Regarding The Aspirations, Needs And Futures Of The Citizens Of East Africa

The revived regional integration process is on course. But it is largely a project of politicians and bureaucrats. There is scant involvement of the people. For the community to integrate meaningfully, the process needs to be grounded in the aspirations, needs and futures of the citizens.

Eastern African politicians and bureaucrats owe their citizens at least one thing this decade: to prioritize and fast track the formation of the East African Community. They killed it in 1977; they shouldn’t take another generation to revive it. Why? Because it is the right of East Africans – let’s say it is our human right – to let the citizens of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi or South Sudan to cross the borders freely, do business, fraternize, love and marry, study, seek medical treatment, holiday, look for work and be East Africans. For that is what they had been doing for millennia until the mzungu [European] came around and drew imaginary lines to separate them.

The so-called anti-colonial struggles were nothing but battles for human rights. They were about the right for native Africans to study, eat what they wished to, grow crops they wanted to grow, travel, do business, visit relatives; in other words, be Africans in their respective communities, languages, cultures, villages, homes and houses. Period. So, why are our politicians unwilling today to re-make what has always been? Is it because they don’t see it as a right; as the correct thing to do? Shouldn’t ordinary citizens then either ignore them and go on with what we have always done or insist that they legalize the union?

At the 3rd East African Academy in Arusha, Tanzania, between 4th and 5th November, this issue of regional union was the core point of discussion. It was debated as a human rights question. It was discussed as political and economic integration issue. It was spelled out as a cultural matter. But most speakers in the conference agreed that for the community to become, for the region to finally integrate, the process needs to be grounded in the aspirations, needs and futures of the citizens. It is these citizens who make the political constituency, the market for the goods and services that integration will make available and the socio-cultural capital that will give the community a lasting collective identity. The European Union isn’t just a market or a political union; it defines a people, culture(s) and a worldview.

The East African Academy together with Zinduka festival which runs from Wednesday 6th to Saturday 8th of November, 2014, are important events because they bring together diverse groups from East Africa but all with one interest in mind. These are the citizens of the region – lawyers, members of the civil society, university professors, teachers, journalists, musicians, thespians, farmers, ordinary people etc – converging at different barazas and spaces here in Arusha to reflect on how, why and when they wish to see the region fully integrated economically and politically. The political and economic integration will reduce the bureaucratic cultures that inhibit movement of individuals and goods across the region and undermine shared cultural identity that for instance is easily recognizable in Kiswahili, a language spoken throughout the region.

This is a region where people share languages, religious beliefs, cultures; communities straddle borders; individuals have intermarried; children from Uganda attend schools in Kenya and those from Kenya go to college in Uganda; Ugandans seek medical attention in Kenya whilst Tanzanians work in Rwanda etc. The shared lives and transactions between ordinary citizens definitely outweigh the econo-political considerations about loss of economic control, jobs and political authority if the region is to become one economic zone and a political federation. The supposed fears by the politicians mainly camouflage the fact that East African Community integration is also about how the citizens of the region can benefit from minerals, natural resources and job opportunities available in the region rather than just respective countries. And this is why the highlight of this East African Academy, human rights, is a most appropriate topic for conversation over the dragging integration of the region.

Probably the only way to push the politicians in the respective capitals and bureaucrats at Arusha to speed up the integration is to go back to the old ideals and ideas, as Samir Amin urges us. One of those ideals/ideas is that power and authority exercised by politicians and bureaucrats derives from the people, voters. These voters therefore have a right to demand that it is their inalienable right to travel, trade, work, live, own property, study etc in the region without visa hindrances. Several speakers at the Academy noted that as the countries of the region pursue democracy through institutional and constitutional changes, these gains are undermined by a political class that is unwilling to allow more freedoms to the citizens. These concerns about emerging dictatorial tendencies in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, according to several speakers, demand perpetual vigilance by wanainchi [citizens]; and not just human rights defenders.

But as other presenters showed, the struggles to protect and enjoy the rights that the constitutions of these countries guarantee, among which, one imagines, would be the right to association beyond the respective countries’ borders by their citizens, have to be led by those well-informed in the ‘new’ laws that are drawn up every other day. Considering the considerable illiteracy of East Africans in the English language – even in Kiswahili – yet the protocols governing the community are in English and generally expressed in legal jargon; human rights advocates, especially those with a background in law, have to be at the forefront of the efforts to realize the dream of a unified region. However, the civil society has to transform those energies into a people-driven movement that is broad based and spread through the region creating a force of solidarity among wanainchi.

 by Dr Tom Odhiambo from here

Whilst not a call for socialism as we  might hope to find, this is a powerful message for worker solidarity, and wider community solidarity, spreading outwards with an aim of inclusivity by removing the restrictions of false borders. East African countries, as West, North and Southern African countries, like EU countries and others in the western hemisphere are not organised to the wishes of the people. Nowhere do we have a democracy determined by the people for the people. Here is one more struggle against the rank hypocrisy of our capitalist-run world society. Solidarity to all in their struggles across the world.
JS



 

Severe Risk Of Acute Food Insecurity In East And Central Africa

Some 20 million people are facing acute food insecurity in eastern and central Africa, with most of them being at “crisis” and “emergency” levels, according to aid agencies. This figure compares unfavorably with 15.8 million people in July 2013.
The affected countries include Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania.

“The overall nutrition situation in the region has deteriorated precipitously and, according to survey results, the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) levels are higher than 20 percent, exceeding the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold of 15 percent, especially in parts of South Sudan, CAR, Somalia and northern Kenya,” said the East and Central Africa Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG), a multi-stakeholder regional forum chaired by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

FSNWG warned that the situation could deteriorate further in the absence of quick action.
“FSNWG strongly believes that in the absence of an increased and immediate multi-sectoral response, the food and nutrition status of affected populations is likely to deteriorate further.”
It added that “the countries of major concern with regard to food and nutrition insecurity are the conflict-affected South Sudan, CAR, DRC and Somalia.”
These four countries, all grappling with conflict, account for over 10 million people facing food insecurity.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Categorization (IPC) scale, at least 20 percent of people must have significant food shortages and there must be above normal acute levels of malnutrition for a situation to be declared an “acute crisis”. For “emergency” levels, there must be high levels of acute malnutrition and at least 20 percent of people must have extreme food shortages.


For more detail regarding each of the affected countries read on here

Some African History (1)

Some of the world's greatest cities during the Middle Ages were on the eastern coast of Africa. Throughout the Middle Ages, great civilizations ringed the Indian Ocean. From Egypt, people could travel the Red Sea to reach the ocean, then sail south to Africa, or continue east to the Arab world and India. They were the superpowers of the Swahili Coast.  They were cosmopolitan cities whose cultural diversity would have made places like New York and Sao Paolo look like monocultures. Among those great medieval cities were places like Songo Mnara, a gorgeous and bustling Swahili city built on an island off the coast of Tanzania in the fourteenth century. It's been preserved so well because archaeologists from an earlier era didn't believe it was a legitimate African ruin — they believed the architecture was too sophisticated, and therefore had to have been crafted by Arab traders who wanted an outpost. That idea has long been disproven, and now the archaeological community accepts that the vibrant Swahili culture was purely African in origin, and that the cultural influences from the Middle East cut both ways. The Swahili Coast and its luxurious arts and goods were an enormous influence on their neighbors ringing the Indian Ocean.

At a time when European cities were getting wiped out by plagues and famines, Songo Mnara was thriving. Today, Songo Mnara is a ruin that had been almost forgotten. It was built by the people of Kilwa Kisiwanti, an ancient city on a nearby island, and they did it the way today's best city planners might. Though no one is sure why, they wanted to erect this city quickly. So they drew up a city plan and organized the homes, palace, and town's mosques around graceful open areas, with generously-sized courtyards that the locals used to greet traveling merchants. Swahili towns didn't have marketplaces like comparable cities in Europe, the Middle East and China. Instead, archaeologists are learning, trade was conducted in the courtyards, which were halfway between public and private space. Similar kinds of public/private areas were common in ancient Rome as well.

The people who lived in Songo Mnara were part of a Sultanate, or city-state, connected to their parent city of Kilwa. They spoke Kiswahili (related to today's Swahili), and were part of an enormous cultural network that spanned the coast from Somalia to Tanzania. Like the Arab peoples they traded with, the people of the Swahili Coast were Muslims and some of their most breathtaking architecture can be seen in the towers that crown their mosques.

Swahili society is traditionally matrilocal (meaning that a man, after marriage, moves in with his wife's family), which doesn't seem to jibe with the more socially conservative form of Islam practiced on the Swahili Coast today. It is thought that the later Omani occupation of the region imposed a stricter version of Islam with regard to women, overwriting what could have been a brand of Swahili Islam with greater gender equality.

University of Bristol archaeologist Mark Horton believes he's uncovered a mosque that was purpose-built for women. Horton is an expert on mosque architecture and believes that such a mosque would be unique in the Islamic world and would have reflected the importance of women in Swahili society of the middle ages. It's possible that women prayed alongside the men in the many other mosques of the town, and eventually were segregated into their own mosque as their roles changed over time. We don't know for sure, and Horton says that it's always possible that the building was for some other purpose — perhaps a Koranic school — they still haven't figured out yet.

But the power of the Swahili Coast fell as European powers rose. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese arrived and Indian Ocean trade changed. Many stone towns were abandoned around this time, often hastily. Through the ensuing 500 years of colonial occupation—Portuguese, Omani, British—the Swahili culture that coalesced in the medieval period has persisted. Today, more than a million people in East Africa still identify as Swahili (from Sawahil, an Arabic word meaning "people of the coast").

Kilwa in the sixteenth century, a century after the city's heyday.

East Africa's Food Security Under Threat From Climate Change

The report, East African Agriculture and Climate Change, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), looks at threats to food supplies in 11 countries in East and Central Africa – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Agriculture accounts for more than 40 percent of gross domestic product across the region. The report says soil deficiencies in many parts mean agricultural productivity is falling.
Ecosystems are depleted, infrastructure is poor and there’s a lack of reliable information and policy coordination. Meanwhile weather systems are becoming more erratic and violent.
“Climate change will have far-reaching consequences for the poor and marginalized groups, among which the majority depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and have a lower capacity to adapt…this situation is likely to become more desperate and to threaten the very survival of the most vulnerable farmers as global warming continues,” says the study.

Crop production across the region depends overwhelmingly on rainfall. Many areas are likely to see less rainfall in future and an increased incidence of droughts. In 2011 there were prolonged droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Rising temperatures in many areas are likely to result in reduced crop yields: harvests of wheat, soybean, sorghum and irrigated rice could decline by between 5 percent and 20 percent, with irrigated rice production being the hardest hit. However, output of rain-fed maize and rain-fed rice might increase slightly, due to increased rainfall in some areas.
Endemic poverty affects more than 50 percent of the region’s 360 million people. Overall – unless adaptation measures, including the introduction of new crop varieties, better land management and the advancing of planting dates to cope better with changes in climate are adopted – the outlook for the region is bleak, warns the report.
“Recent trends and the current performance of agriculture expose a region that is progressively less able to meet the needs of its burgeoning population.”

The countries of East Africa have among the highest population increases in the world: between 1988 and 2008 the region’s population – excluding that of the DRC – increased by “a staggering” 74 percent. By 2050, that population could double. While there’s growing urbanization across the region and more industrial development, agriculture will continue to dominate the countries’ economies.

The report says there’s a role for insurance schemes which would enable farmers to cope better with changes in climate. But persuading those working on the land – mainly smallholders – to invest in such schemes is hard, with no spare cash available to spend on even small premiums.

[The study is a collaboration between IFPRI, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and regional scientists. Previous studies have looked at the impact of climate change on agriculture in West Africa and southern Africa.] 

Taken from here