Africa News // Current

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24 days ago

Usain Bolt in Nairobi to adopt a Cheetah

World and Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt could meet his match in Kenya Monday when he encounters a cheetah for the first time.... more

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Rogue police caught in the act - Kenya

Kenya Police are famous for their tax raising powers, for years driving in the corrupt African state was liable to cost you more... more

stupidy
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Somalis get first-ever debit card

A money-transfer company has made a piece of banking history in Somalia - introducing the first-ever debit card in the breakaway... more

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Kenya to conduct census of gays

The confidential survey will be carried out by the National AIDS/STD Control Programme (NASCOP), starting in January or February... more

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Traditional leaders plan ritual animal slaughter at World Cup

South African traditional leaders plan to perform ritual animal slaughters to bless stadiums for the 2010 World Cup tournament... more

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Africa is treated as a ‘Priority Market’ as investment floods in

Chief Executive of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe has confirmed that telecoms investment in Nigeria in the last eight years has exceeded USD18 billion, and they are not alone as the entire continent is seen as a priority market by the worlds investors. This came to light at the Recent NGT Africa summit lead by Ahmad Farrouk, CEO, MTN Nigeria who addressed the fifty strong Telecom leaders on the Growth potential of Africa’s communication industry, sharing his ideas on the importance of deploying networks in rural communities in order to connect harder to reach subscribers and increase market growth.

Other visionaries that took part in the elite debate included Sameer Dave, CTO & Chief Executive, MTN SA, Mohammed Sheik, Group Strategy Director, Zain, Mickael Ghossein, CEO, Telkom Kenya and Steve Bailey, CEO, Virgin Mobile SA who came together to unite the industry to capitalize on investor confidence. Innovation was clearly the buzz word during the discussions. Having one of the largest a growth markets in the world is clearly not enough for the developing continent, they want to build a sustainable network, a point clearly made by the Commonwealth Business Council and GSMA at the NGT summit. Such discussion on innovative technologies were lead by giants Microsoft, ITS and HDS who all see Africa as the ‘land of opportunity’ and played a pivotal role in educating the Executives present.

“African Telecom leaders have united this week at the NGT and are really embracing new technologies. Such pioneering development in ICT clearly sends out the right message to Global investors, as the continents ongoing socio-economic development continues to improve”. William Francis Austin – NGT Summit Director
But what is the next step for Africa, is the continent now stable enough to capitalize on its growth potential as Europe and the US become saturated and stagnant? Could an enhanced ICT infrastructure allow Africa to compete with Asia or South America? Only time will tell, such discussions are set to continue throughout the year until they rejoin at the next NGT hosted in Cape Town in June 2010.Chief Executive of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe has confirmed that telecoms investment in Nigeria... more

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29 days ago

Whipped for wearing a 'deceptive' bra

A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly whipping women for wearing bras that they claim violate their religion, as... more

stupidy
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1 month ago

Karate Granny

Grandmothers in Nairobi Kenya are busy learning Karate to prevent them being raped and robbed. The latest craze sweeping Kenya is... more

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1 month ago

Guinea's leader misses deadline

The African Union gave Guinea's military leader Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara until midnight on Saturday to formally promise he... more

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1 month ago

Gag lifted on Guardian reporting parliament

The Guardian received a stunning gag order today forbidding the paper from reporting on a Parliamentary debate. For the first... more

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1 month ago

Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace prize

US President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international... more

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1 month ago

Africa and the world

Africa is the land where humanity was born and is also the mirror that shows the world all the problems that humanity has never... more

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1 month ago

South Sudan Faces Widespread Crop Failure, Food Crisis

Action Against Hunger warns that increasing scarcity in South Sudan is largely ignored by the international community, and will... more

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1 month ago

Will Allen's Growing Power takes its grassroots-agriculture model to Africa

At the Clinton Global Initiative wrap-up on Friday, ex-President Clinton made waves in the sustainable-ag world by declaring Will Allen of Milwaukee/Chicago-based based Growing Power his “hero.”

The real news was buried in the press release, though. Toward the bottom of a listing of verbal “commitments” from NGOs and foundations, we find this:

Growing Power commits to strengthen food security for school children and their care givers in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Growing Power will build a new model of local food systems to ensure adequate nutrition in the short-term and build a long-term foundation for competitive African human capital in the global market place.
So Growing Power will be bringing its community-based, low-input style of agriculture to Africa—under the aegis of a group most known for its top-down, Big Solution way of development work.

I got Erika Allen, daughter of Growing Power founder Will and leader of the group’s Chicago operations, on the phone Monday to talk about the announcement.

She told me that in the current phase, Growing Power is hoping to raise $2 million to get its Africa initiative started. (The Clinton Global Initiative doesn’t so much fund specific projects as match funders with projects.)

Allen described the proposed initiative as a “cultural exchange”—Growing Power reps would be learning about how food production currently works in South Africa and Zimbabwe; looking closely at local assets, resources, gaps, and needs. And food-system actors from those places would visit Growing Power sites in the United States—not just at the flagship enterprises in Milwaukee and Chicago, but also at partner projects in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Mississippi.

From there, Growing Power and its partners in southern Africa would work on “modifying our production systems to local resources there.”

She stressed that what works in Milwaukee won’t necessarily fly in Zimbabwe. Here in the United States, Growing Power essentially siphons off some of the enormous food waste generated by a modern U.S. city and transforms it into fertile soil, which is then used to grow food. But African cities generate less compostable waste.

Erika Allen of Growing Power. “The challenge will be to find the systems that work in areas with less excess,” Allen told me. She cited Growing Power’s aquaculture setup, where waste from tilapia tanks is used to fertilize watercress, one example of a low-input system that could work in Africa.

“Overall, it’s about helping people use their resources to build soil and grow food,” she said.

In a single sentence, Allen had articulated a vision completely counter to the top-down model of development that has dominated U.S. policy since at least the Cold War—the agricultural model most famously promoted by the recently deceased Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug. In this model, imported agrichemicals and seed varieties provide the path to food security in the global south. And trade is venerated with an almost religious zeal—nations should only produce food insofar as they have a “comparative advantage” in a particular crop. “High-value” crops like fresh produce should be exported to the industrialized north, where consumers can pay top dollar for them; “low-value” staple crops should be imported when expedient.At the Clinton Global Initiative wrap-up on Friday, ex-President Clinton made waves in the sustainable-ag world by declaring Will... more