From IFEX:

UNESCO won’t honour Africa’s longest-serving dictator with namesake prize

UNESCO has once again announced it will not reinstate a life sciences prize funded by and named after Africa’s longest-serving dictator, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, report Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The decision comes after passionate lobbying by IFEX members and other international and African rights groups. On 27 September, IFEX and 10 members and partners sent a letter to UNESCO director general Irina Bokova, urging her not to reinstate the UNESCO-Obiang prize given the “well-documented record of human rights abuse, repression of press freedom, and official corruption that have marked his rule.”

On 3 October, prominent authors, scientists and other public figures, including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, also sent UNESCO a letter decrying the prize and pointing out that it is likely funded by corruption, given criminal investigations in France and Spain into the source of the Obiang family’s mass wealth, including luxury cars.

Due to international outcry, the prize has never been awarded since its launch three years ago, despite yearly efforts by Obiang and other African diplomats to have it reinstated. UNESCO has not yet taken the step rights groups would like to see, however, which is the final cancellation of the award.

As Tutu Alicante, executive director of the non-governmental group EG Justice, argues, “The UNESCO Board needs to end this debate once and for all by rejecting this prize outright. UNESCO delegates should not let themselves be bullied into backing a public relations campaign by President Obiang.”

MSF – Belgium has opened a rape clinic in Mbare at the Edith Opperman Mbare Polyclinic. The clinic offers free services and is open from 7:30 am to 4:30pm everyday including Sunday.

The clinic offers medical attention needed as a result of rape as well as HIV and STD prophylaxis. Rape victims are advised to seek treatment within 72 hours for the most complete care.

Some nights I like to read bedtime stories to my 3-year-old son. I have been told, and strongly believe reading aloud to my son, even before he is able to read and write himself, is very beneficial. I find bedtime reading is another way I can bond with him, and get to know his likes and dislikes, gauge what and how much he knows and teach him new things, as he tends to ask so many questions after a story.

He loves to be read to and often recites parts of the stories along with me as I read. You see, I have a small collection of books, and they are all now quite familiar to him. I would really like to add to this collection, and introduce him to more stories he is not familiar with, and, most importantly, Zimbabwean stories.

It is saddening to think that my son has never been read a Zimbabwean bedtime story. I’ve read to him about penguins and polar bears in the snow, kangaroos and koalas in the Australian outback, seals and dolphins swimming in the ocean, all things which are foreign and irrelevant to our sub-tropical, land-locked nation.  I fear he may be learning more about the world out there than he is about the world around him. I think its important to read stories to our children, involving things, places and people that they can really relate to.

The formative years of children are the most important, and many lessons they learn at this stage have a lasting impression on them. I want my son to grow up learning about our country, every step of the way.

A while back, I searched high and low, for local (in both authorship and subject matter) books for children below 5 years and was disappointed.  Apart from the age-old “Sunrise Readers” collection that was recommended to me on one of my many quests, are there any Zimbabwean children’s books out there, for this age group?

Every year, the first Monday of October is set aside to commemorate Habitat Day. On this day reflections are made on the state of our towns and cities, basic rights for all, and access to adequate shelter. For Amnesty International, World Habitat Day is a global day to take action to end forced evictions and other human rights violations suffered daily by people living in slums and informal settlements. In commemoration of this years’ World Habitat Day, Amnesty International Zimbabwe remembered the survivors of Operation Murambatsvina with the theme “End Forced Evictions’. Many families were displaced and left homeless when the government of Zimbabwe initiated its unpopular and inhuman Operation Murambatsvina. Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle then followed to resettle these families but, however, today years later no proper essential facilities and services have been provided for these families such as sanitation, education, housing and health.

A drama group from Hopley and Hatclife settlements where many of the families affected by Operation Murambatsvina are settled took time to remind Zimbabwe of how they are living. They had their own exhibition of their plastics shacks at the Harare Gardens. Some operate hair saloons, or bars and some sell firewood, or vegetables. The shacks take various shapes and forms but they all exhibit the plight of how our government has failed its people in so many ways. In these informal settlements education is a privilege whereas it should be a right for all children. In these settlements safe drinking water does not exist, as their water sources are unprotected wells. ‘The walls have ears’, is a saying you wont be caught saying in these settlements because their housing is little more than thin plastic.

Therefore Amnesty International of Zimbabwe in remembering the survivors of Operation Murambatsvina is calling on the government of Zimbabwe to:
End all forced evictions
Adopt guidelines based on the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development Based Evictions and Displacement
Provide free primary education for children living under Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle

On Tuesday October 3, 2011 I attended a discussion on the topic, The Mobile Audience – Lessons for New Adapters, led by online media expert, Regina McCombs, on new trends in online media, in particular, mobile audiences. The discussion was based on the trends in mobile audiences in the United States (with a few global and even local statistics included), and the lessons that we can learn from.

Very early on McCombs mentioned that she was interested in the potential for mobile in journalism (news and other such information), but I found that her presentation revealed information that can also be used in the exploration of the potential of mobile in many other sectors.

Her talk began with an analysis of Smartphone usage, and most valued features, in the US.  Staying connected, research and news, navigation, entertainment, management and planning were among the major uses, with consumers valuing features such as GPS, social networking, internet browsing and music the most.

She then outlines more statistics on how a) smartphones have replaced PCs, especially in for browsing and searching for information, use of Apps and videos; b) smartphones are changing how people interact online, and how they do things in their daily lives. The main uses outlined were:
·    Staying connected 90% (excluding phone calls)
·    Research n news 82%
·    Navigate 75%
·    Entertainment 65%
·    Managements and planning 45%

Regina stressed multi-tasking as a key factor to consider when developing Apps or mobile pages. People in the US tended to connect to the web on their smartphones in short bursts, usually while doing other things such as waiting in a queue (59%), socializing (40%), on the loo (39%), cooking (27%), watching TV (60%) and so on. It is therefore important for App and mobile pages developers to create products where information can be seen quickly, with shorter versions of things and for less data, in order to grab attention in these small windows of opportunity.

She also shared information on how several companies are now moving away from making Apps for every different device, and are instead specializing more in device detection and automatically orienting their pages to suit these different devices. This is a far better, once-off way of dealing with the varied devices that constitute web traffic. An example of a company employing this clever system is The Boston Globe.

Regina then spoke a little about Tablets and other new forms of mobile Internet access.  According to her currently 69% (29 million) of tablets worldwide are Ipads. By the end of 2011, it is estimated that 62 million Ipads would have been sold. It is clear from these figures that tablets really are a big deal the world over. Tablet owners in the US tend to be mostly male, middle aged or younger, wealthy, racially diverse and early adaptors (ahead of the pack with technology). On average tablet users spend about an hour a day on the devices, mostly at home or while traveling.

Interesting points

The link between breaking of major news events news and mobile online traffic – Regina highlighted that on election night, 2009, 75% of CNN television viewers were also connected on CNN mobile. On 11 March 2011, the day of the Japanese tsunami, CNN once again had record mobile views, in the region of 13,9 million, and a further 1 million CNN App downloads in the next 10 days. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) also recorded that at election time a third of its online traffic was via mobile. I feel that there is something that local media agents can learn from this global trend, in order that they may better position themselves for mobile access.

Mobile advertising and its potential for revenue – Regina revealed something about the problems faced with online advertising, in the sense that people are now playing catch-up in the area of online advertising. With the development and growth, many failed to recognize and make the most of the commercial value or potential of mobile advertising. Google has now launched a page dedicated to mobiles advertising, in a bid to drum up more business in the sector.

Apparently 40% of online mobile users from Zimbabwe have smartphones. I have a smartphone myself, and it is nice to see that, network allowing, I’m not doing too badly at making the most of my device’s capabilities, according to these statisticsglobal standards. This cannot be said for many smartphone owners in Zimbabwe. At the moment, l would say, (and I think many of you would agree), that most smartphones are just being used as GSM phones, cameras, music players, and light internet browsers. Yes, they are flashier, and more expensive, but these phones don’t really get the chance to serve their real purpose and be “smart”. Even though it is true that many of the things a smartphone can do are either not supported by Zimbabwean networks or are too expensive to even be considered, many people just have no idea how smart their phones really are. Smartphone social networking Apps such as WhatsApp and Nimbuzz, the Gmail App, CNN App and a few more, are among the few apps available in Zimbabwe

A problem that was identified in the discussion was that Zimbabwe is not producing enough online content. We Zimbabweans need to package current, local information in such a way that is attractive, relevant, practical and useful. It is also necessary to explore how people can make money by putting this information online, as many people, especially those in the print media, are hesitant to put information online, because they fail to see how they will make money from it. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a mobile website where, for example, tobacco farmers can get objective, up to the minute updates on what’s happening on the sales floor (delays, price hikes of falls, weather), at the click of a few buttons?