It’s a chill wind that blows no good - for some in Kenya

27 August 2010. The day dawned cold and grey, a dark lowering sky. All the same, hundreds of thousands of jubilant hopeful Kenyans trekked to Uhuru Park in central Nairobi, to take part in a grand ceremony to mark the birth of ‘the Second Republic’, a new Kenya to be built up on the basis of our brand new constitution. After decades of false starts, lost and shattered lives, and many thwarted attempts at meaningful reform, finally a new constitution, voted in by a 67% majority in the national referendum of 4th August, was here. Actually here! Coming barely two years after the post election violence that showed Kenyans a vision of hell and shocked millions of us to the marrow, the (relatively) peaceful passage of the campaigns for and against the new constitution, and the fair and orderly polling process, demonstrated once again the powerful resilience and optimism that the stoic Kenyan people have needed to take them through the hard times. Just like parents everywhere all they ask for is peace and stability under an honest government (democratically elected), and a chance to use their time and energy productively to earn an income which enables them to care for their families and bring the children up well. That’s what they hope the Second Republic will provide.
Everything looked good and the whole event indeed was conducted in an orderly manner, strictly and capably choreographed by the security people. Great excitement, cheers and ululations greeted each ritual of promulgation of the new constitution. The crowd was cold but vocal and made their views clear about which individuals among all the politicians and potentates up on the podium they felt should be recognized for their championship of the commoner. They went wild for Prime Minister Raila Odinga, less so for President Kibaki to whom they were merely polite, and were positively displeased to see former President Moi up there with the nobs, along with Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, former Ghanaian President Kuffuor, and a posse of regional heads of state. People cheered Kofi, but jeered Museveni of Uganda (who had been rude about Kenyans a few months ago in a dispute about the ownership of Migingo Island in Lake Victoria).
But there was consternation and bewilderment at the sudden appearance and comfortable installation on the dais of the Sudanese President Al-Bashir, who has a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of genocide by the ICC, and who ought by law to have been detained by the police the moment he set foot in Kenya. So what was all this? His name did not appear on any of the invitations and schedules circulated about the day, but he was announced and officially welcomed. Very awkward moments for the US Ambassador and other diplomats, and difficult for Kofi Annan. How had this come about? Speculation is rife of course. Somebody must have arranged it, presumably with the knowledge and assent of top government. The Foreign Minister airily dismissed all expressions of outrage and the questions about Kenya’s serious transgression of international law - on the very day it inaugurated the new constitution - as misplaced. ‘We don’t do that kind of thing to our neighbours in Africa’ he intoned, a patient uncle chiding us to remember our manners. We keep peace with our neighbours he explained, and ..er .. and we want to encourage Bashir to have a peaceful referendum in Sudan next year too. Southern Sudanese will vote in 2011 on the option to secede from Sudan and be independent.
But it was an odd message for the Kenya government to send to the world on such a day. And half the government claims to have been utterly unaware of the arrangement, with dozens of ministers and MPS spluttering in outrage too, including Odinga. So why? Surely it was not just a goofy thing someone did without realizing it would upset people. The Foreign Minister wanted us to know that it was part of the government’s master strategy to ensure long term peace and stability in the greater Horn of Africa. But how many people really buy that? Could it have been something as simple and silly as plain truculence, contrariness – the inveterate compulsion to spoil it for others, felt by some of the die-hard old guard in top government who just did not want this new constitution to happen? So they give us all the middle finger. They ‘cocked a snook’ at the world by pulling this stunt, and now have something to chuckle about when they meet at the club? Was that it? Or is there something more sinister going on? Like wanting to scupper the imminent ICC prosecution of some of their number for organizing the post-election violence? The sad thing is that once again, just when everything looked like it was going so well, something happens to sour the taste. And send a shiver down the spine.
But that’s not all. While the international media made a big story of the Al-Bashir business, they took little or no notice of another peculiar episode at Uhuru Park. When Prime Minister Odinga ended his official speech the crowd exhorted him to say more. So he told a garbled cryptic tale, describing the duplicity of the bat, a creature which claims to be a bird when it is among birds, and a mammal when it is among mammals, and noted that we all know who the bats are among us. He did not name them. Perhaps the significance of his words will emerge in time. But this further twist in the tale of that cold grey day in Kenya may herald some further complications in the infancy of our brave new Republic. This is still just the beginning.
Meantime, excitement over for the moment, we will go back to the less glamorous work of persuading smallholder farmers in Africa to use our MoneyMaker irrigation pumps to grow more food more often and make some useful money. Last month some 1800 families took up our offer. Because whatever the politicians say or do, life still has to go on.

HEAD IN THE CLOUD. FEET ON THE GROUND

In my previous blog I said I’d talk in my next one about how I think Africa can feed itself and half the world, and take up its rightful place in the global village market in the process .Well sorry but l I lied! Not at the time you understand; and not about Africa. It’s just that I have changed my mind since and want to tell you instead about a meeting I went to in London last week, called the Guardian Activate Summit. It was all about the application of web-based ICTs (information communication technologies) in making the world a better place.

I had been invited as a speaker, and found myself in very illustrious company. Leaders of huge multinational multimedia and telecom industries and some super-bright young innovators told of the latest things going on in the field of ICT. A lot of it is truly dazzling. But what on earth was I, a peddler of human-powered water pumps, doing in this ethereal web-world?

The session I spoke at was moderated by Ethan Zuckerman, jovial and genial genius, founder of Global Voices. Ethan said some extraordinarily nice things to me about KickStart which encouraged me. My main point was that ICTs are essential and we use them all the time at KickStart in our business operations, to drive efficiency and achieve more with less. And that sure enough the one-acre farmer in Africa these days often uses a cellphone, to send and receive ‘business’ information (not just social stuff) and to send and receive money using Electronic Money Transfer services. Which is great. And that these phones will get smarter and smarter and cheaper and cheaper so that very soon the farmer will be able to do much more than just talk, text and send money with a cellphone. But .. and here is the nub of it … information alone is not enough ! Whats the use of knowing that tomatoes are wanted in Nakuru and are fetching 1,000 shillings per crate if you have no way of producing tomatoes of the right quality on time and have no way of getting them to market??? So we need a whole bunch of ‘web-footed’ (vs web-based) technologies as well – better seeds, post harvest storage, access roads, local value-add industries, a supportive legal environment, and a range of other things - if the one-acre farmer is to really get ahead. So while ICTs are cool, awesome, and indispensable lets not imagine they will resolve the world’s problems without us also developing and disseminating other less fashionable technologies that enable people to make and produce things. Not sure how this argument went down – many of the participants (seemed to me) live almost completely in a virtual world, and probably don’t dig potatoes up that often, so the world of the smallholder African farmer is very very remote and exotic for them. Still, the organizers assured me I did a great job, so perhaps I needn’t enquire further!

There was one particular observation during Activate that I really did appreciate. It was that some of the most exciting and promising new information and communication technologies these days are being pioneered in Africa, not just in Silicon Valley or the Silicon Fens, or in digitally sophisticated places like South Korea. I urge you to find out more, for example, about Ushahidi ….a “crowd-sourcing” system developed in and for the notorious Kibera slum settlement in Nairobi, and originally used to collect, analyze and map information from thousands of ordinary wananchi about stuff going on in Kibera. Later it was used in the post-election violence period in Kenya, to help organize and manage the response, and more recently in Haiti post-earthquake, and now for the Gulf Oil Spill, election monitoring in Guinea … in fact all over the place.

No surprise to some of us, this simply underlines the point I have been making on this site – namely that there are some decidedly smart young people on this continent. And with very few resources and hardly any money they are able to respond to a challenge quickly and effectively. Inventiveness, innovation, enterprising attitude, goodwill, optimism, a practical approach – these are the qualities we have in abundance here. And which form the basis for my assurance to you, which I will get back to as promised, that Africa has what it takes to eradicate its own poverty and to feed the world, or half of it at any rate.

Africa. Awaken The Big Friendly Giant Within

Africa has a tremendous opportunity to take its rightful place in the new world order that is taking shape in the aftermath of recent global crises. By far the richest continent in terms of resources, and with the youngest and most energetic people in the world, ready and eager and enterprising, wanting to get ahead, the continent has staggering potential for prosperity and for contributing to global development.

Africa can easily shrug off dependence on international development aid, if developed countries and international corporations really truly want this to happen, and choose to recognize Africa as a valued business partner, not just as a great place to dig up money and cart it away, paying off a few local heavies in the process. Oh and then sending food aid when it looks like too many people are dying. And of course if African governments truly want what is best for their people, not just what is good for the rich. The key to this transformation is for Africa to finally be allowed to use its competitive advantage, play to its strengths in a genuinely open world market, on a level playing field.

Consider that physically the world needs Africa every bit as much (if not more) than Africa needs the world. There is oil, iron ore, bauxite, uranium, lithium for your batteries, coltan for your cellphone… and probably unobtainium .. here in plenty. Pretty much everything you need to make all the machines you want, AND keep them running. Its all here, along with the diamonds and the gold.

But it doesn’t stop there. There is more. Along with the machinery and equipment and toys we all need or want, which are nearly all made with raw materials from Africa, there is the everyday question of food. We all need to eat, ideally every day. So where is all the food going to come from in the future?

Right now there are 6.5 billion of us on the planet and 2.5 billion of us (well .. of them anyway) go to bed – or to thin mat on floor - very hungry, every night. That’s not a civilized society now is it, where 4 people out of 10 are quietly starving? And by 2050 there will be 9.5 billion of us! (Unless maybe something really really good comes on TV J).

So we need to grow more food. Twice as much food as we are producing now. So where and how are we going to do that exactly, eh? Well Africa of course! It’s the only place.

But .. but … but how’s that? Isn’t Africa a net importer of food? Aren’t most of those starving people we read about Africans in Africa?. Don’t the Americans and the Europeans and the Japanese and everyone keep them all alive with development money and food aid right now? Whats all this about?

Well, let me tell you how … in my next blog!

AFRICA IS HOT. AFRICA IS COOL.

I know this because I have lived here for 28 years. Indeed that is WHY I live here. But I can see that in other parts of the world when people think of Africa they generally think of bad stuff. Desperate poverty, famine, death and disease, the ravages of AIDS, civil war and genocide, corruption, bad government, horrors of every description. Its understandable really, given the spin put on Africa by the international media. (Only recently, as for instance now with the Soccer World Cup being hosted in South Africa, a few more positive stories are being told about the place).

Well maybe its not the kind of thing that sells newspapers, but I can tell you that Africa is much much more than this. The grim stories are mostly true of course but conceal much more than they reveal. And I am not talking just about the legendary warmth and hospitality of African people that foreign visitors report. Its more than that. I am talking of the spirit of enterprise and innovation, of creativity and inventiveness, of hard work and tenacity, of clear focus and determination, of energy and optimism that is everywhere in Africa. People here are really very smart. Thinking ‘out of the box’ (a tired expression no?) is normal, perhaps because most people were never inside a box in the first place. Emotional intelligence, seeing and using the interconnectedness of everything – well that’s standard operating procedure around here. And while most people are acutely conscious of the privations and the injustice of their situation, they don’t spend a lot of time whingeing about it. They get on with living as best they can. On a dime. With dignity and grace and patience. And the second a real opportunity comes their way, to get on and get ahead, they take it up and run with it. And you won’t see them for dust.

I will be talking more about this kind of thing in blogs to come, and hope you might be interested. But that’s enough for now. This is a big moment for me. My very first blog! I am not a ‘digital native’, been around way too long – but figured it’s time to take the plunge.