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  • in Agriculture

    Food Security is About More than Land Grabs

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    Foreign powers are not just engaged in African land. They are also engaged in African food systems, often in damaging ways.

    By Adam Sneyd , Lauren Sneyd

    At a market in Cameroon. Photograph by Adam and Lauren Sneyd.

    The conventional view right now is that land in Africa is a really big deal. Over the past few years, high-flying experts and journalists have continuously pumped out earnest reports on African land issues, often centred on the activities of foreign firms.

    Some of these stories have rightly honed in on the misadventures of Western companies − such as the US-based Herakles Farms’ bungled foray into oil palm in Cameroon − but most have focused on firms from emerging economies. Plenty of controversy and countless column inches, for example, have been generated by the Indonesian Salim Group’s 60,000-hectare endeavours in southern Nigeria, the efforts of Malaysian Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK) to acquire a vast swathe of Liberia, and the questionable multi-billion deals conducted by the likes of India’s Karuturi and Shapoorji Pallonji in Ethiopia.

    The speedy scaling up of African ventures by companies registered in the BRICS, South Korea and the Gulf states, and of wealth funds such as Singapore’s Temasek, has understandably provoked a degree of panic. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, amongst others, have warned of “neo-colonialism,” and the snowstorm of anxiety around land grabs has contributed to the creation of new global guidelines aimed at promoting better land governance.

    The guidelines are a step in the right direction, and the ongoing attention on land is important and completely warranted. However, overly fixating on land grabs risks obscuring more fundamental issues that ultimately underpin our concerns over the future of food in Africa. There is a danger that by concentrating only on grabbed land, broader food security challenges might remain cloaked in darkness.

    Better out than in?

    The time has come to move away from land-centric accounts and to examine how foreign powers have not only occupied African land but also African food systems. This is nothing new. From the salt flats of Senegal through to the shores of Lake Victoria, imperial conquest and colonial enterprise have left a lasting footprint on what and how Africans eat. The cultivation of inedible export crops such as rubber and cotton, for instance, continues to mean less land is available to grow food for local consumption. In ideal cases, sales from these crops give growers the purchasing power to buy the foods they want in the markets. But often, the persistent underperformance of cash crops and low incomes from plantation labour contributes to hunger.

    Alongside these legacies of colonialism, there are also more recent forms of foreign involvement in African food systems. Today, global commodity traders, industrial food manufacturers and retailers exert control over food volumes, prices and qualities across the continent. Control over land is of course a central element in this story, but there are also many others.

    For starters, it is worth noting how foreign investments in sectors other than agriculture have always had massive impacts on the potential for Africa to durably feed itself. It is significant, for example, that as governments across the continent leverage funds from the BRICS and elsewhere to build large-scale transport networks, the railways, roads and ports being constructed are primarily aimed at bolstering Africa’s links to Asia and Europe. Rather than helping domestic or regional integration, which would make it easier for foods and other goods to be transported and exchanged within Africa, these forms of outward-oriented infrastructure make it quicker and simpler for Africa’s crops to leave, and for food imports to enter.

    For example, financed by China’s EXIM Bank, Cameroon is constructing a highway between Yaoundé and Douala as well as a deep seaport. Unlike infrastructure that would enhance sub-regional linkages or a transport corridor that could run across central Africa, these mega-projects are geared towards exports and imports in and out of the continent. The road not taken, literally, is bad news for the movement of African foods and for African people.

    Going against the grain

    Overly focusing on land could also lead us to discount the important role of foreign foods on the continent. This idea often conjures up images of surplus US corn being flown to hunger hotspots, but aid deliveries pale in comparison to the values and volumes of the everyday foods that flow to Africa.

    To serve consumer tastes inherited from colonial times, Canadian and French firms, for instance, have consistently reaped fat profits from selling wheat to African mills. More recently the likes of Thailand and Vietnam have upped their capacities to export rice. And the surplus production of industrial food processors in Doha and Dubai now increasingly finds ready markets south of the Sahara.

    In shops where tinned brie and off-year bottles of French wine once exclusively filled the shelves, packets of Chinese whiskey and Moroccan dairy products are now vying for space. Moreover, Indian tractors, Chinese hand hoes and Russian fertilisers have undercut many of their European competitors in commercial capitals such as Douala and Dar es Salaam.

    The daunting task for experts is to peel back the dynamics and the politics behind these shifts. Food professionals tend to talk in the neutral and scientific language of ‘productive efficiency’, ‘yield maximisation’ or ‘basic food baskets’. But these and other buzzwords are themselves subject to political contestation.

    The reality of rice consumption is enlightening. It would be simple to assert that Africa’s partnerships with rice exporters are a victory against hunger. After all, rice producers’ desire to ship more of the crop to Africa lowers staple food costs. But, as we found in Cameroon, the greater availability of ‘cheap’ and ‘easy’ imported rice has had a nasty knock-on effect. The abundance of rice has raised the relative prices of highly nutritious and widely preferred local forest foods. The presence of the plentiful and cheap foreign crop has pushed many Cameroonians to change their diets due to forces out of their control.

    A healthier debate

    There are some things about which specialists tend to agree. Most accept that there is enough food available to feed all Cameroonians, but that food prices in Cameroon have trended worryingly upwards since the start of this year, that higher food prices typically mean more hunger, and that diets might no longer be nutritionally or culturally appropriate. There is also a consensus in Cameroon that each dimension of food security – from economic accessibility, to physical availability, to nutritional adequacy – is important.

    However, there is little agreement on what is to be done, and those who see the solution in freer markets compete with those calling for greater government intervention, and also with those pushing for a broader transformation of agriculture, or for greater local control over food.

    Moving forwards, this political complexity must not be ignored, and land must not be the only issue on which the world focuses. Food systems are hugely complex, involving countless actors from governments to corporations to labourers, operating from the global scale down to the local, and encompassing myriad dynamics from land to infrastructure to politics.

    These all need to be prised apart and examined. After all, more robust analyses could well help African governments, activists and citizens to better engage with questions around food security, and enable them to redress the corporations and countries that continue to unduly profit from the food insecurity status quo.

  • in History

    Terrabyte Incognita: Africa Might Not Look Like You Think It Does

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    There is no such thing as an objective map. This was true of cave paintings, Roman tapestries, and colonialists’ charts of Africa. It is also true of Google Maps.

    By James Wan

    An upside-down Gall-Peters map by ODT

    About halfway through Jonathan Swift’s boisterously witty epic poem On Poetry: A Rhapsody, the 18th century English satirist briefly turns his attention to maps of Africa, writing:

    So geographers, in Afric maps,
    With savage pictures fill their gaps,
    And o’er uninhabitable downs
    Place elephants for want of towns.

    In Swift’s time, European explorers had only skirted around the coastal edges of Africa and its interior remained, to all intents and purposes, a mystery. But as the poet pointed out, rather than just leave the middle of the continent blank, mapmakers would instead “fill their gaps” with things they thought might reside in such exotic corners of the world, such as strange monkeys, roaming lions, and “elephants for want of towns.”

    From Willem Janszoon Blaeu’s 17th Century map of Africa.

    These elephants were largely marched off maps of Africa in the 19th century as expeditions by the likes of David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley provided more information to Europeans about the continent’s geography. But these explorations were fairly narrow in scope, and the vast bulk of Africa would remain Terra Incognita for years to come.

    In fact, even at the 1885 Berlin Conference where, legend has it, Europe’s colonial powers each drew lines across a map of Africa and coloured in their territories with their imperial hue-of-choice, the colonialists weren’t really sure what those areas contained. Although cartographers had given up their predilection for doodling odd creatures across Africa’s interior, there wasn’t a whole lot more they could put there instead.

    These maps of Africa, drawn up by a small group of Western cartographers, symbolically reinforced Europeans’ sense of control over their mapped territories and subjects, but they didn’t betray much in the way of real information. Though they would have been seen as objective and impartial at the time, in retrospect it is clear how subjective, ideologically-driven, and, in many ways, fantastical they were.

    Fast-forwarding to today, it may seem like the situation is completely different. Any gaps in our geographical knowledge have been painstakingly filled in thanks to advanced technologies and satellite imagery. Access to maps is no longer confined to a small Western elite. And mapmaking no longer seems so ideologically charged, but far more scientific and technical.

    Unlike the age in which Africa was patchily mapped through a distinctly colonialist lens, one could argue that today, we all finally know what the continent − and indeed the world − actually looks like.

    But things may not have changed as much as one might assume. No map is completely objective and every cartographer has to make countless decisions over what is more important and what is less so. Some of these choices may be purely technical, some may be issues of historical convention, and some may be informed by ideological assumptions. But these decisions − as invisible as they are in the final product − have to be made and they all fundamentally change how we see the world.

    In today’s maps, Africa arguably gets as rough a deal as it always has. Now as ever, the continent may not look like we think it does.

    Mapping the corners of the world

    One way in which we imagine Africa is through world maps. But as far back as Ptolemy, in the 2nd Century Roman Empire, cartographers have known that drawing an accurate map of the world is basically impossible. The world is spherical, a map is flat, and there is no obvious way to get around this.

    One way to demonstrate this is to imagine you have the hollow peel of an orange and that you somehow have to turn that into a flat object. Two things become quickly apparent: 1) there are an infinite number of ways to do that, and 2) none is particularly satisfactory, let alone a neat rectangle.

    This problem of reducing a 3-D world to a 2-D representation has always haunted cartographers, and the shapes of world maps have typically been hugely diverse, ranging from hearts to half-circles to squashed turnips.

    Left: Johannes Stabius’ pseudoconical projection (~1500); Centre: Johann Heinrich Lambert’s conic projection (1772) ; Right: A pseudocylindrical projection used by various cartograhers (1600s)

    This diversity faded away, however, as one particular model gradually surpassed all the others to become the world map that is now ubiquitous on classroom walls, in books and now even on Google Maps. For many people today, that projection − invented by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 − is the world map.

    The main reason Mercator’s projection became so popular was because of its navigational usefulness; in his map, straight lines represent lines of constant compass bearing. However, in manipulating the map to ensure this feature, the sizes of countries become hugely distorted. In particular, the southern hemisphere appears much smaller than it is in reality.

    For instance, in the Mercator projection (below), North America looks at least as big, if not slightly larger, than Africa. And Greenland also looks of comparable size.

    But in reality, Africa eclipses both. As is apparent in the Gall-Peters equal projection map (below), you can fit North America into Africa and still have space for India, Argentina, Tunisia and some left over. Greenland meanwhile is one-fourteenth the size of the continent.

    Another age-old convention that has subtly but seemingly innocuously under-privileged the southern hemisphere in world maps comes from the fact that the North is always put at the top of maps. This was not always the case. In Medieval Christian maps, East was located at the top because it was believed the world and Garden of Eden emanated from the East. Meanwhile in Islamic maps of around the same period, South was up.

    The fact that our maps typically put North at the top is a mere convention. But like with Mercator’s various technical manipulations, very minor decisions can have very major effects on how we see the world.

    It would of course be silly to speculate on whether world history would have taken any different turns if our basic cartographic conventions had been different over the last half a millennium, but imagine for a moment that when we pictured the world we live in, we all thought of this:

    In pursuit of the perfect map

    Aside from the age-old conventions still used in today’s world maps, one could argue that thanks to new technologies and the vast amounts of data they allow us to access, we have at least entered a new era of cartography since the height of colonialism. Maps are no longer mere symbols of dominion drawn up by conquerors; Africa is no longer mostly Terra Incognita; and one could make the case that maps now belong to everyone.

    At the heart of this is the rise of Google Maps, which has come to dominate cartography today, both in terms of resources and popularity. Billions of searches are made through Google each day, and Google Maps is by far the most widely used smartphone app in the world. Thanks to Google’s access to masses of data from satellites, aircrafts and camera-fitted cars, users can see aerial photographs and street maps of virtually the entire planet.

    Google Maps claims to be on a “never-ending quest for the perfect map,” and one might hope that with the creaking weight of information now available, the goal of a truly accurate and truly objective map may finally be within reach.

    Jerry Brotton, historian of cartography and the author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps, however, warns against such notions.

    “Mapmakers have always claimed objectivity,” he says, “and cartographers always imagine they’re creating maps from some omniscient Godlike position. When it comes to Google Maps, however, the reality is that they’re being produced on the west coast of America.”

    According to Brotton, that fact necessarily affects how they are made. All maps, he argues, are of their time, of their place, and serve certain purposes. Medieval mapmakers wanted to chart their orientation to the Garden of Eden or Mecca; Mercator wanted to make things easier for sea-faring navigators; and colonialists wanted to plot the extents of their empires.

    Today, Google has its own partialities and purposes in creating huge maps of the world, and Brotton believes that these motivations lie in Google’s corporate goals.

    “For me, it seems clear that Google Maps are driven by commercial multinational profitability,” he says. “They are ultimately driven by the prospects of advertising revenue.”

    Indeed, Google relies on advertising for almost the entirety of its nearly $60 billion annual income. One way to think of Google’s business model is that its massive advertising revenue allows it to offer its services free of charge. But another way to think of it is that the near monopoly the company achieves by providing its ubiquitous services for free gives it the dominance necessary to generate those ad dollars in the first place. Google’s corporate motto may be ‘Don’t Be Evil’, but it’s bottom line is still ‘Make A Profit’.

    It is arguably this reality that has led Google to spend massive sums of money on developing Google Maps, but which also affects what is put in and what is left off its maps.

    “It is telling that some townships in South Africa are just blank spaces on the map,” says Brotton. “In Google’s corporate model, certain communities just aren’t of any interest. Mapping is becoming privatised, not even states have the vast resources necessary to compete, and inevitably the usual problem is that Africa comes very low down on the pecking order.”

    Worlds apart

    The history of the Mercator projection and the North-is-up convention show how small cartographic decisions can make huge differences in how we see the world. Just recall how strikingly different the upside-down Gall-Peters map looks to the conventionally-oriented Mercator projection.

    The decisions made by Google’s engineers may have similarly huge repercussions on how we interpret the world, though this argument is more difficult to clearly demonstrate. Firstly, the decisions Google Maps make may operate in far more subtle ways than, for example, deciding which way North should point.

    However, secondly, it is much harder to quickly highlight Google Maps’ particularity because there are no real alternatives to which we can look. We can imagine that if all of Google’s data and programming ability was suddenly in the hands of a Namibian agriculturalist, a Sahelian nomad or a Senegalese fisherwoman, the maps they would conjure up would be completely different. They might well prioritise soil types over Starbucks, wells over Walmarts and the state of land degradation over panoramic streetviews of American towns. But we can only imagine. As was the case a century ago, it is still just a small group of Western individuals with specific ideas of the world that have the resources to map the world.

    In 1976, the writer-cum-statesman Lennart Meri wrote that “If geography is prose, maps are iconography.” While the study of the earth’s features may be an ongoing descriptive process, he suggested, the map is both more and less than that. The information a map can convey is fairly limited, but the symbolic or ‘iconic’ power it can convey is almost limitless.

    This was the case with ancient cave paintings, Roman tapestries, and grand imperial charts. And it is still the case with Google Maps today. All of these maps communicate much more than mere information and all of them necessarily contain within them the worldviews of their makers. Now, as ever, those makers are a very specific group of people from a very specific part of the globe, looking at the world through a very specific lens. To return to Jonathan Swift, our 21st century cyber-cartographers may not be filling in the “gaps” with “savage pictures” anymore, but that may be because from 10,000 miles and a universe away, these gaps simply don’t exist.

    Amendment [02/04/2014]: In the original, the Latin phrase for ‘unknown land’ was wrongly translated as terra incognito rather than terra incognita. This has now been changed. Thanks to the tweeter who pointed it out.

  • in Kenya

    End of the Line? Allegations of Corruption Knock Kenya’s Railway Project Off-Track

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    The growing controversy around Kenya’s multi-billion dollar railway project has delayed construction, but could it fully derail it?

    By Sarah Collier

    One of Kenya’s existing railway lines. Photograph by Victor Bautista.

    Kenyans are continuing to hold their breath as a parliamentary committee investigates allegations of irregularities into the tender process for a multi-billion dollar railway project. The $5.2 billion standard gauge railway is to link Mombasa with Nairobi and has been heralded by President Uhuru Kenyatta as largest project to be undertaken in Kenya for 50 years. However, claims of corruption and mismanagement in the awarding of the contract have stalled construction and provoked questions into the true costs of the deal.

    On one side, anti-corruption campaigners are calling for answers and the Parliamentary Public Investment Committee (PIC) is investigating various allegations and irregularities. On the other, the government has defended the deal and infrastructure companies are suggesting the inquiry is moving too slowly, holding up the crucial project. Meanwhile. a number of other issues − such as questions over the wisdom of the project in the first place and controversy over compensation for land − continue to cast a shadow over what has become one of Kenyatta’s pet projects.

    Controversy on wheels

    The need for improved infrastructure in East Africa is clearly apparent and well-documented. According to a 2011 World Bank report, the region’s infrastructure lags behind West and Southern Africa’s on various indicators, while the International Monetary Fund estimates that trade within the East African Community has tripled over the past decade, putting ever greater strain on already struggling networks. In Mombasa, for example, Kenya’s transport minister Michael Kamau claims some 3,300 trucks leave the regional port each day – one every 30 seconds – generating significant congestion.

    In light of these challenges, a huge intra-regional rail network linking Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi was announced in November 2013. The first phase of the development is to link Mombasa with Nairobi, and will, according to Kenyatta, reduce the costs of freight transport by 60%, cut the journey time down from 30 hours to just 8 hours, and relieve road congestion.

    However, soon after the project was announced, rumours of corruption in the tender process emerged, and in December, the young and little-known MP, Alfred Kiptoo Keter, publicly alleged that the project was hugely overpriced relative to international standards and that the legal procedure for bidding had not been followed. Some political figures hit back with their own allegations that Keter had been hired to stir up trouble by business leaders who were disgruntled at not being awarded the railway deal themselves.

    Nonetheless, Kenyan officials did reveal that there had been no public bidding for the concession, which was awarded to China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) reportedly as part of a 2011 memorandum of understanding between the Kenyan and Chinese governments. That deal is also believed to have included an agreement that the China Exim bank would help fund 85% of the project.

    Two parliamentary investigations were launched into allegations around the deal, while the project also faces a challenge in Kenya’s High Court. The first parliamentary probe − carried out by the National Assembly’s Committee on Transport, Public Works and Housing − gave the deal a clean bill of health in February and urged the government to speed up proceedings so construction could begin.

    However, the second investigation − being conducted by the Public Investment Committee − is ongoing and has revealed various irregularities. For example, documents looked at by the committee suggest that the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) − the government agency which approved the project − ignored warnings from Githu Mugai, Kenya’s Attorney-General, prior to the signing of the deal.

    The PPOA reportedly consulted Mugai, who raised strong concerns over the way in which the same agreement for the railway switched from being a commercial contract to a government-to-government contract. In a letter to the agency, he wrote: “In adopting initially a procedure… and awarding a contract on that basis, only to subsequently cancel it, and purport to re-award it under alternative arrangements, raises doubt about the integrity of the statute’s authority.” One suggestion is that the type of deal was changed because government-to-government contracts are not under the purview of the PPOA, meaning it was therefore not required to ensure it followed the usual procurement procedures.

    The committee has also reported difficulty getting coherent answers from the Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) and summoned its management as well as that of the PPOA to return to the committee to clarify their testimony, claiming that contradictions in their previous responses show they “were not prepared to deliver factual information.”

    A number of anti-corruption campaigners meanwhile have called on the government to suspend the railway project until the issues around it have been resolved, while others have demanded the deal be cancelled and a fresh and transparent tender process conducted.

    Legacy project

    Alongside the various allegations of corruption, the railway project has also stirred controversy in other ways.

    Some, such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), for example, have argued that it would make more sense to improve existing railway systems rather than building new ones. According to the AfDB, railways in East Africa are currently operating at just 20-30% capacity due to poor maintenance and mismanagement, and the bank − along with other financial institutions − previously pledged $164 million to renovate the line between Mombasa and Kampala. An additional concern is that the new standard gauge railway line will be difficult to integrate with the existing network in East Africa which is mostly narrow gauge, while there have also been questions raised over compensation for those displaced by the construction of the lines.

    These myriad concerns and legal challenges are likely to delay the Mombasa-Nairobi project’s timetable, which is set for completion in 2017. However, given President Kenyatta’s enthusiasm for it, it seems unlikely that the deal will be completely derailed. Kenyatta has publicly put his name behind the project and has gone as far as to say it “will define my legacy as president of Kenya.”

    As attention on the project grows, Kenyatta may well be right that the railway programme will be one of the issues for which his time in office is remembered. But amidst growing controversy over the tender, allegations of corruption and questions over its cost-effectiveness, it remains to be seen just how happy those memories will turn out to be.

    Amendment [27/03/14]: The original said that KRC and PPOA management was summoned last week. In fact they were called on by the committee in late January to answer questions last month.

  • in Health

    Experts Weekly: How Can Africa’s Water and Sanitation Shortfall be Solved?

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    At current rates, it will take sub-Saharan Africa 15 years to reach its water goals and 150 years to reach its sanitation targets. A group of experts explain what needs to change.

    By Mark Dearn

    At the celebrations to mark World Water Day 2014 in Madagascar. Photograph by Diorano WASH Coalition.

    On 22 March, groups across the globe marked World Water Day, an occasion for highlighting the importance of water and sanitation as well as the many shortfalls in its provision.

    Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are well understood to be critical to eradicating poverty, improving health, nutrition, education and gender equality, and enabling economic growth. Some 2,000 children die every day from diseases linked to water and sanitation; it is estimated that women in the Global South spend a cumulative 200 million hours a day collecting water, walking an average of 6 km a day, and carrying weights of up to 20 kg; lack of safe water and sanitation is estimated to cost sub-Saharan African around 5% of its annual GDP; and women are at far greater risk of sexual assault when searching for places to defecate at night time.

    Water and sanitation targets are both captured within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with target 7c aiming to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” Debate remains around how access figures are calculated, but the UN estimates that while 783 million people still live without access to clean water, at a global level the water target has been met five years ahead of schedule.

    By contrast, however, sanitation is the most off-target of all the MDGs, so much so that UN Deputy Secretary General, Jan Eliasson, refers to the sanitation shortfall as a “scandal.” Currently, 40% of the world’s population – 2.5 billion people − lacks access to a toilet. In fact, more people around the world have mobile phones than access to toilets.

    In terms of both water and sanitation, Africa is far behind other areas of the world: across the continent, 327 million people lack access to safe drinking water while 565 million lack access to sanitation – 210 million more than in 1990. It is estimated that at current rates of progress, it will take until at least 2030 for sub-Saharan Africa to meet the MDG water target, and more than 150 years to reach the sanitation target.

    Think Africa Press asked a selection of experts on water and sanitation to evaluate why the situation in African countries is such, and what can be done to change it – whether in a national or pan-African context.

    Leo Atakpu, National Coordinator, NEWSAN (Nigeria), and Chairman, Africa Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW):

    A number of reasons are adducible as to why Africa lags behind in access to water and sanitation.

    First, it is about the failure of governments in the region to deliver essential services to their citizens, characterised by bad governance practices which are not particular to just the water and sanitation sector. Large amounts of money allocated to the water sector, including foreign aid, are often either misappropriated or outright stolen through corrupt practices. This is a major problem in most of sub-Saharan Africa and unless this issue is tackled head on, efforts to provide water and sanitation to the region’s poor will remain a pipe dream. Civil society groups in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector need to rise up to their responsibility of mobilising citizens to hold their governments accountable and end impunity in water governance.

    A second point is the lack of political commitment. Governments, civil society and donors, as key stakeholders, have not demonstrated sufficient commitment to sanitation as evidenced by the meagre priority assigned to the issue in most poverty reduction strategies and national budgets. It is still a puzzle to many why sanitation is so often ‘left behind’. It is really shocking that schools and health centres are still built without toilets; that access to toilets is so far behind access to water supply; and that sanitation has failed to be translated from commitments into national policy and budget lines in most countries.

    However, there is some evidence that this is slowly changing at higher levels of policymaking, for example from the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW). There are also positive examples of local commitment to improved sanitation, including: the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, which is spearheading an initiative to roll out efficient support for rural sanitation through health extension workers; and the government of Nigeria and UNICEF’s work with the Society for Water and Sanitation (NEWSAN), under the aegis of the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS), to renew its approach to sanitation through piloting and implementing new ‘community-led’ approaches. Yet there is negligible evidence of commitment among many other key line ministries and at local government level.

    Countries such as Rwanda remain leading examples for the region. African policy makers and actors need to replicate what works in Rwanda in other countries, using local technologies.

    Patrick Bond, Senior Professor of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban:

    From the ongoing looting of Africa’s natural resource wealth, eco-social crises such as inadequate water and sanitation logically follow. Thanks mainly to non-renewable resource depletion, The Changing Wealth of Nations (World Bank, 2011) estimates that African wealth shrinks 6% annually. Beneficiaries are corporations from the West and from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) bloc.

    Nonsensical ‘Africa Rising’ rhetoric – reliant upon GDP growth notwithstanding fatal conceptual flaws – is dangerous for it promotes more extraction, typically accompanied by crony-state capture and abuse of water systems. ‘Acid Mine Drainage’ stretching from west of Johannesburg all the way to Mozambique is one example of minimalist ecological regulation by a corrupted state. Meanwhile water in our platinum belt is directed to mines rather than desperately thirsty people.

    Such looting leaves most African governments unable to finance even basic services to a frustrated citizenry. Capturing surpluses is harder because of: inadequate taxation, multinational corporate export of profits, and capital flight by the corporations’ local allies, including many state rulers. Even in South Africa, balance of payments deficits compel the Finance Ministry to borrow from abroad – to supply foreign exchange for profit and dividend repatriation – such that our foreign debt has risen by nearly a factor of six from the $25 billion inherited from apartheid in 1994.

    Lack of control over locally-generated riches leaves most African countries dependent upon ‘neoliberal’ donor aid. From Integrated Water Resources Management to Community-Led Total Sanitation, the message is to price water according to market techniques, commercialise retail supply via Western corporations, decentralise functions to (often bankrupt) municipalities, and adopt technology that limits operating and maintenance subsidies. Progressive civil society in many communities resist this and protest for affordable clean water. But the larger problem is structural: it is predatory capitalism.

    Dr Akissa Bahri, Coordinator of the African Water Facility (an initiative led by the African Ministers’ Council on Water to mobilise resources to finance water resources development activities in Africa, hosted and managed by the African Development Bank):

    Political stability and economic progress are key in developing the water and sanitation sector. However, political will and commitment can help overcome some of the challenges faced by more vulnerable countries where economic and political stability are more fragile. Wherever there is commitment, change is possible.

    The lack of political will has to be one of the most serious stumbling blocks because without it there is little hope of progress. Even if the international community, development partners and civil society agree that the water and sanitation sector needs more attention, you simply cannot impose a water and sanitation agenda on any government. This must come from within, from a conviction it is the right thing to do and the right time to do it. A lot of campaigns have helped raise awareness and provide governments with the knowledge and information necessary to make different decisions, and we feel they are showing results. The African Minister’s Council on Water (AMCOW) has been a driving force in efforts to bring attention to the issue by mobilising and sensitising stakeholders by providing them with improved data.

    Yet government allocations alone will not be enough, which brings us to the other issue: the lack of investment. The investment required to keep pace with the growing demand and rapid urbanisation in Africa is estimated at $50 billion per year for the next 20 years. Forecast on annual spending required for the water sector reveals a sizeable financing gap and an increased need for non-traditional funding sources. Future annual spending on water supply and sanitation is estimated at $21.9 billion, compared with current spending levels of $7.6 billion.

    The African Water Facility was created to help prepare more bankable projects to attract investment and boost the water sector. So far we have been able to mobilise €935 million ($1.3 billion) and hope to reach the €1 billion ($1.4 billion) mark in the next few months. It may seem like a drop in the ocean considering the amount needed every year, but with more capacity the Facility could draw a lot more. Our leverage ratio is around 1:30, which is to say that for every Euro we invest, we get 30 back.

    Another issue is the inadequate decentralisation of power. We have seen several cases where local governments are made responsible for implementing water and sanitation programmes and initiatives, but do not handle the financial resources which are instead managed by central authorities. This dramatically weakens their ability to implement those programmes in a timely manner, or at all.

    Finally, while we all agree that the private sector can play an important role in catalysing the development of the water and sanitation sector, governments need to do a lot more to create an enabling environment and to allow for an attractive market to attract private investments. Our role is to help countries prepare for this by increasing resilience and promoting the expansion of water and sanitation services through a holistic water resources management approach as well as through projects aimed at improving service delivery, including business models and social, institutional, financial and technical innovations, as well as public-private partnerships.

    Nelson Gomonda, Pan-Africa Programme Manager, WaterAid:

    North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa have made different levels of progress towards the MDG targets on water and sanitation. North Africa has 92% water coverage and is on track to meet its 94% target before 2015. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 40% of the population lacks access to improved sources of drinking water.

    There are a number of factors which explain why Africa is lagging behind. Lack of policy and strategy backed by political will is regularly cited as one major cause of insufficient progress on both improved water and sanitation. Firstly, ministries of finance seem unconvinced about investing in sanitation. Secondly, national governments are not willing to decentralise fiscal authority to local level to enable implementation. Thirdly, there are various governance challenges, including corruption. Consequently, water and sanitation fall off the list of priorities at national level. Countries are also failing to meet their high-level commitments on water and sanitation in Africa (such as eThekwini, Sharm El Sheikh and Sanitation and Water for All – SWA).

    Inefficient sector financing investments remains one of the greatest challenges. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that Africa currently has an annual financing shortfall of $8.1 billion to meet the MDG targets. The absence of adequate or inefficient donor financing mechanisms remains one of the key challenges. Governments in Africa are also believed to not be making requests for sanitation funding, and they tend to leave it to donors or NGOs to foot the bill.

    The absence of effective coordination within government agencies and between external agencies is also a hindrance to progress on WASH. Agencies like AMCOW and the AfDB highlight the problems of coordination and reluctance of NGOs to align themselves with government priorities. Cross sector linkages involving ministries of health and education also remain one of the challenges.

    Institutional reforms in the WASH sector have lagged behind, resulting in challenges and confusion around institutional roles and responsibilities at various levels. WASH Sector Performance monitoring is one of the greatest challenges facing Africa. Getting funds allocated and disbursed for what they are intended is also a problem. And implementation procedures are not respected and monitoring mechanisms are not addressing these shortfalls. Other important factors include the private sector not showing much interest in entering the WASH sector, particularly with regard to rural sanitation and in peri-urban areas.

    Leonard Shang-Quartey, Policy Analyst, Water and Health, Integrated Social Development Center (ISODEC), Ghana:

    The current water supply and access situation in Africa is a bit more serious than “lagging behind.” ‘Lagging’ in my opinion greatly understates the situation of continuous deterioration of water systems which produce limited access for a significant part of the population or high costs for those with the ‘privilege’ of access. On the question of why this is the case, the explanation is complex but also simple.

    Most African water utilities began experiencing a nose-dive in the late 1970s under World Bank and IMF policies. Many countries were suffering from serious trade deficits which had enormous implications for their budgets, incomes, and their abilities to honour loan obligations to, among others, bilateral and multilateral partners. These difficulties for African countries coincided around that period, with a major shift in global economic thought; a shift from heterodox economic thinking which favoured state intervention in critical sectors of the economy, to neoliberal economic thought which is more hostile to state intervention and prefers the deregulation of markets and their unfettered operation. This thought became dominant in the IMF and World Bank and influenced structural adjustment austerity packages that the two institutions prescribed to the struggling African economies at the time. This point is fundamental and cannot be divorced from any comprehensive analysis of the access deficit in African countries.

    The austerity measures enforced by the Bank and IMF ensured a drastic reduction of state funding to the utilities, resulting in deterioration of facilities, poor conditions for staff and a mass exodus of expert staff. In the face of the resulting difficulties, the Bank and IMF held out only one option for the governments; the option of full cost recovery and of privatisation. This sealed the expectations of any funding for the sector as the private sector found the water sector highly risky to invest in. Following the common interventions set out by the World Bank, the countries achieved mostly poor results.

    Contrary to much mainstream discourse, neither privatisation nor commercialisation constitute an adequate or sustainable way of managing urban water utilities to ensure access to people in Africa given the extreme poverty that confronts a significant portion of the population. The solution lies in a progressive tax-supported water delivery system that ensures access for all, supported by a management structure and a balanced set of incentives that ensure performance.

  • in Sierra Leone

    The Courage to Speak in Sierra Leone

    70 Views

    Sierra Leone has a reputation for being open and democratic, but on the issue of human rights and mining, few have spoken out. The brave Sallu Conteh was one of the few who did.

    By Rona Peligal

    A hydropower station in Bumbuna, the town in which the AML strike took place. Photograph Ronald Vriesema.

    Freetown, Sierra Leone:

    I first met Sallu Conteh in July 2012 while doing research in northern Sierra Leone on the impact that the mining company African Minerals Limited (AML) was having on residents and workers.

    AML is a British-based iron ore firm which began its operations in the country’s Tonkolili district in 1996, since which time it estimates it has invested $2 billion into the national economy. The mining sector as a whole is believed to contribute around 30% of Sierra Leone’s GDP, and AML, one of the biggest players in that industry, is the country’s single largest private employer.

    Conteh, a former soldier and air conditioning technician, had become one of those employees in 2006. On 16 April, 2012, however, he was one of a handful of individuals that led a strike against the company in the town of Bumbuna.

    The strike, which involved AML workers and contractors, erupted after the Sierra Leonean government denied workers the right to form a labour union of their own choosing. The mine workers had been concerned about uneven and inconsistent salaries, lack of payment for overtime, arbitrary termination, an inability to appeal, and discriminatory treatment on the job.

    AML employees took to the streets, but as they began their protest, about 200 police arrived in the town and opened fire. Both community members and police were injured in the ensuing mêlée, and one woman, marching with other women to call for peace, was shot dead.

    In the aftermath of the clash, Sierra Leone’s Human Rights Commission conducted a full-blown investigation, wrote a comprehensive report that said the incident resembled a “war zone”, and organised public hearings to which it invited key witnesses. Conteh was the only AML worker brave enough to testify.

    It could not have been an easy decision for him. He told me that the night before the hearing that two AML employees had called and told him to testify in favour of the company. But he ignored their advice. When I asked him in September 2012 − the last time I saw him − why he did so, he replied:

    “What gave me the urge to speak the truth was that the bosses wanted otherwise. I spoke as a Sierra Leonean. The people in this country would suffer if these concerns were not addressed. I have faith in the law. I wanted to show that I would not be bribed.”

    Unanswered questions

    Two months after the hearing, Conteh was relocated to the capital, Freetown, with little advance warning. The company told him it was a promotion, but he wasn’t so sure.

    Then, on 20 May, 2013, one of Conteh’s relatives called me to say that he had died in a motorcycle accident on his way to Bumbuna. He had given her my number, and I shudder to think that it was because he sensed his life was in danger.

    I started to make calls and asked a journalist friend to investigate. Why was Conteh going to Bumbuna on a Saturday (18 May) when he no longer worked at the mine there and it was his day off?

    It emerged that the Paramount Chief in Bumbuna had asked Conteh to do some home repairs for him. Although Conteh told friends that he didn’t want to make the six-hour motorbike journey, the chief apparently insisted, and Conteh went, leaving Freetown at 4 pm. He stopped in Makeni, the regional capital, where he saw colleagues, before continuing his way towards Bumbuna. He spoke to his wife at 11 pm, which was the last anyone heard from him.

    His body was found in early the next day − Sunday, 19 May − lying in a swamp by the road. His skull was fractured. His jeans were torn. His phone was missing. His bike was not seriously damaged.

    The police, through its traffic division, immediately ruled Conteh’s death an accident. AML said it was conducting an inquiry, but later reported difficulty in establishing exact details, since it was not workplace-related. Civil society activists called on the Sierra Leonean police to investigate. The inspector-general of police said he was waiting for the relevant groups to follow up and “partner with” the police, who seemed to want financial support to conduct the investigation. In the end, it never happened.

    A stifled symposium

    I thought about Conteh last month at a symposium in Freetown, where I was presenting my research findings on the role of government and AML in Tonkolili, and on Sierra Leone’s human rights and development challenges more broadly. I presented the Human Rights Watch report, which raises questions over AML’s alleged violations of human rights as well as the failure of the government − which consistently promotes the company’s operations as being essential to national development − to hold the firm accountable. As one of the world’s poorest countries, Sierra Leone certainly needs investment, and its mining sector is central to the economy, but my research found that key state institutions seem to have shown a lack of will, interest, or ability to ensure its citizens’ rights are respected.

    Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, which is designed to improve the flow of information to the people and is housed in the office of President Ernest Koroma, hosted the event. I hoped for an open, frank, and constructive dialogue, but the government officials were largely dismissive, and the corporate representatives quite hostile. About 25 activists attended the meeting, but only a couple asked questions or offered comments. Most of the local reporters echoed the government’s and company’s posturing. Khadija Sesay, the director of the Open Government Initiative, was even threatened after the symposium for her involvement in it.

    One person who did make a statement was a journalist friend who had been jailed the previous week on the ludicrous charge of seditious libel after hosting a radio show in which a guest speaker apparently insulted the country’s vice-president. After an outcry, he was released.

    Sierra Leone has a reputation for being open and democratic, but it seemed that the only people who felt comfortable commenting on the Human Rights Watch report at the symposium were government and corporate officials. I don’t blame people for not publicly airing views critical of the authorities, given the potential for arrest or worse. But when I think of the stifled discussion and the malicious media commentary afterward, I remember Sallu Conteh’s quiet humility and stoic bravery.

    I know that if he had been there, he would have said something.

  • in Central African Republic

    The Central African Conflict is about Far More than Religion

    183 Views

    CAR violence has been painted in largely religious terms, obscuring deeper dynamics. But these more complex aspects must be recognised if resolution efforts are to be effective.

    By Stephanie Burchard

    Refugees from the CAR in Cameroon. Photograph by EC/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie.

    For the past several months, the United Nations, France, and other international groups have been warning the world that the Central African Republic (CAR) is facing widespread religious violence that could take on genocidal proportions. Thousands have been killed, Muslims have been fleeing the capital Bangui in droves, and there has been no shortage of stories about brutal close-range communal violence.

    However, as starkly sectarian as some of the fighting has been, the conflict is far more complex than just some kind of deep-rooted Christian-Muslim enmity bubbling to the surface. After all, although the country has been notoriously unstable since gaining independence from France in 1960, communal violence of this nature and severity is unprecedented. In fact, there has previously been little or no history of specifically religious conflict in the CAR.

    The conflict has deeper and different roots and it is only by understanding these that the appropriate measures can be taken to stem the conflict and ensure it does not reignite a few months or years down the line.

    From Bozizé to Samba-Panza

    In March 2013, then-president François Bozizé was ousted by Séléka rebels, a loose coalition from the north of the country. Michel Djotodia, their self-appointed leader, took over as transitional president.

    Djotodia was the first Muslim leader of the mostly Christian CAR − Muslims account for approximately 15% of the population − and the Séléka mostly comprises of Muslims from the north, though bolstered by some Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries.

    Under Djotodia, the Séléka engaged in looting, rape, and murder of civilians. In response, various communities formed self-protection brigades. These so-called anti-balaka forces are believed to be mostly Christian, but their origins and leadership are largely unknown − some speculate that former president Bozizé and his supporters control more than half the forces.

    The anti-balaka clashed with the Séléka on many bloody occasions, and amidst a rapidly deteriorating security situation in which nearly a million were displaced and thousands were killed, Djotodia was eventually forced to resign by regional leaders in January 2014. Catherine Samba-Panza, formerly mayor of Bangui, was selected to be the new transitional president two weeks later.

    Since then, the anti-balaka have been accused of continuing to attack former Séléka rebels and completely unrelated Muslim civilians, seeking revenge for the atrocities committed during Djotodia’s brief rule. Some of the anti-balaka militias have been particularly brazen in their attacks; in one instance, for example, they beat and stabbed a suspected ex-Séléka rebel to death in front of journalists directly after a press conference in which the newly-inaugurated Samba-Panza had called for an end to the violence.

    Patronage politics

    Because of the way fault lines have formed over the past year or so, with Muslims and Christians seemingly on opposite sides of an escalating conflict, many have depicted this conflict as sectarian in nature. This reading seems unlikely to be the whole story, however, given that the CAR has no significant history of sectarian conflict or deep-seated religious enmity. Indeed, many Central African political and religious leaders have repeatedly asserted that it is insecurity and a fight for power that is driving the conflict rather than religious divisions.

    Furthermore, by looking over the past 30 years in the CAR, we can see there has been a trend towards the politicisation of ethnicity, not religion. For example, former president André Kolingba (1981–93) explicitly rewarded his ethnic group, the Yakoma from southern CAR, with patronage and support. His successor, Ange-Félix Patassé (1993–2003) in turn dismissed the Yakoma and rewarded his own supporters from the northwest, mostly Sara-Kaba, with government positions and patronage. And Bozizé, who deposed Patassé and also came from the northwest, gave clear preferential treatment to the Gbaya.

    Kolingba, Patassé, and Bozizé all favoured different groups and politicised identity, but awarded privilege based on ethnic not religious terms. After all, all three were Christian.

    This is not to say that there hasn’t been religious tension in the country. In 2012, for instance, the US State Department noted that some repression of Muslims was taking place. However it also concluded that such actions were not organised or sustained at any mass level.

    Historically, religion has been far less important than regional and ethnic antagonisms. Throughout the 2000s, and especially after Bozizé came to power in 2003, the Central African government was routinely unable to secure the north. It faced repeated challenges from rebels supporting the deposed Patassé as well as incursions by neighbouring − in particular Chadian − rebels and bandits. This north-south insecurity contributed to growing rivalry between the Yakoma and the amorphous northerners who − in the eyes of their southern compatriots − increasingly became seen as being foreigners.

    This pattern of government weakness, ethnic favouritism, regional neglect, and foreign interference created a perfect foundations for the current conflict, which became coded in far simpler religious terms. And this new narrative is spreading. According to a local report from Berbérati, located in south-western CAR, there was never a problem between Muslims, who make up approximately one-third of the city’s population, and Christians until the past few months. Now, Muslims are fleeing the CAR’s third largest city in droves.

    Appropriate solutions

    It is important not to mischaracterise the conflict as purely religious and to ensure we fully appreciate the complex social, economic and regional dynamics underpinning the current violence because without this deeper understanding, attempts to truly resolve it run the risk of being inadequate and even inappropriate.

    For example, if efforts to end the conflict focus purely on religious mediation and ignore the underlying causes, any resolution cannot hope to be durable and lasting. Mislabelling conflicts can also exacerbate and inflame tensions, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and events in Berbérati and elsewhere may reflect this dynamic.

    Finally, describing the conflict as sectarian or based purely on ideological divisions between non-state actors obscures the fact that some groups or wily individuals may in fact be benefiting − whether economically, politically or otherwise − from a chaotic and ungoverned CAR.

    Religious identity is important in the Central African conflict and has become an increasingly important marker to those involved. But the violence doesn’t originally derive from these identities and the conflict is about far more than just religion. Any efforts at resolution or intervention must reflect that.

  • in Niger

    Vive la Françafrique! Who Benefits from Niger’s Uranium?

    157 Views

    France needs Niger’s uranium, while Niger needs French assistance. But the relationship is and always has been unequal.

    By Sam Piranty.

    Last December, as negotiations dragged on between the Nigerien government and the French state-owned mining company Areva over royalties, the latter suddenly stopped production. At the time, Niger had been demanding a better deal for its uranium for over a year and Areva’s decade-long mining contract was about to expire at the end of the month.

    As its mining activities came to halt, Areva claimed it had suspended production for maintenance, but many saw it as a political move aimed at putting pressure on the Nigerien negotiators. After all, Niger’s economy is heavily dependent on its huge uranium reserves and its population is already one of the world’s poorest. Turning off that tap could have huge repercussions.

    However, in a sense, it is that very discrepancy − between the country’s vast mineral wealth on the one hand, and widespread poverty on the other − that the government was in negotiations to re-assess. According to the International Monetary Fund, Areva’s global revenues of nearly $13 billion in 2013 make the French firm almost twice as big as Niger’s whole economy, and as Areva’s revenues have risen − partly off Niger’s uranium − Nigeriens have remained poor.

    In the end, Areva restarted production at the start of this month, but the talks are still ongoing. Niger is reportedly demanding that the royalties Areva’s mines pay increase from 5.5% to 12%, bringing them closer to the 13% Areva pays in Canada and the 18.5% paid in Kazakhstan. However the French-owned company, which has posted losses in recent years, insists that such a change would not make their operations worthwhile.

    The result of the deadlocked talks could prove highly significant for Niger, but this is not the first time the West African nation has found itself in this position. In fact, the current negotiations are merely the latest chapter in a long history of France-Niger relations, and unfortunately for Niger, a look back at previous chapters of the story doesn’t offer too much hope for a positive outcome in the one being played out today.

    Forming Françafrique

    Franco-African relations first began in the late-14th or early-15th century with trade with the coastal regions of what are now Gambia and Senegal. But it was only in the early 17th century that France “began granting trading charters in specified areas as part of an attempt to extend France’s power and wealth,” in the words of political scientist Victor Le Vine. Like most of the European powers, the French initially didn’t venture far inland as trading slaves and resources didn’t require more than a port and a few merchants. However, as the nature of trade shifted so did the means by which to plunder the continent, and by the 19th century, France, along with the rest of Europe’s colonial powers, was moving inland, starting in Senegal.

    After its 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, colonialism was seen as a way of regenerating nationalist sentiment and elevating France’s global status, and with enhanced efforts, by 1900 France had become the second largest colonial power in the world.

    This status was officially lost after decolonisation in the 1960s, but in many ways, the end of empire wasn’t quite the rupture it may have seemed. By 1965, despite the formal recognition of independence, many heads-of-state in Francophone Africa had been members of the French parliament and often these elites were part of a French push for cultural dominance, they were what the French called Évolués. Under colonialism, France hadn’t just sought to dominate states but also indoctrinate their citizens. Furthermore, despite a shift in the geopolitical climate, France was in no mood to loosen its grip on its former colonies for three reasons, as explained by political scientist Xavier Renou: 1) France wanted to retain its international status; 2) it wanted to secure access to strategic resources; and 3) it could make huge profits from its system of economic monopoly.

    Masterminded by government advisor Jacques Foccart (aka Monsieur Afrique) and initially by President Charles de Gaulle, what resulted was a symbiotic relationship between France’s leaders and those of the its former colonies. Francophone Africa relied on French contributions for sustenance, while France counted on the continent for resources. The former Gabonese president, Omar Bongo, is famously reported to have said “Gabon without France is like a car with no driver. France without Gabon is like a car with no fuel.”

    The Franco-African pacte colonial made sure that African financial decisions were made with French interests at heart and that post-colonial Francophone markets were reserved for French companies and traders. And of all the resources available to France, uranium was of arguably the greatest importance − it not only offered economic value, but political and military value, and reified France’s status as a global force . At the end of World War II, France had been left devastated, but the progress of French nuclear scientists in the years following in their first experimental nuclear reactor, Zoé, provided a sense of optimism. As uranium expert Gabrielle Hecht wrote, “nuclear nationalism comforted state leaders anxious about their country status. The French compared reactors to the Arc de Triomphe and the cathedral of Notre Dame.” In a post-WW2 world, global status was increasingly determined not by the size of one’s empire, but the size of one’s nuclear arsenal. France did not want to be left behind, and with special access to Niger and Gabon’s uranium deposits, it would not be.

    Having already entered into the pacte colonial, France had a monopoly over the uranium offered in the two countries through French-owned company Cogema (now Areva). This facilitated the energy independence that de Gaulle and France craved, and in return, Niger and Gabon were granted military security, developmental aid and guaranteed markets for their products. Furthermore, as Hecht points out, “France would help defend the new leaders not only against external threats but also against coups d’etat.”

    The Nigerien negotiations

    Uranium was first discovered in Niger in the northern town of Arlit in 1957 by the French geological survey, and negotiations between France and Niger started in earnest when the former African colony gained independence in 1960.

    Niger’s first president, Hamani Diori, faced a difficult balancing act between pleasing the likes of de Gaulle and Foccart in Paris on the one hand, and the newly-liberated Nigerien population on the other. However, France had an advantage in this conundrum – its relationships with former colonies were built on clientelistic networks. They were held together by key personalities and moreover, patrimonialism was rife within the Nigerien state itself, with Diori and his party at the heart of it trying to maintain their dominance. As Bruno Charbonneau explains, French policy in Africa was “more than anything else the result of transnational elites whose main objective is to maintain and to reproduce the social conditions that privilege them.”

    Like many other leaders in Francophone Africa, Diori met frequently with Foccart. Foccart was known to be the kingmaker in France’s former colonies and had the means and influence to keep Diori in power when times were tough, but Diori was himself a skilled negotiator. When Diori saw France’s initial plans for the distribution of profits from the uranium mines and was unimpressed, he went straight to Foccart. The French advisor relented and talked to de Gaulle who, according to Hecht, “personally granted a larger percentage of the profits to Niger, throwing in a special development aid package and a promise to send French troops as needed to defend the deposits against Algerian incursions.”

    At first, Diori accepted the improved deal, but after a visit to the US in 1960, the Nigerien president realised that uranium was more than just another resource and that he could drive a even harder bargain. He set about pushing for further concessions from France and a significant stake in the mining companies Somaïr and Cominak. He also requested the establishment of a new special investment fund. France conceded to some extent, but Diori’s pressure for a better deal continued through the years, partly driven by the fact that by the early-70s Niger had still not received any dividends from its uranium.

    In 1973, Diori gained a new bargaining chip as the global oil crisis pushed France to expand its nuclear power capacity. Diori saw this as an opportunity to strike and, alongside Gabon’s President Bongo, called for a meeting to renegotiate uranium prices. The talks were initially unsuccessful and put on hold.

    One week after the meeting, however, de Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou died. And on his way to the memorial service, the relentless Diori tried to arrange a meeting with the prime minister to resume negotiations. This tactless move seems to have been the moment that tipped the balance for France. Diori had pushed too hard. The Nigerien president had been a useful ally, but on 15 April 1974, France decided not to intervene as Diori was ousted in a coup d’etat led by Lieutenant Colonel Seyni Kountché.

    There were of course other factors leading to the coup such as the dire economic state of the country and the unrest amongst the military, but France’s inaction was perhaps the most tragic for Diori. After decades of colonial rule and with Foccart’s extensive intelligence networks on the continent, France surely knew what was coming for the president. It’s unlikely the Nigerien and French militaries would not have been aware of each other’s intentions and, moreover, the French still had large numbers of troops in Niger and in neighbouring states. France deliberately looked the other way as Koutché planned his move, and essentially, Foccart had decided to fire Diori.

    Back to the future

    Fast-forwarding to the current day, the structures and means of coercion in France’s relations with Niger continue, albeit altered through generational changes in personnel, new economic realities, and a shift from a Cold War to a War on Terror geopolitical discourse. Both President François Hollande and his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy have made lofty statements about ending La Françafrique in recent years, but France’s military presence and continuing economic hold in its former colonies suggest an ongoing and unequal relationship.

    In terms of a generational change, the death in the 1990s of leading Franco-African figures such as President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, French President François Mitterrand, and Foccart caused a symbolic rupture in France’s ‘special’ ties with Africa − la Françafrique had always been held together with highly personal relationships. However, to suggest that this shift diminished or ruptured the clientelist structures between France and Africa would be wrong.

    Sarkozy certainly didn’t cut the old colonial ties and is even believed to have presided over the marriage of Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara and his wife Dominique in 1990. These weren’t just patrimonial ties, but ‘family’ ties. Furthermore, the extent to which France’s clientelist networks still exist was arguably demonstrated clearly in 2008 when Jean-Marie Bockel, France’s secretary of state for cooperation and Francophonie, was removed from his position just two months after he had criticised corrupt African leaders and urged France to stop giving aid to states such as Gabon. According to Director of Research at the International Crisis Group, Richard Moncrieff, President Bongo had seen the speech and “quickly activated his remarkable network of influence within the French Gaulist movement.”

    In terms of economics, the region also remains highly important for France, as a recent Chatham House report explained, pointing out that French companies are “particularly strong in sectors such as logistics, port and rail operations, telecoms, shipping, banking and air transport; they also have significant interests in tropical commodities and agriculture.”

    Finally, although the Cold War has subsided, the War on Terror has added a new dimension to the France-Africa relationship. Over the years, there has been growing attention and concern about the Sahel, a region in which al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other Islamist militant organisations reside, and the US has looked to increase its military presence across the continent, including in Niger, to monitor ‘terrorist’ threats. Recent announcements from Paris suggest that France too is reorganising and perhaps expanding its military capabilities in Africa. France is believed to be setting up extra bases in northern Niger, Mali and Chad, and in a post-9/11 world, Islamist militancy offers France a reason to sit at the top table.

    What’s yours is mine

    When it comes to France’s relationship with Africa then, it seems the adage that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose rings true − including when it comes to its ongoing negotiations over Nigerien uranium prices.

    France currently sources over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy and is dependent on Niger for much of its immediate and future uranium supply. This dependence could grow even further when production at the recently-discovered Imouraren uranium deposit is up and running in 2015. The mine is set to produce 5,000 tonnes of uranium per year and would help make Niger the second-largest uranium producer in the world. Areva, which is 87% owned by the French state and holds a majority share in three out of the four uranium mining companies operating in Niger, is funding the new mine.

    However, despite Niger’s vast uranium reserves − over which France has an effective monopoly − the country has remained poor. In February 2013, President Mahamadou Issoufou, a former Areva employee, claimed that Niger’s uranium deals generate just 100 million Euros ($140 million) a year, representing just 5% of Niger’s budget. “That’s why I have asked to re-equilibriate the terms of the deal between Areva and Niger,” he said. Issoufou also said Niger has started looking to other countries, saying that his “objective is to diversify our uranium mining partners.”

    One can perhaps substitute ‘other countries’ for China, which already owns a 37% stake in Niger’s SOMINA mine and has carried out uranium exploration throughout the country. However, Areva − France by proxy − still holds all the cards given its controlling stakes in the country’s three other mines. Comparatively, Francophone Africa does not receive the same level of Chinese investment as many Anglophone parts of the continent and Niger is no different. French saturation of Nigerien markets leaves little space for other investors, and its grip on the uranium industry is such that hopes of real diversification of investment and competition are slim. And without other prominent competitors, Niger’s position in negotiations with Areva is severely weakened.

    Areva’s power in Niger is also exemplified by recent court battles over the safety of the mines. In 2009, Serge Venel, a French miner who worked for Areva in Niger from 1978 to 1985 died of lung cancer. He had previously raised concerns about the lack of health precautions in mines and after his death, doctors said that his unprotected work in the nuclear industry had been the cause of his illness. The French courts agreed, and in 2012 demanded Areva pay Venel’s family €200,000 ($270,000). However, in 2013, Areva won an appeal. The company argued that the COMINAK mine was to blame, not Areva, despite being the majority shareholder in the mine. Proving where culpability lies in mining-related illnesses is particularly tricky, especially when Areva owns all the local hospitals in the area. Serge Venel was able to be diagnosed properly at home in France; Nigerien miners and their families are treated at Areva-owned medical facilities.

    Recently, an Al Jazeera documentary and investigation by Greenpeace has further raised concerns about the health effects around the mines in Arlit. Greenpeace claims that radiation around the mines is 100 times the World Health Organsation’s safety levels, while the NGO along with important and extremely active local civil society groups maintain that water used in the towns surrounding the mines has been contaminated, mine vents pump radioactive radon into the air, and tonnes of nuclear waste has been left around the area. The Al Jazeera documentary even showed Areva-employed doctors saying that radiation had been responsible for a local’s death. How Areva responds and whether it will be held accountable, however, remains to be seen.

    Ultimately, many of the dynamics at play in the 60s and 70s are still prominent today as a Nigerien president pushes for a better deal of uranium prices once again, France continues to dominate the country’s mining industry, the region remains somewhat unstable, and the French military maintains its heavy presence.

    France needs Niger’s uranium, while Niger needs French assistance, both military and economic. But the relationship is and always has been unequal. Despite the both parties need for each other, France has more power to set the terms for this exchange. The current negotiations − coming after years of exploitation by both French and Nigerien elites − may slightly increase Niger’s income from its vast resources, but if history and the current balance of power tell us anything, it’s that the Nigerien people will continue to miss out on the revenues they deserve.

    Amendment [20/02/14]: In the original, the ‘pacte colonial’ was wrongly spelt ‘pact coloniale’ and Serge Venel’s surname was mistakenly spelt ‘Venal’. These have now been corrected.

  • in Blog

    If the UK were an African Country: Was Great Britain a Mistake?

    174 Views

    Is Scotland the next Northern Ireland? A boy burns a tyre in the 1980s, during the Northern Ireland conflict. Photograph by Bobbie Hanvey/Burns Library, Boston College.

    Author: William Clarke.

    With apologies to Slate’s If It Happened There series.

    The United Kingdom’s (UK) capital, London, is a city of stark contrasts, where wealthy expatriates and a few home grown billionaires, rub shoulders with the numerous poor, who flock from across the country to make their fortune in the metropolis. However, despite the riots that regularly tear across this sprawling city, there is little sign of ethnic unrest, deep in the heartlands of the English peoples.

    The same cannot be said hundreds of miles to the north, where a growing political movement is demanding independence for the Scottish tribe. This would be the first time that borders have changed in Western Europe for half a century, and would represent a severe blow to the southern tribes, who depend on the mineral wealth of the Scottish homeland.

    The Scottish have long had a strong presence in this island nation. Local legends describe a Scottish chieftain called James seizing the English throne, which doubtless explains the antipathy between the two groups today. The last two premiers of the UK, Brown Gordon and Anthony Tony Lynton Blair, were both of Scottish background, and depended on support from Scottish voters to retain their grip on power. However, current Premier Dave Mister Cameron is considered English, despite his ethnically Scottish name.

    Now, a growing separatist movement, led by the charismatic demagogue Salmon Alexander seeks to change the status quo. Tensions have bubbled up, and though no violence has yet been observed, concerns are growing. Given that the army is divided on tribal lines, with ethnically Scottish and English regiments, the possibility of civil war cannot be ruled out.

    The eventual dissolution of the United Kingdom seems inevitable. The whole county is only a few hundred years old, its borders drawn around a collection of countries and dependencies with no historical ties to one another. Many in the Ulster region are of the Irish ethnic group and declare their loyalty to the Republic of Ireland, and the historically subjugated Welsh people have made repeated attempts to declare independence. However, despite the arbitrary nature of the state and its borders, some still declare loyalty to this accident of history. Though without oil reserves, the moribund United Kingdom economy may struggle to support itself. The English leadership may not be ready to relinquish its grip on the Scottish homelands just yet.

  • in Health

    Blowing Smoke in Africa: Big Tobacco and Child Smokers

    203 Views

    Weak regulations – and alleged underhand tactics – are helping big tobacco firms increase demand in Africa, especially among the young.

    By Ravi Jaipaul

    A cigarette vendor in Kinshasa, DRC. Photograph by Rachel Strohm.

    Mtwapa, Kenya:

    In Mtwapa, Kenya, palm trees shade 14-year-old Destiny and his young friends as they overlook a warm, white beach that backs onto the shimmering Indian Ocean. Clouding the pristine view are puffs of smoke from cigarettes they’ve purchased for a few cents per single stick at the propped-up convenience shack on the corner.

    “All of us, all of my friends smoke,” says Destiny, inhaling deeply from his cigarette before exhaling the smoke slowly through his nose. “We see [tobacco advertisements] everywhere, and the cigarettes are cheap.”

    As the popularity of smoking has slowed in the developed world, it has spread rapidly in developing countries. And as the West has tightened regulations and tried to push Big Tobacco out of the limelight, cigarette companies have turned their attention to African markets, and young people are taking up the habit.

    It is estimated that between 82,000 and 99,000 young people start smoking each day across the world, the vast majority in developing countries, and smokers who start as children are more likely to become lifetime addicts as the number of cigarettes required to establish a nicotine addiction is lower than in adults. Tobacco dependence is regarded by many as a paediatric disease, but action to combat the spread of smoking addiction has been slow.

    The children are the future

    There are currently four multinational tobacco companies working towards increasing their African profits and market share. One of them is Philip Morris International, and although John Fielder, the company’s Global External Communications Officer, insists that “Philip Morris International has a very small market share in the region,” this is changing. The company’s brands include L&M and Marlboro, and the multinational opened a factory in Senegal in 2009, employing 230 people.

    Meanwhile, tobacco is being marketed aggressively across the continent, helped by the fact that many countries have yet to establish regulations and restrictions on cigarette advertising. Tobacco ads regularly feature scantily-clad girls and film stars, while a recent study found that many basketball courts in Senegalese towns have cigarette brands’ logos painted on the walls. In Guinea, so-called ‘cigarette girls’ are employed to go around nightclubs, corner stores and public places to encourage youths to smoke branded cigarettes with aspirational-sounding names such as Diplomat, High Society, Sportsman and Champion.

    Furthermore, across the continent, the possibility of buying single cigarettes or smaller (and therefore cheaper) ‘kiddie packs’ ensures that smoking is affordable to far larger demographic. Single cigarettes are also used by some youths as appetite suppressants, especially in areas where adequate nutrition can be hard to come by. Asked if he and his friends have had their lunch, Destiny looks at his half-lit cigarette and replies, “this is much better, no?”

    Tobacco companies deny they target young people. “We do not advertise to children anywhere in the world,” says Simon Evans, Group Press Officer at Imperial Tobacco Group PLC, “our products are marketed to adult smokers and in doing so we employ the same responsible standards in Africa as we would in any Western market.” But many academics and activists disagree.

    They point out that tobacco companies advertise heavily in youth-friendly magazines, movies and social media in developing countries, while recent research found that 68% of six-year-olds in Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Russia can identify at least one cigarette company logo.

    “The tobacco industry needs to recruit children to replace the adult smokers killed by its products,” says Anna Gilmore, Professor for Public Health and Director of the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group. “Marketing to children has and will always be central to their business strategy.”

    Blowing smoke

    In many African countries, there is currently a struggle going on between those advocating greater controls on the one hand, and tobacco firms on the other. Some cigarette companies have been accused of manipulating local governments to delay tobacco legislation, of sponsoring health professionals to act in their favour, and intimidate governments with threats of litigation. For many, these tactics simply highlight the need for greater regulation.

    “It is because of these marketing ploys of the tobacco companies that tobacco control advocates in Africa are pushing for strong comprehensive tobacco control that will protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, economic and environmental consequences of tobacco use,” says Enó Isong, Associate Director at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The United Nations has also been trying to intervene to prevent a new generation of young, addicted smokers, and in 2005, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), came into effect.

    Enforcing the FCTC has, however, proven difficult. Partly because firms may provide jobs and some economic opportunities, the tobacco industry is able to wield a relatively large amount of power over the governments of poorer countries, making legislating against big tobacco trickier. “The tobacco industry continues to try to interfere in the legislative process, taking advantage of their access to policymakers as well as their purported ‘socially responsible’ activities,” says Isong.

    Evans at Imperial Tobacco Group PLC however refutes this, claiming, “It is the role of governments to provide the general public with clear and consistent messages about the health risks to smokers that are associated with their smoking. We do not challenge those messages.”

    Lighting up the debate

    There have been some positive actions being taken to combat the rise of smoking, but regulation remains the exception rather than the rule for now. According to a WHO report, just five African countries have issued smoking bans in public places, nine have banned tobacco advertising, and only four meet the WHO’s recommendations for health warnings on cigarette packaging.

    Almost all governments on the continent have a way to go, but South Africa arguably provides a promising example to follow. It has established smoke-free public places, large and clear health warnings, and health education campaigns. Furthermore, in 1999, South Africa passed the Tobacco Products Control Amendment Act which bans the advertising of tobacco products, free distribution of tobacco products, and all forms of promotion such as sponsorship − exactly the kinds of measures Isong believes are necessary to control tobacco dependence amongst the youth.

    “Adopting a total ban on all direct and indirect tobacco products advertising, promotion and sponsorship activities, for example, will prevent messages, cues, and other inducements to begin using tobacco, especially among children,” he says. For the moment, however, that hope remains some distance away for most African countries, including Kenya.

    Back in Mtwapa, Destiny and his friends have now risen from their concrete blocks overlooking the ocean and are heading back to the shack, finishing the last of their cigarettes. They plunk down some coins, grab a single cigarette from a blue box, put a match to it and turn away to the beach again. “I’ll have probably five or six today − it keeps me cool,” says Destiny.

  • in Chad

    Chad: Déby’s Misstep in the Central African Republic

    208 Views

    By allegedly backing the Séléka rebels in early 2013, President Déby of Chad thought he could finally solve his southern problem. His plan backfired dramatically.

    By Celeste Hicks

    Chadian peacekeepers at the inaugration of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Mali. Photograph by MINUSMA/Marco Dormino.

    For those who keep an eye on goings-on in central Africa, it came as no surprise that the recent resignation of Michel Djotodia, the Central African Republic’s (CAR) short-lived president, came during a regional summit in Chad. As if the extent of Chad’s involvement in its southern neighbour wasn’t already apparent, the country had also managed to summon the CAR’s entire transitional parliament to N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, ahead of Djotodia’s announcement.

    Having influence, however, doesn’t mean things will always go your way, and in a sense, Chad has some responsibility in the crisis that has unfolded in the CAR. A year ago, Chad is believed to have given tacit approval to the Séléka rebel alliance − then led by Djotodia − as they embarked on a second push towards Bangui. A number of irregular Chadian soldiers and former Chadian rebels are understood to have been among their ranks, and the Séléka eventually overthrew President François Bozizé. Since then, the situation in the CAR has turned out much worse than anyone could have anticipated at the time.

    A history of involvement

    Though it ended on difficult note, 2013 had started well for Chad with its swift response to France’s call for help in tackling Islamist militants in northern Mali. Around 2,000 Chadian soldiers were sent to Kidal, where their combat experience in the deserts of eastern Chad was invaluable. While northern Mali is far from fully pacified, France’s Operation Serval has been broadly seen as a success, and the jewel in the crown was Chad’s claim that they had killed one of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s key commanders, Abou Zeid.

    Chad’s sacrifice in Mali – which included the deaths of over 30 soldiers – was perhaps not as well rewarded as President Idriss Déby Itno would have hoped; the command for the UN’s Mali mission (MINUSMA) was given to a Rwandan general rather than a Chadian one. Nevertheless, France, which has around 1,000 soldiers in the Chadian cities of N’Djamena and Abéché as part of its ongoing military presence in the country − known as Operation Épervier − was grateful, and reportedly sent teams to Faya-Largeau in the north of Chad to look for ways to secure the Libyan border. However, it was to events south of Chad, where the CAR was quietly disintegrating, that attention would soon turn.

    Chad and the CAR have a long history of involvement, dating back to the 1980s when Libyan forces used bases near the CAR-Chadian border from which to launch attacks against Hissène Habré, Chad’s dictator at the time. More recently, President Déby was involved in the installation of François Bozizé in 2003, giving the renegade general sanctuary during his campaign against then-president Ange-Félix Patassé. And even more recently, Déby made the significant move of withdrawing his support of Bozizé.

    Déby shows few signs of stepping back from involvement any time soon. “With the fall of Gaddafi, Chad’s Idriss Déby has become the regional kingmaker and shows no sign of leaving CAR alone,” writes Keith Somerville, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

    One reason for Chad’s interest in its neighbour is the continued activity of Chadian rebels in northern CAR. Many who took part in the attacks from 2008 to 2010 on N’Djamena and Abéché sought shelter in the north-west of the CAR, which was virtually untouched by Bangui’s authority. Here they mixed with Central African rebel groups, many of which later joined the Séléka coalition, and which have been operating in the Bria diamond-producing region for many years.

    One reading of Déby’s decision to back the Séléka over his former protégé Bozizé is that the Chadian president was emboldened by his foreign policy success in Mali and wanted to put an end to the constant rebellions in the CAR. According to a UN security adviser in N’Djamena, it seemed Déby calculated that his former rebel opponents could be drawn into Séléka’s fight, pulling them away from Chadian territory.

    Déby’s miscalculation

    It now seems clear that decision to switch allegiance to Séléka was “indeed a miscalculation” as Roland Marchal, a Chad expert at Sciences-Po University in Paris, puts it, adding that it is not clear who among Déby’s inner circle actually made the decision.

    While Chad cannot be blamed for the sectarian hatred which has ripped the CAR apart, it played a significant role in the lead up to Bozizé’s overthrow, and its continued interference has not been welcomed by some of the CAR’s political class. “It is vital that our sovereignty is respected,” says Martin Ziguélé, an opposition leader currently living in Paris, “we can’t keep asking for outside help, we have to sort these problems out for ourselves.”

    There are further costs associated with Déby’s decision to allow Chadian soldiers to move unofficially into the CAR early last year to join the rebels. Indiscipline by Chadian soldiers comprises the reputation of the country’s military and has exposed the limits of Chad’s foreign policy being exercised through its army. In December, hundreds of Central Africans gathered at the airport to call for Djotodia and the Chadian contingent of the African Union peacekeeping force (MISCA) to leave, accusing the Chadians of supporting the Séléka. The Chadian response was to open fire, killing one person. And a few days later there were reports of Chadian soldiers fighting Burundian peacekeepers in the MISCA barracks. “Important questions have been raised about the actual quality of the chain of command within the Chadian contingent,” says Marchal.

    Déby’s bottom line has always been survival. He came to power through a desert rebellion 23 years ago and is acutely aware that he may leave power in a similar manner. Rather than ending instability, however, his decision to tacitly support the Séléka has made the situation on Chad’s southern border worse than ever. The country is now faced with thousands of displaced citizens − some of them Chadians who had lived in the CAR for years, trying to get home − and the prospect of recriminations and violence across the border for months to come.

    Correction 29/01/14: The third paragraph of the section “A history of involvement” originally stated that Libya established bases in the CAR near the Chadian border to attack Chad in the 1970s. But, while bases were established in the 1970s, they were not used until the 1980s to attack Habré ruled Chad. This has now been corrected.

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