Africa Pulse
African Union Should Spotlight Human Rights
By: HRW, 2002-07-11
The African Union must strengthen the region’s human rights institutions if its promise is to become reality, Human Rights Watch said this week, following the launch of the AU in Durban.
The African Union’s Constitutive Act pledges respect for human rights and rejects the widespread impunity that has characterized armed conflict and political repression in many African countries. In “grave circumstances” such as occurred during the Rwandan genocide, the Constitutive Act authorizes the African Union to intervene. But the existing regional human rights institutions the African Union will inherit have been crippled by a lack of resources and political will.
Leading African states in the African Union have also adopted a New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a program to lift Africa out of poverty that explicitly recognizes the importance of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law for economic development. NEPAD has also developed its own code of governance and system for “peer review,” but its pledges on human rights remain vague.
“The African Union will only succeed if it replaces the culture of impunity with the culture of accountability,” said Peter Takirambudde, director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division. “That means making sure the nice words of its Constitutive Act and of NEPAD come to life and that there are consequences if states don’t live up to what they say they will do.”
Human Rights Watch called on African Union members to follow through on human rights pledges they have already made. For a start, they should:
1. urgently finalize a strong protocol to the African Charter on women’s rights, negotiations on which have been stalled for months;
2. ratify the protocol establishing an African Court on Human and People’s Rights, which could award judgments against states for human rights abuse;
3. give Africa’s existing human rights body, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, the resources and political backing needed to carry out its mandate.
At the G8 summit last month in Kananaskis, G8 leaders committed support for the NEPAD initiative, but adopted a wait-and-see approach to the system of peer review. The G8 leaders said they would make their own assessments in deciding whether to develop partnerships with particular countries.
“Peer review is a positive step, but only if the process is transparent and given teeth,” said Takirambudde. “It must be backed up by institutions that can ensure proper scrutiny and enforcement of human rights.”
South Africa will be the first chair of the African Union, and Human Rights Watch urged President Thabo Mbeki to take a lead in ensuring human rights are at the core of the new body’s activities over the next year.
For further information, please contact: In London, Bronwen Manby: +44-20-7713-2789.In New York, Rory Mungoven: +1-212-216-1276.Peter Takirambudde: +1-212-216-1834
What is Africa Pulse? Africa Pulse is an information portal for the Civil Society sector in the Southern African Development Community. It uses state-of-the-art technology to allow organisations throughout the region to publish content directly to the site, whether it be news of the arrest of a journalist in Zambia, the HIV/Aids crisis in South Africa, a profile of an organisation's work in Tanzania, the devastation caused by a flood in Mozambique, an analysis of the war against Unita, or an election update from Harare. Organisations, academics, journalists, researchers, activists and unions are free to publish any material on the portal that is relevant to the Civil Society sector and to the region. There is space for organisations to alert the sector to events, such as protests, book launches, seminars or campaigns, and to advertise job vacancies. A database of website URLS (website addresses) searchable by category and country on anything from education, conflict and governance, to democracy and human rights also provides a valuable resource to the sector.
Copyright © 2001: SANGONeT
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African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD
By: SANGONeT, Date: 2002-07-09
"We do not accept NePAD !! Another Africa is Possible !!"
We members of social movements, trade unions, youth and women's organisations, faith-based organisations, academics, NGOs and other popular civil society organisations from the whole of Africa, meeting in Port Shepstone, South Africa, 4-8 July 2002 on the threshold of the launch of the African Union and NePAD in Durban, critically examined NePAD in the context of the struggles for Africa's development and emancipation.
While conscious of the importance of joint endeavours for the development of Africa, this 'new international partnership' initiative ignores and sidelines past and existing programmes and efforts by Africans themselves to resolve Africa's crises and move forward from programmes such as the Lagos Plan of Action (1980) and the Abuja Treaty (1991), the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes (AAF-SAAP, 1989), the African Charter for Popular Participation and Development (Arusha Charter, 1990) and the Cairo Agenda (1994).
In contrast to such programmes, NePAD is mainly concerned with raising external resources, appealing to and relying on external governments and institutions. In addition, it is a top-down programme driven by African elites and drawn up with the corporate forces and institutional instruments of globalisation, rather than being based on African peoples experiences, knowledge and demands. A legitimate African programme has to start from the people and be owned by the people.
We take as our point of departure, and build upon, the many fundamental critiques of NePAD from all over the continent, such as the statements of the African Social Forum (Bamako, Mali, January 2002) and of CODESRIA (Council for Development and Social Sciences in Research in Africa) with the Third World Network-Africa (Accra, April 2002) and others.
During our deliberations and wide-ranging discussions on NePAD we focused on the following key aspects and reached the following conclusions.
I NePAD, DEMOCRACY AND 'GOOD GOVERNANCE'
We discussed the nature and role of the post-colonial state in Africa and the role of the developmental state in the earlier economic, social and human development achievements following independence. We noted that NePAD
1. ignores the way the state has, itself, been undermined as a social provider and vehicle for development, particularly under the World Bank's tutelage;
2. ignores the way the state, in turn, has been undermining institutions and processes of democracy in Africa;
3. does not reflect the historic struggle in Africa for participatory forms of democracy and decentralisation of power;
4. promises of democracy and 'good governance' are largely intended to satisfy foreign donors and to guarantee foreign investment.
We conclude that
1. While we are committed to good government in Africa, we do not accept the interpretation and content that this is given in NePAD, including questionable economic policies in 'good governance' that we do not accept.
2. We call on African people to mobilise for a developmental participatory state responsive to their needs and aspirations, and to build popular and democratic movements that can hold our state to their responsibilities.
II NePAD, PEACE AND 'STABILITY'
We discussed how the conflicts on the continent have their sources in the legacy of colonialism, economic exclusion, political intolerance, social polarisation, artificial borders and unequal access to resources. We noted that NePAD
1. ignores all these factors and approaches these problems mainly as technical peace-keeping operations;
2. does not point to the structural adjustment policies of the IMF and WB in exarcerbating conflicts leading to further wars;
3. does not point to the interests of corporations, war profiteers and war-lords in their determination to control and exploit our resources, such as oil, diamonds, and other pressure metals as a major source of war and conflict in Africa
We conclude that
1. Peace requires an environment that fulfils people's needs, and guarantees peoples livelihoods free from all forms of discrimination .
2. Peace demands a Pan-African response to the divisions and tensions created by the legacy of arbitrary colonial borders and social relations.
3. The Kampala Declaration establishing the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation (CSSDCA) can be an important instrument for peace building.
III NePAD AND HUMAN RIGHTS
We discussed with great concern the longstanding denial and abuse of human rights in most of the countries of Africa and the devastating effects of the HIV-AIDS pandemic on our people. We noted that NePAD
1. makes very few references to human rights and these are largely rhetorical;
2. deals only superficially with the impact of HIV-AIDS upon peoples lives;
3. does not guarantee self-determination for the people and contains policies that contradict or are incompatible with democracy and human rights;
4. promotes 'regional economic integration' but is totally silent on the rights of people to freely move and seek employment across borders in Africa.
We noted, further, that since the recent G8 meeting in Kananaskis, NePAD is now being linked to the US agenda on 'terrorism' that could to use as a lever for the introduction of legislation violating basic civil and political rights.
We commit ourselves:
To continue our struggle for human rights in the fullest meaning, including political, civil, economic, social, women's, cultural and environmental rights.
IV NePAD AND STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMMES
We analysed the policies and effects, and our direct experiences of World Bank SAPs over recent decades in our countries. We noted that, despite the negative economic, social, political, and environmental effects of SAPs, NePAD
· accepts the fundamentals of gender-blind neo-liberal SAPs paradigm which have been largely responsible for the deepening of the African crises, including the feminisation of poverty;
· uncritically endorses the latest version of SAPs, the so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (PRSP) which has been discredited by popular movements;
· throws a lifeline to the IMF and WB at precisely the time that they are in ideological and institutional crises as a result of unremitting criticism and struggles worldwide against their policies.
We commit ourselves
· To continue to expose to greater public knowledge, and reinforce our resistance to all policies of the IMF and the World Bank now incorporated into NePAD.
V NePAD AND RESOURCE MOBILISATION
We examined the challenges and problems of resource mobilisation for development and noted that NePAD
· ignores the question of people's ownership and control of African resources, and disregards the people as the most vital resource and purpose of development;
· will not mobilise Africa's rich natural resources for African development but for further foreign exploitation and plunder;
· has nothing to say about the mobilisation, redistribution and utilisation of
African land for development, particularly for women;
· focuses heavily on external financial resources without concern for the costs, and the negative economic, social, and environmental effects of foreign investment and liberalised capital flows
We conclude that:
1. The unrealistic hopes for external financial resources will, as always, not be forthcoming, as already evident at the recent G8 response to NePAD.
2. The 'donors' or aid givers have shown that they will decide separately which countries they will/will not support and on their own policy terms and self-interests.
3. The 'debt relief' offers by the G8 will, similarly, be very limited and only offered to those governments which will dutifully follow gender-blind neo-liberal precepts.
4. Such debt 'relief' will not go even to such countries but to bail out the creditors.
5. The whole NePAD 'fundraising' project is a non-starter, and we will focus our efforts on appropriate resource mobilisation, including African financial resources now legally and illegally outside of Africa; and relate all such resources to alternative development strategies based on collective self-reliance.
VI NePAD AND DEBT
We examined the nature, sources and causes of Africa's 'debt', which
Ø is a fundamental cause of underdevelopment, poverty and inequality;
Ø is owed to the same forces that benefited from slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism;
Ø has served to build the wealth and power of the elites in Africa; and
Ø is not only a financial, but a political instrument of domination and control of the North over Africa.
We note, however, that NePAD
· accepts the obligation for Africa to repay this illegitimate debt to the prejudice of fundamentally important social services;
· ignores the demands for total debt cancellation produced by campaigns in Africa, in South-South campaigns and worldwide.
On this basis we
1. We demand total and unconditional debt cancellation.
2. We reaffirm the demand for reparations for the social, economic and ecological damage done to Africa and its people through slavery and colonialism.
3. We call for the return of Africa's wealth corruptly transferred by African elites and held in the North.
3. We undertake to intensify popular mobilisation to pressurise African Governments to repudiate the debt.
VII NePAD, TRADE AND GLOABLISATION
We fully discussed the role of trade in Africa and the current global system, and noted that indiscriminate trade liberalisation has led to de-industrialisation , unemployment and poverty, and has reinforced Africa's role in the global economy as suppliers of cheap raw materials and labour.
We noted that NePAD
· ignores the huge body of knowledge, evidence and analyses discrediting the theories that trade leads to growth which leads to development;
· accepts export-led growth and the expansion of Africa's traditional exports which has already aggravated the deteriorating terms of trade for Africa;
· reinforces Africa's focus on 'market access' into the richest countries through unilateral but false offers such as the EU's Everything But Arms (EBA);
· endorses the aims of reciprocal free trade and other policy conditionalities demanded by the EU and the US, such as privatisation, labour deregulation, and investment liberalisation in the Cotonou Agreement and the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), respectively;
· accepts the erroneous depiction of the 'marginalisation' of Africa whereas Africa has long been deeply and disadvantageously integrated into the global economy;
· promotes the deeper integration of Africa into the current globalisation process which fundamentally serves the interests of the rich;
· misunderstands the imbalanced nature of WTO trade agreements and trade-related agreements, particularly the General Agreement on Trade in Services which will extend global appropriation of African services and resources.
We conclude that
1.We need to continue our efforts to create different types of local, regional and inter-regional trade, and a different role for trade in our economies.
2. We will continue to campaign and mobilise the African peoples to pressurise their governments to resist an expansion of the scope and powers of the WTO through new issues and to resist a new WTO round being pushed since the Doha Ministerial Conference.
3. We will continue to campaign for our governments to resist unilateral, bilateral and multilateral trade agreements which do not address the inequities of the international economic system.
4. We will continue to build the popular movement at national, continental and international levels against neo-liberal economic globalisation and against the World Trade Organisation as the main institutional force driving globalisation.
On the basis of the above, we do not accept NePAD plan, as a process and in its content. We are to committed to joint efforts for Africa's development and emancipation, and we call upon all African peoples' organisations and movements to continue their existing efforts to produce sustainable, just and viable alternatives that will benefit all the people of Africa.
Copyright © 2001: SANGONeT
Africa Media Watch, 13 July, 2002, 09:22 GMT 10:22 UK
With the launch of the African Union making headlines across the continent and beyond this week, Media Watch looks at reaction in Madagascar to the AU's first significant decision. And as the Durban summit comes to an end, South Africa's press sounds a warning over Africa's old guard.
Madagascar's leading newspapers took a dim view of the African Union's decision at its inaugural summit this week not to recognise Marc Ravalomanana's administration.
The position of the AU will lead Madagascar to reflect carefully on the usefulness of this organisation
Midi Madagasikara
Midi Madagasikara, the largest circulation daily, carried a cartoon showing African heads of state "burying" the OAU - the African Union's predecessor - and casually throwing a file marked "Madagascar" on top of the coffin.
The paper said that arguments in favour of recognising Mr Ravalomanana's presidency were put forward in heated closed-door sessions by the leaders of Mauritius, Burkina Faso and Senegal, but were "ignored" by other leaders at the summit.
The AU upheld a controversial OAU policy, refusing to recognise Mr Ravalomanana as president, saying his administration took power unconstitutionally and calling for fresh elections.
"The position of the AU will lead Madagascar to reflect carefully on the usefulness of this organisation," the paper said.
Unperturbed
The Madagascar Tribune took the view that Madagascar's priorities at the moment were economic and not political, "therefore the decision taken in Durban yesterday hardly caused a stir."
"Africa's contribution to the Malagasy economy is indeed negligible, and can apparently even be done without, following the gold mine granted recently by the World Bank and EU," the paper said.
Ravalomanana adviser Ralison Roger, quoted by the same paper, said Madagascar would need to "turn elsewhere" in the wake of the AU's decision, including to regional economic organisations.
"African Union or OAU, this institution will not change on the political level while it concerns itself more with the interests of heads of state than with the interests of Africa's peoples," Mr Roger said.
The AU refused to recognise Ravalomanana's leadership
Picking up the economic theme, L'Express de Madagascar asked whether the country might soon join the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
It noted that even though Madagascar was already a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), Malagasy leaders had always shown an unexplained reluctance to join the SADC.
"Yet," it said, "this organisation offers the advantage of member states' proximity to Madagascar, which is not the case for Comesa member countries."
Old guard
As the AU's inaugural summit wound up, several South African newspapers warned that the continent's old guard of leaders posed a threat to the goals of improving democracy and human rights in Africa.
They will make it their business to twist and deform the AU
Business Day
Financial daily Business Day said leaders like South African President Thabo Mbeki, the first AU chairman, and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, gave the Union much-needed credibility.
But they would have to deal with the likes of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi.
"None of these", the paper said in an editorial, "now goes away because the AU has been formed. In fact, they will make it their business to twist and deform it."
"But the intention of the African democrats is clear. They want to build an institution, open, effective and democratic, that can transform Africa," it said, adding that what happened in Durban "is a very big deal".
Credibility blow
Johannesburg's The Star voiced concern about the Libyan leader's efforts to put Libya in line for a seat on an enlarged steering committee for the Union's recovery plan - the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).
The committee will be tasked with driving Nepad, which promises democracy and good governance in return for billions of dollars in Western investment, aid and debt relief.
This summit confirmed that those values are becoming entrenched in the collective mind of Africa
The Star
"If Gaddafi does get onto the implementation committee, it will be an undoubted blow to the credibility of Nepad, the AU and Africa," The Star said.
"Donor government observers at the summit were doing their best to be philosophical about it... Potential investors will not be so understanding," it said.
But perhaps, the paper added, these were quibbles.
"Even if the vehicle for realising the values of democracy and good governance is imperfect, this summit confirmed that those values are becoming entrenched in the collective mind of Africa. That is good news for the long term," it concluded.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
Senegal may have the cure for AIDS. Traditional Medicine Treatment for Aids Passes Clinical Tests
allAfrica.com,July 11, 2002
Charles Cobb Jr.Washington, DC
In what are called "significant clinical and laboratory results," by The Association for the Promotion of Traditional Medicine (Prometra), a three year study of 62 Aids infected patients suggests that Metrafaids, an indigenous herbal preparation made from five medicinal plants, may be a useful treatment option for African people living with HIV/Aids.
According to the NGO's President, Dr. Erick V. A. Gbodossou, lead researcher of the study, "their [the patients] viral loads deceased while at the same time their CD4 count went up."
CD4 cells help to organize the body to fight disease. Healthy adults and teenagers usually have a CD4 count of at least 800 cells per cubic millimeter of blood. If this number drops below 200 the risk of illness is severe. Viral loads tell doctors how much HIV is in the blood providing important clues as to how quickly HIVis doing harm. When a treatment reduces viral load the chances of getting an Aids-related infection, or dying of Aids, drops.
The viral loads of 70 percent of the patients decreased by more than 54 percent up to 94 percent. "The same percentage saw their CD4 count become normal, that is to say between 500 and 1100," Dr. Gbodossou told allAfrica.com.
"This study was overseen by an international scientific advisory committee. It is African, natural, without apparent side effects, accessible and affordable. It truly is an African solution to an African problem," said Gbodossou.
The study was conducted at the Center for Experimental Traditional Medicine in Fatick, Senegal, about 150 km from Dakar. "What makes this study different from the many 'so-called' traditional medicine therapies reported earlier, is that it was conducted meeting international scientific standards, and the results have been validated by international reference laboratories¨, Gbodossou said in a statement earlier this week.
LabCor, a diagnostic laboratory in New York did the blood analysis, picking up blood samples and returning the analysis by international courier. The study received US$2m in support from the Ford Foundation.
Metrafaids also reduced patient vulnerability to "opportunistic diseases", dermatosis, hepatitis B, hypertension, weight - alleviating clinical symptoms in 85% of the patients. No adverse reactions were documented throughout the study, which was conducted between 1999 and 2002. "The benefits of this traditional herbal medication are great, recognizing its efficacy, accessibility, low cost and non-existent side effects," said Professor Maurice Iwu, vice-chair of the scientific committee which reviewed the study.
Iwu is the Executive Director of Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme, an international, non-profit organization that seeks to develop strategies for sustainable utilization of biological resources. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Division of Experimental Therapeutics of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Gbodossou said that the plants used "can be found in any tropical region or any forested region - we find them in Africa, especially in West Africa. We find them easily."
Gbodossou said he wants to continue the study for another year "then after that we can go to the next step - to produce this medication, to manufacture a lot of this medication."
But just where any medication based on the study might be manufactured is still uncertain. The Association, which holds the patent on the drug, is seeking a partner. Manufacturing the drug is "easy" says Dr. Gbodossou."We can do it in tablet form or pill form. We dry the plant and make a powder. Our hope is to manufacture this in Africa - any country in Africa. And we want to make it accessible at a small price."
Copyright © 2002 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
SPACEMART
Africa Can Lift Itself Out Of Poverty, ICT Entrepreneur Says
Africa has three telephone lines for 200 people, compared with 128 lines in the United States. The continent's 54 countries, home to 700 million people, have only one percent of the world's Internet users, and no more telephones between them than the 26 million citizens of Tokyo.
by Robert Holloway
New York (AFP) Mar 23, 2002
As Third World leaders pleaded this week for big increases in Western development aid, US-based African businesswomen said governments could help by unshackling their Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors.
"We really believe that Africa can pull itself out of poverty" and become an information and communication technology centre, said Rebecca Enonchong, the Cameroon-born founder and chief executive of Application Technologies, of Bethesda, Maryland.
Awo Quaison-Sackey, president of AQ Solutions in New Haven, Connecticut, said most outsiders thought of Africa as a war zone or a drain for aid money, "but no-one sees the business opportunities."
In countries such as her native Ghana, women played a vital economic role that could be amplified by access to the Internet, Quaison-Sackey said.
Both women are members of a committee set up this year by the UN development fund for women (UNIFEM) to bring together African entrepreneurs inside and outside Africa, as well as major firms such as Cisco Systems and UN bodies.
A third member, Somali-born Yussur Abrar, who heads Warsun International Communications of Vienna, Virginia, said "we can perhaps influence some of the regulators in Africa" who keep markets closed to protect state-run monopolies.
The three spoke in separate telephone interviews with AFP.
Africa has three telephone lines for 200 people, compared with 128 lines in the United States. The continent's 54 countries, home to 700 million people, have only one percent of the world's Internet users, and no more telephones between them than the 26 million citizens of Tokyo.
Enonchong, who runs a company with 100 employees and annual revenue of 20 million dollars, said she saw that as an advantage.
"There is no way we can catch up, but by using wireless and satellite technology, we can leapfrog," she said.
In the market at Cameroon's main city, Douala, a seller of local handicraft had scanned photos of his wares and asked for her advice about selling over the Internet, she said.
"There are so many things the developing world needs which the developed world does not see," Enonchong went on.
"If a farmer can go onto the Internet and find out how much his coffee is selling on world markets, he will be better able to negotiate with his buyers."
Enonchong said the committee gave companies such as hers "an opportunity to leverage the credibility and authority of the United Nations" in discussions with governments.
"We have the know-how, the experience and the ability, but it is much more difficult for us to interact with governments," she said.
Abrar said state monopolies acted as a brake on development, but that created opportunities for an international telecommunications carrier such as Warsun, which employs about 50 people at its headquarters.
"A lot of carriers don't consider Africa important enough for them to do business there," she said, but her firm deals with about 10 countries as diverse as Nigeria, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
AQ Solutions, an offshore software maintenance and development company which employs 25 people in Accra, has also exploited trans-Atlantic differences to attract clients including General Electric and Phoenix Insurance.
Wages in Ghana are between 25 and 60 percent below the United States, while the five-hour time difference with the US east coast in effect gives the client an extra working shift without paying overtime.
The company took off in late 1999 "when many companies found they were short of resources to tackle the Y2K Millennium bug threat," Quaison-Sackey said.
Asked how much impact it had had on the Ghanaian economy, she replied: "When you pay wages to one person, you raise the livelihood of up to 100 others; if we can reach our goal of employing 400 people in Ghana by 2005, we will benefit thousands."
All rights reserved. © 2002 Agence France-Presse.
University of Glasgow, Development newsletter, avenue 31, January 2002
http://www.gla.ac.uk/publications/avenue/31/
The African Connection
In the first of a series of articles on Glasgow's connections with the continents of the world, Douglas Blane explores the Afican connection
1. Something new out of Africa...
2. Veterinary links...
3. Wisdom lingers...
4. A spoonful of sugar...
Douglas Blane is a writer and journalist. He is an alumnus of the University of Glasgow and a graduate of the Universities of Stirling and London.
Something new out of Africa
by Douglas Blane
At the time of the foundation of the University of Glasgow, Portuguese sailing ships had been exploring the coastline of Africa for just two decades. But complex societies and sophisticated cultures had been flourishing on that great continent for almost five thousand years.
Ancient Egypt had supported not just an opulent aristocracy but writers, artists, craftsmen. The kingdom of Aksum had grown rich on commerce with Rome and Arabia, building a navy that dominated the Red Sea. The inhabitants of Jenne-jeno on the Niger had developed a uniquely co-operative style of urban living. And the great tracery of caravan routes across the Sahara had carried the lifeblood of Mediterranean trade to thriving centres like Timbuktu deep in the heart of West Africa.
From tropical rainforest to arid desert the continent supported a rich diversity of cultures as old as anything known to Europe: farmers, herders, townspeople, hunter-gatherers with intimate knowledge of the land and its wildlife. But the Portuguese adventurers, and the Dutch, French and British that followed them, had little interest in the people, no knowledge of their history, and scant understanding of the physical landscapes they had come to plunder.
But currents were astir that would lift the veil on the physical features of the continent, even if its history and culture would remain terra incognita for a long time to come. Explorers had begun to trek across the sands and savannahs, and navigate the Nile, the Niger and the mighty Zambezi. Not far behind them came the missionaries, and before long there were hundreds of these zealous men and women struggling to save the African soul. David Livingstone, the most celebrated of them all, strove for over three decades to open up Africa to commerce and Christianity, and to put an end to the terrible traffic in human slaves.
Irascible yet persuasive, racked by malaria but "compelled by the love of Christ", Livingstone was one of the hardiest characters in recorded history. The medicines he concocted to combat fever: 'Livingstone's Rousers': were so powerful they made his head spin and his ears ring, but they kept him going for over 30,000 miles, most of them on foot, and they became the standard treatment for malaria until something less lethal was devised in 1921.
Countless idealistic men and women have been inspired by Livingstone's story to follow him to Africa: a tradition that has been particularly strong in the west of Scotland where he grew up and was educated, attending classes in medicine at Andersonian University and Greek at the University of Glasgow. But Livingstone was the product of a much older tradition, and his belief in the merits of education, hard work, and devotion to God has been absorbed by Scottish schoolchildren, around the hearth and the blackboard, since the time of the Reformation.
The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, paid tribute to those traditions when he addressed the Scottish Parliament on 14 June 2001. He spoke of Lovedale College built by the Glasgow Missionary Society in 1824 which, from its earliest days, was focused on the need to create a non-racial South Africa. Throughout the political upheavals of the 20th century, he said, the College preserved that ethos "because Scottish missionaries were still teaching there". The impact on South Africa of Lovedale graduates, he concluded, was "incalculable in terms of helping us to get to where we are today".
Credit for transforming Lovedale into such an influential institution belongs largely to Rev James Stewart, who took part in Livingstone's Zambezi expedition before returning to Scotland to study medicine at the University of Glasgow. Appointed Principal of Lovedale in 1866, Stewart, a firm believer in the character-building qualities of education, industry and religion, introduced manual labour to lessons at Lovedale, organising his students to build roads, watercourses and dams. In later years he was substantially responsible for setting up Livingstonia Mission in modern-day Malawi.
It was at Livingstonia that Donald Fraser, a Glasgow medical graduate and leading light in the student missionary movement, began a long and productive relationship with rural Africa. He and his wife Agnes founded the clinic on the shores of Lake Malawi which later became Embangweni Hospital, and nowadays serves a rural population of 100,000, treating 4,000 in-patients a year for malaria and malnutrition, AIDS and anaemia. In the words of a recent visitor "beauty and hardship sit side by side at Embangweni".
A thousand miles north and 60 years later another medical project: more secular but with benefits that would prove equally enduring: began when a team from the University's Vet School alighted from the planes that had flown them to Nairobi and set off in a convoy of cars to the outskirts of the city. It was 1963 and colonial rule in British East Africa was hastily being dismantled. But perceptive eyes among the Glasgow vets had noticed that the departing administration was leaving behind a potential disaster: the livelihoods of the predominantly rural population, intimately linked to the health of their cattle, were being entrusted to the hands of just two qualified vets for the entire country.
Veterinary Links
by Douglas Blane
Ian McIntyre, convinced that local diploma students could be educated as veterinary surgeons, proposed that University staff and resources be made available to do so. "Within days of our arrival," says Professor Max Murray, a young Glasgow vet at the time, "McIntyre with his characteristic drive and leadership had the course going full tilt. A year later 40 students graduated as veterinary surgeons, the first ever graduates of the University of East Africa. These later came to occupy the most senior veterinary positions throughout Africa, steering Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania through the transitional years of independence."
Other benefits that flowed from this innovative project included the setting up of a medical school in Nairobi, the founding of major animal research institutes in Kenya and The Gambia, and the creation of new vet schools in Uganda and Tanzania. All of which gave rise to a network of friendships and professional contacts that has grown and strengthened over the years. Currently the Vet School is working on diseases and treatments in 18 different African countries.
Despite such notable successes, however, Africa as a whole is not a continent the developed world can point to with much pride. At the time of writing, surgeons in New York had just announced a high-tech operation by remote control on a gall-bladder 5,000 miles away in Strasbourg. Meanwhile at Embangweni Hospital surgical patients are anaesthetised with ether dispensed from a peanut-butter jar.
The contrast could hardly be more stark. Most of Africa's 800 million inhabitants barely scratch a living from the land. Endemic diseases like malaria kill millions, new ones like AIDS devastate entire populations and, despite decades of research, the trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness in animals and humans still "hold captive an area of Africa equal to continental USA".
It is hardly surprising that unswerving confidence in the potential of modern science to transform the continent is now rarely heard, having been replaced by something more measured and circumspect. "The idea that all the problems of the third world could be solved by wholesale transfer of science and technology had its origins just after the War," says Geography Professor John Briggs. "Yet half a century later life for most Africans hasn't got any better."
Part of the problem, he suggests, is that "the voice of the South goes largely unheard". Left to their own devices, it is thought, local people will only cause further degradation to fragile environments: which must therefore be managed using knowledge rooted firmly in western science and technology. Reacting against this viewpoint, researchers at Glasgow and elsewhere have been trying to tease out the informal but often sophisticated understanding of the natural environment: how to manage its resources, soils and water: that has been built up over generations among indigenous populations.
"The challenge," says Professor Briggs who has worked on many African projects, most recently among the Bedouin of the Eastern Desert, "is to combine and interweave formal and people's knowledges. We're not saying science and technology have no role to play: of course they do. But reality is messy. What we're trying to do, if you like, is explore those areas where the precision of science meets the messiness of reality."
But according to Alex Johnstone, who retired earlier this year as Professor of Science Education, this paradigm shift will take more to achieve than increased flexibility on the part of the developed world. There exists in Africa, he says, a post-colonial legacy that militates against attempts to enrich science with indigenous knowledge, or adapt it to local needs. In his work with postgraduate students in Glasgow, and in educational institutions in Africa, he has encountered a seemingly intractable dilemma: "I gave a talk once and they listened politely and told me it was very interesting and they'd love to apply the ideas. 'But you do realise,' they said, 'that there is no electricity in our schools?' It hit me like a ton of bricks that a lot of our ideas just cannot work in Africa. Now you might think the answer would be to devise scientific activities using local materials and local ideas. But a lot of ingenuity has gone into that approach, and instead of grabbing the stuff many teachers would reject it because it 'wasn't the real thing'."
On the one hand existing infrastructures and resources will not support the kind of science education practised in the west. On the other, most attempts to adapt pedagogy to local conditions are regarded as ersatz science. It is very frustrating, says Professor Johnstone, and there is no easy answer. Progress will come, he believes, when educators in Africa are weaned away from English textbooks and exam-systems, and science is taught in the students' own languages using concepts, examples and practices with which they are already familiar.
Given the long history of Vet School involvement in Africa, it is perhaps no surprise to find one of its young professors already active in this area: presenting research findings relevant to people's lives in an easily accessible way. Julie Fitzpatrick has been collecting and analysing data on the animals owned by some of the world's poorest people, the farmers and herders of northern Tanzania. But not content with merely publishing her research findings on widespread diseases like mastitis, Professor Fitzpatrick has also been trying to communicate them to local people who are "hungry for information".
Training courses have been organised, as well as lively meetings in and around the villages. "We have also been working on books for the classroom, aimed at getting animal health practices across to children in their own language. When you talk to people and watch how they work, you sometimes notice small things that can make a big difference. When farmers dip their cattle for instance, they often use the wrong concentration because the instructions are inadequate or written in English. Severe losses to these poor people could be prevented just by making sure they get the right information."
Max Murray believes that this type of work holds great promise for the people of rural Africa. He talks of the Glasgow vets' research on a hardy breed of cattle called the N'dama, which have been found to possess inherited resistance to trypanosomes. And he cautions against too vigorous a rejection of modern science: perhaps the way ahead will involve breeding programmes to assist natural selection. Perhaps it will come from newer technologies such as cloning the N'dama genes that confer resistance. Perhaps it will take some as yet unimagined scientific breakthrough.
Whatever the means, Professor Murray, whose work in Africa has extended over almost 40 years, is optimistic about the end. He looks forward to the day when animals have been produced that can be relied on to stay robust, healthy and productive. "That will make a tremendous difference," he says, "to the lives of ordinary people in Africa."
Sisdom lingers
by Douglas Blane
Hnterian Museum & Art Gallery
Relations between the University of Glasgow and the continent of Africa began in the 19th century as not much more than a cordial friendship. Since then there have been a few periods of disaffection, but at the beginning of the 21st century the bonds are stronger and more varied than ever before.
Around the time of the University' s 1870 move to Gilmorehill two discoveries: the great diamond-fields on the northern frontiers of Cape Colony, and the ailing David Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika: combined to bring Africa dramatically to the public eye. Graduates in divinity, medicine and engineering began making their way to the mines and the mission stations, and at the same time the University' s growing reputation began to attract people from Africa to study at Glasgow.
African experts on the staff around the turn of the century included the first Professor of Geography Henry Lyons and the first Professor of Geology John Walter Gregory, a larger than life character with a substantial academic reputation. Gregory was twice consulted on African locations for a Jewish homeland. "It is interesting to speculate on the possible consequences for world history," comments Professor Forbes Munro, "if at least one of his reports had been positive."
In Uganda there occurred at this time a prolonged and devastating outbreak of sleeping sickness, which the government attacked on two fronts: relocating thousands of people from the tsetse fly breeding grounds, and supporting fundamental research by a scientific team under the auspices of the Royal Society. At least one Glasgow researcher, zoologist Muriel Robertson, joined that team, and as an expert on the trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness took some of the first steps on the long road to eventual defeat of the deadly parasite.
For a time during the first half of the 20th century work on Africa diminished, but in 1948 a Centre for African and Far Eastern Studies was offered to the University, probably because of the world renown of its then Chancellor and former graduate John Boyd Orr, soon to be awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on nutrition in Britain and Kenya. The Centre did not materialise but Tom Price, who had been teaching in Malawi, was appointed lecturer in social anthropology, subsequently collaborating on a substantial work of scholarship on the African hero John Chilembwe.
The great resurgence of interest in Africa can be dated to the Vet School initiative of the 1960s, to which can also be traced the origins of much current work by young researchers like Julie Fitzpatrick, Paul Hagan, Mark Eisler and Stuart Reid. Increased research activity in turn has led to greater interest in Glasgow as a place of study for Africans. Between 1880 and 1965, 1,046 students born in Africa matriculated at the University, but since then an average of over 130 a year have studied here. The African connections are no longer confined to the Vet School and the Institute of Biological and Life Sciences. Joe Connolly has been analysing the active constituents of therapeutic plants in Cameroon. John Briggs has been studying indigenous knowledge in Egypt and the vexed question of land use in South Africa. Robert Ellam has been investigating South African geology by isotopic analysis of its rocks. And Malcolm McLeod is an authority on the culture and history of the Asante.
In the Hunterian Museum a set of gold weights carved by the Asante is currently on display: a small part of a much larger collection of African objects stored in a dark room full of tall, wooden cabinets. There, as Aileen Nisbet walks along the dimly-lit passageways, pulling out drawer after drawer of bracelets, statues, spears, tools, musical instruments and exquisite tortoise-shell boxes: all lovingly labelled, classified and protected from the elements: she talks of the conflict museum staff feel between the desire to preserve and the need to display: "None of these objects from the past will last forever. Chemicals in the air, in the wood and on people' s fingers are gradually eating them away, and every time you move one its life is shortened. There is no point, though, in having these fascinating things if nobody ever gets to see them."
But the University' s African research and teaching are more robust than its artefacts. It may be time, suggests Professor Malcolm McLeod, to bring them out of the shade by formulating a University policy on African studies: "It is striking that few of those involved in Africa ever seem to have worked with others outside their own departments: or even to have been aware of who was doing what and where. It may be that the time has come to change that approach."
The African Connection
Oregon State University, Office of International
Research & Development
Women in International Development
Mission
The Women in International Development Program (WID) at Oregon State University focuses on issues of equity, justice, peaceful living conditions, and equal access to resources for all women. WID's goal is to empower women through collaborative projects and the exchange of knowledge and experience in women's issues worldwide.
Women in Development Network
The program maintains the WID Network which includes community members, faculty, staff, and students. Information on current gender-related opportunities, lectures and events, and publications is shared through the network. Community members from outside the university are encouraged to participate in WID programs and planning. Women engaged in leadership training, and natural resource management, human services, health and international development currently help with many aspects of our programs. WID welcomes all that share an interest in women's concerns internationally. Contact us to become a member of the Network.
Women in Development Council
The Women in International Development Council is a group of OSU faculty, staff, and community members committed to this goal. The Council’s role is to create programs and projects that take advantage of the interests and abilities of university and community women to address women's issues internationally. Faculty associated with WID represents a wide range of departments across the OSU campus. This diversity is reflected in the array of fields in which WID associates pursue research, fields such as health, natural resources and the environment, education, political science, anthropology, and agricultural research and extension.
What WID Does
1. Generates proposals for projects that further WID's goals of empowering women through exchange of knowledge and information, and improving conditions for women worldwide.
2. Performs gender analysis of proposals developed in the Office of International Research and Development and in other OSU departments.
Provides contacts for information, training, and consulting in gender analysis in international development.
3. Assists faculty with curriculum development to enhance the relationship of gender concerns to various academic disciplines.
4. Provides network support in the arena of community management of natural resources and women's critical roles as community organizers and networkers in the management of natural resources.
5. Organizes and hosts a seminar series that explores women's experiences in development worldwide and draws on people at OSU and in the community to serve as presenters.
6. Maintains a library and resource center where university and community members may check out books, publications, and videos on international women's issues.
Who to contact:
Charlotte Haynes, Director
Women in International Development Program
Phone: 541 737-6406
E-mail: Charlotte.Haynes@orst.edu
Office of International Research & Development
407 Snell Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331-1641