Tag: West Africa

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 The case has since been withdrawn.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

Lagos store brings modern African luxury to Nigeria’s rich

The interior of the Alara retail store on Victoria Island, Lagos. (Pic: AFP)
The interior of the Alara retail store on Victoria Island, Lagos. (Pic: AFP)

Take a sought-after architect, add the king of “new Africa cuisine” and a smattering of famous designers, and you get a concept-store in Lagos that seeks to bring modern African luxury to Nigeria’s ultra-rich.

The chaotic, cosmopolitan metropolis has largely failed to cater for its mega-rich minority despite a big appetite for high-end shopping and eating in a country that houses 11 of Africa’s 50 biggest fortunes, according to Forbes magazine.

So, Reni Folawiyo, a businesswoman married to one of the 11 – multi-millionaire Tunde Folawiyo – decided to create Alara, a four-storey building housing a mix of African fashion, design and art and a selection of work by Western designers, complete with a gourmet restaurant.

Nestled in the heart of Lagos, the store does not attract droves of shoppers in a country where the vast majority still lives on less than $2 a day, but it already has its share of discreet regulars who rarely leave the building empty-handed.

David Adjaye building

The price tags are in dollars and often count several zeroes, aimed at customers who are used to travelling far and wide and shopping abroad.

But while they can afford items in New York and Paris luxury stores, these don’t necessarily always cater for the tastes of African women or their body shape.

“We like colour, we’re dramatic, adornment is our way of expression,” says Folawiyo.

Enter Alara, which she says is geared towards “the flamboyance of the Africans”, from the retro, multi-coloured dresses by Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean, futuristic glasses by Kenya’s Cyrus Kabiru to the python bags made by Nigeria’s Zashadu.

The store also has a personal shopping service on offer to cater for customers’ varying needs.

“We are specific in terms of our bodies. We don’t necessarily fit into a sort of international mould, in terms of the size and shape,” says Folawiyo.

The building itself – an imposing black and orange-ochre bloc whose square, openwork patterns bring to mind Nigeria’s traditional Adire textile – was designed by David Adjaye.

The store is the first major work on African soil by the British architect of Ghanaian origin, who is also behind Washington’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others.

‘A cultural re-awakening’

It’s a first for Nigerian designer Duro Olowu too, who grew up in Lagos but now spends his time between London and New York.

The man who counts US First Lady Michelle Obama among his customers had initially refused to have his creations sold in Lagos, but was so taken by Alara that he allowed the store to showcase them.

“Lagos was seen as a mishmash of badly presented things,” Olowu says of the 20-million-strong heaving city better known for its giant traffic jams and poor infrastructure.

“I wanted my clothes to be stocked somewhere that represented everything I believed in. And Alara is stylish but also cultural.

“This store is also a place where young people can walk in and be inspired,” he added.

Fashion aside, a gourmet restaurant is also due to open soon on the ground floor.

The menu will be drawn up by Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam, one of the biggest names in contemporary African cuisine who owns several restaurants in New York.

Like Olowu, this is his first collaboration in Africa, which he left in 1989 but still remains his main source of inspiration.

On the menu, dishes that blend African street food with Western classics such as millet and peanut lamb risotto, quail grilled with suya spices typical of northern Nigeria, hibiscus tart served with palm leaf, coconut and lime flavoured ice cream.

“I wanted this place to be a cultural reawakening, bringing what we’ve known as Africans into the new world,” says Folawiyo.

Ebola: Getting to zero cases

The Ebola outbreak has slowed across West Africa but every new infection continues to threaten millions of lives. This fatal disease claimed 7 000 lives by the end of 2014 in just Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Lione. Overcoming this complex emergency challenged governments and international aid organisations and brought fear to the rest of the world.

This inspiring story of a girl in Sierra Leone who loses her parents to Ebola visualises the truly devastating effect of the disease, but also the courage of everyday heroes who help fight the outbreak.

Last month, Liberia was finally declared Ebola-free. However, the deadly virus will not truly disappear until there is no longer active transmission in affected neighbouring countries.

Sheldon Yett, Unicef‘s representative in Liberia, cautioned that the region could not afford to let its guard down. “Having achieved zero cases is the first step, now the challenge is to remain at zero. The threat won’t be over until there are no more cases in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.” He also added, “In the longer-run there is a need to rebuild a better health system, with the capacity to identify and respond to any future outbreaks, be it Ebola, measles or pertussis,” said Yett.

Getting to zero is now a reality as long as we see a sustained commitment throughout 2015 in the fight against Ebola. Liberia is now clear. Now it’s time for Guinea and Sierra Leone to #GetToZero.

WHO declares Liberia Ebola-free

A man walks past an Ebola campaign banner in Monrovia. (Pic: AFP)
A man walks past an Ebola campaign banner in Monrovia. (Pic: AFP)

The UN health agency on Saturday declared Liberia Ebola-free, hailing the “monumental” achievement in the west African country where the virus has killed more than 4 700 people.

“The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement, adding that 42 days had passed since the last confirmed case was buried.

That period is double the number of days the virus requires to incubate, and WHO hailed its eradication as an enormous development in the long crisis.

“Interruption of transmission is a monumental achievement for a country that reported the highest number of deaths in the largest, longest, and most complex outbreak since Ebola first emerged in 1976,” it said.

The declaration was a source of both great pride to Liberians who had been stalked by the deadly virus they simultaneously sought to battle.

“We are out of the woods. We are Ebola free. Thanks to our partners for standing with us in the fight against Ebola. We are Liberians,” tweeted Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown.

The news was also cheered by international organisations like the Red Cross, Unicef and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), as well as officials from the US and European Union.

However whailing the “important marker” White House spokesman Josh Earnest, in a statement, said: “The world must not forget that the Ebola outbreak still persists in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Guinea.

“We must not let down our guard until the entire region reaches and stays at zero Ebola cases.”

Relief and sorrow

The WHO warned that because the Ebola outbreaks were continuing in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, the risk remained high that infected people could re-enter the country.

Because of that risk, MSF also tempered its applause of the declaration with reminders that the crisis will not be over for any one nation until the virus has been eradicated everywhere.

For average Liberians, the development was a source of both relief and sorrow.

“I lost a brother in the Ebola crisis so I am happy and sad,” said 40 year-old Monrovia taxi driver Nyaningo Kollie.

During the two months of peak transmission last August and September the capital Monrovia was the setting for “some of the most tragic scenes from West Africa’s outbreak: gates locked at overflowing treatment centres, patients dying on the hospital grounds, and bodies that were sometimes not collected for day,” noted WHO official Alex Gasasira, who read the organisation’s statement Saturday.

At the height of the crisis in late September Liberia was suffering more than 400 new cases a week, with uncollected and highly infectious bodies piling up in the streets of Monrovia, a sprawling, chaotic city at the best of times.

The health system – embryonic before the crisis, with some 50 doctors and 1 000 nurses for 4.3 million people – was devastated, losing 189 health workers out of 275 infected.

“At one point, virtually no treatment beds for Ebola patients were available anywhere in the country,” Gasasira recalled.

Schools remained shut after the summer holidays, unemployment soared as the formal and black-market economies collapsed and clinics closed as staff died and non-emergency healthcare ground to a halt.

And then, as suddenly as it had spread, Ebola retreated.

‘Thank all Liberians’

Liberia, which had recorded 389 deaths in one week in October alone, saw fatality counts dropping below 100 within weeks, and into single figures by the start of 2015.

During a WHO-hosted ceremony Saturday in the Ebola crisis cell in Monrovia, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf saluted her fellow citizens and health workers for rising to the crisis.

“I thank all Liberians for the effort. When Ebola came, we were confused. We called on our professionals. They put their best in the fight, this is the result I have sent a message to the international community to thank them,” she said.

In the coming years there will be a reckoning on the response to the greatest ever Ebola outbreak, which left 11 000 dead.

The West was initially accused of ignoring the crisis and then treating Liberia and its neighbours as pariahs, blocking flights and quarantining returning health workers after the first-ever domestic infections outside of Africa, in the US and Spain.

The WHO, at times seen as overly bureaucratic and politicised, was berated for waiting until August – almost five months after the outbreak was identified – to declare it a “public health emergency of international concern.”

“Quite simply, we were all too late. The world – including MSF – was slow to start the response from the beginning,” said MSF’s head of Ebola operations in Brussels, Henry Gray, in a statement.