Crypto gains ground in U.S.-sanctioned Cuba

Apr 28, 2022

The Cuban central bank issued regulations for virtual asset service providers, after giving a nod last year to the personal use of cryptocurrencies, a move some experts said could help the Communist-run Caribbean island skirt stiff U.S. sanctions.

#Cuba #Crypto #Cryptocurrencies

California probes 'Big Oil' over plastic pollution


Just 9 percent of plastics are recycled, California's attorney general said as he launched a probe into the role of fossil fuel companies in plastic pollution

 (AFP/SAUL LOEB) (SAUL LOEB)

Thu, April 28, 2022, 5:18 PM·2 min read

California launched a sweeping investigation Thursday into plastic pollution by major oil companies, in a probe it says will look at whether fossil fuel giants have been lying about the problem for decades.

As part of the wide-ranging probe, the state's attorney general hit ExxonMobil with a subpoena with the aim of uncovering its role in an alleged cover-up.

"Enough is enough. For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis," said Rob Bonta, the US state's top lawyer.

"The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled, and the recycling rate has never surpassed nine per cent."

The remainder is buried in landfill, burned, or littered in the environment.

From there it breaks down into micro-plastics that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.

"Every week, we consume the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic through the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe.

"This first-of-its-kind investigation will examine the fossil fuel industry's role in creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis –- and what laws, if any, have been broken in the process."

The attorney general's office said recent reporting showed fossil fuel and petrochemical companies, which produce plastics, knew in the 1970s that recycling was not feasible and could never be economic, but that the industry pressed on with the manufacture of the materials.

Companies and their lobbyists sought to assuage public concerns about plastic by adopting the circular arrows symbol to denote supposedly recyclable materials, a statement said, despite knowing that their products could not be re-purposed.

Some 460 million tons of plastics were produced worldwide in 2019, generating 353 million tons of waste, according to the OECD.

This waste degrades into plastic micro-particles that end up in all of the world's oceans, in ice floes, in the stomachs of animals and has even been found in air sampled at the top of mountains.

The OECD says plastic products also account for nearly 3.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

"In California and across the globe, we are seeing the catastrophic results of the fossil fuel industry's decades-long campaign of deception," said Bonta.

"Plastic pollution is seeping into our waterways, poisoning our environment, and blighting our landscapes."

It was not immediately clear what the ramifications of the investigation would be, or what penalties any firm might face.

But an investigation by California -- the most populous and wealthiest state in the US -- could at least highlight an issue that scientists say we should be concerned about.

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Russia’s War Will Boost Solar Demand This Year, China Giant Says

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News

Photovoltaic panels at a solar farm operated by Yellow River Power in Gonghe County, Qinghai province, China, on Monday, Sept. 27, 2021. China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, can’t meet its environmental goals without connecting its abundant sources of renewable energy with its coastal megacities. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Europe’s efforts to reduce reliance on imports of Russian fossil fuels will boost demand for solar energy as soon as this year, according to JinkoSolar Holding Co., the world’s third-largest supplier. 

Global solar capacity installations should rise to 250 gigawatts this year as nations seek alternatives to Russian supplies, and with the impact of new Covid-19 outbreaks likely to be short-term and controllable, the Shangrao, China-based producer said Thursday in an earnings statement. Installations were 184 gigawatts in 2021, according to BloombergNEF.

“The Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the need for solar energy, with incremental demand expected within the year and further steady increases over time,” Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Xiande Li said in the statement. Solar will “make up a higher proportion of the energy mix in countries traditionally reliant on gas-fired and thermal power,” Li said.

JinkoSolar’s first-quarter revenue jumped 92% on the same period a year earlier to $2.3 billion on higher solar module sales, according to the statement. The producer reiterated full-year shipments of modules, cells and wafers are expected to be between 35 gigawatts and 40 gigawatts.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Homemade library builds bookish community in S.Africa's Soweto




Homemade library builds bookish community in S.Africa's SowetoThami Mazibuko has turned the upper level of his childhood home into a bookstore and library 

(AFP/EMMANUEL CROSET)


Griffin SHEA
Thu, April 28, 2022

Behind an unmarked gate, on a residential street in South Africa's Soweto township, Thami Mazibuko makes his way down a corridor and up a stairwell, all lined with books.

Here in his childhood home, the 36-year-old has turned the upper level into a bookstore and library, seeded with 30 of his own books, now overflowing with hundreds of donations.

The slender man's face lights up as he rummages through the stacks to find some of the most popular reads -- currently Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and Sol Plaatje's "Mhudi", the first novel in English by a black South African.

"Books, they put you in other people's shoes," Mazibuko told AFP. "I want people to visit here, and be transported into other communities."

As a child, he can't remember having any books in his home.

After he finished school, he left Soweto and moved into the formerly white suburbs of Johannesburg, staying with relatives who were artists, with a home full of books.

He developed an insatiable appetite for reading, even bring books into the reggae club where he liked to listen to music.

When he decided to move back home, he brought his growing personal collection with him.

"Readers who do not have access to books, your old aunties, they are like 'you have books! Can I borrow one?'" he recalled. "And I am like, okay aunty it's fine."

So began the Soweto Book Cafe, officially founded in 2018.

Now, he sells books to those with enough money to buy them. And he offers a membership fee of 50 rand ($3.50) a year for people who want to borrow books -- though in reality, he loans them to almost anyone who asks.

"That's one of the reasons I started this place, to advance literacy and to provide the community with access to books and information, which is a basic human right," he said.

Mazibuko likes to focus on African literature, and has hosted book launches and readings (AFP/EMMANUEL CROSET)

- 'Reading Is Super Cool' -

The Book Cafe also hosts a youth group, called Reading Is Super Cool, with 50 regular members from ages four to 16. Older kids read to younger ones, and Mazibuko teaches them board games like chess and go.

Sindisiwe Zulu, 27, started the book club to help her niece get through school.

"She was failing dismally and I asked her," why.

The reply was that she didn't know how to read: 'I don't understand a thing that is why I am failing.'

"I have a lot of books at home, and I initially started with her and a few friends, and started the book club," Zulu said.

Neighbourhood start-ups like the Book Cafe took on even greater importance during South Africa's stringent Covid lockdown, when public libraries were closed for more than a year.

Small bookshops such as this one proliferate across Johannesburg, usually offering second-hand books, but also a sense of community.

The last major survey of Johannesburg's books scene was completed a decade ago, as part of the World Cities Culture Report, which found the city has 1,020 bookshops -- just five less than Paris, and about 250 more than New York.

Sindisiwe Zulu, 27, started the book club to help her niece get through school 

(AFP/EMMANUEL CROSET)

Mazibuko likes to focus on African literature, and has hosted book launches and readings on his unassuming residential street.

More importantly, he provides a quiet, safe space for his neighbourhood.

"I come to do my assignments, read and de-stress," said 14-year-old Anele Ndlovu, one of the Soweto Book Cafe's regulars.

"It's where I like to think about what I want in my life."

Her dream is to go into finance, and become a forex trader. So while she's enjoying a Michael Connelly's thriller at the moment, she knows what she'd like to read next: "Books that can teach us how life is, and how markets work."

gs/sn/bp

South Asia wilts in heat as Delhi rubbish dump burns



Children in Allahabad, India try to beat the heat as they bathe at a roadside tap on a scorching day (AFP/SANJAY KANOJIA)


Bhuvan BAGGA in New Delhi and Nasir Jaffry in Islamabad
Thu, April 28, 2022

Millions sweltered in a dangerous early summer heatwave Thursday across India and Pakistan that has led to power and water shortages as annual furnace-like temperatures hit South Asia.

In New Delhi, a burning rubbish dump choked residents for a third day with temperatures crossing 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in parts of the region -- several degrees higher than normal -- and forecasters warning it will get even hotter this weekend.

Heatwaves have killed over 6,500 people in India since 2010, and scientists say climate change is making them harsher and more frequent across South Asia.

"This is the first time I've seen such horrible weather in April. Usually, we're prepared for this in May and onwards," said 30-year-old Delhi housewife Somya Mehra, as she and her family thirstily searched for cold drinks.

"Today we stepped out because of our anniversary but otherwise I'm not stepping out at all. I've stopped sending my kid out to play".

The Indian states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh imposed power cuts on factories as consumption for air conditioning and fans skyrocketed.

Media reports said power stations were also facing shortages of coal, the main source of electricity in the nation of 1.4 billion people.

Many regions also reported falling water supplies that will only worsen until the annual monsoon rains in June and July.

Water shortages will hit farmers hardest, including those growing wheat as India aims to boost exports to help ease a global shortage due to the war in Ukraine.

Several parts of India should expect no relief in the coming days.

"Heat wave conditions are likely to prevail over the northern plains as well as the central parts of the country throughout this week," while "severe heat wave conditions" were forecast for west Rajasthan on May 1-2, the India Meteorological Department said Thursday in a weather review.

- Hottest since 1961 -

Temperatures are expected to be up to eight degrees higher than usual in parts of Pakistan, with the mercury peaking at 48 degrees in parts of rural Sindh on Wednesday, Pakistan's Meteorological Society warned.

Farmers have to use water sparingly in a country where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy and accounts for around 40 percent of the workforce.

"Public health and agriculture in the country will face serious threats due to the extreme temperature this year," climate change minister Sherry Rehman said.

Last month was the hottest March on record since 1961, the Pakistani Met office said.

Coming during the month of Ramadan, the heat makes fasting in both India and Pakistan even tougher for Muslims -- who shun even water during daylight hours.

"Temperatures are rising rapidly in the country, and rising much earlier than usual," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday, adding that India has seen "increasing incidents of fires in various places -- in forests, important buildings and in hospitals -- in the past few days."

South Asia wilts in heat as Delhi rubbish dump burnsRagpickers carrying sacks walk near the Bhalaswa landfill in New Delhi on April 28, 2022, after a fire broke out there (AFP/Prakash SINGH)

In New Delhi, a 60-metre (200-feet) high rubbish mountain has been ablaze since Tuesday, which firefighting teams have been battling with lorry-loads of sand and mud.

The inferno, belching toxic black smoke that engulfed nearby districts, was the fourth such incident at a landfill site in the megacity of 20 million people in less than a month.

Pradeep Khandelwal, the former head of Delhi's waste management, said they were likely sparked by warmer temperatures speeding up the decomposition of organic waste.

"The dry and hot weather produces excess methane gas at the dumping sites that trigger such fires," Khandelwal told AFP.

"Before human activities increased global temperatures, we would have seen the heat that hit India earlier this month around once in 50 years," said Mariam Zachariah from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

"But now it is a much more common event -- we can expect such high temperatures about once in every four years. And until net emissions are halted, it will continue to become even more common".

Just 2% of Starlink users live outside of the West, data suggests

Despite global ambitions, Elon Musk’s Starlink struggles to reach users outside North America and Europe.

Nina Lyashonok/Ukrinform/Future Publishing/Getty Images

By MEAGHAN TOBIN
28 APRIL 2022

Last year, Sarfaraz Hassan, the chief technology officer at an adventure tourism startup in India’s northeastern Assam state, signed up to receive a Starlink unit from SpaceX. Hassan thought Elon Musk’s satellite internet service could help his company, Encamp, entice digital nomads to work from the rugged foothills of the eastern Himalayas, where fewer than 40% of people have access to broadband. Then, in early January, Starlink announced that preorders in India were being refunded until the company received license to operate in the country. After months of waiting, Hassan recently got his $99 deposit (about 7,500 rupees) back.

Hassan is one of the half a million people worldwide who have signed up to receive Elon Musk’s Starlink service but are still waiting for access. In India, where Starlink was supposed to arrive this month, SpaceX had planned to deploy 200,000 dishes across the country by the end of this year. Instead, the company has had to refund its waiting list at the direction of the Indian government, leaving thousands waiting for connectivity. (The Indian telecomms regulator had warned the public late last year not to pay for equipment before the company had a license.)

In June 2021, Elon Musk claimed that Starlink would span the globe within months. But nearly a year later, the service has, with a few exceptions, been exclusively made available in North America, Europe, and Australia. The issue of refunds to the waiting list in India is the latest in a series of stumbling blocks that have prevented Starlink from bringing the internet to the hardest-to-reach places on Earth.

SpaceX has pushed back rollouts in massive markets like South Africa, where, at the end of last year, the expected date for Starlink service to become available was delayed from 2022 to 2023, with no explanation. Last month, Starlink surpassed 250,000 subscribers across 25 countries. But according to Cloudflare and self-reported statistics on Reddit, nearly 80% of users to date are located in North America, with another 18% in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Just 2% of Starlink users live in the rest of the world. Although many of the delays come down to regulatory challenges, it’s also unclear whether the service is prioritizing existing markets or growing new ones.

Starlink’s current coverage area.https://www.starlink.com/map

Although Starlink had a notably successful deployment in Ukraine in late February, the service was already being set up in the country at the time of the Russian invasion, and the effort was carried off with millions of dollars in support from the U.S. government. In Ukraine, SpaceX issued an update to enable mobile roaming, giving users the ability to access the internet from the road, even from a moving vehicle. While this update helps users living in a war zone, it also entrenches Starlink’s appeal among one of its main user bases in the West: digital nomads who want to use the service to work remotely and stream Netflix from campers, RVs, and boats.

Korath Mathew, a Delhi-based independent consultant who has worked on government smart city projects across India and Kenya, told Rest of World that he hoped that the March mobility update was a positive indicator that Starlink service might soon expand services. “I was thinking that it’s suddenly going to come in [to India], because so many people had signed up,” Mathew told Rest of World. “Even portability is available now. You can travel across the whole U.S., while moving. This gave us a hope that access could be implemented [here] in rural areas.” But the update did not make service available in India. SpaceX did not respond to Rest of World’s request for comment.

Mathew says he doesn’t understand why the government hasn’t granted Starlink license to operate in India. “You have satellite phones in India, you have geosatellite communication,” said Mathew, referring to traditional satellites. “It just doesn’t make any sense not to broaden it out to low earth orbit satellites like Starlink.”

Encamp founder Ratan Kumar said his startup had planned to use its Starlink equipment to connect neighboring communities and schoolchildren. “We were very excited when we heard Starlink is coming into India,” Kumar told Rest of World. “We were like, we’re going to have one dish in every location where we operate. Obviously, that didn’t work out.”

Mike Puchol, who runs the website starlink.sx, which maps the global availability of Starlink service based on open-source data, had a similar vision for how Starlink could be used to distribute connectivity in Kenya, where he also runs an internet service startup called Poa! internet. If Starlink were available in Kenya, said Puchol, it could function as backhaul for the country’s minimal fiber infrastructure. Puchol said that given current prices and internet speeds available in much of Kenya, as many as 100 people could conceivably use a terminal at once, at a cost as low as a dollar a month per person.

When the island nation Tonga was cut off from the internet following the eruption of a massive underwater volcano earlier this year, Starlink sent 50 terminals to the country. By the time they arrived, the main internet cable had been reconnected, so the Starlink equipment was sent to support outer islands, where international aid groups had already coordinated to send Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) terminals and satellite phones. The head of state-backed Tonga Cable Ltd., Samisi Panuve, told Rest of World that while a few terminals had been sent to “outer island government departments and communities and some public areas,” his company hadn’t found a use for its Starlink equipment.

“We were like, we’re going to have one dish in every location where we operate. Obviously, that didn’t work out.”

Part of the reason Starlink has failed to expand outside the West has been regulatory challenges. While Starlink has been welcomed by regulators in places like Chile, in other countries, regulators face pushback from powerful domestic telecommunications lobbies. In India, Puchol pointed out that Bharti, which operates local broadband provider Airtel, has a stake in one of Starlink’s direct competitors, OneWeb. In addition, many regulators aren’t used to moving at the speed of Silicon Valley, added Puchol. “I think Starlink there went too fast and then got the door slammed in their face.”

Gaining regulatory approval to access new markets is Starlink’s biggest global challenge, said Jose Del Rosario, a Manila-based consultant at satellite industry firm Northern Sky Research. But mobile roaming will greatly increase its commercial appeal. “A few thousand aircrafts and hundreds of cruise ships can close the business case,” said Del Rosario.

A private yacht captain based in the Caribbean told Rest of World that he started using Starlink last year because the price was so much lower than the up to $6,000 per month he had paid for commercial internet on the open sea. “If [Musk] starts selling it to commercial airlines, boats, trucks, and buses, he is going to make a lot of money,” the captain told Rest of World. “His plans are likely much bigger than helping Ukraine and people in remote locations.”

Meanwhile, Starlink service has continued to expand in some markets. In January, Starlink reported 145,000 users, and subscriptions nearly doubled that number just two months later. And while SpaceX has launched dozens of satellites to build out its constellation, it has also inked a deal to offer in-flight Wi-Fi on American air carrier Hawaii Airlines.

For his part, Kumar is still hopeful that Starlink will become available in India soon. He credits Musk as an entrepreneurial inspiration “to keep the same grit and determination in whatever small thing we are trying to achieve in our own career.” But if one of Starlink’s competitors, like Amazon’s Project Kuiper or Softbank-backed OneWeb, succeeds in getting satellite service to his area first, he won’t hold out for Musk. “We expect Starlink to come over, but if that doesn’t happen, we’ll do it with an Indian network, whatever is possible,” Kumar said. “The Indian market is a tough nut to crack for an organization which is coming from outside. There are hurdles, but the market size cannot be ignored.”

Meaghan Tobin is a reporter at Rest of World.

Masha Borak contributed reporting to this story.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Inside the scandal at Flutterwave, Nigeria’s fintech champion
Former employees allege bullying, mismanagement and serious administrative errors at the startup, which is valued at more than $3 billion.

Olugbenga “GB” Agboola helped make Flutterwave a $3 billion company, but allegations of financial and professional misconduct at the company have surfaced. Techpoint Africa

By ABUBAKAR IDRIS
28 APRIL 2022 • LAGOS, NIGERIA

Inside the scandal at Flutterwave, Nigeria’s fintech champion

On April 4, Clara Wanjiku Odero, a Nairobi-based former executive at the Nigerian fintech unicorn Flutterwave, posted an explosive article on Medium. Odero, who until 2018 held the title of head of implementation at the company, making her responsible for its expansion into East Africa, alleged that she had been bullied and harassed by the company’s current CEO, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, that she’d had to fight to get paid after she left the company, and that the company’s “negligence” had led to her being investigated by the Kenyan police.

“I really just wanted it [the Medium post] out there, so nobody could try to intimidate me,” Odero, now CEO and founder of Softbank-backed Credrails, an open-banking startup, told Rest of World.

Over the last four weeks, Rest of World has spoken with 12 former employees of Flutterwave, who said that Odero’s allegations are reflective of what they claim are recurring issues at the company, which is valued at more than $3 billion and boasts high-profile investors that include Tiger Global, Y Combinator, Avenir Growth Capital, Visa, and Worldpay from FIS. Most of the former employees requested anonymity so they could speak freely without fear of reprisals. They alleged that the company encouraged a culture of impunity among senior executives and behavior that included bullying and inappropriate relationships between managers and staff, that the company underpaid departing employees for their stock options, and that basic administrative errors were made with company documentation, creating serious legal problems for former staff. Some of the allegations were previously reported by local investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, on April 12.

In an emailed statement to Rest of World, a Flutterwave spokesperson said, “Many of the claims that have been recently made are false, recycled, or have been previously addressed.” The spokesperson also said that the company doesn’t comment on employee matters but that it has “robust HR policies and procedures that aim to create a safe and respectful workplace for all employees. We are always reviewing those policies, and we take action as and when appropriate.”

Industry insiders told Rest of World that the overlapping scandalous allegations at Flutterwave are likely to reverberate throughout Nigeria’s startup ecosystem. Not only is the company a poster child for the country’s thriving fintech sector, its CEO, Agboola, is a leading investor in African tech, with stakes in more than 25 startups.

Several venture investors in the Nigerian tech ecosystem, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there could be a significant fallout from the allegations, particularly with the Silicon Valley venture capital community that has driven so much of Nigeria’s investment momentum for the last half a decade.

Flutterwave was founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (who was its first CEO), Agboola (then CTO), and Adeleke Adekoya (chief compliance officer). The team had the credentials needed to bring in serious capital: Aboyeji had previously co-founded the coding jobs and training platform Andela, while Agboola had been on the tech and payments team at two large banks. They attracted early funding from companies such as Mastercard and New York–based CRE Venture Capital. Several funding rounds later, in 2021, Flutterwave hit unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation. The company is now present in 34 African countries, and its services are used by major clients, including Uber, Microsoft, and Wise. Flutterwave Store, a Shopify-type platform that allows small business owners to sell online, launched during the pandemic and now has a reported 30,000 stores signed up. In February, a series D funding round brought Flutterwave’s valuation to more than $3 billion, making it Africa’s most valuable startup.

After the company first launched, Flutterwave’s management went on a charm offensive to attract staff, former employees told Rest of World. But they also hired from within their circles, including, in 2018, Ifeoluwa Orioke, Agboola’s brother-in-law, who joined as CFO.

It was around that time that the workplace environment seemed to sour badly, according to people who worked at Flutterwave during this period. Seven former employees told Rest of World that Orioke was aggressive toward staff. They claim that he, along with other senior executives, felt able to act with impunity and to pursue sexual relationships with more-junior staff, including teammates, four former employees said.

Orioke was accused of making unwanted sexual advances to at least one female employee, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, and had consensual relationships with at least two others, one of whom reported to him, according to three former employees. “His philandering was widely known,” said one former developer manager at Flutterwave. Three former staff members allege that Orioke regularly lost his temper and screamed at his teammates. People complained to the CEO about Orioke’s behavior, sources told Rest of World, but it appeared that no meaningful action was taken.

“At one point, after I had left, I called GB [the CEO] and warned him that this guy [Orioke] was your problem,” one source, who left Flutterwave as a senior level employee a few years ago, told Rest of World. The source said Agboola responded, “I know what to do.” But Orioke remained in his position. “He’s not going to fire his wife’s brother and start family trouble,” another former employee said, referencing the fact that Agboola is married to Orioke’s sister.

Three employees who worked at the company at the time told Rest of World that Orioke was moved to the position of chief commercial officer (CCO) in 2019, after they were told investors questioned some of his financial practices. “The company termed it as a ‘promotion,’” one of the former employees said.

Orioke did not respond to Rest of World’s multiple requests for comments.

At least one other senior executive had relationships with more-junior staff, three ex-employees told Rest of World. Several former employees said that they were uncomfortable with these relationships. The company has opaque promotion and pay structures, they said, and they worried that people in romantic relationships with management might receive preferential treatment.

Olugbenga “GB” Agboola is an influential figure in Nigeria’s startup ecosystem, and has invested in more than two dozen other tech companies. Techpoint Africa

Allegations of harassment and concerns about relationships between staff at the startup surfaced publicly in late 2018 and early 2019, when a Twitter account, “Eko Minaj,” began posting allegations of improper conduct. The account’s holder later sent emails to staff and investors. Former employees who left before 2019 said the company’s management contacted them about the Twitter handle, looking for the source of these allegations. The allegations led Visa, which was due to lead Flutterwave’s series B investment round, to pull out, former employees said. Agboola acknowledged that an investor had pulled out as a result of the allegations in a recent interview with a local blogger, without naming the investor. The funding round had to be delayed by a year. Visa was named as an investor when the company did finally raise its series B, but not in subsequent rounds.

Visa did not respond to a request for comment.

Following the Eko Minaj allegations, in 2019, Flutterwave hired consulting firm KPMG to investigate allegations of sexual harassment and introduced a new whistleblower policy afterward. However, most people who spoke to Rest of World about this audit said they felt it was mostly cosmetic and that the findings of the investigation weren’t revealed to them. In a 2019 company all-hands meeting — a recording of which has now been widely shared on social media — Agboola told workers that he had reviewed sexual harassment policies of several big corporations domestic and abroad. “One big trend I saw was this,” Agboola said, “I think it would be very very funny that as a company, we’re also a moral judge.” He added that employees’ relationships are “their business.”

Former employees also alleged that around this time the company made significant administrative errors.

In 2019, the former CEO of the company, Aboyeji, who resigned from the board in 2018, was arrested by Nigerian police and spent a night in the cells, two people with direct knowledge of the incident told Rest of World. The police said at the time that the company had been accused of fraud, after failing to refund a customer card transaction; Aboyeji was arrested because Flutterwave had neglected to take his name off its official documentation. He was ultimately released without being charged.

In her Medium post, Odero alleges a similar thing happened to her. She had been named as the contact person for the company’s bill payment service in Kenya and for its M-Pesa mobile money account. Even though she’d left the company in November 2018, she was still listed as its contact in May 2019, when she was approached by 20 people demanding refunds after they’d paid for access to sex parties in Nairobi via Flutterwave. When it turned out the parties weren’t real, the buyers started threatening Odero. Odero was later investigated over the parties by Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigation. The experience was terrifying, she said. Odero sued Flutterwave for negligence and emotional trauma and was awarded $2,500 in damages. She is appealing, seeking a larger settlement.

Odero also accused Flutterwave of withholding payments due to her after she resigned. Several other former employees told Rest of World that they had experienced difficulties with their employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) after they left the company. These stock options give employees the right to own equity in the company and are becoming a common way for startups to attract talent in Nigeria.

ESOP distribution at the company was not fair and impartial, alleged one former employee, and a majority of its workforce had no equity until 2020. One former manager who had a signed contract with the company that included ESOPs is currently suing the company for allegedly reneging on the agreement.

“GB is on every cap table … These days, if he isn’t on your cap table, other investors will ask you why not.”

Former Flutterwave CEO Aboyeji told Rest of World that he helped design the stock options program to reward early employees and advisors and approved some names to receive ESOPs. “I was made aware afterwards that the founders decided to do things differently, and some of the people on that list weren’t issued stock options after I left, but I don’t know why not,” he said.

Other former employees said that when they left, they were given three months to convert their stock options into full equity, but when they tried to sell their shares, they found their choices limited.

In March 2021, Flutterwave completed its series C round, led by U.S. hedge funds Avenir Growth Capital and Tiger Global. But the company also bought back equity from angel investors, former employees, and others who were leaving the company, according to six former employees. Former employees alleged that the company made low-ball offers for their shares — as low as $3.50 per share. A cap table spreadsheet — a list of investors’ shares in the company — seen by Rest of World showed that Flutterwave shares sold for around $20 during its series C round and were valued at $52.45 during its series D.

Former employees were also limited in whom they could sell to. In messages seen by Rest of World, when one employee asked the Flutterwave CEO if he could sell higher to a new investor, Agboola said he wouldn’t be able to get sign-off from the board. “As a company, we can’t just get someone on our cap table without board approval,” he explained to the employee. “Unless they will give us value as an investor, [the] board wouldn’t approve it.”

Instead, they were encouraged to sell to a company called Berrywood Capital, an early stage investment company. Two sources in the Nigerian investment community confirmed to Rest of World that Berrywood Capital is Agboola’s vehicle for investing in startups.

This has raised questions among investors of whether shares were purchased below their true value, which two investors who spoke to Rest of World referred to as a conflict of interest, also called self-dealing. “If they don’t disclose that the buyer of secondaries is an entity controlled by Agboola, it’s a problem,” one of the people said.

Agboola did not respond to a request for comment. But in an email to employees on April 20, reported by TechCrunch, he denied the allegations of impropriety and self-dealing. “The fact that the allegations of financial impropriety, conflict of interest and sexual harassment have been proved false or have already been reported, investigated and addressed by management matters less to me than the reality that these claims may have shaken your confidence in the company,” he told Flutterwave workers.

The accusations against Flutterwave and Agboola are significant not only because of the company’s scale and prominence in the Nigerian startup ecosystem but because Agboola is a serial investor in startups. As an angel and early stage investor, he has backed at least 25 other startups over the last two years, typically investing between $25,000 and $150,000 alongside major domestic and international VC players, including Tiger Global and Greycroft. His portfolio includes the stock trading app Bamboo, fintechs Mono and Sudo Africa, and media company Big Cabal Media, publisher of TechCabal, a Pan-African technology news outlet.

“GB is on every cap table,” said one former Flutterwave employee, who started his own company. “These days, if he isn’t on your cap table, other investors will ask you why not.”

Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is close-knit, and rumors of alleged mismanagement and misconduct at Flutterwave have spread widely through the community for the past few weeks. An acquisition deal being negotiated by Flutterwave and another startup is hanging in the balance as a result of the these reported allegations, as the dealmakers worry about a “doomsday scenario” where Flutterwave is unable to raise a series E round, said one person with knowledge of the discussions. “Most are just waiting to see what comes out next,” he said.

Some fear that the stories will confirm international investors’ prejudices against Africa’s technology sector, but others hope that the scandals could be a moment of reckoning for a sector where questionable management practices are far from uncommon.

“Telling these stories are actually important in how we grow our ecosystem into self sustainability,” Jason Njoku, CEO of IrokoTV, an African video streaming company, posted on Twitter. “Hot emerging market money [has] poured into Nigeria with zero checks & balances,” he added.

In March, 259,000 people tuned in to a Twitter Space that lasted seven hours, as tech workers highlighted their experience with bad management and abusive practices in response to an investigative report by TechCabal.

“I feel like we are in this phase of the tech ecosystem where our foundation needs to get stronger,” one Nigerian developer told Rest of World. “We have passed the flowery stage, and these are some of the things that have to happen, as employees at companies know they have some power.”


Abubakar Idris is a Rest of World reporter based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke from New York.

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Turkey’s reluctance to join sanctions against Russia - analyst

Apr 28 2022

http://ahval.co/en-140253

Turkey is reluctant to join the West in sanctioning Russia due to its financial ties with Moscow, which are becoming more vital because of its deteriorating economy, said associate professor ‪Burak Bilgehan Özpek of TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara.

But there is a “darker side” to the policy, Özpek said.

“Any comprehensive sanctions regime must consider the sanctions evasion route that runs through Ankara,” Özpek said, referring to sanctions imposed on Iran for its nuclear programme that were undercut by Turkey.

Measures against Iran were seen as a “window of opportunity” for Turkish politicians and bureaucrats, Özpek said in article published by the EU Observer website on Wednesday.

The one-man rule that emerged after a failed military coup in 2016 has “enabled cabinet members to conduct illegal activities without concern regarding oversight by state institutions and the judiciary,” he said.

“Coupled with the Turkish economy’s severe decline is why the international sanctions imposed are regarded as an opportunity for corrupt elites who perceive sanctions as a bargaining chip to make more money,” Özpek said.

A full reproduction of the article follows below:

Most Turks, according to the latest surveys of public opinion, view the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a challenge to Turkey's national security and want the government to remain neutral in this conflict.

Such a cautious position is the product of Turkey's financial ties with Russia, and its fragile economic situation.

This interdependence explains president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's reluctance to subscribe to U.S. and EU-backed Russia sanctions and is seeing support from Turkish society. There is, nevertheless, a darker side to this policy.

As it happened during the period when sanctions were initially levied against Iran, prior to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, international pressure over Iran was regarded as a window of opportunity by politicians and bureaucrats in Turkey.

Indeed, the Iranian regime's need for survival required mechanisms that would bypass legal and transparent international processes, and many in Turkey saw an opportunity to be a key country in this process, getting rich along the way.

December of 2013 marked a threshold in the history of modern Turkey.

Public prosecutors and police chiefs linked to the Gülen movement initiated a graft probe revealing illegal ties between cabinet members and Reza Zerrab, an Iranian businessman facilitating the transfer of money from Turkish to Iranian banks. Zerrab was laundering Iran's oil and natural gas money through shell company transaction account in Halkbank, owned by the Turkish state, alongside a complex network of businesses, banks, and front companies, in a case that came to be known as "the biggest sanctions evasion scheme in recent history".

In order to ensure continued operations, he was bribing cabinet members who would help him secure the operation from the intervention of the Turkish police.

The indictment later argued that Egemen Bağış, minister for EU affairs, Muammer Gülen, minister of the interior, and Zafer Çağlayan, minister of economy, all received bribes from Zerrab.

The graft probe was a milestone on Turkey's path to autocracy.


Erdoğan, prime minister in 2013, called the indictment a "judicial coup" plotted by the Gülen movement, aimed at subverting his government. This was an unexpected confrontation considering that Erdoğan and Gülen had been political allies against the secular army's tutelage after Erdoğan's (Justice and Development Party) AKP came to power in 2002.

It is safe to argue that cooperation between Erdoğan and Gülen catalysed the Gülenists to fully infiltrate Turkish state bureaucracy and function as a replacement for the secularist army and judiciary.

Nevertheless, these two factions had problems with sharing the power. Erdoğan believed that the graft probe was instrumentalised by the Gülen movement to overthrow the elected government.

In the following years, Erdoğan managed to survive on popular support he received, gradually cleansing the bureaucracy from Gülenists. Especially after the failed coup allegedly attempted by Gülenist soldiers in July 2016, Erdoğan has now established his full authority over the judiciary, leaving no autonomous institutions.

Such an autocratic turn has paved the ways for the AKP members to violate legal restrictions as long as they remain loyal to Erdoğan. Should sanctions imposed by the west on Iran continue, it should be expected, as was the case with Zerrab in 2013, that senior corrupt government members will see an opportunity to help Iran continue to do business by evading sanctions.

The extent to which corruption of this sort is prevalent can be seen from Sedat Peker, a well-known mafia leader and close ally of the Erdoğan government in the post failed-coup era, who released a widely-viewed series of confessions on YouTube.

In these, he accused Turkish cabinet members of being involved in drug smuggling, arms smuggling, gambling and corruption.

These confessions have demonstrated how judicial control over the executive body has completely disappeared in Turkey, underscoring the risk of sanctions related to the JCPOA evasion running through Ankara. Public prosecutors and judges are either corrupt, or have close ties with politicians — making it more likely than not, that such illegal activity could continue unimpeded.

This concerning picture implies that members of the government would be inclined to facilitate sanctions evasion for their own financial gain in the absence of autonomous bureaucratic institutions and an independent judiciary.

It is not surprising that we can pinpoint a correlation between the AKP ministers' cooperation with Zerrab to launder Iranian money and the military's decline in the Turkish politics. Less oversight from third party organisations traditionally more critical of the government allows corruption to run amok.

Similarly, the rise of Turkey's one-man rule after the failed coup has enabled cabinet members to conduct illegal activities without concern regarding oversight by state institutions and the judiciary, so long as they maintain allegiance to Turkey's strongman.

All of this, coupled with the Turkish economy's severe decline, is why the international sanctions imposed are regarded as an opportunity for corrupt elites who perceive sanctions as a bargaining chip to make more money.

Any comprehensive sanctions regime must consider the sanctions-evasion route that runs through Ankara.

Past experience shows that ignoring this runs the risk of effectively neutralising any significant financial impact of the sanctions regime currently in place against Iran, not to mention the message it sends to other sanctioned regimes, such as Russia, alongside corrupt politicians and businessmen who see a financial opportunity in strengthening rogue regimes at the expense of Western interests.

(The original version of the article can be found here.)

Energy’s Future Is Both Cleaner and Dirtier

Thursday, 28 April, 2022 - 

The green energy revolution is making greater progress than expected. Solar and wind power have seen exponential cost declines, and electric vehicles seem to be a market winner.

That’s all good news, but improving green energy is not the same as addressing climate change. There is good chance that even optimistic projections for green energy will come true — and carbon emissions will continue to increase.

That’s in part because of innovation not only in green energy but also in the fossil-fuel industry. The fracking revolution in the US has been a positive development, if only because gas is usually cleaner than coal. Nonetheless burning gas (and the fracking process itself) creates environmental problems, including carbon emissions. It is easy to imagine the US fracking revolution spreading to more countries, thereby boosting the use of natural gas. In the short run gas will substitute for the much dirtier coal, but over the longer term fracking is competing with greener forms of energy production.

The bottom line: If you are bullish on green innovation, perhaps you should be bullish on innovation in fossil fuels as well.

One notable feature of energy is that it is easy to use more of it. If energy were truly cheap, people would take more plane trips, build more robots, desalinate more water and terraform more of the earth’s surface. These are wonderful ambitions, but they might lead the world to use both more green energy and more carbon-intensive energy.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has made me less optimistic about people’s willingness to incur economic pain to bring about better energy outcomes. The prices of oil and gas have risen dramatically because of the war — yet not many countries seem to be looking to resume the use of nuclear power, which is a form of green energy. Germany is not overturning its previous decision to shut down its nuclear power plants, for example. And while France may extend its use of nuclear power, it is hard to see a major pro-nuclear trend.

A more common response to the war and its associated energy price hikes has been to insulate consumers from the effects of higher gas prices. Governor Gavin Newsom of California has proposed $11 billion in gasoline vouchers for drivers in the state, which is hardly a stronghold of climate denialism.

Overall, few politicians or voters (outside of oil- and gas-producing regions) seem delighted by higher prices for fossil fuels, though such price hikes might be required to diminish carbon emissions. Even Germany seems willing to continue as a major financier of Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine, with its atrocities against civilians. If this is true in a country still horrified by its fascist past, where the ideology of “never again” remains strong, then it is unlikely that arguments about the need for green energy will hold much sway.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund typifies the world we live in. The country has decided that the fund should divest from fossil-fuel assets. Yet most of the fund’s assets come from selling Norwegian fossil fuels to the rest of the world.

Again, it seems increasingly easy to imagine a world with wonderful green energy innovations and lots of carbon emissions — and people will praise the former to feel less bad about the latter.

Most likely, the world’s countries will develop their energy supplies in a sequential, rolling fashion. Japan developed economically before China, which in turn became industrial before Vietnam, and currently Vietnam is leading most of Africa. It could be that the world always has some growing countries that will want to use lots of fossil fuels, and a universal transition to solar power and good batteries could be distant.

Price pressures along the way could reinforce this basic logic. As green energy becomes more common, batteries may become more expensive, as they are based on a variety of scarce physical inputs. At the same time, the initial slack in demand for oil and gas, during a true green-energy transition, will make those resources very cheap. Is it such a sure bet that an industrializing Uganda will immediately and directly go the green energy route?

So there is reason to temper all the optimism about the green energy revolution. It’s all good news, but even if it’s all true, it doesn’t necessarily mean a better energy future is imminent.



Tyler Cowen
Bloomberg

War Forces Germany to Put G-7 Coal Phaseout Push on Hold

Birgit Jennen and Jessica Shankleman, Bloomberg News

Cooling towers emit vapor at the Niederaussem lignite fueled power station, operated by RWE AG, beyond a wind turbine in Bergheim Niederaussem, Germany, on Friday, April 8, 2022. Germany's Economy Minister Robert Habeck last week said the country has already cut its reliance on Russian coal by at least half in the past month as the European Union agreed to ban imports of the fuel from Russia. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government is backtracking from its Group of Seven agenda to push globally for a speedier exit from coal.

Steffen Hebestreit, the Chancellor’s chief spokesman, said Russia’s war in Ukraine cast doubt over the practicality of asking the world’s richest countries to end the use of coal. Germany is the current holder of the rotating presidency of the G-7 nations, which have taken the lead in pursuing sanctions against Russia.

Despite political pressure to end the use of the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal generation is expected to jump 9% from last year, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s driven by the economic recovery from the pandemic, while countries are also scrambling to find alternative sources to Russian fossil fuels. 

Japan and Germany, which have both banned nuclear power, have fewer options than others. And so in Germany, coal-fired power plants that were once decommissioned are now being considered for a second life. 

Germany’s “G-7 presidency is taking place in an international political situation which has clearly changed after Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its impact on energy supply,” said Hebestreit in response to questions on Wednesday. 

“It’s questionable as to whether this topic will be directly addressed in this acute phase where we are working to become more independent from oil and gas,” he said.

As G-7 leader, the German government had previously said that its priorities include efforts to accelerate the global phaseout of coal. Ministers circulated a draft proposal, calling on countries to halt coal-fired power plants by 2030, according to Japan’s Asahi newspaper on Tuesday. 

German officials presented the draft proposal to a preparatory meeting, ahead of an upcoming G-7 environment, climate and energy summit. But that prompted pushback from Japan’s government, which said it would continue to curb coal use at home, while also recognizing its energy security needs.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.