Free press, the first step to freedom from poverty?

Some say the chronical cycle of poverty in Africa is partially caused by the corruption and un-accountability from governments or individual heads of state.

An independent and free press could be the significant step out of this vicious circle.

Tanzania recently took such a step, with the recent creation of the Tanzania Media Fund (TMF).

TMF's goal is to create an open society where all people can access information, express views and debate issues. They want to achieve this through "an independent, quality, diverse and vibrant media in Tanzania by enabling investigative and public journalism and facilitating critical reflection and learning".

TMF’s work in Tanzania is centered on three objectives:
1. To improve the skills and capacity of journalists and media institutions.
2. To increase both the quantity and quality of investigative and public interest journalism.
3. To encourage the media to play a more critical role in ensuring accountability among public and private sector actors.

Discovered via Pernille. Picture courtesy AFP and BBC.

Read the full post...

Rumble: The Road's Kiva project 3: Fatuma Jumbe

Here is a summary of The Road's third social project:

A micro-financing loan to the Fatuma Jumbe Women's Group in Tanzania .

Fatuma Jumbe, 51, is married with 6 children. She has a tailoring business which she began 15 years ago. Working from 8 to 5 daily, she is able to make a monthly profit of about US$80.

She has taken out three previous loans, all since repaid, to buy vitenge (traditional Swahili fabrics) which she sells at her sewing shop. She now would like to buy a sewing (interlocking) machine.

Fatuma will share this loan with her loan group, Mabibo Freedom, whose 15 members hold each other accountable in paying back their loans. In the picture, Fatuma is sitting on the left in the front row. (See their full profile on Kiva).

Their loan went through "Tujijenge Tanzania Ltd", a local micro financing partner of Kiva.

In a group loan like this one, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a group of individuals bound by a group guarantee.
Under this arrangement, each member of the group supports one another and is responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults. This is not only a financial guarantee, but also stimulates the social solidarity and responsibility aspect of micro-financing.

Loan Request: $4,000
Repayment terms: 3 months (Deadline April 15 2009)
We gave them a loan of US$100

This is The Road's 3rd social project. The funds for this loan were donated by the VK0IR Heard Island expedition team.


More on The Road's social project "Change Starts Here".
You can keep track of our project via our score card.

Read the full post...

News: When Green goes Commercial: the new colonization of Africa

More than a century after the last “scramble for Africa”, when European powers fought to colonise the continent, there is a new stampede into one of the world’s biggest areas of uncultivated terrain.

Last year, by one estimate, the government of Mozambique received bids from foreign investors to buy 110,000 square kilometres of land, more than an eighth of the entire country.

In neighbouring Tanzania, a Swedish company, is bidding for 50,000 hectares on the banks of a lake in the Rufiji province. And that is just one example.

Why? A rush from European companies to grow biofuel.(Full)

It begs to think if agrable land can not be used for better purposes. Using the same two examples: Tanzania has more than 40 percent of the population in chronic food-deficit regions where irregular rainfall causes recurring food shortages. Mozambique has 660,000 vulnerable people in need food assistance, and suffers from yearly flooding displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

More about biofuel on The Road.

Source: International Aid Workers Today
Picture courtesy Robert Maas/WFP

Read the full post...

Rumbles: Writing Friends

Two of my friends started writing down some of their stories. Both work in the same "business" as I do. Our paths, our roads, crossed many years ago, and continued to overlap since then.

Ladies first: I met Marie-France (who features as the mysterious "MF" in some of my posts) about eleven years ago (in 1996) in Ivory Coast. We were first introduced by a common friend, in a bar, said "Hi", and that was it. We met two weeks later at a party, where she said "Hey, I am leaving next week, and will start to work with the World Food Programme!". I answered: "Hey coincidence, so am I!". (MF remembers me because that night I was wearing a fluorescent T-shirt saying 'Save the coral'. "You always have a soft spot for designer clothes", E. would say... hahaha).
Anyway, long story short. MF went to work in far and remote Ngara (West Tanzania), I was a few hundred kilometers further in Kampala (Uganda), and we would not speak again for about a year. One evening, I was working late in the evening, and she called in to our radio room, asking for an Email exchange (see this post about the radio email system we developped at that time). Being the only one left in the office, I picked up the radio call, and we started talking. That was in 1998. After a few radio-talks, MF disappeared from the radar, and we met again, over Email, two years later, when she was posted in Rome and I was in Pakistan.. We have kept better contact since then... MF started two blogs, one with her stories as a humanitarian aid worker and one about her new role in life, as mum to Xinfa.

Mats (left in the picture), I met over the radio waves many many years ago, in the late eighties when he was travelling in the Pacific. He was a fanatic ham, just as I was at that time. One day he wrote me an Email saying he was interested to work in the humanitarian world, and a few weeks later, he joined us in Kampala. A classic annecdote I still pull his leg with, was just before joining, he asked if we, as UN humanitarians, were wearing uniforms... He has, we have, come a long way since then, and he features in many of my shortstories. We worked together in Uganda, started FITTEST, the UN's first emergency technical intervention team, we did many missions and emergency interventions together, to end up in Dubai together. We set up and run the WFP base in Dubai for five years. We have been complimentary in many ways. He being more the rational thinker, the one who put systems and procedures in the chaos I created, as the one running on feelings and impressions... Read Mats' travel stories here.

Read the full post...