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Monday 24th of September 2018 |
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"if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here That's home That's us On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives" "The Pale Blue Dot" Africa |
“We succeeded in taking that picture, &, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here That’s home That’s us On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives'' “The Pale Blue Dot” Carl Sagan
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Gunmen kill 11 Revolutionary Guards in attack on Iran military parade -ISNA Law & Politics |
State television blamed “takfiri elements”, a reference to Sunni Muslim militants, for the attack. Ahvaz is in the center of Khuzestan province, where there have been sporadic protests by the Arab minority in mainly Shi’ite Iran. Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif blamed the bloodshed on “regional terror sponsors”, language that usually refers to Iran’s enemies Saudi Arabia and Israel, and “their U.S. masters”, and vowed that Tehran would respond decisively. A video on state television’s website showed confused soldiers at the scene of the attack. Standing in from of the stand, one asked: “Where did they come from?” Another responded: “From behind us.”
Conclusions
Pompeo and his team of MBS and MBZ are baring their fangs
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Brexit: @theresa_may's Chequers deal goes pop @thetimes Law & Politics |
It was the look on Donald Tusk’s face that told Theresa May she was in trouble. When the president of the European Council — the shop steward for the other 27 EU member states — greeted the prime minister shortly after lunch on Thursday “he looked ashen-faced”. Tusk had just sat through a leaders’ lunch at which the French president Emmanuel Macron had torn up Tusk’s plans for a special summit in mid-November to thrash out a final Brexit deal. Tusk ushered May onto a balcony for a private chat to break the news.
Tusk’s message sabotaged what May’s aides had believed was a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance that would see EU leaders welcoming her Chequers proposal as having advanced discussions — while not backing its substance — and keeping it alive before the Tory party conference next weekend.
Macron, irritated that Britain was refusing to devise a new version of the “backstop” to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic in time for October’s EU summit, demanded that May be put on the spot. “The UK must make choices,” he said. “We have to go faster.”
At first Downing Street aides saw Tusk as a fellow victim of Macron’s intervention. “Whatever happened in that room had been difficult for him too,” one British source said.
An hour later Tusk was the villain of the piece. At his press conference he pronounced that May’s Chequers proposal “will not work” in its desire to achieve access to the European market for goods and maintain frictionless borders.
Later he turned injury into insult, publishing an Instagram picture of May with some cakes and the slogan “sorry, no cherries”, a sly reference to the widespread EU belief that Britain is seeking to “cherry-pick” the benefits of EU membership while dodging the costs. Macron went further, calling Brexiteers “liars”.
A minister said: “We had expected something between warm and lukewarm and what we got was stone cold.”
May’s team were quickly in crisis mode and the prime minister held her own press conference shaking with rage and fear. Backstage, “frustrations were boiling over,” a source said. The meeting had turned into abject humiliation.
Eurosceptic MPs said Chequers was “dead as a dodo” and May would have no chance of getting the Commons to vote for her plan. Ministers called each other to discuss whether they should urge her to “pivot” to a looser free-trade deal with Brussels.
As her team — which included chief of staff Gavin Barwell — fled Salzburg, they quickly began working up plans for a speech to the nation on Friday.
Back in Downing Street, more radical thoughts were being considered. At least two of May’s senior political aides concluded that the only way to break the deadlock with Brussels, her party and parliament would be to call a general election. They began to war-game how the prime minister could position herself to win.
“It’s my personal view, but the thought of it has crossed a lot of minds,” one of them said.
Another aide spoke to a Tory strategist outside government and said: “What are you doing in November, because I think we are going to need an election.”
An election was not discussed on the conference calls with advisers and speechwriters as May raced home. When it emerged the next morning that she was to make a statement, ministers were quick to express their horror that she might already be taking the step.
Yet if May is to survive and force a deal through the Commons, radical measures might be required. The premise of those backing an election would be for May to switch to a more Eurosceptic-friendly vision of Brexit — a free-trade deal like that signed by Canada with the EU — and then a direct appeal to the public.
“The idea is that she pivots, strikes a looser deal with Brussels and if she can’t get that deal through the Commons, she calls an election and runs as a Eurosceptic,” one Tory said.
“You say to the public, ‘I told you last time that I needed your help to deliver Brexit, you didn’t believe me, but now it really is critical.’ If you get a decent majority, the Eurosceptics can outvote the remainers in the Commons.”
The fringe benefit for May is that a snap election would stop a coup to oust her.
The drawback of this approach is that when May last asked for support to bolster her Brexit negotiating hand, at the 2017 general election, the public removed her majority instead.
Last week’s events and the disaster that unfolded have strengthened the hand of those who want a change of approach, however.
The genesis of the disaster appears to have been a profound miscalculation about the willingness of the Europeans to help a prime minister in peril.
EU diplomats say May overplayed her hand, planting an article in the German newspaper Die Welt before the meeting arguing that she has compromised and now the EU must too, a message she repeated over dinner with her fellow leaders on Wednesday night.
EU diplomats accused her of reading out the article. The defence, that she did not read it out but simply made the same arguments from her notes, hardly absolves May of blame.
Andrew Bridgen, the back-bench dean of dissent, said: “The prime minister is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The tragedy is that she put herself in the hard place and rolled the rock over her own head.”
One ERG source said: “A cabinet minister was due to resign this weekend but now there’s no point. Yet again the prime minister has been able to shoot herself in the foot without our assistance. It’s political S&M. It’s like every disaster gives her a grisly shudder of pleasure.”
“The prime minister’s got 10 days to come up with a new plan and reset Brexit and her leadership, or men in grey suits will be dispatched to tell her to go,” one Brexiteer said. “It’s now shit or bust.”
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09-JUL-2018 :: Tariff wars, who blinks first? Law & Politics |
James Dean was an iconic American actor, who tapped into the universal yearning and angst of nearly every adolescent human being with a raw connection that has surely not been surpassed since. In one of his most consequential films, Rebel without a Cause, two players (read, teenage boys) decide to settle a dispute (read, teenage girl) by way of near-death experiences. Each speeds an automobile towards a cliff. A simple rule governs the challenge: the first to jump out of his automo- bile is the chicken and, by universally accepted social convention, concedes the object in dispute. The second to jump is victorious, and, depending on context, becomes gang leader, prom king, etc.
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China's Sea Control Is a Done Deal, 'Short of War With the U.S.' @nytimes Law & Politics |
NEAR MISCHIEF REEF, South China Sea — As the United States Navy reconnaissance plane banked low near Mischief Reef in the South China Sea early this month, a Chinese warning crackled on the radio. “U.S. military aircraft,” came the challenge, delivered in English in a harsh staccato. “You have violated our China sovereignty and infringed on our security and our rights. You need to leave immediately and keep far out.” Aboard the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, flying in what is widely considered to be international airspace, Lt. Dyanna Coughlin scanned a live camera feed showing the dramatic evolution of Mischief Reef. Five years ago, this was mostly an arc of underwater atoll populated by tropical fish and turtles. Now Mischief Reef, which is off the Philippine coast but controlled by China, has been filled out and turned into a Chinese military base, complete with radar domes, shelters for surface-to-air missiles and a runway long enough for fighter jets. Six other nearby shoals have been similarly transformed by Chinese dredging. “I mean, this is insane,” Lieutenant Coughlin said. “Look at all that crazy construction.” A rare visit on board a United States Navy surveillance flight over the South China Sea pointed out how profoundly China has reshaped the security landscape across the region. “In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” Admiral Davidson said, an assessment that caused some consternation in the Pentagon. In a June meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Xi vowed that China “cannot lose even one inch of the territory” in the South China Sea, even though an international tribunal has dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the waterway. The reality is that governments with overlapping territorial claims — representing Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei — lack the firepower to challenge China. The United States has long fashioned itself as a keeper of peace in the Western Pacific. But it’s a risky proposition to provoke conflict over a scattering of rocks in the South China Sea, analysts say. On the scratchy radio channel, the Chinese challenges kept on coming. Eight separate times during the mission this month, Chinese dispatchers queried the P-8A Poseidon. Twice, the Chinese accused the American military aircraft not just of veering close to what Beijing considered its airspace but also of violating its sovereignty. “Leave immediately!” the Chinese warned over and over. “China’s militarization of the South China Sea has been a gradual process, with several phases where alternative actions by the U.S., as well as other countries, could have changed the course of history,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. Chief among these moments, Mr. Vuving said, was China’s takeover of Scarborough Shoal. The United States declined to back up the Philippines, a defense treaty ally, by sending Coast Guard vessels or warships to an area that international law has designated as within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. “Seeing U.S. commitment to its ally, Beijing might not have been as confident as it was with its island-building program,” Mr. Vuving said. “The U.S. failure to support its ally in the Scarborough standoff also demonstrated to people like Duterte that he had no other option than to kowtow to China.”
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28-AUG-2017 :: China Rising Law & Politics |
Apart from a few half-hearted and timid FONOPs [freedom of navigation operations], China has established control over the South China Sea. It has created artificial Islands and then militarised those artificial islands across the South China Sea. It is a mind-boggling geopolitical advance any which way you care to cut it.
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How to Russia-proof an election Law & Politics |
A nondescript office in Riga’s communist-era Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science may be Latvia’s last line of defense against threats to next month’s general election.
There, the nation’s 29-strong CERT cyber-security group is bracing for its biggest test to date: repelling attempts by Russia to sway the voting process. Having studied meddling in the U.S. and fellow European Union members like Germany, the team is schooling state employees on suspicious emails and website links that could be phishing attempts, all the while receiving “threat feeds” from NATO and allied countries.
“The awareness that something could happen is clearly much higher” than during the last election, Varis Teivans, CERT’s deputy head, said in an interview in a secure room containing some basic furniture but no computers. “It’s clear our big neighbor, Russia, has carried out offensive cyber operations against the Baltic states.”
Estonia suffered what’s widely believed to be the first large-scale Russian cyber assault in 2007 amid a row over relocating a Soviet-era monument in its capital, Tallinn. A massive denial-of-service attack ensued, crippling government, banking and media websites.
The interference didn’t stop there. Estonian prosecutors recently unearthed a scheme in which Russia secretly bankrolled three supposedly independent news websites, dictating stories containing Kremlin talking points, Buzzfeed News reported in August. One was allegedly instructed to play up tensions in the U.S. or the EU, as well as the Ukraine conflict.
“Our adversary is reactive and opportunistic,” Liisa Past, a former chief research officer at Estonia’s Information Security Authority, said by phone. “Its goal isn’t so much tampering with the result of elections as de-legitimizing the process, raising questions and doubts, much like we saw with the U.S. presidential elections.”
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US to set up $60bn agency to counter China in developing world @FT Africa |
The US is preparing to create an agency that can invest up to $60bn in the developing world in an effort to counter what some in Washington describe as China’s use of debt to wage “economic warfare”. In what observers say is the biggest shake-up of US commercial lending to developing countries in 50 years, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation will be folded into the new agency and allowed to invest in equity. At present Opic can invest only in debt, putting it at a disadvantage to European development finance institutions (DFIs). Ray Washburne, president and chief executive of Opic, told the FT that China – by using what he called “loan-to-own programmes” – was “creating countries that have the shackles of debt around them”. That amounted to “economic warfare”, he said. By more than doubling Opic’s lending ceiling to $60bn and allowing it to invest in equity, he said, it would be put on “an equal footing with other DFIs”. Riva Levinson, president of KRL, a Washington-based emerging markets consultancy, said she hoped legislation could be passed by the Senate before midterm elections in November. “This is the first real attempt to recognise that the US needs to support its companies in the commercial battlefield in the developing world,” she said. “Because China is taking it all.” The Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development act (Build Act), which passed the House in August, has bipartisan support, including from close allies of President Donald Trump such as Wilbur Ross, secretary of commerce. Opic will be folded into the new agency, called the International Development Finance Corporation. The arrangement has been sold to the president, as spearheading private-sector investment and countering China’s so-called debt diplomacy, while making a profit for the US taxpayer, according to those involved in talks. “Opic started out being viewed as corporate welfare and within a year the office of management and budget was giving it an extra $30bn,” said Ms Levinson. “It’s a blueprint of how to get things done in Trump’s Washington.” In August, 16 senators wrote to Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury secretary, complaining that the International Monetary Fund was bailing out countries that had got into trouble because of what they called “predatory Chinese infrastructure financing”. The letter expressed concern that Chinese lending to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa could enable Beijing to take control of the country’s container port. Last year, Beijing opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Red Sea. “The Chinese are all state-owned enterprises and it’s part of their foreign policy to go in and control things for the benefit of the Chinese state,” said Mr Washburne. Some recipient countries have also begun to question Chinese lending practices. In June, Malaysia suspended $22bn of China-backed projects while it reviewed financing terms. In Africa, some citizens’ groups have said Chinese deals favour corrupt officials more than the state. “The Chinese have an edge with the African political elites, but not so much with the people,” said Kwasi Prempeh, executive director of the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana. “African elites are doing business with them because there’s not a lot of transparency. But at the popular level, the Chinese cannot muster the soft power of the west.”
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Africa's high birth rate is keeping the continent poor @TheEconomist Africa |
JOHN MAGUFULI, the president of Tanzania, has strong views about birth control. He does not see the point. In 2016 he announced that state schools would be free, and, as a result, women could throw away their contraceptives. On September 9th this year he told a rally that birth control was a sign of parental laziness. Tanzania must not follow Europe, he went on, where one “side effect” of widespread contraception is a shrinking labour force.
There seems little danger of that. Tanzania’s fertility rate is estimated to be 4.9, implying that the average woman will have that many children. Europe’s rate is 1.6. Tanzania is helping drive a continental baby boom. In 1950 sub-Saharan Africa had just 180m people—a third of Europe’s population. By 2050 it will have 2.2bn—three times as many as Europe. If UN forecasts are right, sub-Saharan Africa will have 4bn people in 2100 (see chart 1).
That is worrying, although not for the old reasons. In “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, published in 1798, Thomas Malthus claimed that the human population was bound to increase faster than the supply of food, leading to catastrophe. Although Malthus is still admired by some, the green revolution rubbished his hypothesis. The fear now is not that countries will run out of food but that a surfeit of babies will retard their development.
Mr Magufuli is right to suggest that Europe has many old people and could do with more workers to support them. But Tanzania’s many children weigh on its economy, too. Sub-Saharan Africa’s dependency ratio (the population younger than 20 and older than 64 versus the population between those ages) is 129:100, compared with 65:100 in Europe. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to have a worse dependency ratio than Europe even in 2050.
High fertility can also be seen as a global problem, says Bill Gates, whose foundation (jointly run with his wife, Melinda) will hold a conference next week about the state of the world. Overall, humanity is becoming wealthier. But because birth rates are so high in the poorest parts of the world’s poorest countries, poverty and sickness are that much harder to eradicate. “Kids are being born exactly in the places” where it is hardest to get schooling, health and other services to them, he explains.
There is nothing inherently African about large families. Botswana’s fertility rate is 2.6, down from 6.6 in 1960. South Africa’s rate is 2.4. And although the UN has a good record of predicting global population growth, it has got fertility projections badly wrong in individual countries. Sudden baby busts in countries like Brazil, Iran and Thailand caught almost everyone out. Could Africa also spring a surprise?
The UN’s demographers project that fertility will fall in every single mainland African country over the next few decades. They just expect a much slower pace of change than Asia or Latin America managed when their families were the same size. It took Asia 20 years, from 1972 to 1992, to go from a fertility rate above five to below three. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to complete the same journey in 41 years, ending in 2054. Its fertility rate is not expected to fall below two this century. Because many Africans marry young (see next article) the generations turn over quickly, leading to fast growth.
The reason the UN expects change to be slow in future is that it has been slow until now. After stagnating economically in the 1990s, countries like Nigeria and Tanzania grew wealthier in the 2000s. But their fertility rates hardly fell (see chart 2). Nor has urbanisation transformed family life as much as you might expect. West Africa is much more urban than east Africa, but has a higher fertility rate.
Three things could drastically change the picture, however. First, more African governments could promote family planning. Ethiopia, Malawi and Rwanda have done so, and their birth rates are dropping faster than average. Perhaps the starkest change is in Kenya. Alex Ezeh of the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank in Washington, remembers showing Kenyan politicians evidence that wealthy people both desired and had small families, whereas the poor wanted large families and ended up with even larger ones. The government invested in clinics and propaganda, to some effect. Household surveys show that 53% of married Kenyan women used effective contraception in 2014, up from 32% in 2003. Kenya’s neighbour, Tanzania, is at least a decade behind.
The second cause for optimism is education. Broadly, the more girls go to school in a country, the lower that country’s birth rate. This seems to be more than just a correlation: several studies, in Africa and elsewhere, have found that schooling actually depresses fertility. To attend school—even a lousy school where you barely learn to read—is to gain a little independence and learn about opportunities that your parents had not envisaged for you.
Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria suggest that Africa’s schools are about to drive a large change. They point out that education spending weakened in some African countries in the 1980s as governments scrambled to cut budget deficits. Girls’ schooling, which had been increasing, flattened. It is probably not a coincidence that African fertility rates fell little in the 2000s, when that thinly educated cohort reached womanhood. But school enrolments have risen since then. If education really makes for smaller families, that will soon be apparent.
The third profound change would be stability in the Sahel. The semi-arid belt that stretches through Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria and Sudan is lawless in parts and universally poor. Child death rates are still shockingly high in places. Partly as a result, and also because women’s power in the Sahel is undermined by widespread polygamy, people still desire many children. The most recent household survey of Niger, in 2012, found that the average woman thought nine the ideal number.
Progress on all three counts depends mostly on African politicians. It falls to them to create more and better schools, provide security for their people and invest in family planning. They, not foreign observers, need to conclude that their countries would be wealthier if they had rather fewer children. Like so much in Africa, almost everything depends on the quality of government. And that, sadly, is hard to decree.
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Maldives holds presidential election as China and India vie for influence @dwnews Africa |
The Maldives' presidential election has been dubbed a "referendum on freedom." As China gains more political influence across the archepelago, India wants an electoral setback for "pro-Beijing" President Yameen. The Maldives will hold its third multiparty presidential election on September 23 amid grave concerns over rights abuses in the country. President Yameen Abdul Gayoom (Abdulla Yameen) has consolidated his power since winning the 2013 presidential election by a narrow margin of 6,000 votes. President Yameen has jailed two former presidents, including his half-brother, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, his former vice president, two Supreme Court judges, two former defense ministers and scores of other government critics. Rights groups criticize the trial of former president Mohamed Nasheed, who in 2015 was sentenced to 13 years in prison. The vice president, Ahmed Adeeb, was arrested in 2015 after what the government called a failed assassination attempt on Yameen. Adeeb is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence on terrorism and corruption charges. In February of this year, the Maldives government ordered law enforcement agencies to disregard any move by the country's Supreme Court to arrest or impeach President Yameen for not obeying its ruling to release jailed opposition leaders. Aiman Rasheed, a spokesman for Transparency Maldives, said that Sunday's vote is "a referendum on authoritarianism versus freedom." Opposition parties – many of them Yameen's former political partners – formed an alliance in exile with the aim of ousting the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) from power. Despite differences, opposition forces managed to field a single candidate – Ibrahim Mohamed Solih – to challenge Yameen in the Sunday vote. Despite indications that Solih, who has the backing of exiled former president Nasheed, could defeat Yameen, the outcome of the election is still hard to predict. But the economic growth during Yameen's tenure is partly due to aid and investment from China, which, under Yameen, has managed to oust India as the Maldives' main backer. Beijing considers the Maldives an important route in its "Belt and Road" initiative that, apart from its other projects, also aims to connect the Indian Ocean to Central Asia. "We believe that the Chinese government has an interest in maintaining the authoritarian rule of President Yameen," he said Friday at a news conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he's living in exile. "Beijing is encouraging dictatorship in the Maldives and secretly promoting unsolicited contracts. These contracts are not transparent at all; there is no bidding process, no tenders. There is no democratic oversight," he said. Nasheed, who cannot participate in the September 23 polls due to his conviction, believes India needs to step up its role to counter Chinese influence on the Maldives. "India is responsible for providing security in the Indian Ocean and also to the Maldives. We are in a very precarious situation at the moment. What is happening is that China is giving out high-interest loans to our country. By 2020, we have to pay off almost 40 percent of the government revenue to pay back the debt. If we are unable to do so, China would ask for equity and in the process we will have to give up our country's sovereignty. So we are falling into a death trap," Nasheed told DW, adding that India, being the historical provider of safety and security to the Maldives, has a reason to be concerned about the situation. Until Yameen came to power, the Maldives had remained in the Indian sphere of influence ever since both countries gained independence from British rule in 1947. The recent inauguration of the China-funded Sinamale Friendship Bridge has become the latest cause of friction between Beijing and New Delhi. The $200 million (€170 million) bridge will link capital Male to an airport-island. Yameen said the bridge marks the "dawn of a new era for the Maldives." Despite China's increasing clout, India still enjoys a considerable influence on the Maldives. Unlike India, China does not have a military presence in the Maldives. Indians are the second-largest expatriate community in the Maldives. Also, India has a geographical proximity with the Maldives, which is located just 400 kilometers southwest of India's Malabar coast. "The Sunday election is crucial for both Yameen and India," Harsh Pant, head of the strategies studies program at the Observer Research Foundation, told DW, adding that the India-Maldives ties have taken a hit because of Yameen's policies. "At the moment, the space for India in the Maldives is limited. But New Delhi can still emphasize the fact that that the Indian Ocean is an area where India plays a much bigger operational and logistical role than China. So, there are certain red lines that President Yameen must not cross," said Pant. Dhruva Jaishankar, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institute India, believes the election is likely to "raise more questions about Yameen's legitimacy" as Maldives ruler. "President Yameen is overseeing an authoritarian government. For many years, he has financial support from China and Saudi Arabia, and has also tied up with organized criminal groups," Jaishankar told DW, adding that India's carrot and stick policy with Yameen has not yielded the desired results.
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From kerosene to toothpaste governments are imposing taxes, measures that are hurting the poor further. @The_EastAfrican Africa |
From kerosene to toothpaste, toilet paper, toothbrushes, sweets, chocolates, books, mattresses and even Internet access, governments are imposing taxes, measures that are hurting the poor further.
In June, as finance ministers presented their annual budgets, East Africa’s three top three economies announced plans to borrow more than $12 billion to finance their budget deficits, even as their public debts rose amid concerns over sustainability.
Kenya had the highest borrowing plans of $5.58 billion, followed by Tanzania at $4.6 billion and Uganda at $2.4 billion, with a huge chunk of this being sourced from external financiers. However, this seems to have slowed down, as the reality that they needed to cut down their spending sank in.
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Zimbabwean Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube would like to employ a "big bang" economic reform program to the battered economy @ReutersAfrica Africa |
“My preference is a fiscal shock, but there is a what you call the political collar or the politics of policy making which then slows you down. My preference would be more of a big bang approach because every day counts in terms of cost,” Ncube, a former banker, said in a briefing with journalists on the sidelines of an investor conference in New York on Friday.
The new government’s focus on getting the economy back on track requires paying off the roughly $2 billion in arrears to international financial institutions such as the World Bank, African Development Bank (ADB), European Investment Bank (EIB) and the $4 billion it owes the Paris Club of sovereign nations.
John Mangudya, who is both governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and chairman of the government’s arrears clearance committee, said the strategy is to clear the debts to the World Bank and ADB first before approaching the Paris Club.
“We are looking at many options,” Mangudya said. He expects to announce the plan within six months, noting the need for debt sustainability.
“One year from now, our wish and our hope and prayer is that we would have cleared our arrears,” he said.
Going to the International Monetary Fund cannot happen until the arrears are cleared, however. In the meantime, Mangudya would like to engage in a six-month IMF staff monitoring program through June 2019 as part of the nation’s re-engagement with the global economy.
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Congo confirms Ebola case at Ugandan border Africa |
The new infection is almost 200 km (125 miles) away from the nearest other known case in Congo’s current Ebola outbreak, which is believed to have killed 97 people since July and infected another 46 in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. Ituri province’s Vice Governor Keta Upar said in a statement that the latest Ebola case had been reported in Tchomia on the shores of Lake Albert. It is the closest the disease has come to Uganda, Congo’s eastern neighbor.
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Bears roam the @NSE_PLC and the number of Zombies grows. @TheStarKenya Africa |
"THE markets are never wrong," President Kagame said in an interview in Washington in 2014 at the USAfricaSummit and this statement is in fact a timeless one. There have been occasions too many to mention where Folks will rail against the market and the Point is this, always take the side of the market against the Demagogue. Always.
The term "bear market" is named for the manner in which a bear tends to attack. A bear will usually swipe its paws in a downward motion upon its prey, and for this reason, markets laden with falling stock prices are called bear markets.
A bear market is a condition in which securities prices fall and widespread pessimism causes the stock market's downward spiral to be self-sustaining. Although figures vary, a downturn of 20 percent or more from a peak is the widely accepted definition of a bear market.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange has 3 Indices, The Nairobi All Share [market Capitalisation Index], the NSE 20 and the NSE 25 [which are equal weighting indices where each of the 20 or 25 stocks that comprise the Index carry an equal weight]. The NSE 20 is -23.697% in 2018, its at a 19 month low and entered a bear market at the end of August. The Nairobi All Share is -15.02% in 2018, at a 16 month low and entered a bear market on September 19th. Last week a whole series of share prices hit all time lows. This List which is not exhaustive includes the venerable Nation Media Group [-34.913% in 2018 on a Total Return Basis], Kenya Power [-48.9%] Deacons [-84.5% in 2018], Uchumi [-76.08%], Mumias Sugar [-50.00%]. The Question you need to ask yourself is which of these are ''zombies''
Economists have worried about “zombie companies” for decades. Timothy Taylor, editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, has followed a trail of references back to 1989, noting sightings of these zombies in Japan from the 1990s, and more recently in China. The fundamental concern is that there are companies which should be dead, yet continue to lumber on, ruining things for everyone [FT]
The Big Cap stocks have also rolled over. Safaricom entered a bear market Friday having fallen 20% over the last 4 weeks. The Banks are getting slammed too. KCB has slumped into a bear market and is down 20% over the last four weeks.
The stock Market is largely seen as a Leading Indicator.
If this were the price performance in New York [which by the way closed at all time highs last week], there would be a Revolution and immediate remedial action.
One of my first Bosses was the aptly named Mark Dearlove who said to me, ''You only get smelly fingers picking bottoms, Aly-Khan''
The market has further to fall.
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Summit Mt Kenya @CNNTravel @CNN Africa |
Rising to just over 17,000 feet (3,800 meters), Mt Kenya is the continent's second highest peak. But the summit trails are far less crowded than its snowy counterpart (Kilimanjaro) across the border in Tanzania.
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N.S.E Today |
Team Pompeo and his Lieutenants MBS and MBZ evidently bared their Fangs in Iran where 11 Revolutionary Guards were killed in an attack on an Iranian military parade. This coupled with some coercive Iranian sanction warfare sent Crude Oil spinning higher and to a 2014 high. This Surge higher will prove problematic for a number of Pure-Play Oil importers. Vladimir Putin needs to shut out Netanyahu over Syrian Air-Space or shut up and today we learnt via Russian Minsiter of Defense Shoigu that "[Syria] will be supplied with S-300 air defense missile system within two weeks" and that "Russia will jam sat navigation, on-board radars and comms systems of combat aircraft which attack target Syria." The Escalator in Chief continues to ratchet his Trade and Tariff War higher. The US announced it is to to set up a $60bn agency to counter China in developing world @FT Ray Washburne, president and chief executive of Opic, told the FT that China – by using what he called “loan-to-own programmes” – was “creating countries that have the shackles of debt around them”. That amounted to “economic warfare”, he said. By more than doubling Opic’s lending ceiling to $60bn and allowing it to invest in equity, he said, it would be put on “an equal footing with other DFIs”. Provisional liquidators have granted exclusivity to @ActisLLP for @abraajgroup Africa funds, citing emerging market investor’s “level of on the ground diligence undertaken, flexibility in their approach and immediate working capital support,” email Kenya’s credit rating has been kept on hold by S&P with a stable outlook. last week, @NSE_PLC equities market was on a downward trend with the NASI, NSE 20 and NSE 25 declining by 8.0%, 5.4% and 8.4%, respectively @CytonnInvest The NSE 20 is -23.697% in 2018, its at a 19 month low and entered a bear market at the end of August. The Nairobi All Share is -15.02% in 2018, at a 16 month low and entered a bear market on September 19th. Last week a whole series of share prices hit all time lows. The Equity Market steadied after last weeks precipitous spiral lower. The Nairobi All Share which was -15.02% in 2018 and at a 16 month low rebounded +3.86 points to close at 149.35. The Nairobi NSE20 which was -23.697% in 2018 and at a 19 month low rebounded +40.23 points.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom which had retreated -20.00% over the last 4 weeks and therefore into a bear market, rebounded +4.17% to close at 25.00 and on heavy volume action of 23.473m shares worth 584.367m. Safaricom has been in a multi-year bull run and has severally bounced after a 20% correction. The Bulls will appreciate todays violent rebound as confirming that bull Trend remains in tact. Medium Term Investors should be loading the boat right around here.
Nation Media rebounded +2.94% off a record low to close at 70.00 and traded 3,600 shares.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Equity Group rebounded +3.87% to close at 40.25 and traded 8.396m shares worth 339.192m. Equity is +6.28% in 2018 on a Total Return Basis and outperforming the Indices. KCB Group rebounded +4.61% to close at 39.75 and traded 3.285m shares worth 131.085m. KCB Group is at scratch in 2018 on a Total Return basis. KCB was recognised by Cytonn as the most attractive bank, according to their H1'2018 Banking Report supported by a strong franchise value & intrinsic value score.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen firmed +0.77% to close at 6.55 and traded 172,900 shares. KenGen has been exhibiting price resilience as the market tanked. KPLC closed unchanged at 4.65 an all time low [-48.9% in 2018] and traded 3.219m shares. You would hope that at some time in the not too distant future KPLC will speak to the share price and how they are seeking to address its precipitous fall which surely imperils a number of loan agreements.
KenolKobil surged +6.734% to close at 15.85 and traded 134,300 shares.
EABL improved +0.56% off a 2018 closing low to close at 181.00 and traded 226,000 shares.
Mumias Sugar closed unchanged at a record low of 0.55 and -50.00% in 2018.
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