Africans rescue fellow Africans

I found this interesting factoid while reading about the Somali pirates (since many of those sailors kidnapped are Filipinos, and we have a relative who is a sailor, I keep an eye on the news there).

from StrategyPage:

Soldiers from the TNG (Transitional National Government) raided a pirate base in central Somalia and freed a South African couple who were kidnapped 18 months ago when their sailboat was seized off the Kenyan coast. Pirates have been trying to obtain a high ransom for the couple ever since.

The Mail (SA) has a photo of this couple, which is a SA white woman and her (younger looking) Italian boyfriend.

The article says they don't know if ransom was paid, but here in the Philippines, the Italians alway pay huge amounts of ransom and deny it. (The joke is that the MILF always kidnaps Italian priests because they like Pizza).

On the other hand, the MAIL article doesn't mention the TNG troops.

On the other hand, European and American reporters rarely notice when Africans are doing something like this...

China in Africa investing in land etc.

TPM Barnett also has an essay about a new book and a NYTimes editorial onChina inAfrica.


the book he reviews defends China against charges of neoImperialism, using it's own people instead of local employees, and of course, supporting dictators and corrupt leaders.

Yes, folks someone is shilling for China.

He then adds his opinion:

My take: the more China gets into Africa, the more it enmeshes its interests with the locals, who, in turn, become more demanding of better deals - just like Chinese labor back home. Will it be a nice process? Hardly ever is, judging by history. But an unsurmountable process? Not if China is as highly incentivized regarding back-home stability as Moyo argues here (and I agree).

After ripping African leaders a new one, Moyo ends powerfully with this: With approximately 60 percent of Africa’s population under age 24, foreign investment and job creation are the only forces that can reduce poverty and stave off the sort of political upheaval that has swept the Arab world.

And China’s rush for resources has spawned much-needed trade and investment and created a large market for African exports — a huge benefit for a continent seeking rapid economic growth. No argument from me on that. China is creating connectivity and opportunity - more so than the West right now. The West is still a far bigger player in Africa, but China is the most dynamic agent right now.

Africa's Cheetah generation

From ThomasPMBarrett's(Wikistrat) blog: 
he sites an article in the Economist (UK)

Nifty Economist story on what economist George Ayitteh likes to dub the "cheetah generation" of Africa's business community ...  
Article contrasts serial entrpreneurs (who start company after company in sequence over their lives) with parallel entrepreneurs (who start mini-conglomerates of companies and seek to grow them all synergistically over time). The Economist argues that this is really the way things are unfolding in successful African economies.

 he then adds:

Speaking from experience, I couldn't agree more.  Virtually every deal I'm currently structuring or pursuing in Africa involves these parallel entrepreneurs.  They all seem about 35 and they're all running this cluster of companies that involve them in all manner of adjacent opportunities and economies (most of these clusters extend over several African states).

he links to this TED video:

Human rights abuses continue

From Fides:

Harare (Agenzia Fides) - Rigged elections, limited freedom of speech and press, media censorship or intimidation and attempts to control the activities of civil society and NGOs continue to violate human rights in many countries of the world. In Zimbabwe the situation is particularly serious.  ...


Groups of criminals under the flag ZANU-PF have invaded private property, demolished homes and small markets. For the good of the nation, it is essential that all political protagonists and the security sector follow the directives of the President and immediately suspend such violence, as well as being equally important that President Mugabe insists that the government imposes its guidelines....

Report from Zimbabwe

Sister E writes that the poor rains resulted in a poor harvest, so folks are only eating one meal a day in her area.

From the DallasNews:

AIDS was an inferno burning through sub-Saharan Africa. The American people, led by Bush, checked that fire and saved millions of lives.
People with immune systems badly weakened by HIV were given anti-retroviral drugs that stopped the progression of the disease. Mothers and newborns were given drugs that stopped the transmission of the virus from one generation to the next. Clinics were built. Doctors and nurses and lay workers were trained. A wrenching cultural conversation about sexual practices broadened, fueled by American money promoting abstinence, fidelity and the use of condoms.
“We kept this country from falling off the edge of a cliff,” said Mark Storella, the U.S. ambassador to Zambia. “We’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives. We’ve assisted over a million orphans. We’ve created a partnership with Zambia that gives us the possibility of walking the path to an AIDS-free generation. This is an enormous achievement.”
Bush remains active in African health. Last September, he launched a new program — dubbed Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon — to tackle cervical and breast cancer among African women. The program has 14 co-sponsors, including the Obama administration.

Falling death rates

Nyankombe sells colorful batiks, purses and other crafts to benefit Mothers without Borders, a charity that looks after orphans. When AIDS tore unchecked through southern Africa, millions of children lost their parents. Nearly one in five children in countries like Malawi and Lesotho were orphaned. In Zambia, it was one in four.
A decade ago, AIDS was killing 630 of every 100,000 Zambians, according to the World Health Organization. That was 100 times the AIDS death rate in the United States.
In neighboring Botswana, the toll was 750 of every 100,000 people. That was four times the rate for the leading cause of death among Texans (heart disease).
In 2001, four in 10 adults in Botswana were infected with HIV. President Mogae went before the United Nations to plead for the life of his country.
“We are threatened with extinction,” he said. “People are dying in chillingly high numbers. It is a crisis of the first magnitude.”
Bush, with bipartisan support from Congress and $15 billion, mobilized the U.S. government with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In 2008, Congress agreed to provide $38 billion more.
By the time Bush left office, the death rate from AIDS had fallen more than 60 percent in Botswana. There are now 330,000 taking anti-retroviral drugs.
The death rate fell by nearly half in Zambia. There are 418,000 Zambians taking the drugs.

Drought resistant rice

from Oryza:

A Japanese company will develop new nitrogen and water-efficient, and salt resistant, rice varieties for small scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) under a new deal with the Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).

The joint effort aims to boost rice production in the SSA region, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, where a majority of rice farmers are smallholders of rice fields. According to ATTF executive director nitrogen deficiency and drought are major hurdles in improving rice yields in upland SSA, while salinity is affecting several rice producing regions in Africa.

why Africa is booming

From the Atlantic.

...

Africa, with a population expected to roughly double by mid-century, has become recognized as the world's fastest growing continent. But the less-told story is of Africa's economic rise. In the last decade Africa's overall growth rates have quietly approached those of Asia, and according to projections by the IMF, on average Africa will have the world's fastest growing economy of any continent over the next five years.

Seven of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies are African. The continent is famously resource rich, which has surely helped, but some recent studies suggest that the biggest drivers are far less customary for Africa, and far more encouraging for its future: wholesale and retail commerce, transportation, telecommunications, and manufacturing.

A recent report by the African Development Bank projected that, by 2030, much of Africa will attain lower-middle- and middle-class majorities, and that consumer spending will explode from $680 billion in 2008 to $2.2 trillion. According to McKinsey and Co., Africa already has more middle class consumers than India, which has a larger population. Goldman Sachs recently put out a report, "Africa's Turn," making similar points.

American media have largely failed to pick up on these trends, hewing instead to their long-running traditional narratives of African violence and suffering to the exclusion of most other news....

(headsup Instapundit)

South Africa's Army has problems

StrategyPage has an article discussing the reasons that South Africa's once formidable army has gone weak.

After the 1994 elections, the first to feature participation by all South Africans (not just the whites), the military quickly turned into another form of patronage. The word came down that the military was there to provide jobs for political loyalists of the party in power. These men could be dismissed only if they committed a serious crime (rape, murder, kidnapping) and were otherwise untouchable and increasingly undisciplined. Eventually most of the troops are too old, too sick or too undisciplined to be effective soldiers. The government gets away with this because South African has no neighbors that pose a military threat.

They also have an article on Nigeria's problem with corruption 

On the other  hand, they discuss the good work of Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi troops who work with the African Union peacekeepers HERE.

More trouble in central Africa

from Fides

invia articolo printable version preferiti

Kinshasa (Agenzia Fides) - "The social fabric of the people who lived so far in peace and mutual solidarity is compromised: its members have become enemies to each other, just because a Canadian company in search of gold has come to settle on their land." This is the complaint made by a Congolese citizen Néhémie Bahizire in the document entitled "The curse of gold in Kivu," on the exploitation of gold mines in Twangiza / Luhwinja, about 90 km south of Bukavu, capital of the province of South Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

full article at link

ZANU PF pastors don't want Joshua to visit

from the Zim mail

HARARE - Churches loyal to President Mugabe's Zanu-PF have expressed concern over the planned visit this May by a Nigeria-based prophet, Temitope Balogun Joshua, saying men of God are non-partisan.

HARARE - Churches loyal to President Mugabe's Zanu-PF have expressed concern over the planned visit this May by a Nigeria-based prophet, Temitope Balogun Joshua, saying men of God are non-partisan. The world-acclaimed prophet is supposedly due in Harare this month for prayer meetings at the invitation of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Heads of different church denominations affiliated to the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) are in agreement that the church does not have immigration powers and as such it will not determine whether TB Joshua should visit Zimbabwe or not. They however highlighted that as a church they can only raise concern. The church leaders were speaking at a meeting in Harare to review the constitutional process as well as decide on the church’s role in the process.

more from various bloggers at Global voices on line.

B Joshua's popularity seemed to rise in Zimbabwe after after his prediction that an “aging African leader” would die, with critics of long time ruler President Robert Mugabe concluding that the prophecy was referring to Mugabe. Malawian President Bingu wa Mutarika died shortly afterwards, apparently confirming that indeed TB Joshua is a “prophet.”
Now, social media sites and blogs are on fire ahead of his May 25 Day of Prayer visit.

 the gov't newspaper explains why....

Rev Chimbambo said they would not allow any political party or foreigner to interfere with their operations.
"We were surprised to hear that Prime Minister (Morgan) Tsvangirai wanted him to be the guest speaker on the day of prayer yet the day is for praying and no one should address the crowd," he said.
He said their programme had no link with the prayer rallies PM Tsvangirai and some local pastors had been holding countrywide.

this is ata time when Mnangagwa is trying to take over ZANU PF

China invests in South Sudan

From the BBC:

Officials in South Sudan say China has agreed to loan it $8bn (£4.9bn) for major development projects. A government spokesman said funds would be used to build roads, bridges and telecom networks, and to develop agriculture and hydro-electric power. However, there was no mention of plans to build a new pipeline to export oil from the newly independent state.

China has been a big supporter of Sudan, which has been trying to wrest the oil producing areas from the South, and has gotten away with a lot of various genocides because China stops the UN from interfering too much. This sounds like China is now hedging it's bets...

South Sudan in the news

Strategypage discusses the oil issue in Sudan's war against the now independent Southern Sudan

Arab vs Black African, Muslim vs Christian complications, but it's essntially over who gets the oil revenues, which are badly needed by South Sudan...

musical interlude of the day

Evil

The Kony campaign is a day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes...and a lot of folks are annoyed that these do gooders just noticed the fight, and some think they are cashing in on it (while libeling the good things going on in Uganda). LINK

Yes, charities are good, but the old suggestion not to sound a trumpet to attract attention to your good deeds is still important today...

-----------------------------
the good part of the Kony campaign, however, is that many westerners will become aware of the plight of child soldiers.

Rehabilitating children who learned to fight at a young age is difficult (they learn that they can do anything or steal anything because they have a gun; they now have to be retrained to obey the basic laws of society: no stealing, no raping, no killing).

Another part of the rehabilitation is training them for a new job, so that they can support themselves. This includes the young women, who often got pregnant. Having a baby out of wedlock is not a big thing in Bantu society, but in Somalia and other strict Muslim societies, they are at risk for being ostracized.

This, however, assumes young teenagers recruited who agree to fight (often for food, or for adventure, or maybe even because they believe in the cause).

The real problem is when


The activists who are pushing gay rights on Africa (including the Obama adminstration), assumes this would occur in culture with a western style of individualism and freedom...

But the activists not only misunderstand the extended culture of African society, the destruction of the African family by colonialism, and the high rate of abuse, especially in lands which have been affected by civil wars......hint: it's not your hairdresser or the gay bar down the street they are worried about...check UKGuardian report.

It's not just child soldiers: remember the street kids are vulnerable to such things too...and not just in Africa...link

when I was considering adoption, we were cautioned to assume that all older girls and half of older boys probably had been sexually abused, and to remember that when they became teenagers and started acting out.
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Zimbabwe

bbc series on the lost Kingdoms of Africa.

This one is Zimbabwe, but the series includes Nubia, Ethiopia and other medieval/precolonial kingdoms of Africa.

Africa's quiet revolution

From the Atlantic:

The poverty mafia once controlled the development debate in Africa. No longer.

The old approach was about how to prevent Africa from getting poorer. All development goals were essentially negative, as experts wallowed in risk-aversion and promoted various doomsday scenarios of an Africa with a rapidly growing population.

The new thinking on development is to share Africa's wealth more equitably. That's right: Africa's wealth...In the ten years from 2000 to 2010, six of the world's ten fastest-growing countries were in sub-Saharan Africa: Angola, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Chad, Mozambique, and Rwanda. In eight of the past ten years, sub-Saharan Africa has grown faster than Asia, according to The Economist. In 2012, the International Monetary Fund expects Africa to grow at a rate of 6%, about the same as Asia..

.

one of the reasons for the change: Cellphones...

Eden shmeden

Lolo likes nature films and there were several recently on Madagascar.

PBS MADAGASCAR EDEN

yes, but when there is a high rate of childhood malnutrition, how can one say it is "eden"?

Right now, there has been a little reported cyclone that has devestated much of that Island.

(49 news articles on the cyclone, 118 on the "world's smartest chameleon").

Congratulations Zambia

sometimes the underdogs DO win

Guess who owns Zim's diamond mines

from the UKTelegraph

A Zimbabwean diamond field said to be the largest in the world is being mined by companies staffed by Robert Mugabe's police and military chiefs who may use the proceeds to crack down on opposition supporters, Global Witness has warned.

..

"There is a real risk of these revenues being used to finance violence during a future election."

Military chiefs, many of whom fought under Robert Mugabe in the independence war, have already made clear that they will not allow an MDC victory.

Global Witness is appealing to the Southern African Development Community, charged with keeping the peace in Zimbabwe, to push for the cancellation of the mining contracts and greater transparency in future.

"Zimbabwe desperately needs these diamond revenues for health, education and the refinancing of its banks," said Nick Donovan, the Global Witness researcher who compiled the report. "It does not need it to be spent on AK47s or the repression of its people."