Africa News blog

What’s in a name?

My colleague Emma Farge has blogged  on the confusion that arose in oil markets after reports of a coup in Niger caused erroneous rumours that last month’s military takeover had taken place in Nigeria, a similar-sounding country with its own history of  interventions by the men in uniform.

This is not the first time the confusion has arisen. During my time as a correspondent in Lagos in the 1980s, a report appeared on the front page of a local newspaper saying Nigeria had rescheduled its foreign debt, an important issue at the time and a story I certainly did not want to miss.

I even got a call from a diplomat at a foreign embassy asking what was going on, and suggesting we discuss it over lunch.

What was going on was that a French-language report about another African country rescheduling its (much smaller) debts had been mistranslated. You guessed it — it was Niger of course.

I found the offending report and was able to show it to my embassy contact. Lunch was a much more relaxed affair after that, for both of us.

(Picture shows soldiers from the military junta in Niger after  last month’s coup)

Buy on the Nigeria rumour, sell on the Niger fact

Confusion over the names of two similar-sounding African countries may have helped boosted oil prices to near $80 a barrel this week as traders rushed to buy oil after reports of a military coup.

A Reuters reporter received a flustered phone call from a hedge fund partner who had heard animated discussion in the market about an incident in Nigeria, only to realise that traders had muddled up Africa’s biggest oil producer with its neighbour Niger.

“Markets took off at around the same time a Reuters story came out about gunfire erupting in the Niger capital in an apparent coup bid, mistaken by many as being Nigeria,” said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodities.

Reuters first broke news of heavy gunfire and a coup in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Thursday. Prices jumped to a one-month high of $79.29 a barrel during the day.

While a coup in Nigeria would almost certainly rock crude oil benchmarks, a coup in Niger  — which has yet to produce oil — would almost certainly not, barring linguistic confusion.

Traders said that an oil market version of the game “Chinese whispers” rather than poor geography may have been behind the jump, as some scrambled to call the market amid mounting confusion over the titles of the two countries which share the same first five letters. The fact that Nigeria’s main oil producing region is called the Niger Delta and is an area of political unrest probably also stoked the rumours. A popular trading mantra is “buy the rumour, sell the fact”.

But far from being a costly mistake, the decision to buy oil on the Niger coup was a flash of fortuitous genius for some as oil prices continued rising afterwards to within cents of $80 a barrel on Thursday, spurred by other factors such as tension over Iran’s nuclear programme and a weaker dollar.

Do Guinea’s dark days reveal junta’s colours?

In Guinea this week, at least 157 people were killed when security forces opened fire on a demonstration against military junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, according to a local rights group.

Much has changed since I visited the country in April and May this year. Then, the young Camara — or “Dadis” as most Guineans refer to him – did not look particularly dangerous despite his images staring out from walls, buildings and roundabouts all over Conakry, and cassettes of his speeches on sale in the markets.

“Long live peace” was the graffiti of choice, and if expectations of real improvements in living standards were low, at least soldiers were in the barracks rather than shooting in the streets.

What was clear then was that a certain degree of patience had been extended to Camara both domestically and internationally.

Relief that the power vacuum opened by the death of former President Lansana Conte had not collapsed into violence, and populist anti-corruption rhetoric carried most Guineans through the first uneasy months. At the same time the international community swallowed its distaste for a military regime with the sweetening promise of elections by the end of the year.

As long as peace and the election timetable held, and Camara himself wasn’t tempted into standing, Guineans and foreign partners would grit their teeth and give Camara and his National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD) breathing space to manage the transition.

That patience, which had shown signs of strain in recent months, has now run out. International condemnation has been swift and harsh for the deaths at the demonstration.

What is the truth behind Ethiopia’s “coup” plot?

A plot is defined as “a plan made in secret”, but even by the usual shadowy nature of such matters around Africa, the recent conspiracy to overthrow the Ethiopian government has been hard to see clearly.

The story broke two weeks ago when the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said 40 men had been arrested for planning a coup after police found guns, bombs and “written strategies” at their homes. But a few days later the government communication office was asking journalists not to use the word coup anymore. The “desperados”, they said, had planned to “overthrow” the government by using assassinations and bombings to create enough chaos to get supporters on the streets to topple the government.

The sensitivity surrounding the language and the details of what was actually going on highlight the caution that still exists in sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country after a disputed 2005 election ended with police and soldiers killing about 200 opposition street protesters who were marching on government buildings.

Understandably, many Ethiopians are sceptical that people would take to the streets again. And others question whether the will is still there to march against a government that most analysts consider the most effective the desperately poor nation Horn of Africa has ever had.

The suspected involvement of an Ethiopian-American university professor was a detail that caught the interest of the international media. Berhanu Nega, who called the accusation “baseless”, was elected mayor of Addis Ababa after the 2005 poll but was imprisoned along with about 100 other opposition members when the government accused them of orchestrating the street protests.

He was released in 2007 after a pardon deal and soon fled to America, where he teaches economics at Bucknell University in Philadelphia. Another leader released as part of that pardon, 36-year-old former judge Birtukan Mideksa, was rearrested last year after the government said she violated the terms of the pardon. She remains in prison.

Ethiopians love to talk politics in the bars and cafes of capital Addis Ababa — often in very hushed tones, which is perhaps a hangover from 17 years of brutally repressive communist rule that ended when the rebel group led by Meles came to power in 1991.

from Global News Journal:

Cheers for Africa’s new military ruler. For now.

Fifteen years ago this month, Guinea’s late ruler Lansana Conte made clear what form democracy would take under his rule.

We answered a summons to a late night news conference to hear the result of his first multiparty election, speeding through silent streets where armoured vehicles waited in the shadows. The interior minister announced that ballots from the east, the opposition’s stronghold, had been cancelled because of irregularities. Conte had therefore won 50.93 percent of the vote. There was no need for a run-off because he had an absolute majority.

The show was over.

We rushed off to file our stories at the press centre, set up helpfully by a government under pressure to show the world it was ready for fair elections. The press centre was gone, the lines cut. In the morning, fighter jets swept over Conakry in case the message had not been clear already.

There were more elections, there was occasional turmoil on the streets, sometimes bloodshed. At one point Conte was almost overthrown, but he managed to hold on until his death from illness on Monday.

In a matter of hours, the army - Conte’s real constituency – made clear he would be succeeded by one of his own instead of any of the civilian politicians who prospered under the system over which he kept such strong control.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the head of the junta, was the first soldier to announce the coup on state radio. A Guinean website said the choice was made by drawing lots. Camara's promises - heard many before times in Africa - are to fight corruption, to hold elections in a set period – in this case two years - and not to stand himself.

from Global News Journal:

Drugs and guns in Guinea-Bissau

Members of Guinea-Bissau's unruly armed forces have blotted the military's record again with another attack against the country's political institutions. Early on Sunday, Nov. 23, renegade soldiers, their faces hooded, sprayed the Bissau residence of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira with machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire. The president survived unhurt this latest apparent attempt to topple him.

But The attack underlined the fragility of the small, cashew nut-exporting West African nation, one of the poorest in the world and a former Portuguese colony which has suffered a history of bloody coups, mutinies and uprisings since it won independence in 1974 after a bush war led by Amilcar Cabral. The assault followed parliamentary elections on Nov. 16 which donors were hoping would restore stability and put in place a new government capable of resisting the serious threat posed by powerful Latin American cocaine-trafficking cartels who use Guinea-Bissau as a staging post to smuggle drugs to Europe.

How can a little-known African country like Guinea-Bissau, prostrated by poverty, its government and military undermined by the corrupting influence of multi-million dollar drug-trafficking, dig itself out of underdevelopment?