Category: Economy

Rhino Roundabout

Rhino Roundabout

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

rhinoandguardsThe age-old economic debate whether a government can adequately control demand by regulating its market has moved onto the survival of the rhino.

Last week a regional appeals court (The Pretoria High Court) voided a South African government ban on selling and trading rhino products within South Africa. The decision does not effect South Africa’s compliance with the international treaty that bans the trade of rhino products internationally.

Practically speaking, the value of buying rhino horn products that remain in South Africa is almost nil. The value of a rhino product comes from demand from far away Asian markets.

CITES, the international treaty which regulates the international trade in living things, has prohibited the sale of any rhino product for almost forty years.

(CITES is a fantastic world-peace treaty that I’ve often written about. Use the search bar on my blog to learn more about it.)

CITES was created to save elephants, and it did. Various whales and fishes have also been saved from extinction, but there are hundreds more species that have benefited from being “listed” at various levels of restricted trade.

Rhino were among the first animals to be “listed” as off-limits to international trading by CITES. The rhino horn commands an enormous price in Asian markets where its powder is believed to have medicinal properties capable of curing stomach ailments, reducing fevers and even curing chronic illnesses like diabetes.

The weakness of CITES is proved in the fact that even today powdered rhino horn is legally available throughout Asia, often displayed in the windows of store-front drug stores. Acquiring it – from Africa or India – is patently illegal under CITES. But once acquired, the trade within the country is entirely the purvey of that country alone.

Opponents of CITES thus argue that all it does is perpetuate black markets. Proponents point to several studies conducted when portions of the treaty were lifted temporarily (such as for auctions of stockpiled elephant ivory), when refreshed markets stimulated new demand which in turn broadened the black market.

In an attempt to close this contradiction some countries have passed laws prohibiting internal trade in the same species that CITES prohibits international trade. The Obama administration is currently in the process of an uphill battle that will prohibit the domestic trade in elephant ivory.

Until last week, South Africa had prohibited the domestic trade of rhino horn.

Rhino – unlike elephants – survive because of private game farms, ranches and fenced national parks (like Nakuru in Kenya and Hluhluwe in South Africa). The horn is so valuable and the animal so easy to kill (a single individual with a relatively small gun has an excellent chance of hitting the very large rhino heart from the side of the animal) that only by virtual sequestration from the true wild can it be conserved.

And even so, with great difficulty. Rhino poaching and black marketering is legend. The 20,000 rhino alive predominantly on southern African ranches and farms represent 80% of the remaining population, but the poaching of rhino in South Africa has almost turned into a war.

South African Rhino farmers argue that they have an extremely valuable product that is entirely sustainable on the free market. Without a market, poaching ramps up to supply demand. Farmers claim they require virtual armies to protect their herds.

“This is a momentous judgment,” the plaintiff rhino farmer told the press. “I would just hope that the world understands that if I don’t sell rhino, my whole rhino herd would be dead within the next ten years.”

Rhino can be sedated and portions of the horn scraped off. The powder is more valuable than gold. Like fingernails the horn then regrows with virtually no negative effects to the rhino.

South African rhino farmers have been stockpiling huge amounts of rhino powder for many years, certain that the day will come when CITES will realize that market demand in Asia can be adequately supplied without endangering the animal. In fact, they argue, the pressure for poaching will abate.

In many ways rhino farmers see the prohibition against selling rhino horn similar to the prohibition against selling alcohol. With proper government regulation, the horrors of bootlegging will abate.

Most scientists, CITES and the South African government disagree and that’s why there was – until five days ago – a ban on any sale of a rhino product within South Africa.

The irony in all of this is, of course, that there is not a large enough market just within South Africa to sustain the farming. Clearly farmers believe by opening the valves on the internal market, it will somehow facilitate the international one. That’s illegal.

But that’s not their problem, is it.

A Little Bit Too High

A Little Bit Too High

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

porterstrikeAt least 20,000 people try to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro every year, but those planning to do so next month have an even greater risk of not making it.

The Tanzania Tour Guides Association (TTGA) and the Kilimanjaro Guides Association (KGA) are threatening a three-week strike over pay.

Now this isn’t the first time porters and guides on Kilimanjaro have threatened a strike. It’s actually the third time since 2011, each time running up to a start date before the government finally mediated.

Each of those times meetings were convened and agreements made that were never kept.

“They are furious over the apparent failure by the government to implement the terms the two parties had agreed” in August, which was to be implemented in 60 days, according to a reporter for the Arusha Times.

The dispute this year came to a head on October 7 when guide and porter representatives went to attend a meeting arranged during the August negotiations to evaluate implementation of the agreement. No one from the government showed up, ironically because the government later claimed it didn’t have the funds to convene the event.

A porter on Kilimanjaro usually gets paid between $15-20/day. The better climbing companies then recommend to the clients that a tip equal to an average of $5-8/day be given at the end of the climb, resulting in actual wages of $20-28/day.

But there are many companies which delay paying the porters. At last check 290 companies were registered with the Tanzanian tourism authorities to operate climbs on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Porters normally carry up to forty pounds, although some have been recorded carrying sixty. As a daily wage the level is actually above average for most Tanzanian tourism workers, but the amount of work they get fluctuates greatly, is very seasonal and never guaranteed.

Because there are few qualifications required to become a porter, the industry is never without applicants. New applicants are generally paid less than veterans, and this results in a constant race to the bottom. Many porters will spend the first several years working less than 30 days annually.

The fact that there are many more applicants than there are jobs, it makes the idea of a strike somewhat illusory, and this may be part of the reason a strike has never actually been staged despite repeated confrontations with the government.

On the other hand, the last-minute government mediation and various agreements made – even if not implemented – suggests the government takes the threats seriously.

While I have seen reports that there are upwards of 60,000 climbers annually government numbers suggest about a third of that. More than 80% of climbers travel the relatively inexpensive “Coca-Cola” route known as Marangu, a 3-days up and 2-days down, 4-night excursion that retails for around $1000.

Twenty percent travel more scenic and less challenging routes that take 2-4 days longer and are generally outfitted by more reputable companies. These week-long climbs can cost as much as $5000 but absolutely attract the more seasoned porters and guides.

Regardless of the route or style chosen, the government mandates that each climber have at least one porter. The more expensive, more scenic and longer climbs often field a staff of up to 25 for as few as 4-6 clients.

Climbing Kili is a bucket list item that attracts a huge range of people, mainly because it really isn’t a climb. No implements are required and it’s a well traveled path that’s followed, regardless of which of the six routes are taken.

The challenge is altitude, with 12,000′ being the make or break point. The summit is 19,347′. About half of Kili’s climbers are unable to make the top because of the effect of altitude.

If the porters strike, and if scabs aren’t allowed (which is normal government labor policy) then the climbs will stop. But frankly it’s hard to imagine.

Despite the government’s posturing that suggests a serious concern with the threat, it’s hard to see it happening this time. I think everyone might just be aiming a little bit too high.

Changing Too Fast

Changing Too Fast

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changingtoofastWhat happens when all the new Kenyan apartments start collapsing? Or when all the new highways cave into the earth?

The developing world might be developing too fast: Its super-development is terribly flawed and in as few as ten years everything being built now might collapse.

To understand this premise you’ve got to grasp how quickly things are developing in the emerging world, today. The already iconic internet example is from China, where a 57-story skyscraper with 19 atriums, 800 apartments and office space for 4,000 people, certified earthquake resistant, was completed in 19 working days!

The previous record was a 30-story skyscraper opened for use in 30 days, also in China.

Today a 60-story skyscraper in the U.S. normally takes 2½ years of construction from ground-breaking to open-for-use.

The Chinese records are ever so bit exaggerations, because in these two cases each floor was prefabricated and basically inset level by level into the exterior frame. But even so they represent remarkable feats.

Unless, of course, in ten years they fall down. It seems to be happening already.

In many cases it’s simple corruption, as with the collapse of the important Ugandan Katuugo-Kaweweta road only months after it was newly rebuilt.

Journalists discovered that the money for the project was massively diverted into the pockets of officials. While low-level corruption like this continues to plague much of the developing world, the more sinister prospects for new infrastructure collapsing is much more complex.

There seem to be two main reasons to expect the developing world’s infrastructure to collapse prematurely:

First is the simple notion that haste-makes-waste. The demand for new infrastructure in the developing world is unbelievable, hard to imagine by us in the developed world:

“The world is moving from agrarian to urban at a startling pace,” Michael Bloomberg wrote recently.

According to South African business developer, Wayne Duvenage, “We sit with … many costly capital expenditure debacles in Eskom‚ Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa‚ South African Airways and other inefficient state-owned entities” because “Our government’s ministers … are far too hasty in their acceptance of major capital expenditure projects” with no time for due diligence.

The second reason, though, is more subtle and more sinister.

“Urgent demand [for infrastructure] is already overwhelming adequate risk management and urban governance capacities,” according to a senior manager at the Institute for Sustainable Communities and former Director of the Clinton Foundation.

Today when a new interstate is built across America it is laid with exquisitely new technology that in many ways builds upon the old road that it lies over and replaces.

There is no old road being built over by the new highways in the developing world, but they are still being built with new practices and materials and high-tech engineering.

Modern buildings pose a similar problem, not because they may need the foundation of the older building, but because the inputs of water, electricity, internet and cable, etc., require that those fundamental infrastructures have already been built first. That’s simply not always the case.

The result is a mismatch that could prove fatal.

It’s pretty obvious, but contemporary politicians in developing worlds overseeing new infrastructure are loathe to embrace this. “Adequate risk management” is generally side-lined.

Lack of “governance capacities” is considered a liability that best not be admitted, and this leads to numerous projects being fast-tracked without adequate preparation.

“Kenya is building huge infrastructural projects [that] have been accompanied by malpractice in construction, land grabs, displacements [and] environmental degradation,” writes Kenya’s permanent ambassador to the UN, John Kakonge.

Finally because of the above red flags private investment normally attracted to these mega development projects is lacking. As a result many specialized projects that should be built by the better equipped and specialized private sector are instead built by less specialized and well-equipped government agencies.

This recipe for a disaster in the offing will not be easily remedied. Certainly head-on attacks on corruption will help, but the more sinister components of over demand and mismatching current technologies with historical situations have no easy solution.

It could be the world is just changing too fast.

Lower Education

Lower Education

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StudFeeProtestFree higher education is becoming an explosive issue in Africa.

Until the turn of the millennium most higher education throughout Africa was completely free, as in much of Europe it still is. The model, in fact, for most African countries was Germany.

But today about a quarter of an African university student’s costs are borne by the student. In South Africa it just became more than a third.

South Africa’s most prominent university remains closed today after protests against fees that began Wednesday.

The University’s CEO, its Vice-Chancellor, raced back to Johannesburg to address today’s massive student demonstration morning and was followed on national TV by the country’s Minister of Education, but the students have not been placated and the protest continues.

You can follow this massive and explosive event on twitter at #WitsFeesMustFall.

The 10.5% increase in fees announced last week will push a university student’s contribution to just over half of all estimated costs.

The arguments on both sides are identical to arguments in the United States, Kenya or virtually anywhere in the world where higher education is not free:

“The government needs to invest significantly more … for public universities. This is the kind of expenditure that will pay for itself… Money given to universities is money that alleviates poverty, creates employment and drives cutting-edge research and innovation,” writes student leader, Saul Musker, in today’s Daily Maverick.

“Indeed, the actual social, political and economic costs of under-investing in higher education are far greater than the additional expenditure…. If the ultimate goal of the government is to create an equal and prosperous society… this is an obvious choice.”

From the university:

Contractual costs particularly salaries are increasing much faster than government subsidies for them; utilities and other operating costs are unexpectedly high, and unique to South Africa, the Rand has fallen by 22% against the dollar and much of the university’s costs are dollar based.

In fact, government subsidies have actually fallen, as they have throughout much of America.

So as in America we have an extraordinary situation where both the protesters and their targets are in agreement. The problem, of course, is the government that funds them both.

Governments ordinarily reduce their subsidies with additional loan mechanisms and “bursaries” or scholarships. But in many places like Kenya that’s proved self-defeating, because the loans can’t be recovered and the process of awarding scholarships is cumbersome and often corrupt.

The result is a spiraling downwards of government support, as forward budgets are often based on presumptions of recovering loans while funds for bursaries are often underused for getting tangled in confusing regulations.

Opposition politicians often clamor onto the bandwagon that there should be more government support, but once in power, they become hamstrung by budget necessities.

Governments are rarely so forward-thinking as to invest in a student whose productivity is many political cycles in the future. Mature, successful governments like Germany and the Scandinavian countries should be a model for us all, but in the U.S. archaic conservative forces hold us back, and in Africa, the critical capital mass capable of this policy just hasn’t yet been achieved.

So the gap between the haves and have-nots widens even further.

Only this time it’s not just a gap of wealth, it’s a gap of intelligence.

Pick The Winner

Pick The Winner

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PikettyinSAThe guru of anti-capitalism has received a warm welcome in South Africa in advance of his Saturday lecture in Soweto.

The young French economist rocked the world last year with his book, “Capitalism in the 21st Century,” claiming that income inequality is intrinsic to capitalism.

Thomas Piketty will deliver the prestigious Nelson Mandela annual lecture this weekend. He follows such eminent persons as Bill Clinton and Kofi Anan, taking a stage intended to highlight South Africa in the forefront of global development.

Piketty’s explanation for income inequality caught the economist world by surprise last year, leaving many jaws still open. His rather simple thesis is that accumulated wealth, capital, will always grow faster than the growth of the community in which that capital is held.

In other words, get rich just by accumulating wealth and renivesting it.

Piketty contends this works regardless of your financial acumen, regardless that the world around your bank account might be in a depression, and regardless of the particular currency in which your capital is held.

In other words, do nothing but reinvest.

Remember, this is a macro idea. Don’t go out and put all your marbles in the penny stock offering just appearing in your inbox. It isn’t true for every unique, individual case, but Piketty believes in the global context, it always works. There will never be enough bad unique individual cases to reverse the overall thesis.

Moreover, even if your portfolio is linked to the S&P, if the economy sinks 3% and your portfolio tumbles only 2.5%, that’s not exactly a compelling reason to embrace his theories.

Piketty therefore has no strong message for personal investors. His message is much more poignant: in today’s capitalist world, he explains why the rich get richer while the poor get poorer… no matter what.

Needless to say, this reportedly shy and now overwhelmed scientist has not received an especially welcoming reception by his peers here. Paul Krugman is an exception, embracing what he calls the Piketty “phenomenon.”

Robert Reich, now an announced supporter of Hillary Clinton, likes him …. sort of.

Except for those two, though, most American economists are in the throes of trying to dissect Piketty’s simplicity for the devil detail, even while they fear its truth.

So Thomas Piketty hasn’t been invited to give a lecture here.
450px-U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007
Piketty’s own data for South Africa shows that between 1910 and 1950, the top 1% took home between 22% and 25% of the national income. Though this declined to 11%-12% between 1950 and 1980, the alarming finding is that it has risen again to between 16% and 18% today.

That isn’t as bad as the chart for America from Wikipedia shown to the right. But, of course, America is the bastion of capitalism, so it stands to reason that Piketty’s theories would be most accentuated here.

So should I find it remarkable that it is a much smaller economy, albeit a very capitalist one like South Africa, that embraces Piketty?

No, because while in America the ignorant who hold much of the wealth are fostering greater ignorance, in the rest of the world the ignorant are becoming increasingly educated and powerful.

“Globally, we have rejected the equal sharing of misery that was the result of the socialist experiment,” the editor of South Africa’s top financial newspaper, Tim Cohen, wrote this week. Yet: “Personally, I find Piketty’s ideas fascinating…what I think is really unassailable is his central notion that … the disparity between economic growth and investment growth … is the foundation of inequality.”

I don’t think the disagreements over Piketty’s so obvious thesis are as complicated as critics suggest.

Economists like Cohen who embrace Piketty, like most of the South Africans, don’t want inequality. They might cherish it as much as Donald Trump, but they know in their society that it is the fuel of bloody revolution.

Economists like Paul Krugman embrace Piketty because they’re socialists who hate inequality with a passion.

Robert Reich doesn’t like inequality, but he likes Hillary, he likes being a capitalist Secretary of the Treasury and he’ll search till hell freezes over for some exception to the notion. Economists writing in The National Review know Piketty is right … and want it to stay that way.

Americans to a man are not pressed like South Africans. Our society is too stable. But when capitalism as practiced here in America begins to fall because of forward thinking from places like South Africa, we’ll have to pivot.

I don’t think that day is too far away.

Little Naughties

Little Naughties

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SECvsHitachiAmerica slaps the wrist of a Japanese company that bribed South African authorities to beat an American competitor. Ouch did that hurt! At all?

It’s now up to a judge in New York to decide if it hurt.

Yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a settlement with Hitachi, a Japanese construction company that was bidding against American companies to build coal-fired power plants in South Africa.

Hitachi agreed to pay SEC $19 million to close all further litigation against them.

SEC charged that Hitachi paid about $13 million in bribes to South African individuals and corporations linked or belonging to the ruling party, the ANC.

When the project is completed Hitachi stands to earn a billion.

So on the one hand, of course, if you’re a capitalist it makes perfect sense to drop a little kick-back of around .13%. In fact, it’s so little that you’re well hedged to pay any SEC fees that might come along.

Here’s the point: the Obama administration condones bribery.

South Africa’s ANC is embroiled in so many scandals it’s getting boring. This one has been followed closely for nearly a decade.

So in some ways it’s not news. Hitachi is breaking ground soon, it’s paid its naughty fees and the ANC has illegally benefited and likely South Africa won’t get the best deal.

That isn’t to say Hitachi doesn’t build good coal-fired power plants. I have no idea if it does. But this itty bitty reproof SEC has given them for flagrant moral and legal violations means that not only is bribery being institutionalized in South Africa, but at the courtesy of the great country of America.

So give me a break, folks. Anybody talking about how corrupt Africa is better re-read this, first.

No Lions in the Horizon

No Lions in the Horizon

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watching cruise shipWhy are more Americans traveling than ever, but many fewer to Africa?

American tourism to Africa continues to decline (third year in a row), while overall vacation travel oversees is booming: up 5% over last year, which was up 13% over the year before! That’s amazing.

Worldwide tourism is much weaker than America’s but still growing slightly: Most of this is travel to Asia and America. Worldwide tourism to Africa’s on a tailspin.

North American travel to Mexico is off the charts. Europe is up 7%. Even the Middle East is up 6% (which has to be explained given the extraordinary crises, there. Ethiad, Emirates and Qatar airlines are massively growing and are exceptionally good. Even for American travelers going, say, to Russia, there is now a greater likelihood that they will be traveling through the Middle East and counted as visitors there.)

African tourism has always been based on European business, and that’s nearly dried up because of Europe’s mess politically and economically. The last decade’s surge of Asian visitors to Africa, mostly from China, is slowing because China’s economy is slowing.

South Africa has always commanded the largest number of tourists into sub-Saharan Africa, but this year tourism shrunk 23% from Europe and 27% from North America, despite the Rand being at historical lows.

Statistics for East Africa are always hard to get and not available until the end of the year, but the indications are that Kenya is holding its own while its neighbors are all decreasing.

“Indications” include the habit of governments like Tanzania to announce aggressive tourism initiatives when the numbers become dreadful. The numbers must be dreadful:

Last week the Tanzanian government announced plans to build an “online portal” for tourists, which like past initiatives will probably never be funded and is a terrible idea anyway.

The mystery of why American travel has declined 13% this year to Africa while overall American travel is increasing so much is revealed when we examine where other American travel is also declining.

American travel to Central America is flat and to South America is down 12%, only a percent less than Africa.

Travel to much of South America and Africa has always been classified, somewhat wrongly, as “adventure travel.” There is, in fact, more outdoorsy travel within the U.S. than for U.S. travelers abroad. What “adventure travel” really means is “more risky” travel.

Add to this cost. The cost of adventure travel has increased much faster than the cost for conventional vacations. There are all sorts of reasons for this, and none of them is easily reversed.

We’re stuck for the time being with a very expensive safari versus a very economical cruise on the Rhine.

The older American I believe is the one boosting current travel statistics as retirees and soon-to-be-retirees recover their pensions and savings. They have always represented the penny pinching, cautious part of the American traveler market.

American travel companies to Africa are mostly, too, in a tailspin … except for OAT, a frequent advertiser on public radio whose audience is preponderantly older.

That reveals all: The OAT itineraries to Africa are cheap. They are also incredibly scaled down. Shorter than their competitors’ trips, in several cases in East Africa they offer hardly a fifth as much game viewing (the expensive part of a safari).

But they offer some game viewing and they are … affordable: Perfect for retirees just regaining their financial footing.

Younger Americans are still finding their footing. Provided we don’t elect a Republican who starts another war, I think they will start effecting travel in the next five years. Then, “adventure travel” and cost will have less of a negative impact.

Until then, buckle your seat belts. Viking River Cruises will sail into more and more horizons and there ain’t any lions in those horizons.

Automatic Settings

Automatic Settings

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Lion KillDrones and robots are revolutionizing wildlife photography. But will the Serengeti authorities allow BeetleCam?

Drone photography in Tanzania’s national parks has been going on for at least five years, but until now only professional shoots could afford the devices.

Now devices like BeetleCam will soon be available for purchase at prices competitive with good SLR cameras. Much less sophisticated camera/drones are also available for much less money.

More and more are showing up on safari, and this has led the Tanzanian authorities to catch up with the trend.

At the end of last year, TANAPA advised the public that in general drones and robot cameras were prohibited in the national parks.

But that didn’t stop the public, and the message did not get out well. Moreover, TANAPA has given many professional filmmakers the right to use drones.

One of the first organizations to use them for photography was NatGeo as referenced in the first link above.

And now NatGeo is finding itself increasingly on the defensive. Recent articles in the magazine are promoting the importance of using drones in conservation.

But the wildlife community is quite divided on the value of using drones.

Last month PBS reported a study in Current Biology indicating that drones were stressing out bears.

NatGeo has become increasingly self-serving over the last decade, but the legitimate argument is rising to the top of most wildlife organization agendas.

As it does the possibility of using drones for photography – even professional photography – diminishes.

I’ve often felt that too many visitors to Africa’s wilderness spend too much time with their photography.

The obsession that has followed many tourists for my entire career ends up reducing the fullness of their memories, from my point of view. If you’ve got to worry about the settings and absolutely correct click moment, you’ll more than likely miss the grand picture of everything happening around that single image.

I chuckle when remembering the old days of the first public video cameras, those huge rectangular boxes that everyone brought on safari:

We were following three cheetah on a hunt in the Mara. I warned everyone that when they sprinted, it was ridiculously short and fast.

But a good number of my clients kept their faces plastered to their video eyepiece, and sure enough, when the hunt and takedown occurred, they were still filming – and seeing – an empty veld!

Train Wreck

Train Wreck

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TrainDifferenceI step very gingerly on loose railway ties when we bird along the Mississippi River close to the horrible derailment last spring, wondering why Kenya can build a modern railway and we can’t.

The quick answer is that Kenya isn’t: China is, in Kenya. The second quick answer is because Republicans think they can get along just fine without government invested infrastructure.

Kenya’s 380-mile modern, fast standard gauge railway project is “running ahead of schedule.” When fully operating in 2017 it will cut the travel time between the coastal city of Mombasa and megalopolis of Nairobi down to 4 hours.

China is paying for 90% of the $3.8 billion dollar cost with the Kenyan government paying the remainder and then of course paying for the operating costs.

Railways worldwide are usually not profitable … as in the United States. That’s because they don’t have as many derailments.

Railways are understood in the sane, modern world to be a lost leader, a necessary infrastructure that builds commerce and ultimately increases tax revenues enough to justify them while providing the population with a modern service.

Like … a sidewalk.

It’s generally an idea Republicans don’t get: providing their constituencies with infrastructure. They prefer to believe the private sector will know when to build something.

“America’s sparse rail network is so far behind [the] standards in [European] countries,” the Guardian newspaper reported after our spate of spring crashes.

A private sector that prefers to clean up toxic leaking bonfires because it’s less expensive than building something that won’t crash is how America does it, today.

Kenya’s new railway replaces the decrepit “Iron Snake” that was built more than 100 years ago and is essentially useless, constantly breaking down and often taking 19 hours to travel from Mombasa to Nairobi.

The railway was one of the first undertakings of the British colonial regime, recognizing that transportation of goods and people was essential to development. The colonial power pursued similar projects in its Indian and Asian colonies.

Pity we overthrew them too early.

China has significantly withdrawn its investment in Africa since its slowdown this year, but the project was begun early last year and it appears the Chinese will see it through.

Chinese attempts to “cut corners” with a standard Chinese-designed culvert were thwarted in March by Kenyan authorities who insisted on sticking to the original British design. Work was actually stopped for several weeks until the Chinese agreed to continue with the original design.

Remarkably the railway will cut right through Nairobi National Park and parts of the Tsavo national parks, but there has been little opposition.

“We can’t say to the Nairobi resident: ‘You have to sit in a traffic jam for the rest of your life’,” the famous conservationist and anthropologist Richard Leakey told reporters.

China isn’t just playing nice guy. China had lots of cash it needed to invest a few years ago. It knows that Africa often produces as great a return on investment as in its own society. And Africa has … oil and other natural resources.

But this mercantile motivation is what capitalism is all about, right? Then how come our own government won’t invest in its own people? Because the private sector is so greedy it holds all the cards?

Yeah, that’s it.

Who Loves Bernie?

Who Loves Bernie?

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Sanders and the WorldAn American/South African has turned Bernie Sanders on his head, revealing a gaping contradiction in the ethos of this growingly popular progressive.

I like Bernie. I like him more than Hillary and probably more than Joe and my ideal presidential contest is Trump vs Sanders.

But an American turned at least resident South African has stayed my Sanders’ enthusiasm as nothing else I’ve read.

J. Brooks Spector was an American diplomat some years ago when he decided to leave America and take up residence in South Africa. He set up some businesses in the country, taught at a major university, ran a theater and is seen on South African TV interpreting the world from a former American’s eyes.

Commenting today on the drowning of the Syrian refugee child Alyan Kurdi, he writes:

“…nobody can point to any acts by an outside power that have set off these recent waves of migration, other than the US being an economy that is growing in contrast to so many others…”

Ah-hah! I thought, and it had nothing to do with migrants and everything to do with Bernie.

For decades I’ve felt oppressed by my own beliefs, which often raise slight smiles and dismissive stares from my clients who are always much wealthier than I am. My safaris get wonderful reviews but if I lose a client it’s often, as one wrote me, “when you talk politics. Safari guiding has nothing to do with politics.”

As ridiculously incorrect as that remark is it typifies the state of American Progressivism for the last 40 years.

Until Bernie Sanders.

There really are people out there – lots of people like me – fed up with life’s stagnations. The status quo has a remarkable ability to squelch dissent. But you can put up with something being downright unfair for just so long.

It would be one thing if America weren’t growing, but as Spector points out, America versus the rest of the world is growing quite well. But … as Bernie so eloquently explains: not for the 98% and I and likely most of you reading this are in the 98%.

Moreover, we more stable of the 98% are very sensitive to those who are sinking … like some of our kids or friends’ kids, or important parts of our communities that we’ve been so deeply involved with for years.

Bernie wants to change that. He wants to level the playing field, right? He wants to spread out the largess, taking some of the unfair success of the few and reapportioning it to the many.

I like that. After all it is the many which provide the few with their growth at the expense of not growing themselves.

Although Spector was referring to migration, what if we expand his notion to all the world’s problems?

Then immediately we have some serious problems with Bernie’s views on trade: If farm subsidies should be reduced in the U.S., shouldn’t tariffs worldwide be reduced, or dare I say it, Free Trade? His initially welcome views on foreign intervention – “Don’t!” – become questionable: if the federal government must audit individual police departments, what about Assad?

Or let’s talk about AID. If we subsidize rebuilding I-90, what about the Suez Canal or the great new Ethiopian dam?

And so it goes. If Bernie’s hyper focus on putting our own house in order results in a fairer, bigger house for all here at home, will it be at the expense of the rest of the world growing less?

“At present, however, the prevailing international order still means that individual nations will decide what is best for them to do… within the realm of their [own] national politics. Don’t expect the impact of [Alyun Kurdi’s] death to trump individual conceptions of national interest.”

Or, for that matter, the implosion of Burundi or the rape of capitalism by Chinese moguls.

It is a pernicious contradiction increasingly evident the smaller you conceive your world.

Get More, Obviously

Get More, Obviously

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

cornfieldbusiaKenya will end all restrictions on genetically modified agricultural seed, setting the stage for the largest production of GMO crops in Africa.

According to the country’s vice president, William Ruto, the end of the partial ban on a variety of GMO seed will “maximise agricultural production, improve health services, conserve the environment, and basically improve the living standards of our people.”

The back-and-forth suspensions of GMO seeds throughout sub-Saharan Africa this decade reached a turning point two years ago when Monsanto agreed to unlimited free use of its Monsanto 810 by sub-Saharan African countries, currently being distributed by the Bill Gates Foundation.

The drought resistant corn embodies the entire debate over GMO. While there is no doubt higher yields in stressed environments are produced when Mon810 is used, both bug and virus diseases seem to develop rapidly and powerfully against it.

As a result farmers using the seed also must use more pesticide.

The debate is whether this is because the GMO maize itself somehow nurtures super disease, whether it is simply more susceptible because it’s a relatively new genetic strain, or even whether it’s simply climate change.

The third possibility remains plausible because statistics gathering in Africa remains poor. While there are reasonable statistics to prove that additional pesticides are required for the use of GMO crops, there are not good numbers on what climate change is doing to traditional crops.

No matter the cause, new and tougher ways to suppress bugs and viruses is required whenever a farmer begins using Mon810.

South Africa has discovered that planting every fifth or sixth row of corn with non-GMO crops considerably reduces the need for added pesticide on the entire field.

But that’s an expensive proposition, especially for Kenya.

The net financial payoff, however, remains positive in both South Africa and Kenya. The question is what is the payoff to the overall environment and this question is a much longer term consideration than growing enough food next year for the local population.

I’m no scientist, and I remain very skeptical about altering genes for agriculture or medicine. But in the absence of any similarly efficient alternative for food production, it seems terribly crass to argue against the use of GMO in Africa.

Pork Pies

Pork Pies

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

farmsubsidiesPreparing for the first-ever WTO leadership meeting on African soil in December, Kenyans are coming out swinging.

Against western trade deals. Against western “communism.” They have a point.

Developing countries overriding responsibility is to feed their population. Many developing countries, like those in East Africa, have large amounts of agricultural land, relatively modern farming techniques and educated farmers.

Today they are even being supported by better infrastructure for getting their product to market.

They are entirely capable of not only feeding their own population, but growing an agricultural sector through global exports. Tanzania, in fact, has had multiple years in the last two decades of doing just this.

The problem is that their countries are not wealthy enough to subsidize their agricultural sectors while the world’s mega economies, including the U.S. and Europeans, do.

Advantage Big.

“The US … spends billions of dollars every year subsidizing its agricultural sector. These subsidies lead to over-production of commodities and dumping of surpluses on the global markets,” explains Pete Ondeng, director of the “Lead Africa Foundation.

The result is that it’s often cheaper for Africans to import American food than develop an agricultural industry that becomes self-sustainable.

This makes the African countries real economic vassals of the developing world. Its populations eat well when the developing world makes good decisions, but its people starve when the developed world does poorly or ignores them.

It’s also a characteristic of societies managed from the top, not by free markets. It’s a perfect example of communism, and Africans see this as the height of American hypocrisy.

Most of the U.S. disputes over its subsidies to farmers have been with non-African countries like Brazil (for cotton) and India (for meat). Last year, however, the African country of Burkina Faso blasted the U.S. for destroying its cotton industry with the billions of dollars of cotton subsidies paid U.S. farmers in the last decade.

This “buying” of the market would be a federal offense if the dynamic occurred wholly within the United States.

Kenyans believe that the World Trade Organization’s decision to hold its leadership conference in Nairobi this year is a signal that the organization will more aggressively advocate the interests of developing nations.

“The meeting presents a unique opportunity, not just for Kenya, but for all African countries to make their voices heard. Clearly, something new has to happen,” Mr. Ondeng says.

Western pandering to combat poverty in the developing world comes cleanly exposed when trade issues like this are put on the table.

But the political hold that farmers in the developed world hold on their countries’ socialist if not communist policies to artificially prop up their farming is so strong that even the most conservative developed world farmer does not see it as unfair.

I’ve always insisted that charity begins at home.

If westerners are truly interested in combating world poverty, this is where to begin: end agricultural subsidies.

Politics or People?

Politics or People?

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

Donald-TrumpYou probably have no idea what an illegal immigrant is.

You’ve heard of course of the hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners and North Africans sailing to Greece to get to Macedonia to get to Serbia to get ultimately and mostly to Germany.

You might even know of a nearly equal number from west and North Africa seeking asylum in France, because they’re native French-speakers.

You’ve probably given a slight ear to news reports about all the political fighting going on right now in Europe and especially Greece and Italy about what to do with the (yes) millions of immigrants who’ve besieged those countries in the last decade.

But do you know anything about these people? These individuals? Whether you want to call them refugees or illegals or desperados or whatever, do you have any idea what these people are really like?

You’d be surprised.

Check this out: an aggressive German journalist is right now traveling with a group of refugees from Aleppo trying to illegally get into Germany. Follow him on Twitter and Periscope by clicking here.

This is real-time journalism and here’s what you’ll find out about these refugees:

1. They’re rich.
2. They’re educated.
3. They’re young.
4. Most are professionals.

And that’s as true for a Libyan or Zimbabwean as a Syrian. There’s an incredible similarity between these fleeing peoples whether they are starving Guatemalans trying to enter the U.S. for a meal, or professionals fleeing bombs from war-torn Libya into France.

If you remove any one of the first three of those characteristics of a typical refugee listed above, they’d never make the journey.

It’s ridiculously expensive for a refugee. Many illegal immigrants from Central America pay upwards of $20,000 to get help sneaking into Texas.

It’s true all over the world.

Only an educated person who can read and speak multiple languages, navigate signs and maps and figure out the necessary deception and convincing to get past authorities has a chance of making it.

It’s strenuous. There’s a lot of walking, bushwacking, sleep deprivation … few but young people are capable of this.

But why professionals? Because in a stressed society, they suffer the most. They’ve made the greatest investment in their lives and are enjoying no return.

Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society has been writing about African refugees for years: “This is not a new problem. It is called globalisation,” he reminds us.

I’ve also written about refugees from northern Africa fleeing to South Africa. See that reference for my profile of Hemadet, shown in the picture above opposite Donald Trump. In fact in that blogpost several years ago I asked, “how soon will there be millions?”

Well, there are right now.

So rethink this refugee, illegal immigrant issue, please! These are not rapists, murders and criminals. A single one of them probably has greater personal character and life accomplishment than the entire bunch of politicians now quibbling over them.

And if borders were thrown wide open and all these people welcomed without question, they’d probably solve all our problems a lot quicker than we’ll ever be able to do ourselves.

Strongmen Clapping

Strongmen Clapping

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Barack ObamaObama’s speech to African Heads of State in Addis Ababa several weeks ago was both naive and inspiring and made me realize how weak a President but how strong a role model he is.

Obama minced no words when calling out African leaders for corruption, misuse of power and insensitivity to human rights. It was no diplomat speaking when he repeated his oft-stated opprobrium about the continent:

“Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

What was singularly remarkable was that this line was followed by wild applause, clapping from the strongmen.

It was the case throughout this most remarkable address. Many lines in Obama’s speech were more than sufficient to jail him in many of the countries whose Heads of State wildly cheered those remarks.

“In many places across Africa, it’s still too hard to start a venture,” he said, alluding to powerful nepotism and biased regulations that favor the wealthy classes. “Here in Africa corruption drains billions of dollars from economies that can’t afford to lose billions of dollars.”

He boldly claimed that many basic human and democratic rights “are denied… many Africans. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society — (applause) — then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance. (Loud applause.)”

He nuked all diplomatic etiquette when charging three sitting African leaders with crimes against humanity: in the South Sudan, Burundi and Central African Republic. Strong supporters of these regimes … clapped.

“I have to also say that Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. (Applause.) Now, let me be honest with you — I do not understand this. (Laughter.)”

The chairman of the AU, the forum at which he was speaking, is Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, a “president-for-life” who is as ruthless as they come. He did not clap. But the representatives from South Africa at his side, who have diligently supported him year after year, did clap.

“The bottom line is that when citizens cannot exercise their rights, the world has a responsibility to speak out. And America will, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable — (applause)”

At this point many commentators in Africa began to wonder if African leaders understood English well enough to know what they were applauding. That, they do.

“In Africa this was a revolutionary speech,” wrote Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society.

Let me tell why this shouldn’t baffle you, but indeed makes sense.

Africa’s leaders fall into two categories: good guys who can’t get much done, and bad guys who spend their public lives denying their own prevarications.

Right now almost all of the 54 African presidents fit into one or the other of those two categories.

Category One Guys applauded enthusiastically, hoping beyond hope that Obama’s force will infiltrate the networks and institutions that constantly obstruct them.

Category Two Guys applauded because they’re in denial … at least public if not personal denial. (It takes a Freud or Landers to determine which.)

So I’m not baffled, and I don’t think this speech is revolutionary. Obama was giving all of them just what they wanted.

For me the speech focused my growing understanding of exactly who Obama is.

I see Obama as a weak leader. He’s a professor, a role model, a stellar person. He believes like all good wise mentors that the spoken word can be as powerful as the clever act.

In that, especially in Africa, he is oh so wrong.

Oil & People

Oil & People

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

DeepInamazonAs I wait here in Arusha for my clients to arrive tomorrow, I’m haunted by my visit to the Amazon a few weeks ago.

It wasn’t just the goose bumps and occasional terror produced by the massive, towering jungle with its chaotic screaming sounds. I was profoundly moved by the local people who hosted us and who are demonstrating remarkable courage refusing the wealth of oil that sits below them.

Ecuador’s Amazon is one of the richest biomass areas in South America and includes Yasuni National Park, which the Wildlife Conservation Society says is “one of the most biologically diverse forests in the world.”

The area is also the home of several clans of Huaorani people who continue to forcibly resist development, violently opposing all efforts to contact and civilize them.

But controversy with oil companies dominates the area. The first discoveries of huge reserves in the 1960s led to a mini oil boom that was eventually stopped when several massive spills galvanized local opposition. An increasingly leftist government in Quito became incensed by the significant ecological destruction of their Amazon.

One of the tribes in the area, in fact, the Achuar Kapawi, successfully obtained a large judgement against Occidental Petroleum after a persistent six years of expensive litigation in New York (spearheaded by EarthRights International).

But even more significant reserves were discovered in the late 1990s and so the pressure on the Quito regime grew substantially. The Correa administration asked the United Nations to calculate its reasonable return over ten years if it allowed the oil to be developed. The UN came up with a figure of $7.2 billion.

President Rafael Correa then addressed the opening session of the United Nations in 2007 and asked the assembly to create a trust fund that if if subscribed by half that amount, $3.6 billion, would be used by his administration as an alternative to developing the oil in the Amazon.

Correa challenged us global conservationists to put up, or shut up.

Several years later only $110 million had been pledged and less than $13 million actually paid into the trust. So in 2011 Correa struck a deal with a consortium of multinationals for a federal royalty of $17.06/barrel and invited the companies to negotiate final deals with the various owners of the Amazon land where the reserves were located.

Nineteen of the 26 indigenous communities in the Yasuni National Park area have so far struck deals with the oil companies. The Sani-Isla community, which owns about a half million acres including a small portion actually inside the national park, has repeatedly refused deals.

Multiple times oil company representatives have requested and received an audience with Orlando, the 70-year old, democratically elected Sani-Isla leader, who is also a shaman, and who also worked for the oil companies for 20 years in the 1960s to 1980s.

Orlando’s first job with an oil company was as the most menial of laborers, the poor bloke who has to climb inside a giant oil barrel and swab it clean. By the time he left more than 20 years later he was a foreman on an oil rig.

Orlando grew increasingly horrified by the drugs, alcoholism and prostitution that always seems to beset an oiltropolis. He pleaded with management multiple times for rules and regulations to curb the errant behavior so alien to his way of life, but to no avail.

So he led his 600 Sani-Isla people to vote no to oil. Instead, they built a tourist lodge with Orlando’s savings. It’s always hazardous to critique a place you’ve been so soon after leaving it, but my initial impression is that my 7th Amazon visit, this time to Sani Lodge, was the best I’ve ever had in a jungle.

The earnings from Sani Lodge have funded a school, but it’s small and basic and has no bathrooms. They’ve also built a health clinic but it’s very rudimentary, dependent upon infrequent nurse volunteers.

On all sides of the Sani’s half million acres of Amazon, oil rigs are churning. Those communities with negotiated deals have modern schools and health clinics. Some have running water. Some even have sanitation systems. Many of their smarter children are getting scholarships to U.S. schools.

Sani Isla’s children are just as smart as any, and ironically the oil boom trusts created in the 1960s actually provided scholarships for some of the San Isla children.

Javier Gualangi is the principal guide at Sani Lodge and one of Orlando’s chief supporters. He spent three years studying biology at a college in Portland, Oregon, and he traveled across the States, visiting wilderness sites from California to Minnesota to the Everglades, in part on oil company tabs.

It was in the Everglades that his longing for the Amazon grew acute.

“That was when I knew I must come home,” he told me.

At 27-years old he has yet to start a family. He gently refused his parents’ arranged marriage, and he insists that Orlando has the correct vision for his people.

“Before we began our conservation efforts with the lodge,” he told me, “there were hardly any capuchin monkeys left.” This is the case throughout much of the Amazon, by the way. “Today they’re all over!”

We saw many. Javier’s enthusiasm for the wild is almost unbelievable, especially because he expresses it so elegantly in excellent English. What is such a remarkable person doing here? I asked myself, when the modern world is at his fingertips?

Javier showed me more stuff in the Amazon, I think, than I saw in all my combined previous six visits. He found at night the treasured paca. (See this Flickr link for pictures.) He showed us the Great Potoo, many many-banded aracari, lots of caimans, wooly and howler monkeys.

He knew the scientific names of … well, everything: plants, bugs, animals. He explained how trees walk across the ground, how mushrooms invade moths, how eels electrify our imaginations!

Two professional birders who were with us at the lodge said they came here specifically because there are more species of bird than anywhere else in Ecuador’s Amazon.

But – as I cautioned Javier – Sani Lodge as good as it is will never achieve the revenue stream of oil. Was there not a way to negotiate with the companies to protect the community’s social and cultural values?

Javier’s radiant face always seemed to smile knowingly. He said nothing at first, then pointed to a black bird deep in a bush near our canoe that was singing a most haunting Amazon tune.

“That,” he said with pride, “is the plumbeous antbird. You can’t see it anywhere else but here! It’s disappeared from the other communities.”

I listened to the hauntingde-escalating warble, a quintessential Amazon bird song echoed even louder as it sallied through the dense jungle around us. Then suddenly, the great forest fell surprisingly silent for all of a second. My tummy thundered. You could hear albeit from ten miles away the distant low rumbles of an oil rig in the next community downstream.