Author: The Guardian

Kenya in the grip of Obama mania

Some Kenyans are looking forward to the US president’s visit. Pic: Tony Karumba/AFP
Some Kenyans are looking forward to the US president’s visit. Pic: Tony Karumba/AFP

The silver-grey walls of the Godown Arts Centre, a sprawling converted car- repair warehouse that offers a home to many of Nairobi’s most creative minds, usually feature a rotating cast of murals celebrating sports stars, freedom fighters and screen sirens such as the Oscar-winning Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong’o.

In recent weeks all those figures have been overshadowed by the likeness of one man. At the gate a whole section is taken up by a full-face painting of US President Barack Obama looking into the distance and wearing a wistful expression.

In the warrens of cubicles in the theatre, the star painting is a portrait of Obama, seated on a tree in a lime-green jungle, striking the pose of a Roman emperor with his feet dipping into a stream. “We are very excited about his visit,” says Evans Yegon (30), who painted the portrait. “We are just curious to see how things will be and we just can’t wait.”

Kenya is in the grip of Obama mania. For weeks, newspapers have led with numerous articles describing preparations for the trip at the end of the month and analysing its importance. Roads have been relaid, streetlights fixed, billboards erected and the highway between the airport and the central business district boasts a new garden — although social media users have been quick to note, witheringly, that the newly planted flowers are unlikely to have blossomed before Obama arrives.

It is hard to overstate Obama’s popularity in Kenya, the land where his father was born, and in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, one of the few places where his reputation has remained undimmed through the course of his presidency.

Yet his visit to Kenya will also highlight the changing dynamics of the relationship between the West and a continent that has grown more assertive with improving economic fortunes at a time when new powers, especially China, are making a big play for prominence in Africa.

At the airport, Obama will be received by Uhuru Kenyatta, whose presidential bid Washington semi-openly campaigned against because, at the time of the election in March 2013, he was facing indictment at the International Criminal Court for his alleged role in post-election violence that rocked the country at the end of 2007. The case has since been withdrawn.

The election of Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, was seen as an embarrassment for Western envoys who had warned the electorate that “choices have consequences”. Their entry into office led to a deepening of Kenya’s relationship with China and strained ties with Western allies.

“This will be a very significant visit,” says Professor Winnie Mitullah of the University of Nairobi. “Relations with the West hit a low not witnessed for decades in recent years and it will be a chance, in effect, to reset the partnership and create a new narrative.”

Some analysts say the rise of China has seen United States administrations grow averse to criticising the governance and human rights records of governments in Africa. Campaigners complained that a summit of African heads of state in Washington last August focused on trade and security with little discussion of human rights, and many will be watching to see how Obama, whose strong words against official corruption in Kenya on his last visit as a senator in 2006 stirred a ruckus, will handle the issue.

Scott Gration, a former US ambassador to Kenya who grew up in East Africa and was an early supporter of Obama’s presidential campaign, says Obama remains a champion of the good governance agenda but argues that US dealings with the continent have to reflect shifting dynamics.

“I believe we are witnessing a change in the international community’s engagement with Africa. President Obama’s focus on entrepreneurs [he will attend a global entrepreneurship summit] continues the positive shift from historical political-military relationships in Africa to a new series of economic-centric associations on the continent. To be truly successful, his visit must translate into substantial results that are sustained beyond the visit itself.”

Beyond the complex calculations of various actors, including some evangelical pastors and conservative MPs whose demands that Obama not advance the gay marriage agenda have stirred national debate, most Kenyans are simply happy to host a man many see as one of their own. Nowhere is the excitement at a greater pitch than in K’Ogelo, the village in Siaya, a county on the fringes of Lake Victoria, where Barack Obama Senior grew up.

“Obama is my brother,” said Michael Ochiel (42), reflecting the tendency of many Africans to ascribe kinship to anyone from their locality. “By coming to Kenya he will put the country on the world map, making Kenyans all over the world a proud people. I hope he extends his visit to K’Ogelo.”

Musa Ogilo (67), a maize miller, said the area had witnessed a quick transformation since Obama became president, citing the levelling of roads and extension of the electricity grid to the village by local authorities. But he called on Obama to build a proper hospital in the village, illustrating the fact that many Kenyans struggle to distinguish between the president’s duty to US citizens and to the land of his father’s birth.

Commentators say the excitement surrounding the visit may cloud the main objective — the global entrepreneurship summit, which the White House describes as an effort to gather entrepreneurs and investors from around the world with the aim of spurring economic opportunity.

Despite its ethnicised and occasionally violent politics — and the growing menace of the al-Shabab terror group, which has carried out attacks and triggered fears it might try to disrupt the visit — Kenya boasts one of the best-developed middle classes on the continent and has proved a big draw for US and European investors in recent years.

A financial analyst, Aly Khan Satchu, says Kenyan authorities would make a mistake if they allowed themselves to be caught up in the excitement, which he compared to John F Kennedy’s trip to Ireland in 1963, and passed up the opportunity to sell the country’s merits to the world: “Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, is globally fluent, has 21st-century connectivity and an impressive pool of human capital.”

It’s a view echoed by Chad Larson, one of three co-founders of one of the most successful enterprises driven by the growth of mobile money transfers in Kenya, M-Kopa. The business, incubated in part in chats between Larson and fellow students at Oxford University, sees users pay a deposit of about $35 for a solar system worth about $200 before settling the balance using mobile money transfers over a year.

The firm has sold 200 000 systems in Kenya and Uganda since its launch in 2010 and shifts about 500 a day. “We could not have properly got off the ground without the support of international investors who were willing to allow us to try different iterations and ultimately succeed,” says Larson. “It would be great if more local Kenyan investors were willing to back local enterprises and support the next M-Kopa. I hope Obama’s visit is a catalyst for that.”

Evans Yegon’s expectations are more straightforward. “I just hope I can reach him and that he takes this painting away with him.” — © Guardian News & Media 2015

Sisters fight to save ancient African language from extinction

The 11 official languages of South Africa on display at the Constitutional Court. (Pic: Flickr)
The 11 official languages of South Africa on display at the Constitutional Court. (Pic: Flickr)

A 95-year-old woman is helping a last ditch effort to preserve an ancient African language before it goes extinct.

Hanna Koper and her two sisters are thought to be the last remaining speakers of the San language N|uu, rated as critically endangered by Unesco . The San, also known as “bushmen”, were the first hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.

N|uu, which has 112 distinct sounds, was passed on orally down the generations but never written down. Now Koper and her siblings have worked with linguists to design alphabet charts with consonants, vowels and 45 different “clicks” that are typical of San languages, as well as rules of spelling and grammar.

Matthias Brenzinger, director of the Centre for African Language Diversity at the University of Cape Town , who is working on the project with British academic Sheena Shah, said: “It’s the most indigenous language of southern Africa.”

N|uu and related languages were spoken in most parts of southern Africa, he added, but were wiped out by white settlers, sometimes with the support of locals. “Very often they kept the young girls, but they killed all the men. Genocide is the major reason for these languages in southern Africa to be extinct now, and then forced assimilation. Farmers were taking their land so there was no subsistence for them any more.”

Brezinger has overseen the teaching of N|uu at a local school, where pupils learn basics such as greetings, body parts, animal names and short sentences. One teenager girl in particular is showing huge promise in the language but “at one stage there will be no fluent speaker any more”, he said.

That does not mean N|uu will necessarily be doomed to the archives, however. “With these languages, you never know,” said Brezinger. “Hawaiian was extinct basically, and then there was a movement 35 years ago and you have 2 000 mother tongue speakers of Hawaiian.

“This is why it’s very important now for us to record as much as possible with the speakers so we have material, spoken language on video tape and so on.”

N|uu has one of the biggest speech sound inventories in the world, he added, including more than 45 click phonemes, 30 non-click consonants and 37 vowels. “Language is the most important cultural asset, so if you lose your langage, you lose your culture. In Canada there is a clear link between those indigenous people who lose their language and suicide rates. In this globalised world, local identity is essential,” Brezinger.

Koper, who lives near Upington in Northern Cape province, told the Sunday Times newspaper that when she was a girl in the days of white minority rule, she and her siblings were told their language was ugly. “We were told not to make noise, and the baas [a Dutch word for supervisor] would shout at us if we spoke the language because they believed we were gossiping,” she was quoted as saying.

“This is my language. This is my bread. This is my milk. I didn’t learn it, but I ate it and this is how it is my language.”

Koper’s sister Katrina Esau, 82, who has received an award from President Jacob Zuma for her work to preserve San language and culture , added: “Other people have their own languages. Why must my language be allowed to die? It must go on. As long as there are people, the language must go on.”

David Smith for the Guardian 

700 migrants feared dead in Mediterranean shipwreck off Libya

Rescued migrants watch as the body of person who died after a fishing boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast, is brought ashore along with 23 others. (Pic: AFP)
Rescued migrants watch as the body of person who died after a fishing boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast, is brought ashore along with 23 others. (Pic: AFP)

A major rescue operation is under way in the Mediterranean after as many as 700 migrants are feared to have drowned just outside Libyan waters, in what could prove to be the worst disaster yet involving migrants being smuggled to Europe.

Italian coastguards have retrieved 49 survivors so far and about 20 bodies, according to the interior ministry, after the boat went down overnight about 60 miles (96km) off the Libyan coast and 120 miles (193km) south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, told the Guardian that up to 700 may remain in the water, according to numbers supplied by a survivor. The accident happened after the migrants saw a merchant ship in the distance and scrambled to attract its attention, over-balancing the fishing boat in which they were travelling.

Barbara Molinario, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Rome, said: “They wanted to be rescued. They saw another ship. They were trying to make themselves known to it.”

If confirmed, Sunday morning’s accident means that at least 1 500 migrants have died so far in 2015 while on route to Europe – at least 30 times higher than last year’s equivalent figure, which was itself a record. It comes just days after 400 others drowned last week in a similar incident.

The deaths prompted fresh calls for Europe to reinstate full-scale search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Last October, the EU opted not to replace the Italian-run operation Mare Nostrum, which saved about 100 000 lives last year, amid fears that it was encouraging smugglers and migrants to organise more trips to Europe.

Pope Francis, an outspoken advocate for greater European-wide participation in rescue efforts, reiterated his call for action during mass on Sunday after learning of the latest disaster.

“They are men and women like us – our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war,” he said from St Peter’s Square.

Save the Children, one of the primary aid agencies working with migrants arriving in Italy, called on EU leaders to hold crisis talks in the next 48 hours and to resume search-and-rescue operations.

‘Europe cannot look the other way’
“It is time to put humanity before politics and immediately restart the rescue,” the organisation said in a statement. “Europe cannot look the other way while thousands die on our shores.”

Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, called for an emergency meeting at Palazzo Chigi with top government ministers, including foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni, on Sunday to discuss the crisis. The EU commission for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, is due in Italy on Thursday.

But the huge rise in deaths in 2015, and the largely similar levels of arrivals in Italy, suggest the tactic has not worked. In Tripoli on Saturday, a smuggler told the Guardian he was not aware of Mare Nostrum in the first place, nor knew that it had finished.

“I’ve not heard of that. What is that – from 2009?” said the smuggler, who says his network organises 20 trips a week during the busy summer months. “Many people would go on the boats, even if they didn’t have any rescue operations.”

Migrants interviewed this week in Libya, the main launching pad for those seeking to reach Europe, say the demand will continue despite the deaths. Mohamed Abdallah, a 21-year-old from Darfur who fled war at home to find another war in Libya, said he could not stay in Libya, nor return to Sudan.

“There is a war in my country, there’s no security, no equality, no freedom,” Abdallah said. “But if I stay here, it’s just like my country … I need to go to Europe.”

In Misrata, a major Libyan port, coastguards told the Guardian that the smuggling trips would continue to rise because Libyan officials were woefully under-resourced.

In all of western Libya, the area where the people-smugglers operate, coastguards have just three operational boats. Another is broken, and four more are in Italy for repairs. Libyans say they have been told they will not be returned until after the conclusion of peace talks between the country’s two rival governments.

“There is a substantial increase this year,” said Captain Tawfik al-Skail, deputy head of the Misratan coastguard. “And come summer, with the better weather, if there isn’t immediate assistance and help from the EU, then there will be an overwhelming increase.”

Save the Children has been on the front lines in the migrant crisis, and said it was growing increasingly worried about an expected increase in children making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.

On Friday, it reported that nearly two dozen badly burned Eritreans had landed in Lampedusa that morning, the victims of a chemical fire in the Libyan factory where they were held before their departure.

According to witness accounts, five people, including a baby, died in the blast – which occurred after a gas canister exploded – and the rest of the victims were not brought to a hospital by the smugglers holding them. Instead, the injured were put on a ship bound for Italy a few days later. The victims were airlifted to hospitals across Sicily on their arrival.

The story was confirmed by UNHCR, which also interviewed survivors.

Water pans offer lifeline to female farmers in Kenya

Kenyan farmers pick through their maize crop in a field in the village of Kapsimatwa near the Rift Valley town of Bomet. (Pic: AFP)
Kenyan farmers pick through their maize crop in a field in the village of Kapsimatwa near the Rift Valley town of Bomet. (Pic: AFP)

It’s mid-morning and the sun is blazing. It is so hot that germinating seeds struggle to grow.

In Moi Ndabi, about 44km south of Kenya’s Lake Naivasha in Nakuru County, the vegetation dotted sparingly across the village has turned yellow.

More than 100 people have lined up at the Moi Ndabi borehole to wait their turn to fetch water sold at five Kenyan shillings ($0.05) per 20-litre jerry can.

But about 12km away from the water point in this region of the Rift Valley two greenhouses of different sizes stand adjacent to the homestead of Zainabu Malicha. By the end of March, she hopes to have pocketed at least 1.2m shillings ($13 100) from the sale of the tomatoes she grows there.

For the widow who is now solely responsible for the care of her five children, this venture into agribusiness has transformed her life, which for much of the last two decades has been dominated by hunger, poverty and malnutrition.

“Living in this semi-arid area [used to mean] no viable farming activity,” she says.

Malicha’s business venture relies on a simple water-harvesting technology: a water pan. Constructing the pan – a circular container 20m across – involves digging a dam and covering it with a dam liner. The pan then stores the runoff water during the heavy rains. Once full, it can provide enough water for Malicha for up to four months until the next rainy season.

“Before 2011, when the water pan was constructed, life was hard. Extremely hard. Maize would fail due to [the] scorching sun. Vegetables withered every so often. Going to sleep hungry was common,” Malicha says.

Having made 600 000 shillings ($6 500) from produce grown in the smaller greenhouse, Malicha used the proceeds to set up the bigger one. “I have so much joy now because I can comfortably feed my children with [a] balanced diet and meet the education expenses,” she says.

A few miles from her homestead, Florence Muthoni is also enjoying the fruits of the water reservoir.

Having access to a greenhouse has enabled her to grow watermelons, a crop she once attempted and failed to grow on her hectare (2.5 acres) of land.

“After two months, I harvest and make 135 000 shillings ($1 475). This is good enough to pay for my two sons on parallel programmes in local universities,” says the widow, who has lived in the area since 1992.

On a separate half-hectare of land she has also grown vegetables, some bananas and sugarcane, made possible through using water pans.

“I plan to buy a plot and then rear two Friesian cows. This could raise my profits, and when I finally become old, my children would take over,” she says.

Having the water pan, Muthoni says, has emancipated her from hunger and “opened up her mind to hope for great things” not just for herself but for other women in the village.

Muthoni and Malicha now lead a group of 286 women who form the Chemi Chemi ya Tumaini Jangwani Women Group (Springs of Hope in the Desert Women Group) as chair and secretary respectively.

Even though the water pans led to solutions to the problems of food scarcity and related health issues, their construction was possible only with the assistance of an NGO.

Muthoni says the NGO spent 20m shillings ($200 000) on setting up 50 water pans in the area for the women to irrigate their farms. The amount includes the 560 000 shillings used for their smaller greenhouses.

“We hear the government has loans for women, but how to get them is what we do not know. If it wasn’t for the NGO, we could still be suffering in hunger,” says Muthoni. “We need people to reach out to us in the villages and give us a sense of direction, just like non-governmental organisations do.”

The Kenya Institute of Economic Affairs report (2014), Public Spending in Agriculture in Kenya: Is It Beneficial to Small Scale Women Farmers? (pdf), notes the increasing importance of NGOs as a source of credit to farmers in the country. Although women are the backbone of the agricultural sector, the report showed that many of them had not benefited from agricultural credit.

Worryingly, the lack of gender-disaggregated information on credit beneficiaries continues to hamper balanced distribution of available resources, it says. Despite the creation of government funds specifically for women, only a few have benefited from them. Women make up more than half of Kenya’s population of 44 million.

Through community groups, women can access money from the Women Enterprise Fund , established in 2007, and the Uwezo Fund , launched in 2013. So far 707 435 women have received funding from the WEF while 274 857 have been trained in business management skills, according to statistics from the Ministry of Devolution and Planning.

‘Our hearts are black’: Tunisians in shock after gunmen target tourists in capital

Tourists are evacuated by special forces from the site of an attack carried out by two gunmen at the famed Bardo Museum. (Pic: AFP)
Tourists are evacuated by special forces from the site of an attack carried out by two gunmen at the famed Bardo Museum. (Pic: AFP)

Crouched against a wall in the Bardo museum, Fabienne, a French tourist, hid with her guide and 40 French holidaymakers, fearing they would be discovered by the gunmen who had burst in to take the Tunis museum of ancient treasures and its tourists hostage. Whispering, she told French TV station BFMTV by phone: “We’re all terrified … we’re afraid they’ll appear and suddenly kill us all.”

Tunisia, the small north African country which lit the first spark of the Arab spring when its popular uprising toppled the dictatorship four years ago, has been plunged into shock after gunmen killed at least 20 people, including at least 17 foreign tourists, in the worst terrorist attack in more than a decade.

The targeting of tourists by terrorists is a new phenomenon in Tunisia and a massive blow to a country whose struggling post-revolution economy depends largely on its beach resorts and foreign visitors. Tunisia, which peacefully elected a new Parliament in December, has prided itself as a model of political transition since the overthrow of the brutal authoritarian Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, in contrast to the post-revolutionary difficulties of its troubled neighbours.

But it has also been struggling to tackle the growing terrorist threat in the region and thousands of Tunisians have left to fight foreign jihad. The attack immediately raised questions about the Islamist terrorist threat to Tunisia amid mounting anxiety that jihadi violence is spilling over the border from neighbouring Libya, as well as Algeria.

Three Italians as well as visitors from Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead, as well as a Tunisian cleaner and a security officer. Around 22 other foreigners were wounded.

Bardo museum
The attack began just after midday as gunmen armed with kalashnikovs opened fire in front of the Bardo museum, the country’s largest and a major tourist attraction, which houses one of the world’s biggest collections of Roman mosaics and is built in a 19th century palace adjacent to parliament.

As the gunmen struck, tourists were getting out of coaches to visit the museum on a spring day that had seen scores of visitors, many from cruise ships docked in the port for the day.

Wafel Bouzi, a guide with a Spanish-speaking group, told journalists that on exiting the museum with his group, he saw in the car park “a young 25-year-old man, dressed normally, without a beard” who was holding a kalashnikov. “I thought he was playing with it. Then he opened fire.”

The gunmen began shooting near the coaches then entered the museum where hundreds of panicked visitors had taken refuge. Josep Lluís Cusidó, mayor of the small Catalan town of Vallmoll, was at the museum as part of a wedding anniversary trip with his wife. “A few men walked in and started shooting, we’re alive thanks to a miracle,” he told the Spanish news agency Efe. “These men suddenly started shooting and people started falling to the ground dead and things started falling from the ceiling … Everything happened so fast. Right now we’re with the police. It’s total chaos.”

Tunisian security forces entered the museum and shot dead two gunmen at about 3pm local time (1400 GMT). MPs had been in parliament nearby debating new laws which were to include an anti-terrorism bill. After the shots began, the parliament session was suspended and MPs were evacuated. The tourists were also later ushered out of the museum as security officials warned at least two or three accomplices of the gunmen might be at large.

More than 100 European tourists freed at the end of the siege were driven out of the museum gates, their faces showing a mixture of anxiety and relief. The mixture of men and women, young and old, stared out into space, some giving smiles at crowds still packed outside the gates.

One young blonde woman inside the first bus grinned and waved her hand. Dozens of armed police and troops remained inside the museum complex sealed off from the city. One Italian couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on a cruise ship told the Italian newspaper La Stampa how fellow holidaymakers had been rushed from the museum back to the ship. “All of a sudden we saw them all rushing back on board. There was panic among those who had managed to get away from the terrorists,” the newspaper quoted them as telling a friend.

Several hundred Tunisians gathered around the museum gates. Relief that the ordeal was over was mixed with dismay among those watching. “This is a black day for Tunisia,” said Karim Ben Sa’a, a manager in the tourism industry. “We are very sad for these tourists. They visit our country and it is so, so sad to see them die. Our hearts are black.”

There was shock that terrorists had managed to launch an attack at the very heart of the capital. Police set up checkpoints and a policeman with a machine gun was posted outside the office of the UK’s British Council.

“There is a possibility, but it is not certain, that [the two gunmen] could have been helped … and we are currently conducting extensive search operations to identify the two or three terrorists who possibly participated in the operation,” the prime minister, Habib Essid, said.

The president, Beji Caid Essebsi – the 88-year-old secularist elected in December after serving in previous Tunisian regimes – visited survivors in hospital, saying: “The authorities have taken all measures to ensure that such things don’t happen.”

Worst attack since 2002
The museum assault was the worst attack involving foreigners in Tunisia since an al-Qaeda suicide bombing on a synagogue killed 21 people on the island of Djerba in 2002.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said: “It is not by chance that today’s terrorism affects a country that represents hope for the Arab world. The hope for peace, the hope for stability, the hope for democracy. This hope must live on.”

The attack came the day after Tunisia announced arrests of a jihadi group trying to infiltrate the country, and in the week a key Tunisian militant was killed in Sirte. Troops are deployed on the Libyan border to stop suspected terrorist groups bringing in men and equipment.

There have also been concerns about the Mount Chaambi area on the border with Algeria where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has reportedly been helping a Tunisian group that has killed numerous soldiers.

Although the country has been more stable than others in the region, a disproportionately large number of Tunisian recruits – some 3 000, according to government estimates – have joined Islamic State (Isis) fighters in Syria and Iraq, triggering fears some will return to mount attacks back home.

The American embassy in Tunis was attacked in September 2012, seriously damaging the embassy grounds and an adjoining American school. Four assailants were killed. Overall, though, the violence that Tunisia has seen in recent years has been largely focused on security forces, not foreigners or tourist sites.

In 2013, two opposition figures were assassinated in Tunis and, in what is believed to be the first suicide bombing in Tunisia , a man walked off the beach in the resort town of Sousse and blew himself up in front of a seaside hotel. He was the only fatality.

Philip Stack, of British risk analyst Maplecroft, said of the Tunis events: “This attack is certain to have an effect on the tourism industry, which the authorities have worked hard to rebuild after the 2011 revolution. The principal targets of terrorism in Tunisia in the last couple of years have been the security forces. By targeting foreign tourists at a prestigious city centre site, the terrorists have changed their tactics and raised the stakes.”

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said Washington condemned the attack and continued “to support the Tunisian government’s efforts to advance a secure, prosperous, and democratic Tunisia”.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, blamed Isis, saying in a statement: “With the attack that has struck Tunis today, the Daesh [Isis’s Arabic acronym] terrorist organisation is once again targeting the countries and peoples of the Mediterranean region.

“This strengthens our determination to cooperate more closely with our partners to confront the terrorist threat. The EU is determined to mobilise all the tools it has to fully support Tunisia in the fight against terrorism and reforming the security sector.”

Additional reporting by Ashifa Kassam