UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 152
Week of: Sunday, 13th May, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 17th May, 2007
Topical Issue(s):
• UN Radio

• A brief lull in the violence-torn Somali capital of Mogadishu has been broken with the killing of four African Union peacekeepers. This happened as thousands of displaced people are still unable to return to their homes because of insecurity.

• On the occasion of World Telecommunications and Information Society Day, UN Information Centres in Sub-Saharan Africa launch websites to provide more information about the UN. The head of Pretoria UNIC, Margaret Novicki says this is to enable local people to get information about the work of the UN.

• The head of UN-Habitat, Anna Tibaijuka says the rate of urbanization is fastest in Africa. At the moment, 37 per cent of the continent is urban and the rate of urbanization is around four per cent per year. By 2030, Africa will cease to be a rural continent.

Producer/presenter: Derrick Mbatha
Editor/co-producer: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Production Assistants: Charles Appel
Studio Engineer: Zach Prewitt
Duration: 15’00”

RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.

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PRESENTER:

Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I’m Derrick Mbatha.

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PRESENTER:

In today’s programme, insecurity in Mogadishu discourages Somalis from returning to their homes.
CLIP 1: WILLIAM SPINDLER
“Our staff in the Somali capital report that people are only returning to those parts of the city which were not involved in the fighting.”

PRESENTER:

You will hear more on that in a moment. Also in this edition, United Nations Information Centres in Sub-Saharan Africa launch websites to bring the United Nations message to local communities.
And later in the programme, the head of UN- Habitat says Africa is urbanizing at a very fast pace.
CLIP 2: ANNA TIBAIJUKA

“By 2030 Africa will cease to be a rural continent. So we shall have homo urbanus Africanus.”

You will hear more from Anna Tibaijuka later in the programme.

So stay tuned to UN and Africa.

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PRESENTER:

Insecurity in Mogadishu Discourages People From Returning Home

PRESENTER;

A brief lull in the violence-torn Somali capital of Mogadishu was this week broken by the killing of four African Union peacekeepers. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall strongly condemned the attacks by unidentified assailants which left other African peacekeepers injured. This happened as thousands of displaced people are still unable to return to their homes because of insecurity. Insecurity in Mogadishu was experienced by none other than the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes himself when he visited the city last weekend. UN Radio’s Ransford Cline-Thomas reports.
NARRATOR:
The man in charge of United Nations relief operations, John Holmes had originally planned to spend two days in Mogadishu. But on the first day of his visit on Saturday, a bomb exploded approximately two hundred meters away from where he was, prompting him to cut short his visit. Mr. Holmes is the first Under Secretary-General to visit Somalia in fourteen years, to see first hand the devastation that’s been caused by conflict in Mogadishu. According to United Nations spokeswoman, Michele Montas, although the Mr. Holmes had to cancel plans for a second day in Somalia, he managed to discuss the situation in Somalia with the country’s political leaders while he was there.
CUT 1: MICHELE MONTAS

In discussions with President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, Holmes did have the opportunity to stress that the Transitional Federal Government needed to provide a more enabling operating environment for aid workers.
Holmes also raised his concerns over human rights abuses in the country, and received reassurances from the TFG that it would let High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour visit Somalia.

NARRATOR:
It is still not clear who placed the bomb that forced the Emergency Relief Coordinator to cut short his visit to Mogadishu. The Special Representative for the Secretary-General for Somalia, François Lonseny Fall, suspects that there was a political message behind the explosion, probably from the insurgents who have been driven out of Mogadishu by Somali forces supported by Ethiopian troops.
CUT 2: FRANCOIS LONSENY FALL
We believe that those who committed that bombing wanted to indicate their presence in Mogadishu and maybe to say that Mogadishu is not completely in the hands of the Transitional Federal Government.

NARRATOR:

Mr. Fall says the international community is ready to continue to encourage the Somalis to discuss genuine reconciliation and work for the security of Mogadishu. The recent fighting in the Somali capital has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. And according to the spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, William Spindler, some of the displaced people are gradually returning to certain areas of Mogadishu.
CUT 3: WILLIAM SPINDLER
Our staff in the Somali capital report that people are only returning to those parts of the city which were not involved in the fighting. At the same time, families who used to live in neighbourhoods affected by the fighting are still reluctant to go back, mainly because of the reported presence of soldiers from the Transitional Federal Government and allied Ethiopian troops.

NARRATOR:

The United Nations refugee agency says that other former residents have not been able to return to their homes because their houses were destroyed by mortar shelling or simply because of continued insecurity. In addition to that, some people who were living in what used to be public buildings such as ministries or police stations are now unable to go back to those buildings because the transitional federal government has ordered the people to vacate these buildings. Added to these difficulties is the fact that relief agencies are still not able to reach all the people who need assistance in Mogadishu. Reporting for UN and Africa, I am Ransford Cline-Thomas.
STING UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC

UNICs in Sub-Saharan Africa Launch Websites

United Nations Information Centres in Sub Saharan Africa have launched their websites to enable people to have access to information about the world organization and its activities. The sixteen UNICs, as the centres are known, launched their websites on World Telecommunication and Information World Society Day, which is observed on the 17th of May. UN Radio’s Yasmin Soliman spoke on the line to Pretoria, South Africa, with Margaret Novicki, the head of the Information Centre there. Ms. Novicki said the launch is the result of a project that has been going on for more than a year to develop these websites.
PRESENTER:

And we thought with this project being completed, it was a very good day to launch them on the World Information Society Day because, as you know, it’s a day that we look to focus attention on the expansion of information and communication technologies around the world, and especially in developing countries.

And in developing countries, what’s your main objective and why developing countries in particular?

Well, most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are developing countries and, as you know, there is what we call a digital divide between the developed world and the developing world in terms of access to information and communication technology. And in Africa, I think this is very important because we have the digital divide which exists here in Africa, but also more and more and more people are getting access to the Internet and we feel that the Internet is a very good way to get out information on the work of the United Nations at a local level.

And you are coordinating with other UN Information Centres in launching these websites?

Yes we are officially launching all of the websites today on World Information Society Day. A number of UNICs around Sub-Saharan Africa are having local launches to introduce their websites to their local constituencies, to their local communities, to the media, to students and to other interested stakeholders. And we really hope that through our UN Information Centre offices around the continent, the people will have access to our new websites by coming into the UN Information Centres in their capital cities. In many of our UNICs we have libraries that actually have Internet facilities that are open to the public to come and look at UN content and UN information on the web.

Now, how often are you going to update the websites because it’s one thing to launch a website but quite another to ensure that it’s updated all the time so that visitors get fresh information?

Absolutely. We hope to have our websites updated almost everyday if not everyday. And this brings in the role of UNIC Pretoria. UNIC Pretoria has a web master that is here to help serve all the UNICs in Sub-Saharan Africa and in terms of being responsible for the ongoing maintenance and updating of the sites.

And who is going to benefit from these websites?

Any user will benefit from our websites but we are really gearing our websites towards our communities in the countries that our UN Information Centres serve. We really would like our local constituencies, whether they are students, whether they are young people, whether they are communities, whether they are the media, government, all our stakeholders and partners, NGOs, civil society. We want them to hook into, look at our websites to able to see what the UN is doing in their communities and also what the UN is doing at the global level.

Also, how do South Africans who don’t have access to computers get information about the United Nations?

Well, exactly. The use of the Internet is expanding really rapidly across Africa. Of course, not everyone has access to a computer or has access to the Internet. But what we find a growing phenomenon in many communities are Internet cafes that you find springing up all over the place. And people are able to go into an Internet café and utilize that Internet at very very low cost in most cases. Also, if they can’t do that, they are welcome to come to the UN Information Centre offices and utilize the Internet in our UN UNIC libraries. And we hope as times goes on that the Internet is going to become more and more accessible to people across the continent.

PRESENTER:

That was Margaret Novicki, the head of the United Nations Information Centre in Pretoria, speaking with UN Radios Yasmin Soliman.

STING UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC

Head of UN Habitat Says Africa Is Urbanizing Rapidly

PRESENTER:

More and more people are moving away from rural areas to settle in urban areas for the simple reason that many societies are no longer dependent on agriculture. People are going to settle in cities and towns for a number of reasons, including the difficulties they encounter as they try to eke out a living in rural areas. The head of UN-Habitat, that is the Untied Nations Human Settlements Programme, Anna Tibaijuka says that, in fact, this year is going to witness a decisive transformation of human beings into an urban species. Using Latin or anthropological terms, she told reporters at UN headquarters recently that Homo sapiens will become Homo urbanus. I caught up with Mrs. Tibaijuka, who told me that in Africa, the pace of urbanization is even faster.
Africa is at the moment thirty seven per cent urban. As we speak now, thirty seven percent of Africans are already living in cities and towns. But the rate of urbanization and therefore demographic transition is fastest in Africa. The continent is urbanization at around four per cent per annum. And by 2030 Africa will cease to be a rural continent. So we shall have homo urbanus Africanus.

Why is urbanization happening so rapidly on the African continent?

Yes. The simple reason is that with the economic progress, people move out of agriculture because agriculture’s productivity always rises faster than in industries and in services. That’s number one. But now you can have what we call the accelerated factors which then promote premature urbanization, which is problematic urbanization as is actually happening in Africa. So you have push factors, like we talked about climate change and deteriorating soil conditions. Rural poverty can become a push factor. For example, now the Sahel environmental deterioration has been quite considerable and farmers cannot just make the ends meet. So they move to the cities. But there is also another factor in Africa, conflicts. Whether you are talking about Somalia, or Darfur, or you name it, Congo, all these conflicts take place mostly in the countryside, and people flock to cities as they are looking for safety and security.

How prepared are African cities and towns to absorb these people?

Well, I must say that they are actually ill-prepared if at all, because as we speak now, 72 per cent of the African urban population is living in unplanned and informal settlements: slums. When you have 72 per cent of the people living in slums, how do you provide for health, for education? How do you maintain law and order? These are serious challenges facing the continent.

And what is being done by local, national governments to address these problems?

First of all we need to have a partnership, a compact with the urban poor. These people have arrived for legitimate reasons I listed. And they are there to stay. The best thing is to cope with urbanization. But having said this, my agency also is helping the government, working together with government also to promote what we call balanced and territorial development so that people don’t all end up in one big capital city. If I take the case, for example of Lagos, Lagos is one of the largest cities in the world. It’s a mega city with more than ten million people. And what is more, by 2015, Lagos will be the third largest city in the world. That’s a big challenge.

So when you are talking about this balanced kind of development are you saying that you invest in these big cities as well as in, let’s say neighbourhoods in rural areas?

First of all you need a network of infrastructure which connects settlements, urban centres but of different sizes so that this way then you can promote trade and specialization in different production, including in agriculture. If you go into many African cities and towns you will find all these people, vegetables farmers on the highways. These people have not given up farming as an occupation. But nobody is buying their spinach and cabbages where they are. So they come to farm the highway. That’s why it is important to focus on infrastructure and agricultural marketing.

PRESENTER

That was Anna Tibaijuka, the head of UN-Habitat, a United Nations agency dealing with housing.
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PRESENTER:
And that’s all for this edition of UN and Africa. Our Production Assistant was Charles Appel and our sound engineer was Zach Pruwitt. I am Derrick Mbatha saying bye bye.

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