🔅 African Curator Takes the Helm of Venice Biennale
How Sudan's Famine Warning Signs Were Ignored & Ghana's Election Blues
Good Morning from Namibia!
Last Week in Numbers
Year-to-Date Performance:
🟢 Johannesburg SE: 86,938.44 (+13.06%)
🟢 Nigerian SE: 98,210.75 (+31.34%)
🟢 Nairobi SE: 115.21 (+25.08%)
🟢 Ghana SE: 4,726.37 (+50.99%)
🟢 US S&P 500: 6,090.27 (+28.41%)
🟢 Shanghai Composite: 3,404.08 (+14.91%)
🇨🇩 79: Lives lost so far to an unknown disease in southwestern DR Congo, primarily affecting young people aged 15-18, with over 300 infected showing flu-like symptoms.
🇪🇹 70%: Surge in arabica coffee futures this year, reaching $3.18 per pound - the highest since 1977 and likely to benefit major exporters like Ethiopia and Uganda.
🇬🇳 56: Death toll from a soccer match tragedy in Guinea, triggered by controversial refereeing and resulting in a deadly crush at a tournament honoring the military leader.
🇰🇪 1%: New levy on entry fees to Kenya's parks and reserves to fund wildlife conservation, following a 43% increase in visitors to 3.6 million last year. Meanwhile, Kenya's benchmark lending rate was reduced to 11.25%, as the central bank sees room for looser policy with inflation under control.
🇳🇦 First: Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah elected as Namibia's first female president, securing 57% of votes to extend SWAPO's 34-year rule.
🇳🇬 $2.2 Billion: Nigeria's successful eurobond sale, attracting $9 billion in bids in its first international debt offering since 2022, as African nations return to global markets.
🇸🇳 🇬🇳 240 km: Length of new climate-resilient road linking Guinea and Senegal, backed by an $81.9 million African Development Fund loan. The project aims to boost regional trade in forestry, agricultural, and mining products.
🇸🇴 300+: Al-Shabaab militants killed by Somali security forces in the past two months, according to the National intelligence agency.
🇿🇦 29%: Agricultural sector contraction in South Africa, contributing to an unexpected 0.3% GDP decline as drought impacts crop production. Meanwhile, McKinsey has been fined $122 million over a bribery scheme involving South African state-owned companies Eskom and Transnet.
And finally, a graphic that speaks volume:
*Data accurate as of the close of markets across the continent
African Curator Takes the Helm of World's Swankiest Art Show
Move over, traditional art world order - there's a new curator in town, and she's bringing a fresh perspective to the canals of Venice. Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian-Swiss art powerhouse, has just been named curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale, making history as the first African woman to snag this coveted role.
Oddly enough, this appointment comes from Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Biennale's new right-wing president who got the job with backing from Italy's far-right leader Giorgia Meloni. Talk about expectations being turned on their head - it's like expecting a conservative dinner party and getting served avant-garde fusion cuisine instead.
Now a little about Kouoh. Born in Cameroon in 1967 and raised in Zurich, Kouoh brings the kind of global perspective that makes cosmopolitan cities look provincial. She's been everywhere that matters in the art world:
Documenta in Germany? Check
Raw Material Company in Dakar? Founded it
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair? Ran it
Wiels in Brussels? Curated there
Running Cape Town's Zeitz MOCAA (think Africa's answer to MoMA)? Check
And much more…
It makes sense, therefore, that she’ll curate the Biennale – the Super Bowl of the art world (minus the halftime show but with way more prosecco). Kouoh's appointment is bound to reshape the conversation about who gets to curate our cultural narratives.
As Buttafuoco puts it, this appointment is about "being the home of the future." And from where we're standing, that future is looking a lot more interesting than the past.
By the way, we previously wrote about Koyo Kouoh here:
Warning Signs Ignored: How Sudan's Famine Monitoring System Failed
Imagine having a smoke detector that takes seven months to sound the alarm after spotting a fire. That's essentially what happened with Sudan's famine early warning system, where bureaucracy and politics delayed crucial warnings while people starved.
At the heart of this story is the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) - think of it as the world's hunger watchdog. Created to manage Somalia's 2004 food crisis, it evolved into an intricate framework that's supposed to prevent famines by analyzing data and alerting the world when things get dire.
But in Sudan's Zamzam camp, this sophisticated system hit a major snag. While doctors on the ground were raising red flags about starving children in January, the official "famine" designation didn't come until August.
The IPC relies heavily on government cooperation to function. In Sudan's case, that's like asking the fox to help guard the henhouse. The government, at war with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), wasn't exactly eager to declare a famine in RSF-controlled areas - even if it meant acknowledging that their own citizens were starving.
Enter Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), whose January survey found alarming levels of malnutrition in Zamzam. Nearly 25% of children were acutely malnourished - well above the IPC's 15% threshold for the most severe hunger classification.
But instead of triggering immediate action, the survey became a political football. Government officials called MSF's numbers exaggerated, while children continued to die at a rate of one every other hour.
By the time the IPC finally confirmed the famine in August, the damage was done. Satellite imagery revealed over 1,200 new graves around Zamzam between June 2023 and November 2024.
Reuters takes an in-depth look at the system’s failures, and the monumental impact it has had on the ground. You can access the report here.
Ghana's Election Blues: When Your Economic Savior Needs Saving
Remember that friend who promised to turn their life around, got a great start, then somehow ended up back where they started? That's basically Ghana's story under President Nana Akufo-Addo's watch.
Back in 2016, Akufo-Addo swept into power like a political rock star, promising to change "the face of Ghana" in just 18 months. He was the first person to unseat an incumbent president, and people saw him as a messiah, ready to save Ghana from corruption, power outages, and an underperforming currency.
Fast forward to 2024, and Akufo-Addo’s fortunes had done a 180.
The Good, the Bad, and the Really Complicated
Let's start with the wins (yes, there are some):
Ghana stayed peaceful while neighboring Burkina Faso deals with conflict
Two shiny new oilfields were discovered
Teachers and medical personnel got salary bumps
Thousands of kids got free high school education
The banking sector got a controversial but stabilizing makeover
But here's where things go sideways:
The currency performed like it was in a race to the bottom
Public debt got higher than a giraffe's neck at 72.3% of GDP which, despite being one of the world’s leading gold and cocoa producers, had Ghana returning to the International Monetary Fund [IMF] for a bailout in 2022.
Those infamous power outages nicknamed "dumsor" came back for an unwanted encore
Illegal mining spread faster than gossip in a small town
More than a dozen relatives of the president or ruling party officials somehow landed cushy government jobs (what are the odds?)
A temporary COVID tax implemented during the pandemic is still hanging around like that house guest who doesn't get the hint to leave.
Which brings us to this past weekend, when Ghanaians went to the polls to choose their next president.
Their choice was really between two candidate:
Mahamudu Bawumia:
Current VP trying to become Ghana's first Muslim president since 1992
Has to defend an economic record that's about as popular as a mosquito at a barbecue
Running mate to the guy who promised economic salvation
And John Mahama:
Former president making his third attempt at the presidency
Had his own issues with corruption "ballooning" under his previous watch
And yesterday, Mahamudu Bawumia accepted defeat in Saturday's election and congratulated the opposition candidate, former President John Mahama, on his victory.
Ghanaians have spoken, and the vice-president said he was accepting defeat before the official announcement of the results "to avoid further tension and preserve the peace of our country".
Mahama will be sworn in on Jan 7th.
Food for Thought
“Wisdom is like a baobab tree: a single person’s arms cannot embrace it.”
— Ghana Proverb