Africa

Mandisa Muriel Lindelwa Maya, South Africas’s Deputy Chief Justice, has been appointed the country’s new Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court by President Cyril Ramaphosa. She takes up the position from 1 September 2024. She replaces current Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, whose term ends at the end of August.

She is the first woman Chief Justice since South Africa became a constitutional democracy following the end of apartheid in 1994.

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• Kenya’s foreign exchange reserves have experienced a significant drop of USD 487 million (about KES 63.9 billion) over the past week, following substantial repayments of external debt.

• The decrease in reserves follows the government’s repayment of USD 533 million (about KES 70 billion) in external loans, which includes USD 433 million (KES 56.8 billion) used to service a loan from China.

• The reduction has decreased the import cover from 4.1 months to 3.9 months. Import cover refers to the number of months the available foreign exchange reserves can finance imports.

• Previous reports indicated that Kenya had spent KES 152.69 billion (approximately USD 1.15 billion) repaying China in the last fiscal year This included USD 705.05 million (KES 100.47 billion) in principal repayment and USD 366.46 million (KES 52.22 billion) in interest.

• Additionally, Kenya paid USD 286.04 million (KES 40.76 billion) more than initially planned for the fiscal year.

• The secretive nature of Beijing’s loan terms with developing countries like Kenya often means borrowers must prioritise repayments to China, placing a considerable burden on the Kenyan public.

The Continent is a weekly newspaper produced by African reporters, photographers, illustrators and editors. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp, Telegram channel, Signal or e-mail, and has become the continent's most widely distributed newspaper.

It is designed to be read on a mobile screen, with mostly short news pieces of 250 to 400 words, and a few longer pieces of about 900 words. Editions are sent out as a PDF on Fridays.

Led by a small team of nine (all working remotely) and having published contributions from nearly 200 journalists, writers, photographers and illustrators from across Africa in the past year, The Continent has covered numerous important and urgent stories, starting with reliable information from African researchers and public health experts on the Covid-19 pandemic, and on to other ground-breaking reporting: the injustice of “vaccine apartheid” with rich countries hoarding Covid-19 vaccines; the impact of Nigeria’s sudden and dramatic Twitter ban (applauded by none other than Donald Trump); a tender photo essay on being queer in Uganda, in a country where it is dangerous to be LGBTQ.

The Continent is published by the All Protocol Observed, a registered non-profit based in South Africa. It was initially funded by the editorial team, but has since attracted donor and commercial funding. So a refreshing difference is no adverts and also no tracking. You receive the PDF weekly via your channel of choice (or you can just download it from their website), and you can reshare this with anyone you wish to.

Credit to Jan Wildeboer @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net for sharing this on the Fediverse.

See https://www.thecontinent.org/

#news #Africa #TheContinent #journalism

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Chinese leaders have been citing the billions of dollars committed to new construction projects and record two-way trade as evidence of their commitment to assist with the Africa’s modernisation and foster “win-win” cooperation.

But the data reveals a relationship that is still largely extractive and has so far failed to live up to some of Beijing’s rhetoric about the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s strategy to build an infrastructure network connecting China to the world.

While new Chinese investment in Africa increased 114% last year, according to the Griffith Asia Institute at Australia’s Griffith University, it was heavily focused on minerals essential to the global energy transition and China’s plans to revive its own flagging economy, but has brought less advantage to Africa.

• Minerals and oil also dominated African-Chinese trade. As efforts falter to boost other imports from Africa, including agricultural products and manufactured goods, the continent’s trade deficit with China has ballooned.

• The result is a more one-sided relationship than China says it wants, one that is dominated by imports of Africa’s raw materials and that some analysts argue contains echoes of colonial-era Europe’s economic relations with the continent.

• Although two-way trade reached a record $282 billion last year, according to Chinese customs data, the value of Africa’s exports to China fell 7%, mainly due to a decline in oil prices, and Africa's trade deficit widened 46%.

• Many projects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which grew rapidly in the two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, proved unprofitable. As some governments struggled to repay loans, China cut lending. COVID-19 then pushed it to turn inward, and Chinese construction projects in Africa fell.

• China's hunt for critical minerals is a main driver of African infrastructure construction. In January, for example, Chinese companies pledged up to $7 billion in infrastructure investment under a revision of their copper and cobalt joint venture agreement with Democratic Republic of Congo.

• With one of Africa’s largest trade deficits to China, Kenya has been pushing to increase access to the world’s second-largest consumer market, recently gaining it for avocados and seafood. But cumbersome health and hygiene regulations mean Chinese consumers remain out of reach for many producers.

• Overall, Kenyan exports to China fell over 15% to $228 million, Chinese customs data showed, as a decline in titanium production led to a drop in shipments of the metal – a key export to China. But Chinese manufactured goods kept coming.

Unless African nations can add value to their exports through increased processing and manufacturing, says Francis Mangeni, an advisor at the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area, “we are just exporting raw minerals to fuel their economy.”

Archived version

Amid unrest in Kenya due to debt distress, it is reported that the country has spent 152.69 billion KES (about 1 billion USD) to repay debt to China in the just-ended financial year, highlighting the burden on taxpayers in servicing loans taken to build a modern railway and other infrastructure projects, according to a report by Business Daily.

• The total amount paid represents a 42.14 per cent jump over the 107.42 billion KES paid in the previous year, ending June 2023, according to disclosures by the Kenyan Treasury.

• According to research lan AidData, "The terms of Beijing's loan deals with developing countries are usually secretive and require borrowing from nations such as Kenya to prioritise repayment of Chinese state-owned banks ahead of other creditors."

• Based on analysis of loan agreements between 2000 and 2019, AidData suggested that Chinese deals have clauses for "more elaborate repayment safeguards" than its "peers in the official credit market."

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Developing countries owe China an estimated $1.1 trillion, and more than 80% of China’s loans are to countries experiencing financial distress, according to AidData, a research lab at William & Mary. Despite this, China rarely agrees to loan forgiveness or principle reduction, preferring to negotiate longer repayment plans on a case-by-case basis.

• Despite promises of two-way trade, African exporters have little access to Chinese markets for their goods. Most of China’s imports from the continent are oil, gas and minerals.

• The result is a more one-sided relationship than China says it wants.. One that is dominated by imports of Africa’s raw materials and that some analysts argue contains echoes of colonial-era Europe’s economic relations with the continent.

• With the annual Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) set to take place in September, China is expected to announce new projects in Africa. But its lending practices are coming under scrutiny. Several countries that have taken on debt have found themselves forced to make drastic cuts to domestic programs or raise taxes in order to repay the loans.

• Kenya, for example, spends about 60% of its revenue on debt payments, with about one-third of that money going to pay the interest on loans.

With negotiations to adopt rules and regulations for commercial deep-sea mining in international waters resuming this week at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), African countries have an extremely important role to play in the future of this industry and the health of our ocean, says Rashid Sumaila, University Killam Professor and Canada Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

ISA, as a UN-affiliated institution, was established in the 1990s to ensure that developing countries would benefit financially from deep-sea mining when/if it starts, ensuring equity in the benefits derived from global commons. As this debate progresses, Africa stands at a pivotal moment where its decisions could profoundly influence the trajectory of this industry and the preservation of marine ecosystems.

[...]

But our research, which looks at the full net cost of deep-sea mining for a wide variety of stakeholders, including mining companies, investors, low-income countries, sponsoring states, and nations involved in terrestrial mining, has uncovered a complex web of risks and rewards.

Mounting scientific evidence suggests that mining would have devastating impacts on fragile seafloor habitats. A single mining operation might discharge massive sediment plumes, significantly affecting light penetration and water oxygenation while dispersing toxins and radioactivity. The price of irreversible ecological damage could be staggering, estimated to potentially surpass the entire global defence budget of about 2 trillion dollars.

And while private companies (and the countries sponsoring their mining operations) stand to make short-term profits from the enterprise, looming business model risks, litigation threats, and technological challenges raise serious doubts about its long-term economic benefits. As new data continues to emerge, we must include the costs of potentially irreversible damage mining causes in our calculus, especially as humanity faces a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Zambia has invested over $1bn (£784m) in the education sector since the introduction of free education three years ago - a much-needed boost after years of decline in spending as a proportion of GDP in this sector.

The government has announced plans to build over 170 new schools and has committed to the recruitment of 55,000 new teachers by the end of 2026, of whom 37,000 have already been hired.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14986553

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In an interview with the French publication “Le Parisien”, Brenda Biya, the daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, explains why she came out, what her family’s response has been, and how she hopes to make a difference for Cameroon’s LGBTQ community. This is an English translation of that interview.

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/18587221

• South African retailers have urged the government to plug tax loopholes that they fear are being used by Chinese e-commerce platform Temu, and Shein, another Chinese online platform,

• Etienne Vlok, a national industrial policy officer for Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, said the government should consider urgent changes to tax rules on small items to ensure fair competition for local businesses.

• Temu, the online shopping juggernaut backed by China’s PDD Holdings Inc. has offered huge discounts in South Africa since its launch in January. The firm has expanded its global footprint to 49 countries and recently took out ads at the Super Bowl to try and sustain growth among US consumers.

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Kenya hopes that the protests would die down after President Ruto decided not to sign the new tax reforms bill. A debt-stricken country, Kenya finds it hard to service loans, much of which is owed to China. Is this the real problem?

President William Ruto came to power in Kenya in 2022, promising to make life easy for average Kenyan people. But seven months into his presidency, Ruto’s chief economic adviser tweeted in April 2023, “Salaries or default? Take your pick.”

A month later, the government held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay foreign loans, news agency Associated Press reported in May 2023.

In less than two years, the same people whom Ruto promised to ease their hardships are baying for his blood. They are out on the streets, demanding the life Ruto had promised. A vast majority of protesters are youth. They have turned violent and set the Kenyan parliament building to fire, damaging a part of it. In response, the Kenyan government has used force killing more than a dozen protesters.

On Wednesday, Ruto relented, declaring he would not sign the tax reforms bill that had triggered the violent protests, resulting in the death of 23 agitators. The bill will now lapse.

The catalyst for protests: Why youth are on streets in Kenya

The new Finance Bill proposed a series of tax reforms and hikes levies, sparking public outrage.

• Among the most contentious measures were new levies on monetised digital content creation and a five per cent tax increase on digital payments, including bank transfers and mobile money payments. Given Kenya’s heavy reliance on mobile money, these measures were particularly burdensome.

• What tipped the scales against the Ruto government were a 16 per cent value-added tax (VAT) on bread and a 25 per cent excise duty on domestically produced raw and refined vegetable cooking oil.

• Additionally, the bill proposed a 2.75 per cent income charge on salary earners enrolled in the national medical insurance plan and a 2.5 per cent annual tax on motor vehicles.

Protesters argued that these taxes would significantly raise the cost of living. They were also alarmed by the bill’s provision allowing revenue authorities to access bank and mobile money accounts to enforce tax collection.

The new bill was aimed at raising an additional $2.7 billion in domestic revenue for the Ruto government. Ruto also aimed to use the new taxes to meet a 2024 revenue target of 3.3 trillion Kenyan shillings ($26 billion).

But why hike taxes so sharply

Ruto justified the tax-hike proposals. He said they were necessary to pay off a public debt of 11.1 trillion Kenyan shillings or $82 billion that Kenya had to repay or service.

Much of this debt is owed to China, a result of extensive borrowing under former President Uhuru Kenyatta, whom Ruto served as vice-president. These borrowings financed infrastructure projects, including a Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line connecting Nairobi to Mombasa, a major coastal city.

Kenya approached lenders for fresh loans but agencies like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank demanded tax reforms and transparency in other loans (read borrowings from China, whose loan conditions are never disclosed and always shrouded in the cloud of secrecy). China is already Kenya’s biggest lender.

The problem: A pattern of consequences

The thing with debts is that they need to be serviced to avoid defaulting on them. A loan default complicates future borrowings for a country. The debts become harder to come, and those available come at very high interest rates, complicating the finances further. It becomes a vicious cycle.

It is estimated that Kenya is currently spending about 59 per cent of its revenues to service debts, leaving only about 41 per cent of tax revenues to finance government expenditures including salaries and development projects.

The World Bank estimates show that the total public debt of Kenya stands at about 68 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for fiscal 2023/24. If things go as per the Ruto government’s plan, it may fall to about 65 per cent for 2024/25. Kenya’s fiscal year follows the July-June cycle. In June 2023, the debt-GDP ratio had gone up to almost 72 per cent.

The China angle to Kenya’s problem

About one-fourth of the debt finance money goes to service borrowings from China, which is not only Kenya’s biggest lender but also accounts for over 70 per cent of the total bilateral debts that the east African country owes. This amounted to 882.5 billion Kenyan shillings or $6.82 billion by June 2023. Figures for the ongoing fiscal are not clear.

Bloomberg cited a lawmakers report to say that Kenya’s loan payments to the Export-Import Bank of China “is a key driver of debt servicing expenditures”. According to Kenya’s National Assembly’s Public Debt & Privatisation Committee, China accounts for 147.9 billion Kenyan shillings or $1.2 billion in interest and principal payments in the next fiscal year through June 2025.

Overall, external debt payments are projected at 590.6 billion Kenyan shillings or $4.5 billion in the financial year beginning July 1, adding up to about a third of total debt servicing.

Kenyan media reports show China, Finland and France are top lenders. The problem with Chinese loans has been the lack of transparency and a track record of defaults or near-default situations for the nations that have had China as their primary lender — Sri Lanka and Pakistan, for example.

Last year, an Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. It said the debt servicing was draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.

There are two other complications with Chinese loans. China has been reluctant to forgive debt. Coupled with its extreme secrecy about the amount of money and terms of its loans, the Chinese hand keeps traditional lenders — the US and others — from stepping in to help the struggling economy restructure their debt and debt service.

The other issue is, as it has been discovered in recent years, that China requires borrowers to put cash in hidden escrow accounts to safeguard its loans. This puts China at the forefront of the line of creditors that are to be paid. Others then prefer to stay away.

The same was happening with Kenya. But as Ruto approached international agencies, they asked to improve Kenya’s tax revenues and fix the flaws in the fundamentals of its economy. Kenya brought a pro-reform budget in April. And the tax-reforming Finance Bill was a step in that direction but an already struggling population was not ready to bear the brunt.

This explains why posts on social media gave a call to occupy the president’s office and residence, and also the local offices of the World Bank and the IMF. Now that Ruto has withdrawn the Finance Bill, his government requires to find new ways to finance the Kenyan economy.

Several African countries depend on China as their main technology provider and sponsor of large digital infrastructural projects.

Under the so-called “EPC+F” (Engineer, Procure, Construct + Fund/Finance) scheme, Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE oversee the engineering, procurement and construction while Chinese banks provide state-backed finance. Angola, Uganda and Zambia are just some of the countries which seem to have benefited from this type of deal.

The Chinese government’s expectation is that mobile applications and startups in Africa will increasingly reflect Beijing’s technological and ideological principles. That includes China’s interpretation of human rights, data privacy and freedom of speech.

Researchers like Arthur Gwagwa from the Ethics Institute at Utrecht University (Netherlands) believe that China’s export of critical infrastructure components will enable military and industrial espionage. These claims assert that Chinese-made equipment is designed in a way that could facilitate cyber attacks.

Human Rights Watch, an international NGO that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has raised concerns that Chinese infrastructure increases the risk of technology-enabled authoritarianism. In particular, Huawei has been accused of colluding with governments to spy on political opponents in Uganda and Zambia. Huawei has denied the allegations.

In the long term African countries should produce their own infrastructure and become less dependent.

In order to attract investment, Nigeria will offer a range of incentives to investors, including tax waivers for importing mining equipment. Enhanced security measures will also be implemented to ensure the safety of mining operations.

However, the granting of mining licenses will be contingent upon companies presenting a detailed plan outlining how they intend to process minerals locally.

This requirement reflects the government’s commitment to creating jobs and benefiting local communities through value addition activities.

[Edit typo.]

While China has built infrastructure throughout the continent, though China’s promising projects are typically faulty or incomplete, revealing its self-serving goals.

Ethiopia is a prominent example of African countries’ challenges. As Ethiopia lacks the funds to build a seaport in its ally Djibouti. China started investing in Ethiopia and agreed to construct a railroad from Addis Ababa to the Port of Djibouti. China gave Ethiopia a $1.3 billion loan with 3% interest and a 6-year repayment period. The modernization project covered 750 km and cost $4 billion. China’s state-owned EXIM bank, one of the primary lenders for BRI projects, covered 70% of the cost with Ethiopia paying the rest in loan installments.

Because China now owns 32.9% of Ethiopia’s external debt, the African country heavily depends on loans from state-owned banks linked to China’s state-controlled market, and is thus affected by China’s economic health.

As repayment amounts are denominated in China's currency yuan, a weaker currency means inflated repayment costs, straining these indebted countries even more.

The overall economic leverage is primarily attributed to a system of high-interest, high-risk loans, as countries fall into a “debt trap” caused by unsustainable debt that continuously accrues.

China has tried to alleviate concerns by highlighting debt-restructuring agreements with African countries. These agreements aim to help struggling countries repay loans, but they’re vague and don’t adequately help countries overcome the debt trap.

Adding to Ethiopia’s woes are corrupt activities by Chinese companies. To get projects in Ethiopia, these firms have bribed corrupt politicians. When they start constructing in Ethiopia, Chinese companies fail to deliver their promises of high-quality infrastructure. In contrast, as Ethiopia’s debt increases, reports have appeared of faltering infrastructure due to lower quality materials than initially promised.

China has built similar projects in other African countries like Kenya and Zambia, with similar attractive promises, like the Nairobi-Mombasa railway and Mongu-Kalabo highway respectively. All these projects require large loans to often opaque conditions.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10465689

The Irish government will intervene in the case taken by South Africa and argue that restricting food and other essentials in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent, the foreign minister Micheál Martin said on Wednesday.

“We believe there is a case, given how this war has been conducted,” Martin said.

“We will be inviting the court to consider the issue of broadening how you determine whether genocide has taken place or not on the basis of an entire population being collectively punished.”

A clear pattern of behaviour had impeded humanitarian aid, resulting in widespread suffering, he said. “Half the population of Gaza is facing famine and 100% is experiencing food insecurity.”

Investigating Sino-African labour relations at the Karuma hydroelectric dam in Uganda and published recently by Cambridge University Press, researchers Robert Wyrod and Kimberlee Chang urge African countries to introduce stronger worker protections to avoid situations as at Karuma "where [labour] abuse seems systemic".

"Unless African governments take a proactive role in monitoring and enforcing standards in a sector they define as strategic, Chinese state capital operates like any other form of transnational capital," they say.

Their findings suggest that there may be something at work beyond more classic labour conflicts related to pay, benefits and safety. They also stress that the abuse is not simply a language barrier issue.

Dams became some of the most controversial development projects, criticised especially for their environmental damage, displacement of communities, and loss of local livelihoods. Due to such criticisms, by the turn of the millennium the World Bank, along with other Western funders, had reconsidered how dams figured into their development portfolio, essentially retreating from this sector.

This shift in the role of hydroelectric dams in Western development funding coincided with the rise of a new player in global dam construction, particularly China. As part of China's ‘going global’ strategy aimed at finding new international markets for China's state-owned and private companies, China began promoting overseas dam construction, along with other large-scale infrastructure projects.

The researchers focuse on the Karuma Hydropower Project, a 600-megawatt power station on the Nile River in northern Uganda. When completed, the Karuma dam will be the largest in Uganda and one of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. While Uganda is a relatively small country, it has forged a strong partnership with China in recent years. This has resulted in an outsized range of China funded and/or constructed projects in Uganda.

In the past decade, more than 63,000 deaths of migrants have been recorded by MMP. Notably, more than one in three of those identified come from countries in conflict, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Ethiopia. With that said, more than two-thirds of those whose deaths are documented in the MMP dataset in the last decade have little to no information on their identities, meaning that each one of these tens of thousands of individuals are unidentified.

Tanzania is experiencing a fearful atmosphere caused by strict measures enforced against individuals who oppose the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The suppression tactics reached an alarming level when Tanzanian police summoned and questioned nine Project-Affected People (PAPs) from EACOP-affected villages for several hours on March 11th.

French multinational oil company Total and the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are the project’s main proponents and stand to profit the most from the pipeline’s construction. Both Total and CNOOC hold the licenses to extract oil in Uganda.

EACOP leaders, TotalEnergies, and CNOOC are urged to take immediate action to denounce these violations while valuing community rights and environmental preservation above all else, says StopEACOP an umbrella organization of over 260 human rights and environmental protection groups trying to stop the project.

"EACOP threatens to displace thousands of families and farmers from their land and has already disrupted the livelihoods of many, rip through some of the world’s most important elephant, lion and chimpanzee nature reserves, and will fuel climate change by enabling the extraction of oil which will generate over 34 million tons of CO2 emissions every single year," the groups add.

The head of the African Development Bank is calling for an end to loans given in exchange for the continent’s rich supplies of oil or critical minerals used in smartphones and electric car batteries.

“They are just bad, first and foremost, because you can’t price the assets properly,” Akinwumi Adesina said in an interview with The Associated Press in Lagos, Nigeria, last week. “If you have minerals or oil under the ground, how do you come up with a price for a long-term contract? It’s a challenge.”

Linking future revenue from natural resource exports to loan paydowns is often touted as a way for recipients to get financing for infrastructure projects and for lenders to reduce the risk of not getting their money back.

Archived link: https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41586-024-07208-3

DOI for the highseas: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07208-3

Adaptive foraging along dry-season waterholes would have transformed seasonal rivers into ‘blue highway’ corridors, potentially facilitating an out-of-Africa dispersal and suggesting that the event was not restricted to times of humid climates. The behavioural flexibility required to survive seasonally arid conditions in general, and the apparent short-term effects of the Toba supereruption in particular were probably key to the most recent dispersal and subsequent worldwide expansion of modern humans.

In order to contribute to restoring the debt sustainability of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Paris Club creditors committed to cancel USD 1.2 billion in nominal terms under the Enhanced HIPC Initiative framework.

In addition, Paris Club creditors confirmed their willingness to grant additional debt cancellation on a bilateral basis for an amount of USD 815 million.

The Paris Club consensus and the expected additional bilateral efforts would result in a reduction of more than USD 2.0 billion, representing 99% of the debt of the Federal Republic of Somalia owed to Paris Club members as of January 2023.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9754345

The lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C. by nongovernmental organization International Right Advocates. It alleged that two mining companies, British company Glencore and Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, supplied cobalt to the companies.

The tech giants who purchased the cobalt were “aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo mines.