Congo Republic’s public or publicly guaranteed debt stood at 5.329 trillion CFA francs, or around $9.14 billion, at the end of July, the International Monetary Fund said at the end of an assessment mission on Wednesday.
The amount, which equates to around 110 percent of the oil producer’s gross domestic product, does not include debt under litigation, it said.
Congo’s economy, which is heavily dependent upon revenues from oil exports, has been hit hard by the drop in global crude prices and the government has entered negotiations with the IMF to try to secure a financial assistance programme.
“The findings of the mission will inform the next steps toward a possible IMF-supported programme to restore macroeconomic stability, and promote sustained and inclusive growth,” said Abdoul Aziz Wane, who headed the IMF delegation.
Congo’s debt load has come under scrutiny from the IMF.
Construction firm Commisimpex has gone to a French court in its fight with the Congo Republic over what it says are more than $1 billion in unpaid bills, the latest step in a decades-old saga that has weighed on the nation’s economy.
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Reporting by Joe Bavier; Editing by Chris Reese and James Dalgleish
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Congo Republic public debt around $9.14BN, or 110 pct of GDP: IMF

A U.S. risk management firm advised South Africa’s state energy utility last year to withhold tens of millions of dollars in payments for advice from McKinsey, because the global consultancy’s “very unusual” payment model allowed it to charge fees in excess of market rates.
Despite the warning by U.S. management consultancy Oliver Wyman, Eskom continued to make payments to McKinsey, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Privately-held McKinsey, the world’s largest management consultancy, is under parliamentary investigation in South Africa for fraud over a $130 million contract to advise energy utility Eskom from late-2015 until July 2016.
A third of the fees were paid by Eskom to a firm called Trillian, controlled at the time by members of the Gupta family, billionaire friends of President Jacob Zuma who were accused by South Africa’s anti-corruption watchdog last year of using control over state agencies to siphon public funds.
Eskom says it paid the fees to Trillian at McKinsey’s request, but McKinsey says it only worked alongside Trillian and they never had a subcontractor relationship.
Trillian, a junior local management consultant, said it supported McKinsey with its work.
McKinsey says a letter written by one of its directors authorising Eskom to pay Trillian as a McKinsey subcontractor “inaccurately characterised” their relationship.
McKinsey says it is cooperating with the authorities and has ordered its own investigation into the operations of its South African office. The Guptas and Zuma deny wrongdoing.
The full payment terms of McKinsey’s contract with Eskom have not previously been made public.
They were examined last year by Oliver Wyman, which was commissioned by Eskom to investigate the deal. Reuters has reviewed the Dec. 15 report containing the findings and recommendations.
Oliver Wyman told Reuters it was not legally permitted to comment on the contents, but it “stands by the findings and recommendations contained in the report”.
McKinsey said it was aware Oliver Wyman had carried out a review of its work at Eskom, but it had not been told there was any dispute over the impact of its work or what it was paid.
“The fees we charged at Eskom are in line with similar projects we, and other firms, undertake in South Africa and elsewhere around the world,” spokesman Steve John said.
Eskom said it would not comment further, pending its own investigation into the affair.
Trillian told Reuters it was not involved in the commercial negotiations between McKinsey and Eskom and had not seen the Oliver Wyman report.
“VERY UNUSUAL”
When Oliver Wyman drafted its report in December, 950 million rand of McKinsey’s billings of nearly 1.8 billion rand ($130 million) had already been paid to McKinsey and Trillian, according to the report.
Of the outstanding balance, Oliver Wyman advised Eskom to withhold payment of 45 percent, equivalent to nearly $30 million, and subject the rest to a legal review and closer analysis to see if it could be reduced.
They described the basis for payments to McKinsey as “not transparent” and “poorly documented”.
Two sources familiar with the case said Eskom made the remaining payments to McKinsey and Trillian for the full amount anyway, despite Oliver Wyman’s advice to withhold the funds.
Why these payments were made will make up part of Eskom’s investigation, the utility says. Eskom suspended its chief financial officer Anoj Singh last week and said it would carry out a disciplinary hearing over his possible role in the payments.
Singh could not be contacted for comment.
McKinsey was hired by Eskom to carry out a ‘Turnaround Plan’ which involved saving the utility money through improving efficiencies, including at power stations.
Under the terms of the deal, McKinsey worked 100 percent “at risk”, meaning it was not paid a flat fee but received a percentage of savings Eskom achieved as a result of its advice.
Oliver Wyman criticised this model, saying it resulted in Eskom paying far more for work than industry norms.
“Projects where fees are 100 percent at risk are very unusual, particularly of such contractual magnitude,” the report said, recommending a legal review of the deal.
“An uncapped incentive fee could mean Eskom ends up paying for a theoretical value instead of true bottom line impact.”
Some of the incentive fees paid were based on targets that assumed that performance at power plants would deteriorate, which meant that McKinsey and Trillian would earn payments even if there was no improvement, the report said.
“Terms of the contract appear to favour the supplier,” the report said, referring to McKinsey and Trillian.
In one case it found that McKinsey and Trillian appeared to have double billed for improvement at one plant, and then to have billed again for estimated future improvements at the same plant after the contract was terminated.
($1 = 13.7282 rand)
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Reporting by Joe Brock; Editing by Peter Graff and Mike Collett-White
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US risk managers advised Eskom to stop paying McKinsey

South Africa’s economy is growing much less than it should be and is unlikely to reach 2-percent annual expansion in the short term because of political and policy uncertainty, the central bank said on Wednesday.
    The Reserve Bank, which in June faced pressure to switch its focus to economic growth from targeting inflation and protecting the currency, said there was little that monetary or fiscal policy could do to arrest a slowdown.
    In its semi-annual Monetary Policy Review (MPR), the bank warned that any economic recovery would be “feeble” and growth would barely exceed 1.5 percent by 2019, well short of the government’s long-term target of 5 percent.
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The bank has previously stated that it sees growth this year at 0.6 percent compared with 0.3 percent in 2016.
The continent’s most industrialised economy contracted in the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 before recording marginal growth in the second quarter.
    The bank’s forecast models in the MPR show that had investor confidence, along with commodity prices, maintained their long term averages, the economy would have grown by about 2 percent in 2016, rather than the actual growth of 0.3 percent.
“FAILURE TO ACT”
    “Confidence indicators have been below longer-term averages since late-2015, when the serving finance minister was unexpectedly dismissed, and are currently about as low as they were during the global financial crisis,” the bank said.
    President Jacob Zuma changed finance ministers three times in less than a week in 2015. In March this year, Zuma axed the respected Pravin Gordhan as finance minister after less than a year in the job, triggering credit downgrades by all three major agencies.
    “The historical evidence is clear that investment in South Africa is highly responsive to uncertainty,” the bank said, noting that private sector investment continued to contract.
Governor Lesetja Kganyago told a news conference later that a lack of action against corruption was weighing on business confidence.
“Our failure to act on corruption might be giving the wrong signal that we actually do not treat this thing seriously,” Kganyago said.
    The bank said larger-than-anticipated shortfalls in government revenues raised the probability of deeper credit rating downgrades, and that the risk this posed to the currency and inflation had convinced it to keep lending rates unchanged at 6.75 percent in September following a 25 basis point cut in July.
    Data released on Friday showed the Treasury recorded a 13 billion rand ($957 million) budget deficit in August following a 92 billion rand shortfall in July.
The bank expects annual consumer price-growth averaging 5.3 percent in 2017 and 5 percent in 2018, a touch below the upper end of its target range of 3-6 percent.
    “The medium term challenge for monetary policy is to anchor inflation and inflation expectations more firmly within the inflation target,” the bank said.
($1 = 13.5850 rand)
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Editing by James Macharia and Richard Balmforth
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Political and policy uncertainty weigh on South Africa’s economy: SARB

Stephen Chan | SOAS, University of London
Kenya’s recently annulled elections will soon be re-run, but the long-term questions they raised about election management are still unanswered. The spotlight is on the work of international observer teams, but there are also much wider questions of electoral capacity – problems that extend to the top of the African Union, and thence across the whole continent.
African democracies are in the process of co-ordinating a generation jump in applied technology. So far, they have actually done a remarkable job by global standards. After all, something like electronic voting is still not used in the UK, where people in raincoats wait patiently while someone with a pencil draws a line through their name on a paper spreadsheet. The rain-sodden voter drips into the polling booth and makes a choice, casts their vote with a pencil on a sheet of paper, and shuffles outside again while putting up an ineffectual umbrella. Nothing has changed for 100 years.
It’s Africa that has led the way – and the West isn’t the place to look for immediate answers for all the problems of running a 21st-century election. One such problem is the use of multiple forms of electronic voting. Voter identification by electronic means is given priority in Nigeria, but even there, it’s not implemented consistently: there are different systems provided by different companies, all submitting tenders on a competitive basis.
The African Union needs to devise a standard set of requirements and attributes for electronic voting across the continent. It’s no longer enough to have a protocol that says paper votes have to be placed into clear plastic ballot boxes. But the African Union has fallen behind. Its previous head, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, was hardly technologically minded; in fact, her successor has apparently stressed the commission urgently needs an email system fit for purpose.
Dlamini-Zuma has now returned to line up for the presidency of her home country, South Africa, whose cabinet is renowned for its technological illiteracy. There are very few images of its current president, Jacob Zuma, working on a laptop or PC, and possibly none of him actually pressing the keys. (His next door neighbour, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, has seemingly never been pictured with a laptop at all.)
But if the presidents might have trouble sending simple emails, the thousands of local observers at each election will need special training of the sort never attempted before. They need to know not just how the system works, but how it can be made not to work – or at least, to work in ways that do not reflect the electorate’s will. Only after that does the question of international observer capacity come into play.
<h2>Mastering the system</h2>
It’s fair to say that although EU observers to Kenya were deployed far in advance of the election and had good geographical coverage, the team was not replete with electronic expertise. And it’s not as if there was no advance knowledge that this would be an electronic election.
Well before the elections began and before the EU observer team was deployed, senior members of both the EU team and the Kenyan opposition were given access to a detailed paper I prepared on the problems of electronic observation. And there was ample evidence from the 2015 Nigerian elections that these things could be bumpy rides. To be fair, electoral commissions need to upgrade their capacities as well; whatever happened in Kenya, whether wicked or incompetent, it was clear electoral officials were not on top of their game, unlike their Nigerian counterparts, who managed to resolve their problems in the end.
Electoral commissions need to open up all stages of the electronic process to knowledgeable observers, and especially the verification stage. This is where subtle algorithmic adjustments can be inserted to preserve close parity between voting patterns on the ground and “verified” results that “just” deliver very narrow victories to a ruling party.
At least electronic cheating can only really work persuasively in close elections. The days of 90% victories are almost (if not quite) over, but they will be followed a rash of elections “won” by about 2%. Margins of about 4%, as in the Kenyan elections, will have to be open to expert interrogation. As it turned out, Kenya’s elections were annulled on grounds of non-electronic irregularities, but neither the opposition nor the electoral commission seemed able to make sustained cases for or against electronic abuse.
Still, it is Africa that has come almost of age in electronic and digital voting. The West’s elections look like Sony Walkmans in the age of the smartphone. Even that comparison might be a bit flattering: in the UK, going to vote is like cranking up an LP on a turntable to 78rpm. Let’s hope Africa’s new leaders and technocrats will make the generational jump more smoothly in the future, and keep showing the creaky old West the way.

Africa leads the way in election technology, but there’s a long way to go

South Africa’s scandal-plagued power supplier Eskom will appoint a new board and begin the search for a new chief executive at a special meeting in November, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Eskom, which is at the centre of allegations of improper dealings in government contracts, has suspended its chief executive and chief financial officer pending disciplinary hearings, both of whom have denied wrongdoing.
Many of the allegations are linked to a slew of leaked emails, which Reuters have not independently verified.
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Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Writing by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by James Macharia
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South Africa’s Eskom to appoint new board, CEO in November: Minister

South Africa’s state-owned freight logistics group Transnet will invest an additional 84 billion rand ($6 billion) over the next three years to increase capacity at ports and railway lines, the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) said on Wednesday.
However, Transnet does not expect to meet a target of 330 million tonnes of freight rail by the end of the 2018/19 financial year, due to a domestic and global economic downturn, the DPE’s latest annual report tabled in parliament showed.
($1 = 13.5709 rand)
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Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia
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S.Africa’s Transnet to spend additional $6BN on ports, railways over three years

A top official with South Africa’s ruling ANC said on Wednesday that the party was concerned about the souring of relations between the mining ministry and the main industry body, the Chamber of Mines.
Zweli Mkhize, who is seen as a potential candidate to replace President Jacob Zuma as head of the African National Congress at a party conference in December, made the remarks at a mining conference in Johannesburg.
The ministry and the chamber in the world’s top platinum producer are locked in a bitter legal battle over revisions to an industry charter which include raising the level of shares blacks should own in mining companies.
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Reporting by Ed Stoddard, editing by Louise Heavens
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Top ANC official says party concerned about tensions between industry, mining ministry

John J Stremlau | University of the Witwatersrand 
&nbsp;
Africa’s leaders, along with everyone else interested in US-Africa relations, have waited eight months for US President Donald Trump’s administration to explain its Africa policy. We aren’t there yet.
But in recent weeks Trump has indicated the level and extent of his interest. And, senior African affairs officials at the State and Defence Departments are at last attempting publicly to outline US goals and objectives toward Africa. This, apparently without much guidance from their president.
Trump’s inaugural address to the UN General Assembly said little about Africa – barely one paragraph towards the end. One sentence praised African Union and UN-led peacekeeping missions for “invaluable contributions in stabilising conflicts in Africa.” A second praised America, which
<blockquote>continues to lead the world in humanitarian assistance, including famine prevention and relief in South Sudan, Somalia and northern Nigeria and Yemen.</blockquote>
The next day Trump hosted a luncheon for leaders of nine African countries –Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and South Africa. Only his welcoming remarks have been published but they are nearly devoid of policy content or guidance. His opening gambit reminded me of a 19th century colonialist hoping to become rich, as he proclaimed:
<blockquote>Africa has tremendous business potential, I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich. I congratulate you, they’re spending a lot of money….It’s really become a place they have to go, that they want to go.</blockquote>
Trump called on African companies to invest in the US. Then, shifting to security cooperation, he urged Africans to help defeat Islamist extremists and the threat from North Korea.
The American president proposed no new presidential initiatives for Africa. But, at least, he did not say those launched by predecessors were a waste of money and would be ended. Nor did he mention opposition to foreign assistance generally. He also did not mention his renunciation of the Paris Climate Accord and refusal to fund Green Climate Fund. Both are crucial for Africa’s adaptation to global warming.
<h2>Hints of a policy taking shape</h2>
A “US-Africa Partnerships” conference at the US Institute for Peace in Washington in mid-September provided additional clues to how this administration will conduct Africa policy.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Tom Shannon, offered the first high level official statement on Africa. Shannon, a highly accomplished Foreign Service officer, emphasised policy continuity. But, he implicitly affirmed Trump’s apparent desire for minimal engagement in Africa.
Shannon and Acting Assistant Secretary Donald Yamamoto at a later session, stressed the four main pillars that have framed Africa policy for many years, would remain. These are:
<ul>
<li>peace and security;</li>
<li>counterterrorism;</li>
<li>economic trade, investment and development; and,</li>
<li>democracy and good governance.</li>
</ul>
They endorsed previous presidential initiatives, including specific references to former US President Barack Obama’s Feed the Future, Power Africa and the Young African Leaders Initiative. Their continuation, and at what levels, will depend on budget decisions. Trump’s initial recommendations, endorsed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, call for crippling cuts.
So far, the only new social development programme that Trump has endorsed is the World Bank’s global Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, championed by his daughter Ivanka. The US has donated USD$50 million toward its global start-up budget of USD$315 million. As Yamamoto noted at the September meeting, Africa could benefit from this initiative.
<h2>Surprise praise for China</h2>
Trump will be less likely to challenge US military’s commitments in Africa. With this in mind I paid close attention to the address by General Thomas Waldhauser, Commander of the US Africa Command (Africom) at the September 13 meeting. He set out Africom’s current engagements in Libya and Somalia, where he said the mission was to support locally engineered political solutions.
Critics of America’s many previous failed interventions in these two countries and elsewhere, will rightly remain sceptical.
The second part of his address dealt more broadly with Africom’s capacity building assistance, nationally and regionally. He said Africom only operates where
<blockquote>US and partner nation strategic objectives are compatible and aligned and, second, the operations are conducted primarily by partner nation forces with the US in a supporting role.</blockquote>
Africom, he said, conducts “some 3,500 exercises, programs and engagements” annually, with “5-to-6,000 US service members working on the continent every day.”
Waldenhauser ended his address with a surprisingly specific and positive view on China’s role in Africa. He praised China’s assistance to building much needed infrastructure throughout Africa and for the rapid growth in China-Africa trade which exceeded USD$300 billion in 2016.
On security issues, he commended Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pledge of USD$100 million to the AU and for supporting UN peacekeeping missions with 8,000 police officers. He then referred to the construction of China’s first overseas military base, which is near the US base in Djibouti, as creating “opportunities found nowhere else in the world,” relating that:
<blockquote>China assigned the first soldiers to this base and expressed interest in conducting amphibious training between Chinese and US Marines. Across the continent, we have shared interests in African stability. We see many areas where we can cooperate with the Chinese military. For example, we both support UN peacekeeping missions and training with African defence forces. The fact that we have mutual interests in Africa means that we can and should cooperate.</blockquote>
To emphasise the importance of this comment he quoted Secretary of Defence James Mattis when he pointed out earlier this year:
<blockquote>Our two countries can and do cooperate for mutual benefit. And we will pledge to work closely with China where we share common cause.</blockquote>
<h2>Charting the future</h2>
But China-US security cooperation in Africa can’t succeed without the inclusion of African governments as equal partners in this “common cause”.
Such “win-win-win” experiments in mutual confidence building would not only benefit Africans, but could also serve as positive examples for other regions and could improve US-China relations globally. In the absence of a coherent and compelling US – Africa policy, this at least is one positive development that merits our attention.
&nbsp;
This article was first published in The Conversation.

Trump’s Africa policy is still incoherent, but key signals are emerging

Nigeria plans to release 100 billion naira for capital projects, taking its total spending in the 2017 budget for infrastructure to 440.9 billion naira ($1.44 bln) by next week, its finance minister said on Tuesday.
Kemi Adeosun said the government had spent 1.5 trillion naira on recurrent expenditure so far.
“We concluded our Sukuk last week, the money will be pushed out this week. As money comes in, we push it out,” Adeosun said. Last week Nigeria sold a debut 100 billion naira in sukuk in the local market to finance road projects.
($1 = 306.00 naira)
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Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Alexis Akwagyiram
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Nigeria’s 2017 capex to hit 440.9BN naira next week: Finance Minister

Guinea’s economy will grow 5.8 percent in 2018, down from an expected 6.7 percent in 2017, the budget minister said on Tuesday, as it struggles with low commodity prices and unrest that has interrupted bauxite mining.
The forecast is lower than the 7 percent growth target authorities had been hoping to exceed in 2018, Budget Minister Mohamed Lamine Doumbouya told repoters in the capital Conakry.
The minister did not give a reason for the expected slowdown in an economy dogged in recent years by the Ebola epidemic and price drops for key commodities like iron ore and bauxite.
But a high-ranking state official told Reuters it is linked to riots that hit the bauxite-mining Boke region last month, when angry youths blocked trains and railroads to protest against joblessness, electricity cuts and pollution.
“Mining is the main sector that really supports current growth. If there are problems in this sector, there are repercussions on the whole economy,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Boke is home to Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) and the Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG), major companies that each produce 15 million tonnes of the aluminium ore per year.
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Reporting by Saliou Samb; writing by Sofia Christensen; editing by Edward McAllister
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Guinea says economic growth to dip to 5.8% in 2018

One of South Africa’s leading seats of learning, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), is dropping KPMG as its auditor after a scandal about the firm’s work for businessman friends of President Jacob Zuma, it said on Wednesday.
“It was agreed that KPMG had not been sufficiently transparent and that it is hard to reconcile KPMG’s conclusion that no one did anything illegal when senior individuals have been dismissed,” Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib said in a statement.

South Africa’s Wits University drops KPMG as auditor

The African Development Bank [AFDB.UL] is expected on Wednesday to decide the fate of a $296 million financing package for Ivory Coast national airline Air Cote d‘Ivoire’s purchase of five new Airbus (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIR.PA">AIR.PA</a>) A320s, a bank document seen by Reuters showed.
While the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based lender has participated in loan packages to commercial airlines in the past, some board members have raised questions about the deals and whether the loans fulfil the AfDB’s development vocation.
Air Cote d‘Ivoire, which aspires to become West Africa’s premier airline and make Abidjan a regional travel hub, ordered three A320neos and two A320s last year. Using a stop-gap loan, it took delivery of the first aircraft in July, bringing its total fleet to 10 planes.
“It’s to finance the purchase of the five Airbuses, the training of the crew and mechanics and the maintenance center,” the company’s General Manager Rene Decurey told Reuters of the loan request.
The size and structure of the package have not been made public, and Decurey declined to confirm the amount.
But according to an AfDB document seen by Reuters, it includes a $60 million sovereign loan from the bank to the Ivorian state, which owns a 65 percent stake in the airline. The bank would also provide $55 million in non-sovereign loans and a $20 million partial risk guarantee.
Specialist bank Investec (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=INVP.L">INVP.L</a>) will contribute $30 million, with other commercial banks providing loans totaling $81.5 million.
Air Cote d‘Ivoire will bring equity of over $50 million to the deal. In addition to the Ivorian state, the airline’s other shareholders are Air France (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIRF.PA">AIRF.PA</a>) with a 20 percent stake and private Ivorian investor Goldenrod, which holds 15 percent.
The airline, which boasts service to 20 African and five domestic destinations, has previously said the expansion will help grow its business. Its proposal argues that the request is in line with the AfDB’s goals of supporting improved transportation and infrastructure in underserved markets.
The bank has lent to airlines before, most recently contributing nearly $93 million alongside Delta (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DAL.N">DAL.N</a>) to finance Ethiopian Airlines’ [ETHA.UL] investment plans.
However, Wednesday’s board meeting could prove contentious, Abidjan-based diplomats said.
Some board members have questioned whether financing Air Cote d‘Ivoire’s aircraft acquisition fits with the AfDB’s stated mission of reducing poverty in Africa by spurring “sustainable economic development and social progress”.
Others have been critical of the deal’s unique structure, which would create a special vehicle allowing the Ivorian state to transfer its sovereign loan to the airline with an AfDB guarantee.
The bank’s rotating board of directors is composed of 13 representatives from its 54 African member countries as well as seven from the 27 non-African nations that contribute to its capital.
France, Germany and Spain, whose governments hold stakes in Airbus, currently sit on the AfDB board.
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Editing by Dale Hudson
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AfDB to decide fate of $296MN Ivorian Airbus purchase

Administrators closed Kenya’s oldest university on Tuesday, citing fears for students’ safety in a planned protest over police beatings at a campus demonstration last week.
Kenyan police frequently face accusations of brutality and extrajudicial killings from civilians and rights groups, but officers are rarely charged and almost never convicted.
Despite this, Kenya, an economic and transport hub in East Africa and a key Western ally in a volatile region, receives substantial financial support for its security services from international donors, including the United States and Britain.
Rights groups say at least 28 people were killed, mostly by police, in unrest following the Aug. 8 election, whose results were later nullified by the Supreme Court due to irregularities.
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A re-run of the presidential vote is scheduled for Oct. 26 and the conduct of the police will be closely watched.
On Sept. 28, University of Nairobi students protested against the arrest of an opposition lawmaker. Police responded by entering dormitories and classrooms, dragging out students, beating them with clubs and firing tear gas, according to a Reuters witness. The university said 27 students were injured.
A police spokesman did not respond to requests for comment but a presidential spokesman told local radio on Monday that robbers were hiding among the students.
On Tuesday, students had planned to demonstrate against the beatings but instead administrators shut down the university.
“The (University of Nairobi) Senate has decided to send the students home for their (own) safety,” John Orindi, the university’s corporate affairs director, told Reuters.
On Tuesday morning, riot policemen stood near a truck with water cannon outside the campus gates.
A 20-year-old veterinary student who did not want to be named for fear of retribution said students wanted the vice chancellor to resign “for allowing anti-riot police to enter campus and seriously injure students”.
University officials had talks on Monday with the interior minister, police chief and the head of a Kenyan government watchdog that is charged with investigating complaints against the police.
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Writing by Maggie Fick; editing by Katharine Houreld and Mark Heinrich
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University of Nairobi closed as anger rises over police brutality

Faith Kiboro |SMC University
After a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated Kenya’s August 8 presidential election, the country now finds itself in a moral predicament between political stability and electoral credibility.
On one hand, the ruling that ordered a fresh presidential election was a win for the democratic process the world over. The court found that Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission was in violation of constitutional procedure. It also found that the commission had violated election law and in so doing impugned the credibility of the election.
On the other hand, the court’s decision has ushered the country into a period of political instability. Where it would have closed the chapter on the 2017 election cycle, it is now gearing up for a repeat poll slated for October 26.
Kenyans now find themselves in a tight spot made even more uncomfortable by demands being made by Raila Odinga and his National Super Alliance. The opposition is insisting that certain conditions, including reconstituting the election commission and reprinting key election documents, must be met before the October 26 election can be held.
The opposition’s hard stance could result in a delayed election. This could also happen if OT-Morpho, the French biometrics firm which supplied the electoral commission with its electronic voting system fails to have a new system ready in time. It’s indicated that it won’t.
If indeed the key issue with the last election was that the voting system was not “simple and verifiable” as demanded by law, then any delays could be interpreted as being in the interests of a free, fair, credible and transparent election.
But for those who argue that no electoral process can be perfect, and that the August 8th poll was merely dogged by minor and inadvertent errors, then it begs the question: what is more important, electoral credibility or political stability?
<h2>Electoral credibility</h2>
The Supreme Court prioritised electoral credibility by invalidating the presidential election result on grounds that the election commission had committed illegalities and irregularities.
In doing so, it broke ranks with foreign election observer missions which had concluded that the presidential election was credible. By and large the Supreme Court ruling was a win for Kenyans and the rule of law. The court took the opportunity to audit the electoral process for transparency and to define the parameters of a credible election.
But its ruling raised questions of its own. For instance, the court ruled that the electoral commission didn’t strictly adhere to election procedure as set out in law. It also held that there had been tampering with the commission’s electronic voter management system. But it mandated the same commission to carry out a fresh election within 60 days.
Because the court gave no direction on the reconstitution of the commission, the petitioner Odinga and the respondent President Uhuru Kenyatta are now at an impasse over who should remain at the commission.
<h2>Political stability</h2>
Those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling see the court’s decision as a subversion of the will of the Kenyan people. For them, the ruling was a destabilising force which didnt’ reflect the people’s decision.
Giving credence to this argument is the fact that Kenya is viewed as the economic hub of East Africa. If the country does not return to normalcy as quickly as possible there will be a ripple effects, including economic, across the region.
On top of this, Kenya finds itself in a precarious situation because the executive is at odds with the judiciary. Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party has the majority in both houses of Parliament. It is therefore within its capacity to limit the independence of the judiciary should it continue to feel aggrieved by the Supreme Court decision.
This could happen through a parliamentary referendum as per Article 256 of the Constitution and would involve members of parliament deciding to amend the constitution without a popular vote.
But by far the most pressing threat to Kenya’s continued political stability is the possibility that the Supreme Court may have created a situation in which Kenya could remain in election mode ad infinitum. Nothing stops a new petition from being filed should one of the candidates contest the next poll results.
If we look at Kenya’s neighbour Rwanda we see an example of a head of state that’s arguably prioritised a semblance of political stability over election credibility. Paul Kagame was recently re-elected for the third time. Some argue that his rule has benefited Rwandans because the country has shown better socio-economic outcomes than most African countries.
But there tensions simmer and in the absence of electoral credibility, Rwanda’s political stability may be skin deep.
<h2>Rethinking Kenya’s election system</h2>
The Kenya case raises questions about elections in Africa and whether they are a force for political stability or instability. I would posit that Kenya has made great strides to improve electoral credibility since its catastrophic 2007 election.
In conclusion, election credibility and political stability aren’t mutually exclusive.
There should be a positive correlation between democracy and the improved well being of a state and its people. But in a country like Kenya with 40-plus tribes, the more populous tribes will always take advantage of their voting might, while the less populous ones struggle to compete. The system just does not work in their favour. It would seem therefore that they are locked out – not by choice but by circumstance.
So, does a majoritarian, “winner-takes-all” system suit an ethnically diverse society like Kenya’s?
Perhaps, not. I’m persuaded that there needs to be a re-imagination of electoral democratic practices in Africa. Kenya should take recent events as an opportunity to clean up its institutions and electoral system. If it doesn’t, future polls will continue to offer up a point of diversion between electoral credibility and a tenuous political stability.

The thin line between electoral credibility and political stability in Kenya

Hyatt Hotels &amp; Resorts will open six new hotels in Africa by 2020, the company said in a news release on Tuesday, underscoring the growth of business and international travel on the continent.
The company will open its first hotels in Algeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Senegal and open new hotels in two countries where it already has a presence: Morocco and Tanzania. The hotels will create approximately 2,100 jobs, Hyatt said.
Hyatt is looking for more opportunities to expand in East Africa, it said, citing continued government investment in infrastructure, an expanding middle class and a growing international recognition of the region’s stability.
The new hotels will double Hyatt’s presence in Africa. Potential countries for further expansion could include Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Ghana and Ivory Coast, Hyatt said.
There was 11 percent growth in Sub-Saharan African tourism in the past year, the company said, citing the UN World Tourism Organisation.
The first half of 2017 saw a 14 percent year-on-year increase in international arrivals in East Africa.
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Reporting by Katharine Houreld; editing by Jason Neely
</div>

Hyatt to double its Africa presence, open six hotels by 2020

South Africa’s audit regulator will fast-track an investigation into global auditor KPMG over work done for business friends of President Jacob Zuma, the regulator’s chief executive told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors’ inquiry into KPMG follows an internal investigation in which the firm found work it did for companies owned by the Gupta family “fell considerably short” of the firm’s standards.
The Guptas, a trio of businessmen accused by a watchdog of improperly influencing the award of government contracts, has denied wrongdoing, as has Zuma.
But KPMG last month cleared out its South African leadership as several companies considered dropping KPMG and after the finance minister asked government departments to review their work with the firm.
“We will fast-track the investigation, but we have to respect the prescribed process of the auditing profession act and disciplinary rules,” Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors CEO Bernard Agulhas told parliament’s finance committee.
“In the beginning we did not always receive the information that we required. It was important that the process isn’t delayed,” Agulhas said, adding that KPMG has since committed to cooperate with the probe.
Nearly a dozen of South Africa’s blue-chip companies use KPMG’s services, including three of the nation’s four largest banks.
The central bank has told top lenders they cannot fire KPMG because it might undermine financial stability, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
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<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="48">
Writing by TJ Strydom; reporting by Wendell Roelf; editing by Joe Brock and Jason Neely
</div>

South African regulator to fast-track KPMG investigation

Global auditor KPMG has given its commitment to cooperate with a South African investigation into work done for business friends of President Jacob Zuma, the nation’s audit regulator’s chief executive told lawmakers on Tuesday.
“In the beginning we did not always receive the information that we required. It was important that the process isn’t delayed,” Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors Chief Executive Bernard Agulhas told parliament’s finance committee, adding that KPMG has since committed to cooperate with the probe.
Zuma and his friends, the Gupta family, have denied wrongdoing.
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Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia
</div>

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