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.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS