Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Whither Africa’s ‘frontier markets’?

By IIan Bremmer, Wednesday, April 9, 2008, New York City, for The Japan Times online.

Zimbabwe’s election appears to confirm a truism: Africa only seems to make international headlines when disasters strike — a drought, a coup, a war, a genocide, or, as in the case of President Robert Mugabe, grossly incompetent government.

But, over the past several years, a number of sub-Saharan countries have attracted unprecedented inflows of foreign capital. Recent global financial turmoil has only added to Africa’s allure, because its frontier markets are less vulnerable to international volatility than are most of the world’s more familiar emerging economies.

There are three main reasons why many sub-Saharan countries are performing well. (1) high commodity prices yield windfall profits for the region’s leading producers of raw materials. Growing demand for energy, metals, and minerals — particularly in China — has driven unprecedented levels of foreign investment. Even large pension funds are beginning to take notice. Moreover,  (2) a large number of Africa’s poorest countries have benefited from exponential growth in (primarily United States-based) philanthropy.

But, while both of these positive trends are likely to continue, a third positive factor may not prove as durable. (3) Every year, Africans living outside the continent send roughly $30 billion to family and friends back home. { That is - Commodities, Philantropy, Remittances.}

These remittances are vitally important for economic stability in several African countries. An economic slowdown in the U.S. and Europe could substantially slow this infusion of cash, because immigrants are often the first to lose their jobs when recession fears take hold.

At the same time, though Africa’s frontier economies are less vulnerable than other emerging markets to global financial turbulence, they are highly vulnerable to political turmoil closer to home. The three countries that served as pillars of regional stability for the past several years — Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa — are now too preoccupied with political troubles of their own to provide the peacekeepers, reconstruction funds, and political pressure that often limit the damage from conflicts elsewhere in the region.

Most of Nigeria’s problems are well known. Militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have at times shut down as much as 30 percent of the country’s oil exports, a vital source of state revenue. President Umaru Yar’Adua has taken concrete steps to tackle elite-level corruption in Nigeria, and appears to have made progress toward a comprehensive peace agreement with the Delta rebels.

But Yar’Adua might soon confront a big short-term problem.

The country’s National Election Tribunal, having overturned the outcomes of several provincial elections, may well annul the results of last year’s presidential race, forcing him to run for president all over again.

While Yar’Adua could use the goodwill that he has built up over the past year to win by an even larger margin, the 90-day election campaign would almost certainly trigger civil unrest, and Nigeria’s leadership would be too busy navigating domestic political rivalries to help stabilize conflicts elsewhere in Africa.

Kenya’s troubles run deeper. Solid economic expansion and one of the world’s fastest-growing stock markets have not helped the country avert a deepening political crisis and mounting ethnic violence since disputed presidential election results in December.

President Mwai Kibaki, whom international observers accuse of rigging the vote, has hinted at a plan to share power in a unity government, but opposition leader Raila Odinga has heard these promises before. Odinga worked hard to help elect Kibaki in 2002, only to see Kibaki renege on a similar pledge.

Despite the alarming escalation in violence, fears of civil war in Kenya are probably exaggerated. The country’s Orange opposition movement has recently won key posts in Parliament and, for the moment, is heeding calls for calm from former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and representatives of the African Union. But no one should expect Kenya to play a stabilizing regional role again anytime soon.

The continent’s third pillar, South Africa, will spend 2008 mired in an escalating political feud between Thabo Mbeki, the lame-duck president, and Jacob Zuma, a former deputy who is the newly elected leader of the ruling African National Congress and the leading candidate to succeed Mbeki, his bitter rival, next year.

South Africa’s courts have become a political battleground, as Mbeki and his allies use corruption charges to try to cripple Zuma’s candidacy. The resulting political firestorm may force Zuma to rely on core support from key allies within the country’s trade union movement and Communist Party, challenging the political elite’s pro-market consensus and provoking debate over the future of South Africa’s economic policy.

No countries in sub-Saharan Africa will have the economic heft and political self-confidence to replace Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa as pillars of stability anytime soon.

Regional blocs like the Economic Community of West African States, the Southern African Customs Union and the East African Community will eventually assume larger roles in helping resolve the continent’s most intractable diplomatic and economic problems. But that won’t happen this year.

There remain many good reasons for investors to take a chance on Africa’s frontier markets. But it will not necessarily take a drought, a coup, a war, or a genocide to make them think twice.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

Kofi gets his Bounce Back.
An excerpt from Comment is Free, Guardian, March 25, 2008, by Ian Williams.

Last week, previous and present UN secretary generals Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon appeared together at the Waldorf Astoria on the occasion of the MacArthur Foundation’s presentation of its first International Justice Award to Annan. It was pretty much their first public appearance since Annan handed over the reins to Ban on January 1, 2007, and it was a significant occasion for both them and the UN itself.

The explanations for Annan’s absence vary. Certainly, in his ineffably polite way, he did not want to cramp his successor’s style, but also in the early stages of Ban’s tenure, his team paid too much attention to the “American” view - as expressed by the former unconfirmed US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, and the Murdoch press.

The vitriolic prejudice and attacks on Annan from Bolton and … did much to redeem the Ghanaian’s reputation with the rest of the world, but clearly influenced Ban’s team when they arrived, basically clutching Bolton’s “reform” plan in their hands. Their experience at the UN has clearly taught them a lot, not least about the qualities of the former secretary general.

It was Ban who approached Annan to undertake what seems to have been a remarkably successful mission to Kenya, and in fact leaned hard on the Kenyans to accept him.

In fact Ban and Annan have much in common. Both are humble men, in the best possible sense, confident enough in their own dignity to be approachable and personable, and they both have a strong moral sense that they do not brandish ostentatiously but manifest when needed.

In fact, a just criticism of both would be that they let their diplomatic duties muffle their use of the bully pulpit that the office provides. Even so, when he was campaigning for the office, Ban expressed his support for the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), and the International Criminal Court - anathema to Bolton, who had spent years trying to strangle it. { In effect, Ban may also have picked up from Annan on Climate Change after the subject was presented to him as a most important item for the future of the human ibvolvement with life on earth.}

Ban reiterated that support at the presentation last Thursday, giving due credit to Annan, whose chief legacy was indeed getting the whole membership of the UN to agree to R2P. In effect, at the sixtieth anniversary of the organisation the membership agreed to reinterpret the UN charter so that threats to international peace and security against which the security council can take action included humanitarian disasters within states where the governments concerned had failed in their responsibility to protect their own people.

Of course, with the bleating from Belgrade about “sovereignty”, the repression in Tibet or the continuing disaster in Darfur, and events in Palestine, a cynical and superficially appropriate response would be “Big deal! So what?”

Certainly there has been a loss of momentum behind the idea, not least as the non-aligned and African states that Annan recruited to the concept have stepped back in the face of western double standards. Now that a rested and recuperated Annan is back on the world stage, allied with Nelson Mandela, an equally respected world figure, he can return to advance the work he started.

It will not be quick. It has taken several thousand years for the precept “thou shalt not kill” to gain acceptance, and the R2P may take some more. However there are signs. Already, in Sudan for example, China cannot preach absolute sovereignty to excuse Khartoum, so it has come under heavy pressure for its abuse of its veto.

Modern Purim thoughts include the UN.

Purim is the day when Jews remember the plans made by Haman to eradicate all the Jews of the old Persian empire. He did not succeed and paid with his life - as we say - the rest is history.

Jews were ordered to remember what happened then - so they read that story - the Megillah (the parchment of Esther) - year after year - on the evening before Purim. This year it happened on Thursday, March, 20th - so last night we participated at the “Megillah Madness” - at The New York Synagogue in Manhattan - led by Rabbi Marc Schneier.
The celebration was at very high tone and at serious decibels - this to the sound and projections of the Beatles Music and the noise of the traditional “grogger” rattles. Each time the name Haman is read - and this happens 54 times during the readings - mayhem brakes lose and the costumed servers came forth to bring us delicious Haman’s Ears (”Oznei Haman” in Hebrew - staffed with marmalade or poppy seeds), or glasses of sweet whisky spiked drinks. Purim is in effect an annual of catharsis, healthy for the mind and the soul. Quite nice when all you are supposed is to remember evil, so you are better prepared when it strikes again. You see, Purim does in effect obligate today the State of Israel to the UN mandate of: “The Principle to Protect.”

On Purim, the Jewish Jockers are used to run a competition for the coveted “Haman of the Year Award” and this year’s two top candidates were two heads of UN Member States who appear daily on the UN menu: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of the Sudan. The former attacks Jews verbally every day, and has also sponsored militants that fight Jews and Israel daily, while the latter was reportedly actually engaged in genocide against less Arabized Africans of Darfur. www.SustainabiliTank.info has posted many times articles on above deeds. We even tried to understand the background of the genocide in Darfur by considering climate change aspects as an influence on what started the warfare. But whatever the reasons, it is the government of Khartoom that backed its favorites. We see here fights between intruding, more Arabized, pastoralists against lesser Arabized, and blacker, agriculturalists. Our claim was that this is genocide that was started by increased desertification in the region. The UN as an institution did not want to hear such arguments, and eventually it took Sir Nicholas Stern, and the intervention of the UK government at the UN Security Council, to vindicate last year what we were saying three years ago. Whatever the issue, it was al-Bashir’s responsibility “TO PROTECT” his citizens. Instead he puts hurdles before those from the outside that came to help.
The UN Security Council has had Darfur on its agenda for five years, and the genocide continues. But the Council spends disproportionately more time considering Israel’s actions with various UN diplomats berating Israel for defending itself vigorously.
Our “Haman of the Year Award” goes to President al-Bashir. If his enemies don’t get him, the UN has established an International Criminal Court and we wonder why was it not invoked yet in the matter of Sudan’s actions in Darfur. Our website described last week how Dr. al-Bashir let UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wait for him in Dakar, and never showed up for the meeting claiming a headache.

Happy Purim - and I would like to note further that this year Purim falls on the same day as Good Friday - or Easter Friday. This has happened only the second time since 1910.

Easter occurs on the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, and that full moon usually coincides with the first day of Passover. That is how both religions - Judaism and Christianity have the renewal holidays aligned. This year this is not the case, and the reason is that it is leap year in the Jewish calendar, and an added month (a 13-th month) has been introduced. That brings instead the strange alignment between Easter and Purim. We would like to see in this an opportunity for healing - in the sense that we could say changes could be introduced so that Haman-type of hatred is removed from our lives - our society gets renewed like at Passover time, though this is Purim time. Would it be so terrible to ask the UN to consider this proposition of making sure that evil is remembered and actually acted against?

Kenya: UN Rejects Amnesty on Violence.

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
20 March 2008, Posted to the web 19 March 2008, by Abiya Ochola, Nairobi.

Perpetrators, financers and organisers of post-election violence should be denied amnesty, the UN has said.

In a report released on Wednesday, the UN said even though it supported the establishment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) - it rejected a blanket amnesty for gross violators of human rights.

The writer says: “The global agency {that is the UN} said it would not provide support to institutions and methods that recommended or granted amnesty for gross violation of human rights.

The UN Office for High Commissioner for Human Rights prepared the report as part of recommendations to be considered when drafting and approving legislation establishing the TJRC.

The UN said the TJRC should have the mandate to recommend criminal prosecution of perpetrators of violence.

“The commission should recommend and provide guidance to the establishment of a Government reparations programme in line with the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law,” the agency said.

It welcomed constitutional, parliamentary, police, electoral, public finance, institutional and judicial reforms, but called for an independent oversight of the police.

It urged the Government to ensure that victims and witnesses were protected to ensure proper functioning of the TJRC.

“The crisis also revealed serious limitations of Kenyan forensic capacity and a concerted effort should be made to reinforce it,” the report says.

To prevent gender violence, the UN called for a reporting and protection mechanism and mandatory investigation into the allegations of sexual exploitation and violence in camps for displaced people.

“The Government should create centres in the camps where women can obtain health care, counselling and legal advice on sexual abuse,” it said.

———————–

“AllAfrica” aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.

Other All Africa articles:

 http://allafrica.com/stories/20080319112…

Govt Attacked Darfur Civilians, UN Finds.
Ethiopian Soldiers Forced to Vacate Army Base.
ANC Tells Army to Back Off.
Ghana Responds to Refugee Crisis, Says Sirleaf.
Small Steps to Rebuilding Lives.

Message from Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) Executive Director on the Occasion of World Water Day 2008.

March 19, 2008.

At a prison on the east coast of Africa, inmates are pioneering a
sanitation project that is working with nature to neutralize human wastes.

The initiative, involving the development of a wetland to purify sewage, is
expected to cost a fraction of the price of high-tech treatments, while
also triggering scores of environmental, economic and social benefits.

Apart from wastewater management, the project is to assess using the
wetland-filtered water for irrigation and fish farming, giving prisoners a
new source of protein or selling to local markets and developing
alternative livelihoods.

Part of the so-called “black wastewater” with high concentrations of human
waste will also be used for the production of biogas.

The biogas can be used as a fuel for cooking, heating and lighting, thereby
cutting electricity bills, saving the prison service money and cutting
emissions from the 4,000-strong jail, including staff and inmates, to the
atmosphere.

News of the project, financed by the Government of Norway and the Global
Environment Facility (GEF), with support from a wide range of partners
including Kenya’s Coast Development Authority and National Environment
Management Authority supported by the University of Dar es Salaam in
Tanzania and the University of Wageningen, the Free University of Amsterdam
and the NGO “Aqua-4-All” in the Netherlands, comes as the globe marks World
Water Day 2008 in the UN International Year of Sanitation.

The Day and the Year are aimed at raising awareness and galvanizing action
to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These include
halving the proportion of people with no access to sanitation from the
current 40 per cent of the global population or an estimated 2.6 billion
people.

Sewage pollution, a great deal of which ends up in coastal waters, is
estimated to cause four million lost “man-years” annually in terms of human
ill-health—equal to an economic loss of $16 billion a year.

In many developed countries, part of the answer over the past half century
has been found in ever more sophisticated, multi-million dollar water
treatment works.

But as the new project at the Shimo la Tewa jail in the Kenyan coastal city
of Mombasa highlights, there are other, less costly ways of addressing the
same problem with important spin-offs.

The sewerage collection and wetland purification system, plus labour and
construction costs and including upgrading of sanitary facilities inside
the prison, amount to some $110,000 or $25 per person served—something of a
bargain.

These do not include benefits likely to accrue as a result of diminished
economic costs to the wider environment—reductions of solids that can
choke coral reefs and nutrients that can increase risk of de-oxygenated
“dead zones”, alongside cuts in bacterial pollution that can contaminate
shellfish and ruin someone’s holiday in a locale where tourism income is
important to the local economy.

Meanwhile, the project is likely to have benefits for wildlife including
birds and marine organisms.

Thus, in its own modest way, it can play a part in assisting to achieve the
global target of reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010.

The scheme is among a raft of projects being undertaken under the
“Addressing Land-Based activities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO-LaB)”
initiative which forms part of the UNEP-brokered Nairobi Convention —a
regional seas agreement.

It is hoped the lessons learnt can be applied to other parts of the world
so that the multiple challenges of sanitation and pollution can, in part,
be viewed through a nature-based lens.

The project is, among others, also working with the coastal Ndlame
communities in Port Alfred, South Africa, using ponds of natural algae to
treat wastewaters including sewage.

The algae, a freshwater or marine organism, assist in de-toxifying the
pollutants and is then harvested as a commercial fertilizer and
protein-rich animal feed.

The total project cost here is around $188,000 with economic benefits from
utilizing treated wastewater and fertilizer production offsetting the price
by $50,000 a year.

Similar creative and nature-based projects are being pioneered on Pemba
Island, Tanzania and in Dar es Salaam.

The sustainability challenges of the 21st century, including those that
relate to water and sanitation, demand more intelligent and creative
solutions than perhaps have been deployed in the past.

Working with nature rather than against it is part of that intelligent
decision-making that may prove a faster, more cost effective and more
economically attractive way of achieving local and international health and
poverty goals.

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Information Officer
UN Environment Programme, New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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From www.policyinnovations.org of the Carnegie Council, New York - Oil and Turmoil.
By Saleem H. Ali. On the web - March 12, 2008

As rebel troops rolled into the Chadian capital N’Djamena last month, commentators were once again ready to blame it all on the country’s oil. Many saw the resource curse in action: An oil-rich country driven to civil strife by avarice and a sudden influx of wealth.

The headline on CNN immediately read: “Oil fuels ethnic violence in Chad.” Environmental groups and human rights activists felt vindicated that their campaigns against the Chad-Cameroon pipeline would now be taken more seriously. Given that many view Iraq as an “oil war,” there was a general presumption that the loathsome liquid was also the ultimate cause of this African conflict.

Nevertheless, we need to consider the complexity of conflicts in regions like Chad far more carefully before assuming linear causality. Civil war in Chad predates the discovery of oil by at least two decades, thus the underlying ethnic rifts may be a more profound determinant of conflict.

As the recent violence in Kenya shows, such visceral tensions can even escalate into violence in nascent democracies with not a drop of oil to fuel the rage. Yet, we must recognize that a sudden influx of cash without appropriate planning and with national asymmetries can be a recipe for disaster.

Extractive industries are a kind of windfall development similar to the establishment of a casino in an impoverished neighborhood. In order for an oil windfall to be successful in the long run, it must be coupled with development strategies that utilize the revenues and minimize its environmental impact. With the growing influence of globalization on national policies, some of the fears of resource dependency in Africa and its connection to corruption may be assuaged.

None of this would have happened if Equatorial Guinea had not been brought to the world’s attention by oil. Yet the onus for exerting such influence still lies with the international community. At the same time, the regulatory capacity of some African governments over oil activities has grown.

Some governments have gained expertise in the technical matters of the oil business, improving their capacity to negotiate concession contracts and regulate social and environmental issues. For example, Angolan authorities fined ChevronTexaco $2 million because of an oil spill in 2002. Despite a history of oil spills and pollution in the region, this was the first time an oil company was fined due to environmental degradation in Africa. ChevronTexaco also compensated local fishermen for losses in their incomes.

As peace returns to the streets of Chad, the eye of the international community should remain on how the oil revenues are managed and how the country ultimately plans for a post-oil economy. The elaborate system for revenue transparency that the World Bank set up for Chad’s oil must be enforced.

Despite oil’s tortured history and eventual demise as a fuel, it must not be summarily dismissed as a cause of turmoil in Africa. Rather it should be considered as a resource that needs to be managed with effective development planning.

Saleem H. Ali

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Natural Resources

Saleem H. Ali is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Natural Resources, and on the adjunct faculty of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. For the 2007–2008 academic year, he is also serving as the Associate Dean for Graduate Education in Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts and how ecological factors can promote peace.

Prof. Ali is also on the visiting faculty for the United Nations–mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica), where he teaches a course on Indigenous Environment and Development Conflicts. Much of his empirical research has focused on environmental conflicts in the mineral sector and he is the author of Mining, the Environment and Indigenous Development Conflicts (University of Arizona Press, 2003). His most recent edited volume is Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (MIT Press, September, 2007), with cover endorsements from E. O. Wilson, George Schaller, and Achim Steiner and a foreword by Julia Marton-Lefevre.

Dr. Ali is also a member of the expert advisory group on environmental conflicts for the United Nations Environment Programme with a specific interest in transboundary conservation zones. As part of this effort, he is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and the IUCN Taskforce on Transboundary Conservation.

Previously, Dr. Ali was an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric and a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Health Canada as an Associate at the Boston-based consulting firm Industrial Economics Inc. Dr. Ali’s research appointments include a Public Policy Fellowship at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, a Baker Foundation Research Fellowship at Harvard Business School, and a parliamentary internship at the U.K. House of Commons.

Articles by this Author:

Oil and Turmoil (Commentary)
Salvaging Peace with Syria (Commentary)

Link: http://www.uvm.edu/~shali/

nbsp;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.j…

Zimbabwe’s official inflation hits 100,000pc
By Sebastien Berger, Southern Africa Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 21/02/2008

Robert Mugabe wakes up to his 84th birthday today with a damning present from Zimbabwe’s government statisticians - official inflation figures of more than 100,000 per cent.

Robert Mugabe will celebrate his 84th birthday
quietly with his family in Harare

With Harare’s shop shelves bare of basic commodities and prices rising daily, it is a wonder that inflation can be calculated at all, but the Central Statistical Office’s work is a marvel of precision.

“The year-on-year inflation rate for the month of January 2008, as measured by the All-items Consumer Price Index, stood at 100,580.2 per cent,” it said in a statement yesterday.

The figure is an increase of 34,367.9 percentage points over December’s 66,212.3 per cent, it added.

Independent observers believe the true figures are even higher. A single cigarette now costs Z$500,000.

Mr Mugabe blames hyperinflation on exploitative businessmen who are part of a Western plot to destabilise his country. His critics point instead to widespread economic mismanagement, corruption and the government’s policy of printing ever more money to satisfy its needs.

“It’s going to get worse because they have to print even more money to pay the army and to pay for the elections,” said Dr Daniel Ndlela, an economist based in Zimbabwe. “The economic instability will increase every day.” At independence in 1980 the Zimbabwe dollar was one of the strongest currencies in Africa. But even with a revaluation a few years ago, when three zeros were knocked off the currency, the fall is astonishing.

On Tuesday the rate stood at Z$8million to the US dollar. Yesterday morning it was Z$9million. By the afternoon it had reached Z$10.5million.

But for Mr Mugabe and his cronies in the ruling Zanu-PF party the foreign exchange market is a source of riches. They are allowed to exchange Zimbabwean dollars with the central bank at the official rate of 30,000 to one, giving them a handsome profit.

The government’s furious printing of money
adds to the crisis

The results can be seen in the wealthy Harare suburb of Borrowdale Brook, where vast mansions are under construction while in impoverished satellite towns people struggle merely to survive.

The destruction of Zimbabwe’s finances dates from 2000, when Mr Mugabe and his party officials began seizing white-owned farms, crippling commercial agriculture, the mainstay of the economy in a country that was once a regional breadbasket.

Mr Mugabe will mark his birthday quietly with his family. On Saturday comes the official, lavish celebration, with his acolytes in the border town of Beitbridge.

Mr Mugabe has proclaimed he is confident of victory in presidential elections next month, saying he is “raring to go, raring to fly”.

A Path to Peace in Kenya.
By Wangari Maathai, published in The Washington Post, Friday, February 8, 2008.

It’s make-or-break time for Kenya. After weeks of standoff, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, who both claim to have won the Dec. 27 presidential election, are engaged in negotiations. Each side in the talks, presided over by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, has agreed to a peace plan. There have been calls for a truth-and-reconciliation commission, which is essential to holding those responsible to account for the recent violence. The African Union has put Kenya’s crisis high on its agenda, as have the European Union and the U.S. Congress, which held hearings on the flawed election this week.

I am cautiously optimistic that a resolution can be found and peace restored to my country. But it is imperative that we unravel the underlying causes of the violence and not paper over them as Kenyan leaders have in the past.

For nearly six weeks, Kenya has appeared to be at war with itself. Unfortunately, the fighting has been ethnically charged. Kenyans know that these “tribal clashes” are a beast that can be awakened by politicians, particularly during general elections. Shortly before and after the 1992 elections, violence consumed communities in the Rift Valley. Hundreds, perhaps more, were killed, and thousands were displaced. Many still haven’t returned to their homes.

Even as we struggle to resolve the current crisis, we need to know why these clashes recur. Only then can wounds begin to heal and people look to the future with hope. One main trigger is the inequitable distribution of natural resources in Kenya, especially land. The colonial government forcibly displaced large numbers of Kenyans to make way for settlers. At independence, land changed hands, but issues of ownership and distribution remained. In Kenya’s highly competitive political landscape, land has become the battleground.

Even today, for ordinary Africans, a threat to their micro-nationality or those they consider their leaders resonates more than a threat to the nation. Tribal clashes are also fueled by poverty, corruption and a perception that national resources are not equitably distributed. Micro-nationalities yearn for one of their own to become president so the community will have its “time to eat.”
To create a more cohesive nation-state, ruling elites must devote time, energy and resources to ensuring universal freedom, security and equitable distribution of resources. And far from trying to destroy micr