Skip to main content

African press review 14 August 2015

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari sets a three-month dealine for the country's new army chiefs to wipe out the Boko Haram insurgency, and African markets are in for hard times as China devalues the yuan.

Advertising

The freeing of China’s currency is set to cause some collateral damage in Africa. This is according to Mail and Guardian as it scrutinises Beijing’s move to devaluate the yuan. From the Johannesburg newspaper’s point of view this is not only about the Chinese economy. If you live in Africa, it warns, you may have to buckle up.

As Mail and Guardian points out last year Africa traded an estimated 199 billion euros worth with China. That is three times more than its volume with the US, according to the newspaper. Hence its conviction that the abrupt move by the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, to devalue the yuan will have more far-reaching ramifications.

Wary African investors will have to reduce their appetite for emerging markets and face up to China’s exportation of deflation and the drying up money supply channels for developing countries.

The other problems provoked by the yuan’s depreciation is that cheaper and more competitive Chinese products will make their way into African markets, with the attendant risk of dumping at the expense of African-made raw industrial materials, according to the newspaper.

Another issue of concern raised by the Mail and Guardian is that Beijing could reduce demand for African imports, especially from commodity-dependent countries such as South Africa, its biggest trading partner in Africa, Zambia, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

For the journal, oil exporters such as Nigeria, Angola and Algeria might welcome the news in the hope of some economic respite if crude prices maintain their rally, but the gain would have to be more to counter the reduced demand by China for energy.

But for the Mail and Guardian, it could however be tougher news for African oil importers, who are the majority and have already seen crude price gains pared by weakened and wildly-swinging domestic currencies.

And last but not the least the Johannesburg newspaper warns that a devalued yuan also makes it more expensive for Chinese tourists to visit tourism-dependent African countries that have been aggressively courting them, such as Kenya, South Africa and Mauritius – the latter already counting its losses as new visa rules continue to chip away at its billion-dollar industry.

And in Nigeria, the Guardian takes up President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive handing the newly appointed chief of defence staff, the service chiefs and his national security adviser three months to end all traces of insurgency, banditry and armed robbery in the country.

Buhari issued the directive during a ceremony where he decorated the security chiefs with their new insignias of office and challenged them to prove their pedigree as first class senior officers.

Interestingly, and the papers were sharp enough to highlight it, Buhari warned the top military hierarchy against compromising the welfare of the soldiers, a situation he said had been responsible for the low morale of the rank and file soldiers since the prosecution of the war against terror started in the country.

The Guardian asked the armed services chief if the three months were enough to crush Boko Haram. He responded by saying that it was a presidential directive‎ which they must carry out. Easier said than done it seems. 

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Keep up to date with international news by downloading the RFI app

Share :
Page not found

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.