AFRICA NEWS BULLETIN @ 20h00
29 January, 2016
Radio
XYZ93.1FM
Lead Producer:
E.K.Bensah Jr
Assistant
Producer/Presenter: Joshua Quodja-Mensah
STORIES
1.
FOCUS: KENYA CONTINUES ITS WEST AFRICAN INVESTMENT DRIVE WITH THREE-DAY
NIGERIA PRESIDENT VISIT
2.
EAST AFRICA:
a.
UNCTAD XIV to be Held in Kenya
b.
RwandAir on the Rise
3.
CENTRAL AFRICA:
a.
President Deby of Chad Most
Likely to Succeed Mugabe as AU Chair
4.
WEST AFRICA: UK-based Think-Tank Shines
Spotlight on Ghana’s Slums Ahead of Elections
1.
FOCUS:
After wooing Ghanaian investors here
in Ghana in November 2015, Kenya is continuing its West African
investment-overtures by welcoming President Buhari of Nigeria for a three-day
visit into the East African powerhouse.
The centerpiece of the visit is the
proposal for the establishment of a duty-free trade zone between the two
countries. This decision comes following trade talks between the two
Presidents.
Accompanied by more than forty
business leaders and investors, Buhari wound down his three-day visit Thursday,
with the expectation that President Kenyatta reciprocates the visit in six
months’ time. Chairman of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry(KNCCI)
Kiprono Kittony said that there will be “a unit in Kenya and Nigeria that will
be concerned with facilitating all interactions concerning trade between [the]
two countries.”
Kenya will house that unit under the
KNCCI’s Nigeria-Kenya Business council, while in Nigeria; its counterpart will
be chaired by Sani Dangote, who is brother of Africa’s richest man Aliko
Dangote.
The two countries have identified
specific areas for mutual cooperation, including agro-processing; cotton; tea;
horticulture and dairy products. Dangote says “East Africa is a market of about
150 million people and we have ECOWAS which is more than 350 million-strong,
and we want the Kenya-Nigeria Business Council to have its own office so that
it can be dedicated to collecting data and facilitating interactions on this
agenda.”
On Kenya’s part, Nigeria needs to
ease the cost of doing business and remove barriers to entry for Kenyan firms.
Still on the visit, Kenya is reeling
from the al-Shabaab attack on Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) soldiers serving in AU
Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in El Adde camp a fortnight ago.
As a consequence of the globalized
nature of terror that has affected the two countries, Kenya and Nigeria have
joined hands with Somalia to unite against terror. Speaking to the press
yesterday on KTN Prime, this is what Kenyatta and Buhari had to say. [AUDIO].
Buhari added:
“the importance of KDF in Somalia is beyond words and we are solidly behind Kenya and the world in fighting these terrorists. We are going to win this fight because we have won it before. The attack just strengthens us. Thank you Kenya,” he said.
“the importance of KDF in Somalia is beyond words and we are solidly behind Kenya and the world in fighting these terrorists. We are going to win this fight because we have won it before. The attack just strengthens us. Thank you Kenya,” he said.
2.
EAST AFRICA:
Nairobi is gearing to host the world
for the Fourteenth Session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development in
July 2016.
The government of Kenya and UNCTAD
has confirmed the conference will be held in the premises of the Kenyatta
International Conference Centre. There will be two hearings with civil society
in Geneva prior to the Conference so as to provide CSOs the opportunity to
contribute to the preparatory process and comment on the pre-conference
negotiating text.
Still in East Africa,
The national carrier of Rwanda,
RwandAir, is expanding its fleet with two new Airbus aircraft that will allow
it add medium and long-haul flights to Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the
airline indicated in a press release.
With this, the carrier will be the
first East African customer of the long-haul A330-300 Airbus airliner. CEO of
RwandAir said in a prepared statement “we have found the A330 to
perfectly-support our plans to expand into Europe and Asia, to enhance our
regional presence, to open up new routes and to grow our market share.”
The aircraft are powered by
Rolls-Royce, which is an important factor that will maximize the
revenue-earning potential of the new aircraft, Mirenge said.
According to East African Business
Week, RwandAir has been quietly building a regional Africa network, with hopes
to establish Kigali as a hub for the continent with 40 percent of the airline’s
traffic connections.
3.
CENTRAL AFRICA:
President Idris Deby Itno has his
work cut out for him!
Apart from contesting Presidential
elections on April 10, the Chadian head of State is incumbent Chair of the G5
Sahel group (comprising Burkina Faso; Chad; Mali; Mauritania & Niger). In
the next Bulletin, we will indicate the instrumentality of Chad in the
establishment of a proposed Regional School of War for the G5.
But to matters of the AU now: apart
from the fact that Chad has just been elected a member of the AU’s Peace and
Security Council that closed a few hours ago, reports by a francophone Tunisian
paper confirm what has been circulating in the rumour mill – that President
Deby is most-likely to be elected Chair of the African Union, replacing
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
The reports indicate that the Chadian
Head of State is the only “consensual candidate” from Central Africa. This is
as per AU rules, where countries need to put forward a regional candidate that
almost-all countries have agreed on.
Deby has been in power since December
1990, but has played important and critical roles in the Mali 2012 civil war,
where Chadian troops fought under the AU-led international force AFISMA. Chad
has been an observer of ECOWAS since 2011, and has contemplated joining the
West African bloc. A major oil-producing country, in 2015, the Guardian’s
Celeste Hicks wrote that much of the country’s transformation “is down to oil.”
4.
WEST AFRICA:
Ahead of Ghana’s elections in
Novemnber, the UK-based Africa Research Institute(ARI) has shone the spotlight
on slums in Accra.
ARI held an event on 28 January,
entitled “Slum Politics in Accra: Understanding Urban Ghana.”
Organised to mark the launch of ARI’s
new “Counterpoint” publication, Dr.Jeffrey Paller – a post-doctoral research
fellow at the Earth Institute at Colombia University – led a talk about the
social and political networks supposed to really govern urban Ghana.
The country is considered one of
Africa’s most rapidly-urbanising countries, with the number of city-dwellers
having risen from 4 million to 14 million over thirty years.
The event was organized on the
premise that as informal settlements will play an increasingly important role
in Ghana politics, Ghana needs to understand the voting intentions of these
slum-dwellers ahead of Ghana’s elections in November 2016. It sought to unpack
how “hidden” informal networks interact with formal politics, and how citizens
ought to hold their leaders to account in this environment.
The discussion was live-tweeted under
“#Accrapolitics” on the twitter social media network with many of the
participants tweeting key points.
Jeffrey Paller, the invited speaker,
tweeting @JWPaller, was quoted as saying that “many researchers in development
and urbanization studies fail to look at what is happening in slums.”
The discussion further revealed that
“local leaders have become highly accountable to locals.” Another tweet
indicated a representative of Cities Alliance maintains Ghana has “more houses
demolished than built.” Another tweet predicted that “elections in Ghana will
be heavily influenced by informal networks.”
ENDs
