Author: The Guardian

African Wikipedia aims to preserve traditions and languages

Offline, off road and off the power grid, the forest village of Ndjock-Nkong in Cameroon is not an obvious choice for an online venture seeking to emulate the giant online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

It is, however, a perfect place for an online African “ark” that will collect and preserve the continent’s endangered languages and traditions, says a local man with a mission.

Gaston Donnat Bappa embodies the combination of old and new: he inherited the title of clan chief from his great-grandfather, grandfather and father but has 34 years of experience in computer technology. He hopes to bring the two worlds together in the user-generated African Traditions Online Encyclopedia (Atoe).

Gaston Bappa is keen to preserve Africa's heritage. (Pic: Terry Morris)
Gaston Bappa is keen to preserve Africa’s heritage. (Pic: Terry Morris)

“People think traditions don’t belong with information and communications technology (ICT) because traditions are so far behind us and ICT is so far ahead of us,” Bappa said. “But if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know where you are going.”

Bappa (56) is creating a site that he hopes will become the first port of call for African arts and crafts, food, laws, medicine, music, oral storytelling, religion, science, sport – anything that can be defined as tradition, dating back millions of years. A prototype is open for contributions, with early entries including Myths and Legends of the Bantu, and Concepts of Social Justice in Traditional Africa .

The idea grew from Bappa’s passion for beliefs and customs from a young age in his village, Ndjock-Nkong, where he has been chief for 22 years, as well as his travels to more than 20 African countries as a senior IT engineer and consultant and bank executive. Most urgently, he found in the web a chance to rescue a precious legacy on the verge of extinction.

“I saw that even in my tribe traditions are beginning to disappear. When I was going to other countries in Africa I saw it was the same. It’s not because young people don’t want to learn about them but because they don’t have the access in urban areas.”

Languages are a prime example, said Bappa, president of an association of 42 traditional chiefs. “Every week we lose a language in the world. Africa has more languages than any other continent – more than 2 000 – and every one has 30 to 50 tribes. If you lose the language it’s very difficult to know the traditions of your area.”

But the Atoe will guard against forgetting, he hopes. “ICT is the only way to store traditions for the next generations. Between now and 2100 there will be 4 billion people in Africa; if we don’t know our traditions, we won’t be able to manage our economic development. They can also be available to the African diaspora in America, Europe or anywhere in the world.”

The success of Wikipedia, whose English edition has more than 4.5-million articles, is a natural model. Similarly, the Atoe will use wiki applications for volunteers to input, change or remove content in collaboration with others. Noting that there are already more than 1 000 websites on African traditions, Bappa is adamant that content will be referenced and verified for accuracy.

“The Wikipedia format remains the best international standard for online encyclopedias: the entire software is free of charge and provides the best and easiest technology. But we will improve the format of content, by integrating more multimedia. For example, we will illustrate African traditional medicine with pictures.”

But unlike Wikipedia, born in 2001 and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation in the tech hub of San Francisco, the Atoe’s headquarters will be starting from scratch. Ndjock-Nkong is 93 miles from Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, and 19 miles from the main road in thick forest, Bappa says. “To get there you need a very strong car.” There is no access to a phone network, the internet or the electricity grid for the dwindling population of fewer than 300. “Even radio reception is very difficult.”

Yet Bappa has a vision. He hopes to fit solar panels to generate power and install servers that will eventually host the Atoe. “Little by little, the government is starting to repair the road. In less than three years, we’ll have TV and radio. We will bring satellite internet to the village so it is connected to the entire world. When we have our own servers, we’ll transfer all the data.”

Until then, Bappa is operating from Yaoundé and working to raise worldwide awareness of the project, which he will formally unveil at next year’s eLearning Africa conference. He plans to approach Microsoft and other potential sponsors in an attempt to raise €400 000 (£323 000) for the initial phase. He also hopes to incorporate content from Wikipedia.

“It is not only for Africa,” he said. “It will be open to all worldwide, Africans and non-Africans. It is for the whole of humankind because Africa is the cradle of humanity.”

Sudan faces mounting condemnation over pregnant woman’s death sentence

Sudan is facing mounting condemnation for sentencing a pregnant woman to be whipped and then hanged for adultery and apostasy, and for keeping her shackled in prison with her toddler son a month before she is due to give birth.

Governments, the UN and human rights groups have called on the Sudanese government to immediately release Meriam Yahya Ibrahim (27) and overturn both her death sentence and sentence of 100 lashes. More than 100 000 people have backed a call by Amnesty International to release Ibrahim.

Ibrahim was arrested after a Muslim relative claimed her marriage to a US citizen was invalid, and thus adulterous, because he is a Christian. Ibrahim was also found guilty of apostasy. But she said she had been brought up a Christian and refused to renounce her faith.

Her lawyers have lodged an appeal against the sentence, which may be heard in Khartoum this week. Ibrahim is being held in harsh conditions and is constantly shackled, according to Amnesty. Her 20-month-old son, Martin, has been kept in prison with her since February.

Ibrahim has been told that her execution will be deferred for two years to allow her to deliver and then wean her baby.

Her husband, Daniel Wani, who left Sudan for the US in 1998, has travelled to Khartoum to try to secure the release of his wife and son. He said Ibrahim was being denied medical treatment and he had not been allowed to visit her or Martin, according to media reports.

The Sudanese authorities have reportedly refused to release the child to his father’s care because of his Christian faith.

Ibrahim – a graduate of Sudan University’s school of medicine – told the court she was the daughter of a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian Christian mother, but was raised as a Christian after her father left the family when she was six.

According to Human Rights Watch, article 126 of Sudan’s criminal code says a Muslim who renounces Islam is guilty of apostasy, punishable by death, unless the accused recants within three days.

‘Barbaric sentence’
The UK government has summoned Sudan’s chargé d’affaires in London to the Foreign Office to hear its “deep concern”.

In a statement, Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds said: “This barbaric sentence highlights the stark divide between the practices of the Sudanese courts and the country’s international human rights obligations.” The Sudanese government must respect the right to freedom of religion or belief, he added.

US senators Kelly Ayotte and Roy Blunt have raised the case with the secretary of state, John Kerry, calling for “immediate action and full diplomatic engagement to offer Meriam political asylum and secure her and her son’s safe release”.

The department’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said on Wednesday the US was “deeply disturbed” by the case and called on Khartoum to respect the right to freedom of religion. The Canadian and Dutch governments have also expressed concern.

The UN has also urged Sudan to adhere to international law. “We are concerned about the physical and mental wellbeing of Ms Ibrahim, who is in her eighth month of pregnancy, and also of her 20-month-old son, who is detained with her at the Omdurman women’s prison near Khartoum, reportedly in harsh conditions,” said Rupert Colville of the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva.

Amnesty said: “The fact that a woman has been sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is appalling and abhorrent.”

‘We are praying for a miracle’
Wani, who has a biochemical engineering degree and suffers from muscular dystrophy, lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and became a US citizen in 2005. He and Ibrahim met in Khartoum, and were married there in 2012. Wani had taken steps to bring Ibrahim to join him in the US.

Last year, a relative accused Ibrahim of adultery, saying her marriage to a Christian was invalid. The authorities later added the charge of apostasy. Gabriel Wani, Daniel’s brother, who also lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, said Ibrahim was in poor physical shape. “Meriam is in a bad condition, she is eight months pregnant. She needs proper medical attention and she needs medical supplies. She’s bleeding and nothing is being done,” he told the Daily Mail.

“She needs to eat well but she is just getting the prison food. When she had her first son it was a very difficult birth, she lost a lot of blood. She is supposed to have check ups with the doctor but it isn’t happening. We are praying for a miracle.”

Egyptian doctor to stand trial for female genital mutilation in landmark case

A doctor is to stand trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation on Thursday, the first case of its kind in a country where FGM is illegal but widely accepted.

Activists warned this week that the landmark case was just one small step towards eradicating the practice, as villagers openly promised to uphold the tradition and a local police chief said it was near-impossible to stamp out.

Raslan Fadl, a doctor in a Nile delta village, is accused of killing 13-year-old schoolgirl Sohair al-Bata’a in a botched FGM operation last June. Sohair’s father, Mohamed al-Bata’a, will also be charged with complicity in her death.

Fadl denies the charges, and claims Sohair died due to an allergic reaction to penicillin she took during a procedure to remove genital warts.

“What circumcision? There was no circumcision,” Fadl shouted on Tuesday evening, sitting outside his home where Sohair died last summer. “It’s all made up by these dogs’ rights people [human rights activists].”

In the next village along, Sohair’s parents had gone into hiding, according to their family. Her grandmother – after whom Sohair was named – admitted an FGM operation had taken place, but disapproved of the court case.

“This is her destiny,” said the elder Sohair. “What can we do? It’s what God ordered. Nothing will help now.”

According to Unicef, 91% of married Egyptian women aged between 15 and 49 have been subjected to FGM, 72% of them by doctors, even though the practice was made illegal in 2008. Unicef’s research suggests that support for the practice is gradually falling: 63% of women in the same age bracket supported it in 2008, compared with 82% in 1995.

But in rural areas where there is a low standard of education – like Sohair’s village of Diyarb Bektaris – FGM still attracts instinctive support from the local population, who believe it decreases women’s appetite for adultery.

Sister Joanna, head of the Coptic Centre for Training and Development, an NGO based in Beni Sueif, a town 130km south of Cairo, participates in a lecture on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) attended by Christian and Muslim women in a nearby village. (Pic: AFP)
Sister Joanna, head of the Coptic Centre for Training and Development, an NGO based in Beni Sueif, a town 130km south of Cairo, participates in a lecture on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) attended by Christian and Muslim women in a nearby village. (Pic: AFP)

‘The law won’t stop anything’
“We circumcise all our children – they say it’s good for our girls,” Naga Shawky, a 40-year-old housewife, told the Guardian as she walked along streets near Sohair’s home. “The law won’t stop anything – the villagers will carry on. Our grandfathers did it and so shall we.”

Nearby, Mostafa, a 65-year-old farmer, did not realise that genital mutilation had been banned. “All the girls get circumcised. Is that not what’s supposed to happen?” said Mostafa. “Our two daughters are circumcised. They’re married and when they have daughters we will have them circumcised as well.”

Local support for Fadl, who is also a sheikh [elder] in his village mosque, remains high. “Most people will tell you he is a very good man: don’t harm him,” said Reda el-Danbouki, the founder of the Women’s Centre for Guidance and Legal Awareness, a local rights group that was the first to take up Sohair’s case. “If you asked people about who is the best person to do this operation, they would still say: Dr Raslan [Fadl].”

Most villagers said they thought the practice was prescribed by Islamic law. But female genital mutilation is not mentioned in the Qur’an and has been outlawed by Egypt’s grand mufti, one of the country’s most senior Islamic clerics. It is also practised in Egypt’s Christian communities – leading activists to stress that it is a social problem rather than a religious one.

“It’s not an Islamic issue – it’s cultural,” said Suad Abu-Dayyeh, regional representative for Equality Now, a rights group that lobbied Egypt to follow through with Fadl’s prosecution. “In Sudan and Egypt the practice is widespread. But in most of the other Arab countries – which are mostly Muslim countries – people don’t think of it as a Muslim issue. In fact, there has been a fatwa that bans FGM.”

Doctors
Campaigners hope Sohair’s case would discourage other doctors from continuing the practice. But villagers in Diyarb Bektaris said they could still easily find doctors willing to do it in the nearby town of Agga, where practitioners could earn up to 200 Egyptian pounds (roughly £16.70) an operation. “If you want to ban it properly,” said Mostafa, the farmer, “you’d have to ban doctors as well.”

Up the road in Agga, no doctor would publicly admit to carrying out FGM operations, and said the law acted as a deterrent. But one claimed FGM could be morally justified even if it caused girls physical or psychological discomfort.

“It gives the girl more dignity to remove [her clitoris],” said Dr Ahmed al-Mashady, who stressed that he had never carried out the operation but claimed it was necessary to cleanse women of a dirty body part.

“If your nails are dirty,” he said in comparison, “don’t you cut them?”

A few hundred metres away, sitting in his heavily fortified barracks, the local police chief agreed the practice needed to end. But Colonel Ahmed el-Dahaby claimed police could not work proactively on the issue because FGM happened in secret. He also said they were held back by the nuances of the Egyptian legal system – something that would surprise those who argue police officers have readily contravened due process in other more politicised cases.

“It’s very hard to arrest a doctor,” said Dahaby. “Why? You don’t know when exactly he is going to do this operation. In order to arrest him legally you have to have the papers from the prosecutor, and only then can you go. But you don’t know when the operations will take place, so you have to catch them in the act or it has to be reported by the father. And that’s difficult because the father will deny what happened.”

Sohair’s case
In Sohair’s case, her family did initially testify that she died after an FGM operation but then changed their testimony a few days later, leading the case to be closed. It was only reopened following a triple-pronged pressure campaign led by Reda el-Danbouki, Equality Now and Egypt’s state-run National Population Council.

Thursday’s hearing will likely be short and procedural. In subsequent sessions, Sohair’s family is expected to waive the manslaughter charges against Fadl, after Dahaby said the two sides reached a substantial out-of-court compensation agreement.

But the family has no say over the FGM charges levelled at both Fadl and Sohair’s father – and the state will continue to seek a conviction against them both. But whether such a result will serve as a major deterrent against FGM remains to be seen.

For Equality Now’s Suad Abu-Dayyeh, the answer is a systematic educational programme that would see campaigners frequently visit Egypt’s countryside to start a conversation about a topic that has previously never been questioned. “You need to go continuously into the communities. We need to find a way of really debating these issues with the villagers, the doctors and the midwives.”

And for the victims themselves, says Abu-Dayyeh, this process cannot start soon enough. “They should enjoy their sexual relations with their future husbands. They are human beings.”

Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

Cairo’s street music mahraganat both divides and unites

Stroll through Egypt’s capital and you can count on hearing two kinds of music. The first has been around for decades: the rich, sedate voice of Egypt’s favourite diva, Umm Kulthum. The second is a more recent phenomenon. A raucous mishmash of auto-tuned rap and pounding drums, this is mahraganat – Egypt’s latest musical genre.

The rise of mahraganat – which translates from the Arabic as “festivals” – has been as relentless as its drumbeats. Its stars have millions of YouTube hits, have appeared at European festivals and at sprawling street weddings, and recently hosted British grime and dubstep DJs for a week of collaboration.

“It’s the ultimate thing in music,” boasts Diesel, AKA 24-year-old Mohamed Saber, one of mahraganat’s most innovative artists. “Everyone listens to it – even those who criticise us.”

Diesel’s words hint at a vexed relationship with some Egyptian listeners. Popular though it is, mahraganat’s roots within Egypt’s underclass mean its artists strive for wider acceptance and a place within Egypt’s formal music industry. Things are changing, butmahraganat musicians often record their music at home, rely on peer-to-peer distribution via the internet or flash drives, and are rarely played on mainstream radio or television. “May God end my life,” winced a representative of Egypt’s musicians’ union after listening to mahraganat last year.

The genre first emerged in 2008 in Madinet al-Salam, or Salam City, a rundown district on the fringes of northern Cairo. Its pioneers began to mess around with drumbeats on basic mixing programs such as FruityLoops – downloaded for free online – and recorded simple auto-tuned vocals. Then some of them began to play their frenetic creations at sprawling street weddings and carnivals – hence its name – and a genre was born.

Mohamed El Deeb, a 28-year-old rap and hip hop singer, poses during the making of his music video, in front of a wall with graffiti near Tahrir square in Cairo June 4 2012. (Reuters)
Mohamed El Deeb, a 28-year-old rap and hip hop singer, poses during the making of his music video, in front of a wall with graffiti near Tahrir square in Cairo June 4 2012. (Reuters)

“People were shocked when it came on,” recalls Sadat – AKA al-Sadat Abdelaziz, 27, one of mahraganat’s trailblazers and probably its biggest star. “But [our] subjects and issues went straight to people – and that’s why it got bigger.”

According to Mahmoud Refaat, the founder of one of Egypt’s most influential contemporary music studios, mahraganat’s lyrical appeal lay in its honesty. Unlike schmaltzy Egyptian music from the 60s and 70s – or the pop artists of the 80s and 90s who “just sang about love and hair” – mahraganat was the first genre to properly deal with issues affecting the poorest Egyptians.

“It’s the very first time, for as long as I’ve heard Egyptian music, that I can say there is truly music for the people – [music] that actually expresses the reality of young people,” says Refaat. “The way these musicians were thinking is very radical and very minimal. They had no shame of dealing with their struggle, using their dialect that they and their friends and the community had developed. And that made it very new.”

British DJs who visited Cairo in March to collaborate with mahraganat artists compared the sound to London’s grime – for both musical and social reasons. “It’s a bit quicker in tempo – grime is about 140 beats-per-minute, and this is around 150bpm or 160bpm – but it’s got the same energy,” says London DJ Faze Miyake, who visited Cairo with the British Council.

Mahraganat stayed largely in Salam City and the surrounding suburbs until 2011, when the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak brought its artists greater exposure. Sadat released a series of songs over the internet that dealt directly with politics. Tracks such as The People and the Government and The People Demand Five Pounds of Phone-Credit (a riff on a revolutionary chant) gave him and his colleagues a prominence far beyond their hometown.

But mahraganat artists resent the oft-made suggestion that theirs is a genre born of the revolution. They started making music long before Mubarak fell. And though their lyrics are often political, Sadat says they feel cut adrift from a national tug-of-war that often ignores the basic needs of struggling communities such as theirs.

“Journalists think everything is related to the revolution. This music has been going on for a while,” says Sadat. “Not all the Egyptians are part of the revolution – the slum areas until now are not interested in anything other than eating. If these masses started to move, it would get messy.”

But for Noov Senarye, who manages a number of mahraganat stars, including Sadat, the more liberal environment created by the 2011 uprising did expose them to bigger and wider audiences. Senarye’s involvement is a case in point. Previously a human rights lawyer, she heard their music by chance in early 2011 – and, inspired, went to Salam City that March to offer to manage them. “In the beginning,” she remembers, “they couldn’t understand why a girl from different community and [social] level came to see them.”

Three years on, most mahraganat artists’ primary source of revenue still comes from playing at sprawling street weddings – thousands crashed Sadat’s own ceremony last year just to see him perform. And they still gauge their popularity not by radio airtime, or album sales, but by how often they hear their music blasting from Cairo’s mopeds and tuk-tuks.

“I know it’s doing well when I’m in the street and I hear it everywhere,” says Diesel. “Some songs will take a week to get to their peak, very few will take more than a month and a half. If they take longer than that – then that’s it.”

But much change has been afoot. For one, says Figo, the DJ known as the movement’s godfather, the music has become more sophisticated. “When it all started the lyrics were meaningless,” says Figo, whose real name is Ahmed Farid. “But now we sing about the revolution, drugs, harassment.”

A song by Sadat that deals with Egypt’s endemic street harassment, “Catcall yes, grope no”, is a much-cited example – even if its condemnation of sexism is only partial. Meanwhile, big companies have tried to co-opt mahraganat’s popularity – with some artists recording tracks for phone, food and Viagra adverts. And as the British collaboration shows, there is a drive to inject the genre with new musical ideas – a move accelerated by younger artists such as Diesel.

“That was the main intention of the studio to work with these musicians – to formalise this as a music genre, not to look at it as wedding-party music,” says Mahmoud Refaat, the studio owner who has taken some mahraganat artists under his wing. But as this evolution gathers pace, some are wary of selling out, of abandoning their roots for international influences. “People like this music as it is. The change and development of this music should be about the way we sing – not to change the core of the genre,” says Sadat. “It’s about what you sing for the people, it’s not about what you sell to the people.”

Bring back our girls and our country, President Jonathan

I watched the first lady of my country, Nigeria, shed tears for the abducted Chibok girls over two weeks after they went missing. I didn’t actually see the tears fall: she covered her face with a large tissue.

Her husband, President Goodluck Jonathan, went on a political rally in the northern city of Kano two days after the girls were abducted. The 2015 elections are, after all, only a year away. Issues such as addressing the nation over the schoolgirl abductions, and the bomb blast in Abuja days later, which killed 70 people, are obviously less pressing in nature.

Yet on national television last Sunday, the president promised Nigeria: “Wherever these girls are, we’ll surely get them out.” It’s amazing what a little international scrutiny will do. We have discovered the power of the hashtag over the last week. The simple, emphatic demand #BringBackOurGirls has moved across the Twitter timelines of the famous and the unknown, uniting Nigerian housewives and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Protests have spread from Abuja to Lagos, London and Washington; CNN, the BBC, al-Jazeera and other international media organisations have flocked to the protest sites, building momentum. And now Barack Obama has called for the world to act against Boko Haram, the terror organisation that kidnapped the girls.

Protesters hold signs during a demonstration on May 6 2014 outside the Nigerian embassy in Washington, DC. (Pic: AFP)
Protesters hold signs during a demonstration on May 6 2014 outside the Nigerian embassy in Washington, DC. (Pic: AFP)

And yet, as elated as I am over the overdue coverage this issue is finally receiving, I cannot help but wonder what comes next. When the girls are released, will they be returned to a country where they are not at risk of being abducted again? Will they be released to families that are safe from the threat of Boko Haram attacks? Will they come home to a Nigeria where the money meant for their education, their health and their future is not siphoned off into accounts around the globe?

Viewing the events surrounding the Chibok abductions, I am reminded of the Occupy Nigeria protest of January 2012, when thousands demonstrated over the sudden removal of a national petrol subsidy, causing fuel prices to double overnight. Like the #BringBackOurGirls movement, Occupy Nigeria migrated from Twitter through street protests to international coverage. The government was forced to the negotiation table. As the world looked on, causing our leaders to squirm, it was the time for us to call for the Nigeria we wanted, to demand transparency, education and better infrastructure.

But the negotiators were blinkered. They could ask for only one thing: a restoration of the subsidy. And when the petrol pump price was reduced, although not to former levels, it was as if a small victory had been won.

What victory, when our legislators were still the highest paid in the world? When our children were still some of the most illiterate in the world? When our youths suffered one of the highest levels of unemployment in the world? None of these issues had been addressed, not even when the world was watching and our government, unembarrassed by the plight of its citizens, was shamed under the vast lens of the international media.

We cannot let this opportunity pass a second time, for who knows what even greater tragedy will cause the world’s attention to return to Nigeria? Now is the time for us to widen our protest; now is the time to ask what country these girls will be returned to.

What happened to the trial of Senator Ali Ndume, alleged sponsor of Boko Haram insurgents? Why, despite the billions allocated to defence, are the insurgents reportedly better equipped than our soldiers? Why do Nigerian girls remain among the most uneducated in the world? Why has polio not been eradicated in Nigeria? Where is the $20bn that our central bank governor discovered was missing from our treasury this year? And, of course: where are our girls?

This Friday I will join hundreds of people in front of the Nigerian high commission in London to protest at the abduction of our girls and the abduction of our country. Mr President, it’s not too late for you to become the leader we elected you to be. Take your eyes off the 2015 elections and focus on the matter at hand. Bring back our girls. Bring back our money. Bring back our country.

Chibundu Onuzo for the Guardian