Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[Poitier]

Moody's Downgrades Zambia Rating on Power Crisis, Metal Prices
Matthew Hill Gabrielle Coppola
September 25, 2015 — 6:26 PM EDT

• Growth to fall below 5% for first time since 2002, report says
• Moody's sees higher debt costs after currency depreciation

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its credit rating forZambia, Africa’s second-biggest copper producer, citing lower growth and an extended period of weak commodity prices.

Zambia’s rating was cut one level to B2, five steps below investment grade. The outlook on the rating was changed to stable from negative.

The southern African nation is grappling with its worst-ever power shortage and metal prices that have fallen to six-year lows, prompting companies including Glencore Plc to halt operations. The kwacha has fallen 41 percent against the dollar this year, theworst performance among the world’s currencies.


“The key driver for the downgrade is our expectation that the trend of persistent fiscal deficits and deterioration in debt metrics witnessed over the past few years is likely to continue,” Moody’s analyst Matt Robinson wrote in an e-mailed report. “An extended period of weak commodity prices, constrained copper production, and domestic electricity shortages” are hurting business activity, he wrote.

Yields on Zambia’s $1.25 billion Eurobonds maturing in 2027 have climbed to 11.4 percent from 9.4 percent when they were sold in July.

Moody’s held its rating of Zambia’s foreign debt at B1 in May while changing the outlook to negative from stable. Glencore’s decision to suspend output in the country threatened growth the government forecast would reach 5 percent this year, the company said in a report this month.

Standard & Poor’s on Friday affirmed its B rating on Zambia, also five steps below investment grade, with a stable outlook.

Moody's Downgrades Zambia Rating on Power Crisis, Metal Prices

 

[Poitier]

Rapper J Cole sneaks into Tanzania
American rapper J Cole was on Thursday spotted at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Arusha,

American rapper J Cole was on Thursday spotted at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Arusha, Tanzania. PHOTO| FILE
American rapper J Cole was on Thursday spotted at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Arusha, Tanzania.

According to his social media pages, however, he has not updated his being in Tanzania, but it was suspected he was headed to the Serengeti National Park, which several Hollywood stars have been visiting.

J Cole has never performed in East Africa but has done so in South Africa.


Rapper J Cole sneaks into Tanzania

 

[Poitier]

China sets up $2Bn fund for 600 projects in Africa and Asia, to give 150,000 scholarships

27 SEP 2015 18:02AGENCIES


Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech at a banquet jointly hosted by Washington State government and friendly communities in Seattle, Sept. 22, 2015. Xi is on his first state visit to the U.S. (Photo/Xinhua/Liu Weibing).

CHINA will set up a $2 billion fund for an initiative involving 600 projects in African and Asian countries, Zhang Jun, director-general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of International Economic Affairs, said in New York.

The fund will focus on areas such as education, poverty reduction, health care and infrastructure in less-developed regions, China President Xi Jinping said earlier in a speech at the United Nations in New York.

China will seek to increase the fund to $12 billion by 2030, and will write off interest-free loans owed by the least developed regions, he said.

“China will not impose political conditions on countries in getting access to the fund,” Zhang said at a briefing.

The “Six 100s” initiative, was declared at a South-South cooperation roundtable Xi hosted.

Also during the period, Beijing will provide 120,000 opportunities and 150,000 scholarships for citizens of developing countries to receive training and education in China, and help nurture 500,000 professional technicians for the developing world, Xi added.

China, said the president, will also set up an Academy of South-South Cooperation and Development.

-Bloomberg News and Xinhua.

China sets up $2Bn fund for 600 projects in Africa and Asia, to give 150,000 scholarships

 

[Poitier]

Obama to allocate additional $300m to fighting HIV among African women


National security adviser Susan Rice announces plan, whose goals include providing antiretroviral treatment to 12.9 million people by the end of 2017



A pharmacist prescribes medication to an HIV positive patient at a clinic in Kitwe, Zambia. Photograph: Alamy
Reuters

Saturday 26 September 2015 11.07 EDT

The Obama administration said on Saturday it was allotting an additional $300m to the effort to reduce HIV infection among girls and young women in 10 sub-Saharan African countries.

The sum would help the main US programme for fighting Aids in Africa to meet goals including providing antiretroviral treatment to 12.9 million people by the end of 2017, said Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

“No greater action is needed right now than empowering adolescent girls and young women to defeat HIV/Aids. Every year, 380,000 adolescent girls and young women are infected with HIV,” Rice said in a statement.

The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, working with partner countries, now provides antiretroviral treatment for 7.7 million people worldwide, Rice said.

The program, known as PEPFAR, was launched in 2003 by former president George W Bush and has provided billions of dollars for antiretroviral drugs and treatment in Africa.

By 2017, Rice said, PEPFAR also aims to “provide 13 million male circumcisions for HIV prevention, and reduce HIV incidence by 40% among adolescent girls and young women within the highest burdened areas of 10 sub-Saharan African countries.“

The countries at the focus of the program are: Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Obama to allocate additional $300m to fighting HIV among African women

 

[Scientific Playa]

Burkina Faso’s Interim President Returns to Power, Week After Coup
By HERVÉ TAOKO

The interim president of Burkina Faso, Michel Kafando, center, after addressing the news media in Ouagadougou, the capital, on Wednesday. Credit Joe Penney/Reuters

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The interim president of Burkina Faso, the target of a coup last week, returned to power on Wednesday, as West African leaders arrived here to finalize a resolution to the political crisis.

The interim president, Michel Kafando, thanked other countries for condemning the coup, which was staged by allies of former President Blaise Compaoré, who was ousted in a mass uprising last October.

“We are proud of the mobilization and fearlessness of the Burkinabé people, especially its youth, whose unwavering determination helped to stop the usurpation,” Mr. Kafando said.

The situation here was notably calmer than in previous days. Daily life was slowly returning to normal; supermarkets, gas stations and shops have reopened. Soldiers who opposed the coup and who had entered the capital starting on Monday evening pulled back on Wednesday.

Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage

• 
  
  African Leaders Call for Reinstatement of President of Burkina FasoSEPT. 22, 2015
• 
  
  An Apology and a Vow to End Burkina Faso CoupSEPT. 21, 2015

The details of the potential compromise — which was arranged by leaders of the Economic Community of West African States, known as Ecowas, and was to be overseen by Naba Baongo II, the leader of the Mossi, Burkina Faso’s largest ethnic group — were far from clear, however.

The leader of the coup, Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, who has defied calls for his surrender, was at the airport here to greet the West African leaders — including President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of Nigeria — as they arrived. The general did not, however, join them and a United Nations representative, the Ghanaian diplomat Mohamed Ibn Chambas, at a later ceremony where Mr. Kafando was formally reinstated.

For now, a standoff between the Presidential Security Regiment, an elite unit founded by Mr. Compaoré and led by General Diendéré, and the armed forces appears to have eased, reducing the threat of further violence. Under the new truce, the military agreed to withdraw about 30 miles from the capital, while the regiment pledged to return to its base and to provide an inventory of its weapons within 72 hours.

French diplomats, who had sheltered Mr. Kafando after the coup and urged their citizens to remain indoors, noted an “improvement in the security situation.”

However, two serious questions remained unanswered. One was whether the coup’s leaders, including General Diendéré, would be given immunity from prosecution over the violence of the past week. The other was whether associates of Mr. Compaoré, including General Diendéré’s wife, Fatou, and two prominent politicians, Achille Tapsoba and Eddie Komboïgo, would be allowed to take part in new elections.

The coup was precipitated in part by the interim government’s decision to prohibit those politicians from taking part in the elections, originally scheduled for Oct. 11. Under the proposed compromise by West African leaders, the elections would be delayed until late November.

Hannah Olivennes contributed reporting from London.

 

[Scientific Playa]

Buhari Meets With Bill Clinton & Gates In New York

President Muhammadu Buhari during a bilateral
meeting with Bill Clinton and Bill Gates in New York

 

[Poitier]

September 27, 2015 5:02 pm

Interview: Alassane Ouattara, Ivory Coast president
Maggie Fick

©Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images
Game plan: President Ouattara presses advantage in commodities

President Alassane Ouattara sees transformative potential in Ivory Coast’s economic comeback — not just for his country, but also for the largely untapped and underserved west African market of more than 300m.

“We’re working very hard to improve production for the west African subregion,” Mr Ouattara told the Financial Times in an interview in Abidjan, the commercial capital.

The president says processed versions of the raw materials Ivory Coast produces are in demand throughout the region, not only in francophone nations but also in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest market with a population of 170m.

Ivory Coast also already exports electricity to several of its neighbours including Mali and Ghana, the president notes. Now, he argues, is the time for Ivory Coast to push its advantage as one of Africa’s top producers of a range of agricultural commodities, from cocoa and cotton to palm oil and rubber.

“Once we get a west African market of 300m people, of which maybe about more than 100m are mid-income consumers, we will be able to expand our production . . . We are quite confident that, with all of the raw materials we produce now, we will be able to do more [processing locally].” Ivory Coast, with its population of about 22m, has the largest middle-class market in French-speaking west Africa.

The government is in talks with Swiss companies interested in making juice to sell in the region, he says. Cemoi, the French chocolate maker, opened a factory this year to make products, including one similar to Nutella, and is considering exporting to other west African countries.

Mr Ouattara became president with international support in 2011 after a post-election crisis in which 3,000 people died. The former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund has focused on attracting foreign investment to build up the country’s ailing infrastructure and position it as the natural place to do business in the 15 nations that make up the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

Key to making the most of the regional market, the president says, is processing more of Ivory Coast’s agricultural riches locally and exporting them throughout the region, which for now depends on more costly food imports from Asia and Europe.

Though Ivory Coast is looking to get ahead of the curve, some believe that chocolate and cashews are unlikely to enjoy serious demand among west African consumers any time soon. But the president has high hopes for rice.

“By 2017, we’ll be able to produce enough rice so that imports will drop . . . and we’ll be able to export rice to the west African subregion. Rice is a basic commodity for all of our countries,” Mr Ouattara says.

So is palm oil, which a UK-listed Israeli company began producing in Ivory Coast two years ago, and is now exporting to meet a deficit in the region.

The revival, led by Mr Ouattara after a decade of crisis, has seen the economy grow at an average of 9 per cent for the past three years. This year, despite the crash in commodities prices that is hurting oil-dependent states such as Nigeria, GDP growth in Ivory Coast is still expected to be near 8 per cent.

Ivory Coast has the largest middle-class market in francophone west Africa
rail link between Niger, Benin and Togo.

Air Côte d’Ivoire, the national airline that began operations after the carrier Air Ivoire went bankrupt, is 20 per cent owned by Air France-KLM and runs daily flights to the region’s major capitals, including daily hops to its anglophone neighbour Ghana and flights four times per week to the Nigerian megacity of Lagos.

The president’s plan addresses a problem highlighted by the World Bank in a study this year. This found that although 60 per cent of west Africans work in agriculture, the region still depends heavily on food imports — which have tripled in the past decade.

The new president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, former Nigerian agriculture minister, says economic stability on the continent depends on African states improving their ability to feed themselves instead of remaining at the bottom of the value chain as raw material exporters.


http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bed99e16-5ada-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3n2YRmWOz

 

[Poitier]

Dangote inaugurates $250m plant in Douala, Cameroon
By Daily Post Staff on August 27, 2015@dailypostngr

Dangote

Dangote Cement Plc, on Thursday, achieved another feat with the inauguration of 250 million-dollar (N48.75 billion) cement grinding plant in Douala, Cameroon.
Dangote Group also laid the foundation stone for a 200metre jetty in Douala.

Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President/ Chief Executive, Dangote Group, said at the ceremony, that the plant, with a capacity of 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum (mmtpa), was a great feat in the operations of the company.

“The plant is our largest greenfield project in a neighbouring country with which we not only share a boundary but also a long history of brotherly relationship dating from our colonial days,” Dangote said.


He said that the company signed the investment agreement for the development and operation of a quarry and cement grinding with the government of Cameroon on Sept. 19, 2011.

He said that massive economic revolution of the Cameroonian government in the power sector, infrastructural development, industrial development and the transportation industry had impacted positively on businesses.

“We can attest to this as we have been one of the major beneficiaries,” said Dangote.

He said that Dangote Cement first came into Cameroon in 2008 but signed an Investment Agreement with the government of Cameroon in 2011.


Dangote said that the investment had increased the country’s economic value through creation of thousands of jobs supported the government’s aggressive infrastructural development.

He listed other benefits of the investment to include; conservation of scarce foreign resources through drastic reduction of importation of cement; creation of revenue for the government through payment of VAT, royalties and taxes.

Dangote said that plans were on the way to commence the second phase of the plant which would double its capacity from the current 1.5mmtpa to 3.0 mmtpa.

He said that the company would soon open an additional quarry in the country and inaugurate more than 200 new trucks to enhance service delivery to its customers.

“Our desire to increase our investment with the Phase 2 project is based on not only the fast growth rate of the Cameroonian economy but also due to the warm welcome extended to us and the enabling environment created by its government.


“Our choice of Cameroon for this multi-million dollar investment is strategic because it is the largest economy in Central Africa and is well endowed with abundant natural resources,” he said.

He said that the country enjoyed political stability, adequate security and growing development of infrastructure.

Dangote also said that the investment would further strengthen the bilateral ties between Nigeria and Cameroon and fast-track Africa’s economic integration.

“Africa has the lowest per capita consumption of cement, an important index in measuring development, and only deliberate efforts by Africans to produce more than current requirements to force down prices can remedy the situation,” Dangote said.

According to him, the company has on Aug. 26 signed a 4.34 billion-dollar contract with Sinoma International Engineering Company Ltd., a Chinese construction giant, for the construction of 11 new cement plants in 10 African countries, and Nepal in Asia.

Dangote said the total capacity of the proposed plants would be 25 mmtpa, projecting that the company’s combined capacity within Africa and outside the continent would hit 100 mmtpa by 2020.

“In Nigeria, we contributed to the successful transformation of the country from being the biggest importer to a major producer and net exporter of cement,” he added.

He commended the Nigerian government for the encouragement and nurturing of the company from inception.

Dangote said that the company owed its existence to the favourable investment policies of the government which encouraged the growth of import substitution industries, especially in areas with comparative advantage like in cement.

Also speaking, President Paul Biya of Cameroon, lauded Dangote for contributing to the country’s development.

Biya, who was represented by Mr Philemon Yang, the Prime Minister, said that the company had contributed massively to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through the investment.

He said the project had created hundreds of jobs and urged other foreign companies to emulate Dangote’s drive and invest in the country.

Biya said that the country’s economy was liberal and friendly and willing to accommodate foreign investors.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the company, with headquarters in Nigeria, currently operates in 14 African countries including Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

Others are Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Niger, Liberia, Mali and Cameroon. (NAN)

Dangote inaugurates $250m plant in Douala, Cameroon - DailyPost Nigeria

 

[Poitier]

Dangote to commission Tanzanian cement plant on October 10
By Daily Post Staff on September 28, 2015@dailypostngr



Africa’s foremost cement manufacturer, Dangote Cement is set to commission its new 3.0 million metric tonnes per annum cement plant located in Mtwara District of Tanzania on October 10, 2015.

The company will also hold the grounding breaking ceremony for 25 hectares of Jetty land at Mgao village in Mtwara District the same day.

The commissioning of the new cement plant which is part of the company’s Africa expansion strategy will be the fourth in the series after Ethiopia, Zambia and Cameroun. Cement plants due for commissioning this year are located in Senegal and South Africa, while construction works are ongoing in several other African countries.


The groundbreaking for the Tanzanian Cement plant held on May 27, 2013 and within 24 months, the plant is ready for commissioning. With the plant in operation, Tanzania is on its way to become of the African countries who are self-sufficient in cement production.

Governments and distinguished Africans are commending the President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote for his massive investments across Africa. The Nigerian Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo speaking at the commissioning of Zambian Plant lauded Aliko Dangote on his investment in in several African countries saying the Federal Government is proud of Dangote.

Osinbajo who described Aliko Dangote as an exceptional African entrepreneur, commended his phenomenal vision, entrepreneurship and commitment to the development of Africa and Africans.


He said “Dangote is a Nigerian from Kano State and he is a pan-Nigerian and pan-African who has done us all proud and his companies spread over 16 African countries, are a signal of an African multinational enterprise.”


Zambian President, Edgar Lungu who also praised the business ingenuity of the Aliko Dangote said “his business expansion across African is worthy of emulation by African businessmen in the task of continental development.”

Cameroonian President, Paul Biya at the commissioning of the 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum Dangote Cement Grinding Plant in Douala thanked Aliko Dangote for his massive investments in cement plants across Africa adding that Dangote has shown willingness to play a significant role in the industrialization of the Cameroonian economy.

For Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, Aliko Dangote is Africa’s most potent investor who has rebranded Nigeria through cement plants located in many African nations. According to him, Dangote Cement billboards are located across many African streets in countries where the company has plants which he said presents Nigeria as a source of investment in other nations.

He said, “Dangote has spurred the industrialization of many African economies through the establishment of integrated cement plants which are geared towards making those countries self-sufficient in cement production, the real sector is the engine room of any economy therefore investments in the sector will have a multiplier effect on other sectors leading to massive direct and indirect job opportunities.”

Dangote to commission Tanzanian cement plant on October 10 - DailyPost Nigeria

 

[Poitier]

Agriculture in Africa
Wake up and sell more coffee
Small farmers in Africa need to produce more. Happily that is easier than it sounds

ON A hillside about an hour’s drive north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is a visible demonstration of the difference between the miserable reality of smallholder farming in Africa and what it could be. On one side of the steep terraces stand verdant bushes, their stems heavy with plump coffee beans. A few feet away are sickly ones, their sparse leaves spotted with disease and streaked with yellow because of a lack of fertiliser.

Millicent Wanjiku Kuria, a middle-aged widow, beams under an orange headcloth. Cash from coffee has already allowed her to buy more land and a cutting machine that prepares fodder for a dairy cow that lows softly in its thatched shed. Her bumper crops are largely a result of better farming techniques such as applying the right amount of fertiliser (two bags, not one) and pruning back old stems on her trees. Simple changes such as these can increase output by 50% per tree. Her income has increased by even more than this, because bigger berries from healthy trees sell at twice the price of their scrawnier brethren, says Arthur Nganga of TechnoServe, a non-profit group that is training Mrs Kuria and thousands of other smallholders in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan. This year’s crop will pay for a pickup, she says, so she no longer has to hitch rides on a motorcycle.

Mrs Kuria’s success invites a question. If it is so easy to raise a small farmer’s output, why haven’t all the small farmers managed it? To say that the answer matters is a wild understatement. Africa’s poorest and hungriest people are nearly all farmers. To lift themselves out of poverty, they must either move to a city or learn to farm better.

It should be possible to grow much more in Africa. The continent has about half of the world’s uncultivated arable land and plenty of people to work it. It is true that erratic rainfall adds to the risks of farming on large parts of the savannah, but switching to drought-tolerant varieties of plants or even to entirely different ones—cassava or sorghum instead of maize, for instance—can mitigate much of this problem. Indeed Africa has in the past given glimpses of its vast potential. Five decades ago it was one of the world’s great crop-exporters. Ghana grew most of the world’s cocoa, Nigeria was the biggest exporter of palm oil and peanuts, and Africa grew a quarter of all the coffee people slurped.

Since then it has shifted from being a net exporter of food to an importer. Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of agricultural exports has slipped to a quarter of its previous level; indeed, the entire region has been overtaken by a single country: Thailand (see chart). This is largely because Africa’s crop yields have improved at only half the pace of those elsewhere and are now, on average, a third to a half of those in the rich world. Farmers in Malawi harvest just 1.3 tonnes of maize per hectare compared with 10 tonnes in Iowa.

There are several reasons for the stagnation in African agricultural productivity but poor policies have played a large role. In many countries state-owned monopolies for the main export crops were established either before independence or soon after. The prices paid to farmers were generally squeezed to create profits that were meant to be invested in other, sexier, industries. Such policies failed to spark an industrial revolution but succeeded in making farmers poorer. In Ghana, for instance, the colonial administration and first independent government taxed cocoa exports so heavily that farmers stopped planting new trees. By the 1980s cocoa production had collapsed by two-thirds.

In the 1990s many of these policy mistakes were compounded when, urged on by Western donors and aid experts, many African countries dismantled their agricultural monopolies without giving time for markets to develop or putting in place institutions to link farmers to them. This was good for commercial farmers in places such as South Africa, where output soared, but cut off remote smallholders. Farmers in Zambia, for instance, now pay twice as much for fertiliser as those in America.

Yet this Cinderella sector is now being seen as an opportunity rather than a “development problem”, says Mamadou Biteye, who heads the African operations of the Rockefeller Foundation, a charity. Money from organisations such as Rockefeller, the Gates Foundation and do-gooding companies such as Nestlé is pouring into supporting small farmers.

The first benefit is improved productivity. Farmers have been shown how to increase crop yields sharply simply by changing their techniques or switching to better plant varieties. A second is in improving farmers’ access to markets. Progress here is being speeded along by technology. In Nigeria the government has stopped distributing subsidised fertiliser and seeds through middlemen who generally pocketed the subsidies: it reckons that only 11% of farmers actually got the handouts that were earmarked for them. Instead it now directly issues more than 14m farmers with electronic vouchers via mobile phones.

Or take Kenya Nut, a privately owned nut processor. It is using technology from the Connected Farmer Alliance to send text messages to farmers giving them the market price of their produce, so they are not ripped off by the first buyer to show up with a lorry.

After years of underperforming, Africa’s smallholders have a lot of catching up to do. The World Bank estimates that food production and processing in Africa could generate $1 trillion a year by 2030, up from some $300 billion today. Yet many remain sceptical that Africa’s small farmers will achieve their potential. To some, the rewards on offer seem too good to be true, like the $50 on the pavement that the economist in the joke walks past because “If it were real, someone would already have picked it up.”

Yet the success of projects such as those run by TechnoServe and Olam (a commodity trader that helps farmers grow more cashews, sesame seeds and cocoa in Nigeria) suggest that there may well be $700 billion on the pavement—or rather, in Africa’s fields. Instead of subsidising steel and other big industries, African nations should wake up and sell more coffee—not to mention cocoa, nuts and maize.

From the print edition: Middle East and Africa

http://www.economist.com/news/middl...?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/wakeupandsellmorecoffee

 

[Poitier]

HUMAN RIGHTS
Killing Kenya
People & Power investigates allegations that Kenya’s police are involved in extra judicial killings.

23 Sep 2015 10:19 GMT | Human Rights, Politics, Kenya, Africa, Al-Shabab

• Last December, an Al Jazeera network investigation examined shocking claims that the government of Kenya has been running secret police death squads, tasked with assassinating suspected terrorists and criminals. At the time the Kenyan government strongly refuted the allegations but reports and rumours in Kenya about extra-judicial killings have continued to proliferate.
  
  Ten months on, People and Power asked Mohammed Ali, one of Kenya’s top independent investigative journalists, to find out why.
  
  In this deeply worrying film, Ali discovers that mysterious killings are indeed continuing amid a culture of apparent impunity, leaving Kenyan security forces open to suspicions that they are unaccountable and seemingly out of control.
  
  He discovers that over 1,500 Kenyan citizens have been killed by the police since 2009, and that statistically, Kenyans are currently five times more likely to be shot by a policeman than a criminal.
  
  With often little or no investigation by the Kenyan state into the circumstances surrounding these deaths, he finds evidence to suggest that an increasing number of Kenyan police officers may be complicit in what have been described as summary executions of suspects.
  
  Even the Kenyan army, seen by most Kenyans as less corrupt and more trustworthy than the police, is now allegedly implicated in the torture and forced disappearance of terror suspects in the country’s northeastern region.
  
  This film contains graphic images of violence and its aftermath that some viewers may find disturbing.
  
  FILMMAKER'S VIEW
  
  By Mohammed Ali and Seamus Mirodan
  
  In the capital Nairobi alone last year, the police killed 127 Kenyans. That's a fatal shooting every three days. And in the aftermath of almost every one of these episodes the police account has been the same: the dead men were armed, dangerous and in the process of attacking the public or officers of the law. In other words, the use of lethal force by the police is routinely justified either as self-defence or as having been necessary to protect the Kenyan public from grievous harm.
  
  But we also heard from the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, a group of leading Kenyan pathologists dedicated to investigating human rights abuses. It has found that the evidence held in medical records, witness statements and even the police's own accounts show that only 10 percent of these shootings actually came in a bid to preserve life.
  
  
  
  
  An eyewitness who claims she saw plain clothes policemen summarily execute young men one morning in December last year in Nairobi, filmed two officers shoot one man in the head at point blank range [Al Jazeera]
  As many as three quarters of police shootings in Kenya, say critics, could instead be classified as something more sinister; as possible summary executions, where a person accused of a crime is killed on apprehension or instead of arrest without benefit of a full and fair trial.
  So what's going on?
  
  That Kenya faces serious challenges from crime and terrorism is without question. As anyone who has spent any time in Nairobi can attest, carjackings, muggings and armed robberies are commonplace. So-called "thugs" patrol the streets on the first Friday night of every month, knowing that people have just been paid, and the pickings will be rich. They often arm themselves with knives, and some have access to guns. Violent crime is so prevalent that even leaving a car window open in traffic can leave one liable to being forcibly and swiftly separated from a mobile phone, wallet or wristwatch.
  
  
  
  
  We speak to Dr Eric Thuo from the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, a group of leading Kenyan pathologists dedicated to investigating human rights abuses [Al Jazeera]
  There is also no doubt that Kenya faces a significant internal and external security threat. In recent years, Somali militant group al-Shabab has perpetrated a series of gruesome attacks on Kenyan soil. In 2013, for example, as the world’s media watched in horror, 67 people - men, women and children - were gunned down when the group attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
  
  Then in May of this year came the worst terror attack to have taken place on Kenyan territory: the rounding up and assassination of 147 Christian students at the country’s Garissa University. And the threats seem to grow - to date, an estimated 3,000 Kenyan citizens have crossed the border into Somalia to join and be trained by al-Shabab - many of them seemingly destined to return to Kenya to carry on a violent insurgency that has no end in sight.
  
  The Kenyan public, shocked and appalled by these various threats to their peace and stability, have demanded action. The government has repeatedly expressed its willingness to stand firm in the face of those threats and forcibly respond.
  
  But can that ever justify abandoning the rule of law, setting aside due process and meeting violence with more extreme violence? Because that is what seems to be happening in Kenya, where on a daily basis elements of the police service seem to be completely unrestrained in their use of force; given licence (whether officially granted or not) to abduct, shoot and kill with impunity people deemed - often on the flimsiest of evidence - to be a threat. Deaths that all too often go unremarked except by the grieving families of the victims are rarely, if ever, properly investigated.
  
  
  
  
  Felix McKenzie, 21, and his friend were shot dead by the police. The Nairobi police chief claimed they were muggers, but the students' families said their sons had been killed on a visit to the city to check on their student loans. Felix was a biochemistry student [Al Jazeera]
  It’s not as though the strategy is especially effective - except perhaps in encouraging more violence in return.
  
  From the Muslim community in Mombasa to the marginalised youths of the sprawling Nairobi slums such as Korogocho or Kibera, we heard time and time again that government actions are creating a "them and us" culture; a breeding ground for endemic violence between economically, politically or religiously disenfranchised communities who feel they are outside the law and therefore have no path left open other than to pick up a gun and a hostile state which seems set on engaging them in battle.
  
  We spoke to many members of the Muslim community in Mombasa who were convinced that police killings were principally responsible for motivating young men to cross the border into Somalia into the arms of al-Shabab.
  
  One man who had been through that process told us that after his brother had been killed by the police, he attended a three-month al-Shabab training programme where he was taught how to use automatic weapons against his countrymen. His point was clear, profiling and targeting young Muslims by raiding their mosques, abducting them off the streets and "disappearing" them is merely creating a new generation of militants who will want to return the favour in spades.
  
  Recent history is littered with examples of what happens when state security forces are given (or take) free reign to act as judge, jury and executioner in response to a perceived threat. All too quickly those forces become unanswerable to anyone other than themselves; they become agents of repression rather than security and the innocent majority increasingly become victims too.
  
  
  
  
  Police have repeatedly raided Mombasa's Masjid Musa mosque, which the government claims is a breeding ground for al-Shahab militants [Al Jazeera]
  As you will see, in the course of making this documentary we came across numerous examples of how this could be happening in Kenya today. We dug away at the evidence, looking always for signs that we were wrong, that we were misinterpreting what we had seen with our own eyes or what eyewitnesses had told us.
  
  With covert cameras, we secretly filmed in a Nairobi city morgue where the bodies of those killed in police shootings were dumped on the floor, negating any attempt to gather forensic evidence. We obtained mobile phone footage filmed by a woman who had watched in horror as police had shot and killed from close range a young "bank robber" lying wounded and helpless on the street.
  
  In the company of human rights workers, we visited unmarked graves on the outskirts of a northern Kenyan town that had recently (until someone came and dug up the bodies) held the bodies of at least seven murder victims. It was likely, we were told, that that they had been abducted and killed by security services on suspicion of links to al-Shabab.
  
  And then, when we felt there were indeed serious questions to be answered, that the stories we had heard had substance, we took them to the highest levels of the Kenyan police in Nairobi seeking a response. We asked repeatedly in person and in writing for an interview with the Inspector General or the Kenyan National Police. We set out all our allegations and offered the organisation a chance to give us a statement. We said we wished "in the interests of fairness and accuracy" to hear the police's side of the story, to incorporate any official reply into our film. Our requests went unanswered. And maybe that's the problem with a culture of impunity; those who have no reason to fear legal sanction or discipline feel no real compunction to explain their actions.
  
  But the questions for Kenya's police forces won’t go away. They will merely become more pressing as the death toll mounts.
  
  Source: Al Jazeera
  Killing Kenya

 

[Scientific Playa]

former head of the Nigerian Central Bank, like the Federal Reserve...

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Emir Sanusi marries 18-year-old Adamawa princess as fourth wife
By Ameh Comrade Godwin on September 26, 2015@dailypostngr


The Emir of Kano has married Sa’adatu Barkindo-Musdafa, the daughter of the Lamido of Adamawa, Muhammadu Barkindo-Musdafa.

Sa’adatu, 18, is the emir’s fourth wife. She recently completed secondary school and is being enrolled for higher studies.

Premium Times reports that the wedding fatiha held inside the palace of the Lamido minutes after Jumma’at prayer.

According to the report, the influential emir only sent out invitation to some dignitaries across the country, adding that Kano government officials sneaked into Yola for the wedding fatiha to avoid journalists.

The Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, was said to have acted as the guardian for the groom, while his Adamawa counterpart, Jibrilla Bindow, played the role of the bride’s guardian, who gave her hands out in marriage to the monarch.

Emir Sanusi marries 18-year-old Adamawa princess as fourth wife

Emir Sanusi secretly marries Adamawa princess - Premium Times Nigeria

 

[Poitier]

Angola's credit rating downgraded to B+ while Nigeria's remains at BB-; but there's hope for recovery

28 SEP 2015 20:05M&G AFRICA REPORTER


The Cidade Alta in Luanda, Angola, stretches along a ridge lined by pink colonial buildings including the president's and archbishop's palaces. (Photo/ Flickr/ David Stanley).

FITCH Ratings has downgraded Angola’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating by one notch to “B+”; the outlook on the rating is stable. The decision was mainly motivated by the fact that the country remains highly dependent on the crude oil industry, and low prices for the commodity have “resulted in rising public debt, falling reserves and weakened growth.”

Fellow oil-exporter Nigeria’s rating remained unchanged at “BB-” with a negative outlook, similarly as a result of the slump in crude oil with prices that now appear to be the new normal; oil accounts for 70% of Nigeria’s revenues.

In Angola’s case, the ratings agency said it acknowledged the authorities’ proactive response to the oil price shock, referring to tighter fiscal and monetary stances while the kwanza exchange rate has been allowed to depreciate. Sharply lower crude oil prices will however still hold major implications for the economy in general.

Fitch predicts the current account will “shift into deficit in 2015, the first time since 2009.” The ratings agency also highlights the risks posed by a slowing Chinese economy and the impact on demand for Angola’s exports.

The impact of lower oil prices on domestic revenues will necessitate a sharp increase in public debt – Fitch forecasts a fiscal deficit of 4% of GDP in 2015, while public debt is “expected to jump above 40% of GDP in 2015 from 23.1% in 2013.”

In Nigeria’s case, lower oil production, election-related uncertainty, fiscal consolidation and a shortage of foreign exchange have contributed to real GDP growth slowing sharply in the first quarter of this year.

The ratings agency nonetheless expects economic activity to rebound going forward: “With uncertainty over economic policy expected to ease and continued dynamism within the private sector, we forecast real GDP growth to rebound to an average of 5% over 2016 and 2017.”

The negative outlook on the credit rating implies that Fitch sees little chance of an upgrade over the near term. That said, the rating could be downgraded if the economic policy response to low trending oil prices remains weak or contributes to a sharp decline in foreign reserves or a significant rise in fiscal debt.

But NKC African Economics, majority owned by Oxford Economics, a leading independent global advisory firm, has a slightly dimmer view of Nigeria’s prospects.

“While we agree that the generally peaceful conclusion to the presidential elections represented a positive development and that risk has eased off to an extent, recent signs suggest that economic policy under the Buhari administration might very well be less liberal than what we originally expected to be the case,” the brief from NKC research states.

“We also remain concerned about the adverse effects of tight forex liquidity spilling over to the real side of the economy… [the liquidity] conditions may well persist for the duration of 2015 and heading into next year,” stated analyst Corbus de Hart.

NKC sees a more optimistic scenario for Angola over the long term. “While the country is definitely facing severe headwinds, the prospect of increased crude oil production over the medium term still counts in Luanda’s favour.”

“That said, signs that large-scale hydrocarbon projects are being significantly delayed, or signs that regulators are using unconventional measures to defend the currency to the detriment of domestic business conditions, could very well see the outlook change to negative moving forward,” the research brief states.

Angola's credit rating downgraded to B+ while Nigeria's remains at BB-; but there's hope for recovery

These commodity economies

 

[Poitier]

 

[BigMan]

ruh roh