Mkapa's Position on Zanzibar Unity Vote

Referendum planned for Zanzibar later this year, should be given a chance as it might prove to be a solution to perennial instability that has haunted the Indian Ocean archipelago for years, former President Benjamin Mkapa said yesterday.

He said for a long time Zanzibar has been embracing the winner takes all policy, but the system has resulted into political instability.

He said it was encouraging that Zanzibar leaders have agreed to try the other model and they should not only be supported, but also be given a chance as the agreed system might prove to be useful in stabilising the Isles.

"And the good thing is that they have agreed to put the option through the people... let us give the referendum a chance," he said.

Retired President Mkapa made the remarks when reacting to a question during a press conference he jointly addressed with two other commissioners for Blair Commission for Africa, which has been re-launched to review progress of recommendations contained in a report that the team published five years ago.

He was asked on his comments over whether the tendency of establishing coalition governments was setting a bad precedent for Africa's governance.

He was referring to recent development in the Zanzibar political arena where two political rivals, Chama Cha Mapinduzi and the opposition Civic United Front have agreed to transform a political system and include in the Zanzibar Constitution an option for a coalition government as an answer to political misunderstandings.

The changes were triggered by the surprise meeting between Zanzibar President, Mr Amani Abeid Karume and his long time political rival, Mr Seif Shariff Hamad at the Zanzibar State House in November last year.

The meeting was followed by public pronouncements by both leaders that they have found a lasting solution to Zanzibar's political problems.

Later a private motion was tabled in the House of Representatives by the leader of official Opposition in the House, Mr Abubakary Khamis (CUF), seeking the changing the constitution through a referendum so that coalition government could be formed in Zanzibar.

The private motion was anonymously endorsed by the House culminating into drafting of a bill on referendum which has already been passed and signed by the President.

Preparations were now underway for the organisation of the referendum before the October General Election.

Mr Mkapa said since the winner takes all system has not worked well, there was a need to give the agreed system a chance to see if it would help solve problems.

On the trend of setting coalition governments in Africa, Mr Mkapa said all depends on prevailing situations.

Giving an example of Kenya, where he was involved in negotiations after the 2007/08 post polls violence, he said the situation necessitated the formation of such a government.

Chipping in, another commissioner who addressed the press conference, Ms Anna Tibaijuka, the UN-Habitat chief, said democratic institutions in Africa were to blame for such developments.

She said failure by democratic institutions to determine a winner after elections, ushered in all sorts of political problems.

"We have copied western democracies and in many instances we lack constitutional legitimacy on what to do especially when the institutions fail to determine and name the winner after elections," she said.

For his party, Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who also sits in the commission, said he was not comfortable for any kind of democratic recipes "every case should be judged on its own merit."

He said coalition governments could be part of the solution in some instances, but that does not mean that it should be applied in every case.

Meanwhile, Mr Mkapa reiterated yesterday that aid was another major factor which impedes Africa's development.

Reacting to question on why Africa was still poor despite its abundant natural resources, he said: "Most of us think that it is other people's responsibility to develop our continent."

He said it was dejecting that more than 50 years since most of African countries attained independence, they have continued to looking for aid as a way of emancipation.
"We chased away colonialists knowing that they will not give us independence. How come then that now we are returning to hem asking for aid?" he posed, adding: "We need to accept that change is our responsibility. Extraordinary dependence is not only a shock, it is disgraceful...we should get on our feet and think for ourselves."

According to former British ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr Myles Wickstead, the commission had been revived to assess progress made in the implementation of the recommendations contained in its report.

"We think that five years after the recommendations were made and five years before the millennium development goals target time, it is appropriate that we review progress made," he said.

1,000 Words About Tanzania

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Kigoma, Tanzania

We arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania excited to catch a flight to Kigoma, a region in the northwestern part of the country to visit a Jane Goodall Institute Tanzania project working with small farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. Unfortunately Precision Air, one of only two airlines that flies to the remote region, has suspended all flights for the next several weeks and the other airline is all booked.

No worries, we headed to Zanzibar instead....

Zanzibar is a place known for beautiful beaches, but the thing that I liked most about my visit there was the food. Everywhere you look there's a bounty of fresh vegetables, fruit, and, most importantly given the island's history, spices. Zanzibar is one of the "Spice Islands," a group of islands that supplied cloves, coriander, nutmeg, pepper, vanilla, and other spices to Europe in the 17th Century.

Today, those spices are grown much the same way they were then-organically, without the use of chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers, in response to consumer demand. And they're still grown on large plantations, but instead of slaves planting and harvesting the crops, local Tanzanian farmers use intercropping to grow many of the spices along with fruit trees and vegetables. The spice farms are also benefiting from tourism-I paid a shockingly low $12 for my day long trip to the spice farm, which included a wonderful (and spicy!) vegetarian lunch and a trip to a pristine and deserted beach.



The Tanzanian government, however, controls much of the land where the spices are grown and also where they are sold. Vanilla grown in Zanzibar, for example, is not used on the island or even in mainland Tanzania, but is grown exclusively for export. And Zanzibar is also the world's third largest supplier of cloves, the main export from the island.

When we arrived back to Dar Es Salaam we did have the opportunity to meet with Pancras Ngalason who is the Executive Director of Jane Goodall Center (JGI) in Tanzania and he explained how the Institute has evolved since it began in the 1970s. They've gone, according to Ngalason, beyond research to address questions of livelihood.

JGI started as a center to research and protect wild chimpanzee populations in what is now, thanks to their efforts, Gombe National Park. But in the early 1990s JGI realized that if it didn't start addressing the needs of the communities surrounding the park, their efforts to conserve wildlife wouldn't work. JGI first started by planting trees in the region, but soon found that communities cut them down, not because they wanted to, but because they needed them for fuel and for making charcoal. It was at that time, says Ngalason, that we "thought beyond planting trees" and more about community-based conservation.

JGI started working with communities to develop government- mandated land use plans, helping them develop soil erosion prevention practices, agroforestry, and production of value-added products, such as coffee and palm oil. They like to say that their products are "Good for All"-good for farmers by providing income, good for the environment by protecting natural resources, and good for the consumer by providing a healthy product.

They're also working training community health practitioners about reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention, educating youth, establishing micro-credit programs, and working with UNICEF and USAID to supply clean water to communities.

We then hopped on a bus to Arusha, Tanzania to meet with the World Vegetable Center...

As hunger and drought spread across Africa , there's a huge focus on increasing yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice. And while these crops are important for food security, providing much needed calories, they don't provide much protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium, iron, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, other important vitamins and micronutrients-or much taste. "None of the staple crops," says Dr. Abdou Tenkouano, the World Vegetable Center's Regional Director for Africa, "would be palatable without vegetables." And vegetables, he says, "are less risk prone" than staple crops that stay in the field for longer periods of time.

Because vegetables typically have a shorter growing time, they can maximize often scarce water supplies and soil nutrients better than crops such as maize which need a lot of water and fertilizer.

Unfortunately no country in Africa, according to Dr. Tenkouano, has a big focus on vegetable production. But that's where the Center steps in. Since the 1990s, the Center (which is a part of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center based in Taiwan) has been working in Africa to breed cultivars that best suit farmers' needs.

Despite the focus on staple crops, vegetable production generates more income on and off the farm than most other agricultural enterprises, according to the Center's website. And unlike staple crops, vegetable production is something that benefits urban and rural farmers alike (See our posts on urban farmers in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya).


Source: Ground Report

Rebounding Africa under pressure to keep up reform

DAR ES SALAAM: Africa will emerge from the global downturn more quickly and strongly than much of the world, but must shift policies and attitudes still further to benefit fully, business and political leaders said on Wednesday.

"We've come through it better than most and we've done that not because we're not integrated in the global economy but because we are," Maria Ramos, CEO of South African bank Absa, told a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa.

"There has been a big amount of reform of this continent over the past decade and a half." The world's poorest continent has defied the direst predictions that it would suffer more than others as a result of the global woes and the World Bank this week upgraded its growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa to 4.2 percent in 2010 versus 1.7 percent last year.

In addition to rising commodity prices and investment from faster growing Asian countries, policy reforms and debt relief over the past decade have put many African countries on a more stable footing and better placed to attract investment.

Businesses in Africa talk up the potential of 1 billion consumers with ever increasing spending power and point to the explosion of mobile phone services as a sign of what can be done.

Results of a survey of CEOs by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed 77 percent of those in Africa were optimistic for the next three years compared to only 50 percent globally.



Opportunity

"We as Africans need to understand this opportunity," South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan told Reuters.

"That's what this WEF is about and to fashion our thinking in a way in which we can take advantage of the opportunities that are there," he said, while stressing that the rest of the world also needed to understand Africa's emerging importance.

The fact Africa's biggest annual business gathering is being held in Tanzania rather than South Africa, as it usually is, was a sign of the growing importance of the countries outside the continent's biggest economic power.

But the east African country's own record on economic reforms has been looking patchy of late. Over two years, it slipped 20 places on the World Bank's ease of doing business survey to 131 out of 183.

President Jakaya Kikwete acknowledged this week that more needed to be done, but he told the summit that laws to promote investment by foreign countries were not enough by themselves.

"We need the support of the governments of these countries," he said, stressing in particular the difficulties created by foreign agricultural subsidies which put African farmers at a disadvantage.

Despite setbacks in some countries, business groups and donors believe that continuing reforms to open up economies and increase political freedoms are an important driver of growth.

"The political will is coming," said Omari Issa, who heads the Investment Climate Facility for Africa, which runs dozens of projects to help countries make it easier for businesses to operate and to eliminate red tape.

"We are creating competition between countries and within countries, competition between agencies. I think the formula is working," he told Reuters.

Source: Arab News

Hivi karibuni hapo Mlandege....