TANZANIA AND THE STORY OF AFRICA`S RICHEST TRIBE

As Tanzania eyes a new Mining Act scheduled to be tabled before the Parliament early in April, the potential for domestic economic success is more alluring than ever.But those who remain skeptical of the effects of people-centered policies in resource-endowed countries should take heed of the story of a single tribe that rose from simple livestock keepers to become one of Africa’s richest tribes, Reports Our Staff Writer who visited South Africa’s “Platinum Province” recently.The Royal BaFokeng’s journey from the Central African plateaus to South Africa had begun in earnest search for arable land and grazing areas for their animals, but little did they know that they had stumbled upon one of the world’s most mineral-rich zones.

Like many other native tribes in Africa their major economic activities were cattle raising and subsistence farming, and they depended largely on outdated and poor technology.From these humbled beginnings, however, the Royal BaFokeng, bounced back with a takeover strategy to buy their alienated land from Boer feudalists, offering an inspiring lesson of perseverance and business acumen.According to oral tradition, the BaFokeng settled in what is now known as Rustenberg, about 112km northwest of Johannesburg at the foot of the Magliesberg. As the valleys amongst the hills in the area captured heavy overnight dew, the people realised it was fertile and the community would prosper there. In honour of the occasion, the tribe took the name 'BaFokeng,' literally meaning 'people of the dew'.

The BaFokeng are in some ways as remarkable for what they are not known for as for what they are. They are not known for stealing from public coffers or robbing their fellow citizens. Nor did they get involved in shoddy deals or suspicious just used their courage and savvy to negotiate a better deal in the interests of their people. They were not ready to be used by external forces or cheap politicians to destroy the image of their land, but were guided by what the future promised for hard work and practical thought.They didn’t see foreign investors as invaders but as partners — as long as they were ready to work with the locals for the benefit of all. Of course some paid a heavy price, especially during the apartheid regime, but the Bafokeng didn’t give up and continued to stand up for their rights in constructive ways.

They never squandered their resources, but rather ensured that what came out of their land would materialise in the form of taxes, royalties or dividends, and that those profits would go toward the people’s development.Today, their courage has paid off, making them the richest tribe in Africa with a per capital income of $50,000 per annum. When I first visited this province in 2006 as a tourist and as a researcher on how locals can partner with investors to bring development, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

From modern infrastructure to a well-planned residential area, from sophisticated mining plants to international hotels like Sun City, from a crime-free zone to modern schools and hospitals, Rustenburg stands as an example of how well exploited and equitably shared resources can change lives in Tanzania and the rest of Africa.Rustenburg is the third oldest town of the former Transvaal Province and offers numerous places of interest. Its jacaranda tree-lined streets are the hub of a thriving agricultural and mining industry. Rustenburg has a population of about 1 million people.When the Boers arrived in South Africa, they posed new challenges to the BaFokeng. Ownership of land now meant purchase, and purchase meant money. The Boers were recruiting BaFokeng to work their farms, but only in return for food, clothing and accommodation.

The then recently discovered diamond mines in Kimberley provided the answer and Chief Mokgatle of the BaFokeng sent his young men to work there. 

They went on foot (a considerable journey) and worked on contract for six months to a year. At the end they returned home and paid their earnings into the tribal 'kitty'. This provided some of the capital to legally buy back their lands.With the help of the missionaries who were active in the area and the efforts of Chief Mokgatle to build good relations with the missionaries, the ancestral lands of the BaFokeng were bought back. Little did they know what treasures lay hidden under the surface!

Unknown to the BaFokeng until 1925, the farms bought both by the tribe and individuals were located on the Merensky Reef—the outcrop rich in an alphabet of minerals ranging from asbestos to vanadium, the most important of which is platinum.After discovering that their arable land held huge minerals reserves, the BaFokeng introduced a policy known as ‘use it or lose it’, which among other things required mining companies to pay royalties directly to the community’s coffer. Under this program, mining companies may utilise the underground rights of the land, but the surface rights belong to the BaFokeng. The miners have to pay royalties to the tribe and provide job opportunities. The Royal BaFokeng’s prominence rose strongly during the 1980s when they demanded compensation and royalties from the mining companies who had been mining platinum in the area.

In 1999 the late Kgosi Lebone Mollwane Molotlegi II won a 10-year legal battle for royalty payments from Impala Platinum Holdings (Implats), which had begun mining platinum on Bafokeng soil in the 1960s.Their win entitled them to 20 percent of the platinum mined on their land and royalties amounting to an estimated $120 million at the end of the 2002 financial year. An agreement reached between several mining companies and the Royal BaFokeng administration resulted in the Bafokeng receiving further compensation payments and annual royalties from the mining companies that extract minerals from the land.In 1998, the Bafokeng, using taxpayer money, bought one million Implats shares worth about $70 million¬ — a move that allowed them a seat on Implats' board, which is currently occupied by the new king, Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi.

The BaFokeng have formed Royal Bafokeng Resources Holdings (RBH) to manage the mining-related interests of their communities.The BaFokeng have used their income from mining to build schools, roads, clinics and other infrastructure such as a sports complex incorporating a soccer stadium with an athletics track, an Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and a gymnasium. Almost all the infrastructure has been planned, designed and funded by the Royal BaFokeng. For decades, mining royalties and dividends were invested in community development through a single agency: the Royal BaFokeng Administration (RBA), which was responsible for developing and maintaining infrastructure and delivering social services.

RBH is leveraging its new partnerships to produce additional benefits, not only for the BaFokeng community, but also for neighbouring communities in the North West province.RBH, Astrapak and investment banker JP Morgan have pooled resources and supported the SA Institute of Entrepreneurs to train 700 teachers to take classes in basic business and economics skills in 80 North West schools, hopefully placing pupils in a better position to become entrepreneurs in a world where opportunities in formal employment are diminishing.By investing in such groups as SA Eagle, RBH also hopes to create a platform for development of financial products tailored to the needs not only of the BaFokeng, but also of other small communities.

Kgosi Leruo sees his role in particularly ambitious terms. He is of the view that in order to become prosperous, a community must produce one "world class" entrepreneur from every 20 of its members. With 300,000 Bafokeng living in South Africa — and half of them in the BaFokeng area — this means the community must strive to produce no fewer than 15,000 entrepreneurs. RBEB offers would-be entrepreneurs coaching, advisory services, mentoring, on-job training, and formal, in-class training. It has also facilitated the consolidation of numerous micro-enterprises into a few sizeable companies, enabling them to compete for contracts in the Bafokeng area and further afield.

Development of enterprises has in part been spurred by the South African government's black economic empowerment policy. Thus, local entrepreneurs have formed joint ventures with established companies to supply mines in the BaFokeng area. This has led to the establishment of locally based companies specialising in such enterprises as drilling operations, manufacturing of overalls, and engineering. Thus, Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi is consolidating the gains his people have made over the centuries, establishing a broad base for them to grow and to realise the goals of Vision 2020 and beyond.

Interestingly, they have funded the construction of a state-of-the-art soccer stadium that will be used in the FIFA World Cup this year. The Royal BaFokeng Sports Palace will host matches in the tournament, and the 42,000-seat stadium is named after the BaFokeng people who live in the area.The North West Province has a definitive comparative advantage in mining. Known as the Platinum Province, it is responsible for 94 percent of South Africa's platinum, 46 percent of the granite and 25 percent of the gold produced in the country. Mining is responsible for more than a third of the province's GDP. Platinum comes from the Rustenburg and Brits districts which produce more platinum than any other single platinum production plant in the world. Diamonds are mined at Lichtenburg, Koster, Christiana and Bloemhof. Fluorspar is exploited at Zeerust. Granite and marble are also mined, and copper and nickel by-products also yield substantial earnings annually.

Over the past decade, mining production in the North West Province has continued to reflect positive growth with the Province increasing its contribution to the overall mining output of South Africa from 26.4 percent in 1990 to 29.2 percent in 1999.Five of the 12 platinum group metal-producing mines in South Africa are situated in the Rustenburg area of what is known as the Bushveld Igneous Complex.For several decades now, these 5 platinum mines have been producing about half of the total platinum group metal yield of the famous Merensky and UG2 reefs. Three of the mines in the area are owned and operated by one of the world’s leading mining houses, Anglo American, while the other two belong to Impala Platinum and Lonmin.

Some of these mines are in joint venture partnerships with the Royal BaFokeng Nation.Mines in the North West Province still have a substantial reserve base of metal bearing reef, which at the current rate of exploitation is likely to last for many years to come.Increased world demand for platinum has seen the price of the metal soar over the past few years and consequently, platinum mining in the North West Province is booming.With the increasing environmental consciousness world wide and a continually expanding list of new applications for platinum, investment activity is rife and huge expansions worth billions of Rands are already underway at many of the platinum mines in the area with additional growth on the cards — all ensuring a highly promising long term future for the metal.

When mining companies invested in the area during the apartheid regime, it was agreed that corporate tax and other related taxes would be paid directly to the government, but that the royalties would be paid to the Royal BaFokeng.The BaFokeng nation currently spans 44 farms and extends over 70,000 hectares. The kingdom is sub-divided into 72 traditional dikgoro (wards), each of which is regulated by a hereditary dikgosana (headman) and mmadikgosana (headman’s wife). Today, locals here see investors not as plunderers of their resources, but as partners in business and development.The hostility that once clouded the two sides was ended not by deployment of thousands of armed forces or expansion of prisons, but through amicable discussions aimed at giving locals their share of the cake.From the documented records it wasn’t an easy battle, but finally there was a deal on the table.For instance, in this Platinum Province, the federal government of South Africa does return back about 10 percent of the total taxes it earns from various mining companies operating here.The idea, according to the architects of this policy, is to force the government to give back to the people from whom it has collected huge revenues of taxes.This is the success story of Royal Bafokeng—Africa’s richest people.This report has been written with great assistance from various documented online researches and interviews conducted in Rusterburg, early last year.

MISSING LINKS IN WORLD BANK PRESIDENT`S THINKING ON AFRICA

As Tanzania prepares to host the World Economic Forum, African Chapter early next month, World Bank President Robert Zoellick has in the past few months laboured to generate an understanding on a new multilateralism, of a bipolar world where the notion of a ‘first, second and third world’ is no longer relevant. CORRESPONDENT MIKI TASSENI has been studying one of his addresses, and sees gaps in bringing about effective development strategies in Africa, the theme of the Dar es Salaam WEF meeting. Taking up the World Bank president’s remarks at random, rather than follow on the script of one recent address and a write about it in the US media, he for instance noted that the World Bank is working with Africans and Chinese to create industrial zones.He said that Chinese companies can be encouraged to relocate manufacturing for both domestic production and export. These manufacturers bring know-how, machinery, as well as access to marketing and distribution networks.

Since this is a new source of capital and new destination for capital as a whole, he said early investors are sensing the promise in Africa and are not dissuaded by the risks, noting that ‘after Lehman Brothers and Greece, investors know developed markets can be risky, too.’.He insisted on the fact that changes in government policies can create opportunities for private sector growth, which in turn offers services to other entrepreneurs. ‘In the ten years to 2008, the private sector has invested more than $60 billion in information and communications technology in Africa; 65 percent of Africans are now within reach of wireless voice services, and there are 400 million mobile phones in use in Africa.

“IFC, the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, is helping catalyze this business revolution. A new IFC equity fund has attracted $800 million from sovereign wealth and pension funds to invest in companies in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean,” he elaborated.That summarises, in part, the more optimistic side of things, while reflections on how the new multilateral environment in world economy can be managed by the Group of 20 on a collegial basis and in terms of a sense of shared responsibility remains problematic.

The G20 at Pittsburgh in the United States and difficulties there, as well as those encountered at the world climate change conference at Copenhagen, tended to sober up the picture somewhat. Comparisons that Zoellick drew with US President Woodrow Wilson’s rather naïve optimism after World War I and the catastrophe that followed 20 years later was a rueful reminder of what is really passing in his mind, as to global consensus prospects.The bank president says the G-20 should operate as a “Steering Group” across a network of countries and international institutions. ‘Take financial reform: the world has paid a big price for the breakdowns of the global financial system in lost jobs and ruined lives,’ he says, and then reflects on the derivatives on Wall Street as the bete noire of commentators on global financial meltdown, but stridently seeks to take the sting out of radical criticism, the Obama type ‘greed of bankers’ sort of analysis that bankers detest.

He says significantly that ‘financial innovation, when used and supervised prudently, has brought efficiency gains and protected against risk: the World Bank has pioneered livestock insurance for Mongolian herders; a Malawi weather derivative against drought; and the Caribbean catastrophe insurance pool.The latter gave Haiti an immediate $8 million in January when its earthquake struck – faster money than from any other outside source.’ In other words Africa has a lot to gain from financial innovation – and let it be added for Tanzania in particular, plenty of the money for exploration of oil, diamonds, uranium and jatropha farming steeply diminishes without the derivative, futurist lending. ‘Wall Street has exposed the dangers of financial innovation, and we need to take heed and serious actions. But development has shown its benefits. A G-7 populist prism can undercut opportunities for billions,’ he pointed out, noting further that the developing countries need support and finance to invest in cleaner growth paths.About 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity, so ‘the challenge is to support transitions to cleaner energy without sacrificing access, productivity, and growth that can pull hundreds of millions out of poverty.’ Harsh statistics can help radical thinking, as proof of their logic.This is the point when one starts seeing analytical drawbacks in the position of the bank president, namely that it isn’t as yet steering clear of typical of World Bank presentation; it doesn’t see issues in terms of the credit mechanism tied to property relations, but a plurality of financing needs in the development process.

Only the European Union-dictated economic partnership agreements with Africa figure this sort of situation, where property ties are created at the grassroots level in Africa, not by offering titles to land as occupational right but as private property that can be exchanged or contracted in any manner, bought out by whoever it is, without a state prerogative to choose who can buy.Thus it is important for the World Economic Forum to start polishing its analytical outlook to get out of the perennial ethos of the ‘need for support and finance for cleaner growth’ and start thinking in terms of the sort of property relations where the land on which the project (investment plan) will stand becomes collateral for that business idea. Continuing to rake the mind for ‘laws’ to make banks lend to ‘indigenous businesses’ messes up the business climate still further, to earn populist plaudits in the ruling party.

Zoellick says that ‘while we must take care of the environment, we cannot consign African children to homework by candlelight or deny African workers manufacturing jobs. The old developed country prism is the surest way to lose developing country support for global environment goals,’ which implies that environment goals are basically negative when high rate of growth are required.Two aspects are missing in this view, that put this way, no country will afford to pay for environment needs as loss of jobs isn’t just an African problem, even if an added piece of drama about ‘doing homework by candlelight’ is specifically Africa. Are oil lamps as romantic as candlelight, anyway.

The second missing aspect is that cleaner technology also represents technological innovation and when marginally encouraged by government action – for instance by applying tax benefits for such technology – it can work in Africa as it works elsewhere.In that case this view of things would reinforce the argument for multilateralism where the sense of responsible environmental policy is applicable all over the world, not the Doha and Copenhagen hide and seek methods of the newly resurrected ‘Group of 77’ which was seeking that the United States, Europe and Japan should foot the bill, chiefly.When one starts accepting that developing countries - and it will be hard to exclude monstrous polluter China from that consideration - should be leniently treated in relation to environment, no consensus, or ethic, can emerge on what can be done about world environment.

And at the same time the argument about jobs and candlelight etc is only protectionist in character, and accepting its core premises is akin to a foreclosure of reform in this aspect as well. World Bank leniency on reform is at the core of stagnation. Zoellick says developing countries need summits for the poor, that they do not just want to discuss high debt in developed countries, but “they want to focus on productive investments in infrastructure and early childhood development.” Here the bank president is immersing himself in the most traditional of World Bank ethos, namely contempt for ‘high debt in developed countries’ and elevating infrastructure and ‘early childhood development’ to investment status, and in equal measure.While the financing of road construction or electricity generation isn’t ‘investment’ if it isn’t anchored in a profit-bearing context, within the private sector, adding nutritional needs as part of investment and not welfare or a result of higher rates of growth, reinforces traditional faulty thinking.He affirms interestingly enough that developing countries ‘want to free markets to create jobs, higher productivity, and growth. Many are exploring how to use the innovation and efficiency of private markets to help provide and maintain public sector infrastructure and services.’

One wonders if Zoellick is saying that developing countries want free markets as such, or ‘free markets’ for their goods as such, that is, as a mercantile conception of free markets that targets the ability of ‘the poor’ to sell their goods – where one can’t exclude the leading G-20 developing countries like China, India or Brazil in demanding a preferential regime with regard to demands of creation of proper free markets.That is why in that respect as well, despite its obvious shortcomings as relates to requiring that land ownership be shifted to freehold rights, EPA of the European Union is still the best model so far on the sort of reform Africa needs to start taking up for high rates of growth.

HOW AFRICA IS BECOMING NEW ASIA

China and India get all the headlines for their economic prowess, but there's another global growth story that is easily overlooked: Africa. In 2007 and 2008, southern Africa, the Great Lakes region of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and even the drought-stricken Horn of Africa had GDP growth rates on par with Asia's two power houses Last year, in the depths of global recession, the continent clocked almost 2 percent growth, roughly equal to the rates in the Middle East, and outperforming everywhere else but India and China. This year and in 2011, Africa will grow by 4.8 percent—the highest rate of growth outside Asia, and higher than even the oft-buzzed-about economies of Brazil, Russia, Mexico, and Eastern Europe, according to newly revised IMF estimates. In fact, on a per capita basis, Africans are already richer than Indians, and a dozen African states have higher gross national income per capita than China.

More surprising is that much of this growth is driven not by the sale of raw materials, like oil or diamonds, but by a burgeoning domestic market, the largest outside India and China. In the last four years, the surge in private consumption of goods and services has accounted for two thirds of Africa's GDP growth.The rapidly emerging African middle class could number as many as 300 million, out of a total population of 1 billion, according to development expert Vijay Majahan, author of the 2009 book Africa Rising.

While few of them have the kind of disposable income found in Asia and the West, these accountants, teachers, maids, taxi drivers, even roadside street vendors, are driving up demand for goods and services like cell phones, bank accounts, upmarket foodstuffs, and real estate.In fact, in Africa's 10 largest economies, the service sector makes up 40 percent of GDP, not too far from India's 53 percent. "The new Africa story is consumption," says Graham Thomas, head of principal investment at Standard Bank Group, which operates in 17 African countries.

Much of the boom in this new consumer class can be attributed to outside forces: evolving trade patterns, particularly from increased demand coming out of China, and technological innovation abroad that spurs local productivity and growth like the multibillion-dollar fiber-optic lines that are being laid out between Africa and the developed world. Other changes are domestic and deliberate.Despite Africa's well-founded reputation for corruption and poor governance, a substantial chunk of the continent has quietly experienced this economic renaissance by dint of its virtually unprecedented political stability.

Spurred by eager investors, governments have steadily deregulated industries and developed infrastructure. As a result, countries such as Kenya and Botswana now boast privately owned world-class hospitals, charter schools, and toll roads that are actually safe to drive on. A study by a World Bank program, the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, found that improvements in Africa's telecom infrastructure have contributed as much as 1 percent to per capita GDP growth, a bigger role than changes in monetary or fiscal policies. Shares of stocks in recently privatized local airlines, freight companies, and telecoms have skyrocketed.

Entrepreneurship has increased at the same time, powered in part by the influx of returning skilled workers. Just as waves of expats returned to China and India in the 1990s to start businesses that in turn attracted more outside talent and capital, there are now signs that an entrepreneurial African diaspora will help transform the continent.While brain drain is still a chronic problem in countries such as Burundi and Malawi—some of the poorest in the world on a per capita basis—Africa's most robust economies, such as those in Ghana, Botswana, and South Africa, are beginning to see an unprecedented brain gain.

According to some reports, roughly 10,000 skilled professionals have returned to Nigeria in the last year, and the number of educated Angolans seeking jobs back home has spiked 10-fold, to 1,000, in the last five years.Bart Nnaji gave up a tenured professorship at the University of Pittsburgh to move back to Nigeria in 2005 and run Geometric Power, the first private power company in sub-Saharan Africa.Its $400 million, 188-megawatt power plant will come online this fall as the sole provider of electricity for Aba, a city of 2 million in southeast Nigeria.Afam Onyema, a 30-year-old graduate of Harvard and Stanford Law, turned down six-figure offers in corporate law to build and run a $50 million state-of-the-art private hospital with a charitable component for the poor in southeast Nigeria.

Many experts believe Africa, with its expansive base of newly minted consumers, may very well be on the verge of becoming the next India, thanks to frenetic urbanisation and the sort of big push in services and infrastructure that transformed the Asian subcontinent 15 years ago.Just as India once harnessed its booming population of cheap labor, Africa stands to gain by the rapid growth of its big cities.Already the continent boasts the world's highest rate of urbanization, which jump-starts growth through industrialization and economies of scale. Today only a third of Africa's population lives in cities, but that segment accounts for 80 percent of total GDP, according to the UN Centre for Human Settlements. In the next 30 years, half the continent's population will be living in cities.

Nowhere is this relationship between the consumer class and urbanization more apparent than in Lagos, Nigeria, a megalopolis of 18 million that has the anything-goes pace of a Chongqing or Mumbai. On Victoria Island, the city's commercial center, real estate is as expensive as in Manhattan.Everywhere you look, there is construction: luxury condos, office buildings, roads, even a brand-new city nearby being dredged from the sea that will hold half a million people. "Everything is in short supply, so everything's a high-growth area," explains Adedotun Sulaiman, a venture capitalist and chairman of Accenture in Nigeria.

"In terms of opportunities, it's just mind-blowing." Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest black entrepreneur, has also cashed in on this consumer culture, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.

His empire, which began in 1978 as a trading business that imported, among other things, baby food, cement, and frozen fish, is focused on Nigeria's burgeoning domestic growth, producing cement for shopping and office complexes; renting luxury condos; making noodles, flour, and sugar; and now expanding into services such as 3G mobile networks and transportation."There's nowhere you can make money like in Nigeria," says the 53-year-old Dangote. "It's the world's best-kept secret."Not anymore. A recent study by Oxford economist Paul Collier of all 954 publicly traded African companies operating between 2000 and 2007 found that their annual return on capital was on average 65 percent higher than those of similar firms in China, India, Vietnam, or Indonesia because labor costs are skyrocketing in Asia.

Their median profit margin, 11 percent, was also higher than in Asia or South America.African mobile operators, for instance, showed the highest profit margins in the industry worldwide. As a result, foreign multinationals like Unilever, Nestlé, and Swissport International report some of their highest growth in Africa. So even as foreign direct investment fell by 20 percent worldwide in 2008, capital in-flows to Africa actually jumped 16 percent, to $61.9 billion, its highest level ever, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even Chinese companies are thinking of outsourcing basic manufacturing to Africa.

The World Bank is now helping China set up an industrial zone in Ethiopia, the first of perhaps several offshore centers akin to the sprawling free-trade zones that opened up China's economy in the 1980s.Still, Africa remains at the very frontier of emerging markets. Despite its gains, the difficulty and cost of running a business there are the highest in the world, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. Couple that with pervasive corruption — Transparency International calls the problem "rampant" in 36 of 53 African states—and it's no wonder Africa is often regarded as a toxic place to operate.

But World Bank president Robert Zoellick says that in the aftermath of the economic crisis, long-term investors have recognized that "developed markets have big risks too." Like China and India, Africa is exploiting that fact, and perhaps more than any other region it is illustrative of a new world order in which the poorest nations will still find ways to steam ahead.

MEDIA LITERACY

Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms. Education for media literacy often uses an inquiry-based pedagogic model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, hear, and read. 

Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their own media messages. Critical analysis can include identifying author, purpose and point of view, examining construction techniques and genres, examining patterns of media representation, and detecting propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming (and the reasons for these). Media literacy education may explore how structural features—such as media ownership, or its funding model -- affect the information presented. Media literate people should be skillful creators and producers of media messages, both to facilitate understanding of the specific qualities of each medium, as well as to create independent media and participate as active citizens. Media literacy can be seen as contributing to an expanded conceptualization of literacy, treating mass media, popular culture and digital media as new types of 'texts' that require analysis and evaluation. By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and manipulation (especially through commercials and public relations techniques), and understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of reality.

Media literacy education is sometimes conceptualized as a way to address the negative dimensions of mass media, popular culture and digital media, including media violence, gender and racial stereotypes, the sexualization of children, and concerns about loss of privacy, cybernetics and Internet predators. By building knowledge and competencies in using media and technology, media literacy education may provide a type of protection to children and young by helping them make good choices in their media consumption habits, and patterns of usage. practical media literacy related abilities can be used to create new learning and teaching methods such as through mobile phones, interactive whiteboard and internet based learning. Media literacy teaches the language that is understood by the human condition worldwide and so is used to convey messages.

POVERTY IN AFRICA

Poverty in Africa refers to the lack of basic human needs faced by certain segments of African society. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capital or GDP per capital, despite a wealth of natural resources. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having "Low Human Development" on the United Nations' (UN) Human Development Index were located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capital is less than $200 U.S. per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa's share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does. Although GDP per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, measures are still far better in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, which suffers from many of the same disadvantages.

Mismanagement of land

In addition to cash crops, European settlers also introduced new staple food crops such as maize. Africans readily accepted these new foods into their diets. The continent was not as accepting as its people. Initially, the new staple crops performed well. They produced great yields, leading to increased acceptance and eventual reliance on these new sources of food. In time, this reliance led to food security/food insecurity. Two factors contributed greatly to this outcome: water and fertilizer, both of which were lacking. African subsistence farmers traditionally did not irrigate, but relied on rainfall to water crops and planted multiple staple crops each season; some did well under drier conditions, others under wetter. Under ideal conditions, the newer staple crops outperformed the old ones. However, they were not as tolerant of the widely varying range of African growing conditions as the native crops, and in years when there wasn't enough water, an irrigated field planted solely with a single drought-susceptible crop yielded nothing. Traditional methods of land use such as companion planting and post-harvest grazing by herd animals enriched the soil at little monetary cost to farmers. Widespread adoption of fenced land monoculture depleted the soil.

Despite large amounts of arable land south of the Sahara Desert, small, individual land holdings are rare. In many nations, land is subject to tribal ownership and in others, most of the land is often in the hands of descendants of European settlers of the late 19th century and early 20th century. For example, according to a 2005 IRIN report, about 82% of the arable land in South Africa is owned by those of European descent. Many nations lack a system of freehold landowning. In others, the laws prevent people from disadvantaged groups from owning land at all. Although often these laws are ignored, and land sales to disadvantaged groups occur, legal title to the land is not assured. As such, rural Africans rarely have clear title to their own land, and have to survive as farm laborers. Unused land is plentiful, but is often private property. Most African nations have very poor land registration systems, making squatting and land theft common occurrences. This makes it difficult to get a mortgage or similar loan, as ownership of the property often cannot be established to the satisfaction of financiers. 

It should be noted that this system often gives an advantage to one native African group over another, and is just Europeans over Africans. For example, it was hoped that land reform in Zimbabwe would transfer land from European land owners to family farmers. Instead, it simply substituted native Africans with ties to the government for Europeans, leaving much of the population disadvantaged. Because of this abuse, foreign aid that was destined for land purchases was withdrawn. (See Land reform in Zimbabwe)

It is estimated^] that a family of four can be made self-sufficient for about $300 (U.S.) - the cost of an Ox, a few hectares of land, and starter seeds.^] Historically, such programs have been few and far between, with much foreign aid being concentrated on the raising of cash crops and large plantations rather than family farms. 

There is no consensus on what the optimal strategy for land use in Africa may be. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences have suggested great promise in relying on native crops as a means to improving Africa's food security. A report by Future Harvest suggests that traditionally used forage plants show the same promise. Supporting a different viewpoint is an article appearing in AgBioForum which suggests that smallhold farmers benefited substantially by planting a genetically modified variety of maize. In a similar vein is an article discussing the use of nontraditional crops for export published as part of the proceedings of a Purdue University symposium.

Misused money

Over $500 billion (U.S.) has been sent to African nations in the form of direct aid. The consensus is that the money has had little long term effect. In addition, most African nations have borrowed substantial sums of money. However, a large percentage of the money was either invested in weapons (money that was spent back in developed nations, and provided little or no benefit to the native population) or was directly misappropriated by corrupt governments like making nuclear weapons, porn movies and pirated CDs. As such, many newly democratic nations in Africa are saddled with debt run up by totalitarian regimes. 

Large debts usually result in little being spent on social services, such as education, pensions, or medical care. In addition, most of the debt currently owed (approximately $321 billion (U.S.) in 1996) represents only the interest portion on the debt, and far exceeds the amounts that were actually borrowed (although this is true of large debts in developed nations as well). Most African nations are pushing for debt relief, as they are effectively unable to maintain payments on debt without extending the debt payments indefinitely. However, most plans to forgive debt affect only the smallest nations, and large debtor nations, like Nigeria, are often excluded from such plans.

What large sums of money that are in Africa are often used to develop mega-projects when the need is for smaller scale projects. For example, Ghana was the richest country in Africa when it obtained independence. However, a few years later, it had no foreign reserves of any consequence. The money was spent on large projects that turned out to be a waste of resources:

• The Akosombo Dam was built in order to supply electricity for the extraction of aluminium from bauxite. Unfortunately, Ghanaian ores turned out to be too low grade and the electricity is now used to process ores from other nations.
• A two-lane paved highway was built into the interior. Unfortunately, Ghana has few motor vehicles that require such a superior roadway, and there are very few other roads of any kind in the country.
• Storage silos for the storage of cocoa were built to allow Ghana to take advantage of fluctuations in the commodity prices. Unfortunately, unprocessed cocoa does not react well to even short-term storage and the silos now sit empty.

Another example of misspent money is the Aswan High Dam. The dam was supposed to have modernized Egypt and Sudan immediately. Instead, the block of the natural flow of the Nile River meant that the Nile's natural supply of nitrate fertilizer and organic material was blocked. Now, about one-third of the dam's electric output goes directly into fertilizer production for what previously was the most fertile area on the planet. Moreover, the dam is silting up and may cease to serve any useful purpose within the next few centuries. In addition, the Mediterranean Sea is slowly becoming more saline as the Nile River previously provided it with most of its new fresh water influx.

Corruption is also a major problem in the region, although it is certainly not universal or limited to Africa. Many native groups in Africa believe family relationships are more important than national identity, and people in authority often use nepotism and bribery for the benefit of their extended family group at the expense of their nations. To be fair, many corrupt governments often do better than authoritarian ones that replace them. Ethiopia is a good case study. Under Haile Selassie, corruption was rife and poverty rampant. However, after his overthrow, corruption was lessened, but then famine and military aggressiveness came to the fore. In any event, corruption both diverts aid money and foreign investment (which is usually sent to offshore banks outside of Africa), and puts a heavy burden on native populations forced to pay bribes to get basic government services.

In the end, foreign aid may not even be helpful in the long run to many African nations. It often encourages them not to tax internal economic activities of multi-national corporations within their borders in order to attract foreign investment. In addition, most African nations have at least some wealthy nationals, and foreign aid often allows them to avoid paying more than negligible taxes. As such, wealth redistribution and capital controls are often seen as a more appropriate way for African nations to stabilize funding for their government budgets and smooth out the boom and bust cycles that can often arise in a developing economy. However, this sort of strategy often leads to internal political dissent and capital flight.

Human resources

Widespread availability of cheap labor has often perpetuated policies that encourage inefficient agricultural and industrial practices, leaving Africa further impoverished. For example, author P.J. O'Rourke noted on his trip to Tanzania for his book Eat the Rich that gravel was produced with manual labor (by pounding rocks with tools), where in almost everywhere else in the world machines did the same work far more cheaply and efficiently. He used Tanzania as an example of a nation with superb natural resources that nevertheless was among the poorest nations in the world.

Education is also a major problem. Elementary education is scatter shot, even in the wealthier nations. Illiteracy rates are high although a good proportion of Africans speak at least two languages and a number speak three (generally their native language, a neighbouring or trade language, and a European language). Higher education is almost unheard of, although certain universities in Egypt and South Africa have excellent reputations. However, some African nations have a paucity of persons with university degrees, and advanced degrees are rare in most areas. 

As such, the continent, for the most part, lacks scientists, engineers and even teachers. The seeming parody of aid workers attempting to teach trilingual people English is not entirely untrue. South Africa under apartheid is an excellent example of how an adverse situation can further degrade. The largely black population earlier wished to learn English (black South Africans saw it as a way to unite themselves as they speak several different native languages).

Disease

The greatest mortality in Africa arises from preventable water-borne diseases, which affects infants and young children greater than any other group. The principal cause of these diseases is the regional water crisis, or lack of safe drinking water primarily stemming from mixing sewage and drinking water supplies.

Much attention has been given to the prevalence of AIDS in Africa. 3,000 Africans die each day of AIDS and an additional 11,000 are infected. Less than one percent are actually treated.However, even with the widespread prevalence of AIDS (where infection rates can approach 30% among the sexually active population), and Clean potable water is rare in most of Africa (even those parts outside the sub-Saharan region) despite the fact that the continent is crossed by several major rivers and contains some of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. However, many of the major population centres are coastal, and few major cities have adequate sewage treatment systems. 

Although boiling water is a possibility, fuel for boiling is scarce as well. The problem is worst in Africa's rapidly growing cities, such as Cairo, Lagos and Kinshasa.

Colonialism concentrated on joining the coast with internal territories. As such, nearly none of Africa's roads and railways connect with each other in any meaningful way. Joining Africa's extensive railway network has recently become a priority for African nations outside of southwest Africa, which has an integrated network. Transportation between neighbouring coastal settlements is nearly always by sea, no matter what the topography of the land in between them. Even basic services like telecommunications are often treated the same way. For example, phone calls between Ghana and neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire once had to be routed through England and France. Although Africa had numerous pre-European overland trade routes, few are suitable for modern transport such as trucks or railways, especially when they cross old European colonial borders.

Conflict

Despite other hot spots for war, Africa consistently remains among the top places for ongoing conflicts, consisting of both long standing civil wars (e.g. Somalia) and conflicts between countries (e.g. Ethiopia and Eritrea's border wars after the latter's independence from the former). Despite a lack of basic social services or even the basic necessities of life, military forces are often well financed and well equipped.

As a result, Africa is full of refugees, who are often deliberately displaced by military forces during a conflict, rather than just having fled from war torn areas. Although many refugees emigrate to open countries such as Germany, Canada, and the United States, the ones who do emigrate are often the most educated and skilled. The remainder often become a burden on neighbouring African nations that, while peaceful, are generally unable to deal with the logistical problems refugees pose.

Civil war usually has the result of totally shutting down all government services. However, any conflict generally disrupts what trade or economy there is. Sierra Leone, which depends on diamonds for much of its economic activity, not only faces disruption in production (which reduces the supply), but a thriving black market in conflict diamonds, which drives down the price for what diamonds are produced.

Effects of poverty

High index values, indicated by lighter colors, show the relative poverty of African countries as ranked by the UNDP's 2004 list of countries by quality of life.MAfrica's economic malaise is self-perpetuating, as it engenders more of the disease, warfare, misgovernment, and corruption that created it in the first place. Other effects of poverty have similar consequences. The most direct consequence of low GDP is Africa's low standard of living and quality of life. Except for a wealthy elite and the more prosperous peoples of South Africa and the Maghreb, Africans have very few consumer goods. Quality of life does not correlate exactly with a nation's wealth. Angola, for instance, reaps large sums annually from its diamond mines, but after years of civil war, conditions there remain poor. Radios, televisions, and automobiles are rare luxuries. Most Africans are on the far side of the digital divide and are cut off from communications technology and the Internet. Quality of life and human development are also low. African nations dominate the lower reaches of the UN Human Development Index. Infant mortality is high, while life expectancy, literacy, and education are all low. The UN also lowers the ranking of African states because the continent sees greater inequality than any other region. The best educated often choose to leave the continent for the West or the Persian Gulf to seek a better life; in the case of some nations like South Africa, many Caucasians have fled due to employment bias.

Catastrophes cause deadly periods of great shortages. The most damaging are the famines that have regularly hit the continent, especially the Horn of Africa. These have been caused by disruptions due to warfare, years of drought, and plagues of locusts.

An average African faced annual inflation of over 60% from 1990 until 2002 in those few countries that account for inflation. At the high end, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both saw triple-digit inflation throughout the period. Most African states saw inflation of approximately 10% per year.There are incomplete numbers for unemployment in most African nations, but it is an important problem. Major cities like Lagos and Kinshasa have large slums of the unemployed and underemployed.