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	A Continent's success stories go unreported by Bashir Goth / Niall FitzGerald Khaleej Times / International Herald Tribune Africa   8 July 2005   "How Africans see the Initiative to Help the Continent", by Bashir Goth. (Khaleej Times)   Good intentions to dislodge poverty's tight grip on Africa are welcome and must be well appreciated by every conscientious African who cares to see an end to the continent's long night of hunger, disease and grinding poverty.   In Africa we should salute all honest initiatives aimed at helping our neglected continent. We say Viva to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, Chancellor Gordon Brown's relentless fight to bring as many countries as possible to the African aid's bandwagon, Bob Geldof's Live 8 and his army of world singers and musicians who enthralled the world in the name of mother Africa. We also take off our hats to the audience of millions who responded to the Live 8 call and poured out their pockets and their hearts to Crusade End of Poverty.   We do this because in Africa it is the language of singing, music and drumbeat that we understand more than any language. When we are hungry we sing, when we are sick we sing, when death descends on us we sing, when life smiles for us we sing. We always sing, beat the drums and dance. Music and singing are the secret of our existence. This is how we cheated extinction and annihilation. Even when the prime youth of Africa, the manpower of our continent were taken in chains across the Atlantic, they took their drum beats and their music in their hearts, in their heads and in their feet. This is why when the world sings in our name today, we understand the honesty of it and we sing with them.   In Africa, we also know that it is our singing and our music that soothes our nerves, drives away our blues and sends our hungry children to sleep. But our music and our singing bring no money. Now when we see music played, drums beaten and lyrics sang in our name to bring us money, we worry. Because we know money is evil at least in Africa. You see when our hungry children hear our music, and our singing and our lullabies they remember it is sleeping time and they go to bed, but if they learn that music means money, they would stay awake and wait for food. Because they know money buys food. But in Africa, money is like a snake's droppings, everyone hears about it but no one ever sees it.   We know it comes from the world to us as aid, as debt, as grants as charity, as food, as medicine. It comes from all over the world. But you know in Africa, our leaders taught us a long time ago that money is evil. They taught us it is the root cause of all wars, diseases and poverty. They said that if money came to our kraals and our abodes, singing would no more help our children and our wives to go to sleep. It will not be enough to give them food and fill their stomachs. No, they will not sleep till they touch the hard cold silver and gold money. And you see in Africa we know sleeping is the therapy of every disease. If someone doesn't sleep he becomes crazy and causes trouble. They even may start fire and burn the whole camp.   Therefore, our leaders taught us that since money is very rare like a snake's droppings, the best place to keep it is in their pockets. They also told us once their pockets were full they would send the rest for safekeeping in far away banks. This is why you see money is like a snake's droppings in our continent, we only hear about it but we never see it.   But lately, some of our young ones who went to schools and travelled to far away lands told us another story. They told us we have to have money to feed our children. They told us we need money to have schools, hospitals, roads and clean water. They told us that money was not evil and in fact it was not as rare as a snake's droppings after all. They told us to go to our leaders and ask them to build schools, hospitals and roads for us and provide us clean water. And when we told them our leaders became crazy and started beating us, killing us and driving us out of our farms and taking away our animals. This is why in Africa today you can see many wars, burnings and killings.   This is why we are worried when we hear Tony Blair, George Bush, Bob Geldof and other good intentioned people talking about money coming to us. We don't want more wars, more killings, and more burnings. We want to thank all for your generosity. Please don't give us money. Keep it in your far away banks. We will tell you what we want. We want our children to have good education like your children, so we need schools. We want medicine to treat our sick like you do, so we need hospitals. We want to send our products to far away markets so that we can get books and pencils for our schools, medicine for our hospitals and tools for our farms, so we need good roads and harbours and airports. We need clean water and electricity.   This is what we want Mr Blair, Mr Bush and Sir Geldof. Singing is our faculty, music is our soul, drumming is our tradition. This is what we know best. This is our language over the centuries. We sing to send our hungry children to sleep, you sing to make money. Money in Africa is as rare as snake's droppings and evil. It should be kept away from good people like us and be held tight in the hands of our leaders. Please don't give us money, just give us the means so our children could sleep in peace with our lullabies, go to schools and get medicine. Empower us, the people, and not our leaders. Thank you.   (Bashir Goth is an African journalist based in Abu Dhabi)   Rights: © 2005 Khaleej Times   30 June, 2005   "A Continent's success stories go unreported", by Niall FitzGerald. (IHT)   Africa is not short of press interest, particularly this year. But amid the successes of debt relief, the hopes pinned on the Group of 8 leaders who will meet next month, and the intervention of Bob Geldof, there is another story to Africa, one that is not concerned with famine, war or disease. It tells of economic growth, stability and political reform. But it is a story that is going unreported.   The news media are missing this story of Africa's development. Unaware of the trend, they are locked in a historical and generalized view of Africa.   Did anyone expect that war torn Mozambique would experience an economic growth rate of 10 percent on average in the last six or seven years? Or that we would see a similar turnaround in Tanzania? That both countries would quietly transition to new presidents through the ballot box? Yet if you look at the international news media, the focus is often on the negative. In the case of Tanzania you don't read about elections, but about the purchase of a presidential jet. This is hardly balanced and informed coverage.   In Africa today, 800 million people, half of them under 20, are determined to find a better standard of life. This year economic growth will be 5 percent - twice the rate of the European Union. Democracy and its institutions are spreading, slowly but steadily. In the last five years, two thirds of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa have had some form of multiparty elections, though clearly some are freer than others.   African leaders have declared their intention to set the agenda for change and be judged on its success through the New Partnership for African Development. Africa is on the verge of a huge investment in transport, education and health, and will be a major beneficiary of a successful conclusion of the current round of international trade talks.   I am not suggesting that the news media should only cover positive stories. It's about balanced context. Reporting exclusively on politics, conflict, famine and disease may be perpetuating an unbalanced picture of Africa and thereby obscuring the positive - and undermining investor confidence in the continent.   It is true that some of Africa's leaders have inflicted upon their people a triple whammy of corruption, incompetence and conflict. The news media have a role to play in applying pressure to the international community to act where injustices are being unleashed, as they did last year in waking the world to the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan.   It is right, too, to tell the world that 11 million children under the age of 5 die each year in Africa, that 350 million Africans live on less than $1 a day. But this story must not eclipse the fact that vast areas of the continent have taken enormous steps forward. If we only cover Africa when disaster strikes, we perpetuate the image of a continent in constant crisis. And that image is out of step with reality.   As we consider the role of foreign journalists in shaping Africa's image, for better or for worse, we should not forget about the continent's own news media. If the international press is not telling the story of advancement, perhaps the rebirth of national news agencies across the continent could create the critical mass of positive stories needed to wake up the world. These agencies would also give the international news media access to independent and objective reporting from the front line.   There are plenty of examples of nations that have built or re-established independent news agencies as part of their regeneration. In Iraq, for instance, an independent news agency is being created with help from the Reuters Foundation and the United Nations Development Program that will provide reliable news information within Iraq and from Iraq to the wider world.   The news media have a responsibility to observe. They also have a responsibility to tell it like it is. Business already knows that things are changing. It is no coincidence that Chinese companies are investing heavily in Nigerian telecommunications companies or Richard Branson in short-haul aviation.   In the face of an opportunity to resolve Africa's problems, we must show that Africa can rise to the challenge, confront the present and build a positive future. Much has already been achieved in some areas of the continent. That story must be told.   (Niall FitzGerald is chairman of Reuters.)
	“Mobilizing for Change” - Report on Civil Society Action & Millennium Development Goals by The North-South Institute Canada   Ottawa, June 2005   As people around Canada and the world join the call to action against poverty, The North-South Institute and the World Federation of United Nations Associations released today the 4th annual report on civil society engagement with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).   Entitled, WE the Peoples 2005- Mobilizing for Change: Messages from Civil Society, the report gathers information from civil society organizations around the globe - their opinions, priorities and actions - relative to the implementation of the MDGs and the Millennium Declaration...   At the United Nations Millennium Review Summit, being held in New York from September 14th to 16th, world leaders will meet to discuss the future of the United Nations, global collective security, and relations between rich and poor. This meeting will mark five years since the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State and government adopted the Millennium Declaration - and this year political leaders are urged to take actions to ensure the fulfillment of the Millennium Declaration.   This year's report of We the Peoples presents priorities that go beyond the UN Millennium Review Summit. It highlights opportunities for action, calling for greater commitment and a more advanced agenda. The report is a summary of the survey respondents review of the progress made over the past five years and lessons that need to be learned. The report is based on a consultative world-wide electronic survey offered in Arabic, English, French and Spanish. Out of the 439 survey respondents, almost 60 per cent are from the "global south" and the majority of respondents work at the national or regional level.   John Foster, NSI Principal Researcher (Civil Society), has coordinated all four annual surveys, and co-written the report along with Pera Wells of WFUNA.   "We the Peoples Report 2005 mirrors the opinions and actions of the groups which participated in the survey." explains Foster. "Our hope is that the report will increase the participation and actions of groups around the world campaigning for the Millennium Development Goals, as well as help them evaluate their strategies. We hope civil society activists use the report, act on it, raise the bar and transcend it," emphasizes Foster.   The messages from CSOs to the world leaders reported in We the Peoples 2005 include:   * Implement the Millennium Development Goals, but go beyond them. Get at the roots of poverty and growing inequality; remove the obstacles to universal human rights, health, and education; eliminate the dangers to our planet's climate and environment; and undertake urgent collective action to build and sustain peace everywhere.   * Strengthen the United Nations to assure development, social justice, peace, and security in our world.   * A dramatic result from this year's survey is the view from 70 per cent of the 439 worldwide respondents that the war on terror and on Iraq are having a negative impact on development work and on achieving the MDGs.   * The most serious obstacle to success against HIV/AIDS is the weakness of health service at the community level, lack of universal and equitable access to health care. There must be assured access to radically strengthened health systems. The right to health must be recognized nationally and internationally.   * Nearly 55 per cent of survey respondents want to see great inclusion of civil society in government policy deliberations.   * Almost 52 per cent of survey respondents believe progress on the development goals would be significantly improved through strategic partnerships with the private sector. Meanwhile, 49 per cent want to see mandatory standards of corporate social responsibility.   * The report concludes that climate change is probably the single greatest environmental threat, one that bears heavily on the poor. Global warming may exceed war or political upheaval as a producer of displaced people.   * Promoting and protecting the right to water, and advocacy against privatization of water and water systems, are priorities for a number of global CSOs.   The report also offers concrete actions that can be taken to help achieve the MDGs by 2015. Among these are included: engaging the public and political leaders through meetings and strategic campaigning to act on the Global Call to Action Against Poverty; as well as campaigning to support national or international initiatives geared to reduce poverty, improve trade terms, debt relief, and implement social support systems for education and health care among others.   We the Peoples 2005 is available in English and French at www.nsi-ins.ca and www.wfuna.org. Visit the related web page
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