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There was a time when what happened in Westminster mattered, when British ballot boxes set the scene for the world.
In 1900, when the Labour Party competed in its first general election as the Labour Representation Committee, the British Empire covered a quarter of the globe and the lives of 383 million people were effectively governed from London.
Labour only won two seats in that first outing but it grew rapidly and went on to form 14 governments between then and 2010, completely overshadowing the Liberals, which had challenged the Conservatives for ascendancy in the 19th century. The Liberals eventually became the Liberal Democrats after merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988.
The British Empire is long gone and aggressive new political parties have put Britain’s two-party political system to rest. In 1950, the Conservatives and Labour won 90% of the vote, but in 2010 they garnered just 65%, according to Professor Paul Whitely of the University of Essex’s Department of Government in an article in news and analysis website, The Conversation.
The recent recession and the re-emergence of nationalism as a potent political force has left Britain with an increasingly restive population which is looking inwards and demanding that politicians do the same.
The reality being hammered home is that all politics is local, a phrase made famous by American politician Tip O’Neill in the 1930s.
Economic recovery, living standards and rising inequality, public health, employment and, importantly, immigration were being grappled with in the build up to the May 7 polls.
Helping other countries to grow and making the world a fairer place is generally far down the list, if it makes it onto the list at all.
Going into the elections, the Greens were the only party tackling international affairs with enthusiasm. Given their view that trade and economic growth must be curbed, it is a good thing for Africa that their influence is likely to be minor.
At the time of writing, it was highly likely that neither the Conservatives nor Labour would win the 326 seats needed for an outright majority and almost certain that both would fall far short of the 340 seats necessary for a ‘working majority’. This makes a minority government propped up by a deal with one or more of the smaller parties very likely. The travails faced by the coalition formed by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in May 2010 makes such an arrangement less attractive. The deal left the Liberal Democrats a shadow of what it was and has weakened the Conservative Party’s claim that it was the sole driver of the economic recovery.
Growing political insularity and the likely outcome of the polls returning no clear winner means that while existing trade and foreign aid commitments will be honored, major new concessions or bigger contributions are highly unlikely.
This means that the outcome the British election will not be felt – either positively or negatively – in Africa.
But before we judge Britain too harshly for this and criticize it for not doing more, it should be borne in mind that last year Britain spent £11.4 billion – or 0.72% of GNP – on overseas aid, becoming the first major economy to meet the United Nation’s 45-year-old aid spending target, according to The Guardian.
Expecting its politicians to do more, especially when times are tough, is simply unrealistic.

Africa Far Down The List

Who was Cecil John Rhodes, the man at the center of the mayhem around South African statues? Rhodes is different things to different people; some call him evil, others say he was a hero. Whatever he was, he has caused a storm 114 years after his death.
Rhodes was a British expatriate who amassed a fortune in Africa from diamond and gold mining – the Aliko Dangote of his day. He died in Muizenberg near Cape Town, South Africa, in 1902. His corpse was transported by train to be buried in Malindidzimu in the Matopos Hills near Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe, as he wished.
More than a century later, his body and his imposing statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) lay undisturbed.
<div id="attachment_3607" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3607" class="size-medium wp-image-3607" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/469050928-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; APRIL 09: Students cheer as the Cecil Rhodes statue is being removed from the University of Cape Town on April 9, 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa. The statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town as a result of a month long protest by students citing the statue &#8220;great symbolic power&#8221; which glorified someone &#8220;who exploited black labour and stole land from indigenous people&#8221;. (Photo by Charlie Shoemaker/Getty Images)</div>
On March 10, it all changed when Chumani Maxwele, a fourth year political science student at the university, dressed in black tights, running shoes and a pink construction helmet, for a solitary protest. Maxwele poured excrement on the statue and placed a placard: “Exhibit White Arrogance @ UCT”. That was the birth of the great statue protest of 2015 that spread across the country.
Xolela Mangcu, a professor at UCT, supported the students’ movement that became known as Rhodes Must Fall.
“When I first arrived here three years ago, I was struck how white and European the university identity was, not just in terms of number of students but the content that is being taught. Nothing in the curriculum says you are in a South African university. The whole question whether UCT can imagine itself as an African university is what I have been raising in my intervention in both my columns and the university itself. The fact is that there are five black full professors out of 200. And there’s not a single South African black woman professor. That’s how I got into this debate. But I was ignored,” says Mangcu.
The debate had legs. Around 872 kilometers from Cape Town, in the heart of the Eastern Cape province, in the city of Grahamstown, lies Rhodes University, named after the British mining magnate in 1904. Grahamstown was named after Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham who drove the Xhosa tribe off their land. There have been calls to change the names of the city and the university.
Nomalanga Mkhize, a history lecturer at Rhodes University and a newspaper columnist, says the anger over Rhodes vindicates Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan scholar. As head of the Centre for African Studies at UCT in 1998, he developed a new curriculum elevating African scholarship, but the university waved it away.
“No doubt, the ‘Mamdani Affair’ is now embarrassing for UCT. It has become clear that he was right and his detractors were wrong,” says Mkhize.
Not every academic agrees. Shadrack Gutto, a professor from the University of South Africa and a constitutional rights expert, says preservation of the past is critical to progress and those who want to wipe the history because it is hurting are wasting their time and are ill-informed.
“History is never made on a clean slate. If you are talking about proper history, you are talking about history of tragedies, grief, happiness, periods of prosperity and periods of decline. From that point of view, you need to preserve all of it, in order to know where you are coming from, where you want to go. I don’t agree with the destruction of symbols of the past, they need to be there, the question is how are they explained and placed. We may disagree on where you place them. But to try to wipe them out, I think it is foolish and something that defies the understanding of people,” says Gutto.
“I support the spirit of 1976 students in the current UCT students. Whether they change their names or not or they have a black vice chancellor, the fact remains, universities have not been transformed.”
Gerhard Papenfus, Chief Executive of the National Employers’ Association of South Africa, says Cecil John Rhodes the person. He says Rhodes oversaw the death of his Afrikaaner ancestors 114 years ago, in the Anglo-Boer War, but he disagrees with the statue removal.
“So, after Cecil John Rhodes’ statue has been removed, followed by the statues of perhaps King George V at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Queen Victoria in Parliament, and then Paul Kruger in Church Square in Pretoria; and perhaps after convincing Robert Mugabe to remove David Livingstones’ statue from Victoria Falls and to exhume Rhodes bones from his grave on Malindidzimu, and after every street and school has been renamed and the history have been rewritten – then what?” asks Papenfus.
A month after Maxwele’s lone protest, statues of Mahatma Ghandi; an Indian human rights champion and Paul Kruger; the Afrikaaner leader and nemesis of Rhodes, along with others were smeared with paint and broken down.
The students at UCT got their wish. At 5:37AM on April 9, management removed the Rhodes statue to the cheers of students in an atmosphere thick with revolutionary slogans.
One would have thought that the removal would settle the dust. But members of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign continued occupying Bremner Building, a main administration block, which students renamed Azania Building – the Pan-Africanist name for South Africa.
University officials served Maxwele and other students with an eviction letter and threatened to go to court. Three days later, the students left.
UCT council chairperson, Njongonkulu Ndungane, says the university will take up the transformation debate.
Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe, was coincidentally in a two-day state visit to South Africa during the Rhodes debate. In a press conference in Pretoria there was laughter as he quipped about the debate over statues in South Africa and a grave in Zimbabwe.
“We have his corpse and you have his statue. What do you want us to do with him? Dig him up? We cannot tell you what to do with the statue but we and my people feel we need to leave him down there.”
One can argue that the noise Rhodes made in his life hasn’t stopped.

#RhodesMustFloat

The Statue  That Moved

The African Development Bank (AfDB) may be about to get its first president from its biggest shareholder – Nigeria.
Africa’s largest country, which holds 9.3% of the AfDB, almost double the total of the two next biggest shareholders, has twice failed to capture the presidency of the bank since its inception in 1964. That may be about to change.
Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the outgoing administration of Goodluck Jonathan, is one of three frontrunners to succeed Donald Kaberuka. Cape Verde’s Finance Minister Cristina Duarte, the first woman to contest the presidency and the first from Portuguese-speaking Africa, and Zimbabwe’s Thomas Sakala, with the backing of the Southern African Development Community, are seen as the other strong candidates. The election takes place on May 28 during the bank’s annual meetings in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Côte d’Ivoire.
Kaberuka’s successor takes over Africa’s only triple-A rated institution that has implemented more than 3,000 programs and projects, worth more than $50 billion. Under Kaberuka, a former Rwandan finance minister, the bank focused on infrastructure, proffered technical advice that some attribute to Africa’s resilience after the 2008 global financial crisis, and has started to attract private capital to help build Africa’s roads, railways and ports.
“Kaberuka has done an excellent job, becoming the leading voice for African development,’’ says Earl Gast, Senior International Adviser at Covington &amp; Burling.  “The ideal next AfDB president will be a global visionary, an inspirational leader, and an outstanding manager of a large, multinational bureaucracy…”
In addition to Adesina, Duarte and Sakala, there are five other candidates: Ethiopian Finance Minister, Sufian Ahmed, who has overseen the economic transformation of Africa’s second most populous nation; former Tunisian Finance Minister, Jaloul Ayed; Chad’s Finance Minister, Kordje Bedoumra; Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister, Samura Kamara; and Mali’s Vice President of the Islamic Development Bank, Birama Boubacar.
With a PhD in agricultural economics, Adesina, who has led Nigeria’s drive to feed its 170 million people, says he will focus on consolidating Kaberuka’s legacy while building a more cohesive institution to drive Africa’s development agenda through regional integration and innovation.
“I will position the bank into a more nimble and effective institution that can effectively anticipate and address emerging and futures challenges for development of Africa,” says Adesina in his presentation to the bank’s board of governors. “I will transform and revive Africa’s dead economic spaces in rural areas through investments in Africa’s rich agricultural resource and agro-industrial developments that turn those resources into value-added commodities.’’
With regional politics, shareholding, qualifications and language coming into play, analysts say the election is one of the most transparent at a global financial institution and the winner will need to build broad alliances to win both the African vote and the non-regional members’ support.
To win, a candidate must capture 50.01% from Africa’s 53 governments and 50.01% from the so-called non-regional members comprising of donor nations, who hold 40% of the bank’s capital. Africans control 60% and the bank president must always be an African.
Aside from their new initiatives, the next leader of the AfDB will take over the implementation of the bank’s 10-year strategy through to 2022 which focuses on the development of agriculture, fragile states, food security and gender.
They will also need to further other initiatives started by Kaberuka, such as tapping private capital into a new source of funds for developing infrastructure and helping smaller countries utilize their natural resources more effectively and ridding the continent of conflict, says Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development.
Whoever it is, the next AfDB President will be judged on the steps they took to grow Africa’s economy and lift people out of poverty.

Who Should Africa Bank On?

On May 7, 1945, just before midnight, Private First Class Domenic Mozzetta of the United States Army’s 97th Division shot at a German sniper near Klenovice, Czechoslovakia. He couldn’t know it at the time, but he had just fired the last official bullet in World War II’s European theater of operations.
The Japanese would finally surrender in August of that year, bringing the entire war – which cost more than 80 million lives if the aftershocks of disease and famine are taken into account – to an end.
The silencing of the guns sounded the death knell for Europe’s African empire and fuelled the wave of decolonialization that swept across the continent from the mid-1950s through the 1960s.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the French army recruited around 300,000 North African and 197,000 West African men, with more being pulled into the conflict as it spread around the globe. On top of this, nearly 400,000 African soldiers from Britain’s colonies were called up to fight.
British units from the Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) comprised the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions and the famous King’s African Rifles (KAR) was made up of men from Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland (now Malawi), Somaliland (now Somalia) and Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
<div id="attachment_3594" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3594" class="size-medium wp-image-3594" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-138601664-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" />UNITED KINGDOM &#8211; JANUARY 01: BRITISH OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH N.K.1528 (Ministry of Information) (See companion picture K.1528) Corporal of a Kenya Battalion of the King&#8217;s African Rifles. A corporal of the 5th Battalion of the King&#8217;s African Rifles wearing drill order &#8211; khaki shorts, blue jersey with yellow chevrons and a felt hat introduced into the Colonial Forces about 1938, similar to those worn by Gurkha regiments. Formerly the Askaris (soldiers) of the KAR wore red tarbushes on drill or ceremonial parades, marching order and fighting order, the hat was a small round khaki affair like a pill-box, with a neck protection cover. (Photo by Planet News Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)</div>
More than 90,000 West Africans played a crucial role in driving the Japanese out of Burma, helping stave off an invasion of British India, and the KAR fought the Italians in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), the Vichy French in Madagascar and the Japanese in Burma. French West African soldiers, fighting with the Free French forces, invaded Sicily and Italy.
White South Africans and Rhodesians (now Zimbabwe) fought alongside their Allied peers but, with the exception of the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) which fought with distinction in Burma, their non-white counterparts tended to be relegated to auxiliary roles and did not face combat.
When the war ended, an immediate programme of ‘whitening’ the war effort began. The fact that Europe had been forced to use African fighting forces was a source of great discomfort for many Europeans who were, to put it mildly, discomfited by the idea of black men killing white.
As John Morrow, a University of Georgia historian, points out in his paper Black Africans in World War II: The Soldiers’ Stories, “African soldiers proved to be highly capable troops in… difficult conditions” and despite high levels of illiteracy were able to fight independently of their white commanders, striking fear into the hearts of their enemies.
Yet after the war, “a politically expedient policy of ‘whitening’” began. French leader Charles de Gaulle replaced black soldiers with French conscripts and partisans – but only after stripping them of their uniforms and weapons and grouping them with African POWs being liberated from German camps.
This was actively supported by British and American leaders. Brave African soldiers who fought alongside the British, especially in Burma, were denied the ultimate military honor of the Victoria Cross.
These soldiers, many of whom had fought with great courage and distinction on foreign battlefields, returned home after 1945 to the reality that once the war was won, their colonial rulers wanted to revert to their old ways, breeding resentment and distrust.
In 2009, a BBC documentary team tracked down some of Africa’s forgotten wartime heroes to hear their stories and, even though the war had been over for 64 years by then, the fact that their contributions had not been adequately acknowledged still rankled. It also found that, having fought alongside white soldiers, any sense that whites were in some way superior was challenged by their battlefield experiences.
“Initially, I saw the white man as someone better than me. But after the war, I considered him an equal,” former infantryman Dauda Kafanchan told the BBC.
Morrow says that “British and French attempts to omit, diminish, or discredit the achievements of African soldiers stemmed from their intent to ignore or limit African demands for equality and independence, in the same fashion that white Americans’ refusal to acknowledge the combat service of African-American soldiers was intended to keep the latter ‘in their place’ and forestall the granting of equal rights to black citizens under the law.”
But this wouldn’t be allowed to stand. As historian Tom Hartley wrote in Sheffield University’s ‘New Histories’ magazine, “the old colonial powers Britain and France had won the war but lost the battle – their statuses as the biggest names on the world stage was now over.”
Having fought to preserve freedom across Europe, it became very difficult for proponents of colonialism to continue to support the oppression of Africans.
“These moral issues, along with the financial cost of propping up an empire with Europe so devastated, led to a movement away from colonialism.”
This movement was supported by the Atlantic Charter, signed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, which spelled out their justification for going to war with Germany and its allies, became a rallying point for African nationalists and gave them a powerful political tool.
Clause 3 of the Charter states that “[the British and American governments and people] respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”
In The Saylor Foundation’s World War II and the Road to Independence, this “was intended to apply only to the European countries which were overrun by German Nazi forces [but] Africans appropriated it and used it for their own purposes,” leading to the “vast politicization of the African masses.”
Rather than arguing for better treatment, less discrimination and greater opportunities, African nationalists were now demanding a complete end to colonial rule.
In 1945, when the fifth Pan-African Congress took place in London, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, the future leaders of independent Ghana and Kenya, stood up and demanded an end to British colonialism.
In an essay entitled ‘To what extent was World War Two the catalyst or cause of British Decolonisation’, hosted on his Active History website, teacher and academic Russell Tarr argues that the war did so much damage to the British economy that that the Empire was forced to break up.
At the time, as The Saylor Foundation and others note, European powers had no intention of granting independence to their colonies – they thought it was too soon for self-governance. Africans, in their view, needed more training and education before they could be trusted to rule themselves.
In fact, Herbert Morrison, the post-war Labour Party Deputy Prime Minister, said that giving the colonies independence would be “like giving a child of ten a latch-key, a bank account and a shotgun.” The fact that the British wanted the process to be slow had more to do with the economic benefits of an almost endless supply of cheap raw materials than any inherent concern for the wellbeing of their African subjects, but the gradual change was never going to be acceptable to battle-weary and hardened veterans.
While the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa has generally been well recorded, it is only in recent years that the role that Africans played in World War II, and the subsequent impact that this would have on the continent in the wake of the conflict, is getting the attention that it deserves.
These forgotten soldiers are at last being properly remembered – not only for the significant part they played in defeating the scourge of fascism but also for their role in winning independence for their native lands.

How A White Man’s War Gave Africans Back Their Continent

Alex Reith had just celebrated his 22nd birthday when he landed his glider in Normandy in northern France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It may have been a dangerous day for his first taste of World War 2, but it was far from his worst. That was to come a few months later in Operation Market Garden – the parachute drop that turned into a slaughter and inspired the Hollywood film  A Bridge Too Far.
It was a glum and grey afternoon when Alex Reith flew his glider – with five troops, a jeep and a field gun on board – across the English Channel, towards Normandy’s Sword Beach swarming with invading troops.
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Although the 22-year-old British-born staff sergeant was aware of the scale of the operation, little did he know that D-Day would go down as the largest amphibious military assault in history. Some 195,701 servicemen took part in the operation, as well as 23,400 parachute units and many thousands of other troops carried by 7,000 ships and vessels and 11,590 aircraft and thousands of gliders.
Reith remembers his journey from England to France as if it were yesterday. The view from high above the English Channel is etched into his memory. Excitement saturates his voice as he recalls the 150-kilometer flight.
“As we were making our way across in our matchbox, we could see the thousands of vessels, boats, battleships and God knows what else below us which were headed for Normandy. We didn’t just catch a glimpse of the armada. No, we had a panoramic view of it! It was an absolutely one time fantastic sight!” Reith recalls, explaining that glider planes were called matchboxes because they were made of plywood, often manufactured in furniture factories.
Eventually, Reith’s glider touched down near Ranville, a small town east of Sword beach.
“It must have been sometime between 4PM and 5PM. It was over 70 years ago, you know, so I am not too sure about the exact time,” he says with a chuckle.
“The landing was fairly unremarkable. Normandy is flat. The only difficulties were the trees and the anti-glider poles the Germans had installed. There were plenty of those around. We were fortunate enough to land in an open field, together with some 20 other gliders.”
Before unloading the field gun and jeep, Reith did some surveillance to see if the coast was clear.
“There was quite a bit of gunfire and smoke, and there were bombs going off everywhere,” he recalls.
“After that, we settled down and had our army rations – which were quite dreadful. Then we went to sleep, taking turns on guard duty.”
Shortly after landing, Reith and a number of glider pilots made their way back to the beach, while the rest stayed behind.
“The duty of a glider was to land safely and accurately in enemy territory, often under very difficult circumstances, and then to take part in any required action on the ground, offensive or defensive. You have to understand that we were not pilots belonging to the Royal Air Force (RAF). We were soldiers, just soldiers – like any other soldier,” Reith explains. “The fact that we were able to fly gliders didn’t make a difference. It wasn’t a very glamorous job.”
The journey back to the beach was tough.
“It was quiet, yet there were all sorts of reminders of a massive battle. It had been truly a dreadful two days,” he says.
“There were dead Germans all over the place, as well as abandoned field guns and deserted vehicles. Interestingly enough, we did not see one single injured or dead Allied soldier. They had already been cleared.”
Reith recalls how he and his colleagues heard machinegun fire as they passed a small village. They decided to investigate.
“We found a lone German in a church, firing at targets outside. He was causing quite a bit of damage and chaos,” says Reith.
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“We gave him a few warnings, and asked him to surrender so we could take him to our base as a prisoner of war. He replied by shooting some more. We decided that something had to be done. A shell wiped him out. In a way, I have always admired this man. Despite everything, he decided to go his own way after the German defeat. He was quite a brave man, I thought. And then he was gone.”
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Market Garden Horror
Once on the beach, Reith and his crew were sent back home, after which their training started for the next offensive: the infamous Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands.
“That was a horrific operation from a glider pilot point of view. Well, it was a horrific operation from so many different points of view,” Reith says.
“We lost some 500 glider pilots during that mission, and thousands of other troops too.”
Operation Market Garden took place between September 17 and September 25, 1944, in and around the eastern Dutch cities of Arnhem, Eindhoven, and Nijmegen. The assault involved tens of thousands of British and American troops behind enemy lines as an ‘airborne carpet’, including 20,000 paratroopers and 13,500 gliders. Thousands of tons of equipment and vehicles were also dropped.
The troops’ objective was to capture eight strategic bridges on and near the Dutch-German border, while Allied tanks would advance on the ground. The aim: the liberation of a large part of the Netherlands, after which the Allied forces would cross the Rhine and bring Germany swiftly to its knees. It didn’t work. Two SS Panzer divisions near Arnhem turned the largest airborne military operation in history into a fiasco that claimed more than 16,000 lives.
“It was an absolute disaster, and a hopeless battle. The Panzer division, along with a battalion of cadets, prevented any Allied advance from Arnhem. British and American soldiers, paratroopers, the infantry, and airborne troops were decimated, as they had the river behind them and the Germans in front of them,” Reith recalls with emotion in his voice.
“I was lucky. I had landed in Nijmegen and not in Arnhem. Nijmegen was difficult, but not as difficult and horrendous as the situation was at the other side of the river.”
After Operation Market Garden, Reith was sent back to England to prepare for the next operation, in April 1945 in Italy’s Po Valley. But the assault was cancelled at the very last minute, after an Allied recce had shown the valley was riddled with Germans.
“Not wanting another Arnhem, the mission was aborted,” Reith says, who was in Sicily at the time.
“That was the end of it. Soon afterwards, the war in Europe came to an end. We celebrated, we drank too much, and then we were taken back to England by a troopship. That was that. It was a bit of an anti-climax, really.”
Reith was discharged from the army a year later, a war veteran at the tender age of 24. He remembers how lost he was during those first few post-war years.
“I [joined] the army when I was 17, after leaving school. This meant that I didn’t have any relevant experience,” he says. “Not many people will say this, but when I came out of the army, I was lost. In the army we were fed, clothed, sheltered; we were given a bit of spending money. There I was, 24 years old and thrown into the labor market with no experience or skills. Most jobs had already been snapped up so it was very difficult. It took me quite a while to find my way around.”
Reith eventually ended up in sales, which he took to.
“By the time I came to South Africa in 1970, I was a successful sales manager,” he says.
So why South Africa and retirement near the beach at Margate in KwaZulu-Natal?
“I had a stepbrother here and my daughters had moved to South Africa with their husbands. When the first grandchild came, my wife insisted we move too.”
When he was invited to the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings, he didn’t hesitate.
“I was treated like royalty and thanks to the South African Air Force Association (SAAFA), I had a sponsored trip – with a first-class ticket donated by British Airways,” he says.
While there were quite a few veterans at the ceremony, only seven glider pilots were there.
“Most of us were over 90, except for one young chap who was 89,” Reith says with a smile. “I didn’t know any of them. It was a bit disappointing in a way. The two gliders I am in touch with – one who lives in Australia and one in Wales – were not well enough to travel.”
“Apart from them and 2,000 to 3,000 troops, all in their best dress, there was an enormous crowd – mainly French people who wanted to extend their gratitude for the liberation,” he says.
“It was quite something, and at times totally emotional. My eyes were brimmed with tears more than once.”
“The most emotional moment was when I was among the gravestones, thousands and thousands of them, looking for a white cross with the name of a comrade fallen during D-Day,” he says before falling silent for a few seconds.
“It was a reminder of how lucky I had been. I survived D-Day, I survived Market Garden, and I lived long enough to attend the commemoration of D-Day’s 70th anniversary. I am a very lucky guy.”

The Tears Of A Hero Who Flew Through Hell – Twice

Perceptions matter. They drive investors’ sentiments, helping to shape market forces and the state of the economy.
In Africa, perceptions and reality often merge into one homogenous picture: a continent of 55 nations constantly struggling with underdevelopment, graft, poverty, political instability, wars, capital and human flight, epidemics, fiscal quandary and general socio-economic disorder. There is, however, a time in the history of a nation when the harsh, sour, reality of its national condition begins to succumb to political inoculation.
For Nigeria, it would appear that time has come.
Nigeria may not have met all of the UN Millennium Development Goals by the end of 2015. Its economy may also be at its lowest point ever. Savants of African political economy will remember 2015 as the year Africa’s most populous nation replaced its culture of political acrimony with a new set of democratic ethos, underpinned by the will and wishes of its citizens.
One political party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has governed Nigeria since 1999. For the first time since independence in 1960, a democratically elected administration in Nigeria will be handing over power – in May – to another democratically elected political party, the opposition, All Progressive Congress (APC).
All things being equal, this seamless transition should rekindle investor confidence in the economy and once again place Nigeria on the radar of the global community – this time for positive reasons.
Goodluck Jonathan, in power since 2010 and perhaps Nigeria’s most vilified leader, will now go down in history as the first major presidential candidate in Nigeria to accept defeat while results were still being announced. And suddenly that ne’er-do-well image, that has defined the world’s view of Nigeria, may have begun to change for good.
Nigeria has had 55 years of arrested development. Governments have failed to build savings buffers. Hobbled internally for so long by ethnic and religious strife, the global view of Nigeria has been defined by its ignoble contradictions: a youthful population, which means it is a commercial Eldorado in the making; economic underperformance and the slow pace of development despite the country’s abundant human and material resources; and despite all these, the consistent positive contributions of Nigeria to the global humanitarian, scientific, economic, and cultural order over the years.
The do-or-die perception created by Nigeria’s political gladiators over the last 12 months did not help. Preoccupied by power games, they heated up the polity and created an atmosphere of apprehension and discomfort. Governance and economic management took a back seat. The dominant mood across the nation was gloom. Domestic and international investors held on to their pockets, watching and hoping that Nigeria Inc. would not self-destruct.
The postponement of the elections to March and April 2015 further ruffled already frayed nerves. Speaking to the Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Nigeria’s only Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka described the build-up to the elections as the most vicious, unprincipled, vulgar and violent he had ever witnessed.
“This one was like a no-holds-barred kind of election, especially, frankly, from the incumbency side. One shouldn’t be too surprised anyway given the kind of people who are manning the barricades for the incumbent candidate,” said Soyinka.
He said the elections were “most expensive, most prodigal, wasteful, senseless, I mean really insensitive in terms of what people live on in this country… And of course the sponsoring of violence in various places, in addition to this festive atmosphere in which every corner, every pillar, every electric pole is adorned with one candidate or the other, many of them in poses which remind one of Nollywood. I just hope we won’t go down as being the incorrigible giant of Africa.”
Soyinka’s worst fears now seem like a mirage. Eventually, the president suffered an electoral loss and secured a moral victory, helping to enthrone peace in his motherland much to the relief of the international community.
Sources within the Presidency confirmed to FORBES AFRICA that Jonathan was cajoled and encouraged by one past Nigerian military leader, an influential cleric and members of the international community including Ghana’s former president, John Kufuor, to throw in the towel.
The immediate verdict on the impact of the Jonathan presidency on business and the economy has been somewhat complimentary. Fisayo Soyombo, editor of The Cable, an online newspaper, believes that, “in the final analysis, history will be kinder to Jonathan than his underwhelming four years deserve – because he will not be remembered as the one who made life difficult with fuel price increases less than a year into his tenure; or the one under whose watch Boko Haram blossomed; or the one in whose time the naira fell to its all-time low; or the one in whose care billions disappeared without consequence; or the one who granted state pardon to one of Nigeria’s most notorious and ignominious public-office thieves. Jonathan will be remembered as the first civilian president to peacefully hand over power to another. That, matter-of-factly, is an undeservedly glittering end to what has been an unflattering four years.”
So, what do Nigerians and the rest of the world require from the incoming managers of Africa’s largest economy?
International investors and business folks with entrenched interests in the economy had secretly hoped that Jonathan’s main challenger, the 72-year-old retired army general Muhammadu Buhari, who was Nigeria’s head of state between late 1983 and 1985, would lose. The rationale for this was business continuity and perceived instability that a change in government might bring.
Nigerians however cared less about business continuity. Their choice of the APC was a vote for transparent and prudent governance. We need a seismic shift in the style and character of governance, says Olu Akanmu, a policy and public affairs commentator.
“A prudent government under the current situation is critical… We do not need 40 ministers and hundreds of special advisers and assistants,” Akanmu says, hinting at the need for Nigeria’s new leader to revamp the executive and legislature.
Nigeria’s public sector costs have been adjudged to be one of the highest in the world relative to the size and productive output of economy.
Inevitably, Buhari must now begin to govern a nation riddled with a despicable culture of corruption. No easy task in a nation brimming with politically connected moguls, many of whom might have supported his bid for the nation’s top job.
Buhari’s campaign was based on change. Winning the election with this anti-corruption mantra was the easy part. Leading and fulfilling the expectations of this potentially wealthy but impoverished country will be harder. Change will not happen overnight. Crude oil accounts for over 80% of Nigeria’s earnings. Crude oil prices have stalled below the $50 per barrel mark for months. Nigeria’s foreign reserves have been depleted to around $30 billion, an all-time low barely enough to cover four months of imports.
For years, the APC reveled in lampooning the policy decisions of the PDP-led government. Now, they will be taking over the unfinished business of fixing education, healthcare, unemployment, power, police-community relations and the huge infrastructure deficit. They have the next four years to succeed or fail.
Nigerians should also expect to say goodbye to some of the brilliant technocrats in the outgoing PDP-led administration, including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister since 2010 and a renowned economist who is respected around the world.
She struggled with ‘political forces in power’ to instill a savings and investment culture throughout her tenure and has absolved herself of responsibility for the failure of fiscal policy over the last six years. As the economy faltered, her club of admirers became increasingly critical of her views.
Jide Akintunde, editor of Financial Nigeria magazine, believes that real economic change will require accelerating reforms and deepening the gains of the last decade, especially in the key petroleum, services and agriculture sectors.
“Nigeria’s potential is currently locked in agriculture. The potential here needs to be unlocked. With more investments in the agriculture value chain, we will save more money, grow external earnings, create more sustainable jobs.”
A source in the Johannesburg office of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of the World Bank, told FORBES AFRICA that international investors will be watching Nigeria closely over the next several months.
“A new party in power, no matter how well intentioned or how well prepared, always has a lot to learn,” says the source.
Buhari and his team will need to win the confidence of his nation and the international community quickly.

Nigeria’s shot in  the arm

Edgar Maculo spent the night at Primrose police station in the east of Johannesburg. He feared for the life of his wife and their 10-month-old baby. He is miles away from his home in Mozambique. Should anything happen to him, his relatives would be forced to transport his remains back home, just like his compatriot, Ernesto Nhamuave, the man who was burned to death in 2008 in the same East Rand region.
He fights back tears when I ask him if the recent events remind him of 2008. Fear is the only thing preventing him from returning to Mozambique, even though South Africa is a place he now calls home.
After the xenophobic attacks almost seven years ago, Africa’s most industrialized economy is yet again battling to exorcize the demon of violence against foreign nationals.
Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini, and President Jacob Zuma’s son, Edward, have been blamed for fueling attacks on foreigners with their statements.
“We are requesting those who come from outside to please go back to their countries,” said Zwelithini.
“South Africa was too accommodative to foreign nationals unnecessarily,” said Zuma.
Following Zwelithini’s comments, at least five foreigners were killed as South Africans hunted foreigners, looted shops and vandalized property.
The attacks which started in Durban spread to Johannesburg. Police patrolled the streets during a series of standoffs between foreign store owners and attackers.
There are fears this could degenerate into ugly scenes seen in 2010 when images of a Mozambican in flames went all over the world.
Zwelithini blames foreigners for dirty streets and crime.
“There are unsightly goods hanging all over our shops. They dirty our streets. We cannot even recognize which shop is which. They are all blocked by foreigners,” Zwelithini is reported to have said at a meeting in Pongola, northern KwaZulu Natal, at the end of March.
Zwelithini’s comments have been criticized by human rights groups, religious leaders and political activists.
Thousands gathered in Durban to participate in a ‘peace march’ on April 16 in a bid to stop the violence.
Independent human rights organization, Lawyers for Human Rights, condemned the intolerance and blatant disregard for the rights of foreigners in South Africa.
“Most concerning is the use of aggressive measures, including rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, by police to disperse the roughly 300 foreign nationals who defied the revocation of their permission to protest against recent xenophobic attacks in the area,” the organization said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, foreign nationals are not given a platform to voice their fears and concerns.”
The rest of Africa has decried the violence.
Nigerians have rebuked South Africa with hashtags on social media and placards at the South African Embassy in Lagos.
“The on-going activity in South Africa is shocking. It is unfortunate that some South Africans are oblivious to the economic contribution foreigners have made to the country over the years,” says Victor Teriba, a lecturer in Lagos.
“These terrible acts have sent shockwaves through the continent and indeed, the rest of the world. To think that foreigners are being maltreated is rather depressing,” says Zainab Maisani, an Abuja resident.
“A lot of South Africans are mortified by the actions of our countrymen towards foreigners and they should be brought to order immediately,” says Xolani Mabaso, a South African living in Nigeria.
Worried Kenyans persistently called friends and family in South Africa to check on them. Many also took to social media to condemn the violence, others simply to vent. The foreign affairs office in Nairobi announced Kenya was ready to evacuate its citizens from South Africa.
Malawi and Somalia started repatriating its countrymen.
President Zuma also condemned the attacks.
“We cannot continue killing one another as Africans who belong to the same continent. What is happening in our country is not acceptable.”
While economists and political analysts say that the xenophobic violence is a symptom of unemployment and inequality in South Africa, some government officials disagreed.
Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba, blamed a ‘third force’. He claims there are people in the shadows that are bent on destroying South Africa’s image.
“There are people who are behind this and their main aim is to destroy the image of and embarrass South Africa internationally. These people buy the youth drugs and arm them to go on a looting frenzy,” Gigaba said in an interview with radio station Ukhozi FM.
Tens of thousands of foreigners, mostly from other African states and Asia, have moved to South Africa since white-minority rule ended in 1994.
It is estimated that about 4% of the world’s population comprises of diaspora communities, a reality that South Africans should start embracing.

Demons On The  Streets Of Hate

For many Kenyans, Thursday April 2 was meant to be a beautiful day. As with the Christian traditions, many of the Garissa University students were preparing for the long weekend. The Easter holidays would give them an opportunity to relax, away from the long hours in class. This was not to be. In the early hours of that fateful day, gunfire rang out. What followed was a near 15-hour siege – a massacre that left 147 people dead.
Hours into the attack, the Islamic insurgents, Al Shabaab, claimed responsibility.
Most of the dead were students, described by government officials and families as ‘the hope of our country’. Five service men too succumbed. Kenyan officials say four of the attackers were killed, while five Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers lost their lives. Six other suspects have been charged in court with the killings.
Tales from the survivors are chilling.
Cynthia Cherotich hid in her room as the militants swept through the corridors of the university.
“I had to drink body lotion to survive. I was thirsty,” she says.
“It was a terrible experience. We hid in the closet the entire period until we heard voices we thought were from the Kenya Defence Forces,” says another student, Mary Njeri.
“Still, we were not sure. So I asked my roommates, who we were hiding with, whether to go out and die or stay in the closet and still die there. She told me that if it was our day to die, we would rather die outside. When we got out, it was about 2.30PM. We met the KDF and they rescued us,” she says.
The students say there was a power failure the previous night. They thought the initial gun shots was the sound of an electrical fault. Soon after, the screams of the dying echoed throughout the building.
The attack, police investigations reveal, was planned well in advance with the help of some of the university’s non-teaching staff. Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi, the mastermind behind the attack, was a University of Nairobi law graduate and the son of a government chief from Mandera.
At the Chiromo Mortuary in Nairobi, where parents identified and collected bodies of their loved ones, grief filled every breath. They blame the Islamist militants and the Kenyan government.
The rescue mission for the students has been described as bungled. For close to 15 hours, the insurgents roamed the corridors of the institution. They herded the students in rooms and shot them.
Survivors had to answer questions about Islamic teachings to stay alive. Most of those killed were Christians.
An elite squad of the Kenyan police force joined late in the day and in less than half an hour, the siege was over. Interestingly, the cabinet secretary in charge of internal security and inspector general of police arrived at the scene hours before the elite squad.
The squad based in Nairobi arrived aboard two fixed-wing aircraft, while part of the contingent travelled 390 kilometers by road to the college. One of the police planes that should have been used for the rescue operation was in the coastal city of Mombasa to pick up a daughter in law of one of the police commandants.
This has led to the government taking some of the blame.
“Institutions of learning should be the safest place for our children. Now where do they turn to? Our government should have done better. All these lives could not have been lost if they acted on the intelligence,” says a family member of a student that was killed.
Five days before the Garissa attack, several alerts of possible Al Shabaab attacks in the country had been issued by embassies. On the eve of the attack, at the Diaspora Investment Conference in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed the warnings and accused the embassies of economic sabotage.
“I have not heard the British issue travel advisories against other European capitals,” said Kenyatta. “We want to send a clear message that they will not intimidate us with these threats.”
In the face of the attack, Kenyatta cut a figure of a head of state in charge. Addressing the nation, the president ordered for the training of 10,000 service men and women whose recruitment was challenged in court. He said he would take responsibility. One week later, the executive order was rescinded and a fresh recruitment ordered.
Tellingly, in March, a number of Kenyan universities had put their students on high alert for a possible terror attack. The notices urged students to be vigilant within the institutions and co-operate with security agents regarding any suspicions.
The Garissa attack is the second deadliest terror attack on Kenyan soil. In 1998, the United States Embassy in Nairobi was bombed, killing over 200 people. The bombings were claimed by the then Osama bin Laden-led Al Qaeda terror group. The attack at Westgate Mall in 2013 resulted in the death of 67 people. In between, however, there have been several Al Shabaab-linked attacks on Kenyan soil.
Al Shabaab claims the attacks, and abduction of tourists along the Kenyan coastline, are retaliation for the KDF crossing the border into Somalia. Victims are told that Kenya will not know peace until its troops are withdrawn.
“We need to withdraw the troops from Somalia and have them pitch camp in the vicinity of the Wajir region [near the Somalian border]. Let them set up a combat base there,” says Andrew Frankline, Managing Director of Small Wars Advisory Services.
However, the government insists that the withdrawal of troops is as good as surrender.
Since October 2011, data indicate that Kenya has been attacked by Al Shaabab, or militants affiliated to it, more than 135 times. This translates to at least nine attacks every month. Government agencies report that it has resulted in over 400 deaths and over 1,000 injuries.
The attacks continue to ruin Kenya’s tourism industry.
“When we thought it could not get any worse it did. Tourism is suffering, it has been tough,” says Agatha Juma, Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Tourism Federation.
It might be a while before Kenya, and its economy, recovers.

‘If It Was Our Day To Die, We Would Rather Die Outside’

Narendra Raval is a palm reader, a priest and an astrologer; credentials that have seen high-ranking people – including presidents – call on him.
Despite his powers, Guru, as he is known, did not foretell the meteoric rise of his integrated construction firm, the largest in East and Central Africa, with an annual turnover of $650 million, according to FORBES.
The rise is even more remarkable when you consider he was born in India’s Gujarat state, to a family so poor that they couldn’t afford to send him to school.
Raval, now a Kenyan citizen worth around $400 million according to FORBES, is the industrialist behind the Devki Group of Companies, a conglomerate of three companies which manufactures cement, roofing sheets and steel.
But even with his sizeable bank account and reputation, Raval has maintained a down-to-earth character; repeatedly crediting his company’s success to his God and more than 4,000 employees.
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“When we started the steel manufacturing company in the early 1990s, my 70 employees agreed to go months without pay; we were not making any sales,” says Raval. “A majority of those loyal pioneer employees are still working with me and so are their children.”
He’s also an indefatigable philanthropist who spends millions, including half his annual salary, on scholarships, plus clothes and food for hundreds of hungry children. He has also poured his money into government schools.
“When you are blessed, it is your duty to bless the less fortunate,” he says.
When we meet in his office early on a Friday morning for this interview, it quickly becomes apparent that Raval is an extremely busy man for whom 24 hours in a day is not enough. His two mobile phones buzz every five minutes.
Two of those calls were from top-ranking government officials. As he ends one of the phone conversations, he apologizes and explains that the Minister of Industry was scheduled to tour his roofing sheets factory in two days’ time.
It’s not surprising. The government has lined up several multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects, making Raval a highly sought after entrepreneur.
His journey to the top began at the age of 11, when he joined a temple in India as a priest’s assistant. There he studied Hinduism and astrology in exchange for a $50 monthly bursary for school.
Raval was sent to Kenya in 1978, to serve as the head priest of the Swaminarayan Temple in Nairobi. He was 16.
At the Nairobi temple, he pioneered mentorship classes and counseled youngsters against drug abuse. In 1982, his father instructed him to get married in order to set a good example for his two younger siblings.
“My family forced me to get married,” he says, as he excuses himself to answer yet another phone call, which this time, incidentally, is from his wife Neeta, a medical doctor.
“In order to get married, I had to leave the temple, which I did in 1982. Three years later, I married Neeta.”
The newlyweds tried their hand at business in 1986. They opened a hardware shop called The Steel Centre, in Gikomba, a market area in bustling downtown Nairobi.
Gikomba was not their preferred site. A former Kenyan finance minister rented a small shop to the couple for $70 (then Sh3,500) per month, a rate four times cheaper than shops in the smarter end of town.
“My wife and I did everything ourselves; one of us would make the deliveries while the other manned the shop,” he says.
The Steel Centre churned out $24,000 a month, a pretty penny in 1986.
Raval ventured into steel manufacturing. He approached one of his acquaintances, and his mentor, former President Daniel arap Moi, who promised to help with plans provided Raval made it his priority to employ Kenyans. It was an easy promise for Raval to keep.
Some of Moi’s friends offered to sell land to Raval but asked too much.
In 1989, he secured 30 acres of land in Athi River, a vast industrial zone about 35 kilometers south of Nairobi, for Sh365,000 (around $4,000 now). Today, this amount can only buy an eighth of an acre in the same place.
This piece of land, which Raval shared with wild animals, became the launch pad for the Devki Group business empire.
“It was a piece of land that hid any potential it had away from us,” says Raval.
Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), a government-owned lender, lent him a $700,000 to set up the factory, import the raw materials to kick start production in 1992.
It wasn’t an easy birth. The three established steel manufacturers at the time fought back.
“They priced their products a few shillings below ours. They had established markets so their dubious pricing tactics did not affect their bottom lines,” he says.
Six months after commissioning the plant, Devki Steel was selling less than 10% of what it made. It had a growing pile of finished product and raw material in its warehouses.
It was at this point that Raval froze salaries. They heard him out; agreed to go three months without pay, and survive on food allowances. It was hard but good news was around the corner.
In the third quarter of 1992, international steel prices skyrocketed.
Devki Steel was in the pound seats. Its warehouses were packed with $1.2 million worth of raw material and finished products. Raval made a killing, earning $1 million in profit right off. Devki Steel was on its way.
“The profit enabled me to settle my workers’ dues, clear my bank loan and invest in expanding the factory,” Raval recalls, shaking his head in disbelief at his luck.
In 2015, Devki Steel produces 250,000 tons of over 100 different finished products every year, a huge climb from 7,500 tons in 1992 when it produced merely steel reinforcement bars and tubes.
Seventy percent of Devki Steel’s products are sold in Kenya. The rest is exported to Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Burundi and Ethiopia.
After working his way up from a humble priest to one of Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, Raval is far from ready to slow down. He wants to offer Kenyans construction materials to build a house at an affordable price.
In 2008, he took $72 million from his steel business to set up Maisha Mabati Mills. It manufactures aluminum and zinc-coated iron sheets, the most common form of roofing material in many parts of the continent. The company’s size, in terms of assets, has since grown to $125 million, churning out 200,000 metric tons of iron sheets every year.
Raval was investing again in 2010, this time commissioning a $100-million cement factory, National Cement, with an annual capacity of 350,000 tons. Investments have pushed annual output to 1.2 million tons.
Kenya’s cement industry is no picnic either. It is highly competitive with players jostling for control against Lafarge-owned Bamburi Cement.
New Kenyan players, like National Cement, Mombasa Cement and Savanna Cement, have entered the market, driven by a slew of infrastructure and housing projects in East Africa.
Kenya’s six cement makers produced 5.2 million tons in the 11 months to November 2014, a 13% increase from the 4.6 million tons manufactured in a similar period the previous year, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
The new cement players, despite already producing excess capacity, are now announcing plans to expand.
Raval last year accepted $70 million ($55 million in debt and $15 million in shareholding) from the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In return, the World Bank’s lending arm took a minority stake in Devki Group of Companies.
“We would like to send a strong signal of IFC’s confidence in a Kenyan company making a difference in the local economy,” the IFC said when the deal was announced.
The money will be used to expand National Cement’s annual production capacity to 2 million by 2016. This includes the construction of a clinker (cement’s main raw material) factory.
The $200-million expansion will make National Cement the largest manufacturer in Kenya, for now. ARM Cement and Bamburi Cement have also announced plans to increase capacity.
Johnson Nderi, the corporate finance manager at ABC Capital, says that these enhanced factories and investments in improved equipment has driven the price of a 50 kilogram bag of cement down from approximately $9 to $7 in three years.
“Kenya is experiencing a construction boom and it is therefore logical that the monopolistic cement industry in the country has finally come to an end following the entry of new local players,” says Nderi.
By agreeing to do a deal with the IFC, Raval snubbed an offer from Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. The Nigerian cement king wanted to buy Raval out and then changed his offer to a majority stake. Raval said no.
Undeterred, Dangote is planning to enter Kenya’s cement scene with a $400 million factory in Kitui.
“We had our reasons for not accepting the offer from Dangote. IFC, other than the substantial financial support, will also bring on board their expertise in infrastructure management,” he says.
The IFC’s expertise will be useful in Raval’s grand plan to expand across the continent. He plans to set up steel and cement factories in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Nigeria over the next five years. The expansion will cost around $150 million, with a portion of this coming from the IFC.
“Beginning next year, we shall be setting up factories in one new country every year. I traveled to Zambia in February to view some potential factory sites,” he says.
Raval could be onto something as the IFC estimates that Africa needs to increase cement production by between 10 and 15 tons per year, every year, for the next decade, to meet demand.
In the four years to 2013, production of cement in the continent increased from 33 metric tons to 88 tons, growth the IFC and Raval hope to sustain ahead of a listing.
“The intention is to list the Devki Group at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) after 2020. I want to give Kenyans a chance to own a part of what is innately their company,”
he says.
Raval dreams of being the man who put a roof over every Kenyan’s head without breaking the bank.
Raval doesn’t like to waste time. He is a trained pilot who flies his helicopter to visit his factories.
“There is still a lot more to be done. Our intention is to become the biggest pan-African manufacturer of steel and cement.”
So, if you see a chopper swooping over Nairobi, it could be a steel-and-cement-making priest on a mission.

Tag: May 2015

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‘If It Was Our Day To Die, We Would Rather Die Outside’

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