Africa

🇨🇩 Denis Mukwege, the gynecologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, said he will run to be president of the Democratic Republic of Congo in elections to be held in December. Mukwege, 68, made his name as a foremost expert on offering recovery care for victims of sexual violence in his country and has been a fierce critic of previous Congolese governments, surviving an assassination attempt in 2012.

🇺🇳 The U.N. Security Council on Monday approved sending a one-year, non-U.N. multinational force led by Kenya to Haiti to combat gang fighting that has rocked the Caribbean country. The resolution — drafted by the United States and Ecuador and approved with 13 votes in favor — follows last year’s appeal to the international community by Haiti’s prime minister for a specialized armed force to quell gang violence and restore security. The mission is set to be funded by voluntary contributions.

🇲🇿 Mozambique and Swiss investment firm UBS on Sunday announced an out-of-court settlement over the $2 billion bribery and fraud allegations better known as the ‘tuna bond’ scandal. Last week, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that Maputo could sue Credit Suisse, which was acquired in June by UBS, Privinvest and its owner Iskandar Safa, over three loans raised in 2013 and 2014 meant for development of the fishing industry. UBS said the two “parties have mutually released each other from any liabilities and claims.”

🇿🇦 South Africa’s environment ministry has given the go-ahead to TotalEnergies to drill offshore for natural gas and oil off the Cape coast despite environmental concerns, reports Reuters. Lobby groups had sought the revocation of environmental authorization granted to the French energy company by the mineral resources and energy department in April. The groups had cited problems related to climate change, marine noise and oil spills in the area covering some 10,000 square kilometers located offshore between Cape Town and Cape Agulhas.

🇳🇪 Niger’s military has accepted an offer from Algeria to mediate in the political crisis that has gripped its southern neighbor since President Mohamed Bazoum was ousted in July, Bloomberg reports. It comes weeks after Algeria, which on Monday said its mediation offer had been accepted, mooted a six month transition process to civilian rule. Algeria has previously opposed any military intervention in Niger after regional bloc Ecowas threatened to deploy troops to restore democratic rule in the country.

The size of the temporary increase in the minimum wage for Nigerian federal government workers, which prompted labor unions to suspend a strike that had been scheduled to begin on Tuesday. The government said it will pay 35,000 naira ($45) per month to its federal workers regardless of their salary level from September “pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.” The payment will be in addition to the basic minimum wage of 30,000 naira. Labor unions argued that the current minimum wage, agreed in 2019, was insufficient for workers in the wake of the rising costs of food and transportation after the government’s removal of a petrol subsidy in June.

Alliance with ex-warlord boosts Liberia opposition candidate’s election campaign

THE NEWS

THE NEWS

MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia’s former vice president has forged an alliance with an influential ex-warlord to build a formidable opposition movement that threatens President George Weah’s bid for a second term.

The election will be fought on the president’s record on the economy, corruption and security.

Joseph Boakai, the West African country’s vice president from 2006 to 2018, narrowly lost to Weah, a former world football star, in the last presidential election six years ago. He has emerged as Weah’s main opponent ahead of a poll due to take place on Oct. 10 after his Unity party joined forces with Prince Yormie Johnson, the ex-warlord turned senator who has been labeled a kingmaker for backing the victor in previous votes.

Boakai chose a member of Johnson’s Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction (MDR) party, Senator Jeremiah Koung, as his running mate. Koung, Johnson and the MDR are influential in Nimba County, Liberia’s second most populous county.

The Boakai-Johnson alliance comes as anger over Weah’s management of the economy and food inflation have prompted demonstrations organized by the opposition. “Prices of goods are skyrocketing, the unemployment rate is rising every day, [and] unqualified people are in key positions,” said Massina-Nuula Varpilah, a 22-year-old Boakai supporter who works for a non-governmental organization.

KNOW MORE

Boakai is the leading opposition candidate in a field of 20 people vying for the presidency. The winner of next Tuesday’s election must secure more than 50% of the votes to win the presidency outright in the first round. If there is no clear winner, the two candidates with the most votes would contest a second round which would be won by a simple majority.

Johnson was a rebel leader during Liberia’s first civil war. His forces killed the then president, Samuel Doe, in 1990. Johnson was seen ordering Doe’s torture in an infamous gory video clip that was seen around the world.

Weah’s administration has been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years. The unexplained deaths of four tax officials in 2020 prompted corruption allegations. More recently, the seizure of weapons and illegal drugs — including cocaine worth $100 million last year — have led to fears that the country has an underlying security problem and has become both a transit point for narcotics and the hotbed of a youth drug problem.

DOUNARD’S VIEW

Boakai’s support has been largely driven by anti-Weah sentiments that stem from rising food prices and a lack of jobs. With recent illegal drug busts and weapon seizures, Boakai has made his stance against illegal drugs a campaign issue which has increased his support. “He is generally perceived as a clean and honest politician who didn’t use his decades in office to amass a fortune,“Joshua Kulah, a lawyer and political science lecturer at United Methodist University in Monrovia, told Semafor Africa.

Despite these factors working in his favor, along with the backing of Johnson, Boakai still faces an uphill battle to secure the presidency. At 78, Boakai’s age combined with rumored health problems — which he has repeatedly denied — is a weakness in a country with a median age of 18. His falling out with long term political allies may undermine his ability to galvanize the opposition if the election goes to a second round.

Weah, 57, a three-time African player of the year and the only African to be named world footballer of the year, has led in campaign spending and advertising. He also benefits from the power of incumbency — his campaign is widely seen as having received a boost from state institutions viewed as weak and “pro-ruling party”.

As it stands, the election is likely to be so close that it will go to a second round, with Boakai and Weah the clear favorites to contest a run-off.

Read the full story, including Room for Disagreement and The View from the CPP.

The global green energy transition in the United States is a major opportunity for African countries where many of the key minerals needed are found, says a new paper from researchers at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. There’s been a particular focus on the competition for these resources between the advanced economies of the West on one side and China on the other. However, Carnegie’s Africa program director Zainab Usman and her colleague Alexander Csanadi say African countries can take advantage of that rivalry and build the foundation for a new economic and strategic relationship with the United States.

They write that there are three broad opportunities for African countries to integrate into the U.S. clean energy ambitions, which are backed by $48 billion in commitments from bills like the Inflation Reduction Act. These include supporting Africa’s mineral supply chains with the ambition of developing battery manufacturing on the continent, as well as boosting R&D and commercialization around the sector; and developing data collection and analytics around transition minerals on the continent.

Africa’s e-commerce giant Jumia will sell Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite terminals and kits in the 11 African countries in which it operates, its chief commercial officer Hisham El Gabry said in an interview. The agreement gives Jumia the benefit of having the first sales and distribution deal of the kits in Africa. Through the partnership, Starlink will sell the portable terminals in areas that lack formal addresses and city mapping.

A Kenyan parliamentary committee recommended a criminal investigation into the activities of Worldcoin, the crypto coin project by OpenAI founder Sam Altman. In July, Worldcoin began offering $55 to Kenyans willing to have their eyeballs scanned with an orb for a digital ID system. But the controversial scheme spooked regulators who raised concerns over potential privacy violations before suspending the operations. The parliamentary committee now says Worldcoin’s scheme “constituted acts of espionage and a threat to statehood” and wants it shut down, according to multiple reports.

Nigeria’s digital economy minister Bosun Tijani set a target for the country’s startups to raise $5 billion a year by 2027. It’s part of an agenda that he said includes ensuring the creation of 50,000 jobs in the artificial intelligence sector to “elevate Nigeria as a top 10 location for AI model training and talents globally.” Nigerian startups typically raise a significant share of funding by African startups, raising $1.2 billion out of the $6.5 billion in equity and debt deals in 2022, according to Partech Africa’s report. But despite an active base of local investors, African startups have depended on foreign venture capital for the majority of funding raised in the last decade. A slowdown in global capital flows has corresponded with slower tech fundraising in Africa this year.

South African fintech startup Stitch raised $25 million from investors that include Silicon Valley firm Ribbit Capital, Cape Town-based CRE Ventures, and PayPal Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the payments company. One of Stitch’s main features allows service providers to access open data about customers from third parties (usually banks), on the premise that those data points can be used to offer more essential services to customers. It is one of a number of African startups hoping to ride the wave of an emerging ‘open banking’ movement, where customer data can be securely exchanged between banks and other service providers through software keys called APIs.

Senegalese writers Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo won the 2023 Caine Prize for African Writing for their jointly authored short story, “A Soul of Small Places.” They were announced as the winners on Monday. Their story, picked by an all-female panel of judges from a shortlist of five, was hailed as an exceptional tale of female empowerment in the face of violence. It follows the life of young female protagonist Woppa Diallo and her family in Mataam, Senegal. The story explores violence that women face and how they deal with the trauma. It also shows how the female characters overcome their circumstances to fight back, turning the victim into a hero.

• There hasn’t been a single vote cast in the Republican primary, but for Trump and Biden, the general election is starting early.
• What’s the endgame on U.S. aid to Ukraine? The path forward is murky after lawmakers opted not to include any in the temporary government funding bill.
• California Governor Gavin Newsom says Fox News is “quite literally bullshit and misinformation.” Also, he can’t stop watching. And he suggests other Democrats do too.

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