Wiki In Africa, the international organisers of the 6th Wiki Loves Africa photographic and media competition announced the international prize-winners of the 2020 competition.
The competition takes place annually and calls for submissions along themed lines.
Both amateur and professional photographers and filmmakers are called to share the world they see every day; life recorded and observed from within their own communities. Their contribution forms a collection of royalty-free images about Africa, a continent that is often the subject of an external gaze and many subsequent stereotypes.
Initially intended as a month-long intervention, Wiki Loves Africa 2020 took place as the COVID-19 crisis hit Africa. It launched on the 15th of February, and the deadline was extended from 15th March to 15th April to facilitate the significant life changes wrought as the COVID lockdowns impacted each country after another.
Over the eight weeks of the competition, 1904 people contributed just shy of 17,000 images, 2 sound and 202 video files that broadly capture the 2020 theme of Africa on the Move! across the continent.
An international jury of photographers from across Africa and Wikimedia specialists from around the world deliberated on the 16,982 images. The quality of images was a key criterion in the selection, as was the encyclopedic value of the image, and also that it was visually arresting and well framed. Of equal importance was the quest to ensure that the unexpected was featured. As a project, Wiki Loves Africa is focused on obliterating the ‘single story of Africa’ by visually displaying the myriad of experiences that make up daily life on the continent. In this case, the thousands of images represented Africa in all its dichotomy through the theme of transport, from donkeys and potholed roads to high-speed trains, cargo and ferry boats.
After an exhaustive jury process that lasted several intense weeks , they decided on the following winners:
1st prize goes to the image My Homeland (Lake Burullus, Egypt) by Mohamed Ahmed Yousry
Mohamed said how he came across this image “I heard a lot about the virgin islands scattered along Lake Burullus. One particular image of an island called Shakloba haunted me. It might be the stunning image I saw on Facebook or the strange name of the island. But either way, curiosity got the best out of me and my travel companions and we decided to explore the island. Shakhloba is one of over a dozen small, mostly uninhabited islands in Lake Burullus. The magnificent lake, the largest in Egypt’s Delta, is located in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate. Lake Burullus has a very rich landscape. It is nestled in the green fields of the Delta, bordering it from the south, with Nile’s Rosetta branch towards the east and the Mediterranean to the north.”
2nd Prize goes to Bread delivery bicycle by Abd Elhamid Fawzy Abd Elhamid Tahoun also taken in Egypt.
Abd said that his motivation to take this shot was “because the boy attracted me for his great effort during work at midday, then I noticed the light and shadow and decided to take the shot.”
3rd Prize goes to A Mess by Summer Kamal Eldeen Mohamed Farag.
Summer is a return winner for 2020. She won 2nd prize in the 2019 contest. She took the photo during lockdown “because I like to shoot from the top when there are suitable configurations”.
Every year the contest looks for an image that represents ancient traditions within a modern context, with this in mind the following image won the Traditional Culture Prize.
Traditional Culture Prize went to Salt transport by a camel train on Lake Assale (Karum) in Ethiopia by Olivier.
The final prize goes to the new video category. The video prize goes to Bouba Kam’s Le Transport Lagunaire à Abidjan (STL) réalisé par Bouba Kam’s that displays an unexpected element to transport in Africa by taking us on a ferry ride across Abidjan’s Ébrié Lagoon.
The winning video was chosen by the competition organisers for its quality imagery and the simple, contemporary way of sharing the journey on board Abidjan’s Lagoon Ferry.
The encouraging entries from across Africa, events were held by local Wikipedia volunteers to encourage people to contribute photographs, and share information on the specifics of Wikipedia licensing and how to upload their entries.
Exquisite photographs by African photographers display Africa On the Move on Wikipedia
Some observations on the troubling Ethio-Egyptian discourses over the Grand Renaissance Dam
By Tadesse Kidane Mariam
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that Ethiopia has been building over the Abbay (Blue Nile) river over the last 9 years has provoked heated debate between Egypt and Ethiopia over a wide range of issues including the scheduled impounding of the river sometime in the first two weeks of July/2020. The frenzied speed with which Egypt has been defining and redefining the debate over the dam in recent months makes sound analysis of issues rather problematic. Yet, the underlying narrative of Egypt’s all-out campaign to mobilize the world community behind its position is the existential threat that the dam’s very construction will have on Egypt’s 100+ million people, The discursive frame that Egypt is a desert country whose very survival depends on the life giving waters of the Nile is not some thing new. Timothy Mitchell (1995) had captured Egyptian construction of its development challenge as emanating from a problem of geography and demography i.e. a narrow strip of 15,000 square miles of land along the Nile and its delta accommodating 98% of its 100+ million inhabitants. This overwhelming dependence of the country on the waters of the Nile and the absence of any other alternative hydraulic resource base has defined its position on the legitimate question of upper riparian states for a just and equitable share of the waters of the international river. Mitchell had criticized Egyptian construction of its economic development challenges from a nexus of ‘fixed amount of usable land and the rapid growth of the population’ as a constrained vision that had led to a myopic definition of solution spaces in the realms of improved use of technology and management of resources. The neglect or the downplaying of the social and political ecology dimensions of Egyptian society has remained a fundamental aspect of Egypt’s internal development dynamics and its external relations with critical countries that share the waters of the Nile.
It is interesting to note that successive Egyptian governments have taken such discursive frames in any serious discussion on the shared management of the waters of the Nile. Egypt’s hegemonic stand on the utilization and management of the waters of the Nile is grounded in the 1902, 1929 and 1959 colonial treaties and agreements that essentially excluded upper riparian states and gave it almost exclusive use rights to this day. The construction of the grand renaissance dam has dramatically changed the nexus and it is time to evolve a common ground for all riparian states to share the water and its management on the basic principles of fair and collective utilization of international rivers. The agreement that the Nile basin countries reached in charting out a strategy for the fair and cooperative management of the waters of the Nile basin was a good start. Unfortunately, subsequent measures were not taken largely due to the unreasonable opposition of Egypt to any meaningful strategy that would have evolved a workable basin-wide water management regime.
The current strategy of Egypt is unfair and devoid of any semblance of normative diplomatic approach to problem solving. The goodwill that Ethiopia has shown towards both the Nile basin initiative and the tripartite approach to the resolution of perceived or actual problems that could emanate from the construction of the Grand Renaissance dam has not been reciprocated by Egypt. Instead it used its diplomatic advantages in the US, the Arab World and the United Nations to subvert the goodwill shown by the Ethiopian side. The massive propaganda campaign of the Egyptian and Middle Eastern and Gulf press and social media against the Ethiopian project has poisoned the environment for sane deliberation on whatever critical issues that needed to be discussed. The continuous shifting of the forum for resolving the perceived danger emanating from the impounding of the waters of the Blue Nile is a strategy of diversion that lacks legality, sincerity and goodwill. The recent rhetoric by some in the Egyptian political circle that ‘all options were open’ is a veiled threat to seek non-diplomatic resolution to an essentially non-existing problem. The pronouncements of both officials and experts of the Ethiopian side have underlined the fact that the three countries had already reached a memorandum of understanding on most technical issues.
Egypt fully knows that its water supply will not be significantly compromised by the impounding of the waters of the Grand Renaissance dam. Even if there is a slight decrease in the volume of water during the impounding, it is neither an existential threat nor a gap that could not be filled with better management of the use of its water. Egyptian water management practices need to be revisited before anticipating water shortage and other management problems that could develop from the Ethiopian dam. Egypt should have appreciated Ethiopia’s tremendous sacrifice in building the largest dam in Africa without the assistance of any foreign source – a dam that has significant economic and social benefits to the entire Horn of Africa, East Africa and the lower basin countries of Sudan and Egypt.
I find the shifting discursive formations that Egypt has been manufacturing troubling. A cursory look into Egyptian geography, demography and political economy clearly shows the importance of the water of the Nile. Egypt has a total area of 386,000 sq. miles and a 2020 population of 100 mln, 98% of which is concentrated in 5% of the Nile river valley and its extensive delta. Egyptian agriculture is among the most productive systems in the world with an average acre of Egyptian farmland producing more than three times that of both Bangladesh and Philippines, two of the most densely populated countries of Asia (Egypt Stat, 2011). Egyptian agriculture growth rate had kept pace with its population growth rate. Egyptians consume large amounts of food (3,557 kilocalories/capita/day), higher than most upper middle-and-high income countries. Yet, social inequality was such that more than 30 % of children suffered from mild malnutrition and another 31% from moderate to severe undernutrition (1990 Studies in Family Planning). The growing disparity between social classes had been such that it had affected agricultural policy in favor of meeting the demands of the better off population for higher value foods such as meat. Studies in the 1990s had indicated that Egypt had been producing more food for animals than for humans. It has become one of the leading importers of food crops and commodities in the world notwithstanding the fact that it had a robust agricultural export sector. The US and its grain companies have benefitted immensely and continue to do so from the export of millions of tons of wheat other grains and commodities every year. The billions of dollars-worth of subsidies given to the food sector and the Egyptian military have created a political and social class that has followed a flawed agricultural policy that assigns more investment to animal feed than crops for human consumption. The social indicators for Egypt show a middle-income country with a well-established industrial and service economy. (Mitchell, 1995). Other Egyptian geographic, demographic, socio-economic and environmental indicators can be cited to refute the simplistic notion that Ethiopia’s grand renaissance will have an existential threat on the country’s development and livelihood. In comparison, Ethiopia’s social indicators show a significantly lower standing on almost all fronts.
The Grand Renaissance dam is being built to generate electricity. It will create a huge reservoir for the sustained supply of water to Sudan and Egypt. That is why Egypt should desist from the politicization of a regional project that will ultimately benefit all riparian states. The best way to resolve the current unpleasant and unnecessary misunderstanding is to see the project as a regional project that generates electricity for the entire riparian states, provides well-regulated water for multi-purpose use to downstream countries and improves the quality of life of millions in the basin. As clearly indicated by Ethiopia’s prime minister and minister of water resources and energy, Ethiopia has no wish or harbors any ill-will towards the peoples of the Sudan and Egypt and would in no way jeopardize the capacity of the lower riparian states to meet their national developmental objectives and goals. The Sudanese minister of water clearly dispelled the notion that the dam will have negative repercussions on his country’s development. Egypt should listen to its southern neighbor earnestly and act responsibly rather than engage in fruitless accusation and misrepresentation of ground realities. The disinformation campaign on the process of the negotiation and the technical realities associated with all aspects of the dam is counterproductive to the resolution of the current misunderstanding and the future management of the upstream and downstream management of the water of the Blue Nile.
On a people to people basis, the longstanding relationship between Ethiopia and the lower basin countries is written in a bond of amity and reciprocity lasting thousands of years. No well-meaning Ethiopian will have the heart to harm neither the peoples of the Sudan nor Egypt by embarking upon a deliberate policy of development that will have significant negative repercussions on their livelihoods. We also think that no Sudanese or Egyptian will willfully work towards creating bottlenecks against the realization of the Ethiopia’s developmental objectives and goals. The Sudanese and Egyptian peoples have hosted thousands of Ethiopians in their times of political and economic stress. Let us not dampen it with inconsequential posturing and political brinksmanship. The problems of poor access to electricity, water, sanitation services and the perennial challenges of food insecurity are real and have significant quality of life implications in Ethiopia.
Finally, I would like to cite the experience of the US in its Colorado river basin as an example of the positive ramifications of system-wide thinking in the development of the water of a regional character. The construction of the 221 meters (726ft) high and 6.5 million-ton concrete Hoover Dam over the 2,414kms long river in the 1930s created the then world’s largest reservoir in Lake Mead. Its construction ushered a new cycle of dam building upstream and downstream that benefitted millions of people in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California. More that 20 smaller, medium and large-scale dams were built for energy production, irrigation, water supply, fishing, recreation, tourism and wildlife conservation bringing region-wide prosperity for all (G. A Klee, 1991, p.110). Notwithstanding Mexico’s displeasure at the intensity of US water capture and some of its environmental externalities, the project was largely a successful management of the waters of the Colorado basin. Ethiopia’s prudent approach of generating only electricity from the largest dam in Africa should be appreciated by downstream countries. Ethiopia had never posed any threat or created any diplomatic fuss over the building of the high Aswan dam in Egypt or the Roseries dam in the Sudan. I call upon the leadership and peoples of the concerned countries to desist from the politicization of a key regional project by bringing in external forces into the negotiation. Let us cap the unnecessary bickering over inconsequential issues by charting out a long-term collective water management strategy for the entire basin. The phase one filling of the dam went without creating a stir because it was technically a non-issue in the first place. Subsequent fillings will be made without any significant repercussions on either Sudan or Egypt. Let us collectively seize the moment and re-engineer our discourses on scientific analysis of possibilities rather than allow ourselves to be guided by emotive and unrealistic assumptions and expectations.
Tadesse Kidane Mariam, Ph.D. is Emeritus A/Professor at Edinboro University of PA
TO “B” OR NOT TO “b”: A Question of Identity
“What a thing to be both unique and familiar and still unlike any other. Lead or be led astray. Follow your light or lose it. You can’t wear a crown with your head down…the question is who are you?” Beyonce, Black Is King.
In 2015 Lori L. Tharps, a journalism lecturer at Temple University wrote, “Black with a capital ‘B’ refers to a group of people whose ancestors were born in Africa, were brought to the United States against their will, spilled their blood, sweat and tears to build this nation into a world power and along the way managed to create glorious works of art, passionate music, scientific discoveries, a marvelous cuisine, and untold literary masterpieces.” Pan Africanist and a founder of the American organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), W.E.B. Dubois, lobbied in the 1920’s for Negro, rather than negro, stating emphatically, “Eight million Americans are entitled to a capital letter.” Ground rules of anglophone grammar states “proper nouns” are to be capitalized, such as the names of people and places; and in the case of Black for a people, it shows respect and recognition. Both argued that capitalization does matter.
Now, some unfamiliar with my ‘connect the dots’ style may not think this is relevant to Africa and particularly Ethiopia where the notion of identifying through color is a no-no. So here we go back in time. In the 1600’s European scientists including German Bernhard Varen, English John Ray and French Francois Bernier categorized humans based on “biological definition of species”. By the 1700’s and thereafter these “scientific” definitions were massaged to justify the heinous act of slavery and subsequent race-based theories which relegated Blacks to sub-human status with therefore no need to consider their human rights much less economic or social well-being. One of these commonly used names was Negro, literally the root word for the color black in Spanish and Portuguese. By the late 1800’s, when Emperor Menelik II had defeated the Italians at the Battle of Adowa, and during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I, who defeat the invading Italians again in the mid 1900’s, Negroe was the accepted lingua franca for Black folks, honed by White folks.
For Ethiopians, identity had not been coopted by colonizers and hence their basic right to self-determination and cultural sovereignty and identity remained intact. This is why I argue that the stories which circulate periodically, peddling politically motivated propaganda that both Emperors Menelik II and Haile Selassie I denied being Black, are false. Their reported declarations in response to being asked if they were Negroes was a resounding No. If indeed this is true, I argue that to answer NO, in the aforementioned context, is correct. The denial of being labeled as Negro speaks to a strong sense of identity as Ethiopia was a sovereign empire, not identifying with such branding, notwithstanding local references such as k’eyi, tayim and ye k’eyi dama describing the range of hues dotting the diverse and noble nation. They were Ethiopians, bekka. (Factoid, the word Ethiopia is said to be rooted in Greco-Roman epigraph as early as c. 800, a compound word meaning “burnt face”.) Point being, it is curious that currently some well-learnt and well-spoken Ethiopians can push such nonsense about both Emperors whose victories over foreign powers fueled the Pan African Movement. Specifically, the Rastafari Movement embraced and emphasized Ethiopia as a beacon of light, inspiring Black pride for Black People at home and abroad, what has evolved into the Black Lives Matter Movement.
The nexus between Ethiopia and Black with capital B is identity; it’s the desire to protect legacy, culture, language, spirituality, food, dress, music, hairstyles; its love, hope and determination. The capital B reminds us that the millions of Africans ripped from the continent and displaced in the Diaspora, whose names and tongues were taken away, never stopped being Black, code for African, grasping at what genetic memory could provide augmented with good ole “African ingenuity” aka “n%#*@r riggin” to survive. The nomenclature, Ethiopia, reminds us that all Nations of this ubiquitous land rallied for millennia to protect the all-encompassing identity; preserving the precious dynamic heritage for generations to come.
Mahmud Ahmed sings in Ethiopia Hagere, loosely translated and sung by several generations, “…I am proud of you, I can’t take your name from my mouth, the word itself is sweet like honey to my mouth that’s why I always call your name. Our beautiful country that we are proud of, you are more than anything else, where you come from is a deep source…you are my world…we grew up on your soil and we are beautiful, we are your fruit and we continue to give fruit…Ethiopia hagere…Ethiopia my country…”. This same love and delight is expressed present day in Beyonce’s Black Is King visual album released this week and touted as a “… a celebration of blackness, a love letter to Africa… an ambitious attempt to spiritually connect African diaspora worldwide to their ancestral homeland.” Lady Bey voices the trailer on youtube, a gripping journey through time, yesterday, today and tomorrow; connecting space and heritage through ancient and futuristic African images, glorifying the strength and resilience of Blackness. “What a thing to be both unique and familiar and still unlike any other. Lead or be led astray. Follow your light or lose it. You can’t wear a crown with your head down…the question is who are you?” Take it from Beyonce’, Black Is King… with a capital B.
Dr. Desta Meghoo is a Jamaican born
Creative Consultant, Curator and cultural promoter based in Ethiopia since 2005. She also serves as Liaison to the AU for the Ghana based, Diaspora African Forum.
Too little too late
Ever since the Corona virus began hitting the nation, measures were put in place to curb the menace, which seemed to be effective. From the health perspective, the caseload remained low for a long time and I believe, much credit is due to the measures taken at Bole International Airport and related quarantine directives.
We were thus able to prevent the virus entering into the country to a certain extend. However, it eventually found enough ground to cause an exponential increase in the caseload, especially over the past month or so and the end is not insight. With people crowding around markets and bus stations for example, there is no stopping the virus from spreading anymore. Remember what happened during the Easter holidays. And then the unfortunate political unrest created only more fertile ground for the virus to strengthen its grip on our society.
COVID-19 however bites much deeper into society than the health sector alone. As in all countries, the economy suffers heavily with companies, big and small, loosing business, seeing their earnings go down and reserves evaporate, while informal workers and the self-employed are losing their jobs and income.
The Government was quick to think about measures to be taken to curb the impact of COVID-19, both from a health and economic perspective, including the following:
On April 30, the Council of Ministers approved a set of economic measures to support firms and employment, like forgiveness of all tax debt prior to 2014/2015, a tax amnesty on interest and penalties for tax debt pertaining to 2015/2016-2018/2019, and exemption from personal income tax withholding for 4 months for firms who keep paying employee salaries despite not being able to operate due to Covid-19.
The Central Bank has provided 15 billion Birr (0.45 percent of GDP) of additional liquidity to private banks to facilitate debt restructuring and prevent bankruptcies. It has also provided 33 billion Birr of additional liquidity to the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
Such measures raised hopes for business owners and investors that they would receive much required support to keep their business heads above the water. After all, laying off employees because of COVID-19, is prohibited, while income has dwindled, and recurrent costs and loans taken out to develop the business have to be paid.
However, from what I learn and observe, the high-level measures and directives don’t seem to trickle down to the ground. Business owners are forced to continue to pay the income tax for their workers and some private banks fail to support their business clients as directed. Three months down the road many SMEs have landed in dire straits indeed. Why forcing business owners to continue paying income tax for their workers, who in fact do not even work? And what is the use of offering new low interest loans, while demanding that outstanding loan payments have to be serviced first? The fact that payments cannot be made is exactly the reason for applying for additional credit!
Admittedly, banks have taken some initiatives to support business, like waiving some service charges, and lowering the interest rate for certain sectors. However, these efforts fall far short of what businesses need. Banks are in my opinion rather untransparent in any case when it comes to providing information about the services they render. Clients have no way to make easy comparisons between banks and inform themselves about services they are looking for. In other countries online information is available and accessible for all to see and decide which bank to talk to first. And when asked about the above described COVID-19 supportive measures, bank and branch managers have responded to clients that they are not aware. How is that even possible and what confidence does that create that the bank is there to provide support and services to its clients?
These are trying times, both for the country’s health sector and the economy, the consequences of which cannot be mitigated or solved by the Government alone. Instead we need an effective and coordinated mitigation plan of both the public and the private sector. We need to see effective cooperation and take proactive measures before things are out of hand. Banks should play a pivotal role here, be creative in finding solutions to help business not to go bankrupt but provide light at the end of this tunnel and hope to recover from the crisis they are in. The Council of Ministers and the Central Bank have opened the door; it is up to the tax authority and private banks to take their responsibility now and apply solutions in the public and national interest, not only their own. The business community have kept their workers on the payroll while allowing many of them to stay home. It is unfair not to support them as directed. Otherwise it will simply be too little too late for many.
Ton Haverkort
