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from Global Investing:
The Sub-Saharan frontier: future generations
As growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is set to post a steady 5-6 percent per annum to 2017 according to IMF estimates, investors will be taking notes on the region's growth story not least with the financial sector.
Growth projections have rebounded from forecasts of around a 3 percent rise in 2009 after falling commodity prices have hit one of the region's main revenue sources. Yet, according to the World Bank's recent Global Development Finance report, stronger commodities will firm growth prospects in the coming years. In recent weeks, commodities have dipped, dampening the outlook for some resource-rich countries, but as 76 percent of the region's population do not have access to a bank account, lenders are set to grow their presence in the region.
Julius Baer notes the region's market potential:
Since 2002, resource-hungry China has swept across a by-and-large grateful African continent, taking oil and minerals in exchange for debt relief, low-interest loans, or much needed infrastructure, such as roads, ports and housing.
The continent's existing banking sector is nascent, with many payments bypassing traditional deposit methods, instead mobile technologies such as M-Pesa and M-Kesho are the only method of making payments and transfers. On banking Baer had this to say:
from Global Investing:
Paid for the risk? Egypt’s tempting pound
Surprising as it may seem, the Egyptian pound has got some fans. The currency has languished for months at record lows against the dollar and the headlines are alarming -- the lack of an IMF aid programme, meagre hard currency reserves, political upheaval. So what's to like ?
Analysts at Societe Generale say that just looking at the spot exchange rate of the pound is missing the bigger picture. Instead, they advise buying 12-month non-deliverable forwards on the pound -- essentially a way of locking into a fixed rate for pound against the dollar in a year's time depending on where you think it may actually trade. They write:
from David Rohde:
Jon Stewart v. Muslim Brotherhood
For Americans, it was Jon Stewart as national treasure. In a virtuoso performance Monday, the American satirist ridiculed the Egyptian government’s crackdown on Cairo comedian – and Stewart protégé – Bassem Youssef. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch Stewart’s mock conversation with Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi here.
“What are you worried about, Mr. President – the power of satire to overthrow the status quo?” Stewart deadpanned. “Just so you know, there’s been a grand total of, uh, zero toppled governments we’ve brought about.”
from The Human Impact:
Monique Villa: Being a woman in a schizophrenic male world
This past week, chatting away at the dinner table, I was asked about one of my favorite books. My answer was swift: 'Il Gattopardo' -"The Leopard"- the masterpiece of Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
The novel narrates the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Italian Risorgimento, the revolution which led to the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a unified Italian State in 1861. Central to the story is the idea of change, feared and opposed by the dominant class, but also opportunistically embraced by those willing to re-invent themselves in exchange for a slice of new power. It is Tancredi, the aristocrat joining the revolution to safeguard his family interests, who speaks the novel's most famous line: "If we want things to stay as they are" - he says - "things will have to change."
from The Great Debate:
Assessing the resiliency of Hillary Clinton
As Hillary Rodham Clinton finished her last few weeks on the job, after a month of convalescence, how can we assess the secretary of state’s contributions?
The question is worth asking simply because of the job’s importance and its significance for U.S. national security. It is also relevant given Clinton’s unprecedented role in our national life over the last two decades.
from MacroScope:
Will bank lending finally start to rise?
Big news over the weekend was the world’s banks being given an extra four years to build up their cash piles, and given more flexibility about what assets they can throw into the pot. This is a serious loosening of the previously planned regime and could have a significant effect on banks’ willingness to lend and therefore the wider economy.
For over two years, banks have complained that they can’t oil the wheels of business investment and consumer spending while being forced to build up much larger capital reserves to ward off future financial crises. That contradiction has now been broken (a big win for the bank lobbyists) and the impact on economic recovery could be profound.
from Breakingviews:
Qatar gives SocGen an honourable exit from Egypt
By Una Galani
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
Qatar has given Societe Generale an honorable exit from Egypt. State-backed Qatar National Bank will buy the French bank’s 77 percent stake in its Egyptian unit, National Societe Generale Bank (NSGB), through a mandatory tender offer valuing the whole at $2.6 billion. The valuation of 2 times book value is lower than pre-revolution multiples, and SocGen will have to carry some currency risk. But with few-sizeable buyers willing to live with Arab spring volatility, it makes sense for SocGen to shrink while it can.
from David Rohde:
The trouble with democracy, from Cairo to Johannesburg
The return of protests, tanks and death to the streets of Cairo this week is harrowing. So is the power of the rampant conspiracy theories that cause Muslim Brotherhood members and their secular opponents to sincerely believe they are defending Egypt’s revolution. Both sides are behaving abominably.
Criticisms of President Mohamed Mursi’s foolish and unnecessary power grab and rushed constitutional process are legitimate. So are complaints that the country’s secular opposition is poorly organized, lacks majority support and refuses to compromise.
from The Great Debate:
A battleground for weapons of the future
More than a week after a U.S.-Egyptian brokered ceasefire brought a fragile peace to Gaza, military analysts are busily assessing the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Their goal: Apply lessons from the eight-day battle to weaponry still in development.
Israel's frequent conflicts with its Arab neighbors have historically been proving grounds for the latest in battlefield technology. Arab-Israeli wars inspired the first operational aerial drones, radar-evading stealth warplanes and projectile-defeating armor. All are now staples of the world's leading militaries.
from Photographers Blog:
Under attack in Tahrir Square
Cairo, Egypt
By Amr Abdallah Dalsh
I was on assignment on the Turkish-Syrian border when I was asked to come back home to help the Cairo team as the situation in Egypt developed with protests and clashes.
I arrived in Cairo early yesterday morning and planned to go to Tahrir square later in the day. When I reached the scene of the clashes near the square, which has witnessed a lot of clashes in the last few days, I found some members of the riot police coming close to reaching protesters. The police and the protesters normally do a tit for tat (cat and mouse) sort of thing. Police sirens blared. Usually the protesters run away quickly when they hear that sound. It was obvious that there were about five or six riot police to the left of the vehicle and they wanted to hit back at protesters with stones the protesters were hitting them with. Those few riot police entered a building near the protesters.
