Africa

The number of people in Africa affected by internet shutdowns in 2022, making the continent the second hardest hit behind Asia, according to an annual tracker by digital privacy company Surfshark. Partial or total shutdowns were imposed 13 times by five African countries last year. Sudan was responsible for a third of all shutdowns with four incidents. Other nations were Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe with three each, Sierra Leone with two, and Somalia which had one.

➚  Buy: Nigeria’s cash alternative. The Central Bank of Nigeria announced a new card payment scheme to rival Visa, and Mastercard in the country. AfriGo, as it is called, is aimed at reducing demand for foreign exchange and easing pressure on the naira, the bank’s deputy governor Aisha Ahmad said. China, Russia, and India have similar state-owned card schemes.

➘ Sell: Nigeria’s cash extension. The central bank extended the Jan. 31 deadline for phasing out three of the naira’s highest denomination notes, which are being replaced with revised designs. The bank’s governor Godwin Emefiele insisted last week that there would be no extension but President Muhammadu Buhari gave approval for more time. The new deadline, Feb. 10, is two weeks before general elections are due to begin.

Africa’s top neobanks have grown rapidly to have more than 30 million customers by the end of 2022, according to data collated by investment bank FT Partners. Neobanks interact with their customers almost entirely on mobile apps and are proving to be particularly attractive to African consumers because of the low penetration of physical bank branches. And they are expanding beyond Africa. This month, three-year-old Nigerian bank Kuda received a license from the State Bank of Pakistan that could increase its base of 5 million customers.

In Uganda, the president’s son is getting ready to run

THE NEWS

KAMPALA, Uganda — Defying his father and the law, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba is laying the groundwork for a campaign to succeed his father, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

Muhoozi this month started making rally appearances for his MK Army/Movement and named key individuals to his team. They include veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda as spokesperson and his uncle as his team’s regional coordinator for Ankole, western Uganda. The rallies and appointments contravene Ugandan law which bars serving army officers from engaging in politics.

Muhoozi held a rally in Kapchorwa, in northeastern Uganda on Jan. 21, promising to “keep close, talking and interacting” with the people. And for many of the rallies he has addressed, he has been asking the crowds: “Will you support us? Let me see those who support us. Put up your hands.”

MUSINGUZI’S VIEW

By stepping up political activities, Muhoozi, 48, isn’t just breaking the law against serving officers participating in politics, he’s also defying his father who ordered him late last year to stop politicking and criticized his divisive use of Twitter — at one point last year he joked about invading Nairobi in neighboring Kenya.

Analysts I speak with here in Uganda note that Muhoozi’s moves, which he started in early 2022, are about positioning himself to be first in line for the inevitable succession. Yusuf Serunkuma, a political analyst in Kampala said that Museveni, who is 78, and his family know that the president doesn’t have many years ahead of him. But after 36 years in power, the president shows no interest in retiring.

“I don’t think [Muhoozi] is campaigning for an electoral cycle, he is campaigning to prepare for uncertainty,” Serunkuma says. “He is… crafting a presidential public profile just in case.”

Muhoozi is trying to bond with low level members of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) but faces stiff resistance from senior figures within the party. The vice president, Jessica Alupo, and other senior ministers have been criss-crossing the country mobilizing youth to declare Museveni as the party candidate for 2026 and beyond.

But his father’s refusal to give any indication of plans to retire has left Muhoozi without a clear message of when he will contest for presidency.

Last year, Muhoozi hinted that he would be on the ballot in 2026. But he has now changed the messaging that it will be when his father allows him to contest. “If my father allows me to stand in 2026, we will shock the entire country,” he tweeted recently. Many of his supporters, most of whom are legislators in the ruling party, describe him as a “standby generator” that will be switched on if his father gives a nod.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Many observers argue that Muhoozi lacks a political base. His rallies come with performances from Uganda’s top musicians who are crowd pullers, and people are ferried over long distances to rally venues where they get free food and drinks. “He lacks a constituency,” says Kristof Titeca, a researcher on African politics at University of Antwerp in Belgium. “In several ways Muhoozi might have a constituency problem both at the grassroots but also within the party and within the army.”

One Good Text with...Rama Yade

Ambassador Rama Yade is a former minister and ambassador of France and director of Atlantic Council’s Africa Center in Washington D.C.

🇬🇭 Ghana’s central bank raised its interest rate by 100 basis points to 28% on Jan. 30, continuing an upward review to fight inflation and an evolving economic crisis. The rate hike follows an increase in the government’s balance of payments deficit to $3.64 billion in December, per Reuters, and pressure from the IMF on the Ghanaian government to stop borrowing from its central bank.

🌍 Focus on Africa, the BBC’s 60-year-old flagship news and current affairs radio show about the continent, will gradually move to being pre-recorded rather than broadcast live in the coming months, according to Lucy Walker, a senior editor at the corporation. BBC veterans have told Semafor the change, along with deep staffing cuts and a shift to digital storytelling, will degrade the corporation’s Africa coverage.

🇿🇦 African investment firm Convergence Partners raised $296 million for private equity bets on technology assets, Bloomberg reports. The company, whose offices are in South Africa and Nigeria, has invested in over a dozen companies in Africa’s technology, media and telecommunications sector. CSquared, one such company, was integral in helping Google land fiber optic cables in Togo in 2022. Also in its portfolio are South African giants Telkom and Vodacom.

🇬🇧 British International Investment, the UK’s development finance investor, has a new managing director for its Africa operations. Chris Chijiutomi, a former investment fund manager in Nigeria, will oversee BII’s equity and debt deal activities in the region that include investments in companies such as Ecobank, Moove, and TradeDepot. BII was formerly called the CDC Group until last year.

Kenya to privatize public universities in an effort to address debt stress

Kenya’s government is in talks with foreign investors to take over some of its public universities as part of its drive to tackle its unsustainable debt.

Trade minister Moses Kuria warned that the country can no longer ignore the ballooning debts of its higher learning institutions when he announced the plans at a press conference late last week.

“All the public universities are in debt…they are no longer a going concern,” he said, adding that the investors will “establish the actual demand for university education in the local market.”

Kenya’s 32 public universities collectively owe 56 billion Kenyan shillings ($450 million) to the government tax agency, suppliers, and staff, among other partners, according to the auditor general’s office. The problems are part of the country’s growing debt problem.

Public universities in Kenya admit a higher number of students to degree and diploma programs than the country’s 35 private universities. Just under 450,000 students were enrolled at public universities during the last 2021/2022 academic year compared with nearly 115,000 at private institutions over the same period.

Ken Echesa, a law and tutorial fellow specializing in legal studies at the University of Nairobi School of Law, said privatization risks turning institutions into “profit-driven institutions as opposed to being academic citadels.” That, he said, could compromise the quality of teaching and make university education only available to wealthy people.

— Muchira Gachenge in Nairobi

• The Chronicle for Higher Education’s Karin Fischer attends a student fair in Dakar, Senegal, which was organized by eight universities from the American South. These schools are keen to attract international students from Africa especially as China, once a reliable source of students, starts to supply fewer numbers with tensions rising between the world’s two largest economies. “The African continent has cornered the market on 18- to 23-year-olds for the next 25 years,” Lydiah Kemunto Bosire, founder of 8B Education Investments tells Fischer.
• Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has taken advantage of Ethiopia’s two-year civil war to extend his military influence across the Horn of Africa subregion, leveraging himself into a kingmaker role in Ethiopia, while also expanding his alliances in Somalia and other countries in the Horn, writes the Globe and Mail. Eritrean soldiers have been seen entrenching themselves in at least 16 towns in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region despite the peace deal.
• China is keen to improve its influence on multilateral institutions and its alliances with countries in the Global South but Africa in particular is a key part of that growing ambition, explains Africa Center for Strategic Studies’ Paul Nantulya in a recent paper. His concern is that while China’s efforts to reshape existing global institutions and norms rely on the support of African governments, this can often be in conflict with the interests of African citizens.

NBA teams to hold pre-season games on the continent

The NBA is looking to bring pre-season basketball games to an African city near you as soon as next season. Amadou Gallo Fall, the Senegalese head of Basketball Africa League, a joint venture between the NBA and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), told ESPN there are plans to have two current NBA teams play each other. Before now, typical NBA Africa tours have involved exhibition games featuring African-born players on a Team Africa versus a Team World.

If you’re enjoying the Semafor Africa newsletter and finding it useful, please share with your family, friends, Kenyan professors, and African basketball fans. We’d love to have them aboard, too.

Let’s make sure  this email doesn’t end up in your junk folder by adding yinka.adegoke@semafor.com to your contacts. In Gmail you should drag this newsletter over to your ‘Primary’ tab.

You can reply to this email and send us your news tips, gossip, and good vibes.

— Yinka, Alexis, and Alexander