THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY IN ETHIOPIA

The country’s ruling coalition is controlled primarily by the Tigray ethnic group, who accounts for only 6 percent of the population 

The Ethiopian parliament has extended by four months a state of emergency it declared six months ago after almost a year of often violent anti-government demonstrations.

The widely expected extension comes amid reports of continued violence and anti-government activities in some rural areas.

At least 500 people were killed by security forces during the year of protests, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch group - a figure the government later echoed.

"We still have some anti-peace elements that are active and want to capitalise on disputes that arise among regional states in the country," Ethiopia's defence minister, Siraj Fegessa, told MPs when he called on them to approve the extension on Thursday.

"In addition, some leaders of the violent acts that we witnessed before are still at large and are disseminating wrong information to incite violence."

Opposition parties complain that the emergency powers are being used to clamp down on their members and activities, especially in rural regions far from the capital, Addis Ababa.

The state of emergency, declared on October 9, was a reaction to protests that were especially persistent in the Oromia region. Many members of the Oromo ethnic group say they are marginalised and that they do not have access to political power, something the government denies.

OPINION: The Oromo protests have changed Ethiopia

A wave of anger was triggered by a development scheme for Addis Ababa, which would have seen its boundaries extended into Oromia. Demonstrators saw it as a land grab that would force farmers off their land.

The protests soon spread to the Amhara region in the north, where locals argued that decades-old federal boundaries had cut off many ethnic Amharas from the region.

Crushed to death

The Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups together make up about 60 percent of Ethiopia's population.

The country’s ruling coalition, which has been in power for a quarter of a century, is controlled primarily by the Tigray ethnic group, who make up six percent of the population.

Tensions reached an all-time high after a stampede in which at least 52 people were crushed to death fleeing security forces at a protest that grew out of a religious festival in the town of Bishoftu on October 2nd.

In the following days, rioters torched several mostly foreign-owned factories and other buildings that they claimed were built on seized land.

The government, though, blamed rebel groups and foreign-based dissidents for stoking the violence.

The state of emergency initially included curfews, social media blocks, restrictions on opposition party activity and a ban on diplomats traveling more than 40 kilometres outside the capital without approval.

Authorities arrested over 11,000 people during its first month.

Some provisions of the state of emergency were relaxed on March 15th, two weeks prior to Thursday’s announced extension. Arrests and searches without court orders were stopped, and restrictions on radio, television and theatre were dropped.

HOW AFRICAN LEADERS ROB AFRICA FOR THE WESTERN WORLD

Why does the Western world feed Africa with one hand while taking from it with the other?

The world's wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption - especially that perpetrated by those among the continent's government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world's poorest peoples. 

Yet the West is culpable too in that it often looks the other way when that same dirty money is channelled into bank accounts in Europe and the US.

International money laundering regulations are supposed to stop the proceeds of corruption being moved around the world in this way, but it seems the developed world's financial system is far more tempted by the prospect of large cash injections than it should be.  

Indeed the West even provides the getaway vehicles for this theft, in the shape of anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities, whose disguised ownership makes it too easy for the corrupt and dishonest to squirrel away stolen funds in bank accounts overseas. 

This makes them nigh on impossible for investigators to trace, let alone recover.
                     
It is something that has long bothered Zimbabwean journalist Stanley Kwenda - who cites the troubling case of the Marange diamond fields in the east of his country. 

A few years ago rich deposits were discovered there which held out the promise of billions of dollars of revenue that could have filled the public purse and from there have been spent on much needed improvements to roads, schools and hospitals. 

The surrounding region is one of the most impoverished in the country, desperate for the development that the profits from mining could bring. But as Kwenda found out from local community leader Malvern Mudiwa, this much anticipated bounty never appeared.

"When these diamonds came, they came as a God-given gift. So we thought now we are going to benefit from jobs, infrastructure, we thought maybe our roads were going to improve, so that generations and generations will benefit from this, not one individual. But what is happening, honestly, honestly it's a shame!"

What is happening is actually something of a mystery because though the mines are clearly in operation and producing billions of dollars worth of gems every year, little if any of it has ever been put into Zimbabwe's state coffers.  

Local and international non-governmental organisations say they believe this is because the money is actually being used to maintain President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in power. 

True or not, it is clear that the country's finance minister, Tendai Biti, has seen none of it. A representative of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which sits in uneasy coalition with ZANU-PF, he says he has no idea where it is going.     

"We have got evidence of the quantities that are being mined, the quantities that are being exported but nothing is coming to the fiscus .... All I know is that it's not coming to the treasury. So that is a self-evident question. It is not coming to us. That means someone is getting it. The person who is getting it is not getting it legally. Therefore, he's a thief, therefore she's a thief." 

Sadly, as Stanley Kwenda has realised, it is typical of a problem found all over Africa. 

The continent is rich is natural resources that are being exploited for big profits, but the money is rarely used for the benefit of the people. Instead it goes to line the pockets of corrupt officials who then often smuggle it out to be deposited in secret offshore bank accounts in the developed world.

So who facilitates these transactions? And how and why does the developed world make it so easy to launder this dirty cash? 

In this revealing investigation for People & Power, Kwenda and the Ghanaian undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, set off to find out. Posing as a corrupt Zimbabwean official and his lawyer, their probe takes them deep into the murky world of 'corporate service providers' - experts in the formation of company structures that allow the corrupt to circumvent lax international money laundering rules.  

It just so happens that the pair's enquiries take place in the Seychelles but, as they discover to their horror, they could just as easily be in any one of a number of offshore locations (or even in the major cities of Europe and the US) where anonymous companies can be set up for the express purpose of secretly moving money and keeping its origins hidden from prying eyes.

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By Anas Aremeyaw Anas

Despite the abundance of resources on the continent, success has been very elusive for many Africans. The narrative is one many are too familiar with: corrupt leaders force themselves into political office, then they work to undermine the progress of their people. 

That is what leaves many African countries poor - corrupt leadership. It hinders progress. 

What has kept this diagnosis of Africa from a cure is not immediately clear. Foreign aid, debt relief and the many notes of economic salvation have been applied. Not much has changed. Dreams fail for many young Africans. The trouble with Africa still looms large.

The need for Africa's troubled state has inspired my career as an undercover investigative journalist. 

Over the past decade, I have tried to focus on human rights violations, corruption and the many ills that plague society. Through many anti-human trafficking and anti-corruption stories, I have come close to answers. 

Exposing bribe-taking police officers, public officials and other corrupt individuals has brought some change. This has been on the ground, yet many of the problems still persist.

This film, How to Rob Africa, takes this further by focusing on what many leaders in high office do that leaves the continent in a bad shape. 

Decades into political independence, many African governments remain reliant on foreign aid, yet often as soon as this aid arrives it is spirited away into the personal accounts of the leaders who are supposed to be looking after the interests of their people - and ironically many of those accounts are back in the West. 

It is no surprise that many Africans are left asking the developed world: "Why do you frown publicly about corruption, yet turn a blind eye to its fruits?" 

What we sought to do in our investigation was to point in the direction of money laundering as a substantial contributor to Africa's corruption - or at least one of the most important enabling factors - and the role played by corporate service providers in setting up structures to allow it to take place.   

In the Seychelles, we found how easy it is to rob Africa. We learned about the clever but brazen tricks and scams that can be used (for a fee) to disguise the origins of money and the identities of those who are moving it around. 

We do not say that all of Africa's woes are the fault of others outside the continent. Nor do we assume that criminality is the only reason why Africa, despite its many natural riches, has been kept in poverty.  

But we did come away wondering why the outside world feeds Africa with one hand and takes from it with another. Why cannot the resources for aid be directed into fighting this obvious problem? Is it not about time that something was done to stop those stealing our wealth, and those helping them steal it, from evading responsibility prosecution for their crimes?.

THE TIENS SCHEMES IN UGANDA

WHY IS THE UGANDAN GOVERNMENT SILENT OR NOT CLOSING SUCH SCHEMES OR IS IT PROFITING?

We investigate allegations involving a Chinese billionaire and a controversial alternative health scheme in Africa.

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Living in a poor country with one of the worst doctor-patient ratios in the world - about one for every 24,000 people - it's perhaps no surprise that many Ugandans are tempted by alternative remedies, even though there's often little evidence to support the claims made about their efficacy in treating or preventing disease. But the phenomenon does beg many questions, not least of which are who is really benefiting from the sale of these products and how exactly are they marketed?

We'd heard reports about one particularly controversial business, a complex multi-level marketing scheme run in Uganda under the aegis of a Chinese company called Tiens, which produces food supplements.

Its products, we'd been told, were being inappropriately sold as medications - in some cases for very serious diseases. We had also heard disturbing claims that its sales representatives, or "distributors" as they are known, were being invited to invest large sums of money in Tiens products, when in reality there was little chance of most of them ever making the kind of dazzling returns that the company promised.

So we sent a filmmaking team and Ugandan reporter Halima Athumani to investigate further.

Three years ago a close friend in the UK started to work for a company that sold questionable products at high prices.

She would sell them door-to-door, from 8am to 11pm, six days a week, with the promise that if she sold enough units and recruited enough people into her team, she would be promoted to the position of manager and would no longer have to "work in the field". She received no salary and worked completely on commission. If she had a good sales week the company would insist she spend it on her team. She became obsessed with wealth and often spoke at length about the lavish lifestyle she would lead once her business took off, emulating that of her "upline" manager.

It was only later that I realised that the only money she could make was from recruiting others to join the business. This was an aspect of the job she didn't like to advertise and clearly struggled with.

Over the years, I watched as her health deteriorated, her debts increased and she severed every relationship she had to achieve success. What struck me most about this "job" was that she constantly blamed herself for not doing well. It was as if she had been brainwashed to believe that the reason she wasn't making money had nothing to do with the company's exploitative business model, but was due to her own ineptitude in being unable to sell expensive products to people on their doorsteps.

I could not understand how such businesses thrived and grew. How were distributors sustaining themselves if few were buying the products? Fascinated, I started to investigate these schemes and discovered that most used a business model called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), which tells people they're going to get rich selling products to friends and family and door-to-door, but also tells them to recruit those very same customers on to their marketing team. It's a model used by many companies - selling everything from cleaning materials to mobile phone subscriptions and dietary products.

So the subject of this investigation, Chinese-owned herbal supplement company Tiens, one of the largest multi-level marketing companies in the world, is by no means unique in using such techniques. What marks it out is that it seems to be targeting so much of its activity in African countries with inadequate healthcare systems, where people are struggling desperately to get medical help.

Our Ugandan colleague Halima Athumani had told us that life expectancy in her country is among the lowest across the globe. She described the lack of insurance plans, health centres often lacking adequate doctors or medicine, and the best doctors - those who haven't been tempted overseas - frequently found working in unsanitary conditions with outdated equipment.

In this environment, then, it was understandable why many people might be persuaded that Tiens products offered an accessible alternative to conventional medicine. But on the other hand, we knew its products are only licensed in Uganda as nutritional or food supplements. So how and why would people ever use them like medicines?

From what we knew about the close-knit nature of MLMs, we realised that to fully answer this question meant going undercover. So, equipped with a hidden camera, Halima went to get a check-up at a Tiens "clinic" in downtown Kampala.

The result was worse than we had feared. As you can see in the film, the "distributor", a man called Frank - whom we later discovered had no medical qualifications whatsoever - uses a device called an "Aculife Magnetic Wave Machine" to diagnose Halima with a variety of very serious illnesses for which he prescribes only Tiens products.

Needless to say, Halima is perfectly healthy and the device is a nonsensical toy, but Frank put on a good show and if you had no reason to disbelieve him, the completely spurious consultation would have left you very disturbed and desperately wanting the treatment. Later, when looking through a sales handbook given to Tiens distributors, we also found - albeit after a medical disclaimer - disturbing suggestions that its products could prevent a number of life-threatening conditions such as cancer and HIV/Aids.

Living in a poor country with one of the worst doctor-to-patient ratios in the world encourages many Ugandans to use alternative remedies [Milante/Getty Images]

But there was more to this story than just medical quackery. We also wanted to investigate the allegations we'd heard about Tiens drawing people into a commercial relationship that could take over and ruin their lives.

Tiens products are expensive for most Ugandans, especially when compared with off-the-shelf equivalents, but we'd been told that the company tells customers the products will be cheaper if they become a distributor. Then - once they have been signed up and have paid their fees - the company uses clever psychological techniques to convince them to keep working, even when they are not personally making any money.

So we asked Halima to go to the weekly "training sessions" with her hidden camera.

This, we knew, was risky. I'd spoken to people who had been investigating MLM practices for years and they thought Halima, who would be attending training sessions over several weeks, might actually be in danger of being convinced and recruited.

She was going to be subjected to a barrage by the Tiens motivational speakers. We couldn't be with her the whole time, so we agreed to monitor her with regular phone discussions to check that she was not suddenly having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich through selling food supplements.

Luckily she isn't so easily fooled, and was able to document how Tiens convinces people to stay loyal through reinforcement of the idea that distributors are starting a new life and by its unrelenting "blame and shame" rhetoric about personal failure and not selling enough products. Only their inadequacies and doubts - and those of sceptical family and friends who should, of course, be dropped - were barriers to the recruits achieving great wealth.

When we met up with Michael Halangu, a former Tiens distributor, he confirmed these were the same techniques that had kept him in the business for years. In our interviews he was open about how they fooled him and how much money he lost, but the psychological impact had gone deeper; although he could see all the aspects of the scam, he still blamed himself for not having made a success of it.

But while it is clear that the poor, weak and vulnerable are particularly susceptible to such schemes, even strong people can succumb under enough pressure. Michael is an intelligent and determined man with a college degree, and we even met a university professor among the distributors at one Tiens event we attended.

Eventually, as you will see, we were able to put some of the points raised in this film to a Tiens representative. The company told us about its 5,000 distributors in Uganda and its operations across the African continent and how if people worked hard enough they too could enjoy the cars and yachts and millionaire lifestyles that their top distributors enjoyed. The company was less illuminating about those who hadn't been so lucky - or those of its distributors who, after carrying out bogus medical diagnoses, were happy to con gullible members of the public into buying Tiens products.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2017/02/uganda-health-pyramid-170202054305553.html

AFTER 30 YEARS,ISRAEL INTERESTED IN AFRICAN PARTNERSHIP,WHY?

“The automatic majority against Israel at the UN is composed – first and foremost – of African countries. There are 54 countries. If you change the voting pattern of a majority of them you at once bring them from one side to the other. You have changed the balance of votes against us at the UN and the day is not far off when we will have a majority there.”

Israel has eleven embassies in Africa. Last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the ambassadors in Jerusalem. He had a clear message for them: “The automatic majority against Israel at the UN is composed – first and foremost – of African countries. There are 54 countries. If you change the voting pattern of a majority of them you at once bring them from one side to the other. You have changed the balance of votes against us at the UN and the day is not far off when we will have a majority there.”

Netanyahu was, of course, talking about UN resolutions against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Israeli officials, followed by Israeli media, have made it a habit in the last few years to declare time after time on the flourishing relationship between Israel and Sub-Saharan African nations.

In the latest instance, in September 2016, Netanyahu met with President Macky Sall of Senegal in New York and announced: “Of course we have great relations between Senegal and Israel, and we’ll make them greater.” (At the meeting Netanyahu reminded Sall that Leopold Senghor, Senegal’s first post-independence president, had once visited Israel. What he forgot to mention to Sall was that in the end Senghor felt Israel wasn’t serious about peace with the Palestinians.)

Israel’s recent rapprochement to African states is part of a coordinated effort by the government to get close to African countries. On the sidelines of that United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September, Netanyahu also met with the President of Togo, and Israel’s UN ambassador organized event with 15 African leaders for Netanyahu. A few months earlier, Netanyahu traveled to four countries in Africa and met with seven African presidents, including Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

Netanyahu’s trip to East Africa came after a 30-year hiatus in which no Israeli Prime Minister visited Africa.

During the 1950s and even well into the 1960s, Israel established relationships with at least 35 African countries. The strong ties included help with founding Nahal-like settlements, bringing about 7,000 students for training courses in Israel, sending nearly 2,000 physicians, agricultural and economic advisors, and a large diplomatic presence to these countries. The 1967 and 1973 wars brought an end to those relationships (with the exception of Apartheid South Africa) – and they never returned to what they were.

But in the last few years, there was a feeling of optimism among Israeli officials. When a reporter from the newspaper Israel Hayom, in effect Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, praised the Prime Minister’s trip to Africa back in July, he explained the diplomatic importance of the visit by saying: “Africa has 54 countries; that’s 54 votes in the UN.”

Given the early meeting between Netanyahu and Sall in September, it came as a shock to Israel that one of the sponsors of the UN Security Council resolution passed in December last year criticizing Israeli settlements, was Senegal. Another African state, Angola, voted in favor of the resolution. Israeli officials claimed it had assurances from Angolan diplomats they would oppose the resolution.

Netanyahu retaliated by canceling a visit by the Senegalese foreign minister to Israel, banned visits of the non-resident Senegalese ambassador to Israel and ordered all planned aid to the country (though it’s unclear whether such aid even exists) voided. He also ordered the Israeli ambassador in Dakar back to Jerusalem. (That ambassador has not returned since.)

The Angolan ambassador was called for a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry to reprimand him for his country’s behavior. (When he left the Prime Minister’s office, the ambassador found he had been issued a parking ticket. Jerusalem municipality said his car was simply disrupting traffic flow).

Then the Israeli government announced that the activities of Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation with Angola would be halted. But once again, that seems to be more of a symbolic act then one with significant practical meanings. But there’s a major Israeli presence in Angola, and it is important to distinguish between what official Israel does (guided by a foreign policy), and what private contractors (or mercenaries) do, even if they very often overlap.

The 1990s were characterized in Israel as the (neo) liberalizing decade its relations with Africa. Post-independence African countries were eager to do business and in the absence regulatory relationships between Israel and these countries many private Israeli companies and investors flocked to the continent. The result was unregulated, unsupervised business relationships, which often entailed direct involvement in military and governmental affairs.

Angola for example, has a significant Israeli business presence. But Israel’s government doesn’t often blend its strategy towards African countries with the business affairs of some of the country’s corporations and businesspeople. If it did, it would have to block arms deals between Israeli firms and South Sudan, (which perhaps ironically in this case included a Senegalese middleman) or agree to expose the Israeli arms shipments to the Rwanda militias in 1994, a fight that was still taking place in an Israeli court just last year. The court eventually ruled against the exposure.

So if the Israeli government hasn’t been there for Senegal, Angola, and other African nations – why would they now defend Israel?