Grameen Bank, whose claim to fame lies in micro financing rural households in third world countries, is dishing out loans on the streets of Washington DC. That is almost as strange as Iceland, once categorized as a first world country, applying for World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans.

It is assumed only developing countries do that. These strange things are happening in the wake of a global recession that financial pundits say will get worse before it gets better.

Developing countries have learned the hard way that free market economics seems to only work for the few. The majority have had to find other ways of making ends meet. In this round of crisis where the privileged few find themselves staring bankruptcy in the face, developing countries may be in a position to give them a little advice.

In some kind of role reversal, one can almost hear them saying “Watch out for Bretton Woods institutions which have a habit of recycling failed policies and imposing tough conditions on repayments that take up most of your budget while charging interest on the interest.” Indeed this has been the experience of many a debt ridden developing country.

It is said that the current global financial crisis was caused by the Wall Street boys club. Testosterone driven, they got out of hand with risk taking and bad investments. The Third World, which has never really been a part of that racket, nevertheless feels the pinch of fall out. It may as well offer the West an idea or two.

For more than three decades, Grameen Bank has been pioneering programs to alleviate poverty. The bank began as an action-research project in 1976 and transformed into a bank in 1983, providing microcredit and related financial services targeting the rural poor in Bangladesh.

Ninety-seven percent of the borrowers were village women, and they became shareholders of the bank. Because Grameen Bank was constituted as a “for-profit” organization owned by the poor, it became the first model of a kind of “social enterprise”, more specifically a “social business ”, a term coined by Professor Muhammad Yunus (its founder) in his book Creating a World Without Poverty.

Grameen Bank and some of the more prominent Bangladeshi non-governmental organizations (NGOs), all of whom sought to combat poverty, were originally positioned at two extreme ends of a large spectrum when they began their operations. Grameen Bank was focused exclusively on microcredit for poverty alleviation in a ‘business-like’ way; it believed empowerment of the poor, particularly of women, was only feasible through a cost-effective, financially self-reliant mechanism.

As Grameen microcredit expanded in the 1980s, it became clear that while microcredit was a prerequisite for poverty alleviation, it was more effective when the social development needs of women and their families were met at the same time. It also became apparent that, to ensure sustainable growth and development, Grameen Bank borrowers needed access to better health, better housing, better schooling, better nutrition, and greater social participation.

On the streets of Washington DC, away from Wall Street ‘testosterone boys’, Grameen is working mainly with women who have opened up small businesses and sharing lessons learned in Bangladesh in a more socially congenial manner. Not surprisingly, their businesses are growing amidst the worst recession America has seen in a long time. Their story may serve as a gift from Third World countries to the West.

Studies conducted by the African Development Bank (ADB) suggest that financial remittances from family members living and working in foreign countries have made significant contributions to maintaining non income rural Third World families. More to the point they offer examples of how banking and social welfare can work hand in hand for people who are not formally employed and are being supported by families.

Morocco has one of the highest levels of migrant remittances in the world and an efficient banking system with good national coverage. Senegal, a West African country characterized by longstanding migratory flows, a highly developed trade network, has a very high growth rate for informal money transfers. It represents a significant Diaspora presence in several countries. The banking sector qualifies Senegal as an emerging market.

Mali, Senegal’s neighbor, is landlocked and poorer. But its Diaspora is more concentrated and migration is mostly of rural origin. Informal transfer systems are highly developed and well organized. The banking sector qualifies this market as slightly competitive. The Comoros, a high-migration Indian Ocean country, has an economy which is heavily supported by migrant remittances.

This option out of the bankruptcy void requires that Westerners put aside individualistic ways in favor of more communal social arrangements. It also requires that they play fair and tone down exploitative tendencies. Would this be asking for too much from people who have been used to having it all?

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/survival-tips-for-the-west-from-third-world-experiences/feed/ 0 mutere http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/book-on-asantehene-leadership-in-ghana-offers-a-model-for-africa/ http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/book-on-asantehene-leadership-in-ghana-offers-a-model-for-africa/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:51:56 +0000 mutere http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/?p=25 ]]>

In 1992, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni published, What is Africa’s problem? Museveni did not say directly, but his short answer was “leadership”. Africa was, his admission, in crisis due to its loss of spirit; loss of traditional leadership and its postcolonial “questionable leadership”.

On 1^st April, 2009, a book written by Mr. Kojo Yankah and published by Unimax Macmillan Ltd. was launched in Kumasi, Ghana. Entitled “Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. The king on the Golden Stool”, it seems to have a 21^st century answer for Museveni. It talks to the spirit of Africa’s traditional leadership in the person of one Asantehene who rules the traditional kingdom of the Asante people. That spirit is very much alive and growing in a way that reflects powerfully on the ingenuity of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.

Museveni is familiar with traditional rulers. When he came to power, he was confronted with a Kingdom ruled by the Kabaka dynasty of Buganda. It wanted the power and glory it lost to the state at independence returned. Museveni gave back the glory but not the power for obvious political reasons. Kojo Yankah’s book tell the story of how the power of one traditional kingdom is being exercised in a contemporary world where education and information technology rule.

Historically, the Golden Stool with its divine powers symbolized unity among separate chieftancies as they fought against the tyranny of their enemies who included the British. The connection between a stool and a people empowered a resistance movement of such significance that historically, only Shaka, King of a Zulu empire larger than the whole of Western Europe could compare.

Under Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the same unity symbolized by the mystical stool, manifests itself today in the fight against such enemies as poverty, disease, ignorance and conflict. It was their objection to injustice that led them to challenge the domination of the king of Denkyira and to fight to free themselves in the later part of the 17^th century.

And it was because of their unwillingness to accept injustice that they decided to fight their way to the sea and deal directly with the European merchants, instead of having to operate through middlemen from the communities living near the coast.

Today’s injustices are being fought in the classroom and on the information superhighway. The Otumfuo Education Fund was initiated by its namesake and officially inaugurated on 13 November 1999, six months after he was sworn in as Asantehene, King of the Asante Kingdom. The fund was set up to redress the decline in educational standards, poor and inadequate facilities, lack of text books, poor conditions of service, lack of teachers and the financial stress on parents who could not pay fees.

Under “The Partnership with Traditional Authorities Project”, the World Bank provided a grant of $4.5 million to build the management capacity of chiefs, rehabilitate schools and build sanitation facilities in 41 communities, develop health education modules for traditional authorities to lead in awareness creation in HIV/AIDs and build programs to preserve traditional values and culture. In all cases traditional leaders played active roles in the implementation of the projects.

As he narrates these achievements in his book, Yankah effectively builds the profile of a traditional leader who is a far cry from the stereotypical African chief which is peddled in the Western media. Indeed, while King Mswati of Swaziland only commands media attention each year when he is “marrying yet another wife” after a “reed dance”, the King of Asante gains world attention when delivering talks at Harvard University addressing “Chieftaincy and Development in Contemporary Africa”. Lady Julie, Otumfuo’s wife, has an MA degree in International Humanitarian Law. Such a profile is markedly different from the stereotype.

The Asantehene’s conviction that Ghana should involve traditional rulers decisively in the development process reveals how figures like him, who are in the forefront of re-thinking and awakening values in her progress, are struggling to right many historical wrongs. It may interest Museveni to know that as the world is settling into the 21st century and globalization becomes inescapable, the King of Asante could represent a new breed of leaders.

Where leadership is needed that has the intelligence and capacity to anticipate wisely the possibilities of domestic as well as global social, economic or political change, comprehend its significance and effectively respond to it, evidence presented in the book suggests that Otumfuo Osei Tutu II fits the bill.

An appropriate sequel to Yankah’s pioneering work may talk to how the Asantehene’s example can be replicated in other African countries, especially those like Kenya and Zimbabwe where chieftancy as an institution was completely destroyed by white settlers and the dynamics of neocolonialism. A conversation around such issues at this time when the “global village” is reeling financially and seeking direction would be significant.

Chickens born in the structural adjustment era are coming home to roost. The global financial meltdown crisis is revealing flawed agreements, especially in well endowed mineral rich economies like Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

That era gave western countries a lot of leverage. In 1996, the Canadian High Commissioner in Tanzania intervened as western pressure was being imposed on African governments to influence revisions to mining legislation as a means of promoting Canadian business interests. Specifically says Paula Butler in ‘Canada’s 21st Century Colonial Interests’, they did so in order to counter the legal claims of local miners questioning the legitimacy of the mining company Sutton and designs on Bulyanhulu deposits.

In June 2008, the staff of the very same High Commission energetically intervened in Tanzanian parliamentary affairs to ensure that the country’s politicians rejected the conclusions of the Presidential Mining Sector Review Committee on revisions of the mining sector. The Committee had recommended a greater proportion of profits generated by higher prices be kept for the country itself.

In 2004 says Denis Tougas in an article entitled “Canada in Africa: The mining superpower”, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations criticized a part of a report produced by the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the DR Congo, in which nine Canadian companies were accused of violating OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) guidelines during the country’s protracted war.

And now, “in order to formalize the sector’s acquisitions over the last decade, Canada has signed its first Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) plan with mining countries, with Tanzania and Madagascar in first place. This FIPA, already established within many Latin American countries, has among its aims the removal of current agreements through placing them under international arbitration. New legislation on the issue by host countries could not be applied without significant compensation”.

The fallout of such transactions are now hurting. In the past three years there have been complaints from different segments of the Tanzanian public regarding contractual agreements between the government and foreign investors in strategic sectors such as mining, infrastructure and energy.

Increasingly, dubious contracts are becoming a source of heated debates in the mass media, parliament, opposition parties, the ruling party, civil society organizations, faith based organizations, academic institutions and among the general public.

The most contentious contracts were revealed in the mining and energy sectors said the Vice Chancellor of University of Dar es Salaam, Prof. R.S.. Mukandala in a state of the nation review forum held last year. With regard to the mining sector, he noted that the following issues had to be noted and resolved:

• All the large scale gold mines are 100% foreign owned. Tanzanians concerned with “economic nationalism” have a legitimate right to ask why this is the case and why the principle of partnership has been abandoned in this and other lucrative areas of investment.
• Earnings from the minerals are kept in offshore accounts for one-sided protection of earnings of the investors. How does the country benefit from this arrangement?
• The export earnings accruing to the country in real terms are minimal, partly because the minerals are exported in raw form and therefore the country loses jobs and earnings from what could have been the added value.
• Mining companies pay lip service to corporate responsibilities, for what they contribute to the so called “empowerment” projects in the mining areas is small and has little empowerment value.
• The royalty of 3% the mining companies pay is almost a mockery of the mineral owners, namely the Tanzanian public.

Such issues do not get resolved in international trade talks. The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the architects of structural adjustment, were in Dar es Salaam recently talking about what Africa should do in light of the current financial mess. They historically have never taken responsibility over flawed programs.

Results are more likely to be achieved through the efforts of diverse groups of civil society organizations. They need to imagine that mining companies can be held to account for their actions in African countries.

Lasting progress may derive principally from the ability of African and Western civil society organizations to work in solidarity against the negative environmental and human rights concerns associated with the mining sector. They did well in the 1980’s and 1990’s when it came to pushing for good governance, multi-party democracy and liberalization. The time has come again for them to rise to the occasion.

If Ghana’s first leader and Pan African stalwart Kwame Nkurumah were alive today, what would he say about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country which has from day one been at war; to quote BBC’s Focus on Africa, “at war with itself, war with its neighbors and war over its huge mineral resources that seem to be the curse of generations”.

The visionary, who would have celebrated his 100^th birthday this year, committed a lifetime to fighting against the eventuality that DRC seems to have become. Potentially the richest country in Africa, its development has from day one been stymied by incessant plundering.

It was the private real estate of King Leopold II of Belgium; it was a western pawn in the Cold War configuration; it has always been ruled by a small elite “shared the ill gotten wealth mainly through the awarding of mining contracts to international companies while millions did not even have access to clean drinking water or basic infrastructure like roads, hospitals or schools”, said BBC.

Only on 6 December 2006 was Joseph Kabila sworn in as the first democratically elected president since Congolese independence. That however did not curb chronic political instability exacerbated by attempted secession, coups and military take overs.

Under some pretext or another, neighboring countries have claimed their share of the loot. Were Nkrumah here today, he would be frowning. The forces – local elites and rebels, foreign governments, foreign corporations, and multi-lateral institutions – have the Congolese people in a death trap.

War, disease and malnutrition are killing 45,000 Congolese every month in a conflict driven humanitarian crisis that has claimed 5.4 million victims in nearly a decade. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which carried out the study with Australia’s Burnet Institute, said DRC’s 1998 – 2003 war and its aftermath caused more deaths than any other conflict since World War Two. “Congo’s loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the entire state of Colorado perishing within a decade,” George Rupp, President of the aid group said.

Which way forward under such horrendous conditions? Were the Pan Africanist alive today, he would probably be as pragmatic as he ever was and advocate a strategy that ensured Africa’s wealth remained African. Such pragmatism saw him pursue an industrialization and infrastructural development strategy in Ghana in the 1960s second to on and way ahead of its time. His detractors, oblivious to the big picture, and the machinations of a neo-colonial ogre, sabotaged his efforts and ultimately eliminated him.

Were he alive today, he would probably engage his friends in China who are providing billions of dollars in loans for infrastructural development in DRC without imposing conditions or controls in return for access to the country’s valuable natural resources. Beijing has already used this method in neighboring Angola, where it now controls much of the oil production.’

His vision for continental unity would probably dictate that such infrastructure be designed to serve not just DRC but the whole of Africa. Indeed the River Congo alone, not withstanding all of its other resources, has the capacity to electrify the continent corner to corner.

Western interests would be forced to compete with such offers. Their coercive ways have been the bane of the Republic. Mining contracts the DRC signed with Western partners were founded on the West keeping 75 per cent of the stakes. There is no single contract where the DRC gets more than 25 per cent. Is that acceptable?

Right now, they have their hands full with ‘global economic meltdown’ issues. Vintage Nkrumah would probably recognize this as a window of opportunity for forging ahead. His biggest headache was in the area of political leadership. Very few of his contemporaries bought his ‘United States of Africa’ dream.

Those who came after him got bogged down with serious governance problems. Some, including Sudanese President, Omar Bashir, have been censured on account of human rights violations by institutions like the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).

APRM, set up to function as a continental governance oversight mechanism, did not exist in Nkrumah’s day. Conceivably, were he around today, that would probably one instrument he would use for moving leaders towards a continental unity that serves Africans and moves them away from looters.

A candid APRM may admit on a good day that the forces which have the Congolese cornered are the same ones that in varying degrees afflict every African country. The sovereignty of the people is under threat everywhere.

Were Nkrumah here today, with the weight of 100 years worth of wisdom, he would probably say the call for unity is not only for DR Congo but for Africans everywhere. How else, he would ask, could this phase of democratic transition work?

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/dr-congo-nkrumah%e2%80%99s-worst-nightmare-on-100th-birthday/feed/ 0 mutere http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/come-election-time-in-africa-people-worry/ http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/come-election-time-in-africa-people-worry/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:15:45 +0000 mutere http://capricorninafrica.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/come-election-time-in-africa-people-worry/ ]]>

Ghana goes to the polls on December 7 with much apprehension. Its people saw Kenya’s 2007 election year blow up in an ethnic storm. They saw Zimbabweans flee a country whose leader was determined to hold onto power by any means necessary.

Democracy, coming to Africa after an era of military and civilian dictatorships was supposed to herald hope. Instead, it seems to have become the toxic formula for causing political institutions to implode on their people.

There are some differences though when it comes to Ghana. And they are worth noting for anyone who wants to make sense out of Africa’s emerging democratic mosaic. As the first country on the continent to gain its independence in 1957, it has had more than its fair share of civilian and military dictatorships.

However their first President, Kwame Nkurumah, gave them an ideological imperative for showing Africa how democracy in Africa should grow. He noted that for as long as we stay in our colonial configurations defined by national boundaries, exploitation of African resources by former colonizers would continue even as independent political institutions erode.

To counter this syndrome Nkurumah asked for a united African state which could wrest control of its wealth from outsiders so as to benefit the development its people. If he came back today, he would probably know what to say about the state of political unrest.

In appreciation of his wisdom, Ghanaians are saying it for him. This election, journalists noted at a media election workshop held in the Volta Region recently, should be work in progress towards Nkurumah’s dream. Unlike Kenya where politics is defined by what tribe you belong to Nkrumah encouraged political candidates from one ethnic group to contest for parliamentary seats in other tribal regions.

So too did Gerry Rawlings when he was Ghanaian President. It was in that way that they toned down Kenya’s tribal curse. It is said that if, as in Kenya, tribalism defined access to wealth, the problem would lie with the Ashanti – the richest tribe in Ghana.

However, as with other tribes, the Ashanti have a history of affiliating politically along ideological lines. That history serves as reassurance against the likelihood of ethnic strife. Former Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere achieved the same effect with his Ujamaa philosophy. Indeed, the last elections in Tanzania were conducted with minimum disruption and polarization of issues.

In Zambia, transitions from President Fredrick Chiluba to late President Levi Mwanawaza and then Rupiah Banda also went smoothly. In that country, tribalism was down played and overrun by Kaunda’s philosophy entitled “humanism”.

The rise of ethnicity in South Africa is however worrying in a way that suggests that Africa may not be out of the woods with philosophies per se. Veterans of the anti-apartheid resistance are talking. While delivering the fifth annual Ashley Kriel Memorial Youth lecture at the University of Western Cape in July, one of the founders of the United Democratic Front (UDF), Allan Boesak, accused the African National Congress (ANC) of recreating apartheid’s system of racial and ethnic categorization, demeaning colored citizens “ruthlessly and thoughtlessly”.

Policy analysts Peter Kagwanja and Ernest Waititu in an article entitled “Split in ANC inevitable as ethnic tensions reach an all time high in South Africa”, noted that
ethnic nationalism is fast replacing civic nationalism and solidarity, which gave the nation a common rallying point against the ethno-centricism of the apartheid era.

Ethnic orientation has been a fundamental feature in the ANC since its founding, but the escalation of the Thabo Mbeki-Jacob Zuma tussle which saw the former resign as the nation’s president, has given the ethnic question new meaning, they say. “The clash between the two major political players, and by extension their ethnic groups, has turned ethno-nationalism into the axis around which politics in South Africa is increasingly coming to rotate.”

For a country that goes to the election polls next year, it is worrying to see Mbeki allies led by former security minister Mr. Lekota breaking away from the ANC to form a splinter party. It is still getting over a bad bout of xenophobia. That bout victimized and killed many so called foreigners who were deemed guilty of taking jobs away from South African.

In that bout, there was little thinking around on how the bulk of the economy remains in the hands of a white minority that benefited by the same apartheid system ANC fought to overthrow. Today, little thought is given to the fact that although political structures have changed, economic structures reinforce old sets of ethnic and racial relationships.

South Africa has done well economically by global standards. However, as Nkurumah noted in the 1960s, ownership issues ultimately define political stability. That is where Kaunda and Nyerere may have got it right. Ownership is a serious election fever issue.

At the best of times sovereignty has been used by the international community of nations to bring order to a world which was chronically at war, especially in Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia brokered in 1648 brought an end to 30 years of war in Europe by committing religious denominations, kings, dukes, princes and anarchists to accepting an international order defined by states.

Leadership of this state entity was to be recognized by everyone else so long as certain conditions were satisfied at three levels, namely:

• that it was accepted by the people it claimed to rule;
• that it could guarantee their security under a coherent legal regime;
• that it had the power to govern the territory and enforce its laws.

Westphalia brought unprecedented order to Europe. It constituted a basis for developing the international system we live under today. It however did not translate well for Africa. In 1884 when Europe decided on the ground rules for partitioning the continent, contradictions in the Westphalia logic began manifesting themselves.

Indeed, for the locals, this was imposition of the highest order and they fought against it. In Sudan, the litany of conflicts that ensued ever since colonialists drew lines around that huge country makes one wonder whether it was ever a state.

A substantial section of northern Sudan was aroused in the late 19^th century against British penetration and to some extent against Egyptian overlords. The movement took the form of a Jihad and initiated military action against foreign intruders. In 1885 General Gordon Pasha from Britain was killed in the battle of Khartoum.

The anti-colonial struggle introduced an element into the discourse that Westphalia had gleaned over in its quest to manage conflict in Europe. That was the element of human rights. The right of everyone to be treated as equals did not feature in Berlin as western powers were defining the ground rules for dividing Africa amongst themselves.

In a strange twist of fate the same human rights principles that fueled liberation struggles in Africa became casualties in a post-independence decade marred by one party rule and military dictatorships. Sovereignty, a Westphalian phenomenon, gave human rights violators free reign. They ran roughshod over democratic principles with no oversight mechanism in place to hold them accountable.

In 1983, the Republic of Sudan became one such country under the military rule of President Jaafar Nimeri. He introduced Islamic law and in so doing exacerbated a protracted division between the Muslim north and Christian south. A war, which ensued, lasted for over 23 years. The war suggested a second failing under Westphalia logic – government could not guarantee the security of the people in its territory under a coherent legal regime.

A fragile time specific peace agreement brokered mainly in Kenya now holds northern and southern Sudan together. It does not auger well for the union to know that people of the south are celebrating the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment against Sudanese President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir and the issuing of a warrant of arrest for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur.

His indictment undermines a third Westphalian edict – the power to govern the territory and enforce its laws. With the ICC ruling, the promise of chaos that members of the African Union (AU) fear now becomes very real. Says the International Crisis Group (ICG), Bashir’s regime has already issued veiled threats against the UN and AU missions in Sudan, the international humanitarian agencies operating there and Sudanese who support the ICC prosecution.

It could also direct, or encourage, violence against the millions of displaced Darfuris living in camps in the war-torn region. There are signs that it may also declare a state of emergency and clamp down on internal political opposition, to show the Darfur rebel groups that they will not be able to use this development to their military and political advantage.

Such actions would risk further destabilising the country, given the inevitable opposition from many within Sudan, and likely international condemnation, including from its African and Arab allies. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a partner in government, would strongly oppose the declaration of a state of emergency, and may well pull out of the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in the event of a unilateral declaration. This risks plunging Sudan back into widespread conflict.

In the face of all this happening, Westphalian advocates would undoubtedly feel justified in calling Sudan a failed state. In their book all provisions for recognition would have fallen by the wayside. History begs the question ‘was Sudan ever a state to begin with?’ By Westphalian standard, not likely.

Depending on how one looks at it, criminal elements have taken over the state in Kenya and they are winning a war against justice in its current phase of post election house cleaning.  Just a day after Kenyan MPs blocked government attempts to set up a local tribunal to try those who orchestrated the violence that rocked the country last year, a disappointed mediator, Kofi Annan said he would act in the “spirit, letter and intent” of the Waki Report, which suggested that poll violence suspects face justice at The Hague.

Parliament’s defeat of the Constitution of Kenya Amendment Bill 2009, preempted the prospect of establishing a Special Tribunal in Kenya.  “The Panel will now review the actions it should take in line with the spirit, letter and intent of that report,” Annan said.  He said he was disappointed with the Bill’s defeat terming it a blow to ending impunity in Kenya.  He said the “development is a major setback to the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election Violence (CIPEV).”

The element of crime and impunity is the subject of enquiry in a book entitled “The criminalization of the state in Africa”.  In a chapter entitled “From Kleptocracy to the felonious state?” the authors suggest that Kenya, in material terms, is going through an evolution which appears to be based on the occupation of the most dubious niches of international economic activity (forms of trafficking drugs and toxic waste) and on the unregulated exploitation of the mineral, oil and wildlife resources of the continent. 

Politically the authors of the book suggest Kenya and countries like it in Africa are seeing the radical privatization of the state, the criminalization of the behavior of power holders, and even the transformation of factional struggle into armed conflict.

“Socially, such a movement appears to be resulting in massive population movements and offering young school drop outs the possibility of securing access to wealth through means which they themselves see as legitimate, a prospect even more enticing than that offered by petty crime.”

In such a melee Annan, banking on leaders to do the right thing, set himself up for disappointment.  If the responsibility for managing justice his handed to the Hague, Mr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who is just looking for opportunities to assert the relevance and legitimacy of the organization he heads will be only too glad to oblige. 

Africa, for his organization, is a land of opportunity.  His paper entitled “The Tenth Anniversary of the ICC and Challenges for the Future:Implementing the law” reads like a fast growing CV. 

• “We are prosecuting Thomas Lubanga and Bosco Ntaganda for recruiting child soldiers and transforming them into killers. 
• We are prosecuting Joseph Kony and other leaders of the LRA for killing entire communities, raping and abducting children and transforming them into sexual slaves and killers. 
• We are prosecuting Germain Katanga and Matthew Ngudjolo for killing and raping civilians. 
• We are prosecuting Jean-Pierre Bemba, for a campaign of massive rapes and pillaging.  We are prosecuting Ahmed Harun and Ali Kushayb for massive killings, rapes and the torture of civilians. 
• We have requested an arrest warrant against Omar Al Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.  At the same time, we are conducting preliminary examinations in a number of different situations, including Afghanistan, Kenya, Georgia and Cote d’Ivoire, and in Colombia.”

MPs seeking to bring the International Criminal Court process to Kenyan soil are likely to petition the United Nations Security Council if the government fails to act on it.

The suggestion that Kenya adopt the Sierra Leone model to effect this and request the UN to set up and run a special international tribunal to prosecute perpetrators of the 2007 post-election violence locally is being spearheaded by Central Imenti MP Gitobu Imanyara.

He formally made the proposal to the chairman of the parliamentary select committee on constitutional reforms a day before the House Business Committee presented to the House the constitutional amendment Bill to entrench a special tribunal, which was shot down.

This is just what ICC needs at a critical stage in its evolution where it is still defining its own role and strategies.  It is also still defining its relations with domestic governments, judiciaries, populations and other actors.  Questions about the identity and ultimate purpose of the Court are especially complicated in the African context, given the fraught nature of many other forms of international intervention on the continent. 

However, crime and politics offer configurations that read like gifts that are strewn everywhere in Africa.  Judging by the Kenyan experience, Presidents and ministers will not show leadership and adjust to a new legal framework.  The Hague beacons.

An economist working with the original East African Community (EAC) predicted that “one day money will lose value but we will still need to eat”.  On the strength of that argument he opted for early retirement, bought himself a three acre farm in Busia District, Western Kenya and learned to grow everything needed to feed, educate and raise a healthy family.

On three acres, animal and vegetable fed off each other in an ecosystem that was environmentally friendly.  Nothing went to waste.  Everything contributed to growth.  That was twenty years ago.  Today, faced with a global financial crisis, his words resonate.  Financial analysts offer no assurances for better days to come.  The implication of financial meltdowns for Africa is always starvation. 

Our EAC retiree had misgivings about alien financial concoctions that consistently fail on a resource rich continent.  For Africa, the latest round of calamities began last year when global food prices made nonsense of commercial farming.  The so-called “world food crisis” noted a coalition of NGOs, trade unions and social movements in February 2009 coalesced across the globe in 2007 and early 2008 when the price of rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, cooking oils, and food more generally skyrocketed.

At the World Social Forum 2009, they noted ‘food riots that erupted on virtually every continent demonstrate both the global integration of food and agricultural systems, and the severity of the problems inherent within them.  Triggers such as commodity speculation, grain hoarding, the diversion of food crops for use as fuel crops, the growth of industrial methods of livestock production and meat consumption, and falling grain reserves contributed to the rapid increase of food prices. The world’s poor suffered the greatest blow as food prices rose to unattainable levels, rations decreased or disappeared, and as a result, hungry people took to the streets in protest.’  This is happening even as our EAC retiree can happily feed his family on three acres of land. 

Eburie Hills, overlook Ghana’s capital city, Accra hosts two farms know as “the Spiders Village” and “Ave Maria”.  The Owner, Prof Kofi Asare Opoku says they grow everything and anything.  He never tires of saying, “put it in the ground and it will grow.”

Oranges, lemons, yams, cassava, grapefruit, ginger, coconut, palm oil, pumpkin – “you name it – it will grow.”  Prof. Opuku, a seasoned Africanist wonders why so many Ghanaians, especially the youth, migrate north, die in the Sahara trying and are always looking outside when everything they need can be found at home.  Prof., who is now a Vice President at the African University College of Communication (AUCC) gives his food away to the community for free.

False expectations and misconceptions about real needs have led Africa astray.  In the independence years it was all about state corporations driving development.  Countries like Tanzania opted for socialism.  All suffered from corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency.  The song shifted to liberalization and structural adjustment.  Subsequent downsizing saw many falling into the abyss of poverty and despair.  ‘Golden handshakes’ did not prepare them for what was to come.  Africa is still recovering from that phase.

A Summary Report on food riots and government responses in 2008 entitled “We are Hungry!” suggests that Africa’s crisis is fundamentally the consequence of a capitalist system of production based on laissez-faire and fed by short term accumulation of profits by a minority, unequal redistribution of wealth and an unfair trade system.

This crisis affects first of all the most vulnerable (workers, jobless, farmers, migrants, women…) and Southern countries, which are the victims of a crisis for which they are not at all responsible, the report says.

In the face of such adversity, the eternal optimist, one former UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan, suggested ways of moving forward.  As co-chair at the World Economic Forum’s 2009 annual meeting, he noted that fairness and equity could no longer be an afterthought – it was a necessity. 

The gross inequality of wealth, opportunity and influence in our world revealed the selfish side of systems that have not cared to fully understand connections between economies.  Said Annan, the lack of inclusive processes and institutions needed to manage the risks and ensure that the whole world gains from the benefits, has also been exposed.

Prof. Asare Opoku and our EAC economist belong in this broader dialogue.  Underlining the validity of their perspectives, Annan noted, “Solutions to the financial crisis must look beyond the impact on the market, financial institutions and developed countries.  They must also focus on jobs, family incomes and the effect of the slowdown on the poorest countries.”

Nearly seven years after 9/11, America is still unprepared for a terrorist attack. This was President-elect  Barak Obama’s campaign message in the run-up to elections.  From improving security for transit systems and chemical plants, to increasing cargo screening in our airports and seaports, the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission had been underfunded and ignored, he argued. 

As senator, Obama was a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and has supported efforts to base homeland security spending on risk rather than pork-barrel politics. He also introduced legislation to strengthen chemical plant and drinking water security and to enhance disaster preparedness.

As President, Senator Obama, may want to include his name on the list of security details.  The need arises in in the form of crosses burnings in America; school children chanting “Assassinate Obama;” in the same country;  black figures hung from nooses; and racial epithets scrawled on American homes and cars. 

Such incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barak Obama are dampening the post-election glow of racial progress and harmony.  More fundamentally, they clearly suggest a home grow version of terrorism that may be rallying to unleash another salvo.

When second and third grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chant “assassinate Obama,” one wonders whether American schools might be breeding next generation terrorism.  Crosses were said to have been burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J.  A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted “Obama.”

Late Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere, had a perspective on this disturbing phenomenon.  He once noted that historically, such conflict was not accidental.  It was by design.  It was born of the Agrarian and Industrial revolutions which took place in Europe. The former created the “landed” and the “landless” classes in society; the latter produced the modern capitalist and the industrial proletariat.

“These two revolutions planted the seeds of conflict within society, and not only was European socialism born of that conflict, but its apostles sanctified the conflict itself into a philosophy.”  Said Nyerere, civil war was no longer looked upon as something evil, or something unfortunate, but as something good and necessary.

It took on racial characteristics as people of African origin were sold into slavery and made second class citizens.  Nyerere’s argument suggests that the President elect is today confronted with an inevitable dialectic that was now translating into a dangerous high stakes game.   

Indeed, for someone of African origin who has for the first time ever become president of the most powerful country in the world, the pressure is on at two levels says Carina Ray in the November issue of ‘New African.’  The simple fact that the continent is already on his radar suggests that we can expect him to have a greater hand in proactively easing conflicts on the continent that were brought on by competing American interests, she notes.

However, “while we certainly have cause for hope, we also need to be mindful of the very real constraints that Barak Obama is laboring under and how these limitations necessarily affect his ability to imagine and enact a foreign policy that departs from the past,” Ray adds. 

In the melee of competing interests, conflicts will ensue as a matter of course.  Just how long it takes to alarm the world in the form it is taking on American soil remains to be seen.  But talk of assassinating a President coming so easily from children who were just born yesterday gives one some perspective on how embedded Nyerere’s dialectic may be.

Homeland security in Obama’s words will take the form breaking away from a foreign policy that lectures without listening; that divides us from one another instead of forging a new strategy to face down the true threats that we face.  How he does it remains to be seen.  Mwalimu will undoubtedly be awaiting with much interest for the positive outcome of that pledge.  He himself challenged the system and lost.  Over time it has proven to be an unforgiving one.

Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro likes American President, Barack Obama. But he dislikes the ‘empire’ Obama now leads. The man has outlived all the US Presidents since John F. Kennedy. But he says he may not make it to the end of Obama’s four year term. A meeting between the two leaders needs to happen sooner than later, so as to bring closure to years of bad blood and mistrust.

For decades, Cuba has been the target of an unremitting effort by the United States Government to rid the Americas of the revolutionary government which came to power in January 1959. Its policies have included direct military intervention; the threat of nuclear annihilation; the instigation and carrying out of countless acts of sabotage and plans to assassinate Cuban leaders, all of which has been officially recognized by successive US administrations.

An essential element of this course has been an economic, commercial and financial embargo aimed at crippling Cuba’s economy. The embargo is so sweeping that it includes a total prohibition on Cuba’s acquisition of foodstuffs, medicine, and medical supplies and equipment from the US.

Currency restrictions prevent US residents from traveling to Cuba. Through legal entanglements and measures such as preventing ships engaging in trade with Cuba from docking in transit at US ports, Washington has prevented its competitors from trading in the Cuban markets that US businesses abandoned.
This history of implacable hostility has no parallel in modern times. However, despite such animosity, Castro has good things to say about Obama. During the run up, he praised Democrat Obama as “more intelligent” than “old, bellicose” Republican John McCain. In a column published in the state-run media he however added that neither of the candidates running in the election was concerned with the world’s most pressing problems as they campaigned to lead what he called “a parasitic and plundering empire.”
Obama, Castro wrote, is “without doubt more intelligent, cultured and calm than his Republican adversary.” McCain, he said, is “old, bellicose, uncultured, not very intelligent and not healthy.” Quoting from a letter he wrote to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Castro said if McCain wins “the danger of war will increase.”
Questions linger. Indeed, how will Obama manage Cuba? He believes, as do most Americans, that the keys to resolving problems are ingenuity, decency, hard work and good will.
Domestically, he is pursuing these options with a lot of gusto. Foreign policy, however, has proven to be more intractable. When President Carter tried to reach out to Cuba and reopened a U.S. diplomatic mission during the cold war era, Americans did not take kindly to what they understood to be Castro’s response – that of deploying Cuban armies in Africa in support of what they believed were ‘Soviet interests’.
Castro approves of Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq, which he described as “a war of conquest imposed by the empire seeking oil.” He said Obama will put an end to it and bring the U.S. troops back.”
The closing down of Guantanamo Bay prisons where terrorism suspects have been held and tortured will no doubt also merit Castro’s nod of approval. It seems as if Obama recognizes how American perceptions of ‘the enemy’ have too often clouded their better judgment.
Castro was part and parcel of the independence movements of the 1950s and 1960. This was a period in time when three quarters of planet earth – the so called Third World – broke away from western imperialism demanding freedom and basic human rights. Castro headed the Non Aligned movement of developing countries for three years after hosting the Summit in Havana in 1979.
The significance of this bond with Africa led Castro to involve Cuba in the liberation of Southern African countries. In the 1970s and 80s, he sent 350,000 soldiers, civilians and doctors to support the struggle especially in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Principe and Sao Tome.
A good 2,007 Cubans died fighting for this continent. This gesture of solidarity is the number one reason why Africa is in love with Fidel. Cold War advocates may never understand this representation of the man. Nor will homeland security buffs who are scouring the globe in search of terrorists. However, if President Obama is to make headway with healing, he would do well to embrace some of these alternative perspectives.
In his inaugural address, Obama went on record as saying “the world has changed, and we must change with it.” Many interpreted that statement to be a slight against former President George W. Bush’s policies. There are those who recognize it as the dawn of a new era. For the latter, it ideally portrays the spirit that is needed to turn the US Cuban impasse around. The world continues to wait for such a turn around.