Mali flies into international storm over purchase of $40m presidential jet

Purchase of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta's private plane may be a tipping point in Mali's relations with aid donors

theguardian.com, Alex Duval Smith in Bamako, 16 May 2014

Mali prime minister Moussa Mara with Andris Piebalgs, the European development
commissioner, and French MP Annick Girardin. Photograph: Habibou Kouyate/EC

Controversy about the purchase of a presidential jet and recriminations over transparency overshadowed a meeting in Bamako on Thursday between the Malian government and international aid donors.

The conference was called a year to the day after a massive $4.1bn (£2.4bn) was pledged to Mali by 55 countries and institutions. It took place as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has granted the country a phased three-year extended credit facility worth $23m, demanded explanations regarding the acquisition of a Boeing 737 costing about $40m.

In a robust speech aimed at deflecting donor criticism, Mali's prime minister, Moussa Mara, called for more transparency from the country's partners. He confirmed that $1.2bn of the pledged money had been spent. But he complained that only about a third of that amount had been channelled through government ministries and just $280m had gone directly into the treasury.

Mara told donors gathered at Bamako's international conference centre: "For the sake of the transparency you are all attached to, we demand that the concerned partners inform us of the use of the money and its impact. We want the remaining money to be used in a way that is totally traceable."

Mara, 39, appointed in a cabinet reshuffle last month, Mara, was responding to a passionate speech by Annick Girardin, the French secretary of state for development. Girardin insisted "the Brussels conference was not only about economics, it was deeply political" and had committed Mali to profound institutional reform.

Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, whose acquisition of a private jet has
 raised questions among donors, at Conakry airport. Photograph: Cellou Binani/
AFP/Getty

She said: "Parliament must deal with the social and economic development of the country. It must also – and I am thinking in particular of the fight against corruption and justice reform – [accept that] these are areas where vigorous measures are expected.''

In a direct reference to the presidential plane, she added: "I am thinking also of financial and economic management – an area where the Malian government must respond to legitimate questions raised by international institutions."

The scandal surrounding the purchase of the Boeing 737 in April is likely to be at the forefront of donors' thoughts in forthcoming weeks as they decide how to reconfigure aid and loan payments to serve more effectively the needs of 14 million people living in one of the world's poorest countries.

The swiftness with which the multimillion-euro French-led military operation ousted the core of Islamists occupying northern Mali last year has been matched only by the alacrity with which President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta's government – elected by a landslide in August 2013 – appears to have revived some of the poor governance practices that opened the door to extremism in the first place: nepotism, high-living, lack of accountability, political aloofness and what the IMF sees as "threats to the integrity of the budgetary process".

Most of the pledged money has been spent through established international aid organisations that have revived existing programmes, targeting Mali's longstanding shortfalls in sanitation, health, education and food security. But continuing security fears in the underdeveloped north, where the government has failed to initiate meaningful peace talks with rebel groups, mean much aid is still spent in the south of Mali, which was never occupied. At least a quarter of a million northerners are still displaced or living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

For months after he came to power in an EU-funded election, diplomats gave Keïta and his government the benefit of the doubt. Wary of being accused of colonial-style heavy-handedness, they tolerated his seemingly endless round of expensive foreign trips, his failure to travel to the far north of his own country, the lack of regular broadcasts to the crisis-bound nation, and an initial round of political appointments that included his son and three members of his wife's family.

Hints were dropped by visiting ministers, especially those from France, and by the UN security council. But the international silence has proved dangerous. Malians are beginning to believe in a conspiracy theory – never dismissed by Keïta – that suggests greedy "foreign powers" have secret information about massive oil and mineral wealth in the north of Mali and are siding with secessionist rebels.

Finally, last month, on the sidelines of the Rwandan genocide commemorations, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon took Keïta to task about his failure to hold talks with northern armed groups. But when Keïta returned from Kigali on 9 April, his new plane had been delivered. A tour of the aircraft at Sénou airport followed, and international pressure for more rigour, accountability, peace talks and general leadership was, it would seem, a distant memory.

It has taken until now for the IMF to shame Keïta's government by demanding an explanation for the purchase of the aircraft. "I learned about the plane by reading the local media,'' said Op de Beke, a senior economist at the IMF. "It had not been mentioned by the government when our team carried out its review in March.''

Since the purchase of the jet was never put to parliament, little is known about it beyond airport staff observations that it arrived with an Arab-speaking crew. Mara claims it cost $40m; the presidency says $34m. The biggest question surrounds whether Keïta needs a new plane; Mali already has one, which ferried his predecessor, the interim president Dioncounda Traoré.

De Beke says the IMF has also asked for explanations about a state guarantee of $200m given for defence procurement. Again, details of what the amount was or will be spent on – and whether aid money has been part of the guarantee – are subject to speculation. But the Malian army was recently, and somewhat mysteriously, rekitted in new uniforms, boots and hats, and given a new logo.

Ordinary Malians are not about to take to the streets, however. The middle classes have been tweeting frantically to decry the jet, but 80% of Malians are illiterate. In the election, they voted for "IBK", as he is called, because religious leaders told them to do so. Most like their president, and are from the south; the security situation at the time of the election left thousands of displaced northerners without voting cards.

Now that the conference is over, many donor chiefs – including European development commissioner Andris Piebalgs – are staying on in Mali to visit projects they are funding. They must decide how and if they are to release a remaining $140m in direct budget support to Mali's treasury. And they must insist that Mali moves swiftly to incorporate more checks and balances in its own government processes, so that the national budget cannot be treated as petty cash.

Indonesia’s first presidential plane. (JG Photo/Ezra Sihite)

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Colombia's Medellin rides cable car to a better future

Google – AFP, Ariela Navarro (AFP), 25 January 2014

Picture showing the Metrocable cable railway in Santo Domingo neighbourhood

 in Medellin, Antioquia department, Colombia, on January 5, 2014 (AFP/File,

Fredy Amariles Garcia)

Medellín — Medellin's "cable car of the poor," soaring over the slums of Colombia's second largest city, has revolutionized this former drug lord fiefdom and inspired other violent Latin American cities.

The city of 2.5 million, long considered one of the most dangerous places on the planet, has seen crime rates fall and neighborhood life return thanks to new public services in some of its poorest areas.

At the center of the strategy to reclaim the slums is a transportation system that now includes subways, the cable car, hillside escalators and even public libraries at metro stations.

Picture showing the Metrocable cable

 railway in Santo Domingo neighbourhood

 in Medellin, Antioquia department,

 Colombia, on January 5, 2014 (AFP/

File, Fredy Amariles Garcia)

It "creates a sense of belonging," said Juliana Correa, communications director for the Metro de Medellin.

"Before, the people of the hillside slums would say, 'I'm going down to Medellin.' Now they feel part of the city," he said.

At the Acevedo station, where the subway and Metrocable meet, a huge library welcomes residents from the gritty neighborhoods surrounding it -- and also tourists who ride the cable car for the spectacular birds eye views of the city.

"This was a very violent neighborhood, not that busy, so there was no transportation," Luz Valdes, at a small grocery store just outside the station, told AFP.

"Now there are many jobs and many tourists from far away visit the neighborhood because it's very nice with the Metrocable and library."

'Dark, long night'

It is all a far cry from just a few years ago.

Medellin went through "a dark, long and painful night", the mayor, Anibal Gaviria, told AFP, referring to the 1990s, when the drug lord Pablo Escobar unleashed a wave of violence.

Then, the city had a startling homicide rate of 380 per 100,000 inhabitants and the dubious distinction of being known as the murder capital of the world.

Last year, the murder rate was 10 times lower according to the mayor. Other studies support the claim that there has been a sharp drop in violence.

To change the dynamic local governments have employed a kind of "urban acupuncture," bringing to bear a welter of programs designed to reach long neglected shantytowns.

With an $88 million budget in 2014, the plan provides transportation at critical points and promotes education, culture, health and the deployment of security forces.

People chat next to a section of the

covered outdoor escalators at Comuna

13, one of the poorest neighbourhoods

of Medellin, Antioquia department,

Colombia, on January 5, 2014 (AFP/

File, Fredy Amariles Garcia)

The Metrocable opened in 2004, and the subway system has also added on a bicycle rental service.

But the most striking initiative is a system of outdoor escalators that has served Comuna 13, one of the poorest and most violent areas in Medellin, since December 2011.

Instead of trudging up 350 concrete steps, residents take escalators now.

"Projects such as the Metrocable, the metro, the escalators and the libraries imply the presence of the state in places in the city that had been abandoned," Gaviria said.

'Cable car of the poor'

None of this is to say that Medellin does not still have considerable problems. In Comuna 1, which is served by a cable car, gangs maintain a discreet presence.

But Ferney Navarro, a resident of 32 years, told AFP: "There is more control from the authorities.

A man walks with his mules past the

 Metrocable cable railway station in

 San Javier neighbourhood in Medellin,

 Antioquia department, Colombia, on 

January 5, 2014 (AFP/File, Fredy

Amariles Garcia)

"Seeing so many tourists coming, the government has had to tighten control. Before we were totally abandoned, but now we have more protection."

A study by Columbia University in the United States found the homicide rate in the slums of Medellin where Metrocable serves dropped by 66 percent between 2003 and 2008.

This decrease coincides with a sharp drop in homicides in Colombia -- from 78 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 32 in 2012.

The rate, however, remains well above the Latin American average of 15.6 , according to the Organization of American States.

A secret of Medellin's success has been its ability to adapt initiatives that have worked elsewhere in the world.

At the same time, the city has become "an inspiration for other cities living difficult times," said the mayor.

Thus the Metrocable -- "the cable car of the poor" -- has been replicated in Curitiba, in southern Brazil, and Caracas, capital of Venezuela.

Since 2010 in San Agustin del Sur, in the west of Caracas, a Metrocable carries more than 40,000 people a day on a nine-minute ride from the foot of a mountain to the populous neighborhoods overhead.

That initiative's success led Venezuelan authorities to begin building another cable car serving Mariche neighborhood in February 2012.

Another is scheduled for December this year for Petare, the largest slum in the Venezuelan capital and one of the most overcrowded in Latin America.