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Friday 18th of March 2016 |
Morning Africa |
Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke
Looking forward to tomorrow's #Mindspeak 19th March at the @SankaraNairobi from 0930 am.
We will be hosting @stpaulsplc The Founder Richard Britten-Long and Key Officers from the same |
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Marshall McLuhan Africa |
"The goblins make no beautiful things, but many clever ones." — JRR Tolkien
“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
“I sit beside the fire and think Of all that I have seen Of meadow flowers and butterflies In summers that have been
Of yellow leaves and gossamer In autumns that there were With morning mist and silver sun And wind upon my hair
I sit beside the fire and think Of how the world will be When winter comes without a spring That I shall ever see
For still there are so many things That I have never seen In every wood in every spring There is a different green
I sit beside the fire and think Of people long ago And people that will see a world That I shall never know
But all the while I sit and think Of times there were before I listen for returning feet And voices at the door” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
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Brazil protests: Rousseff and Lula supporters rally amid corruption claims Law & Politics |
At the end of a week of extraordinary political drama, constitutional chaos and massive anti-government protests, supporters of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will rally in cities across the country on Friday.
The Frente Brasil Popular, a network of trade unions, social movements and other organisations sympathetic to the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) said it would hold events in 45 cities in defence of democracy and the rights of the working class.
It will mark the first major show of strength by Brazil’s pro-government factions since an estimated 3 million people took to the streets on Sunday to demand the president’s resignation.
Conclusions
Seriously in disequilibrium, now.
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New Chinese ship activity spotted at disputed South China Sea shoal Guardian Law & Politics |
The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef seized by China from the Philippines nearly four years ago, which could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the US navy chief said on Thursday.
The head of US naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.
Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move.
He said the US military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 200km (125 miles) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay.
Conclusions
China is not prepared to be boxed in. The US Pivot needs to do more than bare its Fangs.
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Last month was the hottest February in 137 years of record keeping Law & Politics |
Last month was the hottest February in 137 years of record keeping, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's the 10th consecutive month to set a new record, and it puts 2016 on course to set a third straight annual record.
It was a big month, not only the hottest February but the most unusual warmth for any month on record. Unprecedented temperatures in the Arctic, averaging an astonishing 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, melted away layers of ice to record-low levels. The heat helped prolong the longest planet-wide coral bleaching event. These grim milestones coincide with the biggest recorded jump in carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas.
To be sure, some of this is the result of a monster El Niño weather pattern lingering in the Pacific Ocean. But the broader trend is clear: We live on a planet that is warming rapidly, with no end in sight.
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ World Currencies |
Euro 1.1314 Dollar Index 94.83 Japan Yen 111.45 Swiss Franc 0.9673 Pound 1.4466 Aussie 0.7642 Australian dollar AUD=D4 shot up to $0.7681, its highest since July India Rupee 66.635 South Korea Won 1162.96 Brazil Real 3.6242 Egypt Pound 8.8840 South Africa Rand 15.2231
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Drawing a line in Libya 18TH MARCH 2016 The West's military and political leaders are pondering a major new armed intervention as Da'ish's momentum builds Africa |
Signs are emerging that another major Western intervention in the Arab-African world is on the horizon. United States President Barack Obama is telling his National Security Council to consider all options to counter Da'ish (Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, ISIL) in Libya. US aircraft have already carried out an air raid on a Da'ish training camp at Sabratha, west of Tripoli, and are being readied at British and Italian air bases to carry out more, some possibly elsewhere in North Africa.
The spread into Libya of the Da'ish franchise is one of several existential threats to UN-led efforts to unite the feuding Tobruk- and Tripoli-based governments and other factions. Support for the new Government of National Accord (GNA) is the only strategy which Western governments can countenance to create a viable post-Moammar el Gadaffi state from an atomised, mess of rival tribal and ideological groups, and to eliminate Da'ish and criminal gangs from Europe's southern flank (AC Vol 57 No 2, A cure that could kill). Western governments want such a government to authorise broader military action in Libya.
Although the GNA's future is far from certain, Western governments need the new national administration to authorise broader military action.
Conclusions
The Decapitation of the Strong Man without any serious idea for the day after.
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Gaddafi's Body in a Freezer - What's the Message? 24th October 2011 Africa |
I am left thinking, this dead Gaddafi business is one powerful message. And today Marshall McLuhan’s prediction in The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) that ‘The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village’ has come to pass. The image of a bloodied Gaddafi, then of a dead Gaddafi in a meat locker have flashed around the world via the mobile, YouTube and Twitter.
Who is in charge of the messaging? Through the fog of real time and raw footage, I note a very powerful message. The essence of that message being;
‘Don’t Fxxk with us! Be- cause you will end up dead and a trophy souvenir in a fridge.’
That same person is probably repeating Muammar’s comment, “I tell the coward crusaders: I live in a place where you can’t get me. I live in the hearts of millions.”
And asking ‘Really? Are You? Or are you now very dead and in a meat locker?’
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The battle for Kenya's property market Africa |
Back in 2002, Meles Zenawi, then prime minister of Ethiopia, drafted a foreign policy and national security white paper for his country. Before finalizing it, he confided to me a “nightmare scenario” — not included in the published version — that could upend the balance of power in the Horn of Africa region.
The scenario went like this: Sudan is partitioned into a volatile south and an embittered north. The south becomes a sinkhole of instability, while the north is drawn into the Arab orbit. Meanwhile, Egypt awakens from its decades-long torpor on African issues and resumes its historical stance of attempting to undermine Ethiopia, with which it has a long-standing dispute over control of the Nile River. It does so by trying to bring Eritrea and Somalia into its sphere of influence, thereby isolating the government in Addis Ababa from its direct neighbors. Finally, Saudi Arabia begins directing its vast financial resources to support Ethiopia’s rivals and sponsor Wahhabi groups that challenge the traditionally dominant Sufis in the region, generating conflict and breeding militancy within the Muslim communities.
Fourteen years later, reality has exceeded Zenawi’s nightmare scenario; not only has every one of his fears come to pass, but Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman bin Saud are working hand-in-glove on regional security issues — notably in Yemen and Libya — which has raised the stakes of the long-running Egypt-Ethiopia rivalry. If the worsening tensions in the Horn of Africa erupt into military conflict, as seems increasingly possible, it wouldn’t just be a disaster for the region — it could also be a catastrophe for the global economy. Almost all of the maritime trade between Europe and Asia, about $700 billion each year, passes through the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow straits on the southern entrance to the Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal.
These fractures in the Horn of Africa have been deepened by Saudi Arabia’s reassessment of its security strategy. Worried that the United States was withdrawing from its role as security guarantor for the wider region, it resolved to build up its armed forces and project its power into strategic hinterlands and sea lanes to the north and south. In practice, that has meant winning over less powerful countries along the African coast of the Red Sea — Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia — a region that Ethiopia has sought to place within its sphere of influence.
The Saudi presence along the African Red Sea coast has grown more sharply pronounced since its March 2015 military intervention in Yemen, which drew in Egypt as part of a coalition of Sunni Arab states battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The coalition obtained combat units from Sudan and Eritrea, and scrambled to secure the entire African shore of the Red Sea.
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Zupta chamber of secrets blown open: Tide turns in ANC Africa |
The conspiracy of silence in the ANC has been broken. With official confirmation from Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas that he was indeed offered the position of finance minister by the Gupta family, the dam walls have broken. New allegations of audacious moves by the Guptas are emerging, including trying to woo or give instructions to senior government leaders. It is being alleged that the Guptas had planned to have Jonas fired and replaced with a new ANC Member of Parliament. The go-between role of the president’s son, Duduzane Zuma, in the Guptas’ political manoeuvres is also being exposed.
ut it is Zuma’s own organisation that he has to fear. After years of dodging responsibility and laughing off accountability, his friends the Guptas brought him to the moment of reckoning.
Even for the ultimate Teflon man, political survival might be difficult this time around. |
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Nile flood, 1923 One of the earliest images in the exhibition is of the Giza pyramid complex Photograph: Mohamed El Ghazouly Africa |
Nigeria’s currency crisis Can you spare a dollar? Economist http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21695065-how-make-hard-currency-shortage-worse-can-you-spare-dollar
THE mutterings of discontent are growing louder in Nigeria’s street markets. The price of a bag of rice has surged by 12.5% in the past month. Supplies of bread have dwindled after bakers turned off their ovens to protest about the rising cost of flour. The rich lament that milk is missing from supermarket shelves. The poor complain about the price of garri (cassava flour). A fish importer estimates that 70m Nigerians can no longer afford his wares.
Such are the symptoms of Nigeria’s foreign-exchange crisis. Africa’s most populous nation exports oil and imports nearly everything else. As oil prices have collapsed, Nigeria’s foreign earnings have tumbled with them, putting huge pressure on the naira, the local currency. Yet President Muhammadu Buhari refuses to allow the naira to devalue, fretting that this would fuel inflation. Economists point out that a weaker currency would simply reflect that Nigeria is poorer now than it was when oil was above $100 a barrel. He ignores them.
The policy is not working: inflation hit 11.4% in February and growth has fallen to 2.1%. Factories are closing down for lack of supplies and the managers of those still running spend much of their time trying to find things to sell abroad to raise dollars, such as gold jewellery or gum arabic. Most have been pushed into the black market, where they pay about 60% above the official rate unless they are lucky enough to get some of the $200m or so released each week by the central bank. That the bank has the power to hand out subsidised greenbacks naturally invites corruption. An executive at a big importer says its budgets now include a 30% “premium” to be paid to central bank officials to get dollars.
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Fairy Circles, Long a Mystery in Africa, Now Found in Australia Africa |
When Stephan Getzin, an ecologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, opened the email, his heart began to flutter. Attached was an aerial image of fairy circles, just as he had seen in countless photos before. But those images were always taken along long strips of arid grassland stretching from southern Angola to northern South Africa.
These fairy circles — which looked nearly identical — came from Australia, not Africa.
“I was really astonished,” Dr. Getzin said. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
The emailed photo came from Bronwyn Bell, who does environmental restoration work in Perth. She had read about Dr. Getzin’s research in Namibia and made a connection to the odd formations in her home state, Western Australia.
Until that point, Australian circles were completely unknown to science. “Not even the Australians were aware of their jewel,” Dr. Getzin said.
Tracks of Oryx antelopes crossing fairy circles in Namibia. Credit Norbert Jürgens http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/14/science/fairy-circles-australia.html?ref=africa&_r=0
The Paris Review Malick Sidibé’s Iconic Photos of Nightlife in Bamako, Mali pic.twitter.com/BTAzna2v6r
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LOOK In Bamako Paris Review Africa |
“You go to someone’s wedding, someone’s christening,” he told LensCulture in 2008, speaking of the renown he gained as a party photographer:
I was lucky enough at that time to be the intellectual young photographer with a small camera who could move around. The early photographers like Seydou Keïta worked with plate cameras and were not able to get out and use a flash. So I was much in demand by the local youth. Everywhere … in town, everywhere! Whenever there was a dance, I was invited … At night, from midnight to four A.M. or six A.M., I went from one party to another. I could go to four different parties. If there were only two, it was like having a rest. But if there were four, you couldn’t miss any. If you were given four invitations, you had to go. You couldn’t miss them. I’d leave one place, I’d take thirty-six shots here, thirty-six shots there, and then thirty-six somewhere else, until the morning.
Vues de dos—Juin, 2003/2004, vintage gelatin silver print, glass, paint, cardboard, tape, and string, 10 3/4" x 14 1/2". http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/03/17/in-bamako/
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Destitute Zambian Mineworkers Dream of Copper Market Rebound Africa |
Across Africa, the commodity price downturn spurred by slumping demand from China has slammed economies from Nigeria to South Africa. Zambia, which relies on copper for more than 70 percent of its export earnings, has been particularly hard hit. More than 10,000 workers have lost their jobs since late last year, as plunging prices for the metal left mines unprofitable and power shortages hobbled production.
The economy grew last year at the slowest pace since 1998, and the kwacha has slumped 44 percent against the dollar since the start of 2015, more than any other African currency.
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20 OCT 14 :: Ebola Severity Lies in Speed of Infections, The Star Africa |
“The effectiveness of electronic money lies in its mass, which increase its velocity of circulation.’’
Virilio claims that as the “last post-industrial resource, acceleration exceeds accumulation...the escape velocity becomes the equivalent of profit.” Virilio believes that accel- eration and speed are the defining characteristics of our new world. So my first point about the Ebola virus is that it is not about the absolute number of cases, it is about its ‘escape velocity’ viruses that exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics.
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@KenolKobil reports FY PAT 2015 +84.642% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 0.50/- Closing Price: 10.80 Total Shares Issued: 1471761200.00 Market Capitalization: 15,895,020,960 EPS: 1.37 PE: 7.88
KenolKobil FY Earnings through Dec 2015 FY Net sales 86.557936b vs. 90.209977b -4.048% FY Cost of sales [80.720486b] vs. [85.088414b] -5.133% FY Gross profit 5.837450b vs. 5.121562b +13.978% FY Other income 1.411992b vs. 0.851713b +65.783% FY Administrative and operating cost [2.223810b] vs. [1.771446b] +25.536% FY EBITDA 4.794782b vs. 3.911475b +22. 582% FY Finance cost [0.651344b] vs. [1.212792b] -46.294% FY Profit before income tax 3.364023b vs. 1.994716b +68.647% FY Profit for the year 2.014974b vs. 1.091284b +84.642% EPS 1.37 vs. 0.74 +85.135% Dividend Final 0.25 Interim 0.10 Total assets 17.377103b vs. 23.915166b -27.339% Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year 0.762095b vs. 1.051464b -27.521%
Company Commentary
a record net profit of 2b shillings +85% versus 2014 Strategy ''to turn around the business by reducing debt, simplifying the business and engaging in value adding activities, such as closing protracted law suits, selling under performing assets and exiting operations in difficult, unprofitable countries. Sales volume +13% 6.7% gross Margin versus 5.7% in the previous year Debt level reduced from 10.4b in 2014 to 4.6b at end of 2015 improved gearing ratio of 31% in 2015 Forex Losses for the year was 232m We have divested Kobil Tanzania and inactive depot asset in Congo Final Dividend 25cents a share +10cents Interim
Conclusions
Strong earnings and probably more to go, given how last year witnessed an exponential drop in the Price of Fuel [and this year we are seeing better price stabilisation]
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Pan Africa Insurance Co reports FY PAT 2015 -95.68% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 5/- Closing Price: 50.50 Total Shares Issued: 144000000.00 Market Capitalization: 7,272,000,000 EPS: -0.43 PE:
First listed insurance company on the NSE.
FY Gross written premium 5.181614b vs. 5.246527b -1.237% FY Outward reinsurance premium [384.628m] vs. [255.757m] +50.388% FY Investment income 2.388531m vs. 1.993175b +19.835% FY Fair value [losses]/ income [637.144m] vs. 648.386m -198.266% FY Total income 7.237184b vs. 7.974995b -9.252% FY Insurance outgo [4.257215b] vs. [5.053694b] -15.760% FY Commission and operating expenses [2.301649b] vs. [1.751465b] +31.413% FY Total expenses [7.186122b] vs. [6.825007b] +5.291% FY Profit before tax 0.054325b vs. 1.152598b -95.287% FY Profit for the year after tax 27.350m vs. 871.190m -95.68% FY Profit attributable to equity holders of the parent [61.559m] vs. 871.190m -107.066% EPS [0.43] vs. 6.05 -107.107% Dividends – Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year 3.916168b vs. 3.981296b -1.636%
Company Commentary
-95% decline in FY Profit before Tax The Asset Management and property businesses exceeded 2014 operating profit levels whilst the life insurance and Loans' businesses performance declined. Newly acquired General Insurance business also under performed. ''Life Insurance business was negatively impacted by challenges experienced with our distribution network from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015'' No Dividend
Conclusions
Fair Value Losses will be a common theme across this Sector.
Africa’s ports The bottleneck Economist http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21695054-new-investment-alone-will-not-fix-africas-ports-governments-need-deal
AT THE entrance to the Port of Mombasa, just in front of where machinegun toting policemen check visitors’ permits, is a shipping container mounted on a plinth. It was erected last year to commemorate the port processing 1m containers (or TEUs; twenty-foot equivalent units are the industry standard) in a year for the first time. It is a boast about how much the port, east Africa’s biggest, has improved in recent years. And at the other end of the bay, a brand new container terminal juts out into the water, a smooth new road leading from it. On a hillside nearby, Chinese workers in straw hats look over the valley where a new railway is being built from the port to Nairobi.
All this gives a solid sense of progress. Yet behind the scenes, not everything is going well at Mombasa. Though the builder, Toyo, a Japanese company, has handed over the new terminal to the government, a tender has not yet been agreed to run it. Instead, the port’s management is in chaos. Last month the head of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) was sacked along with six other senior officials. Corruption has soared of late, grumble Kenyan businessmen. “The port of Mombasa is completely rotten,” says one chief executive.
What is true of Mombasa is true of ports across Africa. From Nigeria to Djibouti, decrepit and inefficient container ports are being expanded with money from the World Bank, governments (particularly those of China and Japan) and logistics firms such as Bolloré (a big French company which operates 14 port concessions across the continent). That offers the potential to transform African trade. Yet corruption and poor management may mean the gains will be squandered.
Good ports are perhaps more important to Africa than any other region. On a continent bereft of good roads and productive factories, fully 90% of trade happens by sea. Ports also corrall trade where it can be regulated and taxed: in Kenya, for example, some 40% of government revenue is generated by the customs department. Ports are also the means by which much contraband, from drugs to ivory, escapes to the rest of the world.
Yet many African ports are dire. And most are tiny. In 2013 sub-Saharan Africa’s largest, Durban, in South Africa, processed just 2.6m containers––a thirteenth as many as Shanghai, the world’s busiest port. And they cost a fortune to use. According to the World Bank, in 2011 shipping a container from Africa was typically twice as time-consuming as getting one shipped from India and about six times as slow as doing it through an American port. On average, containers sit waiting in African ports for three weeks before being taken to their final destination—compared with a week in other emerging markets.
This makes Africa poorer. The World Bank’s figures suggest that delays in ports add roughly 10% to the cost of imported goods, more in many cases than tariffs. For exports the harm is worse. In northern Mozambique, the banana industry could be 20 times larger if Nacala—a natural deep-water port—were as cheap as those in Ecuador, reckons Jake Walter of TechnoServe, an NGO. Instead, perhaps 80% of containers leave Africa empty.
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