Six on History: Africa Today
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"After activists in South Africa demanded to see details of their government's contracts with Johnson & Johnson and other pharmaceutical companies, under which locally-bottled vaccines were to be shipped to the West, the European Commission announced it was reviewing the agreement initiated by its vaccine procurement office.
The agreement also drew criticism from Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who said he was 'stunned' to hear that vaccines produced in South Africa were being shipped to Europe. The 'divide between the haves and have nots will only grow larger if manufacturers and leaders prioritise booster shots over supply to low- and middle-income countries,' he said.
The row over the deal shows the [complete failure and moral bankruptcy of capitalist, "market-driven" responses to a global pandemic?] economies complexity of global pharmaceutical supply chains and the lack of effective policy to address the chronic vaccine shortage in developing countries.
On 19 August the European Commission said it had temporarily amended arrangements under which it would use a vaccine plant in South Africa to bottle or 'fill and finish' Covid-19 vaccines that are being imported into Europe. An official said the arrangements were necessary because of supply chain problems in the United States.
The deal was the first contract for Covid-19 vaccines to be processed and finished in Africa; it was meant to have been part of a wider plan by the European Union to promote international investment in vaccine hubs across the continent. But as news leaked out about the arrangement, it quickly became a political problem for the EU, South Africa and the companies involved.
Part of the problem is the low level of vaccination delivery to Africa. Earlier this month, an EU document revealed that around 4% of the 200 million Covid-19 vaccines promised had been delivered to African states.
Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused the EU of a 'neo-colonial attitude', adding that because of vaccine oversupply for wealthy nations, 45 out of 54 African countries would miss their September target of vaccinating 10% of their citizens. The EU's approach is mirrored in Britain and the United States.
At the heart of the crisis is the reluctance of the world's biggest economies in the G20 to implement the IMF's $50bn plan to finance global coordination of production and distribution of vaccines with clear schedules for 2021 and 2022 (AC Dispatches 06/08/21, Europe's economies race to look good).
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2022
https://www.africa-confidential.com
"An historic mobilization of the Malian people by the hundreds of thousands in support of the transitional government in Mali and against the severe economic sanctions and implied military threats imposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) created an outpouring of Pan-African solidarity throughout the continent on Jan. 14.
Mass rallies and marches occurred throughout Mali. The largest, in the capital Bamako, with a population of over 3 million, was livestreamed. Live time comments indicate it was watched throughout Africa. Other demonstrations took place in Timbuktu, Kadiolo and Bougouni.
The sanctions were announced Jan. 9 in Accra, Ghana, and include the closure of land and air borders, suspension of financial transactions and the freezing of Malian state assets in ECOWAS central and commercial banks. The sanctions were quickly backed by the U.S., France and the European Union (EU). China and Russia in turn blocked imperialist attempts to have the United Nations Security Council endorse the sanctions.
ECOWAS wants elections to be held by February 2022, while the transitional government says it needs more time to stabilize the country.
Mali is a landlocked, former French colony, whose largest export is gold. The most populated region of the country lies in the Sahel region of Africa on the southern border of the Sahara desert.
The 2011 U.S./NATO war on Libya resulted in the transfer of vast amounts of military weapons into the region from Libyan government stockpiles. In a complicated situation, previous Malian governments then lost control of the region to various armed groups — some with legitimate grievances and some with unknown agendas. Assistance from other countries was requested.
More than 10 years later, Mali is still occupied by thousands of foreign troops. The EU has hundreds of troops under the Swedish-led Takuba Task Force. France has thousands of troops in its Operation Barkhane. There is also the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) with around 16,000 military, police and civilian personnel. Still there is no peace and security for the Malian people in the Sahel.
Popular coup d’etat wants France out of Mali
On May 24, 2021, a new government came to power in Mali through nontraditional means — a military coup d’etat. Led by the extremely popular Colonel Assimi Goita, who is currently the President of Mali and the Chairman of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People of Mali, it has been attempting to rally the country to take control of its own destiny. It appears to be making progress — perhaps too much for the imperialists and those who follow their lead.
The Malian people want France and the EU out of the country. The Malian Armed Forces, while small, are preparing to take control of the situation in the Sahel. When Russian military trainers were brought in to replace French advisors, alarm bells went off in the imperialist camp. Sanctions soon followed, fronted by ECOWAS.
The day after sanctions were announced, neighboring Guinea in an act of solidarity stated that it would refuse to apply the ECOWAS sanctions. Speaking on behalf of the Guinean government, Lt. Colonel Aminata Diallo stated, “Our air, land and sea frontiers stay open conforming to our Pan-African vision.” (youtu.be/ztYixk_N46E)
On Jan. 22 an International Day in Solidarity with Mali was called with actions in Bamako, Mali; Brazzaville, Congo; Cotonou, Benin; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Conakry, Guinea; Niamey, Niger; and Cayenne, French Guiana; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Berlin; Brussels; Paris; London; Milan; and Barcelona. A mobilization in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, was banned by the government.
Watching the Jan. 14 livestream from Bamako was incredibly inspiring. Well-known Malian political activist Adama Ben Diarra, wearing his trademark cap with a Cuban flag and the image of Che Guevara, began his keynote speech leading chants by tens of thousands at Independence Square: “Down with imperialism!” “Down with France!” Down with colonialism!” and “Down with racism!”
And Interim Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga addressed the crowd speaking for the government and observed, “All of Africa is watching Mali today. To some extent, the fate of Africa is being played out in Mali today.” (AFP Jan.15, 2022)"
"On January 12, the Washington Post’s John Hudson published an article detailing the Biden administration’s decision to continue supporting French counterterrorism operations in the Sahel region of Africa — despite the unsuccessful nature of those operations over the last decade.
After deploying troops to northern Mali in 2013 to chase jihadists [mostly soldiers and arms emanating from the disastrous Franco-American decision --Sarkozy, Blair, Obama, Sec. Clinton, but officially led by NATO, the folks who defend Europe and N. America, was to launch a regime change war against the Gaddafi government in Libya, which immediately led to a murderous Libyan Civil War Operation Odyssey Dawn that began in Spring 2011 and ... well, it's pretty much yet to be resolved] out of major cities, the French transitioned to a region-wide counterterrorism mission, Operation Barkhane, in 2014. Barkhane’s future is unclear amid a partial force reduction and French President Emmanuel Macron’s June announcement that the mission was ending. Despite those moves, Barkhane continues to conduct operations at a fairly rapid tempo, and the French are simultaneously building up a pan-European special forces unit called Task Force Takuba. French officials had also threatened to cut off operations in Mali if Malian authorities brought in Russian assistance in the form of Wagner Group mercenaries. The junta there had approached the Russians after the French announced it would be reducing its own troops there under Barkhane by half.
The Biden administration’s decision to continue providing logistical and intelligence support for French operations in the Sahel, Hudson reports, was undertaken as part of a wider diplomatic overture following a completely unrelated U.S.-French dispute over who would sell submarines to Australia. The U.S.-United Kingdom-Australia trilateral security pact known as AUKUS, announced in September 2021, involves U.S. and UK support to Australia for nuclear-powered submarines— an agreement that undercut a 2016 French-Australian contract for diesel-electric submarines. In response to AUKUS, France recalled its ambassador from Washington for what may have been the first time ever. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the pact — and what the French saw as American and British undercutting of core French economic interests — “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.” The resulting tensions left Washington scrambling to find other areas where they could mollify the French, and its decision to provide assistance in the Sahel appears to be one of them."
"Early on Sunday morning, Ebrima Dukureh, 60, answered a phone call at his home in the Gambian town of Allunhari.
It was his nephew, Haji Dukureh, 49, calling from New York City, to check in – as he often did. The two men caught up on news, asked after each other’s families and exchanged blessings.
“May God protect us, may God give us peace,” they prayed.
When the call dropped out after a few minutes, Haji sent a voice note: “I might be delayed sending back money, but if you need anything or there is an emergency, tell me immediately, don’t wait.”
It was the last time Ebrima would hear his voice.
Later that night, a fire tore through the Bronx apartment block where Haji lived, killing him, his wife, Haja, and three children, as well as 13 others.
Eight of the victims were children, and most of them had intimate links to families in this tiny West African country. Sunday night’s tragedy in New York has plunged communities on both sides of the Atlantic into grief and consternation.
Haji had lived in New York for 17 years, and was one of many Gambians – most with roots in Allunhari and another town, Soma – who lived in the block at 333 East 181st Street. The 19-storey building had since the 1980s been a landing spot for Gambians and other West Africans seeking a better life in the US.
And in a culture where personal success also means success for the family and wider community, Haji had stayed in close contact after he emigrated.
Most families in Allunhari survive on limited means, reliant on farming – and remittances from sons, daughters, husbands and wives who have left to seek their fortunes in other African countries or farther afield.
Bronx fire victims Haji Dukureh and his 13-ear-old son, Mustapha. Photograph: Family photoPointing to a stack of rice sacks in a store that Haji had paid for earlier this month, Ebrima said that his nephew sent money every month for food, school fees and other expenses.
“He was obedient, he was always reaching out to me, helping the family,” he said.
Haji earned modest wages doing “night-time work” in New York, said Ebrima, but he also sent money to extended family members and even neighbours when they held celebrations.
Such payments can have an outsized impact in a country where about 48% of the population live in poverty, according to the UN. According to the Gambia’s central bank, remittances to the country are worth 20% of its GDP.
The fire has stunned the people of Allunhara. There has been no official declaration of mourning, but grief from the deaths has gripped the entire town.
Televisions were muted and groups of people sat in the shade in a sombre mood. Along the roadside, where pounding music normally blares from loudspeakers, welders worked in silence.
“Such a thing has never happened here,” said one passerby. “Entire families perishing – when have we witnessed that?”
Fatoumata Tunkara with her sons. Photograph: Family photoIn Soma, a few hours to the west, well-wishers streamed into the compound of the Tunkara family. Some brought food, money or gifts. Others just sat and remembered 41-year-old Fatoumata Tunkara and her 13-year-old son, Omar, who both died in the fire.
Aji Mama Tunkara, 71, pulled out fraying photographs of her sister, in Soma, where she was born, and in New York, where she moved about 20 years ago.
Fatoumata had also helped the family, sending monthly remittances, which helped their lives improve.
“She was the pillar of the family. I spoke to her hours before she died,” said Tunkara. “But now it seems our situation will get worse.”
Fatoumata, who worked two jobs in New York, did not live in the building where the blaze occurred but her childminder looked after Omar there, said Jaha Dukureh, a prominent human rights activist who was born in Soma and now lives in Atlanta.
“When she went to pick him up it was very late so she decided to stay – and then the fire happened,” Dukureh said.
“It’s important to highlight that she had two daughters, two sons and she was all her kids had,” she said. “The people who died aren’t people who lived a luxurious life. It’s really sad to see them living in such conditions and dying in the way that they did.”
Jaha Dukureh, who campaigned to have female genital mutilation banned in her home country, said that support from the Gambian community – both in the US and abroad – has been profound. But she added that the families affected by the blaze would need much more help.
Fatoumata’s daughter had set up a GoFundMe page for donations, Dukureh said, to look after her siblings, now living with a relative.
For many Gambians, the Bronx felt like a home away from home.
“The community has everything that you need: you have the African stores, the products. You can’t step outside without speaking to your people. That’s what makes this place a place you’d want to come to. It’s also what makes this a tragedy.”
In Soma and Allunhar, there were mixed feelings about whether the bodies of their relatives should be returned to the Gambia to be buried or buried in New York.
“Bringing the corpses to Allunhari will be more devastating because we have never witnessed such a tragedy,” said Haji Dakureh’s aunt Aja Musa Njie. “The vacuum left behind by Haji cannot be filled by anyone.”
"Growing at unprecedented rates, and shaped by forces both familiar and new, dozens of African cities will join the ranks of humanity’s biggest megalopolises between now and 2100.
Researchers created three population models to account for different paths of development African countries might take this century, and in all of them, African cities outpaced the rest of the world’s cities in growth.
In each of the following five African cities, we examine common themes — migration, inequality, foreign investment, conflict and planning — that underlie this transformation across the continent.
- Lagos, Nigeria: Set to become the world’s most populous city, Lagos faces all the challenges rapid growth poses, which can be boiled down to one: planning. Can solutions outpace the weight tens of millions of new inhabitants will place on a city that is low-slung and dense, situated on polluted lagoons and rivers, and short on public services? Jump to city.
- Khartoum, Sudan: Unstable states like Sudan crumble first in their hinterlands, and in those moments of crisis, cities are beacons of safety, places for people to regroup, build new identities and forge political movements — even revolutions — that aim to bring peace back to places they had to abandon. Jump to city.
- Kinshasa, Congo: In a city whose geography still reflects segregationist colonial-era planning, where a handful of oligarchs lead gilded lives while the poor navigate systems broken by corruption and neglect, we get a glimpse of what it takes to break inequality’s shackles. Jump to city.
- Mombasa, Kenya: The designs of foreign powers have molded African cities for centuries, especially along the continent’s coasts. From narrow-alleyed old towns to gleaming new container-shipping terminals, port cities like this one are layered with evidence of how budding empires, in the Arab world, Europe and now China, sought to remake them. Jump to city.
- Abidjan, Ivory Coast: Despite fearmongering that Africa’s growing population will flood into wealthier parts of the world, cosmopolitan cities like this one draw most of Africa’s migrants and serve as models of tolerance, welcoming immigration policies and a reinvigorated Pan-African identity. Jump to city.
On a new expressway in the city on track to become the world’s most populous, Abolaji Surajuddin lurches his packed minibus forward in traffic. Then he switches off the ignition for the 10th time in 10 minutes. It will take him three hours to travel 15 miles.
He’s driving one of nearly 100,000 decrepit “danfo” buses in Lagos — the main means of public transport — all of them decades-old hand-me-downs from wealthier countries.
Surajuddin’s ancient Volkswagen Transporter, its bare wooden benches packed with 20 weary commuters, shudders as he turns it off.
Humidity sets in.
Hawkers encircle, selling small plastic packets of water.
Passengers sigh.
“This is every day,” one says, when a reporter turns around and looks at her with a sympathetic face. “This. Is. Every. Day,” she repeats.
The traffic is a manifestation of what Lagosians fear most for their city: There is no plan. Lagos will balloon to 30 million, then 50 million, maybe even 100 million people, and meanwhile the government will keep unveiling new visions for the city that never come to fruition. Many doubt even its simplest promises, such as the impending inauguration of a single subway line that was supposed to open a decade ago.
That’s why the small talk in this city isn’t about weather. It’s about traffic. The horror stories aren’t of bad jams; they’re of the times the “go-slow” became a “no-go” and everyone just left their cars in the road, figuring they would fetch them once the day’s obstructions — a flooded patch of road, a broken-down truck — were cleared.
“Maybe the government has tried to improve traffic, but we can’t see it,” Surajuddin says. “Because what good is a road if all you do is fight every day for an inch of space on it?”
He kicks the Transporter back into gear and focuses on the tasks at hand: maneuver wisely, don’t dent someone, conserve fuel.
“Yes, I am tired. My brain is tired, my hands are tired, my soul is tired. I am tired of this city,” the 39-year-old says. “But I am feeding my family.”
When demographers predict a city’s size far into the future, they seek to create growth models that account for variables such as shifting levels of education, family planning, climate change and migration.
In other words, values for political choices can be plugged into population-growth algorithms to change the outcome.
No matter how the values are tweaked, though, Lagos emerges as the world’s most populous city at some point between now and 2100, in study after study. Changing the inputs affects only how soon and by how much.
Lagos is already enormous, but no one is sure how many people live there. City officials say there are at least 20 million residents; the United Nations puts the number at a more modest 15 million — still nearly double New York City’s population.
Every new Lagosian has their own reason for coming here: fleeing poverty, fleeing conflict, fleeing family burdens, perhaps. The birthrate in Nigeria — one of the world’s highest — means the city also grows rapidly on its own.
“There’s no exact science” for determining the city’s population, said Taibat Lawanson, a professor of urban planning at the University of Lagos. She explained that most Nigerians go to ancestral villages for census counts, even though they live in Lagos most of the time. A huge proportion of the city’s residents are itinerant laborers who sleep in different locations from week to week, making census questions about household size irrelevant.
“If anything, Lagos’s population is probably higher than anyone gives it credit for,” she said.
A study published last year in the Lancet forecasts that Nigeria will become more populous than China by the end of the century, as birthrates rapidly shrink in some parts of the world — East Asia, eastern and southern Europe, the Caribbean — and level off in others, such as the United States, which is projected to have a similar population in 2100 as now.
Most of Africa’s population will continue to grow rapidly this century. Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania are all forecast to join Nigeria among the 10 most populous countries by 2100. North Africa and southern Africa, while continuing to grow, will do so at much lower rates than the rest of the continent.
Unlike China and Vietnam, which have imposed limits on the number of children families could have during periods of rapid growth, no African governments have attempted large-scale population control, although many do promote family planning.
In three projections by the University of Toronto’s Global Cities Institute, Africa accounted for at least 10 of the world’s 20 most populous cities in 2100. Even in the institute’s middle-of-the-road development scenario, cities that many Americans may seldom read about, such as Niamey, Niger, and Lusaka, Zambia, eclipse New York City in growth.
Depictions of Lagos in the news often focus on poverty; the urban landscape is frequently reduced to Makoko, a singular slum that sits on stilts above the city’s huge lagoon, where members of a local fishing community smoke their catch before distributing it.
Makoko slum in Lagos is built on stilts and was founded as a fishing village in the 19th Century.
But Makoko accounts for less than 1 percent of Lagos’s population. More than half the city’s residents live in what Lagosians call “face-me-I-face-you” housing, where space is so tight that several people sleep in the same room, either back to back or facing one another.
That is what most Lagosians can afford — in part because services such as water and sewage, which in other countries are subsidized by the government, are controlled in Lagos by private companies that often overcharge for what they provide.
Ayandele Olushola, 39, nearly lost his livelihood when okadas were banned in 2020. Every governor of Lagos in the past two decades has attempted a ban.
“The people who govern this city are brutes, banning this and that left and right,” said Olushola, who, like countless others, pays off police officers to continue working. “We are providing a service that millions of people need 24/7. There is no alternative except to walk, and they ban us.”
Lindsay Sawyer, a researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute who has written extensively about Lagos, said many of the city’s problems stem from the fact that nothing is really public.
“Can we accept the reality that there will likely never be those centralized services? Why push for metro lines when you can work with the danfo organizations? Why criminalize reliable services instead of formalizing them?” Sawyer said in a recent phone call. “They’re not working with urban realities, perhaps because they’re not living in them.”
Olushola and his roommate Samson Odunlami, 30, a baker, share a face-me-I-face-you room with three others in a relatively common arrangement: all men, all paying slightly different rates depending on who sleeps on the room’s single mattress vs. the couch, or the rattan mat on the floor.
The aim is to save up and get out.
“I am very sure about my savings — 5 percent every year. In nine years, I will be able to afford a place with my family in Surulere,” said Odunlami, referring to a relatively better-off neighborhood where families, instead of groups of men, often take up single rooms.
But won’t Lagos have millions more people in nine years, and won’t it be more expensive — have you factored that in?
His earlier optimism disappeared, and he switched into Nigerian Pidgin English, his more comfortable language.
“God no dey promise future,” he said. “If you dey come give am ticket to leave this here country, I will disappear o. I will not even stop home for pick my bag.”
The prevalence of face-me-I-face-you housing means the heads of many Lagosian families live separately in single-sex quarters. It also means children often live outside the city with grandparents, while their parents work to afford an entire room they can share.
“I see my kids every three months,” said Saidat Bunmi Ayanwole, 37, who sells plastic kitchenware on the street in downtown Lagos. She pays roughly $3 a week to sleep in a room nearby. She said her husband never visits the kids, who are with her mother.
Despite the challenges, millions continue to pour into Lagos from the rest of Nigeria.
“You can get started in Lagos with practically nothing if you are willing to live on the street,” Lawanson said. “Come in on a truck. Buy a broken basket. Use it to transport goods. Use the money to buy a wheelbarrow — there’s a ready market for that kind of labor.”
But Lawanson and other researchers cautioned against believing wholesale in projections of 80 million or even 100 million people in greater Lagos. Not because that’s infeasible, but because the city is already so strained, there’s no guarantee that people will continue to find the kind of economic opportunity that draws them here now.
“These projections are based on people not leaving Lagos as it falls apart,” Lawanson said. Stuck in traffic herself, she canceled an in-person interview and instead spoke by video call from her car, horns blaring and hawkers shouting right outside her window.
“We are not worried,” said Idris Salako, commissioner of the Urban Development Ministry for Lagos’s state government.
Salako talks about new jetties being built to make ferry travel across the lagoon easier and gets animated about removing the pesky roundabout junctions built in less-populous times.
But in a city where the first and only major bridge over the lagoon was built decades ago, his assurance that not one but five more are being planned is scoffed at by many Lagosians — as are the four metro lines he says are “in the pipeline.”
“Danfo and okada are menaces, and we will gradually be rid of them,” Salako said of the transport that not only ferries nearly all the city’s millions but employs millions as well.
The unavoidable problem is budget. Nigeria spends 75 percent of its annual budget on civil servant salaries and other costs, leaving little for infrastructure projects. Lagos state has higher tax revenue than any other in Nigeria, but collection is still abysmally low.
Without new infrastructure to keep up with the growth, it now takes longer to cross Lagos from one edge to the other in a danfo than it does to fly to Lagos from Europe. Lyrics written half a century ago by Fela Kuti, the legendary Lagosian king of Afrobeat, still ring true: “Before-before Lagos traffic na special, eh / Number one special all over the world / You go get PhD for driving for Lagos, eh.”
It’s going to take more than master plans to keep Lagos from imploding, Lawanson says. And like Sawyer, she says the solutions already exist in the creative ways Lagosians have adapted to a city where traffic and face-me-I-face-you are facts of life. Rather than restricting those practices, adapting them for rapid growth needs to be at the center of the plan, she says — not an imitative subway system or dredged-up land on which luxury apartments can be built.
