nyt's reporter's gaff re lagos as capital of
nigeria, it reminds me of the first spate of
books written about the rwandan genocide, by
reporters like gurevitch or poly sci people whose
specialization was on current affairs.
with all respect, it seems to me that most
reporters, and especially especially especially
american reporters, nyt's reporters, have a
knowledge about what is happening today, maybe
yesterday, but surely not the day before that.
whereas french reporters stayed on in africa for
many years, developing expertise about the
regions they covered, and the brits more or less
the same, americans were in and out of africa every couple of years.
they do NOT know, or care to learn, the
historical record of a region, except superficially.
thus, an example: "tutsis and hutus have always
been at war with each other." this is the
nonsense reporters larded their superficial
stories with. you will recognize this from any
corner of africa. thus when they first come, what
do they seek? exotica, which they always find in
the bush, in the parks, in the dress of people,
in adornments, in trivia, in linguistic
differences and tics, in ANYTHING BUT real actual
political interests, motives, and calculations;
anything but shifting historical patterns that
reflected changes, since for US reporters africa
cannot change or else hollywood would be a lie
and their knowledge of the past exposed to be
false. the extended discussions on nigerian
politics on this list go largely ignored by the
us press. why is that? maybe a piece on the oil
dumping in the delta; or a kidnapping. but is
there ever any background that suggests a real
consideration of the political alignments, the
play of power besides presidential?
it isn't just the taste of the reading public; it
isn't simply financial editorial decisions. it is
knowledge and the fine appreciation of the actual
realities, past and present, that go ignored.
so for the article ogugua evoked: it is probably
great for current financial questions. beyond
that, does the reporter really know where nigeria is? oh, somewhere over there
ken
At 11:16 PM 7/15/2010, you wrote:
>Please see Tim Gray's NYT Report below.
>Mr. Rowe elects to write on Nigeria when he does
>not know that the City of Lagos ceased to be
>Nigeria's capital city along time ago. Should
>his reports on Nigeria be taken seriously even
>when there are positive about nigeria?
>
>oa
>
>________________________________________
>From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
>[usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
>Of Ejikeme, Anene [Anene.Ejikeme@Trinity.edu]
>Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 1:52 PM
>To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria in
>NYT, 9 July 2010 "Newfound Strength in Frontier Markets"
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/mutfund/11frontier.html
>
>
>July 9, 2010
>Newfound Strength in Frontier Markets
>By TIM GRAY
>THREE years ago, when Joseph Rohm, manager of
>the T. Rowe Price Africa and Middle East fund,
>visited Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, he was
>chaperoned by guards carrying semiautomatic
>weapons. These days, he strolls the streets
>alone. "I feel safer in Lagos than I do in
>Johannesburg," said Mr. Rohm, a native of South Africa.
>That transition underscores the changing reality
>of so-called frontier stock markets, those that
>are less developed than emerging markets like
>Brazil, China and India. Countries, whole
>regions even, that a few years ago were
>dismissed as perilous to both body and bourse
>have come into stock market vogue.
>Big investment companies have rolled out mutual
>funds and exchange-traded funds that put all or
>at least a big chunk of their money in frontier
>regions. Mr. Rohm's fund, one of the older
>offerings, began in 2007. As of the end of
>April, it had invested about three-fourths of
>its $207 million in countries including Nigeria,
>Kenya and Qatar. For the 12 months through June, it returned 17 percent.
>Two leading providers of exchange-traded funds,
>Claymore Securities and Invesco PowerShares,
>have also introduced frontier products. The
>Claymore/BNY Mellon Frontier Markets E.T.F.
>invests around the world, while the PowerShares
>MENA Frontier Countries Portfolio focuses on the
>Middle East and North Africa. Both are built
>upon frontier-market indexes and invest passively.
>The frontier pitch resonates at a time when the
>American and Western European economies are
>struggling and United States interest rates are
>sagging. And returns in several of the leading
>emerging stock markets, Brazil, China and
>Russia, have faltered this year, after surging in 2009.
>"We view frontier markets as attractively valued
>compared with emerging markets," said
>Constantine Papageorgiou, a senior portfolio
>manager at Acadian Asset Management in Boston.
>"They didn't participate in the huge run-up in
>2009 that you saw in the emerging markets."
>Frontier investing is a new-enough phenomenon
>that professionals disagree on which countries
>make up the sector. Different managers and index
>providers include different names. The Claymore
>E.T.F., for example, has Chile and Poland among
>its top five holdings, though neither is part of
>the MSCI Frontier Index. The index includes such
>diverse countries as Argentina, Romania, Kenya
>and Kazakhstan. It rose 0.66 percent, including
>dividends, in the first six months this year,
>compared with a negative total return of 7.57
>percent for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock
>index. The frontier index has been helped along
>by positive returns in three of its important
>markets — Nigeria, Kuwait and Qatar.
>Almost everyone, including MSCI, puts Nigeria in
>the frontier category. "I get people asking,
>'Who's the next Brazil?' " said Adam J. Kutas,
>manager of the Fidelity Emerging Europe, Middle
>East and Africa fund. "I answer without
>hesitation that it's Nigeria," because it also
>has a large population and a huge base of natural resources.
>Nigeria holds hefty oil reserves — the world's
>10th largest, according to the Central
>Intelligence Agency. For years, its riches
>produced unrest, as residents of the
>oil-producing Niger Delta rebelled against what
>they saw as too small a share of the profits.
>Lately, the delta has stabilized, and the
>country, formerly a military dictatorship, has
>had several democratic transitions.
>Rising commodity prices have helped Nigeria and
>several of the leading African economies, which
>tend to be resource-rich, says Paul Collier,
>director of the Center for the Study of African
>Economies at Oxford University. "These countries
>are the last frontier for natural resource
>discovery," Professor Collier said. "With high
>commodity prices, it'll all get discovered. "
>At the same time, policy makers in places like
>Nigeria have tamed hyperinflation and
>liberalized trade, he said. That combination of
>resource wealth and macro stability is attracting investors.
>Many but not all of the frontier countries are
>richly endowed with commodities. As expected
>from economies on four continents, they're
>diverse. Kazakhstan, for example, unearths oil,
>metals and mineral, while Argentina sells
>soybeans, corn and wheat. Vietnam excels at manufacturing.
>Because of this diversity, their stock returns
>tend not to move in lock step with those in
>developed and emerging markets, Mr. Papageorgiou
>of Acadian said. They can zig when the developed
>world zags. And returns in the frontier regions
>even tend not to track one another.
>"Eastern European markets will trade in line
>with each other but very differently from the
>African countries," Mr. Papageorgiou said. Thus,
>a small frontier allocation can provide diversification in a portfolio.
>All of this does not mean that these locales
>have become low-risk. "Some people think that
>noncorrelation means that frontier markets
>always will be up when everything else is down,"
>said Gregg I. Wolper, a senior fund analyst with
>Morningstar. "That's not true. They're not a
>miracle drug. In the bear market, they got hit
>hard, so it's not that they're protected."
>Some frontier countries remain more vulnerable
>to corruption and political crises than the
>typical developed market, said Darrell S.
>Zechman, a Chicago-based consultant with Towers
>Watson Investment Services. "They're highly
>volatile, so you need a very long time horizon," Mr. Zechman said.
>Even so, he said he agreed with arguments for
>investing in them. "They're relatively diverse,
>populous and growing fast," he said. "They're
>not fully established, but they do merit
>consideration. People were saying the same kinds
>of things about emerging markets 15 years ago."
>So what might be an appropriate frontier
>allocation for a long-term investor who already
>has a diversified portfolio and can tolerate the
>risks? Estimates from money managers who operate
>in the sector range from 2 to 5 percent.
>But Mr. Wolper of Morningstar was skeptical
>about investing anything at all. "International
>funds and emerging market funds put very little
>money in frontier markets," he said. "You can
>build a nice international portfolio without a frontier markets fund."
>Even if you believe that frontier countries will
>grow far faster than the developed world, you
>have to deal with the practicalities, including
>cost, of investing in them, he said. Frontier
>funds tend to be more expensive than average and
>have short records. "They could have great
>potential, but you can't simply assume that
>you'll get great returns," Mr. Wolper said.
>ANYONE who believes that frontier markets will
>rise relentlessly should recall 1978, said Mr.
>Kutas at Fidelity. That was when Time magazine
>named Deng Xiaoping, who led the overhaul of
>China's economy, as its Man of the Year.
>"That's when the world came to the idea that
>China was opening, and that's quite a few years
>ago," Mr. Kutas said. Since then, the economy
>has boomed, but the stock market has been on a
>roller coaster — sagging, for example, during
>and after the Asian financial crisis that began
>in 1997. "What I'm saying is that a lot of these
>trends are true, but you can go through periods of sharp volatility."
>
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Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
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517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755
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