Category Archives: africa

the political economy of violence

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The Economist reports:

YESTERDAY it was Afghanistan and Congo. Today it is Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. Violence, it seems, is always with us, like poverty. And that might seem all there is to be said: violence is bad, it is worse in poor countries and it makes them poorer.

But this year’s World Development Report, the flagship publication of the World Bank, suggests there is a lot more to say. Violence, the authors argue, is not just one cause of poverty among many: it is becoming the primary cause. Countries that are prey to violence are often trapped in it. Those that are not are escaping poverty. This has profound implications both for poor countries trying to pull themselves together and for rich ones trying to help.

Many think that development is mainly hampered by what is known as a “poverty trap”. Farmers do not buy fertiliser even though they know it will produce a better harvest. If there is no road, they reason, their bumper crop will just rot in the field. The way out of such a trap is to build a road. And if poor countries cannot build it themselves, rich donors should step in.

Yet the World Development Report suggests that the main constraint on development these days may not be a poverty trap but a violence trap. Peaceful countries are managing to escape poverty—which is becoming concentrated in countries riven by civil war, ethnic conflict and organised crime. Violence and bad government prevent them from escaping the trap.

Interesting piece. It is particularly important to note that violence affects everyone’s investment decisions, whether rich or poor.

The thing about poor places is that everyone is poor, elite or not.

No matter that Theodore Obiang’s son is buying the second most expensive boat in the world. If he has to hop on a plane to LA to have fun – instead of say, creating Africa’s Dubai in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea – he and his father remain tin pot dictators. The same applies for Idris Deby of Chad, Biya of Cameroon and many others. These dictators may have property abroad but the fact that they cannot accumulate property at home because of structural insecurity of their property rights (a coup is always a crazy junior officer away) continues to confine their countries to penury.

What do you do when even the dictator does not have stable property rights? How can you develop when no one is secure enough to invest in factories?

burkinabe strongman in trouble

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The BBC reports that:

Soldiers in Burkina Faso’s capital have mutinied, with gunfire resounding throughout Ouagadougou overnight. The protests began when members of the presidential guard started shooting into the air in protest at unpaid housing allowances.

President Blaise Compaore is due to meet a UN envoy in the city later, officials say, after he fled overnight. Mr Compaore, in power since 1987, had sought to calm soldiers earlier this month after similar complaints.

… the house of the president’s personal chief of staff had been burned down, some buildings and shops bombarded, including a pro-government radio station. The mutiny has come a surprise to many residents as the president had recently held a reconciliation meeting with the security forces, listening to their demands, Mr Thiombiano said.

Mr. Compraore has been in power since 1987. It is not yet clear how determined the mutineers are or if senior officers are behind the open rebellion against the Burkinabe president. More on this soon.

Kenyan politician loses $10 million at airport

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UPDATE: The blogosphere is already abuzz with the potential absurdity of the Standard story. Apparently $ 10 million in $100 notes weighs 100kg. It is hard to see if someone could carry that much weight around with them, much less be allowed onto a plane. There is vital information missing somewhere. The Standard editorial staff might have been asleep on the job,  again.

The East African Standard reports that a high flying Kenyan politician (either Uhuru or Ruto) lost $ 10 million at the Jomo Kenyatta  airport in Nairobi.

Police are investigating the case. It is believed the said politician had carried the money to the Hague in case he needed cash bail? [whatever happened to wire transfers??? This guy should fire the troupe of yes men around him, and his hapless bodyguards]

The incident raises the question of the legality of carrying such large sums of money in and out of the country. Did the Kenyan authorities know about this? How about the Dutch authorities?

The Kenyan blogosphere is already generating rumors about money laundering and what not. I say the CID should get their noses into this mess.

In unrelated news, parliament will, in a week’s time, be told the names of suspected gold smugglers from the DRC. A few weeks ago the president of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, flew into Nairobi to lodge a complaint with his Kenyan counterpart Mwai Kibaki. Mr. Kabila believes that a Kenyan cartel is smuggling minerals out of the Congo and denying his useless government of vital tax revenue.

economic hardship in uganda

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Strongman Yoweri Museveni might be nearing the end of the road. For 25 years he has ruled Uganda as the country recovered from Idi Amin’s disastrous rule and a brutal civil war. To add to the stability brought about by his regime, Uganda has also been one of the fastest growing in Africa since the mid 1990s.

But recent inflationary pressures on the prices of fuel and other essential commodities are increasing pressure on the strongman. The last two days have seen running battles in Kampala and Gulu, with at least two reported dead. Opposition leader Kizza Besigye was reportedly shot in the hand by a rubber bullet on Thursday.

Museveni’s game plan in reaction to all this still remains unclear. Whatever the eventual strategy, it is gonna be hard to keep the rallies against his regime bloodless if the people keep coming out to protest. Most people tend to forget that Museveni has never really stopped being a military ruler.

History shows that the most frequent way through which military rulers are ousted, at least on the continent, is through coups.

Those who enter power by the gun also tend to exit by the gun.

Overall, African autocrats with the longest tenures include: Obiang’ of Equatorial Guinea (32 years); Edwardo dos Santos of Angola (32); Biya of Cameroon (29); Compraore of Burkina Faso (25); Mswati of Lesotho (25); Museveni of Uganda (25).

Other autocrats fast approaching the league of lifetime rulers include Omar al-Bashir of (Northern) Sudan, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia (who is planning on crowning himself King), Idris Deby of Chad, and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

what I am reading

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(Whenever time permits) I am currently reading the following books:

The King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone by J. Morris

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Kindleberger and Aliber

The two are quick reads targeted at the general audience. The King of Capital, in particular, is very catchy and hard to put down, especially if you are interested in the intrigues of high finance. Manias and Panics dispels the notion that “this time its different” and reminds us that bubbles are part of the wild schumpetarian ride we call capitalism.

I also just ordered Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of World Economy by Dani Rodrik.  I have read a bunch of good reviews of the book and will probably write something about it once it hits my mailbox since its all about a subject that is close to my heart.

In the meantime check out Rodrik’s blog.

nigeria holds first transparent election since 1993

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The last time Nigeria had a transparent election was in 1993. Then, opposition leader Moshood Abiola won the election only to be denied the chance to lead Nigeria by strongman Ibrahim Babangida. Mr. Abiola died in jail in 1998. Nigerians had to wait until May of 1999 to see the end of kleptocratic military rule. Mr. Olesegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, was Nigeria’s first elected president since the early 1980s. His party (Mr. Obasanjo’s) the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has since then won two elections under questionable circumstances, to put it mildly.

The latest election appears to be different.

Initial results show that PDP is set for a thumping in the legislative and governorship races, although its presidential candidate (Goodluck Jonathan) is still the front-runner with 62% approval rating.

Credit goes to Attahiru Jega, a professor of Political Science and head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for ensuring that the Nigerian elections have credibility both at home and abroad.

Watch this space for the results of the gubernatorial and presidential elections in the coming weeks.

 

from the annals of history

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One insurgent movement within the country lingers from the 1964-65 wave of rebellions. Localized in the Fizi-Baraka area by Lake Tanganyika, this group – known in recent years as the Parti de la Revolution (PRP) – achieved notoriety in 1975 by kidnapping four Stanford students from a zoological research station in Tanzania. Its composition is ethnically restricted to Bembe, though its leader, Laurent Kabila, is a Shaba Luba. The movement now has only a few hundred followers, and has no possibility of enlarging its base of operations.

That was Crawford Young writing in Foreign Affairs in 1978.

In 1997 Laurent Kabila, backed by Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda, was in charge of a much stronger force and marched from the east of the DRC (then Zaire) into Kinshasa. After the overthrow of Mobutu Laurent Kabila was sworn in as president, only to be assassinated in 2002 and succeeded by his adopted son, Joseph Kabila. The younger Kabila continues to face a simmering insurgency in the east of the country.

Karl Marx once noted that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. President Kabila’s continued ineptitude may be watering the seeds of his own ouster by rebels from the east in a farcical repeat of history.

what if ruto and uhuru were jailed by the icc?

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Kenyan politics is currently in flux. Two key presidential candidates, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto may be barred from running for public office next year on constitutional grounds. The key beneficiaries of such an eventuality will most probably be Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka, the Premier and Vice President respectively.

But what would such an eventuality mean for Kenya?

I’d say not much.

Over the last few weeks Uhuru and Ruto have been crisscrossing the country and holding chest-thumping rallies to prove to someone – either the ICC or the Kenyan political and economic elite – that they have the support of the grassroots. They have also issued thinly veiled threats that violence may erupt in the country if they are whisked to the Hague and barred from running for president in next year’s general election. Why does Uhuru and Ruto feel the need to do this?

In my view, and according to the rules of power politics, a tiger need not shout about its tigritude [I believe it is the great son of Nigeria, Wole Soyinka who coined this phrase].

That Ruto and Uhuru have felt compelled to shout about their support-base and issue threats tells me that they are feeling the heat. The fact of the matter is that the key backers of the duo are the ones who would lose the most in case of a resurgence of violence – think of Kenyan retail, banking, insurance, media and transport barons. These are the people that will lose the most when the Mombasa-Kampala Highway is impassable and Equity Bank closes everywhere. They know this and Uhuru and Ruto also know this. Furthermore, igniting further violence would most certainly attract sterner reaction from international watchdogs like the ICC and the UN Security Council.

There is also the [small] matter that now ordinary Kenyans will also know where exactly the violence is coming from.

Violence is therefore not an option. Not for Ruto and Uhuru. Not for their backers. And most certainly not for the rest of Kenya.

I suggest that the rest of Kenya call their (Uhuru and Ruto’s) bluff about violence next year.

Their battles with justice should not derail the much needed institutional reforms that will take the country out of the miasma of mediocrity that continues to engulf most of the Continent.

In the final analysis, the words of former VP George Saitoti will ring true: There comes a time when Kenya gets bigger than any single individual. Ruto, Uhuru and the wider political class are about to be schooled on this maxim the harsh way.

Trends on Aid, Growth and Government Spending in Africa

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Data from the Penn Tables

The graph shows average growth rates, government expenditure as a fraction of GDP and foreign aid as a fraction of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1960. Both the growth and aid trends are encouraging. Growth has been positive since the mid-1990s and aid seems to be trending downward in the long-run. It is also apparent that the African growth tragedy was to a large extent confined to the disaster periods that were the “lost decade” of the 1980s (caused by the oil shocks, commodity bursts, debt crises and SAPs) and civil wars era of the early 1990s.

Despite the ongoing crises like this, this and this, the region as a whole appears to be experiencing an economic upswing. In the coming decade, the Economist projects that 7 out of 10 of the fastest growing economies in the world will be African.

kenya’s ocampo six at the hague; kenyan politics will never be the same

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The denouement of the saga is still uncertain. Two Kenyan political supremos, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, are appearing at the ICC in the Hague to answer to charges of crimes against humanity. The two are among six Kenyans accused by Moreno Ocampo for being the brains behind the violence in 2007-08 in Kenya that killed over 1300 and displaced close to half a million people.

The ICC trial of the six is likely to bring to light the hypocrisy of Kenya’s ruling class. For far too long the political elite have used violence as a political tool. Former president Moi perfected the craft and got away with it in 1992 and 1997 (more people died then than in 2007-08). If all goes well, it appears that this time around things will be different.

My hope is that the six accused will bring all to light so that Kenyans can know their leaders for who they really are.

There is no doubt that ethnicity will continue to cloud Kenyan politics. But it is also true that Kenyans will, from now on, know what is at stake when their leaders incite them to violence. They will know that this crop of people do not give a rat’s behind about their (the people’s) plight. They will fully understand why the government of Kenya can spend millions of dollars in defense of a few men while hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens (and victims of crimes committed by the very few men) continue to subsist in limbo. They will understand why millions get spent every year to build offices, buy expensive cars and pay for the lavish lives of the ruling elite while ordinary Kenyans starve.

They will know that their tribal leaders do not have their interests at heart.

Whatever the outcome of the ICC trial, the mystic around Kenya’s ethnic leaders is gone. These little venal and inept men and women who like parading around as gods will no longer have the final word on everything.

Niger’s military keeps its word

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The Nigerien military, led by Salou Djibo, has handed over power to democratically elected President Mahamadou Issoufou. The military ousted strongman Mamadou Tandja 14 months ago after he attempted to extend his rule beyond the term limit. Twice now, the last time being in 1999, the Nigerien military has intervened in politics in support of democracy.

The new president has promised to tackle poverty and famine in the uranium-rich country.

Former president Tandja had been in power since 1999. In late 2009 he was supposed to leave office at the end of his two terms but amended the constitution in a sham referendum allowing him to stay on for a third term. This forced the military to step in. Mr. Tandja’s presidency did not do much for Niger’s 15 million odd citizens. 63% of them continue to live on less than a dollar a day.

links i liked

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Aid Watch on dictators and growth

Blattman has a nice installment in the ongoing brain drain debate.

Interesting South African blog.

 

inept african leaders should be pushed aside

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Rant and Rave alert.

African dictators enjoy some of the highest expected tenures in the world. They are also some of the worst performing leaders. Theodore Obiang of Equatorial Guinea has been in power since the late 1970s. Abundant oil and a low population makes his country be classified as a high income country by the World Bank (over $34,000 per capita income); despite the fact that over 70% of his people live below the poverty line, even as his son plans to buy the 2nd most expensive boat in the world. A huge chunk of his country’s oil money goes directly to his bank account.

This has been the story of African leadership in the last 50 years. Half a century after independence Africans find themselves in a position in which former colonial powers can still roll in and take over with minimal resistance. At the moment Cote d’Ivoire, the jewel of post-independence West Africa, is on its knees. Former colonial power, France, controls the main international airport. It is as if 1960 never happened.

It is like 1960 never happened because tiny Portugal can still roll in and take over Equatorial Guinea.

At the risk of sounding like a dependence theorist, the reality is that external domination of the African Continent only ended on paper. Poor leadership has continued to confine the entire region in the sick ward of the world. The numbers tell it all. The region’s maternal and child mortality figures are mind-boggling. In many places the standards of living belong in centuries long past.

What is on the mind of Laurent Gbagbo as he continues to destroy the lives of millions of Ivorians? What is Idriss Deby’s plan for Chad, and its oil money that he continues to steal with alacrity? Why does Mugabe think that he is God’s gift to Zimbabwe? And why does Zuma of South Africa continue to be embroiled in useless and shameful sideshows involving his sexual life instead of assuming the important task of leading this rudderless continent out of mediocrity?

ethnicity and public employment in kenya

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The Daily Nation reports:

The survey undertaken by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) gave shocking details of how political patronage and personality-based leadership had reduced the civil service into an exclusive club of the big communities at the expense of the so called small communities.

According to the survey, members of the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba and Luo communities occupy 70 per cent of all jobs in the civil service.

Keep in mind that Kenya has about 42 ethnic groups.

I personally did not find this very shocking. The report indicates that the two ethnic groups that have occupied the Kenyan presidency since independence, the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, together make up 40% of the civil service.

My hope is that this report will initiate debate over merit in public employment. It is about time we had standardized and transparent ways of hiring public servants and not leave all the discretion in the hands of venal pols.

support the victims of cote d’ivoire’s war

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Texas in Africa has an idea about how you can help the people caught in the conflict in Ivory Coast.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the presidential palace in Abidjan may have fallen to forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the recognized president of Ivory Coast. It is not clear whether former president Laurent Gbagbo was in the complex. More on this soon.