One laptop project loses partner

One laptop project loses partner
The OLPC laptop is being trialled in Nigeria
Intel has pulled out of a project to put cheap laptops in the hands of children in the developing world.

Citing "philosophical" differences, Intel has withdrawn its funding and technical help from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

OLPC aimed to boost learning in poorer nations via a custom-built laptop intended to cost no more than $100.

Intel's withdrawal is a blow to OLPC which has found few nations willing to buy large numbers of laptops.

Machine code

Intel joined the OLPC in July 2007 and was widely expected to work on a version of the project's laptop that used an Intel chip. Many expected this machine to be unveiled at the CES technology fair which opens in Las Vegas on 5 January.

The first versions of the OLPC or XO laptop were powered by a chip made by Intel's arch-rival AMD.


FROM THE DOT.LIFE BLOG
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC
OLPC was always going to face an uphill battle when confronted with a mighty corporation like Intel
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent

Read Rory's thoughts in full
The green and white XO machine was designed specifically for children, was made rugged to cope with conditions in developing nations and could be kept powered using a hand crank.

Intel spokesman Chuck Molly said it had taken the decision to resign from the OLPC board and end its involvement because the organisation had asked it to stop backing rival low-cost laptops.

On the OLPC board with Intel are 11 other companies including Google and Red Hat.

The chip maker has been promoting its own cheap laptop, the Classmate, in many of the same places as the OLPC.

"OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively," said Mr Mulloy . "At the end of the day, we decided we couldn't accommodate that request."

He added that the use of AMD chips in the first XO laptops had not influenced its decision.

Cost breakdown of OLPC laptop
So far the OLPC has yet to comment on the split.

Prior to Intel's involvement, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte criticised the chip firm for what he called its attempts to undermine the project's work.

He said Intel was selling its Classmate at a loss to make the XO laptop less attractive.

While Dr Negroponte's initial aim was for a laptop costing only $100, the final versions that have been trialled in Nigeria and Uruguay cost $188 (£95).

Costs were supposed to be kept low by governments ordering the XO laptop in shipments of one million, but large orders for the XO laptop have, so far, not materialised.

In a bid to boost the numbers of laptops available, OLPC ran a "Give One, Get One" programme in the US from 12 November to 31 December.

This allowed members of the public to buy two XO machines - one for themselves and one for a OLPC project elsewhere.

OLPC said the success of this had helped it to launch programmes in Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Afghanistan.

THE KENYAN CRISIS AND THE U.S

"The U.S. has in our view gone back to a Cold war paradigm where it supports any regime as long as it fights America's war on terrorism," said Maina Kiai, the head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. "The result is that the Americans have leverage with Kibaki but credibility almost nowhere else within Kenya."

NAIROBI, Kenya _ Mary Wambui sat dazed with grief under a tree on the outskirts of this embattled African capital, her pauper's hut looted by a gang of thugs, her sister recovering from rape in a local hospital and all her worldly possessions stuffed into a plastic bucket salvaged from the ashes of Kenya's recent spasm of election violence.

"Americans won't care about this," Wambui, 18, said, pressing a fist to her mouth as if to still her quavering voice. "They will just say we are hopeless, like another Somalia."

Many Americans might indeed be tempted to dismiss the recent television images of Nairobi's bleeding slums and flaming roadblocks as just one more baffling example of Africa's flirtation with chaos.

But alarmed U.S. diplomats and analysts know better. The unprecedented political violence that has rocked this once orderly country, pitting the supporters of re-elected president Mwai Kibaki against an enraged opposition that claims the vote was rigged, threatens to upend years of carefully erected American foreign policy across a vast, strategic and deeply troubled swath of Africa.

Bound painfully to the United States by the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi by al-Qaida affiliates _ a terrorist attack that killed far more Kenyans than Americans _ Kenya has become many things to its Washington ally: an outpost of peace and economic stability in a impoverished and violent region; a logistical springboard from which to funnel billions in aid to nearly half the continent; and a quiet bulwark against the lawlessness of Africa's Horn, a tough neighborhood that security experts have begun calling the third major front in the war on terrorism, after Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This isn't an ordinary African political crisis," said Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign affairs think tank in Washington. "The stakes are pretty big for the U.S. If they lose Kenya, I'm not sure what the Plan B is."

Not that Kenya is doomed to anarchy yet.

On Friday the nation seemed dazed after five days of mayhem that saw homes and churches torched, untold numbers of women raped and upwards of 300 people slaughtered in political clashes that quickly devolved into grisly ethnic vendettas.

In Nairobi, a trickle of cars and rickety taxi vans began circulating on otherwise empty streets. A few shops cautiously yanked up their shutters. And hundreds of riot police patrolled the reawakening downtown.

Raila Odinga, the fiery opposition leader who says he won the Dec. 27 election, warned that a new vote must be scheduled within 90 days or Kenya would slide deeper into bedlam. A government spokesman shrugged off that suggestion as political "blackmail."

Foreign leaders and diplomats, meanwhile, were scrambling to keep the two leaders talking _ and Kenya from toppling over completely into a humanitarian as well as political catastrophe. Few delegations were pulling out more stops than the Americans.

"Kenya is an important counterterrorism partner," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, adding that Washington was working hard to help what is arguably America's closest African ally "get back on the nonviolent democratic path they had been on."

The stakes couldn't be higher. Indeed, they might surprise Americans who associate Kenya with fine coffee and benign wildlife safaris.

The United States relied on Kenyan airspace and armed border patrols a year ago when the Pentagon backed another regional ally, Ethiopia, in crushing a radical Islamist regime in neighboring Somalia. Kenya has acted also as a logistical corridor for a billion-dollar humanitarian aid effort, paid for largely by the U.S., in southern Sudan. And Kenyan intelligence agencies collaborate closely with U.S. counterparts in monitoring al-Qaeda infiltration into the unstable Horn region.

The alliance only deepened after al-Qaida operatives blew up an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan seaside resort city of Mombasa in 2002.

Such pro-American stances have paid off handsomely for Kenya.

Total U.S. aid mushroomed more than tenfold over the past decade, from $29.5 million in 1997 to $390.5 million in 2006, the last year when government figures are available. Much of that largesse comes in the form of food donations and anti-AIDS funding. American military assistance, however, has grown apace. In the five years before 9-11, it amounted to $3 million; in the five years after the New York terror attack, it zoomed to $34.8 million.

Still, Washington's embrace of the Kibaki regime has caused some awkward and unexpected blowback in the current crisis.

The eruption of post-election violence appears to have caught U.S. diplomats flat-footed, political analysts in both countries say, because Washington is too cozy with Kenya's often corrupt ruling elite. An embarrassed State Department retracted a too-hasty congratulation to Kibaki after international poll monitors declared last week's vote-counting process deeply suspect.

"The U.S. has in our view gone back to a Cold war paradigm where it supports any regime as long as it fights America's war on terrorism," said Maina Kiai, the head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. "The result is that the Americans have leverage with Kibaki but credibility almost nowhere else within Kenya."

The Nairobi-Washington alliance also has managed to alienate many of Kenya's minority Muslims.

Over the past year, Kibaki has been accused of permitting suspected Islamic extremists to be deported without trial to secret jails in authoritarian Ethiopia _ a local version of Washington's clandestine rendition program.

"Ninety percent of Muslims voted for the opposition in this election," said Said Athman, the director of Kenya's National Muslim Leaders Forum. "We feel that the current Kenyan government is a proxy of the United States. We view the U.S. as hostile towards us."

Yet the special relationship is likely to continue, unless Kenya utterly collapses.

"We have no other reliable, coherent partners in the region to contain trouble spots like Somalia and Sudan," said analyst Morrison. "Even if (opposition leader) Odinga eventually takes power, the U.S. will work with him."

Which may or may not be a comfort to Wambui, the young slum refugee and victim of electoral violence, who was camping rough under the trees.

Americans may not be particularly moved by her faraway miseries. But at least Washington is watching anxiously.

___

(Staff writer Bay Fang contributed to this report from Washington.)

UNTAPPED;THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA'S OIL BY JOHN GHAZVINIAN

I came to stumble on this book review which i'll like people interested in knowing what is exactly happening in Africa,to Africa,how and by who to read.This rich but forsaken continent is facing continuous unscrupulous hijacking of it's God given resources in the eyes of the whole wide world,including the Africans themselves who are part and parcel of this shameful stupidity,greed and wickedness.John Ghazvinian narrates what many BIG GUNS should be ashamed of.
"The collision and competition between China and the west, especially over Africa, will be one of the hallmarks of the 21st century. Reading "Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil" is one way to prepare yourself for the battle."

The role played by oil in world politics (and U.S. foreign policy) is hard to quantify but impossible to deny. While the Middle East is the center of oil politics, the new frontier is Africa according to "Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil," an important new book from John Ghazvinian. The book, which could have been a dry recitation of the devastation caused by colonialism in Africa, turns out to be a great and rollicking read which gives a more accurate picture of dusty, sweaty, poor, and invigorating Africa than anything I've seen recently.Travel TalesGhazvinian writes about a trip across Chad: Inside, the Land Cruiser had been converted into a sort of cattle truck, with two hard wooden benches running along its length. Ten people had already squeezed in, along with more belongings, and were looking intensely uncomfortable in the scorching early-morning heat. I plumped for a $25 "first-class" ticket, thinking that sitting in the passenger seat and facing forward would make the ten-hour journey more pleasant. What I had not been told was that a first-class ticket entitled me to only half the passenger seat. It was just as well, then, that the vehicle broke down at least eight times during the journey. (I lost count after the seventh.) The seat was tilted so far forward that my neighbor and I had our arms pressed against the dashboard for the duration of the journey, and every time the driver pulled over to fiddle with the fan belt, it was a welcome chance to step out into the blessed relief of the 120 degree heat and walk around the camels... On the way back I treated myself to both first-class seats... While this leg of the investigation was uncomfortable for the author, other parts were life-threatening and, perhaps, foolish. I've been in some touchy situations in Africa, but nothing like Ghazvinian's trip in a small, decrepit boat with a failing engine out into Nigeria's Delta (think Florida's Everglades with no National Park Service) in search of locals stealing oil straight out of the pipelines. These are people with no incentive to spare the life of a nosey white journalist asking questions. Somehow he survives.
Amazing Wealth, Breathtaking PovertyOf course the book does cover the oil-soaked history, politics, economics and treachery of half a dozen countries. In Angola, the author captures the disparity in lifestyle between the wealthy, "top 100" families and the rest of the deeply poverty stricken country. The SUV driving nouveau riche of Angola can't hold a candle to the outlandish spending of the Obaing ruling family in Equatorial Guinea. And Ghazvinian shows how deeply the Obaing tentacles reach into America. The nation's oil generated cash reserves of $700 million were long held at the Dupont Circle branch of the Riggs Bank (now part of PNC Bank) in Washington, DC where President Obaing, his son and one nephew were the only names listed on the account. The Senate report [into Obaing's finances] even details two rather colorful episodes in which the Riggs official in charge of the accounts walked the mile back to Dupont Circle from the Equatorial Guinea embassy, carrying suitcases stuffed with $3 million worth of $100 bills wrapped in plastic cling film. The author was run out of Equatorial Guinea in February of 2005, and is apparently still the last foreign journalist to be there. He later went to another tiny African nation, Sao Tome, where few barrels of oil have been pumped, but the mere speculation about oil sent the nation into a political and economic tailspin.China RisingGhazvinian's on-the-ground descriptions of China's role in Africa gives the book urgency and makes it a must-read for anyone interested in the future of geo-politics. China is now the world's second largest importer of oil (after the United States). And by 2020 they will need two times more oil per year than the annual output of Saudi Arabia. Thus the oil fields of Africa are a global prize. And China is making friends across the continent. He writes: The scale and ferocity of China's entry into Africa has been breathtaking. China has started construction on a new railway in Nigeria and a new port for Gabon, has paved most of the roads in Rwanda, and is building roads, bridges, power stations, schools, and cellular-phone networks in at least a dozen African nations. At any given time, the China Road and Bridge Corporation alone is likely to be engaged in five hundred projects throughout Africa. In tiny Lesotho, nearly half the supermarkets are owned and run by Chinese, who also operate textile factories in the country. Mauritius, home to many Chinese-owned textile factories, added Chinese language to the national school curriculum in 2004.Clash With United StatesAll this could be described as China engaging in healthy competition with the long entrenched American and European investments in Africa. But quite often, China's approach to the continent is different than America's, Ghazvinian point out: Beijing's growing reliance on African oil has put it on a collision course with U.S. political priorities for the continent. A growing chorus of voices in Washington--from congressmen to newspaper commentators--has been complaining about China's willingness to do business in countries the United States is trying to pressure or isolate. The example most frequently cited is Sudan, whose (notionally) Islamist government many hawks in Washington would dearly love to see destabilized or overthrown, but Beijing's cooperation with Equatorial Guinea and with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe are also frequently in the crosshairs.

From Keith Peter,guide on U.S foreign policy.

African Cup of Nations Ghana 2008

20 JANUARY-10 FEBRUARY 2008

Not for the first time, an African country is paying a terrible price for the tolerance of its corrupt government by its western partners.

The crisis in Kenya leaves a guilty stain on the west

By Michael Holman

Published: January 1 2008 18:37 | Last updated: January 1 2008 18:37

As western leaders scramble to prevent Kenya’s descent into chaos they should find time to consider their own failure to respond to a crisis that has been long in the making.

Seldom has an African tragedy been signalled so far in advance. And seldom have western policymakers been so complicit in a crisis that is turning into Kenya’s catastrophe. For the past three years the international donor community, led by the World Bank and supported by the International Monetary Fund, have ignored the warning signs and knowingly backed one of Africa’s most corrupt regimes.

For the outside world, Kenya has been the acceptable face of Africa: a safe destination for a million tourists a year from Europe, Asia and North America to the country of surf and safari; a reliable base, in a tough neighbourhood, for a burgeoning aid industry; regional headquarters for the United Nations; and – less well-known – a country whose military pacts with the US and Britain have made it a crucial ally in the “war against terror”.

Kenyan politics, however, has never been healthy. It has been dominated by ethnic allegiances, stained by assassination, distorted by one-party rule until 1991 and, above all, oiled by endemic corruption.

When Mwai Kibaki swept into power in December 2002, ending Daniel arap Moi’s kleptocratic era, he was regarded not primarily as a member of the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest tribe. Rather, he was seen as a reformer who led a coalition that promised clean government.

The euphoria that united the country was short-lived. On a mid-winter day in London in early February 2005, John Githongo, the man whom Mr Kibaki had appointed Kenya’s anti-corruption chief, and himself a Kikuyu, chose exile in Britain rather than staying silent at home.

For the first time in Africa’s post-independence history, an insider was ready to reveal how corruption worked – with evidence that included secretly taped conversations with cabinet ministers.

Not only were Britain and other aid donors given an opportunity to tackle corruption, using as leverage aid that exceeds $16bn since independence in 1963. It was also a chance to ask some tough questions about how that money has been spent.

If aid has worked in Kenya, how do development agencies explain the growing pauperisation of its people? In 1990 about 48 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. Today, more than four decades after independence, nearly 55 per cent of Kenyans are subsisting on a couple of dollars a day.

And for all the 6 per cent annual gross domestic product growth achieved in the past two years under Mr Kibaki, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening. To see the crisis only in terms of tribal allegiances and ethnic clashes is to miss a vital element in the Kenyan picture. The population has doubled in 25 years to 31m. Unemployment is growing, and the number without land is growing. For these people there is nothing to lose by taking to the streets, driven by frustration and fury that transcend their tribe.

Alas for Kenya, the bank, the fund and leading bilateral donors such as Britain chose not to act on Mr Githongo’s evidence. Instead, it has been business as usual. In the case of DFID, the UK development agency, aid flows have in fact risen – from £30m in 2003-04 to £50m in 2005-06.

So why did the donors duck away from this unique opportunity to tackle graft?

The truth is, they never had the stomach for a fight. They did not believe it was ultimately in their interests to have a showdown with the barons of corruption. They did not want to upset what they saw as a regional “island of stability” from which the UN and other international relief agencies, including hundreds of foreign non-governmental organisations, operate – a thriving business that accounts for a fifth of Kenya’s annual foreign exchange earnings.

Weighing in the balance are the longstanding military agreements Kenya has signed with the US and the UK, which have assumed particular importance since President George W. Bush launched his war on terrorism.

Not for the first time, an African country is paying a terrible price for the tolerance of its corrupt government by its western partners.

The writer, former Financial Times Africa editor, is author of Last Orders at Harrods (Abacus), set in Kenya

Rich nations attacked for failing Congo

Here we are in another new year,2008 and we are driving nearer to the year 2015 or rather d-day to solve Africa's major crisis,hunger and disease.This, in fact seems to be some sought of utopia as rich nations are much more involved in enrichening themselves with Africa's resources and doing very little to solve the problems in which they are also shareholders(as evidenced in most conflicts).

The head of the United Nations refugee agency has accused the rich world of failing to respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even as its multinationals “systematically loot” the country of its resources.

In an interview with the FT shortly after his return from the DRC, António Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said western assistance came nowhere near meeting people’s needs in a vast country where continuing instability and widespread poverty had created one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world.

Mr Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, attributed this neglect in part to the fact that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan or even Somalia, misery in the DRC involved no perceived threat to western governments.

“Even if we face a humanitarian disaster, as in North Kivu where there has been a dramatic increase in violence, nobody in the outside world feels threatened and so the international community is not really paying attention to DRC.”

Aid groups say 3m-4m people in the DRC, a country with a population of about 60m, have died in recent years as a result of conflict, poverty and disease. While most of the country is now stable – the civil war ended in 2003 and UN-supervised elections were held in 2006 – 400,000 people have been uprooted in the past 12 months by a resurgence of violence in the eastern province of North Kivu.

The UN estimates that 800,000 people have been displaced in North Kivu, which has also seen violence against women, including rape and mutilation, reach terrifying proportions.

Although international agencies and donor governments are providing some assistance, and the UN has mounted its biggest-ever force of some 16,500 peacekeepers, this is small in comparison with needs, Mr Guterres says. He points to the sheer size of the DRC – about four times that of France – and the high cost of operating there, given a lack of infrastructure that requires everything to be transported by aircraft.

Failure to improve living conditions would put at risk the democratic process and could threaten regional stability, he warned.

“One of the most frustrating things is to see a country in which you had [successful] elections but then you have to say to people: nothing can be improved in the next few months, even in the next few years, in infrastructure, in water, in sanitation, in health, in education, in jobs. And so the population starts to ask itself whether democracy has any value.

“Think about the amount of resources that have been taken out of this country. Lots of companies operate in DRC, taking out its resources, in many circumstances, without a minimum respect for any rules. The international community has systematically looted DRC and we should not forget that"