Africa

➚  Buy: Lagos light rail. Lagos finally unveiled the 13-kilometer first phase of its multibillion-dollar Chinese-built light rail with a test drive by state officials on Wednesday. After multiple financing delays, three commercial banks secured funding for the line. Passenger rides are planned to begin in March.

➘ Sell: Abuja light rail.Abuja’s light rail, also built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation for $824 million, took off with much fanfare in 2018 but is widely seen as a flop by locals. This is in part because of poorly located stations away from the city center but also because of insecurity issues along key parts of its route.

The number of soldiers arrested in the Gambia for leading an alleged attempt to overthrow the Adama Barrow government. The west African country’s armed forces said three other officers were still being searched for in connection with the foiled coup.

Rwanda under fresh scrutiny with U.S. Congress

THE SCOOP

United States lawmakers are urging the secretary of state to brief Congress on Rwanda’s alleged human rights abuses and role in the conflict in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

The language is included in an explanatory statement accompanying the fiscal year 2023 appropriation bill for the State Department released as part of a larger funding package earlier this week. It calls on Antony Blinken to brief congressional committees on Rwanda’s “abuse of the judicial system” to “silence critics” of its government. They also identified “arbitrary and incommunicado detention, mistreatment of prisoners, coerced confessions, lack of due process, and unfair trials,” among the issues of concern.

The issue of detention and mistreatment of prisoners is seen by some on Capitol Hill as the latest attempt to pressure Rwanda over the detention of Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan activist made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda”. Rusesabagina, a long-time critic of President Paul Kagame, was arrested in Rwanda’s capital Kigali in August 2020 after being lured onto a flight he was told was going to Burundi.

Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo, in a statement responding to the calls for fresh scrutiny, said the administration is “proud of the enormous progress Rwanda’s justice system has made” since being rebuilt after 1994’s genocide.

In August, Blinken brought up the issue of “wrongfully detained” Rusesabagina in his visit to Kigali. But speaking at the Semafor Africa Summit last week, Kagame pushed back at what he described as an attempt to “bully” him into releasing Rusesabagina.

Rwanda is also highlighted in Congress’ statement about violence and instability in eastern DR Congo. It calls for an “assessment of the support provided by Rwanda to the M23 rebel group and the impact of such support on civilian populations and stability in the region.” Rwanda has repeatedly denied culpability for misdeeds in the sub-region.

YINKA’S VIEW

US-Africa policy watchers on Capitol Hill and beyond are paying attention to these statements even while accepting there is some debate over what they mean in the longer term.

On the one hand, they aren’t legally binding or new policy, it doesn’t officially change anything in real terms when it comes to U.S.-Rwanda relations. But as one Africa policy wonk on the Hill told me “it would be unwise to think Rwanda can just ignore this”. That’s because even though most of these statements end up seeming pretty procedural they do show what U.S. Congress is particularly concerned about and are often the first step in influencing future legislative decisions by simply keeping issues like the detention of Rusesabagina — a U.S. resident —  near the top of the State Department’s Africa agenda. This is after a long period where negotiations were quietly ongoing behind the scenes with little movement.

“It’s a signaling device to the Rwandan government that Congress is watching,” said Joshua Mersevey, Africa analyst at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington. “It could pave the way for future legislative action on the issue if the reporting is sufficiently worrisome to inflame Congressional members.”

The criticism adds to a sense that there is a widening divergence on how the U.S. and Rwanda see the same issues.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

One veteran watcher of US-Rwanda affairs dismissed the notion that these congressional statements might influence matters in the region. Speaking to Semafor on condition of anonymity, due to sensitivities around imprisoned critics and the eastern DR Congo conflict, they described the statements as “pretty routine.” They said the statements simply allowed certain Congress members to keep some of their primary Africa issues on the agenda without necessarily affecting legislative decisions.

One Good Text with...Gregory Rockson

Under the aegis of U.S. government’s Prosper Africa initiative Ghana’s mPharma made a $43 million investment in Nigeria by acquiring a majority stake in HealthPlus, a leading pharmacy chain.

Ghana became the latest African country to default on its external debt this week, prompting the question of which countries might be next.

Eight nations — including Chad, Mozambique, Sudan and Zimbabwe — are in debt distress which means they are unable to fulfill their financial obligations, according to International Monetary Fund figures, with 15 others at high risk of falling into that category.

It remains rare for countries to actually default. Ghana, which on Monday said it won’t service debts including its Eurobonds, commercial loans and most bilateral loans, was only the continent’s second nation to default since the start of the pandemic. Zambia became the first in November 2020.

Many economies were still recovering from disruption caused by the pandemic when they were hit by the shocks related to the war in Ukraine and, in some cases, natural disasters related to climate change.

With no end in sight to the conflict, which likely means high food and fuel prices along with rising interest rates, several economists told me it’ll only get harder for countries to service their debts next year and beyond.

“If the current conditions persist it will spill over into 2024,” Anthony Simpasa, acting head of the African Development Bank’s debt sustainability division.

Ethiopia is in a particularly tough spot with its foreign currency reserves running low, according to two economists.

— Alexis

• Much has been written about the possibility that cheap Chinese loans for infrastructure development have ensnared African countries in debt trap. But what if China is the actual victim? That’s the thrust of a paper by UK think tank Chatham House as it looks at the impact of African countries struggling to service their debts. “Profligate Chinese lending in its early phases may have created a debt trap for China – deeply entangling it with obdurate and increasingly assertive African partners,” write its authors.
• One of the key lessons of the pandemic is that the world needs better distribution of vaccine manufacturing capabilities around the world, according to The Interpreter newsletter by the Lowy Institute think tank in Australia. It says an example of progress is the World Health Organization’s mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa which has been earmarked for work on malaria vaccines. And, still on malaria, our shortform video explains how genetically engineered mosquitoes are helping to defeat the disease.
  
• In the wake of the U.S. Biden administration’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the framing by many of a so-called new ‘Scramble for Africa’ is misguided and patronizing, writes Howard French in Foreign Policy. There are real economic and strategic opportunities for American engagement in a range of sectors and industries beyond simply extraction or for competitive reasons to counter China, Russia or other countries, he writes.

Welcome to Africa’s newest photography library

Renowned Malian photographers Malick Sidibe and Seydou Keïta captured shifts in social, cultural and political norms in the 20th Century, as did Ghanaian photojournalist James Barnor. Ghanaian photographer Paul Ninson hopes to bring their work, and that of lesser known talent, to a wider audience at what the Guardian says is Africa’s largest photography library. The recently opened Dikan Center, which he founded, houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. It also boasts a photo studio and classrooms for workshops, plus a fellowship programme targets African documentarians and visual artists.

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— Yinka