Africa

🇨🇩 The East African Community said its election observer mission would not participate in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s elections tomorrow. The bloc said its request to undertake observer duties was blocked by president Felix Tshisekedi’s government. However, DRC allowed the Africa Union and Southern African Development Community observers to participate, raising tensions between the country and the EAC which it joined last year. Around 40 million registered voters are set to choose a president and lawmakers. Tshisekedi is seeking a second five-year term. Three candidates have emerged as his strongest opponents: mining magnate Moise Katumbi, former Exxon Mobil executive Martin Fayulu, and Nobel Peace Prize winning gynecologist Denis Mukwege.

🇪🇺 The European Union and Kenya on Monday Dec. 18 signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) in Nairobi. Kenya’s exports will be granted duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market under the agreement. It also compels Kenya to undertake a “partial and gradual opening” of its market to goods from the EU, with preferential access. The EU was Kenya’s top export destination in 2022, accounting for 16% of the country’s exports. The agreement, which will be presented to the parliaments of both sides for ratification before coming into force, also includes provisions on environmental protection, climate change and child labor.

🇹🇩 Nearly eight million Chadians voted on Sunday in a referendum that will determine whether the country will adopt a new constitution ahead of next year’s election. It marks a step towards the long-awaited return to civilian rule since the April 2021 military takeover when Mahamat Idriss Deby became the interim president after the death of his father. The proposed constitution would allow Chadians to choose local representatives and collect local taxes for the first time if it passes. Its opponents, including opposition parties and civil society organizations, say the referendum ignored the unresolved question of whether Chad should become a federal state or remain centrally governed.

🇰🇪 Kenya’s Competition Authority has fined local Carrefour franchise holder Majid-al-Futtaim $7.1 million (1.1 billion Kenyan shillings) for abusing buyer power — the largest financial punishment ever handed out by the body. The authority said the franchise holder took advantage of its stronger bargaining position to force suppliers to accept lower prices. Suppliers saw their final pay-outs decline by as much as 12% due to a system of non-negotiable rebates. Majid-al-Futtaim was further ordered to refund $104,613 (16.1 million Kenyan shillings) in illegal rebates and to review all its supplier contracts to remove clauses facilitating abuse of buyer power.

The total of Somalia’s debt that has been written off by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The debt relief was confirmed last week following Somalia’s completion of various reforms under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. The relief has helped Somalia lower its external debt from 64% of GDP in 2018 to less than 6 percent of GDP in Dec. 2023. Somalia’s president said the country had reformed its “laws, systems, policies, and practices” over the past decade to rebuild its economy, which has borne the brunt of three decades of conflict.

South Africa’s ANC divided over Zuma response

THE SCOOP

JOHANNESBURG — The announcement by former South African president Jacob Zuma that he will not vote for the ruling African National Congress in next year’s elections has sparked disagreements within the party’s leadership over how to limit the impact of his move.

The ex-president, who on Saturday held a press conference in Soweto to announce the withdrawal of his backing for the ANC, also declared his support for the newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe party, which is named after the ANC’s now-defunct military wing. However, he remains a member of the ANC.

Semafor Africa spoke to four senior ANC officials who sought differing approaches. Some said they may call for his expulsion whereas others called for caution.

“Zuma has flouted party rules and the constitution by working against the ANC and announcing he would campaign for another party,” a party leader told Semafor Africa, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He has defined himself outside the party and should therefore be taken through a disciplinary action and be expelled.”

But another senior ANC figure, pointing to a different view, said Zuma had overestimated his popularity. “Ignoring him is a better strategy than expelling from the party, as action against him would make him a victim and he would exploit that,” the person said.

KNOW MORE

Zuma, South Africa’s president between 2009 and 2018, resigned amid allegations of endemic corruption across government and state-run companies. He was succeeded by his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa.

The former president was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2021 after refusing to testify during a financial corruption investigation but was freed on medical parole after two months.

SAM’S VIEW

Zuma is an effective political performer who remains influential, despite having been widely discredited over alleged state capture during his time in power. His credentials as an apartheid era freedom fighter, combined with an easy charm — for example, he has a great singing voice that he used to great effect when campaigning — can make Ramaphosa seem wooden in comparison. And Ramaphosa’s strongest feature, his record as a successful businessman, hasn’t been reflected in his handling of the economy.

The former president’s continued influence was clear in the riots of July 2021 that gripped several cities, killing at least 70 people, which followed him being jailed. The unrest was widely considered to have been orchestrated by the former president. While his influence has waned since then, his impact may be felt more in one of South Africa’s nine provinces, KwaZuku Natal, where the ANC could fall below 50% in next year’s election. This is where Zuma has the most appeal and one of the provinces in which the ANC may be most vulnerable.

The good news for the ANC is that the ex-president’s support for Umkhonto we Sizwe could help to split the opposition vote by taking supporters from the Economic Freedom Fighters, a Marxist party led by a firebrand Julius Malema, and the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), which is the largest opposition party.

Demand for oil is expected to increase across the world in 2024, with the highest increases occurring in the Middle East, India and China, according to the OPEC cartel of oil producing countries. The U.S. alone will account for the largest share (19.5%) of the 104.4 million barrels per day of global oil demand, while China will demand 16.7 million barrels per day. Africa’s demand is forecast to be 4.63 million barrels per day.

OPEC’s expectation of increased demand is based on “resilient global GDP growth, amid continued improvements in economic activity in China,” especially manufacturing and transportation. But 2024 oil consumption in OECD countries — the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific — will still be below 2019 levels, says OPEC. The decline from pre-pandemic years follows increasing international pressure for the end of fossil fuels. An agreement reached last week at the end of the COP28 meeting in Dubai called for a “transition away from fossil fuels.” However, following the landmark agreement, the hard part will be the actual process of transitioning away in the face of growing demand for oil and gas, reports Semafor’s climate and energy editor Tim McDonnell.

Semafor Africa will be on the ground at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, along with the rest of the Semafor Davos team, covering what’s happening on the main stages and lifting the curtain on what’s happening behind them.

Sign up to receive our pop-up newsletter: Semafor Davos (and if you’re flying to Zurich let us know so we can invite you to one of Semafor’s private convenings).

Tingo faces U.S. SEC charges

→ What happened? Dozy Mmobuosi, the founder of Tingo Group, which claims to operate agric and fintech businesses in three continents, was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with “massive fraud” on Monday (Dec. 18). The SEC alleged that Nigeria-born Mmobuosi had engaged in a scheme since 2019 “to inflate the financial performance metrics” of three U.S.-based entities that form the Tingo Group. The SEC published a 72-page complaint filed at the U.S. district court for the Southern District of New York demanding a jury trial.

→ What’s the most damning claim? Part of the SEC’s statement read: “Tingo Group’s fiscal year 2022 Form 10-K filed in March 2023 reported a cash and cash equivalent balance of $461.7 million in its subsidiary Tingo Mobile’s Nigerian bank accounts. In reality, those same bank accounts allegedly had a combined balance of less than $50 as of the end of fiscal year 2022.” The SEC also alleged that Tingo’s customer base is fabricated, that Mmobuosi “fraudulently obtained hundreds of millions,” and has diverted money for spending on luxury cars and private jet travels.

→ Wait, did you say $50? Yes, just $50.

→ What does Tingo say for itself? Tingo group, which is listed on the NASDAQ exchange, says it is profitable as a group. Tingo came to prominence in February 2022 when Bloomberg reported that the company was looking to raise $500 million and was already valued at $6.3 billion. The group claims that it has a commodity export business in Dubai, an insurance brokerage with 130 offices in China, and 12 million Nigerian rural farmers as customers. Mmobuosi was also in contention to buy a British football club earlier this year.

→ When did the SEC start looking into Tingo? The securities regulator suspended trading of Tingo’s NASDAQ shares in November, citing “questions and concerns” surrounding the company. But the fuse had been lit in June after Hindenburg Research, the New York-based short seller, branded Tingo “an obvious scam” in a report. Tingo’s response to that report was that “its financial results are accurately reported within its financial statements and its SEC filings.”

→ What happens next? The SEC wants to obtain an order that would freeze Mmobuosi’s assets, and subsequent judgments that would ensure he and his entities were stripped of money made from the alleged multi-year scheme. Three members of the SEC’s New York office are leading the litigation.

The Sahara Desert supported grassy woodland, rivers and lakes in what is now Libya, Niger, Chad and Mali in a period around 6,000 to 11,000 years ago, according to climatological evidence. Those findings are supported by artwork in Algeria’s Tassili N’Ajjer plateau — Africa’s largest national park — which include over 15,000 etchings and paintings that depict wooded savannah ecosystems in what is now the Sahara. A team of climate scientists have found new evidence that shows the Sahara desert “greened” approximately every 21,000 years over the past eight million years using a climate model that simulates atmospheric circulation over the Sahara and the impacts of vegetation on rainfall. The climate modelers established that the strong West African Monsoon system and a shift of the African rainbelt northwards increased rainfall, resulting in the spread of savannah and wooded grassland across the desert from the tropics to the Mediterranean.

• Democrats bet big on influencers in the run up to the 2024 election. But will it be enough to save Joe Biden?
• A fight over how to cover Trump breaks out at The Messenger, a news organization launched with a plan to find an elusive center of media and politics.
• The U.S. is considering striking Yemen Houthi’s militia, Jay Solomon reports, balancing their attacks on Israel with the threat of a widening war.

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