Africa News blog

Guinea’s election – press conferences or scrums?

It remains to be seen if either candidate in Guinea’s presidential election knows how to run a country.

But after Sunday’s run-off election, during which the candidates wanted to say a few words to journalists after casting their ballots, it is clear that neither knows how to run a press conference.

Both events were like 1990s grunge mosh pits, only without the band, and with heavily armed soldiers herding the cameramen, photographers and text journalists together into a sweating and nervous mass.

Cellou Dallein Diallo’s took the cake. First of all, he was four hours later than initially scheduled. That gave the press corps lots of time to quietly set up cameras and tripods around his polling station, everyone negotiating sensibly and amicably for position. But it was all for nothing.

The scene suddenly exploded upon his arrival, with bulky soldiers in red berets and carrying automatic weapons storming through the journalists to make way for Diallo. People fell over backwards into the neighbourhood kids, who were chanting and leaping, pushing the other way in a volatile mix.

At one point, a soldier started whacking someone with the antenna of his walkie-talkie, sending the victim stumbling backwards into a table.

For a small taste of what it was like in Guinea during the Nov. 7 vote, have a look at this video.

Ugandan president is hip-hop hit

The track starts with a soulful “well, well” as a hip-hop beat rises in intensity. “Do you want another rap?” the same deep voice then says in perfect time. “You want another rap?”

But this is no ordinary rapper. This is, believe it or not, 66-year-old Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, previously better known for rebellion than for rhyming.

The road to what has now become a radio and club hit started a few months back at a ruling party rally when the leader of almost 25 years took to the stage and, professing that some youngsters had told him about rap, performed two folk chants from his birthplace in Western Uganda – Naatema akati (I cut a stick) and Mp’enkoni (Give me the stick).

Apparently, he turned up at another rally a few weeks later and asked the mostly young crowd if they wanted another rap. They roared back, “Yes, Sevo!” using one of Museveni’s many nicknames. A canny Ugandan record producer then took the lot, chant and all, added a thumping beat and the song everyone is calling “You want another rap?” was born.

The tune is proving a bit of a sleeper hit on YouTube – already well on its way to 100,000 views – and Museveni’s party is hoping it can endear him to the country’s sizeable population of under-30s ahead of February elections.

Different versions are now doing the rounds and turning up for sale in record shops. According to the country’s Red Pepper tabloid, the below CD cover, depicting the president as American gangsta rapper 50 Cent, is proving especially popular.

Ugandan court gags anti-gay paper

The latest twist in Uganda’s hang the ‘homos’ saga was played out last week when the High Court in Kampala ordering Rolling Stone newspaper to stop publishing the names, photographs and addresses of people it says are gay. Alongside the photos, the paper urged the government: “Hang them.”

The court order came too late for the 26 already featured in two issues of the young newspaper that most people in the East African country have never heard of.

Frank Mugisha, director of gay rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, told me last week that almost everyone outed by the paper, including himself, had since been attacked or harassed and that some were in danger of losing their jobs.

The same day I spoke to Frank I met Giles Muhame, the defiant 22-year-old editor of Rolling Stone, who now says he will find a way to “dodge the law” and work through a list he says he has of 100 gay men and women.

Muhame’s views will be abhorrent to many Western people of a similar age. Gays are “evil”. They “convert” children, they take drugs, they are akin to “terrorists”.

But his views are not uncommon among many young Africans. Homosexuality is illegal in 37 countries on the continent and gay people are mostly in the closet. In Uganda’s bars and cafes, I found a lot of support for Muhame and his paper.

This is the second time Uganda has caused uproar for the treatment of its fearful gay community. An anti-gay bill was tabled in its parliament last year proposing prison sentences for gays and the death penalty for “persistent” homosexuals.

Africa’s giants lag on reform

Rwanda led the table again as Africa’s top reformer in the World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business survey. Although it was beaten into second place by Kazakhstan on the global list, in Africa it moved up 12 places to a global rank of 58th.

Among the other usual suspects doing well in Africa were Ghana and Cape Verde, both up 10 places to 67th and 132nd places respectively. It will be interesting to see what impact the start of oil production in Ghana will have, when the new source of income may mean less need to appeal to foreign donors and investors.

Uganda, also set to start producing oil, rose seven places to 122nd while Zambia continued its strong reform record, rising 8 places to 76th on the list.

But sub-Saharan Africa’s giants again appeared to be lagging. South Africa fell two places to 34th on the list. Kenya was down four places at 98th and Nigeria fell another three places to 98th.

The Democratic Republic of Congo rose four places, but was still only 175th on the table. Some of those foreign resources companies caught up in squabbles over contracts might also question how much change they have seen when it comes to the ease of doing business there.

Angola’s stock phrase

Amid the flurry of changes in African economies and markets over the last 10 years, one of the most enduring constants has been the six-monthly assurance from Angola’s secrecy-obsessed leaders that a stock market will open next year.  

The mantra received an alternative twist on Monday when oil minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos told an energy conference in New Delhi that Africa’s most tantalising bourse would now have to wait until inflation hit single digits.

The pronouncement caused more than the usual head-scratching among investors who have seen frustration turn to despair as what should be one of the continent’s most exciting propositions has failed repeatedly to get on to the grid, let alone over the starting line.

To be fair to the minister, he may simply be reproducing the stock ‘open next year’-phrase with a bit of macroeconomic jargon on top — Angola’s latest budget talked about annual inflation easing to 9 percent in 2011 from 13.99 percent in August.

But the remark does seem to make a causal link between inflation and stock market operations that has so far passed most economists by, and casts doubt on the thinking inside the policy cabal that sits around President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, now well into his fourth decade in office.

 ”How long is a piece of string?” said one economist who covers frontier African markets. “I can’t think of a single country in the world where single-digit inflation was one of the precursors to a viable stock exchange.”

Ready for elections in Ivory Coast and Guinea?

Barring last-minute upsets, Ivory Coast will go to the polls on Sunday, marking the end of a five-year limbo in which the incumbent president has ruled without any real mandate and the country stagnated without a sense of identity or direction.

The following weekend, neighbouring Guinea may finally hold the serially delayed second-round of its presidential election, hoped to end nearly two years of military rule whose defining moment was a massacre of pro-democracy marchers by the security forces in a sports stadium.

It can only be a good thing if the elections allow Ivory Coast and Guinea to draw a line under their past and move on. But is either country actually ready for them?

In Guinea any semblance of voting on a candidate’s policy proposals or merits has been jettisoned after June’s first round which, to no great surprise, set the stage for a run-off between Cellou Dallein Diallo and Alpha Conde — representatives of the large Peul and Malinke communities respectively.

Instead of hearing a meaningful political debate before the decisive second round, Guinean voters have watched a struggle for control of the national election commission, with both sides afraid of it falling into the hands of the rival ethnic group.

The stand-off was only solved by appointing a Malian as the temporary president of the body.

Things are only marginally better in Ivory Coast. One candidate, ex-premier and former IMF deputy chief Alassane Ouattara, declared this week there is “no way” that President Laurent Gbagbo could win the election, effectively pre-empting the choice of the Ivorian voter.

Uganda election: Exciting start, what next?

If the potential success of an election could be judged by the excitement generated by its first day of campaigning, then Uganda is set for an excellent poll.

It can’t, of course, but it was heartening to see both ruling party and opposition supporters whooping it around capital Kampala yesterday ahead of a February 18th voting day that most think will be nothing but a foregone conclusion.

Thousands of screaming, singing, stomping supporters danced through town from the Nelson Mandela Stadium where the presidential candidates received their nomination papers to the sites of a couple of huge political rallies.

Hundreds more hurtled about the place on the “boda boda” motorcycles that ferry paying passengers around the city, revving the engines loudly in support.

Such was the excitement that the Reuters team had trouble battling through the crowds of people supporting opposition leader, Kizza Besigye.

Here’s a small snapshot of what we saw out the window:

Ethiopia’s Birtukan free: Why now? What now?

It’s now been 15 days since Ethiopia’s most popular opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, was released from prison and she still hasn’t said much at all.

Sure, she was “happy”, “elated” even. Prison was “horrible, really horrible.”

But talk of her political future is “for another time.”

The former judge is leader of Ethiopia’s biggest opposition party, the Unity for Democracy and Justice. The country’s 2005 elections ended in disaster when the opposition disputed a government victory and riots killed 193 protestors and seven policemen. Birtukan and other opposition leaders were jailed accused of sparking the trouble and then pardoned in 2007.

But she was sent back to prison in December 2008 for allegedly violating that pardon with a defiant speech in Sweden, which probably explains her caution now.

Ethiopia’s chattering classes, debating her release and the contents of the new pardon that secured it, have enthusiastically filled  the vacuum created by her tight-lipped stance with their theories.

Donors’ aid squeeze to up Africa debts

   Budget crunches in rich countries are bringing cuts in aid spending and may mean a switch from grants to cheaper loans, sowing the seeds of future debt crises in Africa and other poor corners of the globe.     Most African states’ budget deficits ballooned as growth sputtered in 2009, even though they entered the financial crisis in relatively robust fiscal health due to a major round of debt forgiveness in 2005 and gradually improving economic policies.     Growth has picked up well this year — the IMF is forecasting 5 percent for sub-Saharan Africa — leading many governments to unveil double digit increases in spending at the same time as assuring donors and investors that deficits will fall to more manageable levels in a couple of years.     The as-yet-unquantified aid squeeze likely to hit this year is not going to help this cause, but in their budget sums, major recipients such as Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania have factored in cuts in the overseas assistance that has sometimes accounted for as much as half of state revenue.     Tanzania’s budget reflects a reduction in foreign aid from $840 million in 2009/10 to $534 million this year, a figure that still represents 25 percent of the east African country’s projected takings.     Similarly, donors are underwriting a quarter of Uganda’s current budget, although a group of them said in August that next year’s contribution would be down by at least 10 percent, ostensibly due to concerns about corruption.     And in Zambia, Africa’s largest copper producer, the proportion of overseas support for the 2011 budget is 7.7 percent, half the previous year, because of donor worries about graft.     But experts say an overall reduction in bilateral aid — of major donors, only Britain has pledged to ring-fence development spending, at 0.7 percent of GDP by 2013 — is only one worrying aspect of Africa’s financing equation.     Just as alarming is the potential for donors to inflate their aid figures by switching assistance from grants, which are in effect a gift, to concessionary loans, which have to be repaid albeit at cheap rates.     “You’ve got the double-whammy of African countries struggling because of the crisis, and then donors potentially switching more to loans than to grants,” said Daniel Coppard, an aid analyst at Development Initiatives, a UK-based consultancy.      In 2005, donors at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland promised to double aid by up to $50 billion in five years — an ambitious promise that has not been matched by reality.     Furthermore, a trend since then towards more aid delivered via grants risks going into reverse as cash-strapped rich-country finance ministers seek out cunning ways to make their development budgets go further.     For instance, by most definitions a bilateral loan qualifies as “aid” if a quarter of it is a grant, meaning donors can cut today’s cost of their aid bill by 75 percent, and then swallow the cost of a low lending rate over the duration of the loan.     “In 2009, France’s proportions of aid going in loans just rocketed,” Coppard said. “This theoretically will need to be paid back.”     The implications of such a switch by other donors would be dire, burying many African states  under the same mountain of obligations that triggered the 2005 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt forgiveness initiative.     For example, if all its overseas grants became loans tomorrow, Tanzania would be running a budget deficit of a staggering 25 percent of GDP — a ratio that would leave its plans for a $500 million Eurobond dead in the water.     Similarly, 23 percent of the budget in Zambia, which also has ambitions to tap overseas capital markets, would be financed by debt rather than the 15.5 percent of domestic and external borrowing now in the finance ministry’s spreadsheets.     Overall, aid to sub-Saharan Africa was $38 billion or 5 percent of output in 2008, according to the World Bank, although this ratio jumps to 7.5 percent if South Africa, its biggest economy, is excluded.     The signs that donors’ austere response to their own financial problems may end up exacerbating Africa’s are already there. According to an IMF study, total public debt for low-income countries rose to 35 percent of GDP in 2010 from 30 percent in 2008.     “There is a feeling in the development world that somehow debt has been dealt with. But it really, really hasn’t,” said Jonathan Glennie, a researcher at Britain’s Overseas Development Institute.     “During the crisis, there was a lot of talk of getting the money out there to poor countries quickly, which is understandable. But it’s always relatively easy to get money out, and much harder to cancel debts.”

Anger in deadlocked Guinea

Bursts of gunfire in the street, stone-throwing and roadblocks have marked a shift from hope to anger in Guinea, where a historic transition to civilian rule through elections risks falling apart.     Political deadlock over the leadership of the West African state’s electoral commission has put an October 24 presidential run-off in doubt, and has raised the spectre of ethnic violence and prolonged military rule in the bauxite producer.     “Going into an election under these circumstances will lead to total chaos,” said Mohamed Jalloh, Guinean expert at International Crisis Group.     “In the current scenario, no one would accept the results. The electoral body has lost all credibility and needs to be rebuilt.”     The stakes are high for the impoverished state nestled on the coast between Senegal and the civil war-scarred nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast.     Its rich natural resources have drawn billions of dollars in planned mining investments from the likes of Rio Tinto and Vale     and its 10 million citizens are eager to close the book on decades of harsh authoritarian rule.     A first-round vote passed on June 27 in relative calm despite accusations of vote-rigging that prompted the Supreme Court to annul some ballots before validating the result.     But hopes of completing the first free elections in the history of the former French colony have turned to frustration and street violence amid repeated delays to the decisive run-off vote and growing signs the latest target date of October 24 will not hold either.     Presidential contender Cellou Dallein Diallo has accused the current head of the CENI electoral commission, Louceny Camara, of bias against him and has said he will not take part in the run-off unless Camara is replaced.     Rival Alpha Conde has said he is prepared to stand for elections under the current CENI leadership.     “Bi-partisan backing of CENI’s role in managing the presidential run-off election is urgently needed,” said John Stremlau, vice president of the Carter Center elections watchdog in Atlanta. He said the signs of escalating conflict in Guinea were alarming.      Guinea’s junta-led government on Monday warned of a security crackdown after a day of unrest marked by sounds of gunshots and traffic jams caused by angry youths setting up impromptu roadblocks in and around the capital Conakry.     “People continued this morning to occupy the big roads in our country to halt the circulation of cars, to threaten passengers, to destroy vehicles, to attack people. This cannot continue,” said Prime Minister Jean Marie Dore in a televised address late on Monday.     He said he had ordered police and national guard to secure the peace “by all means”.     Gunshots were heard in the Hamdallaye neighbourhood of Conakry late on Monday, a witness said. Earlier in the day, youths called out insults to junta leader General Sekouba Konate as he toured a neighbourhood, accusing him of failing to end the deadlock over the electoral body’s leadership.     Guinea has been controlled by the military since a December 2008 coup, but Konate won support from the United States and former colonial power France for pushing for elections that would transfer power back to civilians.     Analysts said the risk of ethnically driven violence was high given that Diallo and Conde represent the nation’s two largest ethnic groups, the Peul and the Malinke respectively. But they said clashes were unlikely to spill across borders despite Peul and Malinke in neighbouring countries.     “Conflict is a key economic opportunity for the unemployed youth, of which there are many in neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast,” said Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch. “But the risk of spillover could be contained somewhat by the fact that you have increasingly professional armies in Sierra Leone and Liberia, along with a very large UN peacekeeping force in Liberia.”     Diallo and Conde pledged earlier this month to involve the other in government regardless of who wins, in a move that could ease ethnic divisions. But analysts said the accord was uncertain given rising animosity between the two camps.