Thursday, October 22, 2009
Zimbabwe's Political Crisis
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's prime minister, has appealed for regional help in his stand-off in Zimbabwe's unity pact, as his ministers boycotted a meeting with Robert Mugabe, the president.
The suspension of ties has cast a shadow on the fragile partnership, as Mugabe chaired a cabinet meeting on Tuesday - without his Zanu-PF party's main government partners - as Tsvangirai's 13 cabinet ministers met separately.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader flew to Mozambique on Tuesday to ask southern African leaders to step in, after he cut ties with Mugabe's "dishonest and unreliable" camp four days ago.
Tsvangirai said he would resume unity relations only once unresolved issues are settled which include disputes over key posts and a crackdown against his supporters.
After years of economic freefall, Zimbabwe has seen an easing of international ties and rebuilding of shattered infrastructure and social services, but donors say they want to see more reforms before increasing aid.
Many people are taking this as a sign that the country is facing an economic crisis once again, as Haru Mutasu reports from Harare.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
No Prize For African Leadership
Sudanese magnate Mo Ibrahim will not be awarding any African ex-leader his $5m (£3m) annual prize for good governance.
Mr Ibrahim gave no reason for the decision, saying he had always intended for there to be years when no prize would be awarded.
Now in its third year, the prize is given to a democratically elected leader from sub-Saharan Africa who has served their term and then left office.
South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Ghana's John Kufuor had been the favourites.
The winners receive $5m over 10 years, and then $200,000 a year for life after that - the most valuable individual annual award in the world.
'No disrespect'
Mr Ibrahim said people could draw their own conclusions about why no prize was awarded this year.
But he said there was "no issue of disrespect" meant towards eligible candidates.
"The prize committee welcomed the progress made on governance in some African countries while noting with concern recent setbacks in other countries," said a statement from the panel which made the decision.
"This year the prize committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the prize committee could not select a winner."
Former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, one of the panel-members, said that if there had been a similar award for former European leaders this year, it might have been equally difficult to select a worthy winner.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says Mr Ibrahim established the prize because well-run African democracies are not thick on the ground.
Mr Ibrahim argues that the prize is needed because many African leaders come from poor backgrounds and are tempted to hang on to power for fear that poverty is what awaits them when they give up the levers of power.
But our analyst says recent evidence of the prize's effectiveness across Africa is not encouraging.
Uganda, Chad and Cameroon have all changed their constitutions so their leaders can retain their positions.
There have been coups in Guinea, Mauritania and Madagascar, as well as several elections that fell well short of international standards.
And the countries that have received most praise from Mo Ibrahim's foundation this year - Mauritius, Cape Verde and Seychelles - are far from the continent's centres of power.
Botswana's former President Festus Mogae won the prize last year, after two terms at the helm of one of Africa's least corrupt and most prosperous nations.
The inaugural prize was given to Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique's former president, who has since acted as a mediator in several African disputes.
Mr Ibrahim gave no reason for the decision, saying he had always intended for there to be years when no prize would be awarded.
Now in its third year, the prize is given to a democratically elected leader from sub-Saharan Africa who has served their term and then left office.
South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Ghana's John Kufuor had been the favourites.
The winners receive $5m over 10 years, and then $200,000 a year for life after that - the most valuable individual annual award in the world.
'No disrespect'
Mr Ibrahim said people could draw their own conclusions about why no prize was awarded this year.
But he said there was "no issue of disrespect" meant towards eligible candidates.
"The prize committee welcomed the progress made on governance in some African countries while noting with concern recent setbacks in other countries," said a statement from the panel which made the decision.
"This year the prize committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the prize committee could not select a winner."
Former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, one of the panel-members, said that if there had been a similar award for former European leaders this year, it might have been equally difficult to select a worthy winner.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says Mr Ibrahim established the prize because well-run African democracies are not thick on the ground.
Mr Ibrahim argues that the prize is needed because many African leaders come from poor backgrounds and are tempted to hang on to power for fear that poverty is what awaits them when they give up the levers of power.
But our analyst says recent evidence of the prize's effectiveness across Africa is not encouraging.
Uganda, Chad and Cameroon have all changed their constitutions so their leaders can retain their positions.
There have been coups in Guinea, Mauritania and Madagascar, as well as several elections that fell well short of international standards.
And the countries that have received most praise from Mo Ibrahim's foundation this year - Mauritius, Cape Verde and Seychelles - are far from the continent's centres of power.
Botswana's former President Festus Mogae won the prize last year, after two terms at the helm of one of Africa's least corrupt and most prosperous nations.
The inaugural prize was given to Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique's former president, who has since acted as a mediator in several African disputes.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Nyerere and Tanzania: No Regrets at Socialism
By PAUL LEWIS
Wednesday, October 24, 1990
Julius K. Nyerere, who led Tanzania for the first-quarter century of its existence as an independent state, struck an unapologetic note as he said he had no regrets, despite the ramshackle condition in which he leaves his country.
"If I had my time over again, I would do it much the same way," said the 68-year-old founding father who is called Mwalimu -- Swahili for the teacher -- by Tanzanians. He made his comments in an interview while on a recent visit to the United Nations.
A thin, gray-haired man with a ready laugh, Mr. Nyerere has given up his last official position, stepping down in August as chairman of Tanzania's single, ruling party. Five years earlier, he became one of the handful of African leaders to leave office voluntarily, resigning as President, a post he held since 1962, a year after independence from Britain.
In the years that followed, Mr. Nyerere came to be revered throughout Africa as a nationalist who, along with men like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia, brought an end to colonial rule. They served as the first generation of leaders of independent Africa. Pulling Together
He was also a social engineer who brought his own vision of "African socialism" -- he called it "ujamaa," or pulling together -- to his country.
Peasants were regrouped into collective villages; factories and plantations were nationalized; state-run corporations were established; egalitarianism was encouraged; great investments were made in literacy, the accumulation of private wealth was discouraged.
At first, many Western aid donors, particularly in Scandinavia, gave enthusiastic backing to this socialist experiment, pouring an estimated $10 billion into Tanzania over 20 years.
Yet today, as Mr. Nyerere leaves the stage, the country's largely agricultural economy is in ruins, with its 26 million people eking out their living on a per-capita income of slightly more than $200 a year, one of the lowest in the world.
The World Bank reports that Tanzania's economy contracted on average by 0.5 percent a year between 1965 and 1988. It notes a 43 percent decline in average personal consumption since 1973 and reports that "food purchases have moved away from meat, dairy products and vegetables toward cheap starches and beans." A Number of Achievements
To be sure, despite the economic decline, Tanzania can claim some achievements, the work of its gentle and charismatic former leader, an admirer of Rousseau and an intellectual who loved to translate Shakespeare into Swahili.
The country enjoys one of the highest rates of literacy and primary-school enrollment on the continent. It has avoided the civil wars and tribal conflict that plague many other countries. "Tanzanians have more sense of national identity than many other Africans," Mr. Nyerere said.
But while the former President admits some errors, he argues that his inability to translate a relatively educated populace and a stable society into tangible economic progress is largely the fault of an unsympathetic industrial world.
"What would I have changed if I had my time over again?" he mused. "Not much."
Mr. Nyerere said socialism did allow the Tanzanian economy to develop in the 1960's and 70's. "There was growth and wealth distribution," he said, and statistics generally support this view.
What knocked Tanzania off course, he said, was "the hostile international environment" of the 1970's and 80's, including rising oil prices that "absorbed 60 percent of foreign exchange earnings" and falling revenues from the sale of sisal hemp and coffee, major Tanzanian exports.
Sisal, once the raw material of ropes and mats, was increasingly replaced by synthetics, and the international commodity price of coffee plummeted.
"We used to sell our coffee in London for $:3,000 a ton, now we get $:600," he said. "How do you fight that?"
Mr. Nyerere rails against the austerity programs that the West is imposing on developing countries these days through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for loans. As budget deficits are cut in an effort to reduce inflation, he complains that social progress is being reversed and poverty increased as the promised speed-up in economic growth fails to materialize. Not Just in Tanzania
Many of Tanzania's problems are widespread in Africa, where living standards have fallen for a decade. But some countries, like Kenya or the Ivory Coast, partly bucked the trend with the free-enterprise approach that Mr. Nyerere rejects.
Even this was insufficent to shield them from the pervasive recession on the continent. And today, Mr. Nyerere almost gloats at their discomfort. "Houphouet-Boigny is really bitter with the West," he said. "He feels capitalism has betrayed him."
Mr. Nyerere's sucessor as President, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, signed an agreemeent with the International Monetary Fund, something that Mr. Nyerere could not bring himself to do, and in 1987 began an Economic Recovery Program that is slowly reversing many of Mr. Nyerere's cherished achievements. Government spending is being cut, the Tanzanian shilling devalued, price controls lifted and foreign investment encouraged. Modest growth has resumed.
Mr. Nyerere remains skeptical. "We're not earning any more foreign exchange with the World Bank and the I.M.F. running the economy," he said. "In my day, inflation was 28-30 percent a year. Now it's 22 percent. I don't see much success.
"They keep saying you've failed. But what's wrong with urging people to pull together? Did Christianity fail because the world isn't all Christian?"
Wednesday, October 24, 1990
Julius K. Nyerere, who led Tanzania for the first-quarter century of its existence as an independent state, struck an unapologetic note as he said he had no regrets, despite the ramshackle condition in which he leaves his country.
"If I had my time over again, I would do it much the same way," said the 68-year-old founding father who is called Mwalimu -- Swahili for the teacher -- by Tanzanians. He made his comments in an interview while on a recent visit to the United Nations.
A thin, gray-haired man with a ready laugh, Mr. Nyerere has given up his last official position, stepping down in August as chairman of Tanzania's single, ruling party. Five years earlier, he became one of the handful of African leaders to leave office voluntarily, resigning as President, a post he held since 1962, a year after independence from Britain.
In the years that followed, Mr. Nyerere came to be revered throughout Africa as a nationalist who, along with men like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia, brought an end to colonial rule. They served as the first generation of leaders of independent Africa. Pulling Together
He was also a social engineer who brought his own vision of "African socialism" -- he called it "ujamaa," or pulling together -- to his country.
Peasants were regrouped into collective villages; factories and plantations were nationalized; state-run corporations were established; egalitarianism was encouraged; great investments were made in literacy, the accumulation of private wealth was discouraged.
At first, many Western aid donors, particularly in Scandinavia, gave enthusiastic backing to this socialist experiment, pouring an estimated $10 billion into Tanzania over 20 years.
Yet today, as Mr. Nyerere leaves the stage, the country's largely agricultural economy is in ruins, with its 26 million people eking out their living on a per-capita income of slightly more than $200 a year, one of the lowest in the world.
The World Bank reports that Tanzania's economy contracted on average by 0.5 percent a year between 1965 and 1988. It notes a 43 percent decline in average personal consumption since 1973 and reports that "food purchases have moved away from meat, dairy products and vegetables toward cheap starches and beans." A Number of Achievements
To be sure, despite the economic decline, Tanzania can claim some achievements, the work of its gentle and charismatic former leader, an admirer of Rousseau and an intellectual who loved to translate Shakespeare into Swahili.
The country enjoys one of the highest rates of literacy and primary-school enrollment on the continent. It has avoided the civil wars and tribal conflict that plague many other countries. "Tanzanians have more sense of national identity than many other Africans," Mr. Nyerere said.
But while the former President admits some errors, he argues that his inability to translate a relatively educated populace and a stable society into tangible economic progress is largely the fault of an unsympathetic industrial world.
"What would I have changed if I had my time over again?" he mused. "Not much."
Mr. Nyerere said socialism did allow the Tanzanian economy to develop in the 1960's and 70's. "There was growth and wealth distribution," he said, and statistics generally support this view.
What knocked Tanzania off course, he said, was "the hostile international environment" of the 1970's and 80's, including rising oil prices that "absorbed 60 percent of foreign exchange earnings" and falling revenues from the sale of sisal hemp and coffee, major Tanzanian exports.
Sisal, once the raw material of ropes and mats, was increasingly replaced by synthetics, and the international commodity price of coffee plummeted.
"We used to sell our coffee in London for $:3,000 a ton, now we get $:600," he said. "How do you fight that?"
Mr. Nyerere rails against the austerity programs that the West is imposing on developing countries these days through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for loans. As budget deficits are cut in an effort to reduce inflation, he complains that social progress is being reversed and poverty increased as the promised speed-up in economic growth fails to materialize. Not Just in Tanzania
Many of Tanzania's problems are widespread in Africa, where living standards have fallen for a decade. But some countries, like Kenya or the Ivory Coast, partly bucked the trend with the free-enterprise approach that Mr. Nyerere rejects.
Even this was insufficent to shield them from the pervasive recession on the continent. And today, Mr. Nyerere almost gloats at their discomfort. "Houphouet-Boigny is really bitter with the West," he said. "He feels capitalism has betrayed him."
Mr. Nyerere's sucessor as President, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, signed an agreemeent with the International Monetary Fund, something that Mr. Nyerere could not bring himself to do, and in 1987 began an Economic Recovery Program that is slowly reversing many of Mr. Nyerere's cherished achievements. Government spending is being cut, the Tanzanian shilling devalued, price controls lifted and foreign investment encouraged. Modest growth has resumed.
Mr. Nyerere remains skeptical. "We're not earning any more foreign exchange with the World Bank and the I.M.F. running the economy," he said. "In my day, inflation was 28-30 percent a year. Now it's 22 percent. I don't see much success.
"They keep saying you've failed. But what's wrong with urging people to pull together? Did Christianity fail because the world isn't all Christian?"
Monday, October 12, 2009
China Praised For African Links
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has praised the way China does business in Africa, criticising the West for basing relations with the continent on aid.
Huge Chinese investment in African companies and infrastructure is helping Africa develop, Mr Kagame said.
Annual trade between China and Africa is now worth more than $100bn (£63bn).
Chinese companies are active across Africa, but have been criticised by some in the West, who accuse Beijing of failing to promote good governance.
Chinese firms, many of them state-owned, regularly bid for major construction projects at costs which Western firms cannot match.
In addition, Beijing also operates a policy of non-interference in domestic affairs.
That has allowed China to do business in areas of Africa, such as Sudan, where Western firms are constrained by human rights concerns.
Old problems
Speaking to a German newspaper, Mr Kagame - seen in the West as one of Africa's more dynamic leaders - was as critical of the West as he was generous in praise of China.
"The Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies," he told business newspaper Handelsblatt.
"China is investing in infrastructure and building roads," he said, adding that European and American involvement "has not brought Africa forward".
"Western firms have to a large extent polluted Africa and they are still doing it," Mr Kagame said.
"Think of the dumping of nuclear waste in the Ivory Coast or the fact that Somalia is being used as a rubbish bin by European firms."
Although Rwanda received substantial international aid in the wake of the 1994 genocide, which left more than 800,000 dead, Mr Kagame told Handelsblatt that relations based more on trade than aid were now the most useful to Africa.
"I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid," he said.
"There is a need for help - but it should be implemented in such a way as to enable trade and build up companies."
The Rwandan leader also said that high trade tariffs prevented African producers from gaining equitable access to global markets.
"It would help Africa much more if industrialised countries allowed us the same trade rights as they give to each other," Mr Kagame said.
Huge Chinese investment in African companies and infrastructure is helping Africa develop, Mr Kagame said.
Annual trade between China and Africa is now worth more than $100bn (£63bn).
Chinese companies are active across Africa, but have been criticised by some in the West, who accuse Beijing of failing to promote good governance.
Chinese firms, many of them state-owned, regularly bid for major construction projects at costs which Western firms cannot match.
In addition, Beijing also operates a policy of non-interference in domestic affairs.
That has allowed China to do business in areas of Africa, such as Sudan, where Western firms are constrained by human rights concerns.
Old problems
Speaking to a German newspaper, Mr Kagame - seen in the West as one of Africa's more dynamic leaders - was as critical of the West as he was generous in praise of China.
"The Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies," he told business newspaper Handelsblatt.
"China is investing in infrastructure and building roads," he said, adding that European and American involvement "has not brought Africa forward".
"Western firms have to a large extent polluted Africa and they are still doing it," Mr Kagame said.
"Think of the dumping of nuclear waste in the Ivory Coast or the fact that Somalia is being used as a rubbish bin by European firms."
Although Rwanda received substantial international aid in the wake of the 1994 genocide, which left more than 800,000 dead, Mr Kagame told Handelsblatt that relations based more on trade than aid were now the most useful to Africa.
"I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid," he said.
"There is a need for help - but it should be implemented in such a way as to enable trade and build up companies."
The Rwandan leader also said that high trade tariffs prevented African producers from gaining equitable access to global markets.
"It would help Africa much more if industrialised countries allowed us the same trade rights as they give to each other," Mr Kagame said.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Colonialism Blights Africa- Pope
Opening a three-week synod of African bishops, pope Benedict has warned that the developed world continues to export materialism and lack of moral values which he called ''toxic spiritual waste'' to the African continent.
He praised Africa's rich cultural and spiritual treasure, calling them spiritual lungs for the world but the continent was afflicted by an export of the so called ''first world.''
In this sense colonialism, which is over at a political level, has never really come to an end.
The pope went on to denounce religious fundamentalism, which he warned was mixed with political and economical interests.
''These groups do not teach love and respect for freedom, but intolerance and violence'', he said.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Why Millions Of Rural Africans Are Poor
By Vincent Obiro Orute Obunga
Each year, millions of rural Africans find that they do not have enough money to meet their basic needs despite the fact that there are signs of money around them. Sometimes the problem is caused by conditions over which they have no control –illness, old age, discrimination, big business, unions, and economic trends such as inflation; if they could they would vote the culprits out of power.
At other times, however, their own choices are directly responsible –low level of education and career selection are two such areas of choice.
If you take a close look at schools in most African countries, the picture that emerges is that they have become “institutional props for the privileged” yet at the same time they are supposed to be instruments of social mobility.
Clearly, we need to consider alternative in education –alternative content and organization. Above all, we urgently need alternative views on education itself, its nature and possible function in society. Alternative education under the concept of life-long learning is an essential philosophy particularly in this era of rapid scientific and technological information advancement. It ‘s also important to provide ammunition to fight the socio-economic forces, create cultural and demographic awareness in the people and the need to continue learning throughout life. Through this, rural Africans will be equipped and enabled to respond effectively to the changes around them.
According to a recent report of inquiry into education system in Africa, marginalization from the global business due to our low capacity of information use makes us vulnerable to all manner of exploitation by the advanced nations.
This marginalisation occurs not only as a result of our economic poverty but much more so due to our limited knowledge base.
Since the quest for knowledge and its utility are the current measure of human progress across the globe, our survival hangs very much on the extent to which we give due emphasis to education.
Education should be viewed as a process that is not limited to formal or institutional learning only. Rather, it should go beyond the classroom to include cultural and creative activities. The emphasis here in my considered opinion should be to motivate people of all ages and background to continue learning for the sake of acquiring knowledge.
Concerted efforts should also be made to expand and strengthen the campaign for the reduction of illiteracy through the development of reading material couched in local language (i.e. Kiswahili).
Learning materials that would help the youth cope with the society and understand the rest of the world should also be produced in local language (i.e Kiswahili) and made available to them.
The number of teachers for these literacy programmes can be increased through recruitment and in- service training and the use of retired teachers. We have behaved hypocritically by allowing our retired teachers languish in abject poverty instead of utilizing them.
To ensure the efficiency of civic education programmes, there is need for a close collaboration between the government, NGOs and the private sector so that areas of greater need can be identified, prioritized and addressed in a timely manner.
As I had mentioned earlier, school should not be the only place for teaching. And in Africa as we all know, the radio, above all transistor sets, allows the great world news to be instantly known in the most remote corners of the earth. Sometimes when you visit the rural villages of Africa, you hear over the radio “This is Washington DC, “This is BBC London,” “This is Moscow,” and so on. This clearly shows that the entire world is known to the entire world.
Clearly, we need a general civic education. We must foster a more rational scientific outlook toward life. We must understand our true history, our environment –natural and social. We must confront age –old discrimination against certain groups in our society –including women.
Civic education in my opinion should also deal with the evils in society, economic as well as moral.
Civic education should cultivate in the people a sense of self – reflection and the ability to manipulate nature for survival.
And the question we must seek at answer is: What is it that schooling actually does if its education function is laden with archaic administrative philosophies that lead it to rapidly lose touch with the very people it is meant to serve?
Vincent Obiro Orute Obunga is executive director Volunteer network Africa,
a volunteer organization committed to social and economic change across the globe,
Email: orutev@yahoo.com or orute_obiro@hotmail.comor Vincent.orute@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Scholarship Programme for African Students - UK and South Africa
