06 April 2022
Tax dodging: Tax avoidance, tax evasion, corruption and offshore accounts enable companies and rich individuals to reduce their tax bills. According to an IMF study, tax avoidance may cost developing countries 213 billion USD a year. Tax havens have terrible effects on developing countries – and help the transnational companies make good profits. The article takes Nigeria and Zambia as examples. Better regulation is necessary.
https://theconversation.com/how-multinationals-avoid-taxes-in-africa-and-what-should-change-179797
South Africa & Water: Though there have been good rains almost everywhere in the country this year, that does not mean that the water problem has been solved for the long run. First of all, average water consumption is unsustainably high. Also, there is an urgent need to “improve the overall management of water resources and address the deteriorating infrastructure, poor water and sanitation service delivery and water pollution.”
https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-had-lots-of-rain-and-most-dams-are-full-but-water-crisis-threat-persists-178788
Somaliland: 5,000 businesses are said to have been destroyed in Friday evening's fire at the central market of the capital Hargeiza. The country has asked for 2bn USD in international aid to help the concerned families.
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2022. 16:57
05 April 2022
Darfur/ICC: Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman alias Ali Kushayb, a former leader of the Janjaweed militia, has been charged with 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). He “will be the first person to be tried by the ICC over a conflict that left about 300,000 people dead and more than two million homeless” since Omar al-Bashir was never brought to the ICC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60976556
South Africa: Anti-immigrant activism (Operation Dudula, All Trucker Foundation, South Africa First Party, etc.) are by no means a response to an immigration crisis, there is no such crisis. Rather, South Africans are expressing their frustration with unfulfilled promises, with corruption, crime, and unemployment. “Popular embrace of nationalism, street justice, and anti-immigrant activism reflects the ascendency of an extra-legal order.” The article’s thesis is that this fits into the “system of indirect rule” that the country has inherited from Apartheid times, “relying on civic associations, local chiefs and other ‘community leaders’ to deliver votes and maintain order”.
https://theconversation.com/rising-vigilantism-south-africa-is-reaping-the-fruits-of-misrule-179891
Zimbabwe: Leeroy Spinx Brittain, popularly known as Bow, says that “he was raised by a Ndebele grandmother and a Shona grandfather”. With Zimbabwe to this day deeply divided along this ethnic divide (the Shona rule and marginalise Ndebele), he on 22nd of January created a mural in the country’s second-biggest city Bulawayo that has created controversy – the mural was removed within two days by the municipality. In the mural, the Ndebele king Lobengula was portrayed with an arm around the shoulders of Mbuya Nehanda, a Shona ancestral spirit here incarnated by Charwe Nyakasikana who led the Shona resistance against Cecil John Rhodes’ colonising forces. The mural clearly advocated unity between the country’s two main ethnic groups. The uproar it created was inspired partly by the government’s unwillingness, to this day, to recognise the “genocide” of Gukurahundi – the “ethnic cleansing atrocity which claimed up to 20,000 lives in Matebeleland and parts of Midlands in the 1980s”.
https://theconversation.com/a-street-art-mural-in-zimbabwe-exposes-a-divided-society-177927
Tunisia: Participants in the online meeting of parliament (which had been suspended by the president) last week may face the death penalty for their “failed coup attempt”. At the online meeting, “they voted to nullify exceptional measures taken by President Kais Saied last summer, which included the suspension of the parliament.” The President subsequently dissolved Parliament.
BBC Africa Live 05 April 2022. 8:35
Ghana: The country has security concerns. On the one hand there are separatists in the south-east campaigning for a Western Togoland state who might perpetrate attacks. And then, in the north, there is a danger of armed groups crossing over from Burkina Faso, though there has not yet been an islamist terrorist attack on Ghanaian territory so far. The security minister said Ghana needs to be proactive. He also said that security has been sufficiently beefed up including along the border with Burkina Faso.
BBC Africa Live 05 April 2022. 17:30
Mozambique: The Bakers’ Association is warning that a hike in bread prices is unavoidable, as flour now costs 13% more than before the Ukraine war. In 2010, a 30% price rise in bread sparked riots which left “a dozen people” dead and over 400 injured.
BBC Africa Live 05 April 2022. 17:01