Kenya: Colourful lions for Nairobi’s streets to fight extinction – But these lions are unlikely to be dangerous, unless of course a child falls off one when playing on its back.

 

Nairobi (Kenya) – Lions are about to be let loose in Nairobi. Fifty of them are to stalk the streets of the city centre and the major suburbs — prowling the highways and byways, lurking outside shops and lying in wait in the malls. But these lions are unlikely to be dangerous, unless of course a child falls off one when playing on its back.

All of them are to be made of resin and each will be brightly painted by artists — colourful street sculpture aimed at raising awareness of the fate awaiting the king of the beasts.

And that fate is extinction. Twenty years ago there were 200,00 lions in Africa. Now there are only from 25,000 to 30,000 on the entire continent, of which only an estimated 2,100 are in Kenya.

Their decline has many causes, prominent among them being their slaughter by herdsmen anxious to protect their cattle. And it was cattle that gave the charity Born Free the idea of placing full size painted sculptures of lions throughout Nairobi.

They will follow, appropriately enough, in the hoofprints of the full size resin cows that grazed the streets of London, Manchester and Zurich in a popular campaign of the 1990s. And the elephants that trumpeted their way through Norwich in the UK, drawing pubic attention to their falling numbers. And the sheep that flocked the squares of Liverpool.

Yes, painted animals are the new pin badges that support a favourite cause — and now Nairobi is taking its place on the world stage alongside these other major cities.

Lions charity Born Free was started by actress Virginia McKenna, who played Joy Adamson in the film about Elsa the lioness, raised with her husband George as part of their family at Meru National Park. The part of George was taken by actor Bill Travers, who will help to launch the campaign to be called, rather wittily, Pride of Kenya, in Nairobi on June 17. And Virginia McKenna will come to Kenya on November 4 to help auction off the lions to raise more money for her charity.

Sites for the lions have not yet been finalised but the City Council is said to be “very responsive,” as enthusiastic about this idea as it was about the plan by artist Maryann Muthoni to paint the city’s litter bins. Places where Born Free hopes to place their lions — each one securely bolted down onto a concrete plinth — include the Aga Khan Walk, Mama Ngina Street, Freedom Corner, and shopping malls including the Sarit Centre.

Each lion will be in the same standing pose; the fun will be in making each one different — and that is down to the individual skill of the artists the sponsors choose.

The original model for the lions is only three inches high. It was made by Briton Chris Wilkinson whose company Wild in Art specialises in organising events to promote wildlife and in using animals in education and conservation projects. Wilkinson, 63, has worked with the World Wildlife Fund as well as Born Free and his next project will be similar to Pride of Kenya, but aimed at saving polar bears. A television designer, he has worked with Robbie Coltrane on Cracker about a criminal psychiatrist, and with the late Jeremy Brett in the acclaimed series of Sherlock Holmes stories.

After making the model lion he gave it to Kenyan artist Gakunju Kaigwa, who has scaled it up to lifesize, using a polystyrene block finished with plaster. Kaigwa, 51 — perhaps best known for his sculpture of a diving woman in the Westlands mall — then made several moulds from the lion and, as you read this, is casting the 50 full-size lions in resin. They should be ready next week.

The artists will have only one restriction in decorating or painting their lion… no company logo, name or slogans will be allowed, no matter how big the sponsor. Whether such a restriction will deter potential supporters remains to be seen but it will be interesting to note how they get around it — company colours, perhaps? The deep red of KQ or the acid green of Safaricom? Born Free is hoping each lion will find a sponsor at Ksh200,000 each.

Alice Owen, the Kenya manager of Born Free commented: “Lions are at the top of the Big Five and if we continue to lose our lions at the rate of five per cent per year, we are not only losing our heritage but also dealing a body blow to our tourist industry, which employs 19 per cent of Kenyans.”

But Kaigwa put it differently: “I was shocked when I found out there were only 2,100 lions left in Kenya. It’s crucial people are made aware of that. It’s our problem. We have to own it. Lions don’t belong to tourists, they belong to us. It’s up to all of us to do something to save them.”

source.The East African (Kenya)

Rwanda: Time to deal with sugar daddies and mummies (editorial) – their sexual behaviour has left our little ones more vulnerable to diseases

 

Kigali (Rwanda) — Myths surrounding sexual relationships and HIV/AIDS have left our little ones more vulnerable to the disease. One such myth is that if you have sexual intercourse with a virgin then you will automatically be cured of the virus. Utter crap this is. However, there is a second group of people who are just reckless with the lives of teenagers, those popularly known as ’sugar’ daddies or mama’s.

They snatch from the cradle without blinking an eye, before you know it off they go with youngsters old enough to be their grand-children. The ’sugar’ comes in the goodies the youngsters are showered with, from cell-phones, clothes, you name it some even buy cars.

These uncaring individuals feel safer with vulnerable teens for many reasons, they can control them, but more importantly they know these innocent souls have not been exposed to any of the deadly viruses. Some have politely dubbed this form of child abuse, cross generation sex.

The intervention by the Ministry of Youth, is therefore timely, in dealing with this societal scourge, through the campaign dubbed : ‘Sinigurisha’ (I am not for sale).

The timely campaign launched over the weekend seeks to raise awareness among the youth on the dangers of sexual relations with older people.

This is against a back-ground of damning statistics released by the National Commission for the Fight Against Aids (CNLS), that girls aged 20-24 are five times more likely to be infected with HIV than boys of the same age.

Clearly indicating a gender skewed pattern which works against girls as they seem more vulnerable than their male counterparts; a reflection of the status the girl child holds.

This also calls for targeted awareness raising amongst ignorant parents, who at times see it as a blessing when their girl children date older men who pamper them with gifts.

They have to ask themselves at what cost? These parents should be aware that they are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, with their children’s lives.

Such parents should be exposed, including the cradle snatchers, who are everywhere around us by the way. A hotline should be established to report car registration numbers, etc with these creepy individuals being brought to book.

For now it is Kudos, to the Youth Ministry and partners for taking this campaign heads on.

source.The New Times (Rwanda)

Nigeria: Nigerian runs for EU seat – The Nigeria-born candidate is one of only a handful of non-native Czechs to run in the EU parliamentary election June 5 and 6

 

Lagos (Nigeria) — Raymond Asuquo hopes to provide greater representation for minorities in the Czech Republic if he wins a seat in the European Parliament (EP) this year. The Nigeria-born candidate is one of only a handful of non-native Czechs to run in the EU parliamentary election June 5 and 6, and he says he hopes to encourage other minorities “to rise up and take their fate into their hands.”

“I would like my candidacy to mean that the minorities in the Czech Republic [have] a lot to contribute to the development of the country where they live,” Asuquo said. “If eventually I am elected into the European Parliament, I would like to fight for minority rights, equal chances and opportunities, and shared responsibilities.”

Asuquo, who is running as a candidate of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) from his home in B?eclav, south Moravia, is among a tiny population of Nigerians in the country. The Czech Statistical Office records only around 380 Nigerians living throughout the country. Small as their numbers are, there are signs the Nigerian population is seeking greater visibility and a more active role within Czech society.

Besides Asuquo’s campaign, the Nigerian community is now establishing a grass-roots organization called the Association of Nigerians in Czech, which aims to help integrate newcomers into the greater Czech society and to lobby for the return of a Nigerian Embassy.

The Czech Republic has not housed a Nigerian Embassy since its consul Michael Lekara Wayid was shot dead in February 2003. A local pensioner, Ji?í Pasovsk?, was convicted for the murder, which was reportedly motivated by the loss of his life savings in a financial scam by a Nigerian group.

“One of the things we want to do is to brand Nigeria the way it truly is,” said Prague resident Michael Olayemi Olawepo, who is running for presidency of the new association.

Olawepo, who came to the country as an information technology student eight years ago, said there is a wide spectrum of Nigerians living in the Czech Republic – those who study and work legally as well as illegal immigrants. All could benefit from supporting one another and having a collective voice, he said.

“Some [illegal immigrants] are actually graduates. They get here and they are not properly integrated,” Olawepo said, noting that, contrary to the statistical office’s data, the association anticipates a membership of more than 2,000 Nigerians in the Czech Republic. “If we have a community in which we can engage members irrespective of the category they come from, we will be able to help them, either through mentoring or through referring them to programs through seminars and so on.”

Asuquo’s EP candidacy may be seen as an inspiration for Nigerians and other immigrants to become more involved in the country where they now live, Olawepo said, adding that it also indicates the Czech Republic is becoming more receptive to minorities.

“It means [the Czech Republic] has actually gone a long way. It says a lot, but we’d like to see more,” he said. “We’d like to see minorities in the Czech police and the army, in the public services and so on.”

According to Asuquo, native Czechs have reacted positively so far to his campaign, and are accepting of foreigners in general. “The fact that many immigrants including Nigerians and West Africans are coming to Czech Republic shows that the Czech Republic is receptive to foreigners,” he said. “Any country aspiring to make money from tourism cannot afford not to be hospitable to foreigners, whether they are Africans or Asians.”

Asuquo came to the Czech Republic in 1984 at the age of 27 on a scholarship for the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology. He became a Czech citizen in 2002, and is the CEO and director of business development for mineral supplier Zeopol Ltd.

Asuquo said engaging in politics is nothing new for him; he has been involved in the local politics of B?eclav ever since he joined the ODS in 2001 and ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for the EP in 2004.

In interviews with the Czech press, he has expressed that running for the EP is a way of repaying the country for the opportunities it has provided him. “With my knowledge, experiences and exposure, I want to contribute to the development of the Czech Republic within the European Union,” he said.

Within the Nigerian community, reaction to Asuquo’s candidacy is mixed, and Asuquo himself acknowledges that some Nigerians and other Africans whom he has approached have received the news of his campaign with reserved neutrality.

Prague Internet café owner Daniel Bamidele Esan, 37, of Nigeria said he was unsure about the candidate because he did not know enough about him. “It might be good; it might be bad,” he said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

However, Maxim, 37, who declined to give his full name, said he was thrilled to hear a fellow Nigerian was running for such a high-profile position. “Wow, that would be good,” he said. “I believe if we can have a Nigerian member of the European Parliament, it would be a privilege.”

Olawepo said that, regardless of the outcome of Asuquo’s campaign, the fact that he is running is a promising sign. According to the statistical office, other non-natives running for a Czech seat in the EP include two candidates from Slovakia, one from Italy and one from France.

“I think we’re in the age that everyone feels that, at this moment, if you really try, then anything is possible,” Olawepo said. “I’m not saying it’s going to work or not, and I’m not saying that every minority who aspires for a position has something to offer. But why not try?”

source.This Day (NIgeria)

Tanzania: Obama and Kikwete meet in oval office on Africa’s Conflicts – Kikwete has no influence in the African continent

 

Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)/Washington DC (USA) – President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania became the first African head of state to visit the Obama White House Thursday, where he discussed issues including Africa’s most pressing conflicts with President Barack Obama.

According to a White House readout on the meeting, the presidents “had a valuable discussion on a range of issues” and “exchanged views on approaches to enhancing the U.S.–Tanzanian partnership, improving development policy in the fields of health, education, and agriculture, and working with other partners in the region to solve some of the most pressing conflicts on the African continent.”

A Swahili-language report posted to a popular Tanzanian blog hosted by journalist Issa Michuzi said Kikwete and Obama had “debated some of the African continent’s biggest challenges, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, Somalia and the current political situation in Kenya.”

Ongoing tension between mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar was also raised, the report said. Kikwete had “explained to President Obama… the enthusiasm his government has for reconciliation of political issues with Zanzibar.” Recent media reports have suggested that Zanzibar might wish to split from the mainland if oil is discovered offshore.

Michuzi’s blog report added: “President Obama… praised President Kikwete for his leadership in improving government education, and assured him that all the aid for building infrastructure from the [U.S.] Millennium Challenge Account will speed things along, and that many projects are already under construction.”

Kikwete also met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She was among a range of Obama administration officials who sat in on the Oval Office meeting, according to the Swahili news report.

Others included Director of the White House’s National Economic Council Lawrence Summers, National Security Advisor James Jones and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, who was a teacher at the Malangali School in Iringa, Tanzania, in his youth. Carson was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1965 to 1968.

Tanzanians responded to the White House meeting with cautious optimism.

According to a report in the Tanzanian English-language daily, The Citizen, civil society activist Moses Kulaba said he was concerned with “our president’s globe trotting,” citing that words exchanged abroad often translate to little change back home.

“We need to assess that all these expensive overseas trips make economic sense to our country. I hope the President uses the opportunity to make it clear on what Tanzania wants to trade better,” he said.

Nevertheless, the executive director of the Tanzania Investment Center, Emmanuel Ole Naiko, said Kikwete and Obama’s meeting could boost investor confidence: “Their meeting is the best news in these times. Tanzania stands to gain from investors who often take such gestures seriously.

“The U.S. was usually last among the top 10 investors locally but since the rise in relations since the [George W.] Bush times, the country is today in fourth position in terms of foreign investment here,” he told The Citizen.

Earlier in the week, President Kikwete visited California’s Silicon Valley, where he met with executives at technology giants Cisco, IBM and Google. The three companies “agreed to help” Tanzania, the government-owned Daily News reported.

The newspaper said that at Cisco, Kikwete discussed the “various steps Tanzania was taking in embracing ICT fully, including that of the laying of a fibre-optic [cable] and the establishment of an IT college at the University of Dodoma.”

At Google, he discussed how the government could work with the company to “accelerate development and promote efficiency.” And IBM Vice President Dr. Mark Dean “assured President Kikwete that the century-old company would continue assisting Tanzania in ICT, especially the proposed IT college at the University of Dodoma.”

Kikwete’s meetings with technology companies come just a month before the expected landing date for Seacom, the first of three undersea fiber optic cables which will connect East Africa with Europe.

In an interview last year, Seacom’s CEO Brian Herlihy told AllAfrica that Seacom “will provide free Internet access to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.”

Kikwete also visited Stanford University in Palo Alto, where he discussed access to clean drinking water in Tanzania.

On Wednesday, Kikwete received an award from Doctors for Africa in Los Angeles for his efforts to improve health on the continent, and for steering his government toward increasing the country’s health budget to 11 percent.

According to the Swahili-language report, Kikwete will spend the rest of his visit to the U.S. visiting international organizations and international financial institutions.

source.allAfrica.com

Africa: Should aid come to an end? (Book review) – Aid breeds corruption in African countries

 

‘Stars come and go,’ said William Goldman in Adventures in the Screen Trade. And Goldman was right. Lately in the African literary and development circle, Dambisa Moyo with her new book Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa, has become one such a ’star’. The book, not to my surprise, has received a very warm welcome within the western academic circuit that is usually unreceptive to African intellectual contributions.

For instance, one Oxford University don (Moyo’s former tutor both at Oxford and Harvard) reviewing for the Independent wrote: ‘Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam. Here is an African woman, articulate, smart, glamorous, delivering a message of brazen political incorrectness: “Cut aid to Africa”‘.

Another well-placed British reviewer continues the flattery: ‘Moyo cannot be dismissed as a crank. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she heads the Africa strategy of a major bank. Nor can she be dismissed as a renegade who has rejected her roots. She is deeply wounded by the lack of development in Zambia, her home country’.

Michela Wrong, (a former FT reporter) whose recent book-launch I attended at SOAS, also thinks Moyo is right. Her book It’s Our Turn to Eat: the story of a Kenyan Whistleblower is based on narratives of her friend John Githongo, the former Kenyan anti-corruption tsar who sought sanctuary in Britain in 2005 after uncovering high-level corruption in the post-Moi regime. Since its publication, Kenyan bookshops have refused to stock or distribute it, citing fears of persecution and prosecution by the incumbent Kibaki administration.

Reviewing for The Spectator (a right-wing publication) Wrong said: ‘The assumption that foreign aid is an unalloyed good runs so deep in the guilt-ridden, post-colonial West, people are often shocked to discover that many Africans, far from showing appropriate gratitude or begging for more, regard these contributions with both distrust and suspicion’. Concluding: ‘No wonder this book is causing a stir’.

But should Moyo be branded a star simply for causing a stir? Having read her submission, forgive me, I think not.

Truth, reality and objectivity, it is often argued, mark out the straight road of knowledge and put us on our guard against all deviations. As an analyst with a Pan-African posture, whenever reading socio-political texts on Africa, I often ponder on whether the writer managed to make a correlation between Africa’s development and its accompanying social and historical conditions. Thus Dead Aid was no exception.

In spite of her ‘impressive’ statistics, Moyo makes no attempt to either mention or entertain the possibilities, as did Dr Walter Rodney in his classic How Europe underdeveloped Africa, that exogenous factors have and continue to hamper development in Africa. For instance the conditionalities imposed on the so called ‘aid’ given to Africa; the culture of protectionism practiced by US and EU and safeguarded by the World Trade Organisation (WTO); the ongoing core (Western world) and periphery (Africa) relations that constantly disadvantage Africa; and last but certainly not least, the subsequent mind-set of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) that subordinates Africa.

For many Africans, particularly women, children and those working in the informal sector, the social impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) has been excruciatingly felt. Designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), they have been the frame-work for economic and social policy in Africa since the early 1980s. Instead of reducing poverty, they have impoverished already poor ‘wanainchi’(Africans) both in the rural and urban areas.

The donor community’s insistence that African countries liberalise their markets through privatisation of public enterprises and downsizing of the civil services have made corruption endemic in Africa. According to a recent UN report, Western business interests are at the heart of corruption in Africa, the report estimated that government supported companies pay bribes worth $80 billion a year in order to secure long and short-term contracts and other concessions from African governments and at the expense of the voiceless and already poor ‘mwanainchi’.

With recent British broadsheets biblically citing Dead Aid and continually amplifying statements such as ‘…having received almost a US$1 trillion in the past 60 years in foreign aid, yet Africans are still worse off than they were during the independence years…’, one somehow gets the impression that Dead Aid has become a fitting kit for the West to justify aid reduction to Africa.

Moyo’s prime argument that Africa’s culture of dependency is to blame for its woes (although explicable) is simply not true. Because were we to reverse that argument then one should expect the economies of countries such as Eritrea, Mauritania, and for the last 18 years anarchic Somalia, which have received virtually no foreign aid at all, to have improved notably. This, needless to say, has not been the case.

Therefore aid in my view is not the problem. The way in which it is structured and delivered is the real problem. The conditions imposed on the aid are so many and in most cases not the right ones. That said, aid alone cannot solve Africa’s many problems, it must go hand in hand with reforms of international trade and financial rules in order to ensure that wanainchi have a fair chance of benefiting from the wealth of resources that Africa has aplenty.

The timing of Dead Aid is, to say the least, neglectful, especially given the recent US and EU banking systems collapse and the inevitable global financial crisis that has followed, the severity of which will be felt more by nearly 40 million poor wanainchi as they swell the ranks of abject poverty. According to Action Aid, the crisis is likely to cost Africa US$400 billion in the next three years alone.

It is this reason amongst others that drove most of us at a recent alternative G20 Summit in London under the banner ‘Real Financial Fairness’, to call on richer Western nations to maintain their pledge to increase aid to 0.7 per cent of their respective Gross national incomes (GNIs) as agreed by the UN, (instead of the current 0.2 per cent that they occasionally give) in order to help poor wanainchi in Africa cope with the impact of the current economic crisis.

After all, how about the immeasurable capital flight that has left and continues to leave Africa everyday? Under the current circumstances, Samir Amin’s ‘de-linking’ hypothesis becomes more and more relevant and appealing. African leaders ought to start entertaining this possibility with a degree of seriousness if African economies are to become truly independent of aid.

* Ronald Elly Wanda is a political scientist based in London.

source.Pambazuka, by Ronald Elly Wanda

Kenya: Over 3 million from “Uhuru Generation” will retire into poverty – Pensions experts are warning of a time bomb

 

Nairobi (Kenya) – The spectre of massive old-age poverty is hovering over Kenya as the first major wave of retirements of salaried workers and civil servants since Independence draws closer. Pensions experts are warning of a time bomb as the number of retirees in Kenya mounts from 1.6 million currently to a projected three million in the next seven years.

The expected spike in retirements will be driven by what has come to be known as the “Uhuru Generation” phenomenon. This is in reference to the baby boom at Kenya’s Independence in 1963 when most families had an average eight children. Most of the people born just before and after Independence will start retiring in the next seven to 10 years.

But according to the Retirement Benefits Authority — the country’s pensions industry watchdog — many retirees could end up in abject poverty in their old age because of a poor saving culture.

“We have many people set to retire in the next seven to 10 years. But most of them will be poor. Currently, very few have saved enough [to sustain them in retirement],” said Edward Odundo, Retirement Benefits Authority chief executive, in an interview last week.

He added: “Most of those born at independence — the Uhuru Generation — will retire one after another. But they don’t have pension reserves. Some of them have been eating their savings as they go along.”

Mr Odundo added that many working Kenyans don’t save for retirement. The majority of those who do, he says, save less than 10 per cent of their monthly income. And in most cases, those who save start doing so “rather late”.

A survey conducted by the regulator in April this year shows that most Kenyans consider retirement a stage in life when one stops formal employment. Instead of saving money, the report says, they give priority to acquiring assets in the belief that they will use these to generate income after “formal employment,” the RBA’s Dipstick Survey says.

Top on the priority list of a typical Kenyan worker, the report says, are rent, food, household bills and transport. These are followed by school fees, clothes, entertainment, tithes/offerings/donations — and, finally, savings.

Some financial experts have described the saving habits of Kenyans as “peculiar,” noting that while most people are aware that they should be putting aside a certain percentage of their monthly income against their retirement among other investment options, very few actually do so due to lack of discipline.
“Saving for retirement is critical, and yet it is the most difficult decision for most people,” says RBA chairman Julius M’igweta.

Currently, Kenya’s retirement benefits industry, worth Ksh300 billion ($3.8 billion), is being contributed to by only 2.5 million people, which means that 14.2 million or 85 per cent of the country’s workers do not have any form of retirement benefits scheme.

Recently, Finance Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua described the fact that more than 80 per cent of the Kenyan workforce lack any form of pension plan as “worrying”.

Unlike in the developed world, where there are social security programmes to take care of retirees, workers in developing countries like Kenya cannot rely on national schemes like the NSSF for anything more than a pittance. They have to save for retirement through occupational and individual schemes.

Mr M’igweta says hard times have also contributed to dismal savings among Kenyans. He says that with the demands of daily subsistence and raising children high on everyone’s priority list, it is all too easy for workers to defer the issue of their retirement security.

Similarly, less disposable income means cutbacks on non-essentials, he says. “While these may be holidays and luxury cars for some, or entertainment and helping siblings for others, my sincere advice is that saving towards your retirement — no matter your age — is essential.”

The regulator is currently running a Ksh25 million ($321,000) public awareness campaign whose ultimate goal is to reduce old age poverty.

Launching a Retirement Benefits Authority public education campaign in mid March, Mr Kinyua said lack of financial preparedness for retirement by the majority of Kenya’s employees was a recipe for old age poverty.

source.The East African (Kenya)