A day at the races? Abseiling down a waterfall? These are among the attractions residents hope will lure tourists to Lesotho.

It is struggling with drought and an HIV/AIDS crisis that is believed to have infected about a third of adults.

Its economic fortunes have waned too, especially after a new global textile deal in 2005 removed quotas supporting an industry once seen as the kingdom’s future.

With limited resources bar its and mountainous landscape — grazing for angora goats — the former British protectorate is dependent on the continent’s economic powerhouse South Africa, which entirely surrounds it.

Developing tourism could provide a lifeline.

Most of the informal businesses near the town of Semonkong, high in the mountains about 100 km (60 miles) from the capital, are linked in some way to serving holidaymakers. The town’s biggest economic venture is probably the Semonkong Lodge, which employs 30 people and is run by a South African.

“I started working at the bus stop with another woman making and selling local bread. The owners of the lodge used to see us there, and they asked us if we could supply bread on a daily basis. It’s the main source of income for all our families,” Itumeleng Rapotsana, who left her family behind in her home village, told Reuters Africa Journal.
   
Another group of residents offers visitors the experience of abseiling down the gorge where sub-Saharan Africa’s highest single waterfall — Maletsunyane — surges into the river below.

So far, just a few hundred tourists a year make it to Semonkong, about a five hour drive by 4×4 from the capital Maseru. Annual tourism revenue for the town is $250,000.

Lesotho Tourism Development worker Delphis Ntseli says the government is trying to bring services closer to the town — which has no mains water or electricity — and there are plans to improve access to “help Lesotho capitalise on the uniqueness of the place that Semonkong is”.

“As one would imagine, it’s a remote place and being remote is has got its challenges in terms of economic development,” he said.

Race days bring a dash of excitement to the town for residents and tourists alike. There are no professional jockeys, indeed most of the jockeys are children, the sons of the trainers and owners, but the prize money and pride ensure stiff competition.

“I don’t think I can survive without it, I don’t think I will ever quit this, it is in my blood,” 68-year-old trainer Moreruwa Mohlodisi told Africa Journal. He has bought livestock, built houses and educated his children with the proceeds of racing.

Many residents hope the races, the landscape and even the abseiling will attract more people, but the trick will be to find the balance between securing a place on the tourist trail and not losing the town’s soul.

(Photos: A villager sits in Moholi, southern Lesotho, October 2004. Reuters/ Lesotho residents on horseback attend inauguration ceremony of water project, March 2004. Reuters/Juda Ngwenya)

In the relative political calm of the Indian Ocean, Madagascar has long been a centre of turbulence.

Now another political crisis is brewing as the opposition accuses President Marc Ravalomanana of abuse of power and threatening democracy. Tens of thousands of opposition protesters demonstrated in Antananarivo on Wednesday, two days after an earlier rally descended into violence that left nearly 40 people dead.

The bodies of most the victims were found in a burned out clothing store. The authorities said they were looters who got trapped.

Ravalomanana and opposition leader Andry Rajoelina are very different characters.

The president is a self made millionaire. In his early twenties, he started selling yoghurt off the back of a bicycle. Today, at 59, he is a dairy tycoon with extensive business interests.

Rajoelina is 34 years old and nicknamed TGV, after the French high speed train, for his rapid-fire manner.

He is incensed that the authorities closed down his private TV station after it broadcast an interview with the former president, Didier Ratsiraka. Since he was elected mayor of the capital - a position Ravalomanana once held - Rajoelina has been one of the most vocal critics of the presidency.

Residents of the capital say they now fear a return to the political deadlock of 2001/2002. Then, a dispute over presidential election results between Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka degenerated into eight months of political instability. The economy took a serious hit.

The latest troubles will be no help for Madagascar as it tries to promote itself as a tourist destination alongside other Indian Ocean islands, particularly when the global financial crisis is likely to cut tourist numbers overall.

Even more important are the billions of dollars of foreign investment in mining and oil exploration. Continued turbulence could put that in doubt too.

Can Madagascar afford another long political crisis? How can it be resolved? What do you think?

If you lived on an archipelago that defined paradise with palm-fringed white sand beaches and emerald green waters, you would expect a relaxed, lazy pace of life.

Lazy would be a generous description of the Seychellois soldier’s wave at the entrance to State House as I arrived with my local colleague George Thande - who is admittedly a regular visitor here.

The Seychelles were ruled by the French before the British and State House in the capital Victoria is every bit the luxurious colonial mansion: a lush garden exploding with tropical colours; an oil painting of Britain’s Queen Victoria hangs in the wood-panelled reception room close to a portrait of Castor, a runaway slave from the 19th century with a fearsome reputation; a Daimler and Rolls Royce are parked on the forecourt.

But President James Alix Michel, cannot afford to be relaxed. This is an exotic destination at the sharp end of the global financial crisis.

The Indian Ocean archipelago may lie thousands of miles from the financial hubs of the world, but the bankers on Wall Street and in the City of London, not to mention the celebrity visitors, help keep the Seychelles’ tourism-dependent economy afloat.

On Friday, however, Michel told Reuters he thought visitor numbers might drop by as much as 25 percent, a painful blow for a heavily indebted economy –  its $800 million debt is somewhat more than 2007 gross domestic product according to World Bank figures. The country, with only 85,000 people, is in desperate need of foreign currency to replenish severely depleted reserves.

When the Seychelles failed to service an interest payment on a $230 million bond late last year, it called in the International Monetary Fund, which pledged a 2-year $26 million rescue package. Now negotiations are underway with creditors over how to re-structure the debts.

On Friday, Michel called on creditors to forgive fifty percent of the country’s debts.

But should they be forgiven or was the previous government reckless in the way it borrowed heavily to invest in social projects such as free education, free healthcare and housing over more than two decades?

Or does the fault lie with the creditors who issued loans they perhaps knew were ultimately unsustainable? The government might well argue that while it had borrowed irresponsibly - if it felt for good reason - but there had been no shortage of people willing to stump up the cash.

President Michel is holding out for an oil strike under the Seychelles’ offshore plateau. Seismic surveys suggested there could be reserves of oil and gas amounting to billions of barrels. But that’s not for years to come.

The Seychelles can’t wait that long.

(Picture 1: Miss New Zealand, Lauralee Martinovich, poses for photographs after taking the 2nd Princess title in the 1997 Miss World Pageant in the Seychelles. Reuters/Mike Hutchings)

(Picture 2: Seychelles’ President James Michel poses for a photograph during an interview with Reuters in Victoria. Reuters/Richard Lough)

After a decade of rampant destruction of the Mau forest water catchment in western Kenya, the country’s coalition government seems firmly united in trying to save the complex before more serious damage is inflicted on the economy.

U.N. officials say this is no longer simply an environmental issue but something that has huge importance for the whole country. Already two of the top three foreign exchange earners — tourism and tea — are feeling the impact of falling water levels which have also forced the postponement of a major hydro-electric project. 

Prime Minister Raila Odinga describes the forest’s destruction as a national emergency. Both foreign and local officials say there is no gap between Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki on the issue.

Saving the forest will involve huge costs to resettle and compensate some of the thousands of people living illegally there and restore tree cover which produces vital supplies of water. Officials say they expect international donors to provide major financial help.

Until a few months ago, the destruction of the forest was a familiar story of land grabbing, illegal logging and the allocation of government land to try to win votes. It began in 1997 when the government of Daniel arap Moi gave large plots away in exchange for electoral support.

Then, this year, the United Nations flew Odinga and other officials over the forest to show them the extent of the destruction, shocking them into urgent action.

The government is pushing ahead despite the fact that many of the area’s MPs and voters belong to Odinga’s ODM party. Unlike the past, political considerations are being pushed to one side in the national interest. U.N. officials call this process unique for a country long blighted by the depradations of powerful and greedy politicians.

This momentum is all the more striking because Odinga and Kibaki were bitter enemies before and during a bloody political crisis in the first two months of this year when around 1,500 people died in tribally-based clashes following the president’s disputed victory in an election.

Does the Mau forest issue mark a turning point in Kenyan politics or is it a one-off. What do you think?

MARSABIT, Kenya - We are in two Land Rover Defenders, headed north to Ethiopia through one of Kenya’s remotest and harshest areas.

Our route is along the Great North Road, the famed Cape Town-to-Cairo highway on what is said to be the only untarmacked stretch on the whole continent - roughly 550 kilometres from where the highway ends at Isiolo town north to Moyale on the Ethiopian border.  It has all the wildlife and stunning scenery Kenya is world-famous for, but few tourists ever see it.

This is part of the old Northern Frontier District, the arid top half of Kenya which was closed to visitors by the British colonial government because of its inaccessibility, harsh conditions and endless banditry.  Little has changed since independence in 1963.

 To call the wide track of dirt, ruts and rocks a road is an insult to other roads. It demands a four-wheel drive vehicle, and punishes any that comes with an endless succession of shuddering bumps, heat and fine dust that penetrates every corner. It has taken us two days to reach Marsabit, a mere 600 km from Nairobi. But out here, trips are measured by time, not by distance.

We - Reuters TV producer Patrick Muiruri, Reuters photographer Antony Njuguna, navigator Michael Githaiga and mechanics Frederick “British” Gappy,  Lawrence “Jughead” Waithaka and myself - are rolling in convoy in case one vehicle develops a problem. There is another reason to move together - safety in numbers. Cattle-rustling is still a rite of passage for young warriors among the nomadic peoples that roam the dry plains with herds of cattle, goats, camels and sheep. It has intensified in recent decades thanks to an influx of automatic weapons from conflicts in neighbouring Somalia and Sudan.

Violence here is regular and can easily spill over into outright warfare. Banditry has also blossomed in these badlands.

The government presence here is thinly stretched and usually without the equipment needed to police the problem, leaving police and paramilitary soldiers in a reactive position. Electricty, water and functioning telephones are rare sights, and in most places were never brought by the state-owned utilities. Schools are there, but it is difficult for teachers to get students from wandering clans. Most schoolchildren in other parts of Kenya are speaking English and Swahili by the age of 5; here, it is common to find boys of 15 who cannot speak Swahili - the lingua franca of a nation with more than 42 different ethnic groups.

Local people speak of Kenya Mbili - Two Kenyas - the developed southern half, and theirs, the forgotten and neglected one.

“When someone leaves for Nairobi, people say he has gone to Kenya.
There is a sense of being second class, neglected,” said Hussein Sasura, a native of the Marsabit area, told us. Sasura is also the assistant minister in the new Ministry for Northern and Arid Lands, which aims to bring development to this vast region.
He’s optimistic that things are finally changing after 45 years of independence, from which the north has rarely tasted any fruits.

Two big developments are already inching their way north. Chinese engineers are beginning to lay 136 km of asphalt from Isiolo to near the Merille River, the first phase of a plan to finish the road to Moyale. Already, tourist lodges and wildlife managers are planning for an upsurge in tourists to an area that usually is reached by light aircraft or those willing to make the punishing trip to see some of Kenya’s still-unspoiled beauty.

Moving faster is a team of engineers laying a fibre optic cable alongside the road, working under a Ministry of Information and Communication contract to bring internet and telephone service to all corners of the country. Digging with a 10-metre long cable-laying machine, they say they expect to hit the border in about two months.

And oil men from China are already prospecting in Merti, and have plans to look elsewhere in a region rumoured for decades to have oil. All this means more people will be in the district, but will it bring all the attendant commerce and development? Can the highway bring more tourists and help tame the insecurity? Will the road and communications infrastructure finally unite the Two Kenyas?