Africa

The number of TV projects to be selected for a four-week residency program at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, under a newly launched Africa Creative TV Initiative. The initiative comes under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. It is focused on professional development and network building for television writers, producers, as well as art direction, cinematography, editing and more by working with established Hollywood professionals to develop their skills. Participants will come from the big TV markets including Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Where you were born, your parents’ level of education, religion, and your ethnicity, have a disproportionate impact on your future outcomes in life if you’re African, compared with most other regions of the world. A new paper from the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Practice used consumption per capita as its metric for outcome, and found that inequality of opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa is “stark and more pronounced than previously estimated.” It says that on average, inherited circumstances explain more than half of the inequality in the region. “Estimates range from 40% to 60% in most [African] countries and reach 74% in South Africa.” While the findings showed birthplace, parents’ education, and ethnicity tended to be the most significant contributors, there was large variation in the importance of these circumstances across countries.

Generally, inequality of opportunity is higher in poorer countries than wealthier parts of the world. Inequality of opportunity measure for Africa was generally in line with the Gini coefficient of countries, the other more commonly used measure of inequality by economists. In theory, a Gini coefficient of 0 would indicate perfect inequality while a coefficient of 1 would mean the opposite. Africa’s average coefficient of 0.42 was second only to Latin America & the Caribbean 0.47.

We recently soft-launched our WhatsApp channel and hope you can join us on the platform where much of modern Africa lives.

Follow two simple steps:

One, click here to join.

Two, and this is important, click on the 🔕 icon in the top right corner of your screen to unmute notifications.

While we’re still in the experimental phase, we’d love to hear from readers on what you’d like to see on WhatsApp that’d be better or different from our newsletters. Also, if you have that friend who never checks their inbox, this is for them.

Tanzania is wooing Chinese tourists with a new documentary

Tanzania is once again turning to film to attract tourists but this time focused on visitors from China. A new documentary, dubbed “Amazing Tanzania,” is scheduled to premiere in May featuring Chinese actor Jin Dong, who is also a tourism goodwill ambassador for the country.

The government hopes it will build on the success of Tanzania: The Royal Tour, an internationally-distributed TV program which debuted in 2022 and is credited with helping increase tourist arrivals in the East African nation, after the pandemic downturn. Like its predecessor, the new documentary will showcase some of the country’s top natural attractions, including wildlife havens, mountains and sandy beaches. It will also feature Tanzania’s President Suluhu Hassan.

Tourist arrivals in Tanzania grew 22% to hit a record 1.84 million visitors in the year ending January 2024. Only 44,438 Chinese tourists visited Tanzania in 2023, though that was up 32% from 33,541 in 2019.

Tapping into the Chinese market would be a major boost to the country’s tourism industry, which accounts for around 17% of the country’s GDP. Tanzania’s earnings from tourism grew to $3.4 billion in the year ending January 2024, up from $2.6 billion the previous year.

“I think Tanzania has been slow to deliberately grow numbers from China compared to other countries with comparable tourism industries in the region, so this is a positive move,” Brian Mwinyi, a Dar es Salaam-based travel consultant, told Semafor Africa. He cited South Africa and Kenya which grew Chinese tourist arrivals by 216% and 154% respectively in 2023, compared with the previous year.

“Using media and entertainment is one way to really capture the imagination of many people, but we also need more direct flights and partnerships with travel agencies and other stakeholders to actually increase these numbers,” he said.

THE VIEW FROM KENYA

Kenya, like Tanzania, has been expanding its focus to reach more Chinese tourists in recent years. Its strategy has involved marketing through travel agents, plus partnerships with airlines and tour operators, Kenya Tourism Board told Semafor Africa last year. There’s a particular focus on Chinese social media platforms including WeChat, Mafengwo, Weibo, and Douyin, the China-based sister video channel to TikTok.

— Martin K.N. Siele

Britain’s regulators are looking into a petition against the British Museum over its handling of Ethiopian artifacts looted more than a century and half ago.

Returning Heritage, a non-profit set up in 2019 to advocate for cultural restitution, said in its petition that the museum failed to disclose complete information about 11 artifacts, taken away by British soldiers from Ethiopia in 1868, after multiple freedom of information requests, including one last August.

The organization’s position is that the artifacts, which include tablets made from wood and deemed sacred objects, could be returned to Ethiopia. “It’s a mystery to us why the British Museum clings on to a group of objects so clearly unsuitable for anywhere other than the sanctity and protection of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,” read a statement last week on the organization’s website.

Western countries including France, Germany, and the U.S. are under increased pressure to return looted artifacts in their possession, but the U.K. has been at the receiving end of most calls, having the largest stock of such items. Some progress has been made in the form of the returns and loan of Benin bronzes to Nigeria and next month to Ghana.

The Ethiopian artifacts in question have never been displayed and may never be studied, on the belief that they can only be viewed by religious authorities with the requisite ordination. The British Museum intends to lend the items to an Ethiopian Orthodox church in the U.K., according to the Guardian, while Westminster Abbey said it could return one item to Ethiopia.

— Alexander Onukwue

🇪🇹 Ethiopia’s historical heritage is being erased with the demolition of the historic district of Arada Piazza. The bustling commercial area in Addis Ababa is being knocked down to make way for road corridors aimed at improving the city’s infrastructure. Rachel Dubale writes in Africa Is a Country that the reconstruction of the historical sites reveals the conflict in the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture. She questions if it is impossible to achieve a balance where progress and cultural preservation can coexist.

🇳🇬 Multinational companies are finding new ways to do business in Nigeria — and sometimes leaving the country completely — amidst tough economic conditions. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Wexler reports on the rise of the use of cassava, a root crop, by Unilever and Nestle as a key ingredient in toothpaste and seasoning cubes. Companies like Procter & Gamble, who haven’t adapted to the local supply chain, have opted to import finished products into the country instead.

🇬🇭 Scientists from low- and middle-income countries are often faced with visa inequalities and miss out on opportunities to advance their research. In Nature, Ghanaian scientist Sandra Owusu-Gyamfi reflects on being denied a visa, and missing an opportunity to present research on species extinction in West Africa. She argues that visa issues should not block researchers from Africa and elsewhere from benefiting from the funding, publishing, and policymaking opportunities available in conferences.

🌍 Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, who curated this year’s Sharjah Architecture Triennial exhibition in the United Arab Emirates, brought together architects and studios from 25 countries to celebrate innovation in architecture. The BBC’s Ijeoma Ndukwe notes that the exhibition drew attention to sustainable, accessible, and equitable futures, and highlighted the value of alternative responses to resource constraints.

🌍 Western governments and policymakers are gradually moving away from the view that countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America should embrace the Western approach to democracy and globalization. Instead, they acknowledge that these “Global South” countries have their own socio-economic priorities, writes Comfort Ero in Foreign Affairs. Ero warns that treating such different countries “as a geopolitical bloc … will not help solve the problems they face.”

🇰🇪 A new comprehensive investigative report on Bridge International Academies traces the child sexual abuse allegations in Kenya that have clouded its investor-fueled growth. For The Intercept, Neha Wadekar and Ryan Grimm dig into how Bridge’s scandals have rocked some of its biggest investors including the British development agency and the World Bank’s investment arm IFC, which is still going through an internal investigation.

🗓️ The World Bank will publish its sub-Saharan Africa economic outlook report ‘Africa’s Pulse’ with updated economic forecasts for 2024 and 2025. (April 8)

🗓️ Uganda’s central bank will provide an update on its latest lending rate decision. In March, the Bank of Uganda raised the rate to 10% from 9.5% in a bid to support the shilling after it fell to an all-time low. (April 8)

🗓️ The South African government will officially launch the National Freedom Month, celebrating 30 years of democracy. The celebrations are titled, “30 Years of Democracy, Partnership and Growth”. (April 9)

• The MIT-Empowering the Teachers (MIT-ETT) Program provides an intense, semester-long, teaching-focused engagement for selected cohorts of faculty members (ETT Fellows) from African universities. Apply here. (May 26)
• TWAS-DFG Cooperation Visits Program: Postdoctoral science researchers from sub-Saharan Africa are invited to apply to take a “cooperation visit” lasting three months to an institute in Germany. (June 5)

Lael Brainard, Director of the White House National Economic Council; Christian Lindner, German Minister of Finance; Richard Lesser, Global Chair, Boston Consulting Group; Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission EVP and Commissioner for Trade; Suzanne Clark, CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Steve Rattner, Chairman & CEO, Willett Advisors will join the Global Growth Session at the 2024 World Economy Summit to discuss shifts from global to regional trade, impacts on capital allocation and market efficiencies, as well as strategies for navigating the ever-changing economic landscape.

April 17 | 9 a.m.-12 p.m. ET | Washington, D.C.

• The border crisis might be a boon for the U.S. economy.
• American unions’ picket power now extends to boardrooms.
• Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer tells us about her new photo app.

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

Let’s make sure this email doesn’t end up in your junk folder by adding africa@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, street food recommendations and good vibes.

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