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Tuesday 26th of January 2016 |
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Chasing Fried Eggs with Jorge Luis Borges Africa |
On another occasion, during an interview in Rome, an Italian journalist tried to embarrass him. As he failed to do so he asked Borges, “Do you still have cannibals in your country?” Borges replied, “No, we don’t. We ate them all…”
For a blind person used to living on past memories, perhaps the life of the imagination was for him more important than real life. And yet his life and work had a singular impact on the life of many.
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“There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought and we surrendered ourselves to it.” ― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths Africa |
“This has happened and will happen again,' said Euphorbus. 'You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have seen were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.' Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him.” ― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
“Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.” ― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
“Whoever has seen the universe, whoever has beheld the fiery designs of the universe, cannot think in terms of one man, of that man’s trivial fortunes or misfortunes, though he be that very man. That man has been he and now matters no more to him. What is the life of that other to him, the nation of that other to him, if he, now, is no one? This is why I do not pronounce the formula, why, lying here in the darkness, I let the days obliterate me.” ― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
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Winners and Losers in the Syrian Civil War Patrick Cockburn Law & Politics |
The two sides hate each other and have spent five years trying to kill each other, making it unlikely that they will agree to share power in any way except geographically, with each side keeping the territory it currently holds and defending it with its own armed forces.
The problem about ending the war in Syria and Iraq is that there is a multitude of players who are too strong to lose but too weak to win. Countries and movements such as Iran and Hezbollah see themselves as fighting for their very existence in a war they cannot afford to lose. Others, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey have invested too much credibility in the struggle for Syria to admit they are not going to achieve their aim of ousting President Bashar al-Assad.
The big loser here could be Turkey, which seemed to be in such a strong position to extend its influence across the Middle East in 2011. Its image as an economically prospering, democratic yet Islamic, state was attractive to many Arab protesters looking to overthrow and replace dictatorial rule. But the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, soon made clear that he was supporting a Sunni Arab sectarian takeover that was anti-Shia, anti-Kurd and anti-secular and was bound to be resisted. Having first backed the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey then tolerated or helped Isis, al-Nusra and extreme jihadi groups.
It was a calamitous miscalculation for Syria and for Turkey. For all President Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman dreams of making Turkey a great power in the Middle East again, he has achieved the opposite. How he responds to this failure should become clear in the coming months as the US and Russia try, in different ways, and in support of a rather different list of allies, to close the border between northern Syria and Turkey.
President Erdogan will either have to accept Turkey’s exclusion from northern Syria or increase Turkish military involvement, possibly including an invasion. Critical commentators in Turkey say he wanted to invade last year, but was restrained by senior Turkish army generals. Full-scale military engagement by Turkey would be more difficult today, since Russian military intervention and the shooting down of a Russian bomber by a Turkish F-16 on 24 November. A Turkish move into northern Syria now would face American disapproval and resistance by Russian aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles.
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Malaysia Calls for Caution on #MH370 as Metal Found in Thailand Law & Politics |
Malaysia’s government cautioned against speculating about the location of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 after a chunk of metal was found off southern Thailand.
The barnacle-encrusted debris, measuring about 2 meters by 3 meters, was found by fishermen Jan. 23 off the country’s east coast in the Gulf of Thailand, the Bangkok Post reported. Electrical wires hung off the curved piece of metal, which was stamped with numbers in several places, the newspaper said.
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25-AUG-2014 The signal announcing this new arrhythmic normal was the disappearance of the #MH370 Law & Politics |
His excellency Johan Borgstam told me the signal announcing this new arrhythmic normal was the disappearance of the MH370. Since then planes have been falling out of the sky like flies. And the uncertainty around MH370 and MH17 which is sharpened by the way the story is seemingly turned on and off took me back to Don Delillo
‘’”We are not witnessing the flow of information so much as pure spectacle, or information made sacred, ritually unreadable. The small monitors of the office, home and car become a kind of idolatry here, where crowds might gather in astonishment.’’
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South Sudan needs arms embargo; leaders killing civilians - U.N. panel Africa |
The panel asked the council to blacklist "high-level decision makers responsible for the actions and policies that threaten the peace, security and stability of the country."
The names of the individuals the panel recommend for sanctions in the form of an international travel ban and asset freeze were not included in the body of the report. But a diplomat familiar with the contents told Reuters that a highly confidential annex calls for blacklisting both Kiir and Machar.
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Africa Currency Crises Spark Diverging Central Bank Stances Africa |
Africa’s biggest economies are taking opposite approaches on monetary policy as they struggle to cope with collapsing commodity prices and a slump in investor confidence.
South Africa, Nigeria, Angola and Ghana are set to announce their first interest-rate decisions of the year this week in an environment complicated by plummeting currencies, rising inflation risks and deteriorating growth. While a record-low rand may force South African policy makers to take more aggressive action, Nigeria is set to stick to its looser policy, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The contrasting approaches underscore the difficult policy choices African central banks are being forced to take as their currencies suffer the worst of the rout in global financial markets. In Nigeria, the continent’s biggest economy, growth concerns and naira stability have trumped inflation risks, while fiscal pressures in Ghana and an oil-triggered crisis in Angola have fueled weaker currencies and prompted higher interest rates.
“A further decline in commodity prices, tightening of monetary policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve, and unfavorable weather conditions mean that the short-term outlook for African currencies is weak,” Jacques Verreynne, an economist at NKC African Economics, based in Paarl, near Cape Town, said in an e-mailed response to questions.
“Although the outlook for economic growth is fairly weak in many parts of the continent, there is pressure on central banks to raise interest rates in order to anchor inflation expectations,” he said.
The Bank of Ghana is set to kick off the week’s policy decisions by keeping its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 26 percent on Monday after three increases last year, according to seven of the 10 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Kenya’s central bank also opted last week to extend the pause in its interest-rate cycle by leaving the policy rate at 11.5 percent.
In Nigeria, pressure is mounting on Governor Godwin Emefiele to devalue the naira and ease foreign-currency controls that are hurting businesses and worsening the outlook for growth in Africa’s biggest oil producer.
He surprised market analysts at the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting in November by cutting the benchmark rate by 2 percentage points to 11 percent and snubbing calls to weaken the currency.
All but one of the 22 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict Emefiele will leave the key rate unchanged on Tuesday, with some predicting an adjustment to the naira rate.
“The concerns are that the currency is under pressure, that the currency is misaligned,” Bismarck Rewane, chief executive officer at Financial Derivatives Co. Ltd., said by phone from Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. “Ghana and South Africa have already moved closer to an equilibrium. Nigeria has not really accepted that the currency price is in disequilibrium.” While the Central Bank of Nigeria has virtually fixed the naira at 197-199 per dollar since March, South Africa’s rand has plunged about 29 percent and Ghana’s cedi is down almost 8 percent in the same period. Authorities in Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil producer after Nigeria, have gradually devalued the kwanza since last year.
The rand’s slide to a record-low of 17.9169 per dollar on Jan. 11 is adding to pressure on inflation in South Africa at the same time that the worst drought in more than a century boosts food costs. Inflation accelerated to 5.2 percent in December and is set to exceed the central bank’s 3 percent to 6 percent target band this year. The rand gained 0.2 percent to 16.4389 by 8:57 a.m. in Johannesburg.
That may prompt the Reserve Bank to increase the magnitude of its rate increases from 25 basis points. While most of the 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict higher rates this week, 16 forecast the repurchase rate of 6.25 percent will be lifted by at least 50 basis points.
The MPC decision is the first since the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates in December and President Jacob Zuma shocked financial markets by changing his finance minister three times in the space of five days, triggering a weaker rand.
Governor Lesetja Kganyago said in an interview on Jan. 20 that it’s impossible to avoid the trade-off between growth and inflation and the central bank will “act with resolve” if price pressures stemming from a weaker rand spread more broadly in the economy.
“There’s still room for African central banks to tighten monetary policy,” Courage Kingsley Martey, an economist at Databank Group Ltd., said by phone from the Ghanaian capital, Accra. “It is possible to sacrifice growth for some time and then allow macroeconomic stability to return, else inflation will return to haunt growth.”
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Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago off the East African coast, plans to offer so-called blue bonds Africa |
Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago off the East African coast, plans to offer so-called blue bonds, which fund the development of sustainable fisheries, to investors later this year.
The country’s Treasury is in talks with multilateral agencies including the African Development Bank and the World Bank to facilitate the sale of $10 million of the government-backed debt, Finance Minister Jean-Paul Adam said in a phone interview Jan. 22 from the capital, Victoria. The securities are modeled on green bonds, which channel their proceeds to projects that save energy, curb pollution and recycle resources.
Seychelles is considering the debt as it’s $169 million of bonds due January 2026 outperform other sub-Saharan African nations, returning 2.6 percent this year compared with an average loss of 2.9 percent among 17 countries on the continent tracked by Bloomberg. The commercial fishing industry in Seychelles, which has Africa’s biggest tuna-canning factory, is dominated by companies including Thai Union Group Pcl, Thailand’s largest seafood exporter. Fisheries account for about 1 percent of the country’s $1.4 billion economy, according to World Bank and African Development Bank data.
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02-NOV-2015 The Seychelles @TheStarKenya Africa |
I am writing this article from Mahe, which is the one of 115 islands that make up the Seychelles archipelago, which lies 1,500 Kilometres off East Africa. Seychelles has a population of 90,024 and that is the smallest population of any independent African state. The minister for Finance, Trade and The Blue Economy Jean-Paul Adam informed me that the Seychelles receives tourists three times its population every year. If Kenya was to receive the same ratio of tourists, we would be welcoming 120 million tourists a year. The minister described to me how the Seychelles navigated the 2008 financial crisis [debt to GDP soared close to 125 per cent] and the Republic defaulted, but now runs an annual surplus of over five per cent. The debt-to-GDP ratio is in the 40 per cent range [after some help from the Paris Club and the IMF]. Let us hope Seychelles in 2008 is not a Harbinger for some countries on the mainland continent.
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From Venezuela-Type Crisis to Free Float: Nigeria Naira Choices Africa |
“They have to do something,” said Ayodele Salami, who manages about $500 million of African equities as chief investment officer of London-based Duet Asset Management Ltd. Foreign investors are seeking a depreciation to about 250, and an end to foreign-exchange trading restrictions before re-entering the country, he said. “It would really undermine the credibility of the central bank if they say nothing about it.”
The foreign-exchange controls were hurting U.S. companies’ ability to do business in Nigeria, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said in an interview in the commercial capital, Lagos.
Here are the options open to Emefiele, and their probable consequences:
* Devalue and let the currency trade in a band: Analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG and Morgan Stanley are among 13 of 16 surveyed by Bloomberg who predict the central bank will devalue the naira on Tuesday to between 214 to 275 per dollar. In this scenario, Emefiele would still want some control, and can do so by allowing the naira to trade 5 percent either side of a new midpoint, said Chernay Johnson, an analyst at Credit Suisse in Johannesburg.
* No devaluation for six months: Despite the growing scarcity of dollars and the black-market rate plunging to 305 this month, the central bank, whose policies are backed by President Muhammadu Buhari, has no plans to devalue for at least another six months, according to JF Ruhashyankiko, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist in London. In the meantime, Emefiele will curb the supply of dollars to banks to save foreign reserves at their lowest level since at least mid-2010, he said.
* Let the naira float: Buhari and Emefiele have said that weakening the currency may accelerate inflation already at a three-year high of 9.6 percent. That makes this option unlikely, especially given Nigeria’s history of retaining a strong grip on the currency, according to John Ashbourne, a London-based economist at Capital Economics Ltd.
* Create a second official exchange rate: Emefiele may continue holding the central bank’s official rate and allow companies deemed strategic, such as fuel importers, access to it, said Razia Khan, head of Africa economic research at Standard Chartered Plc in London. The regulator may then let everyone else use a more liberalized interbank market in a bid to encourage foreign-exchange inflows. The danger is that it could distort the market and lead companies and individuals able to buy at official rates to sell back their dollars on the interbank and black markets to profit from what would be wide spreads, she said. “There has been increasing talk of the possibility of a two-tier exchange rate,” said Khan. “Nigeria had one in the past. All it did was encourage round-tripping. You cannot police it.”
* Resort to a Venezuela-style regime: Emefiele could try to maintain the current regime indefinitely, which may lead to the black market being the only source of dollars for most Nigerians and “risks pushing the country into a Venezuela-type crisis,” according to Ashbourne of Capital Economics. The South American oil exporter, where the official rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar is almost irrelevant against a black-market rate that’s as high as 850, declared an economic crisis this month.
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CBK governor sets public finance tone for the year BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
Opposition leader Raila Odinga has recently named the CBK as one of the institutions that played a negative role in the controversial Eurobond affair and called on authorities to investigate some of the institution’s senior staff. What is your position?
Claims that $999 million (Sh100 billion) is missing from the CBK accounts are far from the truth. There was a balance $999 million in JP Morgan sovereign bond account and the National Treasury instructed the CBK to transfer the balance from the sovereign bond account at CBK and close the JP Morgan account.
So the CBK acquired the $999 million and credited the National Treasury account with Sh88 billion. That is the simple transaction and this we do all the time.
The account that was credited with the US dollars is a CBK account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We at CBK have accounts with so many other central banks in the world because we are regularly working with them in our normal course of business.
There was another transaction on December 17. The amount in US dollars was $815 million and it was converted to Kenya shillings at the then prevailing rate such that the Treasury account was credited with Sh73.8 billion.
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