Spotlight on Nigeria

You may have noticed that Nigerians have been going to the polls. Elections in faraway countries are not usually very interesting - and in Africa often dismissed as sham. Nigeria has a reputation for corruption and mismanagement along with the worst culprits, so I wouldn't be surprised if you switch off at this point.  

BUT I'm going to try to hold your attention at least for another few paragraphs, because these elections suggest that something unusual is going on in Nigeria.

Why should anyone care about Nigeria? For one thing it epitomises Africa. Bad things that happen there stain the rest of the continent. It's by far the biggest country - over 150 million people (no one really knows because there hasn't been an effective census for decades). And it gets the world’s attention because outrageous things happen there, or are perpetrated by Nigerians in other places - particularly the infamous scam emails.

Most people know that billions of $ of oil revenue have been stolen by Nigeria's political elites over the years. They may also hear about kidnappings in the Delta, inter-community violence on the fault line between north and south Nigeria, and disturbing practices involving traditional medicine. If you know any Nigerians in England, chances are they will not be complementary about the people who run their country.

But think what an example Nigeria would set if it had free and fair elections. And that's what appears to be happening right now. Goodluck Jonathan - the incumbent president with the Homburg - has just spent over half a billion dollars on the most elaborate election administration system any country has ever seen - with the prime objective of eliminating fraud. The only thing he hasn't introduced is voter DNA matching.

Why is he doing this? Supreme confidence of victory?  Or is he a new Nelson Mandela? Neither in fact. The reality is he's simply a conscientious and rather modest person – he was an environmental protection officer before stumbling into politics - who wants to do the right thing. And he doesn't trust his fellow Nigerians to follow his lead. So let’s hear it for dull politicians!

Things could still fall apart (to borrow from Chinua Achebe). Especially in the electing of State Governors. These positions are seen as licenses to print money. It's beyond Jonathan's power to control that. But just for once, if the fish rots, it won't be from the head down.

By the way, you may be wondering why Jonathan wears that Homburg. No he’s not known to be a fan of Madonna. It’s just a tradition among tribal chiefs in the Delta where he’s from.

Next blog - why I like going to Nigeria.

Beira Part 2

This is my second trip to Beira. I was here same time last year. Time has stood still in the sleepy suburb where I stay. Same old men on crutches leaning on the seawall – victims of land mines. Same breathtakingly beautiful girls looking for pickups in the MiraMar beach café, Bob Dylan must have had Beira in mind when he sang about Mozambique in 1976.

I’m here on a project to introduce educational technology – e-learning, tele-classrooms, interactive broadcasting, stuff like that – to universities in seven African countries. What on earth’s the point of that, you say, when people are malnourished and most don’t have access to electricity. And you’re right to ask.

The logic goes something like this. The leaders in most countries – particularly in less developed ones – tend to be university graduates. If the quality of those graduates is poor, you get bad leadership. (Garbage in garbage out is the brutal analogy.) Of course it's not as simple as that. Venality has a part to play - but that's for another programme.

African universities have on the whole not served their societies well for many years, mainly because of poor teaching. Now, on top of that, you have overwhelming numbers of students, which makes even the best teachers’ jobs almost impossible.

Educational technology attacks on both fronts. It forces the academics to redesign their courses with the learner in mind. Interactivity, autonomous discovery, reflection: these are some of the things that shape e-learning.

It can also help with the numbers. When the student gets turned away from the lecture theatre because it’s already crammed with 457 others, she can retreat to the internet café and usually get a far better learning experience than straining to read the lecturer’s scrawl on the white board.

So this programme is transforming higher education in Africa? Well not yet, but every little helps.

And it’s great working with these people. They’re so up for it – the university teachers and the students. The students are beginning to drive the process. The majority – a couple of years ago - had never touched a computer. Now they’re getting smart phones and demanding learning materials on line. Their world is expanding at warp factor 8.

And Beira's a place to enjoy at the end of the day. The beer's OK and the best fish you’ve ever tasted costs £1.50. And the sunsets...

Beira, Central Mozambique

Beira used to be Mozambique’s second largest city and port. It is the nearest point on the coast to the landlocked countries of what used to be called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. The railway line from the interior was once the busiest in Africa.

And it wasn’t just copper, wheat and cattle that came down the track. Beira was the playground for white Rhodesians. There would be as many English-speaking voices as Portuguese in the bars of the stylish hotels or the gardens of the neat seaside villas. The city was built on a grand scale – wide boulevards and imposing administrative buildings.

That all went down the tubes soon after independence when Mozambique slid into a 15 year civil war. Renamo – the South African-backed rebel movement – overran much of central and northern Mozambique. For much of the war, Beira was cut off from its hinterland and soon, literally, began to crumble.

The war ended in 1992 and it slowly got back on its feet. Until a few years ago, you could smell Beira long before you reached the city. The sewerage system had collapsed completely. But donors paid for it to be re-constructed by the world’s most proficient municipal sanitation engineers – the Italians (I’m not making this up!!).

But there’s still a lot to do. Beira’s Grande Hotel (see the picture above in its heyday) is now "home" to 3700 people in a sort of self-governing community. No paradise this, though. There’s no electricity or running water. Chunks of masonry fall off almost daily, sometimes with people on them. Fear stalks the pitch-black corridors at night.

The majority of suburban villas are also home to dispossessed people who eke out a living growing vegetables in the gardens.

Beira is still very poor. One indicator of this is the traffic – there isn’t any. The photo on the left is one of the main thoroughfares in the afternoon “rush hour”. There are only six scheduled flights a day from the airport, all but one on domestic routes.

If you’re a donor-funded consultant on expenses, it’s a very pleasant place to work.  And you can easily make a difference. People want to catch up with the rest of Southern Africa – or at least with Maputo whose economy is thriving (relatively).

In case you’re curious, I’ll do another blog tomorrow about what I’m doing here (it's not that interesting - no diamond smuggling).

On the road again

The week in Nairobi ends with a whimper. Steeling myself for the cross-town drive to the airport - but at 5.00am, even Nairobi hasn't got that many traffic horrors to throw at me. (Kenya has the highest rate of road fatalities per head of any country in the world.)


Nairobi airport is a revelation. We lived in Kenya 25 years ago and the daily flight to London caused a stir at Jomo Kenyatta International. There were a handful of other flights to Europe, and some short hops to countries in the region like Uganda (when it was peaceful), Zimbabwe and - whisper it - South Africa - despite the anti-apartheid boycott.


The only way to get to West Africa was via Europe. Or up to Addis Ababa to take that amazing survivor Ethiopian Airlines. Ethiopian saw it as its duty to keep Africa connected at all odds. Unfortunately bits used to fall off its planes - different now I'm sure.


Now, the roll call of flights leaving Nairobi is dazzling. For an ex-geographer, map nerd and Africaphile, it's heaven. I want to go to all of them: Douala, Lubumbashi, Maputo - perhaps not Abidjan right now. And definitely not Luanda which is the world's most expensive city to stay in.


What isn't heaven is the airport itself. Really showing its age. Only two cafes - neither offering much more than white bread sandwiches - for an airport that is heaving round the clock. The coffee's OK though - this is Kenya after all.


Anyway on to Johannesburg for the weekend. The big question: will I be able to watch England v France (the annual Six Nations rugby tournament for the uninitiated) on TV down there? I needn't have worried. Satellite TV sports coverage is one of South Africa's great gifts to the continent. Six channels.

I have lots of work and good friends in South Africa. The food and wine (of course) are out of this world. But I don't tend to linger in Johannesburg. It's a tense place even if the dangers are probably exaggerated. 


It's Sunday so that means Mozambique. Not Maputo, which is closer to Johannesburg than Cape Town, but Beira, about half-way up Mozambique's 2500 km of mostly gorgeous unspoiled coast. It used to be Mozambique's second city. Will probably regain that title soon with all the minerals being dug up in its hinterland.


I'm in Beira for work (higher education not minerals). No-one goes there for a holiday nowadays. It was very different 35 years ago. More about Beira in the next blog.

Nairobi Part 2

I'm staying in Nairobi at a place called the Safari Park Hotel and Casino on the north side of Nairobi on the road to Thika, originally famous for its flame trees and its pineapples. Now famous for its traffic, which even by Nairobi standards is ghastly. 


Normally I wouldn't contemplate staying at a place with a name like this. But as it's the only pukka hotel within easy reach of the university I'm working at, I agreed. I crossed that bridge last time I came here for this project. Now I'm back - I'm here to make up numbers


The hotel is an enigma. It has about 200 rooms in two storey lodges scattered around acres of parkland. There are five restaurants, a vast gym, and loads of other amenities (including the casino which I haven't bothered to locate). There's a cabaret every night in the open air nyama choma (barbecued meat) restaurant. But on the two occasions I've stayed here there are usually only about 20 other guests. There are probably about 30 staff to every guest.

Here for example is the delightful Japanese restaurant at peak lunchtime!


Leaving aside how they manage to carry on financially, the main reason for the lack of guests is this recurring theme of traffic. The hotel is a beached whale. It's about 10 miles from the centre of Nairobi. It takes an hour or two to get to the centre and at least two to get to either of Nairobi's airports, even by the Mathare valley road of horrors (see my first Nairobi post). 


When it was opened in the early 80's, you could get to central Nairobi in 20 minutes. I know - we lived in Nairobi then. So it was a place people stayed before or after their trips to the Masai Mara or flights to the coast. Now the only guests are a few bemused independent travellers - or people like me who have business in the northern suburbs. 


Then of course there are periodic conferences and other jamborees - and that's its lifeline. But it desperately needs reinventing. So if you fancy a challenge...

Here are two more pictures to tempt you. 














By the way if you're wondering what you get at the nyama choma restaurant, last night there was (vegetarians look away!) chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, goat, crocodile and camel. And they get upset if you don't try them all.      

Dar Es Salaam February 2011

I've decided that Dar Es Salaam is my favourite large African city. This is obviously a relative concept. African cities are hard to love. Even harder to live in - if you're poor. I'm not poor and I have a disposition to like Africa, so in those terms Dar Es Salaam is distinctly likeable.

One of its charms of course is the sea. The Indian Ocean imposes itself on Dar in several ways. There's the sultry climate, which some can't tolerate. I can and do. Norwegians say there's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. The same applies to hot places. Wear black or white and you can sweat to your heart's content. Actually you sweat less if you know it doesn't matter - it's a state of mind.

The Ocean is never far away in Dar. The city has spread along the coast, more than inland. The verges of the roads are sandy, not muddy. Housing - even the poorest - is less dense than most African cities. This is surprising. Dar is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. One of the downsides is that for those with cars there are more miles to travel in the inevitable queues.

But here's something else I like about Dar - the traffic is less stressed. There are exceptions, but on the whole cars form orderly queues and just creep along. Where in Dar there are two lanes of traffic, in Kampala, Lagos or Nairobi you'd get three and a half with constant jockeying for position. In Dar you also don't get the cacophony of horns. And people actually give way to let vehicles in like they do in England.

Why are people like this in Dar? The climate probably has something to do with it. But Tanzania, with all its faults, has less contested political and social spaces than most others. This must be both a cause and consequence of a relatively strong urge by people to get along with each other. Naive - I hear some of you say. But I tend think positively about the places I go to, partly because you don't get change by always emphasising the negative. And it also makes for more enjoyable visits.

For the privileged there's Msasani. A suburb smugly occupying peninsular that juts out into the Ocean north of the city centre. You can always tell the prime locations from where most senior diplomats have their residences. That's Msasani. It's low density, mostly villas in nice gardens. In the evening you see the Wazungu out jogging along the sandy verges. There are rows of smart little shops where you can park outside - not the ghastly covered malls that dominate African cities elsewhere.

And there's Alexander's Hotel, where I stayed this time. Thank you TripAdvisor. It's a boutique hotel hidden away down a sandy track. Run by two Brits, a handful of multi-tasking staff, and three dogs that demand you attention.  Maasai guards on the gates - very re-assuring. Gordon the owner is a mine of information. The food is excellent - fresh lobster, prawns on steroids. Most people eat in the rooftop bar which is a social space if you want it - or you sit in an alcove with your laptop and your Serengeti beer (one of the best in the world).

Alexander's is a sublime place in a tranquil suburb in a tolerable city. But just to remind us that the world around carries a sting or two, there were a couple of "incidents" in the four days I was there, unfortunately not that uncommon (I know this because I'm evaluating a programme about disaster risk reduction). The first night Dar caught the tail of a tropical storm and our delightful rooftop bar was inundated.

Much more serious - on the second evening, a series of explosions shook the building. About 10 miles away, an army munitions store blew up, sending rockets flying across its neighbourhood. Around 30 people died and nearly 100 were seriously injured. Homes and a school were destroyed. The airport was closed and thousands of people evacuated. (In mitigation, the people camping in the national stadium seemed to be getting better food than they are used to.)

This was the second time this has happened in 15 months. The heavy munitions had been there since the Mozambiquan civil war where Tanzania supported the Maputo government against Renamo. No sign of any resignations.

Ah well - on to Nairobi.

Nairobi 19 February

Jomo Kenyatta Internal Airport is looking about as tired as I am after my early morning flight from Dar es Salaam. I am a little sorry to be leaving Dar after only 4 nights, but that's for a retrospective blog in a few days.

One of the good things about arriving at JKIA is the visa process which takes about 3 minutes. They don't even look at my letter from the Vice Chancellor of Kenyatta University saying how critical it is that Dr Spaven should be allowed into Kenya to evaluate the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa's Educational Technology Initiative. All they seem to be interested in is my £20 - which I gladly hand over, wondering why they don't charge more (Nigerian visas are £90).

Unbounded joy! There's a man with my name on a piece of cardboard as I emerge from a deserted customs hall (this is not the Kenya we knew when we lived there in the 1980's - when the place was crawling with officials eager to delve into the recesses of your suitcases, looking for heaven knows what).

It's rare for pre-booked airport transport to show up at all. (I've never managed to find a pattern in this. Every excuse is different.) To show up and have my name spelt correctly is a minor miracle. Good start.

Unfortunately it's downhill from there as we swing away from the city road onto the Outer Ring Road. My hotel is on the far side of the city, and to traverse central Nairobi, even on a weekend, can take 3-4 hours, So the driver's right to take the Ring Road. but this is no well tarmaced version of the M25. It's a rutted single carriageway road that in places morphs into a track or rather a series of pot holes. Yet it's packed with minibus taxis and families in battered Toyotas out looking for bargains in the thousands of stalls that line the road/track. It's Saturday so it's shopping.

After skirting the notorious Mathare Valley slum (my hotel doesn't usually allow drivers to take guests this way so as to shield them from the slum realities faced daily by 40% of Kenyans) and a couple of miles of chaos on the Thika Road (8 lane "super-highway" under construction - doesn't seem to have progressed since I was last here 15 months ago ) we arrive at the tranquil oasis of the Safari Park Hotel. More about that tomorrow.