Africa News blog

Emerging donors chip away at aid industry’s status quo

By Alex Whiting

Jan 26 (AlertNet) – Where most expat aid workers fear to tread in Mogadishu, recently arrived Turkish aid workers have been driving in the streets, swimming in the sea and praying in local mosques.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Somalia in August, the first head of a non-African state to do so for nearly 20 years. The Turks have since opened an embassy, started work on the international airport, offered Somalis university places in Turkey and made plans to build a new hospital.

“Turkey is an animating force in Somalia … The people honestly love them,” said Mustakim Waid, who worked in Mogadishu for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) — the second-largest intergovernmental organisation after the United Nations.

From Turkey to Brazil, India to Saudi Arabia, a growing number of non-Western donors are bringing fresh funds, a different mindset and their own experience of managing natural disasters to the global humanitarian aid scene.

Until recently most emerging donors focused their aid on their own regions. Some, like India, China and Brazil, were also major recipients of international humanitarian aid.

from MacroScope:

Building BRICs in Africa

Some eye-catching numbers from Standard Bank out today on the influence of BRICs countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- on Africa.

First off, the bank says the global recession and its recovery have been nourishing these so-called South-South ties. But it is all now ready to take off. The bank estimates:

-- By 2015, BRIC-Africa trade will have incresed threefold, to $530 billion from $150 billion this year.

-- BRICs share of Africa's total trade will increase from one-fifth today to one-third in the next five years.

-- BRICS foreign direct investment stock in Africa will swell to more than $150 billion from around $60 billion today.

Standard Bank bases these assertions partly on estimates for BRICs growth over the next five years -- eg, domestic output, global output and a doubling of BRICs trade with the world in general. But it also sees Africa growing rapidly -- for example, a per capita real annual growth rate of 5.7 percent between now and 2015, and a doubling of private consumption in Africa's 10 largest economies. And it adds:

Crucially, a host of global-minded corporates is emerging from the BRICs. In 2010 231 (11.5 percent of the total) companies listed in the Forbes Global 2000 originated in the BRICs, up from only 83 companies (4 percent) in 2005. Recent trends are a harbinger of deeper potential.

Africa optimism rising

When some of the most influential figures in emerging markets finance spoke to a group of Reuters editors, they were asked about top picks for growth beyond the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

One continent came up again and again – Africa – and one country in particular – Nigeria. Goldman Sachs global head of economic research, Jim O’Neill, highlighted the improvement in the growth-environment index of Africa’s giant over the past decade.

“If it were to show the same increase in its growth-environment score over the next decade, many investors will look back and say why the hell didn’t I invest in Nigeria,” said O’Neill, who coined the term BRICs.

You can read the full story here.

Recent interest in Africa has been buoyed by the World Cup while a series of reports have highlighted its prospects beyond the global crisis. There was a recent McKinsey study and Fitch has come out with an improved outlook for sub-Saharan Africa.

There is certainly plenty of optimism outside the continent. Will it be fully realised this time around?

Africa-Asia ties flying high

Investment from China and other Asian countries was an important factor in several years of unprecedented growth in Africa before the global downturn hit.

It is very much seen as a critical driver for Africa’s future growth prospects as well.

China has repeatedly emphasised its commitment to Africa through the global troubles and is emerging even more solidly implanted on the continent now. Other Asian countries are also pushing hard, as a recent high-level Indian visit showed.

As one of the main links between Africa and Asia, Ethiopian Airlines offers an interesting indicator as to how the ties have held up and are expected to grow.

Early last year it was talking of cuts, but it is now at 14 flights a week to China and 12 to India. It is planning flights to more destinations in both countries.

Unlike many airlines elsewhere, it also managed to double its profits in its last business year.

from MacroScope:

Why the BRICS like Africa

There is little doubt that the BRICs -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- have become big players in Africa. According to Standard Bank of South Africa, BRIC trade with the continent has snowballed from just $16 billion in 2000 to $157 billion last year. That is a 33 percent compounded annual growth rate.

What is behind this? At one level, the BRICs, as they grow, are clearly recognising commercial and strategic opportunities in Africa. But Standard Bank reckons other, more individual, drivers are also at play.

In a new report, the bank looks at what each of the individual BRIC countries is trying to do. To whit:

-- Brazil's immediate intererest in Africa is securing access to natural resources, particularly oil. But is also motivated by a desire to create a new "Southern Axis" with itself at the forefront.

-- Russia is also interested in Africa's natural resources. But it faces a problem because of the sullied reputation of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. So Moscow has also embarked on a rebranding programme within the continent by ramping up its aid programmes.

-- India is attracted to Africa in part because of long historic ties. Commercial engagement, however, is also motivated by a need to guarantee the natural resources it needs for its own growth. Furthermore Africa is seen politically as a key ally in the pursuit of a competitive advantage over its Asian competitor China.

-- For China, Africa provides a long-term partner in its ongoing bid to gain global economic ascendancy, providing it with the resources, markets, geopolitical support, and, eventually, food and social security in the form of a growing and engaging diaspora.

from Global News Journal:

New world shapes up off Somalia

The Somali pirates who released a Saudi supertanker got a $3 million reward, according to their associates. Good money in one of the world’s poorest and most war-blighted corners.But the waters off Somalia are getting ever more crowded with foreign ships trying to stop the pirates. As well as potentially making life more difficult for the hijackers, it has become a real illustration of the much talked about global power shift from West to East in terms of military might as well as economic strength.This raises a question as to whether this will lead to close cooperation, rivalry or something altogether more unpredictable.This week the United States said it planned to launch a specific anti-piracy force, an offshoot of a coalition naval force already in the region since the start of the U.S. “War on Terror” in Afghanistan in 2001.It wasn’t clear just what this would mean in practical terms since U.S. ships were already part of the forces trying to stop the modern day buccaneers, equipped with speedboats and rocket-propelled grenades. It was also unclear which countries would be joining the U.S.-led force rather than operating under their own mandates.The U.S. announcement came two days after Chinese ships started an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. This is the first time Chinese warships have sailed to Africa, barring goodwill visits, since Ming Dynasty eunuch Admiral Zheng commanded an armada 600 years ago.As my colleague Sanjeev Miglani wrote last month, the Chinese deployment was being scrutinised by the strategic community from New Delhi to Washington.The Chinese had actually been catching up to other Asian countries. India already had ships in the region. So did Malaysia, whose navy foiled at least one pirate attack this month. Reasserting its might, Russia had sent a warship after the big surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. The European Union has a mission there.For Asian countries there is good reason to send warships. This is the main trade route to markets in Europe and their ships have been seized. Attacks on shipping push up insurance rates and force some vessels to use more fuel on the longer, safer route around Africa instead of taking the Suez Canal.But there certainly appears to be evidence too to back up the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2025” report late last year that highlighted the relative decline in Washington’s long term influence in the face of the rise of China and India.As well as being a chance for the world’s old and new powers to show their strength in terms of numbers, the anti-piracy operations off Somalia could prove something of a test of effectiveness.While the hardware the navies have will always outclass that of the pirates, the new powers may have an advantage in more robust rules of engagement. That might lead to mistakes, however. In November, India trumpted its success in sinking a pirate “mother ship”. It later turned out that a Thai ship carrying fishing equipment had been sunk while it was being hijacked. Most of the crew were reported lost.There is a lot of sea to cover, one of the reasons why naval forces have had so much difficulty in stopping the hijackings, but the presence of so many navies in the same area at the same time must raise questions over how well they are going to work together.Will this become a model for cooperation in a new world order? Or are there dangers? Might this also end up being a display of how little either East or West can do in the face of attacks by armed groups from a failed state with which nobody from outside seems prepared to come to grips? What do you think?(Picture: Commanding officer of a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser monitors the pirated ship off Somalia REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Handout)(Picture: Forces from French naval vessel "Jean de Vienne", seen in this January 4, 2009 photo, capture 19 Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. REUTERS/French Navy/handout)

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

And now the Chinese navy in Somali waters…

Chinese naval ships may soon be steaming into the Gulf of  Aden to join a growing fleet of international warships fighting  Somali pirates.

A first probably for a navy that has long confined itself to its own waters, the move is certain to stir interest in the strategic community stretching from New Delhi to Washington.

Chinese state media on Wednesday quoted Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei as telling a UN Security Council meeting that Beijing  was considering sending naval ships on escort duty in the troubled waters.

On the face of it, as Beijing would argue, too much should not be read into its naval deployment off the Somali waters. Theirs will be one of a number of navies patrolling the region such as the United States, India, Greece, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain and Pakistan. Besides, Chinese vessels have been attacked by the pirates in recent months giving them as much justification for escort duty as anyone else operating there. The latest was on Tuesday when a Chinese fishing vessel was seized in the Gulf of Aden, along with three other ships including a yacht.

But China's military has been the subject of relentless scrutiny and any move it makes will be closely watched especially in regional capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi. India, one of the biggest navies in the Indian Ocean boasting of an aircraft carrier group, has long looked over its shoulder watching for signs of a creeping Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

If nothing else, its role in helping Pakistan build its Gwadar port on the Baluchistan coast  is a matter of concern for Indian navy planners who worry that the deep water port is a key element of China's "String of Pearls" strategy of  extending its influence from the South China Sea through the Indian Ocean and on to the Arabian Gulf through  a chain of outposts.