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Happy Friday. We hope you enjoy your weekly Africa Brief.

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• African Development Bank (AfDB). AfDB’s President, Akinwumi Adesina, said the bank is on track to help African states produce US$25 billion worth of food within the next five years (Reuters).

• Enza Capital. The multi-stage pan-African VC closes US$58mil across two funds (TechCrunch).

• Eswatini. A parliamentary vote is set on Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy (Al Jazeera).

• Gabon. The State Prosecutor said the eldest son of ousted President Ali Bongo, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, and several of his political allies have been charged with corruption. Television footage showed images of him and some of his father's allies in front of suitcases of cash reportedly seized from their homes (BBC).

• Ghana. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, President Nana Akufo-Addo called for the payment of reparations for the slave trade to address the resultant historical injustices. ‘It is time to acknowledge openly that much of Europe and the US has been built from the vast wealth harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the transatlantic slave trade’ (Sahara Reporters).

• Mali. The historic city of Timbuktu remains under siege from jihadi militants. The city is now facing severe food shortages. Mali’s military has struggled to halt the country’s insurgency since seizing power in 2020 (BBC). The government has indefinitely postponed elections and a transition to civilian rule.

• Niger. France said it would pull its troops and ambassador out of Niger, two months after coup leaders demanded their withdrawal. Generals took power in July, overthrowing Niger’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. France, the former colonial power, has around 1,500 troops in the country to counter Jihadist terrorism (Al Jazeera).

• South Africa. According to the region’s top official, climate change worsened floods in South Africa's Western Cape, causing 11 deaths and evacuations from 1,000 low-lying homes in the past four days (Bloomberg).

• Sudan. Medics reported outbreaks of dengue fever and acute watery diarrhea in war-torn Sudan, posing a major health threat to the country’s already fragile health care system (Voice of America).

In context: Many African states are blessed with an abundance of natural resources. However, the continent’s reliance on those commodities has proved to be more of a curse than blessing. Low prices, mismanagement, corruption, wars and the legacy of colonialism hampered Africa’s development throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s — a time since referred to as Africa's lost decades. By 2001, regional GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa was lower than it had been in 1981. It became the “hopeless continent” in the eyes of many investors (Bloomberg). Since the turn of the century, China’s bumper economic growth has improved many African states' GDP. Now the world’s transition to the green economy has spurred another international race for African commodities like cobalt, coltan, tungsten, nickel, and copper. The new scramble for commodities begs the question — will Africa’s political leaders change their ways or fall back to old habits?

Google celebrated the South African jazz pianist, composer, and journalist Todd Matshikiza — widely considered one of the most significant musical critics and melodists of his era. South Africa, especially the cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town, had the greatest impact on the musical genre outside of the United States. Two distinctive jazz sounds emerged from the country: Kwela, a musical style that made the pennywhistle an indispensable part of its sound, and Mbaqanga, a sound that combines guitar and bass with brass. The country hosts a number of international jazz festivals each year, the most famous being the Cape Town Jazz Festival. Notable South African jazz artists include: The Blue Notes, Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, and Miriam Makeba.

As the United Arab Emirates prepares to host the COP28 climate summit later this year, the Gulf state is increasingly conspicuous by its presence in Africa’s burgeoning green finance sector. At the Africa Climate Summit in September, a group of Emirati investors unveiled a landmark $4.5bn pledge to invest in clean energy projects on the continent (African Business).

Further from the Graphic of the Week, world trade volumes were 3.2% lower in July than a year earlier, according to a closely watched index from the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (The Economist). That is the sharpest decline since August 2020, amid the pandemic, and driven to a large extent by the slowdown in China and the knock-on effects to trade in Asia.

China’s lending to the continent has hit the lowest point in two decades — this on the 10th anniversary of the launch of its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Voice of America). Researchers from Boston University Global China Initiative said the pandemic, domestic economic woes, policy changes, and concerns about African debt were among the reasons lending in 2021 and 2022 slumped. In 2021, Beijing loaned $1.22 billion to Africa, and last year only nine loans amounting to $994.48 million were signed.

Chinese money isn’t the only source of cash that’s drying up. The private sector has also cut back — foreign direct investment hit a 22-year low of $7.2 billion in 2022, according to data from the World Bank. FDI flows peaked at $45 billion in 2012 during the last days of the China-led commodity boom.

COP28 is a few weeks away. The Climate Policy Initiative estimates that the continent requires US$2.8 trillion between 2020-2030 to implement its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Despite these targets and the already felt impacts of climate change, annual climate finance flows in Africa stand at only US$30 billion.

Mali’s military leaders have postponed elections due to “technical reasons.” Two rounds of voting were initially scheduled for Feb. 4 and 18, 2024, but a new date will be proposed according to government spokesperson Abdoulaye Maiga (Al Jazeera).The announcement came in tandem with the junta’s dispute with French company Idemia. Idemia issues biometric passports in the country, which the Malian government said has been involved in creating a census database.

In a provocative piece for The Times, Ian Martin writes that mass migration from the continent is going to continue to rise unless wealthy powers help African nations to build economies that persuade people to stay.

On the topic of migration, Pope Francis warned against a ‘paralysis of fear’ as European nations shy away from responsibility for taking care of people arriving by sea (Al Jazeera). Importantly, intra-African migration still exceeds migration from the continent — African states are left with the bulk of the responsibility in hosting displaced people.

The US and Kenyan governments signed a five-year defense pact on Monday ahead of a possible Kenyan peacekeeping mission in Haiti to combat gang violence (Al Jazeera). The US intends to provide US$100 million for Kenya toward peacekeeping in the country; the funds, however, still need approval by Congress. Kenya has pledged to send 1,000 security officers to Haiti in a mission that is pending approval from the UN Security Council.

Two inspiring pieces in TechCrunch this week. First on the VC front, African VC firm Enza Capital launches its founder partner program as it closes $58M across two funds (TechCrunch). The multi-stage investor has made 48 investments in 31 companies spanning 8 African markets, including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Egypt and South Africa.

On the start-up end, Revio raised $5.2M seed funding from QED and Partech. Revio is one of the few African startups working on payment orchestration to address fragmentation in the financial sector. Ruaan Botha, the co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that he started the fintech after learning how much time and manual effort businesses spend collecting payments across various providers and engaging customers on outstanding and failed payments.