Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[Yehuda]

Algeria approves deep-sea port

Turloch Mooney, Senior Editor, Global Ports | Feb 03, 2017 12:26PM EST

The Port of Algeciras will soon have new competition.

The government of Algeria has reportedly approved construction of a new deep-sea port 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of the capital Algiers to be financed with loans from China and the African Development Bank, or AfDB.

Plans for the facility at El Hamdania were drawn up in December by Algeria’s Laboratoire des Etudes Maritimes with South Korea’s Yooshin engineering corporation. The total cost of the project is expected to be around $3.3 billion.

The plans consist of a 23-berth facility with a 20-meter (66-foot) alongside draft and eventual capacity of up to 27 million-tonnes-per-annum. Two industrial zones covering 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) are to be built next to the new port.

China Harbour Engineering and China State Construction Engineering have been linked to the project and local media said the two Chinese state companies will take a 49 percent stake while the controlling stake will be held by the Algerian Port Authority.

The reports said financing will be provided by a consortium of Chinese banks together with funds from a newly secured loan from AfDB.

The AfDB signed an agreement with Algeria at the end of 2016 for a $900 million loan facility. At the time, the bank the loan was to support the country’s industrial and energy competitiveness and “to offset the drop in its revenue due to the sharp fall in oil prices”.

Oil and gas accounts for over 90 percent of Algeria’s export revenues and the low oil price has hit state finances hard. This has led the government to put more focus on measures to diversify the country’s economic base.

“The decline in the price of oil has created a lot of difficulties for many oil exporting countries, and has had an impact on their balances of payment and budgets,” said Kapil Kapoor, an acting vice president with the bank.

Construction work on the new port is scheduled to begin in March and the first berths are due to be operational by 2021.

When operational, the facility is expected to compete for transshipment traffic with Morocco’s Tanger Med port and southern European ports such as Algeciras in Spain and Gioia Tauro in Italy.

A concurrent project to upgrade a highway linking El Hamdania to Algeria’s southern border would also enable the port to complete with West African ports to serve landlocked countries in the region.

Contact Turloch Mooney at turloch.mooney@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on Twitter: @TurlochMooney.

A version of this story also appeared on IHS Fairplay, a sister product of JOC.com within IHS Markit.

Algeria approves deep-sea port

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Tanzania: Defence Forces On Call to Embrace Industrial Economy
Defence and security organs were yesterday told to embrace the government championed industrial economy, through setting up of factories to add value to locally produced raw materials.

"Why should we import uniforms for members of the armed forces and yet we produce cotton in large quantities? Even if it means producing garments from locally available sisal, let it be so," President John Magufuli ordered in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

He said it was high time the security organs embarked on manufacturing of goods for the domestic market to avoid turning Tanzania into a "dumping ground" for cheap imports."You could as well give specifications of your garments to textile industries to produce the uniforms, domestically.

Other countries in Africa are doing the same and they even produce their equipment, why not us," he queried. Dr Magufuli was confident as well that the security organs could produce dynamites required by the forces rather than relying on imports.


The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces issued the order at the swearing-in of the newly appointed Tanzania People's Defence Force (TPDF) Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) General Venance Mabeyo and Chief of Staff Lieutenant General James Mwakibolwa.

At the event, Inspector General of Police (IGP) also swore in the new Director of Criminal Investigations Commissioner of Police (CP) Boaz Mikomwanga. Dr Magufuli instructed the newly confirmed Commissioner General of Prisons to ensure prisoners, particularly those serving long sentences, work and produce for the nation through participation in infrastructure projects.

President Magufuli on the other hand explained that the firstphase construction of the 300-kilometre Central Railway line to standard gauge will be implemented using local funds.



It will be undertaken in 30 months from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro. "I am quite sure that prisoners can be used to crash stones and take part in other tasks in the project. A total of two trillion will be used for the project to be undertaken by Turkish and Portuguese contractors.

"The current train travels at an average of 30 kilometres per hour but the envisaged standard gauge railway (SGR) train will have a speed of between 160 and 180 kilometres per hour," he explained.


According to President Magufuli, the SGR in Tanzania will have the capacity to carry 38 tonnes per axle compared to 25 tonnes in other East African nations. He revealed as well that the tender for construction of the second phase of the SGR covering Morogoro to Dodoma will be floated in April, this year.

At the occasion, Dr Magufuli urged the new Tanzanian envoy to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Ambassador Paul Mella to attract more cargo from the landlocked country to pass through the port of Dar es Salaam.

President Magufuli also challenged the Ambassador Shelukindo, who has been posted to Paris, France, to woo investors from the European country.

Speaking after the swearingin ceremony, the former CDF, General Davis Mwamunyange said he was happy to have served in TPDF, rising from a junior army officer to the highest position.

"The army has won esteem from the public and we did a good job in peace keeping missions in DRC, Lebanon and Darfur," the soft-spoken army general recalled.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201702070450.html

 

[Yehuda]

Namibia sees full output at Chinese-backed uranium mine by August

Wed Feb 8, 2017 | 10:09am EST

Namibia's mines and energy minister expects the country's flagship uranium mine, the $2 billion Chinese-backed Husab project, to reach full output by August following delays last year due to a fire at its processing plant.

“We expect them to reach full production within six months,” Obeth Kandjoze, Minister of Mines and Energy, told Reuters at an African mining conference.

He said there had not been a "flurry" of activity after a decade-long moratorium on uranium exploration was lifted last month, but predicted a global recovery of uranium prices amid a slew of new reactor projects worldwide.

Kandjoze added that Olso-headquarted BW Offshore will pay $10.2 million to Namibia's national oil company for a 56 percent farm-in stake in the Kudu gas development, seen as a key future power source to the southern African country. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia)

Namibia sees full output at Chinese-backed uranium mine by August

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

 

[Poitier]

Kenyan Court Blocks Government Plan to Close the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
Move prevents repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis
NAIROBI, Kenya—Kenya’s high court Thursday threw out a government plan to shut down the world’s biggest refugee camp, halting the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis to the war-ravaged nation and relieving pressure on refugee facilities caused by President Donald Trump’s recent travel ban.

The court ruling suspends plans for the closure of Dadaab but the government can appeal the decision.

The Kenyan government said last year it wanted to shut down Dadaab, where roughly 300,000 Somali refugees have been living for years, many born there as their homeland has been in the throes of a civil war and a violent Islamic insurgency.

“The government decision specifically targeting Somali refugees is an act of group persecution, illegal, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional,” Judge John Mativo ruled in Nairobi Thursday. He said the plan was a violation of Kenya’s obligations under international law, and declared it “null and void.”

Despite the United Nations and Western countries that helped Kenya fund Dadaab decrying the decision last year, the government insisted it would go ahead with its plan, seen as part of its electoral campaign ahead of polls this August.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the admission of Somali refugees to the U.S. because of concerns they pose a security risk has added pressure to resolve the refugees’ situation.

The U.S. last year accepted 11,000 Somali refugees, many of whom were joining families. The number is a drop in the bucket of 1 million Somalis refugees in Kenya and other East African countries, but was still helped in managing the population and giving more vulnerable displaced Somalis, especially small children, a chance at an education outside the limited future offered at the vast refugee camp that lies in a desert land between Kenya and Somalia.

News of Mr. Trump’s decision last month shook Dadaab and left thousands who had already gone through multiyear vetting procedures by U.S. authorities in limbo, fearful that Kenya would send them home as the U.S. was shutting the door.

“After months of anxiety because of the camp closure deadline hanging over their heads, increasingly restricted asylum options and the recent U.S. administration suspension of refugee resettlement, the court’s judgment offers Somali refugees a hope that they may still have a choice other than returning to insecure and drought-ridden Somalia,” said Laetitia Bader, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch

Somalia, which Wednesday evening elected a new president, a U.S.-Somali dual national who fled the civil war to find refuge in Buffalo where he spent much of his adult life, is facing an extraordinary combination of problems.


Apart from the inter-clan conflict that has been going on for 25 years and al-Shabaab still controlling swaths of the country and wreaking havoc with attacks, the Somali economy is decimated and a drought has left some six million people on the verge of famine, according to the U.N.


Kenyan Court Blocks Government Plan to Close the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Kenyan Court Blocks Government Plan to Close the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
Move prevents repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis
NAIROBI, Kenya—Kenya’s high court Thursday threw out a government plan to shut down the world’s biggest refugee camp, halting the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis to the war-ravaged nation and relieving pressure on refugee facilities caused by President Donald Trump’s recent travel ban.

The court ruling suspends plans for the closure of Dadaab but the government can appeal the decision.

The Kenyan government said last year it wanted to shut down Dadaab, where roughly 300,000 Somali refugees have been living for years, many born there as their homeland has been in the throes of a civil war and a violent Islamic insurgency.

“The government decision specifically targeting Somali refugees is an act of group persecution, illegal, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional,” Judge John Mativo ruled in Nairobi Thursday. He said the plan was a violation of Kenya’s obligations under international law, and declared it “null and void.”

Despite the United Nations and Western countries that helped Kenya fund Dadaab decrying the decision last year, the government insisted it would go ahead with its plan, seen as part of its electoral campaign ahead of polls this August.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the admission of Somali refugees to the U.S. because of concerns they pose a security risk has added pressure to resolve the refugees’ situation.

The U.S. last year accepted 11,000 Somali refugees, many of whom were joining families. The number is a drop in the bucket of 1 million Somalis refugees in Kenya and other East African countries, but was still helped in managing the population and giving more vulnerable displaced Somalis, especially small children, a chance at an education outside the limited future offered at the vast refugee camp that lies in a desert land between Kenya and Somalia.

News of Mr. Trump’s decision last month shook Dadaab and left thousands who had already gone through multiyear vetting procedures by U.S. authorities in limbo, fearful that Kenya would send them home as the U.S. was shutting the door.

“After months of anxiety because of the camp closure deadline hanging over their heads, increasingly restricted asylum options and the recent U.S. administration suspension of refugee resettlement, the court’s judgment offers Somali refugees a hope that they may still have a choice other than returning to insecure and drought-ridden Somalia,” said Laetitia Bader, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch

Somalia, which Wednesday evening elected a new president, a U.S.-Somali dual national who fled the civil war to find refuge in Buffalo where he spent much of his adult life, is facing an extraordinary combination of problems.


Apart from the inter-clan conflict that has been going on for 25 years and al-Shabaab still controlling swaths of the country and wreaking havoc with attacks, the Somali economy is decimated and a drought has left some six million people on the verge of famine, according to the U.N.


Kenyan Court Blocks Government Plan to Close the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

Interesting.

 

[Yehuda]

Somali MPs elect former PM, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, as new president

08/02 - 17:30

Somalia has a new president in the person of Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo. Farmajo, a former Prime Minister was declared the winner of the polls after incumbent Hassan Sheikh Mohamud conceded just when the process was about to enter a final round. He was immediately sworn into office in the presence of the parliamentarians – from Upper and Lower houses of the legislature.

His victory means Somalia maintains the culture of electing a new President at each election. Farmajo got 184 votes against Hassan Sheikh’s 95 votes. A third candidate secured 45 votes. He will now handle affairs of the state for the next four years. Somalia hopes to be able to conduct a normal universal adult suffrage vote by the next polls slated for 2020.

Hassan Sheikh won the first round of votes which saw the original number of 21 candidates pruned to four. Out of that number, PM Sharmake also dropped out citing interference in the process. He however tasked electors to vote for change – a sign that he was not backing the candidature of Hassan Sheikh.



About Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmajo’

The one-time prime minister under former president Ahmed, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, entered the race after failing to win the election in 2012 despite his popularity.

He served as a prime minister for less than a year before he was forced to resign under a deal supported by the population who protested when he refused initially.

Somali MPs elect former PM, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, as new president

 

[Yehuda]

Africa’s ports revolution: setting the scene for economic take-off

7 February 2017 | By David Rogers

With its crippling deficiency in ports and overland transport infrastructure, Africa has been cut off from modern world trade.

But over the next five years, thanks to international investment, much of the continent will be fitted with state-of-the-art deepwater container terminals able to handle supersized box carriers, plus modern transport networks to distribute them.

In this special GCR report, we chart how Africa, through the concerted push for the “million-teu port”, is steering toward the path of economic take-off, similar to east Asia’s post-war development.

How Africa's ports are about to be transformed

The story that dominated the African construction sector at the end of 2016 was the commissioning of a standard-gauge electric rail line between Addis Ababa and Djibouti. This 750km line, built at a cost of $4bn, has given landlocked Ethiopia a much-needed outlet to the Indian Ocean. The previous link, a railway completed by the French in 1917, fell into dereliction in the 2000s. Its replacement is capable of moving freight at 120km/h (passengers travel at 160km/h), all the way to the microstate of Djibouti. The project “glows with the radiance of a prospectively multi-beneficial enterprise”, as a journalist writing for the African Exponent website described it.

On the other hand, Ethiopia had not really suffered from being cut off from global markets, because it has had almost nothing to take to them: in 2007, its largest trading partner was Germany, to which it exported $51m of goods, principally coffee beans. Most of the internal economy was taken up with subsistence farming.

By 2015 that picture had been utterly transformed. The country’s total exports increased eightfold in value, to just under $6bn, and China was its dominant partner, buying $275m of them and supplying $4.7bn of its imports. So, the lion’s share of the freight that the new line will carry will be boxes filled with Chinese manufactured goods, arriving at the Chinese-built container terminal of Doraleh and travelling east to west. It was not surprising, then, that the actors who financed and built the railroad were three Chinese banks and two Chinese contractors, all of them controlled and co-ordinated by the Chinese government.

The chances are good that, in another eight years, this picture will change again. Despite severe political difficulties with sections of its own population, Ethiopia has become the demonstration project for African economic take-off: as well as the railway, some of the continent’s most ambitious power schemes are being constructed, of which the best known is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which was paid for largely with indigenous capital. Once that is complete, other electrified railways will follow, and the basis will be laid for the growth of manufactured goods to replace coffee, oil seeds, gold and cut flowers as the country’s main foreign currency earners.

And this shift is the real point of the Djibouti railway: at the moment 100% of containers arrive in African ports full and 80% leave empty. If Ethiopia is to achieve middle-income status by mid-century, as the World Bank optimistically predicts, then the contribution of manufacturing will have to rise from the 10% level, where it is now, to the 30% that China has achieved, and those manufactured goods will have to find markets around the world. The same applies to all African countries who have set their sights on economic development. For that to happen, something will have to be done about Africa’s ports.

The inactive continent

Africa’s port sector is grossly deficient in both quantity and quality of harbours, quays, cranage, storage systems and hinterland transport. How deficient? Although China and Africa have similar populations (respectively, 1.4 billion and 1.2 billion), in 2015 the five largest Chinese ports moved more than 118 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (teu), whereas Africa’s top five moved less than 10 million. According to Lloyd’s List, the entire continent accounts for just 3% of world container traffic.

This partly reflects the fact that much of the continent’s exports consist of primary commodities such as oil, gas, mineral ores and tropical agricultural produce that are moved on breakbulk cargo ships or tankers, but it also indicates just how little Africa participates in global trade. Throughout its history, as a supplier of involuntary manpower to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries, and as site for colonial plantations in the 19th and 20th centuries, Africa has always shown a net loss in its dealings with the rest of the world.

It is a remarkable fact that 90% of Africa’s total trade, including its internal variety, moves by sea. This is partly because it can’t move any other way: road networks within countries are often inadequate and, outside South Africa and the Maghreb, rail systems are “a losing game”, to quote a recent study by the African Development Bank. For example, Mombasa in Kenya is the largest port in east Africa, and last year succeeded for the first time in handling a million containers. However, the country’s main railway, completed by the British in 1901 (dubbed the “Lunatic Express”) has only enough capacity to move one in 20 of those boxes, so there is a continuous traffic jam of trucks trying to enter and leave the city.

Another factor is the inability of most of the continent’s ports to deal with container ships built after the 1970s. Any vessel that carries more than 3,000 containers – that is, a Panamax or greater – requires a draft of more than 12m, meaning they’d get stuck some distance from the wharf in most African ports.

Then there is the question of whether ships are “geared”, meaning whether they carry their own cranes to load and unload their boxes. Pretty much all modern container ships are gearless – cranes take up too much space and require too much maintenance. However, most African ports require ships to do their own lifting. The result is that, with the exception of the modern terminals such as those at Durban, Tanger Med, Doraleh and Port Said, Africa’s manufactured goods are moved by slow, old “feeders” hauling around 1,200 boxes – the containerised equivalent of a tramp steamer.

As well as the difficulty of physically moving containers into and out of ports, there is the additional problem of getting them through customs and agreeing what import duty is to be paid – a process of unpredictable length, in which time is always on the port authorities’ side.

This means that the average length of time between bringing a container to a port by ship and dispatching it into the hinterland by road or rail is much longer in African ports than elsewhere. A World Bank paper from 2012 noted that, that, with the exception of Durban, dwell times average about 20 days in African ports, compared with three to four days in most other international ports. This average conceals the extreme variability of the statistics. For example, figures for the Cameroonian port of Douala in 2009 show that 19% of containers were dealt with in fewer than six days, but more than 12% took between 20 and 30 days, and a further 12% took between one and three months to be processed. This is a serious matter under any circumstances, but when those containers are filled with goods required for, say, a construction project, the consequential costs are painful to contemplate.

Enter the dragon

The good news for Africa is that this crippling deficiency is beginning to be tackled. China’s demand for oil and minerals, as well as its superabundance of capital for external investment, had led to a surge in economic activity in the east and west of the continent, particularly Nigeria, the Great Lake states and the Ethiopian highlands. To see how pervasive the influence of China has been over the past 10 years, consider the growth in the number of African countries who have China as their primary economic partner. Alongside trade, there has been a large number of other construction and civil engineering projects, as well as a transfer of Chinese managerial skill, capital, commercial networks, and often sizeable – and controversial – immigration flows.

China's economic ties with Africa

This has led to an equivalent surge in port construction projects. Over the next five years, much of sub-Saharan Africa is going to be fitted with state-of-the-art deepwater container terminals that are able to handle supersized box carriers, as well as modern transport networks to distribute them. Alongside the ports, there will be tax-free special economic zones to stimulate foreign investment in manufacturing, and the chance to follow the post-war path of east Asia towards economic take-off.
In the coming weeks, this GCR special report analyses the rise of the “million-teu port” on all Africa’s coasts, and looks at the chances of an infrastructure-led transformation in Africa’s prospects.

We start with West Africa.

West Coast to welcome the world

Top image: Tanger-Med soon to be Africa’s biggest port (APMT)

GCR - Sectors - Africa’s ports revolution: setting the scene for economic take-off

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Africa’s ports revolution: setting the scene for economic take-off

7 February 2017 | By David Rogers

With its crippling deficiency in ports and overland transport infrastructure, Africa has been cut off from modern world trade.

But over the next five years, thanks to international investment, much of the continent will be fitted with state-of-the-art deepwater container terminals able to handle supersized box carriers, plus modern transport networks to distribute them.

In this special GCR report, we chart how Africa, through the concerted push for the “million-teu port”, is steering toward the path of economic take-off, similar to east Asia’s post-war development.

How Africa's ports are about to be transformed

The story that dominated the African construction sector at the end of 2016 was the commissioning of a standard-gauge electric rail line between Addis Ababa and Djibouti. This 750km line, built at a cost of $4bn, has given landlocked Ethiopia a much-needed outlet to the Indian Ocean. The previous link, a railway completed by the French in 1917, fell into dereliction in the 2000s. Its replacement is capable of moving freight at 120km/h (passengers travel at 160km/h), all the way to the microstate of Djibouti. The project “glows with the radiance of a prospectively multi-beneficial enterprise”, as a journalist writing for the African Exponent website described it.

On the other hand, Ethiopia had not really suffered from being cut off from global markets, because it has had almost nothing to take to them: in 2007, its largest trading partner was Germany, to which it exported $51m of goods, principally coffee beans. Most of the internal economy was taken up with subsistence farming.

By 2015 that picture had been utterly transformed. The country’s total exports increased eightfold in value, to just under $6bn, and China was its dominant partner, buying $275m of them and supplying $4.7bn of its imports. So, the lion’s share of the freight that the new line will carry will be boxes filled with Chinese manufactured goods, arriving at the Chinese-built container terminal of Doraleh and travelling east to west. It was not surprising, then, that the actors who financed and built the railroad were three Chinese banks and two Chinese contractors, all of them controlled and co-ordinated by the Chinese government.

The chances are good that, in another eight years, this picture will change again. Despite severe political difficulties with sections of its own population, Ethiopia has become the demonstration project for African economic take-off: as well as the railway, some of the continent’s most ambitious power schemes are being constructed, of which the best known is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which was paid for largely with indigenous capital. Once that is complete, other electrified railways will follow, and the basis will be laid for the growth of manufactured goods to replace coffee, oil seeds, gold and cut flowers as the country’s main foreign currency earners.

And this shift is the real point of the Djibouti railway: at the moment 100% of containers arrive in African ports full and 80% leave empty. If Ethiopia is to achieve middle-income status by mid-century, as the World Bank optimistically predicts, then the contribution of manufacturing will have to rise from the 10% level, where it is now, to the 30% that China has achieved, and those manufactured goods will have to find markets around the world. The same applies to all African countries who have set their sights on economic development. For that to happen, something will have to be done about Africa’s ports.

The inactive continent

Africa’s port sector is grossly deficient in both quantity and quality of harbours, quays, cranage, storage systems and hinterland transport. How deficient? Although China and Africa have similar populations (respectively, 1.4 billion and 1.2 billion), in 2015 the five largest Chinese ports moved more than 118 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (teu), whereas Africa’s top five moved less than 10 million. According to Lloyd’s List, the entire continent accounts for just 3% of world container traffic.

This partly reflects the fact that much of the continent’s exports consist of primary commodities such as oil, gas, mineral ores and tropical agricultural produce that are moved on breakbulk cargo ships or tankers, but it also indicates just how little Africa participates in global trade. Throughout its history, as a supplier of involuntary manpower to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries, and as site for colonial plantations in the 19th and 20th centuries, Africa has always shown a net loss in its dealings with the rest of the world.

It is a remarkable fact that 90% of Africa’s total trade, including its internal variety, moves by sea. This is partly because it can’t move any other way: road networks within countries are often inadequate and, outside South Africa and the Maghreb, rail systems are “a losing game”, to quote a recent study by the African Development Bank. For example, Mombasa in Kenya is the largest port in east Africa, and last year succeeded for the first time in handling a million containers. However, the country’s main railway, completed by the British in 1901 (dubbed the “Lunatic Express”) has only enough capacity to move one in 20 of those boxes, so there is a continuous traffic jam of trucks trying to enter and leave the city.

Another factor is the inability of most of the continent’s ports to deal with container ships built after the 1970s. Any vessel that carries more than 3,000 containers – that is, a Panamax or greater – requires a draft of more than 12m, meaning they’d get stuck some distance from the wharf in most African ports.

Then there is the question of whether ships are “geared”, meaning whether they carry their own cranes to load and unload their boxes. Pretty much all modern container ships are gearless – cranes take up too much space and require too much maintenance. However, most African ports require ships to do their own lifting. The result is that, with the exception of the modern terminals such as those at Durban, Tanger Med, Doraleh and Port Said, Africa’s manufactured goods are moved by slow, old “feeders” hauling around 1,200 boxes – the containerised equivalent of a tramp steamer.

As well as the difficulty of physically moving containers into and out of ports, there is the additional problem of getting them through customs and agreeing what import duty is to be paid – a process of unpredictable length, in which time is always on the port authorities’ side.

This means that the average length of time between bringing a container to a port by ship and dispatching it into the hinterland by road or rail is much longer in African ports than elsewhere. A World Bank paper from 2012 noted that, that, with the exception of Durban, dwell times average about 20 days in African ports, compared with three to four days in most other international ports. This average conceals the extreme variability of the statistics. For example, figures for the Cameroonian port of Douala in 2009 show that 19% of containers were dealt with in fewer than six days, but more than 12% took between 20 and 30 days, and a further 12% took between one and three months to be processed. This is a serious matter under any circumstances, but when those containers are filled with goods required for, say, a construction project, the consequential costs are painful to contemplate.

Enter the dragon

The good news for Africa is that this crippling deficiency is beginning to be tackled. China’s demand for oil and minerals, as well as its superabundance of capital for external investment, had led to a surge in economic activity in the east and west of the continent, particularly Nigeria, the Great Lake states and the Ethiopian highlands. To see how pervasive the influence of China has been over the past 10 years, consider the growth in the number of African countries who have China as their primary economic partner. Alongside trade, there has been a large number of other construction and civil engineering projects, as well as a transfer of Chinese managerial skill, capital, commercial networks, and often sizeable – and controversial – immigration flows.

China's economic ties with Africa

This has led to an equivalent surge in port construction projects. Over the next five years, much of sub-Saharan Africa is going to be fitted with state-of-the-art deepwater container terminals that are able to handle supersized box carriers, as well as modern transport networks to distribute them. Alongside the ports, there will be tax-free special economic zones to stimulate foreign investment in manufacturing, and the chance to follow the post-war path of east Asia towards economic take-off.
In the coming weeks, this GCR special report analyses the rise of the “million-teu port” on all Africa’s coasts, and looks at the chances of an infrastructure-led transformation in Africa’s prospects.

We start with West Africa.

West Coast to welcome the world

Top image: Tanger-Med soon to be Africa’s biggest port (APMT)

GCR - Sectors - Africa’s ports revolution: setting the scene for economic take-off

Creepy. Nigeria has a long coastline. Why are major port infrastructure projects only happening in the South-West?

 

[Spyro]

How are white people treat in Nigeria? Asking for a friend

 

[Yehuda]

Mozambique’s economy grows by 3.3% in 2016

FEBRUARY 13TH, 2017

HOME

Mozambique’s economy grew by 3.3% in real terms in 2016, precisely half the 6.6% growth registered in 2015, announced in Maputo the National Statistics Institute (INE).

INE, disclosing National Preliminary Accounts for 2016 reported that the evolution of the economy was primarily due to the performance of the secondary sector, which grew by 5.2%, including the stand out sub-sectors of the manufacturing industry (+7.3%) and construction (6.7%).

The tertiary sector comes second in terms of contribution to GDP with growth of 5.1%, which was driven by financial services whose production grew 25.4%.

The INE also said that the primary sector recorded positive growth of about 3.9%, driven by mining, which grew 10.9%. (macauhub)

Mozambique's economy grows by 3.3% in 2016

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

 

[BigMan]

So what's cracking in Ghana how does it rank as far as economic growth influence etc
Especially in comparison to Nigeria Ethiopia s Africa and other coli favorites

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Mozambique’s economy grows by 3.3% in 2016

FEBRUARY 13TH, 2017

HOME

Mozambique’s economy grew by 3.3% in real terms in 2016, precisely half the 6.6% growth registered in 2015, announced in Maputo the National Statistics Institute (INE).

INE, disclosing National Preliminary Accounts for 2016 reported that the evolution of the economy was primarily due to the performance of the secondary sector, which grew by 5.2%, including the stand out sub-sectors of the manufacturing industry (+7.3%) and construction (6.7%).

The tertiary sector comes second in terms of contribution to GDP with growth of 5.1%, which was driven by financial services whose production grew 25.4%.

The INE also said that the primary sector recorded positive growth of about 3.9%, driven by mining, which grew 10.9%. (macauhub)

Mozambique's economy grows by 3.3% in 2016

3.3 is very small. Investors must be spooked by the tuna/warship scandal.

 

[Yehuda]

St. Kitts and Nevis and Sierra Leone commit to free movement of citizens

By Web Editor - February 15, 2017

High-Commissioner-to-London,-H.E.-Kevin-Isaac-(left)-and-High-Commissioner-of-Sierra-Leone,-H.E.-Edward-M.-Turray

Press Release

London (England) 14 February, 2017 – High Commissioner of St. Kitts and Nevis to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, His Excellency Dr. Kevin M. Isaac and his colleague, High Commissioner of the Republic of Sierra Leone to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, His Excellency Edward M Turay, today signed a mutual visa waiver agreement which will grant visa free access to their citizens to each other’s country for up to 90 days.

H.E.-Kevin-Isaac-(L)-and-H.E.-Edward-M.-Turray

The Agreement conforms with the Unity Government’s strategy and ongoing commitment and efforts to deepen relations and foster relationships and engagements with countries across Africa. In the last eighteen months, Government has been studying how best to exploit the obvious synergies that come from bilateral and multilateral engagements with African countries as well as to exchange best practices.

Sierra Leone is a member of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) which consists of fifteen member countries, including such countries as Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, which are in the Western African region. These countries have both cultural and geopolitical ties and shared common economic interest.

The Sierra Leone High Commissioner expressed satisfaction that both countries have embarked on this new path in their cooperation which has long benefitted from engagement in the context of the Commonwealth. His Excellency Turay welcomed the opportunities embedded in free mobility of citizens and underlined his desire to enhance people to people contact between both countries and regions through tourism and business.

For his part, Dr. Isaac underlined the importance of convergence between St. Kitts and Nevis and countries in Africa and championed the visa free access as a bridge across the Atlantic. High Commissioner Isaac emphasized that the historical links between both the Caribbean and Africa should facilitate deepened relations – a position and project that holds resonance with Foreign Minister, Hon. Mark Brantley’s vision of an expanded diplomatic footprint.

Both envoys offered greetings on behalf of their respective governments and extended invitations at the Ministerial level to take forward the renewed partnership.

St. Kitts and Nevis and Sierra Leone commit to free movement of citizens