Liberia's Arrow Points Backwards

Reposted from the October 2 article in The Economist online, citing a recent report by the World Bank, which compares the increase in GDP per capita with rates of urbanization in Asian Tigers (and China) with sub-Saharan African countries. Strikingly, the African economies do not correlate GDP growth with increasingly urbanized populations, as is markedly the case in the major ASEAN economies and China. Only Ethiopia and Ghana show any similarity, with tiny Guinea-Bissau joining Cameroon and Kenya only slightly tilted in the same direction. Massive Nigeria points straight upwards, stagnating even as its cities have boomed. Zimbabwe and Madagascar actually show a decrease in GDP per capita as those states have urbanized, while the most dramatic outlier is Liberia, which saw a rapid decrease in GDP even as the country's urbanization shot up. The Civil conflict is, of course, major cause of this.

Updated: This was also posted on The Atlantic which has a link to the World Bank's Tumblr.

Moved 2 Moscow

The Economist's Baobab column from April this year chronicled and compared the comically centipedal convoys of many African heads of state. Its worth reading in full, and its point that such motorcades are both over-cautious and an unwise expenditure of aid-dependent governments. President Sirleaf's motorcade was picked out in particular: 

ON A recent Tuesday evening, President Ernest Bai Koroma's motorcade swung past St Mary's supermarket in the west of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown. A motorcyclist came first. Mr Koroma followed in a Mercedes saloon. Most of the other six vehicles in the procession were gleaming black 70 Series Toyota Land Cruisers. The 70 Series wagon starts at $68,210. The World Bank puts Sierra Leone's GDP per capita at $325. 

Mr Koroma's extravagant motorcade is modest compared with other African leaders. When Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni travels up-country he takes between eight or nine cars, a couple of mine-resistant South African armoured personnel carriers and a large silver Mercedes truck with a mobile lavatory. Occasionally mobile-phone signal dies when he arrives, suggesting that one of his vehicles also contains some kind of jammer. 

For a trip to church some weeks ago, the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, travelled with three four-wheel-drives from the Special Security Service, two pickup trucks from the Liberian national police, and an off-roader carrying Nigerian troops from the United Nations peacekeeping mission. Long-time Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe travels with two motorcyclists up front who clear the road, arriving at high speed then stopping by their road, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. Three blacked-out Mercedes saloons follow, one with the number plate "Zim1". Finally two pick-up trucks appear, with ten or more armed guards in them. Which of these many cars Mr Mugabe himself travels in is unclear.

This wasn't the only time that Presidential Motorcades were mentioned in African-focused press during the same time frame. From the Brookings Institution Africa blog:

Likewise, President Banda has come to power with a lot of goodwill from home and abroad . But she must be careful not to follow the path of her predecessor. It is easy to squander such goodwill. President Banda must be very careful not to fall victim to the trappings of power. Last Friday (April 13, 2012), I was traveling around Lilogwe and I was stopped by police as the president’s motorcade passed through. The president’s limousine was surrounded by over 20 outriders, a large number armed cruisers and other vehicles as part of the president’s security detail. A very large convoy by any standards. While the president’s security is critical, there is no need to be extravagant. For a country that is heavily dependent on donors and one that is experiencing severe fuel shortages, such an image does not reflect a leadership that seeks to move away from the trapping of power that marked Mutharika’s regime. So, Your Excellency President Banda, as you rationalize the activities your government, start by getting rid of some of those vehicles in your motorcade.

These long motorcades may or may not be overblown or overbudget. That point is not, to me, the most detrimental effect of these long motorcades. This is not just a contingent of cars moving down the road, after all. This is a heavily armed caravan, with sirens whining and guns drawn, rushing at high speed down the highway at all hours, requiring (and sometimes forcing) other vehicles and citizens out off the road and out of the way, a repugnantly aggressive tactic that has lead to at least one death in the past year, when a Presidential Escort struck and killed a pedestrian in Paynesville in July. Traffic laws, as little as they are celebrated in Liberia, are not applied here. 

This is a daily, or multi-daily occurrence, often during rush hour, or other periods of heavy traffic, which have become increasingly constant in the last several years as roads have improved and more people have bought cars. The only relief is during the President's frequent visits to other countries. 

President Sirleaf is not alone in skipping the gridlock. The Vice President has an only slightly smaller, slightly less-armed motorcade to and from his residence in distant Paynesville. But any time the President gets in a car, space is made for her movement. As you may notice from some of these videos, the grand finale of this show, along with various Special Security guards, UNMIL troops, as the Economist mentioned, are a random assortment of SUVs with the bright red government plates, or just regular business and private plates, or NGO plates, which may or may not have been part of the convoy at the beginning, but just may be tagging along to skip the traffic. All it seems to take is a big helping of the old "look like you belong" behavior and pressing the hazard button of the dashboard for some flashing lights. In the montage below, notice the yellow (business)-plated grey SUV tailing the last police escort as it rushes through ELWA. The last video is from when Sirleaf and the aforementioned Malawian President Banda attended church together on the Sunday during her official state visit to Liberia, also in April: 



This seems to be the precipice of a slippery slope which Liberia's motorists are now happily sliding down. In the past year, a proliferation of impromptu motorcades seems to appear almost daily. National Police vehicles now routinely travel with their sirens sounding, rushing at high speed into on-coming traffic. Perhaps they have pressing business, but perhaps they are just making (ab)use of their privilege. Any government plate (such as the black Representative plate in the first video below) is a license to instantly enter motorcade mode: hit the flashers and cross the yellow line into the opposite lanes of traffic, or at least, as in the examples below, have other motorists show you undue deference even if you stay on the right side of the road: 



This practice has become an everyday occurrence, and there is no way of knowing whether there has been any official sanction for these Make-Your-Own-Motorcades, or whether this method is authorized, but its frequency seems inversely proportioned to the increase in gridlock traffic on Tubman Boulevard, and are a rather dispiriting display of public servants and regular citizens finding was to flaunt the law, the rules, and dilute social norms. 

Its starting to feel a bit like the ridiculous circus that is the gridlocked Moscow, which has become infamous for the proliferation of special flashing blue lights (which come with immunity from traffic laws) can be purchased by business men and other private citizens to whip past stalled lanes of mere mortals.  Maybe Monrovia needs its own Society of Blue Buckets. But it'd be nice if this society would move away from the chaos of Moscow rather than speeding head-on toward it, and it would be better if the elites in and out of government weren't imitating oligarchs.

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.

Historic Photography of Africa from the UK National Archives

Commissioner's Compound, Buea, Cameroon

(old capital of German Kamerun)

Via one of my favorite websites, Things magazine, comes the UK National Archive, which has a digitized their much of their holdings onto Flickr. This includes a delightful project called Africa Through A Lens, which is a totally jaw-dropping treasure of historic photographs from across the continent, from Sudan and Somalia (I had forgotten there was any such thing as British Somaliland) to Sierra Leone to South Africa and Swaziland.

Views of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). Date uncertain.

The project has 25 sets arranged by country, both erstwhile crown colonies like Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Tanzania and Zanzibar are organized separately), and non-Commonwealth states like Togo, Mali and Madagascar.

Kumasi Hospital, Ghana. c.1950?

Nothing from Liberia, sadly, but nearly 1,500 scans just from Nigeria and Ghana. In total there are nearly 5,000 images here of all variety of subject, mostly landscapes, and scenes, but some portraits. I've only just got a start on perusing.

A panorama of Entebbe, Uganda, and Lake Victoria. Date uncertain.

Definitely check this out in full size.

Have a look around: there is a lot of great stuff here taken by hundreds of individuals over many decades. I've particularly geeked out on the many historic photos of settlements, cities, and architecture, which I've concentrated on relaying here. This includes some vivid shots of Antananarivo (bottom of post) and an incredible series of aerial shots of many of Nigeria cities from 1929 and 1930, including several overviews of Lagos from 1,000 feet over the water, looking down on a peninsular port city of perhaps 100,000 people. The utility of the early documentation of Nigeria's urban settlements evince the value of these records beyond simply intriguing visual artifacts.

Both images of Lagos, Nigeria, November 1929.

An aerial shot of Katsina, Northern Nigeria, 24 February 1930.

There's also a lot of work to be done: most all of the photos have scant labeling, without much attribution or even dates. That part I am a bit perplexed about, maybe I am missing something but I can't believe that nearly all of the pictures had no dates to them.

Photographs and notes on the Dervish fortifications at Tale, British Somaliland.

9 February 1920.

The Archive is actively seeking assistance on the project, crowd-sourcing input, and also has a warning that some of the transcribed notes might be offensive in terminology and the like. I didn't see any examples of this myself so far, but certainly the entire trove was transferred from the Colonial Office, and thus orginated through the bureaucracy of colonial administration. [Update 5/25: More on this issue from Scarlett Lion's post about the Archive from this past February.]

Cairo Road area, Lusaka, Zambia (at the time, Northern Rhodesia), c.1950

A huge bonus is that, given the age of the photographs and the Archive's general policy, all the photos are unrestricted by copyright. Enjoy.

Three images of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Dates uncertain.

In Memoriam: Bob Marley (in Africa)

A little trivia for the 30th anniversary of the death of Bob Marley: his 1980 World Tour started in Africa, and although it is best known for the triumphant Independence concert at Rufaro Stadium in what was then still Salisbury, later Harare, Zimbabwe, the tour actually kicked off in Libreville, Gabon, before moving on to the newly-liberated Zimbabwe, and then onto Europe and the United States. Marley would be gone just 13 months later.

These facts are lucidly illustrated in these graphic artefacts that adorn the walls of the Bob Marley restaurant at Universal Orlando Theme Park in Florida. Watch the beginning of the clip below for Marley talking about his travels in Africa. The video starts off with the interviewer asking Marley, where else have you been in Africa besides Ethiopia?