Africa

The increase in visits to Shoprite stores in South Africa. The company, Africa’s largest supermarket chain, said customer numbers at its stores grew between June and December 2023, with the average spend growing 7.7%. Its stores outside South Africa also grew their sales in rand terms by 6.2%, contributing 8.8% to overall sales. Shoprite’s customer growth drove the group’s sales up to $6.4 billion over the same period — but the Cape Town-headquartered retailer has said that its operations in South Africa are “challenging and costly” due to its reliance on diesel generators to keep stores functioning amid the nation’s energy crisis.

UN-backed Haiti mission faces new Kenyan roadblocks

THE NEWS

NAIROBI — A planned U.N.-backed security mission in Haiti led by Kenya is in jeopardy due to a new legal effort in the East African country to stop the deployment of 1,000 police officers to the Caribbean island.

Haiti has seen an escalation of gang violence in recent days. Multiple criminal organizations in Haiti last week unveiled a new coalition and declared plans to overthrow the government. They led a mass jailbreak that saw thousands of inmates freed. They also launched attacks on the country’s biggest airport, causing a state of emergency to be declared.

The deployment of Kenyan police officers to Haiti was declared illegal by the High Court in January. Ekuru Aukot, the politician and lawyer who led that case, told Semafor Africa he is working on a fresh challenge against a bilateral agreement signed by Kenyan President William Ruto and Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry last week. He questioned its legality and demanded that it be made public.

“For parties to enter into a bilateral agreement, they must have the capacity to do so,” Aukot argued. “PM Ariel Henry has no capacity. He is unelected and has never been vetted by Haiti’s parliament due to the situation there. International agreements must also be ratified by Kenya’s parliament, and this also hasn’t happened.”

President Ruto said last week Kenya was ‘ready to deploy’ its officers following the signing of the agreement, which was seen as a move to sidestep the court ruling blocking the deployment.

MARTIN’S VIEW

The planned U.N.-backed security mission has faced a series of significant hurdles that make it increasingly look like either a bad plan, or one that is just extremely difficult to implement.

Macollvie Neel, executive editor of the Haitian Times, said the more it dragged out, the more the planned deployment looked unlikely. She argued that the slow response by the international community “allowed these gangs to become so powerful that they can extort governance of the country.”

Observers are increasingly concerned that it might be time for the mission’s backers to consider a change of tack. The U.S. in particular has been rallying support for the mission, and disclosed on Monday that the White House was working to “expedite” the deployment of the Kenya-led force. It refused to send its own troops, a possibility that was reportedly discussed following the latest escalation of gang violence.

The U.S. is providing $200 million to support the mission. Critics of the planned mission, such as Aukot, say it is this financial incentive that has Ruto determined to push the deployment through despite a court ruling blocking it.

“Money is definitely a factor,” he argued. “The U.S. does not represent the Republic of Kenya.”

Senegal sets election date

Senegal’s president Macky Sall set March 24 as the new date for presidential elections, potentially ending tensions that have engulfed the West African state since February.

Sall announced the decision to his cabinet on Wednesday, after he dissolved the government to replace Prime Minister Amadou Ba — the presidential candidate for Sall’s BBY ruling coalition — with Sidiki Kaba, a 73-year-old former interior minister.

The new date followed a decision by Senegal’s top court to reject a national dialogue commission’s proposal for the elections to be held on June 2. The court said holding elections after April 2, when Sall’s tenure will end, would be unconstitutional. It also decided that the list of 19 candidates for the election should not be revised, against a recommendation of the dialogue commission.

Sall has been president for 12 years. His decision to suspend the original Feb. 25 election, which parliament then ratified and postponed to December, sparked widespread unrest across Senegal. It threatened to upend the country’s reputation as a model of democratic stability in a region where many countries have been overrun by juntas.

Senegal’s parliament has also approved an amnesty bill for those who have been arrested for participating in anti-government protests. Sall proposed the bill during the national dialogue to “pacify the political arena” going into the elections. Beneficiaries of the law could include those arrested during demonstrations in 2021 following the arrest of popular opposition figure Ousmane Sonko.

— Alexander Onukwue

Malawi’s passport system breach prompts protests

Malawi expects its passport production system to resume operations within weeks after an attack by hackers that the president said constituted a major breach of national security.

But the assurances have not dampened anger among Malawians who plan to protest today over the disruption that has halted the production of passports for the last month.

President Lazarus Chakwera told parliament about the hacking on Feb. 21, two weeks after Malawian authorities stopped issuing passports. The hackers reportedly demanded a ransom of about 2 billion Malawian kwacha ($1.2 million) to surrender the system which Chakwera said he rejected because his government opposed “appeasing criminals with public money.”

Thousands of young Malawi workers leave the country every year to look for seasonal informal work in South Africa where they can enter without the need for a visa and remain for 90 days.

Civil society groups were due to stage a protest today calling for the resumption of passport printing and lower processing fees. News of the hacking sparked discontent among Malawians who expressed their concerns on social media. Some have questioned whether the system was hacked while others have suggested illegal access to the passport system may have been widespread among Malawian authorities.

The head of Malawi’s department of immigration and citizen services, Charles Kalumo, told journalists late last month that access to 90% of the passport system had been recovered. He said the department is “confident” that the goal of resuming passport printing services before a 21-day deadline set by the president was “within reach.”

The hacking came months after the termination of an agreement with an independent contractor responsible for managing the system and printing the passports. Authorities said the move was due to poor performance but the termination of the contract was seen by some as a move to reduce the price of passports. It led to the reduced production of passports before the hacking.

— Charles Pensulo in Blantyre, Malawi

Gro Intelligence is having a rough start to 2024. It has been acclaimed for the last decade as a potentially pivotal force in using technology to solve food security in the developing world. But the company, which has offices in Nairobi, New York and Singapore, has reportedly conducted multiple layoffs since January, struggled to meet payroll, and — most significantly — has replaced its founding chief executive Sara Menker with an interim head.

Gro was founded in 2014 as a service that uses big data and artificial intelligence to enable governments and large corporations to predict crop yields, improve supply chain efficiency and prevent global food crises. Born and raised in Ethiopia, Menker was a commodities trader for Morgan Stanley in New York before starting Gro. She raised $123 million from multiple U.S. venture capitalists and family offices, making Gro one of the best-funded agric-tech companies associated with an African entrepreneur. Menker has become a sought-after voice in global agriculture and climate circles.

But Gro’s problems have been described as a failure to match products with the market. Though she is expected to retain some functions in the company, Menker’s role as CEO has been taken over by James Cariello, a former engineering lead at navigation app company Waze who previously worked as Gro’s chief technology officer. The company did not respond to requests for comments.

The company said its models cover half of global wheat production. It said its yield models for corn, soy, wheat, and cotton last year averaged at least 92% accuracy, predicting what governments eventually reported 10 months in advance. Emergency fundraising, reported by AgFunderNews, could enable Gro to solve some of its immediate needs and stay the course this year. But questions about the company’s future remain, given a global slowdown in venture capital funding that has affected growth-stage startups in Africa. Gro’s investors did not provide comment on their outlook for the company.

— Alexander Onukwue

🇪🇹 Ethiopian Airlines has announced that it will purchase eight Boeing 777-9 passenger airplanes. Africa’s largest airline said there is the potential for as many as 12 additional aircraft orders. Boeing has been under intense scrutiny in recent years: A door blew off of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 jet mid-flight in January, and two 737 Max 8 planes — including one operated by Ethiopian — crashed in 2018 and 2019.

🇳🇬 Crypto exchange Binance said it will stop offering services in Nigerian naira. It said users should withdraw or sell off their naira assets held on the platform before Mar. 8, or risk having them involuntarily converted to USDT, a digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar. The move follows a turbulent fortnight for the company: Its website was blocked in Nigeria, and two of its executives were detained.

🇨🇩 Former child miners who accused tech companies including Alphabet, Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft of engaging with “forced labor” by working with cobalt suppliers have lost an appeal filed in a U.S. court. Their suit alleged that the companies were obscuring their dependence on child labor to ensure a steady supply of the metal from DR Congo. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs had legal grounds, but that the companies did not have more than a buyer-seller relationship with the suppliers, or the means to stop them from using child labor.

🇰🇪 Kenya and the United Arab Emirates signed an agreement on Wednesday to develop the country’s first-ever data center powered by geothermal energy. The pact to establish the EcoCloud-G42 Mega Data Center with an initial capacity of 100 megawatts was signed between Kenya’s EcoCloud and UAE’s G42, an artificial intelligence firm.

Jackals help distribute the seeds of the nara plant — a shrub endemic to the Namib desert. The plant provides food, moisture and shelter for animals and humans in the desert’s harsh environment. Namibian scientist Saima Shikesho, who published her findings in the Journal of Zoology, reviewed images obtained via camera traps in the Namib-Naukluft National Park, located on the western side of Namibia. She found 200 nara seeds in the droppings of eight jackals, which germinated successfully.

• After Big Oil’s waves of consolidations, Big Solar could be next.
• Investors are still clamoring to funnel millions into Elon Musk’s companies.
• U.S. braces for foreign interference in 2024 election.

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— Yinka, Alexis, Alexander Onukwue, Martin Siele, and Muchira Gachenge