By a Global Information Network correspondent
DUBAI, Sep 29 2015 (IPS)

To the ordinary eye, it looks like an empty desert but from this spit of endless sand is rising the largest photovoltaic solar project in the Middle East.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, located 30 miles south of Dubai, was launched with 13 megawatts of capacity. It could be producing 3,000 megawatts by 2030.

A similar project is rising in Morocco, future home of what may be the world’s largest concentrated solar power complex. Built in Quarzazate province, it is the kingdom’s answer to costly fossil fuel imports and climate change.

These two projects, along with other solar developments in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, are demonstrating that the Middle East and North Africa will have a Plan B if oil prices continue to fall.

By contrast, sub-Saharan Africa has some of the world’s most abundant and least exploited renewable energy sources, especially solar power.

The need is undeniable. Today in Africa, 621 million people – two-thirds of the population – live without electricity. The problem is most acute in East Africa, where only 23 percent of Kenyans; 10.8 percent of Rwandans; and 14.8 percent of Tanzanians have access to an electricity supply, according to the World Bank.

But a new breed of “solar-preneurs” is emerging, increasing access to power and generating revenues at the same time.

“Solar is a valuable source of distributed energy,” says Sachi DeCou, co-founder of Juabar, a company running a network of solar charging kiosks in Tanzania.

“Here in Africa, populations are quite dispersed. Solar is modular so it can be sized to fit the needs of anywhere, from a light to a business, household to an entire village.”

Jesse Moore, managing director at M-Kopa Solar, which provides “pay-as-you-go” renewable energy for off-grid households in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, agrees.

M-Kopa Solar provides power to more than 140,000 households in East Africa for 0.45 dollar per day, and is adding over 4,000 homes each week. Revenues are nearing 20 million dollars per year, and the company is starting to license its technology in other markets, such as Ghana.

“Solar is a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike,” Moore says.

In Rwanda, Henri Nyakarundi developed a mobile solar charging kiosk, operated under a franchise model that offers Rwandans the chance to run income-generating businesses by providing services such as charging of electronics and sales of electronic vouchers.

Opportunities to create solar businesses in Africa are huge, he says, but they only exist at the micro level. The next step is to produce power for the grid through solar, he adds, but this requires large investment and local banks are not yet willing to finance such projects unless you are a big company. (END)

While Liberia’s civil war is distant history to some, an African playwright has rescued the tale of five women, captive wives of a rebel commander, whose survival in a treacherous war zone resonates strongly even today.

“When I first came upon the story of Liberian women, it was actually about women soldiers,” recalled writer-actor Danai Gurira. “And when I saw that image, with AK47s and tight jeans, I said I need to figure out that story, that portrayal of African women that we never get to see.”

“ ‘Eclipse’ is a story about a group of regular women motivated to end the war,” added director Liesl Tommy. “It’s about how they impact other women,” letting Gurira finished the thought: “…how they get through it, and what they become in order to survive.”

Starring in the theatrical performance, which begins previews at New York’s Public Theatre on Sep. 29 and officially opens Oct. 14, is Kenya’s acclaimed actress and high fashion model Lupita Nyong’o.

In a recent interview with Variety magazine, Nyong’o described her attraction to the theatre piece. “It’s about how women end up creating freedom within themselves,” she said. “My character is wife number four. It’s about her grappling with the loss of her life.”

Gurira, born in America and raised in Zimbabwe, builds upon her reputation for hard-hitting drama on relevant themes involving African women. From the 2005 play “In the Continuum” about two females living with HIV, “Eclipsed,” is an unflinching treatise on the subjugation of women in war-torn Liberia. “It’s a gut-wrenching saga told with poignancy and wit, precisely the kind of niche today’s cutting-edge theater strives to fill,” writes Paul Harris of Variety magazine.

“These women in the story are amazing people with amazing potential,” says Gurira. “But they get eclipsed, there’s a blockage that happens to their lives against their will. But the blockage passes, it’s temporary.

“There are some amazing African women out there, people who we tend not to pay attention to in our global community, but we should,” she declared. “I’m excited to imagine that it could happen with this exchange of audience with performers.”

The production is scheduled to run through Nov. 8. (End)

A gleaming green and white urban commuter train was launched this week in the capital Addis Ababa. It is the first fully electrified train service in sub-Saharan Africa.

The 470 million dollar Addis Light Rail project was mostly funded by China’s Exim Bank. A delegation of Chinese officials stood at attention at the launch.

Hundreds of people waited excitedly for a ride on the train’s maiden voyage which is expected to significantly reduce the capital’s traffic congestion. Fares for the new train will run 20 to 40 cents per trip, four times cheaper than the local bus or minibus.

The train will run 16 hours per day including weekends. It is expected to carry 15,000 people per hour in one direction, with a top speed of 44 miles per hour. Only one line is completed, another should be ready in a month.

China will train the drivers and maintenance staff, while another Chinese company will put together the power system.

Ethiopia, with a population of 94 million, is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to grow at 8 percent in 2015-16, the second-fastest pace on the continent. The Horn of Africa nation has drawn a lot of debate for the shape and speed of its ‘developmental state’.

The tramway is designed to relieve the mounting strain on the city’s roads, where up to now public transport for the 5 million and growing population has consisted of aged buses and so-called “blue donkeys” – a network of cramped, polluting minibuses.

“I have had many problems with the blue donkeys, with the long lines and the fights to get a seat. I hope this will no longer be a problem,” said Tigist Dekele, a young woman who lives in the city.

Ethiopia’s transport minister, Workneh Gebeyehu, said the tramway project would also boost Ethiopia’s bid to make the city – already the seat of the African Union- the undisputed continental hub.

“This is a sign of modernity. This is a very modern train that will serve the capital city of Africa. We are very proud of that,” he said. “The light rail is not for commercial purposes. Tickets are very cheap. It will serve the people with low income.”

Authorities have also promised the scheme will not be beset by power cuts, with a separate power grid set up to feed the lines. (End)

Credit: Stop the Arms Fair

By a Global Information Network correspondent
LONDON, Sep 15 2015 (IPS)

Human rights and citizen activist groups are criticizing one of the world’s largest arms bazaars, which opened at London’s Docklands Tuesday.

Participants in what is officially known as the Defense and Security International (DSEI) include 61 countries that violate human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Angola and Algeria. According to the website, some 30,000 visitors are expected.

More than 1,500 companies will exhibit their military wares, including the U.S. and UK giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems. Forty foreign governments will have pavilions. Sponsors and co-sponsors of the event include Turkey, South Africa, Northrup Grumman and Hewlett Packard.

The four-day fair has drawn furious debate between human rights activists and those who say the arms industry provides thousands of jobs and valuable exports.

Citizen activist groups using Twitter and other social media have jumped into action to condemn the fair. Traders at previous arms fairs, they note, have been able to buy and sell equipment used for torture including electric shock stun guns and batons, leg-irons, and belly-, body- and gang-chains. There has also been a range of illegal cluster-munition weaponry advertised at the fair.

Nine, companies which have attended the DSEI fair between 2005 and 2013, have breached UK law, according to human rights campaigner Amnesty International.

This year’s DSEI comes as the UK government ramps up its effort to sell weapons to countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, by far its most lucrative single arms market.

Ryvka Barnard, senior military and security campaigner for the activist group War on Want, took issue with organizers giving Israel a national pavilion where Israeli arms companies exhibit ‘battle tested’ military technology used on Palestinians.

The UK headquarters of Amnesty also spoke up: “In the past, torture equipment has been on offer right on our doorstep. Things like illegal leg irons and electric-shock batons have been shamelessly advertised and it’s blindingly obvious the law needs tightening up.

“We need strengthened laws – and crucially we need proper enforcement – to stop Britain being used as a showroom for torturers to advertise their disgusting wares…” the group said.

Groups organizing on Twitter against arms sales include Stop the Arms Fair!, Stop DSEI, Pax Christi and the Campaign Against Arms Trade, among others.

Credit: UNHCR

By a Global Information Network correspondent
TUNIS, Sep 15 2015 (IPS)

Once surrounding castles of old, a moat stretching 100 miles is being dug by Tunisia against alleged terror threats from nearby Libya. Reporters are kept at bay from the digging in what officials have dubbed “a closed military area.”

Saltwater will fill the massive trench to be topped with sand dunes. Alligators are not mentioned in the moat’s prospectus.

“Why erect this wall when one was brought down between the two Germanies?” asked Salim Grira Mzioui, a local council representative of Wazen, a Libyan village along the border in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde. “This will pose insurmountable problems. There are farmers cultivating land on both sides. There are also camel herds coming and going.”

The wall will put an end to ancestral traditions of border communities that have long ignored the state line artificially dividing entire tribes, he said. “We’re going to divide a people,” Adel Arjoun, a Tunisian hotel owner from Medenine, told Le Monde.

According to Tunisian officials, incursions by terrorists who target tourists prompted the decision to dig the barrier. Last June, for example, 38 foreign tourists were killed by a Tunisian said to be trained at a Libyan camp. Earlier, two attackers killed 21 foreign visitors at the Bardo Museum in Tunis.

But the small number of attacks suggests that Tunisia may be joining the anti-immigrant fever that has gripped some northern European countries.

And as the walls go up, the number of lives lost among desperate refugees is growing. Last month over 500 people leaving Libya were tossed into the seas when their vessels capsized.

Tunisia’s moat is only one of several misguided solutions to the swelling number of refugees fleeing war and extreme poverty. Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece are building walls. Ukraine plans to seal its 1200 mile border with Russia, and Estonia has a 70 mile wall in the works against the former Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Tunisians turned out last weekend to march against a draft bill for amnesty to those accused of corruption.

The draft bill is the centerpiece of the new government, which seeks to boost the economy by clearing away cases against businessmen and civil servants charged with corruption crimes.

Opponents of the law, however, call it as an attempt to whitewash the misdeeds of the old regime and ignore an ongoing process of transitional justice through the Truth and Dignity committee.

“We’re against the draft law because it is unfair and unconstitutional,” Sami Tahri, an official with the Union for Tunisian Workers, said at the protest. “It doesn’t fight corruption, it encourages it.”

A man at a political rally held by Salva Kiir, President of the Republic of South Sudan, in Juba, March 18, 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

By a Global Information Network correspondent
JUBA, Aug 18 2015 (IPS)

Dismissing efforts, including those of U.S. President Barack Obama, to sign off on a peace agreement and end the 20-month-long civil war in the world’s newest nation, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declined to sign, saying he needed more time for consultations.

President Kiir’s team reportedly had “reservations” over the deal and wanted an additional 15 days before returning to sign, Seyoum Mesfin, mediator for IGAD, a regional group, told the media.

Rebel leader and former Vice-President Riek Machar did sign the agreement.

Among the issues in dispute were the structure of the government, the powers of the president, and the vice president, power-sharing percentages, security issues, and the demilitarisation of Juba and other places.

Then, in a move that would add fuel to the fire, President Kiir on Monday removed four elected state governors and arrested one of them.

The actions by the South Sudanese leader threw the U.S. strategy into a tailspin. A State Department release expressed “deep regret” for the failure to sign a peace proposal by Monday’s deadline.

“The United States deeply regrets that the government of South Sudan chose not to sign … We call on the government to sign the agreement within the 15-day period it requested for consultations,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily briefing.

Meanwhile, a film that shows that cost of war and colonial exploitation in South Sudan, opened in New York on Monday. The film, “We Come As Friends” is a work by Austrian-born filmmaker Hubert Sauper who previously made the film “Darwin’s Nightmare,” a film about Uganda.

That film, nominated for the Academy Award, “sifted through the wreckage of globalization by way of the fishing export industry in Lake Victoria, the impact on local Tanzanians, and a fast-and-loose subculture of Russian cargo-plane pilots.

“We Come as Friends” is firmly rooted in reality, wrote The New York Times in a review. “The ‘land grab’ confirmed in the nighttime scene with the tribal leader has occurred frequently, in Sudan and elsewhere, said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the think tank Oakland Institute, which has studied such issues.

“It’s not one of a kind — it’s not a small trend; it’s widespread,” Ms. Mittal said of the kind of “resource theft” that Sauper depicts.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Recognition of the indispensable role played by women in defeating apartheid was the focus of countless speeches, film showings and even fashion shows as the country paused this week for National Women’s Day, a public holiday.

Women’s Affairs Minister Susan Shabangu kicked off the activities with a speech on Pan African Women’s Day, celebrated on the last day of July.

“This year marks 59 years since the 1956 Women’s march to the Union Buildings where women protested against the pass laws which among other things restricted their freedom of movement,” she began.

“The march by 20,000 women challenged an oppressive system that deepened inequalities in terms of race and gender, and contributed to the current triple challenges of inequality, unemployment, and poverty.”

The Minister urged citizens to “take a journey” beginning from the era of Manthatise (the female warrior), Princess Mnkabayi, Princess Mantsopa, Queen Modjadji, Charlotte Maxeke and her ilk through to the generation of 1956 and beyond.

“This journey depicts the leadership role that these foremothers provided in the various stages of the evolution of our society and links it to the 21st Anniversary of the democratic South Africa and the impact of the policies of the country in changing the quality of life of South African women.”

Women have made major strides and are no longer “at the bottom, almost slaves,” observed the former ANC leader Dr. Ruth Mompati, who passed earlier this year in May. “Now women are in Parliament, at all educational levels, holding positions in business.”

Still, more needed to be done, she said at the time. “We should ask what our country should be doing – particularly a country that has been liberated by both men and women.”

Media activist Gugulethu Mhlungu picked up the challenge, citing a report released by President Jacob Zuma during his National Women’s Day address.

“Earlier this week, the 2015 Women’s Report confirmed what we already knew,” she said. “Women in South Africa are still, on average, paid 15 percent less than men in the same positions. And that’s a conservative estimate.

During Women’s Month, she said, the issue of gender inequality is seen as a special cause and worse, it gives men a free pass.

“Much like Youth Month, where only black youths are expected to do something about fixing society, the work of ending female oppression in South Africa is largely seen as the work of women themselves.

Even the Department of Women’s theme for 2015 – Women united in moving South Africa forward – suggests this is a job just for the women. “It’s catchy and has the right sentiment – but for another year we will focus on what women must do, which women are already doing.”

Pres. Zuma, in his speech, acknowledged the legacy of white privilege which still discriminates against black women today.

“If we are to succeed economically as a country, women must participate at both the micro and macro levels of the economy. They must not be relegated to micro operations and the informal economy as has been the case.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

There was pure emotion in the face of Dr. Helena Ndume, more used to bringing sight to the blind than wiping away tears of her own.

Photo courtesy of the 2015 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Prize

According to friends, she was caught off guard by the rousing welcome awaiting her this past week at the Hosea Kutako International Airport after picking up the first U.N. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Prize in New York.

“This is not a Helena Ndume award. It belongs to Namibia,” she said as more tears welled up in her eyes. “We should not leave our people and leave them to be blind. It is not their fault that they are blind. I cannot lock myself in my practice when the nation needs me.”

According to the nonprofit SEE International based in Santa Barbara, California, Ndume has performed 30,000 pro bono surgeries for sufferers of eye-related illnesses in Namibia. The blind patients are filled with intra-ocular lens implants free of charge.

She was also vice chairperson of the Namibia Red Cross Society.

This summer she will collaborate with SEE on three programmes in Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The organisation expects 700 patients to regain their eyesight during the three-week course of the tour.

Ndume left Namibia for exile at age 15. She lived in Zambia, and Gambia where she completed secondary school, and Angola, before going to Germany to study medicine.

Growing up, she wanted to be a fashion designer. On her not-pursued fashion dream, she said, “Yes, I wanted to be a fashion designer but the Swapo secretary of education in our refugee camp (former Prime Minister Nahas Angula) said ‘No way! We do not need fashion designers in an independent Namibia. To come make clothes for who? We need doctors and I want you to be a doctor’,” she said.

She is currently the head of the Ophthalmology department at Windhoek Central Hospital, Namibia’s largest hospital, and is one of only six Namibian ophthalmologists.

During an interview she had with The Namibian last month, Ndume encouraged young girls to learn how to be independent.

“You need to be independent as a woman. Instead of depending on a man and then he uses you and you end up being treated like toilet paper, you need to work for yourself.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Southern exit of the Suez Canal, Port Suez. Credit: WPCOM/Heb

By a Global Information Network correspondent
CAIRO, Aug 3 2015 (IPS)

Ships at sea around the world will blast their horns on Aug 6 to mark the re-opening of the world-famous centenarian waterway in Egypt, local officials there say.

“Food will arrive faster. Medicine will arrive faster. Petroleum products will arrive faster,” proclaimed Suez Canal Authority head Admiral Mohab Mohamed Hussein Mameesh.

“Egypt is serving the whole the world by speeding up this naval passage.”

The “new canal” – constructed parallel to the existing one – will allow ships to pass by each other, like a two-lane highway, as opposed to a single lane. Upon completion, more ships will fit inside the canal at the same time, reducing the wait time for some ships from 22 hours to 11 hours.

“Ships manufactured today are enormous,” said Mameesh. “Our current capacity is just eight ships per day. If there are nine ships, one has to wait outside the canal.” With the expansion, the Canal Authority expects to capture over 13 billion dollars a year in toll fees by 2023, or more than 5 billion dollars over what the canal now earns.

But critics of the refurbished canal see it as an attempt by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to shore up support for his government amid continuing economic problems in Egypt.

“[There are] questions about the merits of the overall project. The country is still in a very difficult situation, with population growth high, economic growth low, and where inflation remains high, in addition to a more politicized population,” said Angus Blair, chief executive of Signet, a Cairo-based regional forecasting consultancy firm.

Others have suggested Suez Canal may not need an upgrade.

“I don’t understand the logic of this Suez Canal expansion,” said Robin Mills, head of consulting at Manaar Energy in Dubai. “On the oil side, the canal’s importance is likely to wane as European Union oil imports from the Middle East fall. As for liquefied natural gas, the existing canal can already take the largest LNG carrier.

Even if successful, it may not be enough to improve the lives of average Egyptians, who are suffering rising poverty and prices, as the economy tries to recover from the financial and political turmoil between 2011 and 2013, said Naval History Professor Andrew Lambert, of King’s College in London.

“It’s a high-risk strategy,” Lambert said. “Egypt is a large, complex country with a very big population. It is highly unlikely it is going to be able to live off the kinds of incomes it will get, even from two canals.”

For the surrounding area, development of an industrial hub along a 160 km corridor of barren desert beside the waterway been awarded to the Bahrain-registered consultancy Dar Al-Handasah, which called the canal “one of the greatest feats of modern engineering and one of the world most vital channels for global trade.”

The consultants are partners with the Egyptian Army through the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, according to the Reuters news agency citing army and government sources.

A World Bank country director confirmed that the Bank is participating in the project in an advisory capacity saying it would “change the economic landscape of Egypt and create sustainable job opportunities for brilliant and energetic Egyptian youth.”

The original 101 mile-long canal, which connects Europe and Asia, took ten years to build in the 1860s at great human and financial cost.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

President Barack Obama greets embassy staff and their families during a meet and greet at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, July 25, 2015, before going to Addis Ababa. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By a Global Information Network correspondent
ADDIS ABABA, Jul 28 2015 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a meeting with regional African leaders, threatened new sanctions for the warring factions in South Sudan if a peace deal is not be reached by Aug. 17.

“The possibilities of renewed conflict … is something that requires urgent attention from all of us,” Obama said. “We don’t have a lot of time to wait.”

Pres. Obama outlined the options at a meeting Monday in Addis Ababa with leaders of Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, the chair of the African Union and the foreign minister of Sudan. “Liberating” South Sudan, with support from the U.S., Britain and Norway, was supposed to be the high point of Obama’s Africa policy. Four years after independence, the nation is a humanitarian disaster.

In fighting showing no signs of letting up, thousands of people have been killed and more than 2.2 million displaced, since violence erupted in December 2013, according to the U.N. Human rights abuses and indiscriminate killings have been carried out by both sides – namely the South Sudanese government led by President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, and forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer.

At the session of leaders, Obama set an Aug. 17 deadline for a peace agreement signed by all combatants although no consensus was reached on Monday on what to do if the deadline comes and goes. Numerous sanctions were floated – an arms embargo and the freezing of assets and ability to travel – backed by the international community. Obama expressed his preference for sanctions over intervention, as proposed by one of the leaders.

Western diplomats have pushed countries in the region to withdraw support for the South Sudanese combatants in order to make peace. Uganda, for example, openly supports the South Sudan government. Sudan supports Machar’s rebels.

Those at the talks included Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour and the chair of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

In a press briefing, a senior administration official told reporters that “venal leaders” had squandered a huge opportunity which the international community had helped them win. “So we can’t undo this for them,” he said, referring to the crisis. “They’ve got to fix this (themselves).”

Fighting has been fiercest in the Upper Nile and Unity States, where the nation’s two major oil fields are found. With the onset of the rainy season, an already dire situation has grown worse.

“Tens of thousands of people are cut off from aid and medical care as fighting intensifies in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State,” Doctors Without Borders, the international medical humanitarian organization, said in a statement last week.

Meanwhile, rebel spokesman James Gatdet welcomed Obama’s comments, saying “peace is possible”. But a spokesman for South Sudan rejected the plan and accused the international community of “jeopardizing the chances of the people of South Sudan.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

With a dangerous insurgency spreading within his borders, the visit to Washington this week by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was certainly going to touch on increased military support against Boko Haram.

But it also encompassed a discussion of stolen assets – namely billions of dollars siphoned away by bankers, ministers, and in some cases newly-minted millionaires.

According to the new president, about 150 billion dollars has been stolen in the past decade and held in foreign bank accounts by former corrupt officials. It could have been used on education and healthcare, among other spheres of national life, he said.

Adetolunbo Mumuni, director of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), praised the agenda: “We welcome the commitment by President Obama to assist the Buhari government in tracking down billions of dollars stolen from the country. However, greater efforts are required by the Obama government to follow through its commitment if it is to secure a measure of justice for Nigerian victims of corruption and money laundering.”

The Nigeria-based organisation asked President Obama to “establish a Presidential Advisory Committee and facilitate a Congressional Hearing on stolen assets from Nigeria. These initiatives would be tremendously important in bringing renewed attention to repatriation of stolen assets to Nigeria.”

“Corruption, money laundering and systematic violations of human rights go hand in hand and that is why President Obama should do everything within his power to get to the bottom of the stolen assets from Nigeria kept in the US,” the group said.

According to SERAP, “Recovering stolen assets from the US is a lingering issue that requires justice and fairness especially given the complicity of US banks and other institutions in corruption and money laundering in Nigeria, and the fact that stolen assets have contributed to the growth of US economy. “

Johnnie Carson, a former assistant secretary of state, concurred in the view that Washington should not let security issues overshadow the need for closer trade and investment ties.

“Nigeria is the most important country in Africa,” said Carson, currently an adviser to the U.S. Institute of Peace. Now more than ever, “the relationship with Nigeria should not rest essentially on a security and military-to-military relationship,” he said.

Still, to demonstrate his resolve at purging incompetence in the military, President Buhari last week dismissed his entire military top brass, even as militants launched deadly attacks in Nigeria’s remote northeast and in Cameroon.

This was discussed at a breakfast meeting Monday with Vice President Joe Biden where they compared notes on the terror war. “Victory cannot come from the military option alone,” Biden told the Nigerian leader.

After the high-level meetings with Obama and Biden, Buhari is scheduled to meet with World Bank executives, members of the U.S. Congress and West African diplomats. He is also scheduled to hold a town hall meeting with Nigerians in the DC area.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A scene from the mission of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to Chad to inquire into crimes committed by the regime of Hissène Habré in 2001. Credit: FIDH/cc by 2.0

By a Global Information Network correspondent
DAKAR, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

After years awaiting justice by a court of law, Chadian citizens packed the Palais de Justice in Dakar, Senegal, to catch a glimpse of Hissene Habre, president of the central African nation from 1982-1990 during which time his iron fist rule took between 1,200 and 40,000 lives, according to evidence compiled by Chadian and international rights groups.

Members of victims’ groups, whose efforts to bring Habre to court spanned over two decades, now strained to view this now slight figure dressed in white robes and a traditional white turban to cover most of his face.

The 72-year-old former strongman appeared unrepentant. As the proceedings began, he shouted “Down with imperialism! [The trial] is a farce by rotten Senegalese politicians. African traitors. Valet of America,” setting off a struggle between his supporters and alleged victims. At least half a dozen guards rushed to remove him. A small group of supporters was also removed.

When Mr. Habre refused to return to the courtroom, presiding judge Gberdao Gustave Kam warned he would be forced to attend on Tuesday. Over 100 victims are due to testify at the trial.

“We want to show the Chadian people, and why not all Africans, that no, you cannot govern in terror and criminality,” Souleyman Guengueng, 66, a former accountant who spent more than two years in Habre’s prison, said to Diadie Ba, a Reuters journalist.

“After 25 years, to see him again – it was a very emotional experience,” said Clément Abaifouta, president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of Hissène Habré, who claims he was forced to dig graves for many of his fellow inmates. “But now I see that I am in the sun and he is in the shade. For us, the victims, this has been an important occasion.“

The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal’s justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country’s domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges.

A successful trial would also make the case that African countries could try their own, rather than have the Western-led International Criminal Court (ICC) be the venue for trials of Africans.

The case against Habre turns on whether he personally ordered the killing and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals. In 1992, the Chadian Truth Commission accused Habré’s government of up to 40,000 political murders, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate. (DDS)

Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. A court handwriting expert concluded that margin notes on one document were Habre’s.

“Rarely do we find so much evidence of crimes,” said Reed Brody of HRW. “And these match the testimonies of the victims, day for day, word for word.”

“This is the end of a nightmare,” said Jacqueline Moudeina, the lead lawyer for the victims. “The fact that he is here and listens to victims speak of all the atrocities they suffered is already a great victory.”

Habré denies being responsible for hundreds of deaths.

The trial is expected to last several months.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

An electricity pylon in Somaliland being repaired by Edwin Mireri. Credit: IPS

By a Global Information Network correspondent
CAPE TOWN, Jul 14 2015 (IPS)

Sub-Saharan Africa is still far behind in its ability to generate electricity, hampering growth and frustrating its ambitions to catch up with the rest of the world.

All of sub-Saharan Africa’s power generating capacity is less than South Korea’s, and a quarter of it is unproductive at any given moment because of the continent’s aging infrastructure. The World Bank estimates that blackouts alone cut the gross domestic products of sub-Saharan countries by 2.1 percent.

This dismaying picture was echoed in the annual report of the Africa Progress Panel, released in June. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan heads the panel. The report foresees electricity coming to all homes and businesses in Africa – by 2080.

Graca Machel, a member of the panel and the former wife of Nelson Mandela, said she was taken aback by the prospect of a 65-year wait for electricity. The report also estimated that an investment of 55 billion dollars would be needed yearly to achieve universal access.

Presenting the report at the World Economic Forum Africa in Cape Town, titled “Power People Plant: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities,” Annan noted that some African countries are already leading the world in low-carbon climate-resilient development.

“African countries do not have to lock into high-carbon old technologies; we can expand our power generation and achieve universal access by leapfrogging into new technologies,” he said.

However, he cautioned that Africa’s energy challenge was substantial. “Over 600 million people still do not have access to modern energy. It is shocking that Sub-Saharan Africa’s electricity consumption is less than that of Spain and on current trends it will take until 2080” to catch up.

Modern energy also means clean cooking facilities that don’t pollute household air, he went on. “An estimated 600,000 Africans die each year as a result of household air pollution, half of them children under the age of five. On current trends, universal access to non-polluting cooking will not happen until the middle of the 22nd century.”

Africa has enormous potential for cleaner energy – natural gas and hydro, solar, wind and geothermal power – and should seek ways to move past the damaging energy systems that have brought the world to the brink of catastrophe.

The waste of scarce resources in Africa’s energy systems remains stark and disturbing. Current highly centralised energy systems often benefit the rich and bypass the poor and are underpowered, inefficient and unequal.

Energy-sector bottlenecks and power shortages cost the region 2-4 per cent of GDP annually, undermining sustainable economic growth, jobs and investment. They also reinforce poverty, especially for women and people in rural areas.

“It is indefensible that Africa’s poorest people are paying among the world’s highest prices for energy: a woman living in a village in northern Nigeria spends around 60 to 80 times per unit more for her energy than a resident of New York City or London,” he declared.

“Changing this is a huge investment opportunity. Millions of energy-poor, disconnected Africans, who earn less than US 2.50 a day, already constitute a US 10-billion yearly energy market.”

The panel is an advocacy group which lobbies for sustainable development in Africa and which was originally established to monitor whether the world’s leaders were meeting their commitments to Africa.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

An airlift of emergency supplies needed for those treating Liberians with the virus Ebola was launched last weekend by the U.N. children’s fund, Unicef.

“The largest component of the supplies was chlorine,” for disinfection, said Unicef’s representative in Liberia, Sheldon Yetts. Other supplies in the airlift were oral rehydration salts and sodium lactate to help ensure people are rehydrated, and about 900,000 gloves for infection control.

“Health workers have suffered a disproportionate number of casualties from Ebola,” said Yetts. “We need to make sure that health centers are disinfected and that people in Liberia feel safe to return to health centers.”

Ebola, say some experts, is much less contagious than other more common diseases. The virus, much like HIV or hepatitis, is spread through blood or bodily fluids and is not airborne.

Still, some countries in Africa are rejecting the World Health Organization’s advisory and are slamming their doors on visitors from West Africa. Travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are banned from entering South Africa. Citizens returning home from these areas must undergo a strict screening process, a health ministry statement said.

Senegal has closed its border with Guinea, while Chad closed its border with Nigeria.

Air Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria’s Arik Air, Togo’s ASKY Airlines, British Airways, Emirates Airlines and Kenya Airways have together cancelled over 200 flights to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Kenya Airways froze routes to Liberia and Sierra Leone after Kenya’s ministry of health called the Ebola outbreak “vastly underestimated” and that is was “expected to continue for some time”.

Only Brussels Airlines and Dutch airline KLM say they will continue flights. “Travelers are highly unlikely to be infected with Ebola, which cannot be transmitted under normal hygiene conditions”, said KLM.

With apparently conflicting health advisories sowing confusion and fear, a Zimbabwe blogger penned her concern that the upbeat picture of “Africa Rising” was getting a black eye.

Writing in the Mail & Guardian’s Voice of Africa,“ blogger Fungai Machirori observed: “Over the last few years, meticulous work has gone into crafting the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative – namely rising economies (like South Africa and Nigeria), tech and innovation (think Kenya) and the growth of a middle class we might call ‘post-African’ – savvy, urban, cosmopolitan with no flies to swat off their faces and no begging bowls in their manicured hands.

“While the statistics do point to a truth, another truth still prevails,” she cautioned.

“Across Africa I have seen the consumerist dream (high-end malls, cars, mansions and general financial exuberance) coexist with abjection, poverty and depleted social services. The rich do exist, but they are not the majority.

“The spread of Ebola shows up the Africa Rising narrative …Quite instantly, Ebola has become ‘the great leveler’ among Africans, re-perpetuating stereotypes of barbarism and savagery; that Africans eat ‘strange foods’ like fruit bats and bush meat and other ‘filthy creatures’, that we are unclean, diseased and therefore dangerous.

“Ebola has opened up the way for the ‘dark continent’ narrative to re-emerge, if it ever really disappeared,” she said. “Africa is collapsed into one territory, one country, one race, even if the fatality of Ebola represents about 0.15% of the continent.

A dominant global hysteria has emerged that lends itself to racial profiling and generalisations. I’m wondering how far, if at all, the discourse around blackness has progressed.

At the same time, “Ebola is serving to deepen regionalism (west Africa versus the rest of Africa) and the dangerous sort of nationalism that has often led to ineffectual collaboration across the continent…

“If Africa – given its wealth of human and natural resources – cannot contain Ebola, then we must sober up and accept that we haven’t risen to where we should be, given the accompanying discourse of booming economies and commodity markets.”

(Fungai Machirori runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for social media)  w/pix of Liberian women washing hands with chlorinated water from “Ebola buckets”

Some 400 delegates from 36 African countries are expected to fill the halls at the 18th annual Highway Africa conference for media activism which takes place Sept. 7-8 at Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

The two-day event will explore how social media has impacted all aspects of our lives in the last ten years. Dan Gillmor, a U.S. professor of digital media literacy at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Community is the keynote speaker.

Gillmor, the author of We the Media (2004), describes the Internet as an opportunity for independent journalists to challenge the consolidation of traditional media and contains his widely cited realization: “my readers know more than I do.”

The book offers a guide to new internet tools for journalists, including weblogs, RSS, SMS, peer-to-peer, and predicts how these tools will change journalism. His latest book, Mediactive, is on digital media literacy.

The conference will have a mix of panel discussions, training workshops, book launches and networking dinners. There are four distinct tracks in the program catering to the different core constituencies that are attending, ranging from mainstream journalists, academics, community media activists, to journalism students.

The conference will be preceded by council meetings of the African Editors Forum and the South African National Editors Forum.

In a related development, the African Media Initiative (AMI) this month launched a Pan-African campaign against hate speech at a panel discussion held in Nairobi, Kenya.

The panel brought together leading media figures from the Kenyan broadcasting station, NTV, which is part of East Africa’s largest media conglomerate, the Nation Media Group; Eric Chinje, Chief Executive Officer of AMI; Nanjira Sambuli, researcher on online hate speech at the iHub; Fatuma Abdulahi, owner of Warya Post, Africa’s fastest growing website; and Boniface Mwangi, award-winning photographer and social activist.

Examples of hate speech cited by conference organizers included the Ugandan media’s attack on the LGBT community. In one case “the 200 top homosexuals” were highlighted under the banner “Exposed!” on the front page of the paper Red Pepper.

“It’s happening all around us,” said AMI director Eric Chinje. “All of a sudden, Africa again is becoming the land of strife. It’s not like Rwanda in 1994 but there is a growing sense of exclusion on the continent, and the media appears to be a part of it.”

“The #TurnthePageonHateSpeech campaign serves as a call to media leaders and operators in Africa to lend their full support to efforts to turn the tide against the rise of hate speech on the Continent,” AMI said.

Survivors of the Nigerian civil war that raged for 3 years and whose horror was captured in unforgettable photographic images that shocked the world have renewed their demand for compensation for the suffering of those years.

Ndigbos, a socio-cultural Igbo group, were cut down in a brutal war that followed years of political wrangling among three regional-political sectors joined in an uneasy alliance by British colonialists.

The newly-independent Nigeria consisted of Yoruba, Igbo and Muslim Hausas. After a deadly coup and counter-coup, the Igbos declared their intention to breakaway and form a sovereign republic called Biafra.

Their intention triggered a war against the new republic which had minimal defenses. A military blockade of the Biafrans in 1968 led to a humanitarian disaster including widespread civilian hunger and starvation in the besieged Igbo areas. The Biafrans claimed that Nigeria used hunger and genocide to win the war, and they sought aid from the outside world.

Only five countries (Tanzania, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia and Haiti) officially recognized the endangered Biafra republic. The UK and the Soviet Union supported (especially militarily) the Nigerian government while Canada and France helped the Biafrans.

The United States declared neutrality, with the Secretary of State explaining that “Nigeria is an area under British influence.” Nevertheless the U.S. provided some military assistance to the Nigeria government.

Images of the Biafran war came to life in the recent best-seller by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun – now a movie. It is estimated that up to three million people died due to the conflict, most from hunger and disease.

This week, the Reparation Committee of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, in a 28-page document titled: “Atrocities and Injustices Against Ndigbo,” set out a list of demands and submitted them to President Goodluck Jonathan.

It reads in part: “The Federal Government should pay 400 billion naira each to the five states of the South East as compensation to those who lost loved ones, lost properties, and those still suffering dislocation today in Nigeria.

Compensation would be made to those Igbos who escaped during the pogroms and war and returned to find their jobs taken, their properties and houses occupied and their Biafran money worthless.

This has led to a feeling of an injustice as the Nigerian government policies are seen as further economically disabling the Igbos even long after the war.

The group is also asking the Federal Government to invest in a massive re-planning of Igbo cities with proper structures such as provision of urban water works, a sort of Marshall Plan often devised for war-ravaged area.