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Uncertain times
If there’s one thing big investors, economists, political analysts, small to large businesses and ordinary families have in common, it is a fear of uncertainty. It’s one of many overwhelming feelings after the election of Donald Trump to be president of the United States.
While it is impossible to set aside a presidential campaign with an unprecedented level of hate, bile and outright racism, the uncertainty about what a Trump presidency might look like is very real.
When it comes to Africa that uncertainty is justified because the inward-looking, isolationist Trump campaign barely touched on Africa at all. There’s a genuine concern that Africa could metaphorically ‘drop off the map’ in a Trump presidency. Some argue this may be a good thing for Africa. For one thing, it will hopefully force African countries to put more effort into developing stronger trade links with each other. Intra-Africa trade is still a small share of trade for many African countries. But, while boosting intra-Africa trade is a very good thing, it isn’t mutually exclusive from trading with the United States, which should, and likely will, remain an important trading partner even if things like AGOA get stifled.
While Trump’s approach has been policy-lite, there was always a good sense of his philosophy or outlook on certain key issues. For example, even if the specifics of the ‘the wall’ with Mexico remain vague, young Africans with hopes of moving to the United States for study or work are in little doubt that they’ll be a lot less welcome. This is in part why Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature Wole Soyinka has promised to go through with ripping up his US green card in a symbolic, but important gesture.
Despite the fact many Africans have seen similar visceral and unpredictable politics in their own countries, those watching from the continent are shocked and disappointed in the United States. There’s concern Trump will have a ‘strongman’ approach to leadership, which we see more frequently on the continent. Indeed, some of the earliest political congratulations came from some of Africa’s strongmen and populist leaders. One unintended consequence of a White House with little interest in Africa, might be that the continent’s more repressive leaders might feel emboldened without the disapproving eye of the United States. But Africa also had probably the only non-diplomatic heartfelt reaction from a sitting president in Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, who described Hillary Clinton’s loss as “extremely” sad.
Despite all this, it’s worth remembering uncertainty isn’t all just about downside. The unpredictability of a Trump presidency will create new types of opportunities for Africa and Africans. We may not know what they are yet, but we won’t know if we’re not looking.
Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor
Five stories from this week
Zimbabweans are sleeping outside banks to get cash. Zimbabweans have been lining up outside banks to get hold of what little cash is in circulation before the government replaces it with bond notes as currency. The situation is so desperate that Zimbabweans have began prefacing anything that is temporary with the word “bond,” report Lynsey Chutel and Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi.
A Ugandan court closed schools backed by Zuckerberg and Gates. Bridge International Academies, a chain of low-cost private schools with investors including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, had 63 schools closed in Uganda. The court ruled the schools weren’t properly licensed, used unqualified teachers and unsanitary locations.
Nairobi’s matutu buses resist digitization. The anarchy and chaos that shapes the local transportation in Nairobi generates huge profits for the bus operators. The matatu industry is cash-intensive, and has been resisting initiatives that would permit electronic payment and pre-booking tickets, writes Joshua Masinde from Nairobi.
South Africans know something about replacing an intellectual president with a populist. On Nov. 9, Americans woke up to the reality that a charismatic populist was slated to become their next president. Reflecting on the election of president Jacob Zuma, South Africans, Jackie Bischof and Lynsey Chutel write: We’ve been there America.
The chip that could revolutionize medicine for Africans. Precision medicine, or the practice of scanning patients’ genes to devise treatment programs, has largely ignored Africans and people of African descent. But a chip containing millions of genetic variations that are common in Africa could help reverse all that, explains Linda Nordling.
CHART OF THE WEEK
How African countries can avoid being hurt by Trump. President-elect Donald Trump barely mentioned Africa when he outlined his trading policies during the campaign. But as Abdi Latif Dahir writes, the only way for the continent to benefit from a Trump ‘America first’ trade rhetoric, will be to trade with each other first.
Other Things We Liked
Africa’s heroin highway to the West. The volume of heroin being smuggled on dhows across the Indian Ocean through East Africa and on to Europe and the United States has swelled to record levels. As Alexandra Fisher writes for Daily Beast, this unprecedented flow is partly due to the freedom from prosecution that the route offers traffickers, in case they are caught by forces patrolling international waters.
Life as Joseph Kony’s bodyguard. For three years, George Omona was a bodyguard to Joseph Kony, head of the Ugandan rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army. In a new book titled When the Walking Defeats You, Ledio Cakaj documents some the brutality George experienced, as well as some the bodyguard had carried out.
Dan Och’s African nightmare. For years Och-Ziff has been one of the blue-chip hedge fund firms that boasted such high-profile, risk averse public pension clients. But as Imogen Rose-Smith writes in the Institutional Investor, shareholders and investors now wonder how the company became so involved in so many backroom African deals that recently forced it to pay $412 million to settle bribery charges with the US government.
Keep an eye on
The Emergent Continent Conference (Nov.16). The Lagos conference is an enterprise innovation showcase for Africa and will features speakers from across industry including Google, Microsoft, BBC, Bloomberg and Big Cabal Media among others.
AfricaCom (Nov. 14-18). AfricaCom, the Africa-focused tech event, will take place in Cape Town bringing together industry insiders and tech entrepreneurs.
Mali municipal elections (Nov. 20). After a two-year delay, Malians will go to the polls to elect 12,000 councilors in the country’s 703 communes. The campaigns have been going on under a cloud of apathy and uncertainty, following years of civil conflict.
Our best wishes for a productive week ahead. Please send any news, comments, Zimbabwe cash and Nairobi matatu digital maps to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day.
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