By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/benedikt-kamski-822811">Benedikt Kamski</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/freiburg-university-2097">Freiburg University </a>

If it’s completed, the <a href="https://www.ethiopiansugar.com/omo-kuraz-sugar-development-project/">Kuraz sugar project</a> in Ethiopia will be a mega-scheme unprecedented in size and processing capacity. The project sits on 100,000 hectares in the southwestern lowlands along the lower reaches of the Omo River. 

Kuraz was the showcase project of the state-owned Ethiopian Sugar Corporation under the country’s first five-year <a href="https://theredddesk.org/sites/default/files/growth_and_transformation_plan.pdf">growth and transformation plan</a> launched nearly a decade ago. One of its central objectives was to meet increasing local demand for sugar. It also aimed to become a net exporter of sweeteners, and to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

This was to be achieved through the development of large-scale irrigated sugarcane estates. But today, Kuraz is just one example of the disappointing results of a decade of state-led sugar industrialisation.

Across the country, several billion US dollars have been invested in new processors. Existing sugar estates have also been expanded. Yet, progress has been stuttering for years. This is illustrated by fluctuating industry <a href="https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Government%20of%20Ethiopia%20to%20privatize%20all%20Sugar%20projects._Addis%20Ababa_Ethiopia_6-28-2019.pdf">output</a>. The planned cane cultivation of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2016.1267602">Kuraz</a>, the largest of such ventures, has been reduced by 75,000 hectares. The number of processors has also been reduced from five to four, partly because of a costly redesign of waterworks. 

The ambitious goal of exporting surplus production remains a distant reality – if it’s even possible at all. Employment creation, another central aspect of the government’s vision for the industry, has been particularly unsuccessful. 

At the opening of Kuraz’s second processing factory out of four planned last year, prime minister Abiy Ahmed chose surprisingly optimistic <a href="https://www.ena.et/en/?p=3689">words</a>. He proclaimed that “problems seem to be alleviated” now. As it stands, the government’s proposed solution is <a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/article/govt-initiates-modalities-privatize-sugar-projects">private investment</a> to proceed with Kuraz and the other state sugar projects in Tigray, Afar, Amhara, and Southern Nations regions. 

But it’s debatable whether this is the best or most practical solution to harnessing the potential of Ethiopia’s sugar industry.

<h2>Privatisation: profitable and desirable?</h2>

The state corporation is overburdened with debt. It needs substantial capital to service outstanding loans and get the industry on track. The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia reportedly provided loans equivalent to more than $2 billion for expansion and modernisation projects. This puts the government in a tight spot: repayment was only <a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/article/massive-state-loans-threaten-cbe">expected</a> once these schemes were finalised. 

The latest <a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/08/01/omo-investors-wont-scrub-away-kurazs-sugary-stain/">estimates</a> refer to an additional $2 billion in outstanding external debt contracted by the corporation. Added to this are capital injections of unknown dimensions into the sugar industry from the sale of the 2014-Eurobond and the <a href="https://www.canr.msu.edu/oturn/OTuRN_Briefing_Note_1.pdf">Sugar Industry Development Fund</a>. 

In view of this, divestment might seem a logical solution to escape the debt trap. But the government would also be compelled to revise earlier projections of return on investment and expected profits.

Following the official privatisation <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-privatisation/ethiopia-opens-up-telecoms-airline-to-private-foreign-investors-idUSKCN1J12JJ">announcements</a> in June last year, 30 potential bidders had <a href="https://www.ethiopiansugar.com/investment/">recorded interest</a> by January 2019. This confirms the agro-economic potential of several schemes but the central question on how develop a profitable and sustainable sugar industry remains unanswered.

<h2>New stakeholders, old challenges</h2>

Prospective investors have a tough task. They must be successful in an industry beset by technical challenges and incomplete planning. A vital first step is to identify all the root causes of operational failures. These include the failure to include and compensate local communities adequately. 

A realistic look at the actual feasibility of projects will be crucial, too. These projects were designed and conceived in high spirits and with great optimism. A dose of reality is needed. The quality of waterworks for irrigation and incomplete feasibility studies might be a key limiting factor. 

Only time will tell just how oversized the Kuraz processing plants are. A sufficient supply of cane is critical to ensure the processors run at full capacity. This much cane may simply not be available.

The price investors will be willing to pay for estates not operating at full capacity will mainly depend on the status of construction, quality of existing infrastructure, and cultivation potential. 

But there are other factors potential buyers from the private sector will have to consider. These include land lease payments, export restrictions, and supply for domestic consumption. The sharing of tax and rent revenues between the federal and regional states is a burning issue and needs to be resolved before the privatisation of state-owned assets. 

Finally, there are concerns about how Ethiopia will manage domestic sugar demand and decrease its import dependency – a primary reason for the government’s bet on sugar industrialisation. 

<h2>Reputational risks</h2>

The challenges won’t stop there. Investors, especially in the lower Omo Valley, will be faced with a different, but equally critical issue: negative publicity and reputational risk. Academic <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-018-1139-3">studies</a> and reports by <a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/ethiopia-tricked-gibe-dam-sugarcane-plantations.pdf">international rights groups</a> have repeatedly pointed to the negative effects on local people’s livelihoods stemming from defects in how Kuraz is being planned and implemented.

There can be no denying that Kuraz has so far failed on its “development promises” made to the indigenous local communities. Existing land users have also not been compensated, included or consulted adequately. How local conflict dynamics will evolve and if scarcity-induced migration threatens regional stability are important questions. 

Sugarcane is a water-intensive crop. That increases the challenges for sustainable development. This is largely neglected in the official debates on the industry’s future trajectories. Chances are high that agricultural run-off, and effluent – liquid waste or sewage – from processing will seriously affect complex water systems. Agricultural run-off could include water from farm fields that contain fertilisers, pesticides, animal waste, or soil particles which enters and contaminates drinking water.

Increasing local acceptance of the project will require a novel approach towards local inclusion. It will also require substantial additional financial commitments by the government. More importantly, this needs the support and endorsement of new stakeholders from the private sector.

The successful operation of a scheme such as Kuraz is subject to more than capital and the solving of technical problems. From now on, the success of the sugar industry will be measured not only in economic terms but in how environmental and social costs will be reduced.

A <a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/08/01/omo-investors-wont-scrub-away-kurazs-sugary-stain/">longer version of this article</a> was published by Ethiopia Insight.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122871/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/benedikt-kamski-822811">Benedikt Kamski</a>, Post-doctoral researcher, Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute (ABI), <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/freiburg-university-2097">Freiburg University </a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ethiopias-showcase-sugar-projects-face-huge-challenges-122871">original article</a>.

Here’s why Ethiopia’s showcase sugar projects face immense challenges

By Francois Conradie, Head of Research, NKC African Economics.



Tunisia’s voters took to the polls on Sunday, September 15, in the first round of the second democratic direct presidential election in the country’s history. 



Since
Tunisians elected Beji Caid Essebsi in the first such election in November
2014, the political environment has undergone a number of changes: Mr Essebsi
has died; his party, Nidaa Tounes, has been badly damaged by infighting; and
the marriage of convenience between his secular current and the Islamist
current is on the rocks. 



The
race is a two-round affair: The first round is on Sunday and the second round
will take place later (no date has been fixed yet, but it will probably be
around October 13, which is the week after the legislative election on October
6). 



Results
from the first round will be known early in the week after the vote.



There
are 26 candidates in the race. No publication of opinion polling data has been
permitted since the start of campaigning, on July 16, so the most recent poll
(or the most recent reliable one – fake poll results have been flying across
social media) is from mid-July. That poll, by Sigma Conseil, indicates
television tycoon Nabil Karoui as the favourite (with 23% of voting
intentions), followed by Kaies Saied, an elderly law professor (20%); Abir
Moussi, the Ben Ali apologist (12%); Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, who looked
like the favourite not so many months ago (7%); former state president Moncef
Marzouki (7%); and Defence Minister Abdelkrim Zbidi (3%). 



But
that was before Mr Essebsi died, before Mr Karoui was arrested on August 23 on
money laundering charges that date from 2016, and before the Islamists of
Ennahdha named a candidate, Abdelfattah Mourou.



There
is little doubt in public opinion that the accusations against Mr Karoui are
politically motivated, and Tunisians see the hand of Prime Minister Chahed
behind it. 



Mr
Karoui may be freed at the eleventh hour: his case is to go to a second appeal before
the Cour de Cassation on Friday, September 13. Our expectation (based on
conversations with sources with some legal knowledge) is for the case against
him to be struck down, and for him to accordingly be in a position to contest
the election normally. 



A
twist in the story is that if he is elected president, Mr Karoui would become
immune from prosecution on these or other charges.



Mr
Essebsi’s death has boosted Mr Zbidi’s chances. His experience at defence is a
strong selling point in a country that has felt a serious deterioration in
security since the 2011 uprising against Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, and he will
moreover be the natural candidate for secularist voters who are looking for a
candidate to block the Islamists. 



Mr
Mourou’s campaign has not gone especially well (when his party named him, we
thought he looked to be a strong contender) and we expect he will get little
support outside of the relatively small community of convinced Islamists. 



The
people who have historically supported Ennahdha will, this time, vote for the
populist candidates like Mr Karoui or Mr Saied, as the polls show. Our
expectation is for Mr Karoui and Mr Zbidi to go to the second round. Mr
Karoui’s party, Heart of Tunisia, is also looking like a strong favourite to
dominate the legislative race in October. 



The
election should go smoothly and should once again affirm Tunisia’s status as
poster child for Arab democracy. 



Political
interference in the judiciary (we are among those who see Mr Chahed’s hand in
Mr Karoui’s arrest) is less positive, but, without relativising the matter too
much, is more typical of Italy’s messy and semi-captured democracy than of the
pitiless autocracy of Tunisia in Mr Ben Ali’s time. (So is the popularity of Mr
Karoui, who seems to have studied former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi for
political strategy.) 



If
Mr Karoui’s appeal succeeds, we expect him and Mr Zbidi to go through to the
second round, in which Mr Zbidi is set to be the favourite. 



The
legislative election will deliver a very divided Parliament, which will
probably mean some weeks of negotiations before a prime minister is named and
the government can get down to business.

Op-Ed: What you need to know about Tunisia’s presidential election

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/rafael-badziag/">Rafael Badziag</a> 



There are billions of people in the world, and only a tiny fraction of them are <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-agree-giving-up-this-one-thing-will-make-you-more-successful.html">billionaires</a>.



What distinguishes the billionaire’s thought process from everyone else’s? What are their secrets to achieving outrageous success? What are their belief systems? What gives them the energy to pursue ambitious goals?



To find the answers, I spent six years conducting face-to-face interviews with 21&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/money-mistakes-millionaires-like-warren-buffett-bill-gates-google-eric-schmidt-never-make.html" class="">self-made billionaires</a>, anddocumented the principles that led them to great success in the book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Secret-Principles-Billionaire-ebook/dp/B07SB6HQFF/?tag=billionair046-20" class="">“The Billion Dollar Secret.”</a>



But throughout my journey, I learned something that I found deeply insightful: Just like the rest of us,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/self-made-billionaires-the-6-habits-of-massive-wealth-and-success.html" class="">billionaires</a>&nbsp;have regrets.



Based on my conversations, here are some of the most common ones:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. Not jumping on great opportunities</h2>



With great risks comes great rewards. But you’ll have a hard time reaping the rewards if you don’t take action fast. Many of the billionaires I spoke to learned this lesson the hard way.



Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and billionaire, is one of them. When asked what advice he had for people who would like to be as successful as he is, he answered: “Choose a goal and go after it.”



But even Draper has failed to act. He told me a story about when he first became interested in investing in Facebook. At the time, Sean Parker, who was president of the company, first said the company was valued at $20 million. But Draper got into a bidding war over the company that eventually went to a $115 million valuation.



Draper ended up backing out. That’s a regret, he said, because Facebook grew in value many times over.



His firm was also outbid when attempting to invest in Yahoo. “I should have just gone ahead and written the check with a note and let them convert it into whatever,” he said, of making the first offer on Yahoo. “When you spot a great opportunity, don’t hesitate.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Not living in the present</h2>



Chip Wilson, founder of the athletic clothing company Lululemon, has a great mantra: Live in the present. But it took him a few years to get there.



When building his first sports apparel company, Westbeach Snowboard Ltd., Wilson said he found himself struggling until he made a life-changing realization.



“I was living my life in the past, in angst about things that I’d done in the past, or I was living my life in the future,” he said, adding that he was never fully appreciative of the people he was with or the things he accomplished in that moment.



“It seemed to me I was always in survival mode. I was always thinking, ‘What am I going to do in the future?’ I recognized that I spent probably 40 years of my life&nbsp;not&nbsp;saying, ‘Oh, isn’t life great?’”



As soon as Wilson changed his mindset, he started telling himself: “I live a&nbsp;great&nbsp;life.” And that helped him move forward by thinking about how he could become a better person and create a difference in the world.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. Not starting soon enough</h2>



Despite their success, many billionaires regret not pursuing their goals earlier in life.



Peter Hargreaves is the founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest financial services company in the UK. When asked what he would do differently if he could start his business all over again, he answered: “Well, I’d probably start sooner.”



I received a similar answer from Naveen Jain, who started his first company, InfoSpace, when he was in his late 30s. “I wish I had done it when I was in my 20s,” he said. “I would have 20 years more experience to be doing things.”



Why is that important? “Because you learn a lot more by doing it yourself than by learning from someone else,” he explained. “So if I had done it for 20 years, maybe my first company wouldn’t have been successful, and a second company wouldn’t have been successful&#8230;but a third company&nbsp;would&nbsp;have been.”



As&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ron-sim/#7345f0f849ae" class="">Ron Sim</a>, the Singaporean billionaire who built OSIM International, a maker of high-end massage chairs, told me: “There is never a right moment to start a business or have a child. But if you don’t do it, nothing will happen. So don’t wait for the right moment. The sooner you do it, the better.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Not being bolder</h2>



Billionaires are also humans. They weren’t born the greatest risk-takers, defying all fears. I asked Jack Cowin, who founded Competitive Foods Australia (which operates Burger King’s Australian franchise as Hungry Jack’s), about what he would have done differently if he could go back to being 21.



“I’d be bolder. I’d take more risks,” he said. “The fear of failure makes you more conscious. The fear of debt makes you more conscious. So I would have more confidence in myself that I could find my way through the maze.”



However, it’s important to balance boldness with caution, he added. Otherwise, you’ll go broke. “If you make a mistake, you make a misjudgment. It’s easy to do.”



In the restaurant business, “you’re never that far away from the danger of someone dying from food poisoning or from someone making a mistake regarding procedures,” he explained. “Everything requires constant diligence. It’s a risk that you live with all the time, so you’ve really got to manage it properly.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5. Not changing fast enough</h2>



Frank Hasenfratz, founder of automobile parts manufacturer Linamar, says, “Every day, you’ve got to change. If you don’t change, you die.”



Hasenfratz is well aware of the changing world and of the need to adapt to changing conditions.



To illustrate his point, Hasenfratz said he once checked a Chamber of Commerce document from 1964, when he started his own business. At the time, the documented listed about 100 manufacturing plants. But now, he said, almost all of them are gone.



“I’ve been here for 60 years,” he said. “And if you’re not a little bit apprehensive, if you don’t think, ‘I’ve got to do better tomorrow, I’ve got to get a different product or a more advanced product’ — if you don’t do that, you won’t be here for long.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mistakes and failures are necessary</h2>



Despite the many regrets that these billionaires have shared with me, what surprised me was how little they actually dwell on the things they didn’t do. In fact, almost all of them expressed that mistakes and failures are inevitable.



Cowin’s attitude is, “If you haven’t had a few failures, you haven’t tried enough. You’ve been lazy.”



So the lesson here is to avoid looking back at your actions in a disapproving way. Instead, focus on what you can do now to improve the future.



When it comes to regrets, Cowin said his basic make-up and attitude is a positive one. “If I was 21 again, there wouldn’t be too many things I’d do differently,” he told me.&nbsp;“Sometimes I might’ve gone harder on this or on that. But I think it’s important not to obsesses over the things that didn’t work.”



<a class="" href="http://thebilliondollarsecret.com/">Rafael Badziag</a> is an author and expert in the psychology of entrepreneurship. He has interviewed more than 21 self-made billionaires from all over the world to learn about their secrets to success. His new book, <a class="" href="https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Secret-Principles-Billionaire-ebook/dp/B07SB6HQFF/?tag=billionair046-20">“The Billion Dollar Secret,”</a> is an Amazon best-seller. Rafael has been featured on NBC, CBS, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/5-biggest-life-regrets-of-self-made-billionaires.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/5-biggest-life-regrets-of-self-made-billionaires.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Here are the 5 most common biggest regrets by 21 self-made billionaires

OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) &#8211; West African leaders have pledged $1 billion to combat the spiralling threat of Islamist militancy in the region, the head of the regional ECOWAS bloc said on Saturday.



Groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have strengthened their foothold across the arid Sahel region this year, making large swathes of territory ungovernable and stoking local ethnic violence, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso.



The fifteen members of the West African bloc and the presidents of Mauritania and Chad had gathered for an extraordinary summit in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ougadougou, to address the growing insecurity.



ECOWAS Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou said the commission had decided to “contribute financially and urgently to joint efforts in the fight against terrorism” by pledging $1 billion.



In a speech following the closed meeting, Brou also called on the United Nations to strengthen its MINUSMA peacekeeping mission, which has been based in Mali since 2013.



In July, the U.N. said Islamist attacks were spreading so fast in West Africa that the region should consider bolstering its response beyond current military efforts.



In 2017, five countries &#8211; Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania &#8211; backed by France, launched the G5 Sahel task force to combat the insurgents. But the initiative has been perennially underfunded.



The situation in Burkina Faso has deteriorated in particular in recent weeks. An attack in late August killed 24 soldiers, one of the heaviest losses yet in the nation’s fight against Islamist militants. Last week, 29 people were killed in separate attacks in its troubled central-northern region.



Once a pocket of relative calm in the Sahel, Burkina has suffered a homegrown insurgency for the past three years, which has been amplified by a spillover of jihadist violence and criminality from its chaotic neighbour Mali.



Large swathes of Burkina’s north are now out of control, and France’s military Sahel mission began limited operations there earlier this year.



Reporting by Thiam Ndiaga; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Daniel Wallis

West African leaders pledge $1 bln to combat Islamist threat in the region

NAIROBI (Reuters) &#8211; Ethiopian Airlines saw a big rise in its operating revenue in the year to the end of June, as a surge in passenger numbers helped to offset the impact of higher fuel costs, the carrier told Reuters on Friday.



Africa’s biggest airline said operating revenue rose 17 percent in dollar terms while passenger numbers were up 14 percent.



In March, one of the airline’s Boeing planes crashed a few minutes after take-off from Bole airport in Addis Ababa en-route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.



“In one of the most challenging years, we managed to continue our fast, profitable and sustainable growth,” the airline told Reuters, sharing its preliminary results for the period.



The full set of results is expected in the next two weeks, the company said.



It flew 12.1 million passengers during the period, helping to cushion an increase in fuel costs of about 25 percent, the airline said.



Planes were three quarters full on average, a key performance measure for the industry.



Ethiopian said it offered 13% more flight seats per kilometre during the reporting period.



Reporting by Omar Mohamed; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle

Ethiopian Airlines sees jump in operating revenue as passenger numbers rise

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s economic growth is unlikely to reach the treasury’s target of 1.5% in 2019 because conditions have changed and the country is facing increasing headwinds, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said on Friday.



This week ratings agency Moody’s, the last of the top three credit firms to rate South Africa’s debt at investment level, said it had lowered its growth forecast to 0.7% from 1%.



The central bank sees gross domestic product at 0.6% this year.



Both have cited slow economic reforms as the key drag on economic activity, and massive bailouts to state-owned companies, including 59 billion rand ($4.05 billion) to power firm Eskom.



This has limited the government’s scope for stimulus and raised debt while the resultant uncertainty has kept investment subdued.



“The assumptions underlying the forecasts have clearly changed &#8230; the actual deficit now is probably much higher,” Mboweni told a banking conference in Johannesburg.



He said that increasing calls for the treasury to bail out state firms was putting pressure on growth and spending.



“We must re-focus our economy on agriculture …but we also have to continue to support Eskom, because without electricity there is no growth,” Mboweni said.



A Reuters poll of economists this week forecast South African economic growth at 0.7% this year, up from 0.6% in the previous forecast. Second quarter growth bounced back 3.1% after a revised contraction of 3.1% in the first quarter.



($1 = 14.5521 rand)



Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; editing by Andrew Heavens and Jason Neely

South Africa’s is likely to miss 1.5% growth target, here’s why

NAIROBI (Reuters) &#8211; Kenya on Friday added the world’s first malaria vaccine to the routine immunization schedule for children under two, becoming the third country in Africa to roll out the vaccine for the disease that kills one child globally every two minutes.



Malaria is a top killer of children under five in the East African nation, and the vaccine is critically important to its efforts to combat the disease because other measures such as mosquito nets have not proven adequate, the director general of Kenya’s health ministry, Wekesa Masasabi, told Reuters.



“We still have an incidence of 27% (malaria infection) for children under five,” Masasabi said before Friday’s launch of the vaccine in the western county of Homa Bay.



The Homa Bay programme was the government’s first step toward creating awareness of the new vaccine, he said.



African nations Ghana and Malawi launched their pilot programmes of the vaccine earlier this year. Kenya plans to roll out the vaccine to eight of its 47 counties over the next two years, Masasabi said.



Malaria can be eradicated within a generation, global health experts said in a major report last weekend that was commissioned by The Lancet medical journal. The Lancet report contradicted the conclusions last month of a malaria review by the World Health Organization, and its experts urged the WHO not to shy away from this “goal of epic proportions”.



Malaria infected about 219 million people in 2017, killing around 435,000 of them, the vast majority babies and children in the poorest parts of Africa.



Due to ongoing transmission, half the world’s population is still at risk of contracting malaria.



Reporting by Maggie Fick; Editing by Tom Hogue

What you need to know about Kenya becoming 3rd African nation to introduce world’s first malaria vaccine

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) &#8211; The World Bank has approved a $450 million loan to Tanzania, the bank said on Friday, signalling the release of the first tranche of funds to the East African nation that were frozen last year because of concern over government policies. 



Those concerns included passing a law that made it illegal to question official statistics and expelling pregnant girls from public schools.



The government amended the statistics law in June to remove the threat of jail. But has yet to announce changes to the rules on teenage pregnancy.



    The financing comes from the bank’s International Development Assistance (IDA), which gives grants or low-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries. It covers a poverty- reduction programme that will help around five million Tanzanians, the bank said in a statement.



“The World Bank has been engaging with the government of Tanzania on a range of policy issues that led to a hold-up of financing since 2018”, the World Bank said in a statement.&nbsp;



&nbsp; &nbsp; “Approval of this project acknowledges efforts by the government of Tanzania to address the policy issues by amending the statistics law (2018) in line with international practice, as well as the government’s commitment to facilitate all girls to complete their education.”



&nbsp; &nbsp;The government has been working to unlock $1.7&nbsp;billion in funding from the bank that was frozen last year. In July, Tanzania’s statistics agency said it may review its economic growth figure for 2018 after the World Bank came up with a significantly lower one. It has not released updated figures.



&nbsp; &nbsp; The World Bank is Tanzania’s biggest external lender. Foreign loans and grants are a key source of foreign exchange for East Africa’s third-largest economy.



&nbsp; &nbsp; “This new support will be critical to improve the lives of many more people in need and overall raise the country’s human capital index, which is still very low at 0.40,” said Bella Bird, the World Bank’s country director for Tanzania.



&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;“We will continue to work with the government and engage with citizens and other stakeholders on the complex set of development issues facing the country and its people.”



Reporting by Fumbuka Ng&#8217;wanakilala; editing by Maggie Fick, Larry King

World Bank approves $450 million loan for Tanzania, what you need to know

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s market regulator has fined retailer Steinhoff a record 53 million rand ($3.6 million) for making “false, misleading or deceptive statements” to the market, the company said on Thursday.



Steinhoff disclosed the hole in its accounts in December 2017 which shocked investors and wiped more than 200 billion rand off its stock market value.



The company said the penalty would have been 1.5 billion rand, but was reduced in recognition of the fact that the fraud was perpetrated by former employees and that the company had cooperated with regulators.



“Even after this reduction it remains the largest single fine ever imposed by the FSCA,” Steinhoff said in a statement, quoting the regulator.



The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) ruled that multiple, significant restatements of the company’s accounts after December 2017 supported the conclusion that Steinhoff failed to meet its obligations under the Financial Markets Act.



Steinhoff CEO Louis du Preez said there were no more further FSCA enforcement actions outstanding against the Steinhoff.



“We are pleased that the matter has now been brought to a conclusion and that the FSCA has recognised our full co-operation with the investigation,” said Preez.



An independent report by PwC released in March found Steinhoff had overstated profits over several years in a $7.4 billion accounting fraud involving a small group of top executives and outsiders.



($1 = 14.6256 rand)



Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by Mark Potter

Steinhoff has been fined R53 million for misleading markets

By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/elvira-bolat-392016">Elvira Bolat</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/bournemouth-university-1215">Bournemouth University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nasiru-taura-773412">Nasiru Taura</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/bournemouth-university-1215">Bournemouth University</a>

Digital technology has created new opportunities for businesses in sub-Saharan Africa to compete on a more equal footing. However, these businesses have yet to enjoy the full benefits because of a difficult operating environment.

Our recently published <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/series/15149">book</a>, ‘Digital Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and Prospects’, details case studies of economic sectors where digital technologies are making a positive impact.

In Ghana, digital technologies have had an impact on the agriculture sector. Agri-tech firms like Farmable, Farmerline and Esoko have successfully pursued the creation of new business ventures and renewal of existing, matured corporate business models. These agri-tech firms support farmers with pricing data, crowdfunding and communication activities. They are also connecting farmers with buyers as well as helping them work out what differentiates them from competitors.

Digital technologies are playing a role in Nigeria’s agricultural sector too.
<a href="https://primewavesltd.com">Prime Wave </a>, an engineering company that supplies equipment to rice processing firms, and Al-Wabel Trading Company Ltd, a rice miller, have been working together to invent new technological solutions. These are aimed at improving the performance of rice processing. The innovative solutions the company came up with for rice processing can be applied more widely across the agricultural sector. However, these firms have had to overcome regulatory and institutional challenges in the sector. 

<h2>Crossing boundaries</h2>

Digital technologies have also become a part of arts, media and entertainment, in particular in Kenya and Nigeria.

Case studies from <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-04924-9_4">Nigeria</a> show how small and medium-sized new media players benefit from embracing a culture of experimentation, partnership and continuous learning. These businesses have adopted a “mobile first” mindset. They do this by using mobile technology as a resourceful, quick and flexible solution to do business, connect and promote their content. 

The advertising, game development and media companies that took part in the research had all invested substantially in establishing their own systems for sharing data. These firms also embrace the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45152042-the-passion-economy">Passion economy</a> which centres around social causes and <a href="https://europeansting.com/2019/08/29/how-to-turn-africas-manufacturing-sector-into-a-high-tech-powerhouse/">high access to mobile technology</a> “as driving forces of the business”.

Nigeria’s movie industry, too, has benefited from digitisation. The technology has improved production time and quality. It has also helped extend the reach of movies to wider audiences. Foreign investors are taking <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/15/canal-acquires-african-film-studio-rok-from-irokotv-to-grow-nollywood/">greater interest</a> in this <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/07/08/nigerias-nollywood-film-industry-reels-in-foreign-investors.html">fast growing business</a>.

A potential drawback of digital technology in the arts is that cultural artefacts created digitally can also appear in many places at once. So, instead of gaining visibility it is actually lost in the digital crowd. But <a href="http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/31756/">Kenyan artists</a> have managed to use social media networks to build their own “cultural capital” and gain access to physical galleries.

<h2>Innovation hubs</h2>

There’s also been an increase in the number of digital hubs across the sub continent. But do they really help business to start up and survive?

The number of innovation hubs in Africa has grown sharply. There’s BusyInternet and <a href="https://hubtel.com">SMSGH Solutions</a> in Ghana; <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-57878-5_3">Erik Hersman’s iHub and Safaricom’s M-PESA</a> in Kenya; and Nigeria’s Yaba, a suburb of Lagos labelled the country’s Silicon Valley.

A chapter in <a href="https://www.hiig.de/publication/innovation-hubs-in-africa-what-do-they-really-do-for-digital-entrepreneurs/">our book</a> discusses the social complexity of engaging these hubs. In Accra, the Ghanaian capital, hubs could not provide support that is relevant to local digital entrepreneurs’ circumstances. Entrepreneurs in Harare thought that hubs “wasted precious resources”. Most hubs on the subcontinent also appear to make little contribution to the creation of new businesses. 

Perhaps <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/to_augment_techs_transformation_of_sub_saharan_africa_impact_investors_should_focus_on_the_startup_ecosystem#">“impact-oriented” investors</a> who are passionate about the region should assist digital hubs to make the necessary changes to how they operate.

Local conditions and culture can shape the “ecosystems” in which businesses operate. Some of these conditions, such as corruption, are hostile to business efficiency. The <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/inside-africas-bid-digital-economy">challenges</a> are most pronounced in the communications, transport, and energy networks. Much of the region’s infrastructure is inefficient, and more than three-quarters of the <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/sub-saharan-africa-s-future-linked-to-technology/1556198">population remains offline</a>.

Take Nigeria’s movie industry. It needs more than <a href="https://guardian.ng/business-services/bank-sees-opportunity-in-lending-to-creative-sector/">investment</a>. It also needs government to make regulatory changes to protect the creative sector. Government should also prioritise the development of movie industry skills. The same can be said about <a href="https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/09/20/latest-nigeria-music-industry-pricewaterhouse-coopers/">the music industry</a>. 

<h2>Afrocentric digital solutions</h2>

Overall, the book highlights that in a region with multiple social, environmental, economic and political challenges there is a need for more interrogation into how both incumbent and new players in sub-Saharan Africa are shaping the landscape with a view to meeting the <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/">UN Sustainable Development Goals</a>.

Digital technologies, as some of our case studies show, can play an important role in transforming African economies. However, digital technology solutions must not just be mere adaptations of dominant Western services and products. They must be aimed at meeting the sub-continent’s needs. In this regard, there’s a lot to learn from Japan. 

Demand for technology after the Second World War resulted in the development of a plethora of advanced solutions which secured Japan’s status as an innovator. 
There are promising new ventures such as <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/14/africa/google-ai-center-accra-intl/index.html">Google’s Artificial Intelligence lab</a> in Ghana – the company’s first in Africa. This is a centre of research into digital solutions to Africa’s problems.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120005/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/elvira-bolat-392016">Elvira Bolat</a>, Principal Academic in Marketing, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/bournemouth-university-1215">Bournemouth University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nasiru-taura-773412">Nasiru Taura</a>, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/bournemouth-university-1215">Bournemouth University</a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-technologies-are-transforming-african-businesses-but-obstacles-remain-120005">original article</a>.

Digital technologies are transforming African businesses, but what are the obstacles that remain?

<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PxHere_xenophobia1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-344954" width="692" height="518"/><figcaption>Image by PxHere</figcaption></figure>



By Unathi Sonwabile Henema 



The looting of shops and the shutdown of several central business districts in several South African cities has unleashed violence and the destruction of property. The normal functioning of several cities has been disturbed by these acts, as public transportation was disturbed and this had a negative impact on employee attendance, destroying value for the public and private sector. 



The attacks on foreign nationals and their property are associated with xenophobia and opportunistic acts of crime. These acts of crime and violence are nothing short of being home-grown terrorism, and a form of economic crime. These acts have gained international attention and this had a detrimental impact on the brand image of destination South Africa. The brand image of a country is important in attracting investment and promoting tourism consumption. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Perception trumps reality</h2>



In a world where perception trumps reality, negative perception of a destination is detrimental for the visitor economy. The tourism industry is one industry that depends on a country’s brand image to achieve its growth and sustainability. South Africa is one of the most beautiful countries in the world and is a bucket list destination. Potential tourists to South Africa always details the immense beauty of our country, and further ask about safety within the same sentence. 



Personal safety and security for tourists in South Africa is a challenge, that impacts on the competitiveness of South Africa negatively. The World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report under Safety and Security places South Africa at number 120 out of 136 countries, which means that safety for tourists is not guaranteed. Safety and security is supposed to be a dividend that is enjoyed by citizens and also tourists, and this is the responsibility of the state. Unfortunately, crime is rampant in South Africa, and it seems as if the only those perpetrators of crime who enjoy the fruits of our democracy. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tourism has been a cinderella industry</h2>



Tourism is disproportionally important for the economy of South Africa, which is in a growth trap. Tourism since 1994, has been a cinderella industry, whose growth rate has always been higher than the GDP growth of the economy. Tourism has therefore rightfully been declared the new gold as it drives the economy of South Africa as gold did. The growth of tourism is associated with the growth in jobs, due to the labour-intensive nature of the tourism industry. Jobs growth is what South Africa needs, and the tourism industry creates the number of entry-level positions at the lowest cost. 



The industry is able to assimilate labour that is both skilled and unskilled and is well-placed to mitigate the structural challenges facing South Africa, which includes the skills mismatch. The vast majority of tourists that visit South Africa are from the African continent, representing more than 60 percent of international tourists. In the latest ‘Tourism &amp; Migration’ it&#8217;s revealed that in June 2019, there were 154 361 international tourists, compared to 578 783 tourists from the African continent. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Africa at the epicentre of SA&#8217;s tourism industry</h2>



The top 10 leading African inbound markets are represented by Zimbabwe at number 1 and Tanzania at number 10. The report further identified &#8220;other’&#8221; top leading inbound markets, which includes Nigeria (1), Kenya (2), Ghana (3) and Uganda (4). The report, therefore, paints a picture that the African continent is therefore the epicentre of our tourism industry. The acts of violence and xenophobia, therefore, threaten the tourism industry. African tourists travel to South Africa more frequently for shopping, healthcare, education, and visiting friends and relatives. Furthermore, research indicates that they are already outspending international tourists. 



Acts of violence and crime against tourists were declared an economic crime by the joint sitting of the Portfolio Committee on Tourism and Police. This means that acts of violence and xenophobia are a form of economic crime because it threatens the ability of South Africa to attract tourists.



Unathi Sonwabile Henama is an academic sangoma teaching tourism at Tshwane University of Technology

Op-Ed: A tourism outlook on the looting of shops and xenophobia

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/kathleen-elkins/">Kathleen Elkins</a>



Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett believes in working with people you respect.



“Try to work for whomever you admire most,” the investing legend told author Gillian Zoe Segal in an interview for her 2015 book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419715704/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;creativeASIN=1419715704&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=getti043-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkId=X6UNEWPT2UNOA7CQ%20%5Ct%20_blank" class="">“Getting There: A Book of Mentors.”</a>&nbsp;“It won’t necessarily be the job that you’ll have 10 years later, but you’ll have the opportunity to pick up so much as you go along.”



It’s advice that served him well: When he was starting his career, well before he made his billions, Buffett took a job with his mentor and hero, Benjamin Graham, without even asking about the salary. “I found that out at the end of the month when I got my paycheck,” he told Segal.



The decision paid off, career-wise. Buffett, who was one of Graham’s students at Columbia Business School, says that his former professor largely <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/billionaire-warren-buffett-tribute-to-investor-teaches-how-to-live-a-successful-and-happy-life.html">shaped his career and investment philosophy</a>.



While&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/most-employees-dont-negotiate-their-salary.html" class="">salary is an important factor&nbsp;</a>when thinking about your career, “You don’t want to take a job just for the money,” said Buffett, “and you should never work for people who make your stomach churn or who keep you up at night.”



Buffett’s longtime business partner,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/charlie-munger/" class="">Charlie Munger</a>, who has also made a name for himself as one of today’s most successful investors, offers similar career advice. “Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/warren-buffetts-partner-charlie-munger-has-3-rules-for-a-career.html" class="">he has said</a>.&nbsp;“Work only with people you enjoy.”



The two billionaires agree that this advice is most effective if you’ve chosen a career path that interests you. “I have never succeeded very much in anything in which I was not very interested,” Munger said. “If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart.”



Passion pays off, Buffett told Segal: “You want to be excited when you get out of bed in the morning. I tap dance to work every day.”



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/warren-buffetts-top-career-advice.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/warren-buffetts-top-career-advice.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Before Warren Buffett made his fortune, he took a job without asking what the salary was—here’s why

MAPUTO (Reuters) &#8211; Mozambique will continue to negotiate debt restructuring with creditors, despite a court ruling that a government-guaranteed $850 million Eurobond issued by the state fishing company Ematum SA in 2013 was illegal, the finance minister said on Wednesday.



Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane told a business conference in Maputo that the debt restructuring talks were not in violation of the June ruling by Mozambique’s top court.



The $850 million Eurobond was dubbed the “tuna bond” as it was supposed to finance a tuna fishing fleet and had been presented to investors as funding for fishing infrastructure, although much of the cash was later designated for maritime security and reallocated to the defence budget.



In 2016, Mozambican officials agreed to swap the tuna bond’s outstanding $697 million for a sovereign Eurobond.



“The government respects the deliberations of our institutions,” Maleiane said. “The decision of the Constitutional Council is a decision that cannot be overturned. It has to be respected and we are respecting it.”



Maleiane said that the restructuring was meant to only repay lenders who acted in good faith.



“The government cannot tell bona fide creditors that ‘I will not pay back.’ I can’t tell the creditors that I am awaiting the payment of the money taken by those who contracted the loans,” Maleiane said.



“The Attorney General Office has the task of pursuing the $850 million on those who acted in bad faith,” he added.



On Monday the government said creditors holding 99.5% of Mozambique’s $726.5 million Eurobond support its debt restructuring proposal, paving the way for an overhaul of part of its heavy debt burden.



Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

This African country will continue debt restructuring talks despite ‘tuna bond’ court ruling

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/kif-leswing/">Kif Leswing</a>



<a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=AAPL">Apple</a>’s iPhone launch on Tuesday didn’t shock anyone.



The company launched new iPhones a few months ahead of the critical holiday season, as it has done every fall since 2011. The new iPhone 11 models feature faster chips, better cameras, and longer-lasting batteries than the 2018 models — solid improvements, but not a revolution.



The most important announcement Apple made on Tuesday was about price. Two years after Apple broke new high-end ground with its first $1000 iPhone, Apple reduced the price of its least expensive current-year iPhone. When the iPhone 11 goes on sale for $699, it will be $50 less than the phone it’s replacing, the iPhone XR.



The iPhone price decrease gives Apple a new way to get new customers into its system of connected products. It’s a move that makes sense as iPhone unit sales peaked in 2015 and haven’t fully recovered. (Apple doesn’t even report iPhone unit sales anymore.)



The online services Apple launched on Tuesday were also lower in price than expected, and give Apple a way to entice new customers with content that’s more expensive or impossible to get elsewhere.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles</h2>



$699 for the iPhone 11 is a significant price drop, especially after Apple raised the price of its second-best new phone from $699 for the iPhone 8 in 2017 to $749 for the XR last year. Apple’s high-end phones, the “Pro” models, still start at $999 and $1099.



The new iPhone 11 has a better camera than last year, and a faster processor, but most people will never notice the difference. Smartphone cameras have been very good for a few years and while some apps need a lot of processing power, some of the most common apps, like Facebook, or Snapchat, or Uber, don’t.



Apple also dropped the price of last year’s iPhone XR to $599, showing how price drops can trickle down the lineup as Apple likes to keep older phones around as low-cost models.



That’s exactly what it’s doing with its Watch hardware, too.



Apple’s newest watch, the Series 5, sports a screen you don’t have to turn on to check the time, the more important announcement might be that that Apple is now selling the 2-year-old Series 3 for $199 — much closer to an impulse buy than the $399 or $499 for the new models.



“While it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as Watch 5, it will attract many first-time buyers,” Moor Insights analyst Patrick Moorhead said in a DM.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Services surprise on price</h2>



Apple also revealed how much it was going to charge for its streaming TV service, Apple TV+, when it launches later this year:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/apple-tv-pricing-vs-disney-hulu-cbs-and-others.html" class="">$4.99 per month</a>, significantly less than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=DIS" class="">Disney</a>+ or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=NFLX" class="">Netflix,</a>&nbsp;although with significantly less content. Apple’s also going to give users a free year with purchase on an Apple device, which will make the first year free for most prospective subscribers, except Jennifer Aniston fans who are committed to Windows and Android. (The service’s flagship program is a drama called “The Morning Show” starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell.)



“The biggest news was the $4.99 price point for what look to be some unique titles. I do believe Apple will have at least one hit across the catalog, making it a no-brainer for customers in every ecosystem,” Morehead said.



Apple also introduced a surprisingly inexpensive $5 per month all-you-can-game subscription called Apple Arcade that parents can share with kids for free. If the games are competitive, that’s a great value for families — instead of buying a single console game for $60, you can get a year of access to a bundle of games for the same price.



“The family-friendly titles and cross Apple platform are nice, but I believe the biggest news was the $4.99 per month price point for an all-family plan,” Moorhead said. “For premium Apple customers, this will be a no-brainer.”



Indeed, dedicated Apple users — “premium Apple customers” — remain incredibly interested in whatever Apple has to launch. Tuesday’s device launch was streamed on YouTube, and over 1.5 million people watched it concurrently. 1.5 million tweets about the event were sent, according to statistics from Sprout Social.



But the main question after Tuesday’s event is whether the price cut for the iPhone 11 will entice new customers to buy a new iPhone, eventually leading to them buying a new Apple Watch or paying for Apple TV+ — or whether Apple’s simply introducing more options for people who already live in Apple’s world.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/iphone-11-top-feature-price.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/iphone-11-top-feature-price.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

The most important feature of the new iPhone 11 is its price

By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/oludara-akanmidu-495255">Oludara Akanmidu</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/de-montfort-university-1254">De Montfort University</a>

Nigeria has received a legal hiding after a UK court awarded a private company a US$9.6 billion <a href="https://www.grantthornton.co.uk/insights/quantum-matters--record-usd6.6bn-award-against-nigeria/">judgment debt</a> against the West African nation. The ruling has generated significant attention in both domestic and international media. This is understandable given that the sum amounts to 20% of the country’s foreign <a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/9-6bn-judgment-fraudulent-target-on-our-foreign-reserve-fg/">reserves</a>. This means it poses a significant threat to its economy. 

The big question is: What went wrong? How did Nigeria end up in this costly situation? For the answer, we must look back to January 2010 and a gas supply contract that went horribly wrong.

<h2>The Background Story</h2>

On 11 January 2010 Process and Industrial Development (P&amp;ID), a company based in the British Virgin Islands, signed a contract with the Federal Government of Nigeria. This contract is called a gas supply and processing agreement. Nigeria’s government agreed that, over a 20-year period, it would supply natural gas (wet gas) to P&amp;ID’s production facility. 

In return, P&amp;ID would process the wet gas by removing natural gas liquids and return approximately 85% of it to the government in the form of lean gas. This lean gas was to be returned at no cost to the Nigerian government. 

Based on this agreement, Nigeria was supposed to arrange for the supply of wet gas to P&amp;ID’s gas processing facility which it intended to build in the country’s Cross Rivers State. This required the government to construct pipelines and arrange facilities for transporting the wet gas. The government failed to do this for three years. 

P&amp;ID viewed this failure as a repudiation of the contract. In simpler terms, this means that the government renounced their obligation under the contract. Consequently, in March 2013, P&amp;ID began an <a href="https://www.grantthornton.co.uk/insights/quantum-matters--record-usd6.6bn-award-against-nigeria/">arbitration</a> action against the government before a London tribunal.

Clause 20 of the agreement, which both parties signed, provided that any disputes were to be resolved by arbitration with the seat of arbitration being London, England or any other place agreed by the parties. Nigeria tried to contest this, but its appeal to have the tribunal sit in Nigeria failed.

At the tribunal, P&amp;ID <a href="https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/36/194469/04516479471.pdf">claimed</a> that it had invested $40 million in the project even though it had not acquired the land or built any facilities for gas processing. It claimed damages of about US$6.6 billion dollars: the amount of the net income it would have earned over the 20-year period of the agreement. 

In response, the government argued that the damages claimed were not a fair and reasonable consequence of the government’s breach of the agreement. This is because P&amp;ID never commenced building the gas processing facility. It also argued that P&amp;ID should be awarded only three years’ worth of income as by that time, the company should have found some other profitable investment which would reduce its losses from the breach. 

Similarly, the government objected to the measure of estimated expenses and income stream which P&amp;ID used to calculate its damages claim. 

<h2>The tribunal’s decision</h2>

In July 2015 the tribunal decided that by failing to fulfil its obligations, the government had repudiated the agreement. P&amp;ID was therefore entitled to damages. 

In January 2017, the tribunal by a majority of 2 to 1 made a final award of US$6.597 billion together with interest at the rate of 7% starting from 20 March 2013 until payment is made. The 7% <a href="https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/36/194469/04516479471.pdf">interest</a> reflects what P&amp;ID would have paid to borrow the money or earned by investing the money in Nigeria. 

Following the tribunal’s award of damages, in March 2018, P&amp;ID brought an action before the Queen’s Bench Division of the English Commercial Court. It wanted permission to enforce the damages awarded by the tribunal. Despite delays by the Nigerian government, on 16 August 2019, the court made an order enforcing the tribunal’s final award which now stands at about $9.6 billion. 

In making this award, the court noted that the damages awarded were purely compensatory and not intended to punish the Nigerian government. The court also confirmed that there were no public policy grounds on which the award should not be enforced. This decision converts the arbitration award to a legal judgement. 

This case perhaps highlights issues with Nigeria’s ability to effectively manage its oil and gas resources as well as its facilities. Between January and June 2019 alone, it is reported that Nigeria <a href="https://guardian.ng/news/why-crude-oil-losses-persist-despite-huge-surveillance-contracts/">lost</a> 22 million barrels of crude oil.

These losses have been largely attributed to pipeline vandalism and aged pipelines. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation recently spent billions on oil pipelines maintenance. But other problems, such as <a href="http://saharareporters.com/2018/11/20/exclusive-protests-nnpc-awards-1848m-contract-without-following-due-process">corruption</a> and fraud in awarding security surveillance contracts for pipelines, persist.

<h2>Next steps</h2>

The $9.6 billion appears to be the largest amount of damages awarded against Nigeria to date. Evidence however suggests this is not the first time that Nigeria has failed to meet its contractual obligations. In 2016 it was reported that investors in Nigeria’s power sector <a href="https://qz.com/africa/591036/investors-are-threatening-to-pull-out-of-nigerias-fragile-privatized-power-sector/">threatened</a> to pull out due to the government’s failure to meet its contractual obligations.

This case also demonstrates an ongoing issue with the government’s attitude to critical infrastructural projects. The <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309943763_Politics_of_Hydroelectric_Power_Development_in_Nigeria_A_Case_Study_of_the_Mambilla_Hydroelectric_Power_Project">Mambilla</a> hydroelectric power project is a case in point. In spite of the huge potential offered by the project, it has been plagued by several controversies ranging from corruption and embezzlement of funds to the “irregular” awarding of contracts, and a general lack of political will. 

The Nigerian government is yet to pay the judgement debt. <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/08/fg-alleges-conspiracy-in-9-6bn-judgment-debt/">Allegations</a> of domestic and international conspiracy surrounding the agreement continue to abound. For now, the government has said that it intends to appeal the amount awarded.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122740/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/oludara-akanmidu-495255">Oludara Akanmidu</a>, Lecturer in Law, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/de-montfort-university-1254">De Montfort University</a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-nigeria-got-hit-with-a-9-6-billion-judgment-debt-in-london-122740">original article</a>.

Explainer: A UK court hit Nigeria with a $9.6 billion judgment debt, how did the West African country end up in this costly situation?

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; MTN Group Ltd said on Tuesday the chief executive officers of its Zambian and Cote d’Ivoire units would step down at the end of the month.



Africa’s largest mobile phone operator said Zambia’s Philip van Dalsen, who joined MTN in 2012 as CEO of MTN Cyprus, would be replaced by MTN Rwanda CEO Bart Hofker, in October.



Mitwa Kaemba Ng’ambi has been appointed as the new CEO of MTN Rwanda.



The firm said Freddy Tchala, its Cote d’Ivoire CEO, who had a 17-year stint at the firm, would also be leaving at the end of September with his replacement still to be announced.



Spokeswoman Karen Byamugisha said van Dalsen and Tchala are both stepping down due to personal reasons.



MTN has a presence in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.



Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; editing by Jason Neely

CEOs of MTN’s Zambia and Cote d’Ivoire units are stepping down

HARARE (Reuters) &#8211; A plane has left Zimbabwe for Singapore carrying government officials and relatives to bring home the body of Robert Mugabe, but it was still not clear where the former leader would be buried, a family spokesman said on Monday.



Mugabe’s family is pushing back against the government’s plan to bury him at the National Heroes Acre monument in Harare and wants him to be interred in his home village, relatives have told Reuters.



Leo Mugabe, the late president’s nephew and family spokesman, said a charter plane left Harare for Singapore just after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Monday.



Mugabe’s body was expected to arrive in Zimbabwe on Wednesday at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT), Leo Mugabe told Reuters.



But when pressed on where Mugabe would be buried, Leo Mugabe was non-committal.



“Mugabe was a chief and he will be buried in accordance with tradition. The chiefs have not told us where he will be buried, so it is not clear yet. I also don’t know,” he said.



In some parts of Zimbabwe, burials of chiefs are a secret affair and people are only told the resting place afterwards.



Mugabe died on Friday aged 95 in Singapore, where he had long received medical treatment. He had dominated Zimbabwean politics for almost four decades from independence in 1980 until he was removed by his own army in a November 2017 coup.



Revered by many as a liberator who freed his people from white minority rule, Mugabe was vilified by others for wrecking one of Africa’s most promising economies and ruthlessly crushing his opponents.



Mugabe’s resting place has been a topic of discussion since the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper reported last month that Mugabe would snub the offer of a burial at National Heroes Acre &#8211; a site reserved for the country’s heroes &#8211; because he felt bitter about the way he was removed from power.



The Zimbabwean government said in a memo sent to embassies that it planned to hold a state funeral for Mugabe in the National Sports Stadium on Saturday, with a burial ceremony on Sunday, but it did not say where the burial would be.



If Mugabe is buried in Kutama village, 85 km (50 miles) from Harare, it would be a major rebuke for his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and the ruling ZANU-PF party that Mugabe helped to found.



Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Giles Elgood

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Plane leaves Zimbabwe for Singapore to bring home the body of former president Robert Mugabe

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