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Africa’s Dark Blot

December 8, 2010 By
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The Black Gold. The End To All Of Our Problems. A New Way To Ensure That Our Societies Are In Tandem With The Middle East States (the Middle East is the New ‘West’, in case you have not checked).

We all pray and hope that this will be true. Kenya sends a couple of Chinese mining firms to the Northern Frontier (a harsh place to be in) to go about drilling for it. Uganda is already on with the exploration in its northern provinces. The newest (hopefully) state in Africa, South Sudan, is waiting for the people to pitch tent there and get on with it. Angola has already gone ahead with it and they are reaping the fruits (and problems) brought about by this not-so-new source of wealth. Nigeria lead the way but the Niger Delta is synonymous with rebels, kidnapped expatriates and cut pipelines more than anything.

From the hope that better things will come across to (crossing our fingers against this) anarchy and all manners of misrule. This seems to be what ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ is afflicted with. North African states, and more specifically Libya, and the Middle East has shown what oil money and more popularly referred to as Arab Money can do to an economy and its peoples. In Qatar, free housing, interest-rate free government loans and other perks are all linked to oil. This is what directly impacts on the people whereas in terms of infrastructure, grand plans are being put up all over.

But what could be the main problem in Africa with regards to oil? A few facts first:

  • Nigeria is OPEC’s largest member in Africa (in terms of exports) and seventh worldwide. It produces 2.05 million barrels of oil per day. It’s total refining 445000 barrels per day.
  • Angola in 2009 hit 1.98 million barrels of oil per day. Angola is challenging Nigeria’s position with regards to oil exports.

Going by the high petroleum prices that are around, it would not be hard to figure out the kind of money and eventual development that these countries would benefit from. But it seems that the locals do not feel the effects of all this wealth. And thus they want a share of the proceeds. They have done this through the formation of rebel groups like Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in Nigeria and the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda in Angola.

The governments are benefitting from the oil since they have formed state companies to help in the marketing of the oil. Government officials, apart from their official salaries, do benefit from the oil but the residents of these areas where oil exploration is happening do not receive anything. Corporations have also been known to engage in high-level corruption with regards to oil. They are also accused of environmental degradation to these areas where they carry on with their business.

Can the government do anything else apart from being spectators in the game of oil, ecosystem and lives?

Images from here and here.

Filed Under: Africa Matters, Chiira Maina, Latest Tagged With: , , , , ,

Purple Flowers

November 18, 2010 By
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Joining high school exposed me to a lot of things that before then had just remained ‘foreign’ concepts or were just far away from my grasp. One of this was trees. Having lived in a residential area with very few trees and most of them being the same, I did not give much thought to trees. High school brought trees into focus. The school was a bit old and had been started by the missionaries who wanted to replicate the surroundings of their motherland thus they ensured that they planted enough trees. Some were labelled with their scientific names but my interest in botany was cut short in my first year.

One of the dominant tree species was the eucalyptus. Dominant because they were close to the entrance of the school and thus everyone knew them. But the one that captivated me was the jacaranda tree (jacaranda mimosfolia). For about nine months in a year, the tree would be just there. For six months out of the nine, it would be leaf-bare. Looking emaciated and almost at the point of death. Then with the advent of Nairobi’s short rains in October, it would spring into life bearing small, pretty, purple flowers by the thousands. The purple would overshadow the green of the tiny leaves. If the trees were planted in a series/row, there would be a purple canopy only cut across by the brown of the branches.

As it would rain, the tree would also start ‘sweating’ and from specific points on its branches, water drops would fall. The October-November period marks the end of both the primary school education and secondary school education in Kenya. In October, the secondary school examination starts and runs for about a month while the primary school examination would run for about a week. The blooming of the jacaranda tree represented a significant period to thousands of candidates; a chance to continue with schooling or not to.

Being that time of the year, Nairobi’s areas that were previously occupied by the British are blooming all over with the purple flowers. Going down Valley Road is where the splendour can be seen. Other residential areas especially Woodley and Milimani estates have this kind of trees and it is just a pure wonder to see the purple flowers covering the ground; a purple carpet of sorts. But with mushrooming development all over Nairobi, these trees face a huge threat. They might soon be replaced by white-walled flats with red-bricked roofs and instead of purple carpets for children to tread on, will be replaced by ugly, grey cabro-paving blocks. Thika, the town that introduced me to the jacaranda tree, though has lots of trees that will hopefully be there for ages to come.

Image from here

Filed Under: Chiira Maina, Latest, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , ,

Mo & Me – A Documentary

November 12, 2010 By
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I can remember the day that I came to learn about terrorists who hijack planes. My parents seemed shocked and they kept throwing a certain name all around. I was really not sure what they were talking about and when my dad told me that Mohamed Amin had died, I thought it must be Idi Amin’s relative. But he further clarified that it was the man with one bionic arm who was a cameraman. I never gave it much thought even though the newspapers and the televisions were talking all about a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane that had crash-landed a few meters off the beach in Comoros.

Mohamed ‘Mo’ Amin had been the unfortunate hero. The one-armed man had tried to take control from the two hijackers who were just young men. Years later, I came to learn that through his pictures in Ethiopia during the drought of 1984-85 had moved the world. The pop stars in America lead by the big stars of back then, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and others had recorded a song that would be a hit and help save thousands of other lives in Ethiopia. And for a very long time that was who Mo Amin would remain to be.

Mohammed 'Mo' Amin

That was until last week when I got movies from my neighbor. There was the disc labeled Mo & Me. When Al-Jazeera had screened it, I never got the chance to watch it. I was not going to waste this moment. Salim Amin, CEO and Managing Director of Africa24 Media and Camerapix, is the famous son of Mo Amin. In this documentary he seeks to know more about the man he called father but would only see him for 3 months in every year. Mo was busy. Salim’s journey takes him from Nairobi where his grandparents had settled during the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala railway line. After the railway line is done, Salim’s grandparents move into neighboring Tanganyika (present day Tanzania Mainland) where Mo is born.

He is an enterprising young man who will go out of his way to help the family in any way that he can. At the age of 11 he buys his very first camera and starts to take pictures around Tanganyika and this is where his talent is noticeable. Mo soon drops out of class and decides to take photography seriously as a career. He is the first person to take pictures of John Gideon Okello when Tito decides to lead a mutiny in Zanzibar. The very first images showing Russian troops training in Zanzibar were captured by Mo. These images handed him three things; a prison sentence, fame as a superb photographer and a reason to leave Tanzania for Kenya where he would set up his first office.

Making Kenya his base allowed Mo to do more than just capture pictures of Nairobi’s life. The world had started seeing Nairobi as the entry-point into East Africa so he could easily land jobs with international media. Marriage for Mo was a problem even though he got married when he was back in Tanzania. It was done secretly since he was getting married to someone from another Islamic background different from his and the parents were not comfortable. It was in Nairobi that he got his only son and heir, Salim Amin.

Salim Amin

Ethiopia defines Mo Amin in two ways, he stood on top of the world as a photography master and he lost an arm. Mo Amin had to trek to one of those places that are quite far so that he could photograph the people of Ethiopia who were dying from the government’s lack of response to their plight. The images from that place brought Africa to the eyes of the world and the largest relief effort was organized. Mo had gone to cover the even of having weapons blasted out of existence and was filming when he lost his right arm. The explosion caught him and his arm had to be amputated at just below the shoulder. An year later, he had been fitted with a bionic arm and he was back to his rogue ways as the cameraman known as Six Cameras Amin.

The Live Aid DVD released by American singers following a broadcast of pictures shot by 'Mo' Amin

This documentary does not glorify Amin as the man who was the first person to interview Idi Amin Dada while exiled in Saudi Arabia. Neither was he the glorious man who took pictures of Idi Amin Dada’s victims after they had been shot by the police. He still is not the man who took one of the last pictures of Emperor Haile Selassie. He was a father who took his son to shoot the Safari Rally. He was the husband to a lonely wife. He was the boss to the people at Camerapix. He was a shrewd businessman. He was the man who went to receive his OBE from Queen Elizabeth in coat-tails and a bowler hat, not with his wife and son on the side but his English girlfriend. The man who came late for his son’s wedding straight from a shoot. It shows both the man and the hero. And I am lucky that I got to watch it on Kenya’s Mashujaa Day (Heroes’ Day) because I believe Mo Amin is one hero.

The documentary was produced in 2005 by Camerapix in collaboration with Al-Jazeera International.

Images from here, here and here.

Click here to download.

Filed Under: African Television, Chiira Maina, Latest, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Blog Action Day 2010: Access to Water

October 15, 2010 By
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Nothing irks someone as opening a tap to find dirty water flowing out. That will most likely mean that you have to wait for some time before you can do whatever you want to do. The only thing that one can do is that they do not have to drink that water or be forced to cook with it. Yet in some of the poorest countries, this is a common sight and the water is not at their convenience at all. It is water that is flowing. Pity those who have to go with plastic containers to scoop it out and use it for their day to day needs.

It has become recognized as the easiest way in which numerous diseases spread dangerous diseases to both children & adults. Access to clean water in slums becomes a major challenge when you are in developing cities and the local authorities are managed. It is even worse in slums where piped water for many remains a dream. Many of these people have been forced to rely on communal water points that become mismanaged within a short time and they are back to square 1 only that they now have a tap. Water flows freely from a broken down pipe and they have to reach out with their containers in order to collect it and get something to use it for their daily uses. Rather compared to the rural areas, the slum areas are worse since lack of running water will mostly mean that sewage is also an issue.

When water comes into contact with sewage, the resulting scenario becomes one of diseases leading to death which will mainly affect young kids. By getting clean running water, this can be eliminated but these water points also require to be managed well. Rural areas are not also escapees from such scenarios only that in such areas the two main burdens are watering for the animals and the great distances walked before once can find clean water.

I had the privilege of living to a downstream area and nearby was a major river that ran into the Indian Ocean. The river was a mighty one and would often flood when it rained to a murky brown colour. At such times, my mother would always warn me against going anywhere that river. It was only much later after I moved to Nairobi that I got to understand why I could not go near the river. The river that gave Nairobi its name was always a blackish colour. It was a river that could have been the envy of all but it had been reduced to a moving garbage dump although with time, it had ground to a halt. Industries had also made the situation very bad indeed by dumping all their chemicals and unused raw materials into the river.

Those who were downstream were the ones who suffered. This is not only a problem that is confined to Nairobi but is also happening to other cities and countries. While in the rural areas, people have to go and get water at the streams and rivers, it is much more likely that they will be picking up a poisonous substance or disease. This can be avoided if only there would be stricter regulation to ensure that industries, especially tertiary ones, are discouraged from dumping waste into rivers. The best thing, even though it would take ages, would be to have piped water to the homes of the residents. This would have been treated and purified at professionally set up water treatment areas.

Fetching water from the rivers also poses some challenges especially in rivers where there are crocodiles. Kenya’s Tana River district is dissected into two by the Tana River that is infested with crocodiles. The number of casualties recorded when women had gone to get water is quite high. It would be quite easy to say that killing such crocodiles is the best thing to do & get rid of the crocodiles but these form part of the ecosystem. Getting piped water will help alleviate some of the problems for these people. When you also consider that some of Africa’s rural areas are hilly, there is the danger of rolling back to the bottom of the valley when carrying water.

It is high time that communities came together and started looking for a solution to this while working with government agencies.

Filed Under: Africa Matters, African Development, Chiira Maina, Latest, Popular posts Tagged With: , , , , ,

Obama’s Speech to the MDGs Summit

October 4, 2010 By
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We keep our promises and honor our commitments. – Barrack Obama.

Such words when said by the leader of a country that is involved in most development activities ongoing especially in the 3rd World countries may seem to be a mockery of the dire situations that exist in those countries. But that is the message that came across when Pres. Obama addressed the United Nations when world leaders had gone for the review of the MDGs in New York.

Development has come about yet the majority of those who are meant to receive it still face issues on other sides. MDGs on education may be on track but what about those who face hunger? The women who die when giving birth? The children who suffer from malnutrition? The five remaining years are quite short and it is only through working together with other countries that will have the MDGs achieved.

The approach that has been taken when tackling the problems that were meant to be resolved by the MDGs was the same and Obama said that development has always been seen in terms of what is expedited and not the returns that are received from it. Development may be hard to implement especially when working with communities who may not see immediate change at all. But that does not mean giving up. New strategies are what are needed to tackle this and in this regards, the entire development agenda of the United States will be overhauled. Focus will be on what is gained on the ground rather than what is spent by the aid agencies.

The main focus of the speech was that development had to come about and those that take the lead will be helped. Giving examples of countries that were changing the way their citizens have better services, Obama said that development has to be sustainable and they will work with partners that want to build their own capacity in providing services for their people. By incorporating the ideas that are being worked on in the providers, they will be able to do so much more since global problems affect us all and it would be imprudent to work on one angle and leave others.

While economic patterns cannot be forced down on the individual countries, some things should be enhanced in order to ensure that development is unhindered. These include;

  1. Entrepreneurship: Making the people in these countries become self-sustainable instead of having to rely on handouts.
  2. Proper governance and democracy: The right structures have to be put in place to ensure that business and development by extension continues.
  3. Free markets: Even with all the efforts put in place, it would be detrimental to have rulesb that block exchange of goods and services between different countries. A better Doha round is what Obama’s administration was looking at.
  4. Mutual Accountability and Transparency: Corruption must be eradicated and this should not only apply to the governments of the countries that the USA is willing to work with but also on the US itself and the corporations that work in such countries.
  5. Building on Talent: By working on the bottom, change can be moved all across the board and they will strive to work with women, daughters and the youth as a whole.

A final plea was to the other donor nations to ensure that they uphold to the same values that they ask of the countries that they are helping. Development projects that are not working would face the axe and those that were, would be enhanced. Governments, aid agencies, NGOs and the private sector would be best if they worked in areas that they were good at to ensure that there is efficiency and also put an end to the duplication of efforts. Development should be sustainable and that through the efforts of all, they could work.

This is what reads like the perfect ambitious way of doing things but it seems like it is the way to go especially with the out-of-the-box thinking that has been adopted by Obama. And as he says, development should not be about outflows but whether lives are changed and ensures that future generations have the security against falling back to the problem that has just been solved.

Wordle of Words Used in Obama's Speech

Thanks to @RafikiKenya for providing the actual speech and the Wordle used above.

Filed Under: African Development, Chiira Maina, Latest Tagged With: , , , ,

Food Clashes in Mozambique

September 7, 2010 By
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It caught me off guard. Actually several tweets alerted me as to what was happening in Mozambique but I had to check out several links before I could get a full idea as to what was happening. The situation was simply out of control in Mozambique and the people had decided to revolt following a 30% increase in food prices especially bread which is their staple food. Even I would have done the same thing. A 30% increase is quite bad for any economy’s residents. Thus I do not find anything strange in the fact that Mozambicans decided that the streets would be a better place to show their anger.

This comes barely two years after more riots following the increase in global food prices. All of these riots have left people dead even though they are all seeking the one basic need we cannot do without; food. While the international media picked it up as a sob-sob story, they are expected to do that, one would have to look at the genesis of the problem to realise how deep this all goes. Mozambique’s imports to exports ratio currently stands at 2:1 i.e. for every tonne they export, they have to import two tonnes. This may be a significant improvement from the 4:1 that they had a few years after independence but still quite low.

That might sound a bit confusing but as with most African economies, Mozambique’s main economic mainstay is agriculture although fishing is said to be largest single export particularly prawns. All the other economic sectors declined after the exit of the Portuguese in 1975. Mining, manufacturing and tourism were the worst hit. Well, guerilla warfare would have done that to any economy. The major issue is that Mozambique’s took a bit of a longer time to recover.

Due to all of this, Mozambique has been ranked among the poorest nations on earth and among the least developed nations. With agriculture, things have not been made any easier with the presence of the minefields that are still being de-mined. This means that the arable land that is available is quite low compared to the total land area. Throwing in the fact that most African economies are dependent on cash crops to cater for the foreign exchange bit leaves some bit of food shortage withing the country. Cashews and cotton are seen to be the country’s major exports from the agricultural sector. Both as cash crops require processing that is done outside the country rather than within. Malawi’s wheat production is just enough to cover 5% of the country’s needs.

Thus when the world wheat prices increased, Mozambique which mostly imports from the Russia and Eastern Europe, was badly hit. This lead to an increase in the food prices and although South Africa is nearby to them, the soaring rand value has not helped matters either for the former Portugal colony. In neighbouring Malawi, maize production has been doing well. Popular story has it that once Bingu wa Mutharika took over, the first thing he did was to create a system whereby farmers would receive maize seed from the government, plant it and then repay after the crops were matured. This is the same system that some of the NGOs and aid agencies use but now the government would be charging just enough to cater for the cost of the seeds.

The agencies tried to discourage this but within years, Malawi was self sufficient in terms of food production and could even export the excess maize. Malawi, once a basket case, is now the holder of the food basket in Southern Africa in terms of food production. These are two countries that have undergone nearly the same agricultural woes yet one remains stronger than the other in terms of food production and also food security.

Two questions arise out of this.

  1. Are African leaders doing enough to ensure their fellow citizens’ food security?
  2. Is it time that we as Africans made a return back to our traditional food patterns?

Malawi, through Mutharika’s ideas, has managed to transform the small country into a food producer rather than just a consumer. Although Mozambique may be suffering from the effects of the  guerilla warfare, it is high time that they focused more on production of food.

Food security, as has been seen in many other African countries, is of vital importance as compared to the foreign exchange earned and then lost in the process of export of cash crops and re-importing them. Once the basics, food security, have been secured, the rest will be easier.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. –Virginia Woolf

Images from here and here

Filed Under: Africa Matters, African Food, Chiira Maina Tagged With: , , , , ,

To Prosecute Bashir in Kenya or Not To

September 1, 2010 By
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August 27th 2010 will mark a great day in the minds of all Kenyans and probably most Africans. Well to the international human rights community, the international media and the International Criminal Court, it will be a dark moment. To Africans, it will be great seeing that a pure success story had come to light. Kenya, once termed as East Africa’s peace haven, had just erupted into turmoil at the blink of an eyelid. That was in 2007/2008. Now, they had gone to the polls again and overwhelmingly voted in favor of the new constitution.

The first constitution to have come from an entire internal process. Not something that had been carried over fromn Europe and imposed upon the people. This was a document achieved through local efforts even though some will say it is for the people but not by the people. It was such a relief seeing that the New Africa was coming of age. Of course, the constitution had to be implemented in front of the people and the whole world too.

Thus August 27th would be the day to implement it. Celebrations had to be planned and as is the custom, leaders from the entire East African region would be invited. Jakaya Kikwete had suffered a minor accident after falling on the dais while campaigning so he could not attend. What would make it curious is to who was invited; Rwanda’s tall and lanky president Paul Kagame, Kenya’s immediate neighbour Uganda’s president was invited and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was there. President Omar el Bashir was also invited. Shockingly upon many people, Comoros’ president Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi was also there.

Apart from the Comoros president, the other three Heads of States invited are all under suspicions of human rights violations. Bashir has even been indicted by the ICC against the killings in Darfur. Human rights officials and groups were incensed that he would be allowed to travel to Kenya. Funny thing to note is that Kenya’s documents also lie at the table of ICC Chief Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo over the 2007 Post-Election Violence.

Protesters were all over Nairobi’s Central Business District protesting against Bashir’s presence but were dispersed within minutes. Kagame and Museveni may not have that much of a public profile with regards to any crimes but it was felt that the government of Kenya were in bad taste to invite Bashir and Kagame. International media also noted that there was a ceremony in Kenya but their eyes were trained on Omar el Bashir. Most of the coverage was on his

Bashir- President of Sudan

presence.

Few questions arise out of this. Was the Kenyan government in good taste when they invited Bashir as a “Head of State”, as Kenya’s Foreign Minister said it? Would it have been better if they had invited some of Africa’s fledgling democracies like Somalia, Somaliland and Burundi? Was the international media justified in the way they covered the event? Is the African Union justified in their shielding of Bashir despite his status at the ICC? If you were the President of Kenya and you invited Bashir, would you have had Bashir arrested even though your country is a signatory to both the ICC and African Union, which says that no African Head of State (read Bashir) would be prosecuted by the ICC?

Photo- courtsey of Wikipedia

Filed Under: Africa Matters, Chiira Maina, Latest Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Africa and Technology

August 21, 2010 By
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The last thing that most people would never mind saying and not wince, is that Africa lags behind the rest of the world technologically. This is to say that even out of the un-habited continents, Africa pales in comparison. You would be pressed hard to argue against that except to say that Africa has the fastest growing technological spaces across the world. The numbers show it but they all say one thing that Africa still has a long way to go before they can get to the likes of the Americas and Asia. These are continents that have really large technology spaces. In terms of Internet access, Africa lags far behind and Google were able to show this in the following map depending on the hits that Google was able to achieve from every region. (The map is a bit outdated).

But over the past few years, there has been an exponential growth in technology in Africa. There is no arguing that mobile telephony has enabled that and according to Business Week, Nigeria had half a million telephone line in 2001 and by 2007 it was estimated that there were more than 30 million subscribers. The story could be replicated almost anywhere else in Africa. Mobile telephony would serve as the very first option of the residents getting access to the outside world. And with several changes in the mobile telephony sector, mobile money has come of age.

When Vodafone, one of the largest mobile telephony companies in the world, wanted to launch a new service on mobile telephony, they reached to their Kenyan subsidiary to test it. Safaricom, in Kenya, was able to show the difference that mobile money could make. All that one needed was a working phone and the network provider’s coverage. Within months, M-PESA was making a total difference to the largely un-banked Kenyan population. And year after year, the service receives incredible growth in subscribers. Other phone networks have introduced similar services and this can only be said to have been enabled by technology.

ICT penetration rates in Africa

While talking about technology, most people would be better off referring to hardware and not software. One would be hard-pressed to talk of any notable company that has been producing computers and it is an Africa country. Even the major computer manufacturers do not outsource to Africa at all. In the software industry, it is a different ball game. Day after day, young university graduates (and some drop-outs) will be hunched over laptops as they type out code to make applications. A good number of them are involved in coding for mobile phones.

Two things are responsible for this;

  • Mobile telephony is the current and the future of Africa
  • Open-user mobile operating systems

Most businesses are now shifting towards mobile telephony payment systems and this has encouraged developers to sit down and provide applications that are independent of the network providers. Other areas also require them especially healthcare and thus systems that are simple to use are coming up day after day. The only problem that hinders all this is the uptake of all this by the industries that they have been developed for.

It would be quite hard to talk of technology and Africa and not talk about Ushahidi. This is the crisis mapping solution that has been used in nearly all the continents. It is a typical showcase of what complex problems can be helped by simple solutions. It also runs alongside the SMS solutions everywhere it is deployed. The ease with which it has been deployed shows how much African solutions need not be unique to the African problems.

One of the upcoming features in Africa’s tech-space apart from the tech conferences and talks, are the incubation spaces that are coming up. Senegal, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Cameroon are leading in respect to getting these spaces although they can be set up anywhere as long as funding is available. These are spaces that will be able to help the African tech-preneurs be able to set-up and also help them with all the aspects of the business that they hope to come up with. With the funding, they are required to pay a minimal amount of the profits that they get so that funding is always available for the next generation of developers. It would be great to see whether the next big app will be as a result of these incubator spaces.

Africa may have just landed in the tech-scene, but it has started making ripples felt throughout.

Images from here.

Filed Under: African Development, Chiira Maina, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Have The Youth Lost Their African Identity?

August 19, 2010 By
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Growing up in the era when the television had invaded the Kenyan home in quite a huge manner, meant that I was exposed to quite a great deal of Western programming that brought with it its own fair share of the good and the bad. Most of my English was polished up from such programs rather than in class although I got to learn some of the cuss vocabulary from the TV. And it would be a number of times that I would always get to hear my mum telling me that such and such programs were inappropriate although she would later stay on to watch The Bold and The Beautiful a show that was a bit on the “raunchy” side, back then. Then came my teenage years and I started to watch music videos that she would most often than not dismiss as trash TV.

Internet came to me when I was already a bit older and she had started receding into the older generation that had no clue as to what the Internet was. I was able to do all those things that she would never ever know about and also never stop me. At this stage, I started feeling like some of my morals were eroding yet I felt it perfectly ok to continue watching and “learning” the ways of the outside world. I also got culturally alienated from all the stuff I had grown up seeing and had now moved on to another world that was completely different from what I had grown up knowing

This is true of many of the African young men and women who grew up at about the same time that I did. Western culture was what we felt was good and it was actually glorified all around us. Anyone who had any inkling of African culture, either in their dressing, mannerisms or even language was despised. But over the years, we have come to learn that all that is Western is not good at all.

Still the question remains, have the youth lost their African identity? I would say yes but then this also begets another question; what is really an African identity? Is it the ability to speak your mother tongue fluently? Dance to the beats from your particular community? Wear the clothing that will have you branded as an African? Maybe and maybe not.

I believe that the African identity comes from what one believes in and what one practices. There are the basic values that we all live with and there is what most are associated with an African and they do not include the negative ones. Things like sharing and caring would come a bit more natural to an African as they have been taught such ever since their childhood days. Such are the mundane stuff that in the normal world we overlook and are most likely not going to lend a helping hand to anyone out there that really requires a hand. We will mostly dismiss them and say that they are just faking it. But in the past it would have been unconceivable to do such a thing especially when it was one of your elders.

funeral procession Antisarabe Madagascar

My mother tells me that when she was growing up, any misdeed seen by anyone older than you are, was liable for punishment by that person and he would later report you to your parents for more punishment. Nowadays, it is even illegal to cane children in Kenyan schools. Yet such canings are what made me become who I am. Thus the generation that comes thereafter will be totally ill-mannered and up to any truancy. Ok, we had a few isolated cases of beatings that bordered on the verge of broken limbs and hospitalizations, but we all turned out pretty okay.

It is even funny when am on a night out and I see kids who should be in high school taking the same drink that am taking. They could be young faced but that is an exception that we are about to overlook. I shudder to think of what would happen if at any time my parents were to find out that I had tasted alcohol out of my own free will at quite an early stage. In the past, alcohol was only reserved for the old men of the village and they would only drink it when they were gathered somewhere and they had something to do. Plus, they would only drink it after they were done with their business of the day. Nowadays, we have the youth drinking at anytime of the day under the guise that life is short. Are they not making it even shorter with all that drinking?

But the problem of lost African identities could only be overcome if we were to show children what is supposed to be done at anytime. That even goes back to the elders who should take their time off and show the younger ones what is supposed to be done at whatever time. Image is another thing that we should take into account. By telling the youth that to be African means you adhere to certain values, we would have stepped into a brighter future.

Filed Under: African Culture, Chiira Maina Tagged With: , , , ,

Kenya decide (d)s part 2

August 9, 2010 By
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As the voting day approached, rallies got quite emotional and Kenyans were as usual, in a jovial mood. The main question that hung around their heads was what the outcome of the referendum would bring. A day before voting started; most people had rushed to the supermarkets and started buying stuff in an effort to pack them in the house in case of anything. Supermarket shelves were empty of gas, dairy and bakery products from as early as 8.00pm. Most slept with one major question above their heads; will tomorrow prove to be like 31st December 2007?

The morning of August 4th would see a lot of people ready to go and cast their ballots for/or against the draft constitution. The queues had started forming quite early and everyone was in high spirits. It was high time that we would finally know the fate of the country. On social media, Kenyans were upbeat especially on Twitter where the #KenyansOnTwitter were using the hash tag  #KenyaDecides to explain to the rest of the world how they would be voting. Media stations were on high alert with each one of them trying to outdo the other in giving the live updates.

Then the situation started coming through in nits full picture with reports that voting was going on well. Pictures and live video feeds helped to put everything into perspective as each and every person rushed to vote. The best part of it was people showing their pinkies which had been shaded purple or the peace sign after the ink had been applied between fingers. Everyone was ecstatic that they had voted and those who did early were encouraging others to go out there and vote. In Kisumu, reports say that residents were woken up at about 4 o’clock in the morning by youth blowing whistles and vuvuzelas asking them to go and vote. Polling stations had long queues but it all depended on the surname that was used and in the region that you were in. The first voter cast their ballot at minutes past 6 before they celebrated that they were part of making history.

Streets in Nairobi’s CBD were mostly empty apart from the voters whose polling stations were there and the local media whose offices were located in the same area. No results would be relayed until the end of the day so there was some bit of tension. Voting would continue until 5 o’clock in the evening and the first batch of results would be ready by 6 0’clock the same evening.

A defining moment of this election was that prisoners would also have the chance to express their wish through the poll a right they had been denied before. This came about after a case filed in the High Court of Kenya asking that prisoners also be allowed to vote. It was quite controversial since the voter registration had already been closed when the judge passed the ruling. Calm was evident in the prisons although a minor number of prisoners voted the key reason being that the time period between the voting and the registration meant that some of the prisoners had been long since released.

There were reports that some ballot boxes had errors in that they lacked one choice on them or that the colour that was used was not what they had expected. Names missing from the voting registers was also another big issue and several polling stations experienced this. One of the returning officers in a certain polling station located to the arid north of Nairobi had died after a long illness and the electoral body chairman took his time to explain this to the country via a live briefing. A boat, while ferrying ballot papers, had also capsized in one of Kenya’s major river. No casualties were reported at all and more ballot papers were airlifted to the area by a chopper.

When the results started trickling in, it was out rightly clear that the YES team would clear this thing. The ratio of YES to NO votes was in the range of 2:1. It was a race for votes and this was the final stretch. There was no change at all in the voting distribution all through the night and even the following day when the YES camp lead by the Higher Education minister threw in the towel even before the end of the tallying.  The tallying this time round was made electronically with updates coming in after every one hour from the National Tallying centre. At one point even the database could not hold up to the trickling in of the results and they had to somehow take a break from all the tallying. The results were finally announced on Friday with the YES team winning by about 67 percent of the total votes cast. The main thing about all of the process was that the electoral body chairperson was what would qualify to be called a youth and he had shown what can be done when the youth are given a chance to prove themselves.

In spite of this, the voter turnout was a bit low compared to the total registered voters with only 9million voters turning up instead of the more than 12.5 million people who were expected. And considering that Kenya has a population of about 40 million people, it is indeed a quite low figure. Riding on the fact that Kenya serves as the bureau headquarters for some major international media networks, serving the East and central Africa region, it was not a surprise to find out that international media would be covering the election. They had pitched camp in various Kenyan towns while booking themselves into nice hotels and ensuring that they had a vantage point. They wanted drama which Kenya showed that it was beyond all that and never provided them with anything at all. How could a country that was in the spotlight after the 2007 elections fail to have any drama at all? How are we going to explain to management that we have been unable to bring another fail story from an African democracy? Did we really get duped by having come out into Africa only to cover an event that was not about happen? Those are some of the questions that they might have asked themselves seeing that they could only say that democracy had come of age in Kenya after the peaceful voting experience. One of the international media houses was also quoted as saying that this was Kenya’s first peaceful voting experience. A minor disappointment and now we can only wait for the implementation of the new set of laws.

Filed Under: African Politics, Chiira Maina Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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