| |
Thursday 05th of January 2017
|
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
Macro Thoughts
Home Thoughts
“I gaze forward without fear.” ― Alexander Pushkin |
| read more |
|
London Eye Africa |
“My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed
has become of my youth?” ― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
|
| read more |
|
The duration of the latest Syrian cease-fire may matter less than its genesis @bv Law & Politics |
Russia, Turkey and Iran brokered the agreement without U.S.
involvement -- a worrying sign of the waning regional influence of the
world's only superpower.
Strategically, the gains of the various parties at the table are even
greater. Russia will have more influence in the Middle East than at
any time since the Soviet era. Iran will have overland access to
Beirut, increasing its sway in Iraq and allowing it to ferry arms and
other supplies to the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. The Turks
will get stability on their southern border while ensuring that the
Syrian Kurds, whom they tie to a Kurdish terrorism movement in Turkey,
don't gain a foothold in an independent state. And Assad will gain a
few more years, if not more, in power.
Conclusions
Putin's move was decisive and conclusive, that is the Point.
|
| read more |
|
19-DEC-2016 :: The Meaning of Aleppo @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
Aleppo is the moment when the trend changed, and Russia and Iran are
now in the ascendancy; and those in their palaces in Riyadh, Doha and
Istanbul need to appreciate how fluid this moment is, and how exposed
they are now. Let me leave with you with the Poem Ozymandias By Bysshe
Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said —
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . .
Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive,
stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the
pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
And ask who will be Ozymandias?
|
| read more |
|
12-DEC-2016 a trend-change is at hand Africa |
Africa is a very non-linear place but recent elections from President
Buhari of Nigeria through president-elect Barrow in the Gambia through
president-elect Akufo-Addo of Ghana is surely signalling a
trend-change is at hand.
“ There will be more repression in the short term and it will look
worse. But I am positive about democracy in Africa in the long run ...
Social and economic change will drive democratisation over 30 years.
But there is a barrier of pain we will have to go through to get
there,” he said.
Make no mistake about the direction of travel and things could speed up.
Conclusions
Jammeh is on his way.
|
| read more |
|
The last days of Robert Mugabe New Statesman Africa |
With considerable trepidation, I took the lift to the sixth floor of
the ministry of justice in central Harare to interview the minister.
It wasn’t just that I lacked the accreditation foreign journalists
must obtain to work in Zimbabwe – the interview had been arranged
through unofficial back channels. The minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa,
also happens to be the vice-president, Robert Mugabe’s notoriously
brutal chief enforcer for the past 36 years, and the most feared man
in the country. “They don’t call him ‘The Crocodile’ for nothing,”
said a Zimbabwean businessman who knows him well. “He never says a
word but suddenly he bites. He’s very dangerous.”
But Mnangagwa, still powerfully built at 74, proved courteous enough
as we sat in deep leather armchairs in his bright and spacious office.
It was not in his interest to be hostile – not at this time. He is
determined to succeed Mugabe and he will need Western support to
rebuild his shattered country if he does, which is presumably why he
gave me an almost unprecedented interview.
Aged 92 and the world’s oldest head of state, Robert Mugabe is fading.
He falls asleep in meetings, suffers memory lapses and stumbles on
steps. He delivered the wrong speech at the opening of parliament in
September last year and had to deliver the right one to a specially
convened session the following day. As long ago as 2008 a WikiLeaks
cable from the US ambassador reported that he had terminal prostate
cancer, and he frequently flies to Singapore for unspecified medical
treatment – blood transfusions, perhaps, or steroid injections. A
diplomatic source talked of Mugabe’s “dramatic deterioration in the
last two years”, and said: “He could go at any point.”
His so-called Lacoste faction (the clothing company’s emblem is a
crocodile) has hit back hard, using Mnangagwa’s control of Zimbabwe’s
Anti-Corruption Commission to launch high-profile criminal
investigations against G40 leaders. For good measure, Mutsvangwa’s war
vets have turned on Mugabe himself. In July they issued a communiqué
condemning his “dictatorial tendencies . . . which have slowly
devoured the values of the liberation struggle”. In November they
sacked him as their patron.
But Zimbabwe is engulfed, and not only by a political crisis: while
its leaders fight, its economy is in meltdown.
“The regime can rig elections but they can’t rig the economy,” he
said, as we chatted in his cluttered office in central Harare.
The manifestations of economic collapse are already apparent. Driving
around central Harare, I saw outside every bank the long queues that
form before dawn each day because withdrawals are now limited to $50
or less per person per diem. The industrial estates of southern Harare
are full of shuttered and closed-down factories: John Robertson, an
economist based in Harare, reckons the industrial base has contracted
65 per cent since 2000. In a country where unemployment exceeds 80 per
cent, street vendors, beggars and – at night – teenage prostitutes
proliferate. The small number of adults who are employed mostly work
in a public sector bloated by “ghost jobs” reserved for Zanu-PF
supporters.
“This used to be the grain basket of southern Africa, and here we are
importing maize to prevent us starving,” Freeth said.
However, the government faces an increasingly grave problem of its
own. It is running out of money to pay the security forces on which it
depends for its survival, and the people’s anger is spreading to
rank-and-file soldiers and policemen.
In the privacy of my car, one soldier who was hitchhiking near the
town of Gutu, 225 kilometres south of Harare, complained bitterly
about being poorly fed and paid late, how his family was struggling to
survive, and how the army told him how to vote. It was time for Mugabe
to go, he said.
Tendai Biti told me how, during one protest last summer, he was chased
down by an unmarked vehicle whose occupants told him: “We’ve been sent
to arrest you, so please run away.” Biti said: “It’s only their bosses
that are eating. They’re not.”
Over lunch at his charming old home in rural Sussex a few years ago,
Denis Norman, a white farmer who served in three of Mugabe’s cabinets
between 1980 and 1997, told me of his last meeting with the president
after losing his farm and before he left for Britain in 2003.
“I asked: ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ He replied: ‘Has it gone
wrong?’ I said: ‘I know it’s gone wrong. You know it’s gone wrong.’ He
paused before replying, softly: ‘It’s not going right, is it?’”
He was “secretive, seemed not to need friends, mistrusted everyone.
Devious and clever, he was the archetypal cold fish,” said Lord
Carrington, the British foreign secretary who chaired those talks.
He sought Britain’s help to forge a new national army. He formed a
surprising friendship with Lord Soames, the last British governor of
Rhodesia, and rebuked his cabinet for celebrating when Margaret
Thatcher was deposed in November 1990. “Who organised our
independence?” he asked them. “Let me tell you – if it hadn’t been for
Mrs Thatcher none of you would be here today. I’m sorry she’s gone.”
In 2008 I visited her grave in Heroes Acre, a monument to Zimbabwe’s
independence fighters on Harare’s western fringe. Fresh flowers lay on
the black marble. My guide said Mugabe brought them every week, early
in the morning when no one was around.
Mugabe inherited a country that, for all its faults, was blessed with
fine infrastructure, functioning institutions, a benign climate and
fertile soil. Today it is a failed state in all but name: a nation of
hawkers, foragers and scavengers. A quarter of the population has
left; in other words, more Zimbabweans now work overseas than at home.
The average monthly household income is $62. Life expectancy is 55
years, one of the lowest in the world. Four million of Zim babwe’s 14
million people survive on food aid, and a quarter of its children are
stunted by malnutrition.
“The whole system is infested with leeches sucking the remaining
blood from the rotten corpse of Zimbabwe,” a white businessman told
me.
Variously named “DisGrace”, “Grasping Grace” or “Gucci Grace”, to
reflect her extravagant foreign shopping trips, the first lady knows
her power will evaporate once her husband dies, and she needs to
protect her three children and enormous wealth. The Mugabes own 14
farms and she is said to take a cut of almost every big deal in
Zimbabwe. “If you want anything business-wise here, you have to go and
kneel before Grace,” one political analyst said.
That said, nobody is ruling Grace out. Zimbabweans detest her, and she
has little standing within the party or the military because she did
not fight in the liberation war – but those who know her describe her
as “delusional”. As a prominent businessman who supports Mnangagwa
told me: “She believes in her heart that the people love her, because
in Zimbabwe we have ritual fawning.
But for now, at least, Mnangagwa is the front-runner. And that, on the
face of it, is bad news for Zimbabwe. “He is associated with all the
darkest periods of our history,” Biti told me. A prominent human
rights worker in Harare said: “He’s really, really bad. He’s toxic.
He’s killed a lot of people.”
Conclusions
|
| read more |
|
Special Operations Forces deployments in 33 African countries in 2016. Map: The Intercept Africa |
In 2006, just 1% of commandos sent overseas were deployed in the U.S.
Africa Command area of operations. In 2016, 17.26% of all U.S. Special
Operations forces — Navy SEALs and Green Berets among them — deployed
abroad were sent to Africa, according to data supplied to The
Intercept by U.S. Special Operations Command. That total ranks second
only to the Greater Middle East where the U.S. is waging war against
enemies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
“In Africa, we are not the kinetic solution,” Brigadier General Donald
Bolduc, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, told
African Defense, a U.S. trade publication, early this fall. “We are
not at war in Africa — but our African partners certainly are.”
As recently as 2014, there were reportedly only about 700 U.S.
commandos deployed in Africa on any given day. Today, according to
Bolduc, “there are approximately 1,700 [Special Operations forces] and
enablers deployed… at any given time. This team is active in 20
nations in support of seven major named operations.”
Using data provided by Special Operations Command and open source
information, The Intercept found that U.S. special operators were
actually deployed in at least 33 African nations, more than 60% of the
54 countries on the continent, in 2016.
|
| read more |
|
Seeking Tranquility Around the Red Sea Stratfor Africa |
The rationale behind the GCC's interest in northeast Africa is fairly
straightforward: Gulf states are compelled to improve their
relationships with northeastern African countries for security
purposes. Installing bases in and enhancing military ties with African
countries gives Gulf states an added layer of protection against
conventional military attacks. (In fact, the United Arab Emirates has
already begun to develop military installations in Eritrea.) The
conflict in Yemen also gives Gulf states a reason to more closely
monitor Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, which have little control over the
arms and people that pass through them destined for Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. Another concern is
that if Gulf States — which are, of course, Sunni — do not reach out
to these African countries, then Iran, their Shiite rival, will.
|
| read more |
|
Kenya's Worsening Drought Seen Hitting Coffee Production Kenyan Economy |
The late onset of Kenya’s second rainy season delayed coffee-bush
flowering and the subsequent drought will hurt the size and quality of
the nation’s Arabica crop, a government agency warned.
The nation that’s the world’s largest exporter of black tea has
already said it may miss a target to raise tea output by 25 percent to
500 million kilograms should the dry spell that begun earlier in 2016
persist.
“With the conditions as they are, we expect coffee production to
decline,” Harrison Mugo, a director at Coffee Research Institute, said
by phone from the capital, Nairobi.
While Kenya grows very little coffee compared to regional producers
such as Ethiopia and Uganda, its beans are prized globally and are
often used in blends. Its exports increased 15 percent in the crop
season through September 2016 to 44,000 metric tons.
Kenya’s mainly rain-fed agriculture makes up about a quarter of the
$69.2 billion economy. The sector contributed 3.9 percent growth to
gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2016 after tea and
coffee output fell, compared with 5.5 percent a year earlier,
according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
Rainfall between November and January has been poor, said James Oduor,
chief executive officer of the National Drought Management Authority.
|
| read more |
|
.@WorldBank unearths massive fraud at RVR @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
IN SUMMARY
World Bank audit found that RVR executives bribed public officials,
manipulated accounts and created convoluted ownership and operational
structures with the aim of defrauding lenders, including IFC.
The bank has written to RVR and those adversely named asking them to
show cause why sanctions should not be imposed against them.
|
| read more |
|
N.S.E Today |
The Chinese Off-shore Yuan gained 2% off-shore as the Chinese
Authorities squeezed the Overnight yuan deposit rate in Hong Kong as
high as 80%.
Increasingly the markets believe Chinese Authorities are set to
introduce capital restrictions.
The purest beneficiary of this Chinese situation has been the
crept-currency BITCOIN which was +126% in 2016 and is at a record high
in 2017.
Christine Lu @christinelu tweeted on December 30, 2016: ‘’If you’re
raising money from Chinese investors in 2017, and that money isn’t
already sitting outside of China, then have fun signing MoUs!’’
The Turkish Lira and the Mexican Peso have plumbed fresh all time lows.
The Kenya Shilling has not been able to fight this rising Dollar Tide
and touched a 15-month low of 103.60/80 against the dollar on Thursday
before trading at 103.50.
The Shilling has been an SSA outperformer and this is seen when you
look at the Shilling against a basket of currencies and not just the
Dollar.
Nevertheless going by Media Demand There is a lot of concern around
the Shilling.
Rainfall between November and January has been poor, said James Odour,
chief executive officer of the National Drought Management Authority
told Bloomberg and a number of commentators are worried about the
direction of food Prices.
The Nairobi All Share retreated -0.82 points to close at 131.45
The NSE20 sank 23.42 points to close at 3170.71
Equity Turnover saw Lift-Off with heavy volume action of 1.233b.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Agricultural |
Sasini Tea and Coffee firmed +2.01% to close at 20.25 and is +3.58%
since the start of the year.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom eased back -1.05% to close at 18.80 and traded 12.9m shares.
Buy on the Dips and this is one such a dip.
The Chairman of Kenya Airways met with the President this morning and
that meeting confirms that the Presidency has skin in this Kenya
Airways game, which is important. Kenya Airways eased -0.87% to close
at 5.70.
WPP-ScanGroup was marked limit-down -9.7% to close at 16.25 and traded
just 4,600 shares.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
KCB Group was the most actively traded banking share at the Exchange
and eased back -1.71% to close at 28.75 and traded 3.330m shares.
I remain of the view that the Flight to Quality continues to favour
the Big Banks at the expense of the less well capitalised ones.
Equity Group eased -0.833% to close at 29.75 and was trading at
session lows of 29.00 -3.33% at the Finish Line. Equity traded 2.574m
shares.
COOP Bank which ramped +3.46% higher the previous session ticked
5cents lower to close at 13.40 and traded 4.862m shares.
Diamond Trust Bank was high-ticked +5.08% to close at 124.00 on light
trading of 900 shares.
BRITAM EA retreated -5.17% to close at 11.00 and traded 455,400
shares. BRITAM is back to +11.00% for 2017 from +26% after the first
trading session of the year. IFC investment refers.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen which confirmed the extension of the MD's contract for another
year [and deservedly] yesterday responded with a seriously high octane
volume session. KenGen traded 93.691m shares worth 538.728m and closed
+0.877% at 5.75. KenGen trades on a P/E Ratio of 5.32 and is
egregiously under-priced.
.@KenGenKenya share price data and volume chart here
http://www.rich.co.ke/rcdata/company.php?i=Mzc%3D
KPLC firmed +1.82% to close at 8.35 and has gained +4.375% since the
C-Suite announcement. KPLC traded 149,400 shares.
EABL probed +0.43% firmer to close at 233.00 and traded 806,100 shares
worth 188.476m. EABL has been caught up in the market downdraft and is
steeply oversold at these levels.
--
|
|
|
|
|
