Reducing Fossil Fuel Dependence Is A Must, Not An Alternative

Untold millions of dollars have been spent in recent years prospecting for oil in Kenya. Nothing commercially viable has been found yet, but this hasn't prevented the search from continuing. In the next few weeks the search will intensify in Isiolo in Kenya's Eastern Province.

It's disappointing that leaders in Kenya don't seem to be aware of the pitfalls of depending on fossil fuel energy, considering they are experiencing some of those pitfalls right now. Emergency energy generation to make up for the shortfall from hydroelectric power is very expensive. The ongoing, widespread drought in Kenya means that the country is resorting to emergency energy more and more.

But it has long been recognised that developing countries will feel the effects of climate change the most. As use of fossil fuels contributes to climate change, are the Kenyan politicians and business people with their snouts in the oil trough not able to see the connection between this and greater use of oil?

If even a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars spent on fossil fuel prospecting could be spent on renewable, sustainable and clean energy sources, Kenya could be able to supply all its own energy needs by now. But, egged on by foreign interests, they are frittering away this timely opportunity.

The country has, like many African countries, abundant solar energy potential. They also have vast, mostly untapped geothermal potential. Some areas get enough wind at certain times of the year to produce huge amounts of electricity. And there are, doubtless, many other alternatives to depending on high carbon emission fossil fuels.

Leaving aside the environmental issues, energy minister Kiraitu Murungi has said that oil exploration has been associated with "dictatorship, imperialism, exploitation, neglect of agriculture, marginalisation and civil strife on the [African] continent". But Murungi needn't worry so much about these issues. Kenyans have experienced them all at some time and are experiencing many of them right now.

As for the possibility that discovering oil in Isiolo or anywhere else in Kenya will relieve poverty, I don't see anyone being fooled into believing this. But now is a good time to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, not increase usage. Now is also a good time to explore the alternatives. Perhaps now is the only time. Sphere: Related Content

A Problem Masquerading as a Solution

Defenders of genetically modified organisms (GMO) never tire of trying to find new ways to trick people into buying their destructive products. If it's not famine, it's drought resistance, increased yield, higher nutritional value and who knows what else. But these defenders don't bother to mention the downsides of all these 'advantages'. Why should we believe that some of the wealthiest, greediest multinationals in the world would want to benefit the poorest and most vulnerable?

For instance, in the article linked to above, we are told that cassava can be modified to resist a serious virus that destroys crops on a huge scale. What is not mentioned is that most of these viruses only affect crops grown on a very large scale. And GMO versions of crops are only feasible when grown on a large scale.

What these idiot defenders fail to get into their thick skulls is that most farmers in developing countries are small scale. They farm a few acres at the most. GMOs have not been shown to be scalable. On the contrary, the 'results' achieved have mostly been in carefully controlled conditions and the techniques are for large scale, industrial production. Small farmers cannot afford to buy overpriced seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. And when their land has been contaminated and rendered completely unproductive, they cannot afford to buy new land. These are just a few 'improvements' that GMOs don't include.

GM companies may, like drug pushers, get farmers hooked on their products with 'free' seeds and other materials. But this will be in expectation of huge returns and farmers will have no way of getting out of the vicious circle they will end up in. Just think of those nice people at Nestle, whose endeavours to get mothers using baby milk formula result in countless deaths every year. Once normal crops have been replaced by genetically modified monocultures, the land will be contaminated for an indefinite period. Levels of biodiversity will be reduced irreversibly.

It's nauseating to hear these claims about how good GMOs are for people in developing countries. They are the people likely to suffer most. GM companies certainly seem to believe in poisoning the earth from the grassroots up. Sphere: Related Content

Misspent Aid Money

Photo: A lot of money is spent on this sort of material, which is all very well. But much of the HIV prevention, treatment and care work is done by volunteers.

Since HIV/Aids has been identified, tens, perhaps hundreds of millions, have been spent on advertising, marketing and publicity. Great, the more people know, the better. However, people who are 'experts' in advertising, marketing and publicity do not seem to know much about public health, nor do they seem to care. So campaigns have received a lot of attention for a short time.

Well, that's what advertising, marketing and publicity are all about. But it's not what public health is all about. People have human rights that relate to health, as well as other basic benefits. Human rights are not a matter of a quick (and extremely expensive) campaign. People need to be aware of their rights and those who are in a position to do so, should object when people are denied their rights.

There are many examples of the excesses of advertising, marketing and publicity campaigns but one featured on the BBC website yesterday certainly takes the biscuit. An Adolf Hitler lookalike is shown having sex and represents HIV, so to speak. For any viewer, Adolf Hitler could just as easily represent a HIV positive person. If the viewer is HIV positive they will experience the sort of stigmatizing attitude that they and other campaigners have spent years fighting against.

So well done to the advertising, marketing and publicity industries. They always know how to make a bad situation worse. Let's hope that their lack of success at achieving anything permanent results in this campaign having as short term an effect as all their other travesties. The worrying thing is, who insists on continuing to give millions of dollars of aid money to these idiots? Sphere: Related Content

fifa, adidas, cokacola and other money grabbing bastards

Photo: Some of the wealthiest corporations and multinationals in the world are also the greediest and extort huge profits from the poorest and most vulnerable people they can find.

I always thought fifa had something to do with football but according to an article on the (excellent) blog afro-ip, they seem to be concentrating much of their attention bullying small businesses that are 'threatening' their intellectual property. If you visit the fifa site, you will see that they are in bed with adidas, cokacola and other assorted vicious thugs. Nice to know that sport is still all about the taking part and not the winning. Sphere: Related Content

National Census Day

Photo: One of Nairobi's many slums. Will the census count or just estimate?

Kenya's National Census starts today. The country's population is expected to have risen to around 40 million, perhaps even higher. It will be interesting to see which areas have grown, which have shrunk, how quickly people are moving to cities, exactly how many children and adults there really are in the country and many other things.

However, the census is not expected to be completely straightforward. I have heard that in some areas, the census staff were have not been paid and say they will not work until they get paid. In other areas, people are refusing to be counted as a protest about various conditions. Some pastoralists refuse to count women and children because there is a taboo against doing so.

In the last census, there were various problems, especially in the more remote parts of the country, where there was already very little population data available. By now, estimates must be mere stabs in the dark.

But I suspect there are many figures the government don't really want to know. How many people live in slums, especially in cities like Nairobi and Mombasa? The government doesn't even want to admit that so many people live in such terrible habitations and they say they are illegal anyway. How many are still in camps for internally displaced people? The press has had little to say about the real numbers of people who are still living in tents, after the post election violence more than one and a half years ago.

Many will be looking forward to seeing the figures, despite the difficulties that may arise in collecting them. So it is to be hoped that the results will be made available as soon as possible and made accessible to all the people and institutions that need them. Sphere: Related Content

Reduce Congestion by Reducing Single Occupant Car Use

Photo: One of Kenya's characteristically colourful matatus, the mini buses that most people use for public transport.

Traffic problems on the roads in and around Nairobi continue to make life there difficult for many. Traffic jams develop for all sorts of reasons; there are a lot of accidents; parts of the roads are being repaired, very slowly; and there are just too many vehicles.

But someone has come up with the rather stupid conclusion that congestion in the central business district can be reduced by keeping matatus and buses out. That's fine, they do add to congestion, but there is now confusion about how close to the city they can go. Several time I have been on vehicles that were stopped some distance from town and diverted through waste land and back alleys. It was quicker to get out and walk the rest of the way, though we were still some way from the central business district. The majority of people in Nairobi depend on buses and matatus and they already had to put up with frequent delays on the roads before this idiocy began.

Perhaps, given the serious fuel shortages the country is experiencing, the police could stop private vehicles from clogging up the city and even some of the suburbs. There are many cars on the road with one occupant and they seem to receive the privilege of being able to drive where they want, to the inconvenience of the majority.

I suppose the people who came up with the present, highly confused solution, drive cars. That's usually the way.



Photo: A very congested Mombasa Road, Nairobi. Sphere: Related Content

The Great Tanzanian Gold Robbery

Finding gold or any other natural resource must be a mixed blessing. But when an American company finds 'vast' deposits of gold in Tanzania, the blessing should be completely unmixed. The American company will take as much as it can and pay as little in royalties, taxes, wages and any other costs.

For Tanzanians, on the other hand, it will be an unmixed curse. Another invasive multinational destroying the environment, creating a few badly paid and insecure jobs and putting enormous numbers of artisinal miners out of a job. They have seen it all before and will probably see it frequently until foreigners have stripped African countries of everything they can possibly use and destroyed even the things they can't use.

People who imagine that developed countries 'give' large amounts of aid money to developing countries should be aware that even larger amounts of wealth are extracted by multinationals that don't pay much in the country they do the extracting nor in the country where they are based.

It seems extraordinary that in a country of around forty million people, around half live below the poverty line, unable to get enough food or clean water to ensure their health and the health of their families. They need the most basic things for their very survival.

At the same time, rich, foreign 'investors' take virtually all the wealth Tanzania has in order to fulfil their need for gold, uranium, precious stones and things that are not in any sense important for survival. They will use much of the country's water and contaminate the water table and the surrounding lands.

I met an Australian who worked in the mineral exploitation industry in Tanzania and he denied that people were exploited or badly paid. However, he also claimed that most highly skilled workers in the industry were not Tanzanian because, according to him, there were not enough trained people in the country. Yet, he didn't seem to see the connection between extracting most of the country's wealth and that country being unable to pay for adequate education for its citizens.

Apparently, the Tanzanian government is putting together a bill so that the state has a 10-15% stake in future mining operations. It's about time, but why don't they enable Tanzanians to do the mining? At present, there are all sorts of incentives for foreigners to come into the country and take what they can get but indigenous mining operations in Tanzania do not receive the same incentives.

Tanzania's minister for Energy and Minerals boasts about the climate for investors in Tanzania. How about the climate for Tanzanians? Most of them are still poor and many are worse off as a result of the mining operations that have been taking place in the country. The amount of money being spent on education, health, infrastructure and other basic needs is a pittance compared to the wealth leaving the country and going into the pockets of very rich people.

Tanzanians are being robbed, with the connivance of Tanzanian politicians. Sphere: Related Content

Let’s Kick them while they’re Down

Photo: Small scale, low tech farming in Central Tanzania

In addition to buying up huge tracts of land in developing countries to produce biofuels for Western car drivers, there is also substantial investment and speculation in buying land to produce food for over consuming Westerners.

Countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, which are currently having trouble growing enough food for their citizens, are easy targets. People are desperate and land is cheap. Governments of developing countries (rather unnecessarily) entice foreign investors with tax breaks and other incentives. Countries currently at war are easier targets and the land is even cheaper. Ethiopia is welcoming investors right now, as is Sudan.

Of course, to offer incentives to their own farmers in order to improve food security would be a threat to a ‘free-market’, they can only give these incentives to foreigners. Go figure; or ask someone at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF). These countries used to assist their food producers but ‘structural adjustment policies’ and other loan conditions have ensured that they don’t do this any more. Hence the current food shortages.

These investors will be able to bring in heavy machinery and developing country governments will help them get rid of the majority of people who presently farm the land. A handful of people may be employed, perhaps only for a short time. This sort of investment requires minimal labour costs.

For Western investors, it’s a matter of finding very good returns. They emphasize the need to feed people but they are not talking about feeding people who are currently short of food. They will be exporting their produce to the West. Some of it may even return in the form of ‘food aid’, who knows?

It’s hard to know where to start listing the disadvantages of this sort of land grabbing: people will be dispossessed of their land and livelihoods; they will be rendered unemployed and homeless and forced to move to overcrowded slums; land will, eventually, be destroyed by overuse of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides; the water supply will be reduced as crops are exported; remaining water will become contaminated; whole ecologies will be exterminated, irreversibly; the list goes on and on.

This ‘investment’ by the private sector is creating the development problems of the future. Development money is, effectively, subsidizing their activities. So those who object to aid money being poured into developing countries, and possibly misused, should take note of who is benefiting. If we really give a dam about food insecure peoples being able to feed themselves, we should be spending money on helping them to adopt sustainable agricultural practices that are appropriate for small scale farms, the sort of farms that the vast majority of people in developing countries currently operate.

Are we really going to live on food that is grown in countries where people are starving? Sphere: Related Content

Converting Food for Africans into Fuel for Westerners

Photo: Arusha Market (from IRIN)

The Tanzanian government has allocated TSH1 billion to an irrigation project in Singida to 'boost agriculture'. This would be very welcome if it really were intended to improve food security and avoid famine. But I can't help suspecting that biofuels production will be one of the main beneficiaries of these irrigation projects.

Of course Tanzania needs to be able to ensure that enough food is produced to feed people and to have a surplus for export. But the last thing the country needs now is to lock itself into deals where it is obliged to produce crops that will be converted into fuel for the greedy and wasteful minority world in the West.

There is also mention of the need to mechanise farming practices, which is all very well, but what will the millions of people engaged in subsistence farming do when the land is bound over to foreign operators? About 85% of Tanzanians depend on subsistence agriculture in some way. In what way will these irrigation projects benefit the majority?

There is a danger of such projects merely moving the drought problem around so that the little water available is wasted on running cars in foreign countries rather than in producing food for Tanzanians. Sphere: Related Content

A $1.25 Million Facelift for the Kenyan Image

Photo: Homes in Molo, destroyed in post election violence in 2008

AllAfrica.com has an article on a US trade delegation, headed by Hilary Clinton, that is due to visit Kenya to help them clean up their image as an investment destination. I don't think the article intended any irony.

But the post election violence certainly didn't help the country's image. This crisis was followed by a fuel crisis, a food crisis, a global financial crisis and various other serious setbacks.

The delegation will attend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum. Apparently it "offers a great opportunity for American importers and investors to see and assess first hand East Africa's needs and challenges". Still no hint of irony.

But the figures cited show that the US exports to Kenya are worth more than double the value of Kenya's exports to the US. And while goods the US exports to Kenya are high value products, such as "aircraft parts, machinery and electronic equipment [and] pharmaceuticals", Kenya's exports to the US are generally lower value products and raw materials, such as "tea, coffee, textile goods, processed nuts and pyrethrum".

A commentator said "the forum will review its impact and explore new ways of exploiting other opportunities created by the [AGORA] Act". Opportunities for whom? I just wish I could see the commentator's face. Sphere: Related Content

Public-Privateer Partnerships

One often hears of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), as if the public sector and the private sector get together and do something that is of mutual benefit, but that's far from the truth. Any PPPs I've come across involve the public sector handing over large sums of money to private sector enterprises and getting nothing in return but demands for even larger sums of money. At the same time,the public sector still has to pump additional public money into the services that they were, ostensibly, paying the private sector to provide.

Well the World Bank has always been very keen on PPPs. They give loans to desperate governments with certain conditions attached and those conditions often include the privatization of things like public utilities, for example, water. This happened in Tanzania with a company called Biwater. They screwed up so badly in the UK that the World Bank felt they could make an even bigger mess in developing countries, which they obligingly did.

They and other wealthy operators continue to asset strip, steal, threaten, maim and kill in various ways in other countries. And with generous handouts from the World Bank in addition to what they can extort from the most impoverished people on earth, they will probably continue to do so for many years to come. Sphere: Related Content

Sweat Shops or 'Export Processing Zones'

Further to my previous posting, about the extractive industries and how the Tanzanian government does little to protect Tanzanian people from the excesses of this massively wealthy industry, here's some more mixed news.

Fourteen regions have been identified as suitable for Export Processing Zones (EPZ). EPZs are almost indistinguishable from sweat shops. Fair enough, the government needs to find some way to get more people into employment and to generate some revenue for the country. But EPZs have been operating for sevearl decades in several countries and they simply lead to exploitation.

In theory, they don't have to lead to exploitation. In theory, the government could use existing legislation and international agreements to protect their people against the overwork, underpay, sexual coercion and other forms of exploitation faced by employees in existing EPZ. And that may be what the Tanzanian government is intending.

But, looking at their record with regard to the gold mining industry, the fishing industry, tourism and other areas of commerce, it seems unlikely that anything will be done that might interfere with rich multinationals becoming richer, at all costs. Any threat of regulation or legislation could result in these vultures leaving the country and moving to somewhere regulation and legislation could always be waved in the interests of moneymaking. Sphere: Related Content

Prevent One Disease or Prevent Many: Decisions, Decisions.

Photo: The famously smelly Nairobi River

Here are two choices: one, giving people access to clean water and sanitation in order to reduce the incidence of all water and sanitation related health problems, which are numerous; two, providing people with a low cost vaccine against one water and sanitation related disease, namely cholera.

Which one sounds preferable? After all, the first choice includes the second. Why just grant people the second when granting them the first makes the second superfluous?

Well, if you're the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, you may want to spend $60 million on such a cholera vaccine. I wonder if the vaccine will be a pill, a drink or an injection. At least if it's an injection the recipient can put off their next drink of water, which may make them sick.



Photo: Water Delivery in a relative well off Nairobi suburb (Fedha Estate). Sphere: Related Content

Super Fast E Everything for All

Photo: Nairobi slum, pre superfast internet connection days.

There may be food shortages, deadly epidemics, extreme poverty, inequality, abuse and various other problems in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda, South Africa and Rwanda. But we can all sleep well knowing that there is now an undersea fibre optic cable connecting them all up.

The children in Nairobi who are not attending school, the HIV positive people in Uganda facing drug shortages, the many Tanzanians who have no electricity supply, the Mozambicans who are not served by any roads, the Rwandans who have no access to clean water and sanitation and the South Africans who suffer from extraordinarily high crime rates need worry no longer.

Being connected to the 'global information superhighway' means 'super-fast internet connections' and 'vastly expanded bandwidth capacity'. According to the president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, 'e-government, e-commerce, e-medicine, e-anything is now very possible'.

Quite so. But you need politicians for government, people need money for commerce and for e-medicine, there needs to be trained health personnel at one end of the connection. Aside from that, I agree wholeheartedly. Sphere: Related Content

De Facto Subsidies for Big Pharma

It sounds like this article, about a HIV prevention trial of gel and tablets, is actually about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

PrEP is the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to prevent HIV infection. At present, ARVs are used to treat people who are at an advanced stage of HIV. They are also used to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV.

One of the reasons that HIV programmes, especially treatment programmes, are so expensive is because the price of ARVs are kept artificially high by drug companies and this phenomenon is supported by donor funding, which is a de facto subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry.

If PrEP gets the go ahead, HIV prevention could also become dominated by capital intensive pharmaceutical technologies. There are an estimated 33 million people living with HIV at the moment. The number of people who could be targeted with PrEP would run in to the hundreds of millions.

It seems odd that the article never mentions PrEP but perhaps it's just an oversight. Sphere: Related Content

Hands off African Countries

Let's not fool ourselves, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an American institution that aims to further the interests of America and, sometimes, its friends. This institution has been giving crap advice to developing countries, especially in Africa, for several decades. As a result, most of the countries now suffering food shortages and overall food insecurity are in dire straits because they followed IMF advice to dismantle the support mechanisms they once gave to their farmers and other food producers.

If free trade is such a good thing, why does the US and the EU subsidize their food producers to such an extent that developing countries cannot compete? Is it possible that these wealthy regions want developing countries to depend on them?

We in the West boast about how much money and aid we are 'giving' to developing countries but in reality, we take far more than we give. We buy raw materials as cheaply as possible and sell back finished products, often produced in developing countries by people who are paid slave wages, at grotesque prices.

Yes, corruption is a terrible thing and top politicians in developing countries shouldn't accept bribes. But Westerners are falling over themselves to bribe them, and that must stop too.

We have failed to help developing countries to develop, the only hope now is that we stop preventing them from developing.



The photograph is of a school in Isiolo built with donor funds. The school is far away from anyone and there are no surfaced roads. No one goes there. Sphere: Related Content