from Global Investing:

Can domestic demand boost African markets? Duet’s Salami talks to Reuters Television

Direct and indirect foreign investors fled from Africa as the credit crisis sparked a flight to safety, or at least familiarity, but Ayo Salami, manager of the Duet Victoire Africa Index fund believes domestic demand can step in to underpin growth.

Africa reforms matter

African governments have been hit hard by a withdrawal of investor money from the continent and need to make sure they remember reforms and avoid high inflation in their attempts to protect their economies, says Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered Bank in London.

Africa gets 3 percent of the world’s cross-border flows, but BIS end-2008 data shows the region suffered the world’s largest decline in cross-border financing due to the global financial crisis, Khan told a breakfast audience of politicians, bankers, investors and journalists in London today.

Africa needs the economic environment that will lure investors back in, she says.

“Financial markets in Africa have not shown signs yet of a significant recovery. “Maybe there is going to be some longer-term support for commodity prices, but governments have to guard against a deterioration of the fundamentals that have been in place to support growth,” she says.

Is Obama Snubbing Kenya on Africa trip?

President Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office has stirred debate in his father’s homeland Kenya.

Some Kenyans believe Obama ought to have come “home” first. Others, especially among critics of President Mwai Kibaki’s government, say he has deliberately shunned the country to show U.S. disapproval of rampant corruption and nepotism in political circles here.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who comes from the Luo ethnic group like Obama’s father, said it was wrong to read too much into Obama’s itinerary, given that neither was he visiting other influential nations in the region like South Africa and Nigeria.

“Ghana is symbolic. It was the first African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana is very advanced in its transition to democratic form of governance. So it is perfectly logical,” he told Reuters.

Are Nigerian banks set to boom?

Few investors dispute the view that Nigeria’s banks look cheap at the moment, with most of the major players trading at a discount to book value and with earnings multiples way below consumer stocks such as Guinness Nigeria.   Nor is anybody arguing against the long-term logic of the financial sector’s potential growth in an oil-rich country of 140 million people but only 23 million bank accounts.   A new central bank head with a background in risk management is also making all the right noises about improving the sector’s notoriously murky financial disclosure – part of the reason the shares crashed so spectacularly in the latter half of 2008.   Furthermore, Lamido Sanusi’s stated desire to relax limits on foreign ownership has breathed new life into the view that another wave of consolidation, this time involving major global players, sits around the corner.   Does all this sound – like so many other Nigerian promises of easy money – too good to be true, or are its banks set on a long-term trajectory that will ultimately see them realise the dream of making Lagos a financial hub to rival Johannesburg?

Money will talk louder than any vuvuzela

The debate around the vuvuzela was always going to generate big noise but for some South African commentators it has become almost a neo-colonial conflict.

The noisy trumpet, which dominates the sound waves around the stadiums during the Confederations Cup, has got a lot of people covering their ears.

Complaints from TV viewers across Europe have been vociferous enough for the future of the plastic pest to become the major item on the agenda at the series of press conferences FIFA president Sepp Blatter has held during the tournament in South Africa.

Blatter has said it will stay — he wants to celebrate local custom and is inviting the rest of the world to do so too.

Zuma’s balancing act

South African President Jacob Zuma has a tough balancing act to perform as he begins his term in office.

 On the one hand, Zuma is anxious to assure investors that there will be continuity in the economic policies that have secured the country’s status as the regional powerhouse.

On the other, he has to address the increasingly vocal demands of his allies in the labour movement, whose support propelled him first to the leadership of the ruling ANC and then to the country’s top government job after April 22 elections.

Nigeria: Ten years of civilian rule

Nigeria marks its first 10 years of unbroken civilian rule on Friday after emerging from nearly three decades of uninterrupted military dictatorship on May 29, 1999.

The political elite in Africa’s top oil producer are rolling out the drums to celebrate the milestone.  And why not?

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler who won elections in 1999, ended Nigeria’s pariah status and brought Africa’s most populous nation back into the international fold, helping secure an $18 billion debt write-off in 2005.

Niger Delta war flares up

Nigeria’s security forces have been carrying out their biggest co-ordinated operation for more than a decade – and possibly since the Biafran war – in the Niger Delta this month, using helicopters, aircraft and gunboats as well as three battalions of ground troops to try to flush militants and criminal gangs out of the creeks around Warri.

The military says it has destroyed camps belonging to Government Tompolo in Delta state which were seen as a key training ground for rebel fighters and a hub of oil bunkering – the theft of industrial quantities of crude oil worth millions of dollars a day – in the western delta.

Major-General Sarkin-Yaki Bello, who commanded the operation, has said he ordered a pinpoint helicopter attack on Tompolo’s home in the village of Oporoza on May 15. Local residents said a traditional festival was being held at the time and that hundreds fled into neighbouring communities. They say innocent civilians were killed.

Some Ijaw community leaders have accused the military of a targeted ethnic campaign as soldiers entered remote communities in the delta’s mangrove creeks to try to hunt down suspected gang members believed to have gone into hiding.

Eritrea and Somalia: did they or didn’t they?

 As Somalia goes up in flames again , fingers are being pointed at Eritrea for its alleged role in fuelling the conflict.  East African regional body IGAD and the continent-wide African Union have both called for sanctions on Eritrea – including a no-fly zone and blockade of its ports – for allegedly supplying arms and equipment to Al Shabaab and other militant Islamist insurgents fighting Somalia’s interim government.The accusations have been around for years, and have surfaced in U.N. reports on breaches of a weapons embargo for Somalia. Asmara says its arch-enemy Ethiopia is driving the accusations, helped by CIA agents in the region, and denies it has given any material aid despite its antipathy towards President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government.Asmara says the government, formed in January during a U.N.-brokered process in Djibouti, is an illegitimate administration imposed by foreign powers. It challenges its critics to produce hard evidence, and says the accusations are particularly hypocritical given Ethiopia’s recent armed intervention in Somalia.Analysts say the spat plays into the wider, unfinished conflict in the region between Ethiopia and Eritrea. They fought a border war between 1998-2000 – just a few years after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia – and their armies still face each other, while the governments spit enmity between them. So who is right? How can the rest of the world know the truth? What should Eritrea and Ethiopia both do to further peace in Somalia?

New hope for Nigerian football

The progress of two Nigerian teams into the group phase of the African Champions League defies the supposed impact of the continuing exodus of the country’s top talent to almost every distant footballing corner of the world.

Kano Pillars caused a major upset last month with their shock win over defending champions Al Ahly, albeit on the away goal rule, while Heartland FC eliminated last year’s runners-up Coton Sport of Cameroon at the same stage of the competition. Both results plunged the established order into disarray and offer now the Nigerians a chance to prove their immense resources.

Nigerian club football has had steady representation in the Champions League over the last 13 years but besides Enyimba, the state sponsored team from Aba State, no club has ever displayed title winning potential.

Much of that has to do with the flight of players from the country, off in search of better earnings and opportunity on foreign football fields. There are more than 200 Nigerian footballers playing across the globe, from the top leagues in England, Germany, Italy and Spain to lesser footballing markets like India, Vietnam and even in Albania.