I am here in Nairobi at one of the most interesting gatherings I have attended in a long time. Fahamu have brought together some 40 African social justice and civil society activists to discuss and share ideas around the use of mobile phones as a tool for activism and advocacy. The workshop is being held in conjunction with Tactical Tech who will be holding their “techie” workshop on Thursday Friday and Saturday to develop a tool kit specially suited to an African environment – a broad term that will inevitably have to be customised by users from across the continent to accommodate, political, economic, social and cultural differences.

The main focus on day 1 (yesterday) was to take a broad look at the technology and how it is being used in Africa today, the challenges faced by existing and future users and the solutions.

We have had presentations from Ken Banks who developed the Frontline sms Software used recently to monitor the Nigerian elections. Dorothy Okello of WOUGNET (women of Uganda) gave a presentation on the use of mobile phones in a rural agricultural project in Uganda along with radio broadcasts. Everlyne Nairesiae – GROOTS Kenya’s presentation centred on community based organisations of women in Kenya using the technology in three specific areas: women and property, women leadership and government, resource livelihood. Mobile phones were used for communication between provincial administrators, para legals based in the community and rural women.

The main challenges were : the cost of handsets, the sim card, tariffs, literacy, languages, network jamming (Ethiopia), limits in characters (160), numbers of people sharing handsets, electricity supplies, record keeping, dependency on other media eg radio & newspapers, privacy, limited government policies eg in Ethiopia blocking sms, lack of knowledge of who is using what, replicability , where is the expertise if you want it, learning how to use technology, security issues (encryption technologies), not understanding how sms works (where are the cross points, vulnerabilities), harmonising as Africa not homogeneous (different cultural values), different structures needed and different challenges exist between countries.

The issue of how to deal with the ownership of technology and technological expertise was also discussed. All the technologists where white and tended to be white males. Why are African technologists not involved in development technology? And technology in general. These questions remain to be answered but definitely something that crops up repeatedly in any discussion on technology in Africa whether mobile phones or the internet.

Other questions raised were:

How useful or reliable is technology as an instrument of social activism
How is mobile technology shaping the democratic momentum in Nigeria and Africa
How useful is technology in the socio-economic empowerment of ordinary citizens

The most important and most exciting aspect of these workshops is the opportunity to meet and network with so many African social justice activists. It was a long day – more tomorrow and the final day on Wednesday.

Photos on Flickr

Tags: Mobile Activism; Africa; Kenya; Social Movements;

Bubele Mahanjana, the young scholar and economics lecturer at Wits University was a rare type of a person in a world which values crass materialism over the life of ideas. Very few people of my generation are moved, inspired and troubled by ideas to the extent they affected Bubele. He so much loved ideas that he sacrificed a fledging career in an internationally renowned accounting firm for the lonely, modest life of a university student. His untimely death met him whilst completing his Masters Degree in Economics at Wits.

A group of us have known Bubele as a brilliant thinker, a persuasive conversationalist and humorous individual. A debate with Bubele always lingered on long after the encounter. He forced us to think. He was so moved by a good debate that he was wont to jumping to his feet, raising his voice without threatening as he systematically developed his argument. At times too patiently for the impatient generation characterised by instant gratification and cosmetic intellectualism.

Whilst he had the aura of the distant professor, he carried with him a capacity to make us laugh hard, at our selves and the follies of life. One of his well remembered jokes was when he asked someone whether she was a nurse, because she had been nursing her drink for the whole evening.

What made Bubele a potential giant, was the fact that he combined his love for ideas with deep commitment to finding solutions for the problems which affect Black people and the African continent itself. Towards the end of his life he was becoming radicalised in his analysis and began to display signs of impatience with Africa’s progress and the direction of South Africa’s transition. He reserved the most scathing analysis for the African intellectual, following Frantz Fanon. On post colonial Africa and liberation he agreed with the Nigerian radical writer Chinwezu that Africa is weak, hence her position of being a play ground for foreign countries through her local elites. Bubele wrote,

“It is dealing with weakness and powerlessness of the African that is key. Everything else is nonsense. Admit that you are weak. Understand how you are weak. Rectify your weakness. This is the only path to salvation”.

[Read more…]

On Wednesday, 28 March, 2007, Professor Archie Mafeje passed away in Pretoria. In his obituary, Adebayo Olukoshi, Executive Secretary CODESRIA describes him as

A great pan-African, an outstanding scientist, a first rate debater, a frontline partisan in the struggle for social justice, and a gentleman of great humanitarian principles. We will surely miss his thoughtful insights, his strident rebukes, his loyal friendship, his companionship, and – yes, his wit, humour and expert culinary skills that included an incomparable knowledge of foods and wines from all corners of the world.

Below are some notes I made from memory following a meeting with Professor Mafeje in 2005 and which is my own personal tribute to the great man.

_____________________________________

“The warning came a few weeks before the actual encounter, “He is difficult”, we were told. We were part of at least a hundred people who waited for His arrival for a sermon at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He didn’t show up for the sermon, nor did he send an apology, he just changed his mind, as all gods are wont to do. So we decided if he cannot come down from his heavens we shall go to him, after all we know too well the story of Mohamed and the mountain. The truth is that the warning just increased the intrigue, what kind of deity is this? He seems not to care to coax disciples and followers, to build a legion of worshippers. Does his doctrine manifest in his behaviour? With these questions in mind the writer and an intellectual friend went to visit the late Prof Archie Mafeje in Pretoria the year was 2005 .

He stood like Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. He looked down on us as we approached his shrine, which hangs high up on the hill. His tall frame engulfed in bright rays, we had to cover our eyes with the palms of our hands, as if in prayer to avoid direct eye contact with the one above. His whole demeanour suggest that he neither asks nor demands to be worshipped, however, human nature demands that we worship beings higher than ourselves. His voice beamed with the force of a hundred chariots:

“So you are one and half hours late”.

That’s how he welcomed us into his house.

We were startled. This was not the last time we were to be startled that afternoon.

We had earlier called to ask for directions and indicated that we would be late.

He continued;

“In other words you chose to bother me one and half hours before you got here”.

We gave each other awkward glances, both in self pity and with a what’s up with him, kind of gesture. It was going to be a very long afternoon indeed.

He went on to say with great disinterest.

“I’m just checking how your heads function”

He was visibly irritated by our earthly ways. He beckoned us to join him. We instinctively took off our shoes and followed him towards the lounge. He found this shoe taking off ritual slightly amusing, “The Swiss do that all the time”, and he was talking to himself really.

Everything is neat and even stylish. The color coordination is pleasant. He dictates the seating order. The result of it all is that we ended sitting directly opposite him, our backs against the wall and much further from the exit. Trapped. Yes that’s how it felt.

And we started;

“We came to see you because we believe you have made a great and original intellectual and academic contribution…”

“Yes indeed I have made a huge contribution not only on the African continent but the world over”.

He interrupted and completed our thoughts. We felt uneasy about this unabashed self congratulatory gesture. But, he was right, and even surer about it than we seemed to be. The AmaXhosa say “he who knows himself is king!”

We wanted to see Mafeje for a number of reasons, some linked to an intellectual journey we were beginning- a search for a progressive race narrative (PRN), we called our clarion call. What more apt a person to ask about intellectual battles than a seasoned warrior of the mind? We knew and were very impressed with Mafeje’s demolition of Anthropology as a discipline. Mafeje, a trained anthropologist himself had systematically exposed the deep colonial structure of inquiry and analysis which forms the basis of Anthropology. That was besides the known fact that Anthropologists had actively assisted the colonialists. His combative style of engagement is something we also found very attractive. Suffocated and reviled by an academy and knowledge production sight which is white dominated, we had developed a deep desire to connect with a Black intellectual of Prof Mafeje’s stature.

I then continued,
[Read more…]

In the hollow cost of the sea you sailed across
you rebuilt you grew strong you get reverence from me—
you’re strong for passing through that storm

Let our voices carry the weight of the world
let us fathom Africa where the colours of the world began
life in its leanest and most magnificent form
the roar of the beast
the fall of the empire
the wail of the islands across the sea

Life written in the greenness of the trees
in the cleanness of the air that we breathe

Now, what shall we talk about
that is the beauty of us three, that binds us
in correlated siblinghood?
© Rethabile Masilo

(thinking of Stephen and Geoffrey)

Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf has got off to a good start in her Presidency - her support of the new rape law and the war against corruption.   Pan Africanist, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem  congratulates her and wishes her well but asks some important questions about some of the problems she will face over the next few years.  What may been seen as her strengths may turn out to be her weakness unless she can meet the aspirations of the people and not just the elite.

Will Ellen Johnson be able to deliver to the women of Liberia? Will she be able to shake off the yoke of her World Bank/IMF persona and doctrines?  Will she be able to "protect and defend it’s peoples, create jobs and empower people to transform their lives. It does not need a state that hands off social and economic development, trusting the ghosts of an unfree market." 

He raises the issue of her Harvard University education in contrast to the majority of Liberians which he describes as a "battle between the educated against the so called "illiterate".  Is democracy only for the literate? Throughout Africa governance and business are carried out in languages that the majority of people do not understand thereby excluding those people. And anyway what is spent by illiteracy - illiterate in foreign languages such as French, English or Portuguese or in indigenous languages such as Ga, Mandinka and Shona?….

When it comes to the right to vote we do not have any qualifications but when it comes to being voted for we demand “minimum” qualifications. Does that mean that so called illiterates have no other right than to be voting for those who are educated? In the case of Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf and her generation of politicians share the responsibility for the mass illiteracy in the country. How can they turn around and condemn the generations they denied the right to education to and look down on them as unworthy?

I would add the question on how will she deal with the multinational corporations in a country described by Robtel Neajai Pailey as "a breeding ground for modern day slavery disguised in the form of what some would call indentured servitude for the American corporation, Firestone".  Not just Firestone but the Liberian Agricultural Company and newcomers Mittal Steel.  Will she insist on accountability and the protect the rights of workers and their communities and the environment or will she leave it up to the "ghosts of an unfree market?"

Abdul Raheem concludes "it is not going to be easy, but if you do not abandon your people, they won’t abandon you too. I wish you well."

Tags:  Liberia