From the Dakar Side of the Toon

In the streets, in the courtroom… in Hogwarts

2012-01-28T11:31:00.003Z

Police clashing with protestors, Dakar, 27 Jan 2012

This weekend had all the ingredients of being one of those moments in Senegal where in twenty years time your children ask you 'where were you when...?'

The ongoing saga of whether the current President Wade would be allowed to run for a third term was controversially answered last night as the Constitutional Court gave the green light.

At the same time they rejected that of one of his potential rivals, singer Youssou N’Dour, whose candidature risks lasting not longer than seven seconds. While no official reason has yet been given, rumours are that the Court claims a problem with the number of signatures collected - furiously denied by the singer himself who claims foul play.

A duo with Wyclef Jean - who used to be the 'next President of Haiti' before similarly being disqualified - is surely on the cards.

Dakar has been geared up for this for weeks - strikes, demonstrations and a heavy police presence have been the norm for Dakarois these last few days - and everyone awaits to see what happens next.

Last night demonstrators camped out in the main square last night, tyres were burned in streets across the city, students smashed up university buildings, and clashes with police left one officer dead.

But what happens next no one is sure - an strange calm appears to have returned, and no one knows whether young, vocal demonstrators will be joined by the political opposition and the broader public, or whether it will wither away all too easily.

The battle is continues in the courtroom though, with Youssou Ndour appealing the decision, and rumours that Wade is similarly going to contest the acceptance of three of his main rivals on various grounds.

Momentous events perhaps, and let's pray peaceful ones. And when my children ask me where I was when this all happened, what will I be able to tell them? "I was in Mali, in the cinema, watching Harry Potter". Oh Hermione.

My view of the Dakar demos

Dinosaurs, magic numbers and celebrity reading tests: Five things from Senegal's elections that you probably won't see back home

2012-01-11T08:40:00.003Z

Election season is firmly upon us in Dakar, with the first round of a heated Presidential poll not much more than seven weeks away. The candidates are declared, the billboards are up, the T-shirts are printed.

It’s billed as a turning point moment in the country – a possible second democratic change of regime following the first democratic ‘alternance’ in 2000, with a divisive incumbent pressing for a third term on contested constitutional grounds.

Democracy and governance in Senegal has its flaws – ranked 93^rd out of 165 countries by the Economist Intelligence Unit – but it’s also quite impressive to watch and these elections seem at this point at least open, free and informed by a vibrant public debate. Apathy is not an issue, and while it may be source of fraction in the short-term, you can see firsthand how it is also acting as a mostly peaceful ‘release valve’ for simmering discontent.

I love elections. Love stats, the spin, the battle of ideas and organisation. I’ve stayed up until the small hours watching the results of Scottish local elections, obsessed over West Wing election episodes crowning fictional Presidents, and plan to do the same over the next two months.

And I love electioneering, and while this one shares the majority of the usual traits you see in any election, anywhere - there is no shortage of baby-kissing or ‘spontaneous’ crowds - here are five traits of a Senegalese election I would not imagine Peter Snow to be talking about back home.

1. Dinosaurs walking the earth: Given that the majority of Senegal’s population is under 25, it is curious that that the five most serious candidates have an average age of 65. The sitting President would rule until he was 93 if he won this poll; even the ‘candidate of youth’ is 43 – just a year short of the average age of Cameron-Clegg-Miliband (itself a sign of just how much a career politician you now have to be in the UK if you want to be a PM by a media-friendly age).

The age gap probably partly reflects a cultural attitude to respecting the experience of elders, and partly a continued grasp of power from the post-independence generation. It might even be preferable to the young robots we get, but either way, you do wonder how long it will last.

2. Magic Numbers: This week’s front pages included claims that the current President (and one of the main challengees) was driven by the discipline of numerology in his big electoral decisions. I’ll be honest, I can’t begin to explain it but the idea is that his decision to release female prisoners on 20^th January, the changing of term lengths and the decision to go for a third term have all been influenced by mathematical insight around the numbers 1,9 and 0. If you read French and want to learn more, set yourself away here.

My guess is that it is mostly nonsense, but did note that if you alphabetise the multiplication of the year 2015 by 10 (Downing Street), add the age of Margaret Thatcher and subtract the circumference of Tony Blair, you do not get ‘Nick Clegg PM’.

3. Celebrity reading tests: The biggest splash last week was the news of Senegalese superstar Youssou N’dour swapping the microphone for the megaphone and formally entering the race. And as a rags-to-riches singer and now businessman who remains widely popular, why not. Except that there are threats to make him take a test before his candidature is validated, to ensure that he complies with the constitutional criteria to read, speak and write French fluently.

A dirty oppositional trick trying to highlight his main perceived weakness – having never finished school – but my main worry is the impact of this abroad. Now even Cantona is running in France, 2015 in UK may need some celebrity candidates and I just hope this never puts off N’Dubz from running. Daffy, the country needs you.

4. The role of guesswork: You can’t go two days in the UK without reading an opinion poll - policies are targeted in response to them, election strategies are based on them, voting choices are often made because of them. But publishing opinion polls is not allowed in Senegal. The big political parties have their own, but not the public. So ask me which candidate has a chance of winning, what parts of the country support which person, what policies are most important to the ‘average Senegalese’ and I couldn’t tell you objectively, and nor can anyone else.

This seems important not just in helping politicians to know more about the opinions of their electorate, and for the electorate to know about the credibility of some candidates, but in making a peaceful acceptance of the result more likely. Much less of a shock if you already knew your candidate was likely to lose. Manipulated polls – the reason why publishing polls are banned in the first place – could, of course, have the opposite effect: both candidates in Ivory Coast waved around opinion polls giving them clear victories before the election, leaving one side’s supporters unable to believe the validity of the final ballot.

5. Doing it for your CV: It’s always nice to add things to your CV – new hobbies, skills and experience. Well for €10,000 you can add ‘former Presidential candidate for the Republic of Senegal’. Certainly that is the accusation of many people towards a good number of the 20+ candidates who won’t get more than 1% of the vote, or may not see it through to the end.

To be fair though, Nick Clegg was probably just doing the same.

New Year Revolutions - The Dakar Side of the Toon in 2012

2012-01-02T20:27:00.000Z

“I never make predictions, and I never will” - Gazza’s wisest words outside of his counsel to Raoul Moat, and worth listening to given how 2011 made a mockery of expert predictors on the telly the world over.

To be fair it has been a year like no other, especially traumatic for the merchants of evil and Viagra. No one can have expected Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il and Gaddafi to expire in the same year as Italy saw it’s last Presidential Bunga Bunga party. Dreams of global tantric domination crushed by bond markets and B52s.

This blog was no better, with clairvoyance that included an early light dismissal of unrest in Tunisia (harbinger of the Arab Spring), a punt that conflict in Cote d'Ivoire would end in power-sharing rather gun-toting (do ask M. Gbagbo how that went next time you’re in The Hague) and that M. Alan Pardew would be a disaster for Newcastle Utd (top half, baby).

Any point trying again for 2012? I’ve got nothing expert to add about the Eurozone (will stay together somehow, at great cost to Germans), Euro 2012 (England will not win, at great cost to Polish bars), or the Olympics (Boris will win everything, at great cost to us all), but here a couple of amateur guesses on what 2012 might bring for this blog.

The most unpredictable may be the most significant - Senegal's presidential elections take place in February and March, with a widely criticised incumbent seeking to win a hugely controversial third term against a deeply divided opposition. Best guesses are that we'll have a new President named Sall or Seck (or even N'dour), although with enough means and cunning there`s nothing to say (and few polls to help us guess) that another five years of Me. Abdoulaye Wade are unthinkable.

What is sure is that the process is going to be messy, perhaps even dangerous for a historically peaceful country proud of the fact it has never had coup, a civil war or major unrest. Among many potential flashpoints coming up in the next few months, the most dangerous perhaps will be if he wins – even if done fairly, there are enough people who simply might not believe it, and might not stand for it.

Elsewhere Cote d’Ivoire should continue to repair itself after a conflict-torn 2011, whilst worries turn instead to Nigeria, whose fragile peace and stability is being profoundly challenged by terrorists within its borders – 39 people were killed in bomb attacks in churches on Christmas Day. The country is home to some fractious religious and cultural divides, and as by far the region’s political and economic superpower any degradation will come at a heavy cost.

Food concerns will grow, as I wrote about in my last blog post, and around April see the world’s attention turn a bit, and a bit late, towards the northern part of the region as a food crisis predicted in November hits its peak. We’ll shake our heads as that awful image of a malnourished child hits our screens once again – but do remember then that we knew now that this was coming.

2012 will not be all doom and gloom. A food crisis might be averted with early action – the politics in the region are better placed than ever to do so, although the outside world may be too exhausted to assist. Many parts of the region will continue to grow, if unevenly and sporadically, and democracy should be further enshrined with successful (if occasionally wobbly) elections in Mali, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

In terms of sporting glory, sadly I don’t see Senegal topping the podium often in Stratford this summer unless La Lutte Senegalaise is introduced at the last minute, but I do predict a West African nation lifting the African Nations Cup on 11^th February – most likely Les Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire overcoming Senegal’s Les Lions de Teranga in the final.

My heart, of course, hopes for the reverse, but few countries could do with such a timely national boost for reconciliation as Cote d'Ivoire, while an election and a cup win in Senegal in the same month might just be too much to take.

For me, I'll be following all of the above throughout my second full year in the Dakar Side of the Toon, in which I'll finally master French, make passable progress in Wolof and learn enough wrestling techniques to take on at least the average one-armed 12 year old. The bigger fights are, as always, for 2013.

Happy New Year, Bonne et Heureuse Année, Deweneti!

If in six months they say they didn't know, they'll be lying

2011-12-08T23:04:00.002Z

Again?

Sometime last February I sat in a meeting when people were talking about how there was going to have an extremely serious food crisis in the Horn of Africa in 3-4 months time. They talked of the possible unprecedented scale, the huge potential cost and above all the possible loss of life. But, ‘hey’, I thought, ‘if people know already that things could get so bad then that's plenty of time to stop it right?’

Theoretically yes, but of course 3-4 months later the region was in the midst of the continent's first fully blown famine since the days when Bob Geldof first asked if we had heard of Christmas in 1984. This year 11 million people were threatened with starvation, in scenes that should have been unthinkable in the 21^st Century.

I wasn’t involved enough in that crisis to know what stopped the world responding in time, but I do know that they didn’t. Many lives have of course saved through the extraordinary efforts of a massive relief effort, but far too few could be reached. But I am now trying to learn fast, because just as the rains are beginning to bring a little relief to Somalia, their irregularity is now threatening the terrible spectre of hunger in the Sahel region of West Africa.

The news of crop deficits (50% lower this year than last in Mauritania and Chad) and high food prices (up to 40% higher) is depressing in a region that suffered its last devastating food crisis – one that affected 10 million people - just two years ago.

But there are two glimmers of hope. The first is that we know about it earlier than ever – early warning systems are working, and this means that there is simply no excuse for governments and donors not to act to prevent the worst before it strikes. If in sixth months time politicians stand up and say that no one saw this coming, they will be lying – and we should remember that.

The second is that governments in the region have already recognised the problem, are developing plans and have asked for support. It sounds like nothing, but in the last food crisis the President of Niger denied the problem to such an extent that to be allowed to work in the county the NGO Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger) had to use its Spanish name (Accion Contra el Hambre) at all times. There is now the political space to act.

The truth about emergencies like the one in the Horn of Africa, and the one on its way to West Africa, is that they are at least partly preventable, and at far less cost than what it takes to respond to them.

While droughts are environmental, famines are man-made. This is either because men (almost always men) have done things to make the situation worse – the conflict in Somalia is a major factor famine there – or because men (almost always men) have not taken the actions that could have prevented it.

There are cost-effective ways of protecting the most vulnerable people against crises before they arrive, we just never do them early enough. The UN appealed for $2.4bn to meet emergency needs in the Horn of Africa – it could have managed with much less had people acted early.

Will it be different this time? There are one or two reasons for optimism, none of them based on history however, but all remains to be seen if they are enough to overcome inertia, crisis fatigue and the false economy of spending our aid money on saving lives rather than on preventing them being put in peril in the first place.

On safari with the Great Northern Cougar

2011-11-03T21:51:00.006Z

A more attractive cougar

Supposedly when the colonial powers divided up Africa, Gambia was taken by the British not as somewhere it actually wanted to keep but, like some sort of Pannini sticker, as something it could trade for something better. Which they never managed.

But if Gambia felt unloved then, its ego must be soothed a little now, as thousands of single, ageing and relatively overweight women descend on the country each year to make amends by sleeping with the country’s population of young men, or at least their "bumsters".

"Bumsters" in Gambia are just like "Rent-a-dreads" and the "Foreign Service" in Jamaica or "whitey-hunters" in Bali – male prostitutes providing "big bamboo" to Europe’s women, in the same way we more commonly see women providing for Europe’s men, but with better nicknames.

Just back from a short trip to what is a beautiful country, the images seared into my mind are not of the lush mangroves along the river bank, but of two far uglier sights.

The first is the image of a Yabba-the-Hut-like man perousng the hotel bar with a face that said "I could have any one of you pretty young things just by reaching into my pocket ", and a wandering hand proving he was going to do exactly that.

The second was of the many muscular, twenty-somthing Gambian men hanging off the flabby bingo wings of Britain’s finest fifty-something dames.

Shamed by the first, I found myself endlessly intrigued by the second. And then spent far too much of my time wondering whether the two were really any different. Time I could have spent, apparently, massaging cellulite from the legs of Daphne from Scunthorpe.

From strictly secondary research it does seem we talk and write about men and women indulging in prostitution in different ways. While men engage in "sex tourism", women do something much more exotic: "Romance on the Road".

And while men going to Thailand for sex seem usually (and not partcularly unfairly I think) to be described as as Gary Glitter-style perverts, their female counterparts are as often described as lonely souls forced to travel half away around the world to compensate for the failings of British men. As if, as if that could even possibly be true…

More interesting still is that even in this most mercenary of contexts, the old stereotypes of love and relationships show their head. While predictably men seem to be straightforward and functional in the marketplace – pick a girl, negotiate a price, release the little fellas – women appear to look for something more subtle and more ‘emotionally fulfilling’.

For women, it’s not just sex that is paid for, but dinners, companionship and compliments too. And payment is never discussed in advance – how crude ! - but rather provided afterwards via ‘gifts’, ‘loans’ and ‘help with the rent’. Nothing can be allowed to kill the true budding romance of a fit, athletic 20 year old and his 55 year-old belle.

Ladies, God bless you. Even in this dead-hearted market you want to fall in love and be told you’re beautiful… It’s depressingly cute, heart-warmingly delusional.

More ‘romantic’, maybe, but any less exploitative? I didn't think so at first, but in some small ways, perhaps. I’d probably wager that far fewer of the "bumsters" had been trafficked or forced into it than their female counterparts, that they are probably more likely to have other economic opportunities, and are much less vulnerable to physical violence or abuse.

But perhaps the best that can be said is that, in a competition with few winners, it is better be a poor man exploited by rich women, than a poor woman exploited by a rich men.

Yet you can only polish this particular turd so much. The fact remains that women flying to the Gambia are doing so explicitly to use their wealth and power to buy sex from men who lack both in exactly the same way men do the world over.

If I were a Gambian father I’d no more want my son thinking that the best way to make money was to sell himself to tourists than I would my daughter.

At the end of the day nothing quite shows the stark reality of global inequality with a hint of colonial exploitation like the sight of the youth of one poor nation sexually servicing the elderly of a rich one, and telling them they're enjoying it.

And like Daphne’s cellulite, nothing can quite put you off your pina colada.

In pictures: Year One in West Africa

2011-10-24T09:27:00.000+01:00

You can do a lot in a year. Get a Masters in Sacred Music, calculate Pi to the ten trillionth decimal (which is 5), or father a love child.

I arrived in Dakar exactly one year ago today and did none of those things.

But it’s been a riot nonetheless, once or twice too literally (though much less so admittedly than back home, there being less Foot Lockers to burn…).

Golden beaches adjacent to rows of factories, wrestling matches and open-air concerts of Angelique Kidjo and Wyclef Jean have provided the light relief to trying to get my head around a new home, strange language and confront new challenges such as the crises in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia.

I’m lucky to have seen so much of this region too, visiting two countries building themselves out of conflict (Sierra Leone and Liberia), one sadly plunging itself back in (Cote d’Ivoire) before pulling itself back out, another recovering from a devastating food crisis (Niger) while reinstating its democracy, and one whose democracy and economy (Ghana) is the success story the region.

One day I’ll go to Chad. Maybe. One day I’ll go to Oldham too.

But it’s Senegal I always come home to, even though one year on it still remains a bit of a mystery to me. With elections coming it’s a country at a crossroads, while myself I’ve barely yet worked out what road goes where.

Anyway, rather than bore you with some profoundly shallow analysis of Senegalese life, here are some pictures of my year gone by…

I am the 1%! Occupy Dakar!

2011-10-19T21:57:00.003+01:00

It’s heady times for the 99% - finally having a crack at capitalism, getting on TV, being spoofed up by Sesame Street.

Good on ‘em I say – you don’t have to respect all the haircuts or sign up to all of the more dubious ideologies on offer to agree that these protests have something important to say that needed said: that this system is not working for 99% of us, but seems to be working just fine for the rest.

Good on ‘em, I say, rather than ‘good on us’, because I just realised that in Senegal I probably am the 1%.

Devastating news for a child revolutionary.

A decent senior NGO job – reasonably well paid while not extravagant – quite probably (I think, but not 100% sure) puts me in the richest 120,000 people in Senegal – the dreaded 1%.

So what’s it like I hear you ask ?

A little uncomfortable, obviously, especially when the purpose of you being the there is supposedly to try redistribute wealth and power to the 99%. But not too uncomfortable obviously – the appartment, restaurants and cleaning lady do take the edge off.

(Ps. I know you’ve just rolled your eyes at the colonial embrassment having a cleaning lady… but uppity morals don’t get kids to school, fairly paid jobs do).

In many ways being in the 1% is the most difficult of being abroad – not of course, actually difficult, but difficult in the way that your values and idea of what working for a charity and living in a poorer country should be like clashes with the standard of life you are used to, and what you want to go home to when you’ve been working your arse off for the 99% all day.

But again, not actually difficult - not difficult in the way that people who struggle to make ends meet or send their kids to school find things difficult. More difficult in a ‘should I send Tarquin to Eton or Westminster’ sort of way.

But it does mean that almost no matter what you do, you won’t live a ‘normal’ life, won’t really understand life that well here – just like wealthy people in the UK who, even if they do hours of volunteering and are as 'right on' as you like, are just too insulated from risk and chance to know the stress and pitfalls of struggling along.

I don’t really notice rises in food prices and petrol, but around the world they are worth rioting about – not surprisingly if you they take up half your income.

But what’s the solution ? NGOs manage multi-million pound budgets and contracts so you need good salaries to get good people to manage it well, and make best use of the money people have generously given. It would just be nice to not accumulate so much while trying to give it away, and to do so more humbly – a ban on NGO workers having nice 4x4s would be my dictatorial starting point…

Anyway, the 1% is not all bad. There’s me (I think). There’s people who invest and create wealth. And yes of course there are the guys (usually guys) who get rich on the backs of us all.

In the global context there’s maybe even you – might you be one of the 70 million richest people in the world ? If not the 1%, there’s a good chance you’re in the 10% at least… That 10% own 85% of the world's assets, the bottom 50% own just 1%...

So please try and not tar us all with the same brush with your rather exciting protests, but good luck with them (genuinely). But please, please cut your hair. And please, please stop doing what your doing in this video – you’re just giving us up here the thought that you down there are never going to clobber us as you should. Toodle pip !

(hat-tip Emmanuel Trepannier)

(And if you want some stats on world wealth distribution, look no further than Wikipedia obviously)

Jiminy Cricket: The Dark Side

2011-10-10T01:41:00.003+01:00

As I sat on the plane from Dakar to Niamey, the capital of Niger, on my way to run some training there, three things scared me.

First was the 37 degree heat (it's the cool season), threatening to vapourise a man who sweats at 19 degrees. Second was running my first ever three-day training in French, a great way to expose my lack of linguistic progress and prowess. And the third was bumping into a Gaddafi, with Niger proving an exile of choice for the extended family, and maybe for the big fella himself.

In the end all worked out ok. The only major french problem was mixing up the concepts of death ('la mort') and love ('l'amour') - but what's a bit of necrophilia between friends? - while thankfully The Guide also remained out of sight, the ‘melt-ability’ of his face surely deterring him from such sunny climes.

What I wasn't prepared for though was what greeted me at the airport on the way back - an actual plague of locusts. As in the sort of thing sent down by a vengeful God in response to an arrogant Pharaoh. The sort of thing that traditionally follows plagues of boils, lice and pestilence, and immediately precedes the slaying of all firstborn children.

I've never seen anything like it. A whole runway covered by swarms of Sahelian Jiminy Crickets, through which every passenger had to fight with every flapping part of their bodies to board. The sort of add on feature that not even Ryanair could charge you for.

Naively I hadn't actually clicked this was a real life problem outside biblical times, but swarms of locusts are one of the things currently battering parts of Niger and threatening to turn an otherwise good harvest into a much more difficult year. The other big factor being the war in neighbouring Libya, as I explained in a previous post.

If divinely ordered, a plague of locusts seems a touch unfair. It's not like Niger doesn't have enough things to deal with. Just last year it was hit by a massive food crisis affecting half of its population, while even in a ‘good’ year over 100,000 children die of malnutrition. Even disasters in Japan have an impact here, with its only major export earner - uranium - not looking a great bet for the future.

The fact that road signs advertise ports that are 2000 km away suggests this landlocked state on the edge of the Sahara, by some measures the world's poorest country, won't win the top trumps of nations any time soon, but there is also another story to tell – against all the odds this could be a country with something positive to say in the years to come.

Politically things are looking up, with recent elections feted as a great success, bringing in a new president following a peaceful transition from military rule (a possible example of a ‘good’ coup d’etat if you dare say it). Economically a programme called 'Nigeriens Nourissent les Nigeriens' is putting a big focus ensuring the country can feed itself without support from outside, and an Oxfam report will soon show that even last year’s food crisis had a few signs of success compared to a very similar crisis a few years before. Due to better management, better politics and smarter interventions far fewer people died - an uncomfortable indicator to celebrate, but an important one nonetheless.

To top it all this weekend the country achieved what it never thought it could – qualify for the African Nations Cup at the expense of continental superpowers Egypt and South Africa. Whether they will have to fight through locusts to get on the plane there remains to be seen, if so they always have the option of a uniquely Nigerien mode of transport spotted in Niamey: a motorbike being ridden entirely covered in bubble wrap. Road safety, it seems, is on the up too.

A Week in the News: Death by self love, an orgy 'near-miss' and some rampaging lions

2011-09-11T22:45:00.005+01:00

Knowing just how much people are craving news from Senegal, but understanding just how busy you avid readers are, I thought that now and again I'd do a quick round up of the week's news in all its glory.

Due to popular demand this will hopefully usually include stories about nobs or something else that seems (according to my google stats) to make people read certain articles on this blog, rather than analysis of food security in Niger or the plight of refugees in Liberia. (PS. Scroll to the end if you just want the lower-brow stuff).

Apologies in advance also that the links are in french. Why include french links for an anglophone audience you ask? Basically I want to look more intelligent and attractive.

Two big political stories this week, both of them recurring ones. First of all the Constitutional Court has been musing over the eligibility of President Wade’s candidature for the elections in February 2012. Wade himself introduced a constitutional limit of two terms in power, but now says that since he did that in the middle of his first term, that doesn’t count - some smart (but dubious) thinking that sets the scene for a few months of legal wrangling and a fair bit of politicking.

Secondly there are the increasingly chaotic efforts of the opposition to find a single candidate to put up against the current President – something almost every opposition party signed up to after their defeat in 2007, but which is looking next to impossible due to competing interests and egos… This week it got a little more farcical as the opposition splintered further, with a new group (Bennoo Alternative 2012) breaking away in frustration from the main coalition (Bennoo Siggil Senegaal) to set up a separate process. Remember The Judea's People's Front anyone?

Turning to the back pages, it's been all about Senegal's footballing victory over DRC last week, attended by yours truly, that saw Les Lions qualify for the African Nation's Cup in Gabon and Equitorial Guinea in January. So now the plan to join Senegal’s equivalent of the Tartan Army in the New Year, although all flights there seem to ridiculously to go via Morocco and require the laying of a golden egg.

The Senegal women’s basketball team (Les Lionnes) also today won the African Games, beating Angola in the final. But like the BBC, I only mention this out of political correctness.

But the news you've all been waiting for, the stuff involving nobs… While only one of these stories actually occurred in Senegal, they all caught my eye by being either prominently featured in national newspapers or in the top read sections of news websites.

First there was the Brazilian teenager who killed himself by (reportedly) masturbating too much. 42 times in one day according the press, causing some type of seriously embarrassing heart attack and found by his mum in an extreme version of that urban myth so you may have heard about someone’s cousin’s friend. How anyone knows that the overall tally for the fatal act times remains unclear.

Next in Senegal itself there was the story of the Dakar taxi driver, as reported in L’Observateur (the national newspaper owned by Youssou Ndor), who claims to have been ‘almost raped’ by four female customers. Having helped carry one of them, who had faked an illness, to her room the others reportedly grabbed him, ripped his clothes off and demanded an orgy. According to the victim, he managed to escape in his underwear by saying he needed to lock his taxi door ‘but would be back’, before driving off to safety. Unfortunately (and very questionably for a Dakar cabbie) he was unable to tell the police where this apartment was. Since the incident, applications to become a taxi driver have rocketed.

Finally there was coverage of the French woman who sued her husband for not having enough sex with her, winning €10,000 in the process. If only she'd known a certain Brazilian teenager...

So a touch of the Daily Star here too. Next week Debbie from Southend will be reporting live from the Constitutional Court, and I’m sure we all look forward to her views.

Libya: African victims of the Arab Spring

2011-09-06T08:51:00.001+01:00

Migrants being evacuated from Misrata by the IOM

The Arab Spring has so far deposed three African dictators and potentially liberated over 100 million Africans. Sounds a bit odd to express it like that, but it’s true. And just as these African revolutions have had profound impacts north of the Sahara, profound impacts have been found south of it too – not least as a result of the fight to depose that great pan-Africanist Muammar Gaddafi.

Thanks to the increasing presence of media crews (see video at end of blog), the most visible and immediate impact on those often described as ‘black Africans’ is to be found in Libya itself, on the migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa attracted by the possibility of making money in Gaddafi’s oil economy who are now caught in a nightmare of fear, persecution and racism. ‘The Guide’ did of course bring in African mercenaries to support his regime, bringing fear and suspicion of those with darker skin, but it’s now it’s the other 1-2 million of “Gaddafi’s Africans” who are feeling the effect.

Abuses including mass arrests, mob attacks and killings are increasingly being documented by organisations such as Human Rights Watch and the International Organisation for Migration, ‘disgracing’ the revolution according to one commentator.

But the impacts on the rest of Africa certainly don’t stop at Libya’s borders – they follow the streams of migrants who have fled the country for safer climes. It says a lot of course when your safer climes include Chad and northern Niger, places where food is short but arms are plentiful, but so far over 670,000 migrants have fled Libya to return to their countries of origin, many enduring weeks of travelling through desert with few supplies - some not making it at all.

What greets them is not always much better. Working in Chad and Niger, two of the world’s poorest countries, Oxfam has witnessed the impact of these returnees on the local economy and on food markets, and it’s a serious but largely untold side of the Libya crisis.

The Sahel region (understood as countries like Niger, Mali and Chad on the edge of the Sahara) is a tough place to be at any time, and is extremely vulnerable to external shocks. A region suffering chronic food insecurity, 300,000 children die of malnutrition-related causes in a ‘good’ year, while the population is still trying to recover from a food crisis which affected ten million people just last year. With much better harvests, 2011 had actually been looking like a much better year, but for many families Libya has changed that.

Before the crisis about half a million Chadians and Nigeriens worked in Libya, and money sent back to their families was a crucial part of how many families fed themselves: in northern Niger it represented 40% of the income of poor households. With about a third of these workers having now fled, and many others still there lost their livelihoods, much of that income has now gone. At the same time, prices of some food goods in many regions dependant on food imports from Libya have increased by 50% - a devastating blow for families that needed no more bad news.

While the Libya crisis has certainly hurt poor families in the Sahel, it might also hurt rich leaders further across Africa, albeit in a less tear-jerking way. It’s no secret Gaddafi was the Godfather of the African Union – his largesse funded about 15 % of the organisation, and his petro-dollars won favour from democrat and despot alike across the continent who simply had to pretend to sign up to his grand dream of a United States of Africa in return. There were of course development projects with this money, but there were also great white elephants and tools of repression.

In the short-term his struggle created huge divisions in the body he founded and funded, drawing lines between the few countries like Senegal and Rwanda who spoke out in favour of western intervention, those like South Africa to whom it was a colonial indignity too far, and many others who just shrugged. In the end, Africa was as irrelevant in deciding the fate of its leading pan-Africanist as its leading pan-Africanist will now be in shaping Africa’s future.

In the longer-term what role Libya will play, once it has licked its wounds, in Africa without the dreams of its deposed leader is a big question. The AU will still need funding, petro-dollars will still offer influence, and there will still be a million or so migrants in the country looking for jobs to send money home, and possibly another million looking to come back in.

What will happen to these migrants - and their families on the edge of the Sahara who depend on them - is difficult to know, but no less real for being hard to see. What is clear, however, is that the real cost or benefit of the Libyan conflict is bigger than one man or one country; the Arab Spring is also an African story, and one where many of the main characters may never be seen or heard.

The beautiful lunarcy of Eid El-Fitr

2011-08-31T00:24:00.004+01:00

Muslims the world over are currently celebrating Eid El-Fitr - or La Korité as it’s called here - feasting heartily to end a long hard month of fasting for Ramadan.

Except in Senegal. Where we're not quite sure if we are or not. Not because there is ambivalence about religious faith - Senegal is supposedly the country that Googles the Koran more than any other - but because we are arguing about the moon.

The ambiguity of national and religious holidays has always confused me since coming here. I've always thought the moon was on a predictable, scientific cycle of 28 days or so, making it possible to predict the end of Ramadan not just this year but in, like, 2352 for example. But there is a reason I am not a respected Imam I guess. Other than the embarrassing gingerness of my beard.

So whilst most of the muslim world feasted tonight, my Senegalese compatriots must wait another day - or maybe two - as the "Commission Nationale de Concertation sur le Croissant Lunaire" proclaims when the moon has been viewed in accordance to scriptures.

Yes, a commission about the moon might sound a bit over the top. But remember Britain had a quango called “The Government Hospitality Advisory Committee for the Purchase of Wines” before George Osborne swung his axe. This commission (not the wine one) is in place because, whilst the process of spotting the moon is the same as in many other places, in Senegal there are multiple 'confreries' (brotherhoods) with differing interpretations. It can be controversial stuff.

So as I write I don't know if I'm off work tomorrow or not. And for 12 million or so Senegalese who have been fasting hard for four weeks, they don't know if they have another day or two to go - something that sounds like torture to someone who needs to know where the next hit of bourbon biscuits will come from.

Having eaten and drank my way around three British weddings during Ramadan, I have little right to feast myself. But if you have been fasting, congratulations on (maybe) having completed a month of sacrifice and prayer. It's genuinely an impressive sight to see a whole country and faith dedicate itself to deferring instant gratification in the name of something higher, especially in the brutal heat and humidity of a Senegalese August. So no matter what moon you're under, or what commission you listen to, Eid Mubarak to you and all your loved ones!

A fair day's wage for a fair day's protest?

2011-07-26T19:21:00.002+01:00

Pro-government supporters out in force, 23 July

One month on from the dramatic events of 23rd June, when thousands of Dakarois took to the streets to protest proposed changes to the constitution, the city was once against braced for a weekend of unrest, with violence widely expected. With two mass protests planned – one pro-Government and one against – and the latter initially banned before being relocated, half the city seemed set to rage outside, the other half cower indoors.

What took place was in the end extraordinary in its banality and hopeful in its restraint. Whilst one month ago the forceful but largely peaceful demonstrations of tens of thousands of people spilled over into burnt buildings and tear gas, this time hundreds of thousands of people seemed to break out in a dramatic display of peaceful citizenry.

That hundreds of thousands of people from rival demonstrations took to the streets in such a heated political climate without ill or injury is remarkable. That a protest group inspired and led by rappers made sure everyone cleaned up all the mess after them – behaviour more akin to Japanese football fans – is impressively surreal. Long live boring, tidy democracy.

Of course it’s not quite as boring as that, and behind the crowds and figures there were some interesting stories to tell…

First, a light was shone on the market rate for a protester, as claimed by opposition-leaning newspaper Le Quotidien. “The PDS [governing party] sets up market in the suburbs” was their headline on the day before the march; “The people who growl and the people who barter” the day after, as local leaders linked o the ruling party were given cash to mobilise their areas. The price: 2000CFA (£2.67) + cap and T-shirt for a youngster, 5000 CFA (£6.66) for a woman, and a nice premium of 7500 CFA (£10) for a wrestler – also charged with providing security for party bosses. “The battle of the per diems” another website reported.

Second there is the great protester numbers game gone galactic. Protest veterans will of course be familiar with the usual ‘protesters claim 100,000, police claim 50,000’ game, but usually they’re correct to within a zero at least. This time minister after minister, live on radios and TVs across the country, stood up to thank the ‘3 million people’ in attendance. Impressive you might say, especially in a country of 12 million. Even more so in a city of 2 million, whose sole road to the rest of the country is chocker-block on a normal day, never mind able to host a quarter of the country gracing it’s battered tarmac. But if you keep saying it enough…

President Wade addressing his supporters

Knock a zero off and then half it and you may get the right number, but either way it was an impressive mobilisation and worked wonders for the President, whose nickname “Laye Ndiombor” I now understand. “Ndiombor” is some sort of wild rabbit, which I’m told is the Senegalese equivalent of the Great British Fox in all its Roald Dahl-esque cunning. (I’m assured there are no connotations to sexual proclivity, à la Strauss-Kahn, though for an 84 year-old leader that would be impressive in a measure beyond even Berlusconi).

So after a month when it seemed to casual eyes that the whole country was against him, that his time was up, President Wade looks again back in the game. And whether his supporters were paid to be there or not may be beside the point: if they were paid it shows he has the means and will to campaign hard and dirty; if they weren’t it shows he has sizeable support outside the Dakar elite, in the small towns and villages where most people live and vote. Either way it showed the President and his party can organise, can mobilise, and remain a force to be reckoned with. No longer can you say that the nation is against him – it’s now a genuine two-sided fight.

Although not, in fact, two-sided. Which is the problem for the other side(s). For all the spirit, moral high-ground and commendable restraint that the opposition brought to the weekend, they exposed once again their weakest flaw – their disunity. The beauty contest of potential presidential candidates taking the stage didn’t inspire a charge in unison across the electoral battlefield; it just exposed the vanity of too many wannabe generals showboating for their own political gain. Contrasted against a ruling-party machine utterly singular in its determination to stay in power, the end of the Wade era no longer looks so certain as it did just one month ago.

So, tactical win to the President, even if there will be many more twists en route to elections next February. But the thing I learnt most this weekend was definitely the price of a protest. Dipping into my savings I now know I could get myself quite a rally if I so desired, and I’ve found myself dreaming of just that… Standing on my balcony, listening to adoring crowds cheer my name (they will be told how to pronounce Cockburn) while I make a rousing speech in perfect wolof – these are the things every former student politician dreams of. And at a bargain price too.

Africa through beer goggles

2011-07-20T19:49:00.000+01:00

Guinness: now more Nigerian than Irish

It's simply a coincidence that on my return from a stag weekend I've been thinking about the meaning of alcohol, desperately trying to find intellectual high-ground from a weekend in the gutter.

A country's alcohol consumption has to tell us something right? Like how the prevalence of 'light beers' alongside chocolate-coated bacon in the US betrays a national schizophrenia about its weight. And how the difference in reaction to ordering a fruity beer in France and a lager and lime in England says something about our respective nations' association of boozing (and possibly fruit-ingestion) to manhood.

Take champagne, a million extra bottles of which were sold in Africa in 2010, with Senegal for one (an overwhelmingly Muslim country no less) seeing imports rocket 8% last year. Although as a continent Africa imports just 2% of the world's bubbly, this is still that is more than India, China and South America combined. And it's rising.

That about 300 million Africans lack safe water to drink but nearly 3 million bottles of champagne arrive each year tells a story, most obviously about inequality and the fortunes of two very different classes, but also of changing tastes, cultures and demographics. A young continent, with a small but growing group literally thirsty for success, where women may be more and more likely to be drinking than before (and as everywhere ordering what costs the most...).

And just as in Britain where bankers bonuses are on the way to recovering to pre-crash levels while the rest of the economy continues to slump, champagne sales have recovered strongly at the same time as ever-rising food prices keep people hungry.

That champagne sales supposedly dip before an election, then rocket just after may make it an indicator of fear and confidence, but should continual rises be welcome news or a warning bell? Quite possibly the latter in some cases. While oil-flush Gabon was the world's biggest per capita consumer of champagne in the 80s, this apparent sign of success could have just as well been a sign that the economy was lop-sided and prone to collapse. Which it did.

And what about drinking trends more generally? I'm not sure how to explain Nigeria's status as the world's second biggest Guinness drinking nation, but a report from the World Health Organisation does shed some light on which African countries like their parties dry, and which like them, err, wet.

At 6.1 litres of alcohol per person per year, Africa as a region is pretty much dead on the global average. But that hides big disparities - Nigerians and Ugandans down double that, and the more Islamic countries of North and West Africa, Senegal included, predictably drink much, much less. And yet somehow these latter countries still socialise, dance, date and mate - a shocking revelation to an Englishman. Where do their social crutches come from? How are emotions expressed? How are kebabs eaten?

Moldova: what 18 litres of alcohol does to you

Either way, no one gets close to the east Europeans, especially the Moldovan habit of knocking back a whopping 18 litres of pure alcohol each a year, which may go some way to explaining their Eurovision performance. The UK’s 13.4 litres would put it at the top of the Africa Cup of Drinking Nations but sees us fall short in Europe, although he survey excludes our nation’s under-15s whose tenacity and commitment would surely propel us towards the summit.

And what kind of drinkers do we have? The mix in Europe is predictable – beer dominates in Germany and Ireland, wine in Italy and France, and spirits in the east – but what about Africa? Beer seems to predominant overall, but there are cultured Cape Verdeans and Equatorial Guineans getting over 80% of their hits from wine, hardcore Liberians getting over 90% from spirits, and a number of countries such as Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa relying overwhelmingly on something described ominously as 'other' (generally unregulated local brews) for their ethanolic pleasures.

As ever, over-analysis remains a great way to spoil a good drink, and a good way to kill a great party. One stat to definitely ignore on a hangover is the WHOs claim that 2.5m people die from alcohol related causes each year. So while the wildest place to have a party may not be Mauritania - consumption there being apparently statistically insignificant - it may be the safest. I’ll take my chances with the Moldovans, and try and not drink too much champagne. Cheers.

Growing Tired, Getting Angry...

2011-06-27T21:46:00.003+01:00

If there is ever to be such a thing as ‘the Senegalese Spring’, the history books may well one day record 23^rd June 2011 as the moment where the political world in Dakar turned on its axis ever so slightly. Usually so calm and tranquil to anyone except the casual shopper, Senegal became the latest scene for mass street protests against an elite accused of subverting democracy for personal gain.

The immediate cause was the attempted introduction of law 13-2011, which sought to amend the constitution so that a Presidential candidate could win the first round of an election with just 25% of the vote, rather than the 50% needed before. It also sought to create a new position of Vice-President, who would take over the reins if the President became unable to carry out his (or her) duties.

Technical changes to election rules might seem an unlikely reason to riot - the British people, of course, unleashing nothing but mass apathy during the referendum on electoral reform this May, opting incidentally to stick with a system not totally dissimilar to what President Wade tried to introduce in Senegal.

But as ever context is everything. With elections just nine months away, and given the level of disunity amongst potential opposition candidates, lowering the threshold for a first round victory would give an enormous advantage to the incumbent. And given the real possibility that the 85 year-old President may face health problems during a future term, opponents also suspect that the creation of the Vice-President post would be a neat way to ease his son, Karim, into power.

Of course, it’s not just the technical changes that have riled people, but also the manner of their attempted introduction – coming not from any consultation or election manifesto, and subject to no referendum. And with parliament dominated by supporters of the President (many opposition parties boycotted the last election so are sparsely represented), resistance came from the streets of Dakar, Kaolack and other towns across the country, where thousands gathered to chant slogans such as “Wade, degage” (Wade, Out!) and “Wade, Go”.

Rocks flew and tyres burned across the city, and while no-one was killed, over 100 people were injured, and the houses of a few ministers were destroyed (though charmingly, one group was convinced not to burn the house of a Minister – just trash it – as it was rented and belonged to someone else). The result: an apparent victory for people power as the law was withdrawn.

The confrontational methods may have been in part inspired by the Arab Spring, but the issues, grievances and personalities were deeply Senegalese in nature. Rappers, wrestlers and, of course, Youssou N’Dour provide a distinctively Senegalese face to the opposition movement, while the role of traditional and religious leaders are highly significant on both sides – the Minister of Family, Aida Mbodji, reacted to events by visiting spiritual leaders asking them to pray for the re-election of Wade in 2012, whilst a major story in the papers just a few weeks ago centred around a vision by another spiritual leader that a military government would be in place before the elections next year.

Constant power cuts and ever-rising food prices – probably the two most common complaints in daily life - take a political edge too. To opponents of the regime they are symptoms of a deeper political malaise that has at its core poor governance and corruption amongst a self-serving political elite. The attempts to load the electoral dice may simply have been the last straw.

A dramatic week, but what does it all tell us? Well, to a casual (ie. non-expert) observer of Senegalese politics like me, the last week provided a few basic thoughts...

The first is that the attempted introduction of law 13-2011 has, rightly or wrongly, provided more fuel for that all-too-familiar caricature of a formerly promising leader who has stayed on too long. A decade ago Abdoulaye Wade was the great hero of “l’Alternance”, Senegal’s first democratic change of power. Today there are plenty of people who feel this heritage has been betrayed.

A second is that after years of simmering frustration, it is quite possible that a tipping point has been reached. A lazy assumption heard all the time is that the people of Senegal are too averse to confrontation, too intellectual, too fond of discussion to enforce change. Civil society is certainly vibrant, but rarely violent – a demonstration in March dubbed in advance as ‘Senegal’s Tahrir Square’ was largely a polite and discursive affair. But now people have stood up, and have won doing so, these assumptions may no longer hold –things might never be the same again.

A crucial third thought is that this last week has shown that the government of Senegal is, to its credit, neither immune to people power, nor willing to use extreme violence to suppress it. This week’s demonstrations were significant, but they were not irresistible, and any actual dictator worth his salt could have crushed them easily, and with glee. But Senegal is certainly not Syria, and Wade is not Assad. Responding to the protests he has said that “he will not walk over dead bodies to leave the Presidential Palace” - something that bodes far better for citizens of Dakar than Damascus.

And finally, it exposed the gap between those itching for reform and the political options open to them. Senegal has no dearth of smart, passionate, idealistic citizens, as movements such as “Y en a marre” (“I’m tired of it”) - or conversations on any street corner - show, but it has too few – or in truth too many - vehicles to make their voices matter. The very attempt to introduce law 13-2011 was to exploit the fatal flaw of division amongst Senegal’s opposition movement, where drives for unity are continually sacrificed at the altar of ego and empire. That there is still no single opposition candidate to rally around nine months before an election must surely be their main cause of concern.

Senegal is undoubtedly entering into more volatile times, and how the politics of the street and the ballot box combine will possibly define its path. Whilst some will be tempted to continue the politics of the street to try and force Wade out before the coming election, to me this risks taking the lessons of the Arab Spring a step too far. Whilst voting out Mubarak or Ben Ali was never really an option for the people of Egypt and Tunisia, Senegal remains for better or worse a democracy nine months away from a national election, where the rule of law is broadly respected. The street can demand a fair process, but ultimately it will be the right of every citizen, whether dissenter or loyalist, at the ballot box to make their choice. The street, after all, might sometimes be wrong.

A little Hope...

2011-06-02T20:21:00.009+01:00

Being introduced into the world in the middle of a makeshift refugee camp shared by over 12,000 other people may not be the start in life every mother dreams of. But it was the case of Veronique and her one-week old child, whom I met at the Catholic Mission in Duekoue, western Cote d’Ivoire.

The father, Veronique’s husband, had been killed in the recent conflict that the mother and then unborn child had fled. I found her washing her beautiful newborn assiduously – undoubtedly the cleanest, newest thing and most cared for thing in the Catholic Mission - surrounded by female friends and relatives. She explained that the child had no name yet, and asked if I would suggest one.

The baby girl in question had an unusual start. Devotedly carried for nine months by her Ivorian mother; safely delivered with the assistance and care of a French NGO, Medecins Sans Frontiere, and with MSF; and finally named by a random Geordie who happened to be walking by.

A profound and high pressure moment – how to come up with a name that would do justice to such a sad but extraordinary beginning? And a fairly embarrassing one too, having done absolutely nothing at all to merit the honour.

Luckily for the little one, she won’t have to answer to the name ‘Keegan’ at school – it’s just not a girl’s name, it wouldn’t have been fair. Just a little cheesy, but a choice that seemed appropriate, little ‘Hope’ is healthy and well.

Eating less, sharing more: returning home after the war

2011-05-31T13:54:00.000+01:00

“Before the war I had everything I needed. I had land and owned sheep. But I spent two months living in the bush and now my animals are gone, my home is destroyed, and I sleep on the bare floor without even a mat. I have no equipment to cook with, and our children are naked.”

These were the words of an elderly woman from the village of Pohan, in the Moyen-Cavilly region in western Cote d’Ivoire. Like hundreds of thousands of others, this woman had only recently returned to her village, having originally fled the violence that swept the area in the months after November’s disputed Presidential elections.

Before the war, her neighbours considered her a rich woman. Being rich in Pohan, I was told, means eating three times a day, with good sauce and a variety of ingredients. Being “middle-class” was eating twice, and having half your kids go to school.

I met her and others from the villages of Pohan and Gueya travelling with an Oxfam team undertaking assessments of humanitarian needs as part of the charity’s response to the crisis here.

At first glance these villages appear like many other neat and quiet villages you might come across in other parts of the country, nestled in lush green forests. Except that they were half empty, and many homes were burnt.

Completely abandoned at the height of the conflict, just one third of the population had yet returned to Pohan, and just under half had returned to Gueya. Those still missing – some 3000 people in the two villages - were presumed to be scattered around various sites providing for refugees either within the region or across the border in Liberia.

Tragically, the violence appears to have been neither random nor the work of soldiers alone. Houses burnt to the ground stood next to those that remain untouched. Bodies dumped in wells purposely poisoned the water. Seed stocks and farming tools were deliberately destroyed to prevent food being re-grown. In some villages the perpetrators had been members of the same community settling scores, or from neighbouring villages avenging atrocities committed elsewhere.

Such systematic violence makes returning as painful as fleeing, and means rebuilding communities will be a long and tricky process. According to the villagers, food and shelter are the most urgent needs – malnutrition has visibly increased and it rains daily now – while getting local economies moving is key to becoming self-sufficient once again.

The residents of Pohan and Gueye were desperate to get back to work before the planting season ends, but lack the tools to do so. They want to be able to buy and sell goods in the local markets once again, but the ‘tax’ to pass military road blocks - $1 per road block, of which I counted eight on our two hour journey - makes getting there unaffordable. Such racketeering is also preventing many others who fled from making the journey home.

While providing basic services to those who remain displaced their homes is as critical as ever, it is villages like Pohan and Gueye that will be the future face of the humanitarian crisis in Cote d’Ivoire as people return home. These villages were neither the worst nor least affected in the region, but now their fate depends not only on their own ability to reunify and move forward, but also on the support provided from outside to enable to them to do so, and the willingness of the men with guns to leave them in peace.

Out of the spotlight, they will continue to face up to food shortages and burnt-out homes by eating less and sharing more. Many will suffer but, as became clear during our visit, by giving up their houses for their neighbours and reducing their meals to feed those without, they are already demonstrating a remarkable solidarity that jars so inexplicably with the horrors that members of the same community inflicted on them. Summarised neatly by the village chief, old divisions no longer matter: “whether rich, poor or in the middle– we are all eating from the same plate now”.

Cote d’Ivoire in Rapture? (A blog post for sinners and blasphemers only)

2011-05-21T13:07:00.012+01:00

Abidjan, 21 May 2011

President Alassane Outtarra of Cote d’Ivoire may have won an election and a civil war, but can he beat The Rapture?

Saturday, 21^st May sees Heads of State from around the world attend Outtara's inauguration ceremony, a huge day for a country torn apart by conflict since November’s disputed elections. Yet according to a very particular reading of scripture, it's also the day when true believers will ascend to eternal paradise, while the rest of us are condemned to look after their pets.

It's poor news management if anything, although divine ascension is not a bad way to separate your Obamas from your Mugabes before the awkward prawn cocktail small talk.

In Outtara's painfully earthly kingdom, he has a lot to get on with. Most immediately, there is still a deep humanitarian crisis across the west of his country that people seem to think is over with the end of the war. Yet over 200,000 people live displaced in squalid conditions in Cote d’Ivoire itself, and a further 120,000 remain in Liberia. Food is desperately short, the rains have started and yet people remain too scared to return home; many of those that do go home find their communities and livelihoods destroyed.


A family seeks refuge in Bahn Camp, Liberia

He clearly also has to rebuild trust and unite a divided people, and get the economy moving again. Atrocities committed over the last few months build on long-standing grievances, so wounds may run deep. Distributing the political and economic dividends of peace evenly will be key, as will treating Gbagbo with greater fairness and dignity than some might think he merits. Trying to revive the country's former 'economic miracle' - destroyed by the God-complexes of its leaders - will also be crucial in showing that conflict benefits only the mercenaries and madmen.

He won’t be able to do all of this alone – the international community is going to have to support the reconstruction better than it supported the emergency response, or risk watching a formerly hopeful country buckle under the weight of its own divisions.

What have we learnt from this response to date? Are there lessons for the way the international community deals with other conflicts?

Firstly, crises clearly don’t start and end when the TV cameras are rolling. The crisis in Cote d’Ivoire was building up long before the response got serious, and was utterly predictable. Rather than using the slow build up to the crisis to prepare an effective response everyone played ‘wait and see’. No-one fixed the roads we now so desperately need to transport supplies to remote border areas; no one built the camps now being erected in a race against the rains.

Once again, the world acted like a frog being slowly boiled, utterly oblivious of the heat building up around it until it was too late.

Marlyand County, Liberia

Secondly, our expectations about how the world responds to crises like this have become so low that it became almost banal to complain. That the world has only been able to muster one third of the money needed to provide for refugees in a wholly predictable crises should be a story. Sadly, it is so common it seems to shock no one. See this webpage showing the funding status of the world’s major crises of the day. As a measure of how much we seem to bother about the world’s most vulnerable it’s pretty embarrassing.

Delving into the figures also tells a familiar story – countries doing their duty well in this case include the UK, the Scandinavians, Switzerland, and even little old Ireland. Those shirking their responsibilities include France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US. Bring us your huddled masses – unless it’s a bit steep, or you've spent it on Bunga Bunga parties.

Finally, it also struck me that although new groups and new non-military means are emerging to impose the international community's will - a source of hope I think - ultimately the old ones won the day. The initial unity and resolve of West African nations to oppose Gbagbo and enforce at least some proactive measures against him – something unlikely in the not so distant past - was impressive. Less so was the pondering of the African Union, suggesting concerted action may be impossible when needing the consensus of 52 leaders of differing levels of legitimacy.

Noteworthy too was the impact of smart sanctions and trade embargos; Gbagbo’s support withered away when he could no longer pay for it. But sadly it ultimately took decisive military action, including by the UN and French forces, to depose Gbagbo and bring peace. Those of us who rue the involvement of old colonial powers in African affairs, should also rue the inability or lack of will of continental actors to carry the day themselves.

Of course with The Rapture coming, all this becomes a little academic. Learning lessons is really a pre-judgement day sort of thing to do. And what it means for Outtara himself I'm not sure - as a muslim I'm not sure the wild-eyed evangelists are going to invite him to the party.

Elsewhere, however, another Ivorian leader may be more hopeful. I’m pretty sure that sitting in a room somewhere, plotting his next move, still never doubting himself for a minute, a certain Laurent Gbagbo is hoping for that rapture. One last chance to escape The Hague, perhaps?

PS. If you're read this far, you're clearly either a sinner or a blasphemer. Or someone got their dates wrong...

If Dakar did Royal Weddings...

2011-05-02T01:00:00.004+01:00

We read a lot about how much Prince William loves Africa. Much like he loves commoners I think. But what would it have been like if it really shown his commitment to the continent by holding his wedding in, err, Dakar?

For a venue, not sure there’s anywhere quite like Westminster Abbey. La Grande Mosquée is pretty, err, grand, and the main Catholic church is pretty special. But surely, oh surely, it would have to be held at the foot of the great ‘Monument de la Renaissance Africaine’, where a foreign family from another age is carved in bronze as an anachronistic monument to waste, vanity and misplaced virility. There are nice flashy lights too.

The guest list would obviously have to be shaken up. Sadly, legalised homophobia means Elton John is persona non grata here, while Senegalese immigration would probably stop the 'Princess of Yugoslavia' from entering on the grounds that her country doesn't exist anymore (she is, however 1397th in line to the British throne).

The real King, Yekini.

Two kings would, no doubt, have to be present – champion wrestler Yekini (‘Le Roi des Arènes’) and omniprescent singer Youssou N’Dour (‘Le Roi du Mbalax’) would bring some merit-based regality. Obviously still no place for Brown or Blair, but equally none for Iran’s President Ahmadenijad - former best buddy found to be arming rebels in the south of the country. Doh!

The dress? No doubt you could get a Sarah Burton replica knocked up in no time in Marché HLM for less than a packet of Prince Charles’s organic ryvita. But how well would Princess Eugenie ‘blue vagina’ hat go down in a slightly more conservative country than Blighty? Or Beatrice's ovarian tube number?

No problem dressing the chaps – there should be plenty of left-over costumes from that oft-forgotten (but worth remembering) ‘Colonial and Native’ party that good-old Wills had for his 23rd birthday. You know the one - the bash where Wills dressed as a Zulu and Harry as a Nazi. Just like us, remember. Just like us.

No question about the carriage – no more impressive way to arrive than in a multi-coloured ‘Car Rapide’, with handy back door to hang out of to wave at the adoring crowds and buy some official Kate and Wills phone cards on the way. Unless noone else is getting on, in which case they’ll have to wait a while to move, obviously.

The after-party would risk being more sober, but not less animated - at least until the first power cut. If anything like Senegalese grandmothers, The Queen would be shaking her booty while Prince Charles twists and writhes to mbalax. The Queen Mum might even be coaxed into a number, turning in her grave, while Prince Philip would stay in the corner muttering about "the damn natives", insisting to anyone who would listen that "we’d have done a better job than the bloody french".

Of course, sadly, this is all just a pipe dream. Senegal will never be host to a Royal Wedding like this, it's just not cut out for it, just not made for this sort of thing. You have to vote for the Head of State here. How bloody barbaric!

Safe but not free: first impressions of life in a refugee camp, Liberia

2011-03-27T20:12:00.002+01:00

Toe Town transit centre

Campaigning on behalf of people you’ve never met, about circumstances you’ve never seen, is something we do all the time. I’ve just spent two weeks in Liberia, visiting the camps and interviewing the Ivorian refugees for whom I and many others are working at the moment. It was my first experience, and a thought-provoking one for me.

First impressions were, to be honest, a little underwhelming. I feel guilty writing that. It’s not that it was not clearly serious, or clearly devastating for those affected. But what I saw in the camps (and I was not able to get to the worst affected areas, explained later on) was, I guess, less visibly dramatic than maybe I expected. Not so much people whose lives were imminently threatened – in the camps no one will starve, no one will get caught up in the conflict – and much more a pervading sense of ‘flatness’ and frustration at the turn their lives had taken. It made you exhale slowly rather than inhale sharply, if that makes sense.

Pablo, a teacher.

People had fled their lives, left behind their families, their jobs, their status and found themselves idle and dependent in a camp where the food rations are meagre, work unavailable and the future – and the fate of their loved ones - entirely unknown. They had found security and the basics of survival, but they had lost their independence and direction. I guess I was more struck at how becoming a refugee has emasculated and imprisoned people, rather than how it had physically degraded them.

That’s not to say people were passive victims. Quite the opposite. I found myself pleased by how demanding many were, how unsatisfied they were to sit and receive handouts, how much they complained. They wanted to work. They wanted to start businesses. They wanted to improve their conditions. They wanted some control. Some moaned, some were exasperated, and if I’m honest sometimes you let the thought enter your head that a few were being ‘ungrateful’. But in reality, it just shows that people don’t lose their capacity to want and demand a better life for themselves and their families just because they become refugees. And nor should they.

Richard Gueye and family

I put a few profiles and photos of some of the people I met and interviewed on another blog post. A real mix of experiences, from all sides of the political divide. A pro-Gbagbo school teacher chased out of his house one night by armed men; 21-year old IT student who had designed posters for both sides, chased out of town by men with machetes; wives who had to leave their husbands and sons behind, who themselves were struggling across the border trying to avoid being conscripted or attacked by militias. A family of 20 who had made the trip together when their town came under fire, all of whom slept in the same battered tent.

The camp conditions were adequate, if not exactly lacking cause for complaint. There was (meagre) food, water, sanitation, limited medical supplies and even a makeshift primary school. People had organised themselves into committees and the place functioned, if hardly flourished.

Entrance to Bahn Camp

Unlike other crises you hear about, the camps were not ‘overflowing’. In fact the problem is the opposite; they’re largely empty. Only about 2,000 refugees have so far made it to the first refugee camp in Bahn, yet between 80 and 90,000 are stranded along border areas, close to the fighting, squatting in villages or makeshift shelters, without any proper access to food, water or sanitation. In one area there were 28,000 refugees registered, but only 11 water pumps.

Some don’t want to come to the camps - they prefer to stay close to the border in case it becomes safe enough to go home – others do and are kept trapped by the terrible roads and lack of transport. Some have chosen freedom over food; others have not been able to make any choice at all.

This is where the crisis is, but it’s near invisible. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, but not one that will make a good photo. If the deterioration continues, lives will be lost, but silently in the bush, not on TV cameras in camps.

Importantly, it’s not just refugees who are at threat. Liberians who have been hosting the refugees so impressively, despite being amongst the poorest communities in the world, are now seeing their own food stocks exhausted. Prices of staple foods in local markets have doubled, many families are now eating only one meal per day, and many more have been forced to use what is known in the jargon as ‘severe coping mechanisms’ – scouring the bush for wild food, and eating seeds rather than being able to plant them. And yet remarkably they continue to host.


One of the better bridges

Bringing relief to these areas is almost already logistically impossible due to the dispersal of people and the desperately poor state of the roads. In a few weeks the rainy season will begin to descend and the treacherous roads will become impassable; the difficulty of providing relief will become a near impossibility. Add to that the possibility of these areas being overwhelmed by new refugee flows – UN projections talk of 250,000 people crossing the border if fighting intensifies - there’s a feeling of sliding painfully slowly towards a disaster.

The bright side? Not a lot, but people do seem more and more to be grasping the severity of the situation, even if not on the scale it deserves. Competing with Libya, Japan and Yemen is no easy task, but a small increase in media and political interest can be seen. A little more funding is coming in bit by bit (the UK just announced £8m, which is not bad), but ultimately only about a quarter of what will be needed has yet been provided.

Airlifting in Oxfam supplies

And I got to see first-hand what so many organisations, including my own, are doing to respond. I do feel quite privileged to have been part of an impressive Oxfam team there that’s just flown in water and sanitation equipment for 70,000 people, is busy setting up camps in some really tough areas, and will be distributing food to border villages very soon.

It won’t be enough for all, it won’t make peace in Cote d’Ivoire, but it will be a life-saver for many. If you would like to support Oxfam’s work in Liberia, you can donate here.

Testimonies from a refugee camp, Liberia

2011-03-25T22:35:00.013Z

This week I spent two days interviewing refugees in Liberia, who had fled violence and intimidation in Cote d'Ivoire (aka Ivory Coast). Some more thoughts later, but first some pictures and testimonies of a few of those who I met there.

Bahn Camp, Nimba County

About 1700 refugees had made it from the border to the first refugee camp at Bahn in Nimba County - less than 3% of the total. People had fled from western Cote d'Ivoire, and most had been there for two to three weeks. The majority of refugees were women and children. The boys in this picture had just come out of the primary school organised by Save the Children. One had come to Liberia without his parents. All were convinced that Didier Drogba was without peer in modern football.

Philippe Cheugui, Danané, teacher.

"If I had stayed in the house that night, they would have killed me".

Philippe was a history teacher in Danané, an area controlled by forces loyal to Alassane Outtara. As an active Gbagbo supporter, he was forced to flee when he saw three men at his door armed with machetes. He fled out the back immediately, and headed to Liberia.

He said that other supporters had been targeted and beaten. He had been been in the camp for one month, with his family who followed him. Despite being a supporter of Gbagbo, he believed he needed to quit power to ensure peace.

Bouin Gueu René, Bin Houé

Bouin fled his home in Bin Houé when rebels loyal to Alassane Outtara entered the town, fighting with forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, and killing civilians. He preferred not to speak about politics, or the divides between people in the camp, which he said should be consigned to the past.

Like many others, he is not content with the conditions in the camp, complaining of meagre food rations, and a lack of rice. He suffers high-blood pressure, but has been able to get some medicines from Medecins Sans Frontieres in the camp.

Pablo, Danipleu, teacher

Pablo was a teacher from the village of Danipleu, in the western region of Cote d’Ivoire. He fled with his wife and children after fighting broke out in the town. He feared a repeat of the 2002 civil war. He had been in the camp for four weeks.

Gankoun Serge Alain, IT student, Zouan-Hounien (no photo available)

"I am not asking for heaven and earth, just for things to be improved a little”.

Gankoun was a 21 year-old from the area of Danané, who had produced election publicity for both sides. He was targeted by a local militia, who patrolled the town in 4x4s, armed with guns and machetes. He fled to Botu across the border, where he boarded a UN truck to Bahn camp with 100 hundred others. He wants to be able to continue his studies, and have the chance to work to contribute to the camp and earn some money.

Nazaire and family, Danané

Nazaire fled to the camp from the village of Danipleu with his two children. He explained that the biggest complaint of refugees in the camp was the lack of food – rations were too small, and they could not stomach the bulghar wheat they were given to eat. He said more people would come to the camp, rather than risk staying around the border areas, if rice was available. The import of rice is strictly regulated in Liberia, due to its role in the first civil war, causing real problems.

Toe Town transit camp, Grand Gedeh county

The transit camp at Toe Town housed 1500 people who had fled the fighting in Toulepleu, 30km across the border. It will be a transit point to another refugee camp that should open in a month's time. Conditions were much more makeshift than the camp at Bahn.

The refugee committee expressed themselves as grateful for the support, but identified five key areas to improve: poor and insufficient food (the biggest complaint), unclean latrines, a lack of medicines, no school, and tents that were cramped and leaked.

Catherine Zeaole Nigninon was one of the residents I met in the kitchen area. She had fled to Toe Town from Toulepleu two weeks earlier with her seven children, but was frustrated by the meagre food rations, which she said could not feed her family.

Richard Gueye and family, Toulépleu

Richard stayed in a tent with 20 other family members, all of whom had fled Toulepleu 3-4 weeks earlier. He made five main complaints about the conditions in the camp: cramped tents which leaked in the rain, unclean latrines, a lack of a school, few medicines and, most forcefully, poor and insufficient food. The latter was a common complaint amongst refugees, who unaccustomed to bulgar wheat, described by one as like “chicken feed”.

Mariame Soumaru, shopkeeper, Toulepleu

Mariame had come to Toe Town from Toulepleu with her two children. She had been separated from her husband, who she believed to be in the bush trying to cross the border, taking an indirect route to avoid soldiers. She has been unable to contact him, and her most immediate concern was to have the Red Cross help her contact her husband.

Her other key concern was the food, which like others she described as poor and insufficient. She said if the war finished, she would return to Cote d’Ivoire as soon as the fighting stops.

Colette Nigninon, Alice Nigninon, Yvonne Klegninon, Toulépleu

"We fled and left everything. We don’t even have any other clothes, or shoes, or soap to wash ourselves… We would like you to send a doctor to look after the people here”.

Colette, Alice and Yvonne had fled with their five children three weeks earlier. They were concerned about the health of their children. They said the food was no good for them, and made their stomachs run.

To see more photographs, see the slideshow below.

A Tale of Two No-Fly Zones

2011-03-14T15:19:00.000Z

Two civil wars; two possible no-fly zones. From Tripoli to Abidjan, the limits and meaning of humanitarian interventionism are being tested from the skies.

In Libya one is being called for – by the rebels, the UK, France, and now the Arab League - in order to protect civilians from a mad leader. In Cote d’Ivoire, one is being ordered by a mad leader to strengthen his poisonous grasp on power; a leader who at the weekend used helicopters and mortars in random attacks on civilians in the capital city.

Calls for a no-fly zone in Libya are all over the news, presented by some sides like the obvious test of how much the west cares about the people of Libya, and by others as an obvious indication of how much the west wants to grab its assets.

Now supported by the UK, France, rebels in Libya, and the Arab League, a no-fly zone is advocated to protect Libyans from aerial slaughter and provide a means of expressing solidarity in ways more meaningful to those in Benghazi than speeches and twitter updates. Its detractors warn it could poison the notion of a home-grown Libyan rebellion by association with the West, and open the doors to interventions that are more about controlling resources than promoting liberty.

In Cote d’Ivoire the situation is different, and you are less likely to have heard of it. Laurent Gbagbo, the loser of November’s elections who has refused to cede power (see previous post), has ordered a ban on all UN and French flights in the country. Squeezed financially and politically, he is getting increasingly desperate and is looking for new ways to squeeze his opponent too. With his rival, Alassane Outtara, currently out of the country as part of mediation talks that Gbagbo refused to attend, and reliant on UN air travel to return to his base at the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, he has struck on a novel way to try and shift the balance.

It may end up being an empty threat if faced down - the Cote d’Ivoire air force or air defences are not exactly world-renowned – but the acceptance of any restrictions could be a political and humanitarian nightmare. As well for transporting the elected Head of State, the UN is reliant on flights to ship in both humanitarian equipment and cash – almost unobtainable in the country now.

The two different situations bring up two main questions for me - how we can intervene, and when we choose to do so.

The first relates to the international community’s ‘tools’ to manage crises, enforce its will and support democracy and human rights without military action. The experiences in North and West Africa suggest both that these tools are growing, and that they remain too limited. The freezing of assets, the economic embargoes, the political isolation and the denial of credit has steadily weakened and isolated Gbagbo, but not yet toppled him. Ten years ago he would not have faced these constraints. Yet he clings on for now a least, still able to pay his army for a little longer, and every step closer to the money running out could bring a dangerous throw of the dice.

Ultimately, if he or Gaddafi decided they wanted to unleash hell in their countries, and bring all around down with them, they probably could. They sort of are already. So while we wait for embargoes and the like to take effect, how do we stop the violence now?

It may be that we can’t. It may be that the desire to ‘do something’ to mask our sense of impotence – or our guilt at having armed these guys in the first place – is dangerous. But it may also be that we can, and won’t. Which is the second question being raised in Tripoli and Abidjan – where are the limits of our humanitarian interventionism after the disasters of Iraq? Big question for a little blog, and having read the weekend’s comment pieces on this, my only main contribution to the debate is to make an appeal to avoid decisions based on dogma, to avoid being selective about our history.

There are massive risks with intervention in any circumstances, even more so in oil-rich countries presenting opportunities to blur humanitarianism with the pursuit strategic interests. And there are terrible examples of interventions that carried its name. Humanitarianism was never more than an excuse in Iraq, but it did show the limits of power and the dangers of self-interest. Somalia was more well meaning, but disastrously implemented.

But remember too when the world failed to act – Bosnia and Rwanda being the obvious pair – and other times when it did, and should be applauded. The British intervention in Sierra Leone is the prime example for me. No real strategic or economic reason to get involved, yet only armed intervention was able to put an end to a civil war that devastated the country, claimed the lives of 75,000 people and the limbs of 20,000 more. Few citizens of Freetown could fail to welcome the troops that prevented the rebels at the city limits from fulfilling ‘Operation No Living Thing’. The country found peace, is recovering, and it is a wonderful thing.

Kosovans might say the same, as might Srebrenicans if they could. That, of course, doesn’t mean it would work for Libyans or Ivorians, but they are reminders that Iraq should never be our only reference point, fear of being opening the door to neocons never the deciding factor. History has too many lessons to be a prisoner of any one story.

Ask instead about the nuts and bolts of what would really work, who is actually calling for it, what the alternatives are, and whether the self-interest of those intervening can be limited or removed. I’d hope we’d be a little bolder, though a little smarter too.

Crisis in West Africa - is anybody watching?

2011-03-03T21:40:00.014Z

Getting into the newspapers is not quite as easy as it used to be. 150,000 refugees (if not many more), military clashes, a regionally crucial economy in meltdown, a country with TWO Presidents (and not in the cutesy Green Party way), rising chocolate prices. This used to be news. What now? Seems like nothing short of an era-changing revolution, a mad man holding an umbrella, or a Prime Ministerial feline rat-catcher will do these days.

Two months ago I wrote about the political crisis in Cote d’Ivoire (aka Ivory Coast), following contested elections in which Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede to defeat to Alassane Outtara, prompting two signing-in ceremonies, two parallel governments, two opposing armed forces. Since then significant inter-communal violence, killings, sexual assaults and fear of a renewed civil war led to a steady stream of refugees heading to Liberia for refuge and protection.

Two months on the fear of civil war has started to become a reality; the low-violence, full on military clashes; the steady stream of refugees, a torrent. From an average of 100 refugees arriving in Liberia every day just a week ago, the daily rate increased to 10,000 as the first clashes broke out. 80,000 seek assistance in Liberia, while 70,000 – if not many more – do the same inside Cote d’Ivoire itself.

There are plenty of interesting political angles to what is happening in Cote d’Ivoire – the challenges of democracy in divided countries where leaders may not respect the rules of the game, the emergence of new financial and economic tools of intervention, the assertiveness of West African governments in the crisis versus ambiguity elsewhere – but those can keep for another day.

What bothers me right now is not just the prospects for peace but also the readiness of the international community to look after those fleeing conflict. And I don’t think they’re all that ready. A funding appeal has received only 20% of what has been asked for – and even the full amount will be too small for the new reality.

Camps are being prepared and equipment flown in - Oxfam is airlifting water, sanitation and hygiene kits in for 70,000 people and helping to set up nine camps. But without greater planning, urgency and ultimately more cash, we could all be caught desperately short by an upsurge in violence or a full economic collapse. Hundreds of thousands of largely women and children left without adequate care and protection.

It’s not an unlikely scenario. Attempts at political mediation in Cote d’Ivoire have largely got nowhere, cash has run out, banks have closed, 500,000 people have lost their jobs, and Gbagbo only has enough money to pay his army for another few weeks – so things may be pushed to the brink. Ominously I’m just reading now that he has shut off water and electricity to the north of the country (where his opponent has strongest support) – not something you would do if you were thinking of being a unifier.

Bringing some glamour
to a crisis near you

So why is this getting so little attention? There are a few stories in the press, of course. And Angelina Jolie did make a heart-rending appeal too. But there’s no sense of urgency, few donors lining up to help, a scant number of journalists ringing the alarm. Attention is, of course, elsewhere. That’s not to try and set one crisis against another – what is going on in Libya is enormous and horrifying, what is going on across the Middle-East could be of era-defining proportions – but it would be nice if we could walk and chew gum at the same time. These are people of equal value after all.

In geopolitical terms Cote d’Ivoire is of course not Egypt, Liberia is not Libya (though unfortunately for profile-raising it does sound like a slurred version). They are neither bulwarks against extremism, nor gatekeepers of trade routes or oil installations, nor among the biggest customers of our arms trade. But every man, woman and child in the country is as important.

The spins off are huge too. Cote d’Ivoire has been the economic motor of West Africa for decades, but is now responsible for spiralling prices and refugee flows. The economy of the whole region is at stake; many countries rely on the Port of Abidjan for vital imports, all rely on its trade. And spare a thought for Liberia too. A country which once exported violence throughout the region from its own diamond-driven conflict is now forced to import it, just as it tries to pick itself up and ready itself for a crucial second post-war election.

For me, this is all unchartered territory too. Trying to do advocacy work in a humanitarian environment is a different ball game – by the time you have written a lobby note, all the information is obsolete; by the time you’ve agreed one strategy, it’s redundant; by the time you’ve worked out what the hell is going on, it’s changed. Part of my job is supposed to be to help get the message out, help push those with power to act, help convince those with money to give. So far, not going so well. Hoping for a change of fortunes soon… Another reason for Gaddafi to go quietly please?

In praise of local football and the former Geordie Nation

2011-02-27T23:54:00.007Z

Not good, not glamourous

The reasons I love football have very little to do with do with soul-destroying antics of Mike Ashley or the work-experience-kid-shooting Ashley Cole (funny as that was). It’s more to do with passion you can muster for 11 people who aren’t really all that good, aren't really all that glamourous.

Which is why I have a real soft spot for the African Nations Championship (CHAN), which just finished on Friday with a 3-0 victory for revolutionary Tunisia over a-bit-too-revolutionary Angola; a final I was lucky enough to watch with a couple of hundred other people when stuck in a bus station in Ghana for three hours.

What’s so special? It’s a tournament exclusively for the players who play in Africa’s local leagues - no Drogba or Tiote to lead the charge of Cote d’Ivoire’s Les Elephants, no Essien or Gyan to make sparkle Ghana’s Black Stars, no El Hadj-Diouf to spread his filth and bile for Senegal’s Lions Locaux.

It might sound like a second-rate tournament for those not qute good enough to make it to Europe – an African Intertoto Cup maybe - which is not totally inaccurate. But it’s popular, passionate and probably important. In a continent where all the best things are extracted cheaply to Europe – whether oil, minerals or footballers – it can never be a bad thing to celebrate those who stay at home.

And the quality can actually be decent too. DRC’s Tout Puissant Mazembe made it to the final of this season’s FIFA World Club Cup, thanks in part to the largesse of their mineral-baron owner, Moise Katumbi, managing to keep hold of local talent.

Tunisia's revolutionaries

The interest in Tunisia’s or TP Mazembe’s achievements are refreshing because local hero stories are so rare now in England – no more Wimbledon getting promoted four-times in a row then winning the FA Cup. The punishment for that these days is being made to move to Milton Keynes.

So it made me think if there are any ‘alternative tournaments’ that could be organised in England or Europe that might help us reconnect to some of the reasons we loved football in the first place. Something to take us back to a time before Ashley, Glazer, Hicks et al ripped out football's soul and packaged it as an add-on to cheap tracksuit bottoms and snazzy white trainers.

A tournament of national amateurs drawn from the lower leagues might be one option, albeit uninspiring. More interesting maybe would be a randomised selection of European pub teams playing each other for the honour of greatest obese footballers on a hangover. Pie-induced food poisoning would of course be obligatory, as would sidelines populated by threatening pitbulls and terrifying WAGs. Or is this sounding too much like the Scottish Premier League?

Given the typical English player's phobia to foreign culture beyond roasting sessions in the Canary Islands (how many English players abroad can you name?), the exact equivalent of the CHAN - where countries could only play those from their national leagues - would be a big advantage to us. But ultimately we wouldn't win; there'll still be plenty of amateur Brazilians kicking around a beach ball on Ipanema Beach, or Peruvian llama-herders kicking around a pigs bladder, who could run rings round Gareth Barry and Joleen Lescott.

The one that appeals to me most is a tournament where players have to represent their home town or region. I’ve always been impressed by Atletico Bilbao’s strident (and probably illegal) commitment to playing only Basque players – I remember the passion when they played at St James Park in 1994 – and I was always a sucker for Sir John Hall’s dream/delusion of 11 Geordies playing at St James Park.

Obviously I’ll never begrudge Asprilla for scoring a hat-trick against Barcelona, or Tiote for his last-minute equaliser against Arsenal, but supporting a football club is often largely about local pride and identity, so Shearer’s testimonial could have been genuinely emotional without Ant and Dec's histrionics, and for brief moments I sometimes forgot that I hated every arrogant lassie-bashing bone in Andy Carroll’s body. Our Nigerian-Geordie Shola Ameobi is just a local catastrophe, much more loveable than a southern one.

In the 90s, the Geordie nation could have been world beaters in such a tournament. Just off the top of my head, imagine Quasimodo Beardsley and a young Alan Shearer up front, Chrissy Waddle and (cough) Steve Stone on the wings, Bryan Robson and Gazza in the middle (complete with chicken and fishing rods), Steve Bruce, Steve Howey, Steve Watson, and Robbie Elliot shoring up the back. Honourary Geordie Pavel Srnicek would be needed between the posts, and it would all be beautifully managed by Sir Bobby of course.

Such a tournament today doesnt bear thinking about. A five-a-side team of three below-average strikers (Carroll, Ameobi, Chopra), one decent sub (Michael Carrick) and a remarkably thick centre-back (Steven Taylor) is all we could manage. We’d be blown out of the water by West Ham’s graduates, literally so by Ashley Cole and Arsenal’s.

So let’s scrap that idea, and do the pub football one instead. That way I might get a call-up, you’ll get a laugh and Ashley Cole wont get a pay-day. In the meantime, congratulations Tunisia for a revolution and a footballing championship in 1 month – one of the best motivations I can see for having a crack at David Cameron back home.

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya... Senegal?

2011-02-23T22:12:00.005Z

It’s a question on people’s lips, consuming many a column inch here. Could the dramatic scenes witnessed in Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli be played out in Dakar, Abidjan or Harare? Could the revolutions engulfing countries north of the Sahara spread their way south ?

No consumer of African radio, TV or newspaper has been spared the awe-inspiring stories from their neighbours to the north. They have not missed the desperate symbolism of Mohamed Boazizi's self-immolation, nor the brave, patient and peaceful resistors of Tahrir Square, nor the gallantry of Libyan soldiers refusing to fire on their brothers and sisters at pain of mass execution.

So could it happen here – in Senegal or beyond? You might find reason to think so. Many of the factors attributed to the revolutions in the Arab world are shared in many countries across the continent. Young urban populations lacking jobs or prospects, elites sifting off the nations’ wealth, arbitrary power exercised without accountability, democratic processes weak, manipulated or bypassed.

But looking around, all remains quiet and my straw (and hugely unrepresentative) poll is sceptical that it would, or could, kick off in quite the same way. A stolen election and two months of political stalemate in Cote d’Ivoire sees serious, ongoing and oft-ignored violence, but talk of a popular revolution to unseat Laurent Gbagbo “à l’egyptienne” remains just that. In other contexts where autocrats have misruled and plundered – think Zimbabwe or Congo – uprisings have either been easily suppressed or accommodations made, with the plundering continuing anew.

It’s not easy to explain – just as it’s not clear why the Greeks revolted yet the Irish stayed passive following the financial crash, as outlined in this astounding article – and the answers I’ve been hearing from people here feel a little unsatisfactory. I keep hearing or reading the view, from Africans themselves, that ‘black Africans’ (ie. Sub-Saharan Africa) are too passive, too deferential, to challenge those in power; that they are too pragmatic, too unprepared to throw their own bodies on the line for a cause beyond their own interest.

I don’t think so. To make any generalisations about ‘Africans’ is problematic, to generalise across scores of countries lazy, to assign continent-wide character traits to explain responses to political systems patronising – as if only citizens of richer countries responded to incentives and power structures.

Did people not say the same about Arab populations, who had endured – tolerated? - decades of misrule, until just 2 months ago? And was it not Africans who sacrificed their own lives and livelihoods for decades as part of liberation battles against colonial oppression and apartheid?

To me, generalising along these lines obviously won’t work; probably generalising on any lines won’t work. But at the same time there may be something – sufficiently common histories, political systems, levels of economic development between some groups of countries – that might provide some food for thought, if nothing else. I hope so, because otherwise what follows is crap.

So here are a couple of thoughts – more initial reactions and pub opinions than anything more substantial or researched – that stick out for me. I’d be interested in what you think…

Sub-Saharan African countries that could revolt but haven't are significantly poorer than the North African ones that have. Senegal’s GDP per capita is about half that of Egypt’s. Whilst in some respects this should lead to greater grievance, it lessens it in others. There are young, jobless, disenfranchised graduate populations in Senegal and elsewhere, but probably not on the same scale. There is of course great inequality, but perhaps in many cases it is less stark. There are the aspirant, frustrated populations who know about and strive for the opportunities of the outside world - the ones who led these revolts - but there are also more people simply struggling first and foremost for the basics of food and clean water.

Technology is still playing catch up. Yes, mobile phones are everywhere, and internet access is expanding at a startling rate, but an important digital divide remains. Senegal’s connectivity is less than a third the rate of Egypt’s, so the online organising and community building that appeared to facilitate these movements may have some way to go.

Younger nations, less united. I think there may be some truth somewhere in the clams people make that many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have a weaker sense of nation than you might see in Egypt or elsewhere, or at least perhaps a weaker sense of national unity. Africa does not lack conflict, but the people turning on each other seems to be more common than the people turning against the elite. It is not like no one ever voted for Laurent Gbagbo or Robert Mugabe, not like they have no support in their areas and fiefdoms - perhaps testament to the continued strength in many countries of patronage systems and identity politics. (Interestingly, the struggles against apartheid South Africa may be an exception to this, but equally we might read it as a fight against colonialism, a fight against oppression by perceived outsiders, rather than one seen as oppression from within).

The West doesn’t often notice, doesn’t often care. With rare exceptions (Zimbabwe in the British media for example), the odd bit of repression and massacre doesn’t often make it to Western TV until it is becomes a full-blown genocide. ‘Stand-off in Ivory Coast Threatens to Boil Over into Full-Scale News Blurb’ is how The Onion brilliantly captured it. Just keep an eye out on how often you read about the current crisis in Cote d’Ivoire, or the 13-year conflict in Democratic of Congo that has claimed the lives of over five million people. I follow African news and until recently I had never heard of 100 Cameroonian protestors being shot in 2008 by government troops.

This matters. International exposure provides an important sense of security and solidarity for protestors, and can apply a brake on the wildest excesses (Gaddafi excepted) of regimes under pressure. When we don’t watch, we don’t cry foul.

Luckily there are often (imperfect) alternatives to storming the Bastille. Protestors in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya had no other option; there was no chance of a peaceful handover from regimes grown comfortable and arrogant by decades in power. Yet democracy of some sort exists in most countries in the continent, and is part of a growing trend. They are, of course, often a source of conflict and instability, are frequently deeply imperfect, occasionally farcical, but in a number of important cases do at least allow another way of changing government and influencing power. Failing that, there is always the tried and trusted coup d’état.

Either way it is telling that those being currently thrown out of office are in general some of the world’s longest serving regimes – Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ben Ali have had over 95 years in the hot seat, and there aren’t many other African leaders who can match that.

These are some of my guesses, no doubt wild generalisations and wide of the mark. Importantly though, I think many of them will change. Demographics and economics is rapidly creating those young, alienated, educated populations able to lead revolts, and communications are expanding even faster. Nations are getting stronger, and there may be no more unifying thing than overthrowing a hated leader. But perhaps most of all there is a heroic example to the north – the omnipotent have become powerless; the powerless, omnipotent. Fear, intimidation and deference no longer need reign, the scales can fall from people’s eyes.

Revolution in Senegal? I doubt it, and in fact very much hope not. There are serious problems here of governance, corruption, economic stagnation, weakening democratic processes, but no large-scale abuse, and people can – and do – rightly protest and find avenues to express their discontent. That may not be enough right now, the space to do so may be smaller than it should be, the political alternatives weaker than one would hope for, but ultimately there remain non-violent ways of changing government, ways of grabbing back power, ways of strengthening a democracy.

The revolutions we have seen, and continue to watch with awe, are inspirational and could lead to a transformation for people across North Africa and the Middle East. But they are not – in my humble, outsider and irrelevant opinion - for everywhere. Ultimately we should want democratic processes to work in a way that revolutions will neither be necessary nor desirable, and where there exists something to build on, something to strengthen, something to save – like I think there is in Senegal - then save it we should. But a little more of the sprit of Tahrir Square would be no bad thing.

World Social Forum: Book the rooms, sweep away capitalism

2011-02-15T23:18:00.005Z

Another day, another global event in Dakar. Not much more than one month after Wyclef, Akon and co. turned the city into one massive mosh pit for the FESMAN festival, 70,000 activists from across the globe turned it into a massive kettle-free protest zone.

The occasion - The World Social Forum: a biannual gathering of campaigners and activists from the ‘Global Justice Movement’ to meet, debate and organise around alternative ways of running the world that don’t involve mass slaughter, exploitation or environmental catastrophe.

Despite being involved in campaigns for years, this was my first forum - no other has been held so conveniently 1km away. And like most people’s first time, I approached it with a sense of wonder, dread and a reasonable amount of drinking.

The start was certainly impressive (the Forum, not my first time) – I’m really not sure if the citizens of Dakar have ever seen anything like the 70,000 people from scores of countries marching through its streets dancing, singing and drumming in support of hundreds of campaigns and causes.

I hate the word ‘inspiring’ – so overused for such menial things as pet food bowls – but I was genuinely inspired. From Congolese citizens wrapped in their flag decrying the plunder of their country’s minerals, to Senegalese communities demanding justice for the pollution that killed their fishing stocks, you felt for a few hours like the campaigning movement was alive.

Obviously some classic demo slogans too: “Un nouveau monde de la peche est possible” (‘Another fishing world is possible’) emblazoned on a huge fishing boat-shaped hat, and “Balayons le capitalisme” (‘Lets sweep away capitalism’) stuck neatly on a broom.

But did it live up to all the hype (the Forum, not my first time)? The Forum gets its fair share of criticism for being a talking shop of the die-hards and converted, for having no obvious impact, for being a place for self-expression rather than serious action. See this blog post from a friend and colleague as one moderate and not unreasonable example.

Sometimes the organisers don’t make it easy on themselves. Sadly, just like the snigger you couldn’t hold in when the French football team – ‘of course the French!’ – went on strike in the World Cup, you couldn’t help cringe when a group often described (almost entirely wrongly, certainly so in this instance) as anarchists screwed up the organisation so badly.

Mass room cancellations and inexplicable clashes with students innocently sitting their exams meant thousands of people walking around desperately looking for a revolution, having seen it quashed not by the forces of darkness, but by poor administration and the failings of an Excel Spreadsheet

Another world will not be possible like this, and you can bet your bottom rouble that the forces of capital would have booked the Novotel as back-up. Credit where credit is due though, no one knows how to self-organise in adversity like wrongly-proclaimed anarchists.

But forget about the problems of organisation – unfair to smear a movement with the errors of a few – there are truths in the criticisms, but mostly only if you take the forum to be something we shouldn’t pretend it is. I think if I'm honest I misunderstood what it was trying to be, have been too quick with the cynical jokes, and I'm sure others have too.

It isn’t – or shouldn’t be – a place trying directly to challenge or speak to those in power. Those in power aren’t there, aren’t listening.

It isn’t – and shouldn't (doesn’t) claim to be – representative of the world’s people. It’s a meeting of activists trying to do what they do better, together.

It isn’t – or shouldn’t be – a place to all get together and create a joint charter for the world. It would be unrepresentative, illegitimate, impossible. You’d get something you might instinctively agree with, without being totally sure what exactly it all meant. Like the one produced. Or maybe like the idea anti-capitalism itself.

The two things I think the World Social Forum can do, and can do brilliantly, are this. First it can serve as one of the few global meeting points where campaigners share ideas, organise, and build networks that ultimately can deliver better once the fun and games of the forum are over. If Brazilian social movements can inspire Tanzanian ones, and vice versa, brilliant. If global movements can be built to combat the avoidance of tax or the growing threat of land-grabbing – as successfully happened here – fantastic. If people just want to get together and celebrate their campaigns, share their experiences and get a warm glow about what they do and what they believe in, also great. The internet is no substitute for any of this.

Secondly, it can, I believe, help spark change in the host country, if done right. One of the sights that pleased me most was watching initially wary local students (the ones whose exams we disrupted) bit by bit involve themselves in the meetings and the debates, eventually taking full part and organising protests of their own. Talking to a number throughout the week, as well as other Senegalese campaigners – be they fighting local pollution or jobs lost to political interference - this really meant something to them. If it helps create a more active and demanding population not prepared to put up with corruption or exclusion, it will mean something to others too.

I originally wrote this to give my ‘judgement’ on the forum, but ultimately I worked out it is not for me to judge – it’s the tens of thousands of impressive people (plus a few loons) who came having campaigned and fought for their causes on a daily basis in a much more real way than I. If they find value they will come back, if they don’t they wont. The Forum will live or die by its success in fulfilling the needs of those who it seeks to serve - the wonder of a free market.

But for me, I would go again, even if it was more than a whole kilometre away. And I’d put more in. I wouldn’t expect it to change the world there and then, but I would expect to be driven to try a wee bit harder when I got back home.

For Guardian coverage of the World Social Forum, including an audio slideshow, click here.

Morals for sale: a taxing dilemma

2011-01-27T00:16:00.001Z

Bono: rock star, tax dodger, leprechaun

Everyone hates a tax exile. Until you get the chance to become one.

Everyone thinks the rich should pay more tax than the poor. Until you work out how much that costs.

Everyone thinks avoiding tax should be hard. Until you find out how.

And then the moral compass starts to spin.

This is my dilemma. As an expatriate staff working for an NGO I am entitled, like a diplomat, to not pay a number of taxes, such as import duty and VAT on many high-value items.

Being exempt from this tax would save me about £3-4000 on buying a new car, something I’m trying to do right now. It would also get me awesome diplomatic licence plates.

But it would also deprive the Government of Senegal of £3-4000 that they could spend on medical supplies, teachers’ salaries, or just fixing the sodding electricity system. £3-4000 that any Senegalese person would have to pay.

And it would, apparently, turn me into something people hate even more: a massive hypocrite.

I’ve spent more than my fair share of time cursing the uncanny ability of the world’s wealthy to avoid tax. More than my fair share of time getting shirty about companies who get out of paying tax in poor countries with the constant threat of moving to the next one down the road.

It’s a big deal in Britain - £25 billion is lost every year through tax avoidance by companies and individuals – hardly small change when budgets from everything from social care to housing are being slashed.

And it’s a huge deal in the developing world too. Hundreds of billions of pounds (estimates seem to vary from about $250bn to $800bn, depending on what is counted) are lost from the poorest countries every year, due to a range of tax avoidance measures undertaken by companies and individuals, often facilitated by tax havens.

That's many more times than they receive in aid, and could provide the sort of sustainable, reliable hard cash that would help states build public services that could serve their poor; the sort of money noone could ever describe as charity.

I'd clearly I’d be a sell-out if I chose not to pay the tax. But a sell-out with a nice car and a tidy sum in the glove compartment.

So I’ve been searching for good arguments to help smoothe the way. There’s little a bit of mental and moral agility can’t handle. Worked for my fairly meaty version of vegetarianism. So far I’ve come up with:

No Taxation Without Representation: What’s more compelling than the war cry of American Independence? I cant vote here, so why should I pay?

No Taxation With So Much Corruption: Surely the money will just end up in the pockets of dodgy politicians and greedy officials? Surely better to avoid the tax and make a (small, obviously) donation to charity?

Not My Services, Not My Bill: I won’t be using public schools or hospitals here, and won’t be allowed to claim the dole, so why should I contribute?

Not Me Guv: Tax is something other people should pay, just like binge drinking is something other people should stop.

Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers: nerr nerr ne-nerr nerr.

All crap really. I cant vote here, but I do rely on the roads, the police and the provision of public sanitation. And I benefit from the fact that others around me have had education too. Someone's got to pay.

Yes, there is corruption, but taxes do still fund schools, do build roads. No country has managed any other way. And ultimately if you think that those who society has served well should chip in a bit more than those it hasn’t, being a Brit in Senegal is not great grounds for exemption.

At the end of the day I cant actually afford a new car anyway. I’ll get some beaten up second hand thing, so the savings (and thus the dilemma) won’t be quite so great. And unless you can provide some better reasons (please do try) I’ll pay the tax. Or at least I’ll tell you I did.

But, as always, the reason for doing so will be mainly self-serving – maintaining the ability to have a good old pious rant. Worthwhile for anyone really, but when it comes to Bono - himself having moved his band's assets to Holland to become 'tax-efficient' - priceless.

http://www.makebonopaytax.com/

http://taxjustice.net

Lost in translation: love, syphilis and a squirrel's penis

2011-01-18T22:31:00.007Z

A talking, crazy, frog

According to someone clever (Wittgenstein) “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. After three months in a francophone country, armed with Mrs Ritson’s best efforts at education, I get his point.

It’s not just a question of translation, it changes who you are. In French I’m definitely more shy, more withdrawn, a little more ‘village idiot’ (‘l’idiot du village’). But at the same time all sorts of gushy crap seems possible, as if a faux-Inspector Clouseau accent prevents your English inner voice – conditioned by years of Great British Values - ruthlessly censoring your more effeminate or expressive moments.

It’s all a bit of a minefield, with some big mistakes to be made. It is surprisingly easy to ask if it is ok to f**k someone (‘baiser’) when you mean a kiss (‘un baiser’). Remarkably simple to comment on someone’s beautiful arse (‘beau cul’) when you merely want to say ‘very much’ (‘beaucoup’). And it seems that a squirrel's tightly held acorn is not just an acorn, it is a penis (‘gland’). So I found out.

In affairs of the heart too, I imagine. How do you avoid the serious clanger of telling a girl you love them when what you really mean is you ‘kind of like them, sort of, but don’t get too carried away’ (same verb, ‘aimer’)? The same sort of dilemma you might have finding the sufficiently underwhelming Valentine’s card each year.

I’m told you might say ‘tu me plais’ (literally ‘you please me’), which sounds very landlord-servant girl to me. But not in a bad way, obviously.

Linguistic wrangling should have at least been compensated by some extra much-needed notches on the sex-appeal front. The high hopes I had when my former French teacher said I spoke French like an Italian (one for the ladies), are being mercilessly suppressed as person after person asks me if I’m German (one for the gentlemen).

But there are phrases I love. I still can’t get over saying telling someone you are ‘enchanted' to meet them (‘enchanté’), no matter who the hell they are, and saying ‘I pray to you’ (‘je vous en prie’) instead of ‘you're welcome’.

I’m intrigued too by the deep philosophical difference (or not) that might (or might not) be behind how our garlicy cousins say ‘I miss you’ (‘tu me manques’). In French it is the other person who is missing from you, rather than you who are missing them. I might be wrong, but it seems something like ‘you were a part of me, and now you are missing from me’, which seems sort of sweet. Or not.

But maybe what tickles me most are not the idioms – nothing can beat the krio ones I came across in Sierra Leone (scroll to end of post) – but is how the French and English use language to do each other down. There are a couple of ok things (that I think were maybe originally insults) – a ‘French kiss’ is also ‘un baiser anglais’ (allegedly), and a ‘French letter’ (old phrase for condom) is ‘une capote anglaise’ (‘an english hood/coat’) – but largely we use each other as terms of abuse.

The ‘French disease’ is none other than syphilis; while ‘la maladie anglaise’ is suicide (‘la maladie italienne’ is syphilis). Leaving without permission used to be ‘taking French leave’ in English, while the phrase ‘filer à l’anglais’ is still used today to mean the same thing across the channel.

An englishman will ‘excuse his french’ after swearing, but whilst there is no direct froggy riposte for this one, I think we’ve been outdone elsewhere. The French phrase for a lady’s time of the month? ‘Les anglais ont débarqués’ (‘the English have landed’). Enchanté indeed...

Cote d'Ivoire on the edge (and potential chocolate crisis)

2011-01-09T16:08:00.002Z

Laurent Gbagbo, clinging to the flag

Kidnappings in Niger, bombs in Nigeria and Mali, riots in Tunisia and Algeria, soldiers executed by separatists in Senegal, a possible civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, and a developing refugee crisis in Liberia. Happy New Year one and all!

The end of 2010 in West Africa was dominated by ‘one success, one failure’, as the editorial in Jeune Afrique put it, in key elections in the region – the relatively peaceful (in the end) transition to democracy after 50 years of dictatorship in Guinea, and the continued mess in Cote d’Ivoire.

For positive stories from 2010, see Marwane Ben Yahmed outlining (in French) a number of countries joining the fold of veritable African democracies and the successful hosting of the World Cup on African soil. Note also the continued economic growth of the continent, albeit slowed by global recession (the 'oik' Osbourne would be jealous).

For potential flashpoints (and potential successes) in 2011 see elections in Liberia, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Chad, DRC, Gambia and Gabon, the growing threat from Al Qaeda in Maghreb, and any fallout (pray not) from the Sudan referendum starting today.

But most of all keep your eyes on Cote d’Ivoire, a potential political, economic and humanitarian catastrophe for the region, and a potential major setback in building trust in democratic processes as a way of resolving conflict in Africa.

The country teeters on the edge, a grim soap opera played out by the region’s political celebrities, on a seemingly never-ending cliffhanger ending.

Following November’s disputed election results Alassane Outtara has been recognised as the winner by the country's Elecion Commission, but Laurent Gbagbo claims the support of the Constitutional Council, citing voting irregularities in the north. Both men have sworn themselves in, both refuse to compromise.

Outtara has been recognised as the rightful President by all but a few in the international community (ie. Angola, Lebanon, Israel) and has been given access to the funds of the regional and international financial institutions. But Gbagbo still controls most of the army – who are surrounding Outtara’s hotel - and there are reports that mercenaries and guns are being shipped in from Liberia and Guinea.

Following it personally and professionally is a see-saw. Chinks of lights in from different statements are later quashed or denied, small openings quickly closed. There are clearly deep and complex interests involved – as much as this is about 2 men, it is about 2 regimes and all the interests within.

And as this continues, violence and intimidation reigns – more than 200 people have been killed so far (including 14 in street violence just a few days ago), and hundreds abducted and tortured – while refugees flee the country.

22,000 are already in Liberia as NGOs and UN agencies scramble to provide food, shelter, water, sanitation and protection. The fear is that this will grow if the situation worsens – contingency plans are being made for 150,000 possible refugees across Cote d’Ivoire’s neighbours.

The potential for chaos outside of Cote d’Ivoire is massive. It is the economic powerhouse of the region, its ports are a lifeline to the landlocked Sahel countries, it hosts hundreds of thousands of workers from neighbouring countries (especially Burkina Faso) who could become vulnerable, and as producer of 40% of the world’s cocoa, your chocolate could get more expensive (yes, it’s that serious, spare a thought for Willy Wonka).

Gbagbo stepping down voluntary, being offered a plum post or a comfy exile seems like the least worst solution, but whether he will recognise this is as legitimate, or whether the interests in his camp (or his own) will allow him is a massive question. Every time they rebuff a peace mediator, every time they turn down a call from Obama, they dig a little deeper.

The alternatives are all relatively grim. A military intervention by West African states is openly being threatened, and called for by Outtara himself if all else fails (though he now favours a very targeted action against Gbagbo rather than an invasion). It could work, who knows, but the risks of it provoking huge bloodshed and renewed civil war in the country are enormous.

A negotiated power sharing solution – like in Kenya or Zimbabwe – might sound attractive for securing peace, but would be fragile, and would be a dangerous message to send on to the losers of all the elections to take place this year: don’t worry if you lose, threaten enough violence and you can stay on.

Predicting what will happen is a mug’s game, but my (optimistic) guess is that this will rumble on for weeks (months?) more with sporadic violence and a continuous see-sawing between hope and despair. But that eventually Gbagbo will realise that he cannot rule without access to funds and the acceptance of his international peers. And that the freezing of his circle’s international assets will make him reconsider, eventually. But it will be messy, and he will not exit entirely, but be given some role, somewhere, to save face and maintain peace.

I might be wrong, there is a very good chance it could get much, much worse.

But one chink of light to me is that in a very odd way there is a small, tortured sign of progress in this somewhere. 10 or 20 years ago Gbagbo would be President now. We would have shrugged our shoulders, as would his neighbouring states. No sanctions, no travel bans, no freezing of assets, no talk (no matter how useful or not) of military intervention. Leaders used to rig things with impunity. Now at least there is some reckoning, some limits, no matter how dangerous and partial they are.

Some good news in a future blog post I promise.

Shackled and screaming: The worst flight home

2010-12-31T02:08:00.007Z

Yarls Wood Detention Centre, UK

Have you ever seen someone deported? Any of the 5000+ people forcibly removed from Britain each year? If so, maybe you were also on yesterday's Air France 781 flight from Paris to Dakar .

You might have been woken from a pre-flight slumber by the screams of a man dragged into a seat three rows back, wailing in agony as three of La Police Nationale’s finest grappled him to his seat, sat on him and held his neck to restrain him.

You might have been more than a little concerned. In fact you would (I hope) have been outraged. You might have started thinking of Jimmy Mubenga, the Angolan man reportedly killed by British security guards in exactly this sort of situation.

If you were a kid you almost certainly would have been screaming too.

For a good 15 minutes you might have been proud and impressed by your fellow passengers for demonstrating in the aisles, for demanding the ill-treatment stopped, for failing to look away. You might have joined in a bit too.

You will, though, definitely have been annoyed at the American lady who tried to use it as a way to get upgraded over everyone else…

But eventually, once the shouting stopped, once all the police threats had been made, you might – like everyone else - have slumped back in your seat and looked out the window for the rest of the flight, slightly ashamed not to have done something more dramatic.

I don’t know anything about this man or how he found himself in this position. Perhaps he had done something terrible. Perhaps he was just guilty of being born in the wrong country, picked up for wanting to make a better life for himself and his family.

I also dont really know if the police overstepped any rules, and dont really know what those rules are. But the guy was definitely in real pain and distress, was masked for a lot of the flight (they promised me it was his choice), and given how still and silent he became I wouldnt have been surprised at all if they had drugged him (they denied it).

What I do know is that this was all deeply disturbing, for me at least, not just because how inhumane it was, but also because it crashed our plane’s cosy world.

This daily flight between Paris and Dakar essentially links the elites of Europe with the elites of West Africa. A plane full of people, like me - well educated, comparatively wealthy, with international lives - all choosing, and being allowed, to split their time across continents for work, school or family.

All crossing borders regularly to make a better life for ourselves. Easy when we’re of that class of people whose passports are stamped without fuss. The outward journey bears no risk of being washed up on a beach, the destination no risk of being sold into modern slavery, the return journey no risk of being forcibly made in shackles.

None of us fall prey to the rotten politics and faceless bureaucracies so common around Europe today. The sort of populist inhumanity that sees Sarkozy expel hundreds of Roma from France, lets Britain lock up children and their families for years - or provide just £5 a day in benefits - when they come to our shores for help, and drives odious politicians like Phil Woolas to run campaigns that drool over the wrecked lives of those from abroad.

There was a ghost at the feast today, reminding all of us on that flight of the privilege and inequality on which we ride, and showing us the reality of our hidden shame.

Happy New Year everyone. Except certain members of La Police Nationale and everyone who makes you do what you do. Allez vous faire enculer.

(If interested, have previously written a blog on migration for Progressonline).

Christmas in a third world country

2010-12-23T23:59:00.004Z

Spending Christmas in a ‘third world’ country is tough.

Crumbling infrastructure has made traversing the country near impossible, while crazed mobs ransack shops nationwide.

75% of the population is struck down with an apparently life-threatening illness, curable only by moaning.

And right-wing media barons, colluding with the state, are taking down elected politicians with wire taps and piano wire.

Hello Great Britain, I missed you. I love you. It is nice to be back.

Wikileaks on Africa: naughty Frenchmen and voluptuous Ukranians

2010-12-12T20:14:00.001Z

The two most reassuring things about the Wikileaks explosion are undoubtedly that the world is, in fact, exactly how we suspected, and that American diplomats have only as much insight as the average taxi driver in Dakar or Dagenham.

Watching the powers that be squirm is always fun, but this time not actually that enlightening. There's not much to add on the shock revelations that there is corruption in Afghanistan, Russia has high-level mafia links, the world is full of egotistical leaders, or that Prince Andrew is a bit of a nob.

And apart from the news that Colonel Gadaffi goes nowhere without a vuluptuous Ukranian nurse named Galina Kolotnitska, there hasn’t been a lot in the Western press from Africa, so here are a few bits and pieces:

The US and France are worried that democracy in Senegal is weakening and corruption is growing, because of the tight control by the President and his son. President Wade’s "black widow-like" qualities see him kill off (metaphorically) any young rival to his or his son’s power.
Acknowledgement of past "secret" deals between France and many of its former colonies, including guarantees of military intervention by French troops and preferential treatment to natural resources. This old-skool "France-Afrique" policy is meant to end under President Sarkozy, but its implementation has been criticised.
Reports that Pfizer effectively tried to blackmail the Nigerian Attourney-General to get him to drop a court-case where they were accused of conducting unapproved trials of a controverisal drug on children with meningitis.

There are plenty more too, including how many African countries prefer "no-strings", practical, Chinese aid over Western aid focused too much on "capacity-buidling"; fears that Laurent Gbagbo would only hold elections in Cote d’Ivoire if he was certain of winning; and worries that a number of West African States are increasingly host to drug-running and terrorist activity.

There is also split opinion on President Mugabe’s health, with the South African Minister of International Relations describing him as a "crazy old man" and an EU delegation reporting him to be "physically fit and mentally sharp".

Most of this is not massive news (apart from, in one sense, the Ukranian nurse), but as elsewhere seeing it actually written down is morbidly fascinating.

Slightly disappointing though, for I was hoping to read stories such as:

Clandestine mineral deal included secret agreement to nominate El-Hadji Diouf for Nobel Peace Prize.
Bono secretly used promise of free Oakleys and an end to ageing to lobby for a chieftancy in Equitorial Guinea.
Sarah Palin’s planned campaign tour of Africa, cancelled as opinion polls showed strong support to Obama, was in fact meant for Arizona.

For the real stuff Jeune Afrique has a good rundown (in French), and you can browse the database via the Guardian site too.

Africa on Pardew: "Wey nerr man"

2010-12-09T18:33:00.001Z

Awoken from my working slumber by the screams of children and the noise of rocks raining down on a corrugated-iron roof next door, this was no ordinary day in Dakar. Scores of kids were gathering outside the school by our office, shouting, remonstrating and calling on their young comrades to join them in arms.

A strike by students unable to pay fees or denied a good education – not an unfamiliar sight – was suspected. But it turns out that they were venting their rage over something far bigger: the replacement of Chris Hughton by Alan Pardew as manager of Newcastle United.

“It’s an outrage” said Pierre Sow, donning a second-hand Adidas 3-stripe shell suit. “I don’t care if a Kangol tracksuit costs just CFA 7000 Francs in Sports Direct, my days of subsidising Mike Ashley’s obesity are over.”

Elsewhere in West Africa, reactions have been similar. In Guinea, Cellou Dalein Diallo has stopped contesting the results of the Presidential election, sensing an alternative career path.

“I hope this move to respect the democratic process in my country puts me in the frame when Alan Pardew is sacked, a few months from now. A 5 year contract to work just 6 months is the sort of opportunity one must always be ready for. If Joe Kinnear can do it, why not me?”

In Cote d’Ivoire, opinion is predictably divided. President-elect Alassane Outtarra expressed disgust at the treatment of Chris Hughton, while the other President-elect Laurent Gbagbo claimed there is no reason why they can’t all be manager.

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal declared Newcastle a ‘Permanent State of Emergency’ and offered the services of his son, Karim, already a proven multi-tasker as Minister of State for International Cooperation, Regional Development, Air Transport, Energy and Infrastructure.

Outside the region, President Robert Mugabe today telephoned Mike Ashley to congratulate him on his outstanding human and financial management skills, while also enquiring about the availability of Joey Barton, “a man I can do business with”.

Elections in West Africa: it's the losers that matter

2010-12-08T18:30:00.004Z

Soldiers queue to vote in Cote d'Ivoire.
Credit: fxnonstop.com

As car tires burn in Abidjan, a capital city with two Presidents, the fate of West Africa’s previously most economically successful state blows in the wind, hostage not to fortune but ego.

20 million people in Cote d’Ivoire wait nervously. Some riot. Some die. A prolonged crisis will see the impacts will go much further – refugees in Liberia, Guinea or Mali will do nothing for stability in a volatile neighbourhood.

It is also an ominous sign for other elections taking place over the next two years. In 2011 Niger, Liberia, Nigeria, DRC, Chad, Benin and Central African Republic all take to the ballot box, while in 2012 Sierra Leone, Mali and Senegal all do the same.

A wave of people power is of course a positive sign that democracy is taking hold in Africa, an opportunity to instil good governance and direct resources towards the people denied a share of the continent’s wealth. But it also risks violence and division of the type we have seen over the last few weeks.

It is not democracy itself that is causing upheaval, but its form and practice. A good democracy with the right checks and balances provides ways of peacefully managing conflicts that exist already in society. A bad one fails, and by raising expectations risks making things worse in the short term.

Weak infrastructure and poor procedures give room for fraud, or suspicions of such. Poverty and illiteracy cultivate grounds for manipulation. Identity politics sow the seeds of division. Cynical politicians reap their harvest on the backs of the poor.

But there is no inevitability in this; much could be alleviated with the right investment, smart rules and sufficient support. Democracy does not have to be perfect to be superior to reliance on the Big Men and ‘benign’ dictatorships that inevitably crumble under the weight of ego, corruption and incompetence.

The missing ingredient will always be human will, respect for rules, and ultimately the ability to show dignity in defeat. Think Scotland in any World Cup.

“I lost, yet I love my country too much to fight on” should always rank higher than “I lost but I love myself too much to give in”, for in elections it is not the winners who decide the country’s fate, but the losers.

Fortunately we have a more happy story to tell than that told by ‘President’ Gbagbo and co. In Guinea, former Prime Minister Diallo has just conceded defeat in a tense and fiercely fought contest, ending 50 years of undemocratic rule and joining an increasing number of African governments changing hands at the ballot box rather than the battlefield.

Humility and genuine patriotism that puts nation before self will define the future of democracy in Africa. Presidents Diallo of Guinea, Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Koroma of Sierra Leone - you all deserve your victory parties. But stand up and take a bow Cellou Dalein Diallo, George Weah, Solomon Borewa and others like you – by losing well you have served your country far better than you think.

Chad: Like Oldham, but a bit worse.

2010-12-03T20:01:00.001Z

Bit by bit I’m getting to know my new stomping ground and the countries in which I’ll be working. There are those who are becoming economically successful, but in need of better governance (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal). Others that are rebuilding after decade-long conflicts (Sierra Leone, Liberia). And others still (Niger, Mali, Chad) who face chronic food crises driven in part by a volatile climate, and part by poor politics.

Amongst all that, God help us, there is Chad.

Charmingly tagged ‘The Dead Heart of Africa’ - which must rank alongside Oldham’s claim to be "Home of the Tubular Bandage" as an example of uninspired tourist marketing – it has a real image problem.

Consistently ranked among the top 10 poorest countries in the world, a few years ago Transparency International also judged it the most corrupt. According to The Onion "even the elephants take bribes" (I’m assured they don’t, by the way.)

It is home to a serious food crisis (1.6 million people were at extreme risk in 2010), and extreme drought has left Lake Chad less than 10% of its former size. It is ‘home’ to 430,000 refugees and internally displaced people, who have fled either internal conflict or violence in Darfur. Over 50% of the population are illiterate.

Temperatures reach 40 degrees, and transport connections are so poor that to fly to neighbouring Niger, you have to go via Paris. Oil drove economic growth to 6% last year, but with few benefits to ordinary Chadians - a landmark deal to dedicate 80% of oil revenue to development has been sidelined.

Yet you can find Beaujolais in the capital city, and the streetlamps have solar panels. So not all bad.

What is impressive though is learning about the work that Oxfam and others do there, and the brilliant and masochistic people who provide much needed aid in a country so full of challenge and so short of glamour. 100,000 people receiving water and sanitation and 70,000 receiving food supplies rely on them.

Enough to bring a frisson of guilt to someone based in balmy Dakar, where power cuts and a lack of beach time are my main complaints. But not quite enough to be booking that flight N’djamena just yet.

A few photos from Chad, during the Food Crisis. Credit: Oxfam

Salone: If yu tek tem kil anch, yu go si in gut

2010-11-25T00:56:00.004Z

Ever since some large women from Freetown decided, sometime in the mid-80s, to go on mission to a school a small town in Northumberland (Bedlington) and teach me and other small, confused white kids to dance, I've been meaning to pay a return visit and share my own local moves. Much has happened to Sierra Leone since that day, but having finally made my way there, I found a beautiful country moving onwards and upwards to better times.

Sierra Leone has had more than it’s share of problems. A decade of civil war left the country in tatters, tortured by the minerals that should have made it rich. 200,000 people died, a third of the country was displaced, infrastructure was destroyed and a generation of child soldiers were left with the scars of what was done to them, and what they did to others.

Sierra Leone was poor before the war, but worse after. According to the Human Development Index it is now the world’s 11th poorest country, with the 5th lowest life expectancy (48), and one of the highest child mortality rates (1 in 5 dont make it to their 5th birthday).

Perhaps most shockingly it has the very worst – by some distance – rate of mothers dying during pregnancy or childbirth. One mother will die for every 50 births, compared to about 1 in 25,000 in the UK, a terrible statistic for a life-giving act.

But - and it is a big beautiful but - the place has real potential, and some positive lessons. Perhaps all the more beautiful because it is not necessarily exceptional. A similar story can be told in many countries – globally we are making real progress in keeping more kids alive, as this great TED video by a mad Swede shows.

Slowly but surely, Sierra Leone is rebuilding and growing, poverty is reducing, and health care is improving. Importantly, confidence in the peace and stability of the country is high, bringing back a diaspora armed with foreign funds and educations to invest.

Politically, the country boasts a functioning (albeit imperfect) democracy that witnessed a peaceful handover of power at the last election, although corruption remains an issue. And there is tolerance – a country split between Muslims, Christians and others live in peace, inter-marry and seem impervious to any supposed clash of civilisations.

There are assets within too. It has real beauty – a lush, green, hilly country with white sandy beaches and clear warm seas that should be the envy of everyone from Barbados to Blackpool. And a population that is charming, enterprising and eager to prosper.

Rich in minerals, the wealth that drove a country to be torn apart by armed gangs with AK47s and machetes could, if well managed (and if foreign companies paid proper tax), provide the same wealth to drive the country’s escape from poverty.

Sierra Leone is a wonderful place to visit, and hopefully will become a wonderful place to live. There are few reasons why the country could not mine, trade and charm its way out of poverty, with the right politics and a bit of help. And if it did it would be a monument to how the destiny of a small, remote country has been driven, for good and for ill, by both the endeavours of its own people and the whims of forces far from its shore.

For while long-term progress will ultimately come from within the country - from the national reconciliation well underway, the enterprise of its existing and returning people, and the good use of its own beauty and resource – what outisders do matters too.

History makes this clear. The capital city, Freetown, was the originally populated by the off-cuts of a perverted global trade (freed slaves), at the behest by an imperial power (Britain) who shaped it’s destiny for over 150 years.

Its murderous conflict, although largely carried out by its own people, was partly provoked by violence spilling over from Charles Taylor’s Liberia, financed by ~~Naomi Campbell~~ the international diamond market, and fuelled by ~~merchants of death~~ the international arms trade.

Yet peace was eventually brought about by troops from a new regional superpower (Nigeria) and an old one (Britain), while its development since then has relied in part to international aid, including the introduction of free health care to all mums and children just last year.

Two key examples of why we should never let the idea of genuine humanitarian interventions disappear in the sands of Iraq, nor believe aid cannot make a difference.

Na wan-wod kin plit kola (‘unity can split a cola nut’), as you might (though I might have it wrong) say in Krio* - my second favourite language, after Geordie and just ahead of Welsh.

A stunning country with, I believe, a much better future, Sierra Leone will be the master of its own destiny. But the international community must stand by and stay the course, something it does not always do well.

New roads will not be paved overnight, nor clinics be opened in every village, but with persistence and patience the rewards will come. If yu tek tem kil anch, yu go si in gut (‘take your time to kill an ant and you will see it’s guts’) might be one way of expressing it.* Or it might mean something totally different.

*Other Krio proverbs I chose not to use, but like a lot include :

We pus node, arata tek charge (when the cat’s away, the rat takes charge)
If yu no want le monki tel toch yu, no go na monki dans (if you dont want a monkey’s tail to touch you, dont go to a monkey dance)
If yu wan wet fo san, siden nia faya (if you want to wait the sunrise, sit near the fire)
No luk usai yu fodon, luk usai yu bob yu fut (dont look where you fell, look where you tripped)
If wi bodi de doti, i go bigin pan wi fut (if the body gets dirty, it begins with the feet)
Posin no go tek to sked bele wuman, bikos i don orodi gi am in mak (you cant frighten a pregnant woman with a penis, because it already left its mark on her)

Rams to the slaughter/the TV studio

2010-11-17T19:07:00.003Z

Tensions have been rising amongst a certain section of Dakar’s population – it’s sheep - this week, in anticipation of the Feast of Tabaski (Eid Al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice), a key date in the Islamic religious calendar.

690,000 sheep will have been sacrificed today. The baaa-ing that has been steadily growing from behind walls and in market squares will fall eerily silent; the heroic scenes of ram-wrestling currently taking place on every street corner will be no more.

The festival, a hugely important one for Muslims worldwide, commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael in obedience to God/Allah’s orders, as well as His mercy in providing Abraham with a ram to sacrifice in his son’s place.

Of course the slaughter part is not so different from back home. 10 million turkeys are eaten at Christmas every year – we just outsource the gory bits to Bernard Matthews and co. But it's a shame we dont follow the custom of giving one third of our sacrifice to the poor.

"Getting in debt to have a sheep"

"Sheep at various prices"

Sheep have been front page news for weeks now too. Import taxes have been dropped to ensure affordability, while worries abound about people endebting themselves through numerous loan schemes to afford their slice of ram. Sheep cost anything from £100 upwards.

And of course where there are TV cameras, there is reality TV. Kharbii – sheep in Wolof – is a popular X-Factor style show in its second year of running, where our fluffy friends compete for the crown of most beautiful sheep. Winner gets 3.5 million CFA Francs (about £5000), and possibly a date with Simon Cowell.

Personally, and maybe it’s because I’m a vegetarian, I prefer my sheep wrapped in LEDs and made to jump artistically around the welsh countryside.

I'm off to join a feast now, having helped skin my first sheep like a good vegetarian.

Happy Tabaski!

African Renaissance or North Korean vanity?

2010-11-14T12:56:00.026Z

Good art is meant to provoke, to split opinion, so we’re told each time someone wins a prize by cutting a cow in half or riding down a river in a shed. Today I visited the President of Senegal’s contribution to artistic debate, Le Monument de la Renaissance Africaine, a work drawing intense discussion of the value of art, the political health of Senegal and, err, the future of Africa.

Not bad for a 49m tall bronze statue of a buff man emerging victoriously from a volcano with a woman in tow and holding a naked child up to the sky. Towering above the city on top of a 100m hill, on the edge of the battered and half-built suburb of Ouakam, it has become an unmistakeable, and deeply controversial, symbol of modern Dakar.

The stated aim is to give substance to ‘African Renaissance’, a concept of the continent emerging from exploitation, slavery and poverty into a future of freedom, self-reliance and prosperity, following the waves of decolonisation and democratisation of previous decades.

Nice idea, but not without its issues. The most common complaint of all is the £19m cost in a country where 54% of people live below the poverty line. But also the use of a North Korean workforce to produce it seemed to be contrary to the idea of African Renaissance, whilst many local religious leaders slam it as idolatrous in a majority muslim country (not to mention the very skimpy attire on show).

Others shake their heads at its caricaturistically Stalinesque qualities – no doubt informed by the North Korean creators – that for some reason made me think of 1960s Soviet washing powder.

It’s more politically opportunist critics claim it is a symbol of the President’s increasingly erratic behaviour in a country that has been seen for so long as a beacon of stability and relative prosperity in the region.

It’s defenders argue that it places Senegal at the cultural and diplomatic centre of pan-Africanist progress, a similar argument used for the provision of scholarships for Haitian students following the calamitous earthquake. The presence of 19 African Heads of State at it’s inauguration might back this up, albeit the argument is undermined a little by the presence of Akon (Mr Lonely).

My instant reaction was to scoff at the vanity and waste. But part of me wonders whether it might be a work of genius not fully appreciated in it’s time. Sort of.

Many symbols and landmarks are priceless, enriching our lives in a way you can’t factor into a budget sheet. The awe you feel when walking past St Paul’s Cathedral or The Pantheon. And to build a national or continental identity, the odd work of folly can sometimes go far. If it brings any value to people’s lives, and helps build some much needed cohesion, should Africa not invest in art and beauty in the same way it should invest in roads and schools?

And remember that many of the world’s great landmarks were originally far from accepted as masterpieces, and were hardly cheap at a time when rates of child mortality were as high, if not higher, as Senegal’s today. In today’s money the Eiffel Tower cost about $35m, and the Statue of Liberty about $75m.

If I was a poor Londoner recovering the Great Fire, living in a sewerless city plagued by cholera, scrabbling to have enough to eat, Im not sure I’d have been a fan of spending even more than the above on St Paul’s Cathedral. And when the Statue of Liberty was being built, in the midst of a recession, The New York Times editorial wrote that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances."

But we’d miss them all now.

I’m also just intrigued that this could be one of the greatest monuments to irony in history, that it's all a big jape to mock state-built white elephants.

In this case, sadly I think that most of what I've just written is balls, but I hope to be proved wrong. Let's hope it's not an African Millennium Dome (£789m), home to second rate pop concerts and wrestling matches and testament to spin over substance.

Probably more important to invest in the real building blocks of African Renaissance – democracy, good governance and a sound economy – and then build a monument to its success. But then I've always felt awkward in art galleries.

Anyway, doesn’t really matter what I think. My random sample of Dakar residents is split. The taxi driver on the way there was deeply proud of it, and what it does for Senegal’s place in Africa. The taxi driver on the way back was incandescent, furious about the waste of money in a poor city whose rising cost of living has pushed people to the brink. I tried to argue it was somehow at least beautiful – "you can’t eat that", he retorted.

Notes from the Nipple of Africa

2010-11-09T23:41:00.011Z

It’s a couple of weeks since I left my beloved Deptford Bridge (aka Greenwich to estate agents) for my adopted home of Dakar. If you don’t know where that is, imagine Africa is a body facing West, and Dakar is its nipple. A nipple inhabited by about 2 million people on the most western tip of the continent.

I’ve been in the city 8 days, explored about a 500m radius, and spoken not a word of Wolof. But no harm in making some unreflective generalizations.

It’s not unlike many African cities – a bit rough around the edges with more than its fair share visible poverty – but with the advantage of an awesome coastline and a thriving cultural scene. Youssou N’Dour is a legend who appears (or at least cancels appearances) regularly in the city’s top venues. Nenah Cherry less so.

Can’t exactly say I know the city or got any amazing insights yet, but a couple of observations stick out…

First, the good people of Dakar have watched one too many Mr Motivator and Lizzie Webb videos – it’s an urban gym without the fluffy white towels. Every piece of scaffolding a potential chin up bar, every stair case a potential shuttle run, every passing runner a reminder of how flabby and unfit you really are.

Second, being hassled in French to pay over the odds for something is a way more stylish, almost chic, way to conduct business. Having to buy stuff imported from France at massively inflated prices, from caricature cheese-eating surrender monkey expats with curly moustaches, is not.

Finally, it already feels like there are two totally different worlds here. In one the European expats and the upper-middle class Senegalese live on international salaries with an army of domestic staff. In the other, the bulk of the population – average income a couple of dollars a day – scrape out a living with little hope that their labour or enterprise will ever be enough to buy a hubcap on the 4x4 they see traversing potholes and dodging streetkids disinterestedly every day.

How to try and bridge those worlds seems like the big question for me, but definitely no answers as yet. I'll make use of my home broadband to let you know.

A quick word on goodbyes, from a great man

2010-11-09T00:02:00.010Z

Obviously I’m writing this because I’m missing out on friends, family and Furry Conventions back in London, Morpeth and beyond. But to continue an obsession since the fantabulous Roald Dahl Party (see photos below), here are some wise, suitably cheesy, and this time not in any way anti-semitic, words from the great man himself:

We have tears in our eyes,
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so love being with you, we three.

So do please now and then,
Come and see us again,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.

All you do is to look,
At this page of this book,
Because that’s where we always will be.

No book ever ends,
When it’s full of your friends,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.

Or something like that.

Le début

2010-11-08T23:51:00.006Z

It’s obvious that people love reading travel blogs. That’s why so many people write them. All those crazy stories of wild times in backpacker hostels, all those tales of the funny things foreigners do. So here’s mine, until I get some friends and a life at least.

My main aim is for it not to be the massive, almost inevitable cliché that plagues those who move abroad. If I ever “find myself” or write that Senegalese people “may be poor in material wealth, but rich in culture/spirit/community” it will be proof that in time-honoured tradition I’ve become, essentially, a bit of a tosser.

The plan is to write/share photos once or twice a week about life, politics and culture in Senegal, my work with Oxfam across West Africa, or anything I come across or think about. Hopefully it won’t be too wanky. So some serious stuff about regional food crises maybe compensated for by the occasional video of El Hadji Diouf being spanked by Jedward, if possible.

Hopefully something will be of interest, so enjoy.

PS. All the posts below are from previous attempts at this blog, including articles written for Progress Online. This is an attempted renaissance.

Human Rights and Tory Wrongs

2010-11-01T17:24:00.003Z

(Article published on 15th October for Progress Online)

‘A Conservative government will always speak up for freedom and human rights', so declared the Tories' election manifesto. How then, just a few months in, have we found our government almost alone in the world arguing against recognising the human rights of people to some of life's most basic needs?

And yet we have. Twice. In July the UK abstained on a UN resolution tabled by the president of Bolivia recognising access to water and sanitation as a human right, due to its status as the second biggest cause of under-five deaths in the world. Then just a month ago, Her Majesty's government ‘disassociated itself' from a Human Rights Council resolution that made this legally binding - the diplomatic equivalent of picking up your football and storming home.

As highlighted in my last post, development language is always difficult to follow, much like Whitehall-speak. So a political commitment to speak up for human rights way have been mistranslated as an instruction to speak against, and our lovely foreign office aggressively lobbied against both these resolutions.

Now the UK stands alone alongside only 12 other infamous countries* to not recognise access to sanitation as a legally binding human right - a situation 'deplored' by Amnesty International and described as ‘no less then shocking' by the international Freshwater Action Network.

Surprising also, given that just days earlier Andrew Mitchell spoke strongly about the importance of water and sanitation at the Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York.

The UK opposing a UN resolution wasn't a news story in the way it is when Madonna adopts a baby. But it matters because development is about much more than signing cheques to build schools and medicines. Fundamentally it is about the same things as fighting for social justice in the UK - power, equality and accountability, all things that come under a human rights lens.

Lack of access to water and sanitation is a perfect example. Those who suffer most are also the most powerless - the girls who drop out of school because of poor sanitation facilities, the rural women kept out of work because they must walk hours every day for water, the women in slums who risk sexual assault when travelling to distant toilets every night, the 1.5 million children under-5 who die of diarrhoeal diseases every year.

Because they lack power, they are often ignored. National policies can be blind to the poorest communities, donor funding weakest in the poorest countries, and water sources threatened by resource-hungry industries paying scant regard to the needs of local populations.

Yet where human rights approaches have been implemented, albeit imperfectly, the potential is clear. South Africa's Water Services Act, for example, enshrines their citizens right to a minimum provision of water, and has been instrumental in driving the government to expand and improve services to its people. Wells and latrines are no longer the in the realm of charity, but in the realm of justice.

Of course resolutions themselves don't build wells and latrines, but the tangible measures that follow - inclusive national policies, specific focuses on marginalised groups, mechanisms for legal recourse, and effective monitoring systems - can help to build effective states responsive to their citizens, surely the real goal of international development.

Tackling poverty means promoting human rights, not just stealing its language. Joining the rest of the world in legally recognising the human right to water and sanitation, and making it real, would be a good first step.

*The other countries are Israel, Tonga, Canada, Albania, Austria, Belize, Czech Republic, Malta, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and Turkmenistan.

The other conference. The one about global poverty.

2010-11-01T17:08:00.002Z

(Article published on 30th September for Progress Online)

It's a little-known fact that the UN headquarters in New York is the only public place in the Big Apple where you can legally smoke. Tobacco, however, is not the only thing there capable of slowing killing people with hot air.

Last week 100+ heads of state (and Nick Clegg) gathered for the UN Millennium Development Goals summit, to set out what they would do over the next five years to meet criticalpromises on poverty they made ten years ago, such as cutting by two-thirds the number of children dying before their fifth birthday.

Being there was not inspiring stuff. A 32-page ‘action plan' agreed by over 190 states included pretty much no measurable actions. The resistance to incorporating human rights principles into poverty targets won out, and this time it wasn't just rich countries to blame. And I think I spotted some people so bored they were tuning into the Lib Dem conference.

More prevalent than action was doublespeak. Ireland, for example, launched a new global strategy to tackle child malnutrition, receiving applause for announcing it was to increase the share of its aid budget for fighting hunger to 20 per cent. Everyone seemed to forget Ireland has slashed its aid budget by 25 per cent, meaning serious cuts in funding for everything else children rely on.

Similarly, the big news of the summit was the launch of a new Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health - much needed to improve efforts to end the preventable deaths of eight million children every year, as well 350,000 women in childbirth. A great plan that takes a broad and progressive approach to health, but funding announcements to implement it have so far flattered to deceive.

The UN did some sums to claim $40 billion was committed for the next five years by governments, NGOs and possibly your granny. Even if true it'd be a fraction of what's needed to meet their promises, but in any case few people are in any doubt that this is largely recycled from funds already being spent or planned in this or other areas. If the National Audit Office wants to have a look at this before it perishes in the quango bonfire, it could keep itself in business for a while.

From a British lens, Nick Clegg's first big moment on the international stage, and Andrew Mitchell's at a major UN event, were neither disastrous nor remarkable. Their speeches were fine, and the financial commitments made commendable in comparison to others, but not particularly balanced. Taking a headline-driven approach to funding healthcare - ie. investing in programmes to prevent children dying from malaria, but not from malnutrition or diarrhoea - has delivered only patchy progress so far, and needs to stop.

Ultimately they went about their business but failed to decisively lead. No shocking leaders with pictures of Zimbabwean torture victims, nor getting into trouble for haranguing their US counterparts too strongly, like dear old Gordon. Nor the all-night sessions in Copenhagen, like our newly-anointed Ed.

Most significantly, they ignored the plea at the summit from Sarkozy and Zapatero to back a global tax on financial transactions to raise funds for poverty reduction - the Robin Hood Tax - something that could begin to make meetings like this a thing of the past, and something supported by Labour's new leader, as shown in this video.

The offer was made, but Britain stayed silent. If the next big summit is to be more than speeches and canapés, we'll need a lot more from our boys in blue (and yellow).