Conferences

What is Kelele?
Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Why Kelele?
Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice. Where society has room for debate and discussion. With too many voices marginalised or simply ignored in Africa society today for a variety of reasons we believe that technology in general and grassroots media tools such as blogs in particular represent the most powerful way in which to give Africans back their voice. We are gathering in Nairobi in August 2009 to make a powerful, positive, inspirational noise that will be heard across the continent and beyond. KELELE!

The theme of Kelele ’09 Nairobi is Beat Your Drum – we want to connect the traditional Africa method of getting your message across vast distances – the talking drums – to the 21st century and the tools we use today to get our message across, blogs and the Internet. We anticipate that this conference will continue to be called Kelele wherever it is held. For example Kelele Nairobi ’09, Kelele Accra ’10, Kelele Cairo ’11 and so on.

When will Kelele ’09 Nairobi take place?
August 2009. We have tentatively booked the 13th – 16th August 2009.

Here is a summary of the proposed programme:
Day 1 August 13: Arrival in Nairobi and official opening
Day 2 August 14: Conference Day
Day 3 August 15: Skills/Training Day and Outreach Day. Official closing
Day 4 August 16: Sight seeing / departure

Sister events
The African Bloggers Awards, which aims to recognise the top blogger from each African country. The winner from each country will be invited and sponsored to attend Kelele ’09 Nairobi.

Budget
Every successful event needs the backing of some great sponsors! We’d like to invite all organizations with an interest in blogging, Africa and citizen media to become a sponsor of the inaugural African Bloggers Conference: Kelele!

There are a variety of ways that you can become involved as a sponsor for Kelele - your contribution doesn’t only need to be financial in nature. If you’d like to find out more about the sponsorship opportunities, please email daudi.were AT gmail.com

For more information please contact
Daudi Were – daudi.were AT gmail.com
Erik Hersman - erik AT zungu.com
Ndesanjo Macha - ndesanjo AT gmail.com

This week I am in Yokohama covering the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) IV for AllAfrica as part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) press team. I am not here as a delegate but as part of the press corps, which I feel is significant.

This is another example that increasingly the line between the traditional mainstream media and citizen media is blurring rapidly. The rest of the UNDP press team here at TICAD is made up of traditional journalists from print, TV and radio, now they have a blogger not only on the scene but embedded with them as another outlet off TICAD coverage. We saw during the 2007 Kenyan election, how bloggers in particular and the citizen media in general stepped up to cover angles of the election that the mainstream media were not covering and/or were ignoring. We also saw bloggers step up and fill the gaps when the mainstream media was gagged in a draconian ministerial ban on live broadcasting. Bloggers as part of a traditional press team is a welcome move, long may it continue.

I have watched this change in the role of bloggers with interest. At TEDGlobal in Arusha last year the Google PR team was enthusiastic and insistent that bloggers joined the traditional journalists at any Google announcement. At Highway Africa, Africa’s biggest conference for journalists, bloggers have graduated from being a sideshow at the Digital Citizens’ Indaba (albeit a very significant and extremely worthwhile sideshow) to being included in the main conference programme. Indeed the Digital Citizens’ Indaba is now a draw for traditional journalists, at least those with the foresight to see where the future lies. In January Internews Kenya organized a media forum entitled Media Coverage of Post Election Violence Before and Now. It was an opportunity for the media in Kenya to reflect and to critique each other and themselves on coverage during the 2007 elections and the violence that followed. It was refreshing that I was invited as a blogger to take part in that conversation as an equal member.

Coming back to TICAD IV, it will be a challenge to find the correct tone and angle as a citizen journalist as I feel there will be no point in reporting what happened and who said what to whom as the traditional mainstream media seems to have the covered. If there is anything you feel I should look at please let me know in the comments or via email.

If you are interested in following TICAD or want to know what it is all about have a look at the website. If you want to see and hear what is going on in the main hall check out the Live Broadcasts. There are more than 40 African Heads of State/ Heads of Government here; surely you will find some them fascinating!

TICAD IV | TICAD

BarCamp Nairobi 2.0 is in full swing at Strathmore University in the heart of Nairobi. In the first two hours we are discussing everything and anything to do with everything and anything with a technological bent. The final two hours we will focus in on this year’s theme, Innovation.

The short talks cover a wide range of issues (as you would expect at a BarCamp!) so far we have:

• Alex Gakum – Protecting Innovation
• Wesley Kirinya – Schools working with companies
• Edgar Okioga – .net innovation
• Nathan Eagle – Mobile Epemology Apps
• Riyaz Bachani – Demonstrating the One Laptop Per Child laptop
• Valentine Wambui - Call Centre set-up (using Asterix technology)

this list will grow as more people turn up. If you are in Nairobi and reading this, get to Strathmore University NOW (Ole Sangale Road, off Langata Road, in Madaraka Estate. If using public transport, take matatu number 14, which leaves town from the corner of Ronald Ngala and Mfangano Streets and goes directly to the entrance of Strathmore University (the last stop).

We are recording as much of the sessions as we can and will upload them as podcasts.

barcampkenya

Colonialists would often turn up at an African community and ask, “Who does that land belong to?” pointing to the vast fields around the village. Many times the reply from the villagers would be, “It does not belong to anyone.” The colonialists would then promptly set about fencing and craving up the land amongst themselves, which would enrage the Africans, which, in turn, would confuse the colonialists as, after all, they had been told that this land did not belong to anyone.

These exchanges highlight the differences in the cultures involved and the different understandings of what initially looks like a very simple situation. When the Africans tell the colonialists that this land does not belong to anybody, the colonialists would take that to mean that the land is unoccupied. “It does not belong to anyone” is taken to mean it is ownerless. That was a misunderstanding of what they had been told. For when the African said, “This land does not belong to anyone”, what they mean is this land does not belong to any single person or family. This land is the property of the community under the stewardship of those who currently occupy it. The Elesi of Odogbolu, a Nigerian chief, told the West African land commission in 1912, that he “conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn”. In other words, “this land does not belong to anyone” meant this land belongs to everyone. It is occupied by us, but we do not own it, we are merely the current stewards holding it for future generations.

In my talk during the Digital Citizen Indaba I touched upon the issue of the African blogosphere and ownership asking, “Who owns the African blogosphere”? I used the above example of our ancestors’ attitude to land as the basis of my understanding. In my opinion the internet is a space through which discussion takes place and blogs are the tool through which we utilise that space for discussion. In other words this space we have carved on the internet is our land and bloggers are the occupiers of that land. Like our ancestors I believe that this land does not belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us.

Why is this important? First of all this space belonging to all of us means that there is room for all of us and for all our opinions in that space and we all have an equal right to it. For example those who feel unrepresented in the main stream media can use this space to get their message across. Those who feel left out of the national conversation can use this space to get their message across. Ndesanjo in his keynote address emphasised this highlighting that several Africans who happen to be gay had used this space to express themselves through blogs, several Africans who happen to be white or of Asian origin had used this space to express themselves through their blogs.

Another example, last year during the time of the first DCI there was a passionate, and at times, heated debate about whether a blogging conference organised largely by South Africans, who happened to be white, and held at a university named after Rhodes, had the right to call itself African. I felt then as I do now that, yes, they had the right to call it a conference of African bloggers. I feel no one has the right to stop other bloggers from organising themselves in a way they feel fit. Once you start putting restrictions on how bloggers organise themselves then you are on the slippery slope that ends up with putting restrictions on what bloggers can write about. For if you think that these guys do not have the right to organise a conference for African bloggers do they have the right to write about African bloggers or as African bloggers?

I should clarify the difference between those who objected to the content of the conference and those who object to the very notion of the conference. The DCI crew never claimed to be organising a perfect conference and gave us the opportunity to give our feedback on what they did right and what they could do better. This year you can see they took the suggestions on board. A big issue last year was the DCI venue did not have wireless internet access, this year we had wireless internet access. Last year we raised the issue of representation amongst the speakers in terms of geographical location and content. This year we have spent a lot of time examining the role of language which was led by Tanzanian bloggers with their central role in the Kiswahili blogosphere. We also looked at cyber activism is Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well v-blogging, photo-blogging and open source. Space to give feedback and raise issues about the content of a conference should always be available. Feedback I have no problem with. What I object to is those who feel that the conference itself had no right to exist in any form.

That is not to say that all bloggers must agree with all other bloggers all the time or even most of the time. In fact we do not have to agree at all! I hope that having disagreements and differences of opinion does not mean we can not sit down together at the end of the debate and appreciate each other. But if that is not the case, the good thing about this space we are carving on the internet is that it is basically limitless. If you do not like the way people are doing things you can start your own thing. Just do not try to stop people from doing what they are doing by placing artificial restrictions based on your opinion of what is and isn’t for they have as much right to this space as you do.

digital citizen indaba | highway africa

The second Digital Citizen Indaba is in full swing at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. The conference was opened by Professor Banda who welcomed us to the DCI. Then Global Voices sub Saharan editor, Swahili blogosphere pioneer, Tanzanian blogosphere pioneer, and KBW member Ndesanjo Macha got things moving with his Keynote Address.

I spoke with on the Democratization of the Digital Citizen in the morning session on Fractured Identities. I shared the floor with my Tanzanian brother Ansbert Ngurumo. Our panel was chaired by Professor Guy Berger.

Check out the DCI wiki which is updated regularly throughout the day for a summary of all the talks, the DCI flickr stream for evidence that bloggers are the best looking people around!

digital citizen indaba

Lost in translation

At one of the evening dinners at TED Global I ended up sitting next to a group of Americans and we started discussing the TED bags that each one of us got. I told them the best thing in the bag for me, apart from the bag itself, was the torch (each bag came with a small yet powerful LED torch (number 6) ).
When I mentioned this, there was short silence, then they asked me,
“You got a TORCH?”
“Yeah”, I reply wondering why they would be so impressed. OK it is a bloody good torch but still.
“In your TED bag?”
“Yeah.”
“Can we see it?”
“Sure.”

I pull it out of my bag wondering which company these guys work for if they have never seen a torch before. Once they saw it, however, the disappointment on their face was telling.

Perplexed I ask them, “What did you expect?”

They explained that when I had said torch they thought I meant open flame, fire, as in burning torch, you know those things you dip into petrol and light at the end, to them that is a torch. You know, like that guy in the Fantastic Four who runs around on fire that is a torch.

To them what I was holding in my hand is a flashlight. To me, a flashlight or a flash is something you stick on top of camera when you want to take pictures in the dark.

OK I can see now why they were initially impressed. Imagine having one of those open flame “torches” in your rucksack just waiting for an opportune moment to light the petrol.

I blame Micro$oft and their “English (US)”!

How the players play

I asked another bunch if this was their first time in Africa, they said yes, they had been in Morocco for a couple of days and then flew to Arusha. So I asked them if they flew through Nairobi.
No, they said they flew straight from Morocco to Arusha.
So now I’m looking at them wondering what kind of a muppet they think I am, why the hell they would lie to me so badly, I mean which airline flies direct to Arusha from Morocco?
Just before I launched into a mini argument with them another Kenyan next to me notices the look on my face and whispers to me, “You guy, they came in their own plane.”
OHHHHH!

Serena Mountain Village, Arusha

Everyone thinks they had it going on but seriously the TED Group at Serena Mountain Village was fantastic. One of the guys predicts the future, another one is a leading Nollywood director, one has built the building with the most solar panels in Africa, one had a brilliant way of keeping intellectual debate going and another had the guts to show this picture during his 3 minute talk, meanwhile this geezer gave the best 3 minute talk any roommate of mine has ever given at a TED conference, at the same time Manu and I spent time debating the merits of a good single malt.

The TED veterans ensured we mixed and to be honest they even outlasted us and still sounded coherent at 5am. A better bunch of crazier yet interesting and completely unpretentious people you would not meet. All we were missing was a neo-con! I think there is a conspiracy going on here, aren’t neo-cons allowed to have passports by the US authorities? I have never met an American who says they voted for Bush. Aren’t they allowed to travel and leave America?

The lodge is very romantic and very honeymoon like. Luckily my roommate has already been on his honeymoon a couple of years back.

A Radio!

You may have heard that due to the generosity of the Google and AMD each of the TED Global Fellows will soon be getting a new Mac or PC laptop. What you may not have heard is that due to generosity of Noah Samara from Worldspace each fellow is also getting a satellite radio and an annual Worldspace subscription. As you can imagine we went, as a famous Kenyan blogger would put it, bananas. But I quickly realised I was going bananas for a different reason from everyone else. All the other fellows are going nuts over the Macs (is anyone seriously choosing a PC?) But me, I was going bananas over the radio.
Walalala.
Satellite radio, for one year. Yani I can wake up at 3am and tune into what the good people of Papua New Guinea are up to? And I’ve always wondered what the theme music for radio news in Peru sounds like. Now I’ll know. On News Year Eve I’ll start listening from Time Zone 1 and check out how each time zone celebrates the New Year! Imagine how many countdowns I will catch! Yeah ok, Macs are cool, very very cool. Lakini, you guy, a radio with a ka small satellite dish, come on now, what is cooler than that! Seriously!

Body no be wood

Umm well, yeah umm, ah ehhhh hmmm!!! If you know you know, if you don’t know, you don’t know, or ask a Nigerian. Don’t ask Google, it will just confuse you! However BNBW in the TED Global context may be slightly different from the traditional context. We kinda switched it into an ICT cheetah thing, (cough cough), let me just put it this way, YMMV, and I do not mean THAT mileage.

Kilimanjaro International Airport

Is there any reason why Kisumu airport can not be expanded to look and feel like Kilimanjaro airport?

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

Experienced bloggers are by nature a questioning lot. A less kind person would call us a cynical lot. You tell us something, we will question it. You raise a point, we will debate it. You lie, you will eventually get caught, usually by another blogger who notices inconsistencies. Like a girl on a first date, we are not easily impressed. To remix that old quote, you can fool one blogger one time, but you can’t fool all the bloggers all the time.

Experienced bloggers are by nature an articulate lot. We spend hours each week not just telling but analysing whatever we find important. It is vital that we are able to put our point across to our readers. We defend our positions, usually by employing intellectual debate. Experienced bloggers are generally not dazzled by your personality, popularity, or prosperity. We want to hear what you have to say and we will judge you on that basis.

So this TED Global thing, what is it about it that has us who attended walking around on cloud nine, talking about a “cheetah generation” and “forget making poverty history we want to make Africans rich“? It is almost like we were indoctrinated by the some powerful force. Every single blogger who was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend TED Global came out very very very very very impressed!. Why? Recently we got an email asking us to rate the conference, the organisation, the speakers on scale from poor to excellent. Talking with some other TEDsters over the weekend we were of the opinion that the scale should start at bloody brilliant and end at flipping unbelievable. (Thanks Hash for putting all those links together!)

In my experience there are a couple of reasons why I had a fantastic time.

1. I am not alone.

I lie in bed sometimes thinking about Kenya and Africa and I can not sleep because my head starts feeling like it is about to explode. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? In what way can I be most helpful? Where do we even begin? At TED Global I was in a whole room of people who go through the same thing. Young people across the continent who have a passion about this motherland called Africa that really surpasses all logic. They see what you are doing, you see what they are doing and suddenly you realise that you are not alone, and you do not have to do it alone. Instead of wondering if we will ever rise, now I am like, there is no way, absolutely no way that anyone can keep us down. The next 20 years will not be like the last 20 years, that I can guarantee you. In 2027 this will be the most linked post on Mentalacrobatics and you can all start calling me prophet!

2. The explosion of ideas and learning.

What a speaker line up. You walked out of the room rubbing your head wondering how you are going to process all that knowledge. Next time you bump into one of those idiots who starts asking you questions like, “where is the African Mozart, or where is the African Brunel, implying that Africans do not think send them a copy of Ron Eglash’s study of fractals in African architecture and watch their heads explode as they try to understand just what the hell is going on, and that is just one of many many examples that were shared at this conference. Sending txt messages in Amharic, no problem, want to build a computer that thinks like a brain, easy peasy.

3. The 1958 feeling.

This is the big one for me. I have often wondered how it would have felt to attend THE pan African conference of all pan African conferences, The All-African People’s Conference in Accra in 1958 as the wind of independence was sweeping over the continent. How exhilarating it must have felt to watch freedom galloping over the horizon coming closer and closer as one colonial power after another was kicked out. But I wondered more about how powerful it must have been to walk into a room and you have all those brains there, all those visionaries in one place at one time. Imagine standing in the queue for lunch and you see Nyerere chatting with Lumumba or W.E.B DuBois sharing a knock-knock joke with Nkrumah or something like that. At TED Global I got that same buzz, you got the sense that there were people in that room that would revolutionise this continent. Now you know why I was smiling strangely at all of you at lunch at TED, I was trying to figure out which one of you was Nyerere and which one was Lumumba, who would be DuBois and who Nkrumah! In the 1958 conference they elected a young man called Tom Mboya from Kenya as their chairman, in his summing up speech he called for a reversal of the Scramble for Africa addressing the colonial powers thus:

“Your time has past, Africa must be free. Scram from Africa.”

Substitute colonial powers then for your pet hate today. Corruption, nepotism, tribalism, maybe even neo-colonialism? Whatever it is, tell it to scram from Africa. Like 50 years ago, change must come and change is in the air and that change is unavoidable. But we have learnt the lessons of 50 years ago, this time the pact between African leaders and African people must be paramount.

Kudos to the Tom Mboya of TED Global, Emeka Okafor.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

Last month in a blog post called a “Tale of Two Kenyans” I wrote about how the Kenyan police woke up an entire slum when two suspected cop killers decided to hide amongst the residents. A couple of readers expressed doubts to put it politely. One of the emails I received even accused me of making the whole episode up claiming the Kenyan authorities did not have enough manpower to mount such an operation.

Kenyan police round up suspected Mungiki members in Nairobi’s Mathare slum. Click on the image to see the full size image.

Well, well, well. I get back from TEDGlobal in Arusha to find the world has gone mad back at home. Yesterday a combined force of 500 made up of regular police, administration police and the elite General Service Unit raided Mathare in a crackdown on the gangsters of the Mungiki Sect that is responsible for the deaths of at least 20 people included at least 12 who were beheaded in the last three months. So far the police operation, code named Operation Kosovo, has resulted in around 30 deaths and 300 arrests. Of course the police claim that they have good reasons to suspect that all those they have arrested and killed are members of Mungiki. Mathare is under siege. After months of harassment by Mungiki now they have another threat to watch out for, trigger happy police.

A policeman with a police dog rounds up suspected Mungiki members in Nairobi’s Mathare slum. Click on the image to see the full size image.

Another Kenyan blogger, Majonzi, writing on this story uses a powerful headline

Wananchi vs Mungiki vs The Police

I would change it to

Mungiki vs Wananchi vs The Police

The wananchi, the ordinary Kenyan citizen, is now caught in the middle of a battle between Mungiki and the police for the control of parts of Nairobi and parts of Kenya. Month after month, year after year this sect has grown unchecked, harassing, beating, killing and beheading ordinary wananchi going about their lives. This sect was seemed untouchable by the police. Well the authorities have woken up and as one policeman was quoted saying,

“Lala chini ung’orote. Unajua kuna serikali?”
(Lie down and sleep. Do you know there is a government in Kenya?)

Kenyan police round up suspected Mungiki members in Nairobi’s Mathare slum forcing them to lie face down. Click on the image to see the full size image.

Where has this “government” been up to now?

This is a clear example that we have to take the optimism, positive energy and empowering ideas from TEDGlobal and start making change in our society at a fundamental level. James Shikwati in his talk urged Africans to start panicking, to enter “panic mode”. We have to open our eyes to our society is breaking and in many ways in broken and perhaps if we enter panic mode we will start to deal with issues with the urgency they require.

Thanks M4 for sending me the images.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

No place in the world has ever grown a market sector on the type of risk that Africa’s farmers face.
Eleni Gabre-Madhin creator of Ethiopia’s first commodities market

Forget making poverty history. I want to make Africans rich.
Idris Mohammed believes that we should be talking about increasing wealth not reducing poverty.

I call it the African shuffle.
Idris Mohammed describes yet another graph that shows stagnant economic growth in parts of Africa where instead of rising the graph remains a flat line.

Dignity is more important that wealth.
Jacqueline Novogratz

Understand the power of patient capital.
Jacqueline Novogratz explains that taking time to engage with the communities you invest in helps the money do more.

The blind leading the clueless.
George Ayittey does not think much of Africa’s political leadership.

The Cheetah generation.
George Ayittey term for the progressive, active, integrity, entrepreneurial African youth.

The problem with computers is that they do not have enough Africa in them.
Kwabena Boahen quotes Brian Eno

Let us redefine poverty
P for possibilities
O for opportunity
V for validation of our ideas
E for enthusiasm to do things
R for resilience
T for trust
Y for yes
Ted Kidane

Indigenous communities used to make decisions after considering what effect the decision they take would have on the next seven generations.
Jane Goodall

To the guy who insisted on taking a photo with me because his wife wanted a picture of him with Larry from Google, well now you know the truth.
Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, after introducing Larry Page, Google Co-Founder & President of Products

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

The presentations from the TED stage yesterday were fantastic. Thought provoking, opinion shaping, informing, and interesting. After day 1 it would take something special to blow us away again and to raise expectations again, they managed to do that.

The whole premise of TED is based around the principle of “Ideas Worth Spreading”. This sharing is an essential part of the TED experience. Our programme guide urges us to sit next to someone different at every session and at every meal. The same guide urges us to switch of our phones and leave our laptops behind in our hotel rooms. This is all in order to encourage us to build social networks, brain storm together, learn about each other, learn from each other. TED is to be a fluid and interactive process. What happens on stage is important yes, but what happens between us is even more important. Yesterday brought this home for me.

I was invited to the Google.org private lunch yesterday where the people at Google told us about the philanthropic side of the Google organisation. At the lunch we heard from Joe Tackie an entrepreneur from Ghana who was the first winner of Believe, Begin, Become Ghana’s national business plan competition sponsored by google.org. During the afternoon tea break a couple of us spent time talking with Joe about the programme and the challenges he faced, how he over came them, the business he started and how it is growing. A fantastic story.

During dinner I was lucky enough to share a table with Esther a Community Development Facilitator working for a NGO in Cameroon, Megan a director at Google, William a secondary school student from Malawi who built a windmill to provide power to his family home from old bicycle parts and the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. The conversation around that table was full of world changing ideas and this was being replicated on different tables around the room. There are no seating plans here, you just go out there and network.

After dinner I ended up on table full of Kenyan entrepreneurs, the people changing the nature of their business sectors in our country. We covered everything, politics, economy, redistribution of wealth, the politicisation of the youth, the power of blogs and the internet, investments, humour. Network at it is most energetic within our own. We only stopped because the last buses to our various hotels were threatening to leave us.

Back at the hotel is when TED came home. I sat down to write my thoughts on the day when Harinjaka shared with us the crazy deforestation that is taking place in his country of Madagascar. That was the beginning of all night thinking, sharing, debating session. Two Kenyans, one Madagascan, one Nigerian, one Italian, one American. We had never met before TED, all but one of us are at our first TED conference and we had our own TED session then and there. We talked about HIV/AIDS, about social disempowerment, about colonial legacy, about Nollywood, Bollywood and the Chinese film industry, about music, about deforestation in Madagascar, about the creation of Israel, about sports, about whiskey, about family, about the world economic market, about our experience in the formal job market, about starting businesses and creating jobs, and on and on and on. That is TED, TED 2.0 maybe but that is what all this is about, people from all around the continent and the world sharing and debating, engaging each others brains from a position of mutual respect.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

In a CNN interview last year Emeka Okator, the programme director of TedGlobal 2007, was asked, “How do you shed light on the brighter side of Africa?”

He answered, “It’s coming from the bottom or primarily from the citizen media type, the bloggers, who are covering Africa to an extent it has never been covered before. There’s strong belief that the rest of the world will catch up as this process accelerates.”

Emeka understands the vital role that authentic, uncompromising, voices from Africa that are expressed through blogs play. Probably because he is a energetic blogger himself. It is wonderful that there is a healthy mix of bloggers amongst the TED Fellows. I’ll highlight the KBW members who are here apart from myself; Afromusing, Bankelele, Kenyan Pundit and White African. Ndesanjo is here as well running things on his home ground. Outside KBW Jea Brea and Andrew Heavens are here too.

There are couple of other Kenyan bloggers who have promised to send me their URLs and I will share them as soon as I get them. We also have a number of bloggers from other countries and I will do the same with the links.

KBW members let me assure that your blogs have a wider readership then you may imagine. I have met some people here that have never been to Africa before but read the KenyaUnlimited aggregator regularly. Many of the other Africans here talk about the power of the Kenyan blogs on the internet and are inspired to go out and start their own blogs and aggregator. Perhaps we should look out for NigeriaUnlimited, MaliUnlimited, etc soon!

At some point in the next few days we will sit down and brainstorm about the African Bloggers’ Conference. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have on this with us.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

TEDGlobal is in full swing here in Arusha and it is quickly turning out to be unlike any other conference I have been too, and believe me I’ve been to a few. First of all there is the calibre and variety of people here that is just amazing. Everybody here is doing something revolutionary in their ordinary lives and we are all here to share.

I won’t do a session by session blow of what is happening on stage. For that I suggest you read Ethan’s blog. Ethan must be running a dual core processor brain. The man sits in the hall and blogs in real time like an episode of 24 taking in the talk, digesting it and laying out coherent blog posts all at the same time. Go there for a blow by blow account of what is happening. White African also has good posts on the sessions, with photos. If only all my roommates in life were this helpful eh, doing all the work while I sit there engrossed on what is happening on the stage.

Instead I will attempt to share a variety of titbits from around the conference.

Rokia Traore kicked things off with a song of welcome from Mali. Rokia has a fantastic, powerful and moving voice and set the tone for a wonderful conference. African, confident, powerful, human.

Euvin Naidoo quotes the philosopher who said, “The only dark thing about Africa is our perception of Africa.” This is a theme that is to remain central throughout the day.

Carol Pineau of Africa Open for Business fame, continues this theme as she shares with the stories of entrepreneurs across the continent. One of those featured in Carol’s talk is Mohammed Olan the CEO of Somali airline Diallo Airlines. This guy is happy that Somali doesn’t have a government because he doesn’t have to deal with government corruption. What I found most interesting about Carol’s talk was two tag clouds she shared with us. One showed what people in the west thought Africans wanted, and the second one showed what people in Africa want for themselves. I’ll try to find them and post them later.

Zeray Alemseged a palaeontologist from Ethiopia responsible for finding Selam a 3.3 million year old 3 year old girl. (Yes that sentence makes sense). He shared that the key thing as far as he was concern was to, “promote a positive African attitude towards Africa”. It is just like your parents used to tell you, you have to love yourself before anyone else will love you.

I am not much of cinema and movie person but Newton Aduaka blew me away with the short clips he showed of his films. Maybe I am a movie person and I’ve just been watching the wrong films. He has film coming out called Ezra about child soldiers in Sierra Leone that looks brilliant. Andrew Dosunmu shared some interesting clips as well.

But a conference isn’t a conference without some controversy and on Day One of TEDGlobal it was Andrew Mwenda – v – Bono. Andrew is a Uganda journalist and free speech activist that has seen jail time in Uganda for his beliefs. Andrew is against foreign aid in a big way. He feels makes Africa governments lazy as they do not have to invest in their entrepreneurs. If there was no aid and governments had to pay their way they would show a lot more interest in the people in their countries trying to generate wealth. As a Kenya trying to set up a business I can relate to that oh to well.

Bono on the other hand spends a lot of time campaign for aid to Africa to be increased. He also campaigns for debt cancellation and fair trade. Bono likes to stress the links between Africa and Ireland. Well.

It made for a lively session to say the least.

Youssou N’dour didn’t make it unfortunately but we did not have a chance to miss him as Rokia came back with her band and blew us away. My goodness, that woman’s voice, style and substance is unbelievable.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

10 days to go before TEDGlobal kicks off and the anticipation is building like crazy. I’ll say this about these TED guys, they look like they sure know how to organise a conference. Well that’s easy to say 10 days before everything begins but if their organisation on the day is as good as it has been thus far then things will be great.

This conference is unlike any I have ever been to before in that I have no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, what kind of conference to expect. There is a wealth of information on the conference but it just highlights that I should expect the unexpected.

One thing I do know for sure is that I will be rooming with one crazy dude called Hash a.k.a White African. Now really it does not get any crazier than that. I wonder what TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor will do once he realises that he has put two techie and blogging members of the Front Row Union in the same room. (Hash, I hope you play tight head because, bruv, I’m a loose head!) If we don’t blow up something while trying to plug in all our gear into the one wall socket in the room, we’ll probably be busy forcing encouraging all kind of interesting people to talk to us. I notice that Yvonne Chaka Chaka has stopped organising her calendar to take in my conference dates instead Youssou N’Dour will be doing his thing.

Other KBWers who are representing are:

• Afromusing
• Bankelele
• Kenyan Pundit
• Ndesanjo

Any others out there (I’m sure they’ll be a couple attending chini ya maji a.k.a undercover)

I’ll post some more details on the proposed Madaraka Day (June 1st) KBW, Tedsters, Skunkworkers, techies, wanainchi, anybody, everybody meet up over the weekend. Come one, come all.

(Isn’t it interesting how many of the people who branded us traitors/sell outs/neo-colonial appeasists for going to the Digital Indaba in South Africa in September last year because it was “white” are happily gobbling up all that TEDGlobal can throw at them with not even a little sense of irony? Hmm the contradictions, the contradictions )

Tags: TEDGlobal

(Logo designed by the talented White African.)

BarCamp Kenya is in full flow at the Civil Engineering Lecture Hall at the University of Nairobi (Directions, call 0724-334558 if you get lost) and remarkably there is free wi-fi here. There around 100 people here (and growing) the discussions are interesting and passionate. Full report and photos later.

Manze free wi-fi, for that alone if you are in Nairobi you should get here faster.

Tags: barcampkenya

This past week while this blog was dominated by a group of young Kenyan activist and patriots demanding accountability at the World Social Forum, the main stream media was dominated by another Kenyan patriot, John Githongo and his demands for Kibaki’s government to show some accountability.

At first glance it is hard to see what the two groups have in common. The protest at the WSF was lead by a youth group from Korogocho, the third biggest slum in Nairobi. Their demands were simple: cheap food and free entrance into the WSF. Many of them laughed when they were asked if they were registered to vote. To register to vote you need an ID card. To get an ID card in Korogocho is, to put it politely, difficult. This group had never addressed their MP, saw ministers only on TV, and the only time they appeared on the president’s radar – indirectly – was when the first lady, while interrupting the party of her neighbor and tenant the World Bank Country Director, ordered the music to be turned down at his party, informing him “This is Muthaiga, not Korogocho.”

John Githongo on the other hand is an acclaimed journalist, has a degree in Economics and Philosophy, founded and run the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International, was appointed the first ever Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics reporting directly to the president. His demands involve investigations into corrupt multi million dollar government contracts which involve hiring forensic accountants and getting threats direct from the top of the government which forced him into exile in Oxford, England. This has lead to accusations that he is an agent of the British government, that he has betrayed his country, that he has betrayed his president, that he has betrayed his tribe and even the online wanainchi joined in calling him disappointment of the year 2005.

(Aside: how things change:
2005 – whistler blower called disappointment of the year
2006 – (different) whistle blower named person of the year.)

These two groups, the Korogocho youth at the WSF and John Githongo, seem to have little in common. But they do.

First of all they are patriots. The youth group started each speech at the WSF with a loud, “wazalendo muko?” They were clear in that they were not just fighting for themselves but for the soul of Kenya. Githongo is a patriot as his actions show. The man left a top job, security and comfort because he could not sit back and watch while the country was fleeced. Integrity. How many times do you hear that word when talking about the political elite in Kenya?

Secondly, both the youth and Githongo have the same lesson for us. Courage is not enough. If you want to fight, if you want to stand up for your rights, if you create a fairer system, you need courage, yes, but you also need a strategy. A well defined, well worked out strategy. Then you can shake the system. I wrote how the youth group was organised, had a team of spokespeople, knew who to target, had a list of grievances, had a list of demands, and had a way of making sure they were implemented. They were courageous to take on the WSF organising committee in the eye of the world media, the eye of the police and in the eye of the Red Berets a.k.a GSU. But that courage would have taken them nowhere if they did not have the strategy behind it to make sure their grievances were dealt with.

Githongo, as well is proving to be a master of strategy, just as they think they have him in mate, he manages to come out with an unexpected move. He wrote a dossier, they rubbished it, so he released audio tapes with damning evidence. They wanted to interview him, he agreed, but in London at the Kenyan High Commission. They “lost” the recording, he released a written statement. Eventually after months of dilly dallying the anti corruption authorities decided to close the case, the attorney general said the tapes were inaudible (as Madd asked – kwani they rest of us who could hear the recordings clearly have bionic hearing?), he released more tapes with more explosive evidence. Now everybody is wondering, what else does he have? Does he tapes of Ringera? Does he have tapes of the president? Suddenly Githongo seems to be holding all the cards again.

Courage is not enough. We saw it from the youth, we saw it from Githongo. To succeed in your goals, you need strategy as well.