Three days ago, I sat in my Paris hotel room watching Ivory Coast maul Guinea in the Africa Cup of Nations. How much the world has changed, I thought. This was virtually impossible 20 years ago.
Ten years ago you would get the occasional Africa Cup of Nations game on European screens. Today it’s all over the place. One reason is that the army of African players like Didier Drogba at Chelsea, and Samuel Eto’o at Barcelona FC are so big with their European clubs, the hordes of their European fans will follow them wherever they play. It makes commercial sense, therefore, to air the Africa Cup of Nations tournament.
On Monday, as I thought through this column, a friend arrived from London with a copy of one of my favourite British news magazines, New Statesman, for me. In it the Somali-born prize-winning journalist Rageh Omaar reflects on one of the reasons African celebrity players like (Ghana’s) Michael Essien, and before him George Weah, are so feted on the continent:
“It is about the magic of having heroes. The reason why (football) is so important in Africa is that it shows the millions of young fans, who probably don’t have enough to eat most days, who probably have no shoes on their feet and little education, that, like Samuel Eto’o, they too can make an impact on the world”.
There’s the beautiful game, but there’s far more in what we are seeing in the Africa Cup of Nations in recent years. First, the difference in quality of play today and a few years ago is like day and night. In the 1980s, I used to be appalled to see players running to kick a penalty and missing the ball!
Today, the quality is sometimes breathtaking. A lot of it has to do with the fact that very many of the chaps play their game in the top European clubs, and they bring back home the skills and discipline, and motivation that simply they wouldn’t have acquired if they had remained to play in their wretched domestic leagues.
But this is not all about football. It’s a statement about what happens when you allow free movement of skills, knowledge, and services in the world. The Africa Cup of Nations, and the European leagues, is one of the best advertisements for globalisation and free trade.
Of course the question can, rightly, be asked; if the free movement of goods and services help everybody, how come Drogba’s Ivory Coast has fallen from a once happy to a miserable war-torn basket case; and how come when Weah was at the top of his international stardom, Liberia was wracked by the same forces of death and misery?
It’s because globalisation isn’t non-discriminatory like rain that will fall equally on every farmer’s plantation in the village.
This is partly because it’s not nations that are the primary beneficiaries of globalisation. It’s usually the most innovative and skilled individuals and firms that benefit first. In India, the IT industry is a world leader, and its success is enriching millions more who work in related industries. In Finland, for years Nokia was by far the biggest source of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, and employer. Nokia’s global success, put a lot of money in the pockets of thousands of Finns. Back to Africa, international football has brought fame and fortune first and foremost to its star players who play in Europe and other parts of the world. But it has done more.
Despite what the critics of globalisation say, it’s still given democracy to the few Africans who have exploited it in ways that decades of freedom struggles on the continent haven’t done. An important ingredient of democracy is that it guarantees you security that you will enjoy the fruits of your labour without extortionate taxes by corrupt leaders who won’t put the money to good public use, but steal it instead.
Also, at its best, globalisation is a very transparent system. We all know why Eto’o and Drogba get all the millions they do. We see them score goals, and help win games for their clubs. It’s not an experience that repeats itself in many important aspects of African public life. You don’t know how most African ministers get appointed. Certainly it can’t be for competence.
But it gets worse. You have many African presidents who, once they get into office, we know how they stay there — by stealing votes whenever they hold elections. When Drogba, for all his fame, commits a foul, he gets the whistle. If he plays rough, he gets a yellow card. If he commits a flagrant foul, he gets a red card. And can’t refuse to leave the field. Now try and give an African leader a red card. It will be you, not him, who will be ejected from the ground. On the other hand, international football teaches us the opposite. That even those who are at the top of their game, are still subject to the rules.
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East African (Kenya), by Francis Ayieko - February 6, 2008.
The urgency to restore soil fertility in Africa stems from the fact that more than three-quarters of the farmland in sub-Saharan Africa has been so depleted of the basic nutrients that crops need for survive, leading to reduced crop yields.
The soils are also low in organic matter and have poor water holding capacity. Experts warn that until these conditions are reversed, food production in Africa will remain depressed. They also say that unsustainable land practices are contributing to massive erosion and deforestation.
According to experts, much of Africa’s soils are ancient, derived from granite weathered over millennia. But soil conditions have worsened in recent decades. Driven to meet the food demands of a growing population, African farmers have steadily abandoned traditional practices that restore soil nutrients, such as leaving fields fallow for several years between plantings. It is estimated that continuous cultivation without soil revitalisation causes the loss of eight million tonnes of soil nutrients each year.
Today, there are 95 million hectares of degraded land in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to greatly reduced farmland productivity. In the past, traditional farming practices maintained soil fertility by allowing fields to lie fallow for a few years. But population growth and pressure on land have led to a sharp decline in fallowing. Today, fallowing is practised on less than 25 per cent of land in 29 African countries and is expected to disappear entirely from 20 of those countries in the near future.
On the other hand, few small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are able to use fertilisers to restore soil health — because they either cannot get or afford the appropriate inputs. Today, sub-Saharan Africa uses one-tenth of the fertiliser commonly applied on farms around the world. In addition, there is an art and science to the efficient and environmentally responsible combination of fertilisers, organic inputs and cropping techniques to get a maximum return on investment.
Finding the right combinations requires the best farmer knowledge and technical knowledge. For example, many soils respond poorly to the application of fertilisers or of organic matter alone. They often require rehabilitation with the right combinations of both and appropriate soil management practices. According to agricultural experts, achieving the level of soil health critical to sustainable and adequate food production in Africa requires a variety of activities that will simultaneously improve soil management and land use practices while increasing farmer access to fertilisers and to the knowledge needed for their efficient and environmentally sound use.
Statistics show that during the 2002-2004 farming season, 85 per cent of African farmland, most of it in sub-Saharan Africa, experienced moderate annual losses of at least 30 kilogrammes of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, and 40 per cent of farmlands experienced high losses of more than 60 kilogrammes per hectare. It has also been confirmed that nutrient losses are higher in particular regions. For example, annual losses on farmlands bordering rivers and on the dry savannahs of Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya can be as high as 100 kilogrammes per hectare.
And agriculture lands developed on coastal sediments in Senegal, Gambia, Benin, Somalia, Kenya and Mozambique are losing up to 120 kilogrammes per hectare.
Lifted and Published by Korir, API africanpress@getmail.no source.TheMonitor.UG
