Author Archives: smiah

03 Jul

Solar power strategy to fix Togo’s electricity problem might just work

In Togo, the electricity access rate is 28% , far below the West African average of 40%. Both rural and urban households struggle not only with access but with low voltage when it is available. It has to rely on Ghana, its neighbor to the west, to supply some of its power.

However, the Togolese government hopes an ambitious “electrification strategy” will bring millions of its citizens out of the dark. Its target is for electricity to reach 50% of Togo’s 7.5 million-population by 2020, 75% by 2025 and achieve universal access by 2030.

The crux of the strategy is for solar power to serve three million people in communities where the grid would not reach—even after it’s been extended to another 800,000 households.

To achieve this, the government would partner with private investors to build 300 mini solar plants across the country and distribute solar kits to 500,000 households.

The government has also scrapped the 30% tariff on solar kits. This is in keeping with the World Bank’s recommendations on how to extend electricity to millions of Africans and forms part of Togo’s own ambitions to make renewable energy 50% of the energy mix by 2030.

Despite successes at extending electricity to many, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the lowest household electrification rate in the world (at 42%) and 600 million people live without it.

Collectively, the region has even less installed capacity when compared with India and China. According to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa needs $50 billion of investment every year to get close to achieving universal access by 2030 as envisioned by the UN’s SDG Goal 7.

There’s long been an expectation and hope that renewable energy—solar power in particular—will play a vital role in filling the huge deficit in Africa’s power generation capacity.

One challenge has been how to deliver a consumer proposition that would be affordable for some of the poorest people in developing countries, particularly in rural areas—though there are now more startups that specialize in delivering power at affordable prices.

To read the full article, click here.

 

02 Jul

Ugandans – furious with new tax for using social media and mobile money

Uganda’s government has kept its promise: Many Ugandans woke up today (July 1) to find that if they hadn’t paid the new tax on social-media use, services like WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Skype were inaccessible.

Uganda’s government has long had an issue with social media as it tries to keep tabs on its young population. Back in February 2016, the country’s telecoms regulator blocked the internet during elections, ostensibly for security purposes.

This year, the regulator proposed a tax on social-media use, designed to curb gossip online and raise billions of shillings in government revenue.

That levy came after president Yoweri Museveni complained that idle talk on social media was costing the country much-needed time and income.

Many tech-savvy Ugandans have already taken to virtual private networks to get around having to pay an extra 200 Ugandan shillings ($0.05) per day. The new fee is expected to impact usage of social media and mobile money, which now has an additional 1% tax.

Major telecoms providers MTN, Airtel, and Africell, issued a joint statement informing customers of how to pay the new tax with mobile money services of MTN and Airtel.

Internet penetration stands at just 22% in Uganda, according to the World Bank. Social networks constitute the internet for those already online, with Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter being the most popular apps.

Source: https://qz.com/1319064/uganda-social-media-and-mobile-money-tax-now-in-effect/

28 Jun

Scene is set for interesting contest in Zimbabwe’s upcoming poll

Zimbabweans are heading to the polls on July 30. They will be making their decisions not only on what appears to be a dramatically changed political landscape, but with looming fears of a destabilised country following the recent bomb blast at a Zanu-PF election rally in Bulawayo.

Reports say that the attack targeted President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Opposition parties now fear a crackdown.

But Mnangagwa and his deputy immediately pledged that the bomb attack wouldn’t stop the elections going ahead.

Nonetheless, the incident is likely to create a climate of fear, insecurity, intense polarity and high securitisation of the state.

Even before it happened civil society actors and think-tanks in Zimbabwe had raised questions about the possibility of a rigged election.

But be that as it may, the circumstances are very different from when Zimbabweans went to the polls in 2013. Then Zanu-PF won a two thirds majority.

The upcoming elections will be closely fought between the 75-year-old Mnangagwa and new leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-Alliance), Nelson Chamisa (40). In addition, the polls will be contested without two men who have dominated Zimbabwe’s politics for decades – Robert Mugabe, who was deposed in 2017 and Morgan Tsvangirai who died in February this year.

These two factors – new leaders and the absence of old ones – set up an interesting contest.

As things stand, the MDC-Alliance is seeking to regain its relevance in the absence of Tsvangirai. Across the aisle, Mnangagwa is seeking to legitimately secure his authority, and the dominance of his party following the November 2017 transition after 37 years of Mugabe’s rule.

The elections are significant for average Zimbabweans too. Citizens are eager for new leaders to kick start the economy after years of decline under Mugabe’s rule.

A lot is at stake for Zanu-PF. The party has aggressively pursued an agenda to restore its legitimacy regionally and internationally. For example, the Mnangagwa administration has repeatedly promised that the election will be credible. It has even taken its reform agenda to the international stage.

To read the full article, click here.

26 Jun

WhatsApp is getting set to be Africa’s biggest payments and ad platform

The ambitions of WhatsApp have remained something of a mystery, even as its reach as a messaging service and as the social media platform of choice for Africans has grown and grown. It has done so without a very obvious business plan and we’d often wondered why.

Then, after the departure of co-founders Brian Action (September) and Jan Koum (April) from parent Facebook, there has been some great reporting (paywall) on the internal tensions over how a desire to protect users’ privacy clashed with the goal of commercializing WhatsApp to justify the $22 billion Facebook paid for it in 2014.

WhatsApp’s competitive advantage is in emerging markets, where its service almost always works, regardless of internet speed or available bandwidth. It’s the world’s No.1 messaging service, thanks to users from Latin America to Africa and most of Asia outside China.

In these regions, there’s intense interest from local businesses that want to see WhatsApp commercialize—they want to be able to use the platform more efficiently to transact with their customers who pretty much live on WhatsApp.

Facebook understands that. “The wave of disruption we’ll see from Africa will come from small companies more so than from big corporates,” Julien Decot, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships for EMEA, said at the MEST Africa Summit in Cape Town, South Africa last week.

“It’s clear those companies will probably jump directly to WhatsApp to connect to their prospective customers and get their businesses discovered. It’s unclear if they’ll advertise on Facebook’s Newsfeed.”

That doesn’t mean Facebook thinks African or Asian businesses will never advertise on WhatsApp. It’s just taking a step-by-step approach. The first move: creating a WhatsApp Business app for millions of small businesses to reach their customers.

The next: “fixing the plumbing” by enabling key services like payments and discovery and then identifying the “underlying business model,” Decot explains.

To read the full article, click here.

26 Jun

The Ethiopia rally bomb will test the prime minister’s reform agenda

At least two people died and 156 were wounded in a grenade attack at a political rally in Addis Ababa addressed by reformist Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed.

Abiy was a surprise guest on the day and, moments after sitting down once he’d made his speech, there was an explosion meters away. He was not hurt, but the rally’s organizers have claimed he was the main target.

Was this an unprecedented moment in Ethiopia’s history?

The attempted assassination on a national leader isn’t entirely new to Ethiopia. There was, at least, one such attempt in 1976 targeting Mengistu Hailemariam, a former leader who now lives in Zimbabwe as a fugitive. He survived with slight injuries.

That attack was interpreted by many as the incident that triggered horrendous political violence known as “Red Terror”, which left thousands of young people dead.

But the scale and the audacity of this attack is unprecedented. It appears that those who planned it couldn’t deliver on the scale they might have wanted. Had they succeeded, the human cost and its political implications would have been immense.

What is the current political context?

The ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front which has been in power for nearly 30 years, is decaying.

It lacks the political will to introduce fundamental reforms which would address issues like endemic corruption, the incarceration of journalists and political opponents and widespread economic marginalization.

These concerns precipitated protests from various segments of society and forced former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to resign.

Abiy emerged from within the ruling party amid this disarray. His message was markedly different. He spoke the language of the people and tapped into society’s aspirations and fears.

While it was expected that he’d be a safe pair of hands for ordinary people as well as the ruling elites, nobody expected him to be as direct and decisive as he has turned out to be in his reform efforts.

To read the full article, click here.

 

25 Jun

How Senegal became a soccer fan favorite at World Cup 2018

As the World Cup moves into its final group stage matches, one of the teams that has quickly become one of the neutrals’ favourites is Senegal.

Prior to the tournament, the team received very little by way of attention. For teams from Africa, Nigeria stole the headlines with their popular jersey and Iceland with its tiny population and its unlikely story and its fans’ ‘thunderclap’ chant had won the underdog plaudits.

But Senegal’s relatively low profile has proved a bit of a competitive advantage as they became the first African side to win a group match after Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco flopped.

While Nigeria initially under performed and made a comeback. Senegal’s Teranga Lions seem to have the better chance of going further in the tournament.

But Senegal’s quiet campaign belies the talent in the squad. Among a host of skillful players is star man Sadio Mané—who became the most expensive African player in 2016 and partnered Mo Salah last season to give Liverpool a throwback to its glory days with a run to Europe’s biggest club match, the Champions League final in May.

Senegal does have pedigree. Their proudest soccer achievement was at the 2002 World Cup co-hosted by Japan and South Korea. Avoiding defeat on Sunday against Japan in Ekaterinburg will extend their group stage unbeaten run at the World Cup to five games.

But they have been making history since their appearance at the tournament in 2002. In that campaign, they saw off then defending champions and former coloniser, France in one of sports most defining underdog triumph moments.

A remnant of that dream team that reached the last eight in 2oo2 is present in the current squad in the form of the meme-friendly hipster coach, Aliou Cissé, who was once the captain of the team.

Once again, Cissé, 42, is making waves on the big stage as the only black coach on the touchlines in Russia. Even the most populous black country, Nigeria, is being managed by a white 64-year old German.

To read the full article, click here.

22 Jun

Ethiopia needs to end the persecution of a key ethnic group

The political upheaval that Ethiopians have become accustomed to seems to be a thing of the past—for now.

Many have praised the new prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in April 2018, for restoring calm to much of the country. Some have even dubbed his reform agenda a massive turn around for Ethiopia.

There has been progress on his watch. Ahmed has overseen the release of political prisoners, as was promised by former premier Hailemariam Desalegn.

Most recently he lifted the state of emergency that was imposed after Desalegn unexpectedly resigned in February 2018 after five years in power.

Ahmed has also promised to privatize state owned enterprises, and declared his readiness to stabilize Ethiopia’s tumultuous relations with neighbor Eritrea.

But it hasn’t all been rosy—especially when it comes to the ongoing eviction of ethnic groups in various regions in the country.

The targeted eviction of ethnic Amharas in the regional states of Benishangul Gumuz and Oromia is especially worrying.

Thousands of Amharas have been evicted, killed and tortured. Although cases of evictions have recently increased, the problem started in 2012 when thousands of Amharas were evicted from the Southern Region.

The Amharas are one of Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups; the other is the Oromo. Together the groups account for about 60% of Ethiopia’s population.

Mistreatment of Amharas has drawn the attention of several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International which has called out the pattern of ethnically motivated attacks and displacement.

To end such ethnic attacks and unfortunate instances of targeted evictions, Ahmed’s new administration must consider institutional reforms.

My research shows that Ethiopia’s regional states and their constitutions have been designed in a way that bestows ownership of regions on certain ethnic groups. So, for Ahmed’s reform agenda to take full effect such laws need to be amended.

To read the full article, click here.

20 Jun

Scientists are exploring a lost rainforest hidden in a Mozambique volcano

It’s hard to miss Mount Lico, a relatively isolated cliff jutting out 700 meters (nearly 2,300 feet) above the plains of northern Mozambique.

Yet for hundreds of years, people were unaware that inside the ancient volcano lay a hidden rainforest, protected by the volcano’s high walls.

Discovered by conservation biologist Julian Bayliss in 2012, the untouched biosphere is a gift for scientists. The only disturbances it has experienced over centuries are natural, such as droughts, as opposed to man-made.

And so it offers a benchmark that scientists can use to compare the full effect of human interference on rainforests.

Now, for the first time, scientists have scaled the 125-meters up a near-vertical rock face to explore the undisturbed rainforest within.

Bayliss took five years to assemble a team that included biologists, botanists, lepidopterists, and other experts from Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

The team also included rock climbers who trained the scientists for the expedition from May 10-24—an adventure that sounds straight out of a Jules Verne novel.

After only one expedition, scientists have already found a new species of butterfly and a mouse species that has yet to be classified, and expect to find more previously undiscovered animals.

Because Mount Lico’s habitat is a rainforest, unique plants and animals have developed there, and can help us better understand both the past and future of the natural world.

The discovery is also noteworthy because it’s the second undisturbed rainforest that scientists have found in Mozambique thanks to Google Earth—offering an example of how big data can lead to new discoveries in long-overlooked habitats.

In 2005, Bayliss noticed Mount Mabu, a 1,700 meters (more than 5,500 feet) mountain range that appears in the middle of a savannah.

Bayliss spotted Mount Mabu while searching the earth’s surface for undisturbed rainforests. The mountain range looked similar to one he was already studying in neighboring Malawi, but scientists had never documented it.

To read the full article, click here.

19 Jun

The history behind Morocco’s “Africa” World Cup

Morocco’s fifth bid to host the World Cup, like its previous four, ended in disappointment.

After a vote by FIFA member nations on June 13, the “United” bid of the United States, Canada and Mexico was picked ahead of Morocco to host the 2026 World Cup.

Morocco notched 65 votes, compared to 134 by the United bid. Crucially, 11 African countries voted against Morocco’s bid despite its projection of a united front for another “Africa” World Cup.

That lack of African support proved costly as, to have any chance of winning the 104 votes required for a simple majority, Morocco needed the 54 votes held by Africa’s federations.

Some of the opposition to Morocco’s bid within the continent stemmed from a four-decade old territory dispute: Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara also known as Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a former Spanish colony in 1975.

South Africa, the first African country to host the World Cup in 2010, was one of the major opponents of Morocco’s bid over its Western Sahara claims.

Both countries have had a strained relationship since 2004 when South Africa recognized the Western Sahara’s independence.

Similarly, Namibia voted against Morocco’s bid saying “it will never support nor align itself with a colonizer” in reference to Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara.

After World War 1, Namibia was itself occupied by neighbor South Africa for 75 years until 1990.

Politics over Western Sahara territory have lingered for years. In January 2017, Morocco rejoined the African Union after a 33-year absence since the union admitted Western Sahara as a member state in 1984.

But Morocco’s re-admission was voted against by 15 of the AU’s 54 member states. Morocco also asked the AU to re-consider its stance on recognising SADR when it requested to rejoin.

Morocco’s Africa foreign policy has markedly changed in recent years under King Mohammed VI.

To read the full article, click here.

 

19 Jun

Supermarket shopping in Kenya is increasing the risk of poor nutrition

The middle class boom in many African cities has inevitably resulted in several life style changes but one is proving particularly dangerous.

A rise in supermarket shopping—an offshoot of rapid urbanisation—has resulted in locals eating higher amounts of processed food than fresh food typically found at traditional markets.

But it’s a habit that could prove costly on the long-term, a new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shows.

The study analyses diet choices and nutrition in urban Kenya and finds that shopping in supermarkets “significantly increases” body mass index (BMI) and a higher consumption of processed and highly processed foods.

Across the continent, the rise of fast food chains is having a similar effect on increasing overweight and obesity levels.

The study collected data in 2012 and 2015 across several households in three towns in central Kenya where the share of grocery sales through supermarkets is about 10% nationally.

The change in diet choices and nutrition as an impact of shopping at supermarkets, a trend that’s already occurred in developed countries, is referred to as “nutrition transition” and the severity of the problem depends on the types of food offered in supermarkets.

Generally, increases in BMI contribute to non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension among locals.

Even though supermarket shopping was not found to result in a rise in calorie consumption, it resulted in “significant shifts in dietary composition,” the study showed.

For locals, energy consumption from unprocessed staples as well as fresh fruits and vegetables reduced and were replaced by dairy, processed meat, snacks and soft drinks—foods that likely contain higher sugar, fat and salt levels and lower micro-nutrients.

To read the full article, click here.