African news and blogwatch: focus today on Kenya and on G8
The big news out of Kenya lately has been the crackdown on members of the Mungiki sect, a quasi-political religious cult which draws inspiration from the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, and which has been blamed for a series of recent beheadings. 127 suspected Mungiki adherents have been arrested in the ongoing crackdown, as police pursue the sect in the slums of Nairobi. A member of parliament announced this week that about 10 MPs in central Kenya were kidnapped by armed Mungiki members and forced to take an oath of allegiance to the sect. An article in the East African Standard explores the nature of the Mungiki, their appeal to Kikuyu pride (Kikuyu are the largest tribe in Kenya), and the ways they build their power in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, by extorting money from matatu (very small public bus) drivers, taking charge of public toilets, and forcing residents to switch to getting electricity from them. The Mungiki are also said to operate kangaroo courts in the slum.
A debate on abortion is underway in Kenya, where abortion is illegal except in cases where the woman’s life is in danger from the pregnancy, but where “Ward 1D of Kenyatta National Hospital receives between six and eight cases of botched abortions.”
Aulelia, the excellent African guest blogger (for this week) at Feministe, writes about the Intimacy for Grades scandal in Kenya, and more generally about encouraging education for women in Africa.
On a more hopeful note, Kenyans will at last have an opportunity to access the latest research findings.
A medical school in the developed world will have for its students typically more than 3,000 biomedical journals, not to mention textbooks, costing millions of dollars in subscriptions.
A medical school in Africa will have a small collection of old textbooks and journals and virtually no access to the latest cutting-edge research and knowledge.
n reality, the difference between the brightest medical student in the University of Nairobi and the brightest medical student in Harvard University is no more than the difference in access to the latest research, scientific journals, information tools and databases.
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… However, the latest cutting-edge knowledge is now available for free or at low cost for poor countries through electronic databases.
For the medical and health community, there is now HINARI, an initiative launched by the World Health Organisation and Yale University. For the agricultural community, there is AGORA, an initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation and Cornell University.
African sources have also been writing a lot this week about G8, which has agreed to spend $60 billion dollars on Africa, AIDS, education, and malaria. G8 also announced that it would back “further measures” against Iran and Sudan, if they continued to reject U.N. Security Council demands.
An ecumenical water conference in Uganda warned about an increase in water conflicts.
From Darfur in western Sudan to Mt Elgon in Kenya, the absence of water for rural communities is emerging as a major cause of conflict on the African continent. In Darfur, the story is one of pain and desperation for the nearly two million displaced persons. And the organizations that work in the area are convinced that it is battles for water and pasture that sparked it off.
Darfur is not an isolated case.
… experts at the conference warn that the danger of similar conflicts elsewhere cannot be ignored. Church delegates working with the grassroots report that they have to grapple with the fear of bigger conflicts, and that small clashes have increased.
Only eight months ago, a violent conflict over land and resources was sparked off in a settlement scheme known as Chepyuk in the Mt Elgon region of Kenya. “The conflict is around access to land and water, which is fast diminishing,” says Rev. Maritim Rirei, an Anglican Church of Kenya programme coordinator in the Eldoret region. His church has been running peace programmes in the area.
Over this short period, an estimated 60,000 people have been displaced, hundreds of homes destroyed and 35 schools closed down. About 200 people have been killed and 300 arrested in government attempts to settle the conflict. “This means that members of these displaced communities will lack access to safe and sufficient quantities of water,” says Rirei.
Jesse Mugambe, a “Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Nairobi who has been at the centre of global debates on climate change,” read a paper at the conference warning about the effects of climate change on the water supply in Africa. The ice caps of Mt Kenya and Kilimanjaro are melting.
These ice caps feed rivers on their slopes, but with declining ice or none at all, communities living near the streams below will lack adequate water for domestic use or agriculture as the rivers dry up. According to participants at the conference, this is already starting to happen and the survival of communities dependent on this water supply is threatened. Already there is competition for water, pasture and farmland.
The G8 conference has agreed to take action on climate change. However, at African Vox 2007, a blog of African journalists covering this year’s G8 conference, Richard Kavuma expresses concern that the search for “green” fuels not jeopardize Africa’s forests (hat tip to Global Voices for this link).