While the world watches the tragedy of Afghanistan with increasing sorrow and dismay, especially the fate of women, there is as always news out of Africa, as per sundry sources including New ZWire or Netzwerk Afrika Deutschland (Network Africa Germany).
Democracy has triumphed greatly in Zambia, where one of its richest men has made it to State House at the sixth attempt. The previous guy botched the economy, which still relies on copper (70% of exports), assisted during his time by a drop in copper prices (now recovering) and massive job losses on the Copperbelt of 15 000 miners. Hakainde Hichilema, the new man from a Southern Province is deeply entrenched in the economy from cattle ranching, fertilisers, banking, mining – you name it. He is the sunny boy of Big Business and also of the miners. He has a tough job ahead of him such as dealing with inflation and debt – in 2020 Lusaka defaulted on foreign bonds of US3 billion. Hichilema promises to fix things such as by providing jobs, something he says he’s good at, as, after all, he is a businessman. Good luck to him!
Other countries also wallow in economic woes. Zimbabwe is in a bad way with its forex crisis, so that it can’t import the material industry needs to produce. FDI – foreign direct investment – was down in 2019. In the same year exports of agricultural produce dropped, also gold the biggest export with 17%.
Of the total bank deposits of ZW$34.5 billion at the end of 2019, half was in the hands of a mere 200! So says no other authority than the Reserve Bank’s Governor. No need to spell out that this ‚Club of 200‘ is the in-group of politicians, security forces and allied business.
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa sees the gloomy political, social and economic situation as due to several scapegoats including the opposition he regards as terrorists and bad apples, as well as inevitably western governments and sanctions.
Other news included snippets about shop windows puppets in Nigeria and miniskirts in Uganda. The first is a new rule of the head of the Sharia police in the state of Kano, that puppets on display must be headless and never uncovered. With a head, a puppet resembled a human, which was against Islam that rejected the worship of idols.
The second item is good news. The Uganda Constitutional Court repealed a controversial 2014 anti-pornography law that barred any activity from writing to wearing mini-skirts. The Court ruled the law does not conform to the constitution to the cheers of women organisations.
This doesn’t mean other more serious news is overlooked! How can one not commiserate with the magnitude of the earthquake that has overcome Haiti! 2000 people have been killed, thousands have become homeless as 600 000 homes have been destroyed,76 000 more damaged. Thankfully, the UN kept its promise of help!