Africa is not the world’s graveyard of journalists, stated the Committee to Protect Journalists.  The Africa Program Research Associate of the CPJ Mohamed Keita said more reporters had died elsewhere than Africa.
Below is the full interview:

Africanews.com: How does the CPJ works i.e do you just create awareness etc?

CPJ: CPJ is an independent advocacy organization that investigates, documents, reports and speaks out against censorship and attacks against news gatherers worldwide since 1981.Our board members participate in our advocacy missions with heads of states and members of government and in coordination with other organizations, we assist persecuted journalists with relocation and funds for legal assistance and medical care following attacks. Each year, we honor courageous journalists with CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. The award’s aim is to draw attention to the plight of journalists worldwide.

Africanews.com: What have been some of the achievements of CPJ in Africa?

CPJ: The most immediate impact of our work is the assistance we have provided persecuted journalists, particularly journalists from the Horn of Africa, Zimbabwe and Gambia. In coordination with other organizations, we have facilitated the relocation and resettlement of dozens of journalists since 2001.

Without the continuing documentation and reporting of press freedom abuses by CPJ and other organizations, who knows what number of journalists who would face imprisonment, threats, censorship and murder without any support? It is difficult to provide figures for the number of journalists released from prison because of our advocacy, but in our evaluation, we are continuing to sensitize governments from Gambia to Ethiopia about adhering to press freedom as guaranteed by their national constitutions and the African Charter on Peoples and Human Rights.

Africanews.com: How would you respond to the saying that “Africa is now the graveyard of journalists”?

CPJ: Actually, since 1992, when CPJ began keeping detailed death records of the fallen members of the media, more journalists have gotten killed in other regions of the world (Iraq, Asia, and Latin America) than in Sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, the conflicts in Algeria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda claimed the most journalists in the line of duty on the continent, but Africa is not the world’s graveyard of journalists.

Africanews.com: A lot of people say African journalists in particular deliberately engage in activities that could cause them their lives just for the sake of cheap popularity/fame. How is CPJ dealing with this?

CPJ: CPJ is strictly an advocacy organization and our mandate does not involve editorial policy, labor issues or journalism ethics. However, we acknowledge that unethical practices linked to poor training, low salaries, and financial and political pressures, are realities plaguing the free press in Africa and perhaps reflect the larger socio-economics problems of the continent. We believe these problems should be addressed by media self-regulation (for instance a professional media association for instance with disciplinary powers) and NOT by government regulation.

Africanews.com: Could you tell us briefly about the state of journalist abuse in Africa?

CPJ: Officials, government supporters, security forces, rebels routinely threaten and assault journalists over their coverage.

Imprisonment of journalists under libel, defamation, vague national security or anti-state laws or spurious criminal charges is common. This year, over 90% of journalists in prisons in Sub-Saharan Africa are behind bars without charge or trial and held in secret locations.

Journalists are murdered in quasi-total impunity and the killers are likely to walk off. In very few instances do investigations and prosecutions are carried out professionally and thoroughly to apprehend not only the killers but the masterminds.

Governments are also using more subtle methods of suppression of independent media, including pulling advertising from critical outlets, asking for exorbitant civil damages in defamation cases or bankrupting media companies with legal defense fees, or administrative restrictions on. Government enact media legislation criminalizing critical coverage and restricting press freedom

Africanews.com: Is there any improvement as compared to previous years?

CPJ: The rapid development of new technologies (internet, mobile phones) has allowed average citizens in only a few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to freely share testimonies and photos with a worldwide audience. In countries like Madagascar and Uganda for instance, we saw bloggers and citizen journalists offer unfiltered news, photos and video about the unfolding events there, circumventing the mechanisms of censorship that the traditional media is subjected to. There is also a significant portion of Africans in the Diaspora who have started news web sites and online fora to either track what is happening in their home countries, or advocate a particular political, social or religious opinion that cannot be freely expressed at home. There are questions that can be raised about the quality and accuracy of this kind of information, but it should be a positive development. At the same time, governments like Ethiopia are noticing these movements online and moving to block the sites at home.

Africanews.com: Why do you think most African governments “oppress” the press?

CPJ: African governments, like governments around the world, understand the power of the media in shaping public opinion and we see that most journalists are attacked for reporting bad governance (corruption, abuse), or challenging the official position on a sensitive topic. Many governments justify their repression by linking critical coverage with incitement to violence and undermining national security or development interests, but those are excuses.

Africanews.com: What has been the cooperation between CPJ and government institutions that you send petition letters to?

CPJ: Just last month, we received a response from the president of Senegal after we raised concerns about criminal libel laws used to jail journalists and a culture of impunity for those assaulting or threatening the press. We strive to engage officials in a constructive dialogue and we always seek to hear their side of the story, but there are some governments which refuse to be engaged.

Africanews.com: What do you forecast in terms of press freedom, journalists safety in Africa in the next five to 10 years?

CPJ: Hard to answer, but we remain optimistic, especially when we think of countries that experienced brutal civil wars and have come a long way in terms of their press freedom records, countries like Liberia or Burundi.

First published in my company network – africanews.com

Chelsea’s Didier Drogba has attracted praise for his decision to donate £3m to charity, but he is not the first footballer to show his generous side. FanHouse takes a look at 10 players who have found it’s good to give.

1 – Didier Drogba intends to donate all the money he will receive for being the “face” of Pepsi. The Ivory Coast striker will finance the building of a hospital in his homeland. A 150-200 bed facility will be set up to treat children and it will also be used as an orphanage.

2 – Cesc Fabregas has convinced his team-mates to give up a day’s salary and a win bonus this season in order to raise up to £1m for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Last year, the Gunners raised an impressive £532,816 for the Teenage Cancer Trust and plan on making their donation an annual event.

3 – Niall Quinn gave nearly £1m – the money raised by his 2002 testimonial game at Sunderland – to a host of charities in the north east and Ireland and also funded the construction of a hospice in India.

4 – Sami Hyypia was at Liverpool last season when heard on a local radio station that a playroom at nearby Arrowe Park Hospital would not be completed because of a shortage of cash. The defender stepped in with a gift of £23,000 to make up the difference and the playroom was finished.

5 – Michael Essien set up the Michael Essien Foundation to help children in his native Ghana. It is believed that Essien will plough as much as £500,000 into the project over the next 12 months.

6 – Gary Kelly, the former Irish international defender, donated 750,000 euros after his Leeds United testimonial in 2002 to a cancer charity that had helped his sister Mandy. She died of cancer in 1998, prompting Kelly’s big-hearted gesture – the equivalent of more than £460,000 at the time – and the Gary Kelly Support Centre opened in 2003.

7 – Craig Bellamy may not be the most popular footballer in the Premier League, but, without wanting publicity, he set up a Sierra Leone charity in 2008. The Craig Bellamy Foundation aims to help youngsters affected by civil war and he pumped in £650,000 of his own cash to get the idea off the ground.

8 – Alan Shearer decided that the profits from his testimonial should split between charities in Newcastle and The Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research. Fourteen charities received a healthy share of the money from Shearer’s farewell game.

9 – Ole Gunnar Solskjaer marked histestimonial in front of a packed Old Trafford against Espanyol in 2007 by giving £2m to Unicef so they could finish off school building projects across the world, including Angola and Mozambique.

10 – Rio Ferdinand, the Manchester United defender, has set up a charitable foundation, donating substantial sums to try and get youngsters off the street and more involved in their communities.

Credit: fanhouse.co.uk

South Africa rated among the top 10 countries using the Opera Mini browser to surf contents on mobile phones. In its latest State of the Mobile Web report on Tuesday, Opera said 35.6 million people used the application in September, an 11.5% increase from August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008.
The Norway software developer stated that Nigeria was axed from the top 10 countries’ list while Vietnam made a debut. It said more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis amounting to 2,000 terabytes .

Nokia and Samsung were the most used mobile phone brands in browsing, according to the report.

Opera highlighted that users in the top 10 countries – Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam – saved up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year due to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ operators.

Data traffic through Opera’s mobile browser — which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth – rose 8.7% in September compared to August, the company said.  About four million new Opera Mini users were gained in that same period of time, the report added.

The report revealed that Opera Mini users viewed nearly 15 billion pages in September 2009. Since August, page-views have gone up 7.2%. Since September 2008, page-views have increased 230%.  Click for full report

I had no idea what Africa’s largest city – Cairo – looked like before I first visited in late September 2009. I was part of a Twenty Ten All Star training programme taking place in Cairo on the sidelines of the U-20 FIFA World Cup 2009. Just about 15 minutes for our plane to land I saw a beautiful landscape of desert underneath with lorry and human paths. “Wow,” I exclaimed silently.

From the top one is tempted to believe this is not Africa. Egypt’s Cairo has high-rise buildings mostly made from bricks. The road networks are close to excellent but drivers in Cairo need a lot more driving lessons. It’s a beautiful city endowed with tourism potentials.

No one visits Cairo without making it to the Giza city. It has one of the largest pyramids in the world, which is considered to be one of the great Seven Wonders of the World. With $20 me and two other colleagues hired a taxi to take us around town. Ynoues, our taxi driver doubled as a tour guide with excellent basic English expression for us to understand his rich cultural lectures.
He drove us through Down Town Cairo to the City of the Dead (cemetery for the poor), the River Nile, the Egyptian Papyrus Institute before the Giza City. At Giza, we parked our taxi and hopped unto the back of camels to the desert. It cost the three of us about $26 (140 Egyptian pounds) to hire a camel for our two-hour journey on the desert.

At the entrance to the desert we paid $11 (60 Egyptian Pounds) instead of the official 30. We later realized after other participants visited same place later that the local guys ripped us off with extra 30 Egyptian Pounds. As our camels slowly glided in the sand, the tip of one of the pyramids popped up. Three giant Pyramids welcomed us shortly in the distance and just by them is a Sphinx. We were fascinated by the super imposing structures ahead of us. “How did this come about?” I murmured. I was sure similar question was running through the minds of the hundreds of tourists coming from all over the world trooping in and out the pyramid centre.

The biggest of all the pyramids is The Great Pyramid of Khufu and this is the only one among the seven wonders of world. Our local guide told us the pyramid was build by King Khufu around 2560 BC (About 500 years old). Khufu is the second Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty of rulers in Egypt.

The Sphinx is just close by. It is a giant structure with a lion’s body and a man’s face, which is supposed to be the guardian of the necropolis. This is believed to be a manifestation of sun god.

I got back to my hotel terribly tired but was visibly happy that I had an opportunity to feel one of the greatest Seven Wonders of the World. The next time you visit Egypt don’t forget to visit all the three pyramids. A journey to Egypt would be incomplete without visiting them.

World's tallest man in a pose. Credit: Getty Images

The world’s new tallest man, measuring 2m 46.5cm (eight feet one inch), said he was looking for love as he was presented by Guinness World Records in London. “My biggest dream though, is to get married and have children — I’m looking for love,” Sultan Kosen, 26 said.
Kosen is also wearing a new title as the one with the world’s largest hands and largest feet, measuring 27.5cm and 36.5cm respectively. He has beaten China’s Bao Xishun, whose height is 2.36m.

The Turk is reported to have blotted out the iconic Tower Bridge as he posed for photographs on the banks of the River Thames in his first ever trip outside his native Turkey.

Media reports say journalists had tough time thrusting their microphones towards his mouth for interviews. Kosen dropped out of school due to his extreme height, but works occasionally as a farmer to support his family.

He said he hoped his newfound celebrity status would enable him “to travel and see the world and have a car that accommodates my size”. He has problems squeezing into a regular-sized car. However, Kosen said his height makes it easier for him to replace light bulbs and hanging curtains for his mother at home.

He has three brothers and a sister, who are all normal-sized, but his rate of growth surged from the age of 10 because of a tumour which caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland, according to the news.com.au.

The report said the tumour was successfully removed in surgery and he finally stopped growing last year. He uses walking sticks and tires quickly if he is standing.

Guinness editor-in-chief Craig Glenday travelled to Turkey to personally validate Kosen’s height under strict guidelines, measuring him three times in one day because bodies expand and shrink throughout the day.

Glenday said: “Sultan’s an imposing figure, but a gentle, quiet man who’s totally relaxed and unfazed about his unique standing in the world.”

The smiles, the beauty and all the lively people that made my wedding a success.

Our arrival at the wedding grounds

Walking to the dais

Looking into the future with hope

The lasting smiles of Abigail

Singing in harmony to thank our God

The long-awaited moment

It was all smiles into our new world

The big crowd

I have never been to a fair of African inventors before but I have seen snippets on television over the last few years. Sometimes it’s pretty boring watching some so called African inventions that do not even meet the standards of primary school kids.
But for those of you who think African inventions are still in the primary school ages, you better reset your minds. I was totally thrilled and mesmerized during the Maker Faire Africa 2009 event held in Accra, Ghana.

Visitors were fascinated at the wonderful and interesting inventions displayed at the event. The innovations ranged from cream heater to a cooler made from roofing sheets, pipe and jute as well as living room chairs made out of plastic water bottles.

“MFA ‘09 has changed my perception about Africa. With the little that I have seen here I think Africans can make it by themselves,” Christy Brown, a student from Ashesi University told my news agency – AfricaNews.

Among some of the inventions on display were locally manufactured radio transmitter by students from Accra Polytechnic, cassava grating machine, locally made latrine hand washer for primary schools, corn planter, shea nut roaster among others. Most of the items displayed were made from scraps and cheap materials in town.

Believe in ourselves

“It’s about time Africans believed in themselves. We must have the can do spirit and we’ll be able to produce for ourselves and even sell to the Western world. I’m lost for words and find it hard to believe fellow Africans invented these,” Charles Koomson, a local journalist said.

A school drop-out who happened to build a local windmill – William Kamkwamba – from Malawi said he was inspired by windmill pictures that he saw in books in a community library. “Once someone had made it I believed I could make it too and I am happy I did. I hope to train a lot more of the local folks and to eventually start it on a commercial venture.”

Emeka Okafor – co-founder of MFA – said he is impressed with turnout so far. He said MFA 09 is just the beginning of what Africans have under their sleeves for the world. “I am happy to see the smiles and surprise on the faces of our visitors. Africa has something to tell the world and this is just a fraction of the whole,” a visibly elated Okafor stated.

MFA was an event focused on bringing together acts of ingenuity and inventions from across the Africa continent. The 3-day event attracted a sizeable number of visitors at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT.

Crocodile made from left over metal sheet

Maker Faire Africa – an event focused on bringing together acts of ingenuity and inventions from across the Africa continent – has kicked off in Accra, Ghana. The 3-day event hopes to welcome about 900 participants. There would be workshops, seminars and lectures focused on four key innovation areas.  They are: Arts and Crafts, Robotics, Agriculture and Environment and Science and Engineering.
The organizers of the event said it is “designed to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, and propagated, this conference will answer the question, ‘What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from across the African continent together and add resources to the mix?’”

Speaking at a press conference ahead of the event, Emeka Okafor – co-founder of MFA – said – the event is a chance to change the conversation about Africa from development to innovation. “We hope to tell the inventor on the street or the student that what he or she has invented is worth it. It will re-enforce people’s passion to do more. We want to create a sense of community empowerment,” he said.

“So often the world hears the bad news coming from the African continent.  Maker Faire is a chance to highlight the innovation, entrepreneurship and opportunity that abounds in Africa,” said Nii Simmonds, co-founder of Maker Faire Africa in a statement.

“With MFA we can create a space where the best and brightest can come together to support each other, exchange intellectual capital and find the resources they need to deliver products that fulfill the most basic to the most complex needs on the continent.  And this is just the beginning.  We hope to propel this into a platform that continues to bring people and products together for the future.”

MFA will deliver 4 conference tracks all fostering conversation and collaboration with attendees: Robotics – Lead by Afrobotics in the ROBOlab, this track host lectures as well as a LEGO robotics workshop and competition.

Agriculture & Environment – takes a new look at sustainability, green technologies and innovations such as biofuel and architecture.

Science and Engineering – this track will highlight new innovations from the 3rd annual IDDS at KNUST as well as a series of hands-on workshops.

Arts & Crafts – held at an outdoor art center this track will showcase everything from sculptures to toys to textiles.

The MFA is taking place at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI) and will end on Sunday, 16 August 2009. Photo: WhiteAfrica.

Health services in Ghana have switched on their surveillance systems as the West African country records its first H1N1 (swine flu) case since its outbreak. The Ghana Health Service confirmed two cases on Thursday. One is in the capital Accra and the other in the Western region bordering Ivory Coast.

The Director General of the Ghana Health Services, Dr. Elias Sory, has assured the public that the country is fully prepared to handle the case. He said researchers at the Noguchi Memorial Institute as well as that of the Health Ministry are conducting series of tests on the cases.

Dr Sory told Joy FM that one of the cases has been traced to a gentleman who just arrived from London to visit his relatives in Ghana. He said both the man and his relative have been quarantined to avoid further spread. He stated that people believed to have come into contact with the infected person are being screened.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Health Minister, Dr Benjamin Kumbuor, has announced that the government is putting together an emergency response team to deal with the reported cases in the country.

Swine flu is a deadly respiratory disease caused by a strain of the influenza type A virus known as H1N1.

IT giants Google has unveiled an SMS service that would help provide information to cell phone users in Africa. The product – Google SMS – to begin first in Uganda, would provide information, via SMS, on a number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather and sports.

“At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home,” the company said in a blog post.

“It’s important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty,” Google said.

The Internet search and advertising giant noted that Africa has the world’s highest mobile phone growth rate and that mobile use on the continent is six times higher than Internet penetration.

“Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS,” it said.

Google also said that it is also launching a service called Google Trader, an SMS-based application that helps bring together buyers and sellers of product or services, from used cars to livestock to jobs.

Google said another service, Google SMS Tips, enables a mobile phone user to have a Web search-like experience. A user enters a text query and Google returns relevant answers after searching a database, according to an AFP report.

Google said Google SMS Tips and Google Trader were developed in partnership with several organizations, including the Grameen Foundation, an offshoot of the pioneering Grameen bank founded by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus.