Africa/Global: New Reports Show Massive Tax Losses

AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 17, 2017 (170417)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

On April 15, “tax day” in the United States, tens of thousands of
demonstrators in over 200 communities around the country marched to
demand that President Trump make public his tax returns (http://taxmarch.org/home/). Protesters also denounced his use of
taxpayer funds for his personal profit and military escalation while
his administration continues its assault on spending for urgent
public needs at home and around the world. There is no sign that the
President will comply with the demand for transparency. But the
award of a Pulitzer Prize last week to the international consortium
that exposed the Panama Papers was only one indicator that the drive
to expose tax evasion, tax avoidance, and corruption around the
world will continue.

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One new report, from the Tax Justice Network, estimated that global
tax losses by governments to “profit-shifting” come to at least $500
billion a year, while another report from Oxfam America cited $1.6
trillion stashed overseas by the 50 largest U.S. companies alone for
the purposes of reducing their U.S. taxes. And Shell Oil was forced
to admit having paid a $1.1 billion bribe to a former oil minister
in Nigeria to facilitate the award of the rich Malabu oil block.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains brief press releases on these
three reports, as well as on new legislation introduced by Democrats
in the U.S. Congress that would limit such abuses, particularly by
requiring “multinational corporations to report their employees,
sales, finances, tax obligations and tax payments on a country-by-
country basis.” As the Oxfam report and other critics have noted,
Trump’s so-called “tax reform” plans would instead massively reduce
transparency and allow corporations and the ultra-rich to grab even
larger shares of national wealth.

Additional links of interest:

CBS News, “Secret Service costs for Trump family protection continue
to mount,” April 14, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/n7ftvpd
“One purchase order reviewed by CBS News shows the US Secret Service
has spent $35,185 on golf cart rentals [to Trump’s resort] in Palm
Beach County, Florida since the President’s inauguration.”

“Civil Society Experts Issue Accelerated Agenda for Addressing
Illicit Financial Flows in Africa,”
January 26, 2017, press release with link to 10-page full report.
http://tinyurl.com/kqznhqd
“The Accelerated IFF Agenda is a set of 14 recommendations that
identify steps African governments can take to jump-start the
process of addressing illicit financial flows (IFFs).”

Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition

Home Page

“a non-partisan alliance of more than 100 state, national, and
international organizations working toward a fair tax system”
Essential up-to-date resources on U.S. legislative issues and other
policy and advocacy efforts.
US-Africa Network
https://usafricanetwork.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/m9er3kg
Resources on illicit financial flows and the Stop the Bleeding
Africa campaign

Previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on tax justice and related issues
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Shell Knew

Global Witness Report / April 10, 2017

http://www.globalwitness.org – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/k97cenq

[note story at link includes additional graphics, short video, and
link to full report]

BBC News, April 11, 2017, “Shell admits dealing with money
launderer”

Emails show senior executives at world’s fifth largest company
knowingly took part in a vast bribery scheme that robbed the
Nigerian people of $1.1 billion.

It’s one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of the
oil sector – and this is the biggest development so far.

Damning new evidence shows oil giant Shell took part in a vast
bribery scheme that robbed the Nigerian people of over a billion
dollars.

Internal Shell emails seen by Finance Uncovered and Global Witness
show how the world’s fifth biggest company took part in a scheme
which deprived Nigeria and its people of $1.1 billion in a murky
deal for access to one of Africa’s most valuable oil blocks, known
as OPL 245.

For years, Shell has denied it did anything wrong, but today’s
emails show they knew the money would be diverted to private hands,
and they went ahead with the deal anyway.

This is devastating for the people of Nigeria. Right now five
million of them face starvation. The money paid for the block
equates to one and a half times what the UN says is needed to
respond to the current famine crisis. But the Nigerian people saw
none of the benefits.

What the Leaked Emails Show

The emails we have published today show senior executives knew the
massive payment for the oil block would go to Dan Etete – a
convicted money launderer and former Nigerian oil minister. He spent
some of it on a private jet, armoured cars, and shotguns.

The emails also show Shell’s top brass were told that money was
likely to flow to some of the most powerful people in the country,
including then President Goodluck Jonathan.

He spoke to Mrs E this morning. She says E claims he will only get
300m we offering—rest goes in paying people off. (Shell
representative and former MI6 agent John Copleston in a leaked email
to Shell Africa executives. “E” is understood to be Dan Etete.)

Shell portrays itself as an oil company that does good. Yet our
investigation reveals a story of hypocrisy and deception, and finds
the company’s most senior bosses depriving Nigeria of life-saving
funds by going ahead with a dodgy deal that they knew was a vast
bribery scheme.

Background: The OPL 245 Deal

In 2011, Shell and the Italian oil company Eni paid $1.1. billion in
a murky deal for this lucrative asset located off the coast of
Nigeria. After a lengthy investigation, Global Witness tracked down
documents showing that this money didn’t go to benefit the Nigerian
people as it should have done. Instead it went to convicted money
launderer and former oil Minister, Dan Etete, who had awarded
himself ownership of the block in 1998 via a company he secretly
owned, Malabu Oil and Gas.

For six years, Shell has denied it did anything wrong, and said it
only dealt with the Nigerian government in securing rights to the
block. This latest investigation shows that Shell’s senior
executives knew where the money was really going.

***************************************************

Top 50 US Companies Stash $1.6 Trillion Offshore

Current “Reform” Proposals Likely to Make Tax Dodging Even Worse

Oxfam America, April 12, 2017

http://www.oxfamamerica.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/k2yhvdr

[full report available at http://tinyurl.com/lgo8hru]

The 50 biggest US companies, including global brands such as Pfizer,
Goldman Sachs, GE, Chevron, Walmart, and Apple, have $1.6 trillion
stashed offshore according to Oxfam America, a $200 billion increase
in a single year.

In a new report based on corporate financial, lobbying, and investor
disclosures released ahead of Tax Day, Oxfam revealed that the 50
largest US companies relied on an opaque and secretive network of at
least 1,751 subsidiaries in tax havens to avoid paying their fair
share of taxes. Oxfam also warned that reforms proposed by President
Trump and Congressional leaders will only further rig the rules in
favor of the rich and powerful, deepen the inequality crisis, and
harm poor families in the US and in developing countries worldwide.

“As Americans prepare for the yearly ritual of filing their returns
and sending Uncle Sam a check, the 50 largest US companies are
hoarding more than a trillion dollars offshore that could provide
much-needed funds to fight poverty and inequality here and around
the world,” said Robbie Silverman, Senior Advisor for Oxfam America
and one of the authors of the report. “While President Trump was
elected on the promise to fix the rigged political and economic
system, his proposals will only enrich powerful corporations and
enable special interests to game the tax code at the expense of
ordinary taxpayers and small businesses.”

The report, which updates Oxfam’s analysis from a similar report
last year, reveals that the 50 largest US companies have deepened
their use of tax havens and boosted their investments in building
political influence to push for even greater tax breaks than they
already enjoy. Even as these 50 companies earned over $4.2 trillion
in profits globally, they used offshore tax havens to lower their
effective overall tax rate to just 25.9% according to the most
generous estimate of their tax payments, well below the statutory
rate of 35% and even below average levels paid in other developed
countries. Since 2009, these 50 companies alone have spent $2.5
billion in federal lobbying–almost $50 million for every member of
Congress.  Oxfam estimates that for every $1 these companies spent
lobbying on tax issues, they received an estimated $1,200 in tax
breaks.

“Every year rigged tax rules cost Americans approximately $135
billion in corporate tax dodging and sap an estimated $100 billion
from poor countries–revenue that should go towards building
schools, bridges and hospitals,” continued Silverman. “The losers in
this rigged game are small businesses, working families, and the
poor who cannot deploy armies of lobbyists to preserve their
favorite tax loophole.”

The report does not accuse any of the companies of acting
illegally–rather, Oxfam’s analysis demonstrates how the current tax
system permits companies to dodge hundreds of billions of dollars of
tax within the bounds of the law.

Instead of supporting straightforward reforms to prevent large
companies from gaming the system, President Trump and leaders in
Congress are pitching “reform” that would provide massive tax breaks
to US companies that have trillions stashed offshore, give giant new
tax breaks to large, profitable companies, and dramatically reshape
the way US companies are taxed with terrible implications for poor
countries.

Oxfam estimates that the top 50 US companies would stand to gain
between $312-327 billion from the repatriation holidays proposed by
President Trump and the House GOP. Just 4 companies–Apple, Pfizer,
Microsoft and General Electric–together could potentially pocket as
much as $132 billion in new tax breaks from this single policy
change.

The report also reveals that the Border Adjustment Tax, proposed by
the House GOP, will harm poor and middle class Americans and could
cost poor countries more than what the US spends on poverty-focused
foreign aid. As a direct result of this proposal, poor countries
could face rapidly increasing costs in servicing their debts, which
would drain resources needed for schools, hospitals and other basic
services that help pull their citizens out of poverty.

The tax reform plans, which will cost the US trillions of dollars
over the next decade, must also be considered and understood in the
context of the Trump Administration’s proposals to dramatically
slash the federal budget, in part to help pay for tax cuts for the
wealthy. President Trump’s budget would severely cut or abolish
programs that provide low-income Americans with affordable housing,
job training, energy assistance, rehabilitated homes in
neighborhoods hard-hit by foreclosures, and food delivery to
homebound seniors. At a time of unprecedented global crisis, with 65
million people forced to flee their homes and up to four famines
looming, the cuts would also devastate US leadership to save lives
and help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Oxfam calls on Congress to go back to the drawing board on its tax
reform plans and start over with measures that do not further
entrench the inequality crisis. Congress must also work to enable
cooperation with other countries that are struggling to prevent tax
abuse rather than compete with other nations in a mutually
destructive race to the bottom. The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention
Act and the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act are just two reasonable
measures that would simplify the tax code and ensure companies pay
their fair share.

“A fair and effective tax system is the lifeblood of an efficient
and well-functioning government, allowing for investments in basic
services like schools, hospitals, roads, first responders, social
safety nets and other vital public services that can address poverty
and ensure a thriving business climate,”  said Silverman. “The vast
sums that companies have stashed in tax havens should be fighting
poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden in
Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”

Editor’s notes: The Oxfam report analyzed the tax practices between
2009-2015 of the 50 largest public companies in the US according to
the Forbes 2000 list: Allergan, Alphabet (Google), American Express,
American International Group (AIG), Amgen, Apple, AT&T, Bank of
America, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, Capital One Financial, Chevron,
Cisco Systems, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS Health, Dow
Chemical, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors,
Gilead, Goldman Sachs, Home Depot, Honeywell International, IBM,
Intel, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Medtronic, Merck, MetLife,
Microsoft, Mondelez, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, PepsiCo, Pfizer,
Phillips 66, Procter & Gamble, Prudential Financial, United
Technologies, UnitedHealth Group, US Bancorp, Verizon
Communications, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney, and Wells Fargo.

**************************************************************

New estimates reveals the extent of tax avoidance by multinationals

Tax Justice Network

Press Release, March 22, 2017

http://www.taxjustice.net – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/kyg26s6

* Global tax losses estimated at $500 billion a year
* Losses account for a higher share of GDP in lower-income countries
* Losses in some countries such as Zambia and Argentina exceeded 4%
of GDP
* Biggest dollar losses in the USA, estimated at $190 billion in
2013

New figures published today by the Tax Justice Network provide a
country-level breakdown of the estimated tax losses to profit
shifting by multinational companies. Applying a methodology
developed by researchers at the International Monetary Fund to an
improved dataset, the results indicate global losses of around $500
billion a year. The figures appear in a study published today by the
United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics
Research (UNU-WIDER, in Helsinki). Full study available at
https://www.wider.unu.edu/node/74539

While this global total is more cautious than the $600 billion
estimate of the IMF researchers, the distribution is also different.
Losses are now estimated to be even more intense in lower-income
countries in relation to GDP and as a proportion of total tax
revenues. In addition, today’s estimates include the full country
breakdown.

Profit shifting is the process whereby companies move profits from
their subsidiaries in higher tax countries, where the real economic
activity takes place, to other subsidiaries in ‘tax havens’. This is
typically achieved by the multinational company setting up internal
trades which exploit international tax rules to move taxable profits
from one jurisdiction to another.

Profit shifting has been a big focus of international attention
since scandals at companies like Apple and Amazon revealed the scale
of distortions – and the systemic nature of
avoidance schemes marketed by big 4 accounting firms was then laid
bare in the ‘LuxLeaks’ revelations.

Tax Justice Network chief executive, Alex Cobham and Petr Janský of
Charles University in Prague, carried out the analysis which
recreates the methodology of a study published by researchers at the
International Monetary Fund in 2016. Cobham and Janský replicate the
IMF analysis, and then repeat it using a more robust source of
national tax revenue data.

The data showed that whilst the largest losses occurred in rich
economies such as the United States, lower-income countries were the
biggest victims of profit shifting. Some countries, such as
Argentina (4.42%) lost a significant proportion of their GDP to
profit shifting. In Chad, the estimated losses to profit shifting
were larger than all of the (non-resource) taxes collected in the
country that year. In Pakistan the losses were 40% of tax revenues.
While any estimates of this deliberately hidden phenomenon are
necessarily uncertain, the order of magnitude indicates that the
economic development of countries may in some cases be significantly
undermined by the activities of multinational companies.

The calculated losses to individual countries can be seen in this
interactive global map: goo.gl/vZiWjj

A spreadsheet with the data can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/mc2laa2

[Note by AfricaFocus editor: The data by country in the spreadsheet
includes 146 countries, excluding Russia and many countries in the
Middle East. The largest amounts of tax losses are from the United
States ($189 billion) and China ($67 billion), but most countries
with a large percentage of losses compared to the GDP are in Africa
(24 countries) or other developing areas (16 countries).}

On the publication of the report Alex Cobham, chief executive of the
Tax Justice Network said:

These findings support the long-held view that it is lower-income
countries that suffer the most intensive losses due to tax dodging
by multinational companies. The current status quo, in which
international tax rules are set at the OECD where lower-income
countries lack any effective voice, is simply untenable.

Now we need political progress to challenge profit shifting.
Governments around the world can legislate today for the publication
of multinational companies’ country-by-country reporting – revealing
the precise pattern of profit shifting to citizens, and giving tax
authorities the power to curtail it.

…

**********************************************************

Two New Bills Would Plug Major Loopholes in Our Offshore Corporate
Tax System

Tax Justice Blog, April 6, 2017

http://www.taxjusticeblog.org – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/mxxkzwj

By Richard Phillips, Senior Policy Analyst at Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy (http://www.itepnet.org/)

A new pair of bills introduced by Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-
TX) this week would crack down on loopholes that allow corporations
and individuals to avoid paying their fair share in taxes.

Rep. Doggett’s Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which was sponsored by
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in the Senate, would close a
number of the most harmful loopholes in the current international
tax code. Taken together, the provisions of the bill would reduce
international tax avoidance by $278 billion over 10 years.

Corporations’ use of offshore tax gimmicks have grown so out of
control that companies have now accumulated a stunning $2.6 trillion
hoard of money offshore for tax avoidance purposes. The bill
wouldn’t entirely solve the problem of tax haven abuse, but it could
ensure corporations are paying part of the estimated $100 billion
they avoid each year in taxes. Some of the key components of the
bill include provisions that would:

* Reduce corporate inversions by treating the corporation resulting
from the merger of a U.S. and foreign company as a domestic
corporation if shareholders of the original U.S. corporation own
more than 50 percent (rather than 20 percent under current rules) of
the new company, or if the company continues to be managed and
controlled in the United States and engaged in significant domestic
business activities (meaning it employs more than 25 percent of its
workforce in the United States).

* Disallow the interest deduction for U.S. subsidiaries that have
been loaded up with a disproportionate amount of the debt of the
entire multinational corporation. This provision would curb so-
called “earnings stripping,” a practice in which a U.S. subsidiary
borrows from and makes large interest payments to a foreign
subsidiary of the same corporation to wipe out U.S. income for tax
purposes.

* Require multinational corporations to report their employees,
sales, finances, tax obligations and tax payments on a country-by-
country basis as part of their Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) filings. Such disclosures would provide crucial insights into
how companies are gaming the international tax system and would
provide more transparency to investors.

* Repeal the “check-the-box” rule and the “CFC look-through rules”
that allow companies to shift profits to tax havens by letting them
tell foreign countries that their profits are earned in a tax haven,
while telling the United States that the tax-haven subsidiaries do
not exist.

Rep. Doggett’s other new tax-related bill, the Corporate EXIT
Fairness Act, takes direct aim at one of the main drivers of
corporate inversions. Under the current tax code, companies have a
huge incentive to invert or become a foreign corporation (at least
on paper) because they can permanently avoid paying taxes on
accumulated offshore earnings. Doggett’s legislation would require
inverted companies to pay the full amount of taxes they owe on
offshore earnings if they become a foreign company, which means that
avoiding taxes on unrepatriated earnings will no longer be a factor
in making that decision.

The bill also contains the same anti-inversion provisions in the
Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act that tighten rules around what constitutes
a domestic corporation.

What differentiates Rep. Doggett’s exit tax bill from similar bills
is that it would require all expatriating companies to pay what they
owe on their offshore earnings, rather than just those companies
that are engaging in a transaction that meets the definition of an
inversion. This makes the bill even more effective in that it
reduces the offshoring tax incentive across the board and allows the
bill to work as a complement to other anti-inversion legislation.

Rather than moving to an even more loophole-ridden corporate tax
code as the House GOP has proposed, lawmakers should be considering
reforms such as those in the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act and the
Corporate EXIT Fairness Act that crack down on offshore tax
avoidance.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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see http://www.africafocus.org

By James Thompson

Donald Trump, in his short period in office, has launched an all out assault on working people around the world. He is brought the world to the brink of World War III and has threatened countries around the world to include Russia, China, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and numerous others. We all know that nuclear war would reduce the inhabitants of the world to cockroach food. We can all be cremated equally.

In the United States, Donald Trump has assaulted and insulted numerous groups and sectors of the population to include Planned Parenthood, immigrants, working people, women, the disabled, and minorities.

Sebastian Gorka, a supporter of the Nazi party in Hungary, remains on Trump’s cabinet to this day.

All this madness must stop! Sign the petition to boycott all Trump’s businesses at: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/boycott-donald-trump-3

You can find a list of Trump related enterprises at: http://grabyourwallet.org/

by James Thompson

Barely 3 months into the administration of tyrant Trump, the Donald is rattling all the swords of war against the DPRK.

Whatever happened to the biblical passage Let us beat our swords into plowshares? The U.S. Navy has positioned an “armada,” according to Trump, on the shores of North Korea. Meanwhile, massive US, South Korea military exercises are being conducted on the border between South and North Korea.

Since the 1950s, there has been a declaration of war from the US on North Korea.

Many experts maintain that the launch of 59 tomahawk missiles against Syria and the dropping of the $16 million MOAB on Afghanistan were intended to put the DPRK on notice that the same thing could happen to them.

Meanwhile, people in the USA can perform simple mathematics and realize that in a short period of time tyrant Trump has dropped $75 million worth of bombs on foreign countries. At the same time, tyrant Trump and his congressional allies seek to decimate social programs in the USA to include healthcare, education, women’s health, infrastructure repair and other programs which are of benefit to the people of the US. All of this is in contradiction to Trump’s campaign promises.

People in the USA must recognize that there can be no peace, or progress as long as capitalism dominates the governmental structure.

Working people need socialism in order to progress.

War with the DPRK and/or Syria will only set back the working class while advancing the bourgeoisie.

Working people need to rise up and oppose the tyrannical policies of the new Trump administration and fight for peace.

Tyrant Trump Romps: Rest of the World Aghast at Unprecedented US Brutality

by James Thompson

The bourgeois tyrant Trump has already distinguished himself in his brief period in the Oval Office as one of the most notorious tyrants in US history. Barely 3 months in office and he is already responding to imagined threats to the USA with deadly bombs. A few days after a deadly chemical attack, tyrant Trump unleashed 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian Air Force Base without any substantial evidence that this Air Force Base perpetrated the chemical attack.

The Syrian government and the Russian government have denied that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attack. One must ask what could be the benefit of launching a chemical attack on its own citizens if the government of Syria denies that they were responsible for the attack.

We must remember that the Syrian army was making advances on the terrorists in Syria prior to the attack. President Assad, hated by the US bourgeois media, categorically denied his government’s involvement in the criminal chemical attack.

Who benefited from the chemical attack? Undoubtedly, tyrant Trump, his cronies and the massive munitions industry in the USA, benefited from the deadly, brutal, unprovoked chemical attack on innocent people in Syria.

Without a thorough, unbiased, scientific investigation of the chemical attack, tyrant Trump launched a brutal attack on a Syrian Air Force Base known to heroically fight the criminal puppets of the USA known commonly as ISIS. 59 tomahawk missiles at a cost of $1 million per missile were launched and a great deal of concrete was demolished. Syrians were terrorized as well as many other people in the Middle East.

Not even a week later tyrant Trump authorized a MOAB drop on Afghanistan. The US MOAB is the closest conventional weapon to a nuclear weapon to date. When dropped, it sucks up all the oxygen and sets the air on fire, resulting in the death of all humans in the area. This drop resulted in the deaths of an insignificant number of ISIS members according to the US bourgeois media. The MOAB cost $16 million.

Meanwhile, tyrant Trump has dispatched an unknown number of U.S. Navy attack vessels to the Korean Peninsula to show the socialist country who is boss. North Korea has an unknown number of nuclear weapons. They have not threatened the mainland of the USA. They have loudly stated that they are a sovereign nation and are entitled to defend themselves against US aggression.

Tyrant Trump is effectively seeking to ignite the world on fire through his brutal and provocative action. No one knows where Trump’s reckless behavior will lead.

We do know that there is no overwhelming opposition from the working class in the USA against USA military intervention in either Syria or North Korea. Will Trump continue to romp or will the world working class rise up to oppose the brutality of the bourgeoisie against the working class as led by tyrant Trump?

by Darrell Rankin
The NDP statement on Trump’s criminal attack on Syria

The NDP, Canada’s social democratic party, has complete faith in the outstanding US intelligence agents who say that Syria’s government gassed its own citizens, just when Syria was on the verge of defeating the terrorists. 
“Assad must be held accountable for these crimes,” says the NDP.
The NDP must have information that US intelligence is more reliable compared to 2003 when it made a mistake about Iraq having chemical weapons.
The NDP adds that it supports international law and “a lasting political solution.”
Details please, about some political solutions?
Does it include a stop to the West training and arming the terrorists? Does it include condemning the latest criminal Western aggression, rather than saying “it is not clear what the impact of these missile strikes will be”?
Evading these questions will get the NDP nowhere.

by Darrell Rankin

AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 10, 2017 (170410)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“On February 18th I lost my grand aunt – my grandmother really …
This incredible woman, May Kyomugasho Katebaka left us at the age of
97. We last met in 2014 when I visited her. She’s a fierce woman.
Fierce in her religion but also fierce in her knowledge of what she
wanted from the world. And that is what moves me. Moves me every time
one claims feminism is foreign and for the educated, un-african. She
always came to mind when I met such arguments. I would tell myself
that if only they could hear half her life story, then they would
understand why I am such a rebellion.” – Rosebell Kagumire
(https://rosebellkagumire.com/)

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“Today as ever, African female activists are reshaping not just
African feminist agendas but global ones as well,” wrote scholar
Aili Mari Tripp in a March 8 article published in African Arguments.
But this was only a small sample of articles and web features that
have recently appeared highlighting different aspects of “African
feminism(s),” as well as a host of new books by both famous and
relatively unknown authors.

Among sources that have come to my attention in the last month, this
AfricaFocus Bulletin features the overview article by Aili Mari
Tripp, a reflection by Ugandan journalist and activist Rosebell
Kagumire, several additional links to web features from the African
Feminist Forum and OkayAfrica, and a listing of a selection of
recent related books, from 2017, 2016, and 2015.

The article from March 8, International Women’s Day, was the initial
impetus for this Bulletin. But it is appropriate that the Bulletin
comes only a few days after April 7 (Mozambican Women’s Day),
commemorated to honor the example of Josina Muthemba Machel (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josina_Machel), who I was privileged
to work with in Dar es Salaam in 1966-1967, a few years before her
death at the age of 25 on April 7, 1971. [I don’t know who wrote the
Wikipedia article, but it is substantive and, to my knowledge,
accurate).

Additional recent web references

African Feminist Forum, “Know Your African Feminists” and “African
Feminist Ancestors” Accessed March 2017
http://www.africanfeministforum.com/ – direct URLs:
http://tinyurl.com/mrlua9o and http://tinyurl.com/nxg3u8v

“Talking African Feminisms with Dr. Sylvia Tamale,”
Rosebell Kagumire blog, August 19, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/m9l3fav

“OkayAfrica’s 100 Women” Accessed March 2017
http://www.okayafrica.com/100-women/

“Ghana: Women are the new face of telecommunications’ players,”
Balancing Act Africa, March 17, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/ma3j2sr

“Malawi: Rural Women, Empowerment and Mining,” Publish What You Pay,
December 19, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/m35tt3k

Eunice Onwona, “Karen Attiah Is the ‘Warrior of Diversity’
Channeling Journalism Into Activism,” OkayAfrica, March 17, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/mwvggag

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

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Those who Defied the Odds, Those Who Stood True to their Beliefs
Till the End

by Rosebell Kagumire

African Feminism, March 22, 2017

http://africanfeminism.com – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/m3h7dhw

On February 18th I lost my grand aunt – my grandmother really
(English limitations) because in my culture a sister of my
grandmother is my grandmother. Both have almost equal roles and
space in your life.

This incredible woman, May Kyomugasho Katebaka left us at the age of
97. We last met in 2014 when I visited her. She’s a fierce woman.
Fierce in her religion but also fierce in her knowledge of what she
wanted from the world. And that is what moves me. Moves me every time
one claims feminism is foreign and for the educated, un-african. She
always came to mind when I met such arguments. I would tell myself
that if only they could hear half her life story, then they would
understand why I am such a rebellion.

Grandma May, always made it a point to tell us she got ‘saved/born
again’ in 1949. Religion was at the centre of her life. She always
told us had it not been for her selfless service in the church, she
would have ended up like most women of her time.  She was one of the
few among millions of women at the time who could read. And that
came through the colonial state where knowledge of the bible
accorded one certain privileges.

Her life is an inspiration. She was married, briefly, and quickly
figured out that married life wasn’t for her so she dedicated
herself to serving the church. Where she was married and even when
she didn’t have children of her own, she is known to have treated
the kids she found in the home like her own. Of course this is
something many women are required of by society and the conditions
are often not on their side – women should have choices – but the
love between her and her step children remained even when she was
longer part of their family. That love was demonstrated till the
end.

In my culture and many in Uganda still, unmarried and childless
women are scorned upon but Grandmother May commanded a certain
respect above all these. She managed to weave her life story, with a
church as her shelter, to be who she wanted to be. Of course many
would say she should ‘have had a child at least’ and god knows what
other pressures she faced. All these little narrow definitions of
what a woman’s life should be according to society wouldn’t dwindle
her.

I loved her and she lived an exceptional life and didn’t matter who
accepted it. She was beautiful too and a deep deep soul. In many
ways she was still traditional like I remember her asking me to
always wear long t-shirts over my jeans – you know – not to show
‘secret body parts’ like we call it in my Runyankole. I usually
laughed these off.

She is inspiration and the fact that her life in itself – some
aspects probably weren’t intentional – but she never followed the
crowd. And that’s enough to get me through this life. I thought in
the spirit of women’s history month, Grandma May fully represents
the people in my life that shattered those expectations. To
understand where we are going we must always look back for a lesson,
inspiration and sometimes caution.

********************************************************

How African feminism changed the world

Aili Mari Tripp

African Arguments, March 8, 2017

http://www.africanarguments.org – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/hrpzdbw

[Aili Mari Tripp is Professor of Political Science and Evjue Bascom
Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. She is the co-editor, with Balghis Badri, of
Women’s Activism in Africa (2017).]

Today as ever, African female activists are reshaping not just
African feminist agendas but global ones as well.

One of the great fallacies one still hears today is that feminism
started in the Global North and found its way to the Global South.
Another is that universal understandings of women’s rights as
embodied in UN treaties and conventions were formulated by activists
in the North.

International Women’s Day, however, provides an opportunity to
highlight the reality: that not only do feminisms in the Global
South have their own trajectories, inspirations, and demands, but
they have contributed significantly to today’s global understandings
of women’s rights. Nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where
women are increasingly exerting leadership from politics to business
and have helped shape global norms regarding women’s rights in
multiple arenas.

For decades, African activists have rejected the notion that one can
subsume all feminist agendas under a Western one. As far back as the
1976 international conference on Women and Development at Wellesley
College, Egyptian novelist Nawal El-Saadawi and Moroccan sociologist
Fatema Mernissi challenged efforts by Western feminists to define
global feminism. In the drafting of the 1979 Convention on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the All African
Women’s Conference was one of six organisations and the only
regional body involved.

African women have also been influencing national gender policies
for over half a century. In 1960, for example, Mail’s Jacqueline Ki-
zerbo had already developed the idea of considering the gender
impacts of policies. It was only decades later that this idea – now
commonly known as “gender mainstreaming” – gained international
currency, particularly in national budgetary processes.

In key UN conferences, African women activists have been visible
from the outset. Egypt’s Aida Gindy held the first international
meeting on Women in Economic Development in 1972. The Kenya Women’s
Group helped organise the 1985 UN Conference on Women in which
African women brought issues of apartheid and national liberation to
the fore. And Egypt’s Aziza Husayn helped organise the 1994 Cairo
International Conference on Population and Development, which
shifted the debate around population control away from a traditional
family planning emphasis on quotas and targets to one focused on
women’s rights and health.

Additionally, Sierra Leone’s Filomena Steady was one of the key
conveners of the Earth Summit in 1992. Tanzania’s Gertrude Mongella
was General Secretary of the pivotal 1995 UN Beijing Conference. And
African women peace-builders played a crucial role in the 2000
Windhoek conference, which paved the way for a UN Security Council
Resolution encouraging the inclusion of women in peace negotiations
and peacekeeping missions around the world.

Leading the world

Women in Africa have also set new standards for women’s political
leadership globally. The likes of Guinea’s Jeanne Martin Cissé,
Liberia’s Angie Brooks and Tanzania’s Anna Tibaijuka and Asha-Rose
Migiro have all held top positions at the UN. Meanwhile at a
national level, many African countries have made important gains in
women’s representation.

Rwandan women today hold 62% of the country’s legislative seats, the
highest in the world. In Senegal, South Africa, Namibia, and
Mozambique, more than 40% of parliamentary seats are held by women.
There are female speakers of the house in one fifth of African
parliaments, higher than the world average of 14%. Women have
claimed positions in key ministries throughout Africa. And women
have increasingly run for executive positions, with Liberia, the
Central African Republic, Malawi and Mauritius all having had female
heads of state. Moreover, these increases in female representation
are taking place across the continent, including predominantly
Muslim countries such as Senegal, where women hold 43% of
legislative seats.

These new patterns are found at the regional level too, with women
holding 50% of the positions at in African Union Commission,
compared to just one-third at the European Commission. South
Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma meanwhile chaired the AU Commission
from 2012 to 2017.

Women’s strong presence in African parliaments has resulted in new
discussions about strategies to enhance female political
representation worldwide. Scandinavian scholars such as Drude
Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall even argue that the incremental
model that led to high rates of female representation in Nordic
countries in the 1970s has now been replaced by the “fast track”
African model in which dramatic jumps in representation are brought
about by electoral quotas.

Shaping the world

African women have also been pioneering in business. Aspiring young
female entrepreneurs today have several role models they can follow
such as Ghana’s Esther Ocloo, who pursued the idea of formalising
local women’s credit associations and became a founding member of
one of the first microcredit banks, Women’s Worlds Banking, in 1979.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, African countries
have almost equal numbers of men and women either actively involved
in business start-ups or in the phase of starting a new firm. And in
countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia, women are reportedly
more likely to be entrepreneurs than men.

These changes are evident not only at the grassroots but, to an
extent, at the highest levels. Female representation in boardrooms
worldwide is very poor, but Africa’s rate of 14.4% is only slightly
behind Europe (18%) and the US (17%), and ahead of Asia, Latin
America and the Middle East.

Finally, a younger generation of activists is emerging throughout
Africa today and redefining feminism from an African perspective.
One sees this not only in the work of the African Feminist Forum,
which first met in 2006, but also in the work of figures such as
novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who issued a clarion call to women
in her video We Should All be Feminist, adapted from her 2013 Ted
Talk, in which she explores what it means to be an African feminist.
Her book length essay by the same title is found on bookshelves in
major cities around the world, and the Swedish Women’s Lobby has
given it to every 16-year-old in Sweden to help them think about
gender equality.

Feminist discourse meanwhile has become commonplace throughout the
continent on websites, blogs, journals, and social media. New
feminist novels like Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya), Kintu by
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda), and Americanah by Adichie
(Nigeria) have offered new ways of imagining women.

There are clearly still enormous hurdles for African feminists to
overcome in fighting for gender equality. But as they have over the
past half a century, Africa’s women activists of today are reshaping
not only African feminist agendas in tackling these challenges, but
global ones as well.

*********************************************

Books, 2017

[Thanks to Kathleen Sheldon for most of these suggested books.
Short quotes after each book are from the publishers’ descriptions
unless source is otherwise cited.]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in
Fifteen Suggestions, 2017. “Adichie has partly written Dear Ijeawele
to reclaim the word feminism from its abusers and misusers. Her
advice is not only to provide children with alternatives—to empower
boys and girls to understand there is no single way to be—but also
to understand that the only universal in this world is difference.”
– Emma Brockes, The Guardian (UK)
http://amzn.to/2ndqp05

Balghis Badri and Aili Mari Tripp, eds. Women’s Activism in Africa:
Struggles for Rights and Representation, 2017. “Drawing on case
studies and fresh empirical material from across the continent, the
authors challenge the prevailing assumption that notions of women’s
rights have trickled down from the global north to the south,
showing instead that these movements have been shaped by above all
the unique experiences and concerns of the local women involved.”
http://amzn.to/2nJLhxq

Helene Cooper. Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf, 2017. “Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and
bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf’s personal
story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian
women.”
http://amzn.to/2nCo0Nm

Linda M. Heywood. Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen
Hardcover, 2017. “Though largely unknown in the Western world, the
seventeenth-century African queen Njinga was one of the most
multifaceted rulers in history, a woman who rivaled Elizabeth I and
Catherine the Great in political cunning and military prowess.”
http://amzn.to/2nnklmd

Kathleen Sheldon. African Women: Early History to the 21st Century.
2017. “The rich case studies and biographies in this thorough survey
establish a grand narrative about women’s roles in the history of
Africa.”
http://amzn.to/2ndpiNS

Books, 2016

Berger, Iris. Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, 2016. “This book
introduces students to many remarkable women, who organized
religious and political movements, fought in anti-colonial wars, ran
away to escape arranged marriages, and during the 1990s began
successful campaigns for gender parity in national legislatures.”
http://amzn.to/2nJSnSC

Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela. Mothers on the Move: Reproducing
Belonging Between Africa and Europe, 2016. “[The author”takes
readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how
migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult
management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at
once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic
community that bridges them.”
http://amzn.to/2o5jC6c

Hunt, Swanee. Rwandan Women Rising. Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2017. “[The author] shares the stories of some seventy
women—heralded activists and unsung heroes alike—who overcame
unfathomable brutality, unrecoverable loss, and unending challenges
to rebuild Rwandan society.”
http://amzn.to/2o56cY4

Mgbako, Chi Adanna. To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker
Activism in Africa, 2016. “Well-written and elegant, Mgbako’s
research reveals the rise of African sex work activism and the
ongoing trials and tribulations of organizing in the face of
economic, social, and political adversity.” – Aziza
Ahmed,Northeastern University
http://amzn.to/2nVXb3V

Rhine, Kathryn A. The Unseen Things: Women, Secrecy, and HIV in
Northern Nigeria, 2016. “The book is especially innovative in its
rich detail about desire, pleasure and love, and the strategies men
and women use to reconstitute relationships after testing positive
for HIV.” – Carolyn Sargent, Washington University in St. Louis
http://amzn.to/2nCFqd1

Scully, Pamela. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Ohio Short Histories of
Africa), 2016. “A clear and concise introduction to the woman and to
the domestic and international politics that have shaped her
personally and professionally.” —Peace A. Medie, University of Ghana
http://amzn.to/2ndGpPI

Sylvanus, Nina. Patterns in Circulation: Cloth, Gender, and
Materiality in West Africa, 2016. “[The author] tells a captivating
story of global trade and cross-cultural aesthetics in West Africa,
showing how a group of Togolese women—through the making and
circulation of wax cloth—became influential agents of taste and
history.”
http://amzn.to/2nJW8Ye

Books, 2015

Galawdewos, Wendy Laura Belcher, and Michael Kleiner. The Life and
Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century
African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman, 2015.
“This is the first English translation of the earliest-known book-
length biography of an African woman, and one of the few lives of an
African woman written by Africans before the nineteenth century.”
http://amzn.to/2nnpSco

*****************************************************

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providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
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