Africa Up Close

South African agricultural workers plant cabbage seedlings on a farm in Rustenburg. Photo courtesy of Solidarity Center via Flickr Commons.

South Africa has emerged as the African continent’s preeminent economic powerhouse by making laudable strides in addressing the social, political, and economic remnants of apartheid. However, the tacitly polarizing issue of land-ownership has, once again, reopened the nation’s old wounds. As outlined in Section 25 of South Africa’s constitution, the state maintains constitutional rights to expropriate land “for a public purpose or in the public interest.” Recent deliberations on amending Section 25 to allow land confiscation without compensation, however, has garnered diverging reactions from the South African public as well as political parties. Putting aside the social and political implications of such a landmark decision, the economic effects of the policy would lead to an eventual collapse of South African markets and financial systems.

On March 21, 2018, close to 50 African Union (AU) Member States signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement during the 10th Extraordinary Summit of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Kigali, Rwanda. Photo courtesy of the Government of South Africa via Flickr Commons.

The operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement was launched in July 2019 amidst excitement and a sense of hope, and rightly so. AfCFTA, which is on course to become the largest free trade area in the world is an agreement among 54 African nations for the creation of a single continental market for goods and services, in addition to the free movement of persons, labor, and investment geared towards a customs union. Its purpose is expanding intra-African trade through harmonized and well-coordinated trade facilitation regimes. It also aims to harmonize trade instruments across the Regional Economic Communities (RECs).

Local fishermen at Lake Victoria, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Ryan Harvey via Flickr Commons. 

Migingo, an island roughly the size of a football pitch on Lake Victoria, has been a site of contention between Kenya and Uganda, due to the large fish population found in the surrounding freshwaters. As populations increase, environmental degradation and pollution put pressure on the flora and fauna in the lake basin, creating a natural resource conflict time bomb. East African countries, especially Kenya and Uganda, are witnessing diminishing returns in fish and related products, leading to rising competition for the increasingly scarce natural resources.

Tomato farmers from USAID’s Tanzania Agriculture Productivity Program in Tanzania. Photo courtesy of USAID via Flickr Commons. 

There are some 40 countries that can easily enter in the category of fragile states today, and a good number of them are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are countries with weak governance or institutional incapacity. They fail to carry out some critical governance functions such as ensuring the security of their populations and territory, maintaining the rule of law, and delivering key public services. Life in fragile or weak states is marked by endemic corruption, bad governance, political instability, insecurity, rampant poverty, hunger, high (child) mortality rates, social and political unrest, etc. As time goes by in such an environment, populations and communities tend to have their resilience eroded. They become particularly vulnerable to a range of shocks without the ability to face them adequately. Violence, conflicts, and sometimes the breakdown of institutions start to factor in.

Factory workers produce shirts for overseas clients. Photo courtesy of the World Bank via Flickr Commons.

What are the perceptions of African workers in Chinese firms? How do these perceptions relate to media criticism of Chinese labor practices and the spirited defense of African leadership and Chinese investors against such criticism? For employees that extol Chinese employment, is their position informed by genuine satisfaction, or is it a case of ‘either this or nothing’? These questions inspired me to interview a group of workers in a Chinese-owned retail firm in Kamwala Market in Lusaka—Zambia’s capital city. I also interviewed representatives of workers in a Chinese-run ceramics plant in Kenya. I will test my findings against a 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report about China’s labor practices in Zambia.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed alongside military commanders. Photo courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia via Wikipedia Commons. 

Ethiopia has undergone some crucial political development since the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition elected a new prime minister. Among other achievements, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ended a 20-year conflict with neighboring Eritrea, freed thousands of political prisoners, unfettered the media, and appointed women to 50 percent of cabinet positions. In addition to that, Parliament accepted his female nominees for president and head of the Supreme Court.

Wind turbines at Lake Turkana Wind Power in Loiyangalani District, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Lake Turkana Wind Power. 

In northern Kenya, the tall, white wind turbines of the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project conspicuously stand out against the brown landscape. As Africa’s largest wind energy power plant and the largest private investment in Kenya to date, the project is a milestone. Not only can LTWP generate up to 310MW and provide around 17 percent of the country’s installed energy capacity, but it also marks another achievement toward Kenya’s goal of green energy reliance. Kenya has already demonstrated itself as a global leader in renewable energy development, with approximately 70 percent of its installed capacity coming from renewable sources.

President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar at the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ACRSS). Photo courtesy of UNMISS via Flickr Commons.

The signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ACRSS) on September 12, 2018, has led to relative peace in South Sudan. Mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—a regional economic and security bloc—South Sudanese policymakers recently extended the ‘pre-transitional’ period until November 2019 before forming the transitional government of national unity. Given the few months remaining before this new deadline, there are serious concerns that many key tasks remain to be addressed: namely, the issue of the number and boundaries of provinces/states, violent conflicts, a single national army, and securing the funding necessary for implementing the peace agreement. These cumulative factors hamper the peace process, foreshadowing future outbreaks of violence.

President Cyril Ramaphosa co-chairs the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Photo courtesy of the South African government via Flickr Commons. 

The narrative regarding China’s presence in most African countries has been dominated by views of the Chinese as the new colonialists of Africa, finding strategic new ways to exploit Africans and their resources.[i] However, this discourse is narrow, emphasizing state-led investments in Africa, and does not account for growing Sino-African relations at the grassroots level and socio-cultural dynamics. In East African countries such as Kenya, growing numbers of independent Chinese migrants are settling throughout the country and influencing the lives and communities of Kenyans. The implications of uncovering these stories and the cultural interactions between Chinese migrants and African publics at the grassroots levels are two-fold. First, focusing on the socio-cultural aspects of China-Africa relations expands the debate from economics and trade to determining how exactly cultural exchange can also fuel Africa’s development. Second, this analysis allows for a more nuanced understanding of the different forms of Chinese involvement in Kenya. Chinese migrants in Kenya form a distinct community. Not only are they seen in most spheres of Kenyan society, but they also assert their values and practices through different social and cultural means. The proliferation of the Chinese language, food, and work ethic, and a rise in interracial relationships are the most notable sociocultural impacts experienced by the vast majority of Kenyans, in cities such as Nairobi and more rural regions such as Kirinyaga County.[ii]

Nobel Square in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo courtesy of FedericoLukkini via Flickr Commons. 

On the 18th of July, the cavalry came to Cape Town.

In a surprise move, the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) arrived in Manenberg and began conducting search and seizure operations—their mission—combating the startling rise of gang-related violence in Cape Town.