The Economist - USA (2021-01-30)

38 Middle East & Africa The EconomistJanuary 30th 2021

2 day’s worth of nutritious food, including

fruit, milk and meat, costs about 70% of the

average daily household income per per-

son in sub-Saharan Africa.

The World Health Organisation reckons

that 7% of people in Africa had diabetes in

2014, which was more than double the rate

in 1980. The prevalence of high blood pres-

sure has risen too. Chronic diseases not

only harm people. They also make them

less productive, and therefore poorer than

they would otherwise be.

Rising obesity does not mean that hun-

ger has been banished. About 30% of boys

and 20% of girls aged five to 19 in Africa are

still underweight (see chart). Policymakers

warn of a “double burden of malnutrition”,

where hunger and obesity co-exist within

the same village or even the same house-

hold. Joachim von Braun at the University

of Bonn takes the example of an overweight

mother who saves time and money eating

junk food but has an underweight child.

In parts of the continent people think

corpulence is beautiful and associate it

with wealth. A study in Uganda found that

fat people find it easier to get credit. Some

wealthy city folk reject healthy local pro-

duce, such as okra, as “village food”, and

gorge on burgers instead.

Tackling Africa’s weight problem will

require many approaches. Children need

to be taught about nutrition. Packaged food

needs better labels. Cities need pavements

so people can walk or jog without being run

down by buses. Christopher Murray of the

University of Washington reckons there is

an inverted U-shaped relationship be-

tween income and obesity. Millions of peo-

ple have pulled themselves out of poverty,

where their challenge was getting enough

calories to stay alive. But they are not yet

rich enough to eat healthy food and keep

fit. If waistlines are to shrink, economies

will have to grow fatter. 7

The unhappy median

Overweight adults* and underweight children†

2016,%oftotal

Source: Global Nutrition Report, 2020

*BMIover 25 †5-to19-year-oldsbelowonestandarddeviation

from the median BMI-for-age of the WHO growth reference

Overweightadults

SouthAfrica

Zambia

SouthAfrica

Zambia

0 25

Male Female

Africa average

Africa average

50 75

Underweight children

I

n december 2017 Donald Trump’s ad-

ministration imposed financial sanc-

tions on Dan Gertler. That came as a shock

to the government of Joseph Kabila, who

was then the president of the Democratic

Republic of Congo. Mr Gertler, who was

named alongside several allegedly crooked

politicians and businessmen, was one of

Mr Kabila’s closest friends. He was also a

middleman who had sold much of Congo’s

wealth in minerals to the world since arriv-

ing there in the wake of war in 1997.

America’s Treasury department said

that Mr Gertler had “amassed his fortune

through hundreds of millions of dollars’

worth of opaque and corrupt mining and

oil deals”. Between 2010 and 2012 alone

Congo had “lost over $1.36 billion in rev-

enues from the underpricing of mining as-

sets that were sold to offshore companies

linked to” the Israeli billionaire, it said. The

sanctions froze Mr Gertler’s bank accounts

and prevented any firm from doing busi-

ness with him in dollars.

In a late Christmas gift, Mr Trump’s ad-

ministration seems to have undone that

work. On January 24th the Sentry, an anti-

corruption watchdog based in Washing-

ton, revealed that in its last days Mr

Trump’s administration had granted Mr

Gertler a special licence to do business in

dollars. The licence is, legally, a “specific”

one which allows only certain activities.

But unusually it seems to allow Mr Gertler

to do almost anything, for a period of a

year. Mr Gertler, who denies wrongdoing,

had lobbied hard for the waiver; among

others he hired to press his case was Alan

Dershowitz, a celebrity lawyer who has also

defended Mr Trump.

The news came just days after another

Israeli billionaire, Beny Steinmetz, who

also has French citizenship, was convicted

in a Swiss court of paying bribes to gain ac-

cess to Simandou, an iron-ore seam in

Guinea. His conviction (he is appealing)

brings to an end a sordid story that came to

light in part thanks to documents collected

by Mamadie Touré, the youngest of the four

wives of Lansana Conté, Guinea’s president

until his death in 2008, through whom

bribes had been funnelled. After her hus-

band died she had fled to Jacksonville, Flor-

ida, where the fbi acquired the documents.

On the face of it, the two Israeli billion-

aires, both involved in questionable deals

in mining in Africa, seem to have met dif-

ferent fates. But Mr Steinmetz’s conviction

will have rattled Mr Gertler, who, despite

the sanctions, has never been charged with

any crime. Since being put on the sanctions

list, Mr Gertler has found it much harder to

do business, even if he has managed to

keep working. Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss

commodities trader, initially stopped its

payments to him. When he sued in a Con-

golese court, the firm decided to pay him

royalties—roughly 2.5% of the sales from

its Congolese mines—in euros, rather than

risk its Congolese mining business being

taken away by a court order.

Yet the billionaire’s luck may be run-

ning out. His friend and sponsor, Mr Ka-

bila, is losing his grip. When he conceded

the presidency in 2019, Mr Kabila kept con-

trol of the majority in parliament, and had

allies in several key posts. On January 27th

Congo’s national assembly voted to eject

the prime minister, Sylvestre Ilunga Ilun-

kamba. This clears the way for the new

president, Félix Tshisekedi, to appoint

more of his own people to ministries and

agencies, including Gécamines, the state

mining group that gave Mr Gertler his con-

cessions. If Mr Tshisekedi succeeds in con-

solidating his grip over Congo’s minerals,

he could press Gécamines to take away Mr

Gertler’s mines and royalties.

That is why the new sanctions waiver is

so useful, reckons Elisabeth Caesans of Re-

source Matters, a Brussels-based research

group. In November Mr Gertler produced a

bizarre video in which he proposed to sell

some of his royalty rights to ordinary Con-

golese people (two months later, the details

remain unclear). This, said Mr Gertler, is an

invitation to “come and enjoy the wealth of

the copper and cobalt of the drc”. It may, in

fact, be an insurance policy. By selling a lot

of Congolese people a stake in his projects,

he reduces the chance of his contracts be-

ing cancelled. With his new licence, thanks

to Mr Trump, he can now be paid in dollars.

In theory, Joe Biden’s administration

could revoke the licence as easily as Mr

Trump issued it. Yet that risks exposing the

Treasury to a lawsuit, says Brad Brooks-Ru-

bin of the Sentry. Mr Gertler could claim

that taking his licence away would be ca-

pricious. Yet as Mr Steinmetz’s case shows,

losing his licence is not the only risk that

Mr Gertler faces if the allegations of cor-

ruption persist. The sanctions imposed on

him came about after years of campaigning

by anti-corruption ngos. They show no

signs of being ready to forgive or forget. 7

One gets prison, the other a reprieve from sanctions

Mining in Africa

A tale of two billionaires