 Good afternoon. Welcome to Global Report. I'm your host, Lily. We have with us today Mr. Johann Berger, who is the director of the Center for African Studies at the National Technological University of Singapore. Welcome to the show, Mr. Berger. Thank you very much, Lily. Pleasure to be on it. Thanks for being here. Now, Mr. Berger, I would like to talk with you about Africa. I know you're an expert in this area. Could you perhaps give us an introduction on Africa first? Yes. First of all, I think we must bear in mind that Africa is a continent of 54 countries and not a country. So when you do understand and look at Africa, you must understand that there are 54 different entities that you need to bear in mind, each with its own unique characteristics. There's a couple of broad trends that we see happening in Africa. First of all, we see that population explosion. Currently it has about 1.2 billion people. We're going to see this moved up to about 2.4 billion people by 2050. So that's double? Literally double and it will probably be doubling again up to 2100. Wow. So a massive population. Currently about 40% of them urbanized. This is going to increase to about 50% within the next decade or two. Now, before we go into more of these characteristics, could you tell us how large exactly Africa is? Africa is huge. You can park into Africa, China, the US, Russia, Europe, India and still have a bit of space left. Oh, wow. Definitely put things in our perspective. Indeed. And if you bear in mind that you're looking at only 1.2 billion people, it gives you an impression that there's a lot of space that is not covered by people. But this urbanization trend is an important one because it's put people in cities, which from a consumer perspective, a consumer approaching perspective brings about a change in strategy. Early on, people would have spoken about do you have an Africa strategy, which would have been wrong in the first place because as I've said, there are 54 countries. But given the urbanization approach, we see a lot of companies actually now developing a city strategy and not really a country strategy anymore. So if you were to go into Angola, you would not worry about the country as a whole, but you would look at Luhanda. And the same thing when you go to Nigeria, Lagos with 20 million people will also be a target. And that's necessary because every country is quite unique too, right, from the other right. Yeah, absolutely. And what makes this more interesting is the fact that there is a strong trend of growth in the middle class. Now, some people say, Johan, you can't really talk about a middle class when you look at the parameters that they use. So you also need to be careful which parameters you're using or which company that you're talking about who has defined middle class. So I tend to speak about a consumer class and this consumer class is growing strongly. So a lot of African people, in spite of a lot of poverty that you do find on the continent, there is a growing consumer class with an increasing amount of personal disposable income, which from a retail perspective makes Africa an attraction for global companies interested. So I get a terminology, right, is this consumer class parallel to middle class? Are they in the same grouping or? Yes, they would be within, but some of them would actually be below middle class. It all depends on which definition you would use to define your middle class. Some companies talk about between two and twenty dollars personal disposable income on a daily basis. Others talk about between ten and a hundred dollars personal disposable income. So to take out that confusion as to what you're talking about really, I prefer to talk about a consumer class. Then there's no sort of confusion as to who you're actually talking about. I see. Now you mentioned the demographics. So with that increase in population, I heard that by 2050, one in four workers would actually be living in Africa. Is that correct? Indeed. Indeed. It's amazing and I'm not really sure whether Africa can at this stage of the game with its current disposition afford to have that many people. The reality is that currently you're looking at Africa in spite of the fact that they have the potential to feed the world. Our net importers of food on an annual basis to the tune of 41 billion dollars. This is half of the total, used to be half of the total infrastructure spend that it needs. It's about what it needs on an annual basis for its total energy infrastructure spent. So and this figure is set to grow to about 110 billion dollars over the next decade or two if we go on doing what we currently doing. So with this strongly growing population, urbanizing, an added to that, a youth that is not willing to live in the rural areas anymore and then moving into the cities, we're finding that Africa is going to find it increasingly difficult to feed its people. So and that is why amongst others, the African Development Bank has adopted as one of its high five priorities feeding Africa as very important for Africa such and you would also find countries adopting its own version of the high five priorities such as Kenya, where they're also looking at feeding its own population. Now talking about feeding, talking about food, Africa has such a large land mass. How much of the land is edible? Huge amount. I'm going to lie to you if I tell you the exact figure. What I can tell you is that 65% of the world's arable land left is in Africa. So there's a massive amount. You know, the reasons why is Africa currently importing 41 billion dollars food on an annual basis on a net basis is amongst others. The fact that you find difficulties in financing, they're using archaic farming methods. Irrigation is a challenge. Financing is a challenge. Using fertilizer, getting access to that is a challenge. Roots to market is a challenge. Infrastructure in general is a challenge. Now, one could say, but you know, this is a challenge. Why go there and all and always remind myself of the two guys way back over the story, 30 years, you probably heard it yourself is that the two guys went to Africa and they will shoe salesman and the one guy said, don't worry, 400 million people don't wear shoes. Another guy said, start manufacturing is 400 million people that don't wear shoes. That's a great market. So a lot of these challenges where there's roads, rail, airports, ports, energy, water, that infrastructure is a major constraint for a lot of countries. But as such present opportunities, not only for construction companies within Africa, but also for construction companies outside of Africa. And may you happen to know what percentage of the arable land are being cultivated, are being utilized? No, I don't. Sorry. Now, talking about, you know, all this the population rising up, what about the demographics? Because here in Asia, we have an aging problem. What's the scenario like in Africa? Oh, we have the reverse. We have a very young population, where a large part of Africa's people, depending what country you look at, is below the age of 15. As in terms of general, the the median age we're talking about, depending, I would say between 19 and 25. That's the median age. So we're sitting with a very young continent, which has benefits, but it also has some negatives. The benefit is we talk about the demographic dividend, that's when a certain portion of the people are below 80 or below 15 years of age, preferably less than 35%. And then when you're looking at a certain ratio of the population is not older than 65 so that your economically active people between 15 and 65 make up by far the major part of your population. Now Asia, Japan and those countries have a problem with this. Europe has a problem with this. Africa is not even there yet. It'll probably move a few years from now into this frame where we are going to have more people in the economically active part of the population than otherwise. The challenge is that this grouping of people needs to be educated appropriately. And we're finding that a lot of Africa's youth is either not educated, or educated in ways that doesn't really make a contribution. We're looking at a scenario where we want more people with STEM education, science, technology, engineering and maths. We want more vocational training. We want fitters and turners, moral rights, engineers, plumbers, electricians, and we don't have them. So what we are finding is that also the youth are leaving the rural areas where they are fed up of sitting in poverty and watching their parents struggle for survival. And then they flock into the cities where they don't find housing. They don't find a job and they become frustrated because as I said they are either not educated appropriately or not educated at all. Now is this educational gap something that foreigners have looked at feelings because that sounds like an opportunity as well. Have we seen any countries kind of going in and providing those opportunities? Seemingly not, because the problem remains, they would find a lot of business schools from abroad, Australia, this part of the world, from Europe, and the US, that they become involved in countries such as in Kenya. If you go into Nairobi, you would find quite a number of foreign business schools and foreign universities involved there. But not in the field of, not enough in the field of STEM engineering, etc. vocational training. But it has been identified as an area of concern, as an area of concern. But we do not see enough people yet being educated in those fields. Some countries such as Ethiopia, for example, if Ethiopia is doing a lot, amongst others, you are finding them doing education in digital and robotics and that kind of thing, which is great, but not enough by a long shot. And that is true for the whole continent, unfortunately. Well, I know Singapore went through a vocational training phase, I was hoping that, you know, maybe Singapore could share some of their experience and expertise with them as well. We are finding that Africa's governments are sending people to Singapore, the SCE, Singapore Corporation Enterprise, the Singapore Civil Service College. They regularly get groups from Africa to educate and train. And they see what can be done. But then frequently becomes an issue of political will in the one hand, it becomes a budget issue on the other hand, it becomes a competence on that part. I'm in the process of linking up Singaporean companies in this field with African companies and enterprises and entities, for that matter, that then hopefully they can collaborate and they can be a meeting of the hearts and minds. And then that kind of skills development can be transferred into Africa. Yeah, that will be fantastic. Now, besides the traditional, so-called traditional sweet spots like oil and gas engineering, what are some of the emerging industries that you see in Africa? Right. Manufacturing is obviously an important one. Let's take one step down, looking at agriculture. And agriculture, the whole value chain has become important. Frequently, what we have seen is that where there were agricultural exports, it would be raw materials being in the basic raw commodity being exported. A couple of countries have now mandated that A, you cannot import food products from abroad if it can be manufactured or grown locally. And secondly, you cannot export products if value added has not been done to it. For example, Rwanda, you're not allowed to export raw milk, you have to process it. Now, that's the kind of opportunity I think that will slowly, usually, but take place. But you need to look at the whole value chain from the side of original equipment manufacturers, farming, food processing, et cetera, right down with a scenario where I've said you import $41 billion of food on an annual basis net, then there's clearly a lot of opportunity. And a quick question before I take our break here is, do you foresee Africa overtaking China as the world's manufacturing hub? I think it's less a question of overtaking China than getting support from China to do this. China's economy is growing. People say it's only 6.7% or 6.8% economy of that size is massive growth still. So it is moving up the level of sophistication as far as manufacturing is concerned. And together with its growing middle class, higher salaries, it's doubtful whether they actually want to be in a position where it'll be manufacturing lower cost and lower end products. And it has been actually encouraging a lot of its companies to look abroad to manufacture elsewhere. We have cheaper labor available. And I can remember about a year or two ago, the Chinese ambassador in Ethiopia actually telling Ethiopians, but listen, this is all that we can do. We can encourage our companies to go abroad, but you need to entice them. And that's amongst others why Ethiopia's strategy of putting up industrial parks have been so successful, and why they're aiming at getting Chinese companies to come and rather settle in Africa, settle in Ethiopia specifically as far as the Ethiopians are concerned, to manufacture there. Another point that they're making is obviously the fact that Ethiopia's part and parcel of the African Growth and Opportunity Act by from the US, which allows African countries then to export goods territory into the US. So it makes sense for China currently being targeted by the US with tariffs, then to produce in Ethiopia and then to export from Ethiopia territory into the US. That works well. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Boko. We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, we'll love to learn more about what the other international players are doing in Africa. Cool. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Cynthia Lee Sinclair. I am the host of Finding Respect in the Chaos here on Think Tekawaii. My show is live every other Friday at 4 p.m. The show is a safe place for survivors of abuse to come and tell their stories and a place for advocates to come and share important resources. All of my episodes can be found on the YouTube playlist. The latest events in Washington have prompted me to want to come and talk about the effects that these proceedings with Brett Kavanaugh have been having on victims of abuse. Hotlines across the country have had a 200% increase in their call volumes. A ground swell of courageous people are coming forward with their stories. I can understand their concerns. As a survivor myself, I have watched all of the hearings and I agree with the general consensus that Dr. Ford was very credible. In stark contrast, Kavanaugh with his arrogant sniveling acted like every abuser that I have ever worked with right after they've been caught. I found it very hard to watch without feeling ill. It isn't furiating to watch these senators cry foul and bang their fists while refusing to allow an FBI investigation. The fact that they did not allow the FBI to investigate immediately speaks volumes about just how far they have compromised their moral compass. Now finally, with an investigation going, they are limiting the scope so severely that we are at risk to this investigation not being a complete and trustworthy one. They claim that the third accuser is so outrageous that she should not even be interviewed. I think it is important to take a sociological view of her accusations. I worked with teenagers in the 80s. There was a bracelet game being played in high schools all across the country back then. The thin bracelets of different colors were collected. Each color bracelet represented a different sex act accomplished by the wearer. Gang rape was one of the acts on the list. That was the sociological climate in that day. Kavanaugh lied when he was asked what the devil's triangle is. It is clearly noted on his calendar. He said it is a drinking game. It is not. It is a reference to sex with one girl and two guys. You can see him flush with embarrassment when he talked about it. Before he rallied and said it was a drinking game. He was under oath and he lied. And that was not his only lie. So now the main point of logic is it does not matter about the he said she said it does not matter if you believe her or him. He lied under oath. I am appalled that they are still trying to ram this questionable man through. It is a complete outrage. Falsas in uno. Falsas in omnibus. Faults in one. Faults in all. At common law it is a legal principle that a witness who testifies falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter. This is even a common jury instruction. I am very worried that the panel of old white guys won't go through the changes that this country needs to support women's rights and victims of abuse. When I look at history Kavanaugh is an ultra conservative. He believes in full presidential power and has a history of voting against important women's issues. And this is just with the limited documents we were allowed to see. The Supreme Court is no place for such partisan tendencies. At best his beliefs are very polarizing. It seems to me there's too much of that in this country already. I do not believe it has a place on the highest court in our land. A Supreme Court judge needs to be completely above reproach. I have hoped from the start of these accusations that the good that could come from this whole proceeding would be to change the narrative about abuse. Well I am encouraged to see that lots of the country is coming out to support Dr. Ford. They believe her and they respect her courage. Hopefully because of this the world as we knew it has forever changed regardless of what happens with Kavanaugh. Now survivors can know they are not alone. They can come forward without fear of condemnation from society if you have been triggered by any of these proceedings. I want you to reach out to your local services. There is healing in the telling and I want you to keep telling until you get the help that you need. I'm living proof that there is hope and healing on the other side of abuse. If you would like to come on my show and share your story or if you are an advocate that has important resources please email me. I want to thank you for your time. This is Cynthia Lee Sinclair from Finding Respect in the Chaos on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back to Global Report. I'm Miho Loleong. We have with us today Mr. Johan Berger who's the director at the Center for African Studies at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. Mr. Berger I would love to learn more about the other international players in Africa. Could you share some of that with us for example well you mentioned China. Could you elaborate on that please. China is currently still the major player in Africa as far as trade is concerned. One of the major players as far as construction of infrastructure is concerned but it's not the largest FDI investor in Africa. I think currently still it's the US thereafter we're looking at the UK then France and still as late as 2015 China was only at fourth place. So a lot of who are made about China taking over Africa but it's still not the largest FDI investor as I said that. Now when did China start looking at Africa as an investment ground. I understand that even back in Mao Zedong era Joe and Joe and I was already taking groups over there since 1964. Did they go in there at that time or even earlier. I'm going to lie too as to when they started actually probably or I can think back China has always been involved in somewhere or another in Africa. In the wars of liberation that Africa fought against the colonial masters at the time there was always a China somewhere somebody talking about being involved in Africa. So they were supporting the liberation movements. Yes so and arming Africa and training its people so as far as I can recall that's always been an issue or observable trend. That doesn't surprise me because China has always been you know long-term strategic player. Indeed indeed so China is currently the largest trade partner of Africa that is that Manchester and doing exceptionally well from its perspective in getting involved economically and politically. Providing diplomatic support and getting diplomatic support its Belt and Road Initiative is going very well in Africa. Initially when you look at the plans they were mentioning three countries i.e. Kenya, Djibouti and Egypt but China has always said with the BRI that they're looking at it inclusively. So no country should feel itself excluded from the Belt and Road Initiative. So that's always been my understanding. However they've actually now recently become quite specific and said no uncertain terms the whole of Africa is welcome to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and from Africa's perspective China is very welcome to participate in the financing and also the development of Africa's infrastructure. Now what are the general sentiments of Africans? I mean I've spoken to a number of Africans but I think it's the sampling fallacies is a very small number. What are the general sentiments of Africans towards China being in Russia not Russia but Africa because I've heard they feel like they're being exploited is that do you hear that much? It depends on who you speak to if it's a government official or a government supporter they will tell you no come on we love China if you're in our position then you say we're going to chase China away. I must have just been speaking to the government people because they were all in favor of China's presence. It helps a lot to know who you're speaking to. I can remember the current leader of the opposition in Zimbabwe during the election run-up it was quite vocally he was going to chase China out of Zimbabwe as if he would have been able to given the fact that Zimbabwe for amongst others is not high up in the investment agenda of the western country so it would have been interesting to see to whom and with him they would have been would have approached to fall in investments so it depends on who you speak to. I for one have come across most of the people that I've come across let's put it this way are quite in favor of what Africa is doing. I can remember a couple of years ago I was in France in I think it was France in France where at the business school this was now the topic China new colonizing Africa and there was an African professor there and he took exception to this and he said listen do you think we idiots we can manage for ourselves we can think for ourselves so yes I for one my experience has been that it's viewed quite positively and when you look at Africa the guys that are getting involved are over the broad spectrum you're looking at people in countries where I would not go into and then there are countries that I'm very comfortable with and whose leaders I think set a good example as to what they're doing in their countries so yeah I think it's about who you ask now I know that the world is quite focused on China being in Africa but there's another player gaining in prominence and people are starting waking up to that awareness and that that's Russia what has Russia been doing in Africa so far yeah very interesting everybody's looking at China nobody's saying anything about Russia from the beginning of this year it's become much more prominent but not only from this year they've been the past few years becoming involved when Egypt developed its redeveloped doubled its the Suez Canal China Russia got involved got involved also in the special economic zone and this was a patching up of a relationship that got hurt way back in the 70s are these economic zones around the Horn of Africa too like the Suez Canal or this is now in the Suez Canal okay yeah that's where it currently is but it's also Russia's also now becoming much more involved it always has been involved in the Sudan arming Sudan and training their people but getting so to a much greater extent do they have a base there now I believe yeah while they're looking at a base there and so much the the president of Sudan has actually offered Sudan as a gateway for Russia into Africa and I think he's actually also training the president president security force yes getting quite involved there and also offering from an economic perspective has requested Russian companies to become involved in the world industry where it also already has Chinese companies involved too so certain ways to done then looking at getting both involved in this country to the benefit of his is it hitting one against the other arches I think he would be very careful to do that you know both those two players are not people that you take on you know sort of and play around with both of them you can get hurt severely were you to do that so I think he would be careful but he's inviting both so I think as to not to exclude rather have an inclusive approach than playing them off against one another I think that would be stupid of him now you highlight Sudan and Sudan happens to be at odds with America do you think that could be the reason why it's you know trying to foster warmer relations with China and Russia yes Sudan has been hurt severely with the sanctions from the U.S. the U.S. last year lifted quite a number of the sanctions but is still on the list of company countries rather that sponsor terrorism which it wants to get out of and it currently due to this it currently has a liquidity problem that is quite severe it has been closing down diplomatic stations abroad it's closing down some of the functions of government downsizing government as it were for the simple reason that it doesn't have money and so looking towards Russia looking towards China looking towards Turkey Qatar all of them getting involved the UAE looking at how can they entice these countries to come in invest spend it's a country that has probably third fourth highest GDP on the continent currently in spite of the fact that it has been the target for decades of American sanctions if you look at people talking East Africa of Kenya and Ethiopia yet it's the Sudan's GDP is higher than both these countries in spite of the fact that it has been targeted by sanctions from the U.S. but then you have as I said these other countries now all sort of approaching Sudan and say listen how can we get involved and Russia has been courting Africa more strongly these days do you think it's also part of the isolation from the western allies are they seeking a new ally in Africa yes I think it's looking at increasing or getting back to the days of the Soviet Union within a massive influence in Africa and there were a big staunch support of the liberation movements too as well arms still today if you look at the Central African Republic this time with the permission of the approval rather of the UN it has provided small arms to Central African Republic government as well as quite a number of advisors and to help them the government of the CIR fight against extremists in the country so it's doing that there it's also been looking at it has been reported that it was working with Mozambique also to get small arms development and manufacturing up and running there but this time it's not just military might military projection but they also got a very strong economic outreach towards Africa for the simple reason there's a lot of resources that it needs you're looking at uranium in Namibia you're looking at platinum in Zimbabwe and then you also the former former foreign minister Lavrov is doing his utmost to sell China's nuclear energy facilities to Africa and convincing them to procure nuclear energy facilities from Russia amongst others a couple of years ago South Africa was one country that said yes they would do it now sort of coming out in the investigations being held in the former president's administration that they actually had approved it but then there was a court case in the high court set aside this approval so Lavrov is doing his utmost he was there in March this year actually he was he was a high profile visit he went to five different African absolutely and I think he's recently been there again so he's he's targeting Africa in a very real sense we also visited Ethiopia now very recently Rwanda as well Tanzania so Russia is trying its utmost to position itself it is also looking at in Somalia developing its own a port of its own it's probably one of the big ones that are not in the Djubiti port China was now the latest addition so Russia is looking at a port in Somali land and the understanding is that they would be helping Somali land gain its independence it has autonomy from the federal government of Somalia but it's not independent so Russia is looking at that as well which would position if it takes up the port or military base in Sudan it would have a presence at the beginning of the Red Sea right down south it would have more or less in the mid-part and then the top end in Egypt and the Suez Canal as well so Russia would be very prominent in that whole very important sea lane from the beginning at the Horn of Africa right up to the Suez Canal and correct me if I'm wrong even isn't Sudan also the main migration route from Africa into Middle East well there's a sea that they need to cross the Red Sea so from Africa into the Middle East would probably be depending on whether you want to take a flight to what but land-wise it would probably be through Egypt okay okay but the sea-wise will be just across that just across the Red Sea okay now if we were to compare and contrast Russia's and China's movements in Africa what are some of the distinction would you say Russia's is more a mix of business and diplomacy and also arms deals well that would describe what's happening in Russia you're not finding the prominence of Russia that you would find from China China has 10,000 companies in Africa with 9,000 our private sector companies but all of them report back to the Chinese government in a very real sense and you don't find that scenario from the Russian scenario so that one big difference also China made a mistake in the sense that it would take a lot of its own laborers in the early years and then leave them but it's learned from that now currently there's still a complaint that China brings its own top-end educated people trained people to do a lot of the work and it only uses Africa for the cheap labor component but the reality is frequently that Africa does not have enough of those trained people irrespective of which way you look at it this is China coming into Africa and you don't find that same operating model on the Russian side I see well thank you so much Mr. Mogher I wish you more time thank you so much for enlightening us on on you know Africa today thank you my pleasure thank you very much for having me