TAR July Aug by The Africa Report

The Nigeria Barometer

• Horn of Africa Ports and power plays • Migration Targeting the transit countries • South AfricaRamaphosa, the boa constrictor

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influential women in business From left to right: Martine Hélène Coffi-Studer, Nadia Fettah, Sola David-Borha, Tabitha Karanja and Maria Ramos

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Belgium €5.90 • Canada CA$ 7.95 • DR Congo US$ 9 • Denmark 60 DK • DOM 8 € • Ethiopia 130 Birr • France €5.90 • Germany €5.90 • Ghana GH¢ 10 • Italy €5.90 • Kenya KES 410 • Morocco 40 DH • Netherlands €5.90 • Nigeria 800 NGN • Norway NK 70 • Portugal €5.90 • Rwanda RWF 6,000 • Sierra Leone LE 15,000 • South Africa R40 (tax incl.) • Spain €5.90 • Sweden SEK 70 • Switzerland 9.90 FS Tanzania TZS 10,000 • Tunisia 5.4 DT • Uganda UGX 10,000 • UK £4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 48 ZMW • Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA • Euro Zone €5.90

The Nigeria Barometer

influential women n in business N ° 1 0 2 • J U LY/A U G U S T 2 018

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• Horn of Africa Ports and power plays • Migration Targeting the transit countries • South Africa Ramaphosa, the boa constrictor

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The Nigeria Barometer

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SIVE RANK

Ahead of next year’s elections we assess the Buhari government’s record at the centre and in the states

influential women in business From left to right: Martine Coffi-Studer, Nadia Fettah, Sola David-Borha, Tabitha Karanja and Maria Ramos

THE AFRICA REPORT # 102 - JULY - AUGUST 2018

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP NIGERIA EDITION

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

FREE with this issue: an INVESTING supplement on GUINEA. Not to be sold separately.

BUSINESS

04 EDITORIAL Revolution from within 06 LETTERS 08 THE QUESTION

BRIEFING 10 SIGNPOSTS

12 PEOPLE 14 INTERNATIONAL 16 CALENDAR 18 OPINION Nic Cheeseman, professor, University of Birmingham

30 DEBATE Information minister Lai Mohammed and presidential aspirant Donald Duke

72 FINANCE The winding road to bank consolidation in Tanzania 73 HANNIBAL

32 MIGRATION Niger at a crossroads The Africa Report examines the EU’s efforts to tamp down migration to its shores

46 ANANSI Voice of the people

COUNTRY FOCUS 51 MOROCCO The Casa challenge Can the Moroccan city make it as a continental leader? THE AFRICA REPORT

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74 Ports and power plays Controversial ports deals put Djibouti and Somalia at the heart of a big-stakes game in the Horn of Africa 78 INTERVIEW Hadiza Bala Usman, Nigerian Ports Authority 80 INTERVIEW João Miguel Santos, MD, Boeing International SSA

ART & LIFE

36 INTERVIEW Aristides Gomes, Prime Minister, Guinea-Bissau

44 MALI IBK on the backfoot

LOGISTICS DOSSIER

POLITICS

40 SOUTH AFRICA Getting the band back together

68 LEADERS Arunma Oteh, Vice-president and treasurer, World Bank Group 70 INTERVIEW Imad Benmoussa, director for Egypt and North Africa, Coca-Cola

FRONTLINE 22 NIGERIA The state of the states Our ranking of Nigeria’s 36 states shows their performance on fighting poverty, providing electricity and raising revenue

60 TOP 50 Influential women in business The Africa Report, Jeune Afrique and the Africa CEO Forum assemble an exclusive list of the top African businesswomen shaping their sectors

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82 DIASPORAS Home away from home The long road from Ejigbo, Nigeria to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire 86 BOOKS Poetry and politics in Somaliland 88 LIFESTYLE Cameroonian DJ Cyrius Black 89 TRAVEL A yoga retreat in Overberg, South Africa 90 DAY IN THE LIFE Djiboutian taxi driver Ali Hussein

THE AFRICA REPORT A Jeune Afrique Media Group publication

BY PATRICK SMITH

57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL – 75016 PARIS – FRANCE TEL: (33) 1 44 30 19 60 – FAX: (33) 1 44 30 19 30 www.theafricareport.com

Revolution from within

biy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s radical prime minister, is testing the outer limits of the possible. After releasing tens of thousands of prisoners, lambasting security officials for human rights abuses and promising to open the biggest state-owned companies to foreign capital, he announced that Ethiopia would withdraw its troops from the border with Eritrea and start negotiations for an enduring peace. And then you wake up. In fact, it continued. In Asmara, President Isaias Afwerki – perhaps the world’s most cantankerous negotiating partner – announced that he takes Abiy’s overtures seriously. So, on 26 June, just three days after someone tried to assassinate him at a rally in the capital, Abiy turned up at the airport to welcome Eritrea’s foreign minister, Osman Saleh. The Eritreans were welcomed with garlands of Ethiopian roses. “Our desire is to love rather than hate,” Abiy told the delegation. Of course, the negotiations to end one of Africa’s longest military stand-offs, in the wake of a border war that killed more than 80,000, will be fiendishly complex. What is new is the sense of common benefit in cutting a deal. Eritrea could end its isolation, while Ethiopia – one of the biggest landlocked countries in Africa – could get access to Eritrea’s ports. In a region where the geopolitics resemble a game of three-dimensional chess, a peace deal could simplify security calculations. But, as a long-time security adviser in Addis told us: “There are few guarantees in the Horn of Africa. This week, your enemy’s enemy will be your friend; next week, he could be your enemy as well.”

CHA I R M A N A ND F O UND E R BÉCHIR BEN YAHMED P UB L I S HE R DANIELLE BEN YAHMED publisher@theafricareport.com E X E CUT I VE P UB L I S HE R JÉRÔME MILLAN

The most obvious losers from the new détente are Tigrayan military and business leaders, who have dominated Ethiopia’s politics since 1991. In rallies across the country, Abiy – an Oromo, the country’s biggest ethnic group – has been talking of patriotism and national unity, trying to shortcircuit identity politics. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians flock to his rallies, entranced by his flights of rhetoric. For now, it looks like a weirdly personalised revolution. With the peace talks in train, the big symbolic gestures have been made and the political test has started. That At rallies means Abiy’s team has to get stuck into policy Abiy talks and strategy ahead of of national elections in 2020. He unity, has promised freedom for banned civil society trying to groups and a dialogue short-circuit with the opposition to ensure those elections identity are credible. politics Those pledges will be on trial in Ethiopia’s regions. First, in the south, where clashes in early June forced the resignation of the regional leader. And more so in the Ogaden, where rival factions are battling to control the contraband trade and will push back hard against attempts to wield control from the centre. In tandem with that, Abiy has to boost the economy to show his liberalisation can work. After the Eritrea talks, that ideological battle over strategy will loom largest. As for the risks of Abiy pushing so fast on so many fronts at the same time, one of his supporters compared his leadership to riding a bike: “If you slow down, you’re going to fall off.”

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M A R K E T I NG & D E VE L O P M E NT ALISON KINGSLEY‑HALL E D I T O R I N CHI E F PATRICK SMITH M A NA G I NG E D I T O R NICHOLAS NORBROOK editorial@theafricareport.com A S S O CI AT E E D I T O R MARSHALL VAN VALEN R E S E A R CH & P R O D UCT I O N OHENEBA AMA NTI OSEI RE G IO NA L E D I T O R CRYSTAL ORDERSON (SOUTHERN AFRICA) A RT & L I F E E D I T O R BILLIE ADWOA MCTERNAN S UB - E D I T O R ALISON CULLIFORD P R O O F R E A D I NG KATHLEEN GRAY CHLOÉ BAKER A RT DI R E CT O R MARC TRENSON DESIGN VALÉRIE OLIVIER (LEAD DESIGNER) SYDONIE GHAYEB CHRISTOPHE CHAUVIN (INFOGRAPHICS) CAMILLE CHAUVIN R E S E A R CH SYLVIE FOURNIER P HO T O G R A P HY CLAIRE VATTEBLED XAVIER ROUSSEAU LAURA LAFON FRANÇOIS GRIVELET SALES A JUSTE TITRE Tel: (33) 9 70 75 81 77 contact‑ajt‑sifija@ajustetitres.fr CONTACT FOR SUBSCRIPTION: Webscribe Ltd Unit 4 College Road Business Park College Road North Aston Clinton HP22 5EZ United Kingdom Tel: + 44 (0) 1442 820580 Fax: + 44 (0) 1442 827912 Email: subs@webscribe.co.uk ExpressMag 8275 Avenue Marco Polo Montréal, QC H1E 7K1, Canada T : +1 514 355 3333 1 year subscription (10 issues): All destinations: €39 ‑ $60 ‑ £35 TO ORDER ONLINE: www.theafricareportstore.com A D VE RT I S I NG D I F CO M INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING AND COMMUNICATION AGENCY 57‑BIS, RUE D’AUTEUIL 75016 PARIS ‑ FRANCE Tel: (33) 1 44 30 19‑60 – Fax: (33) 1 44 30 18 34 advertising@theafricareport.com PRINTER: SIEP 77 ‑ FRANCE N° DE COMMISSION PARITAIRE : 0720 I 86885 Dépôt légal à parution / ISSN 1950‑4810 THE AFRICA REPORT is published by GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

ALLIANCES AND OPPORTUNITIES

New Ethiopia PM takes on Somali strongman

Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopian PM

• Old Mutual The giant must dance • Zimbabwe Young blood tests old guard • Agribiz East Africa’s caffeine kick

t is the duty of the UK government to protect Africa must stop its homeland in whatever way it deems necessary bleeding cash to criminals says Nigeria’s – stern immigration policies inclusive [‘Brexit Ngozi OkonjoIweala brings hard choices’, TAR101 June 2018]. However, it is expected of any country or region affected by such policies to probe for favourable treatment through its present comparative advantage, which Face to face with in Africa’s case are trade agreements. Now is the perfect time for African governments to come with equal opportunities to the table by demanding the UK reconsider its hostile policies on African residents in exchange for trade agreements. Britain is already paying hefty prices for Brexit to work and to think they will reconsider rigid immigration policies at this time without highly beneficial trade-offs, is daydreaming. Africans, especially those in the diaspora, should demand actions from their governments rather than exclusively criticize the UK government. Ibrahim Anoba, Advocate, Young Voices N ° 101 • J U N E 2 018

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corruption

JEUNE AFRIQUE MEDIA GROUP

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL Africa has lost its commanding market share in world coffee production because the market has changed beyond recognition over the past 30 years [‘A caffeine kick’, TAR101 June 2018]. Africa cannot compete on volume with Vietnam, Brazil or Colombia, and must develop niche markets. Côte d’Ivoire is a prime example, exporting over 80% of its crop to the Mediterranean, where consumers like the bitter Ivorian robusta. Boosting local consumption is crucial to the sector’s health in Africa: Ethiopia has shown the way, consuming so much of its crop that buyers have to compete to secure

present start-ups to build new ones in fintech or agritech because that’s where the money is. This is a terrible trend, as […] they become robots trying to copy already established brands. [...] Early this year, I was in an accelerator programme powered by Microsoft and I met this brilliant start-up founder with a brilliant e-commerce start-up. Frustrated that he couldn’t land an investor, he exited it for an agritech start-up, something he has no interest or experience in. These are the kinds of entrepreneurs the bad African economy is breeding. Money over value. Chidi Nwaogu, Co-founder, Publiseer, Nigeria

MISSING AFRICAN VOICES

Missing in all of the debate and analysis about Black Panther [‘Black Panther: Beyond the hype,’ TAR101 June 2018] are the voices, experiences and cultural productions of Africans who understand Marvel’s ‘Africa’ as simplistic and flat. […] Edward George, African support for authentic Head of group research, Ecobank depictions of their world on the big screen should be an alternative to the Western publicity machine’s manufactured Africa. And black FICKLE STARTUPPERS American longing for depictions of The average start-up founder in Africa Africa should be sourced from vibrant African films like Supa Modo. Bridging is no longer passionate about the this divide and launching new visions problem his or her start-up is solving of African futures would realise the [‘Start-ups: Slow-motion revolution’, potential of a film like Black Panther. TAR100 May 2018]. Rather, they’re Robyn C. Spencer, passionate about investment potential. Professor of history, Lehman College, US […] Many founders have exited their supplies. But Africa must be wary of mono-cultivation – coffee is well suited to mix with other crops (e.g. cocoa, palm oil) and this should be encouraged so that farmers are not at the mercy of traders when prices fall.

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RELE AS E TH E F U L L P OTENTIA L

To respond to this month’s Question, visit www.theafricareport.com. You can also find The Africa Report on Facebook and on Twitter @theafricareport. Comments, suggestions and queries can also be sent to: The Editor, The Africa Report, 57bis Rue d’Auteuil, Paris 75016, France or editorial@theafricareport.com

After reporter Anas’ report on dodgy deals brought down the leadership of the Ghana Football Association in June, everyone who spoke to The Africa Report was unanimous in saying that graft is hurting the game

Has corruption held back African football?

Yes ERICK MWANZA Club licensing manager, Football Association of Zambia & CAF Media Manager

The abuse of authority at any level of governance has hindered the development of the sport in Africa. Countless players are denied the chance to represent their countries because an official has a certain player preference or a coach has connived with an agent to preselect a team. The result is shambolic performances and pitiable technical development. Money, donations of equipment and false promises directed at football stakeholders and offerings of other gifts have thrust football power into the hands of people whose interests lie far from advancing the game. This has resulted in the stagnation of various projects. Grassroots and youth investment has suffered; and poor workmanship on infrastructure has left leagues with a very sad state of playing fields. It is not uncommon to find stadiums and technical centres that are incomplete, derelict, without reinvestment and unsafe because resources for these programmes have had to be shared between contractors and officials who want to withhold ‘something’ for their luxury lifestyles. That poor state is evident across the continent in the kind of playing fields and turfs that characterise even the top divisions. The impact of this is discernible from the position the continent occupies in global football development. Yet, elsewhere, African talents rule the world’s top leagues.

Yes, but KAY SARPONG FIFAlicensed football agent

As bad as the evidence has been, corruption is not a problem for Africa alone. African football doesn’t have a corruption problem, football does. We have seen numerous occurrences of corruption in FIFA. It is institutional, not isolated to Africa. Africa has so much unrealised football potential. Unfortunately, the venality of some officials has stagnated the continent. We are yet to see an African team progress to the semi-final stage of a World Cup. George Weah is the first and only African player to win a Ballon d’Or. Since then, we haven’t seen an African player feature in the three-man shortlist. I don’t believe there hasn’t been a player good enough in over two decades. In the wake of the Anas investigations into corruption – which has seen the dissolution of the Ghanaian Football Association – the reaction from the public was that of expectation, as opposed to shock. That, in itself, tells a story. This is the norm. Personal gain is too often given more importance than continental progression. As a continent with a proud heritage, Africa must be its own barometer of morality. There must be a public abhorrence to corrupt practices. We have seen how effective the Time’s Up and #metoo movements have been. It will take a collective effort to effect real change and hold those who abuse their positions accountable.

Players are not chosen on merit. Some are selected on tribal lines, while others are selected based on the promise that the coach will be getting a percent of the player’s salary. Albert Fwamba Well, FIFA is itself facing corruption investigations as we speak, no? So perhaps African football only follows in the same steps as FIFA. Mukiria A. Nderitu Yes, as long as [it is] in Africa, we are all corrupt. That’s why FIFA introduced the issue of the video assistant referee [because] they knew that African referees are corrupt. Mike Maseya We all know how bad things have been and how Anas’ exposé took it to another level. It’s disappointing for a sport that is so loved by the people to be tainted this much. People have stopped going to the stadium now because they’ve lost all hope in the game. Prosper Nyarko Certainly, yes, money is stolen at all levels – sports development, training budgets, players’ salaries and incentives. Player selection is not on merit. It’s just a mess. Football administrators are busy pampering themselves. @FactZimbabwe

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MESSAGE

Sérgio Pimenta, Vice President for the Middle East and Africa IFC

While IFC’s talent pool is strong, we need to increase our focus on attracting, developing and retaining staff from the region and creating opportunities for them across IFC. In the coming years, IFC expects to grow even faster in the world’s most challenging markets. We will benefit from having a diverse workforce that knows these markets well. We also want to create career paths that allow Africans to gain experience in other parts of the world, to share the knowledge from this region, and bring back that global knowledge over the course of their careers. To this end, we have recently launched a recruitment drive aimed to attract nationals of Sub-Saharan and Caribbean countries. We are planning to fill positions in operations across the regional hubs in Africa as well as in other regions. We are also looking for staff to fill positions in business and corporate support functions. I encourage professionals to apply for positions at IFC if you feel you would fit well into the mission of creating markets and taking on the development challenges, and if you want global careers in the emerging markets where you would be privileged to make a difference.

« We want to welcome more Africans to our teams and offer them career opportunities. »

What kind of difference can qualified Sub Saharan Africans make at IFC and in international development ? There are still 390 million people in Africa living in extreme poverty, and many more globally. We need massive scale-up in investment and the roll-out of new solutions in the emerging markets. Investments in infrastructure, health and education are critical for the developing world to exploit opportunities across sectors. Technology-based solutions—such as remote health care, computer-assisted teaching, and off-grid solar—provide new opportunities for leapfrogging. As the main driver of investment and innovation, the private sector needs to play a much greater role.IFC has a central role to play across the international community in addressing the development needs and helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. IFC is implementing a new strategy to push ourselves to support investors willing to take more risk with the right incentives. The cornerstone of this new strategy — called IFC 3.0 — is to systematically create new markets, country by country and sector by sector, by tackling market and regulatory imperfections and by collaborating upstream on the policy side. Professionals at IFC are implementing this strategy, and we want more Africans to be part of our team to help lead the development community.

What skills do you expect from applicants ? The World Bank Group seeks experienced professionals. We look strong academic record at the masters or PhD level, more than five years relevant experience, and demonstrated professional achievements. IFC is especially interested in candidates with an MBA or master’s degree in finance or financial services, investment banking, private equity, or investment management. Varied international experience and an understanding of development is important. We are also looking for professionals that can support our investment activity through environmental and social or legal expertise, and in other corporate service functions. We expect candidates to be ready for a demanding, international work environment, and also one that supports them. To ensure effective development and retention of the staff we are recruiting, I have committed to sponsor a cohort of new mid-career hires who will be provided with a well-defined on-boarding and a support system to enhance their growth, satisfaction and retention.

Seynabou Ba Manager, Environmental and Social, Sub-Saharan Africa

« I am passionate about working with private sector clients on development projects across Africa. Being part of this journey to convince companies to adopt strong E&S risk management practices to improve on the ground development impacts coupled with being part of a diverse community of people that actually believe that we will make a difference in the fight against poverty are some of the reasons I joined IFC.».

International Finance Corporation 2121 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA Tel. : (202) 473-1000

For more information and to apply : www.ifc.org/careers

©DIFCOM - PICTURES : D.R.

Why are you seeking to recruit more Sub Saharan Africans to work at IFC ?

MOZAMBIQUE

On the defensive

JOAQUIM NHAMIRRE/AFP

Villages have been torched in the north

head of general elections planned for October 2019, a series of security crises have shaken the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique government of President Filipe Nyusi, which is already on the back foot due to the disastrous economic impact of the previous government’s huge secret loans (see TAR101, June 2018). Peace talks with the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo) opposition/ armed group are in doubt after the May death of former rebel leader

Afonso Dhlakama, and the government is responding with violence to a growing Islamist insurgency in the north, home to large natural gas reserves that multinationals want to exploit. At the time of his death, Dhlakama was negotiating with Nyusi about security reforms and devolution – two key issues that need to be addressed in order to create a viable peace plan. The party chose Ossufo Momade, a former guerrilla fighter, to be the interim party leader and

“If we don’t watch

Sub-Saharan Africa, world mobile-banking leader 22% 14 6 0

2014

East Asia & Paciﬁc

2017

Europe & Central Asia

South Asia

Latin America Middle East & Sub-Saharan Africa & Caribbean North Africa

out, [corruption] will engulf us. […] My report was completely ignored nored ”

Kenya’s auditor general, Edward Ouko, who loo oked into the Nationa al Youth Service scanda al, says it was not a one-off.

THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS

are worried about the boom in lending on mobile-money platforms and are pushing for the urgent roll-out of new regulations to prevent a mobile-powered financial shock. Read more about the growth of Kenya’s mobile-money sector in next month’s special finance issue of The Africa Report.

SOURCE: WORLD BANK GLOBAL FINDEX DATABASE

MOBILE MONEY LEADING THE WAY Sub-Saharan Africa remains the top region for mobilemoney activity, with nearly a fifth of the population aged 15 and upwards holding accounts in 2017. This technology is expanding the African continent’s small banked population. But even the best innovations have their downsides. Kenya’s regulators

continue talks with the government. The military is said to oppose the integration of Renamo fighters, so Momade may have doubts about the government’s demands for disarmament, which would limit Renamo’s powers to destabilise. A new rebel group, the Islamist Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, entered the fray last October. Some 30 men attacked three police stations in Mocímboa da Praia, in Cabo Delgado province. Composed of young and marginalised fighters, Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah has parallels with Nigeria’s Boko Haram. Ignoring Nigeria’s lessons with those Islamist militants, Nyusi’s government arrested nearly 500 people, closed mosques, and bombed villages suspected of hosting Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah members, while the intelligence agency is negotiating with Erik Prince, the founder of private security company Blackwater, to protect oil and gas infrastructure. Nongovernmental organisation Human Rights Watch estimates that the Islamist attacks and the government’s response to them have killed about 40 people and already displaced 3,000. Mozambique’s gas offers potential for economic growth, but, as with the government’s secret loans, many Mozambicans worry that such big deals will bring little positive change for the citizens of the country, more than half of whom live in poverty.

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DAVID GOLDBLATT/GOODMAN GALLERY

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PICTURE OF THE MONTH David Goldblatt, the legendary South African photographer whose searing portraits bore witness to apartheid, died on 25 June aged 87. This photograph: An elder of the Dutch Reformed Church walking home with his family after the Sunday service, Carnarvon, Cape Province (Northern Cape), January 1968.

PRESIDENTS WHO IS TESTING TERM LIMITS?

START-UPS FINDING FUNDS

Leader left ofﬁce when limit reached Limit not yet met by any president Retained after attempt to modify/eliminate Modiﬁed or eliminated No two-term limit Some African leaders are finding it hard to organise elections and become presidentsfor-life (see page 18). Remaining in power for more than two terms used to be the norm, but there is now a strong trend developing that opposes long-stay presidents. Oppositionists in Togo are putting pressure on President Faure Gnassingbé to introduce term limits. Meanwhile Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza successfully swept term limits away in May, opening the possibility of his staying in power until 2034. Many eyes are on the DRC, where President Joseph Kabila has overstayed the end of his mandate and is delaying elections. THE AFRICA REPORT

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SOURCE: AFRICA CENTRE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES

Under current constitution, February 2018

Startup investment in Africa Venture capital raised by African startups Number of funding rounds SOURCE: PARTECH VENTURES

Constitutional two-term limits for African leaders

Africa is but a tiny corner of the global start-up ecosystem, but fundraising continues to grow rapidly. In May, the French government announced the creation of a $76m African start-up fund. That is small beer, and company founders are still clamouring for more. Companies need different levels of funding according to the stages of their growth. Huge digital-payment company Cellulant landed $47.5m in its latest funding round in May to finance its expansion on the continent. Meanwhile, in the same month, savings-focused start-up Piggybank.ng received $1.1m to help it to develop a new line of products.

$600m

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SPOTLIGHT

Adem Mohammed Ethiopia’s spy boss is focusing on reforming the intelligence services, investigating threats and keeping an eye on a troubled neighbourhood THE TODO LIST FOR Ethiopia’s new spy chief, General Adem Mohammed, is formidable. Less than two weeks into the job, Adem had to deal with an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as Abiy was addressing more than 700,000 people in Meskel Square, Addis Ababa, on 23 June. At least 26 officials, five of them police commanders, were arrested after the grenade attack. That attack shows the high stakes as Abiy pushes through Ethiopia’s most radical changes in more than two decades. They include restructuring

the federal system, opening up the economy, releasing tens of thousands of prisoners – political and otherwise – and pursuing a peace deal with Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia is a key force in the Horn of Africa, where Somalia has been hit hard by Islamist insurgents and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Iran are jockeying for influence (see page 74). Abiy appointed Adem, an Amhara and a former commander of the air force, on 7 June, the same day that he selected a Tigrayan, General Seare Mekonnen, as the new chief

of defence staff. On state television that night, Abiy declared: “Defence doesn’t have ethnicity or race […] we die together for one country.” That said, the replacement of long-time spy chief Getachew Assefa was a bold move: he represented the power of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which led the war to oust Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. His removal signalled the shrinking power of the Tigrayan securocrats within the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). A rebellion in Oromia over the past three years helped bring an Oromo – Abiy – into the prime minister’s office. Getachew had orchestrated the crackdown on the Oromo Liberation Front, which human rights groups say included extrajudicial killings and imprisonment without due process. Under the new order – in which the hugely popular prime minister has lambasted the security services AIRCRAFT AND SPYCRAFT 2013 Named chief of the Ethiopian air force February 2018 Became a full general and was promoted to deputy chief of staff

7 June 2018 Appointed head of the National Intelligence and Security Services 13 June 2018 Abiy appoints him to the board of industrial conglomerate Metec

“The elections are going to take place without the participation of President Kabila”

“I did nothing. There are people who just like to make trouble for me”

The DRC’s prime minister, Bruno Tshibala, sought to reassure voters that President Kabila would respect consitutional term limits.

South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma says he is innocent of the many corruption charges he is now facing. THE AFRICA REPORT

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BRIEFING 13

DAVID MOININA SENGEH With a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and experience as a research scientist at IBM in Nairobi, the Sierra Leonean engineer became the country’s chief innovation officer in May.

JEAN-PIERRE BEMBA

LEON BENNETT/WIREIMAGE

South Africa’s DJ Black Coffee says prejudice is a major stumbling block for African artists internationally. N ° 10 2

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MARGARET MWANAKATWE With the Lusaka government and the IMF quarreling over Zambia’s debt figures, and a bailout hanging in the balance, finance minister Mwanakatwe must do some tough negotiating and implement austerity measures.

BRIAN GITTA The Ugandan engineer and his team at Matibabu won the $25,000 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation in June for creating a device that allows health professionals to test for malaria without taking blood.

“Next to my face on the flyer, they will put an African mask and the bongos and the congas ” •

The DRC singer is set to go on trial in France, standing accused of having sexually abused and imprisoned four of his dancers between 2002 and 2006. He is said to be the subject of an international arrest warrant.

The ICC threw out the former rebel leader's guilty verdict for war crimes in June. Bemba could soon be freed, and he might run in the DRC's presidential election planned for this year.

Honoré Banda

THE AFRICA REPORT

KOFFI OLOMIDE

for past brutalities – what chances are there of smiling reconciliation between Abiy and the securocrats from the old order? “People have to make their choices,” says an analyst formerly based in Ethiopia. “They see the pace and extent of change and realise that their options are limited. […] For the moment, with that wave of popular support, Abiy is a really powerful figure.” Insiders report that Adem has moved quickly to replace several divisional commanders within the National Intelligence and Security Services and is working hard to ensure the loyalty of the extensive middle ranks. Abiy’s reforms are hurting some of the powerful and rich in the security and business establishment. He also appointed Adem to the board of the Metals and Engineering Corporation (Metec), the troubled conglomerate billed as the vanguard of Ethiopia’s industrial renaissance. Metec failed to deliver the 10 sugar factories that the government had commissioned, despite being paid nearly in full for some of them. Adem and new Metec board chairman Ambachew Mekonnen, the industry minister, want to put the company on a sounder footing – and that is not a simple task. It will also not be an easy time for Adem to oversee the security aspects of a potential peace settlement with Eritrea. Eritrea, under mercurial leader Issayas Afewerki, fought a bloody border war with Ethiopia that ended in 2000 but still causes repercussions today. Abiy says he wants lasting peace, and a delegation from Asmara was due in Addis Ababa in late June to open discussions. Adem’s diary will certainly be very full for the next few months.

DANIEL MATJILA Some oppositionists in parliament have called for South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation (PIC) boss to be suspended and investigated for corruption. Campaigners say the internal PIC investigation was not enough.

WORLD

410

parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide emissions were recorded in April and May, marking a new record as pollutants continue to skyrocket. Such emissions were close to 300ppm in the 1950s. Countries are due to begin implementing their emission reductions under the Paris Agreement from 2020.

EUROPEAN UNION

Testing principles

ASMAA WAGUIH/REDUX-REA

Yemeni forces advance on Hodeidah on 13 May

A new Eurosceptic government in Rome, and quarreling in the governing German coalition, have thrown the European Union into renewed turmoil as migration again jumps to the top of the agenda (see page 32). A crisis was sparked in early June when Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government refused to receive a boat filled with migrants. The spark received more oxygen when Chancellor Angel Merkel faced off a threat to her government over her policy of welcoming immigrants. The stage is now set for a big battle over reforming Brussels’ asylum and immigration policy, as southern states bristle under the challenges of receiving hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia each year.

YEMEN

An end in sight?

The Saudi-led coalition of forces fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels may be close to victory, but the death and destruction from the recent conflict will cast a long shadow into the future. The United Nations (UN) estimates that eight million Yemeni risk starvation and the World Health Organisation will soon have identified 1m cases of cholera in the country. As of June, the port city of Hodeidah was one of the rebels’ last strongholds and a key space on the chessboard for its links to international supply routes. Yemeni, Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces launched a big push to retake it in June. The rebels have promised to launch more guerilla operations and fight to the death if a Saudi blockage becomes effective. The UN has been pushing for the formation of a transitional government. But with some southern forces calling for secession and an unstable Yemen potentially continuing to serve as a base for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the path to peace and stability remains perilous. 3

UNITED STATES

“You have

to take the children away ” US President Donald Trump tried to justify his policy of separating immigrant families at the US border, before reversing his position after widespread public anger.

NICARAGUA

President Daniel Ortega, a former leftist guerilla leader, provoked the country’s current political crisis by naming family members to positions of power, weakening checks on the presidency and trying to implement painful economic reforms. Nearly 200 people died in violent confrontations over the past two months, with the opposition calling for a new vote with international observers in 2019. Ortega is refusing, but his security forces have been unable to return stability to opposition strongholds like Masaya.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

Stuck in stalemate

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JULY

NELSON MANDELA INTERNATIONAL DAY 18 July

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta wants a second chance

AFRICA CEO FORUM WOMEN IN BUSINESS 2-3 July

Inspiring citizens of the world to make a difference. mandeladay.com

VINCENT FOURNIER/JA/REA

PARIS | FRANCE A new event co-hosted by Groupe Jeune Afrique, organisers of the Africa CEO Forum, and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. acfwomeninbusiness.com

NIGERIA OIL & GAS 2-5 July ABUJA | NIGERIA cwcnog.com

CAINE PRIZE FOR AFRICAN WRITING 3 July LONDON | UK Three Nigerians, a Kenyan and a South African compete for the annual literary prize. caineprize.com/

MINING ON TOP: AFRICA SUMMIT 3-4 July GENEVA | SWITZERLAND miningontopafrica.com

PRESIDENT MACRON VISITS NIGERIA 3-4 July ZANZIBAR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (ZIFF) 7-15 July ZANZIBAR | TANZANIA With a record 4,000 entries this year, new categories for TV and web series and a focus on women in cinema. ziff.or.tz

MALI PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 29 July In office since 2013, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta is running again for president, much to the displeasure of a large section of the population (see page 44). Last month, thousands of Malians, including some opposition candidates, took to the streets to protest against the 73-year old leader, who has been accused of incompetence and corruption during his first-term mandate. Former minister of finance Soumaïla Cissé has warned the administration against using force on his supporters. He is widely considered the strongest opposition candidate, and likely to pose a serious threat to Keïta in the elections. Overcoming security hurdles is another major issue for government, which faces ongoing challenges in the north of the country.

WEST AFRICA COM 10-11 July DAKAR | SENEGAL All about digital and ICT development in the sub-region. tmt.knect365.com/west-africa-com

GHANA UK-BASED ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS (GUBA) 13-14 July LONDON | UK A seminar on Africa entrepreneurship on 13 July and prize-giving on the 14th. gubaawards.co.uk

GHANA TECH SUMMIT 18-20 July ACCRA | GHANA West Africa’s largest tech summit, with 100 global speakers on the programme. ghanatechsummit.com

ZIMBABWE GENERAL ELECTIONS 30 July AUGUST

CEM AFRICA SUMMIT 1-2 August CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA Customer experience management in Africa. cemafricasummit.com

MOBILE 360 SERIES – AFRICA 17-19 July KIGALI | RWANDA Elevating mobile access and inclusion across sub-Saharan Africa. mobile360series.com/africa/

AFRICAN WORLD FESTIVAL 17-19 August DETROIT | US thewright.org

POWER-GEN AFRICA & DISTRIBUTECH AFRICA 17-19 July

AFRICA-SINGAPORE BUSINESS FORUM (ASBF) 28-29 August

JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA Twin energy sector events. powergenafrica.com

SINGAPORE Fostering trade between Africa and Asia. gems.gevme.com/ASBF18-interest

THE AFRICA REPORT

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N Cheeseman Nic

Profes ssor of democracy and international development, University of Birmingham, UK

How to rig an African election

t is a tough time to be an African dictator. Forced to hold elections against their will by civil society groups and the international community, they now have to participate in political processes that they neither believe in nor respect. Strongman rulers are challenged by increasingly assertive opposition parties and the rise of social media. Holding on to power has become more difficult – especially for the many countries in which the economy is failing to create enough new jobs. With the rise of election observation and biometric technology to prevent multiple voting, things now look very different to the heyday of authoritarianism in the early 1980s, when ‘presidents for life’ were the norm. Facing such a hostile environment, despots risk becoming an endangered species. But if you are an aspiring dictator, do not despair because you still have plenty of options left. Our new book, How to Rig an Election*, draws together the greatest hits of the most corrupt and venal leaders around the world to explain how to manipulate elections and retain power. With this knowledge, even inexperienced autocrats like Edgar Lungu can stay in power. To follow in the footsteps of past masters like Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo or Idriss Déby, all you need to do is follow these five easy lessons:

Start before anyone is looking

International observers can really undermine autocrats’ efforts to control an election outcome. Don’t worry too much about the African Union, you can rely on them to pull their punches. But if you end up with the European Union and the Carter Centre, you need to be more careful – not only will they try and catch you in the act on election day, but they will send long-term observers to the country a few months before the polls. It is therefore important to start early. The best dictators get their plans in place for the next election as soon as they have ‘won’ the last one. There is no time to waste. Tell the bureaucrats not to give out identification documents to those living in opposition-run areas to make it harder for them to register to vote. And you should extend government control over the

banks so that only your allies get access to credit. Without money, your rivals will find it almost impossible to beat you! If you do this step well, everything else will become easier – and the best thing is that these tactics go under the radar and are almost never used as evidence that the election was rigged, so you have your cake and eat it.

Manage the message

Your people will be less likely to kick you out of office if they have no idea how badly you have been performing, so make sure you get tight control of the media. Savvy dictators subsidise the state press through unnecessary government adverts and get rid of opposition media by targeting them with trumped-up charges of defamation or tax fraud. Remember that social media is not your friend. Left unattended, Twitter and Facebook will reflect popular opinion, which is a problem because many people do not like you. But don’t worry, you have more money than the opposition, so use it to buy friends and have them flood social media with positive messages. Once these networks are set up, clever dictators use them to circulate fake news detailing their accomplishments while discrediting their main rivals – a good story to start with is that the opposition is funded by the former colonial power!

Get someone else to do the nasty stuff for you

Using physical violence all the time is costly and likely to upset observers. If you do have to use physical violence, the lesson from history is to make sure that the blood doesn’t end up on your own hands. Use militias and gangs because you can give them money, send them out to do your dirty work and then deny all knowledge of it if anyone turns up asking difficult questions. The fact that these THE AFRICA REPORT

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BRIEFING 19

groups are not part of the state means that it will be harder for anyone to pin the blame on you. And even if the International Criminal Court launches an investigation, they are unlikely to be able to get the evidence they need to secure a prosecution, allowing you to get away with murder.

Pretend to be a reformer

Everyone loves a reformer, so give them what they are looking for. Tell them that you have changed, that you are an authoritarian developmentalist. Once they believe you, persuade your international allies that you would love to hold a more democratic election but that this could generate instability, undermining the prospects for economic growth – and no one would want that, would they? If you are looking for a tried and tested catchphrase as part of your rebranding, try ‘open for business’ – it works like a charm. Special tip: As part of this strategy it is advisable to do some interviews with international media in which you can mention your aspiration to emulate the inspiring example of Paul Kagame in Rwanda.

Use technology to your own advantage

You might be thinking that new election technology will make it harder to manipulate the polls in the same way as in the past. But don’t worry, the most creative dictators out there have already shown how you can turn it to your own advantage. If you can’t avoid introducing biometric verification at polling stations – thus making ghost voting impossible – just ensure that the officials you appointed to the electoral commission know when to crash the system. After that, the commission will revert back to its old manual processes and you can get all of your fake voters through before putting the electronic system back online. Special tip: Deliberately buy new technology so late that it cannot be properly tested. That way, you can blame the problem on an unspecified ‘server error’ and everyone will have to believe you. If observers tell you that they want to conduct a parallel vote tabulation to check that no one is fiddling the counting of the ballots, don’t panic! Remember that only amateurs rig at this stage. The best in the business know that they have won the election well before a vote was cast, so they do not fear a parallel count. After all, it will just provide external confirmation that you got more votes than your rivals, while saying nothing about all the other strategies you have used to manipulate your way into power. As a result, as soon as the count is announced, criticism of the election will melt away – leaving youwith a democratic legitimacy you never dreamed of. Congratulations – you are now free to govern as a respectable member of the international community. *How to Rig an Election by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas (Yale University Press) seeks to expose the way that elections are rigged around the world so that we can learn how to better defend democracy.

Five Fingers of One Hand

BRICS cooperation has established a major force in shaping the modernization of international governance By Lin Songtian

n July this year, South Africa hosts the 10th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. The venue for the summit returns to South Africa after it was hosted in Durban in 2013, and BRICS now enters its second decade as an influential group. BRICS cooperation was established as a response to the 2008 international financial crisis. South Africa joined BRICS in 2010. Since its establishment, BRICS has associated itself with Africa, the continent with the largest number of developing countries, and has become an emerging powers cooperation mechanism that reaches across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. After 10 years of development, BRICS cooperation has shed the outdated practices of political and military alliance, and instead established a new type of partnership. BRICS cooperation has walked a path of mutual respect and common progress. It is also the cooperation that has transcended the old idea of a zero-sum game and the winner taking all, and has implemented the new concept of win-win cooperation for common development. Today, BRICS has established itself as a major force in shaping the modernization of international governance.

Driving economic growth

BRICS cooperation has become the main engine driving the world’s economic growth. The combined population of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa accounts for 40 percent of the world’s total. Together, BRICS countries contribute over 50 percent to the world economic growth, which exceeds the contribution of all developed countries

combined. BRICS countries’ voting share in the World Bank and the share quota in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have respectively increased to 13.19 percent and 14.84 percent. BRICS unity and cooperation have helped strengthen the force for fairness and justice in the international community. The member countries hold high the banner of peace, development and cooperation, while maintaining effective coordination and collaboration in the United Nations (UN), G20 and other major international fora. As regards the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals, BRICS countries are actively involved. On contentious issues and major global challenges such as climate change, the five countries have demonstrated BRICS wisdom, contributed BRICS plans, and expressed BRICS voices, upholding the fundamental principles and authority of the UN and international laws, effectively safeguarding the common interest of all developing countries. In addition, the BRICS Plus initiative, proposed during last year’s BRICS Xiamen Summit, has opened up a new prospect of broadening the BRICS’ circle of friends, and has gained extensive attention and popular support.

Results oriented

BRICS cooperation has produced remarkable results and brought concrete benefits to the peoples of BRICS member states. Over the past 10 years, BRICS’ total GDP has grown by 179 percent, trade expanded by 94 percent, and

urban population increased by 28 percent, bringing the sense of achievement to over 3 billion population across the member states. With increased progress in the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership, BRICS mutually-beneficial economic cooperation is expected to produce more fruitful results. The New Development Bank (NDB) established in 2015 has already reserved sufficient capital to support member states in infrastructure development and production cooperation. A contingency reserve with $100 billion offers member states a robust line of defense against financial risks. These milestones mark major steps of emerging countries to jointly tackle global challenges through the establishment of a collective financial safety net. By doing so, the BRICS mechanism has been operating in a fundamentally different way from the global financial system long held by the West, and offers a new choice for all the developing countries in their pursuit of self-sustainable development. Unlike the World Bank and the IMF, the capitalization of the NDB is equally shared among five BRICS

The five BRICS members are like the five fingers of a hand, each one is different, but they all complement each other. The shared strategic interests of BRICS offer robust and constant strengths of cohesion, making the hand wellcoordinated and flexible. countries and accordingly, the decisions of the bank are on consultation on an equal footing and on the rules of the market. Consistent with the trend of times, the NDB fully encapsulates the principle of equal partnership, mutual benefit, and win-win cooperation, and has become an accelerator and an engine for the financial stability of BRICS countries and of the whole world. For the BRICS, South Africa is a major participant, contributor and beneficiary. More importantly, South Africa is a leader and a bridge in connecting BRICS’ development and cooperation with Africa. China is South Africa’s strongest BRICS partner. In 2017, bilateral trade between China and South Africa increased by 11.65 www.chinafrica.cn

XINHUA

Leaders of BRICS members and some developing countries pose before their dialogue during the Ninth BRICS Summit in Xiamen in September 2017

percent year on year to reach $39.17 billion. Today, China is South Africa’s largest trading partner and a major source of foreign investment and overseas tourists. In 2017, the NDB opened its Africa Regional Center in Johannesburg and committed to approve $1.5 billion of loans within 18 months of its opening. It is certain that BRICS cooperation will create more strength for the development of South Africa and Africa as a whole.

Creating unity

multilateral trade regime, and increasing instabilities and uncertainties in international political, economic and security domains. Against such complicated and acute challenges, stronger unity and cooperation among the BRICS and the developing countries are the inevitable and the only correct path forward. As the BRICS chair for this year’s BRICS, South Africa has proposed the Fourth Industrial Revolution and inclusive growth as priorities for this year’s summit, along with concrete measures to deepen BRICS Plus cooperation. These proposals have been warmly welcomed and actively supported by China and other BRICS members. China will give its full support to South Africa for a successful BRICS Summit, and will work together to inject new momentum into fully deepening BRICS strategic partnership, and creating a new chapter for BRICS cooperation. This year marks the centenary of the birth of former South African President Nelson Mandela. The BRICS’ open, inclusive, cooperative and win-win spirit is highly consistent with the Mandela spirit. It is also the long-cherished wish

of Mandela and all other revolutionary leaders of the African National Congress to fight for a more fair, just and equitable international order. We are fully convinced that, as long as the BRICS countries strengthen unity and commit to win-win cooperation for common development, BRICS cooperation will embrace new vigor and dynamism in its second golden decade of development. In this way, BRICS will become an example and make new contributions to the establishment of a new type of international relations featuring winwin cooperation and a community with a shared future for humanity. CA The author is the Chinese Ambassador to South Africa * Comments to niyanshuo@chinafrica.cn

Scan QR code to visit ChinAfrica’s website

NIGERIA

The state

Ahead of elections planned for 2019, The Africa Report presents its first ranking of Nigeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 36 states, showing what is working and what is not. We also feature a debate between heavyweights about the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current direction

Lagos: an economy the size of a country despite the tangles of red tape

of the states P

resident Muhammadu Buhari’s government and its opponents agree on one thing: that Nigeria’s system of federal government is broken. Although the central government allocates just less than half of national revenue to the state and local governments – far more than any other system of devolved power in Africa – this has not resulted in good public services or more accountability. Our ranking of Nigeria’s states (see page 24) – with Lagos at the top and Yobe at the bottom – highlights which states are fighting poverty, providing access to electricity, facilitating business and raising local revenue. In fact, few of them are doing any of these things. Although states and local governments are responsible for primary and secondary education, basic healthcare, water and sanitation, and feeder roads, the standards of these services are falling. More people are stretching their budgets to send their children to private schools and clinics. Two-thirds of

FRÉDÉRIC SOLTAN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Eromo Egbejule in Calabar

24 FRONTLINE | THE STATE OF THE STATES

ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY (%)

RANK

EASE OF DOING BUSINESS

INTERNET USERS AS SHARE OF 2016 POPULATION

RANK

99.3

24,096.9

108.6

Kwara

0.099

90.6

5,402.6

68.3

Edo

0.08

82.4

5,439.6

76.4

Ogun

0.112

13,971.6

123.3

Osun

0.043

89.4

1,887.1

51.2

Anambra

0.05

88.1

13,891.6

113

49.1

Delta

0.107

78.3

7,779.8

57.5

Rivers

0.088

65.1

11,677.3

51.2

Kogi

0.113

62.9

2,139.3

46.3

Abia

0.088

81.7

3,404.5

128

52.6

Ekiti

0.051

92.7

9,14.2

Akwa Ibom

0.099

4,244.7

103

32.5

Oyo

0.0155

66.6

2,407.9

68.7

Cross River

0.146

57.4

3,822.8

35.3

Bayelsa

0.12

52.5

3,472.4

29.9

Ondo

0.127

66.3

1,858

50.3

Imo

0.083

69.9

1,085.3

127

36.4

Nasarawa

0.251

33.2

1,347.4

89.8

Enugu

0.123

55.4

3,228.2

43.7

Plateau

0.273

36.3

2,187.9

50.2

Kaduna

0.311

53.5

2,066.1

54.6

Niger

0.324

51.7

1,058.3

63.5

Benue

0.28

22.1

1,665

40.9

Taraba

0.448

10.9

1,923.8

41.8

Kano

0.434

52.1

2,367.5

35.4

Gombe

0.471

48.1

902.7

35.8

Adamawa

0.295

37.6

1,362.8

39.9

Katsina

0.52

31.3

7,08.7

Bauchi

0.583

29.3

1,327.8

27.5

Borno

0.401

457.3

28.7

Kebbi

0.553

44.4

704.9

Ebonyi

0.265

39.2

812.4

104

Zamfara

0.605

29.1

1,040.9

22.6

Sokoto

0.548

38.9

910.3

26.4

Jigawa

0.552

607.4

17.9

Yobe

0.635

18.1

983.6

29.2

RANK

0.035

MULTIDIMENS. POVERTY INDEX

Lagos

STATE

RANK SOURCES: OXFORD POVERTY & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX/UN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME; NATIONAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS; WORLD BANK

IGR PER CAPITA (N)

F ro Fo our ranking methodology, please see www.theafricareport.com

Nigeria’s 36 states ranked

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THE STATE OF THE STATES | FRONTLINE 25

Land Cruiser states The landcruiser states are making it farthest and fastest, with a few bumps in the road. Lagos – Nigeria’s business hub – tops the charts, but its scores on the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings show that it has much to do to cut the complications of getting construction permits and other bureaucratic tasks. Lagos blows the competition away on collecting taxes. And, despite widening inequalities, it is doing better than its peers at cutting poverty and boosting education and healthcare.

Danfo states Like the ubiquitous bus that gives them their name, the danfo states are getting close to their destination quickly, breaking a few rules on the way and on a smaller budget. Their performances are mixed, with Ekiti, for example, doing well on electricity but poorly for internet access. Cross River State’s governor Ben Ayade launched his “budget of kinetic crystallisation” for 2018, but has been accused of a land grab for his Ekuri forest superhighway project.

With even smaller budgets, these okada states are moving forward but are unable to travel long distances over rough roads. Crash helmets are compulsory. Gombe, one of the best, brought in just N902.7 ($2.5) in internally generated revenue per inhabitant in 2017, giving it a small budget to invest in infrastructure. The north-eastern state of Adamawa is currently battling cholera outbreaks and communal violence between Fulani herders and settled communities.

Waka waka states The states travelling by foot are not getting anywhere very fast. Those in this group have some of the highest levels of poverty and lowest access to electricity and the internet. The UN estimates that 1.7 million people have been displaced by Boko Haram and the government’s fightback in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. With a combined unemployment and underemployment rate of 62.4% in 2017, Jigawa State is the worst place in the country to be looking for a job. THE AFRICA REPORT

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Okada states

the 36 states have been unable an agreement with the governors that to pay their employees on time. at least 50% of the first tranche would Neither has federalism opened the be used to pay arrears on salaries and pensions. Within days, seven governors door to more open or accountable were said to have used the funds for government. Most state governments other purposes. The bailout did not are at least three years behind with their audited accounts; most also refuse to help much either. According to BudgIT, answer questions about how they are a civil society monitoring group, the cumulative domestic debt of the 36 states spending public funds. rose by N1.64trn between December Today’s division of labour between the 2014 and December 2017. federal, state and local government dates back to the 1999 constitution. Every For the country’s information minister, government since then has promised to Lai Mohammed (see page 30), this gets rewrite it but failed to get a consensus to the heart of the clash between the for change. The two main parties – the centre and the states: “The constitution allows allocations to the states, but there All Progressives Congress (APC) and are no constraints on how they spend the the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – fighting the 2019 election say they want revenues.” Under the 1999 constitution, true federalism. At the minimum, this States are critically dependent on oil would give states that revenue – but even less accountable produce oil, gas and minthan the federal government erals a greater share of the revenue they produce. That the federal government gets 52.68% of is something that makes most politicians in Abuja nervous, whatever they say at the federation account – which is funded by a mix of oil and gas revenue and election time. national taxation – and it has exclusive The biggest fight will be over money powers over foreign policy, defence, the and who controls it. Two years ago, central bank and debt management, 24 state governments appealed to the federal government in Abuja for a bailout customs, air transport and seaports. The because they could not pay civil servant states get 26.72%. Local governments are salaries. Almost as many state governmeant to get 20.6% via the state governments. Together, they are responsible ments were unable to service their debts, for education, basic healthcare, water owed mainly to local commercial banks. Although the immediate cause of and agricultural services. the crisis was the crash in the oil price, Some of information minister which halved Nigeria’s export revenue, Mohammed’s colleagues want the strict the bigger causes are structural. Like the rules on spending and debt that apply to federal government, state governments the federal government to be extended to states in a new version of the Fiscal are critically dependent on oil revenue. But states are even less accountable Responsibility Act. They want tougher than the federal government. rules on disclosure and spending, and audits on state-owned enterprises. But SPENDING THE BAILOUT most state governors push back hard Like the president, governors enjoy at such moves. immunity from prosecution while in Donald Duke (see page 30), a forpower. The national assembly can promer governor of Cross River State and vide checks and balances, even when the a presidential contender in the 2019 president’s party has a clear majority in elections, wholeheartedly supports both chambers. Governors typically rule constitutional restructuring that would give more financial power to the states. supreme in their domain. In most cases, they dominate the election process, The resource-rich states, such as his own ensuring that state houses of assembly oil-producing state, would keep most of and local government authorities are their own revenues, but he argues that filled with their own allies, controlling states without natural resources can find solutions: “Look at what Kebbi is doing them with patronage from public funds. Faced with demands for a bailout with rice. If all Kebbi did was focus on rice […] Kebbi alone can fill half of Nigeria’s from the indigent state governments in 2016, finance minister Kemi Adeosun rice needs, and the state will be rich.” offered a package worth N1.75trn Kelechi Udeogu, an aide in the Rivers State governor’s office, is also a fan of ($4.8bn). Adeosun said that there was

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26 FRONTLINE | THE STATE OF THE STATES

more local control of the money. “If we had fiscal federalism, we would have becomeanadvancedanddevelopedeconomy,” he says. “This ‘mama put’ federalism we practice has ruined this country with corrupt, lazy and irresponsible leaders. I’d propose that states manage their resources and pay a percentage of this to the federal government. States should also manage internal security. These are the two most important [issues].” CAMOUFLAGE CASH

Most of the country’s security problems – including Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency in the north-east, the herder-farmer clashes in the Middle Belt and north central states, secessionist agitation in the south-east and militancy in the Niger Delta – have been shaped by political fights, often between the federal and state governments. After vice-president Yemi Osinbajo made several peacemaking trips to the Niger Delta and the government boosted the budget for the amnesty of former militants by N35bn, attacks in oil-producing areas fell off. But, according to Saatah Nubari of the Nigerian Nationalist Youth Movement, which defends Ogoni rights, “there is a growing disaffection from Ogoni to Efik, Ibibio, Itsekiris, Ijaws and other ethnic groups. There are many

The federal government doles out amounts averaging N500m monthly to governors in their capacity as chief security officers of their states. This money is not publicly accounted for and has often been used for political patronage. A joint investigation by the Civil Society L egislative Advocac y Centre and Transparency The N500m paid monthly as ‘security International found in May votes’ to state governors is often used that the federal government had paid an annual average for political patronage of $579m in so-called ‘security votes’ to state governments in 2016 militia groups forming underground. If and 2017. The organisations called the any oil company tries to explore any well in Ogoniland before the elections, that transfers ‘camouflage cash’, arguing that they fuelled corruption. might cause violence that could spill over across the Niger Delta.” Certainly, the security votes are doing little to dampen down smouldering The Middle Belt, meanwhile, has been conflicts. In many states, the federal the focus of escalating clashes between herders and farmers. A violent flaregovernment has deployed the army up in June resulted in the deaths of 87 to deal with insurgents, militants and – sometimes – cattle-rustling gangs. people. Shrinking Sahelian grasslands

are forcing herders to move south in search of grazing land for their cattle, and grazing areas and livestock paths set out in law before the civil war in 1967 have been supplanted by roads, residential settlements and factories. Some states have endorsed a new antigrazing law to establish ranches for the herders and to reduce clashes with the farmers. It is due to be implemented later

Ayodele Fayose

After working as an investment banker in the US and Nigeria, Godwin Obaseki servedd as an economic adviser to the Edo State government for seven years under governoor Adams Oshiomole. Obaseki launched public finance reforms and attracted investors to fund major power, transport and water projects. He played a key role in getting World Bank funding, along with other foreign investment, for the Azura-Edo power project. Obaseki also helped to launch a N25bn infrastructure spending programme in 2010. Close relations with Oshiomole, who is now chairman of the governing APC, helped Obaseki win the governorship in 2016. Because of Edo’s history as a spiritual centre in the Delta, Obaseki has been promoting a cultural renaissance. The Smithsonian Museum in the US, which is helping to renovate a museum in Benin City, has returned photos taken by a royal court photographer. Obaseki also personally financed a Nigerian contigent at the Venice Biennale in 2017. He has commissioned an export-processing zone in Gelegele, a project mooted in the ’60s by his grandfather, then the traditional prime minister of Benin. Under Obaseki, Edo has paid arrears to staff at the state’s tertiary education institutions. The state is financing a revamp to feeder roads in order to reduce gridlock.

The populist’s populist, Ayodele Fayose is the combative governor of Ekiti State andd a member of the opposition PDP. He revels in political controversy, fighting off claims of grand corruption and involvement in political thuggery. A self-styled man of the people, he often stops to buy food from sellers on the road and sits down to eat with locals. But his financial mismanagement has meant the state owed many months of salary arrears to civil servants. To help the cause of his deputy governor, Kolapo Olusola, in gubernbatorial elections planned for July of this year, Fayose persuaded Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike to pay off the arrears. Fayose’s second stint as governor is better starred than his first, which ended in his impeachment in 2006 for financial malfeasance by the state house of assembly – an extremely rare case of a state legislature holding the executive to account. This time, Fayose has made a place for himself on the national stage with harsh attacks on President Buhari over the management of his health problems. In April 2016, Fayose wrote to the Chinese government asking Beijing to reject a $2bn loan request from Abuja. He then delivered a strident anti-Buhari speech at a Shangai shopping mall, breaking an unwritten rule that politicians should not attack national leaders when speaking overseas.

PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP

Godwin Obaseki

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The good, the bad and the bolshy

FRONTLINE 27

With Buhari’s APC controlling 24 states there are fewer policy rows between tiers of government

In fact, many states have already set up what are effectively local security forces. These can vary from trained uniformed officers to a more informal youth force with a much looser agenda. This year, Lagos launched its Neighbourhood Safety Corps; Ekiti, Rivers and Kogi have followed suit. Anambra, under former governor Peter Obi between 2007 and 2014, claimed to cut kidnapping by using community policing.

this year, but defence minister Mansur Dan Ali has asked that implementation be suspended. Ali’s request, rejected by the Senate, raises questions about the military’s role. “The armed forces are not neutral,” retired general TheophilusDanjuma told a meeting at Taraba State University. “They collude with the armed bandits to kill people.” The herder-farmer crisis

could swing opinion sharply in next year’s elections, as the clashes spread northwards and southwards from the Middle Belt. The ferocity of those clashes has triggered calls to establish state police forces. At present, control of the police is an exclusively federal power. This year, vice-president Osinbajo has started discussions on reform.

A previous governor of Anambra, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, brought in a gang known as the Bakassi Boys to join what he called the Anambra Vigilante Squad. But they quickly got involved in political violence. Stanley Achonu, of the Open Government Partnership Nigeria secretariat, says: “This country won’t stop electing crazy people, so the fear [is] that some governors will abuse [state police].” Apart from the lack of state policing powers, former Cross River governor Duke says that Nigeria is under-policed: “With a country of almost 200 million people, the police force should be two million. That’s one policeman to 100 people. That’s the international standard.” The country has an

Abubakar Atiku Bagudu

Businesslike and straight-talking, Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai has won admirers and detractors in equal measure. An astute administrator since his days as minister of the federal capital territory, El-Rufai is an acerbic critic of the national assembly. He has taken its elected members to task for low productivity and inflated salaries and emoluments. This year, he has focused his ire on the three state senators – Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central), Sulieman Hukunyi (Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (Kaduna South) – who blocked a $350m loan request. El-Rufai called the three “enemies of democracy”, accusing them of opportunism and trying to undermine President Buhari. In turn, the three have ripped into El-Rufai for his handling of herder-farmer clashes in the state, accusing him of favouring the herders. They also lambast El-Rufai for the state’s and the federal government’s treatment of Ibrahim Zakzaky, a Shia Muslim leader in detention since late 2015 on a murder charge. Some of El-Rufai’s reforms have won widespread applause. Kaduna made history in the local government elections as the first state to introduce electronic voting. Despite Kaduna being an APC-ruled state, the PDP managed to win in four of 19 councils, a previously unheard-of feat for an opposition party.

As a financial associate of military leader General Sani Abacha, who was held responsible for diverting some $4bn of public funds into private accounts, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu has tried hard to put history behind him. Bagudu’s political opponents have been urging the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to open a full investigation into his links to the Abacha clan but have had little success. Bagudu won a senatorial seat in Kebbi on a PDP ticket, then switched horses to run for the governorship on an APC ticket in 2015. His former colleagues in the PDP have failed to get Bagudu’s 2015 election ruled illegal. However, they have been able to exploit the fact that, under his leadership, Kebbi has remained a poor performer. In response, Bagudu has launched a well-financed media campaign to laud his achievements. The most important of these are the expansion of rice production and milling in the state. Independent experts reckon that Kebbi could produce enough rice for most of Nigeria’s domestic market, boosting local incomes hugely. But, under Bagudu, the state has remained chronically dependent on federal government allocations. The best news for him, ahead of elections next year, is the wave of defections to the APC from the opposition PDP.

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TWITTER

Nasir El-Rufai

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POLITICAL VIOLENCE

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FEDERAL LITERACY BOOST

Sometimes states and the federal government can work well together. Although state and local governments are meant to run secondary and primary schools, the federal government has intervened with its universal basic education programme to boost literacy levels. With an average adult literacy rate of 59.6% – and rates far lower in the north – there is much work to do. Boko Haram (which means ‘Western education is forbidden’) has targeted schools, killing and kidnapping students in the north-east over the past decade. Nigeria’s governors (see profiles, page 26) offer a microcosm of the country’s

politics. Some of them are making personal sacrifices and leading by example, while others get rich and make noise. In Gombe in the north-east, governor Ibrahim Dankwambo has inaugurated three tertiary institutions since his election in 2011. In 2017, his family house was demolished to clear the way for a block of classrooms. In Kaduna, in the northwest, governor Nasir El-Rufai says he is determined to raise the performance of state schools. Last year, he fired 21,000

teachers for failing a competency test. His government hired 25,000 others who passed a fresh test and in February, he increased their salaries by 32.5%. The government of Aminu Tambuwal, governor of Sokoto, has recently built 800km of access roads and 90 new primary healthcare centres. Sokoto’s annual budgets for 2016 to 2018 have focused on education and healthcare. Those policies have made Tambuwal one of the most popular governors. Some

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estimated police force of 370,000 for a population of around 196 million. A direct result of the unaccountable power amassed by state governors is that they can become dominant political figures in their region and beyond, long after they leave office. Many ex-governors are referred to as political ‘godfathers’. “By the time the patron becomes governor or a federal lawmaker,” says Abdullahi Gwarzo, a former lecturer at Kano State Polytechnic, “there’s a support system behind him […] and he has to continue finding money to keep them happy.” Being governor provides a powerful platform to build a political career. Former governors, such as Bukola Saraki of Kwara and Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano, now represent their states in the legislature. Although both Kwankwaso and Saraki are still members of the APC, they have presidential ambitions, greatly strengthened by the networks they built up as governors. Other former governors, such as Babatunde Fashola in Lagos and Rotimi Amaechi in Rivers, have traded influence in their states to take on ministries in the federal government. Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, is the quintessential godfather: he has political influence on a regional and national level, as well as plenty of enemies. Under Tinubu Lagos boosted its revenue by ratcheting up incomeandpropertytaxes.Itwasamatter of financial necessity: Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria was fighting it out at the centre with the ruling PDP, which cut funding to Lagos as political punishment. One of the latest political battles between the states and the centre is a bid by the federal government to control national water resources. Ekiti, Rivers and Cross River states, all run by the opposition PDP, oppose it.

Governor Abdulazeez Yari of Zamfara State claimed that an outbreak of meningitis was divine punishment for immorality Above: The military is accused of colluding with bandits in regional conflicts Right: Borno State is building schools for more than 52,000 children orphaned by Boko Haram

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THE STATE OF THE STATES | FRONTLINE 29

insiders say he could be a serious presidential contender. In River State, governor Nyesom Wike – another first-term governor – has focused on revamping healthcare, with new maternity clinics and a new medical college. In charge of one the worst-performing states in our ranking, governor Abdulazeez Yari of Zamfara State claimed that an outbreak of meningitis was divine punishment for immorality. “There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will not send a disease that cannot becured,” hetoldjournalistsinApril2017. Zamfara, together with Sokoto and Katsina, accounted for more than 80% of the 1,166 deaths from the disease in the course of six months. In Gader Zaimer, a hamlet on the border with Kebbi, The Africa Report met meningitis patients convalescing in the heat of the sun and mothers who had delivered babies on bare stone floors due to a lack of beds. Whether states are run by reformers such as Gombe’s Dankwambo or the likes of Zamfara’s Yari, they are likely to get more power over revenue and policy through the next constitutional review. On that, all parties are agreed. Yet unless this devolution of power brings far higher accountability, making governors answerable to financially independent assemblies, the state governments’ generally poor performances could continue until the next fiscal crisis forces more fundamental change.

States and their challenges Lagos State: population growth Calling itself the ‘centre of excellence’, Lagos does not indulge in false modesty. Its projected gross domestic product this year of more than $140bn would rank it as the fifth-biggest economy in Africa. It generates 60% of its revenue from local sources like LAGOS sales and property taxes, almost as much as all the other Nigerian states put together. Middle-class Lagosians are the main beneficaries of state government spending on roads, gardens, parks and security. Those living on the margins are having it much tougher due to the government’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards lagoon-side shanties and other structures lacking official permits. With the fastest-growing urban population in Africa, much more thought will have to go in to radical change to provide basic social facilities.

Imo State: corruption Imo is the only state governed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the south-east, and its political class is at war with itself. The APC has split into rival factions, with governor Rochas Okorocha and his family empire being the main point of IMO contention. Although Imo scores in the top half of our rankings, some residents interviewed say conditions are deteriorating: roads recently built are beginning to crack, a problem attributed to substandard materials. The governnent’s closure and demolition of markets has been widely criticised, as have apparently random decisions to close roads. Most urgent are the protests at the lack of accountability on the transfer of state-owned assets such as land and buildings to individuals with close ties to senior state officials.

Benue State: herder/farmer clashes During President Buhari’s tenure, no state – not even where Boko Haram is active in the north-east – has suffered as many casualties as Benue. The state is at the heart of the pastoralist/ BENUE farmer crisis which has swept across the Middle Belt. Several villages have been razed, the locals shot or killed with machetes. Governor Samuel Ortom looks out of his depth. His calls for help to Abuja, where he is unpopular, have gone unanswered. The federal government accuses the state government of incompetence and misuse of funds, seeking to use the herder-farmer clashes as an excuse for poor conditions. Civil servants are also owed at least four months’ wages. Regular floods and communal clashes have also left Benue, the region’s breadbasket, with production shortfalls.

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Katsina State: education

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For a state that has produced two presidents – incumbent Muhammadu Buhari and the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua – Katsina is in the political spotlight, often for the wrong reasons. Former governor Ibrahim Shema is fighting charges of misappropriating KATSINA public funds and there is concern about poor educational standards. As in Kaduna, the state authorities have found that thousands of teachers lack the requisite training. Katsina government has now launched a major recruitment drive. It recently allocated a meagre N400m ($1.1m) for vocational training programmes in all 34 local government areas. The state has weak infrastructure and an under-five mortality rate of 102 children per 1,000 births. It wants to encourage wind and solar projects to improve access to electricity.

30 FRONTLINE | THE STATE OF THE STATES

DEBATE

Is Nigeria on track?

Lai Moham mmed Information minister

Nine months ahead of elections is a good time to take the political temperature. In this special debate, we talk to two leading politicians

Interviews by Eromo Egbejule and Patrick Smith

AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

This government has a track record, and our people recognise that. I have not lost a night’s sleep over the 2019 elections. There is a lot of talk about defections, but I don’t see a credible new force in the making. You cannot compare the political situation today with that of 2015. Then

there was a newly merged entity – consisting of strong parties in the south-west, the north-east and the north-west as well as defectors from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). And, critically, we had a charismatic leader in the shape of Muhammadu Buhari. I don’t see that in the opposition ranks today.

Donald Duke

Presidential conten nder

Unemployment is probably between 70% and 80%

STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP

he health of the economy, the fight against corruption and the search for security look set to dominate national election campaigning into 2019. Examining the arguments that the government and opposition will make, The Africa Report talks to Lai Mohammed, information minister and one of the founding fathers of the governing All Progressives Congress, and Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River State and a self-declared candidate for the presidential elections, as yet unaligned with a party. Both Mohammed and Duke had plenty to sayaboutallthreeissues.FromMohammed’s viewpoint, the government has deftly managed the economy, pulling it out of recession, and implemented reforms that have encouraged investment in agriculture, services and start-ups. Accordingly, the central bank is forecasting growth of 3.5% this year, two years after crashing oil prices sapped the country’s growth. Mohammed also cited an opinion poll inwhichamajorityofNigerianssurveyed said the government was succeeding in its battle against corruption. And on security, Mohammed argues that huge strides have been made over the past three years and that there is now a functioning regional alliance against the insurgents in the north-east. Duke, on the other hand, says the economy remains in deep trouble because of the lack of progress on diversification and structural change to provide capital for small to medium-sized companies, which are key creators of new jobs. He rejects claims that the anti-corruption campaign is succeeding and links the problem to wider economic failings. On security, Duke calls for more inclusive policies to bring marginalised people into the political mainstream and also argues for a far bigger police force.

Our anti-corruption strategy is working

Muhammadu Buhari ran for office on two main problems: security and corruption. You can only judge him based on what he said. Corruption, where are we? We are still as corrupt as ever. In fact, if we use the [Transparency International] integrity index, we are worse. We need to understand police in the totality of

policing […]. Incidences of kidnapping are still rampant, the herdsmen problem has reared its head even more under President Buhari’s watch. Boko Haram: President Buhari has announced about three times that it is over, but it is still there. He didn’t say much about the economy; he said he will make the naira stronger, but we all

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THE STATE OF THE STATES | FRONTLINE 31

I don’t see any political party that would merge with the PDP and challenge us. We have a government that leads with a track record on security. We inherited a situation in which Boko Haram controlled territory the size of Lebanon. Even Abuja was not safe. The UN and This Day newspaper in the capital were bombed. Whether or not the Islamic State-linked affiliate to Boko Haram is dominant or not, we think its aim is to hold territory and not just to do hit-and-run attacks. The government is up and doing. We are determined to clear the Sambisa Forest, which Boko Haram is using as its rear base. Nowhere in the world do you see a government that is able to completely eradicate terrorist attacks.

have multiple causes: demographic; environmental; and fallout from the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Sixty years ago Nigeria had less than 45 million people; today it is 190 million. So there is economic scarcity. Part of that is the far higher demand for grazing land. People recognise that our anti-corruption strategy is working. Over 1,000 cases are being investigated

it looted the treasury, so logically more PDP politicians will face prosecution. We also respect the constitution. This government believes in the separation of powers. The police have investigated political violence in Kwara State and have arrested some individuals who are making accusations against senior politicians. That is legitimate. They have the

system has helped us fight corruption. We have weeded out the ghost workers at the federal level and now we have to do the same with the state governments. We have set up efficiency units in the ministries to focus better on implementation and inter-agency cooperation. We are doing much more due diligence on procurement and other contracts.

know it couldn’t happen. What people are looking at is not the value of the currency but the stability of the currency […]. Because you are a mono-economy, you need to engage the International Monetary Fund, you need to have a buffer with them and create a confidence that, come what may, we are giving you a guarantee that we have reached a deal whereby the price of the naira will

for him should not expect as much as those who voted for him. That’s not leadership. If you don’t vote for him, it is more reason why he should win your heart and soul next time. I will use my example. In 1999, I got only 19,000 votes from an entire senatorial district, Cross River North. If you took out the vote from that district, I still won the election. What did I do? I focused

people feel that you don’t care for them. Each time a section of the country doesn’t feel carried along, they are going to react. I don’t believe in the statistics that say unemployment in Nigeria is 15%. It is probably between 70% and 80%. Even those who are employed are underemployed and underpaid. So you find that it puts a lot pressure on those who are employed

In Nigeria, which has a 20m-unit housing shortage, that is a big opportunity. Schools have to be built. We have a lot of people who are out of school. Even the student-teacher ratio is inadequate, so you need to recruit more teachers. We should be bustling with opportunities, but we are not. You have a credit system that does not allow for small and medium-scale industries. Even for the large-scale industries, [banks] charge interest in the upper 20%. In a nutshell, my focus will be to create as many jobs and include as many people into the economy as possible. That will douse a lot of things. That will even douse corruption. That will douse security threats.

Normalcy is slowly returning to the north-east. In Maiduguri, banks and schools have been repaired and are reopening. Apart from Borno State, there are no internally displaced people’s camps. The herdsmen-farmer clashes

currently by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission […]. It’s not true that we’re just targeting opposition politicians. For 16 years, just one political party, the PDP, had exclusive access to executive power. And

“Nowhere in the world do you see a government that is able to completely eradicate terrorist attacks”

“The cry for Biafra is a cry of marginalisation. The people feel you don’t care for them” remain at 350 naira to a dollar for the next 10 years. In the United States, President Buhari was asked how he will deal with the Niger Delta, the south-east etc. He made a statement that those who did not vote THE AFRICA REPORT

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right to call those individuals for questioning. We would encourage all parties to cooperate. We have implemented structural reforms and improvements in doing business. For example, the single treasury account

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because they have to support those who are unemployed. The advantage of a developing country is that it opens up opportunities for people because so many things have not been done.

MIGR ATION

Niger at a

crossroads The Africa Report examines the EUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to tamp down migration to its shores by pouring hundreds of millions of euros into an African country with a poor governance record and high rates of poverty

bdourahmane Alfa’s claustrophobic office captures the changing times in Niger’s capital, Niamey. The poky little room is an indication of the importance his own government used to attach to the border and customs police. A plaque from his Italian counterparts and a flat-screen TV playing clips from joint operations with Italian and French counter-trafficking police show how much Europe cares. The long-serving border and customs chief talks with evident pride of the new status that Europe’s migration obsession has brought him. “There’s a flourishing of meetings, international summits on migration and we’re at the core of all this,” says Alfa. Niger’s elevation to this new status is reflected in the rapidly changing panor ama of Niamey. Italy, whose commercial interests in Niger did not stretch much beyond a landmark restaurant, now has a marble-clad embassy, opened in January. Belgium has followed suit. The International Organization for Migration

(IOM) and the United Nations High CommissionerforRefugeeshavesplashed entire streets with blue and white. The reason for the surge in engagement with a country many Europeans would struggle to place is that three-quarters of the 120,000 African migrants who reached Italy in 2017 transited Niger. Raul Mateus Paula, the European Union (EU)’s top diplomat in Niger, describes the world’s fifth-poorest country as a “strategic partner”. With Mali and parts of northern Nigeria racked by Islamist insurgencies and Libya consumed by conflict, the EU has found a willing partner in the corridor between the Sahel and the Sahara. For its part, the Niger government is open to trading aid and legitimacy for a crackdown on northward migration. MOVING THE BORDER

Alfa explains how this works in practice: “We control people at our border posts, at internal checkpoints. And we conduct investigations in [key] transit areas, like Agadez and Tahoua.” The EU supports freedom of movement within its member states; it is less keen on the principle when it comes to its West African counterpart, the Economic Community of West African

States. Citizens of the 15 countries cannot be prevented from entering Niger under a 1979 protocol. But Niger has agreed to bring its border control south, in line with the desert city of Agadez. European ambassadors in Niamey now talk openly of Niger as the “southern border of the EU”. “If someone intends to head north of Agadez, towards Libya or Algeria, he will lose his right to free movement," says Alfa. The de-facto movement of the border came with Law 36, passed in 2015 with European technical input. The government implemented it a year later, under acute EU pressure. The EU’s Paula is happier to give the credit for the crackdown to Niger: “Since 2015, Niger wanted to act. They knew that trafficking networks were dangerous for the state but they were afraid, so they asked Europe for help.” For Alfa, that help came in the form of a joint investigation team with European police experts – one of 11 projects funded under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, a financing instrument billed as “addressing the root causes of irregular migration […] in Africa”. The migration focus means that Niger is receiving much more EU aid and attention than before. It is getting

Fewer migrants now cross the desert from Agadez to Libya but those who do pay more

IACOMO ZANDONINI

By Daniel Howden and Giacomo Zandonini (photos) in Agadez

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€230m ($267m) from the trust fund, far more than any of the other 27 countries it covers. Frontex, the EU border agency, has its only permanent staff in Africa based in Niamey. Total EU aid to Niger for the period of 2014-2020 is due to be to nearly $1bn. Just as unusual as the scale of the spending is the manner in which it is spent. Three-quarters of current aid is in the form of direct budget support, Paula says.WhenWesterngovernmentsgiveaid to countries with high levels of corruption, they channel it in large part through non-governmental organisations. The funding surge illustrates the broader phenomenon of the EU redirecting development budgets across Africa in pursuit of reduced migration. Under the Khartoum Process, an inter-regional forum covering the Horn of Africa and Europe, pariah regimes in Eritrea and Sudan have been recast as European allies in countering people smuggling. CITY OF A THOUSAND DOORS

But closing borders in the Sahel and Sahara is harder than some Europeans might realise. Niger has 50 border posts, says Alfa, to cover a border of 6,000km. Many of the posts do not have electricity. After recruiting 50 new agents, Alfa commands a force of 2,000, but says there is urgent need for “more vehicles and funds". If the mission looks daunting from Niamey, then 900km further north, in Agadez, it looks both improbable and deeply unpopular. “In Agadez, we are on the frontline of the fight against the illicit traffic of migrants,” says Ali Issoufou, the region’s police chief. Unlike Alfa, Issoufou is based in a city that has long survived on the income from the movement of goods and people. Curtailing migration may be popular in Brussels and Berlin – and palatable in Niamey – but it is in Agadez where the effects are actually felt. Issoufou admits it is tough to “reconcile the fight against migration with the right to free movement”. If the authorities intercept a third-country national in a pick-up heading north of Agadez, they will arrest the driver under Law 36 and confiscate the vehicle. “What counts is the intention,” Issoufou explains. “If you plan to enter Libya or Algeria, then we have to stop you.” He does not always have the equipment equal to the task. The recent capture of a Gambian smuggler only happened after Spanish agents brought

a sophisticated phone-tapping device. The police chief’s portrayal of smug“It took only 48 hours to track him down. glers does not fit well with Yacoub. A But then they left and took their beautiful former university student who could device with them,” he says. The Agadez not afford to finish his studies, he started driving migrants to Sabha, in southern chief says he detects a lack of joined-up thinking in some European support. Libya, as understudy to his uncle. In four Niger got 22 jeeps from Germany but years, this fresh-faced Tuareg young man took thousands of passengers to Issoufou’s forces frequently do not Libya. Since the 2016 crackhave the fuel to operate them. He unrolls a map on down, he says, the whole Libya Algeria the table and sketches system has changed: a circle around the city “Risks are higher, but Mali limits: “There are 13 so are rewards.” Niger Chad routes to enter the city, Yacoub says it now Burkina but I can control only takes 400 litres of fuel to Faso reach Libya, about doufour of them. Agadez is Benin Nigeria a city with a thousand ble what it used to, and doors, traffickers can enmeans moving at night and dodgingmilitarycheckpointsin ter everywhere.” Year-round Agadez, Dirkou and Séguédine. Some patrols and the threat of prosecuof his colleagues have quit, but he says tion have convinced some drivers to he does not see another way to live: “I abandon smuggling, says Issoufou, “but there are some smartasses who wasn’t offered an alternative, and this is still the only way I have to feed my family.” are still in business.” THE AFRICA REPORT

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Sallah’smovementtookpartindemonstrations against the widely criticised 2018 budget law. The law hiked taxes on staples like rice and sugar as well as utility bills, while foreign multinationals got tax breaks. Protests swelled earlier this year with as many as 35,000 people marching in Niamey. The government jailed eight leading civil-society figures and slapped a heavy police presence on their headquarters. TWIN GRIEVANCES

Clockwise from top left: Fulani tribespeople and soldiers in Agadez region; Saudi Oumar Douda and his family, refugees from Darfur, in a government compound in Agadez; a Nigerian migrant is transferred to the IOM transit centre; tally of detainees in Agadez prison office

Migration numbers, from the IOM, show a drastic reduction in the northbound traffic from Niger, falling from 290,000 in 2016 to 33,000 the next year. The knock-on effect can be seen in sea arrivals in Italy, which dropped from 180,000 in 2016 to 120,000 in 2017. BIG PLAYERS ABOVE THE LAW

But internal EU documents seen by The Africa Report acknowledge that “unpredictable and growing new routes have been emerging”. EUCAP (EU Capacity Building) Sahel, a €27m tentacle of the EU apparatus in Niger, is trying to track down where the smuggling routes have shifted to. In late 2016, it opened a heavily guarded compound in Agadez THE AFRICA REPORT

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with the only swimming pool in a city which suffers constant water shortages. Finnish diplomat Kirsi Henriksson, whoheadedaciviliansecuritymissionfor EUCAP Sahel until April of this year, says migrationhasbecomethecompletefocus of its mission. Together with Nigerien forces, the EU has been trying to identify the big players in the smuggling business. “The desert is vast,” says Henriksson. “But it talks.” All sides acknowledge that the security forces were so deeply embedded that bribes worked like an informal tax. The sentiment on the ground is that some effort has been made to reduce migrant numbers while the better-connected smugglers continue to operate. Despite EU efforts to build trust with the local community, anger is building in Agadez, which has witnessed two major rebellions in the past 30 years. Mahmoud Sallah, a traditional leader among the Tubu ethnic group, is one of the government’s most prominent critics. After being jailed for sedition, Sallah joined the Mouvement pour la Révolution Démocratique, a group created in 2017, “to deliver the country back into the hands of its own people”.

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“We’re a rich country, but we’re ruled by a corrupt government, influenced by Western powers”, says Sallah. “Why are more European countries bringing more soldiers to Niger? The reality is that most of our people are killed by poverty and bad governance, not terrorists.” The fight against terrorism is another area where Niger is attracting more attention, due to its strategic location in the Sahel. The United States air force is currently building a drone base near Agadez to serveasaWestAfricanbaseofoperations. The migration crackdown illustrates Niger’s lack of independence, Sallah argues. “The whole region of Agadez is suffering from a criminalisation of migration. The EU corrupted our government to jail our relatives, who were making a living out of it, without offering any real alternative,” he says. Brussels’ answer to these critics has beenan18-monthprogrammetoconvert those working in the migration business into the owners of small businesses. So far, it has reached just 371 people out of its own expensively compiled list of 5,118 migration workers. Those 371 people got goods, not cash. Many in Agadez say that fridges and cheap Indian motorcycles are a poor substitute for the hard-currency rewards of transporting people. Activists like Sallah see the budget protests and resentment over anti-migration measures coming together in a serious challenge to the government. The EU responded to the budget with praise. “Civil society doesn’t really understand the impact of these reforms, which will ease Niger’s dependence on foreign aid,” says EU delegation head Paula. Rhissa Feltou, the French-educated mayor of Agadez, also fails to see how the Europeans are helping: “There’s a growing popular discontent because our economy is suffering. Even if the EU would pour millions of euros here, how can you replace a whole economic sector destroyed in the blink of an eye?”

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Aristides Gomes

Prime minister, Guinea-Bissau

Solving the crisis is another story

The prime minister in Guinea-Bissau’s consensus government says upcoming elections are necessary but they will not address the country’s long-running problems

woyears,eightmonths and six prime ministers after the start of Guinea-Bissau’s latest political deadlock, veteran politician Aristides Gomes’ appointment as prime minister was hailed as a breakthrough. In April, Gomes brought together the country’s main parties to form a government. His days are already numbered, and he is due to step down in November after organising the next round of legislative elections. Six months in office will, by his admission, be too short to solve many of the issues holding the country back. The road ahead is steep. There is the political crisis that has gripped the country since 2015 due to infighting between President José Mário Vaz and his political party, the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC). Regular power and water cuts have sent young people protesting onto the streets of Bissau. The government has increased the price of cashews, the country’s main export, discouraging buyers and leaving producers with tonnes of unsold nuts. In addition, the country was dubbed a narco-state – a transit point for cocaine going from South America to Europe – several years ago and has struggled to shake off the mantle.

Gomes says his absolute priority will be to organise elections, which are set to take place on 18 November. For a figure meant to reconcile old foes and push the country forward, Gomes is uncharacteristically cynical about the prospect of reconciliation. “Elections are great, and we’ll do everything to make them hap-

“What is dividing us is that we live in a poor country where the state creates jobs” pen on time,” he tells The Africa Report, “but solving the crisis, that’s another story.” Gomes’ predecessors struggled to get the support of both President Vaz and the PAIGC, which has been marred by divisions. Former prime minister Domingos Simões Pereira heads the PAIGC wing that has been quarreling with Vaz and vetoed the nomination of Augusto Antonio Artur da Silva in February. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been mediating the Guinea-Bissau conflict and came up with the Conakry Accord in 2016 as a roadmap out of the political stalemate. ECOWAS imposed a round of travel and other sanctions on some of Vaz’s supporters after this last attempt to select a premier who did not

have the backing of a wide political consensus. Gomes’ 40-year political career mirrors the country’s troubled quest for stability since independence: at 17, he left school before graduating and joined the PAIGC, enrolling in the army to fight for national liberation. He went on to be a member of parliament, party leader and a minister in several governments. In 2005, President João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira chose him as his prime minister in a controversial appointment after Gomes defected from the ruling party. Gomes formed his own party, the Partido Republicano para a Independência e Des envolvimento, three years later. During Gomes’ political career, Guinea-Bissau witnessed military coups, a civil war and assassinations at the highest level of government. When President Vieira was murdered in his home in 2009 in an apparent revenge killing just hours after a bomb killed an army chief, Gomes left the country and settled in France. Guinea-Bissau’s semipresidential system, in which the president and the prime minister have overlapping duties, means that continued political instability is likely. RACE AGAINST TIME

The elections planned for November come with their own set of challenges. Voter registration is supposed to start in June, but a lack of funding has so far prevented the buying of the necessary equipment. The government has provided some funds for the effort, but expected international funding is still THE AFRICA REPORT

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CREATING CONSENSUS 8 November 1954 Born in Canchungo 1990 Named director general of Televisão Experimental da Guiné-Bissau May 2004 Appointed minister of territorial administration

2 November 2005 Served as Prime Minister until 13 April 2007

lacking. “We have to work fast,” Gomes says. It is a race against time: the rainy season also starts in June, making travel difficult in remote parts of the country. No matter the result of the November legislative vote and the presidential race due in 2019, divisions will run deep due to the high stakes. “What is dividing us is that we live in a poor country where the state creates jobs and there is no strong civil society. So people do politics to try and make a living,” Gomes explains. Gomes says he is up against the expectation that a high-level political post comes with opportunities for personal enrichment. “The fact that the main political parties are sharing government positions does not discourage predation,” he adds. “The struggle for government positions revolves THE AFRICA REPORT

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16 April 2018 Became Prime Minister in a government of national consensus

around ministries with a lot of funding, ministries in charge of public enterprises, development projects. This is a source of conflict and instability.” Like many of his fellow politicians, Gomes is a member of the generation of 60-year-olds who

“The fact the main parties are sharing government positions does not discourage predation” have a firm grip on the country’s affairs. He says he is convinced his various stints in government give him unparalleled insights into Guinea-Bissau’s problems, while his short mandate allows him the bold moves required to begin to solve them. “You can’t fight corruption efficiently in six months,” Gomes

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confirms, but he is trying to slow it down nonetheless. He also holds the post of minister of the economy and finances, and froze the spending of all public companies days after taking office in a move designed to return to “financial morality”. State-owned companies are now required to manage their accounts jointly with the treasury. “The aim is political stability,” the 63-year-old prime minister says. FRESH START STALLED

During the political crisis, parliament did not meet for almost three years. Since 2015, not a single school year has been completed, and social services such as education and health are collapsing. The government abandoned the Terra Ranka – meaning “fresh start” in Creole – development plan due to political in-fighting after a donor conference in 2015. Experts say drug trafficking has significantly decreased since the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s arrest of former navy chief José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto. But the country is not equipped to fight international smugglers. In three months in 2018, the authorities seized more cocaine than in the whole of 2017, but most seizures have been small and at the airport. The bulk of the trade is still said to pass through the Bissagos islands, reaching the mainland in small boats. There is only one drug-testing laboratory in the country and no force patrolling the waters to fight drug trafficking. Tackling those gargantuan challenges will mostly be left to Gomes’ successor. While planning to stay involved with the PAIGC, which he has spent most of his career with, the former researcher and professor is not considering running for election – at least not imminently: “I’ve been away from active politics for a decade. For now, I think I’ll stick to that.” Interview by Anna Pujol Mazzini in Bissau

O P INION

Dele Momodu Nigerian journalist and publisther

As French President Emmanuel Macron heads to Nigeria

ellow Nigerians, in June I spent two weeks in Paris, France. To say I love Paris is an understatement. I love to visit French restaurants, wherever I can find one. I’ve been here many times, yet I’m not tired or bored of coming to spend my quiet moments in one of the most famous tourist destinations on earth. It has been said that you must see Paris before you die. I admire the renowned patriotism, romanticism and fairness of the French. One of my biggest regrets is that I did not study French in school. It is strange how Nigeria is virtually surrounded by Frenchspeaking countries and majority of us can’t even offer greetings to our neighbours in French. This is why I’m excited about the good news that Nigeria is playing host to one of the youngest Presidents in the world, Emmanuel Macron, this July. And not just that Nigeria is set to host the biggest and best Alliance Francaise establishment in Africa. This means more Nigerians can learn about French culture and language in Lagos, our commercial capital. This is a welcome development which is bound to promote greater interaction between Nigeria and France and expand business opportunities, cultural exchange and employment. The story of President Macron is bound to inspire the youths of Africa. It is a fairy-tale. He was born on 21 December 1977 in the French village of Amiens. He had his primary education in the village and went on

to complete his final year of High School in Paris. He obtained a degree in Philosophy from the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterres La Defense. Afterwards he expressed the beginning of a literary bent which was to impact positively on his political career by being an editorial assistant to a French Philosopher writing his memoirs and also becoming a member of the editorial board of the literary magazine ESPIRIT. Subsequently, he then went on to obtain a Master’s of Public Affairs from the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po. Thereafter, he trained and graduated from the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in 2004 and during the course of that training worked at the French Embassy in Nigeria. Upon his graduation from ENA, he worked as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances. He resigned from the Civil Service in 2008 to become an investment

the Bank and put in charge of Nestle’s acquisition of a subsidiary of Pfizer. He became an instant millionaire as a result of the huge success of this Nestle transaction. The money and contacts he made as an investment banker and friend of the press were to stand him in good stead during his successful 2017 Presidential bid. His political career is the stuff of dreams for aspiring young politicians. He joined the Socialist Party of France when he was 24, but was an effective member only after 2006. In 2007, he attempted to run for office in the National Assembly on the platform of the Socialist Party, but his application was declined. He joined the staff of President Francois Hollande in 2010, but declined to be Chief of Staff to Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, that year. In 2012, he was made a Deputy Secretary-General on President Hollande’s Staff.

The story of France’s President Emmanuel Macron is bound to inspire the youths of Africa banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque. President Macron was responsible for putting together several business deals at Rothschilds. He continued his affiliation and dalliance with the Press by becoming friends with a member of the supervisory board of Le Monde. Thereafter he assisted with the recapitalisation of Le Monde and was promoted to Partner level at the bank in 2010. Also in 2010, he was appointed managing director of

Macron resigned from the government in June 2014 to continue his personal aspirations and was employed as Research Fellow at the University of Berlin with the help of his rich businessman friend. Alain Minc. In this period he declined to be a candidate for municipal elections in his hometown of Amiens. Providence was soon to smile on him as he was appointed Minister of Economy and Finance in the government of Prime

advertorial

Minister, Manuel Valls. He was the youngest Minister of the Economy since 1962. As a Minister he pushed through several significant business reforms including his signature law package known as Macron 1. Macron left the Socialist Party in August 2015 and launched his own party, En Marche, in his hometown in April 2016. It was soon clear that he was a popular candidate who engaged and resonated with all sectors of the French populace. He resigned from the government in August 2016 to launch his campaign to be President in the 2017 Presidential election. In November 2016, Macron declared that he would run as the candidate of En Marche! Macron was heavily supported by the media and business. He won 24% of the votes in the first round of the Presidential elections on 23 April 2017 and, as this was the most votes, went into a run-off election with Marine Le Pen of the National Front. He won this second round of Presidential elections on 7 May 2017 by a landslide victory of more than 66%, thus becoming the youngest ever French President. In June 2017, En Marche and its political partner, the Democratic Movement won a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, winning 350 seats out of 577. Indeed, En Marche itself won an outright majority of 308 seats. Since being elected, President Macron has stamped his unique authority and style not just on French life, but also on the European Union, international politics, business, anti-terrorism, climate change, culture,

religion and the general well-being of humanity. His stance on various issues including nuclear proliferation, terrorism and the unity of Europe has won him many admirers and increased the stature of France in the comity of Nations. President Macronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visit can therefore not be coming at a more opportune time. Nigeria is preparing for its own democratic litmus test , and it is a homecoming of

The plans for the new AllianceFranĂ§aise building to be constructed in Lagos, Nigeria

to increased business and cultural relationships between French and Nigerian citizens. Indeed, it is this sort of interaction that has facilitated the spectacular facelift that Alliance Francaise Lagos now enjoys. The Alliance Francaise Fondation is the premier cultural organisation in the world, founded on 21 July 1883,

President Macron has stamped his unique authority and style on French life and the EU sorts because of his short stint in Nigeria. It is also symbolic that his visit coincides with the beautiful renovation and refurbishment of the new Alliance Francaise building in Lagos. This is because of President Macronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s avowed belief that cultural interaction can only benefit the improvement of progressive relations between countries. Playing co-host to President Macron as he visits Nigeria, is the French Ambassador to Nigeria, His Excellency Denys Gauer. Ambassador Gauer is a seasoned International diplomat who has served in various capacities both domestically and internationally on behalf of the French Foreign Ministry. He is an adept and able diplomat whose views are well respected and cherished. He has done a lot for Franco-Nigerian relations since arriving in Nigeria as the French Ambassador which has led

and now has 800 local associations in about 133 countries. It is supported by grants from the French Government and the generosity of patrons, including its founding fathers who are notable Frenchmen like the scientist, Louis Pasteur, the publisher, Armand Colin and writers, Jules Verne and Ernest Renan. The renovated building, which is a villa now has new additions which have transformed it almost completely. There are spectacular alterations done to the amphitheatre and the internal auditorium to make them bigger and better. The accommodation has been improved and increased. And there is superb space for the library and administrative offices. Quite simply, the modernisation that has gone into the building is simply breath-taking and only befitting of an organisation with the size and stature of Alliance Francaise Fondation.

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SOUTH AFRICA

Getting the band back together President Ramaphosa wants to present a united ANC for the 2019 elections. Will he be able to erase the long shadow of former president Zuma by then?

arack Obama was elected on a tidal wave of hope, but battled in vain to manage expectations about how much he could change. Cyril Ramaphosa won his party’s internal election on a knife’s edge, and managing hope is no less tricky for him. Within hours of Ramaphosa’s December elevation to president of the governing African National Congress (ANC), the rand rose to a three-month high against the US dollar. More importantly, hope returned. Disenchantment had set in as corruption under former president Jacob Zuma tightened its grip, with even loyal ANC voters drifting off to the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Democratic Alliance (DA). Though there have been clear victories for Ramaphosa in displacing some corrupt networks – including the March sacking of the South African Revenue Service boss Tom Moyane and the shuffling off of disgraced ministers – the shine has come off in recent months. Former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, who Zuma fired for speaking out against ‘state capture’ and the infamous Gupta family, told reporters that the country should resist “Ramaphoria”, pointing out that growth was negative in the first three months of the year.

Outside the Durban court, hundreds of supporters – dressed in their ANC regalia – were singing pro-Zuma songs. Inside, former ministers like Faith Muthambi and Black First Land First leader Andile Mngxitama watched as Zuma again reminded the crowd that he is a victim. “I did nothing,” pleaded Zuma, before turning threatening. “I am not a coward. I don’t fear. I know politics. I don’t know it from a distance,” he told the crowd, warning that he might reveal some secrets that party leaders may not want the public to know. Playing the victim has saved Zuma before – especially in his fight with another former president, Thabo Mbeki. “We will forever support [Zuma]

no matter what the consequences,” Mahumapelo told supporters. That could mean political gridlock. “Look at what is happening in my province,KwaZulu-Natal[KZN],” saysMakhosi Khoza, a former member of parliament and chair of the portfolio committee on public service and administration. She quit the ANC in September after facing disciplinary measures for her criticism of Zuma. “There are so many people on the ground that have benefited from the Zuma patronage network, almost the entire leadership went to court to support him. This is a dangerous situation, and Ramaphosa has limited power.” A few hours after Zuma’s court appearance, chaos erupted at an ANC

Rand Merchant Bank economist Isaah Mhlanga says ANC divisions are driving poor investor sentiment: “We have to stop the downward momentum.” Former president Zuma and his allies who remain in powerful positions in the ANC are behind that downward tilt. In June, Zuma sat in the dock at the Durban High Court on 16 counts offraud, money laundering and racketeering as his close allies and friends kept a watchful eye on proceedings. These include the disgraced former South African Broadcasting Corporation boss Hlaudi Motsoeneng, North West Province ANC chairSupraMahumapeloandUmkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association spokesman Carl Niehaus.

PRESIDENCYZA/TWITTER

ZUMA LOYALISTS

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The NEC ‘top six’ Team Ramaphosa Cyril Ramaphosa

SOURCE: ANC

provincial conference in KZN. Many delegates booed one of Ramaphosa’s key allies, the party’s national chairman, Gwede Mantashe, when he tried to address them. With some branches complaining about voting irregularities and obtaining a court interdict to stop voting, a KZN ANC elective congress has been put off until at least July. The ANC has more members from KZN than from any other province, and the upheaval there does not bode well. So how much damage can Zuma’s supporters really do? The recent flurry of court cases to try to hang on to control of ANC provincial structures shows their strategy – keep hold of areas where they can retain patronage money and influence. Zuma’s allies rely on the provincial power bases of the ANC in places like Free State, Limpopo and Mpumalanga to apply pressure on the national party. Khoza argues that there is an unspoken cold war within the ANC, with the different factions all vying for power and contradicting each other. “The chief whip, Jackson Mthembu, did

Gwede Mantashe

Team Zuma David Mabuza?

Paul Mashatile

Jessie Duarte

Ace Magashule

some appointments in parliament, then the secretary general, Ace Magashule, withdrew some of the people that the chief whip had appointed. So who is in charge?” asks Khoza. Part of the problem is that Zuma stuffed much of the ANC hierarchy with placemen the course of his two terms. Political analyst and author Ralph Mathekga says that after the vicious political fight at the ANC national conference in December, when Zuma sought

Nelson Mandela is the memory that binds when all else is fissured: Ramaphosa and his cabinet on centenary day THE AFRICA REPORT

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to get his ex-wife Nkosazana DlaminiZuma to succeed him, Ramaphosa is still in the boxing ring. “He is [against] street fighters who know the ANC better than him. He is the opposite of Zuma, who didn’t care about the workings of government and was more interested in the inner workings of the ANC.” The key elements of this pro-Zuma faction on the political side are provincial premiers and former premiers like Mahumapelo and Magashule. On the security front, State Security Agency director general, Arthur Fraser, holds the keys, while Shaun Abrahams still sits atop the National Prosecuting Authority. RULING PARTY SPLIT

Ramaphosa is clearly trying to dislodge this merry band, but he does not have a free hand to do so. Dennis George, head of the Federation of Unions of South Africa, tells The Africa Report: “The [ANC] National Executive Committee [NEC] is usually the grouping who is able to move against people […] like they did against Jacob Zuma. If Cyril cannot get this group firmly behind his vision then it will weaken him.” The NEC ‘top six’ are Ramaphosa, deputy president David Mabuza (see box page 42), chairman Mantashe, secretary general Magashule, deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte and treasurer Paul Mashatile. Ramaphosa’s political opponents also say that his party is not yet fully behind him. DA leader Mmusi Maimane told reporters: “Internally, the ANC cannot see eye-to-eye on a litany of issues […]. The ruling party’s top six is split down the middle, and therefore many of the political decisions that influence government are reduced to a tussle between two factions within the ruling party.” Zuma’s court case and the last-minute court interdict stopping the KZN ANC conference is worrying ANC watchers. The province has been without leadership since a 2017 court ruling nullified its 2015 elective conference. And it is not just in the volatile KZN, but also in Free State that Ramaphosa has struggled to impose himself. There, suspended Dihlabeng municipality mayor Lindiwe Makhalema has been the most vocal in her opposition to Ramaphosa, calling him a “stinking sellout”. With the backing of allies like ANC stalwart Cheryl Carolus and businessman Sipho Pityana, President Ramaphosa wants to deal decisively with those who are looting the state’s

42 POLITICS

coffers. But others preach a focus on the long game, claiming the KZN case shows the president does not yet have the control he needs to shake things up. An insider on the Ramaphosa team tells The Africa Report: “He is taking people out one by one […]. He is President and has access to state power. The institutions of the state are taking them out.” PUTTING ON THE SQUEEZE

That can be seen in Ramaphosa’s boaconstrictor approach to his enemies. Take the spy boss, Fraser, who is said to hold compromising files on many top politicians. Ramaphosa has set up a ‘task team’ on which he placed key allies like former police minister Sydney Mufamadi and former spy chief Barry Gilder. It will, “seek to identify all material factors that allowed for some of the current challenges within the [State Security Agency]”, according to the presidency. In essence, the team will quietly prepare grounds for Fraser’s dismissal. Ramaphosa appears to be gathering momentum.DespiteZuma’sfriendsmaking moves in KZN, his support there is on the rise. The Congress of South African Trade Unions Western Cape leader, Tony Ehrenreich, says: “KZN was always Jacob Zuma’s base. They are fighting, but it is clear that Zuma is no longer in control and he is on the retreat […] no matter how much noise he makes.” In May, the ANC National Working Committee (which is appointed by the NEC) unanimously agreed to replace Zuma-ally Mahumapelo with the more neutral Job Mokgoro as premier of North West Province. Mahumapelo had faced violent protests about corruption and poor service delivery. Magashule could prove more difficult. One possible tactic is the use of deputy president David Mabuza – who flipped against the Zuma camp in the December polls – to neutralise Magashule’s aggressivecampaigntoundermineRamaphosa. Insiders see Magashule’s hand quietly fanning the flames of conflict in Free State and Eastern Cape, for example. Expect another ‘task team’ to investigate abuse soon in Magashule’s home base of Free State, where he is already facing criminal charges. If, as is likely, the ANC wins the elections planned for mid-2019, then Ramaphosa will have more space to act. Until then, the boa-constrictormechanismandexpectation management are his top priorities. Crystal Orderson in Cape Town

David Mabuza

Deputy president, South Africa

‘The Cat’ is on the prowl

nown as ‘The Cat’ to his As a result of the current distrust close allies, 57-year-old between Ramaphosa and Mabuza, David Dabede Mabuza Ramaphosa has not been using was one of the big winners his deputy president as a point man for of the African National Congress (ANC) policy or party progress, but rather as national elective conference in a bearer of bad news. Ramaphosa chose December 2017. A provincial baron Mabuza to meet with President Vladimir catapulted onto the national stage, Putin and explain why South Africa the former provincial ANC chairman was no longer going to spend $76bn and Mpumalanga premier is now deputy on Russian nuclear power stations, for president of the ANC and President example. Ramaphosa also sent Mabuza Cyril Ramaphosa’s number two. to Nairobi to smooth over relations. The result of the conference left Ramaphosa’s opponents in Jacob Along with his newly appointed Zuma’s camp spitting nails. Mabuza parliamentary councillor, veteran ANC was thought to be loyal to Zuma member of parliament Ebrahim but flipped mid-conference. There Ebrahim, Mabuza has brought his close is plenty of speculation but little allies from Mpumalanga along with him evidence to suggest why. to Cape Town and Pretoria as advisers. Few expected Mabuza’s career But he has not been able to shake path to lead him to where he is today. off his past, in particular, the issue of Mabuza is a former school principal political killings in the province. During and was active in the Azanian Students’ Mabuza’s first address to parliament, Organisation in the 1980s. Former in May, the Democratic Alliance’s John senior ANC leader Mathews Phosa Steenhuisen asked about the subject. was Mabuza’s mentor, but the two This provoked an angry response from have since fallen out. Under Zuma, Mabuza Ramaphosa has been was a member of the using his deputy president ‘Premier League’, a as a bearer of bad news grouping that included then Free State premier Ace Magashule and North-West Mabuza: “All I can do is to help the Province’s Supra Mahumapelo. Mabuza police to conclude or find the criminals. first backed former African Union If members here have any information Commission chair Nkosazana Dlaminion political killings […] go to the nearest Zuma to be ANC leader in December police station and lay a charge.” – he was her running mate – before Makhosi Khoza, the former ANC encouraging his province’s delegates member of parliament for Mpumalanga, to vote for their candidate of choice. is not convinced by Mabuza’s answers As a result of the conference, or his perfomance as premier. She tells Mabuza has a curious blend of strength The Africa Report that public services and weakness: weakness because in the province were a mess. Her he has now made many enemies within outspokeness there earned her death the ANC, and his survival now depends threats. “I was chased out of the on Ramaphosa’s political project; province. Several of my close and strength because he nevertheless comrades were murdered, and what offers opponents of Ramaphosa did Mabuza do? He did nothing,” says a conduit for their ambitions. Mabuza’s Khoza. “I am not casting aspersions on chequered past does not suggest him but he has been the leader. What is a man who discovered the gospel it he has done to make a difference?” Crystal Orderson in Cape Town of good governance overnight. THE AFRICA REPORT

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In the second wave of demonstrations, on 8 June, the police backed off

MALI

IBK on the backfoot

With little progress made on the security front, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s popularity is low. But a divided opposition may not be able to unseat him

he presidential election due on If that happens, the beneficiary will 29 July has burst into life with be veteran campaigner Soumaïla Cissé, who got 22% of the votes five years ago. a succession of street protests Other frontline contenders include: organised by a new opposition front information technology scientist and against President Ibrahim Boubacar former prime minister Cheick Modibo Keïta (IBK). The first time the opposiDiarra; and two other former prime tionists took to the streets of Bamako, ministers, Modibo Sidibé and Moussa at the beginning of June, the regime Mara – who is now backing Diarra. cracked down remorselessly with tear Among the many other candidates gas and baton charges, triggering local and foreign censure. is another technocrat, Hamadoun Undaunted, the opposition reconTouré, former secretary general of the International Telecommunication vened the following week, attracting Union (see interview, page 43). thousands more to their cause. This time, the police backed off. It was the clearest indicaHundreds of thousands tion of how far Keïta’s stock of eligible citizens have not has fallen in the capital and beyond, and how much yet been registered to vote he has squandered the support that won him more than 75% What all the opposition candidates, of the votes in the 2013 election. even former close allies of IBK, have Now, the main question is whether the in common is their realisation that so opposition candidates can collaborate many Malians, especially those under effectively enough to deny Keïta more 40, feel betrayed by the ruling elite and than 50% of the vote in the first round the vertiginous levels of corruption in the administration, the police and the of the presidentials. If they can force a second round of voting, many activists school system. in Bamako predict that the “tout sauf Ballan Diakité, an analyst at the Centre de Recherche d’Analyses Politiques, Keïta” (anyone but Keïta) rule will apply.

Economiques et Sociales (CRAPES) in Bamako, says the vote will be decided on prices and public services: “Food prices have been going up relentlessly. There are water and electricity shortages, especially outside Bamako. Our education system is in a bad way.” Yet IBK’s biggest failure is his regime’s inability to hold off, let alone defeat, the armed groups pushing down from the north into the more populous central region. According to Ibrahim Maïga at the Institute for Security Studies, the failure of the government has left a dangerous vacuum in the central region. “In the Mopti region, people align themselves with armed groups to protect their cattle. In places like Gao, people have used the jihadists as cover to protect their various smuggling rackets,” he says. INSECURITY, NO JOBS

A report by the UN secretary general António Guterres in June said that less than a third of state officials are in their posts in Mali’s northern and central regions. Maïga adds: “The elections depend on the capacity of the authorities to create minimal conditions of security.” That explains the despatch of some

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POLITICS 45

soldiers to Kidal, where the writ of the state does not run, and there is a plan to set up new voting centres. The economy is forecast to grow at between 4.5% and 5% over the next couple of years, buoyed by incentives for rice and cotton production as well as at least two new gold mining projects. But it is not creating nearly enough jobs. Former prime minister Mara warns thatinsecurityandaweakeconomycould trigger the country’s break up. Areas such as Kayes and Sikasso provide most of the food for Bamako but see almost nothing in return. Many government officials have fled in response to armed attacks. RADIO EXPOSÉS

“It would be nice if we got jobs when we leave university,” says Araba Keita, a journalism student at the Université de Bamako. Like so many others, she has low expectations of the government. Last year’s large protests blocked IBK’s attempts to strengthen the president’s powers and create a costly Senate. Now the demonstrators are protesting against IBK’s failure to address the employment crisis. Militants from the broad-based Collectif pour la Défense de la République, led by Mohamed Youssouf Bathily (aka Ras Bath), are radically changing politics in Mali. CRAPES’ Diakité explains: “Ras Bath has helped create a new citizen who is aware of his rights and obligations. And with his media appearances, he has uncovered information that is usually hidden.” Ras Bath’s radio show has exposed scandals and corruption at the heart of government. As the opposition gathers steam, fresh doubts are emerging about the fairness of the elections and the government’s capacity to manage them. Not only have officials fled from swathes of territory in the north and central regions, but hundreds of thousands of eligible citizens have not yet been registered to vote. Opposition politicians suspect any delay of the elections is part of a wider plot by IBK to prolong his presidency. The leading opposition candidate, Cissé, now supported by Ras Bath and a generation of younger Malian dissidents, argues that he has enough backing to force a second round of voting – in which everyone could unite against the incumbent. Others warn that IBK’s political nous and intra-opposition rivalries could easily derail Cissé’s ambitions. Bram Posthumus in Bamako

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Hamadoun Touré Presidential candidate, Mali

From Smart Africa to smart politics?

his urbane polyglot champion Asserting that Mali’s security policy of the digital revolution has failed, Touré argues for a joined-up in Africa is not an obvious socio-economic plan to deal with the insurgent politician, but desertification, destruction of grazing Hamadoun Touré insists it is time lands and water shortages that have to retire Mali’s political class. been among the background causes In its place, he wants the country of communal clashes in the central and to be run by technocrats committed northern regions. “It’s been happening to accountability and dialogue. since 1960. How come [the That is why he is running, without government doesn’t] say ‘What’s the any experience in national politics, for the “All the politicians have lost presidency in elections credibility. They want someone on 29 July. “I’ve gone through who has not been corrupt” the country and sent envoys everywhere to test the mentality link?’ and study the problem. There are of the people […]. All the politicians no mills or factories in these regions.” have lost credibility. They want Much of it goes back to bad someone new, someone who has not governance, Touré says. He points been corrupt. And the only way not to the iniquitous sale of land by corrupt to have been corrupt was not to have officials. A believer in “total been part of it, of any government. transparency”, he promises “to declare And I’m the only one today.” everything, including my own revenues He currently works as executive from day one […]. I have committed director of Smart Africa, a digital to donating 100% of my salary, half alliance of 22 member states. of it to women’s associations, half He was also secretary general to handicapped people.” of the International Telecommunication Asked about the rapid growth of Union from 2007 to 2014. With that the strict Wahhabite sects of Islam and experience, Touré is pushing for hi-tech the undermining of more open Sufi solutions to development problems. groups in Mali, Touré says: “The These include widening access average person doesn’t know the to broadband and boosting financial difference between the two […]. I was and public-service accountability. meeting with a group of our religious That is part of the ‘Open Waves’ leaders and I told them that the way campaign for a single digital market some of them were preaching can in Africa, launched in Kigali at be a little bit disturbing.” He adds: the Transform Africa summit in May. “The level of knowledge, the teaching, the tone has to be agreed […]. There Like other contenders in the should be some code of conduct.” presidential election, Touré salutes On Morocco’s application to join the the activists – Sy Kadiatou Sow of Economic Community of West African An tè A Bana and Mohamed Youssouf States, Touré argues it would be a Bathily (Ras Bath) of the Collectif pour positive step towards greater economic la Defense de la République – who are integration but adds that Algeria, Mali’s mobilising the youth vote. “They have traditional ally in North Africa, should been very courageous at a time when be part of that convergence. “I’m really the old politicians were afraid to an Africanist, I see Africa only strong speak out […]. Many old politicians when it’s a single market […]. Our had tried to hide behind them. These 54 small markets don’t make sense.” Interview by Patrick Smith people are the age of their kids.”

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Voice of the people

hen tens of thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets in November 2017, demanding the exit of President Robert Mugabe, it was another stalwart of the ruling party, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who declared: “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” Mnangagwa, now president and fighting an election on 30 July, was a beneficiary of the voice. Others have been less certain about popular opinion. Greek philosophers mused about its risks, and the Roman consul Cicero disparaged the vox populi, vox dei principle. But Western liberal politicians have used it to attack overbearing monarchs. Mnangagwa might want to revisit the idea after the elections. His campaign advisers will have read with interest an opinion survey on Zimbabwe published in June by polling group Afrobarometer, whose polls are independent and rigorous but also point to the complexity of the public view. Afrobarometer’s pollsters found 68% of Zimbabweans thought the country was going in the wrong direction under Mnangagwa’s government. And yet, when asked who they would vote for, 42% of the respondents said they would vote for Mnangagwa and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Just 30% claimed they would vote for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its presidential candidate, Nelson Chamisa. Most of the rest said they hadn’t made up their minds or didn’t want to disclose their preferences. Both sides could take heart from the poll. ZANU-PF is leading, but not by as much as it was six months ago. The MDC is closing in, but it has to make spectacular gains before election day to cause an upset. Most of those gains will have to be in the countryside, where Afrobarometer found that ZANU-PF remained dominant. Rural areas are also home to about 60% of those on the voter list. None of the above tells you what will happen on 30 July, but it is looking like a much closer contest. Interpreting the ambivalence of public opinion is always a painstaking business, Afrobarometer director Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi told

Anansi as he presented the findings of the group’s latest survey of political views across 36 countries in Africa. There is growing support for multiparty democracy in Africa, Gyimah-Boadi said. Almost two thirds of respondents saw competition between parties as essential to democracy. But less than half of those surveyed said they trusted the parties vying for voters, whether in power or opposition. Political leaders and politicians scored lower than almost every other institution in terms of public trust. Religious leaders topped the list, followed by the military and traditional leaders. Anansi was shocked to see that 68% of journalists, our doughty fraterniZimbabweans ty talking truth to power, didn’t even make it into the rankings. said they In East Africa, the news was thought worse still. There, when it asked about the value of a free media, the country Afrobarometer found declining was going support for the “right to publish views and ideas without governin the wrong ment control”. Over the past five direction, years the percentage of respondbut 42% ents defending journalists’ rights fell from 73% to 40% in Tanzania; said they from 80% to 59% in Uganda; and would still from 59% to 50% in Kenya. One of the clearest messages, vote for said Gyimah-Boadi, was that 75% Mnangagwa of respondents wanted to see the strict application of term limits on presidents. In Côte d’Ivoire, the message was still stronger. In June, President Alassane Ouattara told Jeune Afrique, our sister publication, that he was free to seek a third term. That week, 80% of Ivorian respondents told Afrobarometer (and its partner le Centre de Recherche et de Formation sur le Développement Intégré) that they favoured a strict twoterm limit on the presidency. Afrobarometer’s findings show public opinion at odds with those regimes – in Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda – who are tearing up term limits. For Ivorians, it will be a critical test when Ouattara decides whether to run for a third term in elections due in 2020.

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Morocco

JIANG CHAOYANG/GETTY IMAGES/EYEEM

With 3.35 million living in the urban area, Casablanca is Morocco’s largest city

The Casa

challenge Can the Moroccan commercial capital make it as a continental leader? A recent boycott of companies run by the elite shows that the city has a long way to go to become a haven for both the financial industry and the people it benefits, and the many thousands of others aspiring to a better life By Jon Marks in Casablanca and Honoré Banda

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he social-media phenomenon that started in April with a hashtag, #boycott, has since embarrassed Moroccan political and business elites as the turnover and profits of three major groups linked to the Makhzen (the ruling establishment – the name comes from the Sultan’s ‘storehouse’) have plummeted. Anecdotal and some empirical evidence suggest the boycott has been more widely observed in ‘marginalised’ regions, like the northeast, but its impact on the commercial capital is tangible, showing the fragility

the fragility of even the most powerful titans among the ranks of Casablanca’s business elite. The boycott targets three major players: the Afriquia gasoline chain, owned by Aziz Akhannouch, petroleum products billionaire, minister of agriculture and key palace ally; the Oulmèsmineral-waterbrandfoundedby Miriem Bensalah Chaqroun, the queen of the Casablanca business elite and boss of outgoing Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc; and iconic French-owned yogurt brand Danone. “The boycott shows the extent to which people are disillusioned with the elite who are supposed to be driving the economy ahead,” comments a civil society activist who cut his teeth with the Mouvement du 20 Février protests in 2011. “Casablanca hums with commerce and finance. It may seem at peace with itself, and has more buildings rising all the time as it continues to grow. But the city, as much as anywhere else across the kingdom, is riven by deep cleavages that will not so easily heal.” The Casablanca-Rabat-Kenitra triangle enjoys the kingdom’s highest gross domestic production per capita. Casa’s wealthiest neighbourhoods – including the well-named Californie – host grandiose real-estate plays and huge personal investments, from the bling to the exquisite, made by a business class that has profited hugely from economic liberalisation. But millions of poorer Casawis live in difficult conditions.

MORANDI TUUL ET BRUNO/HEMIS.FR

52 COUNTRY FOCUS | MOROCCO

late at night because they live in one or two rooms with 12 people. We need a much larger clinic to meet demand,” says Salma Tourougui, director of the complex’s Complexe Culturel El Ghali. “Casablanca can be seen as the New York of North Africa,” a veteran expatriate says: “You can make a better future for your kids here, whether you’re a driver or an entrepreneur.” New York has a huge financial centre, and Casablanca wants its own. Launched five years ago, Casablanca Finance City (CFC) is a symbol of the government’s investment drive and Morocco’s attempts to tap into global finance networks. It is the planned home for about 130 companies, including Allianz, Lloyd’s and Reuters, and ranks higher than Johannesburg in the Global FinancialCentresIndex.Thegovernment is offering to facilitate work visas and provides other incentives for companies

LOCAL PHILANTHROPY

The world’s most crowded cities Number of people per square kilometre, 2015

Dhaka, BANGLADESH Mumbai, INDIA Medellin, COLUMBIA 19,700

SOURCE: UN UBRAN DATA

Now linked to the megalopolis’s wealthier centre by the French-built Casablanca tramway, Sidi Moumen remains a hardscrabble suburb where, for many, life is still a grind. A decade of construction of social and low-cost private housing has transformed the neighbourhood’s landscape. It was an area of shanty towns that housed many of the Moroccan jihadist Islamists who terrorised the first decade of this century. However, shanties still rise up as newcomers arrive – some of them hoping to be speedily rehoused. At the neighbourhood’s vibrant Complexe Social Oum Keltoum – finan ced by the influential Berrada family – a committed team provides services including education and social support for small children, health care for a population under stress and adult literacy courses that are enthusiastically attended by women of all ages. “We have children here who don’t sleep until very

Manila, PHILIPPINES 14,800 Casablanca, MOROCCO 14,200

44,500 31,700

that set up in the area. On the surface CFC is making progress, but deeper down, it is struggling to get going on the ground (see page 58). Casablanca faces competition from Tangier, which is pushing a similar initiative to attract financial services companies, as well as the challenge of working with a relatively weak domestic stock exchange. The glamour of Casablanca can hide otherchallenges,likethelargepercentage of public-sector workers, the influx of rural incomers, and the failure of many small businesses, whose fortunes are moving in the other direction. The recent boycott is widely seen as a protest at risinglivingcostsandperceivedMakhzen profit-taking from monopoly positions. Benefactors like the Berrada family can play a significant role in improving people’s lives. But much more still is expected of Morocco’s first family. As your correspondent left a business lunch, an old woman asked for alms. She said her only son was out of work and could not support her. “Where is the Makhzen?”, she asked. King Mohammed VI has seen the need for the teeming city to receive extra care, unlike his father, the late King Hassan II. According to an historian, Hassan II “paid little attention to the commercial capital after the Casablanca riots in 1965, until he decided to fool everyone and build his legacy there in the 1990s.” Hassan commissioned French architect Michel Pinseau to design a giant mosque. It looms over the sea

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MOROCCO | COUNTRY FOCUS 53

Moroccans to create a new, more vibrant and open economy in the still often all-too-dusty kingdom. Many of those who make Casablanca’s business districts hum with activity are women. “Life is not always easy, but we are working towards a goal,” says a senior executive with a major bank. Committed to social reform, she nevertheless lives a life, similar to many others of her economic status, “in my Maarif [upmarket central district] bubble”. Many of Mohammed VI’s megaprojects have blossomed further to the north – the Tanger-Med container port, fast-growing and tech-driven aeronautical and auto industries and an Africafirst high-speed train that will run from Tangier to Kenitra. But Morocco will be slow to advance without the concentration of private-sector capital, know-how and drive that places Casablanca at the cutting edge of African business.

Optimistic, polluted and everexpanding, Casablanca has both problems and promise

BETTER GOVERNANCE

that buffets Casablanca’s corniche, and Hassan II controversially called on all the kingdom’s citizens to contribute a percentage of their earnings to build what was, on completion in 1993, Islam’s second-tallest mosque. The giant mosque was one of the late monarch’s only legacies to the biggest, least ‘imperial’ of Morocco’s major cities. The other legacy was the economic and social liberalisation Hassan launched in his final decade. It was “a strategy to open up Morocco so his dynasty could survive in a new age,” the historian adds. CHARITY AND OPPORTUNITY

Mohammed VI has worked with the Casablanca business elite to create a city more relevant to an increasingly wealthy local population and ever more international visitors. His allies include Afriquia boss Akhannouch, and his wife, Salwa, who in October 2011 opened the flagship Morocco Mall. The monarch seems to recognise the harder facts about life in Casa. In early THE AFRICA REPORT

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SOURCE: CITY OF CASABLANCA

ARLETA CHOJNACKA/CIT’IMAGES

A Moroccan model of a developmental state has emerged during Mohammed VI’s second decade at the helm (see TAR89, April 2017) and following the shocks of the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’, which endowed the kingdom with an Islamist-led government. While a prime minister in theory runs the government, the palace has – in many fields – retained the towering heights of strategy that must then filter down June, clad is his trademark coloured on the ground. turban and jellaba, the King inauguCasa has its place in this, as the rated a second centre to tackle drug monarch observed when opening abuse in greater Casablanca. Following parliament in October 2013: a similar project in Sidi Moumen, the “Casablanca’s transformation into an new unit, at Benslimane on the coninternational financial hub requires above all infrastructure and basic urbation’s western edge, is funded by the Fondation Mohammed services that respond V pour la Solidarité – part to global norms,” of the royal machine for Mohammed VI said. distributing largesse. It “also requires the Casablanca needs more consolidation of rules Total cost of than charity to keep its popof good governance, an Casablanca’s 2018ulation at work and help it appropriate juridical 2022 development acquire the skills that define framework and the plan, including cities with global aspiratraining of highly infrastructure, tions. With a population qualified human transport and more green spaces estimated at close to five resources.” However, million and a growing reputhe king concluded: tation as a hub for continental business, “Unfortunately, Casablanca does not greater Casablanca is emerging as a bring together all those assets.” major African city – one that is capable There have been some improvements since then. Governance of “a city that of attracting international players, from the Africa50 Fund to McKinsey and Co. has too long tended to be run by voyous and, more important still, of unleash(gangsters) has improved to a degree,” ing the talents of a younger generation says a Casablanca newspaper editor.

$5.4bn

The government is aware that it needs to do more to make life better in urban areas, and launched a pilot programme of new administrative police officers in Casablanca in January of this year. The 77 officers are working in five areas of the city, focusing on security, cleanliness and respect for building regulations and other administrative measures. The programme will soon be rolled out to the remaining areas of the city, and to other cities as part of the government’s 2015-2022 urban action plan. PRIVATE TAX COLLECTORS

A gleaming new Alstom tram on the already operational Line 1

TRANSPORT

Casa with fewer cars Big investments in public transport should transform the lives of commuters in the next few years

egular roadworks and the nearly five million people – by 2022. rising number of cars owned By then, the tram network will have by the middle classes make more than tripled in size to 107km. traffic snarl in Casablanca, especially France’s RATP Dev won a $497m contract late last year to manage and during the holy month of Ramadan. develop the tramway system. Casa The city’s tramway is a key piece of Transport director Youssef Draiss says infrastructure to get the city’s population to and from work, the goal is to reduce waittheir homes and leisure ing times to between five activities. Launched to and 10 minutes. While the tram works create much fanfare in 2012 and costing $550m, the T1 many temporary jobs, Planned length of the line of the tram is now Casa Transport says the Casablanca tram T1 line employs about 31km long and carries an network to be average of 120,000 peo600 people directly. completed by 2022. ple per day. The T2 line F re n c h c o m p a n i e s 400,000 people a day RATP and Alstom, which is set to link the seaside are expected to travel on its three lines. manufactures the tram resorts of Ain Diab in the cars, have been the big west to the working-class neighbourhood of Sidi Bernoussi, next winners in terms of contracts so far. to the airport in the east, with a travel Other firms have a chance to make time of just over an hour. theirmark.Anotherelementofthecity’s The Casa public transport sector is transport development is the planned small but growing fast. Transport is launch of a bus rapid transit (BRT) due to eat up a big share of the funds network by 2020. BRT vehicles travel in dedicated lanes to allow them to travel the city plans to devote to its 2018faster. The government launched a 2022 development plan, which has bidding round for the two lines in May a global cost of D52bn ($5.4bn). The and is set to make a decision on the Casablanca authorities predict that contract before the end of the year. For the addition of three new lines, one those stuck in rush-hour traffic jams, of which will be operational before the relief cannot come soon enough. the end of the year, will boost daily Nelly Fualdes for Jeune Afrique traveller numbers to 400,000 – for a and Honoré Banda Greater Casablanca population of

107km

SOURCE: CASA TRANSPORT

Like officials in other major Moroccan cities, Casa mayor Abdelaziz El Omari – a member of the governing Islamist party, the Parti de la Justice et du Développement – is worried about raising the funds that the city needs for its future development. He told our sister magazine Jeune Afrique that the city had failed to collect an estimated D5bn ($523.6m) that it is owed: “On the financial front, the situation is very complicated for Casablanca.” In late April, city officials debated a controversial plan to create a private company called Casa Ressources, which would be responsible for collecting unpaid taxes. Houcine Nasrallah, president of the Commission de l’Urbanisme et de l’Aménagement du Territoire, warns about the opacity of the project and told Jeune Afrique in April: “They tell us nothing or almost nothing.” Investment in infrastructure, such as the expanding tramway system, is symbolic of efforts to draw together the city’s very disparate populations, from Anfa through Maârif to Sidi Moumen and other previously marginalised neighbourhoods. But ensuring unity is far from obvious in this city of extravagant opportunities for some and hard luck for others, where – in no particular order – drug use, sexual frustration, exploitation and abuse, football violence and rising street crime all point to pressures bubbling up beneath the surface. The Makhzen has traditionally controlled such pressures, but may not have a strong connection with the average citizen. Activist Anouar Zyne, a committed child of Casa, says that there are some reasons for optimism. He argues that “people protest and agitate in their own way, and local authorities that accept this is so will make for a more inclusive future.”

THE AFRICA REPORT

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GUILLAUME MOLLÉ FOR JA

54 COUNTRY FOCUS | MOROCCO

56 COUNTRY FOCUS | MOROCCO

THE RIF

The paradox of the north

The region is home to cosmopolitan Tangier and the impoverished, cannabis-growing hinterland. Can the government reconcile and develop both areas?

he Rif has two sides. One, on the west, is symbolised by its capital, Tangier. It is a city both modern and steeped in myth. Its past has given it a rich reputation: international, cosmopolitan, intellectual, with the whiff of sulphur in the air. It has a jet set that is less bling and more arty than its Marrakech counterpart. Writers and jazz musicians still fantasise about the Tangier of the Beat Generation. But Tangier is now focused on the future. After its reconciliation with the palace under King Mohammed VI, the northern metropole has become an industrial lung of the country, second only to Casablanca. Since 2000, the state has poured big money into the region. Between

2013 and 2017, it invested some €660m ($768m) in an ‘integrated, balanced and inclusive’ development plan. The metamorphosis has been impressive. New infrastructure is bringing more life to the area. The region now hosts the bustling Tanger Med free trade zone. It is home to the largest car production line on the continent – Renault’s – and the largest wind farm. The Tangier port has become a direct rival to Spain’s Algeciras, while next door a luxury marina hosts the yachts of the elite. A new high-speed rail line is due to be launched in June. It will link Tangier to Casablanca, with trains due to make the trip in about two hours and 20 minutes. Nevertheless, with unemployment in Tangier at 11% and massive arrivals from inhabitants

94.32%

The Rif: Morocco’s second-largest economy 10% of GDP

people in urban areas

Tangier

FahsAnjra

TangierAssilah

1,070,000 M’diqFnideq Tétouan

Tétouan

TangierTétouanAl Hoceima

72.31%

34.37%

550 ,374 Al Hoceima

19%

RabatSaleKenitra CasablancaSettat Béni MellalKhénifra

399, 654

of exports

30%

MarrakechSaﬁ

Larache

Chefchaouen

of FDI

SOURCE: REGIONAL COUNCIL, 2017

More than 80% of industry employees are from other regions

FèsMeknès

DrâaTaﬁlalet

SoussMassa

Al Hoceima Ouezzane

GuelmimOued Noun LaayouneSaaguia el-Hamra

3.56 million inhabitants

(representing 10.2% of the total population)

150 km DakhlaOued ed-Dahab THE AFRICA REPORT

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Oriental

MOROCCO | COUNTRY FOCUS 57

New clinics and sports installations were the first to arrive. The government has inaugurated a new marina in El Hoceima and upgraded rural roads. Contractors rebuilt the market place of the village of Imzouren, which had been the site of clashes between locals and security services. To improve governance, local officials now have to work with the cour des comptes, the central accounting administration that wrote the initial, damning report on the region’s development projects. PORT RIVAL FOR TANGIER

rural areas, the city is struggling to profit from this economic activity. That is why interior minister Abdelouafi Laftit has launched a new plan to integrate Tangier into its rural hinterland. In reality, the success of Tangier obscures the problems of the wider, impoverished region. On the other side of the mountainous Rif region is the city of Al Hoceima. The area around this city of the central Rif is starved of resources. The people of Al Hoceima made their anger about that known in two years of restive protests, known as the ‘Hirak’, in 2016 and 2017. The death of a fish seller sparked huge demonstrations, with riot police barely able to maintain order. ROYAL OUTBURST

Al Hoceima’s nearly 400,000 inhabitants have about 40 schools, just 400 hospital beds and no university. Unemployment there is approaching 22%, and less than two out of three people in Al Hoceima are literate. Although the government launched a development plan – known as THE AFRICA REPORT

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SOURCE: MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR

DUBOIS/ANDIA.FR

An obstacle to economic development is that the central Rif is circled by mountains, with higher logistics costs making it harder to attract industry. Local businesses await the arrival of the D10bn ($1.1bn) Nador West Med port complex, which seeks to rival Tangier when it is finally operational in 2021. It will sit in front of the major east-west transport axes roughly two hours’ drive from Al Hoceima. That should stimulate the kind of economic activity that could begin to shift the region away from its Tangier now basks in dependence on drug money. the success brought by But work of a much more profound its free trade zone kind also needs to be done: reconciling the region’s people with its history. The central Rif first sought independence from the Spanish, to much national ‘Lighthouse of the Mediterranean’ – for that part of the region in October 2015, acclaim, in the 1920s. It was the victim it has made little progress. Critics say of chemical weapon attacks in this the 2016 legislative elections meant liberation war, and to this day has the politicians did not want to move on highest rates of cancer in the country. the project. It then sought independence from Whatever the reason, it provoked Morocco in the 1950s. That earned it a right royal outburst when King the wrath of King Hassan II. The reMohammed VI received gion was starved of cash a report on the delays: he and left to its own devices sacked officials and prom– essentially abandoned ised that the programme to the gangs who manage would restart. cannabis production. Investment allocated “Despite the delay, The government’s new to the Al Hoceima the plan will be finplan is to integrate the ‘Lighthouse of ished on schedule, that Al Hoceima region with the Mediterranean’ is to say in 2019,” says its western neighbours, development plan; Mounir El Bouyoussfi, Tétouan and Tangier. The 30% of its projects the director of the Agence new Agence Régionale are now complete pour la Promotion et le d’Exécution des Projets Développement du Nord. The flexible is in charge of this, with its budget of nature of the agency – a far cry from the D580m. A greater focus on regional creaking bureaucracy that characterises development is part of the new terrimuch of Morocco’s government – and torial administration plan that King its healthy budget of more than €400m Mohammed VI launched in February, have helped it to catch up somewhat. which reduced the number of regions Of the 580 projects in the development from 16 down to 12. Fahd Iraqi for Jeune Afrique plan, some 30% are now complete.

D6.5bn

58 COUNTRY FOCUS | MOROCCO

CASABLANCA

A focus on financiers Casablanca Finance City (CFC) aims to be a continental hub for finance, but it is still early days. CFC has a long way to go to catch up to global financial centres like Singapore

CFC Authority managing director Saïd Ibrahimi is vigorously promoting the zone

JEAN-MICHEL RUIZ/CAIF FOR JA

ome 150 firms – around 30 of them Moroccan – have already signed up to enjoy the expected benefits of Casablanca Finance City (CFC), the offshore financial zone whose towers are going up around a 27-floor edifice in the Anfa neighbourhood. CFC’s boosters see it as the future capital of African finance – reflecting the measure of Morocco’s wider continental ambitions. In roadshows around the financial world, CFC Authority managing director Saïd Ibrahimi and a highly articulate team have excited interest in the zone’s potential, while a global line-up of benchmarkers and award-givers have placed the nascent CFC alongside Dubai and Johannesburg as a regional finance hub, despite its relative lack of substance. CFC is the product of some deep, well-informed thinking. Ibrahimi says: “We’ve opted for a model not unlike that of Singapore, in which an ecosystem is created that brings together finance companies, the core of any financial centre, with professional services and the regional headquarters of multinationals and holding companies.”

largely insufficient when compared to the precious opportunities offered by our country’s stability and in particular its opening up to the African continent.’ Details of reforms to the CFC and the wider financial system that the central bank and the palace see as necessary to implement a successful ‘pivot to Africa’ are still awaited, but all sources agree they are in the works. The Bourse de Casablanca is working closely with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to create a more dynamic market. LSE chief executive Nikhil Rathi says PIVOT TO AFRICA “the LSE now has no relationship closer than with Casablanca”. Critics say the international plaudits do not yet match the CFC’s performance. A senior banker tells The Africa The sage of Moroccan finance, Bank Report: “Casablanca could be the place where African companies come Al-Maghrib governor Abdellatif Jouahri, wrote in his 2017 annual report that ‘to to raise funds, rather than London or make [CFC] an efficient instrument [of Johannesburg.” The stock market is Morocco’s ambitions], a vast amount being refashioned to encourage bigger of strategic work has been launched local and regional listings in order to attract international equity, for the period to 2025, which has been put off by whose implementation the bourse’s decade-plus requires a juridical status in the doldrums. New which is appropriate to products are expected to the human and finanof Moroccan include Islamic bonds and cial resources required’. investments in Africa project bonds – the latter Central bank governor since the launch offering buy-in to projects Jouahri did not mince his of Casablanca Finance as ambitious as the kingwords: CFC’s ‘achieveCity in 2010 have dom’s plan to build a gas ments have remained well been by its member below its ambitions and companies pipeline from Nigeria SOURCE: CFC

74%

across nine West African countries and link it to Europe. Casablanca is positioning itself to be a major player at a time when other bourses are looking to scale up to create pan-African markets. The Abidjan-based Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières (BRVM) is working on integration with the Ghanaian and Nigerian stock exchanges. BRVM chief executive Edoh Kossi Amenounve mirrors Moroccan ambitions when he says the BRVM “could become the second-largest bourse in Africa after Johannesburg, early in the 2020s”. One of the BRVM’s biggest listings, after Ecobank, is six separate national branches of veteran Moroccan financier Othman Benjelloun’s Bank of Africa (BOA). BOA chief executive Amine Bouabid admits that with six BOA companies listed on the BRVM “it makes sense to consolidate, especially as their performance is weak […] and there are problems of listing in a very small market that doesn’t attract investors.” Bouabid told an investor round table that for regional equities markets to boom, “[we need] to build some African champions to list with big market capitalisations to attract investors”. This is the BRVM’s ambition, but it could also be a manifesto for the CFC.

THE AFRICA REPORT

Jon Marks in Casablanca

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Sola David-Borha Nigeria

CEO for Africa, Standard Bank Group

influential women in business

The Africa Report, Jeune Afrique and the Africa CEO Forum assemble an exclusive list of the top African businesswomen who are shaping their sectors, helping a new generation of female leaders and improving their firms’ profitability By Oheneba Ama Nti Osei

hen Snowy Khoza was appointed executive chair of infrastructure company Bigen Africa Group in July 2016, nothing could have prepared her for what happened next. “The day I took office, 70% of the men resigned,” she recalled during the Women Initiative PanelattheAfrica CEOForum in Abidjan in March. Even though she had earned her stripes as a leader, her skills were still questioned. “They had never been led by a woman, and a black woman for that matter,” she added.

Leading female business executives from across the continent gathered at the Groupe Jeune Afrique event to share strategies to bridge the gender leadership gap. Khoza’s experience is not unique; most female business leaders have encountered their share of gender-based prejudices in the workplace, not to mention the uphill battle required to get to the top. From a low base, Africa has made considerable progress in recent years. Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa ranked in the top 10 worldwide for parliamentary gender equality on a 2017 United Nations (UN) list. Rwanda, which

avid-Borha has a chance to show Western banks creeping out of Africa that they are making a serious strategic error. South Africa’s Standard Bank is aggressively pushing into francophone Africa, for example. It opened a bank in Côte d’Ivoire in April of this year and is planning more in the region. “We seek to ensure that we can provide the full range of financial services to clients”, David-Borha told reporters,“comparedtointernational competitors, who have a narrow corporate strategy.” But Standard Bank, too, wants to work with the continent’s corporate giants as they expand across the continent and further afield. David-Borha is a tough Nigerian bankerschooledatAtedoPeterside’s NAL, the first merchant bank in Nigeria. When Peterside launched IBTC Chartered Bank, David-Borha joined at the start. This, she recalls, changed everything: “In IBTC, we actually had women in seniorpositions,sowewere anoutliertotheindustry.” When IBTC and S t a n d a rd B a n k ’s Stanbic Bank Nigeria merged, the path was open. David-Borha was eventually made CEOatStanbicIBTC, working at the position from 2012 to 2017. Success there clearedthewaytoher seat on the board of StandardBankGroup in Johannesburg. She still had time to work as an associate pastor at the Redeemed Christian ChurchofGod,Cityof David parish.

COMPANIES & MARKETS 61

topped the list, has been praised globally for its decision to make female empowerment one of its keys to development. In 2008, the East African country became the first government in the world to have a majority of women in the legislature. But while these strides cannot be overlooked, there is still a long way to go. According to the 2016 ‘Women Matter Africa’ report by consulting firm McKinsey & Co., ‘approximately half of women cabinet ministers hold social welfare portfolios, with arguably limited political influence, that do not open doors to top leadership roles.’ MORE WOMEN, MORE PROFIT

The picture is not much brighter in the private sector. The number of female chief executives in Africa is above the 4% global average. But at only 5%, it is nothing to boast about. Companies need a strong pipeline of female talent – from the entry level to the highest ranks – and now just 29% of senior management roles in Africa are held by women. Ibukun Awosika, chair of Nigeria’s First Bank and one of the 50 women influencers on our list, spoke of the loneliness at the top. “In my experience, the higher you get, the more alone you are. Lower down, there are more of us but not many of us will advance,” she shared at the 2017 Africa CEO Forum. This fact influenced her decision to join a group to address gender inequality in the workplace. As studies have shown, most companies are missing out on the positive effect gender parity in leadership can have on their performance. There is a direct correlation between equal gender representation on corporate boards and better financial performance. And according to McKinsey’s report, the top 25% most gender-diverse African companies have earnings over 20% higher than their industry averages before interest and taxes. In an International Finance Corporation (IFC) report entitled ‘Gender Diversity in Ghanaian Boardrooms’, Ronke-Amoni Ogunsulire, IFC’s Ghana country manager, concurs. She wrote that it is important to promote gender parity and increase participation of women on boards because it “adds value socially and economically and has the capacity to play a significant role in institutional capacity building and private-sector development”.

62 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

The UN estimates that gender inequality costs sub-Saharan Africa an average of $95bn annually and that equal participation of men and women in the economy could add as much as $28trn to the global annual gross domestic product by 2025. With these staggering figures, African leaders can no longer afford to put gender equality anywhere but at the top of their agendas.

BOLA ADESOLA

Nigeria

CEO, Standard Chartered Nigeria With more than 25 years of banking experience, Adesola is the definition of a veteran banker. Prior to joining Standard Chartered as head of its Nigeria subsidiary in 2011, she worked at First Bank Nigeria and Citibank in Nigeria and Tanzania. Adesola was recently appointed deputy chair of the board of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustain ability initiative.

MEN SPREAD THE MESSAGE

In April 2018 the UN Economic Commission on Africa, UN Women, the African Union Commission and the African Women Leaders Network launched a $500m fund that will invest in women-led companies over the next decade. This fund comes at a crucial time, as a global study of entrepreneurs has shown there is a significant funding gap,with female-ledbusinessesreceiving less than 3% of venture-capital funding. And in all of this, men cannot be left out. Tonye Cole, co-founder of Nigeria’s Sahara Group, said that the other half of the population have an important role to play in advancing gender equality in the workplace. Speaking at the 2017 Africa CEO Forum, Cole announced his company’s commitment to hit a 40-60 female-male ratio on its board. Cole said women have “a sense of loyalty, a sense of dedication and a sense of trying to bring stability into the business”. He also pledged to encourage other men to participate in the inaugural Women in Business Annual Leadership meeting, organised by the Africa CEO Forum in Paris on 2 and 3 July. The event will gather more than 200 women decision-makers from the African public and private sectors. Men can take concrete actions, too. Nigeria’s Sola David-Borha, now running Africa operations of the continent’s largest bank (see profile, page 60), recalled how, back in the 1990s, her then boss Atedo Peterside insisted he wanted women in senior leadership positions. Developped in collaboration with sister magazine Jeune Afrique and the Africa CEO Forum, this year’s list of top 50 businesswomen in Africa puts a spotlight on icons, trailblazers and game-changers who are boldly scaling the heights of the corporate world. From young CEOs of multinationals to tycoons and seasoned executives, this year’s honorees are making their mark in different industries and continue to prove that talent and success have no gender.

SALWA IDRISSI AKHANNOUCH Morocco CEO, Aksal Group

The UN estimates that gender inequality costs sub Saharan Africa an average of $95bn annually

The influential entrepreneur and wife of Morocco’s agriculture minister, Aziz Akhannouch, is the founder and CEO of Aksal Group, a leading Moroccan company specialising in luxury goods, department stores and shopping malls. Aksal owns a 50% stake in Casablanca’s Morocco Mall, one of Africa’s biggest shopping centres, where in October 2017 she launchedherownbeautyand cosmetics brand, Yan&One.

PATIENCE AKYIANU

Ghana

MD, Barclays Ghana After five years at the helm of Barclays Bank Ghana as its first female leader, Akyianu will leave the institution in September 2018. She will take ontheroleofgroupCEOatinsurance firm Hollard Ghana Holdings, parent company of Hollard Insurance Ghana and Hollard Life Assurance Ghana. Akyianu wants to help Hollard compete with the industry leaders, including the State Insurance Company, Star Assurance and Enterprise Insurance.

FOLORUNSHO ALAKIJA Nigeria

Deputy chair, Famfa Oil Alakija is ranked the secondrichest women on Forbes’ Africa Billionaires list, with an estimated net worth of $1.6bn as of January 2018. Her fortune mainly lies in Famfa Oil, an oil exploration company with a 60% stake in the deepwater Agbami oil field. Alakija has diversified her business into other fields, including publishing and fashion.

MAIDIE ARKUTU

Ghana

VP, Francophone Africa, Unilever After a three-year stint as head of Unilever’s Ghana subsidiary, Arkutu became the group’s vice-president for francophone Africa in January 2017. A trained marketer, her goal is to get more Omo washing powder and Lipton tea in consumers’ hands in Côte d’Ivoire and other major markets.

IBUKUN AWOSIKA

Nigeria

Chair, First Bank Nigeria Awosika is the first female board chair of First Bank Nigeria. A multiple-awardwinning entrepreneur, she is the founder and CEO of the Chair Centre Group, which comprises companies in retail, manufacturing and security system services. The Nigerian businesswoman is a fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and the author of a Christian book, Business His Way.

SELMA BABBOU

Tunisia

Deputy MD, Amen Group Babbou is an influential businesswoman and the deputy managing director of Amen

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Nadia Fettah

Morocco

CEO, Saham Finances

HASSAN OUAZZANI FOR JA

Group. The third-largest conglomerate in Tunisia, it has more than 3,000 employees working in sectors including agribusiness, health and banking. A chartered accountant by profession, Babbou also sits on the board of directors of the Société Africaine de Crédit Automobile.

ABIOLA BAWUAH

Nigeria

Regional CEO, West Africa, UBA In March, Bawuah was promoted to regional chief executive of United Bank for Africa, overseeing the bank’s businesses in six West African countries. Prior to her appointment she was head of the bank’s Ghanaian subsidiary, where she was credited for her stellar performance, recording 134% growth yearon-year in profit before tax.

MOSUN BELOOLUSOGA Nigeria Chair, Access Bank

Belo-Olusoga has been board chair of Access Bank since THE AFRICA REPORT

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he meteoric ascension of Nadia Fettah has surprised few who know her. From consultancy to insurance via an entrepreneurial interlude, Fettah has a reputation for efficiency and responsibility. In March 2017, she was made head of Moroccan insurance giant Saham Finances, as well as chair of Saham Assurance Maroc. She has made a client-centred approach her method for conquering markets. “In the past, insurers imported an old industry in its oldest form into the youngest continent,” she told Jeune Afrique. “But the African client has different needs to the European client.” One year later, South African insurance giant Sanlam bought Saham Finances, rocketing Fettah into the executive committee of Sanlam Emerging Markets, now part of business linking the continent from north to south. Fettah’s ambitions have grown with her responsibilities. For example, though Sanlam and Saham have combined, they remain a small player in two large markets, Nigeria and Kenya. “We can't stay small in these two markets because we want to be credible,” Fettah told reporters.

July 2015, having joined the board in November 2007. With more than 30 years of banking experience to her name, she is widely recognised as a credit and risk-management expert. She was previously head of investment banking at GT Bank, and now sits as a non-executive director on several boards as well as serving as the principal consultant for a boutique training company, KRC.

MIRIEM BENSALAH CHAQROUN Morocco Director, Holmarcom Group

Bensalah-Chaqroun wears many hats, among them airline pilot, humanitarian and a serious golf player. But she is most known for her business prowess, managing Holmarcom Group and working as CEO of Les Eaux Minérales d’Oulmès, a leading water and bottling company listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange. She also headed the federation of Moroccan business owners for six years. J U LY - AU G U S T 2 018

WIDED BOUCHAMAOUI Tunisia

Administrator, HGB Holding

Bouchamaoui was previously head of the Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat (UTICA), an influential employer’s organisation representing more than 150,000 private companies across several business sectors. UTICA was one of four members of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution to democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 ‘Jasmine Revolution’. She is an administrator at family conglomerate HGB Holding, which is active in a wide range of sectors including automobile, real estate and distribution.

YOLANDA CUBA

South Africa

CEO, Vodafone Ghana Cuba is one of South Africa’s youngest business leaders, who at only 29 years old was appointed C E O o f Mv e l a p h a n d a

Group, a Johannesburg Sto ck E xchang e-liste d conglomerate founded by politician Tokyo Sexwale. She was appointed CEO of Vodafone Ghana in June 2016 and previously served as an executive director at South African Breweries, a subsidiary of multinational brewer SABMiller.

AÏDA DIARRA

Mali

VP Africa, Western Union With an interest in business developed at an early age thanks to the help of boundary-pushing female forebears, Diarra has been at money-transfer company Western Union since 1999. Western Union is the dominant player in the sector, and Diarra told media that “new technologies and new channels” are her focus to keep the firm on top and to fend off a growing number of newer and more agile competitors. In 2016, she told Jeune Afrique that she has no plans to leave Western Union anytime soon because “Africa’s prospects are phenomenal.”

64 BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

LAURENCE DO REGO

Benin/France

Head of commercial banking, Ecobank After pointing out serious financial problems under the leadership of former boss Thierry Tanoh, the accounting expert has now been entrusted with weeding out bad debts at Ecobank’s commercial banking division. The sector represents 19% of its loans, but 39% of its bad debts. The success of the bank’s wider turnaround strategy will depend greatly on her efforts.

HEND EL SHERBINI

Egypt

CEO, Integrated Diagnostics Holdings Excelling in the fields of medicine and business, El Sherbini successfully listed the firm she founded, Integrated Diagnostics Holdings, on the London Stock Exchange in 2015. The initial public offering put a value on the firm, which provides diagnostic services in Egypt, Jordan and Sudan, at $668m. In late 2017, IDH partnered with Man Capital andthe InternationalFinance Corporation to buy Nigeria’s Echo-Scan. To succeed in

business, she told reporters: “You have to have a lot of self-confidence.”

ADA EZE

Nigeria

Telecom and Orange, with a big focus on high-speed mobile internet to capture more revenue from the fast-growing data segment.

Executive VP, West Africa, Total

Cameroon

One of the highest-ranking women in the African oil business, Ada Eze is managing French oil giant Total’s operations in the booming West African oil sector. Under the leadership of the company veteran, Total has taken aim at Guinea and Mauritania for new exploration projects. Eze is also chairman of Total Senegal, and the firm signed a deal for an ultra-deep offshore exploration block there in May of last year.

Fotso was half of a Cam eroonian business power couple with the late André Fotso, who headed the country’s biggest business lobby. She runs Telcar, a joint venture with agribusiness giant Cargill, and the firm controls about one third of the local market for cocoa exports. She is a shareholder of Ecobank Cameroon and on the board of the Port Autonome de Kribi, Cameroon’s newest deepsea port.

KATE FOTSO

NADIA FASSIFEHRI

MD, Telcar Cocoa

GHISLANE GUEDIRA

Morocco

The long-serving manager of royally owned firms launched a broadside in May against incumbent provider Maroc Telecom, suing it for disregarding government regulations on infrastructure sharing. Fassi-Fehri is overseeing more than $200m per year in investment to challenge competitors Maroc

The financial engineering specialist is both the CFO and an executive VP at the continent’s top fertiliser producer. She has to make sure the money keeps on flowing where it needs to as OCP buys a 20% stake in Spain’s Fertinagro Biotech and makes progress on its planned $3.7bn in

CEO, Inwi

Executive VP, OCP

Tabitha Karanja Kenya

CEO, Keroche Breweries

NOOR KHAMIS/REUTERS

aking on the entrenched multinationals to create the only Kenyan-owned brewery is no small challenge. After a debut in fortified wine, Karanja launched Summit Lager, whose popularity allowed the company to build a $29m factory expansion at their Naivasha headquarters. Now producing 10m litres, the company will be able to produce 110m litres. But fighting local market leader East African Breweries, owned by global drinks giant Diageo, has

investments in Ethiopia, which has huge untapped agricultural potential. With experience at the state oil company and at a royal holding company, Guedira is helping Morocco Inc. to expand around the continent and beyond.

YVONNE IKE

Nigeria/UK

MD, SSA, Bank of America Merrill Lynch The former CEO for West Africa at Renaissance Capital and managing director at JP Morgan has more than two decades of high-level experience in the financial services business. Ike’s brief does not include South Africa, but shecould help the bank to review its Africa exposure after it lost an estimated $292m on a loan to South African investor Christo Wiese.

AMY JADESIMI

Nigeria

Chief executive, LADOL Nigeria is emerging out of a big recession and oil prices are on the rise, which is good news for the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base, which provides services to the oil industry. To seize these and new opportunities, proved tough. Distributors are unwilling to take on small producers like Keroche. But that did not stop Karanja from spotting a gap in the market for low-income drinkers, who often swallow cheap and dangerous homemade concoctions. Recent years have been more of a strain, due in no small part to a sparring match with the tax authorities. But Karanja recently won her court battle with the Kenya Revenue Authoritiy and has now hired a new managing director, Sam Shollei, to run the brewery. Karanja is now mulling a regional expansion. “My dream is to see Keroche grow to the whole of Africa,” she told reporters.

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Jadesimi is preparing to list the company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange within the next two years and to expand operations, especially on its 100ha free trade zone.

JANINE KACOU DIAGOU Côte d’Ivoire

SAÏDA KARIM LAMRANI Morocco

Ru n n i n g f ra n c o p h o n e sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest insurance company is not enough for Diagou. In November 2017, she was named chair of the former West African subidiaries of Nigeria’s Diamond Bank, which NSIA purchased. The daughter of NSIA’s founder, Diagou said that she used to be in her father’s shadow but will not be defined as ‘a daughter of’: “I make progress through the strength of my work and my results.” Investors, including the National Bank of Canada, want to see if NSIA can compete with its Moroccan and South African peers.

The trained lawyer is making her way in the family business, which was founded by former prime minister Mohammed Karim Lamrani. Groupe Safari has holdings in many sectors, and she is the boss of SMEAI, a dealership that has the import rights for Jaguar, Land Rover, BMW and Mazda automobiles. She is on the board of the King’s foundation, Fondation Mohammed V.

CATHERINE LESETEDI Botswana CEO, BIHL

GHITA LAHLOU Morocco

Director, Saham Assurances, École Centrale Casablanca The director of Saham Assurances, who heads its health and offshoring units, does not limit her energies to the insurance sector. She is the president of Les Citoyens, a civil society platform to promote stronger communities. She balances all of this with her responsibilities at the

École Centrale Casablanca, an engineering school that was launched in 2015.

LIZÉ LAMBRECHTS

CEO, Santam The former chief executive of Sanlam Personal Finance runs South Africa’s top short-term insurer, which is N ° 10 2

Th e l ea d e r o f o n e of Bostwana’s top financial services groups has a tough task ahead after its investment in mircofinance institution Letshego proved less profitbale than initially predicted. Lesetedi has been leading the company since 2016. BIHL reported double-digit growth in premiums in 2017, and meanwhile Lesetedi is lobbying government to work with and strengthen the local financial sector.

DELPHINE TRAORÉ MAÏDOU Burkina Faso COO, Allianz Africa

South Africa

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Executive VP, Holding Safari, Sofipar and Cofimar

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Insurance industry expert Maïdou is the eyes and ears of German financial services company Allianz. She served as CEO of Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty J U LY - AU G U S T 2 018

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CEO, Groupe NSIA

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owned by major insurance firm Sanlam. Sanlam and Santam both took big stakes in Morocco’s Saham this year, offering the opportunity to become much bigger players in other African markets.

Martine Coffi-Studer Côte d’Ivoire

Chair, Bolloré Africa Logistics, Côte d'Ivoire

iscreet, well-connected and effective, Coffi-Studer, a former communications minister in Côte d’Ivoire has the political touch that can often help get things done on the continent. Her recent victory in the courts in a dispute over a plot of land in the economic capital Abidjan – which had been seized by regime baron Adama Bictogo – is a case in point. Listened to by both President Alassane Ouattara and his frenemy Henri Konan Bédié, Coffi-Studer also has good international links, as chair of the Ivorian subsidiary of French transport giant Bolloré Africa Logistics since 2014. The firm is now building a new logistics hub on the grounds of Abidjan’s airport, which is part of a wider plan to create eight bases in strategic areas of the continent. At Bolloré, she was vital in the ulitmately successful fight to win the contract for a second terminal at the port in Abidjan. And within the Bolloré Group as a whole, she sits on several company boards. She was confirmed at Bolloré Côte d’Ivoire for another term in office in May of this year. Her expertise is solicited elsewhere, too: Coffi-Studer sits on the board of 10 other companies, often in an exective role. These include the Compagnie Ivoirienne de Production d’Electricité, a private power-producer that sits in the industrial zone of Port-Bouët. Armed with a degree in economics, she started out in advertising, creating Océan Ogilvy in 1988. The company is now present in more than 20 African countries.

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from 2012 and became the firm’s Africa COO in 2017. Allianz has operations in 17 African countries and bought a majority stake in Nigeria’s Ensure Insurance in 2017.

ELISABETH MEDOUBADANG Cameroon

Zone director, Middle East and Africa, Orange Medou-Badang has steadily climbed the ranks at the French telecom provider Orange. She became CEO of Orange Botswana in 2009 before returning to her home country in 2013 to head up Orange’s operations there. She was named director for the Middle East and Africa this year, a post she hopes to use to spread the digital and mobile-money revolutions even further.

JALILA MEZNI

Tunisia

CEO, Société d’Articles Hygiéniques (SAS Lilas) Mezni shuns the spotlight, but her success in manufacturing personal care products has made her an influential member of the Tunisian business elite and she is one of the few women to run a listed company. SAH got a boost in 2016 when the private equity firm Abraaj acquired a stake, promising to help Mezni expand operations into the West African market. Mezni is now taking some of her fortune and investing it in the private education sector.

NICKY NEWTONKING South Africa

CEO, Johannesburg Stock Exchange The CEO of the continent’s biggest stock market is busy defending her institution after recent financial scandals, including the meltdown of Steinhoff. With that and

Irene Charnley South Africa

CEO, Smile Telecoms

he chief executive of Smile Telecoms is a born organiser. With a trade-union background, Charnley started in the world of business with the creation of the National Empowerment Consortium (NEC), a body aimed at empowering those who apartheid excluded from the commanding heights of the economy. The NEC then bought a 35% share of Johnnic Holdings – where Charnley was executive director – which in turn took a controlling stake in what became South Africa’s leading telecoms company, MTN, helping to drive its listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. And this commitment to sharing wealth has been constant. While at Johnnic, which is now called Times Media Group, she championed the Ikageng scheme, which turned 32,000 previously excluded South Africans into shareholders in Johnnic. And in 2002,

high-profile corruption cases, she says her focus is on winning people’s trust. In a recent op-ed she lamented: “We have become too sceptical of those in positions of authority […] to trust that anyone would act other than for their narrow self-interest.” She hopes that a turnaround in South Africa’s economy will soon lead to a slate of new listings.

ANTA BABACAR NGOM Senegal CEO, Sedima

The 33-year-old France and US-trained business executive is taking a family business with activities in poultry and real estate to new heights. She joined the company in 2009 and became its boss in January 2016. In that year Sedima ploughed $29m into two new factories, a flour mill and an abattoir. Sedima has operations in Mali, Equatorial Guinea and DRC, and aims to be a top West African agribusiness within a few years.

Charnley led a R4bn ($296m) management and staff buy in to MTN. While commercial director of MTN, Charnley spearheaded the group’s expansion through Africa and beyond, anchoring the company’s reputation as the continent’s biggest telecoms player. The entry into Iran, however, did not come without controversy. MTN was accused by rival Turkcell of stealing its licence, something denied by MTN and Charnley. A brief spell as the unpaid chair of the South African Broadcasting Corporation in 2009 – where she uncovered scandal after scandal – displayed her continued interest in public service. But it was not politics that Charnley pursued after stepping down as executive director at MTN in 2007. Instead, telecoms remains Charnley’s core passion: as chief executive of Smile Telecoms, Charnley has continued to push for expansion. Smile now claims one of the largest 4G networks in Africa, operating in Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and soon in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

NONKULULEKO NYEMBEZIHEITA South Africa CEO, IchorCoal

Nyembezi-Heita started her career as an engineer for IBM, but unleashed her full potential when she got into business. After her role as head of investment group Alliance Capital Management, she became CEO of ArcelorMittal South Africa, and now of IchorCoal. She is also chairman of the JSE and the first woman to chair the board of insurance company Alexander Forbes Group Holdings.

HUGUETTE OYINI

Gabon

Deputy MD, BGFIBank After 16 years at BGFIBank, Oyini took over its second most important post, as deputy to Henri-Claude Oyima. She is in charge of the efficiency of the company’s subsidiaries, a pan-African mission considering that the bank is active in seven African countries. She is also busy with digitalising the

bank’s services, and the court case by e-Doley for using its mobile transfer technology.

MARIA LUISA PERDIGÃO ABRANTES Angola

Director, U.S.-Africa Business Center The ex-wife of Angola’s former president José Eduardo dos Santos and former chair of its National Agency for Private Investment (ANIP), Perdigão-Abrantes still halfway between business and politics. In 2016 she was appointed a non-executive director of the U.S.-Africa Business Center, a US chamber of commerce programme to increase trade and investments across the Atlantic.

MARIA RAMOS

South Africa

Chief Executive, Absa (Barclays Africa) Previously director general of the National Treasury of South Africa, Ramos took over the reins of Transnet

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president of the South African Association of Investors. In December 2017 she was reappointed to Steinhoff ’s supervisory board as chairperson. She has since been busy dealing with the fraud scandal that hit the company in late 2017 and led to the resignation of its CEO, Markus Jooste.

MAMA TAJMOUATI

Morocco

CEO, Ynna Holding

in 2004. As chief executive, she restructured and partly privatised the state-owned transports company, before becoming CEO of Absa, which she is taking to the Nigerian Stock Exchange. She also serves on the board of luxury goods holding company Richemont.

Sekha is back to work with the South African telecom company, with a new unit created specifically for the ICT law specialist. She has also been working as a deputy chairperson of the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

HANIA SADEK Egypt

South Africa

GLORIA SEROBE

COO, HSBC Bank Egypt Sadek started her career as head of the IT department of HSBC Egypt in 1983, and climbed the ladder to the very top. Appointed COO in 2010, she is also an executive director of the bank. Her 35 years of banking experience and her deep understanding of the company makes her a powerful woman in Egypt's finance landscape.

FELLENG SEKHA

Founder, executive director of Wiphold and CEO of Wipcapital A member of various boards such as Sasol Mining and South African arms manufacturer Denel, Serobe is known for her contribution to the empowerment of black women. She founded Wiphold(WomenInvestment Portfolio Holdings) in 1994, which is majority black- and women-owned.

HEATHER SONN

South Africa

After leaving her executive position at MTN in 2007,

Sonn is the former CEO of Legae Securities and

Head of regulatory affairs and public policy, MTN

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Chair, Steinhoff International

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At 81, Tajmouati is the most senior businesswoman on our list. In 2016 she inherited her husband’s empire, comprising more than 30 firms owned by Ynna Holding, of which she was already an active member. The company covers many sectors, such as real estate, construction, hotels, petrochemicals and retail, making its diversity the driver of its growth.

LAMIA TAZI Morocco

Managing director, Sothema Trained as a pharmacist, Tazi went on to head Sothema, the Moroccan pharmaceutical company founded by her father, Omar Tazi. She has restructured the company’s exports division, while supervising the Dakar factory and launching the production of cancer medications. She is also the new secretary general of the Moroccan Association of Pharmaceutical Industry.

BINTA TOURÉ NDOYE Mali

Managing director, Oragroup The Malian banker led the Malian and Togolese subsidiaries of Ecobank before arriving at Oragroup, owned by Emerging Capital Partners. Ndoye’s main goal is to

amplify the bank’s growth and to widen its customer base from small and medium-sized enterprises to individuals through the digitalisation of its services.

MARY VILAKAZI

South Africa

COO, FirstRand Last July Vilakazi assumed the role of COO of FirstRand, leaving her position as deputy CEO of MMI. The chartered accountant is the first female executive to join the bank’s board and will be responsible for internal audit, regulatory and enterprise risk management, as well as the group’s insurance and rest-of-Africa strategies.

SHARON WAPNICK

South Africa

Founding partner, Tugendhaft Wapnick Banchetti & Partners Wapnick has built her empire both through her father’s wealth and her own hard work. A real-estate mogul, Alec Wapnick founded City Property, of which Wapnick is now a director. She is also the chair of Octodec Investments, a JSE-listed real estate investment trust, and an attorney and senior partner of TWB.

RITA MARIA ZNIBER

Morocco

CEO, Diana Holding As CEO of the Moroccan spirits and agribusiness company, Diana Holding, Zniber started off strong, becoming the majority shareholder of French spirits company Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits. Her new goal is to internationalise Morocco’s oldest wine and spirits company, while keeping the whole value chain, from production to distribution, under the strict control of Diana Holding.

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Arunma Oteh Treasurer and Vice-President, World Bank Group

Private capital should be the new mantra The World Bank treasurer champions a new approach in which the Bank doesn’t just lend money, it backs private investment in sustainable development projects

oney is needed – and it is no trifling sum. The funding gap for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – 17 global targets set by the United Nations with a deadline of 2030 – is estimated at $1.4trn. The ability of African countries to raise their shares of these sums is limited. The continent’s frontline ‘cheap money’ institution, the African Development Bank (AfDB), lent $7.4bn in 2017, a record for the Bank. But that is a drop in the ocean of the continent’s needs. Meeting Africa’s demand for roads, railways, power stations, water and sanitation, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure requires spending of $120bn a year, according to the AfDB. There is, however, money out there. This includes, “$26trn of assets under management that is invested in low or negative yielding securities,” says Arunma Oteh, treasurer and a vice-president of the World Bank. Oteh has championed a financial engineering approach to the funding gap: this means taking the World Bank’s concessional finance arm for the poorest countries – known as the International Development Association (IDA) – and using its

funds as collateral to raise money on international markets. TheformerregulatorofNigeria’s stock exchange is a no-nonsense advocate for bringing fresh capital to bear on the world’s problems. Wielding the cut-glass English accent of Nigeria’s elite, she unpacks the World Bank’s current opportunities. The basic equation is that the IDA is respected, and a growing class of investor wants more than just financial returns – so why not launch a bond that will go a little further in meeting the global funding gap for development? The result, the first paper issued by the IDA, was a $1.5bn benchmark bond launched in April of this year. LOW, LOW RISK

It was successful because the IDA is seen as a sure bet. When Oteh took the idea to the ratings agencies, they were “fascinated by the repayment history”, she says. Because the IDA has ‘favoured creditor’ status as part of the World Bank Group, debtor countries make sure to repay their loans. “If you don’t pay back the IDA, it’s unlikely that anybody else will want to lend,” says Oteh. There are of course exceptions to this rule of thumb, notably Zimbabwe, which owes the World Bank $1.1bn.

TREASURE KEEPER 1992 Started her career at the AfDB 2001 Named treasurer of the AfDB 2006 Promoted to AfDB group vice-president 2010 Appointed head of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission September 2015 Chosen to be World Bank treasurer

The IDA also has $160bn in equity it has built up since it was established in 1960, which represents a sizeable balance sheet to lend against. And the same teams that manage the World Bank’s non-concessional lending, known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, also manage the IDA, helping to earn it the coveted AAA status, the top tier of low risk lending, which helps an institution borrow money at cheaper rates. In addition, because it lends all over the world, the IDA spreads its risk all over the world, another comfort for investors. The IDA also, “applied to the Bank for International Settlements to get a 0% risk weighting, which means that bank treasuries can hold the bond without having to set aside capital,” says Oteh.

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to historic lows by quantitative easing – the bond-purchasing programmes of central banks worldwide – the IDA bond yield of 19.6 basis points above five-year US treasury bills make it attractive. Still, $1.5bn remains a matchstick where a tree is needed. It represents just 0.1% of the $1.4trn needed for countries to meet the SDGs. But attractingprivate capital to developing economies should be the new development finance mantra, Oteh says: “We can derisk your project. We can de-risk a country. We can make you feel comfortable because we’re a partner. We have experience.”

AKIO KON/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

AFRICAN CAPITAL MARKETS

There is also a growing class of investors who seek social and environmental impact, not just financial returns. “In the last five years,we’vebeenabletoimmunise 250 million children. We’ve been able to give health services to 600 million people,” says Oteh. This trend was first driven by Nordic countries that wanted to invest in projects that focused on the environment. That led to the first ‘green bonds’ being launched by the World Bank in November 2008. “I don’t know whether everybody has more millennials [working for them], but there’s just a greater interestinimpact,[…]peoplereally wantingtoconnectwiththingsthat have meaning,” says Oteh. And she says that words like ‘sustainability’ are not just sentimental. Instead, a company that focuses on sustainability has to get THE AFRICA REPORT

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creative about how to be productive. “You are basically revisiting your own business model”, says Oteh – which can drive both innovation and the bottom line. Certainly $1.5bn is an impressive debut. The original sum, mooted almost two years ago whentheprocessbegan,was$1bn,

“We can de-risk your project. We can de-risk a country. We’re a partner, we have experience” but the issuance was 4.6 times oversubscribed. The investors were pension funds, central banks and insurance funds from across Europe, the Americas and Asia. For Oteh, the reason for the success is simple: “You make a good enough yield, but it’s also safe.” With interest rates driven

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Recent big wins in this field have been in the Nigerian power sector, which has seen multibillion-dollar investments in recent years. The World Bank in 2014 approved $670m in partial risk guarantees to help catalyse private investors, with some success – though many power plants have since faced difficulties because of problems with payments and the national grid, among other things. This February, the World Bank invested $486m from the IDA to upgrade Nigeria’s transmission network, perhaps to fix that hiccup. Buttherealchange,arguesOteh, will come when African countries start using their own resources more effectively. “The big one is really better public financial management,” she says. “If you’re not even raising the revenue, how can you provide the basic services?” She wants to see African countries develop their capital markets. with a role for the digital revolution. “Kenya has been a great example of issuing retail bonds via mobile phones,” she says. “The first transaction was $100m.” Issuing retail-focused bonds is more expensive than institutional-focused bonds because individual investors have small budgets and are more geographically diverse. Oteh says this is the sort of innovation needed for African governments to raise more funds to finance their countries’ development. Interview by Nicholas Norbrook in Busan

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Imad Benmoussa We plan to invest around $500m Coca-Cola is chasing the youth market in North Africa through diversifying its drinks offer and creative thinking on points of sale

oca-Cola’s North African headquarters, in a characterless building 30 minutes’ drive from downtown Casablanca, hardly match the image of the ‘best known brand in the world’. The marketing champion, whose global headquarters in Atlanta is a landmark in the US, does not have the same dominant position here. That is especially the case in Egypt and Sudan, where its arch-rival Pepsi gives it a hard time. Local brands are also providing fierce competition in the high-growth market, particularly in Algeria. Morocco’s Imad Benmoussa, who became director for Egypt and North Africa in February 2017, drinks, talks and lives Coca-Cola. He previously headed Coke’s French and Middle Eastern operations. Between two gulps of soda, he tells how he plans to improve the availability of Coke’s products and strengthen its marketing in North Africa, which is home to more than 700,000 points of sale.

MOHAMED DRISSI KAMILI FOR JA

Director for Egypt and North Africa, Coca-Cola

TAR: You have been in charge of North Africa since February 2017. How does Coke see this part of the world? IMAD BENMOUSSA: It is a very dynamic region of about 250 million consumers, however, the consumption of store-bought drinks per capita is weak. According to our calculations, the growth in value for the non-alcoholic drinks sector will be between 5% and 6% in the next few years, compared with 1-2% in Europe and North America. This strong potential is due to economic growth, rising buying power, urbanisation and the fact that the sector is poorly diversified. Fizzy drinks account for 40% of the market, water 3540% and juice 15-20%. That leaves room for innovations like readyto-consume tea and coffee and also for energy drinks. Which countries have the most potential? Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, due to the size of their populations and the structure of their markets.

A COKE CAREER 1999 Became brand manager for Coca-Cola Morocco 2002 Promoted to West African regional marketing manager 2010 Named director of Coca-Cola Middle East 2014 Appointed head of Coke’s operations in France 2017 Took up the role as Coke’s director for Egypt and North Africa

Is Coke crushing the competition? Inthefizzy-drinksmarket,which is what we focus on, we are by far the leader in Morocco and Tunisia. But in Algeria, where there is more competition – with more than 400 different operators – our market share is less than 50%. In Egypt, as wellasthetwoSudans,wearechallengers. But competition is good: it allows us to measure ourselves and pushes us to innovate, which seduces our core market – young adults and teenagers. Whatareyourinvestmentplans? Alongside our bottlers, we are planning about $500m in industrial, commercial and marketing investment over the next three years. Globally, that is $200m in the Maghreb and $300m in Libya, Egypt and the two Sudans. In some countries in the region, 40% of consumers said in a survey that they had not had a Coca-Cola in the 30 days prior. Our top goal is thus to penetrate our markets more. What is important is not that those who drink Coke drink

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Coca-Cola is focused on marketing. How much do you spend on advertising? That is very sensitive information. Our marketing investment in each country depends first on our brand portfolio. In Morocco, for example, we have seven fizzydrink brands, two juice brands and one for water. In Algeria we only have four fizzy-drinks brands. Another variable that influences our spending is the intensity of competition [in each country]. Where are you on the water market? There are two markets where this is a sizeable business for us: Sudan, where we are the leader with our Safia brand; and Egypt, were we are challengers with our Dasani brand – in a market that is rapidly growing. On the other hand, our presence is very weak in the Maghreb. We have the Ciel brand in Morocco, which has a tiny market share, and nothing in Algeria and Tunisia. But we are interested in the market segment because the market for water is growing faster than the market for fizzy drinks and juice in North Africa and the rest of Africa. Are you planning on launching a brand of water in Algeria? For the moment, we are focusing on fizzy drinks because we still THE AFRICA REPORT

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have a long way to go in terms of market share. But we are listening to the market. In our diversification strategy, we are always debating whether to acquire a brand or to start our own. In Sudan with Safia, in Egypt with Dasani and in Morocco with Ciel, we went with the second option because we did not find an acquisition target that met our criteria. How many bottlers do you work with in the region? We work with eight bottlers. The biggest one is our partner CocaCola Bottling Company of Egypt (CCBCE), as the country is the biggestmarket.Thesecond-largest is Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company (ECCBC), which covers some parts of Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. And the third is Brasseries et Glacières Internationales, which covers Tunisia andpart ofAlgeria. We also work with independent bottlers: two in Morocco (SBGS and ABC), one in Libya (GBC) and another in Sudan (DAL). We have minority stakes in CCBCE and ECCBC. What do you get from these shareholdings? It is not uncommon for us to control a minority stake in the biggest regional bottlers. It is often

“The market for water is growing faster than that of fizzy drinks in Africa” for historical reasons. At the beginning, the Egyptian bottler belonged to the government. Several years ago, we decided to take a stake and we have not questioned that investment since then. As for ECCBC, the majority shareholders were Spanish and wanted to expand into sub-Saharan Africa. They wanted Coca-Cola to work with them on this geographical expansion. There are not global reasons for those decisions, just particular ones. What is certain is that we decided several years ago not to be the majority shareholder or the manager of our bottlers. Interview by Julien Wagner for Jeune Afrique

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Aminata Kane Ndiaye In April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technologytrained manager was appointed chief executive of French telecom provider Orange’s operations in Sierra Leone. She is 33 and y marketing g was p previously manager for Orange Money.

Phakamani Hadebe The government turned the acting boss of troubled South African electricity utility Eskom into its CEO in May. His financial skills – he was head of corporate and investment banking at Barclays Africa – will be tested as the firm deals with corruption investigations and an angry workforce.

Juliana Rotich The Kenyan co-founder of crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi and technology firm BRCK picked up a new position in May, becoming the country cluster head for German chemical company BASF East Africa. She is also on the board of Standard Group.

ABDOULAYE NDAO; FELIX DLANGAMANDLA/FOTO24/GALLO MAGES/GETTY AGES/GETTY IMAGES; IMAGES BASF

more, but that those who do not drink Coke get to know us. Availability is fundamental to this. We sell ‘enjoyment’ products that are driven by an impulse. If it is not satisfied in half an hour, it can disappear or be satisfied by another product. We, at the same time, have to be sure that we are associated with something positive and have to be there each time a consumer wants to see us. That is why we set goals each year for the number of new points of sale. You have to be creative and adapt to different regions. In Morocco, for example, we had the idea to offer little refrigerators to dried-fruit sellers, who are numerous out there on the streets, which helped us to improve our penetration rate.

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NMB, one of the two largest lenders, is still interested in mergers and acquisitions

TANZANIA

JONES NDEKIA

The winding road to bank consolidation

The sector is struggling with too many bad loans and small lenders, but the government seems wary of raising capital requirements due to weak investor interest

iming is not the same as hitting, so goes a popular Kiswahili proverb. In Tanzania, this is true for the banking sector, which is a source of anger for policymakers, not least President John Magufuli. “The President is saying he wants banks which are efficient. That’s the point. So if the bank is not efficient, then we don’t need that bank to operate in our country,” presidential spokesman Gerson Msigwa tells The Africa Report. “There are some banks which were only making business with government, just in treasury bills and all, but not serving the people,” Msigwa adds. Since his 2015 rise to power, Magufuli has railed against weak lenders and ordered the central bank to close struggling institutions. Sharing the same concerns, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said addressing nonperforming loans (NPLs) should be Tanzania’s priority in order to reduce financial sector vulnerabilities and revive credit growth.

In this land of the Serengeti, bad loans are a stench that will not easily go away. There has been a recent downturn in key sectors, including trade and transport. By the close of 2017, the NPL ratio was 11.7%, up from 10.6% in June 2017, which is more than double the regulatory benchmark of 5%. Annual growth of credit to the private sector was a mere 1.7% in December2017,comparingpoorly withagrowthhighof23.6%in2016. Spurred into action, the central bank liquidated five community banks in January and put another small lender under a provisional licence. It has also called for consolidation among the 59 licensed financial entities, 40 of which are fully fledged commercial banks. Yet for some players who are eagertoseeconsolidation,thecentral bank should notstopthere.“I think wecouldexpectmorefromBankof Tanzania,” says Ineke Bussemaker, CEO of the National Microfinance Bank. “The minimum capital requirements are still what they are. [Increasing them] could be an

12.5% Nonperforming loans hit a recent peak in September 2017 SOURCE: IMF

option, and then you would see a natural consolidation,” she says. Charles Kimei, CEO of CRDB, Tanzania’s largest lender by assets agrees. “But now the banks are dealing with implementing International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9, they have been forced to do a lot of provisioning […], so now that is the major market development that is going to force consolidation,” Kimei says. IFRS 9 is a new global financial reporting standard that came into effect this January. Some of Magufuli’s reforms –takinggovernmentandparastatal cash fromcommercialbankswhile also tightening budget implementation – have hurt the sector. “Especially for the smaller banks, cost-cuttingisanissueandtheonly way to manage is also to explore economies of scale,” Kimei says. “We are expecting acquisitions. We can do some acquisitions and some other deals,” he concludes. While CRDB and NMB, two of the largest lenders, maintain an interest in mergers and acquisitions, the third-largest, National Bank of Commerce – a unit of Barclays Africa – is focused on consolidating Barclays’ other, eponymous, unit in the country. Other international banks in Tanzania, including Standard Chartered and Stanbic, have largely stayed away from expansion in the country. IMF URGES ACTION

Tanzania requires bold actions to ensure the viability of its banks and avoid contagion, the IMF said in its latest country review. But the government, while encouraging consolidation, is unlikely to use statutory powers to achieve it. Benny Mwaipaja, spokesman for the ministry of finance, tells The Africa Report: “When two of the banks merged, it was just an advice that the other banks should follow the same, if at all they find themselves in crisis.” The central bank is also implementing the Basel II capital requirements, which will allow the regulator to

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set capital adequacy ratios based on individual risk assessments. Understandably, the regulator’s cautious approach may be informed by a recent experience withTwigaBancorp,anundercapitalisedstate-ownedlenderbrought under statutory management in October 2016. Whereas the central bank stated that it would find a buyer “soon,” it found no takers until this May, when it agreed to merge it with another state-owned lender, Tanzania Postal Bank. SMALL CHANGE

Voluntary consolidation has its proponents, too. “I concur that the banking industry in Tanzania should consolidate,” says Hildebrand Shayo, head of research at TIB Development Bank. “Most of the small banks are not adequately capitalised and it has been difficult for these small banks to meet regulatory requirements for minimum capital, which is currently capped at TSh15bn ($6.6m) for commercial banks.” Shayo adds that problems of asset quality may be hampering consolidation, a factor Bussemaker is also acutely aware of. “Issues of valuations and asset quality are there,” Bussemaker says, “but as long as there’s no compelling reason, they reckon that the market is just what it is.” For Patrick Mususa, executive director of The Tanzania Institute of Bankers, the discussion that matters is not consolidation but the rate of financial inclusion. “At only nine million Tanzanians with bank accounts, we still have a long way to go to achieve effective mobilisation of both capital and liquidity in the financial sector,” Mususa says. Surely, aiming is not the same as hitting.

Where others fear to tread The traditional difficulties of investing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have not fazed Chinese investors, ever keen to take a greater slice. State-run firm CITIC agreed in June to buy a 20% stake of Ivanhoe Mines, which is developing Africa’s largest copper deposit. CITIC was not visibly worried that Ivanhoe has been vocal about Kinshasa’s mining reforms (see below) and says it will take the government to court. With the new digital economy dependent on cobalt-powered smartphones and copper-hungry renewable energy, China sees a strategic advantage in securing mineral stocks. And, while many Western companies back away, Chinese investors are piling in, locking in supply contracts and mining equity. Glencore, for example, agreed in March to sell a third of its cobalt output to Chinese battery maker GEM.

Mining whining There may be trouble ahead. Some of the miners involved may pretend they will not litigate… We’ll just face the music and dance, suggests mining minister Martin Kabwelulu. “The code will be applied as it was promulgated!”, he barked at Reuters in a text message. Tax hikes for several big mining houses are now due after the code was signed by Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala on 15 June. We hear the lawyers are sharpening their quills as we speak, with traditional handwringing about ‘economic nationalism’ coming to the fore. South African miner Randgold leads the fightback against the changes to the mining code, which industry players say will reduce foreign investment in the sector as the government gets a bigger take.

Disrupting lucrative networks A few thousand kilometres to the east, other miners are also under pressure. Morocco’s phosphate mining and fertiliser giant OCP has disrupted the Kenyan fertiliser import barons with a much cheaper product. But the barons are pushing back: in January, a cargo was accused of being contaminated with mercury. An insider at OCP claims this is a diversionary tactic, and that the fertiliser in question was actually created in conjunction with Kenya’s own institute of agronomic research. The cash generated from the fertiliser import business is said to run right up into the stratosphere of Kenyan political power.

Joseph Burite in Dar es Salaam

EXPERTISE IN AFRICAN RAILWAY MANAGEMENT www.vecturis.com

Nicolas GREGOIR, Chief Administrative Officer SETRAG / GABON

DOSSIER LOGISTICS

HORN OF AFRICA

Ports and power plays

Repercussions over controversial ports deals in the Gulf of Aden put Djibouti and Somalia at the heart of a big-stakes game. While landlocked Ethiopia spreads its diplomatic hand, the Gulf States and world superpowers are bringing their own conflicts to the table By Honoré Banda

D Djibouti’s Doraleh port is looking for new investors

$442m Cost of the joint venture between DP World (51%), Somaliland (30%) and Ethiopia (19%) to rebuild and manage the port of Berbera

VINCENT FOURNIER FOR JA

SOURCE: REPUBLIC OF SOMALILAND

ubai-based ports operator DP World would have done well to beware the ides of March. This was the month in which the governments of both Djibouti and Somalia kicked out the state-owned entity. The two separate quarrels over infrastructure deals have origins and ructions that go far beyond the ports themselves, reflecting a complex network of shifting regional alliances, geopolitical manoeuvres by influential powers in the Middle East and North Africa, and the potential for profit – and corruption – such large projects invite. In February, after six years of conflict, President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh’s government in Djibouti took over the Doraleh Container Terminal (DCT) that it had built in a joint venture with DP World. Djibouti complained about the commercial terms of the contract, saying that it was lopsided in the Emiratis’ favour. The government is now looking for new investors. It recently hosted delegations from CMA CGM and Pacific International Lines, and has received attractive offers from its allies in Ethiopia. Aboubaker Omar Hadi, president of the Djibouti Autorité des Ports et Zones Franches (APZF), complained to our sister magazine Jeune Afrique about the long and difficult divorce with DP World. He said: “For six years, we tried to renegotiate the contract without success. In February, we proposed buying out their shares of Doraleh Container Terminal. They were about to accept, but they insisted that we should not develop any

other ports in the country. It was a blatant attack on our sovereignty.” In April, President Guelleh told Jeune Afrique: “DP World never really tried to develop Doraleh, which operated about 40% of its capacity, preferring instead to support the development of Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.” DP World has launched arbitration proceedings in London against Djibouti, which says that it is prepared to pay the company compensation. The difficulty will be agreeing on the sum. HIGH COURT BATTLE

Beneath those claims about contractual problems was the falling out between long-serving president Guelleh and Abdourahman Boreh, who was head of the APZF between 2003 and 2008 and later became one of Djibouti’s most prominent dissidents. Guelleh’s government sued Boreh, saying he received millions of dollars in opaque payments from DP World in exchange for helping to get its contract signed. That dispute culminated in a trial for fraud and bribery at the London High Court of Justice, which dismissed the charges against Boreh in 2016 and obliged the government to pay Boreh’s costs. Policymakers in Djibouti do not seem to be worried about losing DP World – they have plenty of interest from other investors. In late April, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed chose Djibouti – his country’s closest ally and access point to international trading routes – for his first international visit. Amidst reports that Ethiopian companies and the government pay a combined $2bn annually

76 DOSSIER | LOGISTICS

“It was a blatant attack against our sovereignty ” Aboubaker Omar Hadi, head of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority, on why the country cut short its deal with h DP World.

LARRAYADIEU

for the use of Djibouti’s ports, Abiy offered to trade Guelleh’s government a stake in Ethiopian Airlines or Ethio Telecom in exchange for shares in Djibouti’s port infrastructure. Guelleh’s government has yet to respond to the offer from the Addis government, which launched a new Chinese-built rail line linking the landlocked country to Djibouti’s main port last year. But Addis does not want to rely on one export route alone. In June, Abiy turned his diplomacy to Somalia, with whom relations had long been strained due to Mogadishu’s worries about the intentions of its bigger and wealthier neighbour. On 16 April, after Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’ Mohamed hosted Abiy at the presidential palace, the two leaders issued a joint statement that they would be investing in four seaports to attract foreign investment to their two countries. The day before Abiy’s visit, the UAE had pledged $3bn to Ethiopia in aid and investments in a major show of support for the country’s new leadership. The pledges of cooperation came in sharp contrast to Somalia’s reaction in March, when news broke of a port deal signed between Ethiopia (19%), DP World (51%) and Somaliland (30%), a secessionist territory of Somalia whose government is not internationally recognised. Mogadishu considers Somaliland part of Somalia and saw the deal as a provocation. On 12 March, parliamentbannedDPWorldfrom operating in the country. The government also cancelled planned projects for the construction of ports at Kismayo and Bosaso.

unitsperannum.Expansionworks are now due to start in September. The Somalia government’s reaction added more fire to a raging dispute dividing the Middle East: Qatar and Iran on one hand and Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the other. The Saudi-led coalition accusesQatarofsupportingterrorism and Iran’s attempts to destabilise the Middle East. The conflict is playing out in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and its allies are fighting rebels with links to Iran. Qatar is supportive of Somalia’s President Mohamed, who has complained that the UAE is trying to influence local politics to his detriment. The UAEalsohasaninterestinBerbera, where it had promised to build a military base as part of its drive to playabiggerroleintheMiddleEast and North Africa region. Global strategic concerns aside, Somaliland’s President Muse Bihi Abdi insists that there is nothing

Sana’a YEMEN

Asmara Asm

Assabb

MIDDLE-EASTERN DIVISIONS

The deal gave Ethiopia a stake in the $442m development of the Berbera Port, originallyagreedas a joint venture between Somaliland and DP World in 2016. Berbera currently has the capacity to handle about 150,000 containers a year, and new investment could bring that up to 1m, making it potentially a considerable rival of Doraleh, which handles about 900,000 twenty-foot equivalent

BUILDING LINKS

SAUDI ARABIA ERITREA

DJIBOUTI ETHIOPIA Addis Ababa

Doraleh B Berbera Somaliland

SOMALIA Mogadishu KENYA Nairobi

Kismayo

that Farmajo can do to stop the Berbera port deal. The fight about the Berbera plans have also scuppered nascent mediation talks between Somalia and Somaliland that were due to be held in March. For his part, Djibouti’s Guelleh is worried that Boreh, the former APZF head turned dissident , nowin exile in Dubai, is playing a role in DP World’s recent moves in the Horn. In addition, if Ethiopia is able to use Somaliland for a third of its import-export needs, and is also working on port projects with Somalia, that could weaken the alliance between Addis and Djibouti, and hurt Djibouti’s logistics-powered economy.

B Bosaso Puntland

Abiy’s strategy seems not to be to trade one ally for another, but to build multiple strong links with regional players. This is evidenced by the fact that, in June, he also opened the door to reconciliation withEritrea,whichwon independence fromEthiopia in 1991andhas been at daggers drawn with Addis Ababa since then (see page 12). Ethiopia has a key role in Djibouti’s economic growth, but Djibouti too is playing the diversification game. Djibouti is the focus of a growing rivalry between China and the US due to its position at a key chokepoint of international trade. China is seeking to tie fast-growing East Africa into its zone of influence through the Belt and Road Initiative. China Merchants Group has a stake in the Doraleh port, and Beijing has been lending money to Guelleh’s government for new ports, airports and other transport infrastructure. China also inaugurated its first overseas naval base in July 2017 – in Djibouti, which hosts the US’s Camp Lemonnier. With Djibouti borrowing billions from Beijing, US President Donald Trump fears falling out of favour with a strategic ally and has been critical of China’s influence.Giventheexplosivepolitics in the Horn of Africa, the wider East African region and the Middle East, it is unlikely that power plays for the control of critical logistics infrastructure will die down anytime soon.

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EXPERT ADVICE

Tobias Maier,

CFO DHL Global Forwarding Middle East and Africa

Best practice in freight forwarding It seems that there is no one-size-fitsall solution in digitalisation: what is the way forward? The new approach in digitalisation is doing it in bits and bites. It really is a matter of the best practise sharing approach: ideally, if it works well in one warehouse, it should work in all the warehouses. For example, we have new tools called Electronic Supplier Portal (ESP) which allow us to track shipments from A-Z. You can take pictures of the cargo at all stages, with proof of delivery on smartphones across the world: from Nairobi to Kinshasa, from Lyon to Lagos. We have another tool called DHLinteractive to

enable customers to get quotes, book and monitor their own shipments. We even have drones flying through warehouses to help with instant inventory counting. All these innovations are shared to boost productivity and simplify the life of our customers. How are you meeting demand for freight services in the South of the continent? South Africa is a hub for cargo coming into the continent, and we have a road freight network going up to places like Luanda, Lubumbashi, and then even up to Kenya. So we offer full container loads, but also modules. Our vision

is to one day have a road network going all the way from Europe down to Johannesburg. What are the cargos you are most proud of delivering? Kenya is one our certified destinations where we can deliver on a cold chain solution. Our purpose as a company is connecting people and improving their lives. If we are able to get medicine to people who need it - and we recently delivered a big shipment of insulin - then those are the shipments that makes me happy.

DHL GLOBAL FORWARDING MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA Email: salesmea@dhl.com Phone: +971-4-8160-730 www.dhl.com

78 DOSSIER | LOGISTICS

Hadiza Bala Usman Managing director, Nigerian Ports Authority

The NPA was considered a cash cow In two years, Bala Usman has started sweeping a clean broom through Lagos ports, but she has a long way to go before Nigeria can become a logistics hub for the region

otorists in Lagos are well aware of the problems facing the city’s twin ports. For more than two years, hundreds of parked trailers have lined the highways leading to the gates of Apapa and Tin Can Island. Of Nigeria’s six sea ports, which are situated in four states along the country’s southern coastline, the Lagos pair are the busiest, accounting for 75% of all the cargo that is shipped in and out of the country. Lagos’s ports are also reputed to be a den of large-scale racketeering involving both public officials and private operators. And, despite some infrastructure improvement over the past two decades, both ports fail to keep up with the exponential growth of cargo. The snarling traffic jams out of the ports are a grim symbol of the task faced by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). Hadiza Bala Usman – an activist and former chief of staff to Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State – has managed the federal agency since July 2016. President Muhammadu Buhari tapped her to accelerate port reforms that have been

bogged down since the transition to a concession model in 2007, which gave the NPA oversight over private port operators. Though the concession model has certainly improved the situation, it is far from ideal. At the conclusion of the initial stage of the government’s reform programme, the country’s ports were carved out into 26 concessions won by terminal operators such as A.P. Moller-Maersk and Julius Berger. Overall cargo throughput grew by 73% from 49m tonnes to 84m tonnes between 2006 and 2014, before dipping following a recession that started in late 2014. THE WAITING GAME

The volume of cargo recovered to 71m tonnes in 2017. Cargo dwell time – how long ships wait to unload – initially dropped from around 30 days prior to the reforms to an average of 20 days in 2010, according to a study by the US Agency for International Development. It stood at 22 days in 2017, says a study carried out by the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Organisation, which is amongst the highest port wait times in the world. The slow progress

ACTIVIST TO ACCELERATOR 2 January 1976 Born in Zaria 2000 Graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Ahmadu Bello University 2011 Strategy director of the Good Governance Group 2015 Became chief of staff to Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai July 2016 Buhari appointed her as managing director of the NPA

suggests the new regulator has yet to fully find its feet. The NPA had always been a favourite of leaders looking to dispense patronage and grant favours. That is going to change, Bala Usman tells The Africa Report: “The NPA was considered a cash cow. [But we] will not be that agency that is seen to finance political activities or to be where politicians gravitate to in seeking funds or having access to patronage.” One of her first moves was an audit of the NPA. Some N11bn ($45m) was missing. The investigation revealed the funds were stashed in a number of commercial banks, violating regulations. Bala Usman also uses sunlight as a disinfectant. She signed a twoyear partnership with BudgIT, a civic organisation that advocates for open government, to make the NPA budget public. Critics wonder how sustainable this transparency will be after her time is up. But Bala Usman is convinced that the move sets a strong precedent. “I think having already taken that step, it might be challenging for anyone that comes in to sort of reverse it. That would mean that you want to operate an opaque system.”

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STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP

Next on the agenda was the enforcement of concession policies. The concessionaire arrangements that the government had entered into with terminal operators was premised on the idea that competition would drive efficiency. That only works, however, if the arrangements are entered into fairly. One case involving Intels, a logistics company partly owned by former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, demonstrated how the NPA had favoured certain operators over others. In 2017, the government moved to end Intels’ monopoly on oil and gas exports. Oil and gas shipments can now berth in any of the multi-purpose or bulk cargo terminals, including the likes of the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base (LADOL). ONE-STOP-SHOP AMBITION

Some will see this as attacking political rivals and boosting allies – Atiku wants to be Nigeria’s president, while LADOL has been supportive of Buhari. Others say it is simply allowing market forces to operate. Regardless, while the policy fix has introduced more competition, there remain many other THE AFRICA REPORT

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problems. Clearing cargo is still onerous. Reducing the number of agencies required to carry out checks would help. So, too, would a ‘single window’ mechanism, to allow all supervising agencies to share a common platform for inspecting cargo. Bala Usman is championing both initiatives, but other agencies are proving resistant. Insiders say the customs services are opposed to a one-stop-shop platform. To break the deadlock, she is con-

“We will not be that agency that is seen to finance political activities” sidering a unilateral deployment of a ‘ports community platform’, which mimics a single window. Butsheconcedesthatportproblems will not be fully resolved until there is a one-stop shop: “If we are not able to have single window, we are not there yet when it comes to trade facilitation. Our neighbouring countries have single windows, so what is it that is challenging us from implementing that?” After this, the next pressing issue is how to get containers out of

J U LY - AU G U S T 2 018

the ports. The bulk of the country’s cargo passes through the Lagos ports, and most of the goods are evacuated by road through the city. The trailer traffic pushes up Lagos’s collective blood pressure, with residents and businesses suffering major disruptions. The main roads that lead to the Lagos ports are in tatters, the legacy of decades of neglect. To fix them, the NPA helped to get the works ministry and Dangote Group, which has its flour mills in the area, to work together to rehabilitatetheroads.TheNPAhas committed N1.8bn to the project. The reconstruction kicked off last year and is near half complete. Longer-term solutions are being developed, such as bringing rail and inland waterways into the mix, says Bala Usman. Considering the country’s location, Nigeria has often been tipped to be a potential transhipmenthub for West and Central Africa. But Bala Usman says Nigeria needs to walk first before running. “The ports need to be competitive for our own use even before we look to being a hub,” she concludes. Interview by Charles Idem in Lagos

80 DOSSIER | LOGISTICS

Which governments are doing the right things now to develop their air transport industries? The single African air transport market and the continental free trade agreement were signed recently. They are the number-one initiatives as part of the African Union Agenda 2063. We want to see tariff-free trade just like we see in Europe today. We firmly believe in open skies at Boeing. It creates competition. More airlines can sprout. If they compete, prices go down. If the fare prices go down, more people can travel. Africa is the last continent to implement open skies. A lot of places today are not served or are underserved. The challenge in Africa is that we have poor road or railroad infrastructure.

João Miguel Santos

Managing director, Boeing International Sub-Sahara Africa

Our forecast for demand has almost doubled

o improve the freedom of movement of people, 23 African countries signed a treaty to form a continental single market for air transportation in January of this year, joined by three more by the end of May. As the top player in the aircraft market, US firm Boeing is in prime position to benefit from the boost in competition and passenger numbers. TAR: What is Boeing’s expansion strategy? What markets are you excited about? JOÃO MIGUEL SANTOS: Five years ago, our 20-year forecast [for Africa] was 120 aircraft. Our forecast has now almost doubled. What we foresee as the demand for Africa by the year 2057 is 1,220 aircraft. Today, we have 62% market share in the continent. My goal is to get 65% market share. Why should we settle for less? Was the delay in delivering the 787 damaging to your relationship with Ethiopian and other carriers in the continent? A delay in delivering an airplane is always damaging. It had never

ED TURNER/BOEING

Africa’s new aviation treaty brings huge opportunities, and both Boeing and European rival Airbus want their piece of the pie happened in Boeing’s history. But about 168 new markets never previously connected have now been created because of the 787 model. Look at Ethiopian Airlines: they are flying from Dublin to Los Angeles! The 787’s costs of operation are so low and the plane is so efficient, it is doing what it was designed to do. In Asia, low-cost carriers have been having problems. Do you see that as the future for Africa? [Comair chief executive] Erik Venter said that one of [the air-

“We firmly believe in open skies. It creates competition. More airlines can sprout” line’s] secrets of success is the constant drive to replace the fleet with new aircraft. You cannot start cheap: AirAsia has been successful, but they buy new airplanes. The 737 MAX that Comair is using burns 14% less fuel than the 737800. That makes operating costs go down by 5%. And when the margins in the aviation industry are so small, 5% is a big number.

Does that not present opportunities for the aviation industry? Aviation is the most important component of trying to develop free movement of people, goods and trade in Africa. The only airline in Africa that has freighters in its fleet is Ethiopian Airlines. Most of the goods exported out of or brought to South Africa are not travelling by South African freighters. How sad is that? Let’s talk about efforts to reduce emissions. There is an investment drive in biofuels in Africa. When you have an airplane that burns 14% less fuel, that’s a massive contribution to the environment. However, that’s not good enough. We now have focused on four strategic sources of biofuels. One of them is [the tobacco plant] solaris. The coating of its seeds can be refined into jet fuel, while the inside can become food for cattle. Could it be used for the entire aviation industry? It has to be scaled up massively. Right now, the objective is that four years from now South African Airways flies on 50% biofuels. And solaris is 4% more efficient than fossil fuel, which means you actually could reduce fuel consumption by another 4%.

THE AFRICA REPORT

Interview by Mark Anderson in Abidjan

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Ejigbo, an unlikely outpost of francophonie in Nigeria’s Osun State

DIASPORAS

Home away from Three countries separate them, but Ejigbo, Nigeria and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire are inextricably linked. The Africa Report takes a journey into the lives of a Yoruba community on the move By Eromo Egbejule in Ejigbo and Abidjan

GHANA

CÔTE D’IVOIRE

Accra

A Abidjan Cape Coast Takoradi

DAVID YOUNG

ven the trivial matter of ordering a meal requires some diplomatic skills in the tiny, trilingual town of Ejigbo, in the state of Osun, in Nigeria’s south-west. Guests poring over the menu at Palm Hotel, arguably the town’s biggest recreation spot, will find Ivorian meals of attiéké and kedjenou alongside well-known Nigerian soups like efo riro and egusi. At some point in the day, Ivorian boy band Magic System’s 2000 continental hit ‘1er Gaou’ or any of the more recent songs from that country is certain to play over the bar’s sound system; this, as the manager dishes out instructions to stewards and waitresses in rapid French. A backwater town 242km north of Lagos, Ejigbo has a population of fewer than 150,000 people, who are predominantly Yoruba. As such, the lingua franca here is naturally Yoruba and, to an extent, English, but also – strangely, for a non-border town in an anglophone country – French. The legal tender is the Nigerian naira, but some shops, market women and even

home

NIGERIA

Ibadan

BENIN

TOGO

Cotonou Lomé

Lagos Porto Novo

Golfe de Guinée

Ejigbo

interstate transporters readily accept CFA francs, the currency of francophone countries in West and Central Africa. In the small market beside the palace of the town’s traditional ruler, the Ogiyan of Ejigbo, household utensils, fabrics and other imported wares from Abidjan are displayed for sale. Across the town, there are more elderly people than young. It’s a civilservice-based economy and those in the state employment are currently owed several months’ pay, despite bailouts from the federal government. There are few or no jobs for recent graduates; residents say these youngsters are keen to emigrate to Cote d’Ivoire soon after graduation from high school. Those who stay back for their tertiary education at the state university campus in town go for internships in the Ivorian capital or move there after graduation. NAIJA SOUNDS AND SMELLS

About 1,200km – and four countries – away, in Abidjan, the cultural intercourse is strikingly similar. On rue Princesse in Yopougon, a suburb of the city, prostitutes haggle and laugh in Yoruba and pidgin English. Another suburb, Treichville – which has an Oba, a traditional Yoruba monarch – has been home to West African migrants since the Nigerian civil war, when those fleeing their country set up shop in an area now called Quartier Biafra after the short-lived secessionist state. In yet another area, Adjamé, it is common to find loudspeakers blasting the music of fuji superstars Saheed Osupa and Pasuma Wonder outside bukas selling amala and other meals native to south-west Nigeria. A popular discotheque in the area also belongs to a Nigerian. Vendors and their patrons are mostly Nigerians from Osun state who either emigrated from their homeland or were born and bred in Cote d’Ivoire. For these people, their ‘new’ place of abode has become home away from home. Outside one of these bukas, Samson Oladiran, a 36-year-old mechanic tired from a long day of work oiling car undersides in the district known as Sapeur Pompier, recounts his story in sparse English. Having lived all his life in Abidjan, he visited Lagos two years ago – his first and only trip to the country of his parents. In 1994, his

mechanic father died and his mother returned to Osun state. Oladiran and his three siblings had to move in with his uncle in Abidjan. At primary school he reached class five at the Nigerian Baptist School in his neighbourhood, but had to drop out as the family could no longer afford to pay his school fees. “I just got married to an Ivorian and we are happy,” he says. “Here is my home. Every Yoruba person you see here is from Osun. We are everywhere in this country; everyone in construction and building material business here is Nigerian. We have Yoruba churches and schools here. One woman from Burkina Faso married one of us and now she and her kids speak Yoruba well. They have never been to Nigeria.” He prostrates in true Yoruba fashion and greets every elder approaching the buka. “E ka le [Good evening, my senior],” he says. Given the distance between them, just how did the siblingship between Ejigbo and Abidjan develop? No one is exactly sure of the genesis of the exodus from Nigeria, but Baba Jerusalem, an elder who retired from the Ivorian army and now lives back in Ejigbo, traces the origins to the early ’40s and ’50s.

THIERRY GOUEGNON/REUTERS

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Clockwise from above: Nigerian soccer fans living in Abidjan celebrate their moment of glory in the African Nations Cup 2013; Nigerian working girls on rue Princesse; immigrants from Ejigbo board the bus for the long ride home

OLIVIER FOR TAR

BABA JERUSALEM’S JOURNEY

“My first trip was in 1953 by ship from Lagos and it took us three days to get to Abidjan. Our people would go to Benin Republic, Ghana and Ivory Coast,” says Baba Jerusalem, who speaks 11 languages in varying degrees of fluency including French and Baoulé. “There were no jobs then. Those of our people who went to Ivory Coast returned in shorter time and better condition than others, even though it was further away, so many of us started going there.” The septuagenarian, who refuses to give his actual age or real name, got his nickname after a 1983 monthlong holy pilgrimage to Israel. On that trip, he was one of three blacks among the 44 tourists – the other two being a Ghanaian and an Ivorian. It was one in a series of travels across the world using his Nigerian passport in tandem with his acquired Ivorian passport. “I was a driver in Abidjan and that financed my 57 years of travel all over Europe,” he boasts. A primary school dropout, Baba Jerusalem made ends meet in the new city by also working as a travel agent arranging Ivorian passports

for Nigerians born in Cote d’Ivoire. He then joined the Ivorian army. Now too old for the commute, he sits in his wife’s shop in Ejigbo, helping sell selected sundries such as slippers, grinding stones, soap, jewellery and clothing, including from Abidjan. In Abidjan, Oladiran the mechanic says there are many other elderly men and women like Baba Jerusalem who moved from Nigeria and now have dual citizenship, having lived and paid taxes in Cote d’Ivoire for decades. His late father was one, his uncle who raised him is another. And many more Nigerians are still trooping in. Some of the migrants stopped in Ghana and Togo, while others went along the coast to Liberia and Gambia. This led to the emergence of pockets of wholly Nigerian communities in various cities and towns across the region.

These days no one goes by ship any more. Also, thanks to the free movement policy within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), nationals of the region can work and reside outside of their home countries for up to three months at a time. There are five different transporters whose coaches ply the Ejigbo-Abidjan route on a weekly basis. Bashiru Salau, the accounts clerk at Bully Orelope Transport (B.O.T.) has seen many of these vehicles come and go over the years – almost always full. B.O.T. operates a bus service twice a week, conveying Ejigbo indigenes on the 30hour trip across the borders of Benin, Togo, Ghana, and into Cote d’Ivoire. On the large wall beside his cubicle hang three large clocks set to the time in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Saudi Arabia.

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ART & LIFE 85

Ejigbo and Abidjan: brothers from different mothers /// The majority of Ejigbo’s

150,000 people speak French as a mother tongue and use the West African franc (CFA) as a legal tender alongside the Nigerian naira.

/// Every other family in Ejigbo has a direct relative living in Abidjan. /// The first set of migrants from Ejigbo are said to have arrived in 1902, and settled in Treichville.

/// Years later, many Nigerians fleeing the Biafran war between 1967-1970 settled in a suburb of Abidjan that is now called Quartier Biafra.

CHRIS STEELE-PERKINS MAGNUM

/// Thousands of Nigerians

Salau himself goes to Abidjan twice a year to visit family members there. “Abidjan is like London for us here,” he beams. “People go there for their holidays and to start a new life. Even the many Muslims here use it as transit point before going to Mecca for pilgrimage. And the Ivorians themselves come to learn fashion tips and then go to trade in the east of Nigeria.” FOLLOW THE MARKET

These emigrants from Cote d’Ivoire (and sometimes Senegal too) bring their local fabrics along with them and are employed as cheap labour by wealthy fashionistas and businesswomen. Their employers, who are in Lagos and parts of south-east Nigeria, sometimes also provide food and shelter for them. The trans-country commute has brought a significant cultural impact THE AFRICA REPORT

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to both sides, but the relatively higher standard of living in Abidjan made the flow in that direction more attractive. Beginning in mid-2016, the Nigerian economy suffered its worst recession in over two decades, contracting for five successive quarters before an upturn in late 2017. In that period, the CFA franc waxed stronger as the Nigerian naira became weaker. Oladiran, the mechanic, watched as his neighbours and others in Adjamé began buying commodities cheaply to sell for high profit margins back in Ejigbo, which, like the rest of Africa’s biggest economy, was immersed in double-digit inflation. “Our people are not lazy,” he says. “We have sense to follow the market but we don’t cheat people because we are all brothers. Whether from Ejigbo or Abidjan, we are brothers. This is our home too.”

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returned from Côte d’Ivoire after a civil war broke out in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. In 2011, the Osun State government sent buses to evacuate its citizens stranded there.

/// The community quickly

re-established itself: with the fastest growing economy on the continent in 2016, Côte d’Ivoire is now one of the most stable countries in Africa and attractive to Nigerians in search of greener pastures.

/// There is a thriving second-

hand cloth market in Belleville, Treichville. Many of the traders are Nigerians, who play music from their homeland in their adopted country.

/// One of the 16 casualties in the terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on the Ivorian beach town of Grand Bassam in March 2016 was Nigerian. He was 25-year old Adekunle Sikiru from Ejigbo.

PILLARS OF LIFE: THE POWER AND GRACE OF MARKET LIFE Until 21 July ADDIS ABABA | ETHIOPIA Columnar, sculptural groups of women invest Tadesse Mesfin’s recent paintings. addisfineart.com

AFRICA IS NO ISLAND Until 24 August MARRAKECH | MOROCCO The MACAAL, Morocco’s new contemporary art museum, brings together more than 40 African photographers in this exhibition, including Joana Choumali, Sammy Baloji and the late Leila Alaoui. macaal.org

ADDIO DEL PASSATO Until 26 August CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA After almost a year, Yinka Shonibare’s occupation of the Dusthouse comes to a close. The multifaceted work tells the story of Frances Nisbet, the rejected, estranged wife of 18th-century British naval officer Lord Nelson. zeitzmocaa.museum

BOUCHRA KHALILI: BLACKBOARD Until 23 September PARIS | FRANCE Important survey of 10 year’s work by the Franco-Moroccan artist, for whom art is a civic platform where minorities speak their resistance. Includes the milestone photo series ‘The Tempest Society’. jeudepaume.org

Making a stand against censorship in Hargeysa

Books Poetry and politics Hargeysa’s book fair strives to nurture Somaliland’s intellectual heritage amid threats to freedom of speech

“

omaliland! Somaliland!” the women chant as they twirl around like whirlingdervishestothebeatingof drums by the older women. The drums beat louder and faster. Somaliland flags appear, and the crowd is worked into a frenzy. In the capital of the country – a breakaway state since 1991 – that shares with Somalia the epithet “land of a thousand poets, the Hargeysa International Book Fair (HIBF) brings together writers, poets, curators, art and literature lovers from all over the world. In July, 2018’s fair launches with the theme ‘Wisdom’, towards enriching “a society that has survived within its own mechanism, culture, heritage and knowledge production”.

Dr. Jama Musse Jama, director of Redsea Cultural Foundation, which organises the HIBF, says the theme continues the fair’s tradition of promoting freedom of expression: “We are striving to create what was missing in this country for a long time: a platform where people can say what they want to say,” Jama says. “Creating a space for those who do not belong to the establishment. […] We are pushing the boundaries, knowing we are working in a tight environment.” This edition of the fair comes at a time when freedom of speech is under threat. In January 2018 a Somalilander poet, Naciima Qorane, was arrested for calling for the reunification of Somalia and Somaliland

She Called Me Woman

Mohammed, Nagarajan, Aliyu (editors) Cassava Republic She Called Me Woman brings together 25 personal accounts from LGBTQ women in Nigeria, as told to co-editors Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan and Rafeeat Aliyu. In sometimes moving

biographical extracts they detail relationships, childhoods and contrasting experiences within discreet, vulnerable communities. The book responds to the erasure of queer voices and of Nigeria’s diverse sexual

history. In 2014 the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act banned gay relationships, enshrining in law

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attitudes that permeate Nigerian life. Through the anonymously narrated experiences the book gives a nuanced, personal insight into homophobia and transphobia in Nigeria, and how queer women navigate the country’s social norms. An extract by JP, a 33-yr-old •

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COURTESY OF TADESSE MESFIN/ ADDIS FINE ART

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Ciku Kimeria

transwoman, stands out. Like much of the book, it is a colloquial and, at times, unstructured telling of scattered thoughts that translate as a genuine voice. The narrative feels bleak, but JP’s voice has a drive and sense of purpose. She Called Me Woman’s collective THE AFRICA REPORT

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of voices asserts a visibility the narrators feel denied. Humanising the desires of LGBTQ women in Nigeria, it tackles the tendency to homogenise queer experiences. As such, these candid, deeply revealing and emotive texts are distinctive and striking. Emmanuel Akinwotu N ° 10 2

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On the road Suffering and smiling In Nigeria, road trips are uncomfortable but also reveal the country’s vast lands, and its soul

SVEN TORFINN/PANOS-REA

in her poetry. “Her arrest was really unfortunate,” says Mohamed, a Somalilander writer speaking on condition of anonymity. “But to know why it happened at this particular time, one has to understand the geopolitics around it. We are in the centre of a race for supremacy in the Horn of Africa that is being led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Ethiopia and Turkey.” Since Somaliland split from Somalia the country has enjoyed relative peace, but Mohamedsuggeststhisisnowchallengedon account of its geography, wedged between theHornandtheMiddleEast.WhileEthiopia increases its stake in ports along the coast, the Yemeni conflict has brought to light the powerplay between two new Middle Eastern blocs: Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt on one side;and Turkey, Iranand Qatar on the other. With Somaliland not recognised by the UN, leaders are averse to what they perceive as challenges to the country’s autonomy. “The government’s arrest of Naciima was a direct reaction to these concerns. They fear any calls for reunification as we are trying to maintain our sovereignty,” Mohamed adds. Qorane was released in May after receiving a presidential pardon that followed a public demonstration against her arrest. Organisations like Jama’s continue to contribute to the country’s rich culture of arts and literature through workshops, discussions, a travelling library and book translations into Somali. “I still see my country as one that wants to maintain space for open discussions,” Mohamed says. “My hope is that the ongoing changes in the Horn of Africa will not be an excuse for taking away people’s freedom of speech and expression.”

Crawling along in the petrol nation

t 5.30am in Abuja a small a trip also provides consistent evcrowd of prospective travidence of systemic breakdowns. Decrepit buildings dot the interstate ellers gathers at the Utako roads, whittled down to the point of bus park, to register themselves on losing all their capacity. the 10-to-12-hour journey from the country’s Middle Belt to Lagos. The Prayers kick off the journey, passengers contend for the best seats prayers end it. In transit, passengers on a old Sienna vehicle that is close share chargers, earphones and food, to being consigned to the junk yard. sometimes getting into topics of the day, or bonding over the failings of The car takes off to a preselection the government. Fela’s iconic “sufof music CDs on rotation. Sometimes the bus company provides air condifering and smiling” song could not tioning. On other occasions passensum up Nigerians’ attitude more. gers have to contend, depending on “We have to manage,” an imam on the season, with intense heat or dust the journey from Abuja to Lagos clouds swept up by fast-moving cars says, smiling. “What else will we do?” and potholes. The car stops twice “We have to manage,” says an for food and rest imam on the journey to Lagos. breaks. In one of the “What else will we do?” moreprominentstops a horde of mostly children and young adults rush at The Sienna beats the odds, again, and arrives in Lagos, plunged into the incoming cars, stretching out hours of traffic. Passengers sit silently an assortment of edibles. Nobody taking in the corrupted air. No one questions why they are not in school. Any road trip around Nigeria complains. At the last stop those has a decent amount of scenery. remaining disembark, sweating. Driving from Abuja to Sokoto, the Everyone mumbles goodbye and sun beats down on large stretches of heads to their various corners of a dry ground. Travelling from Lokoja country that exists on uneven springs, in the Central Region to Abuja small yet magically stays afloat on the back mountains, waterbodies and swathes of its citizens’ misguided resilience. Alithnayn Abdulkareem in Lagos of foliage fill the landscape.But such

TWITTER TRENDS NOT SO SUPER EAGLES

DJ Cyrius Black

Nigeria’s Super Eagles got off to a disappointing start during the Russia 2018 World Cup and their fans weren’t afraid to let them know

When he’s not rocking Douala’s nightspots, the young Cameroonian goes planetary with his eclectic podcasts, videos and radio show

Gimba Kakanda @gimbakakanda

Super Eagles are those bestdressed classmates in secondary school, who have all the swags. And all the Fs [grades].

What are you listening to?

Right now, I’m listening to a lot of old-school hip hop like Dr. Dre, DMX. Also French rap like Secteur Ä, NTM and IAM. I can’t escape the trap music trend. When I want to dance in my car I put on afrobeats.

Mad E’Leine @badgalmaddie_

Super Eagles before the match Vs Super Eagles after the match #CRONGA

What’s the best concert you have ever been to?

Without any hesitation, Maître Gims in Yaoundé and Wizkid in Douala. The crowd was alive, people knew all the words. It was great!

Where are you hanging out?

I’m quite a fan of chilling with friends. My favourite club is La Canne à Sucre in Deïdo, Douala. TWITTER

How would you describe Douala to someone that has never been?

Humid, vibrant and frenetic. This is Cameroon’s main city. Douala is the crossroads of all cultures in our country. There is some charm in the street life and battered independence architecture. Most people love our food, ndolè, poulet DG, and our nightlife.

Övie @OvieO

Olamide & Phyno shot the video for “Road 2 Russia” yesterday. By the time they release it, the Super Eagles would already be on their way back from Russia.

Who, living or dead, would you like to host at a party?

Mac Loïc, Myster, Michael Jackson, Dr Dre and Spring Break. Only hard work pays.

What single night out has been the most memorable for you as a DJ?

As a DJ I truly enjoy Apero Street in Cameroon and Manu Killer’s party at Safari Club, Yaoundé.

The secret to the best party? Good music, a good DJ, drink at will and a receptive, not capricious, crowd. People who really want to have fun.

Interview by Diane Audrey Ngako

A quote that suits you?

Major A. @king_adze

Instead of training, the Super Eagles were busy modelling with the new Jersey Giant @Missturnerbecky

See ehn... Nigerians can troll super eagles... The other 31 countries can troll us... But Ghana please just shut up.... You did not breathe in Russia air biko Francis Ndung'u @Frank_ndungu_99

Apparently, the Super Eagles of Nigeria promised their President that “We will bring the World Cup home.” Let politicians also know how it feels to receive empty promises! #CRONGA THE AFRICA REPORT

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ART & LIFE 89

Work, rest and play Organic food growing where you eat it, acro yoga on the lawn, and a chance to find the centre of the maze make for a rewarding retreat in the Western Cape

verberg literally means “over the mountain”, and heading to the Overberg Highlands for a yoga retreat certainly felt like a mental leap, leaving city stresses behind in the 90-minute drive from Cape Town. But, tranquil and isolated though it is, the Drift Farm Homestead is no ashram. It’s a workingorganicfarmandwinery,making it the perfect location for one of Satori Africa’s wellbeing breaks, which combine restorative practice with the good things in life – even wine, in moderation. The 10 attendees were a mix of couples and singles. After settling in to the modern, luxurious guestrooms, we were all keen to explore the organic garden, to sample and savour what would later make its way onto our plates. This already involved some level of body bending as we climbed onto each other’s shoulders to reach the few remaining tamarillo fruit in the trees, or crouched down to pick gooseberries and snap peas straight from the ground, inhaling the delicious fragrances from several different herbs. THE AFRICA REPORT

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requires giving up some control. There we were on the lawns doing somersaults, handstands and other things adults don’t do nearly enough, if at all. One of the key points of the retreat was For the duration of the retreat guests also to go offline; three days with phones were treated to a specially prepared on flight mode, laptops packed away and without hearing the sound of a car. vegetarian feast by chef Lindy Aronowitz from Zooop, an organic deli in nearby Returning to the world of traffic – both online and off – can be a task. A lesson Caledon, incorporating the farm’s produce and “prepared with love”. learned was to incorporate some quiet On any other occasion the Drift Farm time into daily life. It doesn’t take much. has all food and drink bases You might take two minutes at covered with a pantry that the top of every hour to turn includes the farm’s wines, off your phone, close your eyes, and breathe. Or cidersandotherproduce for sale. Guests can also perhaps eat your lunch opt for pre-prepared outside or, if you’re Westcoast meals or dine at local lucky to be near a park Karoo Winelands restaurants, of which or beach, take off your Cape Town Garden Route there are several excelshoes and sink your toes lent choices. into the grass or sand. Overberg The weekend involved The weekend of mindfuldifferent styles of practice led by ness can be summed up in the Cape Town yoga teacher Will Lindeque Do Hyun Choe quote at the entrance of and Satori Africa’s founder, Mark Bland. the Drift Farm’s maze, fringed with trees symbolising the twelve zodiac signs: A highlight was a playful session of acro yoga on the lawn – sometimes referred “Stillness is what creates love. Movement to as partner yoga or the yoga of trust is what creates life. To be still and still moving – this is everything.” because the idea of ‘flying’ while you Eugene Yiga in Overberg rest your pelvis on a stranger’s lifted feet

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SATORI AFRICA

TRAVEL SOUTH AFRICA

ER O

M O E G B EJ UL E

By day, driver Ali Hussein shows visitors the sights of Djibouti, but at night he navigates a different side to the city

know how to do many things. I can drive. I can also clean and wash and work as translator and guide. I speak seven languages: Somali, Arabic, French, English, Greek, German and Amharic. I learnt all while I worked as a seaman for 25 years. My father was one, too, and he was taking me to work with him so that’s how I became a seaman. When I was young, my father would bring back food from his work. Different kinds, Greek food, English food, seafood. I grew up in a large family with my 12 siblings. Me, too, I have a large family. I have one wife and 10 children. In Djibouti, we are all one. One big family. Djiboutians, Ethiopians, Somalians, even the Yemeni fleeing the crisis in their country. We help each other. You know, Al-Shabaab is fucking crazy. They just kill people for nothing. Why do you kill your fellow

STEFAN VOLK/LAIF-REA

Two-way traffic Muslims just like that? They make things hard for everyone. I drive now. We don’t make much money so I do other things. For one ride, I charge you only 1,000 francs ($5-$6) because you’re my black brother. Not much to the hotel you’re going. Everywhere in Djibouti is not far. But we don’t make too much money. Everything costs too much in Djibouti because we grow nothing and import everything.

EASY MONEY

Prostitution has increased a lot. Fifteen to 20 years ago, all the hookers you see at night were only Ethiopians and they did it to help their families back home. After a few years, they used to go back to their country with their money and start a new life. Now there are Djiboutians also. They don’t struggle like Ethiopians because they have their family here, but they like easy money. Even the cashiers in club or waiters in some restaurants are hookers. I know a girl who is French and also Djiboutian and

her mother was a hooker, too, so she got pregnant on duty. They all speak English now with all these Americans. Before they charge like 2,000 DJF, now they take maybe 5,000 DJF. The owners of clubs pay a bunch of hookers to fill the clubs and distract the customers to make them drink more. Every month they pay each girl around 30,000 DJF if they are good. I don’t drink. I don’t touch the fine girls. I just carry them around, from club to club, from one man’s house to their house. Back and forth. You can get them cheap if you want. They like black man blood but they charge white man plenty money. The white man pay plenty for sex, I tell you. My enjoyment is khat. I chew khat. Everyone in Djibouti chews khat, even our president chews khat. We taxi drivers take breaks to chew khat. Our brothers in Ethiopia use our ports to import the fertiliser and grow khat then export it to us and we put it in our mouths and chew for hours. It is our snack. I chew it and it helps me drive. Interview by Eromo Egbejule

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