Social Media: Our world in Africa

There is no way one can have a conversation that doesn’t touch on the world of social media. Now Africa is experiencing more and cheaper bandwidth, combined with cheaper and increasingly versatile mobile devices have been inextricably linked to a universe of highly-functional and user-friendly platforms.

We have been catapulted into a new, digital dimension. It’s a bit like how Alice felt in “Alice in Wonderland”. However, this is no fairy tale. It’s real! People’s lives are changing – for the better, companies are adapting to this
digital dimension with more enthusiasm than fear and there is a tangible economic stimulus and business impact.

The period since mobile penetration figures became significant has been characterised by innovation and technology-driven value added services that are increasingly specifically tailored to meet the spending and consumption needs of African consumers.
For example, Kenyan-based Safaricom’s M-PESA has, through it’s mobile money transfer product, tapped into the “unbanked” portion of the population by taking advantage of the country’s high mobile penetration levels.

Around half of the world’s 2 billion Internet users have used some form of social media according to latest data. Africa has seen a 2357% growth in internet usage between 2000 and 2010 and Asia represents around 42% of the total internet population worldwide.

For the vast majority of Africans, social and other digital communications media are a daily part of life. One in four African
is a “heavy” social media user, meaning they use at least two different types of social media each and every day.

Many more Africans report a positive impact of social media use on their emotional well-being than a negative one. Most of them don’t think their use of social media affects their social and emotional well-being one way or the other.
But there are some who think that using social media does affect how they feel about themselves and their social situation.

Social media is taking Africa by storm with mobile phone subscriptions, internet and social media usage figures on the climb. Facebook is leading the way with high user numbers and Twitter is catching up with the most significant social networking recorded in the first half of 2011.

Some exciting figures show that there are presently about 120-million internet users and 32-million Facebook users in Africa. This is quite high when compared to only 18% of internet users in Asia are on Facebook.

Are we going there yet?

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Improving Ghana’s Business Climate

International press coverage tends to overemphasize the positives and downplay the real challenges Ghanaian entrepreneurs face. When I moved back home to Ghana from New York in 2004, less than 5 per cent of Ghanaians had bank accounts; banking was a cosy club of 18 actors with little incentive or appetite for the private sector.
This was unsurprising with a Government Treasury Bill rate as high as 42 per cent. Entrepreneurs lucky to be advanced credit could expect business-crippling interest rates—as high as 50 per cent at one point. Add to that an inflation rate of almost 24 per cent and you get a picture of how difficult it was to operate as a small- or medium-sized enterprise (SME) or entrepreneur—especially if you required credit.

Under the circumstances, only certain kinds of entrepreneur could thrive—service-oriented entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs with access to private finance.

The Ghanaian business landscape has changed tremendously since 2004. With a fall in the Treasury Bill rate to 23.02 per cent, the 26 banks have been forced to diversify, growing their balance sheets by other methods including private sector lending, even if at an average rate of 27 per cent.
However, the challenges, though diminished, remain —within them opportunities exist for government, development agencies and private equity firms to really help transform Ghana into a thriving environment for small business and entrepreneurship. I see four key areas that need attention: Access to credit, policy enforcement, infrastructure and the development of human capital.

Access to credit is still the toughest barrier to business operations and growth. Without a proper credit referencing system and adequate information about companies, industries and opportunities, banks find it difficult to make credit evaluations.
As a result banks treat entrepreneurs as an amorphous set and demand the same collateral package regardless of business sector or industry, instead of evaluating each proposal separately. It is near impossible for most SMEs to obtain credit from banks in Ghana without collateral.

As financing from development finance institutions (DFIs), and other commercial international sources, are a key part of financing for Ghanaian banks, given particularly low bank deposit levels as a percentage of GDP, these institutions could perhaps tie credit and debt investments in Ghanaian banks to a requirement to provide minimum levels of support to local entrepreneurs.

In addition, both domestic and international players should support the nascent credit referencing system and invest in systems to generate and disseminate useful data.

There is a gap between policies and laws on paper and what happens in practice. A review of government policies and laws reveal an impressive set of initiatives aimed at promoting private sector development but it is rare to see them in practice.

Linked to this is an unfriendly government machinery. The departments of government which entrepreneurs rely on to establish and operate their enterprises are perceived to be ‘entrepreneur-unfriendly’ and ‘anti-private sector’.
Officers who populate these institutions appear more concerned with unnecessary bureaucracy than facilitating the launching of new businesses. Many officers are also ill-prepared to provide the level of support that entrepreneurs require.

Despite significant investment in infrastructure, a lot more remains to be done to provide better quality roads, water and electricity to support businesses. For example, there are nascent initiatives in contract manufacturing and outsourced customer services,that require greater reliability from basic utility providers.

Given the lack of breadth in private enterprise, many of the best graduates of our universities and polytechnics leave the country to seek experience and opportunity. Also, there is a growing number mid-level of graduates who are not necessarily ‘fit for purpose’.
After access to capital, entrepreneurs cite human capital as the biggest barrier to operations and growth. Many entrepreneurs find the talent pool so poor that they essentially train recruits from scratch.
While all the four areas I have outlined remain challenging for SMEs and entrepreneurs, they have all shown improvement over the years and – in my opinion – offer further opportunities for investors. Prospects exist in skills training, public/private infrastructure such as toll roads, private equity, and lobby organisations.
Without changes, the breadth of entrepreneurial endeavour in Ghana will continue to suffer and some of the most dynamic young graduates will be lost, further slowing development. It is only by tackling these challenges will Ghana be able to give meaning to its stated objective of private sector led growth.

Elikem Kuenyehia is a founding partner in Oxford and Beaumont solicitors in Accra and author of Kuenyehia On Entrepreneurship. At BEIGE Capital, he plays a strategic role in Legal Affairs and International Relations.

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My say on President Obama's Africa visit

Some key issues in the U.S. policy towards Africa includes supporting open and democratic governance and increasing access to quality healthcare and education.  President Obama’s visit to Africa was an important milestone in rebuilding relationships between the West and Africa.

During his visit to Ghana in 2010, he articulated his policy on promoting democracy and building strong institutions in Africa.  Now it remains to be seen how the U.S. will strike a balance between promoting democracy and fighting terrorism, as well as fostering economic development and trade.

Today, Africa’s leading trading partners are China and India.  Turkey, Brazil and South Korea have also significantly increased their trade volumes with Africa in recent times.

China overtook the United States as Africa’s major trading partner in 2009.  As a result, Beijing is seen as a major buyer of Africa’s natural resources and a supplier of capital goods for infrastructure development.  India is investing considerably across Africa as well, especially in the agriculture, pharmaceuticals, hydrocarbon resources, information technology and telecommunications sectors.

The strong presence of China and India calls for rethinking of the U.S. relationship with Africa in terms of investment and trade opportunities.

One of the key issues that needs attention is the extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which is set to expire in September 2015.

Through the AGOA initiative, 40 African countries have been able to increase their exports to the U.S.  However, the full potential of the initiative has not been exploited.  Of particular importance is the need to increase the range of products exported to the U.S. under AGOA in order to benefit African producers and manufacturers.

Since regional integration is already taking root in Africa, it is important that the U.S. engages regional economic blocs in trade negotiations to promote trade and commerce.  The U.S. should also see emerging players in Africa as partners so that the interaction between Africa and the rest of the world leads to a win-win relationship.

I believe the United States can support youth employment opportunities by having bilateral discussions on identifying successful poverty reduction programs, making the youths benefit directly and conducting evaluations to assess progress.

Through these programs, youths become empowered, creative, innovative, and gain a political voice - all conditions necessary for building the strong institutions that promote good governance and economic development.

When Obama visited Africa, he saw a lot of young faces. I am sure he may have noticed that the vast majority of those young people are looking for decent work.

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Wireless Technology in Africa

All my life, I have had great hopes that wireless technologies will be one of the critical ways of advancing the continent to a better status.

To me be clear from the outset I am an ardent free marketer and highly in favor of competitive markets. I am also in favor of speed as a catalyst for change and believe that the worst mistake of policy makers is when they favor analysis over action.

Wireless is clearly a “leapfrog” technology. It permits the ability to easily transmit information across wide geographies with the least amount of cost and capital expenditure. It can be built out according to population densities instead of despite them.

Better information removes distance as a barrier to communication and understanding it allows for better planning and resource allocation. It permits for widespread education of the population in both academic and practical matters.

Overall, better information creates a smarter communities, societies and people.
With all this, the question of how do we get wireless technologies to take root in Africa?

What needs to be done at the policy level to permit the growth of wireless technology and the possibilities it brings for African countries to leapfrog years of infrastructure developments...?

Wireless is by its very nature highly personalized service. As such it permits information flow between individuals and therefore represents threat to any government or system that wants to limit such communication.
Without this very first fundamental change, wireless deployment will always be marginal.

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Investing in Nutrition

Africa is in need of critical investment in nutrition. It is said that every year 11% of GDP in Africa is lost to under-nutrition.

There are affordable solutions to build a stronger, healthier population with the skills to drive economic-growth and social-development.

It is essential that we make these investments in nutrition now. Malnutrition, hunger will not and cannot be solved by governments alone.

I support a comprehensive range of interventions to prevent stunting in early childhood.

I Will support programmes in partnership with the private sector, to fortify food-staples such as flour, oil, sugar and salt.

Women like Hawa in Mozambique.

Hawa has already had to bury some of her children because they died of malnutrition. Of those that survived 3 year old Ali is severely stunted, Jamal is seven and just 3 foot 8 and her oldest daughter Habiba has already lost children of her own.

Hawa and her family haven’t been living through a famine. They strive every day to get the nutritious food they need. But it simply hasn’t been possible.

Hawa is not alone.

After all that has been done, there are still 1 billion people under-nutrition. 1 in 4 children are stunted through chronic malnutrition. And 165 million children are so malnourished by the age of 2 that their minds and bodies will never fully develop.

This is a massive issue for humanity, and it’s absolutely right that some investment should be made this regard.

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Doing business on the Internet

Simple information websites with product and contact information, as a first step can open new doors for small African businesses locally and internationally.

I do not particularly like prescribing any solution that will depend on governments. But E-commerce requires vendor credibility.
Through the online mall people in the Diaspora may order local goods for friends or family. These associations can also help to guarantee the quality of products advertised on the site, as well as the credibility of its members to ensure fraudulent people do not seize the opportunity.

Apart from technology, the greatest impediment African businesses face in embracing e-business is fraud.
This is where the governments should play important role. Law-makers should strengthen existing laws to stem out corruption in their countries. People who thrive on advance fee fraud should be put out of business. It is possible!

Anything that works through technology can be stopped through technology. It's simply a digital war amongst programmers (it's like the virus and anti-virus battle among programmers). Moreover, the world wants to see trials, prosecutions and convictions to believe that African countries are serious in their war against corruption.

As for now, cross-continental partnerships will play a major role in helping businesses in Africa cross the e-commerce threshold, as African businesses will still need international partnerships to help complete orders.

Doing business on the Internet will help small businesses in Africa increase their market share in the global marketplace. There should be a concerted effort to make this happen.
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A look at world water day..

The World Water Day is held annually on March 22 to celebrate something that most of us take for granted. Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of water. It's a day for those of us in developing countries to step back and assess the facts of how much water we actually use in our daily lives.

The UN General Assembly, in its resolution 65/154, decided to proclaim International Year of Water Cooperation: Making it Happen!, a day dedicated to something so basic and simple that most people never give it a second thought: Clean water.

We leave our water footprint in nearly all of our daily human activities from our morning shower to our evening meal.

A massive amount of water goes into the food we eat, far more than most people think. For instance, it takes about 1500 liters of water to produce 1kg of beef and, statistically, it takes a thousand times more water to feed the human population than it does to satisfy its thirst.

Did you know that almost a billion people are forced to spend countless hours scavenging for water each day?

The goal of the day is to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

One out of every eight people worldwide lacks safe drinking water, and two out of every five people lack adequate sanitation.

Those who have better access to water tend to have lower levels of undernourishment and the lack of water can be a major cause of famine in areas where people depend on local agriculture for both food and income.

It's undeniable that those living without safe drinking water reside in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the global demand for water is growing. There are currently over seven billion people to feed on the planet and another two billion are expected to join by 2050.

By 2025, the UN expects that 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water-stressed conditions.

The UN suggests several ways we can help, including the need to reduce the roughly 30% of food produced worldwide that is lost or wasted every day. In several developing countries, a large portion of the food is lost between the farmers' fields and the market due to poor storage and transportation facilities.

In more developed countries, and in particular cities, food is wasted by the consumer who is either not aware of or not sensitive to the resources needed to produce it.

Investing in water, sanitation, and hygiene programs is one of the smartest investments in tight economic times because communities with safe drinking water and adequate sanitation see tangible progress in children's health, school attendance, and local economic development.

Not all the news is bad on World Water Day. A report released earlier this month noted that over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources between 1999 and 2010.

While the road may be long, each small step is making a difference.

For something so essential to all of life, it is only fitting that once a year the world takes a moment to contemplate this mysterious and essential life-giving compound.

How are you celebrating World Water Day 2013?

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A look at world water day..

The World Water Day is held annually on March 22 to celebrate something that most of us take for granted. Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of water. It's a day for those of us in developing countries to step back and assess the facts of how much water we actually use in our daily lives.

The UN General Assembly, in its resolution 65/154, decided to proclaim International Year of Water Cooperation: Making it Happen!, a day dedicated to something so basic and simple that most people never give it a second thought: Clean water.

We leave our water footprint in nearly all of our daily human activities from our morning shower to our evening meal.

A massive amount of water goes into the food we eat, far more than most people think. For instance, it takes about 1500 liters of water to produce 1kg of beef and, statistically, it takes a thousand times more water to feed the human population than it does to satisfy its thirst.

Did you know that almost a billion people are forced to spend countless hours scavenging for water each day?

The goal of the day is to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

One out of every eight people worldwide lacks safe drinking water, and two out of every five people lack adequate sanitation.

Those who have better access to water tend to have lower levels of undernourishment and the lack of water can be a major cause of famine in areas where people depend on local agriculture for both food and income.

It's undeniable that those living without safe drinking water reside in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the global demand for water is growing. There are currently over seven billion people to feed on the planet and another two billion are expected to join by 2050.

By 2025, the UN expects that 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water-stressed conditions.

The UN suggests several ways we can help, including the need to reduce the roughly 30% of food produced worldwide that is lost or wasted every day. In several developing countries, a large portion of the food is lost between the farmers' fields and the market due to poor storage and transportation facilities.

In more developed countries, and in particular cities, food is wasted by the consumer who is either not aware of or not sensitive to the resources needed to produce it.

Investing in water, sanitation, and hygiene programs is one of the smartest investments in tight economic times because communities with safe drinking water and adequate sanitation see tangible progress in children's health, school attendance, and local economic development.

Not all the news is bad on World Water Day. A report released earlier this month noted that over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources between 1999 and 2010.

While the road may be long, each small step is making a difference.

For something so essential to all of life, it is only fitting that once a year the world takes a moment to contemplate this mysterious and essential life-giving compound.

How are you celebrating World Water Day 2013?

Mobile Phones on the increase

A few years ago here in Ghana, the mobile phone was a luxury and only the very rich could afford one. This has changed with time and right now everyone has a cell phone which can do more than just make a call or send a text message.

One of the most functional services that the mobile phone has been offering customers is money transfer services.

For instance, many people who could not complete the many bank requirements have been able to transact on their mobile phones with a lot of ease.

Through the mobile phone, people can buy talk time, pay their utility bills, transfer funds, access their bank details as well as receive payments from various parties.

The transactions are flexible as one can initiate them at the comfort of their homes as long as they have some funds in their account.

 International barriers to transacting have also been reduced through international mobile money transfer services.

You may be wondering about the security of the funds on your mobile phone. Everyone registering for the mobile cash transfer services will do so with their original passport or recognized identification.

 They will then have a unique password and a secret word that they are vetted on before any transaction can be carried out. Each user has to hold the vetting data as confidential to prevent occurrence of fraud.

Will the cell phone come to override the use of credit cards, hard cash payments and use of checks? Only time will tell.

Trends on the Labour front in Ghana

Ghana, over the last two decades, has succeeded in providing a marginal solution to the problem of unemployment and poverty. The impact of implementation of stabilization and structural adjustment policies are being used as a vehicle to enhance economic growth and development.

The success of any adjustment program depends on a well-functioning and flexible labour market in which labour allocation is done through the market mechanism, and also creates sufficient incentives for human capital investment. The presence of wage rigidities or labour mobility raises basic questions in terms of the effectiveness of macroeconomic policy and the extent to which the supply response necessary for adjustment will be forthcoming.

Ghana has witnessed some changes in the labour market due to globalization and the withdrawal of the direct involvement of government in productive economic activities. Stabilization and adjustment programmes initiated have contributed to a substantial decline in public sector employment and through public sector retrenchment and privatization.

Ghana's labour market is dominated by agriculture and related activities. The informal sector where majority of the workforce is self-employed is very pervasive, partly as a result of the sluggish growth of the formal sector employment. The public sector continues to employ the greater chunk of the formal sector workforce.

The government and labour unions together with employers play a significant role through the determination of minimum wage by the Tripartite Committee in shaping the structure of wages in the formal wing of the labour market. The market evidently appears to exhibit wage rigidities as a result of the strong influences of institutions in the market.

Since the year 2000, formal sector employment, which incidentally has been most remunerative, has increased substantially. Formal sector employment seems to have picked up with the declining share of informal sector.

 

Isaac Twumasi-Quantus
Journalist / Web Editor / Content Manager / Online Marketer / Blogger
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Ghana's oil paves the way

Ghanaians are beginning to feel the impact of the oil being produced from the Jubilee Field so far. The country earned US$444 million to the state coffers, being the sum of royalties and income from the sale of the government’s share of oil output.

Already, China through its state-owned China Development Bank has provided US$3 billion in credit lines to Ghana over the next couple of years. That is more than any of the country’s creditors has provided at any single time.

The President John Dramani Mahama signed the agreement for the transfer of the initial US$1 billion of the credit lines, most of which are being used to build the gas-processing infrastructure planned for Atuabo in the Western Region, but also to deploy an ICT-based communications system to enhance monitoring and surveillance of oil facilities.

For Ghana, the funds will help to plug an infrastructure financing hole, estimated by a World Bank sponsored report in 2010 to be US$1.2 billion annually.

Even though Ghana has joined the middle-income classification of countries, the quality and adequacy of its infrastructure lags peers in sub-Saharan Africa such as Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa. Over the last two decades, the road network has been extended and improved, but most rural roads remain unpaved.

Since oil has become our number one source to turn this situation around, the rules governing the use of revenues from the resource are used to augment road infrastructure.

It is expected that if crude oil prices stay buoyant, the budget for roads will be boosted substantially and the scorecard for access to such infrastructure will look better.   

Isaac Twumasi-Quantus
Journalist / Web Editor / Content Manager / Online Marketer / Blogger
Blog: http://isaactwumasi-quantus.blogspot.com/ /+233-342-192710 /
+233-244-566761 / 0209053284 / Skype: isaac.twumasi.quantus / twumasitq@yahoo.com /
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The economy is on an unsustainable path with the highest budget deficit in Ghana’s history

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has described the path and manner in which the Ghanaian economy is being managed as unsustainable.

He said data coming in on Ghana’s economic performance in 2012 indicates quite simply that public finances are out of control and the economy is in trouble. At the end of 2012, Ghana’s budget deficit was a whopping Ghc 8.7 billion, amounting to 12.1% of GDP using the rebased GDP numbers (or some 20% of GDP in terms of the old GDP series).

This is the highest recorded budget deficit in Ghana’s history. From Nkrumah through Acheampong, Rawlings and Kufuor, no government has incurred this level of budget deficit.

What is more worrying is that this provisional deficit figure excludes some Ghc 4.0 billion in commitments and arrears yet to be paid to contractors and other service providers.

If we include these arrears the deficit for 2012 would be some 23% of GDP using rebased numbers (or some 35% of GDP using the old GDP series). These are mindboggling numbers. The crux of the problem is that government spending increased astronomically to 34.5% of GDP even though government revenues amounted to 16.1% of GDP (a gap of over 100%) for the year.

The provisional 2012 budget deficit of 12.1% of GDP is almost double the budget deficit of 6.5% in 2008 using the rebased GDP numbers (or 11.2% of GDP using the old GDP series) notwithstanding the fact that Ghana enjoyed more favorable economic circumstances in 2012. In 2008 Ghana was not an oil producer and the global economy was in crisis. In 2012 on the other hand, Ghana was an oil producer facing a favorable external environment for its exports and yet managed to double the 2008 budget (which this government described at the time as “reckless”) and in the process achieve what is a truly unprecedented budget deficit in Ghana’s history.

The government promised last year that its management of the economy would be more prudent than that of other governments in previous election years. Despite all the favorable opportunities at its disposal, 2012 has turned out to be the worst election year outcome in Ghana’s history in terms of the management of public finances. This is also  yet another failed NDC promise.

For any economy with this historic budget deficit combined with an increasing balance of payments deficit (some  13% of rebased GDP) and mounting public debt, this state of affairs will raise alarm bells, but not so in Ghana. The government has found a way to delay tackling critical economic problems through borrowing domestically and internationally and falsely claiming “unprecedented” achievements at home. In the process, Ghana’s total public debt has increased from Ghc 9.6 billion in 2008 to Ghc 33.5 billion in 2012 (an increase of 248% in 4 years!).  As has been demonstrated for Ghana and many countries in the past however, this path and manner of managing an economy is unsustainable.

Take the example of the management of oil revenues. It turns out that the NDC government forecast oil revenues from corporate taxes of Ghc 384.1 million for 2012 knowing full well that revenue would not materialize. This is because the Jubilee partners are entitled to capital cost recovery under the Petroleum Income Tax Law 1987 (PNDC Law 188) and the government knew this.

The government nonetheless forecast the receipt of these revenues because the provisions of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2011 are such that the proportion of then oil revenues that accrues to the budget (The Annual Budget Funding Amount) is based on projected benchmark oil revenue.

Under the Act, 70% of projected oil revenue accrues to the budget and 30% is divided between the Stabilization (21%) and Heritage (9%) funds. The government therefore over projected the oil revenue so as to get more of the oil revenue into the budget.  In the meantime, the projected revenues were spent through government borrowing. Is it therefore a surprise that with such economic management the budget deficit would increase astronomically?

Poor economic management has consequences. Unfortunately, the burden of the inevitable consequences of the NDC’s management of the economy is bound to fall disproportionately on the segments of society which are least able to afford it, as prices for petroleum products (whatever happened to the oil hedging policy?), transportation, water, electricity (in the face of water and power shortages), school fees, tax increases, expenditure cuts, unemployment, wage pressures, inflation, interest rates etc.  shoot up and non-oil GDP growth slows down.  This reality is already being felt and will soon be patently obvious for all to see.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is a renowned economist / was a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana until his nomination as a Vice Presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was Country Representative of the African Development Bank in Zimbabwe.

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“The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”: Enter the Chad Dragon in the ECOWAS-CENSAD region!

Back in October 2011, my piece “Hot Issues on the AU needing popular advocacy (I) – or Travelling Cheaply in Africa, & Southern Sudan” touched briefly on CENSAD. I started off with a history of CENSAD, going on to ask the way forward.
The Community of Sahel-Saharan States was established in 1998 by the late Colonel Qaddafi. After the rationalization of the regional economic communities in 2006, it became an AU-REC – that is one of the eight RECs mandated and recognized by the African Union. It has twenty-eight members, and Ghana is a member.

Despite many meetings that had taken place and a then-fully-functioning website on http://www.censad.org, the uprising that started in Libya in March threw a huge spanner in the works of the organisation, effectively throwing the regional grouping out of sync with the other RECs at its base in Tripoli. Regrettably, the conspicuous absence of the African Union itself on the future of CENSAD has not helped dispel the notion that the AU is nothing more than a “toothless” bulldog.

The passing of Qaddafi, I intoned, has effectively taken the wind out of the sails of CENSAD, probably throwing all the good work – including the Great Green Wall being built along the sub-region to protect the region from climate change; as well as the establishment of a free-trade area of ECOWAS-UEMOA-CENSAD/ECOWAS-CENSAD/ECCAS along the likes of the SADC-COMESA-EAC tripartite free trade area, which was mooted in 2008.

Going forward, I would expect to see the AU taking serious the need to engage the National Transitional Council in Libya on their commitments to the African Union. This would include discussions on Libya and where it stands on the establishment of the AU-mandated and Tripoli-hosted African Investment Bank, as well as the state of play of CEN-SAD, and how it can be factored into discussions of Africa’s ongoing discussions over Africa’s integration.

In January 2013, an organisation by the name of Centre 4S, which is based in Morocco, and which researches defence and security in the Sahelo-Saharian band /strip; armed violence and terrorism, among other subjects, released a paper in French entitled “Revitaliser le CENSAD”, or reinvigorating CENSAD.

The main idea of the paper is to look at the critical role CENSAD can play in the Sahel; ways in which cooperation and synergy can be created around the zone, and ways in which there can be strengthened cross-border cooperation.

Truth be told, the uniqueness of CENSAD is in its ability to merge ECOWAS; Arab Maghreb Union and ECCASS countries together. The article maintains that the contribution that CENSAD offers its member states ought to be re-examined. Furthermore, the crisis in Mali has set an important precedent for the member states to really get serious on what can be done to use the body as a tool for securing the region politically and diplomatically.

The paper states that “CENSAD should present itself as an institutional and diplomatic framework, of unity and action, capable of formulating a pertinent response, inclusive and varied, to current security challenges.” Even more important for a reinvigorated and re-launched CENSAD should be the aspiration to complement ECOWAS and the Arab Maghreb Union, especially as they are two RECs most-familiar with the security deficits of the Sahel region. These efforts will “equally allow for a better coherence and coordination of different initiatives on the Sahel”, such as Algeria’s Joint Military Command with Mali; Niger; and Mauritania.

Chad rising, Chad in ECOWAS?
Chad is a Central African country and a member of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Some wonder why it should not also become a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) According to one Elvis Kodjo, writing in fratmat.info, 'although the idea has not been officially announced, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Moussa Mahamat Dago indicated on 19 January 2012 in Abidjan during a celebration of Chad's 50th anniversary that the issue was currently being considered.”
The idea for joining rests with the fact that Chad has emerged from several decades of unrest, and understands “more than any other African country that “African integration is necessary for its development”.
The fact is that since the start of oil production in 2005, “Chad has become the ninth largest African oil producer and has improved its network of roads, which has expanded from 200 to more than 3 000 km. Plans for a new, ultramodern airport are underway, and a railroad linking the country to Cameroon will soon be constructed”. Kodjo maintains that “while being a veritable construction site, Chad also has forty million hectors of arable land”.
In order to encourage the effective use of this land, the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs spokesman Mahamat has said that the country “has equipped itself with a particularly attractive investment code” and is looking to secure the best opportunities for itself by diversifying its economic partners in both Central and West Africa.
In March 2011, Chad was, in fact, granted observer status of ECOWAS and my monitoring of Chad's wooing suggests that Chadian President Idris Deby is still keen on sweet-talking Jonathon—in his capacity as leader of the regional hegemon, Nigeria—to accept Chad as a full member of ECOWAS. In April 2012, I was quick to speculate that it is unlikely to happen soon, given the instability in the Sahel region and the headaches of Mali and Guinea-Bissau. All that can be said for now is for observers to keep a keen eye on Chad making “incursions” into ECOWAS sooner than later.
Then Mali happens. And suddenly, we are confronted with a Chad that is offering support to the Africa-led support mission in Mali (AFISMA) to the tune of around 3000 troops, which is around a third of what all ECOWAS troops have offered.

One of the reasons why Chad is an important country to look out for is for what happened on Saturday 16 February when Chad’s president Idris Deby hosted some eleven leaders of the CENSAD regional economic community that was established in 1998. The capital N’djamena played host to what should have been 20 members of the populous grouping. Even if a little over a third of the Heads of State showed up, it was encouraging to see that the 17 other member states dispatched representatives. Furthermore, it has shown that the raison d’être for the establishment of the grouping might still be relevant.

Some of the major outcomes include a revision of the Charter, to reflect the fact that the organisation is interested in two major things: peace and security; and sustainable development. Two permanent organs will be established to this end, and Egypt is likely to host the peace and security organ.

As this is a developing story, with much of the material in French, watch this space over the next couple of weeks when the implications of a rising Chad will begin to unfold. For what it is worth, CENSAD’s next meeting will be in Morocco, which is itself making overtures to re-join the African Union.

In April 2012, I wrote of how there is talk of an ECCAS-ECOWAS-CENSAD free trade area along the likes of the Tripartite FTA (T-FTA) of SADC-COMESA-EAC that was mooted in 2008. With Central Africa only last week meeting and seeking concretely to rationalise its programmes for ECCAS and CEMAC to harmonise and merge, it is really exciting times for African integration!


In 2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42^nd Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://www.critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on ekbensah@ekbensah.net / Mobile: +233.268.687.653.

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Consumers and the Internet in Africa

In less than two years, the bandwidth of traffic on Internet services provided in Africa has doubled.

Africa is now experiencing superior quality Internet services that come at a higher speed and that will provide for more comfort on the Internet; including improved flow in the downloading of pages and quicker downloads of information, navigation, reception of e-mails, teleconferences and multi-media services.

The quality of Internet services provided to the public, because it determines the speed of downloading pages, notably from servers based in Europe or the United States, and at bottom line, as this number is increased, the more comfortable your use of the Internet gets.

Bandwidth of Internet traffic to and fro has been increasing at a booming speed.

Internet use in Africa has also been extended beyond the capital cities with impressive telecom infrastructure been created.

As prices for broadband installation and services rapidly are going down, a bigger segment of the population uses the Internet at work and at home.

The real boom in Internet reaching a large part of the African populace is however attributed to Africa’s large and ever-growing number of telecentres or cybercafes, which combine telephone and fax services with Internet renting at a low price.

Renting a computer connected to the web normally does not cost much for an hour. Uses vary from e-mail communication to news reading, chatting, games and multi-media usage, and costumers include almost all social layers.

Isaac Twumasi-Quantus
Journalist / Web Editor / Content Manager / Online Marketer / Blogger
Blog: http://isaactwumasi-quantus.blogspot.com/ /+233-342-192710 /
+233-244-566761 / 0209053284 / Skype: isaac.twumasi.quantus / twumasitq@yahoo.com /
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/isaac-twumasi-quantus/10/91/457
http://www.africabusinesscommunities.com

Africa’s improved business environment

The position of Africa in the world now in terms of business is very encouraging. There is tough competition because all businesses are keeping up with the heat of the battle.

But one caution is that businesses in Africa will become harder to bear because of the rise of more foreign investments.

The race in Africa's business sector is expected to become tougher. This is so because of the growing number of investors.

Foreign companies from large economies are the premiere investors in Africa now. China is one of them and their focus is on oil, mining and infrastructure business.

But as always the first one to come is the one who gets much of the advantage. This is why Chinese investors are making the most of the moment while everything is still fresh and hot.

With their wide spread investments, China is one of Africa's best business partner right now. Africa boost of competitive natural resources, enough to sustain the life of any African business.

In addition to the large population, the continent is a great prospect to become consumers. Consumers’ behavior of most people is also improving.

A tighter competition can only be a disadvantage for businessmen if they don't know how to abide with it.

Isaac Twumasi-Quantus
Journalist / Web Editor / Content Manager / Online Marketer / Blogger
Blog: http://isaactwumasi-quantus.blogspot.com/ /+233-342-192710 /
+233-244-566761 / 0209053284 / Skype: isaac.twumasi.quantus / twumasitq@yahoo.com /

http://www.africabusinesscommunities.com

Africa and Wealth

It now pleasant to know that Africa is counted among the wealthiest continents and it will take a few to describe Africa so.

Even though many families in Africa get their food from their own unirrigated one plot of land and walk distances to retrieve water. That does not mean every African lives that way.

The story about Africa’s wealth is not based on individual achievements. Companies of international repute have made Africa what it is today.

The list of the top wealthiest countries in Africa, as demonstrated by gross national product GDP), contains some real surprises. Equatorial Guinea, Botswana, and Gabon top the list.

In fact Equatorial Guinea has the 9th highest GDP in the world. This country struck it rich when in 1996 when large oil reserves were discovered.

Equatorial Guinea has a population of only half a million, yet most live in poverty. Corruption is widespread and the gap between rich and poor is probably the widest in the world.

It is not only entrepreneurs and politicians who are wealthy, Kenyan and Ethiopian runners make fortunes beating the rest of the world on the track and on the road.

But, Africa's highest paid athletes are her footballers. Inter Milan's Cameroonian, striker Samuel Eto'o Fils tops the list with fifteen million USA dollars in salary and endorsements earned last year. Fils' networth is estimated at more the $40 million.