Category: Africa

  • From the ground in Kenya to the gold stud in the ear

    From the ground in Kenya to the gold stud in the ear

    Artisanal gold mining in Kenya’s Western region is raising environmental and public health concerns as mercury contamination threatens both the miners and local water sources.

    At sunrise in western Kenya’s Migori County, small groups of men and women gather at makeshift gold pits, sifting through soil in search of a precious livelihood. Across Kenya’s western counties, tens of thousands of people have turned to artisanal gold mining — small-scale, informal mining operations, often characterized by manual labor and the use of basic tools and low-tech equipment — as global gold prices rise and traditional farming incomes decline. 

    But while mining offers a vital economic lifeline, it brings a toxic legacy: mercury contamination that threatens health, water and livelihoods far beyond the mines.

    A growing Industry in Western Kenya, small-scale gold mining has expanded rapidly in counties such as Migori, Kakamega and Vihiga. Recent estimates suggest that Kenya is home to more than 250,000 artisanal miners, with more than one million people depending on gold-mining for their livelihoods. In Migori alone, gold mining injects an estimated US$37 million into the local economy each year.

    Despite the dangers, mining remains the most viable source of income for many. Surveys in Migori found that a significant majority of miners would not leave the industry, citing a lack of alternatives. 

    Extracting gold

    Women make up an estimated 38% of Kenya’s small-scale gold mining workforce, often involved in ore processing — where mercury exposure is highest — yet receive just 11% of the sector’s revenue. 

    Nashon Adero, a lecturer at Taita Taveta University and a Kenyan mining policy expert, said that women’s roles and vulnerabilities are often overlooked in policy discussions. 

    Herman Gibb, a lecturer at George Washington University and managing partner and president of Gibb & O’Leary Epidemiology Consulting said that mercury is widely used by artisanal miners because it is cheap, accessible and effective at extracting gold from ore. 

    “It’s the easiest way for miners with limited resources to extract gold,” said Gibb, who used to work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

    The process, known as amalgamation, involves mixing crushed ore with liquid mercury. Mercury binds to gold, creating an amalgam, which is then heated to vaporize and remove the mercury, leaving behind pure gold. But Gibb said that this heating releases toxic mercury vapour, endangering miners and nearby communities. 

    Mercury poisons

    Researchers, including Gibb, have warned that mercury vapour can settle in households, exposing families, particularly children and pregnant women. Biomonitoring studies, including hair sampling, have shown high levels of exposure among women in small-scale gold mining regions. 

    However, research shows that testing capacity in rural Kenya is limited, and the logistics of sampling, storage and analysis pose additional barriers to effective surveillance. Mercury poses a variety of risks, depending on the form of exposure and who is exposed. 

    Elemental mercury, the liquid form used in gold extraction, poses serious risks when inhaled as vapour, which can cause neurological symptoms such as tremors, memory loss and cognitive impairment. Prolonged exposure can also cause kidney damage. 

    “Mercury vapour can damage the brain, especially in children whose nervous systems are still developing,” Gibb said.  

    Methylmercury, on the other hand, is an organic form of mercury created when elemental mercury enters water bodies and undergoes microbial transformation. It accumulates in fish and other aquatic organisms, entering the food chain. Methylmercury is particularly harmful to pregnant women and children, as exposure can lead to severe developmental disorders, intellectual disabilities and long-term neurological damage.

    Chemicals in the food stream

    Gibb said that when methylmercury enters the food chain, the risks become even more serious. “This is a toxin that affects the most vulnerable in invisible but lasting ways,” he said.

    Although Kenya’s Mining Act of 2016 bans mercury use in mining, enforcement remains weak, and mercury is still widely available in local markets. News reports from the Kenya Chamber of Mines, the main mining industry organization in Kenya, state that many miners lack awareness of its dangers or access to protective equipment. 

    A 2023 study found that groundwater within six kilometers of mine sites in Migori contained mercury levels exceeding Kenya’s safe drinking water limit of 0.001 mg/L during the dry season. Soil samples from mine tailings (waste materials left over after valuable minerals have been extracted) showed mercury concentrations above 9.6 mg/kg, surpassing the National Environment Management Authority discharge limits. 

    Kenya’s mercury crisis is part of a wider global problem. Gibb said that the World Health Organization estimates prenatal exposure to methylmercury causes more than 227,000 new cases of intellectual disability each year, contributing to nearly two million “disability-adjusted life years” — a measure of years lost to ill-health or disability. 

    Mercury ranks among the top chemical threats to global health. Gibb said that its burden is compounded by the fact that most harm is invisible and long-term, making it difficult to prioritize in health budgets. 

    Science diplomacy

    In 2017, Kenya ratified the Minamata Convention, an international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from releases of mercury, committing to reduce mercury use and emissions. Yet implementation lags. A 2022 Auditor General’s report found that the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining had not mapped or formally designated artisanal mining zones in key counties.

    Adero, the Kenyan mining expert emphasized the need for “science diplomacy” — the use of geospatial technologies (mapping tools and location data) and data-driven reports to influence local and national policymakers. Recent GIS-based research (Geographic Information System, or mapping software that shows roads, rivers, houses etc.) show mercury levels remain high in soil and water near mines. 

    “This highlights enforcement gaps and spatial risks [risks due to location] that many policymakers overlook,” he said. 

    Monitoring mercury exposure in rural areas is especially challenging due to limited laboratory facilities, transportation and technical capacity. 

    “We cannot manage what we do not measure,” Adero said. “Without proper exposure tracking, policies are just words on paper. We need data that is local, current and trusted by both governments and communities.” 

    Enforcing regulations

    Gibb said that constraints around sample collection, storage and analysis hinder the ability to track exposure and enforce regulations. 

    The Migori county government has signed an agreement with the State Department for Environment and Climate Change to establish demonstration sites for mercury-free processing. But while these techniques can be effective, Gibb said, they require up-front investment, training and new equipment and that some alternatives such as cyanide also pose environmental risks. 

    Adero said that early adoption in countries such as Tanzania and Ghana shows promise but similar scale-up in Kenya remains limited. 

    Gender and social dimensions organizations such as the Association of Women in Energy and Extractives in Kenya address gender disparities by organizing cooperatives, providing training and advocating for gender-sensitive safety policies. 

    In his research, Adero found that significant gender gaps remain, with women overrepresented in the most dangerous roles but undercompensated. This research underscores that these disparities are rooted in systemic deprivation and limited access to education and financial literacy, he said. 

    Bureaucracy and fees

    While formalizing small-scale gold mining through Kenya’s Mining Act of 2016 could improve safety and access to technical assistance, progress is slow, hindered by bureaucracy and high fees. Adero advocates simplifying the permitting processes, reducing costs and exempting small-scale miners from fees — learning from successful models such as Ghana’s community mining schemes.

    Yet until real changes happen on the ground, artisanal miners remain caught between economic necessity and the invisible dangers of mercury poisoning. 

    “It’s what we know, and it works — you can see the gold right away,” said a miner from Migori. 

    But Dr. Adero warns that real progress requires concrete actions, not just policy declarations. Reliable, on-the-ground data to measure mercury exposure and inform decisions is key.

    As Kenyan miners struggle with mercury poisoning, consumers around the world unknowingly wear and invest in gold that carries hidden human and environmental costs. Ultimately, addressing mercury contamination is not just a local challenge, it’s a call to action for global accountability, connecting distant luxury markets directly to the miners who risk their health and lives for precious metals.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why do some people in Kenya risk their health to mine for gold?

    2. What are some things the Kenyan government is doing to improve the lives of gold miners?

    3. Why do you think gold is considered so valuable?

     

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  • A pipeline of prosperity or plunder

    A pipeline of prosperity or plunder

    In the sticky heat of an April afternoon in Kampala, Uganda nine university students stood outside the headquarters of Stanbic Bank, their voices raised in protest. It is a sound that has echoed for more than half a decade.

    Their signs called for an end to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a $5 billion project: 1,443 kilometers of 24-inch wide, heated and buried steel ambition, snaking from Uganda’s oil-rich Lake Albert basin to the Tanzanian port of Tanga on the Indian Ocean. Before the hour was out, they were in police custody.

    The government has hailed the project as a pillar of economic transformation. But critics — students, activists, and environmental groups — argue it will displace communities, threaten biodiversity and entrench a model of development that sidelines democratic participation. Dissent has been met with arrests, surveillance and a steadily shrinking civic space. The protests, though often silenced, persist, challenging a narrative that equates oil with progress.

    Five days after the arrests, in the same city, a different kind of statement was made. At the Eleventh Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, held from April 7th to 11th, delegates issued a call that seemed — if only for a moment — to resonate with those voices on the street.

    The route of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. Wikimedia Commons

    Members of the UN Economic Commission for Africa urged a shift away from exporting raw materials and toward value addition through manufacturing and industrialisation. Mining, they said, and the export of cash crops like cocoa, tea and coffee must no longer be the end of the story, but the beginning of something built to last.

    Shouting into the void

    For the students arrested, whose protests have long been dismissed as anti-developmental by a government intent on progress-by-pipeline, this sudden harmony of rhetoric might feel like vindication — if only the delegates meant what they propose.

    The students may have been shouting into a void, but the echoes resonate with a wider pattern etched deep into the continent’s political and economic architecture. Back in 2016, journalist Tom Burgis, author of “The Looting Machine”, put it in a 2016 interview with CNN: “There is a pretty straight line from colonial exploitation to modern exploitation.”

    Burgis has long documented the mechanisms of resource extraction in Africa and pointed to the lingering dominance of oil and mining multinationals — entities that, decades after independence, still wield economic and political influence akin to that once held by colonial administrations.

    Zaki Mamdoo, a South African climate justice activist and campaigner with the Stop EACOP coalition, agrees with Burgis’s notion of modern resource imperialism — only now, the governors wear suits and operate through shareholder meetings.

    “How come TotalEnergies owns 62% shareholding power, while Uganda and Tanzania hold just 15% each?” he said.

    Partnership or plunder?

    The numbers speak for themselves. The French oil giant TotalEnergies, with Chinese partner CNOOC in tow, controls the lion’s share of the project. Uganda, the country from which the oil originates, has been cast in the role of host, not owner. Tanzania, whose land will bear the pipeline’s longest stretch, fares no better. For Mamdoo and many others, this is not a partnership; it’s a palatable version of plunder.

    “This is not African-led development,” Mamdoo said. “It’s an extractive model dressed up in nationalist rhetoric.”

    To critics, EACOP is a 21st-century replay of old patterns — resources extracted with little local benefit, profits flowing abroad and environmental costs left with the people. What’s different now is the packaging: marketed as part of an energy transition and a driver of economic empowerment. But on the ground, the reality is displacement, disrupted livelihoods and fragile ecosystems in the pipeline’s path.

    According to EACOP’s official figures, more than 13,600 people have been affected, with 99.4% of compensation agreements signed and paid. But activists argue the numbers mask deeper issues — slow and uneven compensation, uprooted communities and long-term uncertainty.

    “The real number is far higher,” said Mamdoo. “We’re talking well over 100,000 directly impacted — and many more indirectly. But of course, Total reports a few tens of thousands.”

    Differing views on sustainability

    From Uganda’s farmlands to Tanzania’s reserves, the pipeline cuts through forests, wetlands and biodiversity hotspots — what critics see as a trail of ecological and human disruption beneath a polished PR campaign.

    By underreporting those impacted, critics argue, multinationals shrink their obligations — and their compensation budgets. The payments, when they come, have been slow, sporadic and, in some cases, still absent. Yet the construction rolls forward.

    To Morris Nyombi, a Ugandan activist now living in exile for his work opposing EACOP, the narrative of compensation is as hollow as it is dangerous.

    He watches from afar as national television and international media spotlight a few smiling beneficiaries — residents celebrating a new house, a fresh coat of paint, a sense of reward.

    Nyombi sees what isn’t shown. “Let’s state facts, when minerals are found somewhere, just know that’s lost land — it becomes government property,” Nyombi said. “And to the select few given houses, what then? You’re an agriculturist. Giving you a house somewhere else doesn’t mean giving you land to till. You’re killing a way of life.”

    A pipeline of displacement

    Without farmland, families are forced to sell off whatever land remains and move to towns and cities in search of new beginnings.

    “They end up in Kampala renting, looking for what to do,” Nyombi said. “It’s displacement without a plan. Progress for someone else.”

    Farmers who were near the pipeline’s path are now scattered across the Uganda-Congo border, Nyombi said. “They were duped into compensation. When they resisted, they started receiving threats. Husbands arrested. The women and children forced to run, to hide. That’s the reality.”

    These, Nyombi said, are the people the government never talks about. They don’t show up in speeches or glossy brochures about development. But their lives tell the story better than any pipeline prospectus ever could.

    But speaking out against EACOP is dangerous. “It’s a gamble with one’s life,” Nyombi said. Being an activist, he adds, is a kind of social exile. Most organizations won’t hire you — won’t even stand next to you. In much of Africa, governments don’t hesitate to hit below the belt.

    A lake that sustains life

    Nyombi has been on the government’s radar since 2020. He has been threatened and surveilled and been the subject of smear campaigns. As a result, he stepped back from frontline organizing.

    But what if the project were perfectly managed with strict environmental safeguards, zero corruption and full compensation? Would that make EACOP justifiable?

    Mamdoo said that isn’t what is happening, citing reports of oil slicks on Lake Albert and elephants rampaging villages. The very question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding, Mamdoo said. Environmental damage isn’t a hypothetical risk, it’s already unfolding.

    “If oil spills hit Lake Victoria—the region’s largest freshwater body—over 40 million people would be poisoned,” he said.

    Lake Victoria sustains agriculture, fishing, drinking water, and transport across Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. It’s East Africa’s largest inland water body — and the source of the Nile. Yet while project backers point to EACOP’s technical safeguards, critics like Mamdoo argue that no pipeline cutting through seismically active zones, protected ecosystems and critical watersheds can ever be truly safe.

    “You can’t just contain a pipeline,” Mamdoo adds. “You can’t plug all the holes when the system is built to leak — money, justice, land, people.”

    Keeping oil where it is extracted

    Supporters of the pipeline argue that projects like EACOP could open the door for substantial donations to tourism development and wildlife protection, especially in ecologically sensitive zones where the pipeline runs near or through national parks. The idea is that the extractive industry might fund preservation as part of its footprint.

    But to Mamdoo, that premise is flawed from the start.

    “What’s that compared to the 62% they’re taking?” Mamdoo asks. “You shouldn’t settle for peanuts when you own a resource.”

    Being a funder, he adds, doesn’t make you the owner. Mamdoo would like to see the oil stay in Uganda. “We’d be having an entirely different conversation if the plan was to have our own refineries, process it locally, then sell the products to them,” he said.

    Nyombi isn’t surprised that the government supports EACOP. Historically, leaders who stand up to corporations and the Global North haven’t lasted. “These multinationals don’t want an Africa that sees clearly,” Nyombi continues. “They want us manageable. If you open your eyes and demand real sovereignty, you become a threat to global stability.”

    Taking on global establishment isn’t easy.

    Some critics point to the case of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader who championed a gold-backed African currency and pan-African resource control before being toppled in a NATO-backed intervention. His fall, they argue, wasn’t just about domestic tyranny — it was about challenging the global status quo.

    Yet among younger Ugandans, particularly students, the legacy of figures like Gaddafi is often blurred or reduced to villainy — taught more as a cautionary tale than a case study in resistance. The narratives they inherit are tightly curated. But still, a shift is happening.

    Especially among those studying environmental science, Nyombi sees a growing restlessness.

    “These students, they want to act,” Nyombi said. “They’re interested in ground action. But more than that — they’re asking deeper questions. They wonder, why keep planting trees that won’t grow?”

    There’s a frustration with symbolic gestures — school-organized clean-ups, ceremonial tree-plantings — that often sidestep the policies creating the very destruction they’re meant to remedy.

    “They’re starting to say, no, the problem isn’t the seedling. It’s the system. So why not challenge policy instead?” Nyombi said. “But to challenge policy, you have to get out there.”

    That’s how the students who were arrested on 2 April while approaching Uganda’s Stanbic Bank came to act.

    Taking protests to the front line

    Mamdoo said that the protest was not just symbolic — it was strategic. Stanbic is one of the banks linked to funding the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. For the students, it was the front line.

    “They’re trying to secure their future,” Mamdoo said.

    But the bank saw it differently. Kenneth Agutamba, Stanbic Uganda’s country manager for corporate communications, defended the institution’s involvement.

    “Our participation aligns with our commitment to a just transition that balances economic development with environmental sustainability,” Agutamba said. “The project has met all necessary compliance requirements under the Equator Principles and our Climate Policy.”

    For the students, though, no statement or principle outweighs what they see as the theft of their future. Their protest, they insist, is not rooted in mere outrage. It’s anchored in a growing global reckoning: at least 43 banks and 29 insurance companies have declined to support EACOP, citing its environmental threats and human rights risks.

    But despite the pressure from abroad, the pipeline — and the crackdowns — continue to move forward.

    “That’s why we’re targeting the funders,” Mamdoo said. “If the money dries up, the project can’t survive.”

    Dissent and disappearance

    The students arrested will likely be released — this time. They’re lucky. Local papers spoke of them. Many others vanish into cells for months, even years, without trial — especially those without lawyers, or whose names never make it into the headlines.

    If there’s a single line that captures the price of resistance, it might be Braczkowski’s blunt warning: “Any oil activist in Uganda will be sniffed out before Total.” Oil, he adds, has become Uganda’s gold — a lifeline that may help service the country’s mounting debt.

    “That’s exactly the problem,” Mamdoo counters. “If all it does is pay off debt, what’s left for the people? There won’t be money for schools, for hospitals — just enough to keep the lights on in their offices.”

    It’s been nearly a decade since EACOP was first proposed. Only now, as shovels hit soil and risks become real, has public scrutiny begun to catch up. And that, Mamdoo and Nyombi agree, is because of activism.

    “Without it,” Nyombi said, “this would’ve gone quietly. Smoothly. Just another deal signed behind closed doors.”

    But things aren’t moving as fast as they once were.

    “Activism has slowed them down,” Nyombi adds. “It’s not moving at the pace they wanted.”

    So what’s the real equation here? A pipeline backed by billions. A government banking on oil. A continent still clawing for control of its wealth. And in the middle — students, farmers, mothers, exiles — bearing the cost of asking the most dangerous question of all:

    What if we said no?

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. What is EACOP?

    2. Why are many people in East Africa opposed to a pipeline that promises to bring money to the region?

    3. If you were in charge of natural resources for Uganda, what policies would you put in place?

     

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  • The mining of sand scars Kenya’s land

    The mining of sand scars Kenya’s land

    From space, Kenya’s sand-mining crisis is starkly visible. Satellite images reveal scars gouging riverbeds throughout its historic Rift Valley and fully extending border to border, west to east, from the shorelines of Lake Victoria to the Indian Ocean. 

    These growing scars tell the story of the nation’s booming construction sector and of a largely unregulated trade: sand harvesting.

    Sand is the world’s second-most consumed natural resource after water. It fuels construction booms globally, including in Kenya, where urban expansion and large infrastructure projects have surged. Yet sand is also among the most illegally trafficked natural commodities.

    In Kenya alone, around 50 million metric tonnes of sand worth roughly US$600 million are extracted each year, mainly for expansion of the nation’s capital, Nairobi, and major infrastructure projects. Yet the true cost of this extraction, particularly illegal operations, is far higher in terms of environmental degradation and human impact.

    “The scale of environmental crime related to sand harvesting is significant but poorly understood,” says Dr. Willis Okumu, a senior researcher at ARIN Africa, an organization dedicated to sustainable management of natural resources and environmental governance. 

    A multinational problem

    Okumu describes Lake Victoria — Africa’s largest lake by area, bordering Tanzania and Uganda as well as Kenya — as a convergence point for environmental crimes. These include illicit sand harvesting, charcoal burning and timber smuggling, facilitated by weak enforcement across bordering countries.

    Illegal sand harvesting strips riverbanks and lakeshores. It weakens soil structures, causes landslides and floods and devastates aquatic habitats. River systems feeding into Lake Victoria have suffered badly, threatening fisheries crucial to local livelihoods.

    These operations cause severe environmental impacts. Unregulated extraction weakens riverbanks, disrupts ecosystems, and significantly increases risks of flooding and deadly landslides. 

    River ecosystems, including those around Lake Victoria, suffer profound damage. Aquatic habitats and biodiversity are severely disrupted, jeopardizing livelihoods that rely on fishing and farming. Communities struggle with declining water quality and availability that are directly tied to unregulated sand extraction.

    In Mombasa, a city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean, unregulated sand extraction has altered river flows. This has disrupted irrigation systems, making it harder for farmers to grow food in a region already hit by drought.

    Sand loss and social ills

    Socially, the consequences are equally dire. The United Nations Environment Programme reports that “sand extraction and its trade are fuelling a myriad of social issues in Kenya, with violence and deaths related to sand trade widely documented.” School dropouts, teenage pregnancies and drug abuse spike as impoverished youth turn to illegal sand mining for quick income.

    Communities in the Rift Valley face a difficult trade-off: short-term survival through sand work or long-term sustainability. In Nakuru County, uncontrolled sand extraction has left homes exposed to erosion and collapse. Residents report that land beneath their feet is quite literally disappearing.

    Consolata Achieng, of Asieko Village in Nakuru County, told a local news reporter that all the land surrounding her property had been sold off to harvesters over the last eight years. “We were assured that harvesting had stopped but we still see workers and lorries every day,” she said. “A lot of people live around here and have nowhere to go. This is the place we call home.”

    Communities can also find themselves caught between environmental concerns and lack of alternatives. “All you need is a spade,” noted one senior Kenyan civil servant, highlighting how easy it is to mine sand. Labourers, including school-aged children, work in dangerous pits for low wages. 

    The lucrative nature of sand mining has attracted organized criminal groups that exploit the resource with impunity. Violent confrontations have occurred between cartels and local communities attempting to protect their resources, leading to injuries and fatalities.  

    These organized crime groups — known locally as “sand cartels” — are central to the illegal trade, often operating under the protection of corrupt state officials, enabling them to bypass regulations and continue illegal activities. 

    Countering illegal mining requires coordinated efforts

    According to ENACT Africa, a program that focuses on addressing transnational organized crime in Africa, weak co-ordination among law-enforcement agencies across borders allows such networks to thrive. Violent confrontations have occurred between cartels and local communities attempting to protect their resources, leading to injuries and even deaths. 

    Efforts to regulate the industry have largely failed due to corruption and ineffective governance. In a UNEP Global Sand Analysis report, a senior official bluntly observed: “All you need to do is pay,” reflecting systemic bribery and regulatory capture, which occurs when a government agency that was created to act in the public’s interest ends up serving the interests of the industry it’s supposed to be regulating. 

    UNEP has warned that sand is becoming dangerously scarce. It advocates for stronger global regulations, regional co-operation and alternative construction materials such as crushed rock and recycled debris.

    In Kenya, sand isn’t just used locally. It’s also smuggled to neighbouring countries and, allegedly, to international markets — further complicating enforcement.

    However, there are signs of hope. Kenyan authorities have created specialized investigative units in the Mining Police Unit to crack down on illegal extraction. Officials are also piloting new tools, such as satellite tracking and GPS monitoring of trucks, to improve oversight.

    Protecting the land

    Some counties are fighting back. In West Pokot county, authorities recently launched new sand-harvesting policies to control extraction and protect the environment. 

    In Makueni County, the government implemented a comprehensive sand regulation act that has significantly reduced illegal activities and environmental damage within its jurisdiction. When the county lifted its decade-long ban on commercial sand mining to boost revenue, the move sparked concern among residents, who fear the return of water shortages and environmental degradation.

    The persistence of illegal sand mining underscores the need for robust enforcement of regulations, community engagement and the promotion of alternative construction materials to reduce reliance on natural sand resources. 

    Without urgent and co-ordinated action, Kenya faces continued ecological destruction and intensified community conflicts. As Okumu emphasized, transparent governance and meaningful community participation are critical. “With currently poor public participation, rehabilitation work rarely follows in Kenya’s land-based sand mining projects,” he said, underscoring the critical need for reform.

    Research across Africa shows a consistent pattern: profits flow to powerful players, while environmental costs fall on the poorest. Labourers risk their lives in collapsing pits. Farmers and fishers lose the very resources they rely on.

    “We are running out of time,” Okumu said. “Without immediate regional action, environmental damage from sand harvesting will become irreversible, devastating ecosystems and the communities dependent upon them.”

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why is sand so valuable?

    2. How are countries like Kenya trying to stop the mining of sand?

    3. Can you think of ways concrete and cement are used near you? Could you think of alternative materials?

     

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  • What stories can teach us about the world

    What stories can teach us about the world

    In a time of widespread misinformation, disinformation, fake news and outright lies throughout the world, many people are wondering what the truth really is and how to find it.

    In Africa, it is embedded in the power of story.

    “The oral tradition has always been a hallmark of West African culture for generations long before colonization, and so storytellers have been the truth tellers,” said Dr. Geremie Sawadogo, a World Bank talent manager and storyteller, who, as a child growing up in Burkina Faso, would gather with his family to listen to story hour on national radio every Tuesday evening.

    David Thuku, an executive coach and storyteller in Nairobi, Kenya, agreed. “Stories are a very structured system of managing life and giving knowledge about such things as governance, values, laws, social sciences and medicine. Medicine men, for example, would tell people which plants to use for different illnesses,” Thuku said.

    “They also taught us morals and our code of acceptable behaviours,” Sawadago added. For many, they are a form of timeless, universal truth.

    African stories can come in many different forms: two- to three-hour speeches, long monologues, oral renditions, poems, sayings, proverbs, fables, folklore tales, visual language, songs and even dance.

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  • Can France accept its past as an oppressor?

    Can France accept its past as an oppressor?

    The captives were taken to a centre where masked Algerian informers picked out suspected rebels. “Those were detained, interrogated, with a lot of violence. The rest were released.”

    Worse followed. Kihn was on guard duty when he first saw a suspect being tortured with electricity from a hand-cranked generator. “It was unbearable. The man was yelling, jerking around. I had tears in my eyes,” he said, his eyes filling again as he re-lived the moment.

    When he was discharged, no one in his village wanted to hear his war stories, so for decades he clammed up. But memories, nightmares and panic attacks kept tormenting him. When he was 70, a film-maker cajoled him into an interview. He later wrote a book and found a measure of relief.

    Kihn, disgusted by his experiences, would not touch his military pension. Instead, he and some other former soldiers send the money to local NGOs in Algeria.

    “What we need is recognition of the truth,” he said. “Yes, we were criminals in Algeria.”

    France has tried to turn the page, but the past will not die.

    It took France until 1999 to recognise formally that its struggle in Algeria had been a “war,” even though it had mobilised up to two million conscripts for “operations to restore order” against the independence-seeking fighters of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN).

    The French campaign led to widespread torture, the forced displacement of two million civilians to cut the FLN from its rural base and countless summary executions and “disappearances.”

    The FLN was ruthless, too, terrorising French and Algerian civilians and eliminating its political rivals and eventually factions within its own ranks.

    The conflict, which brought violence to both sides of the Mediterranean, exposed deep divisions within France, toppled the country’s Fourth Republic and raised the spectre of civil war.

    After President Charles de Gaulle set Algeria on course for independence with a 1961 referendum, some French die-hards formed the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS), an armed group that mounted bomb attacks and assassinations, including at least one attempt to kill the French leader.

    OAS members eventually benefited from sweeping post-war amnesties. France sought to draw a veil and forget, but the past refused to die.

    Keeping the past alive

    Suzy Simon-Nicaise, 67, who heads one of the main associations of pieds-noirs, is determined to preserve a particular vision of the lost world of French Algeria, its culture, history and lifestyle.

    In her memory, it was a cosmopolitan place where Europeans mixed freely with Muslims based on mutual respect, where the French colonists had promoted development from the ground up.

    France, she concedes, may have committed some “not very glorious” deeds early on in its conquest of Algeria. “But Algeria did some things that were just as unbearable, if not more so,” she said.

    At a memorial event in Perpignan, Simon-Nicaise, wearing a dress as bright as her red hair, recounted a massacre of pieds-noirs in the mainly European city of Oran on July 5, 1962, the day Algeria became independent.

    She said 700 to 1,200 people were killed that day while French troops, in their barracks since the ceasefire in March, stood by with orders not to intervene. An exact toll has never been established. Macron, in his address to the pieds-noirs this year, said “hundreds” had died.

    Simon-Nicaise’s family had planned to stay on after independence, but an Algerian friend working with her father warned them to leave urgently, advice driven home by a French official who told her father that his name was on an FLN death-list. The family raced to the port with four suitcases.

    Around 800,000 pieds-noirs, the vast majority of the Europeans living in Algeria, also voted with their feet, believing their only choice was “la valise ou le cercueil (the suitcase or the coffin).”

    The French government had not anticipated such an exodus, and the flood of new arrivals met a chaotic and chilly reception.

    “We were treated worse than foreigners,” Simon-Nicaise said, recalling how she, then five, and her family were put up in a holiday village. “My family was crying, and everyone else was dancing the twist.”

    Later, her family had to share a cramped, squalid apartment with another family in Le Havre. Simon-Nicaise went to school there, where she heard a classmate declare: “Don’t talk to her. She’s a dirty pied-noir.”

    France’s rejected allies in Algeria

    If the pieds-noirs were mostly unwelcome in France, the harkis — Algerians who had served with the French military — were doubly so. De Gaulle had rejected any idea of taking them in, effectively abandoning tens of thousands of men and their families to FLN vengeance.

    Nevertheless, up to 90,000 harkis made it to France, many helped by their French commanders. They were consigned to grim army camps behind barbed wire, most of them for many years.

    “There were no toilets, one washbasin for 10 families,” said Abdelkrim Sid, who was six on arrival and spent the next 15 years with his sprawling family in isolated camps.

    His father, like many other harkis, was later put to work in forestry settlements on the minimum wage but never fully integrated into the wider economy.

    “My father was a spahi (cavalryman). He really believed in France,” said Sid at the bleak Rivesaltes camp near Perpignan.

    In Rivesaltes, a museum now commemorates successive waves of inmates dumped there from 1939 onwards, among them refugees from the Spanish civil war, Gypsies and Jews interned by the wartime Vichy régime, German prisoners of war and then harkis.

    Sid, a burly retired truck-driver, says he can’t forget how shamefully the harkis were treated in the camps, which he likened to pens for animals.  “It was as if we had the plague.”

    Troubled identity

    The war deeply marked the Algerian diaspora, swelled by migration that also drew in Moroccans and Tunisians whose labour was in demand as the French economy revived after World War Two.

    North Africans today make up the bulk of France’s estimated 5-6 million Muslim citizens, roughly 8% of its total population, the biggest ratio in any European country.

    France, which prides itself on its principle of laïcité, which makes the secular state neutral towards religion, has found it difficult to come to terms with its Muslim minority. The complex relationship is made no easier by mutual mistrust that has lingered since the colonial venture in Algeria.

    Magyd Cherfi has tried hard to integrate in his native France, with outward success as a musician and songwriter, a devotee of French literature and an author in his own right.

    Yet as he explained at a café in a mostly Arab quarter of Toulouse, the city where he grew up, he has never felt fully accepted as French. Ironically, he knows that many in the deprived milieu of his childhood resent him as a traitor to his origins.

    “It’s as if being French is a mountaintop. You climb and climb, and it’s never far enough,” he said.

    “In the street, they ask, ‘Oh, where are you from?’ That means you are not French, because if you are, no one asks that question.”

    Cherfi’s father, a building worker, fled to France after four of his brothers were killed fighting in the maquis, or underground, during the Algeria war. “He only told us fragments of what happened then, about bad things the French did to his family, girls raped, cousins killed, imprisoned, tortured.”

    So Cherfi grew up with an uneasy sense of difference from his French chums because France had been the enemy in Algeria. Yet when his parents decided to stay in France, when he was about 15, they told him, “You must respect the French. They give us work. They feed us.”

    He admires much of what France offers, notably freedom and secularism, but says it fails to honour its own principles when it comes to its non-white citizens.

    “That’s the big rip-off of the republic. France is unable to build a narrative that is anything other than exclusively white. We barely exist in French history,” he said.

    “So France is still sausages, accordions, traditions, villages, and now, with millions of Muslims here, you feel they cling to this even more. So it’s quick, get out the accordions!”

     

    Questions to consider:

    • What was Algeria’s relationship to France before it gained independence in 1962?

    • How were the post-war experiences of the pieds-noirs and harkis similar and different?

    • Why do you think it took until 1999 for France to recognize the conflict over Algeria as a war?

    • What would you do to improve the integration of France’s Arab/African-origin citizens?

     

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  • Can regional leaders help bring peace to DR Congo?

    Can regional leaders help bring peace to DR Congo?

    Critics abroad and in Congo accuse DRC president Tshisekedi and his government of being distant, corrupt and ineffective and continually failing to meet promises or even talk to the rebels. 

    “I am exhausted with Tshisekedi’s governance,” said one Congolese citizen.

    There have been strong and repeated accusations by the United Nations and others that the M23, which is now part of the broader Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), receives both funding and tangible support from Rwanda and its army, that it has been responsible for excessive violence — including reports of rape in a Goma prison last week — and that it has benefited from the increasing control of lucrative mineral mines in the region.  

    A multinational push for peace

    The actual truth is much more complex, nuanced and difficult to distinguish, especially given the direct involvement of national army soldiers on the ground, not just from the DRC and Rwanda but from other countries, such as Burundi, South Africa and Tanzania. 

    There are also about 14,000 UN peacekeeping forces in the region, as well as more than 100 other militia groups and even mercenaries from Eastern Europe. Rwanda recently ensured the safe repatriation of 300 of them back to Romania.

    And then there are powerful political and business leaders in the United States, Europe, Russia and China who somewhat cynically want to ensure the continued supply of precious minerals — such as cobalt, coltan and tantalum — for their cars, cellphones and computers. 

    On a more personal level, I live with my Rwandan wife and young son in a newly-built house just south of Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, which lies only 150 kilometres away from the current conflict zone and which has been repeatedly threatened by DRC president Tshisekedi and leading government officials.

    Just last week, Rwanda’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, James Ngango, accused the DRC of amassing a stockpile of weapons — including rockets, kamikaze drones and heavy artillery guns — that are pointed straight at Rwanda.

    Fears that violence will cross borders

    My wife Merveille — whose father and three brothers may well have been murdered by some of the current FDLR militia fighters in eastern DRC — still has nightmares about them possibly attacking or even taking back Rwanda.

    A Rwanda security expert texted me that the threat to “attack Rwanda immediately” was real before the M23 rebels took over Goma and there are still concerns about large weapon stockpiles in South Kivu province. He added that if the M23 can now secure the regional capital of Bukavu and the nearby Kavumu airport “all security risks against Rwanda will be reduced/mitigated.”

    This will allay our personal concerns but we are still worried about the security of some close friends in Goma, who fell silent for five whole days after the M23 rebels took control of their city in late January but thankfully got back in contact right after power and WiFi service were restored.

    Daily life in Goma has returned to something like normal over the last week or so but the nighttime is different.

    One of our friends texted me on Tuesday: “Safety in Goma is degrading day in, day out. Getting armed looters at night. From this night alone we register more than seven deaths. A friend was visited as well. He let them in and his life was spared and his family. He said this morning that it was hard to determine their identity because they had no military uniforms but we all suspect they are they are the Wazalendo or prisoners who escaped from Munzenze prison. They come in to steal, rape and kill who ever shows resistance.”

    The Wazalendo — meaning “patriots” or “nationalists” — are a group of irregular fighters in North Kivu province, who are allied with the Congolese army and opposed to the M23.

    Our friend in Goma said that he still has enough security in his house but when asked about the potentially revitalised multilateral peace process, he said: “I am actually speechless right now, I don’t know what to think about all this. So much has happened.” 

    The weekend summit’s joint communiqué did call for an immediate end to the violence and for defense ministers to come up with concrete plans for sustainable peace measures, such as the resumption of “direct negotiations and dialogue with all state and non-state parties,” including the M23 that DRC president Tshisekedi has long tried to resist.

    Observers see this as a positive sign and there are renewed hopes — along with lingering doubts after so many earlier failed initiatives — that this unusual and timely degree of coordinated Africa-based action and support at the highest levels could mean that the fighting, killing and disruption may wane soon and a long-lasting, peaceful solution can be reached.

    In the words of the sadly-departed Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the UK: “The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities, discovering a genesis of hope.”

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. Why is the situation in Eastern DRC so difficult to sort out?
    2. Think of a time when you, someone you knew or someone you respected used “direct negotiations and dialogue” to achieve a positive outcome to a challenging problem.
    3. What would you say or do if you were one of the regional African leaders trying to achieve a sustainable, non-violent solution to the Eastern DRC crisis?

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