#2 South Sudan a beacon for Africa with UK and USA and Thailand?

The Parliament review of the monstrous failure of providing the cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi from USA and now the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on Italian Mafia fake drugs infiltrating the NHS is no doubt a further scalp for Kent Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren on the warpath in her POTUS bid on drugs prices.

And Norman Lamb MP of Parliament Committee raising the issues. The Collapse of Southern Italy under the Mafia matched only by the NHS Medicinees Agency denying and denying the problem then calling an urgent inquiry as patients sicken and die from fake drugs.

POTUS Trump probably also pondering the Rust Belt opportunities – and Treble Club possibilities with UK trade on focused investment – as the Presidential race crunches into first gear with Democrat debates this month.

With my Sincerity Advertising hat on I’ve long argued for the regeneration strengths of Buffalo beyond Madison Avenue.

As with Somalia and Yemen and Libya though, the opportunity for South Sudan is to deliver peace and prosperity after years of civil war and before the deeper effects of Climate Change and desertification across the Sahel.

Perhaps greater UK efforts needed for LatAm with the mega power failure across Argentina an Uruguay: G20 nations falling at the first hurdle of a Digital Economy without electricity. And the Great British success story of the mega windfarms form Lincoln to Kent ready to help the sunny and windy nations of the South Atlantic and Patagonia?

Interesting Lord Browne former CEO BP refloating the possibilities of Desertec Sahara solar panels - I previously worked on the Beyond Petroleum strategy. Those MENA nations not regearing fro solar beyond oil likely to fall further down the poverty and conflict leagues. Perhaps as South Sudan rises with a New Economy.

Former USA UN Ambassador Nikki Haley taking time to spur on the US Embassy in Juba before preparing for the launch of her book “With all due respect” in the Autumn - the Fall if you prefer.


### FDR and AOC New Deal for Africa and USA ###


Boris Johnson in his PM bid no doubt reflecting on the inadvertent wisdom of both the Scotland-Ireland bridge, and remarks on clearing the Libyan bodies from the Med seafront. That latter comment perhaps paling into insignificance with the economic decline afflicting Tunisia after the Sousse tourism beach killings – and Egypt and the Luxor deaths in previous years -and potential for Somali tourism prosperity along its seaboard highlighted by NZ’s Helen Cark.

But silence on the NZ Manston Infratil criminal extradition of Steve Fitzgerald and Matt Clark now at Wellington Airport.

While potential boondoggle projects such as the Jonglei Canal, perhaps the Aral Sea of Africa without rigorous evaluation, have ground to a halt since civil war in 1983 and the strange rusting hulks of the mega tunnelling machinery visible from space, presumably Mars, and surely awaiting prompt demolition and effective scrap metal recycling as Kent’s Royal Engineers are more fully deployed from barracks and stirring memories of the Channel tunnel megatunnel kit.

Already the vanguard of the Royal Engineers in place with Operation Trenton as UNMISS and recent support from the Thai military and Cambodia. The UK’s secret weapon of the RE 521 well digging battalion still AWOL, probably in the rough pubs of Chatham. Perhaps gearing up to complement the new Prince Harry initiative on Landmine Free Africa in the delicately placed footsteps of Princess Diana in Angola.

Kofi Annan’s warning of DRC Congo UN forces as too large to be invisible and too small to be effective key in driving greater UK peacekeeping involvement. Already the BATUK base in Kenya capable of being expanded for greater USA support in Somalia. As can also be expanded the under-used UN Police training base in Ethiopia.

POTUS Trump might have paused in the absurd nonsense of searching for Obama’s Kenyan passport or Hillary’s homebrew email server, but again food for thought in more focused troop rotations through Kenya and Oman and Afghanistan.

The end of piracy in Somalia and winding down of the war in Yemen and potentially Libya the low hanging fruit of just Syria as the last main MENA security threat.

In my MP and Mayor campaigns I’ve urged no further awards of the QPM Queens Police Medal in Kent or the other 43 forces except for bravery, not admin, and for being deployed to peacekeeping zones as South Sudan.

UK Deputy Chief Constables deployed from the 43 forces for 6-12 months gaining valuable experience and links as Kent Police used to as with the 1954 death of a Kent Police UN Peacekeeper in Cyprus. UN Police service in South Sudan should be a badge of honour and the gateway to the Chief Constable role.

While Surin Village School charity work shows 60M children not in school primarily in sub-Saharan nations such as South Sudan. Schooling, aside from the benefits of education, providing the basis for vaccines and Pandemic Prevention, the UK’s main strategic threat, whether TB or Ebola or HIV or Spanish Flu.

UK American Hollywood star George Clooney and husband of Amal Clooney the UK lawyer soon to star in the Catch 22 television series and famous for using his Nespresso coffee advertising fees for Sudan human rights drones. The USA embassy in Juba probably needing to caffeinate up with UK DFID chief Rory Stewart and Matt Rycroft and Helen Lewis to access USA military drones and USAid budgets.

And Irishwoman abroad, EU ambassador Sinead Walsh no doubt exploring further bridges along the White Nile, as well as Halo trust and MAG minefield clearance work with the Red Cross. And probably distracting dynamic Eire USA ambassador Dan Mulhall from his poesy to mobilise the Red campaign and U2 in Africa again.

If bridges are being built in South Sudan then fences and walls are going up again in Europe.

Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury here in East Kent already active on mobilising the Sudanese Anglican church, while his right hand man the Bishop of Dover retired, if that’s possible from the church, not just promoting Buddhist tolerance in Kent but no doubt pondering on deploying the UK church along the Rome pilgrim paths.

Both Cyprus and Libya perhaps the greatest failure to date of UN and EU with over 10,000 Mediterranean drownings each year, and the Sudan crises and the Syria/Assad crisis plunging the EU into the populist/nationalist crisis still playing out with the Faragist Brexit Party in UK, Mattini in Italy, Le Pen in France and Orban in Hungary.

One small positive in the colonial-era gay human rights breaches is the overturning of such legislation in Botswana as well as Bhutan and Brunei gay discrimination. Such death penalty and hate legislation sanctions surely also low hanging fruit.

And The Six Companies of Deere, JCB, Mott, Murphy, Bechtel, Balfour and Hitachi - there never was just six providing the basis of that Africa New Economy.

For the picket line of the Sahel from Dakar in Senegal to N’Djamena and Lake Chad (another Aral Sea shrunk by 45% in Chad) to Djibouti on the Red Sea and Suez Canal route surely now marks the southern frontier of Europe.

As with Spanish Sahara and Morocco dispute effectively raised by UK’s Karen Pierce in UN New York in December it’s not inconceivable that similar sand berms will be raised by Kent’s Royal Engineers across the Sahel – less as sandy Checkpoint Charlies but as desertification barriers to the onward sweep of the sand tides of the Sahara.

As well as the African efforts of The Six Companies: Balfour Beatty and The Mighty Quinn, Murphy, Bechtel, Mott McDonald, JCB and Hitachi. the various incarnations of The Six Companies and supply chains delivering not just The Boulder Dam but even thousands of bridges in Cuba.

ASEAN Minister Richard Graham, probably urging on his colleague Mark Field, given Mabey bridges in his constituency capable of going into overdrive and overtime.

Construction in itself moving the Sahel into a New Deal, worthy of FDR or AOC, of not just aid but functioning and growing economies. As would the Wau-Juba rail link – that eventually connecting with the Morocco hispeed rail. Africa’s first hispeed rail studied last week, with Morocco’s burgeoning food exports to UK: xx sardines, by Liam Fox the dynamic UK Trade Minister swapping his air miles for rail miles and a long-delayed UK Strategic Rail Group.

Thailand’s USA Senator Duckworth no doubt keen to ensure her Cairo, Illinois constituents feature in The Davos15 and The Six Companies groundwork for Cairo, Egypt – UK already steaming ahead with the Cairo Metro.

While her USAF strategic initiative in Scott USAF base might well plug into those Clooney and Sudan drones, even Med refugees, for more than five eyes extra analysis of East Africa.

Much as the West Africa ports of Dakar and Nouakchott would need greater oversight to provide Atlantic ports facing north to Cherbourg and Dover, and west to Virginia and south to Rio and Buenos Aires as African trade increases.

The Arabian Smart Cities already underway along with the tilt to the Mediterranean by Prince MBS, that gaining more attention and effort and FDI as the Yemen war concludes, and hispeed rail across Arabia from Port Sudan to Kuwait and Tehran.

That lynchpin of a stable and peaceful and prosperous South Sudan also providing not just a strategic focus for UK with is SANE approach: the mega markets of South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, or Africa Smart Mega-Cities such as Cape Town, Lagos and Cairo. My previous work on UK New Towns and Cardiff Bay and London Docklands national developments flagging up the new UK potential in such Smart Cities with the Chunnel and Crossrail engineering and Super Sewer and the Shard, all Europe’s largest construction projects for decades.

But, hence the Thailand focus, South Sudan also provides a strategic link to the Indo-Pacific.



### If it’s Tuesday it must be a gin day, all week ###


Not just the Suez Canal approaches already with USA Marines at Camp Lemonnier and the nearby Chinese and Japanese military bases, but linking across Arabia to the Persian Gulf and Oman. Those Pentagon golf courses on the rates soaking up the new Trump budget?

A USA Africa Command upgrade from Stuttgart and out from under the US Army Europe umbrella, if not to Juba or Khartoum then Nairobi or Djibouti might refocus better Pentagon value from that $750BN budget in safeguarding peace and prosperity.

For, as the Persian Gulf becomes strategically less important with peak oil and growth of Desertec-style solar farms, Muscat in Oman provides a stable and progressive eastward outpost to the IndoPacific: Pakistan and the OBOR/BRI deep water port of Gwadar, and India and Thailand and Singapore.

That last megaport perhaps augmented by the Kra Canal through the Thai isthmus to the rest of ASEAN and China.

Lake Chad and Jonglei Canal, along with the Aral Sea forewarning on water wars, surely the basis of major UK thought leadership by FCO and DFID et al at the Budapest Water Conference in October.

While the Indo Pacific and Pivot South, and former UK Chagos base, is already a key element of USA naval and Resilience policy even before factoring in the conflict potential of Indian and Chinese submarines.

If the FCO’s Miss Moneypenny in Australia claims it’s always International Gin Day somewhere in the world then USA Ambassador Harry Harris is willing to play bartender to serve up a gin martini shaken not stirred for an Indo Pacific naval policy from Korea to Canberra to Cape Town.

If only UK was serving up greater trade with Korea as well as Japan given the Brexit mess had yielded the loss of Honda and Nissan. Empty MOU’s with Korea on current or future trade maybes are thin gruel for two of the world’s most advanced G20 economies.
Those incompetent UK Myanmar officials haven’t been sent to Korea to mess things up there too?

More positively Soccer Aid despite a UK defeat perhaps marks the kick off not just of renewed UK efforts and Sports diplomacy in South Sudan but a richer strategic impetus.

The UK as a Sporting Superpower and with football as one of its key currencies, the real/only World Series – Senegal’s xx xGolden Boot in the Premier League – calling out for a marshalling of Charlton Athletic or Manchester United or Crystal Palace under the strategic stewardship of Arsenal and its community work.

UK Ambassador to Jamaica foregoing the Reggae Girlz Women’s World Cup efforts, to field a team of Jamaican nurses to the Leeds teaching hospitals as part of the Social Care and Gilgamesh Strategy. Exactly the right blend of training and learning and Kent Chevening scholarships not healthcare plunder that UK and the Commonwealth needs.

And no doubt a cookie cutter template of South Sudan future employment and hospitals.

While DFID with USAid – each with the world’s largest aid budgets of c.$20BN each as well as G20 support - is surely able to deploy the Red Cross and its DEC partners more fully in South Sudan alongside Virginia’s Operation Smile and Clearly spectacles.
Operation Smile already with medical and hospital ship links and blueprints in Africa and Asia.

And the Bidi-Bidi refugee camp in Uganda cannily taking South Sudan human capital for its own Smart City of the future – much as Jordan and Turkey will no doubt do with their Syrian brain drain in reverse windfall.

And if the UK’s IndoPacific strategy was recently described as nonexistent then the green shoots of South Sudan growth also sit alongside Commonwealth efforts: it seems astonishing that one of the world’s largest organisations and only Anglophone institution has no specific plans of expansion.

Surely gone are the days of imperial vicar’s tea parties of warm words, warmer beer and cold tea with the potential to forge a more robust 21st century Commonwealth institution.

Rwanda already one of the non-colonies leading the way. While the political and economic and population heft of India and Bangladesh and Pakistan mark a seachange for the future as Prince Charles’ reign begins.

Undoubtedly Duchy Original biscuits, as in his Cuba and Caribbean Commonwealth visit, will be merely the appetiser for detailed Climate Change action and crunchy trade reform in the Commonwealth.

South Sudan must surely be in the frame for Commonwealth membership and Sudan even before the Senegal Youth Games in 2022 and infrastructure upgrades - that Moroccan rail link?

While Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury has already forsaken the vicar’s tea party syndrome (but not the Duchy Original biscuits) for a more muscular approach in welding the Anglican churches, and others, into a political force for stability in South Sudan and Africa.

South Sudan over the next decade could just be a beacon for the rest of Africa.

Time for Change
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