OFF ON A JOURNEY
I am off to Namibia for a most exciting experience. I am joining a few others going to work on farmland to monitor the Cheetahs there. We need to try and count the numbers that there are. What available food is there for them? What other preditors are around? All Cheetahs in the area are to be collared, and their where-abouts monitored. What is the state of heath of the animals. How many are young ones? How far do they travel to find food, or to find a mate? This is all in an effort to record how the Cheetah is doing in view of the poaching that occurs all over Africa, and to try and prevent this magnificent Cat from dying out. Their numbers are dropping and the cheetah is, one of many of the wild animals in Africa, on the endangered species list. I will be away for three weeks..................
THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT.
SEAWEED FARMERS.
Tanzania's new seaweed farmers.
|
|
By Daniel Dickinson
BBC News, Pemba, Tanzania
|
Fatima Hamidi is one of Tanzania's new seaweed farmers.
Seaweed is used in cosmetics, cheese, fertilizer and shampoo
|
Cultivating her new crop at Vumawimbi beach on the northern tip of Pemba island, she hopes it will supplement the meagre income she earns from other sources. "We don't yet know how successful it will be as we have not sold any yet," says Fatima. "But we think it will help us to earn a little money, which we can invest in other small businesses. We are not rich, sometimes we don't even have the money to buy enough food, so selling seaweed will help." Fatima is one of an estimated 5,000 farmers who are cultivating seaweed on the small island of Pemba. All along the Tanzanian coast and around its many islands, other farmers are doing the same. They are meeting a worldwide demand for seaweed, which is being used as an ingredient in everything from cosmetics to cheeses, and fertilizers to shampoos.
|
FACE
EVERY MAN OVER FORTY IS REPONSIBLE FOR HIS FACE.
( ARV) DRUGS.
HIV Kenya protest at patent law
|
|
By Muliro Telewa
BBC News, Nairobi
|
The protesters say they may soon not be able to afford medicine
|
Police in Kenya have stopped hundreds of people living with HIV and Aids from demonstrating at the Indian High Commission in Nairobi.
The protests, also planned in Uganda and Tanzania, are over an Indian draft law which may block poor countries' access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. According to WTO rules, India is obliged to protect and enforce drug patents from the start of this year. his will stop routine generic drug productThe production has led to major reductions in the cost of ARV medicines, as well as other medicines that treat other diseases affecting millions of people in developing countries.
|
PUNISHED
MEN ARE NOT PUNISHED FOR THEIR SINS ~ BUT BY THEM.
ILLEGAL LOGGING.
G8 to tackle illegal timber trade
|
|
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent, in Derby
|
The G8 want to tackle the illegal timber trade
|
Environment and development ministers from the G8 group of leading countries have committed themselves to tackling the problem of illegal logging.
They have also agreed that action is needed to protect Africa from the consequences of climate change. Their statement of intent came at the end of a meeting in Derby, UK. Britain's Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said there had been "an interesting dialogue". "What was most noticeable was the degree to which everyone was singing from the same hymn-sheet," she told reporters at the conclusion of the two-day meeting. However, other delegates spoke of dissent behind the scenes, with the United States delegation determined to block any mention of linkages between climate change and issues such as trade and agricultural subsidies.
|
ZIM EXPATS NO VOTE
Zimbabwe expats lose vote battle
|
Mugabe says expatriates can only vote if they come back to Zimbabwe
|
More than three million Zimbabweans living abroad will not be able to vote in the 31 March parliamentary poll, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court has ruled.
It dismissed a challenge by seven UK-based Zimbabweans to a law barring citizens abroad from voting. "This application has no merit," said Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a former government minister. Critics of the law say the ruling Zanu-PF party fears that Zimbabweans abroad would vote for the opposition. Correspondents say Zimbabweans are leaving in increasing numbers because of an economic and political crisis.
|
REPUTATION
THE REPUTATI0N OF A THOUSAND YEARS
MAYBE DETERMINED B Y THE CONDUCT
OF ONE HOUR.
LIGHTS OUT.
Sierra Leone thrown into darkness
|
Freetown has had an erratic electricity supply for months
|
Anger has been rising in Sierra Leone as a two-week fuel shortage begins to bite, with long petrol queues and the capital pitched into darkness at night.
Many Freetown residents rely on generators, which run on petrol, as the country's power supply is so erratic.
A government official said oil companies had pooled together to organise a shipment of fuel products, but he gave no date for its arrival. Sierra Leone relies on refined oil imported from Ivory Coast and Senegal.
BY BBC'S LANSANA FOFANA.
|
MOUNT KILIMANJARO - TANZANIA
The last snows of Kilimanjaro
|
|
By Euan McIlwraith
BBC, Tanzania
|
My first glimpse of Kilimanjaro is awesome. As dawn breaks in the town of Moshi in the north of Tanzania the snow-capped peak of the mountain emerges from the mist.
Nineteen-and-a-half thousand feet above sea level, the snow and ice hurt the eyes in the African sun.
Kilimanjaro seems set to become just another mountain
|
Kilimanjaro, literally the "mountain of snow" is a place where God was said to live, a provider of water for the local Chagga people and, today, the single largest source of tourist dollars in a struggling economy. But the ice is melting and once it is gone there is a real concern that the 20,000 tourists who come to climb the mountain each year will be gone too. After all a mountain without snow in Africa is just another mountain. The exact reasons for the glacier's shrinkage are not known but deforestation and global warming are commonly blamed. Phil Ndesamburo, the MP for the area, remembers the mountain of his childhood covered in snow. Now in his seventies, Phil shared his concerns for the future. "Without this mountain we cannot live. It provides water for the coffee and banana plantations at the base of the mountain and without water there is no life," he said. We set off just after dawn. At the gate to the Kilimanjaro National Park the porters, guides and would-be climbers are massing for the ascent. With the hazards of altitude sickness, more than half of them will not reach the summit.
|
The glacier is a shadow of its former glory
|
Each porter carries a massive 20kg. My pack weighs in at four. For four days we climb steadily upwards camping each night until we reach the ice. Professor Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University has been studying the ice cores his team took from the mountain in 2000. The cores are a frozen archive with 12,000 years of climatic history locked in the ice. His research shows that over 80% of the ice cover has been lost since 1912, and given the current rate of decline he predicts that the glacier will be gone completely in the next 15 years.
|
FOOTPRINTS
3.5-million-year-old human footprints were discovered, on this day, in Tanzania in 1978.
RUNNING BATTLES IN KENYA
Kenya protesters in police battle
|
The police said the demonstration was illegal
|
Kenyan police have arrested nine people and used tear gas and water cannons in running battles with protesters before the opening of parliament.
Some 200 people were waving placards demanding a referendum on a new draft constitution which would limit the president's powers.
President Mwai Kibaki has formally opened what is expected to be a stormy parliamentary session. His government has not kept election promises to change the constitution. It has also been rocked by a string of corruption allegations
|
PEACE
LEARN TO BE QUIET IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL,
FOR QUIETNESS IS THE END OF STRIFE,
AND THIS IS THE JOURNEY TO PEACE.
WOW !!!
Jailed MP can fight Zimbabwe poll
|
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Bennett's ancestors were thieves and murderers
|
Zimbabwe's new Electoral Court has ruled that a jailed opposition MP can contest parliamentary elections.
Roy Bennett was sentenced to 12 months in prison for attacking the justice minister in a debate on land last year.
This is the first ruling made by the court, which was set up under new regional guidelines.
The court also postponed the election in his constituency by a month to give his team time to campaign. Elsewhere, elections are due on 31 March.
|
VALUE
TRY NOT TO BECOME A MAN OF SUCCESS,
BUT RATHER TRY TO BECOME A MAN OF VALUE.
BBC ONE IN AFRICA
BBC One shows head out to Africa
|
Geldof has dubbed himself "Mr Bloody Africa"
|
BBC One will devote a week of programmes to African life and culture as part of its new schedule.
Bob Geldof and Rolf Harris will appear in the summer specials, which the BBC hopes will give viewers a deeper understanding of Africa.
Highlights include Geldof on Africa, The Elephant Diaries, Rolf on African Art and Strictly African Dancing.
News bulletins will focus on African issues, while the Breakfast programme will come live from South Africa. David Dimbleby hosts a special edition of Question Time from South Africa. The African season is being held in a year when the continent will hit the headlines thanks to the G8 conference, the Commission For Africa and the 20th anniversary of Live Aid.
 |
 I think it is a tremendous opportunity to turn perceptions of Africa around 
|
Other programmes include Trauma in Africa, which reveals the extreme conditions staff battle with in Johannesburg General Hospital.
'Fantastic opportunity'
Worlds Apart will see a British family sample life in Northern Namibia, staying with a family of the Himba tribe. The documentary will be produced by Endemol, the makers of Big Brother and based on a successful US show. The chosen family are due to travel to Africa next week.
|
Heggessey hopes viewers will see Africa "in a different light"
|
Ms Heggessey said five celebrities with links to Africa will undergo intensive training with African dance troupes for Strictly African Dancing.
She said: "This is a fantastic opportunity to display one of the things that happens to define Africa as a continent - dance.
"We have the ideal format in which to do that and it will enable us to bring lots of African music to the screen." Actor and presenter Kwame Kwei-Armah will travel to South Africa for a special edition of Songs of Praise featuring Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He said: "I think it is a tremendous opportunity to turn perceptions of Africa around."
|
APPROVAL
A MAN CANNOT BE COMFORTABLE
WITHOUT HIS OWN APPROVAL.
DEADLY MALARIA
Global toll of malaria 'doubled'
|
Malaria is spread by mosquitoes
|
The number of cases of the deadliest form of malaria across the world could be twice as high as previously predicted, researchers suggest.
An Oxford University team, writing in Nature, estimated there were over half a billion cases of Plasmodium falciparum malaria globally in 2002.
The figure is up to 50% higher than estimates from the World Health Organization. Two thirds of cases occurred in Africa, predominantly affecting under-fives.
The new figures are 200% higher for areas outside Africa.
The study suggests that, in total, 2.2 billion people are at risk from malaria. The researchers say this could be because the WHO's reliance on all centres in a particular country reporting all cases of the disease in order to collate incidence data was less certain than the method they used.
The WHO had set a target to halve deaths by 2010, but resistance to drugs is threatening that plan.
|
LUCY'S BLOG
Harare election blog: Food fears.
In the run-up to Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections on 31 March, 22-year-old receptionist Lucy Gomo (not her real name) is keeping a diary about life in Harare. Tuesday 15 March
A huge rain storm on Saturday has brought some relief to us in the Harare heat. I was shocked to see three guys walking outside my office wearing T-shirts showing an open palm - the symbol of the opposition But water has been a source of complaint, as most homes in the low-density areas of the capital were without water for three days last week. My cousin, who lives in these northern suburbs, says it's quite common for the water to be cut off there. Meanwhile, rumours about maize meal, sugar and cooking oil shortages are making people jittery, especially those with large families. The police have been checking garages to make sure petrol - which costs about $3,600 Zimbabwean dollars (70 US cents) a litre - is not being hoarded. I've not seen any evidence of fuel shortages so far: there are long queues each morning as I wait to catch my buses to work - but this has always been the case. There never seems to be enough transport.Yesterday I was shocked to see three guys walking outside my office wearing opposition white, red and black T-shirts showing an open palm - the symbol for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). They didn't seem worried about wearing them at all, but it's unusual to see people casually supporting the opposition unless they're gathered in numbers at a political meeting.
There are reports of many Zanu-PF rallies outside the capital. On the other hand, ruling party supporters - usually young men - go about their business around town wearing white T-shirts with black Zanu-PF slogans slashed across them. I usually see them when I pop into the town centre as I did over the weekend to check my emails at an internet café where I have an account. It costs Z$250 (5 US cents) a minute to log on - and the café was packed, with most of the 50 computers being used. I've heard there are political meetings for both Zanu-PF and MDC going on and the state-run Herald newspaper says there have been plenty of Zanu-PF rallies outside Harare - some taking place in schools - where large donations are given.A friend of mine phoned to say she'd tracked down a cleaning product similar to the one I usually use - which I had been fruitlessly searching for - in a shopping centre near where she works. So instead of going to church this Sunday, I spent the day washing, ironing... and cleaning the stove.
