Commentariat Index - 060508

The first 4 of today's selection have an economic bias. I'm not sure it's unconnected with today being my economist 'twin sister's' birthday. Maybe that's why my mind is somewhat selective in its choice...my way of saying Many Happy Returns.

Micheal Nyamute (East African Standard): How cottage industries can lead to more growth

"Indeed the role and importance of small-scale industries has equally been felt even in developed countries, with big business and industrial set-ups. How much more, then, should the developing economies pay attention to this sector?
It would be prudent for a developing economy like ours to turn attention and resources to ensuring this sector plays its rightful and vital role in uplifting the rural economy."

Tunji Bello (Thisday, Lagos): Before the Presidential Rice Arrives

"There are two critical issues we need to take up with the federal government on this matter. The first is that the issue of 500,000 MT of rice from Thailand is unrealistic and looks more of a public relations stunt. Thailand, currently the world’s largest producer of world rice, produces about 30 million tonnes yearly...
So how can Thailand now export about 17 per cent of its annual production to Nigeria alone? Certainly something is seriously missing in the so-called food emergency plan."

Thompson Ayodele (Mail & Guardian): Drug patents are beside the point

"As long as healthcare delivery remains in the hands of dysfunctional governments, the health of the poor in developing nations will not improve. Aid groups and policymakers must instead enlist the help and expertise of the private sector. The advantages of this are two-fold. First, it would reduce corruption, which certainly exists in the private sector as well, but private enterprises with ethical problems risk exclusion from the next round of programmes and contracts. Second, competition governs the private sector. Firms that fail or receive low marks from customers or aid organisations will lose out to competitors. Market participants are forced to improve productivity and patient care or face extinction."

John Moyibi Amoda (Vanguard, Lagos): Generator economy and the power crises

"Corruption is in the very structure of government and its routine practices. Once in a while the veil is taken away, the clouds are dispersed and we are face to face with corruption but fail to recognize it for what it is because of the ideas we have about it.
And because we cannot recognize it, we therefore cannot understand it, and we therefore make our own idea of corruption the reality of corruption. No wonder the more things seem to change, the more they remain the same."

Ernest Kofi Adu (Ghanian Chronicle): Should Criminal Libel be Revisited?

"News communication across borders, we are told, does not automatically lead to better understanding; often it results in enmity and distrust, since the profound political philosophies and differing social ideologies of individuals and parties that have characterized the nation so much prevent agreement on what is legitimate news, hence, the description – dangerous and criminal – for the practice of journalism in Ghana."

Michael Madill (Daily Monitor, Kampala): A government of whores; who is to blame?

"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us. These words of American journalist P.J. O'Rourke inspired a recent contribution to this newspaper in which the author wore the spirit of the words. I propose Ugandans consider their meaning for they weigh heavily, or ought to, on democracy."

Binyavanga Wainaina (Mail & Guardian): Pinned & wriggling on the wall

"Wikipedia: according to a British medical journal of 1972 haemorrhoids "are common in economically developed communities, rare in developing countries and almost unknown in tribal communities, where the influence of Western countries is slight."
This is not true. Mugabe is a haemorrhoid. He is not Aids, cancer, leukemia or malaria -- those things that can kill you"

Azu Ishiekwene (The Punch, Lagos): Again, the trouble with Africa

"Like immigration or globalisation, debating how Africa is reported is often a vexatious subject; it provides many people a good chance to enjoy an argument with a closed mind. It’s either you come to the debate feeling that in spite of Sean MacBride’s commission over two decades ago, all reports about Africa in the western media will continue to be about death, disease, despair and destruction; or you are asking whether this whole business is about Africans wanting a separate code of journalism that denies its own reality. It’s black or white, and no room in between for any shades of grey."

Nicholas Sengoba (Daily Monitor, Kampala): The road accidents and realities of failed states

"It is in these surroundings and circumstances that one comes face to face with the way citizens cope with some of the realities of a failed state. You get to know that the one who builds a road that ends up with potholes is not just corrupt but to many he makes decisions that gravely impact on the livelihoods of multitudes.The one who knocks road users off the road contributes more than statistics that add up to the tally of hit and run accidents. He is the beneficiary of weak, under funded and undermined state institutions such as the police and the judiciary which will never make him pay for the severe crime he unrepentantly commits as he recklessly uses the road."