Gone

Tanzania

African (des)Union

THE UN estimates that 12m people across the Horn of Africa may still be at risk of starvation. Over 30,000 old people and children may already have died. The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya hosts 400,000 Somalis and could receive another 100,000 by the end of the year. In response the continent’s overseeing body, the African Union (AU), recently held a pledging conference.

The idea was for African heads of state to come to the AU headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and make a bold 21st-century statement of African brotherhood. After several postponements, the conference took place on August 25th—but only 20 representatives of the AU’s 54 countries turned up, plus a handful of heads of state, notably those of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Equatorial Guinea, whose president holds the AU’s annual chair.

Together they pledged just $50m; the UN says another $1.1 billion is urgently needed. It is not clear when this offering will be deposited with the AU for distribution to humanitarian agencies. Jean Ping, a Gabonese former foreign minister who runs the AU’s permanent commission, talked up the conference by adding in $300m in funds reshuffled from the African Development Bank. He noted that AU employees had given two days’ salary towards famine relief.

By contrast, the Turkish public alone has raised $200m in the past month. And Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited Mogadishu, Somalia’s wrecked and dangerous capital, along with members of his family and cabinet, to show—in his words—“common humanity”. South Africa’s government, by contrast, pledged just $1m.

The AU’s main contribution to Somalia has been a military force, drawn mainly from Uganda and Burundi, which has prevented an extreme Islamist group known as the Shabab from taking over the capital. This force also protected Mr Erdogan during his visit.

Whereas the AU and its richest members showed little interest in tackling the famine, it has been left to ordinary Africans to campaign on social networks and by texting money via mobile phones. An organisation called Africans Act 4 Africa says that Kenyans alone have texted $2m. Some African businesses have been generous too, pledging a lot more than South Africa’s government. And smaller fry have also made their mark. Abdirashid Duale, the owner of Dahabshiil, a money-transfer company based in Somaliland, has given $100,000. “Just the beginning,” he says.

Africa - Aid or Roads?

WHETHER it is taking vegetables to market, getting water from a tap or turning on the lights, almost everything is slower, less reliable or more expensive in Africa than it needs to be. The African Development Bank (AfDB), which finances big investments on the continent, says that a shortage of roads, housing, water, sanitation and electricity reduces sub-Saharan Africa’s output by about 40%. There is no controversy in saying that shoddy infrastructure is holding the continent back.

But how to finance more of it? Some want to divert aid money. Suggesting that an engineering firm might make better use of charity than Oxfam or Save the Children sounded like heresy once. But the terms of the debate have shifted—for several reasons. The work of low-cost Asian companies (paid with revenues from African resources) has shown that new roads and ports can be affordable. There is also a new sense of urgency: as populations grow, the need for better infrastructure becomes even greater. Finally, the rise of African banks and stockmarkets has made public-private partnerships more feasible.

Some critics of the aid industry believe that its efforts should be limited to spending on primary schools in the poorest areas, medicines and mosquito nets for all, and a few key agricultural initiatives. But much education work has been labelled ineffective. A village in Tanzania with poor schooling may be better off getting a road than a teacher, critics say. Once local farmers can transport produce to market they will be able and willing to pay for schools—and to make sure they work.

But Africa needs more than rural roads. It needs entire new logistics networks linking airports, railways and warehouses—and new dams and electricity grids to power them. Meanwhile, Africa’s growing cities need better water supplies and sanitation. The World Bank points out that even relatively prosperous African cities, such as Lagos and Nairobi, are in worse shape than they were a decade ago. Violent crime has risen. Cholera and other diseases are back. City roads have crumbled.

The AfDB reckons that Africa can become a middle-income continent within a decade by spending some $90 billion a year on infrastructure. That is only 5% of the continent’s GDP (though double its current infrastructure spending, according to the AfDB).

Others are more sceptical. A generation ago, during a previous resource boom, African states set about building roads and railways. In few countries did this lead to prosperity. Lacking good governance—the focus of much modern aid work—corruption surged, as it often does with infrastructure projects. Donor countries also insisted on using favoured home contractors rather than local workers. Maintenance was routinely neglected. And glory-hungry politicians opted for useless prestige projects.

The Welcome

Remember Rwanda

In a park in London, two men greet each other as old friends. One is grey-haired and American, the other a tall Rwandan in a smart suit. They embrace. The American wipes tears from his eyes. The last time the two men met was in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, in 1994: the year of the genocide in which 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.

The two men, Jean-Francois Gisimba and Carl Wilkens, met a handful of times in that year but in the most extreme of circumstances. Together with Jean-Francois' brother, Damas, they saved more than 400 children and hundreds of adults from the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia intent on eradicating Tutsi "inyenzi" or "cockroaches".

Seventeen years later, the Aegis Trust, which campaigns against genocide, has brought Jean-Francois and Carl back together in the UK. At last, Jean-Francois has the chance to say: "You saved my life but I don't understand why."

Back in 1994, Jean-Francois, then 24, and Damas were running the orphanage their late parents had founded in Kigali in the 1980s. Of mixed Hutu and Tutsi parentage, they were caring for around 60 children of different ethnicities. "We were brought up not to see a difference," Jean-Francois says. Damas ran the orphanage full-time, while Jean-Francois also worked for Radio Rwanda.

On 6 April, a private jet carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down near Kigali airport, triggering the genocide. Government-controlled news organisations began reporting that the Hutu president had been assassinated by Tutsi rebels. Within hours, Kigali was surrounded by roadblocks and the systematic murder of Tutsi families by militia groups began.

Jean-Francois rushed home from the radio station to find hundreds of people gathered at the orphanage, seeking shelter. "They came not because they thought we could save them, but because they didn't want to die alone," he says.

People were hiding in the attic, in the basement and in locked rooms, sick with dysentery and starvation. The brothers kept them alive for months with the help of Red Cross parcels. Because of their father, they had Hutu identity cards, and Damas began to negotiate for the orphanage's survival.

"My brother would go for a beer with the killers," Jean-Francois remembers. "He would say: don't come, don't panic the kids, but he was also protecting the adults inside. He was pretending to be with them."

As the killings continued, the militia members became restless. Armed men began turning up drunk at the orphanage. On one visit they tortured and killed eight people they found hiding on the roof. Then the brothers heard from friends that they planned to kill everyone at the orphanage.

"The day you came was the day the massacre was going to happen," Jean-Francois tells Carl. "There was a knock at the door and I thought: this is it. A boy said, there is a muzungu – a white man – at the door looking for you."

Jean-Francois looks at the man sitting next to him. "It was you in your white Toyota Corolla."

Carl was then the 36-year-old head of Adrai, an Adventist relief organisation working in Rwanda. On 10 April, the UN had evacuated all foreigners from the country, including Carl's wife, parents and three young children.

Carl was the only American who stayed through the genocide. By negotiating with key militia figures including Colonel Tharsisse Renzaho, the prefect of Kigali, he managed to get supplies of water and food through to people in dire need. Renzaho had told him there was an orphanage that needed help.

"I came out and you started telling me: 'I'm bringing water,'" Jean-Francois says. "I wanted you to stop talking. I had the feeling that you did not know what was going on. You just wanted to deliver water and go to the next place. I dragged you to Damas's office.

"I said to you: they are coming in five or 10 minutes to kill all of us. I just wanted you to stay there and witness – so that later you could tell people what had happened."

Carl wanted to leave immediately to fetch help. "I remember standing in the parking lot by my Corolla. You kept on telling me: don't go."

Jean-Francois shakes his head. "We went together slowly up to the car. You were trying to start it. You looked in the mirror and I remember you putting your hands through your hair. You got out again and got on your radio."

As the men stood by the car, dozens of Interahamwe militia began surrounding the orphanage. "The leader said: 'I am coming to take all the Tutsis who are here.'"

"Carl was still on his radio. Then I heard them say: 'We were going to carry out our mission, but the American is there.' The boss said in Kinyarwanda: 'Leave the place, don't do it in front of that man.'"

With Jean-Francois still begging him to stay, Carl left to raise the alarm. When he reached Renzaho's office he found that the prime minister, Jean Kambanda – who would later plead guilty to genocide – was visiting.

"He was one of three people orchestrating the genocide," Carl says. "But what choice did I have? I said: 'There's a massacre about to happen at Gisimba.'

"He talked to his men and said: 'We're aware of this.' He promised me that the orphans would be OK. He shook hands with me."

At the orphanage, Jean-Francois waited. "For three days nothing happened," he says. "Then an army major arrived. Many Interahamwe came behind him. One of the biggest killers – who had killed thousands – was there. 'Inyenzi' he called us – cockroaches."

The major took Jean-Francois aside. "He said to me, 'I am not a killer, I am with you, but you need to tell me the truth.' I decided to trust him. I said, well, the truth is we are hiding many people – more than 400 children, and a big number of adults, widows. I don't even know the number myself.

"He said: 'Be ready to be evacuated.'"

By the next day, more militia had surrounded the orphanage. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi rebel army fighting their way back into Rwanda, were now close to the capital. "Bombs were landing like rain from the hills," Jean-Francois says. "I thought: now we are going to die.

"The major returned with 12 bodyguards. He said to his men, 'Whoever tries to shoot, you shoot all of them.' If only more soldiers had been like him.

"I thought these were my last moments. There was shooting. They took us to the road. He packed all of us into buses. He had a revolver in his hand and a Kalashnikov on his shoulder. They took us all up to St Michel Cathedral. Two to three days later the RPF took the area and we were safe."

More than 17 years later, Carl and Jean-Francois have met again because the Gisimba orphanage (still run by Jean-Francois and Damas) needs money. Next week is the 25th anniversary of the orphanage's foundation. "We want it to have a future," Jean-Francois says.

In London, the American turns to the Rwandan and says: "I never knew if it was the right decision to leave you at the orphanage."

"It was the right decision," Jean-Francois replies. "But what about my question – why did you help us?"

Carl talks about not abandoning his Rwandan staff and friends, but Jean-Francois is shaking his head. "You were on the other side of the city so why cross through all those roadblocks, bombs and bullets to get to the orphanage?"

Carl looks at him as if he should know. Jean-Francois, after all, is a man who let hundreds shelter in the orphanage knowing it meant almost certain death. "Why did you help those people?" he asks.

Jean-Francois looks at him with incredulity. "How would we turn people away? We were taught by our parents that we should respect other people's lives. If you tell people to get away you are an animal not a human being."

And so somehow he himself answers the question he has been waiting 17 years to ask.

David Cato (RIP)

A New Country is Born

Africa in Black...

A 72-year-old Ghanaian woman has been burned to death on suspicion of being a witch, prompting condemnation from the country's human rights groups.

Ama Hemmah was allegedly tortured into confessing she was a witch, doused in kerosene and set alight. She suffered horrific burns and died the following day.

Belief in witchcraft is relatively common in Ghana but there was widespread revulsion at the killing.

Hemmah, from Tema, was allegedly attacked by a group of five people, one of whom is an evangelical pastor, Ghana's Daily Graphic reported.

Three women and two men have been arrested. They are Nancy Nana Ama Akrofie, 46, photographer Samuel Ghunney, 50, Emelia Opoku, 37, Mary Sagoe, 52, and pastor Samuel Fletcher Sagoe, 55.

The suspects say the death was an accident and deny committing any crime. They claim they were trying to exorcise an evil spirit from the woman by rubbing anointing oil on her but it accidentally caught fire.

Augustine Gyening, assistant police commissioner, told the Daily Graphic that Sagoe saw Hemmah sitting in his sister's bedroom on 20 November and raised an alarm, attracting the attention of people in the neighbourhood.

Gyening added that the suspects claimed Hemmah was a known witch and subjected her to severe torture, compelling her to confess. He said Ghunney then asked Opoku for a gallon of kerosene and with the help of his accomplices poured it over the victim and set her ablaze.

A student nurse, Deborah Pearl Adumoah, came to Hemmah's rescue and sent her to Tema General hospital, but she died within 24 hours from severe burns.

Hemmah's son, Stephen Yeboah, 48, told the Daily Graphic: "Our mother was never a witch and had never suffered any mental disorder throughout her life, apart from exhibiting signs of forgetfulness and other symptoms of old age."

Newspaper pictures showing the woman's injuries have caused anger in Ghana. The incident has been condemned by human rights and women's activists.

Comfort Akosua Edu, of the country's Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, said: "The commission finds the action of the perpetrators of this atrocious crime as very barbaric and one that greatly dims the nation's human rights record.

"That they came and met her in their room does not in any way warrant branding her as a notorious witch who deserved to be subjected to such an ordeal."

She added: "It is very disheartening that some men of God, whose responsibility it is to help save lives, could orchestrate the killing of innocent souls, all in the name of God."

Africa. Smile. Football. Hope.

World Cup Champion

Free Western Sahara

28m

It´s estimated that, between 1450 and 1800, around 28m people were abducted in Africa to be sold as slaves mainly in America.

Geopolitics: A New African State?

New South Sudan flag and map showing its relative size to overall Sudan.

There Is Hope

Despite the persistence of Africa’s natural and man-made horrors, the latest trend is cheeringly positive

UNTIL the past few weeks of global turmoil, Africa’s doughty band of boosters were feeling they at last had something to smile about. After four decades of political and economic stagnation that kept most of their 800m-odd people in poverty and gloom, the continent’s 48 sub-Saharan countries have been growing for the past five years at a perky overall rate of 5% or so. If they maintain this pace or even bump it up a bit, Africa still has a chance of taking off. Now, with commodity prices likely to fall, world markets sure to shrivel and Western aid set to plateau or even dip, Africa, though more isolated from the global economy than other parts of the world, is bound to suffer from its ill breeze. But maybe not as badly. Once described by this newspaper, perhaps with undue harshness, as “the hopeless continent”, it could yet confound its legion of gloomsters and show that its oft-heralded renaissance is not just another false dawn prompted by the passing windfall of booming commodity prices, but the start of something solid and sustainable. Despite its manifold and persistent problems of lousy governments and erratic climates (see article), Africa has a chance of rising.

A long way to go

Pessimists have plenty of evidence to call on. There have been spurts of growth before, especially when commodity prices have risen sharply. But when those prices have fallen, growth has fizzled. Africa’s few recent successes tend to be set against a previous history of disaster. Ghana, for instance, is often cited as one of the most hopeful cases, but at independence in 1957 it was nearly as well off as South Korea; now, despite its recent bounce, it is still some 30 times poorer in wealth per person. The lively growth in several other hopeful spots—for instance, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda—must likewise be set against the horrors of their quite recent past. In fact, the sole country in Africa with a record of consistently strong political and economic progress is Botswana.

Many basic indices remain grim. Africans’ lifespan is still declining, owing largely to the scourge of AIDS, 60% of whose worldwide victims are African. A recent World Bank paper was guarded as to whether the African surge would last. Most of the quicker growth, it notes, is due to soaring revenues enjoyed by just eight sub-Saharan African countries blessed with oil. A third of Africa’s countries—by far the highest proportion in any continent—are trapped in civil wars or cycles of violent unrest. The two biggest in area, Sudan and Congo, are ravaged by strife and misgovernment. Zimbabwe, once a jewel of southern Africa, is still a nightmare, despite a recent agreement to forge a government of national unity. The World Bank paper bemoans Africa’s standards of governance.

Perhaps even more worrying, in the past year or so, three of Africa’s leading countries have had heavy setbacks. Nigeria’s election was the shoddiest since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999; Kenya, east Africa’s hub, succumbed to ethnic mayhem after a disputed poll; and South Africa, easily the sub-Saharan continent’s leading power in every way, producing one-third of its entire GDP, has entered an ugly phase of politics, authoritarian if not yet undemocratic, just when it should be setting an example of tolerant pluralism to the rest of Africa. The recent violence against black foreigners is a reminder that the bottom third of South Africans still face gnawing poverty.

All the same, the boosters’ case is stronger than before. Political freedom, however patchy, is commoner than it was a generation ago. Two-thirds of African countries now limit presidential terms; at least 14 leaders (with a few bad exceptions) have felt obliged to step down as a result. Multi-party systems, however fraught, are more usual; the notion of political accountability and choice is more widely accepted. The media, partly because of the internet, are livelier. The latest index of African governance funded by Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born telecoms mogul, suggests a general improvement.

The presumption of state control under the rubric of “African socialism” (an illusory third way) has been junked. Most local leaders accept that Africa must join the global economy to prosper, however shaky it looks right now. The mobile-phone revolution has hugely helped Africans, especially poor peasants and traders. Banking systems are modernising and mortgages more readily offered to an emerging middle class. Businessmen around the world have been investing more, especially in Africa’s better-governed countries. Even those that lack natural wealth have grown a bit faster. The spectacular advent of China into Africa’s market is, on balance, a bonus.

Another report, co-sponsored by the World Bank, gently dissents from the certitudes of the “Washington consensus” that pure free marketry could cure all, and that Africa must just open up to trade, tighten its fiscal strings and sell off the state. One size in varied Africa does not fit all. The rich world could, for instance, offer time-limited trade preferences.

Feel each stone as you cross the river

Other devices could help too. America’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000 has spurred African exports by dropping American tariffs. Another promising new mechanism is the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a voluntary code that a score of African countries have adopted, with governments and foreign firms accounting openly for their dealings—in contrast to mineral-rich Congo, whose government ludicrously claimed in 2006 to have received only $86,000 in mineral earnings. The creation of national savings funds in commodity-flush countries is another good idea. On the farming front, issuing individual land titles, no easy task in a continent where much land is still communally held, is another. Pragmatism often beats dogma.

So Africa has a rare chance to break out of its poverty trap. It would be hard even if governments were honest and efficient. Sadly, most are still not. Amid all the grim drawbacks of climate, disease, illiteracy and ethnic division, bad and corrupt government is still by far the biggest. But the news overall is cheerier. And the rich world, troubled as it is, must never give up in its effort to help the poor one to stand on its own feet.

(from The Economist)

Funny Guy of the Day (No 2,341)

"Go and steal as long as you don't take too much."
J.D. Mobutu

An African Hero

Mo Ibrahim helped to bring mobile phones to Africa. Now he has bigger plans

IN 1998, as the telecoms boom was under way, Mo Ibrahim was amazed that big companies were rushing into the mobile-phone business around the world, yet not in Africa. There they saw only problems: poverty, unrest and corruption. Mr Ibrahim, a veteran of the telecoms industry in Britain and Sudan, was at the time running a consultancy he had founded in London. Amid the cigar smoke and snifters that followed its directors' dinners, an idea formed. Might it be possible to set up a pan-African mobile operator—and to do so without paying bribes?
This was the genesis of Celtel, which is now one of Africa's largest mobile operators, with some 20m subscribers in 15 countries.When Mr Ibrahim sold Celtel in 2005 to MTC, a Kuwaiti operator, for $3.4 billion, it demonstrated that the continent was open for business. Rather than charity, he insists, “the way forward for Africa is investment.”

Building businesses in Africa is important to Mr Ibrahim, who had to leave the continent as a young man in order to pursue his career. Born in Sudan and raised and educated in Egypt, he started off as an engineer at Sudan's national phone company. After further study in Britain he went on to become technical director at Cellnet, the wireless arm of BT, Britain's biggest telecoms operator. (Cellnet was subsequently sold, renamed O2 and is now owned by Telefónica of Spain.) He left in 1989 to set up an engineering consultancy that designed mobile networks, and sold the firm for just over $900m to Marconi in 2000.

These experiences paved the way for Celtel's emergence. The consultancy enabled Mr Ibrahim to peer into the business models of dozens of mobile operators, from which he concluded that an African operator would work. His time at BT was also informative: big companies, he says, teach a fellow everything he ought not to do in order to be successful. “Later on in life I was not worried about taking on the big guys, because you know they are not efficient,” he says. And Mr Ibrahim's previous success meant that the motivation behind Celtel's establishment was not solely commercial. He and his co-founders had already made their fortunes and regarded Celtel as a political and intellectual test. That is why they happily ventured into risky African markets and refused to pay bribes.

Now that mobile telephony is booming in Africa, Mr Ibrahim has other plans. Not for him the typical rush into private equity. Instead he set up a foundation last year with the novel (and, say critics, utopian) mission of promoting good governance in Africa. It plans to award an annual prize of $5m to retired African leaders who rule well and then stand down, rather than trying to cling to power. The foundation is working with Harvard University to establish a scoring system with which to assess potential candidates. The prize committee is chaired by Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations. The first award will be presented in October, though the prize will be presented only in years when a worthy winner can be found. By that point Mr Ibrahim plans to have stepped down as the chairman of Celtel to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

Meanwhile Mr Ibrahim has also put up $150m to establish a fund to invest in African businesses. From its newly opened offices in London, the Africa Enterprise Fund will seek out promising companies in financial services, consumer goods, energy and agricultural processing. The aim is to focus on established businesses that need cash and experienced management to grow, and the average investment is expected to be around $20m. Only companies that can expand their operations regionally or throughout Africa will be considered. Mr Ibrahim has appointed Tsega Gebreyes, Celtel's former strategy chief, to help run the fund. This is because the fund's approach is to apply the Celtel formula in other fields: identify inefficiencies, consolidate fragmented operations, go pan-continental and develop a respected brand. The goal is scale. A large company that operates in several African markets can attract a higher calibre of managers than a gaggle of local ones, and can have more political clout when demands for bribes crop up.

Politics, philosophy and economics

Though there are no direct links between the foundation and the fund, the two are symbiotic. Business and investment in Africa can succeed only if there is good governance, which is what the foundation is intended to promote. And economic development is necessary in turn to give people a stake in improving the political process. The foundation's $5m prize is a pittance, it is true, when compared with the spoils that can be extracted by staying in power. But the initiative may not be totally futile: given the impotence of Africa's intergovernmental bodies it will do no harm at all to produce an annual public ranking of African governance. And the foundation will offer a carrot where other non-governmental organisations carry sticks.

The investment fund is also tiny when set against the magnitude of Africa's problems. But as Celtel shows, some businesses can have a powerful ripple effect, promoting economic activity and generating new investment. Celtel employs around 8,000 people directly, for example, but it and other mobile operators indirectly provide jobs to around 170,000 people in Africa who resell prepaid airtime. More broadly, mobile phones also promote entrepreneurship and economic activity by widening access to markets and making up for poor or non-existent transport infrastructure. Similar ripple effects ought to be possible in other fields such as financial services and energy.

Thirty years ago Mr Ibrahim had to leave Africa for Europe in search of education and professional success. He hopes that fostering indigenous African companies will help ensure that tomorrow's engineers and entrepreneurs can find their opportunities closer to home.