The Global Agriculture Scale Up Initiative was launched in April 2005 as a major initiative in Oxfam's Global Livelihoods Strategy and Corporate objectives relating to Aim 1-Sustainable Livelihoods. The position will aim to provide overall leadership, coordination and support for the Global Agriculture Scale-up Initiative, working closely with country, regional and Oxford based staff to successfully deliver the entire project.Closing date: 3 August 2007.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of Abderrahim Ariri, the publisher of the weekly "Al Watan Al An" ("The Nation Now"), and one of his journalists, Mostapha Hurmatallah, on 17 July 2007 in Casablanca after they published the text of an internal security memo circulated by the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST), an intelligence agency.

The Tanzanian government has announced plans to nearly double the number of people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by the end of 2007. The East African country, where an estimated 1.4 million people are living with the HI virus, has 77,066 patients on the life-prolonging medication; the government intends to raise the number to 150,000 by December 2007, and to 200,000 by the end of 2008.

Based in Mozambique, the HIV/AIDS Behavior Change Technical Advisor will provide technical assistance to CAP grant recipients in designing and implementing community-based HIV/AIDS prevention programs. She/He will provide technical expertise in behavior change strategies to CAP partners through trainings and mentoring. The HIV/AIDS Behavior Change Technical Advisor will develop and adapt behavior change tools and train CAP grant recipients in integrating them into their programs.

It was 3am when armed security agents hammered on the door of Khairat al-Shater's flat in Nasser City; his daughter Zahra could only watch and comfort her distraught children while her father and husband, Ayman, were detained as Hosni Mubarak's latest crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood got under way. "The Brotherhood are good people," insisted Zahra, in a hijab of the kind increasingly seen on the streets of Cairo. "We believe in peaceful change and the regime is crushing us.

Peace talks due to start in Somalia this week were overshadowed by a grenade attack in a Mogadishu market that killed at least three people on Wednesday. The attack caused chaos at the Bakara market a day before the opening of the peace meeting, already adjourned from the weekend in a climate of violence.

We are currently seeking a Program Manager for an upcoming one-year program in Uganda. This program focuses on rebuilding communities in northern Uganda and helping transitional IDPs get back on the road to self-sustainability. Program components include road rehabilitation, land clearing, and crop production and harvesting. The project office will be located in Gulu. Hiring is contingent upon award from donor; anticipated start date is September. We require minimum of 8 years of in international development is required, with 3 years overseas in positions tied directly to project implementation.

The First Vice-President of SAMWU, Mr Xolile Nxu, was detained, interrogated and strip searched by Israeli security en route to the Second Annual Conference on Popular Non-Violent Resistance held recently in the West Bank village of Bil’in, Occupied Palestine. The conference was attended by 400 people from across the world, including EU Parliamentarian, Luisa Morgantini. Mr Nxu spoke on South African resistance to Apartheid, and also held discussions with Palestinians about the need for a One State solution to the current occupation.

For the past four days, Zimbabwe has been hit by an electricity blackout that has plunged the country into darkness and exacerbated the suffering of people already reeling from an ever-deepening economic and political crisis. A source from Zimbabwe, speaking to the Cape Argus on condition of anonymity, said power availability had been very intermittent since the weekend and was mostly accessible for periods of four hours in the evenings.

Police have seized food earmarked for relief aid from a warehouse in Masvingo as part of the crackdown on the business sector, sources say. Aid agency sources told The Financial Gazette this week that police arrested the manager of a Blue Ribbon Foods warehouse, which stored relief supplies sourced by CARE, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The governor of Nigeria's Imo State , Chief Ikedi Ohakim, has declared that the evolution of Information Technologies (ITs), would make the difference in the fight to reduce poverty in any country. Chief Ohakim, who spoke at the on-going 21st international conference and Annual General Meeting of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) being held at the Imo Concorde Hotel, Owerri, Imo State, under the theme "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria: IT strategies and tools."

The United Nations has urged a prominent Darfur rebel leader to join efforts to end the devastation in Sudan’s western region, even though Abdel Wahid Nour, leader of a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, has declared he would not participate in peace talks next month.

Chadian President Idriss Deby said Thursday that he accepts the idea of an interim European Union peacekeeping force in the African nation to protect people affected by violence spilling over from neighboring Darfur. Deby spoke after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been pushing for the force.

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem writes on the recent elections and presidential transition in Nigeria, and concurrent popular protests. He notes that it cannot be good for accountability that the resident president is not held accountable, because people are too obsessed with a former president. Instead, he argues that a new alliance and broad coalition for change needs to be built, to exert democratic pressures on the political system.

I was in Nigeria all of last week. It was my first time in the country since the innauguration of President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, following an election that is universally believed to have been flawed in practically all senses. There were threats by very angry politicians and aggrieved activists that 'Yar Adua will not be sworn in', come 29 May.

The first test of that threat was on 1 May, when the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) called for mass protests during its traditional May Day activities. I happened to be in Abuja at the time. Many of the activists thought the May Day events could become a wider protest about the elections, that would make the country ungovernable. It came to pass without the kind of mass support that was expected. However, a more popular protest called by the NLC after Yar Adua had been sworn in was more successful, because it was based on issues (yet another hike in the domestic oil price) that most Nigerians can easily relate to.

Anybody with a less partisan take on the dynamics of the power play should have realised that flawed as the elections were, it was highly unlikely that the new president would not have been sworn in. Even with the electoral challenges in the courts from the candidates of opposition parties, there was no way the state would have allowed a legal lacuna and political vacuum. But I was speaking to an unwilling audience of friends and compatriots. I warned them against making threats that cannot be enforced. Moses had more luck in his exile on the mountains. Part of the problem with the protests had to do with the anomalous situation of there being no credible leader to rally the population and transform their anger into political force that cannot be ignored. The truth is, that all the parties rigged where they could. But the PDP, being the ruling party at the centre, had more powers and better opportunities for robbing people of their mandate, essentially through control of the results declaration by an openly partisan electoral commission. The process by which the leading presidential challengers in other parties, governorship and other candidates emerged in the various parties was mostly imposed by powerful cliques.

In spite of the vast powers of the ruling PDP, in areas that are very strong opposition turfs like Lagos, Kano, Zamfara or Abia states, the incumbent governors used their popularity and advantages of incumbency to successfully checkmate the PDP machinery and retain power. Therefore, when it comes to rigging, most of the politicians, especially those in the three leading parties (PDP, ANPP and AC), cannot thump their chest about who is cleaner. Yes, Nigerians were robbed of their votes. But one does not intimate that the sense of loss at the national level is in terms of whether candidate A or B had been robbed. The fact that the politicians were not calling for the results to be cancelled in the areas where they had won presented other challenges.

How can the election be flawed only where the ruling party had won? Sections of civil society were calling for cancellation of the whole election, and a re-run. But the politicians who had 'won' were certainly not in favour of that, regardless of their parties. There were also those who had called for an interim government, which was also not a realistic option, because of the political interests at stake.

Nigerians may be aggrieved and remain extremely bitter. But not many are willing to die for any politician anymore, since there are no fundamental differences between them, apart from the ‘I want to chop too’, or ‘I want to be this or that’ - without any bother about policies or alternative programmes for the emancipation of the populace from poverty and want amidst plenty.

The situation is further complicated by two important factors. First, there is resignation that Yar’ Adua would probably have defeated the closest two of his many rivals. Second, the personality of Yar Adua himself - as non-confrontational, being unknown and therefore greatly underestimated - focused more attention on Obasanjo who had orchestrated his nomination and presided over his anointment. There was and still is great anger at the former president.

When I returned to the country early in July, I was hoping that by then the dust was settling, and that there would be a more sober atmosphere in the country. How wrong was I?

There are still many grieving democrats who are refusing to accept that Yar Adua, barring an unlikely decision in the tribunal to nullify the election, will be president for the next four years.

Talking to the usual chattering classes of media pundits, NGO activists and opposition-sympathising politicos, one could make the mistake of believing that General Olushegun Obasanjo is still the tenant in Aso Rock. Every decision or non-decision of Yar Adua is analysed through the lenses of Obasanjo still driving from the back seat from his country home in Ota farm.

In part, Yar Adua’s style of stoic silence in the face of public pressure makes him vulnerable to accusations of being a puppet of the former president. Nigerians are so used to militarised leadership, where things are done ‘with immediate effect’, by executive fiat, that they think Yar Adua is indecisive for taking time before nominating his cabinet, and making senior appointments in dribs and drabs.

If we rewind back to 1999, it took Obasanjo quite some time to exert control over his government. In fact, until his second term, he did not have full control of his administration. Unfortunately for Yar Adua, he does not have four years to wait. However, he will not act in the ways critics of Obasanjo would like. They want him to go after Obasanjo openly, which will not be wise, given the current power balance within the ruling PDP. A president who does not know where the cutlery is cannot start inviting people to dinner!

But as happened between Obasanjo and those vested interests that brought him to power: what goes around comes around. Yar Adua will sooner than later enforce his footprints on his administration and the party that brought him to power. The first cabinet will not be his personal 'A' List. The list of special advisers and key para-statal appointments may be more indicative of his policy thrust and political direction. Obasanjo's so-called 'dream team' did not come into cabinet until his second term, but most of them were key advisers or heads of para-statals.

Obasanjo should know better; that government by proxy does not work in Nigeria. However, the elixir of power is difficult to shake off. It is most deadly in its hangover effect on ex-presidents.

It is not just the pathological anti-Obasanjo elements in Nigeria that believe he is the power behind the throne, and look for him under every executive bed. From all available evidence, Obasanjo, too, is suffering from this grand delusion. I call it Executive withdrawal syndrome.

For now, Yar Adua can enjoy the unusual convergence between the two. This will mean that all his bad decisions, failure or inability to make any decision can be blamed on Obasanjo’s pressures. The good ones will be interpreted as evidence of his becoming his own man! I even read paid adverts and news reports in Nigerian newspapers warning Obasanjo to 'leave Yar Adua alone' - as if he had complained to anybody! It is quite unrealistic to expect that the PDP and the former president from the same party will not attempt to influence the president. That's what politics is all about. But to assume that a president is nothing but a creation of his sponsors removes human agency and turn politics into a game of zombies.

If Obasanjo is the only one putting pressure on Yar Adua, that is the only pressure he will respond to. However, if the grieving democrats can come back to earth, exert their own pressure and engage on their own issues, they may be suprised at the kind of potential influence they could wield. Issues around reform of the electoral process, constitutional reform, freedom of information, transparency and accountability, and independence of the judiciary could be important entry points. The pressure for reform cannot be driven by the political class. Most of them have lost all moral and political credibility. A new alliance and broad coalition for change needs to be built, to exert democratic pressures on the political system. It needs CSOs, NGOs, mass labour, youth, student and women's movements, and other popular forces in strategic partnership with democratically minded elements in the system.

My fear is that people are too obsessed with Obasanjo, baying for his blood and daring Yar Adua to wield the sword. This may actually make Yar Adua take it as his mantra that it is good for him to be permanently underestimated by his opponents. As long as they continue to blame Obasanjo, he may have more room to do what he really wants to do. It cannot be good for our accountability that the resident president is not held accountable for his action or inaction, because people are too obsessed with a former president!

Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Human rights activists have criticised the organisers of a music festival in the Republic of Congo for housing pygmy musicians in a tent at a zoo. Other artists at the Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) are staying in hotels in the capital, Brazzaville. The organisers say the grounds of Brazzaville zoo are closer to the pygmies' natural habitat.

The East African Sub-regional Support Initiative for The Advancement of Women (EASSI) is taking giant leaps in the world of IT. The launch of this website is another example of the many strides this organization is taking to become a giant in the world of communication. With the need to communicate at every level in the advancement of women’s causes, this website is an opportunity to have dialogue with women from all over the world.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) hascalled on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to put pressure on the board of the private media group Raga SPRL so that 9 arbitrarily dismissed union delegates can return to work as agreed a month ago with the mediation of the Labour Minister.

The 2nd Annual Connecting Rural Communities Africa Forum 2007 will bring together African government officials, senior figures from African regulatory authorities and international ICT experts who are leading the private sector connectivity drive to discuss key challenges, opportunities and benefits of connecting rural Africa. The event runs from 21st – 24th August 2007.

Using a condom in conjunction with a diaphragm — a latex contraceptive cap that fits tightly over a woman's cervix — to protect against HIV infection in women is no more effective than relying on a condom alone. The findings are reported in an article published in The Lancet (13 July) by Nancy Padian, from the University of California in San Francisco, and her colleagues. The team, from Methods for Improving Reproductive Health in Africa (MIRA), did a randomised trial of almost 5,000 sexually active, HIV-negative women in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged African farmers to build stronger links with scientists and research institutions as part of their efforts to boost food production on the continent. He also said that, whatever the potential future benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops, conventional seed breeding currently represented an important path towards securing a 'green revolution' in Africa, and thus of decreasing Africa's dependence on food aid.

The Africa Population Report has revealed that poverty, unemployment, poor health and malnutrition are some of the biggest challenges facing social growth and development on the continent. Speaking at the opening of the 6th General Assembly of the African Population Commission in Johannesburg on Monday, South Africa's Deputy Minister for Social Development, Dr Jean Swanson-Jacobs, highlighted these issues and advocated a call to action.

Sierra Leone's special war crimes court on Thursday sentenced three leaders of a militia to long jail terms for war crimes that included killing, raping and mutilating civilians. Alex Tamba Brima and Santigie Borbor Kanu were jailed for 50 years each and Brima Bazzy Kamara for 45 years. All three had been convicted last month by the United Nations-backed court of crimes against humanity committed during the West African country's 1991-2002 civil war.

Freedom House has released an analysis of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa showing that the region has experienced notable increases in freedom over the past generation, although more setbacks than gains were seen in 2006. “Sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 presents at the same time some of the most promising examples of new democracies in the world—places where leaders who came to power through fair elections provide real opportunities for their citizens to live in freedom,” said Thomas O. Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House.

Nigerian, Human Rights Defender and founder of The International Centre for reproductive health and Sexual rights (INCRESE) in Niger State, Dorothy Aken’Ova has been ostracised and intimidated by family and community because of the work she does.

African environmental experts meet in South Africa in August to strategise on a continental position to incorporate climate change adaptation programmes in national development policies. The Climate Change Action Africa 2007 conference will be hosted by the International Quality and Productivity Centre (IQPC) in Midrand from 28 to 30 August.

Much of the discourse on women and information and communication technologies (ICTs) seems to indicate that as a result of using these technologies, marginalised groups like rural women can get empowered. ResearcherPatricia Litho conducted a case study of an ICT project that was established in Uganda with an aim of economically empowering women, to asses the extent to which rural women were able to access ICTs, and if as a result they were empowered as claimed by the project reports.

The UN refugee agency has reopened the Teferi Ber camp in eastern Ethiopia and begun relocating some 4,000 Somali refugees there from an overcrowded makeshift settlement close to the border with Somalia. The first two convoys on Friday and Monday carried a total of 1,043 people, who were warmly and loudly welcomed by the local population when they arrived at the UNHCR-run camp here from Kebribeyah, some 120 kilometres to the south. There will be a convoy every three days.

Leaders of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples are reiterating their calls for the 192-member U.N. General Assembly to recognise their sovereignty over ancestral lands and resources. "It is now time for the General Assembly to adopt the declaration by vote, if necessary," Les Malezer, chairman of the U.N.-based Indigenous Peoples Caucus, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday.

This paper published by Q Squared uses case studies of recent initiatves to explore how official statistics have been used by civil society organisations (CSOs) to hold public agencies accountable for service delivery or for the effective use of public resources. Amnog the key findings are that where governments are committed to increase the accountability of the public sector to citizens, it may be necessary to create new institutions and/or pass new legislation in order to raise the demand for data.

In Burkina Faso 80% of the population lives in rural areas. In this context, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will contribute to development only if they are linked to the specific rural situation and solve concrete problems of the rural inhabitants. Among the initiatives undertaken by agricultural organizations to find the usefulness of ICT, the initiative of the Federation of Agricultural Professional Producers of Sissili (FEPPASI) is one of the most concrete.

More than 50 people were killed and 20 injured in Sudan's worst floods in living memory which have partially or completely destroyed 18,000 homes, the head of civil defence said on Thursday. Hamadallah Adam Ali told Reuters major roads to some parts of the country had been flooded and police helicopters and government planes were flying in emergency aid and tents to affected areas in Sudan's east, southeast and around Khartoum.

The national anti-corruption agency of Namibia has decided not to investigate further the controversial awarding of bidding to top officials in the Office of former Namibian President Sam Nujoma. Human rights activists call the decision a "severe blow to Namibia's anti-corruption crusade."

Only a few years ago, oil-rich Gabon had to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help to reform its economy, which had accumulated an unsustainable level of foreign debts. Today, a recovered Gabonese economy enabled authorities to negotiate an early repayment of its US$ 2.3 billion debt burden.

Scarce building materials, earmarked to rehouse victims of Zimbabwe's Operation Murambatsvina, have been diverted to other projects, including work on a mansion for President Robert Mugabe in an exclusive suburb of the capital, Harare. In the winter of 2005, informal homes and markets were demolished in the ZANU-PF government's Operation Murambatsvina, aimed at clearing slums and flushing out criminals, but which left more than 700,000 people homeless or without a livelihood.

The 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing, the leading literary prize for short stories from the African continent, was awarded to Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko for her story ‘Jambula Tree’ published in African Love Stories (Ayebia Clarke Publishing 2006).

The Chair of Judges, the writer Jamal Mahjoub from Sudan, who was himself short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004, announced Monica as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, on 9 July 2007.

He described her story as ‘a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between two adolescents’.

The other judges of the 2007 prize were: Wangui wa Goro, the Kenyan academic, critic and writer; Delia Jarrett-Macauley, an award winning novelist; Jonty Driver, South African poet and novelist; and Robert Molteno, former managing editor, Zed Books.

The 2007 prize winner, Monica Arac de Nyeko, was born in Uganda. She is a member of the Uganda Women Writers Association (FEMRITE). She was also short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004 for her story ‘Strange Fruit’.

As part of the award, Monica will take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Also on this year’s shortlist were: Uwem Akpan, from Nigeria, for ‘My Parents Bedroom’ (The New Yorker); E.C Osondu, from Nigeria, for ‘Jimmy Carter’s Eyes’ (AGNI Fiction Online); Henrietta Rose-Innes, from South Africa, for ‘Bad Places’ (New Contrast); and Ada Udechukwu, from Nigeria, for ‘Night Bus’, (The Atlantic Monthly). Kenyan Billy Kahora’s ‘Treadmill Love’ published in The Obituary Tango (Jacana/New Internationalist 2006) was highly commended by the judges.

The Caine Prize was launched in 2000, named after Sir Michael Caine. It is awarded to a short story of between 3,000 and 15,000 words, published in English, by an African writer whose work reflects African culture. Translations are eligible, and the internet is an acceptable mode of publication. Previous winners include Helon Habila, Segun Afolabi, Brian Chikwava, Binyavanga Wainaina, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Mary Watson.

For further information, see

Ayebia Clarke Literary Agency and Publishing
BBC interview with the 2007 winner

The idea of the grand debate remains everything but grand in so far as the debate is seen as an imposition by our leaders, to the exclusion of the people, especially the masses, and of course we know that women constitute the bulk.

When I first heard about it, I asked myself a couple of questions which I did not get answers to. First, I asked why it is qualified by the adjective, ‘grand’ when there is really nothing grand about it in either scope or substance.

The idea of the grand debate remains everything but grand in so far as the debate is seen as an imposition by our leaders to the exclusion of the people, especially the masses, and of course we know that women constitute the bulk. There can be nothing grand about the debate so long as its train is moving, and the people, both women and men, are not carried along with it.

One of the next questions I asked myself was: why should we be having this debate in the first place? I would have thought that the question 'to be or not to be' on regional integration is as good as answered; and the questions remain ‘when’ and ‘how’? The question should not be: whether or not. It is a given, and there is no going back. It is a situation of forward ever, backward never. Unlike the OAU, the AU's envisioning for Africa of a peaceful, united and prosperous continent driven by its people lays claim to be a union of African people, and not just a club of heads of states. But how far this is true, we are yet to see.

Our leaders did not stop at theorising. They stepped further by creating new organs like the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and the Economic and Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) through which the voice of the people will be projected to provide room for popular participation by the people in its activities.

The adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights in 1999 signalled one of the preliminary and important steps towards including African peoples, including women, in deciding their own affairs. This was further elaborated with the signing of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa in 2003, and its coming into force in 2005.

The difference between the OAU and the AU is also seen in the AU's highlighting of human rights, which includes gender equality. This is evidenced by its excision of the clause of non-interference in the internal affairs of member nations, for which the OAU was notorious, and also the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa of 2004. But the extent to which these have made a difference in the lives of African women, if at all, is not clear.

Speaking of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, it struck me that when a document is referred to as being solemn, it simply depicts the deep sincerity underlying its signing and adoption. In all the AU documents I have come across, it is only this very important document that, paradoxically, bears this adjective. I stand to be corrected. The document could anyway have been referred to simply as a ‘declaration on Gender Equality in Africa’, given the little or no attention paid to it by our leaders, thereby connoting neither deepness nor sincerity.

But come to think of it, when our leaders signed the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, no one held guns to their heads. They were not cornered, threatened or blackmailed into making commitments to it, leaving one wondering why they are now paying lip-service to it. Why they are dragging their feet and why are we having such a hard time getting them to implement it? At the recently concluded G8 meeting in Heilingendamm, our leaders accused the G8 of reneging on their promises to Africa, but many Africans sadly do not see our leaders in the same light.

Not only is the low level inclusion of women noted in the grand debate, the inclusion of the masses generally is rather more than a little disappointing. If most of the citizens are not included in the debate, how then is this situation different from what it was centuries ago, when our forefathers ceded our entire land and livelihood to the colonial masters for mere ‘shoestrings’. Women were not consulted then, as we are not now. How many peoples and groups have had the opportunity to deliberate and contribute to this ‘grand debate'?

Analysing the official AU study on the proposed union government, gender was mentioned in passing as an area of focus, but did not carry with it any substance. It was not clear what is to be done with respect to gender. As a matter of urgency, African women want this to be broken down so as to be sure we are not being ‘offered’ another white elephant. If gender is a crosscutting issue, as it is often said, and all the areas of priority would be viewed through gender lenses, this should not just be done, but be seen to be done.

Apart from African women, civil society organisations should be included to make the debate meaningful. It is recognised that one of the causes of collapse of some previous regional integration arrangements, e.g. the East African Community (1967-1977), was the low level of involvement of civil society in their activities buttressing the fact that the effectiveness and sustainability of regional integration in Africa will be ensured through sustained political will and involvement of the people in the continental integration processes.

Civil society organisations have been challenged severely on what and who gave them the mandate to represent the people, who elected them and what the basis is of their legitimacy. But when patients are referred from government’s hospitals, due to inadequate facilities and expertise or both, to Nairobi Women’s Hospital, no one raises the question of legitimacy.

The AU has secluded itself in this debate so much so that even the legislative authorities at national level and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are left behind in the grand debate, despite the fact that Africa’s integration process has always been government-led. Yet the latter are supposed to be the building blocks on which the foundations of the union are based.

It is essential that involvement in the debate on union government should not stop at jaw-jawing, but include considering the peoples’ interests and opinions, taking them on board, and basing them on the strategic area of focus on shared values and common interests.

They should not stop at just soliciting public participation and opinion, but should also find ways of exciting them, just like it is done in voter education before an election, where political parties state their manifestos, who is contesting and what the electorate stands to benefit.

It is noted that there has been a dearth of information from the media, both of the process leading to it, and also of the debate itself. But that is understandable, such is the inactivity on this question for the media to cover widely and deeply.

I am sure when our leaders started thinking and deliberating on these issues, right from the beginning, they did not foresee that it was not going to be a thorny path. This path hopefully will be in a smooth and straight road. Yet they should remember that they can only get there if they remain dedicated to the cause of the journey and do not waver.

We can see from the experience of the EU that there certainly will be conflicts. We should then, even at this formatory stage, begin to think of the conflict prevention and management that should put mechanisms we want in place without waiting for them to erupt, and we start applying the fire brigade method.

* Roselynn Musa works with African Women’s Development and Communications Network, FEMNET, Nairobi, Kenya.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Is there a connection between language and the enslavement or liberty of a people and their capacity for development? What have been the experiences of African countries between political independence and 2006, the year of African languages? In this article, Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III elucidates these questions. He also describes the approaches of the AfricAvenir Foundation to raise consciousness about language and development amongst the people and the decision makers.

1. Language, thought and the colonial context

Language and the articulation of thought

When a child is born and their tongue remains ‘attached’ or ‘stuck’, the child will not be able to speak correctly. It is imperative that this organ, which allows us to modulate the sounds of our speech and articulate the words we wish to pronounce, is freed if the child is not to remain handicapped for life. In my Doula tradition, we carry out this benign operation fairly early on. If, later, we see that a child is becoming particularly loquacious, then the tradition is to crack a special nut in the baby’s mouth (‘ba bo mo kasso o mudumbu’).

The language we use enables us to articulate our ideas, feelings, faith, dreams and vision of the world. Language allows us to recount our everyday, to interrogate our past and plan our future. It enables us to articulate constructed thought. And thought is a vehicle of development – or regression.

Thanks to the creation of thought and its practical or technical implementation, discoveries are made, acquisitions preserved, change comes about, predictions and probabilities are programmed, and potential dangers are forewarned of. But it is also thanks to thought that hatred, wars and destruction materialise. Thought and the articulation of ideas are at the centre of human existence; they determine the quality and the rhythm of our progression on earth.

The colonial experience of African countries determinedly applied the breaks to the articulation of the collective thought of the African peoples. The coloniser’s language was imposed as the only officially recognised language. African languages were condemned to the domain of folklore as ‘vernacular languages’ or ‘patois’. Thought, that continued to be articulated by individuals in their ‘patois’, was not recognised and was marginalised. But the collective articulation of the ideas of a given African people no longer identified with the thought transposed by the coloniser’s official language. In the colonial encounter between Europe and Africa in African lands, the articulation of thought thus suddenly became a question of contested political power.

The shock of encounter in the articulation of ideas, in the African colonial context, could not admit compromise. The colonist’s language assumed exclusivity in the public life of the colonies. Thought expressed in indigenous African languages became marginalised. It was labelled primitive, barbarous, backward, incapable of intellect, incapable of communicating progress or development. Knowledge communicated in African languages was thus characterised as non-knowledge by the colonial master. In reality, thought expressed in an African language felt subversive because it could neither be understood, nor controlled, nor commanded by the colonial master. It had to be defeated or reduced to silence.

Despite the presence of the coloniser, African populations did not stop thinking or articulating their ideas in their own languages. But as they lived as conquered, dominated peoples, whose territories remained occupied militarily, often for over a century, all public support for the articulation of their ideas was suppressed. These ideas had all but disappeared from public spaces and were unknown in the administration, schools, media, and, to some extent, in churches.

Language and transformation in the postcolonial period

Africans themselves had passed through the filter of the colonial administration, schools or church seminaries. Indeed, they had no other sources of information other than the media, articulated in the language of the coloniser. Thus they ended up convinced that Africa would not produce original thought worthy of progress and development. Ideas of progress could only be articulated in the language of the European coloniser.

These same Africans would assume power in African countries after the independence movements of the 1960s and 1970s. They continued the application of the colonial project by imposing the former coloniser’s language on the African people. Despite formal independence, which the Asian countries also acquired, thought in Africa remained colonial in linguistic articulation and expression, interleaved in the norms and structures of language and dissemination determined by the European metropoles.

Now, for these same European metropoles, Africa is only a marginal, peripheral continent, very much of secondary concern in the global strategy of power sharing in the world. According to this strategy, Africa must be severely contained, marginalised, controlled, weakened and dominated in order that the winners of globalisation may continue to draw from it what they need to nail their power and globalised supremacy.

African populations, continuing in their overwhelming majority to live their daily lives in their languages, which are no longer used as a means of communication and administration, do not even really understand the strategic games they are embarking on. They remain for the most part ignorant of the concepts, discourses and programmes elaborated for them at national as well as global levels. These populations thus remain in a state of paternalistic dependency. They did not conceive, and do not even have access to, the debate about the fate reserved for them in the framework of globalised competition.

The official language of the public domain operates as an insurmountable barrier for such African populations, who, in fatal error, have sometimes ended up internalising the notion that all these discourses in the white people’s language, which they only understand approximately, do not concern them. They believe that the powerful African elite and international organisations will seal their fate, while they do not have the right to speak. We often hear people saying that they have become powerless in the face of destiny, and that only a divine power could break the conspiracy created by the alignment of the interests of the postcolonial local elite with the powers of foreign organisations.

2. The postcolonial state and linguistic schizophrenia

Permanent structural violence and hijacking the discourse

African populations thus live, for the great majority, in a permanent state of structural violence. This violence confiscates all elaboration of thought and fundamental discourse on the life and future of a given African nation. The tiny minority which has gone through the filter of Western schooling, and has become incapable of articulating thought and discourse in its own African mother tongue, largely shares the foreigner’s discourse on Africa. Those who try to oppose it do so by derisory means: opposition itself being articulated in a language that the population does not know or hardly understands.

The opposition that should claim back the articulation of thought and discourse in people’s everyday language lacks structural support. The ordinary people, although implicated, do not have access to the opposition discourse, purportedly articulated in their favour – as this is in the white man’s language. Some may contest my argument with the assertion that French, English, Portuguese and Spanish have become African languages, since in most cases these languages are the only ones used in schools, the administration and the media, in short, in everyday public life, and because this has been the case for more than a century.

Statistics frequently account for the African population of a country by simply considering them as speakers of the former colonial language. Nigeria, with its 470 African languages thus becomes an anglophone country. The two Congos with the 221 languages of the DRC and the 60 languages of Congo Brazzaville become francophone countries.

Certain discourses in Africa today try to demonstrate, more and more insistently, that European languages such as French, English and Portuguese have become African languages. Advantage should be taken of their status as African languages, notwithstanding of course, the peculiar linguistic development, by which Africa has enabled the enrichment of European languages, on African soil. Despite all this, it remains true that the imposition of European languages on Africa has not succeeded in wiping out the African people’s daily use of their own languages.

Linguistic schizophrenia and development

Africans today thus live in a situation of permanent linguistic schizophrenia, by which personal and intimate matters are articulated in African languages in the strictly private space – at home, in rituals or in convalescence. Whereas anything considered important will unfold in the public sphere in European languages, which are barely known or commanded. Structural violence engenders linguistic schizophrenia, which separates or removes the citizen from the sphere of thought and discourse about the stakes of the nation.

Modern Africa is participating powerlessly in an intellectual genocide that is structural because it is perpetrated every day by the administration, schools, the media etc. Anyone who fails to fundamentally turn their back on their African language and culture, and does not manage to learn the white people’s language (‘bwambo bwa mukala’), is rejected by the system. That citizen will be condemned to survive, or otherwise, in the so-called informal sector, abandoned by the administrative structures and international cooperation. For it is only in this so-called informal sector, which ‘gets by’ that everyday articulation of thought and discourse is permitted in African languages.

Thus, only Africans who have successfully passed through the filter of structural linguistic violence are in a position to read, and perhaps to understand, the foreign discourse on the development of African countries: a discourse articulated exclusively in European languages. The debate on development in Africa remains conceived, elaborated and pronounced in languages which are barely understood or grasped by the overwhelming majority of Africa’s populations, who therefore cannot not participate in the debate. They cannot understand, criticise, amend or reject the outcome of the debate. And yet, it is they who are invited to implement it.

Thus we are living with a debate that is in essence anti-democratic, as it is neither communicated nor shared by the majority of the population. It simply imposes itself through the trick of structural violence. Discourse on the development of Africa will struggle to become an African discourse as long as it is not conceived, developed, criticised, amended and rejected by African populations themselves, in the languages they command and use every day. This is a terrible situation as it affects the lives of several hundreds of millions of people who should, but do not really manage to, get to grips with it.

The new political and international legal framework

The current historical situation presents the African elite with a deep dilemma. To remain or accede to power, it must conform to the rules of the game that govern the system of domination on the African continent. It knows it must negotiate power by forcing itself to satisfy those outside the continent who determine who remains in power in any given African country. Given that this is the underlying situation in most African countries today, African political actors will wisely refrain from requiring African populations to re-appropriate for themselves the articulation of thought in African languages. Others will simply refuse to support the demand for an African re-appropriation of the discourse on African development; they will recognise the danger of destabilising their own political position.

Resolutions of international conferences, conventions signed by states and ratified by parliaments such as the Unesco convention of 2003 for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, the declaration by the African Union that 2006 would be the year of African languages, or current programmes in the francophone zone promoting partner African languages in primary schools all provide new legal and political bases and a recognisable framework for actions that avoid the suspicion that they are intended to destabilise existing regimes. But as reality shows us, very few African political leaders genuinely demonstrate the backbone to give back to their people the power to articulate their own destiny.

The directives of the African Union are, however, sufficiently clear today, thanks to the determination of such countries as Mali, South Africa, Nigeria etc. Besides these official measures, acts of civil courage and the commitment of African civil society have enabled initiatives to re-appropriate the discourse on the collective destiny of the African peoples.

3. Methodologies trialled by the AfricAvenir Foundation

It is in this context that our modest organisation, the AfricAvenir Foundation for African renaissance, development, international cooperation and peace, based in Douala, has been trying for some years to stimulate a debate in the media about the introduction of African languages into the public domain, and to suggest how this could be done.

Discussion forums and African indabas

These discussion forums organised in Douala and in indabas in the surrounding villages in 2004–06 have illustrated the hunger of the local peoples for their Cameroonian languages and, above all, their willingness to contribute personally to their promotion. However, they want to see that there is the political will to set up an institutional structure so that individual efforts can be brought together and channelled.

African language competitions in schools

Cameroonian language competitions, organised by the AfricAvenir Foundation in 2004–05, have confirmed the enthusiasm of the 1,600 pupils, representing 16 educational establishments who participated in the competition for African languages. For the first time in their lives, these pupils, educated exclusively in French and/or English, participated in a competition in which they were allowed to articulate their ideas and feelings in their Cameroonian language through rhetoric, translations, readings, song, poetry, dance etc. However, the pupils participating in the competition, and their families, became conscious of the seriousness of the gaps in their knowledge of their own cultural heritage. A general determination to use their languages more fully in their everyday lives was born.

Storytelling afternoons and soirées

Storytelling afternoons in schools and the soirées at AfricAvenir in 2004–05 have led to the discovery of a fabulous African world to which young schooled Cameroonians no longer have access. Stories told in Cameroonian languages with a short translation in French provided at the beginning of the session evoked more than curiosity – the pupils returned to their parents asking for storytelling evenings in their languages at home. Moreover, once the brief summary had been given in French, the same public attentively followed the stories in Douala, Tpuri, or Ewondo for over three hours!

Religious choirs, rap and song evenings

Christian choirs invited to the foundation sing in Cameroonian languages in church on Sundays, which is already a well-established tradition. Cameroonian singers mostly use Cameroonian languages, particularly the Douala language, in their songs. Whether their performances include religious or secular music, they are well attended.

In a new initiative, we are keen to have rap sung at AfricAvenir in Cameroonian languages. Indeed, young people have asked us to organise a rap competition in our languages.

African language cinema months

Our programme of films in African languages allowed us in 2005 and 2006 to look beyond Cameroon and show many African films, including for example those by the Senegalese Sembène Ousmane in Woolof, subtitled in French. The audiences confirmed that it was perfectly possible to make a film in an African language and have an international audience. Sango Malo, the film by the Cameroonian Bassek ba Khobio, demonstrated that several Cameroonian languages could be used in the same film without causing any difficulties for the audience. On the contrary, when we heard our own languages spoken in the film, we recognised ourselves in it more closely, and appreciated the multilingualism of Cameroon.

The book and CD collections at the Cheikh Anta Diop library

To support the learning of national languages, the AfricAvenir Foundation has undertaken to collect stories in Cameroonian languages that have been published in specialised journals anywhere in the world since the end of the 19th century. Research was carried out in the libraries of the former European colonial powers and stories, some of which had been published before 1900, were photocopied and classified into two main chronological groups. These can be consulted in the foundation’s Cheikh Anta Diop library in Douala.

The foundation’s library also commissioned a team to look in bookshops and cultural, linguistic and religious centres for any books or pamphlets published in Cameroonian languages. This work proved tiresome, as the bookshops and distributors only disseminate books in the official languages – French and English. To date, we have however managed to collect 251 books in 81 Cameroonian languages at the Cheikh Anta Diop library. The result of this initiative was publicly exhibited during 2007.

Publication of illustrated works of multilingual stories

Another team at the AfricAvenir Foundation is preparing the publication of a book of the story ‘Masomandala’ or ‘Jeki la Njamb’a Inono’. This epic was published in the German colonial period, in German in Germany, and in the Douala language. It has been taken up again by our team, which comprises a Cameroonian professor of German, a Douala language specialist, an Ewondo language specialist, a writer, and a book illustrator. This epic, which is about 50 A4 pages long, currently exists in Douala, Ewondo, French and German translations. A trilingual edition is planned in two volumes, Doula–French–Ewondo for Cameroon and an illustrated edition for Germany.

Effectively this epic, collected around 1901, brings to life a profoundly African world and its myths, beliefs, philosophy, political and social organisations, means of resolving conflicts and economic mechanisms. We find ourselves interrogated by an Africa of unsuspecting wealth, demanding its place in our modernity.

This alternative ‘global approach’ practiced by AfricAvenir has only been possible thanks to the support of the Austrian ministry of culture and science since 2004, and that of the Styrian province in Austria (Steiermark) in 2006. Without their support our work would have remained purely theoretical.

Conclusion

As we have argued in this presentation, language is a fundamental means for articulating individual and collective thought. When a language is taken away from its people, when it is forbidden to them, when it becomes marginalised in public life, the people’s thought is also marginalised, the people lose their words and the power to conceptualise and articulate their being. The foreign language, which henceforth occupies the public space, is accompanied by political and linguistic structural violence, bringing in its wake its own vision of the world, present and future ideologies, philosophy, values and dreams. It subjects the dominated population to foreign needs, which are frequently and directly opposed to the needs of the subjugated people.

Thanks to the struggle of Africans for a profound renaissance of the continent, and thanks to new inter-African and international conventions, a more appropriate structure is emerging which will permit African peoples to re-appropriate the articulation of their thought in their own languages, even if their populations – who are by tradition multilingual – also use languages of international communication. This transformation, so long as it is accompanied by consistent political will, will open up a new path for development, articulated by Africans themselves, from which international cooperation can only gain in quality and effectiveness.

* Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III is a professor at the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. He is president of the AfricAvenir Foundation,

This paper was given at a symposium on African languages held in October 22006 at the University of Vienna, Austria. It was originally published in French in Pambazuka News on 7 June 2006, [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org.

The ravaging of Africa has been enriching Europe and North America for more than 500 years. First, European empires imposed slavery and colonialism on the continent. After 1945, the United States took over as the dominant neo-colonial power.

Through the Pentagon and the CIA, the US government has fueled 14 wars in Africa. The methods employed include direct and proxy invasions as well as arms transfers and military training. The US has used the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to systematically demolish African economies and health and education sectors. This military and economic war enables the looting of Africa's resources by Western multinational corporations. Washington's genocidal imperial strategy has killed more than 26,000,000 Africans but failed to suppress popular resistance.

28 activists from 16 African countries were interviewed for the series.
The documentary is based on Asad's award-winning article of the same title. For his publications visit:
To respond email: [email][email protected]

Episodes:

1. 'Militarizing Africa' describes how the United States has fomented the devastating war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as taken part in and engineered the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. With Mfuni Kazadi, Millicent Okumu, Farah Maalim and Halima Abdi Arush.

2. 'Economic War' focuses on the World Bank's and IMF's decimation of the economies and social sectors of Guinea, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa. With Bakary Fofana, Sara Longwe, Caroline Adhiambo, Njuki Githethwa and Molefe Pilane.

3. 'Corporate Plunder' details the disastrous effects of Royal Dutch Shell's operations in Nigeria and those of Canada's Tiomin Resources in Kenya. Also highlighted is the massive tax looting of Africa by Western corporations. With Ifieniya Lott, Mwana Siti B. Juma, Charles Abugre and John Christensen.

4. 'African Resistance' celebrates the liberation of Southern Africa, the defeat of US aims in the Congo and Somalia, as well as the diverse non-military struggles against US domination that were represented at the World Social Forum. With Wahu Kaara, Amade Suca, Mfuni Kazadi, Farah Maalim, Virginia Magwaza-Setshedi, Emilie Atchaka and Njeru Munyi.

The criminalization of Female Genital Mutilation, part of some of the cultural inhibitions stifling Ghana’s progress, by the Parliament of Ghana, indicates attempts to rediscover the state from its roots. It raises the fact that, unlike years ago, the elected representatives are expanding their thinking in relation to Ghanaian norms, values and traditions in Ghana’s progress. The act simultaneously touts the good aspects of the Ghanaian culture and also attempts to refine the ancient cultural inhibitions that have been stifling Ghana’s development process. At deeper level, there is clear demonstration that the law-makers, as the key face of Ghanaian elites and prominent directors of progress, are increasingly having fuller grasp of Ghana’s development process.

Still, by this act, including the heated debate it generated, as the Ghana News Agency (June16, 2007) reported, the elites are “rediscovering the state,” from the roots of its original Ghanaian indigenous values, and “starting to consider the challenges ahead,” as the inhibitions within the values of the 56 ethnic groups that make-up Ghana nation-state pop up now and then in the drive for progress. The Ghana nation-state cannot work harmoniously if there are huge in-built unrefined inhibiting values that stifle it. The attempts are not only to refine the inhibitions within the culture but intellectualize it, enlighten it, as Prof. Kojo Yankah, of the University of Ghana, would say, for progress. For years, such inhibiting cultural practices such as the destructive Pull Him Down syndrome (Prof. Kwesi Andam, of University of Science and Technology, thinks is partly responsible for the decline of the once prosperous Fanteland); immense dabbling in the irrational juju-marabout mediums that twists reasoning(coup-makers used this and nearly blew Ghana into pieces); human sacrifice (there are campaigns Africa-wide to stop this practices); and the excessive interpretation of events as caused by witchcraft and not human agency, have impacted negatively on Ghana’s progress.

As the main centre for national reasoning and reflection, as the fountain of human rights, effectively human refinement, as the key forum of national struggles, and the main juggler of the contending issues of a nation-state slightly founded on the wrong footing, the Parliament of Ghana refracts both the inhibitions and the positive parts of Ghanaian values and traditions, its ex-colonial legacies and the deftness to appropriate as much as practicable global development values for Ghana’s progress. In this sense, the Parliament has huge task, unlike years past, to deal with not only the emerging challenges but the good parts of Ghanaian values and the inhibiting parts such as a shrine near Kumasi ritually sacrificing deformed babies for host of material demands from juju-marabout-minded Ghanaians. How do you change such thinking in the larger development process?

Such long-running counter-productive cultural practices have led some critical observers to question African elites inability to boldly attempt to refine them and led to all sort of views about Africa’s values, especially as science grow globally and certain human events are thought not to be caused by demons, divine feat, evil spirits, or unforeseen forces. From afar and inside Africa, some observers have argued that Ghanaian/African elites cannot think and have no confidence in their own values as critical domains for progress. The German thinker, Friedrich Hegel, thought that Africans cannot think or are philosophically weak. The late Senegalese President, Leopold Senghor, perhaps influenced by Hegel, thought Africans cannot think and brought in Europeans when he has developmental challenges. The Ghanaian law-makers are saying today that both Hegel and Senghour were wrong, that Africans can think from within their values in the global perspective in the context of their norms, values and traditions. Hence, the criminalization of FGM.

Either from the twisted views of Hegel or Senghor, which pretty much reflected the jaundiced European views of Africa’s values and traditions, as the French would tell you with their warped view that Africans needed to be “civilized” because they cannot think and are “primitive,” there have been long-running perception that African elites, after freedom from colonial rule, have not been able to intellectually come out with the thinking that allows them to model their progress from within their norms, values and traditions, and deal with the emerging development challenges effectively. When Ghana’s Dr. Y.K. Amoako, ex-chair of the Addis Ababa-based UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, observed that Africa is the only region in the world where its development paradigms are foreign dominated, Dr. Amoako was effectively saying that Africa’s elites have not being able to overturn the European views of the fact they are so weak that they cannot think from within their values and need foreign values and traditions to develop. Pretty much disturbing! The contention is how Ghanaian/African elites can think through their values and traditions to come out with development paradigms that reflect their environment as the Southeast Asians and other prosperous nation-states throughout the world have done and are still doing a la globalization.

One mistake Ghana’s Founding Fathers did was failing to structure and direct the nation-state from within Ghanaian values and traditions. If the Founding Father had examined the contradictions and atrocities within the values and traditions and laid them out for rigorous refinement in Ghana’s progress, as the current law-makers are attempting to do, the Founding Fathers would have set the path, long ago, for enlightened processes for progress. The criminalization of FGM, in the broader context of nation-building, represents a rebirth – indeed, a reconnection between the “state” (as the political authority) and “nation” (as the root, values and traditions) – since there are conscious attempts to awaken the long-suppressed values, appropriate the good parts and refine the inhibiting aspects for national development.

Yesterday morning news of our current difficulties was injudiciously leaked to international media by a former associate. We had hoped to keep the wraps on this for some time while we tried to mobilise support with the Communist Party and Government of China; but now, alas the news is out, and we are not sure what the result will be.

Sbu Xaba’s frustration and despair is understandable. After the end of apartheid there was genuine hope that the lives of the poor would improve. This is what the incoming ANC government had promised. But as more than a decade passed, hope turned to frustration, despair and anger. Those most effected by these broken promises, the ‘poors’, have not been silent. In 2005 alone there were 6000 protests in South Africa.

On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Gender Links in partnership with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism will be hosting a panel discussion on the first Southern African research report on gender and advertising as part of the monthly seminar series of the Gender and Media Diversity Centre.

A group of prominent and renowned church leaders in Lesotho showed their commitment to promote dignity, equality and rights of all people, especially those living with HIV/AIDS in front of King Letsie III and Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili. They also pledged to discuss openly issues around HIV/AIDS - treatment, shun negative statements that the disease is a divine punishment as well as break negative cultural barriers.

Rwandan senators have unanimously approved the abolition of the death penalty for all sorts of crimes, including those relating to genocide. The senators concurred with the country's lower house of parliament. The move was first initiated by the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front before getting the blessings of the cabinet.

Congolese women have been thwarted in their ambition to improve their showing in the National Assembly after the first round in the Congolese legislative elections. The results of the 24 June vote show that only one woman has been elected and it is unlikely the numbers will improve in the upcoming second round.

After three postponements and many threats of non-attendance, Somalia's national reconciliation conference, due to start on 15 July, will proceed as planned, a senior official told IRIN. "We are moving as planned and the conference is on schedule and will begin on 15 July," Abdulkadir Walayo, the media adviser for the National Governance and Reconciliation Commission (NGRC), which is organising the conference, said on 11 July.

A programme known as 'community conversations' (CC) is making traditionally conservative Ethiopians open up and face the realities of HIV, including the need to treat people affected by the pandemic with greater respect and acceptance. The project began in 2004 in southern Ethiopia as an initiative of the UN Development Programme and Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope, a local non-governmental organisation, and has grown to cover most regions in Ethiopia.