Hear Afrika Society

There seem to be many trials and tribulations people are suffering from nowadays, and it is no surprise that more people have not uncovered the healing and soothing effects that Italian art can provide. For many individuals, doing almost everything right is just not enough to rescue their life from the slump that life's difficulties can create. You will find there's psychological phenomenon that many men and women may be entirely unaware of.

Improve your health using a little Italian art

Have you ever saw a messy desk or table and experienced a feeling of frustration? Have you ever been in a very bad mood mainly because your home or office is simply filled along with too much stuff? You usually are not alone. Thousands of people suffer the same problem. Clutter is an example of how visual designs and colors could cause your subconscious brain to be overburdened with information. An identical problem together with clutter is amplified with regards to far more pervasive things, such as wall color, drapes, and various large amenities in your home.

Color can play an important role in regards to the subconscious thoughts

It is apparently common knowledge that certain colors make you feel one way or another. The overstated example is the saying “I was so mad that I was seeing red.” Bull fighters for instance seem to have been aggravating bulls for centuries together with the color red. Utilizing red in your home generally is a a good or bad thing, based upon your character.

Several organizations utilize color to manage behavior

Nursing homes and federal government organizations are actually using color as a behavior modification strategy for quite a few years. Ever ask yourself why big facilities have well coordinated color schemes? Most institutions use shades of green, blue, and earthy tones in order to generate a relaxing atmosphere and in particular in locations where people are usually in a upsetting situation and could be very easily irritated. Most health professionals and health administrators think that environmental conditions can improve the rate of recovery after injury or surgery and color plays a significant purpose in that process.

The key reason why Italian Art may bring a person more happiness in life

There isn't any question that Italian artists know how to really encourage delight and emotions of well being through their outstanding use of color. You won’t usually see Italian art this is packed with colors that clash in a bad way. A persons vision really wants to comprehend of the world and too quite a few contrasting color combos repel the majority of viewers. Italian painters have the art of emotional enhancement using colors right down to a science. It really is no wonder that individuals usually are willing to pay top dollar to own this terrific type of mood enhancing art inside their home.

The Dreadful Scramble for Africa: A Case of DR Congo

African issues seems to have gained popular debate with in academia, students and in general public gatherings but this dialectic discourse has never taken a clear and critical position in creating a better understanding of Africa and the issues that plague her, such as the plundering of African wealth and beauty.

Many of these issues stem from the fact that African countries are not formed of groups of people who, traditionally, would have chosen to live in the same place. Most of the borders in Africa today are the result of colonialism. Someone sitting in Westminster drew a line across a map of Africa and declared that was the border between two countries. African countries were forced to form new political entities by the divide and rule approach through the boundary line drawn on a piece of paper in a Kingdom miles away across oceans and mountains.

The abolition of the slave trade led to colonization, colonization led to Independence and it seems to many that Africa has attained an uhuru at last.

After the second world war, the colonial masters who were involved in the war came out of the war almost bankrupt did not have the strong national financial strength to embark on further colonial business. This was coupled with continuous anti-colonial campaigning in the West and series of conferences put together by a few leaders of Afrian nations who had secured their independence (such as the All African People Conference organized by Kwame Nkrumah). This conference helped shape the visions of many African leaders who had stood for independence such as Patrice Lumumba of DR Congo.

DR Congo, formerly refered to as Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo-Kinshasa and Zaire, is an epitome of natural wealth endowment, beauty and crisis. Almost every natural resource, as well as conflict, environmental degradation, crime against woman, child solider, genocide, deforestation, you name it, is profound in DR Congo.

The genesis of the conflict in DR Congo was after the Conference of Berlin in 1885.The motive of this was meant to divide Africa among the emerging rivalry between European powers. Congo became a colony of Leopold II, the King of Belgium and was a Corporate State, an extension of King business empire.

Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State became the site of one of the most infamous international scandals of the turn of the twentieth century.In the Free State, colonists bullied the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of autos and development of rubber tires created a growing international market.

Then to compel the congolese to work, the Belgians instituted a Public Force or La Force Publique, which enforced the rubber extraction quotas on the local people.The FP was an army, but its aim was not to defend the country, but to terrorize the local population. The comon punishment practiced by the force was cutting off the limbs of the natives as a means of enforcing rubber quotas a matter of policy; this practice was widespread.

During the period 1885–1908, between 15 million Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and diseases.This was the one of the first holocaust carried out in modern history. Nothing was said about this and it continued till June 1960 when Congolese thought they had attained indepence. Little did they know that this was a new phase of their expolitation and into the hinterland of Africa.

In 1996, a fresh conflict erupted in DR Congo. In 1996, the war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda had spilled over to the DR Congo (then Zaire). Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe) who fled Rwanda following the ascension of a Tutsi-led government were using Hutu refugee camps in eastern DRC as bases for incursions against Rwanda. This is the story most media made us believe.

According to the Independence news paper, the Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

The truth is Congo has all of world’s precious stones, metals and minerals, from diamonds, gold, tin ore, copper and coltan (used for mobile and computer manufacturing). The major mineral resources expose the country to exploitation especially by western multi-national companies. One such example is Tantalum, (a refined coltan) which sells for $100 a pound, and it is becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel to Sony stereos and VCRs etc.

François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, said : "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

This greed has caused suffering and the deaths of 5.4 million native Congolese between 1998 and 2006 due to poor nutrition, lack of healthcare or directly from the fighting. Many of these victims have been children who are used as child soldiers.

The state of anarchy and lawnessness is so terible that bestiality has replaced humanity. Rape crime is becoming a daily occurrence for women all over the country. According to the government, more than 250,000 women have raped, abuse and assualted. Rape is a cheaper weapon of war than bullets. Experts estimate that some 60 percent of all combatants in the DRC are infected with HIV/AIDS. As women rarely have access to expensive antiretroviral drugs, sexual assaults all too often become automatic death sentences.

Human Rights Watch reported that it is estimated that as many as 30 percent of rape victims are sexually tortured and mutilated during the assaults, usually with spears, machetes, sticks or gun barrels thrust into their vaginas. About 40 percent of rape victims, usually the younger ones, are abducted and forced to become sex slaves.

Not just the native people of Congo are on the verge of their exitinction but also their rainforest . The Democratic Republic of Congo contains approximately 25% of the world’s remaining rainforests. The equatorial forests give off 66% of global oxygen. As the conflict continues, international logging companies are lining up to commercially exploit this valuable resource.

All Party Parliament region on great lake wrote: “Industrial logging has little chance of bringing development benefits to DRC’s population. In a country with close to zero regulatory capacity and an ingrained culture of corruption, industrial logging has the potential to be destructive to the environment, to biodiversity and also to the livelihoods of the approximately 35 million people living or dependent on the forests”

It is so disheartening that African students came this far and have to pay between £9,500 and £25,000 to have an education for better future to help get their countries out of this state of hopelessness. It is becoming more and more obvious however that their money returns to their countries as destruction through universities’ investment in arms and unethical companies.

In 2008, a Campaign Against Arms Trade inquiry into the University investment in arms companies found that the University of Sussex is investing in an UK arms company called Cobham worth £1,389 and US arms company General Electric worth £4,373.This investment might be relatively small comparison to what they pay. But the fact is every penny makes a difference to the line of production.

The University of Sussex should not be investing in arms or unethical companies. Universities should aim at promoting human development and protection not destruction or degradation. By so doing, the University of Sussex is giving arms and unethical companies moral and intellectual justification that it is right.

As a fresh conflict erupted between the Rwandan backed rebel leader Laurent Nkunda militia and DRC government forces on 25th of October Hear Afrika and Suubira Uganda Societies are staging a conference to create critical political and economical discourse on the issues surrounding this potentially rich country on the 11th of November 2008 from 1 pm to 5.30 pm. It is tagged The DR Congo: The New Scramble for Africa.

Luqman Onikosi

2nd year; Economics and International relations

Agrofuels: The Cost to Communities, Climate and Ecosystems

The Cost to Communities, Climate and Ecosystems

As our planet faces carbon-fuelled destruction, it is bewildering that the EU considers agrofuels to be part of the solution. On the 11th of September 2008, a European Parliament vote confirmed a binding target of 10% agrofuel in all transport fuels by 2020. It is ironic that as we approach the United Nations World Food Day (16th October), tens of millions of people, many in Africa, are being pushed into poverty and hunger as a direct result of agrofuel production.

African civil society organisations are urgently calling for a moratorium on new agrofuel developments on the continent. Food security, forests, water, land rights and the needs of farmers and indigenous peoples are being undermined by the aggressive march of agrofuel development. Governments urgently need to stop and think before delivering Africa to the demands agribusiness, plantation companies, the oil industry, car manufacturers and venture capitalists.

Using of the term “agrofuels”, rather than the more common expression “biofuels”, is intended to make clear that it is the industrial-scale growing of crops by agribusiness which is being contended and not the use of wood, dung or waste matter, on a small-scale, that is often integrated into food production or used for household and local energy production.

Africa is already feeling the impact of climate change. The continent is likely to be the hardest hit by future changes in weather systems. All must be done to both mitigate the problems and adapt to the coming changes. However, the push for agrofuels , rather than the seductive “carbon neutral” solution it claims to be, will exacerbate Africa’s climate and food security problems. 

Agrofuel in Africa is being termed the next “Green Gold Rush”. Investors are rushing to privatise land for their industrial scale plantations, while governments willingly allocate millions of hectares from the 70% of Africa’s land that is still communally owned. "Jatropha", spread as a hedge plant to Africa by Portuguese traders, is being pushed as one of the new miracle fuel crop for small farmers to produce. But in reality the gold rush is controlled by large transnational companies bringing about disastrous socio-economic and environmental impacts shouldered by communities, food security, forests and water resources.

Some of the impacts that already have been observed in 2007 include:

• Displacement of farmers and food security in Tanzania

Thousands of Tanzanian farmers growing rice and maize are being evicted from fertile and water sourced areas of land for Jatropha plantations on newly privatised land. Villages are being cleared with families being given minimal compensation for their loss. Evictions have taken place in Kisarawe district and the Usangu plains, and tens of thousands of hectares in Bagamoyo and Kilwa districts are being given to foreign investors. In addition, the government has identified millions more hectares in at least 10 other districts.

• Deforestation for agrofuels in Uganda

In Uganda, plans to cut down thousands of hectares of the country’s largest rainforest reserve, for a sugar plantation for ethanol have fortunately been cancelled, following civil protest. Such deforestation can threaten local water cycles - Mabira Forest is a key water catchment area for Lake Victoria and the River Nile. Unfortunately, thousands of hectares of forest on Kalangala and Bugala Islands in Lake Victoria have already been cut down to make way for palm oil plantations.

• Conservation Areas Threatened in Ethiopia

Millions of hectares in Ethiopia have been identified as suitable for agrofuel production with foreign investors being allocated land from farms, forests and wilderness areas. Even protected areas are not safe from the spread of agrofuels. One European investor has been granted 13,000 hectares of land in Oromia state – 87% of which is the Babile Elephant Sanctuary; home to rare and endangered elephants.

• A Bad Deal for Out-growers in Zambia

Privatised plantations are not the only model of large-scale agrofuel production in Africa. Some investors in Zambia are choosing to grow crops such as Jatropha through huge numbers of out-growers, using contracts that last up to 30 years. These contracts serve to transfer control over production from the farmer to the company, through a system of loans, numerous extra charges, service payments and prices determined by the company. Under such a system of dependence, farmers increase their debt to the company, often leading to a hand over their land..

• Fuel or food in West Africa?

In West Africa, the agrofuel craze is gaining momentum. Jatropha is already being grown in Togo, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger. Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade has enthused about an African "biofuels revolution" and placed fuel crops at the heart of an agriculture renewal programme. Ghana is planning to plant one million hectares of Jatropha with support of the government, while in Benin, permission has been gained to plant a quarter of a million hectares of agrofuel crops. Farmers in Benin and in many other countries in the region have, on average, 1 hectare to grow thier products. Agrofuels will seriously dent their food production capabilities.

In other words: the agrofuels ‘revolution’ is geared to replace millions of hectares of local agricultural systems, and the rural communities working in them, with large plantations. It is oriented to substitute biodiversity-based indigenous cropping, grazing and pasture farming systems with monocultures and genetically engineered agrofuel crops. The millions of hectares of what agribusiness euphemistically calls “wasteland” or “marginal soil” are to be turned ‘productive’ via fuel-crop production disregarding the needs of millions of people in local communities who make a living from these fragile ecosystems. Where there are no indigenous farming systems to replace, one just takes forest.

In Africa, much of the drive for agrofuel developments comes from talk of achieving national energy security. However, in most countries there seems to be a failure to recognise that foreign industry is already controlling the direction of agrofuel production, with an eye on targeting more lucrative export markets. Rising global oil prices will determine the price of liquid agrofuels, and is likely to price fuel and feedstock out of the reach of the poor, and into export markets in the North.

Agrofuels do not offer a genuine solution for climate change or energy security, Prof. Tad Patzek, specialist in biofuels and sustainability, Berkley University, outlines the inherent limits of bio-energy:

“The astronomic scale of energy consumption from fossil plants and the minute scale of energy production from new plants are fundamentally incompatible. In engineered crop systems, we continuously apply fossil fuels and nutrients to replenish soil. What Earth has produced over 400 million years cannot be produced in annual cycles. If we ever attempt to do so, we will destroy the planet and ourselves. The initial stage of planetary destruction is well under way. We must pull back and use fewer resources.”

Scientific studies show that the production, processing and transport of agrofuels, uses more energy than is contained in the fuel product. Other studies show that the cutting down and burning of forests and peatlands to make way for agrofuel plantations, produces many times more carbon dioxide emissions per litre of agrofuel than the equivalent amount of fossil fuel: South-east Asia's peatlands contain up to 50 billion tonnes of carbon. This carbon will be released as the peat is drained. Of the 27.1 million hectares of peatland in South-east Asia, 12 million hectares have been deforested and mostly drained.

We don’t need agrofuel plantations to produce fuel energy. Instead, we need to turn the industrial production system upside down. We need policies and strategies to reduce the consumption of energy and to prevent waste. In agriculture and food production this means orienting production towards local rather than international markets; it means adopting strategies to keep people on the land, rather than throwing them off it; it means supporting sustainable approaches which bring biodiversity back into agriculture; and it means putting local communities back in the driving seat of rural development.

Africa can ill afford to lose food, forests, land and water. A moratorium that can protect Africa from the many threats of the new and dangerous Agrofuel stampede is desperately required?

Robyn Monaghan

Pix: http://globalsociology.edublogs.org/tag/ecology/

Photo A, “George Osodi, Oil Rich Niger Delta_11? by we-make-money-not-art.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has approximately 25% of the world’s remaining rainforests. In contrast to neighbouring countries, very little commercial exploitation has occurred in its 1.3 million square kilometres of forest (an area twice the size of France) as a result of the limited road infrastructure and years of debilitating conflict. However, now relative stability has returned to Congo and with the restoration of democracy, international logging companies are lining up to commercially exploit this valuable resource.  At the same time the international community is now recognising the value to the global climate of preserving the forests and the need to pay countries such as the DRC not to cut them down.  The future of DRC’s forests rest at a critical juncture.  The concern is that the reform agenda both internationally and within the DRC will not be developed in time; nor with sufficient robustness to prevent large scale deforestation.  

Throughout Africa, industrial logging has failed to deliver development benefits for both the state and forest communities.  It threatens to destroy the forests, their rich biodiversity and the communities that live or depend on it for their livelihoods, as well as contributing massively to climate change.  Sustainable industrial logging depends heavily on strong state regulation.  The capacity of the DRC forest administration is minimal and hampered by the widespread culture of corruption which pervades Congolese society.

(from the  All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa website)

The Democratic Republic of Congo has made significant progress since the start of the transition, but it is clear most of the underlying challenges facing the country remain unresolved and are a grave threat to any gains. In the latest in in its series of reports the APPG reviews key areas of concern and recommendations for urgent action almost two years after the 2006 elections. Among these challenges are the imminent threat of the unresolved conflict in the east, the lack of meaningful security sector reform, the slow progress on education and protection of children, the ongoing wave of violence against women, the need to improve democratic accountability and protection of human rights, and the problem of corruption and poor governance – particularly of natural resources.

The Congo is of critical significance to the future of Africa, and is the scene of human suffering on a scale unparalleled since the Second World War. The conflict has cost more than 5.4 million lives since 1998, mainly through disease, poor nutrition, and lack of healthcare: most of these are children under 5. This is a considerably worse disaster than the one affecting Darfur, but commands a fraction of the international attention. It demands concerted, long-term and effective engagement by the UK and the whole world.

Time is fast running out before the approach of the next election cycle, and perhaps disillusionment among the Congolese people, will make it more difficult to act. Both the Congolese government and its international partners face a difficult task, and their efforts so far have not been insignificant: Congo has its best chance in decades. But if greater progress is not made on the big underlying issues, there is a risk their investment will count for little. 

(from the  All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa website)