Monthly Archives: June 2009

rather alarming developments

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I just read this article on the Economist website on the security situation in Southern Sudan. The piece reminded me of posts I made on this blog a while back about nomadic pastoralism and other supposedly “African” ways of life.

The strongly worded emails that I got over these two posts notwithstanding, I still stand by them. I think that it is time we woke up and faced the truth. Subsistence agriculture, nomadic pastoralism and the isolated rural life that characterizes most of Africa are inefficient at best and the real causes of African poverty at worst. Economic history shows that the percentage of a state’s population involved in agriculture is inversely proportional to per capita GDP. Forgive the cliche, but numbers don’t lie (at least not all the time).

Now I am not advocating for Soviet-style relocation of whole populations or anything close to that. But African governments ought to be cognizant of the above mentioned trend and so offer incentives to their nomadic communities to settle down (plus it easier to provide public goods to sedentary populations)  and encourage rural farmers to consolidate their production.

I say this with a firm belief in agriculture as a pillar of economic development. Again, the history books show us that agriculture, textiles and construction comprise the holy trinity of economic development. This was true for England during the Industrial Revolution in the mid 18th century and is still true today. Starving, unclothed and homeless people will not magically start thinking about how to land a man on Mars.

while countless Kenyans starve or face starvation….

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The Daily Nation reports that Kenya has sent a 13 member delegation (Ory says they are as many as 30!) to make a five minute speech in Geneva. The delegation will attempt to defend the Kenyan government, whose police force stands accused of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals, most of them members of the banned (murderous) Mungiki sect.

It still baffles me how fully grown adults pull off  such stunts with a straight face. Signs of an overloading of the Geneva delegation emerged when ODM complained that the initial government delegation was not representative of the entire government since it only included ministers from PNU. The solution was to add new ministers from the ODM wing of government, but without chucking any of the initial members of the team. And all so they could fly to Geneva and witness one of their colleagues give a five minute speech defending the well documented extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals which took place under their watch.

Who are these people???

the absurd

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I am no fan of sensationalist journalism. But this one was absolutely irresistible. Here I give you His Excellency President Professor Dr Al-Haji Yahya Jammeh, leader of The Gambia, a West African country. If you are a keen follower of absurdities on the Continent, he is the one who claims to cure HIV/AIDS – but only on Thursdays. And how he is after witches, perhaps out of boredom. Please read on…

Somalia, the forgotten

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Oxfam, the UK-based aid agency, has declared that Somalia is Africa’s worst crisis. According to reports 3.2 million malnourished Somalis are in urgent need of food aid. Meanwhile, the fighting between government forces and Islamists rages on. Roadside bombings have become commonplace.

Somalia has not had a functional government since 1991. Warlordism has been the order of the day since then, especially after the botched UN (US) intervention in 1993 after which the international community pretty much turned its back on Somalis. In recent months Islamist terrorism and piracy off the coast of Somalia have earned the struggling millions in the country some international attention. But the 4,300 man African Union force in the country is not enough to restore peace and stability – let alone prop up the weak and largely illegitimate transitional government of Somalia.

May be it is time that regional governments considered talking to the Islamists. A BBC report shows that they control most of the South of the country and so perhaps the AU can be persuade them to stop the killing and go easy on human rights (in any case Saudi Arabia’s brand of Sharia is not that different, it still forbids women to do just about anything outside the house) in exchange for some aid or guaranteed security against US drone attacks, for now. Anything for peace and stability at this point.

It is sad that all of the international community’s attention has been focused on Darfur and the Congo, at the expense of Somalia. The AU leadership (and especially South African President, Jacob Zuma) should take the plight of Somalis more seriously and initiate the beginning of the end of the disaster in their country.

Nimeiri bites the dust

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It is un-African to be irreverent to the dead. I don’t intend to break this particular ancestral tradition. OK may be I will, just a little bit.

Jaafar Nimeiri, the man directly responsible for the start of the second Sudanese civil war, died last Saturday (May, 30). He was 79.

Nimeiri took over power in Khartoum in 1969 through a military coup. His authoritarian rule lasted until he was himself overthrown in 1985. The late Nimeiri will be remembered as the man who brokered and then broke the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement. After years of pretending to govern as per the 1972 agreement, Mr. Nimeiri (under pressure from Islamist extremists in the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood movement) finally decided, in 1983, to impose Sharia law on all Sudanese, including the non-Muslim South. In addition, he sought to redraw the borders of Southern Sudan and created new administrative structures in the region in an attempt to sap some of the newly acquired power of Southern Sudanese leaders. His actions led to rebellions in the South and the formation of the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) led by the late Col. John Garang de Mabior.

The almost certain secession of Southern Sudan in the upcoming 2011 referendum will be one of Nimeiri’s lasting legacies. His autocratic style of government and lack of spine in the face of extremist Islamism gave the South no option but to rebel against Khartoum, and win, more than two decades later. To put a positive spin on this, may be we should all be grateful that Khartoum’s extremism during his tenure exposed the non-viability of Sudan as one nation-state. The South and the North were never part of a single polity. It is probably a good thing that the South will secede from Northern Sudan and occupy its rightful place as an East African state.

May Jaafar Muhammad an-Nimeiri rest in peace.

3% growth is a recession, Mr. President

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Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, said today in his Madaraka Day address that things were not as bad as they seem to be for most Kenyans. He assured Kenyans that the grand coalition government was intact and operating smoothly (Mr. Kibaki mistakes most Kenyans for ignorant Martians, I guess) and to buttress his point reminded the country that Kenya’s economy would grow by 3% in the year 2009, up from last year’s projection of 1.7%. Mr. Kibaki also added that his government was in the process of looking into how to create 300, 000 jobs in an effort to arrest Kenya’s crazy unemployment figures.

Like most of the President’s speeches of late, his Madaraka day address seemed like an exercise in speculation and the voicing of half-thought-out wishes.

The coalition government is ineffectual, expensive and divided. 3% growth in a country where income per capita is less than US $2000 is a recession. And about the 300,000 new jobs, I would bet a cow that the president either misread what was in his speech or it was a clerical error – like the one at the treasury that nearly cost Kenyan tax payers KSHS. 10 b – or the president just felt like telling us what he wished was the case.

Kenya is 46 this year. Most Kenyans are lucky if they live to be 46.