Jump to navigation

Published 8th August 2014

Vol 55 No 16


Dollars, security and a few surprises

U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit 2014
U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit 2014

President Obama and the promise of trade and investment drew the leaders to Washington’s summit but the results will emerge only slowly

For many, the most emblematic moment of Washington's maiden Africa summit on 4-6 August came at the end of an intense day of economic and commercial debate on 5 August, when President Barack Obama sat in on a 15-minute discussion with Takunda Chingonzo, a 21-year-old internet entrepreneur from Zimbabwe. It was a conversation of the free-ranging kind that Obama had specified for the following day at the Leaders Summit. It was also a signal that the USA wanted to send about its offers of partnership with Africa, the continent with the youngest population.

READ FOR FREE

A moral victory

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

View site

A US judge finds Sudan and Iran guilty of the 1998 US embassy bombings, revealing new details of their involvement

Sixteen years after the bombings of the United States' embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured more than 1,000, a New York court has ordered Iran and S...


The Ebola epidemic

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

View site

The crisis might have been contained if politicians had acted more quickly and health services were not neglected

Following the death of more than 900 people in West Africa from the worst outbreak of Ebola so far and with potential carriers arriving in the United States and Middle East, the in...



BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

Amid the gridlock and diplomatic glad-handing as over 50 high-level African delegations descended on a humid Washington for a week, it looked as if straight talking might lose out. Economics and business, it quickly emerged, was what had brought the delegations to the capital.

However, Mohamed Ibrahim, the Sudanese telecoms pioneer and philanthropist, quickly breached diplomatic politesse on 4 August by asking why it required the presence of 50 African leaders in Washington to convin...

Amid the gridlock and diplomatic glad-handing as over 50 high-level African delegations descended on a humid Washington for a week, it looked as if straight talking might lose out. Economics and business, it quickly emerged, was what had brought the delegations to the capital.

However, Mohamed Ibrahim, the Sudanese telecoms pioneer and philanthropist, quickly breached diplomatic politesse on 4 August by asking why it required the presence of 50 African leaders in Washington to convince big American companies that they should be searching for business on the continent, like their Chinese, Indian and Brazilian counterparts.

Looking around with a smile, Mo Ibrahim argued that African leaders spend far too much time attending summits and far too little fixing their own countries. His final demand struck a chord later in the week: that US companies should pay their taxes and royalties in Africa and not set up elaborate schemes to avoid their obligations.

On 6 August, President Barack Obama lamented that too many US companies set up structures that enable them to avoid paying taxes in the USA, let alone in Africa. With some subtle prompting from African and US activists on the growing illicit capital outflow from Africa, more than US$50 billion according to the latest reports, Obama said US officials would be working with a group of African leaders to close many of those loopholes.

And it wasn't long before Washington's political battles disrupted summit proceedings. Although most US Africa policy enjoys bipartisan backing, the Tea Party group in the Republican Party is unpicking that. It is trying to shut down the US Export-Import Bank which guarantees billions of dollars of US trade with Africa. That, some of the departing delegations might say, is a reminder of the perils of democracy.

Read more

Gas, cash and votes

As elections approach, money and favours change hands and the gas boom unleashes a torrent of competing companies and politicians

With the race underway to exploit the massive gas reserves off the coast of Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces, economic power and now political power is shifting northwards. That ...


Who owns what?

Vast sums of money and political loyalties are at stake as the land clashes spread

President Uhuru Kenyatta has belatedly moved to stem the violence over land ownership in Coast Province but the delay has allowed conflict to become entrenched. His 31 July order f...


The science of summitry

Seasoned Africa summit organisers in Paris, Beijing, Tokyo and New Delhi looked on with more than a hint of competitive concern as the United States launched its own variant, the U...


Coup de Grace

The succession battle is in turmoil after the President’s wife is proposed for a top ZANU-PF post

The nomination of Grace Mugabe for the leadership of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's Women's League has put the cat among the party pigeons. The bandwagon rol...


Politicians as targets

The latest round of murderous attacks contradicts President Hassan’s claims to have stabilised the country

The murder of the popular singer and member of Parliament Saado Ali Warsame on 23 July and of MP and former minister Aden Madeer on 1 August was a sharp reminder of the continuing ...


The coal train derails

China's demand for coal drew big mining companies to Mozambique's world-class reserves but now they are frantically revising their forecasts

When Rio Tinto sold its stake in Mozambique's coal reserves on 30 July, alarm bells rang for the country's coal industry. The Anglo-Australian company took US$50 million, less than...


Not waving but drifting

Some see the kingdom as a star in this troubled region but a political vacuum at the top and a lack of ideas are holding it back

Prescient members of the ruling class are feeling uneasy, even in Casablanca's smartest restaurants and on its widest boulevards, thronged by designer shops and choked with luxury ...


Heading for the hills

The government is rallying the people behind a major campaign against the jihadists despite weak economic indicators

Tunisian security forces are beefing up their campaign against Islamist militants in the Mont Chaambi mountains along the Algerian border with a major purchase of helicopters from ...



Pointers

Embarrassing Biya

When Boko Haram kidnapped one of the wives of a Deputy Prime Minister on 27 July, killing 16 people in the process, it also unleashed the latent competition for the succession to P...


Demarche in DC

The tension between Egypt and its long-time ally, the United States, was evident at this week's Africa summit following US criticism of Cairo's human rights record. New Foreign Min...


'Too rich to bribe'

Any hope that the December congress of the governing Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front would bring a degree of clarity to the succession race is fast fading as the fa...


Contracts galore in the new order

There have been suggestions that 'state capture' has been advancing in the downstream gas sector as companies linked to the political elite gain control over the northern ports. Fi...