Human rights quotations:
"The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education. -- Albert Schweitzer:
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Dom Helder Camara:
" Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it. "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with. Eleanor Holmes Norton
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor. Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (Philippines)
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. ~Barry Goldwater
"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights. Bishop Desmond Tutu, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
"It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home. Carl T. Rowan
"Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below. Roger Baldwin
Towards a Viable and Credible Development in Africa
By Abdoulaye Niang
“Annually hundreds of seminars, workshops and high level meetings are organized and numerous policy and technical papers and books are written on global partnership for Africa’s development. Yet, Africa remains a sick continent. In this book, through a simple technique of Rethinking Africa’s Development Process (RADP), questions on Africa’s development process are asked and answered resulting in generating the push factors to put Africa on a path to a viable and credible development.” ~Excerpt from Towards a Viable and Credible Development in Africa by Abdoulaye Niang, Ph.D.
What is wrong with Africa?
Towards a Viable and Credible Development in Africa is an empowering, important plan to invigorate the economic structure of one of the world’s most impoverished regions. Africa is a continent rich in natural resources. However, many of its inhabitants live in extremely poor conditions, primarily due to internal corruption and external exploitation. In this enlightening work, author Abdoulaye Niang, Ph.D. offers a concrete plan that asks African leaders to band together, united by the principles of progress and self-sufficiency. Perhaps most significantly, Niang explains how development of one continent will lead not only to a more viable Africa, but also how it will impact and improve global economics and stability—making the world a better, safer place for all.
http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/sdd/default.htm
Africa must meet its basic needs without undermining the environment, says Dione
By Yinka Adeyemi
Africa must find a way to meet its basic needs, extricate itself from poverty and mainstream itself in the global economy, without undermining the very resources and environment on which it depends for survival, ECA’s Director of Sustainable Development Division, Josue Dione, said in Addis Ababa today.
In an opening statement at the high-level launch of the African 10-Year Framework Programme (10YFP), Mr. Dione said by most assessments, it was clear that Africa would not meet the MDG targets on basic needs such as food, health, shelter, water and sanitation.
Yet, the continent continues to face challenges in high population growth, rapid urbanization and increasing environmental and natural resource degradation.
“This is why I am delighted that the framework programme has focused on energy, water and sanitation; habitat and sustainable urban development and industrial development,” he said.
Mr. Dione said ECA had, over the years, been paying closer attention to all these thematic areas collaborating with the African Union and African Development Bank (AfDB) in developing the Africa Water Vision 2025; instituting the African Water Information Clearing House and collaborating with eight UN agencies and the AfDB in preparing the biennial African Water Development Report.
ECA also carried out two pilot studies on minerals cluster development which identified potential areas for natural resources cluster development in Africa and strategic options for their development, said Mr. Dione.
“Changing production and consumption patterns in the continent requires that linkages between the natural resources sector and local economies are maximized, local beneficiation of raw materials is promoted, value addition is increased, and clusters of competitive industries anchored on the natural resources endowments are fomented,” he said
For full text, please click here. http://www.uneca.org/eca_resources/Speeches/2006_speeches/052906speech_dione.htm
Sokari gives us the low-down on blogging in Africa.
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=4847159
Internet & ICTs for Social Justice and Development News
A computer for Africa, will it work?
KADUNA, Nigeria -- APCNews interviewed Ochuko Onoberhie (34) in the Southern Kaduna state of Nigeria. The young man who studied engineering at the University of Benin is from the Fantsuam Foundation [1], an APC affiliated non-profit founded in 1996 in the city of Jos, Nigeria. From the outset, it was known that his group planed the development of a unique computer that could fight the heat, dust and take on the challenging power situation of rural Africa [2]. But Onoberhie reveals details around the `Solo'.
The new Solo computer is being developed in partnership with a group of software designers based in Great Britain. It is designed to get around the many challenges of operating in Africa, and Fansuam is now field-testing the latest prototype.
It is very tiny, just like a single card from the motherboard of a regular PC and comes with all the same ports and connectors as a PC. The most obvious difference is the wooden case. There are no moving parts to fail, the hard drive is replaced by a flash card and most importantly, it has been specially engineered to work on very limited power supply. A typical PC's power consumption is 300 watts [equivalent to three 100 watts light bulbs], whereas a Solo's, running with the help of a solar panel, is just 8.5 watts.
Where did it got its name from? The computer can be used on its own, without being connected to an electrical grid or power supply. This is why the people behind the project have coined it 'solo', meaning 'alone'. Since it runs on very little energy, the name also plays on words in referring to "so low".
It is meant to take care of unique challenges in developing countries. One of these challenges is the issue of heat and dust that causes computer failure. Then, there is the issue of high humidity and high temperatures. Testing in harsh weather conditions is almost over. "It's currently very close to production. Hopefully, in a few months, we should have a production version ready," he says. "The response has been tremendous", says Onoberhie. "Everybody is waiting for us to get it out."
"It doesn't have any hard-driver with any moving parts. It works on eight-and-half watts. If you can afford a strong UPS [Uninterruptible power supply unit], you can be on for a very long time when the power fails," promises Onoberhie.
Explan [3] of the United Kingdom is Fantsuam's technical partner. They are responsible for design. Although their input is not free of charge, there's another side to the story. "We're looking at the TCO [total cost of ownership] which we hope to be able to bring down. Currently, it would cost USD$ 100 a year, which to us is very cheap, when looked at against the other products in the market. This promises a life of 10-12 years," says Onoberhie.
"The only thing in between you might want to replace, is your battery. These are nickel metal hydride high-temperature batteries. They are the size of a triple A battery and stacked in two sets, in a box with an intelligent processor, which makes it hot-swappable... if needed when one is low on charge," he adds, optimistically.
What are its specs? The ARM processor is going to be at about 500 megahertz, with about 256 megabytes of memory and 2.5 gigabits of flash drive capacity. "It's hoped that data storage will be more external than internal -thorough devices like the USB pen, and flash disks are envisioned. You could plug in a USB CD drive, which it supports. Maybe even find a way to power it externally, if it's necessary," says Onoberhie.
The operating system is GNU/Linux based - Debian Woody - but the production version is going to be on Sarge [a recent release of the community-driven Debian distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system].
Even though a release date is not firmed up yet, it is expected that the Solo will be introduced in Africa to begin with and supported by Fantsuam in Nigeria.
[1] http://www.fantsuam.org/
[2] http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=1129563
[3] http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/solo.shtml
Fantsuam Foundation
The Solo is being developed with the support of the Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) programme
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/article/view/155754/1/
A little laptop with big ambitions
Steve Stecklow and James Bandler
30 November 2007
World leaders and corporate benefactors jumped in to support the nonprofit project, called One Laptop Per Child. Mr. Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopscotched the world collecting pledges from developing nations to buy the laptops in bulk.
But nearly three years later, only about 2,000 students in pilot programs have received computers from the One Laptop project. An order from Uruguay for 100,000 machines appears to be the only solid deal to date with a country, although Mr. Negroponte says he's on the verge of sealing an order from Peru for 250,000.
Mass production
The first mass-production run, which began this month in China, is for 300,000 laptops, tens of thousands of which are slated to go to U.S. consumers. Mr. Negroponte's goal of 150 million users by the end of 2008 looks unattainable.
Mr. Negroponte's ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea. For-profit companies threatened by the projected $100 price tag set off at a sprint to develop their own dirt-cheap machines, plunging Mr. Negroponte into unexpected competition against well-known brands such as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.
A version of Mr. Negroponte's vision is starting to come true. Impoverished countries are indeed snapping up cheap laptops for their schoolchildren -- just not anywhere near as many of his as he expected. They now have several cut-price models to choose from, raising the possibility that One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, will end up as a niche player.
"I'm not good at selling laptops," Mr. Negroponte has told colleagues. "I'm good at selling ideas."
"From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million" laptops made by competitors "in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success," he said in a recent interview. "My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It's in the education business."
From its inception, One Laptop Per Child posed a threat to the personal-computing dominance of software giant Microsoft and chip maker Intel. Mr. Negroponte's team, drawn from MIT, designed a machine that didn't use Windows or Intel chips. It uses the Linux operating system and other nonproprietary, open-source software, which users are allowed to tinker with.
Last year, Intel, which normally doesn't sell computers, introduced a small laptop for developing countries called the Classmate, which currently goes for between $230 and $300. It has marketed the computer aggressively, although it stands to make little money on the initiative. But it hopes to prevent rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or AMD, whose chips are in Mr. Negroponte's competing computer, from becoming a standard in the developing world.
By most accounts, Mr. Negroponte and his 20-member team have created a rugged, innovative laptop with good software for learning. The small green-and-white device is designed to operate on very little power -- a small solar panel can keep it going -- and to resist rain and dust. Its unique, high-resolution screen stays bright even in direct sunlight. The laptop has a built-in video camera and connects wirelessly to the Internet and to other laptops of its kind.
Hitting snags
But the project has hit snags. The $100 price target is proving difficult to hit, although Mr. Negroponte's team has succeeded in creating a device that's cheaper than other laptops. It now sells for $188, plus shipping. Potential buyers in the developing world have expressed concern about the availability of training for schoolteachers, and after-sales support. Mr. Negroponte's plan is for the machines to be simple enough that students can train themselves -- and solve any glitches that arise.
Some potential buyers are having second thoughts about One Laptop Per Child. Officials in Libya, who had planned to buy up to 1.2 million of the laptops, became concerned that the machines lacked Windows, and that service, teacher training and future upgrades might become a problem.
"The Intel machine is a lot better than the OLPC," says Mohamed Bani, who chairs Libya's technical advisory committee but doesn't have the final say on buying laptops. "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines." Libya has decided buy at least 150,000 Intel Classmates. The future of the One Laptop program there is now uncertain.
Mr. Negroponte, who is 63 years old, is a computer-science expert and veteran technology investor. He co-founded and formerly directed the MIT Media Laboratory and helped to found Wired Magazine. He serves on the board of Motorola Inc. Recently, he was selected by News Corp. to serve on a committee to protect the editorial integrity of Dow Jones & Co., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, following News Corp.'s agreement to purchase the company. His brother is U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.
Unveiling $100-laptop
Nicholas Negroponte unveiled his $100-laptop plan in January 2005 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting it would transform education for the world's disadvantaged schoolchildren and help eliminate poverty. Later that year, he predicted the project would sell 100 million to 150 million laptops in 2008 to developing countries.
Google Inc., AMD and News Corp. were among the companies that each kicked in $2 million of funding. In November 2005, then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly endorsed the concept, demonstrating an early prototype powered by a hand crank, a feature that subsequently was scrapped.
At a presentation seven months ago, Mr. Negroponte expressed confidence that he had commitments from countries to purchase 2.5 million laptops in 2007.
But the Taiwan-based manufacturer, Quanta Computer Inc., is producing only 300,000 units this year, he said in a recent interview. At a conference this month, he said that his new goal for 2008 is to produce one million laptops a month, but he added that he can't say when that target will be reached.
Because the initial production volume is smaller than expected, the project hasn't benefited from anticipated economies of scale. Design upgrades - more memory and a faster microprocessor, the brains of the machine - also added to the price, apparently costing the project sales.
Nigeria, for example, so far has failed to honor a pledge by its former president to purchase one million laptops. That's partly because they no longer cost $100 apiece, says Tomi Davies, a Nigerian-born technology entrepreneur who helped Mr. Negroponte set up talks with Nigerian officials.
The higher price also has made the laptop vulnerable to competition from sellers of more traditional, Windows-based machines. For many education ministries, "it's a no-brainer you go with Microsoft," says Mr. Davies.
The One Laptop initiative is facing competition from Taiwanese, Indian and Israeli sellers of inexpensive Windows laptops, who see the developing world's more than one billion potential young customers as a big opportunity.
Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., so far has proven the biggest competitive threat. The introduction of the low-cost Classmate sparked accusations by Mr. Negroponte that Intel was trying to undermine his nonprofit initiative. Intel made a multimillion-dollar contribution to the One Laptop project and joined its board in July.
Nevertheless, Intel has continued to compete with the nonprofit, and it appears to be winning. It recently inked deals to sell hundreds of thousands of Classmates in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan -- countries that Mr. Negroponte had been counting on. Intel has launched a series of pilot projects in those countries, and has said it will test the Classmate in at least 22 other nations, donating thousands of machines.
In recent months, Mr. Negroponte has abandoned his initial strategy of trying to persuade a half-dozen developing countries - Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Thailand - to buy one million laptops each. The project has begun accepting much smaller orders, and is attempting to persuade wealthier countries, including Italy and Spain, to finance laptops for poorer ones.
As sales problems mounted, the project recently reversed course on its plan not to sell the device to American consumers. On Nov. 12, it began selling pairs of laptops to U.S. and Canadian buyers for $399. Under the program - called "Give One. Get One." - one goes to a student in a poor country like Haiti, the other to the buyer. The program was supposed to last just two weeks, but on Thursday One Laptop said it was extending the offer through Dec. 31 because "people want more time to participate." Mr. Negroponte says there were about 45,000 two-laptop orders in the first nine days, with nearly half coming on the first day.
Grumbling suppliers
Suppliers are grumbling about missed forecasts and lowered expectations. "We wish they would ship more, absolutely," says Scott Soong of Chi Mei Group, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the laptop's screen, who also serves on One Laptop's board. Laptop-maker Quanta, which was told early this year to expect initial orders of five million to eight million, also is disappointed, according to a person familiar with the matter. "We're all frustrated with each other," says Mr. Negroponte of the friction with Quanta and suppliers. "Everybody's got a short fuse."
He seems most frustrated with Intel, whose overseas sales force has trumpeted the Classmate over his laptop in Nigeria and Mongolia, using marketing materials that claim the Intel machine is superior. "These are not isolated examples," he said in a recent interview. "They are daily events."
At a meeting this month in Cambridge, Mass., with representatives of Macedonia's government, Mr. Negroponte balked at authorizing a pilot project there after learning that officials also were considering testing the Classmate. He told them he didn't want to participate in a "bake-off."
Mr. Negroponte says he communicated this month with Intel's chief executive, Paul Otellini, and demanded that Intel stop selling the Classmate. Intel, which says there is room in the market for many machines, has refused, according to a spokeswoman.
Mr. Negroponte says he got the idea for the initiative after working on educational projects in Cambodia and other developing countries, where he saw that computers could spur children to learn and explore outside the classroom.
In November 2005, he demonstrated a working prototype with Mr. Annan at a U.N. technology conference in Tunisia. "It was the main highlight of the whole summit," says Raul Zambrano, a senior technology adviser at the U.N. Development Program, which provides assistance to developing countries and shared a booth with Mr. Negroponte. "People were coming up with cash, saying, 'I want to buy it now!' " Mr. Zambrano recalls.
Mr. Negroponte draws no salary from the nonprofit, which only has about 20 paid employees. For most of the past three years, he has promoted his idea around the world, meeting with numerous heads of state.
Commitments from countries
In mid-2006, a One Laptop official said the project had "commitments" from Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Thailand to purchase one million laptops each. The organization later retracted the claim. In October 2006, the New York Times reported that Libya had agreed to buy up to 1.2 million of the laptops by June 2008.
Publicly, Intel and Microsoft officials didn't hide their disdain for Mr. Negroponte's machine. In December 2005, Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett called an early version a "$100 gadget" that wasn't likely to succeed. At a conference in March 2006, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said: "Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type."
This year, Mr. Gates announced in China that Microsoft would offer developing countries a $3 software package that includes Windows, a student version of Microsoft Office and educational programs. Mr. Negroponte said the move was a direct response to his project.
James Utzschneider, general manager of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, a unit whose targets include young people in developing countries, denies this.
Libya and Egypt plan to buy the $3 software, Mr. Utzschneider says. Mr. Negroponte had hoped to sell his Linux-based laptops to both countries. Mr. Utzschneider says an organization in Russia has signed an agreement to buy at least 200,000 copies, with an option to buy up to 800,000 more. The Russians, he says, initially will load the software onto a low-cost laptop made by Asustek Computer Inc. of Taiwan, another One Laptop competitor.
By this spring, many of Mr. Negroponte's informal agreements with world leaders to buy millions of laptops appeared to be unraveling.
The prime minister of Thailand, who backed the project, was removed in a military coup. Nigeria was having second thoughts, in part because of the rising cost of the machine, according to Tomi Davies, who is helping One Laptop in Nigeria. Last month, Intel's Mr. Barrett visited Nigeria and announced that the company would donate 3,000 Classmates to schools there and would train 150,000 teachers to use computers in the classroom.
"We can't compete," complains Ayo Kusamotu, One Laptop's attorney in Nigeria. "The minute we started getting some traction, they [Intel] intensified their effort." Nigeria recently agreed to purchase 17,000 Intel Classmates.
Blasting Intel and then making peace
In May, Mr. Negroponte appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes" and blasted Intel, suggesting it was trying to drive his nonprofit out of business. Intel's Mr. Barrett called that idea "crazy." Two months later, Intel announced it was joining One Laptop's board. The agreement included a "nondisparagement" clause, under which Intel and One Laptop promised not to criticize each other, according to Mr. Negroponte.
John Davies, who oversees Classmate sales at Intel, says that after the broadcast, Intel decided to "purge" any marketing material that directly compares the competing laptops. But last month, an Intel representative gave a PowerPoint presentation to a Mongolian official that offered a "head-to-head comparison" between the Classmate and the One Laptop machine. Intel claimed the Classmate prevailed in nine of 13 categories, including processor speed and support for different operating systems, a copy of the presentation indicates.
Intel's Mr. Davies says the presentation violated company policy. "Sometimes you get escapees," he says, adding that he will be doing some "retraining" of the sales staff.
Mr. Negroponte says he complained to Intel's chief executive two weeks ago, then "made peace." Intel and the One Laptop project, he says, have agreed to work together to design by early January a new "Intel-based" One Laptop device. An Intel spokeswoman confirmed Mr. Negroponte's account, but said any comment would be "premature." AMD, whose chips are used in One Laptop's current machines, declined to comment.
There are no signs that Mr. Negroponte's project is in danger of fading away. Robert Fadel, its director of finance and operations, says the nonprofit has enough funding to last years. Its dozen corporate benefactors this year contributed $16.5 million, and it will be using $1 from each computer sold to cover administrative costs.
Last year, it took in $7.6 million in revenue, mainly from donors, and its budget this year is about $9.5 million. As of September, it had $8.7 million in cash on hand, an internal document indicates.
But it continues to face skepticism from its target audience. At a training conference it hosted this month in Cambridge for a large group of educators and tech specialists from developing countries, participants peppered Mr. Negroponte and other project officials with questions about teacher training and software bugs. "It will always have bugs in it and it will never be perfect," Mr. Negroponte told them, adding that he has a "royal battle" with his Windows-based computer nearly every morning.
Later, at a private meeting with a group from Rwanda, he announced that 20,000 laptops, courtesy of the "Give One. Get One." program, would soon be distributed. Carine Umutesi, who works for Rwanda's Information Technology Authority, questioned who would fix them if they break.
Mr. Negroponte said some initial tech support would be provided by Brightstar Corp., a Miami-based wireless equipment distributor. Just who would provide support a few years from now, he said, was "a frightening question." The students, he said, will need "to do as much maintenance as possible."
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Flush out the toilets, concludes World Toilet meet
Zofeen Ebrahim
27 November 2007
While the United Nations estimates that 2.6 billion people are living without proper sanitation and without access to potable water, those using flush toilets are converting precious water into dangerous effluents.
Sanitation experts who gathered in the Korean capital for the assembly, that concluded on Sunday, called for a major paradigm shift and even a `back to nature' approach to the disposal of human waste.
"We are on the wrong track," said Hubert J. Gijzen, a biotechnologist representing UNESCO's Indonesian office.
Newer ways, all agreed, were needed to be developed to dispose human excreta. If flush toilets have to be used they must be redesigned to reduce water consumption, or else use recycled water.
`'The current conventional sanitation systems will not be able to achieve the (United Nations') Millennium Development Goal,'' said lawmaker James D. Mamit from Malaysia, who is environment advisor to its state of Sarawak.
Ecologists are calling for a major sanitation reformation, along the concept of `EcoSan' or ecological sanitation, that would contribute towards water conservation and mitigating surface and ground water pollution, thereby reducing the risk of water-borne diseases.
Ecological ways
One of the technologies being widely advocated involves separation of faeces, urine and grey water, thereby minimising the volume of water needed to flush away excreta. Valuable nutrients are recovered, and the residual matter converted into biogas and used as fuel.
This rethinking would not only require innovation, research, training and awareness-raising but an abandonment of conventional water management while developing strategies that are effective, low-tech and low-cost as well.
Mamit suggests the inclusion of EcoSan concept at the policy level and suitable changes to existing legislations in many countries that favour conventional, centralised sanitary systems.
"It is understandable that these impacts were not foreseen at a time when the world population was only around one billion people, and global change pressures of today were not foreseen," said Gijzen.
But with climate change, population explosion, major urbanisation, which has in turn led to informal settlements, the old method of removing human waste is no longer sustainable.
Public health hazard
"No doubt water is life, but it is also a killer because we are contaminating our water," says Gijzen, adding that wastewater treatment was costly and still does not produce safe and pathogen-free effluents.
"In developing regions, effluents get dumped into water courses untreated due to the phenomenal costs of sewer collection systems and high rate of wastewater treatment technology. And with more than five billion people living near contaminated water we can never hope to get rid of water-borne epidemics or meet the Millennium Development Goals."
If taking the "toilet out of the water cycle" suggestion is taken seriously it is possible, Gijzen says, to have greener, eco-friendly cities 50 years from now while providing a toilet which everyone on the globe can afford.
"Living in a home next to a water course, which not only has crystal clear water, but which you can you can actually drink from, can be a reality,'' says Gijzen.
Eco-friendly models
One promising design for a toilet, that attracted attention at the Seoul meet, actually recycles water using a biological and physical process and sends it back into the toilet bowl.
Keon Ki- Lee, a Korean engineer who designed the system, says the toilet can be set up with or without a waterline or a drainage system and is environment friendly because the system does not produce a water discharge. "It has been received favourably by our local government," explained Lee.
A new UNESCO project Sustainable Urban Water Management Improves Tomorrow's City's Health, or SWITCH for short, already implemented with a hefty budget of 32 million US dollars for a period of five years, is already being implemented.
A whole range of eco-friendly models are being tried and tested in nine demo cities which include Bogota, Beijing, Ghana, Lima, Colombia and Alexandria. Schemes include those for the rational use of water, effluent reuse, dry sanitation, urine separation and nutrient recovery.
Mamit shared the experience of an EcoSan model established in two residential rural schools in Sarawak where toilets were modified to accommodate one flushing in a day using up to two litres of water. The biogas produced has helped save over 500 dollars per month that was spent on buying cooking gas for the school kitchen.
Source: IPS. http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/155612/1/
African Voices. Number 6: Sustainable Development Part 2
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PRESS IN AFRICA
by Sandra Mbanefo Obiago
Sustainable development is a much used phrase in international circles, but it is a concept that still has no clear definition nor clear time frame (what is a sustainable period?) and is little understood by the African press.
According to the World Resources Institute's 1994-95 Guide to the Global Environment, "Sustainable development is based on the recognition that a nation cannot reach its economic goals without also achieving social and environmental goals;that is, universal education and employment opportunity, universal health and reproductive care, equitable access to and distribution of resources, stable populations, and a sustained natural resource base." Although this definition is as broad as it is imprecise, we shall use it within the context of this article.
One reason that the African press doesn't write much about sustainable development is probably that there are few good examples of sustainable development projects to report. Another is that the press rarely gets the opportunity to visit examples of sustainable development and to see what it's all about first-hand.
Another reason sustainable development issues are not in the media spotlight is that major media houses across Africa are cash-strapped. There is no money for journalists to leave the city and visit sustainable development projects in the field. Furthermore, news and information have been forced into a commercial straightjacket. Ninety percent of what gets into the newspapers, television and radio is heavily sponsored. So cash-strapped developmental NGOs feel the necessity to wine and dine journalists to ensure that their message gets into print.
But even this is no assurance, as the information gatekeepers or editors often don't see the relevance of publishing the developmental story. Disaster, crime, and politics always beat the sustainable development story to the end-goal, unless of course there is some national controversy, in which case the story usually takes another twist and the controversy is pushed to the foreground.
An editor of a Nigerian newspaper asked a press officer of an environmental NGO about the relevance of a press release on the biodiversity convention. When the press officer explained that the biodiversity convention covered topics such as sustainable agriculture, equitable trade, technology transfer, and intellectual property rights and that it was important for developing countries to be active in the biodiversity dialogue, the editor insisted that while interesting, this was not a pressing news story.
Another obstacle to developmental reporting is that development, like the environment, often crosses into the area of human rights. A case in point is the massive oil exploration in Nigeria's Niger River delta. Everyone is aware that the oil exploration activities are unsustainable and that huge areas of the delta are being destroyed by oil pollution.
Niger Delta communities are crying out for international help as their soil, rivers, streams, and fish stocks are polluted and their livelihoods gravely threatened. But government is cracking down on this protest and the worst hit communities have been zoned off as national security areas. Journalists and human rights workers undertaking investigative work in the area have been labelled "unpatriotic" and have encountered difficulties in getting information.
And this is not an isolated case. Many African countries lack press freedom and when criticism of governments' unsustainable development practices and human rights violations becomes too sharp, media houses are proscribed and journalists become "security risks."
At the end of 1994 the organization Journalistes Sans Frontières reported that 103 journalists had lost their lives in the line of duty that year, up from 63 in 1993. Many were killed covering wars and civil unrest, but a large proportion also died while investigating controversial stories.
Also in the wake of wars and political turmoil in many African countries, sustainable development reporting takes a back seat within a context of political instability.
But before we go further in criticizing the African press, it is only fair to note that the non-African press also understand very little about sustainable development in Africa.
A case in point is the environment and development project called Campfire (Communal Areas Management Plan for Indigenous Resources) in Zimbabwe (see p. 33). Campfire is a national programme which gives local communities control of the natural resources in their area. The most notable natural resource with the highest income generating potential is wildlife;which, conversely, causes the greatest amount of poverty.
Communities which are rich in wildlife and want to join the Campfire programme register with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). Wildlife surveys are subsequently carried out within the Campfire communal areas, and sustainable wildlife quotas are set by the NPWS. Village committees decide if they want to kill and eat the wildlife on their quota, or if they want to sell the quota as hunting rights to safari hunters.
And this is the beginning of sustainable development. Villagers earn significant revenues from safari hunting (a tourist pays as much as US$12,000 to shoot an elephant), which they plough back into community development projects like schools and clinics.
But non-African press have a problem with this form of sustainable development. While they understand that shooting a few elephants will increase Africans' standard of living and alleviate poverty in rural areas where the land is poor, they often cannot reconcile killing a majestic elephant or lion as sustainable development or advancement.
In their minds, elephants are best kept protected, even at the cost of human suffering. In a similar vein the western press can't understand why some of Zimbabwe's elephants should be culled even if they destroy overpopulated national parks by ripping up tree trunks and destroying park vegetation, continuing on to ravage farmland and terrorize villagers outside park boundaries.
No, most of the international press, supported by animal rights activists, would rather see 70,000 elephants protected in Zimbabwe at the expense of sustainable development. The fact that Zimbabwe's land does not have the carrying capacity to sustain this massive elephant population falls mostly on deaf ears. All the international press are interested in are sensational photographs of elephants being slaughtered, accompanied by a few simplistic captions.
But from at least an African perspective, how can we ensure that sustainable development stories get into the African press?
The most obvious point is that sustainable development stories need to have a strong African slant and relevance to an African audience. For example, an international conference on the world's dwindling fish stocks will have little relevance to a Malawian, unless parallels can be drawn to the lack of sustainable fishing practices in Lake Malawi.
Development NGOs often work hand in hand with their international sister organizations and jointly publish press releases with a northern bias and non-African examples. If a story has a strong local lead and contains local examples and local quotes, there is a greater chance of having the information picked up.
Well-respected Kenyan educator and journalist Hilary Ng'weno recently commented that environment and development NGOs need to communicate, not just to the media but to all stakeholders in society. A concerted effort needs to be made to find strong, well-respected development spokespeople in such sectors as the religious community, the legal profession, the industrial and business sector and other professional groups. These spokespeople will not only ensure that the message reaches their target audience, but they also stand a better chance of getting picked up by the media.
Likewise, if newsworthy information is being released during a press conference, it increases the development NGO's credibility if nationally recognized content experts (not only staff members) also take part on the panel.
Bryna Brennan, a veteran American journalist experienced in conducting environmental reporting seminars in the developing world, advises NGOs to put media contacts on their mailing lists and encourages NGOs to write press releases with a local human interest angle free of scientific jargon.
A propos "jargon," Tom McShane, Africa Programme Officer with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said recently, "I suggest that the word "sustainable development" is jargon. The scientific, NGO, development and environment community really don't know what the term means;ask ten people and you will get ten definitions."
Development NGOs should also consider organizing awareness raising seminars for journalists to increase their understanding of development issues and to put the media in contact with development experts; journalists often don't know who the leading experts in various fields are.
Field trips to projects are another good way of impressing journalists with three-dimensional examples of exemplary sustainable development projects, as well as showing them examples of unsustainable development practices.
Furthermore, the environment and development community needs to support development courses in African universities, to sensitize students to sustainable development issues.
And in conclusion the best development medium in Africa is still radio. Radio is the most cost-effective and widespread medium for reaching Africa's 744 million people. Especially in highly populated urban areas and in rural communities, most people listen to the radio because it is cheap and doesn't always require electricity.
There are approximately 31.1 million radio receivers in sub-Saharan Africa;compared with 7.73 million television receivers, and a newspaper circulation of 4.8 million.1
Clearly, more Africans receive information through the radio than from any other communications medium. If development NGOs want to get their message across to the African general public, they should invest in radio communications and take a special interest in sensitizing radio journalists and producers to development issues.
I would like to end this brief article with the inspiring words of one of Africa's foremost fighters for sustainable development and environment, Wangari Maathai. Maathai, who is revered for her selfless and fearless struggle for African development said to me during an interview at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992:
"As long as you plant trees and don't ask questions, nobody will bother you. It's when you start looking for the causes of environmental degradation, rather than constantly dealing with the symptoms, that you enter into the arena of politics, human rights, justice and equity. In Kenya the government claims it has a right to encroach on forests;that it wants to create jobs. But forests are important for water security, for example. If the government is going to encroach on forests, people must be informed and must understand the impact... because 20-30 years along the road, they will have no water, streams will dry out, they will not be able to grow their crops, and there will be famine. That's the time we start asking the world to give us aid to feed our people. Instead of waiting until we see starving children, I would rather go to the root cause of the problem."
Notes
1. 1992 Africa South of the Sahara report.
http://www.unsystem.org/ngls/documents/publications.en/voices.africa/number6/vfa6.05.htm
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