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Friday 03rd of February 2017 |
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A struggle for land and survival in Kenya's restive highlands France24 Africa |
LAIKIPIA (KENYA) (AFP) - The broad plains of Mugie, a huge estate on a high plateau northwest of Mount Kenya, are crisscrossed with cattle trails and the wildlife is mostly gone.
The knee-high grass remains, but not for long, reckons manager Josh Perrett.
Tensions between semi-nomadic pastoralists and settled landowners are nothing new, nor is competition between livestock and wildlife, but in Kenya's central Laikipia highlands they are taking a destructive, sometimes violent turn.
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.
"Before, you would see elephant, a few hundred head of buffalo, Jackson's hartebeest, oryx, Grant's gazelle, impala. Now you see thousands of head of cattle, a lot of sheep and goats."
At the 44,000-acre (17,600-hectare) Suyian ranch, south of Mugie, thatched huts for tourists were burned down and shots fired this week as herders swept in. Black and white landowners alike speak of invasions, fear and siege.
- Too many people, too much livestock -
The dangerous situation in Laikipia is an acute expression of a chronic and complex tangle of population growth, livestock increases, overgrazing, erratic rainfall, climate change, weapons, money and politics.
A recently published four-decade study by the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi uncovered "catastrophic... widespread" declines in Kenyan wildlife as herds of livestock displace wild animals.
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"Wow! What a Ride!" Hunter S. Thompson Africa |
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
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The frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine has flared up again Law & Politics |
The frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine has flared up again because both the Kremlin and the Kiev government are, to some extent, interested in the escalation as they try to achieve their political goals in a world shaken by Donald Trump's approach to guiding U.S. foreign policy.
When Putin spoke with Trump last Friday, the two sides' readouts of the conversation differed. The Russian one said the two presidents discussed "the major aspects of the Ukraine crisis," but the U.S. one failed to mention Ukraine altogether. Putin must have liked what he heard, or what he didn't hear, because the escalation quickly followed.
"Putin will pick a spot here and there and test the West for resolve," former Ukrainian foreign minister Volodymyr Ogryzko wrote in the weekly Novoe Vremya. "Moscow is checking whether its actions will cause more tension."
Conclusions
Russia, Israel, China are all set to push the envelope.
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05-DEC-2016 :: "We have a deviate, Tomahawk." Law & Politics |
However, my starting point is the election of President Donald Trump because hindsight will surely show that Russia ran a seriously sophisticated programme of interference, mostly digital. Don DeLillo, who is a prophetic 21st writer, writes as follows in one of his short stories: The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “ There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “ Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.” I have no doubt that Putin ran a seriously 21st predominantly digital programme of interference which amplified the Trump candidacy. POTUS Trump was an ideal candidate for this kind of support. Trump is a linguistic warfare specialist. Look at the names he gave his opponents: Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, ‘Low-energy’ Jeb — were devastating and terminal. The first thing is plausible deniability The second thing is non-linearity, you have to learn how to navigate a linear system (the new 21st digital ecosystem) in a non-linear way.
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An insurgent in the White House The Economist Law & Politics |
WASHINGTON is in the grip of a revolution. The bleak cadence of last month’s inauguration was still in the air when Donald Trump lobbed the first Molotov cocktail of policies and executive orders against the capital’s brilliant-white porticos. He has not stopped. Quitting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, demanding a renegotiation of NAFTA and a wall with Mexico, overhauling immigration, warming to Brexit-bound Britain and Russia, cooling to the European Union, defending torture, attacking the press: onward he and his people charged, leaving the wreckage of received opinion smouldering in their wake.
To his critics, Mr Trump is reckless and chaotic. Nowhere more so than in last week’s temporary ban on entry for citizens from seven Middle Eastern countries—drafted in secret, enacted in haste and unlikely to fulfil its declared aim of sparing America from terrorism. Even his Republican allies lamented that a fine, popular policy was marred by its execution.
In politics chaos normally leads to failure. With Mr Trump, chaos seems to be part of the plan. Promises that sounded like hyperbole in the campaign now amount to a deadly serious revolt aimed at shaking up Washington and the world.
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Trump Twitter Bursts Throw Decades-Old Alliances Into Disarray Law & Politics |
This week, President Donald Trump and his deputies hit out at some of America’s closest friends, blasting a “dumb” refugee resettlement deal with Australia and accusing Japan and Germany of manipulating their currencies. Ties with Mexico have deteriorated to the point its government had to deny reports that Trump told President Enrique Pena Nieto he might send U.S. troops across the southern border.
The dilemma for officials globally is figuring out if Trump’s blunt style is simply a tactic to keep them off balance or the start of a move to tear up the rule book that has guided relations with the U.S. since World War II. In the mean time, allies have little choice but to prepare for the worst.
The president told Turnbull he had spoken to four other global leaders that day, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, and “this was the worst call by far,” the paper reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials.
New Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has already pledged to challenge China over the waterway.
“China has no idea at the moment about how to deal with Trump and taking a cautious approach,” said Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor of Asian studies at City University of Hong Kong. “The one question that everyone is looking at in the region -- and this goes to the web of security partnerships in Asia -- is what is going to happen between the U.S. and China over the South China Sea.”
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No 'G'day, mate': On call with Australian prime minister, Trump badgers and brags WAPO Law & Politics |
It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.
Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.
At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”
Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.
“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.
Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”
Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5 p.m. Saturday from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.
“These conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately,” Turnbull said at a news conference Thursday in Australia. “If you see reports of them, I’m not going to add to them.”
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DONALD TRUMP THROUGH A LOUDSPEAKER, DARKLY @NewYorker Law & Politics |
Winston Smith, the protagonist of “1984,” is confined in an authoritarian prison, deprived of the most fundamental freedoms and inculcated with Newspeak. In my early childhood, at least as I remembered it, everyone I knew lived ordinary, unmolested lives.
The muddling of fact and fiction is a tried-and-true tactic of totalitarian regimes. What’s more, when the two are confused for long enough, or when an indefatigable war on truth has been waged for a year, or two years, or perhaps eight, it will likely be harder and more tiresome to untangle them and remember a time when a firm line was drawn between the true and the false as a matter of course. If amnesia breeds normalization, fatigue has always served as the authoritarian’s great accomplice.
I already know what it is like to live in a world with an omnipotent leader and a renovated reality. I have known loudspeakers, their mass persuasions, emotional arousals, and booming, relentless broadcasts. And I know that they are not my destiny, because I won’t let them be.
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Food prices rose to a two-year high in January pushed up by an increase in sugar and grains. Law & Politics |
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization said that its food price index rose 16.4 per cent from a year before to the highest level since February 2015.
January sugar prices jumped 45 per cent from a year before and 10 per cent month-on-month, driven by expectations of protracted supply tightness in Brazil, India and Thailand.
Cereal prices hit a six-month high with wheat, corn and rice all increasing. Wheat markets reacted to unfavourable weather conditions hampering this season’s crops as well as reduced plantings in the United States of America, while higher corn prices mostly reflected strong demand and uncertain crop prospects across South America.
Rice also rose, in part due to India’s ongoing state procurement programme, reducing supplies for export.
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Calling Trumpsville Washington's radical changes in policy and alignments are starting to hit African governments and economies @Africa_Conf Africa |
Until the outgoing Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, told the organisation's summit in Addis Ababa on 30 January that the United States' travel ban on seven countries with Muslim majorities presaged 'turbulent times', the continent's reaction to Donald Trump's presidency had been muted. The best guess among many African officials was that the lack of any reference to Africa in Trump's election campaign – bar a sideswipe against his rival Hillary Clinton on Libya – suggested that there wouldn't be big changes in US policy.
That now looks mistaken, especially on migration and security. As Dlamini-Zuma was sounding her warnings about the Trump government's entry ban, backed up more diplomatically in a subsequent speech by the new United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, hundreds of thousands of people were protesting against the order in the USA and Europe.
The ban includes AU members Libya, Somalia and Sudan and although it was introduced as a security measure, many officials now see it as a prelude to a wider crackdown on immigrants in the US, particularly the millions of undocumented people living in the country. Estimates of how many Africans fall into that category start in the low millions. One New York-based civic activist predicted deepening social divisions if a government-backed immigrant round-up gathered momentum, as well as fierce legal battles over the status of 'sanctuary cities' in the USA where illegal migrants can get local legal protection.
An African diplomat at the UN echoed a memorandum by dissident officials in the US State Department, arguing that the entry ban would prove counter-productive, boosting accusations of Islamophobia. It would also risk 'serious blow-back', with several countries rethinking security cooperation, he added.
Such warnings would not have overly concerned retired General Michael Flynn, Trump's National Security Advisor, who takes an extremely robust view on countering Islamist movements, armed and unarmed. He set these out in a book, co-authored with historian Michael Ledeen, called 'Field of Fight: How we can win the Global War against Radical Islam'. Among policy ideas circulating in Washington, we hear, is placing the Ikhwan al Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) on the US terrorist list.
Such a measure would be warmly endorsed by President Abdel Fatah el Sisi, who has banned the Ikhwan in Egypt, where it was founded by Hassan el Banna in 1928. El Sisi was also the first foreign head of state to congratulate Trump on his election win on 7 November. Yet his influence among some of the Trump team extends much further, particularly with regard to policy towards his western neighbour, Libya.
Cairo knows how Libya resonates in Washington. Trump's Republican Party allies accused President Barack Obama's government, particularly Secretary of State Clinton, of criminal negligence in failing to provide heavier security for US diplomats in the eastern city of Benghazi, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US officials died during an attack by Islamist fighters on 11 September 2012. Since Trump's election, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have stepped up support for their ally in Libya, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and his Libyan National Army (see Libya Feature, Front lines in flux).
Haftar's political stock has been rising, as has his financial muscle, since his forces wrested control of Sirte from Da'ish (Islamic State) in November and seized the surrounding oil facilities, outflanking the Misuratan militias. Visiting Russia the following month, Haftar was promised more arms and weapon systems. Then one of his special envoys flew to Washington to meet the incoming government. We also hear credible reports of US private military companies operating out of the Jinja military airbase in Uganda to train more militia fighters in Libya. Haftar, who was once financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Colonel Moammar el Gaddafi's regime, is following a script close to Gen. Flynn's book.
Indeed, Flynn's co-author Ledeen takes Haftar extremely seriously. Close to French businessman and security consultant Jean-Yves Ollivier and Congo-Brazzaville President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Ledeen wants the USA to get more active in Libya (AC Vol 41 No 17, Bemba's boys). That may have prompted an ill-fated but much-publicised bid by Sassou-Nguesso, the AU's envoy on Libya, to meet Trump to discuss Haftar and North African security. That would have given Sassou some kudos in Washington and delivered a snub to Obama's officials, who had declined to give him an audience with the President.
After the news leaked, it was announced that Trump, who was enjoying his Christmas holidays in Florida at the time, would have no scheduled meeting with Sassou. Yet a new Libya policy involving US support, diplomatic and perhaps financial, for Haftar is under discussion. That would mean pushing against the current UN-backed peace plan and the government in Tripoli under Faiez el Serraj. It would also put Washington and Moscow in close cooperation on North African security, cutting out most of the European governments but reopening Libya to US oil companies and technology.
One Libyan politician called the policy 'Syria light', comparing Russia's weapon deliveries and air support for Haftar with its backing for President Bashar al Assad in Damascus. Flynn and his team are understood to be highly critical of African counter-insurgency efforts, including those backed by US forces, in Nigeria, Somalia and the Sahel.
Peter Pham, who is likely to be the next Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (see Box, Roll call of the Trumpeteers), is outside these discussions, despite his deep interest in security. Instead, he has been making a more conventional case for US involvement in Africa. Pointing out that over a quarter of the global labour force will be in Africa by 2050 and that it currently hosts six of the world's fast growing economies, Pham painstakingly lists the continent's reserves of platinum, chrome, phosphate, bauxite and cobalt, as well as extensive deposits of rare earth elements.
Pham is also a strong supporter of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade deal which gives African countries better market access in the US. Some Trump officials question its value, partly because it helps oil-producing states, but Pham argues that it boosts productivity and has created more than 120,000 jobs in the USA (AC Vol 49 No 5, Bush, the farewell tour). Richer states such as South Africa will face more push-back on trade terms from Washington as it tries to boost US companies.
If Pham gets the post, US policy could harden against Congo-Kinshasa, where he wants much more pressure on President Joseph Kabila to leave office. As a convinced backer of Morocco's claims to the Western Sahara, Pham would have welcomed Rabat's readmission to the AU at the latest summit.
On foreign aid, Pham argues for greater national self-interest and more rigorous monitoring. He cites a US$110 million credit to Mali, which used the money for an energy contract with China's Sinohydro. Compared to its $5.5 billion aid to Afghanistan and $3.1bn. to Israel, the US aid of $10 bn. for all 54 states in Africa (including $1.8 bn. for Egypt) is far less significant on a per capita basis. Many expect that most aid budgets except Israel's will be cut.
Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has publicly endorsed the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a multi-billion dollar programme introduced under President George W. Bush to boost distribution of anti-HIV and tuberculosis drugs. Tillerson was backed by two of Bush's top officials, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who regard the PEPFAR initiative as part of their government's legacy.
Although some Trump officials have referred to it as 'global welfare', PEPFAR is likely to survive. The future of other US funding for international health programmes is understood to have been the subject of a private meeting between Trump and US philanthropist Bill Gates early last month.
In the fraught days after the 7 November presidential election, questions to policy specialists in Washington about who would be on President Donald Trump's Africa team were met with blank stares and long silences. After which the name of Peter Pham, Director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, would invariably come up as the most likely choice as the next Assistant Secretary for African Affairs. Born in Paris to Vietnamese parents in exile, Pham speaks several European languages but his main academic interests are security in Africa and the Middle East. That gives him a chance with the new order in Washington DC. He also argues fluently that doing more in Africa is in the US national interest.
Also in the frame for the top Africa job at the State Department are: veteran military intelligence officer and specialist on international crime syndicates, Charles Snyder (AC Vol 45 No 23); Kate Almquist Knopf, Director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in the Department of Defense, with strong academic credentials but with a brand of Republicanism, including friendships with Democrats such as the outgoing US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, which might be too liberal for the current zeitgeist (AC Blog, AFRICA/UNITED STATES: Tussling for influence in Trumplandia); and Jeffrey Krilla, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Rex Wayne Tillerson, Trump's choice for Secretary of State was, as Africa Confidential went to press, likely to be confirmed after Senate hearings on 1-2 February. He would then make the final choice for the top diplomatic posts. As a long time Chief Executive of Exxon Mobil, Tillerson has a close knowledge of Africa's big oil producers, Nigeria and Angola. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil's Director for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, in Washington recently, is tipped for a senior job in government, perhaps Under Secretary for Political Affairs. Kansteiner, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Africa in George W. Bush's government is taken seriously by Tillerson and they share similar views on economic policy and government relations (AC Vol 44 No 19). On the periphery of that network is Emmanuel Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources in Nigeria, who was formerly legal counsel to ExxonMobil in a particularly tricky patch for the company there (AC Vol 57 No 19).
With the appointment of the uncompromising retired General Michael Flynn as his National Security Advisor, who does not have to be screened by Congress, Trump sent a clear message about his priorities (see Feature, Calling Trumpsville). Flynn, whom President Barack Obama dismissed as Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, wants robust backing for nationalist, anti-Islamist leaders in North Africa and the Middle East. His Africa Director, former US Marine Corps Sergeant Robin Townley, strongly shares this view. Townley has extensive experience as a counter-intelligence officer and interrogator in Africa and the Middle East.
If he doesn't get the State Department job, Snyder would also be a strong candidate to replace Amanda Dory as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs. Insiders see Snyder as a 'cool head' with an encyclopaedic knowledge of conflicts in Africa and the proliferating armed factions dating back to the days when Chester Crocker ran Africa policy under President Ronald Reagan. Once the State Department's Senior Representative on Sudan, he took the US lead on the talks that brought South Sudan to independence.
If Krilla doesn't get the top Africa job, a well-informed lobbyist tells us that he may replace Amos Hochstein as Special Envoy in the Bureau of Energy Resources, an office in the State Department that specialises in relations with major oil producers around the world, especially in Africa and the Middle East.
Conclusions
30-JAN-2017 a big signal about the shape of the Africa – Trump administration engagement. We are back to a counter-terrorism focus. http://www.rich.co.ke/media/docs/PX_014NSX3001.pdf
30-JAN-2017 US and its US AFRICOM has been advancing rapidly across the continent. http://www.rich.co.ke/media/docs/PX_014NSX3001.pdf
We can surely bet the house that this advance will now be turned to 11 as well.
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Ethiopia claims success in quashing wave of anti-government unrest FT Subscriber Africa |
The government of Ethiopia has vowed to crush all threats to its economic model and insists it is succeeding in restoring order as it grapples with the most serious threat to its 26-year hold on power.
Negeri Lencho, the communications minister, told the Financial Times that a state of emergency imposed in October had succeeded in quashing a wave of nationwide anti-government protests that left hundreds of people dead. He insisted that Addis Ababa would not “give opportunity to any party to block the fast-growing economy and the attempt or efforts of the Ethiopian government to change the lives of the people”.
But in an apparent acknowledgment of the failings of the government’s state-driven development model, he admitted that anger over high unemployment was a factor behind the unrest.
“The government educated the youth and there was not enough employment,” Mr Lencho said. “So the extremists used this fertile ground to incite violence.”
More than 500 people have been killed and tens of thousands detained over the past 18 months as anti-government protests spread across the country. The violence, which also targeted foreign-owned business, and the autocratic government’s response, has rattled investors.
The unrest has also called into question the sustainability of Addis Ababa’s economic model, which has helped drive some of the world’s fastest growth rates and lured billions of dollars of foreign investment to the Horn of Africa nation.
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a Marxist-Leninist coalition that has ruled with an iron grip since taking power in 1991, has concentrated on state-led infrastructure and industrialisation projects rather than opening up the private sector as it has sought to develop the impoverished country.
The model has been widely lauded in development circles, but the government has been accused of taking repressive measures and committing human rights abuses.
Mr Lencho said authorities had detained more than 20,000 people for “training” on the constitution since the protests erupted — initially over land disputes — in 2015.
The minister refused to speculate on how long the state of emergency, imposed for six months, would last.
He said “armed groups” and “terrorist organisations” bent on regime change, most of which were overseas, and which he did not identify, were no longer able to incite violence because of the restrictions on demonstrating and access to, and use of, social media. But he gave few specifics, apart from the creation of a “forum” of political organisations, about how the government was addressing people’s underlying frustrations to ensure the protests did not re-erupt.
The grievances, which he accepted were largely justified, were a lack of “good governance, justice, fairness [and] equity in benefiting from development”.
Pro-democracy activists and foreign diplomats have dismissed the forum as being a sham because it comprises few credible opposition figures. They say it is indicative of the government’s refusal to countenance meaningful reform. Ethiopia’s political opposition has been severely weakened, and the EPRDF and its allies control all the seats in parliament.
“They’re worried that if they give an inch they won’t be able to control the fallout,” a diplomat said.
Activists say Ethiopians flocked to the demonstrations because the government had steadily curtailed democratic freedoms since post-election protests in 2005 were ruthlessly crushed.
Protests flared periodically thereafter, but began in earnest in November 2015 when the government sought to extend the capital Addis Ababa into Oromia. This plan was eventually shelved but because of the authorities’ repressive response the demonstrations spread and became increasingly violent.
Hailemariam Desalegn, the prime minister, has admitted that about 500 people might have died while human rights groups and activists believe the toll is much higher.
Mass arrests followed, which Mr Lencho said fell into two categories: protesters who needed “training” for a few months and people considered more hardened criminals.
Initially about 11,000 people underwent “training”, of whom more than 8,000 have been released. A further 12,500 have been incarcerated for training in a second wave of detentions, he added.
No figures have been given for the total number of arrests but activists believe it is more than 50,000.
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17 OCT 16 :: Ethiopia's Reputation Shattered by Political Tensions @TheStarKenya Africa |
Ethiopia has always loomed large in my imagination from the time at prep school when my Ethiopian friend Ezana Haile, could not go home and came to spend the vacation with us in Mombasa. I recall reading The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuściński and in that book Kapuściński recounts the tale of Lulu, Haile Selassie’s lap dog that was allowed to piss on the shoes of dignitaries, and the courtier whose job for 10 years was to wipe those shoes clean with a satin cloth. That book also speaks to how the cushion bearer [ The Emperor was very short and therefore had to perched on cushions so as not to be beneath his subjects] became an all-powerful figure at the Imperial Court. Kapuściński was subsequently trashed for his poetic licence in his reportage but I accept his mea culpa:
“You don’t understand a thing. I’m not writing so the details add up – the point is the essence of the matter.”
I first visited Addis Ababa in 2005. It was eerie and disconcerting sitting in the wonderfully well-appointed Sheraton Hotel perched on the hill and knowing that an almighty fracas had taken place a near enough 200 people had been shot dead a few short weeks before. It took me about three hours to send an email. e ruling oarty EPRDF [which overthrew the Derg and Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991] brooked no dissent then. We are more than a decade down the road from that time and what is clear now is that the dissent has metasized to the point that the regime has seen fit to impose a six month state of emergency.
Ethiopia has been a Sub-Saharan-African poster child with real GDP growth averaging 10.9 per cent between 2004-2014. Many folks tout a double-digit growth rate but the Ethiopians have done it and not for just a brief moment but for more than a decade. Ethiopia was measured as the second poorest country in the world in 2000 and was widely expected to reach middle income status by 2025. Ethiopian Airlines criss crosses the African skies. Just a few days ago on October 5, the Ethiopian government unveiled the country’s new $3.4 billion railway line connecting the capital, Addis Ababa, to Djibouti, on the Red Sea. Every multi-national company I came across was high-tailing it up there to set up shop. Kenyan banks were salivating at the prospect of unlocking this market opportunity. Justin Lin the former World Bank Chief Economist spoke of how Ethiopia was in prime position to reap the transfer of low- cost Chinese manufacturing from China into Africa.
When I saw the results of the last election where the ruling party won 100 per cent of the seats in parliament, I thought to myself why would you want to publish a result like that which is not only not credible its incredible. However, the government got a free pass from the international community not least because Ethiopia occupies a strong geopolitical position. It has been seen as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism and is able to marshal and project a compelling military spear in the region.
The government was able to also point at the trajectory of its growth and say look at the parabola of our GDP. However, as Maplecroft said ‘’Ethiopia’s reputation for stability has been shattered by an escalating series of protests in Oromia and Amhara regions.
The government is talking about a number of around 500 when it comes to protesters killed over the last few months. Most observers I speak to are talking of at least 10x.
Foreign companies have come under attack. Fana broadcasting reported on its website that 11 companies ranging from textile firms to a plastics maker to flower farms had been damaged or destroyed, while more than 60 vehicles had been torched. Dutch firm FV SeleQt said its 300-hectare vegetable farm and warehouse had been plundered. Another Dutch firm, Africa Juice, said its factory had been partially destroyed.
The government need to change tack and effect a course correction and history shows us that this course correction is one of the most difficult things to pull off.
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Nigeria's foreign-currency shortage @TheEconomist Africa |
DURING Muhammadu Buhari’s stint as military ruler of Nigeria in the 1980s, Fela Kuti, a well-known Afrobeat musician, was locked up for the offence of possessing foreign currency, to the tune of £1,600. More than three decades later Mr Buhari is back in office, elected this time, and the issue of who gets access to foreign currency, and what they can do with it, remains as contentious as ever in Nigeria.
Last November officers of the State Security Service (SSS), the main domestic intelligence agency, arrested money-changers in cities across the country, in what was seen as a response to the tanking value of the naira on Nigeria’s foreign-exchange markets. The central bank has for months tried to keep the naira stable at about 315 to the dollar, after supposedly floating it last June, but a shortage of foreign currency combined with high demand for dollars has caused the naira to lose as much as 38% of its value on the black market since then.
The intervention of the secret police has created in Africa’s second-largest economy “an even blacker [ie more secretive] market,” says Pabina Yinkere, a director of Vetiva Capital Management in the commercial capital, Lagos. The supply of dollars began drying up when the price of oil, Nigeria’s main export, collapsed in 2014. The problem worsened in 2016 after militants, unhappy with the grinding poverty of Nigeria’s main oil-producing region, started blowing up pipelines.
Nigeria is highly dependent on imports, with everything from the petrol in pumps to the rice in supermarkets coming from abroad. Importers need foreign currency to pay their invoices, but dollars, pounds and euros are hard to find. Banks theoretically sell dollars for around 315 naira each. But few branches have any to sell, or are willing to part with what they have.
Before the intervention of the SSS, dollars could be bought at money-changing bureaus for around 465 naira each. But with the SSS breathing down their necks, money-changers are now forced to accept no more than 400 naira for each of the few dollars they have. Many traders have dropped out of the dollar business entirely, says Abubakar Ruma, a leader of a group of currency-exchange operators in the capital, Abuja. Changers cannot make money if they sell greenbacks at the enforced rate.
The public has reacted similarly. People with foreign currency prefer to hold on to the bills they have in the hope that the rate will improve. That has starved the money-changers of cash, and the weekly dollar sales held by the central bank, says Mr Ruma, are not enough to ease the crunch. The raids by the SSS have not entirely banished the higher rates. Some money-changers will still buy dollars for 490 naira or above, from people they trust.
What to do? Higher interest rates would help attract foreign investors. A negotiated settlement with the militant groups would allow oil production to return to full capacity, bringing Nigeria back to its position as Africa’s largest producer of crude. Most important, the central bank could also help by being more transparent about the naira’s value. It claims to have floated the currency back in June, but few believe its value is truly free of interference and the persistence of a black market suggests the opposite. If investors could be sure of the naira’s stability, they might start bringing in the dollars the country so sorely needs.
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Geologists have discovered a lost continent beneath Mauritius in the Indian Ocean Africa |
An ancient lost continent is lying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, underneath the island of Mauritius, according to a new study led by a geologist from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.
“Mauritia,” what researchers have dubbed the continental fragment, likely broke off of the supercontinent Gondwana as it splintered some 200 million years ago to form the continents of Africa, India, Australia, South America, and Antarctica. The team found zircons, minerals found mostly in the granite found in continents, that were as many as 3 billion years old on the island of Mauritius which is itself only 8 million years old.
“The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent,” said Lewis Ashwal, from Wits University and lead author of the report published in Nature Communications this week.
Researchers had previously found zircon crystals of a similar age on the beaches of Mauritius, but critics questioned whether the mineral could have been blown onto the island from elsewhere. Ashwal’s study looked at crystals recovered from trachyte rocks, igneous volcanic rock, where the zircons would have only emerged from volcanic eruption.
Kenya
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Laikipia ranch invasions spark friction between Kenya, UK @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
The UK High Commission sent an update to its citizens on Tuesday, detailing a festering bout of insecurity in the area. The commission said the attacks by pastoralists from neighbouring Turkana and Samburu communities, are believed to be partly inflamed by politicians with vested interests. British ranch owners on Thursday blamed Kenyan authorities’ lukewarm response to the skirmishes for the continued escalation that now has caused destruction of property worth millions of shillings.
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Drought stokes battle for pastures in Kenya's northern regions Reuters Kenyan Economy |
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.
"The drought has been a problem for years but people have been living peacefully. This (flare-up) is because of politics," said Francis Narunbe, a local chief of the Turkana tribe.
In Laikipia, north of Nairobi, herders from the Samburu and Pokot tribes tend to back the opposition, while smallholder farmers from the Turkana and Kikuyu ethnic groups usually support President Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee party, said Martin Evans, head of the Laikipia Farmers' Association.
"There's political incitement," he told Reuters.
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Sasini is set to sell its restaurant chain, Sasini Coffee House, for Sh70 million. @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
Sasini says it will sell its entire 60 per cent stake in the company that runs four restaurants on Nairobi’s Loita Street, Ralph Bunche Road, Muthangari Road and Mombasa Road.
“The group entered into a contract with Sheb Investments Limited to sell off its entire shareholding in Sasini Coffee House for a consideration of Sh70 million,” Sasini said in its latest annual report.
Disposal of Sasini Coffee House marks the latest divestiture by the firm whose principal activities are growing and processing of tea and coffee.
Sasini in 2015 sold its building on Nairobi’s Loita Street, Sasini House, for more than Sh600 million. It recently raised Sh1 billion from sale of its land in agricultural operations it says are unprofitable, recording large capital gains from the properties it bought decades ago.
These include land in its two coffee estates in Nyeri — Mweiga and Wahenya — that it said had been running losses for six consecutive years.
The agricultural firm recorded a 30.8 per cent net profit drop in the year ended September on a larger tax charge and relatively lower gains from asset sales than the year before.
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N.S.E Today |
The Nairobi All Share made it a 4 session winning streak and closed +0.615% at 124.19. The All Share has rebounded +2.416% since the 30th of January narrowing its year to date loss to -6.86% and the rebound can gather momentum. The Nairobi NSE20 Index which had slumped to a 2008 Low of 2,789.64 on 30th January, sprung +1.03% better to close at 2862.39 and is +2.63% above that multi year closing low from 30th January. Equity Turnover clocked 653.041m. The Equity Market here in Nairobi was in a disequilibrium in January and when markets emerge from disequilibrium, the move can be meaningful and dynamic. At these price levels, seriously bad outcomes are priced into the market and as previously stated these price levels will look very shapely 12 months down the track.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom firmed +0.539% to close at 18.65 and traded shares as high as 19.00 +2.42% during the session. Safaricom has rebounded +3.899% since 17th January when it closed at a 2017 Low. Safaricom is -2.61% in 2017 and will flip to positive for the year as early as next week. Safaricom traded 13.73m shares worth 256.619m.
WPP-Scangroup rallied +3.715% to close at 16.75 and traded 90,600 shares. Typically in an election year, election related spending is meaningful and surely WPP-Scangroup is in position to gain an outsize piece of that pie. WPP-ScanGroup is -7.73% through 2017.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
The Banks have been the softest component of the Nairobi Securities Exchange through January as Investors started to project the Interest Rate Regime through a FY 17 but are now badly overcooked to the downside. StanChart was the only Bank to serve up a positive return at the Nairobi Securities Exchange in 2016 and is similarly expected to outperform in 2017.
It was a Real pleasure interviewing the very "zen" Tejinder Singh MD @StanChartKE today https://twitter.com/alykhansatchu/status/827425471038119936
StanChart firmed +1.19% to close at 170.00 and traded 101,500 shares. StanChart is a big Buy at -9.574% in 2017
KCB is girding its loins for a bounce but closed unchanged today at 24.25 and traded good volume of 3.887m shares worth 95.020m. KCB is oversold at -15.65% in 2017. Barclays Bank rebounded +3.27% to close at 7.90 and traded 3.866m shares. Barclays has rebounded +11.26% this week from a seriously oversold position. Barclays Bank is -13.186% in 2017 and the rebound has further to run. Equity Group rebounded +2.04% to close at 25.00 and was trading at 25.50 +4.08% at the finish Line. Equity traded 3.387m shares worth 85.164m and -16.66% in 2017.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen surged +6.36% to close at 5.85 and on heavy volume action of 4.66m shares. KenGen has rallied +18.18% since closing at an all time low on 26th January. This price reaction is exactly what you would want to see after such an unwarranted and egregious sell-off.
EABL firmed +0.44% to close at 230.00 and traded 423,700 shares worth 97.449m. EABL has rebounded +6.976% since closing at a multi year Low on January 13th. The Release of the H1 Earnings end January gave the share a further fillip. EABL is -5.73% through 2017.
EABL H117 Earnings Release here and share price data -5.73% 2017 http://www.rich.co.ke/rcdata/company.php?i=MzQ%3D
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