Africa blogging roundup, 12th February 2009

NaijaReports comments on Nigeria’s “new export market”. Once it was coal and cocoa now the only resource is oil which is highly controversial as a “rental economy” and the lack of development in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta. The countries other “exports” are not exactly ones she should be proud of...

In the last few years we have tried to diversify the economy by creating more produce to export abroad and the top four are..
1.Petroleum…..We are one of the top 10 in the world
2.Polio virus…..According to the WHO, we are now no 1 in the world.
3.Prostitutes…..Talk to the Italian police.
4.Pastors…We pastor the biggest church in England Ukraine etc

This is closely followed by 419, every comedian in America now joke about Nigeria spam emails and Nollywood films although this is predominantly to Africans in Diaspora.

Mama Shujaa writes on the matriarchal tradition amongst some Kenyan women of “marrying wives”

One of the fascinating women featured in the book had a large family because she married other women and handed them over to her six male workers to bear her more children. The children born out of those marriages and the family units created, carried the matriarch's name. The male workers did their chores and served as 'escorts' on her many business trips...mmpphh!

More on this and other stories will be published in the forth coming book: “Women Of Courage And Power In Kenya's Oral History, by Rebeka Njau.”

ScarlettLion - Uganda now writing from Liberia publishes an interesting story on “Hungry Caterpillars” which are eating up and destroying crops across West Africa

The infestation may be linked to a long rainy season, cold weather at the start of the year, or climate change and deforestation forcing caterpillars to seek food elsewhere, scientists and Liberian ministry officials said this week.
"I think this is a seasonal threat. From our experience in Benin, the moth will disappear by early or mid-March," Georg Goergen, an entomologist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told Reuters.
While the caterpillars feed on trees, adults belong to a group known as fruit-sucking moths for their penchant for piercing ripening fruit and sucking out the juice, often causing the fruit to rot and drop prematurely.
Spray teams, each member with a plastic tank of insecticide strapped to their back, have started work. But Jobson Momo, an agricultural programme officer in the town of Carey, said his team did not have enough pesticide, protective gear or vehicles.

Meskel Square reports on the finding of 300 year old skeletons under the British embassy in Khartoum, Sudan which predates the founding of the city.
"It is something of archaeological interest rather than anything more recent or more sinister," said Craven adding officers had not been able to work out the gender of the bodies or their age when they died.
Historians say humans have lived for thousands of years at the site of Sudan's capital at the meeting of the Blue and White Niles.

Afrigadget More from the animal world this time something positive. Giant rats are being used to detect mines in Mozambique

The rats are attached to little red harnesses and guided down the length of a 100-square-meter field by their trainer. When the rat hits on a suspected mine, it stops, sniffs and starts to scratch. These rats are not only huggable, but they are smart (unlike some African politicians who are neither smart nor huggable), they work fast - two can cover 200 sq m per day - an area that takes a human 2 weeks. And are too light to detonate the mines they’re sniffing so don’t worry, they do not go BOOM…splat!
Great idea – I hope it takes off in other parts of the world where mines are killing and maiming thousands every year.

Black Looks writes on the tendency of the media to “ignore African wars” and why this imbalance continues to take place which she puts down to unwillingness to address the complexity of wars in Africa.

“The truth is that wars such as in the DRC and Somalia are less news worthy because they are complex – in an age of media minimalism and over simplification and the need to bullet point events. Secondly the importance of the visual is lost as these are not wars with planes dropping bombs and people and buildings being blown up as in Gaza and Lebanon. It requires time and effort to present the war in the DRC in it’s reality”

* Sokari Ekine blogs at www.blacklooks.org

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/