Excellent Podcast: Peter Day's World of Business in Zambia

One of the best podcasts that I've heard in a long time was broadcast in two parts last month. The slightly unlikely platform for this insight into African development was Peter Day's World of Business on the BBC.

It seems precisely because Peter Day, an intelligent, experienced broadcast journalist who appears to possess no particular Africa experience and no apparent "aid/development" mindset, comes with his questions and observations without any preconceptions, that he was able to conduct such straightforward, revealing interviews.

What follows over two 20+ minute reports about the inadequate supply of power, drinking water, and transport both within Zambia and crossing its borders, as well as quick, perceptive dives into the country's rocky but stabilizing economic, political, and infrastructural scenes, and how these all interact. The interviews include the US Ambassador and the Zambian Vice President Guy Scott but many are by and large discussions with regular Zambians, from a truck driver, who can drive from South Africa in two days but has to sometimes wait five days sitting around because of transport bottlenecks, to poor people in peri-urban communities of Lusaka searching for clean drinking water.

There is also an insightful analysis of Zambia's copper mining industry, illustrating the challenges of transfer pricing, tax evasion, over-reliance on a single extractive sector with a fluctuating commodity price.

Well-worth listening to both parts of this podcast, first broadcast on 31 August and then 7 September, and available for listening online or download.

Planet Money Podcast on Nigeria's GDP

Speaking of Podcasts, which I am a bit addicted to, in addition to the Africa Today Podcast from the BBC, which comes out 5 days a week, I also subscribe to NPR's Planet Money podcast, which features short, digestive summaries of complex economic stories in the news.

Earlier this year, Planet Money has two episodes about Nigeria and Ghana's GDP calculations. One called, When a Poor Country Gets a Whole Lot Richer, which described the re-adjustment of Nigeria's GDP calculations, moving the baseline year up and accounting for whole sectors such as mobile telephony, resulting in a radically larger GDP figure. Earlier in the year, an episode covered both Ghana's 2010 GDP readjustment as well as emerging tech sectors contributing to Nigeria's GDP reckoning.

I definitely recommend listening to the whole episode via the link above, which is quite illustrative on how GDPs are calculated and informative generally on Nigeria's economic growth, but I also was amazed to hear the episode because I had written an email to Planet Money and recommended this topic for a show. Unfortunately, no love for me in the credits, but still.

Grand Bassam: Ready for Tourists?

While preparing the posts about Françafrique earlier this month, it seemed serendipitous to hear my good friend and excellent journalist Tamasin Ford, the BBC West Africa correspondent based in Abidjan, on the BBC Africa Today podcast, filing a report about Grand Bassam, Cote D'Ivoire's original capital city.

Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, tiny Grand Bassam is about an hour southeast of Abidjan, and was the first capital of the French colony has been more recently something of the Newport, Rhode Island of Ivory Coast. As Tamasin reports, it has received UNESCO World Heritage status, but hasn't yet seen an influx of tourists. Listen to Tamasin's report on her Soundcloud page.

I happened to visit Grand Bassam in April this year, while visiting Tamasin and her boyfriend in Abidjan. Upon arriving from the city, we first went to a decent beachfront hotel for lunch. The beach was busy and the hotel was lively, although I didn't see that many foreigners; the majority of people seemed to be West African.

The three of us strolled to find the Vieux Carré after lunch. It was a bit hard to find, as there were no street signs or maps, and few wayfinding aides for the interested visitor. We experienced one of those strange sensations when visiting a foreign city, that particular disorientation when you have no idea if you've found the center of town or if you're on the outskirts, looking for something else.

Like several other colonial historic districts that I've visited in West Africa, Grand Bassam in its current, dilapidated condition, offers the visitors a rare chance to get up close to the architecture in its on-reconstructed state. Its amazing to be able to walk in these old buildings without restriction, such as the old railway station, below:

However, the bigger aspect is also the more negative: I was disappointed not so much at the sorry condition of the historic buildings, but it was obvious that several had already disappeared, and even the better examples that still stood, there was no way of learning more about them, such as the case with the magnificent example at the top of this post. The old center was interrupted by new construction, as would be expected in an inhabited district; some was more "contextual than others." In the bones of some of the older structures, the possibility for a refurbished, tourist-oriented destination seemed possible: fixing up a few for restaurants, cafés and small guest houses. Certainly sufficient crowds were coming to the area, as the beaches just ten minutes away were full of weekenders.

I am not familiar with what expertise or assistance UNESCO provides its designates, or whether a master plan or other aide is coming Grand Bassam's way. But there is a lot of work to be done to capture the potential of this historic city as a place for visitors, and much like the historic architecture of Liberia, as time passes, less and less of the older buildings are left standing.

All photos ©2013 Mathew M. Jones

Mines and Undermining Minors who Mine Them

At the present time, Liberia's economic growth is in significant part due to the recommencement of iron ore and other natural resource export, with lots of excitement around the Chevron exploration announcement. President Sirleaf mentioned, in her talk at the CDG last week, the hurdles in avoiding resource curse, and spreading the benefits of these billion of dollars in investments to all of Liberia's citizens, which is an on-going struggle.

With that in mind, recently, several interesting episodes have been playing out in southern Africa, namely Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, which might be educational cautionary tales for Liberia and other economies which have just inked concession agreements and are commencing resource exports:

In Zimbabwe, the administration of Robert Mugabe is trying to both attract $6,000,000,000 in foreign investment in the sector over the next 5 years, while at the same time forcing foreign entities to surrender a majority stake in their operations to locals by the end of September. The contradictory nature of this agenda seems not apparent to the administration. Also, the roster of Zimbabwean businesses and investors in a position to acquire such shares may be a short list, and the scarcity of such buyers would effect the prices of these equity stakes in such a fire sale. (Thanks to Todd Moss of CDG for the link).

Speaking of the Mugabe administration acquiring mining assets and less than transparent circumstances, Zimbabwe was also approved to export diamonds under the Kimberely Process. These would be coming from operations that the military violently seized by force in 2008. The individual who seems to have had decision making power in this is Mathieu Yamba Lapfa Lambang, of the DR Congo, who is currently the Kimberely Chairman.

This dovetails well with other regional news on state-ownership of mines: In South Africa, there has been on-going talk of nationalizing mining companies, which some say would be merely a bailout and windfall for a clique of powerful, corrupt elites in and around the ruling ANC. So much so that prominent South African communists are against nationalization, which is the making of an Onion headline. Interesting how the South African saga is one chapter ahead of Zimbabwe's local-ownership decrees.

By the way, if you're unaware of South Africa's Aurora Mining saga, may I suggest the BBC African Perspectives Podcast as an introduction to the topic.

Elsewhere in southern Africa, there has also been an enormous deal of backlash in Zambia against extraction-extract entities, as this accounts for around 3/4 of Zambia's export earnings, but only about 10% of tax revenue.

Khadija Sharife wrote this eye-opening, jaw-dropping opinion piece on Al Jazeera last week concerning Zambia's predicament (thanks to zungzungu for the link). Its not the first time that someone's argued that the supposedly squeeky-clean, least-corrupt nations, such as lily-white Switzerland, are in fact the very center of global corruption.

What I hadn't heard before is Sharife's in-depth analysis supporting his position that the Extraction Industry Transparency Initiative-- of which Liberia was one of the first signatory countries-- disadvantages the less-developed partner government, and allows the foreign corporate investor nearly-limitless options for not only avoiding taxes both in the host country and elsewhere, but also to employ a range of amoral tricks of accounting for all types of bribery and corruption.

Each of these country's handling of its mining sector, its valuable assets and previous foreign investment, is critical not only to its own economic destiny, but beyond its borders. Nearly every sub-Saharan economy relies primarily on mining and extraction. Liberia, still in the nascent stages of economic stability, is balancing the promises of future prosperity in large part on mining--and how it addresses similar issues and concerns that of broadening the benefits to more Liberians.

BBC Podcast about Liberian Rubber Tappers

I forgot to mention it the first time around, but the always-insightful podcast series from the BBC, African Perspectives, has re-released their episode on the lives of Liberian rubber tappers on the Firestone plantation.

As of the date of this post, there are two weeks left to download it directly from the BBC website. If you're reading this and don't see the podcast at the link above, I think it be more or less permanently available on iTunes, especially if you subscribe to African Perspectives, which is a good idea generally.

The mini radio documentaries are generally just under 30 minutes in duration, and span the continent from interviews with African first ladies, investigative reporting as to why the Congolese army commits so many rapes, to how a centuries-old Chinese shipwreck was found off the east coast of Africa.

Incidentally, the BBC also provides a daily collection of their reporting from Africa, from Egypt to Liberia to South Africa, in a daily podcast called Africa Today, usually about 15 minutes long as is issued every weekday.