Dialectic Africa Analyst

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                                   Kenya has been in the nose in recent years with one accounting scandal after the other.  The scandals came into the public domain through aggrieved parties, Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) or foreign parent companies.  Investigations into the "cooking of the books" exposed corrupt dealings and outright looting in some cases.  These are definitely worrying developments as is the recent case of Tesco in the UK and Toshiba in Japan where profits were overstated. In Kenya, accounting scandals of note over the years are: 1. Uchumi Supermarkets 2. Mumias Sugar 3. Haco Tiger Brands 4. CMC Motors 5. Kenya Airways The only acknowledged accounting scandal in Nigeria till date is that involving Cadbury Nigeria.  On paper, corporate governance and cooking of the books is more prevalent in Kenya, than in Nigeria. I am of the strong opin

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                                 Over the past one year under the leadership of Patrick Njoroge, three Kenya banks have gone into receivership and the National Bank of Kenya has had its CEO & CFO removed along with four others.  A net profit of 2.25B Ks by September 2015 turned into a net loss of 1.15B Ks by December 2015 for National Bank of Kenya.  Patrick Njoroge, has stated that " never again will fuzzy numbers and creative accounting be used to deceive investors in banks."  The system is rotten and he has decided to openly acknowledge it and resolved to clean up the system.  Kenya is in tune with the rot within its banking system and is putting in place a better structure and closer surveillance and reporting to restore investor confidence in its banking system. Let's take a five hour flight to Nigeria, the most visible frontier market in Africa.  Skye Bank reported a pretax profit of N1

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                         On June 20, 2016, I published an article titled: "Nigerian Naira: The misfortune of its people is the glee of foreign investors."  This article turned out to have the most one day views of any article ever written since the inception of this blog about fourteen months ago. Two months later, let us concisely review my major short-term expectations as stated in the article against present economic and market reality In Nigeria.    1. Expectation: The stock market will have a transient positive bump and then tank as the reality of pain sets in.  The naira free float policy commenced on June 20, 2016.   Reality:  The Nigeria All Share Index rose by 1.12% from June 20 to June 30.  The NGSE index declined by 4.42% in July and has declined by 2.25% as at August 25, 2016.  The market had a transient boost during the last nine trading days of June and then has been on a persisten

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                                  Gradually it is becoming more evident that human prejudices that have existed since time immemorial are also impacting the way fund managers make decisions in Africa. The first angle I will look at is the demographic composition of staff of hedge funds that invest in Africa.  I have looked at Brazilian, Chinese, Eastern Europe, Asian, South East Asia, Latin American, American, Middle East and African funds.  The funds whose investment staffing is least similar in makeup to the region of portfolio inflows is Africa. People of European and American origins dominate African and frontier market funds.  This staffing domination is not seen anywhere close to the extent it is in funds invested in non African markets. Why are funds more open to talent from regions of investment focus except when it is Sub-Saharan Africa? The matter is further laid bare when South Africa domiciled A