Dynamic Africa
Formerly, "This is Africa/fyeahAfrica".
(Profile Photo by Mama Casset)
DISCLAIMER:
I do not endorse any of the products or opinions shared on this site, nor do I claim any of the work posted here to be my own - except where stated. All posts originally made by me are credited. If no credit is given then the work is either my own/written by me or reblogged from another source.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME:
Student, 24
Based in Cape Town, South Africa
From Lagos, Nigeria
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(As an unemployed media student, all donations go into ensuring my survival in this cruel world and future projects I hope to embark on).
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(since Oct. 21th 2012)
A new United Nations report says AIDS-related deaths in Africa are falling while the number of Africans getting treatment for the AIDS virus is on the rise.
The report from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS says the number of people in Africa who receive anti-retroviral drugs increased from less than 1 million in 2005 to more than 7 million last year.
It says AIDS-related deaths fell by nearly a third during that same period, and that new HIV infections are also falling.
Many African countries have taken steps over the past decade to ensure that at least some of their HIV patients have access to treatment.
The report, released Tuesday, notes that Africa continues to be affected by HIV more than any other region in the world. It says the continent accounts for nearly 70 percent of people living with the virus worldwide.
It also notes that in 2011, there were still 1.8 million new HIV infections in Africa, and 1.2 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses.
Al Jazeera South2North host Redi Tlhabi interviews some of Africa’s most influential and powerful women, including Malawian President Joyce Banda - Africa’s second woman president, and South Africa medical doctor, business woman, activist and politician Dr Mamphela Ramphele about their transformative and historical roles.
Powerful and interesting commentary.
Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, Lagos is set to become the continent’s 13th biggest economy, similar to the size of West African nation, Ghana, investment research and advisory firm, Renaissance Capital has revealed. In its latest report titled, “Nigeria Unveiled: Thirty Six Shades of Nigeria,” the company stated that with a per capita income of about $2,900 which is currently double amount of the national average of $1,700, Lagos is at par with countries such as Morocco and Sri Lanka.
Lagos’ economy is significant to that of Ghana and is the heart of Nigeria’s $284 billion GDP economy.
“We base our analysis on states’ internally generated revenue, which make up 15 per cent of state government revenue, and consumption data, as proxies for state income.
“Lagos State produces about 12 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, which is equivalent to $32 billion by 2013 ending. Post rebasing, which we now expect in early 2014, we estimate a 40 per cent upward revision in the country’s national income.
“By our estimates, the Lagos State economy will become Africa’s 13th biggest economy in 2014 at approximately $45 billion – equivalent to that of Ghana,” said RenCap.
You know it’s serious when they start comparing a city to countries. And we manage all this without stable electricity, easy access to basic resources, and the necessary infrastructure to accommodate life in a commercial urban landscape.
Just think about what Lagos would be if all the above-mentioned factors were appropriately set up and maintained.
Damn.
The World Bank says, between 2013 and 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy will grow at an average of five percent while the global economy will only grow by about three percent over the same period.
However, high growth rates are no reason for euphoria, says Robert Kappel, a German Africa researcher from the GIGA Institute in Hamburg. He has been researching the development prospects of 42 sub-Saharan countries. He says international comparisons show that most of them are performing poorly.
“The growth is mainly coming from outside factors such as the demand for raw materials and agricultural products that has increased greatly in recent years and has pushed up prices. That means export has greatly contributed to this high economic growth, and that is also a great weakness,” Kappel told DW.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank recently warned that Africa is becoming dependent on trade with foreign countries.
At this year’s World Economic Forum in Cape Town, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the industrialized nations to apply stricter rules for trading in natural resources with Africa. He said corruption and tax evasion are bleeding wealth from the continent.
Industrialization in Africa remains slow and agriculture cannot even meet the needs of Africa’s own populations. Job markets show zero growth. In South Africa, more than 25 percent of the population, mainly young people,are unemployed.
[…]
“Africa is doing well. We are making tremendous progress, particularly in the past two decades. But if we are to sustain this and to ensure growth that allows for employment creation for the youth and greater equitable distribution of prosperity, then we need to speed up the reforms, deepen transparency, reduce bureaucracy in getting projects approved.”
It was not without its fair share of challenges. The students initially hoped to launch the CanSat with a rocket, but discovered authorities would not give them permission to import one. “They think you are going to use it as a missile, like a terrorist,” said Benjamin Bonsu, the lab’s 29-year-old project manager.
(via ghanailoveyou)
“I developed the pot-in-pot to help the rural poor in a cost-effective, participatory and sustainable way.”Northern Nigeria is an impoverished region where people in rural communities eke out a living from subsistence farming. With no electricity, and therefore no refrigeration, perishable foods spoil within days. Such spoilage causes disease and loss of income for needy farmers, who are forced to sell their produce daily. Nigerian teacher Mohammed Bah Abba was motivated by his concern for the rural poor and by his interest in indigenous African technology to seek a practical, local solution to these problems. His extremely simple and inexpensive earthenware “pot-in-pot” cooling device, based on a principle of physics already known in ancient Egypt, has revolutionized lives in this semi-desert area.
read more about his AMAZING project and HEY he’s Nigerian!! :) Aren’t we innovative? ;) Source!
(via zenjamaican)
npr:
(via Lady Mechanic Initiative Trains Women For ‘The Best Job’ : NPR)
In Nigeria, the Lady Mechanic Initiative trains women to fix cars. Founder Sandra Aguebor-Ekperuoh started the initiative after having a vision from God.
She has trainee mechanics all around the country. Some of the young women are from disadvantaged backgrounds, some former sex workers and others just hugely enthusiastic.
Faith Macwen, who graduated from the Lady Mechanic Initiative in 2009, now works for a top automobile company in Nigeria.
Macwen says men at work were initially dismissive. “Actually, at first, the male were feeling, ‘You can’t do it, that it’s our world.’ But we made them realize — I made them realize — we can do it. I want other ladies to take up the opportunities. Go out. When you have a flair for something, go in for it,” she says. “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it. You can do it.”
Photo: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR
The black middle class in South Africa, which held its first all-race elections in 1994, has more than doubled in size over the past eight years, exceeding the number of white people in the same bracket and the amount of money they spend.
The number of black South Africans classified as middle class rose to 4.2 million people last year from 1.7 million in 2004, the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing said in a statement. South Africa has a population of 51.8 million people.
“South Africa’s black middle class continues to rapidly expand and is more influential and powerful than ever before,” John Simpson, a director at the Unilever Institute, said in the statement, which was e-mailed yesterday. “The black middle class is helping create a vibrant and stable society by increasing South Africa’s skills base, deepening employment, and widening the tax net.”
South Africans in this group now spend 400 billion rand ($44 billion) annually, more than the 323 billion rand spent by 3 million white people classified as middle class, according to the study. The number of white South African in the group rose from 2.8 million in 2004.
High Unemployment
South Africa’s unemployment rate of 24.9 percent is the highest of more than 30 emerging-market nations tracked by Bloomberg. Retail sales advanced 3.8 percent in February from a year earlier, with South Africa’s Reserve Bank keeping its benchmark interest rate at the lowest level in more than 30 years to spur spending.
To be classified as middle class, respondents had to meet at least two criteria. They include having a household income of between 15,000 rand and 50,000 rand, personal transportation, tertiary education, employment in a white collar job, own or rent a home for more than 4,000 rand a month in a city or town and be 15 years of age or older. The full study will be released next month.
Early this month, leaders of five leading emerging economies made a revolutionary decision that will have a significant impact on developing world economies.
At a summit in Durban, South Africa, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (collectively known as BRICS) unanimously decided to set up a development bank that will finance development and infrastructure, not just in emerging economies, but in what is known as the Global South.
The leaders also endorsed a $100-billion contingency reserve that can be deployed to bail out a crisis-ridden BRICS country. This decision represents a significant move by emerging economies to break away from the traditional donor-recipient model advocated by Western nations for more than six decades.
The BRICS countries – which account for more than a quarter of the global GDP – are asserting their clout by showing that they are willing to bankroll projects in poor countries and to help each other to avert financial crises, without resorting to traditional development banks such as the World Bank and the IMF.
What remains to be seen, however, is what conditionalities the BRICS Bank will impose on countries and whether the loans extended will be on more favourable terms. Nonetheless, the bank will impact the way international lending agencies conduct their business.
This good news comes in the wake of several articles in the international press that have dubbed Africa as the “rising” or “aspiring” continent.
Journalists have suddenly switched from being Afro-pessimists to Afro-optimists as African economies take off in places such as Angola and Ethiopia, once written off as hopeless countries that suffered from endemic poverty and conflict.
About a year ago, Time magazine, in a cover story titled Africa Rising, attributed Africa’s phenomenal economic growth to aid-effectiveness. The Economist (which once dubbed Africa as “The Hopeless Continent”), is more realistic in its assessment of why Africa’s economies are growing while those in the rest of the world are stagnating: it attributes growth to the continent’s commodities-led economies and its “demographic dividend” i.e. the rising proportion of working-age people.
Financial analysts underscore the role played by non-traditional donors, such as India and China, and the prevalence of mobile telephony, which has had a marked impact on the economies of countries such as Kenya.
In March, in a special report titled A Hopeful Continent, the Economist stated that Kenya’s economic growth was significantly boosted by modern technology, particularly mobile banking and money-transfer services.
However, even in Kenya, political tensions, poor governance and greed often get in the way of sound economic policies and innovations.
Already, legislators are demanding the disbanding of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission which finally put a much-needed cap on what they could earn while in office.
The avarice displayed by Kenya’s political elite has been a stain on Kenya’s reputation since the 9th and 10th parliaments awarded MPs exorbitant salaries. These recent demands, if met, will not only drain the country’s resources, it will further dent the country’s image.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has said his government will not entertain such demands. This and other sensible decisions he might make in the coming weeks may assuage some of the fears sceptics have about his commitment to implementing the Constitution.
It is also not lost on Kenyans that after threatening “consequences” and sanctions against Kenya if International Criminal Court indictees form the next government, Western countries and the UN are now revising their policies to accommodate the Kenyatta government.
The UN has issued new guidelines that state that its officials need not avoid contact with people facing charges at the ICC as long as they cooperate with the court.
Meanwhile, Uhuru’s Obama-like sleeves-up-touchy-feely-hand-holding-first-name-calling informal style is making people wonder whether this new look is mere PR or whether he is setting an example on how government should interact with citizens. Let us hope it is the latter.
International Development Secretary Justine Greening is to announce that the UK will stop giving direct aid to South Africa in 2015.
The government’s aid programme to South Africa is currently worth £19m a year.
This funding has focused on reducing the mortality rate among women giving birth, as well as supporting businesses.
The UK’s relationship with South Africa should now be based on trade and not development, Ms Greening will say.
At its peak, the UK’s aid for South Africa was more than £40m in 2003.
Ms Greening will make the announcement at a conference of African ministers and business leaders in London on Tuesday.
“South Africa has made enormous progress over the past two decades, to the extent that it is now the region’s economic powerhouse and Britain’s biggest trading partner in Africa,” she will say.
“We are proud of the work the UK has done in partnership with the South African government, helping the country’s transition from apartheid to a flourishing, growing democracy.
“I have agreed with my South African counterparts that South Africa is now in a position to fund its own development.
“It is right that our relationship changes to one of mutual co-operation and trade, one that is focused on delivering benefits for the people of Britain and South Africa as well as for Africa as a whole.”
MARTIN: Do you think that the prize is having its intended effect?
IBRAHIM: I think so. What we wanted out of the prize, really, is raw attention to the issue of governance and leadership. The week before we announce the winner or the week after, this is the main subject of conversation in every dinner table in Africa. People say, oh, well, why my president didn’t get it? Why this guy got it? Why? Once people start to talk about governance and leadership, that all what we wanted. Once a civil society gets hold of this issue, then our job is done.
MARTIN: What - of the major forces that we are now seeing in Africa - we’re seeing a drive toward entrepreneurship, the roots of which have always been there. We’re seeing a very young population. We are seeing a reverse migration in many ways, so many people who’ve been educated in the west in a previous generation would have stayed in the west are now returning home. We’re also seeing investment, like from China and a number of other countries, but China being the one that gets the most attention. Of all those factors, what do you think is going to be the most transformative?
IBRAHIM: I think the rise of the African civil society is very important and this new generation of young people - and, by the way, half the African people is below 19 years old. We have the most young population anywhere on the planet and this young generation is much better educated than us, than our generation. It’s much better connected to each other, but in our times, many years ago, there was only one newspaper in the country run by the government, one TV station, one radio station, both run by the government. And just to acquire a photocopier, you needed permission from the police.
Now, it is different, so the flow of information - this connected young people who receive better education than us who are not afraid. They are asking the questions. Why is that our standard of living? You know, Africa is rich as a continent. Why are we poor? That’s the question. And when people start to ask that question certain conclusions will be reached and that is very important. So I’m really quite optimistic about the future of Africa, given this vibrant, young generation of people.
MARTIN: What do think you…
IBRAHIM: African women also are very important.
Mobile communications entrepreneur, billionaire, and philanthropist, Mohamed ‘Mo’ Ibrahim is optimistic about the continent’s future.
Trade can be an important catalyst to poverty eradication. However, this has not been true in the African story, especially trade within the continent. Worldwide, Africa contributes only three per cent to world trade. This is insignificant and telling of the poverty levels in the continent.
Trade among African countries accounts for 10 per cent of the continent’s total trade balance and it’s the least compared to trade between the continent and markets like Europe, America and Asia. Trade among African countries has been low and not highly regarded. There are reasons to this state of affairs.
First, colonialism played a key role in ensuring that Africa was used as a source of raw materials and not an industrial hub. The countries focus too much on primary goods, mostly agricultural and mineral.
Second, the intra-African infrastructure is minimal and in a poor state. Take the example of Kenya. It is cheaper to call the US or the UK than to do so in the East Africa. Further, Kenya has Ethiopia, South Sudan and Somali as neighbours. For all those years, there are no major roads linking Kenya to Sudan or Ethiopia or Somali, limiting trade.
Trading blocs like the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and East Africa Community seek to improve trade among member states. In the past, Kenyan traders have benefited from Comesa as little or no duty was charged for imports or exports within the bloc.
Beyond the efforts by governments to boost trade, there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to provide a solutions and create a robust business.
First, it is important to shift from primary products to serious value addition. Africa remains low on the value chain yet it has rich resources. We should invest in industries and factories to add value, create employment and produce finished products, not raw materials. Wealth creation comes from value addition.
Further, with infrastructure development, I can’t help but think about a Kenya with a complete Lamu port and a road to Khartoum or Addis Ababa. The opportunities are vast.
Days when international traders used to depend on buyers in Europe are long gone. Europe has its own share of problems. Your buyer might be right next door in Arusha.
Mr Odhiambo is the managing consultant of Elim Consulting.
Major pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking to harness Africa’s opportunity, lured by an emerging middle class across the continent’s growing urban centers.
Although the total size of the African market is still small compared to other global regions, analysts say that the continent’s big cities hold the key to unlocking the industry’s lucrative potential.
In such areas, increasing individual wealth, coupled with a stronger health system infrastructure and a rising demand for drugs treating chronic diseases, are driving demand for pharmaceuticals, say analysts.
“Urban centers have the highest concentration of the segments of the population that are more likely to be relatively wealthy, more likely to be educated and also possibly more likely to suffer from the chronic diseases of affluence that are becoming increasingly important in Africa,” says Sarah Rickwood, director of Thought Leadership at IMS Health.
According to a recent IMS report, called “Africa: A ripe opportunity,” pharmaceutical spending on the continent is expected to reach $30 billion in 2016, up from about $18 billion now. By 2020, the market could represent a $45 billion opportunity for drug makers, spurred in part by robust economic growth and demographic changes.
This can only be good news for people like Rudzani Modau, owner of Mangalani Pharmacy in Soweto, just outside Johannesburg in South Africa.
“The pharmaceutical business is growing and it will grow,” says Modau. “It’s the next big thing in Africa.”
Modau says his profits have soared over the last decade. “We have a lot of potential in Africa,” he adds.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa is home to 11% of the world’s population, yet accounts for 24% of the global disease burden.
“Africa is more dependent on aid than any other continent and its citizens have had little choice on whether to accept it or not…”
In this first episode of Al Jazeera’s new program South2North hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa, anchor Redi Tlhabi re-ignites the ongoing debate on the true impact on foreign aid throughout Africa.
Tlhabi also looks at the rise in African economies and what these developments mean in a broader global political context.
Very interesting discussion, especially in regards to China’s presence in Africa where Moeletsi Mbeki says that, “the regulations of the African countries are really the problem”, as well as arguing that due to the various levels of development and ‘stress’ that certain African countries face, aid is necessary in some way to establish economic stability in these nations.
Head of ActionAid International Joanna Kerr that outlines the distinctions between ‘real aid’ that does actually tackle issues such as poverty and social development, and aid that is linked to other non-beneficial political gains. She goes on to state the importance of transparency and creating spaces in which both citizens and the media are given both platforms and agency to freely and openly hold leadership accountable.
Nigeria is running one of Africa’s biggest space programmes. The hope is the satellite-based project will help manage agricultural production, but not everyone is convinced of the benefits.
In 2003 Nigeria announced its space programme and within a few years it had launched its first satellite, which quickly lost power and disappeared from orbit.
Now Nigeria has three satellites in orbit including NigComSat-1R, built in China. It was launched in 2011 and has boosted internet and telecommunications services across the country.
Next, the Nigerians turned to Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology, which has built two earth-observation satellites, including the top-of-the-range NigeriaSat-2, which at the time of its launch was producing the highest resolution images of any UK-built satellite.
The other part of the project involved a trained team of 26 Nigerian engineers putting together the second satellite, NigeriaSat-X.
Both satellites are now providing data to help government agencies with planning.
For example, the satellites are tracking crops and weather around the country in an effort to protect long-term food supply.
There is also closer monitoring of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where there has been massive crude oil theft and environmental damage from oil spills.
This vantage point could also be useful in the Nigerian government’s fight against militants in the north.
“We’ve just collected images over Mali, which we’ve handed over to the armed forces because we believe they will be helpful to them in the peacekeeping mission over there,” says Seidu Mohammed, director-general of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA).
