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Ancient hallucinogens found in 1,000-year-old shamanic pouch @NatGeo Africa |
A SMALL POUCH, made from three fox snouts neatly sewn together, may contain the world’s earliest archaeological evidence for the consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant preparation indigenous to peoples of the Amazon basin that produces potent hallucinations. The pouch likely belonged to a shaman in what is now southwestern Bolivia around a thousand years ago, according to José Capriles, an anthropologist at Penn State University and an author of a paper published on the discovery today in the journal PNAS. Capriles found the pouch—and evidence of its trip-inducing contents—during a 2010 archaeological dig in Cueva del Chileno, a rock shelter that shows signs of human activity going back 4,000 years. The cave was once used as a tomb, and though later looters took the bodies, they left behind what they considered to be garbage—beads, braids of human hair, and what Capriles first thought was a leather shoe. That “shoe” turned out to be an archaeological treasure—actually a leather ritual bag or bundle containing the fox-snout pouch, a decorated headband, tiny spatulas made from llama bone, and a carved tube and small wooden platforms for inhaling substances. Radiocarbon dating of the leather bag surface indictaed it was used sometime between around 900 to 1170 A.D. While the bundle contained some dried plant remains, Capriles and his international research team weren’t able to determine their identity with certainty. Still, wondering what other plants the shaman once stored in his bag, the researchers tested the chemical signature from the inside of the fox-snout pouch against those of a variety of plants. It turns out the pouch once contained a number of psychoactive substances. The analysis revealed traces of bufotenine, benzoylecgonine (BZE) and cocaine (likely from coca leaf), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine, and possibly psilocin, a chemical component of psychedelic mushrooms. The pouch’s owner was either well-traveled or connected to a vast trade network, as not all of the plants once present in the pouch are native to southwestern Bolivia. Harmine is abundant in the yage plant, which comes from tropical parts of northern South America, hundreds of miles away. And the team thinks the DMT may have been from chacruna, a plant from the Amazonian lowlands. “This person was moving very large distances or had access to people who were,” says Capriles. The suspected shaman also had access to powerful psychedelic experiences, likely thanks to a combination of harmine and DMT. Harmine-containing yage is the primary ingredient in modern-day ayahuasca, and is often combined with DMT-containing chacruna. Together, the substances interact to cause powerful hallucinations along with nausea and vomiting. Though ayahuasca is touted today as an “ancient” preparation, the actual age of the brew and ritual are contested. Capriles’s find can be considered the world’s earliest archaeological evidence of ayahuasca consumption, although there’s no way to prove that the shaman at Cueva del Chileno actually brewed or administered ayahuasca from the ingredients detected in the pouch. Modern ayahuasca preparations “are idiosyncratic,” says Dennis McKenna, an ethnopharmacologist who specializes in plant hallucinogens and leads modern-day ayahuasca retreats. “Every shaman practically has his own brew.” But he agrees that the substances found in the Cueva del Chileno shaman’s pouch could have been used to prepare ayahuasca. “People have been arguing that [ayahuasca] was mostly a recent thing,” says Scott Fitzpatrick, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon who was not involved with the research. “The ayahuasca ritual has a deep time perspective now.” Today, ayahuasca is enjoying newfound popularity. Its psychedelic effects—and its potential psychiatric benefits for people with mood disorders and illnesses—fuel demand both in South America and the United States, where shamans offer ayahuasca ceremonies for curious practitioners. Capriles concedes that the discovery could well be used to advertise modern ayahuasca rituals aimed at tourists, but he emphasizes the sacred nature of the shaman’s work. “These people were not just tripping because of entertainment,” he says. Nor was the ritual bundle left in the cave by accident. “We believe that it was left intentionally,” he adds. “This is a typical behavior that you see in ritually charged places.” Modern users don’t necessarily try the drug for spiritual reasons, says McKenna. “It’s used very differently these days—not necessarily in a worse way, but a different way.” But McKenna, who has spent years studying and sampling ayahuasca, sees common ground between ancient healers and those seeking powerful psychedelic experiences today. “When I use these substances, I am usually astonished by what I experience,” he says. “They must have been astonished, too.”
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High tech, millenial, crypto, avocado economy exhibits viral, wildfire and exponential and even non-linear characteristics not unlike Ebola. Africa |
08-JAN-2018 :: The Crypto Avocado Millenial Economy.
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. Whether its President Trump’s rat-a-tat Tweets or a mind boggling 625% share price advance because an erstwhile Tea Company [The Long Island Iced Tea Corp was a little-known company making non- alcoholic lemonades and ice teas] renamed itself the Long Blockchain Corp. We are living in extraordinarily fast moving times. Paul Virilio has said ‘Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth’ and he is not wrong.
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09-JUL-2018 :: a "Chickie Run." Both race stolen cars towards the edge of a cliff. The first to eject out of his car is branded a "chickie." 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 automobile 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. Buzz, the leader of a local gang, agrees to a “Chickie Run.” Both race stolen cars towards the edge of a cliff. The first to eject out of his car is branded a “chickie.” Seconds into the race, Buzz discovers that his jacket is stuck on the door handle, making jumping out of the car so- mewhat difficult. Jimmie jumps out an instant before the cars reach the edge of the cliff. Buzz, still unable to free his jacket from the door handle, fails to escape. While he won’t be branded a “chickie,” he suffers a worse fate.
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18 SEP 17 :: "A screaming comes across the sky" North Korea. @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
Gravity’s Rainbow is a 1973 novel by Thomas Pynchon which is about the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the “Schwarzgerät” (black device), slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number “00000”. As the world watches PyongYang, I cannot help wondering if Kim Jong-Un has read Pynchon which speaks of “A screaming comes across the sky” and North Korea.
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused to believe -that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return.’’
국정원 "北 미사일 신형무기체계 가능성…분석 늦어져"(1보) @yonhaptweet https://twitter.com/yonhaptweet/status/1126749323797061633
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Iran Circles Wagons If there can be a lethal game of Russian roulette in international politics, this is it @newsclickin Law & Politics |
If there can be a lethal game of Russian roulette in international politics, this is it — what just began on May 8, the first anniversary of the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015. Iran exercised “strategic patience” for one full year, as President Hassan Rouhani noted, upon the request from the five remaining signatories of the nuclear deal — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. That period has run out. Not only have the five powers failed to persuade the Trump administration to retract from its decision, but Washington has gone on a warpath of sanctions and deployment of a formidable strike group to the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, the five big powers couldn’t ensure that Iran got the full benefits out of the nuclear deal as envisaged under the nuclear deal, despite its full compliance with the terms of the deal, which has been acknowledged repeatedly by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Only Russia and China observed the commitments given to Iran as signatories, while the three European powers merely paid lip service. Against this sombre backdrop, Rouhani announced on Wednesday that if the remaining signatories fail to provide Iran with the merits stated under the deal in the next 60 days, Tehran will stop complying with its nuclear undertakings in consequent phases. For a start, Iran will cease to observe the capping on the volume of enriched uranium and heavy water reserves that it is permitted to hold. After 60 days, if Iran’s grievances are not still addressed, it will no longer observe the restrictions on the 3.6 percent level of uranium enrichment and will resume work on its heavy water reactor at Arak. Iran has underlined that it is not withdrawing from the nuclear deal but is only taking reciprocal measures as provided under articles 26 and 32 of the agreement regarding the eventuality of one or more of the six powers failing to observe the treaty. Rouhani has specified Iran’s concerns particularly in the oil industry and the banking sector, which Washington has targeted with sanctions. Rouhani said that after 120 days from now, even if Iran starts enriching uranium beyond the 3.6 level and resumes work in Arak, it will give yet another 60 days for negotiations before taking additional unspecified (which could be by the yearend). Meanwhile, Iran will react strongly against any move by the western powers to approach the UN Security Council for reimposition of the old UN sanctions. Russian roulette is a game of chance where players spin the cylinder of a revolver with a single bullet in turns, put the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. The player has 16.67% chances of firing a bullet into his head if there is one bullet in the 6-chamber revolver. Each player starts by spinning the cylinder, thus each player has an equal chance of being killed by the bullet. Quite obviously, it’s an insane game that US President Trump started on May 8 last year. With Iran’s response by way of reciprocal measures, round two is complete. Russia and China are watching helplessly from the sidelines the insane game being played out. A big question can be put whether Trump himself wants another Middle Eastern war. The danger lies in sleepwalking into a war. (See my earlier blog Iran to even the nuclear score with US.) Iran’s reflexes will be guided by certain key factors. First and foremost, Tehran has no illusions that the Islamic Revolution faces an existential challenge from the US and Israel. Capitulation is a non-option. The nuclear issue is an alibi to overthrow the 40-year old Islamic regime in Iran, which the US had wanted to strangle in its infancy in the cradle for the dangerous precedent it was setting in the region — nationalist resistance to the western political, economic, military and cultural hegemony of the Muslim Middle East. On top of it, if in the heat of the battle, perchance an aircraft carrier sinks or if the Straits of Hormuz gets closed or if oil prices cascade, Trump alone will have to face the music. The point is, Iran is a large country and its nuclear sites are vastly dispersed. A massive bombing campaign is needed to destroy them, which will inevitably trigger a full-scale regional war with catastrophic consequences and in all probability sink Trump’s presidency. Zarif talks about the famous ‘B Team’ that is pushing Trump into a war with Iran — Bibi (Netanyahu), MBS (Saudi Crown Prince), MBZ (UAE Crown Prince) and Bolton (US national security advisor.) In common perception, the B Team is credited with having magical powers over Trump. But is it really so? Trump doesn’t convey such an impression, certainly. When the crunch time comes, Trump indeed has a way of taking decisions that are in his self-interests or can make or mar his presidential legacy. North Korea is a telling example. Trump’s 90-minute phone call to Vladimir Putin last week too shows his lone ranger approach. Bolton threatened imminent US intervention in Venezuela and damned the Russians for supporting Nicolas Maduro but Trump steps in to mollify the Russians, hold out assurance that there is no US intervention and actually seek Putin’s help. Looking ahead, therefore, Zarif’s consultations with Lavrov on Wednesday signal that Iran will coordinate closely with Russia its future moves. Significantly, at the joint press conference with Zarif in Moscow yesterday, Lavrov went out of the way to justify Iran’s role in Syria. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed Washington’s “ill-conceived subjective decisions” subjecting Iran to “unjustified pressure” and triggering the current face-off. He said the priority now is to “maintain the (Iran nuclear) agreement’s viability” and to this end, Moscow will plan its diplomatic moves.
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@Aiww What's in a Name? @aiww @aiweiwei_art Law & Politics |
A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights: No matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.
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Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. is due to price shares in its long-awaited initial public offering after the market closes Thursday. @business International Trade |
While the listing is still expected to be the largest in the biggest year for technology IPOs since 2014, it’s unlikely to hit the highs that were first expected. Uber last raised money from Toyota Motor Corp. in August, at a valuation of about $76 billion. That could see the company debut with a market value just above that of its most recent funding round, at about $79 billion. Last year, bankers jockeying to lead the offering told Uber it could be valued at as much as $120 billion in an IPO. “They’re looking at the market as well as what’s happened to Lyft,’’ Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said. Shares of Uber’s biggest competitor tumbled to a record low on Wednesday after it disclosed a steep loss in its first quarterly earnings report as a public company. The stock closed 26% below the IPO price of $72, valuing Lyft at just $15.1 billion -- exactly the valuation it garnered in its last private funding round in 2018. However, because Lyft is focused on the domestic ride-sharing market, Ives said the company is a “one-trick pony” compared to Uber, a “three-headed value monster.” On the roadshow, Uber touted its plans to expand in logistics and other transportation businesses, including scooters, autonomous driving and mass transit, a person familiar with the matter has said. The company aims to become a one-stop shop for customers who would only need to use one platform for multiple services. Over multiple funding rounds its valuation soared: from $60 million, to $3.7 billion, to $42.8 billion, to -- in 2016 -- $62.5 billion when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund wrote the company a $3.5 billion check, sent in a single wire transfer.
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In 18 years of publishing, @CitronResearch has never seen such an obvious fraud as #Jumia International Trade |
In 18 years of publishing, Citron has never seen such an obvious fraud as Jumia. As the media in the US is naively anointing Jumia the “Amazon of Africa”, the media in its home country of Nigeria has a plethora of articles discussing the widespread fraud in this Nigerian company. Not even that elusive Nigerian prince can cover this one up. Jumia is the worst abuse of the IPO system since the Chinese RTO fraud boom almost a decade ago. Worse than being “the most expensive” US listed ecommerce company, Jumia reported financials show us a stagnant business that has burned through $1 billion and has moved the suckers game to the US Markets. In this report, Citron will expose the SMOKING GUN and show why the equity is WORTHLESS. We believe investors cannot rely on reported numbers and a restatement of financials is on the horizon. The SEC must protect US Investors.
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@CitronResearch has never seen such an obvious fraud as #Jumia International Trade |
What do you do when you’re on the verge of bankruptcy, your largest shareholders won’t fund you anymore, and your closest competitor just got sold at a fire sale valuation? You fudge the numbers and hope that you can dump stock onto US investors. At the end of 2018, Jumia had a year’s worth of cash left and its two largest shareholders, MTN and Rocket Internet, wanted an exit. Therefore, Jumia filed for an IPO in March 2019, fudged its numbers, and began trading last month.
From 2015 to 2018, Jumia made little progress in its core business. While mobile penetration has soared in the core markets, the Company’s revenue declined from $145 million to $131 million while adjusted EBITDA loss went from $161 million to $150 million. Jumia learned the hard way that Nigeria, Jumia’s largest and most important market, is not an easy place to do ecommerce for plenty of reasons including logistics, poverty, and a culture of corruption. Naspers, the smartest and largest tech investor in Africa, invested in a Nigerian ecommerce company called Konga but sold the business to Zinox Technologies in 2018 for a >90% loss on its investment. This was not due to a lack of funds or a short-term investment horizon. Naspers has $12 billion of cash on the balance sheet and its original investment in Tencent (still owns >30%) dates back to 2001. Rather, this decision was a reflection of Naspers’ bearish view on the Nigerian ecommerce market vs. a bullish view on South African ecommerce. Since its Konga exit, Naspers announced plans to invest over $300 million in South African tech businesses.
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World's Food Bill to Drop Thanks to Cheaper Coffee and Shipping @economics Commodities |
Global import bill to drop 2.5% to $1.47 trillion in 2019: FAO There’s ample supply of some foods; freight costs have fallen Cheaper coffee, oilseeds and shipping costs mean the world’s food import bill is expected to fall for the first time in four years. The cost of buying food from abroad may drop 2.5 percent to $1.47 trillion this year, according to the the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization. The FAO doesn’t forecast increases for any of the main food groups and coffee, tea, cocoa and vegetable oil prices are expected to fare worst. Lower bills would be good news for consumers who’ve paid more for food in recent years, helping to push up inflation. Costs are now coming down as coffee to grains are pressured by abundant supplies and trade tensions. At the same time, commodity freight costs have fallen almost 50 percent from a July peak amid concerns about worsening prospects for global economic growth. “Lower unit costs of importing food are likely to offset an expansion in global demand for many foodstuffs, implying that in 2019, more food can be purchased nominally for the same or lower cost,” the FAO said in a report Thursday. The Bloomberg Grains Spot Subindex is near the lowest since 2016 amid ample global supplies. Coffee futures have reached the lowest in more than a decade in New York as the market grapples with a global glut. The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity shipping costs, reached a more than two-year low in February. Still, it’s a mixed bag for some of the poorest nations, where import bills will range from 3 percent declines to gains of 4 percent. Those countries are likely to need to import more grains because of poor production prospects. The dependence on cereal imports could reach 35 percent of the total food bill for least-developed countries and those in sub-Saharan Africa, the FAO said. The food import bill for last year was revised to $1.51 trillion, the FAO said. Costs peaked at $1.52 trillion in 2014.
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By 0600 GMT, 75.6 percent of ballots in 22,925 voting districts had been counted, showing the ANC to be in the lead with 57.21 percent @ReutersAfrica Africa |
At the last election in 2014, the ANC won 62 percent of votes, the DA 22 percent and the EFF 6 percent. By 0600 GMT, 75.6 percent of ballots in 22,925 voting districts had been counted, showing the ANC to be in the lead with 57.21 percent, while the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) was on 21.81 percent and the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) had garnered 10 percent.
At the last election in 2014, the ANC won 62 percent of votes, the DA 22 percent and the EFF 6 percent.
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Zambia's Debt Build-Up Continues Apace Despite @IMFNews Warnings @economics Africa |
Zambia, which the International Monetary Fund has warned is at high risk of debt distress, contracted an additional $2.6 billion of new external loans last year, according to the Finance Ministry. If the funds are disbursed, they’ll increase the southern African nation’s external debt to $12.7 billion, from $10.1 billion at the end of 2018. The new loans suggest the government is too complacent about rapidly increasing debt risks, Gregory Smith, fixed-income analyst at Renaissance Capital in London, said by email Thursday. “Last year, the government pledged it would be canceling loans and slowing down the accumulation of debt,” he said. “Adding more new loans is only going to aggravate what is already a dire situation.” A spokesman for the Finance Ministry didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. Zambia’s foreign-exchange reserves have plunged from a peak of almost $4 billion in 2015 to $1.4 billion in February as foreign-debt servicing costs soared. Yields on the country’s $1 billion Eurobonds due in April 2024 jumped 69 basis points to 18.09 percent by 5:31 p.m. in Lusaka. Africa’s second-biggest copper producer has boosted spending on infrastructure including roads and airports in recent years, which it has largely financed through external borrowing. The projects are an investment for the future, according to Finance Minister Margaret Mwanakatwe. Foreign debt has more than doubled since 2014, and the cost of servicing it will increase by 90 percent this year, according to Smith. While analysts including him are concerned about the possibility of default in 2020 and in subsequent years, the government has dismissed these worries, saying that the country has never defaulted before.
“Avoiding default in our view will require canceling some loans, not adding them, plus some combination of an IMF financed program, Chinese debt re-profiling, and a People’s Bank of China credit line,” Smith said. “Debt sustainability would require a u-turn on most of the loans signed in 2018.”
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GANGNAM STYLE Is @MagufuliJP's economic nationalism working? @TheAfricaReport Africa |
The threat of a $190bn tax bill became a $300m payment. The Africa Report looks into whether the Tanzanian government’s barnstorming style will revolutionise the economy or scare away investors. There was a certain optimism when John Magufuli became president in 2015. Here was a man, as the early skirmishes on social media revealed, who was not afraid to get his hands dirty to get things done: surprise visits on hospitals and government offices to reveal who was slacking off work; a push for discipline and austerity in public office; and an anti-corruption drive known as ‘lance the boils’. Even some of his most trenchant critics – like opposition politician Zitto Kabwe – say that Magufuli is making progress. Kabwe tells The Africa Report: Magufuli is doing the “right thing, but in the wrong way”. What is this “right thing”? At its core it concerns the role of government, the mediator between the interests of capital, on the one hand, and citizens, on the other. “Let us stand as one. Tanzania belongs to us all and we should put the interests of the country first,” Magufuli told parliament in 2015. It is also a political fault line of the industrial era. The US President Theodore Roosevelt at the dawn of the 20th century fought against the price-gouging cartels in big business in finance, energy and logistics, who ripped off Americans in the era of the robber barons. “When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game,” said Roosevelt in a famous speech, “but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.” Magufuli has certainly changed the rules of the game in Tanzania. Passed in 2017, the Natural Wealth and Resources Contracts law allows officials to trawl back through two decades’ worth of contracts to see if any of the terms are unfavourable to the government. Equinor, which has invested more than $2bn in developing Block 2 off the coast, says that the production-sharing agreement it has with the government is still valid, but has been unable to get any further in negotiations over building a $30bn gas plant in Lindi. Other legislation pushed the royalty rate on gold from 4% to 6%, gave the government 16% of the stock of mining companies, and made it illegal to export concentrates and unprocessed minerals. This was accompanied by a major confrontation with the biggest mining company, Acacia Mining – which had revenue of $751m in 2017, is owned by Canada’s Barrick Gold and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. In March 2017, the government halted the company’s cargoes at the port. It claimed that Acacia had been understating the value of exports to avoid tax since 2000 – something Acacia denied. The Magufuli administration then slapped a tax bill of $190bn on the company. “The country has been short-changed and continues to be cheated out of the much-needed revenue that would greatly boost our health sector, infrastructure and others,” Magufuli declared. In what appears like a victory for his tough stance, Barrick Gold announced that a deal had been struck – whereby it handed 16% of the company to the government, promised to share profits 50:50 and agreed to pay a fine of some $300m. The coal sector has seen intervention, too. A ban on importing coal to stoke domestic mining raised howls across the private sector in 2016, especially with Dangote Cement. Owned by the continent’s richest man, the firm argued local coal was too expensive and poor quality. But it is not just in mining. Late last year, Magufuli stepped in to support a higher price for farmers. When private buyers baulked at the price, he forced a government-controlled bank to step in: “We will buy the entire crop, then we will look for buyers, and we will eat anything that is not sold,” he said, ordering troops into the fields to protect the crop from black-market operators. Telecoms have not escaped his attention. In 2017, Magufuli claimed that Indian company Bharti Airtel had swindled the government out of its rightful share. The presidency announced in January this year that it had upped its stake in Bharti Airtel from 40% to 49%, and that the telecoms operator would be paying the government more dividends. So how has Magufuli executed his systemic rejig? It is a highly centralised approach – heavy on loud rhetoric, light on parliamentary or societal checks and balances. “There is rampant looting in the mining sector,” says Magufuli one day; “We are in an economic war […] billions in revenue have been lost,” he will say the next. And another: “Even the devil is laughing at us over our own self-inflicted level of poverty amid natural wealth given to us by God.” Dismissals of what he sees as corrupt or inept officials, and a rewiring of responsibility back to the presidency are also a feature. “The wide discretionary powers of the Minister for Energy and Minerals have been removed,” wrote Stein Sundstol Eriksen in a 2018 report for the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. The ministry of energy and minerals has certainly been a locus of corruption. But Magufuli has also changed the dynamic in the tax-collection wing of government. Tax is the fuddy-duddy at the development party But building a solid tax base remains a core job, the tough slog of good governance. And in Tanzania, similar to African peers, the tax-to-GDP ratio base is consistently in the low teens. Magufuli has delivered here. “The tax-to-GDP ratio has increased by about 1.5% of GDP since FY2014/15, supported by President Magufuli’s drive against corruption and tax evasion,” reads the June 2017 International Monetary Fund report on Tanzania. And at a contract-signing ceremony for the building of a new hydropower dam in the middle of Selous game reserve in December 2018, Magufuli hammered home his trademark ‘us against the world’ message. “When we asked for financing for this project, the lenders refused to give us money, but thanks to improved tax collection we are able to finance this project using our own resources” Magufuli said. East Africans with long memories will remember another politician who said similar things: Meles Zenawi, a former Ethiopian premier. Ethiopia is an interesting case for Tanzania because Addis Ababa consciously tried to copy the Japanese and South Korean state-juiced development model. “The neoliberal economic reforms undertaken by Tanzania since the late 1980s in the mining and other economic sectors have largely created an enclave economy in which a few wealthy individuals and multinational corporations benefit at the detriment of majority poor people in rural and urban areas,” says Japhace Poncian, a lecturer at Mkwawa University in Tanzania, who says Magufuli is riding on the public backlash against this – as well as Tanzania’s own socialist past under Julius Nyerere – to promote his vision. So it seems clear that Magufuli has chosen his side of the debate – he will use ‘economic nationalism’ to ‘get the prices wrong’, be that for cashews, gas or gold. But will Magufuli make Tanzania rich? Or will it slide into mismanaged, debt-burdened trouble? First, a reckoning with capital. The second is the ineffective bureaucratic tools with which he wants to execute his great leap forward. Third is a drift into authoritarianism that disconnects the executive from the best available righting mechanism for development: the public. Then take, for example, the cashew confiscation: while Amsden vaunted South Korea’s ability to ‘get the price wrong’, there was always a final goal in mind, more often than not the upskilling of a particular industrial subsector. “There are a few examples involving the president himself and some of his government officials taking initiatives to bring private operators closer by convening meetings to learn of their challenges and issues,” says Poncian. “The impact of these initiatives in terms of moving up the value chains is yet to be seen.” Here, the cashew price bump is good politics. But is it good economics? Reports have emerged about a shadowy company called Indo Power Solutions, which has entered into a $180m deal with the government to buy 100,000tn of cashews, despite lacking any experience in the commodity. Certainly, the threat of $190bn tax bills and the prospect of the army guarding cashews have made foreign investors circumspect about whether or not to put money into the country. “We believe that there is a question mark about future policies around ownership of businesses,” says Konstantin Makarov of StratLink, a boutique investment adviser for East Africa. But Tanzanian officials are adamant they are not attempting to make a hostile environment for foreign capital. “It’s not the aim of the government to frustrate investors but we want to have a win-win situation. We want to prove to stakeholders that nobody is missing out,” Charles Sangweni, the acting director general of the Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Authority tells The Africa Report. His institution is in charge of looking at contracts signed under previous administrations. “We are doing the review for two purposes. First is to clear the environment by proving that whatever was agreed was good. But second, we are laying the baseline for establishing a new production-sharing agreement for future investments,” he says. The second key stumbling block is the tool Magufuli is wielding to effect change: the bureaucracy. Japan had its legendary cadre of technocrats in the ministry of trade and industry. But in Tanzania, “there is total confusion,” says Kabwe. This is partly because of the 180-degree turn in focus, from the more free market- driven years of presidents Mwinyi, Mkapa and Kikwete to the more state-driven economic turn of Magufuli. But it is also due to a lack of investment and discipline that has eroded the professionalism of the civil service. “We need a new generation of bureaucrats now,” argues Kabwe. It matters, partly because of the complexity of economic planning, but also because of the dangers of ‘state capture’, as the South Africans euphemistically call the purchasing of top government officials by corporate interests. “Yes, we may have a highly trained bureaucracy, but this is rarely insulated from political and economic interference,” says Poncian. “Magufuli has led a sharp authoritarian turn. This gives him freedom to manage and perhaps curtail rent-seeking, but it will undermine the institutional checks on it too,” according to Dan Paget of University College London. “Worse still, it will leave an inheritance of centralised power to his successor.” And a mild economic nationalism balanced with investor interests is not just a romantic notion, either. Jacob points to Chile as a “good example where a mix of resource nationalism, a credible state-owned company and respect for investors has proved successful”.
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.@KeEquityBank share price data here +16.21% 2019 Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 0.50/- Closing Price: 40.50 Total Shares Issued: 3702777020.00 Market Capitalization: 149,962,469,310 EPS: 5.25 PE: 7.714
Equity Group Holdings Q1 2019 results through 31st March 2019 vs. 31st March 2018 Q1 Investment securities 169.650576b vs. 150.181142b +12.964% Q1 Loans and advances to customers (net) 305.535628b vs. 271.075482b +12.712% Q1 Total assets 605.667335b vs. 527.780738b +14.757% Q1 Customer deposits 428.509100b vs. 382.422176b +12.051% Q1 Total shareholders’ funds 95.436726b vs. 82.122852b +16.212% Q1 Net interest income 10.435623b vs. 9.817591b +6.295% Q1 Total operating income 17.617422b vs. 16.533236b +6.558% Q1 Total operating expenses [8.781156b] vs. [8.206367b] +7.004% Q1 Profit/ [Loss] before tax and exceptional items 8.836266b vs. 8.326868b +6.118% Q1 Profit/ [Loss] after tax and exceptional items 6.195443b vs. 5.904736b +4.923% Q1 Basic and diluted EPS 1.64 vs. 1.55 +5.806% Q1 Net NPL 16.497233b vs. 9.314390b +77.116%
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.@KeEquityBank hit by Tanzanian subsidiary loan defaults @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
Customers of Equity Group’s Tanzanian unit defaulted on nearly a third of loans in the first quarter, a balance sheet deterioration that seeped through to the parent company’s consolidated results. The subsidiary’s stock of bad debt stood at 31.6 percent of the total loan book of Sh14.8 billion by the end of March compared to 12.6 percent in its unit in South Sudan, 8.5 percent in Kenya, 8.1 percent in DR Congo, 3.5 percent in Rwanda and 1.7 percent in Uganda. Reporting as a combined entity, Equity Group’s non-performing loans rose by Sh5.4 billion to Sh29.4 billion in the three months to March. This translates to a non-performing loan ratio of nine percent. The lender said the Tanzanian subsidiary has been hit by the ban on raw cashew nut exports last year and the move to relocate core government functions from the commercial capital Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. “The context of the issue in Tanzania is economic, which has significantly affected the SME value chains, especially due to the cashew nut ban and relocation of government to Dodoma from Dar es Salaam,” said Equity chief executive James Mwangi on Thursday during the release of quarter one 2019 financial results.
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