The Economist May 28th 2022 Middle East & Africa 45TheUnitedArabEmiratesThe new man tips the scales
T
ransitionsdo not get much easier.
On May 13th the United Arab Emirates
(uae) announced the death of its presi
dent, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Though
he had held the job since 2004, a stroke in
2014 pushed him largely out of the public
eye. Running the country fell to his half
brother, Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown
prince of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emir
ates that make up the uaeand the one that
provides its capital. On paper Muhammad
was outranked by the ruler of Dubai, who is
also the uae’s prime minister. In practice
he was already the most powerful man in
the country.
His de factorule is now official. One day
after Khalifa’s death, the rulers of the seven
emirates unanimously chose him as presi
dent. There will be no radical change in
policy: the new boss is the same as the old.
Still, his ascent is not without its in
trigues. First will be his choice of crown
prince. The uae’s constitution sets a proce
dure for picking the president. Within
each emirate, however, matters of succes
sion are left to ruling families. They are of
special import in Abu Dhabi, which has
supplied all three of the country’s presi
dents: today’s heirapparent will probably
be tomorrow’s head of state.
The new man’s father, Zayed bin Sultan
Al Nahyan, who ruled from independence
in 1971 until his death in 2004, had 18 ac
knowledged sons by seven wives. He
meant them to share power. The most influential are the six born to Fatima, his
third and favourite wife. Muhammad is the
eldest of that bunch; if he follows tradi
tion, he will make a brother his heir. The
frontrunner is Tahnoun, the powerful na
tionalsecurity chief, who also oversees a
vast business empire.
Though he has taken a more public role
of late, he is still a quintessential man in
the shadows. Yet he is a far more likely
choice than Mansour, the former chairman
of a sovereignwealth fund tarnished by its
association with a multibillion dollar
scandal to do with a Malaysian statein
vestment firm; he also bought Manchester
City, a top football club. Another brother,
Abdullah, has served as foreign minister
since 2006, a big job but not the best prac
tice for running the uae’s domestic affairs.
Many diplomats believe Muhammad
ultimately wants his eldest son, Khaled, to
replace him; he has been grooming him for
years. But he need not rush. At 61, Muham
mad can expect to rule for a while. Naming
a brother would let his son grow into the
role, perhaps as deputy; the line of succes
sion can always be changed.
There is no deadline. Whatever Mu
hammad decides, there is unlikely to be
much public drama. A century ago several
members of the Nahyan clan killed their
brothers to seize power. Abu Dhabi went
through four rulers in the 1920s. The fam
ily’s matriarchs are said to have asked their
sons to swear off such strife. Today the NaD UBAI
Abu Dhabi’s old-new sheikh may jolt the rules of succession and federationMuhammad (left) and Khalifa (right): portraits of fraternal continuityfell in world markets, most of the surplus
was captured by middlemen.
“The price of food is a sign of how effi
cient markets are,” says Peter Njonjo, Twi
ga’s chief executive. The Kenyan ecom
merce firm buys fresh produce directly
from farmers and takes it to warehouses,
where it coordinates delivery to informal
retailers. The vendors place orders on the
Twiga app, which gives the firm lots of data
to match supply with demand. Mr Njonjo
claims that Twiga has reduced the share of
farmers’ produce that rots from 40% to 5%.
That means farmers and retailers both get
better margins. In theory this should result
in shoppers enjoying lower prices.
Twiga is one of several African ecom
merce firms attracting tens of millions of
dollars in venture capital. TradeDepot,
which operates in Ghana, Nigeria and
South Africa, has a similar model, focused
on packaged goods. As Onyekachi Izu
kanne, its chief executive, explains, for cli
ents such as Unilever, a consumergoods
conglomerate, “the economics of getting
into millions of small stores doesn’t make
sense.” Large suppliers have historically re
lied on middlemen to reach informal re
tailers. “Where we come in is to be able to
aggregate a lot of demand, and to aggregate
inventory from multiple suppliers.”
On May 3rd Wasoko, a similar ecom
merce firm operating in six countries,
topped a Financial Timesranking of African
companies based on how fast their rev
enues grew from 2017 to 2020. Its boss,
Daniel Yu, says the growth of firms like his
reflects their understanding of African re
tail. In markets where many shoppers buy
sachets of shampoo or scoops of cooking
oil, and live in hardtoreach places, sell
ing directly to them online is quixotic.
For all the talk of the African middle
class, he says, “the reality is the Amazo
nian consumer does not exist.” Mr Yu ar
gues that is why, for instance, Jumia, a
businesstoconsumer firm once dubbed
“the Amazon of Africa”, has struggled to
live up to its initial hype. The businessto
business ecommerce model, which has
proved successful in parts of Asia and Latin
America, may stand a better chance.
If Wakulima market typified the old
way of doing business, then the new way is
symbolised by Twiga’s huge warehouse in
Tatu City, a bespoke development 20km
north of Nairobi. Among other modern
features, it has Africa’s largest facility for
ripening bananas. Sprays of ethylene gas
almost magically turn shelf after shelf of
green fruit a lustrous yellow. It would not
look out of place in rich countries, notes
Tim Broekhuizen, a Dutch logistics expert
hired by Twiga after 17 years running sup
ply chains across Asia. The facility is the
sort that African retailhaslong lacked. And
it may be enough toworryeven the most
serene of middlemen.n