Nigeria

In many ways, this has been Nigeria's week. Mostly as a result of the news that Goodluck Jonathan disolved the cabinet on Wednesday. I blogged about it then (read it here), and since there have been more signs that it may be positive news - for example the response from the markets. The news have generated plent of comments, for today's editorial on The Guardian to the unavoidable and unnecessary advice given by Col. Muammar al Gaddafi: "split Nigeria in two" (so much for his vision of a United States of Africa!) - which has been responded by Nigeria recalling its ambassador to Libya.

For some background information of Nigeria's current predicament you can read this Global Voices' article on the Enough is Enough movement - and their protest on Tuesday; and this Sahel Blog entry on a conference on Nigeria and Islamic Extremism.

Zimbabwe

Zuma's been to Zimbebwe this week, where he's engaged in talkes with both ZANU-PF and MDC officials and tried to resolve the stalemate paralysing the country's government. Although Zuma called for a free and fair election, he knows this is not likely to happen- and that any alection may lead to further violence if ZANU's grip on security forces continues. The most positive outcome of the talks than is that Zuma has met not only top-officials, but he's made his round of conversations wider - including even Roy Bennet, the MD member standing trial accused of "terrorism". Furthermore, all parties in government agreed to solve outstanding issues and reprting back to Zuma before the end of the month.

Various

- The Pan African Media Conference has taken place in Nairobi yesterday and today. There has been a brilliant coverage by Tweeps. If you want to have a look ot what's been said follow the #AfMediaConf topic.

- World Bank sees Africa economies rebounding in 2010 (via Loomnie)

- Does the ongoing debate about American military support for Somalia’s government signal a small but significant step toward non-interventionism among US elites? asks Sahel Blog

- Congo Siasa reminds us that "these are important days in the future of the Congo.Two important decisions are being taken by the international community: debt relief and the future of the peacekeeping mission."

- Fela! comes closer - I can only share NaijaBlog's enthusiasm.

- Spanish blog "Héroes de Ébano" shares this classic and touching video:

Bamako is severely lacking in bars and cafés. Coming from Côte d'Ivoire for this visit, it has taken a bit to get used to as the Malian culture doesn't seem to focus around this aspect of casual life as it does for the Ivorians. What you do see are a group of guys sitting around a small street stove that is boiling a pot of tea that they then serve, drinking with this slurping sound that quite honestly drives me a bit nuts, but seems to be the only way to drink tea here as it's quite hot once poured.

While my wife and I were rummaging through the many excellent jewelry shops just West of the center (I highly recommend checking them out if in Bamako), I noticed that the owners of one shop understood very well how convection works in fires. Obviously having grown tired of fanning the flames, which I know is quite a bother when I'm firing up in the barbecue back home, they decided to use a forge.

Now, I'm not quite sure if this forge is generally used for jewelry making, but I only saw it used for tea making. Essentially, it's a raised bed of coals that sit above an air path that has air forced in to it by a blower they picked up from lord knows where, that they crank with a re-purposed bicycle wheel. In a word, it's a genius as it works exceedingly well. For those familiar with how a forge typically works, they've greatly improved upon the hand-pumped bellows. It heats up the coals and thus, the tea, incredibly fast.

I love tea and so of course I took the chance to try the Malian take on boiling the magic leaves. Mother if it's not strong. It's like an espresso shot in each of those small glasses. It's highly bitter as well which is most likely why they sweeten the bejesus out of it. It's still good though, in the way that Turkish coffee is good and this touch with the forge makes it all the more cool.

On my first day in Bamako, I went for a walk up around the bluffs that look down upon the town. I was mainly just going for a stroll as it looked like a nice place for a view over this infinitely sprawling town of two million inhabitants. It also happens that in the caves that are splattered heavily across these bluffs there are apparently cave paintings from the earliest humans to live in the area that Bamako now occupies.

After a couple of failed attempts to scale some rugged paths in sandals, I finally came to an easy way to get up to the top. With the caves in the distance, I came to the top of a ledge and found sprawling before me new home construction that was being partially built from the rocks quarried out of the bluffs by hand. I was thankful that it was by hand to this point because if it had been mechanized, the whole top of the plateau would probably be gone.

It's sad that this chunk of history is being removed just to make room for yet more one story homes in Hippodrome Deux. I believe that the caves below the Presidential Palace a bit to the West are still intact, but still, while I realize that this must appear as "just some rocks", they're not replaceable rocks that are being transformed in to homes that will likely be razed in the coming decades as they're being built quite fast and cheaply.

This type of thing annoys me as I'm constantly seeing it everywhere in the world as we convert more of the planet in to more human beings and more space for human beings. From the coasts of Spain and Croatia to the Sacramento Valley where I grew up in Northern California, it's everywhere and really, it has to stop. We have to learn how to contain our sprawl and the impact of said sprawl. Anyways, Eco-Geek rant over. On to finer things in Mali.

Les listes électorales provisoires, officiellement remises aux autorités en charge des élections en Guinée, cet après midi

Le site central de la gestion du fichier électorales a abrité cet après midi, la cérémonie officielle de remise des listes électorales provisoires des 951 Commissions administratives de révision des listes électorales (CARLE) de la part de la société SAGEM aux autorités en charge des futures échéances électorales : la CENI et le MATAP.

A la faveur de cette remise conjointe au président de la CENI, M. Ben Sékou Sylla et au ministre des Affaires Politiques, M. Nawa Damey les deux responsables en charge de la gestion des élections dans notre pays ont salué le travail abattu par la SAGEM et réaffirmé leur engagement quant à la tenue effective des élections présidentielles, le 27 juin prochain.

Ce jeudi, 18 mars, le coup d’envoi des opérations d’affichage desdites listes sera donné par MM. Ben Sékou Sylla et Nawa Damey, dans la CARLE N° 020, au quartier Cameroun, dans la commune de Dixinn. Aussi, la reprise du recensement de nos compatriotes vivant à l’extérieur sera effective dans les 17 commissions administratives de révision de listes électorales retenus à cet effet et ce, jusqu’au 4 avril prochain.

A signaler que toutes ces opérations visent le recensement sur le fichier électoral d’environ 4, 200 millions d’électeurs tant à l’intérieur qu’à l’extérieur de la Guinée.

Enfin, il faut noter que ces listes provisoires sont tirées sur 30 000 pages. Et déjà, la formation des 39 maintenanciers et des 8 superviseurs est à pied d’œuvre par l’équipe de M. Philippe Marcilly, responsable de la SAGEM en Guinée.

¿Cuánto cuestan las cosas?

• El jet privado de Museveni (Uganda): 1 año de retrovirales y otras medicinas contra el VIH a 230.000 personas

• Lo que gasta Mswati III (Swazilandia) y sus muchas esposas, a las que hace unos meses mandó de compras por todo el mundo: 210.000 tratamientos contra la tuberculosis.

• La corrupción africana: tratamiento completo contra el SIDA a 704 millones de personas.

• La Guerra de Irak: más de 140 veces el dinero necesario para financiar el Fondo Global HIV-SIDA

• La fiesta de cumpleaños de Mugabe: 10.500 tratamientos contra la tuberculosis.

“Lords of the Bling” (Los dioses de los diamantes) es una campaña de ARASA (Aids and Rights Alliance for Southern African) para mostrar cuánto dinero se han gastado los líderes africanos -y algún que otro foráneo- en compras extravagantes, desde coches a grandes palacios y aviones privados, y cuántos tratamientos contra el SIDA y la Tuberculosis se podrían haber adquirido con ese mismo dinero.

Para ello han creado cientos de dólares falsos. En una cara, fotografías de personajes como el Rey Mswati de Swazilandia, Muammar Gaddaffi o George Bush, con un ‘valor’ equivalente a la cantidad de dinero gastada por estos.

�Por la otra, el valor de ese dólar traducido al número de tratamientos que se podrían haber comprado.

Visto en: Africa is a Country

News just broke that the Nigerian cabinet has been dissolved. I first heard about on Twitter. This is an excerpt from the BBC piece from about one and a half hours ago:

Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan has dissolved the country's cabinet, government sources say...

The cabinet was picked by Mr Yar'Adua and correspondents say Mr Jonathan is now trying to stamp his own authority...

Mansur Liman of BBC Hausa says there had been rumours of the dissolution for some time and Mr Jonathan had already changed several senior personnel.

But our correspondent says this is the biggest move Mr Jonathan has made since becoming acting president and he is clearly plotting a new course for the government.

Nigerian acting president Goodluck Jonathan

This comes at a critical time, and the question is: are these news positive or negative? Will things get better after this, with Jonathan strenthening his control of the government? Or is this a further sign that Nigeria is slipping futher out of control? It is obviously way too early to say, and I, furthermore, have no detailed knowledge of Nigerian politics. Nevertheless these are some things to bear in mind:

1) Yesterday, a protest march and demonstration took place in Abuja yesterday. This is part of the text calling for action (at Naijablog):

Young People Power!

March 16 is the date that young Nigerians will march in Abuja to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Time: 11am

Venue: National Assembly, Abuja (We gather at Eagle Square at 11am PROMPT)

Demands:

1) President Yar’Adua should resume, resign or be removed

2) The promise of 6000megawatts must be fulfilled

3) The 5-month fuel crisis needs to end now

This was organised by the group Enough is Enough Nigeria . A group of young people organised to protest for the current political crisisin the country, and organised via Facebook and other new media like Twitter. The move by Jonathan is in a way, a step in the direction demanded by this group, closin the door of the Yar'Adua administration.

2) As well as the political crisis, violence has affected the country recently in terrible ways: first, it was the violence on the town of Jos, which left hundreds of deaths. Violence between Christian and Muslims communities erupted first in January, and re-appeared again this month. As well as the inter-communial tensions this violence has highlighted the corruption of the police and the passivity of the military. See here the Human Rights Watch Report.On the Niger Delta, amnesty talks were disrupted yesterday by the explosion of two car-bombs outside a government building. The actions were claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), who sought to "announce our continued presence".

3) All this has lead to fears, voiced yesterday by writer Wole Soyinka in converstion with UK newspaper "The Independent", that:

"Nigeria is close to breaking up and its leadership has descended into a "theatre of the absurd"...

The veteran writer and civil rights activist told The Independent that his home country was now a "failed state" where ordinary people's "anger has peaked", with potentially lethal consequences. "Nigeria is looking at its last chance in the next year...

"If nothing changes, I cannot guarantee what recourse the people will take," the writer said. "The level of anger has peaked. I don't rule out Nigeria breaking up. That's what can happen to a failed state."

Wole Soyinka speaking at a rally in Nigeria

4) These has also led to heightened international preocupation for the future of the country, following the Niger Delta violence, the Christmas bombing incident, and the placing of the country on list of terror-watch. As blogged here before:

This growing concern has even led an "intelligence oficial in AFRICOM" to affirm "that Northern Nigeria could become like Western Pakistan" (AC 53,3), which in my mind leads to the follow-up question: Could Nigeria be the next Pakistan?...given the growing strategic weight of Nigeria on both the energetic and counterterrorism fields, could this country - like Pakistan - become a (borrowing a fashionable economic term): a country "too-big-to-fail", which will require closer attention, and intervention from the US?

Despite the justified concerns showed by Wole Soyinka, I believe today's move by Goodluck Jonathan is not a further sign of Nigeria's collapse, but a step on the right direction. Judging by the comments left on the online newspaper 234next.com, most readers believe that the disoultion of the cabinet suggests that Jonathan is ready to make some difficult decisions and take control of the country. I hope this is not too late, and wish Nigerian people the best in these exciting times.

This week, I received a media invite from the Nation Media group about accreditation for the Pan African Media Conference. They were asking for $150 for journalists to cover the event.

I read the email again, it was not to participate, but to cover the event, you know, the journalists that come in just for the speeches by the big wigs. Before I could digest the shock, another email came, rectifying the figure to Kshs 2,500 (about $30); but I was still in a shock.

I was in shock because I know media houses have been against charging journalists to cover events. Think about management/motivational events that many people pay lots of money to attend but journalists get in free.

I was once asked for advice by someone organizing a management talk on those tips they did not teach you at Harvard Business school and i was against journalists paying a fee just to cover the event.

So, why is the Nation Media Group asking other media houses to pay in order to cover the event?

I was with some other tech journalists in the morning and we were joking that because the Nation is so big, they can afford to cover the event on their own, across all the platforms.

For others, it was a way for the Nation to get all the scoops by ensuring that they cover everything and lock out the others.

Anyway, I am sure the fee is not that much and other media houses can pay but will it be fair to ask other event organizers to allow journalists in free when other media houses charge accreditation fee?

By the way, the meeting has allowed some bloggers free, so will this be the first case where social media has trumped mainstream media?

Read the email sent below...

RE: PAN AFRICAN MEDIA CONFERENCE JOINTLY ORGANISED BY NATION MEDIA GROUP & AFRICA MEDIA INITIATIVE

We are pleased to invite you to cover the 2010 Pan African Media Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference with the theme, Media and the African Promise is a collaboration of the Africa Media Initiative and the Nation Media Group and will be held from the 18th-19th March 2010 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The event will reflect on the African media’s past, present and prospects for the future against the challenges of a dynamic globalised environment. The conference has been organised to commemorate Nation Media Group’s 50th Anniversary since the first copy of the Daily Nation rolled off the press.

This conference will draw attendance from leading media professionals from all over the African continent, speakers representing industry and policy development, as well as academic scholars and thinkers from the global media arena. The forum will encourage contribution and development of robust policy related to the operation and development of media in Africa.

Participants will explore issues ranging from the advent of citizen journalism where audiences generate and publish news using popular online platforms and new media such as SMS, MMS, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, to the role of media and civil society in solving Africa’s challenges, to governance democracy and other perspectives, to the emergence of a global media culture, to reporting change and crisis in Africa, and saving the African environment among others.

We have a great line-up of speakers including: H.E. Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former President of Mozambique, H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor, President of the Alliance, and former President of Ghana, Dr. Hussein Amin, Professor and former chair of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo, Achim Steiner Acting on the nomination of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Dr. Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim, Sudanese-born British mobile communications entrepreneur, Professor Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and Mr. David Dadge, Director of the International Press Institute(IPI among others.

We invite you to cover the conference. For purposes of accreditation please send a list of the print, broadcast and photo journalists who will cover the event by Friday 12th March to Wanjiru Waithaka at the conference secretariat (wwaithaka@nation.co.ke). For each journalist we will require two (2) passport size photos, an official letter confirming he or she has been assigned to cover the event by your organization and accreditation fee of USD150 (or Sh10,000) payable in advance.

Follow-up email

Dear all,

With regard to the invitation below please note that the accreditation fee has been reduced to Sh2,500 PER journalist.

Regards,

Ends