Africa

1. Record breaking chess
2. Cocoa vs chocolate
3. Benin’s festivals
4. Senegal’s Tirailleurs

Also, the future of Equatorial Guinea under Teodorin Obiang

Hello! Welcome to Semafor Africa Weekend, where we’re sending congratulations to Nigerian chess champion Tunde Onakoya for his impressive marathon feat last week (more details below). He was, as many readers know, playing these long grueling matches to raise funds to educate poor children across the continent. African education was also high on the agenda for the International Monetary Fund last week during the Spring meetings in Washington D.C. In its sub-Saharan Africa outlook, it reiterated that the only way African countries will truly benefit from the so-called demographic dividend of producing one in five of the world’s workers by 2050 would require most countries to double their spend on education as a share of GDP. Without workers being educated, they’ll be less able to participate in their local or global economy beyond low-skilled jobs.

The challenge is that sub-Saharan Africa’s education system is “under strain” thanks to budget cuts, few trained teachers and rapid population growth. African countries have little hope of repeating the rapid developmental feats seen in East Asia without improvements in education, the IMF argues. “The effects of demographic change and education on growth are crucially intertwined — favorable demographics, in the form of a higher share of the working age population, tends to increase growth, but the size of this benefit depends crucially on the level of education,” the Fund said in its outlook.

Remember, this comes even as the IMF and other bodies have also worried aloud about how rising debt payments are taking priority over education and health in several developing countries under pressure to meet their obligations. The Fund suggests more efficient spending of existing budgets and expansion of tax bases to help support education, but it also calls on donors and other stakeholders to prioritize support for education.

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A chess champion conquers Times Square

The number of hours Nigerian chess champion and child education advocate Tunde Onakoya played chess non-stop in New York City’s Times Square between Wednesday (April 17) and Saturday morning (April 20), setting a world record. Onakoya, 29, played against American chess champion Shawn Martinez in line with Guinness World Record guidelines that any attempt to break the record must be made by two players who would play continuously for the entire duration. The Guinness World Record organization has yet to publicly comment on Onakoya’s attempt, which broke the current chess marathon record of 56 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds, achieved in 2018 by two Norwegian players. Onakoya hopes to raise $1 million for children’s education across Africa.

Cocoa prices soar, farmers stay grounded

Cocoa prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future as the world’s biggest producers, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, both have environmental and structural challenges to their respective production capabilities. This has led to a sharp rise in cocoa prices on world markets that has been nothing short of stunning. Prices on the London exchange jumped by nearly 50% in March to well over $10,000 per tonne. Just a year earlier, a tonne was priced around $2,600. But farmers in the biggest markets haven’t been benefiting from these increases as prices have been set well in advance by regulators, though the Ivorian president is looking to raise the farmgate price. Farmers in Cameroon and Nigeria, whose cocoa markets have long been liberalized, have been able to benefit from the windfall. Ultimately, with or without cocoa price rises, African farmers generally get a very small share of the revenue from an average bar of chocolate, according to research by Make Chocolate Fair, who estimate it at around 6 cents on a $1 bar.

Benin is burnishing its creative credentials

Benin has been making moves to position itself as a culture hub in the West African subregion with a series of arts festivals. Next week the second edition of the Benin International Arts Festival will take place in its largest city, Cotonou, alongside events in Ouidah and Porto-Novo. The festival promotes African creativity around music, dance, cinema, theater, fashion, literature, and visual arts. Ludovic Fadaïr, a leading visual artist within the contemporary African art scene, will supervise the collective exhibition, which will also feature a fashion show in partnership with OYEMI Fashion. In January, Benin welcomed visitors to its first international ‘vodun’ festival.

A novel tells an African-first story in WWII

The role of Africans during World War II, and other conflicts of similar or close magnitude in history, is often told from a European perspective. But that trend has been steadily shifting in recent years, thanks to some history writers centering Africans in their own narratives. One such is author and filmmaker Gabriel Souleyka, whose historical novel, My Soul is a Witness, was officially released this month.

Set in colonial-era Senegal, the novel centers on a newly-wed couple, Awa and her husband Ibrahim, whose honeymoon is abruptly halted when the latter is conscripted into the Senegalese Tirailleurs — a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army — and taken to the European battlefields during the Second World War. The main plot deals with the fraternity between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the face of Nazi barbarism. All this is narrated through the eyes of Awa, an African woman from Senegal.

“I think it’s important to remember that, in the context of colonization, thousands of Africans were conscripted to fight in Europe,” the novelist told Semafor Africa. “My motivation stems from the fact members of my family were sent; some lost their lives, others returned with visible and invisible scars.” He added that the story of Awa and Ibrahim was narrated to him while in Dakar, albeit in scanty details. The author said it was crucial to tell the story, especially with a Black African woman as the protagonist, “so that she could tell the story of what she was experiencing and seeing in her own words and with her own sensitivity.” The novel’s mission was also to spotlight the sacrifices of Africans during the war, he said.

— Muchira Gachenge

Weekend Reads

🇬🇶 The long-term stability of Equatorial Guinea is at risk as its oil production drops and Vice President Teodorin Obiang, heir apparent to the presidency, continues to show “erratic behavior” and make “arbitrary decisions.” Bloomberg reports on the case of two South African oil workers jailed in the central African country for drug smuggling as the latest in a recent trend of tit-for-tat arrests against nationals of countries that have crossed Obiang.

🇰🇪 Farmers in rural Kenya are using pesticides containing toxins that have been linked to cancer or hormonal disruption, according to The Elephant. The farmers rely heavily on these chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase crop yields even though many of these products, which were developed in Europe, have been banned by European regulators.

🌍 What have been the benefits of the African democracy?, asks an essay by Mohamed Kheir Omer and Parselelo Ole Kantai for African Arguments. The authors claim that governments were effectively forced into accepting political liberalization when most were at their weakest, wracked by debt and austerity programs in the 1980s and 1990s. “Democracy, therefore, was more a creature of the market than of popular citizen aspirations,” they write.

🇨🇩 Citizens in DR Congo have been protesting in the capital Kinshasa against inaction by Western governments as ongoing violence in the east of the country escalates. Bossissi Nkuba and Liliane Nabintu Kabagele write that the protests would trigger actual change and improve the security situation if DRC leverages its position as a resource-rich nation which has around 70% of global cobalt deposits.

🇬🇭 What should you expect when visiting Ghana’s capital, Accra, for the first time? In an essay in The New York Times, Peace Adzo Medie reflects on the beauty of the city in the southern part of the country, noting the museums, galleries and libraries. To find one’s way around, understand the culture, and the people in the city, Medie recommends several books to read.

Week Ahead 🗓️

April 21-22 - The UN’s African Science, Technology and Innovation Forum will take place in Addis Ababa.

April 21-25 - Connected Africa Summit 2024 will be hosted by Kenya’s information ministry, in Nairobi.

April 22 - The 5th Africa Climate Talks, hosted by African Union Commission’s African Climate Policy Centre and African Development Bank, will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

April 22-23 - The African Counter-Terrorism Summit held in Abuja, Nigeria. President Bola Tinubu, in conjunction with the UN, will host representatives from the African Union and West African bloc Ecowas.

April 22-26 - The annual AVCA Conference for African private equity and venture capital investors will take place in Johannesburg.

April 22-25 - The Namibia International Energy Conference 2024 will be held in Windhoek, with OPEC secretary general Haitham Al Ghais among global energy leaders expected to attend.

• AI startup Tome makes cuts in pursuit of new focus.
• Moderna CEO says AI will help scientists understand ‘most diseases’ in 3 to 5 years.
• Private equity investor sees a cash cow in AI electricity boom.

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