see further reading).

It was to be able to handle 24 million containers a year, which would make it the fourth busiest port in the world in 2020, after Shenzhen, Singapore and Shanghai.

CCCC’s contract was to build the fi rst three of 32 berths for $480m, although the outturn cost was reported earlier this month to be $370m.

Sudan

Ethiopia Uganda

Tanzania ►►

The route of the LAPSSET corridors (Nairobi123/public domain)

Lamu Port

The fi rst berth was completed in August 2019, and work was to have been completed last year, a timetable that was put back by the Covid-19 pandemic. Work is under way now to install cranage and other equipment.

KPA now has to fi nd investors for the other 29 berths. According to the Kenyan Star news site, Danish shipping giant Maersk is among the carriers interested in playing a role in future expansions, including a special economic zone for manufacturers.

Meanwhile, work is continuing on building LAPSSET’s road links. The port will rely on links with Ethiopia, the most dynamic of the regional economies, and this will in turn depend on a 1,425km highway between Lamu and Moyale, on the Kenyan–Ethiopian border.

Work is now taking place on the 257km section between Lamu and Garissa (see map), which is expected to be fi nished in 12 months. A 157km section between Garissa and Modogashe is complete and a 165km stretch between Modogashe and Wajir is out to tender. www.media4africa.com/kenyas-long-awaitedlamu-port-to-become-operational-in-june

Image credits: globalconstructionreview.com