nairobinotes’s posterous

The latest AfricaFocus bulletin pulls together articles on U.S.-Somalia policy. Interesting stuff.

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Mom regularly checks my mail for me while I'm out of the country.

Mom: You received a letter from the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle.  Also another letter from Smith.

Me: Okay - what do they want?

Mom: The church one is an inspirational letter for these hard economic times and then they ask for money.  The Smith letter explains Smith's finances and then they ask for money.

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• In Nigeria, a potential ruling party gubernatorial candidate has been blocked from contesting the election by the Kwara State Supreme Council for Sharia - because she's, well, a she.
• Some painful information is emerging from Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
• While Ethiopian troops are supposed to be pulling out of Somalia, we still read news like this every few hours.

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The Gates Foundation is giving away a bunch of money to media organizations for global health reporting. It seems like a step in the right direction, but I do hope that more of the money ends up with African media organizations. It's not just that African media houses need to be doing more of this critical reporting, but that they need to be doing it better. Still, who wants to send over millions of dollars to a media outfit anywhere without a guarantee that it will be used properly?

The good news is that it might be easier to reach out to media owners across the continent thanks to the (soon-to-be) annual African Media Leaders' Forum. At their inaugural meeting this year, some of Africa's most powerful media executives - including the Nation Media Group (Kenya-East Africa), Mail & Guardian (South Africa), and ThisDay (Nigeria) agreed to work together to push for more international recognition. I'm not overly optimistic about the ability of all of these big wigs (who will, if they are successful, possibly end up in competition with each other). But imagine - a one-stop contact point to reach Africa's most influential media types. It could end up being quite a powerful organization.

Some organization exists, but most of it seems pretty weak, or simply out of touch. The African Press Association is essentially just a tool for distributing press releases. And it's based in Switzerland. Really useful. On the country level, national press organizations tend to operate as labor unions and end up being highly political and tightly controlled by whoever wins that all important election. (See the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, or SLAJ, for a good example of how ridiculous the infighting can get. The Concord Times of Freetown has been covering the association's elections like it's more important than the national presidency.)

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I took the (US) Law School Admission Test here on Saturday. It was unlike any other standardized testing experience I've had. I don't think I scored very well. At points, I was shoving my fingers in my ears to try to hear myself think. Pretty sad, considering that I was taking the test with just one other person (a fellow in the Peace Corps who, interestingly, speaks Kalenjin). Some of the highlights:

• Large framed photo of test proctor with Daniel Arap Moi and George H.W. Bush (nice!)
• Daladalas matatus driving by with super bass and tinny treble choruses (mostly your standard U.S. hiphop)
• As the evening wore on, we were treated to a truck driving around the block with loud music, including "Bembeleza" (a song I actually quite like under normal circumstances), and unforgettably, the "Numa Numa" song. Oh, and loudspeakers. It sounded lke a crusade was going on outside.
• During the break, our test proctor talked a lot about how one famous media personality here was a "dog." Oh, and she also told us that someone once jumped out the window and committed suicide during this exam. She seems like a real character.

Anyway, there's no way I performed optimally on the test, but I'll wait it out and see in January.

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