confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
UNITED STATES/AFRICA: Furore over migrant ban could complicate diplomacy
Patrick Smith
Again, we start the week in the United States where the Donald Trump administration’s first week of frenetic activity has major implications
for Africa and diplomatic deal-making. Then to Addis Ababa where
delegates to the African Union summit are set to welcome Morocco
back into the fold and choose a new chair. The Gambia's
new leader, Adama Barrow,
faces a busy week as he chooses his cabinet, responds to calls for
widespread reforms of the security services and launches probes into
human rights abuses. Nigeria could start a slow
economic recovery this year but security worries and lack of food aid
are causing horrendous problems in the north-east. Finally, Uganda's
President Yoweri Museveni gets a clear warning on
ballooning debt from the International Monetary Fund.
UNITED STATES/AFRICA: Furore over migrant ban could
complicate diplomacy
Last Friday’s (27 January) presidential executive order
for a four-month ban on entry to the United States of people from Libya,
Somalia, Sudan,
and four Middle Eastern Muslim-majority countries could obstruct peace
and trade negotiations. Already, there are reports of several citizens
from these countries with business in the US being turned off flights
amid considerable confusion about how the rules are meant to be
implemented.
At Cairo airport, one of the regional hubs most frequently
used by
North Africans, officials said they would allow only those nationals
with diplomatic passports or senior government officials onto flights
bound for the US. In a television interview on yesterday (29 January),
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus insisted
that the ban would not affect people holding Green Cards, contradicting
an earlier statement by the Department of Homeland Security in
Washington.
Olympic gold medallist, Sir Mo Farah, who has
dual Somali-British
nationality but has been resident in the US, quickly denounced the ban
as did other dual nationals affected, including a British Conservative
MP, Nadhim Zahawi. After quick negotiations,
officials in London have reportedly now secured US entry rights for
people from the seven restricted countries who also have British
nationality.
Much trickier to resolve will be the status of nationals from
Libya,
Somalia and Sudan involved in political or security negotiations at the
UN in New York or elsewhere in the US, let alone those fleeing
persecution. This comes at a particularly awkward time for UN-backed
peace negotiations which show signs of unravelling.
There are also signs that the Trump administration’s policy on
Libya could change. We hear that General Khalifa Haftar,
commander of the Libyan National Army, sent an envoy to Washington in
December to solicit support from the Trump government. That may mean
Washington dropping its diplomatic support for the
internationally-recognised government in Tripoli. Such a major shift in
policy could be complicated by the ban on Libyans entering the US.
AFRICAN UNION: Morocco's King Mohammed in Addis to
rejoin continental body
Despite the misgivings of Algeria and South
Africa, Morocco looks set to rejoin the African Union at its
summit in Addis Ababa which winds up tomorrow (31 January). King
Mohammed VI arrived in the Ethiopian capital
today (30 January) and hosted a grand reception for the other heads of
state.
We understand that at least 40 member states back Morocco's
application to rejoin the AU but there is still no resolution about the
position of Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in Western Sahara
which is also a full member of the organisation. Morocco and the SADR
have been locked in a 40-year dispute over the status of the former Spanish
territory. Until now, Morocco has refused to attend any meeting at
which the SADR is also present. Resolving these contrary positions will
require some innovative diplomacy in Addis.
Summit delegates elected the new chair of the AU Commission
today (30 January). Chad's Moussa Faki Mahamat saw
off the strongly-backed and better-fancied candidacies of Senegal's Abdoulaye
Bathily and Kenya's Amina
Mohamed (AC Vol 58 No 3, The
scramble for the chair).
THE GAMBIA: Celebrations for new
President’s homecoming
After
supporters cheered their welcome when his plane landed at Banjul
airport last Thursday (26 January), Gambia's new President, Adama
Barrow,
has to pick his cabinet this week and set about the sensitive task of
restructuring the country’s armed forces and intelligence services. At
the head of a coalition of several opposition groups, Barrow is under
pressure to form a broad, representative government and also to hold to
account those officials accused of abusing their powers.
Barrow has already asked the West African forces, which played
a key role in persuading former President Yahya Jammeh
to stand down after he lost the December election, to stay in the
country for another six months. The Chief of Army Staff under Jammeh, Ousmane
Badjie, who said his troops would not waste their blood
fighting regional forces to keep Jammeh in power, is to keep his post
for now.
On Friday (27 January), Senegalese troops arrested General Bora
Colley, the former head of prisons in Gambia, as he was trying
to enter Guinea-Bissau. Human rights campaigners say
that Colley presided over a regime of torture and persecution in the
country’s gaols.
Although Barrow has said he will rename the National
Intelligence
Agency, also accused of terrible abuses under Jammeh’s regime, he is
yet to respond for calls for a commission of enquiry into the
organisation’s record since 1994. Some are calling for the immediate
sacking of Yankuba Badjie, the current head of the
NIA.
NIGERIA: Better news on economy but security crises
persist
With
world oil prices predicted to average $66 a barrel this year,
economists are forecasting a modest economic recovery for Nigeria if
the government goes ahead with its $20 billion capital spending
programme. In a speech to bankers in Davos earlier this month,
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said the government
is determined to close the gap between the official exchange rate of
N315 to the US$1 and the parallel rate of around N500=$1. But as the
central bank in Abuja has excoriated 'unpatriotic' bidders on the
foreign exchange market, many questions remain about how Osinbajo’s
team intend to reform the market.
Most of the big risks in Nigeria this year are linked to
national security. Nigerian troops have substantially pushed back the Boko
Haram
militia and destroyed some of their bases in the Sambisa forest but the
after-effects of the war haunt the north-east. World Food Programme
Executive Director Ertharin Cousin says that some 4.4
million people are in need of food aid in the north-east, about one
third of them at risk of starvation. She said there were still hundreds
of thousands of people in Boko Haram's heartlands in Borno
State who could not be reached by aid convoys.
UGANDA: IMF chief sounds alarm on mounting debts
Last
July, the central bank in Kampala warned President Yoweri Museveni's
government that its growing dependence on foreign loans could cause
grave financial problems within two years if it did not move forward on
oil exports as soon as possible.
Those warnings were reinforced in Kampala on 27 January by the
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde,
who argued the government should do more to raise revenues
domestically. The country's external debt is just over US$10 billion,
much of it owed to Chinese companies building new roads, a new airport
and power stations.
Lagarde said infrastructure spending could boost Uganda's
growth
rate to over 6% but the projects, their quality and value for money
would have to be strictly monitored by the government. It has taken the
government a decade to move forward on the exploitation of oil reserves
found in and around Lake Albert. Progress has been hampered by a
dispute with the government's partner oil companies about the viability
of a local oil refinery designed to sell to the regional market and the
choice of an export pipeline route towards to Indian Ocean. Last year,
to some surprise, the government announced it would build a pipeline to
Tanga, on Tanzania's coast instead of the widely
favoured route to the Kenyan coast.
