Honoring Africa's Best - The CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards 2007

Richard M. Kavuma, a 32-year old senior writer for Uganda’s The Weekly Observer is not a household name in the news business, but he should be. I first came into contact with Richard during the run-up to the 2007 G8 Summit at Heiligendamm, Germany. The London based Panos Institute sponsored a crew of 9 journalists and media professionals from the African continent for the AfricaVox 2007 project to cover this year’s G8 Summit and Richard Kavuma was among these professionals here in Germany. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Richard in-person; we met via the comments section of his posts to the AfricaVox 2007 blog.

I had quite a bit of fun both welcoming all these fine journalists to the 2007 G8 Summit in Germany and to the rough & tumble world of the blogosphere and my first comment on the AfricaVox 2007 blog was a scorcher in response to Richard’s article about the June 1st frontpage spread on Afrika by Germany’s Bild Zeitung. I had already composed and published a scathing article about the Bild Zeitung Afrika Spezialausgabe before discovering Richard’s piece at AfricaVox.

Since then poor Sir Bob Geldorf and his sidekick Bono have been severely criticized online in numerous opinion editorials and blog posts, but my angle on the story was the overtly negative and stereotypical depiction of helpless, starving, suffering, and clueless Africans in one of Germany’s top selling newspapers (circulation in print over 1 million copies with revenues approximately at Euro 1 billion annually). Geldorf serving as ‘guest editor-in-chief for a day’ at BILD for this despicable characterization of Africa was just a secondary issue for me. Sir Bob should have known better and I’ll bet you he gets the message on his failures at BILD and other media stunts now. Africans can speak very well for themselves in the international media and elsewhere without Geldorf’s public profanity and antics, thank you very much.

Fast forward to July 23, 2007

Tucked away in the corner (Africa news section) of the new CNN.com website was an article about the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. I try to keep track of these prestigious awards for professionalism in journalism and media on the African continent because it is a great source of information about Africa’s top news professionals and the award-winning stories they write and produce for print, TV and radio, online news, and photojournalism. This year’s winner of the African Journalist of the Year Award in two separate categories is none other than Richard M. Kavuma!

It’s a bit of surprise because as I stated earlier to the Panos-London staff I personally felt that the AfricaVox 2007 project presented some of the best news professionals in the business and that I was most grateful for being able to communicate with them via the AfricaVox 2007 blog. I had no idea that the Panos AfricaVox crew was that good (like Nr. 1 journalist in Africa good). That Richard Kavuma of Kampala’s The Weekly Observer won this year’s award was also a surprise for other media professionals in Africa as the newspaper where he works has been in publication since 2004. Richards winning entry for the top award was his 2006 8-part series on Uganda’s progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.

So without any further ado I want to extend my congratulations to Richard M. Kavuma (aka ‘Rimkav’) and the staff at Uganda’s The Weekly Observer for bringing home one of Africa’s most coveted professional journalism awards. This is the first time in the 12 years of the competition that the African Journalist of the Year Award has come to the country of Uganda. Yo Uganda, congratulations!

Something else that caught my attention re: the African Journalist of the Year Awards is that up to now it hasn’t received much play in the Africa sector of the blogosphere. Why not? Aren’t these people important sources of information and inspiration to aspiring CJ’s (citizen journalists) and blog authors out there? Have we become so ‘full of ourselves’ that we fail to recognize the hard work and excellent contributions to the profession from Africa’s finest news professionals? I certainly hope not. I couldn’t even begin to produce posts for Jewels in the Jungle without the leads and inspiration of professional journalists who cover the continent of Africa and publish their work to the Internet. And I mean all international journalists and news professionals covering the Africa beat regardless of race, creed, color or nationality.

The African Journalist of the Year Awards is in its 12th season, founded in 1995 by Edward Boateng (Turner Broadcasting Systems) and the late Amin Mohammed. The competition is open to African professional journalists and freelancers who work on the African continent for African media organizations that focus their content primarily on an African audience. This year’s competition attracted 1679 entries from over 40 countries in Africa. CNN has more info about the awards at the official website including the two CNN African Journalist Award press releases below:

Ugandan Richard M. Kavuma named CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year

CNN Multichoice African Journalist Award finalists announced

CNN’s Inside Africa aired a short report on the award ceremonies in last weekend’s program. It would be a great idea if Femi Oke, Isha Sesay, and the CNN producers would produce a weeklong TV/Internet special on news reporting and journalism in Africa, highlighting the work and actual reports by some of the journalists and other media professionals honored at the African Journalist of the Year Awards. But that, that would be asking too much of the execs at this renowned international news network, wouldn’t it?

Note: Wait a minute, there’s the problem with these awards right there.
Number One: only “professional journalists and freelancers” who work for a “professional” media organization can participate
Number Two: the content must be primarily focused toward an African audience.

Well, that counts Jewels in the Jungle out and the work of thousands of even better online citizen journalists and bloggers worldwide. Africa’s bloggers are to be found everywhere on the planet and they write for a global audience. Maybe we could talk CNN into sponsoring an African Global Citizen Journalist of the Year Award 2008?

Which brings me to the next subject re: CNN International and the CNN Africa news crew: Where is Jeff? Where is Jeff Koinange? Did he quit or was he fired, is he sick, are the Niger Delta rebels holding him for ransom? With all due respect for CNN Inside Africa program host Femi Oke and newcomer correspondent Isha Sesay, Jeff is the guy who has been the Master of Ceremonies at the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards and this year he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, replaced by his CNN colleague Jonathan Mann instead. What’s up with Jeff? What!? No, you’re kidding? Damn.

While I’m on the subject of awards in journalism and news, Reuters Africa deserves a nod of congratulations for winning this year’s Diageo African Business Reporting Awards for the Best Website category. This is especially interesting for those of us who support the Global Voices Online project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society as Reuters News is one of the principal sponsors of the project. Here is the lowdown on Reuters winning the Diageo Business Reporting Awards at Global Voices Online and the news article about the award on the Reuters Africa website.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Richard M. Kavuma upon receipt of his award at the African Journalist of the Year ceremonies in Cape Town, South Africa last week:

“In accepting this award, I dedicate it to my colleagues at The Weekly Observer in Uganda, and to my fellow journalists in Africa. This is in recognition of journalism that strives to put people at the forefront. With this award, I give my renewed dedication to act as a voice for the voiceless.”

Right On, Richard. If you’ve got a strong voice for the people of Africa, use it.

Related articles and online resources

The Weekly Observer (Uganda)
Observer journalist best in Africa by Carolyne Nakazibwe, 07/26/07
Mand thirsty for safe water by Richard M. Kavuma, 05/10/06

Punch (Nigeria)
How Kavuma won the African Journalist of the Year Award by Waheed Bakare

IPP (East Africa)
CNN/Multichoice Journalist Award winners announced by Lydia Shekighenda

allAfrica.com (This Day, Nigeria)
Ugandan Kavuma named 2007 CNN Multichoice African journalist, 07/24/07

CNN
Ugandan journalist scoops award, 07/24/07
CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year official website

Panos Institute – London
Africavox 2007: African voices at the G8 Summit
Africavox 2007 profiles: Richard M. Kavuma

AfricaVox 2007 G8 Summit articles by Richard Kavuma:
‘Green’ fuel must not destroy Africa’s forests, 06/08/07
Protesting for/against whom? 06/04/07
Why Geldorf’s image of a rotting Africa is OK by me, 06/01/07

Jewels in the Jungle
Saving the Africa agenda at the G8 Summit 2007 in Heiligendamm, 06/01/07

Africa Media blog
African voices from the G-8 Summit 2007, 06/12/07
What do Africans think of international news coverage of Africa? 07/26/07
African journalists: more than victims, 08/01/07


Technorati tags: Africa Uganda journalism media news CNN CNN African Journalist of the Year Award Global Voices

Age of the Dragon: German press on China's Conquest of the 'schwarze Kontinent'

While the People’s Republic of China is still reeling from the latest slavery scandal in the country (Hat Tip: Global Voices) and the Beijing officials have ordered the Chinese press and TV networks to stop reporting on the issue, I couldn’t help but wonder what implications this has for workers at Chinese businesses that are expanding so rapidly across sub-Saharan Africa. Of course it would be ridiculous and xenophobic to even suggest that the type of behavior uncovered in Shanxi province is widespread and is practiced by Chinese businesses working abroad, but if you do a Google search on Chinese slavery you do come up with a lot of stuff. For example, I didn’t know that slavery has been a problem in China dating back to the Shang Dynasty (18th-12th Century B.C.).

My regular readers know all too well that I have serious doubts about the Beijing government’s ‘good intentions’ toward African people as the world looks on in awe at China’s massive investments in African oil, gas, and minerals, no-strings-attached government sponsored loans to cash-strapped African governments in return for huge no-bid public infrastructure contracts and door-wide-open policies for cheap Chinese imports and labor. But for a change I am not going to go down that path and instead will point readers to the objective, independent, and transparent reporting on the subject by respected international journalists and news editors. Let’s start with the Germans.

In the weeks preceding the 2007 G8 Summit at Heiligendamm, Germany the EU finance ministers and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘voiced deep concern’ over some $20 billion dollars in loans promised by the Beijing regime to key African nations in the wake of the May 2007 African Development Bank meeting in Shanghai. In a statement made at the Potsdam meeting of G8 finance ministers Germany’s Peer Steinbruck said, “…China is willing to re-launch what we are trying to break, with our debt relief.”

How do the Germans feel about China’s aggressive push into the African continent? There has been some limited TV news and press coverage on the subject recently in light of the German Chancellor’s intense focus on helping to reduce poverty in Africa by forcing fellow G8 leaders to live up to their promises made at the 2005 G8 Summit, by increasing Germany’s direct foreign aid and development to African nations, and by encouraging German business leaders and entrepreneurs to invest more in Africa. During a pre-summit conference, the African Partnership Forum in Berlin, attended by some key African and European political and business figures, Merkel stated in a report by Germany’s Deutsche Welle news service:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen opened the Africa Partnership Forum in Berlin on Tuesday.

The two-day meeting is looking at how the G8 can help the world's poorest continent. It will "make recommendations for the preparations for the G8 and African Union summits," the German government said.
…………………………………….

On Monday, the chancellor had met with German business leaders in Berlin and urged them to invest more in Africa.

"Whoever accepts Africa as an investment location today will reap the rewards tomorrow," Merkel told the group of high-ranking managers, including the chief executives of automaker Volkswagen and telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom. The meeting was also attended by representatives from medium-sized businesses, trade groups and international organizations.

"Africa is a continent with an unbelievable development potential," Merkel said.

The meeting at the chancellery discussed investment opportunities in Africa, as well as good governance and ways to integrate the continent in the global economy. Merkel said she and business leaders agreed that political efforts to improve government in Africa should be coordinated with economic activities.
……………………………………

In a parallel meeting, the German World Bank Forum opened in Berlin on Monday. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said that Africa received only two percent of worldwide direct investment at present.

"That is not enough," Wieczorek-Zeul said. "Germany and the G8 are supporting reform-minded Africa countries through a partnership for development aimed at creating the basis for an increase in sustainable investment: good governance, an adequate infrastructure and combating corruption."

The two-day World Bank Forum is hosted by the German Development Ministry and the World Bank.

Read more at Deutsche Welle Germany’s Chancellor...Urges Investment in Africa 22.05.2007

Germany’s Der Speigel magazine, a highly respected news source in Germany and across Europe, published a pre-G8 Summit special report on China in Africa titlted ‘The Age of the Dragon: China’s Conquest of Africa’ by Andreas Lorenz and Thilo Thielke.

The China Digital Times (Univ. of California - Berkeley) picked up on the May 30th feature at Spiegel International (Der Spiegel’s English language edition) right away. The CDT (China Digital Times) also has a great podcast interview with Der Spiegel’s former Beijing correspondent Andreas Lorenz that you won’t want to miss titled ‘Andreas Lorenz on Germany’s late China-phobia’.

Update June 20th:
Looks as if the PR of China is grabbing headlines over in the U.K. too! The Aegis Trust has just launched a Sudan Divestment Campaign focused on major U.K. retirement funds, Barclays bank, U.K. companies, and (get this) the Church of England's massive investments (100's of millions of British Pounds Sterling) in Sudanese oil projects and China's state-owned oil and chemical companies. More on the Guardian newspaper article and the Comment is Free blog post by Aegis Trust executive director John Smith can be found at the end of this post.

Plus, Eric Jon Magnuson of the Sudan: the Passion of the Present blog has published an article about the growing debate in the U.S.A. and Europe to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (aka The Genocide Games). The Related Articles section at the end of this post includes links to press releases, news articles, and video about how German businesses are working in partnership with Chinese companies and the Government of Sudan (GoS) on oil and transport (railway) projects. The researchers at Der Spiegel and Spiegel International online failed to spot that little morsel for their article, and fellow blog authors here in Germany have ignored this little factoid in their posts about the G8 Summit 2007 and/or have chosen to remain selectively ignorant of these facts.

So let’s dig right in by examining a few choice excerpts from the Spiegel article on China in Africa and see if it holds up to heated debate in "the Sphere".


THE AGE OF THE DRAGON
China's Conquest of Africa
by Andreas Lorenz and Thilo Thielke - translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
May 30, 2007

China is conquering Africa as it becomes the preferred trading partner of the continent's dictators. Beijing is buying up Africa's abundant natural resources and providing it with needed cash and cheaply produced consumer goods in return.


Thomas Mumba was a devout young man. He spent his free time studying the Holy Scriptures and directing the church choir at the United Church of Zambia in his hometown of Chambeshi. Mumba, a bachelor, was also committed to abstinence -- from beer and from sex before marriage. A larger-than-life depiction of Jesus Christ surrounded by a herd of sheep still hangs in his room. The poster is pure "Made in China" kitsch, like most things here in the Zambian copper belt, located more than a six hours' drive north of the capital Lusaka.

Mumba, a shy, slight young man, bought the Chinese-made religious image at a local market and hung it up at home. It was cheap, cheaper than goods from Europe, at any rate. Mumba's Chinese Jesus cost him 4,000 kwacha, or about 75 cents. "It was his first encounter with the evil empire," says Thomas's mother Justina Mulumba, two years after the accident that would change her entire life.

Thomas Mumba died on April 20, 2005 when an explosives depot blew up in the Chambeshi copper mine. He had just turned 23 and had been working in the mine for two years. To this day, no one knows how many people died that day, because the mine's Chinese owners attempted to cover up what they knew about the accident. Besides, they had kept no records of who was working near the explosion site on the day of the accident.

According to the memorial plaque, there were 46 victims, but it could just as easily have been 50 or 60. Only fragments of the remains of most of the dead were recovered. Mukuka Chilufya, the engineer who managed the rescue team, says that his men filled 49 sacks with body parts that day. The Chinese have deflected all inquiries about the explosion.

Justina Mulumba wears a mint-green dress as she kneels at her son's grave, whispering almost inaudibly: "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do." The cemetery is by the side of the road, only a short distance from the plant gates. Chinese trucks drive by, churning up the dry African soil and briefly coating the entire cemetery in a cloud of red dust.

The drivers are in a hurry to get their trucks, filled with copper, to the port of Durban on the Indian Ocean, where the copper will be loaded onto ships bound for China. Mumba wasn't the only one whose fate was sealed by copper. All of Zambia depends on copper, which is by far this southern African country's most important export, well ahead of cobalt. Copper accounts for more than half of all its export revenues.
.............................................................................

Feeding China's Hunger for Raw Materials

In the early 1990s, Zambia abandoned its socialist planned economy, Kaunda withdrew from politics and the ongoing slump in copper prices precipitated an economic crisis. In the late 1990s, when then-president Frederick Chiluba felt compelled to give in to pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to privatize the unproductive, unprofitable state-owned mines, the price of a ton of copper was barely $900.

At the time, no one in Africa -- or, for that matter, in New York, London or Geneva -- foresaw India's and China's rise as economic powers, or the attendant thirst for resources. When rising demand suddenly drove up copper prices to previously unanticipated levels, it was yet another stroke of bad luck for poor Zambia that the country had already sold off much of its copper-mining rights to the Australians, Canadians, Indians and Chinese.

A ton of copper costs $8,000 today. Zambian mines are currently producing 500,000 tons a year, a number that could soon increase to 700,000. This is good for the foreign mine owners, but the Zambians see next to nothing of the profits.
.................................................................

Sata captured more than 29 percent of the vote in the September 2006 presidential election, while the winner in that race, current President Levy Mwanawasa, claimed 43 percent. But Sata believes that the election was rigged. According to opinion polls, he was initially clearly in the lead in the capital and in the copper belt. But when the tide turned in favor of the incumbent, Sata cried election fraud and violence erupted in the streets of Lusaka for several days.

If there is one issue which Sata uses to mobilize the masses, it is the Chinese. He has warned voters that they plan to export their dictatorship to Africa, colonize the continent and introduce large-scale exploitation. Unlike Western investors, says Sata, the Chinese have little interest in the Africans' well-being.

The politician quickly talks himself into a rage. Chinese have little interest in human rights, he says. They are only interested in exploiting Africa's natural resources, which they have carted off using their own workers and equipment, and without having paid a single kwacha in taxes. Sata sums up his position as follows: "We want the Chinese to leave and the old colonial rulers to return. They exploited our natural resources too, but at least they took care of us. They built schools, taught us their language and brought us the British civilization."

A majority of Zambians likely agree with Sata. On his recent and third trip to Africa, Chinese President Hu Jintao canceled his planned visit to the Zambian copper belt at the last minute, fearing demonstrations by disgruntled workers and the resulting embarrassing TV images. Only last year, protestors in Chambeshi were injured when police fired into their midst.

Thousands of workers felt they had been conned out of their wages and had staged a protest march in front of the local mine. These demonstrations have become almost a ritual in Chinese-owned mines. The Chinese pay wages of only $30 a month, less than the Indians and substantially less than the salaries paid by the Canadians and Australians.

While Zambians may have long considered Western capitalism barbaric, it now seems practically idyllic compared to the supercharged Chinese version. "At least Western capitalism has a human face," says Sata, "the Chinese are only out to exploit us." Indeed, the Chinese are currently toying with the idea of establishing two Special Economic Zones within Zambian borders. "Then they will have their state within a state," Sata believes, "and will truly be able to do as they please."

'The Silent Invasion'

It is especially irksome to many Zambians that the Chinese have created relatively few jobs in the country. According to Sata, there are already 80,000 Chinese in Zambia, "former prisoners who are housed in labor camps and mine the copper." The metal is shipped to China in the form of copper ore and processed there. Even the machinery comes from China. The Zambian government allows it to be brought in without imposing any duties. The Chinese workers don't even leave their camps for lunch or to drink beer, says Sata, who calls them "a strange people."

Resentment over the behavior of the Chinese is also smoldering elsewhere in Africa. China's involvement in the continent creates few jobs, says political scientist Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari. Instead, he says, "we solve China's problems by giving Chinese workers jobs in our backyard."

According to Hengari, who teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris, Africa is the only continent on which Chinese companies "apply for government contracts, get them and then import Chinese workers." Kenyan monthly magazine New People calls it a "silent invasion." Even South African President Thabo Mbeki, whose country maintains close ties to China, has warned that Africa threatens to become an "economic colony" of China.

Read more of China's Conquest of Africa at Spiegel International Online.


Related articles and online resources (last updated July 5, 2007):

BBC News ( the BBC expands on the China in Zambia mining ripoff)
Zambia's miners see 'little reward', 07/04/07
China's hunger for African minerals, 07/03/07

Finance & Development - a quarterly magazine of the IMF, June 2007 Vol. 44 Nr. 2
(HT re: these new articles goes to Pablo of the World Bank's PSD Blog)
Getting Together: the new partnership between China and Africa for aid and trade by Ulrich Jacoby
Connecting Africa and Asia by Harry G. Broadman
Making Remittances Work for Africa by Sanjeev Gupta, Catherine Patillo, Smita Wagh

AfricaBeat by Jennifer Brea
Can China offer Africa an alternative path for development?, 05/28/07

Danwei (media, advertising, and life in China)
China and Africa: the hypocrisy of the West by Jeremy Goldkorn, 05/28/07

Comment is Free (The Guardian newspaper blog)
Funding Genocide by James Smith (AEGIS Trust U.K.), 06/19/07
China’s lessons for the World Bank by Dr. Jeremy Sachs, 05/24/07

The Guardian Online (UK)
British Investors Urged to Quit Sudan, 06/19/07
(Aegis Trust publishes first dossier detailing U.K. investments linked to the Khartoum regime and launches the U.K. Sudan-China Divestment Campaign)

Sudan - Passion of the Present
Darfur Crisis Sparks Louder Cries for 2008 Olympics Boycott, 06/19/07

China Digital Times (University of California – Berkeley)
Andreas Lorenz on Germany’s late China-phobia, 05/20/06
China’s Conquest of Africa, 05/30/07
Children Slaves, Shanxi, China Video, 06/18/07

The Peking Duck (Taipei, Taiwan)
China’s approach to developing countries way better than the World Bank’s, 05/25/07

DW-World, Deutsche Welle
Germany’s Chancellor Merkel urges investment in Africa, 05/22/07
(Note: see the DW-World video 'German Oil Pumps and Pipelines in Sudan' which features a 10 million Euro export of heavy equipment by Bornemann Pumps from Hanover, Germany. Also see Dornier Consulting and the Sudan Railway Project)

BusinessWeek
Hitting Sudan in the Pocketbook, 05/02/07

International Herald Tribune
Siemens sets timetable to pullout of Sudan, 01/27/07
Some U.S. states move to bar investments linked to Sudan, 02/21/06

Business & Human Rights Resource Center
Siemens to pull business out of Sudan, 01/22/07
Archive on Siemens, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, Fidelity Investments

Bloomberg.com
Buffet can follow Harvard, ABB lead on Sudan, 01/29/07

Newscloud
Siemens and the moral high ground, 01/22/07

Sudan Tribune
Siemens, Mobitel Sudan sign Euro 20 million deal, 08/09/06

Atlantic Review
Oympics 2008: Only Americans remind China of its resonsibility for Darfur, 06/20/07
Sudan Divestment Campaign against Siemens and others gets stronger, 07/21/06


Technorati tags: Africa China business politics Sudan Darfur genocide human rights Germany G8 Summit G8 development economics poverty economics developing world Global Voices

G8 Summit 2007 in Germany closes with a fizzle. Will Africa's voices fall silent?

Dateline Berlin 06/12/07 – Sweltering in a sudden heatwave west of Germany’s cool capital. Updates on the close of the G8 Summit with a focus on African voices.

I’m still trying to figure out what happened at Heiligendamm? Was it a success as claimed by the G8 Summit 2007 host country Germany and some members of the German press and media, or was it a bust as described by Bob Geldof and Bono and other high-profile activists and various experts? If the G8 Summit at Heiligendamm was a success then a success for whom, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel?

I’m not as disappointed and pessimistic about the outcome of these talks as some people seem to be but at the same time you have to wonder, are the G8 Summits relevant anymore? Were they ever useful in helping to solve the world’s problems? It has all become such a circus for the politicians and every group under the sun to voice their outrage and anger about all kinds of causes that have little or nothing to do with the summit agendas that one has to ask, why bother?

TIME Magazine’s Massimo Calabresi writes in the article ‘Does the G8 Summit Have a Point?’:

It's hard to get a fix on just what the 80,000 protesters who descended on the G-8 summit here in northern Germany this week actually want. Plodding through a field towards the 7.2 mile, multimillion-dollar fence designed to keep him and his unkempt peers out, Channing Jones, a 40-year-old American freelance programmer, said Wednesday his purpose was to get governments to "help the common people." Earlier in the day, the art group Dropping Knowledge had released a huge floating sculpture of a baby into the River Warnow, in a less-than-self-explanatory attempt to show that "the Western world is not really taking Africa seriously," according to one of the group's sponsors, Stefan Liske. Late Thursday afternoon, a man wearing a fluorescent pink wig and standing on stilts made up to look like enormous pink go-go boots declared he was blocking the main road to the summit "for freedom of movement for all people, and no nations and no borders!"

One priority these disparate, confused groups share, however, is bringing the annual G-8 meeting to a grinding halt. They managed to shut down all the road and rail access to the summit Wednesday, and interrupted it Thursday. Some skeptics at think-tanks and college campuses around the world have suggested that may not such a bad thing. The annual G-8 meeting is an anachronism that no longer pursues the economic agenda for which it was created, they argue; it doesn't include some of the world's most important economies (China and India are not in the club) and fails to achieve even the limited goals it sets for its members.

As a small group of protesters bounded through a wheat field on Wednesday afternoon pursued by a slightly larger group of policemen, it was hard not to wonder what the point of the whole exercise was.

Inside the fence, it turns out, some were asking the same question. In the whitewashed buildings of the elaborately restored Baltic resort of Heiligendamm, important things seemed to be happening. Russia's Vladimir Putin and President Bush strolled out past the massive beds of hydrangeas to say they had held good discussions on missile defense in Europe, with Putin provocatively proposing the use of Russian installations as a substitute for the ones the U.S. plans to place in Poland and the Czech Republic. And the G-8 leaders agreed on a putative program for addressing climate change.

But even in the highest-level delegations, there were skeptics. "They should just hold the whole thing over secure video-conference and make it every other year," said one White House aide Thursday morning. "There's a whole industry now surrounding the G-8, and two weeks from now, when it's all over here, they're going to start again for next year. In my opinion, they'd be better off sending the money to Africa."

The Germany summit cost $134 million, much of it spent on security. Measured by the organizers' outlay or by the media coverage the event receives, it appears as if the protests themselves have become the point.

End excerpt---------------

My analysis: Call the whole thing off and save the taxpayers money. The carbon footprint alone from the 10,000’s of people at this summit is enough to setback efforts to fight global warming by one hundred years. Private passenger jets and military and police helipcopters for the official delegations, gas-guzzling motor vehicles of every type for the security forces and demonstrators, and 25,000 open-air barbecue pits using ill-gotten timber (charcoal) from developing countries on a planet under ecological pressure. I mean BITTE (Please)! Get a grip on yourselves.


What news do I take home for my people? AfricaVox journalists call it a wrap at the G8.

The 9 African journalists and media professionals invited by Panos-London to attend this year’s summit are heading home this week and I must say that I will miss their contributions to open expression and the sharing of their ideas and thoughts about the G8 Summit. Unfortunately not very many other CJ’s (Citizen Journalists) who write regularly about African news and affairs bothered to stop by the AfricaVox 2007 blog to express their appreciation and welcome these journalists to our sector of the blogosphere. I find that to be sad but heck, maybe many Africa bloggers didn’t know about this great journalism project. So if you haven’t stopped by the AfricaVox 2007 blog yet then do so before it’s too late (a hint for Melissa at Africa Media and other hardworking blogger colleagues out there in the Sphere).

I’ve made myself a real nuisance at the AfricaVox 2007 comments section but Risha Chande, external relations assistant for the Panos AfricaVox project, sent me a very nice message today thanking me for my support and encouragement. Problem is that “We the Bloggers” who write about Africa need to be thanking Panos-London and this fine group of African journalists and media professionals. Africa’s bloggers need to show much more support for Africa’s professional journalists and editors and publishers so that we all can learn from one another, not compete with one another as is so often the case.

Collins Vumiria, chief news editor of Uganda’s Radio West (Mbarara), writes in her G8 summary article titled ‘What news do I take home for my people?’

As far as I can tell, everyone who's attended the G8 Summit here in Heiligendamm leaves it with mixed feelings. Some are bitter that the G8’s announcement of $60 billion to fight disease failed to mention when it would arrive. Others complain that the Gleneagles promises have yet to be fulfilled.

But out of all this, what do I have to tell my people back home in Uganda when I return? To get a steer, this afternoon I rushed down to a news conference given by two musicians who for years have been campaigning to rid Africa of poverty and disease: Bob Geldof and U2’s Bono.

I find Geldof describing the Summit as a total mess. “I do not want to see 2005 reiterated endlessly,” he tells the assembled journalists. “The richest countries of the world, trillions of dollars, swirling around that table… do me a favour! Get serious guys! This wasn’t serious. This was a farce. This was a total farce.”

All very well, I think to myself. But I need specific information for my own people, not just these soundbites. I had hoped for something more constructive to communicate to my people in Mbarara than this emotional dismissal.

Next it’s question time for the journalists. “My name is Collins Vumiria, I am a journalist from Uganda.” Faces turn to look at me. “After this summit, what news do I take home for my people?”…

Read the full article What news do I take home for my people?

More articles of interest from the very fine AfricaVox 2007 crew:
AfricaVox 2007 – African voices at the G8 Summit 2007
Africa: master of its own destiny
The G8’s $17 million dollar security fence scandal
AIDS prevention paying the price of the G8 donor circus
The sick priorities of the G8
The J9 (Junior G8+1 Summit) at the G8

openDemocracy Speaks Up for Women & Girls at the G8 Summit

openDemocracy.org’s blog project ‘openSummit – Women talk to the G8’ has a good series of posts about the G8 Summit 2007 and the Alternative G8 Summit. See the great work by Patricia Daniels and the summit summary post by Jessica Reed. The openDemocracy open blogs section has an article by Chukwu Emeka Chikezie titled Africa at the G8 Summit: déjà vu? Mr. Chikezie who works for the London-based non-profit organization AFFORD writes:

So, here we are again. Two years on from the July 2005 gathering at Gleneagles, Scotland, the acceptable face of African leadership is preparing to assemble on the steps of the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Heiligendamm, Germany for a photo-opportunity amid more heartfelt pleas to increase aid to Africa.

The presence of "this" Africa at the summit owes much to the promotion and patronage of individual G8 leaders, most notably Tony Blair. Indeed, it seems hard to think now about the African component of the G8 summit at all without considering the input of the outgoing British prime minister; he has even made Africa a central part of his valedictory tour, whose aim (according to a normally reticent BBC) was to burnish the Blair legacy for posterity.

And this is the problem. The mere fact that media commentators seem routinely to put "Blair, Africa, aid, legacy" together in the same sentence underlines the inability to "see" Africa as it really is: a living, proliferating, diverse collection of some 700 million people in fifty-three different countries, making their lives, lurching forwards, sometimes falling backwards, occasionally sideways. "That" Africa is invisible; the one that has come to dominate public perception is a meek, grateful place that provides a soft, faintly glowing backdrop to an assessment of Blair's ten years in office. The African leaders on the Heiligendamm steps are unlikely to do anything to change the focus.
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Aid: from critique to reform

Two years after Gleneagles, a year after St Petersburg, it is striking how little the discourse around Africa has changed. G8 leaders, NGO activists and African leaders all seem to agree that aid is pivotal to Africa's turnaround. Germany's chancellor and host of the G8, Angela Merkel, has joined the club - promising that this time the G8 will redeem its pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010.

This approach rests on a studied evasion about why so much aid to Africa in the past has failed to deliver transformation. It thus seems more concerned to salve consciences than to bring real change. It also ignores the lively debate that is raging behind the scenes and in public forums about whether aid is really effective as an instrument of development.

A thirty-year veteran of the World Bank, Phyllis R Pomerantz contributes one valuable view to this argument (see Aid Effectiveness in Africa: Developing Trust between Donors and Governments [Lexington Books, 2004]). Pomerantz attributes much of aid's ineffectiveness in Africa to donors' failure to pay attention to culture. Monologue and one-way impositions, donor paternalism, and insensitivity undermine the trust, mutual respect and understanding that should, in Pomerantz's view, underpin aid relationships.

Pomerantz would like to see donors pay more attention to African traditions and conditions. She is aiming for trusting relationships that underpin shared purpose, commitment, reliability, transparency, and familiarity.

Such a vision - which is echoed from a different direction by Michael Edwards in his openDemocracy article on the reinvention of "development" - seems very far from the cold calculations of summit talks where the paternalism of the discourse about aid is reinforced by hypocrisy over a second potential route to African development: trade. Here, the contradiction between the rhetoric of free and equitable trade and the reality of subsidies and preferential agreements is all too established. As the United Nations human-development report of 2005 says: "The world's richest countries spent just over one billion dollars for the year 2005 on aid for agriculture in poor countries, and just under one billion dollars each day of that year for various subsidies of agricultural overproduction at home."

Read more at openDemocracy.org Africa at the G8 Summit: déjà vu?

More posts and podcasts about the G8 Summit at openDemocracy.org
Podcast Nr. 22 – G8, are you listening? by Solana Larsen
Women won’t wait by Susana Fried
G8: the aid gap by Tina Wallace
Merkel’s G8 – spot the difference by Patricia Daniel

It would appear that the G8 Summit 2007 at Heiligendamm ain’t quite over yet but instead has only just begun. The follow-up activities from this summit to insure that what has been promised is actually done and that these initiatives and programs and processes bring the desired results for all stakeholders, depends on us. Oder?

We shall see.


Related news articles, posts, and online resources:
Guardian Online (U.K.)
Geldof hits out at G8 ‘farce’, 06/08/07

Globe and Mail (Canada)
Bono singles out Canada’s PM Harper in deriding leaders, 06/09/07
PM’s ‘laggard’ effort on Africa assailed

Bloomberg Financial News
Merkel quarrels with Bono, Geldof over Africa aid, 06/07/07

Washington Post
Geldof puts Africa on front page (BILD special Afrika edition), 06/01/07

Jewels in the Jungle
Germany: Saving the Africa Agenda at the G8 Summit 2007
G8 Summit and Tanzania (TED Global in Africa)
Circus Maximus Opens in Germany
G8 Summit and TED Global Updates II

Africa Media
World’s most famous African: Bono or Madonna?

More news coverage of the 2007 G8 Summit
Spiegel International (Germany)
G8 Summit in Heiligendamm special feature archive

Financial Times London
G8 Summit 2007 In-Depth special coverage
African graft is a global responsibility by Richard Murphy and Nicholas Shaxson
Why Africa needs a Marshall Plan by Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan
The rich world can help Africa by Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn Denning

New York Times
Group of 8 (G8) special coverage

Reuters and Reuters Alertnet
Interview with Kofi Anan: G8 must give Africa aid faster
No Coke, only German AfriCola at the G8 Summit (soft drink of choice since 1931)
Factbox: G8 measures to tackle African poverty
Reuters’ blogs: Who should hold the aid world to account?

Technorati tags:Africa Germany Tanzania development economics development aid global trade business media journalism G8 G8 Summit G8 Gipfel TEDGlobal2007 tedglobal07 Global Voices

G8 Summit and TED Global Updates II: G8 meets the J8, African voices at the G8 Summit, TED Global Africa closes with success

Dateline Berlin 06/07/07 – Outside the Bunker and on the streets
Updates on the close of the TED Global Conference in Tanzania; G8 world leaders meet J8 world leaders in Heiligendamm; South African journalist asks who is listening to the voice of African women at the G8 Summit

This is just a quick Heads Up post to keep my readers informed on what’s hot and what’s not at the G8 Summit in Germany today. First the good news:

G8 leaders meets J8 youth leaders in a roundtable discussion at Heiligendamm. No violence reported (yet).

Germany’s ZDF TV network televised a 1-hour roundtable discussion between all of the G8 world leaders and 9 members of the J8 Summit youth leaders. It’s about the best live TV news coverage you will see come out of the Circus Maximus 2007 where the world leaders go one-on-one with some of the finest young minds on the planet. All G8 countries were represented by a young person selected by members of the J8 (Junior 8) Summit in Wismar, Germany. A 17-year old young man from Tanzania represented his country and the continent of Africa and was paired with the European Commission boss from Portugal (what’s his name? José Manuel Barroso). Links to all of the related online websites and a 59 minute video available for free viewing at the ZDF website are listed at the end of this post.

Nobody’s listening to African women’s voices at the anti-G8 Summit in Germany

South African journalist Zihnle Mapumulo, a member of the AfricaVox 2007 news team that I wrote about in my previous post, is complaining that nobody is seriously listening to Africa’s concerns at the G8 Summit. However, this may change because it’s still early in the Circus Maximus and some world leaders and anti-G8 demonstrators may start to pay attention. Patricia Daniel writes in a post for the OpenDemocracy blog project Womens Open Summit - Women talk to the G8:

There is a team of award-winning African journalists here covering the G8 summit and the alternative summit, in collaboration with the Panos Institute, on their blog AfricaVox 2007 .The aim is to see whether the G8 are really listening to African voices, as the official press service claims Germany is doing.

I spoke to Zinhle Mapumulo, a reporter with the Sowetan in South Africa, who covers health issues and has a weekly women’s page. Zinhle was inspired to go into the media by the one black woman television presenter working during apartheid, Noxolo Grootboom. After finally opting for print journalism, she has previously covered youth issues, lifestyle and women in enterprise as well as spending two years in her native province of Kwazulu Natal as bureau chief for Sowetan news. So, what’s her particular motivation in covering the G8 this year?

“Firstly I wanted the opportunity to experience the whole sandwich – the demos, the debates – and to ask all the questions we don’t get to ask back in South Africa. Then, as a woman, I feel there’s never any in-depth coverage of women: I want to know how do the G8 contributions, how do their pledges benefit me and my 2 year-old daughter – and other African women and their children - how is this process going to help us?”

Zinhle went out on the demo at the airport when Bush arrived Tuesday evening. “I wanted to see the action. We don’t get to see this kind of confrontation now in South Africa – the violence, the police. I wanted to talk to the demonstrators.” But she came away with some concerns. “They say they want attention from the world about Africa’s problems. But when I asked them, they don’t know anything about Africa. I felt it wasn’t genuine, they’re doing it for the hype, just to be a rebel.” She told one of them: “Your struggle is not about us, it’s about you. You should be feeling some kind of spiritual connection with us.” (Read more at AfricanVox 2007 blog)

TED GLOBAL 2007 - Africa: The Next Chapter closes with success (and tears)

My friend and blogging mentor Ethan Zuckerman (EZ) of the Global Voices project mentioned in several of my earlier posts sums up the feeling of many of our fellow blogger colleagues who have had the privilege of attending the TED Global 2007 conference in Arusha, Tanzania. This is an event that was eagerly awaited and followed by the international blogger community that writes about and follows news and issues on Africa. The conference was attended by Bono and other world figures and was carefully monitored by Gemany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel as well (I think?). You see, TED Global 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania and the G8 Summit in Germany are tightly linked and are (presumably) very supportive of one another. Ethan writes in his blog on the closing day of this excellent meeting of minds:

Former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the sort of visionary African leader everyone on stage and in the crowd would wish for Africa. She’s challenged with summing up four days of discussions on “Africa, the next chapter”.

She tells us we’re seeing changes in Africa that we never thought would happen. We’ve seen annual growth of 5%, in some cases 6-7%, up from 2%. External debt has been massively reduced. Countries are building up foreign exchange reserves, shoring up their currencies. Private investment flows are increasing, remittances to Nigeria are skyrocketing, and there’s a net inflow of capital.

But Africa needs jobs. 62% of Africa’s population is under 24. We have to figure out how to make these people productive. Nigeria is now building an opinion research organization, a way of listening to citizen voices, which she notes is a rare thing on the continent. The top issue in every survey? Jobs…

Just a few years ago, she tells us, we couldn’t even talk about “the next chapter” for Africa. There was negative economic growth. There’s been an amazing transformation, and this is something that’s allowed us to have our debate about aid versus the private sector. “It has been a simplistic debate.” It needs to be about “a partnership that involves governments, donors, private sector, and ordinary Africans.” It’s not trade or aid - “what is the combination of all these factors is going to yield results?”

African entrepeneur Mo Ibrahim dreams of the moment when Africa is giving aid. “But we’re already doing it - the UK and the US could not have been built without African aid. The resources - including human resources - have made those countries what they are today.” So when those countries are willing to give something back, we need to take it, but we need to use it effectively.

Okonjo-Iweala tells a story about growing up during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Her father was a brigadeer on the Biafran side, and her family was doing very badly, eating a single meal a day. When she was 15, her mother was ill, and her three-year old sister was deathly ill from malaria. She put her sister on her back and walked 10 kilometers to a clinic, where she’d heard there was a good doctor. When she arrived, there were a thousand people outside, trying to break down the door. She went to the side and climbed in through the window. The doctor told her she’d barely saved her sister - she gave the girl a shot of chloroquine, put her onto rehydration and within hours, she was back to health. “The ten kilometers home with her on my back, that was the shortest walk of my life.” The point of the story: “When someone is saving a life, you don’t care that it’s aid - you want the person to be alive.” (Read more at Ethan’s blog on Madam Okonjo-Iweala’s powerful address at TED.)

That’s it for today folks. The weather has finally improved considerably here in northern Germany and my Staropramen pilsner is getting a bit too warm down at the local pub. I gotta go because I’m really thirsty. Auf Wiedersehen, bis Übermorgen. Ciao Bella...Mama mia!

Related articles and online resources

ZDF TV – Heute (daily news program) G8 Spezial
G8 in Minutentakt - G8 trifft J8 (multimedia plus 59:00 min streaming video)
J8 Gipfel in Wismar: “Wir wollen gehört werden” (ZDF feature article)
J8 Youth Summit in Wismar, Germany -Official J8 Summit website

G8 Summit 2007 at Heiligendamm official website (lots of stuff here boy)

OpenDemocracy blog – Women’s Open Summit - Women talk to the G8
Who is really listening to African women’s voices? by Patricia Daniel

AfricaVox 2007 – African voices at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm
AfricaVox 2007: “We need the G8’s help in the fight against poverty and HIV”
Articles by South African journalist Zihnle Mapumulo

TED Global 2007 Conference in Arusha, Tanzania – TED Blog
TED Global bloggers look back at worldchanging days, 06/07/07
TED Global in Africa: Day 4, reports from the bloggers, 06/07/07
TED Global 2007 aggreagated articles from bloggers-in-residence

Ethan Zuckerman (Global Voices Online – Harvard)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala with the last word on aid, 06/07/07

P.S. And what about the Bad News? There is no “Bad News” to report today. Think positive. Ciao y’all.

Technorati tags: Africa Germany Tanzania Nigeria development economics development aid global trade business media journalism G8 G8 Summit G8 Gipfel TEDGlobal2007 tedglobal07 Global Voices