Africa Report
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PROJECT ON BUSINESS AND POLITICS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD AFRICA REPORT First Quarterly Report on Africa January to March 2008 Reports for the period for January to March 2008 Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Ijaz Shafi Gilani Contributors Abbas S Lamptey Snr Research Associate Reports on Sub-Saharan AFrica Abdirisak Ismail Research Assistant Reports on East Africa INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD BUSINESS AND POLITICS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD AFRICA REPORT First Quarterly Report on Asia January to March 2008 Reports for the period January to March 2008 Department of Politics and International Relations International Islamic University Islamabad 2 BUSINESS AND POLITICS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD AFRICA REPORT First Quarterly Report 2008 Table of contents Reports for the month of January Week-1 January 16, 2008 05 Week-2 January 29, 2008 10 Reports for the month of February Week-1 February 19, 2008 24 Week-2 February 26, 2008 82 Reports for the month of March Week-1 March 04, 2008 117 Week-2 March 18, 2008 161 Week-3 March 25, 2008 207 Country profiles Sources 3 BUSINESS AND POLITICS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD 4 Weekly Presentation: January 16, 2008. SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA- (LOOKING BACK AT 2007) Abbas S Lamptey Period:December 2007/January 2008 Introduction: This introduction aims to provide a conspectus of some of the important events that took place in Sub-Saharan Africa during the year 2007.There was cornucopia of events on the continent. However, this paper seeks to highlight those issues which might be of particular interest to civil society organizations or those groups that are engaged in public advocacy activities of one kind or the other. Issues relating to violence against women and attacks against their fundamental human rights for no other reason other than that they are women pose serious challenges that most Sub-Saharan African countries must address. The challenges that women face during war as well as peace time, including rape and women trafficking as well as the legislative measures taken by some countries, such as sierra Leone, to alleviate the plight of women will be looked at in some detail by this paper. Another issue which is of paramount importance relates to the proposed establishment of United States African Command on the continent. During the year under review, the United Stated floated the idea of a United States African Command (AFRICOM) whose establishment, it is believed, will result in thousands of American soldiers being stationed in Africa. The purpose of this command as announced by the US is to help quell civil unrest wherever it occurs on the continent before it spills out of control, not to mention the purported economic benefits that such a command would bring to the host nations on the continent. While some regional groupings in Africa such as the EAC and SADC have outrightly rejected the idea, other African governments have been quite equivocating in their reaction to the idea. As usual, there occur serious human rights violations across the continent. The human rights condition in countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Chad, the Gambia, Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Rwanda ,to name a few, worsened during 2007. In Zimbabwe, sweeping surveillance laws that give the government the right to tap phone calls and e-mail communications of journalists and that also give the government the right to spy on ordinary citizens, is seen by many as a desperate attempt on the part of the government of Robert Mugabe to throttle freedom of the press. In Chad, a number of French Aid workers were arrested and charged with child trafficking offenses when they were about to board a plane to France with 50 children. The French Aid workers had lied to the Chadian authorities that the children were orphans from southern Sudan. However, it was later learnt that the children are Chadian and that all of their parents are alive and living in Chad. From the Gambia and Senegal in West Africa to Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia in East Africa, and to Chad, DR Congo in 5 Central Africa to Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, human rights violations against ordinary citizens, members of the opposition and journalists have not stopped. An important development on the continent though is that during the past few years more than 43 African countries have fully embraced democracy although there are still problems regarding the way democracy is practiced on the continent. For instance, during the April 2006 Nigerian elections there were serious allegations by both international and local observers of massive vote rigging and fraud. According to international observers’ missions from the EU and ECOWAS, the elections have not been conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner. These were marred by widespread fraud and vote rigging. It was widely observed that the then incumbent(Olusegun Obasanjo) rigged the elections in order to make sure that his handpicked man succeeds him in the presidency to avoid being probed for allegations of corruption or for any other wrongdoing during his term in office. In spite of this apparent flaw in the application of democratic norms, one would still commend Nigeria for the smooth transfer of power from one civilian government to another; it has never happened before in the entire post colonial history of the country. A similar case is the ongoing violence in Kenya precipitated by allegations of vote rigging at the December 27 elections. The picture which we now see after the December 27 elections has been nothing but dismal. The ODM opposition party has cried foul and made serious allegations against the ruling party for rigging the elections. In spite of losing as many as 20 seats in the elections, the ruling party claimed victory and its leadership was sworn into office in a hurriedly arranged ceremony at the presidency. Already more than six hundred (600) people have lost their lives the rioting and street fighting and shooting incident that has greeted the fraud allegations. The stability that Kenya has enjoyed over the years and which has made her the envy of most African countries seems to be evaporating very fast. In South Africa the struggle between President Thabo Mbeki and Zuma (the former vice- president) for the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) threatens the unity of the party. It should be recalled that President Mbeki had sacked Zuma after a sexual harassment case was brought against him. During the year a list of the continent’s 100 best books of the 20th century was published. Ali Mazrui, an African intellectual, came up with the idea in order to direct the world’s attention on the achievement of African writers who have had their work published during the 20th century. At the top of the list was Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART, a novel which has been translated into more than 120 languages of the world. On the issue of governance, a survey that can be described as unprecedented, was sponsored by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and conducted by the Kennedy School of Government with the help of an advisory council of African academics, to pick the continent’s best and worst-governed nations. The survey which was called the ‘Ibrahim Index of African Governance’ picked Mauritius as the best 6 governed country in Africa for the year 2007. At the bottom of the list are Sudan, DR Congo, Chad and Somalia. Zimbabwe occupied the 31ST position while Nigeria trails behind at the 37th position. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation Award for Leadership went to Joachim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique. The award carries a cash prize of US$200,000. It is believed that by offering financial security following retirement from active political life, the Ibrahim prize will provide Africa's best leaders with the platform and means to continue to contribute to public life in their countries and the continent at large. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance also aims to encourage good democratic practices and behaviour on the continent. HIV/AIDS continue to devastate the continent. The Aids pandemic is prevalent in Southern and East Africa where the governments there are fighting to grapple with not only finding cheap antiretroviral drugs but also with the issue of Aids orphans. With no cure in sight, the disease will continue to take its toll on the human capacities of the countries most affected by it. The agriculture sector in this region has suffered immensely as a result of the AIDS pandemic. Thus HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria continue to take their toll on human lives in the continent. Kenya and Tanzania have declared war against TB and Malaria respectively, and women continue to be the most vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS disease. Climate change and issues of the environment are other important concerns of all the governments of sub-Saharan Africa because these are issues very much connected to food security. Lack of rain in certain regions of the continent, often blamed on the gas emissions and industrial activities of the advanced nations of the North, creates a famine situation on the continent. Conservation of the environment and the ecosystem were of priority concern to countries such as Uganda where the sale of a forest reserve to a businessman precipitated a nationwide riot leading to the death of several citizens. In Namibia farmers protested a government bill that would have turned a game reserve into a park for holiday makers. Flash floods in different parts of the continent were also blamed on climate change. Most part of the discussion that took place during the Commonwealth meeting in Uganda was dominated by the issue of climate change and the environment, thus overshadowing discussion on development issues.