According to the final vote tabulation on February 27, 2019, President Buhari, who had promised to fight corruption, won re-election by a wide margin. He asked his voters not to gloat, since victory was prize enough. As expected, his opponent, Mr. Abubakar, claimed the vote count in some areas was suspect, and he said he would contest the election in court.
Nigeria's February 16, 2019 presidential election had been rescheduled to February 23. Leading candidates, current President Muhammadu Buhari and wealthy businessman Atiku Abubakar, both Fulani Muslims from northern Nigeria, blamed each other for the delay as an attempt to rig the election in their favor. The National Election Commission claimed weather conditions prevented all the ballots from reaching Nigeria's 120,000 polling places.
There was general agreement that either winner would have to deal with: Boko Haram terrorists determined to eliminate Christian influences, conflict between cattle herders and farmers, restructuring representation to provide greater balance between Muslims in the north and southern Christians, unemployment over 20%, economic hardship from volatile oil export revenue, crushing public debt, and corruption.
Buying votes and rigging elections are features of local, governor, party primary, and presidential elections, but they are far from the only sources of corruption in Nigeria. The state-owned Ajabkuta Steel Company, which has received $8 billion and "employed" 10,000 over a 40 year period, has never produced any steel, according to The Economist (February 9, 2019). Carnegie's Endowment for International Peace identified corruption as the greatest obstacle preventing Nigeria, with Africa's largest economy and population, from achieving its enormous potential.
Contract fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, bribes, and other forms of corruption siphon off billions from every economic sector: petroleum, trade, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, energy, banking, and the environment.
Bureaucratic corruption channels funds into questionable departments. Nigeria has three space agencies that only have managed to launch five satellites into orbit.
Politicians also pocket funds meant for hospitals and clinics. In the areas of health, education, and humanitarian aid, corruption prevents international organizations from providing development and emergency assistance.
Authors of books on trust in business, Barbara Brooke Kimmel and Charles H. Green, note "the most powerful form of trust is personal." They know words require backup by action. Nigeria may lay claim to democracy, security, and progress, but these words have no meaning as long as corruption undermines every personal transaction.
Showing posts with label steel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steel. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2019
Monday, May 1, 2017
All Aboard for China's African Railroads
A new Chinese built railroad scheduled for next month's trial run from Kenya's busy Mombasa port to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi offers students a good opportunity to study the map of East Africa. At the same time, this infrastructure improvement will benefit, not only the Chinese, but all future marketers who want to get their commodities and products in and out of Africa.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
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