Andrea Bohnstedt

Two of my Facebook friends posted this CNN piece on Akon's planned Akon City in Senegal. And my goodness, this infuriated me so much that I actually turned my Facebook write up into the first blog post in ages. It's ridiculously lazy journalism. (Of course CNN doing a lousy job on Africa issues is not entirely unheard of) And note: this isn't about what Akon should or shouldn't do with his - or, in fact, other people's - money. This is about CNN being unbelievably sloppy.

It’s no great surprise that the new standard gauge railways (SGR) is not quite the attractive investment that the current administration sold it as, and just the first stretch, from Mombasa to Nairobi, cost the tax payer $3.8 billion, the bulk of which was loan financed and therefore needs to be repaid with interest (that’s part of what contributed to the eight per cent fuel VAT and mobile money payments now being silly expensive). And now the financing for the second stretch looks shaky.