Sixty years after Humphrey Bogart steered her through crocodile infested waters, the African Queen is back plying the Nile.
Lovingly restored, the boat is operated by Cam McLeay, a New Zealand adventurer and Nile enthusiast, and took its first passengers for a ride in December.
“The African Queen belongs on the Nile. So it is so important to have the boat back home over 60 years after the film was made,” McLeay told AFP.
Cam McLeay stands on his boat with his colleagues on the shores of the River Nile in Jinja, Uganda. He bought the boat, made it functional and will use it to offer cruises on the river Nile in Jinja. (Pic: AFP)
In 1950 Bogart and Katherine Hepburn flew into Uganda together with a huge team from Hollywood to shoot the movie of the same name.
The film told the story of a prim missionary and a gruff adventurer, the captain of the African Queen – two totally different characters – who in true silver screen fashion end up falling in love despite the odds.
Hepburn wrote a frothy account of the making of the African Queen, which was shot between Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, subtitled “How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Houston and almost lost my mind”.
Based on a 1934 novel by C.S. Forester, the movie was set during World War I in German-occupied east Africa.
“There were actually two of these boats, one of them was in Congo and this is the Nile’s African Queen,” explained McLeay, who recounts his love affair with the Nile.
“I’m very attached to the Nile. I’ve travelled the full length of the river, from the Mediterranean to the source in Nyungwe,” the father of three recounted. “I’ve been up and down the river for 16 years.”
Back in the 1990s he set up a rafting company in Uganda’s Jinja area, and then had an eco-lodge built on an island in the river.
McLeay says he wants his projects to be sustainable – from both an economic and an environmental point of view.
He then started thinking about a river boat to do trips and sundowner cruises for tourists, showcasing the scenery and the very varied birdlife.
“Just on this section here, we have over 100 species of birds. It’s just beautiful to be on the river here at the sunset on the Equator,” he told AFP.
McLeay learned of the existence of the African Queen when on holiday on Kenya’s island of Lamu, where traditional Arabic-style sailing dhows with lateen sails are common.
“I was looking for an authentic African boat to run on the Nile and I was thinking of buying a Swahili dhow,” he recounted.
“Then this hotel owner said: ‘Why don’t you buy the African Queen? She’s from Uganda!'”
A week later McLeay had gone to Nairobi and tracked down Yank Evans, a septuagenarian who explained how he had found the hull of the boat abandoned in northern Uganda’s Murchison Falls national park 20 years earlier and had done it up.
When he left Uganda for Kenya he brought the boat with him.
Another five years went by between the boat’s return to the banks of the Nile and the start of services on the river.
One of the challenges was to rebuild the steam engine, which was more than 100 years old.
In the movie, directed by John Huston and released in 1951, the boat was powered by a diesel engine that was made to look like a steam engine.
But when Evans restored it he decided to fit a real steam engine and had one airfreighted from Britain.
“When we got this boat, the boiler had been sitting around for a very long time,” explained Gavin Fahey, the African Queen’s captain and mechanic, adding that he had to strip down the engine and re-machine it.
McLeay explains that he has tried to recreate an atmosphere of times gone by on board his African Queen, the time when huge tracts of Africa were – for Western adventurers at least – still virgin territory waiting to be explored.
“Gavin wears the same kind of clothes as Humphrey Bogart. We have adopted the fez for the waiters, which is associated with the Sudan, where the Nile makes most of his journey,” McLeay said.
“And we are serving gin and tonics, like Humphrey Bogart drank in the movie.”
Keeping the engine fed with wood has virtually no environmental impact, McLeay says, since he is using wood left over from a construction project, and he has planted trees to ensure supply when that stock runs out.
“It’s probably more environmental friendly then a modern boat,” he says. – Sapa-AFP
Can you make a film from scratch in two days? Contestants in the 48 Hour Film Project recently held in Nairobi did just that. On Friday November 29, 200 budding filmmakers from across the capital were put into teams, made to choose a genre out of a hat, and got to work writing scripts, shooting and editing. They were also given a prop, a character, and a line of dialogue that had to be included in their film.
All of the films that were submitted on Sunday night screened to sold-out audiences at Century Cinemax, The Junction on December 11 and 12. With genres ranging from horror to thriller and romance, audience members were spoilt for choice as they got to cast their vote for “Best Film – Audience Choice”. That honour went to Dead Wrong.
With a booming economy in Nigeria and more black children than anywhere else in the world, Taofick Okoya was dismayed some years ago when he couldn’t find a black doll for his niece.
The 43-year-old spotted a gap in the market and with little competition from foreign firms such as Mattel Inc, the maker of Barbie, he set up his own business. He outsourced manufacturing of doll parts to low-cost China, assembled them onshore and added a twist – traditional Nigerian costumes.
Seven years on, Okoya sells between 6 000 and 9 000 of his “Queens of Africa” and “Naija Princesses” a month, and reckons he has 10-15 percent of a small but fast-growing market.
“I like it,” said five year-old Ifunanya Odiah, struggling to contain her excitement as she checked out one of Okoya’s dolls in a Lagos shopping mall. “It’s black, like me.”
Dolls dressed in local attire are arranged on a table at a workshop in Surulere district, in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos. (Pic: Reuters)
While multinational companies are flocking to African markets, Okoya’s experience suggests that, in some areas at least, there is still an opportunity for domestic businesses to establish themselves by using local knowledge to tap a growing, diverse and increasingly sophisticated middle class.
There’s no doubt about Nigeria’s economic potential. Economist Jim O’Neill has this year popularised it as one of the “MINT” countries – alongside Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey – that he sees as successors to the first wave of emerging markets he dubbed the Brics (Brazil, Russia and India and China).
With around 170-million people, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country by far, and its economy is growing at about 7 percent, vying with South Africa as the continent’s largest.
Several multinational firms have been here for years. Drinks group Diageo, for example, now sells more Guinness in Nigeria than in the beer’s traditional home market of Ireland. South African grocer Shoprite has seven profitable stores in Nigeria and plans to roll out hundreds.
While Western economies struggle, the appeal of emerging markets for toymakers is clear. Between 2006 and 2011, developed countries saw toy sales grow just 1 percent a year, versus 13 percent in emerging markets, according to Euromonitor data.
But in Nigeria, basic goods aside, consumerism is in its infancy, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs.
“When it comes to sectors like spirits or beer, or even cement, all the international players are already there,” said Andy Gboka, London-based equity analyst at Exotix LLP Partners.
“Other sectors, such as toys or less-developed industries, provide a huge potential for local companies.”
Tailored to local tastes Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, has been selling black dolls for decades, but said its presence in sub-Saharan Africa was “very limited”. Furthermore, the firm does not “have any plans for expansion into this region to share at this time,” according to spokesperson Alan Hilowitz.
There are good reasons for foreign companies to be cautious.
While Nigeria sees thousands of births every day, two thirds of children are born into families unable to afford anything off the shelves of most toy shops.
Multinationals also cite poor infrastructure and corrupt port authorities as reasons for steering clear.
South Africa’s Woolworths pulled out of Nigeria last year, blaming supply chain problems, though analysts said it also misread the local clothes market.
The longer companies such as Mattel wait, however, the more time Okoya has to build his business and shape consumer tastes.
At a small factory in Lagos’ Surulere suburb, his workers stitch brightly patterned West African fabrics into miniature dresses and “geles” – traditional head gear.
Nigeria’s three largest ethnic groups of Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa are represented in the “Queens of Africa” range so far, highlighting the growing sophistication of consumers – and the need to tailor products to local tastes.
The dolls go for between 1 300 Nigerian naira to the special edition 3500 naira ($22), while cheaper “Naija Princesses” sell for 500 to 1 000 naira apiece. Okoya makes a profit margin of about one third, and as well as selling at home, is increasingly shipping to the United States and Europe.
He plans dolls from other African ethnic groups, and is in talks with South Africa’s Game, owned by Massmart, a part of Wal-Mart, to sell to 70 shops across Africa.
Like Barbies, Okoya’s dolls are slim, despite the fact that most of Africa abhors the Western ideal of stick-thin models.
Okoya said his early templates were larger bodied, and the kids didn’t like them. But he still hopes to change that.
“For now, we have to hide behind the ‘normal’ doll. Once we’ve built the brand, we can make dolls with bigger bodies.”
A week after Nelson Mandela died, Kenya marked 50 years of independence from British colonial rule. This anniversary, on December 12, amid South Africa’s mourning period for Madiba, received little attention in the world media.
For President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose mission is to turn Kenya into a middle-income economy, the golden jubilee festivities offered much-needed diversion from the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has charged him for having a hand in post-election violence that left 1 200 dead and 600 000 homeless back in 2007. The ICC trial is a millstone no (sitting) president wants around their neck.
Between executing his duties as Deputy President, William Ruto – Kenyatta’s co-accused for the 2007 clashes – has spent the recent while, and a fortune, shuttling between Nairobi and The Hague, where his trial began in September. Whatever the result, it’s a lamentable distinction that Kenya’s top brass – already made up of strange bedfellows – is being tried by the ICC. With the exception of a euphoria-filled but troubled first decade of independence, and, less so, from 2003, Kenya’s past is sorry to put it mildly. Given where things are, will Kenyans look back on the 50th anniversary festivities with a sense of pride in years to come?
President Uhuru Kenyatta reviews the guard of honour during celebrations marking Kenya’s 50th year of independence. (Pic: AFP)
Sandwiched between Jakaya Kikwete-led politically stable Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia, a failed state notorious for piracy, Kenya is home to about 43-million people. For context, Nigeria’s population is four times larger while South Africa’s population is 50-million. Kenya’s US$71bn in GDP makes it Africa’s tenth-largest economy, according to the World Bank. On a per capita basis it’s pitifully low – a fraction of Botswana’s, Tunisian or that of Mauritius, Africa’s bellwether.
High levels of poverty and kleptocracy have spurred Kenyatta’s talent-packed administration to force a turnaround to achieve 10% in annual economic growth. But graft could dampen that, University of Nairobi academic Dr Brigitte Okonga-Wabuyabo explained in a telephonic interview. Indeed, corruption affects many other facets. In an article titled “The rot that is killing Kenya“, journalist Bertha Kang’ong’oi bemoaned its pervasive nature and linked the Westgate incident to “endemically corrupt” police and state officials. It’s no small wonder then that Kenya fares shabbily on the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index as well as the Global Competitiveness Index.
On the upside, Kenya, replete with ICT initiatives such as Konza Techno City, East Africa’s Silicon Valley, is a top performing market with a “burgeoning middle class”. Still, Kenya is a curious mix for South African companies. Some of them, like Avusa and Nando’s, flopped and retreated while others boom.
Lured by a mix of rising incomes that have boosted levels of alcohol consumption, SABMiller is back after retreating last decade. On a per capita basis, according to SABMiller, Kenyans consume 46 litres of beer. While that’s half the Polish average, it’s pretty high by East African standards, where consumption hovers around 10 litres per capita.
On why some locals fail to impress, Okonga-Wabuwayo argues that some companies don’t understand the Kenyan consumer profile and “feel that whatever works in South Africa can be replicated here”. Further, she says, Kenya is an expensive place to do business in.
Despite such hurdles, Southern Africa is well-represented, with Strive Masiyiwa-led Econet, Botswana’s lender Letshego and JSE-listed outfits like Woolworths. Dozens of Chinese firms, including Huawei, also play here.
Back to the ICC. Okonga-Wabuyabo prefers the matter to be dealt with speedily “for the sake of certainty and sanity”. In contrast, it seems Kenyatta, with the African Union egging him on, would rather not go to court. In his favour, it’s emerged that some witnesses, who were bribed, have turned out to have lied against some of the co-accused. After many delays, it seems Kenyatta will have his date in court in February. Don’t bank on it. Across the border, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir is also wanted by the ICC for genocide in Darfur.
Kenya’s leaders For all its troubles, Kenya, led to independence in 1963 by Kenyatta’s father, Jomo (also known as Mzee, an honorific), has made strides. These are notable especially since, to paraphrase Moeletsi Mbeki in Architects of Poverty, by 1970-1990 Kenya had fallen to unprecedented lows. Because Mzee, the father of the nation, neglected the poor he endured two coup bids. Diagnosing the malady, Oginga Odinga (who was subsequently fired from his job as Mzee’s deputy and then jailed), cited land grabs from the poor and neo-liberalism, which he felt worsened poverty.
On the economic front, Mzee fared excellently. GDP rose on average by a high 6% per year and Kenya outdid Indonesia and Malaysia right until 1980. Behind the stats is a sad picture. “[The] figures disguised a widening disparity – the rich got richer and poverty levels increased,” Martin Meredith observers in The State of Africa.
The narrative got worse under Mzee’s successor, Daniel Arap Moi, another coup d’état survivor. His 24-year reign – a spaghetti junction of violence, terror, repression and graft – cost Kenya dearly on all fronts. Criticising kleptocracy or advocating political reforms was akin to treason. “Arrest, detention and other forms of harassment – for journalists, academics, trade unionists, and even members of parliament – were the most likely,” Meredith writes.
Some of those who spoke out including Bishop Alexander Muge and other clerics were assassinated. Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was found dead after compiling a report into “high-level corruption”. Eight hundred protesters were killed on the eve of the 30th anniversary of independence. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced while others, like Shadrack Gutto, fled into exile. Moneywise, runaway inflation hit 100% and the economy degenerated.
So, when Mwai Kibaki, whose clean government campaign enabled his coalition to dethrone Moi, took over in 2003 the country was freefalling. Within a year, sadly, members of Kibaki’s top brass were thieving. Michela Wrong, citing human rights and anti-corruption activist John Githongo, put it aptly in It’s Our Turn to Eat. Nevertheless, Kibaki is best remembered for extricating Kenya from the doldrums and setting it on an upward trajectory.
What will Kenyatta’s legacy be? Back to the future. With the festivities that marked the 50th anniversary behind us, the question for Kenyatta is what his legacy will be. It’s not the pomp or speeches that matter to Kenyans in slums like the capital’s Kibera or Mombasa’s Bangladesh but when and how they’ll live the Odinga dream: get land and jobs that will enable them to escape poverty, and have access to quality education and clean water. Will the incumbent (or his successors), like Kibaki, fail the corruption test? Kenyans are watching.
Kenyatta better take lessons from Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – whose successful efforts to grow the economy and reduce poverty makes him a case study – especially since Kenya is still trapped in the vicissitudes of the past. Life expectancy is in the 50s (markedly lower than 80 in the UK or even Cuba, a peer low income nation, but in line with Botswana and South Africa). Before gazing into the future or speculating on how all of this can ail the Vision 2030 development blueprint, no one is saying what’s to be done with the republic of slums – the type synonymous with Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.
Instead of simply patting itself for dominating East Africa, a small pond, Kenya should measure against giants like Malaysia. Apart from making it to the middle-income league, its success should reflect in improved literacy and reduced infant mortality rates, for two. Kenyatta is a youthful politician with a business background. Members on the fourth president’s team are highly trained and have talent aplenty. All of these factors should count for something.
“Vision 2030 is about ensuring that the country becomes a developed one, it’s also about uplifting the poor. Right now, most Kenyans live on less than $1 a day,” says Okonga-Wabuyabo. While South Africa also fares poorly on this score, Mauritius has slashed the number of people in that category to just 1%.
The Kenyan academic believes Vision 2030 can work, but stresses the need for players to pull together. “For now we’re still battling with corruption – it’s a serious threat that could take us back or stall progress.”
Kenyans have been singing Not Yet Uhuru since the Odinga days. It’s time for a new tune and the founding president’s son, whose Kiswahili first name means freedom, hasn’t only the power to do it. If he fails, well. Will the nation look back to 2013, which marks the second half a century of independence, with a sense of pride?
Shoks Mnisi Mzolo is a South African print and broadcast media practitioner who covers a range of topics including business and the economy, healthcare, telecommunications, and politics.
Hundreds of young Africans began a five-day conference in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Monday focusing on the “time bomb” of youth unemployment across the continent.
Africa is one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing regions but growing joblessness has become a major threat to prosperity, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Alioune Gueye, head of the Network of Youth Leaders of Africa and the Diaspora, which organised the event, said “nothing is more tragic” than seeing parents educate their children only to watch them fail to find jobs.
“This is a time bomb that must be defused,” Gueye said as he opened the fourth Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit, co-organised by the United Nations, which this year will tackle youth unemployment.
Prime Minister of Senegal Aminata Toure (3rd L) at the summit. (Pic: AFP)
The UN estimates that 20% of Africans – around 200 million people – are aged 15 to 24, with the youth population expected to double by 2045.
Africa’s economy is projected to grow by 5.3% in 2014, according to the 2013 African Economic Outlook, an annual report produced by the AfDB, the UN Development Programme and other groups.
But growth is not translating into jobs for the young people who make up 60% of the unemployed or underemployed in Africa, the report says.
Recent estimates by the AfDB based on household surveys across sub-Saharan Africa and data from the International Labour Organisation find that youth unemployment stands around 34%.
“Unemployed young people are a threat to the stability of our countries,” Gueye said.
He told AFP after his address that “when a young person isn’t working, he has to rely on his family. He wants to start a family but cannot do so. He becomes embittered and can fall into organised crime or terrorism.”
Senegalese Prime Minister Aminata Toure told the conference the global financial crisis had led to numerous problems related to youth unemployment.
“The time has come to tackle this breakdown, to make young people the future of the continent. That must be the top priority,” she said.
The conference will make policy recommendations on tackling youth unemployment which will be circulated to the African Union and United Nations. – Sapa-AFP
