Malawi's Banda of sisters

Joyce Banda was sworn in on the weekend as president of Malawi – and just the second female head of state of an African country. Banda was the country’s vice president and was promoted after 78-year-old president Bingu wa Mutharika died of cardiac arrest on Friday. Banda took the oath of office before parliament in the capital Lilongwe on Saturday as a threatened power succession struggle never eventuated. Banda and Mutharika were former party colleagues and Banda was promoted to vice president in 2009. (photo: AFP)

Mutharika and Banda ran together for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in the 2009 elections but fell out just two months after they assumed office when the President started positioning his 72-year-old brother and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mutharika to succeed him on retirement in 2014. Mutharika expelled her from the party. Banda and other disgruntled politicians from the DPP and other parties launched the Peoples' Party. However Malawi’s constitution prevented Mutharika from sacking her as vice president.

Matters worsened in 2010 after former colonial power Britain slashed $4.5m from its annual $33m aid budget when Malawi bought a $13.26 million presidential jet. Britain said its aid criteria were based on the three principles of government commitment to poverty reduction, sound public financial management and human rights. Malawi relies on aid for 40 percent of its budget and the country is desperate undeveloped. Only one in 20 of Malawi's population has access to electricity while the rest depend on charcoal and paraffin for cooking and lighting respectively.

When Mutharika died, the country’s information minister Patricia Kaliati said Banda could not take over as head of state because she was in opposition. However strong calls from the US, EU and Britain and stopped a resistance movement to her ascension from gaining any traction. One of Banda's first actions was to sack Kaliati.

The 61-year-old Banda is no relation to Malawi’s founding president Hastings Banda who achieved independence for what was then Nyasaland from Britain in 1963. The earlier Banda chose the name Malawi for the country based on a corruption of Lake Maravi. Following a typical African post-colonial trajectory, Banda turned Malawi into a one party state and became immensely wealthy. A pro-Western proxy, his power and support faded after the end of the Soviet Union and by 1993 the internal pressure for democratic change was intense.

In the 1994 elections Hastings Banda was defeated by Elson Bakili Muluzi. Muluzi proved just as corrupt as his predecessor and siphoned off millions from the sale of Malawi's food reserves. Despite this Muluzi was re-elected in 1999 and tried to change the constitution to run a third time in 2004. He was frustrated by parliament, the courts and demonstrations in the street and was forced to stand aside, anointing Mutharika to replace him. Within 12 months Muluzi was apologising for his choice of successor and set himself to run again in 2009.

But an anti-corruption investigation into him in 2008 crippled his campaign and the country’s Electoral Commission and the courts combined to stop him from running again. Mutharika was at the height of his powers having overseen an increase in agricultural production. But the subsidies Mutharika paid to lift harvests could not be sustained after Britain cut its aid budget.

Joyce Banda was one of Mutharika’s earliest ministerial appointments. A single mother and refugee from a violent marriage, she had run several successful businesses before entering parliament in 2004. She quickly proved her mettle rising to become Foreign Affairs minister after just two years in office. She was made deputy for the 2009 election but felt betrayed after Mutharika endorsed his brother as successor.

The role of Peter Mutharika now becomes crucial as Banda attempts to establish her presidential credentials. Mutharika is relatively new to Malawi politics have lived in the US for decades as a teacher of law. He congratulated Banda on her appointment but is likely to become her biggest issue as he becomes DPP leader following his older brother.

His congratulations may be smart politics. Mutharika’s brother’s death was not greatly mourned. As Al Jazeera said, many of Malawi’s 13 million people saw him as an autocrat responsible for an economic crisis precipitated by the British withdrawal of aid. Fixing Malawi’s flailing economy presents a great challenge to Banda. There is plenty of time between now and 2014 for her to become unpopular allowing Mutharika an easy run at bringing the leadership back into the family.

Niger's famine kills celebrations of 50th anniversary of independence

Celebrations in Niger for the 50th anniversary of its independence from France yesterday were muted as it faced up to a massive famine that threatens millions. The UN estimates half of the West African country’s 14 million people are at risk, with the number of severely food-insecure people increasing significantly from 3.3 million people as recently as April. The sombre mood was reflected with few public events marking the independence milestone. Among them was a simple tree-planting ceremony on the outskirts of the capital, Niamey. (picture: Sunday Alamba/AP)

The country’s leader General Salou Djibo dedicated the celebration of independence from France to the "struggle against food insecurity by sustainable land management." Djibo who claimed power in a coup earlier this year, said in a broadcast on Monday he wanted an overhaul of farming to prevent a repeat of the crisis in future harvests. “Our goal should be radically to transform the system of agricultural production to definitively bring Niger out of the disastrous consequences of unreliable climate change and the cycle of famine," he said.

Aid groups have been generally supportive of Djibo even if he hasn’t let the famine get in the way of dealing with his political enemies. Last week Niger police arrested the ex-prime minister and three other former senior officials on charges of embezzling public funds. The arrests were part of a promise Djibo made to investigate corruption during the ten year reign of former president Mamadou Tandja who he toppled in February. Last month his anti-corruption commission published 200 names they accused of embezzlement. Ex-prime minister Oumarou has been called to return $500,000.

Djibo has been less keen to dismantle some of Tandja’s even bigger earners. In 2008 the then president gave his approval for a $5 billion production-sharing agreement for the Agadem oil block with Chinese state-owned CNPC in 2008. Human rights groups complained the agreement lacked transparency and should be investigated. But this week Djibo approved the deal. "The production-sharing agreement with CNPC allows us, if we manage it well, to guarantee better returns for our country," he said. The Agadem oil block has estimated reserves of 325 million barrels and should come online in three years. Niger is also set to become the world’s second largest uranium producer when French company Areva's billion-dollar Imouraren mine starts production.

This abundant mineral wealth means little to the lives of millions destroyed by lack of food. Niger lies at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index so even in a year of good harvests the region is on the edge of a humanitarian crisis. Last year’s harvest was not good. Niger is at the centre of a Sahel famine that has hit Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad and Mali, after insufficient rains left poor crops and a desperate shortage of cattle feed. The fodder shortfalls and lack of water are affecting livestock herds with increasing cases of animal mortality and pastoralists having to sell their cattle at very low prices. The situation is becoming critical in all regions and emergency destocking measures are recommended by humanitarian partners.

Children are worst affected by the crisis. The results of the UN 2010 nutrition survey published on 24 June show the magnitude of the nutritional crisis among children. The Nutrition Survey shows 17 percent of children aged 6 months to 5 years are affected, increasing by 5 percent in a year. The UN’s biggest priorities in Niger are food security (including assistance to pastoralists) and nutrition (including water, sanitation and health activities).

The UN World Food Program is rolling out a large-scale feeding operation to provide foods fortified with vitamins and nutrients for all children under two and their families in the worst-affected parts of the country. They are also providing medical treatment for those who succumb to malnourishment, nursing mothers in particular. Longer term, the communities need build up their livelihoods to become more drought resilient. “Higher agricultural output and lower population growth would make these crises less likely,” the WFP said. “That means improving living conditions in rural areas and providing farmers with access to water, credit, education and healthcare.”

The reign in Spain is mainly plain

And so a World Cup that began as African, and then turned South American before becoming European ended up as Spanish in a tense but always absorbing final overnight in Johannesburg. Nelson Mandela delighted fans by turning up but not as much as Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniestra did by scoring the game’s only goal deep into extra time consigning the Dutch to their third final defeat.

One punter on Twitter said after the game a Dutch victory would have been a Scorsese award: given purely for their work in the 1970s – this is a little unfair on Martin Scorsese whose more recent films Gangs of New York and The Departed are on a par with anything he did in his earlier career but the point is well made nonetheless.

Holland (never the more geographical correct Netherlands) were the great side of the 1970s with Johan Cruyff at the centre of most of their brilliance. But they never won anything at national level being undone by their own arrogance in 1974, 1976 and 1978 losing to the hosts and winners of the tournament each time. 1978 was a particularly tragedy when Cruyff decided for political reasons not to go to Argentina. What better rebuff to the junta generals would have been for him to lift the trophy in front of them.

The defeat of the current Dutch crop is no tragedy, being nowhere near as good as the total football side of the 1970s. The current vintage is a competent if workmanlike team epitomised by the starring role of Liverpool’s much maligned workhorse Dirk Kuyt. They beat Brazil which was perhaps the biggest shock of the entire World Cup. But otherwise they were like Brazil’s 2006 conquerors France, tough to beat and lucky but not worldbeaters themselves.

And in terms of sporting disappointment, they are only the second best of the month compared to unknown Frenchman Nicolas Mahut who lost his Wimbledon tennis match to equally obscure American John Isner in a record breaking three-day 11-hour contest 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (7-3), 70-68. I can’t begin to imagine how Mahut felt at the end of that final 183rd game after they shared almost a thousand points between them.

But even Wimbledon reminds us of the World Cup with a Spaniard Rafael Nadal carrying off his second crown. His fellow countrymen – and they are countrymen, despites their catalogue of Catalans - one nilled their way to the World Cup final and repeated the dose one last time to deservedly take the crown. I congratulate them on their first title, a magnificent achievement especially outside their own continent.

As convincing European Champions in 2008 they went in as the favourite side from the northern hemisphere, but few people thought they could get past Brazil or Argentina to win outside their own continent. More still (myself included, I must admit) wrote them off after their opening shock loss to unrated Switzerland. The defeat was occasion for great angst in Madrid and Barcelona yet two games later they were back on track having won the group while the Swiss packed their bags for home.

The group win was crucial. It meant they avoided Brazil in the round of 16. Instead they won a tense Iberian derby before squeezing past a Paraguay side that was just delighted to be in the quarter finals. Germany was a different kettle of pescado having thrashed Australia, England and then Argentina but Spain passed them to death to deservedly win before repeating the dose against the Dutch.

Perhaps it is appropriate that the most Africanised country in Europe (and the one closest geographically) should triumph in Africa though the players probably won’t feel that way. But this victory may do what 50 years of oppression under Franco could not: seal a farrago of nationalities into a nation. Though it was a Castilian Iker Casillas who lifted the trophy (and in the process joining Dino Zoff in the pantheon of goalkeeping greats), it was a Catalan backbone that sealed the win. And the celebrations would have been just as great in Basque Bilbao and Galician La Coruna as they were in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville. Viva Espana.

I'm hearing only bad news from Radio Africa

I remember at the Italia 90 World Cup when Cameroon got to the quarter finals and were unluckily beaten by England everyone saying it was only a matter of time before an African side won the World Cup. The breakthrough would come some time in the next 20 years. What no one predicted was that Cameroon’s 1990 performance would be remain an African high water mark, equalled only by Senegal who also went out in quarter-final extra time in 2002.

Things have gone backwards since then. With one round of the group matches left to go in the first ever African World Cup, it remains a distinct possibility that no African side will make it through to the last 16. South Africa, Ivory Coast and Nigeria are almost certainly out already. Algeria has some hope in the group of sleep but will probably lose to USA. That leaves Ghana who top their group currently ahead of Germany and Serbia. However their lacklustre performance against a poor ten-man Australian side suggests that they will probably lose to Germany and allow Serbia to grab the other place with a win or draw against Australia.

Just about the one African innovation of note in this World Cup is not the football but the vuvuzela. The infamous horn has split sporting fans across the world who either love it for its ability to get the fans involved or, more usually hate it for its incessant one-pitched drone which drowns out every other noise in the stadium. Problems with the vuvuzela were identified as early as the 2009 Confederation Cup which acted as a dress rehearsal for the hosts. FIFA boss Sepp Blatter went on the record saying he didn’t want to ban the vuvuzela saying “we should not try to Europeanise an African World Cup.”

As with most things Blatter says, this was hypocritical bullshit. It had nothing to do with anti-colonialism and everything to do with office politics. There is certainly no long history of the vuvuzela’s use in Africa or elsewhere. Plastic horns first emerged in Mexico in the 1970s and were seen at the Argentina 1978 World Cup. They didn’t become popular in South Africa until 20 years later. With its dangerously high sound level and closeness to the frequency of human speech, the horns are detestable and Blatter probably hates them as much as anyone who is not playing them. What the FIFA President was really saying is that he was not prepared to risk African votes deserting him during the 2011 presidential election.

But while Blatter is busy buying votes, the tournament he runs is starting to gather pace after a slow start. The first week saw a succession of negative games and 1-0 scorelines. Desperately poor and uneven refereeing didn’t help. The code’s complete refusal to use technology to help the refs leaves it looking a laughing stock compared to the range of facilities available to rugby, cricket and tennis umpires.

This is especially ludicrous now that the referees and assistants are wired up to talk to each other. It would not take long to talk to a fourth or fifth official in the stands with access to replays, goal-line incidents and offside decisions. The oft-quoted excuse that it would “interrupt the flow of the game” beggars belief especially when considering how many interruptions currently exist when players fall over under the slightest provocation.

But back to the football itself. I’ve mentioned the problems with Africa, but Europe does not seem in much better health. A European team has never won the competition outside its home continent and this statistic is likely to continue in South Africa. Germany looked strong against Australia only to fold against Serbia. Meanwhile Italy, France and England all lack a cutting edge. Favourites Spain inexplicably lost to Switzerland and may find it impossible to recover from the shock of that loss. The Dutch look the best of the Europeans so far but don’t really have the aura of trophy winners.

The same cannot be said of Brazil and Argentina. Both sides have aura in abundance and won their games easily. With the right amount of fortune they should end up playing each other in the first all-South American final since 1950 (or 1930 if you are being picky and say there was no actual final in 1950) and the first ever final between these two old foes. It would be hilarious to watch Diego Maradona pick up another world cup trophy, despite all his obvious flaws and apparent madness. I suspect Brazil have slightly too much guile to make that happen, but it is Argentina and its current on-field genius Lionel Messi that have my heart as we head into the next few fascinating weeks.

New test to help crack down on illegal ivory trade

A new test to distinguish antique from modern ivory may help defeat the illegal trade in ivory. The EU allows the sale of antique ivory from before 1947, but once a tusk is carved there is no accurate way of distinguishing it from modern ivory. Until now, the only option has been to send samples to museums where experts tried to work out its age from signs such as how yellow it appeared. However this evidence would not stand up in court. A new method by an Edinburgh Zoo scientist can determine the age of ivory by looking at its level of carbon isotope. Because of nuclear testing which started in the 1950s, modern ivory has double the amount of carbon 14 than those of elephants that lived before the nuclear age. The test will now be rolled out to all European countries. (picture by wwarby)

While Europeans have killed elephants for trade since colonial times, the large-scale exploitation of elephant herds began in the 1970s. Organized gangs of poachers used automatic weapons while corrupt governments turned a blind eye. They laundered tons of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in the East and West. At its height, the ivory trade was driving the poaching of an estimated 100,000 African elephants a year for their tusks, as species numbers dropped from 1.3 million to 600,000.

Things improved after the African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989. This banned the ivory trade though it carried on illegally. And only 16 out of 35 African countries complied with the CITES system. The Born Free Foundation says thousands of elephants are still killed every year for their ivory. The British animal welfare group describes the slaughter as “horrifying”, with poachers shooting elephants with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.

In November 2009 Tanzania and Zambia submitted a proposal for the relaxation of the ban to allow for the sale of 100 tonnes of stock-piled ivory to China and Japan. The proposal will be examined at an international meeting on wildlife conservation scheduled for March. There is a precedent for this. In 1997 regulations were relaxed for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of stock-piled ivory. There was a similar sale in 2002. But Kenya has opposed the latest request for a relaxation saying it could lead to increased poaching in the region. It also wants the ban to include rhinos. Kenya’s elephant population dropped from 168,000 in 1969 to only 16,000 in 1989 when the ban was enforced. The population has now risen to 35,000 since the ban but the rhino population has decreased by a third in the same timeframe.

The Chinese market is now driving the demand for ivory. The problem has escalated in recent years as China forges more links with Africa. Chinese entrepreneurs, miners and tourists are coming to the continent in increasing numbers fuelling the illicit trade. Over 35 million tonnes of ivory has been illegally imported into China from Africa in the last 10 years and British-based wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC is working with China to educate travellers about ivory smuggling. But there are concerns the Chinese government is reacting defensively to reports of Chinese people caught in the act. After an Interpol operation seized several tonnes of ivory in November and arrested three Chinese and 62 Africans, China Daily refuted the director of a Kenyan wildlife NGO, who blamed the growing number of Chinese workers in Africa for the rise in elephant poaching in Kenya.

Ominously, ivory trade has been on the rise across the continent since 2004 but increased sharply last year according to TRAFFIC. Their latest report said the surge in 2009 suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end markets. According to its analysis of 14,364 ivory seizure records from 85 countries between January 1989 and August 2009, the adjusted trend for illicit ivory trade has risen to over 25 tonnes, the second largest after a peak of 32 tonnes in 1998. CITES will submit the report to the upcoming meeting of member countries.

Problems of Geography and Branding: Dakar in South America

The so-called Dakar Rally got off to a “symbolic start” in Buenos Aires today and for the second year in a row the event has now switched to Argentina and Chile. Quite how symbolic that was, seems to have been lost on most western media. The official symbol of the rally remains a (faceless) person in North African dress but the challenges now for the riders is the Andes not the Sahara. Given the widespread interest and money generated from the South American venue and the continued security fears of the original route, it is unlikely the rally will ever return to Africa. This is a mixed blessing. The event was often seen as a triumph of colonialism that cared little for the impact on the lands it travelled through or the faceless people. But it also was a strong boost to the economies of the likes of Mauritania, Mali and Senegal bringing in badly needed foreign revenue. And no one involved with the race sees an issue with stealing an African name for a South American context.

The idea for a race from Europe to Africa began in 1977 when French rider Thierry Sabine got lost on his motorcycle in the Libyan desert during the Abidjan-Nice rally. After being rescued from the sands he came up with the idea for a rally to cross the Sahara. The first Paris-Dakar rally started on 26 December 1978 with 175 competitors travelling across the Mediterranean and down through Algeria, Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and ending in Senegal’s capital Dakar. The danger and exotic nature of the route meant it captured the public imagination and quickly became a household name through most of Europe.

Over the years the route varied and the number of competitors doubled and then trebled. The race went through Gaddafy’s Libya in 1989. In 1992 it went all the way to Cape Town. But that year’s race route through wartorn Chad reminded organisers that politics was never far away. It returned to Dakar in 1993 but the race ended its association with Paris in 1995 when it started from Spain. In 2000 competitors started in Dakar and drove to Egypt but terrorist threats forced them to fly over Algeria. The 2006 death of two young spectators in Guinea and Senegal drew criticism across Africa for the lack of sensitivity shown by the organisers.

In 2007 two planned stages between Nema and Timbuktu were cancelled because Mali authorities could not guarantee the safety of competitors. However, the transformation of the Dakar rally from a destination to a brand began in earnest a year later when the entire event was cancelled a day before it was due to start. On Christmas Eve 2007, a French family of five were having a picnic by the side of a road in the Southern Mauretania town of Aleg when they were attacked by gunmen. After robbing the family, the gunmen opened fire killing four and wounding the other before fleeing into neighbouring Senegal. The attacks were a rare event in Mauritania and government blamed it on a terrorist sleeper cell from Algerian Al Qaeda.

When the organisers of the rally sent team to examine conditions on the ground in Mauritania, they found out that three soldiers had been killed in an ambush in the north of the country on the day they arrived. Nevertheless the French director of the rally Étienne Lavigne said the deaths would not affect the running of the race. Lavigne decided to scrap the two Mali legs again but both he and Mauritanian Interior Minister Yall Zakaria said all other necessary precautions had been taken and security was on track including a 3,000 man security force. But on 29 December Al Qaeda used a website to criticise Mauritania's government for "providing suitable environments to the infidels for the rally." While it did not directly call for attacks on the race or its participants, it was enough to spook Lavigne. He called off the race a day before it was due to start on 5 January 2008.

The Mauritanian president complained that the cancellation was an overreaction. But white western lives always take priority over black African ones and there was no real criticism of the cancellation in western media other than to over-dramatically refer to it as a “death sentence” for the event. But what the media were not taking into account was that the Dakar was now a lucrative brand that could easily be de-coupled from its African location. Other countries in Europe and South America queued up to offer their services to host the event and Argentina and Chile won the rights to host it in 2009. There was little doubt that they would win it again this year. Dominique Serieys, head of Mitsubishi Motorsport saw it purely in sporting terms. "It was necessary to take a break in Africa given the geopolitical context there,” he said. “The fact the resumption is on a new continent is good news."

Serieys is right from a motoring perspective and a race of cars, trucks, motorbikes and quads across the rugged terrain of the Andes will be enjoyable for fans. It may even be more difficult than the Sahara in parts. But this hardly makes it a “Dakar Rally”. The race was born of Sabine’s vision of a trek across the sands of the Sahara and while it did not always (or even often) have the interests of Africans in mind, at least it was a rare opportunity for Africa to star on the world stage. The ease of which the race left Africa and the theft of its name are a shameful reminder of the cravenness of western interests ahead of the Third World.

Lumumba Di-Aping: the Third World's Hero of Copenhagen

Lumumba Di-Aping has made the brave call that no Australian politician has been game to make and called Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a climate sceptic. The key negotiator at Copenhagen on behalf of the G777-China group told the ABC Rudd’s message to his own people was a fabrication which “does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action.” Di-Aping was pointing out the disparity between Rudd’s sayings and actions on climate change. “It's puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change,” Di-Aping said. “And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he start acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism.” (photo credit: Reuters - Jens Norgaard Larsen)

Di-Aping is essentially correct. For all Rudd’s moralising about climate change as the world’s greatest problem, he has offered very little by way of Australian action to solve it. And Lumumba Di-Aping is the right person to remind him of his responsibilities. The Sudanese diplomat is the chief negotiator for the 130 nation bloc confusingly known as the G77-China group at the Copenhagen climate change talks. He was chosen because Sudan is the current chair of the G77. Despite (or perhaps because of) Sudan’s poor international reputation since Darfur, Di-Aping is proving to be a formidable opponent of vested western interests.

It was Di-Aping who led the criticism of the Danish Text which Rudd is also intimately associated with. The draft of the text which emerged at the start of the conference last week proposed a solution to stop global temperature rises at two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UN tried to play down the document as an “informal paper” put forward by the Danish Prime Minister. Di-Aping was having none of it and slammed the proposal. "It's an incredibly imbalanced text intended to subvert, absolutely and completely, two years of negotiations," he said. “It does not recognise the proposals and the voice of developing countries".

Once again Di-Aping had a very good point. The Danish Text was leaked to The Guardian who described it as a departure from the Kyoto Protocol principle that developed nations should bear the brunt of climate change. The Guardian said the draft handed control of climate change finance to the World Bank. More importantly it would abandon the Kyoto protocol which remains the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions. Lastly it would make funding to poor countries trying to adapt to climate change contingent on a range of actions.

But what infuriated the developing countries most about the Text was the fact it was prepared without their knowledge. It smacked of colonialism. On the first Monday of the climate change talks, Di-Aping addressed an ad hoc meeting of 100 African civil representatives and a few African parliamentarian. He began dramatically by crying, putting his head in his hands and saying “We have been asked to sign a suicide pact.” Di-Aping may well have been milking the drama but once again his analysis was spot on. He said a global temperature increase of 2 degrees meant 3.5 degrees for much of Africa. This was “certain death for Africa”, and a type of “climate fascism” imposed on the continent by high carbon emitters. He said Africa was being asked to sign on to an agreement that would allow this warming in exchange for $10 billion, and that Africa was also being asked to “celebrate” this deal. “I am absolutely convinced that what Western governments are doing is NOT acceptable to Western civil society,” he said.

On Thursday, Di-Aping made a direct call for action from US President Obama. He said it would be embarrassing for the US not to be part of a solution “to save humanity”. Di-Aping reminded his audience that the US is the world's largest emitter historically and per capita. He asked the US to join the Kyoto Protocol and take on its commitments as a developed nation. “This is a challenge that President Barack Obama needs to rise to as a Nobel Prize winner and as an advocate of a multilateral global society,” Di-Aping said. “We know he is proud to be a part of that community through his family relations in Africa.”

Frustrated by the lack of action from American and other Western negotiators, Di-Aping led the biggest gamble yet when he led the walk out of the G77-China group conference. Di-Aping explained his rationale for the walk-out with BBC Radio Four. He said it had become clear the Danish presidency was undemocratically advancing the interests of developed countries at the expense of the obligations it had to developing countries. "The mistake they are doing now has reached levels that cannot be acceptable from a president who is supposed to be acting and shepherding the process on behalf of all parties,” he said.

The Western media were becoming furious at the way the conference was being “hijacked” by an uppity nobody from the Third World. The Australian dismissed him as "hyperbole prone". Toronto’s The Globe and Mail went further and called him “an ill chosen voice from Khartoum”. The headline was meant to damn him by association with long term Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir. But this comparison is false. Di-Aping does not represent Sudan at the conference. He represents 130 nations who are not creating climate change, but who will suffer the most from it. Lumumba Di-Aping is a hero and one who should shame the West into hearing the truth of climate change as seen from the perspective of the poor.

Media140: Internet political economy in Asia and Africa

This is my sixth and final post about the Media140 conference in Sydney last week. I've enjoyed putting together my reflections of an important event and I’d encourage readers to check out Julie Posetti’s (Sydney Media140's editorial director) excellent overview and discussion of where it might lead next. See also my prior posts about my initial impressions, and the speeches of Mark Scott, Posetti, Mark Colvin and Jason Wilson, and Jay Rosen. (photo by Derek Barry)

I wanted to finish off by talking about some of the underexplored political economy of the Internet. The presentations of Riyaad Minty and Jude Mathurine brought some of the brightest ideas of Asia and Africa to Friday’s events. Both presenters are South African of similar age with a fascination for all things new media working in different fields. Minty was a digital entrepreneur at 19 before joining Al Jazeera in 2006 as a new media analyst. Jude Mathurine went into education and advocacy and is now head of the new media lab at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape Province.

Minty’s presentation was a quick introduction to how the new media team in Doha promotes Al Jazeera online. Minty noted that Al Jazeera is broken into six major functions: Arabic, English, documentary, sport, training and research and his group is involved with all of them. Their job is to ensure the brand stays relevant in the new digital age. Their mantra is “people trust people” so Al Jazeera has been personalising its message in what Minty called a “virtuous circle” of old and new tools and old and new audiences.

He discussed how Al Jazeera covered Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza). According to the UN Goldstone Report this was a particularly brutal occupation and unsurprisingly Israel didn’t want the media around to question their actions. They made Gaza off-limits to westerners but Al Jazeera had two reporters Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros inside the Strip who got their message of the devastation out on television, the website and Twitter. Al Jazeera also urged the people of Gaza to give their online “views from the ground”. Their Twitter live updates were a compelling real time unveiling of suffering that was otherwise unheard in the western media.

Al Jazeera used Ushahidi to integrate mobile, email and alerts for crowdsourced crisis mapping and provided Google maps mashed up with up-to-date bombing information. The site also enabled creative commons video footage which was used creatively by artists, activists and educators alike. Minty said that telling the truth was hard, but not telling it is even harder. His team give Al Jazeera the tools to make it just a little easier.

While Minty is doing great things in Asia, Jude Mathurine is determined Africa will not be left behind in the digital revolution. The theme of Mathurine’s presentation was that the future of journalism in that continent is firmly tied up to mobile social networks and its enormous array of tools.

The question for Africa is how many people will be able to access the tools. Although 15 percent of the world’s people live there, Africa has just four percent of the world’s Internet users. The continent is handicapped by huge income disparities, education issues, poor bandwidth and bad regulation. In South Africa the black and poor are digitally disenfranchised and online social media is biased towards the white and wealthy. Journalists suffer just as badly as the general population and have little by way of media education or exposure. Media organisations are staid and hierarchical and do not engage audiences.

Yet Mathurine says Africa will not be left out of the global village of social networks. He sees hope in the fact the social network sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Blogger are among the most popular sites in many African countries. Critically, this trend is further exacerbated on mobile services. “The revolution will be mobilised,” says Mathurine. In the last six years world mobile growth has outstripped landlines by a factor of over a hundred to one. By 2007 Africa had almost 200 million mobiles compared fewer than 30 million fixed phones. Mobile users are transforming the continent using SMS (and reconnecting the millions elsewhere of the African Diaspora).

Mobile growth is fastest among the young and are taking to the social networks in greatest numbers. Online tools such as Kabissa and Zoopy are changing the political landscape too as Africa looks to local and cheap solutions to get around its many problems. People can buy mobile handsets using open source operating systems with camera and recording capability for just $15 and the Internet backbone is slowly increasing around the continent. But SMS remains the killer app and sets the agenda often bypassing media censorship in the process. Young people and social media are Africa’s great hope for a truly democratic continent, concluded Mathurine. And mobile technology will be far more important than desktop access.

No former African leader worthy of Mo Ibrahim prize this year

Sudanese-born British mobile phones billionaire Mo Ibrahim has denied the GFC forced his foundation not to award a $5 million prize for good governance in Africa this year. "The prize committee do not pay any attention to my bank statement," he said. "This is an award for excellence. Jury meets and they set the bar some way and decide. There's no way to know where the bar was set." (photo of Mo Ibrahim by World Economic Forum)

Ibrahim was bristled by the questioning of British journalists about his role in the Prize that bears his name. Ibrahim has made $2.5 billion from two successful business ventures and his second Celnet provides mobiles for 25 million Africans. His foundation is aimed at “re-branding” Africa, he says. The Mo Ibrahim Prize for achievement in African leadership is awarded to a democratically elected former African head of state or government who has left office in the past three years. The foundation has awarded two former African leader the prize in 2007 and 2008 but could not find anyone who matched their confidential criteria this year. Former Botswanan president Ketumile Masire said the prize-giving committee had "considered some credible candidates" but could not select a winner.

The ceremony will go ahead next month in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania despite the lack of a winner. Ibrahim said he respected the decision of the committee and said it did not mean that Africa was not making progress in governance. He claimed he had no input to the decision “I am not privy to the conversation, I don't know on what basis they decided not to award it this year, and I don't want to know. Their deliberation is confidential," he said. Nevertheless, the decision means a timely and considerable saving to Ibrahim. The Prize is the richest individual prize in the world. The Winner receive $5 million plus paid over ten years and then another $200,000 for each year of the rest of their life. It is designed to encourage African leaders to be less corrupt.

The key factors in the award are measured using the Ibrahim Index. The index was developed under the direction of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard with the help of African academics and ranks African countries according to five criteria. These are: sustainable economic development, health and education, transparency, democracy, and rule of law. Ibrahim calls his Index a tool to hold governments to account and frame the debate about how we are governed. “Africans are setting benchmarks not only for their own continent, but for the world,” he said.

The two previous recipients are former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano (2007), and Botswana's former president Festus Gontebanye Mogae (2008). Chissano served two terms in office and helped end Mozambique’s 16-year-old civil war in 1992. He also stepped down voluntarily even though he could have run for a third time. Meanwhile Mogae's Botswana is Africa’s most stable country and has had multi-party elections since independence in 1966. Mogae stepped down in 2008 after two successful terms in office.

African Affairs Analysts Cameron Duodo (see Al Jazeera youtube clip at 5:50) says the prize-winning criteria is too narrow. Duodo says it is not just presidents and leaders who do outstanding work. He said independent media and the judiciary who scrutinised the powerful and bring governments to account over corruption also play a major part in ensuring good governance. Leaders are already pampered and don’t need any further financial inducements. The enormous power vested in the executive office is a major reason why Africa has so many failed states. The year’s gap should give the Ibrahim Foundation the pause it needs to re-evaluate its intent.

Africa hardest hit by global recession

A new report by anti-poverty organisation ActionAid has found that developing countries are hardest hit by Global Financial Crisis. The report "Where does it hurt? The impact of the financial crisis on developing countries" (my thanks to ActionAid media officer Lindiwe Tshabalala for providing me a copy - unfortunately it not on the website at the time of writing) says Africa will suffer a drop in income of $49 billion in the two years from the start of the crisis in 2007 to the end of 2009. This represents a 13 percent drop in financial inflows to the continent. The report says the benefits of financial liberalisation have been oversold and that countries with the most open economies have suffered the most.

ActionAid say there are actually two problems – a financial crisis and a recession. The financial crisis impacts bank lending, investments, bonds and interest rates while the recession impacts trade flows. While both problems are the fault of the rich north, they are both are hitting developing countries the hardest. Africa is predicted to lose $22b due to the financial crisis while losing another $27b to earning exports, aid and income from rich countries in recession. This latter problem also impacts money sent home by relatives working in rich countries.

Of the money flowing into developing countries, bank lending has suffered the most. The international association of financial institutions known as The Institute of International Finance (IIF), estimates that foreign lending to developing countries in 2008 was just 40 per cent of the 2007 level. It gets worse this year when the drop is predicted to hit 100 percent. This means that more money will be leaving the continent to overseas banks than will be paid out in loans.

There will also be a negative flow on to equity markets in developing countries as their stocks are deemed too great a risk by international traders. The IIF predicts an 82 percent downturn in equities while foreign direct investment will also dip by a third. The crisis has also pushed up the costs of raising money by issuing bonds. Poor countries suffer disproportionately (despite not being responsible for the crisis) as lenders look for less risky places to put their money.

Trade losses from the recession that follows the crisis will also be severely felt in Africa and the global south. Most countries in ActionAid’s survey will expect a drop in export earnings of over 10 percent with Nigeria hardest hit at 25 percent. The combination of impacts on local economies is likely to lead to a worsening of poverty and ActionAid predicts “terrible consequences for individuals”. They are not alone in believing the worst. The World Bank’s chief economist for Africa predicts that 700,000 children under the age of one may well die over the next few years as a result of the financial crisis and the ensuing recession.

The survey results show that vulnerability to the crisis is directly proportional to a country’s exposure to international trade. The biggest factors are export revenues, level of concentration of exports, trade balance and reserves. Many countries have also increased foreign direct investment and private bank lending despite their being no provable correlation between financial integration and growth. In 2008 Rodrik and Subramanian found that on the international front, the benefits of financial globalisation were hard to find, even leaving financial crises aside.

The report concluded that domestic generated development was best. It needed to be shored up by diversified financial flows, controlling risk, a commitment to transparency, regulated financial markets, and the importance of involving developing nations in global market decisions. The report also made several recommendations to the G20 summit next month. They involved controlling risk, improving transparency and developing regionally based financial markets. The report also recommended assistance to countries who cannot afford their own stimulus packages.

ActionAid’s head of policy, Claire Melamed said the report showed there was a large risk that development will start to go backwards in many countries as the money dries up. “The recession will lead to worsening poverty and terrible consequences for the men, women and children caught in its grip,” she said. "Although developing countries didn't make this crisis, it has become all too clear that they are in the firing line when it comes to suffering its worst effects.”

Mixed start to Thomas Lubanga’s ICC trial

The first week of evidence in the historic International Criminal Court (ICC) trial of Congolese man Thomas Lubanga has ended with mixed results for the prosecution. Lubanga has pleaded not guilty to recruiting and using child soldiers under age 15 in 2002-2003. After the first witness recanted his evidence he was a child soldier, a second has restored hope to prosecutors by testifying he taught child soldiers in the art of war. He is the first of four Congolese warlords that will face trial. The trial is the first to be heard by the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal since it was created in 2002. But as the Toronto Star editorialises, the real value of the case is that the practice of using child soldiers “will persist until warlords and others understand they can no longer send children to their deaths with impunity.”

For this first case, ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged the 48 year old Lubanga with recruiting 30,000 child soldiers to fight in the conflict that raged in north-eastern DRC between 2002 and 2003. Lubanga is the leader of the UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots), a group set up in 2000 that was closely allied to Uganda. The UPC was accused of massacring civilians in 2002 in DRC’s eastern province of Ituri. Ituri is a gold-rich region near the Ugandan border and the Ugandan army took the side of Lubanga’s Hemi ethnic group against the Lendu.

Initially the war here was ignored while peace efforts focussed on more pressing parts of the DRC. Eventually French troops occupied Ituri’s capital Bunia. UN peacekeepers arrested Lubanga in 2005 and transferred him to jail in the DRC capital Kinshasa. A year later he was extradited to the ICC court at The Hague where he was charged with three counts of war crimes for using child soldiers. However it has taken a long process to get him to trial. It was due to begin in June 2008 but immediately stalled when the court ruled that prosecutors had wrongly withheld evidence. The court granted his release a month later but this was delayed pending appeal. In November the suspension was lifted and The British Judge Adrian Fulford announced a start date for the trail of the end of January 2009.

However things went badly for the prosecution on the opening day of the trial last week. Firstly the young star witness flown in from Congo was forced to take his oath three times due to malfunctioning microphones. There was a bigger shock when he finally testified and recanted his earlier testimony that he was a child soldier. Earlier the young man, now a teenager, said he was snatched by Lubanga's militia on his way home from school. However he changed his story in court and denied that he'd ever been a child soldier taken to a military training camp. Instead, the witness claimed his testimony was prompted by an NGO which he did not name. Stunned prosecutors claimed their witness felt unprotected and feared for his safety from the watching Lubanga.

Judge Fulford immediately ordered the witness’s testimony to be adjourned and called for a probe into possible threats against the witness and his family. He also directed the prosecution to examine the risks of self-incrimination faced by witnesses who may face prosecution in the DRC. The court’s "Rule 74" requires that witnesses be fully informed that evidence could possibly incriminate them back home.

Meanwhile the trial continued and prosecutors did better with Friday’s witness. A former militia fighter told the court he trained children to use assault rifles and fought alongside them. The man said he joined Lubanga's militia in 2002 when senior officers threatened to torch his village unless the young people joined up. He had previously served as a child soldier in the Congolese army five years earlier and he was made an instructor because of his experience. He taught recruits the basics of war and how to fire AK47 rifles. He said children often were assigned to officers as armed "bodyguards or escorts," and many fought and died in battle.

The trial is expected to last for six to nine months and is a crucial test for the tribunal's ability to bring war criminals to justice. The ICC is the only permanent tribunal for prosecuting individuals accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Previous war crimes cases have been handled by adhoc tribunals. The ICC was established under the 1998 Rome Statute, a treaty now ratified by 106 states (though the US is a notable absentee). While discussion of ICC membership was studiously avoided during the election campaign, Obama is known to support the court. Bringing the US back into the fold would be an even bigger step towards the ICC’s legitimacy than a Lubanga conviction.

Africa takes to citizen journalism

A conference of African journalists commencing tomorrow in South Africa will look at the emerging trend of citizen journalism. Held at Grahamstown’s Rhodes University in Eastern Cape Province each year, this event is the 12th Highway Africa Conference. 700 Delegates (including journalists, media educators, bloggers, publishers and students) from 40 African countries will take part in three days of talks, workshops and skills training and will hear a keynote address from technology writer and author of “We the Media”, Dan Gillmor.

The conference is an exciting event for the world’s least Internet connected continent. The theme “Citizen Journalism, Journalism for Citizens” will focus on how media professionals and citizens can improve their contributions and work better together. According to Rhodes University’s school of journalism head Guy Berger the conference will examine the extent African journalists contribute to democracy. “Much media content around Africa calls itself journalism, but is really a far cry from promoting citizens' rights,” he said. “It shamelessly promotes the rights of political rulers at the expense of broader human rights.”

Berger’s lament is not unique to Africa and is one of the common drivers for citizen journalism across the world. Queensland academics Terry Flew and Jason Wilson examine this and some of the other issues around citizen journalism in their paper “Journalism as Social Networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election” (pdf) which has been submitted to the journal Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism” for peer review.

The paper draws on the authors’ experience in the youdecide2007 project which acted as an online news and opinion site in the lead-up to last year’s federal Australian election. The site was founded with the aid of a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) research grant to invigorate public debate about Australian politics in a digital arena and worked with industry partners such as the public broadcaster SBS (who provided legal services for a site-prepared citizen journalism manual), as well as IT company Cisco, online publishers The National Forum (publishers of On Line Opinion) and The Brisbane Institute public affairs think-tank.

The book of Highway Africa’s keynote speaker, Dan Gillmor was also quoted by the Queensland authors. In “We The Media”, Gillmor pointed out the difference between big media journalism and citizen journalism as that of the evolution from “the news as a lecture” to “journalism as a conversation”. And when that happens, he said, the lines between producers and consumers will blur and the communications networks would “become a medium for everyone’s voice”.

Such was the aim of the youdecide site which deliberately set out to provide hyperlocal “bottom up” content that would act as a counterpoint to the “presidential narratives” of news-lecturing big media. But the experiences of Wilson, Flew and others at youdecide showed that new hybrid forms of media still require a significant amount of professional mediation. For starters, they needed to be technically proficient. The site managers (“produsers”) tailored an open-source content management system called Joomla! to allow the submission of multimedia content through the public areas of the site as well as editorial work in the “back end”. They also ran a weekly television show each Friday on Brisbane community television which attracted a decent audience of 12,000 viewers, about half that of the ABC’s Stateline show which appears in a similar timeslot.

Site staff also generated a significant amount of “seed content” for the site as well as editing user content for legal and quality concerns. In this they perform a similar gatekeeping function to the Korean Ohmynews! which is perhaps the most successful international template for citizen journalism. The youdecide experience was that the “pro” content was crucial in attracting visitors to the site and was generally the most-read stories (though intriguing the “am” content generated more comments!). The site’s one “gotcha” story was a staff story: the so-called “Crategate” affair when Jason Wilson’s interview of a Liberal MP was quoted in parliament by then-Opposition leader Kevin Rudd.

Another crucial learning experience from youdecide was the value of networking. In order to get attention for the site, staff members needed to draw on their connections and make alliances with the mainstream journalists. For all its faults, big media is still the best way to get in contact with a mass audience and can help citizen journalism sites thrive if site managers can cultivate relationships with professional journalists and political operatives. Content can also be networked across platforms and the Briz31 output was repurposed on Youtube.

Staff members also provided mentoring services for their amateur content providers. They provided user training in legal and licencing issues, how to post content (and make it compelling), how to register or comment, or how to use linked off-site technologies like digital editing technologies or YouTube. They provided site specific information and also mediation services to stop flame wars, respond to objections and ban repeat offender users.

Flew and Wilson’s key conclusions were fourfold. Firstly, citizen journalism remains at the margins of news production but the production values and multi-skilling at such sites as youdecide are moving to the centre. Secondly the relationship between mainstream media and independent sites is becoming increasingly inter-connected (“porous and permeable” as the authors put it). Thirdly all citizen journalism endeavours should be seen as works in progress and should seek out new areas to engage. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, networked journalism has significant repercussions to the future of journalism and will contribute, as those at Fairfax known only too well, to a further decline in the traditional newsroom environment. “Learning from citizen journalism initiatives,” conclude the authors, “will be an important part of what will define journalism as a professional practice in the 21st century.”

G8 report says rich nations are failing Africa

A new G8 sponsored report issues a damning indictment of the world’s richest countries saying they are falling short on aid commitments to Africa. The Africa Progress Panel says the first world is falling seriously behind in its commitment to help the continent meet it challenge to escape poverty and debt. The aid problem is exacerbated by rising food prices and the impact of global warming. The report suggested innovative ways to meet the aid shortfall and called for immediate assistance in food production, an end to trade barriers, and a drastic increase in African infrastructure projects.

The report entitled Africa's Development: Promises and Prospects (pdf) cites four different but interlocking crises that dominate the global economy. They are the financial crisis in the West, a worsening energy crisis, the threat of global warming, and high food prices which are affecting the world’s poorest people. While it says the world has missed “early opportunities” to deal with the first two crises, it believes it is imperative “we meet the challenge of the third and take immediate steps to address the fourth”.

The Panel has drawn on the work of various institutions and eminent individuals working on African issues to present an independent assessment of progress. The report focuses on the twin challenges of food crisis and global warming. Many countries are undergoing a reversal of decades of economic growth and 100 million people are being pushed back into poverty. Export bans on key commodities such as rice are adding to the problem. The report issues a dire warning that unless a way can be found to reverse the current trend in food prices there will be a “significant increase in hunger, malnutrition, and infant and child mortality”.

The report calls on developed nations to raise the level of financial assistance to affected countries and aid agencies. It also calls on the rich nations to review economic and financial policies to ensure the production of food is not threatened. In the longer term, the report advocates “substantial new investments raise agricultural productivity and food production” in Africa and the wider world. The report also calls for a review of trade policies concerning biofuel subsidies, grain storage and the need to kick-start fertiliser markets. Africa needs fairer access to protected world markets but multi-lateral trade negotiations have been stalled since the Doha round were deadlocked in 2006. It also pleads for prioritising rural development and giving the poor access to world markets. But it warns that “the delivery of promises on aid for trade must not be held hostage to trade deals”.

The report follows other NGO warnings that Africa is ill-prepared for climate change and will bear the brunt of any negative impact. Climate change will further diminish the means of food production and will play havoc with the lives of the global poor. Already disadvantaged by high food prices, the urban poor in particular will suffer greatly if there is any further loss of agricultural productivity due to climate change. The report recommends increased funding for renewable energy noting solar, wind and geothermal production is “very viable” in Africa. It also lauds a Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to prevent the disappearance of tropical rainforests. The plan involves estimating nation’s forest carbon stocks for emissions estimates and providing financial incentives to reduce emissions below a defined threshold.

Investments in infrastructure are also needed to achieve lasting solutions to the food crisis. Africa requires roads, power and water so that farmers to produce and distribute food. Infrastructure projects will also generate economic growth, jobs and income and will help create a productive private sector currently missing in many African countries. 60 per cent of all enterprises fail to thrive due to lack of basic electricity due to a poor national grid or numerous power outages. The report recommends hydroelectric projects such as Congo’s Grand Inga Dam as having the potential to meet a significant share of the continent’s power needs. Poor roads are also a problem with only 12 percent of Africa’s roads paved and 10 percent of all road deaths worldwide occurring in Sub Saharan countries. The report calls for a Trans-African road network (pdf) linking Dakar, Lagos, Khartoum, Luanda, Mombasa, Windhoek and Gaborone.

The Africa progress panel was an initiative of the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. The eleven member Panel members has several high profile members including chair Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Bob Geldof, former International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. The Gleneagles Summit pledged large funds towards debt cancellation and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. But the G8 has been slow to match these pledges with action. It has had success with debt relief but has not yet produced a timetable to progress to the much vaunted goal of doubling aid. The G8 promised $130 billion in aid by 2010 but is likely to fall short by $40 billion.

The report acknowledges that traditional budgetary resources are unlikely to address this shortfall. It suggests innovative new sources of funds such as currency transactions taxes, carbon taxes, taxes on international
air travel and freight transport, a global lottery, and measures to increase private funding of development agencies, Annan and his team say urgent collective work needs to be a priority for the donor community to evaluate these and other options. Africa, they say, is at a critical juncture. It pleads with the G8 to renew its 2002 Canadian Kananaskis Summit goal that no countries genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform, will be denied the chance to achieve their Millennium Goals through lack of finance. Kofi Annan’s introduction put it best: “the world has a stake in realising the African continent's huge potential to thrive."

A meeting of minds: India - AU Summit

The first ever collaborative summit between India and the African Union (AU) has ended yesterday in New Delhi with a pledge to work as partners to address economic and development challenges. Both sides identified rising oil and food prices as top concerns. Tanzanian President and current chair of the 53 nation AU, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete said high prices will hamper efforts around economic growth and reduction of poverty. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed and said both India and Africa needed to increase domestic food production. He promised to help Africa with technology to increase farm productivity.

There is much mutual interest at stake at the summit. Rising food and oil prices threaten many African economies and while India is dealing with a three-year high inflation rate of 7 per cent, which poses a serious difficulty for Singh's government as it contemplates national elections next year. India sees Africa as a cheap and bountiful resource supplier and will look to offer a carrot of easy export conditions, billions of dollars in lines of credit as well as investment of money and skills in low-cost industry and services.

Both sides have also agreed to back each other to gain a bigger role in the proposed expanded UN security council. India, Japan, Germany and Brazil have long been campaigning for several years for permanent seats on a body that remains fixed to the boundaries set for at the end of World War II. Now African countries also are eager to be permanently represented on the council. On Tuesday Singh recruited African support for his country’s push saying in return that India would support any country nominated by Africa for permanent membership. "No one understands better than India and Africa the need for global institutions to reflect current realities and to build a more equitable global economy and polity," he said.

The historic summit was greeted positively in the host country with Newstrack India saying it produced “new bonds of friendship” and laid the foundation for a deepening relationship between resource-rich Africa and Asia’s fast growing economic powerhouse. The relationship is closely following the successful model laid down by China. However Prime Minister Singh claimed India was not in competition with China for African influence. “We are not in any race or competition with China or any other country,” he said. “It is up to Africa to determine the path they wish to pursue and to the extent of what lies within our capacity, we will offer whatever help is required.”

Whatever the truth of that, there is little doubt that with one third of the world’s population between them, India’s evolving partnership with Africa will become a major factor of world influence in the next couple of decades. On the Monday prior to the two day summit, foreign Ministers from key African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia, South Africa and Tanzania attended a closed-door meeting with their Indian counterpart to set the tone for the conference to follow.

Sources close to the meeting said the Africans and Indians agreed to co-operate in widely varied key areas including economic, trade, industry and investment, agriculture, finance, regional integration, politics, science, technology, research and development, ICT (Information & Communications Technologies), water and sanitation and poverty eradication to meet their challenges. At the summit itself, Manmohan Singh talked grandly of the desire to turn the 21st century into a "century of Asia and Africa".

India’s summit website reflected its leader’s optimism and discusses the “philosophy” of the forum in flowery language. It talked about the similarities of both sides including the struggles against colonialism and apartheid and the need to “jointly accept the challenges of a globalising world.” Their vision of the partnership saw the need to develop "a new paradigm of cooperation which will take into account Africa’s own aspirations for pan-African institutions and development programmes".

Meanwhile the official African objectives of the summit were more prosaic: strengthening co-operation, setting up frameworks to reinforce that co-operation and harnessing the resources of the continent’s Diaspora populations, Africa was represented at the summit by many of its most senior leaders. Tanzania’s Kikwete was just one of a swag of presidents in attendance including Ghana’s John Agyekum Kufuor, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki, Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade, and the DRC’s Joseph Kabila. They will all return to their home countries emboldened by a new direction in world affairs that owes nothing to their former western colonial masters.

Save the Children report paints shocking picture of child mortality

Save the Children UK have released a new report that says that nearly ten million children die worldwide each year before they reach the age of five. The figures get worse as the children are younger. Four million of these die within the first 28 days of their life. Three million die in the first week and two million die on the day they are born. An incredible 99 per cent of all these deaths occur in developing countries. The report also contains a new 'Wealth and Survival Index' which compares child mortality to national income per person. This shows which nations are squandering their resources and Angola is ranked as the worst offender.

The report (pdf) blames three major causes for child deaths. Firstly, poor access to treatment and prevention means for major diseases such as pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and AIDS. Secondly are infrastructure factors such poor health systems, undernutrition, lack of clean water and female illiteracy. The third factor, says the report, are the outcome of political and policy choices that are the responsibility of governments and other agencies. Bad governance, violent conflict and worsening environmental trends are additional underlying causes that profoundly impact children’s survival prospects.

The countries with the worst child mortality rates are among the world’s poorest and to have experienced war or violent conflict, such as Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia and Sierra Leone. Five countries: India, Nigeria, DRC, Pakistan and China account of half of all deaths of children under five. Sierra Leone has the worst mortality rate, closely followed by Angola. Afghanistan is third worst and the only non-African country in the top ten. But on the Wealth and Survival Index oil-rich Angola is considered the worst offender. Although it now has a per-capita income high enough to put it in the "middle income" category, 20 percent of all Angolans still die before their fifth birthday.

Angola is still recovering from a 27 year civil war which ended in 2002. The former Portuguese colony was supported by the Soviet Union after independence in 1975. However they faced a long and debilitating war against Unita rebels backed by the US and apartheid-regime South Africa. After several broken ceasefires, it took the death of Unita leader Jonas Savimbi to bring the rebels to the table. However a separate struggle still remains in the enclave of Cabinda where 60 per cent of Angola’s oil resides. There have also been strong allegations that oil revenues have been squandered through corruption and mismanagement. Most Angolan still live in desperate poverty on less than $1US a day. The Index shows that Angola’s child mortality is strongly related to grossly unequal distribution of wealth.

Angola’s problems are not unique in sub-Saharan Africa. A child’s risk of dying on their first day of life is about 500 times greater than their risk of dying when they are one month old. The first few hours of a baby’s life are therefore critical, but far too often basic steps that could save the life of a child are not taken. A 2007 study in Ghana showed that 16 percent of neonatal deaths could be prevented by breastfeeding infants from birth. That figure rises to 22 percent, if breastfeeding begins within one hour of birth.

With two million victims annually, pneumonia is the largest single killer of children under five and is responsible for more deaths than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. However the underlying cause is malnutrition. Children without food do not have a strong immune system, and are unable to defend themselves against diseases. Pneumonia can be treated through community diagnosis and the use of antibiotics. However many poor countries do not have access to such successful antibiotics as Cotrimoxazole and Amoxicillin. In the 1990s, just one in five children who developed pneumonia was treated with antibiotics. Costs have dropped all over the world but the price is still beyond the means of most poor people.

Save the Children’s director of policy David Mepham concludes that a child's chance of making it to its fifth birthday depends on where it is born. But he disputes this is beyond human control. While poverty and inequality are consistent underlying causes of child deaths, all countries, even the poorest, can cut child mortality if they pursue the right policies and prioritise their poorest families,” he said. “Good government choices save children's lives but bad ones are a death sentence.”

Congo presses ahead with Grand Inga Dam

When Zambia was hit by its second electricity blackout in 48 hours last week, it turned to its unlikely major power importer to solve the problem: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC is more commonly known for its interminable problems due to long-running war but is looking towards the mighty Congo River’s power generating capacity to forge a major new export industry for much of Southern Africa. Although Zambia has three hydro power stations of its own, it relies on the DRC to overcome a shortfall.

The key to the DRC’s long-term prospects in this industry is the long promised Grand Inga dam on the lower Congo. When it is delivered, the Grand Inga will be the world’s largest hydropower scheme. It is also envision by the international economic community to link into a power grid across Africa that will spur the continent's industrial economic development. Grand Inga has the potential to produce up to 39,000 MW of electricity, over twice the power generation of Three Gorges Dam in China, up to a third of all Africa’s current needs.

The major problem is the price tag: $US80 billion, well beyond the infrastructure budget of a poor African country. The scheme requires an international approach. Grand Inga is listed as a priority project of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the World Energy Council. Meanwhile other groups are proceeding with their own plans. Three days ago, South African company Eskom and the UN environment agency UNEP presented a $50 billion plan to dam the lower Congo. It is unclear whether this cheaper option included schemes to divert water to dryer regions south and north of the humid Congo Basin. Nor have Eskom revealed the local environmental consequences.

The Congo River has long been recognised for its damming potential. When the country prepared for independence in the late 1950s, its political leaders recognised that modernisation of the country required massive amounts of electricity for factories, cities, hospitals and schools. Its leaders decided to build a dam to span the river at one of the 32 cataracts on Livingstone Falls between the capital Kinshasa and the Atlantic Ocean. The narrow gorges within the Falls create pressures within the river capable of generating waves 12 metres high followed by whirlpools strong enough to suck trees under water.

In 1972 under the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, the first hydroelectric dam opened at the city of Inga, about 55km upriver from the seaport of Matadi. Known as Inga I, it was joined by Inga II a few kilometres away in 1982. The dams not only enabled Mobutu to control the flow of power to the rebellious province of Katanga but also remain the only extant hydroelectric dams in the country. They span the river where it narrows, plunging its way through a gorge. While they have been instrumental in supplying electricity to the people of the Congo basin, they represent just six per cent of the river’s potential hydroelectric capacity and there remains 30 other unexploited cataracts.

The idea of the Grand Inga megadam has been around since Inga II was completed. The likely cataract for the dam has a drop of almost one hundred metres promising a huge amount of energy. The dam has been slow getting off the ground while the DRC has been entrenched in war. Now as peace emerges, the plans are being dusted down again. However critics are worried by the environmental consequences. The size of the dam will create a massive reservoir of water that will flood forests and farms and also prevents migration of fish while killing millions of them sucked into the blades of the turbines. The World Wildlife Fund has warned that as conflict in the region subsides, a hydropower development presents the greater threat to the freshwater biodiversity of the Congo Basin, one of the most important wilderness areas left on the planet.

The dangers inherent in the potential size of Grand Inga is also shared by the World Rainforest Movement (WRM). They argue that because the Congo River runs strongly all year (due to rains on both sides of the equator) no large dam is needed. They say that to connect Inga to an Africa-wide electricity grid would cost more than $10 billion but would still not reach the hundreds of millions of Africa's rural poor. The Inga project departs from the goal of small-scale sustainable energy projects which would bring electricity to rural people through local wind and solar power projects. According to WRM, megaprojects are more likely to bring social, economic and environmental disruption of people’s livelihoods, lands and life.