Kenya’s Maasai warriors are known for being fearless lion killers but times have changed and the country’s lion’s population is in danger of being wiped out. Now the Maasai in southern Kenya are taking part in an initiative to preserve the big cats.

For thousands of years the Maasai co-existed with huge herds of wildlife. Their lion-killing rituals kept down the number of lions preying on the game while their fearsome reputation as warriors kept the herds safe from other humans. The result, Kenya’s wildlife heritage is a wonder of the modern world.

But Kenya’s lions, a huge tourist attraction, are being decimated. From tens of thousands, only around 2,000 survive.

Lion researcher Amy Howard told Reuters Africa Journal that Maasai are now being recruited as Lion Guardians: “The problems are that these lions are coming into bomas, they’re attacking livestock, goats and cows and the communities are getting angry about this. In the past they used to go out on hunting parties and try and kill the lions in revenge and also as a rite of passage for the warriors.

“So what we are doing is we are employing warriors here to conserve the lions. They go out and track them and tell their communities where they are so they know not to herd there. So we’re tying to reduce the amount of conflict that we’re getting between the livestock and lions.”

Lion Guardians use an electronic device that will help them track a dozen or so lions that they and the researchers have been able to collar.

The Guardians often walk huge distances to pinpoint the exact location of the collared lions. But while the tracking device helps them locate collared lions, uncollared lions still require traditional tracking skills.

The Lion Guardians work alongside other conservation efforts in the area. The Maasailand Preservation Trust oversees a programme that compensates herders when they lose livestock to lions, hyenas and other predators.

But not everyone is happy, as cattle owner Solomon Lotobulua explains: “We are told to simply watch when lions attack our animals, that we would be compensated. The agreement we reached was that for one cow attacked we would be paid $200. But now we’re only paid $160. So we are saying that unless things change, by the end of the year, we will chase away the lion projects.”

The Maasai are in a difficult position, caught between the need to conserve Kenya’s wildlife and a historical animosity towards anything that might kill their cattle. But as Lion Guardians they are helping their community reclaim a place at the centre of Kenya’s conservation efforts.

So, is it now inevitable that Sudan’s oil-producing south will decide to split away from the north as an independent country in a looming secession referendum in 2011?

That was the conclusion of some observers of a bluntly worded exchange of views between two leading lights from the north and the south at a symposium in Khartoum on Tuesday.

Sudan’s Muslim north fought a two decade civil war with southerners, most of them Christians and followers of traditional beliefs. The 2005 peace deal that ended that conflict set up a north/south coalition government and promised a referendum on southern secession.

Sudan’s foreign minister Deng Alor told journalists at the symposium most of his fellow southerners, embittered by decades of northern oppression and imposed Islamic values, “overwhelmingly” wanted independence. Only a miracle would change their minds, he said, going on to appeal for a “peaceful divorce” should the south choose to split.

Two days earlier, southern president Salva Kiir shocked many when he openly told a cathedral congregation they should choose independence if they wanted to be free and unity if they wanted to be “second class” in their own country.

Powerful northern presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin countered on Tuesday by accusing southerners of paranoia, “living in victimhood” and mismanaging their own semi-autonomous region.
The comments were unusually blunt and personal for such a public venue. To many, their tone was a bitter reminder of the rhetoric routinely thrown around before the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Sudan commentator Alex de Waal wrote on his blog that many of the comments echoed what had been said in earlier closed sessions in the U.N. sponsored conference.

“During the earlier sessions of the symposium, the same theme was repeatedly made: Sudan is entering its last days as a single nation. Among the northerners, there was immense regret, but also acceptance of the inevitability of the split. One well-known Islamist said that secession was coming and the important thing was to make it smooth.”

Managing a smooth secession would be a huge task for northerners and southerners weighed down by decades of mistrust and bitter grievance, poisoned by ethnic and religious divisions.

There are many good reasons for them to want a peaceful divorce, beyond avoiding another bloody conflict.

The biggest factor is that they both need each other when it comes to oil — the south has most of the country’s proven oil reserves while the north currently has the refineries and the pipeline routes to the sea.

But any managed separation needs planning, and plenty of it. So far there has been no sign that the two sides have got together for any kind of strategising on the implications of separation after the referendum.

The head of the U.N. in Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, tried to accentuate the positive when he summed up Tuesday’s discussions, saying both sides remained committed to the ideal of unity.

But there was a telling slip as he finished his summation.

“We are still at a moment of hope. And I believe that the leadership of the two countries which have ensured that the peace is maintained, that the ceasefire has not broken down, during the period of the CPA, they have already shown that responsibility. They can rise to the challenge even now.”

On the evening of the 20th of March 1878, Ethiopia’s two great rivals, Emperors Yohannes IV and Menelik II, came face-to-face to thrash out their differences.

As the two men met for the first time, traditional Ethiopian singers are said to have sang “A road that is perilous is far / you have to climb and then descend.”

Ethiopia’s journey since then has certainly been perilous.

It has been marked by great heights like the defeat of Italy’s colonialist army at the battle of Adwa in 1895. And devastating lows such as the 1984 famine that killed more than 1 million people and brought the country long-lasting notoriety.

The huge nation is again heading into interesting times.

This week the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi agreed a code of conduct for next May’s national elections with three opposition parties — two of which are dismissed by opponents as ruling party satellites.

But the biggest opposition force, a coalition of eight parties called Medrek (the Forum), did not participate in the negotiations despite repeated invitations.
 
Medrek said issues including reform of the national electoral board and access to the media were left out. But some Ethiopians suspect that opposition leaders just can’t stand the thought of sitting down with government negotiators.

And a lot of the opposition parties seem to despise each other, too.
 
Ethiopian politicians love to talk about democracy. It’s presented as the ultimate political goal for a country that has never had a peaceful transition of power.
 
The government talks about democracy. But is routinely accused of harassment and intimidation. Opposition parties talk about democracy. But most of them won’t even try to talk to those in power about how to make it a reality.
 
And they all disagree on how close they are to finally achieving it.
 
“Ethiopia believes it is an emerging democracy,” the government’s head of information Bereket Simon told me this week. “We cannot say we have perfect governance yet. But, on balance, we are moving forward.”
 
Yet the opposition says there is no democracy at all and accuses the government of using the code of conduct negotiations to hoodwink the West — on which it still relies for huge amounts of humanitarian aid.

Ethiopia’s last national elections in 2005 ended in disaster when a previous opposition coalition said the government fixed its victory and street violence broke out in the capital Addis Ababa in which almost 200 protesters were killed.

Many Ethiopians tell me they were so disheartened by that experience that they have lost interest in voting. 2005 also entrenched extremism on both sides.
 
Some diplomats in Addis Ababa are putting pressure on Medrek to talk to the government, telling its leaders they believe Meles is acting in good faith.
 
And the government says Medrek can still get involved in ongoing talks.
 
So, no matter how bitter the rivalry, why haven’t Ethiopia’s main powerbrokers today been able to talk to each other as happened more than a century ago?

Who’s right about how close Ethiopia is to democracy? How can a poor country secure a prosperous future? What are the solutions? Is democracy even one of them?

Africans living in the United States are twice as likely to graduate from college as the average American.

These African students often come from families who value education as a way to get on in life and place a high value on working and studying hard.

Sara Tsegaye, a straight-A student at UCLA, is one example of that success. Her parents fled Ethiopia in the late 1980s, first to Sudan and then, when Sara was one year old, they moved to San Jose, California.

Sara’s father works on a mobile ice cream truck in San Jose and her mother used to be a factory worker before she got laid off.

“We manage to pay for school because I’ve been working since I was 11,” Sara told Reuters Africa Journal. “I’ve been working with my dad on his ice cream truck, he’s been paying me and I’ve been saving the money. Also I had two jobs in high school and I saved up a lot of money. I understand the value of money.”

Sara wants to work with an NGO or a non-profit organisation after she graduates. She wants to travel and she wants to make a difference in the world. Other African students say they want to go home once they get a bit of experience in their careers.

But Africa is suffering from a massive brain drain just now and it’s questionable whether enough of those highly motivated students from America will return home in large enough numbers to really make a difference.

 
Activists often say that the world is not paying enough attention to Sudan’s Darfur crisis. But could the opposite be true — that Darfur is actually getting too much attention, from too many organisations, all at the same time?

A rough count shows at least 10 international and local initiatives searching for a solution to the region’s festering conflict. Many of them are at least nominally coordinated by the United Nation and the African Union. But with so many parallel programmes in play, the opportunities for duplication, competition and confusion are legion.

Top of the bill on the international stage is the double act between the United Nations and the African Union. Their joint Darfur mediator — Burkina Faso’s low-profile former security minister Djibril Bassole — spends much of his time shuttling between capitals, holding closed-session discussions with rebels, regional powers, Darfuri intellectuals and civilian groups.

The most high-profile initiative is a project launched at the Arab League for peace talks between Sudan’s government and rebels hosted in Qatar. Those talks, currently stalled, are hosted “in coordination” with Bassole but their have their own separate identity — Qatar has made its own statements and has held its own meetings with rebels.

During one crowded fortnight in August, both Libya and the United States held separate meetings with different sets of rebel splinter groups, urging them to reunite ahead of talks, with mixed results.

The Obama administration has since formalised its approach to Darfur with a new Sudan policy — although it did not go into details on which carrots and sticks its Sudan envoy Scott Gration would be able to offer Khartoum and Darfur’s rebels.

Egypt has held and hosted meetings with Darfur rebels and other major players. Russia, which says it wants to rebuild its influence in Africa, has appointed a Sudan envoy, and held a two-day symposium on Darfur earlier this month. China also has a Sudan envoy but has so far, mercifully, held back from organising its own conferences.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki led a panel of African dignitaries around Darfur and produced a report packed with recommendations for the region. A group of veteran politicians formed by Nelson Mandela called The Elders have kept a watching brief in Darfur since their first visit there in 2007 and have continued to release statements and reports.

Inside Sudan, the Khartoum regime has trumpeted its Sudan People’s Initiative, a mass congress of political parties, civil society groups (but no rebels) that met in November 2008 to recommend a set of solutions to the crisis.

The south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) joined forces with opposition parties in September to release a Juba Declaration - a blueprint to solve Sudan’s ills including its own Darfur plan.

And that isn’t even counting the various Darfur peace plans and campaigns launched by mainly U.S.-based activists from Save Darfur and other coalitions - or the push for prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.

Cynics might say Khartoum and some of its key negotiating partners have an interest in encouraging the multiplication of Darfur’s peace efforts.

Each new initiative creates another set of meetings, another set of processes, another collection of excuses to delay making the hard decisions that will end the conflict.

Regional powers may also be competing for influence in Sudan, an oil producer and Africa’s largest country. “There has been a lack of a single clear strategy on Darfur so everyone is poking their nose in, trying to gain influence in Sudan,” said Al-Tahir al-Feki, a senior official with Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.

Only one thing is clear. When the Darfur crisis is finally resolved and the Nobel Committee comes to hand out its peace prize to the organisations responsible for sealing the deal, there could be a crowded podium.

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI with African bishops in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 4  Oct 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

Roman Catholic bishops called on corrupt Catholic leaders in Africa on Friday to repent or resign for giving the continent and the Church a bad name. Around 200 African bishops, along with dozens of other bishops and Africa experts, also accused multinational companies in Africa of "crimes against humanity" and urged Africans to beware of "surreptitious" attempts by international organizations to destroy traditional African values.

Their three-week synod, which ends formally on Sunday with a Mass by Pope Benedict, covered a range of Africa's problems, such as AIDS, corruption, poverty, development aspirations and crime. But it had a very direct message for corrupt African leaders who were raised Catholics.

"Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name."

The message did not name any leaders. The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola's President Eduardo dos Santos. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

In a section on AIDS, the bishops' message repeated the Church position that the spread of the disease could not be stopped by the use of condoms alone. Last March, on his way to his first trip to Africa, the pope caused an international storm by saying that the use of condoms could actually worsen the spread of AIDS.

Read the whole story here.

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(Updates after Parreira appointed)

Joel Santana arrived for what he thought was a routine review of his work with his South African Football Association bosses on Monday and within hours was packing his bags for a return to Brazil, ending his tenure as the 15th coach employed by South Africa in the last 17 years.

The run of poor results in recent internationals plus last year's early elimination from the African Nations Cup qualifiers, had left Bafana Bafana in deep crisis, a team without any confidence or direction and running out of time before hosting the 2010 World Cup finals.

Santana had done himself few favours, first with his inability to learn passable English even after 18 months in the country and secondly his glib answers to increasingly concerned questions about the progress of the team. His side have looked listless and without direction in recent matches.

Santana was the second coach in the country's Brazilian experiment, following Carlos Alberto Parreira as South Africa turned to the land of the five-time word champions for the expertise to mould their 2010 team.

Parreira has now returned to the job. He quit in April 2008 after his wife was found to have cancer. She has since recovered and he had indicated over the last days he would be interested in returning to the job.

There was, however, a clamour for a local coach to take over, with popular sentiment believing the experiment with foreign coaches has failed. In the past the deluge of callers to phone-in shows on radio and TV has influenced the decision of SAFA, which makes for a potentially dangerous decision-making.

The issue of Santana's successor was discussed on Friday by the association's leadership and Parreira will be in charge for the next internationals at home to Japan and Jamaica in mid-November. He will have six months to resurrect the country's hopes of at least making it past the first round.

PHOTO: Carlos Alberto Parreira reacts during a match against Swaziland at Ellis Park in Johannesburg March 13, 2007. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

It has now been 25 years since more than 1 million Ethiopians died as those of us lucky enough to live in the rich world sat transfixed in front of our television screens. The horrible suffering brought with it the biggest outpouring of charity ever seen as governments and ordinary people dug deep to stop it.

But a quarter of a century on foreigners are still feeding a huge number of Ethiopians. The Ethiopian government says poor rains mean 6.2 million of its people need food aid this year and has asked the international community to provide it.

Another 7 million hungry people are on a government-run but foreign-funded scheme that gives food in exchange for work, which means more than 13 million of the country’s 83 million people rely on foreign handouts to survive.

Aid agency Oxfam is now saying that food aid is trapping Ethiopia in a cycle of dependence on the West and that donations could be better spent.

In the valleys of northern Ethiopia much has changed since 1984 when hundreds of thousands of dying people streamed down from the hills desperate for food.

Chinese engineers in huge trucks hurtle down newly built roads financed by their government and children now flow from the hills on the way to school.

Ethiopians say they are sick of their image as a people beset by famine and war and point to foreign investors showing growing interest in their country.

This week I travelled to a small village called Abay where Oxfam and Ethiopian NGO Orda are trying to help the locals become independent of food aid so that, when a drought hits, they will be able to survive without charity.

Men worked fields rich with wheat, young boys threshed barley for a local brewery and women had set up self-help groups and were giving out loans so their members could buy the five sheep necessary to start a breeding business.

The area looked prosperous and the people said they felt more pride now.

A growing number of aid experts — many of them African — say that if more money was spent on schemes like this, rather than on food, then Ethiopians and other Africans dependent on food aid could eventually wean themselves off it.

“I am 100 percent confident that day will come,” one farmer told me, standing in his impressive field of wheat. “Begging is a shameful practice for Ethiopia.”

So is food aid making Africans dependent? Is it time donor countries cut back on it? Should more money be spent on helping people become self-sufficient? Could foreign direct investment improve things? Or is there another answer?

One day this year, in all probability, the “billionth African” will have been born, a milestone that will only benefit the poorest continent if it can get its act together and unify its piecemeal markets.
   Nobody knows, of course, when or where in its 53 countries the child arrived to push Africa’s population into ten figures.
   The U.N. merely estimates that in mid-2008 there were 987 million people, and in mid-2009, 1,010 million.
   Given the difficulties of obtaining accurate data from the likes of Nigeria, where provincial population figures are often hostage to the ambitions of local politicians, or any data at all from the likes of Somalia, experts are reluctant to hazard any greater degree of accuracy.
   There is less doubt, however, about the underlying trend — that Africa’s population is set to grow faster than in any other part of the world in the coming decades, and to double by 2050.
   To some, the statistics from the U.N.’s population division will invite comparisons to the Asian giants, and inspire hopes of a flood of investment from Africans and outsiders to meet the needs of a continent likely to be home to one in five people by the middle of this century.
   By contrast, China’s projected population of 1.4 billion in 40 years will be shrinking, while India will only be adding an annual 3 million to its 1.6 billion people.
   To others, the numbers are stark reminders of the mammoth task Africa’s leaders face in providing the food, jobs, schools, housing and healthcare that are still so sorely lacking.
   UNFPA, the U.N.’s population arm, summarises by saying that sub-Saharan Africa faces “serious political, economic and social challenges” and points to the last two decades as evidence that more people does not mean more wealth.
   “Twenty years of almost three percent annual population growth has outpaced economic gains, leaving Africans, on average, 22 percent poorer than they were in the mid-1970s,” it says.
    Are Africa’s leaders ready and willing to create the truly unified common market needed to boost investment, trade and economic growth, or are short-term national interests likely to prevail, consigning Africa to a century of overpopulated poverty?

On Monday U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration announced its new Sudan policy after months of speculation and lobbying from those opposed to any positive overtures to Khartoum and those who said further isolating Sudan would derail years of peace efforts.

U.S.-Sudanese relations have seen many ups and down in recent years. U.S. sanctions were imposed in 1997 and the United States bombed a Sudanese pharmaceuticals factory in 1998. There was praise for a 2005 north-south peace deal ending more than two decades of civil war, but it was overshadowed by outrage over atrocities in the 2003 Darfur uprising where Washington accused Khartoum of genocide.

The new policy outlined broad engagement, although no direct talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur. Khartoum was offered unspecified incentives for tangible progress towards ending the Darfur crisis and implementing the 2005 north-south peace deal. But the government was warned of penalties for any stalling tactics.

Most analysts agreed the strategy was middle of the road with something in there to please everyone. The reaction from most sides of Sudan’s multiple conflicts was one of cautious welcome indicating that, at least for now, it was a good compromise.

And after a fierce battle between anti-Khartoum lobbyists and those advocating engagement in the United States, Obama’s envoy Scott Gration seemed to come out on top, with the U.S. President expressing open support for his work, snubbing calls for him to be removed from his post.

Washington said it had learned past lessons including that the focus on Sudan could not just be on either the ongoing hostilities in Darfur or on the democratic transformation outlined in the north-south deal known as the CPA. Rather it acknowledged a more comprehensive approach to Sudan was necessary to ensure long-term peace.

Once the dust had settled it became apparent that the ball had been left in Khartoum’s court. Washington will scrutinise concrete moves towards breaking a deadlock on talks on how to hold the first multi-party elections in 24 years due in less than six months and a southern referendum on secession in 2011.

Do you think this marks a real change in U.S. policy in Sudan? Or has Obama’s administration just openly declared a policy that former President George W.  Bush was already following behind the scenes?

Do you think peace in Sudan can be achieved through the “carrot and stick” approach?

Should the international community be so involved in Sudan or should it just leave the Sudanese to solve their own problems?