Month: January 2019

Rotting hides on the road are all that is left of three butchered cows.

Such carnage is common in Venezuela’s cattle country, where thieves, squatters and government policy threaten a vital food resource.

Venezuela’s severe economic crisis is felt keenly in cities — where food sources are limited — but it’s also cutting a swath through what should be the country’s food basket.

Seeing the hides on the road — the handiwork of cattle poachers — Jose Labrador stops his truck and explodes with rage.

“It’s as if they were telling us: ‘We are killing your cattle, so what?'” the 46-year old rancher says, fuming that complaining is useless — police and local authorities will do nothing.

Labrador and other farmers in the cattle-rearing region of San Silvestre, in the western state of Barinas, say they are in a state of siege — from squatters, gunmen and government price controls that make their farms unprofitable.

“I can’t sleep on the farm anymore because I’m scared,” said Jose Antonio Espinoza, owner of a 600-head herd in San Silvestre. “They have come around here and tied people up, and then stolen everything — chainsaws, water pumps, cattle.”

He said as many as 74 bulls have been stolen over the past year from his family farm.

Cowboys on horseback herd his traditional Venezuelan Brahman and Carora breeds, as well as buffalos, to and from their fertile grazing land.

But they are powerless when the rustlers strike.

The wheeling of vultures overhead is a warning that the poachers have struck once again. When they arrive, only bones and skin remain, the meat cut up and taken away to feed a hungry black market.

Farm Policy Failures

In a 2016 survey, three-quarters of Venezuelans reported they had lost weight since the economic crisis began, by an average of 19 pounds (8.5 kilos).

Chronic shortages of protein in the cities should provide an opportunity for the country’s farmers, but farms are producing less and less.

Meat produced in Venezuela now barely accounts for 40 percent of  domestic consumption, less than half the 97 percent of two decades ago, according to the National Federation of Cattle Ranchers.

Per capita meat consumption went from 20 kilos per year in 1999 to only seven kilos at present, the federation says. Even then, farmers can’t fulfill demand.

“We are going backwards… even though those of us who remain on the land work tooth and nail,” federation president Armando Chacin told AFP.

Chacin warned that government policies, far from easing the problem, have served only to strangle growth.

Venezuela, a country of more than 30 million people, raises less than 10 million head of cattle, the federation says; in 1999, when the population was 20 million, there were 14 million cattle.

Dwindling resources makes meat more expensive in the capital Caracas, 560 kilometers (350 miles) away, where it costs the equivalent of the minimum monthly wage to buy two kilos of meat.

Land Expropriations

Since the arrival in power in 1999 of Hugo Chavez, the socialist government has expropriated five million hectares (12.4 million acres) of agricultural land, the cattle ranchers federation says.

At the same time, high oil prices meant Venezuela imported more of its food, to the detriment of its own agriculture industry.

Now, Chavez’s hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro sets prices for basic foodstuffs, often below production costs, leading many farmers to bankruptcy.

Price controls mean farmers get little for the meat they produce.

After years of fattening, a big animal brings in about $250.

But with Venezuela’s staggering inflation set to top one million percent this year — according to the International Monetary Fund — it barely covers the cost of a truck tire.

Land invasions are another problem. Emboldened by government policy, armed squatters invaded a large maize farm in San Silvestre and ransacked it in the space of three days.

“They robbed nine tractors and three harvesters, they destroyed the house. We got tired of complaining about it and neither the national guard nor the police intervened,” said Marisela Febres, the owner.

The incident happened in 2016, but she was never able to recover her land. Arguing that the land was idle, the state-run National Land Institute awarded the farm to the squatters earlier this year.

In border areas, farmers can be even more exposed, regularly becoming the target of extortion by armed groups, engaged in running contraband or drug trafficking.

Late last month, the government took over the running of a score of slaughterhouses. Officials accused their owners of speculation and promptly slashed prices by two-thirds.

There have also been cases of pro-Maduro state governors demanding that farmers sell part of their production, setting the prices themselves, to distribute to their supporters at low cost.

Making matters worse on a local level is that the poachers don’t discriminate.

The animals killed include breeding bulls and dairy cows alike, animals that remain productive for up to 12 years. One cow alone can produce 4,000 liters of milk a year.

Labrador says he was a recent victim.

“They killed a bull of mine with incredible genes, one that was going to be a very productive stud,” he said.

Farmers have difficulty buying seeds and fertilizers, even vaccines for livestock, he says.

“If there are no medicines for people, imagine what it is like for the animals.”
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Laborers milled around an unfinished eight-story building in an expansive field in Konza dotted with zebra and antelope — the only visible sign of progress in a decade-old plan to make Kenya into Africa’s leading technology hub by 2030.

Grandiose plans, red tape and a lack of funding have left Konza Technopolis — the $14.5 billion new city to be built some 60 km (37 miles) southeast of Nairobi — way behind schedule on its goal of having 20,000 people on site by 2020.

“It has taken too long and I think people have moved on,” said tech entrepreneur Josiah Mugambi, founder of Alba.one, a Nairobi-based software company, who was initially excited by the government’s ambitious project.

Dubbed the Silicon Savannah, Konza aims to become a smart city — using tech to manage water and electricity efficiently and reduce commuting time — and a solution to the rapid, unplanned urbanization which has plagued existing cities.

About 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in towns and cities and the World Bank predicts the urban population will double over the next 25 years, adding pressure to already stretched infrastructure.

Konza’s dream is to become a top business process outsourcing hub by 2030, with on-site universities training locals to feed into a 200,000-strong tech-savvy workforce providing IT support and call center services remotely.

But the first building has yet to be completed on the 5,000-acre former cattle ranch, three years after breaking ground, and business has shifted its focus to other African countries, like Rwanda, with competing visions to become modern tech hubs.

“Nobody can wait that long for a city to be built. For a tech entrepreneur, they think about where their startup will be two to three years down the line,” said Mugambi.

Other smart cities planned across Africa include Nigeria’s Eko Atlantic City near Lagos that will house 250,000 people on land reclaimed from the sea, Ghana’s Hope City and an Ethiopian city styled as the real Wakanda after the film “Black Panther.”

Utopian

Bringing such utopian schemes to life is no easy task for African governments that are struggling to provide adequate roads, power, water and security to their existing cities.

“Upgrading infrastructure in places like Kibera (slum) in Nairobi to provide water and a better sewerage system is equally as important as building a new city such as Konza,” said Abdu Muwonge, a senior urban specialist with the World Bank in Kenya.

Some critics say Konza was ill-conceived from the start.

“The vision is wrong; the vision is too big,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent financial analyst.

“This is miles from anywhere. There are not leveraging the existing infrastructure … It is assuming that you can bring in academia, you can bring in venture capital, you can bring in corporates.”

The first serious hurdle arose in 2012 when the National Land Commission (NLC), which manages public land, introduced a cumbersome land acquisition procedure, said Bitange Ndemo, who led a team that conceived Konza Technopolis in 2008.

“The NLC was saying we should follow the processes of acquiring public land, which would take years to complete,” Ndemo, now an associate professor of business at the University of Nairobi, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The delays caused at least one deal with a German university to fall through, he said, as the process was much slower than the old one where investors signed deals directly with government ministries which took care of land leases.

To resolve this, the government transferred ownership of the site to the Konza Technopolis Development Authority (KoTDA), set up in 2012 to co-ordinate development of the new city, which now allocates land to investors on 50-year renewable leases.

Cold Feet

Financing has also proven a major issue.

In its strategic plan, the government promised to fund 10 percent of Konza, laying the infrastructure, while the private sector would come in with the rest of the money to build universities, offices, housing and hotels.

But the government was slow to contribute its share and has yet to pass a law to create KoTDA as a legal entity which would make it easier to sign contracts with external lenders, said Lawrence Esho, one of Konza’s project planners until 2013.

“They are way behind schedule partly because the government took time to give Konza money,” he said, adding that no money came in until 2013.

“This stopped any work from starting at the site and investors may have developed cold feet as they waited.”

KoTDA’s chief executive, John Tanui, said the government has committed to invest more than 80 billion shillings ($780 million).

“When I say committed does not mean we have absorbed. Our absorption is less than 10 percent of that figure,” he said, without elaborating.

The government has stepped up funding since 2017, said Abraham Odeng, deputy secretary at Kenya’s Information Communications and Technology ministry, without giving figures.

Odeng pointed to a 40 billion shilling contract signed in 2017 with an Italian firm to build roads, water and sewerage infrastructure by 2021, funded by the Italian government.

“That is a concessional loan, which is a long-term loan that the Kenyan government will pay,” he said.

Drop in the Ocean

But Kenya’s growing reliance on loans is causing jitters, with the International Monetary Fund warning of an increased risk of default.

The Washington-based lender forecast Kenya’s total public debt will reach 63 percent of economic output or GDP for 2018, up from 53 percent in 2016, citing the government’s public investment drive and revenue shortfalls.

The World Bank’s Muwonge said the issue is eliminating challenges for the private sector to do business.

“Getting Konza city off the ground will require that we pull in private capital with concessions for them to deliver certain kinds of infrastructure for which the government may not have resources,” he said.

Five local investors, including Nairobi-based software developer Craft Silicon and the state-run Kenya Electricity Transmission Company, are expected to build offices, residential buildings and hotels by 2020, KoTDA head Tanui said.

But critics say it is not enough.

“What (investors) have allocated so far is still a drop in the ocean,” said Ndemo, the former government technocrat.

And international interest is shifting elsewhere.

Rwanda — widely regarded as the least corrupt country in East Africa — launched its Kigali Innovation City in 2015, designed to host 50,000 people in universities and tech companies on a 70-hectare site outside the capital.

The $2 billion plan, due for completion by 2020, is seven times cheaper than Konza.

“All these other (cities) have better proximity, have better density and have better collaborative feedback loops,” said financial analyst Satchu. “We are now at a serious disadvantage vis-a-vis these other countries.”

($1 = 102.5000 Kenyan shillings)
…

Think of public spaces in big cities, and formal parks, bustling markets and grand squares come to mind.

Think again.

In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, residents have redrawn the map and come up with innovative ways for locals to congregate in their ancient and fast-changing city.

A boxing ring was built on a bridge. Next to it — architects installed art to amuse commuters as they hurried over the river.

The grimy gaps between garages were turned into a ‘stadium’ where locals could face off over dominoes. Inside the disused garages, bakeries, barbers and beauty salons plied their trade.

It is not how most cities do public spaces, but Tbilisi — which stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia — has a long history shaped by diverse masters, all of whom left their architectural imprint on the Caucasus.

As the city shakes off decades of Soviet rule and reinvents itself again, developers have bent once-tight planning rules and a building boom is underway — one that is changing the face of the city and jeopardizing the open areas where Georgians meet.

“Left behind … (in) the construction boom, public spaces are still important and constitute a resource, a big treasure to be preserved,” says Nano Zazanashvili, head of the urban policy and research division at Tbilsi’s Department of Urban Development, a city office. “The main challenge of the City Hall is to protect these areas.”

Boxing Bridge

The DKD bridge — which connects two Soviet-era residential districts — is a perfect example of how locals adapted centrally-imposed urban design to fit their own suburban needs.

Flat dwellers in this northeastern sprawl live in the sort of anonymous, concrete blocks typical of any Soviet city.

Beauty is not their selling point, so in the 1990s architects installed informal shops, a hotel and a boxing gym on the bridge, which connects two identikit micro-districts.

The bridge building was part of an outdoor exhibition created for the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial earlier this year.

The event – the first since Georgia regained independence in 1991 – brought together experts to study the city’s rapid transformation and to involve locals in the debate.

“It is the very beginning, not even a first step,” Tinatin Gurgenidze, co-founder of the Biennial, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The local community needs to understand what is the necessity of working on these issues.”

Rich Mix

Downtown, the cityscape makes for an eclectic backdrop.

Deco mansions jostle with Soviet constructivism. Ancient sulphur baths and tiny churches squat at the feet of futuristic skyscrapers, while rickety wooden houses lean into the hills, their gaily painted balconies perched in thin air.

Much of this history is fading into oblivion, sagging walls propped up with outsize beams to stop whole ghost streets crashing to dust.

Other parts of town are bulldozed and built over.

The city center is a decade into a frenetic construction boom, but the drab Gldani suburb mostly cleaves to its 1970s integrity, an era when uniform blocks were built to accommodate workers relocated from older, central neighborhoods.

This dormitory suburb became the area of the city with the highest density of population – and as communism and central control began to crumble, residents stole the chance to tack on ad-hoc balconies, garages and makeshift gardens.

With Georgian independence came a headlong rush to architectural deregulation, free of any supervision or control, changing the look, feel and use of once sacred public spaces.

“People came up with their own solutions to the problems,” said Gurgenidze, who trained in Georgia as an architect. “The informal structures need to be taken into consideration when decision makers and architects plan the future of these areas.”

Informal and Changed

Take the garages — erected in front of flats to park cars in the 1990s, they were later transformed into basic fruit and vegetable shops, bakeries, barbers and beauty salons.

Rented for 40-100 lari ($15 to £38) a month, the self-declared shops generate extra income for the residents and many were legalized after the fact into formal commercial spaces.

Now they face a possible next life.

The mayor of Tbilisi, former soccer star Kakha Kaladze, this year launched an initiative with local backing to replace the ‘garages’ with playgrounds or gardens.

So far, the plan has had limited success.

But according to architect Nikoloz Lekveishvili, locals are regaining the tiny spaces in between to play dominoes, soak up the greenery and relax with neighbors.

“People see this public space as an opportunity,” he said.

Lali Pertenavi, an artist who grew up in Gldani, temporarily turned Block 76 — a local residential building — into an exhibition space in October as part of the biennial. Residents opened their homes to artists, who in turn transformed them into social spaces recalling the best of Soviet-era collectivism.

While a master plan for the whole city is under discussion at municipal level, public spaces for ordinary people are low in the pecking order of priorities.

“Public spaces and green areas are a hot topic in the local debate but people don’t have enough time to fight for it,” said Anano Tsintsabadze, a lawyer and activist managing the Initiative for a Pubic Space, an NGO that focuses on urban planning and supports residents fighting for public spaces.

In parts of the city, such as Saburtalo and Didi Digomi, the community is slowly mobilizing against the privatization of public spaces amid a drive to keep them free and accessible.

“The social tissue has grown more than the local government.

People know what happens in Europe and are asking for more organised, clean urban spaces,” said architect Nikoloz Lekveishvili, co-founder of Timm Architecture, an international network stretching from Milan to Moscow, Istanbul to Tbilisi.

($1 = 2.6550 laris)
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Digital developments that have upended businesses throughout the global economy, from music to manufacturing, are also changing what the world trades and how manufacturers and merchants move and sell their goods. Experts tell VOA’s Jim Randle, the digital revolution presents significant opportunities, but also serious problems, for countries.
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