Transaqua has the capacity to transform the lives of the people of the interior of Africa more than any other infrastructure project .
Source: Centro Studi Africani
LAKE CHAD AND INFRUSTRUCTURES: CHALLENGES AND IDEAS
12 November 2020
Monthly Archives: November 2020
Mathew Ehret: The Coming Battle For The New World.
on the degenerates of Davos…….like Maurice Strong …..and the transformation of the Hitlarian eugenics movement into today`s environmental cult, devised by the Club of Rome, which has been denying Africa`s creative potential, while City of London extractive interests reap the benefits of their resources. The Green New Deal which is the Great Reset is the climax of this depopulationist, zero-growth policy. And more explained in this very interesting interview….
Source: ROGUE NEWS
Mathew Ehret: The Coming Battle For The New World.
BIO: Matthew J.L. Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review and founder of the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. His works are regularly featured on Strategic Culture, the Duran, Zero Hedge, Fort Russ, Lew Rockwell, Global Research, Dissident Voice, Off-Guardian and Greanville Post. He is the author of the Untold History of Canada book series and be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com
Agriculture Minister urges farmers in northern Namibia to move away from the old way of farming
Source: Namibian Broadcasting Corporation
17 November 2020
China’s Involvement Pushes Forward Development of Huge Guinea Iron Deposit
re posted from EIR Daily Alert Service
China’s Involvement Pushes Forward Development of Huge Guinea Iron Deposit
Nov. 16 (EIRNS)—Deep within the interior of Guinea lies the world’s largest and richest (65% pure) deposit of iron ore, located at Simandou. Since its discovery in the 1990s, the question has always been: “How to get it out?” Guinean authorities are determined that their ore be transported on their railroad, and exported from their port (even though neither one exists, and export through Liberia would be shorter/cheaper).
Authorities have divided the Simandou deposit into four “blocks,” and fierce battles—involving global oligarchs like George Soros and Beny Steinmetz (of the Israeli DeBeers diamond fortune), who fought a years-long court battle for blocks 1 and 2—have taken place for possession of the treasure trove. In 2016, Rio Tinto wrote off a more than $2 billion investment after an investigation by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office. After the Soros/Steinmetz battle (still not completely resolved), Guinea sought to make any future concession conditional on the building of, not just a 650-km railway, but also a deep-water port, potentially Africa’s largest infrastructure investment, to sort out the serious contenders.
Enter the Chinese. In June 2020, Reuters reported that the Guinean government had granted rights to blocks 1 and 2 to a consortium which includes France’s Société Minière de Boké (SMB), a “transportation and logistics” company; Singapore’s Winning Shipping; and Chinese Shandong Weiqiao, an aluminium producer, part of China Hongqiao, along with a Guinean government company.
On Thursday, Nov. 12, mining trade publications were reporting that the Guinean government had approved the $16 billion deal, which includes the construction of both the railway and port in Guinea in order to export the raw materials. “We finally have hope of realizing this old dream for the country,” Mines Minister Abdoulaye Magassouba told Reuters.
While the details are not completely spelled out, the evidence shows that it was the involvement of China—led by mammoth steel producer Bau Steel—which made the difference. A cornerstone for the port was laid in October, with full production expected by 2025.
Source: EIR Daily Alert Service
Elimination of Last Pockets of Absolute Poverty in Xinjiang Should Be Celebrated!
re posted from EIR Daily Alert Service
Elimination of Last Pockets of Absolute Poverty in Xinjiang Should Be Celebrated!
Nov. 16 (EIRNS)—Authorities of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region two days ago announced confirmation that absolute poverty has been eliminated in the region’s remaining 10 counties. The counties are all located in the southern desert region, five of them in the Hotan Prefecture, where less than 4% of territory represents oasis areas. With this, more than 3.08 million residents of Xinjiang have now been led out of poverty.
To be considered out of absolute poverty by China’s official standards, requires not just a certain level of income, but stable access to education and medical care, among other physical economic parameters. To achieve that, the region put over 70% of its fiscal budget into improving the welfare of the people, Xinhua reported. In addition to securing access to services, there was a 9.1% average yearly growth in residential per-capita disposable income in the region from 2014-2019.
So much for the lies of the British Empire and their agents like Mike Pompeo, that the Chinese government is imposing “genocide” on the Uygurs—whose birth rate, incidentally, has risen faster in recent years than that of the other ethnic residents of the region.
This success in what had been one of China’s most horribly-poor regions, is the result of President Xi Jinping’s unrelenting campaign to eliminate all absolute poverty from China by the end of this year. According to CGTN, one in every three counties in China was labeled “poverty-stricken” in 2013, so the central government in 2015 set the goal to eradicate extreme poverty by the end of 2020. Since the Yunnan region also announced two days ago that they had verified the elimination of absolute poverty in their last 9 counties, there are only 33 impoverished counties left: 9 in Guizhou Province, 8 in Gansu Province, 8 in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 7 in Sichuan Province, and 1 in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Source: EIR Daily Alert Service
Green Finance To Attack Food, Farming at ‘Great Reset’ WEF Davos Event on Nov. 23-24
“There is not a word on the current world hunger emergency, except for the truism that cutting waste will help.”
re posted from EIR Daily Alert Service
Green Finance To Attack Food, Farming at ‘Great Reset’ WEF Davos Event on Nov. 23-24
Nov. 16 (EIRNS)—The ongoing “Great Reset” initiative by the Wall Street and City of London banksters, operating through the World Economic Forum (WEF), will target food and agriculture next week, at a Nov. 23-24 event titled, “Bold Actions for Food as a Force for Good.” The “Great Reset” series of conferences refers to proposals to build a green economy, after the pandemic, which is a see-through cover story for a green finance bubble, while the means to life are eliminated for masses of people.
There is not a word on the current world hunger emergency, except for the truism that cutting waste will help.
Food as a “Force for Good,” is a construct meaning that people should eat in a way that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save the planet from heat death. There are 45 sessions at the two-day affair, organized around five green themes. Session sponsors and leaders include mega-cartel firms, e.g., Unilever and PepsiCo; Rabobank, one of the world’s largest private agriculture banks; and the World Wildlife Fund, the government of the Netherlands, as well as academic and foodie groups.
One Nov. 23 session, for example, is titled, “Boosting Nature Positive Production,” which will be led by WWF International. The WWF is hyperactive in many nations, against high-technology agriculture production. This fall, it teamed up with Cargill, Walmart, and McDonalds on a new program which issues “green” standards on how cattlemen can use their pastureland in the U.S. Northern High Plains, which at present is voluntary, but would be dictatorial, under the WEF economic Great Reset.
Another Nov. 23 session is, “Net Zero Agriculture: Aligning Banking Portfolios to 1.5 Degrees.” This session “will ideate with stakeholders” on how banks can deny credit to farming and food operations they consider not compliant to net-zero, and realign their portfolios to be more green. It will be led by Rabobank and the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, once one of the world’s leading agriculture centers (and still is, except for the green moldy departments).
Source: EIR Daily Alert Service
Zambia’s COVID Default Must Force a ‘Global Reckoning with Debt’
re posted from EIR DAILY ALERT SERVICE
Zambia’s COVID Default Must Force a ‘Global Reckoning with Debt’
Nov. 16 (EIRNS)—As of Friday, Nov. 13, the African nation of Zambia has become the first official “COVID default,” after bondholders refused the nation’s request for a six-month extension on a $42 million interest payment, originally due on Oct 15. In this, Zambia is only steps ahead of other developing nations, many of which barely survived the “first wave” of the pandemic—by postponing financial obligations—but are not likely to survive the second.
Despite continued public efforts to pin Zambia’s poor creditworthiness on China, the bonds which are immediately in default are held by a consortium of European and American (Western) lenders, which lent Zambia a total of $3 billion, in three different deals in 2012, 2014 and 2015, when copper prices were soaring in the wake of the 2008 “Great Recession.” Lenders were eager to lend, offering cheap, 5.4% interest rates, which quickly jumped to 8.5%, then 8.9% for later (and larger) loans, just as the price of copper—Zambia’s primary source of foreign income—was backing off its historic highs.
Chinese lending to Zambia is now estimated at $6.5 billion, although the terms of these loans are not known. Bondholders have been using the looming default as leverage to try and force the Zambian government to open their books, where they hope to glean much-sought-after details about its loans from China, details for which Western (especially British) financial “analysts” have been conspiring ever since China became a global development powerhouse in 2013. This may also be the reason Zambia has balked at taking a “reassuring” loan from the IMF, for which bondholders are pushing.
Several news outlets are now noting that this is just the beginning for African defaults, pointing to Kenya and Ethiopia, specifically, as likely next on the block, based on their “excessive” Chinese borrowing. Looking beyond the African continent, however, Princeton Prof. Layna Mosley observes that, “there is a sense that debt relief and restructuring is necessary for many countries, and that delaying it will only worsen the problem in many parts of the world.” Her Oct. 29 analysis is titled, “Zambia’s Looming Default Is Only the Start of a Global Reckoning With Debt.”
Source: EIR Daily Alert Service
Discourse on the Debt, 33 Years On
DISCOURSE ON THE DEBT, 33 YEARS ON
by PD Lawton, 15 November 2020
Today, Africa stands at the cross-roads. This is the last opportunity for the continent`s leadership to decide the fate of 1.3 billion people.
This is the most crucial moment in Africa`s history. The choice on one hand, is to continue following IMF diktat and agree to a future of economic policy that benefits the banks of Wall Street and the City of London. For that choice there is a bribe which is called the Green Finance Package. [1]
Kenya, sadly, has become the first to accept the UN Green Finance Package which was received by Kenya`s Central Bank this week.It has chosen to appease the Paris Club and protect its credit rating.
By accepting the Green Bribe, Kenya is committing to a zero-growth policy. The Green New Deal will not fund fossil-fuel or nuclear energy. Without reliable, cheap energy, it is impossible to power development and industrialize an economy. Renewables cannot run a steel mill. Hydropower has its physical limits in terms of transmission distance and it is not a possibility without considerable water volume.
Does Kenya want to continue relying on tourism and agriculture, a green economy? How will that eliminate poverty?
The Green New Deal puts emphasis on digital infrastructure. What is the point in having network coverage when there is no modern road, rail, bridge or port along which to transport your goods?
The alternative is the only choice that will end poverty and propel African economies into a prosperous future. That choice is to re-invest historical debt into the physical economy.
This week Zambia became the first African state to default on its international debt since the start of the Covid Pandemic.
Zambia`s debt situation is being politicized in ugly attempts at discrediting President Lungu`s progressive economic policy and strong friendship with China. The politicization is also aimed at China which is still being blamed for creating debt traps and debt book diplomacy even though this kind of anti-China propaganda has now itself, been discredited.
Over the last few years, Zambia has had the foresight to invest heavily in physical infrastructure. This has been largely financed by China`s Development Bank as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Zambia`s appeal this week to the Eurobond holders for deferment of payment has been rejected. In contrast, China has already annulled a number of loans to African governments, including Zambia, and deferred payment on others since Covid-19 triggered further economic difficulty. Some Chinese loans will become interest free. In 2018, at the historic Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, Zambia secured a $30 million interest-free loan and a $30 million grant from China .
On-going attacks on President Lungu`s government have come from foreign funded anti-China campaigns .The President has responded to critics and said:
“I implore you to ignore the misleading headlines that seek to malign our relationship with China by mischaracterising our economic cooperation to mean colonialism.”
Leading Zambian economist and head of Zambia’s Private Sector Development Association, Yosuf Dodia, said that Chinese investment should be seen as an opportunity not a burden.”Zambia has been dominated by the West for 100 years… and we are seeing poverty all over the continent,” he said.
That is the general consensus of African governments who defend the Chinese model. Compared to other creditors ( like the IMF) Chinese banks offer far better terms. The interest is in some cases non-existent or else at very low rates of interest. There are lengthy periods of grace before payments commence and much longer re-payment periods. And unlike Western banks, the Chinese banks are lending, extending credit for the express purposes of uplifting the standard of living of African nations.
China`s Exim Bank is extending credit for mega-infrastructure projects, for development of goods and services. That`s exactly what a bank is supposed to exist for, for the extension of credit for projects that will create progress and the upliftment of a nation`s standard of living. And it is exactly what the City of London-Wall Street banking empire does not do.
It is 33 years since Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso, called upon Africa`s leadership to renounce the continent`s debt. In a speech given on the 29 July, 1987, at the OAU ( Organization of African Unity) Summit in Addis Abeba, he said this:
“We think that debt must be seen from the standpoint of its origins. Debts origins come from colonialism`s origins. Those who lend us money are those who colonized us before. They are those who used to manage our states and economies. Colonizers are those who indebted Africa through their brothers and cousins who were the lenders. We are strangers to this debt. Therefore we cannot pay for it. Debt is neo- colonialism in which the colonizers transform themselves into `technical assistants`. In fact it is better to say `technical assassins`.
They present us with financing, with financial backers, as if someone`s backing could create development! We have been advised to go to these recommended lenders. We have been proposed with nice financial set-ups. We have been indebted for 50, 60 years and more. That means we have been led to compromise our people for 50 years and more.
Under its current form the debt is a formula for controlled imperialism; debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus each one of us becomes the financial slave, that is to say – a true slave to those who were treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay. We are told to repay, but it is not a moral issue. It is not about this so-called honour of repaying or not!”
Debt servicing and restrictive loans for poor countries, in these current times , is more than immoral!
As written in an article on Africa and the World:
“Oxfam reported “84 percent of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) COVID-19 loans encourage, and in some cases require, poor countries hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic to adopt more tough austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis”. New analysis by Oxfam finds that 76 out of the 91 IMF loans negotiated with 81 countries since March 2020 – when the pandemic was declared – push for belt-tightening that could result in deep cuts to public healthcare systems and pension schemes, wage freezes and cuts for public sector workers such as doctors, nurses and teachers, and unemployment benefits, like sick pay.”
Africa`s debt, to the IMF, is a creation of a neo-liberal economic system of so-called Free Trade that has deliberately withheld industrialization from African economies. The debt should have been renounced in 1987 . But it wasn`t. Instead Thomas Sankara was assassinated for what he said.
Today the situation has changed. Africa`s debt burden to the IMF remains immoral. Debt servicing across the continent has taken precedence over health, over food to the hungry, over education , over everything that matters. If debt is to be seen from the standpoint of its origins, then we need to look at debt which has its origins in the Belt and Road Initiative. That is debt owed to China since the beginning of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 to construct infrastructure and build economic corridors.
The G20 announced its Debt Service Suspension Initiative in April this year. This is a non-binding agreement but pressure is being put on China to join the Paris Club of creditors.
This initiative is an attack on China. The intention is to de-rail the Belt and Road Initiative. China, which only accounts for 17% of Africa`s debt, is not liable to pay for the decades of the IMF`s economic assassination.
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), will not create prosperity without massive infrastructure development. Without transport networks,AfCFTA is like a body without veins.
Aliko Dangote of the Dangote Group and financer of Nigeria`s first oil refinery has said that infrastructure is more important right now than any trade agreements and that manufacturing and processing of goods on African soil has to become a priority, but for that, infrastructure once again takes precedence.
Lawrence Freeman, Africa analyst , explains the importance of infrastructure :
“What African nations most desperately need, and which will have the greatest impact of their economies, is infrastructure, infrastructure, and more infrastructure. It is not hyperbole to state that the lack of infrastructure is responsible for millions of deaths on the continent. The dearth of on-grid energy, arguably the most crucial component of an industrialized-manufacturing society, is preventing African nations from attaining the levels of economic growth required to sustain their populations.”
In October, 7 African parliaments called for the continent`s debt to be annulled. The Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila, has initiated the Conference of Speakers and Heads of African Parliaments (CoSAP) which is the body that is launching the African debt write-off campaign. The 7 countries represented are Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa. Algeria, Morocco, Cote D’Ivoire, and Cape Verde have also expressed their desire to join.
Professor Aaron Oquaye, Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament recently gave an interview with CGTN in which he called for “a New Paradigm.” ” A New Paradigm”, he said” which cannot take place under the present world [economic] arrangement.” He said that debt servicing was a game of “robbing Peter, to pay Paul” creating a never ending “cycle of poverty, misery and disease.”. “Debt cancellation”, he said “is a matter of liberating us.” In other words, it is a final end to colonialism.”And in order, even, to maximise our raw resources, we need a new world economic order. How do we balance processing? For example, taking our foods, vegetables and also fruits, processing them in competition against foreign cheap products? No country, ever, in this world, you know, got economic self dependency by allowing cheap competition..” Professor Oquaye is not advocating for total isolationist policy but against the utterly unfair advantage of the mega-corporations that have been the only beneficiaries of the financial elite`s `globalism`.[2]
Africa`s leaders must unite to demand that all debt which has been accrued for anything except constructing infrastructure, which includes health care and water sanitation, will no longer be paid. It will instead be re-invested into the physical economy for the benefit of all.
Building the physical economy of central Africa, must begin with international financing of the Transaqua Project. To construct the world`s largest engineering project, will require a change of heart, will and motivation from the privately-owned central banks. In fact, it will require that the banking order is replaced by a new Bretton Woods system which extends credit for mankind, not for money. Those that gave Africa economic assassins want to fool us again with their phony version of a New Bretton Woods [3], under their Great Reset, which is a zero-growth policy. In terms of Africa, it is to kill the African Dream.
Stop greening the debt, stop politicizing the debt. Review the debt and where applicale re-invest into the physical economy.
footnotes/sources;
[1]
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2020/2020_40-49/2020-46/21-22_4746.pdf
[2]
[3]
DISCOURS SUR LA DETTE
His Royal Highness’ ‘Great Reset’: The Evil Green Dictatorship
re posted from EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
This article appears in the November 13, 2020 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
His Royal Highness’ ‘Great Reset’: The Evil Green Dictatorship
[Print version of this article]
Nov. 7—In early June, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, launched the Great Reset initiative, aimed at promoting policies to tighten elitist global financial and economic control—presented as a way to rebuild from the pandemic. On June 3, the keynote speech was given by Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Other speakers included the chief executives of Microsoft, BP, and Mastercard.
Since then, the WEF platform has conducted a series of Great Reset conferences, involving hundreds of speakers, to promote their “rebuilding” theme, while in fact, spelling out specifics of their worldwide Green New Deal—cutting power, industry, agriculture, infrastructure, and other means of life, wrapped up as commitments to goals of Zero Emissions and “new systems.”
All the while this evil campaign is underway, some have mischaracterized the Great Reset threat as a “global health dictatorship.” Some clarification on that is in order, given below.
It must be noted at the outset that the Great Reset is just a pandemic-period continuation of the pre-COVID-19 green, anti-development perspective of banker elites centered in London/Wall Street networks, and Prince Charles in particular, who, after all, is a close collaborator of Klaus Schwab, founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum. The WEF supports Charles’ Sustainable Markets Council for developing ways to decarbonize the world. Charles gave the keynote on a green future at the 2020 WEF Davos meeting in January. In September, at the time of the UN General Assembly in New York, the WEF held a forum on “Realizing a ‘Great Reset’ for Sustainable Development,” where Charles held forth on how the scale of the Great Reset requires a worldwide green “Marshall-like plan” to decarbonize the behavior of consumers, businesses, agriculture, investors, and all.
The enforcement arm of this is Green Finance, and among its principal figures is Mark Carney, another pal of HRH Charles. Carney was Governor of the Bank of England (2013-2020), and is on the Foundation Board of the WEF. In 2018, on Charles’ 70th birthday, Carney gave a speech in which he said that, “His Royal Highness has provided inspirational leadership” for decades, on the need for a green horizon.
Today Carney—besides doing private banking in his home country of Canada—serves as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. After the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, an agreement for reducing human existence in the false name of saving the planet from emissions-death, Carney and his banker and billionaire cronies, including Michael Bloomberg, set up a new association to restrict credit so that it goes for only select green purposes, and not for high-tech energy, industry, agriculture, and infrastructure. It is the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure.
On November 9, Carney will be on the opening panel of a WEF Great Reset event titled, “Green Horizon Summit—The Pivotal Role of Finance.” It runs through November 11, and is co-sponsored by the City of London Corporation, in collaboration with the Green Finance Institute and the WEF. Other speakers on the first panel, which is titled, “Cartography of Post-COVID-19 Green Growth,” include Christine Lagarde, Chairman of the European Central Bank; Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England; and the IMF’s Georgieva again. On November 10, Bill Gates will speak, along with Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock.
Just as the Great Reset features bankers and billionaires, in their own name, issuing their dictates on what they say is permissible to happen under their green rules, so other leading cartel and financial figures are active in many economic sectors for the Reset. For example, at a Great Reset summit on “Bold Actions for Food as a Force for Good,” November 23-24 (online), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a co-sponsor of a panel asserting the perspective that, unless their activity is limited, humans degrade the Earth. The panel is titled, “Boosting Nature—Positive Production.” This conference is the public relations side of WWF activity around the world, in league, for example, with Cargill—the huge agro-commodities cartel, McDonalds, and others, to dictate how food is produced.
Three Pillars of the Great Reset
In her June 3 speech at the launch of the Great Reset, Ms. Georgieva stressed three pillars of the initiative. She said, “From the perspective of the IMF, we have seen a massive injection of fiscal stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis, and to shift gears for growth to return, it is of paramount importance that this growth should lead to a greener, smarter, fairer world in the future [emphasis in the WEF transcript]. She ended her remarks saying, “And I want to say—loud and clear—the best memorial we can build to those who have lost their lives in the pandemic is to build a world that is greener, smarter, and fairer. …”
Translated into reality:
With “greener growth,” the intent is to bail out the bankrupt financial system with measures creating a Green Bubble generated by massive government spending for an “energy transition” into a “carbon-free” economy. The blueprint for that is the Green Deal policy of the European Commission. Mark Carney is its champion.
Under “smarter growth,” special emphasis is given to the digital economy, and overcoming the digital divide among countries in the world. Digital technologies, although important, cannot replace energy, transport, industrial and agriculture improvements, and other basic infrastructure, without which economic growth is impossible, but which the Great Reset ignores.
The third pillar, “fairer growth,” emphasizes the “expansion of social programs.” Behind the nice words, however, is the intention to manage increased poverty with handouts, rather than eliminating poverty worldwide.
In sum, the Great Reset is just a newer version of the Keynesian policy adopted by Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s Finance Minister, to streamline the financial system in such a way as to bail out the assets of the super-rich, ruin the middle class, and destroy the poor. As John Maynard Keynes specified in the German edition of his work in 1936, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, such policies are best implemented by authoritarian regimes.
Missing the Target
Rather than exposing and rejecting this evil policy in those terms, some have adopted a distorted version of the Great Reset, claiming that it aims at a “health dictatorship” run by Bill Gates and the Chinese, to force vaccination on the population and threaten with expropriation those who refuse.
While trans-Atlantic governments have failed to control the pandemic, and are restricting liberties in order to stay in power, it is dangerously misguided to present mandatory vaccination as part of a health dictatorship. Vaccination is an achievement of humanity. It existed well before Bill Gates, and to oppose it because of Bill Gates is like being against motorways because Hitler built them. The no-vax movement is a product of the same “factory of irrationality” that has produced radical movements to stop global warming and other imagined threats.
Source: Executive Intelligence Review
Ouattara Elected President: Cote d’Ivoire Poised for Progress
Cote d’Ivoire, a potential economic hub in West Africa, is already exporting energy to several nations in the region and transporting goods from its port via rail to landlocked Niger and Burkina Faso. With the modernized Abidjan port, Cote d’Ivoire offers a vital gateway for development in West Africa.
re posted from AFRICA AND THE WORLD
Ouattara Elected President: Cote d’Ivoire Poised for Progress
Lawrence Freeman
November 12, 2020
On October 31, Alassane Dramane Ouattara was re-elected President of Cote d’Ivoire. The official vote for President Ouattara was 3,031,483, which was 94.5% of total votes cast, with 53.9% of registered voters participating. Observers for both the African Union and Economic Community of West African States validated the legitimacy of the election process. On November 9, he was sworn in for his third term as president of Cote d’Ivoire.
In the days leading up to the election, scores of widely circulated stories, with frightening headlines predicting “chaos, a dangerous election, civil war,” attempted to create the narrative that this election could potentially experience a repeat of the violent conflict that caused thousands of deaths in 2010-2011. This blatantly false storyline, spread by major news outlets in Britain, France, and the U.S., that was intended to create fear and inflame the emotions of the population; never materialized. There were acts of civil disobedience and conflicts in a few outlying districts. However, in Abidjan, the country’s port city, where 20% of the population resides, there was no evidence of any kind of violence and the city remained calm.
I was very pleased to witness hundreds of Ivorians peacefully standing in long lines waiting to vote, in Treichville, a poor section of Abidjan. This was one of the several polling centers I visited. As I walked around several voting locations, I observed a professional orderly voting procedure.
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Ouattara Elected President: Cote d’Ivoire Poised for Progress