Month: January 2012

Maybe a Wolf, but no Railway

Maybe a Wolf, but no Railway

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

There is no evidence that a Chinese railway will be built through the Serengeti, despite the alarms sounded by Serengeti Watch (SW) retweeted and reblogged by conservationists.

SW’s end-of-year alarm is not just premature, it’s dangerous. It makes it difficult to sustain a lasting fight against those in the Tanzanian government interested in subsuming conservation to more rapid commercial development.

Several days after SW’s issued an alert to its 40,000+ friends on Facebook that the Tanzanian, Ugandan and Chinese governments had plans to build a railway through the Serengeti, the Tanzanian government said unequivocally that any railway being planned “will not run through the park.”

I’m the last to enshrine African government announcements as trafficking in truth, but this one is pretty clear and simple, and while of course anything can be lied about, this time I seriously doubt it. Here’s why:

SW’s principal evidence was a December 23 announcement of an Uganda/Tanzania/Chinese agreement released by the Uganda Transport Minister reported by one of Uganda’s better news services, IPP media, on December 24.

The agreement for a $450 million feasibility study for several infrastructure projects all linked to China’s extraction of African natural resources included a railway from Tanzania’s northern and wholly undeveloped Indian Ocean seaside city of Tanga to its Lake Victoria port of Mwanza. A straight line from one to the other goes through the Serengeti.

There is nothing in the announcement to suggest the railway will be straight.

In the next few days following SW’s alert dozens of bloggers took up arms, and while not exactly going viral it was widespread. Several days later one of Uganda’s typically near-tabloid newspapers took the rumors and staged a full-on, evidence-lacking scandal claiming in its lead paragraph that the agreement would “build a railway line passing through the Serengeti National Park.”

That was promptly followed by the Tanzanian government denial noted above.

A whole basket of threats jeopardizes the Serengeti, not just from this yet fluid and unclear agreement, but from numerous other development projects including the moribund roads project which has not yet been removed from Tanzania’s transport docket of active projects, despite clear indications it has been shelved.

But ambiguity is supreme in African politics and policy, and it takes a bit of care in mastering your position. Threats must be fought differently than wars. The Serengeti road project is definitely on the shelf and being monitored by a whole range of pantry watchers including UN agencies and Hillary herself. It was a war that SW helped to win. That battle’s over; the threat continues.

And the railway is not yet clear enough to send in the troops.

The way to oppose these threats successfully is to be grateful to the various glorious ministers for their stated positions and to constantly remind them and the public of these. The stated position by the Tanzanian government is that there will be no big road through the Serengeti and no railway through the Serengeti. Thank you, Mr. Minister.

If the day arrives when this stated policy changes, the reversal – unlike Newt’s, Mitt’s and our farcical righties – will carry significant political leverage in Tanzania where a growing movement similar to Kenya’s is requiring more and more accountability and constancy from local politicians.

This is a tough one, and it is so because of China’s intractable need for natural resources, one that with each day is clearly insensitive to anything but its own consumption. Huge battles loom all over resource-rich Africa.

In Tanzania alone we need battle strategies right now to stop ongoing projects around Zanzibar and Tanga’s coral reefs, uranium in The Selous, hydroelectric plants on the Rufiji and the ongoing travesties with gold mining near Mwanza. Any one of these, all ongoing at this very instant, has negative environmental impacts as great as the imagined threat of severing the wildebeest migration.

The way to master the railway threat on the Serengeti is not SW’s. We need effective diplomacy not not-for-profit hysteria. The best way to lose a battle is for the little guy to shoot first.

In Africa dreams often become reality. But the last thing we need right now is to provoke these threats in the Serengeti. China has a lot of money and doesn’t exactly like clean air.

SW’s call to arms is premature and incendiary.

African View of Iowa Caucus

African View of Iowa Caucus

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Many Africans view the Iowa caucus as not very democratic, governed less by voters expressing preferences than by the media, polls and money.

Me, too.

Nairobi’s heavily listened to radio station, Capital FM, called today’s elections in Iowa “peculiar.” Finding it amusing that “voters .. gather late on Tuesday in church basements, school auditoriums and even in some private homes” the radio station said it was one of the “quirkiest but most important electoral events” for the United States.

I think that most of the educated world has developed a notion of democracy that is much more realistic than we have in the U.S. Pure democracy, which might today be akin to California’s referendums or even simple issue questions that participants endorse or condemn by a simple internet vote, is itself confused by how that “simple issue question” is formulated to begin with.

Democracy is a messy process, however you look at it. Voting fraud, which is not an issue in America, is a grave issue throughout much of Africa. But undemocratic influencing of voting has reached its apex in America, today.

Much of Africa receives its news about America from world sources, since local resources don’t allow foreign correspondents. BBC-Africa Service, News24 (from France) and Radio Netherlands all have services directed at Africa and often produced in Africa by Africans.

The BBC-Africa service has provided the most coverage of the American election. In a video interview with a university professor in Iowa, BBC-Africa claimed that issues were hardly important in today’s election in Iowa, but rather how much attention the winner would get, how it would then effect him/her in the polls and most of all, how much money will then flow into his campaign coffers.

Money for campaigns overwhelms most Africans. Consider that the amount of money this election will likely receive from PACS and superPACS ($2 billion) exceeds the entire national budgets of many African countries. And that could be doubled by individual small contributions.

You can’t help but agree that money is one of America’s most important democratic tools. I don’t think Africans think this necessarily wrong, particularly if it’s fairly managed (which it may not be, now, after recent Supreme Court cases), but what sticks out like a sore thumb is how brazen Americans are that their system is more democratic than others.

“I don’t think Europe is working in Europe. I don’t want Europe here,” Mitt Romney was quoted in fin24, a conservative South African business journal which was nevertheless mocking the idea that Europe isn’t working.

Of course Europe is working for Europeans, and frankly I believe the parliamentary system delivers democratic choices cleaner and quicker than ours.

America is descending from supreme everything, and that’s not all bad. But hopefully we can learn from those in the world ascending, like many in Africa. Becoming jingoistic as suggested by the Romney quote doesn’t aid our transition.