Post Tagged with: "Africa"

Why we have no idea whether Africa is rising or not

Finally, something that I can agree with. If we want to fetishise numbers we should at least try to get them right. Morten Jerven at FP:

Today, due to the uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries by GDP is misleading. The basic problem is that many countries have been using outmoded data and methods. Nigeria’s astonishing upward revision is due to the fact that, until quite recently, the authorities there were still using data and methods from 1990, and have only recently decided to update them. The new methods are capturing a whole range of fresh numbers, such as data from telecommunications (mobile phones) and the service sector. Needless to say, while we wait for the new figures, any comparison between Nigeria’s GDP and another country’s are meaningless.

In research conducted for Poor Numbers I surveyed methods and data in use in national statistical offices in Sub-Saharan Africa. For many countries no official information was obtainable. The IMF Statistics Department periodically reminds authorities to update their baseline statistics every five years (in accordance with international best practice). But within the past seven years, limited resources and data availability have meant that only seven countries (Burundi, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger, Rwanda, and Seychelles) were able to follow suit. Of the 34 countries for which information was available, 21 reported having a base year that is within the last decade, while 13 countries have base years from the 1980s and 1990s. This means that our last reasonably accurate picture of these economies is more than a decade old. By comparison, most Western economies update their base years on an annual basis.

Yet the available figures do suggest one likely finding: Many economies in Africa today may be richer than we think. Some of them, like Nigeria, probably are. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we don’t really know for sure. The African growth and income evidence does not tell us as much as we would like to think — and for some countries it’s seriously misleading. It’s disturbing to think that, as recently as last year, we were still working under the assumption that Ghana was a poor country. Now we’ve discovered that we have to re-examine all our ideas.

For both Nigeria and Ghana, the implications are that a large amount of economic activity has gone missing since the 1990s, making it impossible to write the history of those countries based on the official statistics. Were the estimates made in the 1990s exhaustive? When did the economy grow and at what rate? What policies caused the growth?

And we have not even added the informal economic activities within and across countries. And by the way, if you see any figures for those, for obvious reasons, doubt them.

Update

Lee Crawfurd just told me on Twitter that informal activities are captured in household consumption data. That is an excellent point, although the collection of household data – income and consumption – are problematic for different reasons. See section 29 of this UN Economic and Social Council doc on poverty and the informal sector [pdf].

January 30, 2013 Read More

So the Chinese are benefiting from AGOA

Of course they are:

A paper from the Centre for the Study of African Economies suggests that savvy Chinese companies have set up shop in Africa as a route to get their products into the US, with the added incentive of all those juicy AGOA benefits.

The logic is impeccable. Not only does an Africa platform get them duty-free access to US markets; they can also avoid punitive quotas on China’s exports, imposed under previous protectionist measures enacted by the rich world such as the Multifibre Arrangement.

And even during that whole MFA thing, Chinese companies were producing in Africa so they could export as products from African countries. Which was one of the reasons that it looked like textile industries in some African countries were doing OK. Once the MFA expired, after a few years of which China joined the WTO, there was no longer any need for them to export from Africa. I wrote about all that a couple of years ago here, touching on the AGOA bit, especially as it affected (or not) textile. An excerpt:

Before the MFA expired, the United States introduced the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), an initiative that opened up the American market to African countries. Before the expiration of the MFA, textile products were one of the fastest growing exports to the US under AGOA. However, by the time the quotas were lifted, Chinese exports [exported from China] increased rapidly and proved to be stronger competition than African companies could handle. According to a 2005 presentation made to the US-China Commission by Princeton Lyman, a former United States ambassador to Nigeria, African countries suffered from the increase in exports from the Chinese textile industry on two fronts. Cheap exports from China were undermining local textile industries. At the same time, the growth of Chinese exports to the United States was making it almost impossible for African countries to compete with China for the US market.

December 19, 2012 Read More

Who is funding infrastructure projects in Africa?

From a new report by the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa on external funding of infrastructure projects in Africa:

In 2011 total external financial commitments/investments in African Infrastructure declined to 2009 levels. Overall commitments totalled US$41.5billion – a decline of 26% compared with 2010 figures. Commitments from ICA Members declined by 56% to US$11.9billion as compared to 2010 figures.

Financial commitments by ‘other’ financiers such as Arab Funds and particularly China has witnessed a continuous increasing trend. In 2011 such ‘other’ commitments grew by 39% to US$18.1billion. and the Arab Funds have doubled their contributions, and private sector commitments have nearly recovered to pre-crisis levels.

Private finance to African infrastructure although experienced a decline as compared to 2010 figures, has remained relatively stable in porportion terms accounting for approximately 27% (US$11 billion) of total external financial commitment/investments.

The full report.

December 18, 2012 Read More

A Framework For Discussing ‘Africa Rising’

Jolyon Ford

Jolyon Ford of Oxford Analytica:

I wonder if we should perhaps think of sub-Saharan Africa as a collection not so much of jointly emerging markets, but of diverging ones.

Last week I was privileged, under the umbrella of the commendable ‘Invest in Africa’ initiative, to join experienced businesspeople in London discussing endemic inaccurate negative perceptions by outsiders of the relative risk of doing business in African countries.

The curiosity is that longstanding, ingrained negative perceptions persist now alongside a more recent, contrary trend – the more hyperbolic proponents of which claim that anyone not rushing to invest in Africa must need their head examined.

There is perhaps no better theme for a contemporary African Argument – for those following business issues as well as (often related) developmental or political ones – than efforts to unpack and understand this ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. Simon Freemantle’s recent post here is an excellent addition. It develops an argument he delivered with typical cool conviction at a recent Joburg event where we reflected on the proposition ‘Africa: New Hope or New Hype?’ hosted by Ernst & Young’s Michael Lalor.

There are many dimensions to getting behind simple binary characterisations of either ‘Africa rising: all is great’ or ‘Nothing new here: it’s a false dawn’. Each time one goes (as we constantly must) behind the headline rates of growth, one sees the complexity – both the exaggeration about transformative progress, and the under-reporting (or misreporting) of the many positive achievements and trends.

Here.

November 29, 2012 Read More

The Economist interview on Boko Haram

The Africa editor of The Economist talks to Lizzy Donnelly of Chatham House on Boko Haram. I mostly agree with her, mainly because she made sure to express the uncertainties about Boko Haram, the disagreement among ‘Nigeria watchers’ and ‘analysts’ on the group, and the fact that there is so much that is not known about them. But she hit the sweet spot when she pointed out that oil wealth likely led to the current state of Northern Nigeria – high unemployment etc. etc. – and that the north used to be a strong centre of commerce in West Africa. She didn’t elaborate on this in the interview so I’m going to do it in one sentence:

Part of the north was on the famous trans-sahara trade route; up until the 1970s there was a strong textile industry (there was a minor surge sometime later, but that is mostly gone now); and in the 80s when I was in primary school, the pyramids of groundnut from the north were highly visible parts of our Social Studies textbooks (pyramids of groundnut in the north, oil palm in the south-east and cacao in the south-west).

Just so one is not misunderstood, it should be added that oil wealth led to the current state of the economy of the whole of the country, not just the north.

Give it a listen, especially if you need a brief introduction to Boko Haram.

October 11, 2012 Read More

Drug trafficking and usage in Africa

Ken Opalo has an excellent article on drug trafficking in Africa:

The problem of drug trafficking in Africa is not merely a law enforcement concern. Firstly, it is a threat to the development and consolidation of important state institutions, especially the region’s judiciaries and security agencies. In many of the African states that have been cited as important transit destinations for drugs from Latin America and Asia, drug traffickers have managed to infiltrate vital state institutions. Important politicians, members of the judiciary, and key members of the security apparatus – both police and the military – have been their primary targets. As a result, the very institutions that have been charged with policing such illicit activities have been the ones that actively promoted and/or provided protection for drug traffickers. Ineluctably, the large amounts of drug money up for grabs have caused splits among ruling elites, sometimes resulting in bloody conflict, as has been the case in Guinea-Bissau since early 2009.

Apart from the political and security problems that come with drugs trafficking, another particularly worrying trend is the adoption and usage of cocaine and heroine by people in communities along the trafficking routes. From a UN report:

Drug use appears to be spilling over into countries lying on trafficking routes, such as in West and Central Africa, which is witnessing increasing numbers of cocaine users. The increasing use of heroin and drug injecting is also emerging as an alarming trend, particularly in Eastern Africa.

September 8, 2012 Read More

Three Nigerian states fight over a newly-developed oil field

On August 30, president Goodluck Jonathan flew by helicopter to Aguleri Otu in Anambra state, in south-east Nigeria, to commission the construction of the country’s first privately-owned refinery and declare Anambra Nigeria’s tenth oil-producing state.

Hours into the festivities, two bordering states, Kogi and Enugu, issued public statements claiming that the oilfields, OPL 915 and OPL916, are on their turf.

FT’s beyondbrics blog.

September 6, 2012 Read More

A little about Ghana’s new president

Thoughts are with Ghana at the passing of President Atta Mills, who many described as being slow but steady. The vice president was sworn in last evening as the new president. The video of the swearing-in ceremony is here.

The new President John Dramani Mahama was a minister for communication between 1998 and 2001. Shortly after that, he was in the Pan-African Parliament, before eventually becoming vice president. He has also written a memoir, My First Coup d’Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa. A few days ago, he was interviewed about the book by NPR. The audio and text of the interview are here.

July 25, 2012 Read More

African Peacebuilding Network Research Grants

The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) invites research grant applications from African researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners working on conflict and peacebuilding at universities and research institutions or regional governmental and non-governmental organizations in Africa.

About the African Peacebuilding Network

The APN promotes independent African research and analysis on peacebuilding in or near countries and regions affected by violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.

About the APN Research Grants Program

A core component of the APN, the Research Grants program is a vehicle for enhancing the quality and visibility of African peacebuilding research regionally and globally and for making such knowledge accessible to key policymakers and research centers of excellence in Africa and around the world.

Substantial support is available for research and analysis on issues such as:

Conflict prevention, mediation, management, resolution, and transformation
Environmental change and conflict
Post-conflict democratization, governance, and reconstruction
The relationship between peacebuilding and statebuilding, including state-society relations and state reconstruction
Transitional justice, reconciliation, social and economic justice
Peacekeeping and peace support operations
Disarmament, demobilization, and reinsertion
Security sector reform
The role of the media and civil society
Peace partnerships involving the UN, the AU, and Regional Economic Communities
Gender, youth, identity, and culture
International actors and peace interventions

Grants are awarded on a competitive, peer-reviewed basis and are intended to support six to seven months of research. Up to fifteen grants of a maximum of $15,000 will be awarded.

All grantees are required to participate in two Africa-based workshops that will provide opportunities to refine research focus and methodologies, present findings, explore ways to make work accessible to multiple peacebuilding constituencies, and develop constructive working relationships with other grantees, senior academics, and practitioner facilitators.

Research Grant Proposals

The APN is interested in innovative projects that demonstrate strong potential for producing high-quality research and analysis that can lead to practical action on peacebuilding and/or facilitate inter-regional collaboration and networking among African researchers and practitioners.

Proposals should clearly describe research objectives and significance (with a clear alignment between research design/method and research questions and goals), demonstrate knowledge of the research subject and relevant literature, and address the feasibility of proposed research activities, including a time frame for project completion. Applicants should also discuss the likely relevance of the proposed research to existing knowledge on peacebuilding practice and policy. Individual and joint proposals are welcome.

Eligibility

Applicants must be African citizens currently residing in a Sub-Saharan African country.

Academics must hold a faculty or research position at an African university or research organization and have either a PhD or a master’s and at least two years of research experience.

Policy analysts and practitioners must be based in Africa at a regional or sub-regional institution, a government agency, or a non-governmental, media, or civil society organization and have a master’s with at least two years of work experience.

Application Process

Available on the APN website: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/apn/. The APN strongly prefers that applications be uploaded through our online portal. Alternately, completed applications can be e-mailed or delivered by post or courier service.

Deadline for Applications

Applications are due by 9 p.m. EDT, June 15, 2012.

Additional Information

If you have further questions, please contact APN program staff by telephone at (212) 377-2000 or by e-mail at apn@ssrc.org.

Program Director: Cyril Obi

Contact

Kimberly S. Greenberg

May 8, 2012 Read More

Pirates and European politics – Video

As you’ve probably heard, the Pirate Party got elected into the Berlin state parliament late last year. They got 8.9% of the votes, which gave them 15 seats. Last month in local elections in another state, Saarland, they got 7.4% of the votes, but more importantly, they got 25% of the first-time voters and about the same share from previous non-voters (see this post by Marian Wirth on Google+). Some people have been pretty dismissive of them. See this article by foreign policy wonk, Dr Ulrike Guérot, in which she compares them to the Occupy movement in the US (I am not even going to try to discuss how seriously misinformed and misleading that is). On the other hand, some say that the Pirates are going to democratise Europe. Well, let’s just say that I dont think that is even one of their main goals. The most important thing to know, as the founder of the first Pirate Party, the Piratpartiet, says in the video below, is that they grew out of a protest movement and they are just beginning to deepen their philosophy. The fact that they are making real inroads in Germany is a sign of that.

What about Africa? They talk a little about that during the last 10 minutes of the video.

Thanks to Menelic for sending me the link to the video.

April 14, 2012 Read More

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