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SOUTH AFRICA End of rainbow diplomacy

The Nigerians are coming

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How Africa can establish and defend its brands against global competitors

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SOUTH AFRICA End of rainbow diplomacy

CONTENTS

The Nigerians are coming

w w w.t he af ricarep or t.com

N ° 72 • JU LY 2015

How Africa can establish and defend its brands against global competitors

Fight for your opyright

THE AFRICA REPORT # 72 - JULY 2015

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Algeria 550 DA • Angola 600 Kwanza • Austria 4.90 € • Belgium 4.90 € • Canada 6.95 CAN$ • Denmark 60 DK • Ethiopia 75 Birr • France 4.90 € Germany 4.90 € • Ghana 7 GH¢ • Italy 4.90 € • Kenya 410 shillings • Liberia $LD 300 • Morocco 50 DH • Netherlands 4.90 € • Nigeria 600 naira Norway 60 NK • Portugal 4.90 € • Sierra Leone LE 12,000 • South Africa 35 rand (tax incl.) • Spain 4.90 € • Switzerland 9.90 FS • Tanzania 9,000 shillings Tunisia 8 DT • Uganda 9,000 shillings • UK £ 4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zambia 30 ZMW • Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 FCFA

BUSINESS

4 EDITORIAL Justice must cut both ways

64 NIGERIA Dangote’s smooth landing With a new government in power, the business magnate is betting on his huge refinery and agriculture projects taking off

6 LETTERS 8 THE QUESTION

BRIEFING 10 SIGNPOSTS

68 SOUTH KOREA-AFRICA Samsung leads the charge

16 INTERNATIONAL 18 PEOPLE 20 CALENDAR

70 INTERVIEW Vivian Imerman, Vasari Global chairman 72 AfDB New leadership, same direction

FRONTLINE 22 BRAND AFRICA Fight for your ©opyright Bootleg goods keep Africa’s informal economies afloat but governments must do more to protect traditional knowledge

73 HANNIBAL LOGISTICS DOSSIER

POLITICS 28 NIGERIA Knight in northern armour Nasir El-Rufai, the new governor of Kaduna, is the self-styled “rescuer” of northern Nigeria hoping to kickstart the economy

32 SOUTH AFRICA Contradictions hurt foreign policy

ART & LIFE 82 AFROFUTURISM Seeing parallel worlds A new wave of African creatives are remoulding the past and present into fantastic futures

37 ETHIOPIA Generational freeze 38 TANZANIA The race is on 38 ANGOLA Vengeful sentence 43 GHANA Changing of the guard 44 ANANSI

COUNTRY FOCUS 47 CAMEROON Hopes on hold Cameroon’s youthful population means President Paul Biya must manage a delicate handover to the next generation •

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78 EGYPT A new canal for a new economy 80 EAST AFRICA Rail to the rescue Governments are betting big that new railways will boost competitiveness with Asia

34 KENYA What does Kenya want?

THE AFRICA REPORT

74 Transnet transformed The South African state-owned transport company shunts forward with its plans for a regional infrastructure strategy

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86 BRIEFS The Venice Biennale 88 LIFESTYLE Reggae artist Bebe Cool and Getting inked in Cairo 89 TRAVEL Snorkelling in Mozambique 90 DAY IN THE LIFE Sidi Diokh, Senegalese traditional wrestling referee

This issue carries a loose insert for selected countries

EDITORIAL

THE AFRICA REPORT A Groupe Jeune Afrique 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

Justice must cut both ways

ike Groucho Marx, South Africa does not want to belong to a club that will accept it as a member. This time, the club in question is the International Criminal Court (ICC). What could be the final showdown over South Africa’s membership of the ICC was prompted by the fiasco of the arrival of Sudan’s indicted President Omar al-Bashir at the African Union (AU) summit in Johannesburg on 13 June and his forced departure on 15 June. South Africa, with the moral strength from its struggle against apartheid, was a key signatory of the ICC’s Rome Statutes. The governing African National Congress now says the ICC is “no longer useful for the purposes for which it was intended – being a court of last resort for the prosecution of crimes against humanity.” The ICC’s charges against Bashir are based on the deaths of more than 300,000 people in the Darfur region a decade ago. The latest United Nations (UN) reports say at least 78,000 people have been forcibly displaced in Darfur this year and there are unverified reports of 130,000 more chased from their homes by the government’s Rapid Support Forces and state-backed militias. The current fate of Darfur shows the same short attention span that has stymied the development of the ICC. The court’s international backers have to show that justice must cut both ways: if the US was to ratify the Rome Statutes, it would add pressure on Russia and China to follow suit, making it far less of an Africa-centric affair. ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, as a top Gambian lawyer trained in Nigeria, is sensitive to the charge that the ICC is pursuing

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

selective justice against Africa. She has also made the point that the UN Security Council, which authorised the ICC investigation and prosecution, should take much more serious action if it wants the court to press its charges against President Bashir. The Security Council, which could not agree on a resolution to refer Syria to the ICC this year, should back a French proposal that no council member should use its veto The fate when considering crimes against humanof Darfur ity. It should also suphighlights port the ICC’s implethe short mentation of witness protection programmes attention and effective and span that technologically savvy investigations. As a has stymied senior UN official tells the ICC The Africa Report: “If Loretta Lynch and the FBI can work out who laundered the money at FIFA, the ICC should be able to prove who ordered the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Africa.” Another development for the court that could win it wider credibility is the membership of Palestine this year, which could trigger investigations into allegations of war crimes carried out by both Israel and Hamas. There have also been a slew of proposals for hybrid courts – in Central African Republic, South Sudan, Guatemala and Kosovo – combining the knowledge of national judiciaries with the guarantees of international jurists. These could help the ICC to win back support. For the sake of the hundreds of thousands of victims of atrocities, let’s hope it succeeds. ●

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 I S TA NT E D I T O R CHARLIE HAMILTON A S S O CI AT E E D I T O R MARSHALL VAN VALEN E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA NT OHENEBA AMA NTI OSEI R E G I O NA L E D I T O R S PARSELELO KANTAI (EAST AFRICA) CRYSTAL ORDERSON (SOUTHERN AFRICA) TOLU OGUNLESI (NIGERIA) BILLIE ADWOA MCTERNAN (GHANA) S UB - E D I T O R S ALISON CULLIFORD ERIN CONROY P R O O F R E A D I NG KATHLEEN GRAY A RT D I R E CT O R MARC TRENSON DESIGN VALÉRIE OLIVIER CHRISTOPHE CHAUVIN P R O D UCT I O N PHILIPPE MARTIN CHRISTIAN KASONGO R E S E A R CH SYLVIE FOURNIER P HO T O G R A P HY CLAIRE VATTEBLED O NL I NE PRINCE OFORI-ATTA SALES SANDRA DROUET SOLÈNE DEFRANCQ Tel: (33) 1 44 30 18 07 – Fax: (33) 1 45 20 09 67 sales@theafricareport.com CONTACT FOR SUBSCRIPTION: Webscribe Ltd Unit 8 The Old Silk Mill Brook Street, Tring Hertfordshire HP23 5EF United Kingdom Tel: + 44 (0) 1442 820580 Fax: + 44 (0) 1442 827912 Email: subs@webscribe.co.uk 1 year subscription (10 issues): All destinations: €39 - $60 - £35 TO ORDER ONLINE: www.theafricareportstore.com 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 A D VE RT I S I NG D I R E CT O R NATHALIE GUILLERY WITH JEANNY CHABON R E G I O NA L M A NA G E R S FADOUA YAQOBI LILIA BENACEUR ELODIE BOUSSONNIERE US R E P R E S E NTAT I VE AZIZA ALBOU a.albou@groupeja.com

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PRINTER: SIEP 77 - FRANCE N° DE COMMISSION PARITAIRE : 0715 I 86885 Dépôt légal à parution / ISSN 1950-4810 THE AFRICA REPORT is published by GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

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LETTERS For all your comments, suggestions and queries, please write to: The Editor, The Africa Report, 57bis Rue d’Auteuil - Paris 75016 - France. or editorial@theafricareport.com

GHANA’S NPP MUST DEAL WITH THE TAG OF ‘AKANISM’

MINING Dealing in the downturn

NIGERIA What can Buhari do for Africa?

SOUTH AFRICA The DA’s Maimane comes out fighting

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N ° 71 • J U N E 2 0 15

ana Akufo-Addo and the NPP [New Patriotic Party] are right to compare the result of the Nigerian elections to what they could have when Ghana heads to the polls in 2016 [‘Ghana is bankrupt and back in the hands of the IMF’, TAR71 Nana Akufo-Addo June 2015]. But the NPP have their work cut out “Ghana for them with regard to claims by their opponents is bankrupt” that they are too reliant on the Akan vote. They need to accept that the problem does really exist and it’s not just a propaganda weapon, so that they can focus their efforts on correcting this unfortunate image and stand a good chance in 2016. Dealing with the tag of ‘Akanism’ should be one of their main objectives as a party seeking power in a highly ethnicized country like Ghana. That said, I wish Nana and the NPP well in their endeavours to win power and bring about the change Ghana desperately needs. Lawrence Adu-Gyamfi, via email EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The leader of the opposition says the government has brought the country to its knees, and offers his own economic remedies

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

GHANA EDITION

THE RIGHT WAY TO TACKLE AFRICA’S DRUG PROBLEM Some years back, I riled South African media by stating that South Africa had lost the war on drugs. Today, after reading Farai Sevenzo’s article [‘Addiction in Africa’, TAR70 May 2015], I am sad to say that Africa has lost the war. The real question is what can be done? As the head of The Anti Drug Alliance of South Africa I find many are shocked when I start talking about legalisation and decriminalisation. Africa’s stance of fighting the problem with a big stick has not worked and will never work. We need to look at laws that treat drugs as a health problem,

not a criminal problem. Using outdated methodologies for treatment is also pointless. It is time Africa realised that drugs are not going away, and that dealing with abuse and addiction is the way forward, not fighting a tsunami of drugs entering our continent.

them will require multiple measures in African and non-African countries alike, to usher in a fiscal revolution that will provide not just sufficiency of resources, but enable resources to be spent on addressing inequality. Progress on these areas can be made in 2015, as the Financing for Development Conference and Sustainable Development Goals negotiations enable new, global commitments to implement policies such as public country-by-country reporting, public registers of the real owners of companies, equality in international tax policy development, and transparent, accountable budgeting. Joseph Stead, Senior Economic Justice Adviser, Christian Aid, via email

SAFETY WILL BRING BACK EGYPT’S TOURISTS

I was very interested by your article ‘Waiting for the big spenders’ [TAR69 Apr 2015] about Egypt’s failing tourism industry. As someone who spent a Quintin van Kerken considerable time in Egypt, and worked CEO, The Anti Drug Alliance, via email very hard to bring tourists back after the revolution, I can say that the real problem with the tourism industry is safety. The tourist board’s focus 2015: A CHANCE TO END should not be on specific segments ILLICIT FINANCIAL FLOWS (the Gulf Arabs or the Chinese), As you outline in ‘Cash, oil & blood’ but on creating a lasting, safe image [TAR69 Apr 2015], the processes that for Egypt the world over. Only then will enable illicit financial flows from Africa the big spenders come back. Mona Ibrahim, via email are many and global in nature. Tackling

HOW TO GET YOUR COPY OF THE AFRICA REPORT On sale at your usual outlet. If you experience problems obtaining your copy, please contact your local distributor, as shown below. GHANA: TM HUDU ENTERPRISE, T. M. Hudu, +233 (0)209 007 620, +233 (0)247 584 290, tmhuduenterprise@gmail.com – KENYA: NATION MEDIA GROUP, Antony Mutunga,+254 (0)72 15 19734, amutunga@ke.nationmedia.com – NIGERIA: NEWSSTAND AGENCIES LTD, Solomon Otinwa, +234 (0)709 8123 459, newsstand2008@gmail. com – SIERRA LEONE: RAI GERB ENTERPRISES, Mohammad Gerber, +232 (0)336 72 469, raigerbenterprise@gmail.com – SOUTHERN AFRICA: RNA DISTRIBUTION, Butch Courtney, +27 (0)11 602 9800, butchc@mad.co.za • SUBSCRIPTIONS: RAMSAY MEDIA, Karin Mulder, +27 860 100 204, subs@ramsaymedia.co.za – TANZANIA: MWANANCHI COMMUNICATIONS, Emmanuel J Lyimo, +255 716 500 500, elyimo@tz.nationmedia.com – UGANDA: MONITOR PUBLICATIONS LTD, Stephen Eselu, +256 (0)702 178 198, seselu@ug.nationmedia.com – UNITED KINGDOM: COMAG, Mark Swan, +44 (0)1895 433791, Mark.Swan@comag.co.uk – UNITED STATES & CANADA: LMPI, Sylvain Fournier, +1 514 355 5610, lmpi@lmpi.com – ZAMBIA: BOOKWORLD LTD, Shivani Patel, +260 (0)211 230 606, bookworld@realtime.zm – ZIMBABWE: MUNN For other regions go to www.theafricareport.com MARKETING (PVT) LTD, Nick Ncube, +263 (0)4 662755, nickncube@munnmarketing.co.zw

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX CMA CGM p 2; LIQUID TELECOM p 5; ICB 2015 p 7; DSTV AFRICA MAGIC p 9; REP. OF GUINEA p 12-13; ADEXEN p 21; APPSTECH p 21; GLOBAL MEDIA ALLIANCE p 36; REP. OF COTE D’IVOIRE p 39-42; BIOPHARMA p 45; BIOPHARMA p 46; NANA BOUBA GROUP p 50-51; BGFI BANK CAMEROON p 53; TRADEX SA p 55; SOGETRA p 57; SMARTRACK AFRICA p 59; CDC p 62-63; C2I EASYHALLS p 63; BAUMA CONEXPO AFRICA p 77; DDP OUTDOOR p 77; ECOWAS p 79; EKO HOTELS p 81; CNN p 91; NECOTRANS p 92 – MIX TELEMATICS: LOOSE INSERT

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briefing

CALENDAR

CAINE PRIZE FOR AFRICAN WRITING 6 July OxFORD | UK The shortlisted five this year include a past winner, Nigerian Segun Afolabi (1); and two previously shortlisted writers, Namwali Serpell (2) from Zambia and Nigerian Elnathan John (3). South African newcomers F T Kola (4) and Masande Ntshanga (5) are the other contenders for

AFRICA PORTS & HARBOURS SHOW 2015 30 June – 1 July JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA terrapinn.com

AFRICAN EDUWEEK 1-2 July

AFRICA WRITES 3-5 July LONDON | UK A book fair, performance poetry, an evening with acclaimed Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri and a Caine Prize debate are some of the highlights of this annual event at the British Library. africawrites.org

JOHANNESBURG | SOUTH AFRICA A brand new platform, E-Tech Africa, will be introduced at SABC Education’s usually well-attended show. educationweek.co.za

AGN ASSEMBLY 1-3 July ARUSHA | TANZANIA The African Grantmakers Network (AGN) raises the profile of African philanthropy. africangrantmakersnetwork.org

NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL 2-12 July GRAHAMSTOWN | SOUTH AFRICA Performance and visual arts festival at the university city of Grahamstown. nationalartsfestival.co.za

the £10,000 prize money, which last year went to Kenyan writer Okwiri Oduor. Award-winning South African author Zoë Wicomb and her team of judges will announce the winning short story at a dinner in the Weston Library in Oxford, and with only two of the authors on the shortlist based on the continent the debate about what constitutes “African” writing is sure to be hot conversation. www.caineprize.com

POWER-GEN AFRICA & DISTRIBUTECH 15-17 July

AFRIKAKTIV FESTIVAL 23-26 July

CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA The race to keep up with demand for electricity creates opportunities all along the value chain. powergenafrica.com M

TÜBINGEN | GERMANY The annual cultural and arts event focuses on Cameroon this year. afrikafestival.net

NELSON MANDELA INTERNATIONAL DAY 18 July GLOBAL mandeladay.com

4-26 July THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM & FRANCE For the first time ever, an African-registered team, South African MTNQhubeka, will compete in the cycling event after winning one of the five wildcard invites to the 2015 race. letour.fr

LAND FORCES AFRICA 6-7 July PRETORIA | SOUTH AFRICA landforcesafrica.com

ZANZIBAR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 18-26 July ZANZIBAR | TANZANIA An inspiring programme of feature and documentary films strong on human rights themes begins with the award-winning tribute to Dr King, Selma. ziff.or.tz

GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUMMIT (GES) 25-26 July NAIROBI | KENYA Launched in 2009 by President Barack Obama, the summit’s 6th edition will be held in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time with more than 1,200 attendees, including Obama himself, expected to participate. ges2015.org

FILDA 21-26 July

SOUTH AFRICAN BOOK FAIR 31 July – 2 August

LUANDA | ANGOLA Multi-sector trade show. fil-angola.co.ao

CAPE TOWN | SOUTH AFRICA southafricanbookfair.co.za the africa report

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FRONTLINE

AFRICAN BRANDS

Fight for your

opyright

Bootleg handbags and pirated films keep informal economies going so African governments turn a blind eye to counterfeiting. Could they do more though to protect the continent’s traditional knowledge? Zimbabwean IP lawyer and novelist Petina Gappah looks beyond the labels

n the picturesque bridges spanning the narrow waterways that spill into Venice’s Grand Canal, young African men stand like sentinels. Before them, laid out on the steps of each bridge, are the wares that they cajole passers-by into buying. “This does not look real,” I say to one in mock surprise that he is selling a Chanel handbag on the street. “This is a fake, right?” “It is a real fake, my sister,” the young man smiles. “A real fake, just give me €50

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($57) and it is yours.” In addition to the real fake Chanel bags thrust before me are fake Fendis, fake Guccis, fake Pradas and fake Louis Vuittons. The counterfeit trade is well organised. The producers of real fakes manage to copy the latest collections within days of their launching. The new African merchants of Venice are equally well prepared. They have just enough of the wares to show a representative sample, enough to make a good day’s profit but not so many that they are unable to scoop them up when they spy the police.

Whenever they spot the sellers of fakes, the police half-heartedly give chase. Italian police uniforms favour elegance over utility; the officers are no match for their African quarries. The youths disappear into the back alleys behind St Mark’s Square, then someone gives the all clear and back they are again. Like those traders in Venice, youths in almost every African capital are dabbling in the pirated goods business. In Europe, it’s fake handbags. In Africa, it’s counterfeit everything: electronics

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX GREEN FOR TAR

By Petina Gappah in Geneva

FRONTLINE | AFRICAN BRANDS: FIGHT FOR YOUR

and software; shoes and perfumes; films and music; books, phones and watches. Only the Bible and the Koran are immune to piracy. In Harare last year I chatted with a man cheerfully hawking pirated music. “That’s quite the business model you have,” I teased him. “No rent, no electricity, no overheads of any kind. You don’t even have to pay the artists who worked hard to make what you are selling.” He said: “Don’t worry sister, we do not pirate our own. We only sell foreigners here.” I am not sure that local musicians would agree. Every year I teach international trade law students in Arusha, and I am amused to see them sport an array of fake products. My explanations of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the laws of their own countries on trademarks, patents and copyright have little practical effect. The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition estimates that the crossborder trade in counterfeit products will have a value of $1.8trn in 2015. Africans are the end users and the middlemen in the trade. They are not – local music and DVDs aside – usually the creators. African governments lack the political will to enforce intellectual property (IP) rights. Under WTO rules, member governments are obliged to prosecute counterfeiters and pirates. But many African governments see street trading, despite periodic police crackdowns, as a way to absorb the rising numbers of unemployed youths in the continent’s fast-growing cities.

Companies such as South Africa’s Castle Brewery and Kenya’s Safaricom mobile phone network defend their trademarks vigorously in African markets, but traders freely sell expensivelooking counterfeit Apple or Samsung phones. Local trademarks enjoy protection because local companies use them to advance their market shares. Where that market advantage is eroded or threatened by copycats, companies can to take legal action to protect their IP rights. European luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton have only a tiny

market in Africa, so they leave the enforcement of copyright to African governments. And the latter are rarely challenged in the WTO on their failure to enforce the rules. In 2011, the United States and the European Union challenged what they considered to be China’s lax enforcement of IP rights. With a billion people and a burgeoning middle class, China’s market is a critical target for Western manufacturers. And China’s failure to enforce IP rights stringently meant that lucrative corporate profits were being

10 trademarked African brands

Mining company (South Africa)

Mobile telecoms and information technology (Kenya)

Foundation of Aliko Dangote’s corporate empire (Nigeria)

Mobile telecoms and information technology (Nigeria) Africa-wide entertainment provider (South Africa)

Telecoms company (South Africa)

BOX-OFFICE BLUES

It also comes down to consumer power and the economics of supply and demand: IP rights are generally enforced only where there is an economic benefit from their enforcement. In 2012, the Hollywood film The Avengers grossed more than $1bn worldwide. It made $6m on its first day in cinemas in Australia, which has a population of just more than 23 million. In the cinemas of Nigeria, with more than 170 million people, the same film set a box office record of N100m ($500,000) for its entire run. Many Africans watch pirated films in local bars and their homes. Relatively few of them go to cinemas.

Civic society group founded by telecoms billionaire (Sudan)

Mobile telecoms and information technology (Zimbabwe)

Lager beer (Kenya)

Lager beer (Nigeria) THE AFRICA REPORT

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AFRICAN BRANDS: FIGHT FOR YOUR

drained away. China lost the case and has had to implement a systematic overhaul of its enforcement. To allow African economies to benefit from the current IP regime, governments have to work out how to make the best use of hard-won flexibilities to produce and sell cheaper versions of vital pharmaceuticals. In 2001 at the Doha ministerial conference that launched the latest round of multilateral negotiations, WTO members agreed to review the enforcement of patent rights on medicines and other

public goods in poor countries. They changed the rules to simplify the licensing of generic drugs for public health purposes. They approved a special “parallel import licensing” scheme under which a country with little or no manufacturing capacity could import generics manufactured under a compulsory licence. In 2007, Rwanda imported generic drugs from Canada under the scheme and it is now manufacturing its own. This system has not been used as frequently as its advocates had hoped.

10 African products needing protection MAASAI CLOTH AND JEWELLERY

(Ethiopia)

KORHOGO CLOTH (Côte d’Ivoire)

KENTE CLOTH from Bonwire and Ntonso (Ghana)

MARULA OIL (Namibia)

BARAKAT COTTON (Sudan)

BOGOLAN MUDCLOTH (Mali)

MPINGO AND GRENADILLA BLACKWOOD (Tanzania)

ZAMBIQUE CASHEW NUTS (Mozambique) THE AFRICA REPORT

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SHEA BUTTER (Burkina Faso)

Determined lobbying by pharmaceutical companies has combined with bureaucratic inertia in Africa to thwart progress on the wider distribution of generic drugs. Emmanuel Katongole, the chief executive of Uganda’s Cipla Quality Chemical Industries, says his company is seeking to develop medicines from traditional African plants. He tells The Africa Report that more must be done: “It’s high time Africa woke up. It’s high time we realised that every country has its own priorities. It’s up to us Africans to build up that industrial capacity, and the public sector has a very big role to play. Of course, there is that big issue, saying ‘Oh, protectionism should be fought’, but every country protects its indigenous facilities. Africa should give preferential treatment to its industries.” THE PROTECTION CONUNDRUM

BATI, CABRETTA AND SELALLIE LEATHER

(Kenya)

There are big questions about how Africa protects its own IP. At the top of the negotiating agenda at both WIPO and the WTO are demands for the protection of Africa’s traditional knowledge. This question carries with it a history of exploitation and injustice. In the general sense, explain WIPO officials, traditional knowledge embraces the content of knowledge itself as well as traditional cultural expressions, including distinctive signs and symbols associated with traditional knowledge. In the narrow sense, traditional knowledge refers to knowledge as such, in particular the knowledge resulting from intellectual activity in a traditional context and includes knowhow, practices, skills and innovations in agricultural, scientific, technical, ecological and medicinal knowledge as well as biodiversity-related knowledge. So traditional knowledge covers areas as diverse as traditional songs and legends, the patterns on the kente cloth of the Ashanti in Ghana as well as the means of producing kente, the use of local medicines in China, Inuit ways of harvesting fish from under the ice in Greenland and the use of neem and turmeric in India. Of perhaps massive commercial potential, given the global sales of Viagra, is the use of the vhuka vhuka root to treat male impotence in Zimbabwe. Vhuka vhuka is an exhortation to ‘wake up, wake up’. It is hard to protect traditional knowledge through the usual IP systems. Traditional knowledge, a community

FRONTLINE | AFRICAN BRANDS: FIGHT FOR YOUR

public good, is inherently different from the kind of individualist scientific and artistic work that is the conventional subject of IP protection. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and Malian singer Salif Keita enjoy copyright protection for their original works, but such a system of copyright protection would be difficult to apply to the creation myths that are part of the Yoruba cultural heritage or the traditional songs of the Zulu. SHARED KNOWLEDGE

Similarly, a patent system that requires novelty, inventiveness and industrial application may not be the best means of protecting traditional knowledge that, by definition, can be called neither new nor inventive. And, crucially, traditional knowledge – the kente cloth patterns of the Ashanti and the hunting and tracking methods of the San of Botswana – belongs to no single individual. That means that traditional knowledge in itself is not IP in the classic sense. It can, however be protected as IP. How best to do this is the subject of debate and negotiations at the Genevabased WTO and WIPO. Innovations based on traditional knowledge may benefit from patent protection. So medicines like vhuka vhuka could be patented by a Swiss company, while some practices could be protected as trade secrets or confidential information.

How Africa can defend its IP

1 2 3 4 5

Ensure that local copyright, trademark and patent laws and enforcement meet international standards. That will boost the power of African producers and artists to secure legal protection in their own and international markets. Commission inventories of intellectual property and show producers and distributors how licensing deals can protect the uniqueness of their work and increase its value in retail markets. Demand that products such as cocoa, palm oil, vanilla and blackwood get the same level of protection through the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) geographical indications scheme. Develop a common position with Asian and Latin American countries on the legal protection of the widest range of traditional knowledge at the WTO and accelerate negotiations. Use fully the technical assistance offered by experts at the World Intellectual Property Organisation both to defend their producers’ legal rights and to get access to the technology transfer now available under international treaties.

WIPO officials talk about the defensive and positive protection approaches: defensive protection means that third parties cannot gain illegitimate or unfounded rights over traditional knowledge. It includes reforms to simplify the patent system for the benefit of communities wanting to protect the value of their traditional knowledge. Positive protection means preventing the unauthorised use of traditional knowledge. But the most far-reaching

proposals would be to incorporate traditional knowledge into some form of community protection. It is possible to develop a communal idea of ownership that enjoys IP protection. For example, European producers have introduced geographical indications (GIs) into the WTO rules: this means protecting products produced in a specific geographical area. It started off with the lucrative wine and spirits industry.

RENÉ MATTES/HEMIS.FR

South African winemakers should smell the rooibos and protect their geographical uniqueness THE AFRICA REPORT

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Côte d’Ivoire

A new challenge: electricity

Abidjan by night…

ôte d’Ivoire boasts one of Africa’s most successful power industries. Since 2012, the country has greatly stepped up its efforts to boost output and meet the needs of a portion of the population left in the

dark. Thus giving five million citizens the means to improve their quality of life and bring up their children. It is also indispensable for the country’s industrialisation. The goal: to generate as much power as Nigeria does today by 2020. MESSAGE - July 2015 - I

Côte d’Ivoire

Plugging in Côte d’Ivoire On 10 June, Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan was in Bouna, 600km northeast of Abidjan, to turn on the lights for 62 localities in the Bounkani region, raising the electrification rate there from 1% to 17%. Over 200,000 people now have access to electricity in what had been one of the country’s most underserved areas. Two weeks earlier, Oil and Energy Minister Adama Toungara flipped the switch on 35 villages in the Denguélé region, in the far northwest, increasing the electrification rate there from 22% to 46%. Meanwhile, the electrification rate in Odienné, the region’s capital, tripled from 30% to 90%. © OLIVIER / JA

The SOCOCÉ shopping centre.

A school in Abidjan.

These examples from 2015 show the tangible results achieved by the National Rural Electrification Programme (PRONER 2020), underway since 2014, which is spending 600 billion FCFA (a billion dollars) to electrify over 2,000 villages by mid-2016. The effort involves not just infrastructure and public lighting, of course, but also subsidies to connect households that cover up to 75% of the cost. In 2016, the push to electrify the smallest villages will continue. By 2020, over 95% of villages will have electricity, compared to 31% in 2009. Côte d’Ivoire aims to be one of the first countries in Africa to achieve total electrification by 2025. MESSAGE - July 2015 - II

No region left behind Côte d’Ivoire is among Africa’s best-equipped countries — 78% of the population has access to electricity — but the current is not flowing everywhere. In late 2013, 5,666 out of the country’s slightly more than 8,500 localities were still powerless: five million people had no access to modern medical care and tens of thousands of children were kept from learning in conditions worthy of a modern country. What’s more, access to electricity varies widely. Big cities and certain regions, especially in the West and South, are well served, while progress has left others behind, especially in the North. In the San Pedro region, in the East, the electrification rate stood at around 30% in 2011. Yet San Pedro is a major economic centre with the country’s second-biggest cargo port, which looks set to grow quickly as a maritime outlet for the expanding mining industry in the Northeast’s Man region.

THE MOST PRESSING TASK WAS TO CONVINCE THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO INVEST

A new challenge: electricity

After a decade of under-investment, Côte d’Ivoire’s power industry was in pitiful shape by 2009, when consumption peaked at 856 MW, outstripping capacity (847 MW). N o re s e r v e s w e re l e f t t o c o p e w i t h a possible emergency. The situation impeded development and the economic recovery promised in 2011. How could industry or commerce take off without electricity to power machines or light office buildings?

The situation needed to be remedied as soon as possible. First, power had to be available for economic activity, which was expected to grow at a brisk pace — a complex proposition because in Côte d’Ivoire the utility industry’s business model is based on three components. Private c o m p a n i e s o p e r a t e g a s - f i re d p l a n t s , whereas the Compagnie ivoirienne d’électricité (CIE) has a monopoly on transporting and distributing power in the framework of a contract with the government, which also owns hydroelectric plants and has started building several new units. But the government’s most pressing task was to convince the private sector to invest. It takes several years between the time work starts up on a dam and the current starts flowing.

Remedying oversights

The CIE building in Abidjan.

MAINTAINING RATES THAT ARE AMONG AFRICA’S LOWEST Côte d’Ivoire has one of the

continent’s most competitive

and efficient power industries. A

kilowatt-hour costs less than the African average and the average outage time is 40 hours per year

compared to 41 in South Africa and approximately 100 in Senegal. But

its financial equilibrium is still shaky.

SOLAR AND WIND POWER TO ELECTRIFY THE REMOTEST VILLAGES

For three years, households and

businesses’ power consumption has outpaced GDP: slightly over 10%

per year in the former case, slightly under 10% per year in the latter.

In contrast, power production rose by just 2% per year. What’s more, © NABIL ZORKOT / JA

The port of San Pedro.

generation costs are affected by

the price of gas, which so far has been the main energy source for

the country’s power plants. When prices spike or the dollar rises in

relation to the euro, so does the bill for producers. The consequences are still limited for households, especially the 40% that benefit from rate subsidies. By 2020,

the availability of more plentiful

electricity, 60% of which will come

from hydroelectric power plants, will

help Côte d’Ivoire maintain rates that rank among Africa’s lowest.

MESSAGE - July 2015 - III

A new challenge: electricity

Côte d’Ivoire

Investing to double output The bright outlook for a sustainable economic recovery, which has since become a reality, convinced private utilities to invest in order to swiftly boost their output. This year, Ciprel, the country’s biggest supplier with 30% of the market, will increase the production capacity of its plant in Vridi, near Abidjan, from 322 to 544 MW. When the new facilities are up and running, Vridi will be sub-Saharan Africa’s most powerful thermal plant. Meanwhile, in 2015 Azito Énergie will raise its production capacity from 288 to 418 MW. In 2014, Aggreko, the country’s third-biggest supplier, which has operated a 200MW gas-powered plant since 2013, launched an investment plan to double its output by 2016. Lastly, ContourGlobal, an American company, is building a fourth gas-fired plant in Bingerville, east of Abidjan, capable of generating 330 MW. Côte d’Ivoire’s power output capacity will reach 2,000 MW this year, a 40% rise compared to 2011.

BY 2020, 95% OF THE IVORIAN POPULATION WILL HAVE ELECTRICITY

The SANIA plant, a subsidiary of the SIFCA Group.

Thermal power plant in AZITO.

Hydroelectric plants will supply most of Côte d’Ivoire’s power by 2020, when this clean, cheap source of energy will meet 60% of the country’s needs, compared to 25% today. Construction on seven dams that will boost capacity by 1,150 MW has been underway since January 2014. The new plants will be in Ayamé (two tranches for a total of 50 MW), Kossou (174 MW), Taabo (210 MW), Buyo (165 MW), La Faye (five MW) and Soubré. The latter, under construction near San Pedro, is the biggest plant (275 MW). It will start operating in 2018 to meet some of the mining industry’s needs. Côte d’Ivoire’s power output capacity will reach 4,000 MW by 2020 — the same as Nigeria’s, where just 48% of the population, which is six times bigger, has access to electricity. The proportion is 78% in Côte d’Ivoire and will reach 95% by 2020.

WHAT ABOUT RENEWABLE ENERGY? and 2020. Today, gas-fired plants account for 75% of output.

In five years, hydroelectric plants will generate 60%. Renewable

sources, such as solar, wind and biomass, were neglected during

the 2000-2010 decade. Legislation passed in 2013 now encourages

their growth. This year, their share of total output will reach around 100 MW, or 5%. Most of that is biomass, including oil palm fibres, sawdust or cotton seed hulls burned to generate electricity

for industrial purposes. In the long run, solar and wind power are indispensable to electrify the remotest villages. MESSAGE - July 2015 - IV

Côte d’Ivoire will diversify its energy sources between 2015

AFRICAN BRANDS: FIGHT FOR YOUR

Like appellations of source or origin, geographical indications are a new category of IP that the WTO recognises as signifying a product’s quality. Swiss watches, Manchego cheese and, most famously, Champagne are protected as geographical indications. Thus, the wine makers of the Champagne region can all use the protected geographical indication Champagne as part of their trademarks. Indeed, the European Union’s (EU) highly successful negotiation strategy means that there are two tiers of protection: GIs for wine and spirits enjoy what is called a “higher level of protection”. This means a producer from elsewhere cannot even use the term ‘champagne-style sparkling wine’ or ‘imitation champagne’ or ‘champagne-like’. The most famous African product to enjoy the protection of GIs is Ethiopian coffee. The Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office has registered the Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe varieties as GIs in Ethiopia and in other territories. The Addis government had the help of USbased non-governmental organisation Light Years IP, which is working with representatives of the Maasai people in East Africa to develop trademarking and certification opportunities. ROOIBOS ROBBERY

Ultimately, these kinds of measures bring the debate back to where it started, with the question of enforcement. For a GI to be defended outside its country of origin, it must be protected first at home. An ultimately unsuccessful 2013 French attempt to trademark rooibos, a plant traditionally grown and used for tea in South Africa, could have succeeded because rooibos does not enjoy a patent, trademark or GI in South Africa. The conflict was resolved in 2014 when South Africa won recognition for the rooibos trademark through a deal with the EU. The GI approach is one from which African countries can learn. It shows that the system of IP rights protection can adapt to the demands of its member governments. But to make this work, African governments must vigorously enforce agreed IP rights and take full advantage of negotiated flexibilities in the emerging global rules on IP. As African economies grow, failure to take reform and enforcement of IP rules seriously could cost the continent tens of billions of dollars. ● THE AFRICA REPORT

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OPINION

Patrick Smith Editor in chief, The Africa Report

An intellectual liberation

he elegant woman about to sip from a cup of Ethiopia’s Sidamo coffee on our cover symbolises the hope for Africa’s fight for its intellectual property (IP) rights. It is too late for Ethiopia – which takes credit for the discovery of the caffeinated red beans in its highlands a thousand years ago – to patent the invention of coffee, but it is now doing the next best thing. Working with cooperatives and exporters, the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office has secured trademark registrations in more than 30 countries for its three most popular brands of fine coffee: Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. By insisting that distributors have to buy licences to sell them, it has doubled coffee farmers’ incomes in a short time and protects them in the long term. The same principle applies to Kenya’s Milima tea, which aficionados regard with the same reverence as India’s Darjeeling. Although the quality of Sudan’s Barakat cotton ranks with Pima or Egyptian cotton, its farmers receive a fraction of its retail value. A vigorous campaign to promote and protect the Barakat brand, which sells at about a 50% discount to Pima cotton, could sharply increase earnings for growers and exporters. Shrouded in legal jargon, the fight hardly seems the stuff of national liberation struggles. It calls for clever strategy and patient negotiations with organisations sporting an alphabet soup of acronyms – WTO, WIPO, ARIPO and OAPI to name a few. But the fight is of critical importance for Africa’s future. Unless governments take determined steps to secure IP rights for their countries’ products, flora and fauna, art and culture, the continent stands to lose billions of dollars a year as the rest of the world protects what is known as the intangible value of production. This poses a big challenge to African economies. The clear message is that simply boosting output for a small profit will be a lengthy and arduous route to growth. The current downturn in almost all commodity prices tells its own story. But innovation backed by IP strategies can help African farmers and entrepreneurs market the distinctiveness of their products and boost incomes. Many battles are still to be fought to protect Africa’s seed varieties from rapacious agribusiness companies and to assert and protect the value of its idiosyncratic cultivation methods of oil palm, cocoa and rubber. Equally, Ghana and Mali have to find ways to secure protection for their kente and bogolan cloth, which have been ruthlessly appropriated by manufacturers across Asia. On the other side of the coin, Africa will have to negotiate harder for flexibility in industrialised countries’ IP regimes, especially when they literally amount to matters of life and death. Under pressure, big pharmaceutical companies have relented a little on their refusal to allow local generic production of life-saving drugs such as anti-malarials and anti-retrovirals. But they need to go much further, perhaps encouraged by new financing methods for critical pharmaceutical research. ●

BUSINESS

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COMPANIES & MARKETS

NIGERIA

Dangote’s smooth landing With a new government in power, the business magnate is betting on his huge refinery and agriculture projects taking off. Meanwhile, Dangote Cement continues an expansion plan that has left others scrambling to catch up By Tolu Ogunlesi in Lagos

BENEDICTE KURZEN/NOOR

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illionaire businessman Aliko Dangote got one important piece of advice from Sanusi Dantata, his wealthy maternal grandfather: “No matter what you do, you must always respect the authority of the day. Do not fight government. You must be an obedient person.” Since he started business in the late 1970s, Dangote has taken this very seriously. Critics argue that he has depended unfairly on exploiting his government connections to secure lucrative concessions and undermine competitors. Meanwhile, supporters point to the myriad Nigerians who have yet to parlay their government access into a place on Forbes’ rich list as evidence that it has taken a lot more than connections to create Dangote’s unprecedented levels of success. Throughout his presidency, Goodluck Jonathan appeared enamoured of Dangote’s success, presumably because of how it reflected positively on the government’s ‘Transformation Agenda’. A few months after he was sworn in as president, Jonathan said on national television that “by December

[2011, Nigeria] shall start exporting [cement]. Dangote himself told me.” No bloc of politicians today can afford to ignore a man whose net worth is roughly equal to Nigeria’s federal budget for this year, and whisperings suggest that while Dangote has been a major donor to the People’s Democratic Party since 1999, he has also consistently but quietly funded the opposition. On the day the electoral commission announced the results of the 28 May presidential vote, Dangote was one of a handful of people photographed in the company of both the incumbent president and the president-elect. NEW FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

As always, top businesspeople have to ride transitions. In May, Dangote was invited to address President-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s transitional council, where sources familiar with proceedings said he spoke frankly about the scale of the problems facing the incoming government. Local newspapers suggest Dangote was frozen out during the Jonathan years by then petroleum minister Diezani Alison- ● ● ●

BENEDICTE KURZEN/NOOR

Madueke. He will be banking on his closeness to All Progressives Congress power brokers like Babatunde Fashola and Nasir El-Rufai as well as key advisers to the presidency like former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi. Political choppy waters are not the only challenge for Dangote. Nigeria’s recent stock market troubles have affected him. In early June,DangoteCementwasdownto N177 ($0.89) per share from N250 in July 2014. Before a market rally at the end of March, Dangote, who owns 90% of the cement giant, had lost more than $5bn. ●●●

RACING TO WIN

But he is not one to be deterred. In March, he told reporters: “If it is a race, I can assure you I will come back stronger. We have a hard time for now, but the fundamentals of the business are there.” Ever bullish on Nigeria, he is pushing ahead with expansion plans for his cement company,

Dangote has benefited from restrictions on cement imports to feed the local market

$9bn

Dangote is investing heavily in Nigeria’s first oil refinery project SOURCE: DANGOTE

which is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa by production capacity. It also singlehandedly accounts for a quarterofthemarketcapitalisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Further afield, new production facilities are on stream in Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Cameroon and South Africa, with plans for new plants in Tanzania, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, among others (see map). Beyond the bottom line, Dangote sees boosting employment as a sustainable solution for Nigeria’s most intractable problems. “The only way to stop Boko Haram is to create jobs,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Abuja last May. The Dangote Group, one of Nigeria’s largest private employers, is currently recruiting 7,000 fleet officers to “manage and operate” its cement, salt and sugar haulage trucks. According to the advertising notice it put out, fleet officers will take full ownership of trucks assigned to them once

Cementing Dangote’s reputation DANGOTE CEMENT COMMANDS around two thirds of Nigeria’s market share. The nearest competitor, Lafarge, has around 10-15%. “If you look just at housing, Nigeria has a backlog of about six million housing units, and they are only producing 100,000 per year,” says Dexter Mahachi, a Dangote analyst at Imara Investment. “Then look at the infrastructure needs, the roads, the sewer systems [...]. The drivers for cement demand in Nigeria remain strong.” Although the company is in expansion mode, Nigeria remains its stronghold. The country accounts for 90% of total sales and around 70% of total profits. “It’s still a Nigeria story. And when you see that the gross profit margin for a full year was 63.5%, you can see why,” explains Mahachi. Those hefty profit margins are explained by the fact that, to boost local production, the Nigerian government has placed restrictions on the import of cement. Dangote, Lafarge and several other local producers have been the beneficiaries of the policy. With the local market expected to reach the point of saturation in a few years, Nigerian authorities hope that cement exports – rather than the huge imports of previous decades – will become the norm. ● Nicholas Norbrook

they have logged 400,000km of travel. The firm is also hiring 2,000 truck drivers. A plan to list the cement company on the London Stock Exchange by 2013, through a sale of a 20% stake, has been on hold. Dangote has hinted that the listing is being delayed by ongoing work to improve corporate governance and recently assured that the listing will happen in 2016. Another project on the horizon is his $9bn refinery complex on the peninsula to the east of Lagos – the closest shot Nigeria currently has to breaking its dependency on the large-scale importation of petroleum products. When completed in 2018 it will have the capacity to process in excess of 600,000 barrels per day, more than the combined capacity of Nigeria’s four collapsing stateowned plants. The Dangote refinery will target the local market. Many will be watching to see how the project turns out, as none of the 18 refineries granted operating licences more than a decade ago have commenced operations. A DUD DEAL

In 2007, during the final weeks of PresidentOlusegunObasanjo’sgovernment, the state sold a 51% stake in two state-owned refineries to a consortium jointly owned by Dangote and oil trader Femi Otedola. The deal did not last. Protests by labourunionsreportedlypressured the new owners into abandoning the deal a few months later. Dangote’s associates say that had the deal gone through Nigeria would not now be struggling with what analystsare describingas the worst fuel supply crisis in years. THE AFRICA REPORT

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COMPANIES & MARKETS | BUSINESS

The shadowy cartel that has made billions of naira from Nigeria’s fuel subsidies is also a force in keeping Nigerian refineries closed. Though the country is likely to retain some fuel imports over the coming years, as it will take a few years for the new production capacity to start, it may be that Buhari’s tough stance on corruption will help boost the local market for petroleum products. And if the government cuts fuel subsidies further, that will deepen the market accordingly.

An ever-widening network of African production CATCHING OLDER EUROPEAN RIVALS like Lafarge and HeidelbergCement on the hop – both are now desperately scrambling to invest in African production – Dangote Cement has the continent in its sights. The company’s $4bn expansion plan includes the opening of plants in Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, the Republic of Congo and Kenya. In addition, the company is creating import or grinding facilities in Cameroon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Francophone countries Moroccan companies increasingly pose competition to Nigeria’s cement powerhouse. South Africa’s PPC is now starting to invest across the continent, too. In Kenya, Dangote’s arrival has sparked price wars. In Ethiopia, Dangote has announced a doubling of the capacity of its newly opened Mugher plant to 5m tonnes, with the second line opening in 2017. Further afield, projects are mooted in Myanmar and Iraq, but these are unlikely to kick in before the continental market is secured, perhaps a decade down the line. Back home, his interests are slowly starting to push into the energy sector, after famously making his billions from non-oil businesses, a rarity in Nigeria. ● N.N.

NORTHERN BOOST

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SOKOTO

Domestic dynasty

KATSINA

Dangote’s business interests spread across Nigeria

ZAMFARA

YOBE

JIGAWA

BORNO

KANO

KEBBI KADUNA

GOMBE

BAUCHI

ADAMAWA

NIGER PLATEAU KWARA

NASARAWA

TARABA

OYO OSUN EKITI OGUN

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KOGI

BENUE

ONDO

LAGOS SOURCE: THE AFRICA REPORT RESEARCH

Agriculture is another of Dangote’s big growth sectors. His tomato processing factory, in his home state of Kano – a commercial hub for northern Nigeria – is currently running tests in preparation for full operations. Last August, Dangote Industries launched a $1bn rice farming and processing venture in partnership with the agriculture ministry. It has already acquired 150,000ha in five states in northern Nigeria, and there are plans to build rice milling plants with a combined capacity of almost 500,000tn – more than four times the tonnage of its nearest competitor, the 105,000tn plant that Olam opened in Nasarawa State in 2014. So far, Dangote has not been involved in Nigeria’s troubled power sector,focusinginsteadonbuilding embedded generation plants for his cement factories. Most of the plants are powered by gas. In 2014, Dangote Cement invested $250m in coal-based generation capacity in the face of the rising unreliability of the gas supply.A 2012 move, through Dangote Power, to acquire one of the 18 privatised power companies was reportedly disqualified when the company failed to meet a submission deadline. Dangote may yet make a fresh foray when the new government restarts the privatisation programme for 10 brand new power plants that are yet to be sold. Elsewhere in the power sector, Dangote announced in April a $2.5bn investment programme in two pipelines that will transport gas from the Niger Delta to

ENUGU EDO EBONYI ANAMBRA IMO

DELTA BAYELSA

RIVERS

ABIA

CROSS RIVER Senegal

AKWA IBOM

Dangote’s international reach Key cement manufacturing plants

Ghana Benin

Ethiopia Congo

Ports management Cement manufacturing plants Steel mill

Lagos. Two US-based investors – Carlyle Group and Blackstone – may back the deal. The pipelines could quadruple gas supply to the Nigerian economy from 1bn cubic feet per day to 4bn. Philanthropy is one of the least talked-about aspects of Dangote’s activities, and one that, against the backdrop of debate about a ‘Marshall Plan’ for northern Nigeria, is likely to make the headlines more frequently in the months ahead. In recent years, he has donated millionsofdollarsincashandmaterial

Sugar processing Tomato paste factory

Tanzania Zambia South Africa

aid to victims of natural disasters not only across Nigeria but also in countries like Niger and Pakistan. Not to be ignored are Dangote’s designs on Nigeria’s national sport – football. In 2010, he lost a bid to acquire English Premier League club Arsenal – one of themost popular among Nigerian fans. He told Bloomberg in May: “I still hope, one day at the right price, that I’ll buy the team. I might buy it, not at a ridiculous price but a price that the owners won’t want to resist. I know my strategy.” ●

ADVERTORIAL

High-quality products and an efficient distribution network dedicated to serving consumers.

ince 1984, Nana Bouba Group has developed its business in line with three core values: quality, availability and proximity. These values serve both its customers and the environment. The company’s deployment and integration strategy is designed to respond to the challenges of the 21st century and the global economy. • DEPLOYMENT in several sectors and in various product lines to maximize value creation and mitigate risks. • INTEGRATION and complimentarily to optimize supply chains, production and distribution channels. • Partnerships and alliances with major worldrenowned industrial groups will enable the Group to pursue its development whilst enriching its technical and managerial skills in order to to face the challenges of globalization. OPERATING COMPANIES

Agro-pastoral - CAMBEEF - GREENFIL SA Distribution - SOACAM SA

Industry - AZUR SA - NABCO SA - SAGRI SA - IBI SA

THE INDUSTRIAL DIVISION

Real Estate and Construction - SCI KRINA - BERNI SA

2004: set-up of the glycerol-water treatment plant with capacity of 1,200 tons, both to respond to environmental issues and to provide “made in Cameroon” glycerine to the domestic market. 2006 revenue: $ 12 million. 2007: set-up of a 100-ton-per-day capacity oil mill, operational in August 2008. Revenue doubles. 2009: production capacity rises to 60,000 tons per year thanks to a second soap factory. Support from the SOACAM network and the development of exports (which today represent 30% of business) have earned AZUR SA recognition as the laundry soap leader in Cameroon and Chad, and a prominent player in Congo and Gabon. Challenges for 2015: secure supplies of palm oil to ensure activity in compliance with international environmental standards. AZUR SA in brief: 2013 revenue: $100 million Headcount: more than 560 employees Activity: 80,000 tonnes of processed fats

IBI SA 2014: exclusively dedicated to export, IBI SA soap manufacturing unit has been founded to respond to growth in demand and changing consumption habits. Objectives:

AZUR SA

2015: Construction of the plant, creation of the palm grove

2001: start-up of the manufacture of laundry soap (AZUR), refined palm oil (oil Azur Gold) and glycerine.

2016: production capacity of 80,000 tons/year, destined for CEMAC and other countries.

GREENFIL SA

Founded in 1984, SOACAM SA is the historic flagship of the Group and is specialized in the distribution of consumer products such as rice, soap, refined oil, sugar, flour, tomato, pasta, etc. Leader in Cameroon thanks to its network of retail outlets and warehouses across national territory, SOACAM SA also supplies neighboring countries from its sites in border cities.

SOACAM SOACAM distributes products manufactured by the NBG Group, but also other products. The reach of its network combined with its logistical efficiency gives SOACAM SA a strategic position within the mass distribution circuit in Cameroon.This position has led several Cameroonian and international manufacturers to establish exclusive distribution partnerships with SOACAM. SOACAM in brief: 2013 revenue: $150 million (wholesale and retail) • N°1 rice importer in Cameroon with more than 200,000 tons

AGRICULTURE

SAGRI SA Established in 2011 with a high-tech plant based in Bonaberi, SAGRI SA produces doubleconcentrate tomato paste known in Cameroon under the brand Neima. Objectives: produce double-concentrate tomato paste from fresh tomatoes.

NABCO SA In its modern plant located in southwestern Cameroon, NABCO SA launches the production of mineral water and soft drinks in 2011. 2014: entry into the Cameroonian soft drink market (orange, grapefruit, apple, pomegranate, pineapple and fruit cocktail) under the brand Vigo. 2015: other flavours and mineral water. SAGRI and NABCO in brief: Investments of over $12 million Sales target: $21 million

CAMBEEF Located in the heart of the Adamawa region, the ideal location for breeding in Central Africa, the 15,000-head cattle ranch is a cultural success. It also represents a potential source of raw materials for the production of milk and meat to supply the entire sub-region. Objectives: set-up of a dairy plant, a slaughterhouse, a butchery and a tannery.

SOACAM building Marché Congo 3rd floor - PO BOX 3031 - Douala Cameroon

Founded in 2013, the palm grove company is in advanced negotiations for plots in the Ocean (South region) and Nkam (Littoral) regions. The challenge is to secure supplies while ensuring the ecoresponsible provenance of the palm oil (‘planting without uprooting’). Objectives: planting 500 hectares in 2016 and then 1,000 ha/ year until 2030. Investment of over $120 millions with net borrowing of 50%. PROJECTS Since 2009, NBG has cultivated a few hundreds hectares of corn in Wassande (Adamawa) in order to gain experience before launching major projects. SAGRI SA: creation of fresh tomato crops. SUPPORT ACTIVITIES BUILDING AND PUBLIC WORKS •The vision of BERNI SA: become the benchmark builder for property developers in the public and private sectors in the sub-region. • Since 2012, its main purpose has been the development of infrastructure through the construction of buildings, dirt roads and urban roads... • Various civil engineering works, the construction of two plants, classrooms and villas have already positioned BERNI SA as a key player. REAL ESTATE •The real estate company Krina manages the Group’s property assets. • It has over twenty land titles belonging to the Group: bare land and buildings located across the territory of Cameroon. •The real estate portfolio held by SCI Krina is estimated at more than $10 million. •These land titles are free from any commitment and thus constitute genuine financial leverage for the group. NANA BOUBA GROUP : A KEY PLAYER WITH ITS SIGHTS SET ON THE FUTURE • Consolidated revenue: more than $300 million. •Total workforce: about 1,500 employees. • NBG offers its products and services across the entire CEMAC territory. • NBG has developed its vertical integration strategy to ensure sustainability in securing raw materials. • NBG has strengthened existing operational units to respond effectively to market demands (building human resources, increasing production capacity...). • NBG is proud of its performance and employees, but also of its contribution to the improvement of household living conditions by providing access to a diverse range of quality products. • By contributing to food security and enhancement of the territory, NBG’s approach is humanistic and responsible. • NBG is committed to the interests of all stakeholders: consumers, employees, shareholders... • NBG is now focusing on international market players in order to promote the transfer of the skills and knowhow • required for the Group’s optimization and sustainability. ■

Phone Fax: (00237) 233 42 17 16 informations@nanaboubagroup.com www.nanaboubagroup.com

Limited company with Boardof Directors and share capitalof 10 500 000 000 FCFA Trade register number rc/dla/2009/b/1250

DIFCOM/FC - Photos : DR

THE DISTRIBUTION DIVISION

BUSINESS | COMPANIES & MARKETS

SOUTH KOREA-AFRICA

Samsung leads the charge Korean firms Samsung and Hyundai are the standard bearers in the country’s trade thrust in Africa, while its debtridden state-owned companies cut back on investment to attract investment. “Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire will be ideal locations if the company is to take advantage of the Economic Community of West African States no-duty law to distribute in West Africa,” says Nour Seklaoui, managing director of Electroland, the sole distributor of Samsung products in Ghana. AFRICAN FACTORIES

In July 2014, Samsung’s South African subsidiary announced planstoestablish a$20mtelevision manufacturing plant in Durban. The Korean firm’s first manufacturing facility in the Middle East and North Africa region, the E£1.8bn ($236.8m) Beni Suef plant in Egypt started production in July 2013. LG Electronics already has a television assembly plant in the East Rand area of Gauteng in South Africa. South Korean corporates are strong in construction, too. Since 2011, South Korean companies have landed 308 construction contracts worth some $20.3bn in 31

TICKER TAPE AVIATION Kenya Airways gets a $43m government bailout

Daewoo won a $161m contract in August 2014 to build the Kazungula Bridge SOURCE: DAEWOO

South Korea’s trade with Africa (US$ billion) exports

imports

9.9

9.6

8.5

8 4.7 3.2

2009

2010

2014

CONSTRUCTION Egypt’s Arabia Group signs $4.6bn house-building contract

KAMBOU SIA/AFP

outhKoreanbrandsarebecoming household names in Africa. “Hyundai in terms of cars, Samsung in terms of mobile phones, LG in terms of televisions and home appliances: these are well-known global brands in Africa that are reliable,” says Mthuli Ncube, professor of public policy at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. Samsung Electronics, the largest unit of the Samsung chaebol and the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, has carved out an enviable niche in Africa’s burgeoning economies well ahead of global competitors such as Apple, Nokia and domestic rival LG Electronics. The company held 35% of the African smartphone market in 2014. Samsung has been able to move withthetimes,unlikeitsmoreponderous, state-owned South Korean colleagues. It has thrown itself into sales negotiations with telecoms network operators. “If we take the continent back five or six years, the telecoms networks were not selling devices at all,” says Thecla Mbongue, an analyst with Ovum, a telecoms research company in South Africa. The strategy has paid off and diversified Samsung’s distribution channels. To expand its business on the continent, the electronics giant is in discussions to start assembly plants for handsets, tablets and television sets in Ethiopia, Kenya and Angola. Others are queuing up

SOURCE: KITA

African countries. They are mainly in Algeria, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana, according to the International Contractors Association of Korea. In 2014, Samsung’s construction arm, Samsung C&T Corporation, won the right to build two of five power plants that were up for bids in Algeria. The company will spend a total of $1.4bn to build a 1,450MW and a 1,163MW plant in Mostaganem and Naâma, respectively. In August 2014, Daewoo International announced that it had won a $161m contract to build the Kazungula Bridge over the Zambezi River, which will connect Zambia and Botswana when completed in 2018. In collaboration with its Japanese partner Zenitaka, Hyundai Engineering & Construction, the construction wing of Hyundai – which also owns a 34% stake in Kia Motors – is currently building the 525-metre New Jinja Bridge across the Nile River in Uganda.

AUTOMOBILES Peugeot gives signs it will open a manufacturing plant in Morocco soon THE AFRICA REPORT

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Hyundai’s construction wing is expanding the Azito power plant

The company is also scheduled to complete a 139MW expansion of the 288MW Azito power plant in Côte d’Ivoire by the end of 2015. Korea’s state-owned energy companies are not mirroring this flurry of corporate activity in the consumer goods and construction sectors. They are saddled with debt and facing an uncertain future in Africa. State-owned enterprise (SOE) debt was about 50% of the country’s $990bn in public sector debt in 2013. Korean energy companies “have often been crowded out of the market place by deeper pockets and more experienced companies […] like BP, Chevron and Shell,” says Daragh Neville, projects assistant with the Africa programme at London-based think tank Chatham House. The Seoul government has put heavy pressure on 18 state-run energy firms to divest overseas assets and make outstanding debt payments by 2017. These SOEs – including the Korea Electric Power

Corporation (KEPCO), Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) and Korea NationalOilCorporation(KNOC)– are tightening spending and investment in overseas oil, gas and electricity projects. REINING IN SPENDING

35% Samsung controlled more than a third of the continent’s smartphone market in 2014 SOURCE: KITA

OIL Nigerian government investigates state contracts to trade crude for refined products THE AFRICA REPORT

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Last year, for example, KEPCO backed out of the $600m deal it had signed with Senegal’s Société Nationale d’Electricité in May 2013 for the construction of a 250MW coal-fired plant west of Dakar at Sendou. In February of 2015, KOGAS, the world’s top corporate buyer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), announced plans to reduce staff working on its gas exploration project in the Rovuma Basin of northern Mozambique, making any near-future investments in Africa highly unlikely. For a resource-deprived and manufacturing-oriented country – Korea is the world’s fifth-largest crude oil and second-largest LNG importer – this is surprising.

AGRIBUSINESS South African Tiger Brands reports senior management fraud

Worse still, Korean diplomats are pulling in their horns too. The government postponed the fifth Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation ministerial conference, which was due to be held in Seoul in October 2014. Similarly, the fourth Korea-Africa Forum was initially scheduled for late 2014 in Addis Ababa and was postponed. Chatham House’s Neville says: “To postpone conferences such as these, which are really what the Africa-Korea relationship was built on back in the mid-2000s […] maybe doesn’t send out the best signal from Korea to Africa.” Withthepublicsector’sweakrole in its Africa relations, the ‘Asian Tiger’ can pin its hopes on a dynamic private sector to further expand in Africa. The government-chaebol relationship,creditedwithbuilding the private firms into global giants injustafewdecades,couldperhaps inspire African governments to follow the same path. ● Oheneba Ama Nti Osei

ELECTRICITY Old Mutual in talks to finance power generation projects in Zambia

BUSINESS | LEADERS

INTERVIEW

Vivian Imerman Chairman, Vasari Global

We built a world-class food facility Vasari Global and its partners have entered the Ethiopian biscuit business and have their eyes on the wider East African market as consumer spending rises

he United Kingdom-based investment firm Vasari Global has invested $36m into Ahadukes, a food manufacturer in Ethiopia that aims initially to sell on the local market. Vasari is working with local businessman Solomon Wondimneh, and together they set up their first factory through a joint venture in May. The partners ultimately seek to supply the East African market and provide much-needed foreign exchange for Ethiopia. The factory is located in Bishoftu, Oromia Region, about 50km south-east of Addis Ababa. Vasari Global plans to increase the investment to $120m as new lines like pasta are added to the biscuits currently coming out of the processing facility, which is housed in a 9,780m2 space. The African Development Bank estimates that more than 20% of Ethiopia’s 94 million people are now middle-class consumers, and companies at home and abroad

want a piece of the growing market. In the production of pasta, biscuits and other fast-moving consumer goods, Ahadukes faces competition from East African Tiger Brands Industries, a joint venture founded in 2010 by South Africa’s Tiger Brands and local company East African Holding. Vasari has invested in two other projects in Ethiopia – the Dashen Brewery and Rorank Business, a new spirits distillery – both of which are planning expansions. TAR: How has your project evolved? VIVIAN IMERMAN : It’s a brownfield operation. Two years ago, it was just bare land. We built a world-class food facility that will comply with most international standards. The building itself is brand new and the equipment that we’re putting in, of course, is all brand new, state-of-the-art European equipment. Can the market bear the pricing of your product?

VASARI GLOBAL

BOOZE, BANANAS AND BISCUITS 21 September 1955 Born in Johannesburg, South Africa 1989-2001 Served as chief executive of fruit producer Del Monte 2001 Became chairman and CEO of whisky company Whyte & Mackay June 2008 Founded Vasari Global

We’ll be producing a range of high-quality biscuits. The whole idea of what we’re producing is giving a much better quality biscuit than what’s available on the local markets but only at a slightly higher price. So the valuefor-money experience that we’re creating out of the facility is superior to anything on the market currently. The price is only marginally higher, but the quality is twice as good. Where are your inputs coming from? Ninety per cent of our raw material is locally sourced, and the balance is imported. What we import is mainly on the packaging side because we aren’t able to get the quality packaging that [local businesses] are offering. How did you choose Solomon as a local partner? How did we choose him? He was looking for an international partner, and it was brought to us by Deloitte. Our business is THE AFRICA REPORT

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How is the fast-moving consumer goods market changing in Ethiopia? Well, we see the market evolving. As disposable income increases, we see a sizeable market evolving in the consumer space. Already, we’ve seen significant growth in the market in the past three or four years. We have other businesses there as well. And benchmarking against those, we certainly understand the upward trend of the market. By when do you think you might be exporting to East Africa? I would say within about 18 months. I mean, we first want to understand our local demand. Once we’ve got full distribution in the market and we’ve covered what’s already out there in a vast area – 90-odd million people in a geographical spread that is mostly rural in its consumption channel – we’ll be looking at exports. I imagine the Ethiopian government is keen for you to export as well. Yes, I think we all know that one of the drawbacks of Ethiopia is limited foreign currency whilst the country is developing. They’re putting all the big infrastructure projects in, so exports are essential for that. What kind of incentives did they offer for this particular joint venture? None. The only incentives were you get a two-year tax holiday, and that’s from the time you start up your factory. But as far as the government giving any further incentives goes, none. On a regional basis, you’ve got some benefits in terms of reduced cost of land and so forth, but really there are no direct benefits in terms of grants or anything like that. In any of our businesses anywhere THE AFRICA REPORT

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in the world, we always look at our business without any grants or benefits or any non-sustainable short-term incentives. How do you get the product out there? We have a route-to-market system. We use key distributors in certain areas, and in certain areas we do our own distribution. So it all depends on the region and on the dynamic of the distributors and of the consumers. One of our key competencies is route to market and route to consumer. As you can imagine in this type of business, it’s got to be brand management, quality, and then, of course, getting the product to the consumer. How do you know exactly how big the demand is in a particular town or village? It really is on the market trends, consumption trends, as it goes up the income groups. So you will see the similarities if you look at the business cycles of any country. You know, you can almost plot, perhaps scientifically, the consumption patterns in terms of where and when they consume the product, what size they consume. Is it done on a seasonal basis? Is it refriger-

“We look at our business without any non-sustainable short-term incentives”

APPOINTMENTS

Amine Mazouzi Taking over from Saîd Sahnoun in late May, former director of strategy Mazouzi becomes the ninth chief executive in 15 years for the beleaguered Algerian oil giant Sonatrach. Mazouzi is the son of former labour minister Mohamed-Saïd Mazouzi.

Mobolaji Balogun Balogun took over as chairman of the board at Lafarge Africa in May after being a director since 2005. The co-founder of Econet Wireless Nigeria, he is also the chief executive at Chapel Hill Denham Group and has been a director of several Nigerian banks.

ated? Is it sold in small packs? Is it sold in multi-packs? Again, it all depends on the consumption pattern and the disposable income in any particular region, the channel of distribution and the market country. So macro tools rather than granularsurveysoffar-flungregions? No, granular surveys too, as it’s a bottom-up exercise. But, once you understand the benchmarking, that’s pretty much your macro experience, which for us has arrived over many years of operating in markets and understanding the consumer’s requirements. ● Interview by Nicholas Norbrook

Ebenezer Asante A former head of MTN’s operations in Rwanda, Asante now takes up the leadership of the South African firm’s Ghanaian subsidiary, which is currently a telecoms market leader. Asante previously worked for Unilever in Ghana and Zambia.

the fast-moving consumer goods business, and we’ve been in biscuits for many years. And in pasta – we used to have the Nabisco and Kraft brands in South Africa many years ago. We certainly understand this type of business.

RENAUD VANDERMEEREN

BUSINESS | FINANCE

AfDB

New leadership, same direction The Bank chose Akinwumi Adesina as its new president in May. The Nigerian says his priorities are infrastructure, private-sector lending and inclusive growth

gainst expectations, and triumphantly uniting the Francophone and Anglophone wings of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina was chosen as the eighth president of the institution in late May. The outgoing Nigerian agriculture minister was ahead from the first round of voting, fending off challenges from Christina Duarte of Cabo Verde and Kordjé Bedoumra of Chad. That the AfDB’s shareholders preferred a former agriculture minister to lead the premier development finance institution is perhaps a sign that Africa is finally putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to a green revolution. The voting took place in the great hall of the Sofitel Abidjan HotelIvoire,a symbol of therenaissance of Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital. The return of the AfDB to its traditional home, which it left in 2003 because of the civil war, means a great deal to the country. Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara said: “I am delighted that the Bank decided to

delay the celebration of its 50th anniversary so that it could hold it here in Abidjan.” The gleaming new Henri Konan Bédié Bridge that whisks delegates straight from the airport over the lagoon to the hotel in short order was financed in part by the AfDB. BUILDING A WORKFORCE

President-elect Adesina endorses the two main priorities of his predecessor, Donald Kaberuka, who enjoyed an emotional valedictory annual general meeting. Under Kaberuka’s watch, the AfDB has committed $28bn to infrastructuredevelopmentover the past decade and increased its private-sector lending from $200m to $2bn annually. Adesina is also keen to work on inclusive growth, ironing out the growing inequalities Adesina, the bowtied bureaucrat who’s tough on wealth inequality

VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

whereby the top 10% has reaped the lion’s share of Africa’s recent growth spurt. Some of that can be tackled through education. “In South Africa, there are 80,000 jobs available, but there aren’t people with the skills to fill those jobs,” Adesina told The Africa Report on the campaign trail in May. These priorities are not idle wish lists, either. With an estimated 370 million young people entering the job market over the next 15 years, governments will need to work quickly to prevent demographic growth turning into political unrest. This problem is particularly acute in the cities. “We have islands of prosperity in oceans of poverty,” says Adesina. His solution is a greater focus on social housing, mortgage finance and mass transit to give those on the fringes better access to public goods. This should, in turn, create large and stable reservoirs of labour for Africa’s industrialisation. That is, of course, assuming that Africa industrialises. While established companies are expanding, new businesses are rarely able to make the jump up the value chain. “Eighty-five per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises who want finance can’t get it,” says Frannie Leautier, head oftheMkobaPrivateEquity Fund. This creates a narrow corporate ecosystem unlikely to create

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HANNIBAL the innovative and fast-growing companies that might spearhead a new wave of industrial growth. Adesina points to de-industrialisation in parts of the continent: “We need proper planning. But we also need to link the private sector to those industrialisation goals.” PARTING GIFT

On the sidelines of the annual meetings held in Abidjan, Kaberuka told Chinese media that “the global manufacturing cycle started from Europe then [went] to America before moving to Southeast Asia and China. It is now coming to Africa.” And so, with transport and energy remaining the two greatest barriers to this becoming reality, Kaberuka’s parting gift to the AfDB before he leaves on 1 September is the Africa50Fund, a way of harnessing Africa’s own resources to de-risk infrastructure finance. Reaching financial close in June, with 17 African countries already signed up to the tune of $750m, the fund will hire private-sector managers and use sovereign African reserves to catalyse the big infrastructure projects that change the dial for manufacturers – large power plants, rail networks and modern ports. “And part of that is an innovative project developer built into the fund that can take the early-stage risk”, says Tas Anvaripour, the chief executive of the Africa50Fund. While claiming not to be a “legacy person”, Kaberuka was still keen to hammer out some priorities: “You can be a landlocked country.Butakidwithoutcommunications is mentally landlocked, and that’s a real problem.” And the fact that the AfDB has become Africa’s lead negotiator on things like climate change, the fight against Ebola and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – the global architecture that replaces the Millennium Development Goals – speaks volumes for the journey the Bank has taken over the past decade. “But there mustn’tbeanymisunderstanding,” quips Kaberuka. “Adesina has his ownshoes,andtheyfitverywell.” ● Nicholas Norbrook in Abidjan THE AFRICA REPORT

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The rich rise, the emerging stutter and stall BE WARNED, say the World Bank. While the rich world is starting to resume its role as global growth driver, emerging economies like China, Brazil and Russia are slowing or stuttering. A falling oil price has failed to act as a stimulus as previously hoped. This ‘structural slowdown’, as the Washington eggheads have it, will last for several years. Bad news, then, for African economies dependent on commodity prices. Emerging-market appetite for oil, minerals and soft commodities has kept many an African treasury ticking over. Time for some fresh thinking in, say, Algeria, as it burns through its foreign exchange reserves.

Nigeria’s go-slow THE SLOWDOWN has already spread to the continent, where analysts predict economic growth of only 4.3% in 2015, a figure pared down from rosier forecasts. A slowdown in Nigeria is particularly to blame, as the continent’s largest economy is dependent on oil prices to prop up government spending. With the coffers bare – not a great legacy from President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, nor the outgoing co-ordinating minister for the economy Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – and a host of traditional problems reappearing including fuel scarcity, blackouts and port delays, it is belt-tightening time in Abuja. South Africa, another potential growth cluster, is also acting as a brake to growth with its continuing problems of labour unrest and power shortages.

An East African building boom IN EAST AFRICA, expansionary spending on road, rail and port projects appears to be the way Kenya and Uganda are going to tackle the slowdown. East African budgets are all delivered on the same day – regional integration in action – and Fitch spots two different paths being taken. Whereas Rwanda has chosen to pay down national debt earlier, Uganda and Kenya have decided that their infrastructure priorities are more important. They risk, according to the ratings agency, a debt burden that could get nasty. The money they recently borrowed is in US dollars, against which their own currencies are sliding. What happens when the US Federal Reserve decides to hike interest rates?

Free-trade opens doors NEVERTHELESS, the regional infrastructure that is planned in East Africa will be transformative for the region. The Lamu corridor that links the Kenyan port to road and rail projects will ultimately connect stretches of East Africa to global markets. Twenty-six East and Southern African countries signed a deal to create Africa’s largest free-trade zone in June, so the potential for African companies to target the newly rising African consumer will be paramount if the continent is not to be swamped by cheaper foreignmanufactured goods, especially from Asia. ●

DOSSIER

Trans

LOGISTICS By Sikonathi Mantshantsha in Johannesburg

ransnet, South Africa’s rail and port parastatal, is undertaking a vast counter-cyclical investment campaign to build new port infrastructure and update old railway equipment. While oil and mineral prices are low, Transnet’s managers are overseeing plans for the construction of facilities to repair oil rigs at Saldanha Bay and the manufacture of a generation of new locomotives to replace train components that are in some cases more than 30 years old. With South Africa’s electricity and other infrastructure struggling to keep up with demand, this represents a crucial challenge for the government and the economy. Bucking the trend of other South African state-owned companies like the troubled Eskom and South African Airways, Transnet has been ahead of the curve and has won the confidence of financiers from China to the US. In April, the government moved Transnet chief executive Brian Molefe to the leadership of blackout-prone Eskom to see if he could turn the company around. Siyabonga Gama, who had managed Transnet Freight Rail and a programme to build locomotives in South Africa, is now Transnet’s acting boss. The locomotive manufacturing plans are the centrepiece of Transnet’s R312bn ($26bn) expansion programme, which started in 2012 and runs until 2019. In March 2014, the parastatal awarded initial contracts to build 1,064 locomotives to the US-based General Electric (GE), Canada’s Bombardier and China’s CNR and CSR.

This June, Transnet announced that it had secured R30bn from the China Development Bank to finance the Chinese-built railway units. Transnet plans to grow its freight volumes to over 350m tonnes in seven years, from the current 210m tonnes, said Gama at the announcement of the funding deal. “The difference between how Chinese companies operate in the rest of the continent and our process is that all the wagons will be built here in South Africa using local labour,” Transnet spokesperson Viwe Tlaleane says. Just 70 of the trains will be built abroad, with the rest manufactured in South Africa. Transnet also insists on a minimum of 60% local content for the manufacturing programme. LOCOS BRING LEARNING

The Americans were first off the mark with funding commitments for the locomotives. In March, the Export-Import Bank of the United States provided a financial guarantee of R6bn for 293 of the locomotives being built by GE at a plant in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital. Before leaving Transnet, Molefe gave assurances that the first GE-produced locomotives would roll off the line in July. Transnet has sent hundreds of workers abroad to learn from those four companies and intends to use the contracts as a means to develop local capacity and eventually build a base for exporting locomotives made in South Africa, following on from the government’s encouragement of auto manufacturers to set up locally. The South African government hopes to use Transnet’s ● ● ●

JEREMY WOODHOUSE/MASTERFILE/CORBIS

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nsnet

A change at the top has not worried investors as the South African state-owned transport company shunts forward with its plans for locomotive manufacturing and a regional infrastructure strategy to benefit ports

transformed

Where the rail meets the water: Durban port will be an even stronger regional hub

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capacity-building and exRevenue Rail per commodity volumes tend it to the rest of the contin(Billion rand) (Million tonnes) ent, where it is already supplying wagons to rail and mining companies, says Mervin Chetty, Transnet’s general manager for African affairs. Countries as far away as Ghana and Kenya have either bought its wagons or partnered with South Africa on maritime and port security. “Last June, the board approved General freight - 19,619 General freight our Africa strategy, which will business - 87.9 help guide us in expanding into Export coal - 8,909 Export coal - 68.2 the continent,” Chetty tells The Bulk - 4,171 Export iron ore - 54.3 Africa Report. Currently, aside Export iron ore - 4,961 from selling wagons, South Africa Piped products - 2,862 mainly runs trains to the countries Break-bulk -1,141 of its Southern African DevelopTotal rail volumes ment Community neighbours, for Maritime containers - 7,924 210.4m tonnes Others - 7,019 whom it hauls heavy shipments of iron ore, copper and coal to the major South African ports of in competing with existing inRichards Bay and Durban. That frastructure builders like China may soon change, however. and India. “We can bring in the Transnet is looking to be a turnSouth African construction comkey provider of rail and pipeline panies to a project and provide an infrastructure. Chetty explains SA Inc. solution and packages,” that Transnet has some advantChetty explains. The company is in the feasibility ages in the field: “Being a statestages of building a 140km railway owned entity puts us in a better line that will link the Kingdom of position than other companies. Swaziland and the southern part It is very easy for us to go into a Loan that of Mozambique to South Africa’s country and help with both rail Transnet and port infrastructure using the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. The signed with various bilateral agreements in new line would help to alleviate the China place between governments.” congestion on the main line to the Development Bank terminal. The chief executives of in June RAIL CORRIDOR the respective railway utilities met To that end, and due to the fact in Johannesburg two years ago to that most of its neighbours are ink a deal, which will largely be landlocked, Transnet is involved funded by South Africa. When in the conceptual stages of what construction finally goes ahead has been termed a north-south in 2016, the line will be a small rail corridor with Zimbabwe, Botbut significant step in fulfilling swana, Zambia and Namibia. Transnet’s ambition of being a “We are designing a joint reserious regional railway player gional strategy on rail and planin the continent. At home, Transnet’s investment ning together to predict what Transnet’s plan includes increasing capacity volumes need to go through our growth respective railways. Each country to transport minerals and taktarget will upgrade its own infrastrucing more of the country’s freight for freight ture,” says Chetty. The talks on transport from the roads and in 2022 this initiative started two months onto the rails. Transnet shipped ago. The aim is for the cargo to go 68.2m tonnes of coal for export in to Durban and Richards Bay as 2014 and expects improvements well as Namibia’s Walvis Bay on to allow it to raise its capacity to the Atlantic coast. 97.5m tonnes in 2020. In terms of Transnet has ambitions beyond containerised freight, Transnet where its trains currently reach. estimates that it will be able to Chetty says his unit is tasked with move 5.9m twenty-foot equivalfinding business opportunities ent units (TEUs) by the end of the ●●●

R30bn

350m tonnes

decade, up from the 4.6m TEUs it transported last year. Transnet argues that the shift from road to rail will have spillover impacts for the economy, reducing costs for importers and exporters. For example, it would cost about 23% less to import a container from China to Johannesburg using the rail link than by road. The company’s plan is to increase its share of total container traffic from 79% in 2012 to 92% in 2019. PORTS EXPANSION

South Africa’s ports also feature in the government’s expansion plans. Saldanha, which is on the west cost, already has dedicated infrastructure for the export of iron ore. Transnet announced plans for a R9.7bn investment in the port in January to follow through on the government’s plans to provide facilities for Africa’s oil and gas sector. The parastatal is encouraging the participation of private sector partners in the port’s development and plans to organise a bidding round for interested parties later this year. The port of Ngqura, which is part of the Coega Industrial Development Zone outside Port Elizabeth in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, is the country's newest port. It launched operations in 2009 and completed a R2bn upgrade in March. Transnet built two new quays that will help expand the port’s capacity to 2.2m TEUs, which is part of the company’s attempts to make it a transshipment port for South Africa’s landlocked neighbours. The state-run firm also plans to shift Port Elizabeth’s manganese export terminal to Ngqura by 2019. The goal of Transnet’s infrastructure spend is to anticipate demand, so the company’s planners are waiting on an economic uptick to test its new capacity to handle containers and export natural resources. The International Monetary Fund predicts an annual 3.2% and 4% growth in the volume of imports and exports over the next four years, so there is little room for failure. ● THE AFRICA REPORT

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ADVERTORIAL

SOGETRA

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Design • Feasibility studies • Structural calculation • Geotechnical tests

Construction • Frames and foundations • Buildings • Lubrication bays • Fuel tanks in BA

Management and control systems • Installation of automation systems • Electrical engineering

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Our accumulated experience of over 50 years and our holistic approach to the market allow us to follow your projects from start to finish, from the preliminary study to the turnkey completion of your infrastructure. Our goal is to offer flawless ser vice within agreed-upon deadlines and budgets thanks to advanced training of our staff and the constantly calling into question of our skills and knowledge. Our clients are our priority and our reason for being. Our basic values and passion for work well done make SOGETRA an indispensable partner for telecom, renewable energy and civil engineering infrastructure projects.

DOSSIER | LOGISTICS

Completed in just a year, Al-Sisi’s grand projet is a publicity coup for Egypt

PAN CHAOYUE/XINHUA/CORBIS

EGYPT

A new canal for a new economy The deeper, wider Suez Canal that will open on 6 August is the basis for a new special economic zone that could one day represent a third of the country’s economy

uge dredging barges have been widening and deepening the Suez Canal and dry digging has carved out a parallel channel in the light brown sand ever since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the ambitious expansion plans for a new economic zone centered around the waterway a year ago. The dredgers’ enormous vacuums suck up millions of cubic metres of sand to allow another passage for cargo ships transiting to and from Europe, North Africa and Asia. The authorities estimate that it will almost double throughput to 97 ships per day and raise billions of dollars in revenue. Egypt raised the initial funding for the New Suez Canal project through a financing scheme that had traits of a popular crowdfunding campaign. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) sold investment certificates to Egyptian citizens and entities through four main public banks, and the government was able to raise more than the needed E£60bn ($7.8bn) in just eight days. The five-year non-tradable certificates, guar-

anteed by the finance ministry and denominated in Egyptian pounds, carry an interest rate of 12%. The fundraising effort was similar to one that the Ethiopian government launched for the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Besides the nationalist fanfare, the development plan itself is a significant undertaking. The main focus so far has been on extending the canal itself by dry digging a new 35km waterway, along with expanding and deepening the existing canal over 37km. LARGER SHIPS

The SCA reported that dry digging was completed in early May, and the expansion is meant to allow for two-way traffic and ease bottlenecks in order to cut transit time and allow larger ships to traverse the trade route. The increased traffic, according to the government’s calculations, should bring an uptick in annual revenue to $13.5bn in 2023 from $5.3bn last year. Plans to expand the Suez Canal area and develop it into an indus-

The canal expansion project is predicted to raise annual revenue from $5.3bn in 2014 to $13.5bn by 2023 SOURCE: EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT

trial, logistics and trade hub have gained momentum in the year since they were announced, all leading up to what promises to be an extravagant canal opening ceremony on 6 August. “We expect that, upon the full development of this area, it will represent no less than 30% of the economic scale of Egypt,” says Hani Sarie-Eldin, the founder of Sarie-Eldin & Partners, a law firm that is part of an alliance to establish a master plan for the Suez Canal Area Development Project. Officials have said that the economic zone, which spans around 450km2, will be a driving force for foreign investment, which has dried up in the years following the 2011 uprising. Egyptian officials are approving legislation that would designate the area a special economic zone with its own regulatory framework. A one-stop shop will have representatives from the many ministries and governmental entities that usually deal with investors. The unified authority should facilitate the overly bureaucratic process of licensing, incorporation, gaining access to land and other aspects of doing business. The grander economic zone is a long-term project, with the first phase due to be completed in 2030 and the second phase 20 years after that. “We hope that by [August] the law will be issued and the new entity that will be in charge of this economic zone will be established and in operation,” adds SarieEldin. He explains that by legally establishing the area as a special economic zone, the proposed legal framework will “avoid the constraintsfacedwithlocalinvestment laws and regulations by adopting the existing economic zone law which has not been fully enacted. We proposed some amendments to it as well to improve the quality of investment and the quality of the regulatory framework.” With that, August will be one of the first tests to see if the government can get the economy back on track. ● Amira Salah-Ahmed in Cairo

THE AFRICA REPORT

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CLASSIFIED ADS

FROM : 05TH/06/2015 TO : 16TH/07/2015 CLIENT : ECOWAS COMMISSION - TYPE : EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI) TITLE : RECRUITMENT OF A CONSULTANT FOR THE FEASIBILITY STUDY ON PREPARATION OF ECOWAS MARITIME PORT MASTERPLAN 1. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional grouping with 15 Member States in West Africa (three landlocked and one island) with a population of about 300million with an annual economic growth rate of 6%.The ECOWAS Commission is one of the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs) supporting the African Union to coordinate the implementation of continental and regional integration and development programmes in West Africa. 2. A region’s ability to unleash its economic potential is closely linked to the efficiency of its transport system.Transport is also an integral part of almost all daily subsistence and social activities. Without welldefined and effective transport policies and strategies,poor people will not be able to accumulate enough human,physical,financial,and social assets to get ahead.Transport has, therefore, to be an integral part of a country’s poverty reduction strategy. 3. It has been recognized that maritime transport is a key catalyst to the achievement of the ECOWAS Commission’s people-centered Regional Integration vision that is capable of stimulating economic growth and eradicating poverty in the region. It is in this regard that Article 32 of the ECOWAS revised Treaty of 1993 seeks the development of transport infrastructure and policies within Member States to promote free movement of persons, goods and services within the Community. 4. The fierce competition among the regional ports in West Africa has led to the multi-loop system of alliance with smaller vessels than running very larger vessels on a few loops.The bargaining power of shippers that ensures the principle of ship, follow cargo in the liner service network becoming a customer oriented differentiation exercise, with less transshipment and more direct ship calls based on traffic density and overall logistic chain efficiency for the shipper.This is a challenge for future expansion of West African regional ports unless certain policy options are vigorously pursued. This is especially true for landlocked countries where transit traffic is expected to increase tenfold in the next 30 years. 5. It is in this perspective that the ECOWAS Commission, through its Infrastructure Projects Preparation and Development Unit (PPDU), Lomé,Togo is desirous to undertake a study to prepare a Maritime Port Masterplan for the West African Region. 6. The overall objectives of this assignment is to enable ECOWAS identify the maritime sector requirements within the sub-region to meet projected economic growth and development needs of West Africa over the next three decades and also develop a Masterplan for the realization of these sector needs. The consultant is expected to: ! Task 1: Conduct Diagnostic Analysis for Maritime Sector Requirements for 2025, 2035 and 2045; ! Task 2: Design and draft Maritime Sector plans; ! Task 3: Develop an Action Plan and Timeline for the ECOWAS Master Plan Implementation; ! Task 4: Develop a Financing Strategy; ! Task 5: Develop a Plan for Coordination and Monitoring of the Master Plan; ! Task 6: Undertake Capacity Building Activities

7. For the realization of the mission, the firm shall at least: " Be a major and internationally renowned firm with wide experience ( at least 10 years ) in Maritime Port Masterplan Development; " Have a qualified team of key staff (Minimum of a Master Degree) with at least 10 working years experiences in Maritime Port Masterplan Development matters; " Have the capacity to produce and provide the reports in at least two of the ECOWAS official languages, namely: English and French. 8. The selection procedure will be based on Quality and Cost in accordance with the ECOWAS Tender Code. ECOWAS Commission is under no obligation to shortlist any Consultant who expresses interest. 9. A shortlist of six firms which present the best profiles shall be drawn up after the expression of interest. 10. The firms that are part of an international network are to submit one expression of interest. 11. The ECOWAS Commission now invites eligible Consultants (Firm) to indicate their interest in providing these services. Interested Consultants must provide information showing that they are qualified to perform the services: " list of staff and expertise of the Consultants for the mission; " The Consultant should have on its team,members with a combined knowledge of the official languages of the ECOWAS Region, which are English, French and Portuguese; " list of verifiable technical references similar to this mission: list of previous clients and contacts for this type of mission stating the year and the cost of the mission; " the Office Address (location, contact, BP,Telephone, Fax, e-mail). 12. Interested Consultants may wish to apply as a consortium to enhance their profile and chance of being qualified. 13. Interested Consultants may obtain further information at the address below during office hours: Monday to Friday from 9.00 am GMT+1 to 5.00 pm (GMT+1). Procurement Division, Directorate of General Administration, ECOWAS Commission, Plot 101, Yakubu Gowon Crescent, Asokoro District, P. M. B. 401 Abuja Nigeria or by E-mail to this following addresses: procurement@ecowas.int 14. Expression of Interest must be delivered in sealed envelope and clearly marked “RECRUITMENT OF A CONSULTANT FOR THE FEASIBILITY STUDY ON PREPARATION OF ECOWAS MARITIME PORT MASTERPLAN”, Do not open except in the presence of the Tender Committee” to the address below latest by Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 11.00 am (GMT+1). The ECOWAS Tender Box is located in the Office of the Commissioner, General Administration & Conference, 5th Floor ECOWAS Commission, 101 Yakubu Gowon Crescent, Asokoro District, P. M. B. 401 Abuja Nigeria. 15. This request for EoI can also be viewed on the ECOWAS Commission websites: www.ecowas.int. Commissioner, General Administration & Conference

DOSSIER | LOGISTICS

EAST AFRICA

Rail to the rescue Governments are betting big on new railway and port projects to boost the regional market’s competitiveness with Asia

fter years of neglect, East Africa’s logistics networks are starting to see the benefits of sustained investment from public bodies and private companies. Ethiopia, which lost its access to the sea with the independence of Eritrea in 1991, relies on Djibouti’s port as its main access point. Long lines of trucks stream out of Djibouti’s Doraleh Container Terminal, headed south along the crowded highway leadingtoDireDawa andtheEthiopian capital, Addis Ababa. But this congestion should end when Ethiopia finishes its longawaited rail links between the capital, the port to the north and various key economic zones in the country, including the new sugar plantations and refineries in the Awash Valley. Given that international transport costs can hit $4,000 per container, this should help move Ethiopia closer to its goal of offering an alternative to the manufacturing hubs of Asia. TRACKS ON TRACK

“By October 2015, a considerable portion of the Addis AbabaDjibouti project will be finished,” Getachew Betru, chief executive of theEthiopianRailwayCorporation told reporters in January, adding that the first trains will run in early 2016. With $1.6bn in upfront financing from the Export-Import Bank of China and sections built by China Railway Engineering Corporation and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, the $4bn project will connect Ethiopia’s inexpensive workforce to global markets. However, exporters and importers still face challenges in clearing containers at Djibouti’s ports. Congestion can block the arrival of new containers. “So instead of

Ethiopia’s new rail links should clear congestion at Djibouti’s Doraleh Container Terminal

$4bn Ethiopia’s Chinabacked plan to build railways to the sea

VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

the cargo waiting at Djibouti, we can take it as soon as possible to our dry ports. And all other processes, including ours, will be finalised at [the end of this year],” Mesfin Tefera, the deputy chief executive of Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), tells The Africa Report. The government is also targeting PortSudanforimportsandexports for northern Ethiopia and Berbera in Somaliland for importing coal. “Five to ten per cent of the country’s imports are planned to come through the port of Berbera, and we will be looking for proper ports for different areas of the country,” transport minister Workneh Gebeyehu told parliament in February. “But the port of Djibouti continues to be the major one.” OPPORTUNITIES

The government in Addis Ababa has experimented in outsourcing the management of key parastatals without relinquishing ownership. For instance, France Telecom managed Ethio Telecom from 2010 to 2013. Given the scale of the ESLSE’s operations, it may well be that foreign companies see management opportunities arise. Across the border in Kenya and Uganda, management contracts

for parastatals already exist, although they had a bumpy ride in their first iterations. The Rift Valley Railways (RVR) consortium picked up the baton in 2006 and is currently managing the colonial-era metre-gauge track system. RVR bought 20 new General Electric locomotives in 2014, of which 13 have been delivered to Mombasa. When added to the current rehabilitated stock, this doubles RVR’s mainline pulling power. An additional 120 wagons should arrive by November of this year. RVR says that it welcomes the competition from Chinese-built rail networks. China Road and Bridge Corporation, a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Company, began work on a new standard gauge rail line in Kenya in 2014. “The total throughput of Mombasa port is estimated to be around 26m tonnes per annum (mtpa) by 2017,” says Andreas Heinel, RVR’s chief commercial officer. “We would beabletocarry approximately 4mtpa at full capacity on the metre gauge. And the standard gauge railway would target around 10mtpa when fully up and running. That still leaves a lot of slack to be picked up.” ● Nicholas Norbrook THE AFRICA REPORT

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ADVERTORIAL

Tradex: a companion for individuals, a partner for industry Tradex, which distributes petroleum products and has become a powerful force in Cameroon, is pursuing its regional development and sector diversication. One of the ambitious company’s medium-term goals is to increase its services to industry and boost its participation in major infrastructure projects. radex, which was founded in 1999 with the Société nationale des hydrocarbures (SNH) as its majority shareholder, is pursuing its development to become a major player in the key links of Africa’s oil industry. The company focused on sales before starting to diversify and branch out into supply and bunkering operations (maritime and aviation) in 2002. It entered the distribution market in 2006. Tradex has gone beyond Cameroon’s borders, becoming a key player in the sale of petroleum products in the ECOWAS zone.

any investment in Africa, especially in the ECOWAS sub-region and the WAEMU zone.

A key partner for infrastructure projects

In April 2012, Tradex became the fuel supplier for Camair Co, Cameroon’s national airline, joining the small circle of companies approved for aviation. A month earlier, it won a contract to supply fuel products and lubricants to CWE, a Chinese company building the Lom-Pangar hydroelectric dam. Since then, Tradex has continued An increasingly dense to increase its presence with distribution network companies and on strategic building sites. Since 2014, it Pursuing its expansion policy has supplied petroleum prodin the past two years, Tradex TRADEX BASTOS IN YAOUNDÉ. ucts and lubricants to the China now has 54 service stations Communications Construction Company Ltd (CCCC) in Cameroon, up from 32 in December 2011. Six new for its building projects: the Kumba/Mamfe road and ones were built in 2014, allowing the company to a stretch of the Yaoundé-Nsimalen urban motorway. boost its market share to approximately 22% compared to 14% two years earlier. This makes Tradex An ally of manufacturers service stations more successful than their competitors, including those of multinational oil companies. Tradex is the exclusive supplier for many other strategic building sites, including the Kribi deepwater A higher prole in Africa port, the Memve’ele and Mekin dams, numerous road In 2014, Tradex launched its distribution network in projects, the Mobilong diamond mine project and Chad, where it has been active through a local subthe second bridge over the River Wouri. It is also a sidiary since 2004, with two service stations. Since trusted partner for the biggest companies operating 2006, the company has also had approximately 20 in Cameroon, active in such strategic areas as power service stations in the Central African Republic, to generation, hydrocarbon exploration and production, which it exports petroleum products. Always on the merchant marine, construction, public works, mining lookout for new opportunities, Tradex is open to and agro-industry.

Tradex BP 1468- Douala, Cameroun Tel.: (237) 233 43 63 75 / 233 43 63 76 Fax: (237) 233 43 63 80 E-mail: tradex@tradexsa.com

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DIFCOM/DF - PHOTO : DR.

DAY IN THE LIFE EXTRAORDINARY STORIES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

ANTOINE TEMPÉ FOR TAR

The umpire's stake A traditional wrestling referee in Palmarin, Senegal, Sidi Diokh lost two friends in an illegal crossing to Spain, but he still dreams of finding a way to a better life

efore I became a traditional wrestling referee, in 2012, I was a wrestler myself. I started when I was eight years old, on the beach. I used to dream about being the next big wrestler, the king of the arena. I did it professionally until I was 26 but didn’t win many fights. If you go one year without winning your family doesn’t eat, so I decided to give it up. I love the music and atmosphere of the wrestling competitions, but sometimes we do have problems with the wrestlers, who can be undisciplined. If they fall and you give the other the victory they can hit you. But I love it when the wrestlers dance and when they fight well and don’t cause trouble. Wrestling is our culture here in Palmarin. All the children you see here in the street wrestle, that is our sport. My family are not happy that I am a referee. There are a lot of people who say that referees are bad people [and] talk about me behind my back. But I say that it’s what I do to earn money for my family and I have to keep doing it. I would have loved to have had an education. I’ve been trying to earn money for such a long time, and there are kids in the village who have had an

education and now, five years after leaving school, they have managed to build a house. In 2010, I had saved 300,000 CFA francs ($511) and I decided to go illegally to the Canary Islands in a fishing boat. I told my mother I was leaving and she said I had to wait, that it is God who decides and if He says I can go, then I can go. I said OK, and stayed. After I decided not to go in the boat, two of my friends left and after 15 days we heard they had died at sea. It broke my heart. They went without having had children, without a wife, and now they have left nothing behind. Before they went, I told them that they should not go, that it wouldn’t work. They said, “Oh it’s nothing, we can go.”

A dream deferred I have three friends illegally working in Spain and Germany now. They say it’s very good there, and they have sent money to their mothers and built houses in the village too. But there are also people who say that life is too hard in Spain. At night sometimes I dream I am walking on the beach and I find monkfish washed up and sell them for a lot of money. Before my friends died going to Spain, I used to dream about that too, but once I dreamed that the police caught us and beat us really hard. I am happy I didn’t go to Spain, that I stayed here to work. I would never do it now, it’s not safe. The money I saved has all gone now. But if I had gone to Spain, I would not have my family, and [they] make me very happy. I want to stay here until God gives me a little something so that I can get my papers together, go to the airport, and go over there to work. ● Interview by Rose Skelton THE AFRICA REPORT

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