The migrants arrived mainly in the southern regions of Apulia and Calabria, as well as the tiny island of Lampedusa south of Sicily which is closer to North Africa than to the Italian mainland.

The figures were considerably lower than this time last year at the height of the Arab Spring revolts that swept North Africa but Cancellieri said Italy was on alert for a possible increase in arrivals.

Libya has traditionally been a major transit point for migrants from other parts of Africa making the Mediterranean crossing to Italy.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had struck a controversial agreement with then Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi in 2008 that allowed for migrants and potential asylum-seekers to be turned back to Libyan shores.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, on a visit to Tunisia, pledged on Wednesday to help families of missing migrants with updates of their fate while meeting his counterpart Moncef Marzouki.

He said Rome’s “priority is saving human lives”, and added: “We understand the anguish of families whose members go missing and we want to help them to get information.” Report AFP.

May the jubilant voice of the Church reach all of you with the words which the ancient hymn puts on the lips of Mary Magdalene, the first to encounter the risen Jesus on Easter morning. She ran to the other disciples and breathlessly announced: “I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18). We too, who have journeyed through the desert of Lent and the sorrowful days of the Passion, today raise the cry of victory: “He has risen! He has truly risen!”

Every Christian relives the experience of Mary Magdalene. It involves an encounter which changes our lives: the encounter with a unique Man who lets us experience all God’s goodness and truth, who frees us from evil not in a superficial and fleeting way, but sets us free radically, heals us completely and restores our dignity. This is why Mary Magdalene calls Jesus “my hope”: he was the one who allowed her to be reborn, who gave her a new future, a life of goodness and freedom from evil. “Christ my hope” means that all my yearnings for goodness find in him a real possibility of fulfilment: with him I can hope for a life that is good, full and eternal, for God himself has drawn near to us, even sharing our humanity.

But Mary Magdalene, like the other disciples, was to see Jesus rejected by the leaders of the people, arrested, scourged, condemned to death and crucified. It must have been unbearable to see Goodness in person subjected to human malice, truth derided by falsehood, mercy abused by vengeance. With Jesus’ death, the hope of all those who had put their trust in him seemed doomed. But that faith never completely failed: especially in the heart of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ Mother, its flame burned even in the dark of night. In this world, hope can not avoid confronting the harshness of evil. It is not thwarted by the wall of death alone, but even more by the barbs of envy and pride, falsehood and violence. Jesus passed through this mortal mesh in order to open a path to the kingdom of life. For a moment Jesus seemed vanquished: darkness had invaded the land, the silence of God was complete, hope a seemingly empty word.

And lo, on the dawn of the day after the Sabbath, the tomb is found empty. Jesus then shows himself to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to his disciples. Faith is born anew, more alive and strong than ever, now invincible since it is based on a decisive experience: “Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life’s own champion, slain, now lives to reign”. The signs of the resurrection testify to the victory of life over death, love over hatred, mercy over vengeance: “The tomb the living did enclose, I saw Christ’s glory as he rose! The angels there attesting, shroud with grave-clothes resting”.

Dear brothers and sisters! If Jesus is risen, then – and only then – has something truly new happened, something that changes the state of humanity and the world. Then he, Jesus, is someone in whom we can put absolute trust; we can put our trust not only in his message but in Jesus himself, for the Risen One does not belong to the past, but is present today, alive. Christ is hope and comfort in a particular way for those Christian communities suffering most for their faith on account of discrimination and persecution. And he is present as a force of hope through his Church, which is close to all human situations of suffering and injustice.

May the risen Christ grant hope to the Middle East and enable all the ethnic, cultural and religious groups in that region to work together to advance the common good and respect for human rights. Particularly in Syria, may there be an end to bloodshed and an immediate commitment to the path of respect, dialogue and reconciliation, as called for by the international community. May the many refugees from that country who are in need of humanitarian assistance find the acceptance and solidarity capable of relieving their dreadful sufferings. May the paschal victory encourage the Iraqi people to spare no effort in pursuing the path of stability and development. In the Holy Land, may Israelis and Palestinians courageously take up anew the peace process.

May the Lord, the victor over evil and death, sustain the Christian communities of the African continent; may he grant them hope in facing their difficulties, and make them peacemakers and agents of development in the societies to which they belong.

May the risen Jesus comfort the suffering populations of the Horn of Africa and favour their reconciliation; may he help the Great Lakes Region, Sudan and South Sudan, and grant their inhabitants the power of forgiveness. In Mali, now experiencing delicate political developments, may the glorious Christ grant peace and stability. To Nigeria, which in recent times has experienced savage terrorist attacks, may the joy of Easter grant the strength needed to take up anew the building of a society which is peaceful and respectful of the religious freedom of its citizens.

Happy Easter to all!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world!

When the African Union was launched with great fanfare in Durban in 2002, African leaders promised a new beginning for the continent. They promised that the pussyfooting and procrastination that hindered the resolution of so many issues in Africa – save the liberation struggle – would disappear.

One of the overarching aims of the AU is to ensure that human security takes precedence over state security. This has been a thorny issue for some of the continent’s leaders who feel that the pan-African body has been given too much power to intervene in the internal affairs of member states.

Those who back this concept point out that if African leaders behave in the right manner in the first place, there would be no need for humanitarian intervention.

There is no denying that some countries and regions in Africa have been involved in perpetual conflict and in most of these cases it has been down to the UN to try to rein in the protagonists. Nevertheless, there is now a growing reluctance among some members of the international community to commit themselves to peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance in Africa.

It is in this regard that the AU, under the auspices of its Peace and Security Council (PSC), decided to create the African Standby Force (ASF) that will ensure that well-trained troops are rapidly deployed to deal with emergencies in the continent. The ASF will draw from the five standby forces established by the various regional organisations, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has had huge experience in regional intervention.

“African solutions to African problems”, as part of the global concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, is what the continent’s leaders are wont to espouse these day. For Africa, this should encompass not only intervention in conflict situations but also how the AU can respond to conflicts over health, water, land and food security in the continent.

The biggest test so far came over the rebellion in Libya that eventually led to the overthrow and death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi last October. The AU failed woefully to deal with the situation – allowing the UN and NATO to take the lead. The AU’s poor showing was captured in a statement released by ex-African leaders under the Forum for Former African Heads of State and Government, commonly known as the Africa Forum (AF), which includes Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa; Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia; Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; and Abdou Diouf of Senegal. They expressed “concern that [Gaddafi's] killing was aided and abetted by the surreptitious use of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 – in total marginalisation of the African Union – to implement regime change in Libya”.

The AU itself was in a weak position to complain because, since the creation of the PSC and its commitment to R2P, African governments have never provided funding for the African Peace Facility (APF) to which they are committed. Instead, the European Union (EU) has been bankrolling African interventions in places like Darfur and Somalia. As of March 2012, the EU had pumped in €740 million into the APF. Is it any wonder that the AU was sidelined when the UK and France, two major EU powers, led NATO into Libya to back the revolution?

Clearly, the AU did not have the organisational capacity to respond to the Libyan crisis. The fallout of the situation in Libya was the impasse over the election of the Chairman of the African Union Commission (AUC) at the January heads of state summit in Addis Ababa. The current AUC Chairman, Jean Ping of Gabon, was challenged by former South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, but African heads of state failed to provide the two-thirds majority needed for a winner to emerge. After the deadlock, it was expected that the Deputy AUC Commissioner, Erastus Mwencha of Kenya, would step in as Chairman until another vote was taken at the next summit in Lilongwe, Malawi in June, according to the AU Constitutive Act.

But after much behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, it was announced that Ping, who has been Chairman since 2008, had contrived to negotiate a deal that would keep him at the helm for the next six months. Even after Dlamini-Zuma pulled out of the race, Ping failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority.

The summit also suspended the election of the eight other Commissioners. Botswana was the only country that objected to this manipulation of the Constitutive Act. This was really an embarrassment for the AU because it was clear that internal politics could have been responsible for scuppering the elections. The leaders then recommended the setting up of an ad hoc committee to find out why the whole exercise ended the way it did. The committee was expected to meet last month.

This situation will tend to weaken the AU’s voice in the international arena such as at the UN where it has been urging the Security Council to defer the warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. “If the AU could not abide by its own constitution, why would African leaders expect the Security Council to take them seriously over the al-Bashir request,” questioned one analyst in Addis Ababa.

Apart from the Libyan debacle, observers believe that the impasse could have arisen because some countries do not want an AUC Chairman from the most powerful country in Africa. But the South Africans were adamant that Mrs. Dlamini-Zuma, the ex-wife of South African President Jacob Zuma, would present another challenge for the position in June. “Nothing stops us from fielding the same candidate because she has shown or proven to be a formidable candidate that the incumbent could not defeat,” said South Africa’s Minister for International Relations, Maite Nkoane Mashabane, in a statement.

The outcome of the Commission election did however provide a good indication of the evolving internal politics within the AU as well as the strength and loyalties of the various regional blocs on the continent. Was Ping rejected because of the weak manner in which he handled the Libyan issue? Are some member countries wary of handing the leadership of the AUC to someone from the most powerful country in South Africa? These questions will be answered over time.

But participants at a meeting of the Institute of Security Studies in South Africa in February said that the fact that the summit failed to produce a chairman and commissioners presented an image of democracy and accountability in action.

However, one participant, Dr Mehari Taddele Maru, did not think so. He felt that member states did not take the elections seriously. Mehari argued that there had been a fall in the number of candidates for the AUC elections. Yet, this had not necessarily led to a corresponding decline in the active campaigns of candidates participating in the elections. He said compared to the elections of 2004 and 2008, the 2012 elections were not competitive enough and enjoyed less consideration by member states.

He called for an overhaul of the entire electoral process within the AU in order to enhance the number of candidates in future elections. He suggested the current AU Assembly to consider the means to improve competitiveness of the election as an agenda item. Accordingly he suggested a reform of the nomination process as an important area of intervention. These are the issues that the ad hoc committee was looking into.

The electoral impasse highlighted the fractured lines among member states. As observers noted, this could not just be simply put down to the Anglophone/Francophone divide because Nigeria lobbied for Ping. “Nigeria’s seeming inability to create an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) voting bloc to support Ping reflected the internal challenges of that country and a relatively weak regional position,” noted the ISS.

Participants at the ISS meeting also noted that it was clear that the South African electoral strategy for Dlamini-Zuma was ineffective outside the Southern African region. Any future candidate would require support from key states, the majority of which seemed opposed to a South African bid.

So it is back to the drawing board, as the AU tries to bolster its sagging credibility.

In its post-summit report, the ISS noted: “Among the lessons that can be drawn from the outcomes of the summit are firstly that the larger African powers could increase their contributions and support for the AU. This should not simply pertain to budgetary support, an unfeasible notion given the current under-utilisation of both budget and staff by the AU, but capacity support through contributing skilled people.”

In the final analysis, in the context of the Libyan situation, Ping’s legacy as chairman will lead to heated debates and various interpretations for his action or lack of it. Indeed, it was clear that Ping failed to secure the necessary support for re-election because AU leaders more or less did not have confidence in him to deal with a similar issue in the future.

The unwillingness of member states to transfer powers to the AU also continues to handicap the performance of the Commission. The same could be said of the Pan-African Parliament.

Getting the ASF up and running is another problem for the AU. It was supposed to be ready in 2010 but it is taking much longer to put in place the continent’s peace and security architecture. While ECOWAS has made good progress, a region like the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has not achieved much. It has struggled to establish a viable security regime because of tensions between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

“While there is a recognised need for the creation of a security community in Southern Africa, such a community does not yet exist in the region,” noted Hany Besada of the North-South Institute in Canada “Many argue that although the legal basis exists in protocols and treaties, the political will to fully implement these arrangements lags behind.”

Will the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) be equally hamstrung? At their Addis Ababa summit, African leaders agreed to establish a pan-African trade pact by 2017 as part of a broader effort to increase intra-regional trade within the continent that could be worth $22 trillion when fully functioning, according to World Bank analysis.

Intra-African trade currently stands at 12 per cent of total trade, compared to 60 per cent for Europe, 40 per cent for North America, and 30 per cent for Association of South East Asian Nations, according to the World Trade Organisation.

But already the feasibility of the CFTA is being questioned. At a meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) – an eight-country regional development organisation in East Africa – the delegates argued that, instead of the CFTA, African countries should concentrate their efforts and investments on infrastructure development.

Countries could also push for the removal of non-tariff barriers and trade facilitation while also addressing the challenges of food security, the organisation added. There were “many deadlines that have been set and surpassed,” IGAD said, referring to the current state of play of other proposed trade pacts in Africa. Rather than continue to push for a continent-wide trade agreement, the focus should shift to “what can be done to promote trade and the creation of inter-industry linkages rather than in-actionable action plans,” IGAD continued.

Along similar lines, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said that the 2017 target date for launching the CFTA was unrealistic. “There are no quick-fixes to integration,” he said.

There are currently major obstacles to intra-African trade such as high trade barriers with neighbouring countries. These are costing African nations billions of dollars of potential earnings and depriving the continent of new sources of economic growth, according to a World Bank report. As a consequence, Africa had integrated with the rest of the world faster than with itself, argued the report, De-Fragmenting Africa: Deepening Regional Trade Integration in Goods and Services.

While tariffs in general have been lowered within regional communities, many non-tariff and regulatory barriers still raise transaction costs and limit the movement of goods, services, people and capital across borders. Five types of barriers to trade were analysed in the report: inefficiencies in transport, customs and logistics, complex fiscal arrangements, restrictive rule of origin, lack of effective regulations and standards, and heavy administrative procedures. In one striking example of the administrative burden faced by businesses, the report explained that a particular South African supermarket chain needed to spend an average of $20,000 a week on import permits to distribute its products to its stores in Zambia and provide around 1,600 documents to send one truck across the regional border. The report also described the dangers faced by “informal” cross border traders, in particular women carrying agricultural products, who routinely encountered violence, demands for bribes, and sexual harassment. It noted that women would help to bring Africa’s booming informal trade into the formal economy.

According to the report, African leaders need to urgently pursue changes in three crucial areas, improving cross-border trade, removing a range of non-tariff barriers to trade, and reforming regulations and immigration rules. Given a worsening euro zone crisis that could reduce Africa’s GDP growth by as much as 1.3 percentage points, the World Bank warned that effective regional integration was currently of particular importance.

So, clearly the AU has much work to do. It has to show that it is not losing the plot and moving away from the ideals that informed its establishment in 2002 – that of enhancing the quality of life for Africans after the liberation struggle came to an end with freedom in South Africa.

The organisation, Made In Africa Foundation, is dedicated to bringing innovative ideas and capital to Africa, whilst also focusing on the first stage of funding for infrastructure.

With little capital available in the past, the International Finance Corporation estimates that Africa’s infrastructural deficit amounts to US$93 billion annually right through 2020. The fact that a large amount of this money was available was irrelevant, as it could not be applied until business plans and feasibility studies were sufficiently developed; a void the Made In Africa Foundation will try to fill.

Atlantic Energy has committed to underwrite US$7 million for an independent power project feasibility studies across Africa, as well as the Ugandan urban renewal master plan for Kampala’s Naguru Nakawa redevelopment, and the Foundation’s running costs for the first three years.

Founder, Ozwald Boateng said, ‘It is a well known statistic that US$400 million of funding for feasibility studies and master plans across Sub-Saharan Africa would develop over US$100 billion of infrastructure projects, which in turn would create a value of a trillion dollars across Africa.’

With this in mind, the organisation believe infrastructure is the key to transforming the economy from a developing to emerging market status and propose to provide ‘first mile’ finance to people and businesses that are involved in contributing to the development of major infrastructural projects in the region.

Dayo Okusami, General Counsel and Executive Director of Atlantic Energy, a private upstream oil and gas group that operates in Nigeria, said, ‘Atlantic Energy is pleased to be a founding donor and supporter of this exceptional charity and we look forward to fostering a continent wide push for sustainable infrastructure development.’

With the first step of infrastructural projects often being the hardest, the foundation hopes that its work will now make that step easier for Africans.

The Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) is comprised of six countries located in Central Africa; Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo. These countries offer investment opportunities in strategic sectors of their economies, ranging from telecommunications to urban planning and construction.

The conference focused on presenting the positive potentials these countries offer, whilst also discussing the progress and advancements individuals governments have been able to achieve. These include promoting both economic and political development in line with the specific needs of their communities, as well as looking to bridge the current gap that exists with countries in the northern hemisphere.

Many European investors have recently turned to Africa, mainly Central Africa, to explore the possibility of investment. They have looked to support local economies whilst also benefiting from various petroleum operations. At present, Cameroon offers significant agricultural potential whilst countries such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo offer the possibility of natural gas explorations.

With the CEMAC region currently in the process of a political and economic renewal, better governance is being implemented, and the introduction of social developments are being explored, enabling continual progress and moving away from political instability and corruption.

With more countries across the African region becoming open to the prospect of tourism (CAN 2012), guest speaker Robert Tashima of the Oxford Business Group said, ‘the potential to stimulate revenue growth is enormous, particularly in light of the rich biodiversity of the region.’

However, the conference highlighted CMO London’s belief that the most important change is the need to listen to Africa’s diverse population and for Africans themselves to be proud of their ethnic background to enable continual growth within the region.

The strides currently undertaken by governments in the region, supported and publicised by CMO London, are bound to make business opportunities a reality and enable the CEMAC area to break free and become a destination for serious investors around the globe.

CMO London annual conference 2011 has been a success for the organisers and the special guests and in particular to the CEMAC region.

Essex’s erroneous research spawned the theory that HIV originated in African monkeys. This misconception is critical because the concept is a pillar for the fallacy that HIV/AIDS is endemic in Africa.

In 1985, it was Essex and his team of investigators that “discovered” an “AIDS-like” virus in the blood sample of wild-caught African green monkeys (AGM). This “AIDS-like” virus eventually came to be called SIV, the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus; even though it did not cause immunodeficiency in African green monkeys.

AIDS was a hot topic at that time; the discovery of SIV by the Essex team was instant front-page news worldwide. Both scientists and the public were striving to make sense of this terrifying mystery, and the impact of this initial media acclaim continues to reverberate throughout the medical and mainstream media today, as well as adversely affecting HIV/AIDS and general health care interventions in Africa.

Yet, in 1988 – only 3 years later – the truth came out! SIV was not from Africa! SIV was not a new virus! Rather, what was thought to be SIV was actually another virus, which had contaminated the blood samples of the African Green monkeys.

This contaminating virus originally came from Rhesus macaque monkeys. As a species, Rhesus macaques originated in Asia, but these particular Rhesus macaques were residents of the United States, and lived at the New England Regional Primate Research Center (NEPRC) in Southborough, Massachusetts, where various species of primates were housed and bred for the purpose of medical experimentation.

Several months prior to the discovery of “SIV,” a researcher at NEPRC, Phyllis Kanki, had isolated the virus from 4 sick Rhesus macaques monkeys. She then gave Max Essex a sample. Three years later, another group of investigators compared the genetic structures of SIV (“discovered” by Essex) and the virus from Rhesus macaques. Genetically, the two viruses were 99% identical; meaning they were the same virus. The viruses Kanki had given Essex had contaminated the blood samples of the wild-caught AGMs in the team Essex laboratory (the blood samples but not the monkeys were brought over from Africa).

In 1988, Nature, the leading interdisciplinary scientific journal, published a letter by Essex admitting this contamination and its source. Nature also published the genetic analysis that exposed the contamination. However, both the admission and the genetic analysis seemed to pass unnoticed by the medical and scientific community at large – even though Nature followed up several months later with a short editorial entitled “Human AIDS Virus Not From Monkeys”.

Nonetheless, 6 months after Essex’s letter of admission was published in Nature, Scientific American – a magazine of far greater distribution – published an article co-written by Essex and Kanki entitled “The Origins Of The AIDS Virus” which featured a full-page, color photo of the African green monkey.

Thus, the theory that HIV originated in Africa primates perpetuated. This theory changed over time as the species identified as the source of HIV’s progenitor shifted from AGMs to sooty mangabeys to the common chimpanzee, the chimpanzee currently bearing the crown stamped “Origin of AIDS.” To date, dozens of SIVs have been isolated from at least 30 species of African primates, none of them causing immunodeficiency; nevertheless, they all are labeled “closely related” to HIV by the investigators who discovered them.

This categorical use of the misnomer “immunodeficiency” in this crop of viruses reflects the “plight” of virologists. To get funding, it’s best to be working on a primate immunodeficiency virus. The situation is analogous to the height of the ‘War on Cancer’ in the 1970s. At that time, any virologists working on viruses labeled oncogenic (causing or inducing tumor formation) were viewed in particularly favorable light by funding agencies.

In relation to the current situation with HIV/AIDS, this prerogative continues to afflict HIV/AIDS research funding and interventions across many scientific, medical, and allied professional domains.

Given all the known retroviruses “closely related” to HIV derived from primates in Africa, it is ironic that only 2 primate retroviruses are known to induce an analogous immunodeficiency in their original hosts; and both these retroviruses and their hosts come from the United States. The first is SIVmac, the aforementioned virus isolated from Rhesus macaques by Phyllis Kanki. The second is HIV. HIV infects the primates called humans.

Phyllis Kanki originally isolated SIVmac from 4 Rhesus macaque monkeys which had an immunodeficiency syndrome with a “remarkable similarity” to human AIDS. As with human AIDS, the immunodeficiency experienced by these Rhesus macaques was characterized by opportunistic infections; namely, candidiasis, cytomegalovirus infection, and cryptosporidiosis — all diseases characteristic of human AIDS as well. The appearance of these diseases in humans and Rhesus macaques means that their respective viral infections both damage the defenses of cellular immunity. Cellular immunity defends the body against fungi, virus, and parasites, specific types of infections that flourish during HIV infection. The bacterial defense mechanism, humoral immunity, remains intact during early HIV infection.

Kanki’s discovery of SIVmac and “simian AIDS” raised no great acclaim. She soberly suggested that SIVmac and Rhesus macaque monkeys might be suitable models for experimentation and drug development; an appropriate suggestion, but it was not until after the same virus was “discovered” in African green monkeys that it received any fanfare.

An exuberant reader might theorize, given the geographic juxtaposition of SIVmac and HIV, that SIVmac and Rhesus macaques represent the origin of HIV and AIDS. However, SIVmac shares only about 50% genetic homology (‘relationship’) with HIV, and collectively, all the African primate retroviruses share about 50% genetic homology with HIV.

SIVmac shares about 75% genetic homology with all the African primate retroviruses. So, genetically, SIVmac is more closely related to the set of harmless Africa primate viruses than to HIV. What makes sense is that SIVmac is actually a virus of African origin brought over generations ago by captured African primates, and the Rhesus macaque monkeys were exposed to this African virus by living in close proximity to these African species within the cages of the U.S. research facility.

In truth, HIV stands alone among the primate viruses. All the other primate retroviruses are clustered together; having approximately 75% homology. HIV stands off to the side with 50% homology. However, HIV shares 40% – 50% homology with a set of well-characterized, pathogenic (disease-causing) retroviruses; namely retroviruses that infect ungulates (animals with hooves): horses, goats, sheep, and cattle.

Before HIV and the African primate fiasco, most known retroviruses were infectious agents that caused disease in the aforementioned animals of economic interest. At the advent of HIV, virologists working with these animal viruses attempted to draw parallels between these pathogenic animal retroviruses HIV. This comparison was easy to make because some of these animal viruses and HIV shared biological infectious processes, such as the induction of syncytia (a massive cell created by the fusion of many cells) and neurotropism (the ability to infect brain cells). (Retroviruses are also found in birds, mice, rats, pigs, and felines – both house cats and lions. Since the advent of HIV, many retroviruses under study have been renamed “immunodeficiency” viruses.)

But the theory that HIV and AIDS originated somewhere “way over there” was more palatable than any research that might associate HIV and AIDS with food and ranch animals. Which, in part, brings us to our current status of misconception.

Chris Jennings

HIV/AIDS Analyst

Publications:

• The HIV/AIDS Biological Primer

• HIV/AIDS – The Jennings Report: Redefining the Size, Scope, and Scale of the AIDS Epidemic by Forensic Review of the Medical Literature

• HIV/AIDS Statistics in the Republic of South Africa (RSA): An Analysis of HIV/AIDS Mortality comparing Death Counts, Surveillance Data, and Modeled Estimates

For More Information: www.healthalert.net

The company’s founder and Chief Executive, Aiden Heavey, had the idea, in the 1980s, of venturing into the oil and gas business when a friend of his mentioned there were oil fields in parts of Africa that had been more or less abandoned by the major oil companies. These majors had left because they were not satisfied with the outcome of the work they had done. But Heavey’s friend suggested he gave it a try to see if something good could come of it.

Another friend who worked at the World Bank fuelled Heavey’s ambitions further when the friend told him about a project in oil and gas in Senegal. So, off he went to Senegal and that’s how Tullow started.

Given his background in accountancy, Heavey had, at that point, very little knowledge of the oil and gas industry. So when he started Tullow Oil, he wasn’t given much of a chance to succeed. Nevertheless, he has worked hard at it for the past 25 years to bring Tullow up to this point.

In 2007, Tullow Oil plc did some analysis on oil prospects in Ghana. The data and information looked promising and so to Ghana Tullow headed. Its initial involvement in the country was in a couple of blocks in partnership with other oil companies.

Gayheart Mensah, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications of Tullow Ghana Limited explains that ‘very often companies will go into partnership, particularly in countries that are not known to be oil and gas producing, for purposes of mitigating risk. To drill one well for instance can cost between $80 and $100 million. If you’re able to strike oil, then you are in good business, but if not, it’s about $100 million of investment down the drain. Nobody refunds that money to you.

‘And so when Tullow came into Ghana, it went into partnership with a number of companies: Kosmos Energy, Sabre Oil, Anadarko Petroleum, EO Group and, indeed, there was Ghana’s own National Petroleum Corporation. Altogether there were six companies. There were two oil blocks that Tullow had strong interest in, and the company worked these two blocks with the same partners.’

In 2007, oil was discovered straddling these two blocks. This field was named Jubilee because the discovery was made in the year Ghana celebrated her 50th independence anniversary. When it was established that it was in commercial quantities, the issue then became what would be the earliest time that Tullow and its partners can produce this field. It was clear that Ghana couldn’t wait for the financial benefits that would accrue, given that the country needed massive infrastructure development.

‘Normally, in the oil and gas industry, it takes 7-10 years from the point of discovery to be able to produce fields. But in this particular case, after several discussions and development models had been looked at, the partners pledged to develop and produce the field within 40 months.’

This was a very ambitious target. Indeed there was a lot of scepticism within the industry as to whether this target was attainable. But the partners were not to be daunted. ‘We worked diligently at it and we were able to produce oil within the stipulated time,’ Gayheart says.

‘It has been acclaimed as a world-class achievement, and has attracted a lot of reviews because of the accelerated nature of the project, and because we were able to deliver within 40 months, particularly in Ghana, which didn’t have any oil history,’ Gayheart explains. ‘We didn’t have any oil field development and production infrastructure. It has really been a remarkable achievement.

‘How were we able to do that? It had to do with the effectiveness of the partnerships on this project. When it was decided that the field had to be produced via an accelerated project, a number of quick decisions had to be taken. The reason why it takes quite some time to develop a field has to do with the need to understand the nature of the field; the geophysical conditions and how these play out; the quality and types of the sands and rocks, levels of porosity and permeability, and several other technical conditions.

‘All these feed into determining how to develop the field and extract the oil. It helps determine what would be the best option, in terms of the deployment of facilities for the purpose of developing and producing the field,’ Gayheart says.

But Tullow had very little understanding of the Jubilee Field. Notwithstanding that, the company went ahead with the information that it had. Equipment was ordered in advance. Such orders or equipment would depend on the nature of the field and have to be ordered according to certain specifications. Others lend themselves to off-the-shelf solutions. In placing the advance orders for the Jubilee Field, Tullow made allowance for any eventuality.

FPSO Kwame Nkrumah:

Soon, it became very clear to the technical team that the best option for developing the Jubilee Field was to deploy a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, normally used for offshore production. They float on the sea and are hooked up to the various infrastructure laid on the ocean bed. For instance, with regard to the Jubilee Field, from the surface of the water to the ocean bed where the drilling actually starts is a distance of about 1.5km. That’s why it is referred to as a deepwater development.

Drilling, from the ocean bed, can go as deep as 3km to 4km under the sea – drilling through very hard rocks in order to get to the reservoir, where the crude is deposited. During production, the crude is extracted from the crust of the seabed and goes through many kilometres of production lines, until it gets into the FPSO. FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has a reservoir for storing crude, after it had gone through some initial processing, from where other vessels come for their supplies ready for sale to the international market.

FPSO Kwame Nkrumah cost about $1 billion and the entire cost of the Jubilee Project is about $3.4 billion. FPSO Kwame Nkrumah is about 330 metres long, about three football fields put together. It took two years to build in Singapore by MODEC, a general contractor specializing in engineering, procurement, construction and installation of floating production systems including FPSO vessels. It is the fastest ever conversion of a tanker vessel of that size into an FPSO.

The Jubilee Project made a number of pledges and delivered on them, which has drawn a lot of attention to the project. Among them are:

• FPSO delivered within two years

• Production of oil from the Jubilee Field within 40 months

• Beginning of oil lifting from the Jubilee Field to international markets in January

It was acknowledged as a world-class project for a variety of reasons. The drilling efficiency of the project is one. This refers to the amount of time taken to drill a well, and the resources expended.

‘In the Jubilee Field we were able to achieve a record in terms of drilling efficiency. That’s part of the reason why the project was acknowledged as a world-class project.’

At the height of the operations, when installations and other activities were taking place, particularly in the first quarter of 2010, there were about 20 vessels working off the coast of Ghana. ‘Installation of the subsea infrastructure on the ocean bed requires specialised vessels. Due to the depths the water, no human being goes down there to lay anything. Robots (Remotely Operated Vehicles), assisted by the specialised vessels, are responsible for laying the infrastructure – even the proper positioning of pipes, tightening of knots and valves, etc.

Ghana had been exploring for oil for over 100 years without success, and questions were raised as to why it was taking the country so long to strike oil. ‘Basically, this had to do with technology’ Gayheart explains. ‘Up until about 15 years ago, deepwater technology hadn’t advanced to the stage that it has gotten to today. This held back successful exploration activities in Ghana, since most of the prospects were offshore.

On December 15 last year, Ghana had a huge celebration to finally mark oil production in the country. At the moment, the Jubilee Field has been producing 85,000 barrels of oil a day (b/d). It is anticipated this will move up to 120,000 b/d by the end of the year, which is the plateau production, and FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has the capacity to process that volume.

In order to extend the plateau production of 120,000 b/d over a longer period, the Jubilee Partners are working other wells within the Jubilee Field area.

Share offer

Tullow Ghana Limited has pledged long-term commitment to developing Ghana’s oil and gas capability. ‘Tullow intends to be in Ghana for the long haul. We have huge investment in Ghana because we have confidence in the value and industry of the Ghanaian. Recently we floated shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). We ended up raising equity of $72.3 million from Ghanaians. It was the largest ever equity to have been raised on the GSE. Our share offer more than doubled the value of the Exchange, and that was an exciting achievement. We now have about 10,000 ordinary Ghanaian shareholders, which manifests our commitment to Ghana’ Gayheart says.

Developing human capital

Tullow Ghana has also done well investing in human capital. It initially sent 14 Ghanaian graduates to UK universities on scholarships to undertake Masters Degrees in subjects specific to the oil industry. They returned last year to the government institutions that they worked for. ‘We are building local capability and ensuring that it stays within Ghana to help develop the oil and gas sector,’ notes Gayheart.

The Tullow Scholarship Scheme will become a fully-fledged programme that aims to support learning and development in the oil and gas sector. It will assist Ghanaians every year to undertake studies in oil and gas related courses at UK universities. Some of these subjects will include petroleum engineering, environmental health and safety; taxation; and finance and accounting. This year, 24 Ghanaians have been sponsored by Tullow on this scholarship on a pilot basis. It will officially take off next year.

‘In order to ensure transparency in the scholarship programme, we’ve enlisted the help of the British Council to administer it on our behalf’ says Gayheart. ‘We agreed the criteria. The Council handles the selection process because it has the experience and track record.

‘We are also investing in education in the country, providing science labs and educational facilities. We are building a technical school in the Central Region, and supporting the Polytechnic in Takoradi to deliver curriculum that will build the required middle-level technical manpower for the oil and gas industry’ Gayheart says. This is being done in conjunction with TTE Technical Training Group, which is one of the UK leading technical training providers, focusing on the delivery of apprenticeship programmes and technical training services to the Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Engineering and Petrochemical industries. Tullow is also working with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to support manpower development for the industry.

Our CSR

Indeed, Tullow’s corporate social responsibility has four pillars: education, health, entrepreneurial development and environmental protection. The company is also assisting the government to set up a small and medium-scale enterprises (SME) centre that will help develop the private sector. Internally, Tullow has a local content development department that reaches out to local companies that want to be part of the oil and gas supply chain, helping to bring them up to scratch. ‘The oil and gas industry is a stickler for standards, and as much as we want to help as many Ghanaians to take part in this process, we won’t compromise on standards,’ explains Gayheart.

In the area of health, Tullow supports local communities by organising quarterly health checks in communities in which the company operates, in partnership with Ghana Health Service (GHS). The GHS provides the doctors and paramedics who screen people for various illnesses such as eye defects, diabetes, breast cancer, malaria etc. The company also pays for treatment.

Tullow is building a maternity ward in the Western Region. ‘The issue of maternal health care has been on our radar, and we intend to contribute to addressing it,’ says Gayheart. ‘For the future we plan to assist the emergency unit at the hospital in Takoradi.’

The environment

On the thorny issue of the environment, Tullow has done an Environmental Impact Assessment of its operations on the immediate communities. The company shared its findings with communities, NGOs, policy makers, traditional leaders, the media, local authorities, in order to develop an action plan to mitigate the impact. The company consistently engages the fishing communities to listen to, and help address their concerns. Managing fishing expeditions and how they interface with operations at the Jubilee Field requires regular dialogue to promote understanding and co-existence’. Gayheart says.

On the whole so far Tullow has managed to establish a successful deepwater operating company in Ghana through its operations in the Jubilee Field. ‘We are proud to have been able to establish such high tech oil and gas operation in Ghana, relying predominantly on local capability’ Gayheart says.

‘To build such levels of local capacity within two years, in addition to producing the Jubilee Field has never happened anywhere before. Ghana is being touted as the fastest growing economy in Africa on the back of oil receipts’ Gayheart says. Until the production of oil last year, Ghana relied on cocoa, gold, timber and to some extent tourism for its foreign exchange revenue. Oil has helped to diversify this to a very large extent. .

Tullow hopes to make the Ghanaian industry bigger and more economically viable than Nigeria’s embattled oil and gas sector. The company is currently exploring in Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Sierra Leone, all in West Africa. The company expects that the West African region will be a very resourceful area in terms of oil and gas production, if good finds are made.

Given that Tullow says it is in Ghana for the long haul, how does the company view the sustainability of oil production in the country? Gayheart says the Jubilee Field is estimated to last for 25 years. ‘There are other discoveries that have been made and so the industry in Ghana has a lot more years beyond 25’ Gayheart says confidently. Indeed, there are six other discoveries that Tullow is working on. Some, hopefully, will come on stream within the next few years, especially the Enyenra Field, similar to the Jubilee Fields in terms of reserves and resources, and the quality of the crude.

Gayheart says Tullow will turn its attention to this project next year, which is already at an advanced stage.

So what qualities have suddenly projected Tullow into the big league? A look at Tullow in Ghana will inevitably list the following:

• Drilling efficiency as recorded during the Jubilee Project

• Tullow’s operatorship of the Jubilee Field which has attracted global acclaim

• Delivery of oil from the Jubilee Field within 40 months

• The local capability that has been built in Ghana from 2007 till date

• Tullow’s strong relationships with the communities and key stakeholders

• The company’s agenda of ‘creating shared prosperity’ as manifested by listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange

• The state-of-the-art technology deployed to develop and produce the Jubilee Field

• The building of a deepwater development company in Ghana within a remarkable short period

• Quality of the crude produced from the Jubilee Field

• The Jubilee Projects outstanding record in the area of Environment, Health and Safety

• The excellent partnership with Kosmos, Anadarko, GNPC etc

• World-class partnership, great teamwork

Although the industry says that partnerships can be problematic for oil development, Tullow has worked well with its partners. It has also refused to re-invent the wheel, buying equipment off the shelf; equipment that has been used already by other companies.

‘But most of all the partnership with, and support from the Ghanaian government has been exceptional’ Gayheart proclaims. ‘Without them we couldn’t have gotten this far. The support and understanding from the government has played a major role in what we’ve been able to do so far.’

Killed in Misrata on April 20 during the early days of the Libyan translation of the Arab Spring, Hetherington’s work and life read like something out of one of his acclaimed works. Born 40 years ago in Liverpool, England, Tim read English literature and Greek at Oxford. Inspired during a trip to the Indian subcontinent Tim decided he wanted to make images and upon his return to the UK earned a diploma in Journalism at Cardiff.

No one knew what motivated Tim from the classics to images, but from his first job as a photojournalist at the Big Issue, a UK magazine for homeless causes, to his award winning pictures, documentaries, films, and his work with the kids at the Milton Margai School for the Blind, it is clear that Tim used his images to not only shed light on the stark realities of the pain and agony of conflict but also as a means of social activism to give voice to the voiceless.

‘He was not just a journalist, but a great humanitarian [with] human touch in abundance,’ said Peter Penfold. The former British Ambassador to Sierra Leone met Tim in Freetown towards the end of the brutal civil war. The two men started a letter-writing scheme between students at the Milton Margai School for the Blind (MMSB) and a UK-based school for the blind. The contrasting program resulted in the MMSB choir touring the UK culminating in a performance at Westminster Abbey, a feat only accomplished by one other individual, Elton John, when he paid a tribute to the late Diana Spencer.

It was during this and a 2007 tour that Tim formed a lasting bond with the first recipients of the Tim Hetherington Award, Alie Mansaray and Osman Kamara. During their acceptance speech, the duo paid a lighthearted tribute to Tim that left the crowd in stitches.

‘I am going to miss Uncle Tim. He was always available to us. Life has to end and sadly, Tim had to die; but he died doing what he loved. As a tribute to his life, I am going to use the award money to study journalism and continue where he left off. Tim’s message continues with us,’ said Osman Kamara.

The Tim Hetherington Award is an annual award established by the Hetherington family and Peter Penfold in support of the work of MMSB. The Hetherington family designated the school to honor the legacy of their son. Tim’s legacy and message of truth lives on in the hearts of the people he touched around the world. ‘Tim has left footprints in the sands of time that will never be wiped off,’ said Acting Principal of MMSB, Albert Sandy.

Jerry Kai-Lewis, Freetown.

Moulay Mohamed had been a storyteller for forty-five years. He started to tell me a tale about a poor man from Marrakech whose only possession was a red lantern, but I was too impatient, so I cut him short and pressed on with the interview. My impatience proved to be costly because when I returned two years later, he had gone. I was told he was gravely ill and no longer telling stories.

But I did meet Abderrahim El Makkouri, a bombastic showman who was still performing to the crowds. I spent many afternoons in a cafe listening to his tales. One day Abderrahim started one: ‘once upon a time in Baghdad…’

‘No,’ I protested, ‘I want to hear Moroccan stories!’

‘Ok then, once upon a time in Marrakech…’

At first I was dismayed that I was not going to hear a local story but then I realised that this might be how stories had evolved across the world. Plots from as far afield as India have been copied with only the names being changed.

I had heard that storytelling in Morocco, which is one of the last places in the world where it exists as a public entertainment, was dying out. But I did not appreciate just how quickly. In the next couple of years of collating tales I noticed that the hlaykia had seemed to stop performing in the Jemaa El Fna. The urgent need to gather their tales struck me very suddenly.

I returned six months later, determined to record more stories before they vanished forever. Sadly there was still no sign of Moulay Mohamed. I did however meet Mohamed Bariz, an intellectual who reinvents tales by imbuing them with lines from Cervantes or Borges. I was delighted with his stories. But I also encountered many charlatans, such as those that tout themselves out to five star hotels to perform in front of tourists.

But my translator Ahmed came to my rescue again, telling me that he had tracked down one of the most famous storytellers of all. Ahmed Temiicha is very old and has gone blind. It took us hours to find his house in the backstreets of the old Jewish quarter. He was born in the 1920s and learnt his craft just a decade later building up a vast repertoire of stories.

Efforts have been made to categorise Moroccan tales. The Arabists Jilali el Koudia and Hassan el-Shamy class them into animal tales, ordinary folk tales, local legends, humorous narratives and formula tales. Within these categories are further subdivisions, the smallest unit being the motif. Common motifs are ogres, tests, rewards and punishments.

Their research follows other illustrious folklorists. Albert Bates Lord examined oral narratives from recordings of bards from Yugoslavia and from epics such as the Odyssey and Beowulf. Lord found that a large part of the stories consisted of text improvised during the narration. He identified certain formulaic phrases and discovered around ninety percent of an oral epic is assembled from lines repeated verbatim or with one-for-one word substitutions. I noticed that Moroccan stories also often have stock phrases, such ‘x, who was a good man,’ or ‘y, the son of z.’

Academics sometimes divide oral tales into two groups: Marchen and Sagen, German terms for ‘fairy tales’ and ‘legends’.

The Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp analysed many of his country’s tales and identified thirty-one narrative units including for example interdiction, trickery, struggle, solution, punishment and inheritance of the throne.

One plot that frequently occurs in Moroccan fables is the rags to riches tale and many stories concern a poor man who, by completing severe tests, marries the Sultan’s daughter. Moroccan folk tales were generally for the common man and for them it was a relief to hear that the underdog could can triumph, because that was not what happened in their own lives. The hlaykia have traditionally been impoverished and lived on the margins of society like beggars. Until recently you could find the hlaykia in all the country’s major cities, such as Fes, Meknes and Tangier. Morocco was one of the last places were storytelling survived in the Arab world.

The stories are a mixture of three different traditions, Arabic, Berber and Gnawa (from Sub-Saharan Africa). Stories can be told in classical Arabic but more often in the local dialect, darija.

The tales often have a strong religious element. Like the parables of the New Testament; they help people understand ethical values enshrined in Islam such as honesty and hospitality.

I found it fascinating to see how themes from other traditions across the world recur in Moroccan stories. For example one story is almost exactly the same as Cinderella. It seems reassuring that stories are similar no matter where they come from. It reveals the universality of mankind’s experiences. This has been explored by Carl Jung in his theory of the ‘collective unconscious,’ the anthropologist Lucien Levy-Brul’s in ‘collective representations’ and by the ethnologist Adolf Bastian with ‘elemental ideas.’ Bastian suggested that our minds work along certain mental grooves and images.

The storytellers have been part of an informal education system in a country which has an illiteracy rate of forty percent. Oral tales were therefore the best way for people to understand the world.

In the 1970s there were eighteen storytellers in Marrakech, now there are less than half a dozen and they are all old men with no apprentices. After perhaps a millennium, the art of the hlaykia is vanishing. The country’s young population is turning instead to television and the internet.

Not everyone has been prepared to stand by while storytelling disappears. The United Nations’ heritage organisation UNESCO planned to record the stories on its website. It was an enchanting idea that technology which had been the storytellers’ killer, could turn out to be their saviour, but sadly this project has lost momentum.

What will we have lost if the storytellers disappear? From Morocco’s point of view, it is losing part of its national identity. But the country’s loss is also humanity’s deprivation. We are all losing part of our collective memory and history. And since the stories have universal themes, they are the world’s inheritance and we will all be poorer with their passing.

My last trip to research my book was in November 2009. ‘I have someone for you to meet!’ said Ahmed with a glint in his eye. Moulay Mohamed was sitting beside him in the same faded grey djellaba. With great ingenuity Ahmed had sought him out. We sat down and restarted that interview which had begun three years earlier. I asked Moulay Mohamed to tell me a story. I was more patient this time when he began the tale about a poor man in Marrakech whose only possession was a red lantern…

Richard Hamilton is the author of “The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco”.

The 11th Zimfest music, sport, arts and culture event which takes place in Rayne’s Park, West London on the 27^th of August will donate funds to the East African crisis which has seen more than 10 million people facing desperate food shortages following the worst drought in 60 years. Prospective donors and well wishers can contribute to the Zimfest/British Red Cross appeal on the Just Giving online page, it has been announced.

Zimfest coordinator, Hilton Mendelsohn, said: ‘Zimfest has always had humanitarian and charitable objectives at the heart of its principles. This year we are looking to give part of the proceeds of the money raised at the festival towards perhaps the worst food crisis of the 21st Century.’

He added: ‘We are also most excited about returning to our South West London traditional home in Raynes Park after a year away. This Zimfest will be yet another occasion for community development amongst and between Zimbabweans in the UK; and other communities and nationalities. ‘The annual all-day Zimfest Festival started in 2001 and contributes to the charitable causes of the charity WeZimbabwe.

The Zimfest line-up for this year’s 10 year anniversary includes British veteran DJ Brandon Block famous for his Ministry of Sound and Ibiza gigs. Also among the artists billed to star on the day is Pop sensation Tinashe and Afro-pop duo Bkay and Kazz who are currently riding on the wave of success following the release of their sophomore international album, African Spirit.

Kazz said: ‘We are most thrilled to return to Zimfest and more so now as African Spirit is out and getting the most amazing reception from our fans and music lovers all over.

‘We know Zimfest always brings the most action-packed programme with entertainment for the whole family to enjoy, whether to take part or simply sit and watch. It’s so up our street and we are looking forward to a great festival,” he said.