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You are here: Home / Archives for Africa

Burkina Faso president ‘back in charge’ after coup

September 23, 2015 by Nasheman

President Michel Kafando, who was taken hostage during last week’s coup, says civilian transitional government restored.

The elite presidential guard last Wednesday took the president, prime minister, and several other officials captive [AFP]

The elite presidential guard last Wednesday took the president, prime minister, and several other officials captive [AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Burkina Faso’s interim President Michel Kafando, who was taken hostage during a coup a week ago, said he was back in power and had restored a civilian transitional government.

“I have returned to work,” he said in a brief speech to journalists at the foreign ministry in the capital on Wednesday. “The transition is back and at this very minute is exercising the power of the state.”

Burkina Faso coup leaders agreed to return to their barracks, signing a deal with the army that apparently defused the standoff sparked by last week’s coup.

The breakthrough came on Tuesday night after marathon talks in Nigeria’s Abuja, where West African heads of state had sought to break the impasse fuelled by angry threats on both sides.

The deal was signed a day after troops entered Burkina’s capital of Ouagadougou, turning up the pressure on the elite presidential guards (RSP), who staged the coup.

Under its terms, the RSP agreed to step down from the positions they had taken up in Ouagadougou, while the army also agreed to withdraw its troops 50km from the capital and guarantee the safety of the RSP members as well as their families.

The deal was presented to the Mogho Naba, or “king” of Burkina Faso’s leading Mossi tribe, in front of the media early Wednesday.

Burkina Faso plunged into crisis last Wednesday when the powerful RSP detained the interim leaders who had been running the country since a popular uprising deposed iron-fisted President Blaise Compaore last October.

The elite unit of 1,300 men loyal to Compaore officially declared a coup on Thursday and installed rebel leader General Gilbert Diendere, Compaore’s former chief of staff, as the country’s new leader.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Economic Community of West African States said it planned to reinstate and demonstrate solidarity with Kafando, who was released on Friday.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Burkina Faso

Military claims control of Burkina Faso amid unrest

September 17, 2015 by Nasheman

Military takes to airwaves and declares it now controls West African nation, just weeks before planned elections.

Burkina Faso was due to hold elections on October 11 that many hoped would strengthen democracy [Reuters]

Burkina Faso was due to hold elections on October 11 that many hoped would strengthen democracy [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The military in Burkina Faso has taken to the airwaves to declare it now controls the country, confirming that a coup has taken place – just weeks before national elections.

In the announcement aired early on Thursday on national television and radio, the statement said that the transitional government in the West African country had been dissolved.

The statement came a day after members of the elite presidential guard unit of the military arrested the transitional president and prime minister.

The communique read by Lieutenant Colonel Mamadou Bamba criticised the electoral code, which blocked members of the ex-president’s party from taking part in the October 11 elections.

Anyone who supported the ex-president’s bid to amend the
constitution so he could seek another term is also banned from running.

Bamba on Thursday announced the beginning of a “coherent, fair and equitable process” that would lead to inclusive elections. The power grab violates the country’s constitution.

Fanny Noaro, a journalist based in the capital Ouagadougou, told Al Jazeera gunfire could be heard on the streets of the city.

“There is a lot of military on the street […] there is also no information about the transitional president and prime minister and there is no information if they are dead or alive,” she said.

A Reuters witness said that soldiers had fired warning shots to disperse a crowd gathered in Independence Square to protest against an apparent seizure of power by the presidential guard. More than 100 people had gathered in the square to demand the release of the interim government, detained by the elite military unit since Wednesday.

Burkina Faso was due to hold elections on October 11 that many hoped would strengthen democracy.

Cynthia Ohayon, West Africa analyst with International Crisis Group (ICG), described the turn of events as “unsurprising”.

“It is still very unclear how this crisis will now resolve itself […] the only outcome will come through negotiation and compromise [but] I don’t see what sort of of compromise will be acceptable to both sides, considering both sides have gone all in so far,” Ohayon told Al Jazeera from Paris.

The transitional government came to power after the president for 27 years, Blaise Compaore, was toppled late last year in a public uprising.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Burkina Faso

Millions at risk as severe drought hits Ethiopia

September 5, 2015 by Nasheman

Ethiopia says it is managing crisis though UN says number in need has increased by more than 55 percent this year.

sécheresse-afrique

by Al Jazeera

Around 4.5 million Ethiopians could be in need of food aid because of a drought in the country, the UN has said.

Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while pastures and water resources are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region, and northern Tigray and Amhara districts.

Reacting to the UN’s claims that the number in need had increased by more than 55 percent this year, Alemayew Berhanu, spokesman for Ministry of Agriculture, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had “enough surplus food at emergency depots and we’re distributing it”.

“When we were informed about the problem, the federal government and the regional state authorities started an outreach programme for the affected people,” he said.

In August, the Ethiopian government said that it had allocated $35m to deal with the crisis that has been blamed on El Niño, a warm ocean current that develops between Indonesia and Peru. The UN says it needs $230m by the end of the year to attend to the crisis.

“The absence of rains means that the crops don’t grow, the grass doesn’t grow and people can’t feed their animals,” David Del Conte, UNOCHA’S chief in Ethiopia, said.

One farmer in the town of Zway told Al Jazeera that he was selling personal belongings to stay alive.

“There is nothing we can do. We don’t have enough crops to provide for our families. We are having to sell our cattle to buy food but the cattle are sick because they don’t have enough to eat,” Balcha, who has a family of nine, and grows corn and wheat, said.

The onset of El Niño means the spatial distribution of rainfall from June to September has being very low. According to the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), the El Niño weather pattern in 2015 is being seen as the strongest of the last 20 years.

Experts say it could be a major problem for the country’s economy, as agriculture generates about half of the country’s income.

Climate shocks are common in Ethiopia and often lead to poor or failed harvests which result in high levels of acute food insecurity.

Approximately 44 percent of children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia are severely chronically malnourished, or stunted, and nearly 28 percent are underweight, according to the CIA World Factbook.

UNICEF says that about 264,515 children will require treatment for acute severe malnutrition in 2015 while 111,076 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition between January and May 2015.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Drought, Ethiopia

Clashes force 5,000 to flee after beheading in CAR

August 28, 2015 by Nasheman

Fresh violence in central town of Bambari comes ahead of planned presidential elections next month.

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation was seen to be improving [Getty]

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation was seen to be improving [Getty]

by Azad Essa, Al Jazeera

Around 5,000 people have fled from their homes in Bambari following clashes between rival militias over the past few days, demonstrating how fragile the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) remains ahead of next month’s presidential election, the UN refugee agency has said.

The latest flare-up in Bambari erupted after a 19-year-old Muslim was beheaded by fighters on August 20, according to the UNHCR.

In a town hit hard by violence, the new set of clashes around Bambari prompted the escape of almost 5,000 people in recent days, seeking shelter at the UN’s nearby base.

“We cannot say the country is at peace – because the events in Bambari show how fragile the situation remains,” Dalia al-Achi, spokesperson for the UNHCR, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

“They are living in a [former] cotton factory [at the UN base] where there is no sanitation, lights or any infrastructure. It is not fit for living,” she said.

On Friday, Diane Corner, deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), said in a tweet that 5,000 people had been displaced and that  the protection of civilians remained the mission’s top priority.

With just over a month left before presidential elections are held in the country, experts are not convinced the country would be able to host credible polls.

More than one million people have been displaced since Muslim-led Seleka rebels took the capital, Bangui, in March 2013.

Following a spate of abuses by the Seleka, vigilante groups known as anti-Balaka (anti-machete), made up of animist and Christian fighters, emerged to fight off the new leadership.

They also targeted the country’s Muslim minority, seen as sympathetic to the Seleka.

The country has been run by a transitional government since January 2014, after the Seleka were forced out of the capital.

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation in the country was seen to be improving, but the recent violence is likely to undo a lot of the efforts being put into rebuilding the nation.

“More than half the districts of the Central African Republic continue to be controlled by the Seleka coalition and its allies, who have not allowed a return of the national administration to the areas they control,” Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Bouckaert told Al Jazeera that the bloodshed may have reduced over the last twelve months, but attributed the drop in violence to the fact that most Muslims had been “forced to flee [and] not because the war is over”.

Bouckaert said that despite the obvious weaknesses of hosting presidential polls under the current conditions, the EU and France continue to push for the elections.

“The danger is that they see a quick and flawed election as an excuse to once again abandon the Central African Republic, with a claim that the country will then have made a ‘democratic transition’,” Bouckaert said.

“A very large percentage of the population, particularly Muslims living in refugee camps in Chad and Cameroon, but also many rural people, have not even been registered to vote yet, and preparation for a national vote has been minimal,” he said.

The UN says more than half the country’s population are still in need of aid, while 1.5 million people were affected by food insecurity.

In early August, the UN said that only 31 percent of the humanitarian appeal for the CAR had been secured. Aurelien Agbenonci, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in CAR, told Al Jazeera at the time that if more support was not forthcoming, the UN “won’t be able to continue humanitarian activities till the end of the year”.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, CAR, Central African Republic, Christians, Genocide, Islam, Muslims

Muslims being ‘erased’ from Central African Republic

July 31, 2015 by Nasheman

Amnesty International says Muslims living in rural areas especially targeted as militias undertake “ethnic cleansing”.

Central African Republic

by Azad Essa, Al Jazeera

Militias have taken advantage of the political vacuum in Central African Republic (CAR), engaging in ethnic cleansing of Muslims in a bid to erase the community from the country, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

Discussing Friday’s report, entitled “Erased identity: Muslims in ethnically cleansed areas of the Central African Republic,” Joanne Mariner, a senior crisis response adviser at the UK-based organisation, told Al Jazeera that Muslims in the western half of the country were being repressed and forced to abandon their religion.

More than 30,000 Muslims are living in seven enclaves, guarded by UN troops, across the country, but for those living outside, especially in rural areas, they are being targeted with impunity, the report found.

“They not allowed to express themselves as Muslims; if they are outside the enclaves, they cannot pray, dress in any way that identifies them as Muslim,” Mariner said.

“Their survival depends on a daily routine of negotiation with anti-Balaka fighters.”

Mariner said that many had been forced convert to Christianity or face persecution from the community

‘Failed state’

More than one million people have been displaced since Muslim-led Seleka rebels took control of Bangui, the capital, in March 2013.

Following a spate of abuses by the Seleka rebels, vigilante groups known as anti-Balaka (anti-machete) emerged to fight off the new leadership.

But the anti-Balaka, made up of animist and Christian fighters, also targeted the country’s Muslim minority, seen as sympathetic to the Seleka.

Amnesty’s report, based on a series of interviews with residents across CAR, says militias “unleashed a violent wave of ethnic cleansing aimed at forcing Muslims to leave the country”.

“The continued insecurity and threat from the anti-Balaka comes from there being an absence of a state,” Mariner said.

Though violence in CAR has tapered off since late 2014, the country remains largely insecure.

The collapse of the state apparatus and the fragility of the transitional government have left parts of the country to the mercy of militia groups in the hinterlands.

Concerns remain that despite the perceived calm, the root causes of the crisis have yet to be addressed.

Amnesty’s report comes just days after the International Rescue Committee said CAR “needs a new start, or it will become the case study of a failed state”.

Destruction of mosques

In April, a US envoy said that almost all of the 436 mosques in CAR have been destroyed in the violence. Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, called the devastation “kind of crazy, chilling”.

Amnesty said in Friday’s report that none of the mosques outside Bangui, and the town of Carnot, have been repaired or rebuilt.

One of the “clearest signs of the intensity of sectarian animus was the destruction of the country’s mosques”, the organisation said.

More than 6,000 people have been killed since the crisis began in March 2013.

“The key challenge is a lack of security. The government understands they have a long way to go [but] they need to be able to assert control over these far flung areas,” Mariner said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said this week that more than 1,000 people were still looking for their loved ones, a year after after being separated from them during the wave of violence.

“In this part of the country, very few families have been spared the pain and uncertainty of being separated from loved ones,” Scott Doucet, head of the ICRC sub-delegation for the west of the country, said.

The UN says that that 2.7 million people, more than half the population, are still in need of aid, while 1.5 million people were affected by food insecurity.

The global body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says humanitarian needs continue to exceed resources available.

Meanwhile Doctors without Borders (MSF) has previously described the country to be in a state of a protracted chronic health emergency.

CAR has been led by a transitional government since January 2014. The country is scheduled to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on October 18.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, CAR, Central African Republic, Christians, Genocide, Islam, Muslims

Obama in Kenya: Africa is on the move

July 25, 2015 by Nasheman

US president says Africa is “one of fastest growing regions in world” as he co-hosts entrepreneurship summit in Nairobi.

Obama attends a private dinner in Nairobi with his Kenyan family members including his step-grandmother Sarah and half-sister Auma [Reuters]

Obama attends a private dinner in Nairobi with his Kenyan family members including his step-grandmother Sarah and half-sister Auma [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

US President Barack Obama has praised Africa for its economic advancements, calling it “one of the fastest growing regions in the world”, while co-hosting a summit on global entrepreneurship with his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, in Nairobi.

Obama declared on Saturday that “Africa is on the move”, in his first official engagement since arriving in the Kenyan capital a day earlier.

“People are being lifted out of poverty, incomes are up, the middle class is growing and young people like you are harnessing technology to change the way Africa is doing business,” he told the summit.

Sharing the stage with Obama, Kenyatta also voiced optimism towards a brighter future for the continent.

“The narrative of African despair is false, and indeed was never true,” Kenyatta said. “Let them know that Africa is open and ready for business.”

The summit is aimed at promoting businesses that promise to lift many more Africans out of poverty and help insulate societies against radicalisation.

As Obama arrived in Kenya, the birthplace of his father, throngs of Kenyans lined the route of his convoy, cheering, whistling and waving as the motorcade passed by and a helicopter circled overhead.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Nairobi, said there was “overwhelming euphoria” when Obama arrived, adding that the US president is the “most popular” politician in Kenya.

The visit is Obama’s first as president, and is also the first time a sitting US president will visit Ethiopia and the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The first African-American president of the US is expected to address regional security issues and trade, and also touch on matters relating to democracy, poverty, and human rights in the region.

A previous planned trip to Kenya was delayed by Kenyatta’s indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Those charges were suspended last year – in part, prosecutors say, because the Kenyan government thwarted the investigation.

Obama’s trip has also come under fire by rights groups, and more than 50 African and global human rights organisations have called on him to publicly meet democracy activists on the ground.

They voiced concerns about “grave and worsening” rights challenges in both Kenya and Ethiopia.

The charges against Kenyatta, and the fact that Ethiopia’s government won 100 percent of parliamentary seats in a recent disputed election, has raised questions about whether Obama should have made the trip at all.

In Addis Ababa, Obama is expected to address leaders of the African Union.

He spent Friday evening reuniting with about three dozens of Kenyan family members.

Obama has said he had “never truly known” his father, who was born in Kenya’s far west, in Kogelo village near the shores of Lake Victoria.

An economist, he walked out when Obama was just two and died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982, aged 46.

Obama has previously made personal visits to Kogelo, the home of many of his Kenyan relatives, most recently in 2006.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Barack Obama, Kenya, United States, USA

Zimbabwe offers new exchange rate: $1 for 35,000,000,000,000,000 old dollars

June 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Central bank discards local currency after years of hyperinflation which at one point reached 500,000,000,000%

 An old Z$100tn note, pictured in 2010. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

An old Z$100tn note, pictured in 2010. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

by The Guardian

Zimbabweans will start exchanging “quadrillions” of local dollars for a few US dollars next week as President Robert Mugabe’s government discards its virtually worthless national currency.

The southern African country started using foreign currencies including the US dollar and South African rand in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was ruined by hyperinflation, which hit 500 billion per cent in 2008.

At the height of the country’s economic crisis, Zimbabweans had to carry plastic bags bulging with banknotes to buy basic goods. Prices were rising at least twice a day.

From Monday, customers who held Zimbabwean dollar accounts before March 2009 can approach their banks to convert their balance into US dollars, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, John Mangudya, said in a statement.

Zimbabweans have until September to turn in their old banknotes, which some people sell as souvenirs to tourists.

Bank accounts with balances of up to 175 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars will be paid $5. Those with balances above 175 quadrillion dollars will be paid at an exchange rate of $1 for 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars.

The highest – and last – banknote to be printed by the bank in 2008 was 100tn Zimbabwean dollars. It was not enough to ride a public bus to work for a week.

The bank said customers who still had stashes of old Zimbabwean notes could walk into any bank and get $1 for every 250tn they hold. That means a holder of a 100tn banknote will get 40 cents.

The bank has set aside $20m to pay Zimbabwean dollar currency holders.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Currency, Zimbabwe

Renewed violence forces 100,000 to flee in South Sudan

May 11, 2015 by Nasheman

UN says fighting in Unity State has displaced 100,000 people, as two aid agencies withdraw from Leer fearing attack.

South Sudan

by Al Jazeera

Fighting has escalated in war-torn South Sudan forcing up to 100,000 people to flee their homes, the United Nations has said.

Toby Lanzer, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan said up to 100,000 people had been displaced from their homes in Unity State, as clashes intensified between rebels and government troops.

“Since the beginning of May, military activities south of Bentiu in Unity State have forced up to 100,000 people from their homes,” Lanzer said in a statement.

“People should never be harmed, and certainly not targeted or forced to flee from their homes,” he added.

Also on Saturday, two global aid agencies evacuated their international staff from part of Unity State fearing clashes.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said they withdrew from the town of Leer, Machar’s hometown, over concerns of an “imminent attack”.

“Today, we withdraw again with a heavy heart, because we know how civilians will suffer when they are cut off from critical, lifesaving medical care,” Paul Critchley, head of mission at MSF said.

MSF was previously forced to abandon Leer in January last year when fighting over the town made it too dangerous to stay.

When aid workers were able to return four months later they found the hospital burned and looted and vehicles stolen.

Franz Rauchenstein, the head of the ICRC in South Sudan, urged the warring sides to respect international law.

“At all times, those who do not take part in the hostilities must be spared and the distinction needs to be made between civilian objectives and military objectives,” he said.

Violence in the world’s youngest nation has been characterised by rape, attacks on civilians and medical facilities and ethnic massacres.

Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Africa, Riek Machar, Salva Kiir, South Sudan

Maputo Declaration of African Civil Society on Climate Justice

May 1, 2015 by Nasheman

Climate Justice

Climate justice advocates, community peoples and mass movements’ representatives met in Maputo, Mozambique from 21-23 April 2015 to consider the roots, manifestations and impacts of climate change on Africa and to consider needed responses to the crises.

At the end of the deliberations it was agreed that Africa is disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis although she has not significantly contributed to the problem. The conference also noted that the climate crisis is systemic in nature and is a result of defective economic and political systems that require urgent overhaul. In particular, the meeting considered that Africa has been massively plundered over the centuries and continues to suffer severe impacts from resource exploitation and related conflicts.

The meeting noted that the Africa Rising narrative is based on the faulty premises of neoliberalism using tools like discredited measures of GDP and is presented as a bait to draw the continent deeper into extractivism and to promote consumerism.

The meeting further noted human and environmental rights abuses on the continent, as well as the ecological, economic, financial crises, all adversely affect her peoples and impair their capacity to adapt to, mitigate impacts and build collective resilience to climate change.

The meeting frowned at the widening gap between our governments and the grassroots and the increasing corporate capture of African governments and public institutions. These constitute obstacles to the securing climate justice for our peoples.

The long walk to climate justice requires mass education of our populace, as well as our policy makers, on the underpinnings of the climate crisis, the vigorous assertion of our rights and the forging ahead with real alternatives including those of social and political structures and systems. It also demands collective and popular struggles to resist neo-colonialism, new forms of oppression and new manifestations of violence including criminalisation of activists and social movements, and xenophobia. We recognise that as climate change worsens, it will increase the resource crunch and migrations and will lead to more conflicts between people. We also recognise that the exploitation of migrant labour by corporations often leads to conflicts between neighbouring countries.

With justice and equality as the irreducible minimum, the conference further noted and declared as follows:

  1. All nations must act together to ensure that global average temperature rise does not go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels as anything beyond that will mean a burning of Africa.
  1. In Paris COP21, we demand that African governments defend positions that benefit Africans not the World Bank or corporations.
  1. We reject carbon markets, financialisation of land and natural resources, consumerism and commodification of nature, and all forms of carbon slavery.
  1. We reject all false solutions to climate change including, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), industrial tree plantations, genetic engineering, agrofuels and geoengineering, noting, for example, that clean coal does not exist.
  1. We reject the false notion of “green economy” that is nothing but a ploy to commodify and hasten the destruction of nature.
  1. Renewable energy that is socially controlled must be promoted across the continent.
  1. We call for the creation of financial systems that promote and facilitate clean energy options including by supporting subsidies, facilitated loans, research and development.
  1. We demand an end to financial systems built on extensive subsidies, externalisation of costs, over-optimistic projections, and corruption.
  1. We resolve to work towards reclaiming energy as a public good that is not for profit and reject corporations-driven energy systems.
  1. We say no to mining as we lived better without extreme extractive activities.
  1. Our land is our present and our future livelihood and we reject land grabbing in all its forms including particularly for so-called “investment” projects that are setting the path beyond land grabbing to a full continent grab.
  1. There must be full, transparent and prior informed consent of communities before the use of their lands for any sort of projects.
  1. In all cases the welfare of local communities and our environment must come be prioritised over the profits of investment companies.

In line with the above and through other considerations, the conference demands as follows:

  1. Governments must ensure that the energy needs and priorities of local households, local producers and women – including with regard to social services, transport, health, education and childcare – should be privileged over those of corporations and the rich.
  1. We demand that no new oil exploration permits or coal mines should be granted in order to preserve our environment and to keep in line with demands by science that fossil fuels be left in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.
  1. We call for and support public and social control of the transition to renewable energy, including by community-based cooperatives, civil society collectives and the provision of local level infrastructure.
  1. Governments must dismantle the barriers of privilege and power including those created and reinforced by financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
  1. We demand urgent technology transfer for clean energy production, the abolishment of intellectual property and increased research and development funds to tackle climate change.
  1. We demand full recognition of local community knowledge of forests, food production, medicinal and cultural uses of land and forests; funding of research in this area and use as part of the public education system.
  1. We demand an urgent transition from dirty energy forms to clean energy systems while ensuring that workers are properly equipped and provided with new healthy jobs created by this shift.
  1. Governments must support agro-ecological food production in the hands of small scale producers, prioritise food production over cash crops in order to promote food security in the context of food sovereignty.
  1. Governments to ensure the protection and recognition of farmers’ rights to save, sell and exchange their seeds while rejecting genetic engineering and synthetic biology, including of those seeds manipulated and presented as being climate smart.
  1. Ensure access, security, control, and right to use land for women. We recognise land as a common good.
  1. Tree plantations must not be misrepresented as forests and trees must not be seen simply as carbon stocks, sinks or banks.
  1. Community forest management systems should be adopted across the continent as communities have a genuine stake in preserving the health of forests.
  1. The right to clean water should be enshrined in the constitutions of all African countries.
  1. Governments must halt the privatisation of water and restore public control in already privatised ones.
  1. Governments should halt the building of big dams, other mega structures and unnecessary infrastructure.
  1. Governments should be responsible for holding corporations accountable for all environments degraded by ongoing or historical extractive and other polluting activities. Corporations who have created this contamination must pay to clean it up, but their payment does not constitute ownership of these environments.
  1. Governments to ensure the cost of social and health ills by using energy derived from fossil fuels are not externalised to the people and the environment.
  1. Governments must take up the responsibility of providing hospitals, schools and other social services and not leave these for corporations to provide as corporate social responsibility or other green washing acts.

Conference participants resolved to work with other movements in Africa and globally for the overturning of the capitalist patriarchal system promoted and protected by the global financial institutions, corporations and the global elite to secure the survival of humans and the rights of Mother Earth to maintain her natural cycles.

Signed by: All the civil society organisations, representatives of social movements and communities from Mozambique and southern Africa, and students present at the meeting.

Filed Under: Environment Tagged With: Africa, Civil Society, Maputo Declaration

Five African novels to read before you die

December 1, 2014 by Nasheman

Odds were on for Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o winning the Nobel Prize this year. University of California/Ho/EPA

Odds were on for Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o winning the Nobel Prize this year. University of California/Ho/EPA

by Brendon Nicholls, The Conversation

There is a surfeit of book prizes. Big ones, small ones, ones that award experimental fiction, others that concentrate on female authors, or young authors, or authors from Ireland or Latin America. African literature is blossoming, and its prize culture is flourishing alongside. The Caine Prize is well-established, and the last few years have seen the establishment of the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for work in African languages (announced on November 18), the Etisalat Prize for first time authors, and the South African Literary Awards.

None of these are recognised on a global level, and so people following this growing trend were excited when this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature re-ignited speculation that the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o would receive the award. His fans reasoned that the recent death of Chinua Achebe might focus the minds of the Swedish Academy on their pioneering and accomplished, but now ageing, generation of African writers.

But it was not to be. So to partly address this yawning oversight, here’s a list of five of the greatest African novels:

1) Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)

Things Fall Apart comprehensively imagines how the Nigerian Igbo community functioned prior to colonialism. The divisions in this community accompany the tragic fall of the hero, Okonkwo, whose heroic but rash stand against colonialism ends in a lonely suicide. Achebe’s wisdom is sufficient to move readers beyond recriminations or historical blame, since the Igbo community adapts to accommodate Christianity and new forms of colonial governance. Just as the novel’s title quotes Yeats’ poem The Second Coming, Achebe’s African philosophy of balance in all things works towards a millennial partnership with Western modernity.

2) Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Petals of Blood (1977)

This is the great novel of African socialism. Petals of Blood reaches beyond its native Kenya to embrace the wider black histories of the Caribbean and the US. Drawing together four village outcasts – a teacher, an ex-Mau Mau soldier, a student teacher and a barmaid – the novel intertwines the characters’ memories and life-experiences to construct a shared communal past. Ngugi accumulates a deep communal history of colonial, multi-national capitalist, and post-Independence theft. Charting the development and decline of a single village from Edenic pastoral to apocalyptic disorder, Petals of Blood likens the endlessly regenerating African socialist struggle to the Biblical resurrection.

3) Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born (1968)

Armah’s novel reflects on the existential predicament of one honest man, a lone moral beacon in the corrupt last days of the Ghana’s Nkrumah regime. Amid the greed of all who chase the “gleam” of possessions and wealth, Armah’s unnamed man endures slights from his political friends and chastisement from his wife. When the Nkrumah government eventually falls, the man becomes the ironic saviour of those who have attempted to corrupt him. The man’s moral purposes become vindicated for a moment and they anticipate a future in which the “Beautyful Ones” will one day be born.

4) Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (1988)

A young Rhodesian girl, Tambu, dreams of going to school in a family that favours her brother. Breaking with her female destiny to work in the fields and bear children, Tambu realises her ambition of attending her uncle’s mission school. But all is not well. Tambu’s cousin, Nyasha, is aware of the trap of a colonial education, which empowers individuals at the cost of their belonging to family and community. As Tambu’s dream materialises, Nervous Conditions charts Nyasha’s increasingly self-destructive eating disorder in a futile rebellion against patriarchy and history.

5) Bessie Head, Maru (1977)

A powerful love story written during Head’s exile from Apartheid South Africa. Margaret Cadmore is a young Masarwa (Bushman) woman adopted and educated by a British namesake. Margaret’s identity breaks the usual categories in the Botswanan village of Dilepe, where her people are slaves. Unknowingly, she inspires a deadly love-rivalry between two powerful men, Maru and his best friend Moleka. Maru defeats Moleka and kidnaps Margaret through the wiles of witchcraft and suggestion. His marriage to Margaret has the effect of freeing her people from slavery. However, in an unconscious room in her mind, Margaret continues to dream of Moleka.

These novels contain stories that Africans themselves want to tell, stories that imagine a world exceeding all expectation. Their world, it is true, contains its elements of suffering, but it also offers the surprises of triumph, community, magic, justice, philosophy, wisdom, humour and the habits of African dailiness.

In celebration of African literature, readers can judge for themselves which of these great novels merit plaudits and accolades. So this year, stop that desperate rifling through the Booker and Nobel lists to find something to buy distant relatives for Christmas. Your list is right here.

Brendon Nicholls is a Lecturer in African and Postcolonial Literatures at University of Leeds.

The Conversation

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: Africa, Books, Literary Prizes, Novels

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