Africa's Week In Brief
Week of 12 - 16 June
Dear Friends,
Today is June 16th, a day in celebration of the courage of the youth in South Africa.
Happy reading. Happy Friday.
w/o 12 June - 16 June 2023
TL;DR
BRICS in Beijing? South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, requesting China to host the BRICS summit in August. Mozambique as an alternate option seems off the table, for now. Xi praised Ramaphosa and other African leaders for their upcoming peace mission to Ukraine and Russia (more below).
DRC. A camp for internally displaced persons in the DRC was attacked by rogue militia, resulting in 45 deaths. The assault is a grave violation of international humanitarian law (Al Jazeera).
Germany. A new public-private-partnership will promote remote STEM learning for Africa’s youth (DEVEX).
Great Carbon Valley? Kenya could lead the world in carbon capture, check out this article in The Economist for more. Martin Freimüller, founder of Octavia Carbon, quoted for this story is a friend of the Africa Briefing.
Huawei. The EU is funding Huawei to test cutting-edge research (from AI to 6G) despite the bloc having pressed for stricter curbs on the tech giant (Financial Times). This decision matters for the African continent as Huawei is a major provider of its telecommunication equipment.
Macroeconomics. Africa is experiencing a fundamental economic shift to services. See more in this week’s graphic.
Ukraine. A delegation of African leaders from six nations, led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, will meet today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. See the past Special Briefing on Africa and the War in Ukraine for more.
Sudan. Sudanese citizens must now obtain a visa to enter Egypt. Some 200,000 Sudanese have crossed into Egypt since violence broke out some months ago.
Graphic of the Week
*Credit: McKinsey & Company
In context: Africa is transitioning to services. If the continent matched the productivity growth of Asia’s strongest services hubs; it could add $1.4 trillion to its economy, almost doubling the GVA from services today. McKinsey estimates that this would create 225 million jobs by 2030—a crucial consideration in the light of Africa’s rapidly growing workforce. On its current trajectory, the services sector will create at least 85 million net new jobs across the continent by 2030, sufficient to absorb almost half of all new labor-market entrants.
Arts in Africa
Egypt expels a Dutch museum for the promotion of an “Afrocentrist” history of Egypt (Foreign Policy). Funny considering Egypt is in Africa.
This move comes after a group of Egyptian jurists and archaeologists demanded $2 billion compensation from Netflix after its series Queen Cleopatra featured a mixed-race actress. They objected to Cleopatra being depicted as “dark-skinned.”
Business & Finance in Africa
In the biggest monetary policy move this year, Nigeria’s central bank floated its currency, the naira. The floatation saw the currency lose 36% of its value to a record low of 750 to the dollar (Reuters).
In positive news for Kenya, the EU agreed to a trade deal as Brussels aims to boost trade with the East African powerhouse. The EU is Kenya’s biggest export market with more than 20% of the country’s total exports — famously sending its beautiful flowers to brighten up the European bloc (Financial Times).
In less heartening news, Devex crunched the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) financial data and found an overwhelming downward trend in expenditure figures. Overall, the bank allocated $3.9 billion in 2022, a decrease of around $1.2 billion from the previous year.
In Egypt, the country’s sovereign wealth fund plans to dominate the green energy sector across the MENA region. The country is seeking to mobilize both public and private sector investment in this space (African Business). The move follows the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warning that Egypt is “highly vulnerable” to the financial consequences of a changing climate.
Moving on from larger macroeconomic stories. Sierra Leone announced that it would join Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service. The country joins Nigeria, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Mauritius as African nations connect to the low-earth orbit satellite system. Starlink enables coverage to remote parts of the continent at no extra cost compared to land-based telecom towers and subsea fiber cables (African Business).
In the VC space, Endeavor South Africa is targeting to invest in up to 30 entrepreneurial firms with the next fund. The company has allocated R500-million (US$28million) to its Harvest Fund III. ISF Africa counselor and Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa, Alison Collier, says the fund aims to follow on from the success of Harvest Fund II, which raised R200-million and has invested in 17 companies to date, making it the most active South African venture capital fund for 2021 and 2022.
Staying in the country, South Africa faces a growing emigration problem, with large numbers of highly skilled young people leaving the country. This trend is adding significant stresses on local businesses already facing critical skills shortages. Speaking at a roundtable on SA’s brain drain, Simonetta Guiricich from services group Payroll said the country faces a mass exodus of talent. BusinessTech cites a recent report from the UN that showed 914 901 South Africans were living abroad in 2020, a significant jump from the 786 554 recorded in 2015. The number of people who left SA between 2015 and 2020 (more than 1 280 000) was roughly three times higher than the 43 000 people who emigrated between 2010 and 2015. The UK has the largest SA diaspora, with nearly 250 000 people listing SA as their country of birth, followed by Australia, the USA, and New Zealand.
China in Africa
Check out this free to view data base on Chinese investment in African energy infrastructure over time (Boston University).
*Credit: Boston University
Climate in Africa
*Credit: Financial Times
Climate scientists report the worst drought in four decades has led to crop failures and animal deaths leaving more than 4mn people in acute hunger and in need of assistance in the horn of Africa.
Democracy in Africa
Amnesty International is pressuring Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa to reject a Criminal Law Codification Amendment Bill – known as the Patriotic Bill. The human rights organization says the Bill’s promulgation would be a grave assault on human rights. The Bill, criminalizes "wilful injuring of the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe with violations punishable by up to 20 years' imprisonment, revocation of citizenship and the death penalty.’
Guinea-Bissau's recently held elections resulted in the opposition winning a majority of seats in legislative elections (Associated Press).
Europe in Africa
The EU has offered Tunisia an aid package worth more than €1bn ($1.07bn) to help the country tackle an economic crisis (All Africa). This is far from a no-strings attached agreement as the bloc is requesting Tunisia stem the flow of migrants to Europe from its shores. According to the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, most migrants registering in Italy came from the North African country. According to the Italian Interior Ministry, some 53 800 migrants have reached Italy over the Mediterranean since the start of the year, up from 21 700 at the same time last year.
Peace and Security in Africa
Along with his requesting a change in venue from Cape Town to Beijing, President Ramaphosa and Xi addressed Chinese-South African relations; ‘calling for favourable conditions to solve the Ukraine crisis’ (News24).
Further north, there is more instability in the heart of the continent with the Democratic Republic of Congo once again accusing the Rwandan military and the M23 rebel group of planning attacks on the eastern Congolese city of Goma.
*Credit: Voice of America
The Tutsi-led M23 captured swathes of territory in North Kivu (see map) leaving 1m people displaced by the fighting. The DRC has repeatedly accused neighbouring Rwanda and its Tutsi-led Government of backing the M23, a charge backed by several Western countries and independent UN experts. Kigali denies any involvement (Observer).
Finally, Saudi Arabia announced a Sudan aid funding conference to gather pledges to address the pressing humanitarian needs of over half of the Sudanese population.
Tech and Society in Africa
Termii, a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup announced $3.65 million in new financing (total funding to date to slightly more than $5 million) according to Techcrunch. In 2021, the company raised $1.4 million in seed funding serving more than 500 fintechs, including Chipper, Paystack, Moniepoint and Piggyvest with a little over 1,000 businesses and developers using its APIs. Today, its CEO says 10,000 businesses rely on Termii’s API and no-code campaign dashboard for terminating SMS and voice messages each month.
US in Africa
The US-South Africa fallout continues with a group of US lawmakers calling for a US-Africa trade summit planned for later this year to be moved from South Africa in response to what they said was the country’s “deepening military relationship” with Russia. In a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the lawmakers suggested South Africa is in danger of losing its benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) – Washington’s flagship trade programme (Al Jazeera). South Africa is due to host the AGOA Forum in Johannesburg in 2025 to discuss the future of the programme, which is slated to expire in 2025.
Cheers,
Joshua