Angola

Zimbabwe has no money for elections

Apr 15th, 2013
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Zimbabwe has no money for elections

HARARE: Cash-strapped Zimbabwe is appealing for help to fund crunch presidential elections planned for later this year, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said on Monday.

“It’s self-evident that treasury does not have the capacity to fund elections,” Biti told parliament.

He said the country needed $132 million for the elections which veteran President Robert Mugabe’s party wants held as early as June.

However Biti said government would not borrow this money from local firms as it did for a March referendum on a new constitution which paved the way for the polls to be held.

“This ministry of finance has no intention to emasculate the economy for this event which will happen on one day. As far as we are concerned the international community must come to assist.”

Biti said apart from appealing for funding through the UN, the government recently wrote to South Africa and Angola to ask for loans.

He said all is not well with Zimbabwe’s economy, battling to recover from a decade-long downturn marked by galloping inflation which at one point peaked at 231 million per cent.

This has since stabilised and while the economy is growing, at five per cent last year, public finances remain in disarray.

“We are already under pressure. We are being suffocated even before we include the elections of 2013,” Biti said.

He said the government received no revenue from diamond mines in January and February and only $5 million in March against a target of $15 million.

“If there was honesty from diamond revenue we would not be asking for money from anyone for the elections,” the minister said. Tsvangirai’s camp has accused Mugabe’s ZANU-PF of pocketing diamond revenues.

“We essentially raped the economy for the referendum,” Biti said adding that the funds borrowed for the elections could have been lent to companies to increase production.

Zimbabwe is expected to hold elections later this year at the expiry of the power-sharing government formed four years ago by Mugabe and long-time rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

There is no agreement yet on the date of the elections with Mugabe targeting elections before June 29, while Tsvangirai wants the elections later in the year to allow for reforms to ensure a fair vote.

Source: MOLE

African economies to see robust growth

Oct 9th, 2012
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African economies to see robust growth

JOHANNESBURG: Sub-Saharan Africa is poised to enjoy the type of high growth rates not seen outside Asia in the next few years, the International Monetary Fund said Monday, as the region's unbridled economic rise continues.
The IMF predicted the region's economy would grow at 5.0 per cent in 2012 and 5.7 in 2013, a little slower than expected this year, but faster than expected next year.
"Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to continue growing strongly in the near term," the Fund said in its regular economic outlook.
Ghana and the Ivory Coast are expected to top the region's growth this year, with growth of over eight per cent.
Oil producers Nigeria, Angola and Gabon will also see strong growth.
The outlook for the rest of the region is also rosy, raising hopes that Africa may be on the verge of experiencing the type of growth that has transformed Latin America and South East Asia in recent decades.
"Economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa has expanded by more than five per cent in each of the past three years -- continuing a decade-long run of strong performance that was only briefly interrupted by the global downturn in 2009," the IMF said.
But there were a flew blots on an otherwise positive landscape.
Africa's leading economy South Africa is likely to experience weak growth of around 2.6 per cent this year, thanks in part to spillovers from Europe's debt crisis.
The IMF predicted South Africa's economy would grow 3.0 per cent next year.
The IMF also warned that African nations must use the prolonged boom to help create a nest-egg for any trouble ahead.
And Sub-Saharan Africa still has a long way to reach its potential. Today it accounts for just 2.5 per cent of world GDP -- or 1.3 per cent excluding South Africa and Nigeria.

Source: MOLE

Olimpik 2012 : France Kejutkan Juara Bertahan

Jul 29th, 2012
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LONDON, 2012 – France melakukan kejutan terbesar pada hari pertama acara Bola Baling Wanita dengan menewaskan juara bertahan Norway dengan keputusan 24-23 dalam Kumpulan B peringkat kelayakan di Copper Box.

 

Norway yang merupakan Juara Dunia, Juara Olimpik dan Juara Eropah terpaksa berhempas pulas menentang France yang bermula dengan cemerlang dengan mendahului 6-1. Walaubagaimanapun, pasukan dari Scandinavia itu kembali merapatkan jurang kepada 9-10 setelah 22 minit separuh masa kedua bermula.

 

France kembali menjarakkan diri dengan menjaringkan empat gol berturut-turut sehingga berada dihadapan seketika dengan jaringan 17-12 mengakibatkan pasukan Norway hilang tumpuan untuk kembali mencari rentak permainan.

 

Sehingga tiupan wisel ditiup, akhirnya pasukan France berjaya menumpaskan Norway dengan jurang keputusan yang cukup rapat 24-23.

 

Sebelum itu, juara tiga kali Olimpik acara Bola Baling Wanita, Denmark memulakan langkah kanan dengan menewaskan Sweeden dengan keputusan 21-18. Keputusan lain turut membabitkan Korea Selatan menumpaskan Sepanyol dengan keputusan 31-27 dalam Kumpulan A.

 

Rusia turut menewaskan Angola dengan keputusan 30-27, Brazil pula menewaskan Croatia 24-23 manakala pasukan tuan rumah Great Britain terpaksa tunduk kepada Montenegro dengan keputusan 31-19.

Angola celebrates 10 years of end to civil war

Apr 3rd, 2012
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Angola celebrates 10 years of end to civil war

LUANDA, April 3, 2012 (AFP) – Angola on Wednesday celebrates 10 years of peace after a devastating civil war, with parades and concerts hailing President Jose Eduardo dos Santos for ushering in an oil-fueled economic boom.

 

Dos Santos will unveil a peace monument in the eastern town of capital of Luena, near the site where Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle on February 22, 2002.

 

Savimbi’s death paved the way to a peace deal signed in the capital Luanda on April 4, 2002, ending the 27-year civil conflict that erupted soon after independence from Portugal in 1975.

 

But despite the parades and the peace monument tensions remain, with not everyone content at the dominance of Dos Santos.

 

The president, in power for 32 years, not only dominates the political sphere but presides over a vast network of patronage, according to former prime minister Marcolino Moco.

 

“In Angola the president is very powerful. He changed the law of presidential elections in a way that he doesn’t need to be elected directly,” Moco said.

 

“For the international community it is very important to see that in Angola things aren’t good,” he said. “I am very concerned with the situation of human rights and problems of corruption in Angola.”

 

Angola is well used to international influence. Cold war powers turned the country into a proxy battle that pitted the then-communist MPLA-government against Unita and the Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA).

 

Cuba and the Soviet Union supported the MPLA, while the United States and apartheid South Africa assisted the rebels.

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, international pressure led to a peace agreement in 1991. Dos Santos won the first round of a 1992 election, but Savimbi rejected the result and pulled Angola back into war.

 

The conflict left an estimated 500,000 dead and displaced four million others. Roads, bridges, farms and entire towns were destroyed.

 

This legacy is still visible, even as Angola emerged from the ashes of war as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

 

Nearly 2.4 million people, almost a fifth of the population, still live in areas riddled with landmines, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

 

Angola is running behind on pledges to destroy all the landmines, and last month applied for an extension to its deadline under the Ottawa Treaty to complete de-mining by 2013.

 

“Another legacy of the war is a lack of efficient public policies, which weren’t a priority during the conflict,” said Markus Weimer, Angola specialist at the Chatham House think-tank in London.

 

Basic services are still trailing and education levels are very low because a whole generation of Angolans didn’t study during the war, he told AFP.

 

Youth and opposition groups held several protests over the past year to demand reforms, but police quickly broke up the demonstrations. Still, they marked a rare sign of dissent under a government that allows none.

 

“You could say there’s a mental block against any opposing debate,” Angolan sociologist Joao Nzatuzola said.

 

In the the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda, a separatist uprising still rumbles.

 

But any organised opposition has been getting weaker. As a political party, Unita was crushed in the last elections in 2008, with Dos Santos’s MPLA taking an 80 percent majority.

 

New elections are expected later this year, despite worries about the organisation of the polls, only the third since 1975.

 

“In a normal country the election would have been delayed. With five months to go, we have no infrastructure and an illegal board,” said Horacio Junjuvili, a Unita member of the electoral commission.

 

Suzana Ingles, formerly a top official in the MPLA women’s wing, has sparked an outcry since her appointment as head of the commission. Unita argues she doesn’t meet the legal requirements for the job.

 

“My advice to the opposition is I think they should stop” from taking part in the elections, Moco said.

 

“They should speak to the president and say there’s a lot that needs to be changed.”

Source: MOLE

Chinese village exports cheap labour

Feb 7th, 2012
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Chinese village exports cheap labour

LUJIAZHUANG: Xie Guolu proudly shows off the two-storey home he is having built in this small Chinese village, paid for by money his son earns thousands of kilometres away in Algeria.

 

The 63-year-old’s son is one of more than 300 people in the village — about three hours from Beijing by road — who work in sometimes unstable countries, lured by better pay and firm contracts.

 

“In China, it’s difficult to get paid regularly. If, for example, work on the construction site stops, we don’t get any more money. So if he can sign a contract abroad, my son will do it,” Xie said.

 

The dangers faced by migrant workers abroad came under the spotlight at the end of last month when dozens of Chinese labourers were kidnapped in Egypt and Sudan.

 

While those captured in Egypt were subsequently released, 29 workers were still being held in southern Sudan, where the body of another missing Chinese worker had also been found, according to China’s state media.

 

But the risks have not deterred the residents of Lujiazhuang — a village where working-age men are in short supply and the work of tending the arid fields and raising pigs and poultry mostly falls to women and the elderly.

 

Village chief Guo Zhanyong said Lujiazhuang had been sending its young men abroad since the 1980s, when a large group of workers went to Sudan. It has a reputation for sending an unusually large number of its people overseas.

 

“Out of fewer than 3,100 inhabitants, we have more than 300 abroad. They are scattered in most European countries, but also in Singapore, Angola, Congo, the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius,” said Gu.

 

Some construction workers toil away around 10 hours a day, 30 days a month, and with few opportunities to spend their hard-earned cash they send it back to the village where plush new homes are being built with the proceeds.

 

Most residents in Lujiazhuang have relatives working overseas.

 

They earn between $8,000 and $11,000 annually, well over the average annual salary for construction workers in big cities such as Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, which was 40,500 yuan ($6,400) last year.

 

Jing Liying, another villager in her forties, says her husband is in Cameroon and her two sons in Singapore.

 

“I live with my daughter-in-law,” she said. “The recruiters come here as they know people here are ready to leave. They take those who are under 45,” she added.

 

Officially, more than 810,000 Chinese people currently work abroad, according to the commerce ministry, the majority on short-term contracts of one or two years.

 

In 2011 alone, 452,000 workers went overseas — including 243,000 people employed by Chinese firms — and few of these have any substantial contact with locals.

 

Africa, where China has emerged as a major funder of infrastructure projects, is growing particularly attractive for migrant workers seeking to earn good money.

 

But the work does not go without its share of risks, as was illustrated last week by the abduction of the road-builders in Sudan and the technicians and engineers working for a military-owned cement factory in Egypt.

 

Last year a dozen workers from here were involved in the mass evacuation of 36,000 Chinese nationals from Libya as civil war raged.

 

Gao Baohu, for his part, has just returned from three years in Singapore.

 

“Our firm arranged accommodation for us. Ten of us would sleep on bunk beds in a room, and we had our food delivered or would make it ourselves,” he said, adding he was able to expand his house in China thanks to his earnings.

 

“We often worked overtime, from eight in the morning to around 10 or 11 at night, with an hour for lunch. On Sundays, we finished at five in the afternoon.”

 

Wang Peng, a carpenter, earned 60,000 to 70,000 yuan a year between 2002 and 2005 in South Korea, but now hopes to be able to earn almost as much at home.

 

With the gap in earnings shrinking, the numbers working overseas may start to decline. “Salaries are on the rise in China,” said Wang. “So it’s becoming less interesting to go abroad.”

Source: MOLE

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