It is  not every day I get cajoled to sing happy birthday to President Robert Mugabe.

The old man, guest of honour at an African tourism conference in Harare last week, looked pleased as the praise singers that surrounded him (otherwise known as government officials) cranked out the ‘happy birthday’ tune to mark his 86^th birthday, exhorting, with limited success, the delegates to take part.

Continue reading Zanu-PF snookers MDC on indigenisation law

IN 2008, after months of delays, the Zambian government finally gave in to public pressure to capture a greater share of profits from the commodity boom by introducing a windfall tax on minerals, raising mining royalties and hiking corporate taxes.

The measures, which came into effect in the April 2008 national budget, raised the effective tax rate from about 30% to 47%. The move raised a howl of protest from mining companies, which said it violated investment agreements with the government.
Continue reading Zambia and the gap between rhetoric and reality in Africa

OFFICIAL discussions about how to manage traffic and people through Africa’s busiest border post — Beitbridge — have been going on for at least a decade. And yet, every major holiday begets horror stories about the experience of trying to move through this border crossing. This past Christmas season was no exception. In fact, with the mass flight of Zimbabweans to SA, the situation has become worse.

Delays of several hours for holiday- makers were commonplace. Cars queued for kilometres from the immigration buildings on either side of the border, touts milled through the crowds soliciting bribes, and the sun beat down on the crowds in one of the hottest places in the region.
Continue reading Costly Beitbridge chaos could be solved with right political will

SABMILLER ’s two main competitors in Nigeria, Guinness and Heineken, make nearly as much in that market as SA’s brewing giant makes in 24 other African countries, excluding SA.

This startling fact was disclosed by an SABMiller Africa executive at a recent SA-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce event. He maintains that for all the challenges of the Nigerian market, if companies do not have a Nigeria strategy, they do not really have an Africa strategy.
Continue reading Decade of success and missed chances between SA and Nigeria

Business Day / Published: 26 October 2009

A GREEN revolution, like any other revolution, takes real leadership; it requires an acknowledgement that food production is a life-and-death matter, a Vietnamese academic told an agricultural conference I attended in Hanoi last week.
Feeding a nation was not possible without a clear and decisive strategy, he said. Vietnam has proved that it knows a thing or two about producing food, for not only its people but a good chunk of the globe. Its own green revolution allowed it to move from being a net food importer to one of the world’s biggest exporters in certain crops.

Continue reading Poor leadership sows the seeds of African agricultural failure

Published on Business Day Newspaper: 12 October 2009

Most people would not be able to find Guinea on a map – until the recent slaughter and rape of dozens of people in the streets of the capital, that is.

As the horror was splashed across the world’s media, the rulers of this West African nation tried to distance themselves, and the army they command, from the massacre.

The regime, which seized power in a coup d’etat last year after the death of dictator Lansana Conte,, is trying to sell the army as the saviour of this blighted nation.

The African Union, confronted by these unfortunate events, has been in discussions with coup leader, Moussa Dadis Camara, in an attempt to force an early election. The organisation has extracted a promise that no coup leaders will stand for election in return for keeping international sanctions from the door.

Published: 2009/09/28 06:28:29 AM

RETURNING to his country after an absence of more than a decade, a Nigerian friend said what had caught his eye first was the fact that Lagos had streetlights — and they worked. The streetlight project, which brings some light to a city of 15-million people, is one of the Lagos State governor’s early initiatives to start rolling back the decay of Nigeria’s commercial capital .
Continue reading Africans can start by focusing on the light

Business Day / Published 20 July 2009
ZIMBABWE is currently swamped by investor conferences. The perception of rich pickings at rock-bottom prices and the search for new capital by the public and private sectors have raised the business profile of a country no one wanted to visit a year ago. And despite the flaws of the unity government, the economy is starting to turn around.

The introduction of hard currency has been the biggest factor in restoring a sense of normality and is allowing companies to gear up for a new era. International companies that were forced to ring- fence their Zimbabwe operations as a result of hyperinflation are now bringing them back into the fold. Tongaat Hulett reports that it will include its Zimbabwe sugar operations in its financial statements this year as many of the distortions of macroeconomic fundamentals had been removed

Continue reading Zimbabwe business must build its integrity

New Statesman / Published 23 July 2009

The close relationship between South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, and the country’s powerful trade unions had the private sector and investors worried. Would the payback for union support of his campaign, which helped sweep him to victory in April, be a leap to the left for a carefully charted, investor-friendly economic policy? Would there be rampant state spending to appease poorer sections of the population, for which Zuma’s promise of poverty alleviation was the answer to their prayers?

Continue reading The enemy within

Business Day newspaper / Published 17 August 2009

When President Mwai Kibaki first came to power in Kenya in 2003 he put out an arrest warrant for the chief justice, among many other public officials, in a bid to stamp out a cancer that had taken hold of the country.

One of his first legislative acts was to publish three anti-corruption bills.

Continue reading A poison plant SA is allowing to take root