Elections are historically bad for Kenya’s economy—next year will be no different

Kenya’s biggest economic hurdle right now is its upcoming election. According to a new report (pdf) from the parliament’s budget office released today (May 19th), the general election in August is the “greatest challenge” to the national economy.

Elections are always a time of uncertainty for Kenya. Since independence, the country has held ten elections and several of them have been marred by post-election violence, including the 2007 vote when more than 1,000 people were killed and over half a million displaced. On Monday, supporters of Kenya’s main opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, were tear-gassed and beaten by police during a weekly demonstration.

“The election mood currently being experienced as the country is gearing itself for the 2017 elections have dampened the investment mood of the country as most investors are practicing the wait-and-see approach,” the report says. Current president Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to seek re-election.

The report, by economists and analysts advising the budget office, says that investors are waiting to start new projects or put more money into existing ones. In 2017, the pace of growth should remain flat, at about 5.6%, last year’s rate of expansion. (Officials had previously given an optimistic projection of 6.0%.)

Elections have been bad for the Kenyan economy in the past. The economy has slowed or remained stagnant through three of the five multi-party elections held in Kenya. The economy grew by only 0.2% in 1992, the year of Kenya’s first multi-party election, and only expanded by 0.5% in the 1997 and 2002 elections. (Economic growth also slowed in two of five single-party elections between the late 1960s and the late 1980s.)

There’s some hope that the impact may not be as great this time. During the last election year, 2013, the Kenyan economy actually expanded, a trend reversal that analysts credited to optimism over electoral and governance reforms under a new constitution instituted in 2010.

NOT AGAIN; Burundi is not on the brink of another genocide but what’s unfolding is no less worrying

Suspected fighters are paraded before the media by the Burundian police. (Reuters/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana)

As many as 100 people have been killed in Burundi’s capital city Bujumbura over the past four days, after opposition groups attacked government military bases on Friday. Security forces have reportedly raided neighborhoods killing both opposition activists and civilians, leaving their bodies in the streets, in what is the worst spate of violence since April when president Pierre Nkurunziza ignored widespread protests and sought a third term.

Human rights observers say that mass arrests have also been made. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Powers warned over the weekend that the situation could “devolve into mass violence” if both sides don’t negotiate. Both the US and Canada have advised their citizens to leave or avoid the country.

The small central African country has experienced two genocides in the last 50 years driven by tensions between Tutsis and Hutus—the last one left 300,000 dead and is believed to have triggered ethnic killings in neighboring Rwanda in 1994 that left 800,000 dead. But worries about another genocide are unfounded, analysts say.

“It is essentially a political conflict,” Carina Tertsakian, a researcher on Burundi for the nonprofit, Human Rights Watch, told Quartz. “It opposes on one side, the president and the ruling party who have been trying to cling on to power and on the other side, his opponents, and those opponents include a mixture of both Hutu and Tutsi… It’s very different from what took place in Burundi in the 1990s.” While politicians on both sides have tried to use ethnic language to whip up popular support, few Burundians are taking the bait, according to Tertsakian. “They are saying, ‘We don’t want to relive that.'”

The structure of the government and military also make it unlikely that violence will devolve into genocidal killing. Burundi’s armed forces are now composed of both Hutu and Tutsi and local and national government bodies, including the parliament and the senate are split 60% to 40% between Hutu and Tutsis, according to Patrick Hajayandi, with the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. “In such a sensitive political climate, hyperbole can make the already precarious situation more fragile,” he wrote in the Guardian.

The fact that this is mainly a political conflict does not make it any less deadly or intractable. Before this weekend’s violence, more than 240 people are believed to have been killed, according to the UN. The fledgling economy will take a further hit. Foreign aid, which accounts for half of the government’s budget, is plummeting and its few exports of coffee are also suffering. The World Bank has predicted its economy will contract by 2.3% this year.

Burundi’s conflict is already spilling over into the region. More than 200,000 Burundians have fled to Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to a lesser extent Uganda, putting pressure onfood supplies and prompting friction between Burundians and their local hosts. The government of Rwanda has been accused of adding fuel to the conflict by supporting armed opposition groups and theirrecruitment of Burundian refugees. (Rwanda denies these allegations.) Still, in some cases opposition groups have formed in neighboring countries and launched incursions into Burundi.

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SAVING LIVES: These South African innovations could help the world finally beat tuberculosis

The most deadly form of tuberculosis is one that lies in wait inside the body for years, attacking at the first sign of weakness. About a third of the global population may carry what is known as latent TB. Slow diagnostic tests mean many will go years without knowing that they are infected. Now, two separate medical innovations aim to detect TB earlier, stopping the deadliest form of the lung disease.

Using a process called fluorescence dilution, scientists are now able label the specific bacteria that cause latent TB and isolate it in order to track its development. This specific labeling process works like a “micro-tweezer,” allowing scientists Samantha Sampson and Jomien Mouton to physically pick out the slow-growing, but deadly bacteria. It’s the same process used to detect salmonella.

They’ve learned that the bacteria creep inside white blood cells—the body’s defense mechanism—where they live until their host’s immune system is susceptible to attack. This information is vital to helping medical scientists understand how to treat drug resistant forms of TB.

Multidrug-resistant TB is a form of the disease that is resistant to first-line medication most commonly used to cure TB. A deadlier form, extensively drug-resistant TB, is impervious to even a second line of treatment, according to Doctors Without Borders.

The World Health Organization estimates that 480,000 cases of multidrug-resistant TB occurred in 2014. Still, only about a quarter of these were detected and reported (pdf). On average, an estimated 9.7% of these cases had the more serious extensively drug-resistant TB.

In 2014, TB killed 1.5 million people and now ranks alongside HIV as the leading cause of death worldwide. In the same year, 6 million new cases of TB were reported to the World Health Organization, but the organization estimates that 37% of new cases went undiagnosed or were not reported, putting the number of people living with TB at about 9.6 million.

Another group of scientists say they have developed a blood test for TB that detects if faster. Until now, the most accurate TB test is a culture test, which takes 10 days to show a positive result and up to 42 days to demonstrate a confirmed negative test. The more common sputum test is inexpensive but labor intensive and only has a 60% sensitivity rate. The test is especially difficult to carry out on children because it requires a nasal tube.

A new method, developed by team of scientists at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, uses a pin prick to measure the blood chemicals of people possibly infected. This centralizes the process, allowing healthcare workers to test patients on the ground and have results in an hour, Professor Gerhard Walzl, one of the test’s inventors told The Conversation.

At $2.50 per test, compared to $45 per culture test and $12 per sputum test, it also promises to be a much cheaper method, according to Walzl. Still in the development phase, the patent will be tested in five African countries over the next three years.

An airborne disease, TB has infected humanity for thousands of years, and remains deadly in some regions. Dramatized during the Victorian era as consumption, it is marked by a hacking cough and a slow wasting away. It seemed a disease of the past for most people in the developed world.

The number of TB cases rose in the US for the first time in 23 years last year. While most new TB cases occurred in South East Asia and the Western Pacific, Africa has the biggest incidence with 281 infections per 100,000 people.

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