Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
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Oh my goodnessMore Nigeria
Published 15-12-2014 • Modified the 15-12-2014 at 02:07
Burkina Faso: close companies Compaoré nationalized
RFI
Prime Minister Isaac Zida (d.), Announced the nationalization of companies owned by relatives of the former president Comaporé. AFP / Sia KAMBOU
The Prime Minister of Burkina Faso Isaac Zida announced the nationalization of certain companies owned by some close to the Compaoré power. A process that could slow the momentum and worry some investors in the country, according to some leaders of organizations of civil society.
The operation began with the case of SOCOGIB, the construction company and property management Burkina transferred to Alizeta Ouedraogo for a " symbolic franc ". According to the executive director of the institute Free Afrik Dr. Rasablga Seydou Ouedraogo, however, it is not nationalization, as stated Isaac Zida, but a recovery operation of certain public companies, which were sold to private, and to whom the Burkinabe State continues to pay money.
"In reality, it's just an act to return to this fraudulent privatization, which is basically a theft of public property by people who organized it. I tell you that today the Burkinabe State pays a monthly rent to SOCOGIB, which was subtracted from fraudulent manner to the public good. Do you even lift
To avoid discouraging potential investors in Burkina Faso by this, Evariste Konsimbo, Circle of awakening, believes that this process of nationalization should be legally. " These companies were privatized at the end of a process, so if the state believes it has been wronged, he must go to court , he says. And justice must do its job. And this is not a presidential decree that should come to restore the state's rights. "
Dr Seydou Ouedraogo Rasblaga judge all privatizations carried out under the governance of former President Blaise Compaoré, should be a thorough audit. " During the great decade of the 90s, early 2000s, there were about fifty public and para-public companies that were on the agenda of privatization and says the executive director of Free Afrik . Not all have been privatized, some were liquidated. It is instructing a general audit of all sprivatisations. "
http://m.rfi.fr/afrique/20141215-bu..._date=2014-12-15&aef_campaign_ref=partage_aef
Burkina Faso: close companies Compaoré nationalized
RFI
Prime Minister Isaac Zida (d.), Announced the nationalization of companies owned by relatives of the former president Comaporé. AFP / Sia KAMBOU
The Prime Minister of Burkina Faso Isaac Zida announced the nationalization of certain companies owned by some close to the Compaoré power. A process that could slow the momentum and worry some investors in the country, according to some leaders of organizations of civil society.
The operation began with the case of SOCOGIB, the construction company and property management Burkina transferred to Alizeta Ouedraogo for a " symbolic franc ". According to the executive director of the institute Free Afrik Dr. Rasablga Seydou Ouedraogo, however, it is not nationalization, as stated Isaac Zida, but a recovery operation of certain public companies, which were sold to private, and to whom the Burkinabe State continues to pay money.
"In reality, it's just an act to return to this fraudulent privatization, which is basically a theft of public property by people who organized it. I tell you that today the Burkinabe State pays a monthly rent to SOCOGIB, which was subtracted from fraudulent manner to the public good. Do you even lift
To avoid discouraging potential investors in Burkina Faso by this, Evariste Konsimbo, Circle of awakening, believes that this process of nationalization should be legally. " These companies were privatized at the end of a process, so if the state believes it has been wronged, he must go to court , he says. And justice must do its job. And this is not a presidential decree that should come to restore the state's rights. "
Dr Seydou Ouedraogo Rasblaga judge all privatizations carried out under the governance of former President Blaise Compaoré, should be a thorough audit. " During the great decade of the 90s, early 2000s, there were about fifty public and para-public companies that were on the agenda of privatization and says the executive director of Free Afrik . Not all have been privatized, some were liquidated. It is instructing a general audit of all sprivatisations. "
http://m.rfi.fr/afrique/20141215-bu..._date=2014-12-15&aef_campaign_ref=partage_aef
13 December 2014 Last updated at 19:48 ET
The tourist town with a few surprises
By Justin MarozziChefchaouen, Morocco
The 15th Century town of Chefchaouen in north-west Morocco is popular with tourists - but there are a few things visitors need to bear in mind if they don't want to make a hash of their holiday.
I've been coming to Morocco for more than 25 years but even I was surprised by the taxi driver's behaviour.
A friend and I had flown into Fez to sell our house in the mountains. It had all become a bit too much and while we chose a taxi to take us into town there was some dispute between the drivers over who would get our fare.
So far so normal.
We rattled away in one of those classic North African taxis - a heavily engineered, 1980s Mercedes - only for the driver to face a barrage of phone calls from a very angry colleague, the driver who had missed out on the fare.
Several increasingly heated calls followed. Then a young man in a car pulled across in the road, triggering a volley of abuse from our driver.
Now it was the young stranger's turn to take offence.
The other vehicle shot ahead of us for a few metres and then stopped abruptly in the middle of a busy Fez main road, deliberately blocking our way.
Our now furious driver rushed out, opened the other car's door and kicked him in the face. The fight quickly escalated. In a flash, our driver was back to his car, rummaging in the boot.
Out came a baseball bat and off he strode wielding it with a very focused glint in his eye.
Just as the confrontation was starting to get uglier, a plainclothes policeman brandishing handcuffs materialised from nowhere, separated the two men and put an end to it. A few bruises, wounded pride. More than handbags, but no serious damage done.
Welcome to Morocco.
Dextrously fending off guides and touts in this fabulous country can be as much of an art as the carefully honed skills they use to target their quarry.
Years ago, as a hapless 18-year-old I was trying unsuccessfully to lose a particularly adhesive guide as I threaded my way through the labyrinth of the ancient medina - or old city - in Marrakesh.
The showdown only ended when by chance I bumped into one of the king's bodyguards. He saw what was happening, slammed the tout's head into a wall and the matter was over - albeit with minor bloodshed.
Several hours north of Fez, in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco, the pace of life is rather more relaxed in the spectacularly beautiful 15th Century town of Chefchaouen.
This is probably not unconnected with the fact that the local economy in recent years has centred on hashish and backpackers. There is a certain degree of interdependence between the two.
When I first visited Chefchaouen, or Chaouen as it is known, in the late 1980s, I was the only foreigner in the Pension Mauritania - £3 ($4.70) a night, delicious breakfast included - not smuggling drugs.
Some hid them in the back of old cars and chanced their luck north on the ferry to Spain. Some talked showily of night-time missions on fishing boats.
Others used to mould their stash into wax-covered pellets, before swallowing them and flying off to the Canaries. Unsurprisingly, some of them never got further than Tangier.
The son of a Spanish politician spent most of his time on the top floor of the pension, drinking opium tea. He didn't get out much.
The touts and guides in Chaouen, unlike their steelier counterparts in Tangier, Fez and Marrakesh, are pretty relaxed.
But they have got a living to make, too, and the days are long gone when the town, once a Muslim redoubt, was forbidden to foreigners.
Chaouenis take pride from the fact they were the last town in Morocco to submit to the Spanish in 1920, and these days visitors are there to be gently fleeced rather than killed.
Walk up and down through the higgledy-piggledy medina, a dazzling blend of whitewashed walls and blue paint unlike any other in Morocco, and within seconds you're brushing past touts advertising their wares sotto voce.
"You want good piece to smoke? Top quality. Not for tourists," says one.
"Nice carpets? Special price. Not for tourists," says another.
It's funny how everything sold to tourists is always described as "not for tourists".
On our last day in Chaouen, we sat in a cafe in Outa al Hammam, this is one of the prettiest town squares in the world with its handsome mosque, a 17th Century kasbah and a solitary pine tree needling towards the heavens.
Over a glass of mint tea we contemplated the sale of our old house with mixed feelings of relief and regret.
A group of young men sidled up to take positions at the table behind us. For a moment, silence.
Then the proposition - the tout's equivalent of the chat-up line: "Today is not the day to smoke a cigarette. It's the day to smoke hashish."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30432938
The tourist town with a few surprises
By Justin MarozziChefchaouen, Morocco
The 15th Century town of Chefchaouen in north-west Morocco is popular with tourists - but there are a few things visitors need to bear in mind if they don't want to make a hash of their holiday.
I've been coming to Morocco for more than 25 years but even I was surprised by the taxi driver's behaviour.
A friend and I had flown into Fez to sell our house in the mountains. It had all become a bit too much and while we chose a taxi to take us into town there was some dispute between the drivers over who would get our fare.
So far so normal.
We rattled away in one of those classic North African taxis - a heavily engineered, 1980s Mercedes - only for the driver to face a barrage of phone calls from a very angry colleague, the driver who had missed out on the fare.
Several increasingly heated calls followed. Then a young man in a car pulled across in the road, triggering a volley of abuse from our driver.
Now it was the young stranger's turn to take offence.
The other vehicle shot ahead of us for a few metres and then stopped abruptly in the middle of a busy Fez main road, deliberately blocking our way.
Our now furious driver rushed out, opened the other car's door and kicked him in the face. The fight quickly escalated. In a flash, our driver was back to his car, rummaging in the boot.
Out came a baseball bat and off he strode wielding it with a very focused glint in his eye.
Just as the confrontation was starting to get uglier, a plainclothes policeman brandishing handcuffs materialised from nowhere, separated the two men and put an end to it. A few bruises, wounded pride. More than handbags, but no serious damage done.
Welcome to Morocco.
Dextrously fending off guides and touts in this fabulous country can be as much of an art as the carefully honed skills they use to target their quarry.
Years ago, as a hapless 18-year-old I was trying unsuccessfully to lose a particularly adhesive guide as I threaded my way through the labyrinth of the ancient medina - or old city - in Marrakesh.
The showdown only ended when by chance I bumped into one of the king's bodyguards. He saw what was happening, slammed the tout's head into a wall and the matter was over - albeit with minor bloodshed.
Several hours north of Fez, in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco, the pace of life is rather more relaxed in the spectacularly beautiful 15th Century town of Chefchaouen.
This is probably not unconnected with the fact that the local economy in recent years has centred on hashish and backpackers. There is a certain degree of interdependence between the two.
When I first visited Chefchaouen, or Chaouen as it is known, in the late 1980s, I was the only foreigner in the Pension Mauritania - £3 ($4.70) a night, delicious breakfast included - not smuggling drugs.
Some hid them in the back of old cars and chanced their luck north on the ferry to Spain. Some talked showily of night-time missions on fishing boats.
Others used to mould their stash into wax-covered pellets, before swallowing them and flying off to the Canaries. Unsurprisingly, some of them never got further than Tangier.
The son of a Spanish politician spent most of his time on the top floor of the pension, drinking opium tea. He didn't get out much.
The touts and guides in Chaouen, unlike their steelier counterparts in Tangier, Fez and Marrakesh, are pretty relaxed.
But they have got a living to make, too, and the days are long gone when the town, once a Muslim redoubt, was forbidden to foreigners.
Chaouenis take pride from the fact they were the last town in Morocco to submit to the Spanish in 1920, and these days visitors are there to be gently fleeced rather than killed.
Walk up and down through the higgledy-piggledy medina, a dazzling blend of whitewashed walls and blue paint unlike any other in Morocco, and within seconds you're brushing past touts advertising their wares sotto voce.
"You want good piece to smoke? Top quality. Not for tourists," says one.
"Nice carpets? Special price. Not for tourists," says another.
It's funny how everything sold to tourists is always described as "not for tourists".
On our last day in Chaouen, we sat in a cafe in Outa al Hammam, this is one of the prettiest town squares in the world with its handsome mosque, a 17th Century kasbah and a solitary pine tree needling towards the heavens.
Over a glass of mint tea we contemplated the sale of our old house with mixed feelings of relief and regret.
A group of young men sidled up to take positions at the table behind us. For a moment, silence.
Then the proposition - the tout's equivalent of the chat-up line: "Today is not the day to smoke a cigarette. It's the day to smoke hashish."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30432938
China shocked by fatal riot in Madagascar
By DIDI TANGDecember 14, 2014 3:35 AM
BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese Embassy in Madagascar expressed shock Sunday at a deadly riot involving local workers at a Chinese-run sugar plant and criticized the island nation's government for failing to protect Chinese interests.
The statement came three days after local workers clashed with Madagascar security forces, leaving two people dead, before they looted the sugar plant in Morondava.
The embassy said the Chinese staff evacuated the factory because of fears for their safety.
"We hope the Madagascar government will take necessary measures to properly handle the attack at the Morondava sugar plant and to erase the ill impact this incident has brought to the country's international image and its ability to attract foreign investments so as to create a good environment for Madagascar to cooperate with China and other countries," the statement said.
Madagascar Prime Minister Roger Kolo and the country's industry minister, Jules Etienne Rolland, have pledged to try to resolve the situation.
The labor protest started when the plant's seasonal workers demanded contracts that offer better pay and better conditions, according to reports.
The Chinese Embassy said the requests were unreasonable, and that the workers began in early November to block the factory, cutting off utilities, harassing employees and sabotaging equipment.
Confrontation escalated after Madagascar security forces arrested two strike leaders.
On Wednesday, about 500 workers rushed to a base of the security forces to demand the release of their colleagues, and police fired tear gas and live ammunition, the Madagascar Tribune reported. Two people died. Police said they were acting in self-defense because some workers had guns and machetes
The official China News Service said the workers were armed with axes, slingshots and rocks.
Rioters then converged on the factory, looted its sugar supply and set fire to a building. Some looters carried bags of sugar on their backs or in carts and wheelbarrows, and some of it was quickly sold on the illegal market, according to reports.
China is Africa's largest trading partner, but closer ties have resulted in sometimes violent labor disputes.
___
Associated Press writer Christopher Torchia in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
By DIDI TANGDecember 14, 2014 3:35 AM
BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese Embassy in Madagascar expressed shock Sunday at a deadly riot involving local workers at a Chinese-run sugar plant and criticized the island nation's government for failing to protect Chinese interests.
The statement came three days after local workers clashed with Madagascar security forces, leaving two people dead, before they looted the sugar plant in Morondava.
The embassy said the Chinese staff evacuated the factory because of fears for their safety.
"We hope the Madagascar government will take necessary measures to properly handle the attack at the Morondava sugar plant and to erase the ill impact this incident has brought to the country's international image and its ability to attract foreign investments so as to create a good environment for Madagascar to cooperate with China and other countries," the statement said.
Madagascar Prime Minister Roger Kolo and the country's industry minister, Jules Etienne Rolland, have pledged to try to resolve the situation.
The labor protest started when the plant's seasonal workers demanded contracts that offer better pay and better conditions, according to reports.
The Chinese Embassy said the requests were unreasonable, and that the workers began in early November to block the factory, cutting off utilities, harassing employees and sabotaging equipment.
Confrontation escalated after Madagascar security forces arrested two strike leaders.
On Wednesday, about 500 workers rushed to a base of the security forces to demand the release of their colleagues, and police fired tear gas and live ammunition, the Madagascar Tribune reported. Two people died. Police said they were acting in self-defense because some workers had guns and machetes
The official China News Service said the workers were armed with axes, slingshots and rocks.
Rioters then converged on the factory, looted its sugar supply and set fire to a building. Some looters carried bags of sugar on their backs or in carts and wheelbarrows, and some of it was quickly sold on the illegal market, according to reports.
China is Africa's largest trading partner, but closer ties have resulted in sometimes violent labor disputes.
___
Associated Press writer Christopher Torchia in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
Found in SA … Libya’s trillions
December 7 2014 at 11:26am
By JOVIAL RANTAO Comment on this story
Johannesburg - The South African government and President Jacob Zuma have been caught in the middle of an international wrangle over as much as R2 trillion in US dollars as well as hundreds of tons of gold and at least six million carats of diamonds in assets belonging to the people of Libya.
What could be the world’s largest cash pile is stored in palettes at seven heavily guarded warehouses and bunkers in secret locations between Joburg and Pretoria.
The Libyan billions have led to a Hawks investigation into possible violation of exchange controls as well as international interests from the UN and the US.
It has also led to heightened interest in the local and international intelligence community as well as the criminal underworld.
Those interested in the Libyan loot include several high-ranking ANC politicians, several business leaders, a former high court judge and a number of private companies.
The R2-trillion held in warehouses is separate from several other billions, believed to be in excess of R260 billion, held legally in four banks in South Africa.
Other legal assets include hotels in Joburg and Cape Town.
The Sunday Independent has seen official South African government documents which confirm that at least $179bn in US dollars is kept, illegally, in storage facilities across Gauteng.
Soon after Muammar Gaddafi’s death in October 2011, the new Libyan government embarked on a large-scale mission to recover legal assets in South Africa, the rest of Africa, the US and Europe.
In South Africa, the focus of the Libyans has been on assets brought into the country legally as well as illegally.
Last year, the Libyan government put in place a separate process to identify and repatriate the illegal assets in South Africa.
Investigations by The Sunday Independent on the illegal assets have led to allegations that:
* The US dollar loot was ferried to South Africa in at least 62 flights between Tripoli and South Africa. The crew of the planes were mainly ex-special forces from the apartheid era. The crew are understood to have deposed affidavits clarifying their role in an effort to avoid criminal charges.
* The money, gold and diamonds were moved to South Africa. Most of it was kept here and some was moved to neighbouring southern African countries. Most of the assets were taken out of Libya after Zuma got involved in an AU process to persuade then Libyan President Gaddafi to step down after an Arab-spring-like uprising to force him out of office.
Gaddafi was killed as he tried to flee Tripoli.
The Libyan government has formed a special board, the National Board for the Following Up and Recovery of Libyan Looted and Disguised Funds, to recover the assets. Now two companies have presented themselves to the South African government, claiming they were mandated by the national board to recover the funds.
The two companies are the Texas-based Washington African Consulting Group (WACG), led by its chief executive Erik Goalied, and Maltese-based Sam Serj, led by its chief executive, Tahah Buishi. Both companies claim to be the only legitimate representatives of the Libyan government.
Goalied has dismissed Sam Serj as impostors who want to stage the “biggest heist in the world”.
He said they were using fake documents and had used a number of South Africans, with the lure of lucrative commissions, to get the South African government to comply. Goalied has formalised his allegations about Sam Serj in an affidavit that he has submitted to the National Prosecuting Authority, who have passed it on to the Hawks.
He told The Sunday Independent that on September 26 he met with the Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani in New York, where both parties reconfirmed that the WACG should work with the South African government. “The assets are important but the bigger goal is to resolve this smoothly so that relations between South Africa and Libya can improve,” he said.
Goalied said the Libyans did not necessarily want the loot to be sent back to Tripoli. They wanted full and legal control of the assets which, he added, could be used for investments and other job-creation projects that would benefit both countries.
Last month, Goalied wrote to Zuma asking for co-operation and assistance in resolving the assets saga. The Presidency wrote to him this week, acknowledging his letter.
The Presidency has referred The Sunday Independent’s queries to the Treasury. The Treasury, in turn, referred The Sunday Independent to a statement issued last June in which the government called on those with knowledge of Libyan assets in South Africa to come forward. Hawks spokesman Paul Ramaloko declined to confirm the probe.
The Sunday Independent has also established that Goalied has also written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US Foreign Secretary John Kerry asking for assistance. The UN adopted Resolution 438 which forces countries that have Libyan assets to return them.
The second company – Sam Serj – has already been in South Africa to discuss the return of the assets.
Sam Serj chief executive Buishi claimed his company was the only legitimate entity with a mandate to find and recover assets that belong to the people of Libya.
Buishi said his company has been contracted by the Libyan government to trace and recover assets looted by Gaddafi and those close to him.
He said the assets had been traced to South Africa, Libya’s neighbour, Tunisia, and several countries in Europe.
“We have been contracted by the Libyan government and are working with the South African government to recover the looted assets.
“We had a good meeting during our last visit with the then-minister of finance, Pravin Gordhan.
“We are working with the South African government. Hopefully, there will be a delegation to South Africa to repatriate the assets or come to some sort of arrangement.
“We want to work with the South African government to not only recover the assets but to find ways of re-investing them in South Africa.
“We want the assets to be identified as belonging to the Libyan people.
“Politically, we are trying to help the new Libya integrate with the rest of the African continent. Libya is a very big and rich country and together with South Africa can play a strategic role in Africa,” Buishi said.
Several sources told The Sunday Independent that the Libyans have complained to the UN and have placed South Africa and Zuma on terms, threatening to lay charges of theft with the International Criminal Court if the assets were not returned promptly.
The Sunday Independent understands that the money was brought in by a company, which has hired former SADF special forces and is keeping the warehouses where the money, gold and diamonds are being kept under 24-hour surveillance.
Other cash assets, running into hundreds of millions of rand, are being kept in accounts in South Africa’s major banks.
Several sources have confirmed that the ex-apartheid era special forces pilots and soldiers have deposed affidavits that are designed to protect them from, among others, money-laundering charges.
Sunday Independent
http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/...dium=facebook&utm_source=dlvr.it#.VJC844rF_VR
Exciting times: Africa is not just one country, it is slowly becoming one big tribe
16 DEC 2014 21:29CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
Africa becoming one big – and unwieldy – country. It is not the one Kwame Nkrumah dreamt of, but that which the people have made for themselves.
Boda boda in Kigali. Could be anywhere in Africa (Photo Thomas Stellmach/flickr). BELOW Nollywood has become the standard. (Photo Carsten ten Brink/flickr), and she could be from any African country. (Pixelpro) The ubiquitous used cars.
I THINK Binyavanga Wainaina settled one of the vexing questions about Africa: how to write about the continent (or not to write about it, for it is the same thing really) with his wonderful essay “How To Write About Africa”.
It still left some room to play with a few other issues, especially the basic one; what is Africa, is it a continent of 54 countries, is it one huge geographical mass, is it a history, is it a consciousness, is it two sub-continents – one Arab the other, well, Black Proper – or is it a cultural expression? The politically correct position is that Africa is complex, and each of the countries is different, and it is wrong and simple-minded to overgeneralise. Yes, and No.
Nearly a year ago I went chasing answers in a blog [READ Africa Used To Be A Continent Of 50 Plus Nations, Now It’s Becoming One Big Messy But Delightful Country].
Like then, the answer as to whether Africa is one big country (a messy one at that), or several countries in a continent, some terrific, others hopeless, has changed little.
And so back to an old story. One of our daughters used to attend a study group on the weekends along Ngong Road in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. I would drop her off, and park across the street nearby under some acacia trees. I would sit there reading a book, news magazines, or working on my laptop – sometimes for four hours – as I waited. There is a small green park there, and on a couple of occasions I noticed that a young group of what looked like Ethiopians would arrive carrying plastic bags and sit around.
They would open the bags and take out food and share it. By the time they were done, there would be over 20 of them. Then they would start playing a football game.
I got interested in their story, but didn’t want to spook them by inquiring directly. So I asked workers at a nearby workshop. They told that they were Ethiopian refugees and exiles. Sometimes, I was told, Eritreans exiles also gathered at the spot.
Africas’ micro-Africas
On a separate but, ultimately, related event, one Saturday I got the time for an appointment I had in central Nairobi terribly wrong, and had to wait for three hours.
As a good residual Catholic, I decided to go and “pass time” at Nairobi’s St. Paul Church. Friends who used to go there on Saturdays, had told it was a “very modern” and short service. I got the time for that wrong too, but there was a service going on nonetheless. However, it was in French. Turns out it was the service for French-speaking Congolese, Burundians, and Rwandese who live in Nairobi as political exiles, economic refugees, or regular refugees.
And from that I got immersed trying to make sense of the phenomenon of “micro-Africas” in Kenya, and found that they were many; Somalis from Somalia, Nigerians, Senegalese, Sudanese, Zimbabweans, name it.
I got the impression that one of the least understood and under-reported shifts on the continent is this migration by Africans within Africa and how much they are changing the continent. They are breaking down the walls that used to make it possible to say that one African country was different from the next.
So near yet so far
African countries were indeed very different in the colonial period, and the 30 or so years after the 1960s independence period. Those were the days when, if you were calling Ghana from Kenya, the international telephone was routed through London. It was quicker to fly to Bujumbura from Entebbe, in Uganda, by taking a Sabena flight to Brussels, and then from there hop on another Sabena plane from Brussels to Burundi.
Some of this still happens. To this today, to fly to the African island nation of Cape Verde from most capitals on mainland Africa you have to go through Portugal or France.
When I was in Dakar, Senegal, in 2012, a Mozambican editor friend arrived there one day late for a media conference. Why? Because the quickest flight he could find to Dakar from Maputo was via Portugal, where also he got his Senegalese visa!
Still, things were not always what they looked like. Slavery and colonialism, divided Africa, yes. However, in a perverse sort of way, they were also the first globalising forces on the continent. They brought Africa in contact with the rest of the world in a very painful way, but also became the first mass collective experiences for Africans.
Refugees and revolutionaries
However, the real pan-African revolutionaries have been the refugees. Yes, they were running away from murderous armies and warlords at home, but the Barundi refugees, for example, didn’t need to go through Brussels to come to Uganda. They took matters in their own hands, or rather legs, and hoofed it through forests, crossed rivers, ignored borders, until they found a safe valley in another country.
Refugees have a very different view of the countries they are passing through from those who arrive in these same countries by air.
They also tend to have greater impact, because they do so at the retail level – imagine, for example, how much Somali refugees have changed the areas around the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya. Refugees drink - and often brew - the local beer, date and marry the local villagers, and many times destroy the local environment. The latter is harmful, but it is still a serious footprint left behind.
I have met many Kenyans whose parents are Ugandans who lived in Kenya both as refugees and exiles in their tens of thousands in the 1970s and early 1980s. Nearly three out of five times, I have been able to figure out that they were Kenyan-Ugandans (or is it Ugandan-Kenyans?) despite their Kenyan names, and before they told me that they were partly of Ugandan parentage. There is an untouchable African “thing” that increasingly many people on the continent share.
But more direct forces are contributing to turning Africa into one big country, gradually removing the old distinctions and making us one big tribe.
One of them is football. When the African Cup of Nations was first played in 1957, there were only three participating countries. Today, it is huge and we Africans get emotionally entangled in it.
Today, there are many things you find in all corners of Africa – Nigerian films, matatu/dalala mini van buses, boda boda/okada motorcycle taxis, the used cars from Japan and the Middle East, and the English Premier League (EPL).
The value of enemies and rivals
Football-loving Africans are united as fans or enemies of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, or Manchester City. While the EPL has a considerable homogenising effect, it wouldn’t have happened without DSTv pay television and the widespread phenomenon of the sports pub.
It is old in England, but the sports pub has not celebrated its 20th birthday yet in Africa. England’s influence in Africa, and one of its more enduring effects, has happened long after the end of the British Empire – and didn’t require a single soldier or bullet.
All this is before we take into account the role our corrupt and murderous generals plays in homogenising Africa. Nearly 30 years of military dictatorship in Africa – except in a few countries like Kenya, Botswana and Mauritius – again joined the African people in the shared experience of the soldiers’ boot.
Famines too did the same.
A mad general in khakis in Nigeria, or an Idi Amin in Uganda, became instantly recognisable in Egypt or Guinea. A starving child in Niger, brought sad personal memories to a grandmother in Ethiopia.
These were not Africa’s proudest and best moments, but they were our moments, among the many chisels that make up our collective history. Just like the joy of the Cup of Nations is a collective celebration, the tragedy of famine became in many ways a continent-wide bond of agony.
Enter Dubai and Shanghai
Lately, it has been the turn of Dubai and cities like Shanghai to touch Africa. If you walk around Lagos or Accra, you will see many “kiosk” shops. They all look like the ones in downtown Dubai. And most of the goods are from downtown Dubai – or somewhere in China.
The shops off Cairo’s revolutionary Tahrir Square, were among the first to get this Dubai look in the early 1990s. I saw the same thing in Dakar, Accra, Addis Ababa, and Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.
Journalists from other African countries I haven’t been to tell me this “Dubaisation” and “Shanghaisation” is happening in their cities too.
Soon, most shops in African cities will look like the ones in Dubai and Shanghai.
I can go on and on. The short of it that if you live in an African city, there is little to nothing that will be unfamiliar to you anymore no matter which other African city you go to. Africa is becoming one big – and largely unwieldy – country. It is not the united Africa Kwame Nkrumah dreamt of, or Muammar Gaddafi talked up. It is the one the African people have made for themselves.
http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-12...-country-it-is-slowly-becoming-one-big-tribe/
16 DEC 2014 21:29CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
Africa becoming one big – and unwieldy – country. It is not the one Kwame Nkrumah dreamt of, but that which the people have made for themselves.
Boda boda in Kigali. Could be anywhere in Africa (Photo Thomas Stellmach/flickr). BELOW Nollywood has become the standard. (Photo Carsten ten Brink/flickr), and she could be from any African country. (Pixelpro) The ubiquitous used cars.
I THINK Binyavanga Wainaina settled one of the vexing questions about Africa: how to write about the continent (or not to write about it, for it is the same thing really) with his wonderful essay “How To Write About Africa”.
It still left some room to play with a few other issues, especially the basic one; what is Africa, is it a continent of 54 countries, is it one huge geographical mass, is it a history, is it a consciousness, is it two sub-continents – one Arab the other, well, Black Proper – or is it a cultural expression? The politically correct position is that Africa is complex, and each of the countries is different, and it is wrong and simple-minded to overgeneralise. Yes, and No.
Nearly a year ago I went chasing answers in a blog [READ Africa Used To Be A Continent Of 50 Plus Nations, Now It’s Becoming One Big Messy But Delightful Country].
Like then, the answer as to whether Africa is one big country (a messy one at that), or several countries in a continent, some terrific, others hopeless, has changed little.
And so back to an old story. One of our daughters used to attend a study group on the weekends along Ngong Road in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. I would drop her off, and park across the street nearby under some acacia trees. I would sit there reading a book, news magazines, or working on my laptop – sometimes for four hours – as I waited. There is a small green park there, and on a couple of occasions I noticed that a young group of what looked like Ethiopians would arrive carrying plastic bags and sit around.
They would open the bags and take out food and share it. By the time they were done, there would be over 20 of them. Then they would start playing a football game.
I got interested in their story, but didn’t want to spook them by inquiring directly. So I asked workers at a nearby workshop. They told that they were Ethiopian refugees and exiles. Sometimes, I was told, Eritreans exiles also gathered at the spot.
Africas’ micro-Africas
On a separate but, ultimately, related event, one Saturday I got the time for an appointment I had in central Nairobi terribly wrong, and had to wait for three hours.
As a good residual Catholic, I decided to go and “pass time” at Nairobi’s St. Paul Church. Friends who used to go there on Saturdays, had told it was a “very modern” and short service. I got the time for that wrong too, but there was a service going on nonetheless. However, it was in French. Turns out it was the service for French-speaking Congolese, Burundians, and Rwandese who live in Nairobi as political exiles, economic refugees, or regular refugees.
And from that I got immersed trying to make sense of the phenomenon of “micro-Africas” in Kenya, and found that they were many; Somalis from Somalia, Nigerians, Senegalese, Sudanese, Zimbabweans, name it.
I got the impression that one of the least understood and under-reported shifts on the continent is this migration by Africans within Africa and how much they are changing the continent. They are breaking down the walls that used to make it possible to say that one African country was different from the next.
So near yet so far
African countries were indeed very different in the colonial period, and the 30 or so years after the 1960s independence period. Those were the days when, if you were calling Ghana from Kenya, the international telephone was routed through London. It was quicker to fly to Bujumbura from Entebbe, in Uganda, by taking a Sabena flight to Brussels, and then from there hop on another Sabena plane from Brussels to Burundi.
Some of this still happens. To this today, to fly to the African island nation of Cape Verde from most capitals on mainland Africa you have to go through Portugal or France.
When I was in Dakar, Senegal, in 2012, a Mozambican editor friend arrived there one day late for a media conference. Why? Because the quickest flight he could find to Dakar from Maputo was via Portugal, where also he got his Senegalese visa!
Still, things were not always what they looked like. Slavery and colonialism, divided Africa, yes. However, in a perverse sort of way, they were also the first globalising forces on the continent. They brought Africa in contact with the rest of the world in a very painful way, but also became the first mass collective experiences for Africans.
Refugees and revolutionaries
However, the real pan-African revolutionaries have been the refugees. Yes, they were running away from murderous armies and warlords at home, but the Barundi refugees, for example, didn’t need to go through Brussels to come to Uganda. They took matters in their own hands, or rather legs, and hoofed it through forests, crossed rivers, ignored borders, until they found a safe valley in another country.
Refugees have a very different view of the countries they are passing through from those who arrive in these same countries by air.
They also tend to have greater impact, because they do so at the retail level – imagine, for example, how much Somali refugees have changed the areas around the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya. Refugees drink - and often brew - the local beer, date and marry the local villagers, and many times destroy the local environment. The latter is harmful, but it is still a serious footprint left behind.
I have met many Kenyans whose parents are Ugandans who lived in Kenya both as refugees and exiles in their tens of thousands in the 1970s and early 1980s. Nearly three out of five times, I have been able to figure out that they were Kenyan-Ugandans (or is it Ugandan-Kenyans?) despite their Kenyan names, and before they told me that they were partly of Ugandan parentage. There is an untouchable African “thing” that increasingly many people on the continent share.
But more direct forces are contributing to turning Africa into one big country, gradually removing the old distinctions and making us one big tribe.
One of them is football. When the African Cup of Nations was first played in 1957, there were only three participating countries. Today, it is huge and we Africans get emotionally entangled in it.
Today, there are many things you find in all corners of Africa – Nigerian films, matatu/dalala mini van buses, boda boda/okada motorcycle taxis, the used cars from Japan and the Middle East, and the English Premier League (EPL).
The value of enemies and rivals
Football-loving Africans are united as fans or enemies of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, or Manchester City. While the EPL has a considerable homogenising effect, it wouldn’t have happened without DSTv pay television and the widespread phenomenon of the sports pub.
It is old in England, but the sports pub has not celebrated its 20th birthday yet in Africa. England’s influence in Africa, and one of its more enduring effects, has happened long after the end of the British Empire – and didn’t require a single soldier or bullet.
All this is before we take into account the role our corrupt and murderous generals plays in homogenising Africa. Nearly 30 years of military dictatorship in Africa – except in a few countries like Kenya, Botswana and Mauritius – again joined the African people in the shared experience of the soldiers’ boot.
Famines too did the same.
A mad general in khakis in Nigeria, or an Idi Amin in Uganda, became instantly recognisable in Egypt or Guinea. A starving child in Niger, brought sad personal memories to a grandmother in Ethiopia.
These were not Africa’s proudest and best moments, but they were our moments, among the many chisels that make up our collective history. Just like the joy of the Cup of Nations is a collective celebration, the tragedy of famine became in many ways a continent-wide bond of agony.
Enter Dubai and Shanghai
Lately, it has been the turn of Dubai and cities like Shanghai to touch Africa. If you walk around Lagos or Accra, you will see many “kiosk” shops. They all look like the ones in downtown Dubai. And most of the goods are from downtown Dubai – or somewhere in China.
The shops off Cairo’s revolutionary Tahrir Square, were among the first to get this Dubai look in the early 1990s. I saw the same thing in Dakar, Accra, Addis Ababa, and Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.
Journalists from other African countries I haven’t been to tell me this “Dubaisation” and “Shanghaisation” is happening in their cities too.
Soon, most shops in African cities will look like the ones in Dubai and Shanghai.
I can go on and on. The short of it that if you live in an African city, there is little to nothing that will be unfamiliar to you anymore no matter which other African city you go to. Africa is becoming one big – and largely unwieldy – country. It is not the united Africa Kwame Nkrumah dreamt of, or Muammar Gaddafi talked up. It is the one the African people have made for themselves.
http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-12...-country-it-is-slowly-becoming-one-big-tribe/
The Tanzanian Prince
Tanzania Nakupenda Kwa Moyo Wote
Lagos, Nigeria
reminds me of the Old Taxi Park in Kampala, UG and a bit of Kariakoo here in Dar es Salaam
I hope to visit UG in the next year or so, got mad cousins up there
The Tanzanian Prince
Tanzania Nakupenda Kwa Moyo Wote
double post...
The Tanzanian Prince
Tanzania Nakupenda Kwa Moyo Wote
Hyatt Regency - Kilimanjaro Hotel located in the heart of Dar es Salaam
