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 The case has since been withdrawn.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

Two new trials of Ebola vaccines begin in Africa and Europe

Healthcare workers, wearing protective suits, leave a high-risk area at the French NGO Médecins Sans Frontières Elwa hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Pic: Dominique Faget/AFP
Healthcare workers, wearing protective suits, leave a high-risk area at the French NGO Médecins Sans Frontières Elwa hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Pic: Dominique Faget/AFP

Two new Ebola vaccine trials began on Wednesday with volunteers in Britain, France and Senegal getting “prime-boost” immunisations developed by Bavarian Nordic, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

The mid-stage, or Phase II, trials are designed primarily to test the vaccines’ safety, but will also assess whether they provoke an immune response against the deadly virus.

The development of the prime-boost and other vaccines was accelerated in response to vast outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa, where at least 11,200 people have died so far in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

“The current Ebola outbreak has reinforced that speed of response is crucial,” said Egeruan Babatunde Imoukhuede, who is coordinating one of the trials in Senegal.

“Outbreak diseases spread quickly, so any vaccination approach must be able to keep up.”

Data from the World Health Organisation show there were 30 confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa in the week to July 5.

In Liberia, which was declared Ebola-free in May, a sixth new case was confirmed on Tuesday in what health officials fear is a new wave of the outbreak.

While the number of Ebola cases has dropped sharply in recent months, researchers said the flare-up in Liberia underlines the need to push ahead with developing potential vaccines that may help control this and future outbreaks.

The trial of the Bavarian Nordic and J&J prime-boost combination initially aims to recruit more than 600 healthy adult volunteers in Britain and France.

Bavarian said it hoped to launch another phase of this trial in Africa later this year involving 1,200 volunteers, but other large clinical trials have recently been thwarted by the drop in case numbers.

Previously planned trials of GSK, Merck and J&J shots in West Africa have been struggling to recruit volunteers with enough exposure to Ebola to prove whether their vaccines are doing the job and preventing infection.

The second trial will be conducted in Senegal and uses two vaccines tested first in people at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and being developed in a partnership with GSK. The first, based on a chimpanzee adenovirus, is designed to stimulate, or prime, an initial immune response, while the second is designed to boost that response.

Each vaccine is based on genetically modifying safe viruses to carry just one part of the Ebola virus that will stimulate the body’s immune system. Researchers stressed that none of the shots contains any live Ebola virus.

Kate Kelland for Reuters

Outrage as 9 Sudanese women face 40 lashes for wearing trousers

Sudanese women leave after voting at a school turned into a polling station in Al-Jarif West, outside Khartoum, Sudan. Pic: Ashraf Shazly/AFP
Sudanese women leave after voting at a school turned into a polling station in Al-Jarif West, outside Khartoum, Sudan. Pic: Ashraf Shazly/AFP

A Sudanese Christian woman arrested for wearing trousers has narrowly escaped the punishment of 40 lashes, in a case that human rights groups say is further damning evidence of the government’s intolerance to its Christian population.

Fardos Al Toum, 19, was arrested for indecency along with 11 other women in June in front of a church in Khartoum by the so-called morality police, who enforce the government’s strict codes, for appearing in public in trousers and skirts.

A judge pronounced his guilty verdict on Monday, and the rest of the 9 accused women will appear at separate trials throughout July, the threat of flogging still hanging over them.

Muhamad Mustafa, Al Toum’s lawyer, said it was pressure from activists and campaigners which prompted the court to abandon the punishment of lashes in this case. “This is the weirdest decision I have ever heard: the judge instead of declaring her innocent has convicted her without punishment, and this is itself is unlawful decision,” Mustafa told the Guardian.

“He gave her a lecture about the appearance of decent women, and he found himself in a bad position among the activists who came to support her. He didn’t want to lose his arrogance – that is why he came out with this decision.”

The women, aged between 17 and 23 and originally from the Nuba Mountains region on the border with South Sudan, have gained the support of groups who say the case is an example of the ongoing prejudice against Christians by a Muslim government intent on enacting Islamic law.

The group are being charged under article 152 of the criminal code which, based on Sharia law, bans “indecent dress”. Elfatih Hussain, another lawyer representing the women, says that the application of the rule is too broad: “They have different traditions and customs from Muslims, and they are being tried because the law is [too] loose,” Hussain told the Guardian.

Social stigma
In 2009, the Sudanese government faced international outrage following the arrest of journalist and UN officer Lubna Hussain – along with 13 other Christian women – who were also threatened with 40 lashes each for wearing trousers.

Amal Habbani, a rights activist with the group No to Women’s Oppression claims that between 40–50,000 women are arrested and flogged every year by the public order police because of their clothing.

Because the standard for contradicting what is considered “public morality” is subjective and not defined, Habbani says, the law is frequently applied arbitrarily, to the detriment of women and girls.

However not all cases receive media attention because it can “create social stigma to the women”, she said.

Habbani explains that this particular case reached widespread attention because of the activism of the women themselves, and thanks to social media support. “The cases are usually against women in the marginalised areas in Khartoum, and amongst poorer women,” Habbani said.

Amnesty International has called for the charges against the 12 women to be dropped. In a statement released on Sunday the organisation said: “It’s outrageous that these women face a risk of being flogged simply for choosing to wear a skirt or a pair of trousers. The public order law is imposed in a way which is hugely discriminatory and totally inappropriate and violates women’s rights.”

One of the accused, Wigdan Abdallah, said that the police mistreated the group and held them in a truck for hours before taking them to the police station in Bahri district, where they spent a further 16 hours.

“We were taken in a big truck along with drunken people and they kept driving with us on the streets of Khartoum from 9pm until 2am before arriving to the police station. Until then we didn’t know the reason for our arrest,” she said.

“The police abused us verbally – but they didn’t beat us – and we kept telling them we are not guilty of anything because we were wearing trousers or skirts with shirts, which are the normal clothes that we wear everyday and most of the girls in Sudan wear.”

Nahid Gabrallah, the director of Seema, a centre working to protectwomen and children, said: “We are very worried about [the women’s] wellbeing and psychological health, because according to our previous studies in similar cases they try to commit suicide after they go through such experience,” she said.

Organised prejudice
Sudan is a religiously, culturally and ethnically diverse country, however president Omar al-Bashir has long made his intolerance towards the country’s Christian and traditional African religions clear, which together make up 3% of the country’s population, according to official figures.

Bashir declared famously in a speech in 2010 prior the secession of South Sudan, that the country would follow Sharia law: “We don’t want to hear anything about diversity – Sudan is an Islamic and Arabic country.

“Sharia (Islamic law) and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language,” he said.

For the people of the Nuba Mountains, this latest arrest is further evidence of an organised campaign of discrimination against them.

Arno Ngotilu, spokesman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, said arrests like these are just further examples of the ruling party’s intolerance. “The National Congress Party is a racist group, and what happened to the girls is part of their campaign launched by the president in Nuba Mountains against the Nubian people.

“They want to rule Sudan with a very narrow-minded view, imposing one religion, one culture and one language,” said the rebel spokesman, whose group has been fighting the government in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile states since 2011.

Lawyer Hussain said that a major judicial shift is needed to stamp out such abuses of the criminal code: “We need to change the whole legal system in Sudan, which is against the Sudanese constitution itself and international human rights such as the international covenant on civil and political rights that Sudan has ratified,” he said.

“They were wearing ordinary clothes that all girls their age in Sudan wear, and what happened to them is a systematic discrimination against women.”

Zeinab Mohammed Salih for the Guardian Africa Network

Zimbabwe’s game of political musical chairs is not really about us

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe announced yet another Cabinet reshuffle last week. (Pic: AFP / Mujahid Safodien)
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe announced yet another Cabinet reshuffle last week. (Pic: AFP / Mujahid Safodien)

Last week, yet another cabinet reshuffle was announced in Zimbabwe, with one more Zanu-PF minister, Joel Biggie Matiza, losing his position barely six months after assuming it. His removal followed the grand purge of multiple cabinet members — including former presidential affairs minister Didymus Mutasa and former vice-president Joice Mujuru — late last year on allegations of leading and encouraging party factionalism against President Robert Mugabe.

But while Matiza was the only removal of this latest process, the largest media space has been reserved for news of the reassignment of Jonathan Moyo from the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity to the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development.

The enigmatic Moyo — who recently had a public Twitter spat with the former governor of South Africa’s Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni — is rumoured to have been removed from his position as a result of deepening friction between him and Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of Zimbabwe’s two vice-presidents. Ironically, Moyo’s 2005 ouster from Zanu-PF is attributed to his keen involvement in a factional plan to bring Mnangagwa to the then-vacant post of vice-president, a position that was assumed by Mujuru until her expulsion.

Factionalism is indeed the staple offering of Zimbabwean politics at the moment, with the MDC — that once potent opposition — following suit with Morgan Tsvangirai’s own purge of 21 party parliamentarians on grounds of factionalism earlier in the year. As one joke goes, “If you send two Zimbabweans to the moon, they will come back with three political parties.”

The humour and bizarreness of it all aside, I am perpetually disconcerted by what gets amplified, and left out, in discussions around these ongoing purges. Take for instance, the terminology used to describe Moyo’s reassignment to the tertiary education ministry. This has largely been deemed a “demotion”; a control measure to put Moyo back “in his place”.

With a track record as a ministry where wayward Zanu-PF politicians are sent for “punishment” or as an “in-between place”, the negative connotations associated with this portfolio are hardly new. Former finance minister Herbert Murerwa was once “demoted” to this post in the same way that the late Stan Mudenge (once minister of foreign affairs) was meted out this same fate. In more recent times, the post has fallen to Olivia Muchena (who was removed from cabinet along with Mutasa and others) and Oppah Muchinguri, who replaced Muchena after vacating the Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development ministry as rumours swelled that First Lady Grace Mugabe would take up the Cabinet position.

I am well aware that not all ministerial positions are perceived to be equal in terms of power and influence when it comes to political manoeuvring. I am also aware of the reported hierarchal ordering with Zanu-PF’s politburo; a strategic line of succession to the presidential position. But something is very wrong when a ministry of tertiary education comes to be seen as the proverbial sacrificial lamb of a cabinet; a position of so little consequence that it relegates its occupier to near oblivion. That is saying a lot for a portfolio supposedly dealing with one of the Zimbabwean citizenry’s fundamental needs; education. And it would appear the gender ministry suffers a similar negative perception as, until the appointment last week of Nyasha Chikwinya to the post of minister, that position had been vacant since December last year.

If there was ever a time that these two portfolios could be deemed inconsequential, now is not it. Strikes, and threats thereof, have become the modus operandi of many state tertiary institutions. In March, following a lecturers’ strike over outstanding salaries, the University of Zimbabwe shut down abruptly, with students forced to vacate halls of residence indefinitely, the university reopening a day later against mounted pressure. Ironically, this was at a time when the strong #RhodesMustFall student movement in South Africa was influencing widespread debate and discussion around race, power and oppression, all leading to the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the grounds of the University of Cape Town.

I recall once having a conversation with an influential media executive with a large local company who remarked that she would always think twice before hiring a local graduate, favouring working with the few returning Zimbabwean students trained at western universities, or in South Africa.

“I don’t have to start from scratch teaching them basic things like how to work digital programmes and equipments,” she said, alluding to the fact that where learning does occur, it often proceeds with demotivated staff and outdated and scarce equipment.

“Time is money.”

So vast has become the rift.

What, then, are the chances of young local Zimbabwean graduates being professionally competitive if they are not attractive — even to their own job market, which, mind you, remains severely compromised by excruciating levels of unemployment?

Recently, also, Prosecutor-General Johannes Tomana spoke in defence of courts that did not jail paedophiles who could “prove” that they had gained sexual consent from girls as young as 12. In his comments, which raised widespread uproar, he also recommended marriage for these young girls (to their sex offenders) as an alternative to poverty. In a survey conducted by Plan International and presented to Parliament last week, it was found that 58% of people within community settings did not see anything morally wrong with sleeping with underage girls.

Given these staggering challenges, and many more, Zimbabwe doesn’t really have the luxury of calling any one of its ministerial portfolios “inconsequential” or “unimportant”.

As enthralling and immersive as factionalism has come to be, it seems we have lost sight of the fact that it serves as yet another distraction from serving and representing our genuine interests, and those of many Zimbabweans not afforded much privilege to articulate their own grievances. The question, perhaps, is whether it actually matters to still have genuine interests within a media and political landscape that favours characters over causes, and sectarianism over service.

No doubt, Zimbabwe is currently suspended in a perpetual game of musical chairs, with politicians across the spectrum scrambling for scarce seats of power as we spectate.

But what happens when the music stops, no one really knows.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for womenHer Zimbabweand is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter

South Africa’s jobless ignite creative power with solar kits

(Screenshot: ecoboxx.co.za)
(Screenshot: ecoboxx.co.za)

A motorbike accident two years ago in the Cape Town suburb of Milnerton left Pascal Kassongo with a leg fracture, multiple cuts and a written-off bike, crippling his courier business.

Two weeks in hospital, followed by several more of physiotherapy and recovery, drove the father of four into near destitution.

Too weak to buy and deliver goods to clients, his opportunity to earn R300-R400 ($24.40-$32.60) a day was gone.

Originally from Uvira in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kassongo fled the war there in 2007, and had only a few friends he could call on for help in South Africa.

One of them was a pastor who took him to Scalabrini, a centre that helps migrants settle and find an economic foothold in South Africa.

As well as receiving regular food parcels, Kassongo was recruited for the “Amandla!” Project, whose name means “power” in the Xhosa and Zulu languages.

The scheme trains unemployed people, especially migrants, to run small businesses using a solar-powered kit called Ecoboxx.

Inside the box

The Ecoboxx is a lightweight, portable power supply, charged with two solar panels, that can provide 50 hours of power. It comes with two LED lights, a USB-driven fan, hair clippers and a charging cable for cell phones and other devices.

The kit was designed for the Amandla Project, with the intention of giving entrepreneurs a tool to power their activities, said Merle Mills of Community Chest, the organisation that came up with the project.

Using the kit, an individual can make up to R1 600 per month cutting hair five days a week, or at least R1 400 by charging up to seven cell phones at once with the device, Mills added.

Community Chest CEO Lorenzo Davids said a Dutch investor had backed the Ecoboxx as a way of helping Africans access economic opportunities.

“Getting into green or solar technology is the ideal platform to ensure we give our people low-cost and sustainable resources so they can develop the economy for themselves,” Davids told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Community Chest started Amandla in January after getting funding of almost 2 million rand, on condition the kit would be made available at a nominal cost of R200 to keep people out of debt.

Davids said the Ecoboxx would help entrepreneurs in townships and rural areas “electrify” their homes, and set up businesses to generate income for their families and communities.

At first, it was targeted at individuals who find it hard to break into the mainstream economy, like African migrants and communities where small businesses lack access to electricity.

The solar device, which retails for R4 000, is manufactured by a technology company that also supplies to retail stores in South Africa.

So far, Amandla has distributed 300 kits – almost a third of the planned total – including 50 to foreign nationals.

Spreading the light

“After spending a month in Pollsmoor prison for selling pirated DVDs and CDs, I was determined to sustain myself through legal means,” said Papy Shereza, 31, a bio-chemistry dropout from a Congolese university.

After enrolling in the Amandla programme, he was given an Ecoboxx, which he uses to run his own barbershop in the community of Du Noon.

“On weekends I make good money, but during the week I have to supplement my income by selling other hair products for women,” he said.

He also charges cell phones, and in a good week, he can earn up to 1,000 rand.

In the sprawling community of Gugulethu, Janet Bete, who came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2007, is equally happy. Her son, 24, uses an Ecoboxx to power a family barber shop.

“In my neighbourhood there is a man who runs a spaza (tuck shop) but has no electricity, so I hire out the solar lights to him daily from 5am when he opens, to 7am when it’s no longer dark,” said Bete.

The enterprising woman, who also manages a crèche, rents out the solar lights for evening church crusades and parties too.

“Whenever there is a funeral in my community and there is no power, I donate my lights – it’s my way of paying (people) back for living well together,” she added.

In Milnerton, Kassongo has adopted a different approach.

“I don’t own a barbershop, but I hire out my kit to local South Africans who do. We share the proceeds,” he said. “It helps put something on the table.”

Joe Pereira, head of strategy for Community Chest, said the Amandla project aimed to expand its opportunities to all “deserving” South Africans.

“Being creative around renewable energy will benefit many people,” he added.

Munyaradzi Makoni for Reuters