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Monday 06th of February 2017
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Morning Africa |
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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
very much looking forward to hosting H.E. John Dramani Mahama, Former
President of the Republic of Ghana (2012- 2017) at #Mindspeak This
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The Future Arrived Suddenly @WSJ Africa |
In "My First Coup d'Etat," John Dramani Mahama offers personal
reminiscences of the vast cultural changes that took place in Ghana
after independence, as old tribal ways died out.
Mr. Mahama is at his best in describing this vanished world. He does
so with the eye of a historian and the flair of a novelist. "My First
Coup d'Etat" is a collection of personal reminiscences centered on the
traditional customs of his home village, where every older man is
respectfully called a grandfather and every woman a grandmother. Some
of the stories are his own, involving one or more of his 18 brothers
and sisters; others were handed down by his father, who came from a
long line of tribal chiefs. At times the lost world he describes seems
almost magical, as if it were populated by fairies and demons rather
than real people.
Many of his tales revolve around tribal practices that no longer
exist. One is the teenage courting ritual called Simpa, or full-moon
dance. Simpa would take place in the village square when the moon was
"huge, round, and electric white against the black sky." Villagers
would start to sing. Then young women would begin to dance
seductively, and young men would tap them on the shoulder and ask to
join them. "As the evening went on under the light of that moon," Mr.
Mahama says, "people would find partners not only for dancing but also
for life."
Macro Thoughts
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Interview with Ian Craig of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy @lewa_wildlife @Youtube Africa |
Home Thoughts
I had an Uncle by marriage called Cassu. He was a Roly-Poly Fellow,
full of banter and good jokes [sometimes very risqué]. You would
always find yourself chuckling even before you said Hello like he used
to chuckle at his own jokes. A few days ago, My Uncle said lets go and
all have dinner at the Muthaiga Club. I got there early because some
Folks are Teetotallers and one Uncle isn't so he wanted to fuel his
Tank before everyone arrived. During the main course, Cassu started to
feel poorly. The Muthaiga Club staff deserve a shout-out but I thought
given the demographics they must have some experience. Yesterday, I
went to Cassu's funeral. The Place was packed. Life is a very slender
momentary thing.
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US would go into any war with China with 'unparalleled violence', warn experts Law & Politics |
The United States would likely win because sending China's untested
forces against the might of America's military would be like pitching
farmers against Achilles and his warriors, said one, but even a
conventional military victory would be a strategic disaster. It would
set off a global economic crisis and create a potential power vacuum
inside defeated China "the like of which we can't imagine".
Mr Bannon said war would erupt in the South China Sea in "five to 10
years". He said: "They’re taking their sandbars and making basically
stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come
here to the United States in front of our face—and you understand how
important face is—and say it’s an ancient territorial sea."
Conclusions
I expect a ''Show-down''
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Who supplies the news? Patrick Cockburn on misreporting in Syria and Iraq @LRB Law & Politics |
The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has
been the reporting of the siege of East Aleppo, which began in earnest
in July and ended in December, when Syrian government forces took
control of the last rebel-held areas and more than 100,000 civilians
were evacuated. During the bombardment, TV networks and many
newspapers appeared to lose interest in whether any given report was
true or false and instead competed with one another to publicise the
most eye-catching atrocity story even when there was little evidence
that it had taken place. NBC news reported that more than forty
civilians had been burned alive by government troops, vaguely sourcing
the story to ‘the Arab media’. Another widely publicised story – it
made headlines everywhere from the Daily Express to the New York Times
– was that twenty women had committed suicide on the same morning to
avoid being raped by the arriving soldiers, the source in this case
being a well-known insurgent, Abdullah Othman, in a one-sentence quote
given to the Daily Beast.
All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real
atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided
reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not
seen since the First World War. The ease with which propaganda can now
be disseminated is frequently attributed to modern information
technology: YouTube, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter. But this is to
let mainstream media off the hook: it’s hardly surprising that in a
civil war each side will use whatever means are available to publicise
and exaggerate the crimes of the other, while denying or concealing
similar actions by their own forces. The real reason that reporting of
the Syrian conflict has been so inadequate is that Western news
organisations have almost entirely outsourced their coverage to the
rebel side.
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Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles NYT Law & Politics |
President Trump loves to set the day’s narrative at dawn, but the
deeper story of his White House is best told at night.
Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate
the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their
meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one
that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr.
Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes
another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.
Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires
upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use
Twitter. With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New
York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective
presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief,
Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his
bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and
advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar
surroundings of his new home.
“We are moving big and we are moving fast,” Mr. Bannon said, when
asked about the upheaval of the first two weeks. “We didn’t come here
to do small things.”
But one thing has become apparent to both his allies and his
opponents: When it comes to governing, speed does not always guarantee
success.
With most of his belongings in New York, the only family picture on
the shelf behind Mr. Trump’s desk is a small black-and-white
photograph of that boss, Frederick Christ Trump.
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"The hippies deserved a homage and a space," Urgell was quoted as saying last year. World Currencies |
Urgell opened a nightclub in Ibiza in the seventies, ignoring
financiers who claimed only a small group of “hippies” wanted to spend
time on the Balearic island. “The hippies deserved a homage and a
space,” Urgell was quoted as saying last year.
While Ibiza’s isolation attracted the ‘hippy’ movement in the sixties
and early seventies, the rave movement coupled with the emergence of
venues such as Pacha and Amnesia later helped the island to become
more fashionable within the mainstream.
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African Issuers Scrutinized After Mozambique's Bond Default Africa |
After Mozambique’s default, investors are wondering who’s next in Africa.
Bloomberg’s sovereign credit risk model -- which uses data including
budget deficits, foreign reserves, non-performing bank loans and
political instability to calculate default probabilities -- flags four
candidates among African Eurobond issuers: Senegal, Tunisia, Ghana and
Zambia.
Mozambique became the first African country to default on dollar bonds
since Ivory Coast in 2011 when it failed to settle an almost $60
million coupon initially due in January. It had a 15-day grace period
that ended on Thursday.
“It’s prompted fears of a string of debt crises across Africa,” John
Ashbourne, Africa economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said
in an e-mailed response to questions on Feb. 1. “While the risk of
contagion in a region with disparate economies and few linkages is
low, some countries may face difficulties repaying or rolling over
bonds sold during the boom years.”
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Connecting the dots, food prices, the weather and Laikipia @thestarkenya Kenyan Economy |
A number of stories caught my attention last week. The UN Food and
Agricultural Organisation said that its food price index rose 16.4 per
cent from a year before to the highest level since February 2015.
Sugar prices jumped 45 per cent from a year before and 10 per cent
month-on-month. Cereal prices hit a six-month high with wheat, corn
and rice all increasing. Food prices reached an all time high in 2011
and surely one of the conditions precedent of the Arab Spring. People
may vote with their pocketbooks, but more often than not, they revolt
with their bellies [Joshua Keating Slate] If you want to predict where
political instability, revolution, coups d’etat, or interstate warfare
will occur, the best factor to keep an eye on is not GDP, the human
development index, or energy prices.
“If I were to pick a single indicator—economic, political, social—that
I think will tell us more than any other, it would be the price of
grain,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute,
who has been writing about the politics and economics of food since
the 1950s.
Interestingly, President Daniel Arap Moi understood this correlation
very well and interventions like ''Nyayo'' milk were introduced. In an
election year, food prices need to be damped down otherwise it can
metastize into a big political head-wind.
Last Year was the hottest on record and its following on a series of
hottest years on record. Parched conditions scorches yields. It is
estimated that 18 out of the most 20 affected [by climate change]
countries are in Africa. Famine is threatening Nigeria, Somalia, South
Sudan and Yemen. The Kenya Red Cross has cranked up its interventions.
Reports out of Laikipia last spoke to a dystopian situation. Reuters
reported Armed cattle herders have been flooding onto farms and
wildlife conservancies in drought-ravaged northern Kenya, leading to
violence in which at least 11 people have been killed and a tourist
lodge torched, residents said on Thursday. You could argue that
Laikipia finds itself in the eye of the storm. That storm is being a
cocktail of global warming [which has reduced available pasture] and a
surge in livestock +76% as per the International Livestock Research
Institute in Nairobi. Exacerbating the situation, the value of cattle
has increased dramatically, making it a smart investment for urban
elites, a mobile bank account hidden from scrutiny and taxation
[Reuters]
ILRI's Joe Ogutu pronounced
"At the basis of all this is the human population explosion"
According to Tristan Mcconnell writing in France24, Last month perhaps
30,000 livestock arrived on Mugie, displacing wildlife. The illegal
herders - some armed with spears, others with AK47s -- cut through
fences, making off with wire and posts. The shooting, looting,
poaching and rustling that accompanied them left Perrett despondent.
"Twenty years of time, effort, sweat, money... it's fallen apart in
two weeks, destroyed," says the 35-year-old.
The cause and effect for the current situation is being disputed.
County Commissioner Onesmus Kyatha said the situation was under
control and blamed drought in the region for the tensions. "It is a
conflict over pasture," he said. "Once the rains come, they will
leave."
Francis Narunbe, a local chief of the Turkana tribe. "The drought has
been a problem for years but people have been living peacefully. This
(flare-up) is because of politics."
Martin Evans, head of the Laikipia Farmers' Association. "There's
political incitement."
The bottom line is we will need more political will because it seems
to me Laikipia is a laboratory experiment and where just about
everything is colliding.
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At 6.99 per cent, January's inflation is the highest since February last year Kenyan Economy |
Food takes up the largest share (36 per cent) of the basket of goods
used to calculate inflation, making it the main driver of the cost of
living.
Inflation hit an 11-month high in January, pushed up by higher food
prices. The latest data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics
show inflation stood at 6.99 per cent, up from 6.35 per cent in
December.
At 6.99 per cent, January’s inflation is the highest since February
last year, and just a few points shy of the Central Bank of Kenya’s
preferred ceiling of 7.5 per cent.
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N.S.E Today |
The Shilling firmed to trade at 103.71 versus the Dollar. Bloomberg in
some interesting analysis have shown that January is historically a
weak month for the Shilling.
The Future direction of the Shilling will naturally be dependent on a
number of variables. Those variables include the level of political
contestation [Its an election year after all], The Price of Crude Oil
[the single biggest Kenya Inc. expense item], Remittances [50% come
out of North America and Trump represents a risk to that flow] and of
course the Weather looks like a Big Factor.
The January swoon at the Securities Exchange and 2008 Lows for the
NSE20 was an overextension and saw the Securities Exchange enter a
disequilibrium. Everything and all the worst possible outcomes had
been priced in and therefore, counterintuitively, the Securities
exchange has upside head-room.
The Nairobi All Share rallied for the 5th consecutive session and
closed +0.87 points at 125.06
The Nairobi NSE20 Index also made it 5 Up Days in a row to close at 2867.39.
Equity turnover [more than half of which was transacted in Safaricom]
clocked 902.931m.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom rallied +1.34% to close at 18.90 and traded 24.381m shares
worth 461.56m. Safaricom has rebounded +5.29% since closing at a 2017
Low Jan 12th through Jan 17th and has narrowed its FY Loss to -1.305%
considerably ahead of the Index Averages and informs us to expect
another FY Outperformance.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
As can be seen from the Year To Date Returns, The Banks have borne the
brunt of the Sell-Off at the Securities Exchange. The Banks have been
on the rebound in February from admittedly deeply oversold positions.
KCB Group traded 2nd at the Exchange and firmed +1.0309% to close at
24.50 and was trading session highs of 25.00 +3.09% at the Finish
Line. KCB traded 5.513m shares worth 136.023m.
COOP Bank which closed unchanged at 11.35 [-14.051% 2017] saw heavy
volume action of 11.406m shares worth 129.495m. COOP Bank closed the
session trading at 11.50 +1.32%.
Equity Group rallied +2.00% to close at 25.50 and traded 1.759m
shares. Equity is -15.00% in 2017.
Barclays Bank ticked +1.27% firmer to close at a 2 week high of 8.00.
Barclays traded 2.125m shares and is -12.087% in 2017.
Centum rallied +3.149% to close at 32.75. Buyers outpaced Sellers by a
factor of 9 to 1 which is a bullish development.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
Mumias Sugar has not received a fillip from the fact that Raw Sugar
Prices surged near enough 10% in January and are +45% over 12 months.
Mumias Sugar traded 205,100 shares and closed at 1.05 -4.55%.
KenGen firmed +0.87% to close at 5.90 and has rebounded +19.19% since
closing at a 2017 Low last month.
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