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Tanzania derailing single tourist visa uptake - industry stakeholders
PRINTRATING
Tourists at a park in Tanzania. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
By CHRISTABEL LIGAMI
Posted Saturday, December 27 2014 at 12:20
IN SUMMARY
Background
According to tourism stakeholders, the number of tourists visiting the region as a circuit would rise if Tanzania, the lead destination in the region, joined in the initiative.
“Currently, Tanzania receives more tourists than Kenya and has more and better sites than any other partner state. Therefore, if the country were to join hands with the other member states, then we would likely to see more tourists coming into the region especially to the Mara then Serengeti National park,” said Waturi Matu, the co-ordinator of the East African Tourism Platform.
She added: “Kenya is known for its Big Five Safaris while Tanzania is best known for its tree-climbing lions. A tourist would prefer travelling to these two destinations on a single tourist visa through Kenya for the safari then cross over to Tanzania to spot the tree climbing lions.”
But Tanzania has categorically stated that until security concerns are addressed, it is not ready to be part of the single tourist visa. The country also wants the issue of how revenues will be split addressed and infrastructure put in place.
“Security in the region is not good. For example, Kenya is prone to Al Shabaab attacks; if a tourist gets a visa from Tanzania and has security problems in Kenya, who will be blamed?” Tanzania’s EAC Deputy Minister Abdullah Juma said in an interview.
READ: Tough times ahead for EA tourism as insecurity scares visitors away
ALSO READ: Terrorist threat may weigh against Single Tourist Visa
A recent report shows that since the launch of the single tourist visa on February 20, only 1,560 have been sold. The number is projected to rise by nine per cent in 2015 if insecurity, and the issue of high cost of airfares and hotel ratings are addressed.
According to Ms Matu, the high cost of air travel across the region is hurting the growth of the tourism industry.
“Flying across the East African Community is too expensive compared with other regions across the continent and globally,” said Ms Matu, adding that a tourist would rather pay $100 more to South Africa than fly to the three East African countries which will cost him/her almost three times the cost to South Africa.
Flight charges
Flying from one of the EAC countries to another costs between $220 and $350 minus taxes, for a return trip. Ms Matu blamed the high costs on the absence of uniform airspace policies and high airport parking fees.
EAC air transport is governed by the Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) negotiated between the different EAC countries.
The current BASAs, however, have restrictions on designated routes (route schedule), which in most cases include departure from one party’s international (mainly capital city) airports to the other contracting party’s international airport or capital city; cabotage rights (the transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country by an aircraft registered in another country), which are not provided; designation of beneficiary airlines; conditions such as the requirement for substantial ownership and effective control of the designated airline being vested in the contracting party or its nationals.
This is the case in the BASA between Rwanda – Kenya; and Rwanda – Tanzania.
Limitations of capacity, particularly in frequencies, such as the case of Rwanda and Tanzania’s bilateral agreement, is also a challenge. Any flights beyond the scheduled number are considered unscheduled and attract extra charges.
“The restrictions limit operations of foreign airlines and are, therefore, uncompetitive,” noted Ms Matu.
Other factors constraining the EAC air transport industry include the uncompetitive domestic tax regime; fiscal policies such as airport taxes and VAT, high insurance premiums; management inefficiencies; limited subsidies and safety oversight.
The EAC is currently negotiating to liberalise its air space in order to boost competitiveness. It recently developed the EAC liberalisation of transport services regulations — which eliminate some of the restrictions imposed by BASAs.
For example, partner states can grant each other rights beyond the ones provided in the regulations at their own discretion. They can also liberalise air transport tariff without the relevant authorities in the EAC being required to approve them.
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/bus.../2560/2570394/-/item/1/-/plqk0az/-/index.html
BUSINESS
Tanzania derailing single tourist visa uptake - industry stakeholders
Tourists at a park in Tanzania. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
By CHRISTABEL LIGAMI
Posted Saturday, December 27 2014 at 12:20
IN SUMMARY
Background
- The single tourist visa was launched on February 20.
- MARKETING: Since then, the three partner states have been jointly marketing the region as a single destination at the international level.
- OUTSOURCING: Countries also pledged to each task a private public relations firm to help in the marketing of the countries’ tourism sites.
- PROGRESS SO FAR: Only Rwanda has hired a private PR firm to handle its marketing. Uganda is in the process of hiring one and has already advertised the tenders. Kenya is yet to act.
- COSTS: The single tourism visa costs $100 and grants tourists a 90-day validity period with no room for extension.
- Tour firms recently proposed a review of the visa to allow 30 days of free movement for expatriates within the region.
According to tourism stakeholders, the number of tourists visiting the region as a circuit would rise if Tanzania, the lead destination in the region, joined in the initiative.
“Currently, Tanzania receives more tourists than Kenya and has more and better sites than any other partner state. Therefore, if the country were to join hands with the other member states, then we would likely to see more tourists coming into the region especially to the Mara then Serengeti National park,” said Waturi Matu, the co-ordinator of the East African Tourism Platform.
She added: “Kenya is known for its Big Five Safaris while Tanzania is best known for its tree-climbing lions. A tourist would prefer travelling to these two destinations on a single tourist visa through Kenya for the safari then cross over to Tanzania to spot the tree climbing lions.”
But Tanzania has categorically stated that until security concerns are addressed, it is not ready to be part of the single tourist visa. The country also wants the issue of how revenues will be split addressed and infrastructure put in place.
“Security in the region is not good. For example, Kenya is prone to Al Shabaab attacks; if a tourist gets a visa from Tanzania and has security problems in Kenya, who will be blamed?” Tanzania’s EAC Deputy Minister Abdullah Juma said in an interview.
READ: Tough times ahead for EA tourism as insecurity scares visitors away
ALSO READ: Terrorist threat may weigh against Single Tourist Visa
A recent report shows that since the launch of the single tourist visa on February 20, only 1,560 have been sold. The number is projected to rise by nine per cent in 2015 if insecurity, and the issue of high cost of airfares and hotel ratings are addressed.
According to Ms Matu, the high cost of air travel across the region is hurting the growth of the tourism industry.
“Flying across the East African Community is too expensive compared with other regions across the continent and globally,” said Ms Matu, adding that a tourist would rather pay $100 more to South Africa than fly to the three East African countries which will cost him/her almost three times the cost to South Africa.
Flight charges
Flying from one of the EAC countries to another costs between $220 and $350 minus taxes, for a return trip. Ms Matu blamed the high costs on the absence of uniform airspace policies and high airport parking fees.
EAC air transport is governed by the Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) negotiated between the different EAC countries.
The current BASAs, however, have restrictions on designated routes (route schedule), which in most cases include departure from one party’s international (mainly capital city) airports to the other contracting party’s international airport or capital city; cabotage rights (the transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country by an aircraft registered in another country), which are not provided; designation of beneficiary airlines; conditions such as the requirement for substantial ownership and effective control of the designated airline being vested in the contracting party or its nationals.
This is the case in the BASA between Rwanda – Kenya; and Rwanda – Tanzania.
Limitations of capacity, particularly in frequencies, such as the case of Rwanda and Tanzania’s bilateral agreement, is also a challenge. Any flights beyond the scheduled number are considered unscheduled and attract extra charges.
“The restrictions limit operations of foreign airlines and are, therefore, uncompetitive,” noted Ms Matu.
Other factors constraining the EAC air transport industry include the uncompetitive domestic tax regime; fiscal policies such as airport taxes and VAT, high insurance premiums; management inefficiencies; limited subsidies and safety oversight.
The EAC is currently negotiating to liberalise its air space in order to boost competitiveness. It recently developed the EAC liberalisation of transport services regulations — which eliminate some of the restrictions imposed by BASAs.
For example, partner states can grant each other rights beyond the ones provided in the regulations at their own discretion. They can also liberalise air transport tariff without the relevant authorities in the EAC being required to approve them.
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/bus.../2560/2570394/-/item/1/-/plqk0az/-/index.html
27 December 2014 Last updated at 09:33 ET
Al-Shabab militant Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi 'surrenders'
Al-Shabab fighters are increasingly launching cross border attacks in neighbouring Kenya
Somalia: Failed State
A top al-Shabab militant, Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi, has given himself up, Somali officials say.
Mr Hersi, a leading figure in the militant group's intelligence wing, surrendered to police in the Gedo region, local media report.
In June 2012, the US state department offered $3m (£1.9m, 2.5m euros) for information leading to his capture.
It comes three months after al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a US air strike.
A Somali intelligence officer, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, suggested Mr Hersi may have surrendered because of a dispute with al-Shabab members loyal to the former leader.
BBC Africa editor Mary Harper says Somali intelligence had received a tip off that he was hiding in a town close to the border with Kenya.
He fell out with Godane last year and has been on the run ever since but he is still a powerful figure, she adds.
Ahmad Umar was named the new leader of al-Shabab, days after Godane's killing last September.
The US has supported the African Union (AU) force that has driven al-Shabab out of the capital Mogadishu and other towns since 2011.
The al-Qaeda-linked fighters want to overthrow the UN-backed Somali government and frequently attack government targets as well as neighbouring countries that provide troops to the AU force.
Three members of the AU force and a civilian contractor were killed in an al-Shabab attack on its headquarters in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday.
Al-Shabab militant Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi 'surrenders'
Al-Shabab fighters are increasingly launching cross border attacks in neighbouring Kenya
Somalia: Failed State
A top al-Shabab militant, Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi, has given himself up, Somali officials say.
Mr Hersi, a leading figure in the militant group's intelligence wing, surrendered to police in the Gedo region, local media report.
In June 2012, the US state department offered $3m (£1.9m, 2.5m euros) for information leading to his capture.
It comes three months after al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a US air strike.
A Somali intelligence officer, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, suggested Mr Hersi may have surrendered because of a dispute with al-Shabab members loyal to the former leader.
BBC Africa editor Mary Harper says Somali intelligence had received a tip off that he was hiding in a town close to the border with Kenya.
He fell out with Godane last year and has been on the run ever since but he is still a powerful figure, she adds.
Ahmad Umar was named the new leader of al-Shabab, days after Godane's killing last September.
The US has supported the African Union (AU) force that has driven al-Shabab out of the capital Mogadishu and other towns since 2011.
The al-Qaeda-linked fighters want to overthrow the UN-backed Somali government and frequently attack government targets as well as neighbouring countries that provide troops to the AU force.
Three members of the AU force and a civilian contractor were killed in an al-Shabab attack on its headquarters in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday.
FSG (Fusion Sportsgear) presents the new silhouettes of the Sub Saharan Sneaker, which is completely hand made in Nigeria. It is more than just a shoe, it is a product with a cause.
The sales from the shoes go to paying the workers and craftsmen above current minimum wages in West Africa. In addition the patterns are designed and printed by africans locally and in the diaspora, destroying the current social construct of African print.
Future goals of the brand include donating clothing to orphanages and organising sporting events for public schools. Founder of the brand, Funfere Koroye, believes in using innovation and product development to change the current state of manufacturing and product development in Nigeria.
Oil region clashes seriously escalating: Libya FM
Flames and black smoke engulf a tank at the port of al-Sidra, Libya’s largest oil terminal, on December, 26, 2014.
Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:33PM GMT
Libya's foreign minister says militant groups are increasing their attacks in the African country's oil regions in a bid to control the oil resources.
Speaking in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Mohammed al-Dairi described the clashes as a serious escalation.
He also urged concentrated international efforts to stop the flow of funds and weapons to terrorists, expressing hope that pro-government troops succeed to deal with the terrorist attacks.
This comes as fighting has started near Libya's largest oil terminal, al-Sidra, which is currently under the control of pro-government forces. The clashes have shut down the Sidra terminal and caused a massive fire.
On Saturday, Libyan officials said it could take at least a week to extinguish the massive fire at al-Sidra oil terminal, one of the country’s largest oil export facilities.
“The extinguishing process requires a week non-stop, provided the necessary equipment is available,” said Hamid al-Habuni, a high-ranking official in the state-run Ras Lanuf Oil Company.
"Firemen and emergency service personnel are doing their best to put out the fire and stop it from extending to other tanks in the terminal amid hard circumstances," he added.
The fire started on Thursday after militants fired a rocket that hit one of the 19 storage tanks of al-Sidra oil terminal. The fire spread to two other tanks, raising alarm about an environmental catastrophe.
Oil is the main source of revenue for Libya which is a member of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Libya plunged into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. The ouster of Gaddafi gave rise to a patchwork of heavily-armed militias and deep political divisions.
AB/HMV/KA
Flames and black smoke engulf a tank at the port of al-Sidra, Libya’s largest oil terminal, on December, 26, 2014.
Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:33PM GMT
Libya's foreign minister says militant groups are increasing their attacks in the African country's oil regions in a bid to control the oil resources.
Speaking in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Mohammed al-Dairi described the clashes as a serious escalation.
He also urged concentrated international efforts to stop the flow of funds and weapons to terrorists, expressing hope that pro-government troops succeed to deal with the terrorist attacks.
This comes as fighting has started near Libya's largest oil terminal, al-Sidra, which is currently under the control of pro-government forces. The clashes have shut down the Sidra terminal and caused a massive fire.
On Saturday, Libyan officials said it could take at least a week to extinguish the massive fire at al-Sidra oil terminal, one of the country’s largest oil export facilities.
“The extinguishing process requires a week non-stop, provided the necessary equipment is available,” said Hamid al-Habuni, a high-ranking official in the state-run Ras Lanuf Oil Company.
"Firemen and emergency service personnel are doing their best to put out the fire and stop it from extending to other tanks in the terminal amid hard circumstances," he added.
The fire started on Thursday after militants fired a rocket that hit one of the 19 storage tanks of al-Sidra oil terminal. The fire spread to two other tanks, raising alarm about an environmental catastrophe.
Oil is the main source of revenue for Libya which is a member of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Libya plunged into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. The ouster of Gaddafi gave rise to a patchwork of heavily-armed militias and deep political divisions.
AB/HMV/KA
Morocco’s economy on track for growth
Borzou Daragahi in Rabat©Getty
Morocco may be entering a growth phase, after a seven years during which its economy struggled but avoided the turmoil that has affected some of its Arab neighbours.
Having previously notched up double-digit growth rates, the North African country was hit by, in close succession, the global financial crisis, the 2011 Arab uprisings and prolonged weakness among its European trading partners.
However, Abdellatif Jouahri, Morocco’s central bank governor, said the country was now on the “right path”, as he pointed to a rise in foreign reserves, modest economic growth and increased activity in important non-agricultural sectors such as textiles, automotive and aeronautics.
“We have been able to go through this period with the least possible damage,” Mr Jouahri said in a rare interview from the bank’s headquarters in the capital, Rabat. “Morocco is not associated with one single product, like oil or steel. We have a bit of everything . . . that helped us get through the difficulties.”
Alone among Arab states, Morocco responded to the Arab uprisings by granting permits to demonstrators and implementing constitutional reforms that propelled to power a government led by moderate Islamists, although King Mohammed VI holds ultimate authority over critical matters of state.
Such stability allowed for the implementation of subsidies and pension reform that helped to improved Morocco’s fiscal balance sheet.
In contrast to Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, where revolutions gave way to political chaos and economic stagnation, Morocco has charted a more steady path.
Its GDP growth since 2008 has been tepid at 2.5 per cent, largely because of poor agricultural output. But there has been better news elsewhere, with the budget deficit down from 7.3 per cent of GDP in 2012 to 5.4 per cent this year. Mr Jouahri said he hoped it would fall to 3 per cent by 2017.
Subsidies expenditures have fallen from 6 per cent of GDP in 2012 to 3 per cent, while inflation has remained low, averaging less than 2 per cent over the past 10 years. Foreign reserves have risen recently from four months worth of imports to five.
This month Morocco’s central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 2.5 per cent.
Capital Economics, a London-based consultancy, cited increased tourism arrivals, export growth and rising manufacturing jobs as reasons to predict overall growth of 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent in the fiscal year ending 2016.
“We have seen in the long term that non-agricultural sectors had 5 per cent growth on average,” Mr Jouahri said. “When you do the balance of payments analysis, you see there are good opportunities for growth in Morocco.”
He noted that Morocco was the only Arab country exposed to the Arab spring that had qualified for a precautionary credit line from the IMF, a testament to its stability.
At the same time, its economy has remained fragile, and heavily dependent on remittances by labourers working in Europe. Public debt remains relatively high at 64 per cent of GDP, up from 40 per cent in 2011.
Economists have also estimated that Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, unrecognised by the UN, has cost the country up to 10 per cent of GDP annually. Rabat subsidies the impoverished territory’s economy and the occupation also contributes to its outsized defence budget of 5.1 per cent of GDP.
But the country’s relatively peaceful political and economic reform have opened the space for modernisation, providing perhaps a more appropriate path for Arab countries than the oil-rich Gulf states.
Over the past fours years, the number of Moroccans with bank accounts has increased from 28 per cent to nearly 66 per cent as increased competition and regulatory changes encouraged banks to seek out new customers.
The central bank has also done away with minimum deposits, abolishing fees for day-to-day bank use and allowed the national postal service to create a bank, which has signed up 5m customers.
Morocco also signed a deal last month to use its recently upgraded presses to print money for other countries, an innovative way of leveraging existing infrastructure to generate revenue.
“We have highly qualified engineers, production line supervisors of high quality and we recently spent $111m upgrading our production lines,” Mr Jouahri said.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6cbe.../feed//product&siteedition=intl#axzz3NCpOocOa
Borzou Daragahi in Rabat©Getty
Morocco may be entering a growth phase, after a seven years during which its economy struggled but avoided the turmoil that has affected some of its Arab neighbours.
Having previously notched up double-digit growth rates, the North African country was hit by, in close succession, the global financial crisis, the 2011 Arab uprisings and prolonged weakness among its European trading partners.
However, Abdellatif Jouahri, Morocco’s central bank governor, said the country was now on the “right path”, as he pointed to a rise in foreign reserves, modest economic growth and increased activity in important non-agricultural sectors such as textiles, automotive and aeronautics.
“We have been able to go through this period with the least possible damage,” Mr Jouahri said in a rare interview from the bank’s headquarters in the capital, Rabat. “Morocco is not associated with one single product, like oil or steel. We have a bit of everything . . . that helped us get through the difficulties.”
Alone among Arab states, Morocco responded to the Arab uprisings by granting permits to demonstrators and implementing constitutional reforms that propelled to power a government led by moderate Islamists, although King Mohammed VI holds ultimate authority over critical matters of state.
Such stability allowed for the implementation of subsidies and pension reform that helped to improved Morocco’s fiscal balance sheet.
In contrast to Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, where revolutions gave way to political chaos and economic stagnation, Morocco has charted a more steady path.
Its GDP growth since 2008 has been tepid at 2.5 per cent, largely because of poor agricultural output. But there has been better news elsewhere, with the budget deficit down from 7.3 per cent of GDP in 2012 to 5.4 per cent this year. Mr Jouahri said he hoped it would fall to 3 per cent by 2017.
Subsidies expenditures have fallen from 6 per cent of GDP in 2012 to 3 per cent, while inflation has remained low, averaging less than 2 per cent over the past 10 years. Foreign reserves have risen recently from four months worth of imports to five.
This month Morocco’s central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 2.5 per cent.
Capital Economics, a London-based consultancy, cited increased tourism arrivals, export growth and rising manufacturing jobs as reasons to predict overall growth of 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent in the fiscal year ending 2016.
“We have seen in the long term that non-agricultural sectors had 5 per cent growth on average,” Mr Jouahri said. “When you do the balance of payments analysis, you see there are good opportunities for growth in Morocco.”
He noted that Morocco was the only Arab country exposed to the Arab spring that had qualified for a precautionary credit line from the IMF, a testament to its stability.
At the same time, its economy has remained fragile, and heavily dependent on remittances by labourers working in Europe. Public debt remains relatively high at 64 per cent of GDP, up from 40 per cent in 2011.
Economists have also estimated that Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, unrecognised by the UN, has cost the country up to 10 per cent of GDP annually. Rabat subsidies the impoverished territory’s economy and the occupation also contributes to its outsized defence budget of 5.1 per cent of GDP.
But the country’s relatively peaceful political and economic reform have opened the space for modernisation, providing perhaps a more appropriate path for Arab countries than the oil-rich Gulf states.
Over the past fours years, the number of Moroccans with bank accounts has increased from 28 per cent to nearly 66 per cent as increased competition and regulatory changes encouraged banks to seek out new customers.
The central bank has also done away with minimum deposits, abolishing fees for day-to-day bank use and allowed the national postal service to create a bank, which has signed up 5m customers.
Morocco also signed a deal last month to use its recently upgraded presses to print money for other countries, an innovative way of leveraging existing infrastructure to generate revenue.
“We have highly qualified engineers, production line supervisors of high quality and we recently spent $111m upgrading our production lines,” Mr Jouahri said.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6cbe.../feed//product&siteedition=intl#axzz3NCpOocOa
10 Pictures of a 26 Year old Obama Connecting with his African Roots
DECEMBER 10, 20143 LIKES 11,136
In 1987 Barack Obama at the age of 26 visited his father’s homeland for the first time. He met his brothers, sisters and grandmother and later he said, the visit was to transform his life. The images below come from that trip to connect with his African roots. What a transformation from an unknown young African man to the leader of the free world.
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DECEMBER 10, 20143 LIKES 11,136
In 1987 Barack Obama at the age of 26 visited his father’s homeland for the first time. He met his brothers, sisters and grandmother and later he said, the visit was to transform his life. The images below come from that trip to connect with his African roots. What a transformation from an unknown young African man to the leader of the free world.
facebook.com
nation.co.ke
theobamafile.com
wordpress.com
images.nymag.com
snagfilms.com
twitter.com
reobama.com
wordpress,com
Women of Timbuktu find their voice again after nightmare of jihadi rule
Persecuted when the city was occupied by Islamist militants, women are now keen to have a greater say in Malian society
The historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali was taken over by Islamist militants in 2012 Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
Charlie English in Timbuktu
Thursday 25 December 2014 07.30 EST
It was, says Khaira Arby with some pride, her music that swung the election in favour of Timbuktu’s first female MP. Arby had been asked by the only female candidate, Aziza Mint Mohamed, to perform at a rally on the last day of campaigning in Mali’s national assembly elections of 2013. She had travelled the 560 miles from Bamako to Timbuktu especially, setting up her band in the sandy acres of open ground between the 14th-century adobe-walled Sankoré mosque and the city’s single paved road.
When she reached the city, Arby, a desert blues legend and cousin of the late Ali Farka Touré, discovered Mint Mohamed’s main rival was holding a simultaneous rally a few hundred metres away in the Grand Marché. When “the nightingale of the north” started to sing, however, the unfortunate contender’s audience began to move northwards towards the soulful notes that were drifting out of the Place Sankoré. Mint Mohamed went on to win the election.
It was a sweet victory for Arby and Mint Mohamed, not least because of their opponents’ sexism. In the first stage of the two-round vote, five male candidates, were ranged against Mint Mohamed; in the second round, when she was running against a member of the president’s RPM party, all four of the men who had lost urged their supporters to vote against her.
“They said, no, a woman cannot be MP for Timbuktu,” says Mint Mohamed, a short but forceful presence whose father was one of Timbuktu’s leading imams. “In the madness of the election campaign, the men of the north said a woman MP could not be good for the city. But if politics had been forbidden for us by Islam, my father wouldn’t have let me go into politics. So I said to them, show me the verse in the Qur’an where it says that a woman cannot be MP. They weren’t able to.”
A year after Mint Mohamed was elected, stories of the suffering and humiliation women experienced under jihadi rule in 2012 are beginning to emerge. In late March that year, a rebellion in the north of Mali sparked by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya swept across the north of the country. On 1 April the rebels captured the remote desert town. So began a nine-month occupation, first by the secular Tuareg separatists of the MNLA, whose fighters wrecked government buildings and stole what they could, then by the jihadi alliance of Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghbreb (AQIM).
It was an unprecedented situation: instead of merely attempting to destabilise a political structure to pursue global jihad, al-Qaida was now in possession of a famous city that it set about trying to govern. The jihadis imposed their version of sharia law, with catastrophic consequences for the women of the north.
Arby was on tour on the day Timbuktu fell, and friends warned her not to return. The rebels broke into her house and wrecked it. “They came to my house and were trying to find me because I am a musician,” says Arby. “They found all my instruments and took them and they burned them. I thought if I was there maybe they would catch me and do the same thing to me.”
The jihadi ban on music – something that, according to Arby, had never happened in Timbuktu’s long history of invasions – hit women hard because the musical tradition for which the north of Mali is famous has been kept alive by women. “Music is very important to Timbuktu. You can’t have a wedding, or a baptism, or a big meeting of the population here without music. It is something that unifies people, that can pass a message to the people. Since its creation, the people who made music in Timbuktu were the married women. They took up their violins and made their music for their husbands, to make them happy, and for their own pleasure, to sing love songs.”
During the occupation even musical ringtones were forbidden: jihadis, including the al-Qaida governor of Timbuktu, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, chose the sound of a laughing baby instead for phone alerts. Arby says the occupiers’ interpretation of Islamic texts with regard to music is just wrong. “Music is a big part of Islam. The day the prophet entered Mecca they made music for him, they sang for him. If it was forbidden it would have been forbidden ever since then.”
Other parts of the jihadis’ sharia law were equally painful for women. They appeared obsessed with sex and sexuality: unmarried couples with children were beaten, and every interaction between unrelated men and women was banned. Brothers and sisters, mothers and sons who were found talking in the street were interrogated by the fighters. At checkpoints, gunmen stopped vehicles not for illegal goods or arms, but to check that male and female passengers were not sitting in the same row.
But it was the dress code that caused most grief: women were forced to cover all except their faces. Women with manual jobs found it almost impossible to work in their jihadi-approved gloves.
Stories of women being beaten or jailed for dressing incorrectly are legion in the city. The Islamic police’s “vice squad” set up a women’s jail in the ATM booth of the Malian Solidarity Bank. The booth was no more than three metres by two, yet a dozen women would be held there for days at a time with no access to water or sanitation. People who live nearby remember distressed prisoners wailing all night, and in particular one young woman who had a seizure and cut herself while smashing the glass door of the booth. Even as she bled profusely and people tried to help her, the vice squad’s leader, Hamid Moussa, told her she deserved everything she got and he would let her die in prison.
Other women say they were told to buy jihadi-approrpriate clothing they could not afford from Moussa’s wife.
“They had applied their law, and if you did not obey their law there were sanctions,” says Mint Mohamed. “So when the women refused to wear the burka, they sanctioned them. If the men didn’t wear their trousers short, they were forced them to cut them with scissors. These were their laws and their justice. If you don’t respect their law they put you in jail.”
She continues: “It was a violation of human rights, and it was the women who suffered the most, because in Timbuktu the women go out a lot. They go to the market, they earn money, they run small businesses, they almost run a branch of the economy. And they are already covered, but burkas are not part of our culture. All the women who didn’t wear them got into difficulty. It was truly a humiliation.”
When French and Malian troops liberated Timbuktu on 28 January 2013, the people who had not fled the city came out to welcome them. Almost two years on, long-term peace, the big prize, remains elusive. “The jihadis left with [the French-led] Operation Serval,” says Mint Mohamed. “But now there has been a rebirth of the armed groups. They have come back and it is only the capital of the Timbuktu region that is free. Even there it’s not good, people aren’t able to sleep, every day they say they are about to take Timbuktu, people are coming tomorrow. They are afraid. It’s not good for the mind or the spirit.”
Timbuktu is lucky, she says, because of its name, cultural heritage, saints and women. “Did you know the Sankoré mosque was financed by a woman,” she says. “And Timbuktu was founded by a woman. Today the UN force in Timbuktu is led by a woman. We have had many great women – and that is why Timbuktu has women in authority today.”
Development and education for the population are her priorities, but these are overridden by the need for peace, which she hopes may yet be delivered by talks between the rebels and the government in Algeria, due to restart in the new year. “I am optimistic,” Mint Mohamed says. “As long as people are talking, there is reason to hope.”
Persecuted when the city was occupied by Islamist militants, women are now keen to have a greater say in Malian society
The historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali was taken over by Islamist militants in 2012 Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
Charlie English in Timbuktu
Thursday 25 December 2014 07.30 EST
It was, says Khaira Arby with some pride, her music that swung the election in favour of Timbuktu’s first female MP. Arby had been asked by the only female candidate, Aziza Mint Mohamed, to perform at a rally on the last day of campaigning in Mali’s national assembly elections of 2013. She had travelled the 560 miles from Bamako to Timbuktu especially, setting up her band in the sandy acres of open ground between the 14th-century adobe-walled Sankoré mosque and the city’s single paved road.
When she reached the city, Arby, a desert blues legend and cousin of the late Ali Farka Touré, discovered Mint Mohamed’s main rival was holding a simultaneous rally a few hundred metres away in the Grand Marché. When “the nightingale of the north” started to sing, however, the unfortunate contender’s audience began to move northwards towards the soulful notes that were drifting out of the Place Sankoré. Mint Mohamed went on to win the election.
It was a sweet victory for Arby and Mint Mohamed, not least because of their opponents’ sexism. In the first stage of the two-round vote, five male candidates, were ranged against Mint Mohamed; in the second round, when she was running against a member of the president’s RPM party, all four of the men who had lost urged their supporters to vote against her.
“They said, no, a woman cannot be MP for Timbuktu,” says Mint Mohamed, a short but forceful presence whose father was one of Timbuktu’s leading imams. “In the madness of the election campaign, the men of the north said a woman MP could not be good for the city. But if politics had been forbidden for us by Islam, my father wouldn’t have let me go into politics. So I said to them, show me the verse in the Qur’an where it says that a woman cannot be MP. They weren’t able to.”
A year after Mint Mohamed was elected, stories of the suffering and humiliation women experienced under jihadi rule in 2012 are beginning to emerge. In late March that year, a rebellion in the north of Mali sparked by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya swept across the north of the country. On 1 April the rebels captured the remote desert town. So began a nine-month occupation, first by the secular Tuareg separatists of the MNLA, whose fighters wrecked government buildings and stole what they could, then by the jihadi alliance of Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghbreb (AQIM).
It was an unprecedented situation: instead of merely attempting to destabilise a political structure to pursue global jihad, al-Qaida was now in possession of a famous city that it set about trying to govern. The jihadis imposed their version of sharia law, with catastrophic consequences for the women of the north.
Arby was on tour on the day Timbuktu fell, and friends warned her not to return. The rebels broke into her house and wrecked it. “They came to my house and were trying to find me because I am a musician,” says Arby. “They found all my instruments and took them and they burned them. I thought if I was there maybe they would catch me and do the same thing to me.”
The jihadi ban on music – something that, according to Arby, had never happened in Timbuktu’s long history of invasions – hit women hard because the musical tradition for which the north of Mali is famous has been kept alive by women. “Music is very important to Timbuktu. You can’t have a wedding, or a baptism, or a big meeting of the population here without music. It is something that unifies people, that can pass a message to the people. Since its creation, the people who made music in Timbuktu were the married women. They took up their violins and made their music for their husbands, to make them happy, and for their own pleasure, to sing love songs.”
During the occupation even musical ringtones were forbidden: jihadis, including the al-Qaida governor of Timbuktu, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, chose the sound of a laughing baby instead for phone alerts. Arby says the occupiers’ interpretation of Islamic texts with regard to music is just wrong. “Music is a big part of Islam. The day the prophet entered Mecca they made music for him, they sang for him. If it was forbidden it would have been forbidden ever since then.”
Other parts of the jihadis’ sharia law were equally painful for women. They appeared obsessed with sex and sexuality: unmarried couples with children were beaten, and every interaction between unrelated men and women was banned. Brothers and sisters, mothers and sons who were found talking in the street were interrogated by the fighters. At checkpoints, gunmen stopped vehicles not for illegal goods or arms, but to check that male and female passengers were not sitting in the same row.
But it was the dress code that caused most grief: women were forced to cover all except their faces. Women with manual jobs found it almost impossible to work in their jihadi-approved gloves.
Stories of women being beaten or jailed for dressing incorrectly are legion in the city. The Islamic police’s “vice squad” set up a women’s jail in the ATM booth of the Malian Solidarity Bank. The booth was no more than three metres by two, yet a dozen women would be held there for days at a time with no access to water or sanitation. People who live nearby remember distressed prisoners wailing all night, and in particular one young woman who had a seizure and cut herself while smashing the glass door of the booth. Even as she bled profusely and people tried to help her, the vice squad’s leader, Hamid Moussa, told her she deserved everything she got and he would let her die in prison.
Other women say they were told to buy jihadi-approrpriate clothing they could not afford from Moussa’s wife.
“They had applied their law, and if you did not obey their law there were sanctions,” says Mint Mohamed. “So when the women refused to wear the burka, they sanctioned them. If the men didn’t wear their trousers short, they were forced them to cut them with scissors. These were their laws and their justice. If you don’t respect their law they put you in jail.”
She continues: “It was a violation of human rights, and it was the women who suffered the most, because in Timbuktu the women go out a lot. They go to the market, they earn money, they run small businesses, they almost run a branch of the economy. And they are already covered, but burkas are not part of our culture. All the women who didn’t wear them got into difficulty. It was truly a humiliation.”
When French and Malian troops liberated Timbuktu on 28 January 2013, the people who had not fled the city came out to welcome them. Almost two years on, long-term peace, the big prize, remains elusive. “The jihadis left with [the French-led] Operation Serval,” says Mint Mohamed. “But now there has been a rebirth of the armed groups. They have come back and it is only the capital of the Timbuktu region that is free. Even there it’s not good, people aren’t able to sleep, every day they say they are about to take Timbuktu, people are coming tomorrow. They are afraid. It’s not good for the mind or the spirit.”
Timbuktu is lucky, she says, because of its name, cultural heritage, saints and women. “Did you know the Sankoré mosque was financed by a woman,” she says. “And Timbuktu was founded by a woman. Today the UN force in Timbuktu is led by a woman. We have had many great women – and that is why Timbuktu has women in authority today.”
Development and education for the population are her priorities, but these are overridden by the need for peace, which she hopes may yet be delivered by talks between the rebels and the government in Algeria, due to restart in the new year. “I am optimistic,” Mint Mohamed says. “As long as people are talking, there is reason to hope.”
24 December 2014 Last updated at 03:26 ET
From the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the schoolgirls' kidnapping in Nigeria to the murder trial of South African athlete Oscar Pistorius and the conflict in South Sudan, it's been a busy year for Africa.
But can you remember some of the quirkier headlines from 2014? Here are 10 things we've learnt in the last 12 months.
1) Jogging can be illegal in Burundi
Running is a national pastime in Burundi, with hundreds of people out jogging on weekend mornings. But in March the authorities banned jogging in groups - unless permission was sought from the authorities. It affects all group sports in the capital, which can now only be played in designated areas.
The restrictions followed the arrest of some opposition members who were out jogging and chanting political slangs. Police officers tried to stop what they regarded as an illegal march and the situation deteriorated into clashes. More than 40 Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD) party members received sentences ranging from five years to life.
Burundi: Where jogging is a crime
2) Tanzanian police are banned from kissing
Two police officers in Tanzania who were photographed in a passionate embrace have been fired. The image was widely shared on social media. A regional commander said the pair had breached the police code of conduct by kissing in public and whilst in uniform. The officer who took the photograph and uploaded it online also lost his job.
Students at the University of Zimbabwe were also subjected to a kissing ban this year. However, after an uproar on campus, it was subsequently reversed.
Tanzanian officers fired for a kiss
University of Zimbabwe condemned for kissing ban
3) It can take just two months to get a Phd in Zimbabwe
The University of Zimbabwe was also at the centre of a storm over a sociology PhD awarded to the country's first lady Grace Mugabe.
Academics have called for an investigation after reports that it only took her two months to get the doctorate. They also expressed concern that her thesis has not been filed in the university library. There is a nod to her title in a new Harare road sign reading: "Dr Grace Mugabe Way".
Call for Zimbabwe's Grace Mugabe to return PhD
The rise of Zimbabwe's first lady
4) West Africans are touchy about jollof rice
When British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver published his own version of jollof rice - a dish popular in West Africa - there was outrage online.
He had suggested using coriander, parsley and a lemon wedge, which some people said should not be associated with it. Jollof rice is popularly made from blended tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and scotch bonnet. Twitter users came up with hashtags like #jollofgate.
Jamie's jollof rice recipe rejected
From the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the schoolgirls' kidnapping in Nigeria to the murder trial of South African athlete Oscar Pistorius and the conflict in South Sudan, it's been a busy year for Africa.
But can you remember some of the quirkier headlines from 2014? Here are 10 things we've learnt in the last 12 months.
1) Jogging can be illegal in Burundi
Running is a national pastime in Burundi, with hundreds of people out jogging on weekend mornings. But in March the authorities banned jogging in groups - unless permission was sought from the authorities. It affects all group sports in the capital, which can now only be played in designated areas.
The restrictions followed the arrest of some opposition members who were out jogging and chanting political slangs. Police officers tried to stop what they regarded as an illegal march and the situation deteriorated into clashes. More than 40 Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD) party members received sentences ranging from five years to life.
Burundi: Where jogging is a crime
2) Tanzanian police are banned from kissing
Two police officers in Tanzania who were photographed in a passionate embrace have been fired. The image was widely shared on social media. A regional commander said the pair had breached the police code of conduct by kissing in public and whilst in uniform. The officer who took the photograph and uploaded it online also lost his job.
Students at the University of Zimbabwe were also subjected to a kissing ban this year. However, after an uproar on campus, it was subsequently reversed.
Tanzanian officers fired for a kiss
University of Zimbabwe condemned for kissing ban
3) It can take just two months to get a Phd in Zimbabwe
The University of Zimbabwe was also at the centre of a storm over a sociology PhD awarded to the country's first lady Grace Mugabe.
Academics have called for an investigation after reports that it only took her two months to get the doctorate. They also expressed concern that her thesis has not been filed in the university library. There is a nod to her title in a new Harare road sign reading: "Dr Grace Mugabe Way".
Call for Zimbabwe's Grace Mugabe to return PhD
The rise of Zimbabwe's first lady
4) West Africans are touchy about jollof rice
When British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver published his own version of jollof rice - a dish popular in West Africa - there was outrage online.
He had suggested using coriander, parsley and a lemon wedge, which some people said should not be associated with it. Jollof rice is popularly made from blended tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and scotch bonnet. Twitter users came up with hashtags like #jollofgate.
Jamie's jollof rice recipe rejected
5) Nigeria buys weapons in hard cash
In September, South Africa seized $9.3m (£5.7m) from two Nigerians and an Israeli who arrived at Johannesburg's Lanseria airport in a private jet. The money was being carried in $100 bills in three suitcases and was to buy weapons for the Nigerian government, which later said it was having difficulty purchasing arms because of restrictions imposed by the US.
Ghana's government also resorted to flying in cash, not for weapons but to pay $3m to footballers in Brazil after a row over the Black Stars' World Cup appearance fee.
Nigeria MPs storm out over South Africa 'cash arms deal'
Nigeria fury over US arms refusal
Ghana sends $3m cash to players in Brazil
6) The world's most beautiful person is from Kenya
People magazine named Lupita Nyong'o as the world's most beautiful person for 2014.
The Kenyan actress shot to fame in the film 12 Years a Slave, winning the Oscar for best supporting actress. She also made Vanity Fair's best-dressed list, though the magazine came in for criticism online for seeming to lighten her skin in a photograph in January.
Lupita Nyong'o named world's most beautiful person
7) Mandela had a rabbit in his ear
In January, South Africa's government ordered sculptors to remove a bronze rabbit they had hidden in the ear of a nine-metre (30ft) bronze statue of Nelson Mandela, which was unveiled after the former president's death.
They reportedly inserted the rabbit as a trademark signature and to denote the haste with which they had to complete the statue. Rabbit in the Afrikaans language is "haas", which also means haste. The rabbit was later removed.
Row over rabbit in Mandela statue
The tale of Nelson Mandela's rabbit
8) Botswana's president campaigns by bike
Botswana's leader, a general and pilot in the army before he entered politics, likes to fly military aircraft himself when on official trips. But while campaigning for general elections in October, Ian Khama also insisted on using his own wheels.
A week before the polls, he was pictured meeting voters on a bicycle and turned up to address a rally on a quad bike.
Botswana's ruling Democratic Party wins general elections
9) Guinea-Bissau has a penchant for bobble hats
Elections were also held in Guinea-Bissau, the first since a coup in 2012. A run-off vote was won by Jose Mario Vaz, an ex-finance minister. His main rival was independent Nuno Gomes Nabiam, who was pictured whilst campaigning in a bobble hat.
He had the backing of former President Kumba Yala, who died shortly before the vote and was known for wearing a woollen hat.
Guinea-Bissau run-off to decide president
Guinea-Bissau's ex-President Kumba Yala dies
10) African men like facials
The male grooming and beauty industry is booming in South Africa. According to trends consultant Siphiwe Mpye, the growth is being driven by black African men because sustained economic growth on the continent has been giving them greater disposable income.
After a facial in men's salon in Johannesburg, the BBC's Milton Nkosi wrote: "I feel almost as if my skin is breathing. I feel new. I feel like a million dollars."
The Africa I Know Isn't The Africa In The Headlines Today
DECEMBER 20, 2014 7:03 AM ET
TODD MOSS
Todd Moss on a 1992 visit to Tanzania.
Courtesy of Todd Moss
Stepping off the plane in Zimbabwe a quarter century ago was a huge shock. A college student on my very first visit to Africa, I was surprised how familiar everything felt.
Like most Americans, my image of the continent had been formed by disaster news, flies-on-the–eyes charity commercials and wildlife documentaries. Instead, I found an energetic-if-ordinary place. My welcoming host family of two teachers, four children and several adopted cousins aspired for good schools, well-paying jobs and a better life. The Zimbabweans I got to know had remarkably similar hopes, dreams and challenges as did my family and neighbors back home.
The skyline of the capital Harare even looked an awful lot like my hometown of Rochester, New York. The downtown was a modest cluster of weathered high-rise office buildings and tree-lined avenues, surrounded by sprawling suburbs of around a million people.
Millions of African families are ... buying their first refrigerator, their first television, their first family car.
That one semester abroad left me wanting more. I returned after graduation to volunteer and backpack throughout southern and eastern Africa. I've now been to two dozen African countries and have been involved with the region as a professor, author and policymaker.
Over the years, what always struck me was the vast chasm between the dynamism and optimism that I witnessed in Africa versus the popular notion of a place stuck in war and famine. It was thus heartening to see this image gap begin to close in recent years.
Buoyed by booming economies and growing confidence, Africa-as-disaster was being quickly replaced by Africa-as-opportunity. Instead of quizzical looks when I told people what I did for a living, I began to get serious questions about the best destinations to visit or where to invest.
Todd Moss and President Toure of Mali in September 2007. Toure was deposed in a coup five years later.
Courtesy of Todd Moss
Until Ebola. The outbreak has terrified Americans and thrust the continent to the top of the news cycle, reviving the old idea of Africa as a primordial catastrophe, best kept at bay.
Yes, Ebola is a real threat to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Americans should do all they can to help these countries contain the virus and we must take reasonable measures to protect ourselves. But Ebola should be put into perspective: The virus is affecting a relatively small number of people in a very small number of countries. In the United States, we've had a total of four cases and one death. Influenza, by comparison, kills an average of 23,000 Americans every year.
We shouldn't allow irrational fears of a virus distort the real reason that Africans and Americans are closer than ever: We share growing interests.
First of all, we have business to do. Cities like Dakar, Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg are already major cosmopolitan centers of culture and commerce. One of my first projects in the 1990s was investigating the rise of stock markets in Africa. (I even invested myself and did quite well!). Today, there are 22 stock exchanges on the continent attracting great interest from American investors.
The U.S. business community is taking note too. When President Obama hosted nearly 50 African heads of state in Washington, D.C., this summer, the top agenda item was private investment. Companies like IBM, General Electric, Walmart and Coca-Cola announced more than $14 billion in new investments in Africa's emerging markets. These brand names are excited because the economies of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and many other countries are thriving. (Sadly, my beloved Zimbabwe is an exception, saddled with a dictator who keeps that country stuck in the past.)
Today, millions of African families are making a remarkable transition similar to the changes that Americans experienced in the 1930s and '40s: They're buying their first refrigerator, their first television, their first family car. The emergence from poverty to the bottom rungs of the middle class is unleashing massive consumer demand and, for the first time, creating tremendous new wealth.
Shared security is another powerful force pulling Americans and Africans together. During my time as the State Department's top diplomat for West Africa, I saw firsthand how many of the national security threats we now face — terrorism, international criminal cartels, diseases that cross national borders — require that we work much more closely with our African allies. The thwarted 2009 Christmas bomber on Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit was from Nigeria. In 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked extremists took over northern Mali, prompting a French military invasion and heightened American involvement in the Sahara Desert. Last year, Al-Shabab launched a bloody terrorist assault on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
These attacks have sharpened U.S. attention on these new mutual security threats. Our military now has a fully-fledged Africa Command to manage the increase in counterterrorism operations , a naval base in the Horn of Africa, and a growing fleet of unmanned drones in the region.
Social media is bringing us together too. I connect with my host family, a quarter century later, via Facebook. Regular Americans are feeling more connected to the continent through clicktivism: #Kony2012 rallied millions of people to call for the capture or killing of a Ugandan warlord. #BringBackOurGirls captured the world's horror at the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian girls last April. These incidents may be fleeting, but they can have real effect on policy; both of these twitter campaigns created public pressure that led President Obama to deploy Special Forces.
American culture is embracing Africa too. My longtime affection for Zimbabwean pop music and Burkinabe films is less of an outlier now that artists like Nigerian authorChimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Oscar-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o have gone mainstream. In 2011, when I finished writing my novel about an American diplomat in Mali, I was told Africa wasn't yet commercial; now, there are at least half-a-dozen contemporary thrillers set in the region.
Deeper economic, security, and cultural ties make it harder and harder to view the continent through the tragedy-only lens. Once Ebola is contained and the news cycle moves on, more Americans will come to experience Africa and come to know what I and the growing legions of Africa-philes have learned: Africa is a source of progress, beauty and life.
Todd Moss, chief operating officer and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. His novel, The Golden Hour, a thriller about an American diplomat during a coup in Mali, was published in September.
DECEMBER 20, 2014 7:03 AM ET
TODD MOSS
Todd Moss on a 1992 visit to Tanzania.
Courtesy of Todd Moss
Stepping off the plane in Zimbabwe a quarter century ago was a huge shock. A college student on my very first visit to Africa, I was surprised how familiar everything felt.
Like most Americans, my image of the continent had been formed by disaster news, flies-on-the–eyes charity commercials and wildlife documentaries. Instead, I found an energetic-if-ordinary place. My welcoming host family of two teachers, four children and several adopted cousins aspired for good schools, well-paying jobs and a better life. The Zimbabweans I got to know had remarkably similar hopes, dreams and challenges as did my family and neighbors back home.
The skyline of the capital Harare even looked an awful lot like my hometown of Rochester, New York. The downtown was a modest cluster of weathered high-rise office buildings and tree-lined avenues, surrounded by sprawling suburbs of around a million people.
Millions of African families are ... buying their first refrigerator, their first television, their first family car.
That one semester abroad left me wanting more. I returned after graduation to volunteer and backpack throughout southern and eastern Africa. I've now been to two dozen African countries and have been involved with the region as a professor, author and policymaker.
Over the years, what always struck me was the vast chasm between the dynamism and optimism that I witnessed in Africa versus the popular notion of a place stuck in war and famine. It was thus heartening to see this image gap begin to close in recent years.
Buoyed by booming economies and growing confidence, Africa-as-disaster was being quickly replaced by Africa-as-opportunity. Instead of quizzical looks when I told people what I did for a living, I began to get serious questions about the best destinations to visit or where to invest.
Todd Moss and President Toure of Mali in September 2007. Toure was deposed in a coup five years later.
Courtesy of Todd Moss
Until Ebola. The outbreak has terrified Americans and thrust the continent to the top of the news cycle, reviving the old idea of Africa as a primordial catastrophe, best kept at bay.
Yes, Ebola is a real threat to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Americans should do all they can to help these countries contain the virus and we must take reasonable measures to protect ourselves. But Ebola should be put into perspective: The virus is affecting a relatively small number of people in a very small number of countries. In the United States, we've had a total of four cases and one death. Influenza, by comparison, kills an average of 23,000 Americans every year.
We shouldn't allow irrational fears of a virus distort the real reason that Africans and Americans are closer than ever: We share growing interests.
First of all, we have business to do. Cities like Dakar, Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg are already major cosmopolitan centers of culture and commerce. One of my first projects in the 1990s was investigating the rise of stock markets in Africa. (I even invested myself and did quite well!). Today, there are 22 stock exchanges on the continent attracting great interest from American investors.
The U.S. business community is taking note too. When President Obama hosted nearly 50 African heads of state in Washington, D.C., this summer, the top agenda item was private investment. Companies like IBM, General Electric, Walmart and Coca-Cola announced more than $14 billion in new investments in Africa's emerging markets. These brand names are excited because the economies of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and many other countries are thriving. (Sadly, my beloved Zimbabwe is an exception, saddled with a dictator who keeps that country stuck in the past.)
Today, millions of African families are making a remarkable transition similar to the changes that Americans experienced in the 1930s and '40s: They're buying their first refrigerator, their first television, their first family car. The emergence from poverty to the bottom rungs of the middle class is unleashing massive consumer demand and, for the first time, creating tremendous new wealth.
Shared security is another powerful force pulling Americans and Africans together. During my time as the State Department's top diplomat for West Africa, I saw firsthand how many of the national security threats we now face — terrorism, international criminal cartels, diseases that cross national borders — require that we work much more closely with our African allies. The thwarted 2009 Christmas bomber on Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit was from Nigeria. In 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked extremists took over northern Mali, prompting a French military invasion and heightened American involvement in the Sahara Desert. Last year, Al-Shabab launched a bloody terrorist assault on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
These attacks have sharpened U.S. attention on these new mutual security threats. Our military now has a fully-fledged Africa Command to manage the increase in counterterrorism operations , a naval base in the Horn of Africa, and a growing fleet of unmanned drones in the region.
Social media is bringing us together too. I connect with my host family, a quarter century later, via Facebook. Regular Americans are feeling more connected to the continent through clicktivism: #Kony2012 rallied millions of people to call for the capture or killing of a Ugandan warlord. #BringBackOurGirls captured the world's horror at the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian girls last April. These incidents may be fleeting, but they can have real effect on policy; both of these twitter campaigns created public pressure that led President Obama to deploy Special Forces.
American culture is embracing Africa too. My longtime affection for Zimbabwean pop music and Burkinabe films is less of an outlier now that artists like Nigerian authorChimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Oscar-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o have gone mainstream. In 2011, when I finished writing my novel about an American diplomat in Mali, I was told Africa wasn't yet commercial; now, there are at least half-a-dozen contemporary thrillers set in the region.
Deeper economic, security, and cultural ties make it harder and harder to view the continent through the tragedy-only lens. Once Ebola is contained and the news cycle moves on, more Americans will come to experience Africa and come to know what I and the growing legions of Africa-philes have learned: Africa is a source of progress, beauty and life.
Todd Moss, chief operating officer and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. His novel, The Golden Hour, a thriller about an American diplomat during a coup in Mali, was published in September.
Tanzania's Mwiba Lodge: Where luxury and wildlife meet
by Everett Potter
Tanzania's Mwiba Lodge offers a luxury safari at the top of its game
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he last leg of your journey to Mwiba Lodge, a new tented camp in a luxurious league of its own, is a 40-minute flight that lifts you over Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain until the Great Rift Valley opens on to a sky-high plateau like something out of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The Northern Air charter plane from the international gateway city of Arusha lands on a grassy strip dramatically close to the plateau’s edge, where a waiting Land Cruiser whisks you off to the lodge.
The local staff greets you, with warm hand towels and Champagne, on a platform in the middle of the bush. Mwiba Lodge, it turns out, is all around you, scattered among the massive boulders and vegetation, connected by wooden walkways and perched on an escarpment overlooking a river gorge—all surrounded by a 125,000-acre private wildlife reserve.
Mwiba has the cool, understated look of, say, an Aman Resort, but with only eight suites, it feels more like a secluded personal compound. That’s not surprising, given that the lodge—like the charter airline that brings you there—is owned by Texas-based billionaire Dan Friedkin, the chairman of Gulf States Toyota. His family trust, the Friedkin Conservation Fund, is deeply involved in East African conservation and leases an astonishing 6 million acres of Tanzania’s wilderness with an eye towards protecting it.
Mwiba itself was built to have a near-stealth presence in the landscape. Says Friedkin, “The design execution was a collaborative effort, but my wife, Debra, gets all the credit for the vision of the experience we wanted to offer our guests.”
Wildebeest crossing: Mwiba offers expansive views of the Serengeti, making it ideal for watching animal migration
First up is a visit to your ‘tent’. Mwiba’s eight canvas-sided suites are all but invisible to one another, with proper doors, hardwood floors and decks cantilevered over a rushing river with chaises ready for post-safari snoozing. The canopied king-size beds have green air-conditioning systems that cool the bed areas. The living space has linen-covered sofas and copper lamps, while the bathrooms have soaking tubs, indoor and outdoor showers and antique fixtures. It’s not only sexy and theatrical, something most safari accommodations are not, but offers the height of luxury: Complete peace and solitude. (If it feels like Aspen came to Africa, that may not be a coincidence—Friedkin recently became chairman of the board of Auberge Resorts, which owns Aspen’s newly renovated Hotel Jerome.)
The showstopper at Mwiba is the main lodge. You enter a narrow space between boulders worthy of an Indiana Jones set, and that opens into an enormous, thatched-palm-roof great room with elegant sitting and dining areas, and a view that goes on for miles across the high grasslands of the Serengeti. There’s a stone fireplace, a bar and a separate library, where more intimate dinners can be served. While the menu varies, ours was aimed at traditional Western palates, featuring dishes such as Caesar salad, an expertly prepared steak and a fig tart with a South African Cabernet.
The nature of a private concession like Mwiba is that you have absolute freedom to go off-road and encounter only wildlife, not a dozen other safari vehicles. One evening game drive began with cocktails to accompany the sunset, segueing to a full-moon night tour that yielded a dozen big-eyed bush babies in the trees, giraffes, a curious hyena and a chameleon. And that’s just some local colour. The lodge’s location, bordering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, means that it commands a prime spot for viewing the Great Migration of a million and a half wildebeests and their entourage from December to March.
“Mwiba is the wave of the future,” says Friedkin of this isolated aerie. “It’s a benchmark for future developments.” Contemplate that while dangling your legs in Mwiba’s grey slate infinity pool, sundowner in hand, as elephants and zebra come to drink at the springs below.
(This article is excerpted from the latest ForbesLife India Nov-Dec 2014 issue which is now available at news stands and book stores)
This article appeared in the ForbesLife India magazine issue of Nov-Dec 2014
Keywords: Tanzania, Mwiba Lodge, Dan Friedkin, Friedkin Conservation Fund, Luxury Resort, Wildlife, Auberge Resorts, Aspen
Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/live...xury-and-wildlifes-meet/39177/0#ixzz3NDrz2gOr
by Everett Potter
Tanzania's Mwiba Lodge offers a luxury safari at the top of its game
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T
he last leg of your journey to Mwiba Lodge, a new tented camp in a luxurious league of its own, is a 40-minute flight that lifts you over Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain until the Great Rift Valley opens on to a sky-high plateau like something out of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The Northern Air charter plane from the international gateway city of Arusha lands on a grassy strip dramatically close to the plateau’s edge, where a waiting Land Cruiser whisks you off to the lodge.
The local staff greets you, with warm hand towels and Champagne, on a platform in the middle of the bush. Mwiba Lodge, it turns out, is all around you, scattered among the massive boulders and vegetation, connected by wooden walkways and perched on an escarpment overlooking a river gorge—all surrounded by a 125,000-acre private wildlife reserve.
Mwiba has the cool, understated look of, say, an Aman Resort, but with only eight suites, it feels more like a secluded personal compound. That’s not surprising, given that the lodge—like the charter airline that brings you there—is owned by Texas-based billionaire Dan Friedkin, the chairman of Gulf States Toyota. His family trust, the Friedkin Conservation Fund, is deeply involved in East African conservation and leases an astonishing 6 million acres of Tanzania’s wilderness with an eye towards protecting it.
Mwiba itself was built to have a near-stealth presence in the landscape. Says Friedkin, “The design execution was a collaborative effort, but my wife, Debra, gets all the credit for the vision of the experience we wanted to offer our guests.”
Wildebeest crossing: Mwiba offers expansive views of the Serengeti, making it ideal for watching animal migration
First up is a visit to your ‘tent’. Mwiba’s eight canvas-sided suites are all but invisible to one another, with proper doors, hardwood floors and decks cantilevered over a rushing river with chaises ready for post-safari snoozing. The canopied king-size beds have green air-conditioning systems that cool the bed areas. The living space has linen-covered sofas and copper lamps, while the bathrooms have soaking tubs, indoor and outdoor showers and antique fixtures. It’s not only sexy and theatrical, something most safari accommodations are not, but offers the height of luxury: Complete peace and solitude. (If it feels like Aspen came to Africa, that may not be a coincidence—Friedkin recently became chairman of the board of Auberge Resorts, which owns Aspen’s newly renovated Hotel Jerome.)
The showstopper at Mwiba is the main lodge. You enter a narrow space between boulders worthy of an Indiana Jones set, and that opens into an enormous, thatched-palm-roof great room with elegant sitting and dining areas, and a view that goes on for miles across the high grasslands of the Serengeti. There’s a stone fireplace, a bar and a separate library, where more intimate dinners can be served. While the menu varies, ours was aimed at traditional Western palates, featuring dishes such as Caesar salad, an expertly prepared steak and a fig tart with a South African Cabernet.
The nature of a private concession like Mwiba is that you have absolute freedom to go off-road and encounter only wildlife, not a dozen other safari vehicles. One evening game drive began with cocktails to accompany the sunset, segueing to a full-moon night tour that yielded a dozen big-eyed bush babies in the trees, giraffes, a curious hyena and a chameleon. And that’s just some local colour. The lodge’s location, bordering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, means that it commands a prime spot for viewing the Great Migration of a million and a half wildebeests and their entourage from December to March.
“Mwiba is the wave of the future,” says Friedkin of this isolated aerie. “It’s a benchmark for future developments.” Contemplate that while dangling your legs in Mwiba’s grey slate infinity pool, sundowner in hand, as elephants and zebra come to drink at the springs below.
This article appeared in the ForbesLife India magazine issue of Nov-Dec 2014
Keywords: Tanzania, Mwiba Lodge, Dan Friedkin, Friedkin Conservation Fund, Luxury Resort, Wildlife, Auberge Resorts, Aspen
Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/live...xury-and-wildlifes-meet/39177/0#ixzz3NDrz2gOr