Poverty

The genital disappearance panic sweeping across Nigeria evokes nagging anxiety over masculinity and male power.   

Without new measures to build democratic institutions, entrenched corruption, migration, and violence will only get worse.  

It is time for a new approach to human trafficking. We need to change how we talk about human trafficking and tackle challenges faced by vulnerable communities. 

Conventional wisdom is that Africa's rising middle class is the engine for economic and social development, that its trajectory has been positive, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously compromised the success of the middle class. However, on a continent of 1.3 billion people resident in more than fifty countries, this trope, much of it based on feel-good anecdotes, may obscure more than it illuminates.  What is Africa's middle class, how large was it before COVID-19, and was it growing? Media reports that Africa's middle class is made up of about 170 million people, and that COVID-19 could push some 8 million out of it and into poverty. This would imply a common understanding of what middle class is. But that does not exist. There appears to be no, real credible definition generally accepted. One estimate, from the World Data Lab, defines middle class as those households that spend per capita a range of $11 to $110 per day. Such a huge range reflects the diversity of the African continent but otherwise it is not helpful. Perhaps more helpful on a continent where statistics are weak are definitions of middle class status by behavior or lifestyle. For example, a South African economist distinguishes the middle class from the poor by the ability to earn a steady income. Even within countries, there can be different definitions of middle class: in South Africa, Blacks who own an automobile, no matter what the state of repair, may be regarded as middle class. Among whites, however, the attributes and consumption patterns of the middle class are similar to those in other parts of the developed world.  Has the African middle class been rising? What is the evidence for it? Certainly, there has been a telecommunications boom, more obvious in Kenya and a few other countries than elsewhere. However, in Nigeria, while cell phones and internet access are common—about 60 percent of the country is online—that positive development must be balanced by the fact that the country is home to the largest number of severely impoverished people in the world, surpassing in 2018 India, which has a population six times as large. In some places, a middle class has indeed played a transformative role. The continent is in the midst of a population boom; a corollary is that the number of people in the middle class—however defined—is growing. But as a percentage of the overall population? The answer is not clear.

When talking to Nigerians about insecurity, especially those that live in the Lagos-Ibadan corridor, Abuja, and Port Harcourt—some of the most developed parts of the country—the first thing they often raise is their fear of kidnapping specifically and crime more generally. For them, kidnapping is far more immediate than the carnage of Boko Haram, far away in the northeast, or the carnage in the middle belt over land and water use between “farmers” and “herders.” In the oil patch and Port Harcourt, kidnapping is often seen as a manifestation of the ongoing, low-level insurrection over how oil revenue is distributed. In the past, kidnapping victims tended to be the wealthy and the prominent, and so kidnappers had every interest in keeping their victims alive to extract the maximum ransom possible. In March 2020, for example, two Nigerian footballers were kidnapped and released soon after, though it is not clear if a ransom was paid. Further, hours before a world cup match in 2018, the captain of Nigeria’s national football team learned that his father had been kidnapped. But a new report [PDF] from SB Morgen, a Nigerian consulting firm, using data gathered from a variety of open sources, including the Council’s Nigeria Security Tracker, shows that, over time, the pool of potential victims has greatly expanded. Now, victims are often poor villagers, sometimes kidnapped indiscriminately, a departure from the targeted kidnapping of wealthy people. They struggle to pay ransoms quickly because of their relative poverty, and victims are much more likely to be killed. The report also presents a valuable attempt to quantify the costs of kidnapping and to map its spread. Between 2011 and 2020, it concludes that over $18 million had been paid in ransom. The amount of ransom accelerated in the latter portion of that period: between 2016 and 2020, around $11 million was paid out. It shows that kidnapping has spread from the oil patch to the entire country and that that the army is now stationed is almost every Nigerian state, essentially to keep order. (The exceptions are Kebbi state and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.) In many parts of the country, kidnapping appears to have become a business, especially for otherwise unemployed youth. SB Morgen expresses concern that kidnapping will increase as Nigeria falls into recession driven by the coronavirus and the fall in oil prices, putting more people out of work. Perhaps a surprise is that the total spent on ransoms—$18 million over nine years—is so low, especially compared to ransoms Sahelian kidnappers extract from European states to free their kidnaped nationals, which can reach millions of dollars per victim. It may be that current Nigerian victims are so poor that ransoms are low. The report cites an estimate that ransoms can range from $1,000 to $150,000, depending on the economic situation of the victim and their family. The SB Morgen report shows that Nigerian anxiety about kidnapping is well placed. Wealthy Nigerians and expatriates are subject to much larger ransoms than poor farmers. They live mostly in Lagos and Abuja. Though they have tight security, they are not immune from the general crime wave, of which kidnapping is just one part. In December 2019, for example, attackers attempted to extort and murder the manager of the shipping giant Maersk in Nigeria in his home. He survived his injuries, but his wife did not.

A recent, so far unexplained, spike in deaths in Kano, Nigeria, highlights the difficulty of tracking the spread of coronavirus, especially in certain large African urban areas. Kano is regarded as Nigeria's second largest urban agglomeration, after Lagos. It is the capital of Kano state, the first or second largest in population. The population estimate of 4 million for the city is almost certainly much too low. The city sprawls over some fifty square miles and is highly decentralized in governance, with forty-four local government areas. Large number of people have fled to the city to escape the breakdown of security in the north as well as drought and other perennial hazards. Overcrowding is ubiquitous, and most people are very poor. The population is predominately Muslim, though with a small Christian minority, and hosts the emir of Kano, one of the most senior traditional rulers in the north. Even in normal times, a large number of Kano residents die outside of hospitals. The dead are not deposited in morgues, and the cause of death is nowhere recorded. When they can, residents return to their home villages to die or they die in the urban households where they have been living. Following Muslim practice, the dead are buried immediately. Hence statistics are of little use in charting rates or causation of death. It was gravediggers that called attention to the recent spike in deaths. City residents are fearful that the spike in deaths is directly related to COVID-19. Apparently, so is President Muhammadu Buhari, who has extended for another two weeks in Kano city a lockdown even as he is loosening those restrictions elsewhere. As of April 28, according to the Nigerian Center for Disease Control, Kano state had 115 reported COVID-19 cases. State investigators are looking into the spike, but the definitive answers that might be provided by tests may be hard to come by. Investigators are conducting “verbal autopsies,” interviewing relatives of the deceased about the nature of the deaths, partly because testing capacity is low. Nigeria had conducted just under 13,000 tests as of April 28. One of the Kano testing facilities was contaminated and thus closed for cleaning, further delaying results. Doctors who observe patients with COVID-19 symptoms often have no tests on hand to verify if the patients have the disease. Some local officials and observers see the death spike as the result of multiple causes. For example, most private hospitals in Kano have been closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Public hospitals remain open, but they are geared now to responding to COVID-19. Under normal circumstances, for those that can afford it, private hospitals provide care for many of those with preexisting conditions. Others receive no medical treatment at all. Even for those that are relatively well-off, with the hospital closures, those afflicted with diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, for example, go untreated. Those with preexisting conditions and the poor are especially vulnerable. In the best of times, Kano's disease burden is heavy, and life spans are short. The city hosts myriad lethal diseases, including malaria, meningitis, and Lassa fever. Clean water is difficult for the poor to access, and a high percentage of the population is malnourished. Hence, whatever role COVID-19 has played in Kano's apparent death spike is difficult to determine. The same will likely be the case in cities such as Lagos or Kinshasa, but not necessarily elsewhere. For example, morgues are in greater use in Abidjan and Johannesburg, facilitating the capture of cause of death data. In Kano, the extent of the disease is simply unknown at this time. 

In much of Africa, but also in the most developed parts of the world, much about the coronavirus pandemic is unclear, including the knock-on health complications it may cause, how far it has actually spread, and whether antibodies can deliver long-lasting immunity. This reflects insufficient or contradictory data and statistical shortcomings. The figures cited that measure the extent of COVID-19 in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa generally indicate a low level of spread. But this is at least partly driven by low levels of testing. Nigeria, with about 200 million people, had conducted just under 12,000 tests as of April 26. Botswana, with a population around 1 percent that of Nigeria, had conducted over 5,000 tests as of April 23, and South Africa, a quarter of Nigeria's population, had conducted around 185,000 as of April 28; but both are notable exceptions. As of April 29, Nigeria has recorded over 1,300 cases, with 40 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Nigeria’s coronavirus spread had initially been concentrated in Abuja, Lagos, and Ogun state, the latter effectively a suburb of Lagos. Those three areas have been under lockdown since March 30, with an announcement by President Buhari to begin easing some restrictions beginning on May 4. Kano state has since displaced Gombe and Ogun to have the third-highest number of cases in Nigeria. The situation in Kano provides an example of some of the challenges that might be faced elsewhere in Nigeria and the world. Kano, the country’s second-largest city, registered its first case on April 11. Since then, grave diggers had reported what appeared to be an abnormally high number of deaths, which, after investigation, were linked to a variety of preexisting conditions, and coronavirus seemed to have been ruled out. President Buhari nevertheless ordered that the city be locked down for an additional two weeks. Whether or not those people died of COVID-19, the pandemic may still have led to their death. The health care system in Kano has reoriented itself to deal with the coronavirus at the expense of other essential medical services, leaving some without health care. Also, the BBC reports that “no official death records are kept,” making it difficult to attribute a death to COVID-19. Various Nigerian leaders have been largely supportive of the lockdowns, at least initially. Both the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) have supported the government lockdowns, and have worked with some local and state governments to disseminate accurate information and encourage compliance. The NSCIA, in fact, ordered closed their Abuja mosques a full week before the government-imposed lockdown. Many state governors imposed their own lockdowns despite no requirement from the federal government, and on April 22, all unanimously agreed to ban interstate travel for two weeks. That states and Nigerian leaders at the highest level are working together is a good sign. But the mass lockdowns weigh most heavily on the poor, who are often part of the informal economy and thus dependent on face-to-face contact. For many of them, a day without work means a day without food. Hence the resistance in Lagos that has resulted in harsh responses employed by the security services. At one point, security forces enforcing lockdown orders across Nigeria had killed more people than the coronavirus. President Buhari has repeatedly acknowledged that the poor are most affected, and it is part of the impetus to ease lockdown restrictions. A patchwork of volunteer welfare programs and private sector-led initiatives are trying to make up for an insufficient government response  In rural Bayelsa state, there are credible anecdotes about chaotic and insufficient government relief measures, such as distribution of food to the poor.  Sentiments are hard to capture, but in urban Nigeria, there are anecdotes about popular satisfaction that most of the deaths from the disease have so far been from the elites who contracted the disease while abroad. More anecdotes tell of popular rage at elites, who many hold responsible for introducing the disease from their travel abroad. There is also popular satisfaction that the elites are now dependent on the same inadequate medical services as the rest of the population.

Recent attacks that appeared to target immigrants have underscored South Africa’s struggle to combat violence and limit tensions with the rest of the region.

The Nigerian police recently rescued some three hundred men and boys, many of them chained, from a purported Islamic school in Kaduna, according to Reuters. Some of the victims said that their parents had brought them to the building thinking it was an Islamic school in the almajiri tradition, but there is apparently no indication that the building ever was, in fact, a school. What, then, was it? It does seem clear that those freed had been kept against their will and that some of the parents thought it was an almajiri school. One possibility might be that it was a holding center for some variety of trafficking in persons, a modern variant of the slave trade. It is said that between ten and twelve million children in northern Nigeria are enrolled in Islamic schools. These schools, called almajiri, focus on the study of Islam and vary in quality. Some follow a classic curriculum instilling a deep knowledge of the Koran and high Islamic culture. Others focus on memorization of the Koran in Arabic. Of the latter sort, some teach Arabic, others do not. Memorizing the Koran in Arabic with no knowledge of Arabic from a Western, secular perspective resembles memorizing nonsense syllables. But, within some currents of Islamic thinking, the memorizing of the Koran in Arabic is in and of itself a holy activity. Nevertheless, many in northern Nigeria have been concerned that the almajiri system, even at its best, fails to prepare students for the modern economy. Northern governors have proposed—and in some case, implemented—the introduction of modern elements into the almajiri curriculum, especially those traditionally congruent with Islam, such as mathematics. In southern Nigeria, there is concern that almajiri schools may be nurseries of jihadist, violent extremism. However, there is little evidence of links between, say, Boko Haram and almajiri schools.  The roots of the almajiri system are pre-colonial. During the slack time between harvest and planting, when there was no work for children and little food, families would send them into town to study with a mallam. For half the day, students would study; for the other half, students would pay the mallam and sustain themselves through begging. In effect, the system represented a small resource transfer from town to rural dwellers and was part of the rhythm of urban and rural life. The integral role of begging in the almajiri system reflected the importance within Islam of giving alms without the negative connotation it has in the West. However, with the explosive growth of the population, combined with stresses within the agricultural sector and the decline of manufacturing in urban areas, the classic almajiri system appears to be breaking down.  

Kidnapping has long been a feature of political terror in Nigeria. Militants operating in the Niger Delta have kidnapped Nigerians and foreigners working in the oil industry. Such kidnapping usually has a political purpose, with ransom a side benefit. Boko Haram, the radical jihadist movement in northeast Nigeria, has kidnapped thousands, though their best-known victims are the 276 Chibok school girls taken in 2014, of whom about 100 remain in captivity today. Boko Haram kidnapping appears to be motivated by the need for labor, soldiers, and wives. No doubt Boko Haram, too, collects ransom when it can. Other militant groups, especially in the north, have resorted to kidnapping foreigners to raise money. But the current wave of kidnapping is different from the politically-motivated and usually geographically-banded kidnapping of the past. It is now occurring all over the country. According to Voice of America, this wave of kidnapping is driven by economic hardship. VOA quotes the Nigerian Police Service as saying that there were 685 kidnappings nationwide in the first quarter of the year, with ransom demands ranging from $1,000 to $150,000 depending on the kidnappers’ estimate of what the victims and their family or organization can pay. The United States government does not pay ransom to free American citizens, but many other governments do to free their nationals. The police figures likely understate the reality, as much kidnapping goes unreported. Though ransom payments are illegal in Nigeria, most victims appear to pay, probably contributing to underreporting. There is anecdotal evidence that those who do not, or cannot, are murdered. The kidnapping wave and the fear it engenders is having a deleterious effect on Nigerian national morale, though how much is hard to quantify. The country has a population of more than 200 million; even if the number of victims is a multiple of those reported by the police, it is a tiny percentage of the population. But, the fear is nationwide. 

Mob attacks on foreign-owned shops in Johannesburg have damaged relations between South Africa and Nigeria. The Nigerian government has announced that it is evacuating some four hundred Nigerians from South Africa. The violence is being characterized as “xenophobic,” which, by all accounts, it is. But the story is more complicated, and aspects of it have roots in apartheid South Africa and the dislocations resulting from too-rapid urbanization. According to the Washington Post, the mobs comprise mostly single, black men who have recently arrived in Johannesburg from the countryside looking for work. Many of them live in apartheid-era hostels, squalid shelters for workers away from home long known as breeding grounds for ethnic violence. Work in Johannesburg is hard to find. Unemployment is over 50 percent for those under thirty-five, while among the entire working-age population it is almost 30 percent. In terms of education and training, many or most of the newly-arrived are ill-equipped to enter the modern economy. Elite educational institutions have become racially integrated, but they serve a tiny proportion of the population. The quality of primary education available to the poor, especially in rural areas, has not advanced much since the days of “Bantu” education in the apartheid era. Again reflecting apartheid strictures on black self-employment, the informal sector of South Africa’s economy is smaller than, say, in Nigeria. In Lagos, a far poorer and less developed city than Johannesburg, everybody has a hustle. Begging among southern Nigerians is rare; those that beg are usually from elsewhere in Nigeria or West Africa. The popular culture is highly entrepreneurial. Hence, when Nigerians emigrate, and millions do to all over the world, the often set up small enterprises, creating wealth, but also engendering envy. The Johannesburg mobs are attacking “foreigners,” who are probably disproportionately Nigerians and Somalis—known for being similarly entrepreneurial—because they are seen as taking away jobs from local people. That appears to rarely be the case; if anything, foreigners may well be creating jobs. A final factor to consider is that, all over Africa, urbanization is proceeding rapidly—probably too rapidly. South Africa is now said to be 60 percent urban and over half of Nigerians live in cities. In Nigeria, investment in urban infrastructure, ranging from clean water to roads to schools, has not remotely reached the level needed to accommodate the urban influx. There has been more such investment in Johannesburg and South Africa in general, reflecting (among other things) that South Africa is a much richer, more developed country than Nigeria. Hence its attraction to economic immigrants. Nevertheless, the investment shortfall in Johannesburg is there for all to see. It is particularly acute in education. Unemployed male youth would appear to be drivers of Johannesburg crime and violence, in part because there is no place for them.  What to do? Reversing urbanization is not really a possibility. Infrastructure investment takes time and money. South Africans are conflicted over education reform; everybody agrees it is necessary, but there is no consensus about how to do it. So addressing the roots of mob violence will take time. For now, the Ramaphosa government appears correctly to be dealing with mob violence as a law-and-order issue.

Economic and social inequality is the elephant in the living room of the current American presidential election cycle. It also powers the yellow vest demonstrations in France, and is an important driver of Brexit sentiment in the United Kingdom. It turns out that it is—or should be—an issue in West Africa as well.  Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) have developed the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI). The index ranks 157 countries by their commitment to reducing inequality through increased spending on health and education, taxing the rich more than the poor, and paying a living wage. On July 9, they released their first CRI Regional Report [PDF]. It is critical of West African governments’ efforts to address social and economic inequality.  The report starts with the arresting observation that six of the ten fastest growing economies in Africa were in West Africa in 2018: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Three of them—Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Senegal—were among the ten fastest growing economies in the world. But, despite rapid economic growth there has been little or no reduction in poverty, and huge increases in economic inequality. The report concludes that the top one percent in West Africa own more than the combined wealth of everyone in the region. The top five West African countries on the Index—or those that have demonstrated the highest commitment to reducing inequality—are Cape Verde, Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, the Gambia, and Ivory Coast. At the bottom of the list are Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and Sierra Leone. At the very bottom of the list is Nigeria, the largest economy of them all, though at present with a low rate of economic growth, unlike the top five. Cape Verde and Senegal are usually near the top of most indexes of African development. The surprise here is the presence of Mauritania and the Gambia near the top of the CRI. Reducing extreme inequality in West Africa will be a challenge even when governments are committed to do so, and, according to the report, not all are. After all, among the most developed economies in the world, like the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, inequality is proving intractable. Only the Scandinavian social democracies have had much success, and they have special advantages not shared in the rest of the developed world, and certainly not in West Africa.

Four years ago, on July 2, 2015, a Minneapolis dentist killed a well-known Lion, Cecil, in a Zimbabwe trophy hunt with a bow and arrow. Cecil was something of a star in the developed world. He attracted tourists, in part because his black mane made him readily identifiable, in part because he allowed safari sight-seeing vehicles to come up close. He was also part of an Oxford University wildlife study, and wore a GPS tracking collar. Cecil’s killing provoked outrage in Europe and the United States, and the resulting media storm made the dentist an international pariah, at least at the moment. Nevertheless, following an investigation, the Zimbabwe authorities determined that the dentist had a permit and that the hunt was legal. Neither the dentist nor his hunting guide were ever successfully prosecuted in Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Zimbabwean authorities have said the dentist is free to return to Zimbabwe whenever he likes, though not as a big-game hunter However, in the aftermath of the outcry over Cecil, American and British airlines banned the transport of hunting trophies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added lions to its endangered species list, making it more difficult for Americans to hunt them under American law.  In Zimbabwe the killing caused hardly a ripple. Cecil was hardly known, according to the media. Lions, especially those living in close proximity to farms, are often viewed by local people as a dangerous menace. Some Zimbabweans took the Western hype over Cecil as yet more evidence that Europeans and Americans put a higher value on wild animals than on black people. Some African conservation officials expressed concern that if trophy hunting—and the huge fees that they command—were banned, essential funding for conservation programs would dry up.  Marking the fourth anniversary of Cecil’s killing, the Financial Times (FT) ran a story indicating that there is more money from wild animal tourism than from trophy hunting. The dentist allegedly paid $59,000 to kill Cecil. Charity LionAid (an NGO) has calculated that a male lion in the Serengeti brings Tanzania $890,000 in tourism revenue over a five-year period. Using a different set of calculations, an FT columnist concluded that the tourism value of a lion is about $179,000—still multiple times higher than the return for trophy hunting a lion.  Perhaps the bottom line of the Cecil episode is that it highlights the difficult trade-offs conservation, local opinion, tourism, and trophy hunting impose on African governments, many of which are poor and with limited bureaucratic and administrative capacity. They must balance local community concern about damage inflicted by wildlife on people and crops with often uncritical western support for “conservation”—protection of animals anywhere and all the time. They must also balance the revenue from trophy hunting—easy to determine and immediate—with income from tourism, perhaps harder to calculate and realized over a longer term. These dilemmas highlight the need for a little humility from Western critics from all perspectives.

Part of the basis of Muhammadu Buhari’s street popularity is his modest style of living, at least compared to other members of Nigeria’s elite. As is required by law, in May 2019, President Buhari submitted his asset declaration to the Code of Conduct Bureau. According to Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, there was no significant change in President Buhari’s assets since he last submitted a declaration following his 2015 election as president. This is credible. In 2015, the president’s listed assets consisted of “farms;” five homes and two mud houses; an orchard and a ranch with 270 cows, as well as 25 sheep, 5 horses, and a variety of birds; shares in three firms; plots of land in Port Harcourt and Kano; two cars; and $150,000 in a personal bank account. By contrast, Buhari’s vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, said that he had $1.4 million in his bank account at this time. In a country in which about half of the population lives in extreme poverty, Buhari is well off. His principle private residence in Kaduna is masonry of a size and finish appropriate for a retired army general with no business dealings on the side. Nevertheless, the government’s purchase of an official automobile costing an estimated $170,000 is a reminder of the perks of office.  But, compared to most of Nigeria’s elites, his personal fortune is very modest. Many former presidents and presidential aspirants have wealth in the tens of millions of U.S. dollars, and Nigerians routinely believe that holders of public office exploit their positions to enrich themselves. Buhari has so far largely avoided serious accusations of personal corruption, and his personal anti-corruption credentials remain strong. Political corruption scandals are a dime a dozen in Nigeria, and corruption remains deeply rooted in both the public and private sectors. But if the president is leading by example, media reports indicate that few are following.