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Friday 01st of November 2019 |
Mark Bradford's 'Los Moscos' at @Tate Africa |
This large-scale collage includes materials found by the artist on the streets around his studio in Los Angeles, USA. Visually suggestive of aerial maps of sprawling, urban areas, the collage is constructed entirely from paper fragments which, the artist believes, ‘act as memory of things pasted and things past. You can peel away the layers of papers and it’s like reading the streets through the signs’. The work takes its title from a derogatory slang term for migrant day labourers in the San Francisco Bay Area, reflecting the artist’s long-standing interest in the sub-cultures of the inner city.
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Mark Gertler Merry-Go-Round 1916 @Tate Africa |
The painting is undoubtedly Gertler’s outstanding contribution to British modernism, as DH Lawrence recognised when writing to him in October: ‘It is the best modern picture I have seen: I think it is great, and true.’
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PEPE ESCOBAR: The Age of Anger Exploding in Serial Geysers @Consortiumnews Law & Politics |
The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP. Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician. Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency. Macri, in fact the president of so-called Anti-Politics, No- Politics in Argentina, was a full IMF baby, enjoying total “support” (and gifted with a humongous $58 billion loan). New lines of credit, for the moment, are suspended. Fernandez is going to have a really hard time trying to preserve sovereignty while negotiating with foreign creditors, or “vultures,” as masses of Argentines define them. There will be howls on Wall Street and in the City of London about “fiery populism,” “market panicking,” “pariahs among international investors.” Fernandez refuses to resort to a sovereign default, which would add even more unbearable pain for the general public. The good news is that Argentina is now the ultimate progressive lab on how to rebuild a devastated nation away from the familiar, predominant framework: a state mired in debt; rapacious, ignorant comprador elites; and “efforts” to balance the budget always at the expense of people’s interests. What happens next will have a tremendous impact all over Latin America, not to mention serve as a blueprint for assorted Global South struggles. And then there’s the particularly explosive issue of how it will influence neighboring Brazil, which as it stands, is being devastated by a “Captain” Bolsonaro even more toxic than Macri. It took less than four years for neoliberal barbarism, implemented by Macri, to virtually destroy Argentina. For the first time in its history Argentina is experiencing mass hunger. In these elections, the role of charismatic former President CFK was essential. CFK prevented the fragmentation of Peronism and the whole progressive arc, always insisting, on the campaign trail, on the importance of unity. But the most appealing phenomenon was the emergence of a political superstar: Axel Kicillof, born in 1971 and CFK’s former economy minister. When I was in Buenos Aires two months ago everyone wanted to talk about Kicillof. The province of Buenos Aires congregates 40 percent of the Argentine electorate. Fernandez won over Macri by roughly 8 percent nationally. In Buenos Aires province though, the Macrists lost by 16 percent – because of Kicillof. Kicillof’s campaign strategy was delightfully described as “Clio mata big data” (“Clio kills big data”), which sounds great when delivered with a porteño accent. He went literally all over the place – 180,000 km in two years, visiting all 135 cities in the province – in a humble 2008 Renault Clio, accompanied only by his campaign chief Carlos Bianco (the actual owner of the Clio) and his press officer Jesica Rey. He was duly demonized 24/7 by the whole mainstream media apparatus. What Kicillof was selling was the absolute antithesis of Cambridge Analytica and Duran Barba – the Ecuadorian guru, junkie of big data, social networks and focus groups, who actually invented Macri the politician in the first place. Kicillof played the role of educator – translating macroeconomic language into prices in the supermarket, and Central Bank decisions into credit card balance, all to the benefit of elaborating a workable government program. He will be the governor of no less than the economic and financial core of Argentina, much like Sao Paulo in Brazil. Fernandez, for his part, is aiming even higher: an ambitious, new, national, social pact – congregating unions, social movements, businessmen, the Church, popular associations, aimed at implementing something close to the Zero Hunger program launched by Lula in 2003. In his historic victory speech, Fernandez cried, “Lula libre!” (“Free Lula”). The crowd went nuts. Fernandez said he would fight with all his powers for Lula’s freedom; he considers the former Brazilian president, fondly, as a Latin American pop hero. Both Lula and Evo Morales are extremely popular in Argentina. Inevitably, in neighboring, top trading partner and Mercosur member Brazil, the two-bit neofascist posing as president, who’s oblivious to the rules of diplomacy, not to mention good manners, said he won’t send any compliments to Fernandez. The same applies to the destroyed-from-the-inside Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, once a proud institution, globally respected, now “led” by an irredeemable fool. Former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a great friend of Fernandez, fears that “hidden forces will sabotage him.” Amorim suggests a serious dialogue with the Armed Forces, and an emphasis on developing a “healthy nationalism.” Compare it to Brazil, which has regressed to the status of semi-disguised military dictatorship, with the ominous possibility of a tropical Patriot Act being approved in Congress to essentially allow the “nationalist” military to criminalize any dissidence. Hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail Beyond Argentina, South America is fighting neoliberal barbarism in its crucial axis, Chile, while destroying the possibility of an irreversible neoliberal take over in Ecuador. Chile was the model adopted by Macri, and also by Bolsonaro’s Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist fan. In a glaring instance of historical regression, the destruction of Brazil is being operated by a model now denounced in Chile as a dismal failure. No surprises, considering that Brazil is Inequality Central. Irish economist Marc Morgan, a disciple of Thomas Piketty, in a 2018 research paper showed that the Brazilian 1 percent controls no less than 28 percent of national wealth, compared to 20 percent in the U.S. and 11 percent in France. Which bring us, inevitably, to the immediate future of Lula – still hanging, and hostage to a supremely flawed Supreme Court. Even conservative businessmen admit that the only possible cure for Brazil’s political recovery – not to mention rebuilding an economic model centered on wealth distribution – is represented by “Free Lula.” When that happens we will finally have Brazil-Argentina leading a key Global South vector towards a post-neoliberal, multipolar world. Across the West, usual suspects have been trying to impose the narrative that protests from Barcelona to Santiago have been inspired by Hong Kong. That’s nonsense. Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation, which I have analyzed, for instance, here, mixing anger against political non-representation with a ghostly image of China. Each of the outbursts – Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests for nearly a year now – are due to very specific reasons. Lebanese and Iraqis are not specifically targeting neoliberalism, but they do target a crucial subplot: political corruption. Protests are back in Iraq including Shi’ite-majority areas. Iraq’s 2005 constitution is similar to Lebanon’s, passed in 1943: power is distributed according to religion, not politics. This is a French colonizer thing – to keep Lebanon always dependent, and replicated by the Exceptionalists in Iraq. Indirectly, the protests are also against this dependency. The Yellow Vests are targeting essentially President Emmanuel Macron’s drive to implement neoliberalism in France – thus the movement’s demonization by hegemonic media. But it’s in South America that protests go straight to the point: it’s the economy, stupid. We are being strangled and we’re not gonna take it anymore. A great lesson can be had by paying attention to Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera. As much as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe may dream of Left Populism, there are no signs of progressive anger organizing itself across Europe, apart from the Yellow Vests. Portugal may be a very interesting case to watch – but not necessarily progressive. To digress about “populism” is nonsensical. What’s happening is the Age of Anger exploding in serial geysers that simply cannot be contained by the same, old, tired, corrupt forms of political representation allowed by that fiction, Western liberal democracy. Zizek spoke of a difficult “Leninist” task ahead – of how to organize all these eruptions into a “large-scale coordinated movement.” It’s not gonna happen anytime soon. But, eventually, it will. As it stands, pay attention to Linera, pay attention to Kiciloff, let a collection of insidious, rhizomatic, underground strategies intertwine. Long live the post-neoliberal Ho Chi Minh trail.
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21-OCT-2019 :: "The New Economy of Anger". Law & Politics |
The real time Feed is a c21st Netflix and is both unputdownable and incendiary. From Chile where Protestors burned down the headquarters of ENEL [The Electricity Generating Co] after a proposed Price increase and a state of Emergency has been imposed. All over Latin America from Peru to Ecuador to Haiti to Honduras, Demonstrators have taken to the Streets. The IMF cut the projected economic growth rate for Latin America from 1.4 percent to 0.6 percent, citing domestic policies and the U.S.-China trade war and clearly nose-diving economic opportunity is creating tinder-dry conditions. Of course, no country is as extreme as Venezuela where GDP is down from $350bn in 2012 to an estimated $60bn in 2019. People have been pushed to the Edge and are taking to the Streets. Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics, “The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words a producer of speed.’’ This Phenomenon about which I am speaking is not limited to Latin America. We have recently witnessed the ''WhatsApp'' Revolution in Lebanon, where a proposed Tax on WhatsApp calls sent up to 17% of the Lebanese Population into the street. Iraq is on a Knife Edge. Millions of Algerians sent the wheelchair bound Bouteflika home not too long ago. Hong Kong remains in open rebellion and trying to shake off the ''Crusher of Bones'' Xi Jinping and his Algorithmic Control. The Phenomenon is spreading like wildfire in large part because of the tinder dry conditions underfoot. Prolonged Stand-Offs eviscerate economies, reducing opportunities and accelerate the negative Feedback Loop. Antonio Gramsci wrote “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear....now is the time of monsters.” This level of unhappiness is unprecedented in a time of ''Peace'' and in a time when our august Financial Institutions keep touting about how it has never been so good for the Human Race. Dr. Célestin Monga in a recent piece characterised the situation thus The Great Discordance ''the planet is filled with rage and anger'' The New Economy of Anger ''Anger and discontent levels around the world are high, despite the fact that most available indicators of political and economic progress are better than they have even been'' Leadership in the c21st has become nationalistic and jingoistic, horizons have been narrowed. President Trump is not John F Kennedy. Xi Jinping is all about Han China. Narendra Modi is all about the Hindutva. Boris is all about Brexit. In Africa, other than the Nobel Prize Winner Abiy, who else is sketching out a horizon? Todays leadership does not appreciate the humanity of all of its Citizens, how can they appreciate the humanity of the World or as Marshall McLuhan once put it “There are no passengers on the Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” Ryszard Kapuściński wrote “Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d’état, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution—never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.” This is a Revolution and it is a Global Phenomenon. Ryszard Kapucinski also said: "If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over." It is not over. More and more People are gathering in the Streets. Unless we are now going to Xinjiang the Whole World [A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside @haaretzcom “Children are being taken from their parents, who are confined in concentration camps, and being put in Chinese orphanages,” he says. “Women in the camps are receiving inoculations that make them infertile''], the current modus operandi is running on empty.
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28-OCT-2019 :: From Russia with Love Law & Politics |
“Late to the party: Russia’s return to Africa.” tweeted @pstronski.“Our African agenda is positive and future-oriented''Putin’s linguistics is an art form and I imagine he buttressed the above points by discreetly showing his visitors a photo of a dead Gaddafi and maybe he dwelled a little on the bottle and then a Photo of a spritely Bashar Assad and would surely not even have had to ask the question; what’s the difference?Between 2006 and 2018 Russia’s trade with Africa increased by 335 per cent, more than both China’s and India’s according to the Espresso Economist.Russia is now Africa’s leading supplier of arms. According to the Swedish think tank SIPRI, between 2012 and 2016 Russia had become the largest supplier of arms to Africa, accounting for 35 percent of arms exports to the region“Russia regards Africa as an important and active participant in the emerging polycentric archi- tecture of the world order and an ally in protecting international law against attempts to undermine it,” the story of a brave but beleaguered Central African lion, who was fighting a losing battle against a pack of hungry hyenas. Luckily the lion had a friend who came to the rescue — the strong Russian bear I would argue Putin’s timing is exquisite and optimal and his Model has an exponential ROI. Russia’s “political technologists” have reportedly devised bespoke solutions for confronting incipient and ongoing color revolutionsOnce we look through the Optics of two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers belonging to the Russian Air Force landing in Pretoria for the aircraft’s first-ever landing on the African continent and, according to an embassy official, only the second country in which it has made a public appearance outside of Russia.The first was Venezuela. Then we need to see this move for what it is. It is meaningful.Where Xi is fed up and speaks about the ‘’The End of Vanity’’ becau-se the ROI [outside commodities and telecoms for China] is negative, Putin has created a hybrid model with an exponential ROI. I would imagine he is on speed dial.
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Oil Set for Weekly Drop on Rising Saudi Output and Trade Woes @markets 54.20 [BUY] Commodities |
Futures edged higher in New York on Friday, but are down 4% this week. Chinese officials are warning they won’t budge on the thorniest issues and are wary of President Donald Trump’s impulsiveness even as the two sides get close to signing an initial agreement, people familiar with the matter said. U.S. crude inventories rose by more than forecast last week and a JBC Energy report showed Saudi Arabian production rebounded to normal levels in October. West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery rose 19 cents, or 0.4%, to $54.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 10:53 a.m. in Singapore. The contract lost 1.6% on Thursday, just managing to eke out an 0.2% gain for October. Brent for January added 7 cents to $59.69 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange. The December contract dropped 0.6% as it expired on Thursday. The global benchmark crude traded at a premium of $5.27 to WTI for the same month.
Emerging Markets
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Can the centre hold? Ethnic violence threatens to tear Ethiopia apart Africa |
Every window of the factory on the outskirts of Adama is smashed. On the side of the road are the scorched remains of a bus and lorries torched by angry young men last week. This scene of mob violence, just 75km from Addis Ababa, the capital, is one that is becoming wearily familiar to many Ethiopians. The democratic revolution kick-started by Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister, last year has long been bittersweet. The government released tens of thousands of political prisoners, welcomed back exiled opponents and promised free and fair elections in 2020. Last month Abiy won a Nobel peace prize, for helping end a decades-long conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. But his efforts to put his own country on a more liberal path have been marred by rising violence and ethnic tensions. The latest killings suggest it is the transition’s darker side that is ascendant.
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At least 78 people killed in Ethiopian protests last week - prime minister's office @ReutersAfrica Africa |
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - At least 78 people were killed during protests in Ethiopia last week over the treatment of a prominent activist, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Thursday. Billene Seyoum told a news conference that 409 people had been detained over the unrest and that investigations were ongoing and the death toll and number detained could rise. Supporters of activist Jawar Mohammed took to the streets last week to protest against his treatment after he said police had surrounded his home in Addis Ababa and tried to withdraw his government security detail. Crowds of young men from his Oromo ethnic group quickly turned their anger against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, also an Oromo, saying that he had betrayed them by mistreating Jawar. Billene said that at least 78 civilians had died in “a very senseless act of violence” in the Oromiya and Harari regions and the eastern city of Dire Dawa.
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Zimbabwe government workers plan pay protest as economy slumps @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Government workers in Zimbabwe on Thursday announced plans for a “massive” protest march next week to press for higher wages, as the finance minister said the economy would this year fall into recession for the first time since 2008. The Apex Council of public sector unions said the government had not responded to its demands for U.S. dollar-indexed salaries to cushion workers against inflation that economists say reached 380% in September. “As a consequence of the above, the Apex Council is calling upon all civil servants to prepare for a massive protest march,” the council said. In a letter to labour minister Sekai Nzenza, the union chair Cecilia Alexander and her deputy Thomas Muzondo said the demonstration would be held on Wednesday, when they would hand a petition to government. Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube earlier told lawmakers that the economy is set to shrink by 6.5% this year - its first contraction in a decade - after a drought and power shortages. Ncube said water in the Kariba dam, which can produce 1,050 MW, was so low that “we are dangerously close to a level where we have to cut off power generation”. Kariba was producing 122 MW on Thursday.
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JAN-2019 :: "money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised." Africa |
“Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.” “Cowry shells and dollars have value only in our common imagination. Their worth is not inherent in the chemical structure of the shells and paper, or their colour, or their shape. In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind.” The Point I am seeking to make is that There is a correlation between high Inflation and revolutionary conditions, Zimbabwe is a classic example where there are $9.3 billion of Zollars in banks compared to $200 million in reserves, official data showed. The Mind Game that ZANU-PF played on its citizens has evaporated in a puff of smoke. ‘’The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history’’ and also said “If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over.” What is clear to me is that Zimbabwe is at a Tipping Point moment.
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The @MoodysInvSvc Mystery: A South Africa Rating That Just Won't Sink @economics Africa |
For a quarter-century, South Africa has been able to count on an investment-grade rating from Moody’s Investors Service. Bond buyers may be forgiven for wondering why. Financial markets have been pricing in a downgrade for months, and the other two major rating companies have had South Africa at junk status for two years. Should Moody’s follow suit, the nation would suffer enormous financial consequences. For one, the country would lose its place in the FTSE World Government Bond Index, which requires at least one investment-grade rating from either Moody’s or S&P Global Ratings. Exiting it would spark an investor selloff and outflows of as much as $15 billion, according to Bank of New York Mellon Corp., at a time when South Africa needs portfolio investment to finance its persistent current-account deficit. A downgrade would also raise borrowing costs, complicating the government’s efforts to balance the budget. South Africa doesn’t need more fiscal woes. It’s already spending 138 billion rand ($9.2 billion) to bail out Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the troubled state power utility. Coupled with other likely industry aid packages, deficit spending will rise to a decade high next year, with debt topping 70% of gross domestic product, according to this week’s medium-term budget statement. The country’s 10-year bond yield is almost three percentage points higher than lower-rated Brazil’s. “From a rating agency’s perspective, this means only one thing: The debt trajectory is unsustainable over the long term,” Cristian Maggio, London-based head of emerging-market strategy at TD Securities, said in a report after Wednesday’s budget release. “We think the sovereign debt ratings will have to be adjusted lower.” An “outright downgrade is unlikely without a prior change of outlook.” Finance Minister Tito Mboweni himself said Thursday that the fate of the Moody’s rating was “not looking good.” Most analysts in a recent Bloomberg survey predicted that Moody’s would change its outlook on the nation’s credit rating to negative, from stable, before the end of the year -- a move likely to precede a downgrade. Moody’s is scheduled to review its rating on Friday, after a call with Treasury officials. The company declined to comment on why it hadn’t downgraded South Africa. “I expect Moody’s to look at three things: the debt metrics, is our growth story credible and what are we doing on the expenditure side,” Dondo Mogajane, director-general at the National Treasury, said in an interview in Cape Town. “It remains a challenge and a concern.” Moody’s already rates Eskom’s long-term debt at B2, five notches below investment grade and lower than Fitch. That means the utility has to rely on government guarantees to borrow in capital markets, increasing the strain on state finances. Should Eskom be unable to repay its debt, the government would be on the hook for as much as 280 billion rand. Moody’s, say former government officials, investors and economists, has kept South Africa investment-grade partly because of history, partly because of methodology. When South Africa emerged from apartheid and the consequent international isolation in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, one of the first things it sought was a credit rating that would allow the government to access funding in international markets. Fitch responded with a BB rating, two levels below investment grade, and S&P followed suit.Then came Moody’s, with an assessment of Baa3, the lowest investment rating and two levels higher than the others. Mandela’s charisma had something to do with it, according to Estian Calitz, director-general of the Treasury at the time and now an economics professor at Stellenbosch University. But South Africa also worked hard to earn credibility, he said. The president and his cabinet “had a profound understanding of what it would take to get South Africa back to international markets,” maintaining fiscal discipline even as they pursued policies aimed at redressing economic inequalities, Calitz said earlier this year. President Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela in 1999, continued along that path, and South Africa’s credit rating improved during his administration. It reached its apex with Moody’s in 2009, a year after Mbeki was replaced by Jacob Zuma. That’s when the tide started turning, according to Lungisa Fuzile, a former director-general of the Treasury who resigned from office during Zuma’s presidency. A series of downgrades ensued, sparked by a slowing economy, institutional decline and rising political risks, including Zuma’s firing of his respected finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene. By 2017, Fitch and S&P had the country at junk, while Moody’s had shaved its rating by three levels.Moody’s and S&P consider broadly similar factors when making their assessments, according to information published on their websites: The economy, institutional strength, fiscal position and susceptibility to event risk. But Moody’s appeared to give greater weight to the institutional and political factors that underpin the willingness to repay debt, according to Calitz. “The rating companies had two questions in 1994: Can you repay foreign debt and service debt until maturity, and will you do it?” said Calitz. “The political factor seemed to have weighed a bit more with Moody’s than with S&P. Moody’s seemed to look more at the political economy whereas S&P was stronger on the technical factors.” It’s not like Moody’s hasn’t come close to cutting South Africa to junk. The company placed it on review for a cut to sub-investment grade in December 2017. But when the review was concluded three months later, the country kept its Baa3 rating and was rewarded with an outlook change to stable from negative. Market pricing indicates it’s only a matter of time before Moody’s comes into line with its competitors. The cost of insuring South Africa’s debt for five years using credit-default swaps is more than double that for Russia, which has a similar rating at Moody’s. And it’s higher than that of Brazil, which is rated junk. The premium investors demand to hold South Africa’s dollar debt rather than similar-maturity U.S. Treasuries, at 345 basis points, is about on par with Bolivia, rated one step below investment level, and Jamaica and Belarus, both six notches into junk. And among emerging markets, only junk-rated Turkey, Lebanon and Nigeria pay more for 10-year local-currency debt. South Africa’s longer-maturity debt and its low level of foreign-currency bonds -- 10% of total debt -- set the country apart from other emerging markets, said Lucie Villa, Moody’s vice president and lead sovereign analyst for South Africa, in September. “That’s certainly something that explains one of the reasons why we are at Baa3 at the moment,” Villa said at the company’s sub-Saharan Africa summit in Johannesburg. While the country still faces major challenges -- including the crisis at Eskom -- President Cyril Ramaphosa has started repairing some of the damage since he came into office in February last year. Though some investors are frustrated at the slow pace of change, Moody’s is giving him some breathing room, said Gina Schoeman, a Johannesburg-based economist at Citigroup Inc. “Moody’s will look at all of this and say he’s actually had very little time to enact a lot,” Schoeman said. “It comes down to, will Moody’s see fiscal effort, are they seeing an effort to actually do something on growth? And then they’re going to have to weigh that up with the more fundamental deterioration in GDP, in debt, in the fiscal metrics.”
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Sudan once had the largest railway network in Africa, with most of the train cars obtained from the United States @VOANews Africa |
Sudan once had the largest railway network in Africa, with most of the train cars obtained from the United States. But decades of negligence, economic troubles, and U.S. sanctions have made the railway reliant on Chinese-made trains and parts that it can hardly afford. With the recent ouster of Omar al-Bashir, the railway's supporters are hoping the United States will soon lift sanctions to help restore it to its former glory Yassin remembers the railway's glory days, when it was the largest in Africa, running 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from the Egyptian Red Sea and crisscrossing Sudan to what is now South Sudan. Yassin said Jebait school was graduating one hundred students per year - all qualified to work on the railway. It was a strong corporation. There was abundance in spare parts and locomotives. But the railway fell apart through mismanagement and a fear of organized labor's influence on the economy and politics. Now, railway workshops in Sudan look like a graveyard, littered with dozens of vehicles, some of them idle for decades. Sudan fired thousands of qualified rail workers, replacing some with political appointees put in place after former president Omar al-Bashir came to power. Mahmoud Salih, director of engineers in the Khartoum train workshop, said if the sanctions are lifted, they can at least be updated with the technology of the trains. Salih added that Sudan is so late to update the current technology, it's functioning with the past century's technology, they need to update and then develop. After the British colonial era, the state-run railway became reliant on U.S. trains and replacement parts. But because of sanctions, Khartoum has been unable to buy U.S. parts leaving only 18 of the railway's 106 U.S.-made trains in service. Sudan Railways corporation director Mohamed Hamid said the railway turned to China to keep the trains running. Hamid said when the U.S. embargo cut out everything; they had to import their spare parts and needs from other countries. He said that they resorted to China, they have the American locomotives and, of course, China cannot produce the American spare parts, especially the main machines from Caterpillar (Inc.), so what they were going to do? Importing a few Chinese trains in 2014 allowed Sudan to launch two new passenger lines. But poor track conditions means the trains can only go 60 kilometers per hour - half their maximum speed. Before Yassin retires at the end of this year, he hopes to see U.S. sanctions lifted and more efforts by Sudan's transitional government to get the country's railways back on track.
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@Safaricomltd reports H1 2020 EPS +14.4% Earnings here Africa |
Par Value: 0.05/- Closing Price: 29.25 Total Shares Issued: 40065428000.00 Market Capitalization: 1,171,913,769,000 EPS: 1.58 PE: 18.513
Safaricom PLC HY 2020 results for the period ended 30th September 2019 vs. 30th September 2018 HY Voice revenue 46.87b vs. 47.53b -1.4% HY Mpesa Revenue 41.97b vs. 35.52b +18.2% HY SMS Revenue 8.60b vs. 9.67b -11.0% HY Mobile data revenue 19.78b vs. 19.01b +4.0% HY Fixed service revenue 4.55b vs. 3.84b +18.4% HY Other service revenue 2.55b vs. 2.49b +2.4% HY Service revenue 124.32b vs. 118.05b +5.3% HY Handset revenue and other revenue 5.16b vs. 4.31b +19.7% HY Construction revenue 0.35b vs. 0.30b +15.2% HY Other income 0.07b vs. 0.17b -58.8% HY Total revenue 129.93b vs. 122.83b +5.8% HY Direct costs [37.48b] vs. [34.96b] +7.2% HY Contribution margin 92.07b vs. 87.57b +5.1% HY Contribution margin % 71.1% vs. 71.5% -0.4% HY Operating costs [25.59b] vs. [25.82b] -0.9% HY EBITDA 66.49b vs. 61.79b +7.6% HY EBITDA margin% 51.3% vs. 50.4% +0.9% HY Depreciation and amortization [16.67b] vs. [17.56b] -5.1% HY EBIT 49.82b vs. 44.22b +12.7% HY Net financing, FX and fair value losses 1.85b vs. 1.41b +31.2% HY Earnings before taxation 51.71b vs. 45.63b +13.3% HY Net income 35.65b vs. 31.50b +14.4% EPS 0.89 vs. 0.78 +14.4% HY Free cash flow 37.33b vs. 38.42b -2.8% KEY HIGHLIGHTS Full-Year Guidance Maintained • Service revenue growth of 5.3% to KShs 124.32bn. • Voice service (incoming and outgoing) revenue declined 1.4% to KShs 46.87bn. • M-PESA revenue grew by 18.2% to KShs 41.97bn. • Mobile data revenue increased by 4.0% to KShs 19.78bn. • Messaging revenue declined by 11.0% to KShs 8.60bn. • Fixed service revenue increased by 18.4% to KShs 4.55bn. • One month active overall customers increased by 8.9% to 27.45mn. • One month active M-PESA customers increased 12.4% to 23.61mn. • One month active mobile data customers increased 14.8% to 20.19mn. Strong financial performance • 12.7% growth in EBIT, or Profit before Interest and Tax, to KShs 49.82bn with an EBIT margin of 38.5%, up 2.4ppts YoY. • Net Income, or Profit after Tax, increased by 14.4% to KShs 35.65bn. • Free Cash Flow declined 2.8% to KShs 37.33bn. Operating review Revenue growth for the half year to September 2019 was 5.3% driven by robust performance across M-PESA and fixed data and strong customer growth offsetting decline in the traditional revenue streams and soft performance on mobile data. Voice and messaging Voice declined 1.4% while messaging declined 11.0%. This decline was partly driven by competitive pressures and migration to newer technologies, and partly by the impact of corrective actions taken last year to make it easier for our customers to manage their premium rate subscriptions, and opt out of them where no longer needed. Voice and messaging are now 44.6% of service revenue. M-PESA M-PESA has sustained robust growth in the period recording a YoY growth of 18.2% despite the impact of the slow-down in the gaming industry. The growth was driven by 12.4% YoY increase in 30-day active M-PESA customers to 23.61 million and a 7.8% YoY growth in monthly usage per customer to 13 chargeable transactions per month. The company added 2.6 million active M-PESA customers with MPESA now accounting for 33.8% of service revenue, further accelerating displacement of traditional voice and messaging services. Excluding gaming, revenue grew 20.9% YoY and chargeable transactions per customer per month grew 17.5%. Mobile Data Mobile data registered a 4.0% growth in revenue as we continue to carry the effect of corrective actions taken in prior year; repositioning data bundles and absorbing the excise duty increase. Mobile data now accounts for 15.9% of service revenue and registered an impressive 14.6% growth on the revenue earned in the second half of last year. Growth in mobile data revenue is expected to return to double digits in the second half of this year driven by increased penetration and usage.
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