By Sabdiyo Dido Bashuna, Senior Technical Adviser Value Chains &amp; Agribusiness, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)



As Covid-19 continues its spread across Africa, the restrictions to limit infection are having a disproportionate impact on half of the continent’s food growers and producers: women.



At a time when food security is under extra strain because of the pandemic, women in agriculture are enduring extra hygiene and social distancing measures on top of endemic inequalities, which together undermine their capacity to respond and recover from the crisis.



But the pandemic has also triggered creativity and survival techniques, leading to product diversity, new digital marketing and distribution channels.



Across Africa, women make up&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/am307e/am307e00.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50 per cent</a>&nbsp;of the agricultural labour force as well as often taking primary responsibility for caring for families, households and communities.



Yet historic inequalities mean women are facing the added pressure of the coronavirus outbreak while also having access to just a fraction of the necessary resources, from land and labour to finance and trainings.



In normal times, the productivity gap between men and women farmers is an estimated&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e04.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">30 per cent</a>&nbsp;as a result of unequal access to resources, but with shocks like coronavirus exacerbating existing inequalities, the potential impact on food production, food security and nutrition could be far greater. &nbsp;&nbsp;



Better supporting African women in agriculture would help bridge this gap and increase both yields and profitability, providing more food for the poor, sick and hungry, and more income to support rural families during the global health emergency. So how can we do this during the pandemic?



One challenge of persistent gender inequality is that women, whose roles are often home-based and even more so during the coronavirus outbreak, tend not to present themselves for support.



The first barrier to overcome, then, is reaching women in the first place, whether with agricultural advice, financial support or valuable farm inputs like seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.



For more than three decades, CTA has worked closely with extension workers in Africa, who make direct contact with women through cooperatives and communities while also championing digital tools and services that are less intrusive or demanding.



Online networks such as&nbsp;<a href="https://value4her.hivebrite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VALUE4HERConnect</a>&nbsp;have provided a platform for African women entrepreneurs in agriculture that offers networking, mentoring and training support in a way that is convenient for heads of households.



These kinds of networks are also helpful for addressing a second challenge resulting from gender inequality, which is that the majority of women’s agri-businesses tend to be smaller and more likely to fail given the low levels of resilience.



To be effective, any tailored support for women must also be channelled with such small businesses in mind. Only a small fraction of rural women own bank account, for example, so accessing such funds is a challenge.



Providing grants and flexible loans for women can help them afford financial services like insurance and credit that protect their livelihoods against stresses while allowing them to invest in growing their enterprises.



Additionally, for women to fulfil their often care-based roles in households and on farms throughout the pandemic, they must be safe, both from the risk of infection and gender-based violence, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/issue-brief-covid-19-and-ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-en.pdf?la=en&amp;vs=5006" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increased</a>&nbsp;as a result of lockdowns.



Finally, the new coping mechanisms and survival techniques adopted by women in agribusiness during the pandemic need to be documented, supported and scaled to cushion them from failure and help build resilience against future shocks.



Governments, health agencies and non-profits must provide technical assistance to help educate women on navigating the complexities caused by this pandemic, from basic hygiene measures to skills such as business management, renegotiation of supply contracts, or accessing business support.



Women smallholders already play such a vital role in producing and providing food in low-income countries, which has become all the more important in the wake of coronavirus.



But without targeted and appropriate support, they miss fulfilling their potential, which is a loss to women and families that depend on their incomes, and in the grip of a pandemic, it may also be a fatal oversight.

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Op-Ed: Why African Women In Agriculture Face The Greatest Double Burden Of Covid-19 And Food Insecurity

Last year, Bill Gates named his 10 breakthrough technologies for the year. Among the technological developments he outlined were robot dexterity, new-wave nuclear power, customized cancer vaccines and the cow-free burger. It was the first time that the list, usually compiled by MIT Technology Review, was created by a guest editor. It is no wonder that Gates rightly predicted that home computers and the internet would infiltrate much of our lives. Yet, when I went through this list, it was not necessarily universal. Many of these breakthrough technologies made sense through Western lenses. We have to ask, which of these breakthrough technologies will have the most significant impact on the African continent?



Perhaps the most pressing issue for Africa now is agriculture. Climate change has had a devastating impact on the agriculture sector, which is particularly concerning when you consider that most African economies still heavily depend on it. A study by McKinsey &amp; Company found that more than 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is smallholder farmers, and about 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from agriculture. Yet, increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather events not only disrupt entire industries but reduce food availability and impacts food quality. This, of course, is coupled with the fastest-rising population, which places more strain on resources.



We have already observed in the last few years how devastating a drought can be. South Africa has become a significant food importer, while Kenya and Zimbabwe are on the verge of starvation. This has seen the regional and national economic growth take a severe knock. Yet, as the United Nations put it, “the continent has enormous potential, not only to feed itself and eliminate hunger and food insecurity but also be a major player in global food markets.” So how do we go about this? I would argue that tapping into the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) does not just serve as a way of revitalizing the agricultural sector but also realizing its potential. As the American financier Bernard Baruch once put it: “Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deep into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.”



I have just bought a farm and have been looking at ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can make farming more efficient. Farmers can tap into AI to combat disease and pests, which have been made worse by climate change and pesticide use. Drones and other robots equipped with computer vision can collect data points from the farms’ existing crops. If you were to ask me to spell out some breakthrough technologies, many of them would be inextricably linked with the agricultural sector.



For instance, it is estimated that humans would need to plant over 1.2 trillion trees to combat climate change. Here, we could use AI to automate this process.



Airlitix is a South African AI software that is currently being used in drones to automate greenhouse management processes. We could take this a step further. Airlitix can collect temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide data as well as analyse soil and crop health. 



Elsewhere, similar technology has been adopted. The Third Eye project in Kenya uses near-infrared cameras mounted on drones to survey and diagnose the plants for pests and diseases, water stress and nutrient deficiencies. This requires a combination of historical data and the use of AI. Last year, IBM developed an AI-powered app to test the quality of their soil and water on location, in real-time. The AgroPad is a technology that can rapidly perform chemical analysis of water and soil samples. In California, Ceres Imaging has mapped fields using images of farms, which are analysed using AI to ascertain whether crops are getting enough water. This technology helps farmers decide when to plant, water, spray and harvest their crops.



This conversation crops up as we scrutinize what it means to have a green economy. The 4IR does not merely provide tools for efficiency, but it presents a unique opportunity to interrogate how we can transform the industry as our natural environment deteriorates.



To a large extent, we underestimate the importance of the agricultural sector. Yet, without it, we would not have food security, we would see our economies crumble and there would be untold job losses.



-Tshilidzi Marwala

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Op-Ed: How To Be A Major Player In Global Food Markets

The world economy is set to enjoy a very good year. In that, it will be much like 2018 and 2017 and most probably like 2020 and 2021. Economic growth will be fairly strong in most of the countries where such expansion does the most good. While rich countries worry about objectively tiny setbacks, poor people are overall gaining more of the dignity that comes with adequate material comfort. 



Consider extreme poverty. The World Bank draws the line between the wretched of the earth and everyone else at daily consumption of goods and services worth $1.90. The Our World in Data website at Oxford University estimates that 72 percent of the world’s population lived below that line in 1950. The World Bank’s preliminary estimate for 2018 is 8.6 percent, down from 10 percent in 2015.



Fewer very poor people means more are enjoying better lives. The proportion of the global population without access to electricity is declining by about 0.3 percentage points a year. The number of children not enrolled in school is shrinking by about 5 million annually. Almost every indicator of basic prosperity shows the same trend.



The good news is pretty much global. Even Africa, long the lagging continent, is starting to catch up. The proportion of African children that die before they turn five has declined from 21 percent in 1975 to 8 percent in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available. Better health comes from &#8211; and with &#8211; greater wealth. Real per person income in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 40 percent in the last decade.



Not all the news is good. Due to war and civil conflict, primarily in Africa, the proportion of the world’s population that is undernourished has risen by 0.2 percentage points in the last two years. Still, at 11.9 percent, it is 2.2 percentage points lower than a decade ago.



The prediction of more global gains in 2019 is pretty solid. There are also good reasons to believe that 2029 will be fine. Economic growth in very poor countries is becoming a virtuous circle. More education and better health creates better workers, who support stronger institutions, which make larger and more effective investments, which produce the money needed to pay for even better schooling and health.



That pattern has held in country after country for at least two decades. Bad governments do slow progress, but it takes war or total state failure, as in Venezuela, to reverse the progress.



The almost unstoppable global retreat of misery and ignorance is arguably the best news ever in economic history. For political history, however, the trends are far less clear. The old belief that greater wealth would naturally bring more open societies looks flawed. The populace of many countries, both richer and poorer, seem pretty happy with autocratic and extreme nationalist governments.



China is the prime example. The oppressive and fairly corrupt Communist Party has presided over rapid and widespread increases in prosperity. Its cross-border ambitions, both civil and military, have expanded as well.



That is worrying for many reasons. One of them is that war is probably the only force destructive enough to stop the upward march of global economic good news. The great question, for both 2019 and 2029, is whether progress will threaten prosperity by leading to the use of the world’s ever-larger supply of ever more deadly arms. -Reuters



-Edward Hadas

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World Will Improve Where It Matters Most In 2019

Idrisu Ali grimaces as he recalls the day he sent his 12-year-old daughter, Fatima, away to live with a 65-year-old man.
Although the practice is common in Nigeria’s remote northern state of Bauchi, Ali did not feel entirely comfortable with the idea of giving away his little girl’s hand in marriage – to a man old enough to be her grandfather.
“I was sad because he was too old. I wanted her to marry someone younger, say 55 or 50 because he could take care of her for a longer time before he dies. But he was a successful farmer in the village and he paid a good dowry,” says Ali in his rundown shack in Bauchi, the state capital.
The dowry consisted of some kola nuts (native to the African tropics), a cow, a bag of salt and a sewing machine. To protect his daughter from the negative glares of society, Ali accepted the generous offer and sent Fatima on her way to her new life as a wife.
“This is what happens when a girl reaches puberty. It is our culture and that is the right thing for a woman to do. She will grow up quickly and learn how to take care of a man and the home and bring honor to her family,” says Ali.
For Fatima and many other young girls in Northern Nigeria, their demise into forced marriages is puzzling.
Fatima’s marriage is prohibited under Nigeria’s Child Rights Act (CRA), which bans marriage before the age of 18. But federal laws are at loggerheads with age-old customs, as well as the implementation of Sharia law or Islamic law in some Muslim states.
“As a father you have to do what is best for your family. If your daughter is ready for marriage, you do what you must to make sure she finds a good man,” says Ali.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2017/11/06/heres-much-money-kevin-spacey-lose-following-sexual-harassment-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Here&#8217;s How Much Money Kevin Spacey Could Lose Following His Sexual Harassment Scandal</a>
Nigeria is home to the largest number of child brides in Africa, with 23 million girls and women who are married in childhood according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). GirlsnotBrides.org asserts that globally, the number of teen brides is expected to reach 1.2 billion by 2050 if there is no reduction with one in three girls in the developing world married before age 18.
The practice has continued to gain prominence in northern Nigeria due to prevailing attitudes in an area with gender disparity. The grim situation is particularly pronounced in this region due mainly to strong resistance to CRA with opponents stating that some aspects of the Act are against religion and therefore cannot be followed.
“According to current figures, more than 50,000 girls worldwide are married while still children, often before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers and this endangers the life trajectories of these girls in numerous ways,” says Oby Ezekwesili, Senior Economic Advisor and Co-Founder of #Bringbackourgirls campaign.
Such was the case for Mamuna Ibrahim. At the age of 14, she is already a divorcee.
“When I was 13, one of my father’s friends came to the house and asked for a bride. My father chose me because I was the oldest out of my three siblings. I did not want to go with him. I wanted to go to school and be an air hostess but I could not disobey my father so I accepted,” says Ibrahim.
Her husband, a 38-year-old trader, took her away to the remote dust-blown state of Borno in north eastern Nigeria. Immediately after the marriage, Ibrahim’s problems began.
“I wanted to continue my education but he said no. One day he came home and I was reading a storybook and he got really angry and beat me. He said a wife’s place is in the house not at school. He was abusive and demanded sex every evening. It was painful,” says Ibrahim.
To escape the traumatic ordeal, she ran home to her mother and begged not to be returned. Her angry husband divorced her immediately under Sharia Law, which requires a man to say out loud “I divorce you” three times for a marriage to be over.
“My father was very angry and embarrassed. He threatened to kill me but my mother and other elders of the family pleaded with him. He stopped talking to me because I brought shame to the family. He disowned me,” says Ibrahim.
She stays with her mother’s sister on the outskirts of Kaduna. Her situation is worsened due to her early pregnancy. At three months in and with no education or prospects of finding a job, Ibrahim roams the streets of Kaduna selling bean cake and mobile phone vouchers to make ends meet.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/09/26/uncertain-future-nigerias-female-prisoners/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Uncertain Future Of Nigeria&#8217;s Female Prisoners</a>
According to the International Center For Research on Women (ICRW), the impact of the practice of child marriage is felt both at the individual and societal levels and it is therefore imperative in alleviating poverty and subsequently, promoting economic development.
“Child marriages have an adverse impact on the economy by limiting opportunities for career and vocational advancement for young girls. It therefore disempowers women and stifles the prosperity of a country because when a significant number of the workforce is rendered economically inactive, the nation will suffer,” says Bismarck Rewane, CEO, Financial Derivatives Company in Lagos.
Its health implications are just as dire.
“There are several health risks that these young girls are exposed to. Most of them get pregnant at an age where normal vaginal births are difficult because their hips are not wide enough for the baby to be pushed through the vaginal canal and this can lead to the death of the mother and the baby. Also, the babies are exposed to diseases due to the lack of micronutrients in the girl’s body and most often babies do not survive,” says Dr. Mariam Doku, a pediatrician at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana.
Her claims are further buttressed by the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) that asserts that teen brides are more likely to contract HIV and are also exposed to sexually transmitted infections due to their inability to negotiate safer sexual practices. As President of the IWHC, Françoise Girard, has played a key role in advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and women’s rights with UN agencies.
It is her belief that ending the practice of teen brides is a smart thing to do as it falls in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which has made ending child marriage by 2030 a key target.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/08/18/without-money-theres-no-love/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: &#8216;Without Money There&#8217;s No Love&#8217;</a>
Organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNICEF continue to support efforts in many countries but according to Rewane, much more must be done.
“The notion that sending girls off to marry much older men is a better option is also partly attributable to poverty. For instance, a very poor family is likely to reason that marrying their daughter off early will provide her basic needs and in addition, the gains gotten from her marriage may be part of the survival strategy of the family. So we need to tackle the root of the issue, which is poverty and that means efforts to abolish this practice needs to be a state-level intervention,” asserts Rewane.
For those in remote areas who are dependent on subsistence farming, the practice can be influenced by seasonal conditions. For example, in the years when rains or crops fail, the practice of “drought brides”, thus girls who bring in a dowry, while being one fewer mouth to feed, contribute to pushing up the numbers of teen brides dramatically. Four of the 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are in West Africa’s Sahel and Sahara belt, according to UNICEF.
In many of these communities, a family’s wealth is measured in terms of the herd of cattle they own and young girls are the medium of payment. As policy makers continue to lobby traditional heads to implement the CRA in local communities, the dilemma continues for girls like Ibrahim whose cries for freedom continue to fall on deaf ears.

Fatima, 12, Husband, 65 – The Dire Story Of Child Brides

Ramen noodles in Sweden, wheat bread in Tanzania and Chilean wines in China. The cross-Atlantic transit of the potato and the tomato from the Andes to Europe, and back again as French fries and pasta sauce. We think of the world as globalised and sophisticated in its food tastes, and our palettes as curious and ever-expanding. Food spreads cultural acceptance and understanding.
But the spread of food also exposes a darker underlying history of globalisation and industrialisation. Patterns in the way that food is distributed around the world follow colonial-industrial trends from the past. And while global trade has helped lift many out of poverty, it has not done so evenly. It has kept a colonialist imprint on the planet in a different way: with differentiated access to nutritious food and the rise of obesity and other food-related health problems.
Beyond adding unusual grains or fancy foods to their palettes, wealthy shoppers might have their pick of green beans imported from Kenya to the UK, or <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/48.3/a-dry-future-weighs-heavy-on-california-agriculture" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">beef and grains grown in Uruguay by US farmers</a>.
Meanwhile, eaters in developing countries are more likely to eat “exotic” foods like white bread, maize or rice. These are less nutritious because of the way in which they are processed. In addition, exotic food crops tend to require unsustainable farming practices, like using more water in places where it’s already a scarce resource.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/02/01/food-new-oil/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Food The New Oil</a>
To escape these patterns, a new way of engaging with the complexity of food systems is needed. We need to adopt an approach that recognises that challenges are systemic and that they can’t be solved with silver bullet solutions.
A more systemic approach could help shift the global food system because it recognises that food production must become more environmentally sustainable and must be designed in a way that meets the needs of the world’s people in an equitable and just manner.
Understanding the food system as a complex system with interlinking social and ecological aspects is an important step that <a href="http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/project/guidance-for-resilience-in-the-anthropocene-investments-for-development-graid/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">resilience thinking</a> brings to the table of food system governance.
<h2>Colonial roots</h2>
Like many problems in the global South, the global food system issues can be traced back to a colonial history. Back in 1989 two sociologists, Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, developed a useful concept in their work on agrarian studies: <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb00360.x/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">global food regimes</a>. They described two key periods where the structure of the global food system enabled the uptake of Western-style capitalism and consumerism. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 and the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1016/S1057-1922%2805%2911009-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Friedmann</a> went on to describe a potential third regime that we might find ourselves in now: the corporate-environmental regime.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/09/01/pay-nose-food/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Why We Pay Through The Nose For Food</a>
The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb00360.x/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first food regime</a> is defined by food imports to Europe from the colonies. That would include basic grains and livestock from the settler colonies, most notably to Australia, Canada, and the US, and tropical imports from the rest of the occupied colonies.
The second food regime rerouted food from the US “to its informal empire of postcolonial states on strategic perimeters of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10460-009-9218-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Cold War”</a>. It was framed as a development project that had a suite of interventions like food aid, green revolution technologies, and chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and the extension of international markets into the countryside.
<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10460-009-9218-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">At the same time</a>, a division of agricultural labour evolved at the international scale: cheap labour in the former colonies facilitated the flow of commodities across national borders, from poorer to richer countries. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/laura-pereira-321109" target="_blank" rel="author noopener noreferrer">Laura Pereira</a>, Researcher/Lecturer at the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch University 
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>
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Rotten Food,  Rotten Strike

The global food system still benefits the rich at the expense of the poor

No doubt, African nations and institutions remain resolute in their quest for peace and prosperity.
As the African Development Bank (AfDB) takes ownership of this grand mission through its High 5 development priorities, the West Africa sub-region, host to the bank’s headquarters and the location of Africa’s poorest, largest and fastest growing economies, continues to be a source of cheer and sobriety in equal measure.
West Africa’s political, economic and investment climate has been inundated lately with news of the new government in Ghana settling down to the business of governance; the inglorious exit of Yahya Jammeh, the Gambian politician and former military officer who ruled The Gambia from 1994 to 2017; Cote d’Ivoire’s modest macroeconomic achievements, now hinged on its 2016-2020 National Development Plan; Liberia’s preparations for presidential elections in October and Nigeria’s ongoing struggles with the health of its inflation-prone economy.
Equally distressing for Nigerians is the deteriorating health of President Muhammadu Buhari, as they marked two years of his administration last month. While economic stagnation and inertia were the dominant features of Buhari’s first year in office, his second year has been riddled with political and policy spats between the legislature and executive. Buhari’s recurrent disappearing acts have also not helped matters. For the second time this year, he had to be flown to London for urgent medical attention at the beginning of May, heightening fears of his incapacity to lead and govern Africa’s largest economy by GDP ($594.28 billion as at 2016).
Sadly, it is difficult not to connect Buhari’s private and personal struggles with the economic and public affairs of the nation. His physical and cognitive absence from the administration and shenanigans of governance has turned out to be the defining character of his tenure so far. It is also a symbolic reflection of Nigeria’s inability to lead the rest of Africa as the continent pursues social and economic rejuvenation.
To attain its numerous lofty goals for the continent, the rest of Africa and the AfDB will need the democratic engine of the Nigerian nation firing on all cylinders. Ghana’s former president John Dramani Mahama once said if Nigeria sneezes, the rest of West Africa catches a cold. With approximately 184 million inhabitants, Nigeria accounts for 47% of West Africa’s population, and has one of the largest populations of youth in the world, according to the World Bank, which also expects 1% and 2.5% growth for Nigeria’s economy in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Clearly, harnessing the energy and creativity of Africa’s youth will be key to transforming the continent’s fortunes over the next several decades. Also crucial is intra-Africa trade, currently at 12%. Africa needs to trade with Africa, increasing the exchange of goods, services and investment across our fragmented borders.
Linked to trade and Africa’s youthful population is bio-technology and Africa’s capacity to feed itself. When African heads of state gathered in the Indian city of Ahmedabad during the 17th annual general meeting of the AfDB last month, the future of agriculture in Africa was top of the agenda. While the continent is hoping to feed itself and eradicate malnutrition by 2025, the average age of farmers on the continent is currently 60 years.
AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina says: “There are opportunities to empower the youth at each stage of the agricultural value chain as ‘agripreneurs’. Young people are doing new and amazing things in the agricultural space all over the continent but need to be motivated.”
The Bank sought to showcase young African Agripreneurs during its week-long Indian meetings, hoping to prove the point that Africa’s youth can be catalysts for job and wealth creation. Between 2010 and 2015, it had deployed $5.5 billion in agriculture sector investments, covering a portfolio of 6,000 projects and youth operations in agriculture and allied industries in Cameroon, Sudan, Nigeria and several other countries. It is working with scientists at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria, to empower young farmers under the Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment (ENABLE) youth program.
Keen to replicate the trailblazing works he did as Nigeria’s agriculture minister between 2010 and 2015 across Africa, Adesina once told this writer, “My vision for Nigeria’s agriculture sector is that we will use agriculture to produce stupendous amount of wealth&#8230; and become an agriculturally industrialized economy.”
Let’s hope this vision comes true.

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Agriculture Behind Africa’s Health

The road to the mining misery, in Louieville, Mpumalanga, is a picture of poverty; roads are crumbling and children roam the streets barefoot.
It has been five months since the fatal accident at the Vantage Goldfields, Lily Mine, near Barberton, Mpumalanga, and three people are buried in the rubble.
Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyarende were buried, 80 meters underground on February 5, in a steel container where a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine.
Everyday Nkambule’s husband, 39-year-old December Mazibuko, wakes up to what he calls another day in hell.
We meet Mazibuko at his house made of mud, in Louieville, 20 minutes away from Lily Mine. He is on his way to apply for a child support grant at the clinic for his 10-month-old baby. Mazibuko says he had his last meal two days ago. With an empty fridge and electricity on zero units, Mazibuko lives on handouts.
“It’s tough,” says Mazibuko.
“I haven’t eaten. I sometimes get help from my family and neighbors, if they don’t come, it gets hard. I don’t know what to do and where to go to. The shops don’t give us food anymore because they know we don’t get paid anymore,” says Mazibuko, who worked at Lily Mine for nine years.
About 600 workers have been left without jobs since the mine collapsed.
In March, Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, promised families of the trapped a R200,000 (around $13,800) compensation and workers who survived R50,000 (around $3,500) each. The workers claim they’ve seen nothing.
“We didn’t get any money. They’ve been promising to pay us the money, ‘til now we haven’t received it,” says Mazibuko.
“We are very hungry. From now until December, the situation is going to get worse. How are we going to send our children to school? Already most of them are no longer going to school. I just want the bosses to pay us, if they can’t, then they should tell us. This is unfair,” says a Lily Mine worker, who didn’t want to be named.
On the day of the tragedy, 115 people clocked in for work and nearly all were rescued. The three missing were working in a steel container, used as a lamp room, which crashed down a sinkhole.
Rob Devereux, a business rescue practitioner, says they needed to raise R200 million (around $13.8 million) to dig a declined shaft 500 meters away from the sinkhole.
“We are in the process of raising the money. We offered all workers voluntary severance packages. Once we receive the funding, we’ll settle the workers’ salaries and rehire them,” says Devereux.
He says it might take up to a year for the mine to reopen.
“It will take about eight months to develop the rescue operation and the mine will open three months after that.”
Joseph Montisetsi, Deputy President of the National Union of Mineworkers, says they are planning to march to the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) in Johannesburg.
“We are calling on the DMR, as the regulator, that it must be in the forefront to make sure that the three employees trapped underground are rescued,” says Montisetsi.
The three missing workers were all breadwinners.
Dead or alive, the families say they want to find closure.
“We just want the mine to get Solomon out from the ground so that we as the Nyarendes can bury him,” says Wanda Nyarende, a cousin.
Through it all, Mazibuko hopes that his wife is still alive. Like most at this mine he feels abandoned.

A Despairing Demand From The Desperate

The drive to Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, is slippery in light winter rain. The sky is full of rich grey clouds; on the ground, the country is paved with cracked roads, poverty and struggle.
On the way, many businesses are boarded up, their paint peeling and doors closed. As we arrive in Harare, many shops are packed with imported goods, but, in Workington, an industrial suburb in the south west of Harare, there is a stubborn survivor – a factory that has been producing Zimbabwean products since 1978.
Rank, founded by Amish and Ketan Naik’s grandfather, is the leading stationery supplier in Zimbabwe. It also distributes paper and board to the printing industry and manufactures plastic goods. Their grandfather arrived in Zimbabwe, via Zambia, from India in the late 1960s.
Business in Zimbabwe thrived until the country hit hyperinflation in the early 2000s. Although the factory is stacked with goods and 102 employees, like many businesses here, the lack of money in the banks threatens its survival.
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The company has ample money in the bank but it can’t take it out to buy raw materials.
“We are being optimistic because if we are being pessimistic about this whole thing it won’t end well. We have been breaking even for the last six months, last year we were 3.5 percent down. We believe this year we are going to be 20 percent down or probably more,” says Ketan.
The company will cut the number of goods they produce to survive. They say they will try managing their overheads, because their staff is the last cost they want to cut.
“We will work within our means; effectively we will produce what we can in terms of what we can purchase in terms of raw material. It also means we have narrowed our gains down, guided by our industry,” he says.
It’s been a struggle over the last decade to keep the doors open.
“We had to scale down to the minimum. We were down to almost 10 percent, or less than 10 percent, because we were trading simply to pay wages. In the past, during high inflation, it came down to where our staff would just come in to have a meal because by the time they got their money, and went home, it was worthless,” says Amish.
The Naik brothers say their biggest threat is the weak economy. In a way, the recent ban on basic goods imports, which everyone is complaining about, may help companies like them.
“We estimated, for example, that in the exercise book industry, 40 percent was being imported from South Africa and 60 percent bought here. The tariff protection came in August 2015 and there has been a shift, we can say nine to ten percent or so increase, on our manufacturing, and the statistical growth shows it boosted our production,” says Amish.
Another Zimbabwean entrepreneur, Frank Buyanga, with a finger on the pulse, featured in FORBES AFRICA in 2013 when he had an Interpol notice imposed on him by government. He is back in business in Zimbabwe and thinks that the ban on imports is sensible as it protects home-grown industry.
“The advantages of doing business in Zimbabwe are the highly educated and generally honest workforce, good infrastructure and sophisticated business climate, especially when compared to other countries in Africa, except Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The main disadvantage is the increasing level of corruption,” says Buyanga.
Ketan agrees the ban could work; but not with a weak economy.
“It doesn’t help as much because where there is a shortage created by us not having raw materials, the smugglers start because they now see an opportunity. If there is a shortage in the market of the product, the pricing would mean 50 percent mark-up”.
Even Rank’s suppliers are not happy.
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“Our suppliers are saying to us that, ‘Guys we have supplied the goods you need to pay for those’. We have sort of done a reverse circle where initially we had to pay upfront; we built our relationships so that they provide us with credit facilities. Now we are ok, the credit facilities need to be reduced to zero and start paying upfront because we are not able to sustain them,” says Ketan.
Making a bit of money through exports into neighboring countries is not an option because it is expensive to manufacture products in Zimbabwe.
“A Malawian manufacturer, for example, would buy raw materials from the same places as us. But, we would pay let’s say $300 for a job yet they would pay less than $100 for that same job. How do we compete? Their expenses become lower, therefore their goods are cheaper.”
Rank is not the only Zimbabwean company running a tight ship.
On the other side of Harare, Melissa Mafunga, Managing Director at Hamilton Finance, says 30 to 50 people walk into their offices each day seeking to borrow money, most of these, struggling small business owners.
“Sometimes they come borrow money because they want to buy stock or pay a little bit of salaries. From here, I see that many small businesses are run on credit. Due to the cash challenges the country is facing, the default rate has risen by 75 percent this year. So we make sure we hold collateral before we lend out money,” she says.
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Joyce Nousenga, General Manager at Hamilton Insurance, says business is slow because insurance is at the bottom of the list for companies.
“Even companies are slowing down on their purchase of insurance and most people opt for minimal cover, of which most of it is statutory. Business is tough for everyone, so much that they can’t even protect the little they have through comprehensive insurance,” she says.
We leave Amish and Ketan with hope that they will carry on breaking even in a country that is struggling to do so.

The Breakeven Blues

Cape Town’s townships were once referred to as “apartheid’s dumping ground”. Today, 22 years into democracy, the stories usually told of these spaces speak of poverty, rampant crime and socioeconomic marginalization.
But Tony Elvin, the charismatic founder of Ikhaya Le Langa, has a very different view. “When I first discovered Langa, not only was it not what I was told in terms of supposedly being a sad and fearful place,” he says, “It was the place where I found a community still intact. There’s an energy and a spirit that is in Langa, and if we can capture that, it’s like gold.”
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Seated in the café at his headquarters in a repurposed Langa primary school, Elvin uses a detailed and dog-eared map of Cape Town to introduce what his NGO is trying to achieve in Cape Town’s oldest black township.
What the map reveals is surprising and powerful: Langa does not sit on the isolated peripheries of the metropolis where common lore has long positioned it, but right at its pulsing heart.
As a black Londoner living in Langa, Elvin admits that he’s used to surprising people. Before he moved here permanently in 2010, the long-neglected Langa community’s interaction with the rest of the world had been limited to occasional groups of white tourists passing through on a quick “poverty safari”, as Tony disdainfully calls the archetypal township tour, before heading back to their cushy city hotels.
Through the ongoing development of the so-called Langa Quarter, Elvin hopes to emphatically change that trend.
“The aim is to create an aspirational cool place, not just for tourists, to create a new place in Cape Town where Capetonians can also go, not only for a history lesson, but to listen to some great jazz, see some great art, chill out and have a great time. I want the Langa Quarter to be to Cape Town what the French Quarter is to New Orleans,” says Elvin.
The Langa Quarter is the pilot model of a concept that Elvin has dubbed the “Social Enterprise Precinct”. The idea, he says, is to overlay the social enterprise principles of “people, planet and profit” onto particular neighborhoods, and to thereby create “viable, sustainable spaces where investment will flourish, and the poverty will then take care of itself.”
Elvin has considerable experience doing this in Cape Town, having first come here as a social enterprise consultant for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2004. Elvin soon fell in love with the city and went on to set up his own social enterprise consultancy firm in the center of Cape Town, where he came into contact with a number of young township-based social entrepreneurs.
“I became aware that there was a lot more I wanted to do in Cape Town, and particularly in the townships,” says Elvin.
He concedes that he still “wasn’t quite sure” what he was setting out to achieve when he moved from his luxurious Hout Bay residence into the township to start Ikhaya Le Langa.
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“Even today, I sometimes describe it all as being at sea, in the middle of a storm, in a boat that I’m still building, without knowing what shape it will take, and I’m not sure what direction I’m headed in either. It’s still new, this approach.”
But Elvin can already boast a number of successes, including the Langa Quarter Homestay Hotel, where visitors are fed and accommodated in the home of a Langa resident. Since its inception a little over a year ago, this initiative has contributed more than R100,000 (roughly $6,400) to the 15 households currently involved – a considerable amount of money in an area where the majority earn less than R4,000 (roughly $250) a month.
Then there’s the annual, and increasingly well-attended, Uplifting Langa Through Reachable Art (ULTRA) street art event, which this year drew talented artists from across the Langa community and far beyond; world-renowned French street artist Jace stayed in Langa for a week as the event’s artist in residence.
Other fledgling ventures – including a media, graphics and advertising studio, an online shop for local artisans and designers, and a new restaurant – have drawn support from multinational companies, including Amazon and Ikea.
But take a walk with Elvin through the intricate crisscrossing streets of the quarter and it’s evident that he’s not resting on his laurels. He talks incessantly, throwing out countless ideas and plans for improving everything that he passes.
The effusive greetings he receives from the local residents along the way pay testament to the time he has invested in gaining their trust, and ensuring that they will be a central part of every step of this process.
“Above all, I’m focused on how the wonderful, cool transformation of Langa can positively influence the community and what is the opportunity to drive change. Langa deserves to be shown some love.”
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It’s also clear that Elvin feels more than just a philanthropic affinity for Langa.
“I love living in Langa. I’ve got friends here, I love the noise of Langa, I like the people that you walk around and see every day – it’s really very charming. After six years, Langa’s my home.”
With so much still in the pipeline, Elvin is not looking to uproot himself anytime soon.
“The Langa Quarter is far from a finished product, but we are at a stage where we can invite people in and, critically, they can stay,” he says. “So that’s a stake in the ground and we will grow from that, and more and more people will benefit from that. Essentially what we’ve done already is create hope.”

The Londoner Capturing African Spirit And Spinning It Into Gold

Nigeria is a nation that knows all too well what damage dictatorships can do. Between 1966 and 1999, the country saw several military coups, culminating in Sani Abacha seizing power. From 1993 to 1998, Abacha’s rule marked a period of oppression, inflation and poverty. As a business owner, the main objective was to stay afloat.
For those brave enough to speak out against the regime, the punishment was either death by hanging or prison. Atrocities were commonplace in an atmosphere of desolation. In 1998, when Abacha died, Tonye Cole, the Co-Founder of Sahara Group, remembers it like yesterday.
“I remember exactly where I was when Abacha died. I remember people jubilating and singing and it was as if an air of relief had happened. I remember my partner had just got married and we were closing a major transaction so he delayed his honeymoon and stayed in Lagos. It is one of those moments in life where you remember key places you were. And the first expression was that of relief from everybody and then the next day reality set in,” says Cole.
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Tonye ColeFor the first time in years, hope dispelled despair. Cole was invested and happy.
“My partners and I had been working for three years and pushing ourselves really hard. We just got to the point where we were establishing ourselves as a business. Everything seemed to be going right. We had been working on an oil transaction and collected our allocation to load the products. At that point, all the brokers who we collected our oil allocation from had been paid by us. This is what you call betting on the horse. We had taken everything we owned and put it on this single deal,” says Cole.
Cole believed there was nothing more to be done but wait for the return on investment. Then the new government cancelled every contract that was issued by the Abacha administration.
The three young men had pumped everything they had earned for the past two years into the deal. Overnight, Cole and his partners went bankrupt. The trio had invested $400,000 of their savings in the supply and distribution of oil contracts from their new venture. For Cole, this was not the first time he lost everything. The first time was the catalyst for him to take control of his own fate. Ironically, he was hitting rock bottom again.
“If you are an entrepreneur, you are going to get bad days and if you are a successful one you are going to get even more bad days. As young people, this was all we had. People had collected their commission and nobody wanted to help us. We knew we had nothing to lose. Everything was gone. The good thing was that we had records and payment to brokers and their assignments they had given us. So we put the files together and walked into the office of a man we had never met before. We waited until we had an opportunity to speak to him and we locked the door,” says Cole.
It was 2PM on a Monday. The drive to the office of Mallam Lawan Buba, Group Executive Director, Commercial and Investment, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), was a quiet one with all three men contemplating the gravity of what had just happened. Cole remembered advice his father, Patrick, had given him years ago. He told his son to spend five years working and learning from different companies before embarking on his own business venture. Cole had already served the five years but, in hindsight, he wondered if an additional five years could have saved him from this catastrophe.
Cole and his partners spent weeks trying to secure an appointment with the man seated in front of them that day. As Cole stood in Buba’s office, a fleeting fear gripped him. They had leveraged their one good relationship with the company’s secretary to get this appointment and if things did not go according to plan, not only would they still be bankrupt but the secretary could lose her job as well. Cole tried to read the expression on the face of Buba and drew a blank. He then regained his composure and approached the man who had the power to change their destiny.
The trio made their impassioned plea to Buba, the man responsible for the allocation of oil contracts. They showed him their legitimate contracts, payments made and financial records for the past three years. Cole took a cue from his father’s days running for president of Nigeria and gave a fervent speech on why they believed they could make a difference by creating employment and establishing an indigenous oil business, one of the first of its kind.
Buba listened to their plea and told them to wait. That was the end of the journey; there was nothing more the young entrepreneurs could do. As they left, it occurred to Cole that this could be the end of a lifetime of hard work.
“Failure teaches you a lot. As an entrepreneur I am not afraid of failure but I must learn from it,” says Cole.
During the two-hour trip back home, Cole’s life flashed before him.
Cole had three major influences growing up. His creative side was nourished by his mother, who was a journalist for one of the leading publications in Nigeria. From his father, Cole learned the skills of diplomacy and how to be a mediator on account of his role as an ambassador to Brazil. From his stepmother, Cole was given the foundations of the Christian faith upon which he built his life principles. Born in January 1967 in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, Cole and his family relocated to Anambra State during the civil war. Cole had a nomadic existence, shuffling between guardians. He learned to be self-sufficient and stumbled into his career by what he calls divine intervention.
“I ended up studying architecture because the subjects I had taken for O-levels in secondary school aligned more with the profession. I went to the University of Lagos to study architecture and then found that it was something that was perfectly suited for me. It rewards extreme hard work and punishes laziness to a fault. You had to imagine things and create it in your mind long before it comes on paper,” says Cole.
After university, Cole joined Brazilian architectural firm Grupo Quattro SA where he oversaw the construction of the new Palmas city developments in Tocantins, Brazil. This was a slight deviation from his plan to work for himself.
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“When I was in university, we had already set up a business where I created architectural drawings and designs for different companies and teachers, as well as perfecting their existing designs,” he says.
Cole’s father influenced his decision to go to Brazil and leave.
“I have this belief and patriotic zeal in Nigeria and I believe we all have a role to play. My father had decided to run for the presidency in Nigeria and I decided to relocate to help him with his campaign,” he says.
Back in Nigeria, Cole Joined EMSA S.A. – one of Brazil’s largest engineering firms. He was the head of operations and business development in the country.
“They needed someone in Nigeria who could speak Portuguese and someone they could trust to implement a World Bank project. I now had this job, which was an engineering job, and it involved traveling around the country meeting government officials and business development. I had a wonderful salary at an expatriate rate, a company car and all the corporate perks. I had no interest at this point to do anything entrepreneurial. I was very comfortable,” says Cole.
Nigeria had just fallen under Abacha’s military regime. The initial hope and excitement turned to gloom. Almost overnight, the military started throwing people in jail. Riots ensued all over the country, leading to the exit of foreign businesses, like EMSA, from the Nigerian economy. The company signed off all the contracts and instructed Cole to liquidate everything.
“I said to myself ‘I am never leaving my fate in another person’s hands again,’” says Cole.
Prior to this, Tope Shonubi and Ade Odunsi had teamed up to start a new business venture in the burgeoning oil industry. Cole had turned down the offer to join the team in favour of his hefty salary and company perks. The offer was made once again, and now finding himself unemployed, Cole accepted. It was the birth of the Sahara Group, a leading private power, energy, gas and infrastructure conglomerate established two years before the end of Abacha’s rule in 1998.
All of this led to Cole walking out of the office of Buba, the man with their oil contracts. A week later, they got a call promising to reinstate their cancelled contracts over one year. Cole learned a valuable lesson.
“Don’t rely on one product and one country. In 1998, we got some of our contracts back and by 1999 we were in Ghana and then subsequently in Côte d’Ivoire, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore and the UAE.”
Today, the Group has around 20 operations across the energy sector with 660 employees. Sahara began as a facilitator in the oil sector, acting as a middleman between producers, marketers and traders. This year marks their 20-year anniversary and there is a lot to celebrate. The company has diversified into utilities, real estate, farming and infrastructure. Among its many developments is the $400-million Lekki power project in Lagos.
“When we came in there were not a lot of people in the business of trading and exploration of oil. When you talk about someone in the oil business back then, the most they would be were petrol station owners. We were the first pioneers to come into this aspect of the business,” says Cole.
Being trailblazers served the company well. The first major break happened about a year and a half after the company started. A major tool in the oil trade is the ability to have a letter of credit, popularly known as an LC. This is a guarantee taken on by a bank to make payments on behalf of the client, provided certain terms are met.
As brokers, Cole and his team will get allocations and trade them off to those who had an LC and then get their commission from the deal and plough it back into the business. For the initial period, Sahara could not open an LC, which was a major stumbling block for its growth.
“We couldn’t even open a dollar account in the beginning because the banks did not trust Nigerian businesses and this is a dollar denominated business. So we had to use a lot of innovation to get LCs. We asked our international clients to open an account for us so we could receive the payments, which they did with ease and secondly, we made sure that any LCs our clients opened, was done in our name,” says Cole.
Another major breakthrough happened when financial giant BNP Paribas approached the firm after two years of trading and helped them to finally open an LC in the company’s name.
As Cole turns 49 this year, he is slightly nostalgic when asked about his success in the oil business. He takes a deep breath and, for the first time during his interview, the charismatic and energetic entrepreneur assumes an almost vulnerable disposition as he talks of his multimillion-dollar empire.
“I am not sure I will be anywhere I am without my wife. She has allowed me to work and to be able to do what I do. I travel a lot and the ability to come in and go out without anybody being as clingy and commanding has been very helpful. Family wise, she makes me look good with everybody in my family because she is the one who keeps in touch with everyone. She is my perfect complement,” he says.
Cole met the love of his life 22 years ago at university. She was 16 going on 17 and he was in his third year of studies at the age of 18. Cole spent two years trying to convince his wife that he was the perfect match for her and years later, with three children, he calls her the glue that holds everything together.
Success can be fleeting. It has been a number of years since the company almost went bankrupt. In those days, the focus was on staying afloat as a business. Today, the Sahara Group has set up a foundation with a mandate of helping 12 million people in the next four years. The company contributes 5% of its profit to the foundation, which has worked with international not-for-profit organizations to eradicate Guinea worm disease, cataracts and cleft palates.
Faced with a global drop in oil prices, a resurgence of Boko Haram in the north of Nigeria and conflict in the Niger Delta, the West African nation’s economy is facing economic and social challenges. For Cole, his fate is firmly back in his hands. He has a much better understanding of the industry he operates in.
“We are in a boom and bust business, so these challenges are all part of life. We know when it is high and when it is low. Once oil prices are low you adjust immediately as an organization. You look at waste and how to cut it. We try as much as possible not to cut staff, we talk to them and let them understand that they need to be a lot more efficient in the things they do. It is all about planning ahead,” he says.
As Cole looks to the future, he sums up the strategy that has served him well so far.
“Let people think you have 10, act like you have only one but make sure you have 100.”

The MILLIONAIRE Of Oil And Toil

Almost half of Kenya’s population has no access to clean water, according to the World Bank.
Waterborne diseases, such as cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis A, can ravage poorer communities; with women and children most at risk.
Three companies, Jaguar Land Rover, ClimateCare and Vestergaard, are trying to eradicate this problem by supplying schools, in Bungoma County, an agricultural region in Western Kenya, with water filters. The hope is that the children will not get sick if they drink safe water. They’ll then not miss school, be more likely to get good grades and increase their chance of seeing a brighter future.
It’s one of the most underdeveloped areas of Western Kenya. Infrastructure is almost non-existent. The buildings I entered had no plumbing or electricity. The houses and schools were made of mud, wooden poles and corrugated iron. They are dark and humid, like an oven baking in the sun.
The heat inside each classroom is stifling, each small desk is shared by three children – they barely have enough space to write. Many of their uniforms hang from their slight bodies. Parents are forced to buy uniforms that are too large so the children will grow into them. They need to last for years.
Bungoma is an agricultural region. People are reliant on water from nearby streams or boreholes. Both sources are often contaminated by pit latrines.
The harsh elements in Bungoma contradict its natural beauty. The land is green, with small hills rolling as far as the eye can see. Large boulders are littered everywhere. The soil is red and rich in nutrients, making it easier to grow crops. Almost every house has maize, beans or bananas growing around it.
Poverty is rife, buildings are basic or falling apart, and although the main road is tarred and in decent condition, the rest are muddy and inaccessible by car.
Cars are rare anyway. Motorbikes and bicycles are the main form of transport. All are fitted with cushioned seats above the rear wheel to transport passengers. The makeshift taxis swarm along the roads. It seemed chaotic to me but they understand how the system works, and despite my fear, I never saw an accident.
Chicken and goats roam along the sides of the road, past the many spaza shops, cellphone airtime and data vendors, and bike repair shops. These are the most popular businesses for a community that relies on entrepreneurship to survive.
While delivering a water filter to one of the schools, a handful of us walked down a slippery and steep muddy road to a spring at the bottom. We passed women tending their crops, crushing maize or making bricks in large homemade clay ovens. Some are less enterprising though.
A 24-year-old man, spotting us walking through his neighborhood, was intrigued enough to leave his group of friends and the quarts of beer they were glugging. His intrigue soon turned to incredulity when told the filters were for the school and not his home. The fact that his four children would benefit from the filter did not placate him. He told us he needed one because he was poor. His lack of income, though, wouldn’t stop him from having more kids. He said he hoped to have three or four more.
Life is hard in Bungoma and any help is appreciated.
“My biggest hope is to be educated so that I can pass my exams and go to university and look for a job. My biggest challenge will be money, it may be the reason I will not achieve my dream,” says Vivienne Wafula, a shy nine-year-old schoolgirl.
Sharon Cherubet Chepkwemoi, the head girl at her school, dreams of becoming a doctor.
“I want to fix the many challenges that people here face,” she says.
She’ll need to go to university to achieve this.
“My parents are farmers, but they are not that rich, so it will be a challenge.”
Both girls are smart, ambitious and resourceful. Sadly, neither Wafula nor Chepkwemoi are likely to escape the grip of poverty in a part of Africa forgotten by the rest of the world.

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Beauty And Boulders  In Bungoma

Recently, there has been incessant talk about the National Development Plan (NDP) and how it, as our government so eloquently states, will mitigate the triple challenges that South Africa faces: poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Developmental theory tells us that ‘developmental states’ aim to attain industrialization through active participation in the formulation and implementation of industrial policy, while simultaneously implementing policy to redistribute income to minimize the unequal distribution of income resulting from industrialization.
One of the greatest dangers South Africa faces with industrialization is that the tendering processes in the public sector is corrupt. We cannot have a situation where the benefactors of the industrialization will be those with close ties to government and the ruling party. This would be disastrous for the country and will increase social tensions, while widening the income gap. A good education and healthcare system, which is often entirely subsidized by the government, are key characteristics of a developmental state. The equalization of income is also an important factor, with countries, such as South Korea, being considered among the most equal as well as enjoying the highest living standard in the world.
Bureaucratic competence is essential in ensuring that state institutions facilitate the swift and efficient implementation of the NDP. The state will have to bolster its departments with captains of industry and experts to improve its human capital base. In addition, they ought to be able to attract the brightest young minds and look for creative ways to lure them to the public service as opposed to merely giving them higher salaries. How will the National Planning Committee (NPC) fare compared to successful central planning economic bodies of countries such as Malaysia and South Korea? It remains to be seen. In these aforementioned governments, the state had a more interventionist stance in the economy, coupled with establishing a cohesive relationship with the private sector based on common national policy goals.
A competent bureaucracy is an essential, but not sufficient, condition for a developmental state to thrive. Equally important is the political capacity that will ensure that the state is both accountable and transparent. Unfortunately this is an area that the South African government needs to improve.
Although South Africa should draw inspiration and lessons from the developmental states of the Asian Tiger economies, it should note that the blueprint from these nations is not a one-size-fits-all solution. South Africa’s developmental state will require differing arrangements because no single economy is like another. South Africa is a resource-rich nation, whereas South Korea and Malaysia are more technologically-centric and industrialized economies. Our government should focus on formulating our own unique developmental state blueprint that will help tackle and alleviate our pressing challenges within our distinct African context.
The lack of cohesion between the ruling political party, the African National Congress (ANC), and its communist tripartite alliance is also a cause for concern. Very often the two have stark differing ideologies on pertinent issues such as monetary policy. The South African Communist Party (SACP) previously lobbied for a populist stance of growing the economy by removing the inflation target of 3% to 6% and lowering interest rates to stimulate demand for credit. This will result in inflationary pressures in the long-run and will lead to an eventual economic collapse. The communists often fail to understand that in as much as South Africa has pressing unemployment issues, the loss of employment for those who are already employed will permeate levels of poverty throughout our social structures and place an even greater burden on our social welfare system.
The NDP presents the ruling party with the opportunity to make amends for the lag in creation of jobs and reducing poverty. Perhaps the NDP is exactly what the ANC needs in order to salvage some of the lost faith that has resulted in the emergence of opposition parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as well as the resurgence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in last year’s elections.
There is no easy solution to attain economic growth. Placing a nation’s economy on a growth trajectory requires patience and, perhaps more importantly, resilience to astute economic policies.

A lot of work  ahead

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

Growing up in Apartheid South Africa, examples of bravery, heroism and inspirational humanity were all around me. Some of my heroes were personal; ordinary people working quietly to overcome injustice and keep their dignity, while trying to escape poverty.
Other heroes I share with the world: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, JB Marks, Walter and Albertina Sisulu.
But my greatest hero of all was my mother – widowed with three children, living in a poor Cape Flats community. She showed me every day that our circumstances need not define us, and how important it is to balance strength and determination with love, kindness and humanity. My mother showed me how to be brave.
My heroes shaped the value system that defines who I am today – values such as equality and equity, diversity and inclusivity, freedom and responsibility, hope and faith for the future.
I believe that social and economic justice must prevail. I believe in the importance of remaining grounded and humble. And I believe in my ability to achieve anything I set my mind to.
My first chance to test these values came when I was thrust into the minefield of labor negotiations at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
As a union, we had to succeed, because the work we were doing impacted on the lives of hundreds of thousands of black mineworkers. And they were depending on us to safeguard their livelihoods and improve their lives.
Working at the NUM taught me a great deal and laid the foundation for my future in the corporate world. In order to do my job – negotiating increased wages and improved conditions of employment – I had to master all of the issues, irrespective of their complexity.
I learnt that success lies in finding the balance between legitimate business imperatives and our broader, human responsibility to make a positive, sustainable contribution to society.
Naturally, the issues we dealt with were emotionally charged. We had to negotiate professionally and responsibly, navigating the inevitable trade-offs, to ensure that mineworkers’ lives improved while the company made money. Afterwards, we needed to explain the issues and solutions to our members in an accessible way.
The nature of the challenge led to three important lessons.
First, learn fearlessly. Follow that old piece of advice: when others sleep, you read. Secondly, never think that you know everything; have the humility and courage to keep asking until you understand. Do not be afraid to make mistakes.
And thirdly, you only really understand something when you can explain it, in simple terms, in less than three minutes.
These lessons guided me when I moved from the negotiating table to the boardroom table. As an executive director at Johnnic, which at the time was an industrial conglomerate, I represented the unions and the black business consortium.
I also had the opportunity to play a leading role in the negotiation of a number of transactions that ultimately led to Johnnic’s makeover as a focused media, entertainment and telecommunications group. One of these contracts resulted in the reverse-listing of MTN Holdings through M-Cell Limited, and the subsequent transformation of the mobile operator into one of the pre-eminent black-empowered companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
At MTN, I became aware of the inc-
redible impact that information and communications technology can have on people’s lives. Access to information and the ability to communicate makes us masters of our own destinies, empowered to uplift families, communities, businesses, and ultim-ately, the societies in which we live.
The statistics speak for themselves. According to the World Bank, for every 10% increase in broadband penetration, there is a 2-3% increase in employment and a 1.38 percentage point increase in gross domestic product.
This realization, and the freedom that I felt after achieving my objectives at MTN, inspired me to establish Smile Communications.
An African telecommunications operator, Smile has a presence in Tanzania, Uganda, the DRC and Nigeria.
Our mission is testimony to what I have learnt: To deliver affordable, high-quality and easy-to-use broadband access and communication services across Africa, using low-cost, innovative business models and technologies.
Although my journey is – hopefully – nowhere near its end, I suspect that some of the most important lessons still lie ahead. Every day, when I step into the office, I feel that in some small way I am making a contribution to changing the world for the better. That sense of mission makes every problem surmountable and every victory more meaningful.

Making a difference: Irene Charnley’s journey in the corporate world

While Kenya marks and celebrates 50 years of independence in December, many are not convinced that the country has achieved its full potential and believe it is far from meeting citizen expectations. Many years after Kenya achieved its independence from Britain, poverty, illiteracy and disease continue to thrive in the country.
Even though there has been some progress, much more could have been accomplished. Kenya is still grappling with the same basic problems that were supposed to be defeated at the inception of the country but many feel nothing has been achieved to warrant any applause.
<div id="attachment_2364" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2364" class="size-medium wp-image-2364" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ARP2089067-1-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />Mau Mau leader of Kenya African National Union (KANU), Jomo Kenyatta, holds the official document of Kenya independence, December 13, 1963 in Nairobi as he became President of Kenya. At left is Prince Philip of Edinburgh representing Queen Elisabeth for the ceremonies.</div>
Skyrocketing food prices and the high cost of living are the main challenges facing the nation, and must be addressed to significantly improve the people’s living conditions.
The gap between the poor and the rich has widened while poverty has made many dependant on others. This is not the independence that Kenya and Kenyans need. This must be addressed through government creating more job opportunities for the high number of unemployed.
There is fear that resources are not allocated equally and in the next 50 years the government must address this. Kenyans expect nothing less than equality in allocation of national resources and the creation of jobs across the country, so that people in all areas have opportunities to better their lives.
The new constitution and reforms associated with it have begun to usher the country into an era of accountability, transparency and good governance. But to safeguard the gains made so far and to secure the progressive future that constitutional reforms promise, the nation must effectively address the rising insecurity in Kenya.
Kenya’s new constitution is a progressive document that aims to address the failed legal and moral systems created by earlier colonial and postcolonial regimes. The country’s previous constitutional order alienated most citizens from the state, but minority and indigenous communities have borne the brunt of this exclusion. This system reproduced and strengthened differences between Kenya’s diverse groups—mainly ethnic and religious—rather than building a pluralistic society that tolerates all shades of diversity based on equality before the law.
The history of Kenya is one in which its rulers have consistently demonstrated an insatiable appetite for human sacrifice. Some of the country’s most brilliant leaders have been assassinated, from Tom Mboya in 1969 to JM Kariuki in 1975 and Robert Ouku in 1990.
Founding president Jomo Kenyatta—father of the present leader—ruled the country from 1963 to 1978 like a monarchical patriarch, enriching himself through large tracts of state land. Despite having been jailed by British colonial authorities for being a leader of the Mau Mau armed struggle, Kenyatta relied on Pax Britannica—through a British defence pact—to protect his regime. These pro-western policies were challenged by his vice-president, Oginga Odinga, who lamented in a 1967 autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru, that the country had not yet attained full independence.
The heroic Mau Mau struggle from 1952 was one of the greatest anti-imperial movements and exposed the brutalities of the British authorities who tortured and killed at least 20,000 liberation fighters and imprisoned another 150,000 people in concentration camps. Kenyatta’s death in 1978 saw the rise to power of Daniel arap Moi.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2365" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/shutterstock_142808740-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" />
In a country with deep ethnic divisions, it was important that a Kalenjin replaced a Kikuyu. Moi ruled for 24 years with an iron fist and was a crude autocrat who introduced one-party rule and queue-voting that violated the sanctity of the secret ballot. His regime became increasingly draconian after a failed coup in 1982, with violence being used to whip up interethnic tensions in bloody elections in 1992 and 1997.
Corruption scandals proliferated, and combined with Robert Ouku’s murder, eventually pushed previously tolerant western patrons to press their client to introduce multiparty democracy and observe presidential term limits.
A pro-democracy alliance finally triumphed in 2002 under the leadership of Kikuyu politician Mwai Kibaki, Moi’s former vice-president. Kibaki’s stealing of a presidential election in 2007—widely believed to have been won by Raila Odinga—triggered some of the worst interethnic clashes in 2008 in which 1,500 people were killed and 600,000 displaced. The president shamefully had himself sworn in like a thief under the cover of darkness. The 2008 violence centered on Kikuyus and Kalenjins in the Rift Valley. The political marriage of convenience sealed by the present Kikuyu president and his Kalenjin deputy and fellow International Criminal Court (ICC) indictee, William Ruto, helped calm tension during the recent elections.
Political power in Kenya has been used to acquire economic power, thereby placing an additional premium on the necessity of acquiring political power. This has been taken to absurd levels, where particular leaders have used their political positions to illegally acquire wealth and, upon being called to account, have said that their ethnic groups are being persecuted politically.
However, even when a particular community is in power, the perks are only enjoyed by that community’s elite. It does not always translate into a tangible benefit for the ordinary people.
Kenya’s next 50 years will hopefully benefit heavily from the foundations set in the last decade and firmed up in 2010 by a new constitution, which has given massive powers to institutions rather than individuals. As Kenya builds towards its centennial celebrations, the challenge is to foster a tolerant and more secure society.
The country is poised for an expanded economic portfolio thanks to the discovery of major oil and gas deposits in the Rift Valley and the Kenyan coastal regions respectively. The entry of Tullow, Anadarko, Cove Energy, First Australian Resources (FAR) Limited, Pancontinental and Total among others shows an economic boom long before 2030. With the passing of the Kenya Mineral and Mining Policy 2011, Kenya too is set to open up its mining industry covering gold, iron ore, titanium, coal and other precious stones. Improved infrastructure will enhance more intra-regional trade and boost a robust service industry.
Away from economic transformation is the new socio-political-economic model set in the counties system, which will be replacing the colonial provincial administration scheme. Under the new Kenya’s administrative stations, there are 47 new counties as opposed to the original eight provinces in the past. Fifteen percent of the national budget will go to the county governments.

Tag: poverty

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