There is no shortage of news from the UK, a major former colonial master in Africa, over whose former empire the sun reputedly never set. We hope and pray that besides watching the Premier League, the managers of our economies are also monitoring the re-nationalisation of British Railways (BR).

Three decades after BR was privatised in the early to mid-nineties — around the season when Africa was hit by the privatisation fashion — there is emerging consensus by both conservative and liberal parties that it is time the major public transport system reverts to state management.

Yes, there are major services that should be rendered by the state, and the public must not be abandoned to the vagaries of purely profit-motivated capitalism. It is not enough to only argue that government is not good at doing business, because some business is government business.

Since we copied many of our systems from the British — including wigs for judges — we may as well copy the humility to accept if certain fashions don’t work.

Another piece of news from the UK, besides football, was of this conservative MP Tim Loughton, who caused a stir by getting summarily deported from Djibouti and claiming the small African country was just doing China’s bidding because he recently rubbed Beijing the wrong way.

China has dismissed the accusation as baseless, and Africa still respects China for not meddling in its politics, even as it negotiates economic partnerships. China generously co-funded the construction of Djibouti’s super modern multipurpose port.

What can African leaders learn from the Loughton Djibouti kerfuffle? The race to think for and manage Africa by outsiders is still on and attracting new players.

While China has described the Loughton accusation as lies, it shows that the accusing (and presumably informed) Britons suspect other powerful countries to be on a quest to influence African thinking and actions.

And while the new bidders for Africa’s resources are on the increase including Russia, the US, Middle Eastern newly rich states, and India, even declining powers like France, which is losing ground in West Africa, could be looking for weaker states to gain a new foothold.

My Ugandan people describe such a situation as treating a community like “like a widow’s house,” because the poor, defenceless woman is susceptible to having her door kicked open by any local bully. Yes, these small and weak countries are not insignificant and offer fertile ground for the indirect re-colonisation of the continent.

Djibouti, for example, may be small —at only 23,000square kilometres, with a population of one million doing hardly any farming, thus relying on imports for most of its food — but it is so strategically located that the African Union should look at it as precious territory that must be protected from external political influences.

It commands the southern entrance into the Red Sea, thus linking Africa to the Middle East. So if several foreign powers have military bases in Djibouti, why shouldn’t the AU, with its growing “peace kitty,” now be worth some hundreds of millions of dollars?

At a bilateral level, Ethiopia and Djibouti are doing impressively well in developing infrastructure such as the railway link, a whole 750 kilometres of it electrified. The AU should be looking at more such projects linking up the whole continent to increase internal trade with the continental market, the fastest growing in the world.

And, while at it, the AU should be resolutely pushing out fossil-fuel-based transportation the way Ethiopia is doing, without even making much noise about it. Ethiopia can be quite resolute in conceiving and implementing projects, and surely the AU, being headquartered in Addis Ababa, should be taking a leaf rather than looking on as external interests treat the continent like a Ugandan widow’s house.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:buwembo@gmail.com

The name of the organisation is as opaque as a name can get: World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA).

I had never heard of it. And suppose I, who follows socioeconomic developments that affect Africa, had never heard of it until last week when it convened in Nairobi. In that case, likely, only a handful of people outside those who serve its bureaucracy had ever heard of it.

Maybe IDA intends to remain shadowy like magicians, emerging occasionally to perform illusions that give hope to Africa’s impoverished masses that deliverance from poverty and despair is around the corner.

So, I had to research to find out who the new illusionist in town was. IDA was founded in 1960. Thirty-nine African countries, including Kenya, are members. Its mission is “to combat poverty by providing grants and low-interest loans to support programmes that foster economic growth, reduce inequalities, and enhance living standards for people in developing nations”.

It’s amazing how these kinds of organisations have developed a language that distorts reality. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian state of Oceania devises a new language. “Newspeak” limits the thoughts of citizens of Oceania so that they are incapable of questioning whatever the regime does.

Let’s juxtapose the reality in Africa against IDA’s mission. Africa has some of the poorest people in the world. It contributes a paltry two percent of international trade. It contributes less than one per cent of patents globally.

The continent has the largest wealth disparities in the world. Millions of people across Africa are food insecure, needing food aid. A study has indicated that Africa is among the most hostile regions in the world for women and girls, because of residual cultural attitudes and the failure of governments to implement gender equality policies.

Africa has the largest youth unemployment rate in the world. Africa’s political class is the wealthiest in the world. Africa remains unsustainably indebted. The people who live in Africa’s slums and unplanned urban sprawls have limited opportunities and are susceptible to violent crime and natural and manmade disasters.

As speeches in “Newspeak” were being made at the IDA conference, dozens of poor Kenyans were being killed by floods. These rains had been forecast, yet the government, not surprisingly, was caught flatfooted.

So in its 64-year existence, how has IDA reduced poverty and inequality in Africa? How has its work enhanced living standards when so many Africans are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea trying to escape grinding poverty and hopelessness?

As one watched the theatre of leaders of the poorest continent arriving at the IDA illusionists’ conference in multimillion-dollar vehicles, wearing designer suits and wristwatches, with men in dark suits and glasses acting a pantomime of intimidation, and then listened to their “Newspeak,” one felt like weeping for the continent. The illusionists had performed their sleight of hand.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator