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Friday 02nd of November 2018
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Morning Africa |
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0930-1500 KENYA TIME
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Fallout from Jamal Khashoggi killing leaves Saudi royals in crisis @thetimes Law & Politics |
Behind the closed gilded doors of the royal palace, the House of Saud
is locked in crisis talks on how to rescue the monarchy and country
from the global opprobrium unleashed by the murder in Istanbul of
Jamal Khashoggi.
Hunkered down, abandoned by business partners and paralysed by
withering global condemnation, the royal family seems to be searching
for a face-saving way out of its worst political crisis since the 9/11
terrorist atrocities, perpetrated mostly by Saudi citizens.
Senior western diplomats see the unexpected return to Saudi Arabia of
Prince Ahmed, the only surviving full brother of King Salman, as a
sign that the royal family may now be attempting to clip the wings of
the headstrong de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
His reforms in Saudi Arabia have been breathtaking since he came to
power, but for one of the most famous and important people in the
world, we know very little about him
At the urging of dozens of senior princes, pushed aside and
intimidated by MBS, as the 33-year-old is known, the ailing king may
be forcing his son to step back from one-man rule and accept a more
traditional collective form of leadership.
Prince Ahmed, who briefly served as interior minister before being
sacked by MBS, has been living in London and has repeatedly postponed
his return home for fear that he would be placed under house arrest by
the crown prince, who has not hesitated to cut down rivals in the
extended royal family.
Prince Ahmed has expressed a clear wish for the end to MBS’s war in
Yemen, which is causing immense damage to Saudi Arabia’s image as
millions of Yemenis are on the brink of starvation.
He has denied that he intends any criticism of MBS, but as the only
other living member of the Sudairi seven, sons of the founder of Saudi
Arabia, Abdulaziz, from his favourite wife, Hussa bint Ahmed
al-Sudairi, he carries weight within the family.
The crown prince has antagonised a large number of the royal family
and diplomats say he has built up a powerful coalition of opposition.
His imprisonment last year of several of the richest princes in the
Ritz-Carlton hotel was an unprecedented move that humiliated them and
left those who had to pay large sums for their release, including the
wealthy Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, deeply resentful. Several who
refused to pay up are reported to have been arrested.
Others who stood in MBS’s way have also been arrested or threatened.
They include the former crown prince, Muhammad bin Nayef, one of King
Salman’s nephews who served as interior minister and first deputy
prime minister. He was removed from the succession in June last year
and has not been seen in public since.
Another prince with reason to feel resentful is the youngest son of
the late Abdulaziz ibn Saud, Muqrin, who was head of the intelligence
agency and was made deputy crown prince by the last king, Abdullah.
When King Salman came to power, he was raised to the rank of crown
prince, but was removed from that office after only four months in
April 2015. He is a shrewd and well-educated man but is hampered in
the eyes of some Saudis as his mother was a black concubine.
Prince Ahmed, the king’s brother, is not seen as a real challenger to
the crown prince and does not carry much weight within the family. The
fact that he felt it unsafe to return home until Tuesday suggests
considerable tension between MBS and the older members of the royal
family.
A man whose views could be crucial is Prince Turki al-Faisal, the
urbane former ambassador to the US, who for some 20 years headed the
Saudi intelligence service and who personally attempted to persuade
Osama bin Laden to return home.
He is in America and recently insisted in an interview with The
Washington Post that, far from lacking support, the more the crown
prince is criticised, the more popular he is in Saudi Arabia.
Prince Turki’s brother, Saud, served as foreign minister for 40 years
until his death in 2015. Prince Turki, well known in the West, will
have a keen appreciation of the disarray that the crown prince’s
impetuousness has caused and would be a strong voice urging moderation
— if he is free to speak. Khashoggi was his close adviser for many
years, which makes him naturally suspect to MBS.
The key question is whether King Salman still has sufficient authority
to overrule his son. He is reported to suffer from dementia and is not
always sufficiently fit to focus on issues.
The crown prince guards access to his father closely. Rumours, denied
by Saudi officials, circulated some months ago that the crown prince
even denied his mother access to the king for fear that she would
impede her son’s accumulation of power.
Western diplomats say it is unlikely that King Salman will remove his
son from power as this would be a severe loss of face. “MBS is still
very popular with many younger Saudis. So what the family might try to
do is to circumscribe his power, rather than remove it,” one senior
British diplomat with a lot of experience of Saudi Arabia said.
A complicating factor is the evident desire of Turkey, a Nato member
and bitter rival of Saudi Arabia for influence in the Muslim world, to
exploit the Khashoggi killing for its own advantage. Analysts say that
Turkey is probably ready to withhold key evidence on the killing — and
on any damaging links to MBS — if Saudi Arabia is ready to invest in
Turkey.
It is a risky game, however. As Chris Doyle, head of the Council for
the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, notes: “If MBS stays in
power, he will not forget President Erdogan’s attempt to damage him.
He will hold that grudge for a long time.”
However, the royal family’s options for dealing with the tarnished
crown prince — who might still retain the initiative — are severely
limited.
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a 32-year-old wannabe king Law & Politics |
The then 30-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohamed bin Salman
MBS, arrived on the scene and immediately launched an unwinnable war
in Yemen. President Assad, with his Russian, Iranian and Lebanese
allies, resisted the regime changers in Syria. IS, which was a Sunni
and Saudi blade, has been eviscerated. Iraq, which was once firmly in
the Saudi camp, is now aligned with Iran completely. Qatar is lost
(see the intercept article which refers to a plan headlined “Control
the yield curve, decide the future” a plan to construct the ‘’Big
Short’’ on Qatar - The crown prince of Abu Dhabi should have spoken to
me because I could have told them how to do it).
Saudi Arabia and its allies UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait are caught in an ever
tightening Shia pincer. The paranoia in the palaces in Saudi Arabia is
real and existential. And what is also clear is that Bibi Netanyahu,
MBS [the crown prince of Abu Dhabi], Jared Kushner and a Trump carte
blanche have all leveraged this existential paranoia to effect not a
state capture but a kingdom capture.
The existential paranoia in the head of 32-year-old wannabe King is
evidenced in this comment about Iran in May this year, “How can I
communicate with them while they prepare for the arrival of al-Mahdi
al-Montazar?”
Last week after being coached into the early hours by Ivanka Trump’s
husband, Jared Kushner, MBS launched his night of the long knives,
which, according to the veteran Journalist Robert Fisk, and I quote:
‘’When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3
November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen
surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his
mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime
minister silenced’’ Hours later, MBS’s newly minted Anti-Corruption
commission detained 11 House of Saud princes, four current ministers
and dozens of former princes/cabinet secretaries – all charged with
corruption. Bank accounts were frozen [We could witness a massive $1
trillion dollar disgorge right here], private jets grounded. The
high-profile Princely crew is jailed at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton and
the gates are now shut, the phone line is perpetually busy and you
can’t book a room until Feb. 1. Fisk concludes ‘’Put bluntly, he is
clawing down all his rivals.’’
In all the history books I have read, its probably wisest to operate
on one front not two and certainly not three.
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'Ghostbusting' Campaign Saves Tanzania $200 Million in Wages @BBGAfrica Africa |
Tanzanian President John Magufuli said he slashed his government’s
wage bill by two-thirds by removing so-called ghost workers from the
payroll since coming to power three years ago.
The state now spends 237 billion shillings ($103.5 million) on
salaries, a third of the 700 billion shillings it used to pay out in
2015, Magufuli told an economic forum at the University of Dar es
Salaam on Thursday.
“We have made savings after removing ghost workers,” he said. “These
changes have made us unpopular because that was the old Tanzania and
that’s why we decided to make changes.”
The government removed 19,708 “ghost” workers and fired another 14,404
people for holding forged qualification certificates, Finance Minister
Philip Mpango said in June.
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Tanzania's gay community threatened with mass arrest @FinancialTimes Africa |
Gay people in Tanzania face mass arrest from next week after a warning
by the governor of Dar es Salaam that authorities would hunt down
members of the LGBTI community and punish them.
This week, Paul Makonda, governor of the east African country’s
biggest city, asked Tanzanians to report gay people living in the
community. Giving out his personal phone number, he said: “Give me
their names,” adding that a specially convened team would start
rounding up gays and lesbians from Monday.
Mr Makonda told reporters that he expected international criticism of
the crackdown, according to the AFP news agency, adding: “I prefer to
anger those countries than to anger God.”
Fatma Karume, president of the Tanganyika Law Society, told the
Financial Times: “This is a very frightening time for the gay
community of Dar es Salaam and Tanzania in general.”
Lawyers said that homosexuality was not illegal in Tanzania but that
sodomy was under a law left over from the British colonial era. Under
the 1998 Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, which is based on the
British penal code, anyone who has “carnal knowledge of any person
against the order of nature” is punishable by 30 years in prison.
Ms Karume said of Mr Magufuli and Mr Makonda: “They are both Catholic
boys with a very odd sense of religion which they mix with cultural
beliefs”. Tanzanians, she said, were mostly unconcerned about what
went on in a person’s bedroom. “The majority of people in Tanzania
don’t want all this gay bashing,” she said.
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Mnangagwa says Australian firm finds oil, gas in Zimbabwe @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Thursday that
Australia’s Invictus Energy had found oil and gas deposits in the
northern Muzarabani area of the country.
Invictus Energy has agreed to enter a production sharing arrangement
with Zimbabwe once the project reaches commercial production,
Mnangagwa said.
“Government of Zimbabwe will work very closely with Invictus to ensure
that Invictus realises its plans to sink an exploration well by mid
2020,” Mnangagwa told reporters.
Mines Minister Winston Chitando said the well would be sunk at a cost
of $20 million.
Mobil Oil was the first company to undertake oil and gas studies in
Muzarabani in the early 1990s but abandoned the work. Invictus is
using the data first generated by Mobil.
Australian-listed Invictus is an independent oil and gas exploration
company whose only asset is in Zimbabwe, according to information on
its website.
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@SafaricomPLC reports H1 2019 EPS +20.2% Earnings Friday morning share price data previous FY Earnings here -> Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 0.05/-
Closing Price: 23.50
Market Capitalisation: $9.243b
EPS: 1.38
PE: 17.029
Safaricom HY results for the period ended 30th September 2018 vs. 30th
September 2017
HY Voice revenue 48.03b vs. 47.35b +1.4%
HY Mpesa Revenue 35.52b vs. 30.05b +18.2%
HY SMS Revenue 8.81b vs. 8.92b -1.2%
HY Mobile data revenue 19.45b vs. 17.55b +10.8%
HY Fixed service revenue 3.91b vs. 3.23b +21.0%
HY Other service revenue 2.49b vs. 2.63b -5.35
HY Service revenue 118.21b vs. 109.73b +7.7%
HY Handset revenue and other revenue 4.33b vs. 4.49b -3.5%
HY Total revenue 122.84b vs. 114.43b +7.4%
HY Other income 0.17b vs. 0.32b -47.8%
HY Direct costs [34.81b] vs. [36.07b] -3.5%
HY Contribution margin 87.90b vs. 78.47b +12.0%
HY Operating costs [25.82b] vs. [24.13b] +7.0%
HY EBITDA 62.12b vs. 54.27b +14.5%
HY Depreciation and amortization [17.56b] vs. [16.74b] +4.9%
HY EBIT 44.56b vs. 37.53b +18.7%
HY Net financing, FX and fair value losses 1.41b vs. 0.28b
HY Profit before taxation 45.96b vs. 37.82b +21.5%
HY Net income 31.50b vs. 26.20b +20.2%
EPS 0.79 vs. 0.65 +20.2%
HY Free cash flow 38.50b vs. 32.40b +18.8%
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@SafaricomPLC "We are still seeing positive growth in Voice" @bobcollymore Kenyan Economy |
Conclusions
These were muscular against a volatile Economic and Regulatory backdrop.
You cannot argue with an H1 EPS Expansion of +20.2%
These results witnessed a startling dash in Mobile Data - look closely
at Mobile Usage in MB per user 639.8 versus 382.4 - cut prices and
surged usage
I liked what I heard about the regional opportunity.
I also liked The MPESA story which is increasingly become a ''closed garden''
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