Tar64 nigeria by The Africa Report

eBola The world finally wakes up

SoUtH aFrICa Malema pushes for Zuma arrest

w w w.t hea f r ic a r ep or t .c om

MInIng End of the Iron Age

N ° 6 4 • o c t o b e r 2 014

the africa report

NIGERIA

monthly • n° 64 • october 2014

Game of Thrones President Goodluck Jonathan has to tackle insurgents and forge ahead with power reforms to win the 2015 elections

InternatIonal edItIon

Algeria 550 DA • Angola 600 Kwanza • Austria 4.90 € • Belgium 4.90 € • Canada 6.95 CAN$ • Denmark 60 DK • Ethiopia 75 Birr • France 4.90 € • Germany 4.90 € • Ghana 7 GH¢ • Italy 4.90 € • Kenya 410 shillings • Liberia $LD 300 • Morocco 50 DH • Netherlands 4.90 € • Nigeria 600 naira Norway 60 NK • Portugal 4.90 € • Sierra Leone LE 9,000 • South Africa 30 rand (tax incl.) • Spain 4.90 € • Switzerland 9.90 FS • Tanzania 6,500 shillings • Tunisia 8 DT • Uganda 9,000 shillings • UK £ 4.50 • United States US$ 6.95 • Zimbabwe US$ 4 • CFA Countries 3,500 F CFA

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EBOLA The world finally wakes up

SOUTH AFRICA Malema pushes for Zuma arrest

w w w.t heafr icarep or t.com

MINING End of the Iron Age

N ° 6 4 • O C T O B E R 2 0 14

EBOLA The world finally wakes up

NIGERIA Game of Thrones

SOUTH AFRICA Malema pushes for Zuma arrest

w w w.t heafr icarep or t.com

EBOLA The world finally wakes up

N ° 6 4 • O C T O B E R 2 0 14

NIGERIA Game of Thrones

THE AFRICA REPORT

contents

MINING End of the Iron Age

w w w.t heafr icarep or t.com

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JULIUS MALEMA

“We need to arrest Zuma” EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters wants to deliver a knock-out blow to the president

KENYA’S COAST

NIGERIA

President Goodluck Jonathan has to tackle insurgents and forge ahead with power reforms to win the 2015 elections

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Paradise lost Can Malindi survive billionaire playboys, a rampant sex trade, mafia exiles and terrorist threats?

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE

EAST AFRICA EDITION

MONTHLY • N° 64 • OCTOBER 2014

Game of Thrones

The AfricA reporT # 64 - ocTober 2014

GROUPE JEUNE AFRIQUE SOUTHERN AFRICA EDITION

4 Editorial A plague on all our houses 6 lEttErs 8 thE QuEstion

Business

64 Mining End of the Iron Age As low prices and high supplies drive down iron ore prices, small producers feel the squeeze

cover crediTs: inTernATionAl: AfolAbi soTunde/reuTers/phoTo monTAge chrisTiAn KAsongo for TAr; Jordi mATAs/demoTix/corbis - souTh AfricA: Jordi mATAs/demoTix/corbis - KenyA: foToliA

Briefing

69 BaroMEtEr Price rises for soft commodities

10 signposts 12 intErnational 16 pEoplE

70 MEdia Coming to a TV screen near you

18 calEndar

frontLine

20 Education We are what we teach The stark challenge: in the coming decades, the student population is set to explode. How will Africa’s schools cope with the sudden influx?

74 rEtail Bigger is better for Ghana’s malls 76 lEadErs Konza Technopolis Development Authority Acting CEO Catherine Adeya 80 FinancE A taste for chicken 80 hanniBal

poLitics

dossiEr

30 ExclusivE intErviEw “We need a person who will arrest Jacob Zuma” South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters head Julius Malema insists Zuma must repay the Nkandla funds

82 sustainaBlE dEvElopMEnt Fairtrade is no silver bullet The scheme is helping get Ghana’s youngsters into school but is doing little to cut poverty

34 KEnYa Paradise lost 38 intErviEw Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma 45 ZiMBaBwE Parallel power plays 46 liBYa Shock and/or 46 ghana Mahama seeks cash 47 anansi

country focus 49 nigEria Games of Thrones Amid a backdrop of conflict in the north and top-level intrigues among the two main political parties, the nation prepares to go to the polls in 2015 the africa report

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86 opinion General Sir Nick Parker

Art & Life 88 Fashion Designers spread their wings Five African designers who are shaping innovative new looks on the continent’s catwalks 92 in BriEF Afro-fusion band VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes and Rabat’s new state museum 94 liFEstYlE Outlawing plastic bags, and music-streaming guru Tim Rimbui 96 travEl All aboard for Africa 98 daY in thE liFE Anele Khoza, computer programmer

editorial

The AfricA reporT A Groupe Jeune Afrique publication

By Patrick Smith

57‑Bis, rue d’Auteuil – 75016 PAris – FrAnce tel: (33) 1 44 30 19 60 – FAx: (33) 1 44 30 19 30 www.theafricareport.com

A plague on all our houses

othing should concentrate the mind like an epidemic. But, for the first nine months of this year, the only minds focused on what President Barack Obama and the UN now call an “international security crisis” were a few hundred health workers. It is the worst Ebola outbreak since the virus was identified in 1976. It picked up pace rapidly: more were infected with the virus in August than all the previous months combined. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote to President Obama asking for urgent help to stem a regional disaster, and the UN warned that more than 20,000 could die from the outbreak before it ends. The first lesson learned is about the strength and bravery of those African doctors and nurses, and their foreign counterparts, who worked against all odds to fight the virus. Among those to whom the highest honours are due are two Sierra Leonean doctors, Sheik Humarr Khan and Olivet Buck, and senior nurse Mbalu Fonnie. After treating 80 patients at a time and working 16-hour days in Kenema, in upcountry Sierra Leone, all three caught the virus. By mid-year they were all dead. Before that they had saved hundreds of lives. This was partly because Kenema has basic diagnostic facilities but mainly because of the doctors’ and nurses’ commitment to and knowledge of the community. Tackling Ebola requires medical knowledge but also political will. Teams of trained individuals have to work with communities, test for the virus, then isolate and treat those infected. They have to bury the dead while respecting cultural norms, trace patients’ contacts

Cha i r m a n a nd f o und e r Béchir Ben yAhMed P ub l i s he r dAnielle Ben yAhMed publisher@theafricareport.com e x e Cut i ve P ub l i s he r JérôMe MillAn

during the incubation period, manage outreach and education, and even ensure food supplies. Much of this work upcountry was unrecognised and almost unsupported by governments in Conakry, Monrovia and Freetown. The second lesson is that Africa’s healthcare systems are in crisis and that the reformers must work with the doctors and nurses who have stayed on – more than 50% of African-trained docEbola raises tors are working overseas – to tackle chronic the question: under-investment and are we ready bad management. to finance The laggardly response to the killer an effective virus by governments, international international organisations and drugs health companies invites agency? a festival of blame passing. Everyone has tough questions to answer: one is whether we are really prepared to finance an effective international health agency. When the national response was overwhelmed in the Ebola-hit countries, why didn’t the World Health Organisation (WHO) launch a massive intervention? The third lesson concerns the decision by the rich countries financing the WHO to cut its budget to $4bn for 2012/2013, $500m less than the previous two years. Much of that $500m was taken from emergency response funds. This was curmudgeonly and inhumane but also economically stupid: failure to tackle the spreading virus quickly has cost thousands of lives and could cost billions of dollars in lost output and social disruption. It is time to think and act to stop yet another rerun. ●

m a r K e t i nG & d e ve l o P m e nt AlisOn KinGsley‑hAll e d i t o r i n Chi e f PAtricK sMith m a na G i nG e d i t o r nichOlAs nOrBrOOK editorial@theafricareport.com a s s i s ta nt e d i t o r chArlie hAMiltOn e d i t o r i a l a s s i s ta nt OheneBA AMA nti Osei r e G i o na l e d i t o r PArselelO KAntAi (east Africa) a rt & l i f e e d i t o r rOse sKeltOn s ub - e d i t o r s AlisOn culliFOrd MArshAll vAn vAlen P r o o f r e a d i nG KAthleen GrAy a rt d i r e Ct o r MArc trensOn desiGn vAlérie Olivier sydOnie GhAyeB christOPhe chAuvin P r o d uCt i o n PhiliPPe MArtin christiAn KAsOnGO r e s e a r Ch AnitA cOrthier P ho t o G r a P hy clAire vAtteBled o nl i ne JeAn‑MArie Miny Prince OFOri‑AttA sales sAndrA drOuet sOlène deFrAncq tel: (33) 1 44 30 18 07 – Fax: (33) 1 45 20 09 67 sales@theafricareport.com cOntAct FOr suBscriPtiOn: Webscribe ltd unit 8 the Old silk Mill Brook street, tring hertfordshire hP23 5eF united Kingdom tel: + 44 (0) 1442 820580 Fax: + 44 (0) 1442 827912 email: subs@webscribe.co.uk 1 year subscription (10 issues): All destinations: €39 ‑ $59 ‑ £35 tO Order Online: www.theafricareportstore.com d i f Co m internAtiOnAl AdvertisinG And cOMMunicAtiOn AGency 57‑Bis, rue d’Auteuil 75016 PAris ‑ FrAnce tel: (33) 1 44 30 19‑60 – Fax: (33) 1 44 30 18 34 advertising@theafricareport.com a d ve rt i s i nG d i r e Ct o r nAthAlie Guillery r e G i o na l m a na G e r s cArOline Ah KinG FAdOuA yAqOBi liliA BenAceur elOdie BOussOnniere us r e P r e s e ntat i ve AzizA AlBOu a.albou@groupeja.com

editorial@theafricareport.com the africa report

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Printer: sieP 77 ‑ FrAnce n° de cOMMissiOn PAritAire : 0715 i 86885 dépôt légal à parution / issn 1950‑4810 the AFricA rePOrt is published by GrOuPe Jeune AFrique

letters For all your comments, suggestions and queries, please write to: The Editor, The Africa Report, 57bis Rue d’Auteuil - Paris 75016 - France. or editorial@theafricareport.com

south sudan’s missing voices

Cote d’ivoire Economic phoenix rises from the ashes

united states Soldiers, spies and summiteers

ConstruCtion Lafarge and Dangote battle for dominance

Double issue

hree alarming issues emerge from The Africa Report’s interview with Riek Machar [‘The people are forced to fight this war’, TAR63 August/September 2014]. First, South Sudan must reckon with its political leadership in and out of rising government. In a sobering decision, Machar chose stars Peter Gadet – whom the EU and US claim led massacres of his own – to find those responsible for slaughters in Bentiu and Malakal. Second, South Sudan’s people must prepare for prolonged suffering. Machar refers to his supporters as a ‘young resistance movement’ likened to the early SPLM – the political group holding power after decades of war. Finally, missing are the voices of South Sudan’s marginalised civil society – women’s, religious, and other non-violent movements. They certainly will be the ones to collect the broken pieces and rebuild the shattered lives, once the warring leaders finally negotiate a truce. Mark Fathi Massoud, author of Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan, via email w w w.t heaf ric arep or t .c om

N ° 6 3 • a u g u s t- s e p t e m b e r 2 014

The

Mehdi Jomâa • Okwiri

ele • Jo-Ann Phuti Mahany

Pohl

Oduor • Sim Shagaya •

Botsalo Ntuane Jack Nkusi Kayonga

Moctar El Hacen • Maria Ivone Soares • Sia Tolno

Igho Sanomi • Ganzeer • Joel Embiid • Omar Victor Diop

Ismaïl Ism

Thiam Douiri • Amadou

• Eric Mboma

• Rachel Mwanza

Nelson Chamisa • Lupita

Nyong’o

GroUPE jEUNE AFrIqUE

internationaL edition

supporting islamic finance Islamic finance has the potential to play a key role in developing Africa [‘Islamic Finance: Searching for sukuk’, TAR63 Aug-Sept 2014]. It can provide an alternative source of infrastructure financing and promote financial inclusion. However, the extent to which Islamic finance is able to grow and contribute to the development of different African countries will depend on whether they have supportive legal and regulatory regimes. As Islamic finance is based on sharia principles, there is a need to change the banking,

financial and tax laws to accommodate the industry and level the playing field. Professor Habib Ahmed, PhD, Sharjah Chair in Islamic Law & Finance, Durham University, UK, via email

what future for ghana’s youth? The Republic Day (1st July) demonstration on the streets of Accra was indeed avowedly non-partisan, having been initiated by middle-class Ghanaians who could not just sit while the country’s crisis lingers on [‘Rein ’em in, Mahama’, TAR63 Aug-Sept 2014].

This said, some top officials and die-hard supporters of the ruling NDC broke ranks and joined in the protests. I am frantic about the future of Ghanaian youth. The enabling environment for enterprise development and innovation is being stifled. If current trends in the economy persist, the country may in the long term consider the option of what I’ll term ‘modern colonialism’; a system in which foreign countries or investors buy portions or all of a country.

Kwame Adu-Appeah, a concerned Ghanaian, via email

gécamines’ secret sales Reading Gregory Mthembu-Salter’s report on the DRC’s state copper miner Gécamines [‘More digging, more problems’, TAR62 Jul 2014] I was struck by the contrast between Gécamines’ avowed efforts to restore its fortunes and the track-record of the company. As the Africa Progress Panel revealed last year, Gécamines was central to the ‘secret sales’ scandal, which saw the Congolese state losing out on $1.4bn as a result of selling underpriced assets to companies associated with Dan Gertler, a friend of the president. If Gécamines wishes to reassure international investors, it needs to adopt basic standards of transparency. At the moment it doesn’t even publish annual accounts. That would be a start.

Daniel Balint-Kurti, Campaign Leader, DRC, Global Witness, via email

How To gET youR copy of THE AfRIcA REpoRT On sale at your usual outlet. If you experience problems obtaining your copy, please contact your local distributor, as shown below. ghana: GREENWICH MAGAZINES & BOOKS, Mr Ernest Asare, +233 (0)208 142 374, greenmaghana@gmail.com – Kenya: NATION MEDIA GROUP, Josephine Bonareri Abuga, +254 (0)20 32 88507, JAbuga@ke.nationmedia.com – nigeria: NEWSSTAND AGENCIES LTD, Solomon Otinwa, +234 (0)709 8123 459, newsstand2008@ gmail.com – sierra leone: RAI GERB ENTERPRISES, Mohammad Gerber, +232 (0)336 72 469, raigerbenterprise@gmail.com – southern africa: RNA DISTRIBUTION, Butch Courtney, +27 (0)11 602 9800 • butchc@mad.co.za – tanZania: MWANANCHI COMMUNICATIONS, Emmanuel J Lyimo, +255 716 500 500, elyimo@tz.nationmedia.com – uganda: MONITOR PUBLICATIONS LTD, Stephen Eselu, +256 (0)702 178 198, seselu@ug.nationmedia.com – united Kingdom: COMAG, Mark Swan, +44 (0)1895 433791, Mark.Swan@comag.co.uk – united states & canada: LMPI, Sylvain Fournier, +1 514 355 5610, lmpi@lmpi.com – ZimBaBwe: MUNN MARKETING (PVT) LTD, Nick Ncube, +263 (0)4 662755, nickncube@munnmarketing.co.zw For other regions go to www.theafricareport.com

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the question To respond to this month’s Question, visit www.theafricareport.com. You can also find The Africa Report on Facebook and on Twitter @theafricareport. Comments, suggestions and queries can also be sent to: The Editor, The Africa Report, 57bis Rue d’Auteuil, Paris 75016, France or editorial@theafricareport.com

RESPOnSES to last month’s question:

moody’s downgrading of south african banks in august and Ghana’s government in June raises questions about whether external rating agencies have sufficient local knowledge to chart african risk.

Do oil companies care enough about oil spills?

Should Africa establish its own credit ratings agency?

Yes AlexAndrA MousAvizAdeh COO of Arc Ratings

It’s incredibly important for the development of Africa’s capital markets and the increase in investment across all asset classes. An African ratings agency would mean you have an entity that is taking an in-depth look at the transaction and balance-sheet activities of entities across the region. One of the issues across Africa is that it is hard to get this kind of information. A lot of companies are not comprehensively audited so the more ratings penetration across the region, the more comfortable investors are going to be about getting into the market and that will drive investment. You are looking at a continent that has a very low level of penetration into the capital markets, and a ratings agency is crucial to understanding credit quality. The problem is that it is important to be benchmarked on an international scale. You therefore want the combination of deep local knowledge and international benchmarking. The credibility of any ratings agency lies in the strength of the analysis and the ratings. It is essential to have solid analysis that backs up the reasoning for the rating outcome. The reason it has not been done before is that the markets were not mature enough. But that is changing. The demand for ratings is growing and the supply will follow that. ●

No Jonty levin Partner, Alkebulan

Credit rating agencies exist to reduce the information asymmetry between investors and borrowers, so instilling in investors the confidence that the instruments in which they invest are suitably structured and priced relative to the risk they assume. In a globalised financial world, investors seek guidance from ratings agencies that have depth of knowledge and insight and demonstrable track records in terms of their analysis and guidance; in short, ratings agencies that they trust. The contrived establishment of local agencies would not provide prospective investors with the confidence that they seek and so would rapidly prove superfluous to requirements. If the sentiment is that the global credit rating agencies do not provide good input on African debt issuers or issuances then the challenge is less about establishing rival entities and more about identifying areas in which the existing industry participants need to be educated and informed, and ways to achieve this. Perhaps there is the opportunity to work with the credit rating agencies to establish the veracity of, and therefore the validity of taking into account, risk mitigants that are unique to African societies. Alternatively, if the concern is that African entities are not suitably rated, then efforts need to be expended in improving governance and disclosure levels so as to secure the desired levels of scores. ●

I believe they care if those spills will lead to substantial revenue losses. Perry Dzivenu via Facebook Maybe the question should be whether we, mankind, care enough about oil spills. Do we care enough when we are thousands of miles away from the spills and live our lives in ignorant bliss? Do we care enough to stop using oil? If not, then why point our fingers at the oil companies? The Last Barrel of Oil via Facebook When oil spillages happen in developing countries, big oil corporations just get spanked by paying small fines. But the last time BP and its agent (Deepwater) screwed up in southern US, the fine was about $50 billion. It reminds me of [George] Orwell’s quote: “All animals are equal, but SOME animals are more equal than OTHERS.” Toyin Ogunsuyi via Facebook I think they care enough about profit. Sello Cry via Facebook Try having African oil giants that are actually owned by Africans who give a damn about Africa and it’s ecosystem!! Quit whining about Shell BP, don’t invite them to your house. Isaac Imanishimwe via Facebook

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briefing

InTERnATIonAL 1

2 5 4

7 8

9 1

ARGEnTInA

$1.3bn

Money claimed by vulture funds that bought up debt after Argentina’s 2001 default. US courts blocked the country’s payment of a bond coupon in September because the funds are holding out for more money. Argentina has passed laws to restructure the debt.

ISRAEL

Land grabbing

RUSSELL CHEyNE/REUTERS

In late August, Israel triggered a fresh wave of international condemnation after it announced it would take possession of around 1,000 acres of West Bank land for settlement expansion, the largest such appropriation in some 30 years. The US and the EU called on Israel to reverse the decision to occupy the land, which will be used to expand a settlement outside Bethlehem, amid claims it would scupper any chance of restarting stalled peace talks. The ceasefire between Israel and Palestine that started in late July has held and the UN mediated an agreement to allow rebuilding efforts to begin in Gaza, the site of a recent two-month conflict. ●

SCoTLAnD

Och-aye the ‘no’

Scotland voted against breaking away from the UK in a close-run independence referendum held on 18 September. The ‘No’ campaign won with 55.3% of the vote against the ‘Yes’ campaign, led by Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party. The campaign, which frequently turned heated, captivated the UK and triggered huge debate, as displayed by the 86% turnout, a level of participation in a nationwide poll not seen since the 1950s. The independence campaign was weakened by worries over what currency the new nation would use and membership of the EU, crucial for Scotland’s economy. Westminster offered Scots a “devo-max” deal in which a large swathe of powers will be devolved to the Scottish parliament. This may in turn offer hope to other European regions driving for independence, such as Catalonia in Spain. Prior to the vote, a host of financial institutions and multinational firms had warned they would relocate operations south of the border should Scotland leave the UK. International markets responded positively to the result, with the London Stock Exchange rising in early trading and the pound hitting a two-year high against the euro. ● 3

“He

portrayed himself as the man who doesn’t like the rich. In reality, the president doesn’t like the poor ”

TIBET

President Zuma keeps Dalai Lama away The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, cancelled a planned visit to South Africa in September after learning his visa application would be denied. China, a key business partner for South Africa, has regularly pressured foreign governments not to meet the Dalai Lama. In February, US President Barack Obama met him despite warnings from Beijing that the talks would “seriously damage” ties. During his presidency of South Africa Nelson Mandela hosted the Dalai Lama twice, in 1996 and 2004. ●

FRAnCE

Valérie Trierweiler a former girlfriend of France’s President François Hollande, painted a damning picture of him in her new book

LCHAM/SIPA

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CMA CGM

briefing | international

african angles 6

RUSSIA

gas tit for tat Tensions between Russia and the West continued after Russian statecontrolled energy giant Gazprom reduced its gas exports to Poland in mid-September. The cut raised suspicions it was a retaliation for Warsaw’s export of gas to Ukraine, where separatists have been fighting the government in the country’s east since mid-April. Meanwhile, the EU introduced a series of sanctions against divisions of Gazprom, limiting their access to European financial markets. The US Treasury is now forbidding Gazprom from having access to US deepwater, Arctic offshore and shale technology. ●

IRAQ

In August and September, the US carried out more than 150 air strikes against fighters from the radical Islamist group Islamic State who were threatening targets in Iraq including the Haditha Dam, in the country’s north-west.

QATAR

QNB in africa In September, the Middle East’s largest bank, Qatar National Bank (QNB), bought a 23.5% stake in the Togo-based Ecobank for an estimated $503m, making it the pan-African bank’s largest shareholder. With domestic competition limiting QNB’s profits it is seeking to boost its African interests and has pledged to become the largest bank in the Middle East and Africa by 2017. In 2013, it bought Société Générale’s Egyptian division for $2bn. ●

Ogaga IfOwOdO

Nigeria’s Christian Zionists israel’s violence against Palestine provokes few questions amongst nigerian believers

s the horrors of the latest battle in the unending Israeli-Palestinian war shocked the world and Nigerian Christians cheered Israel to victory, I recalled a Pentecostal church service I attended in the southern city of Warri at the insistence of my born-again niece. The pastor urged his congregation to pray for Israel, once again threatened by her philistine neighbours. Then ensued a paroxysm of prayer and speakingin-tongues. The pastor stoked the frenzy: “Nothing the Palestinians could do would make God break his promise to his chosen people.” “So why pray?”, I blurted out. No one noticed. I turned to my niece and asked her: “Didn’t Jehovah create the Palestinians? Aren’t they his children too? Why would he promise the land belonging to some of his children to some other children? Why would God the father play favouritism with his children?” Her response: “You can’t question God.” Three decades later, I ask the same questions of a cousin in whose living room we are viewing images of Israel’s unrestrained use of force in Gaza. He tells me the Palestinians do not deserve pity. Firstly, they are fighting a hopeless battle over land God promised to Abraham, and, secondly, “the Arabs are a problem everywhere, terrorising the world with their violent religion”. It does not help that the atrocities of Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria and of the Islamic State are also in the news. I push for a sober answer and he says: “We can’t question God.”

I suppose every good Christian is a Zionist, meaning he or she who believes in the literal and immutable truths of the Old Testament. My Nigerian brethren are more Zionist than Ari Shavit, whose greatgrandfather collaborated with Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s founding father. In My Promised Land: the Triumph and Tragedy of Israel – an astounding personal narrative history that everyone should read – Shavit utters what the Nigerian Christian would call blasphemy: that Israel was founded upon a great historical injustice, beginning with the conquest of Arab towns and villages and the expulsion of their populations during the 1948 war. “The nation I am born into,” Shavit explains, “has erased Palestine from the face of the earth. Bulldozers razed Palestinian villages, warrants confiscated Palestinian land, laws revoked Palestinian citizenship and annulled their homeland.” Christian Nigeria’s biblical literalism notwithstanding, the world recoils increasingly from the brutal reality of Israeli colonisation of Palestine. Israel runs the risk of becoming a pariah, much like apartheid South Africa. Maybe this suits the Jewish sense of abandonment poignantly expressed by the Zionist hero Yitzhak Tabenkin, who said: “Bitter is the knowledge of our solitude and the knowledge that the world is our enemy.” True, perhaps, before the liberation of Auschwitz, but does Israel wish now to be the world’s enemy instead? The question does not cross the mind of Nigerian Zionists. ●

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briefing

cAlendAr

iPAd drc mininG & infrAstructure indAbA 21-23 october

OCTOBER

AfricA GlobAl business forum 1-2 october

kinshasa | drc ipad-drc.com

Dubai | uAe africaglobalbusinessforum.com

zAmbiA 50th AnniversAry of indePendence 24 october

us-AfricA infrAstructure conference 7-9 october Washington DC | us this year’s CCa conference is on ‘building Resilient Cities’. infra2014.africacncl.org

nobel PeAce Prize 10 october oslo | norwAy nobelprize.org

world bAnk & imf fAll meetinGs 10-12 october Washington DC | us imf.org

AfricAn develoPment forum 12-16 october MaRRakeCh | morocco uneca.org

world investment forum 13-16 october

MoniRul bhuiyan/aFp

botswAnA PresidentiAl & PArliAmentAry elections 24 october

The unexpected death of Gomolemo Motswaledi, leader of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) and vice-president of the country’s main opposition group, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), just months before the election, has heightened tensions in the country. A police investigation after the fatal car crash on 30 July ruled out foul play, a decision that angered opposition party members who accuse President Ian Khama and the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) of a political assassination. With the absence of Motswaledi, whose party was not set to pose a serious threat to President Khama’s reelection, the odds remain high that the incumbent will sail to victory, with the support of loyalists who have continuously voted the BDP into power since the country gained independence from Britain in 1966.

mozAmbique GenerAl/ PresidentiAl elections 15 october

tunisiA PArliAmentAry elections 26 october AGribusiness forum 26-29 october kinshasa | drc aimed at the challenges and seizing opportunities in the agri-business sector in africa, this year’s forum is themed ‘the Future for agriculture in africa: inclusive growth’. emrc.be

28-30 october lagos | niGeriA power-nigeria.com

eAst AfricA oil And GAs summit 15-17 october

lAGos fAshion & desiGn week 29 october – 1 november

naiRobi | kenyA eaogs.com

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RenaMo and FReliMo go head-to-head. see page 16.

liberiA senAtoriAl election 14 october

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the GlobAl AfricAn investment summit 20-21 october

however, the poll remains in doubt due to the ebola crisis.

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NOVEMBER

AfricA oil week 3-7 november Cape toWn | south AfricA www.globalpacificpartners.com the africa report

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frontline

education

We are what

To avoid a crisis in a few decades’ time, governments must act now in order to improve schools and protect the economic advances made since the 1990s. That means developing a new generation of schools that teach students the skills needed for the future and the critical thinking to avoid the mistakes of the past

By Kalundi Serumaga in Kampala

we teach

Jacques Torregano/fedephoTo for Ja

nderneath the savagery, there is a cold logic to Boko Haram’s violent targeting of schools in Nigeria. If you wish to change a society, the education system is a good place to start. Even without the Islamists, Africa faces one of its starkest challenges: before 2050 there will be an estimated billion people under the age of 18 on the continent. Its leaders must invest massively in education or risk condemning a generation to unemployment and poverty. Too often rhetoric fails to match action. Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan in his 2010 campaign said: “Let the word go out from here that I will be for the students, teachers and parents of Nigeria, a president who will advance quality and competitive education.” In practice, Nigeria spends 8.5% of its budget on education; South Korea spends 25%. The struggle will not be about handing out laptops. Rather, the hard work will be building schools, training teachers and ensuring that the skills imparted will serve the industries of tomorrow. Ugandan writer Daniel Kalinaki warned in March that “with the youngest population in the world and one of the highest levels of youth unemployment, the poor education and training we are giving our young people should be a national emergency. Yet we, too, are sleepwalking into a crisis of epic proportions.” ● ● ●

frontline | Education: wE arE what wE tEach

Africa’s education system in numbers

57%

140

PERCEIVED COST AND BENEFIT OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN AFRICA

90%

High cost, high beneﬁt

High cost, low beneﬁt

80%

Burkina Faso Kenya Niger Malawi

Uganda

Mali

Rwanda

Ivory Coast Zambia Guinea D.R.C Cameroon Median Ghana Tanzania Senegal 52% Gabon Zimbabwe Liberia Madagascar Rep. of Congo Sierra Leone Mauritania Benin Botswana Angola Chad South Africa Tunisia Nigeria Morocco

60% 50% 40% 30% 20%

Low cost, Low beneﬁt

10%

20%

Ethiopia

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

120 110 100 90 80

Out-of-school rate, sub-Saharan Africa

Out-of-school rate, rest of world

50 2000

Low cost, high beneﬁt

Median 44%

School-age population, rest of world

80%

Percentage who believe secondary schools teach practical skills and prepare people for work

source: Gallup

70%

School-age population, sub-Saharan Africa

130 source: dfid

The share of total enrolment represented by private schools in Lagos State in 2011

Value relative to 2000 (2000=100)

The number of private schools as a percentage of the total number in Lagos State in 2011

source: dfid

88%

source: mdG indicators

The level of net primary education enrolment in Ghana, up from 65.6% in 2000

source: unesco

New lowersecondary teachers needed to achieve universal lower-secondary education by 2030

DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL-AGE POPULATIONS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD COMPARED TO 2000

90%

2002

2004

2006

2008

Lower secondary-school age

2010 2012

The graph illustrates that school populations in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are rising while those in the rest of the world have slipped, and while the number of children not in school in SSA has fallen, it still lags behind the level of decrease elsewhere.

Morocco matches skills and growth sectors

Companies want to play a central role in shaping curricula to ensure graduates have training that is adapted to the requirements of the job market

n the afternoon of 11 September, not far away from Mohamed V airport in Casablanca, the Institut Spécialisé des Métiers de l’Aéronautique et de la Logistique Aéroportuaire (ISMALA) has an unusual buzz. Students wearing their dark-blue overalls are conscientiously working on different pieces of aircraft, drilling, nailing and folding materials, making it hard to hear what the director of the institute, Abdelhadi Ben Mkaddem, is trying to say. Today is a special day as the ISMALA has just received the Haas Technical

Education Center certification, a first in Africa. “There are around a hundred aeronautical companies in Morocco [...] Having an international certification is a way to reassure investors about the quality of our workforce, therefore increasing the chance of attracting foreign companies and the number of jobs waiting for our students at the end of their training,” says Larbi Bencheikh, director of the Office de la Formation Professionnelle et de la Promotion du Travail (OFPPT), which – under the education ministry –

oversees ISMALA. In Morocco, where three quarters of the labour market is informal and 30% of young people are unemployed, matching education and the needs of the labour market is indeed a strategic question. Across Africa, policymakers are focusing more and more on the concept of skills. With the training institutes that the government and car manufacturer Renault have established, Morocco is ahead of its peers, many of which have not even begun to study the gap between the skills schools provide and the needs of employers.

In 2005, Morocco’s industry ministry launched its Emergence Plan, listing six priority sectors for the country’s development: off-shoring, automobiles, textiles, aeronautics, electronics and food processing. This year, the government launched the Stratégie d’Emergence aux Ecosystèmes Performants, an updated version of the Emergence Plan, with one of its key objectives being the improvement of the skills provided by the education system. When asked by The Africa Report how this consistency is going to be achieved, trade

the africa report

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source: unesco institute for statistics

87.6%

5.1m

Percentage who feel secondary schools are too expensive

Education: wE arE what wE tEach | frontline

secondary school. His daughter did not As children returned to school like it, he explains: “This is a 12-yearacross Africa in September, schooling old telling me that it was not value for was the subject of many a heated demoney.” The computing facilities were bate and a cause of concern for parnot good, and the teachers were not enents and their children alike. Nigerian couraging students to read. “And this in lawyer Jide Bello has more choice than the information age, the 21st century,” most. He schooled in Kaduna in the exclaims Bello. He found a British school 1960s in the school for the children for her in Dorset, UK,where the library of military officers. Nearly all schools is fantastic. Ironically, it is the same and universities were public then. He school where the chairman of Corona appreciated his time at Ahmadu Bello Trust now sends his own child. If even University (ABU) in the 1970s. “It was the elite is exiting the elite school syssaid to have the finest library south of the Sahara,” he explains. When he went tem, there is a grave problem. to Manchester, UK, to continue his studies, students If even the elite is exiting were using the same ecothe elite school system to study nometrics textbooks as in abroad, there is a problem ABU. During a law degree in Jos in the 1980s, he says that he started to see a change. From the If education is how a society passes on 1990s, the decay accelerated, with reguall the knowledge that may help its rising lar strikes and other problems. Students generation thrive in the future, then perstudying for a three-year bachelor’s haps there is no real education system in much of Africa. This certainly seems degree would take six or more years to to be the case in Eastern Africa, if a June complete it, he tells The Africa Report. report from the Inter-University CounNow he is putting his daughter cil for East Africa (IUCEA), is anything through school. He says public school to go by. It says that at least half of the was not an option as it is very poorly region’s graduates “lack employability resourced. He started paying £3,000skills, technical mastery and basic work£4,000 ($4,900-$6,500) per term for an elite private education at a Corona Trust related capabilities.” ●●●

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must be at the heart of the government’s focus on skills, like in Singapore. Slassi says: “1.6% of the national wage bill goes to the professional training tax. This is our money that is used by the OFPPT to offer proper training. It is only fair that we decide what kind of training is offered to our youth, as we are the ones hiring them.” Jamal Belahrach, the chief executive of Manpower Morocco, shares the same opinion. “We need to be consulted more often. The education ministry should not be the one overseeing professional training, it is the companies that should be doing it,” he says, adding that what the country is lacking most is engineers, technicians and marketing experts. ●

Nadia Rabbaa in Casablanca

o c to b e r 2 014

eMPloYerS HAVe tHeir SAY

Only a few governments are rising to the challenge. In Morocco (see page 22) and Ethiopia, the governments are bringing companies, as the employers of African graduates, to the table to discuss how to train students with the requisite skills to build dams and assemble cars. Education cannot be a privately organised affair: resources for curriculum content, infrastructure development, development research and regulation are properly things for which only a government can mobilise. But governments cannot ignore the private sector in designing curricula. As it stands, few are happy with the state of affairs. Just 33% of those surveyed in Sierra Leone and 38% in Mali expressed satisfaction with their education systems in a 2013 poll by Gallup. Rwanda (83%) and Ethiopia (76%) were the top scorers in the survey. ●●●

Morocco is training a workforce for its aeronautical sector

LUDOVIC/REA

minister Moulay Hafid Elalamy explains: “A precise mapping of the training needs is being made through a quantification by sector, by profile, by region and by year, as well as through an inventory of the training available in Morocco.” Coordinating the development of growth poles and providing adequate training is still in its early stages. For example, the aeronautics industry is projected to create an average of 1,500 new jobs each year until 2020, and ISAMA’s first class of aeronautical mechanics had 90 students in 2013. At the Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc, where Mohamed Slassi is the head of the commission on training, companies say that they

This is common throughout Africa, where there are large skills gaps between what employers need and what schools provide. While there is 24% unemployment in South Africa, the government maintains a list of jobs in high demand, with engineers filling up most of the top spots.

Technology – in the form of laptops for all, online education or video conferencing to allow teachers to have a virtual presence in several classrooms – offers no panacea. Simply connecting students to the internet does not necessarily lead to better education outcomes. Parents, in the meantime, have sought what should have been temporary, but have become permanent ‘solutions’ in the face of inertia from governments. This has led to the emergence of a threetier education system. The first tier is the original colonial mission-school model. This was designed to produce very junior civil servants and state functionaries, and tends to remain the domain of the state, sometimes in partnership with the still-powerful original missionary churches. Under the donor-driven reforms that swept Africa from the mid1990s, these schools were expanded to include a new plank of supposedly free and accessible-to-all primary education. Governments continue to struggle to expand education without reducing the quality of the learning offered (see left).

●●●

Secondary considerations Expanding secondary education is key to forming tomorrow’s workers, civil servants and entrepreneurs

hanks to the drive to meet the Millennium Development Goals for universal primaryschool education in 2015, children in the majority of African states now have the opportunity to complete primary school. Expanding secondary-school enrolment – it was just 31% for upper secondary school in 2010 – will take a new budgetary commitment. Sub-Saharan African countries already devote an average of 22.4% of their national budgets to education, according to UNESCO. In 2007, Uganda was one of the first to roll out universal secondary education, which has produced mixed results due to the limits of budgets, personnel and infrastructure. At the time, teachers and NGOs complained that the government did not consult them. Does Uganda offer lessons for

countries like Ghana that are seeking to follow suit? Frederick Mwesigye, executive director of the Forum for Education NGOs in Uganda, explains: “I am not sure one can easily get the answers as there has not been any study I know of to trace the children who enrolled in primary school and transited to university.” Despite its current economic challenges, the Ghanaian government plans to go ahead with expanding the number of secondary schools and removing fees from public secondary institutions, which was a topic of intense debate in the 2012 election. President John Mahama’s government estimates that the policy will cost ¢71m ($19.7m) in 2015/2016 alone. The government’s planning has been ineffective, though. Approving a $156m grant to improve secondary education in Ghana, the World Bank wrote this

year that government underestimated enrolment by more than 20% in 2012/2013 and was spending four times as much in 2013 as it had projected to spend in 2020. The expansion of enrolment often leads to a degradation of standards as schools struggle to manage the new student intake. There are other problems that money alone cannot solve. The World Bank report on Ghana says that 25% of youth either do not have the qualifications to enter senior high school or cannot afford to commute to the schools where they are placed by the computerised placement system. While, at 36%, Ghana’s secondary enrolment rate is one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa, it has a long way to go. The next 200 schools it plans to build could raise that rate by about 14%. ●

Marshall Van Valen

results factories

The second tier is a privately owned school system that has been cloned from the original model by local businesspeople. Due to the slowness of the government in providing education in Nigeria’s mega-city of Lagos, private schools accounted for 88% of the total number of schools in 2011. Outwardly, these private schools maintain the appearance and posture of those in the original model but they are in reality results factories, where their pupils are trained in hothouse fashion to cram data for the specific purpose of passing national examinations. This results in a permanent arms race with all other such schools. The third tier is vaguely modelled on a hybrid of British and American private schools. These target that growing species of pan-African family whose parents have the skills and qualifications to find themselves employed as highly paid senior managers of international humanitarian or commercial organisations. With the children of the political elites – who abandoned the very state systems they manage as government ministers or menace as wealthy warlords – and Western expatriates, this category functions behind a so- ● ● ● the africa report

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frontline | Education: wE arE what wE tEach

● ● ● cial firewall of exorbitant fees. In short, education in Africa seems to be increasingly taking on the appearance of a badly supervised evening market in which nobody really knows the quality of what they are buying – or even selling, for that matter.

a plethora of poor choices

type of African mind required by colonial authority, and that has been most damaging in the post-colonial setting, where policy-makers have remained wedded to a preference for foreign solutions across the board over any home-grown initiatives for the challenges they face. Lynn Najjemba, a senior development worker at the Panos Institute, describes them as “template thinkers”.

The dilemma that this presents to all responsibly minded parents is clear. They will of course want the best possible education they can The three models have this obtain for their offspring. in common: none addresses the As child growth cannot be put on hold to allow the aueducation needs of Africans thorities the extra time they The expanded secular state model need to function properly, parents are simply produces a permanent undercompelled to reach for what they can class of persons no longer capable of within the existing poor choices. They are poor choices because, despite their rural agricultural labour, but wholly aim to differentiate themselves from one unsuited to either further education another, these three models actually or urban employment. In Nigeria, the have something in common: none of pass rate on the West African Senior School Certificate Examination this year them addresses the actual education was just 31.2%, showing that a majorneeds of African societies. ity of students is not receiving a basic The original mission-school syseducation. tems simply continue to produce the

With the elite third tier, what in effect these parents are buying for their offspring is social and cultural insulation from the angst of the rest of the population. As a basis for future career networking, this type creates a strategic danger: although such children may well end up in charge of the continent, they will know virtually nothing about its soul. At the end of it all, the African child is still not being best prepared to face the world it will grow up to occupy, and a lot of money and effort is being put towards its miseducation. This is a matter that should be the subject of a much wider debate than at present, even if certain African countries seem more open to learning from the successes and failures in the field of education across the world. South Korea and Singapore, two countries that have developed rapidly over the past several decades, have been offering training and partnership arrangements with countries like Rwanda. We must go back to a central question: What knowledge, skills and wisdom will the African child require to face tomorrow’s world? ●

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Learning by numbers: the low-cost schools depend on a large pupil base

Private solutions for public gaps

Chains of low-cost private schools are springing up from Kenya to South Africa

he average customer earns $1.60 per day, spends $16.97 a month on rent and is likely to be self-employed. It may sound like analysis from a consumer goods company,

but these stats come from Bridge International Academies, a quickly expanding for-profit company that runs 359 primary schools in Kenya teaching 100,000 children.

Bridge international academies

Education: wE arE what wE tEach | frontline

It approaches teaching like a business problem and is managed by centralised teams in charge of curriculum development and lesson planning. All Bridge teachers have tablet computers and can download lesson plans. Many have not been teachers before. Bridge’s schools charge an average of only $6.35 per pupil per year. Marie Leznicki, vicepresident for marketing at Bridge, says its pupils are performing 35% higher in reading and 19% higher in maths than their peers in government schools. “Parents are in complete control. We promise them their kids will learn x, y, z. They will pull out their kids and stop paying if we don’t do that,” says Leznicki. Bridge is owned by US firm New Globe Schools, which

is setting up subsidiaries in Uganda, Nigeria and India. One of its funders is the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF), a $15m fund set up to invest in innovative companies in Africa. Alongside Bridge, low-cost Ghanaian chain Omega has 40 schools, and SPARK, a South African company, has set up a chain of schools based on a ‘blended learning’ approach – using technology alongside face-to-face teaching. It aims to have 60 schools within a decade. Scale will be the key to their success. Bridge’s Leznicki says the company has yet to make a profit in Kenya. “Our profit margins on each child are very, very tiny. It’s only through having literally half a million kids that it starts to make sense.” ●

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frontline | Education: wE arE what wE tEach

Lindiwe Ngwenya is happy to give something back as a teacher in an informal settlement

government has moved to re-open teacher training colleges that were shut in the years after apartheid. The first re-opened in early 2013 in Mpumalanga, with plans for more in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Eastern Cape. In its 2013-2014 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO estimated that sub-Saharan Africa needs 225,000 additional teachers a year to meet demand. Some countries such as Ethiopia or Mali may be on track to have enough teachers for universal primary education by 2015 or 2020, but only by recruiting Training graduates on the job and e-learning are two ways large cohorts of untrained teachers. The rural/urban of filling the huge gap in qualified educators divide in training is marked. n Zonkizizwe Secondary operational in 32 countries Diaho, founding member In Ethiopia’s remote rural School, in an informal across Europe, South of Teach South Africa. region Afar, only 4% of settlement southeast America and Asia. It has “But we also want to produce primary school grade 1 to 4 of Johannesburg, Lindiwe been running in South Africa an alumni network teachers are properly trained. Ngwenya teaches English for five years, and now of individuals who continue Efforts to train existing to grade 11 and 12 students, Nigeria is interested to make a difference in teachers are therefore aged 17 to 23. “There are in replicating the model. the world and support the imperative to boost teaching very few students who have High-performing graduates learners they meet.” quality, and are now being both parents at home,” are recruited from maths, After their two-year stint, made easier by e-learning. says Ngwenya. “Some have sciences and English people can either continue In 2012, China pledged $8m lost one or both of their departments to teach to teach or take another through UNESCO to a parents. Many have parents in disadvantaged schools career path. South Africa has four-year programme who work in a different town, for two years. Graduates the highest rate of retention aiming to boost the use so the students only see apply and then go through – about 50% of the alumni of technology in teacher them on weekends or the an intense screening and continue to teach. One of the training programmes across month end. These kids either interview live alone or with relatives. process to get The rural-urban divide is marked. In Afar They face challenges such the placement. only 4% of grade 1 to 4 teachers are trained as gangsterism, substance In the past abuse and teenage two years, Teach pregnancy.” South Africa has placed Teach South Africa schools eight countries, including Ngwenya did not dream 277 teachers in schools recently produced its first Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and of being a teacher. Having in eight of the nine South pupil who went on to study Tanzania. studied French and African provinces. science. “Imagine we could Meanwhile, after international relations, The recruited have a critical mass of a successful pilot of a low-cost and then worked for ambassadors get an children choosing this teacher-training programme a charity, she stumbled onto entry-level teacher’s salary in South Africa,” says Diaho for school leaders in the website of Teach South and are also given teacher excitedly. “We hope to create Uganda, the Varkey GEMS Africa, an NGO that places training, leadership an ongoing culture Foundation – the charitable young, talented graduates workshops and on-going of giving back.” arm of the education group in rural and township schools. support from a mentor. It is certainly something GEMS – plans to roll it out Teach South Africa “In the short term, we want to South Africa needs. In to five other countries. ● Kim Garner in Johannesburg is based on a 20-year-old make a serious impact in the recognition of the shortage and Gemma Ware concept from the US, now classroom,” says Mothomang of quality teachers, the Marc Shoul for tar

Teacher training ramps up

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16-17 March 2015, Abidjan

3Rd EdiTiON

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country focus Nigeria

Game of Thrones A

Veteran politicians regard national elections as monumental, epoch-changing events, often reaching into history for parallels such as power struggles in the Yoruba kingdoms or Shakespeare’s history plays. This time they are not exaggerating, judging by the build up to the Nigerian elections due next February By Tolu Ogunlesi in Lagos and Patrick Smith

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gainst the backdrop of Nigeria’s worst conflict since the civil war in the 1960s, billions of naira are sluicing through the political system, thousands of activists are on the street and the two main parties are beset by high-level intrigues. Much will depend on the election outcome and how it is achieved. Will it reaffirm support for national unity and pluralism or will it fire up divisions and deepen regional rivalries? The poll will resonate far beyond Nigeria’s borders. Nigeria is the ● ● ●

country focus | nigeria

● ● ● newly crowned largest economy in Africa, so what happens there matters more than ever. Until now there has been a strange disconnect between commercial opportunities and political realities. Suddenly, companies planning to invest billions in electric power, retail chains and food production are looking more critically at developments. “It’s good that people are trying to understand our politics better,” said one of President Goodluck Jonathan’s political allies attending the US-Africa Leaders’ summit in Washington DC in August. “They can at least see the complexities. He [Jonathan] can’t snap his fingers and make things happen. There is this myth of the all-powerful president sitting in Aso Rock, and the trouble is everyone believes it until you work here,” he explained.

300 km NIGER

CHAD

Kano

BENIN

ABUJA

NIGERIA Lagos CAMEROON

Port Harcourt Gulf of Guinea

nigeria in numbers 173.6 million

PoPulation urban PoPulation (% of total)

51%

life exPectancy at birth

52 (2012)

fDi (current US$)

power at the centre

$7.1bn (2012) $522.6bn

GDP Growth (annual %)

7.3%

inflation, consumer Prices (annual %)

8.5%

total reserves (includes gold, current US$) $47.5bn (2012) internet users (per 100 people)

mobile cellular subscriPtions (per 100 people)

Source: World BaNk 2013

GDP (current US$)

gdp GDP by sector in Q2 2014 (%) Industry

25.96

20.89

Agriculture

Services

53.15

growth Oil and non-oil quarterly real growth (%) 40

Non-oil

Oil

20 10 0 -10 -20

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 2011

2012

2013

2014

Source: Nigeria NatioNal Bureau of StatiSticS (2014)

“In fact, some of President Jonathan’s greatest successes have been getting the government out of the way,” he added, pointing to the US investors’ interest in Nigerian business. “We now have a private electricity industry with an incentive to deliver, we have our own major private oil companies and we want to see more of that in agriculture and manufacturing. We would make more progress if politicians and officials were less fixated on power at the centre.” The focus on power at the centre, however, is relentless and more fiercely partisan. In February 2015, Nigerians are to elect a president, 369 federal legislators, and governors and legislators in at least 29 of the 36 states. For the first time since the return of civilian rule in 1999, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) faces a national opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), formed in 2013 when the four largest opposition parties merged. Since the APC’s founding, political sentiment has been yo-yoing. Initially, the opposition coalition seemed to be making all the right calls: its ranks were quickly swelled by leading PDP members such as former vice-president Atiku Abubakar and five state governors including those of Kano, Nigeria’s second most populous state, and oil-rich Rivers State – both key strongholds for the ruling party. Until the beginning of this year, the PDP and the government were on the back foot, consumed by internal divisions and failing to respond to height-

Campaigning has begun, even though Jonathan has not formally agreed to stand for a second term

ening claims of grand corruption in the oil industry and worsening insurgency in the north. But, under Adamu Mu’azu, its new national chairman, the PDP has fought back aggressively this year, hitting at the opposition’s weaknesses and using its power of incumbency to the hilt. “This will be the most expensive election ever in Nigeria,” says Nasir el-Rufai, a former minister and leading stalwart of the APC. “The PDP is offering billions to us to defect. It’s about misspending the people’s money, not policy or strategy.” Next year’s contest still looks more evenly matched – and more unpredictable – than any of the past five national elections. The PDP has solid support in the oil-rich south-south states and the south-east. The APC has strong backing in the south-west and the north-west. Loyalties are fluid in the Middle Belt. Some doubt elections can be held in the north-east, where Boko Haram insurgents continue to launch attacks and claim to control territory. Godswill Akpabio, governor of Akwa Ibom (see page 61), told The Africa Report that there was no question of postponing national elections: “This terrorism is the africa report

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Nigerian speaker accused the APC of being dominated by Muslims. Another suggested that it had some responsibility, direct or indirect, for Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency. Certainly, the APC’s two main national figures – General (retired) Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu – are Muslim, as are 11 of its 14 state governors. Buhari, from the northern state of Katsina, has a reputation in the south for sympathies towards fundamentalism. This is despite his choice of a Christian pastor for his running mate in the 2011 elections. a shot at hillary clinton

Akintunde Akinleye/ReuteRs

A report by American academic Jacob Zenn for the Bow Group, a lobby group within the ruling Conservative Party, echoed those views, describing the APC as “an Islamist-leaning political party founded in 2013 for the purpose of challenging President Jonathan in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential elections.” The report heavily criticised US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, criticising her failure to put Boko Haram on the US terrorist list. Zenn concluded that “a US government that continues to be led by the Democratic Party would welcome the consultant who worked with major oil rise of the APC in Nigeria – as it initially companies and regional governments, did with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.” made those claims in early September. Outgoing Ekiti State governor Kay“If the government is unwilling to ode Fayemi, a Catholic, dismissed such investigate and, if necessary, prosecute labels as “grotesque” in an interview these people, we want these cases to with The Africa Report in July. “I do be taken to the International Criminal not believe APC is a religious party. I Court at the Hague,” Lai Mohammed am sufficiently senior in APC to know if told the British members of parliament. we are running a religious organisation. “In view of the fact that the alleged Boko As a matter of fact, some of us Haram sponsors are either are quite resentful of the idea members of the ruling party A recent survey by of bringing religion at all into or friends of the president, polling ﬁrm NOI the politics of nationhood and it is clear the PDP-led fedfound that 51% development,” he said. eral government is unwillof people in After losing a state election ing and unable to try them.” Nigeria reported and with its loyalists being tarMohammed went on to improved geted for impeachment, the accuse the Jonathan govdomestic APC has lost momentum. As ernment and the PDP of electricity supply it struggles to hold together its exploiting the insurgency to component parts, it has to face win kudos from attending a bigger question: Is it really international security summits, boosting the security so different from the ruling budget to $7bn this year party? Many of the APC’s senior figures seem united and selectively declaring by little more than a desire emergency laws in APCto unseat Jonathan. ruled states. The PDP, also an uneasy Some of the ferocity of coalition of rival interests, this attack seems to have benefits from the centripetal force of been triggered by the government’s presidential power. As long as Jonathan attempts to label the APC as a party of can secure the presidential nominaIslamists and Boko Haram sympathisers. Indeed, at the Westminster meeting one tion and pacify the party’s sceptics in

an international crisis. We have seen it here before and we have dealt with it. We won’t stop elections. We are organising state elections in Adamawa in October. The terrorists will have no veto.” Yet terrorism and the threat of violence have ramped up the political rhetoric on both sides. APC leaders accuse Jonathan’s government of incompetence and a disregard for northerners in its handling of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency. “I have heard one of the president’s advisers say that the insurgency is seen in Abuja as a fight among northerners, not a concern for the government,” says El-Rufai. “The question they have to answer is how do they let a ragtag insurgency defeat the biggest army in Africa – 100,000 strong – that is why we hear about so many conspiracy theories.” attacked in london

In an extraordinary meeting at the House of Commons in London on 8 September, El-Rufai and Lai Mohammed, the APC’s national publicity secretary, called on the Jonathan government to investigate claims that former chief of army staff Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika and senator Ali Modu Sheriff had been financing Boko Haram. Dr Stephen Davis, an Australian security the africa report

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51%

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the north, he can rely on a formidable national organisation and billions of naira of patronage. The PDP has turned the tables on its opponents. Apart from winning the Ekiti governorship election in June, which gave it a foothold in the APC-dominated south-west, the PDP has benefited from a string of high-level defections. Jonathan’s team has also been hyping improvements made to electricity provision over the past few months. A recent survey by the Gallup-affiliated NOI Polls found that 51% of respondents “experienced an improved state of power supply to their households”. candidates for the throne

Both parties have to choose their presidential candidates and quieten the malcontents. An advocacy group with backing from powerful figures within the government has been holding large rallies canvassing signatures urging Jonathan to run for a second term. Governor Akpabio has no doubts: “President Jonathan will run. The people want him to run and he will win next February.” The APC is more taciturn about its favourites for the presidential ticket, but it is likely to field a northerner. Frontrunners include Buhari, Abubakar, Kano State governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and former Kwara State governor Bukola Saraki. Its handling of the primaries will be critical for the cohesion of the opposition coalition. “There’s an assumption we are going to have a strong [APC] candidate. But that will only be valid in the event of successful primaries that do not lead to a walkout by those who lose,” says Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Abuja-based CentreforDemocracyandDevelopment. For Omano Edigheji, a Nigerian political economist and consultant for TrustAfrica, there are grave risks should the election be reduced to a north-south contest: “If President Jonathan wins, it’ll be more difficult to quell Boko Haram. If a northern candidate wins the elections, the Niger Delta [militants] are likely to take up arms again.” For Edigheji, the best approach at this point would be to ratchet down the regional rivalries and agree on “an inclusive government” rather than the winner-takes-all model, giving strong executive powers to the presidency in Abuja and the 36 state governors. But as election fever starts to envelop the country, power-sharing looks even less likely than a rancour-free vote. ●

What happens after the elections in February 2015? SCENARIO ONE: PDP VICTORY President Goodluck Jonathan, the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), wins outright in the first round. To get the numbers, Jonathan will have to keep all his core support in the south-south and south-east states. The toughest struggle will be in Rivers State, where outgoing governor Rotimi Amaechi has defected to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC). Jonathan’s other priority will be to hold onto the electoral support that he won in south-western states such as Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti and Ogun in 2011. Then, he was helped by a back-room deal with Bola Tinubu, the godfather of Lagos politics. There is talk of another such deal for 2015. In 2011, Jonathan lost in the three largest northern states of Kaduna, Kano and Katsina. Many now argue Jonathan is more unpopular in the north than he was four years ago. Suspicions of vote rigging could provoke serious street protests in the north, which could be exploited by insurgents to ramp up confrontation with the authorities. Jonathan may try to dampen down the crisis by offering to form a government of national unity, like his predecessor President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. If Jonathan wins by a substantial margin again, the APC could disintegrate. ●

SCENARIO TWO: APC VICTORY The opposition APC wins by running an energetic and well-organised campaign. To counter Jonathan’s and the PDP’s use of the advantages of incumbency, the APC would have to be well funded with a strong northern candidate who exploits Jonathan’s unpopularity there and a dynamic running mate, probably from the south-west, the opposition heartland. For victory, the APC would have to shore up its support in the south-west, energise its substantial following in the north, make some inroads into the Middle Belt and hold on to its new base in Rivers State. It would face strong opposition in Rivers, and elsewhere in the Niger Delta, from the militants who have pledged loyalty to Jonathan. This would put great pressure on the leadership skills of the new president and vice-president to reassure the south-south and south-east after the election. A change at the centre would make little difference to the Boko Haram insurgents who are opposed to all northern politicians. After 16 years in power, the experience of losing office could deal a fatal blow to the coherence of the PDP. ●

SCENARIO THREE: STALEMATE AND POWER SHARING Neither of the two parties gets the required 25% minimum vote in 24 states to be declared winner and the election goes into a run-off, the first time in Nigerian history. This also results in a stalemate in which both parties quibble over results amid allegations of rigging and manipulation, as they have in Afghanistan. This could lead to more flashpoints of violence or even more insurgencies in the north, the Middle Belt and the Niger Delta. There would be grave concerns about the ability of the much-weakened military to contain such pressures, running at least two major security operations at the same time. This could encourage a new elite pact, perhaps along the lines of the powersharing deals in Zimbabwe and Kenya. New to Nigeria, such an arrangement might just stop the dangerous political and regional polarisation in the country. ● T. O. and P. S. the africa report

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ADVERTORIAL

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> Historical Background and Mission

country focus | nigeria

Afropolitan Vibes, the monthly roots music night at Freedom Park, where the palm wine flows

Andrew esiebo/PAnos-reA

Lagos Fashion & Design Week kicked off in 2011 and swiftly acquired heft with partnerships with MTN, GTBank and the British Council. “In an international fashion world where a blasé boredom often engulfs the audience, the Lagos Fashion & Design Week was a tonic,” former International Herald Tribune style editor Suzy Menkes wrote about the 2012 edition. This year’s events will take place from 29 October to 1 November (see page 88). book fests galore

The Lagos Book & Art Festival has taken place annually since 1999. In recent years it has made Freedom Park its home and this year’s edition, from 14-16 November, will celebrate Soyinka’s life. CulTure LagosPhotoFestival is a month-long gig that describes itself as “the first and only international arts festival of photography in Nigeria.” This year it will be held from Whether it’s Fela, film or fiction, Nigeria’s economic 25 October to 26 November. capital has a non-stop calendar of cultural events, The enthusiasm for the arts extends beyond Lagos. After years of unrest but other cities have their offerings to the muses too caused by militants, the return of calm to Port Harcourt made it possible for the like Open Mic Night and Afropolitan reedom Park, a former colonial city’s bid for 2014 World Book Capital prison, has become the symbol of Vibes, which draws attendees to Freeto be taken seriously. The ambition an artistic renaissance in Lagos – a dom Park on the third Friday of every city of 21 million people that can itself paid off, and last year Port Harcourt month and plies them with live music became the first city in subsometimes feel like an overcrowded and fresh palm wine. Saharan Africa to be named prison. Where the prison’s gallows once During the fourth quarter of a World Book Capital. Book stood is an open-air stage that overlooks the year, the pace becomes feactivist Koko Kalango, an an art gallery named for Nobel laureate verish. The season unofficially Wole Soyinka. kicks off with the three-yeararchitect of the bid, has orTerra Kulture is another popular arts old Lights, Camera, Africa ganised a literary festival venue, home to the annual Taruwa Festfilm festival from 25 September in the city since 2008. This year’s Port Harcourt Book ival of Performing Arts and a year-round to 1 October. This year’s festFestival will take place on schedule of visual arts exhibitions and ival focuses on “connecting the 20-25 October and will be a theatre. Alongside Freedom Park, it hosclassics to the avant-gardists More than celebration of the city’s new ted a recent series of plays to commemin an audiovisual history that 100 musical artists status. In November, film orate Soyinka’s 80th birthday. spans the times and genres”. are expected buffs will shift their attention FollowingthisisFelabration, Adenrele Sonariwo, a curator of arts to take part in the to Calabar and the literati events and founder of the Modern Day a week-long festival commem2014 Felabration will turn to Abeokuta for the School of Arts, says: “There are really inorating who else but Fela music festival Africa International Film teresting things going on in the cultural Anikulapo Kuti, the musical in October Festival and the Ake Arts & space in Lagos, some superficial, some genius who invented Afrobeat Book Festival, respectively. with a lot of depth. Either way, it takes a in Lagos in the 1960s. The festAbuja, Nigeria’s capital, is struglot of courage to do anything in Lagos, ival, from 13-19 October, is timed to coso everyone deserves commendation.” incide with Fela’s birthday on 16 October. gling to cast off a reputation for culThe month ends with the Musical Sotural limpness. In the city, political feverish pace ciety of Nigeria (MUSON) Arts Festival, intrigue seems to be the only show in The city’s arts calendar is an impressive Lagos Photo Festival and Lagos Fashion town. This is slowly changing but, for one, featuring weekly events like In& Design Week. MUSON is the most innow, Lagos – long-standing muse of artist and scam artist alike – continues dustry Nite at Club Royale, Ikeja – bringfluential promotor of classical music in to hog the cultural limelight. ● ing together the money and the talent in Nigeria. Its annual festival takes place Tolu Ogunlesi in Lagos the music business – and monthly ones this year from 16-26 October.

The beat goes on in Lagos

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The NorTh

Hanging on in there

Wracked by insurgency, northern Nigeria is fighting against the odds to revive its farms and processing plants with the help of major investors

Development estimates that 4.2 million hettima Haruna is a farmer in Chibok, the village in north-east people in northern Nigeria require huNigeria that Boko Haram militmanitarian assistance. ants attacked on 14 April. The insurgents “There is a direct correlation between kidnapped more than 250 schoolgirls, the violence [in the north-east] and a prompting the international ‘Bring Back decline in productivity,” says Omano Our Girls’ campaign to demand their reEdigheji, a consultant at the nonlease. Haruna’s daughter was kidnapped governmental organisation Trust that day and is among the more than Africa and a political economist. “People have been dislocated from their normal 100 still missing. economic activities – agriculture, SMEs As he desperately awaits the safe return of his daughter, Haruna has to face [small and medium-sized enterprises], another side of the crisis: the growing the service sector – which will have an economic destruction in the north as the impactonGDP[grossdomesticproduct].” insurgents have killed, abducted, looted In July, finance minister Ngozi and chased more than half a million Okonjo-Iweala said the insurgency people from their homes. Like many of could reduce GDP growth by 0.5% in the men in Chibok and the surrounding 2014. Some fear still more damage. The villages, Haruna grows maize and beans: fact that the Boko Haram attacks have the maize for his family and not harmed the national economy reveals the dominance the beans as a cash crop. of other regions in the counUsually, the planting seatry’s economic performance. son is June to September, when the rains come. But the Despite feeding much of insurgency has stopped the the country, the north has farmers. “The rain is almost lagged behind in terms of gone, just one more month,” social development. Boko Haruna told The Africa Report Haram’s insurgency has The number of by phone from Chibok. “I’ve made those disparities children aged lost all my crop because of even worse. According to a between 12 and Boko Haram.” National Population Com23 months who mission survey last year, the With no prospect of a harare immunised number of children aged vest, Haruna and his fellow in Nigeria's farmers worry about how they between 12 and 23 months north-east is only will feed their families. “This that are immunised in the a third of the is the second year in which north-east was just a third number in the people have not farmed at all of the number in the southsouth-west. in southern Borno and parts west. “Northern Nigeria’s of Yobe,” says Jibrin Ibrahim, pooreducationindicatorsare director of the Centre for Democracy a deterrent to investors seeking skilled and Development, a thinktank in Abuja, labour,” noted a 2013 report from the Nigeria’s capital. investment bank Renaissance Capital about Nigeria’s 36 states. food shortages Renaissance Capital added that Borno Most of Nigeria’s grain and livestock State – the heartland of the insurgency – “has the lowest per capita power supply comes from the north. Its commercial centre, Kano, has the largest grain marin the country at seven watts.” School attendance rates in the region are in single ket in West Africa. Food shortages are digits. Boko Haram has also attacked worsening in the north, and prices are rocketing in faraway cities like Lagos, which depends heavily on beans, tomaDespite the insurgency, tanning toes, onions and meat from the north. and leather goods manufacturing continues to thrive in Kano Britain’s Department for International

economic and social institutions. Most schools in the state are now shuttered. In July, the Islamist sect destroyed a bridge linking Nigeria to Cameroon. Since last year, mobile phone networks in the worst-hit states have been patchy. Boko Haram has destroyed cellphone masts. The government has also ordered mobile phone operators to shut down networks to stop the insurgents from coordinating attacks by phone. The authorities closed the main airport in Borno after an attack, and now most people have to use the roads that are stalked by insurgents. Nigerian religious leader, Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto does not believe the problem

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NIGERIA | country focus

is irredemable, but that, “The political class has to develop a bipartisan attitude that helps them appreciate that this is not about the triumph or failure of Jonathan”. Andthenorthisprovingresilient.Some entrepreneursaredefyingtheinsurgency, and some of the country’s strongest companies have their roots in the north’s economy. Paul Lubeck, a professor at the University of California, told reporters: “The leather industry is booming in Kano. They are producing leather, shoes, some textiles, some plastics, and there’s a large amount of food processing.” rice mills multiply

Akintunde Akinleye/ReuteRs

There are many new projects that could revive and expand the economy. In July, President Goodluck Jonathan visited the sleepy town of Rukubi – some five hours byroadfromAbuja–tocommissionarice mill built by Olam, the Singapore-based agribusiness company that describes Nigeria as its homeland. It started operations there in 1989 before becoming one of the world’s largest commodity traders.

Olam says the mill, which can process of the highest unemployment rates in 105,000tn of rice per year, is the largest the country. Too many people lump all the northin Africa. Over the past four years, 17 ern states together as devastated by the new rice mills have opened in the north. Locally produced rice is fast replacing insurgency, according to Gambo Manzo, who hails from Gombe State. He says the imports from Asia. Joining the new investors in commerpicture of regional chaos in the north cial agriculture in northern Nigeria is is widespread because “nobody wants Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. After building a Some of Nigeria’s strongest cement empire, the Dancompanies have their roots gote Group has acquired in the north’s economy 150,000ha to grow rice in five states, four of which are to travel there and see things for themin the north. Dangote is building another selves.” A local government councillor tomato-paste factory to process local in Lagos, he remains a strong advocate tomatoes in the north after his first one replaced imports from China and Italy. for business in the north. The group is also planning to build sevmarshall plan for the north eral rices mills with a combined capacity Reviving activity and bringing more that will dwarf Olam’s. development to the north will require This kind of new investment could determined government action as well lead to the creation of much-needed as a change in perceptions. In 2012, jobs. Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reports that the northern states of then central bank governor Lamido Katsina, Gombe and Bauchi have some Sanusi called for a ‘Marshall plan’ for the north. Since then, the federal government launched the Presidential Initiative for the Northeast (PINE). Soji Adelaja, the coordinator of the PINE programme who works with the national security adviser’s office, calls it a comprehensive framework to coordinate the efforts of business, international development agencies and the government to rebuild the regional economy. Thatmeanseverythingfrombackingnew enterprises and keeping schools open and safe, to providing entrepreneurship training for young people. Building new infrastructure and supporting agriculture are two of PINE’s other focuses. In recent years, the government has allocated billions of naira to support dry-season farming. This should boost production, with the help of irrigation, in the months after rains have ended. This year, President Jonathan announced a N14bn ($86m) grant for the scheme. This means that farmers such as Haruna, having missed this year’s rainy season, will no longer have to wait an entire year to start planting and harvesting. Such efforts will make sense only if the farms and surrounding villages can be protected from the Boko Haram insurgents. Sadly, Chibok and many of the surrounding towns and villages in the north-east corner of the country remain vulnerable to deadly attacks and kidnappings. ●

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Tolu Ogunlesi in Abuja

ADVERTORIAL

Dr. Lanre Towry-Coker Ph.D Biopic

r. LanreTowry-Coker is the son of a distinguished Civil Engineer who in the early 60’s was the planning adviser to the late Malayan Prime Minister,Tunku AbdulRahman. Dr. Lanre Towry-Coker was educated at the popular St. Matthias Roman Catholic (Primary) School, Lafiaji, in Lagos, and at the Kingston College, Surrey, in the United Kingdom, where he obtained the GCE ‘O & A’ Levels. He later received his academic training at the prestigious Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, (after passing the entrance examination). He then went to Thames University where he completed his Royal Institute of British Architects’ part 1 exams. He completed his RIBA part II at the N E London University. Dr. Lanre Towry-Coker, who holds a Post-Graduate qualification in Architecture from the University of North East London, completed his professional training at the World famous Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He is also an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in the United Kingdom (ACI.Arb.) and a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (FNIA). A graduate of the renowned Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration (OPM), in the United States of America (which he attended as a full-fledged professional in the course of his brilliant career). He later undertook a five year PhD programme at the Lagos State University, culminating in the award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Urban planning and Geography), with his thesis subject, “Housing Policy AndThe Dynamics Of Housing Delivery In Nigeria UpTo 2008: Lagos State As Case Study”. A seasoned Architect, who started his own architectural practice in 1976. Dr. Lanre. Towry-Coker has originated numerous prestigious buildings all over Nigeria and has won numerous competitions. He was one of the original planners of Abuja and takes credit for originating the initial concept of the first hotel in the relocated Federal Capital, Abuja Sheraton Hotel (now re-christened NICON Luxury Suites Hotel) and won the competition to design the Abuja Conference Centre both of which were completed. Not long ago he was adjudged the best entry in an international competition (WHICH ATTRACTED A TOTAL OF 110 ENTRIES) to design

the World Bank Resident Mission Headquarters, and Residences in Abuja, which was commissioned. He has in his professional career designed and supervised several major buildings all over Nigeria, and trained over 150 archtects. A past Chairman of the Public Relations Committee and International Relations Committee of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA). Dr. Lanre. Towry-Coker has led numerous delegations of the NIA to different types of organized parallel international and regional professional bodies. He was NIA’s representative at the World photo – voltaic association arranged by the International Union of Architects and led the Institute’s delegation to a forum held in Australia under the auspices of the Commonwealth Institute of Architects. More

recently in 1997, he was the head of a Nigerian mission to the United States Building Business Symposium. He is an ex-member of the Lagos StateTenders Board. In 1999, Dr. Lanre Towry-Coker was appointed the pioneer Honourable Commissioner for Housing in Lagos State. He served as a full cabinet member for 4 years, and subsequently was a key adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo, before returning to the private sector in 2003. He was a Member of the Presidential Committee on Housing and Urban Development, inaugurated by the President Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2001-2002. During his tenure as Hon. Commissioner he completed no less than four large abandoned estates and initiated another ﬁfteen housing estates in Lagos State. Dr. Lanre.Towry-Coker, entered partisan politics in 1992 when he contested the Lagos Central Senatorial Seat under the banner of the former Social Democratic Party (SDP). He has over the years authored different publications on wide-ranging topical subjects which are of timeless relevance. These include ‘Towards a Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency’ (a seminar blue print), “Low-income Housing”, “Technology Transfer: The Construction Dimension” and “The Metro –Line Affair (a review / plan for mass Transportation in Lagos State”). In 2011, he published a 350 page-book titled “Housing Policy and the Dynamics of Housing Delivery: Lagos State as Case Study” to coincide with thirty-ﬁve years of architectural and urban planning practice. A much traveled individual whose professional practice has taken him to no fewer than 36 countries scattered all

over six continents. He is a member of the Nigerian-ASEAN Chamber of Commerce, Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). A founder member of the Nigerian-German Business Council. He is also a member of the Nigerian Finnish Chamber of Commerce. He belongs to the boards of a number of companies and bodies including charitable organization like the Chris Ogunbanjo Foundation, Centre for Conﬂict Resolution and the Centre for the Promotion of an Industrial Society, United Way Nigeria, where he is a member of the Governing Board. A warm and outgoing personality who in 1984 was nominated Outstanding Young Person (OYP) of the metropolis by the Jaycees (diminution of the Junior Chamber of Commerce International), a non-governmental organization. Dr. Lanre. Towry-Coker is a member of a number of charitable, social and sports clubs and organizations, notably the Lions Club International, Metropolitan Club (Lagos), Ikoyi Club (Lagos), Polo Club (Lagos), The Lagos Motor Boat Club and Yoruba Tennis Club, all in Lagos. Architect, Urban –Planner- Transportation Planner, Project Manager and Author all rolled into one, Dr. Lanre. Towr-Coker speaks French, and has studied German, Russian. He enjoys writing, and organizing in addition – doing charity work. He plays badminton, golf, squashrackets and tennis occasionally. Dr Lanre Towry-Coker was awarded a Doctorate degree in Urban Planning, after defending his thesis titled ; «Housing Policy AndThe Dynamics Of Housing Delivery In Nigeria UpTo TheYear 2008: Lagos State As A Case Study».

Nigeria TowryTowers, Plot 1,Towry Close, Off Idejo Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

England 47, Park Street, Mayfair, London W1K 7EB, England.

Tchad B.P: 5894, Rue 3258 Porte: 65, Quarier: Klemat N’Djamena, TChad.

Portugal Beco da Igreja, 2B, 8600-013 Barao de Sao Joao, Portugal.

T. +234 (1) 903 235 4/5 T. +351 282 688 542 E. lanretc@hotmail.com E. lanretc@gtisa.co.uk w. www.gtisa.com.ng w. www.towrycoker.com

DIFCOM/FC - Photos : D.R.

DR. LANRE TOWRY-COKER. PHD RIBA. FNIA. DIPL.ARCH. ACI.Arb. OPM (HARVARD), Ph.D (Planning and Geography)

country focus | nigeria

RegiOns

Diversity in all its states

A breakdown of Africa’s largest economy into its 36 states shows striking differences. Poorer states need to expand their revenue bases to catch up

aving become Africa’s largest the lack of processing facilities. A weak economy with a gross domestic industrial base holds back job creation product (GDP) of more than and deprives Benue State of potential $500bn this year, Nigeria has been living tax revenue. According to state governor up to its claims to represent the continGabriel Suswam, as much as 90% of govent’s diversity – economically, politically ernment revenue goes to paying salaries. and culturally. That diversity becomes To balance budgets, many states take bank loans and issue bonds, which are clear in any research on conditions in serviced from their monthly Nigeria’s 36 states. allocations. “These debt over“While Nigeria’s rise is well hangs weigh heavily on the documented, little is known monthly allocations due to the about the composition of states, preventing them from its state economies,” noted meeting their minimum baRenaissance Capital in a desic obligations to the citizens,” tailed report last year. The reIn 2012, Lagos port found big differences in generated more Elias Mbam, chair of Nigeria’s incomes and social conditions than double the federal revenue allocation across states. Primary school body, said in 2012. tax revenue of completion rates vary widely This unleashes a vicious the 19 northern cycle of debt and dependbetween north and south, as Nigerian states does life expectancy. ency on the centre. One way combined Lagos – the state with the out would be for the states to expand their revenue bases by largest share of GDP – has exattracting new investment. Simplified panded its tax base and set up lucrative land policies and infrastructure upgrades but controversial public-private infracould go a long way towards bringing structure partnerships that other states in investors. have copied. A survey of 29 African cities published the impact of oil revenue by the UK’s Economist Intelligence Unit Monthly oil revenue allocations from last year argued that paying attention to the central government account for only the demographic profile of African cities about a third of revenue for Lagos State. That is far lower than most other states. TheNationalBureauofStatisticsreported in 2012 that Lagos generated more than double the tax revenue of the 19 northern Nigerian states combined. Without the monthly allocations from the federal oil revenue, most states would be insolvent. Eight states are classified as oil producers, which earns them an extra shareofrevenuefromthederivationfund. These relatively high oil revenue allocations have meant that productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture have largely been neglected until now. In Benue State, known as the country’s food basket, copious amounts of fruit go to waste every year because of

could reveal “interesting market opportunities”. Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Ibadan made the list. Port Harcourt is home to what is claimed to be the largest gated, luxury real estate development in Nigeria. This collaboration between the state government and private developers is due for completion in 2015. Abuja had a per capita incomemore than double the national average, according to Renaissance Capital, before the government announced the results of this year’s GDP rebasing. Private equity firm Actis is investing in a 27,000m² riverside mall in Abuja, also due for completion in 2015. regional groupings

For state governments, there could be strength in numbers. States have joined together to form regional economic groupings. Under the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria’s (DAWN) strategy, the goal is for “closer integration of neighbouring south-west states as the first step in creating a larger regional market for development, trade and investment.” Similar groupings have emerged, including the BRACED Commission – an acronym derived from the names of the six member states in the oil-rich Niger Delta – and the South East Nigeria Economic Commission. The six northeastern states – three under a state of emergency due to the onslaught of Boko Haram – came together last December to host a joint economic summit, a possible prelude to a formal grouping. ● Tolu Ogunlesi in Lagos

Gwenn DUBOURTHOUMIeU fOR ja

Lagos is thriving on successful tax collection and lucrative public-private partnerships the africa report

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profile

Godswill Akpabio Governor, Akwa Ibom State

SonAL KAntArIA for tAr

A party man par excellence Akpabio is campaigning for the 2015 senatorial elections in a state that is crucial to the ruling pDp. He talks to The Africa Report about Akwa iborn’s transformation and the party’s prospects

olding court at London’s opulent Dorchester Hotel, governor Godswill Akpabio explains the lengthy economic strides that Akwa Ibom State has taken under his tutelage. Sporting a tailored dark suit with matching red tie and handkerchief, Akpabio does not hide his light under a bushel: he describes himself as Nigeria’s foremost developmentoriented politician. Akwa Ibom has seen, he says, beaming, “an uncommon transformation” from a state that had produced mainly civil servants and home helpers to a place with a “new economic ambience”. It has free education, gas-fired power plants and grand plans for a petrochemicals complex and a new deep-sea port. Down the corridor in the London hotel, staff are setting tables for a private banquet in Akpabio’s honour. It was delayed a month, apparently to accommodate a visit by President Goodluck Jonathan to Akwa Ibom to inaugurate two billion-dollar energy projects.

rally the troops. A year later, the PDP is back on the offensive, and Akpabio is taking the credit. “We’ve been able to answer the yearnings of the people in all facets of life,” Akpabio tells The Africa Report. “From the education sector to the health sector all the way down to good infrastructure [...] that’s why the people call it an uncommon transformation.” In fact, the “uncommon transformation” line comes from Akpabio’s energetic and well-financed political campaigning. After two terms as state governor, he is now standing as a candidate for state senator in next February’s elections,andhedoesn’texpecttolose.

Akpabio owns a Bombardier jet, estimated cost $45m, and a luxury bullet-proof van

rallying the troops

In the hierarchy of the loyal in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP),Akpabioisnearthesummit. When six state governors broke away from the PDP last year and formed a rival faction Akpabio became chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum with a mandate to the africa report

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“My people believe that my chances are very high. They think mychancesareover90%,” Akpabio says. Some of the confidence he exudes comes from having closely hitched his political fortunes to the incumbent party and president. AkwaIbom,oil-andgas-richand inthesouth-east,isoneofthestates the PDP must win to achieve national victory. And it has the funds to make that possible. Last year, the state’sshareoffederal-government revenuewasN260bn($1.7bn)–the biggest allocation in the country,

accordingtofinanceministerNgozi Okonjo-Iweala. Akpabio has a reputation for spreading state largesse. Some of this he has used to attract investors such as Frontier Oil and Seven Energy. Their Uquo gas-processing project is set to generate 1,000MW of power, more than a quarter of current national capacity. In the sameleague,QuantumPetrochemical,establishedbytheformerchief executive of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia, is to build a $1.5bn petrochemicals plant at Abeno. splashing cash

Elsewhere, the Akpabio method is more contentious. His entourage splashes cash around at naming ceremonies, sports and social events. In 2012, Akpabio bought a Bombardier jet, estimated cost $45m, and a luxury bullet-proof van. A plan this year to award the governor and deputy governor pensions of around N200m a year for life was hastily modified downward after, it is said, a discreet intervention from Abuja. Aiming to head for the Senate next year, Akpabio remains a party man par excellence: “What is happening is that the only truly national party is the PDP. I don’t want toadvocateaone-partysystem,but I can see other parties collapsing and coming to support the PDP during the election.” ● Patrick Smith in London

OandO Plc

Oando’s July acquisition makes it the top dog of indigenous producers

Oil and gas

Local firms replace majors in the Delta

As multinationals lose their stomach for the fractious onshore fields in the Niger Delta, indigenous companies are increasing their footprints

nternational oil companies (IOCs) like Shell and Chevron are selling off many of their onshore joint-venture stakes to Nigerian companies after a divestment programme attracted little interest from abroad, but opinion is divided about whether this will lead to a thriving locally owned oil sector. Antony Goldman, an oil expert and owner of PM Consulting, explains: “The government characterisesthisdivestmentprogramme as a triumph for local content and points to the capacity of Nigerian companies to manage Nigerian assets better than

Europeans and even to convince stock markets in London with successful IPOs [initial public offerings], but there are well-placed people in Nigeria who are more sceptical. They see the IOCs jumping before they are pushed from assets that they regard as marginal or peripheral for prices that appear to be out of step with market value, with speculation over the sourcing of some of the funds that have gone into financing these deals.” Two high-profile Nigerian operators, Oando and Seplat, illustrate some of the elements of the debate about the future

of the industry. Oando has gone from producing a few thousand barrels per day (bpd) to more than 50,000bpd following its much delayed July acquisition of the lion’s share of ConocoPhillips’s Nigerian assets. The company claims the largest reserves of any indigenous company and targets 100,000bpd of oil production within five years. Seplat, in contrast, has not yet built on the optimism generated by its $500m IPO on both the London and Nigerian stock exchanges in April. The company led by Austin Avuru has the rights to 30,000bpd produced from onshore assets mostly acquired in 2010 from Shell. They include stakes in oil-mining licences (OMLs) 4, 38 and 41. However, a more recent acquisition holds serious risks for the company. Seplat, along with indigenous companies Amni Petroleum and Belema Oil, agreed in late 2013 to purchase Chevron’s 40% stakes in Niger Delta OMLs 52, 53 and 55 for $800m. The prior frontrunner for the deal, local company Brittania-U, has delayed the deal through litigation, claiming its bid for all three OMLs was unfairly rejected. The delay is problematic given the rationale for Seplat’s IPO: to acquire additional assets and invest after modest debts are paid from the IPO funds. Seplat has also been unsuccessful in its bid for assets Shell is offloading. This time the catch was the hefty price. Shell is set to earn around $5bn from the sale of Niger Delta OMLs 18, 24 and 25 and the jewel in the crown OML 29. Those deals are going ahead following the execution of sales agreements in August. As with Chevron’s Niger Delta assets, indigenous buyers are set to profit – even if industry experts believe the sellers are obtaining top dollar. multi-billion purchases

It is unclear whether Shell and the local bidders will face the delays that Oando and ConocoPhillips experienced in obtaining approval from powerful petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. Taleveras and Aiteo look set to take OML 29 for around $2.8bn; Mart Resources and Midwestern Oil & Gas are in line to pay $1.2bn for OML 18; and Pan Ocean plans to secure OML 24. The pending Shell and Chevron sales should certainly change the game, where the IOCs account for the vast majority of Nigeria’s more than two million bpd in oil production. The Shell fields produced approximately 90,000bpd in 2012.

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Estimates suggest that Shell’s OML 29 could produce up to 170,000bpd within five years and as much as 300,000bpd thereafter. This reflects the view that the acquirers will be focused on maximising output rather than being distracted by opportunities elsewhere – a charge levelled at the majors. where is the expertise?

Only a few indigenous producers – including Seplat, Oando and Amni Petroleum – currently produce more than 10,000bpd. A Nigerian joint venture

between Shoreline Power Company and Jersey-headquartered Heritage Oil produces around 15,000bpd. It will take additional divestment and production increases from their existing assets for Nigeria’s oil companies to account for 20% of Nigeria’s oil production and 50% of gas production, targets that Seplat’s Avuru says are achievable by 2018. Indigenous production faces a number of unknowns, including the much-questioned expertise of Nigerian stakeholders and operators. Whereas Oando and Seplat, among others, have

respectable industry expertise, albeit less offshore, energy-trader bidders like Taleveras have meagre upstream experience. So little, in fact, that oppositionists have suggested Shell’s preference for Taleveras and Aiteo indicates foul play. Continued support from the regulatory authorities and passage of the delayed oil bill remain other wild cards. Although government officials say the Petroleum Industry Bill will increase investment, a number of the IOCs are unhappy at some of its provisions. ● Martin Yeboah in Lagos

Wale Tinubu

Chief executive officer, Oando

The market now understands that developing oil deposits in Nigeria is not just reserved for foreign companies TAR: You have finally taken control of the ConocoPhillips assets in Nigeria. Why did it take so long? We signed in December 2012, but the launch date was September 2013. Our market cap at the time was $300m, and we had to absorb a company that was worth $1.7bn. It was always going to be quite complex to raise the funding. We did three rounds of equity in tranches of $350m, $200m and $250m, and three rounds of debt financing of $450m, $250m and $100m. This took time. We had some regulatory delays, which was inevitable. It took another six months to get consent from the regulator. But what is six months when these things are going to be producing for the next hundred years? The deal gives you the Brass River oil terminal, the Kwale-Okpai gas plant and the associated pipeline network. What opportunities does that bring? These facilities are designed for 300,000 barrels per day [bpd] of production, and we the africa report

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are only currently at How do you now fit into the What does it say about 100,000bpd, so there is a lot Nigerian energy landscape? the Nigerian banking of latent capacity available. It’s transformational because sector that it could follow That’s important when this makes us the largest you on this acquisition? we seek to ramp up indigenous producer. We are Nigerian banks have come production. The facilities often the largest indigenous reserve of age. With every deal we take a lot longer to develop holder by far, and it makes do, we de-risk the Niger Delta. than drilling a well. You are us the first indigenous Among those who helped talking about challenging company to be a joint-venture us are FBN, FCMB, Diamond terrain and swamp. With [JV] partner with the NNPC Bank, Ecobank and Zenith today’s security concerns, [Nigerian National Petroleum Bank. Nigerian banks brought it’s good to know that it’s Corporation]. The JV status nearly half of the total financing already in place. We was reserved for the majors and were ready to give more have our own export pipeline and we will be the first if the international banks were and terminal, so we don’t indigenous JV partner with unwilling to take the risk. have to pay handling charges an interest in several blocks, The market now understands to the majors, which not just a farm-in on one block. that developing oil deposits oftentimes is very expensive. We have “We will be generating cash flows of over 40 different up to half a billion dollars net annually” discoveries that have been drilled, mapped and are available Are you ready for all the in Nigeria is not just reserved to be linked into the existing associated cash calls that for foreign companies. Local production system. We come with that? banks have given their backing also have a 480MW power It’s a mature asset, and to our company because plant, with phase two already those cash calls are already we service our debts and pay approved on the same part of our financial planning. dividends to global location, to off-take gas from It runs right now at around shareholders. We have Asian the same gas fields. We $25m a month. We will banks in our consortium, can inject this power into the be generating cash flows banks from America and lots national grid, so there are of up to half a billion dollars of Europeans who say: a lot of things from the net on an annual basis, “We trust this company.” ● infrastructural side that will so we are more than ready Interview by help us exploit this opportunity. for the cash calls. Nicholas Norbrook

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MArk LENNIhAN/NBC/AP/SIPA

interview

day in the life

Extraordinary storiEs of ordinary pEoplE

Julia SeStier for tar

cracking the code Anele Khoza, 25, moved to Johannesburg from Zimbabwe. At work, he codes. After hours, he takes photos around the city and his home, a neighbourhood known locally as ‘Little Africa’

was born in Bulawayo and moved here seven years ago, I think. It’s hard to remember exactly. In Zim, the economy wasn’t stable and the teachers were always on strike. My brothers had moved here before me, so it made sense to come here too – although now my brothers live in the township and I live in the city. I’m far more complicated than they are. We are completely different. I think I’d just cause them stress if I lived with them. Initially, I was working in a camera shop warehouse. Then equipment started to go missing, and they fired a whole bunch of workers. I didn’t steal anything, of course, so I fought legally to get my job back. Then – gosh, they got me – they told me I could come back and work in the ‘service department’. I agreed. It turns out, the service department was actually washing customers’ cars. It was terrible, especially in winter. Luckily, an ex-colleague got me a job at a digital agency. Despite the fact that I had a bursary to study brand communication, my new boss convinced me that I’d learn more if I was working. So, I didn’t go to university. I started working on coding, web development and graphic design. Now people who went to school are asking me

questions. Breaking things apart and rebuilding them is the best part of what I do. I like to see the back end of everything, I want to see how it works, what is going on in the background that makes it cool. I live in a suburb called Yeoville, and it’s great. It’s filled with foreigners, as if the whole of Africa lives there. It’s always pumping, and it’s filled with different music and different smells of food.

there's a place for you here

The people aren’t always nice. There’s still tension between South Africans and African foreigners. Cultural stereotyping still exists. I haven’t experienced xenophobia directly. Most people don’t know where I’m from because I don’t speak to them that much. I don’t really like talking. I have security issues, I think. Although I haven’t encountered crime here, other people’s stories make me feel scared. When I’m not working, I’m taking photos for Instagram, mostly. In central Johannesburg there are so many things to photograph. There’s an old building nearby that looks like it burned down. From the inside, there’s a beautiful view of the Joburg skyline. I don’t know how many times I’ve photographed that skyline. Look, life in Joburg can be hard, and it’s fast paced. But if you’re confident in who you are, and if you want to pursue something you’re passionate about, there’s a place for you here. ● Kim Garner in Johannesburg the africa report

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