Transcript: Pressure builds for early elections in Israel

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Pressure builds for early elections in Israel’

Sonja Hutson
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, April 5th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Analysts are wondering why equities are disappearing. And calls are getting louder for Israel’s prime minister to call early elections. Plus, a Moroccan fertiliser company is betting that Africa can help feed the world. I’m Sonja Hutson and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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The supply of equities around the world is shrinking at its quickest pace in more than 25 years. That’s because companies are buying back shares faster than new ones are coming on to the market. The numbers even shocked the JPMorgan analysts who put the data together. Now, you’d usually expect a rising stock market and relatively strong economy to lead to more equity. The idea being that companies would want to raise funds by selling new, pricey shares instead of spending money buying them back. So the fact that the opposite is happening is a sign that executives don’t have a ton of confidence in the market rally or in the economy.

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Pressure is building on Israel’s prime minister to hold early elections. The country isn’t scheduled to go to the ballot box until 2026, but more people are demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu hold them now. Here to talk to me about it is the FT’s James Shotter. Hi, James.

James Shotter
Hi.

Sonja Hutson
So what’s happened recently that’s made more people call for early elections?

James Shotter
Yes. So this week, Benny Gantz, who is a former general and opposition politician who joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th last year, he has called for early elections. He suggested in September, around the anniversary of Hamas’s attack. And he is basically the most prominent figure to do so, so far. He’s the person who polls suggest if there were elections today would probably emerge as the next prime minister. And his call for early elections basically came after the biggest street protests against Netanyahu since the start of the war. So it sort of adds to the pressure on Netanyahu that’s building. However, I guess it’s worth adding that there’s no way that Gantz can force early elections himself. That basically depends on the internal cohesion of Netanyahu’s coalition. And if they stick together and don’t want elections, then there’s nothing anyone else can do to precipitate them.

Sonja Hutson
OK, well, in that case, what are the odds that there could be a split in Netanyahu’s coalition?

James Shotter
So there’s a number of issues that could provoke a split within the government and where they’re deeply divided. One of them is the question of whether or not to continue an exemption from Israel’s obligatory military service for ultra-Orthodox religious students. And there’s other issues as well. I mean, another would be the price that Israel would be prepared to pay for a deal to bring its hostages home from Gaza. The deal on the table might be too much for some of those more extreme members in Netanyahu’s government to stomach. So there’s various issues that they could fall out over. But on the other hand, you know, all the polling at the moment suggests that if there were elections today, the coalition would lose. And it’s quite likely that none of the parties in it would be in the new government. So they all have an incentive to stick together. And so that could well mean that we don’t see elections just yet.

Sonja Hutson
And how is Netanyahu himself responding to all this pressure to hold early elections?

James Shotter
So he’s rejected it, and he’s been rejecting it all along. He rejected Gantz’s calls from last night. He accused Gantz of playing petty politics and said that holding elections now would paralyse the war effort and Israel’s attempts to bring home 130 or so hostages that Hamas still holds in Gaza. And you know, the members of the coalition have also rejected Gantz’s request in the government.

Sonja Hutson
To what extent do you see this moment as potentially a new stage in the Israel-Hamas war? I mean, not related to the battlefield, of course, but potentially a new direction stemming from domestic politics.

James Shotter
I think the best way to look at it is this — both in terms of Gantz’s intervention, in terms of the return of the street protests — is sort of an intensification of the trends that we’ve been seeing since the start of the year. I mean, there was obviously this period at the start of the war where domestic politics was largely put on ice, and that’s well and truly over now. And you know, I think the politicking that we’ve seen in the last week is only going to intensify from now on.

Sonja Hutson
James Shotter is a Jerusalem correspondent for the FT. Thanks, James.

James Shotter
Thank you very much.

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Sonja Hutson
Russia may be trying to hack into train networks throughout Europe. The Czech Republic’s transportation minister said that there have been thousands of attempts to interfere with railway signals and ticketing systems, and he said Moscow is the culprit. All of these attempts have happened since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and they’ve raised concerns about the possibility of serious outages and accidents.

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Africa’s agriculture is generally pretty inefficient. Its average yields are way less than in other parts of the world, and it often has trouble feeding its own population. Then you tack on political insecurity, and it’s not surprising that a lot of investors are staying away. But now, a Moroccan fertiliser company called OCP is betting that Africa can turn that all around. I’m joined now by the FT’s Susannah Savage to talk about it. Hey, Susannah.

Susannah Savage
Hi there.

Sonja Hutson
So, Susannah, tell me a little bit about OCP. I mean, why do they think that Africa has so much agricultural potential?

Susannah Savage
So basically, OCP is a state-owned fertiliser company that produces mostly phosphate-based fertiliser, which is one of the three major nutrients that crops need. And they think, you know, looking at Africa, that it’s home to 60 per cent of the world’s available arable land, and this is at a time when the rest of the world is running short on agricultural land to grow crops. And also, we’re going to see a huge amount of population growth in the next few years as the world heads towards 10bn people. And that means producing 60 per cent more calories by 2050. So for them, there’s a huge opportunity in the agrifood sector across the continent.

Sonja Hutson
What is OCP’s plan then to transform the agricultural sector in Africa?

Susannah Savage
So Africa uses way less fertiliser than other parts of the world, and that’s got worse as a result of recent geopolitical tensions and the war in Ukraine in particular, which has pushed up the price of fertiliser and made supplies harder to come by. So OCP wants to go in and create demand for that fertiliser, but they also want to create demand for fertiliser in a way that doesn’t necessarily replicate some of the environmental problems that have been seen with overuse of fertiliser in other parts of the world, because fertiliser is a big emitter in terms of greenhouse gases. So their plan is to introduce customised fertiliser use, which means going around Africa and taking soil samples or mapping the soils of the whole continent, I think, to then say specifically what fertiliser needs to be used and in what quantity. And they’re not alone in this either. For example, you have the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is working on developing new seed varieties that are more climate-resilient and disease-resilient to try and help again increase these yields.

Sonja Hutson
So what happens after farmers are theoretically able to grow more food? What’s the plan for distributing it?

Susannah Savage
So yeah, this is when it gets a bit tricky because yes, you can increase yields and productivity, but you have to have a market for those products, right? So an expert I spoke to from the UN, he gave the example of high-yielding potato seeds, which were distributed to farmers in several African countries around a decade ago. And now this should have been great because it increased yields and it should have gone hand in hand with increased profits for those farmers, but actually it just created a supply glut where there were loads of potatoes that ended up rotting in fields and the price fell. So a lot needs to be done to bring investment into building a whole agrifood ecosystem, and that’s really hindered by political insecurity and conflict, but also climate change. So there’s a whole long way to go to build that kind of value chain in order for this to really make a difference and to boost economies.

Sonja Hutson
Wow. OK, so OCP is still a ways off from reaching its goal, but I’m wondering big picture here, if they are successful, what would that mean for the global food supply chain?

Susannah Savage
Well, I think the first and most important thing is whether Africa can be more self-sufficient in terms of food production. So the first sort of major transformative aspect of this is: can Africa feed itself? And then beyond that, because so much of the world’s available agricultural land is in the continent, then, as some of the experts I spoke to said, the future of feeding the global population does to some extent rely on Africa increasing production and in a way that it develops its own economies.

Sonja Hutson
Susannah Savage is a commodities correspondent for the FT. Thanks, Susannah.

Susannah Savage
Thanks very much.

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Sonja Hutson
You can read more on all these stories at FT.com for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back next week for the latest business news.

The FT News Briefing is produced by Kasia Broussalian, Fiona Symon, Marc Filippino and me, Sonja Hutson. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. We had help this week from Michela Tindera, Cara Shillenn, Zach St Louis, Sam Giovinco, David da Silva, Michael Lello, Peter Barber and Gavin Kallmann. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio, and our theme song is by Metaphor Music.

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