Post-colonial approaches to Africa

FT analysis full-pager by Tom Burgis highlights China's relationship with Niger over uranium mining.

The opening gambit:

Following the same bargain it has struck across the continent – swapping infrastructure and cash for resources to sustain its breakneck growth – China has secured access not only to another source of African oil but also to what is perhaps the single commodity considered more sensitive than crude: uranium. It has also turned Niger into a bellwether for those who fear that the struggle to secure the continent’s resources risks re-creating the ruinous brinkmanship of the cold war.

The loser in this particular thrust?  France's Areva, which enjoyed a 40-year monopoly on Niger uranium. Given the level of development in Niger, I would say that competition wouldn't be a bad step.

Naturally, any such journey is contentious:

From 2004, when he became the first president in Niger’s history to be re-elected, Mr Tandja set about loosening Niamey’s umbilical bond to Paris. From 2007, Niger granted some 150 new permits to prospect for uranium, which accounts for up to half its export earnings. Relations with France reached their nadir when his government accused Areva of funding the Tuareg rebels of the Sahara who kidnapped expatriates and laid landmines in the northern mining region, demanding a greater share of the uranium spoils. Two senior Areva officials were ejected from the country in spite of French denials.

The fruits of Mr. Tandja's boldness became quickly apparent:

The competition has seen work start on Niger’s first refinery and a $700m hydroelectric barrage, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in “signature bonuses”, courtesy of Beijing. It helped the country wring tougher terms from France before granting permission for Areva’s vast new mine, which will make the country the world’s second-biggest uranium producer after Kazakhstan.

But apparently Mr. Tandja's closeness to China led to his political downfall:

Yet a February coup d’etat heightened the anxiety of those who see danger in a stand-off. Although ethnic rivalries and opportunism played their part in the putsch, Mamadou Tandja became the first African leader whose downfall could be traced directly to his embrace of Chinese suitors. “It was because Tandja had Chinese money that he felt he could mock the European Union, Ecowas [the regional bloc], the US,” says Mohamed Bazoum, a former minister who now serves on the “consultative council” created by the military junta that seized power.

The US concern?  Naturally, it's all about terrorists getting their hands on WMD --namely, Al-Qaeda's local offshoot.

China's take on things?  The usual:

Perhaps Mr Tandja had not acquainted himself with China’s policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of African states. When young officers stormed the presidential palace on February 18, Beijing was as silent as it had been while he amassed power. The toppled president remains under lock and key. The junta pledged elections by February and has barred its own members from contesting them – so those overseeing the transition are not themselves participants. The soldiers have signalled they have no plans to break with China, although they intend to audit all Tandja-era mining permits.

They will do business with whomever is in power--not a particularly Chinese trait.

And don't think the Chinese are backing off due to the recent volatility:

Xia Huang, China’s ambassador in Niamey, says Beijing’s bonds to Niger are unshaken and that grander projects are in the offing, including pipelines and coal-fired power stations. China, he says, has offered Africa a “more profitable option” than other partners have. With a little overstatement, he adds: “This country has already seen uranium extraction for nearly 40 years. But when one sees that the direct revenues from uranium are more or less equivalent to those derived from the export of onions each year, there’s a problem.”

Nice point, great piece.

Asia's demand triggers frontier integration in Africa via mining co's

FT story.

The basics:

Six of the world’s biggest mining and steel companies have converged on an unprecedented scale on a mineral-rich corner of west Africa beset until recently by civil war. 

The companies plan to spend billions of dollars in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where some of the world’s richest deposits of iron ore, the raw ingredient of steel, are found. 

The groups are Vale, the Brazilian iron ore miner, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the Anglo-Australian mining houses, ArcelorMittal, the UK steel company, Russia’s Severstal, and Chinalco, the state-owned Chinese mining company.

Buoyant demand for steel has lifted iron ore prices, intensifying global competition for Africa’s hitherto little exploited deposits, and pushing companies into increasingly risky territory.

Liberia and Sierra Leone emerged only recently from civil wars, while Guinea has been teetering on the brink of conflict since the death of dictator Lansana Conte prompted a military coup in 2008.

As yet there is little infrastructure to facilitate mineral exports from any of these countries, whose governments want to use the multinational corporations to fund the ports, roads, and railways needed to lift their struggling economies.

Last month, Vale agreed to spend between $5bn-$8bn on building mines, ports, and railways in Guinea and Liberia by 2020. By comparison, the gross domestic product of Liberia is under $1bn (€800m, £700m).

Done well, this can be a big boost to local economic development.  The hoped-for key difference with the past is the sustained, boom-like demand from Asia, which constitutes a socio-economic revolution all its own for Africa.

Takeaway:  compared to our tiny Africom effort, this is SysAdmin work on a grand scale.

The good news:  America's role in shrinking the Gap shrinks by the day.  The bad news?   TBD.

Google working around low internet connectivity in Africa

WSJ story.  Looking at the internet-penetration rates, not so good.  But already, in terms of cellphones, we're talking 30-40% penetration everywhere in Africa save the deep interior.

So Google apparently not waiting on the former to rise and instead targets the latter media device.  Mobiles are a party of everyday life in Africa, but the Internet is not (4% average).  Unfortunately, mobile costs are relatively high in Africa, and internet costs are even worse.

Google clearly takes the path of least resistance, and its aims are noble enough:  increase Internet usage by offering mobile text-based services as the lure.

An industry player is quoted as saying, "There is a tremendous pent-up demand for connectivity and access." This is why tech companies the world over are targeting Africa and its emerging middle class now--again, taking the shortest route and keeping it as practical as possible.  Five years ago, detailed online maps of African cities were nonexistent.  Now Google offers their usual stuff for 51 African countries (out of 55).

I will confess to being excited to use my new Motorola/Google Android phone with Google maps.

AQIM as an organizing principle for West African security cooperation

Theme of mine going back to Blueprint: You squeeze al-Qaeda out of the Middle East progressively (thanks in large part to the middle-aging of the population and globalization's penetration and whatever success in democratization out of the Big Bang beyond Iraq) and it naturally gravitates in two directions (paths of least resistance--namely to the NE and Central Asia via Af-Pak or to Africa.  These two regions provide the bulk of Paul Collier's "bottom billion," and many are, in my vernacular, "fake states" created by outsiders (Europeans in Africa, Brits and Stalin in SW/Central Asia).

So you get two similar strategic flanking maneuvers by great powers:  Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia (Russia and China lead) and America's Africom in Africa.

For a long time, even the precursor US effort in Africa (Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, which I wrote about in Esquire (see "The Americans have landed")) was considered a bit of overkill.  Simply put, there weren't hardly any terrorists to work, outside of the foreign fighters in Somalia by way of Yemen.

This Economist article suggests that a critical mass is appearing in West Africa, or at least enough activity to become an organizing impetus for regional cooperation--naturally with Africom involved:

OPERATION Flintlock has begun. American special forces have been descending on Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal in a joint exercise, expected to last another week or so, to combat Islamist terrorism in the region. It is the latest stage of an evolving partnership between America and much of west Africa. Over several years, Americans have been training their counterparts in these countries in everything from marksmanship and parachuting to the more touchy-feely stuff of winning over hearts and minds.

When the Americans first started talking about al-Qaeda’s threat in the Sahara, many were sceptical. But a sharp increase in the rate of attacks in the past 18 months by what the jihadists call “al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”, usually abbreviated to AQIM, have convinced even cynics that a threat of sorts does exist.

When AQIM emerged three years ago out of a ruthless Algerian guerrilla outfit called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, better known by its French abbreviation GSPC, it seemed intent on uniting north African jihadists to wage war on Europe. It has largely failed on that score, having been squeezed by Algeria’s security forces, who have broken up many of its cells. Instead, the group is now concentrating on softer targets in a belt of countries farther south.

Armies in the Sahel, that wide stretch of land just south of the Sahara, have increasingly often clashed with Islamist fighters.

A lot of AQIM activity is typically banal, as in, kidnapping Westerners for ransom (not exactly a new trick for the neighborhood), so we already see some obvious devolution into organized crime.  Then there's the usual drug trade.

What AQIM brings to the table beyond criminality is the playing on local grievances (there is never a shortage of causes "celebre").

To be monitored.

How goes democracy in Africa?

Map comes from Freedom House 2010.  Legend is green for free, purple for unfree and yellow for partly free.

Subject is Cato Institute report on state of liberal democracy in Africa by Tony Leon.

Gist:  Economic reforms are what will drive the emergence of liberal democracies on the continent.  Why?  All liberal democracies are also market-oriented economies.

Recent positive trends include (from Daniel Posner and Daniel Young, UCLA):

• Democracy is increasingly seen as only legit form of government in Africa (What?  No Beijing Consensus?)
• Elections are now the norm, not the exception
• Elections are now increasingly contested, often vigorously
• Lifetime rule is disappearing (since 2000 we see longtime leaders gone in Malawi, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and ten others).
• Of the 18 presidents who bumped up against two-term limits in recent years, not one went extra-constitutional, 9 stepped down, three tried and failed to change constitution, and the six who were successful all got their 3rd terms.

Still, the report concludes, "presidential power remains a key impediment to democratic deepening."

Best short-term fix:  governments eliminate current restrictions on media.

No mention of China's impact, but I come away from the piece more optimistic about Africa's future.

China will only go deeper into Africa, staying for the very long haul

Pic here

Couple of FTs and a WSJ story on China defending itself from critics.

China does the usual oil-for-infrastructure implied swap in Nigeria:

China has agreed to spend up to $23bn (€19bn, £16bn) to build oil refineries and other petroleum infrastructure in Nigeria, potentially strengthening its hand in the country as it seeks to secure 6bn barrels of crude reserves.

Emmanuel Egbogah, special adviser to the president of Nigeria on petroleum matters, told the Financial Times that China State Construction Engineering Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday.

In spite of being Africa’s leading energy producer, Nigeria imports almost all its fuel – and pays a subsidy equivalent to its entire annual capital spending – because existing refineries are in disrepair.

Crude but sweet.

The fund, China Africa Development Fund, is supposed to have a bunch of deals in the pipeline and an initial $5B to spend.

China also announces its largest investment into South Africa, "entrenching its position as the resource-rich continent's most important economic and commercial partner.  China is now South Africa's single biggest trade partner.

No doubt about that, and it is overwhelmingly to the good.

So naturally China bristles at criticism from outside observers, although it will need to grow ever more sensitive to such criticism growing within Africa.

As J.R. Wu notes in the WSJ piece:

... concerns persist that China is preying on the continent's resources to feed China's economy, while contributing little.

Beijing has put in place some mechanism to deal with issues surrounding its investment and trade on the resource-rich continent, and has asserted that its presence in Africa is increasingly being shaped by nongovernment forces.

Meaning more laws and protections must be put into place, says China's vice commerce minister.

China has set up joint government commissions to work these issues in 43 African countries.  Trade now sits around $100B a year, and is expected to skyrocket in coming years.

As a globalization expert and soon-to-be father of both Chinese and African daughters, my fascination with this process knows no bounds.  I have, in the past, vastly underestimated the potential for China to positively alter Africa's development trajectory.

Southern Sudan's nation will be built around agriculture as much as oil

The Dinka (Christian) of southern Sudan are built around cattle.  They are the south's largest tribe, and like all cattleman, they fret primarily over their herds' access to water and grazing.  The Dinka will dominate any new southern Sudan state--yet to be named.  If the state happens, it'll be Africa's first new one since 1993 (Eritrea), but hardly its last.

The issue:  the lands of the Dinka are vast and fertile but flat.  When rain happens, it pools for months, creating a lot of marshes, mosquitoes, etc.

The fear:  without the north to hate anymore, the tribes might turn on each other over water.

Dinka ministers in Juba talk grandly of bringing in tractors and turning virgin land into a breadbasket.

The trick?  Dinka men despise such labor, preferring the traditional herding route.

Sounds to me like southern Sudan might soon be on the block for having a lot of its potential farm land leased to, and worked by, foreigners.

When civil strife actually improves ground-floor connectivity

Per my recent feature for WPR on telecoms, warlords are pretty good for cellphone connectivity--as in, they want it and everybody whom they either put on the run or force into fending for themselves want it.

Somalia appears to be the classic example here:

Banks barely existed in this war-torn African nation a decade ago.  Now, Somali residents can bank over their mobile phones.

The rapid evolution of technology in Somalia--and people's access to it--comes as several telecommunications companies here jockey for customers amid the absence of any government-regulated phone or Internet-access.  The competition to supply phone service has stoked the nascent revival of Somalia's shattered economy, and it shows that some complex business can thrive even in one of Africa's least developed markets.

Technology players moving in come from China, Korea and Europe, or basically New Core Asia in sub-Saharan Africa and established Euro players in the north.

My bit with the Core-Gap map has always been:  this is globalization's frontier and where it's moving is where you'll find churn and violence and frontier-integration, meaning both the good and the bad concentrated.  It is its own socio-economic revolution on top of whatever else is going on--both good and bad.

Naturally, Al Shabaab, the local radical Islamic group, fights this trend, saying such connectivity violates sharia. Oh, but they'll allow it if you pay them "taxes" and let them dictate its spread.

Classic stuff.

Another sign of Turkey's diplomatic ambitions?

The nature of the problem is familiar enough:

With the backing of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers, a mission known as Amisom, the transitional government controls only an area around the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, the airport and the seaport. 

Lawlessness across much of the rest of the country allows pirates to launch raids on shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden and far out into the Indian Ocean. In 2009, 47 vessels with 837 crew members were taken, despite the presence of an international naval force. 

Violence, poverty and drought have spawned a humanitarian crisis that has seen almost two million Somalis displaced within the country. There are overcrowded Somali refugee camps in nearby Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

What interested me was Turkey's recent hosting of a 3-day conference designed to inject new thinking into possible solutions:

The Turkish hosts of a conference to be held in Istanbul this week on conflict, piracy and the deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia say the event will offer policymakers an opportunity to “rethink” solutions for the war-torn nation.

But even the UN officials helping Turkey arrange the three-day summit that begins on Friday have reminded delegates not to expect any “magical negotiation” that will resolve Somalia’s long-running problems.

I mean, this is beyond Turkey's recent activity in its neighborhood (the zero-problems-with-neighbors policy). This shows some genuine great power ambition.

I say, the more, the merrier.  We're talking another New Core player with growing economic networks and a sizeable military force willing and able to go places and do things.

Very good sign, whatever the short-term outcome.

There has never been any mystery to me why I have immediately sold the foreign rights to all my books to a Turkish publisher.  Like China, where this has also happened, Turkey is naturally a rising power on the make. It is in the zone where thinking about grand strategy holds great appeal, like a rising America in the late 19th C.

Telling Kenya how its constitution should handle abortion

Doves released at a pro-new-constitution rally in Kenya

The gist from a NYT story:

The push to pass a new constitution in Kenya, a cornerstone of the effort to correct longstanding imbalances of power and prevent the kind of upheaval that followed deeply flawed elections here, has attracted some unexpected interference — from more than 7,000 miles away.

Before Kenyan lawmakers had even finished drafting the proposed constitution, American Christians organized petition drives in Kenya against it, objecting to a provision recognizing Islamic courts.

Now that the draft is done, three Republican members of Congress contend that it significantly expands abortion rights, and are accusing the United States Embassy in Kenya of openly supporting it in violation of federal rules.

It is the latest battle in the American culture wars playing out in Africa. Last year, American Christians helped stoke antigay sentiments in Uganda; later, Ugandan politicians proposed the execution of some gay people. That debate is still raging, though it looks as if the Ugandan government is backing down and will not pass the antigay bill after all.

Old theme of mine:  we hamstring ourselves diplomatically and security-wise when we let our strategic choices be unduly influenced by internal social debates like abortion.  Especially sad:  by and large, it's easy to get an abortion across the Core but much harder throughout most of the Gap, where women's rights lag.

I am profoundly pro-choice.  Until you give women control of their bodies, economic takeoff is far harder to achieve.  Development is mostly about liberating women, not men.

Meanwhile, a NYT editorial notes that Core spending for AIDS relief/prevention across the Gap is wavering after the big plus-ups of the Bush era.  Everybody cites the economy.

The sub-divisioning of AFRICOM proceeds logically according to regional economic schemes

Harkening back to my "The Americans Have Landed" piece for Esquire in 2007, this piece (via WPR's Media RoundUp) revisits the five geographic sub-divisions pursued by AFRICOM, a staple concept I used in the brief for a couple of years following my reporting. It was the source of my prediction in the piece that the US could one day have two dozen little forts around the vast continent like the one I visited, and reported on, along Kenya's coastline.  Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, the star of the piece, is the model for four other sub-regional units (north, south, west and central.  At the time I visited, HOA had Djibouti as the sub-regional command site, plus "contingency operating locations" in Ethiopia (3, with one just closed in connection with Ethiopia's intervention into Somalia) and Kenya (1).  That's one mini-HQ and 4 COLs for a total of 5 facilities. Replicate that four times and you've got roughly two-dozen little forts, albeit spread across a landscape roughly triple the size of the United States.  HOA's HQ was 2k, and the COLs were more like 50 a pop, so let's say 2,200 total.  Replicate that four more times and you're talking a whopping total of 10,11-000 personnel (with lots being civilian contractors).  As presence goes, this is a tiny force for such a huge continent, so it can only be about leveraging local capacity.

To compare, we sent 10k personnel to Haiti for the earthquake.  Think about that:  Haiti versus Africa!

And let's just say, we didn't exactly control Haiti on the basis of 10,000 personnel.

Anyway, here's what this piece in the Geopolitical Monitor says:

The month before AFRICOM began its one-year incubation under U.S. European Command in 2007, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Ryan Henry said, “Rather than three different commanders who have Africa as a third or fourth priority, there will be one commander that has it as a top priority.” [2]

The Pentagon official also revealed that Africa Command “would involve one small headquarters plus five ‘regional integration teams’ scattered around the continent” and that “AFRICOM would work closely with the European Union and NATO,” particularly France, a member of both, which was “interested in developing the Africa standby force”. [3]

The Defense Department official identified all the key components of Africa Command’s role and adumbrated what has transpired in the almost three-year interim: By subsuming nations formerly in the areas of responsibility of three Pentagon commands under a unified one, the U.S. will divide the world’s second most populous continent into five military districts, each with a multinational African Standby Force trained by military forces from the United States, NATO and the European Union.

Later the same month, the Pentagon confirmed its earlier disclosure that AFRICOM would deploy regional integration teams “to the northern, eastern, southern, central and western portions of the continent, mirroring the African Union’s five regional economic communities….”

The Defense News website detailed the geographic division described in Defense Department briefing documents issued in that month:

“One team will have responsibility for a northern strip from Mauritania to Libya; another will operate in a block of east African nations – Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Madagascar and Tanzania; and a third will carry out activities in a large southern block that includes South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola….

“A fourth team would concentrate on a group of central African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Congo [Brazzaville]; the fifth regional team would focus on a western block that would cover Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Niger and Western Sahara, according to the briefing documents.” [4]

The five areas correspond to Africa’s main Regional Economic Communities, starting in the north of the continent:

• Arab Maghreb Union: Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
• East African Community (EAC): Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
• Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS): Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda and Sao Tome and Principe.
• Southern Africa Development Community: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 

The piece, with snippets of snarky editorializing here and there ("Pentagon Builds Surrogate Armies To Control Africa Region By Region"  Oh really!  That's all it takes?  My, that was easy!), lays out a lot of references and gets the facts basically correct (although I think it misidentifies HOA as--in effect--a sixth separate effort, as it basically correction to the EAC layout + Ethiopia).  It also explores my colleague Harry Ulrich's similar networking effort in the naval realm (something I also wrote on for Esquire:  "Sea-Traffic Control").

But like I say in the post headline, a fairly natural breakdown by geography:  a local precinct effort by the US to encourage regional integration in the security realm that buttresses that which is already unfolding in the economic realm.  Every neighborhood gets its community cop (locally-derived peacekeeping units) with an attendant mentor (AFRICOM sub-regionals).

Naturally nefarious to some, but who else is making the effort?  Especially when our economic interests are marginal beyond oil, and the oil will flow no matter how many brushfires were to happen anyway.

Nonetheless, the piece ends on this note, however unsubstantiated it is by the actual text:

The U.S. is not dragging almost every nation in Africa into its military network because of altruism or concerns for the security of the continent’s people. AFRICOM’s function is that of every predatory military power: The threat and use of armed violence to gain economic and geopolitical advantages.

Yes, yes. Making Africa safe for Chinese mercantilism.  So selfish of us!

Worth reading for the facts, just understand that the editorializing is both hyperbolic and unsupported.

Mining OPEC for Africa?

Inevitable development and proper channeling of what will be substantial blowback inside Africa (maybe not on top but definitely from below) regarding Asia's (and particularly China's) ramping up of demand for the continent's mineral resources.  

It's misleading and premature to cast China's "penetration" as a colonial-style grab for power.  What is happening is the development of a huge co-dependency relationship that lack counterparty capacity (it takes two to tango fairly on any deal) on the part of African nations.  In short, China's got its state capitalism shtick in line but African nations lack a cohesive counter, creating uneven transactions (i.e., Africa can always do better) that so far generate a lot of investment and activity and jobs (all great); it's just not clear how evenly that new wealth is being distributed locally in a sustainable fashion.

Gist of piece:  time to call the companies' bluff about being able to go elsewhere if they're not treated right by the Africans.  With China's heavy entry, that bluff starts looking a lot weaker because finding such volume elsewhere is a whole lot less feasible with each passing year of "sticky" investment.