PICTURES FROM GHANA 2008

FAMILY DESTINATION | AFRICA; Trips to Help Shape the World

HAVING watched celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Bono give their time and money to Africa in recent years, families can now play a role in the global campaign to ''make poverty history,'' while also enjoying the beauty of the land -- and maybe even a quick safari.

Thanks to a group of volunteer organizations now offering ''volun-tourism'' trips to Africa, families can take part in vacations that involve clearing trails, building houses, teaching the young and helping the elderly in tribal villages throughout the continent.

''I think parents are getting tired of the typical beach resort with a kid's club,'' said Kristina Pentland, a spokeswoman for ResponsibleTravel.com, a Web directory of thousands of prescreened vacation operators from around the world who work to ensure that the local communities benefit and the environment suffers minimally from tourism.


''Now they are looking for destinations where they can immerse themselves in the local culture, experience the benefits of giving back, and bond as a family in a more life-altering way. Africa is one of those places that they hear so much about and really want to see,'' she said, adding that a Kenya family volunteer and safari trip (a 10-day trip that combines both community development work, time on the beach and a visit to an elephant sanctuary) is now particularly popular, despite a cost of roughly $4,000 per family for a 2- to 3-bed tent or $5,200 for a 4- to 5-bed tent, not including flights.

David Taylor, a psychiatrist living in California decided to forgo a bar mitzvah for his son, Virgil, in 2006, in favor of a three-week trip to Tanzania with Global Citizens Network, a nonprofit volunteer organization based in Minnesota that welcomes families. ''Part of my motivation was to expose him to what the world is like and make him think about what he can do to shape it,'' said Mr. Taylor, who, along with his son and a team of volunteers, split rocks to help prepare a new school building site in a hill town. ''It was daunting,'' said Mr. Taylor, remembering the lack of books and teachers at the local school, which led to his son's running an art class with the supplies they had brought over with them.

Brandon Wick, a spokesman for Cross-Cultural Solutions, an organization that sends volunteers on a wide range of international community work projects, said the company recently added a second volunteering trip to Tanzania in the coastal area of Bagamoyo, in addition to one it already operates in Kilimanjaro. ''It was our response to demand as there is such a great interest in Africa right now,'' he said, adding that children under 16 work alongside their parents on projects, rather than engage in separate volunteer activities. ''Most parents work in schools so the children can enjoy the cultural exchange.''

Cross-Cultural Solutions' trip to Tanzania costs $2,885 per adult for three weeks and $1,709 for children under 12, not including airfares, and is tax deductible, Mr. Wick said. Programs are run year around.

Luckily for those who actually want something of a vacation while on these trips, almost every African family volunteer program includes activities beyond work, whether it be hiking, taking drum or dance lessons, or learning a few words of Swahili. And though some accommodations are less luxurious (sleeping in tents or in a room shared with your fellow trip mates), that is also meant to be part of the experience.

''Ours was not a fun trip in the traditional sense,'' said Mr. Taylor of his journey to Africa with his son, even though they did add on a safari. ''But it will be in our minds for a lifetime.''

Cave to Casbah: Adventure for All Ages

The family vacation is increasingly taking an adventurous turn, with more parents looking for exotic alternatives to yet another trip to Disney World. Here are three far-flung destinations on some families' to-do lists for 2008:
Vietnam has historic cities (the picturesque French colonial outpost Hanoi; Hue, a Buddhist center and former imperial capital; and the bustling, urban Ho Chi Minh City), as well as beaches, caves, parks, pagodas and museums. Children should love being pedaled around on a cyclo, shopping at the markets, and even eating the food (kid-friendly noodle soups are a Vietnamese specialty). And parents need not worry about finding suitable accommodations -- nearly every major hotel chain now has an outlet in Vietnam.

Rock the casbah in Morocco by first visiting Marrakesh, where the main square is like a circus for kids with snake charmers, jugglers, acrobats and food stalls (lots of child-friendly chicken and couscous here). Then head across the Atlas Mountains and stay in a real 17th-century casbah in the desert. With souks, Berber villages, Roman ruins and even camel trekking, Morocco has something for every age.

Croatia has not only the historic cities of Dubrovnik and Split to offer, but also the ''Dalmatian Riviera,'' where active families can take part in sailing, kayaking and even mountain biking trips around the various Croatian islands. This region has some of Europe's best seafood, though the kids might prefer bureks (pies filled with beef or cheese).

Nigeria takes on tobacco giants

Nigeria's government is suing three international tobacco firms for $44bn (£22bn) - the first such case in the developing world - due to start in the capital, Abuja.

Smoking at a young age is a problem across Africa. Tobacco manufacturers are putting unacceptable pressure on the country's health services, and companies are targeting younger and younger people in an attempt to replace former smokers in Europe and America.

British American Tobacco (BAT), Philip Morris and International Tobacco Ltd, deny the claims and say they are socially responsible companies who do not target children.

They question the massive sums demanded by the government and say the case "has no merit".

But government lawyers are convinced they have a strong case.

E-mails between tobacco firm employees to be shown to the court in the capital Abuja will reveal deliberate attempts to increase the number of "young and underage" smokers and attempts to influence lawmakers to keep tobacco sales unregulated, they say.


Documents we have refer to ways of increasing the number of 'YAUS' [Young And Underage Smokers] in Nigeria
Babatunde Irukera
Government lawyer

Four Nigerian state governments also plan to go to court early in 2008 to argue similar cases.

Cigarette smoking is widespread in Nigeria and BAT recently set up a factory in the West African country.

Campaigners in Nigeria say children are sent positive messages about smoking all the time.

And young people across Nigeria can buy cigarettes from vendors in single "sticks", which campaigners say makes it easier for young people to pick up the habit.

The World Health Organization estimates that 18% of young Nigerians smoke - storing up huge potential health problems in a country of 140 million people, most of whom are under 20.

Dossier

"If this case gets to the evidence stage, the companies are dead on arrival," says Babatunde Irukera, prosecuting the case for the government.

"We expect they will try to delay the case by questioning the jurisdiction of the court. But if they see that they're in trouble we expect them to try and settle out of court."


We haven't got a clue where the government got the amount they are asking for
Catherine Armstrong, BAT
He says they have a dossier of evidence that runs to 3,000 pages consisting of internal company e-mails discussing how to target children and influence lawmakers in Nigeria.

"Documents we have refer to ways of increasing the number of 'YAUS' in Nigeria. We have expert testimony that says YAUS means 'Young And Underage Smokers'," he said.

The e-mails come from a public depository of evidence uncovered during a series of class-action lawsuits across the US.

Many of those cases have been initially successful, but litigants have seen payouts slashed or kicked out on appeal.

In 2000 a Florida court awarded $145bn damages to hundreds of thousands of smokers, but the case was thrown out on appeal.

The Florida supreme court said making such an award would "result in an unlawful crippling of the defendant companies".

Poor hospitals

Nigerian public hospitals are chaotic, poorly funded places where equipment is often out of date or broken.

Corruption and inefficiency are also responsible for the overload on the health service.

Tobacco company lawyers may argue there is little evidence that the government has been taking responsibility for its own health services.

"We haven't got a clue where the government got the amount they are asking for. Much of what they claim doesn't add up," said British American Tobacco spokesperson in London Catherine Armstrong.

The company says they have been operating in Nigeria since the early 1900s and has never targeted children.

"It is false to suggest that tobacco companies have had a knee-jerk reaction to falling markets elsewhere in the world," Ms Armstrong said.

The tobacco firms expect legal arguments to go on for "years and years", she added.

Counter-productive

But anti-smoking campaigners say children are definitely the targets of marketing campaigns.

Cigarette companies sponsor fashion shows and music concerts, said Eze Eluchie of People Against Drug Dependence and Ignorance (Paddi), a Lagos-based organisation.

"They have something called an 18-plus programme, which they say tries to prevent young people from taking up smoking. But when 16- and 17-year-olds see that, it makes them think smoking is grown-up. It's counter-productive," he said.

Whatever happens with the court case, the government is already trying to curb the spread of smoking.

Cigarette adverts have been restricted - only allowed on radio and TV after 2200 and billboards have been scrapped.

The authorities in the capital, Abuja, are also considering a smoking ban in public places.

China: Poverty at heart of Darfur crisis

BEIJING - A Chinese special envoy described the true cause of conflict in Darfur as internal competition over resources, saying Thursday that activists should not try to shame Beijing into dropping its support for a Sudanese government accused of carrying out genocide.

China has been denounced for not using its economic leverage to apply more pressure on the Sudanese government for peace in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million are homeless. Activists have attempted to shame China by saying its inaction makes it unworthy as host of the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.

"The heart of the problems in Darfur is lack of development ... Desertification has spread quickly and this makes the people in the area fight over the limited resources, leading to conflict and bloodshed," Liu Guijin, China's special envoy to the region, said in a question-and-answer interview posted on government Web site http://www.china.com.cn.
By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer

"People shouldn't just pay attention to the political process and peacekeeping, but also the development and reconstruction of the area," Liu said. "Otherwise, once the peacekeepers pull out and the political treaties are signed, the Darfur region will continue to be poor and people will still fight for resources."

Liu repeated previous statements from Beijing officials that groups should not try to "politicize" the Olympics, which China wants to use to show that it is ready to join the ranks of the world's top countries.

Energy-hungry China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil output and has refineries, a pipeline and joint exploration projects in the east African country. Beijing also sells weapons to the Khartoum regime, which is accused of unleashing janjaweed militias on ethnic African rebels.

Liu denied that Beijing was complicit in allowing atrocities that have included razed villages and rapes.

"China's government has never supported a massacre of Sudanese citizens by their government. Of course, we acknowledge that because of conflict and war and because of reasons related to both the government and rebels, there has been unnecessary deaths and a humanitarian crisis," he said.

The United Nations and African Union have struggled to establish an effective peacekeeping mission in Darfur, with Khartoum being blamed for resisting a force that is not predominantly African.

Liu, a longtime diplomat, said he was taken aback by the grinding poverty in the region on his first visit as special envoy in May 2007. His group arrived in a sandstorm and conditions in major Darfur cities were worse than those in the Chinese countryside in the 1960s or 1970s, he said.

"Even though I had been working in Africa for many years, I had rarely seen such tough environmental conditions like those in Darfur," he said.

Kenya: World Bank Boss Under Fire

"World Bank Boss' Leaked Memo Stirs Controversy"

A World Bank internal memorandum endorsing the controversial re-election of President Kibaki has stirred a major diplomatic controversy over the polls outcome.

The memo has also put Mr Colin Bruce, World Bank's Kenya country director, on a collision path with the Orange Democratic Movement, whose presidential candidate Raila Odinga is contesting Mr Kibaki's re-election and has opened internationally mediated talks, demanding his removal from office.

The talks, led by Ghana's President John Kufuor, were yesterday wavering with Reuters news agency claiming that former UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan would take over as the mediator.

The international community's attention was, however, focused on the leaked memo and the subsequent exchanges within the World Bank, the European Union and the UK.

It reveals the behind-the-scene battles that ensued as the international community struggled to deal with the poll outcome and the political fallout that has claimed nearly 500 lives and destroyed Sh60 billion worth of property. Analysts said the memo also unravelled the various diplomatic interests that are shaping debates on Kenya in Western capitals - mostly driven by foreign policies of the participating governments.

The battles will also help shed light on the underlying positions that the various international organisations have taken and the great powers that support them. This could influence the outcome of the political settlement reached by the mediation process.

Email correspondence between senior World Bank officials in Washington and Nairobi show that two leading international bodies, the UN and the World Bank - which offer the most development aid to Kenya - consider the re-election of President Kibaki to have been proper.

The UNDP office in Kenya however denied having agreed with the World Bank on anything in relation to the Kenyan elections. The UNDP office in Kenya told the Business Daily that the World Bank "had misquoted them".

While the US has dispatched Jendayi Frazer, its Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and asked her to stay in the region - as long as it takes - the Kenyan problem now appears to be tied to the future of the war on terror.

Endorsement by the World Bank was also being understood to explain President Kibaki's confidence in announcing the date of the opening of the 10th Parliament and his naming of a Cabinet, even as President Kufuor, the preferred mediator of both President Kibaki and Mr Odinga, tried to arbitrate.

On January 7, a statement from White House "condemned the use of violence as a political tool and appealed to both sides to engage in peaceful dialogue." A day later Mr Odinga called off the protest rallies he had planned for the next day as Mr Kibaki went on to name a Cabinet and announce the opening of Parliament.

"The endorsement could of course have contributed to the confidence the president had in announcing a date for the opening of Parliament and naming the Cabinet," said Dr Kithure Kindiki, the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law, at the University of Nairobi.

In a clear departure from the stand taken by international observers, and in particular the European Union the Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) in Kenya, the World Bank memo indicates that Mr Bruce, who is in charge of Kenya, Comoros, Eritrea, Rwanda, Seychelles and Somalia, together with the UN, had initially broken ranks with the EU-EOM about the results of the presidential elections.

"The considered view of the UN is that the ECK announcement of a Kibaki win is correct," reads the internal memo between Mr Bruce and Hartwig Schafer, the Director of Operations Africa Region based in Washington DC.

Mr Graham Elson, the Deputy Chief Observer of the EU-EOM, however told the Business Daily, that the EU-EOM still stands by the contents of the preliminary statement they issued.
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"We will release a full statement in February which will give more details," he said.

The email, obtained by the Business Daily on Monday concludes that upon receiving complaints from the opposition about irregularities, the ECK spent 24 hours, in the presence of observers, reviewing each concern.

"On balance, they determined that there were more irregularities of consequence on Mr Odinga's side than on the Kibaki side. For example, ECK considered reported turnout above 90 per cent to be a red-flag for irregularities. Data available so far indicates that the highest reported turnout in a Kibaki stronghold was 90 percent; in Mr Odinga's strongholds, there were six heavily populated areas with a reported turnout of between 102 to 116 per cent," reads the email, which however does not name the six areas.Click on the title above entire article at www.allafrica.com

The effect of $100 oil price on African economies

During the past week, the price of crude oil eventually and finally reached the $100 record mark per barrel thanks to the unrest in Nigeria's Niger Delta, the locked production in Iraq, surging demand in growing Asian economies...
Kpalimé, Togo

...and the cold winter months. This forebodes many things for different groups. Ordinarily, when the price of any commodity goes up, it means good news for the seller or producer.

African nations make up 6 of the 23 top oil-producing countries and this ought to mean good news for these African nations. These nations would be awash with cash, never mind that the oil companies too would also go away with large profits. The windfall these nations would experience could not have been dreamt possible some 5 years ago. The question is what does this translate to for the African nations and by extension the people of Africa?


Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Libya, Egypt, Algeria - to a lesser extent Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Tunisia and Cote d’Ivoire - all have significant production and income generation from the sale of crude oil and natural gas. Nothing stops these countries from deploying the windfall into laying a solid foundation and investment in infrastructure. The UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar -not to mention the oil rich Saudi Arabia- are but few examples of what a purposeful government can do with accumulated wealth- transform the landscape and by extension the living conditions of your people.


Africans for decades have complained of poor development and blamed poverty and thin financial capacity as the excuse for not being able to grow their economies, but with this unprecedented gold-mine in high oil prices, one wonders why there is yet so much despair and so little progress being seen in changing the fortunes of the African people. At least, for a start, let these nations set the example for the rest of Africa to follow.


Corruption and blatant mismanagement of resources has been a recurring malaise in most African nations. Governments and politicians sit tight and amass the wealth meant for the people and instead of building the social infrastructure that will galvanise growth and generate employment opportunities to the average person, they feather their own nests, and steal stupendous mind bogging sums.


The high technology dependent world of oil business makes it difficult for the small scale investor to be a player in the business. Big multinationals and government corporations like the NNPC, are the ones that can provide the financial muscle and skill to play in this big game.


In Nigeria, insecurity and unrest in the Niger Delta has become the natural fall out, as the local communities allege years of neglect while bearing the brunt of social and environmental degradation occasioned by the activities of exploring and drilling for crude oil. Corporate Social Responsibility and partnering with the communities are attempts being made to douse the angst and raging insecurity in the region. These efforts have been described as too little too late.
African governments have to formulate policies and muster the discipline to execute programmes that will develop the continent, provide adequate infrastructure including education and health care to the suffering people that have become victims of this blessing turned curse.


Oil being a depleting resource needs significant investment to ensure new reserves are found and developed. The IOCs are therefore not in this for charity. They also have to compete among themselves and ensure they keep their shareholders happy. It behoves on these lucky African governments to ensure that revenues including taxes and royalties, they generate in these auspicious times, are judiciously deployed in the best interest of the people.


Overdependence on oil, as a mono-cultural economy, is a bane of most of these African economies.
There should be an effort to diversify away from oil to other sectors where the ordinary medium scale business person can participate, such as in local home-grown industries and the services sector.

Esi Ejumabone currently resides in the Netherlands and works for an international oil and gas company. His interests cover studies into how local governments and private organisations can partner with rural communities to achieve sustainable small scale business growth in Africa.