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Record 48 candidates to enter presidential elections in Benin

1 February 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Featured, Politics

Benin Presidential Candidates

An unprecedented 48 candidates have applied to compete for the presidency in Benin’s upcoming February elections.

In a record turnout, 48 candidates have applied to run for presidency in the West African country of Benin in February this year. According to their electoral agency, although 52 nomination papers were received, only 48 forms were correctly completed and accepted.

Political analyst Agapit Napoleon reported this is the highest turn out Benin has ever witnessed in a presidential election since military rule ended in 1990 and multi-party politics commenced.

President Thomas Boni Yayi has held office since 2006 but is barred under the constitution from running for a third term. Thus the elections are wide open to new leadership and the nominations have been flooding in.

“I dream of a Benin that smiles and that’s why I invite us to turn resolutely toward a clear future,” said president Yayi to a crowd of 35,000 at Mathieu Kerekou stadium after he assured the nation he would not change the constitution to run again.

Current Prime Minister strong contender

A front runner is expected to be current Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou who has been selected as the ruling party FCBE (Cowrie Forces for an Emerging Benin) main candidate. Zinsou announced at a business conference in London that he was committed to the electoral race and honored that his party had ratified his candidacy.

Zinsou said his manifesto will concentrate on helping informal workers gain full employment and financial support for agriculture. He argued agriculture needs to be made a priority as it accounts for 23% of Benin’s gross domestic product but only 2% of the banking industry’s profits.

Should he be voted in, he claimed a priority policy would be to finance agriculture in Benin, making sure that families don’t have to carry the burden of borrowing money to finance agricultural activities. Zinsou highlighted the poverty trap farmers often got stuck in when only having access to high-interest loans within Benin, a small cotton-producing nation.

Zinsou’s agricultural policies will particularly focus on developing agricultural banks with an emphasis on ensuring credit is available for farmers. In his policy announcement Zinsou stated that building agricultural credit was the cornerstone of building economic success for the vast proportion of farmers in the country.

Critics accuse Zinsou of colonial collaboration

Speculation from critics claim Zinsou, a French-Beninese investment banker has been implanted by the former colonial power France to safeguard economic benefits for the current president Bony Yayi.

However, Zinsou insists he has the backing of other major political parties including Adrien Houngbedji, a PRD lawyer and current head of Benin’s parliament, who came second in the 2011 election. The government has also publically defended Zinsou, emphasizing his full citizenship and criticizing his opponents for utilizing racist tactics to undermine his candidacy.

Big business in the race

Sebastien Ajavon

Sebastien Ajavon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two of the most influential and wealthy businessmen in Benin have also announced their candidacy to run against each other. Sebastien Ajavon, who acquired a significant fortune in the food industry, is set to run against fellow tycoon Patrice Talon, a cotton mogul. Talon is regarded as the main opponent to President Boni Yayi’s FCBE party.

Ajavon announced to a large crowd of supporters at Mathieu Kerekou stadium on Sunday, January 3rd that he would run as a candidate for all Beninese. He made particular mention that regardless of religion, gender, geographical region or political preferences he would stand for all citizens.

In the past Ajavon has stayed in the background of politics, funding various political parties. In a similar vein Talon has previously offered financial support to president Yayi’s ruling party before switching allegiance to the opposition.

Political analyst Francois Alladji stated that with Ajavon announcing his candidacy it, “pits the two most powerful traders” in Benin directly running against each other.

Opposition coalition split

The opposition coalition named “Unity Makes the Nation” remained split and could not reach a consensus as to their choice of a main candidate. Subsequently Eric Houndele, who acts as vice president in parliament, also dropped his nomination as an independent candidate.

Despite the strong candidacy of Prime Minister Zinsou, seven other members of the current ruling FCBE party have also applied to run against each other.

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Cargo drones, an economic revolution for Africa?

29 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

Africa drone

Cargo drones come to Africa and it could mean an economic revolution for the continent

Drones are now part of our modern consciousness, our everyday reality. Having had a sinister reputation from the association with warfare, their potential is now being harnessed for good.

The development of cargo drones is currently underway across the globe, sparking interest from pioneering technological heavyweights like Google and Amazon, as the revolutionary form of delivery transport.

Cargo drones are essentially un-piloted flying robots that carry medium sized goods. There are different styles to fit different purposes and sizes vary between 3-6 meters in length.

Top internet retailer, Amazon, said on their website that soon viewing cargo drones will be, “as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today.”

For Africa this could mean far more than how a parcel is delivered. Their use has been put forward as a possible boost for the continent’s economy.

Leapfrogging the problem of infrastructure in Africa

With Africa’s rapid economic growth comes the need to build and improve infrastructure. It is estimated that Africa’s shortfall is a much-needed $50 billion per year in this sector. There simply is not enough money to build the roads and lay the new train lines required to keep up with increasing trade.

John Ledgard, the director of Afrotech and long-time Africa correspondent of the Economist has a plan. The futurist thinker sees a way to combat the gridlock that African trade is otherwise unquestionably going to face, failing spending $93 billion a year on financing infrastructure. He hopes to unlock the sky by eventually linking east to west.

Afrotech plans to fill the gap in Africa’s transportation by using cargo drones and their very own aerial highway. Starting by setting up routes in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, eventually all parts of Africa will be connected. The initiative from Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, is working with architects Foster + Partners to create the drone-ports for the routes which hope to be set up by the end of 2016.

“The Droneport project is about doing ‘more with less,’ capitalizing on the recent advancements in drone technology,” said Lord Foster, chairman and founder of Foster + Partners.

The biggest to the smallest airport in the world

Foster + Partners, responsible for the creation of the world’s largest airport in Beijing, China, will now create what could be considered in effect, the world’s smallest airport. Three dome shaped buildings will comprise the Droneport that will rest on Rwanda’s red earth. Designed to run on clean energy, it will eventually provide employment for the surrounding community.

Rwanda was chosen for the trial because the terrain is difficult to travel through and very little air traffic flies over. From here half the country will be reachable via the cargo drone routes. Prioritizing medical and time sensitive cargo initially, Ledgard has a clear vision of how the project will mature. Phase 1: mainly hospitals and humanitarian emergencies. Phase 2: industries that provide spare parts and building equipment.

“Phase 1 and 2 would be enough to make the drones useful contributors. But the real reason for the technology,” says Ledgard “is Phase 3, when the drones will better connect businesses with customers across Africa.”

 

Jonathan Ledgard

Jonathan Ledgard

Turbulence expected

All going to plan, this could be the making of the developing Africa. Inevitably there are valid causes for concern and tangible doubts, but no one is more aware of them than Ledgard himself. He openly cites the areas that may be of concern but says most risks are small or can be overcome and that it is an improvement on current affairs.

Important for Africa is whether it can adopt this new technology quickly enough to make it beneficial. It will need several aspects to come together: the army to ensure security, government leaders of regional economic groupings to put free trade into practice and laws to be passed allowing fully independent drone flight. With Africa united, this could truly be an economic revolution for the future.

“Cargo drones can affordably and precisely collapse time and space….in a city environment you want to collapse time and in a rural environment you want to collapse space,” said Jonathan Ledgard.

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HeroTel wants to consolidate Wi-Fi service in South Africa

28 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

Alan-Knott-Craig-Jnr

The startup, with $4.75 million in capital, believes a single network will benefit consumers with more consistent service at lower costs.

Hundreds of small wireless providers are competing to connect Internet users in South Africa, but a new player has a different vision.

Instead of starting one more competing company, HeroTel founder Alan Knott-Craig Jr. wants to connect as many existing Internet providers as possible to form a national wireless network.

HeroTel hopes to consolidate the fragmented landscape of wireless Internet providers under a single brand. Knott-Craig said this would enable more consistent service for consumers at lower costs and aid expansion of service to areas that currently do not have broadband access.

HeroTel, launched in August 2015, has raised $4.75 million in investment capital and hopes to have a national footprint by April. Knott-Craig said he hoped the company would become the “Capitec of telecoms,” referring the South African banking network.

Knott-Craig, 38, is a South African entrepreneur and former CEO of the social network Mxit. He also founded Project Isizwe, a nonprofit that wants to put free Wi-Fi within walking distance of every South African.

Over the course of two years, the Isizwe Project has successfully turned the South African city of Tshwane (Pretoria), population 2.9 million, into the continent’s largest free public Wi-Fi network.

The network has 750 sites and more than 20 percent of the buildings in Tshwane are within walking distance of Wi-Fi, Knott-Craig said. One million people were to be connected by the end of 2015 with the entire population within walking distance of free Wi-Fi by 2017.

Knott-Craig believes that municipal governments should take responsibility for providing Wi-Fi to their citizens just as the governments provide electricity, sanitation and roads.

South-Africa Wi-Fi

South-Africa Wi-Fi

 

200 wireless providers operate in South Africa

In the private sector, he said there are about 200 wireless service providers operating in South Africa and the business is profitable. Revenues total about $53 million a year with profit margins of approximately 30 percent.

The problem, Knott-Craig said, is that consumers will demand greater wireless speeds at lower prices so a network makes more economic sense than a fragmented marketplace of providers.

Currently, Knott-Craig said, Wi-Fi speeds are doubling. But the cost to the consumer stays the same when it should be decreasing, he contends.

“People want fast reliable, affordable broadband, that’s all they want, and they don’t want you to feel like you’re doing them a favor by arriving to fix it,” he said.

Knott-Craig said South consumers now pay about 600 rand ($35) a month for 10 megabytes per second. He projected they will pay the same amount for 100 megabytes by 2017.

Five million households lack broadband access

He said HeroTel would use unlicensed spectrum, which is the same as the spectrum home and office consumers use for Wi-Fi.

In addition to improving service for existing customers, Knott-Craig believes pooling the resources of existing providers will enable the network to bring Internet access into about five million households that do not have broadband. Only about 400,000 of these are reachable by fiber-optic broadband, he said.

For the rest, he said, unlicensed spectrum Wi-Fi is the obvious answer because it is inexpensive, he said. “That’s why the HeroTel strategy makes sense.”

According to the Internet Architecture Board, South Africa has approximately 33.5 million Internet users, representing 61 percent of the population as of December 31, 2014.

Getting more people connected to the Internet will be good for all of South Africa, Knott-Craig said. “The more people in South Africa that are on the grid, whether it is the poor or the rich, the faster our economy can grow,” he said.

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South African president Zuma under pressure as economy worsens

27 January 2016 Comments (2) Africa, Featured, Politics

Jacob Zuma

Analysts point to potential losses for the African National Congress in upcoming local elections, which could pave the way for Zuma to exit the presidency later this year.

South Africa’s venerable African National Congress party may lose political ground in upcoming municipal elections as economic conditions worsen and controversy swirls around President Jacob Zuma.

As business confidence in the government and popular opinion of Zuma plummet, some are predicting the ANC could pave the way for Zuma to exit the presidency later this year if the local elections go badly.

Zuma’s six-year tenure has been mired by accusations of corruption, policy missteps and controversial appointments that his critics contend have created economic stagnation and stifled investment in South Africa.

Ouster of finance minister sparks protests, while rand plunges

Zuma caused a national uproar in December when he abruptly fired a respected finance minister and then was forced to sack an inexperienced replacement only four days later amid protests and plunging currency rates and capital markets.

The rand dropped to under 16 to the dollar for the first time and the benchmark stock index lost the equivalent of $11 billion after Zuma fired finance minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with parliamentarian David van Rooyen on Dec. 9.

Business leaders protested while thousands of South Africans took to the streets using the slogan “Zuma Must Fall” and demanding that Zuma leave office.

ANC leaders persuaded Zuma to quickly replace van Rooyen and a measure of stability was restored with the appointment of a third finance minister, Pravin Gordhan who had served in that post from 2009 to 2014.

Economy worsens with record drought

South Africa, the most industrialized country on the continent, was under economic pressure well before the latest events. The rand has steadily declined, losing half its worth since Zuma took office in 2009. The economy is stagnant, unemployment is high, and the country is undergoing its worst drought since record keeping began in 1904.

Maize production has dropped by 30 percent and prices on the South Africa Futures Exchange have more than doubled in the past year. While agriculture makes up only a small fraction of South Africa’s gross domestic product, the country will be forced to import food, including as much as $710 million worth of maize, which will result in even higher prices.

Christo Joubert, a price analyst with the National Agricultural Marketing Council, said the council expected prices to increase by as much as 20 percent in 2016. “The drought is hitting everything,” Joubert said.

The higher prices will present further struggles in a nation with an unemployment rate of 30 percent. Also, analysts predict the nation’s economy could stagnate in 2016 for the third straight year, with a growth rate of less than 1 percent.

Support for government declines

ANCBusiness confidence and popular support for the incumbent government have also dropped.

The business community’s confidence dropped to its lowest rate in 20 years, according to the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry. As the finance upheaval unfolded in December, the chamber’s confidence index declined to 79.3 percent, the lowest level since June 1993.

Meanwhile, even before December’s events, public distrust of the president had reached a record 66 percent, up from 37 percent in 2011. A majority of South Africans believe Zuma ignores the courts and the parliament, according to an Afrobarometer poll released in November.

Municipal elections could be pivotal

The troubled economy and public distrust put in doubt whether the ANC can maintain its grip on power and whether Zuma will serve out his term.

The ANC has won 60 percent of the vote since coming to power with Nelson Mandela two decades ago.

Gary Van Staden, an analyst with NKC African Economics, said the party could lose as much as 10 percentage points of support in local elections between May and August. He said the ANC can expect to lose control in some municipalities, which run parks, libraries, utilities and sanitation.

If the elections go badly for the ANC, some analysts predict the party will try to replace Zuma.

“We look for a cornered ANC machine having the possibility of managing the exit of President Zuma around July,” said Peter Attard Montalto, an analyst at Nomura.

For now, however, the ANC has voiced support for the embattled president. In the annual speech on the January 8 anniversary of the party, Zuma touted the progress the ANC has brought to the country and said the ANC was needed as a unifier.

Meanwhile, several possible candidates to become Zuma’s successor have emerged. Among those mentioned are Zuma’s former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who heads the African Union Commission; Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president; and Baleka Mbete, the ANC national chairwoman and speaker of parliament.

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Tanzania stock exchange poised for initial public offering

26 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

dar es salaam stock exchange

The East African nation will become one of only three on the continent that is owned by shareholders.

Tanzania’s stock exchange is poised to join an elite African club as it finalizes plans for an initial public offering by the end of March.

Only two other African exchanges trade their own stock. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange became self-listing in 2005, followed by the Nairobi Stock Exchange in 2014. But about a dozen more African countries are considering the change.

In Tanzania, the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) has an application for the initial public offering (IPO) pending before the Capital Markets and Securities Authority.

With approval, the stock exchange expects to conduct both its initial public offering (IPO) and self-listing before the end of the first quarter this year, according to Moremi Marwa, chief executive officer of the exchange.

Stock exchange will be owned by shareholders

In this process, the exchange will demutualize, which means it will change from a member-owned entity to become a public limited company that is owned by shareholders. Once the self-listing is completed, the name of the exchange will be changed to Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Public Limited Company (PLC).

Conversion to a public limited company is expected to strengthen governance of the exchange and enable it to better ensure financial sustainability since it will be able to raise funds through rights issues or bond issues.

This translates into access to efficiently priced funds to finance the exchange’s growth, including investments in new trading technologies, products and services as regional financial markets become more competitive.

Ambitious plans for growth

The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange has a market capitalization of 20.8 trillion Tanzanian shillings ($9.5 billion). The exchange has an ambitious goal: By 2017 it aspires to build more than double its market value to equal half of Tanzania’s gross domestic product, which was estimated at $40 billion in 2015.

Last year, the stock exchange scrapped controls on foreign ownership of shares in order to boost demand. As a result, the exchange was Africa’s best performer last year, when it gained 64 percent. Trading in November totaled more than $42 million, according to the African Securities Exchanges Association.

Marwa also said he expects the Tanzanian exchange to add at least five new listings of equities and corporate bonds this year.

Currently, 22 companies are listed or cross-listed on the exchange, which was founded in 1996 and began trading in 1998.

Self-listing trend grows

Self-listing by stock exchanges started when the Stockholm Stock Exchange made the change in 1993, followed by Helsinki (1995), Copenhagen (1996), Amsterdam (1997), the Australian Exchange (1998) and Toronto, Hong Kong and London stock exchanges in 2000.

Given the advantages of demutualization, Marwa said more than a dozen other exchanges in Africa are considering initiating the process. There are 29 stock exchanges on the continent.

Despite its growth in 2015, the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange is dwarfed by Africa’s largest stock exchange, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion.

Tanzania’s economy is the 12th largest in Africa. It grew by more than six percent in 2015, with infrastructure construction and transportation projects in the run-up to national elections driving economic growth.

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First International Business Forum in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

25 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

Kinshasa International Forum

The first Kinshasa International Forum, #KINFOR16, at the Hotel Beatrice in Kinshasa on the 26 and 27th of January, 2016, is bringing together seven hundred entrepreneurs from Africa, America, Asia and Europe to meet with Congolese innovators and the large companies which operate within the country, aiming to foster new relationships and opportunities through business to business meetings, informal sessions and thematic workshops. The forum is organized jointly by a Belgian organization called Africa Rise and the Democratic Republic of Congo Conseil Economique et Social – C.E.S.

Africa Rise is dedicated to the social and economic development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and they are already known for their ABBW, Africa Belgium Business Week. They firmly believe that the emergence of a stronger, more capable nation is to be reached through business networking and the sharing of ideas and expertise.

The Conseil Economique et Social is a think tank. They are built up from players within the Congolese society such as employers, workers, NGOs, religious leaders, scientists and bankers. Their role is to advise upon issues chosen for them by the presidency and the state.

The spirit of African Business

Africa in general, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in particular, is no stranger to entrepreneurial spirit and business innovation. The country however has had many years of struggle and while things are improving there are still significant challenges to be met.

Here the entrepreneurial spirit is not something reserved for business people or the creative industries; here the basics of business innovation and entrepreneurship are the very stuff of survival. From Benedict Mundele, the twenty one year old woman from Kinshasa who is aiming to provide a healthy and sustainable lifestyle through Surprise Tropical which she founded at the tender age of sixteen, to Abraham Kazadi, who sells fermented tea in Goma in the troubled east of the country to people in his local community, the spirit of business innovation runs high.

A helping hand where most needed

A forum for these innovators may help to enable the Democratic Republic of Congo to emerge both economically and socially from the troubled haze which has for so long hampered the development of the country. A chance to meet and exchange ideas and experiences with business people from all over the world will be an invaluable asset to the youth of the DRC, where seventy percent of the population is under twenty five.

“It is our strong commitment and a will to contribute to the emergence of a dynamic entrepreneurial scene in Democratic Republic of Congo” said Binta Sagna, Communication Director of Africa Rise.

An interesting idea aimed at just these young innovators is a project called #Kinpitch. As the name suggests this project allows entrepreneurs to pitch their idea, dragon’s den style, to a worldwide panel of business leaders and idea shapers. The seven finalists will be invited to the international forum and be given a year-long mentorship to realize the potential of their ideas.

The First International Forum is a platform for enablement for a troubled but resource-rich nation and hopefully the first of many.

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Rwanda tops the UN Human Development Index

24 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Featured, Politics

rwanda

The Human Development Index, or HDI, celebrates its 25th anniversary since its induction into economic thought with its report published last month by the United Nations. And notably, this year’s report included a section that evaluated the progress economies have made since 1990- reporting that Rwanda has made the most progress out of all countries in the last 25 years.

This fact is all the more impressive given that its level of development fell during the genocide of 1994. Rwandans can now expect to live almost 32 years longer than in 1990, and spend twice as long at school.

China, the frequently lauded growth powerhouse of the world, comes in at number two.

Kagame’s Rwanda

Rwanda’s ability to move from the recovery of genocide towards a service-dominated economy in one generation highlights the impact proper governance can achieve in lower income economies. Rwanda has one of the lowest corruption rates in the region, and is currently still led by Paul Kagame, the man who led the Rwandan Patriotic Front when the armed wing of the party ended the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Currently, Kagame’s presidency is attracting local and international debate as the Parliament recently passed a nation-wide referendum concerning limits on Presidential terms. With the new constitutional amendment and overwhelming popularity Kagame holds, it seems that the President is set to lead the country through at least 7 more years of economic development.

Despite his popularity and demonstrated effectiveness as President, the referendum has attracted global criticism from other world powers. Both the U.S. State Department and the European Union have condemned the results of the referendum, calling Kagame to step down and “foster a new generation of leaders in Rwanda.”

The international community largely fears another life-long leader in central Africa, a region that has witnessed many saviors-turned-tyrants in the post-colonial era. Many neighboring nations are still ruled by dictators such as Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, or Cameroon’s Paul Biya, men who have held power over these territories for decades.

However, Kagame has expressed disinterest towards becoming a life-long president. At 58 years old, he said, “I don’t think that what we need is an eternal leader.” The results of the referendum coincide with other leaders in the region seeking constitutional term extensions as well (in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo), and foreign critics’ fears may be largely attributed to what precedent Rwanda’s referendum may set in the region. In neighboring Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term sparked violent protests resulting in over 100 deaths since the announcement.

How does one measure progress?

Most markers of economic progression deal with money: such as gross domestic product or national debt. The HDI paradigm acknowledges something we all know: it’s not all about money. The health of an economy is also expressed in the welfare of its people and how able they are to contribute to this economy.

The index takes into account measures for household income, life expectancy and education into a single development score, which gives a holistic sense of how an economy is doing on a human basis. The report’s philosophy on progress is explained in its introduction, “development is about enlarging people’s choices—focusing broadly on the richness of human lives rather than narrowly on the richness of economies.”

And for once, it’s mostly good news: the fastest progress was seen among low human development countries. Progress on the HDI has been considerable at the country level. For example, Ethiopia increased its HDI value by more than half; Rwanda by nearly half; five countries, including Angola and Zambia, by more than a third; and 23 countries, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nepal, by more than a fifth.

The five fastest developing countries in the world are Rwanda, China, Iran, Singapore, and Mozambique.

Rwanda’s reforms serve the bottom 50%

Rwanda’s success can be attributed to conscious economic reform geared towards strengthening the ability of the bottom 50% to engage with business and finance. Last year’s reforms boast an astounding reduction in the number of days required to transfer property from 370 to a mere 32, and jumping from a score of 2 to 19 out of 20 on an index that rates the ease and efficiency of obtaining credit according to a World Bank report published in 2015.

In Africa, Asia and Latin America over 30% of surveyed firms reported access to credit as a major constraint to growth. Rwanda’s new credit guarantee scheme enabled the country to become a major exporter of specialty coffee in one year alone. By creating a financial system inclusive to lower-income households, policy makers have allowed for structural transformation and the creation of work among the bottom 50%.

Rwanda sets the bar for highly developed countries

And Rwanda’s structural transformations that allow for creation does not limit itself to expressions of finance. Their Gender Development Index score is almost perfect at 0.957 out of a maximum score of 1. Rwanda, despite being #163 on the HDI Index, in terms of gender equality scores higher than even highly developed countries such as the Republic of Korea, Greece, and the Netherlands.

Even Switzerland, considered as one of the most developed and egalitarian countries in the world, comes in at only 0.950 in comparison to Rwanda’s 0.957. Rwanda is one of only two countries in the world with a female majority in the national parliament.

And put in perspective, Rwanda’s ability to surpass China is more incredible than it seems. As one of the smallest countries in Africa’s mainland, the country is mired by a lack of natural resources. The growth witnessed over the last 25 years is mostly attributed to a surge in the service industry.

Rather that fear the impacts Kagame’s track record may set in Africa, the foreign community would be amiss to ignore the major successes and beneficial precedents he has set as well, demonstrated in the hard numbers published by the UN’s HDI report in December 2015.

In the same month, an overwhelming 98% of Rwandan voters lifted constitutional bans that would allow Kagame to preside over another 3 mandates, meaning that Kagame could be president until 2034. “What is happening is people’s choice,” said Kagame, adding that Rwandans are a people that “have their future in their own hands. Ask people why they want me.” Given the progress highlighted by the UN Report, the answer seems pretty clear.

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South African entrepreneur is first black woman to launch an airline

23 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

Siza Mzimela

Siza Mzimela, a longtime aviation executive, is CEO of Fly Blue Crane, which operates flights to several locations in South Africa.

South African entrepreneur Siza Mzimela is making an important mark on aviation as the first black woman in the world to start an airline.

Mzimela is founder and CEO of Fly Blue Crane, a fledgling airline that flies to several destinations within the country and hopes to expand to regional cities.

Mzimela said she is tapping her years of experience leading other airlines, including South African Airways, the country’s largest airline, to shape Fly Blue Crane to meet customer expectations for consistent, on-time travel. The CEO promised convenient, problem-free booking and travel with competitive fares.

New airline is based in Johannesburg

Blue Crane, based at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, launched in August offering several flights daily to Bloemfontein, Kimberley and Nelspruit.

Blue Crane later added flights between Kimberley and Cape Town and between Bloemfontein and Cape Town, but announced that flights to Nelspruit would be discontinued in January because of lack of capacity.

The airline hopes to find success serving provincial and regional capitals in southern Africa.

Mzimela said that airports in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town had more than enough air service. But Fly Blue Crane wants to fill gaps in the market in smaller cities such as Kimberley within South Africa and then expand to regional centers.

She wants to use the airline to open new routes that will help improve the economies of smaller markets, she said.

fly blue crane

Regional expansion is a goal

While service within South Africa is the immediate priority, the new airline wants to expand beyond those borders. Mzimela hopes to add destinations in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fly Blue Crane operates a fleet of four fuel-efficient 50-seater Embraer Regional Jet 145 aircraft, which enables quick turnaround and efficient crews.

The new company is taking off at a time when the airline industry in Africa is poised to expand. According to the African Airlines Association, there is opportunity for African carriers to expand intra-African and domestic travel for a growing middle class while global carriers dominate intercontinental travel. More than 20 carriers are based in South Africa, the largest being South African Airways with a fleet of 65 planes.

Founder has headed two other airlines

Launching an airline isn’t the first “first” for Mzimela.

She was the first female CEO at both South African Express Airways and South African Airways. At South African Airways, she introduced non-stop flights to New York and Beijing  – a first in the history of the airline.

Mzimela also was the first woman in 67 years named to the board of directors of the International Air Transport Association. She serves on the South African Tourism Board and is a member of the board of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

In 2012, she was named one of the 10 Greatest Female Leaders in Africa Today by Ventures Africa.

Mzimela also founded Blue Crane Aviation, an aviation services company providing African airlines with consulting, and legal and aircraft management services. She serves as the company’s executive chairperson.

She graduated with a degree in economics and statistics and began her career in banking before moving into the airline industry as a researcher.

Few women rise to the top in the airline industry

Mzimela said being a woman executive in the aviation industry has posed challenges. Globally, only 12 of 248 airline CEOs are women, fewer than 5 percent. Sexism and lack of female mentors are cited as factors that hold women back from executive posts.

“I don’t know how many times I walked into meetings and people just assumed I probably was the one who was going to be taking notes,” she said.

Mzimela said her success managing established companies motivated her to want to “build something better from the ground up.”

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Nigerian Billionaire Aliko Dangote Takes On a New Industry: Tomatoes

22 January 2016 Comments (0) Africa, Business, Featured

nigeria tomatoes

Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has built a giant tomato processing factory which aims to boost Nigeria’s tomato production, domestic output, and jobs.

Nigeria grows around 1.5 million metric tons of tomatoes each year, making it Africa’s second largest producer and the world’s 13th. And yet Nigeria is not on the list of official exporting countries of tomatoes or tomato products. In fact, to meet local demand of more than 2 million metric tons of tomatoes, the country imports large quantities of both fresh and processed tomatoes, mostly from China. It is the world’s largest importer of tomato paste, seeing over 300,000 metric tons ($360 million) of tomato paste imported annually.

It’s a situation comparable to Nigeria’s oil industry. While it is the largest oil producer in Africa, gasoline shortages are a regular occurrence as a lack of infrastructure, poor maintenance, and mismanagement have left refineries working below capacity and forced a reliance on imports. Oil makes up just 14% of GDP, while 38% of the country’s imports are petroleum products.

In explanation of the tomato statistics, the Central Bank of Nigeria reports that the approximately 200,000 Nigerian farmers growing tomatoes lose about half of their harvest each year, due to poor food supply chain management and inadequate infrastructure of water, storage, and power supply facilities. The remaining half of the harvest is then subject to price depression, caused by the perishable nature of crops, pests and disease, high rains at peak season, poor marketing, multiple levies by state and local government agents, corrupt practices by officials at air and sea ports, and the costs of processing, packaging, and storage machinery and equipment. Farmers are unable to consistently make a profit, and as a result, many have stopped cultivation.

Dangote Tomato Processing Factory

Aliko Dangote

Aliko Dangote

But Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is looking to change the future of Nigerian tomatoes. Aiming to create jobs and boost Nigeria’s tomato production and domestic output, he has spent the last five years building a $20 million tomato processing plant outside the country’s second largest city, Kano (a city which has been blighted by poverty and unemployment, and the Islamist group, Boko Haram).

Set to open next month, the Dangote Tomato Processing factory will be Africa’s largest: the size of 10 football pitches set within 17,000 hectares of irrigated fields. It is expected to produce 430,000 tons of tomato paste per year. And it will directly employ 120 people, buying tomatoes from 50,000 farmers. The factory will employ modern farming techniques and improved seed varieties and chemicals (funded by the Central Bank of Nigeria) which are expected to increase yields and encourage farmers back into growing tomatoes.

The factory’s general manager, Abdulkarim Kaita, said: “Nigeria is such a huge market for tomato paste that we will find quite challenging to satisfy. Already local tomato paste packaging companies have placed orders with us which we will have to work hard to satisfy. We are set to begin operations. We are only waiting for the tomatoes which are ripening in the fields.”

Aliko Dangote

Aliko Dangote is the founder of the Dangote Group, one of Africa’s leading conglomerates. He comes from Kano, now home to his tomato factory, where, in 1977, he started the Dangote Group as a small food-trading company. Helped with a $3,000 loan from an uncle, he went on to transform this small business into an import and trading company with interests in flour, sugar, and salt. And almost four decades later, the Group is active in 15 African countries, and has expanded to cement, steel, real estate, telecommunications, haulage, port operations, polypropylene packaging, and oil and gas.

Dangote Cement is Africa’s largest cement producer, and counts plants in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Tanzania, producing more than 30 million metric tons annually. And, dominating the sugar market in Nigeria, the Dangote Group sugar refinery in Lagos is the second-largest in the world.

Despite a weak Nigerian currency and domestic difficulties which saw his net worth plunge $5 billion over the past year, Dangote is still Africa’s richest man. With an estimated net worth of $14.3 billion dollars (Jan 2016), Forbes ranks him as the 67th richest person in the world.

The Dangote Group

But while undoubtedly Dangote has seen huge success in Nigeria, there are also concerns that his actions are not entirely positive for the country.

Dangote Cement Factory

Dangote Cement Factory

For example, thanks to Nigeria’s characteristic power cuts, the Kano factory is to rely on diesel generators for electricity, something which will significantly add to production costs and therefore reduce the factory’s ability to compete with imported products. This status quo has so far led to the closing of numerous factories in the state of Kano, including two of Dangote’s own factories. As a solution, the Nigerian government plans to put restrictions on tomato imports in place this year, giving Dangote a forced competitive edge. The vice-president of Nigeria’s manufacturers union, Ali Madugu, comments: “Once the government can place restrictions on the import of Chinese tomato pastes… the sky’s the limit for the Dangote tomato paste because the market is there for them to exploit”.

Some fear that this policy of government assistance – whether higher tariffs, restrictions on imported products or outright bans – is creating damaging monopolies in Nigeria, which push up the local prices that everyday Nigerians must pay. For example, Dangote Cement makes a profit margin of 60% per bag of cement in Nigeria, but a margin of between 6% and 13% across the rest of Africa. Nigerians pay, as a general rule, twice or three times more than any other African country for cement. Restrictions on imported paste (which could be sold at prices that undercut the Dangote Group) could have the same effect, placing Dangote Tomato Processing in a position of monopoly, able to control pricing, production, and jobs.

Again aligning his own interests with those of the nation, as his businesses often seem to have done, Dangote has also announced a move into Nigeria’s precarious oil industry. The 650,000 barrel-per-day Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemical Company, located in the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, is scheduled for completion by early 2018. Promising to reform the Nigerian oil industry, increase productivity, and create more jobs, the facility will produce gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel / household kerosene, polypropylene, and fertilizer, and will be the fifth-biggest in the world.

Senior General Manager, Madhav Kelkar, said Dangote’s plant would not just supply the domestic market, but could lead to a self-sufficient Nigeria that could export to other parts of the world. And perhaps this is so. But for now, only the longer-term local price of tomato paste will reveal whether this tomato processing factory has been a positive development for the people of Nigeria.

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Kenzibox: Thinking Outside The Box

21 January 2016 Comments (0) Featured, Leaders, Middle East

KenziBox is a Dubai-based company that makes shoe-box sized treasure troves of children’s activities, delivered to parent’s doors to promote creative and constructive play. UAE-based co-founders Leyla Lahsini and Shirin Benamadi started the business after facing the problems parenthood poses in the digital age.

Both women have Masters Degrees in Business Administration and impressive careers in finance. Lahsini holds an MBA from London Business School as well as a Masters in Strategy and Marketing and has experience in hedge funds in London, while Benamadi holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and has worked in private wealth management at Morgan Stanley.

21st Century Parenting

In the digital age, pulling children away from televisions and iPads and towards activities that promote healthy brain development can be a challenge for parents- especially those who work full time.

For many, after school programs are expensive or unrealistic to take advantage of on a daily basis. “Kids finish school early and you feel this need to keep them busy in the afternoon,” said Lahsini. “We don’t want to put them in activity classes every single afternoon, but you want to keep them busy in a nice way in the house.”

Like many parents of the 21th Century, Lahsini turned to the internet for solutions, downloading craft projects from Pinterest to take up with her four-year-old son. But it was more difficult than it seemed- having to go to many stores to find the right materials, complicated instructions, and the chaos that young children inevitably introduce to situations that involve glitter glue and dexterous finesse.

Taking Play Seriously

Despite the frustrations, Lahsini was determined to continue because she saw the value of exposing her son to such products. Not only do they take up the afternoon in creative play, but craft projects have been shown to develop higher thinking skills, enhance multicultural understandings, build self-esteem as well as positive emotional responses to learning- all benefits every parent would want for their child.

Lashini turned to her friend, now-business partner Benamadi, who always seemed to make the arts and crafts projects look simple and easy. This simple request for help and the master’s degrees they both carried in business administration paved the way for KenziBox.

Kenzibox

When Moms have MBAs

“Can we bring that simplicity to everyone?” thought Lahsini. Together they researched themes and developed activities around those ideas. In November 2014, their first themed box, Circus in Town, was launched.

Little more than a year later and KenziBox stays true to their successful original fashion. Every month a new theme debuts in shoe-box form, where children can open the box and find everything they need, from materials to illustrated instructions, on how to craft everything from make-your-own clown outfits to volcanoes that actually erupt.

KenziBox: a Dubai’s Business (Role) Model

By creating a product that re-invents itself every week, KenziBox continuously provides opportunities for growth for both children and parents, with creative projects designed by early-age education professionals. Boasting stellar customer service for the busiest of parents, KenziBoxes are conveniently sold online, delivered to the door with all the necessary materials. The simplicity in meeting 21st century parenting problems makes KenziBox a role model in the UAE’s emerging e-commerce market, and is a learning lesson in itself for other businesses that aspire to create a positive impact in their client’s lives.

Their superb business model has won them several recognitions in their first year alone- Dubai Women’s Business Council awarded them First Place as well as the People’s Choice award, and KenziBox was a finalist for SME’s Start Up of the Year.

Emma Fisher, a Dubai-based schoolteacher who was one of KenziBox’s intial clients, can attest to the benefits the projects offer, both as a mother and an education professional.

One month of KenziBox starts at AED 185, with lower rates for long term subscriptions. The company also offers party favor sets and KenziBox travel bags.

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