Dear Kofi and the gang,
Rather than go another year without awarding the Mo Ibrahim prize for leadership, why don't you guys throw out some rules and give the prize to the former interim government in Niger?
Not every time in Africa, or any other continent for that matter, we get to see a military junta dispose of a tyrant, form an interim government, organize elections and hand a country over to a democratically elected president in 13 months flat!
Win a trip to "The City That Shouldn't Exist" The European Commission and Danish Refugee Council has created a video trailer inviting young European citizens to play an online game that lets them step into the shoes of an officer in the European Commission's department for humanitarian aid (ECHO). By playing the game, users can a win a trip to Dadaab in Kenya, the largest refugee camp in the world.For the humanitarian wonks who felt, ethics aside, going by the rules of the new media landscape the game was pragmatic and had good intentions, konwomyn begs to differ:
Sorry but no. If you want to create a game that gives young people a sense of what humanitarian work is about, you do it with dignity, after all human beings are the central subject of this game created by humanitarians. Dadaab is not some extreme game or dangerously exotic place for the young mind's consumption; its an actual place where people live not out of choice, but because a brutal unending conflict has made it so. There is a deeply entrenched perception of Somalia as hell-on-earth and while many humanitarian agencies and refugee have tried to deconstruct that myth, games like give credence to it. Not that there's anything wrong with games about refugee camps, just not this sort of thing.
Madikizela-Mandela has not seen the script nor sanctioned the story. That she hasn't interfered in the making of the opera is "the best situation a writer and artist could want. We're delighted we can't be accused of producing a sanctioned story, nor that we whitewashed it. We can't be accused of writing a product that 'rehabilitates' her."
It’s fascinating to imagine how these blank-screened cadaverous wholes and frayed bits and pieces have all gotten here. There’s so much black glass that it is like the landscape of an indecisive volcano. These used computers have been donated by Western charity organizations and faith-based NGOs and given the Nigerian tendency to use things even beyond their given function or recognizability, their presence here is only temporary. A great many were brought from Ghana or up from South Africa while a steady stream arrived from China even before that country began its obsessive courting of West and Central Africa. But the vast majority of these machines, parts and components have been shipped by or brought in by enterprising Nigerians who since the late 1980s have known that what would mark this generation of West Africans more than blight, violence or corruption was a hunger for Web-based connectivity, that narcotic rush of shared information. With almost no formal education whatsoever, many would learn how to rig, rewire, rebuild and master the essentials of computing in these glorified junkyards. They learned from ragged men with soldering irons in their pockets that pushed wheelbarrows filled with screens, wires and keyboards, with the wild-eyed look of juju men drunk on that vile moonshine called ogogoro.We posted the Vice Guide episode containing segments on Ghana's Sakawa Boys a while back. Here is the full cut:
...sakawa boys, employ the services of traditional priests with the purpose of supernaturally enforcing the co-operation of their ‘clients;’ the potential victims of their online scams. Sakawa boys have managed to hack Africa’s natural mystic; redefine her unique cosmology, and twist it to suit their purposes. As destructive as their activities are, we still can learn from this fascinating illustration the way in which cultural evolution occurs over time, mediated by technology, in constant exchange with the rest of the world, growing ever more nuanced and intricate with each step forward. I expect to see many more of such interactions between culture and technology in the near future, and I’m sure that if we pay more attention to such phenomena we will be better able to navigate through the turbulent waters of our near future.H/T: Poptech
"I know that many people in Washington and in Brussels would want to celebrate Nigeria's election and say it is a great success," said Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai. "I am sorry I disagree. I think it is a major improvement but unless and until we find a way to get results of elections at polling unit level going directly to the chairman of INEC, without any human intervention, without any ability to change the numbers, we are not going to have credible elections in Nigeria."Sahara Reporters has his whole address - here. Council of Foreign Relations' John Campbell joins the rigging chorus:
What happened? There appears to have been substantial election rigging, not so much at the polling stations where international observers were often present but at the collation centers where monitors were usually absent. A distinguished Nigerian civil organization, The Civil Society Election Situation Room, notes that in twelve states – one third of the total – ostensible voter turnout was suspiciously high. The national voter turnout average was 53 percent. In the twelve identified states, the turnout ranged from 62 percent to 84 percent. The Situation Room cites allegations that the figures were “doctored” and declares that the collation process constituted “the weakest link in the election management process.” Project Swift Count, another civil organization involved with election oversight, did station observers at some collation sites, but apparently a number of its personnel were arrested or otherwise intimidated. The Situation Room faults the Electoral Commission for having been “ineffective in its oversight function as far as monitoring and controlling the collation process was concerned.” In Nigeria, governors often play a prominent role in election rigging. Of the twelve states with dubious turnout figures cited by the Election Situation Room, eleven had governors from the ruling party who supported Jonathan; none had governors from the opposition who supported Buhari.A lady in Kano tells the BBC worldservice about the mob that entered her compound:
They entered our compound saying if we didn't give them 10,000 Naira they will kill us.... They collected our phones. They are just boys. They are not men.On that note, Maggie Fick gets to the point abt the broader Northern question:
...what was meant to be Nigeria's first truly legitimate election has begun to look a lot like the clouded ones of the past, even if the votes themselves add up the way they're supposed to. And it's not at all clear that the protesters in the north who torched churches, looted vehicles, and smashed billboards are entirely to blame, given the behavior of their leaders in Abuja. More importantly, if Jonathan does not manage to address the broader issues raised by this violence -- notably the discontent among northerners with the status quo that includes a huge class of unemployed and marginalized youth -- he may find his term as president focused largely on putting out brush fires rather than initiating badly needed reforms.Akin responds to the broader Northern question:
Tatalo Alamu who writes for The Nation newspaper on Sundays, in a piece that was written on the 3rd of April, 2011, titled The messiah and the militia , Tatalo frames his discourse in almost Apocalyptic prose starting with the capturing the feel of a typical CPC political rally with Muhammadu Buhari as the flag-bearer, “This is not an exultant crowd waiting for a political emancipator. This is a traumatized mob waiting for a messiah.” The summary is Buhari appears to represent for these people the escape required by his people from the clutches of leaders before who never addressed the issues that kept them far behind in the Nigeria stakes for progress and development. His inability to assume power would first be expressed in disappointment, then despair and everything else that follows – there was something quite prophetic about that piece because 15 days on, the hopes were dashed, the numbers did not add up and the Buhari or the Messiah they had hoped will come to their deliverance could not ascend the throne of the kingdom. (What the North needs now) There is no doubt that Northern Nigeria needs visionary leadership unhindered by the smokescreens of religious piety masquerading as a society at ease with itself. They need a new political class of selfless people ready to serve their communities and raise all the standards of living that would give Nigeria the better tale of a nation united in purpose and progress.H/T: Naija blog, Opalo
Meet The Adebanjos is about a Nigerian-British family in Peckham (of course), with the kids being the more British arm of the family. I am, despite myself, cautiously optimistic. I saw a couple of clips last year, and didn’t completely hate it, so there’s that. I am also hopeful that the crew and cast (Nigerians-a-go-go, not least Mr Don’t Jealous Me, Tolu Ogunmefun) will add an air of authenticity to the venture. Perhaps the Meet The Adebanjos scriptwriters were all watching and taking notes on The Adesinas on Channel 4′s fly-on-the-wall documentary, The Family last year. It’ll be interesting to see how well it handles its Nigerian-ness; Desmond’s, The Fosters, The Crouches and the Lambert family (Mixed Blessings) were all West Indian.You'd wish Nigerian-British stand up veterans Andi Osho and Jocelyn Jee were consulting on this.
The highest number of voters came out in the North West region with 10,800,075 people representing a 53.75% turnout... When you look at the kind of turnouts across the states and especially in the North where the numbers were higher but hardly reflected in the same inclinations of the South, the voters might well be aggrieved if the numbers across the nation do not go their way when you consider their enthusiasm, their willingness and readiness to participate in electing a new leader.... but their patron never crossed the rivers to the south and so the fault lies with that party rather than the people. (more)Way before Saturday's poll, Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege took a blood pressure reading up North:
In 2000, the Northern Jihadists want to fight the whole of the South. The battle ahead is important because it is one battle that they cannot win! By insisting on the Sharia, they are placing themselves on the firing line of Southern anger. For too long, too many forces have resisted a Sovereign National Conference, now, a national conference of guns seems inevitable! What I intend to say is that for the first time since 1966, the Jihadists will be confronted by a determined southern army: each locked in its ethnic identity but all of them united by the same objective: to teach the Northern trouble-makers a lesson once and for all. This would translate into a balance of terror. The point will then be made that nobody in this country has a monopoly on madness. Each time madness erupts in one part of the country and it is met by equal madness, sanity is bound to prevail: It is this balance of terror so-called that may well save Nigeria.
Memac Ogilvy Label decided to show everyone how bright Tunisia’s future could be if everyone all started building it now. The agency convinced six brands and five major Tunisian media outlets (one radio, one television, two newspapers and one online magazine) to participate in the June 16th 2014 campaign. During a whole day, the media acted as if it were June 16th 2014 and presented Tunisia as a prosperous, modern and democratic country. To further engage people, the agency launched a hashtag on Twitter and 16juin2014.com, a website with all the content and where people could share their own vision of the future. The media content spread to social media via 16juin2014.com and people began to imagine wonderful futures and called everyone for action. #16juin2014 hashtag was the number one top trend topic on Twitter all day long. At 6pm, the debate was everywhere on TV, radio stations and blogs. Getting back to work quickly became an act of resistance. The operation was covered by most Tunisian media and several international networks. As getting on with life had become a political act, people massively got back to work the next day and the six brands started traditional marketing again. Others soon followed.
I am particularly excited that our Golden Rice work, as with all our work at IRRI, is non-profit. For this, we can thank the inventors of Golden Rice and others who have donated intellectual property and supported the project financially. This will help assure that even the poorest farmers and consumers will have access to Golden Rice...White rice, though ample in calories, lacks vitamin A, which makes genetically engineered "golden rice"--which contains an extra beta carotene which turns into Vitamin A when digested--kind of a big deal for a developing world addicted to rice. It all reminded us of a chapter in Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans and the Secret History of Capitalism, which tells the backstory of "golden rice." The excerpt below explains how "golden rice" or other technologies that could help the developing world, even when the inventors of the such technologies want it to be free, are often tied up by the frustrating phonomenon of "interlocking patents":
Unfortunately, the problem of interlocking patents has recently becomeworse. More and more minute pieces of knowledge have become patentable,down to the level of individual genes, thereby increasing the risk of patents becoming an obstacle to technological progress. The recent debate surrounding so-called golden rice illustrates this point very well. In 2000, a group of scientists led by Ingo Potrykus (Swiss) and Peter Beyer (German) announced a new technology to genetically engineer rice with extra beta carotene (which turns into Vitamin A when digested). Because of the natural colour of beta carotene, the rice has a golden hue, which gives it its name. The rice is also considered ‘golden’ by some because it can potentially bring important nutritional benefits to millions of poor people in countries where rice is the basic staple. Rice is nutritionally very effective, able to sustain more people than wheat, given the same area of land. But it lacks one critical nutrient—Vitamin A. Poor people in rice-eating countries tend to eat little else other than rice and therefore suffer from Vitamin A deficiency ( VAD). At the beginning of the 21st century, it is estimated that 124 million people in 118 countries in Africa and Asia are affected by VAD. VAD is thought to be responsible for one or two million deaths, half a million cases of irreversible blindness and millions of cases of the debilitating eye-disease, xerophthalmia, every year.More in Chang's chapter about finding that delicate balance between rewarding innovation through patents but avoiding a "hazardous terrain of interlocking patents" that kicks away, after others have climbed it, the development ladder for developing nations to acquire or use the innovations.
In 2001, Potrykus and Beyer caused controversy by selling the technology to the multinational pharmaceutical/biotechnology firm, Syngenta (AstraZeneca at the time). Syngenta already had a legitimate partial claim on the technology, thanks to its indirect funding of the research through the European Union. And the two scientists, to their credit, negotiated hard with Syngenta to allow farmers making less than $10,000 a year out of golden rice to use the technology for free. Even so, some people found the sale of such a valuable ‘public good’ technology to a profit-making firm unacceptable. In response to the criticisms, Potrykus and Beyer said they had had to sell their technology to Syngenta because of the difficulties involved in negotiating licences for the other patented technologies they needed in order to operationalize their technology. They argued that, as scientists, they simply did not havethe necessary resources or the skills to negotiate for the 70 relevant patents belonging to 32 different companies and universities. Critics countered that they were exaggerating the difficulties. They pointed out that there are only a dozen or so patents that are truly relevant for countries where the golden rice would bring about the largest benefits. But the point remains. The days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage (page 127-8).
Meanwhile, Ouattara has clashed with the UN over claims that fighters allied to him had massacred hundreds of civilians, an allegation that threatens to tarnish his credentials as the elected, internationally supported leader. The UN mission said that traditional hunters, known as Dozos, fought alongside Ouattara's forces and took part in killing 330 people in the western town of Duekoue. The International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 800 people were killed in intercommunal violence in Duekoue last week. It is not clear whether that 330 is included in the larger figure. Guillaume Ngefa, deputy head of the human rights division of the UN mission in Ivory Coast, blamed 220 of the deaths on pro-Ouattara forces. He told France24 TV that the killings happened between Monday and Wednesday as pro-Ouattara troops advanced south. Pro-Gbagbo militias killed more than 110, he added. Ouattara's side responded by blaming the UN. Justice minister Jeannot Ahoussou-Kouadio accused the nearly 1,000 peacekeepers based in Duekoue of leaving its civilians to vengeful Gbagbo fighters. "The government notes that the [UN mission] retreated from the town of Duekoue before its liberation by the republican forces at the same time that the town was prey to looting and exactions of every type being committed by the militia and mercenaries of Laurent Gbagbo," he said. The UN said most of its soldiers were deployed at a Catholic mission, protecting 15,000 people who sought refuge there.Below, BBC Network Africa's Paul Bakibinga spoke to Guillaume Ngefa, Deputy Director for Human Rights in the UN mission in Ivory Coast, about the massacre at Duekoue:
Decades of shared colonial history with comic-mad Belgium certainly had an influence on the emergence of the Congolese comic scene. In fact, most books by Barly Baruti, the Congolese author best known outside his country, are published in Brussels (more).This post and slideshow touches on some of Baruti's work.
Yes and no. Yes, there is a difference, because Ivory Coast has a greater tradition than the Congo, in terms of self-mockery. So it's a little easier there to discuss some social or political issues through cartoons. And, although the newspaper Gbich! did a bit of satire, it is generally very cordial.In Congo, the caricature from the press is sometimes very aggressive and I find this unfortunate. I think we can say things through the caricature without necessarily attacking.Egypt: CNN recently reported Magdy El Shafee's graphic novel, Metro, which was banned in Mubarak's Egypt, (blogged here) is now going to be published in the U.S.
But why Malawi? This poor, rural, landlocked nation is hardly a strategic prize. Elsewhere, the Chinese are clearly after oil and other resources. Malawi does have some unexploited rare-earth metals and a mine producing uranium. But the aggressive Chinese outreach here seems more directly motivated by a plan to establish China as a power throughout the continent, even in its remotest corners....Over at her blog, China in Africa scholar Deborah Brautigam counters:
Nowhere is the contrast of Chinese and American development strategies more evident. The U.S. government, of course, has its own checkered history of resource-seeking behavior, especially in the Middle East. But in Africa today, America consistently promotes economic liberalization and good governance while providing aid focused on human needs and structural reform. America’s innovative Millennium Challenge Corp. — which has approved a compact to improve the Malawian energy sector — makes funding contingent on meeting standards of transparency, human rights and the rule of law. At least America tries to nudge African nations in the right direction.
Gerson nevertheless falls into some of the same pits: the double standard; and the mixing up of aid and business. Gerson writes "in Africa today, America consistently promotes economic liberalization and good governance..." Just how consistently we do this is open to debate. For example, the US provided -- each year -- about $1.6 billion in aid (economic and military) to repressive Egypt under Mubarak....There is plenty to criticize in China's human rights record at home, and plenty of room for improvement as Chinese leaders take uncertain and inconsistent steps toward being a "responsible great power". But let's get our own record straight, Mr. Gerson. Your op-eds will be more credible to Africans if you do so.That audacious and uniquely American "double standard" on Gerson's part and which Brautigham refers to is something that beffudles not just Africans but a lot of other foreigners as well. But hold that thought. We diagnosed Gerson's problem and think it might be symptomatic of American exceptionalism - something far larger as it is pervasive.
"To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action "...as evidence of his belief in the idea of "American exceptionalism." Over at Slate, Glen Greenwald grabs the chance to scrutinize this assumed "perch of exceptionalism" and wrote:
Why celebrate the humble typewriter? Devotees have many reasons.... Typewriters are good at only one thing: putting words on paper. “If I’m on a computer, there’s no way I can concentrate on just writing, said Jon Roth, 23, a journalist who is writing a book on typewriters. “I’ll be checking my e-mail, my Twitter.” When he uses a typewriter, Mr. Roth said: “I can sit down and I know I’m writing. It sounds like I’m writing.” And there’s something else about typewriters. In more than a dozen interviews, young typewriter aficionados raised a common theme. Though they grew up on computers, they enjoy prying at the seams of digital culture. Like urban beekeepers, hip knitters and other icons of the D.I.Y. renaissance, they appreciate tangibility, the object-ness of things. They chafe against digital doctrines that identify human “progress” as a ceaseless march toward greater efficiency, the search for a frictionless machine.The part of the article where Bruder writes that many of the younger typewriter users have "the old technology rest[...] comfortably beside the new," she might as well be talking about the guys behind this new awesome line of usbtypewriters:
