Africa

The number of stories and newsletters Semafor Africa published in 2023. Some of our best read stories were our scoops, including Sam Mkokeli’s exclusive from Johannesburg on a South African government probe into whether a local company delivered arms to Russia, and Martin’s story on how traders in Kenya are considering dumping M-Pesa due to rising costs. Alexis’ interview with a Karpowership executive revealed just how influential the Turkish energy company is on the continent and its expansion plans. And the evolving nature of African democracy wasn’t just about grabbing power through coups, but also about grabbing attention. That’s how to explain the fascinating story from Ghana of a masked candidate building a following before their big reveal in time for next year’s election.

The view from Washington

Just over a year ago the White House held its U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit with several diplomatic ceremonies. It was seen as the start of a major upgrade for Africa in America’s foreign policy priorities. At the peak of the events, President Joe Biden welcomed 49 African leaders in Washington D.C. and his team strongly suggested he would visit the continent by the end of 2023. But that visit never happened.

While most Africa watchers agree a presidential visit to a few African countries is mostly symbolic, with events unfolding in Ukraine’s war with Russia and then Israel’s deadly battle with Hamas, it’s starting to feel like Africa has dropped back down the U.S. priorities list.

Judd Devermont, the president’s special assistant on Africa affairs, rejects that view. He argues that though Biden didn’t visit, there was “an unprecedented pace of senior-level travel to Africa” visiting 26 countries this year. That included visits by Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Devermont also noted the U.S. has pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa over the next three years.

Ultimately, nobody in Africa demanded a U.S. presidential visit, said W. Gyude Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington and former Liberian minister. “But they promised it and there is always skepticism that when it comes to Africa that rhetoric always over-performs substance.”

The Biden administration is trying to position its bets in Africa as being worthwhile investments in themselves — but there should be little doubt it has an eye on China and, more recently, on Russia.

The recent visit by Angolan President João Lourenço was a reminder of the biggest U.S. bet in Africa — the $14 billion Lobito Corridor logistics project which connects Angola, DR Congo and Zambia. Biden is unlikely to conduct non-essential international trips in 2024 as it’s an election campaign year. But if there was one country he would visit, it could well be Angola, argues Peter Pham, a former U.S. special envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes Region. “While it would be good to get the president to visit Africa, ultimately what is more important is delivering significant strategic transformative programs like the Lobito Corridor, not social calls.”

— Yinka

This year will mark the first interruption of the decade-long run of consecutive annual increases in venture capital funding into Africa’s technology startups.

The funding total for this year is set to dip below last year’s peak of $5 billion, and 2021’s tally of $4.6 billion, according to data by Africa: The Big Deal, which tracks fundraising deals above $100,000. The total as of the end of November was $3.2 billion.

African startups’ ability to raise money has been a proxy for the health and stage of the tech ecosystem, as it is seen as a necessary catalyst for the economic and social value startups hope to create. Barring a handful of growth-stage companies like Paystack that have been sold for considerable sums, the continent’s landscape is still mostly a construction site of startups testing and proving their products. Annual increase in funding also signaled global investor interest and validation for the entrepreneurs building on the continent.

A year of scarce funding, therefore, has proven to be a harsh environment for most amidst macroeconomic headwinds. A wave of shutdowns, expected to worsen in 2024, has taken out startups in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, the continent’s biggest hub countries. Headcount cuts have been a recurring theme. In some cases, like the Kenyan commerce platform Twiga Foods, startups have survived but moved on from key founding members. Most analyses have spurred calls for better due diligence by investors, and for greater humility from founders seeking sky-high startup valuations.

— Alexander Onukwue

A difficult year for African democracy

The year 2023 will, for many, be remembered for coups. Niger’s coup in July was followed a month later by a putsch in Gabon. Those flashpoints, which followed military takeovers in recent years across the subregion, created a “coup belt” across the Sahel, with officers consolidating power in Chad, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. The deeper impact was that the validity of democracy was called into question across West and Central Africa.

In Niger, where many citizens had been battered by an Islamist insurgency or forced to pay higher food prices due to supply chain shocks caused by the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic, there was no clamor for the elected president when he was overthrown by the military.

Democratic principles were further undermined when Ali Bongo won a widely disputed presidential election in Gabon to retain power. The coup that removed him days later was welcomed in much of the country. That reflected findings by polling company Afrobarometer which show high levels of trust in the military in many countries — including a groundswell of support for those who remove leaders that abuse power — and a declining belief in the effectiveness of democracy.

The inability of West Africa’s regional body Ecowas to reverse the Nigerien coup through the threat of military intervention and economic sanctions have shown the subregion’s potential coup plotters that little would happen if they staged a putsch. And so there has been contagion with attempted coups in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau in recent months.

The democratic crisis has exposed the fragility of some leaders, such as those in Central Africa’s Congo Basin, where long-standing leaders and soldiers have watched coups unfold in neighboring countries. But, as Nigeria-based risk consultancy SBM Intelligence noted recently, seizing power is not the biggest challenge: “The regimes still have the onerous task of farming for their legitimacy by other means, which chiefly has to do with improving the lives of their people.”

— Alexis Akwagyiram

This was a big year for Chinese trains in Africa — but not always in the way you’d expect. In Ethiopia, Samuel Getachew reported from Addis Ababa on how the city’s Chinese-built light rail network was on the brink of collapse, with only a fifth of its trains still in service seven years after its launch and requiring a $60 million outlay to get things back on track (pardon the pun). Meanwhile over in Lagos, the Blue Line light rail built by China Civil Engineering Construction Co. launched in September to much acclaim from the state governor and his acolytes.

But Alexander Onukwue explained how everyday Lagosians and even officials were nervous about a similar outcome to Addis given Nigeria’s long-standing culture of poor maintenance and mismanagement. And in Kenya, where the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Nairobi to Mombasa is one of China’s most high-profile and expensive transport projects on the continent, President Ruto asked for up to $1 billion in financing from Beijing. Ruto wants to extend the line to the Uganda border as part of a wider transcontinental ambition but the Chinese haven’t responded.

Ruto has proposed a public-private partnership model that would see Chinese companies source funding to build and operate the railway to recoup their investment. If accepted, it’s an approach analysts say could become a popular model with African governments.

— Martin K. N. Siele

Reclaiming African heritage one artifact at a time

In July, U.S. representatives from Illinois State Museum visited Kenya’s coastal county of Kilifi for the official handover of 37 wooden memorial statues known as vigango to the Mijikenda community. The vigango, which hold infinite cultural and spiritual significance, were taken away from the community in the 1980s — a reminder that not all African artifacts were moved at the turn of the last century.

Ethiopia received artifacts that were looted during the Meqdala War of 1868 including the Holy Tabot tablet of Medhane Alem.

These artifacts’ returns are part of an ongoing global art repatriation movement, in which Western countries, museums and institutions are returning looted artifacts back to their countries of origin, many in Africa.

In 2017 French president Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Burkina Faso, pledged to return African looted treasures in French museums. Since then, other European countries have begun the process of returning looted objects. Last year, Germany returned to Nigeria 22 Benin Bronzes — and transferred ownership of about 121 Benin artifacts for some of the objects to remain in their museums on loan.

Namibia, Cameroon, Tanzania — whose objects Germany looted during the Maji Maji Rebellion — are also set to receive their artifacts after negotiations began, according to the Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

As the push to retrieve the lost treasures continues, heritage activists, art curators and academics debate Africa’s readiness to preserve the items. “African art belongs to Africa. The question of whether it will be valuable when returned is neither here nor there,” Peter Achayo, Nairobi-based art curator and founder of Africa Art Matters told Semafor Africa.

— Muchira Gachenge

The pop sounds of urban Africa maintained their hot streak in 2023 led by Afrobeats and its record breaking superstars including Burna Boy, Rema and Davido. They outperformed expectations on global streaming charts and lit up award shows. The strength of Afrobeats partly lies in its ability to influence artists beyond its traditional home markets of Nigeria and Ghana, such as Cameroonian-American singer Libianca (pictured), Malian-French star Aya Nakamura, and Congolese-French singer Dadju.

However, this year other African pop genres stepped into the international limelight. South Africa’s groovy, percussion-heavy Amapiano, in particular, made its mark. South African singer Tyla scored one of the biggest worldwide hits of the year with Water, which reached no.10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Afro Drill also gained international attention, with Nigeria’s Odumodublvck among the year’s break-out stars.

The payoff was the Grammys added a ‘Best African Music Performance’ category ahead of the 2024 awards, and the MTV VMAs also debuted an Afrobeats category.

— Martin K. N. Siele

• 2024 will be the year AI moves from hype to helpful, Semafor’s tech journalists write in their forecast for next year.
• Semafor asked experts in real estate, dealmaking, antitrust enforcement, and more for their 2024 forecasts .
• Fossil fuels ended 2023 with a bang, even as the pace of global decarbonization ramped up.

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