rolling stores, and other tales of System D

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5.7 percent

That's how many Congolese are using the country's banks, according to BusinessWeek.

Money quote: "The proportion of Congolese using the banking system almost tripled to 5.7 percent of the population last year, compared with 2 percent in 2011."

staggering statistics on Africa's food deficit

courtesy of This is Africa:

The value of agricultural exports from Thailand, which has less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population, is now greater than for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa.

No country better exemplifies Africa's agricultural decline than Nigeria. In the 1960s, before the oil bonanza, this was one of the most promising food producers in the world, beating the likes of Malaysia and Indonesia in palm oil, and the US and Argentina in groundnuts. It provided 18 percent of global cocoa production, a figure down to 8 percent today. And while it produces 65 percent of tomatoes in western central Africa, it is now the largest importer of tomato paste (from China and Italy).

In an interview with This is Africa at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town last week, the minister for agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, reeled off these statistics with regret. "Nigeria has transited from being a self-sufficient country in food to being a net importing country, spending $11bn importing rice and fish and sugar and so on. It just makes absolutely no sense to me at all”.
While Nigeria is second in the world in citrus production and Africa’s biggest pineapple producer, its supermarkets are stocked with concentrated, imported products of both. “The only local content is water from Nigeria,” the minister complains. Multinationals testify to the challenges of agricultural import-dependence in their local operations. “We have thirteen factories in Africa that use products like soft oils, tomatoes or starch-based compounds on a daily basis, but much of this is imported, wasting foreign exchange and increasing our carbon footprint,” says Marc Engel, chief procurement officer at Unilever. The company owns the largest soap factory in Africa, but have to import palm oil from Asia to keep it running, and they import sorbitol from China for their local oral care products, when cassava would do the job.

In Glasgow, money buys legislation

Glasgow's new criminal, with her weapon

Oh no, Glasgow.

Seeking to "protect the character and integrity of the Commonwealth Games," and to "control activity" around sporting venues, the Scottish government has proposed punitive new rules banning buskers, ambush marketers, and street traders during the games, which will be held in the city next year.

Street performers and merchants who violate the rules--which will impact 17 zones around the city--will face fines of up to £20,000.

The BBC and Evening Times lay out the plans for Scotland's most dangerous criminals.

Money quote from lawyer Jamie Watt: "Sponsorship revenue is an essential part of any major modern sporting event. Events simply can't happen without this income, that's why regulations are required – to protect investment."

a bizarre addiction to structural adjustment

"African policymakers followed Structural Adjustment Programmes over the last 10 – 15 years. It worked, it delivered results. It delivered economic growth and poverty reduction. You can’t dispute that."

--Shantanayan Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank's Africa division

Source: Think Africa Press

live from the banlieues...it's System D

Self-development arising from the most deprived neighborhoods of Paris is defying the odds in austerity-crushed Europe. The New York Times reports.

Raoul Sodjinou, who emigrated to Paris from the Republic of Benin and is trying to make his struggling cosmetics business a winner, confided the key to what he believes will be his ultimate success: “Those who say stop — that’s not me."

The article doesn't say if any of these entrepreneurial efforts started off-the-books. But it's the entrepreneurial spirit that is true to System D as well: “If we wait for the government to do something, people will just remain stuck,” Mourad Benamer, founder of the successful franchise Eat Sushi chain of restaurants, said. “If we want things to improve, we have to do it ourselves."

sensational stat of the day

Africa loses twice as much in illicit financial outflows as it receives in international aid.



Source: Africa Progress Report 2013