Pambazuka News 470: Shell in Nigeria: The struggle for accountability
Pambazuka News 470: Shell in Nigeria: The struggle for accountability
For the sake of the ANC, Jacob Zuma should come clean, apologise, ask for forgiveness - and resign from the national presidency, writes Peter Townshend.
The Rwandan government and its military have largely been suspected by a UN Panel of Experts, human rights organizations and independent journalists, of financially supporting a number of violent militias that have destabilized the eastern Congo region to illegally traffic millions-of-dollars worth of minerals such as coltan, gold, and cassiterite. These minerals are then brought from neighboring Congo into Rwanda for eventual sale on the international market.
'Environmental determinism’ – the theory that Africa’s development has been hindered as a result of ‘the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit’ – does not accurately explain Africa’s poverty. Environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: "Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power." To tackle the real issues behind Africa’s slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist.
Egypt will invite bids in March for 50,000 acres of land in North Sinai for agro-business projects, the agriculture minister said yesterday. Egypt said this month it planned to lease farmland for agro-business projects during 2010 but was waiting for the agriculture ministry to allocate suitable plots.
Over the years many Big Ideas have been imposed on Africa from outside. The latest is that the region should sell or lease millions of hectares of land to foreign investors, who will bring resources and up-to-date technology. None of the blueprints has worked, and African farmers have become increasingly impoverished. It is time for Africans to turn to their own histories, knowledge and resources.
It’s the largest agricultural investment ever in the West African nation of Sierra Leone—and a Swiss firm is behind it. Addax Bioenergy, based in Geneva, just signed a deal that will allow it to produce 100,000 cubic meters of bioethanol from sugar cane within the next two years alone.
The International Monetary Fund's board will consider whether to restore Zimbabwe's IMF voting rights in a meeting on Friday, an IMF spokesman said on Thursday. By reestablishing Zimbabwe's voting rights -- which would allow the country to take part in IMF decision-making again -- the international community would be sending a strong signal of support for policies of the new unity government led by President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Zimbabwe's Supreme Court has ordered two government mining firms to stop operations on British-owned diamond mining fields plagued by human rights abuses, state newspapers have reported. The case was brought to the court by British-based African Consolidated Resources (ACR) in a bid to win back its mining rights which were suspended in 2006. The government is appealing a court ruling returning the fields to ACR.
The African Union has condemned a coup in Niger, where soldiers have detained President Mamadou Tandja. AU chief Jean Ping said he was watching developments "with concern" after a day of gun battles culminated in a takeover led by Colonel Salou Djibo.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki says his country is not in crisis, despite repeated reports of a bitter power struggle among the nation's elite. Mr Kibaki acknowledged there had been a "heated debate" but said Kenyans should not be worried.
A Ugandan clergyman's decision to show gay pornography to his congregation has been labelled as "twisted, homophobic propaganda" by a gay rights groups. Behind the Mask says the stunt, by anti-gay Pastor Martin Ssempa, equated homosexuality to paedophilia.
International prosecutors have promised there will be "no impunity" for anyone suspected of taking part in the killing of Guinean activists last September. The International Criminal Court's Fatou Bensouda, who is visiting Guinea, told the BBC victims' families would have justice.
Kenyan police have released five people arrested for planning a "gay wedding" north of Mombasa, saying there was no evidence to prosecute them. But police spokesman Martha Mutegi told the BBC the men had been advised to leave the area for their own safety and to avoid angering the local community.
Uganda's environment is being put at risk by a secret deal between the government and a UK oil firm, a lobby group has said. The pressure group Platform said Tullow Oil had framed a deal with no provision for the environmental or social impact of oil extraction in Uganda.
The US has imposed impossible conditions on aid agencies in Somalia, a UN envoy to the country says. Humanitarian co-ordinator Mark Bowden said the US was trying to ensure that aid was not diverted to Islamist insurgents fighting the government.
"Hidden Herstories: Women of Change" is a youth-led heritage project which looks at 4 influential women who haven't had their rightful place in the history books. 20 young people from west London have set out to right this wrong; using their film-making and writing skills, they have made a one hour documentary and published a magazine. The film exposes the plights and determination of Octavia Hill, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Claudia Jones and Jayaben Desai. For more information on these women, click below to view the 28 page magazine featuring contributions from Tristram Hunt, Jenny Bourne, Nzingha Assata and Marika Sherwood.
In 2005, the 15 governments that comprised the EU before its eastward expansion the previous year undertook to allocate at least 0.51 percent of their gross national income to development aid by 2010. But estimates published Feb. 17 project that the average aid allocation given by these countries this year will be just 0.48 percent of income. As a result, the amount being given by wealthy countries to poor ones will be 21 billion dollars less this year than the amount foreseen in 2005.
Brigitte Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson, head of the opposition Democratic Convention of African Peoples party, is Togo's first female presidential candidate. But she has withdrawn from the electoral process.
As the East Africa Community (EAC) gradually moves towards a political confederation, women’s rights groups from the five member states are pushing for an East African Protocol on Gender and Development to bridge the gender gaps within the integration process.
Communities, environmental groups, academics and NGOs are calling on the World Bank to cease and desist from a proposed loan of R29 billion ($3.75 bn) to Eskom. If this loan – which may come up for a Board vote in March or April – goes through, poor South Africans will have to bear the burden of Eskom’s debt and the World Bank’s cost recovery programme, and climate change will intensify.
While the political agenda at the IMF is shifting back to mandate and governance reform, there are growing calls that the Fund needs to fundamentally rethink the monetary and fiscal policies it demands of borrowers if the institution is to retain legitimacy and renew its mandate.
Millions of Egyptian children continue to live in poverty, despite recent gains made for young people, particularly on the legislative front, a study commissioned by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has found.
The Refugee Studies Centre’s International Summer School fosters dialogue between academics, practitioners and policymakers working to improve the situation of refugees and other forced migrants. It provides the time and space for them to reflect on their experiences and to think critically about some of the aims and assumptions underlying their work.
The aim of the Summer School is to provide its participants with an comprehensive understanding of the immigration and asylum policy of the European Union from a legal point of view. The programme is organised by the "Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe", founded with the financial support of the Odysseus Programme of the European Commission and co-ordinated by the Institute for European Studies of the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
Rwanda will play global host to celebrations for the 2010 World Environment Day, observed annually on 5 June, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced.
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia expressed grave concern today at the latest spike in violence in the capital, Mogadishu, which has killed at least 80 civilians and forced more than 8,000 others to flee their homes since the start of the month.
The top United Nations envoy in Côte d'Ivoire is holding intensive talks with all sides in the divided West African country to ensure that last week’s dissolution of the Government and the independent electoral authority does not affect repeatedly delayed elections, currently slated to be held next month.
Officials are appealing for calm during the campaign period ahead of upcoming historic elections in April as insecurity remains a major concern in Southern Sudan. Electoral campaigning in the highly charged contest opened on 13 February, two months before three days of polling from 11 April, with the results due a week later.
Despite efforts to end the use of child soldiers in the war-torn east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), youngsters are still being recruited within the ranks of both the rebels and the national army, with girls at particular risk of becoming sex slaves and less likely to be released, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.
Security forces in Ivory Coast fired live bullets and tear gas to disperse hundreds of protestors in Gagnoa on Friday, wounding dozens, sources said from the southern town. A source at the hospital, who asked not to be named, said dozens of people were being treated there, mainly for gunshot wounds.
South Africa's largest labour federation COSATU has threatened to call a general strike in October if the government does not take steps to improve workers' rights. The union said the use of employment agencies, mostly by foreign companies to source temporary labour, denies workers the the rights they are entitled to under South Africa's labour laws.
The health department is redesigning the new ARV tender in the hope of procuring cheaper antiretroviral medicine amid claims that South Africa is paying around 30% more than the global rate for the drugs.
The national health department has signed off new HIV treatment guidelines, bringing South Africa in line with international best practice and removing a drug responsible for a wide range of side effects. The new guidelines were finally signed off last week after a meeting last November with the provinces, donors, HIV clinicians and other HIV experts.
More than 100 human rights advocates, dissidents and government officials will gather in Washington, DC February 17-19 for a groundbreaking summit to tackle global challenges to fundamental freedoms of expression and association.
The bishops of the so-called 'Province of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa' has issued a strong statement raising concerns about the dire human rights consequences of Uganda's proposed new law, which will ban homosexuality, and even make it punishable with the death penalty. Read the full statement below.
Almost a quarter of patients eligible for HIV treatment in South Africa’s Free State province died before getting it, a further 13% disappeared from the healthcare system and 5% were still on a waiting list, according to a review of three years of progress in the province’s public sector antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme.
The chance of becoming pregnant not only increased over four years of antiretroviral treatment, but was almost 80% higher for HIV-infected women who began antiretroviral therapy than for HIV-infected women not on treatment enrolled in the Mother-to-Child Transmission Plus (MTCT Plus)-Initiative in seven sub-Saharan countries, report Landon Myer and colleagues in a study published in the February online edition of PLoS Medicine.
Education systems in many of the world's poorest countries are now experiencing the aftershock of the global economic downturn. The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, released on 19 January, argues that the crisis could create a lost generation of children whose life chances will have been irreparably damaged by a failure to protect their right to education.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has recommended that the Endorois tribe in Kenya be given back its land, after they were evicted from it to make way for a nature reserve in the 1970s.
Over 400 Bushmen were denied the right to vote in Botswana’s 2009 general election, with five Bushman communities inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve omitted from the electoral register.
Support for regional trade is one of the cornerstones of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But the focus has been on large scale trade in goods and services, ignoring one important group trading throughout the region.
Sandhya Boygah considers herself a victim of male-dominated politics. In 2007, she was asked by her party, the ruling Labour Party, to step aside and allow a man to stand for the elected post she sought.
With hundreds of thousands of girls and women believed to be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Europe, rights groups have mounted a campaign to get EU leaders to stop what they see as a barbaric and dangerous procedure. FGM – an umbrella term for procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons – has been condemned by governments, rights groups and health organisations across the world.
Not long ago an editorial like the one that appeared in the independent Al- Dustour newspaper this week might never have made it into print. In his weekly column, entitled 'Fraud for the benefit of Egypt', chief editor Ibrahim Eissa accuses Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of systematically and meticulously rigging elections and referendums to perpetuate his rule.
Eighteen-year-old David Kimenyi* is sure he infected his girlfriend with HIV. They had unprotected sex many times, even after he discovered he was HIV-positive. "I am afraid that I would have infected my girlfriend with HIV/AIDS," he said.
Even though the global economy appeared to start growing again during the closing months of 2009, labour markets showed little sign of improving. The number of unemployed persons is estimated at 212 million in 2009, representing an increase of almost 34 million over the number of unemployed in 2007, with the bulk of this increase occurred in 2009.
The European Union formally decided on February 15 to lift restrictive measures against 6 individuals and 9 companies in Zimbabwe that were previously subject to travel bans and asset freezes, but continued the measures for another year on the majority of the 203 individuals and 40 companies on the list.
Despite arrests presently rocking the Kenyan gay community, human rights institutions recently held the first ever Public Lecture on Sexual Minority Rights aiming to address the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals among students and members of faculties of different academic institutions in Kenya.
A number of South African Methodists are angry and upset about the ruling that a well-liked minister must be "defrocked" because of her gay marriage. Reverend Ecclesia de Lange of Cape Town married her life partner in December and was suspended by the church in January.
This report sets out to provide a fresh analysis of current thinking and practice about the role of media in relation to governance outcomes. Specifically, the aim was to discover from first principles - and without attempting to prove any particular thesis - what current thinking about media and governance is among a number of high level thinkers and policy makers from the governance, media and development communities.
From The Huffington Post, this article by Internews President David Hoffman discusses the possibilities for increasing the spread of information and communication technology (ICT), "the I-Factor", in light of recent democratic movements. He criticises the effects of the "proselytizing of Western-style democracy by the former [United States (US)] president" in dealing with authoritarian regimes directly threatened by the rhetoric of democracy promotion.
The Ethiopian government and United Nations have opened a new refugee camp for thousands of Somalis fleeing violence in the Horn of Africa country. Somalia shares its northwestern border with Ethiopia, which has experienced a growing influx of Somalis over the last three months.
Western Kenya's Lugari district has long been a maize-growing area. But worsening drought, believed linked to climate change, has made the region's once-reliable staple an increasing risk. "When I planted maize, the rains disappeared when the maize had reached knee height. The whole farm dried up and I had nothing for food. My children could not go to school because I relied on maize as a cash crop also," said Dan Asembo Shaban, a farmer and a father of five.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Congo-Brazzaville has said it is expecting more displaced people to pour in from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The UNHCR said that more than 120,000 refugees are already crammed into camps in Congo-Brazzaville and Central African Republic.
Experts in mobile communications have urged Uganda’s operators to reduce the cost of mobile broadband to increase the penetration of mobile phone-based services among people. Cheap mobile broadband is also a major incentive for the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms.
African ministers, health researchers and pharmaceutical industry representatives began meeting today to discuss how to boost drug innovation and production on the continent. The African Expert Meeting on Pharmaceutical Innovation in Africa — taking place in Pretoria, South Africa this week (18–20 February) — aims to encourage African policymakers to act to boost drug development and access to essential medicines.
Malaria researchers in Benin say they may have found a replacement for DDT in areas where mosquitoes are resistant to common insecticides. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides is a major part of malaria control. But worries over toxicity and environmental persistence have led to calls for DDT to be phased out, and mosquitoes are growing resistant to widely used pyrethroid insecticides. Alternatives are expensive and short-lived.
Transparency International (TI), the global leader in the fight against corruption, will release Africa Education Watch: Good Governance Lessons for Primary Education, a new report on education in seven African countries on 23 February. Despite ten years of international efforts to provide universal basic education, the report shows that poor management and lack of training is compromising the delivery of quality basic education. The report documents a broad range of problems, from deficient or non-existent accounting systems to illegal fees.
The World Bank has pledged to speed up funding for South Sudan after acknowledging that the slow delivery of aid was hindering the region's development. Government officials and development groups have criticised the organisation for distributing only 188 million US dollars out of the 524 million US dollars given by Western donors
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a new online database that exposes the widespread gender gap in land rights around the world. The Gender and Land Rights database allows users to produce comparative reports on several different statistics, such as the total number of women landholders and rural households headed by women, in almost 80 countries
Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi.
Rwandan health authorities have embarked on a campaign to sensitize the country's prisoners - considered high risk for HIV – on how to protect themselves from contracting and transmitting the virus.
The European Union's decision to extend sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and senior members of the ruling ZANU-PF party was endorsed by a leading human rights organization.
Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.
By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.
A new Zimbabwean short film on multiple concurrent sexual partnerships (MCPs) runs for just 24 minutes, but the producers are hoping that its message will last much longer. The film, "Big House, Small House" is the latest offering from the OneLove Campaign, which works to reduce HIV prevalence and MCPs in 10 southern African countries. The title refers to the colloquial expression "small house", used to denote long-term, illicit sexual relationships in Zimbabwe.
The Kenya Prisons Service has won praise for its HIV programmes, including education, testing and the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to prisoners, but specialists say unless the issue of unprotected sex is addressed, HIV transmission will continue unchecked.
Many HIV-positive African patients are starting treatment too late for it to be effective, new scientific studies have shown. Studies from South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe presented at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco (ending 19 February), all found late enrolment of patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) to be a significant barrier to treatment programmes.
Journalistes en Danger (JED) has praise as well as concerns for a new media law passed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 31 December 2009. The law covers the "composition, powers, organisation and functioning" of the broadcasting and communication council (Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel et de la communication, CSAC).The entire text of the law was read aloud on national radio on 2 January 2010 by an advisor to the President.
Reporters Without Borders condemns the Zimbabwean authorities' repeated harassment and intimidation of "The Zimbabwean", a privately-owned newspaper that is edited in Britain and printed in South Africa.
In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, Tougher Chinese bank regulations weakens South african rand, Zambian miners reinstated at Chinese mine, Zain signs deal with India's Bharti, and Tanzania seeks to protect seed genetic heritage.
Bangladesh has voiced strong opposition to plans by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to provide close to US$100 million in climate change aid - because of its delivery through the World Bank.
Pambazuka News 469: How Yar'Adua has improved Nigerian democracy
Pambazuka News 469: How Yar'Adua has improved Nigerian democracy
In the calm water of love-nights
the storm of life sends out cries
carri'd by leaves of death
falling one by one,
as distanc'd nearness cries
disturb the silent candle burning
he, a sultan to spheres of love
arm'd with ecstatic flutes
sang poetry of love in the sky
heard only
by the Goddess moon
he, who opens a thousand gates
of love
subdu'd by unimaginable Venus
takes leave of the world he loves
fleeing from heart'less
horde of fears
of atoms and grasshoppers
that brush fire
in the mid-hours of bloodletting
ascending crimson nights,
he, abjures
to play the game of the world
deafen'd by hearts of passion
instead, his soul crawls out
to sev'n thousand years
of fields of nights
of thousand moonlights
to join in dance
with depart'd stars
to find its morning
love in times of war.
Eugénio Costa Almeida
André de Oliveira, Jefferson Pinheiro, Sarah Brito e Sergio Valentim
Alemayehu G. Mariam reflects on his evening at Ethiopian musician Teddy Afro’s concert in Los Angeles. In Teddy, Mariam sees more than a talented young musician, for ‘it is plain that [Teddy] does not sing just to sing. I really believe the man sings for one reason only: He is hopelessly in love with Ethiopia.’ Mariam describes a zealous crowd and a passionate scene, where a musician has the power to bring Ethiopians together and ‘revive’: ‘he is that strong steel bridge that spans the generation and geographic gap among Ethiopians.’
Ordinary Nigerians, Funmi Feyide-John observes, are experiencing a backlash of discrimination worldwide as a result of the attempted suicide bombing on an American flight by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Following the event, Nigeria has been listed as a ‘terror prone’ country. Feyide-John goes on to reveal that despite most Nigerians having denounced Abdulmutallab’s actions and terrorism, the US is denying Nigerian students their visas, Nigerian travellers are subjected to special ‘rules’ and Nigerian community initiatives in the US are being shunned. She notes that Nigerians are receiving no support from the Nigerian government to overcome these problems. Furthermore, Nigeria’s unstable political backdrop at the moment is one that encourages separation. What is needed, Feyide-John concludes, however, is unity.
While President Yar'Adua’s absence – since November 2009 – has left a power vacuum in Nigeria, Funmi Feyide-John believes that this ‘cloud has a silver lining’. Feyide-John describes the events and steps that are being taken within Nigeria to fill the presidential seat: Peaceful demonstrations, letters of demand, court cases, discussions amongst legislators and increasing general discontent. She holds that the handing over of power – be it permanently or temporarily – strongly indicates the strength of the people and the giant steps that are being taken to shape a truly Nigerian democracy.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Nigerian storyteller and writer of the acclaimed novels ‘Purple Hibiscus’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ – tells us a tale of ‘the danger of a single story’.
With Porto Alegre hosting an evaluation of the 10 years of the World Social Forum (WSF) in January, Boaventura de Sousa Santos wonders why the mainstream media chose to focus on the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos instead. This is strange, writes de Sousa Santos, 'since the analyses and previsions of the WSF during the last decade turned out to be much more precise than those advanced by the WEF'.
Created in Cairo, the World Forum for Alternatives was established in 1997. In this summary of its 2010–11 proposals, the forum sets out a radical vision for a global network of progressive forces rooted in enabling the peoples of the South to organise and determine their own future.