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Monday 04th of March 2019 |
Morning Africa |
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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 |
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"The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.&q Africa |
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it say that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger - something better pushing right back.” ― Albert Camus, The Stranger
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04-MAR-2019 :: The Week that was Trump, Kim, Michael Cohen Indo-Pak, Tea and The Shilling Law & Politics |
The World is just so fluid and fast moving and in fact the velocity makes me plain dizzy. Lets start with what CNN's Stephen Collinson headlined Trump's Hanoi Hail Mary failed to score. This was of course the big Set Piece in Hanoi. Before Trump walked away, Trump and Kim did manage to dine together and partook of Shrimp Cocktail, Chilled shrimp, romaine leaves, thousand island dressing, diced avocado, fresh lemon and herbs, Grilled Sirloin with Pear Kimchi Marinated tender sirloin grilled with sauce, served with kimchi fermented inside a pear. Dessert was a Hot runny centered chocolate cake, chocolate crumble, with fresh berries and vanilla ice cream all washed down with Dried Persimmon Punch. The Gastronomy of these Big Set-Piece Geopolitical Events is unputdownable as are the Optics.
I am sure Nicholas Maduro must be asking himself, what did it take to get Chairman Kim a seat at Trump's dinner table. And the Point is this, it took nuclear Weapons. And the Choice is binary, Dinner ''Grilled Sirloin with Pear Kimchi Marinated tender sirloin grilled with sauce, served with kimchi fermented inside a pear'' or death ask Muammar and Saddam.
Kim was surely counting on President Trump being a soft touch because after all at the very moment they were sitting down for a chat, Michael Cohen [The erstwhile Consiglieri] was opening with the following in front of the House Oversight Committee
“He is a racist. He is a con man. He is a cheat,” Cohen said in testimony that outlined everything from Trump’s alleged involvement in hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels to his purported knowledge of Roger Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks. The President was at risk of being seen as a straw Man.
The Indian Sub-continent entered unprecedented Territory, we witnessed the first tit-for-tat air strikes between India and Pakistan since the 1971 war. The First Casualty in any War is the Truth and when I dialled up Indian and Pakistan TV, it was mind boggling, the decibel level was at 11. Planes were shot down, an Indian Air Force Pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan who sports the most compelling handle-bar moustache I have ever seen was captured and then released. The Indian Army said they killed hundreds of Militants in their attack but has provided no evidence and Pakistan is suing the Indians for ''eco-terrorism'' Of course, Narendra Modi is up against an Election and his entire political raison d'être has been built on the basis of Make India [or is Hindutva?] great again. He cannot back down or it will be a Jimmy Carter type moment. On the other side, we have a neophyte Prime Minister Imran Khan whom I must admit has displayed a very deft touch.
"History tells us that wars are full of miscalculation." he said.
''We in India may not like this, but in terms of pure optics, @ImranKhanPTI at the moment is winning the day by taking the moral high ground'' said @sardesairajdeep
Arundhati Roy wrote ''Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war'' in the Huffington Post.
You would have thought that Gold which is a Geopolitical Proxy would have gone nuclear and the fact that it didn't is an interesting Price Signal. India has withdrawn MFN status from Pakistan and therefore, Pakistan will surely be a bigger Buyer of Kenyan Tea
“Pakistan imports around 65-70 million kg (mkg) of tea from Kenya annually and this is bound to increase. This was reflected in the price movement. Kenyan teas rose by ₹12-15 a kg today,” said Dipa Shah, Chairman of The South India Tea Exporters Association.
These might be Salad Days for the Tea Crew like it once was for the Coffee Kings [when we were Coffee Kingpins] in the 1970s when Brazil's Coffee Crop was knocked out by a frost.
President Buhari won the election in Nigeria. The Big Story for me was the low Turn-Out. It was just 36 percent, compared to about 45 percent last time. The Stock Market is not enamoured with the idea of more ''Baba Go Slow'' economics and slumped on the news.
"There is no way in which one can buck the market." Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the House of Commons many years ago and this kept looping in my mind last week.
Firstly, the worst performing currency in the World in 2019 is the Ghana Cedi which has retreated about -12.6% year to date.
“The performance of the cedi doesn’t correlate with the fundamentals,” Opata said in a phone interview from the nation’s capital, Accra.
in Tanzania, the Shilling slumped to an all time Low. The Citizen was shuttered for a week for writing a story about the same. The Bank of Tanzania shuttered Forex Bureus after conducting unannounced inspections. The Tanzanian Shilling is a continuous real time vote on the state of Tanzania Inc. and the instinct to switch it off is entirely a Fools Errand. The risk of an asymmetric down side move is sky high now.
Meanwhile the Kenya Shilling crossed the psychologically important 100.00 mark last week. We underestimate the regional safe haven status of the currency and I have noticed that these downside moves in the Tanzanian Shilling are being mirrored by the strengthening of the Kenya Shilling. The GOK appears to be inclining towards heavier issuance in the Kenya Shilling with a tax Free Infrastructure Bond slated for sale. If this is the thinking, then I expect the Shilling to strengthen further as Kenya taps offshore funds. The Charts signal a move as far as 92.00 but that might be too bold.
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Russian General Valery V. Gerasimov Pitches 'Information' Operations as a Form of War @nytimes Law & Politics |
General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine. And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said. The Military-Industrial Courier, a Russian army journal, and which many now see as a foreshadowing of the country’s embrace of “hybrid war” in Ukraine, where Russia has backed separatist rebels and used soldiers in unmarked uniforms to seize Crimea. In the 2013 article, General Gerasimov wrote that there were no clear borders between war and peace in the modern world. Militaries fight in peacetime, he said, and political and economic means are deployed in war. Russian strategists use the terms “complex approach” or “new generation war,” according to Ivan Konovalov, a military analyst and director of the Center for Studies of Strategic Trends. In both The Military-Industrial Courier article and the speech, General Gerasimov emphasized the importance of mixed tactics by blaming Russia’s adversaries for using them. “The Pentagon set about developing a new principle and strategy of military action already called a ‘Trojan horse,’” he said on Saturday. “The essence is active use of protest potential in a ‘fifth column’ in the interest of destabilizing the situation, simultaneously with airstrikes on the most important objects.”
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Algeria: @MihrThakar Law & Politics |
Population (2017) 41.32m GDP (2017) $170.4b GDP per capita (2017) $4,123.39 Literacy rate (2015) 79.6% Electricity con. kWh per capita (2014) 1,356 Price of electricity $0.04 per kWh Budget deficit (2017) 6.4% of GDP Capital investment % of GDP (2017) 47.78
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Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. @HuffPost Arundhati Roy On Balakot, Kashmir And India Law & Politics |
With his reckless “pre-emptive” airstrike on Balakot in Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inadvertently undone what previous Indian governments almost miraculously, succeeded in doing for decades. Since 1947 the Indian Government has bristled at any suggestion that the conflict in Kashmir could be resolved by international arbitration, insisting that it is an “internal matter.” By goading Pakistan into a counter-strike, and so making India and Pakistan the only two nuclear powers in history to have bombed each other, Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war.
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'We Will Always Live in Fear': What Life Is Like for Civilians in Kashmir @nytimes @gettleman Law & Politics |
In the decades-old enmity between India and Pakistan, one place almost always suffers: Kashmir, the beautiful but cursed Himalayan valley that both nations claim. It happened again this week, as tensions between the countries exploded. Warplanes screeched across the sky dropping bombs, and thousands of soldiers mobilized in Kashmir, bringing the two countries to red alert. Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, called the pilot’s release a good-will gesture, and with the United States, China, Russia and many other countries urging both sides to de-escalate the crisis, India — though somewhat humiliated — seemed willing to pause. Pakistani officials brought the pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, to the Wagah border crossing in northwestern India, where hundreds of people had gathered to receive him. Several diplomats said that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, would look like the aggressor at this point if India staged more strikes, and that Mr. Khan had no incentive to push things further. Mr. Khan’s priority has been to revive Pakistan’s listing economy, and so far he seemed to have won this case in the court of world opinion. His forces had captured an Indian fighter pilot, the pride of India’s military. And his calls for restraint and peace, even if driven by self-interest, seemed to play well around the world, even in India. “Whatever Pakistan’s role has been in the Kashmir conflict, Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, has acted with dignity and rectitude,” the leftist Indian author Arundhati Roy wrote in an opinion piece published in HuffPost. As for Mr. Modi, she called his actions “unforgivable,” alluding to the always-present possibility of a nuclear conflict between the states. “He has jeopardized the lives of more than a billion people and brought the war in Kashmir to the doorsteps of ordinary Indians,” Ms. Roy wrote. Many Indians, though, are sticking by Mr. Modi. In recent days, several Indians said in interviews that they believed his government’s claims that the initial strike on Tuesday had been a success, and that Indian forces had vanquished hundreds of dangerous terrorists. So far, India has offered no proof of that. Instead, reports from the rural area in Pakistan where the bombs fell cast doubt on the Indian claims. Witnesses said that the bombs fell in a mostly empty forest and that the only person hurt was a 62-year-old villager who suffered a small cut above his eye. “What terrorists can you see here?” he asked, according to Reuters. In Kashmir, people don’t know what to believe. But Kashmir is a depressed place, with little development, few good jobs and a sense of hopelessness. It has been down for decades, ever since its people began chafing for independence. Most of the area is controlled by India, a smaller slice by Pakistan, and a small but dogged insurgency has been fighting against Indian rule. Religion partly fuels the divide: Kashmir is predominantly Muslim, like Pakistan; India is overwhelmingly Hindu.
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26 MAR 18 :: Sell Facebook. @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
We just put information into the bloodstream to the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding – so it’s unattributable, untraceable.”
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Surveillance capitalists depend on the continuous expansion of their raw material (behavioral data) to drive revenue growth. @FastCompany's @shoshanazuboff Law & Politics |
Facebook is an exemplary company—if you are a fan of “surveillance capitalism,” my term for businesses that create a new kind of marketplace out of our private human experiences. They hoover up all the behavioral data they can glean from our every move (literally, in terms of tracking our phones’ locations) and transform it with machine intelligence into predictions, as they learn to anticipate and even steer our future behavior. These predictions are traded in novel futures markets aimed at a new class of business customers.
Surveillance capitalism was invented by Google more than a decade ago when it discovered that the “data exhaust” clogging its servers could be combined with analytics to produce predictions of user behavior. At that time, the key action of interest was whether a user might click on an ad. The young company’s ability to commandeer its data surplus into click-through prognostications became the basis for an unusually lucrative sales process known as ad targeting. In 2008, when Facebook faced a financial crisis, Zuckerberg hired Google executive Sheryl Sandberg to port over this scheme. (Facebook and Google did not respond to a request for comment.)
interfaces to enable the unobstructed flow of behavioral data that previously wasn’t available, harvested from your kitchen to your bedroom.
Researchers now agree that social media introduces an unparalleled intensity and pervasiveness of “social comparison” processes, especially for young users who are almost constantly online. The results: amplified feelings of insecurity, envy, depression, social isolation, and self-objectification. One major study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, concluded: “Facebook use does not promote well-being. . . . Individual users might do well to curtail their use of social media and focus instead on real-world relationships.”
A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization”—released in the journal Nature, detailed how the company planted voting-related cues in the News Feeds of 61 million Facebook users to leverage social-comparison processes and influence voting behavior in the run-up to the 2010 midterms. The team concluded that its efforts successfully triggered a “social contagion” that influenced real-world behavior, with 340,000 additional votes cast as a result.
“Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks.”
“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”
When it comes to elections, others have learned to exploit these harmful methods for their own political ends. The 2016 disinformation efforts around the U.S. and U.K. campaigns were the latest manifestation of a well-known problem that had disfigured elections and discourse in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Colombia, Germany, Myanmar, Uganda, Finland, and Ukraine.
These histories illustrate Facebook’s radical indifference, my term for the formal relationship between surveillance capitalists and their users. Facebook doesn’t care about disinformation, or mental health, or any of the other issues on Zuckerberg’s list of resolutions. Users are not customers, nor are they “the product.” They are merely free sources of raw material. Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and the company’s other top executives are not radically indifferent because they’re evil but because they’re surveillance capitalists, bound by unprecedented economic imperatives to extract behavioral data in order to predict our futures for others’ gain. Facebook does not care because it cannot care, so long as surveillance capitalism is allowed to flourish.
“We connect people,” he wrote. “Maybe someone finds love . . . Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. The ugly truth is that . . . anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.”
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05-DEC-2016:: "We have a deviate, Tomahawk." "We copy. There's a voice." "We have gross oscillation here." Law & Politics |
“There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.” I have no doubt that Putin ran a seriously 21st predominantly digital programme of interference which amplified the Trump candidacy. POTUS Trump was an ideal candidate for this kind of support.
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Presidential challenger @MartinFayulu claims DR Congo run by 'puppet' @thetimes @cristinalamb Africa |
Martin Fayulu, the former oil executive believed to have won the December elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a huge margin, will travel to Europe this week to plead with the international community stop turning a blind eye to what he calls “a massive lie”, and demand a rerun. “I cannot close my mouth and accept what is happening,” he told The Sunday Times. The central African country’s new president, Felix Tshisekedi, took up office in January, but Fayulu denounces him as a “puppet” of long-time former president Joseph Kabila. “I will not let the destiny of an entire people be taken hostage by someone who refuses to give up power.” “How can you explain to the world an election where someone got 62% but the winner was one who got 16%?” he said. “If the international community accepts the fraud and lies, then I don’t see how democracy can exist in this country. People will not vote next time.” “The international community has two choices,” he said. “To recount the ballots, or to hold new elections within six months under international supervision.” “Kabila is still there and controlling everything,” said Fayulu. “He appointed Tsishekedi. Kabila will continue to run the mining sector, the military, security, intelligence … Tsishekedi is just his puppet.” Referring to an incident when a rubber bullet grazed his head in 2016, he added, “I know Kabila very well myself — I received a bullet from his forces.”
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Nairobi-Addis Ababa road corridor boosts trade in East and Horn of Africa @AfDB_Group Africa |
Key figures
Trade between Kenya and Ethiopia expected to jump from US$ 35 to 175 million by the end of 2019 Average transport costs between Isiolo and Merille (Kenya) down from 0.49 to 0.28 cents/km: Extra volume of goods transported to and from Mombasa reaches 900,000 tons per year. The travel time between Nairobi and Moyale has reduced significantly (from three days to less than 1 day). The transport fare between Nairobi and Moyale has reduced from KSH 2,500 in 2013 to KSH 1,500. Kenyan customs revenue along the corridor in 2017 was 16-17 million dollars.
The corridor consists of a 504-kilometre road linking the Kenyan towns of Merille and Turbi, through Marsabit, and an additional 391-kilometre stretch running through Ethiopia linking Ageremariam, Yabelo and Mega. The Bank co-funded the project to the tune of US$ 670 million, amounting to 64% of total project costs.
According to Bank projections, trade between Kenya and Ethiopia is set to increase fivefold, from US$ 35 to 175 million by the time the corridor construction project is completed. The intensity of foreign investment in the region in the period from 2016 to 2018 should further improve this performance. This is due to reductions in transport and shipping costs of goods and the expansion of markets beyond national borders.
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Uganda and Rwanda trade accusations over border crossings dispute @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Uganda accused Rwanda on Friday of blocking goods trucks and other vehicles from entering the country, and of stopping its nationals from crossing into Uganda amid a resurgence of hostility between the two African neighbours. Rwandan authorities have been blocking entry to vehicles from Uganda since Wednesday, Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told reporters in Kampala, adding 129 cargo trucks were now stuck at the border. Denying this, Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Richard Sezibera said trucks were being diverted to Kagitumba border crossing in the north because of construction at the busy Gatuna border post. “Those who have gone through Kagitumba, they have crossed,” he said. Sezibera said Rwanda was stopping its nationals from crossing the border because Rwandans going into Uganda have been detained and accused of being spies with no consular services provided to them. “People are coming in, people are going out except for Rwandans who have been strongly advised not to travel to Uganda because of challenges of insecurity that they are facing there,” he said. “It’s not up to Rwanda. It’s up to Uganda (to sort it out). Of course Ugandans are welcome here, we have no problem on our side of the border.”
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N.S.E Today |
President Trump looks set to bail on his Tariff War. Get ready for a desperately bad deal said @hofrench Author and Mindspeak Guest later this Year. Gold with should have emitted some ''nuclear'' signals on the Indo-Pak stand off has turned South and was last at 1285.00 “I want to clarify these reports that we are giving Zimbabwe hundreds of millions in loans. That is totally untrue,” President Mokgweetsi Masisi told reporters in Gaborone @ReutersAfrica “We are not giving them a single loan. The only thing we gave them yesterday were medical supplies made in Botswana and supplementary feeding worth 2.1 million pula ($197,600).” It has however transpired that Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank has borrowed $985 million from African banks including Mozambique’s central bank and the African Export and Import Bank to purchase fuel and other critical imports, governor John Mangudya said. Mozambique is currently skint so that's a surprise to see them take up a Lender of Last Resort role. The Kenya Shilling is bang on the 100.00 psychological level, supported by Remittances, a low Oil Price and probably a flight to Quality as Folks look to exit the Tanzania Shilling which was last at a record Low of 2,368.00 President Dr John Magufuli is trying to do something that No one I know [except Mahathir] has succeeded in doing. Mrs. Thatcher famously pronounced "There is no way in which one can buck the market." The Tanzanian Shilling is a continuous real time vote on the state of Tanzania Inc. and the instinct to switch it off is entirely a Fools Errand. The risk of an asymmetric down side move is sky high now. The Nairobi All Share firmed +0.77 points to close at 153.68 The Nairobi NSE20 ticked -3.49 points lower. Equity Turnover was light weight at 263.276m.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom firmed +1.34% to close at 26.45 and traded 3.348m shares worth 85.891m. Brokerages have been materially upshifting their M-Pesa Forward Earnings Curve [FY Mpesa Revenue clocked 62.91b +14.216% and HY Mpesa Revenue acclerated +18.2% to 35.52b. The #Fuliza overdraft Facility and Take Up is the proximate cause of the UpGrades, Safaricom has surged +19.144% in 2019.
Umeme [which is cross listed] traded 22.055m shares and closed -6.48% at 5.48.
LongHorn Kenya rallied +2.341% to close at 6.12 with buyers outpacing Sellers by a wide margin. longHorn is +32.75% in 2019 and in fact reported some promising HY Earnings.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
StanBic Holdings which reported startlingly good FY 2018 Earnings last week [FY PBT 8.947757b +65.661% FY Basic and Diluted EPS 15.88 +45.688% Cash and cash equivalents at 31st December 61.040397b +136.074%] traded 800 shares at 93.00 -1.33%. Its a Buy on reverses.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
KenGen eased -2.73% to close at 6.40 and traded 604,100 shares. The market is being circumspect about pricing in the Geographical expansion story.
Eveready was marked limit Up to close at 1.10 +10.00% on light trading. --
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