Africa

1. Betting on crypto
2. Still battling inflation
3. Senegal’s fresh start
4. Sudan’s brutal anniversary
5. Scientists vs mosquitoes

Also, a new museum honors one of the continent’s oldest kingdoms.

Hi! Welcome to Semafor Africa where we’re counting down to the kick-off of our most ambitious event, the World Economy Summit in Washington D.C. I’ll be leading conversations on the Rising Global Middle Class and expect that the Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) will come up, given some of the speakers we have from the U.S. government and development finance. AGOA, which was first passed into U.S. law in 2000, was designed to support sub-Saharan African economies by removing key tariffs and other trade barriers in a range of sectors. The idea was to help create jobs and boost local economies by enabling exports to the world’s biggest economy. But, depending on who you talk to and which country they’re speaking from, the act has had mixed success over the last 24 years.

AGOA was thrust back onto the news agenda late last week after legislation was introduced on Capitol Hill to renew it to 2041 after it expires next year. The bill proposes a raft of changes to a law which has been criticized for being out of touch with today’s Africa. It calls for tighter oversight by Congress particularly on matters such as eligibility rules around governance for example. There’s a push to support tighter integration with the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to enable intra-Africa supply chains. It also pushes for U.S. government capacity-building support to boost exports.

While these are notable tweaks to the existing order, a paper released earlier this month from the Center for Global Development calls for a more radical “AGOA 2.0” overhaul. The authors point out that the biggest export boost by AGOA happened in its first five years with garments but it soon lost ground as trade barriers with China dropped. In order to support the African manufacturing sector — which they argue American development finance has largely ignored in favor of finance and extractives — AGOA should be underpinned with “negative tariffs” or manufacturing subsidies. CGD estimates that less than $300 million in such subsidies could create as much as $1.5 billion in new trade.

🟡 AGOA, Africa’s credit crunch challenges, AI, and digital infrastructure are just a few of the topics we’ll be tackling this week at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington D.C. Speakers include Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, UK; Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank; and Lael Brainard, Director of the White House National Economic Council, among dozens of senior policymakers and business leaders. Sign up here.

South Africa’s regulator takes a chance on crypto

The number of license applications for crypto platforms that have been approved by South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority. The regulator had last year set a Nov. 30 deadline for crypto platforms to apply for licenses. There are still 262 applications pending. The licensing procedure is meant to ensure players in the sector comply with changes to the laws regarding digital asset laws in South Africa, which are meant to protect consumers and enable the sector’s growth.

Nigeria’s prices keep rising

Nigeria’s inflation rose to 33.2% in March, the government’s statistics agency said, continuing a months-long trend of successive price increases in the country. The new data comes even as the central bank has implemented monetary tightening measures in recent weeks, raising the main lending rate by 600 basis points. Food inflation hit 40% for the first time, as the effects of rising petrol prices since the removal of a subsidy last year remain strong in the cost of transportation. The central bank has tried to counter the high cost of imports caused by dollar shortages by selling dollars to local money changers, a move that has helped to strengthen the naira against the dollar.

Senegal’s new government targets economic sovereignty

Senior figures in Senegal’s new government are pushing reforms they say will move the country towards greater control of its resources, retooling the country’s economy away from its decades-old reliance on foreign governments, especially France.

Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, who was sworn in as Africa’s youngest elected president earlier this month, made his political mentor Ousmane Sonko the prime minister and inaugurated a 25-person cabinet that includes only four women. The appointees assumed their roles last week and have begun to provide a stronger sense of how Faye and Sonko’s campaign pledges to break with the past may play out.

Bemoaning rising levels of foreign currency debt incurred by previous administrations pursuing infrastructure development, new finance minister Abdourahmane Sarr said Senegal will seek stronger bilateral and multilateral ties “while aiming to free ourselves from ties of dependence in our public policies.” Government debt as a share of gross domestic product is at 72%, above the sub-Saharan African average of 56%, according to the IMF.

Senegal will also push for more autonomy for the central bank that oversees the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union. Members of the union use the West African CFA franc currency that is pegged to the euro. “We will not be able to develop and deepen our financial market without a more active monetary policy,” Sarr said.

The West African country may also “renegotiate all existing contracts” to bring them in line with the public interest, new energy, oil and mines minister Biram Souleye Diop said on Thursday. Any such move depends on the outcome of an audit of the oil, gas and mining sector which Faye ordered the day after his inauguration.

Faye won last month’s presidential elections on the back of widespread frustration with the immediate past government over high unemployment and widening inequality among Senegal’s 18 million people. He took office at a time of slower economic growth that is partly due to external shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to congratulate Faye on his election using a tweet in Wolof, the major local language in Senegal, is a sign that France is concerned about Faye’s insistence on a sovereign future for Senegal, said Babacar Ndiaye, a senior fellow at the Timbuktu Institute in Dakar.

“It seems likely that, after its traumatic expulsion from the Sahel, [France] is trying to repair its relations with its important French-speaking partners, including Senegal,” Ndiaye told Semafor Africa.

Bin Chen, CEO, Stori Card; Samalia Zubairu, CEO, African Finance Corporation; Hannah Ryder, CEO, Development Reimagined; Olugbenga Agboola, CEO, Flutterwave and Scott Nathan, CEO, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation will join the Rising Global Middle Class Session at the 2024 World Economy Summit to discuss the debt burden developing countries are facing today and how governments and private sector players can foster economic growth to create greater opportunities.

April 18 | 9 a.m.-12 p.m. ET | Washington, D.C.

Sudan’s war is escalating a year after fighting began

THE NEWS

Exactly one year into the war in Sudan, prospects for peace in the near future are getting dimmer. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is escalating and looks set to worsen in its second year because neither side has gained a significant advantage so far, analysts told Semafor Africa.

Clashes between forces led by rival generals erupted on April 15 last year in a power struggle that followed Sudan’s failure to transition to a democratic civilian-led government after the 2019 uprising that ousted the long-serving dictatorial leader Omar al-Bashir.

“Fighting is currently on an uptick and most concerning is that it is spreading into new areas that have not previously seen a lot of violence,” noted Cameron Hudson, an analyst with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Efforts by the international community to broker peace have fallen flat. Peace talks led by the United States and Saudi Arabia, which began in Jeddah last year and were initially slated to resume on April 18, have been postponed with no new confirmed date for the talks.

The sides also continue to seek legitimacy beyond the battlefield, albeit with different approaches. The RSF has aggressively lobbied international support with its leader Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti,” making high profile trips to South Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda among others.

Ladd Serwat, an analyst at conflict monitoring group ACLED, told Semafor Africa that no side had gained a clear upper hand in garnering international support. He said Western countries have “followed international norms to favor the ruling regime,” whereas others, such as Libya and the Central African Republic, have served as “strategic supply routes for the Wagner Group/Africa Corps mercenaries to supply the RSF.”

— Martin K.N Siele

Genetically modified mosquitoes could one day end malaria

Abdoulaye Diabaté, a scientist from Burkina Faso, is at the vanguard of efforts to eliminate malaria by editing the genetic makeup of male mosquitoes and releasing them in the wild to prevent the reproduction of female mosquito species that transmit malaria. Diabaté’s research on “gene drive” technology earned him the 2023 Falling Walls Prize for Science and Innovation Management. He spoke to Semafor Africa ahead of his Ted Talk this week on ending malaria.

* What makes this approach more effective than other approaches used to tackle malaria?

Gene drive offers great promises as a vector control tool. It is self-sustaining, meaning that a relatively small release of modified mosquitoes are able to spread within a population and induce suppression. It allows targeting a large area in a cost effective and self-sustaining manner, reaching areas that are difficult to control with conventional methods.

* After the rollout, how long do you estimate it would take to eradicate malaria in Africa?

Eliminating malaria in Africa will be a difficult and long process. Gene drive mosquitoes have the capacity to suppress population within two to five years in the area of release. Malaria elimination in a country, or even throughout the continent will depend on the scale of the release and on which countries will decide to use the technology.

* How are you factoring in concerns that gene drive technology is unsafe because it may create unforeseen problems in our ecosystem?

We are looking at all possible aspects in our risk assessments. We have a project in Ghana which specifically looks at what can happen if some species are reduced. The results of our studies will be shared this year. Anopheles gambiae play a very marginal role in the ecosystem, and in Africa alone there are over 600 species of mosquitoes. We are planning to target only very few, the ones more responsible to transmit malaria to humans.

— Alexis Akwagyiram

Governance

🇹🇩 Chad’s transitional leader Mahamat Idriss Deby kicked off a campaign for next month’s presidential election that would transition the country to civilian rule. The other nine candidates lining up ahead of voting on May 6 include recently-appointed Prime Minister Succes Masra.

🇬🇭 Ghana’s government on Monday said it did not reach a restructuring deal with two bondholder groups for $13 billion in debt. Talks were put on hold after the International Monetary Fund said the deal would not meet its debt sustainability parameters, the government said.

Deals

🇬🇳 Shareholders in Guinea’s iron-ore reserve Simandou signed $15 billion in financing agreements to fund the building of rail and port infrastructure.

🇳🇪 Niger on Friday said it had signed a $400 million memorandum of understanding with Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. The agreement is linked to the sale of crude oil from CNPC’s Agadem oil field.

🇰🇪 Kenyan farmers’ insurance startup Pula raised $20 million in an equity funding round led by South African firm BlueOrchard, with the participation of other investors including the International Finance Corporation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

🇰🇪 NCBA Bank Kenya lent $11.98 million to Mauritius-based real estate firm Grit Services in the second half of 2023.

Health

🇰🇪 Pharmaceutical giant Moderna said on Thursday it was pausing plans to build a $500 million vaccine manufacturing plant in Kenya, citing decline in demand for COVID-19 vaccines.

🌍 South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria have recalled batches of Johnson & Johnson’s children’s cough syrup after high levels of a toxin were discovered. The syrup had also been sold to Eswatini, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

🇳🇬 Nigeria became the first country in the world to roll out the new Men5CV vaccine against meningitis. The World Health Organization said a 50% rise in annual cases was recorded in 26 African countries last year.

Tech

🇿🇼 Starlink told users of its internet service in Zimbabwe that their access will be cut, following a notice by the country’s telecom regulator that Starlink was not yet licensed to operate in Zimbabwe.

🇲🇿 The Bank of Mozambique ordered mobile telecom companies in the country to implement new transaction limits on electronic money transfers in a bid to counter terrorism financing.

🇰🇪 Kenyan lawmakers met with TikTok’s director of government and public policy for sub-Saharan Africa, over safety concerns related to the use of the video-sharing app in the country.

The Museum of the Bamoun Kings was inaugurated on Saturday in Foumban, Cameroon. The museum was built to honor the Bamoun kingdom —— one of sub-Saharan Africa’s oldest, founded in 1384. Built in the historic capital of the Bamoun Kings, the museum reflects the rich, multi-century creativity of the people’s craftsmanship, art, and technological innovations. The space spans over 5,000 square meters and contains 12,500 artifacts including weapons, pipes, and musical instruments. Only some of the items have previously been displayed in the royal palace. Exhibits include items from the life of the most famous Bamoun King, Ibrahim Njoya, who reigned from 1889 to 1933 and created Bamoune Script, a writing system that contains over 500 syllabic signs.

• Tougher EU migration rules spark anger across the political spectrum.
• ​​Iran sought mass casualties in its Israel strike, U.S. officials say.
• The Intercept is running out of cash.

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