Africa

The amount Tanzania believes it will be able to generate from carbon trading, according to the environment minister. He said the East African nation had received 35 carbon trade project applications by the end of December 2023 and was due to implement them. He added that the country generated just 32 billion Tanzanian shillings ($12.6 million) between 2018 and 2022 from carbon trade. Last December, Tanzania signed a deal for one of East Africa’s biggest land-based carbon credit projects covering six national parks.

Kenya’s media giants plot fight with the government over ad spend

THE SCOOP

NAIROBI — Executives at two of Kenya’s largest media houses are considering legal challenges to what they believe is a politically-charged move to centralize government advertising.

The executives at Nation Media Group (NMG) and Mediamax fear the move by President William Ruto’s administration could starve them of much-needed revenues and boost a more sympathetic rival, sources close to the discussions have told Semafor Africa.

Late last year, the Ruto administration awarded a two-year contract for the printing and distribution of MyGov, a pullout magazine containing government advertisements, to The Star, which is Kenya’s fourth most-read newspaper with only 3% of the market in 2022, behind The Nation, Standard, and Kiswahili language publication Taifa Leo. The Star had the lowest bid for the tender, at 9 million Kenyan shillings ($55,000) per weekly edition.

The Nation, The Standard, and Mediamax’s People Daily, which had previously co-distributed MyGov, all bid for the new contract, quoting prices between two to three times higher, according to a government source.

A circular dated Jan. 23 informed officials of ministries and agencies that they would not be able to advertise in any other publication besides The Star. Distribution of the government magazine by The Star began in January. To boost circulation, The Star made its Tuesday edition, which contains the pullout, completely free.

The Government Advertising Agency did not respond to queries from Semafor Africa. David Omwoyo, chief executive of the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), the independent industry regulator, told Semafor Africa that the body had not yet received any formal complaints related to The Star’s publication and distribution of MyGov.

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Government advertising accounts for around 30% of the revenues of major newspapers in Kenya. As in much of the rest of the world, however, print circulation has been steadily declining and legacy media companies are feeling the pinch.

Ruto’s administration is keen on halving the government’s overall advertising, which would further impact major media houses. The government has also been under pressure to pay the 1.7 billion Kenyan shillings ($10.5 million) it owes media companies in Kenya for services already rendered, with media houses blaming the delayed payments for exacerbating financial pressures on them.

Nigeria’s forex reforms

→ What’s happening? Nigeria’s central bank and other monetary authorities are implementing new measures to quell the rapid depreciation of the naira currency against the dollar and attract foreign investors. Over the past two weeks, they have undertaken a second devaluation of the currency, reviewed regulations for international money transfer operators (IMTOs) and cautioned commercial banks against hoarding dollars.

→ What’s the background? Nigeria’s supply of dollars from oil receipts has lagged demand from businesses in recent years, driving attention to the informal currency market on street corners. A backlog of $7 billion in unpaid obligations, according to central bank governor Yemi Cardoso, has seen foreign businesses such as international airlines struggle to recoup earnings from the country.

→ So, why a second devaluation? Nigeria again moved the official exchange rate closer to the parallel market rate at the end of January following the removal of multiple exchange rates last June after Bola Tinubu became president. FMDQ, a firm that computes the official rate, changed its methodology to ensure “rates accurately reflect market conditions.” Following that, the central bank removed a rule that instructed remittance companies to anchor their exchange rates plus or minus 2.5% of the official rate.

→ What’s the status of the $7 billion backlog? In a TV interview this week, Cardoso said a central bank-ordered audit by accounting firm Deloitte has raised doubts about the validity of a third of the claims. The central bank has cleared about a third with the outstanding to be settled “very shortly” he said. IATA, a trade group of international airlines, said Nigeria still owes its members $700 million as of the end of January.

→ Will the remittance reforms affect the exchange rate? Nigeria receives over a third of remittances to sub-Saharan Africa ($20.5 billion last year) but “sadly very little comes through the official channels,” Cardoso said. The bank’s revised rules for IMTOs will cause more flows through the formal market, helping to increase supply and reduce volatility, he said.

— Alexander Onukwue

Semafor launched in October of 2022 with a philosophy of presenting our sophisticated audience with reliable facts and diverse insights. Our Semaform story structure, which separates facts and analysis, embodies that approach. And you seem to like it!

So, we’re announcing the launch of our biggest new product since then, a new, global multi-source breaking news feed called Signals. Our journalists, using research tools from Microsoft and Open AI, will offer readers diverse, global insights on the biggest stories in the world as they develop on our gorgeous site, Semafor.com, as well as other platforms like this one.

Senegal’s lawmakers voted to postpone presidential elections by ten months to Dec. 15, the latest flashpoint in a tumultuous few days since President Macky Sall’s cancellation of the Feb. 25 elections over the weekend.

The vote was held late Monday in the capital Dakar at the National Assembly. Sall’s ruling coalition, joined by the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), forced through the vote after hours of rancor and removal of dissenting opposition lawmakers from the chambers by police. The new election date will keep Sall in office at least eight months beyond April 2 when the second term he won in 2019 was to expire.

Senegal is now in uncharted territory. Hailed as one of Africa’s more stable democracies, it had never postponed elections. But Sall’s move is now being described as a “constitutional coup” by his political opponents.

The country’s leading Muslim and Christian leaders have raised alarm against the dangers of a postponement to the country’s stability. More residents have poured out onto the streets in recent days calling for President Sall to stand down according to numerous reports, which also note that police in riot gear have been repelling them with tear gas. The government has blocked mobile internet access and restricted daytime motorcycle movement.

Sall has blamed the Constitutional Council, which approves election candidates, for not being transparent in its disqualification of some opponents, in particular Karim Wade of PDS. A son of Sall’s predecessor, Wade was alleged to have held French citizenship; Senegalese law bars dual nationals from seeking the presidency. His party (to which Sall belonged with Wade’s father before a split) then accused two Council judges of being corrupt while calling for the election to be postponed.

Some have called it a manufactured crisis that Sall has leaned into for a few more months in power, perhaps anxious that his chosen successor — current prime minister Amadou Ba — would have lost the vote this month.

— Alexander Onukwue

🇰🇪 Kenya has purchased 300 new wagons for its Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). It is the first time wagons have been added since the launch of the $3.2 billion SGR in 2017. A first batch of 50 new wagons were unveiled on Monday, 250 more are expected to arrive later this month from China. Among them are containers with power plugins to support cold storage of horticultural products, one of Kenya’s top export sectors.

🇿🇲 U.S. mining startup KoBold Metals on Monday announced the discovery of Zambia’s largest copper deposit in a century at the Mingomba site in the country’s northern Copperbelt province. The company, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify the metal deposits, estimates the site may become one of the world’s top three high-grade copper mines, reports the Financial Times. It comes as the West seeks to cut its reliance on China for metals and the U.S. tries to compete with China’s control over minerals on the continent.

🇿🇦 The board of South Africa’s Multichoice Group declined an offer by French TV channel Canal Plus. It said, in a statement on Monday, that the offer undervalued the company. Multichoice, Africa’s biggest pay TV company, said its board remains open to engage with any party regarding any offer of a fair price. Canal Plus, its largest shareholder with a 35% stake, last Thursday made a non-binding offer to buy all the shares it does not own in Multichoice. The deal valued the business at 46 billion rand ($2.5 billion).

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa now has the power to change key provisions in the constitution after his governing Zanu-PF party secured a two-thirds majority in parliament. The party won six parliamentary by-elections last Saturday. The by-elections were triggered by a letter from the interim secretary general of the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change party last October notifying the parliamentary speaker of party members who had allegedly left the party. The opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, who lost to Mnangagwa in the last presidential elections, has since quit the CCC party, alleging it has been hijacked by the government.

🇰🇪 World Bank President Ajay Banga has rejected allegations that there was an effort by its private investment arm IFC to cover up sexual abuse reports at its investee Bridge International Academies, a for-profit school chain in Kenya. Civil society groups had said that IFC ignored evidence of child sexual abuse at the some of Bridge’s Kenya schools until the World Bank received complaints from parents in 2018 and opened an investigation. Reuters reported that Banga said he disagreed with the characterization of a cover-up but said if it is proven to be so, he would take necessary action. IFC held an equity stake in Bridge from 2013 until divesting in 2022.

The reintroduction of Aldabra giant tortoises some 600 years after they were wiped out by hunters in Madagascar is saving the environment, ecologists say. The giant tortoise — the first group of 12 giant tortoises, five males and seven females — were reintroduced to a reserve in Madagascar in 2018, and have since begun multiplying. Ecologists write in The Conversation that reintroducing this tortoise to areas degraded by cattle grazing will help restore the island’s forests, grassy woodlands and shrublands of the past. It could also help prevent devastating forest fires in future.

• The U.S. Senate unveiled its border bill. House Republicans immediately declared it dead.
• Global Election Hot List: AMLO, Thiam, Khan, Maduro.
• How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork.

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