Review of African Blogs
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_01_afromusing.gif comments on Uganda’s reversal of its longstanding “ABC strategy” for combating AIDS. Afromusings wonders whether this strategy is being abandoned because of strings attached to United States financial aid.
“The strategy of ABC - Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condoms had been successful in reducing the AIDS infection rate, but a reversal of that strategy by President Yoweri Museveni perhaps directly or indirectly due to the strings that came with the aid money to combat aids appears to be counter productive. 1/3 of the 15 billion dollars allocated in PEPFAR - President’s [GW Bush] Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief be used to promote abstinence only programs around the world. That is 5 billion bucks.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_02_sokwanele.gifhttp://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_03_business.gifBusiness in Focus writes about the failure of post-independent African leaders to promote economic development at national and continental levels, with Zimbabwe serving as the case study :
“Before Zimbabwe overthrew white rule, in 1980, a pothole on the highway was a disaster. A late train would cause public outcry. Now we have unfinished roads, bulldozed neighbourhoods and hyperinflation, while our dictator blames the West.
Why is it that when the white man handed over Air Rhodesia to a black manager, the airline had 30 airplanes but now there are only three left? Why is it that before 2000 there were only 4,000 white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe and we were the bread-basket of southern Africa, yet now there are 40,000 black commercial farmers and we have to import maize from little, poor Malawi?
I know. There is a fine line between self-criticism and self-loathing. But our problems are not caused by our being black but by authoritarians with incompetent and even murderous policies.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_04_harowo.gif Harawo.com posts a review of Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur which argues that the "democratization" of the internet has, unfortunately, not led to a democratization of excellence, creativity and civility:
“Before the internet it seemed like a joke: if you provide an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters one of them will eventually come up with a masterpiece. But with the web now firmly established in its second evolutionary phase – in which users create the content on blogs, podcasts and streamed video – the infinite monkey theory doesn’t seem so funny any more…
Instead of creating masterpieces, the millions of exuberant monkeys are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels.
Worse still, the supposed “democratisation” of the web has been a sham. “Despite its lofty idealisation it’s undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent,” he says.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_05_blacklooks.gifSok… at Blacklooks revisits the ouster and exile of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with an interview of Trans Africa Forum’s Randall Robinson as the backdrop. She comments on the similarities between Haiti and Palestine:
“Reading the period between 1999 1991 and 2004 in Haiti is like reading Palestine in 2007. The same tactics used by the US government and France to destroy the elected government of Aristide is being used to destroy the elected government of Hamas. Denial of aid, denial of debt relief, (today this stands at an incredible $1.34 billion, much of it from loans during the Duvalier regimes) destabilisation, supporting the opposition with money, disinformation, lies, every dirty trick that the CIA have used was unleashed on the elected government and people of Haiti. Reading Haiti’s history from the time of the slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture to the present tells me that Haitians are still being punished for daring to rise up against their oppression and for achieving independence in 1804. South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne spelt it out at the time and it remains the case today.”
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_06_imhotep.gifhttp://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/314/blogs_07_dibussi.gifhttp://www.dibussi.com
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