1 Tough times for global mining industry (Nils Pratley
in The Guardian) The party is over in the mining industry – again. There is a
strong whiff of 2009, the year after the great financial crisis. Almost every
commodity is falling in price. Assumptions for demand, investment, jobs and
shareholders’ dividends are being ripped up.
The share price of once-mighty Anglo American
illustrates the industry’s feast-or-famine characteristics. Between 2003 and
2009, Anglo’s shares travelled from 900p to £33 and then back to 900p; after
2009, they rose again to £33 but are now 778p.
How does that happen? The group’s Minas-Rio
operation in Brazil was conceived in 2007 when the price of iron ore was $150 a
tonne. Anglo spent $8.4bn, instead of a planned $2.9bn, on building the mine
plus infrastructure. Throw in acquisition costs and Anglo owned an asset with a
notional value of $14bn. Three write-downs later, and with iron ore fetching
closer to $50 a tonne, Minas-Rio is now valued by Anglo at just $3.6bn.
Part of that financial pain was self-inflicted. The
deeper malaise affecting the entire industry is weaker demand from China, the
biggest consumer of raw materials. A country with 20% of the world’s population
takes about 45% of global copper production; and Chinese steelmakers buy almost
60% of exported iron ore, mostly from Brazil and Australia. When China slows,
upsets happen.
One difference from 2009 is more encouraging for the
producers. Balance sheets are stronger and most mining chief executives,
instead of placing blind faith in a “stronger for longer” commodities
supercycle, have been talking the language of production efficiency and
investment discipline.
2 Africa cannot choose between democracy and
security (Howard LaFranchi in Christian Science Monitor/Khaleej Times) Critics
fault president Barack Obama for failing to offer Africa the kind of generously
funded programmes that president George W. Bush did with his President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge
development initiative, and for ceding America's preeminent place in Africa to
a resource-hungry China.
But the Africa trip to Kenya - his paternal family's
home - before continuing on to Ethiopia offers him an opportunity to put his
Africa policy on more concrete footing. Obama's fourth Africa trip as president
presented a stage for him to lay out the more pragmatic policy he has developed
for the continent in the homestretch of his presidency.
It's a policy that is heavier on partnership and
fostering homegrown entrepreneurship than on big-ticket aid programmes, while
moving away from the reliance on the symbolism of the administration's early
years, Africa analysts say.
"Obama came into office as a symbol for Africa,
being the first African-American president, but that generated very high
expectations that in turn led to very deep disappointment when it turned out
Africa was not the priority for the US that people expected," says Joseph Siegle,
director of research at the National Defence University's Africa Center for
Strategic Studies in Washington.
Critics say Obama's focus on pragmatic approaches to
Africa has led him to play down the emphasis on democratisation and human
rights that has long been a hallmark of US Africa policy. Indeed, his decision
to include Ethiopia in this trip drew howls of protest from human rights advocates
who blast the Horn of Africa country as one of the continent's most
authoritarian regimes and worst violators of rights, particularly freedom of
expression.
"Africa is growing - Kenya, in particular, is
enjoying sustained economic growth - but this growth tends to be highly
unequal" and too often tied to corruption, Siegle says. "The rising
inequalities are a particularly strong rallying cry for armed violence,"
he adds. Africans have to realize that democracy and security go hand in hand,
that they can't have one without the other.
3 UN restores Timbuktu’s destroyed mausoleums (San
Francisco Chronicle) Fourteen mausoleums in Mali's northern city of Timbuktu
that were destroyed by Islamic extremists have been restored by the United
Nations. UNESCO's director general and Mali's cultural minister inaugurated the
reconstructed mausoleums in the desert city that was once a major center of
learning and trade in the Middle Ages.
The entire city of Timbuktu is listed as a World
Heritage Site by UNESCO. At the peak of its influence in the 15th and 16th
centuries, Timbuktu counted 180 schools and universities which received
thousands of students from all over the Muslim world. Islamic radicals who
overran Timbuktu in 2012 destroyed 14 of the city's 16 mausoleums, one-room
structures that house the tombs of the city's great thinkers. The extremists
condemned the buildings as totems of idolatry.
The mausoleums were left barely more than heaps of
mud, reminders of the brutal rule of the militants, who imposed an extreme
version of Islamic law on this fabled city, forcing women to wear veils,
banning music and carrying out executions and public whippings. The militants
were driven out after nearly a year by a French military intervention.
The reconstruction of the mausoleums took more than
a year and cost about $500,000, UNESCO said as part of a series of projects in
Timbuktu being carried out by UNESCO.
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