SOUTH AFRICA

WATCH | E-hailing operators want to sit at the table when pricing ratios, driver vetting are determined

Shonisani Tshikalange

Reporter

22 March 2022 

E-hailing operators for companies including Uber, Bolt and DiDi embarked on a three-day “apps off” protest across SA from Tuesday, calling for the government to introduce industry regulations to improve their working conditions.

In Gauteng, drivers are marching to the offices of the department of trade & industry and to the Union Buildings today. Spokesperson Vhatuka Mbelengwa said the department must correctly define e-hailing companies. 

“Is Uber a tech company or a transport company? We want a framework in which we can hold them accountable. When we speak about regulations, we are talking about conditions that will manage the relationship within the sector,” he said.

Mbelengwa said they want joint decision-making platforms on issues such as fair pricing and vetting of drivers.

“Tech companies can’t take decisions autonomously. They must consult with us because we are the bulk investors in this industry.

“It is our money that buys these assets and our money that maintains them. We spend on the fuel. It is the sacrifices of grandparents, parents and siblings at home to make sure there is a vehicle available. These efforts should be appreciated by government. In this country that lacks opportunity, can we at least be protective of the limited opportunities that might be brought about,” he said.

Drivers for e-hailing platforms including Bolt, InDriver, DiDi and Uber embarked on an 'apps off' shutdown of services from Tuesday.
Image: Alon Skuy/Sunday Times

E-hailing drivers to embark on 'peaceful' protest

A planned protest by e-hailing taxi drivers will proceed on Tuesday after their undertaking to increase security measures and reconsider mediation.

NEWS

12 hours ago

Foreign-based app companies “are being given free will to do as they please within SA and this can’t be correct,” Mbelengwa said.

“We are simply saying to government: appreciate and value our lives, appreciate the domestic investment, the billions we have put into this sector so we can empower ourselves.”

Drivers are also concerned about their an unsafe working environment amid violent rivalry at times in the transport sector.

“We can’t continually be put at odds with other participants within public transportation and government does nothing,” Mbelengwa said.

He said they will head to Gauteng transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo’s office on Wednesday.

“On Thursday we are shutting down the industry. No-one must work, but we also think if there is goodwill, whether from government or app companies, they can take Thursday as an opportunity to respond or express themselves and open the door to engagement.”

E-hailing drivers gathered in Marabastad, Pretoria, ahead of a march to the department of trade and industry and the Union Buildings.
Image: Alon Skuy/Sunday Times

Mbelengwa apologised to customers for the disruption to services. 

“We are saying please be patient with us. A regulated industry protects domestic investment and a few days inconvenience may result in an environment where there will be increased safety.”

Uber and Bolt have previously publicly stated the measures they have taken to ensure rider and driver safety and explained their driver vetting policies, which include professional driving permits, police clearance certificates and criminal background checks.

Business Times recently reported that new entrant DiDi charges drivers a commission of 13% on each ride, compared with about 20% to 25% for Bolt and Uber drivers.

Earlier this month, Uber’s head of mobility operations for sub-Saharan Africa, Kagiso Khaole, said the company was actively engaging with its drivers on issues that affected their income.

“Our commitment to them is to continuously find ways to maximise their earning potential while meeting the needs of riders.”

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Iranian arms dealing continued in the UK even after notorious tank deal fell apart in 1979

Published: March 22, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

Following her release from detention in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, held hostage since 2016, said: “what happened now should have happened six years ago”. She was referring to the fact that her release had been secured at the same time as the British government paid Iran a debt it had owed since the first day of her detention – and had in fact owed since the 1970s.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was tragically used as a pawn in this decades-long dispute over almost £400 million.

My research has explored the history of the Anglo-Iranian arms trading relationship and has found that London continued to be a global hub for Iran’s arms purchasing efforts even after the 1979 Iranian revolution. This is perhaps surprising given what we know about Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. Received wisdom is that the UK failed to follow through on arms deals with Iran due to concerns over the politics and provocative actions of the new Iranian regime. These revelations from the archives make this narrative harder to swallow.
A contentious tank deal

Iran was a major customer for British weapons in the 1970s. Between 1971 and 1976, the Iranian government ordered 1,500 Chieftain tanks and 250 armoured recovery vehicles from Britain at a cost of around £650 million. These orders – and the associated funds – were lodged with British state-owned arms company International Military Services Ltd (IMS Ltd).

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At the time, Iran was dramatically expanding its arms purchases, having cashed in on the 1973 oil crisis that saw prices quadruple. The Shah of Iran – the monarch ruling the country – was using the proceeds to pursue domestic modernisation, including through defence and arms procurement. Journalist Anthony Sampson described Iran in the mid-1970s as “the salesman’s dream”. The country spent over US$10 billion on tanks, aircraft, missiles and all manner of weaponry between 1974 and 1976, and planned a further US$10 billion spend by 1981.

When the Shah of Iran was toppled in 1979, Britain did not see through on its arms deal. Alamy

The 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah saw the US halt arms sales to Iran. The UK – at least in some regard – followed suit. British tank transfers ceased and the bulk of the 1970s contract went unfulfilled. Only 185 of the Chieftain tanks ordered by the Shah had been delivered.

However, IMS Ltd held onto the Iranian government’s money – eventually said to be around £400 million when interest is taken into account. A long series of legal battles have been fought over these funds.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained nearly four decades later and, over the years, the link to the 1970s tank debt has gradually emerged. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was first told that the connection was being drawn between her imprisonment and the debt by her Iranian interrogators in 2016. Meanwhile, the British government remained cagey and avoided the question of a link. Now, however, it has formally confirmed that it paid the debt in the same statement announcing the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori.

The post-revolution arms network

While Britain halted the transfer of the Chieftain tanks when the Shah fell, the arms trading relationship with Iran did not cease entirely during the 1980s.

Indeed, by the time Iran was fighting a bloody war with Iraq that would last for most of the decade and claim up to a million lives, Britain, and London in particular, had a central role in Iran’s arms procurement networks.

My research shows that Iran was running a military procurement office in the heart of Westminster to supply its war machine. The office, hosted in the National Iranian Oil Company building, was located over the street from the Department for Trade and Industry, and a stone’s throw away from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

British government documents from 1985 note 60 to 70 arms dealers worked to broker arms deals in the building alongside over 200 oil company representatives. Contemporary press reports suggested millions of dollars of business flowed through the office, although British officials were reluctant to specify how much of Iran’s alleged US$1.2 billion annual arms purchases were handled in Westminster.

While few actual weapons systems appear to have been transferred through the offices, a search of the building in 1982 by the Metropolitan Police did uncover explosive fighter jet ejector seat parts in the basement.

Some evidence even suggests a link between IMS Ltd, the Chieftain tank deal and the Iranian offices. In the mid-1980s some spare parts for the tanks were supplied to Iran, with the name of Iran’s London office found on some leaked paperwork linked to the transaction.

The official British rules on arms transfers to Iran and Iraq during the war were complicated. Guidelines from 1984 suggested that Britain would not supply “lethal” equipment, that existing contracts should be fulfilled where possible and that transfers should not exacerbate or lengthen the conflict.

Richard Ratcliffe, pictured during his hunger strike towards the end of his wife’s captivity. Alamy

British officials were well aware of the Iranian office, and were frequently pressured to act against it by the US government. However, British intelligence struggled to understand what exactly was going on inside the building, and no clear evidence could ever be found of a breach of British law.

The desire to avoid a diplomatic spat with Iran but also the potential for a flourishing commercial relationship with Iran in other areas –- particularly supplying the National Iranian Oil Company – prevented British action.

It was only in 1987, following a series of Iranian provocations, including attacks on oil tankers and British diplomats in Tehran, that Margaret Thatcher’s government pulled the plug on Iran’s arms dealing operations in Westminster.
Insights from the archives

It is clear that challenging diplomatic relations and international sanctions on Iran over recent decades have made resolving the tank debt complicated. But the largely forgotten story of Iran’s London arms procurement office makes the British government’s unwillingness or inability to pay somewhat challenging to comprehend. Any narratives that suggested it was impossible to engage with the question of the debt skip over rather a lot of other activities that continued throughout the period in question.

I’ve been able to scrape together information about Iran’s audacious 1980s procurement operation at the heart of Westminster thanks to the rules that make government records public after 30 years. In another 30 years’ time, the archives might help to shed some further light on the events of 2022, as well as the years Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori spent imprisoned. They might tell us why it took so long for them to be reunited with their families.

Author

Daniel Salisbury
Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King's College London
Disclosure statement
Daniel Salisbury receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PERMANENT+ARMS+ECONOMY

Dancing with the Three Powers
Tuesday, 22 March, 2022 -
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

In Moscow, the illuminated signages of all but a few US brands have dimmed. Unlike its peer Burger King, McDonald's has closed over 847 branches across Russia. Major companies like Apple, Boeing, Adidas, the Marriott Hotels, and Citibank have followed suit. The political climate has reached unprecedented levels of tension. From both the Russian and the American viewpoints, this is an existential conflict where all means, bar direct armed confrontation, are utilized.

While Iran stands on the verge of leaving its decades-long confine of international isolation and boycott, Russia is being hit by harsher Western economic sanctions and isolation. On the Chinese side, the conflict with the US rages on.

As tensions soar, the world is rediscovering the key role that petroleum sources and passages play in geopolitical conflicts and re-establishing the importance of building alliances.

By the end of last year, environmental slogans and calls to lower oil production took over the international scene. Today, the calls have shifted to demanding more oil production.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had previously broached the issue of the future of Saudi Arabia and petroleum in light of the major shifts taking place in the world and the allegedly ebbing role of petroleum and plummeting oil incomes, saying Saudi Arabia is boosting its non-oil resources, but oil will remain a necessity for the world until the 2050s.

The current oil shock was not only prompted by the Ukraine war, but also by consumer markets’ return to full capacity after a two-year near-hiatus due to COVID-19.

To a certain degree, there are no new, resolute choices today more than in the past century. Energy sources are still relevant, maritime passages are still vital for traffic, and geopolitical balances still occupy a significant portion of the considerations of major powers and war institutions like the NATO.

The truth is, oil was never left out of the equation in conflicts, and its significance will only increase with the continued Chinese-US conflict and the Russian-Western war in Ukraine, which transported us and the whole world to a new stage. These recent developments call for a deeper consideration of how a key petroleum-rich region can avoid conflicts and remain in the shade of tensions.

Navigating such a complex situation may prove difficult. Most oil exports from the Gulf region - especially from the Kingdom, its largest country - go to India and China, yet ties with Europe and the US remain strong. At the same time, achieving a balance in the oil market requires cooperation between Gulf states and Russia, which is currently engaged in a dangerous head-to-head with the West. As such, there is not much room for political maneuvering. Our needs dictate strong ties with all three major powers: the US, China, and Russia.

Making things more complex is the involvement of Iran, a rival we do not trust, in the game, in its dual capacity as an oil-exporting country and a commercial partner should its disagreement with the West come to an end. Major powers will need oil as a political tool, which could turn the Middle East region into a tug-of-war scene.

It's not right to compare the current developments to the Cold War (1947-1991). During the Cold War, we were aligned with the Western camp given our common interests: the West was the biggest oil importer and the protector of oil passages. Today, though China has taken the West’s place as the biggest importer, it is not willing to wage wars for oil, which increases the risks and possibilities of regional clashes. As such, the interest of this region lies in maintaining a reasonable relation with all three conflicting major powers, since they are all partners of ours. Nonetheless, when tensions are heightened as is the case in Ukraine today, achieving this aspiration could prove challenging for us.

We realize that our impact on global developments outside our region is limited. When considering our choices, the solution of taking sides could prove difficult, and in any case, discussing such an option now would be premature. We realize that major powers will eventually come to realize the limits of their power and the risks they are bringing upon themselves. We also realize that they will eventually understand that the continuation of the crisis is neither in their own interests nor in the interests of the world. We can only hope they will get to this realization before it is too late.

Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is the former general manager of Al-Arabiya television. He is also the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly magazine Al-Majalla. He is also a senior columnist in the daily newspapers Al-Madina and Al-Bilad.

America’s Economy in the European Mirror
 
Paul Krugman
Tuesday, 22 March, 2022 -

Last week Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, released a revised estimate of the euro area’s February inflation rate. It wasn’t a happy report: Consumer prices were up 5.9 percent from a year earlier, more than most analysts had expected. And it’s going to get worse, as the effects of the Ukraine war weigh on food and energy prices.

Britain hasn’t yet released its February inflation number, but the Bank of England expects it to match the rate in the euro area.

Of course, US inflation is even higher, with February consumer prices up 7.9 percent from a year earlier. These numbers aren’t exactly comparable, for technical reasons, but inflation in the US does seem to be running around two percentage points higher than in Europe. I’ll come back to that difference and what might explain it. But surely the fact that inflation is up a lot in many countries, not just America, is worth noting.

After all, the entire Republican Party and a fair number of conservative Democrats insist that the recent surge in US inflation was caused by President Biden’s big spending policies. Europe, however, had nothing comparable to Biden’s American Rescue Plan; last year the euro area’s structural budget deficit, a standard measure of fiscal stimulus, was only about a third as large, as a percentage of G.D.P., as America’s.

So why is inflation up in Europe?

Part of the answer is rising energy prices. Last week I noted that Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, has declared that gasoline prices “are not Putin gas prices. They are President Biden gas prices.” Let me elaborate on the absurdity of that claim, using British data.

In late December 2020 gasoline in Britain cost 116 pence per liter — $5.94 a gallon. By mid-March that was up to $8.23 a gallon. Over the same period US gas prices rose from $2.24 to $4.32. Taking Britain’s high gas taxes into account, the price increases were similar, even though Joe Biden is not, as far as I know, the British prime minister.

But it’s not just energy prices. US inflation has been driven up in part by pervasive supply-chain problems, with a big shift of demand toward goods straining ports, shipping capacity and more; these same strains, which have lasted much longer than many of us expected, have afflicted Europe, too.

So what does high inflation in Europe tell us? First, that a large part — maybe two-thirds — of the acceleration in US inflation reflects global forces rather than specifically American policies and developments. Second, because these global forces may abate if we finally emerge from this dark tunnel of pandemic and war, US inflation may eventually decline substantially even without drastic changes in policy. (Notice how I avoided using the word “transitory”? Oh, wait.)

That said, inflation is running hotter on this side of the Atlantic. Why? One main factor, almost surely, is that the economy of the United States has recovered faster than that of Europe. In the fourth quarter of 2021 real gross domestic product in the US was 3 percent larger than it had been before the pandemic, while the euro area had barely recovered its losses. And in case you’re wondering, you don’t need to discount those numbers for faster US population growth; our working-age population has in fact stagnated since 2019, largely thanks to a collapse in immigration.

And US economic growth has helped workers as well as G.D.P. Although hourly real wages have been eroded by inflation, total labor compensation is up 13.6 percent since the eve of the pandemic, compared with only 5.2 percent in Europe.

Now, excess inflation suggests that recent US economic growth has been too much of a good thing. Our economy looks clearly overheated, which is why the Federal Reserve is right to have started raising interest rates and should keep doing it until inflation subsides.

But while overheating is a problem, we shouldn’t let it overshadow the good things that have happened. We recovered fast from the pandemic recession and seem to have avoided the long-term “scarring” effects that many feared. Most though not all of the inflation we’re experiencing reflects probably temporary global forces, and multiple indicators — consumer surveys, professional forecasters and financial markets — suggest that longer-term expectations of inflation remain “anchored,” that is, inflation isn’t getting entrenched in the economy.

There’s still the question of why Americans feel so lousy about the economy, or at least tell pollsters that they feel lousy (they’re spending as if they’re optimistic). We’re not unique in this respect: European consumer sentiment has also taken a hit in the face of inflation, although nothing like the plunge we’ve seen here. But that’s a topic I’ll return to another day.

For now, I’d just urge Americans to look at their economy in the European mirror. Recovering from the pandemic was always going to be tough, and Vladimir Putin has made it tougher. But under the circumstances, we’re actually doing relatively OK.

The New York Times

Medvedev stated the meaninglessness of negotiations with Japan on the topic of the Kuril Islands

Today, 14:35In the world

Photo: Вконтакте

Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev (pictured) supported the refusal to negotiate with Japan on a peace treaty and ownership of the Kuril Islands. The ex-president noted that this is a “historically justified, overdue and fair” decision.

“Obviously, we would never have found any consensus with the Japanese on the island topic. This was understood by both us and them. So the negotiations about the Kuriles have always been of a ritual nature. The new version of the Constitution of Russia directly states that the territories of our country are not subject to alienation. The issue is closed”, - Medvedev said on his Telegram channel.

He stressed that in the light of anti-Russian sanctions, the negotiations "have lost all meaning." The former president stressed that by imposing sanctions following the United States, the Japanese demonstrated "with whom they would agree on a hypothetical text of a peace treaty".

Medvedev stressed that instead of meaningless negotiations with Japan, it is more important to develop the Kuriles. He noted significant improvements in recent years, which are visible from the outside and felt by the local population.

“I have repeatedly visited our islands, made decisions about their support, I have seen real changes for the better - from schools to roads and airports. But more importantly, people who live there see it. It will continue to be so!”, - Medvedev summed up.

Yesterday it became known that Russia refuses to negotiate a peace treaty with Japan. Moscow is also withdrawing from the dialogue on establishing joint economic activities in the South Kuriles. This was reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The reason for this was the Japanese sanctions against Russia.

As for Dmitry Medvedev, he created a Telegram channel in mid-March, and the main topic of his publications is Russophobia and Russia's relationship with other countries of the world. Already in his first post, he said: "The frenzied Russophobia of the West, apparently, will never reach the bottom". He later criticized the Polish program for "de-Russification of the Polish and European economy".

WATER IS LIFE

Kenya: Underground water to alleviate water scarcity in dry regions


By Rédaction Africanews
with AFP 
KENYA



Today is world water day under the theme theme “Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible,” and in Kenya climate change is pushing conventional water sources to the brink of exhaustion.

Unpredictable weather patterns and low rainfall mean surface dams are no longer reliable sources of domestic water.

A new UN report highlights how the development of groundwater access can help alleviate water scarcity in drought prone regions.


In the remote village of Mwangulu in Kwale County, people have to walk three kilometers in search of water along dry riverbeds, but projects like this one could change their lives.

This drilling rig is operated by a private company, which is creating a borehole. The engineers here are expecting to access groundwater found three thousand meters below the surface.

Drilling a borehole costs an average of 1.5 million Kenyan shillings, that's a little over thirteen thousand dollars USD.

This particular project is government funded and the work has been subcontracted to Hallmark Pump Services which says it's also operating in Southern Sudan.

The pump will be solar powered and local villagers will be given free access to the water.

According to a new report by the United Nations World Water Development, published by UNESCO, the vast potential of underground water and the need to manage it sustainably, can no longer be ignored.

The title of the new report asks the question "Is the solution to water crises hiding right under our feet?"

It says the quality of groundwater here is generally good.

This means it is safe and affordable without requiring expensive and sophisticated water treatment plants.

The report says regions, such as "Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East for example, hold substantial quantities of non-renewable groundwater supplies that can be extracted in order to maintain water security."

According to the UN report vast aquifers remain largely underexploited with just three percent of farmland in the regions equipped for irrigation and only 5 percent of that area uses groundwater.

It concludes the low use of renewable groundwater is due to a lack of investment in infrastructure and a lack of professional knowledge of the resource.

Water in surface dams evaporates quickly which means they aren't an efficient investment here.

That's the view of Moses Tsuma a private geologist who has been carrying out water surveys and exploration in this area.

Tsuma says he's also noticed the unreliability of the rainfall due to climate change.

He says: "Because of climate change, so rains are not coming the months that they are expected to come. Now for that matter you see that even the investment that the county government has been doing to put on surface dams, water pans is no longer useful because these dams are drying. Where is the water? There is no water. So right now the most reliable source of water is ground water. And like you see, drilling is an exercise that takes only a day. A day and you have water apart from, you know, spending about a month constructing a water dam and then it becomes dry."

"We have water for only a short time. But when a dry spell sets in, there is no water anymore in those dams. Thereafter, we come to these rivers. Here we spend a lot of time coming to fetch water and going back home and it's a journey of almost two hours one way from the river to deliver water home. Then we cook for the children, and by 3PM, we are back again to the river," explains Halima Mwero, a Kwale County resident.

These women walk miles to get enough water to quench the thirst of their families, water their farm animals and to do simple things such as their laundry.

The UN report argues with the development of groundwater more land can be irrigated, this in turn could improve agricultural yields and crop diversity, all of which could drive forward economic growth.

Tsuma says the time spent searching for water is wasting people's lives.

"That is a very big irony that somebody would need to walk 3000 meters and yet there is water just 30 meters below their feet and so, this is something that if possibly we could be having a good mechanism and frameworks put in place, we could be having a solved problem of water in our rural areas especially in places where rainfall is a problem," he says.

Mwero is one of the people who spend hours each day digging along dried riverbanks for water.

She says: "This water is dirty. People do laundry, they urinate, and the cattle drink, urinate and defecate in it. We only excavate the sand a bit to get the distilled one, not that it's good, but we have no option. But now we are happy there is a borehole which has been drilled, which will bring happiness for us because this water is as clean as tap water."

Hamisi Wachondo, another local resident explains access to clean water has always been a problem.

"All my life has been spent along these riverbeds. I come with a metal bar for digging, I dig, and that has been a lifelong problem, since I was born. The only problem is water."

All the villagers are hoping the new borehole will give them better access to water.

Tsuma says the constant search for water means that they are trapped in a cycle of poverty.

"It means that, if somebody is spending half of his day on looking for water, then what else can they do? They cannot develop, they cannot go to school, even children will go to school late, they will not, you know, people will remain in poverty and there is not going to be any development because of one problem of water."

The UN report will emphasize the importance of developing groundwater sources to ease the issue of water scarcity in drought prone regions as an effort to reach its dedicated goal on water and sanitation (SDG 6) that sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

Picking up the pace of poverty reduction in Nigeria

JONATHAN LAIN
MARTA SCHOCH
TARA VISHWANATH

|MARCH 22, 2022

THE WORLD BANK

Children. Nigeria. Arne Hoel/World Bank

Nigeria aspires to lift all of its people out of poverty by 2030. This is an ambitious target, as even before COVID-19 struck, some 4 in 10 Nigerians lived below the poverty line—about 80 million people. Some of the key drivers of poverty in Nigeria and potential poverty-reducing policies are considered in detail in a new report, A Better Future for All Nigerians: Nigeria Poverty Assessment 2022.

Looking at a snapshot of poverty at a single point in time can only take us so far in developing the policies that Nigeria needs to meet its target. What we really need to know is how poverty has changed in Nigeria over time.

Assessing poverty trends has long proved difficult in Nigeria. The 2018/19 Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS) provided the first official estimates of poverty in more than a decade. Yet, given a range of improvements made to the questionnaire—especially on how food consumption was measured—it is difficult to compare this directly with the poverty estimate from the previous official household survey in Nigeria, the 2009/10 Harmonised Nigerian Living Standards Survey (HNLSS).1, 2

Nevertheless, two specialized statistical techniques, summarized in a new paper, can help us construct poverty trends for Nigeria. First, we can “back-cast” Nigeria’s poverty rate, using the 2018/19 NLSS as a springboard in combination with sectoral GDP estimates. Second, we can impute consumption—and, in turn, poverty—into a decade-long survey containing many key non-monetary indicators, the General Household Survey-Panel.

Whichever approach we use, it seems that poverty reduction in Nigeria was at first slow and then stagnated in the decade before COVID-19 (see Figure 1).3 While there was some progress in the first half of the 2010s, this was reversed after the 2016 recession (induced by falling oil prices) hit and population growth started outstripping real GDP growth. This stalling progress on poverty broadly matches the path of non-monetary indicators, including education and access to basic infrastructure, from Nigeria’s Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Subsequent projections suggest that COVID-19 has worsened poverty in Nigeria even further.


1. The 2016 Nigeria Poverty Assessment also identified several anomalies in the 2009/10 HNLSS consumption data.
2. Naively comparing these two surveys would suggest that poverty dropped by more than 17 percentage points in the decade to COVID-19.
3. The fact that back-casting and survey-to-survey imputations—two totally different techniques with totally different underlying assumptions—yield such similar results, adds robustness to these findings.


Figure 2. Stalling poverty reduction in Nigeria in the decade prior to COVID-19
Image


Note: Estimates exclude Borno. Poverty rate calculated using the international poverty line of US$1.90 2011 PPP per person per day. Population estimates taken from the United Nations, via the World Development Indicators. Further details on back-casting and survey-to-survey imputations provided in Lain, Schoch, and Vishwanath (2022). Imputed estimates to be included in the World Bank’s official global poverty measurement. Source: 2018/19 NLSS, GHS, and World Bank estimates.

Moreover, when per capita incomes were growing in the early part of the 2010s, it appears that richer Nigerians benefited more than poorer Nigerians (see Figure 2). Richer Nigerians also lost out more when the 2016 recession struck. Thus, the fortunes of the rich waxed and waned in line with Nigeria’s growth, much more so than the poor. This matches labor market indicators from the same period. When the 2016 recession hit, the shift towards farming as a key coping strategy to try to maintain incomes was more pronounced among Nigerian workers in the top 60% of the consumption distribution than those in the bottom 40%.


Figure 3. Consumption for richer Nigerians is more closely linked to Nigeria’s growth prospects
Image

Note: Estimates exclude Borno. Further details on survey-to-survey imputations provided in Lain, Schoch, and Vishwanath (2022). Source: 2018/19 NLSS, GHS, and World Bank estimates.

These findings chime with global evidence that poverty is becoming clustered in certain regions—such as Nigeria’s poor, largely rural north—in large countries. What is more, poverty in Nigeria is also entrenched in the areas most affected by climate and conflict shocks. Therefore, there is a critical need for policies that can help poorer people in poorer areas.

Given these patterns, what can be done to make growth work for Nigeria’s poor?

In the short-run, three immediate policies can help poor Nigerians recover from the COVID-19 crisis and, since COVID-19 has exacerbated inequality across many dimensions, such policies directly support redistribution. First, distributing vaccines quickly and equitably remains vital for curbing the direct health threat of the virus, especially given uncertainty around new variants. Second, learning losses from school closures still need to be reversed to reduce long-term consequences for human capital; this may involve encouraging children to go back to school when it is safe and adopting low-tech remote learning solutions that work for the poor when needed. Third, social protection should be expanded to offset income losses and prevent households falling into, or further into, poverty; with shocks and uncertainty proliferating, exemplified by the global economic impact of the conflict in Ukraine, this could help build household resilience now and in the future.

Yet Nigeria also needs at least three types of deeper, longer-term reforms to foster and sustain pro-poor growth and help raise people out of poverty. With Nigeria’s young population continuing to grow, the urgency of these reforms cannot be overstated. Now is the time to ensure that the country seizes its potential demographic dividend.

First, macroeconomic reforms, including to fiscal, trade, and exchange rate policy, could help diversify the economy, invigorate structural transformation, and create good, productive jobs, especially wage jobs that offer the best pathways out of poverty. Despite crude oil’s vast contributions to exports and government revenues, less than 1% of Nigerians are employed in mining and extractives, underlining the need to allow other, more labor-intensive sectors to flourish. Government spending could also be increased for pro-poor causes, such as health, education, and infrastructure—the main concerns among Nigerians themselves—by improving revenue collection and redirecting spending from expensive subsidies that benefit the rich more than the poor.

Second, structural transformation and the creation of productive wage jobs on a large scale may not happen overnight, so policies to boost the productivity of farm and non-farm household enterprises will be crucial in the meantime. For farms, this includes developing new and more resilient crop varieties, as well as investments in storage, transport, and market access. For non-farm household enterprises, policies that ease credit constraints could be especially important.

Third, for Nigerians to seize the opportunities available to them, the bedrock of infrastructure needs to be strengthened. The correlation between monetary poverty and access to electricity, adequate drinking water, and improved sanitation is extremely high in Nigeria. Yet information and communication technologies, including mobile phones, could also be used to help boost access to jobs and markets and to support the rollout of social protection programs and other redistributive government policies.

The specifics of poverty-reducing policies will depend on redoubling efforts to gather and analyze data regularly. New official household survey data, the collection of which should start later in 2022, will provide far more detailed insights into changes in poverty over time —as well as into key drivers, constraints, and corrective policies—than even the back-casts and imputations discussed above. By investing in data, Nigeria can build trust, accountability, and transparency, taking substantial strides forward along its pathway to poverty reduction.

Nigeria Poverty Assessment 2022: A Better Future for All Nigerians

Gibraltar seized a $75 million superyacht owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch, the local government said

Kate Duffy

Dmitry Pumpyansky's superyacht Axioma. Gerard Bottino/Shutterstock

Gibraltar's government said on Monday it seized a $75 million yacht owned by a Russian oligarch.
The government told Insider that the yacht, Axioma, was owned by the billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky.
Axioma was previously docked in Antigua, in the Caribbean, before it sailed to Gibraltar.

A $75 million superyacht owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch was seized upon docking in Gibraltar, the local government said.

The 240-foot Axioma is owned by the Russian businessperson Dmitry Pumpyansky, the government of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on Spain's south coast, told Insider.

Pumpyansky, who has an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, is the owner of Russia's largest steel-pipe-maker, TMK, Forbes reported. His assets were frozen by the UK and the EU as part of sanctions imposed last week over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Axioma is valued by SuperYachtFan at $75 million. It was previously docked in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean, until it set sail on March 3. It arrived in Gibraltar 18 days later, the ship tracker Marine Traffic showed.

Dmitry Pumpyansky. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

In a statement on Monday, Gibraltar's government said Axioma was "confirmed to be the subject of an arrest action by a leading international bank in the Supreme Court of Gibraltar." It added, "The vessel is now subject to arrest by the Admiralty Marshal until further order."

In a later statement to Insider, the Gibraltar government said, "The owner of the yacht is Dmitry Pumpyansky."

Axioma, built in 2013, can host 22 guests and crew members on board, SuperYachtFan said. Axioma also features two big swimming pools, a gym, and a cinema, SuperYachtFan added.

Several superyachts linked to Russian oligarchs have been seized by countries that have sanctioned them as part of efforts to punish Russia and President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine.


Italy has seized a $578 million yacht linked to Andrey Melnichenko; France has impounded a $120 million vessel linked to Igor Sechin; and Spain has detained a $153 million superyacht linked to Sergei Chemezov.

 

When the UK welcomed 250,000 refugees from Belgium fleeing the German army’s advance in the First World War

From Hercule Poirot to a Tyneside factory town, the biggest wave of refugees in British history has left its faint trace

Belgians flee by train after the German invasion in 1914 (Photo: Photo: Branger/Roger Viollet via Getty)

By Leo Cendrowicz

March 22, 2022 

They were mostly women and children, fleeing a cataclysmic conflict that laid waste to their homes. In just a few weeks, some 250,000 refugees had arrived in Britain, clutching their bare necessities.

They hailed from a peaceful, neutral country attacked from the east by an invading force seemingly bent on enslaving their homeland.

This might seem to be referring to the fate of Ukrainians heading to Britain as Russian armies drive them across their borders to a safer place. But it is the tale of Belgians during the First World War, fleeing as the German army rolled across their country in its bid to invade France.

And the Belgian experience in Britain offers pointers to what Ukrainian refugees may find when they arrive.

Some three million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February, with almost two million currently in Poland.

Few have yet made it to the UK, in part thanks to the complex visa system, but about 150,000 families in Britain offered homes to refugees in the first hours of the launch of the Homes for Ukraine scheme. If this number is met, it would mark the biggest refugee influx since the Belgians in 1914.

How did it work out then? Much of the fighting on the Western Front during the First World War took place on Belgian territory – in Flanders Fields – with most of the country occupied by the Imperial German Army.

Between August and October 1914, there was an exodus of more than 1.5 million people from Belgium, about one fifth of the population, with a quarter of a million heading for Britain. They arrived at various ports including Dover, Hull, Tilbury, Margate, Harwich and Grimsby. On a single day in October 1914, the Kent port of Folkestone had to cope with 16,000 Belgians.

The refugees elicited huge sympathy when they arrived, with donations of clothes, shoes and toys, while the War Refugee Committee received 100,000 offers for accommodation after a public appeal.

Newspapers at the time hailed King Albert I for refusing to surrender, comparing Belgium’s “Soldier King” to Leonidas of Sparta. The press also presented them as the innocent victims of German brutality, and their country was dubbed poor, gallant, or plucky little Belgium. That mood is echoed in current sentiments about the plight of Ukraine, and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky.

About one in three of the Belgian refugees stayed in London or its environs, with some 38,000 passing through Alexandra Palace: the “People’s Palace” became a sorting centre, with beds filling the Great Hall and Exhibition Hall.

Other refugees were billeted in local communities around Britain, often housed with families who offered rooms or homes. A report in London-based journal The Hospital, published on September 26, 1914, referred to “the homeless Flemish peasants and Walloons” congregated at Alexandra Palace.

“They are simply penniless men, women, and children seeking refuge from a devastated country in a land of whose language and people they are totally ignorant, and are consequently utterly dependent for their food, shelter, and even clothing on the generous hospitality of the strangers to whom they have come in such numbers,” it said.

Elisabethville, in Birtley, Tyneside, was purpose-built for 6,000 new arrivals. Munitions minister David Lloyd George set it up next to two factories making artillery shells, staffed entirely by Belgians working to support the war effort.

Named after Elisabeth, the Belgian Queen, and known by the Belgians as “the Colony”, it was a sovereign Belgian village run on Belgian law. It had its own gendarmes, the Belgian Franc as currency, and Flemish and French were the main languages. Elisabethville also had its own shops, school, a Catholic church, bars, a cinema, prisons, police and even a cemetery.

A similar community of around 6,000 was based in Richmond and East Twickenham, in south-west London, and was also associated with a munitions factory, based in what is now Cleveland Park alongside Richmond Bridge. By 1918, some 30,000 Belgians were working in munition factories, including more than 7,000 women.

Belgians refugees arrive in France after history repeats itself in 1940 during the Second World War (Photo: Getty)

Most Belgians integrated well in Britain. There was a long-time affinity between the two countries – Britain had helped secure Belgian independence in 1831 – and some Belgians already spoke English. There were romances between the guests and their hosts, with some ending in marriage.

Over time, as the war dragged on, public opinion gradually turned into mistrust. Locals grumbled about their sons fighting Belgium’s battles. And there were complaints about Belgians working for lower salaries, undercutting native labour, working longer days and working on Sundays and public holidays.

“The initial hero status was slowly undermined by irritation as the refugees were seen as foreigners,” says Tony Kushner, professor of modern history at the University of Southampton. “At first, the Belgians were the exceptions in wartime atmosphere of strong anti-alienism. But by the end of the war, they were not. All but a few are quickly removed after 1918.”

Although some 140,000 Belgians were still in Britain in 1918, within a year of the armistice, more than 90 per cent had returned home. And while they left few lasting marks on their host country, some remembered them fondly: crime writer Agatha Christie is thought to have based her detective Hercule Poirot on a retired Belgian policeman refugee she nursed in her home town of Torquay.

Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate: 'Not all climate action is climate justice'

 Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate began her activism back in 2019 by staging a solo climate protest at the gates of the Ugandan parliament, before going on to co-found both the Rise Up Movement and Fridays for Future Uganda. She is currently in Paris as part of a delegation of Ugandan and Tanzanian activists who are fighting to drum up opposition to a huge oil pipeline under construction in East Africa. She joined us for Perspective to tell us more about her activism, her hopes for her meeting with Pope Francis and how she feels about being dubbed the African Greta Thunberg.