South African President Jacob Zuma and his fourth wife Bongi Ngema welcome China’s President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan for a working visit to South Africa in March 2013. (Pic: Reuters)
More than half of China’s foreign aid of over $14-billion between 2010 and 2012 was directed to Africa, the government said on Thursday, underscoring Beijing’s interest in the resource-rich continent to fuel its economy.
Some Chinese projects have attracted attention for China’s support of governments with poor human rights records and lack of transparency, such as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Angola.
It provided no breakdown of aid recipients or any yearly figures. In 2011, China put its total foreign aid over the past six decades at 256.29-billion yuan ($41.32-billion).
While the number pales in comparison with the United States’ foreign aid, which is about $46-billion for fiscal 2015, China says its aid has no political strings attached, unlike many Western countries.
“China adheres to the principles of not imposing any political conditions, not interfering in the internal affairs of recipient countries and fully respecting the right to independently choose their own paths and models of development,” the government said in a policy paper.
Aid was given in the form of grants, interest-free loans and concessional loans, the policy paper said, and nine countries, including Equatorial Guinea, Mali and Zambia had been forgiven a total of 1.24-billion yuan in mature interest-free loans.
Criticism Some in Africa say many Chinese projects benefit local people little, with materials and even labour imported directly from China. Dam schemes have proven divisive too.
China’s close links with oil-rich African states, including Sudan and Angola, have fuelled criticism as well that Beijing only cultivates relations to secure access to energy and raw materials to power its surging economy.
The Foreign Ministry said China’s relationship with African nations goes well beyond its quest for resources and encompasses agricultural, health and infrastructure-related projects.
“China’s co-operation with Africa is far from being limited to the sphere of natural resources,” ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters. Foreign aid “is an important manifestation of China’s international responsibility”.
The paper made no direct reference to such criticism, but said China was dedicated to helping economies boost their ability to export by providing infrastructure like roads and railways and by pursuing a policy of aid for trade.
In one project, it said, Chinese experts trained 500 Liberians to weave bamboo and rattan into products they could sell.
“This programme has not only created jobs, brought the locals more income and lifted them out of poverty, but also boosted the bamboo and rattan industry in the country,” the paper said. ($1 = 6.1962 Chinese yuan)
The Nigerian civil war movie Half of a Yellow Sun will finally premiere in its home country in August, the film’s producer announced on Tuesday. The move came after Nigerian censors had earlier refused to approve it, saying the movie could undermine national security.
The censors had demanded cuts and it was unclear on Tuesday what changes were made to satisfy the National Film and Video Censors Board.
The movie is an adaptation of a novel by award-winning writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that has been read by millions since it was published in 2006. But many more millions of Nigerians will be able to appreciate it now through the movie.
The movie is partly set in the 1960s during Nigeria’s civil war, which remains a subject so sensitive that it is not taught in Nigerian schools. Many commentators on social media suggested the censors were afraid that the film could inflame tribal rivalries.
The movie also comes as Nigeria is confronting an Islamic uprising that threatens to tear the country apart as tensions increase between Muslims and Christians, who make up almost equal parts of Nigeria’s 170-million people.
The censors’ board confirmed it has cleared the movie for viewing by people over 18.
It stars Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, the lead actor in 12 Years a Slave, and Thandie Newton and was supposed to premiere in Nigeria on April 25. The day before, the censors said it had not been cleared.
Half of a Yellow Sun already has been shown to audiences in the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
A statement from producers Shareman Media and FilmOne Distribution announced the August 1 premiere and thanked Nigerians for their patience.
About 1 million people died in the war for an independent Biafra for the Igbo people of the southeast. Many Igbos starved to death because food imports were blocked. At the time, leaders of the Igbo, who are almost exclusively Christians, accused the federal government of failing to protect them when Muslims from the Hausa tribe in the north slaughtered about 30 000 of them.
The ethnic tensions and mistrust that led to that war remain strong.
Today, some northern leaders accuse the federal government, led by a Christian southerner, of orchestrating mass killings of Muslims by soldiers in the northeast. And thousands have died in ongoing conflicts over land and resources across central Nigeria that pit mainly Muslim Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farmers from other tribes.
British-Nigerian director Biyi Bandele in May defended his movie, telling The Associated Press it is not a war film.
“This movie is a sort of love story, a love letter to Nigeria’s very complex and complicated history,” he said. “It was meant to be a cautionary tale to say we can disagree as much as we want but war is never the answer.” – Sapa-AP
Refugees from South Sudan wait to board trucks to the Nyumanzi Resettlement Camp in Uganda on January 26 2014. (Pic: AFP)
When a team from Oxford University’s Humanitarian Innovation Project set out to explore what work refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda had managed to find, they were struck by the breadth and scale of businesses they were engaged in – from being café owners to vegetable sellers, to farmers growing maize on a commercial scale, millers, restaurateurs, transporters and traders in fabrics and jewellery.
With the number of the world’s displaced having now passed the 50-million mark and rising, debates are intensifying over how this many people can be supported. Alexander Betts and his team wanted to see whether it was realistic, and politically acceptable, to encourage refugees to be more self-sufficient.
Uganda has a relatively liberal policy towards its 387 000 refugees and asylum-seekers, most of whom have fled conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. Uganda does not have refugee camps as such, but most live in designated refugee settlements where there are allocated plots of land to farm. They can, however, get permission to live outside these settlements if they think they can support themselves, and Kampala in particular has a sizeable refugee population.
Betts told Irin: “Uganda is a relatively positive case in that it allows the right to work and a significant degree of freedom of movement. That isn’t to say that it’s perfect, but it’s definitely towards the positive end of the spectrum. The reason we chose it is that it shows what’s possible when refugees are given basic economic freedoms.”
His team spoke to more than 1 500 households in Kampala and in two rural settlements – Nakivale in the south, and Kyangwali on the DRC border. The families were registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as refugees, but that did not mean that they all received humanitarian assistance. In Kampala 78% of refugee households receive no assistance at all from UNHCR or any other agency. Even in the refugee settlements, 17% of households receive no assistance, and even where families do get help they are unlikely to be fully dependent on aid, since UNHCR gives food rations for a maximum of five years, unless the refugees are designated as vulnerable.
So what do they do instead? They farm, certainly, in and around the rural settlements. Around half the Congolese, Rwandan and South Sudanese refugees the researchers talked to there had plots of their own, and others worked as farm labourers. Only the Somalis showed little or no interest in farming.
Not just subsistence farming
Ugandan crop buyers come regularly to the settlements, and take truckloads of produce from Kyangwali to the market town of Hoima. The researchers spoke to a trader in Hoima who said he bought around 500 tonnes of maize and beans from the refugee farmers last year, some 60% of his stock. He sold the maize on to other parts of Uganda, but also further afield, to Tanzania and South Sudan.
Now the farmers in Kyangwali are trying to cut out the middlemen and take their crops directly to market, through a co-operative with more than 500 members, including some Ugandan farmers from local villages. Kyangwali Progressive Farmers is registered as a limited company, and has started getting contracts to supply produce directly to manufacturers.
Kagoma weekly market in the Kyangwali refugee settlement in Uganda. (Pic: IRIN/RSC)
The research uncovered another substantial trading network with refugees at its centre – in this case Congolese refugees who were doing business in jewellery and printed cloth, known as bitenge. They buy from Ugandan wholesalers in Kampala, and sell, not just in the refugee settlements but also to Ugandan customers in nearby towns. Some also engage in cross-border trade, taking their wares into Kenya and South Sudan.
The picture which emerges is of a very “connected” economy, with refugees using their networks of contacts among fellow refugees and in their countries of origin to do business. But they also trade with their Ugandan neighbours, work in Ugandan enterprises and – when they prosper – create employment both for their countrymen and members of the host community.
A lesson for other countries?
The picture is a generally positive one, but not every country chooses to allow its refugees such economic freedom. Governments worry that if they are making a good living where they are, they will never go home, although Betts points out that when the time does come to leave, it is a lot easier to repatriate someone who has been busy and active and developed their skills, than someone who has spent years surviving on food rations in a refugee camp.
Successful refugees can also generate resentment in local populations. Uganda has remained generally tolerant, unlike neighbouring Kenya, where there has been a backlash against Somali refugees following a series of al-Shabab attacks. Uganda has also suffered terrorist attacks, but says Betts, “for some reason, unlike Kenya, they haven’t been connected to refugees in the same way, perhaps because in Kenya politicians have started to use the refugee issue for political gain”.
So the situation in Uganda does very much depend on its local context. Even so, Betts and his team are convinced that their study has implications for refugee policy elsewhere, particularly for the new crisis in the Middle East. “The traditional response is to create camps,” he told Irin, “but we can’t afford to do this in places like Lebanon. The cost – the human cost in terms of the waste of potential, and the possibility of developing resentment and frustration – is just too high.
“We have to realise what refugees can contribute, and not just warehouse them in camps. We should start by recognising that long-term encampment is not an option, and that when they are allowed, human beings can do a lot for themselves.”
What do you do when you need to deliver several hundred pounds of potatoes, 150 stalks of sugar cane, 30 eucalyptus saplings and eight sacks of coal, without motorised transport?
For residents of Goma, in the war-scarred east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the answer to this, and many other problems, is the tshukudu.
A local but highly efficient tradition, the man-powered wooden scooters are everywhere on the paved highways and dusty sidestreets of Goma, holding their own with the motorcycle taxis.
A man with his tshukudu in Goma on June 19 2014. (Pic: AFP)
They’re operated by a group of 1 500 proud, often burly men who not only have their own union but saw a giant, gold-coloured statue erected in their honour a few years ago in this capital of North Kivu province, on the border with Rwanda.
“The tshukudu is our whole life,” said driver Damas Sibomana.
Their vehicles, pronounced “chookoodoo”, measure about two metres long, have wide handlebars and a raised front wheel. They balance improbably large loads, as the tshukudeurs – as the drivers are known – push their vehicles along almost as much as they “drive” them.
Many drivers live outside the city and their day begins by transporting agricultural products grown in the verdant hills to the north, which feed the city’s markets. The good news? It’s downhill.
Once in the city centre the drivers await further orders for deliveries or return, again fully loaded, back to their starting point.
Men transport goods on tshukudus, wooden push-bikes, in Goma on June 18 2014. (Pic: AFP)
Jean-Marie Firiki gets up at 4am but his descent stops in Kibumba, 30 kilometres to the north of Goma, which boasts of being the tshukudu’s birthplace. The 35-year-old works as a tshukudeur at dawn and builds the machines during the day.
“A decent tshukudu costs $50 (36 euros),” Firiki said, “but the cost of a beautiful one can be $80-100” – quite a sum in DR Congo, where the majority of people live in extreme poverty.
But the boon is no fuel costs, and driver Sibomana says they can earn $10 on a good day.
There are no machines in the workshop that Fikiri shares with other craftsmen. Like most of the country Kibumba has no electricity supply. The men work the wood – here it’s eucalyptus – with a handsaw, a chisel, a plane and some sandpaper. It takes two days for a craftsman to make one scooter.
Invented in 1973 Paulin Barasiza works next to Fikiri. The 52-year-old traces the invention of the tshukudu back to about 1973.
Our fathers would sell potatoes and tobacco at a Rwandan market several kilometres away, he said. “They used wheelbarrows but these where inefficient. This is where the design came from” – inspired by bicycles.
The first tshukudus were made entirely of wood and the wheels were greased with palm oil several times a day to keep their gears from seizing up.
Sales began to pick up in the late 1980s but the decades that followed have been marred by inter-ethnic violence and regional conflicts that would ravage Kivu and still mark the province today.
It was paradoxically during this dark period that the tshukudu experienced significant upgrades: old tires glued on to protect the wheels, metal hubs and bearings and the addition of springs to aid steering.
Today, tshukudus cover vast distances and can carry up to half a tonne. Some models have a brake that works by applying friction to the rear wheel.
When a big load needs transporting to Goma, Sibomana employs two our three extra drivers for the day. Solidarity is strong, and thanks to help from other tshukudeurs, he was able to buy a field and a plot of land where he is building a house.
In early evening after a hard day’s work the scooter takes on another role: courting. The roads are full of young drivers taking their girlfriends out for a ride, both standing on the tshukudu as the man, in back, scoots it along.
The profession is held in high esteem. To have a daughter marry a tshukudeur means she “will not die of hunger”, said local historian Dany Kayeye.
On a recent Friday night, I was watching He’s Just Not That Into You. It’s a sweet love story of a girl chasing love and taking advice from a boy she was falling for, while, unknown to them both, he felt the same about her. Of course they end up together at the end, Hollywood-style.
In one of the early scenes, groups of friends from different parts of the world take turns comforting each other as they share their relationship troubles. When an African girl complained about her boyfriend not being in touch, her friend’s response was: “Maybe he forgot your hut number.” Another quickly added: “Or he got eaten by a lion.”
I found it very offensive that in 2009, Africa was still being portrayed in such a manner. How many times are these ‘jokes’ at our expense going to be told? But here we are in 2014, and Africa is still being portrayed in that manner. It led me to thinking about the stereotypes that follow us around in our daily lives, not just on-screen. I asked my friends – from Cape Verde to Somalia, from Cape Town to Tunis and Nigeria – about the stereotypes they most often encountered, whether it was about religion, culture, tribe or country. Unsurprisingly, many of the responses were similar.
Nigerians will juju you.
Tunisians are terrorists.
Arabs are not Africans.
Igbo people love money.
A Senegalese person’s complexion is several shades darker than the complexion of an average sub-Saharan African.
All Kenyans are fast runners.
Hausa people don’t speak good English
Africans are poor.
Nigerians are scammers and must not be trusted.
Muslims are terrorists.
All Africans are black.
All South Africans have Aids.
Yoruba girls are ugly.
Nigerians are all thieves.
Nigerians are all drug dealers.
Nigerians are obnoxious.
“Do you speak African?”
“Do you people live with lions?”
“Do you know Mugabe?”
All Hausa people are stinking rich or terribly poor.
Africa, in general, is a dangerous place.
“Do you live on trees?”
“Do you own cars?”
All Africans are violent and/or terrorists.
Light-skinned and attractive Africans are more successful.
“Do you have internet in Africa?”
Africa is a homogenous country.
Africans are less intellectually gifted than other people.
You get more opportunities because you are African, especially with college applications.
Egyptians go to school on camels.
Rwandans kill themselves (the genocide of 1994).
East Africans have large foreheads.
Zulu people are hot-tempered.
The South Sudanese all have a delinquent and miscreant mindset.
All Egyptians are Muslims.
“Do you live in a pyramid?”
Sub-Saharan Africans cannot have long hair – it just doesn’t grow.
Nigerians are kidnappers.
Nigerians will ‘hook’ you to drugs.
Xhosa women are all gold-diggers.
People from the Maasai tribe eat blood.
Africans speak “Lion-King” language.
Africans hate white people.
Africans do not wear clothes.
All African countries are corrupt.
I’m sure there are countless others we can add to the list. If, during colonialism, Europeans thought Africans did not wear clothes and spoke “Lion-King” language, I could perhaps forgive that. But I cannot accept the ignorance of people of my generation. Instead of laughing it off – as we are expected to – we should call them out on it.
Khadija Sanusi is a first-year student at the African Leadership Academy.
