Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai challenged Africa's leaders and their people on Tuesday to stand up to the challenges facing the world's poorest continent -- not wait for handouts.
Maathai spoke at an annual lecture in honor of former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who turned 87 on Monday.
Maathai expressed concern about African leaders who govern in their own interests and not those of their people. She urged them to invest in education and technical skills for their countries, manage their resources sustainably, promote peace and security, and strengthen their civil societies.
PHOTO: EPA
"Friends and leaders of Africa ... should strive to empower Africa and not only give her alms," Maathai said.
Maathai was joined on stage by fellow Nobel Laureate and former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former US President Bill Clinton, who have delivered previous lectures.
"Here is the birthday boy -- 87 years young," Tutu said as a frail-looking Mandela -- also a Nobel winner -- came on stage supported by his wife, Graca Machel. Tutu then led a theater full of political, business and other leaders in singing Happy Birthday as Mandela blew out the candles on a giant cake.
Maathai said she was encouraged by the recent meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight richest countries, who agreed to cancel the debts of some of the poorest countries and pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010. And she noted their reluctance to do more, particularly for countries plagued by corrupt leaders and a poor human-rights record. But she said it is not the guilty who pay the price.
"It is the ordinary citizens who suffer when debts are not canceled, when financial assistance is not forthcoming or when trade barriers are raised," she said.
Clinton said the decisions taken at the G8 summit in Scotland were "the beginning, not the end of the discussion." Decisions still have to be made about how the money is going to be spent and by whom.
"The whole thing should be toward empowerment so that when you are finished everybody who is touched by these benefits will be able to make their own way," he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS