Africa

The amount of new capital Nigeria’s electricity companies need to supply power to the country’s 200 million residents. The Nigerian president’s energy adviser told Bloomberg new policies were needed to “bring in new partners with new capital” without providing further details. Large numbers of households in Nigeria use generators to meet their electricity requirements as the country grapples with a dilapidated national grid. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has an installed electricity generation capacity of 13,000 megawatts, a quarter of South Africa’s installed capacity.

Free Russian classes are taking off in Africa

THE SCOOP

NAIROBI — Russia has recruited hundreds of young Africans to its Russian language and cultural programs across the continent over the past year as the spearhead of a wider push by the Kremlin to use education to deepen its ties with everyday citizens and governments.

The courses are being offered online as well as in person at cultural hubs — called Open Education Centers — which are being launched at sites in more than half of the countries on the continent, mostly in partnership with local universities.

In Kenya, East Africa’s largest economy, free Russian classes were first unveiled in March last year. Russia’s ambassador to Kenya, Dmitry Maksimychev, told Semafor Africa the free classes had driven a tenfold increase in the number of Russian language learners in Kenya between 2018 and 2023, with 900 people having enrolled in physical and online classes last year. One student who took part in the online classes told Semafor Africa that each class had around 30 students, with the course running for six months.

Hundreds of students in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria have signed up for these courses while Open Education Centers were launched last year in Egypt, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Tunisia and DR Congo. And a memorandum of understanding was signed in September to establish a center in South Africa. Russian officials have said Moscow plans to locate its centers in 28 African countries.

The language courses have already been “a great success,” claimed the Russian ambassador.

MARTIN’S VIEW

Russia is making a long term bet on Africa. The continent offers a golden opportunity to develop strong ties to counteract the West’s global influence and set up potentially lucrative deals, from trade pacts to agreements providing access to valuable natural resources.

The offer of education shows Moscow has learned from both the Soviet Union’s historical relationship with African countries. Parallels can also be drawn between Russia’s education centers and Beijing’s controversial Confucius Institutes, which opened across the continent to promote the Chinese language and culture. Russia will be keen to emulate China’s success in establishing a valuable foothold in the continent.

Western countries have been raising barriers for student visas for young Africans as migration to the UK, Europe and the United States in particular has become a politically toxic battleground. Added to that, the foreign student tuition fees at most universities in Western countries are prohibitively expensive for students without scholarships.

A grasp of Russian can be extremely useful for those looking to study in the country and is often required by learning institutions. Offering the language courses for free has helped to accelerate their uptake. Courses at typical European language schools can cost hundreds of dollars.

This push may help Moscow to further deepen its influence in countries that have turned their back on the West, in nations like Burkina Faso. But the biggest rewards are likely to unfold over several years through trade ties and alliances that could help to undo Western hegemony in global affairs.

African startup funding for 2023 totalled $3.4 billion, falling from the totals of the two years before it, according to Africa: The Big Deal, which tracks funding data. The dip captures the mood of a difficult year in which the global venture capital industry continued its pull back due to rising interest rates, affecting African startups’ ability to attract much needed capital. Kenyan solar products financier M-Kopa and four other startups each raised $100 million or more in 2023, in keeping with a rise in so-called megadeals over the years.

Kenyan payments company Cellulant said its chief executive Akshay Grover will depart this month after two and a half years. Askay took the job on an acting basis in April 2021 and was made permanent six months later after Ken Njoroge, one of Cellulant’s two co-founders, left his CEO role in January that year citing a need for different leadership. Peter O’Toole, Cellulant’s chief financial officer, will temporarily replace Grover, the company said. Founded in 2003, Cellulant’s product enables businesses to access online and offline payment options. It has raised $54.5 million in several funding rounds, the last being in 2018.

Rwandan electric vehicle company Ampersand raised $19.5 million from investors that include TotalEnergies to increase its battery production and network of swap stations. Ampersand introduced its first electric motorcycles in Rwanda in 2019 and says it provides battery swap services to 1,700 motorcyclists in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, as well as in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. The money it raised is a mix of equity and debt, the latter being $7.5 million from Go Green Fund, a fund for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Africa.

— Alexander Onukwue

January 14-19, 2024 | Switzerland

Semafor Africa will be on the ground at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, covering what’s happening on the main stages and lifting the curtain on what’s happening behind them.

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Kendra Gaither is president of the U.S.-Africa Business Center, a group that seeks to represent the American private sector’s commitment to the continent. It’s part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying group for American businesses.

🇿🇦 South African satellite TV service SuperSport will not air the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, parent company Multichoice announced yesterday after failing to acquire the rights to broadcast the competition. However, some games are expected to be available on free-to-air channels around the continent. The tournament is scheduled to kick off on Jan. 13 in Côte d’Ivoire and run until Feb. 11. Holders Senegal will attempt to defend the title they won two years ago in Cameroon.

🇸🇱 Sierra Leone’s former President Ernest Bai Koroma was charged with four offenses including treason in connection with a failed coup in November. Gunmen attacked military barracks and prison in unrest the government said was an attempt to remove the current president, Julius Maada Bio. Koroma was granted bail after being charged on Wednesday. The case was adjourned until Jan. 17. Twelve others were charged with treason. Political tensions in the West African nation have simmered since Bio secured a second term in a disputed vote last June.

🇿🇲 Zambia hopes to resolve issues raised by its creditors within the first quarter of this year to restructure its external debt, its finance ministry said on Thursday. It follows a rejection of a revised bondholder restructuring proposal between Zambia and private sector bondholders last November. Official creditors co-led by China and France rejected the deal in which Zambia hoped to restructure $6.3 billion of its debt.

🇸🇩 🇿🇦 Sudanese paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo on Thursday met South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria as part of his tour of African capitals that began late December. He has met regional leaders in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti. These were his first visits abroad since the start of the conflict in April 2023 when his Rapid Support Forces went to war with Sudan’s army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. In response to Daglo’s diplomatic engagements, Sudan recalled its ambassador to Kenya in protest.

African birds of prey are at an increased risk of extinction following a population “collapse”, a new study has warned. Researchers found tropical raptors species, including the martial eagle and bateleur (pictured), had disappeared from large swaths of the continent in the last few decades. The study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, was conducted by researchers at the University of St Andrews and The Peregrine Fund, which combines counts from road surveys conducted within four African regions at intervals of 20 to 40 years. It revealed that conversion of natural habitats to farmland led to a loss of biodiversity, exposing raptors to threats such as being killed by other animals, shooting, and poisoning.

• A group of lawyers and investors is sketching out plans to use U.S. corporate law to pressure companies to roll back diversity and inclusion policies that have been adopted en masse in recent years.
• The Messenger’s board considered shutting the publication down, after learning the startup news organization is on track to run out of cash soon.
• Defense tech is having a moment in Silicon Valley.

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— Yinka, Alexis, Alexander Onukwue, Martin Siele, and Muchira Gachenge