East Africa: Bookerista Perspectives

Charles Onyango-Obbo: "Polygamy Can Keep The EAC Going"

The Ugandan-born journalist and moderate in Kenya wonders where the East African Community's new common market will lead the region, as people begin to move, work, live, and trade freely within partner states. After discussing someone he knows who had multiple wives across East African borders under the first attempt to unify the East African Community in the 1970s, he writes: "There were many reasons why EAC 1 fell part. There were the ideological tensions between Tanzania and Kenya; the political hostilities between Uganda’s military ruler Idi Amin and everyone else, especially Tanzania. Looking back now, it seems we missed a great opportunity to save the EAC in 1977. Amin, in his seeming insanity, once proposed that he and then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere should step into a boxing ring and sort out their differences there. A former boxer, Amin was hoping for an easy victory. Nyerere treated the challenge with deserved contempt. Then Amin said if Nyerere were a woman, he would have married her and there would be peace. Now if Nyerere had looked around for a woman who looked like she was his twin sister, he would have appeased Amin. And if he had stepped into a ring and strategically fallen to the canvas at the first Amin blow, Idi would have been satisfied. Perhaps the EAC would have been saved."

More: "More seriously, these episodes offer us a clue into what it takes to keep a Community going. It requires big dreams to come together. But it is the small things — like cross-border polygamy — that keep it together. And it is also the small things, like a regional chieftain’s unquenched desire to humiliate his peer (Amin vs Nyerere in a boxing ring) that tear it apart."

James Shikwati: "Attract Great Minds To Agriculture"

The libertarian head of the Inter-Region Economic Network (Kenya) writes: "'We sleep on cotton bedcovers, have milk and cereals for breakfast, sit on leather chairs in our offices, put on woolen suits and get energized daily by food all from agriculture!'. These are not the exact words but is the sense of what Kenya's deputy police spokesperson Mr.Charles Owino said recently. He was among the presenters in a brainstorming session on 'Food Security and Transformation of Agriculture in Kenya.'"

More: "Has it ever occurred to you that food security goes hand in hand with general security? Law enforcement is crucial to food security. One tends to realize the crucial role of the police only when one gets robbed or mugged. The same applies to the importance of farmers during famine episodes. Unfortunately, for Africa and most developing countries, both the agricultural sector and law enforcement systems have been relegated to illiterates and school dropouts! I was very moved by the police officer's passionate plea to Kenyans to ensure that the police force gets reformed to attract the best of the minds! Who should feed the over 1 billion people faced with hunger and malnutrition globally? The first line of defence against hunger ought to be investment in up-scaling knowledge from and to farmers. Agricultural stewardship must focus on knowledge transfer to farmers just as automotive driving calls for trained drivers."