“Picasso’s painting seems to live on, indispensably, as a protest against the lie of collateral damage,” the exhibition’s curator said.
Eighty years after the bloody air raid on the Spanish town of Guernica that drove Pablo Picasso to paint a masterpiece, a new exhibition in Madrid highlights the enduring relevance of his depiction.
Adolf Hitler sent aircraft in support of Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces to strike the Basque town on the afternoon of April 26, 1937, killing as many as 1,600 and wounding hundreds.
The show at the Reina Sofia museum, the painting’s home since 1992, includes newspaper photographs of the destruction which the Spanish artist saw at home in Paris, and drew on in the black-and-white oil painting.
“Guernica” was commissioned for the Spanish pavilion at Paris’s World Fair in 1937.
Rosario Peiro, head of collections at the Reina Sofia, said that while researching she had seen a photograph of an image of “Guernica” on display in the Syrian town of Aleppo.
“It addresses a system of destruction and terror which sadly is very much a part of our lives,” Peiro told Reuters. “It is so hard to fathom, you never really stop thinking about it.”
Versions of the image have been produced at times of conflict in places from Afghanistan to South Carolina, exhibition curator Timothy James Clark said.
worker |
April 25, 2017 |
9:12 pm | Africa |
Comments closed
Africa/Global: Media Repression 2.0
AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 25, 2017 (170425)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor’s Note
“In the days when news was printed on paper, censorship was a crude
practice involving government officials with black pens, the seizure
of printing presses and raids on newsrooms. The complexity and
centralization of broadcasting also made radio and television
vulnerable to censorship even when the governments didn’t exercise
direct control of the airwaves. … New information technologies–
the global, interconnected internet; ubiquitous social media
platforms; smart phones with cameras–were supposed to make
censorship obsolete. Instead, they have just made it more
complicated.” – Joel Simon, Committee to Protect Journalists, April
25, 2017
The 2017 Attacks on the Press report from the Committee to Protect
Journalists, just released today and entitled “The New Face of
Censorship,” speaks of issues faced both by old and new media in
countries around the world. Joel Simon’s opening article refers to
“Repression 2.0,” and like Repression 1.0 includes centuries-old
technologies such as murder and imprisonment of journalists as well
as those mentioned in the paragraph above. But it also includes
shutting down social media (or the entire internet), harassment by
automated bots or targeted attacks on web sites, or economic
pressures through withdrawal of state advertising in targeted
newspapers.
The CPJ report is available on-line at
https://cpj.org/2017/04/attacks-on-the-press.php
Most of the chapters apply worldwide, and are available at the link
above.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains links to several chapters
specifically on Africa in the CPJ report, and several articles
focused specifically on the situation in Cameroon and in Zambia.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out earlier today, and available
at http://www.africafocus.org/docs17/zam1704.php, has several
reports on the current political crisis in Zambia, involving
repression both of media and of opposition leaders.
On Cameroon see also
http://tinyurl.com/kpkmzpt for Le Monde April 21 article (in
French): “Après trois mois de coupure, Internet est de retour dans
la partie anglophone du Cameroun”
and Amnesty International news flash on April 24 on the sentencing
by a military court of radio journalist Ahmed Abba to ten years in
prison (http://tinyurl.com/lwujatz).
On the use of advertising as a weapon, see also the April 18 article
by George Ogola, with particular reference to the case of Kenya *
http://tinyurl.com/mfbpa84).
To see the full issue in the new format visit
http://mailchi.mp/igc/media-repression-2
Please check on “subscribe in the upper left-hand corner to
opt-in to receive the full Bulletin in the new format in the future.
NOTE: AfricaFocus is making a transition to a new more user-friendly
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FORMAT by filling in the registration form at
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So please make sure you are among those getting
the new format as soon as possible by opting in now. Once you
subscribe to the new format, your email will be removed from the old
list receiving this plain text format.
To see today’s and earlier Bulletins in the new format, visit
http://tinyurl.com/AfricaFocusArchive
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.For more
information about reposted material, please contact directly the
original source mentioned. For a full archive and other resources,
see http://www.africafocus.org
worker |
April 25, 2017 |
9:08 pm | Africa |
Comments closed
Zambia: From Democracy to Dictatorship?
AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 25, 2017 (170425)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor’s Note
“Our country is now all, except in designation, a dictatorship and
if it is not yet, then we are not far from it. Our political leaders
in the ruling party often issue intimidating statements that
frighten people and make us fear for the immediate and future. This
must be stopped and reversed henceforth.” – Zambia Conference of
Catholic Bishops, April 23, 2017
NOTE: AfricaFocus is making a transition to a new more user-friendly
email distribution system and format. PLEASE OPT IN FOR THE NEW
FORMAT by filling in the registration form at
http://eepurl.com/cKnE11
All subscriptions will be updated to the new format as soon as
possible. But the new system only allows a limited number of bulk
entries at a time, and blocks adding many “suspicious emails” that
are actually valid subscribers. So please make sure you are among
those getting the new format as soon as possible by opting in now.
Once you subscribe to the new format, your email will be removed
from the old list receiving this plain text format.
This Bulletin in the new format can be viewed at
http://mailchi.mp/igc/zambia-from-democracy-to-dictatorship.
To see earlier Bulletins in the new format, visit
http://tinyurl.com/AfricaFocusArchive
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains three short commentaries on the
current political crisis in Zambia, by Simon Allison, Nic Cheeseman,
and Tendai Biti. Another AfricaFocus, also to be sent out today,
focuses on the wider African and global context of “media repression
2.0” in the internet era, including a report on attacks on press
freedom in Zambia.
The statement cited above from the Catholic Bishops of Zambia is
available at http://tinyurl.com/l9cepug
The Council of Churches in Zambia has also issued a strong statement
condemning the arrest of opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema (
http://tinyurl.com/my4a6kx).
For keeping up with recent news on Zambia, two key sources are
http://allafrica.com/zambia and The Mast (
https://www.facebook.com/themastzambia/ or
https://www.themastonline.com/, successor to The Post, which was
shut down by the government in 2016.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Zambia, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/zambia.php
Analysis: Dark, dangerous days for Zambia’s democracy
After the attack on the home of Zambia’s opposition leader, and then
his arrest on spurious charges, Zambia’s reputation as a beacon of
democracy in Africa is under serious threat.
by Simon Allison
Daily Maverick, 20 April 2017
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/lxls8nq
Hakainde Hichilema is famously suspicious. The Zambian opposition
leader travels with a phalanx of bodyguards, and often brings his
own food wherever he goes, just in case anyone wants to poison him.
He claims to have received repeated death threats. He has a safe
room installed in his house.
Until Tuesday last week, it was easy to dismiss Hichilema’s paranoia
as exactly that – paranoia. This is Zambia, after all, one of
Africa’s most established and most successful democracies. No one
bumps off opposition leaders in Zambia. It’s not Russia, or
Venezuela, or Tunisia.
And then, in the early hours of that Tuesday morning, everything
changed. For Hichilema, and for Zambia.
Dozens of armed police descended onto Hichilema’s property. They
broke down the door. They threw tear gas into the house. Dazed and
confused, and above all scared, the politician and his family
retreated into the safe room.
I spoke to him there, on the phone. He didn’t raise his voice above
a whisper, and it trembled as he talked. He said that his wife and
children were injured from the tear gas, which was periodically
pumped through the vents of the safe room in a bid to force them
out, and that his servants had been tortured. He said he could hear
their screams. “This guy is trying to kill me,” he said. “This guy
is a dictator, a full-blown dictator.”
He was talking, of course, about President Edgar Lungu.
The siege lasted until mid-morning. By then, Hichilema’s legal team
had arrived, as had journalists. His lawyers eventually coaxed
Hichilema out of the safe room. He was immediately arrested, and
charged shortly afterwards with treason.
No one is dismissing Hichilema’s paranoia now – and no one is quite
sure what would have happened in the absence of that safe room into
which he could retreat.
What we do know is that Hichilema’s arch-rival, Lungu, has now
abandoned all democratic niceties in a bid to consolidate his grip
on power.
It was the nature of Hichilema’s arrest that was most concerning:
the midnight raid, the tear gas, the casual brutality meted out to
the servants. It was all entirely unnecessary. Hichilema is a public
figure, and could have been quietly arrested at any time. But the
raid was designed to intimidate, to send an unmistakeable message to
the president’s opponents that Lungu’s authority shall no longer be
challenged.
It wasn’t just Hichilema, either. Chilufya Tayali, head of the
Economic and Equity Party and a vocal critic of President Lungu, was
arrested just two days later. His crime? A Facebook post in which he
criticised the “inefficiency” of Zambia’s police chief. He has
subsequently been released on bail.
If that sounds ridiculous – well, it is. But not as ridiculous as
the charges levelled against Hichilema, which are so far entirely
unsubstantiated by evidence or detail. The only concrete allegation
is that Hichilema endangered the president’s life when his vehicles
did not give way to the president’s motorcade at a cultural
festival.
In Lungu’s Zambia, a traffic incident has somehow become treason.
It’s not Lungu’s Zambia quite yet, however, as embarrassed
government prosecutors learned in court. In their submissions
against Hichilema, prosecutors made a Freudian slip, referring to
the opposition leader’s alleged offences against the “Government of
President Edgar Lungu”. They were forced to amend the charge sheet
when the defence observed that such an institution does not exist:
there is still only a Government of the Republic of Zambia, as much
as President Lungu might like it to be otherwise.
But make no mistake: these are dark, dangerous times for Zambia. And
if Lungu’s end goal really is to dismantle the country’s hard-won
democracy, then it’s hard to see who or what will stop him.
Domestically, the arrests of Hichilema and Tayali, along with a
sustained assault on independent media, will have a chilling effect
on civil society. It will take extraordinary courage and commitment
to take on President Lungu’s administration now.
Internationally too, Lungu faces remarkably little pressure. He has
already brushed off statements of concern from the United States and
the European Union, warning diplomats that they are “wasting their
time”; just as he brushed off concerns that his 2016 election win
was marred by serious electoral fraud.
South Africa, the regional superpower which does exert real
influence in Lusaka, has been deafeningly silent; as analyst Greg
Mills observed on these pages, it can’t be a coincidence that Lungu
may well have been encouraged down this path by the example of the
“patronage regime” emerging in South Africa. The less leadership
South Africa displays at home, the less it can project abroad.
Zambia’s in trouble. For so long a beacon of democracy in Africa,
its enviable reputation has already been tarnished by President
Lungu’s actions. The risk now is that Lungu undoes that democratic
progress entirely.
If this all sounds a little paranoid, just remember that Hakainde
Hichilema was paranoid too. And on this, he is being proved right.
Zambia: President Lungu sacrifices credibility to repress opposition
by Nic Cheeseman
Democracy in Action, 21 April 2017
http://democracyinafrica.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/kqo4mr4
NicDiA’s Nic Cheeseman looks at the political crisis in Zambia,
where the opposition leader has been charged with treason, and
analyses the prospects for democratic backsliding. Nic Cheeseman
(@fromagehomme) is the Professor of Democracy at the University of
Birmingham
Zambian President Edgar Lungu finds himself caught between a rock
and a hard place in both economic and political terms. As a result,
he has begun to lash out, manipulating the law to intimidate the
opposition, and in the process sacrificing what credibility he had
left after deeply problematic general elections in 2016.
Let us start with the economy, where the president is stuck in
something of a lose-lose position. On the one hand, his populace is
growing increasingly frustrated at the absence of economic job and
opportunities, while a number of experts have pointed out that the
country is on the verge of a fresh debt crisis. Economic growth was
just 2.9% in 2016, while the public debt is expected to hit 54% of
GDP this year, and the government cannot afford to pay many of its
domestic suppliers.
On the other, a proposed $1.2 billion rescue deal with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has the potential to increase
opposition to the government for two reasons. First, it would mean
significantly reducing government spending, including on some of
Lungu’s more popular policies. Second, many Zambians are
understandably suspicious of IMF and the World Bank, having suffered
under previous adjustment programmes that delivered neither jobs nor
sustainable growth.
The president faces similar challenges on the political front.
Having won a presidential election in 2016 that the opposition
believes was rigged, and which involved a number of major procedural
flaws, Lungu desperately needs to relegitimate himself. However,
this need clashes with another, more important, imperative – namely,
the president’s desire to secure a third term in office when his
current tenure ends in 2020.
The problem for Lungu is that while it looks like he will be able to
use his influence over the Constitutional Court to ensure that it
interprets the country’s new constitutional arrangements to imply
that he should be allowed to stand for a third term – on the basis
that his first period in office was filling in for the late Michael
Sata after his untimely death in office, and so should not count –
such a strategy is likely to generate considerable criticism from
the opposition, civil society and international community.
Lacking viable opportunities to boost his support base and
relegitimate his government, President Lungu has responded by
pursuing another strategy altogether: the intimidation of the
opposition and the repression of dissent. While in some ways
represents a continuation of some of the tactics used ahead of the
2016 election, when the supporters and leaders of rival parties were
harassed and in some cases detained, the recent actions of the
Patriotic Front (PF) government represent a worrying gear-shift.
Most obviously, opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema, who came so
close to leading his United Party of National Development (UPND) to
victory in the latest polls, has been arrested and his home raided.
His crimes? There appear to be two sets of charges. One set is
relatively mundane, and relates to an incident in which Hichilema is
accused of refusing to give way to the president’s convoy. For this,
the opposition leader has been charged with breaking the highway
code and using insulting language.
The second charge – that of treason – is much more serious, but also
much less clear. Court documents state that Hichilema “on unknown
dates but between 10 October 2016 and 8 April 2017 and whilst acting
together with other persons unknown did endeavour to overthrow by
unlawful means the government of Edgar Lungu.” Although this charge
has also been linked to the recent traffic incident, it seems more
likely to be motivated by the president’s ongoing frustration that
the UPND continues to contest his election and refuses to recognise
him as a legitimately elected leader.
If this is the true motivation for the charges, it will only be the
latest of a number of moves to cow the opposition. For example, in
response to the refusal of UNPD legislators to listen to Lungu’s
address to the National Assembly, Richard Mumba – a PF proxy close
to State House – petitioned the Constitutional Court to declare
vacant the seats of all MPs who were absent.
The opposition are not alone. Key elements of civil society have
also come under fire. As a result of the waning influence of trade
unions, professional associations now find themselves as one of the
last lines of defence for the country’s fragile democracy, most
notably the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ). It should therefore
come as no surprise that a government MP, Kelvin Sampa, recent
introduced legislation into the National Assembly that would
effectively dissolve the LAZ and replace it with a number of smaller
bodies, each of which would be far less influential.
The bills introduced by Mumba and Sampa may not succeed, but in some
ways they don’t need to. Their cumulative effect has been to signal
that those who seek to resist the governments are likely to find
themselves the subject of the sharp end of the security forces and
the PF’s manipulation of the rule of law. The nature of Hichilema’s
arrest is a case in point. Despite numerous opportunities to detain
him in broad daylight, armed police and paramilitaries planned a
night attack in which they switched off the power to the house,
blocked access to the main roads, and broke down the entrance gate.
Inside the property, the security forces are accused of firing tear
gas, torture, urinating on the opposition leader’s bed and looting
the property.
It is therefore clear that the main aim of the operation was not an
efficient and speedy arrest, but rather the humiliation and
intimidation of an opponent.
Such abuses may help Lungu to secure the short-term goal of
prolonging his stay in power, but they will threaten to undermine
Zambia’s future. It will – or at least it should – be politically
embarrassing for the IMF to conclude a deal with Zambia while the
opposition leader is on trial on jumped up charges and civil society
is decrying the slide towards authoritarian rule. Rumours now
circulating in Lusaka suggest that President Lungu may be preparing
to enhance his authority by declaring a State of Emergency in the
near future, which would further complicate the country’s
international standing.
Lungu’s blatant disregard for the rules of the democratic game also
has important implications for the county’s political future. Many
Zambian commentators reported that the 2016 election was the most
violent in the country’s history, and forecast rising political
instability if this trend was not reserved. Rather than heed this
warning, President Lungu appears determined to put this prophecy to
the test.
Zambia and Zimbabwe: Why fair elections are essential for Africa’s
development
by Tendai Biti
Daily Maverick, 20 Apr 2017
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/klunpsc
[Tendai Biti was finance minister of Zimbabwe under the unity
government from 2009-2013.]
Zimbabwe is used as a case study of a broken society; a country in
which those in power concern themselves only with maintaining power
and amassing wealth. Zimbabwe is also often cited as an exceptional
case. However, while it’s situation undoubtedly has its own
peculiarities, Zimbabwe has not followed a path that is impassable
for others. It is dangerous to think otherwise.
Despite the popularity of the “Africa rising” narrative that has
sounded over the past decade regarding the pace of Africa’s economic
growth and the prospects for development, the continent continues to
face significant challenges in unlocking the benefits for the
majority of its citizens.
While there is no singular reason for this, the one with the
greatest explanatory power is the mindset of self-enrichment at the
cost of social development among the elite. There is little doubt in
my mind that the solution to turning this around also lies in the
hands of leadership and the choices they make. And getting the right
leadership in place, to make the right choices, is a question of
democracy.
As a former minister of finance in Zimbabwe, the proposals that came
on to my desk for government financing of projects that would make a
significant impact on our country were countless. Yet there was –
and continues to be – absolutely no money made available by the
government for any of these projects. It was often a difficult pill
to swallow when all around the country malnourished families were
starving while the lavish lives of those in the president’s inner-
circle were there for all to see.
Zimbabwe is used as a case study of a broken society; a country in
which those in power concern themselves only with maintaining power
and amassing wealth. Zimbabwe is also often cited as an exceptional
case. However, while it’s situation undoubtedly has its own
peculiarities, Zimbabwe has not followed a path that is impassable
for others. It is dangerous to think otherwise.
People often ask me how it is possible that we have been able to get
ourselves into this position as a country where everything is so
fundamentally broken. You cannot break things overnight, I answer,
but you can slowly chip away at the fundamentals and if no one does
anything to stop you then quite quickly all expectations of a
democratic society are abolished.
The increase in the number of elections taking place in Africa since
1990 has frequently been read as a positive indicator for the
continent’s future development prospects. Elections are only a
necessary but not a sufficient component of democracy. Yet this is
undermined if the international community adopts the convenient
fallacy that at least by going through the motion of holding
elections a country will get it right eventually, and so the extent
to which they can become a smokescreen has largely been overlooked.
The frequency of elections is much easier to observe and tick off a
checklist than adherence to the rule of law. However, it is the rule
of law that determines a country’s ability to function properly.
When the law is undermined and eroded, countries can follow a
downward spiral that leads to total collapse and from which it is
almost impossible to recover without outside support.
The rule of law in Zimbabwe has long been considered broken. The
same can now be said of our neighbour north of the Zambezi, Zambia.
Zambia’s leadership seems intent on destroying the 50 years of work
post-independence to build democracy by replicating actions we have
routinely seen in Zimbabwe, notably the systematic harassment and
intimidation of press, civil society and the opposition. While in
the past Zambians have looked to the rule of law to protect their
rights when under threat, today they find there is little prospect
for protection or redress.
Zambia’s major independent newspaper has been closed, with its
editor on the run; reports of intimidation and bribery of legal and
electoral officials have become widespread; and, now, as of a week
ago, popular opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema has been
incarcerated and charged with treason.
Shocking as this bold attempt to charge the opposition leader with
an offence that in theory could carry the death penalty appears, as
well as the violent and shocking manner in which the arrest was
conducted, if you look at the pattern of activity by the authorities
in recent months and years it is less surprising.
Over time Zambia’s leadership has become more and more confident
that they can sit above the law. While cases in which people have
spoken ill of the president or alleged corruption in public
institutions result in arrests and court charges, justice is slow
and often elusive for those outside the ruling elite.
The manner in which last year’s contested election was handled by
the Zambian authorities is a landmark case in this history. It’s a
story of the cost of electoral authoritarianism. Today, with
Hichilema behind bars, it is also testament of how the region and
the international community missed a critical opportunity to stem a
tide of poor governance by speaking out against an electoral sham.
When Hichilema’s party, the United Party for National Development,
challenged the 2016 election result on several grounds he was
advised to call on his supporters to remain peaceful and petition
the outcome in the courts, as is his constitutional right. The
petition was never heard, however, on the basis of a technicality
that his party continues to challenge through various appeals and
court submissions to this date.
This stands in stark contrast to how events played out in Ghana
following the 2012 elections. Then the opposition challenge of the
outcome led to a lengthy court case. While the outcome was
ultimately upheld by the court, the case revealed several failings
in the process for addressing ahead of future elections, and it
enabled the opposition a chance to present their evidence. The
process upheld the rule of law, and sent a clear signal to elites
and citizens alike that they can expect to be held accountable to
the law. This helped to pave the way for the peaceful transfer of
power to the opposition subsequently in January 2017.
The consequences of the soft approach of observers and the
international community following last year’s contested elections in
Zambia appears to be coming back to haunt them, however. Their
cautious approach and hesitancy to challenge leadership has been
taken as a near enough blank check for the elite to step by step
deconstruct the rule of law.
While national sovereignty must be respected we must not forget that
if the government in question is itself undermining the rule of law
and the rights and safety of its own citizens then it has already
undermined the grounds for sovereignty in a democratic nation.
Moreover, the more states that are allowed to continue down this
path unchallenged, the fewer voices there are left to speak out
against such infractions and the more leaders elsewhere that will be
motivated to preserve their stay in power through illicit means. DM
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. For more
information about reposted material, please contact directly the
original source mentioned. For a full archive and other resources,
see http://www.africafocus.org
worker |
April 17, 2017 |
8:07 pm | Africa |
Comments closed
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.
NOTE: AfricaFocus is making a transition to a new more user-friendly
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To see the April 10 Bulletin on African Feminism in the new
format, visit http://eepurl.com/cKmWYP.
To see today’s Bulletin in the new format, visit
http://mailchi.mp/igc/africaglobal-new-reports-show-massive-tax-losses
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
“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
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.
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.
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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/)
NOTE: AfricaFocus is beginning a transition to a new email
distribution system and format. To preview this Bulletin in the new
format, visit http://eepurl.com/cKnLuT. To sign up for the new format
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in the short registration form at http://eepurl.com/cKnE11.
“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
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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.
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.
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 trackâ€
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
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
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AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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Cuban doctors head to Peru in the wake of severe flooding
Cuban doctors departed for Peru early this Friday, March 31, to provide services in areas of the country affected by the recent heavy rains. On leaving, they dedicated their solidarity efforts to the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro
Photo: Jose M. Correa
Cuban health personnel departed for Peru early this Friday, March 31, tasked with providing services in areas of the country affected by the recent heavy rains.
Gathered at the Central Medical Cooperation Unit for a farewell ceremony yesterday evening, they dedicated their solidarity efforts to the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
They were joined by Public Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda, who presented this 23rd Brigade of the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specializing in Disasters and Serious Epidemics, with the customary Cuban flag.
The 23-strong brigade is made up 12 physicians and 11 health professionals, with more than ten years experience and having fulfilled other international missions.
Morales Ojeda, who is also a member of the Party Political Bureau, noted that the Henry Reeve Contingent was formed as part of the solidarity initiatives led by Fidel, and that today 50,000 Cuban collaborators are offering their services across 62 countries.
The Minister also told reporters that the brigade is armed with 7.2 tons of medicines and expendable supplies, which will allow these professionals to provide health care services to some 20,000 people.
Dr. Rolando Piloto, leading the medical mission, noted that Cuba has provided solidarity of this kind on two previous occasions to the people of Peru, flowing earthquakes in May, 1970, and August, 2007.
