Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has often urged Africa’s business and political leaders to “stop thinking about development as something we do with external resources.”
The current managers of the Nigerian economy will do well to heed this advice. They will spend 2016 struggling to rebalance their economy and its tax system. They must save their nation from the spasms of the Dutch disease.
Nigeria entered 2016 with its lowest external reserve levels in 10 years.
Nigeria’s foreign reserves peaked at $63 billion in September 2008. By January 2016, it had dipped to around $29.3 billion, barely enough to cover four months of imports.
The price of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude was trading at $34 a barrel as this edition of FORBES AFRICA went to press. It has been dropping since September 2008 after attaining a record high of $147 in July that year. Prices for cocoa and iron ore have also been falling over the last two years.
Economists believe that the full effects of the resource curse may have finally caught up with Africa’s largest economy. For the third time in three decades, Nigeria’s economy is in serious wahala (Nigerian speak for trouble). Dwindling government revenue, foreign exchange pressure, institutionalized corruption and a massive infrastructure deficit confront the nation.
Like many resource-rich, mono-product economies, Nigeria faces the daunting challenge of curbing its appetite according to the size of its wallet. Embedded in Nigeria’s 2016 budget is a ginormous N6 trillion ($30 billion) revenue shortfall. The deficit financing will come from the domestic and international debts markets. But domestic resource-mobilization might be the key to fiscal and monetary efficiency.
Crude oil has defined Nigeria’s political economy for decades. It will continue to play a significant role, alongside commodities and Nigeria’s abundant natural gas reserves. Earnings from non-oil sectors, such as services, agriculture and entertainment, will continue to grow.
As Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, began talks with international finance institutions for external loans worth $3.5 billion to augment the 2016 budget, the local media was awash with two news reports – both revealing Nigeria’s scandalous administration of its tax regimes and import earnings under previous governments.
The first expose was a report published by ActionAid, an international NGO, which revealed how Nigeria had forfeited a staggering $3.3 billion in revenues through a three-part tax break granted to three of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, over a 10-year period. Apparently, and obviously unknown to many Nigerians outside the infamously opaque petroleum sector, the tax breaks for Shell, Total and Eni started in 1999.
In a country where millions live in extreme poverty, the social cost of the tax giveaways is huge. The amount is double Nigeria’s education budget for 2014; and the money could very well have given 70 million young Nigerians access to quality education, rebuild the university system and tackle entrenched problems in the health system, according to ActionAid.
“It is a striking example of how a global race to the bottom on tax is harming resource-rich countries,” the NGO’s report says.
Previous ActionAid research shows that tax breaks cost developing countries at least $138 billion every year.
The second matter was the revocation of all import waivers granted to several “favored” firms and politically-connected entrepreneurs by previous governments between 1999 and 2015. Excise duty revenues from the Nigeria Customs Service for 2016 is consequently expected to be significantly higher than previous years. Finance ministry sources say Nigeria lost N797.8 billion (around $4 billion), between 2011 and May 2014, to import waivers and tax holiday concessions.
Nigeria’s lax tax system is just one of several public sector development issues awaiting resolution by President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. Figures from the Debt Management Office show that in one year, Nigeria’s debt burden grew by N1.31 trillion ($6.57 billion) to N12.6 trillion ($63.2 billion) as at the end of 2015.
Also during the 2015 financial period, the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation posted an operating loss of N267 billion ($1.34 billion). Its four refineries, with a combined installed capacity of 445,000bpd, continue to underperform.
Value Added Tax (VAT) and Company Income Tax (CIT) will account for 80% of the Federal Inland Revenue Service’s (FIRS) projected revenue haul in 2016.
Comparatively, Nigeria’s tax revenue performance is 7.4% of GDP compared with 27.4% in South Africa, 18.7% in Malawi and 19.5%, Kenya.

SERIOUS WAHALA AS THE RESOURCE CURSE BITES

The sharpest minds in world business are in Africa to take stock of the last quarter of a century and help unravel the great knot of economic problems of the continent. The future of our grandchildren depends upon it.
At the heart of the issue is how the continent is going to get Africa’s fast growing working population to work. The World Economic Forum estimates that working population will double to one billion strong – that’s more than three times the population of the United States – by 2040.
Many of these young workers will be young, restless and savvy; they will be plugged into social media and will know what they are missing out on. Few in Africa will need a reminder that the devil makes work for idle hands; those who remember the death and violence of the Arab Spring in North Africa or the xenophobia in South Africa.
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The only way to mop up this growing lake of unemployment is through economic growth. Regional growth in Africa has remained steady at around 5% – at a time when most of the world has struggled with poor growth.
But double-digit growth is needed now to help draw the young, bright and talented into the workforce. Given Africa’s fight for foreign investment, with the rest of the world’s emerging economies, this growth rate, is likely to prove a mountain to climb.
“Even the world’s fastest growing economies are struggling to grow at 7.5%, so the chances of double digit growth for Africa are almost zero. I think the continent is more likely to be looking at 4.5% to 5%,” says George Glynos, an economist with ETM Analytics in Johannesburg.
For growth to happen, infrastructure is needed in Africa like a drink in the desert. Broadband, rails, roads and ports; a list that trips off the tongue, but the reality is more complicated.
In May 2013, all of us in Cape Town for WEF Africa heard how the World Bank estimated Africa needs $93 billion a year worth of infrastructure. Even at the time, most people in Cape Town thought this figure was a drop in the ocean and they were probably right.
Raising that kind of money may prove difficult with a shallow investment pool and institutions short of money. The Development Bank of Southern Africa admitted in Cape Town that it could only hope to raise 5% of the infrastructure bill, even though it predicted the BRICS nations would invest $50-75 billion over the next decade.
Furthermore, African states have to compete with nations around the world, who are also suffering from crumbling infrastructure, for investors. The exception may be the Chinese who are prepared to pour money into African infrastructure in return for resources and business.
The three magic letters to bring in the necessary billions, according to the experts, are PPP. In English, that is Public-Private Partnership, marrying investor’s money with state coffers to build the infrastructure that economies need. It sounds easier than it is. Many have the romantic idea that governments can sit down with private business, shake hands and agree. Not so. Governments and private business tend to work at different speeds. Governments in Africa can take many months to pay bills and their approach to business can differ.
“Private enterprise always needs to make sure the financing is sound before going into a project with government. If you look at the attempt in South Africa to boost the electricity grid by using PPPs it has proved difficult because the pricing is low. With all the will in the world, nothing will happen until you get the pricing right,” says Glynos.
Most agree that the governments of Africa have to work harder.
First, transparency in processes enables swifter decisions and execution; second, shared value and clear understanding of incentives across the value chain drives buy-in; and third, building a culture of trust between stakeholders is paramount, enabling bottle-necks to be addressed as they arise,” says Euvin Naidoo, a South African banker and strategist who is a WEF Global Young Leader.
Power, or the lack of it, is likely to be one of the big issues at WEF. South Africa, the largest power generator, has been struggling through the winter because of maintenance and breakdowns.
Linda Olagunju, the CEO of DLO Energy Resources who will be a speaker at WEF, believes it is time to integrate Africa’s power business by region.
“It is time for us to stop thinking about what each country is doing individually and start thinking of the progress of investment in power as a region,” she says.
Olagunju believes this could be helped by a legal framework for each region to ease cross-border power transactions and set up uniform bidding processes to help attract private money. She also believes renewable energy should be encouraged.
One of the big issues to be discussed at WEF Africa, is the pledge that the continent’s regions would agree to integrate infrastructure by region. That is, one country has the best airport; while its neighbors have good ports and roads so, between them, they can move trade through. This makes sense but it could be fraught with conflict as each country, naturally, wishes to have the best of everything. At WEF Africa 2013, leaders agreed to negotiate; this year’s gathering will hear back from them, I am sure many people can’t wait.

The Devil  In The Detail

Significant oil and gas discoveries in East Africa have sparked excitement and hope that the region can transform its economies, providing thousands of new jobs and lifting many people out of poverty.
But the jury is still out on whether the frontier countries of Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania can avoid the ‘resource curse’ which has dogged the continent’s biggest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola. This is when the exploitation of abundant mineral resources leads to a weakening in governance, economic distortions, slowing growth and a deterioration of living standards for the poor.
The history of oil development in Africa so far has not set a happy precedent. Oil accounts for more than 90% of the export revenues of Nigeria and Angola, and has fueled rapid rates of economic growth. But the influx of wealth has not led to the kind of broad economic development required for either country, or for the more than half of their combined population of 180 million still living in grinding poverty.
The International Monetary Fund says that $32 billion went ‘missing’ from Angola’s coffers between 2007 and 2010, while other studies suggest that several billion dollars worth of oil revenues have been embezzled in Nigeria.
However Nigeria has recently taken a very positive step. It has established sovereign wealth funds to manage excess earnings from crude oil and gas, by putting aside money for future generations, funding infrastructure and stabilizing its budget.
Ghana, a newcomer to Africa’s oil and gas frontier, has started out on a promising note. The country is on track to become the continent’s third-biggest oil producer, with output of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in a few years. This is a fraction of the output of both Nigeria and Angola, which are each producing closer to two million bpd. But Ghana, with a population of 25 million, has taken steps to manage its resources in a transparent and efficient manner. In 2011, the government passed laws to govern how oil revenues are allocated. It created a public interest and accountability committee to monitor the process, with 13 members from professional bodies, think tanks, and pressure groups. And like Nigeria, Ghana’s government has also prepared the ground for a sovereign wealth fund.
Modest quantities of oil have been discovered recently in Uganda and Kenya. Kenya has the advantage of being a highly diversified economy, unlikely to be disturbed by a sudden influx of oil revenue. It also has a coastline which enables its oil to be exported easily to expanding Asian markets. Uganda, on the other hand, needs a pipeline to transport its crude to Kenyan ports. Kenya is set to become the first oil exporter in East Africa, but its reserves of 300 million barrels are dwarfed by those of Uganda, which has 2.5 billion barrels. The Kenyan government is reviewing petroleum sector laws and discussing with stakeholders how better to allocate its resources to drive infrastructure development as well as expanding training and education.
However, it is the massive natural gas discoveries off the coasts of Tanzania and Mozambique which have generated the most excitement about the region. At present, the two countries (mainly Mozambique) are believed to have about 220 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore. This could eventually make the region one of the world’s top exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The challenges these two countries face in developing their resources are similar to those that must be tackled in Kenya and Uganda. Firstly, massive infrastructure development is needed
for the conversion of gas to LNG, which could drain money from other sectors of the economy. The price tag of proposed oil and gas investments in Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique amounts to about $50 billion, which is very large relative to the size of their economies.
Not only are the projects capital intensive, but it will take several years for significant revenues to be gene-rated, which means that these countries need to tap international credit markets. This poses a problem as none of them has investment-grade credit ratings, which will make borrowing costly. One possible strategy would be to incorporate infrastructure development requirements in the deals signed with international oil companies, provided they make financial sense.
East African oil and gas producers need to ensure that they get a fair slice of the pie in these agreements, without deterring investment. They must also increase their power- generating capacity to keep up with a faster pace of economic growth, Standard Bank warns in a recent report. Taking everything into consideration, energy policy must move swiftly to keep up with the breathtaking pace of oil and gas development in  the region.

Can Africa shrug off  the resource curse?

Governments all over the world lose billions in revenue from corporate tax evasion every year. In many instances, citizens in a country pay a proportionally higher rate of tax than multibillion dollar companies.
Despite this being a global pandemic, Africa suffers more than most.
While delivering his Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg, Sudanese-British mobile communications entrepreneur and billionaire, Mo Ibrahim, said more money is lost from multinationals not paying tax, through what he calls fancy accounting, than gained from aid.
“Physics and numbers don’t lie, but people do,” he says.
The continent is blessed with resources: Oil in Nigeria; gas and mineral reserves in Botswana; Angola, Ghana, and South Africa; the Democratic Republic of Congo has diamonds and cobalt; Mozambique has natural gas. These resources alone could lift millions of Africans out of poverty.
Former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, wrote that the continent loses a huge amount of money from the use of shell corporations, offshore companies and tax havens by multinationals which often divert their profits.
But Dylan Buttrick, an associate at Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa begs to differ—slightly.
“It is important to understand the distinction between aggressive structures that facilitate tax evasion, and corporations that have tax efficient structures as a result of tax planning. In a world of increased globalization and multinationals, offshore structuring and tax planning is to be expected and remains legitimate,” says Buttrick.
The lack of infrastructure and resources makes it difficult for tax authorities to track payments. Revenue authorities would benefit from more sophisticated collection systems and processes that would help these authorities in enforcing compliance.
According to The Elders, an independent group of global leaders, transfer pricing—the practise of shifting profits to lower tax jurisdictions—cost Africa $38.4 billion every year, a number which Buttrick says is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.
He says in recent years, African authorities have increased their focus on compliance with transfer pricing.
Buttrick further says the practise in the market is to ensure that transfer pricing policies comply with the South African tax laws, this despite significant chances in recent times, leading to a perceived uncertainty in some circles.
“Most multinationals do not indulge in invasion, i.e. fraudulent reduction of their tax, but may reduce their taxes in a particular jurisdiction through the use of legitimate tax planning tools, but beyond what certain politicians or even the public may deem appropriate,” says Buttrick.
Buttrick says from an exchange control perspective, South Africa’s banking and reporting system is fairly sophisticated and cross-border payments are easily monitored. The inflow and outflow of capital from the country will need to comply with exchange control regulations.
The G20 plans to fight international tax evasion by multinational companies. They will exchange tax information and support the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its plans to prevent multinational companies from avoiding tax by moving profits across borders. The new rules would force companies to pay tax in the countries where they make their money, instead of where the tax rate is the lowest.
Companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Starbucks are reported to have perfected the art of using loopholes within tax regulations. MercoPress reports that these firms argue that they are doing nothing illegal and have a duty to shareholders to minimize tax payments to maximize profits.
The OECD says that some of the existing tax rules, created in the 1920s, were designed to avoid double taxation of companies operating in more than one country. But this is haunting the industry nearly a century later as these same rules are being used to create double non-taxation.
The G20 leaders agreed to an unprecedented deal to share information on individual taxpayers. They plan to start exchanging information on tax matters among G20 members by the end of 2015.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, says the new tax rules state that only advanced nations will sign on the deal, but it’s important that developing countries participate in sharing tax regulations.
Reforming the outdated global tax framework needs to occur, with governments across the globe working together. Regardless, one question still bothers me: should multinationals be taxed on the basis of where they are doing business or on the strength or weakness of their lawyers?

“Numbers Don’t Lie But People Do”

It was 2001. Billions and billions of dollars were up for grabs in what South Africans call “black economic empowerment” deals. That is, swift deals, selling black South Africans equity, often at a discount, in a bid to redress the imbalances of the past in white-dominated industries like mining. They are worth a fortune and were taking place right under Sipho Nkosi’s nose.
Standing by, while others prosper, is not quite the mark of a man who is ambitious by nature. Growing up, he says, he never thought he would do any job other than that which was the preserve of blacks at the time—being a clerk, teacher, priest or something like that. It took other people to persuade Sipho Nkosi to throw his hat in the ring.
<div id="attachment_430" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-430" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-430 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/AV_00014794-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Sipho Nkosi, CEO of Exxaro Coal at Inyanda Coal mine in Witbank, South Africa</div>
Once he made that decision, though, he never looked back. Eleven years later, he is an astute, if not shrewd, captain of industry leading a cash-flush $9 billion conglomerate. To say nothing of the estimated R1.6 billion ($208 million) personal fortune he has amassed in the process.
It all started when Anglo American, the mother and father of mining in Africa, together with Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton—the biggest miner in the world—put some of their South African coal assets up for sale.
Having occupied some of the most senior positions a black person could occupy at both companies, at the time, Nkosi thought he was the ideal person to lead a consortium, a diverse group that included some of the best black brains in mining, among them the country’s foremost nuclear physicists, geologists and mining engineers.
Months later, Eyesizwe Coal—Nkosi’s company—would win an open tender for an assortment of underground and open cast coal operations.
The consortium would quickly raise R600 million ($78 million) for the business, but as Nkosi and the company would soon discover, raising money was only the beginning.
The hard part would come when he had to appease disbelievers, including “rebel” white workers and their “skeptical” black counterparts.
“They all thought black folk, no matter how educated, would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to run a mining company,” says Nkosi.
The FORBES AFRICA team meets media-shy Nkosi in his makeshift office, at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town. More than 7,000 delegates, including the richest and most famous names in mining, are here for the annual gathering, where major decisions are made.  In between deal-making meetings and the consideration of proposals from prospective suppliers, Nkosi recalls how he got here.
He still vividly remembers Eyesizwe’s first strategy session, after taking over the Anglo-Billiton assets. He was chairing the company’s SWOT analysis session when one of the (white) mine managers stood up and said: “Sir, with all due respect, you guys know nothing about mining. We suggest that you go to Johannesburg and allow us to run the mine for you.”
It was the first time in the new environment, that Nkosi’s trademark calmness was put to the test. While his partners thought the white guy needed to be reminded of who was the boss now, Nkosi didn’t think it was the time, or the occasion, to take offense. So he didn’t.
Months later, at a year-end function, Nkosi was standing next to a (white) CEO of one of the vendor companies when a (black) worker approached, proceeded to greet the other CEO and asked him: “How could you give this business to these guys? What do they know?”
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In both instances he didn’t take offense, but said to himself: “My job is to win these people over. I will focus on excellence. All the time.”
Nkosi first silenced his critics in 2006 when, a mere five years into the challenge, he was one of the chief architects of the successful merger of Eyesizwe Coal with Kumba Resources’ non-iron ore assets to form Exxaro. The transaction was hailed as the deal of the year, singled out for being head and shoulders above the rest in terms of black management participation, the level of economic interest held by black people, as well as the extent of voting rights held by black people.
The following year, Nkosi took over the running of the merged entity and, five years on, it is not only the second largest coal producer in South Africa but also the biggest diversified domestic mining company in the country. Yet Nkosi is still not satisfied.
He now wants Exxaro to be up there with the world’s mining greats: Rio Tinto; BHP Billiton; Xstrata and the Anglo Americans of this world.
Ambitious as he admits all this is, he wants to start by growing Exxaro—which already has a presence in the continents of Europe, America, Asia and Africa—into a $20 billion market cap world player by 2020.
He already has shareholder approval for spending R9.5 billion ($1.2 billion) on a mine in Limpopo, in the north of South Africa. The Grootegeluk mine will supply over 14 million tons of coal a year to Medupi, a new coal-fired power station being built by the country’s electricity utility, Eskom, in response to the electricity shortages of recent years.  That’s apart from another R2.4 billion ($313 million) power station project in South Africa’s east coast province of KwaZulu-Natal, as well as a handful of beneficiation projects and new coal mines.
Nkosi wants to double Exxaro’s coal output to 80 million tons a year, while increasing the company’s portfolio of non-coal interests.
In January, Exxaro announced that it intended to pay $338 million in cash for a takeover of Democratic Republic of Congo iron ore company, African Iron.
Suggested to him that he seems to be moving, well… rather aggressively, he quickly retorts: “I used to have a boss, (former Kumba Resources CEO) Con Fauconnier, who used to say ‘Sipho, don’t ever grow yourself to death. At the end of the day you must cut your cloth to fit you.’”
Nkosi, it would seem, has indeed taken Fauconnier’s advice. Last year he closed down the company’s zinc plant, Zincor.
“It was not making money at all,” he says. The unions, and the government, were not impressed.
South Africa-based mining research company Avior’s senior analyst, Clinton Duncan, is one of those who believe that Exxaro is in fact “undervalued” and is “bullish” in terms of its share performance. Hence, he doesn’t think Nkosi will have a problem fulfilling his driving ambition.
Coal accounts for 33% of Exxaro’s earnings, the analyst points out. Nkosi’s battle plan, on the other hand, includes doubling Exxaro’s coal output to 80 million tons a year—a good move, Duncan says, considering the fact that about 77% if South Africa’s primary energy needs are provided by coal.
The day after our interview, Susan Shabangu, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources, announced that coal was a strategic resource for the country and that the government would do everything in its power to help its miners. Days later the president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, announced a range of support initiatives his government had come up with, including the provision of rail transport connecting coal fields to power stations.
Add to that the fact that populous nations like India and China’s ever-increasing energy demands are going to continue for some time, and you will certainly realize that Nkosi’s plan makes a lot of sense, says Duncan.
But what about environmental concerns, I ask? Put to him that the marked rise in environmental awareness and activism, across the globe, could restrict the world’s use of coal, Nkosi responds: “We know that at some point the world is going to insist on clean energy.”
So what’s the plan?
Exxaro’s venture into solar, wind and methane gas was only a matter of time, he says, although all he’s prepared to disclose, for now, that the outcome of the company’s commissioned feasibility studies into the possibility of Exxaro setting up renewable energy companies has pointed in one direction: that Exxaro would be able to “make huge sums of money in renewables”.
“By the way, South Africa’s search for alternatives started a long time ago,” Nkosi says, relating the story of how, back in the seventies when faced with an oil crisis, the country started manufacturing oil from gas. Worldwide too, mining has been constantly evolving, he adds, citing examples of countries like Japan and France, which had long started moving away from coal to gas.
Looking into alternatives, though, does not mean Exxaro will abandon coal anytime soon, Nkosi says: “South Africa will, for all intents and purposes, continue to use coal. We don’t have gas. We have coal in abundance, and it’s cheap.”
Reminded of recent incidents where Greenpeace activists upped the ante with Eskom and mounted a campaign against the electricity utility, Nkosi is unperturbed. Exxaro is hard at work trying to find environmentally friendlier ways of mining and utilizing coal, he says calmly, insisting the business was working hard at ensuring that it was carbon neutral and would be able to mitigate its carbon footprint.
It’s all part of Exxaro’s commitment to doing business differently; by showing that it cares as much about profits as it cares about its people and the environment.
In December, Exxaro paid out R1 billion ($130.5 million) in bonuses to 9,694 members of its staff, 90% of whom were black low-level workers and managers. The employees were rewarded because they “worked very hard and pushed the company to where it is today”, Nkosi said at the time, adding that the company wanted to debunk the myth that “the fat cats at the top” only cared about making money for themselves.
Frans Baleni, the general secretary of South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers, is at the head of South Africa’s most powerful union with hundreds of thousands of members, which has had many industrial disputes with Exarro. He says there aren’t many captains of industry out there who are able to stay true to themselves and be as mature, tactful and down to earth as Nkosi.
“You can’t fault him on that,” Baleni says, “unlike other mining bosses who can be abusive, arrogant and self-absorbed”.
“Nkosi makes you wonder whether you are not the one who is wrong—even when you know you are so right. Even when he says go to hell, he says it in such a manner that it doesn’t hurt,” says Baleni.
Nkosi is not so gentle about saying it in a gentle manner when it comes to the belligerent pro-nationalization lobby that is the ANC Youth League. When Nkosi once commented that nationalization was “antiquated” and “discredited”, the governing party’s youth was very hurt, publicly berating him for his “misleading, pathetic” lies. But Nkosi, who was president of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa at the time, took the rebuke in his stride.
If it so happens that he crosses paths with the youngsters again, he would still tell them.
It has got a lot to do with his mantra, the one that carried him through those first days, weeks and months of his foray into the tough life at the top of mining, where reputations can be lacerated in the board room.
“People had quite a lot of nasty things to say about this Zulu boy who knows nothing about this industry,” says Nkosi.
“When there’s negativism, always kill it by massive success.”
And there are few companies on the African continent that can claim to be as massive and successful as Exxaro.

Tag: Resources

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

SERIOUS WAHALA AS THE RESOURCE CURSE BITES

The Devil In The Detail

Can Africa shrug off the resource curse?

“Numbers Don’t Lie But People Do”

I Want $20 Billion And The World By 2020