Category Archives: South Africa

No potholes for World Cup

South Africa has really incredible infrastructure.

Visiting from the airport to the highways to a dorm room in rural Rhodes University, you can almost feel that you’re in Zurich or Illinois i.e. in Europe or America, but not in Africa. Especially when your seat-mates on the plane are school kids flying in uniform back to their boarding schools, fresh from holidays in Spain and playing video games on new Sony vaio laptops.

Toyota corolla’s that are ex-Japan or via UAE (known at Dubai cars) are the most common cars in Kenya. Here in SA, its’ small Mercedes, BMW’s, Citroen, Opel, Peugeot’s and Toyota cars – many coupes and hatchbacks, with very few SUV’s on the road which indicates small families and good roads.

Roads range from 3 lane highways in the city to good equally good roads between towns that enable one to cruise in a matatu at about 100 km/h between towns.

 

One Kenyan commented on the (similarly good) infrastructure of Harare (Zimbabwe) with a joke that maybe Kenyans should not have been in a rush to independence and perhaps given the British more years to build up the infrastructure of Kenya.

So plan to be back in 2010 for the World Cup, Insha’Allah.

Banking in SA

SA banking
What’s different about banking in South Africa? Absa is now apart of Barclays and I visited a branch to compare some major differences.

One significant difference between Kenya and South Africa banking is their (SA)recognition that banking is a necessary service which should be affordable. While Barclays is considered to be one of the more expensive banks to use in Kenya, Absa along with the other major SA banks have embraced mzansi which is a voluntary industry effort (financial services transfer charter) to offer accounts for the unbanked, poor, or low-income citizens. Kenya has an unregulated banking sector in which the only option for many such citizens is to seek a cheaper bank such as Co-operative or Equity banks.

Some uniquely Absa services unseen in Barclays Kenya include;
– Izokuphilisa or Absa micro-loans of up to 8500 rand (about 85,000 shillings).
– Mzansi money transfers though which anyone (even non-Absa customers) can use Absa to transfer up to 25,000 rand (250,000) shillings per month to anyone else
– Funeral savings plans
– Full Shari’ah banking including vehicle & asset financing as well as Absa Islamic will writing. (Barclays and KCB have both introduced Islamic banking in Kenya in the last year)
– SA banks sell insurance, something CFC and CBA would love to be able to do at their branches in order to maximise returns on their investments in the insurance industry. A sample Absa insurance plan guarantees additional payment of 50% if death occurs while one is a fare paying passenger on licensed public transport (i.e. matatu) . AIDS is also not a hindrance to obtaining an insurance policy.
– Absa internet access (AIA) for online account users and provides unlimited internet use at a monthly fee
– They have multilingual brochures – typical ½ brochure in English and the back half in Zulu, Afrikaans, or any of the other 11 official languages depending on the region of the country where the branch is located. In Kenya, it’s rare to find brochures in any language other than English.
– On the other hand, it is difficult to exchange foreign currency. Kenya has freed up exchange regulations allowing seamless transfers at forex bureaus and banks while in SA it requires one to show an ID (or passport) and answer a few questions.
– Security is less visible since there are no guards in the bank branches.

EASSY: The Masai – Zulu battle of 2006

Had nice week which started with an unplanned tour of snow-capped crater on Mt. Kilimanjaro courtesy of a South African Airways pilot to a Yvonne Chaka Chaka concert, among other fun activities in South Africa.

My comfort is that if the Highway Africa / Digital Indaba conferences’ were held in Kenya, the delegates would be drawn from Ministers, MD’s, and other senior corporate and government officials, and not ordinary journalists or mere mortals like myself.

Kenya vs. SA
One of the sessions covered this week was the controversial EASSy project which appears to have been now reduced to a Kenyan vs. South African affair.

South Africa traces its history, not to 1994, but to 1957 when Ghana become the first African country to gain independence. South Africa identifies with that milestone and thus immerses itself as a being proudly African and wanting to take the continent forward together though NEPAD and the African Union (AU) as a way to better all African lives and be more competitive with other continents. EASSy is NEPAD’s flagship project which is intended to bring down the cost of communication for the whole of Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.

SA’s leaders are largely drawn from the freedom-struggle movement are proudly African and strive to combat Afro-pessimism in all at forms. In economic terms, they are disciples of Joseph Stiglitz, who are wary of foreign aid and other donor-championed programs such as privatization, having seen how devastating they have been to many other African countries over the last 50 years.

South Africa proudly champions African solutions to African problems e.g. through NEPAD. It also proudly champions media coverage of Africa by Africans, not western media agencies. The South African Broadcast Corporation (equivalent of KBC) has spent 8 million rand and sent a staff crew of 60 to cover the recent elections in the DRC and already has foreign bureaus in Africa, Middle East, US and Europe and soon to open new ones in the Caribbean and China. Such coverage of the continent is something Kenyans may find unsettling.

Kenyans, on the other hand, have seen the OAU, East African Community (EAC), Preferential Trade Area (PTA), COMESA and other regional groups come and go with little impact. They are used to having neighbouring countries who are basket cases mired in wars, famines, or other problems and are happy to offer assistance militarily, hosting peace talks, foodwise, or hosting refugees. They are used to having to do things alone and the EASSy is just the latest example of this.

They view South Africa as new to the party, but eager to assume a superpower role and both economically and strategically dominate the continent. Thus they revel in small victories like when Kenya Breweries defeated Castle Breweries (SA) in the beer wars of the early 2000’s, denying MTN a cell phone license, or frustrating any South African company that tries to take over Uchumi.

Likewise, ordinary South Africans see Kenyans as having a problem with them. When I told an MTN employee that South Africa’s Telkom had been shortlisted to bid for the second national operator license in Kenya, she said Kenyans would never let a South African company win.

Also on Monday, the City Press a prominent black newspaper had two business headlines on Kenya titled Stock trading noise to end (referring to electronic trading on the NSE)and “Kenya credit rating hit by risk and corruption scandals” – an unfortunate spin on an otherwise positive assessment of Kenya by global markets.

Africa Round-Up

GM Food
Kenyans and Africans are set to benefit from genetically modified maize.

Kofi Out?
Kofi Annan may resign in September as Secretary-General of the United Nations to halt an investigation in the Oil-for-Food scandal – which he has personally been linked to through Kojo, one of two children by his Nigerian first wife.

Nyama Choma is hot!
New Yorkers discover tasty goats while elsewhere, four men are arrested for stealing a goat to trade its meat for crack cocaine (from Drudge Report).

Oprah Zulu
Oprah Zulu has tested her DNA and discovered that she is a South African Zulu. “I’m crazy about the South African accent,” she said. “I wish I had been born here.”

No Respect
Tension is high between Rwanda and Uganda after Rwandan security forces detained and searched Ugandan President Museveni’s motorcade.

BMW & AGOA

What does German car-maker BMW have to do with AGOA, a poverty reduction program meant to help struggling African countries? BMW uses the label “Made in Africa” for cars it makes in South Africa and ships them to the US, enjoying tax-free AGOA benefits.