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#KeepItOn in 2017
Quartz has always been transparent about our belief in the new global economy both as a topic of interest for our readers and for the way that we ourselves see the world and operate within in it. It’s why one of our early obsessions was about The Next Billion i.e., the next one billion people to come online.
Nowhere has that idea been more relevant than in Africa. Millions of people have come online as more advanced mobile phones have got into the hands of ordinary people. It has opened new worlds to people with basic internet-enabled communication many take for granted in more advanced countries.
But in 2016, we’ve seen more African governments feel threatened by the expanding freedom their citizens have. The biggest concern seems to be the power of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Viber to reach large groups of people via text and voice, circumventing traditional closely regulated one-to-one telecommunications.
And most of that concern is expressed around elections and other key political activity. We started 2016 talking about this in Uganda, and we’re ending the year discussing it in DR Congo. In between, we’ve covered this topic, with support from the stellar work of Access Now, in Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon and The Gambia, but there were others.
The excuses behind the shutdowns are usually security concerns and claims during elections that false results might be posted online. But as we wrote back in June: “Couching the suppression of free speech in the language of national security not only makes it easier to imprison and intimidate activists, it also makes it more difficult for the international community to apply pressure for reform.”
This intersection of technology advancement and regressive governments trying to control their citizenry might be one of the more under-appreciated conflicts of bringing millions more people online. But it’s a conflict worth having.
We’ve seen from the fallout of the US elections that we shouldn’t be naïve to the capability of both internal and external forces to misuse these platforms for their own ends. But in the end, opaque and repressive systems will lose out to transparency and openness. As a continent, we should always fight to keep it on.
Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor
Stories from this week
Bioscience can revolutionize Africa’s economic development. Harvard professor Calestous Juma and Sujata Bhatia of University of Delaware explain, that Africa’s emerging bioeconomy has the potential to transform primary production, especially in agriculture, forestry, health and industry They compare it to the same way adoption of mobile phones laid the groundwork for a digital economy.
Young Gambians risk a perilous route to Europe to chase a Facebook mirage. The Gambia is one of Africa’s biggest people exporters on a per capita basis in the ongoing European migration crisis. While some say they are fleeing a despotic president accused of human rights violations, many are risking their lives because of a dream life they see on Facebook, reports Colin Freeman.
Millions of Nigerians could lose their money to a Russian Ponzi scheme. Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox (MMM), a Ponzi scheme, suspended its Nigeria operations last week saying it wants to ensure the sustainability and stability of its system. As Yomi Kazeem finds, the hiccup in operations comes after heightened warnings from government agencies to participants. Now there is panic they may never get their money back.
Is president Magufuli’s Tanzania open for business? Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, suspended operations at a cement factory in Tanzania last month after facing stricter-than-promised regulation from the year-old government. Yet, even after the factory reopened, analysts say the dispute has troubling implications for investors, writes Omar Mohammed.
The merger to create an African retail giant. Shoprite, Africa’s largest retailer, is in talks to be combined with Steinhoff, the furniture group that wants to be the Africa’s Ikea. As Lynsey Chutel writes, the two companies envisage the creation of an international retailer that could be “a retail champion of Africa.”
The $380 million fraud deal that brought down a Kenyan bank. With each passing day, depositors at Imperial Bank are terrified of the fact that they might never fully recover their money from the fallen lender. Joshua Masinde digs into court filings and reports the bank’s shareholders are blaming rogue central bank figures while the central bank blames the bank’s founders.
CHART OF THE WEEK
Africa will soon have to import half of its grains. Development organizations have been working on improving the productivity of African farmers as the continent’s population booms. But as a new study shows, even closing that gap will not be enough to meet the needs of the region, despite having a quarter of the world’s arable land, writes Lily Kuo.
Other Things We Liked
The Eritreans who escaped ISIS but their nightmare won’t end. In a special Reuters investigation across multiple countries, Selam Gebrekidan tells the story of Eritrean refugees caught up in the Islamic State’s battle for ascendancy in Libya. Even after managing to escape a harrowing enslaved existence with IS, many are now in captivity with local Libyan brigades under suspicion of being IS sympathizers.
The family business empire the DRC’s Kabilas built. The constitutionally-mandated term of president Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic Congo ends tomorrow (Dec. 19) and the government expects protests. But since coming into power in 2001, Kabila and his relatives have built a network of businesses that reaches into every corner of Congo’s economy find Bloomberg’s Michael Kavanagh, Thomas Wilson and Franz Wild.
What happened when an American ambassador’s convoy killed a boy in Cameroon? Six-year-old Toussaint Birwe was hit and killed by an armored convoy in Mokong, Cameroon carrying American officials led by Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Helene Cooper from the New York Times writes about how the cheers in a Cameroonian village turned to anger.
Keep an eye on
Egypt’s high administrative court to hold session on maritime demarcation with Saudi Arabia. (Dec. 19). Egypt’s supreme administrative court will hear the government appeal to a June 2016 court ruling that annulled a deal with Saudi Arabia that placed the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir under Saudi sovereignty.
Our best wishes for a productive week ahead. Please send any news, comments, Shoprite shares in exchange for Imperial Bank shares, to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day.
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