Tag Archives: south africa

South Africa and the AU [Rant and rave alert!!]

31 January 2012

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As you may already know South African candidate for the AU Commission Chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (ex-wife of president Zuma) failed to get elected. Instead the AU extended Mr. Jean Ping’s term till June. Ms Dlamini-Zuma intends to vie for the seat again in June.

South Africa and its backyard (SADC member states) had lobbied hard for Ms Dlamini-Zuma.

The South African Business Day reports:

Mzukisi Qobo of the University of Pretoria says: “It is clear that this is an intensely divisive campaign, and plays into the hands of those who view SA as harbouring intentions of running roughshod over other countries. Unity in the AU is a facade reinforced by a poorly conceived notion of pan-Africanism.

“Africa’s political elites still think very much in terms of regional groupings — east Africa, north Africa, southern Africa and west Africa — as well as along the colonial lines of Francophone, Lusophone and Anglophone. These are realities that are there.”

SA’s foreign policy stance has been back and forth, which may have caused more divisions with countries like Nigeria and Egypt.

 But political analyst Steven Friedman does not think policy “flip-flopping” was the reason Ms Dlamini-Zuma did not get the post. With its economic infrastructure strength, other countries feared that SA would dominate Africa politically if given a chance, he says.

To which I say, why not?

What would be so wrong with a reasonably stable and important regional player taking charge of the rudderless dictators’ club institution that is the AU? The organization’s failures in the recent past – including in Libya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Somalia, Zimbabwe, DRC, Central African Republic, etc – have been partly because no single country has managed to emerge as its de facto leader and ultimate guarantor (forget the delusion late King of Kings, he was a clown on steroids).

Instead of having a strong leadership – whether by a single country or by a group of regional representatives – the AU has opted to have weak leadership in the form of a Commission headed by nondescript individuals political lightweights unable to rally the member countries to any respectable cause. The only time the club’s dictators are ever united is when they dump on the ICC and all other manner of foreign infringement on their “sovereignty” (which means the right to starve, jail or murder their citizens). The existing post of a rotating presidency has also been a complete sham. Obiang was the latest one to occupy the post. Yes, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. This guy.

May be this episode will end Pretoria’s navel-gazing and encourage it to focus on having a coherent Africa policy that will provide strong leadership for the AU.

A leaderless organization of 54 states, new $200m headquarters or not, is a useless organization.

For more on this see here and here.

Also, check out this thought-provoking piece on the symbolism of the new AU headquarters.

How Africa Tweets

25 January 2012

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Click on image to enlarge.

Just out of curiosity I did a quick calculation of per capita tweets based on the figures from Portland Communications. The biggest difference between the two rankings is Gabon. My guess is that the rather slight variation in the right and left columns (especially for the top ten) is a reflection of the fact that about 57% of tweets geolocated in the region are from the ever ubiquitous cell phones.

Ghana’s ranking on either column was rather surprising.

Top 20 (by volume) Top 20 (per capita)
South Africa
Kenya
Nigeria
Egypt
Morocco
Algeria
Rwanda
Tunisia
Mali
Cameroon
Sudan
Angola
Namibia
Niger
Burkina Faso
Ethiopia
Libya
DR Congo
Gabon
Ghana
South Africa
Kenya
Morocco
Egypt
Nigeria
Rwanda
Tunisia
Namibia
Algeria
Mali
Cameroon
Gabon
Sudan
Angola
Niger
Libya
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Ethiopia
DR Congo

More on this hear.

HT Jason Stearns.

Tackling Africa’s Image Problem

1 December 2011

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Back in 2000….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now…

The latest issue of the Economist has “Africa” on the cover, with the pronouncement that the continent has, in the last ten years, moved from hopeless to hopeful.

Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa’s land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India. The health of many millions of Africans has also improved, thanks in part to the wider distribution of mosquito nets and the gradual easing of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. Skills are improving: productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in America.

All this is happening partly because Africa is at last getting a taste of peace and decent government. For three decades after African countries threw off their colonial shackles, not a single one (bar the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius) peacefully ousted a government or president at the ballot box. But since Benin set the mainland trend in 1991, it has happened more than 30 times—far more often than in the Arab world.

Population trends could enhance these promising developments. A bulge of better-educated young people of working age is entering the job market and birth rates are beginning to decline. As the proportion of working-age people to dependents rises, growth should get a boost. Asia enjoyed such a “demographic dividend”, which began three decades ago and is now tailing off. In Africa it is just starting.

More on this here.

Quick hits

27 November 2011

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Follow the goings on in the DRC (especially this election season) over at Alex Engwete’s blog.

Living under the shadow of Kony and his men in Eastern CAR.

On a related note, the Ugandan army’s dirty war in the Congo and CAR.

Shame on the ANC. But there is still hope for cleaner politics in South Africa. The ANC is an over-size coalition with a high chance of internal breakup in the not so distant future. It might even occur sooner, over the Zuma succession. And this time it might not be a rather benign COPE affair. You can read more on the controversial bill over at the Economist.

Trying God? Churches claim to have cured HIV positive congregants. This goes beyond faith, it is naked exploitation. And a call for government involvement.

And lastly, a very dictator Christmas (via Blattman)

Zuma may be a one-term president

7 November 2011

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Back when he dislodged Thabo Mbeki South African President Jacob Zuma promised that he would only serve one term. But having tasted the power of the presidency, he now wants a second term. His bid, however, has not been well accepted within the ANC.

Although it is common knowledge that the much-married Zuma wants a second term he has remained equivocal on the issue, at one point saying “I never said I would serve one term and I have never said that I would want two terms”  (The New Age reported on Wednesday, June 8th).

The Africa Confidential reports:

Zuma’s main rivals, Tokyo Sexwale and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, are trying to fix it so that Motlanthe would be a one-term president, Sexwale would be his deputy and Paul Mashatile, Gauteng’s provincial leader and Premier, would be ANC national chairman. They may offer a deputy presidency to Lindiwe Nonceba Sisulu, the Defence Minister and Zuma’s ally. Sisulu and Sexwale, however, do not get along.

An anti-Zuma tirade erupted from the General Secretary of the Congress of SA Trade Unions, Zwelinzima Vavi, who said there is leadership paralysis in the ANC and warned that the country is in danger of ‘imploding’. He criticised Zuma’s ‘doublespeak’ on economic issues.

More on this here.

Effects of Conditional Vs. Unconditional Cash Transfer

2 November 2011

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Baird, McIntosh and Ozler have an upcoming paper in the QJE investigating the differential impacts of conditional and unconditional cash transfer in Malawi:

Starting with schooling outcomes, we find that although dropout rates declined in both treatment arms, the effect in the UCT arm is 43% as large as that in the CCT arm. Evidence from school ledgers for students enrolled in school also suggests that the fraction of days attended in the CCT arm is higher than the UCT arm. Using independently administered tests of cognitive ability, mathematics, and English reading comprehension, we find that although achievement is significantly improved in all three tests in the CCT arm compared with the control group, no such gains are detectable in the UCT arm. The difference in program impacts between the two treatment arms is significant at the 90% confidence level for English reading comprehension. In summary, the CCT arm had a significant edge in terms of schooling outcomes over the UCT arm: a large gain in enrollment and a modest yet significant advantage in learning.

The paper then gets nuanced:

When we turn to examine marriage and pregnancy rates, however, unconditional transfers dominate. The likelihood of be- ing ever pregnant and ever married were 27% and 44% lower in the UCT arm than in the control group at the end of the 2-year intervention, respectively, whereas program impacts on these two outcomes were small and statistically insignificant in the CCT arm.

……….. Our findings show that UCTs can improve im- portant outcomes among such households even though they might be much less effective than CCTs in achieving the desired behav- ior change.

Check it out here.

What does a Sata Presidency Mean for Zambia?

2 October 2011

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UPDATE:

For a closer take on the Sino-Zambian connection check out Louise Redvers’ piece for the BBC.

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So the Economist beat me to writing about what a Sata presidency means for the Zambian economy, especially with regard to foreign investment.

For the two of you out there who are not conversant with the campaign details in the Zambian election, Mr. Sata’s main campaign strategy involved characterizing incumbent President Banda as someone who was out to mortgage Zambia’s future to foreign investors, and especially China.

Here is what the Economist had to say:

“He is too savvy a politician not to realise how much this impoverished country of 13m people needs China’s cash. Over the past decade, the Chinese have invested over $2 billion in Zambia, the GDP of which is only $16 billion. More than half of that came in last year. And China is committed to pouring in billions more. There are now about 300 Chinese companies in Zambia, most of them privately owned, employing around 25,000 locals. Standards differ: some companies treat their workers badly, but most of the big state-owned companies genuinely seek to respect local labour laws.”

The long and short of it is that Sata will definitely kick out a few shady companies that were operating outside the law – and these are not just Chinese firms; the South Africans and Australians also have some shady businesses in Zambia. The former, especially, have a lot of money-laundering operations.

More on this here and here.

On the democracy and governance front, things won’t change much. President Sata’s camp is full of recycled UNIP veterans. UNIP was the independence party that ruled Zambia between 1964 and 1991. Mr. Sata, however, could surprise us by finally passing through a new constitution for Zambia. The last parliament killed the proposed constitution.

Quick hits

25 September 2011

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The world marathon record is back in Kenya, where it belongs.

Zambian Economist has nice maps showing the results of the just concluded general elections.

(Dada) Kim on Haba na Haba has a story on the continuing decline of Malawi into overt and brutal dictatorship. President Bingu wa Mutharika recently appointment his wife and brother to the cabinet. This reminded me of this paper on the inefficient extraction of rents by dictators.

President Zuma of South Africa still hasn’t established his dominance within the ANC (and probably never will).

The drought in the Horn has thus far claimed 10,000 lives. The Bank is increasing its aid package to the region.

Quick hits

5 August 2011

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Guide to arguing on the internet (HT Lauren).

Speaking of arguing on the internet, I like the drama that is spats between economists and other academics on their respective blogs.

The Economist presents the faces of famine in the Horn. It is beyond sad that so many people should be condemned to suffer this man-made tragedy.

Brett Keller has posts here and here on Sam Childers (a.k.a. machine gun preacher), a gun-runner into the habit of doing morally and ethnically dubious things in the name of God. Keller says that Childers is “stockpiling arms at his orphanage and has admitted to selling weapons to unnamed armed factions in Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda.”

In Zambia (where I shall be for the elections in Sept.) the politics of citizenship and belonging are yet to be settled 50 years after independence. We recently witnessed the dangers of de-legitimizing whole sections of countries as outsiders in Cote d’Ivoire. I hope that if Sata ever wins he will not do what incumbent Ivorians did to ignite a rebellion in the northern reaches of their country. For more on this check out this great book on the Ivorian collapse. I have read it and absolutely loved it.

A muddy few months ahead for the South African government. Infighting with the ANC top brass might mean an early exit for President Zuma. With over 60% of the votes in the last election, the ANC is essentially an oversize coalition prone to internal wrangles. It will be interesting to see how Zuma weathers the storm in the midst of challenges from both COSATU and Malema.

Lastly, the current issue of the Journal of African Economies looks at the impact of higher education in Africa. The main takeaway is that the low quality of education at lower levels (primary and secondary) has meant that the biggest bang for the buck on the Continent, as far as education is concerned, only comes with higher education. Too bad that many of those that get higher education are underpaid or out of the Continent all together.