Africa Is Now The Fastest Growing Continent In The World- AfDB Report

Kenyan engineers with Civicon Compnay taking a rest as they try to raise a tank in Mtwara Tanzania

Africa is now the fastest growing continent in the world a report by the African Development Bank (AfDB) has said.

The Report, ‘Annual Development Effectiveness Review 2013’ said the growth has been pushed by economic governance on the continent and the private sector.

It also places the positive growth on exploitation of oil and minerals and project more positive growth if assets are effectively managed and used in an accountable and transparent manner.”

 “Africa’s economic growth could not have happened without major improvement in economic governance as more than two-thirds of the continent has registered overall improvement in the quality of economic governance,” it said.

According to the report which is published online the costs of starting a business have fallen by more than two-thirds over the past seven years, while delays for starting a business have been halved.

Internal demand has also seen a growth in private sector which is the main engine of growth for the continent’s improved business climate.

“This progress has brought increased levels of trade and investment, with the annual rate of foreign investment increasing fivefold since 2000,” the report states.

The reports forecast a 5.5 per cent economic growth for continent’s low-income countries in coming years after growth exceeded 4.5 in 2012 forecast.

Africa’s collective gross domestic product (GDP) reached US $953 billion while the number of middle income countries on the continent rose to 26, out of a total of 54.

“This growth has reduced income poverty as the share of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 51 per cent to 39 per cent,” it states.

Some 350 million Africans now earn between US $2-20 (Sh170-1,700) a day with the middle class is increasingly becoming an active consumer market.

However, the report warns of that the continent’s inadequate infrastructure and disparity in earning between rural and urban areas and slums remains a major constraint to the continent’s economic growth and development.

Strong emphasis should be placed in greater regional economic integration to improve prospects for growth by enabling African producers to build regional value chains, achieve economies of scale, increase intra-African trade and become internationally competitive.

Manuel Odeny © 2013

Gender: Lack of Clean Water and Sanitation Affect Women Most

Poor water and sanitation affects women more in African societies, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has said.

The added that the discrepancy is gender based as African women bear the brunt through inequality, especially when it comes to access to education for girls and women.

“In Africa drawing water, transportation, storage and use, and cleanliness of public and private facilities are mostly the responsibility of women who are most affected by scarcity of water and insufficient water supply,” it said.

In rural areas women and girls are obliged to trek up to 15 kilometers every day to fetch water while in urban areas insufficient water supply results in long waiting lines lasting hours and causing social conflicts.

“Poor sanitation facilities also cause high number of girls drop out in school when they reach puberty that is why water and sanitation programmes should have gender equality in planning,” AfDB added.

AfDB said that under its Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative launched in 2003 in partnership with other donors 51 million people have access to clean drinking water and it has aided in building sanitation facilities for 34 million people, of whom 50 per cent are women.

The initiative seeks to involve a gender approach while offering water and sanitation projects to contribute in reduction of water-related chores and increase rate of school attendance for girls, increase income generating activities and create healthy environment.

“These projects need better representation by women in decision-making committees which decreases acts of violence and aggression against women who fetch water from long distances,” the bank said.

Women should also be involved during financing and management of water resources between institutions which will transform the current cultural and social order in the continent.

“This cooperation will also contribute to the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment faced primarily by women and children,” it stressed.

Manuel Odeny © 2013

Human Rights Watch raise concerns over Kenya, Ethiopia Gibe III dam project.

Ethiopian herders at the lower end of the Omo river where the controversial dam Gibe III is set to be built

Kenya’s quest to get power from Ethiopia’s Gibe III dam project by 2014 may receive a setback after Human Rights Watch wrote to World Bank, a major financier against the project.

The rights watchdog have written to WB saying they should stall the funding of the 1,000 kilometer transmission line to the country from the 240m high dam, tallest in Africa, in Southern Ethiopia with a capacity to produce 1,870 megawatts of electricity citing abuse of human rights.

But yesterday Thursday WB agreed to fund the project even though it doesn't meet its project assessment.

 “The World Bank should ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment are rigorously protected before funding a power transmission line connecting Kenya to the controversial dam in Ethiopia” Human Rights Watch said in a letter to President Jim Yong Kim ahead of Thursday meeting on the project.

“The World Bank shouldn’t think that it’s fine to fund a transmission line while closing its eyes to abuses at the power source, where rights of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people are threatened by the Gibe III dam without protection ” Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions advocate at HRW said in statement posted on their website.

The project is set to double Ethiopia's current power generating capacity which will see excess power being exported to neighboring countries like Kenya whose 80 percent of the population don’t have access to electricity.

Apart from exporting the power, the Ethiopian government is going to use power from the dam supplied by the Omo River which also gives 90% of Lake Turkana water, to supply electricity for her 245,000 hectares of state-run irrigated sugar plantations and other projects.

According to HRW “the dam and related agricultural plans are also likely to dramatically decrease water levels in Kenya’s Lake Turkana to further increasing competition over scarce resources for the additional 300,000 indigenous people who live around Lake Turkana.” The statement says.

The site of the Gibe III dam

Apart from Kenya there have been serious implications of Ethiopia’s sugar plantations project where over 200,000 indigenous residents of the Lower Omo have been forcefully relocate by security forces to affect the loss of grazing land and cultivation sites as they rely on the 760KM long Omo River for their survival.

“State security forces have used intimidation, assaults and arbitrary arrests when people questioned the relocation or refused to move even though The United Nations in 1980 named the area a World Heritage because of its special cultural and physical significance” the statement says.

WB requires that projects it funds should follow and mitigate against adverse environmental and social impacts especially if it will affect loss of livelihood by calling on adequate compensation to at least maintain their previous living standard.

“WB is set to undermine these policies by approving the power transmission line to Kenya with the source of energy highly questionable” the statement says adding that environmental and social assessment should be done on the project on indigenous people before funding the transmission line.

Jim Yong Kim the 12^th WB president who took the office on July 1 is faced with his first big test to commitment to human rights and environment issue on the funding of the transmission line to Kenya.

 “Kim should show the people of Ethiopia and Kenya that he will stand for their rights. That means not letting this project proceed until the bank has taken adequate steps to prevent serious harm to peoples’ rights and livelihoods” Evans, the HRW official says.

©Manuel Odeny 2012

10 great rules that will help you remain poor all your life by Moses Kiprono and Winny Moimet

Few pointers from my FB friends on how to remains poor all your life and live as an under achiever, got it for the first time from them and I thought I should share them in my blog with my readers;

1.    Never wake up early:

Keep stretching and turning in bed until you get too hungry to continue dozing. If there are no bedbugs, why hurry to get up?

2.    Never plan how to spend your money:

Whenever you get money, start spending it right away and when it is finished, try to count and recall how you spent it.

3.    Don't think of saving until you have real big money:

How can you save when you earn so little? Those telling you to save are not sympathetic to your burning needs.

4.    Don't engage in activities usually reserved for the 'uneducated':

How can you, a graduate, engage in petty trade or home- based production? That is for people who never went to school.

5.    Don't think of starting a business until an angel comes from heaven and gives you capital:

How do they expect you to invest before you get millions of shillings? Even though more than half the businesses in your town were started with a few hundred shillings, you as a smart person can only start with millions.

6.    Complain about everything except your own attitude:

Blame the system, the government and the banks that refuse to lend you money. They are all bad and do not want you to get rich.

7.    Spend more than you earn:

To achieve this, buy consumer products in credit and keep borrowing from friends and employer.

8.    Compete in dressing:

Make sure you wear the latest clothes among all the workers in your office. Whenever your neighbour buys a new phone, get one that is more expensive.

9.    Get yourself a nice second-hand car/mobile/electronic gadget that costs more than three times your gross monthly pay:

That will surely keep you in debt long enough to hinder the implementation of any bad plans that could make you accumulate capital.

10. Give your children/lover everything they ask for since you are such a loving parent/lover:

They should not struggle for anything because you do not want them to suffer. That way, they will grow up lazy and hence poor enough to ensure they cannot help you in your old age.

HOPE THIS HELPS U GUYS.

FRANCISCO MACIAS NGUEMA. The mad man from Equatorial Guinea.

Francisco Macias Nguema

Guineans believed their first president had supernatural powers. Using the knowledge of witchcraft he inherited from his sorcerer father, President Francisco Macias Nguema built a huge collection of human skulls at his homestead to beat his subjects to submission.

Surrounded by village elders at his state house, Nguema used a bamboo hut as the state pharmaceutical and treasury after closing the central bank. Most of the money rotted on the ground while citizens suffered in subject poverty.

Nguema was favored by the Spanish colonialist as the president on Independence Day, 0ctorber 1968 because of his limited education and mental ability. In favor of a trustworthy collaborator the Spaniards made him a mayor through a civil service test which had failed thrice.

The Spanish plan backfired.

Due to his education inability Nguema had a phobia for intellectuals. 154 days after independence when he found Spanish flags still flying in some parts of Equatorial Guinea he lashed out.

Nguema instructed youths and vigilante groups to attack colonialist. 7,000 Spaniards left, mostly civil servants, left en masse.

Their vacant positions were filled by fellow tribesmen of Esangui. Most notable was his nephew, Colonel Teadore Obiang Nguema Mbosogo; the commander of National Guard, military commander of Fernando Po, a province, and the secretary-general of ministry of defense and head of prisons.

When his foreign minister, Ndongo Miyone, tried to diffuse the tension he was brutally murdered for being too ‘intellectual’ for Nguema liking.

A director of statistics had his body dismembered to ‘help him learn how to count when he gave figures which displeased the president.

A central bank director was executed when he controlled Nguema from plundering the state coffers. Consequently all foreign currency went to his house where he placed the state treasury for his personal use. Civil servants and military salaries always ran long overdue.

When he ran out of money Nguema kidnapped and ransomed foreigners and notable was the $103,600 ransom for a German woman, a Spaniard professor and a dead soviet citizen.

His execution knew no bounds. All former lovers of his current mistresses were executed. The husbands of women he coveted were equally killed.

His pet subjects were intellectuals, education and foreign culture which he rumbled on incoherently on speeches.

He later banned the word ‘intellectual’ in Equatorial Guinea and closed all libraries in the country. Newspaper and printing press were not spared either, they were all banned.

Ultimately education was abolished in 1974 and children were taught political slogans.

He strove to control organized religion by having his pictorials hanging in every church and had himself proclaimed as ‘the only miracle’. Under threat of immediate arrest priests were forced to recite slogans lie;

During his sentencing

“There is no God other than Macias.”
“God created Equatorial Guinea, thanks to Papa Macias. Without Macias, Equatorial Guinea would not exist.”

Nguema was comfortably satisfied when through citations on 1974-75 he banned religious meetings, funerals and sermons. All Christian names were abolished. He turned churches to warehouses. He stored state weapons in a cathedral at Malabo, the capital city.

Nguema’s demise came in 1979 when his ambitious nephew colonel Obiang Nguema feared he could go down with the when he started showing overt madness.

Nguema smoked bhang and a local stimulant, Iboga. He started hallucinating and having monologues with his dead victims. Due to old age he turned deaf. On September 1979 alongside his five most brutal aides Nguema was sentenced to death by firing squad at Malabo’s Blabich Prison.

For fear of supernatural powers, the Guineans hired Moroccan soldiers to shoot him. To date Francisco Macias Nguema ghost is still potent in Equatorial guineas politics.

Of Nairobians and West Wannabes.

So much fascination of the West. Are there no loafers, vagabonds and street sweepers? And is it not a fact that almost everybody who goes there are menial workers.

These are the people who are ready to be called ‘Black monkeys’ while stooping low to boot lick the whites and when they come back to Africa they want to be treated as demigods.

They come back with aura of snobbishness spiced up with haughty eyes. So it is no surprise when westernized Africans say; “it’s very hard to help an African….” This comes after their hard earned money has been overtaxed from jobs with no (or least) security like nursing.

Have you ever wondered what could happen if US borders were to be free for just a day? Just imagine those poor blacks dying to Spain could have a heyday; the visa line at American Embassy could be relieved.

I imagine banks doing a booming business loaning out fares, but above all Africa and Kenya in particular could be empty. I would not forget to pity the Americans because the millions of shillings they get from visas will dry up, my pity will too go to third world countries which receive this donor shillings in loans-just talk of giving with one and stealing from the other.

It is just absurd how Kenyans are west-crazy. Have you ever come across anybody with a relative in the west (a relation attached by cello tape): “Oh! My relative (or unseen pen pal) ananifanyia mipango….. Blah! Blah! Blah! (Plus a lot of daydreaming) these are guys living in a cocoon of fantasy and find it hard to embrace reality.

Kenya is a thousand miles south of Sahara and do you know what that means? It means we are in the part of the world wrenched with poverty, civil strife, high child mortality and a cool HIV/AIDS infection rate. So the thought of comparing your fellow Kenyans with westerns is very inconsiderate.

Anyway away from the West and direct to our capital Nairobi. I just wonder why villagers have got a passion for the capital and not any other big towns. Problem always catch up with us villagers during holidays when the Nairobians carry all their households back. It is funny that all these Nairobians are always from Lavington, Runda and other crème-de-crème estates, I am yet to meet a Korogocho and Mathare Valley guy.

The problem gets murkier when they have electronic gadgets; they will assault any poor guy willing to listen in ‘Ahujarized’ voice about the manual, but please do not ask what an electronic cooker is doing in a grass thatched-mud-and-wattle house in the heart of a remote village where rural electrification is a myth.

You see my village mind always get confused with those city girls a.k.a chicks- I always wonder if their boyfriends are cocks.

Can somebody please enlighten a villager to why a fully grown female specie of Homo sapiens with a bunch of kids likes the name chick but not a hen? These chicks or hens will always insist on Fanta and Chippo in the heart of a Githeri zone.

Needless to say they have always deleted their sir name to have a bizarre combination of two English names to hide their tribes therefore a Mary Nyang’inya will be Mary Anne or a Sipporah Nyakerario Atieno will be a Zippy Night.

So it wasn’t a shock when I saw an ‘enlightened’ fellow who told us was a manager being buttoned by city askaris in the daily paper. The other who was helping his long distance uncle to run a chain of hotels or hovels was caught begging on the streets.