Sustainable Africa

Earth Day has come and gone, but it’s never too late to highlight programs and people working to make positive sustainable changes for the environment. I’ll also spotlight a few projects that get a green thumbs down as far as I’m concerned.  

My friend who works at AllAfrica recently alerted me to a new program in Kenya that seeks to collect and recycle plastic waste before it arrives at dump sites. Joseph Murimi reports,

The concept involves organising youths in groups and empowering them to collect plastic waste from homes and selling them to big industries for recycling. The youth will be given special machines on loan, which they will use to shred plastic bags to make it easier for handling and transportation.

It’s important to collect the plastic before it reaches the streets, so that it can be cleaned. Dirty plastic cannot be recycled. One source of plastic waste to be recycled is bags. They seem to litter almost every available surface in cities and towns across Africa, and I for one am thrilled that a plan has been developed to deal with this type of refuse. The article goes on to mention,

Kenya consumes over 24 million plastic bags monthly, according to Mr Mahesh Dodhia, the Chief Executive Officer, Hi-Plast Group of Companies.

Plastic bags are non-biodegradable and their presence in agricultural fields decreases soil productivity. Improper disposal of plastic bags have been linked to spread of malaria because they provide breeding habitats for mosquitoes and pathogens. When burned plastic bags release toxic gases such as furan and dioxin, and leave unhealthy residues that include lead and cadmium.

An added benefit of this project is that it will provide education to youth on plastic waste recycling. Green thumbs up to them!

The next project I want to spotlight is a group called Wonder Welders, based out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The artists are adult polio survivors who use their talents to create beautiful sculptures and cards out of recycled scrap metal. Their work is phenomenal, and can be purchased at several locations around Dar. If you won’t be in that neck of the savanna any time soon, check out their website, where you can peruse their work, and contact them to place an order or commission a piece. 

Wonder Welders is an all around fantastic project with an environmentally and disability friendly focus. Their website states, 

In the last 3 years we have expanded the workshops to include a handmade recycled paper project, handmade wooden toys, natural handmade soaps and recycled glass bottle beads. We currently employ 40 people on a full-time basis as well as a further 4 in our out-sourcing satellite workshop.  The sales of the items sustain the project and pay all the members all a good salary so that they can support themselves and their families.  

Green thumbs up to Wonder Welders!

Now on to a program that I have mixed feelings about. An eco-city is being built on the outskirts of Mombasa, Kenya. Not only will the community house thousands of people, it will also be environmentally self-sustaining. Francis Ayeiko observes, 

Construction of Kenya’s first eco-city - a residential settlement that is environmentally, socially, economically and culturally self-sustaining - has commenced on the outskirts of Mombasa, with the first phase expected to be ready for occupation by the third quarter of this year.

The city will include a hospital, school, police station, and playgrounds, as well as a solar/wind power station. All of this comes at a steep price, however. A two-bedroom flat is selling for Ksh 2.25 million (USD $35,714). 

I think it’s great that land is being preserved and a sustainable community is being created. It’s just really unfortunate that few Kenyans will have the option of enjoying the benefits of such a lifestyle, due to the incredibly high costs. I give this project a tentative green thumbs up. 

The last project on my list gets a green thumbs down, despite obvious good intentions. Nokia, the Scandinavian cellphone manufacturer, has launched a phone recycling initiative in East Africa. An article on Network World reports, 

Nokia has launched a recycling initiative in East Africa that offers consumers a structured way to dispose of old mobile phones and accessories. The move comes amid fears that cast-off mobile phones are posing an increasing risk of hazardous toxic chemicals in the developing world.

That’s excellent. However, there is no incentive to get people to turn in their old phones and accessories at the designated Nokia recycling centers. I know I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to turn in an old phone, especially if I didn’t know where the center was or why I needed to recycle it.

Here in America, many states offer a redemption fee to get consumers to recycle cans and bottles. If I return my water and soda bottles, I get 5 cents for each one. It’s a very good incentive to return them. I’m embarrassed to even report this, but my family saved all of our bottles in our garage this winter, and we just returned 1,107 of them. For our trouble we got $65. It would be great if Nokia offered even a small incentive for returns. Providing people with a dollar’s worth of cellphone credits for example, might be a good idea and would also help Nokia retain customers. 

Zimbabwe: “Everyone Knows What Time It Is”*

There’s been plenty of news flowing out of Zimbabwe since March 29th, but the wires have really been buzzing these past few days. A couple of the larger stories making headlines: A US position on the elections, the continuing saga of the Chinese arms shipment, and Robert Mugabe’s confirmed parliamentary loss.  

I’ll begin with the US declaration of support for Zimbabwe’s opposition. While I think it’s great that Jendayi Frazier, is finally denouncing the fraud that is Mugabe’s government, I have to wonder why it took four weeks to issue a statement on this?! Frazier remarked,

We can’t stand back and wait for this to escalate. Everyone knows what time it is.*

If the US hasn’t been standing back and waiting for things to escalate, then what the hell have we been doing? In any case, America is ready to play ball now. Ms. Frazier suggested that the human rights situation has gotten so out of hand in Zimbabwe that it is necessary to involve the African Union and the United Nations, as well as other countries. Thanks for telling us something we already knew.

Onwards to coverage of the An Yue Jiang. I’ve been reading contradictory information about this ship all over the web, and it can pretty much be traced back to one person: Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman for China. She was quoted in The New York Times, stating,

The Chinese government has already decided to send the military goods back to China in the same vessel, the An Yue Jiang.

Phew. So the arms are definitely headed back to China. But wait a minute! The BBC quoted Ms. Yu as commenting,

To my knowledge the Chinese company has decided to recall the ship.

Sorry but I’m not willing to rely on the guesstimate of a foreign ministry lackey when it comes to the whereabouts of a ship carrying 77 tons of weapons. Plus, the shipping company could not confirm that the An Yue Jiang was in fact returning to China.

Lots of people are interested and want to know where the ship is headed, but reporting confusing information before the full story is known, doesn’t seem to be the best way to go. When I see headlines in the New York Times that read: China May Give Up Attempt to Send Arms to Zimbabwe, I’m kind of like, what? The Chinese “may” give up their attempt? What does that even tell me?

Fortunately some actual reporting happened today, and we now know that the An Yue Jiang is docked in the waters off of Luanda, Angola. What a shocker! The real surprise is how Angola backhanded Mugabe and his cronies by refusing to allow offloading of the weapons. I did not see that one coming! Angola has been a longtime ally of the Mugabe regime, but it appears that they have bowed to the growing regional and international pressure around this issue. 

Finally, Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission released the results of their partial recount, and found no change in the results. This means that the MDC has a parliamentary majority over ZANU PF for the first time in 28 years. ZEC also announced that the presidential results could be announced by Monday. I’ll believe it when I see it. Like many other people, I’m positive that the ZEC recount is a delay tactic utilized by ZANU PF to buy time. In the interim, the government has worked to import weapons, cracked down on MDC supporters, and unleashed a stepped-up version of their reign of terror upon the general public. They stand to lose everything if they release the actual results. So what will their next move be? 

Penis Snatching?

After watching two late-night talk show hosts joke about penis thefts in Congo, I felt like I needed to figure out what was going on. It turns out that the real story is nothing to laugh about. 

Reuters reported on Tuesday that police in Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested thirteen suspected sorcerers, who have been accused of using witchcraft to steal or shrink men’s penises.  Joe Bavier reports,

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

If it seems like these accusations materialized out of thin air, they didn’t. Apparently it’s somewhat common for allegations of penis theft to surface in West Africa. Reuters also notes that belief in indigenous religion, black magic, and witchcraft, are pervasive, and “ritual killing to obtain body parts and blood still occur[s].” 

As panic set in, fueled by the dramatic response to the radio call-in shows, a number of men who were suspected of being sorcerers were assaulted. Fortunately no one was killed. This hasn’t always been the case. A similar situation in Ghana saw 12 suspects beaten to death by mobs. 

But what about proving a case against the suspects and rendering justice to the victims? Kinshasa’s chief of police, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, had this to say, 

I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke. But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” 

All I can say, is that I hope there aren’t men running around Kinshasa using penis shrinkage as an excuse to test drive their equipment. 

What’s in a Name?

On Tuesday the BBC published an amusing story about a “child-naming craze sweeping across western Kenya.” Parents there are naming their children after popular political figures such as Kofi Annan, Raila Odinga, Barack Obama  and Graca Machel. The article points out that some parents bestow these names upon their kids simply because they admire the politicians, while others believe that their baby will “adopt the traits of the person it has been named after.”

The article got me thinking about naming trends worldwide. In Ghana for example, it’s still common to name children according to the day of the week on which they were born (If you meet a boy named Kofi, you’ll know that he was born on a Friday). Like anywhere else, some names are trendy at the moment. When I was teaching kindergarten outside of Accra two years ago, I had two girls named Princess and a boy named Prince in a class of twenty. Coincidence? 

Back in October, The New York Times did a fun article about naming in Zimbabwe: “In a Land of Homemade Names, Tiffany Doesn’t Cut It.” The article explains how some Zimbabweans get names like Godknows, Givethanks, and Never Trust a Woman. There’s definitely some carryover for names like these. I’ve met people in Tanzania and Ethiopia whose names translate to English as “blessing,” and “love.” 

Here in the United States, the trends are easy to spot if you work with kids. I can’t tell you how many children I’ve met with the following names: Madison (girl), Aidan (boy), Noah (boy) Emma (girl). Please don’t give your child one of these names, because they will be lost in a sea of similarly named children!  Another trend of late, is naming kids after products: Mercedes, Armani, Nautica, L’Oreal. Personally, I think that’s gross. 

My own family is big on passing down names. My dad is a “jr,” meaning his father’s name was passed on to him. He’s not so big on that, and it can get kind of confusing at family gatherings to have two men around with the same name. My younger brother is named after my mother’s father, and my middle name is the same as my aunt’s first name. Ahhh! 

I guess I shouldn’t complain about naming trends too much, because my own name was in the top ten most popular girl’s names the year I was born. Good luck guessing which one it is: Jessica, Jennifer, Amanda, Ashley, Sarah, Stephanie, Melissa, Nicole, Elizabeth, Heather.

If you’d like to share the story or meaning behind your name, please do!

More Drama at the University of Dar es Salaam

[A student in Dakar measures liquid with a broken graduated cylinder. Inadequate equipment is the norm at Africa's ailing universities-picture Ruth Fremson/New York Times]

A couple years back, I studied abroad at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The six months I spent there were the highlight of my college career, although there were some definite ups and downs. At the beginning of the school year (2005), student protests rocked the campus and essentially closed the school for two weeks. It was the second consecutive year of rioting and strikes over unpaid student loans (to be clear, the students were owed a stipend to help them pay for essentials such as books and meals). 

Those two weeks were a tense period. Students seemed ready to erupt at any moment, and the suppressed rage was palpable. I could see why many students felt compelled to take action. Most had not received payment of their stipends, and were trying to survive on as little as a dollar a day. Dar can be an expensive city, and meals, books, housing, and tuition at the top university in the country all add up. 

For all the money the students were spending, the state of the university was awful. I know I’m speaking from a Western perspective, but UDSM has seen far better days. The school is only equipped to handle around 5,000 students, but there are more like 15,000-20,000 attending right now. As a result, students are crammed into the dorms like sardines. My roommate and I took an “illegal” student to live with us, because there was simply no extra housing. Some people suggested creating a tent city on campus to accomodate all of the homeless scholars. It was really a deplorable situation. Not to mention the state of the campus in general. Everything is worn out. The chairs and desks are collapsing, stairways are falling apart, books in the library are pre-1980…

[Students who want to be sure to have a place to study line up outside the library before it opens at 8 a.m. Cheikh Anta Diop University was built in the 1960s to accommodate about 5,000 students but now enrolls close to 60,000. picture Ruth Fremson/New York Times]

Anyway, back to the strike. It did end up happening. It was a peaceful protest for the most part, but the problem was that students who didn’t want to participate were made to. This is a continuing trend. In the case of the 2005 strike, protesting students were left relatively unharrassed by the police, probably due to the fact that it was an election year, and the bad press resulting from maiming youths would not have looked good. 

Now UDSM is back in the news because of a new strike. This time some students are protesting for the reinstatement of 15 of their fellow scholars who were ejected from the school. It appears that the youths were expelled on the grounds that they were involved in previous rioting that led to injuries, and the death of one student. The leaders of the rioting are pulling other students into the fray, which is really unfortunate. My former roommates were yanked from their dorm four years ago and forced to participate in a protest that got violent. Uggg. 

While I can understand the reasons for these student protests, I don’t agree with the way they are conducted. I’m sure UDSM will continue to be plagued by them until corruption, nepotism, and the horrible conditions on campus are dealt with. That’s a tall order. 

A really great report by the New York Times, “Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling” can be found here. 

*Thanks Katy for putting this latest strike to my attention

An Update on the Zimbabwe Arms Shipment

A couple of days ago I blogged with some jubilation about South African dock workers who were blocking a large shipment of Chinese arms destined for Zimbabwe. Perhaps realizing that they were unlikely to offload their weapons, and had entered the eye of a media feeding frenzy, the vessel pulled anchor and left the port of Durban, South Africa. It was speculated, and even reported that the ship was headed for Maputo, Mozambique, but that appears not to be the case. Although the ship’s destination is unknown, The Cape Argus observed,

naval intelligence sources confirmed that at 5pm yesterday the ship was spotted steaming south past Cape St Francis - ‘heading towards Luanda.’

But will the An Yue Jiang actually make it to Angola or will the ship be forced to stop and refuel first? This is Zimbabwe offers interesting commentary on that and everything else. Whoever is at the helm probably hopes to make it to Luanda without a messy pit stop. Angola would be a prime place to dock and offload the weapons, considering that the government doesn’t seem to see much need for continued work on the human rights front.

What to do about this sad turn of events? The International Action Network on Small Arms has set up a “Stop the Zimbabwe Arms Shipment” petition. They also have a map that tracks the position of the An Yue Jiang. I’m not quite sure how they’re doing that, since I read that the ship’s transponder was disabled. But whatever. In the absence of other information, the map is kind of cool. Finally, This is Zimbabwe has a button that you can link to, to inform others about action alerts and the IANSA petition.

Torture Camps: Human Rights Watch Weighs In

Human Rights Watch released a report on Saturday that substantiates many Zimbabwean’s claims of beatings and torture by members of ZANU PF. Georgette Gagnon, HRW’s Africa Director commented, 

ZANU-PF members are setting up torture camps to systematically target, beat, and torture people suspected of having voted for the MDC in last month’s elections. 

According to the report, Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than thirty people in the last two days, who have sustained serious injuries from beatings. The report contends that those targeted for attack are rounded up at night, brought to informal detention centers, and beaten for hours with wooden sticks and army batons. 

The report goes on to state:

ZANU-PF officials are calling the crackdown Operation Makavhoterapapi, or “Where did you put your cross?” There seem to be two aims to this organized violence: to punish people for having voted for the MDC and to intimidate them to vote for ZANU-PF if there is a presidential run-off. 

At least a respected agency is documenting the human rights abuses, since nothing is being done to stop them from happening. 

Searching for Another “Splodge of Wonga?”

Severo Moto, Equatorial Guinea’s exiled opposition leader was back in the news this week. You’d think he’d be laying low after getting caught up in a highly publicized and ill-fated coup attempt in 2004, but apparently not. The Associated Press reports that Mr. Moto was arrested in Toledo, Spain after police found weapons stashed in a car trunk. The weapons were set to be shipped to Equatorial Guinea, and Moto was arrested pending trial on arms trafficking charges.

A fellow member of the banned opposition group Progress Party of Equatorial Guinea, Saturnino Ncogo Mbomio, died in custody of a scull fracture earlier this week at Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison. Supposedly he was injured after falling from his bed (This seems to be happening a lot lately). Mbomio was arrested after the discovery of weapons in the boot of a car that had been exported from Spain (The PPEG needs to find a new method of transport for their weapons, I think). Equatorial Guinean authorities contended that the arms were to be used in a coup attempt planned in conjunction with Moto. 

Although Spain has provided a haven for Severo Moto, his time of residence there has not been without some controversy. Granted political asylum in 1986, his protected status was revoked in 2005, when Spanish authorities claimed he was using the country as a base for coup attempts on Equatorial Guinea. Moto appealed that decision, and the ruling was overturned last month by Spain’s Supreme Court. With his recent arrest, perhaps Moto will finally find himself out in the cold. 

Severo Moto’s personal history and his relationship with Spain merit a mention. Although Moto currently leads what he terms the “Government of Equatorial Guinea in Exile,” he was a former member of that country’s repressive Macias regime during the 1970s. He served as director of television and radio programming, handling official propaganda. Later he worked in the ministry of information under the current dictator, Brigadier General Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. His rift with the government occurred when he and Obiang had a falling out over a woman. She was the face that launched a thousand coups. 

Moto left Equatorial Guinea after extreme animosity developed between himself and Obiang. He has since has been involved in a series of coup attempts. The government of Equatorial Guinea sentenced him to ninety-six years in prison, in absentia, after his first attempt from Angola failed. After taking up residence in Spain, Moto got swept up in a plot backed by British and South African financiers. It was planned that hired mercenaries would depose the government, Moto would assume the presidency, and the financial backers would be rewarded with a share of the country’s oil wealth. The scheme was thwarted when their jet landed in Harare to load up on weapons, and was discovered. For more information on the incredibly convoluted but highly intriguing coup attempt, read The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa by Adam Roberts (This book gets the prize for cramming so many provoking words into one title. It’s a pity the author couldn’t include “gun-running,” “child soldier” or “George Clooney”). 

Severo Moto: This picture is from his personal website. I can’t read Spanish, but I bet it’s pretty interesting.

It remains to be seen what action Spain will take against Moto. In the past the country seems to have had little problem providing a base for Moto’s opposition efforts, that is until his actions became too embarrassing to ignore. It has been alleged that Spain may have been complicit in the “wonga coup.”* In fact, it appears that Britain, Spain and America all had advanced knowledge of the 2004 plot against Equatorial Guinea, and did nothing to prevent it. Still, it’s not like booting out Obiang would be something to cry over, the Nguema family’s legacy is almost too horrific to believe. 

*wonga is slang for money. It is a term bandied about at the elite prep school Eton, which was attended by several of the coup plotters.  

A Tip of My Hat to South African Dock Workers*

Much of what I post on here could be classified as a “Debbie Downer,” so it gives me great pleasure to write about something positive.

A Chinese cargo ship An Yue Jiang has been anchored of the coast of Durban, South Africa since April 14th. It is reported to contain 3 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades, and 2,500 mortar rounds. The contents are destined for Zimbabwe.

Hmmm. I wonder why Zimbabwe needs that kind of firepower right now? Anyway, the South African National Conventional Arms Control Committee gave approval for transport of the weapons (another excellent decision by the South African government). It seemed that the arms would be shipped overland. Then some everyday heroes entered the picture in the form of South African dock workers. They are refusing to unload the vessel, and their representative bureau, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, said it would be “grossly irresponsible” to allow the cargo through. Additionally, the South African Litigation Centre has filed an application to block the transport of the weapons. How fantastic is that?

Hopefully the litigation efforts will stall the shipment of arms until things stabilize a bit in Zimbabwe. One can hope. As for the Chinese, they claim that the shipment of this cache of weapons is simply one aspect of their “normal trade relations with Zimbabwe.” In fact, their Foreign Minister reminded Reuters news agency that,

China has always had a prudent and responsible attitude towards arms sales. 

Hahaha! I love it when foreign ministries have a sense of humor about their work!

*”Tip of the hat” ripped from The Colbert Report  

A Slow Motion Train Wreck

Zimbabwe’s Independence Day is tomorrow, and instead of election results, it’s empty rhetoric that flows out of the country and surrounding region. Thabo Mbeki, the arbiter of the electoral dispute, continues to defend statements he made previously, in which he claimed that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. At the UN in New York on Wednesday, Mbeki observed,

The solution to the problem of Zimbabwe lies in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe. 

Right. The people of Zimbabwe who are being held hostage by the government of Robert Mugabe should just take this matter into their own hands. Well many of them did, and now those same hands are burned and bloody from attacks by ZANU PF militia and supporters. This is not to say that the people of Zimbabwe have no power over their situation. They clearly do. Just read This Is Zimbabwe, and you get a sense of the resistance efforts that are happening every day. It just seems like some high expectations to suggest that people simply overthrow a long-standing police state that has relied on every type of human rights violation to keep them down.  

So what now? I have to say that I agree with Morgan Tsvangirai, when he says that Mbeki needs to step aside. Anyone who is adamant that there is no crisis in Zimbabwe should not be handling the fallout from the elections. What is needed is some decisive action from Zimbabwe’s Southern African neighbors. Why wait until ZEC begins a recount and then releases results that put ZANU PF back in parliamentary majority? It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck and knowing that there is time to avert total disaster.