Day: May 13, 2022

Africa, in recent years, has become the new frontier where China and the United States, the world’s two biggest economic superpowers, are competing for influence in a key industry: telecommunications.

This week, Ethiopia celebrated the launch of a 5G network powered by China’s telecom giant Huawei in Addis Ababa.

Just before that, on a visit to the continent last week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited U.S. mobile company Africell’s offices in Angola, where the firm has amassed some 2 million users since it was launched just over a month ago.

“Today in Luanda, I visited @AfricellAo, an innovative, state-of-the-art U.S. company expanding 5G access in Angola with trusted technology components,” she wrote in a tweet.

Asked in a subsequent press briefing whether the tweet wasn’t a dig at Huawei – which already has a huge digital foothold in Africa but which was sanctioned in the U.S. in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump – Sherman was unequivocal.

“It’s not about throwing shade (being critical) on Huawei. We’ve been very direct. We believe that when countries choose Huawei, they are potentially giving up their sovereignty,” she said. “They are turning over their data to another country. They may find themselves bringing in a surveillance capability they didn’t even know was there.”

Washington has long expressed concern that Beijing is trying to monopolize networks and possibly use them for espionage, while Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations.

“So, we’ve been very public about our concerns about Huawei, and so we are glad that Africell can provide to the people of Angola a safe, capable tool in their hands to reach out to the world,” Sherman added.

The deputy secretary’s comments raised ire in Beijing, where they were met with a stiff rebuke from Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

“Chinese companies including Huawei have conducted mutually beneficial cooperation with many countries in Africa and the world beyond, contributed to the improvement and development of the countries’ communications infrastructure, provided advanced, quality, safe and affordable services for the local people and won great support,” he said on Chinese state media.

“There is not a single case of cyber security accident, surveillance or wiretapping in the course of the cooperation,” he added, going on to allege that the U.S. has long been responsible for such spying activities itself.

Zhao noted that it is up to African governments to decide with whom to cooperate.

In Angola, the company already has a significant presence, with mobile operator Unitel linked to Huawei, which is also building two technological training centers, worth $60 million, in the country in order to develop the digital economy.

And with Huawei widely available in South Africa, only one of the five people VOA spoke to at a local shopping center was even aware of the controversy over the brand.

Cheris Fourie, a sales consultant at a cellphone shop in Cape Town’s Blue Root Mall, said Huawei handsets aren’t that popular anymore, not because of concerns over any nefarious activities by the company, but rather because Google services are no longer on the devices. Google is no longer available because of a U.S. Huawei ban.

David Devillieras, who was sitting at a cafe at the mall using his Samsung phone, told VOA he’d never heard of the possibility Huawei was involved in surveillance. He added that he wouldn’t buy a Huawei phone having heard that.

“I wouldn’t go there at all, not for one second. I wouldn’t buy a Chinese phone,” he said.

One shopper, Steve Elliot-Jones, said he “wouldn’t trust anything that comes out of China,” but thought other countries could also be using mobile networks to spy.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if technology companies including the states or anywhere else for that matter… I wouldn’t say anyone’s actually innocent. I think they’re all probably all up to selling information and making money on the side and denying it if it comes out.”

Source: Voice of America

Top U.S. meatpacking companies drafted the executive order issued by President Donald Trump in 2020 to keep meat plants running and convinced his administration to encourage workers to stay on the job at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report released Thursday by a U.S. House panel.

The report by the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis details the meat industry’s influence on Trump’s White House as it tried to keep production rolling even as employees fell ill.

More than 59,000 meatpacking workers at plants owned by the nation’s top five meatpackers contracted COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic and at least 269 died, according to the first report by the panel, released in October.

“The shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated,” committee chair Representative James Clyburn said.

The North American Meat Institute, the leading meat industry trade group, said the report “distorts the truth” and “uses 20/20 hindsight and cherry picks data to support a narrative that is completely unrepresentative of the early days of an unprecedented national emergency.”

The report, based on thousands of documents and interviews with workers, union officials and experts, found that in April 2020, meatpacking companies led by Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods drafted an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep meat plants open.

The DPA, which was enacted in 1950, gives the president emergency powers to control the domestic economy.

The companies sent the draft to Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials and corresponded extensively with the White House, USDA, and other administration officials before the order was finalized and signed on April 28, the report found.

Industry executives argued at the time that domestic meat supply was threatened by worker absenteeism.

Those concerns were “baseless,” the House report said. USDA data showed meatpackers had 622 million pounds of frozen pork in March 2020 and that top meatpackers’ pork exports grew as much as 370% in the first year of the pandemic.

Jim Monroe, Smithfield vice president of corporate affairs, said the company is proud of its pandemic response.

“Did we make every effort to share with government officials our perspective on the pandemic and how it was impacting the food production system? Absolutely,” he said.

Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesperson, said the company’s top priority is worker health and safety and that it has collaborated with federal, state and local officials in its pandemic response in the interest of protecting workers.

In April 2020, meat industry executives also lobbied the USDA to encourage workers to report to plants as absenteeism rose, resulting in a public statement to that effect from former Vice President Mike Pence, the report found.

The industry worked closely with political appointee Mindy Brashears, the USDA undersecretary of food safety, and corresponded with her via her personal email and cell phone, a potential violation of the Federal Records Act, the report found.

The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, also told the House committee that he added softening language, like “if feasible,” to CDC guidance for managing COVID-19 spread in meat plants because he was “persuaded by industry concerns” about the potential impact of the guidance.

Source: Voice of America

Yodngeum Power Mix Fuel has signed a purchase agreement with the Lao State Fuel Enterprise pledging to provide the latter 10 million liters of diesel every month.

The agreement was signed in Vientiane on May 11 between Director of Yodngeum Power Mix Fuel Somvang Khulurat and Director of the Lao State Fuel Enterprise Sisangkhom Kotyotha.

“Our oil refinery in Yodngeum village, Pek district, Xieng Khuang Province is expected to refine 100 million litres of oil on an annual basis,” said Mr. Somvang Khulurat.

The 30-billion-kip refinery, the construction of which commenced in September 2021, is now fully completed and expected to launch its commercial production by the end of this month, according to the director of the company.

“Yodngeum Power is ready to provide diesel that is much needed in the country at the moment. The rising oil prices in the world market are posing direct impacts on our economy as an importing country.”

With a storage capacity of 2.4 million litres of oil, the refinery can process 100 million litres of petroleum products per year by mixing finished diesel with semi finished oil and certain chemicals in ratios of 60%, 39% and 1%, respectively.

The company will also import gasoline to supply in Xieng Khuang and neighboring provinces through the Lao State Fuel Enterprise.

The refinery is located 380 km from Nghi Son port in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa which is a shorter distance compared to that between the refinery and Thailand, another oil import market for Laos.

“We have chosen Luang Prabang as our oil distribution centre for northern provinces,” said Mr. Somvang Khulurat.

Yodngeum Power Mix Fuel is expected to launch more production facilities in central and southern provinces in September this year.

Source: Lao News Agency