Monthly Archives: September 2010

southern adventurism?

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Charles Onyango-Obbo, in Africa Review, has a piece documenting the cases of infidelity in Southern Africa involving the wives of heads of state. From Swaziland to South Africa to Zambia heads of state have had to manage spouses with “restless skirts.” Mr. Onyango-Obbo argues that part of the reason is that “Southern Africa as a region tends to have a more liberal take on sexual matters” adding that

“It is a mining region, and for over two generations men have left their families behind to go and work in the mines in a neighbouring. Some never returned, others did infrequently – often with second wives they had married. Just like lonely miners sought out newscompanionships in the new areas they worked and lived in, the wives they left at home eventually also filled the void left by their long-absent husbands.”

Although I don’t quite agree with Onyango-Obbo’s assertion that Southern Africans are more liberal when it comes to sexual matters, I do think that labor migration necessitated by the mining sector in the sub-region has had a profound impact not only on the institution of marriage but also on health outcomes. As a result the sub-region has the highest HIV infection rates in the world. I must also add that governments in the region have realized this and are trying to deal with the problem. Botswana, for instance, has an elaborate and fairly well run programme of providing HIV positive individuals with ARVs. South Africa, emerging from years of denial under Mbeki, is also trying to catch up.

debating africa’s growth prospects

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The Economist has an interesting debate going on about Africa’s growth prospects. The consensus appears to be that structural factors – such as institutions, culture, colonial history and what not – are the main culprits in the tragic tale of African underdevelopment. I agree. Bad governance, the historical accident of colonialism which halted the natural processes of state formation, among other things such as historical low population densities and a culture that mystifies most things are what continue to deter African nations from realizing their full potential.

Gilles Saint-Paul argues that:

“most African countries are trapped at a “low-trust” equilibrium where basic property rights are not enforced and corruption is rampant. Essentially if I do not expect others to fulfil their side of the contract, it is rational for me not to fulfill mine, and transactions eventually disappear“

One of my favorite economists, Daron Acemoglu, adds that:

“The economic problems of African nations are a consequence of their postcolonial institutions, which are themselves the continuation of the precolonial institutions.“

But Lant Pritchett is quick to remind us of the folly of lumping all the sub-Saharan African countries together, pointing out the stark differences between places like Botswana and Somalia or Cote d’Ivoire and Mozambique.

More here.

catch me if you can: of presidents and genocide

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Those who conceive of justice as an end in itself must be livid. The last several days have seen one appeasement after another of heads of state who may have or have committed heinous crimes against their people. First there was the Kenyan invitation and failure to arrest suspected genocidaire Omar al-Bashir of Sudan. Then came the leaked UN report accusing Kagame’s men of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, in eastern Congo that did not stop regional presidents from attending the increasingly autocratic Kagame’s inauguration after his sham reelection. The damning report even forced the UN Secretary General to fly to Kigali in order to reassure Mr. Kagame and express his regret over the leaking of the report (I wonder if Mr. Kagame reminded Mr. Ki-moon about his peacekeepers’ abysmal failure to protect civilians from sexual violence in eastern Congo).

While appreciating the complexity of the respective cases (which have serious implications for regional security and stability), the recent events related to Messrs Bashir and Kagame may serve to  create a dangerous precedent. The whole point of the ICC was to make heads of state and other people in power think twice before going Pol Pot on their people. This objective will not be served if leaders realize that not even genocide can get in the way of regional and global geopolitical considerations.

In other news, as usual, Texas in Africa has interesting posts on the Congo. Check them out.

more from Siaya: Siaya District Hospital is a disgrace

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If anyone knows anyone important in the ministry of health and medical services please let them know that the x-ray division at the Siaya district hospital is not even trying – especially the bespectacled guy who apparently recently went on a trip overseas (I know this because he spent like two hours total chatting with random visitors about it). While visiting the hospital I saw what patients at the hospital have to go through on a daily basis. There was the woman who had come in for two days straight to get a dental x-ray. The previous day the x-ray guy sent her home because he had to leave after a three hour lunch break. The next morning when she returned she was made to wait for more than two hours because the said guy had to help out a nurse’s pregnant friend who wanted to have an ultra sound done. The most annoying bit of it all is that the waiting area is right outside the guy’s office and so we could hear all their conversations. The said guy then took another hour doing some paperwork and chatting with friends who popped in about every fifteen minutes. Je, huu ni ungwana???

I obviously got annoyed by all this and in my naivety dialed the hospital hotline which is listed under the poster with the costs of all the x-rays outside the doctor’s office. The lady on the other side casually told me that they would take care of the delay and backlog with the x-rays and immediately hung up. Nothing was done. And to imagine that these guys live on taxpayers’ money. I have contacted Mr. Anyang’ Nyong’o himself and I am still waiting to hear from him (Mr. Nyong’o is very good with email, the only other time I wrote him he wrote back within a week).

slum politics

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The just released results of the 2009 population census dethrones Kibera from the dubious status of Africa’s largest slum. The figures are much lower than most analysts believe. Only 170,070 people live in the slum. This compared to the oftentimes cited figure of close to a million. The total population of the immediate Nairobi area is 3.1 million.The Nation adds:

“Erasing the Kibera lie from history will need one enormous eraser. The lie has been fed to all, from poor residents of the slum who have since grown accustomed to flashing camera lights from tourists taking shots of “the biggest slum in Africa,” to schoolchildren who cram the lie everyday in geography classes.”

More interestingly…

“According to a UN report, over 90 per cent of Kibera residents pay an estimated Sh4.5 billion every year to the real owners of Kibera. This makes the Kibera a sociological paradox-a slum to the poor, a gold mine to the rich.”

And it is not just slum lords who are benefiting from Kibera’s title of biggest slum in Africa. Aid workers Easterly where are you? are also having a field day:

“there are between 6,000 and 15,000 community-based organisations working in Kibera. That is one charitable organisation for every 15 residents of Kibera. Throw in an estimated 2,000 governmental organisations, and you get a rough idea exactly how the billions of shillings pumped into “the biggest slum in the world” are spent.”

kagame on the ropes

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I respect all that Paul Kagame has done for Rwanda. Under his leadership the country appears to have survived the 1994 catastrophe, emerging as the least corrupt and one of the fastest growing economies in the region. But like most autocrats, Mr. Kagame has had his dark side. A damning UN report apparently documents atrocities committed by Rwandan troops in eastern Congo. The just concluded general election in the mountainous central African nation has also exposed the former rebel’s anti-democratic tendencies and intolerance of any form of opposition. It is slowly emerging that not even the much praised and disciplined Mr. Kagame is immune to the most common disease afflicting most autocrats: believing that they are God’s gift to their people and therefore have the right to do whatever they want with their power.

I have not read the entire UN report but for more on it check out Texas in Africa.

food riots in mozambique

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The BBC reports that at least 10 people have died following food riots in a number of urban centres in Mozambique. The Southern African nation has witnessed a 20% increase in the price of bread in the last several days which precipitated the riots. Russia’s ban on wheat exports after fires burned a significant proportion of its crop has caused a global hike in wheat prices leading to a corresponding increase in bread prices. Most African countries (including Kenya where the price of wheat has appreciated quite a bit) will continue to see increases in prices of basic commodities such as bread and baking flour due to their heavy dependence on wheat imports.

Food insecurity, fueled primarily by distortionist policies, continues to be a major challenge to many African states. The model adopted by Malawi – which is fast turning into a regional breadbasket – is taking slower than it ought to to spread within the region, especially in light of the current population growth trends (Kenya, for instance, is growing by 1 million souls a year).

al-bashir and the ugly truth

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August 27th was the day Kenyans founded their second republic. Having woken up early to watch the festivities on tv I was rather surprised to see Sudan’s president Bashir ushered onto the dais by tourism minister Najib Balala. Subsequently members of parliament, the government and Kenya’s civil society started pointing fingers and expressing dismay over the decision to invite the genocidaire president. The international community – through the UNSC – also condemned the decision to host al-Bashir, a man wanted by the ICC for the most heinous crime under international law: genocide.

Kenya’s Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula defended the decision citing regional security concerns. I must admit that I sort of bought his story. Even Southern Sudan’s envoy in Nairobi – speaking with Jeff Koinange on K24’s Capital Talk – seemed to buy Mr. Wetangula’s assertion that the realities of maintaining peace in the region demanded that al-Bashir not be isolated. Like the envoy I am hopeful that Nairobi will get concessions from Khartoum with regard to the implementation of the CPA, most crucially on the holding of the secession referendum scheduled for early January 2011.

That said, president Bashir should not be allowed to get away with the murder of more than 200,000 Darfuris. He may have considerable leverage now by threatening to reignite violence in Southern Sudan but this is a card that he can only play for so long.

Potholes potholes potholes!

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It is a key road that links western Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the eastern DRC to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. But the state of the Kisumu-Busia “highway” does not exemplify its economic importance to the wider east African region.  Potholes, dangerously narrow stretches, and encroachment by vendors are some of the many things that are wrong with the Kisumu-Busia highway. The many accidents that occur on the road tell it all. Last Tuesday I witnessed the aftermath of an accident in the town of Ugunja in Ugenya when on a visit to my aunt’s in Got Osimbo. A tanker swerved while trying to avoid oncoming traffic. As always happens, locals rushed to the scene with containers to siphon away fuel. The fuel caught fire and burnt many stalls that line the road in Ugunja town and a section of the famous St. Michael’s Hotel. As far as I know there was only one fatality – thanks to the fact that the tanker was carrying diesel and not the more inflammable petrol. It is not that long ago when similar accidents in Sidindi and Sachangwan caused the death of dozens of people who were trying to loot fuel.

I can’t stop asking myself: HOW HARD CAN IT BE? How hard can it be for the four countries that depend on this key road to get their act together and construct a proper road?

Drinking their savings and lives away

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Rural (western) Kenya has a drinking problem. I base this conclusion on three weeks of traveling in and around Siaya. From Bondo to Ugunja, Siaya town to Rabar trading centre, men start drinking from as early as ten in the morning. They call it “kustuwa kichwa” (loosely translates to jumpstarting the mind). East African Breweries Limited’s slogan of “baada ya kazi” (after work) has been transformed into “badala ya kazi” (instead of work). I sort of experienced the reality of rural Kenya’s alcoholism two weeks ago when, after a road accident, I was forced to spend hours each day at a local garage. The panel beater was always drunk when I showed up at 10.00 AM to monitor what he was doing. The other people in the garage – mechanics, painters, electricians and jobless hangers-on – were no exception. Even the garage owner would come in, read the paper then order a 500 ML bottle of coke which he drank laced with spirits packaged in small sachets. Most of the mechanics could not afford the nicely packaged stuff and so opted for the local brews made in the surrounding villages of Siaya. The one day our panel beater did not drink – he was late on schedule and so that morning we refused to allow him to go on his usual “tea break” – he could barely function after 2 PM. His hands shook and he got really cranky. We had to stop work at 4 PM and resume the next day.

If you ask me I think alcoholism is a serious problem in rural Kenya with significant implications for economic and social development. From conversations with some of the men I estimated that they spent about 20% of their meagre daily income on alcohol. Drinking not only lowers their productivity but is also a serious impediment to their economic betterment. Asked about school fees, among other more responsible expenses, most of the men laughed and added that their wives took care of that. Quite a number of the men had a second or third wife and/or other “mipango ya kando” (mistresses).

The Kenyan government has outlawed the production and sale of local/tradition brews without much success. In places where the government can access – in and around towns – the brewers and their patrons have simply gone underground (someone in the internal ministry should read a bit on the prohibition era in the US) while in the more rural areas the drinking dens don’t even pretend to hide from the law. The newfound government concern with the informal brewing industry stems from recent cases of death and blindness in the capital’s slums resulting from the consumption of alcohol laced with other poisonous hydrocarbons, including preservatives and industrial alcohol.

I am not particularly big on regulation but this is an area in which more government regulation could do more good than harm. Totally banning the substance is a bad idea, no doubt about that. The government should instead require that all drinking be done in designated places and then regulate the hours of operation of these places. In addition, encouraging the brewers to come out in the open will widen the tax base.

But laws alone will not alter people’s drinking habits. It’s high time social institutions such as churches and local community organizations took up the challenge of promoting safer and less harmful drinking habits.

jkia has free internet!

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The last time I had free wireless at an airport was in Hartford, Connecticut. I am therefore absolutely delighted to be able to blog as I wait for my flight to London tonight. I am not looking forward to the long hours in pressurized steel tubes – as one of my pals calls them – and the long layover in the infamous Heathrow. Although there is no chance of missing my connecting flight to San Francisco, I am bracing myself for the possibility of not having my luggage when I arrive there.

Already missing home. It has been a fun one month, most of which I spent in rural Kenya. Being in Nairobi has been fun too. I am glad I got to be here for the referendum, the promulgation of the new constitution and the release of the 2009 national census results. Kenya is a lot of things, but lately it has been trying tooth and nail to put its best foot forward, the al-Bashir fiasco notwithstanding (I am one of those optimists who are hoping that Kenya was playing smart diplomacy by allowing the genocidaire president to come here in exchange of his honoring the January 9th secession referendum for Southern Sudan).