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Wednesday 03rd of April 2019
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Morning Africa |
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Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, CEO ocryptocurrency firm @bcbgroup said move was likely triggered by an algorithmic order worth about $100 million spread across major exchanges - @coinbase and @Kraken, and @Bitstamp Africa |
The original and biggest cryptocurrency soared as much as 20 percent
in Asian trading, surpassing $5,000 for the first time since
mid-November. By late morning, it had settled at around $4,700, still
up 15 percent in its biggest one-day gain since April last year.
Bitcoin surged to near $20,000 in late 2017, the peak of a bubble
driven by retail investors that pushed cryptocurrencies onto the
agenda of mainstream financial firms. But wide interest waned as
prices collapsed, and now trading is mostly powered by smaller hedge
funds, tech firms and wealthy individuals.
Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, chief executive of London-based
cryptocurrency firm BCB Group, said the move was likely triggered by
an algorithmic order worth about $100 million spread across major
exchanges - U.S.-based Coinbase and Kraken, and Luxembourg-based
Bitstamp.
“There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed
across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC,” he said.
“If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges – there
were in-concert, synchronized, units of volume of around 7,000 BTC in
an hour”.
Outsized price moves of the kind rarely seen in traditional markets
are common in cryptocurrency markets, where liquidity is thin and
prices highly opaque.
So orders of large magnitude tend to spark buying by algorithmic
traders, said Charlie Hayter, founder of industry website
CryptoCompare.
As bitcoin surged, there were 6 million trades over an hour, Hayter
said - three to four times the usual amount, with orders concentrated
on Asian-based exchanges.
“You trigger other order books to play catch up, and that creates a
buying frenzy.”
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Mexico Hass Avocado Prices Jump 34%, Most in a Decade @markets Africa |
Prices probably spiked as importers boosted purchases ahead of any
potential border issues, Fumasi said. Additionally, a heatwave last
year in California delayed the harvest, making the U.S. even more
reliant on Mexican supplies. “Because California is late and it’s a
small crop, Mexico is accounting for nearly all of our avocados,” he
said.
Mexican avocados make up 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. consumption,
and California for about 16 percent, according to data from the Haas
Avocado Board. Chile and Peru supply most of the rest
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08-JAN-2018 :: The Crypto Avocado Millenial Economy. Africa |
The ‘’Zeitgeist’’ of a time is its defining spirit or its mood.
Capturing the ‘’zeitgeist’’ of the Now is not an easy thing because we
are living in a dizzyingly fluid moment.
Paul Virilio has said ‘Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed
the hidden side of wealth’ and he is not wrong.
Gladwell stated: “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread
like viruses do”.
In late April 2017, Avocado prices doubled and reached the highest in
data going back 19 years. The jump in demand in recent years has been
dramatic. American per-capita consumption was 6.9 pounds in 2015,
versus 3.5 pounds in 2006.
My point is millenials discovered the virtues of avocado, the
behaviour spread like a ‘virus’ and boom, prices sky-rocketed. Prices
have retraced since those 2017 highs. The avocado price surge is an
example of the new 21st century millennial economy but there are many
other examples.
“I have ordered the emission of 100 million petros with the legal
sustenance of Venezuela’s certified and legalized oil wealth,” said
Maduro in a state television address.“Every petro will be equal in
value to Venezuela’s oil barrel.”
If you are playing this game, constantly sift the signal from the
noise, be prepared to pivot on a dime and be studying the behaviour of
the ‘’millenial’’ crowd.
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People are taking a huge toll on the plains of the Serengeti-Mara @TC_Africa Africa |
The 40,000 sq km Serengeti-Mara plain that straddles the border of
Kenya and Tanzania is famous for its abundant and diverse wildlife. It
is also home to one of the wonders of the world: the Serengeti-Mara
wildebeest migration. Each year about two million wildebeest, zebra
and gazelles migrate from Tanzania to Kenya’s Maasai Mara in search of
food and water.
The Serengeti-Mara is made up of pastoral community lands and 12 major
protected areas, including the world famous Maasai Mara national
reserve and the Serengeti national park. These make up, what we call,
the “core protected area”.
But despite its vast protected areas, the Serengeti-Mara is being threatened.
In our new research we show how activities by people – like farming,
erecting fences and settlements – are proliferating around the borders
of the core protected areas. This is putting huge pressure on the
area’s environment, natural resources and wildlife.
This is the first time that a large team of scientists, from seven
countries, pooled together various lines of evidence – like ground
vegetation monitoring, aerial surveys of animals and GPS tracked
animals – to show the impact of human activity on the Serengeti-Mara.
The data covers a period of 40 years.
We found that the activities of people have caused extreme changes to
the habitat. It has significantly reduced the amount of grass and,
because of farms, settlements and fences, the landscape has become
fragmented – this means animals can’t move freely to find resources or
mate. Key ecological functions have also changed. There are less
man-made or wild fires which means that trees and shrubs are able to
take root, soils are damaged – and so the land produces less plants –
and the area becomes more sensitive to climate change.
We used 62 aerial surveys, from 1977 to 2016, to examine changes to
wildlife, livestock and settlements around the area. For human
population figures, we used data collected by the Kenyan and Tanzanian
governments.
We found that, within a 60km radius of the core protected area
boundary, there were 26% more people. An increase from 4.6 million to
5.8 million in 13 years. The population growth rate was even higher
within a 15km radius.
With more people come more livestock, settlements and fences.
The number of fenced plots has increased by more than 20% since 2010
outside of the core protected area, in the Mara Region of Kenya.
We found a high density of bomas (settlements), and the number was
rising in parts of the Mara by up to three new bomas per square
kilometre per year.
There was also a substantial increase in the number of sheep and goats
(276.2%) and a slight decrease in the number of cattle (9.4%) in the
Narok region in Kenya.
But the livestock don’t just stay on the boundaries of the protected
areas. They’re going in. Livestock paths were prevalent and visible up
to 5km, often even further, inside. This flags that illegal grazing is
happening which reduces the quantity and quality of food available for
wildlife.
For instance we found that, from 1977 to 2016, illegal incursions into
the Maasai Mara national reserve by cattle increased by 1053% and by
sheep and goats by 1174%.
We also found that the numbers of resident wildlife species declined
by between 40% and 87%. In addition, 63.5% fewer migratory wildebeest
used the reserve.
Another threat is agriculture. Over 34 years the amount of agriculture
happening around the border went up by 17%. It now covers 54% of the
land around the protected area and has destroyed large natural
habitats close by. Coupled with high livestock densities, this has
intensified the pressure to graze livestock inside protected areas.
The biggest impact has been on migratory animals – like wildebeest.
Using data gathered from GPS radio-collared wildebeest, we found that
they were coming together in dense groups at specific locations inside
core protected areas as opposed to ranging widely inside and outside.
This reduces the amount of grass each animal has to eat and, because
of over-grazing, weakens the capacity of soil to store nutrients and
carbon. This means the land is less productive and it increases the
area’s sensitivity to weather changes.
There are also less natural or wild fires which are key to maintaining
grasslands. When livestock grazing removes grass, young trees and
shrubs take root. This turns grasslands into shrublands or woodlands.
Wild grazers, like hartebeest, are then likely to be replaced by
animals that eat leaves and twigs, like giraffes.
The most troubling changes have taken place in an area called Narok
County, located in southwestern Kenya. This area of about 17,933 sq km
includes the protected Masai Mara Reserve, wildlife conservancies and
community land.
Wildlife numbers here have dramatically declined. This is a big worry
because the Maasai Mara is where migratory wildlife go to eat and
drink water in the dry season.
In its protected areas, over about 40 years, the number of cattle
(40%), sheep and goats (189.6%) all increased and virtually all the
large wildlife species such as giraffe, eland and topi decreased by
between 54% and 93%. The number of migratory wildebeest declined by
about 80% and zebra by 75%.
These intense and extensive changes mean that the Serengeti-Mara
area’s wildlife has an unsure future.
The findings call for an immediate and robust response to save the
future of the region’s wildlife populations, their habitats and the
tourism revenue they bring from imminent jeopardy.
The migration and dispersal corridors along the edges of the
Serengeti-Mara should be better protected. Livestock numbers, fences,
charcoal trade, cultivation and settlements should be regulated.
And illegal livestock grazing and poaching must be controlled in
protected areas. Also, conservation benefits should be fairly
distributed to communities living around the Serengeti-Mara.
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Algeria's Bouteflika - from revolutionary to ailing recluse @ReutersAfrica Law & Politics |
Bouteflika, 82, a veteran of Algeria’s war for independence, has
rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013 but held out despite
mass demonstrations against his two-decade-old rule.
He had sought to fend off the wave of dissent that began on Feb 22 by
reversing his decision to seek a fifth term. But he did not say when
he would go, further angering protesters.
In a report on Monday, the APS news agency also avoided mentioning a
date, but said Bouteflika would leave before his term ended on April
28. Two private TV channels said on Sunday he could step down this
week.
A fighter in the 1954-1962 war to end French colonial rule, Bouteflika
became independent Algeria’s first foreign minister and one of the
forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement that gave a global voice to
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He championed post-colonial states, challenged what he saw as the
hegemony of the United States and helped turn his country into a
seed-bed of 1960s idealism.
He welcomed Che Guevara, and a young Nelson Mandela got his first
military training in Algeria. Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, on the
run from U.S. police, was given refuge. Cleaver held court in his
Algiers safe house with Timothy Leary, the drug-taking high priest of
U.S. counter-culture.
As president of the U.N. General Assembly, Bouteflika invited Yasser
Arafat to address the body in 1974, a historic step towards
international recognition of the Palestinian cause.
By the end of the 1970s, though, Bouteflika had fallen from favour at
home and went into exile. He returned to public life when Algeria was
being ravaged by a conflict with Islamist militants which killed an
estimated 200,000 people.
First elected president in 1999, he negotiated a truce to end the
fighting and wrested power from the secretive military-based
establishment known as “le pouvoir” (the powers-that-be).
Helped by oil and gas revenues, Algeria became more peaceful and
richer. But it remains mired in corruption and political and economic
torpor in a region where uprisings brought changes in neighbouring
countries.
With a cushion of foreign reserves and a population wary of major
upheaval after their civil war, Algeria avoided the Arab Spring
revolutions that toppled leaders across the region in 2011.
But protests against poor living standards, the lack of job
opportunities and services were common even before the mass protests,
and foreign investors are keen for economic reforms that will cut the
red tape that often hampers business.
Some biographers say Bouteflika was born in Tlemcen, western Algeria,
and others give his place of birth as Oujda, just over the border in
Morocco.
Aged 19, he joined the rebellion against French rule as a protege of
Houari Boumediene, a commander who would later become Algerian
president.
After independence, Bouteflika became minister for youth and tourism
at the age of 25. The following year he was made foreign minister.
Dressed in the tailored suits and sunglasses fashionable in the 1960s,
Bouteflika became a spokesman for states emerging from colonial rule,
given added authority by the cachet Algeria had earned from defeating
France.
Bouteflika demanded that Communist China be given a seat in the United
Nations. He railed against apartheid rule in South Africa.
The invitation to Arafat to address the General Assembly was
controversial. Only two years before,
Palestinian gunmen took hostage and killed members of the Israeli team
at the Olympic Games in Munich. Bouteflika watched from the chairman’s
dais as Arafat, a gun holster on his waistband, addressed the assembly
in New York.
When pro-Palestinian militant Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as
“Carlos the Jackal”, kidnapped oil ministers from an OPEC meeting in
Vienna in 1975, he demanded to be flown with his hostages to Algiers.
Bouteflika was shown on camera embracing Carlos at the airport before
they sat down to negotiate the hostages’ release.
When Boumediene died in 1978, Bouteflika lost his mentor. He was
replaced as foreign minister and an investigation was launched into
financial impropriety. Bouteflika said the allegations were invented
as part of a political plot.
He left Algeria in the early 1980s and settled in Dubai, where he
became an adviser to a member of the emirate’s ruling family. He
returned home in 1987 but kept a low profile, refusing offers of
government posts.
In the meantime, Algeria was unravelling. The military-backed
government annulled a parliamentary election in 1992 that Islamists
were on the verge of winning. In the conflict that followed, whole
villages were massacred and civilians walking in city streets had
their throats slit.
Bouteflika, backed by the military, was elected president in 1999 with
a pledge to stop the fighting. Against fierce opposition from the
establishment, he gave an amnesty to militants who laid down their
arms. The violence declined dramatically.
He won re-election in 2004 and again in 2009, although his opponents
said the votes were rigged. Through a series of ferocious turf battles
with his security forces behind the scenes, Bouteflika had, by the
start of his third term, become Algerian’s most powerful president in
30 years.
He consolidated that power last year by dismissing about a dozen top
military officers.
Little is known about his private life. Official records mention no
wife, though some accounts say a marriage took place in 1990.
Bouteflika lived with his mother, Mansouriah, in an apartment in
Algiers, where she used to prepare his meals.
Age and poor health caught up with him. French doctors operated on him
in 2005 for what officials said was a stomach ulcer. Leaked U.S.
diplomatic cables said he was suffering from cancer. He became weaker
after his mother died in 2009.
Bouteflika said in a speech in Setif, in eastern Algeria, in May 2012
that it was time for his generation to hand over to new leaders. “For
us, it’s over,” he said.
Months later at the start of 2013, a stroke put him into a Paris
hospital for three months. He was seen little in public after
returning to Algeria to convalesce.
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Vancouver Home Sales Drop to a Three-Decade Low @economics World Currencies |
Home sales are dropping in Vancouver as listings rise, with the local
real estate board blaming policy changes for restricting potential
buyers.
A total of 1,727 homes were sold in the Vancouver region in March,
down 31 percent from a year earlier, though up 16 percent from
February, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported on
Tuesday. The sales total was the lowest for the month since 1986.
The benchmark composite index price for a Vancouver home is C$1.01
million ($760,000), down 7.7 percent from a year earlier and 0.5
percent from the previous month. The real estate board blamed policy
changes for restricting purchases, saying they “sideline potential
home buyers in the short term.”
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@AfricaACSS's Sudan's Shifting Calculus of Power Africa |
President Omar al Bashir’s declaration of a year-long state of
emergency in Sudan indicates that he has opted, for now, to take the
route of greater repression to quell the popular protests that have
been unfolding across the country since December 2018. The initial
response from Sudanese citizens, however, has been even more protests.
These protests are being led by Sudan’s professional associations and
large youth population who are chafing for more economic opportunity
and political freedoms after 30 years under Bashir’s rule.
The emergency declaration was accompanied by the dissolving of state
governments and the appointment of military or intelligence officers
as new governors in the country’s 18 states. These actions should be
assessed from the perspective of Bashir’s political base. Bashir’s
long tenure in power can be attributed to his cultivation of three
main pillars of support: the military, the National Congress Party
(NCP), and an embrace of political Islam. The current protests are
straining each of these pillars and how they relate to one another,
leading to some shifting alliances
Bashir’s appointment of military and intelligence leaders as state
governors and of Defense Minister Awad Ahmed Ib Auf as his first vice
president, while he retains the role of defense minister, shows that
Bashir is trying to consolidate his standing within the security
institutions. Bashir was a Brigadier General in the Sudanese army
prior to leading the 1989 military coup that brought him to power.
Accordingly, the military is a natural base of support for the
embattled president.
The Sudanese population has historically embraced Sufism, which
domesticates and internalizes the teaching of Islam to the African
context, which is characterized by tolerance and accommodation. The
protesters have explicitly expressed their dismay at the
politicization of Islam. However, it remains to be seen how the
post-protests arrangements will address the link between religion and
the state in Sudan’s political marketplace.
Women, in particular, have participated in sizeable numbers. Women
protesters have also indirectly showed their rejection of Islamist
fundamentalism by dressing in Sudanese dress with the traditional tobe
headscarves rather than the strict hijab dress as prescribed by
ultra-orthodox Islam. The depth of the protests’ popular support is a
key factor driving the recalculation of the pillars of power within
Sudan.
Notably, the protests in Sudan are led by non-Islamist forces.
Moreover, they are nonviolent and well organized with a clearly
articulated political agenda. Maintaining the peaceful nature of the
protests will be key to sustaining this support. This will be more
difficult if the security forces increase their use of force. Adding
to the complexity is that disgruntled members of the NCP may join the
protests, which may trigger violent confrontations.
The intricate internal dynamics that are reshaping the pillars of
power in Sudan make it difficult to predict how the current crisis
will unfold. The peaceful protests calling for a transitional,
technocratic government leading to genuine elections are an attempt to
provide an alternative pathway to stability and peace in Sudan. Doing
so would be a break from Sudan’s historical legacy of power changing
only through uprisings and military coups d’état.
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@PaulKagame tells @jeune_afrique that he 'foiled terror attack from Uganda' Africa |
THE BIG PICTURE: Kagame’s revelations come to add fuel to the fire
between Rwanda and Uganda countries which are mired in a stalemate
since the closure of Gatuna border by Rwanda.
Kagame tells Jeune Afrique that his government has “multiple” and
“irrefutable” evidence that President Museveni has offered “his help”
and “logistical facilities” to individuals and groups to start a
rebellion against Rwanda.
Kagame adds to Jeune Afrique that there was an “individual” who had
been intercepted with plans for a terrorist attack on Rwandan soil
from Uganda and another individual from Iran
“We also interrogated an individual who was coming from Iran and had
planned to commit attacks after transiting from Uganda,” Kagame told
Jeune Afrique
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Congo Ebola outbreak spreading faster than ever - @WHO @Reuters Africa |
Less than three weeks ago, the WHO said the outbreak of the
haemorrhagic fever was largely contained and could be stopped by
September, noting that weekly case numbers had halved from earlier in
the year to about 25. [nL8N2115X1]
But the number of cases hit a record 57 the following week, and then
jumped to 72 last week, said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier.
Previous spikes of around 50 cases per week were documented in late
January and mid-November.
“People are becoming infected without access to response measures,”
Lindmeier told Reuters.
The current outbreak is believed to have killed 676 people and
infected 406 others. Another 331 patients have recovered.
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UAP Holdings Limited has posted Sh518 million loss, the first in about a decade @OldMutualSA @dailynation Kenyan Economy |
The loss for the financial year ended December 2018 is a 166 percent
decline in performance from the Sh608 million profit that was reported
in the previous financial year.
Group CEO Peter Mwangi said the business experienced challenging
conditions last year.
“Performance was impacted by a tough operating environment in Kenya
and the wider region.
"We have had to let go of accounts we couldn’t price properly and that
has had an impact on the topline,” said Mr Mwangi in a press
statement.
Gross written premium reduced by 1.8 per cent to Sh18.7 billion as the
firm dropped non-performing accounts.
Net claims payable rose by 10 per cent to Sh10.38 billion.
“The increase was largely driven by more prudent reserving in our
short-term insurance businesses, claims deterioration in South Sudan
where inflation remains high and increased reserves in our life
business,” said Mr Mwangi.
Total income dropped by 6.8 per cent to Sh18.7 billion majorly driven
by 20.4 per cent reduction in investment income due to poor
performance of equities market at the Nairobi Securities Exchange
(NSE) #ticker:NSE.
Additionally, property valuation write-downs of Sh604 million due to
reduced rent prices hurt the income levels.
Operating expenses dropped by 11 per cent to Sh5.4 billion from Sh6.14
billion on increased operating efficiency.
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