It is hard to say when that might happen, but if it does, the uprising already has a house band in Mali with several road-tested anthems.

Anchor Marco Werman talks about SMOD, a Malian band, an acronym of the four members and friends Sam, Mouzy, Ousco and Donsky.

The band creates a desert-dry groove punctuated by acoustic guitar and percussion.

SMOD – Les Dirigeants Africains

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Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: The political unrest in Senegal seems to fit right in with the uprisings of the Arab Spring. But there’s no such thing as an African Spring, and as we mentioned uprisings against repressive governments have not taken hold in Sub-Saharan Africa – at least not yet. Andrew Meldrum is the Africa editor for the online news site GlobalPost. He says there is a thirst for change in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Andrew Meldrum: There are signs of populations really being inspired by the Arab Spring and saying we want more democracy in our countries. However, it hasn’t resulted in an immediate domino effect, but in Sub-Saharan Africa there are specific countries that have entrenched governments where there is a sign of revitalized popular demonstrations.

Mullins: What is the sign and which countries are you…

Meldrum: Well…

Mullins: … think are inspired.

Meldrum: … I would say one is Senegal, which we’ve just heard about. Another, similar, is in Uganda. There have been a series of demonstration in Kampala. Several people have been killed, and so that is a kind of simmering problem.

Mullins: But there are often simmering problems that we’ve heard of including in Ivory Coast that happen post-elections. What makes something like this, in particular, look like it has the potential to end up in some kind of a revolt, if not deposing a government?

Meldrum: Well, the first thing is that in Uganda they are referring specifically to Mubarak. They are referring specifically to what happened in Tunisia.

Mullins: They being…

Meldrum: The demonstrators against Yoweri Museveni.

Mullins: And where are you hearing that, by the way? I mean, can you see it? Is it social media? Is it more through old fashioned sloganeering? How is it…

Meldrum: Yes. I do see it on Facebook. I see postings that people put on Facebook in response to, let’s say, a GlobalPost article. And in interviews with men on the street, our reporters there say people, that we have quotes from people saying this is what we want.

Mullins: Meaning they want Yoweri Museveni to leave?

Meldrum: They don’t want Yoweri Museveni to leave, but they want to feel that they have full, free and fair elections.

Mullins: And is this different from what you’ve seen before?

Meldrum: It is because they’re not just talking about their own country. They’re pointing to other countries and saying, that’s what we want here as well.

Mullins: And beyond Uganda, where else do you see it?

Meldrum: Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe has a firm hold. I see a lot of social media comments saying, what are we waiting for? Why has everybody else gotten democracy and yet Mugabe still has us under his thumb. And, of course, Mugabe does have the Zimbabwean population under his thumb. He has laws that prevent any public demonstration of three people or more without previous police approval. Well, OK, you can’t have something like Tahrir Square in Egypt if five people immediately gets hit by police, and that’s what happens in Zimbabwe.

Mullins: What are the differences in terms of how the revolutions are expressing themselves, to the extent they are, in Sub-Saharan Africa versus in the Middle East.

Meldrum: I would say, one is that in a lot of the Arab countries the leadership had become complacent. They were caught unawares by the demonstrations. Also, the armies made a decision not to back the entrenched leaders and instead to back the demonstrators. Once you see a split of the security forces from the political leadership, that’s when you’re going to see change.

Mullins: If we see a split.

Meldrum: If we see a split.

Mullins: Alright. Thank you very much. Andrew Meldrum. Africa editor for the online news site GlobalPost talking to us about the possibility of an African Spring, or I guess by now African Summer. Andy Meldrum, thank you.

Meldrum: Thank you, Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Western hedge funds are buying up large tracks of land in Africa, and that could have an impact on food production on the continent. That’s according to a new report this week by the Oakland Institute, a California think tank. The report also says that prominent American universities, like Harvard and Vanderbilt are taking part in African land deals. Investors from the US and Europe are attracted to such deals by cheap land prices and the promise of huge returns. Anuradha Mittal, one of the report’s authors, says that could be misleading.

Anuradha Mittal: Investors have been looking for new opportunities to put their money in for the next soft commodity market, where they can invest in. And here come the private equity funds, the hedge funds, who are promising returns between 20-40%. Unfortunately, American universities, totally lured by these high returns, are moving forward to invest in such funds. One is not saying that they are the ones who are doing it knowingly. We do not know. But right now, their focus is to see higher returns. And just driven by that quest for high returns, they’re going into investment funds who are promising such returns on agricultural investments in Africa, without questioning that when the agricultural returns in the United States over the 15-20 years have been 5-6%. How do you get this kind of return in Africa?

Werman: If the promised return on the investment in this land in Africa is so high, are the people who the land is being bought from, getting a fair deal?

Mittal: The issue in Africa is that traditional lands, communal lands, are considered as state lands. So it is the states, which under the direction of world bank groups or international finance corporations, who are being told to offer their lands to foreign investors as a development paradigm. People are working these lands. They use these lands to grow foods for their families, to grow food for the local market. It is a means of livelihood. But they have no say in the process. So you find, whether it’s through the interaction with a chief, who might not be informed, or in the case of Mozambique, where we learned there was a lot of pressure from the local officials to sign the papers that they’re giving away their land. And they really have no choices. In Ethiopia, even when people are against it, the fear of repression, the fear that you cannot speak out, means that people are being displaced, are being relocated, and they have no choice in the batter.

Werman: Well, one company that is involved in some of these deals, EmVest Asset Management, took issue with your report and said that it was not involved in exploitative or illegal practices. The Africa director for the company, Anthony Porter, told the BBC “There are no shady deals. We acquire all land in terms of legal tender.” Is it necessarily a bad idea, these land purchases, if it puts otherwise unused land, into production, and gets investment to impoverished parts of the world?

Mittal: Well, there are different ways to look at this issue. First, just to answer Antony Porter at EmVest, it would require, not a debate between Mr Porter and myself, but really the families that I met, the children that I saw, who, and their helpless family that I met with, who suddenly was, well we don’t know what to do. We are waiting for our neighbors to finish planting, so we can use their land. because our land has been taken away. Secondly, in terms of, is investment in land and agriculture bad? We started this project because we believe agriculture needs investment. But to assume that just because you invest in land, it would translate into jobs for people, it would mean economic agricultural development for Africa, that’s a myth. It does not take rocket science to figure out that Africa does not need this form of agricultural development.

Werman: What do you think would happen if Harvard, Vanderbilt and other prominent american universities stopped making these sorts of investments? Do you think it mould have any impact on whether the acquisitions continued?

Mittal: If investors, such as Harvard University or Vanderbilt started caring for the impact of the investments, and not just the returns… We’re not saying, don’t care about your returns, but if you can have a balance between the two, we would see a different economy, and that’s what we are talking about here.

Werman: Anuradha Mittal is the executive director of the Oakland Institute and the author of a new report on land acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa. Thank you very much for your time.

Mittal: Thank you, Marco.

Werman: We contacted EmVest Asset Management and Harvard University to get more on their side of the story. They did not get back to us by airtime.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Albinos in much of sub-Saharan Africa are in danger.  Albinos are people who lack the pigment melanin in their eyes, their skin, and their hair. It’s a genetic defect, but in much of Africa, it’s also reason for extreme and deadly prejudice. Phillip Martin has been reporting for us about race and color around the world. Today, Phillip has the first of two stories about the growing threat to albinos.

PHILLIP MARTIN: In a musty apartment building in central Madrid, human rights lawyer Javier Ramirez says he’s fighting to save a man’s life.  This past April, 18-year-old Moszy, as he calls himself, was among 60 African refuges that came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands.  But with a face as white as chalk Moszy stands out.   He’s an albino, a condition that makes life in much of Africa miserable and dangerous. Moszy is locked away in a Spanish immigration detention center, so Javier Ramirez speaks for him.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: Albinos face persecution in terms of the Geneva Convention for Refugees because these people suffer personal persecution.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez is with the Spanish Commission for Refugees.  He says Moszy is seeking political asylum in Spain because albinos face persecution in his native Benin, in West Africa.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: They suffer violence.  You know, so they face a huge discrimination in their country for origin. And they suffered persecution not only by a few, but also by the huge majority of the community and the society.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez says across most of Africa, discrimination against people with albinism runs wide and deep, particularly in under-developed rural areas where people are less educated.  Thabo Leshilo is editor of the South African newspaper, The Sowetan, which has reported on human rights abuses against albinos in Southern Africa.

THABO LESHILO: ‘Cause there’s still a lot of ignorance. People still believe, for example, that people with albinism don’t die.  That they actually disappear, and don’t get buried.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Leshilo says over the past 19 months, these prejudices have taken a deadly turn. In Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya some 60 albinos have been victims of ritualistic murders in which their body parts have been hacked off and sold.  The buyers are witch doctors acting on behalf of often wealthy, sometimes educated businessmen seeking to improve their fortunes with so-called albino magic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You bring bones here and an albino’s hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How will that help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Help?

PHILLIP MARTIN: This is a recording from A BBC investigation last year that exposed the business of killing albinos for their body parts.  It found that an arm fetches 800-dollars, and a leg up to a thousand dollars.   This conversation voiced over by actors is with a witch doctor in Northern Tanzania.  It was secretly recorded by the reporter posing as a businesswoman in search of albino body parts

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the albino’s hands?

WITCH DOCTOR: We use the potion from that, for your fishing nets.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the legs?

WITCH DOCTOR: The legs will help you in the mining business.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: If I can’t bring these body parts can you help?  I can’t do these things alone because, you know, I’m a woman.

WITCH DOCTOR: There are ways. There are people who can get these body parts for you.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Over the past 19 months, 46 people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania, 10 in Burundi, and at least one in Kenya.  Because traditional healers require body parts from living beings, some victims, as young as 2 months old, have been attacked and hacked to pieces alive. Rick Guidotti, a former New York fashion photographer turned human rights activist, recently traveled to Tanzania to investigate the killings.  He fears that the attacks could escalate as economic conditions worsen in East Africa.

RICK GUIDOTTI: When there’s an opportunity to feed ten children when you bring the bones of one child with albinism, it’s greed but it’s also survival.  And these children, their lives are threatened, and it’s only going to get worse until people stand up and start prosecuting the people that are suspected of these horrifying crimes.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That may finally be happening.  Just last week, eight men who were convicted in connection with the murders of albinos in Burundi were sentenced to prison.  One was told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The sentences were seen as a major victory for albino human rights advocates in Burundi.  But so far, despite many arrests, there have been no convictions in neighboring Tanzania. Tanzanian government officials say they are moving as fast as they can, but not fast enough for Peter Ash.

PETER ASH: If I was born in Tanzania, my life would be in danger, because I have exactly the same genetic disorder they do, and I can’t sit by and do nothing.

PHILLIP MARTIN: For Peter Ash it’s personal. Ash is an albino, who lives in Vancouver.  He says he suffered prejudice growing up in Canada, but nothing prepared him for what he encountered in Tanzania.  On a recent trip there Ash says young men taunted him with chants of “Deal, deal, let’s make a deal!” suggesting they could cash in on his body parts.  Now Ash travels with his own security detail to Tanzania, where he says he feels a deep kinship with the country’s albinos.

PETER ASH: There was an almost instant connection that I had with the folks there, because I’m not black and I’m not African and I don’t speak Swahili, but the fact is they are my people.  They are my brothers and sisters because genetically in some ways, they have as much or more in common with me then they do their own people. And I was really gripped by Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” And I decided that was not an option for me.

PHILLIP MARTIN: So two years ago Ash founded Under the Same Sun, a Canadian charity to assist Tanzania’s albinos, who number nearly 200-thousand out of a population of 40 million people, one of the highest rates of albinism in the world.  Bill Oetting, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota, says albinos who escape the body poachers still face the prospect of shorter lives.

BILL OETTING: We have a situation where in Africa being light skin is going to be detrimental from a survival standpoint because you’re going to have a higher susceptibility to skin cancer.  And many individuals who have albinism within Africa do die early because of untreated skin cancer.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That motivated Peter Ash of Under the Same Sun to donate sunglasses, tanning lotion, and protective clothing for albinos in Tanzania.  He’s also funding cancer research and human rights monitoring in the country.  And he’s turned his attention to the albino asylum case in Spain.  While there is less information about the fate of albinos in Benin, where Moszy is from, Ash says he takes his claim of persecution seriously.

PETER ASH: I can tell you that through the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years around people with albinism in large parts of Africa.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Even so, Spanish human rights advocates face an uphill battle proving that Moszy faces a real and deadly threat of persecution, if returned to Benin.  Meanwhile, 10′s thousands of other albinos continue to confront deadly prejudice across much of Africa. For the World, I’m Phillip Martin

LISA MULLINS: Tomorrow Phillip Martin examines efforts to generate positive images of albinos worldwide. For example, a group of South African journalists is sponsoring a writing competition.

SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALIST: This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help in educating in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa and also in South Africa specifically.

LISA MULLINS: That’s coming up tomorrow on The World.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.