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.

He is the first head of state to be indicted, tried and convicted by an international tribunal. The crimes for which he was convicted ranged from acts of terrorism, murder, rape, pillage, sexual slavery, inhumane acts, including mutilations and amputations, outrages upon personal dignity, cruel treatment, recruitment, enlistment and use of child soldiers, and enslavement.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, a hybrid of Sierra Leone and international law, was first established in 2002 to try ‘those who bear the greatest responsibility’ for the appalling atrocities committed during the 11 year rebel war in Sierra Leone which started in 1991 when a group of RUF (Revolutionary United Front) rebels crossed from Liberia into Sierra Leone and started terrorising the people. The Court’s quest to pursue international justice has not been without difficulty and controversy.

Following the deaths in 2003 of Foday Sankoh, the infamous leader of the RUF, and his psychopathic henchman, Sam Bockarie, there were calls for the Special Court to be disbanded before the trials had got underway. Sankoh and Bockarie were undoubtedly the two most responsible for the atrocities and their deaths, (Sankoh’s whilst in detention in Freetown and Bockarie’s in Liberia, ironically on the alleged orders of Taylor), robbed the Sierra Leone people of seeing the two brought to justice for the havoc they had caused. Sankoh had in fact already been found guilty of treason and sentenced to death in an earlier Sierra Leone Court but it was the international community, led by the US and UK, who had insisted on pushing through an ill-conceived peace agreement which left Sankoh as a de facto Vice President and in charge of the country’s diamond wealth. When Sankoh reneged on the terms of the peace agreement these same countries then pushed for him to be tried as a war criminal.

The calls to disband were ignored and the Court pursued its quest to prosecute others for the atrocities. Johnny Paul Koroma, the head of the military junta which had removed President Kabbah in 1997 was indicted but he fled the country and disappeared. Chief Sam Hinga Norman, one of Kabbah’s ministers and widely regarded as one of those most responsible for defending the people and restoring peace and democracy to Sierra Leone, was also indicted but he too died in detention before his trial was concluded. The trials for nine other members of the three warring factions, the RUF, the AFRC/SLA and the CDF were concluded a few years ago and these nine are now serving out their long sentences in a prison on the other side of the continent in Rwanda.

But these nine were generally regarded as lesser figures in the conflict and therefore much hinged upon the trial of Charles Taylor, whose support for the RUF prolonged the conflict. The manner in which the Court’s Chief Prosecutor, David Crane, unveiled Taylor’s indictment nearly derailed the delicate negotiations which were taking place at the time in Ghana to persuade him to stand down and bring an end to the equally bloody conflict in Liberia. The Ghanaians ignored the indictment and handed Taylor over to President Obasanjo in Nigeria as part of the peace process and Obasanjo held him in Nigeria despite intense international pressure from many, including the US Government who issued a $2 million bounty for his capture. Obasanjo finally handed Taylor over to Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf upon her election as Liberian President in 2006. She immediately passed him over to the Sierra Leone Special Court who whisked him off to The Hague to commence his trial, which dragged on for the past four years.

The Taylor conviction is hailed as a justification for all the Sierra Leone Special Court’s efforts. In welcoming the conviction, Brenda Hollis, the Court’s present Chief Prosecutor, claimed: ‘Today’s historic judgement reinforces the new reality that Heads of State will be held to account for war crimes and other international crimes. This judgement affirms that with leadership comes not just power and authority, but also responsibility and accountability. No person, no matter how powerful, is above the law.’

Some have questioned this claim. It has been pointed out that Taylor was not the only head of state involved in the Sierra Leone conflict. They note that the origins of both the Sierra Leone and the Liberian conflicts emanated in Libya under the guidance of President Gadaffi. They also note that some of the arms and ammunition for the RUF passed through the neighbouring West African country of Burkino Faso with the supposed agreement of President Compare. However, neither of these two heads of state was indicted.

It is also pointed out that in setting up the Special Court a waiver was granted against indicting members of the peacekeeping force including the West African force, ECOMOG, who according to the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission were responsible for 1% of the atrocities. (According to the TRC, the RUF were responsible for 60.5% of the atrocities, the AFRC/SLA 16.6% and the CDF 6%). It’s also worth mentioning that the US Government, one of the strongest supporters of the Special Court, had concluded a bilateral agreement with the Sierra Leone Government to ensure that no US national could be brought before the Court.

Undoubtedly, alongside the deployment of British troops, Taylor’s removal, allied to the imposition of the embargo on the sale of ‘blood diamonds’ through the passing of UN resolution No. 1306 contributed significantly to ending the Sierra Leone conflict. During his presidency the export of ‘Liberian’ diamonds increased twentyfold, even though Liberia has far less diamond resources than diamond rich Sierra Leone. One of the highlights of the Taylor trial was the appearance of the supermodel, Naomi Campbell, to explain her gift from Taylor when meeting him in South Africa of a cache of diamonds – ‘dirty-looking stones’, as she described them. According to some press reports, Taylor amassed around $800 million in his personal bank account during his presidency while the Liberian economy plummeted.

There will be few tears shed for Taylor’s plight, not least in Liberia itself, where he subjected the people to a bloody conflict for years. Taylor’s election in 1997 was on a platform of in effect ‘if you don’t vote for me I’ll go back to killing you!’ It is somewhat ironic that for these crimes in which he was clearly more directly involved, he has not been held to account.

However, does Taylor’s conviction really deter other criminal heads of state, as has been claimed by the Special Court and its supporters? Taylor’s conviction had been preceded by that of President Milosevic by the Special Court for Yugoslavia (the ICTY) but Milosevic died before his trial ended. The ICC trial of ex President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast will now follow. The ICC’s indictment of President Omar al-Bashir does not appear to have had much effect on him and the situation in Sudan, and the ICC’s indictment of Joseph Kony has seemed to prolong the conflict in northern Uganda.

The ICC is still celebrating its first conviction of the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubango. There are currently over two dozen people indicted by the ICC for war crimes or crimes against humanity – all of them African. This focus on Africa has incurred the wrath of many African leaders. The Rwandese President, Paul Kagame, has dismissed the ICC as a new form of imperialism created by the West. Charles Taylor’s defence counsel, the Jamaican born British QC, Courtney Griffiths, has said that the process risks being viewed as ‘neo-colonialism’.

Have the activities of these courts of international justice made it easier to resolve conflicts, as has been claimed? When attempting to resolve conflicts it is usually necessary to persuade both sides of the conflict to cease fighting and killing, lay down their weapons and negotiate a peaceful agreement. Often this will require not only understanding, patience and skilful diplomacy, but also some form of concessions such as pardons and/or amnesties. The activities of the ICC and the Sierra Leone Special Court have demonstrated that such provisions and assurances negotiated on the ground in good faith become meaningless once the juggernaut of international justice comes on the scene. What incentive, therefore, will there be for some of those to stop fighting?

Sentencing for Charles Taylor has been set for 30 May and subject to any appeal he will serve his sentence in a British prison, at a cost of some £64,000 per annum to the British tax-payer. It has been estimated that his trial alone has cost $50 million, within an overall cost of over $200 million. Has it been money well spent? Supporters of the Special Court will say that justice comes at a price but for the victims of these terrible atrocities, the poor people of Sierra Leone, who continue to eke out a living in one of the poorest countries in the world, they may have other views.

Peter Penfold

After a stop-start journey in the last five years, the big players have arrived: BG group, KPMG, Royal Dutch Shell, Anadarko, Tullow, Petrobras, Ophir, Origin Oil, Total, BP and Aminex. Even the ‘security firms’ such as Cenkos, which previously regarded East Africa (and the Congo) as too swamped in piracy, conflict and uncertainty, said in November last year “East Africa is high risk and hugely expensive. It is also exceptionally rewarding if exploration is successful.” With only 500 oil wells drilled so far (compared to West and North Africa’s 35,000), the estimated value of the gas reserves alone are 100 trillion cubic feet. Petroleum reserves are estimated at 600,000 barrels a day. The factors that have tipped East Africa into the big game, are these.

Ease of Business and smoother democracies

First of all the creation of the East African Community has theoretically opened up trade borders and lessened tariffs. Secondly there have been technological advances both in mapping seismic faults and geographical areas that were previously unreachable, the economic risks of drilling have reduced. Thirdly, there is a concerted and obvious effort by East and Central African governments to sort out internal conflicts and engage more rigorously with the West, whose escalating oil prices have forced them to be more compliant. For the Mozamibiquan, Kenyan, Tanzanian, Sudanese, Somali, Puntland and Ugandan governments, the potential gains from oil, gas and mineral exploration are huge incentives to come to the table.

Wads of Cash

But most importantly, there is cash. US$ 2.1 trillion is needed for investment in African oil and gas supply infrastructure (refineries, roads, whole towns, ports,) between 2010-2035. This is where Africa’s burgeoning love affair with China becomes important. Previously smaller ‘wildcat’ oil explorers had the skills, but not the funds to take it to the next stage. Since the Africa Oil Week in South Africa in November last year, there have been a succession of buyouts of these smaller firms. China has proved its technical expertise in major projects all over Africa, from airports to the recent The Lamu Port and Lamu Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) developments, and has proved itself cheap, fast, reliable. China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)has pledged to invest, although exact figures are impossible to locate. As establishment and US darling Oxford economist Professor Paul Collier remarks: “Future discoveries and resulting exports of resources including oil and gas will be around five times their current levels, based on what remains unexplored in Africa versus currently known sub-soil assets.” His sentiments are echoed by Adrian Heavey, CEO of Tullow, a prominent name in West and East African exploration: “This is a vital step towards the development of the Lake Albert Rift Basin and the oil and gas industry in Uganda and East Africa. I look forward to working in partnership with the Government of Uganda and CNOOC and Total as we progress this world-class asset.”

MYOPIA: People, Resources and Marine Ecosystems

Yet there is a staggering amount of myopia and short-sightedness. Have we learnt nothing from Ghana, Angola and Nigeria, where bitter battles, inconsistent petroleum regulation, weak civil society, existing conflicts exacerbated by oil, and deaths (and losses to shareholders) have shown it’s impossible to invest in oil/gas/mineral exploitation without ‘exploring local capacity’ as the jargon goes? In other words making sure the people that already live in the area are consulted, and have a share in decision making and profits. And being mindful of existing conservation stresses, and potential ecological problems.

It’s hard to know where to start. Most of East Africa has no regulatory frameworks in place for oil and mineral resources exploitation. Or if they have, there is an abject lack of willpower to implement them. Selous in Tanzania, the Albertine Rift and Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, and Virunga National Park in Rwanda have all had Environmental Assessments or management plans which have not been adhered to or implemented. This is something which international marine organizations Ocean Conservation Group ( OCEANA) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) would like to rectify. So at the moment, unlike USA, Europe and some of the Pacific countries, there is no obligation to implement detailed environmental impact surveys.

The coastal regions (from Somaliland in the North to Mozambique) are acknowledged to be some of the most vulnerable sea areas in the world. WWF and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) are already concerned about myriad of issues: from coastal mangroves, to turtles, whale sharks, torpoises, dolphins, rays, over 400 types of corals, seagrass, to overfishing. Says Dr Amani Ngusaru of the WWF “The resources of coastal East Africa are coming more and more under threat from rapid population growth, increased resource exploitation, unplanned development and climate change, burgeoning cities such as Mombasa, Dar es Salaam are threatening the very resource base that sustains them.”

The perils of oil spills are visible and high profile, in fact it is the planned building around the ports, which will cause the most damage. Oil spills upon marine environments are dwarfed by those of pollutants introduced from other sources (including domestic sewage, industrial discharges, leakages from waste tips, urban and industrial run-off, accidents, spillage, explosions, sea dumping operations, oil production, mining, agriculture nutrients and pesticides, waste heat sources, and radioactive discharges). Land based sources are estimated to account for around 44 percent of the pollutants entering the sea and atmospheric inputs account for an estimated 33 percent. By contrast, maritime transport accounts only for around 12 percent .

Accidents will Happen

In Jan 2012 Exxon Mobile – announced its staggering annual profits of $41.1 billion, yet no plans are in place to either enforce action plans or responses for oil spills, in any of the areas allocated for deep or shallow water drilling. Yet just recently, the oil giant BP agreed to pay $7.8bn to settle claims from an estimated 110,000 victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In the last six years there have been four major oil spills, resulting in an estimated 100 billion gallons of oil into the sea.

Oceana, the largest international global ocean advocacy group says that currently, as well as relying on financial insurances, companies can pass along much of their cleanup costs to the domestic taxpayer when faced with disaster. Talking about the recent BP spill, Jacqueline Savitz, senior campaign director at Oceana says: “Taking the lives of 11 people, injuring many more, destroying tourism and fisheries industries, spilling 200 million gallons of oil and killing hundreds of turtles, dolphins and other ocean life is not, and should never be, considered a normal cost of doing business. It is bad business, and not what was intended when the tax write-off was established.” Given the poor record of citizen engagement in African countries, and the dubious taxing situation (allegedly 85% of Africa’s taxes remain unpaid) and the sometimes weak and collaborative media, it is highly unlikely the mechanisms will be in place to protect the populations of the coastal regions, who are already politically, economically and socially marginalised.

Even when data is forthcoming, it is so daunting, it is a huge task to tackle it. According to the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA)/UNEP ‘Science 2008 Marine Survey.’ 40% is the amount of the ocean heavily affected by environmental mismanagement, 50% Amount of coral reefs heavily damaged, and 0.5% (850,000 square miles) of the ocean floor are very heavily affected. Only 4% of the entire ocean shows no traces of human impact.”

On Shakey Ground

On terra firma there are also problems. In Uganda three British firms, Tullow, Tower and Dominion are all exploring the Albertine Rift, a lake area.2- 2.5 billion barrels of oil have already been discovered. This is a vulnerable area of skirmishes with DRC rebels: over 100 people have been kidnapped in this area in attacks linked to fights over ransoms, minerals and oil. The most recent attack on the border town Mutungo on 2 August 2011 by the Mai-Mai militia displaced 70,000 residents. At a local level, villagers are concerned. Florence Landsberg of the World Resources Institute explains: “The fish stock is already at risk, because there is more catching of fish that are not mature. The upgrade of the roads has allowed for more fish to be exported. The restocking of the fish is not going to happen if there is no intervention”. Says Peter Viet, also of WRI “ Many scientists will tell you that the Albertine Rift is the most biologically diverse area in all of Africa. There are national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, forest reserves, and there already is some impact on these protected areas. For example, there is drilling in Murchison Falls National Park, even though many public interest environmental lawyers in Uganda will tell you that the law does not allow that. Kenneth Kakuru of Greenwatch filed a pleading in the High Court over extractive resource industries in national parks. (His case was rejected). There have been discussions on de-gazetting one of the parks to make way for an oil refinery. There is also talk of a pipeline that would take the oil to Mombassa that would have effects on biodiversity. And there is evidence oil workers are poaching inside protected areas. He adds that Achioli and Bunyoro people, local to the area, are selling up fast, at below market prices, scared that the government will not recompense them adequately.

There is further controversy in the area, according to a recent article on Pambazuka; “ A vicious land grab,’ Allimadi writes, ‘is being carried out in Uganda, pairing the country’s leader with an ‘investor,’ and the targets are the Acholi, genocide survivors who live in the northern part of the East African country, on abundant, fertile and mineral-rich land.’

Existing Lack of Resources for Citizens:

None of the existing plans to extract oil, gas and petroleum come with concrete systematic plans to provide for the communities in the area, beyond some references to providing local jobs in some cases. The threats to forests (due to charcoal and firewood exploitation) and erratic provision of electricity are well known in East Africa. Drilling down to basics, Erica Mackey, Co-Founder of Off-Grid Electric in Tanznia, says “Generally, people in Africa suffer from an expensive electrical grid, an unreliable grid, or have no electrical grid at all. Increasing the amount of raw materials extracted from the continent is not going to automatically increase infrastructure access, decrease transportation costs or ultimately extend the electrical grid to the 90% of East Africans who live without a connection.” She goes onto add: “If the goal of energy exploration is to actually increase energy access in Africa rather than the developed world, then the focus has to shift to include renewables. In addition to exploring the continent for oil, gas and coal, international investors should look at ways to finance business models that provide clean power as a key component to the future of Africa’s power provision”.

(Mostly) Angry locals- lack of consultation

Despite high tech imaging of geological deposits, pictures of the sea from space, the reality is we don’t have an accurate record of the approximately 50 million pastoralists and 200 million who depend on the sea and land for their livelihoods in Africa. There is no documented record of contacting these communities in the regions mentioned for their views on oil and gas exploration.

Thousands of miles away, on the Kenya coast of Mombassa, tucked between the new port of Lamu and Tanga, there is considerable trouble brewing: The Mombassa Republican Council, a secessionist movement, wants autonomy from Kenya. They are popular in the area, where there is high illiteracy rates, the presence of Al Shabaab, low rates of enrolment in schools and universities, and a sense they have been abandoned by Nairobi. Land tenure is ambiguous or is not officially recognised. More than 60 per cent of indigenous coastal people do not possess title deeds to their land. Others have entered into a kind of quasi squatter-tenant agreement with land owners. The problems of local fishermen and farmers have been well documented by local NGO’s, as they compete with trawler fishing, and larger super-boats that can pinpoint shoals, leaving fishermen with paddles in dugout canoes, floundering.

Their situation, despite riots and four deaths in December 2011, goes unreported in national media. Ditto the situation in North Kenya: hours away from the capital Nairobi, where news editors and reporters, constrained by tiny budgets and tight deadlines, are unable to go and see for themselves. There are rumours presently circulating that valuable archaeological deposits in Turkana, North Kenya, have been already destroyed through oil exploration. However no organisations want to be identified with ‘squealing’ so the situation remains unreported in local press: a local journalist was murdered in Loliondo, reporting on land grabs two years ago.

A glimmer of hope

Many of the issues these people in the East African Coastal regions face are similar to those in Puntland, Somalia, where resources are seized upon, in a dearth of opportunities.

In Puntland, local leaders under the Transitional Government are bucking the trend. Aware that no mechanisms exist to make sure money flows into the region, they are however, in an optimistic mood. Farah Hassan Atosh, a traditional elder and resident of Armo town, 28km northwest of an oil field, said: “We are expecting great things. It will change our lives for the better. Insh’Allah [God willing] we will never depend on others to give us food again.” He said that change was already happening in Armo town (population 25,000). “You can see many more people arriving every day and it can only add to the development of the town.” Drilling for oil began in January 2012. Said Atosh,”We not only support it, we will defend it from anyone who wants to stop it.” He said the project was also contributing to peace-building in the area. “They are employing many young men who would have been idle and easy prey for recruitment into militias.”

Lack of Financial accountability: have we learned nothing?

In Tanzania, there are mechanisms in place to regulate, but according to regional environmental consultants, (who prefer to remain unnamed) there is little will power to implement them and ministers rapidly forget about their commitments. Track records of environmental investigations in Selous, Stiegler’s Gorge dam, Kidunda dam and Mkuju River uranium mine and oil exploration do not bode well: they are dusty reports on shelves somewhere. Pweza, Chewa and Chaza wells have been drilled in deepwater in the northern part of the Ruvuma Basin and the Mafia Deep Offshore Basin held by BG and Ophir Energy. The Chinese government is providing Tanzania with a $1.06-billion loan to construct new infrastructure, which includes a new gas pipeline, feeder roads and telecoms. All these areas are deemed ecologically vulnerable, and there is no public record of community consultation or mechanisms to ensure profits flow back into community development.

One of the main problems is tracking the money: the investments, and ways to prevent a small elite benefiting. Again, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda have poor records. In East Africa, only companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (in the USA) are required to submit financial reports. Even then as in Uganda, local ministers and judges ensure disclosure of documents relating to oil is kept out of the public sphere.

Meanwhile, the Mara River is an international river, shared between Kenya and Tanzania. The mining areas will impinge upon the dwindling Mara River Basin and draw valuable and scarce water. The basin is about 13,750 km2, of which about 65% is located in Kenya and 35% in Tanzania. The Mara River runs through the Masai Mara Game Reserve on the Kenyan side and the Serengeti National Park on the Tanzanian side, both of global conservation significance and of great economic importance for tourism. “Over 80% of Africa’s lions have been displaced due to environmental changes” says Richard Anderson in an article on the BBC in November 2010.

A recent, (Oct 2010) UNEP report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), put the damage done to the natural world by human activity in 2008 at between $2tn (£1.3tn) and $4.5tn. A second study, for the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), puts the costs at $6.6tn, or 11% of global economic output.

It looks like we are no way reversing the trend.

Thembi Mutch

‘South Sudan has a larger proportion of its children out of school than almost any other country in the world, along with the deepest gender inequalities, he said. ‘We know that education can be a catalyst for progress in other areas, such as nutrition, child survival and combating infectious diseases. For children trapped in conflict, education can help to create a sense of normality and keep alive the hope of a better future. The time for bold action is now’ Mr. Brown said

‘Access to a basic education is the birthright of every child, no matter where he or she is born,’ said Graça Machel, Co-Convenor of the High Level Panel on Global Education, referring to the need to get more children in school. ‘The international community’s commitment to the world’s most vulnerable children should be measured by its willingness to ensure schooling even for those who are the hardest to reach, including in conflict-affected states’ she said.

A new report titled ‘Education in South Sudan – investing in a better future’ was published to launch the campaign on Wednesday 18th April. The report argues that the world’s newest country provides an ideal opportunity to showcase the rapid progress that can be made towards the international development goals in education, even in fragile states. Thus far, however, international organisations have been slow to address the situation in South Sudan. In particular, the report argues that the Global Partnership for Education’s response to the Government of South Sudan’s education strategy is instead ‘a showcase for what is going wrong in an aid system that is too inflexible, slow-moving and unresponsive to the needs to conflict-affected countries.’

Mr. Brown’s advocacy campaign includes an online grassroots initiative designed to put pressure on the World Bank and GPE to launch an urgent review of South Sudan’s education needs. The petition also demands that the Bank and the GPE set aside at least $180 million in funding for education in South Sudan by July 9, the first anniversary of the country’s founding.

The report includes grim statistics about the state of education in South Sudan including:

• Six years after the end of the Sudanese civil war, more than one million children remain out of school.

• Of the 134 countries for which secondary education enrollment data are available, South Sudan currently ranks last.

• Less than five percent of 13 year-old girls in South Sudan have completed primary school.

• In some parts of South Sudan, the ratio of students to trained teachers is more than 200 to one.

In the report, Mr. Brown outlines an emergency ‘education catch-up’ plan for the country. Through classroom construction, teacher training and targeted incentives to encourage parents to send their children to school, particularly girls, the plan would get another one million children into school by the end of 2015. The plan’s financing provisions for the period 2012-2016 include:

• $180 million in co-financing from the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education.

• $100 million from OECD bilateral donors, and $30 million from non-traditional donors.

• $30 million from the Africa Development Bank/Africa Development Fund, with their support leveraging additional finance from other sources

Mr. Brown’s action is one component of a wider Education for All campaign that is being led by himself and wife Sarah. Their goal is to boost the number of children in primary schools worldwide, and to partner with government, business and non-profit leaders and organisations around the world to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.

The countries include South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, DRC Congo, Ghana (all Vodafone), Kenya (Safaricom), Rwanda, Uganda (MTN), Uganda (UTL) and Burundi (UCOM).

The company annunced today that customers travelling to these countries can now receive free incoming calls and SMS, lower calls and data rates while roaming on the Vodacom Lesotho, Vodacom Mozambique, Vodacom South Africa, Vodacom DRC, Vodafone Ghana and Safaricom Kenya, MTN Rwanda, MTN Uganda, UTL Uganda, and UCOM Burundi networks.

Commenting on the new Africa roaming service, Rene Meza, Managing Director at Vodacom Tanzania says, ‘We know that people want to remain connected at an affordable rate whether they are at home or on holiday in South Africa or travelling for work in Ghana and that nobody likes the headache of worrying about roaming bills.

‘What we’re launching today is a solution to give our customers peace of mind when travelling’. Data roaming has been and still is an expensive affair for most operators and today we are so proud to reduce substantially together with voice and SMS our data roaming charges for our customers travelling in any of our African family added Meza.

This and the many products and services we have launched lately at Vodacom Tanzania are in keeping with our promise to stay the best, with the most value network in Tanzania. More should be expected from us in the coming weeks and months concluded Rene Meza, the managing Director of Vodacom in Tanzania.

Vodacom Tanzania Limited is the country’s leading cellular network offering state-of-the-art GSM communication services to more than 9 million customers across the nation. Vodacom Tanzania is a subsidiary company of Vodacom Group (Pty) Limited, South Africa.

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!

But many Senegalese were disappointed because they thought that Wade, himself a long-time opposition politician before he finally won the presidency in 2000, should have behaved better given his own political experience. But he somehow atoned for his initial recalcitrance by accepting defeat when voters plumped for Sall, 50, in the run-off on March 26 when most of the other 12 candidates in the first round backed Sall.

In February’s first round Wade fell short of a majority, polling only 34.8 per cent while Sall came second with 26.6 per cent.

The groundswell of opposition to Wade ensured that if he had attempted to rig the poll in his favour it would have been obvious that something fishy had gone on and this would have led to more violence in the only country in West Africa that has never had a military coup. The threat of more violence could have informed the decision of Wade to concede defeat to Sall who held several ministerial positions under Wade before becoming prime minister.

Senegalese voters have bucked the recent trend in Africa where aged politicians still rule the roost. For instance, when 74-year-old Rupiah Banda lost the presidential election in Zambia in September 2011, the winner was another 74-year-old, Michael Sata, who had challenged for the position three times before.

A month later, in Cameroon, President Paul Biya, 78, was re-elected for another seven-year term. By the time he finishes this current term he would be 85 and would have been in office for 36 years.

During the election campaign in Senegal, Sall promised that, if elected, he would shorten the presidential term to five years from the current seven, and enforce the two-term limit. This is a promise that the people of Senegal would want their new leader to keep. In Africa, where politicians of a certain age abound, there is a need to build a new community of younger leaders to take on the challenges of the 21st century.

Justice Ayoola who was speaking at the inauguration of the National Anti Corruption Volunteer Corps equally lamented the move by members of the Assembly then to increase their allowances in the midst of what he described as large scale unemployment, poor living conditions and increased poverty.

Expectedly, that outburst attracted a lot of reactions from many quarters and from the Assembly itself. Nothing however seems to have changed since then as the Lower House of the NA continues to be mired in one form of corruption or the other.

It will be recalled that the first major scandal that rocked the House was in 1999 when the then Speaker was exposed by The News Magazine of certificate forgery and perjury; the allegation made him to resign and preempted his impeachment in the early life of the Fourth Republic. Also, the first female speaker of the House, Mrs. Patricia Etteh was also forced to resign in 2007 in order to avoid being removed for an alleged contract scam totaling N268million ($1.7million). The probe of the power sector by the House is still fresh in the minds of many Nigerians. The power probe under the chairmanship of House member, Ndudi Elumelu had in its report indicted former President Olusegun Obasanjo of misappropriating $10Billion allocated to the power sector. Elumelu who became an instant celebrity had in a sudden twist of fate, turned into a villain , and is facing trial today for allegedly stealing N5.4 Billion (US$34.2 Million) meant for the Rural Electrification Agency alongside some of his colleagues while the immediate past speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole and his deputy, are also today facing trial over alleged contract inflation.

Despite all these scandals and the image battering, members of the House appear impervious to such negative images. Recently, ignoring all these, members of the lower house increased their quarterly allowance from N15million (US$95,100) to N27million (US$171,200) which is an 80% increase. This is apart from other benefits that include a hefty salary, vehicle maintenance allowance and fuelling , allowances for personal staff, allowances for entertainment and utilities. The increment was brazenly done even as President Goodluck Jonathan had in January this year announced a cut in salaries of all political office holders.

Only recently, the most embarrassing scandal of recent times was exposed when the House Committee on the Capital Market was investigating the circumstances that led to the near collapse of the nation’s capital market. The chairman of the committee, Herman Hembe had accused the Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms Orunmah Oteh of compromising the regulatory position of the Commission by engaging the services of a staff of one of the banks it was supposed to be investigating as an adviser to the Commission. The committee also accused the Director General of ignoring extant laws on how much a chief executive could spend , pointing out that in one such instance , N825,000 (US$5,230) was spent on food and refreshments in a day by the Commission, while N30million (US$190,425) was expended on hotel accommodation for the Oteh in eight months . All this was dramatised on live television and it appeared members of the House were enjoying taking the head of SEC to the cleaners. Suddenly the tide changed the next day when Ms Oteh point blank, took on the chairman of the House Probe Committee, accusing him of lack of credibility and the moral justification to accuse her of any breach of extant laws. She alleged that Herman Hembe had collected a business class ticket and the sum of N5million (US$31,700) from SEC to attend an occasion overseas but that he did not go, neither did he return the amount collected. She equally put the members on the receiving end when she accused the committee of soliciting for the sum of N39million (US$247,300) from the SEC in order to facilitate the probe of the capital market by the committee.

But while the committee chairman had continued to deny any wrong doing, alleging that it was the SEC that made a proposal of cash advance to the committee, documents continued to be bandied around by both the House Committee and SEC, each accusing the other of wrong doing. And as the battle of integrity continues with both parties calling on the anti graft-agencies to wade into the imbroglio, for now it is obvious that the SEC had inflicted a far more deeper cut on the House Committee on the Capital Market which had since been replaced after Hembe had resigned. And for now, and in view of the numerous scandals that are fast becoming a trade mark of the House of Representatives, members of this committee have been judged and found guilty by the court of public opinion.

The writer, Shui’aibu Usman Leman is the secretary general of the Nigerian Union of Journalists.



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.