In this edition of the Kleptocracy Report:

• Our editors are dismayed at the prospect of Kenya’s government buying more useless equipment for unknown reasons while simultaneously eyeing a tax on remittances sent home to their families by Kenyans abroad.
• The last instalment in ZAM’s Sell Outs transnational investigation portrays the intricate relationship between politically connected individuals in the DRC and international mining speculators. Nearly a decade of shenanigans, with millions of dollars in profit for the group, have resulted in exactly nothing for the community atop a vast lithium deposit.
• Theophilus Abbah tries to understand how vast budgets spent on Nigeria’s security have gone up in the past decade in tandem with devastating rises in crime, banditry and terrorism.
• Thieves rob widows from their farm donkeys in Ghana, while politicians -supported by donations from the syndicate- do nothing
• And stories from our network!

Editorial

When on 4 August the Central Bank of Kenya announced that soon, the statistics agency KNBS would start visiting Kenyan households to check how much money they received from relatives working in the African diaspora, a ripple went through that community. Would the government, already the target of vehement protests for its tax pressures on citizens, now even tax remittances sent home from those working -and already paying tax- elsewhere?

Parts of foreign-earned salaries sent home have helped to put tens of thousands of Kenyan children through school and funded household income for those struggling at home in the country where the political elite live well but a majority suffer various levels of poverty and unemployment.

ZAM editors sent written questions regarding the intentions behind and purposes of the announced remittances household survey to Kenya’s Central Bank, the KNBS and the country’s Treasury Department but did not receive a reply from any of these.

In the same week, Kenyans were disturbed to hear President Ruto announce new multi-million US$ government expenditure for the lease of medical equipment for the country’s hospitals. A similar project in 2019, that has become known as the MES (Managed Equipment Services) scandal, saw millions go up in fruitless expenditure and corruption when the government for the first time leased medical equipment from foreign companies. (ZAM published this report about the scandal at the time). The new project, meant to replace the MES, looks very much the same as the first project and will likely cost even more. “Look at this madness”, wrote a Kenyan colleague. “There is nothing innocent about anything this government is doing. They are out to milk as much money from citizens as they possibly can.”

Kleptocracy is alive and kicking in Kenya.

Lastly, a reminder that we are now able to accept paid subscriptions to the Kleptocracy Report. Our content will remain free to all, but your support can help journalists publish in freedom and help open gateways for democratic change. Read more about our work and funding here.

Lithium Millionnaires

The DRC chapter of ZAM’s new transnational investigation into Africa’s Sell-Outs documents a partnership around lithium prospecting between politically connected Congolese actors and a group of foreign businessmen, to the detriment of a mining community. Civil society groups have criticised how key deals in this carousel have unfolded, saying inter alia that “bad governance of the [lithium] sector, a lack of transparency, opaque conditions of license distribution and the complicity of the political class between all sorts of intermediaries, allow a small group of people to enrich themselves at the detriment of our country.”

What will happen next, now DRC President Tshisekedi has offered his country’s minerals to Trump in exchange for what he believes to be security in the east, is anybody’s guess.

Read Lithium Millionnaires here

Nigeria’s expensive security failures

As budgets spent on military and state security have ballooned in Nigeria, banditry, crime and terrorism have only gotten worse. Corruption is only part of the problem. Theophilus Abbah did some number crunching, tries to explain what is happening and calls on Nigeria’s leaders and the international community -which supports Nigeria’s counterterrorism and supplements other military expenses, too- to hold securocrats accountable.

Read Bullets instead of Food here

Saving donkeys and widows

Rural families in northeastern Ghana and parts of the Sahel have been losing vital farm donkeys—essential for ploughing and transporting crops—to a syndicate that kills the animals for their skins. The primary victims are peasants, often single women and widows, who manage small farms to support their families. Together with civil society organisations, committed state officials have made progress in curbing the plunder, but their main obstacle now is political. “We can’t anger the traders who fund political campaigns,” a source within a political party said.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas and Tiger Eye investigated.

Read Saving Donkeys and Widows here

News from our network

• In Ghana, Tiger Eye and Anas Aremeyaw Anas unearthed how a vast budget meant to do up a road went missing while the road stayed muddy, but that’s not all: together with the community, their action and protest resulted in the road works restarting and the minister apologising -without the country paying more.

   

• MakanDay in Zambia has explored the lives of young men, many still in their teens, who risk their lives as illegal miners in Zambia’s dangerous copper mines. “Politically connected people profit from this, while state institutions grow weaker.” Read it here.
• Our partners, the Human Rights, Accountability, & Social Justice Agora platform in Uganda, @AgoraCFR, are following up on their earlier parliamentary corruption exposures with a new series of revelations about vast sums of money missing from Parliament’s Corporate Social Responsibility budget. Follow #ParliamentCSRHeistUg on X.
  

  Also good to read

• In tandem with our Lithium Millionnaires featured above, this piece by The Conversation, explaining what is wrong with the US-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.
• Also from The Conversation: “Come meet us in Dubai”: a deep dive into the new offshoring of grand corruption.
• A new article by UK University of Sussex’s Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption programme (GI ACE) researcher Devi Pillay questions the relationships between states and consulting firms, and how these can create risks of state capture and corruption. The case study: Bain & Company, which recently announced it would shut its consultancy business in South Africa after struggling for years to overcome the consequences of its involvement in state capture during the Zuma presidency.

   

  Coming soon: Alabuga

• In seven African countries, from Cameroon to Kenya and from Zambia to Nigeria, -plus a little extra digging in South Africa and Zimbabwe-, a NAIRE team of investigative reporters, in cooperation with ZAM, follows the recruitment of young African women to the Alabuga industrial and military manufacturing compound east of Moscow. Are they victims of a scam or courageously escaping the spectre of a miserable future at home, no matter what the risks?

   

  But why does Russia only want girls, none of them older than 22?

   

  And why do the governments in all seven countries seem happy to see them go?

   

  ZAM will publish what promises to be a groundbreaking investigation on 8 September.

   

  Stay tuned!

ZAM works with investigative reporters in African countries to bring you this content. Please subscribe, preferably paid, to support and enable more ZAM and NAIRE Kleptocracy Reports.