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NIAMEY, Niger — The European Union has cut off financial support to Niger, and the United States has threatened to do the same after military leaders this week announced they had overthrown the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.

Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, receiving close to $2 billion a year in official development assistance, according to the World Bank.

It is also a key security partner of Western countries such as France and the United States, which use it as a base for their efforts to contain an Islamist insurgency in West and Central Africa’s Sahel region. Previously seen as the most stable country among several unstable neighbors, Niger is the world’s seventh-biggest producer of uranium.

Niger’s foreign allies so far have refused to recognize the new military government led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, previously head of the presidential guard, who officers declared head of state on Friday.

Bazoum has not been heard from since early Thursday when he was confined within the presidential palace, although the European Union, France and others say they still recognize him as the legitimate president.

“In addition to the immediate cessation of budget support, all cooperation actions in the domain of security are suspended indefinitely with immediate effect,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.

Niger is a key partner of the European Union in helping curb the flow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. The EU also has a small number of troops in Niger for a military training mission.

The EU allocated $554 million from its budget to improve governance, education and sustainable growth in Niger over 2021-2024, according to its website.

The United States has two military bases in Niger with some 1,100 soldiers, and it also provides hundreds of millions of dollars to the country in security and development aid.

“The very significant assistance that we have in place for people in Niger is clearly in jeopardy,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. U.S. support depends on the continuation of democratic governance, he said.

The United Nations said the coup has not affected its deliveries of humanitarian aid.

It is unclear how much support the military junta has among Niger’s population. Some crowds came out in support of Bazoum on Wednesday, but the following day coup supporters were demonstrating in the streets.

The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, will hold an emergency summit in Nigeria on Sunday to discuss the situation.

After an emergency meeting on Friday, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council issued a statement demanding the military return to their barracks and restore constitutional order within 15 days. It did not say what would happen after that.
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More than one-third of US workers are remote for at least part of the week
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The European Union allowed the free trade of Ukrainian crops after Russia invaded. The glut that resulted prompted some EU members to impose a ban on sales, which threatens the flow of the grain to world markets. VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze reports from Warsaw, Poland. VOA footage by Daniil Batushchak
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WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund said on Friday that it has reached a staff-level agreement with Argentina to unlock about $7.5 billion and complete the fifth and sixth reviews of the struggling country’s $44 billion loan program.

The agreement, which still needs IMF Executive Board approval, eases some program requirements because a devastating drought has created a “very challenging” economic environment in Argentina, causing some end-of-June financial targets to be missed.

Reuters first reported that the agreement would combine the fifth and sixth reviews of Argentina’s IMF program — a move that provides additional loan funds sooner. The IMF said its board would meet to consider the agreement in the second half of August.

The Fund said in a statement that since the fourth review of the loan program in March, “Argentina’s economic situation has become very challenging due to the larger-than-anticipated impact of a drought, which had a significant impact on exports and fiscal revenues.”

“There have also been policy slippages and delays, which have contributed to strong domestic demand and a weaker trade balance,” the IMF said.

To sustain demand for Argentina’s peso currency, the agreement calls for authorities to ensure that policy interest rates remain “sufficiently positive in real terms.”

The agreement projects a more gradual accumulation of reserves, with a target of around $1 billion by the end of 2023, compared to an $8 billion goal set in March.

The agreement calls for Argentina to tamp down import demand with new foreign exchange taxes for imported goods and to strengthen expenditure controls. But its 2023 primary fiscal deficit target remains unchanged at 1.9% of GDP, the IMF said.

With no liquid currency reserves in the central bank, Argentina has recently introduced more peso exchange rates to stop the drainage. The Fund said that the program will need waivers because these measures are “against the introduction of multiple currency practices.”

The government will need to take some additional measures, known as prior actions, between the staff-level agreement and the board approval, according to a source familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the measures are still not public.

The next review is expected to take place in November, a month earlier than originally scheduled.

Argentina is set to have another three reviews on its 2022 IMF program by September 2024, although the IMF statement didn’t specify what would happen with those.

The IMF’s board approval of the reviews would come after a primary vote on Aug. 13 when Economy Minister Sergio Massa runs as one of the presidential candidates for the ruling coalition.

The country still needs to avoid a default with the Fund next week, with maturities of $2.6 billion due on Monday and almost $800 million due on Tuesday. Argentine officials are working to “get financing from several sources” to meet these obligations, the source added, without providing any further details. 

While it is not clear how the country will make those payments, Buenos Aires could potentially use a swap line with China, a move it recently made to complete part of its June payment to the IMF.
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BANGKOK — Shortly after China opened its borders with the end of “zero-COVID,” Zhang Chuannan lost her job as an accountant at a cosmetic firm in Shanghai and decided to explore the world.

“The cosmetics business was bleak,” said Zhang, 34, because everyone wore face masks during the pandemic. After being laid off, she paid $1,400 for an online Thai course, got an education visa and moved to the scenic northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

Zhang is among a growing number of young Chinese moving overseas not necessarily because of ideological reasons but to escape the country’s ultra-competitive work culture, family pressures and limited opportunities after living in the country under the strict pandemic policies for three years. Southeast Asia has become a popular destination given its proximity, relatively inexpensive cost of living and tropical scenery.

There are no exact data on the number of young Chinese moving overseas since the country ended pandemic restrictions and reopened its borders. But on the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, hundreds of people have discussed their decisions to relocate to Thailand. Many get a visa to study Thai while figuring out their next steps.

At Payap University in Chiang Mai, around 500 Chinese began an online Thai course early this year.

Royce Heng, owner of Duke Language School, a private language institute in Bangkok, said around 180 Chinese inquire each month about visa information and courses.

The hunt for opportunities far from home is partly motivated by China’s unemployment rate for people ages 16 to 24, which rose to a record high of 21.3% in June. The scarcity of good jobs increases pressure to work long hours.

Opting out is an increasingly popular way for younger workers to cope with a time of downward mobility, said Beverly Yuen Thompson, a sociology professor at Siena College in Albany, New York.

“In their 20s and early 30s, they can go to Thailand, take selfies and work on the beach for a few years and feel like they have a great quality of life,” Thomson said. “If those nomads had the same opportunities they hoped for in their home countries, they could just travel on vacation.”

During the pandemic in China, Zhang was cooped up in her Shanghai apartment for weeks at a time. Even when lockdowns were lifted, she feared another COVID-19 outbreak would prevent her from moving around within the country.

“I now value freedom more,” Zhang said.

A generous severance package helped finance her time in Thailand, and she is seeking ways to stay abroad long-term, perhaps by teaching Chinese language online.

Moving to Chiang Mai means waking up in the mornings to bird songs and a more relaxed pace of life. Unlike in China, she has time to practice yoga and meditation, shop for vintage clothes and attend dance classes.

Armonio Liang, 38, left the western Chinese city of Chengdu in landlocked Sichuan province for the Indonesian island of Bali, a popular digital nomad destination. His Web3 social media startup was limited by Chinese government restrictions while his use of cryptocurrency exchange apps drew police harassment.

Moving to Bali gave him greater freedom and a middle-class lifestyle with what might be barely enough money to live on back home.

“This is what I cannot get in China,” said Liang, referring to working on his laptop on the beach and brainstorming with expatriates from around the world. “Thousands of ideas just sprouted up in my mind. I had never been so creative before.”

He also has enjoyed being greeted with smiles.

“In Chengdu, everyone is so stressed. If I smiled at a stranger, they would think I am an idiot,” he said.

Life overseas is not all beach chats and friendly neighbors, though. For most young workers, such stays will be interludes in their lives, Thompson said.

“They can’t have kids, because kids have to go to school,” Thompson said. “They cannot fulfill their responsibilities to their parents. What if their aging parents need help? They eventually will get a full-time job back home and get called back home because of one of those things.”

Zhang said she faces pressure to get married. Liang wants his parents to move to Bali with him.

“It’s a big problem,” Liang said. “They worry they will be lonely after moving out of China and worry about medical resources here.”

Huang Wanxiong, 32, was stranded on Bohol Island in the Philippines for seven months in 2020 when air travel halted during the pandemic. He spent his time learning free diving, which involves diving to great depths without oxygen tanks.

He eventually flew home to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou but lost his job at a private tutoring company after the government cracked down on the industry in 2021. His next gig was driving more than 16 hours a day for a ride-hailing business.

“I felt like a machine during those days,” Huang said. “I can accept a stable and unchanging life, but I cannot accept not having any hope, not trying to improve the situation and surrendering to fate.”

Huang returned to the Philippines in February, escaping family pressures to get a better job and find a girlfriend in China. He renewed his Bohol Island friendships and qualified as a dive instructor.

But without Chinese tourists to teach and no income, he flew home again in June.

He still hopes to make a living as a diver, possibly back in Southeast Asia, although he also might agree to his parents’ proposal to emigrate to Peru to work in a family-run supermarket.

Huang recalled that he once surfaced too quickly from a 40-meter (131-foot) dive and his hands trembled from a dangerous lack of oxygen, known as hypoxia. The lesson he took was to avoid rushing and maintain a steady climb. Until his next move, he plans to use that free diver discipline to counter the anxieties of living in China.

“I will apply the calm I learned from the sea surrounding that island to my real life,” Huang said. “I will maintain my own pace.”
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African countries are investing heavily in trying to attract tourists from the world’s biggest outbound travel market, China, as they battle to recover from losses suffered during the travel bans of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“COVID wiped out large parts of tourism industries, especially in poorer parts of the world like Africa,” said Mike Fabricius, a specialist in tourism management, consulting and marketing for his Johannesburg-based company, The Journey. “Some African countries rely heavily on the foreign exchange that tourists bring in and the money they spend in domestic markets. To lose that for a few years was a heavy, heavy blow.”

In 2019, before the pandemic, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated that tourism in Africa had a yearly growth rate of 5% and contributed an average of 8.5% to GDP.

The WTTC said direct investments into the tourism sector were about $29 billion, and that tourism created jobs for 24.3 million direct employees, accounting for 6.4% of Africa’s total working population.

It estimated that COVID-19 travel bans cost Africa at least a third to half of these numbers.

“We saw similar losses across all major African tourism markets,” said Peter Masila, a tourism lecturer at Moi University in Kenya.

Nomasonto Ndlovu, chief operations officer of South African Tourism, said 500,000 jobs were lost in the local tourism sector because of the pandemic.

“We’re confident of a good recovery by end 2024, especially because we’re targeting tourists from a huge market like China,” she said.

In 2019, 155 million Chinese tourists visited foreign destinations.

“It’s true that relatively few chose to come to Africa,” said Ndlovu. “Only 95,000 visited South Africa in 2019. So, we can’t blame COVID entirely for low numbers of Chinese visitors. As far as South Africa’s concerned, we’re now spending a lot of money on new plans and strategies to win more Chinese over, and I know other African countries are doing the same.”

Discounts on airfare

South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania are some of the countries now offering more direct flights to China.

Kenya is partnering with Chinese social media platforms and marketing attractions such as the Maasai Mara game reserve on WeChat and TikTok.

Tanzania’s national airline is offering discounts of up to 50% on flights to and from China. Still, the country’s tourism board projects that only 45,000 Chinese will have visited Tanzania by the end of the year.

But Fabricius said African authorities were placing too much emphasis on numbers.

He has worked on tourism projects in China and elsewhere for the United Nations and the World Bank and formulated strategies for global tourism authorities.

“I don’t think Africa’s a place for the mass tourism Chinese market,” said Fabricius.

“The Chinese market has evolved a lot. It used to be thrown in one pot, like the Chinese only travel in big groups and take lots of pictures; they only go to the big places,” he said. “But with a new generation of travelers, there’s no longer such a thing as ‘the Chinese tourist’; it’s become a lot more diversified and segmented.”

Fabricius said the Chinese mass market remained focused on “iconic” international travel destinations, such as New York, Paris and London.

“Africa’s not going to attract that bulk market; it remains a niche destination for the Chinese,” he said. “So, what you want to do is attract Chinese tourists with focused interests in things like culture, wildlife and exploring.”

Rosemary Anderson, chairperson of the FEDHASA organization, which represents hospitality industries across Southern Africa, said continental authorities should indeed be promoting “unique experiences.”

“We have rich cultural assets and diverse experiences” she said. “South Africa, for example, offers every experience imaginable — wildlife safaris, stunning landscapes, vibrant culture and adventure activities. We need to emphasize experiences that are distinctive.”

‘Visa access is essential’

According to Anderson and Fabricius, government inefficiency and complicated visa requirements remain challenges to African efforts to lure Chinese tourists.

“Visa access is essential,” Fabricius said. “It’s no good having all this slick marketing and then your government lets you down by making it hard for the Chinese to get visas.”

Anderson agreed. “Although we (South Africa) have an e-Visa system that accepts applications by Chinese nationals, the process remains cumbersome and is not fully optimized.”

She suggested that marketing initiatives should span both the public and private sectors, ensuring that messaging is targeted to attract diverse budgets, ages, travel interests, preferences and travel motivations.

“We also need to do more to ensure that destination and product information is available on Chinese search engines and marketing on Chinese social media channels, like Weibo and WeChat,” she said.

Fabricius said efforts to attract Chinese visitors should “actually begin at home,” not in Beijing.

“China is Africa’s biggest trade partner, and many thousands of Chinese business travelers are visiting the continent every day,” he said.

“That creates another opportunity: These people who come on a business trip and then after that they tell others about their experiences and that creates a second wave of the leisure travel market,” he said.

This story originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
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