Africa

1. More education, please
2. City of innovation
3. Grammy time
4. Preserving culture
5. Reclaiming culture

Also, Nigeria’s government is put to task over press freedom.

Hello! Welcome to Semafor Africa, where we appreciate any job we’re given. A few years ago it seemed the only cabinet jobs worth having for an African politician had to be something like the ministry which controlled natural resources such as mining and oil. Another was perhaps finance or treasury, where you literally controlled the flow of money into the economy. But these days dedicated technocrats are showing up in areas like health, information technology, and culture — and things are beginning to change.

Culture is of particular interest to us on the weekend beat. That’s because we chronicle how Africa’s creative economies are slowly, but very surely, being formalized to generate more consistent and hopefully more sizable earnings for the creators and entrepreneurs whose work we enjoy. The long-term hope is not just to boost the creative economy, but the wider economy.

In our main story, there’s much to like about what Grammys organizers are trying to do here by working with African governments to support local music industries. But ultimately these governments will be focused on what can help their countries, and rightly so.

🟡 This was another busy week for Sam Mkokeli in Johannesburg who captured the tense horse trading to create a South African national coalition government while, in Addis Ababa, Maya Misikir carefully explained the backdrop to a critically acclaimed documentary on Chinese industrialization efforts in Ethiopia. Over in Lagos, Alexander examined how Africans will spend even more on non-refundable visa fees to visit Europe on top of a much higher rate of rejection.

🟡🟡 Have you followed us on WhatsApp yet? What are you waiting for?

How to educate more African children

The amount the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates is required annually to support children’s education in Africa and achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal on education. However, the agency said that most African countries are failing to meet the benchmark of allocating 15% to 20% of their national budgets to education. This translates to underfunded schools, overcrowded classrooms and an insufficient number of teachers, many of whom lack adequate training. It said available resources currently stand at $106 billion, leaving a financing gap of over 40%. The statement was released ahead of the Day of the African Child 2024 to be commemorated today (June 16).

Rwanda’s smart city is a step closer

It promises to create more than 50,000 jobs, house thousands of students, and become a technology hub. Plans for a “smart city” to be developed in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, feature four universities, office space, shops and housing built across a 61-hectare site. Kigali Innovation City, based on an urban master plan unveiled over two years ago, moved a step closer this week with the announcement that infrastructure investor Africa50 had signed an agreement with Rwandan authorities for exclusive rights to develop and operate the project.

The government hopes the development will attract $300 million in foreign direct investment and generate $150 million in information technology exports. Rwanda isn’t the only country that is moving forward with plans to develop a smart city. Earlier this month, Kenya secured $238 million from the Korea Exim Bank to fund the Konza Digital Media City, located 40 kilometers southeast of Nairobi.

The Grammys are coming to Africa

The Recording Academy, the Los Angeles-based music industry body behind the Grammy Awards, announced this week it is globalizing its reach by working with key African countries to support creative talent.

Two people close to the discussions told Semafor Africa there is a longer term vision to bring a Grammy Awards event to the continent, though the time frame is still unclear. A Recording Academy spokesperson was not available ahead of press time to comment on the plans.

The academy has already signed early agreements with culture ministries in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa as part of what one of the people described as a “capacity building” strategy to help expand the global music industry. It has also signed MOUs with Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

The plans currently include training and educational programs for creators and executives, advocating for strong intellectual property legislation, and publishing research on local music markets.

Executives from the academy have spent the last two years visiting countries in Africa and the Middle East as part of this plan to expand the reach of the formal music industry. There is widening acknowledgement among culture leaders in African governments that more rigorous IP and copyright laws are key to ensuring local creators can fully benefit from their work and thereby boost the wider economy at home but also as export products.

Nigeria’s cultural preservation efforts continue

Nigeria’s Museum of West African Art will unveil its MOWAA Institute in Benin City on Nov. 4 to support museums and cultural organizations across West Africa. The culture-centric research and education institute is being opened at a time when restitution politics, and a radical attempt to reconstruct the history, culture and artistic heritage of Nigeria have taken center stage. It follows hot on the heels of persistent calls to repatriate the nation’s looted artifacts, popularly known as the Benin Bronzes — thousands of objects British soldiers looted in 1897 from Benin Kingdom, now part of Nigeria, and most of which remain held in institutions across the world, including in the British Museum.

The Institute, a testimony to the broad-based efforts by the West African country to preserve its cultural memory, also features state-of-the-art facilities for ongoing research and a hub for training in archaeology, conservation, heritage management and museum practice.

— Muchira Gachenge

Uganda reclaims looted artifacts on loan

Uganda has joined a growing list of African nations in the art restitution movement, after it received 39 objects repatriated by Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology this month. The items, ranging from traditional regalia to delicate pottery, were returned on a long-term loan for an initial period of three years. They were looted from the East African nation between 1894, when it was declared a British protectorate, and 1962 when it gained independence. They are part of a collection of about 1,500 ethnographic objects that have been held by the British university for more than a century.

The Uganda Museum in the capital, Kampala, where the repatriated items will be housed, is expected to put on a temporary exhibition of the objects next year. Ugandan officials said the agreement with Cambridge is renewable, allowing for the possibility of a permanent loan and local ownership.

Ghana and Nigeria are other African countries that have received looted artifacts through repatriation-on-loan arrangements.

— Muchira

Weekend Reads

🇿🇦 For The Conversation, Nicolas Bancel revisits the historic boycott of the 1976 Montreal Olympics by 22 African countries, and the role of the Organisation of African Unity in its planning. Bancel highlights the June 16, 1976 massacre in Johannesburg (pictured) which saw hundreds of Black anti-apartheid demonstrators killed, and how it triggered the boycott that “helped force the world to confront apartheid.”

🌍 Highlighting the strategic importance of Africa to global security, James Stavridis writes for Bloomberg that China and Russia have surpassed Washington’s influence on the continent. The retired US Navy admiral proposes a new strategy in which four “anchor nations” — South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia — receive preferential economic and military support from the US.

🌍 The West African economic bloc Ecowas is struggling to regain credibility following a series of missteps in recent years, Jessica Moody writes for Foreign Policy. Ecowas, she observes, has failed to counter anti-democratic constitutional changes including term limit extensions in the region while also failing to “effectively stand up” to the military officers that led coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger.

🇳🇬 Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu’s administration is put to task over the arrests and harassment of journalists who report on stories of impropriety and corruption in a piece for African Arguments by Promise Eze. The writer notes the troubling use of an amendment to the cybercrime act which criminalizes “the dissemination of false messages via the internet that may cause annoyance or give offense to others.”

🇧🇫 Burkina Faso’s status as a regional hub for arthouse cinema is being threatened by the decade-long jihadist insurrection facing the country, Claire Macdougall writes in New Lines Magazine. The conflict, which has displaced 2 million people since 2015, has severely restricted filmmakers’ ability to shoot in various locations, and led to the loss of key jobs in the sector.

Week Ahead

June 16 — The African Union and UNICEF will mark the Day of the African Child. This year’s theme is “Education for all children in Africa: the time is now”.

June 18 — South African mobile operator Telkom will release full year results. It has forecast a significant boost in profit for its 2024 financial year.

June 19 — A terrorism trial of Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu will begin in the capital, Abuja. Kanu, a British citizen who leads the banned Indigenous People of Biafra movement, faces seven counts of terrorism, which he denies.

June 20 — A Namibia high court is scheduled to rule on the criminalization of same-sex acts between men.

June 19-21 — The Aviation Development Africa Conference, will bring together officials from airlines, tourism boards, government and industry experts in Windhoek, Namibia.

• The Black sports icons shaping Donald Trump’s take on race.
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• Renewable energy alone can’t save Ukraine’s faltering grid.

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