The International Red Cross has warned that Zimbabwe could be facing a very severe food crisis.

The charity says that more than 2.7 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, are in “dire need” of food aid.

There are already more than two million people who need food aid in the country and that number is going to rise because the harvest has failed, the group says.

They are appealing for donors to contribute more than $20 million USD in funding.

There is also concern about the possible impact of food shortage on the estimated one million children left orphaned after their parents died of AIDS.

Return to Main

A group of Nigerians armed with guns and machetes has killed hundreds of people, including women and children, in a number of villages near the central city of Jos.

Local villagers – predominantly Christian – blame Muslims for the attack. Clashes between the two communities are not uncommon due to a historical feud over control for the region’s fertile farmland.

Human rights groups say poor governance and a lack of accountability have exacerbated the conflict.

But Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s acting president, has responded to the latest violence by ordering his security forces to hunt down the killers and bring order to the region.

More from the Associated Press:

Rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 200 people including a 4-day-old infant, residents said, less than two months after sectarian violence in the volatile region left more than 300 dead.
One aid worker said Monday it was difficult to tell how many people had been killed because some bodies were charred beyond recognition.
The violence in three mostly Christian villages Sunday appeared to be reprisal attacks following the January unrest in Jos when most of the victims were Muslims, said Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo. State officials did not comment on what may have prompted the latest attacks.
Plateau State spokesman Gregory Yenlong said officials would conduct mass burials for the victims on Monday.

The bodies of the dead lined dusty streets in three villages south of the regional capital of Jos, local journalists and a civil rights group said Sunday. They said at least 200 bodies had been counted by Sunday afternoon.

The bodies of children tangled with each other in a local morgue, including a diaper-clad toddler. Another young victim appeared to have been scalped, while others had severed hands and feet. One female victim in the morgue appeared to have been stripped below the waist, but later covered by a strip of black cloth.

Mark Lipdo, a program coordinator for the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian aid group, confirmed 93 dead in Dogo Nahawa village alone.
“These are the ones we know, but there are corpses charred beyond recognition,” he said.

The youngest was just 3 months old, Lipdo said. Residents there also said the dead included a 4-day-old infant.

The killings represent the latest religious violence in an area once known as Nigeria’s top tourist destination, adding to the tally of thousands already killed in the last decade in the name of religious and political ambitions.

Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people and Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Jos lies in Nigeria’s “middle belt,” where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.

Muslims have complained about being denied jobs and other benefits in Jos by the Christian-dominated government. However, many Muslims also operate shops and businesses in a nearby town where the tourist trade has dried up and the surrounding tin mines have been abandoned, stoking fears for Christians about retaliation from Muslim neighbors.

Jos has been under a dusk-til-dawn curfew enforced by the military since January’s religious-based violence. It was not clear how the attackers managed to elude the military curfew early Sunday.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan said security agencies would be stationed along Plateau state’s borders to keep outsiders from coming in with more weapons and fighters.

“(We will) undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers,” he said in a statement. “While it is too early to state categorically what is responsible for this renewed wave of violence, we want to inform Nigerians that the security services are on top of the situation.”

On Monday, an Associated Press reporter saw nearly 100 soldiers in tan military fatigues and bulletproof vests standing near armored cars at an entrance into Jos. The street was mostly deserted but soldiers appeared tense, holding Kalashnikov rifles at their hips and pointing them at passing cars.

More than 600 people had fled to a makeshift camp that still held victims from January’s violence, said Red Cross official Adamu Abubakar. He expected more to come, putting an even bigger strain on the already limited humanitarian aid for those fleeing the violence.

In Dogo Nahawa, three miles (five kilometers) south of Jos, those who survived claimed their attackers shouted at them in Hausa and Fulani — two local languages used by Muslims.

Yenlong, the state government spokesman, also said police were seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, because Bayari’s comments incited the attack. He offered no other details.
But the chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the attack.

Nigerian military units began surrounding the affected villages Sunday afternoon, Waubo, the Red Cross spokesman, said. He said the agency did not know how many people may have died in the fighting but workers have been sent to local morgues and hospitals to check.

The latest death toll update stands at over 500 dead.

Return to Main

Zimbabwe began as a liberation from colonialism. 30 years on, white farmers are being violently driven from their land. Is it a question of land redistribution, a way to reverse the injustices of the past? Or is it about wiping out the white population, a political game ensuring that a controversial leader remains in power?

A new documentary entitled The Last White Man looks at the ongoing racial strife in Zimbabwe and the systematic persecution of white farmers in the country.

Return to Main

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, was once hailed as the man who made his country’s education system a success.

In spite of political and economic problems in the country, Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa and once boasted some of the finest public schools on the continent.

But Zimbabwe’s education system is now in crisis and its poorly paid teachers are leaving government-run schools in the thousands.

As Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa reports, many parents are now searching for alternative resources to educate their children.

Return to Main

Somalia’s spiralling instability has reached the capital, Mogadishu, as at least 17 people were killed and 61 injured in fighting between government forces and opposition fighters. But just who is fuelling the conflict this time around and is the country becoming a battleground in the fight against al-Qaeda?

Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Africa Growth Initiative of The Brookings Institution has an article worth a read: Fractionalized, Armed and Lethal: Why Somalia Matters.

For the last few years, Somalia has held strong onto the top spot in both the Index of Failed States and the Fragile States Index. And this country—if one can use that term—is likely to maintain its lead for the foreseeable future. But this is nothing to brag about.

By definition of a failed state, Somalia has no single legitimate governing authority and is divided among numerous constituent factions that are relatively strong and have control of some lucrative sources of revenue. These factions are well organized and function more or less as independent states. Yet no single faction has a monopoly on violence, which explains why Somalia has remained a failed state for so long. In essence, the various factions have no interest in a well organized sovereign state. As such, the failed state is in a precarious equilibrium, resulting in what may appear as paradoxically both a functional and stable, stateless society.

Probably because of its fragile nature and the fact that it is small and poor, the international community has grossly underestimated the capacity of this country to destabilize the region and to engage in extremely costly activities to the international community. At present, there are no well-coordinated international efforts to rebuild this state. Yet this country—or better, its various factions—possesses the potential to inflict major global damage and could be the next hotbed for international terrorism. Ignoring Somalia would be a huge political and humanitarian mistake. But the Somali state may also have degenerated beyond the stage where marginal interventions can be beneficial; thus the focus should shift to building a new state. As the events of the last two decades have shown, the Somali state was not consensual and focusing on reverting to the same structure is likely to be futile.

Fractionalized Society

A number of factors make Somalia an increasingly volatile country. The first of course is the presence of numerous factions that lay claim to a specific territory or strong mass of supporters. Some factions have established control of a sizeable part of the country while others consist of small warring groups. Of these factions, many have a claim to illegal enterprises and have established themselves as legitimate tax collectors or traders. With the vacuum created by the absence of a state sovereign, each faction has established its own organized “government” and possesses substantial capacity to impart violence. The factions include the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, both of which have been able to control a significant section of the country and are able to maintain some degree of peace. Other notable factions are the warring groups in the central region, including the Federal Transitional Government, Al-Shabab, Hizbul-Islam and Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Then of course there are other groups like the Islamic courts that control most of South-Central Somalia, and the infamous pirates, whose sole interest is monetary gain (and which may support some of the other insurgent groups).

With all of these groups competing for control, it is not surprising that some of these factions have connections or are sympathetic with terrorist groups. Some Somali factions have accepted financial support from terror organizations in order to settle clan disputes.

The absence of a central authority combined with its general lawlessness makes Somalia an ideal haven for terrorists.

Illegal Arms Market

Not only is Somalia heavily fractioned, but these factions are well-armed. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 placed an arms embargo on Somalia, reports indicate that the number and variety of small arms available in Somalia is greater than at any time since the early 1990s. Private businesses, nation states, arms dealers, Somalis in the Diaspora, and local clans/militia all contribute to the growing number of smuggled weapons in the country. In fact, small arms are so prolific in Somalia that they are a form of currency in most parts of the country.

The Somali arms market, based in Mogadishu, is a key hub for arms trading in East Africa and weapons are constantly being transported along its porous border to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the DRC. The Kenyan government estimates that thousands of small arms are smuggled across the border every year. In fact, the Kenyan government is finding it difficult to fight crime as a result of the large number of illegal arms smuggled from Somalia. The presence of such a high number of guns poses a threat to security in Northeast Africa and beyond.

Drug Economy

Where there are guns, there are often drugs; and in Somalia the trade is in khat—a narcotic leaf that is traditionally consumed in parts of Africa and in Arab countries for its stimulating properties. Although khat is considered legal in many countries, it is an addictive drug. Khat is the most common drug in Somalia and it is estimated that approximately 75 percent of all males in Somalia use it. The khat trade is fairly lucrative, with a significant proportion of the drug originating from the Kenyan highlands and exported freely to Somalia. Kenya exports about $250 million of khat annually, beating out tea as one of the county’s most lucrative exports, with a majority bound for Somalia. The Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse estimates that Kenya exports about $300,000 worth of khat to Somalia daily. Despite the negative consequences of a stateless Somalia that Kenya is experiencing, there has not been any attempt by the Kenyan government to curtail this trade, because local interests benefit a great deal.

With no central government to regulate the trade, warlords in Somalia have extended their power and now collect taxes and customs duties on khat. Many clans and regional administrations rely on import tax from the drug as their main source of revenue. In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on Somalia reported that many warlords now control the khat trade and use the proceeds to buy weapons needed to maintain control of their territory. This highly addictive substance even allows warlords to keep their troops loyal since otherwise troops suffer the consequences of withdrawal. Accordingly, khat is often included as part of troop salaries.

Diaspora Support of Factions

Evidence shows that civil wars are likely to last longer and be more intense in countries that have large populations outside of their own, due to support that members of the Diaspora provide to warring factions. Somalia is a case in point. Although the Diaspora can and has played a critical role in facilitating peace building and local reconciliation in some cases (especially in Somaliland and Puntland), in other cases the Diaspora has also provided financial support to warring clans facilitating conflict. Without financial support from the Somali Diaspora, many clans lack the resources to wage war against each other. Estimates show that at least 1 million Somalis—approximately 13 percent of the population—live abroad, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, the U.K., Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The UNDP estimates that annual remittances (or Hawala) from the Somali Diaspora are about $1 billion (about 18 percent of GDP). Although it is impossible to measure the exact amounts, the available data shows that the flow of remittances is substantial. On balance, the Diaspora is contributing to the further degeneration of the state.

(more…)

The debate over Nigeria as a failed state has been going on for quite some time. Foreign Policy magazine Index of Failed States ranks Nigeria as the 15th most critically weak state in its 2009 ranking, down from 19th in 2008.

Two opposing views courtesy of the BBC Focus on Africa.

Ogaga Ifowodo is a lawyer and a poet whose book, The Oil Lamp, is about the Niger Delta crisis. He is currently completing a PhD at Cornell University in New York. He argues the Yes side.

Most, if not all of the indices of failed states, declare Nigeria well on its way to joining that disreputable club. Nigeria boasts a government unable to deliver basic social services. It is plagued by corruption so endemic and monumental it is hard to separate it from state policy.

It lacks the capability or discipline to prevent threats to public safety and national integrity and is assailed by active challenges to its legitimacy.
The latest disaster of a re-run election in Ekiti state, meant to correct the errors of the first, proved an even greater show of shame.

While Nigerians, notoriously prickly in their nationalism, may loudly denounce any suggestions from abroad of the imminent disintegration of their country, they nonetheless admit the unflattering truth of this possibility to themselves and each other.

The inflammable Niger Delta, for long the booty of successive bands of political pirates and now also a seething swamp of untameable angst, points clearly to the dangerously frayed social fabric.

The Brookings Institution’s index of state weakness ranks Nigeria 28 out of 141 developing countries and was co-authored by Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s top diplomat at the United Nations.

It places the self-styled “giant of Africa” in the honoured company of Somalia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Looking on the bright side, Nigeria happily sits on the cusp for countries termed “critically weak” as opposed to the merely “weak” states.
But if the Brookings Institution takes a kind view of Nigeria, the American Fund for Peace, a research body, thinks otherwise.

In its 2008 index of failed states, Nigeria is only two short rungs away from being in the same category as Somalia and Zimbabwe.
Ironically, Nigeria has to look up the ladder at Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries she spared no expense of life, limb and hard currency to bring out of civil wars to restore to democracy.

Yet none of this goes to the heart of the problem. For to speak of Nigeria as a failed state is, in a sense, to put the cart before the horse.

Never having been a nation to start with, the question of a legitimate state to handle her affairs proves redundant.

We must therefore, open the dusty pages of history for the radical cause of Nigeria’s state of distress and there we will find that what we have grown accustomed to calling a nation deserving of a state is, to quote one of her “founding fathers”, “a mere geographical expression.”

Nigeria is not a nation, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared with characteristic forthrightness more than a decade before nominal independence from Britain.

For saying the unsaid and for championing constitutional federalism along the lines of Nigeria’s multitude of ethnic groups, Mr Awolowo was labelled a tribalist and unjustly maligned until his death in 1987.

The unwillingness to grapple with the trauma of Nigeria’s stillbirth as a nation is the great political unconscious – the implacable repressed – that returns at will to haunt and mock the state of denial.

This repressed truth, being political, hides as it were in the open. It can be seen in the headlines and by-lines of our newspapers.

It is volubly declaimed in bars and every public forum where two or more Nigerians are gathered.

It defines the so-called “national question”, so cacophonous that the prodigious expense of political and psychological energy needed by Nigeria’s self-appointed rulers to repress it produces such frightful spectacles as compel the verdict of a failed or rapidly failing state.
A mere geographical expression indeed, or, as another “founding father” preferred to put it, “the mistake of 1914.”

That was the fateful year the British colonial administrator, Lord Frederick Lugard, merged by colonial fiat northern and southern protectorates and the colony of Lagos to form Nigeria.

Meaning, “people of the [lower] Niger area”, it was as if the hallowed river possessed the magic to transform disparate denizens within its acceptable radius into nationhood by mere eponymous naming.

This would be deemed superstitious in any other context but the colonial.
Unfortunately, this mistake has yet to be acknowledged, for if nations are “imagined communities” as Professor Benedict Anderson said in his book of the same name, Nigeria was clearly unimagined by its would-be citizens and perhaps unimaginable for very long in its current state of existence.

(more…)

In July 2009, Nigeria was racked by four days of violence between security forces and Boko Haram, a militant group trying to impose strict Sharia Islamic law. Ever since, there has been concern that the security forces may have killed many innocent civilians.

Here is the clip showing the execution of Alhaji Buji Foi, a high-level member of Boko Haram. He is escorted out by an Nigerian police to the middle of the road and then executed.

Finally, a report from Al Jazeera:

Return to Main

African leaders are meeting in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

The leaders agreed to consider the proposal by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to resettle some of the Haiti earthquake victims in Africa. The summit on day one managed to resolve the controversial issue of its chairman by electing Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutharika to succeed Libyan President Muamar Gaddafi who was reluctant to step down from the rotational position.

A full report from Agence France Presse:

The African Union (AU) summit opened here Sunday and faced an immediate rift over Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s likely bid to retain the leadership of the organisation.

The summit’s official theme is information technology and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was expected to highlight the importance of putting the Millennium Development Goals back on their 2015 target.
But the 53-member body’s annual meeting at the Addis Ababa headquarters looked set to be hijacked by one of its most controversial leaders.

Kadhafi was elected almost by default a year ago but set the tone for his tenure by claiming to be the “king of kings” and vowing to achieve the “United States of Africa” project he has championed for years.

“Kadhafi’s chairmanship has been very harmful to the AU’s image, notably in the handling of political crises such as Madagascar and Guinea,” said an official close to Jean Ping, who heads the body’s main executive arm.
The system of rotating regional blocs should hand the job to a southern African leader and a consensus had begun to emerge around Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika, but some diplomats fear Kadhafi will put up a fight.

“It is said that Kadhafi is determined to take this to a vote because he thinks enough countries will support him,” an AU official said.
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, who arrived in the Ethiopian capital on Friday, is another leader who is likely to attract some attention.
His movements have been closely monitored since the International Criminal Court last year issued an arrest warrant for him over the atrocities committed in the Darfur region since 2003.

In a report released less than two weeks ago, Human Rights Watch pilloried the AU for supporting the embattled Sudanese leader, arguing that such a move was a blow to the entire institution’s credibility.
“The AU, led by some of the continent’s worst autocrats, began accusing the court of unfairly targeting Africans. In reality, these leaders were cynically trying to protect one of their own,” it said.

The summit it also expected to focus, as is the case every year, on the continent’s various political crises and armed conflicts, notably Somalia, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger and Ivory Coast.

In an interview with AFP on Saturday, Ban put particular emphasis on the fate of Sudan, where tension has been mounting in the run-up to a 2011 referendum in which the south is widely expected to choose independence from Khartoum, only six years after signing a peace deal.

“The UN has a big responsibility with the AU to maintain peace in Sudan and make unity attractive… This year will be crucially important for Sudan with the election in three months and the referendum in a year,” he said.

Return to Main

Africa’s growth strategy is developing new plot lines as the International Monetary Fund expects growth in sub-Saharan Africa to be 1% above the global average; trade with China now tops US$ 100 billion a year.

How is Africa’s growth strategy changing and what will it reveal in 2010 and beyond?

The Panelists
Donald Kaberuka, President, African Development Bank (ADB), Tunis
Jakaya M. Kikwete, President of Tanzania
Li Ruogu, Chairman and President, Export-Import Bank of China, People’s Republic of China; Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System
Jubril Adewale Tinubu, Group Chief Executive, Oando, Nigeria; Young Global Leader; Global Agenda Council on the Future of Africa

The panel is moderated by Maria Ramos, Group Chief Executive, Absa Group, South Africa; Global Agenda Council on the Future of Africa

Return to Main

For the first time in human history a majority of humanity lives in urban areas.

Witness presents an unsentimental introduction to some of the remarkable women and men who struggle to survive against desperate odds in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. About a million people live in Kibera and with a population density estimated at 3,000 people per hectare — 750,000 people in one square mile — or no more than 37 square feet per person, Kibera is one of the most crowded places on earth.

Some of the basics from Kibera UK, a project dedicated to improving the lives of those living in Kibera.

Overview
There are approx 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population, occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses almost 1 Million of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

Land Ownership
The Government of Kenya owns all the land. 10% of people are shack owners and many of these people own many other shacks and sub-let them. All the rest are tenants with no rights.

Housing
The average size of shack in this area is 12ft x 12ft built with mud walls, screened with concrete, a corrugated tin roof, dirt or concrete floor. The cost is about Ksh 700 per Month (£6). These shacks often house up to 8 or more, many sleeping on the floor.

Residents
The original settlers of Kibera were the Nubian people from the Kenyan/Sudanese border – they now occupy about 15% of Kibera, are mostly Muslim and are also mostly shack owners. The other shack owners are mostly Kikuyu (the majority tribe in Nairobi) – although in most cases they do not live there but are absentee landlords. The majority of the tenants are Luo, Luhya and some Kamba – these people are from the west of Kenya. There are many tensions in Kibera, particularly tribal tensions between the Luo & Kikuyu, also between landlord and tenant and those with and without jobs.

Electricity, Water & Sewage
Only about 20% of Kibera has electricity. UN-Habitat is in the process of providing it to some parts of Kibera – this will include street lighting, security lighting and connection to shacks (this costs Ksch 900 per shack, which in most cases is not affordable).

Until recently Kibera had no water and it had to be collected from the Nairobi dam. The dam water is not clean and causes typhoid and cholera. Now there are two mains water pipes into Kibera, one from the municipal council and one from the World Bank. Residents collect water at Ksh 3 per 20 litres.

In most of Kibera there are no toilet facilities. One latrine (hole in the ground) is shared by up to 50 shacks. Once full, young boys are employed to empty – they take the sludge to the river. UN-Habitat and a few other agencies are trying to help and improve this situation but it is painfully slow.

In the United States, the Kibera Slum Foundation works to alleviate the grinding poverty found in Kibera.

Return to Main