Africa – Gondaronline.com

How the Saudi purge will affect detained billionaires’ assets in Africa?

By SHEIKH SHAKEDOWN

Men walk past posters depicting of Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 9, 2017. — Anti-corruption crackdown overseen by crown prince Mohammed bin Salam (Reuters/Faisal Al Nasser)

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The jitters surrounding the Saudi purge continue to reverberate both in Africa and across the world with companies and family holdings wondering how the shakedown would impact their businesses, assets, and long-term investments.

In early November, more than 200 people including princes, prominent businessmen, and former government officials were arrested in what officials said was a wide-ranging anti-corruption probe. More than 1,500 bank accounts of suspects were also frozen (paywall) according to the Financial Times, as the government sought to tackle “systematic corruption” and reclaim embezzled funds.

The unprecedented move is also seen as crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to tighten his grip on power, even as he marshals the kingdom to stem its dependence on oil and encourage foreign investment.

At least two billionaire businessmen detained in the corruption investigation have extensive investments across Africa. One of them is prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, chairman of the Kingdom Holdings, which has sizable stakes in Twitter, Citigroup, and ride-sharing firm Lyft. The other is Mohammad al-Amoudi, son of a Saudi father and an Ethiopian mother, and one of the richest black people in the world. Together, Talal and al-Amoudi own investments across Africa in hospitality, agriculture, cement production, gold mining, real estate, and oil production.

The two businessmen’s venture into Africa preceded the wealthy Gulf nations’ recent interest in financing projects in African markets. Buoyed by fast economic growth, improving governance, and growing demographic and consumer trends, more Gulf money has been flowinginto the continent in the last decade—not only to North Africa but also in sub-Saharan Africa.

Between 2005 and 2014, Gulf firms provided (pdf) at least $9.3 billion in foreign direct investments in sub-Saharan Africa alone, according to a 2015 Economist Intelligence Unit report. The East Africa region was the main draw for Gulf investors, lured by the rise of Islamic banking, halal tourism, retail in Kenya, manufacturing in Ethiopia, and the education sector in Uganda.

For al-Amoudi, Ethiopia became a source of food and arable land, as escalating food consumption and water scarcity presented a challenge for Saudi policymakers. Through his Saudi Star Agricultural Development, al-Amoudi invested in growing wheat, rice, and barley in 0.5 million hectares of land in the Gambella province in Ethiopia. The project has not been without its controversy with the US-based think tank Oakland Institute saying that communities were forcibly relocated, forests cleared, and farmland lost.

FILE PHOTO: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, attends the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 24, 2017. — Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Reuters/Hamad I Mohammed)

But his close relationship with the ruling party, which goes back to the 1990’s, safeguards his business interests says Henok Gabisa, a visiting academic fellow at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. Besides agriculture, the Saudi-Ethiopian businessman is Ethiopia’s single biggest foreign investor and owns Midroc Gold, the country’s largest miner that brings in much-needed foreign currency. A WikiLeaks diplomatic cable from 2008 noted how “nearly every enterprise of significant monetary or strategic value privatized since 1994 has passed from the ownership of the government of Ethiopia to one of al-Amoudi’s companies.”

“Ethiopian ruling elites had no trouble doing business with al-Amoudi even when the investment process from its soup to nuts was infected with corruption and bribery,” Gabisa said. “It looked like they need al-Amoudi more than they hate the corruption.”

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal speaks during an interview with Reuters at his office in Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, May 6, 2013. A potential split-up of the operations of U.S. bank Citigroup Inc is now "completely dead," Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the bank's largest individual shareholder said in an interview on Monday. — Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.(Reuters/Faisal Al Nasser)

But the 71-year old al-Amoudi’s arrest could be cheered on in Egypt says Adel Abdel Ghafar, a fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. This is because of his $88 million pledge to finance the Renaissance Dam, which upon completion will be the largest dam in Africa. And even though the dam will increase the hydroelectric power in Ethiopia, it will significantly reduce Egypt’s share of the Nile water—a matter that is already controversial.

Yet Egypt also finds itself tangled into the Saudi purge given Alwaleed bin Talal’s investments in the north African nation. Talal owns about 40 hotels and resorts in Egypt, in addition to 18 others that are still under construction, according to Reuters. In August, he also promised to inject $800 million to expand the Four Seasons resort in Sharm el-Sheikh, in partnership with Talaat Moustafa Holding Group (TMG). After his arrest, TMG denied that Talal, who also owns a chain of hotels in Kenya, was a company shareholder or had invested in any of its subsidiaries.

But even as family groups and businessmen look for ways to protecttheir assets abroad from the kingdom’s reach, Abdel Ghafar says Egyptian authorities will likely take the lead of the Saudi government. “If there are confiscations to be had, the Egyptian government is likely to follow through.”

Assertive reach

Besides the economic and financial investments, observers say we should also watch out for how the political assertiveness in Riyadh will manifest itself in African capitals. Along with the United Arab Emirates, the two nations have already been building ports and military bases along the Horn of Africa in order to expand their influence and tighten the noose on Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is happening as the Turks, Chinese, and the Americans all step up their engagement in the region.

“What you do see and what you will continue to see in the next couple of years is continuous interference as it pertains by what they [Saudis] perceive to be their long-term strategic interests,” says Harry Verhoeven, who teaches at the school of foreign service at Georgetown University in Qatar.

But as the kingdom’s multi-billion-dollar wealth fund looks to boost returns, Gabisa says that Saudis could use the opportunity for investment as a leverage against African nations. Countries like Kenya are in negotiations to export skilled and semi-skilled workers like nurses and technicians to the kingdom. In the long run, Gabisa said, this allows Saudis “to possess a juggernaut of political and economic leverage and influence over African nations.”

How the Saudi purge will affect detained billionaires’ assets in Africa?

By SHEIKH SHAKEDOWN

WRITTEN BY

Abdi Latif Dahir

Quartz Africa

Assertive reach

DONALD TRUMP’S AFRICA!

The New Yorker

By Alexis Okeowo

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provides support to clinics like the one above, in South Africa. President Trump’s team has questioned whether such programs should continue.PHOTOGRAPH BY FOTO24 / GALLO IMAGES / GETTY

The Trump Administration’s budget proposal for next year includes drastic cuts to a myriad of social services and programs, to environmental protection, education, public housing, and the arts and science. But there is something else buried under all of those line items: a call to completely eliminate the African Development Foundation, a government agency that gives grants worth thousands of dollars, in the form of seed capital and technical support, to community enterprises and small businesses on the African continent.

The A.D.F. functions as a kind of alternative to the aid money that the United States regularly provides to several governments in Africa; it was designed to encourage self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship, and it focusses on ventures by farmers, women, and young people, particularly those in post-conflict communities. Last year, it invested just more than fifty million dollars in five hundred active businesses, including agriculture co-operatives and solar-energy enterprises, which in turn reportedly generated new economic activity worth eighty million dollars. (The agency’s Twitter account has been valiantly tweetingout the results of its work in recent days.) The A.D.F.’s reach has been meaningful, though modest. But its proposed termination reflects a deeper apathy, and even belligerence, about Africa from President Trump’s Administration, whose members have publicly wondered what the United States is doing on the continent, and why it is interested in parts of it at all.

So far, the Trump Administration’s prevailing mood toward much of the world, including Africa, has been one of xenophobia and carelessness. Three of the six Muslim-majority countries named in Trump’s executive order barring people from the United States—Somalia, Sudan, and Libya—are in Africa. (The order is on hold pending court challenges.) The Administration is also expected to soon change the parameters of U.S. military operations in Somalia, by removing constraints on special-operations airstrikes and other actions directed at the terrorist group al-Shabaab—rules that were put in place to limit civilian deaths. The University of Southern California hosts an annual summit on trade in Africa, meant to bring together representatives of business and government interests on the continent and in the United States. This year, there were no Africans present, because the State Department did not grant visas to any of the roughly sixty African delegates who were invited. The head of the African Union has criticized the travel ban, saying, “The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries.” Otherwise, African leaders have mostly refrained from offering public appraisals of the current President. Perhaps they consider it wiser to stay out of the spotlight as Trump goes on tirades against foes like Mexico and China.

But if questions posed earlier this year by the Trump transition team to the State Department regarding Africa are any indication, ignorance may be just as harmful as blustery tweets and threats at post-election rallies, if not more so. As the Times, which got a copy of the questions, summed it up, the incoming President’s team wondered why the United States was “even bothering to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria,” and why it hadn’t yet defeated al-Shabaab. It asked about doing away with assistance for Uganda’s hunt of the vicious, Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army, which is still rampaging through central Africa, since the “LRA has never attacked U.S. interests.” It also asked if the President’s Emergency Plan for aids Relief (pepfar), a program started by former President George W. Bush which helps fight H.I.V./aids and tuberculosis on the continent, was a “massive, international entitlement program”—welfare for Africans, in other words. The questions revealed a stunning lack of knowledge about the humanitarian impulses behind the most important operations and programs on the continent, including the most successful, like pepfar, and the longest running, such as the hunt to capture Kony. There were legitimate points of inquiry, such as whether the aid given to some African countries disappears into corrupt pockets—a question that could, in theory, lead to a serious discussion about whether it is more efficient to focus on investment than on assistance. But there was no sign that this Administration will capitalize on that insight. The tone of the questions, judging from press reports, appears to have been overwhelmingly confrontational and dismissive, and even flippant.

The United States has slowly become more and more irrelevant to Africa’s economic progress. Besides foreign aid, America’s main concern in the region has been bolstering its war on Al Qaeda- and ISIS-affiliated militant groups. Meanwhile, its competitors, mainly China, have seized enormously profitable investment opportunities throughout the continent, and maintained beneficial relationships with African governments. Often enough, those ties involve China looking the other way when it comes to human-rights concerns, while making aggressive, ethically nebulous deals. “How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa?” the transition team asked. “Are we losing out to the Chinese?” The answer to the second question is a resounding yes. Based on the queries about China, observers have speculated that the Trump Administration may also look toward investing in Africa. But retooling America’s approach to the continent requires not only business savvy but also the foresight to recognize that Africa is not simply a destination for constant aid—and never really has been.

Finally, Africa gets its own web address with launch of .africa

Africa

People attend a computer training course, as part of the 'Afrique Innovation, reinventer les medias

The African Union hopes .africa will create a unique online identity for the continent

Africa now has the unique web address .africa, equivalent to the more familiar .com, following its official launch by the African Union.

AU commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma hailed its creation as the moment when Africa “got [its] own digital identity”.

The AU says the .africa domain name will “bring the continent together as an internet community”.

Addresses can now reflect a company’s interest in the whole of Africa.

For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

Icann, the body that establishes these addresses known as generic Top-Level Domains, approved the move, after lobbying by the AU.

The campaign was spearheaded by a South African company ZA Central Registry (ZACR), which will now be responsible for registering .africa names.

ZACR’s boss Lucky Masilela said that .africa addresses could cost as little as $18 (£15), AFP news agency quotes him as saying, and registration will start in July.

Other domain names recently created by Icann, include .fun, .phone and .hair.

What Africa Would Look Like If It Were Not Colonized?

Africa, Uncolonized: A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent

What if the Black Plague had killed off almost all Europeans? Then the Reconquista never happens. Spain and Portugal don’t kickstart Europe’s colonization of other continents. And this is what Africa might have looked like.

The map – upside down, to skew our traditional eurocentric point of view – shows an Africa dominated by Islamic states, and native kingdoms and federations. All have at least some basis in history, linguistics or ethnography. None of their borders is concurrent with any of the straight lines imposed on the continent by European powers, during the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and in the subsequent Scramble for Africa. By 1914, Europeans controlled 90% of Africa’s land mass. Only the Abyssinian Empire (modern-day Ethiopia) and Liberia (founded in 1847 as a haven for freed African-American slaves) remained independent.

This map is the result of an entirely different course of history. The continent depicted here isn’t even called Africa [1] but Alkebu-Lan, supposedly Arabic for ‘Land of the Blacks’ [2]. That name is sometimes used by those who reject even the name ‘Africa’ as a European imposition. It is therefore an ideal title for this thought experiment by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. Essentially, it formulates a cartographic answer to the question: What would Africa have looked like if Europe hadn’t become a colonizing power?

To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline, over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between 30 and 60% of Europe’s population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach pre-Plague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more catastrophic extermination – one from which it could not recover?

Allohistorical Africa, seen from our North-up perspective. The continent’s superstates (at least size-wise): Al-Maghrib, Al-Misr, Songhai, Ethiopia, Kongo and Katanga.

European colonies in Africa in ‘our’ 1913. Blue: France, pink: Britain, light green: Germany, dark green: Italy, light purple: Spain, dark purple: Portugal, yellow: Belgium, white: independent. Lines reflect current borders.

Cyon borrowed this counterfactual hypothesis from The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book, first published in 2002, explores how the depopulation of Europe would have altered world history. Robinson speculates that Europe would have been colonized by Muslims from the 14th century onwards, and that the 20th century would see a world war between a sprawling Muslim alliance on the one side, and the Chinese empire and the Indian and native American federations on the other.

Cyon focuses on Africa – or rather, Alkebu-Lan – which in his version of events doesn’t suffer the ignomy and injustice of the European slave trade and subsequent colonization. In our timeline, Europe’s domination of Africa obscured the latter continent’s rich history and many cultural achievements. On the map of Cyon’s Africa, a many-splendored landscape of nations and empires, all native to the continent itself, gives the lie to the 19th- and 20th-century European presumption that Africa merely was a ‘dark continent’ to be enlightened, or a ‘blank page’ for someone else to write upon.

Basing himself on Unesco’s General History of Africa, Cyon built his map around historical empires, linguistic regions and natural boundaries. His snapshot is taken in 1844 (or 1260 Anno Hegirae), also the date of a map of tribal and political units in Unesco’s multi-volume General History.

Al-Andalus, in this timeline still a dependency of Al-Maghrib; and the Emirate of Sicily to the left of the map.

Zooming in on the northern (bottom) part of the map, we see an ironic reversal of the present situation: in our timeline, Spain is still holding on to Ceuta, Melilla and other plazas de soberania in Northern Africa. In Cyon’s world, most of the Iberian peninsula still called Al-Andalus, and is an overseas part of Al-Maghrib, a counterfactual Moroccan superstate covering a huge swathe of northwestern Africa. Sicily, which we consider to be part of Europe, is colored in as African, and goes by the name of Siqilliyya Imārat (Emirate of Sicily).

The Arabic is no accident. Absent the European imprint, Islam has left an even more visible mark on large swathes of North, West and East Africa than it has today. Numerous states carry the nomenclature Sultānat, Khilāfator Imārat. The difference between a Caliphate, Sultanate and Emirate?

A Caliph claims supreme religious and political leadership as the successor (caliph) to Muhammad, ideally over all Muslims. I spot two Caliphates on the map: Hafsid (centered on Tunis, but much larger than Tunisia), and Sokoto in West Africa (nowadays: northwest Nigeria).

Sokoto, Dahomey, Benin and other states in country-rich West Africa.

A Sultan is an independent Islamic ruler who does not claim spiritual leadership. Five states in the greater Somalia region are Sultanates, for example: Majerteen, Hiraab, Geledi, Adāl and Warsangele. Others include Az-Zarqa (in present-day Sudan), Misr (Egypt, but also virtually all of today’s Israel), and Tarābulus (capital: Tripoli, in our Libya).

An Emir is a prince or a governor of a province, implying some suzerainity to a higher power. There’s a cluster of them in West Africa: Trarza, Tagant, Brakna, all south of Al-Maghrib. But they are elsewhere too: Kano and Katsina, just north of Sokoto.

Islam of course did not originate in Africa, and some would claim that its dominance of large areas of Africa, at the expense of pre-existing belief systems, is as much an example of foreign cultural imperialism as the spread of Western religions and languages is in our day. But that is material for another thought experiment. This one aims to filter out the European influence.

Neither European nor Arab influence is in evidence in the southern part of Africa – although some toponyms relate directly to states in our timeline: BaTswana is Botswana, Wene wa Kongo refers to the two countries bearing that name. Umoja wa Falme za Katanga is echoed in the name of the DR Congo’s giant inland province, Katanga. Rundi, Banyarwanda and Buganda, squeezed in between the Great Lakes, are alternative versions of ‘our’ Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.

Some familiar-sounding names around the Great Lakes.

There is an interesting parallel to the Africa/Alkebu-Lan dichotomy in the toponymic ebb and flow of Congo and Zaïre as names for the former Belgian colony at the center of the continent. Congo, denoting both the stream and the two countries on either of its lower banks [4], derives from 16th- and 17th-century Bantu kingdoms such as Esikongo, Manikongo and Kakongo near the mouth of the river.

The name was taken up by European cartographers and the territory it covered eventually reached deep inland. But because of its long association with colonialism, and also to fix his own imprint on the country, Congo’s dictator Mobutu in 1971 changed the name of the country and the stream to Zaïre. The name-change was part of a campaign for local authenticity which also entailed the Africanisation of the names of persons and cities [5], and the introduction of the abacos [6] – a local alternative to European formal and businesswear.

Curiously for a campaign trying to rid the country of European influences, the name Zaïre actually was a Portuguese corruption of Nzadi o Nzere, a local term meaning ‘River that Swallows Rivers’. Zaïre was the Portuguese name for the Congo stream in the 16th and 17th centuries, but gradually lost ground to Congo before being picked up again by Mobutu.

After the ouster and death of Mobutu, the country reverted to its former name, but chose the predicate Democratic Republic to distinguish itself from the Republic of Congo across the eponymous river.

Kongo – a coastal superstate in the alternative timeline.

This particular tug of war is emblematic for the symbolism attached to place names, especially in Africa, where many either refer to a precolonial past (e.g. Ghana and Benin, named after ancient kingdoms), represent the vestiges of the colonial era (e.g. Lüderitz, in Namibia), or attempt to build a postcolonial consensus (e.g. Tanzania, a portmanteau name for Tanganyika and Zanzibar).

By taking the colonial trauma out of the equation, this map offers a uniquely a-colonial perspective on the continent, whether it is called Africa or Alkebu-Lan.

Map of Alkebu-Lan and excerpts thereof reproduced by kind permission of Nikolaj Cyon. See it in full resolution on this page of his website. Map of Africa in 1913 by Eric Gaba (Wikimedia Commons User: Sting), found here on Wikimedia Commons.

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Strange Maps #688

[1] A name popularized by the Romans. It is of uncertain origin, possibly meaning ‘sunny’, ‘dusty’ or ‘cave-y’.

[2] The origin and meaning of the toponym are disputed. The Arabic for ‘Land of the Blacks’ would be Bilad as-Sudan, which is how the present-day country of Sudan got its name.Other translations offered for Alkebu-Lan (also rendered as Al-Kebulan or Alkebulan) are ‘Garden of Life’, ‘Cradle of Life’, or simply ‘the Motherland’. Although supposedly of ancient origin, the term was popularized by the academic Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan (b. 1918). The term is not a 20th-century invention, however. Its first traceable use is in La Iberiada (1813), an epic poem from 1813 by Ramón Valvidares y Longo. In the index, where the origin of ‘Africa’ is explained, it reads: “Han dado las naciones á este pais diversos nombres, llamándole Ephrikia los Turcos, Alkebulan los Arabes, Besecath los Indios, y los pueblos del territorio Iphrikia ó Aphrikia: los Griegos, en fin, le apellidaron Libia, y despues Africa, cuyo nombre han adoptado los Españoles, Italianos, Latinos, Ingleses y algunos otros pueblos de la Europa”.

[3] A.k.a. the Plague, a very contagious and highly deadly disease caused by Yersinia pestis. That bacterium infested the fleas that lived on the rats coming over from Crimea to Europe on Genoese merchant ships.

[4] In fact, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, capitals of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo respectively, are positioned across from each other on the banks of the Congo River – the only example in the world of two national capitals adjacent to each other.

[5] The ‘founder-president’ himself changed his name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga. The capital Léopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, after an ancient village on the same site.

[6] Despite the African-sounding name, abacos is an acronym of à bas costumes, or: ‘Down with (Western) suits’.

Why do Western states used maps that shrink the real size of Africa?

What’s the real size of Africa? How Western states used maps to downplay size of continent

By Sophie Morlin-Yron

(CNN)On a typical world map, Canada is a vast nation.

Home to six time zones, its endless plains spread from ocean to ocean, dominating great swathes of the northern half of the globe.

But, in reality, three Canadas would comfortably fit inside Africa.

Our world map is wildly misleading.

It’s all down to the European cartographer Geert de Kremer, better known as Mercator, and his 16th century map projection.

While a convenient way to chart the world, the map distorts the true size of countries.

“Somehow this map projection came to be used on most world maps, especially those produced for classrooms since the beginning of the 1900s,” says Menno-Jan Kraak, president of the International Cartographic Association and professor of cartography at the University of Twente, Netherlands.

“Most of us have grown up with this world image.”

Made for captains

The 1569 Mercator projection was made for navigating the seas — drawing the meridians and parallels as straight lines that cross at right angles helped sailors to navigate some of the their first treacherous voyages around the world.

Mercator initially made globes. Later transferring his map from a three-dimensional curved surface to a flat sheet of paper was problematic. Taking the equator as the logical map center left big, confusing gaps near the poles.

Mercator’s solution was to stretch out the northern and southern extremities of the globe to fill those gaps, producing an elegant and usable map.

While a revolutionary tool for captains and explorers, the projection distorts the relative size of the continents, to the advantage of the West.

The repercussions of this are still being felt today.

A map made by Europe for Europe

On the Mercator map, Africa — sitting on the equator, reasonably undistorted — is left looking much smaller than it really is.

But Canada, Russia, the United States and Europe are greatly enlarged.

The distortion is largest near the poles: Greenland, which looks about the same size as the whole of Africa on the Mercator, is a classic example. In truth, it is no bigger than the Democratic Republic of Congo.

That European and North American countries are enlarged is no accident. This system provided more space for Western cartographers to mark towns, cities, roads etc in their part of the world, Kraak says.

“If you would take a map projection with equal areas then there is almost no space on the map to display all [these details].”

There was, of course, much to map in Africa, too, but that mattered less to the cartographers up north, he adds.

A political tool?

One of the dangers of the Mercator map is that it can make enlarged countries seem unnaturally powerful and intimidating.

“The term ‘power of representation and representation of power’ sums up quite well how maps and the rise of the Western nation-state system — and with that, empire and colonialism — are linked,” says Marianne Franklin, professor of Global Media and Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Was subsequent European imperialism perhaps spurred on by a map projection that reinforced the notions of self-importance held by those nations?

“The world maps that prevail today have been embedded in Western imaginations since the British empire. They continue (to prevail) despite many challenges to their fairness and accuracy because they underpin the ongoing Anglo-Euro-American presumption that the world belongs to them, and pivots around these geo-cultural axes,” Franklin says.

In more recent times, maps have been used for propaganda, adds Kraak.

Take Russia, for example.

“If you take the Mercator projection, where Russia looks huge, give it a bright red color and then compare it to the rest of Europe, you see how dangerous it can look,” says Kraak.

No perfect map

Chart of the world as per Mercator's projection, circa 1798, with the most recent discoveries.

Chart of the world as per Mercator’s projection, circa 1798, with the most recent discoveries.

Sadly, there is no such thing as a perfect map. Because the earth is a sphere — more of a potato-shape, in fact — it is impossible to map it on a flat surface without errors in proportion, explains Kraak.

Some schools have begun to use a number of alternative projections. In the US and Germany, for example, maps based on the so-called Winkel Tripel projection, which has a smaller skewness, started to replace the Mercator from the 1920s until the 1980s.

But it has never achieved the dominance of the Mercator.

A digital boost

The digital revolution has further strengthened the Mercator’s dominance.

Today the Mercator projection is being used as a template at Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and Bing, says Kraak.

From guiding 16th century explorers on the high seas to helping people find Pokemons on their smartphones, Mercator’s work continues to influence how people see the world centuries after his death.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy on Africa is likely to be: ‘Where’s that?’

By Peter Vale Professor of Humanities and the Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg

University of Johannesburg

US President elect Donald Trump greets supporters on election night in New York. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Africa is likely to slide down the list of foreign policy priorities of a Donald Trump administration. This is because America’s foreign policy is determined by both domestic and foreign issues.

When it comes to domestic factors Trump is not going to be open to lobbying by the African diaspora in the US which has, historically, always played an important role in pushing African policy and keeping the continent on the domestic agenda. But this constituency hasn’t helpedTrump at all in this election so there’s no need for any payback. And I think that the kind of visibility Africa had is also going to fall in social movements and society in general in the US.

Trump is also unlikely to have any tolerance for the idea that the African diaspora is part of the “sixth region” of Africa. The African Union recognises people of African decent who live outside the continent as the sixth region, in addition to southern, eastern, central, western and northern Africa.

This isn’t going to be something that is of much concern to the new president-elect.

In addition, I think that he is going to be intolerant and disinterested in issues around the domestic politics of African countries. That is unless – as he was very clear in his acceptance speech – they strongly impinge on American national interests.

For example, I don’t think he is going to be very interested in what is happening in Somalia or Ethiopia or in other parts of Africa where there may be conflict. Trump hasn’t got a great capacity for detail, so at best he will live by macro assessments.

The other break with tradition is that it’s impossible to predict who he will chose as his assistant-secretary of state for Africa. As a follower of foreign policy over the past 40 years it has been possible, in nearly all instances, to know who the new incumbent is likely to be. Examples include Chester Crocker, Hank Cohen and Susan Rice. Now with Trump, we simply have no indication.

With this in mind I think it is really important for African countries, including South Africa, to be very conscious, constructive and conspicuous in their choices of ambassador. These appointments will be crucial in opening the doors to the new Trump administration. The worst that African countries can do, however difficult it will be politically, would be to show their displeasure and hold their noses.

Security will be a major issue

Security is going to be a major issue on Trump’s foreign policy agenda. This points directly at the US African Command, which was established in 2007. Africom, as it is generally known, is one of six of the US Defence Department’s “geographic combatant commands and is responsible to the Secretary of Defence for military relations with African nations, the African Union and African regional security organisations”.

When it comes to American policy in Africa, Africom is very likely to emerge as its central piece. Given Trump’s expressed, belligerent viewson the Muslim world, Africom will be set to be the lynchpin. I think African countries should resist this because it is central to American ideology in the world and will bring African countries into conflict with China. But whether African states will in fact resist is a different issue.

In fact, I think one of the issues African leaders will have to be careful about now is how they have to manage their relationships with China and the US. The US has been a little bit lackadaisical in its approach to Africa while China has made great strides on the continent. Not all, in my view, bad. The US will in all likelihood resist the inroads China has made, an issue African leaders will have to manage with kid gloves.

Trade won’t be a given

The African Growth and Opportunity Act AGOA, which came into effect 16 years ago, is aimed at expanding US trade and investment with sub-Saharan Africa. It is supposed to “stimulate economic growth, to encourage economic integration, and to facilitate sub-Saharan Africa’s integration into the global economy”.

There’s still some life left in the act. But it’s clear that Trump is protectionist. He is not going to tolerate any expansion or extension of the agreement, or any misunderstandings. This means American trade policy under Trump needs to be watched closely.

There is also likely to be a decline in aid to Africa from the US. For some African countries aid from the US is absolutely crucial. Take Malawi for example, where it is essential and necessary. As a businessman Trump will want something in return and it’s unlikely he will get his sort of returns on investment from most African countries. His possible response will be that of a reality show host – eject any errant contestants.

Another factor that will affect investment is that Trump is going to improve American infrastructure. I think he is going to borrow and he is going to use the money to rebuild the US because that is his project, to “make America great again”. He will most certainly not care if it comes at the expense of aid to or trade with a number African countries.

The next four years promise to test Africa’s place in the world. The lodestars by which we have understood politics such as rightwing, fiscal conservative, social conservative are all going to be overturned.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy on Africa is likely to be: ‘Where’s that?’

By Peter Vale Professor of Humanities and the Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg

University of Johannesburg

US President elect Donald Trump greets supporters on election night in New York. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Africa is likely to slide down the list of foreign policy priorities of a Donald Trump administration. This is because America’s foreign policy is determined by both domestic and foreign issues.

This isn’t going to be something that is of much concern to the new president-elect.

Security will be a major issue

Trade won’t be a given

IS International Criminal Court Too Focused on Africa?

By Noah Feldman

The new South Africa has been a bastion of respect for human rights, and its decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court is a sign that something is terribly wrong with the tribunal. And it’s no secret: Since 2005, when it first issued arrest warrants, the court has indicted 39 people, every one of them African.

There are various explanations for this, some of them defensible. But the bottom line is that it was an inexcusable mistake for the court not to pursue other cases. It wouldn’t have been tokenism, because there are, unfortunately, plenty of non-African war criminals. Yet even if it were, the tokenism would have been justified to show that the court is more than the imperialist agent of regime change that many Africans consider it.

International Criminal Court

South Africa’s unexpected — and devastating — decision last weekto withdraw from the court is not based on any immediate fear that South African leaders would be prosecuted. In that sense, the decision differs sharply from that of Burundi, which was the first nation to initiate withdrawal, just a few days before the South African announcement.

Burundi’s motivation was the prospect of an ICC investigation of the political violence that has plagued the country in the last year, since President Pierre Nkurunziza declared his intention of running for a third term. Of 110 Burundian lawmakers, 94 had voted for the withdrawal, suggesting, if nothing else, consolidation of the political class against the possibility of an investigation that would probably have focused on the president himself.

It’s not terribly surprising that a president in that position would seek to avoid the ICCs jurisdiction by withdrawing. It’s much more surprising that a stable democracy like South Africa, which has a range of international obligations written into its state-of-the-art constitution, would send such a strong message of rejection.

The South African minister of justice, Michael Masutha, offered the explanation that South Africa considered the obligation to turn over foreign diplomats charged by the court to be a violation of its domestic laws that guarantee diplomatic immunity. In June 2015, the South African government failed to turn over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was visiting for an African Union summit, even after a South African court ordered it to do so.

But the minister’s formalistic explanation rings hollow. South Africa’s constitution incorporates international legal obligations into domestic law, and would certainly be interpreted by South Africa’s progressive courts to trump any domestic requirements of diplomatic immunity.

What makes more sense is that the South African government is consolidating its position of regional and continental leadership by taking a stance that is sure to please other African heads of state. It’s precisely those heads of state who are most vulnerable to ICC prosecution. By weakening the court — and providing thick cover for any other African countries that wish to follow suit — South Africa is giving those leaders a tremendous diplomatic gift.

In other words, the statement that South Africa wants to respect the diplomatic immunity of other heads of state is a way of saying that South Africa wants to do business with African leaders.

The ICC worries African heads of state because it has adopted a prosecutorial policy of going after leaders whom it accuses of being responsible for political violence in violation of international law. Targeting a head of state or government is an attractive and admirable idea for an international body committed to enforcing human rights. In the case of authoritarian or autocratic governments, the leader often does bear moral responsibility for violence. And it would be deeply dissatisfying for an international criminal court to prosecute primarily lower officials who may have committed crimes but did not plan or direct them.

If the court is going to go after government leaders, however, it must confront the concern that, as South Africa’s Masutha put it, it is producing a “scenario of forced regime change by one country on another.” When the prosecution comes from a European geographical base and a court staffed mostly by non-Africans, the regime change has the further feature of seeming “imperialist,” the word used by the chief party whip of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress.

The simple solution for the ICC would have been to prosecute some — any — non-Africans. It’s not like the problem hasn’t been noticed. The ICC itself has held an online symposium of invited experts on what it rather delicately called “the Africa question.”

It must been noted in the ICC’s defense that six African cases brought to it from outside, four by the countries where the violations had occurred and two by reference from the United Nations Security Council. The first four were nondiscretionary, meaning the court had to investigate under its own rules. And in the other two, Sudan and Libya, there were strong grounds to commence investigation.

But that excuse explains why the court has pursued the cases it has — not why it hasn’t pursued others. Admittedly complex rules govern the court’s reach, and it can’t proceed where there are adequate domestic legal processes under way.

Nonetheless, the court’s prosecutors needed to reach more broadly. Initial investigations of cases involving Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Honduras and South Korea could have proceeded more rapidly. The idea that Iraq would be free of crimes against humanity or that the Iraqi legal system could adequately treat them seems highly implausible on its face.

The lesson here is that tokenism isn’t always a bad thing. When it comes to demonstrating the legitimacy of a new and powerful international legal entity, a basic requirement is not only to be balanced but also to appear so.

South Africa’s decision is unfortunate, but the ICC opened the door, and it deserves the primary blame. The court in The Hague stands for the admirable aspiration to hold the worst criminals in the world responsible for their wrongs. But trying to achieve that ideal without pragmatic realism about what seems fair in international politics is a hopeless task.

South Africa’s constitutional court was supposed to hold hearings on this issue in November, but the government will now drop its appeal.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Noah Feldman at nfeldman7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net