The annual UN climate talks in Egypt last month were a breakthrough for the developing world. For the first time, participants agreed to create a “loss and damage fund” to compensate poor countries for the harm caused by global warming.

The idea that rich countries should compensate poorer ones for a problem created by the industrialised world is not new. The tiny island state of Vanuatu first mooted such a scheme in 1991. But the clamour for climate reparations has grown louder as devastation has swept around the world.

Climate change is wrecking the lives of more and more people. In Africa alone, 52 million people – four per cent of the population – have suffered either drought or floods over the past two years, deeply affecting their livelihoods, according to the State and Trends in Adaptation in Africa 2022 report. After four failed rainy seasons, 37 million people today face starvation in the Horn of Africa.

Earlier this year, one-third of Pakistan – an area larger than of Uganda – was under water and half a million people were homeless after torrential monsoon rains. Island states such as the Maldives and Vanuatu risk disappearing altogether under rising seas caused by the melting of polar ice caps. Their calls for climate justice are both urgent and irrefutable.

Climate finance

But compensation is not enough. A fund to pay for loss and damage is essential, but it is not the whole solution. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, climate justice should mean both handing over the $100 billion a year in climate finance promised to the developing countries back in 2009 and doubling the flow of finance for climate adaptation.

It is adapting to climate change that should be Africa’s priority. First, the damage inflicted by climate change is already happening and will only get worse. Second, because adapting to climate change and building resilience will speed the development of African economies. Investing to harness technology will create jobs for young people. It will provide long-term solutions rather than short-term fixes for successive waves of climate disasters. And last, preparing countries well for climate change means there will be fewer loss and damage claims in the future.

Widescale, effective adaptation

For a country like Kenya, widescale, effective adaptation makes the country less vulnerable to climate shocks, reduces poverty and provides new opportunities for economic growth. But right now, despite well-articulated strategies to fight climate change, Kenya’s farms, water, tourism and wildlife are dangerously exposed to global warming. Climate disasters are costing 2-2.8 per cent of its gross domestic product yearly, dramatically undermining economic growth. Today, Kenya invests about Ksh243 billion ($2.4 billion) a year in climate action. That’s a huge effort for a developing country.

But it is only one-third of what is needed to combat the damage being caused by global warming. And data shows that most climate finance is going into renewable energy. Yes, this is important to reduce carbon emissions, but it doesn’t address the urgent need for agriculture, forestry, transport and water management to adapt to climate change.

Closing the funding gap

Across the continent, the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) estimates that countries need to invest another $41 billion a year to adapt effectively to climate change.

That’s almost four times the $11.4 billion invested in adaptation projects in 2019-20. This means two things: African countries need to become savvier at accessing climate finance and need a much stronger portfolio of climate-adaptation projects that qualify for funding. Today, a bold initiative to build resilience and close the funding gap, the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme (AAAP) initiated by the Global Centre on Adaptation and African Development Bank is under way. It has been endorsed by the African Union and plans to mobilise $25 billion for climate adaptation on the continent by 2025.

The GCA supports African countries and financing institutions by bringing the best knowledge, science and solutions for adaptation projects on the ground through the AAAP Upstream Financing Facility.

In Kenya, GCA works with the University of Nairobi on adaptation solutions for transport, power, information technology and water infrastructure.

Enrich local knowledge

The focus is not only on the design of climate-resilient infrastructure but also on developing partnerships that will enrich local knowledge, increase trade, drive economic growth and deliver jobs for young people.

The GCA is also working with Senegalese financial institutions to unlock $1 billion in global climate finance for investments in food security, resilient infrastructure, jobs and entrepreneurship. In Côte d’Ivoire, the GCA is helping the government identify adaptation projects that could be funded from the proceeds of an upcoming Sustainable Sovereign Bond issue.

Africa is the continent hardest hit by climate change. It is also where effective large-scale climate adaptation promises to deliver the greatest lifesaving and life-changing benefits. But the time to act is now. As President William Ruto has said, “Africa can lead the world” in climate action.

Patrick Verkooijen is the chief executive of the Global Centre on Adaptation

Speech of Dr Wilfred Kiboro, NMG Chairman, at the fourth edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival

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Your Excellency the President of Kenya, Dr William Ruto, diplomats, distinguished panellists and participants from many parts of Africa and the world, welcome to the Fourth Edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival.

The Nation Media Group founded this Festival in 2019 to do mainly three things. First, to imagine an Africa and prepare us better to overcome its challenges and exploit its opportunities.  Secondly, to catalyse pan-African conversations and ideas that help to make the best of Africa today, and generate actions to deal with its pressing problems.  Thirdly, to contribute in finding and defining our continent’s place in the world, and present its best face there.

It wouldn’t be good manners to try and be the best judge of how well we have done, but results show that we have scored a decent grade. Our inaugural ideas festival was in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2019. Physically and online, we had tens of thousands of participants, and some of the novel ideas that came out there that we call “moonshots”, have reverberated across many forums since.

Among many, we’ve seen the thoughtful conversations on open skies in Africa become a reality a few days ago, when 17 African nations agreed to pilot the Single African Air Transport Market. These are Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Zambia, Niger and Gabon. The ideas then, that some of us couldn’t understand, about using digital assets to monetise art, became a reality later in the form of non-fungible tokens that African artists have exploited to good effect.  For the second one, in 2020, we opted to have it in Kenya, at the Victoria lakeside city of Kisumu, in early December, because of global Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions.

It was a mixed virtual and in-person event, and we were delighted to have a few early travellers from countries like Rwanda and South Africa, as the world took its first tentative steps to re-opening. It was still a phenomenally successful event, by our reckoning, and easily the biggest such thought leadership event in Africa in that year. I am glad to report that a lot of the thinking about African Covid strategy, and collaboration on securing and distribution of vaccines, became the mainstay of the Africa CDC-African Union-led approach. 

In 2021, we ventured further afield to

Accra, the capital of Ghana, and the home to pan-Africanism, from where we reached more than 17,000 virtual participants from 401 cities and 72 countries. Again, a lot of the policy actions proposed have grown wings. On this one I would like to note the idea of embedding climate change evaluations in financing, and green standards in permits. This has been possible because of our panellists. We have always been fortunate to attract resources and knowledgeable experts who work passionately on African issues. At this fourth festival, you have honoured our invitation and come in even larger numbers. We value you and look forward to drinking from your wisdom.

This year we are here in Karura Forest, to highlight its status as a monumental symbol of victory for an intense environmental struggle of the 1990s in Kenya. It is a perfect backdrop to the question of the climate change crisis we face. Sadly, it is also a reminder of one of the stark realities of one of the themes this festival will tackle — the spectre of disease caused by a changing climate. This festival was initially set to be held in the lakeside city of Entebbe in Uganda. However, it had to be moved at the last minute because the Ebola outbreak in Uganda presented regrettable logistic and safety problems that we couldn’t overcome. Nonetheless it is our hope that Kusi will still make its appointment with Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, in the near future.

With a different set of circumstances, we wouldn’t be meeting here. Karura might not have survived. We owe its survival to many brave Kenyan activists, some of whom paid the ultimate price for their action with prison, and death. Few of them stand as tall as Wangari Maathai, one of the world’s and Kenya’s most committed environmental and democracy activists. We lost Maathai in September 2011, seven years after she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. I am proud to point out that the Nation Media Group answered the call of duty and offered its muscle to bolster the campaign to save Karura.  NMG was a key partner in a years-long project to raise funds for fencing 440 kilometres of the Aberdares Forest to save the water towers for Nairobi. This also contributed to reducing the human-wildlife conflict.

We have been part of several other actions, including dealing with the problem of plastics waste, promoting tree planting, and providing leadership in reporting the big environmental and climate change issues of our times. It is in this regard that I wish to announce here for the first time that this year we have established the Nation Media Foundation to partner with entities such as the Government of Kenya, development partners and corporate institutions to advance value creating initiatives in the areas of education and literacy, climate change, media development, health, community development through entrepreneurship and humanitarian relief.

We call upon all the partners who are here to join us in this endeavour of creating value and empowering our society. We estimate the monetary value of these activities so far to be in the billions of shillings.

Yet, nothing in this history would have prepared us for the climate change existential crisis we face today, and which makes it an urgent subject for our conversation over these two days. 

Climate change is as important a reason as any for Africa to come together. Our shared lakes and rivers are either overflowing and causing disastrous floods, or drying out and plunging tens of millions of our people in hunger.

In the Horn of Africa alone, which includes Kenya, nearly 15 million are facing starvation. Ports that serve landlocked nations are threatened by rising sea levels in the face of rising temperatures.

It was cause for joy to see that among the first series of actions of your relatively new government, Your Excellency, was the launch of an ambitious plan to increase Kenya country’s forest cover from 12.13 percent to 30 percent, and a push to growing 15 billion trees on about 10.6 million hectares of land throughout the country.

This is how we win the battles to save our planet from irreparable damage by climate change. However, winning the war will need more, and the work of all of us as Kenyans, as Africans, and as global citizens.

On our part, we formed the Nation Media Foundation, a non-profit organisation, that will allow us to generate resources to bring more Africans into these important conversations. I am appealing to our partners, and everyone else, to support us on this journey.

Though it is a worthy journey, it won’t be an easy one.  As the African proverb says, “There are no shortcuts to the top of the palm tree.”

Our hope is that Kusi 4 will offer some ideas on how we get there, and build a coalition that pushes us further up on the palm tree.

So, let’s all rally to that cause.

I thank you.

African nations have been urged to do more to fund climate change mitigation even as they wait for developed countries to fulfil their pledges on funding.

This was said at the fourth edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival at Karura Forest in Nairobi, which brings together environment champions.

Exploring African responses and solutions to climate change is timely, because climate breakdown threatens Africa and the world, said Prince Rahim Aga Khan, the Chairman of the AKDN Environment and Climate Committee.

The Prince promised to spearhead responsible stewardship of the environment and promote research to address environmental degradation and climate change.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Prince Rahim also promised that the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) targets to have zero net emissions by 2030.

This, he said, would help restore the natural environment, whose degradation has been occasioned by greenhouse gas emissions.

“The continent has, in recent times, seen a multitude of natural disasters due to climate change, including floods, locust infestations, water scarcity, and food shortages.”

“Currently, some 40 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing famine as a result of the drought, which is robbing Africa, whose strength has always been her people and their resilience, of her most valuable resource,” said Prince Rahim.

“Today, you will hear how temperatures in Africa are rising — and are set to rise faster than the global average during the 21st century.”

“You will also hear that, while Africa has contributed negligibly to the changing climate; being responsible for only two to three percent of global emissions, it stands out disproportionately as the most vulnerable continent in the world to climate change — a vulnerability exacerbated by the continent’s prevailing low levels of socioeconomic growth.”

Carbon sequestration

“This festival brings together some of the best minds in Africa to take this agenda forward and, most importantly, implement the ideas and solutions that will be discussed here,” he added.

As a way of leading by example, Prince Rahim explained, AKDN has eliminated 4,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by installing solar plants, and generated six million kilowatts of clean energy.

The next plan, he disclosed, is to plant more than 500 acres of mangroves in the Kenyan coast to enable carbon sequestration, as the Nation Media Group (NMG) embarks on cutting emissions by implementing a digital transformation.

In a speech read on his behalf by Environment Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya, President William Ruto said Africa has the potential to provide solutions for the global climate change crisis, even as it recovers from Covid-19 and the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, drought and high food prices. He, however, noted that this may be curtailed by inadequate finances.

“It is projected that Africa will need to invest over Sh368 trillion for mitigation and adaptation by 2030 to implement its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement.”

“The bulk of these resources were supposed to come from the rich industrialised nations responsible for the heaviest pollution, but this has never taken off.”

“In East Africa, our Climate Change Master Plan is woefully underfunded. I challenge this festival to tackle the question of how to resource Africa’s response to climate change without relying on outside help,” said the President.

“I urge every Kenyan to plant trees equivalent to their age on each birthday. Our population is about 55 million and its median age is 20 years. The trees that would be planted through the scheme are 1.1 billion annually.”

“If the world, whose median age is 30 years, were to adopt this strategy, it would result in planting 120 billion to 240 billion trees annually, thus providing the rapid healing the world needs,” he urged.

Pressing problems

“If each Kenyan plants four trees every year on Mother’s Day, to honor Mother Earth, Mother Africa, Kenya, our Motherland and our mother, the biological parent, the initiative would yield 220 million trees annually. If, once again, the world adopts our approach, the number of trees planted would be 32 billion, now that the world’s population has hit the eight billion mark,” added President Ruto.

Dr Wilfred Kiboro, the chairperson of the NMG board, said that Africa needs to generate solutions to its pressing problems, while helping the continent find its place in the global sphere.

While announcing the setting up of the Nation Media Foundation, Dr Kiboro explained that the foundation will advance climate change initiatives, which will also be supported by the government and development partners.

This, he said, will further boost what NMG has done in dealing with plastic waste, promoting tree planting, and providing leadership in reporting the big environmental and climate change issues of our times.

“Climate change is as important a reason as any for Africa to come together. Our shared lakes and rivers are either overflowing and causing disastrous floods, or drying out and plunging tens of millions of our people in hunger.”

“Karura Forest is a monumental symbol of victory from an intense environmental struggle of the 1990s in Kenya, and is a perfect backdrop to the question of the climate change crisis,” said Dr Kiboro.

“With a different set of circumstances, Karura might not have survived. We owe its survival to many brave Kenyan activists, some of whom paid the ultimate price for their action with prison, and death. I am proud to point out that the Nation Media Group answered the call of duty and offered its muscle to bolster the campaign to save Karura.”

“NMG raised funds for the fencing off of 440 kilometres of the Aberdare Forest to save the water tower for Nairobi. This also contributed to reducing human-wildlife conflict,” he added.

Threat to Africa’s development

In a virtual speech, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the climate crisis is a threat to Africa’s development, as he called on the big emitters to make true their vow on climate financing.

Tanzania’s Vice President Philip Mpango said agricultural production in most African countries has gone down and leaders should explore options of building innovative technology to deal with challenges of increasing food safety.

“It is apparent that the current climate crisis is curtailing our efforts to achieve accelerated economic growth, sustainable development, and poverty reduction targets. Let us join forces and invest in innovative technologies to fight and combat climate change and associated challenges towards a better future,” Dr Mpango said.

The latest report from Kenya's National Drought Management Authority shows that a total of 4.35 million people living in arid and semi-arid lands (Asals) are still in need of humanitarian assistance due to drought; 942,000 children aged between six months and five years and 134,000 pregnant or lactating women are also struggling with acute malnutrition as they access treatment.

With northern Kenya struggling with poor rainfall attributed to climate change, the situation is likely to get worse, as regions such as Mandera and parts of Wajir and northern eastern Marsabit are forecast to receive near average to below average rainfall during in December.

Adversely impacted

Parts of agro-pastoral clusters, including the southern parts of West Pokot and western Baringo, are also forecasted to receive near average to below average rainfall.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that Africa is highly vulnerable and adversely impacted by climate change, and that the effects of climate change such as increasing temperatures and sea levels, changing precipitation patterns and more extreme weather threatens human health and safety, food and water security and socio-economic development.

“Increases in temperature and changes in rainfall patterns also significantly affect population health across Africa. Warmer temperatures and higher rainfall increase habitat suitability for biting insects and the transmission of vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever, malaria and yellow fever.

“In addition, new diseases are emerging in regions where they were previously not present,” says IPCC.

Reporting by Mercy Chelang’at, Leon Lidigu and Ndubi Moturi

Africa needs to be self-reliant in the face of the latest vaccine and Covid-19 politics, speakers at the Kusi Ideas Festival said Friday.

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the third Kusi Ideas Festival in Accra, Ghana, Nation Media Group Chairman Wilfred Kiboro challenged the continent to build on its own ideas to develop its own capacity to deal with the pandemic.

“We need to get out of the slumber. We have amazing human resource, even with the limited resources. Reflecting on what the last two years has taught us, I see we have a continent that is resilient and can actually turn around its fortunes through innovation, and building on its own capacities,” Dr Kiboro said.

The continent is now facing a pariah status from Western countries over the latest coronavirus variant – Omicron, even as it battles low vaccine uptake, stifled by poor distribution, and access.

“We are now meeting in Accra to look at what the two years have taught us. Then, we were told that Africa was going to be wiped out by Covid-19. And here we are, resilient that any other continent. We have survived better than the naysayers,” he said. “We have risen to the occasion. At the start of the pandemic, only three countries could test for Covid. Now, we have made progress  -- all countries can do it.”

In the last two years, the continent has also witnessed a boom in ideas and innovation as countries tried to work around the fears of the pandemic to keep their economies running and afloat.

Dr Kiboro said the continent's innovativeness kept most of the countries open, as young people turned the fear of the pandemic into a positive and found innovative means to help in the public health campaigns run.

“We witnessed a boom in innovation. Ghana and Rwanda were collecting samples with drones. Uganda had its biggest coffee sales. Kenya’s Revitalise firm, based in Kilifi, became the continent’s largest producer of syringes. In 2020, they did over 70 million syringes. We saw innovation by students in Africa -- from ventilators to hospital beds and such. That is the spirit of Kusi ideas,” Dr Kiboro said.

The continent has also been challenged to push its own ideas and stories, which will help eliminate stereotypes pushed by Western media.

“The strategic importance of Africa telling its own stories is important. The stereotype characterisation of the continent has been here for years and we now need to change that, change what people say about Africa and tell our own stories. We need to influence the direction of the narrative," Dr Kiboro said.

This year’s festival, in its third edition, will be seeking to draw lesson from the last two Kusi festivals held in Rwanda's capital Kigali in 2019, and Kenyan city Kisumu in 2020.

“We need to purpose to leave this festival with a commitment to do better. For the next two days, we shall have panellists discuss Africa’s infrastructure and the opportunities to improve it. We shall also see discussions touching on Intra African trade, politics of Covid vaccines, vaccination apathy, technology, innovation. All this will be done to enable Africa create African wins in the next century,” Dr Kiboro said.

“The return of the African diaspora is also an important area of discussion this year, given the huge intellectual and financial capital they bring, which Africa needs to tap. Finally, we shall also talk about the open borders, and why it is important for the continent to grow. Let us invent the Africa we want tomorrow. We need to see our continent take its place in the international community.”

Speaking at the festival, Wamkele Mene, Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, castigated Western countries for turning the continent's biggest public health crisis into a political chess game in the last two weeks.

Mr Mene termed the current vaccine politics as modern-day colonialism, and apartheid.

“What we are seeing around the world is exactly what the apartheid regime did. These restrictions are imposed because we are Africans. This points now that we must accelerate our ability to manufacture and produce vaccines, generic drugs, to improve public health and position ourselves for industrial development capacity and ensure that we rely less on others to improve our public health.”

“We are confronting a public health nightmare that has recently become a political crisis in the last 10 days. This pandemic has caused the Africa burden, especially on the economies, inducing a recession. The expected growth rate and recovery in the continent will be the slowest among world regions given the small rooms Africa has on fiscal and monetary space.”

Mr Mene challenged African countries to diversify their markets post Covid-19, adding that the Kusi IdeasFestival offers a better chance to see how the continent transforms.

“When global supply chains are interrupted, then the continent suffers immensely. And the pandemic has shown that with our dependence on Asia, mostly China and India, then the continent is at a weak position. We see most of the food, pharmaceutical imports, and in 2019-20 period, we saw the continent struggle, as it sought to manage the pandemic.”

Africa has now been challenged to accelerate industrial development through regional value chain.

“Together with MasterCard Foundation, we have developed a private sector strategy focusing on agro-processing, auto motive sector, pharmaceutical, and transport and logistic sectors, based on potential of import substitution and existing value chains. These value chains have the potential to contribute $11 billion in production and $5 billion in trade creating almost a million jobs. This strategy will help in improving investments in the continent, and guide the private sector where to invest,” Mr Mene said.

AfCFTA also said that the continent must use the new strategy tool to address the imbalance seen in the intellectual property rights around the production of the Covid-19 vaccination.

“As it is, only 7 per cent of African countries are fully vaccinated yet most Western countries procured over five times of the vaccination they required, with most looking at booster shots. This now means that Africa must use this as lesson to manufacture vaccines, push its own agenda, and avoid this vaccine politics that leave the continent at disadvantage,” he said.

Despite the economic and social progress achieved in the past two decades, growth in most African countries remains characteristically fragile.

This affects the continent’s economic, social, political, and cultural fabric and revolves around political instability; weak institutions that lead to poor accountability and leadership; civil and political unrest; low human development; low investment levels; and low levels of economic diversification.

No one was prepared for Covid-19 and its catastrophic effect on the global economy. It goes without saying that this pandemic was bound to hit African economies hard. Social and economic issues that were already facing grave challenges have now become exponentially more serious, posing a critical threat to the future growth and even survival of African economic systems.

Granted, Covid has severely affected all socio-political spheres of African life, but several sectors have played a significant role in enabling the harmful effect the virus has had on Africa. These include the continent’s fiscal systems, the digital divide, healthcare systems, human capital, and urban infrastructure.

The weaknesses of Africa’s fiscal systems have been amplified. The systems were already under pressure due to constrained taxation bases and policies, and the debt situation. They were already buckling under the weight of global disruptions such as the United States-China tensions; the effect of Brexit on African supply chains and trade processes; and related financial flow difficulties.

The digital divide between Africa and the developed world has never been more evident. As the world is suddenly thrust into a situation where digitally-driven communication and processes are the only option, accessible and reliable internet and affordable data have become essential public services.

Most of Africa, with its poor digital infrastructure, will experience the harshest outcomes of the crisis. However, the good news is that disruptive solutions are sure to emerge. Countries such as Kenya, which has embraced electronic payment systems using e-money, will have an advantage, and could even design new systems to buttress the economy and social protection money transfer programmes.

Healthcare system

Even then, such virtual programmes will face the challenge of designing initiatives that take into account the informal systems prevalent in African economies that make it difficult to identify and locate vulnerable groups that need the interventions the most.

Most African countries’ healthcare systems are not equipped to deal with the basic needs of their populations and hardly receive the support and prioritisation they require. The pandemic has exposed the dire state of African healthcare, including lack of basic resources (such as protective wear for medical professionals and safe and suitable medical environments for patients).

Inefficiencies such as lack of adequate laboratory testing ability and capacity have impeded efforts to contain the virus. The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the pitfalls of failing to invest in skills development and learning infrastructure, both in schools and professional training.

With the pandemic forcing the closure of schools, most African communities have no access to educational materials due to lack of infrastructure, including digitisation. Many professionals who have access to digital tools do not have the skills to effectively work remotely during lockdowns and curfews. Skill shortages have worsened the effects of the virus on the economic and educational sectors.

The coronavirus has turned the spotlight on poor urban infrastructure such as overcrowded and unregulated public transportation systems, as well as weak social welfare systems.

An efficient public transport system is the cornerstone of urban development and expanding cities. Africa is painfully learning that an atomistic, disorganised, and small public transport system is a recipe for chaos, especially during a health crisis.

Granted, the pandemic has had a devastating effect on the fragile African economies, but the outlook does not need to be completely dire. In order to move forward, we need to learn from it and change. Our weaknesses have been starkly outlined.

We need to address them. One such outstanding weakness is African markets’ reliance on imported goods (and services). This was illustrated by the dire shortage of masks and other medical and safety resources in the initial stages of the outbreak.

The pandemic had taught us that it is time to get serious about efforts such as the Intra-African Trade Agreement, which aims to bolster continental trade and development across all sectors, including manufacturing and distribution. The emphasis should be on allowing domestic production capabilities to take root, backed by strong institutional makeup that supports international trade and regional integration.

African decision and policymakers need to use this as a framework to build capacity for sustainability to strengthen socio-economic development across the continent. There is an urgent need for solutions that will move the continent forward, reduce risk, and maximise opportunities in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis.

Africa’s actions in the aftermath of this social and economic crisis will guide the recovery and inclusive growth of the continent. We cannot predict the future, but we can be better prepared for the uncertainties that lie ahead.

Decisive, research-driven, and solution-orientated steps need to be taken to turn adversity into opportunity. While the full effects of the crisis have yet to be seen, African leaders need to start taking action to mitigate the negative impacts and work towards building and strengthening the continent. Africa will rise from this battle, and with the potential to be stronger than ever before.

Njuguna Ndung’u, AERC Executive Director, former Governor, Central Bank of Kenya

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

African countries are still reeling from the effects of the measures taken to contain the spread of Covid-19. Though painful, they were a vital part of the successful public health response mounted by many African leaders.

The quick responses by most African countries meant that they were able to avoid the large-scale loss of life seen elsewhere.

The 1.8 million infections and 44,000 deaths recorded on the continent by mid-November are a great loss. They are, nevertheless, far from the catastrophic predictions made back in March and April.

But the fight is not yet over: the Africa Centres for Disease Control has recently warned of a fresh wave of infections, reporting almost 9,000 cases a day. With lockdowns easing and borders opening this figure will certainly rise.

If good public health measures helped Africa tackle its first Covid-19 wave, a response led by scientists and researchers must be central to any current and future threats. This was emphasised by several top African scientists gathered at a recent webinar convened to discuss next steps to contain the pandemic.

The strong leadership displayed by many African countries during the pandemic is certainly a lesson for others. But strong leadership needs good science. For Africa, this means that research for treatments and vaccines for Covid-19 must take place here, led by African scientists and tailored to this specific context.

Global solidarity might be lacking in the fight against Covid-19 but regional cooperation is not, especially in Africa. As the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, John Nkengasong, pointed out, “The continent came together very quickly.”

Under his leadership, 55 health ministers gathered in Addis Ababa in February to develop a joint African strategy for the Covid-19 outbreak.

One of the decisions taken was to develop a platform to train 100,000 health workers and for the common procurement of diagnostic medical supplies. Called the Partnership to Accelerate Covid-19 Testing in Africa (PACT), the initiative was set up for multiple countries and has led to 12 million tests being conducted.

Many countries closed borders and implemented lockdowns. South Africa instituted one of the world’s strictest. For its part the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) instituted a lockdown and suspended all flights into the country – the main way cases were being introduced.

Testing capacity

A number of countries also developed impressive testing programmes. One was Senegal, whose Institut Pasteur in Dakar was one of only two laboratories with Covid-19 testing capacity when the pandemic began. Results are now available in hours. The country has also trained health workers elsewhere on the continent, and the Institut is developing home-test kits which should be available soon.

In South Africa, an army of health workers with experience in HIV and tuberculosis were used as contact tracers for Covid-19.

Another feature of the response in some countries was getting the buy-in of communities. Steve Mundeke Ahuka, the incident manager for the Covid-19 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the country drew on its past experience in managing the Ebola response.

This involved using social scientists and epidemiologists to study perceptions of Ebola in the community because of the distrust of outsiders. These insights were used to create and adapt communications to combat fake news and support vaccination and contact tracing. After two difficult years, the strategies paid off: over 300,000 people were vaccinated.

Similar strategies were used for Covid-19.

Most of the research taking place for Covid-19 is happening in North America and Europe. Large, well-organised clinical trials that were launched months ago are already saving lives.

This intensity of research is needed on the continent.

There are a number of reasons for this.

The first is that Africa has a different genetic profile. According to Helen Rees, executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute in South Africa, who is leading Covid-19 vaccine efforts in South Africa, populations have different genetic backgrounds, and they are exposed to different infections such as HIV and malaria. We need to know if future vaccines will be safe and effective in our populations.

Clinical trials

Another reason for more research on the continent is that it can help drive policy. As Borna Nyaoke Anoke, senior clinical project manager and medical manager at DNDi, argues: We need large, well-conducted, randomised clinical trials in Africa to support policy change for treatments.

One of the most urgent priorities is the need for treatment for mild to moderate cases to avoid mass hospitalisations, which would overwhelm already overburdened health systems.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) will soon be launching a large clinical trial with a number of African and European partners to fill this gap. A number of treatments that can be given to patients with mild symptoms will be tested.

Lastly, African countries need to be active in the research arena to ensure that they are not last in the queue for life-saving treatments and vaccines.

African countries have proved that they have the skills and expertise to provide local solutions to this global pandemic. They need to build on this success together to keep the pandemic at bay.

Dr Monique Wasunna is Director, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, Africa Regional Office, and Researcher, Kenya Medical Research Institute

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

The World Health Organisation’s Africa regional office was predicting up to 190,000 deaths and between 29 million and 44 million infections in the first year of the pandemic alone. However, this was not to be. What were these assumptions based on, and what has made Africa different?

When Covid-19 began to spread globally at an alarming rate, many institutions and scientists felt a sense of apprehension and fear for the African continent. Their fear was rooted in the belief that most African countries had overstretched and underfunded health systems, combined with the large numbers of people with infectious and non-infectious diseases that the continent was already grappling with. So the predicted figures came as no surprise.

However, whilst Africa accounts for 17 per cent of the global population, it only has 3.4 per cent of the reported global Covid-19 cases and a similar margin of deaths. This has come as a shock to the world, especially when it became clear that the numbers in Africa were much lower than any other continent. In hindsight, many were quick to forget the experience the continent has had managing previous outbreaks including HIV/Aids, Ebola, cholera, malaria, and even polio and measles for the younger population.

Several African countries have experienced Ebola outbreaks, the largest having occurred in 2014 in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and a couple of neighbouring countries. The approach of hygiene, testing, and isolating cases and tracing contacts that has been successfully used during Ebola outbreaks came in handy when Covid-19 came to the continent. Many countries already had the necessary experience and infrastructure to be quickly mobilised and deployed.

Additionally, Africa reacted faster in efforts to curb the disease than any European country or the US. The fact that the virus spread to the African continent later than other regions gave us the time “to learn and unlearn” before it was too late. We had the benefit of time, which allowed us to see the consequences of late action. We saw the devastating consequences the outbreak had on health care systems in Italy and Spain. More importantly, we could also see that a different outcome was possible with quick action. South Korea and Vietnam were already posting much better results than Italy and Spain. This was definitely an added advantage in fighting the pandemic. The rate of the spread and the level of impact of the outbreak was recognised early, and preventative measures could be put in place at an early stage. Countries that quickly deployed surveillance measures were those that were still doing Ebola surveillance at points of entry due to the outbreak that was still ongoing in DRC.

Many believe that African countries are reporting low rates of infection due to their limited testing capacity. Could this be the reason the figures from the continent seem exceptionally low, in comparison to the global North?

It is not a secret that several African countries have been facing a shortage of testing kits, thus raising concerns that the continent’s relatively low number of reported Covid-19 cases was and is still due to lack of testing. The lack of adequate testing is however not just an African phenomenon. With the exception of a handful of countries in Asia, many countries are grappling with this. Ideally anyone who needs a test should get it, but this is not the case.

Without mass testing in countries like Italy, Spain, UK, and USA the number of cases have overwhelmed health care systems. One could argue that if there were tens of thousands of undetected cases in African countries, the severe cases would have already overrun the health facilities. This is not the case so far.

So can we really trust the statistics from African governments? In reality, this will vary from country to country based on their ability and method of testing large numbers and the phase of the outbreak they are in. One can never tell whether all cases are being detected, however the numbers are more likely to be closer to what is being reported than the millions predicted. Countries are doing surveillance and testing cases of acute respiratory illnesses, targeted testing in high-risk groups such as frontline healthcare workers, truck drivers, and law enforcement. Additional testing is done for contacts of cases. Test positivity rates (the percentage of cases out of the number of tests conducted) vary widely across the region. Rates above 5 per cent are of concern because they indicate widespread transmission.

How did African countries’ public health response to the pandemic differ from the larger global response? And did this play a role in curbing the spread of the virus?

The continent’s response preceded the reporting of cases by many weeks. Countries instituted checks at ports of entry, started tracking travellers from high-risk countries and public education campaigns as early as late January/early February. Most African countries had already established Ebola national task forces; a few in East Africa were still doing Ebola surveillance, so it was easy to repurpose their disease surveillance systems. In Sierra Leone, which was ravaged by the Ebola virus, lessons from the Ebola pandemic were implemented to curb the spread of Covid-19. One of these was the declaration of a state of emergency throughout the country starting from March 25, 2020, even before the first case of Covid-19 was reported in the country. Several countries banned large gatherings and closed schools before even the first case was detected.

This means that countries were already in response mode when the first cases were reported and not caught flat-footed, as has been seen in the worst hit countries in the North. The Africa CDC and WHO have also been instrumental in quickly developing tools and protocols that countries could use to make choices on the most suitable interventions based on the stage of the outbreak in each country. One key feature of the response of Africa is the strength of regional institutions like Africa CDC and WHO Afro – the coordinated approach and the fact that African countries actually took their advice.

Some scientists believe that Africa has been spared the brunt of the virus due to reasons that include a larger youth population, regular exposure to other infectious diseases, and even genetics. What’s your take on these assumptions?

While they might be true, such assumptions are also grounded in the belief that Africans have no agency and things happen to us because of factors outside our control. There have been several other hypotheses floated around, including the hot weather, BCG vaccination, and cross-immunity from other coronaviruses. There are many factors that could explain why Africa has been spared the worst of the pandemic. First and foremost, we must give credit where it is due: That our governments acted first (or fast??) and prevented the virus from spreading uncontrolled before taking serious measures. Second, we must give credit to our regional bodies for reacting quickly and providing advice and guidance to our governments. Third, we must give credit to the African scientists who have been advising governments and customising the response to local contexts. Fourth, we must give credit to the Africans who have taken measures to slow down the spread – hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, and social distancing. This has come at a great cost to people’s social, economic, and mental wellbeing. We should never minimise that.

Now back to the other theories: Of course the youthful population may mean that most Covid-19 cases have no symptoms or are mild and hence are out there in the community undetected. The hot weather may slow down the spread since the virus may not survive as along in hot as in cold weather. The social interactions in majority of African communities are different. Work in rural areas means walking to the field with one’s family and spending the day outdoors – not taking a crowded commuter train to work in a closed space with strangers. Another plausible theory is that Africans may have what is called cross-immunity, where previous exposure to other coronaviruses has made our bodies resistant to this particular one. The jury is still out there on some of these theories.

For now, I want to go with the agency and ingenuity of Africans – it’s what has brought us this far and it is what will see us through the worst of this pandemic.

Catherine Kyobutungi is the Executive Director, Africa Population and Health Research Centre

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

One of the Kusi Ideas Festival’s themes is “The Pandemic Taught Us That African Integration Is A Winner”. Most of the instances of this integration have been physical – for example, the African Union preparing the continent to receive medical supplies and future vaccines, and African airlines moving desperately needed personal protective equipment (PPE) around the continent. What if the real winner here is when we can all come together online? What if we envisioned a “moonshot” for Africa that promises to bridge the digital divide and get millions of people online for the first time, knowing that when people are better connected, we can better manage the pandemic and become better prepared for our collective future?

According to the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development at Unesco, most Africans get access to the internet through data from their cell phones. However, the usage gap on the continent, or the percentage of people living inside mobile broadband coverage but not using mobile internet, stood at 49 per cent in 2019. Lack of digital skills and affordability are the two main drivers behind this gap – on average, one GB of data costs 9 per cent of monthly income in sub-Saharan Africa (the global standard is no more than 2 per cent). For many people across the continent, this puts getting online almost entirely out of reach.

Covid-19 has shown us in many ways that digital connectivity, particularly through our mobile phones, is crucial and that lack of it can have catastrophic effects. First, putting mobile data into people’s hands allows them to get access to information on demand, beyond what is supplied by government notifications, and perhaps even cheaper.

While there are mechanisms to get information on the pandemic to people without the internet via SMS or USSD, this information comes at a per-message cost, which is sometimes out of reach for the majority of the population. Second, as the pandemic has forced school closures and moved millions of children across the continent (and around the world) to online learning, lack of access to the internet is pushing millions of students in low-resource settings behind.

Third, diagnostic tools to monitor the spread of the virus and disseminate contact tracing information are often only available in Western markets - and even if they were available in sub-Saharan Africa, they would not be able to reach the unconnected. Currently, despite some successes on the continent in monitoring the spread of the virus, governments in the Global South are spending millions of dollars and wasting time and human resources doing contact tracing manually at the expense of their own citizens.

There are examples from around the world about how we can leverage mobile data and technology, even for those getting online for the first time, to better manage the pandemic and prepare for a post-Covid future. First, using national portals, emergency SMS services, social media, and devoted pandemic response apps, governments can spread timely and correct information about outbreak statistics, travel restrictions, guidance on protection from the virus, and government responses to the pandemic.

We can look to Taiwan as an exemplar. From April to mid-August 2020, Taiwan registered no domestic cases of Covid-19, with all new cases arising from inbound travellers.

Central data base

The country implemented a national contact tracing platform known as TRACE that handles case identification, contact identification, and contact health monitoring via phone and a central database. Their success in containing the pandemic has been heralded as a best practice for strategies for managing a future pandemic.

Second, internet access can both allow people to stay home, thus helping to contain the spread of the disease, and also formalise the informal economy, therefore creating innovations to connect people to work. Amal, a Palestinian company, created an app that uses machine learning technology to connect construction workers to projects, eliminating the need for gatherings of labourers in densely populated areas to be selected for work. Such gatherings could be sites for the spread of Covid-19.

Third, access to mobile data can help diagnose and monitor the spread of the virus. In Nigeria, Wellvis created the Covid-19 Triage Tool, a free online product where people can self-score their risks of contracting the virus and then gain access to relevant information about prevention and care.

Luckily, there is no shortage of actors working to get people online on the continent in unique ways. Amp Global (“AMP”), headquartered in Mauritius and with a presence in Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa, is an example of an African company doing its part to bridge the digital divide, with the vision of getting 70 per cent of Africans on 4G data by 2025. AMP partners with telecommunication companies to offer free data rewards to users on its app in exchange for amplifying and promoting content from African artists, removing the cost barriers that prevent people from getting access to mobile internet in the first place.

Cost barriers

AMP is also bridging the local content gap, developing demand-driven content that African consumers want and simultaneously training African artists on digital skills that are in high demand in the continent’s job market. If AMP is successful in its vision and enables 75 per cent of Africa’s population to get online, there is a potential for this to create 44 million additional jobs.

We cannot underestimate the democratisation of data and the power of the internet in the post-Covid future - just getting people connected opens up a world of possibilities that goes beyond getting a job. If you put data in the hands of people and allow them to do with it what they want, it will bring unprecedented opportunities.

Through the internet, ordinary people can create products, services, and content to meet their community needs as evidenced by the pandemic. However, connecting the unconnected costs money and the task ahead of us is massive. A recent report from the Broadband Commission estimates that around $100 billion will be needed to achieve universal access to broadband connectivity in Africa.

Investing in digital skills and local content creation in the next 10 years alone will require $18 billion. Although AMP is a model to look towards, the company and other actors like it cannot do the work of getting hundreds of millions of people online by themselves. Governments, telecommunication companies, private sector actors, international organisations, and civil society need to move out of their silos to co-create and invest in a digitally resilient, more interconnected post-Covid future for Africa.

Isaac Kwaku Fokuo, Jr. Founder and Principal Botho Emerging Markets Group

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

While fast becoming a cliché, in a space of just nine months, the way of life of virtually the whole of humankind has changed. SARSCoV-2 respects no geographic, gender, ethnic, or religious boundaries. Dealing with it has required coordinated efforts between the government, the commercial sector, civil society, and individuals.

On behalf of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), I would like to congratulate the Nation Media Group (NMG) on holding the second edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival – Towards a Post-Covid Africa, in these unprecedented times and under the most challenging of circumstances. NMG’s resilience, flexibility, and ability to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic is reflective of the capacity of AKDN agencies, of which NMG is one, to respond to crises beyond immediate interventions.

Founded by His Highness the Aga Khan, Imam (spiritual leader) of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, AKDN has a presence in over 30 countries, with its agencies operating in Africa in the sectors of education, health, finance, media, culture, tourism, and industry for nearly 100 years. Addressing complex issues in healthcare, education, and certainly during a pandemic, requires enormous resources and AKDN has a tradition of working with partners with mutual interests to produce mutually beneficial outcomes that improve the quality of life.

Mutual interests

This has been evident in our response to the Covid-19 pandemic; AKDN has been working with its partners – governments, development banks, diplomatic donor agencies, and numerous organisations at international and national levels – to provide short and long-term strategic support to mitigate the harmful consequences of the pandemic.

The three key themes for the Kusi Festival this year are health; Africa’s hidden strengths and resilience; and re-engineering Africa’s future. During the festival, you will likely hear about some remarkable organisations and individuals that have responded to the challenges arising from the pandemic with innovation, creativity, tenacity, and ingenuity. Our own experience at AKDN includes examples of widescale adaptation by our agencies in multiple sectors to transform their business and programmatic models in reaction to the pandemic.

In the health sector, AKDN through its Health Services and the University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, supported governments through the provision of isolation facilities, additional ICU beds, Covid-19 testing, personal protection equipment (PPE), and the training of thousands of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers in management and care protocols for Covid-positive patients. Recently, the Aga Khan University (AKU) and the Aga Khan Health Services in Kenya and Tanzania received a grant of six million euros from KfW, the German state-owned development bank, towards the purchase of PPE for health workers and Covid-19 test kits. Part of the grant will also fund a Covid-19 patient welfare programme.

Our media and educational institutions responded to and embraced the digital transformation that has taken place on a global scale: NMG launched its digital brand Nation.Africa and transformed its thought leadership series – the Nation Leadership Forum – into a digital platform; the Network’s schools and university developed online curricula for distance learning and the training of health workers; public education was conducted extensively through AKU’s webinar series, with the participation of renowned subject matter experts; and Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) provided fasttracked financial relief and a swift transition to cashless and online banking for thousands of its clients.

In the public domain, AKU is working with globally renowned partners for a rapid response in vaccine development, drug trials, and research to improve the care and management of Covid-19 patients; DTB signed an agreement with the International Finance Corporation for a $50 million loan – part of IFC’s fast-track Covid-19 global facility – to enable the bank to continue supporting its small and medium enterprise clients; and the Aga Khan Foundation, working with its partners, leveraged its extensive network of nearly 2,000 civil society organisations to channel online content on Covid-19 prevention measures, trained community groups to produce PPE, and provided food relief to thousands of vulnerable families and their communities.

Operational strategies

Although these are just some examples of the measures implemented by AKDN agencies over the past few months, all the agencies are transforming their programmatic and operational strategies to facilitate an emergence into a post-Covid-19 era over the next few years, from positions of sustainability and strength. As we anticipate a wide-scale rollout of Covid-19 vaccines and a hopeful return to a safer, albeit much changed world, AKDN will continue to work with its multi-level partners to support the continent’s people and their development to engender self-reliance for all and to improve quality of life. All of this is underpinned by strong ethics and values, including compassion, concern for vulnerable people, generosity, and excellence.

Dr Azim Lakhani is the diplomatic representative of the Aga Khan Development Network Kenya.

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

Sixty years since most African States attained independence, the Covid-19 pandemic has shone a fresh spotlight on the folly of the haphazard colonial boundaries.

Long traffic jams at border posts across the continent, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, were the poster child of the non-tariff barriers that continue to hamper trade in Africa. These boundaries are the primary reason for the high cost of doing business in Africa and are the cause of low intra-African trade, investment, economic integration, and poverty.

Covid-19 has also introduced a new economic paradigm, with digital technology taking the lead to ease the safe flow of goods across borders. If the pandemic persists late into 2021, some of the new digital technologies introduced to facilitate safe cross-border movement could become permanent fixtures across the continent and indeed other parts of the world.

The concept of intra-African trade dates before the 15th century. Despite war and competitiveness among African empires, they traded among themselves, sometimes travelling long distances to do so. The Songhai Empire practically controlled the trans-Saharan trade whereby an array of goods and services including gold, slaves, ivory, silk, horses, and sugar were exchanged. As is the case today, trade was a mutual exchange of goods and services and it had two dimensions to it; commercial and societal.

With increased trading activities came a well-developed system of trading. The barter trade system was eventually replaced by currencies such as coins used in northern Africa, brass rods used by the Tiv of Nigeria, and copper ingots in central and parts of southern Africa.

To overcome the challenges of adverse weather conditions that rendered some trade routes impassable and the insecurity posed by raiders, traders started sharing information and goods.

Trade routes were developed, opening up previously inaccessible regions. Societies were formed, ultimately leading to European colonisation of Africa.

Trade patterns

With colonialism came new trade patterns. The transport corridors were designed to extract raw materials from the hinterland to the metropolitan centres. The Berlin Conference of 1884 portioned Africa into small colonial enclaves, leading to the creation of 55 African states, 17 of which are landlocked. The partition was intended to settle disputes in the scramble for African land among the colonial powers; it was certainly not for the benefit of Africans. The boundaries engendered rivalries that have persisted and taken the form of mistrust among African leaders.

These rivalries have been costly to the continent and partly explain the perpetual disadvantages that have contributed to Africa’s poor performance in economic, social, and even political growth. Almost 140 years since they were drawn up, the arbitrary boundaries continue to define the relationships among Africa states.

Intra-African trade has continued to suffer, dropping to between 14 to 18 per cent of total traded goods and services.

Landlocked countries face huge challenges because of trans-shipment of goods, leading to high cost of doing business. Global studies indicate a common feature among landlocked countries: low property prices, low industrialisation, dependence on a single commodity, and resentment of neighbours on which they depend due for their imports and exports. First Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah’s sentiment that political independence should be accompanied by economic emancipation still rings true for Africa. The continent is still in the mental shackles of colonisation. How else can we explain our willingness to allow others to exploit Africa to advance their own agenda?

Well, it is not all gloom and doom. Since 1963, when the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established, there have been several initiatives to address the challenges facing intra-African trade. These include the Lagos Plan of Action, the Abuja Treaty, the Constitutive Act establishing the African Union (AU), the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development, and Agenda 2063. In addition to the continent-wide initiatives, all African states subscribe to one or more regional integration arrangements. Through these cooperation arrangements new transport corridors such as the Northern Corridor, the Southern Corridor, and the Western African Corridor are taking shape and have helped to lower the cost of doing business.

Regional economic communities have been at the forefront of championing intra-continental trade through protocols aimed at reducing tariff barriers. Like their counterparts in southern, central, and western Africa, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the East African Community (EAC) have spearheaded and promoted transport corridor arrangements, including the concept of the One Stop Common Border Post (OSCBP).

Transport corridor

Bilateral programmes such as the Standard Gauge Railway could potentially help in shaping new transport corridors, but must be accompanied with a robust trade facilitation programme. Throughout history, urbanisation and cities have developed along transport corridors. Concomitantly the location of industry has always been influenced by availability of power, communication, labour, access to markets, financial infrastructure, and raw materials.

Goods, including agricultural produce, automotive, chemicals, beverages, mining, and heavy machinery, vital for daily consumption, are transported by sea, railway, and road. Under the Programme for Infrastructure Development for Africa (PIDA), the continent has articulated a strategy to address the challenges.

African governments and multilateral agencies have made an effort to reduce tariffs, which are a barrier to trade. Next, the continent needs to tame non-tariff barriers, the biggest of which is the mindset.

Ambassador Erastus Mwencha is former Secretary-General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and former Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission. He is current the chairman of TradeMark East Africa.

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the necessity to rethink the existing economic model informed by capitalist logics of exploitation and profit-making. In many instances, the desire for profit trumps consideration for welfare and the environment.

In many African countries, exploitation of minerals without beneficiation, or value addition, has contributed to mass poverty. This compromises people's health and ability to cope with the outbreak of a pandemic of the magnitude of Covid-19.

What has emerged poignantly from coping with Covid-19 is the urgent need to think about the welfare of the many, rather than profits and consumerism. An economy of welfare considers the workers, women, and other vulnerable groups in the society.

Capitalism, which extols profit maximisation, needs to make way for social capitalism. This would ensure that living wages for workers and care for the environment are given priority. Failure to rethink the current model will accentuate poverty and inequality. This, in turn, will make people more vulnerable to global shocks that may result from future pandemics.

More than any region of the world, Africa remains the epicentre of poverty. This, while corporations exploit its resources and political elites misappropriate its wealth. The Covid-19 pandemic has made urgent the need to move away from an economy of exploitation to one of welfare, which puts people first.

The continued entrapment of African countries in the global circuit of capital and its proclivity for large-scale accumulation imperils the ability of many to cope with the pandemic. This reality prompted research that culminated in the Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy edited by Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba and Toyin Falola.

The handbook illuminates a lively debate on how the past feeds into the present, shaping the political economy of African countries. And it looks at how they could be changed in a way that also values lives, not just profits.

The various chapters cover different aspects of African political economy – in the past and in the present. Conclusions are not the same. But a central argument is the need for structural transformation of economies through value addition to natural resources such as minerals and metals, oil and gas. They also highlight the importance of self-reliance, regional integration, and a more nuanced state involvement.

This should go beyond creating an enabling environment for productive enterprises. It should also ensure distribution in ways that foster inclusive development.

The project enabled a new generation of scholars to revisit the historical ideas of a range of writers. These included Frantz Fanon, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Kwame Nkrumah, Thandika Mkandawire, Claude Ake, Bade Onimode, and Amilcar Cabral. The scholars explain the problematic way in which Africa was brought into the global circuit of power and capitalist economy. These were combined with the thoughts of a younger generation of scholars.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni outlined four moments of the rampaging global capital the kidnapping and commodification of black African people through enslavement; the plantation economies where black labour was exploited; colonies where African people were reduced to providers of cheap labour; and the present neo-colonial moment where Africans are suffering due to debt slavery initiated by the present global financial empire supported by the IMF and other financial institutions.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit an Africa that was already structurally fragile and vulnerable. This, due to its invidious position within the global capitalist economy. Lockdown measures had a harsh impact due to the informal nature of the continent's economies.

Some states rolled out massive stimulus packages to the private sector to revamp their economies hit by the lockdowns.

Nevertheless, the IMF forecasts that Africa's economy will shrink by -3.2 per cent in 2020. Growth is now expected to collapse in many countries, especially those dependent on tourism and resources such as oil and mineral exports. Growth in more diversified nonresource-based economies is expected to come to a "near standstill".

Covid-19 has laid bare the inherent contradictions in the political economy of Africa. Lack of a universal basic income in most countries worsened household incomes and welfare. As Akinola Adeoye argues in his chapter in the handbook, the market-oriented reforms imposed on Africa by the Bretton Woods institutions from the 1980s weakened the capacity of its states to reallocate resources.

For his part, Oloruntoba emphasises the external and extractive nature of economies. This has led to loss of revenues in the form of illicit financial flows from the continent, impinging on the capacity of states to mobilise resources.

The management of African economies post-Covid-19 must go beyond sporadic interventions and stimulus packages such as those seen during the pandemic.

It must engage with what Mariana Mazzucato calls market shaping. This means the state becomes active in governing both the supply side of the economy (investments) and the demand side (government as purchaser) so that citizens benefit.

In other words, the state should go beyond fixing market failures to shaping market motives and behaviour.

The synergy that the state formed with the private sector during the pandemic should be sustained in ways that can lead to massive investment in innovation, job-creating infrastructure and social sectors such as education and health.

African political elites must also be held accountable by both civil society and the private sector to minimise rent-seeking. This will ensure that resources are judiciously used to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor and Chairman of Epistemologies of the Global South, University of Bareuth, Germany, University of South Africa, while Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba is visiting professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University.

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican on December 5, 2020.

In the mid-1300s, humanity was struck by a deadly pandemic. Spread by fleas and flea-carrying rodents, the plague killed between 70 and 200 million people across the world over a period of about 20 years. Trade was slow and so was movement, and this defined the path of the bacteria that became so notorious that it was nicknamed The Black Death. In England, a quarter of the population died!

This wasn’t the first or last plague to strike humanity; the deadly smallpox, eventually defeated in 1978, struck in Mexico, spreading globally and leaving packed graveyards. Another major outbreak in 1918, coming from the battle fronts of the First World War, this time caused by a virus, killed between 50 and 100 million people.

However, humanity largely won the battle against this global enemy through major discoveries in vaccines, antibiotics, hygiene, and other medical advancements.

And there was relative calm.

But this was not to last long as the world witnessed the HIV pandemic towards the end of the 20th century and in quick succession, threats rose in the name of Ebola, swine flu, Zika virus, SERS and MERS, and currently Covid-19, which at the time of writing this article stands at more than 63 million cases and almost 1.5 million deaths globally in less than 12 months. It has been driven largely by globalisation and movement of people and goods in a highly interconnected world.

In 1969, the World Health Organisation Assembly, guided by the history of 20th century suffering and successes, and informed by the growing movement of people, noted that avoiding pandemics was not going to be the responsibility of a single country, but that of the whole world. The member states of WHO therefore adopted the International Health Regulations. This document, legally binding international law, was to achieve global collaboration to prevent, protect against, control, and provide a public health response to the international spread of diseases in a way that interferes with international traffic and trade.

Some 35 years later, and many gaps unattended on the International Health Regulations by Africa countries, the Ebola epidemic broke out in West Africa and became a big threat to the health, trade, and economy of the world. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone lost over 11,000 lives and $2.2 billion in GDP in one year. Actual total cost is estimated to be more than $53 billion.

Then 51 years later, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Africa. As I write this article, the continent has recorded more than two million cases and over 50,000 lives lost. In addition, the continent faces a recession estimated to be an economic contraction of 3.3 per cent, the first in 25 years, leaving many lives and livelihoods destroyed.

It’s clear that the future of Africa’s socio-economic development will be shaped by how well it prepares to prevent, protect against, control, and provide a public health response to current and future pandemics, epidemics, or outbreaks.

How so?

First and foremost, Africa must wake up to the reality that protecting its lives and livelihoods from the shocks of current and future health threats is one and the same thing as building universal health coverage – health security and universal health coverage are two sides of the same coin, as the World Health Organisation Director General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, likes to say.

Currently, Africa remains the continent with the lowest universal health coverage, with only 43 per cent of its population achieving effective coverage of health services. Expanding universal health coverage to all, including its key component of financial protection, will mean that the services needed to keep pandemics at bay such as prevention of infectious diseases and other public health common goods will be available to everyone, everywhere across the continent. This will require investment in community health services, including early disease detection and control, with supportive health system infrastructure of laboratory capacity, health data management, and human resources and commodities in an equitable manner where all are included.

Public resources

This will require Africa to invest more of its public resources in health, in line with previous commitments such as the popular Abuja Declaration to spend at least 15 per cent of governments’ general budget expenditure on health. This has to be seen as an investment in the continent’s future prosperity rather than merely expenditure. Furthermore, embedding community participation and ownership will only guarantee success and efficiency of these investments.

Secondly, Africa must realise that emergence and re-emergence of diseases is closely linked to climate change, which is causing displacement of people and encroachment of wild lands. This has brought humans face-to-face with new disease-causing pathogens to which they have not developed prior immunity; overpopulation resulting in food security challenges and resulting in consumption of wild animals; and emerging resistance of disease-causing pathogens to antibiotics.

Whereas investment in health may be seen as an individual country responsibility, save for the implementation of International Health Regulations requiring country collaboration, climate change is a global responsibility in which Africa must participate fully as the least contributing continent but one the most impacted because of its pre-existing vulnerabilities. Africa must pay more attention to the 2015 Paris Agreement than it has previously done to ensure accelerated implementation of commitments needed for a sustainable low carbon future.

Finally, the continent must examine its response to impending over-population. It is estimated that Africa will more than double its population by 2050 unless girl education and empowerment are accelerated and barriers to the advancement of girls and women are removed.

This unholy triad of poor access to health services, climate change threats, and overpopulation is my 21st century assignment to African leaders to help the continent escape from pandemics and accompanying social and economic deprivation.

Dr Githinji Gitahi, Group CEO Amref Health Africa and Co-Chair UHC 2030

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This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican newspaper on December 5, 2020.

Covid-19 has worsened problems both for the world and Africa. Sixty per cent of Africa’s population is below the age of 25, which makes it the youngest continent, with a median age of 19. Young people are the continent’s biggest resource, but they have been bruised by the pandemic in more ways than one.

Unemployment

According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation 13.4 per cent of Africa’s workforce between ages 15-24, roughly 16 million people, were facing unemployment in 2019. Even at the best of times, young people are most likely to be the first to lose their jobs or have to turn to low-quality, low-pay, and often unsafe jobs. In 2020, Covid-19 has exacerbated this as young people were laid off and a number of youth start-ups and enterprises collapsed because they could not meet governments’ criteria for receiving economic stimulus packages. In the recovery phase of the pandemic response, start-ups and youth-dominated sectors will require concentrated support in the form of financing to help revive them.

Increased Insecurity

What happens when a lot of young people are unemployed, out of school, and barely managing to survive? We have a few clues. First, reports of petty theft and house breakings have been on the rise. This Covid period has also seen an increase in domestic and gender-based violence at the household level, especially for young couples, and increased sexual abuse of young girls and boys. Second, as young people sought to beat the daily monotony of being young, energetic, out of school, and jobless, we have seen the outright breaking of Covid-19 restrictions and guidelines. This has meant increased law enforcement, increasing arrests of young people, and a decline in respect for rules that try to keep society on an even keel.

Education

According to Unesco, 74 per cent of global students have been affected by the pandemic. Along with many other countries, African education has been greatly affected by Covid-19 as students have been at home since its outbreak early this year. Even though many learning institutions, especially the private ones, transitioned to online teaching and learning, many others in Africa are reluctant to invest in digital learning. One can understand why: Many schools, colleges, and universities simply do not have the infrastructure needed for remote learning. An estimated 89 per cent of learners in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to household computers with another 82 per cent lacking internet access. In some places learning has stopped completely and it is hard to tell if Africa’s educational institutions will open again any time soon.

In addition, chronic poverty means many people do not have the necessary devices to successfully navigate an online classroom, let alone connect to online education. This is one of factors that adds to the difficulty of relying on digital education plans.

Digital literacy

First, people who can acquire and use digital platforms for work and learning already have the required education and skills. Outside this group, there is limited education, leaving many unable to get access to digital learning. The need to increase digital literacy and build digital capacity among Africans has revealed itself during this pandemic period. On a positive note, young Africans have been working independently to deepen their digital literacy, often becoming the channels through which others can also receive the skills.

Access to the internet

Africa has some of the most expensive internet costs around the world, making many online webinars and classes for young people practically inaccessible. Even if they could afford an internet connection, many do not have sufficient internet bandwidth to support their participation. There is also the increased cost of trying to study or do business online, or attend webinars. According to Rebecca Enonchong, the founder and CEO of AppsTech, the median of 1GB of data in Africa costs about $7.04, with some countries registering a cost of more than $20 per GB of data. A single Zoom meeting costs approximately 540MB to 1.63 GB of data per hour. As a result, many young Africans are losing out.

Access to electricity

About 600 million people in Africa still don't have access to electricity. Yet reliable and affordable power is an important component for young people who must now work or study from home. Sadly, millions of young people cannot use their laptops or other digital devices due to unreliable and unaffordable power, forcing many to seek alternative sources for charging their devices. Many have been frustrated as a reliable electricity connection allows people to ensure that their days are well used and that they can manage the transition to digital learning and working spaces. It is critical to mention that the Covid-19 period has coincided with disconnection of power for millions of people unable to pay their bills. This means that many children cannot continue their lessons.

Slowed, but not stopped

Despite the pandemic and its impacts, African youth continue to demonstrate resilience, creativity, and the spirit of innovation and enterprise. As we journey towards a post-Covid-19 Africa, it is critical that millions of young Africans are supported with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to recover from the hard blows of the pandemic. This will not only benefit them personally, it will also build a strong foundation for all of us as we face future crises.

Passy Amayo Ogolla is Programme Manager at the Society for International Development in East Africa.

***
This article was first published in a pullout in The EastAfrican newspaper on December 5, 2020.

News of the successful development of a vaccine against the virus that causes Covid-19 was met with a global sigh of relief. Vaccine distribution is slated to start in early 2021. Where does Africa stand in this scenario?

Already, Oxfam has cautioned that rich countries, representing 13 per cent of the global population, have claimed half of all the Covid-19 vaccine doses that will be made available. This means that many African countries may have to wait until 2022 to get sufficient vaccines for their populations.

However, there is hope on the horizon, with a robust vaccine pipeline. There are many candidates on a variety of platforms and technologies with results expected in the first half of 2021, with the initial millions of doses delivered by mid-2021.

Proposed strategies for improvement have focused on ensuring vaccine availability, minimising stock-outs, and enhancing vaccination coverage. The transport, energy, and health sectors together form the core of the logistical infrastructure from the time the vaccines are manufactured, delivered to central storage points, distributed, and administered to a recipient at a specified location.

Globally, immunisation is recognised as one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions, reducing infectious disease-related morbidly and mortality of children at a low cost, and saving millions of lives. However, achieving universal immunisation coverage continues to be a challenge.

The Covid-19 death rate in Africa has been lower than Europe and the Americas, with the bulk of reported cases and deaths (75 per cent) concentrated in five countries, namely South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Tunisia. On the flip side, due to the higher levels of poverty and weak health systems, millions of people have been pushed deeper into poverty, and the disease burden has gone up, with routine immunisation and essential maternal and child health services declining, as well as HIV, TB and malaria care. The rapid increase in Covid-19 cases is causing a significant loss of life and overwhelming many health systems.

The majority of the Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) are working through the COVAX facility - a partnership of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Gavi, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) – to secure subsidised vaccines for their populations.

WHO Africa estimates that the cost of rolling out a two-dose regimen of the Covid-19 vaccine to priority populations in Africa will be around $5.7 billion. An additional 15-20 per cent will be required for associated materials (syringes and needles) and the delivery of vaccines (trained health workers, supply chain, logistics, risk communication, community mobilisation, and monitoring of any adverse events). However, the final prices have still to be determined and discussions with COVAX are in progress to determine if further subsidies can be provided, including free vaccines for priority targets in LMICs.

Lack of access and inadequate health systems have shaped the narrative in Africa regarding epidemics, from HIV to H5NI influenza and now Covid-19. Africans have perished while awaiting donor/development support to purchase needed supplies for diagnosis and treatment. The newly established Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) created a partnership to accelerate Covid-19 testing to fill this gap. The situation is somewhat better as countries have started to manufacture test kits locally in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa.

Due to the limited quantities of vaccines that will be available in the early stages, COVAX will initially focus on 3 per cent of the population (health workers and people with underlying conditions), progressively increasing to 16-20 per cent as more vaccines become available.

Estimates suggest that vaccination levels of 60-70 per cent are needed to achieve herd immunity, the level at which most people are protected against a virus. Africa will need 1.5 billion doses to vaccinate 60 per cent of its population of 1.2 billion, assuming there are two doses per vaccine. Given that up to 80 per cent of the projected production for 2021 has already been secured by developed countries, a more realistic option is for the continent to collectively negotiate directly with vaccine manufacturers to secure additional supplies under bilateral arrangements.

Obtaining and delivering the Covid-19 vaccines while continuing with routine immunisation will present a range of formidable challenges. Now is the time to create an enabling environment, and a preparedness assessment is key to this process. With the first vaccines projected to become more available in the early part of 2021, the window for planning and preparation is now.

The immediate goal for each country is to efficiently execute complex immunisation campaigns simultaneously, to multiple “non-traditional” immunisation target groups in each country. Establishing a strategic framework for collaboration with Unicef, WHO, Gavi, local and regional regulatory agencies, development partners, the private sector, and civil society is the starting point. At the implementation level, institutions or groups with structures to manage logistics in disasters or emergencies such as the military, or those with a comparative advantage in logistics, information systems, and communication, such as private sector suppliers of fast-moving goods, should be co-opted into this framework. The preparedness assessment should inform vaccine delivery and distribution; public communication and education; mobilisation, recruitment, training, and monitoring of healthcare workers and volunteers; as well as safe and efficient administration of Covid-19 vaccines.

The first doses

The key question of who should receive the first doses of the vaccine is complex and should be determined in the earliest stages of planning. For example, frontline workers are often at the top of the proposed priority lists.

Risk communication should underpin the entire vaccination effort to improve uptake by providing beneficial information, addressing misinformation and rumours, and targeting specific factors driving vaccine hesitancy in the different contexts. An active social media campaign can mitigate issues as they arise and improve overall outcomes.

Last but not least, all these efforts are worth little without a robust surveillance system in place for early detection and rapid, targeted responses. In order to ensure appropriate vaccine reporting, monitoring, and evaluation, countries should begin to prepare and improve their vaccine management, reporting, monitoring, and evaluation systems to reduce stock-outs and wastage, and to ensure proper re-allocation and accountability.

Countries worldwide are still figuring out the best information system to manage this entire Covid-19 vaccine process, including distribution and quality assurance, especially where multiple doses are required. At operational level, individuals need to know what vaccine they are getting and remember or be reminded to get the second dose; health providers need to keep track of who has received what vaccines so they can provide the correct second dose; and above all, the government needs to distribute the right type of vaccines to the right geographic regions to avoid stock-outs, especially when people are ready for the second dose.

Africa is in a unique situation. The African Union has established Africa CDC, a specialised health agency dedicated to Africa that is leading the fight against Covid-19 in the region. It is currently engaged with various development partners, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies to explore how Africa can obtain and distribute the Covid-19 vaccine.

Grace Mercy Osewe is Senior Public Health Specialist and Managing Director, MDA Health Consulting Limited

The first Kusi Ideas Festival that was held in Kigali, exactly a year ago, was intended to mark two events in one; the 60th anniversary of Nation Media Group, which is Africa’s second-largest publicly listed media house, and also the aggregate 60th anniversary of independent Africa. For that reason, the wide range of very thoughtful and exciting conversations in Kigali in 2019 looked ahead to how the next 60 years would look like in Africa.

We had many grand ideas about how to structure Kusi 2. But like everybody else, we didn’t foresee that the coronavirus would cause one of the greatest upheavals in the world in nearly 100 years. Though we didn’t foresee the pandemic itself, actually the thoughtful African minds who spoke in Kigali foresaw quite a few of the events that are already beginning to take shape.

For instance, they foresaw a future where urban farming becomes a game changer. Urban farms have been critical in many African cities and towns during the pandemic, as lockdowns and other virus control measures disrupted transportation of food from upcountry.

They foresaw a future where digital dependency increases and a lot more of our daily transactions shift to our mobile devices, and that has happened – although, as in urban farms – they didn’t imagine it would come so soon, or that a virus would be the main driver.

They warned us that if we didn’t become better keepers of the environment, we could unleash diseases, and climate-related phenomena. Both have happened! Covid-19, which is suspected to have jumped from an animal, is a classic example of our exploitation of nature; and this year East Africa saw the worst floods – and destruction from its rivers and lakes in over 60 years.

And they foresaw a flourishing African culture scene, new types of travelling art and festivals. Again, we are already witnessing this online through continental poetry readings, music concerts, and fashion shows.

These are some of the reasons why Kusi 2 looks at this African resilience, and in keeping with its tradition, looks ahead to how we will come out of this crisis, and what we can do to keep on course the best things we had going for us.

Covid-19 has claimed over 1.5 million people globally and our prayers are with their families. We hope the next year brings them recovery and healing. Yet, as I am sure this conference will hear, the worst that was predicted for Africa didn’t happen. There are experts who will speak to that.

But if you take just one example of malaria, it was predicted that it would wipe out Africa, because malaria treatment programmes would collapse, and no bed nets would be distributed. While the threat remains real, a few countries did even better, increasing their bed net distribution!

The response to the Covid-19 pandemic in most countries in Africa has been spectacular. When the pandemic broke out, as at January 2020, no African country had laboratories that could test for the virus. But by February, three had, and today all of them do. Nigeria alone has 80 laboratories with the capacity to test for Covid-19. It is our hope that with the lessons learnt our governments will apply the same vigour and resources to deal with other existential threats and other health challenges like cancers, and cardiovascular diseases that claim thousands of lives every year on the continent.

Amidst the pain, this is telling us something wonderful about ourselves as Africans, and we are hoping this festival will explore them. The Nation Media Group, like numerous other media houses all over the world, went through its own trials during the pandemic. But we found it in us to keep faith in ourselves and in Africa. We accepted that our business model had been irreversibly disrupted, the future was digital, and launched the nation.africa brand.

We are unashamedly and unapologetically Pan-African. We believe in Africa and its future and with God's help we shall continue to provide a platform through Kusi Festivals for Africa and Africans to have a robust and honest discussion about ourselves and our continent, and where we want to be among the community of nations.

Wilfred Kiboro is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nation Media Group

Holding the Kusi Ideas Festival, in collaboration with the Nation Media Group, is a great opportunity for our city and our county. To host guests from far and wide, actually and virtually, at a time when human interaction is severely limited by the necessity to keep safe from Covid-19 is a challenging responsibility. I welcome all our guests to this lakeside city, the gateway to the communities in East Africa whose lives are greatly influenced by our blue economy.

We shall take time to discuss and reflect on how we shall rise from the human tragedy that this pandemic has brought us, knowing that through the mutual social responsibility that has always been central to our communal lives, we can build an even more prosperous and resilient future in East Africa.

We, the nations around Lake Victoria, are all members of the East African Community. The community itself has had its fair share of problems in the past, even breaking up altogether in 1978. But like the proverbial owl of Minerva, the community shall rise again and fly high as a new African success story, saying goodbye to the dusk of our underdevelopment.

After all, before the modern technology of the steam ship was discovered, we had prosperous trade with Asia, travelling across the Indian Ocean in wind-driven sailing ships, hence the origin of the "Kusi Trade" from which this festival derives its name. We would have achieved even more with this old technology had the slave trade not interrupted us.

This festival is, therefore, held at a time when Africa is positive about her future, looking forward to our cities growing in a planned way as homes to productive people who can feed themselves and sustain good health for all. Giving our farmers all the support needed to feed our growing populations should be the strength of our economies and not their curse. Our youth, our women, and the elderly must surely find a place to feel at home in our societies because they will be politically, economically, and socially inclusive.

This Kusi Ideas Festival will give us a moment for dreaming big dreams in an atmosphere as relaxed as no other. Here in Kisumu we believe that enjoying life is a lifestyle, which is never taught at school: it comes naturally to all who happen to be here. Please enjoy the hospitality of our people.

We have a city that is bubbling with change. There is always something new in Kisumu. Our port, which lay in disuse since 1978, has just been rebuilt, refurbished, and rebranded by the national government. Maritime transport across the lake to Uganda and Tanzania is resuming at an encouraging pace. Entrepreneurs are eyeing the lake for business opportunities in transport, leisure, and tourism. The Lakefront Development Corporation, an entity of the Kisumu County Government, is building a 46-kilometre promenade on the north-western shore of the lake to open it up for leisure, tourism, and the hospitality industry.

As the city waits for the arrival of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Naivasha, the century-old Meter Gauge Rail-way (MGR) is being revived for both passenger and freight transport from Nairobi through Nakuru. As one takes this legendary Lunatic Express to the hinterland through the Rift Valley, one passes through the lash sugar belt soon after leaving Kisumu. This belt will soon be home to a Special Economic Zone of 2,000 acres, ready to house industrial, commercial, and financial investments from all over the world.

This, indeed, is the moment to be in Kisumu as we prepare for yet another conference in November next year – the Africities Summit. This will be the second time that Kenya will be hosting this coming together of leaders of cities and municipalities, and which will allow national governments to discuss how the African city of the future should and shall look like in the aftermath of Covid-19, as we also face other problems such as global warming and climate change.

We hope that our guests will make the time to enjoy the artistic talent that abounds in our city in terms of music, dance, and traditional art. Kisumu has in recent years attracted players in the film industry, with more and more movies being shot in the city and its vicinity. We are proud of the beauty of our natural scenery, being endowed with such wonders as the legendary Kit Mikayi, recently recognised as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Not far from here is the famous Kakamega Forest, with its gorgeous flora and fauna, and bird sanctuary.

The Thim Lich Ohinga archaeological marvel, another Unesco World Heritage Site, is only a few hours’ ride away, in southern Nyanza. If you take some time off to relax around the lake, you will be spoilt for choice. There is the Vila del Sol holiday resort on the shores of the lake, a few kilometres west of the airport. A two-hour boat ride will take you to Takawiri or Mfangano islands, both of which have gorgeous holiday resorts. Rusinga island, reachable by air and boat alike, is home to a unique holiday resort situated right next to the Tom Mboya Memorial Museum, the home of one of Kenya’s most famous nationalists, assassinated in the prime of his political career, just like the two Kennedy brothers, who were his friends.

Kisumu's story would not be complete without a mention of our proximity to Kogelo in Alego, the home of the father of America’s 44th president, Barack Obama. His grandmother, Mama Sarah, still lives there and is always eager to welcome "pilgrims" curious to know about the ancestors of the first black man to become president of the United States. Kisumu opens the gates to such unique historical places in Luoland. But do I say? goes the common expression around here.

Your adventure is not complete until you have taken a half-hour drive towards the lake, to Bondo town, where Kang'o ka Jaramogi has become a great attraction to tourists and historians. This is the home of another great Kenyan nationalist, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the doyen of opposition politics in the country. Managed by the National Museums of Kenya as a historical site, the Oginga Odinga Museum tells the history of the struggle for independence in memorable photographs and newspaper reports. You will see photographs of leaders from across the globe who interacted with Jaramogi, including Kenya’s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, independence activist and India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President.

I welcome you to Kisumu. Karibuni sana.

P. Anyang' Nyong'o, Governor, County Government of Kisumu

The Nation Media Group is set to hold the second edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival on December 8-9. This year's conference will focus on examining the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on African economies and livelihoods.

The conference, which will be held in Kisumu, western Kenya, with the theme of “Towards a Post-Covid Africa: Recovering Together,” will explore how the continent can recover from the crisis.

The Kusi Ideas Festival seeks to build a “Pan-African ideas transaction market” to capitalise on the opportunities and innovations available to Africa to help it win in the 21st Century.

Kusi Festival also seeks to contribute to shaping the agenda that will enable Africa be a leading player in global politics and economics. The Festival comes at a time when the continent has been ravaged by Covid-19, with slightly over two million people infected and about 50,000 dead.

The impact on economies has been severe with some countries witnessing significant contractions that have led to massive job losses and pushing more people into extreme poverty.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Africa faces a rough road to recovery with the region projected to post a negative three percent growth in 2020, representing the worst outcome on record.

The drop will be even bigger for economies dependent on tourism and commodity exports.

“As the region looks toward the future, uncertainty over the path of the pandemic continues to loom over an enduring recovery,” said the IMF in its Regional Economic Outlook last month.

It is amid these challenges that the hybrid in-person and virtual Kusi Ideas Festival conference will be held in collaboration with the County Government of Kisumu. The conference will bring together a high-powered delegation of speakers, among them Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame.

Other speakers are Raila Odinga, Africa Union high representative for Infrastructure Development and Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development secretary general.

More speakers

The conference will also be attended by Prof Anyang Nyong’o, host Governor, County Government of Kisumu. Notable speakers are Clare Akamanzi, chief executive officer, Rwanda Development Board; Khazanah Research Institute senior adviser Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Malaysia’ Matsi Modise, founder and CEO, Furaha Afrika Holdings - South Africa; Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director, African Population and Health Research Center – Uganda; Dr Ally-Said Matano, executive secretary of the EAC, Lake Victoria Basin Commission and Tewolde GabreMariam, Group chief executive officer, Ethiopian Airlines.

The overall theme has been fleshed out into three key sub-themes with the top being health, in which the conference will dissect the incidence of Covid-19 in Africa, resilience of the populace and look at Africa’s exemplars in the pandemic among them Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia and Liberia.

The pandemic has stretched the health systems in some countries like South Africa and Kenya to the limits, a development that has resulted in calls for more investments in the health sector, enhancing of equitable access to care and improving readiness to prevent and control outbreaks.

The second will be discovering Africa's hidden strengths and resilience, environmental sustainability, smart cities among others with the third sub-theme being re-engineering Africa's future in which it will seek to explore what is next for the continent, future outlook, acceleration of digital transformation and impact on economies.

This is based on the fact that despite an uncertain outlook, the potential of Africa and the resourcefulness of its people remain clear, a belief that the continent will find its way back to a path of green, sustainable and inclusive development. Nation Media Group launched the Kusi Ideas Festival last year as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, starting a journey to build a pan-African ideas transaction market to capitalise on the opportunities and innovations available to Africa to help the continent win in the 21st century.

A young Alliance High School graduate, Tony Githinji, travelled to the US for further education in the 1990s. He embarked on a career path as an engineer in the world of high-vacuum electronic chip fabrication and nanotechnology, and over the years ascended to the position of CEO of a company called 4Wave.

Tony Githinji’s company has highly specialised research and development (R&D) and production capacity for the generation of new functional material-based devices deposited atomic layer by atomic layer onto silicon-based electronic wafer substrates. 4Wave implements these technologies onto chips for tech giants like Samsung and Microsoft.

Tony is currently on the verge of opening a branch in Nairobi from which he plans to not only make components for vacuum deposition machines for his global customers, which will be a first for Africa, but also to engage in cutting-edge R&D with faculty and students in Kenyan universities.

Tony’s vision is to create the foundation for semiconductor manufacturing in Africa that will spawn innovations in chip technology to meet the African market—Africa will be the largest consumer market in the world by 2050.

Then there is Washington Yotto Ochieng, a highly esteemed professor at Imperial College London, who is credited with directly leading efforts that have culminated in some of the world’s most sophisticated navigation systems.

In Silicon Valley there is Charles Mwangi, who until recently was a senior director of engineering at Tesla Motors. Charles reported directly to Elon Musk and led a team of over 400 engineers in the creation of one of the world’s most sophisticated automobile manufacturing plants.

Osh Agabi, a Nigerian, has founded one of the boldest biology-based technology companies in Silicon Valley (konikukore.com). Koniku Kore produces chips, and I don’t mean potatoes, that are integrated with live biological neurons.

Their first application is sensing – they have fabricated a device that can “smell” chemicals kilometres away and is fed with glucose to stay functional.

These are only some of the bright African minds impacting the world of technology globally. I will revisit these stories later in this article.

Technological change

Someone recently said that never in the history of humanity has technological change been as rapid as it is today, and conversely, will likely never be this slow again. These situation is often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), terminology first used at the World Economic Forum.

What exactly is 4IR? At a certain level of abstraction 4IR may be described as the convergence of the physical, biological, and cyber worlds through massive connectivity and automation.

Previous industrial revolutions brought us steam-powered mechanised productivity in the 1700s, mass production through the advent of electricity in the 1800s, and the digital boom in the later half of the 1900s. 4IR has come about with staggering rapidity during the past 50 years.

Underlying 4IR are familiar more basic technologies such as electronics, control engineering, computer science, data science and statistics, and increasingly molecular (and other forms of) biology.

The continued convergence or integration of these fields in numerous complex ways gives rise to a composite of technologies exemplified by robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), digital fabrication, artificial intelligence and machine learning, systems biology, blockchain, embedded systems, and nanotechnology.

Inter-disciplinary approaches to the basic natural sciences and mathematics are manifestly at the heart of 4IR. Take, for example, certain statistical manipulations of data using Bayes’s theorem and Hidden Markov Models. These represent a powerful instance of machine learning that predates the modern popularity of artificial intelligence by decades and allows the prediction of certain non-evident phenomena by analysing observable events.

An example is the observation of people’s clothing as a predictor of changes in weather patterns (the hidden phenomenon). These methods are used in seemingly unrelated applications such as robotics, self-driving cars, weather forecasting, disease surveillance, and financial credit scoring.

So what does all this mean for Africa? At first glance the broad signs are not good. Africa’s economy is still stuck somewhere in the first three industrial revolutions, often closer to the first. From a dystopian perspective, this may mean increased marginalisation and dependence on aid. With the current trend in demographics, which projects that Africa’s population will double from its current 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion by 2050, one may extrapolate that this will result in catastrophe.

In spite of its mounting debt burden due to the acquisition of traditional factors of production (infrastructure, schools, hospitals) by dubious layers of bureaucracy (read graft), Kenya is widely seen as a case study for ways in which 4IR technologies can create opportunities for leapfrogging, being home to the first broad-based application of mobile money on earth.

The confluence of mobile money and IoT has meant that almost one million homes are now solar-powered through the implementation of a pay-as-you-go model of retail, which is akin to hire purchase on steroids.

Pioneers M-Kopa, for example, make possible the acquisition of solar panels with lights and appliances for which Ksh100 ($1) or so is payable each day. Failing to pay means the equipment will not work as the mobile money server will communicate with the equipment in the home not to switch on, thanks to IoT technology.

Similar pay-as-you-go functionality means that we’re also on the cusp of widespread access to domestic cooking gas with the attendant benefits of reduced respiratory illness, reduced environmental damage due to overdependence on biomass, and greater productivity of the population by reducing the time spent on low-efficiency cooking practices.

Embedded systems are now in almost everything we buy – our fridges, cars, microwave ovens, industrial machinery—leading to the use of the term “ubiquitous computing”, and we can “talk” to them all through IoT.

Local telcos, like their equivalents globally, have all created special data networks to enable Internet of Things solutions which are predicted to grow into billions of dollars’ worth of business in the near future.

Data collected by all these devices, once stored in the cloud, are part of “big data” which, in turn, can be analysed and milked for valuable insights using artificial intelligence. In the retail space disruption is rife as market efficiencies through the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and newer companies like Twiga Foods and Copia push out traditional players.

World-class achievers

So, back to the stories I shared at the start of this piece. The most striking thing about them is not that Africans can be world-class achievers; rather that they are making waves out of the continent and not in it.

In fact, the infiltration of 4IR technologies through the market place is happening all over Africa through diffusion from industrialised countries, not by means of bilateral assistance or even World Bank loans and other traditional routes, but rather through foreign start-ups.

The upside is that the general populace stands to benefit from higher standards of living as a result, regardless of who owns these companies. But over time we need to develop our “national innovation systems” on the continent so that local investors understand and invest in local technology-based ideas, local universities teach in ways that stimulate a regular supply of great ideas, and government policies encourage rather than stymie such efforts.

How many Tony Githinjis, Washington Ochiengs, and Charles Mwangis are stuck in dead-end situations somewhere on the continent, forced to abort their God-given talents? Africa’s greatest resource is its people, and policies need to be designed and applied to reflect that.

Kamau Gachigi is chief executive officer of Gearbox.

There is an unquestioned but common view that the departure of African people from the continent is harmful to its development. The idea is taken as a serious one and comes under the dramatic summary of “brain drain”.

The most serious form of this “brain drain” is the part that a substantial but not majority of Africa’s medical health professionals are based in countries other than those in which they were born and sometimes outside the continent. This argument does not make sense for many of these professionals, and especially for those who depart because of persecution or even state collapse.

From this foundation, the loss of scholars, medical professionals, or others in pursuit of opportunity or refuge does not fit the description of “brain drain”. The demand that a professional African should stay at home and make her brain hostage to so-called national interest is increasingly becoming an untenable, if not altogether ridiculous, claim from a political leadership that makes these professionals to run away to begin with. The factors that create the preference for African scholars and medical professionals to establish their lives outside the continent cannot be stopped by entreaty and attempts to shame them for choosing safer and higher productivity jobs that come with better income.

WHY PEOPLE MIGRATE

At the rudimentary level, there are three types of emigrants from African countries. The first and most common kind are the ones who are compelled by disaster or serious political breakdown to move across borders from one African country into another that is safer. This is the most vulnerable kind of refugee and their migration is never out of choice. Needless to state, this kind of migrant must rely on international protections for refugees, which neighbouring African countries provide in an imperfect form. Migrants of this kind often are constrained by money and therefore travel across a border to a neighbouring country. These are people whose condition reflects the state fragility that is still prevalent in Africa.

The second type of migrant would be the one who moves from one African country to another in order to undertake professional services because terms are better or because employment becomes available after education. This type of migrant has also moved away from “home” and endeavours to build a professional life in another area. This group may include professionals such as physicians, nurses, or even teachers, but a far larger number may be those who relocate to offer labour on farms or even to work in labour-intensive constructions sites or mines, as is common in South Africa. Individual countries in eastern Africa also receive departing professionals from other countries based on conflict or the search for economic activities. This group has a mix of professionals and semi-skilled people, but the common purpose for their relocation is the search for better economic opportunity. The professional kind are often licensed and allowed to work but the semi-skilled are sometimes engaged in work but may not be fully compliant with immigration law.

The third kind of emigrant from the African continent are similar to the second type and are a mixture of professionals and semi-skilled people who proceed outside of Africa. Often their intention is to find employment that would provide better remuneration and opportunity for advancement than they could find at home. Recipient countries in Europe and North America have established mechanisms to tap into the professionals who wish to leave Africa and especially engineers, medical professionals, and selected occupations, but are completely opposed to lower-skilled people even where they are also needed.

Recent scholarship on the economics of migration demonstrates that the whole world would be more prosperous if migration policy was more tolerant and designed to allow people who wish to work to find more productive occupations in other countries. Based on this analysis, it is clear that the use of the phrase “brain drain” in reference to migration by Africans to other countries is misplaced. This is not only because for a country such as Kenya, remittances from migrants is a leading and stable source of foreign exchange, but also because the ability of professionals to find the best conditions to work results in improved welfare for all.

INCENTIVES

In 2017, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development showed that most movement by African migrants was from one country to another within the African continent. Specifically, of the 41 million migrants, 19 million moved from one African country to another, with 17 million residents outside the continent, and the continent accommodated 5.5 million from the rest of the world. The global nature of migration is that it is linked to political and economic activities which make it necessary to change residences for a while and sometimes permanently.

Since the issue of “brain drain” concerns many African governments, they may have to contend with the fact that more migration will follow from the border liberalisation implied by the African Continental Free Trade Area. What this means is that skilled people will find opportunities across the border and create value where they may exploit existing chances. That result is good for individuals because countries should care about the productivity of its people. To prevent this movement, then African countries that are most affected by departure of selected professionals such as teachers, medical workers, and engineers should expand the supply of these professionals through investments in medical and engineering academies. It is not possible to keep these professionals in a country and within the continent by merely enumerating the losses that come from their departure.

The concept of “brain drain” is an oxymoron and governments in African countries should understand what part of the problem they can solve. The economic incentive for people not to depart is not possible because many African countries have constitutions that permit dual citizenship and this means that when domestic policy and political conditions are not ideal, then professionals will depart. Keeping countries stable, secure, and with facilities able to match the aspirations of the ambitious professionals must be the main political aim of African governments. The solution to Africa’s ability to keep its most productive people in the continent is both economic and political. If it fails in both, then African countries will have to be content with the remittances from professionals who left, and this is the dividend of the brain drain. Brain drain is not a problem, but development is.

Kwame Owino is the chief executive officer of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Leo Kemboi is an economist at IEA.

Africa south of the Sahara is surging, lifted by renewed economic optimism, business-friendly reforms, greater trade, and improved regional integration.

At a time when uncertainty is exacting a toll on the global economy, the World Bank has projected overall growth in sub-Saharan Africa to rise to 2.6 per cent in 2019, up from 2.5 per cent in 2018.

African governments are enthusiastically embracing business-friendly reforms. In the 2020 global rankings, countries large and small – Nigeria, which has the distinction of being Africa’s largest economy, and Togo – topped the ease of doing business index. Regionally, Mauritius, Rwanda, and Kenya emerged as the top three African economies that pursued pro-business reforms.

In May 2019, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into effect, creating the world’s largest free trade area and marking the single largest push to accelerate trade-led growth for regional integration and greater prosperity, although this barely made headlines.

The continent is looking to the future with greater confidence and a renewed sense of purpose.

At the continental level, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 serves as a blueprint for transforming Africa into a global powerhouse of the future. More importantly, it signals the political will for a pan-African drive for unity, self-determination, freedom, and collective prosperity.

Rwanda, gracious host of the Kusi Ideas Festival, has developed Rwanda Vision 2050, a bold plan to advance economic and social development and reach upper-middle-income status by 2035, and high-income status by 2050.

So, what could stand in the way of achieving this aspirational African renaissance? Two words: climate change.

Climate change poses an existential threat to the global sustainable development agenda. Nowhere are the threats posed by climate change more pervasive, more pernicious, and more urgent than in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that contributes the least but stands to lose the most as greenhouse gas emissions accelerate.

Absent forward-looking climate action, it is becoming increasingly clear that Africa’s growth agenda and drive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2030 will be in serious jeopardy.

This week the United Nations Climate Change Conference opened in Madrid, Spain. The meeting comes at a time when the numbers paint a compelling and alarming story.

For starters, the past five years have been the hottest on record. The latest UN Environment Emissions Gap Report shows that greenhouse gas emissions have risen 1.5 per cent a year over the past decade. Global average levels of carbon dioxide reached 407.8 parts per million in 2018, setting another new record.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made an impassioned plea to the delegates, challenging them to “stop the war on nature” and warning that humanity stands at a “critical juncture in our collective efforts to limit dangerous global heating”. Sub-Saharan Africa needs to fight climate change on a war footing.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s ability to meet poverty reduction targets, feed a growing population that is expected to top 2 billion by 2050, tackle climate change, and secure long-term environmental sustainability depends on a vibrant agriculture and food sector.

Most of the African continent’s poor people live in rural areas, 70 per cent and more. The Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition report says of the 257 million hungry people in Africa, 237 million are in sub-Saharan Africa and only 20 million in northern Africa.

Paradoxically, rural areas are where food is grown and yet they are the epicentres of hunger and poverty.

Climate change is already exacerbating sub-Saharan Africa’s food and nutrition security challenges, reducing both the quantity and quality of food. Studies by the World Bank and others show that without adaptation, Africa will suffer particularly severe yield declines by 2030, including in important maize growing areas such as southern Africa.

On the nutritional front, the effects of climate change make for sober reading. Cutting-edge research is showing the effects of rising atmospheric carbon concentrations and their link to human nutrition through a reduction in the quality of plants. For example, rice, which is a primary source of food for millions of Africans, suffered declines in zinc and iron content, vital dietary nutrients needed to keep people healthy. All this at a time when one in five Africans is undernourished.

It is a little-known fact that agriculture and land use changes contribute up to 25 per cent of greenhouse gases. Discussions about the causes of climate change have tended to focus on the energy and transport sectors. With better soil management techniques and a greater push to minimise soil degradation and desertification, sub-Saharan Africa, with its 200 million hectares of usable but uncultivated land, has the potential to become the world’s laboratory for soil-based carbon management and sequestration techniques.

Even from this brief snapshot, it is clear that the negative effects of climate change will have economy-wide impacts and affect all strata of society. The battle against climate change will increasingly have to be fought and won in rural areas.

To secure the triple win of higher agricultural productivity, increased resilience to climate change, and lower greenhouse gas emissions, climate-smart agriculture is needed.

The action agenda is broad and requires interventions on multiple fronts and at multiple levels. A judicious mix of mitigation and adaptation interventions is needed, and the measures should be focused on building resilience, boosting food security, and piloting and mainstreaming adaptation. Agriculture and food researchers will need to focus on combating the range of diseases and pests that are crimping food production and supply. Tackling the challenge of food waste must also become a priority.

Mass media play a critical role in information dissemination and influencing public policy-making. The power of mass media’s agenda-setting function must be marshalled to accelerate and win the fight against climate change. Here, a new generation of reporters and citizen journalists can help change the narrative and create content that sparks climate action.

The challenge of communicating climate change – and seeking to bridge the ever-widening world of climate deniers, sceptics, and activists – is fraught, but if journalism is to serve a higher purpose and help protect the common good, a new resolve is needed, both among current and aspiring journalists.

Young people such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and Cameroon’s peace activist Divina Maloum have shown how public opinion can be changed. May the Kusi Ideas Festival serve as a springboard for concerted actions that help win the fight against climate change, hunger, and environmental degradation. With the United States pulling out of the Paris climate accords, the time for action is now. Is anybody listening?

Sarwat Hussain is senior adviser, African Media Initiative

Today, 1.2 billion people reside in Africa, a figure set to quadruple by the end of the century. That will be nearly 5 billion mouths to feed; a monumental figure, but one that doesn’t frighten me. This is why: in 1957, the population of Africa was 250 million, less than a quarter of what it is today, and if our fathers were able to cope with that scale of growth, then I am convinced that we can too. An incredible rise in education and technological opportunities means we have the necessary resources and are now the most educated generation in history.

We also live in the most peaceful period in recent history. The bloodshed of the Ghanaian coup in 1966, Idi Amin in Uganda, and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire is all over, and since last year’s Eritrea-Ethiopia peace summit, there is no ongoing conflict between two African nations. This is very important for economic prosperity.

That said, we have emerging challenges to contend with. We are not immune to the radicalisation in places like Somalia, Nigeria, and the Sahel region that is not only disrupting social order but also causing massive population displacement.

Going back to agriculture, even more devastating is the global climate emergency. In March and April 2019, cyclones Idai and Kenneth tore through southeastern Africa, leading to tremendous loss of life, with many still unaccounted for; estimates indicate that 1.7 million people were affected. Today, 27 million people are facing acute food shortage in the Horn of Africa and that number might grow to 47 million if nothing is done.

I am convinced, more than ever before, that agriculture will be at the heart of the continent’s journey towards inclusive economic growth, affording our people a decent living and continuing to build their resilience to shock. Never again shall we see suffering on the scale of Ethiopia’s mass starvation in the 1980s, when close to eight million people became famine victims and over one million died. This transformation has been ushered in by focused and intentional investment in Ethiopia’s agricultural sector.

This is why, despite having no background in agriculture, I joined other leaders to set up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) about 15 years ago. Taking stock of our progress, the journey so far has been one of impressive results, positive impacts, and fruitful collaborations. AGRA has played a role in giving over 22 million farmers in 18 African countries access to improved seed varieties that have doubled and sometimes tripled yields. These are farmers, 70 per cent of Africa’s population, who own less than five hectares of land. This has been made possible through the establishment of over 110 small African-owned seed companies that have produced around 800,000 tonnes of seeds.

Farmers now have easy access, not just to seed, but other inputs through the network of village shops that AGRA and partners have helped to establish. As a result, the average distance travelled by farmers in search of inputs has reduced from 60km in 2006 to 10km today, and in Kenya it is as low as 4km. Markets have also been opened up for farmers to sell their produce, resulting in increased incomes and improved livelihoods. The private sector has become increasingly engaged. The results have been tremendous – reduced poverty, general economic growth, and better nutrition.

I am truly grateful to the African governments that accepted the challenge to prioritise agriculture. I am also grateful to partners that joined us in this endeavour and entrusted us with their resources. We would not have reached 22 million farmers without your support.

The capacity to produce food is no longer the fundamental problem, as the tools for this are now generally accepted. From the day I started as the chairman of the board of AGRA, I have never doubted that we would declare full food sufficiency by 2030. The challenge now is to produce this food sustainably and in a way that generates prosperity and healthy jobs for our people and looks after the environment, keeping our soils fertile and productive. We will not be able to build wealth for all through agriculture, and migration to cities will continue unabated unless we re-imagine our rural communities in a way that allows the next generation to aspire to a life at the sharp end of agriculture.

Technology is the way to achieve that, and as someone firmly rooted in that world, the most rewarding part of my work at AGRA has been leveraging fast-growing technological innovations to help transform people’s lives in Africa. Who would have thought, 10 years ago, that using drones to deliver services to smallholder farmers would be a reality in our lifetime?

Personally, I recently invested in a tech start-up that has created an Uber-like platform for tractors, enabling farmers to link up with a central database and order a tractor via SMS. The tractor arrives within 24 hours, paid for using mobile money, freeing the farmer from the drudgery of the hoe. This service is particularly valued by women farmers, enabling them to circumvent social norms that might otherwise hamper their ability to hire a tractor.

We need to continue to dream big to make sure these technological developments are used to their full capacity to make agriculture prosperous and rural lives comfortable. We want people, especially young people, to move from the city back to working in agriculture and turn it into an industry with brands that are globally competitive.

Each generation has its battle; ours is to make sure that those on the front line of our farms are there by choice, not by lack of an alternative or because they were left behind, trapped in subsistence farming, and this is the battle that AGRA and its staff and partners are waging. We are winning – today, only 20 per cent of the food produced by smallholder farmers is for subsistence, the remaining 80 per cent goes into national and regional markets. Agriculture is not only providing food; it is transforming the livelihoods of rural communities. 

***

TECHNOLOGY

New varieties of seeds have helped improve food supply as they are resilient and deliver improved yields.

But technology also means that farmers don’t have to spend a lot of time and money producing basic foodstuff. Those who go into farming are there by choice, not by lack of an alternative or because they were left behind, trapped in subsistence farming.

Mr Strive Masiyiwa is the founder and chairman of Econet Wireless and was, until this past September, the chairman of the board of AGRA.

The story of Africa’s journey is inspirational. We see around us every day compelling evidence that Africa is today a continent of opportunity, of hope, and of confidence.

Africa’s strength has always been her peoples. Their resilience, sense of community and self-help, ingenuity and resourcefulness in innovating fresh solutions—often in the most difficult circumstances—is responsible for the continent’s progress and exciting prospects.

The fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa—many of them projected to grow above five per cent per year.

Here, there is also a growing youth population—an impressive 60 per cent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25 years—a significantly higher proportion than in the West.

The continent is also poised to provide a new market for goods and services at a time when the population in the West is diminishing. Imagine the opportunities for employment and investment in Africa!

My early childhood was in Kenya in the 1940s. From the time I became the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims in 1957, an integral part of my daily life and work has encompassed seeking to improve living conditions and opportunities in African countries.

Today, all of us engaged in Africa are witnessing a palpable new spirit of confidence. This is a reflection of the efforts of the African peoples coming together across borders and frontiers in thoughtful, impactful endeavours to improve their lives as well as their countries’ prospects.

I commend President Paul Kagame’s leadership and insight for hosting this Conference and the Heads of State present here today for their commitment to addressing the central issues and challenges of our time.

I am pleased that the Nation Media Group, which I founded in 1959, has been instrumental in initiating this Festival and conceptualising its thought leadership agenda—and that it has played a substantial role over decades in promoting responsible journalism and thoughtful discussion of issues and opportunities on the African continent.

In keeping with this mission, this Festival brings together some of the best minds of Africa to take this agenda forward and, most importantly, implement many of the ideas and solutions that will be discussed here.

All of us recognise that there is much work to be done.

We have an opportunity—and responsibility to assist people and communities to construct strong, resilient foundations, to ensure sustainable progress and lasting, positive change and to support and lift the hopeful voices of the continent’s youth.

This can most readily be accomplished when the government, the private sector and civil society institutions work together to create an enabling environment, where people can plan and build for their future and for future generations of their family.

Sound development rests on learning from, and working with, people at the grassroots to help them articulate and realise their aspirations. It requires good governance and forging a better appreciation of the importance of pluralism across all sectors of society.

To this end, the Ismaili Imamat and the Aga Khan Development Network are committed to expanding our efforts, in partnership with others, to improve the quality of life for all Africans.

I am confident that Africa will continue to be a leader, in drawing on its historical experience, in building resilient, pluralistic, economically-strong, and environmentally-sound communities, rooted in solid values and communal support structures that societies in the West and elsewhere will admire and emulate in years to come. The rest of the World has much to learn from Africa.

This message, on the occasion of the Kusi Ideas Festival in Kigali, was delivered by Dr Azim Lakhani, Aga Khan Development Network Diplomatic Representative for Kenya.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has urged African leaders to try and address the challenges of the continent now so as to guarantee the future of generations over the next 60 years.

Speaking during the Presidential round table at the Kusi Ideas Festival in Kigali, Rwanda, Mr Kagame said it was important for the leaders to work together, if they were to achieve the progress Africans aspire for.

“The start is good and the foundation is laid. We need to push ourselves to fulfil what we have agreed on the reforms so that we can secure a good future for Africa’s young people,” Mr Kagame said.

“Much as we are not where we need to be or where want to be, we need to understand the magnitude of the task and admit that we are up to it, and that we will get there because we have the goodwill,” he added.

President Kagame was speaking alongside the DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Mahamat, the African Union special envoy for Infrastructure Raila Odinga and Vera Songwe, the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

“We successfully pushed through the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement as one of the ambitious strategies, that will see Africa work to fast-track the development countries want to achieve for the future generations,” President Kagame said.

He added that together with other reforms being pursed through the AU, the future for the continent’s largest population, that is the youth, will be secured.
The panellists were in agreement that investments in practical education, infrastructure and creation of opportunities for young people are some of the prerequisites to propelling Africa to achieve future growth and opportunity.

President Tsishekedi said he was keen in creating employment opportunities for his country’s youth, and would start by rolling out free education.

“Since I took that decision, we are seeing a large number of young people back in school. This is how we shall change our nation,” President Tsishekedi said.

The DRC leader also noted that quality infrastructure was key in guaranteeing the continent 60 years of prosperous growth.

“To enable us get it right will require integration and this is what informed our decision to request to join the East African Community,” President Tsishekedi said.

Mr Odinga challenged countries to empower youths with the right education and skills, as they are the core of the continent’s growth story.

“We need to empower them by creating investment opportunities, access to capital to allow them engage in enterprise development and also allow private sector to thrive and offer them economic empowerment platforms,” Mr Odinga said.

Ms Songwe challenged the leaders to position Africa as the place that will offer ideas 60 years hence.

“As it is, the continent’s share of trade is a mere three per cent, showing how poor our contribution to global ideas stands at,” he said.

African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Mahamat said that the continent needed to push for reforms if it were to guarantee its youth a better future.

Africa will mature by giving priority to its own citizens, if it takes advantage of its millennials, who are the most hopeful generation across the world.

Speaking during a panel discussion at the just-concluded Kusi Ideas Festival at Intare Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, Mukhisa Kituyi, the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said the continent currently has a generation of young people who are more interested in collaboration than competition.

Chasing dreams

The discussion themed Borderless Africa and why it is a winner saw Dr Kituyi, Mr Linus Gitahi, a board member of Msingi East Africa and Clare Akamanzi, the chief executive officer of Rwanda Development Board push for a borderless continent that can allow young people to freely interact, invest and migrate within the continent as they seek to push for their respective countries’ growth.

“These young people look for opportunities beyond national frontiers. They overlook analogue boundaries and all the physical boundaries as they chase their dreams. This is the future. Governments now need to create policies for them to ease travel, access and movement across the continent,” Dr Kituyi said.

Online mobilisation

The continent’s leaders were also challenged to open up their borders to migrants and allow them to thrive within the continent as opposed to being self-centred and closed up, through restrictive travel and migration policies.

“We need to understand that almost 53 per cent of migrant movements is intra-African, and we should take advantage of this. Migrants are good both for the country they move to in terms of new and fresh human resource and also the countries they come from, through remittances. We need to encourage that,” Dr Kituyi said.

“The millennials want to trade, the same way they go about their activities on social media platforms. We are not doing them a favour. In the next 60 years, Africa will realise a mobilisation competition and the best example will be that teen climate activist (Greta Thunberg) who is mobilising her campaign through social media and mobilising for a cause. This is the future and we need to offer the best ground work for these kind of people to thrive.”

Ms Akamanzi gave Rwanda as the perfect example of how a borderless vision can spur growth in the continent.

“There is no reason to fear opening up our borders. And as Rwanda, we have championed this for the last five years and it has really helped us attract visitors and investments. That is what a borderless Africa entails,” Ms Akamanzi said.

Digi-tech curriculum

“As a country, we have also adopted the policy and become living proof of concept where we open up policies, make it so easy to set up businesses. This is a good example with firms that have set up through ideas, prototypes and help them set up then expand to the rest of the continent. Those are some great examples of how this can be done,” Ms Akamanzi added.

Mr Gitahi challenged governments to focus on new educational curricula stressing digital technology, which he said is the face of the future.

“We have to invest in the right education that encourages entrepreneurship and create digi-tech. It is now important that we create and support nontraditional careers like the creative arts and creative business,” Mr Gitahi said.

Access to credit

“We have to aggressively support our youths to protect their assets. Governments should have policies that protect these creative ideas through patents and copyright registration.”

African governments were also urged to support the youths in accessing capital to promote their enterprise ideas, as this will help them become viable and create employment.

“We must encourage our small and medium enterprises to integrate and prosper. We give them easy access to capital and also an enabling business environment. They are being run by young people and this will spur their growth story,” Mr Gitahi added.

The two-day event event ended on December 9 and was sponsored by Nation Media Group to discuss Africa’s path for the next 60 years.

“Powering Africa” often means lighting up homes and industries. However, we must understand that the energy landscape is not just electricity for lighting; it covers all energy needs, from cooking to heating and, in this technological age, charging and powering electrical and electronic gadgets and equipment in rural and urban areas. Energy is the bloodstream of society.

With the exception of South Africa, Africa’s energy system is stuck in the 19th century. Between 75 and 97 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population depends on biomass in the form of wood, charcoal, and animal residue to meet their basic energy needs. Biomass is affordable, available, and reliable.

However, headlines today feature big money invested in big energy projects based on hydrocarbons and electricity generation (from hydro, geothermal, gas), which hope to power an Asian model of development for labour-intensive manufacturing. Any surplus electricity will be distributed through the Central, Southern, and Eastern Africa power pools.

This is a 20th century energy system that could bring big debts to sub-Saharan Africa while 59 per cent of the region’s people still live in rural areas. So, will these new electricity lines reach rural Africans and also be reliable, affordable, and sustainable? In short, there is a mismatch between energy needs and today’s investments, which usually follow the money on offer for damaging 20th century technologies rather than clean alternatives.

Lest we forget, the 21st century presents a world of limits. Our energy investments must now factor in not just the needs of a growing population, but also climate instability, decreasing biodiversity, less water, and more pollution. The Asian model cannot work in these circumstances. This leaves us with one option. Africa must invest in building a new, low-carbon model of modernity. We must leapfrog from the 20th century energy system directly into a more sustainable future, with an energy mix heavily sourced from renewables, both small and large-scale, both decentralised and centralised.

Fortunately, Africa has a significant potential in renewables. To tap into this potential, Africa must move beyond the central grid logic. If each African country were to invest in last-mile connectivity (as Kenya is doing), would all Africans have access to sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy for the next 60 years?

Energy poverty is not a connectivity problem; it is an affordability problem and often bears a very feminine face. So long as the alternatives are unaffordable, African women will continue to toil under a physically damaging 19th century energy system in many parts of rural and urban Africa. Any future energy investment must therefore consider decentralised, off-grid, affordable renewable solutions for powering homes and industries in rural areas and local economies.

Whenever a new big power plant plan is unveiled, the need to industrialise Africa or an African nation is given as a legitimate reason. However, the term “energy demand” raises two questions: “Energy for whom?” and “Energy for what?” – in that order. Energy investments in the continent must reflect the real demand from the African people before the needs of large industries. First, make sure that local economies are working by providing local people access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy. People can then use the energy to transform their own lives and develop the industries they need.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

In late 2018, the Society for International Development (SID) in partnership with the Heinrich Boll Foundation’s Nairobi office launched Energy for Whom? Scenarios for Eastern Africa. SID’s work presents three short energy pathways into the future. The first pathway, dubbed “Mitumba”, (Mitumba means “second-hand” in Kiswahili), describes a business-as-usual world where massive investments in 20th century energy technology feed a 20th century political economy that quickly fails in the face of 21st century challenges. The second pathway, “Markets”, sees the region building a large-scale, low-carbon energy system for the 21st century. However, this energy serves an economy of foreign investors and rarely reaches the majority of Eastern Africans. The third pathway, “Struggles”, is a story of tough times, with big changes in small places as urban professionals move into rural cities and invest in social innovations and a smaller scale distributed energy system. It is, however, a time of frequent crises caused by climate change, disease, and political uncertainty.

Although written in the context of the Eastern Africa region, with focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, these future energy scenarios are useful for debating the issues around powering the continent and its population. It is not enough to think of energy as an industrial, economic tool; it must also play a transformative role in making local economies more vibrant, local ecosystems more resilient, and local people more secure.

The author is a programme officer leading the Sustainable Energy Futures Programme at the Society for International Development. Email: [email protected]

“Is Africa a continent or a country?” Eki went to the streets of Brisbane, Australia, to ask. The international student from Ghana and his friends from other countries in the continent were surprised to find that most of the respondents thought Africa was a country. Whether ignorance or misinformation, this speaks volumes about what other people around the globe think about us. They see Africa as one market. Many times you will hear the international media talk about “Africa” while in fact they mean a particular country in the continent. Why then can’t we turn this negative African narrative into a beautiful story of oneness?

The Berlin Conference of 1885 brought together 13 nations from the European continent, the United States of America, and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Southeast Europe, and Western Asia), invited by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. One of the goals of the meeting was to share out Africa and all its resources among themselves. Of course, Africans were not invited to the meeting. Africa was divided into states according to mountains, longitudes, latitudes, and rivers. The old borders that had encouraged peace and love among the nations were ignored. They drew new boundaries to separate every tenth racial group.

Members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party of South Africa have always contended that the country could not develop and become economically stable on its own. They realised that South Africa’s economic advancement depended on the whole African continent. One of the EFF’s campaign points during the recent elections was to make Africa borderless and establish one currency. The citizens were surprised at this proposed policy, but the party did not relent on its stand. Politically, this could have cost the party dearly as the people did not want to hear anything about it.

This rule has worked effectively in the European Union (EU), where more than 20 states, including Germany, Italy, and Belgium, have set up the Schengen Area – where all passport and other types of border control at mutual borders have been abolished. It functions as a single jurisdiction for international travel purposes and has a common visa policy. These European countries are economically stable. Schengen is a stabilised large market for trading among member countries. The European Union negotiates the trading rules on behalf of individual countries. The rules protect local industries from exploitation and unfair business practices. Besides that, the European Union has invested in a convenient, sustainable public transport system that supports all trading activities in the region. People can easily move from one place to another and get access to goods and services. The bloc also utilises its resources to improve health systems. The EU promotes all these services in all the member nations, so one can obtain services anywhere.

In Africa, Zimbabwe is one of the leading nations in agriculture, with large tracts of land to produce tonnes of tobacco. Botswana has many quarries that can support mining activities. Angola can supply oil. South Africa and Mauritius can handle the bloc’s financial affairs and provide quality services. How about buying a car made in Kenya – the Mobius? Why import minerals when we have them in plenty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic? I don’t need maize from Mexico since we have plenty in Nigeria. Why not get a Mara phone from Rwanda? What if my olive oil comes from Morocco? How about my cup of coffee from Ethiopia? What if my next language class will be mellow and flowing Kiswahili from Tanzania? What about a holiday on the beaches of the Seychelles and Cape Verde…The cake is big.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) treaty, signed in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2018, by 44 of the African Union’s 55 members, aims to establish a single market with a single currency and free movement of people and goods. It aims to unite all the African nations and their 1.2 billion people and gross domestic product of more than $3.4 trillion under one market. AfCFTA is one of the largest markets in the world. Economic Commission for Africa statistics show that AfCFTA has the ability to improve intra-African trade by 52.3 per cent. This can be done by subsiding import duty and reducing non-tariff barriers.

African Development Bank data shows that 13 African states freely allow foreigners in without a visa. African Union passports will allow many people to get access to trading services in more than 40 countries because they can travel in the region without any restrictions. The African Union (AU) has allowed Africans to move across the continent to promote trading. The AU passport will enhance borderless Africa and promote unity. It is expected to replace individual countries’ travel documents from 2020.

One of the obstacles to travelling in Africa is cost. There are limited flights between African states. They are also expensive.

Political goodwill is critical to achieve this. The paradigm shift begins now. I believe in Africa. We are one. We will be borderless. 

Rutinu Samuel, 28, is a Nairobi-based freelance content writer and digital marketer, author, and enthusiast of African conversations. [email protected].

A peek into Africa’s crystal ball shows a continent confident in its future. It has the people, large reservoirs of the world’s most prized resources, and the post-digital advantage of huge amounts of knowledge from all the previous epochs. This sleeping giant’s iterations of learning, trying and failing, and achieving will be more rapid than the others – if we are deliberate about it.

This optimism is, however, enveloped in a context of great volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that comes with the ever-changing global markets and the real pressures of climate change – where growth for growth’s sake is not enough.

As Africa projects 60 years into the future, it must embrace the fact that its industries will be grappling with a radically different reality whose shape is simply not known. What matters is whether or not we can create competitive, inclusive, and resilient industries where there are opportunities, knowing we have to go beyond being observers of trends and be active builders.

What is known is that those industries must provide jobs for an increasing number of people. In the next two decades, Africa will need to provide jobs for 450 million people joining the labour market. East Africa alone needs to create 7,000 new jobs daily to keep pace with demographic change. All these people cannot work in the same industries. We must and can create opportunities as diverse as the continent itself.

We need to move from focusing on extractives to manufacturing. There are opportunities represented in the fact that the continent still imports a third of the food, beverages, and processed goods that it consumes. The construction sector will consume large amounts of cement and oil refining will offer a great opportunity for investments. The business-to-business spending across the continent is likely to expand as trade barriers are removed and trade blocs entrenched. In industries such as textiles and apparel, agro-processing for value addition, mobile telephony, building materials, car manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals, Africa has the potential to replace or supplement part or complete unit source markets of China, India, South East Asia, and Latin America.

We can be innovative and become cutting-edge. Africa’s industries of the future must be highly technologically adaptable, a lot smarter and more nimble to retain customers whose tastes change rapidly, and operate world-class systems in that interconnected space.

E-COMMERCE

E-commerce is already having a profound impact on businesses in Africa – with M-Pesa taking the lead globally. Millions of digitally enabled workers will use online platforms as a source of livelihoods, and utilise these forums to transform SMEs into structured entities with the capacity to grow. Furthermore, Africa’s diversity means its cultures can become part of a thriving industry in the arts, fashion, movies, and music.

The shape of these industries will be among the issues discussed by scores of eminent scholars, researchers, scientists, development gurus, political leaders, and captains of industry gathering in Kigali this week for the Nation Media Group-sponsored Kusi Ideas Festival.

Horizon, East Africa’s regional report, quotes commentators emphasising the role of “industries without smokestacks” – such as business process outsourcing, horticulture, and tourism – in supplementing manufacturing. These are industries with “high tradability, the potential for economies of scale, and a capacity to employ large numbers of people”.

As we move into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the fear is that technology can undermine employability. Horizon argues that although automation means clever machines and robots take on more and more tasks performed by humans, this capacity means we have to prepare for increased human labour in other sections that cannot be automated. Some studies (like Frey and Rahbari 2016) demonstrate that technology has created more jobs than it has displaced. The deliberate creation of the right skill sets will be critical for Africa’s place in this ever-changing world.

Africa’s industries of the future are poised to benefit from the growing demand from consumers and the continent’s growing reputation as a source of highly competitive consumer products destined for overseas markets.

But for Africa’s industries of the future to harness these opportunities, they must raise their productivity and increase efficiency. They also need support, like elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers, reduction of the cost of energy, vastly improved infrastructure, and a strong education and skill foundation.

This is where governments, the private sector, academia, and development catalysts come in; the former to create and sustain investor-centric environments, the latter to deploy their unique capacity to convene multiple stakeholders to deliberate and agree on the best approach to catalyse industries. These industries must improve operations, introduce world-class processes, and increase their contribution to the economies by creating employment and triggering activities in other sectors through forward and backward linkages.

Diana Mulili is the interim CEO of Msingi East Africa. Email: [email protected]

If there is a word that best describes the past 60 years of African music, then it has to be “transformative”. From a period when African music was little known beyond its own borders to today, when music by Africans is widely played within and outside the continent, it has been an extraordinary period. Geographic and linguistic barriers have been shattered and African musicians are today listed among the world’s biggest stars.

African music genres are no longer a novelty broadly categorised as “World Music”, but are respected as distinct styles.

The description of “African music” is a misnomer because the continent has some of the most diverse styles of music: from the reverberation of rumba music in a sweaty Kinshasa club to the loud benga guitars blaring out of East Africa; from the mbalax in Dakar to makossa in Cameroon; mbaqanga and kwaito in South Africa; and highlife and Afrobeat in Lagos (now adopted as Afrobeats).

The foundation laid by giants such as Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela, and Miriam Makeba has given rise to a new generation of confident performers, who are not afraid to create an eclectic fusion of African rhythms with global contemporary styles like hip hop, R&B, jazz, and dancehall.

There has never been a more exciting time to be an African artiste with brand-new business models that bypass the traditional record label and connect directly to consumers wherever they may be in the world, thanks largely to online streaming services, mobile telephone platforms, and the ubiquitous video-sharing channel YouTube.

Cross-border collaborations are now in vogue and artistes from the west coast of Africa are now able to conveniently collaborate with their counterparts in the eastern and southern corners of the continent.

But many of the artistes whose achievements we celebrate in these pages thrived in the adversity of the time through sheer grit, determination, and talent.

Regardless of the times that the music has been recorded, one constant has remained as a factor of success: It is the artistes who have been able to combine their unique African heritage with contemporary rhythms who have succeeded in carrying forward their music. It was the great American jazz musician Miles Davis who implored Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela in the early 1960s to develop their own distinctive style rather than just sound like an imitation of their American idols.

This is a celebration of the musicians who have put the continent on the map over the past 60 years. These are the icons of African music, the ones who have had the greatest influence on shaping the sounds and trends that have emerged from the continent over the past six decades.

Miriam Makeba

One of the first African artistes to gain an international profile, Miriam Makeba was such a representation of the promise that the continent possessed that she fondly came to be known as “Mama Africa” during her 30 years of exile from South Africa.

The township girl was introduced to traditional music by her parents and won her first singing contest at a missionary school at the age of 13.

By the 1950s, Makeba was already South Africa's best known female black singer, having recorded many gospel and jazz songs with the all-girl group, The Skylarks.

When she first arrived in New York, Makeba was singing jazz standards by greats such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Until Harry Belafonte told her: "America didn't need a South African Fitzgerald. It needed Makeba doing her own music.”

The decision to sing in Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho in a style only she could do won her many admirers in America and the rest of the world while Pata and The Click Song became international standards.

Her death at the age 76 on November 10, 2008, after a performance in Italy marked the end of an era in every sense. Makeba suffered a heart attack after performing her signature song, Pata, at a concert in support of Italian writer Roberto Saviano for his stand against the Mafia. Her last appearance on stage was to sing for the freedoms she had championed all her life.

Hugh Masekela

Masekela’s love for the trumpet was sparked by watching the 1950 film Young Man with a Horn, and he was given his first instrument at the age of 14 by anti-apartheid priest Trevor Huddleston. The story of the young prodigy eventually reached his idol, US trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who sent one of his horns to Masekela through Father Huddleston.

He recorded 44 albums in a career spanning more than 60 years, with his last recording, No Borders, released in 2016. His signature song, Grazing in the Grass, still sounds fresh half-a-century since it topped the US charts for three weeks in 1968.

Masekela consistently reminded journalists and fans that he was not simply a jazz artiste, but an African musician. His style combined jazz and funk with South African township rhythms to create a distinctive brand of music that remained his identity throughout his career.

Masekela said he and Miriam Makeba, to whom he was married for two years from 1964, earned international acclaim because they stuck to their musical roots and did not imitate the Western sound.

He died in January 2018 at the age of 78. “I didn’t turn out too badly for a boy born in a shebeen,” Masekela quipped during a show in Nairobi in 2011.

Manu Dibango

The “Lion of Cameroon”, who is celebrated as the father of modern African music, has been at the forefront of the continent’s sound since the 1950s. The imposing 85-year-old clean-shaven, gravel-voiced singer/multi-instrumentalist is also a composer, producer, and film score writer.

Even at his advanced age, Dibango has remained energetic in performance along with his famous backing band, Makossa Gang. Born in Douala, Cameroon, Dibango went to study in France in 1949, arriving in Marseilles with a small sum of money and three kilos of coffee to pay for his first term in boarding school (his 1994 autobiography is called Three Kilos of Coffee).

He discovered the saxophone as a high school student but could not afford to buy the instrument, so he started playing the piano instead.

Dibango founded his band in 1967 and released his first-ever music recording in 1968. He created his signature makossa style by blending blues, jazz, reggae, highlife, and other global musical influences. His 1972 classic, Soul Makossa, made him the first African musician to score a Top 40 hit in the US, earned him two Grammy nominations, and has been sampled by Michael Jackson and Rihanna.

Fela Kuti

Fela created the Afrobeat genre from a fusion of jazz and pop with the rhythms of his Yoruba people. His songs were political attacks aimed at the successive military regimes in Nigeria and what he viewed as an oppressive world order. Sorrow Tears and Blood, Colonial Mentality, ITT (International Thief Thief, VIP (Vagabonds in Power), and Zombie were all potent commentaries that riled the authorities in Lagos. Fela paid the price for his defiance with numerous spells in jail on trumped-up charges. He built a fence around his house in the sprawling Lagos suburb of Ikeja and declared it an independent state called The Kalakuta Republic. The home has been converted into a museum and exhibition centre displaying some of Fela’s instruments, clothes, and other memorabilia.

At the end of 1975, inspired by American civil rights leader Malcolm X, Fela dropped his “slave name” Ransome and became “Anikulapo” (he who carries death in his pouch). He also abandoned the trumpet, saying it was too hard on his lips, and began playing the saxophone and the electric piano.

Fela died on August 3, 1997, at age 58 from complications associated with HIV/Aids. He released 77 albums and wrote 133 songs, some of which were released after his death.

Franco

Literally the giant of Congolese rumba, this larger-than-life band leader, guitarist, and composer along with his TP (Tout Puissant – meaning “all-powerful”) OK Jazz band, bestrode the African music landscape like a colossus for more than 40 years.

Franco (Luambo Luanzo Makiadi), more than any other of the greats from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) – his predecessors like Joseph Kabasele or even his contemporary and rival, Tabu Ley – remains the most important reference for Congolese rumba. He redefined and popularised rumba, which was fashioned on Cuban rhythms combined with Congolese music traditions, to produce a seductive sound that resonated with audiences around the world.

The “Sorcerer of the Guitar” recorded more than 100 albums in a career that started in 1956 until his death in 1989, and his influence endures in contemporary rumba music. His band grew to a size of almost 30 musicians playing an intricate web of guitars, horns, percussion instruments, and vocals. It was a spellbinding musical wonder, as those who watched the band’s performances led by the imposing figure of Franco will testify. Anthems such as Mario, Mamou, Pesa Position, Tres Impoli, and Sandoka, each clocking an average of 10 minutes, are unlike any other musical style that has been recorded in Africa.

Franco was an outspoken social and political commentator who composed songs that both charmed and criticised the fearsome dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. His life and career are a fascinating study of the tremendous power that very few musicians have wielded over an entire continent and beyond.

Youssou N’Dour

Youssou N'Dour was born in 1959 in the slums of Dakar, Senegal, to a family of the traditional West African praise singers, the griots. He started singing at circumcision ceremonies and became a professional singer by the age of 13, earning the name Le Petit Prince de Dakar (The Little Prince of Dakar). As a teenager, he joined the Star Band, the best-known Senegalese band at the time, and stayed in the group for three years. He left to form his own band, Etoile de Dakar (Star of Dakar) in 1979, which eventually became Super Etoile de Dakar, a rhythmic dance band consisting of as many as 14 singers and musicians.

N’Dour’s distinct sound is a combination of the traditional mbalax beat but with a variety of contemporary influences, from hip hop to R&B, reggae to jazz, and even rumba.

Through the years, he has collaborated with some of the world’s biggest stars – Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, and of course Neneh Cherry, with whom he enjoyed the global hit 7 Seconds in 1994.

N’Dour’s influence has transcended music into entrepreneurship and he runs a media empire, TV and radio stations, a newspaper, and a nightclub that employs more than 1,000 people.

 

Angelique Kidjo

“Africa’s greatest living diva” sings in English, French, and the West African languages of Yoruba and Fon. Born in 1960 in the port city of Cotonou, Benin, her stated mission is to use her success to open the way for many more artistes from Africa to come forward.

This powerhouse from the tiny West African nation has been the natural heir to the mantle of Miriam Makeba by using her star power to champion the rights of the downtrodden and oppressed. She studied Makeba to learn harmony and to “use your voice to talk about things that are universal and touch everybody”.

While Makeba used her stardom to increase pressure on the apartheid regime in South Africa to drop its segregationist policies, Kidjo is today working on improving the lot of girls and women around Africa. She is currently promoting a new fund from the African Development Bank that will see a greater number of women get access to loans and credit.

Her powerful voice and ability to combine traditional rhythms from around Africa with jazz, Latin, and soul have brought her tremendous success, including three Grammy awards, and there could be a fourth on the way after her latest album, Celia, was nominated for the 2020 Grammys.

Lucky Dube

“Nobody can stop reggae” has become a popular catch phrase in recent times, but perhaps few people remember that it is a lyric from the Lucky Dube song, Reggae Strong.

Not many African musicians have earned admiration on the level achieved by Lucky Dube during his lifetime, and his legacy has only grown after his death. Dube released his first reggae album in 1984 after years of performing Zulu traditional music, known as mbaqanga. Facing a restive apartheid system that banned all reggae music from radio and TV, Dube carefully made the transition to the music, whose socio-political message was relevant to South Africa.

He pioneered a distinctively African variant of reggae, spiced up with elements of soul, gospel, and township jive with its trademark keyboard rhythms. By the early 1990s, Lucky Dube had eclipsed Ivorian Alpha Blondy to become Africa’s biggest selling artiste with hits such as Think about the Children, Prisoner, and House of Exile.

The shocking murder of Dube in 2007 left a huge void in African reggae and the emergence of a successor with a similar global stature has been a long time coming.

Salif Keita

“The Golden Voice of Africa” is a direct descendant of Sundiata Keita, the Mandinka warrior king who founded the Malian empire in the 13th century and, therefore, did not belong to the singing caste known as “griot”.

Undeterred by these caste restrictions, Salif spent two years playing the guitar and singing in markets, bars, and cafes. His unique voice began to attract attention and soon he was recruited as lead vocalist for The Super Rail band of Bamako in 1967.

The political upheavals under the military junta in Mali during the 1970s forced Keita to flee to the Ivory Coast then to France.

It was in Paris that his music blossomed, blending the traditional music of his childhood with influences from the rest of West Africa and Arabic sounds to create the distinctive rhythms heard on landmark albums like Soro (1987) and Amen (1991).

After an illustrious 50-year career, Malian legend Salif Keita announced in 2018 his retirement from recording during the release of his 14th album, Un Autre Blanc (Another White), which featured collaborations with Alpha Blondy, Angelique Kidjo, and Yemi Alade.

Oliver Mtukudzi

The longevity of his music career, spanning 67 albums over four decades, was due to an unmatched ability to write and compose thousands of songs and remain relevant by winning new fans while retaining the loyalty of traditional supporters.

Mtukudzi combined electric guitars, keyboard, and bass with traditional mbira (thumb piano), marimba, and the hosho shakers to create his brand, “Tuku Music”, named after an abbreviation of his surname. It was a sound that veers between traditional Shona music, South African township music, and American gospel and soul. That husky voice remained the most distinct identity of his music as heard on the 1997 hit, Todii, which dealt with HIV/Aids within the family at a time when the topic was still taboo, and other popular songs like Ndakuvara, Neria, and Hear Me Lord.

When the Time ran a cover story on Tuku in 2003, they called him “The People’s Voice”. In a country that has experienced its share of political and economic upheaval, it comes as no great surprise that most of Tuku’s lyrics dwell on the social and economic issues that dominate the everyday life of Zimbabweans. His death in January 2019 at the age of 66 marked the end of an era, not just for the music of Zimbabwe but for the entire African continent, where Tuku was venerated as one of the icons whose music defied barriers such as age and borders.

The distribution of sporting talent in the African continent is almost perfect. If a hypothetical United States of Africa were to put together one Olympic team, by natural selection, the footballers would come from North and West Africa, the athletes from East Africa, and rugby players from South Africa.

Sportsmen and women from all the other disciplines would find their place in it from everywhere within the four shores of the continent. There are interfaces, of course; Zambia in the south, for instance, produces some very good footballers.

Over the past 60 years, many changes have affected the evolution of African sport. They have been mostly incremental, such as the steady rise in the number competitors taking part in the Olympic Games and increase in the number of African teams taking part in the Fifa World Cup from one to five.

Some changes have been earth-shaking—like the collapse of apartheid and the subsequent readmission of South Africa into the international community.

Others have been catastrophic—like the continent’s worst sporting tragedy in 1993, when an air crash killed the entire Zambian national football team in Gabon. All pundits agreed that it was a team destined for greatness.

From Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila in 1960, through Cameroon’s Roger Milla in the 1980s to Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge in 2019, Africa’s sporting journey is an engaging one. As individuals and as teams, here are some of the continent’s headline figures.

• ALGERIA

  Rabah Madjer, Lakhdar Belloumi, and The Desert Foxes

  The Algerian national football team is the current African champion. After the 1982 Fifa World Cup, it forced the enactment of one of the most important rules in football: that all final group games be henceforth played simultaneously to pre-empt match-fixing. In a clear case of collusion, Germany defeated Austria 1-0, a result that qualified both teams and denied Algeria, which had defeated Germany 2-1, passage to the next round. Madjer and Belloumi are the two most prominent legends of that era.

  

  Algeria’s Rabah Madjer practises at Estadio Tecnologico 11 in Monterrey, Mexico, in June 1986. FILE PHOTO | NMG

• CAMEROON
  Roger Milla, Samuel Eto’o, and The Indomitable Lions

  The Cameroon national football team has qualified seven times for the Fifa World Cup – an African record. It was also the first African team to reach the tournament’s quarter-finals, which it did in 1990. The team has won five Africa Cup of Nations titles and was the Olympic gold medallist in 2000.
  Roger Milla and Samuel Eto’o are its most prominent legends. Eto’o, a four-time African Footballer of the Year, all-time leading goal scorer in the Africa Cup of Nations and Olympic gold medallist, is Africa’s most decorated footballer.

  

  Forward Roger Milla celebrates after scoring a goal at Stanford Stadium, California, USA, in June 1994. PHOTO | ANTONIO SCORZA | AFP

  Roger Milla, who at 38 in 1994 became the oldest player to score in a Fifa World Cup match, was in 2007 named by the Confederation of African Football (Caf) as the best African player of the previous 50 years. In 2004 he had been named by Pelé in the Fifa 100 list of the world's greatest living players. He played in three World Cups for the Indomitable Lions.

• EGYPT
  Mahmoud el Khatib, Mohamed Salah, and The Pharaohs

  Egypt’s national team has won the Africa Cup of Nations more times than any other – seven in all. It was the inaugural winner in 1957. In 1934, Egypt became the first African team to appear in the Fifa World Cup. The country’s legendary goalkeeper, Essam el Hadary, surpassed Roger Milla’s age record when, at 45, he played for The Pharaohs at the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia.
  The best known names from Egyptian football are Mahmoud El Khatib and Mohamed Salah. El Khatib, a Fifa Fair Play Award winner for going 450 competitive games with just one yellow card and the 1983 African Player of the Year, made France Football’s 30-man list of the best African players of all time.
  Salah is currently one of the hottest names in world football. The Liverpool forward justified his 2012 Caf Most Promising African Talent of the Year award by winning the 2018 Caf African Footballer of the Year, the BBC African Footballer of the Year as well as selection to the Caf Team of the Year.

  

  Liverpool's Egyptian midfielder Mohamed Salah runs with the ball during the English Premier League football match between Leicester City and Liverpool at King Power Stadium in Leicester, central England on December 26, 2019. PHOTO | OLI SCARFF | AFP

  He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.

• ETHIOPIA
  Abebe Bikila

  He started East Africa’s dominance of the marathon in the world when he won the race barefoot during the 1960 Olympics. Few African athletes have put their names in popular culture as Bikila. He has been the subject of books and documentary films in addition to countless newspaper and magazine articles.

  The Abebe Bikila Award for contributions by an individual to long-distance running has been won by two of his compatriots, Mamo Wolde and Haile Gabrselassie, Tanzania’s Juma Ikangaa, and Kenya’s Paul Tergat and Tegla Loroupe.

  Haile Gabrselassie

  One of the greatest distance runners of all time, Gabrselassie won two Olympic gold medals over 10,000 metres and four World Championship titles in the same event.

  

  Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia celebrates winning the Dubai Marathon in January 2009. PHOTO | REUTERS

  He is a back-to-back four-time winner of the Berlin Marathon, which in 2008 he won at the age of 35.

  Tirunesh Dibaba

  Dibaba is a product of the rich tradition of Ethiopian distance runners. She has won three Olympic and five World Championship gold medals as well as four individual World Cross Country adult titles and one individual junior title. She is also the only athlete to have achieved a double in 5,000m and 10,000m in the same edition, which she did during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. She won back-to-back 10,000m gold medals in the Olympics of 2008 and 2012.

  Derartu Tulu

  By winning the women’s 10,000m race in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Tulu became the first African female athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. She proceeded to also become the first to win two Olympic titles over the same distance when she took the gold medal in Sydney in 2000. She has also won the London Marathon once and is a three-time World Cross Country champion.

• GHANA

  The Ayew family and the Black Stars

  The Ghana Black Stars are consistently one of Africa’s best football teams. They have won the Africa Cup of Nations four times and been runners-up five times. In 2010, they missed a Fifa World Cup semi-final qualification by a hair’s breadth and, with Cameroon and Senegal, remain the only three African teams to reach the tournament’s quarter-final stage. They were bronze medallists in the 1992 Olympics.

  Abedi Ayew Pele, and his three sons – Ibrahim, Andre, and Jordan – are Africa’s most famous footballing family. Abedi is regarded as one of Africa’s best players of all time. Ibrahim and André made the Black Stars team for the 2010 Fifa World Cup, while André and Jordan played at the 2014 World Cup. Andre and Jordan are regular players and, like their father, have captained the Black Stars.

• KENYA

  Eliud Kipchoge

  The first human to run the marathon in under two hours—though not recognised officially as a world record—can stake his claim to being the greatest athlete of all time. For officially-recognised races, his CV includes Olympic champion (2016), 5000m World champion (2003), Cross Country World junior champion (2003), 5000m Olympic silver medallist (2008), 5000m World Championships silver medallist (2007), 5000m Olympic bronze medallist (2004), 3000m World Indoor bronze medallist (2006), alongside several big city marathons including London, Berlin, and Chicago. He has been decorated with Kenya’s second highest civilian award, the Elder of the Order of the Golden Heart of Kenya.

• Kipchoge Keino

  Kipchoge Keino is the original world athletics superstar from Kenya. He won gold and silver medals in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics in the 1500m, 5000m and 3000m steeplechase. From 1965 to his retirement in 1973, he won gold and silver medals in the All-Africa and Commonwealth Games as well as numerous other international competitions. In 2012, he was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) Hall of Fame. He was made the first Olympic Laureate in 2016.

• Robert Wangila

  He holds the distinction of being the only boxer from sub-Sahara Africa to ever win an Olympic gold medal, which he bagged at the 1988 Games in Seoul. A hard punching welterweight, Wangila died after a professional bout in the United States in 1994.

• Stephen Muchoki

  Kenya’s best amateur boxer of all time. He became World Amateur Boxing champion in 1978, improving on his silver medal performance four years earlier. He was also the Commonwealth champion in 1974 and 1978. He missed the 1976 and 1980 Olympics due to politically-instigated boycotts.

• Henry Rono

  Probably the world’s greatest athlete never to win an Olympic medal. It was his misfortune to be at the top of his form between 1976 and 1980, when Kenya boycotted both the Montreal and Moscow Olympics. In one of sporting history’s most remarkable epochs, he smashed four world records – the 3000m, the 5000m, the 10,000m, and the 3000m steeplechase – in a space of only 81 days.

• Catherine Ndereba

  She is a two-time World champion in the women’s marathon and won silver medals in the distance during the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. She is a four-time winner of the Boston Marathon.

  

  Catherine Ndereba at Uhuru Gardens, Kenya, in February, 2012. FILE PHOTO | NMG

  She broke the world record during the Chicago Marathon in 2001 to cement her place as one of the great women marathon runners of all time.

• LIBERIA

  George Weah

  Liberia’s current president has been hailed by many as the greatest footballer to come out of Africa. In 1995, he was named Fifa World Player of the Year and also won the Ballon d'Or, becoming the first and only African player to win these awards so far.

  

  AC Milan striker George (right) vies for the ball with Lazio midfielder Diego Fuser during the Italian Cup final between Lazio Rome and AC Milan at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on April 30, 1998. FILE PHOTO | NMG

  He was voted African Footballer of the Year in 1989, 1994, and 1995. Fifa once described him as “the precursor of the multi-functional strikers of today”, while Pele included him in Fifa’s list of the world’s greatest living players. He was, of course, easily the greatest African player never to play in the Fifa World Cup.

• MOROCCO
  Nawal El Moutawakel

  The current vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a member of the executive committee of the International Association of Athletics Federations is a woman of many firsts. She became the first Moroccan, Arab, African, and Muslim to win the women’s 400m hurdles when the race was first included in the Olympic programme during the 1984 Olympics. She was Morocco’s minister for sports from 2007 to 2009. A symbol of the modern Moroccan woman and a past secretary of state for youth and sports in Morocco, El Moutawakel joined the IAAF board in 1995 and the IOC in 1998.

• MOZAMBIQUE
  Maria Mutola

  Endearingly dubbed the “Maputo Express”, Mutola is the only Mozambican athlete so far, both men and women, to win a World or Olympic gold medal. She is also the only athlete in history to have won four World or Olympic titles over the 800m distance. She had great longevity, competing for almost 20 years.

  

  Maria Mutola at the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium in Beijing, China, in 2008. PHOTO | OLIVIER MORIN | AFP

  In all, she won the 2000 Olympic gold, three World titles as well as chalking up seven victories at the World Indoor Championships. Her dominance of the 800 metres saw her win gold medals in the African Championships, and the African and Commonwealth Games.

• NAMIBIA
  Frank "Frankie" Fredericks

  Fredericks is the face of Namibian sport. He was a lone performer in a space dominated by American and Caribbean stars. In 1992 and 1996, he won four Olympic sprint medals, making him the country’s sole Olympic winner. He also won gold medals in the World, World Indoor, All-Africa, and Commonwealth Games. He is also the oldest man to have broken 20 seconds in the 200 metres, having done that in 2002 at the age of 34. He covered the distance in a time of 19.99 seconds.

• NIGERIA
  The Super Eagles

  The Nigerian national football team has won the Africa Cup of Nations three times – a great underachievement given the country’s depth of talent. In 1994, it was ranked fifth by Fifa, the highest an African country has ever been rated. The Super Eagles have qualified for the Fifa World Cup six times. Though behind Egypt and Cameroon in African titles and World Cup appearances, Nigeria is one of the continent’s giants.

• SOUTH AFRICA
  The Springboks

  The Springboks are the world’s most successful Rugby World Cup team, having won three out of seven tournaments ahead of New Zealand, whose All Blacks have won three out of nine. They were named 2008 World Team of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards.

  

  South Africa celebrates after winning the Rugby World Cup Japan final match against England at International Stadium Yokohama on November 2, 2019. PHOTO | ODD ANDERSEN | AFP

  Though a leading light and founder country of the Rugby World Cup, South Africa missed the first two editions of the tournament in 1987 and 1991 because of the international boycott of apartheid. It won the trophy in its debut appearance in 1995.

• SOUTH SUDAN
  Luol Ajou Deng

  He is the most famous South Sudanese sportsman although he is also a British citizen. Born in South Sudan, he and his family fled the country when he was a child and settled in Britain, where he would eventually play for the British national team. He was a two-time NBA All-Star and was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team in 2012. As a 19 year-old in the US in 2005, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team. He retired in October this year with the Chicago Bulls.

• ZIMBABWE
  Kirsty Coventry

  Zimbabwe’s current minister of youth, sport, arts and recreation is also Africa’s most decorated Olympian. She is a member of the International Olympic Committee and heads its Athlete’s Commission. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Coventry won three Olympic medals: gold, silver, and bronze. In Beijing four years later, she won one gold and three silvers. Described as “a national treasure”, Coventry retired from swimming after her fifth Olympics, having won the joint most individual medals in women's swimming in Olympic history.