Nick Wadhams

New OLPC design

 

The One Laptop Per Child program has come up with a new concept _ a cool-looking tablet. I am still not entirely clear on why kids in poor countries need laptops (or tablets) but there's no denying that this is pretty cool.

No roads, no jobs? Innovate

One more picture from my brief trip to western Uganda.

I came across this scene at the site of a washed out road near Lake Albert. What's happening here? Three guys are rebuilding a dirt road with spades and axes. Looking on is a line of young men who have strung a piece of twine across the road and are demanding cash from anyone who wants to pass. Behind me, out of the picture, is another line of young men to catch people going the other way. Their argument? We take it upon ourselves to fix the road, you pay us for it.

Extortion is one word for it. Necessity is another. This is what happens in a place that has been neglected by the government for decades. There is no infrastructure, and there are no jobs. Until oil was found here a few yaers ago, even driving out to western Uganda from Kampala was a near impossibility.

I'm not sure if this is "community empowerment," "capacity building," or "awareness-raising." But you have to admire these guys for their business sense.

Rhinos on the move

I was up near Mount Kenya this week to cover the relocation of four northern white rhinoceros to Kenya. Here are some pictures.

The plane arrives

Rhinos waiting to be put on trucks

Not sure what to make of this

I spent the day in western Uganda touring the concession where Tullow Oil has drilled wells in search of the black stuff. Tullow has found plenty of what it's looking for, possibly priming Uganda to become Africa's next big oil producer. 

Apropos of very little having to do with oil, this sign, next to a school near the shores of Lake Albert, struck me as curious.

 

Maybe I'm reading too much into a faded old sign, but why would the government feel compelled to note that Nyawaiga Primary School is "government aided?" Aren't all public primary schools government aided?

My theory on this has to do, perhaps oddly, with Uganda's reliance on foreign aid. Outside help makes up more than 40 percent of the country's budget. Everywhere you go, you see signs for schools, clinics, and other services that would be publicly funded in developed countries giving little shout-outs (shouts-out?) to the foreign NGOs or development agencies responsible for their existence.

You might think that the government, not donors, ought to be responsible for providing these services to its citizens, and you'd be right. But the Ugandan government, like many governments in Africa, provides so few of these things to its own people, particularly in rural areas. I suppose the existence of a school building that does not rely on foreign funding is an achievement that the government would want to trumpet.

Does Africa need a cheap laptop?

White African reports on the advent of a $99 laptop dubbed "Africa" being marketed to developing countries. As Hash notes, one of the big questions will be delivery _ how will people get the darned things? Cheap laptops will sell in Africa only if there's a place down the street for people to buy them.

 

The other question for me is how much demand there will really be. People over here can be just as obsessed with technology as folks back in the US, and many, many people I talk to say how much they want a laptop, but will they follow through? 

Kampala scenes

I'm in Uganda this week for a couple of stories. Here are a few snapshots:

 

The best way to get around Kampala is on the back of a motorcycle taxi. Very convenient and cheap. Why are there no boda-bodas in Nairobi?

Rank irresponsibility by the BBC

The BBC has a story today about farmers in Tanzania growing jatropha, a plant that produces oil suitable for biofuel. They sell it to a company called Diligent Tanzania (inevitably, it's a foreign company -- in this case, Dutch), which says on its web site that jatropha "can grow in areas that are unsuitable for other plants, because they are too dry or too arid, or because they have been left by humans because of soil depletion after excessive agriculture. The plant requires little water, fertilizer or pesticides."

Those claims are patently false. Numerous studies and anecdotal evidence from many farmers shows that jatropha can survive without much water, but actually requires more water than other biofuel plants to produce the same amount of oil. And pests like it just as much as they do any other plant.

Aside from a very few number of places, there is no money in jatropha. At this point, it's all potential. And in the meantime, farmers are planting a crop on land that could be used to grow food. 

But with everyone's focus on global warming, jatropha has become easier to sell despite what the science says. Farmers are wooed with pie-in-the-sky notions that they will be improving the environment and preparing for a world without fossil fuels, when it's really all about profit for the company in question.

According to Diligent's web site: "Diligent wants to contribute both to reduction of global warming, and to creation of employment in developing countries. The overall objective is triple profit: profit for society, for the environment, and an adequate profit for Diligent itself."

I guess everything hinges on what you mean by "adequate." One hates to sound pessimistic, but after living in Kenya and watching how companies promising to do good end up exploiting local people, it's hard not to be skeptical of these projects.

Passat Profit Part 2

The Passat insanity scales previously unimaginable heights. There I was the other morning, sitting at Java House at ABC Plaza,* and who should alight from his government-issued Volkswagen Passat but William Ole Ntimama, looking, it must be said, somewhat worse for wear. Apparently Ntimama, who has been the target of rather worrisome allegations from time to time, stashes his cash at the Barclay's just next door to Java.

Check out this exclusive photographic evidence of the Honorable MP doing his part to save the environment.

 

* For some reason, the Java at ABC, more than any other branch of this esteemed chain, is a great place to watch out for Nairobi's glitterati. I have seen government spokesman Alfred Mutua there several times (only on weekends, his colorful golf shirt neatly tucked into a pair of blue jeans), along with Aly Khan Satchu and many other mentionables.

Options. Options!

There are many things that confuse me. One of the big ones is why Kenya's supermarkets offer such a plethora of choices when it comes to cooking fat. In the U.S., Crisco has pretty much cornered the market. In Kenya, you've got Tily, Cowboy, Kasuku, Kimbo, Chipsy... I could go on.

Exclusive photographic evidence below, taken at Chandarana Supermarket in Lavington.

 

Then again, Kenya is home to the world's best product mascot, Biddy, an anthropomorphic dollop of margarine who loves to "spread the goodness." No disagreeing with that!

Somalia arms embargo

Sometime in January, a U.N. monitoring group is expected to publish its next report evaluating the Security Council-mandated arms embargo in Somalia. What with Somalia's various armed groups blowing each other up on a daily basis, you might be forgiven in thinking that there is no arms embargo in Somalia. In fact, the embargo has been in place for 17 years. 

The Somalia monitoring group's 2008 report is about as unequivocal as can be on the absurdity of the embargo (emphasis mine): 

"Although provision exists for exemptions to the embargo to be granted by the Security Council ... no exemption for delivery of arms and ammunition or  other lethal support to any Somali armed force or group has ever been granted. Consequently, the Monitoring Group believes that every armed force, group or militia in Somalia, their financiers, active supporters and, in some cases, foreign donors are currently in violation of the arms embargo." 

If ever there were a case study proving the complete uselessness of U.N. arms embargoes, it would be Somalia. Countries imposed the embargo to try to block other countries from sending weapons to certain factions, and then those same countries went on to send their own weapons to certain other factions. What a mess.

Passat profit goes poof?

CMC Motors Group, which supplied the Kenyan government with 140 Volkswagen Passats, has notified the Kenya Capital Markets Authority that profits for 2009 will be lower than expected (h/t Aly Khan Satchu via Bankelele). So perhaps there wasn't as much profit as everyone thought in the Passat deal, which raised suspicions among anti-corruption advocates for appearing to violate government procurement standards(CMC and the government deny any wrongdoing). 

Interesting aside: A little-noticed element in a recent U.N. report on the situation in eastern Congo was that Kinshasa-based CMC Automobiles SPRL had supplied the Congolese army with Land Rover Defender 110 vehicles, which were seen speeding around in Kinshasa, Kisangani and Goma. CMC Automobiles SPRL is linked to CMC Automobiles Ltd in Tanzania.

But you'd be wrong to suggest CMC Motors in Kenya was involved in that deal. CMC Automobiles and CMC Motors' Tanzania affiliate are not related, and have even seen each other in court over naming rights. 

UPDATE: Minutes after writing this post, what should I see ahead of me out by Valley Arcade? One of the government's new Volkswagen Passats! The insanity! Take a look -- GKA signifies a government plate. Apologies for the low picture quality.

 

Not to sound cynical, but...

Fifty-six newspapers written in 20 different languages agreed to publish an editorial yesterday that asks world leaders gathering at the Copenhagen summit on climate change to take action to fight rising temperatures worldwide. 

Hey, nobody loves a grand gesture more than I do, and I've got nothing against the effort to fight global warming, but this idea just strikes me as useless. The editorial urges the world to "combine to take decisive action" against climate change. "Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone." Um...OK! Let's get on that.

After covering untold numbers of press conferences and summits at the U.N. where someone urged someone else to take action against something, I began to feel that there was no news to report if the words "urge" and "take action" were used anywhere near each other. There has been a great deal of hubbub around Copenhagen but I pity the poor journalists who will have to cover the darn thing _ 14 tedious days of long-winded, well-meaning and vague speeches will be followed by the ridiculous dance of diplomats quibbling over every word of a final statement that will not be binding to any of them anyhow. 

I don't see what would compel world leaders to base their actions on an editorial, even one that appeared in 56 newspapers. World leaders urge us to take action on things all the time, and we ignore them. We urge world leaders to take action on things, and they ignore us too. This thing has as much of a chance of changing the minds of world leaders as do the thousands of protesters who will smash windows and do silly things to "raise awareness" outside the summit hall.

Even worse, the newspapers seem terribly smug about the whole thing _ writing this news story, for example, to trumpet their heroic effort. Just once I would like to see a newspaper quote someone skeptical when reporting on one of its own grand initiatives. From the story: 

"Peter Cole, head of the journalism department at the University of Sheffield, praised the unprecedented collaboration between newspapers." 

Surprise surprise! So much for objective news reporting.

Responsibility for the Mogadishu bombing

Many news reports on the Mogadishu bombing last week quote al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage denying that the group carried out the attack. Rage said al-Shabaab doesn't target innocent civilians (though they do decapitate Christians and stone women to death... apparently those people were not "innocent" enough) and blamed factions within the government.

I am confused by this. In my own reporting on the bombing for Time, I tracked down Sheikh Abdi Fatah Ibrahim Ali, who is deputy chairman of al-Shabaab's information department (love the title). He confirmed that the group was responsible. I am surprised that reporters have given so much credence to Rage's denial. It seems unlikely to me that the TFG would kill its own ministers and do it in a way that would inflict so many civilian casualties. Then again, it would seem like a disastrous PR move for al-Shabaab to do that either.

This blog post at Africa Comments suggests that I am a CIA spy for propagating a false claim of responsibility. I wish I were a spy... there's a lot more money in it than there is in freelancing. (Incidentally, does anyone know a who runs Africa Comments? The lead author is a longtime, prolific blogger who goes by the name "b real." Aside from the spy remark, his/her stuff is pretty interesting. I'm curious to know more about b real).

After the jump is the transcript of Sheikh Abdi Fatah's comments to me. Judge for yourself and tell me if you think he's telling the truth. The Sheikh Muktar he mentions is Sheikh Muktar Robow.

Audiobooks

A year ago, we bought a monthly subscription to Audible.com. You get one book a month for $15. I'd listened to the occasional audiobook before but am surprised, 12 months later, how much joy it brings us to have one on rotation all the time.

Below are the books we've gone through so far, in chronological order.

Dark Star, Alan Furst
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Home, Marilynne Robinson
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
Restless, William Boyd
Regeneration, Pat Barker

The only one I had to force myself to finish was Middlesex, which was read by a narrator who put too much of himself into the story. Anna Karenina was a monster _ more than 35 hours _ but it went with surprising speed. Without a doubt, the best-read book on this list was Restless. I teared up at Home, and it was impossible to stop listening to Stieg Larsson's two novels (relevant essay by Christopher Hitchens is here).

We will probably get the remaining two books in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy next. After that, any suggestions?

It's Getting Quiet Out There

Come now the news that National Geographic Adventure is shutting down its print version after a 59 percent drop in ad pages. Another string bites the dust.

Three years in, and five strings that once took pitches won't consider them anymore (or don't exist themselves). They are the Boston Globe (closed all foreign bureaus, nixed freelance), Cox Newspapers (ditto), the San Francisco Chronicle (shut down the Chronicle foreign service), Fortune Small Business (closed) and National Geographic Adventure.

Again, the above disproves the commonly held misconception that newspapers which fire their foreign correspondents would take more freelance. Instead, they've simply decided not to fill the gap. No wonder those guys weren't returning emails!

To Pay or Not To Pay?

It looks like Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan will be stuck in Nairobi for a few more days recovering from their 15-month hostage ordeal. Among the most interesting narratives in their saga is just how badly the Australian and Canadian governments bungled the negotiations for their release. 

I've spoken to two security consultants who were involved in the negotiations and both were dumbfounded at how ineptly the two governments that handled the situation. One described how the Canadian government repeatedly sent mixed signals _ agreeing one day to pay a ransom, then backing out the next, settling on a price and then changing their minds, repeatedly replacing the person who was in charge of the case. Another said he gave up in frustration after realizing that the Canadians in particular weren't going to be of any use.

At long last, after the pair had been in captivity for a year, their families (led by Brennan's brother) decided to go it alone and strike a deal with the kidnappers themselves. Brennan's family had "sausage-sizzle" BBQs to raise money and relied on the beneficence of an Australian businessman. And voila, within a few weeks, the two were released. As it turns out, there was simply no need for them to remain in captivity for so long.

Paying ransoms is no doubt a bad thing. It only makes the problem worse. But the fact is this: With shipping companies willing to pay millions of dollars to win the release of their ships, it makes no sense for governments to maintain their policy of refusing to pay ransoms. Waiting it out no longer works. Their hostage negotiators need to think up some new strategies.

Journicide

A very interesting story here on the death of journalism. These kinds of stories are commonplace now but this one makes a few salient points. The chief one to me is that because there are so many unemployed journalists out there, media can get away with paying them absolute peanuts. 

The most destructive payment policy I have seen employed by news outlets is the (usually minimal) flat fee. You get $400 for an 800-word story, say, and that's it _ no reimbursement for phone calls, taxi rides, source lunches. This is a terrible way to do journalism because the story comes down to a matter of opportunity cost _ how many calls are you willing to make before the cost of doing so starts eating into your fee so much that  the job is no longer financially viable? Are you really going to take the time and make that extra call? The only way to do it well is to sell versions of the same story to different outlets, but even that is becoming more difficult because everything goes up on the Web and, technically, newspapers in Abu Dhabi and San Francisco will now compete with each other.

Newspapers can offer this kind of rate because they know there are plenty of journalists out there willing to work for free. Refuse to do the work, and someone will take your place. It reminds me of my time back in Russia -- you'd come across nurses or teachers who hadn't been paid in months. When you asked why they didn't just quit, they'd give two reasons: 1. Because doing so would mean they'd lose the propect of getting their back pay; and 2. Because unemployment was so high that the school or hospital would have no trouble finding someone willing to do the job.

I usually refrain from writing posts like this because doing so comes off as whining. It's not _ I've been able to make a good go of it after three years, doing flat-fee assignments and hoarding those rare strings that pay well and even pay expenses. This is about the future of journalism. The scariest thing to me is that newspapers don't seem to mind. They fully understand that policies like this will not result in a great product. Mediocrity seems to be A-OK. Editors are usually not to blame _ they have no choice, after all. But if a news outlet isn't willing to pay for good stories, then what's the point? 

Very Talented People

The last few days have seen much hullabaloo and tut-tutting of Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, the two freelance journalists who were released from captivity in Somalia a week ago. I always knew we journalists were a cynical bunch, but I have been bemused by the suggestion that the pair deserved what they got for presuming to have ventured into Somalia.

Just a reminder: what they got was 15 months in chains, much of that time spent in isolation. Both also said they were tortured. A little sympathy, perhaps?

Having the gumption to get to a dangerous place on a shoestring is a time-honored way for aspiring journalists to break into the biz. Just as time honored is the fact that those aspiring journalists will be scorned by a set of established reporters who fancy themselves keepers of the sacred flame and members of an exclusive club of Very Talented People.

Journalists can be an awfully competitive bunch. They go to dangerous places not just because they want to tell the stories of "the forgotten people," but also because they like to take risks and tell other reporters that they've done so and survived. Being there bestows an air of legitimacy and makes it look like they've joined The Club.

These days, with the demolition of foreign bureaus and the proliferation of news sites on the web, the equation has changed. Freelancers willing to take the risk will almost certainly find a news outlet to buy their stuff. The above-linked New York Times story is telling in that regard.

"A few years ago ... several large broadcasters tried to reach an agreement not to buy video from unassigned, unaffiliated freelancers, so as to discourage excessive risk-taking. But that collapsed when it became apparent that no news organization would actually turn down images from a major news event.

So long as media outlets take the kind of reportage that Amanda and Nigel were willing to supply, freelancers both brave and foolhardy will keep going to dangerous places in hopes of making a name for themselves. Those who emerge unscathed will burnish their reputations and irk the keepers of the flame. Those who get into trouble will be subjected to an almost gleeful barrage of I-told-you-so's. 

Careful preparation hasn't stopped far more experienced reporters (or even security agents) from being killed or kidnapped in Somalia. In this case, the problem wasn't that the pair knew the risk and decided to go anyway, but that they didn't seem to know the risks. That is a big mistake, and they paid for it _ and will keep paying for it for the rest of their lives. But Amanda and Nigel are being written off not just for that. They busted into the reportorial ranks and didn't ask anyone's permission to do it. From the perspective of their fellow journalists, that may have been their biggest mistake of all.

Congo

My latest story for Time -- about the Congo group of experts report -- is here.

Love those pirates

A couple of funny blog posts from Things Seen and Heard and South of West about western journalists' occasionally rather unfortunate penchant for quoting supposed pirate spokesmen in Somalia without knowing whether they are who they say they are.

We've all done it, of course. But... how difficult is it really to snag a pirate? There are plenty of pirate impostors and there are plenty of fixers willing to take naive reporters for a ride. But there are also plenty of bona fide pirates. Lots of them have mobile phones. Many pirates pass through Nairobi (and have even been responsible for a real estate boom). And given the fact that every Somali seems to know a relative of every other Somali, why wouldn't it be hard to track them down?

I think it has a lot to do with the pirate mystique. If reporters weren't endlessly comparing a bunch of drugged, starving, gun-toting Somali kids to the apocryphal "arrgh"-muttering, eyepatch-wearing, peg-leg-walking buccaneers of old, the notion that it's actually kind of easy to get in touch with them wouldn't seem so far-fetched.