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Published 9th July 2010

Vol 51 No 14

Uganda

The Museveni machine grinds into gear

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures
Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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The opposition unites, but not entirely – the president and his party will be hard to beat at next year’s elections

Dissent is growing against a leader and party that have dominated the country for 24 years. On 23 August, Uganda’s diverse opposition parties aim to announce their joint candidate for the presidential election next February. The two-year-old Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC) agreement is holding firm as the campaign gets under way. It links the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), Justice Forum (JEEMA) and the Conservative Party; few doubt that the FDC leader, Kizza Besigye, a former ruling party stalwart and colonel, will be its standardbearer. The ‘spirit of cooperation’ requires a delegates’ conference to choose him by consensus rather than coronation, after four wise elders from each party have agreed on the man most likely to defeat President Yoweri Museveni.

The assassin’s hand

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Violence and intrigue – at home and abroad – overshadow the impending elections

Someone is trying to kill the opponents of General Paul Kagame ahead of the presidential election on 9 August. A group of armed men bungled an attack against...

BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

Can there be too much good news about Africa? Surely not. After a decades-long diet of war and famine coverage, Africa is now feted as the next big economic thing. From McKinsey and Boston Consulting come thorough reports projecting African GDP of US$2.6trn within ten years as investment quickens. McKinsey points out that from 2000 to 2008, inward investment jumped from $9bn to $62bn a year, a rate mirroring that achieved by China. Last week at a business summit in São Paulo, Brazil, Reuters ...
Can there be too much good news about Africa? Surely not. After a decades-long diet of war and famine coverage, Africa is now feted as the next big economic thing. From McKinsey and Boston Consulting come thorough reports projecting African GDP of US$2.6trn within ten years as investment quickens. McKinsey points out that from 2000 to 2008, inward investment jumped from $9bn to $62bn a year, a rate mirroring that achieved by China. Last week at a business summit in São Paulo, Brazil, Reuters journalists heard predictions that there will appear some 100 specialised funds investing over $20bn in Africa within four years. More than half the world’s fastestgrowing economies next year will be African. But notes of caution must sound when African finance ministers and central bankers try to absorb unprecedented flows with often weak bureaucracies and shallow capital markets. The problem is less with the technocrats and the civil servants and more with politicians who see in the encouraging news an opportunity to consolidate power rather than delivering a development boom. There may indeed be too much good news, if joy at the economic upturn derails efforts to hold politicians to account. Private equity companies enthuse about the telecoms and agricultural markets, but few heed the political downturn, especially those authoritarian regimes that have strengthened their grip in this year’s crop of elections.
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Half a century, half the battle

After assassinations, wars and hyper-corruption, President Kabila talks of building on remarkable victories

Congo-Kinshasa’s fiftieth birthday celebrations on 30 June were marred on two sides. International accusations of corruption delayed an US$8bn debt deal (see Box), and an oil tanker explosion...

The falling euro drags down the CFA franc

A relic of France’s African economic empire, the CFA zone must cope with the impact of Western Europe’s monetary disarray

The continuing crisis of the rich world’s financial system has thrown off balance the main surviving element of France’s African empire, the franc of the Communauté financière d’Afrique....

Minister Thiam covers his bases

Mahmoud Thiam, the energetic mines minister and former senior staffer at Union de Banques Suisses, insists that his decisions over the past 18 months are not reversible –...

Criminal business is big business

Mungiki started as a Kikuyu quasi-revivalist religious cult in the Rift Valley’s Laikipia District in the late 1980s. Many Mungiki members lost their land in the 1990s when...

Odious debts, now less debt

More than a decade of tortuous negotiations has won US$8 billion of debt relief for Congo-Kinshasa a day after its fiftieth birthday. The historic, moral argument for relief...

How the CFA Franc zone works

The initials CFA once stood for the Communauté française d’Afrique, later changing to Communauté financière d’Afrique. The name is a colonial legacy and considerable monetary powers are still...

We’re here to be recognised

Decent elections, an orderly transition and plans for investment bring hope at last to a small nation

A credible vote will not bring prosperity without international recognition. On 26 June, Ahmed Mohamed ‘Silanyo’, leader of the Development and Solidarity Party (Kulmiye) was elected as Somaliland’s...

A second, tougher round

Business ties, ethnic politics and elite intrigues will shape a close race in the run-off for the presidency

Former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo and long-time oppositionist Alpha Condé will battle it out in the second round of the presidential elections, due on 18 July. Political...

Mungiki’s new man

Maina Njenga’s evolution from gang leader to born-again Christian to aspiring candidate highlights the breakdown of Kenyan politics

The once unthinkable has happened: Maina Njenga, the much-feared leader of Kenya’s Mungiki militia, is carving out a new career as a mainstream politician. After his release from...

Pointers

Realpolitik and resignations

The resignation of Alain Joyandet, secretary of state for cooperation, will reinforce the grip of the Elysée Palace on France’s Africa policy. Joyandet, who was forced out after...

Crisis on the Nile

The confrontation over the Nile waters, which pits Egypt and Sudan against the five downstream countries, is escalating into a major regional crisis following the collapse of a...

First to integrate

Kenya has moved fastest to implement the East African Community’s Common Market Protocol, which came into effect on 1 July 2010. In the clearest sign of the profound...

A taxing compromise

This month, President Yoweri Museveni has approved a face-saving deal to break the impasse over the US$360 million in capital gains tax that his government is claiming from...

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