South Sudan News Agency

By: Africa Renewal

April 22, 2013 (SSNA) -- The country that gave the world two groundbreaking innovations in technology: M-Pesa, a mobile banking system, and Ushahidi, a platform for crowdsourcing information during disasters, is now taking its technological talents to new heights. The East African nation of Kenya has just started construction on a 5,000-acres piece of land in Konza, about 60km south of Nairobi, to turn the savannah area into “the most modern city in Africa”. 

Using the same company that designed Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in New York City, SHoP Architects, Kenyan authorities want to transform Nairobi’s Konza City into Africa’s technology hub, dubbed Silicon Savannah, similar to California’s Silicon Valley. The designers told the UK’s Financial Times that “the scale of the project compares with creating another Manhattan, central London or inner-city Beijing.”

The Konza techno city project is the brainchild of Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s permanent secretary in the ministry of information and communications. “Rather than echo a smattering of tech parks and business centres starting up on the continent,” says theFinancial Times, “Kenya envisions a broader city-from-scratch to bring research universities, industry and government together, along the lines of Silicon Valley”.

The Wired magazine reported that Konza’s development “plan is extremely ambitious” and is “not just seen as a way of attracting investment from international tech companies and inspiring domestic entrepreneurs, but also as a way of reducing the corruption that has been endemic in the nation for several decades.”

Konza is expected to cement Kenya’s role as a regional technology leader in Africa. With a well developed technology sector, Kenya became the first country in Africa to open its government to the public by making millions of pages of internal governments documents available online. The country’s M-Pesa cell phone banking service is now being used all over the world for purchases and money transfers, and according to the US Time magazine, Ushahidi has been used “in 128 countries to map everything from [the 2010] earthquake in Haiti to [the] Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring.”

The unveiling of the Konza project is being seen as a natural progression of Kenya’s aspirations to attract corporate investments in technology. In 2012, IBM set up its first African research lab in Nairobi, joining renowned American companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel that have their regional headquarters Kenya. Konza is heavily-influenced by similar “new cities”, like Cyberjaya in Malaysia, Cyber City in Mauritius and Egypt’s Smart Village, says the Wired.

The project is expected to cost $10 billion and create more than 200,000 jobs when completed in 2030. There are plans for an electronic manufacturing plant, an international financial centre and a convention centre. The government is offering tax breaks to companies as an incentive to move and invest in Konza. 

Amid the euphoria and excitement over the prospects for Silicon Savannah, there have been some voices of caution. Technology experts at the Mobile Web East Africa conference held in Nairobi in February warned Kenya’s technology industry against copying the Silicon Valley business model. Their concern was that most of the companies being formed in Kenya were based on a single app or software programme. 

“Kenya should be more of a ‘Digital Savannah’ and not ‘Silicon Savannah’, says TMS “Teddy” Ruge, co-founder of Project Diaspora USA/Uganda, an organization that mobilizes resources from Africans in diaspora to invest in Africa, “We are yet to manufacture things here, and most of the companies we have here are based on digital solutions.” 

Kenya’s reputation as a technology leader in Africa suffered an embarrassing setback during the March national elections when both a biometric ID system designed to avoid multiple voting and an electronic transmission system to speed up vote counting broke down. The country’s independent electoral body was forced to switch to counting votes manually, slowing down the process and causing national anxiety. 

Notwithstanding, Konza appears to be proving skeptics wrong. So far, more than a dozen companies are expected to start setting up operations in Konza. 

“Konza will become a game-changer in Kenya’s socio-economic development, spurring massive trade and investment across the entire region,” said President Mwai Kibaki at the groundbreaking ceremony held in January at the proposed new city.

Africa Renewal: http://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/may-2013/africa-wired

Note to editor: In May 2012, Maged Abdelaziz was appointed as the UN’s new special adviser on Africa, at the level of under-secretary-general to advocate for African development internationally and help coordinate the efforts of UN agencies and departments in support of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the African Union’s continental plan for political, economic and social advancement. Mr. Abdelaziz was Egypt’s permanent representative to the UN in New York for the seven years just prior to his most recent appointment, and in that capacity served as vice-president of the UN General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, among other duties. He shared some of his thoughts with Africa Renewal’s Managing Editor Ernest Harsch and staff writer Kingsley Ighobor.

Interview with Maged Abdelaziz, UN special adviser on Africa

New York, January 25, 2013 (SSNA) -- Africa Renewal What are some of the greatest challenges in trying to get the international community to deal with Africa on its own terms, according to the continent’s own priorities?

Maged Abdelaziz We are seeing the remnants of the economic and financial crisis and its impact on development activities. As NEPAD is built not on aid but on partnership between Africa and the donor communities, African countries would expect more investment, more industrialization and thus more employment, more social integration and more social and economic coherence. But unfortunately, there is a lack of funds on this front and a decline in the percentage of aid.

A lot of commitments have been made. But there is lack of implementation. If you take it back to the 2005 Alberta summit [of the Group of Eight industrialized countries], up to now only 25 per cent of the G-8 Action Plan on Africa has been implemented. Of $65 billion that was going to be used for investment in Africa [annually], only about $23 billion has been delivered.

How to deal with these challenges is to try to integrate Africa’s priorities, as defined in the thematic areas of NEPAD, into the economic and social and security priorities of the United Nations. The chance for that is coming, because we are starting to shape the post-2015 development agenda [2015 being the end of the target period for the Millennium Development Goals]. And we played a significant role as OSAA in supporting African negotiators in Rio [at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development] to try to achieve the maximum of what they could achieve out of the unified African position.

AR  NEPAD’s focus is not just on aid, but also investment and trade. Yet the decline in aid, in the wake of the financial crisis in the US and Europe, has nevertheless been a blow. In that situation, what can African countries do to better mobilize their own resources, and to better manage what they have by combating corruption and stemming the flow of African funds abroad?

MA  Well, in order for Africa to use its money better, it should have the money first. The concentration, as you say, of NEPAD is not on aid. It is on trade, investment and industrialization. And through these we can have better employment, better health care, better services and other things. Mobilizing resources from within African countries has been one of the major targets of the African Union, which has established a high-level panel on the mobilization of resources in African countries.

You need good governance at the same time. There are some African countries that have 5 per cent or 6 per cent or even 8 per cent growth. But this growth does not trickle down to the population, and the people who are below the poverty line are increasing more and more. So if you look at it from up there, you see that a country may be growing, doing among the best economic performance, but if you look at how this is affecting the socio-economic structure of the country, it comes at the level of certain people and stops there.

This happened in my country, in Egypt, where we had about 5 per cent or 6 per cent growth a year. But those who benefited were only the businesspeople who controlled the economy at the top. At the same time, we had 40 per cent of the people below the poverty line. Governance should be strengthened to ensure that everybody benefits from the economic gains that are coming.

And corruption. There is a high-level panel established by the African Union on combating corruption and ensuring that there are no kickbacks and no funds that should be going outside of the country. But that also requires some commitment at the international level, from the big economic powers. Because most of those moneys that are being smuggled out of African countries are going to bigger economies, they are not going to smaller economies.

Also to assist African countries, control over natural resources is very important. Most African countries export natural resources as raw material, and then re-import them at five or six times the price. If we can use natural resources for the benefit of Africa — that multiplying the price six times is for the benefit of the African people — then we will be doing better in African resource mobilization.

AR  You’ve alluded to the Arab Spring and the tensions that can be caused by poverty amid high economic growth rates. The other side of the Arab Spring was dissatisfaction with the lack of political inclusion, limits to democracy and political repression. Do you think the events in the north of the continent have been a wake-up call to the remaining authoritarian regimes in sub-Saharan Africa?

MA  It is definitely a wake-up call to everybody. Not only for the autocrats in Africa. It is a wake-up call for all autocratic regimes. There is a political aspect to it and there is an economic aspect. The political aspect is that if you stay in power for a long time, there could be a negative impact. The economic part is that as long as people are not happy economically, they are going to revolt. And if you combine both together, then you have big revolutions, as you had in North Africa. Yes, it is a wake-up call.

Africa Renewal: http://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2013/%E2%80%98ensure-everyone-benefits-economic-gains%E2%80%99

Note to editor: The big drop in new HIV infections in Africa calls for celebration. However, advocacy groups are warning that it is too soon to proclaim total victory. Africa Renewal’s Jocelyne Sambira reports on the fight to defeat the AIDS pandemic and highlights the hurdles on the way.

By Jocelyne Sambira

New York, January 14, 2013 (SSNA) -- Africa is pulling out all the stops in its race to curb the AIDS pandemic by 2015, a deadline set by UN member states. From making anti-retroviral drug therapy (ART) readily available to the masses, to increasing consistent, correct condom use and voluntary medical male circumcision, everything has been tried and tested. And these efforts are paying off, according to the latest report of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Africa has cut AIDS-related deaths by one third in the past six years, the report says. Even countries with the highest HIV prevalence in the world have seen the number of new HIV infections decline dramatically.

Malawi has witnessed a 73 per cent drop in new HIV infections. Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe follow. South Africa managed to reduce new infections by 41 per cent. Even Swaziland — the country with the highest HIV prevalence in the world — saw new HIV infections drop by 37 per cent. Meanwhile, in other regions of Africa, Ghana topped the list, followed by Burkina Faso and Djibouti.

Leaders in Africa have been funnelling money into their national AIDS programmes. Last year alone, South Africa invested $1.9 billion from public sources for its national AIDS response. Kenya doubled its domestic investments for AIDS between 2008 and 2010, and Togo did the same between 2007 and 2010.  International assistance has also been stable, with 26 of 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa relying on donor support for their domestic programmes, Results adds.

The scaled-up response has been most effective in boosting the number of people on ART treatment and reducing the number of children born with HIV. Six African countries (Burundi, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Togo and Zambia) saw a 40 per cent reduction in the number of children newly infected by the virus between 2009 and 2011. “It is becoming evident that achieving zero new HIV infections in children is possible,” says Michel Sidibé, the UNAIDS executive director. “I am excited that far fewer babies are being born with HIV. We are moving from despair to hope.”

On the other hand, North Africa has not fared so well. The number of people newly infected with HIV each year has risen since 2001, although overall numbers are still relatively low.

On 1 December, World AIDS Day, Mr. Sidibé called on the world to renew its commitment to zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. At a UN high-level meeting on AIDS in New York in 2011, global leaders agreed to meet the ambitious targets of significantly reducing the sexual transmission of HIV, virtually eliminate mother-to-child HIV transmission and achieve universal access to treatment by 2015. Mr. Sidibé believes that with “political will and follow through,” the world can reach those shared goals.

ONE, a global advocacy group fighting poverty and preventable diseases, begs to differ. The world is not on track to achieve the global AIDS targets, the organization asserts.

In its latest progress report, The Beginning of the End of AIDS? Tracking Global Commitments on AIDS, ONE remarks that anti-retroviral treatment for HIV-positive individuals has been the hallmark of the world’s response to the AIDS pandemic. But, the group warns, only 6.6 million of the 15 million who need the treatment have access to it, and 2.5 million continue to be newly infected every year.

According to the South African advocacy group Section27, such figures prove that the “end of the epidemic is no where near.” Section27 Director Mark Heywood challenges the “rosy picture” painted by UNAIDS. He argues that the “remarkable” gains of recent years have yet to be consolidated and entrenched, notes that people living with HIV/AIDS still need to secure their rights and warns that the global economic recession could redirect money away from AIDS.

UNAIDS maintains that high-income countries have continued to help even as they faced persistent economic problems. The agency admits though that international assistance is still a crucial lifeline for many low income countries.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international grant-making institution, has been instrumental in attracting funds for national programmes. It is currently preparing for its 2013 replenishment meeting. It has already received a donation of $200 million from RED (a division of the ONE campaign) to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Meanwhile, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a US government initiative and the largest funder of HIV efforts worldwide, has announced that its future focus will be on prevention, women and girls, as well as on reaching the most at-risk populations.

Together, the Global Fund and PEPFAR are supporting 5.6 million people on ART treatment globally, ONE notes.  There are more than 5 million people on ART treatment in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

Moving forward, experts and policy makers agree that keeping people on treatment is as important as getting them the drugs. UNAIDS warns that adherence to these HIV treatment programmes can fall as people regain better health. The agency cites the example of a treatment centre in Malawi where nearly half the people who began ART are no longer in care five years later.

HIV treatment is for life, UNAIDS emphasizes, and people living with the virus need to take pills every day. It urges African countries to incorporate community support strategies to complement clinical services and to keep down programme management costs and drug prices. Basically, more people need access to treatment to live longer and more productive lives.

Africa Renewal http://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/new-hiv-infections-are-falling-dramatically-africa