African journalism. 20 JULY 2024 | ISSUE 168
FOUNDED
WITH

Biniam Girmay
opens the door
Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

2

Inside:■ Meta: Is Facebook contributing
to homophobic violence in West
Africa? (p7)
■ Guinea: Lawyers strike against
a repressive state (p8)
■ DRC: What happens when no
one’s paying attention (p9)■ Senegal: Macky Sall’s parting
gift (p11)■ Nigeria: Oil pipeline breaches
mean more tankers of death (p13)■ Afrobarometer: Two thirds ofAfricans unimpressed with theeconomy■ Review: Ancient lore informs
African speculative fiction (p22)

Cover: A century ago, Eritrean
cyclists were forbidden fromriding competitively by their
European overlords. Now,an Eritrean cyclist has won
three stages of Europe’s mostprestigious race – overcoming
enormous odds to do so. The
Continent spoke to Biniam
Girmay about what this meansfor cycling in Africa (p17). His
extraordinary success is also a
propaganda coup for Eritrea’s
authoritarian government (p20).

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The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

3

MOZAMBIQUE

Big fish on trial in
the Big Apple
The trial of Mozambique’s former financeminister, Manuel Chang, started on Monday
in New York. In a $2-billion “hidden debt”
scheme involving Credit Suisse that cameto be known as the Tuna-bond scandal,
Chang allegedly conspired to deepen
Mozambique’s debt with loans for dubious
maritime project,s and defraud investors.
He allegedly also accepted kickbacks froma shipbuilding company. His comeuppancestarted when he was arrested in South
Africa in 2018 on a US government warrant.
He was extradited to New York last July.

Gill-ty as charged? Manuel Chang, exfinance minister of Mozambique, will
face trial in New York. Photo: AFP

TUNISIA

SOMALIA

Saied doubles downon political lawfareEuro 2024 fans killed
in bombing attack

President Kais Saied has jailed rivals,dissolved Parliament and rewritten
the Constitution. He’s not doneyet. On Saturday, Ajami Lourimi,
secretary-general of opposition party
Ennahda, was arrested – joining party
leader Rached Ghannouchi who has
been in jail since April 2023. The day
before, a court gagged and grounded
former health minister Abdellatif
Mekki, who used to be a prominent
Ennahda leader. After the Arab Springin 2011, Ennahda dominated Tunisianpolitics until 2021, when Saied dissolved
Parliament.

Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility
for a car bomb that killed nine andinjured at least 20 people outside acafe in Mogadishu, including footballfans watching the Euro 2024 final.
The insurgent group said the cafe,
near Mogadishu’s presidential palace,
was targeted because security andgovernment workers often meet thereat night. An offensive campaign against
Al-Shabaab last year raised hope forstability but that the group has regained
enough ground that Somalia asked
African Union forces to slow down theirplanned exit from the country.

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

4

EGYPT

CRIME

If you can’t beatthem, arrest themInterpol mission nets
300 suspects

Egyptian authorities have arrested
nearly 120 people so far in July,following online calls for popular
protests, according to Amnesty
International. The security sweeps
rounded up people who had posted
online about the “Dignity Revolution” –a call for protests on 12 July (that did not
happen) to express anger about risingfood prices. Cost of living protests haveintensified have more than doubled
since the Covid pandemic.

Global policing agency Interpol says
its Operation Jackal III investigation,
spanning five years and 21 countries,
has led to the arrest of 300 people, theseizure of $3-million and the blockingof over 700 bank accounts. Among the
subjects of the operation was Black Axe,a notorious criminal network in West
Africa, which executes cyber fraud andromance scams. The group has also
been implicated in human and drugtrafficking, and money-laundering.

Paul position: Supporters
wave posters bearing
the visage of Rwanda’s
President Paul Kagame.
Photo: Guillem Sartorio/AFP

RWANDA

Another big win for
democracy Kagame
President Paul Kagame won the country’s
presidential election by 99% of the vote,an improvement from the 98.7% he got

in 2017 and 2010’s 93%. Current trends
indicate he could win the next one with amodest 100.1%. He was mostly runningagainst himself after state bureaucracy
sidelined potential rivals. The electoralcommission barred Diane Rwigara fromrunning, while Victoire Ingabire was
ruled out by a 2013 conviction.

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

5

HEALTH

Hiss-tory inthe making.
Photo: Tony
Karumba/AFP

Taking the stingout of snake bites
Although they kill more than 138,000
people a year, snake bites are a neglected
health issue. Where antivenom exists,
it’s in small quantities, expensive andavailable only at hospitals with facilities
for cold storage and intravenous drug
administration. There is some good news,
however: a study published this week in
the Science Translational Medicine journal
found that heparin – a widely-available
blood thinner – could block venom fromthe spitting cobra. Unlike current antivenoms, heparin can also heal the tissue
damaged by cobra venom.
NIGERIA

KENYA

Sorry, Godwin – anote from your mum
ain’t gonna cut it‘Serial killer’
confessed underduress – lawyer

Former central bank governor Godwin
Emefiele’s request to leave Nigeria for
medical treatment has been denied
by a court in Abuja. Emefiele asked totravel to Britain but the judge said he
didn’t show a medical report to support
the claim that he is ill. Earlier this year,
Emefiele was charged with fraud andcorruption in connection to printing
new banknotes and withdrawing billionsof naira without presidential approval.
His passport was held by court after
prosecutors argued he was a flight risk.

Kenyan police say the nine mutilatedbodies discovered after a brutal
crackdown on protests are victims ofcivilian Collins Jumaisi Khalusha. Police
say that the man confessed to killing 42
women since 2022. But his lawyer, John
Maina Ndegwa, says the confession isn’t
credible as police allegedly tortured him
during interrogation. The country’s
top cop, Japhet Koome, resigned on
the day of the discovery, amid public
outcry against police brutality during
the recent protests.

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

6

Glimmer of nope: European countries made more than $61-million in fees fromrejecting visa applications from African citizens. Expect that figure to increase thisyear, as the non-refundable visa fee has recently been increased

SPORTSWORLD

Morocco tops Fifa’s
Africa rankings

No Microsoft jokes,
then? Tough cloud

According to the latest Fifa rankings,
released this week, Africa’s top 10 men’sfootball teams are, in order: Morocco,
Senegal, Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria,
Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Mali,
and South Africa. If your country
is not on that list, it might be time tostart practising. Leading the globe areArgentina, France, Spain, England andBrazil.

Computers and IT networks around theworld were affected by a major bug that
affected systems linked to Microsoft’s
Windows 365 Cloud software. The bug
resulted in some airports halting flights,
banks suspending transactions andhospitals cancelling operations. Many
African companies and institutions were
impacted, including Kenya Airways,
Capitec and the City of Tshwane.

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

News

7

West Africa
Is Facebook
promotinghomophobic
hate speech?
Meta’s oversight board
has launched a new probe.

S

ocial media giant Meta has a longtrack record of allowing hate speech
to thrive on its most influential platform,
Facebook. This week, its own oversightboard – an independent committee
designed to keep Facebook in check– announced an investigation into a
new example of this ugly phenomenon:
how Facebook may be contributing tohomophobic violence in West Africa.
The specific incident underinvestigation is a video that was firstposted last December. In it, two men –bloodied and beaten, and surrounded byan angry crowd – are forced to “confess”
to having sex with each other. They werespeaking in Igbo, suggesting the video wasfilmed somewhere in Nigeria.
The post went viral, attracting millionsof views and thousands of comments
and reshares. Multiple Facebook users
reported the content using Facebook’s

internal mechanisms, and it was reviewed
by multiple human content moderators,
who said it did not violate guidelines.
Eventually, after the video was brought tothe attention of Facebook leadership by
the oversight board, it was taken down.
Now, the board is investigating
whether this incident is a symptomof a much broader problem. It will beassessing whether Facebook properly
enforces its own rules around content“which exposes the identity of at-risk
people in a region where LGBTQ+ people
are particularly vulnerable to harm”. It has
asked for public comments to inform its
policy recommendations to Meta.

Facebook was sued for$2-billion in Nairobi for allegedly
amplifying hate speech andincitements to violence that
may have exacerbated violencein the recent Ethiopian civil war.
Facebook has been criticised for failingto enforce its own guidelines against hatespeech in African contexts. In 2022, it was
sued for $2-billion in a Nairobi court forallegedly amplifying hate speech that may
have exacerbated violence in the recent
Ethiopian civil war.
Facebook maintains that it invests
heavily “in teams and technology to help
us find and remove [hate speech]”. ■The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

8

GuineaLawyersdown tools
over military
repression
Marché ArendsLawyers in Guinea began a two-week
strike on Tuesday to protest against
arbitrary arrests and secret detentions
allegedly carried out by the military junta.
The protest comes after the arrest on
9 July of Oumar Sylla and Mamadou
Bah, two leading members of the
National Front for the Defense of theConstitution, a coalition of civil society
groups that spearheaded pro-democracy
demonstrations in 2019. It was dissolvedin 2022 by the government of Colonel
Mamady Doumbouya, who in 2021
overthrew president Alpha Condé.
Last week, Amnesty International
accused the junta of waging a “crackdownon peaceful dissent”, which included thekilling of 47 protesters in April.
The lawyers’ strike, scheduled to end
on 1 August, could interrupt the trial offormer military ruler Dadis Camara and11 others, accused of torture, abduction,
sexual violence and murder, including the
massacre at Conakry stadium in 2009.

Indefensible: Oumar Sylla (top) andMamadou Bah have been arrested by
Guinea’s junta

On 28 September 2009, Guinea’s
security forces killed at least 150 Guineansby shooting into a crowd of opposition
supporters. They subsequently arranged
a cover-up, burying the bodies in mass
graves elsewhere. Prosecutors have asked
for life sentences for Camara.
The verdict is expected on 31 July, thelast day of the strike. Courts are effectively
immobilised until the lawyers’ return.
Last November, Camara nearly evaded
accountability when gunmen broke him
and three others out of prison in Conakry.
He was recaptured hours later. n

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

9DRC
Is anyonepaying any
attention?
The world is ignoring theconflict in Africa’s mostresource-rich country.
Marché ArendsC

ongolese activists are calling on
African leaders to show more
solidarity with the victims of the “forgotten
crisis” in the Democratic Republic ofCongo.
More than seven million people havebeen driven from their homes by conflict,including 1.8-million in the past six weeks
alone. A humanitarian truce between theCongolese army and the M23 rebel groupannounced by the United States on 5 Julyquickly collapsed, with fighting flaring up
again last Friday.
“I don’t even have the words todescribe the situation. Catastrophic is
an understatement,” said Justine Masika
Bihamba, the founder of Synergy of
Women for Victims of Sexual Violence.
She noted that sexual violence and abusein the conflict had sharply increased.
Speaking at an online media
briefing convened by Crisis Action, aninternational NGO advocating for theprotection of civilians during armed
conflict, activists expressed fears theviolence could worsen in coming weeks.
Bihamba urged African leaders at
the upcoming African Union Executive
Council meeting in Accra to acknowledge
the suffering of the Congolese people.
Addressing the presidents of Rwanda
and the DRC specifically, Bihamba said:“I beg you to set your egos aside and see
the situation for what it is. Find peace sopeople can return to their villages.”
The threat of regional destabilisation
is growing as tension between Rwanda
and Kinshasa mounts. A recent report by
United Nations experts on the DRC said
that close to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers werefighting on the side of the M23 rebels. In
their 293-page report the experts said its
army’s de facto control ultimately madeRwanda “liable for the actions of M23”. n

Forgotten crisis: Militiamen and DRC
soldiers survey Kibirizi, controlled by
M23 rebels. Photo: Alexis Huguet/AFP

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The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Analysis11

Macky Sall’s
controversial parting gift
One of the former president’s last acts in office was topass an amnesty law that freed his political rivals fromprison – and gave himself immunity from prosecution.
Borso Tall in Dakar

A

fter 100 days in power, Senegal’s
ruling duo, President Bassirou
Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister
Ousmane Sonko, find themselves withtwo big legal headaches – both thanks to
the legislative actions of their predecessor,
Macky Sall.
The first issue is an amnesty law
passed by Sall’s government last year,
after it failed to postpone the presidential
election. The law was designed to bring“appeasement to the political space”, andended the prosecution of nearly 2,000
people who had been arrested during
political protests – including both Faye
and Sonko, who were then opposition
politicians. The duo were released fromprison on 14 March, and just ten days later
would win the presidential election on a
joint ticket.
But there was a catch: the law also
exonerated Sall and his allies of potential
illegal activity committed during his
tenure. Victims of political violence
during Sall’s rule have called for the law tobe repealed, so that the former president

can be prosecuted.
Among the loudest are the families andfriends of two soldiers, Fulbert Sambou
and Didier Badji, who disappeared in late2022, after they went fishing together.
Sambou’s body was recovered days later
but Badji is still missing.
Their friends and family blame theirfate on the former president. “Macky Sallcrossed all the rubicons. We are asking
the authorities to issue an arrest warrant
against Macky Sall,” said fellow soldier
Alassane Camara at a press conference
earlier this month.

The law was designed tobring ‘appeasement to thepolitical space’, and ended
the prosecution of nearly
2,000 people who had beenarrested in political protests– including Faye and Sonko
Lawmaker and former presidential
aspirant Aminata Touré has also called
for the law to be repealed. Speaking
on local radio station Rfm in late June,
Touré – who also served as prime minister

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

during Sall’s first term – called for those
responsible for political violence to beheld accountable in court, including theformer president.
Mutually assured destruction
Calls to punish Sall should be music to theears of Faye and Sonko – but for their own
massive conflict of interest. Without theamnesty law, they might still be in prison.
Repealing the law would reopen an
impossible question on whether or not toreopen old prosecutions, including thosetargeting Faye and Sonko.
Despite promising justice andaccountability during their run for office,
Faye and Sonko have not publicly engaged
much with the complication arising fromthe amnesty law. For survivors of some
The rioting’s on the wall:
Protesters clash withgendarmes in Colobane.
Photo: Seyllou/ AFP

12of the most gruesome violence, that is
unacceptable. Bounama Ndiaye, 24, says
he was arrested in June 2023, beaten and
raped and then detained at Yeumbeul
police station about 20km outside Dakar.
He wants to face his abusers one day.

Despite promising justice
and accountability during
their run for office, Faye
and Sonko have not publicly
engaged much with thecomplication arising from theamnesty law.
“It’s out of the question to ignore thislaw,” Ndiaye told The Continent. “We were
tortured in very serious ways. Justice mustbe pursued.” ■Feature

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

13

Deadly: Fire fighters
extinguish a blaze froma tanker laden with fueland gas. Photo: Pius Utomi
Ekpei/AFP

Tankers of death
Vandals forced oil out of Nigeria’s vast pipeline
network, and into heavy-duty tankers that are
causing death and destruction on the roads.
Eric Dumo in LagosP

aul Chette was returning home to his
family one night in late April whena tanker carrying 33,000 litres of petrol
collided with a truck along the East-WestRoad and exploded. From where thefactory worker stood, everything in theinferno’s path seemed instantly reduced
to ash. Watching the scene, the 51-yearold man could not hold back tears. In

the final analysis, the explosion had
consumed five people, destroyed over 120
vehicles, and torched everything within a
500m radius. Chette was far enough away
to emerge unscathed.
Remarkably, the April inferno was
not Chette’s first experience of fueltanker fires. In May 2022, a petrol tanker
explosion on the same road claimed thelives of his younger brother, Maxwell, andthose of several others. “My brother’s wife

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

and children are still too hurt to accept
the reality of his demise,” said Chette.
The two incidents form part of a long
list of death and destruction on Nigerianroads in recent times. Last August, theFoundation for Investigative Journalism
found that more than 800 people havebeen killed since 2018 in over 200
incidents of petrol-laden tankers catchingfire across Nigeria.
On 4 May, just over a week after theRivers State incident Chette witnessed,
another petrol tanker fire killed sevenpeople along the Warri-Sapele Road in
Delta State. Nineteen days after that, one
exploded along the Mowe-Ibafo axis of
the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
After each incident, fingers arepointed, factors like bad roads andcorruption are listed and investigations
are promised. Little talked about is why
the tankers are on the roads at all in acountry with extensive oil pipelines. The
answer to that is unmitigated vandalismon the pipelines.
Nigeria has a 5,001km oil pipeline
network running from 22 petroleum
storage depots and four refineries acrossthe country. The refineries, different
and older than Aliko Dangote’s new
one in Lagos, are not functional and so
don’t use the attached pipelines. But noone would consider repurposing themfor transporting imported petroleum
products because of the fear of vandalism.
According to the Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative, from 2017 to
2021, nearly 209-million barrels of crude
oil were stolen in 7,143 recorded cases ofvandalism on pipelines. The losses from14

those incidents amount to $12.74-billion.
The government’s own estimate is evenmore staggering: $20-billion lost annuallyto oil thieves who breach poorly secured
pipelines.
There have been more than 9,000
pipeline breaches this year alone,according to the national oil company.
“As we remove one illegal connection,
another one comes up,” its chief
executive, Mele Kyari, told the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission. He
said that the company had closed 6,409
illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region
alone and detached 4,846 illegal pipes
connected to its pipelines but estimatedthat nearly 700 other illegal connection
points were still syphoning.

The Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative says
that, from 2017 to 2021, nearly209-million barrels of crude
oil were stolen ... The losses
from those incidents amount to$12.74-billion.
A $50-million oil pipeline surveillance
deal with a company owned by an
ex-militant leader, Government
Ekpemupolo, popularly known as
Tompolo, has not ended the vandalism.
Nor has the fact that the crime attracts 21
years to life imprisonment if caught (it isworth noting that only a fraction of theover 5,000 oil thieves arrested since 2020
were prosecuted).
Given the risk of pipeline transport, oilmarketers are playing it safe by trucking
petrol on the road. Safe, until it’s not. ■The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Feature15

Remembering the past
to feed the present
Individually and through collectives, young Nigerians
are bringing their DIY energy to the food-price crisis.
Damilola AdeyeraSome young Nigerians are returning
to farming even as they pursue theireducation in other fields.
One of these is Adeyemi Aderinola. At
the back of his university hostel is a small
plot of land the university allows him tofarm. Each day, the engineering student at
Obafemi Awolowo University rises before
dawn to weed around his yam heaps before
heading to class. He negotiated for the plot
through an association of 143 student
farmers which he leads.
Funmilayo Bakare, a microbiology
student, is a member of the same collective
and was also allocated a plot, on which she
grows cassava, potatoes, maize and othercrops.
The collective, United Small Scale
Farmers Association of Nigeria, wasfounded by the late academic Makanjuola
Arigbede, who wanted to see more
Nigerian youth take up agriculture. He
often argued that, before the discoveryof oil, farming was the backbone of
Nigeria’s economy – but petro-dollars
led authorities to neglect other sectors,
including agriculture.
That neglect is biting now.

Nigeria is experiencing its worst-everbout of food inflation and, globally, isthe country with the largest number offood insecure people, according to theUnited Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization.
In its May report, the national statistics
office put food price inflation at a record
high of nearly 41%. “We are just reaping
what we’ve sown in the past few years,”said Idris Badiru, a lecturer at the
University of Ibadan. He sees the current
food crisis as the cumulative effect of too
little attention being paid to agriculture
over the years.
Badiru said Nigerian policy had long
been indecisive on whether or not toprotect the agricultural sector and thatclimate change, insecurity in the foodproducing areas, and higher import costs
had exacerbated the situation, driving
food inflation to the current record highs.
Young people who are taking up
farming are hoping they are part of thesolution. Bakare, the microbiology student
by day and farmer by spare time, said she
got into it partly because of how muchfood prices have been rising. “It was justme wanting to make it easier for people toget farm produce.”

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

More collectives like theirs arecropping up: Ekiti Youth in Urban
Farming was established last August
and gives young people plots to farm,in addition to training on vegetable
growing, hydroponics, organic farming
and aquaponics.
“Our experience has been remarkable,with over 60 members and still growing.
Nigerian youths are increasingly showinginterest in farming,” Adetunji Ifeoluwa,
who heads the Ekiti collective, told The
Continent.
The collective receives support fromthe local Ekiti state government, theMastercard Foundation, and Soilless
Farm Lab, a social enterprise that says it
has trained 13,700 people on smart ways
to farm.

16

Other young people are taking up
farming without necessarily joining
collectives.
Ishola Joseph, a student at the
University of Ilorin, said he started
growing rice when it became too
expensive to buy in the market.
Deborah Oke, another student there,
said she is doing it for extra-curricularknowledge and to earn some money. She
grows maize and sorghum and believes
every household should grow something“especially fruits and vegetables”.
She urged the Nigerian state to expand
these individual attempts at solving thefood crisis by emulating the collectives
through “allocation of free land, givingout free seeds and fertilisers. If not free,then at reduced prices”. n
Crop top: Some Nigerian
youth are returning
to the country’s
agricultural roots.
Photo: Luis Tato/AFP

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Sport

17

Mettle to the pedal:
Biniam Girmay crosses
the finish line on Stage
Three of the Tour deFrance on 1 July. Photo:
Marco Bertorello/AFP

Biniam Girmay’s amazing race
As far as we are concerned, the history-making
Eritrean cyclist has already won this year’s
Tour de France.
Erwin Ayota

A

split second before he crossed thefinish line in Turin, Biniam Girmay
sat up on his bicycle. He let go of hishandlebars, smiled to himself, and thenpunched the air in defiance. Behind him,
heads bowed, still pedalling hard for theline, were 175 of the world’s best bicycle
riders.
There were no bicycles ahead of him.
The Tour de France is the world’s oldest
and most prestigious cycling race. Over 21

gruelling stages that span 3,500 kilometres,
cyclists race each other through streetsand up mountains and along winding,
picturesque country roads.
It is one of the most brutal competitions
in world sport, and also one of the mostelite. Never before in its 121-year history
had a stage been won by an Eritrean. Neverbefore had a stage been won by a black
African. Until Biniam.
The 24-year-old was not much fanciedheading into the race, but that win in Stage
3 was no fluke. He also won Stage 8 andThe Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

Stage 12, and is currently wearing theiconic maillot vert, the green jersey thatis typically awarded to the fastest sprinter(the polka-dot jersey goes to the fastest
climber, while the yellow jersey is for the
fastest cyclist overall).
“It was unbelievably crazy, people
everywhere celebrating,” Biniam told
The Continent. Those celebrations were
especially pronounced in the streets andbars of Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, where
cycling is a religion and Biniam is alreadya national hero.

For riders able to keep aheadof all this, they must enter
the cut-throat, expensive
and at times racist world ofinternational cycling, where
opportunities for African
riders are scarce.
“The plan was to build up for the
Olympic Games but now I think I’m
almost in my top shape,” said Biniam.
“First, the goal is to finish the tour safely.”
He may have tempted fate.
Just a few days later, in the last few
hundred metres of stage 16 – on a flattish
course ideal for the kind of sprint finish
in which he excels – Biniam crashed as henavigated through a roundabout at highspeed.
His teammates helped him up, and hegingerly pedalled to the finish line – but
the stage was lost to his closest rival, theBelgian rider Jasper “Disaster” Philipsen,and his hold on the green jersey suddenly
felt a lot more precarious.
Biniam was undeterred. He dusted

18

himself off, got a good night’s rest, andthe next day he smashed Philipsen in anintermediate sprint on a mountain stage,increasing his lead once again. Given the
obstacles that he has overcome to get here,a few bruises and scratches were nevergoing to hold him back.
Taking the long road
The first bicycle in Eritrea was importedby the Italian military – then an occupying
power – in the late 1800s. The sportcaught on quickly. At first, bike races
were strictly segregated, and Eritreans
were not allowed to compete with theircolonial rulers. In 1939, Italian authorities
organised a special race with both Italianand Eritrean riders – ostensibly to prove
Italian superiority. It backfired: the race
was run by Ghebremariam Ghebru in a
victory that is still celebrated today. In thewords of Eritrea’s information ministry,“that victory shattered colonial Italian
myths about Eritrean inferiority”.
Since then, Eritrean cyclists havecontinued to prove their excellence in theface of considerable obstacles. At home,riders have had to contend with civil war,
diplomatic isolation and one of the world’s
most authoritarian governments.
These conditions can also provide aperverse incentive, as African Arguments
reports, as professional cycling is one of the
few ways to escape mandatory, indefinite
national military service – as long as
athletes can keep riding fast enough.
Meanwhile the country’s high-altitude andrelatively quiet roads – a consequence of
its economic stagnation – provide ideal
training conditions.

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

19

Roadsideinsistance:
Biniam Girmay
supporters cheer
near the podium
area after
the 6th stageof the 111thedition of theTour de France.
Photo: Marco
Bertorello/AFP

For riders able to keep ahead of all this,they must enter the cut-throat, expensive
and at times racist world of international
cycling, where opportunities for African
riders are scarce. Biniam hopes his successwill change this. After his first stage win, heposted a picture to social media with thecaption: “Let me open the door.”
It is “a huge opportunity for African
cycling, especially for my country,” hesaid, and urged the big international
cycling teams to start investing more in
talent from the continent. “They need toinvest for this because my team invests a
lot on me and now it’s time to pay them off.
The other teams need to do the same andbelieve in [African cyclists] also.”
This is a familiar refrain within Africa’s
growing cycling community. Despite thehuge potential in young talent, cycling
clubs in Africa mostly survive thanks tothe self-sacrifice and collective support ofmembers who are driven by their goodwill
and passion for cycling. They often survive

in spite of national cycling federations,
who struggle with leadership issues andfundraising.
Cameroon’s most-renowned cyclist,
Kamzong Abesselo Clovis, is one of
the few Africans who can make a livingfrom the sport. He counts himself as
lucky that he is in a team that pays him asalary and training bonuses. He said that
African athletes need more opportunities
to compete. “A sportsman’s food iscompetition,” he said. “Training can’t
make you progress like competing.”
Biniam’s dominance in this year’s Tourde France is proof of what happens when
African cyclists do receive the necessary
support: his exceptional early promise
earned him a rare spot at the International
cycling body’s World Cycling College in
Switzerland, which brought him to theattention of his current IntermarchéWanty team.
He then pedalled into the global
spotlight. And he is still pedalling. ■Analysis

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

20

The race to ride
Girmay’s coattails
Biniam Girmay’s recent success is challenging
perceptions and exposing athlete dynamics in society.
Yohannes WoldemariamE

ritrean cyclist Binian Girmay’s
breakthroughs in the 2024 Tour deFrance challenges assumptions about
African sportspeople. His success is also
being manipulated back home.
The success of Africans in sports suchas athletics is so common that people
from countries like Kenya and Ethiopia
are expected to dominate. But other sports– especially those that require expensive
equipment – have proved harder to break
into. This is not just true of Africa, but alsoof people of minority backgrounds aroundthe world. Golf had seen few successful
black players before Tiger Woods, andthe same was true of tennis before Arthur
Ashe and the Williams sisters.
Breakthroughs in these sports arenotable because they take African athletes
into the clubhouses that have historically
been the hardest to access, with exclusion
occurring along both class and racial lines.
Girmay, for example, was denied a visa for
a competition in Scotland last August.
That exclusion perpetuates the racist
myth that athletes of African descentare better at sports that require physicalstrength rather than strategy. By winningon one of the least diverse sports on Earth,Girmay has broken down another wall,and challenged some of the assumptions ofcycling fans and commentators who haveexpressed amazement at his achievements.
The power of that symbolism has notbeen overlooked back home. Eritrea’s longtime dictator, Isaias Afwerki, never missesa chance to take credit for the performanceof his country’s sportspeople. An Eritrean
defeating Europeans at a sport brought
to the country by Italian colonisers has
proved to be just as tempting to gloat
about.
Afwerki’s claims of credit for the
success of Eritrean athletes have been
regularly punctured by a steady streamof Eritreans who use their involvement
in international sport to claim asylum
and escape his grasp. The sad reality for
Girmay is that he is poorly placed todecide how his own success will be usedbecause he has a wife, child and parents
who remain in Eritrea. ■Yohannes Woldemariam isa US-based academic whowrites about the Horn ofAfrica. This analysis wasproduced in collaboration
with Democracy in Africa

Data

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

21

Economic realities are worseningIf economic growth in Africa isrebounding, many households
apparently didn’t get the memo.
Listening to ordinary Africans,
Afrobarometer surveys find a striking
worsening of economic realities. On
average across 31 countries surveyed
consistently between 2014 and 2023, 66%
of respondents describe their country’s
economy as “fairly bad” or “very bad”,
up by 15 percentage points over the past
decade. And 53% say the same about theirpersonal living conditions, a 7-point rise.
The proportion of households
experiencing moderate or high “lived

poverty” – a measure of how often families
go without basic necessities such as food,water and medical care – has increased
steadily, from 48% to 60%.
In growing numbers, sur vey
respondents fault their government’s
management of the economy. Seven in
10 (71%) say their government is doing
a poor job on the economy, up by 14
percentage points, and the share who cite
economic management as one of theircountry’s most important problems has
more than doubled, from 12% to 30%.
On the ground, economic recovery isclearly still a work in progress. ■Negative assessments of the economy | 31 African countries* | 2014-2023
Government is managing
the economy fairly badly orvery badly

71%
58%
57%
51%
48%
46%

51%
47%

63%

66%

61%

60%

57%

53%

Country’s economic
condition is fairly bad orvery badExperienced moderate orhigh lived poverty

50%

Personal living conditions
are fairly bad or very bad
30%Management of theeconomy ranks among mostimportant problems

21%
14%
12%

* 30 countries for ‘Management of theeconomy ranks among most important
problems’

Source: Afrobarometer is a non-partisan African research network that conducts
nationally representative surveys on democracy, governance, and quality of life.
Face-to-face interviews with 1,200-2,400 people in each country yield results with amargin of error of +/- two to three percentage points.

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Review

Mami Wataand the surgeof a risen tide
Lost Ark Dreaming takes
us into a world undreamt
by Western philosophies.
Jacqueline NyathiO

ne of my favourite things about nonWestern speculative fiction is how thecosmology of each story primes the reader

22

to see a world wholly different from what
our Eurocentricised imaginations allow.
This is not the world of the Enlightenment
philosophers; rules of cause and effectinstead obey ancient laws and beings.
In Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s novella,a catastrophe has led sea levels to rise,causing Lagos to flood. A far-sighted
businessman set up five offshore towers
called The Fingers, with upper levels
reserved for those who can afford to move
there. Lower levels are for a few refugees
and the grunts who keep things running.
When there’s a tower breach below oceanlevel, is it a mechanical failure – or have themonsters of the brine broken in?
Well, monsters are not usually what we
think, and we are so often more monstrous
than those we fear. This is a novella aboutclass, revolution, loss and memory, set inWest African cosmology: it is wonderful
but gut-wrenching how Okungbowa links
the spirit of the deep, Mami Wata, with thetrans-Atlantic trade in enslaved people.
Additionally, the forays into a different
form for messages from outside of time are
beautifully poetic. This novella has warmthand humour all the way through, setting itapart from lots of other speculative fictionthat Takes Itself Seriously Because It Has
Things To Say. Okungbowa makes his
points without being didactic.
It’s a fun and thoughtful read. Come forthe speculative elements of the story, stayfor the Afro in AfroSF. Lost Ark Dreaming
feels like the introduction to a whole story
universe, so perhaps readers can lookforward to more. ■THE QUIZThe Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

23

Photo: Nhial
Deng/X

0-3“I think I need tostart reading morenewspapers.”

4-7“I can’t wait to
explore more ofthis continent.”

8-10“The independenceof Libya represented
a dramatic breakfrom the pasta.”

1_The UAE lifted its
21-month ban on visitorsfrom which Africancountry?
2_In which year did Libya
gain independence?
3_From which country did
it gain independence?
4_Yamoussoukro is Côte
d’Ivoire’s largest city. Trueor false?
5_Which president won
99% of the presidential voteon Monday?
6_How many colours areon the Gambian flag?
7_Mogadiscio was
the capital of which
protectorate from 1889 to
1936?
8_The former province of
Équateur would be locatedin which present-day
country today?
9_In which Africancountry is the World War I
Memorial (pictured) found?
10_French and Sango arewhich African country’s
official languages?

HOW DID I DO? WhatsApp ‘ANSWERS’ to+27 73 805 6068 and we’ll send the answers to you!

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Comment

24

The Continentissue 168. july 20 2024

Analysis25

Chatbots can’t savebroken health systems
Digital health technologies could revolutionise
healthcare on the continent – but only if governments
get the fundamentals right.
Charles EbikemeC

hatbots now deliver healthcare acrossthe continent. The coronavirus
pandemic, when a surge in people’s needfor health information coincided withmandated isolation, was a particular driverof chatbots using large language models
and artificial intelligence to provide healtheducation. WhatsApp chatbots in South
Africa, Rwanda and Senegal provided
reliable information and support for
rapid Covid-19 testing. In Ghana, a free
Covid-19 Telegram app chatbot tackled
misinformation on the coronavirus.
In some cases, chatbots were already inuse. In others, they have expanded beyond
Covid-19 information. NurseBot in South
Africa advises pregnant women and new
mothers through WhatsApp. Mum’s
Companion in Zimbabwe does the same
through Facebook Messenger. In Kenya
and Ghana the Nuru Facebook Messenger
combines classified ads with information
on agriculture, finances and health. Medbitin Nigeria provides medical consultations
and referrals through WhatsApp.
Many other digital health initiatives

are happening across the continent.
African healthtech startups have attracted$550-million in the past three years,
according to Salient Advisory, a healthcare
consulting firm. Online pharmacies,
electronic medical records and telehealthservices are just some of the innovations
garnering interest from investors.
But it’s important to assess digital
health innovations beyond investor
interest. After all, many debuted to large
fanfare in glowing press releases and thenquickly subsided. Babylon in Rwanda,
ConnectMed in Kenya (2016-2019) andHelloDoctor in South Africa are some of
the most notable failures.
When digital health technologies areheralded as potential game changers fora continent with stark health burdens andoutcomes, the optimism often ignores thefact that stable public health infrastructure
is a prerequisite for any success in healthinnovations. “We have to get the basics
in place before we can work on the fancy
stuff,” says Marlien Herselman, a chief
researcher at the Council for Scientificand Industrial Research in South Africa.
The optimism “also misses the fact that

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

healthcare is very conservative,” explains
Ayomide Owoyemi, a researcher who has
built several digital products for Nigeria
and other African countries, and whose
code for an AI-based health insurance
recommendation system in Nigeria isfreely available on GitHub. “Healthcare isexpensive and does not follow the expected
timeline for return on investment.”
The low chances for that “expected
timeline for return on investment” makes
rolling out investor-led innovations a
precarious choice. In 2018, Babylon
announced “the first-ever fully digital
healthcare service in east Africa using
artificial intelligence”. The service would
include a chatbot “to take the power of a
doctor’s brain and put it on a mobile phone
for medical advice and triage”.
In 2022, Babylon reported an operating
loss of $369.8-million, despite generating$1.1-billion in revenue. Months later, thecompany ceased operations in Rwanda,
ending what was initially billed as a 10year partnership with the government.
In countries such as Finland andEstonia, success has come from local
collaboration between stakeholders
including patients, user communities,
technology providers, payers, regulatorsand policymakers. This sort ofconfiguration is rare in African countries.
Health programming has insteadhistorically revolved around time-boundprojects that deliver a set of agreed-upon
activities. Donors define a project andtime frame, identify an implementer tobuild and deploy a digital solution, andthen expect the solution to live on. Yet, few
digital tools are sustained without support

26

Failing health: A Babylon worker helps
a patient access the now-defunct healthservice in Rwanda. Photo: Babylon app

from the public system.
The African Development Bank
estimates that African governments need$26-billion in annual capital expenditure
to meet evolving health needs over the next
decade. They currently spend $4.5-billion
a year. More investment would help build
the shared infrastructure on which digital
health innovations can interoperate.
Like car makers need governments tobuild roads, digital health innovators need
governments to build electronic healthinformation systems, internet connectivity
networks and so on. Yet, in Africa, only
Mali scores highly in public sector
investment for digital health, according
to the Global Health Digital Monitor.
“When you want to solve a problem,
you shouldn’t think of the tech solution
first. Think about the fundamentals first,”
says Owoyemi. ■This report was supported by theInternational Center for Journalists

The Continent | issue 168. july 20 2024

THE BIGPICTUREThe Continent is a member of the Press Council ofSouth Africa. This means we adhere to its Code of
Ethics. It also means that there’s an independent
body you can reach out to with a complaint about
our reporting. That process is on their website— www.presscouncil.org.za.

27

Pitcher perfect: A Tunisian man examines
a pot at an 800-year-old workshop on theisland of Djerba, where ancient Aegeanspottered around even before the arrival ofthe Phoenicians in the 12th century BC.
Photo: Fethi Belaid/AFP

The Continent is published by All Protocol Observed, a not-forprofit based in South Africa. Our home is dedicated to creatinga space for African journalists to do quality journalism, which
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