Cell Phones & A Crash Course in East African Politics

This weekend was rather uneventful, a trip with my family to visit a school my host brother hopes to go to all day Saturday, and church and a meeting with the director of the NGO I will be interning with on Sunday. Therefore, I want to write about two things I think deserve attention, the first of which is the really innovative ways Africans are using cell phone technology!

When someone mentions "Kenya" inginuity and innovation are probally not the first things to come to mind. As a country regarded as a member of the "global south" there are a host of development problems, from hungar to HIV/AIDS, to pollitical corruption that probally first occupy any thoughts about the country. But the good news is, that in a post structural adjustment era, as those big multilateral players in development have finally realized that there may be more to development and fighting poverty than GDP growth and oppresive cnditionality, home grown, truely "African" solutions are begining to emerge that frankly just make sense for these countries and their unique contexts. One more globalexample is obviously the advent of microcredit, which was developed by Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Yunis in Bandledesh, and which has been very succesful. In Kenya there has too been some really interesting and ingenious revolutions in finance and the whole concept of banking. A few years back in order to get a bank account one had only multinational banks to chose from, and minimum accunt balances were the equivalent of a couple hundred US dollars, significantly out of reach of many many Kenyans. Then, a home grown bank came along that offered accounts with a minimum of 100 shillings, about $1.20 US, which made bank accounts available to a much larger population. Another industry that has boomed is cell phones. For about US $25 you can get a cell phone, and they are pay as you go, with rates that are incredibly low, a shilling a minute or so in network. While both affordable cell phones and access to banking are good developments in and of themselves, what is really innovative is how they have been combined in Kenya to create a mobile bankng system that is incredibly pioneering. In fact, there is an article about this very topic in last weeks Time Magazine. Essentially, one can hook their bank account up to their mobile phone account, or simply just load money directly to a mobile phone account. With this mobile money, using just a simple, cheap, no 3G required cell phone (think old brick of a nokia) one can make purchases at an extrodanarily huge number of retail outlets, pay bills, and even transfer money to other mobile phone accounts, just by using the other persons phone number -- to help a friend out in a jam, or pay for services such as a taxi ride by sending money to the drivers phone (and if your phone gets stolen -- a password is required, so you wont loose any money). It essentially works in place of a debit or credit card and is accessable to a whole range of socioeconomic levels that previously had no access to any similar services, all that is needed is the phone. I heard and/or read somewhere it explained like this: In the US you often need a bank account as a credit check to get a phone. In Kenya, you use a phone as a credit check for a bank account.

The other thing I have found fascinating here are some of the political issues facing Kenya and Eastern Africa that don't seem to make the headlines in the US, ecspecially with all the developments emerging from North Africa and the Middle East. Most people probally remember the massive post-election violence in Kenya in 2008 that killed over 1000 people and displaced many many many more (many of whom still remain in internal displacement camps 4 years later). What came of this was a power sharing arrangement where Moi Kibaki became president and shared power with Prime Minister Ralia Odinga. This appears to be a rocky relationship. In almost every daily paper here, there is guarenteed to be a story involving dissagreements between the two sides, and at the ministerial level, the underlying tribal conflict seems fierce. In fact, the recent political alliance of the Kikuyu, kalanjin, and kamba peoples have been some what ironically dubbed the "KKK". However, for most Kenyans, it seems to me,a lot of what is happening is frustrating, and there seems to be anticipation for a new set of elections and the implementation of the new constitution that was voted in in August. One area where the Kibaki - Odinga rift might have reached the international stage is in the response of the Kenyan government to the International Criminal COurt (ICC) inditement of 6 Kenyans, majority being high up Kenyan officials still holding office, in the post election violence. Essentially, Kibaki wants to get the case deffered so that it can be tried in Kenyan courts, which he claims are being established now (Kenya's current judicial system is far from being world renowned), and has sent his Vice President on a mission around Africa, and eventually the AU (African Union) summit, gaining other countries support. Odinga claims to not support this shuttle diplomacy. The ICC has come out and said that this is futile and pointless, and that the only productive path is to talk to them. From the point of view of the Kenyans I've talked to, this is all pretty embarassing, and the Government is making a fool of itself diplomatically, and it seems like majority of citizens would be supportive of the ICC and many think this whole move is a glorified way of protecting those indicted from any real punishment. I think most Kenyans, most Africans, just want justice and are tired of these sorts of antics, which seem to be the rule and not the exception in Africa. For example, there is the issue of Gbagbo refusing to step down from power after losing the recent election in the Cote d'Ivoire (and whats equally frustrating, the recent turn of events where the AU seems to be softening on the strong international stance that he peacefully relinquish power). The AU itself seems to have made a questionable choice this weekend, chosing as its new chairman Equitorial Guinea's Nguema, a dicator in power for multiple decades with a horrible human right record, and of course there are the strong hold characters, like Zimbabwe's Mugabe. However, with calls for democracy seeming to take off across the north of the contenent, and the fact that Southern Sudan managed an all things considered peacefull referendum (99% chose yes) to form its own country, things may not be all grim. While there are always risks of bad outcomes, extremism taking hold in north Africa, bloodshed and fighting over contested oil-rich areas on the boarder between noth and south sudan -- as one Op-Ed I read today said, "There is a Devil Behind Every Door" -- there is also always hope, and in this continent, great potential.

I guess that is all part of why they say:

TIA
(This is Africa)