Newly trained field workers install solar street lights in Mali, the Akon Lighting Africa project.
This has been a week to be proud of #hiphop.
Hip Hop culture gets a lot of flack for negatively influencing the youth, promoting harmful brands, alcohol and drugs and objectifying women. The truth is that hip hop is what inspired us all to make a bad situation better, and help as many people ecape that reality. Hip Hop begun as protest art in South Africa and has been a bridge to different countries throughout Africa.
For Senegalese artist Akon, Hip Hop took him from a dusty open veld on the continent to bright lights and camera time in the United States. Akon has always been an inspiration to Africans – but his latest move is deserving of extraordinary praise.
“Mr. Lonely” has teamed up with African entrepeneurs to launch a solar academy in Mali. This will be a place where Africans are taught how to harness the power of the sun in a bid to give electricity to 600 million people living in the dark every night.
Below is a short video report on the initiative;
It’s also worth noting that Akon’s initiative has received the backing of prominent Hip Hop artists such as Busta Rhymes and Talib Kweli.
A DRC refugee holds up a sign in protest, during a visit by SA president Jacob Zuma to a xenophobia displacement camp in Durban.
Happy Birthday Mama Africa! You’re almost free.
All nations expect the Western Sahara have liberated themselves from colonial powers.
I Cry For You Mama Africa! You’re freedom fighters are unable to govern.
You’re own people have launched wars on each other, I know it causes you extreme pain.
I’m from the south and have noticed our people have a hard time with some of the countries up north. People from countries such as Malawi, Zimababwe, Mozambique, DRC, Nigeria and Burundi. My country hasn’t shown a lot of love to any of them, of late. I know we work well with African businesses and our government has hundreds of cooperation agreements with other African states, but here I’m referring to poor Africans, who set up businesses in small communities across the country. The guys who buy locally owned shops and pay rent, only to remain ostracised from the entire community. It’s important to note that this is not by force, but choice.
I remember when my hometown only had locally owned businesses. Only a handful full of shops, without an ATM or petrol station, in a township called Breitbach, 6 kilometres outside of King William’s Town. About a decade later and the number of local shops as been dwarfed by the new community from Somalia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
One of the Somali shop owners operates from a wooden shack just down the road from my house. A few months ago he was held at gunpoint and robbed of all his money and some stock. After the traumatic experience, a few residents joked that he was jacked cos he’s from Al-Shabaab. These are the types of perceptions that flow among our people.
This is in such contract to the perceptions of South Africans that exist in the same African countries we’re seemingly oppressing. In Malawi, I was able to navigate freely through 3 provinces and had a soldier deployed to guard our team with Rescue-SA. All the while laughing with my Malawian brothers who’d come along to make sure we’re okay.
The way our people have treated others from Africa and Middle East is downright criminal. Many have concluded that the reason for this violence is actually the prevailing poverty, which requires a struggle to overcome. I submit the existing tension between shop owners from other countries and locals could possibly be resolved through their integration into community forums and structures.
The bent up anger should be transformed. Instead of burning down the shop, ask him to help you get a job, or enough capital to open your own business. One could argue “collective capital” is the main advantage of the shop owners from the afore mentioned countries in our small towns.
I saw it first hand. Once the network of shop owners is established in the community, they invite their friends or relatives from back home to visit and eventually stay. Later the small immigrant community funds capital for a new shop. All of this is controlled by one fund. Managed carefully to ensure the purchase versus sales ratio is favourable.
However, some shop owners are also criminals. Some are suspected of making use of goods from hijacked trucks, then make super profits on illegally acquired products.
At my uncle’s work place in the cash and carry, one shop owner filled his trolley with goods and paid, then bribed the security guard not to sign the slip. He then gave the slip to another shop owner, who selected exactly the same products and walked out with it for free.
These aren’t very flattering examples, but it’s a reality that’s part of what causes the tension.
And so our people should learn to operate with collective capital. But the country’s diversity is perhaps its greatest blessing and curse. We seem to be failing to rise to the occasion when the time comes to put differences aside and work together. Evidence of this can be seen in our churches, among teachers and in parliament. Our people have yet to humble themselves to learn from African brothers and sisters. In many cases their education is superior, but they are still treated and paid as unskilled labourers. It seems we are moving forward to unity, but remain entrenched in a fight to get to the front of the line. Our dependence on each other can be described in the Xhosa proverb “All throats are alike in swallowing,” as well as the Nigerian proverb “You can’t use your hand to force the sun to set.”
Happy Birthday Mama Africa! You’re day will soon come
The tinder box has been lit by a system of conglomerates,the revolution is drugs and violence.
I Cry For You Mama Africa! And fear the worst is to come.
Close you’re eyes for now, maybe next year I’ll write back in a better day.
Just over a million people in Nambia will vote for a new president and members of parliament today, in what will be Africa’s first electronic election. About half of the sub-Saharan nation’s 2.3 million people are eligible to vote, of which 20% were born after independence was won from apartheid South Africa in 1990.
The South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) led Namibia’s liberation struggle and its candidates have retained power since the country gained independence. Today it will face off against the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), led by a disgruntled Swapo member that’s formed his own party, and Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, a grouping of smaller parties, led by 37-year-old McHenry Venaani. Then there’s the Julius Malema spin off, Namibian Economic Freedom Front (NEFF), made up of nationalisation seeking radicals, convinced that the capitalist system has failed and its pseudo military style of leadership is desperately missed. Read more about the candidates and their parties here.
There aren’t many surprises expected in the turn-out or voter participation, but the focus will be on the Electronic Voter Machines, meant to usher in a new era of efficient voting systems and reliable outcomes. Namibia’s low population size and relative stability during previous elections makes it the perfect test case for the new system. The prospect of electronic election roll-outs across the continent may still be a distant dream, though. In South Africa, smaller political parties opposed the introduction, out of fear that the system could be manipulated to rig the outcome.
FILE: An Electronic Voting Machine.
Below is a report by Namibia’s Election Watch on the purchase of electronic voting machines, and how it works.
“As Namibia gears up for the 2014 Presidential and National Assembly Elections, the introduction of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) remains a hot topic.
To date, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has purchased 3,400 Electronic Voting Machines at a cost of N$10 million. The EVMs were sourced from an Indian company by the name of Bharat Electronics, which developed and designed this technology for electoral processes in the world’s largest democracy. The ECN is expected to start a voter education campaign regarding EVMs in the near future. The Commission will also purchase more EVMs ahead of the 2014 elections.
Although various technologies have been used to automate certain processes in electoral systems, as yet no African country has utilised actual electronic voting machines as part of its election.
In the March 2013 election in Kenya, in what was meant to be Africa’s most modern election, biometric systems were introduced to streamline the voter registration process, while electronic tallying was used to speed up the counting and tallying process once votes were cast. Unfortunately, due to operational and technical problems, both systems failed, forcing the electoral management body to resort to a hand count – a process that took five days and threatened to destabilise the entire electoral process.
Importantly, when introducing EVMs, International IDEA notes that it is critical that strong trust in the electoral system exists. The organisation also notes that countries should be clear on their goals and the purpose for using EVMs, and that deliberate efforts are made to ensure timely implementation, training, transparency, and sustainability.
Most significantly, international experience shows that in the run up to introducing EVMs for elections, voter education is critical to ensuring proper use of the systems, but more importantly, to ensure that Namibians (including civil society, all political parties and organisations, and the public at large) fully trust the process in creating a credible, free and fair election.
Pros and cons
Electronic voting presents a number of important benefits – the most obvious being faster results, a reduction in the number of spoilt ballots, reduced costs of running an election, and the reduction/elimination of avenues for potential manipulation. However, electronic voting is not without risks, and several countries have opted to stick to manual voting mechanisms due to operational/technical constraints, or the implications this may have on their legal frameworks.
In Germany, for example, e-voting was declared unconstitutional in 2009. In the Netherlands in 2008 e-voting was suspended after 20 years of use when activists showed that the systems in use could, under certain circumstances, endanger the secrecy of the vote. Between 2005 and 2009, Ireland invested over 60 million euros in an e-voting solution, before deciding that the system was unreliable.
For countries like Brazil, India, Estonia, and the United States that have decided to make use of EVMs, the benefits have outweighed the possible disadvantages of introducing this system, and each country will have different factors to consider in deciding whether or not to go electronic. International IDEA stresses that “Electronic voting is only one option for resolving challenges in the electoral process,” and encourages countries to evaluate alternative solutions in making decisions on what best suits their context. Often times, this means using electronic voting to speed up the process, but having paper trails in case of any contestations.” – http://www.electionwatch.org.na/?q=node/489
MUSLIMS IN CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC FLEEING FROM INCREASED VIOLENCE
Kate Ribet – MSF SA
Johannesburg, FEBRUARY 7, 2014 – Violence in the Central African Republic has reached extreme and unprecedented levels, as civilians are targeted by the main opposing armed groups, the ex-Seleka and the anti-Balaka, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said today.
Although the conflict is complex and many communities are affected by the violence, the minority Muslim community is being increasingly targeted according to what MSF is seeing on the ground. In many towns, Muslim groups are isolated and threatened by anti-Balaka forces while tens of thousands of Muslims have already fled to Chad or Cameroon.
“Civilians remain in constant fear for their lives, and have been largely left to fend for themselves,” said Martine Flokstra, MSF emergency coordinator. “In the northwest and in Bangui, we are currently witnessing direct attacks against the Muslim minority. We are concerned about the fate of these communities trapped in their villages, surrounded by anti-Balaka groups.”
Muslims in the northwestern towns of Bouca, Bossangoa, Carnot, Berberati and Baorohave left because of the violence. MSF teams have treated wounded patients in at least eight towns in the northwest. In Bozoum, a Muslim community of 2,500 people left the village on February 5.
In Bouar, a Muslim community of more than 8,000 people are unable to flee the violence. Armed groups are preventing their departure, and access to health care is almost impossible.
The majority Christian population also remains affected and thousands are still living in fear. The conflict has caused massive displacement and hundreds of thousands of people are currently seeking refuge at religious centers in towns or at the airport in Bangui, where living conditions are appalling.
Thirty thousand Muslim refugees have already crossed the border to Chad while 10,000 have reached Cameroon. In Bangui, Muslim families are gathering in a separate camp at the airport, in the Great Mosque or in isolated displacement sites like the one at PK12, waiting for a possible departure or hoping for some protection.
In Bangui, fighting and looting continues unabated. In January alone, MSF treated more than 1,650 wounded patients from both Muslim and Christian communities as a direct result of the violence in Bangui. At the Castor Health Center in Bangui, MSF admitted 91 patients with machete or bullet wounds in the last week. At the Bangui airport camp, where approximately 100,000 people are taking refuge, teams provided medical care to 265 wounded patients in January, including 100 in the final week.
MSF has been working in Central African Republic since 1997, and now runs seven regular projects in Batangafo, Boguila, Carnot, Kabo, Ndéle, Paoua and Zémio, and seven emergency projects in Bangui, Bouar, Bozoum, Bossangoa, Bouca, Bria andBerberati. MSF has more than 240 international staff and 2,000 local staff working in the country.
GRASSROOTS 