Sean Obedih

As Rwanda day 2013 comes to London for the first time, let me take this opportunity to talk about the role that the Rwandan business community in the diaspora can  playing by embracing  the creation of Rwanda startup culture and make a difference in creating much needed jobs at the same time benefiting from the growth of the ICT sector.

Rwanda Day is a periodical event that is held in different countries around the world and brings together Rwandans and friends of Rwanda to reaffirm their core national value, celebrate the country’s progress and discuss ways they can best  be part of Rwanda’s socio-economic transformation.

This event is generally aimed at giving a rare opportunity to members of the Rwandan Diaspora to interact directly with the Head of State and discuss matters that affect them, and get updates on the country’s progress. It is also aimed at encouraging members of the Rwandan Diaspora to partake in the country’s development process.

The proliferation of Information Technology (IT) as a mighty tool to enhance business efficiency is creating opportunities for Rwanda’s young geniuses as the brave ones passionately set up small businesses that specialise in the development of simple applications to exploit the increasing demand for software, especially among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Two years ago Marc Andreessen coined the phrase  Software is Eating the World and  as a Venture Capitalist  whose job it is to spot future trends in the economy and customer behaviour, he should know. The same applies to Rwanda in a very big way and this presents a fantastic investment opportunity at the basement level.

Rwanda, a small, landlocked and natural-resource poor country, has hedged its bets on becoming a knowledge-based economy. ICT development is a pillar of Vision 2020 – President Kagame’s plan to turn Rwanda into a developed country by 2020. In 2000, the government launched the National ICT Plan (NICI I), to create an enabling environment for ICT initiatives to be implemented over four five-year cycles. By 2010, fibre optic cables spanned the countryside, even in places where tarmac didn’t.

Now, with sufficient infrastructure in place, NICI-3 (the third instalment) aims to push forward the ‘participatory phase’ of Rwanda’s ICT development.

If you are a Rwandan living in Rwanda or in Diaspora, it is time for you to seize business opportunities offered by Rwanda.

Privatization and altering government’s role in the capital markets created  a more favourable climate for start-up capital formation; Internet Café, Call Centres, Computer Consulting, Hardware Reselling are the usual suspects but the signs are there that Rwanda is also learning from its neighbours especially Kenya.

A typical example of this can be seen through Klab an open space for ICT entrepreneurs to collaborate and innovate in Rwanda, which opened in July 2012.

kLab is Kigali’s open community innovation centre for entrepreneurs, innovators and mentors in the tech community. Their mission is to promote, facilitate and support the development of ground-breaking ICT solutions by nurturing a vivid community of entrepreneurs and mentors in Rwanda.

The idea of an ‘innovation hub’ is not new to Africa. The continent is undergoing a tech-hub boom; there are now more than 50 tech hubs, labs, incubators and accelerators in Africa, covering more than 20 countries.

The stunning space, along with high-speed internet was donated by the Rwandan Development Board (RDB). Both the RDB and Rwanda’s ICT Chamber play an active role in managing the growth of the space. Other costs, such as renovating and furnishing inside of the space, were funded by JICA, the Japanese development agency. When it comes to fostering technological innovation in Rwanda, simply the existence of a place like kLab, government funded or not, is a big step in the right direction.  No one can deny the tremendous economic, social, and infrastructure development the country has experienced , kLab is barely in its infancy, and while the government may be able to build cool new spaces overnight, a community cannot be built the same way but this is where the Diaspora can make a big difference in building local capacities to make good use of the infrastructure; there’s ample local talent, just to name a few:  Clement Uwajeneza, and Clarisse Iribagiza are trailblazers, and there are surely more.

It will take a great deal of cultivation and leadership to transform the kLab into a meaningful entity for Rwanda’s technology sector the same way that Google Campus became the epicentre of start-up activities in East London but diasporan and other experts in various fields can become mentors to some of the companies operating from Klab and build the relationship from there, all you need is a Skype connection and a weekly chat session with a local entrepreneur before investing any cash.  Practically speaking the best way to strengthen the Rwandan innovation ecosystem is to improve access to financing. A great example of this model in action can be seen in Israel where the government through its various departments is the first line of angel investment in start-ups and innovations. So in order to fill this gap, the Government can make outside investors an offer they can’t refuse by creating tax incentive scheme similar to SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) created by the UK government designed to boost economic growth in the UK by promoting new enterprise and entrepreneurship – of course, all this should be open and attractive to Rwandans in the diaspora.

Rwanda also lacks an adequate pool of angel investors, which delays innovations and start-ups from taking off or contributes to their eventual failure as owners struggle to raise capital; businesses that attract angel investors are always seen as good candidates for further soft funding from venture capitalists because they often benefit from their management skills. This is a gap Rwandan diasporans in particular could  fill by forming a good pool of angel investors  not only because they possess the capital and skills but also because they understand the market better than any foreigner will do.

There’s a need for these potential investors to be made aware of investment opportunities and events like Rwanda Day are a good first step.

Sean is an entrepreneur and founder of Founders’ Hive, a peer-to-peer startup business incubator based in east London. Prior to starting Founders’ Hive, Sean created an award-winning multi-ethnic brand of skin toned first aid products now sold under the name of Urban Armour. He is a graduate of the University of Buckingham.

Follow him on Twitter:  @Sobedih.

Important to protect civilians from fallout of defeating the LRA (Image Source: UN Photo Library)

On the 28^th of February this year, an unfortunate incident happened in Garamba National Park, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)-affected area in North-Eastern Congo. A group of Congolese soldiers went on patrol, in order to track LRA-elements; while at the same time a group of (armed) park rangers was patrolling the park. In an area where civilians were present, both groups noticed each other, and both groups considered the other group to be the LRA. The shooting between the two groups, left one Congolese soldier and one civilian dead, and three soldiers and one civilian wounded. The following day, the park rangers were actually attacked by the LRA in the same area, but managed to push them away after heavy fighting. A park ranger later died of his injuries.  At least, all of this was the official version of the events, which was communicated by the Congolese soldiers involved.  Reports from local civil society groups and international military actors revealed that the above group of soldiers was poaching in the park: they had killed 2 hippopotamus, and had asked civilians to help them cutting and transporting the animals. The park rangers had noticed them, and fighting erupted, which resulted in the above injuries and killings. In retaliation, the soldiers had attacked the park rangers the next day. They also threatened to attack any park ranger leaving the park, or passing through their area. This tense situation also had a strong effect on civilian life: not only were civilians wounded through the above attacks; civil society actors complained that markets could no longer take place, as civilians feared more violence and attacks by the soldiers, who were blaming civilians for the park rangers’ attacks.

These events are illustrative for life in the LRA-affected area in the Democratic Republic of Congo: the fight against the LRA has led to a strong militarization of the area, of which various armed actors are taking advantage. These are not only Congolese soldiers, but also armed poachers and bandits. All of these actors pose a threat to the security of the civilian population.  This crucial point is neglected by a number of external interventions in the area, which are principally focused on Kony and the LRA. This approach has again been put in the limelight through the recently launched US War Crimes Rewards Programs, which gives awards of up to $ 5 million for evidence leading to the capture of Joseph Kony and the two other top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The measure is complementary to previous efforts to stop the LRA violence, such as the Kony 2012 campaign, which also had a specific focus on Kony in order to end the conflict.  Both actions explicitly state how they want to end civilian suffering in LRA-affected areas through their actions – Ben Keesey, Invisible Children’s CEO for example explicitly stated in an interview with The Times newspaper,  about the Kony 2012 campaign how “The true measure of success for this campaign is if people’s lives are getting better on the ground”.

These Kony- and LRA-driven approaches have two major problems: one, they ignore the complex and multi-faced reality of security threats to people’s lives in LRA-affected areas. The presence of the LRA acted as a catalyzer for these different threats. Some of these threats were already present in this area, but became further empowered through the presence of the LRA. Other threats are inherently related to the fight against the LRA and the militarization of the area. Second, an exclusive focus on ‘hunting’ the LRA obscures these other threats, and makes addressing these more difficult.

The LRA Crisis Tracker is a good example of the limits of this ‘LRA-only’ approach: this tool, developed by Invisible Children and Resolve, collects data on LRA incidents in LRA-affected areas. In analysing the number of LRA attacks, abductions and killings, the Crisis Tracker indeed is a good advocacy tool to highlight the LRA threat – and does a great job in silencing misinformed criticisms that the LRA is no longer active. Yet, the Crisis Tracker in itself presents a flawed image of the security situation, by only focusing on one of the armed threats to the population – the LRA, and not looking at the other threats. The partial nature of these statistics becomes very clear when looking at other data from the area: the ‘protection cluster’ coordinated by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, keeps statistics on ‘protection’ incidents towards civilians in LRA-affected areas in the DRC – these incidents include rape, killing, abduction, looting, and so on. These incidents are collected through international NGOS and local organizations on the ground in the affected areas, and do not only focus on the LRA. In doing so, they show how the lives of civilians are a continuous struggle, in which they are threatened by a variety of armed actors: in 2011, a dramatic 48% of all incidents against civilians were committed by individual Congolese soldiers, while (only) 17% were caused by the LRA. The remaining incidents are caused by bandits (Congolese or South Sudanese), armed poachers (from as far as Libya, Chad or South Sudan) and local authorities (such as the police).

This does mean that the LRA is not an important threat. On the contrary, much of the problems are caused by its presence: many of these armed actors – and particularly the Congolese soldiers – are only present in the area because of the LRA. Although the soldiers’ presence to a certain extent indeed deterred the LRA, the presence of the LRA equally offered a number of opportunities. This sometimes happened in collaboration with civilian actors, but more often, soldiers were preying on the civilian population. Various actors, such as armed bandits and again the Congolese soldiers, have in turn been copying LRA attacks, in order to put the blame on the LRA. In other words, the ‘LRA hunt’ allowed individual armed actors to profit from the situation in various ways – with a strongly negative effect for the population. As shown by local civil society reports, a rather cynical example of this dynamic was the trade in ammunition and weapons by Congolese army actors to the LRA in 2010; something which was found out after two LRA prisoners disclosed how they were receiving supplies from Congolese soldiers.

In their efforts to present a simple and accessible story, the anti-LRA lobby organizations (Invisible Children, Enough, Resolve) neglect an important part of the local security dynamics, and the negative consequences of these for the population. While this ‘LRA only’ view definitely allows to gather funding and attention – as the Kony 2012 video has shown – this view equally leads to a reduced effectiveness in interventions, as they are not equipped to deal with the other threats to people’s lives. Invisible Children’s high-frequency radio’s in LRA-affected areas are a good example of this: these radio’s allow remote communities to seek for help in case of LRA-attacks, and to communicate with other localities. This would have been useful to protect the population from large-scale LRA attacks, such as the 2008 and 2009 Christmas massacres (although it remains unclear how any intervention force could arrive in time). It however is much more difficult to protect the population from the small-scale hit-and-run attacks which the various armed actors in LRA-affected areas are using. And it certainly is much more difficult to protect the population from harassment from individual Congolese soldiers, as it simply is (too) risky for civilians to report on army abuses through these radio posts (as these radio posts are exchanging military information, the armed forces closely monitor them); and as soldiers have on occasions controlled these radio posts. Even when using code language, the operators still fear retaliation. In other words, a particular view on civilian protection in these areas – in which only the LRA is perceived as a threat, not any other groups, and certainly no internal threat – leads to particular interventions, which are ill-equipped to address all suffering, and report all incidents. Given the high rate of incidents with soldiers, this is highly problematic.

Moreover, the ‘LRA only’ narrative  has made it more difficult for humanitarian organizations active in the area to rally support and funding for a more holistic approach on civilian protection, which also addresses these other threats. This ‘messy’ image is much harder to sell to the wider public, and much harder to intervene in: the threat is no longer a clearly definable ‘evil’ outsider, but a multiple threat which consists of both insiders (such as individual Congolese soldiers, local bandits) and outsiders (the LRA, foreign bandits, different groups of poachers). Reducing these internal threats is only possible through addressing the behavior of the government soldiers, and re-establishing the judicial system and the general functioning of the state in these marginalized areas.  However, and particularly in 2011 and 2012, humanitarian actors were complaining that this dominant ‘LRA only’ discourse made it very hard to find donor money for this: all programs had to be defined as LRA, whilst the reality on the ground is much more complicated and messy. Consequently, a number of humanitarian actors were discontent that they had to emphasize the presence of the LRA in their programs, and not the other groups. As a result, a number of programs were implemented which were specifically targeted towards LRA-effects, but – in a situation of strongly reduced LRA attacks – had relatively little results; while the increased attacks and dangers of other actors were not sufficiently addressed.

In sum, the fight against the LRA does not occur in a vacuum: it leads to a range of abuses, which have been made possible through the fight against the LRA, and which are inherently related to the militarization of the region. A strict focus on the LRA in this ‘messy’ security context, and not on how various actors profit from this situation, further empowers these armed actors, and further helps these abuses occur. A second important point is that the protection of civilians equally does not occur in a vacuum. If organisations such as Invisible Children really want to improve the lives of people on the ground – as their CEO pointed out – realities on the ground should not be sacrificed for simple narratives. It is cynical to single out one threat to civilians (the LRA), while neglecting others, which on a daily basis constitute a major threat for the civilian population.

Kristof Titeca is a Postdoctoral Fellow from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), based at the Institute of Development and Management (University of Antwerp) and the Conflict Research Group (University of Ghent).

Susana Edjang

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that have driven the global development agenda, since September 2000, when Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, and 191 member states surprised the world by unanimously agreeing and making, the Millennium Declaration.

The Millennium Declaration was both a surprising and encouraging outcome for global progress.  Not long before the Millennium Declaration was signed, just the previous year, 1999, world leaders failed to launch “the Millennium Round” of trade negotiations during the Word Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial meeting in Seattle.  High, middle- and low-income countries could not find it in themselves to agree a global trade agenda that would benefit citizens in rich and poorer countries. In contrast, the MDGs were aspirational and unanimously adopted.  They presented a vision of the world very difficult to disagree with; a world with less hunger; with education for all, without unnecessary deaths of women and children from diseases and misfortunes that could easily be prevented.   Despite this rosy picture, however, the MDGs faced criticism from the start.  They were criticised for being too driven by a pro-aid agenda favoured by the “Triad” — the United States, Europe and Japan — that with support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had pushed through the Millennium Declaration.  Through aid disbursed to achieve the MDGs, these donor groups were said to increase their influence over national policies in aid recipient countries.

Where was Africa in all of this? The first decade of the 21^st century Africa became one of the fastest growing regions in the world.  Its aggregate GDP grew an average of about 5% per year and international organisations and private sector alike started hailing the potential of the African lions.  But this progress was often marred by Africa’s development performance.

As with other regions, African and African countries signed and endorsed the Millennium Declaration, and the top recipients of overseas development assistance (ODA) were African countries.

African countries, many of whom predominated in the list of the least developed countries and human development indicators, were now also singled out as being among the MDGs worse performers.  As of December 2011, Africa was on track to achieve just one goal (universal primary education) and indicators for other two MDGs gender equality and empowerment of women (goal 3), and on improved supply of potable water (goal 7).

But is Africa’s situation so bleak?  Using the MDGs as a framework may present Africa’s lack of progress on the MDGs as worse than it actually is.  The MDGs use as a benchmark to monitor progress the year 1990, and not 2000 (when they were agreed).  Africa’s growth during the 90s was poor, an average of 2% per year.   Economists like Michael Clemens, Charles Kennedy and Todd Moss estimated that Africa needed a rate of growth of at least 7% over a decade to meet the MDGs – a rate of growth that would “be in the top tenth of decades growth rates recorded 1965-2005 for all countries”.  Other countries and regions were on track to achieve some of the MDGs with lower growth rates.  So Africa started the MDG race at a disadvantage and off track to meet the MDGs because of the framework established for measuring success.

Yet, since the 1990s, poverty has been reduced in 76% of African countries (MDG 1).  More over, the rate of progress on some goals is accelerating to the point that, in some cases, Africa’s rate is faster than that of South East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Western Asia.  By 2010, 11 African countries were among the top 20 countries that could report absolute progress (in terms of share of the population) on the MDGs; and countries as diverse as Ethiopia, Egypt and Angola had halved their poverty rate.

But what does this progress have to do with the MDG agenda?  Although it is difficult to empirically attribute Africa’s advance to the MDGs it is equally difficult to deny the impact that they have had on development over this period.  Groups like the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) argue that progress on the achievements of the health MDGs, particularly goal 6 on infectious diseases, can be attributed to aid efforts and organisations driven by the MDGs such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The beauty of the Millennium Declaration is that it is simple, straightforward, and easy to communicate and hence to converge advocacy and mobilise global resources.  Governments, civil society, and increasingly, the private sector around the world, have adopted strategies to achieve the MDGs.  In Africa, the African Union, the African Development Bank and almost all countries have embedded the MDGs within their own institutional strategies.  Donor aid has been and is being directed to initiatives that focus and accelerate progress on the MDGs.  The MDGs have helped direct, catalyze action and drive progress on the issues identified in the Millennium Declaration.

But it is also true that the progress of Africa depends on many factors, and that not all of these can be adequately addressed through the MDGs.  Some argue that the ubiquity of their use has prevented the implementation of national strategies, more attuned to the local conditions, in favour of global goals and indicators.  Critics of the MDGs argue that the lack of consultation in developing the Millennium Declaration is the reason why issues such as equity and jobs are not properly addressed in the Millennium Declaration.

The deadline for meeting all the MDGs is 2015.  Africa will, most likely, not achieve most of them.  While work continues to accelerate action on the MDGs, a new process to define global goals after 2015 has started.  In the summer of 2012, Ms. Amina Mohammed, a Nigerian, was appointed as the UN Assistant Secretary-General on post-2015 – the person in charge of ensuring a new global development agenda is agreed.  Ms. Mohammed was Senior Special Assistant to Nigerian President on the MDGs, and was in charge of distributing US $1 billion per year of debt relief funds to achieve them.  She was known for her diligence and a personal approach to tracking money and results, which, on occasion, saw her climbing up wells to check for the water.

The global process Ms. Mohammed is overseeing is very different from the original MDG process.  This time around, governments and organisations from low- and middle-income countries are more included.  Africa is more involved this time.   Regional and country consultations are taken place on what the next MDGs should be about.  African countries have already held three regional consultations to present a common position, while national consultations are also taking place. Of the 100 countries holding consultations, 29 are African.  This is promising.  Perhaps this time around the global goals will remain aspirational but with an achievable and equitable aim for African countries.

Susana Edjang is a global health consultant with experience working in senior positions in the United Nations, the UK Parliament and leading British NGOs and health organisations.  Susana is also a Trustee of the Royal African Society.  She writes here in a personal capacity.

It is oddly appropriate that in reviewing a book that expends many pages in slightly obscure, not always enlightening and often whimsical accounts of the philosophy of Confucianism and folk tales of the Middle Kingdom, that I should employ a very English euphemism taken from a Punch cartoon from the Victorian era to characterize it. For those who don’t know the cartoon, it shows a young Church of England curate at breakfast with his bishop. The curate’s egg is bad – but so as not to slight his superior he insists that parts of it are excellent.  That is rather the case with Stephen Chan’s book looking at the morality of China’s relations with Africa.

Having worked through it over a couple of days there were a few passages that were excellent but I was not convinced in the end that this would enable me to be as diplomatic or perhaps as obsequious as the curate. But I did feel that a little whimsy was appropriate as so much of the book has a strange, whimsical character that does not always sit well with the seriousness of the subject.

I do always worry when a book about Africa has in the title the words “Dark Continent”. It smacks of the sarcastic advice Binyavanga Wainaina gave to writers about Africa in his well-known Granta article in 2005 – darkness was a metaphor he clearly thought people should avoid.  Stephen Chan, I’m sure, intends its use to highlight some of the less sophisticated Chinese views that persist about Africa.  But it crops up in the book every now and again, as when one contributor, Jerru Liu, notes that “the behaviour of the descendants of Confucius in the Dark Continent is difficult for the West to understand”; one does wonder whether other constructions might have been better to get this across. It is one thing using the phrase to depict bluntly how many Chinese have preconceptions about Africans, as many Westerners also do, but another when trying to describe wider perceptions of Chinese behaviour in his own words.

And it is often the choice of language, of long passages about Confucianism and the Middle Kingdom, that make this a frustrating book to read.  Every now and then one gets glimpses of what could be valuable insights into Chinese approaches to Africa – as the majority of those writing in this slim volume are of Chinese origin – but the whimsical prose or somewhat obscure Confucian discourse then shroud the issue.  We get a lot of folksy or sentimental passages – about how Chan was touched to see Zimbabwean guerrilla leaders eating with chopsticks or how he at one stage seemed popular in Africa because his long-hair meant Africans seemed to equate him with the Shaolin monks of martial arts movies – but these do little in the end to increase the reader’s understanding of the issue of morality in China’s dealings with Africa or the nature and detail of those dealings.

The blurb on the back of the book says that the work “undermines existing assumptions concerning Sino-African relations”.  If there was any undermining going on it was of any lingering doubts about the racist attitudes of many Chinese towards Africa and Africans.  Outlining how “Africa is indeed part of the traditionally ‘barbarian’ world” in Chinese terminology, Chan goes on to say that explanations of the use of white devils for Europeans and black devils for Africans cannot be written off as metaphors for something less insulting, “they were condescending insults”; he then adds that “popular speech in China still uses these labels” (p.17). If that is his judgement on Chinese views of Africans, then it says little for the moral basis of the overall Chinese approach to Africa. He emphasises the point with the old Chinese story of Meng Huo who is crude in his tastes and behaviour but is allowed to remain a king under the tutelage of the virtuous Zhu of the Middle Kingdom – Meng Huo – who, like Africa, is a barbarian and “Barbarians, even those adopted as younger brothers, never quite cease being barbarians” (p. 21).

In between the folk-tales and excursions into Confucianism, there is some detail of the development of Chinese-African relations over time.  I would have liked more of this and greater detail about current trade and investment relations and more in-depth analysis of the problems encountered – such as the repeated and bitter violence between Chinese mine bosses and miners in Africa and growing resentment of the expanding numbers of Chinese migrants and small traders across Africa.

The accounts are interesting, but patchy. So we get reference to China’s support for Savimbi’s UNITA against the MPLA in Angola, but no reference to the extensive arms deliveries and military training given to Roberto’s FNLA via Mobutu’s Zaire in combination with the CIA – the escalation of external intervention in the developing civil war that was arguably decisive in bringing the Soviet Union and Cuba into the conflict.  We get nothing of substance on the use of Chinese rather than African workers on a lot of projects and of the role Chinese retailers play in undercutting their African rivals by importing cheap and subsidised Chinese manufactured goods that, for example, have severely damaged the Nigerian textile industry or reduced South Africa’s trade in manufactured goods with the rest of Africa.

Comparing this volume with Chris Alden’s excellent and detailed China in Africa published by African Arguments and Zed in 2007, I am tempted to ask why Zed didn’t ask Alden for a second, updated edition rather than invest in a discursive and somewhat obscure volume that tells the reader more about the author’s feelings and musings than about the crux of a very important subject for Africa.

Stephen Chan (ed) The Morality of China in Africa:  The Middle Kingdom and the Dark Continent is pubklished by Zed Books, London. ISBN 978 1 78032 567 5 hb; ISBN 978 1 78032 566 8 pb.  £14.99

The World Economic Forum held its annual meeting (the Davos of Africa) in Cape Town last week. It was the biggest so far – yet another sign that business is taking Africa more and more seriously – but beyond the numbers and status of the attendees it is difficult to know how successful this sort of event is. The informal meetings are probably more important than the formal sessions. The annual get-together of business, politicians and NGOs is extremely useful for company bosses, presidents and lobbyists to speed-date each other over the 36 hours. Many of them do just that, putting in an appearance at the meetings, attending a formal dinner but spending most of the time in private meeting rooms or hotel suites. For the rest of us it is like river fishing. You stand by the side of a fast flowing crowd coming out of a meeting and try to catch someone you want to speak to or just meet old contacts and friends.

The mix of people this year was extraordinary: God and Mammon, monetarists and humanitarians. At one bizarre moment I turned from a profound conversation with the saintly Cardinal Onaiyekan, the head of the Catholic Church in Nigeria, to be introduced to Bob Diamond, now of Reverent (sic!) Capital, by Jamie Drummond, the Director of One (the aid advocacy organisation).

The next day I went to listen to President Uhuru Kenyatta laying out his plans for Kenya. Nobody referred, even obliquely, to the fact that if he keeps his promise, he will be absent from Kenya for months, maybe years, attending the International Criminal Court later this year to face accusations of crimes against humanity. Shortly afterwards I went to listen to the Swedish crime writer, Henning Mankell, now running a theatre in Mozambique. Maybe we will soon be reading a thriller set in Cape Town about monks, money, murder and global finance. At least he made provocative statements like: “If you have an idea, don’t wait for the money. Get on with it.”

The main themes of the conference were diversifying Africa’s economies, boosting infrastructure and unlocking the continent’s talent. So far Africa’s economic growth has been driven by the world’s demand for its raw materials and the growth of its middle classes who want all the goods and services this social group all over the world has. But, outside north and South Africa, there are very few small and medium sized businesses in the continent.

Eric Kacou, one of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders, put it very well when he said: “The amount of visible business in Africa is very small. At the top there are people who can go to the president to sort out any problems, and at the bottom there are women selling stuff on the streets. The middle bit is missing. Don’t ignore the struggling entrepreneur who can’t afford a bank loan.”  He is right. Most banks in Africa make their money buying government paper. They are also happy to lend money for buying a house. But their lending rates to small and medium businesses are absurd, often more than 17%.

The infrastructure debate ground on, driven by the excellent Donald Kaberuka, head of the African Development Bank. How can the continent fund power stations and at the same time build railways and roads to create bigger markets? Gordon Brown – yes, he was there too – said that a trillion dollars were needed worldwide for infrastructure, of which Africa needs $90 billion. Only $40 billion had been pledged.

Africa’s power supply is also pathetically small. The whole continent only uses as much as Spain, according to Nkosasana Zuma, head of the African Union. Yet vast quantities of oil and gas are being discovered, developed and exported from Africa. Where are the refineries and gas-fired power stations? Kaberuka advocates an end to Africa’s dependency on aid and is launching an ADB infrastructure bond to build them.

The lack of power partly explains the gaping hole in Africa’s development: manufacturing. The economists’ dictum is that to reach middle income status, a country must add value to its raw materials. That’s where the real profit is. And it creates wealth throughout society by providing jobs. So I was delighted to find a small South African company that makes bespoke event clothing is shifting its manufacturing from China to South Africa and Rwanda.

That is the first sign that rising wages in China may induce companies to establish factories in Africa. I asked the owner the politically incorrect question about productivity of African workers compared to Chinese. I was delighted to find an honest answer. He admitted that African workers were slower than their Chinese equivalents but they were equally skilful and he judged that in the long run, a number of factors made it sense to move manufacturing to Africa.

But the main thing I took away from this WEF was the explosion of Afro-confidence among young African professionals. Every time something negative was said about Africa, it was rebuffed by a subsequent speaker. And every positive intervention was greeted with clapping and whoops of approval.

***

A Clarification: Noticing that some people who responded to my blog on the ICC and Kenya assumed I had some British imperial intent in writing about Kenya, I am on the record as saying that when the ICC charges George Bush and Tony Blair for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2002, justice will start to be done and the ICC will gain credibility in Africa.

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles. For more of Richard’s blogs click here.

Alex has summarized my book quite well, but with one major exception:  the central theme is the failure of the peace process to oversee the democratic transformation called for in the CPA’s Machakos Protocol, which I contend was the only hope for sustainable peace, both between the two states and within them.  Although The Fate of Sudan is not a theoretical study, it proceeds from a critique of liberal peace-making, the starting point of all peace efforts in Sudan.  As Alejandro Bendana and other critics have found – and the Sudan experience backs them up – liberal peace making is a top-down approach designed to stop violence, but not address its underlying causes, integrate the warring parties into a Western dominated world order, and while it rhetorically supports democratic transformation, it is invariably traded off.

The official sponsor of the Sudan peace process was IGAD, an outfit created, paid for, and directed by a handful of Western states.  IGAD (read the U.S.) then sub-contracted the process to its regional ally Daniel arap Moi who assigned his protector, General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, who long had close relations with the American security services to oversee the process, and thus could be trusted.  Under Sumbeiywo the NCP, SPLM, and the Western participants locked out civil society, other military groups and political parties, imposed a regime of secrecy, and then contradictorily called for democratic transformation.  It was not believable and what followed proved that.

The NCP and SPLM used the CPA to isolate their challengers, while the flawed 2010 elections served to undermine their joint commitment to Sudan’s unity by effectively dividing the country before the referendum – all with the support of the U.S. and its allies who feared that confronting the parties would undermine the peace process.  The needs of peace and democracy were thus held to be at odds and the former prevailed over the latter – which is usually the case with liberal peace making.  However, conflict continued directly or through proxies and allies of the NCP and SPLM in spite of this compromise which also led to the consolidation of authoritarian regimes in Khartoum and Juba.

It is my contention that unless internationals can oversee peace processes that genuinely support democratization they should withdraw, that in spite of their weaknesses local actors not operating at the behest of big powers should lead these processes, and if the belligerents are not ready to come to the peace table then we should ‘give war a chance’.  No one relishes sitting on the sidelines watching people die, but there is no conclusive evidence that wars which end as a result of peace agreements have fewer casualties or are more likely to lead to sustainable peace than wars decided on the battlefield.  Moreover, all too often wars that end with peace agreements that do not involve empowering local people leave them as bad or worse off than when the conflict began.  That was clearly the case with the peace agreement that ended the war in eastern Sudan and it could also be argued that was true for the people of Sudan and South Sudan post-CPA.  Meanwhile, many of those killed in what was billed as a north-south war – indeed, maybe the majority – in fact died as a result intra-south conflicts.  In the final years of the war fighting was largely between the South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF) and the SPLA, and that conflict ended as a result of the Juba Declaration in which the role of the internationals was negligible.  Finally it must be noted that unlike the SPLA, insurgents in neighbouring Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda built powerful mass based organizations able to militarily defeat their foes and were thus able – thankfully –   to keep out liberal saviors from the West.

John Young is the author of The Fate of Sudan: The Origins and Consequences of a Flawed Peace Process.

Domestic politics meets foreign intervention - what future for the Malian state?

A little over a year ago, a few friends met to hang out online and talk about the political crisis in Mali (the text was published here and entitled ‘Mali: How Bad Can it Get?’). We thought of this as a virtual grin, with much debate over who was the dogoni who would make the tea.

It was a blistering hot day in Bamako and the power was out in his neighborhood, so Bruce Whitehouse joined us online from a cybercafe. Isaie Dougnon was in Florida. A year later, when we decided to reprise our conversation, Isaie had returned to Bamako and Bruce to the U.S., and some of the ECOWAS intervention forces had established their headquarters around the corner from where Bruce had been sitting. A lot had changed, but some things stay the same: power cuts prevented Isaie from joining us for the chat. And we still have not agreed on who will make the tea.

This chat was held on-line on 26 April 2013.

Bruce Hall (BH) lectures African history at Duke University, Baz Lecocq (BL) lectures African history at Gent University, Gregory Mann (GM) lectures African history at Columbia University and Bruce Whitehouse (BW) is a a member of the Anthropology Department at Lehigh University.

***

Military-civilian relations

GM: What leaps out from the chat from last year for you, Bruce Whitehouse, since you were there then and are here now?

BW: A year ago, I notice, we were expecting the fallout from an imminent clash between “the international community” and the junta, which would either see Sanogo remain in power or exit the scene. Instead what we got was some kind of “third way,” and that confrontation remains unresolved (even if it no longer looms as large as it did back then).

GM: Is Sanogo still relevant?

BW: He proved his relevance in December when he forced Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra to resign.

GM: And post-intervention?

BW: I notice he still gets a lot of airplay on state television.

GM: That’s for sure.

BH: Do Sanogo and his allies have the de facto role of reorganizing the Malian army going forward?

BW: Bruce, that’s his official mandate. But many say Sanogo was set up to fail in his new job, that it was a canny move by Dioncounda, et al. to marginalize him.

BL: The BBC wrote that the now sanctioned UN mission is there to protect the July elections. They probably meant “against Sanogo.”

GM: Just to tweak the response to Bruce Hall—Sanogo has the de jure mission of reorganizing the army—with perhaps a built-in fail by Dioncounda Traore as Bruce Whitehouse said—but the EU has the de facto mission, for different motives.

GM: The striking thing is that the EU training mission is not allowed to have contact with Sanogo and his committee, so the army re-training mission as a priority for outside ‘partners’ and Sanogo’s appointment by Traore to retool that army are on parallel tracks—not touching—and maybe going in opposite directions…

BH: Do we know in any detail how well the Malian army has performed in the North since the intervention? Despite some reports here and there about civilian disappearances, they seem to have behaved in a more professional manner than one might have expected.

BL: They have indeed behaved, but it depends on which units. Some ‘green berets’ misbehaved but not to the extent that people feared, although fear among nomads is still high.  Red berets and Gamou’s men work OK. Most ‘southerners’ remain based in big cities. In fact, Gamou’s men have not ‘misbehaved’ against civilians, but they have taken the opportunity to ‘tweak’ some local economic and political balances.

Elections and the political scene

GM: Can anyone foresee these July elections going forward? Or NOT going forward? Either is an equally valid question.

GM: How long can this hazy special status for Kidal be maintained? Through elections (which the MNLA does not want to see)? Through the end of the year… or through the decade?

BL: How long I don’t know, but until after the completion of the [E.U. military] training mission at least. The excuse [for it] so far is that Malian soldiers risk behaving badly due to a lack of training, command structure, etc.

GM: I have thought one of the key questions around elections was whether or not they would be legitimate if they can’t be held in the North due to general insecurity or due to specific political opposition in the region and town of Kidal in particular.

BL: They can be held in the North, even in Kidal. Maybe not en brousse in Kidal or Gao or Timbuktu to a large extent, but the cities should be no problem in terms of organization.

GM: If France and the US and the UN want elections to be held in Kidal, they will be, but the political scenario will be complex.

BW: A Malian I know was just suggesting today that Malian voters boycott any election that doesn’t extend to Kidal, to signal their desire for the region to remain a part of Mali. Coming back to elections, officials in Paris, Washington and Bamako keep insisting on the July date. But I wonder whether anyone really believes these statements—the French may be simply trying for an ‘effet d’annonce’, like when you give a home repair contractor a deadline to finish the job even when you know he’s not going to make it, you just want to speed the process along. And I notice that the Malian government only announced the winning bid for electoral material (notably voter ID cards) in April, with an eight-month deadline! If my arithmetic serves, that’s about five and a half months too many to be ready for July.

GM: What Bruce Whitehouse says is right, but on the other hand, the campaigns are gearing up… each party knowing that the best organized is most likely to prevail (that is, not the most popular, but the richest and best organized).

BL: The big problem with July elections organization-wise en brousse is the rainy season. Sometimes elections have been organized in July for exactly that reason: to make brousse votes difficult. This was a complaint among nomads in the North against the election system in the first place. So this will make it less likely that elections in the North will be viewed as legitimate among the nomads.

But only among nomads, because the majority of voters are sedentary in the cities and riverine villages. Right?

BW: Right Baz – even under the best of circumstances, July is a terrible time for elections in Mali. This year the rains will be compounded by Ramadan (which begins around July 9th I believe). Add to that lingering insecurity, and logistical problems, and I predict a postponement until at least November or December. Any election held before then would be severely undermined by all the above factors.

GM: Again, the “legitimacy” of elections has never been believed in, in the “North” or “South” and it does seem to be one of those things that is a countrywide problem…

Captain Sanogo and Elections

BH: But does it matter? Is the goal not to dislodge Sanogo and friends?

BW: To do that, it will take a meaningful election with higher-than-usual voter turnout.

BL: I can’t believe international players like France or US think voting will lead Sanogo to retreat or be out of influence and effective power. If they think Sanogo will be gone after elections they are too naïve.

GM: Baz, believe it! They think that guy is done. I think Sanogo and the junta are quite marginalized already, although the arrest of newspaper editor Bakary Daou proved they still have some capacity to defend explicitly corporate and personal interests.

BL: So Greg, you too think that, given AHS being marginalized, a good and well-organized vote (not in July) might make him exit the scene?

GM: I think his marginalization is not an effect of potential elections, but perhaps a permissive factor in them. But I think Sanogo has become unpopular in Mali due to the large privileges he accrued, the transparency of his self-interest, and his failure to actually lead army (or nation). We are a long way from April 2012, and he is also systematically marginalized by outside players who now have much more weight than they did in April 2012.

BL: True.

GM: Any predictions about what overall turnout would look like? Higher than in past? Bruce Whitehouse, any sign for optimism there?

BL: No higher turnout than in the past if elections are held in July for reasons Bruce Whitehouse gave.

GM: If the electoral roll was considered more or less OK by people generally, would they turn out to vote? I know that’s a big ‘if.’

BW: There’s some reason for hope: surveys like Afrobarometer continue to show that Malians prefer elections to any other means of choosing their leaders. They just want better choices and an electoral system that isn’t weighted in favor of the “usual suspects” (parties that were associated with ATT’s rule). Plus, given that turnout in Mali has never reached even 40%, all it would take is a 50% turnout to send a strong signal that Malians support democratic institutions, not juntas or other extra-legal alternatives.

GM: Very good point, Bruce. Any thoughts on who would be favored?

BW: I asked this question to a panel of Malian journalists in Paris a couple of weeks ago, and their responses were all over the map. It’s hard to identify a clear favorite at this point, but perhaps IBK (Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta) is the “establishment candidate” with the “least worst” reputation among ordinary Malians (at least in the south).

GM: There was an interesting internet poll, which is probably not worth much, that showed Sako, IBK, Soumaïla Cissé in the lead. The same article says IBK is considered France’s candidate—that might be true. He might also be the US’ candidate. He also has a strong organization nationally and smart alliances.

BW: Ironic since he was seen as the Islamist’s man in 2002 according to the US and others!

GM: I hear Sako from the inside but never from the outside.

BW: What about Modibo Sidibe? He’s got quite a campaign machine and presumably a big war chest, but is he too tarnished from being ATT’s Prime Minister?

GM: Well, Modibo Sidibe is I think unacceptable to many—too tarnished and the US and others don’t like his history of mega-corruption (see the history of the Global Fund). And, more recently, he was heckled and pelted with projectiles when he tried to raise campaign funds in Paris.

BW: I’ve rarely met a Malian with a kind word to say about Modibo Sidibe.

Elections or a national dialogue?

BH: So there is no serious question around these elections or the future after them of addressing what has happened in the country over the last two years? Addressing the clear alienation in the North, not just among Tuareg nationalists, but more generally in terms of the collapse of the Malian state? It seems to me that [we are looking at] the same political players, and the same rhetoric of democracy and secularism, etc.?

BW: Responding to Bruce’s question: A couple of months ago, Tiebile Drame proposed a wide-ranging national conference-type discussion as a way to lead into elections, but I’m not hearing much support for that idea these days. If elections are held this year, perhaps they will open up an opportunity for such a discussion to take place.

GM: Tiebile has a good argument, I think, but from the outside there seems to be no appetite for such a discussion, whether because of external institutional interests or for fear of results…

BL: Might the ‘Truth and Justice’ procedure that’s slowly starting also address these questions, instead of only focusing on ‘the North’?

GM: The ‘Truth and Justice’ procedure is capacious but also cumbersome and will be slow. It’s too early to condemn it, but there is not much reason for optimism either.

GM: The ‘Truth and Justice’ procedure is meant to be countrywide and to address the more systemic problems of the Malian state, beyond Kidal and Bamako, as would a national conference, if people took part.

GM: BW, would a national conference permit, rather than preclude, such a discussion? No “elected” president would call such a conference!

BW: The only way an elected government would organize such a conference would be if it were elected with the mandate to do so.

GM: Sorry, that seems bit circular, but OK. Wouldn’t the internal pressures of a party (with its competition for posts, etc.), give every incentive to close down rather than open up further discussion? Which winning candidate would put his own mandate in question in such a conversation? I tend to think of elections and a conference as either/or options.

BL: But a ‘Truth and Justice’ procedure would not have that disadvantage as they are organized to focus on the past, where a National conference is focused on the present. So further delegitimization of previous governments might even make present one—whoever it is—look better.

The Malian State

BH: We tend to think of this as a problem between Bamako and Kidal, between Tuareg nationalists and southern Malian elites, but what seems much more problematic and profoundly problematic for the future is the fact that the health service collapsed and was abandoned, that the state completely delegitimized itself and had its infrastructure destroyed in 2012. That doesn’t get put back together easily and it does not recapture the populations of that region, even those who are pro-Mali in Northern terms.

GM: Bruce Hall, very true.

BW: Whatever government gets put in place next, if it can make some progress getting schools and health infrastructure working again nation-wide, that would go a long way to restoring Malians’ confidence in their state.

BL: Not all of the physical health infrastructure got destroyed. [It is perhaps not possible to] further deligitimize the state in the North [because for many] it held no legitimacy in the first place. That is a major issue indeed in the North, as well as in the South… Is the state (so not politicians, but the state) now less legitimate then it was before? Are people in the South en brousse linking legalized land grabbing to the rottenness of the situation elsewhere?

BW: Baz, I think the Malian state took a huge blow in 2011-2012, not only from the coup and rebellion, but the erosion of the rule of law to which you refer. I can’t speak for rural residents, but urbanites were really exasperated by the way the elites under ATT had hijacked the whole state apparatus, from the ministries and the courts on down.

Secularism, Political Islam and Justice

BH: Let me pose a slightly different question: Has the collapse of the state in the North and the relatively successful administration by the Islamists done anything to strengthen the kinds of Salafi voices who have long been critical of the civil servants and agents of the state?

GM: Another great question. I have been asking myself, does the actual lived experience of ‘sharia’ strengthen or weaken broader political support for it? There are two distinct but related questions—vis à vis service delivery and vis à vis ‘justice’ or law-and-order, which Bruce Whitehouse has written about.

BH: I mean in places like Timbuktu and presumably elsewhere, not just in the North, there is a long experience with government civil servants coming and behaving badly. This is the state that many people experience. The Islamists were different, and I always thought that I detected a fair amount of sympathy for what they were doing among people who stayed in the North, even if they were critical of some of the things they did.

GM: Bruce Hall, yes this is a good point. The mujahideen, or whatever you want to call them, provided free electricity in Timbuktu. Diouncounda Traore and Django Cissoko aren’t providing it in Bamako now.

BW: A secular state must be seen as capable of delivering JUSTICE, not only services. And that’s perhaps been the biggest failure of the Malian state so far.

BL: Those people I spoke to were mostly critical of their projects.

BL: The one good thing they seemed to have been able to do was to have food supplies organized sufficiently to avoid total disaster, and they did so by abolishing taxes and bribes etc., and leaving markets open and better situated for international Sahel grain merchants who delivered at lower prices. But all the gendered stuff (women veiling their faces, etc.) and the destruction of ‘teghere‘ (western-style education) and the separation of boys and girls in school, as well as of course huddud… in Kidal it was not welcomed much. But electricity yes, and other infrastructure, they kept it running to some extent.

GM: Re justice, yes—efficacious and rapid justice. All states struggle greatly with this and it is one of the strengths of other systems.

BH: Justice is not what the Malian state has ever delivered. This idea of a secular state is very particular to a group of Malians who constitute the state, and are the product of the French-language educational system. But I don’t think this is representative of Malians as a whole, especially the rather large number of Malians educated in the Arabic schools.

GM: BH, yes agreed. And I’ve been thinking that is one of the things that would emerge from a true national dialogue would be a questioning of secularism and its failures or incapacities (especially vis à vis justice). That is one reason why outsiders might not be too hot on such a dialogue or convention… Also, that dynamic was in my view changed by the French intervention. That is to say, the possibility of a real critique of secularism may have been partly foreclosed by the new disposition.

BH: I think that the point is not that the Islamists’ administration was welcomed as a model for the future, or that everything that they did was well received. But it did provide an alternative experience and it has a constituency still in many places, including in southern Mali. How does this change the national political conversation?

BW: My reading (from afar) over the last several months has been that the Islamists’ political project has suffered a major setback in Bamako, where ‘Wahhabi’/reformist Muslims have had to distance themselves from the Salafists and from armed Jihadists. The more moderate-looking Sufi Muslims have come out strengthened since the French intervention.

BL: The kind of justice the mujahideen gave was ‘petty justice’: catching a thief here and there… forcing food prices down by abolishing taxes will perhaps also be seen as justice but otherwise, what justice did they render? Shouldn’t we make a distinction between Malians thinking about ‘justice’ and about ‘just’ as in ‘just government and just society’?

GM: I think a form of conflict resolution (family and business disputes, civil law) that is quick, efficient, grounded in shared beliefs/texts, and not on bribes, personal connections, etc., is inherently favored. The question is can a secular state provide that, and can it convince people that it can?

BL: Yes, but less so if it starts flogging people for practicing marriage customs differently than prescribed. Some of the sharia-type justice given goes against local visions of sharia interpretation. The strict Salafi view on fiqh is not the view on fiqh that all local ulama hold, or all local people.

GM: Indeed.

BL: So the beliefs/ texts are not all shared.

GM: Let’s say grounded discursively in a shared episteme. While there is a gigantic spectrum within that, arguments grounded in Islam are now much closer to being hegemonic than those grounded in the Malian state, constitution, law books and institutions, and secularism.

BH: What I would suggest – and it is really only a question – is that the secular model of Malian statism has failed. Many people were unhappy with it long before 2012, but it has been proved to be a house of cards now. As problematic as the jihadi-Islamist experience in the North was for so many people, it also opened up a discursive space for a more explicitly Islamist politics in framing how the state works and what it does. We will see if that makes any difference but I think that we might think about northern Nigeria as a reference, because Islamist state governments are not so far away.

GM: I think Bruce Hall and I are agreeing.

GM: Bruce Whitehouse thoughts on this?

BL: Bruce Hall: then there’s also Mali’s western neighbor Mauritania as a model of how to integrate ‘Islam’ into the state, perhaps even more acceptable for people in the North (not saying anything about those in the South) as it is closer to local visions of Islam prior to the introduction of Salafi thought. So it provides good grounds for a compromise between the two (Salafi and local visions of integration of state and Islamic praxis)?

BW: I agree, Greg. As for Bruce’s suggestion, as I’ve spoken to various audiences since January about the situation in Mali, people have frequently pointed out that the same weaknesses I highlighted with respect to the Malian state also apply to states throughout the region. It’s hard for me to verify this since my specialization is pretty narrowly on Mali these days; I don’t have a cross-national lens to look through. But I wonder whether Mali’s crisis might be a sign of things to come elsewhere in Africa.

Outside Actors

GM: Can we turn to the intervention question? Last year, there was great resentment of ECOWAS—Bruce Whitehouse in particular pointed this out. We were in a moment of deep nationalist paranoia (as Roland Marchal called it, maybe a bit dismissively)–has that changed since January?

BL: In Kidal, France is trusted, I don’t know about the Chadians.

BW: France is certainly trusted a LOT more than a year ago—I sometimes wonder whether this would be true if Sarkozy had been re-elected. But the UN has a pretty poor reputation at least according to a recent Friedrich Ebert Foundation poll in Bamako.

GM: Yes, I was struck by that poll result regarding the UN. Any ideas on why that is?

BW: Not really. Greg, I heard you say recently that the only people who wanted the French to pull out of Mali are the French. What do you see happening as they draw their forces in Mali down?

GM: Whew, great question. My fear—worst case scenario—is targeted violence against civilians in cities and villages of the Niger Bend by ‘non-state actors’ to impede ‘stability’ and elections…

GM: The French are very used to the idea of having their soldiers stationed in West Africa for the long term. It will be hard now for Mali to reject that possibility.

GM: Important to remember that they have not actually met their objectives, although they might like to claim otherwise.

BL: Greg, can you expand on ‘not met objectives’ a bit? The main objective of national integrity has been reached.

GM: Has it? Who controls Kidal?

BL: Hasn’t the main objective of AQMI being pushed out of power—although not out of country maybe—been reached?

GM: But have any hostage been freed? Is AQMI no longer a threat?

BL: Indeed, no hostages have been freed and AQMI is still a threat, but do you think the Malian stated controlled Kidal before AQMI did?

GM: Before, say, 2011, the Malian state at least had some claim to power in Kidal region, through proxies, modus vivendi with various armed groups (including possibly AQMI, etc.)…

BL: … and that’s what they’ll get back again, perhaps less of it though, because a number of their proxies are out of power locally.

Intercommunal Tensions in the North

The intercommunal violence committed by all sides in the civil war that occurred in Northern Mali during the first half of the 1990s is a shadow that has hung over our expectations for what the current conflict in Northern Mali might bring. The Ifoghas Tuareg of the region of Kidal were at the heart of a rebellion against the Malian state in the early 1960s, in the 1990s, and again in 2012. But they were ultimately unable to maintain a united front and rebel groups and factions splintered along lineage and social status lines. There are other long-standing tensions in the North along racial and ethnic lines that might create new and very unwelcome possibilities of violence.

GM: Another important theme is possibility of intercommunal violence—Bruce Hall in particular pointing this out in last year’s chat—Baz, does that seem to you still a strong possibility?

GM: Let me put my question another way. In the 1990s, you had a scenario, as Baz has analyzed, of a formal ‘peace’ before the war. That is the ‘91 and ‘92 agreements preceded serious intercommunal violence of 1994. Could we be looking at that kind of ‘peace before war’ scenario again? Baz? Bruce Hall?

BL: I’m not able to say that re. Tuareg / Songhay things (Bruce Hall?) but one conflict that might get out of hand is between Tuareg and Arab communities and especially inter Arab (Bruce Hall, thoughts?) that had been rising in the last decade anyway.

BL: BH: I think 2012 has given Arab communities a lot of bones of contention to fight about on top of the ones they already had.

BL: Inter Tuareg: not so much. Iyad seems really out of the way at least and Alghabbas has lost much credit joining Ansar Dine among at least non-Ifoghas. With Gamou back in the fold of the Malian armed forces he might be able to run a tighter ship and keep inter Tuareg fighting from flaring up

BL: But on Ganda Koy / Ganda Izo…? Bruce Hall?

BH: I think it remains a possibility. In the region around Timbuktu for example, there is quite a bit of pent up anger among Songhay that is directed at local Tuareg and Arabs. The local Arab Barabish in Timbuktu have huge problems among themselves now given what has happened over the last two years, and the role of some Barabich with AQIM. But in the end, the intercommunal violence of the 1990s was orchestrated by the army – at least it was started that way. The danger it seems to me remains a very weak army allying with and arming civilian militias who are much more inclined today to act on their eliminationist discourse about the nomads being fundamentally untamable, than in the past.

GM: Wait, Baz, that’s really interesting—Gamou suppressing inter-Tuareg disputes? Could you expand?

BL: Some bids the Ifoghas tribe might still have had for supremacy in the Kidal area are gone due to the political blunders of the new ‘acting chief’, while the real power holder is gone out of sight and many will not be happy with his recent actions either. This leaves the Ifoghas weaker, and therefore Gamou’s aims to protect and even expand Imghad and other interests.

BL: Also around Menaka MNLA positions have not made them popular either so this may lead to a return to the ‘older’ order of the Ouillimiden coming back a bit, and they are very bent on peace through Malian state.

BL: But on inter Arab violence, you’re right about Berabish internal problems, but I foresee that the Lamhar-Kounta struggle has become more pronounced over their division between MUJWA and Ansar Dine last year and the scraps they had over positions in the area around Al Khalil and the larger Timtarine and Tilemsi.

BL: Responding to Bruce Hall again, I agree that Ganda Koy ‘94 was basically army run, and so is Ganda Koy / Izo now too…

BL: I think this might be a further reason that the French army and AFISMA does not want the Malian army in Kidal and perhaps not very many places elsewhere either. What is the Malian army and what is Ganda Koy right now? Who can see the difference? Maybe exactions [reprisals?] by the Malian army were committed by soldiers who were members of the Ganda Koy or Ganda Izo?

BW: I believe Dioncounda announced some weeks ago that all militia members (Ganda Koy and Izo) had been integrated into the army.

BL: Well… that’s NOT good news! Especially not when it comes to the trust nomad populations will have in the Malian Army.

BH: Well so far, these Songhay militias have not been much of anything, mostly because the army was out of the North. Now that the army is back, we will have to wait and see. But a potential Songhay/nomad problem is not so much of a threat for Kidal, but in the Niger Valley.

BL: Yes Bruce, I think in the Niger valley it’s going to be difficult, and many forget that that’s where most Tuareg live… They will be the last to come back home from refugee camps, I believe.

BL: ma’a salam ya ikhwan

BW: Good night Baz. Good day Bruce!

More analysis of Mali can be read here

Bono: king of the factivists fighting extreme poverty.

Bono’s much-tweeted TED talk spotlighted Ghana, a West African country usually regarded as one of the continent’s better managed and more successful ‘lions’. Ghana’s journey towards ending extreme poverty – and zeroing out aid –has much to teach all African citizens and their development friends overseas, especially as the world contemplates the successors to the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

How will Ghana ensure growth does indeed reach all citizens and inequalities don’t get entrenched? How can the development mistakes of the past be avoided going forward to accelerate progress and stop backsliding?

In 2007 the country took a turn for what statisticians call ‘low middle-income status’, meaning that average annual income started to quietly creep over $1,200 per capita. As the economy grows, tax revenues rise and extreme poverty declines, the government has more maneuvering room to prioritise the country’s long-term development needs and raise the resources to do so.

It is of course not all rosy in Ghana, as recent budget woes show, but the tone of the debate there seems more reminiscent of similar budget crises in America  than of the usual scramble over absolute basics in the developing world.

But what do we mean when we say ‘extreme poverty’ is steadily becoming a memory rather than a reality in Ghana? The UN describes people as ‘extremely poor’ if they survive on less than a dollar and 25 cents a day. In Ghana, the number of people who qualify for this dubious badge has gone down from more than 50% to less than 27% in 20 years and on that trajectory should plummet to zero by 2025.

Extreme poverty data are often unreliable, but this positive trend is corroborated by other data on reductions in hunger, trends in family sizes, child mortality and so on. This trend is real. Ghana can take the extreme poverty rate to zero in ten years. The Zero Zone.

Zero – that is a number to remember. And rejoice over.

But it’s too soon to celebrate too much. Ghana, like most African countries, still has to grapple with entrenched inequality and extreme poverty in some parts. Take northern Ghana and the savannah region for instance. There, nearly 60% of the people fall within the unfortunate poverty bracket.

What is interesting is that Ghana now is in a position to develop an ‘internal Aid’ program. The government has set aside funds to finance special interventions in that part of the country. The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority, which was recently dogged with controversy over its investment choices,   covers the northern region and could surely do with improved political oversight, but at least it’s a start. The program is uncannily similar to Aid from a rich country to a poor one, even using some of the same methodologies, but the Ghanaians are the ones in charge.

So how is Ghana making its money? Over the last decade and half GDP has grown nine-fold. The domestic tax base has expanded dramatically in absolute terms. This point is a bit complex, since as a share of GDP, the total take in taxes has actually declined from a high of 22% of GDP a decade ago to around 12% today. However, one needs to take into consideration how much GDP has grown over the period to realize how significant the current tax revenue amount of about $6.5 billion is in the historical scheme of things: it represents a fourfold increase in tax revenue over the decade.

Clearly, much depends on how effectively the government accounts for the use of these financial resources. All too often the focus is on corruption-prevention, and justifiably so. But it is becoming clear that ‘performance-accountability’ is just as important. Officials who turn out to be square pegs in round holes may not steal the funds, but they can waste it on poorly thought-through or executed schemes and the results would be no different.

The good news is that there is an avalanche of innovations which are helping fight such corruption and inefficiency. For example the World Bank’s Service Delivery Indicators help policy-makers and citizens precisely track resources into real results and should be more widely adopted and adapted throughout the continent. The Open Budget Index shows which budgets are open to citizens (Ghana does quite well, but South Africa and Botswana are the best on the continent), and the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index allows citizens to see how their government fares against its peers. Such initiatives as Revenue Watch, Publish What You Pay, Ghana Integrity Initiative, the Public Interest Accountability Committee, are all empowering people and well intentioned policymakers. These programs resonate with Africa-wide trends such as the African Peer Review Mechanism, the Africa 2.0 framework for mobilization (www.africa2point0.org), Goldkeys (www.goldkeys.org) and ONE’s advocacy in Africa amongst others.

By focusing on both the ‘informed masses’ whom Bono dubs “factivists”, as well as the technocratic elite, these innovations promise actual cultural change. That means going beyond formal educational systems and encouraging a ‘climate of ideas’. Ultimately these innovations help strengthen what we can call a country’s “ultrastructure”.These are the underlying systems that ensure that the brick and mortar developments and projects, or the infrastructure, as they’re usually known – road, rail, ports, dams, energy production, shopping malls, etc – can be financed, delivered, accessible, equitable, maintainable and ultimately transformational for all citizens and not just the urban elite.

Let’s briefly remind ourselves what’s to be avoided. Africa has had its fair share of mega-projects after independence, and when Ghana started its Akosombo Dam project it was at that time the biggest World-bank financed Program to date. The lack of adequate ultra-structure meant that the Dam could not support the industrialization Ghana was seeking, and today its most important offshoot, the aluminum smelter called VALCO, is a near-wreck operating at 20% capacity. Briefly ponder the 10 years and, by some estimates, the $16 billion spent by Nigeria over the last decade to fix that country’s chronic energy crisis. Recently, the government had to find ways of disposing of more than 300 shipping-container loads of electrical equipment in various stages of rust, abandoned for many years at the country’s ports, as projects floundered. Many are working hard to ensure these lessons are learned across the continent.

By recognizing some of these failures, and taking the experience seriously, Ghana has ensured stability, and managed to attract foreign direct investment in unproven areas such as deep offshore drilling outside the known petroleum belts. Last year, oil brought the country $581 million, not the billions initially anticipated, but significant nonetheless. Investments are now steadily pushing beyond the classic fare of construction and solid minerals into private healthcare, higher education, high-end tourism and pharmaceuticals. Many Ghanaians in the Diaspora, now that they can be dual citizens of Ghana and their host countries, are choosing to save in Ghana rather than where they live now, creating pools of cash that are finding their way into ‘meso-finance’ (a critical space between subsistence-level microfinance and multi-million deals) and the newly reformed pensions industry, among others. This isn’t just lifting people to a point where they can scrape by on a little over $1.25 income per day. It is slowly creating a confident middle class.

Every African nation is unique but there are some lessons from Ghana for Africa and the globe. Just as transparency and accountability are helping Ghana’s successful regions  raise the revenues and deploy them effectively to help its more vulnerable regions beat extreme poverty, and along with that beating back desertification and extremists ideologies, so Africa as a whole can do more through greater integration, collaboration, and development cooperation. There is a largely ignored history here to build upon. For example Nigeria was for many years the key provider of energy discounts to its West African neighbours, shielding these countries from the harsh storms of the international oil market. The Gambian Judicial system has benefitted much from Ghanaian expertise; Nigerian finance experts are feeling more and more at home in Ghana; and South Africa is helping neighbours with tax and revenue collection expertise. In the 50^th anniversary of the AU/OAU more such intra-African solidarity, bringing in the diaspora wherever possible through leveraging remittances and diaspora bonds and other investments, would be a great continental birthday present by Africa to itself.

The story of “Africa Rising” is much touted. Increasingly the quest for a more confident continental leadership is how the citizens of African nations can best help their vulnerable neighbours. It is also how Africans can engage global citizens concerned about extreme poverty on a more equal  and more dignified footing.  This suggests that African citizens and their global friends need to focus ever more on the transparency-accountability- measurability of all forms of development/transformation finance. We must campaign together to ensure money can be transparently traceable through the system – from external sources such as aid and foreign investment – especially in the corruption prone extractive sectors – to domestic sources such as corporate and individual taxation at national level, through the governmental budgetary system from national to regional to local village level. The ‘supply chain of development finance’ should at every level be fully visible – so that from a global to a local level citizens can track from resources to results.

For our part we are confident that the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved and exceeded leading to the virtual elimination of extreme poverty and deaths from preventable diseases, as well as hunger – so long as the ultrastructure is firmly in place. Going beyond the 2015 timeline for the MDGs, Africa can position itself to fulfill more than its potential to be a stable strong integrated global player, a region driven by its own citizens – but not unless we make a step-change investment into transparency, accountability and good ol’ open, high quality data and statistics. Deepen and enrich the continent’s ultrastructure, that is.

Sounds nerdy? Far from it. In his TED talk Bono coined the term ‘factivism’ – evidence based activism – and described a new generation of such connected campaigners who are seizing the opportunity opened up by new technologies to turbo-charge transparency, reinvigorate institutions and transform their world.

There is room for many more to join this movement and jump on board the post-2015 effort to re-focus from ‘poverty elimination’ to ‘opportunity maximisation’, recognizing that while the challenges of poverty tend to express themselves more in local terms, the opportunities of transformation often come in global cloaks. And it is precisely because it takes moving beyond the moral emotion of anti-poverty towards embracing the factual reality of opportunity that African factivists are coming into their own – and also why their overseas development friends  are the ones now straining to catch up.

Bright Simons is the inventor of the World’s most widely adopted SMS anti-counterfeiting system (www.mpedigree.net) and a public interest researcher at Ghanaian think tank, IMANI

Jamie Drummond is the co-Founder of One (www.one.org) and was the global strategist for Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt.

David Cameron is taking Somalia seriously, but will international donors follow this talk up with funds needed to reconstruct the country?

Last week, Somalia’s donors and international partners came together in London to lay down the foundations of post-transitional government in the country.  The London gathering, which brought together over 50 heads of state and hundreds of international organizations, marked a new and unprecedented level of involvement by the international community in the country.

In his opening remarks, Prime Minister David Cameron said in the clearest terms that Somalia matters to UK (and the international community at large) as young Somali minds remain at risk of being poisoned by the propaganda of Al-Shabaab, going on to export terrorism and extremism beyond Somalia’s borders. He adds “anyone who thinks this isn’t a priority…I’d say look what we’ve done in the past and look where it has got us – terrorism and mass migration”. He went on to say “we made that mistake not in the Horn of Africa, but Afghanistan”. The UK has two primary national interests in Somalia: that the country never becomes a haven for terrorists operating against UK interests and that the perpetual chaos does not precipitate another wave of mass migration to the UK.

In pursuit of these two interests it has reopened its embassy in Mogadishu – the first Western embassy to relocate there since the civil war, has hosted two major conferences on Somalia in London in the past year and pledged millions of dollars to the reconstruction of the country. More importantly, the new UNSRG is a veteran British diplomat and will spearhead one the biggest UN-integrated missions in the country. The strategic objective for this mission is, according to the resolution, to help Somalia build on political gains made over the past year and support the government’s core policy priorities.

Whilst Britain may be leading the current diplomatic surge on Somalia the analysis in Mogadishu is that this only occurred after Turkey demonstrated a willingness to get involved during the famine in 2011 following a landmark visit by Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. Plenty of countries have now reopened their embassies since then and have begun dipping their feet in back on the ground. The most notable example is the US’s recent stamp-of-recognition to the new government and the subsequent IMF, World Bank and USAID re-engagement.

On balance, Britain’s political-security imperative in the country is much greater than that of other international players and has galvanized Somalia’s pre-existing momentum. But it was Turkey’s moral-imperative which had the greatest impact in humanitarian terms and saved thousands of lives that would otherwise have been lost as a consequence of famine.

The London Conference

Conventional wisdom in Mogadishu towards the London Conference was that Somalia’s problems have now become a global concern and its future agenda are now taken seriously into major Western cities. Whilst such conferences may appear to be largely symbolic, they have a huge psychological effect on the Somali people who, over the years, have grown used to seeing neighboring cities like Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Djibouti host conferences on Somalia and, as result, have become deeply cynical towards neighbour–led initiatives.

The goal of last week’s conference was to rally behind the new government in Mogadishu and outline how the international community can be part of the country’s future. President Hassan outlined a broadly sensible blueprint for his government, despite being notably short on specifics.  His three priorities are security, justice and public financial management.

But will London II live up to its promises and pledges? While there are some reasons to be hopeful, there are equally reasons to worry. Firstly, since reconciliation topped the President’s six-point pillar, the absence of members of semi-autonomous regions, chiefly Somaliland and Puntland, dashes any national and broad-based reconciliation efforts.

It is regrettable that Somaliland refused to attend, as their absence deepens the political and ideological disparity that exists between Somaliland and Somalia. Their respective leaders did, however, recently meet in Ankara after serious cajoling and behind-the-scenes diplomacy brokered by the Turkish government.

Secondly, whilst security has improved considerably, with Al-Shabaab being pushed back to more rural areas, it still mounts frequent attacks against high visibility targets throughout the country and has assassinated high profile officers working for the government. Progress is fragile and easily reversed. The recent storming of the High Court and subsequent blast in KM4 demonstrates the movement’s fast-track guerrilla hit and run strategy.

Although the current government has offered a carte blanche negotiation, it still prefers military activity over diplomacy. This military-centric approach might underpin any potential dialogue with moderate elements and low-level militants (the young poisoned minds that David Cameron worries about) who are not true believers but are either radicalized or joined for financial reasons.

Thirdly, the money that has being pledged and the enormity of the problems remain worlds apart. Somalia is coming out of 20 years of destruction, with financial and social infrastructure having almost totally collapsed. Donor-countries, for their part, should make available the promised financial assistance with no strings attached. Instead of exerting pressure and influence, these donors can establish trade partnerships in livestock, fishery, agricultural and tourism.

These challenges are not easily resolved, but having them in mind now might enable David Cameron to avoid repeating the past mistakes in Afghanistan.

Abdihakim Ainte is a Somali researcher & analyst. You can follow him on Twitter @Abdikhakim

Nigeria and Angola

SSA is set to produce approximately 5.9 million barrels (bpd) of crude oil in 2013 dominated by Nigeria and Angola compared to the estimated 5.5 million barrels produced in 2012. This increase will largely reflect the expected return of at least 150,000 bpd in production from South Sudan, which was shut-in for most of 2012. At full capacity, the region’s largest producer, Nigeria, could produce 3 million bpd, but has faced periodic production challenges, which have continued from 2012; production fell to as low as 1.9million bpd at the end of that year, though average stood at around 2.45million bpd. Government forecasts of 2.53million bpd for 2013 would appear ambitious, and levels closer to 2012 are more likely.

In 2013, there will likely be new production from International Oil Company (IOC) ExxonMobil’s deepwater Ehran North Phase 2 field, and Italian IOC ENI’s deepwater Oberan field. It remains unclear, how much of the illegal crude oil theft also known as ‘bunkering’ scourge can be curbed in 2013.In 2012, Nigeria lost up to 400,000 bpd to this practice at certain periods.  A lingering challenge is industry uncertainty fuelled by delays in passing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which could remain the dominant obstacle to a major boost in production over the 12-18 months. Finally, US demand for Nigeria crude oil looks set to fall further in 2013 to around 580,000 bpd, continuing a downward trend that intensified in 2012, due to rising domestic oil and shale gas production in North America.

Production in Angola also fell to 1.7 million bpd at the end of 2012 due to maintenance work on some oil fields. However, BP’s Block 31 ultra deepwater PVSM project discovered in 2002, and comprising four oil fields; Pluto, Saturn, Venus and Mars, is likely to reach 150,000bpd by the end of 2013. Hopes of pre-salt potential in Angola, both onshore and offshore, based on the country’s geological similarities with Brazil, which is famous for its pre-salt reservoirs, will also attract further interest in 2013.

Despite OPEC quota limits, oil production will continue to rise over the next 12 months as new projects gather pace. Angola’s total oil production capacity will probably rise to at least 1.9 million bpd in 2013, up from an estimated to 1.79 m million in 2012. In 2012 Angola’s government introduced a new FX legislation governing the oil and gas sector aimed at retaining much local value within the country as possible, by requiring IOCs to use local banks for oil and gas transactions. Although Angola is known to have one of the most progressive regimes for oil contracts, the overall government stake in Angola’s oil and gas sector is considered to be relatively high, although this has not necessarily served as a major deterrent to oil and gas development and exploration  and appetite for investment in Angola’s natural resource industry will remain robust

West Africa

Ghana’s Jubilee oil field reached 110,000bpd at the end of 2012, and we expect that Jubilee production could peak in 2013 at a rate just above 120,000 bpd. Jubilee field partners are also fast-tracking plans to develop the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) field, which would create another long-term boost to production beyond 2013. Crude oil production in Cote d’Ivoire is likely to hover around 44,000 bpd in 2013 as investment activity in the country picks up, and new discoveries are developed. New producer Niger, awarded five new oil licenses for oil exploration in the country in 2012, and Chinese state oil firm, CNPC, which already produces 20,000bpd from the Agadem field, could be joined by other investors, whom the government hopes will help boost production to 80,000 bpd by Q4 2013. Production has fallen in Chad to around 115,000bpd following an earlier peak of 220,000bpd, though an extra 50,000bpod is expected in early 2014. Although intense exploration activity continues in other West African countries such as Benin, Togo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which awarded 8 new oil blocks in 2012 to teams of investors, no discoveries were made in any of these countries in 2012, and any hopes of crude oil production remain a longer-term prospect.

Central Africa

In Central Africa, production is dominated by Congo-Brazzaville which produced 370,000 bpd in 2012. New investment of around US$1.9billon could speed up the development of the 70 million barrel Lianzi field. Growing optimism about presalt plays could attract new interest in Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. With the exception of the Central African Republic (CAR) all the Economic Community of Central African States (CEMAC) member states are oil producers, who have a host of maturing and declining fields. CEMAC oil producers produced a total of 1.1million bpd between them in 2012.

A big game-changer in 2013 for the region’s producers, to offset the longer-term decline in production from maturing fields, could be pre-salt exploration which is already underway in Congo and Gabon. However, with little sign of any planned pre-salt exploration in CEMAC member, Equatorial Guinea, short-term increases in production will hinge on the Aseng oil and gas condensate field, and the Zafiro field, which has been the key source of Equatorial Guinea’s 250,000 bpd production. In the short-term at least production from Aseng will help stem off any significant decline in the country’s output.

East Africa and Southern Africa

Crude oil discoveries in Kenya by Tullow at the Ngaima-1 and Twiga-1 wells in the Northern Kenya in mid-2012, following the near-perpetual gas finds in Tanzania and Mozambique in the prior 24 months and continuing into 2012, firmly cemented the East Africa region’s status as an oil and gas exploration frontier. The passing of Uganda’s long-awaited oil law in December 2012 has boosted hopes of first oil production in 2017. To the north, South Sudan is expected to resume production early in 2013, following months of tension with Sudan over crude oil transit fees. An initial production level of 150,000 bpd is expected, and could reach previous levels of around 300,000 by Q4, depending on the success of further border demarcation talks with Sudan. In the SADC region, Namibia is a continuing hotspot for oil and gas exploration, though its pre-salt potential has come to dominate Southern Africa oil exploration.

SSA’s crude oil trading patterns have remained relatively stable over the last few years, with the main oil producers representing key sources of crude oil for the region’s refineries. However, intra-regional flows of crude oil still represent only 3% of the region’s total crude oil trade. Currently, much of the intra-regional crude oil trade flows in West Africa originate from Nigeria, the region’s largest producer. However, with Ghana now the largest producer in the ECOWAS region, at 110,000bpd (after Nigeria), it could potentially supply some of West Africa’s intra-regional exports.

Part I of this Ecobank oil and gas focus can be read here.

Rolake Akinkugbe is Head, Energy research, Ecobank Group.