ACTIVIST/ ENTREPRENEUR

Mukama katibu mkuu mpya wa CCM

2011-04-11T15:43:00.000+03:00

Chama cha mapinduzi (CCM) kimemteua ndugu Wilson Mukama katibu mkuu mpya wa CCM katika kikao chake kilichokuwa kinaendelea cha NEC.Anachukua nafasi iliyoachwa wazi na Yusufu Makamba baada ya kujiuzulu.wakati huo huo, Nape Nnauye pia ameteuliwa kuwa mkuu wa itikadi uenezi wa CCM huku mama Zakia Megji akichukua nafasi ya katibu-fedha

kama katibu mkuu mpya CCM

2011-04-11T15:19:00.003+03:00

waandishi wambana spika makinda

2011-03-12T13:08:00.004+03:00

KAULI ya Spika kutaka wabunge wasome magazeti kama barua, imemtia matatani baada ya waandishi wa habari jana kumtaka awaombe radhi kwanza, ili watekeleze ombi lake la kuvitaka vyombo vya habari, viwe kiungo kati ya Bunge na wananchi.

Hata hivyo Spika Anne Makinda, aligoma kuomba radhi na kwamba alitoa kauli hiyo katika mazingira ambayo, hakuamini kama vyombo vya habari vingeweza kutoa taarifa aliyodai kuwa haikumtendea haki.

Katika mkutano wa pili wa Bunge la Kumi mjini Dodoma, Makinda aliishambulia makala iliyoandikwa na gazeti hili kuhusu mabadiliko ya kanuni za Bunge, zilizogusa kambi ya upinzani bungeni ambayo wabunge waliitumia kama marejeo, akisema "magazeti yasomwe kama barua".

Lakini jana akifungua semina ya siku mbili ya waandishi wa habari za Bunge, makinda alibanwa na waandishi wakimtaka aombe radhi muda mfupi baada ya spika huyo kueleza kuwa vyombo vya habari, ni nguzo muhimu na kiungo kati ya Bunge na wananchi.

"Mheshimiwa spika leo umetaka vyombo vya habari viwe kiungo kati ya Bunge na wananchi, lakini katika Bunge lililopita uliwataka wabunge wasome magazeti kama barua ukimaanisha hayana umuhimu, unaweza kufuta kwanza kauli hiyo au kuomba radhi kabla hatujatekeleza ombi lako,," alihoji mmoja wa washiriki wa semina hiyo.

Akionekana kutaharuki Spika Makinda alijibu,"nilijua ntakumbana na swali hili na nimejiandaa vema, sio kuomba radhi bali kutoa ufafanuzi."Nilifedheheshwa na habari ile, waliandika kinyume na ilivyo, walisema mimi ninakandamiza upinzani. Hapana mimi natakiwa kutoegemea upande wowote kwani nikitenda yaliyoandikwa naweza kuvuruga amani ya nchi. Spika peke yake anaweza kuvuruga amani ya nchi," alisema

Spika Makinda alifafanua kuwa kilichofanyika haikuwa kubadili kanuni za Bunge bali kutafsiri.

"Tulitafsiri kanuni ya 14(2) ambayo inasema kambi rasmi ya upinzani inaundwa na wabunge wote wa upinzani. Zamani ilikuwa kambi rasmi ya upinzani inatengenezwa na asilimia 30 ya wabunge, lakini hili halijawahi kutekelezeka kwa kuwa mwaka 1995 wabunge wa upinzani walikuwa 46 ambao ni chini ya asilimia 30 na mwaka 2000 hawakufikia hata asilimia 2. Bunge likalazimika kubadilisha kanuni na kuwa asilimia 12.5 ya wapinzani inaweza kuunda upinzani," alifafanua.

Lakini akitoa mada katika semina hiyo mwandishi nguli wa habari, Jenerali Ulimwengu, alisema kuwa kauli ya Spika kutaka wabunge wasome magazeti kama barua ni makosa."...Kwa maoni yangu Spika Makinda aliposema wabunge wasome magazeti kama barua alikosea," alisema Ulimwengu.Katika semina hiyo Spika Makinda alisema kuwa kanuni za Bunge zitafanyiwa mabadiliko makubwa katika kipindi hiki cha bunge la kumi.

"Tunaenda kufanya mabadiliko makubwa ya kanuni, na hivyo kambi rasmi ya upinzani haitakuwa tena issue ya kuumiza kichwa..," alisema Makinda.Alisema pia kwamba katika Bunge lijalo Sheria ya Vyombo vya Habari inatarajiwa kufikishwa bungeni tayari kujadiliwa na kwamba wadau watapata nafasi ya kushiriki katika mijadala yake.

Kuhusu Katiba, Makinda alisema mchakato huo ni muhimu na kwamba vyombo vya habari vina nafasi kubwa katika kuwaelimisha na kuwapa taarifa wananchi kuhusu mabadiliko hayo ili nao washiriki katika uandikaji katiba hiyo mpya.

Pengo: Sioni tatizo la maandamano ya Chadema

2011-03-10T08:39:00.002+03:00

ASKOFU Mkuu wa Kanisa Katoliki Jimbo Kuu la Dar es Salaam, Mwadhama Polycarp Kardinali Pengo, amesema haoni tatizo katika maandamano yanayofanywa na Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema).

Akizungumza katika mahojiano maalumu na Mwananchi jana, Kardinali Pengo alisema badala yake Serikali: “Ichimbue mizizi ya matatizo badala ya kukimbilia kukata matawi.”

Kauli ya Pengo ni kama inaunga mkono matamshi yaliyotolewa juzi na Waziri wa Ushirikiano wa Afrika Mashariki, Samuel Sitta ambaye aliishauri Serikali kutotumia vyombo vya dola dhidi ya Chadema na badala yake ijirekebishe kwa kuwa na wepesi wa kukabiliana na matatizo yaliyopo nchini.

Kadhalika, kauli hiyo ya Pengo imekuja wakati Serikali ikiendelea kulaani maandamano hayo ya Chadema na kutaka yasitishwe kwa madai kuwa yanaweza kuleta machafuko nchini.

Katika mahojiano hayo Kardinali Pengo alisema haoni kama Chadema kinafanya vurugu katika maandamano yake kama baadhi ya watu wanavyodai: “Sioni ‘point’ ya kusema maandamano ya Chadema yanaweza kusababisha vurugu,” alisema Kardinali Pengo na kuongeza:

Alisema ikiwa kuna tatizo katika maandamano hayo kama inavyoelezwa na serikali, ni bora hali hiyo ikafafanuliwa mapema na kukiambia Chadema kisitishe kuandamana.

“Lakini serikali isichukulie ‘comment’ (maoni) ya mtu mmoja mmoja na kusema kwamba Chadema inasababisha vurugu, bila kusikiliza na kuchambua kwa undani,” alisema.

Aliongeza kuwa endapo serikali imechunguza na kubaini ukweli kwamba maandamano hayo yanaweza kuleta vurugu za kisiasa, basi iyasitishe badala ya kutoa kauli tu kwamba yanahatarisha amani.

Pengo alisema huenda uamuzi wa Chadema kufanya maandamano unatokana na madai yao dhidi ya kupanda kwa gharama za maisha, umeme na malipo kwa kampuni ya kufua umeme ya Dowans kwamba hayakusikilizwa.

Alisema Serikali haitakiwi kuyafumbia macho matatizo ya kisiasa nchini badala yake itafute kiini chake na namna ya kuyatatua.

“Serikali ianze kuchimbua mizizi ya matatizo ya kisiasa yaliyopo ndani ya Taifa, badala ya kukimbilia kukata matawi. Kwa sababu kuanza kukata matawi ni kuzidi kuipeleka nchi katika machafuko ya kisisasa na matokeo yake ni kuleta madhara kwa wananchi,” alisema.

Askofu huyo mkuu pia alisisitiza kuwa Serikali inatakiwa kuhakikisha inafuatilia matatizo yanayowakabili wananchi kwa sasa, ambayo yanahitaji ufumbuzi wa haraka ili watu wasipate fursa ya kudai mambo hayo kwa maandamano.

Kwa mujibu wa Kardinali Pengo, Serikali pia haipaswi kutoa vipaumbele kwenye masuala ya siasa na kusahau matatizo ya wananchi kwani hilo linaweza kuwa kiini cha vurugu... "Serikali iguswe kama ilivyoguswa na matokeo ya mtihani wa kidato cha nne yaliyotoka mwaka huu."

Baadaye akihubiri katika Misa ya Jumatano ya Majivu kuashiria kuanza kwa siku 40 za Mfungo wa Kwaresma ambao Wakristo hukumbuka mateso ya Bwana wao, Yesu Kristo kabla ya Pasaka zaidi ya miaka 2000 iliyopita, Kardinali Pengo alikemea tabia ya viongozi kung'ang'ania madaraka na kudhani kuwa bila wao nchi zao haziwezi kuwepo au kusonga mbele.

"Yapo matatizo katika viongozi wanaong'ang'ania madaraka wakiwa tayari hata kumwaga damu ya wengine ili wao wabaki madarakani. Hawa ni viongozi wanaofikiri uwezo unaweza kuwa ndani yao, wanajifanya wao Mungu," alisema Pengo.

Alisema viongozi hao wanatazama fadhila za kibinadamu wakiacha upungufu wao na kudhani kuwa wasipokuwa na madaraka basi nchi zao hazitakuwepo jambo ambalo si sahihi na halifai katika jamii.

"Viongozi hao wanajifanya wao ndiyo miungu, wanatazama fadhila za kibinadamu, wakiacha mapungufu yao. Hicho ni kiburi, wakumbuke kuwa Mungu aliwaumba kwa vumbi na watarudi kuwa vumbi, sasa kwa nini mnakuwa na kiburi?," Alihoji Kardinali Pengo na kuongeza;

"Mungu aliwaumba kwa vumbi kwa nini wawe na kiburi? Unadhani ukifa na nchi itakufa, kwani kabla yako nchi haikuwepo? Kumbuka wewe ni uvumbi na utarudi mavumbini."

Alisema thamani ya mtu haitokani na anavyojiona, bali nguvu ya Mungu akiwakumbusha Wakristo kutubu na kumrudia Mungu katika kipindi hiki cha Kwaresma.

Wakati huohuo; Festo Polea anaripoti kuwa wanafunzi wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es salaam ambao wapo katika taasisi isiyo ya kiserikali ya Truya wamesema ili kuondokana na machafuko yanayoweza kusababisha uvunjifu wa amani, viongozi wanaokiuka matakwa ya uongozi, uvunjaji wa Katiba na sheria za nchi wanapaswa kuwajibishwa kwa mujibu wa sheria.

Mwenyekiti wa taasisi hiyo, Helman Sheluleta alisema Ibara ya 18 ya Katiba ya nchi inatambua haki ya mtu kutoa maoni, kusikilizwa na kuandamana kwa amani na kwa mujibu wa sheria lakini sheria inapovunjwa kwa ajili ya kupata haki ndiko kuhatarisha amani ya nchi.

Sumaye: CCM ijibu hoja za Chadema

2011-03-06T10:18:00.000+03:00

ASEMA KUIACHIA SERIKALI NI MAKOSA
WAKATI CCM ikitaka dola ikidhibiti Chadema, Waziri Mkuu wa Serikali ya Awamu ya tatu, Fredrick Sumaye, amekitaka chama hicho tawala kukabiliana na hoja za Chadema kisiasa badala ya kuiachia Serikali ipambane nao.Juzi CCM kilisema nyendo za Chadema zina agenda ya siri ya kuking’oa madarakani kwa kutumia nguvu kinyume cha katiba hivyo kiliitaka Serikali na vyombo vya dola kuchukua hatua za kisheria haraka.

“CCM inaviomba vyombo vya dola viwe imara kuchukua hatua za kisheria… Wanachofanya Chadema ni kutuchonganisha na wananchi, kutoa kauli hatari za kujaribu kughilibu akili za watu ili kuchochea machafuko, umwagaji wa damu na uasi. “Wanachochea wananchi wakisema, ‘peoples’ na hujibu ‘power’! (nguvu ya umma), Je mpo tayari kufanya kama Tunisia, Misri? (ambako serikali zilipinduliwa kwa nguvu ya umma)” alisema Katibu wa Halmashauri Kuu ya Taifa (Nec) ya CCM, Itikadi na Uenezi, John Chiligati kwenye mkutano na waandishi wa habari uliofanyika juzi, jijini Dar es Salaam.

Akizungumza na gazeti hili bila kujua kwamba CCM wangekuwa wanazungumzia suala hilo, Sumaye alisema CCM inatakiwa kukabiliana kisiasa na hoja za Chadema na si kuiachia Serikali ipambane nao.

Kwa mujibu wa Sumaye, kazi ya siasa ni ya chama na si serikali, hivyo CCM wanapaswa kuwa mstari wa mbele kupambana na Chadema kwa sera na kujibu hoja zao zote ili kuongeza imani ya wananchi kwa chama hicho.Sumaye alisema si ishara nzuri kwa CCM kukaa kimya wakati wapinzani wanaendelea kukishtaki kwa wananchi kuwa kimeshindwa kufanya kazi.

Sumaye ambaye Mwananchi Jumapili ilimtafuta kusikia maoni yake kuhusu mfululizo wa mikutano ya Chadema na mustakabali wa CCM, alisema chama hicho tawala kinapaswa kujibu hoja zote za Chadema kisiasa na kama hakina majibu kiiombe Serikali majibu hayo na iyatoe kwa wananchi.

“Wale (Chadema) wanafanya kazi za siasa na hawa (CCM) wamekaa kimya, wanaiachia Serikali ndio inatoa majibu, hali hiyo si nzuri, chama kinapaswa kujibu hoja zote na kama hakina majibu, kiombe kwa serikali,” alisema Sumaye.Mjadala wa uhalali wa mikutano na maandamano ya Chadema uliibuliwa na Rais Jakaya Kikwete alipolihutubia taifa kupitia radio na televisheni Februari 28, mwaka huu na kuwaleza wananchi kuwa chama hicho cha upinzani kina lengo la kuleta machafuko nchini.

Rais Kikwete alisema hayo alipokuwa akilihutubia taifa mwishoni mwa mwezi Februari mwaka huu.Kauli hiyo ya Rais Kikwete ambaye Chadema waliipuuza, ilisisitizwa na Waziri wa Nchi Ofisi ya Rais Mahusiano na Uratibu Steven Wassira, aliyesema kuwa Chadema wasije kuilaumu serikali ikikosa uvumulivu na kuanza kutumia dola kukishughulikia.

Akihojiwa na gazeti hili Sumaye hakuishia kuishauri CCM kuja na hoja za kisiasa kujibu mapigo ya Chadema, bali pia alieleza aina ya watu wanaofaa kukiongoza chama hicho tawala wakati huu wa mabadiliko makubwa ya kisiasa.Sumaye alisema CCM inahitaji viongozi waadilifu, wachapakazi na wasio waoga kumshauri rais ili kuwa na mabadiliko ya kiutendaji yanayoendana na joto la kisiasa lililopo. “Tunahitaji viongozi wasioogopa kumshauri rais juu ya masuala mbalimbali, kama utakuwa na viongozi waoga, lazima kutakuwa na matatizo,” alisema Sumaye.

Kuhusu mabadiliko ndani ya CCM ambayo Rais Kikwete alisema ni lazima yafanyike, Sumaye alisema anakubaliana msimamo huo na anampongeza Rais kwa kutambua kuwa chama kinahitaji mabadiliko makubwa ya kiutendaji.“Kwanza nampongeza Mwenyekiti, maana ameona hilo. Watu wengi wanaona kuna umuhimu chama kurekebishwa na eneo muhimu ni utendaji wa viongozi wa ngazi mbalimbali ndani ya chama,” alisema Sumaye.

Sumaye alieleza kuwa CCM kitaendelea kushika dola, lakini kama kinataka hayo yatimie, mabadiliko ndani ya chama ni muhimu.Alisema umuhimu wa CCM kujifanyia tathmini ya utendaji ulianza kujionyesha katika uchaguzi mkuu wa mwaka 2010, ambapo ikilinganishwa na chaguzi nyingine, chama kilipata upinzani mkali."Sasa ni dhahiri kunahitajika mikakati madhubuti ili kuhakikisha mwaka 2015 unakuwa mrahisi kwa CCM," alisema Sumaye.

Ndejembio atabiri anguko
Habel Chidawali anaripoti kutoka Dodoma kuwa, Kada maarufu wa CCM, Pancras Ndejembi amekitabiria chama hicho kikongwe kuzama.Kada huyo ambaye ni Mwenyekiti Mstaafu wa CCM Mkoa wa Dodoma alisema jana kuwa hali ilipofikia kwa sasa, CCM inaonekana kupoteza mwelekeo na kutia shaka mustakbali wa chama hicho siku za usoni.

Ndejembi ambaye aliwahi kutumikia nyadhifa mbalimbali ndani ya serikali na chama katika utawala wa Serikali ya awamu ya kwanza, alisema CCM bado haijaingia shimoni ila inaelekea huko.“Ni kweli chama hakifuati utaratibu uliokuwepo ndio maana nasema kuwa kinaelekea kuzama tofauti kabisa na enzi zetu ambapo Mwalimu Julius Nyerere alikuwa anasisitiza kuwa turudi kwa wanachama tukae nao na kuzungumza, jambo ambalo sasa hilo halipo na viongozi wamebaki huko juu,” alisema Ndejembi.

Alisema viongozi wa ngazi ya taifa wamebaki katika maofisi yao na kushindwa kurudi katika ngazi za chini kuimarisha chama na matokeo yake wanaishia kupiga kelele bila ya kuwa na uhakika wanachama ngazi ya chini wanataka nini.Ndejembi hivi alisema hakuna mshikamano wa dhati ndani ya chama jambo linalowafanya wanachama kumuachia mzigo wote Mwenyekiti wa Taifa.

“Watu wanaishia kulaumiana kila kona kwamba chama kimefanya nini, mara wanasema bado kimesimama wengine wanasema kuwa kinayumba, ila ukweli utabaki palepale kuwa CCM tunazama sasa,” alisisitiza.Kuhusu nguvu ya wazee ndani ya Chama Ndejembi alisema: “Sisi tumestaafu hivyo tupo tupo na kama hawataki kutuita unadhani tutakwenda ? Lakini, wakisema tuende tuko tayari kukaa pamoja nao kutengeneza utaratibu wa kukinusuru chama kisizame kabisa katika tope”.Ushauri

Kuhusu nini kifanye ili kukinusufu CCM, alisema unahitajika mshikamano wa dhati kati ya viongozi na wanachama: “viongozi wanahitaji kutambua kwa dhati kuwa chama kiko ngazi ya chini kuanzia kwa wajumbe wa nyumba kumi sio ngazi ya mikoa”.Alishauri kuwa Mwenyekiti wa CCM Taifa anatakiwa abaki kama kiongozi wa kutoa ushauri kwa juu, lakini awe na watu wanaochukua mawazo kutoka kwa wanachama wa ngazi ya chini.

Hata hivyo, alisema viongozi wa taifa bado wana mfumo mbovu wa mawasiliano, kwani kila mtu katika nafasi ya juu ni msemaji, jambo linalofanya wajichanganye katika taarifa zao.

Kafulila: Tuko pamoja na Chadema

2011-03-04T15:29:00.000+03:00

CHAMA cha NCCR-Mageuzi kimesema maandamano na migomo inayotokea nchini inasababishwa na serikali kushindwa kutatua kero za wananchi na kwamba hayasababishwi na chama chochote cha siasa.

Akizungumza na waandishi wa habari, Katibu wa Habari na Uenezi wa chama hicho, David Kafulila alisema wanaosema Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema), kinachochea vurugu siyo kweli.

Kafulila alitoa kauli hiyo siku chache baada ya wanachama wa Chadema kuandamana mjini Mwanza, na baada ya siku mbili, Rais Jakaya Kikwete alihutubia taifa na kusema kwamba Chadema kinataka kuleta machafuko kwa kudai mambo yasiyotekelezeka.

“Kazi wanayoifanya Chadema sioni kama ina tatizo, mimi tunatofautina na Chadema, lakini si kwa kila jambo, wanaosababisha maandamano siyo Chadema, NCCR wala CUF ni wananchi kwa sababu serikali imeshindwa kutatua matatizo yanayowakabili,” alisema Kafulila.

Alisema iwapo wanafunzi vyuoni wangepata mikopo yao kwa wakati, wafanyakazi kulipwa mishahara mizuri pamoja na mambo mengine kutekelezwa kwa wakati hakuna Mtanzania ambaye angelalamika wala kuandamana.

“Tatizo la umeme sio la chama ni la wananchi, hata sisi NCCR tuko tayari kwa lolote, tutaanza kazi kama wanayoifanya Chadema, lengo letu sote ni kuhakikisha wananchi wanapata haki zao na si kupika chuki katika jamii,” alisema Kafulila.

Alisema licha ya Tanzania kuwa nchi ya saba duniani kwa kupata misaada, lakini kila kukicha inazidi kurudi nyuma kimaendeleo.

“Tanzania ni ya saba kwa kupewa misaada, halafu wananchi wakiandamana vinasingiziwa vyama vya siasa kuwa ndio chanzo,”alisema.

“Hatuipingi Chadema, siipingi Chadema, NCCR tunajipanga kuwasha moto kuamsha watanzania waiwajibishe serikali yao, pale inaposhindwa kutatua matatizo bila sababu,” alisema Kafulila

Paul the octopus could make millions

2010-07-14T21:21:00.003+03:00

International icon and unofficial king of Spain, Paul the Oracle Octopus has officially retired from the World Cup match-predicting racket and may now be used to cash in. According to CNN, the Sea Life aquarium where Paul resides is entertaining offers for Paul's promotional services and PR people are drooling over his potential to make millions.
best known for generating tabloid headlines such as "Freddie Starr ate my hamster," believes Paul, who was born in England, has ended his soothsaying days at exactly the right time. "Obviously his 100 percent record is remarkable but the minute he gets it wrong it all disappears," Clifford told CNN.
Now Paul could star in light-hearted commercials. "If you get it right, and remember Paul has had worldwide success ... you're talking about an earning potential of £2 or £3 million (up to $4.5 million), maybe more. It's got to bring a smile to everybody's face. You've got the world's first multimillion-pound octopus here.
Up to $4.5 million for the endorsement of an octopus that ate a clam out of a box labeled with the flag of a match-winning team eight consecutive times? It's ridiculous, but when you consider the money paid to humans who have done far less than that to endorse a wide range of horrible products, it starts to make sense.
[Video: Watch the octopus in action]
The only problem with Paul? He's just six months shy of the average three-year lifespan for an octopus. Then again, that's probably a generous assessment of how long people will remember him anyway.
Another expert agreed, saying there was no limit to the ways in which Paul could be marketed. "Obviously he has a short shelf life but there are many options," said Allyson Stewart-Allen, director of London-based International Marketing Partners.
"A good use for him would be in adverts featuring two competing brands, such as Coke or Pepsi. Which does Paul prefer?" said Stewart-Allen.
"The gaming industry would be the logical use for Paul, or marketing a service that compares the market. Or he could just be an icon, marketing a company like Octopus Travel, for instance.
So keep an eye out for Paul the octopus billboards, TV ads and Happy Meal toys over the coming months. Followed by the most expensive octopus dish ever.

Ten Ways To Measure A Startup's Progress

2010-06-24T21:50:00.001+03:00

So you've been working 20 hours a day for months on your new business, have spent your last dollar and still have few results to show. Investors---not to mention your exhausted team---are bound to think that your dream vehicle doesn't have wheels, right?

Don't despair. Investors (the good ones, anyway) are smarter than that.

Here are 10 signs of tangible progress they look for---and that will keep you going the extra miles until your new venture really gains traction.

A Documented Business Plan
It's hard to build a business without a plan, just like it's hard to build a house without a blueprint. If don't have a plan, get to work--or risk not raising a cent. For help, check out

Realistic Objectives and Milestones
You can't measure results if you don't have a yardstick. On the other hand, if your objectives are off the chart, you'll look bad when you set them, and even worse when you miss them. Note: Only written milestones are credible.

A Well-Rounded Team
A great business often starts with one person, but it doesn't end there. Assemble a balanced crop of lieutenants who have real experience. A team of friends and family that work for free on weekends is not likely to impress investors---unless they are your investors.

A Qualified Advisory Board
If you can convince a couple of industry experts or experienced executives to join

your A Working Prototype
Savvy entrepreneurs know that product development never stops. That said, the earlier you can test something--anything--in the market, the better. Define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy a customer's problem and move some product. It will be the wrong product, but you will learn something with each iteration. That's progress.

Climate change human link evidence 'stronger'

2010-03-05T14:54:00.001+03:00

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.

In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.

Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

'Consistent picture'

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.

It's important to communicate to people what the science is showing

Dr Peter Stott

"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."

Tourism forecast to grow at 3-4pc

2010-02-03T13:59:00.000+03:00

he World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is predicting global tourism growth of between three and four per cent in 2010 after a fourth-quarter recovery in 2009, the UN body's secretary general said yesterday.

The UNWTO said global tourism fell a less-than-expected four per cent to 880 million international arrivals in 2009, thanks to a return to growth in the fourth quarter, led by the Asia, Pacific and Middle East regions.

"The global economic crisis aggravated by the uncertainty around the ... (H1N1) pandemic turned 2009 into one of the toughest years for the tourism sector," UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai said.

"However, the results of recent months suggest that recovery is underway, and even somewhat earlier and at a stronger pace than initially expected," he added.

Europe, which receives over half the world's tourists, was among the hardest hit in 2009 and is expected to be the slowest to recover this year, Mr Rifai said.

In Tanzania, arrivals in the first 10 months of 2009 fell 10.2 per cent due to the effects of the global downturn and the year was expected to end with a decline of eight per cent, tourism officials said recently.

The most significant drop occurred in the first six months of the year, before tourist arrivals in the country started to pick up again in July, Mr Ibrahim Mussa, assistant director at the division of tourism in the ministry of natural resources and tourism, told Reuters early this year.

"People usually book holidays to Tanzania one year in advance so we didn't feel the effects of the downturn last year," Mr Mussa said. Arrivals in the first 10 months fell to 576,643 from 641,951 for the same period in 2008. Full year arrival figures and earnings from the sector, which brought in $1.3 billion in 2008, will be released next month.

The sector, whose contribution to the national economy rose sharply a decade ago, currently accounts for 25 per cent of the foreign exchange earnings and 17.2 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Before the recession that has devastated the tourism industry worldwide, Tanzania had expected to host 950,000 visitors this year, which would have made the economy generate some $1 billion (about Sh1.3 trillion). Last year, the industry attracted about 840,000 tourists.

Officials hope the sector, which attracts tourists with its offerings of wildlife safaris, mountain climbing and beach holidays, ranks as the country's biggest foreign exchange earner, will rebound quickly.

"Our target is to reach one million tourists in the year 2012 and $1.5 billion in revenues," said Mr Amant Macha, director of marketing at the Tanzania Tourist Board. "There is hope that by mid-2010 people may find this threat of financial crisis is over, we are praying for that."

Mr Macha said Tanzania hopes to boost visitor numbers by attracting soccer fans heading to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, and South Africans keen to avoid the three million people expected to descend on their country during the tournament.

America is the leading source of tourists to Tanzania, with 66,000 visiting in 2008, followed by 58,000 British holidaymakers.

"We are also aiming at new markets, including the Indians, Chinese, Japanese; we have also Australians, eastern Europeans and of course Russians," said Mr Macha.

The country is also keen to market less-visited game parks in the south of the country, and develop coastal beach resorts to mop up spillover from the Zanzibar archipelago.

The tropical island destination, which relies on tourism for more than 25 per cent of its gross domestic product, has also been hit by the global downturn, with a 12 per cent drop in arrivals last year from 2007.

"We want to open up our markets. We are really going for Russia and emerging markets," said Mr Ali Khalil Mirza, acting head of the Zanzibar Commission of Tourism.

Traditionally, Italians make up a third of all arrivals to Zanzibar and 40 per cent of visitors arrive on charter packages.

In Zanzibar's Stone Town, there are signs the drive to market the destination to new markets is paying off as Japanese tourists wandered slowly on the narrow winding streets, where boutique hotels alternate with crumbling 19th-century edifices.

"We enjoy here. I like this weather, humid and hot," said Mr Miyako Saito, 33, a tourist from Japan. "When they see us they call 'China China' but I think for now the only Chinese people they see are only here for business."

Mr Mirza said Zanzibar was targeting a steady arrivals growth rate of 10 percent a year, with an eye on 200,000 direct arrivals for 2011, up from 128,000 in 2008.

DAILY INTERNATIONAL JOBS IN EAST AFRICA: DIAMOND TRUST BANK

2010-01-04T17:45:00.000+03:00

DAILY INTERNATIONAL JOBS IN EAST AFRICA: DIAMOND TRUST BANK

MORE PICS...

2009-10-23T10:43:00.000+03:00

AM MARRIED NOW

2009-10-02T10:21:00.004+03:00

WE ARE TWO RATHER THAN ONE................ IF ONE FALLS...................ONE IS THERE TO PICK HIM/HER UP

IT IS THE BLESSEN FROM GOD....MADE FROM GOD

WE HAVE STARTED THE JOURNE.....LOOONG JOURNEY

.....SO HELP US GOD!

BAE SYSTEMS

2009-10-02T10:00:00.002+03:00

SEE YOU IN COURT
A defence contractor and a fraud investigator brazen it out
PROSECUTION of BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest defence contractor, for alleged bribery came a step nearer on October 1st when the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it was referring the case to the attorney-general for permission to proceed. The SFO had been pressing BAE for an admission of guilt and a payment believed to be between £500m ($795m) and £1 billion for its dealings with officials in countries thought to include the Czech Republic, Romania, South Africa and Tanzania. The company has co-operated with the SFO but finally refused the deal, judging the figure too high and the case too weak.
The investigation is the biggest and most contentious in British corporate history. Arms sales are a dirty business and allegations that BAE, like some of its rivals, paid kickbacks to get foreign contracts have long swirled. In 2006 a separate investigation into payments to Saudi officials and members of the royal family, supposedly in exchange for a large arms contract in the 1980s, was shelved by the SFO, because of concerns that Saudi Arabia would otherwise cease to help combat terrorism.

BAE has maintained throughout that it made no irregular payments there or anywhere else, though it admitted last year that it has not always been ethically fastidious. It has, the company says, left itself open to accusations of “poor record-keeping”. That may now cost BAE dear, for Britain, accused for years of dragging its feet where corporate bribery is concerned, seems bent on making up for lost time.

Though Britain signed the OECD convention against bribery in 1997 and passed a law against it in 2001, the first successful prosecution of a British company for the offence of overseas corruption was concluded only on September 25th. Mabey & Johnson, a maker of steel bridges, was fined £6.6m by a London court after admitting to having bribed decision-makers in Jamaica and Ghana between 1993 and 2001. It also owned up to breaking UN sanctions governing Iraq’s “oil-for-food” programme in 2001 and 2002.
The company, which replaced five of its eight directors last year, reported itself to the SFO in February 2008, hoping for leniency. This is the model that the SFO hopes will prevail as it cracks down on corporate bribery: confession, co-operation and penalties set high enough to punish and deter but not so high as to cripple.
America’s Department of Justice, meanwhile, has also taken a robust interest in BAE’s overseas affairs. Since 2007 it has been looking into payments to officials in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. There is no firm evidence that BAE’s American business has yet suffered as a result, but the firm appealed last month against the award of a contract for trucks to an American rival. If the investigation goes against it, America’s penchant for jumbo penalties could make £1 billion look like peanuts.

What went wrong with economics

2009-08-07T11:08:00.002+03:00

And how the discipline should change to avoid the mistakes of the past

OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. A few years ago, the dismal science was being acclaimed as a way of explaining ever more forms of human behaviour, from drug-dealing to sumo-wrestling. Wall Street ransacked the best universities for game theorists and options modellers. And on the public stage, economists were seen as far more trustworthy than politicians. John McCain joked that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, was so indispensable that if he died, the president should “prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him.”
In the wake of the biggest economic calamity in 80 years that reputation has taken a beating. In the public mind an arrogant profession has been humbled. Though economists are still at the centre of the policy debate—think of Ben Bernanke or Larry Summers in America or Mervyn King in Britain—their pronouncements are viewed with more scepticism than before. The profession itself is suffering from guilt and rancour. In a recent lecture, Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2008, argued that much of the past 30 years of macroeconomics was “spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst.” Barry Eichengreen, a prominent American economic historian, says the crisis has “cast into doubt much of what we thought we knew about economics.”

In its crudest form—the idea that economics as a whole is discredited—the current backlash has gone far too far. If ignorance allowed investors and politicians to exaggerate the virtues of economics, it now blinds them to its benefits. Economics is less a slavish creed than a prism through which to understand the world. It is a broad canon, stretching from theories to explain how prices are determined to how economies grow. Much of that body of knowledge has no link to the financial crisis and remains as useful as ever.
And if economics as a broad discipline deserves a robust defence, so does the free-market paradigm. Too many people, especially in Europe, equate mistakes made by economists with a failure of economic liberalism. Their logic seems to be that if economists got things wrong, then politicians will do better. That is a false—and dangerous—conclusion.

Rational fools
These important caveats, however, should not obscure the fact that two central parts of the discipline—macroeconomics and financial economics—are now, rightly, being severely re-examined (see article, article). There are three main critiques: that macro and financial economists helped cause the crisis, that they failed to spot it, and that they have no idea how to fix it.
The first charge is half right. Macroeconomists, especially within central banks, were too fixated on taming inflation and too cavalier about asset bubbles. Financial economists, meanwhile, formalised theories of the efficiency of markets, fuelling the notion that markets would regulate themselves and financial innovation was always beneficial. Wall Street’s most esoteric instruments were built on these ideas.
But economists were hardly naive believers in market efficiency. Financial academics have spent much of the past 30 years poking holes in the “efficient market hypothesis”. A recent ranking of academic economists was topped by Joseph Stiglitz and Andrei Shleifer, two prominent hole-pokers. A newly prominent field, behavioural economics, concentrates on the consequences of irrational actions.
So there were caveats aplenty. But as insights from academia arrived in the rough and tumble of Wall Street, such delicacies were put aside. And absurd assumptions were added. No economic theory suggests you should value mortgage derivatives on the basis that house prices would always rise. Finance professors are not to blame for this, but they might have shouted more loudly that their insights were being misused. Instead many cheered the party along (often from within banks). Put that together with the complacency of the macroeconomists and there were too few voices shouting stop.

Blindsided and divided
The charge that most economists failed to see the crisis coming also has merit. To be sure, some warned of trouble. The likes of Robert Shiller of Yale, Nouriel Roubini of New York University and the team at the Bank for International Settlements are now famous for their prescience. But most were blindsided. And even worrywarts who felt something was amiss had no idea of how bad the consequences would be.

That was partly to do with professional silos, which limited both the tools available and the imaginations of the practitioners. Few financial economists thought much about illiquidity or counterparty risk, for instance, because their standard models ignore it; and few worried about the effect on the overall economy of the markets for all asset classes seizing up simultaneously, since few believed that was possible.

Macroeconomists also had a blindspot: their standard models assumed that capital markets work perfectly. Their framework reflected an uneasy truce between the intellectual heirs of Keynes, who accept that economies can fall short of their potential, and purists who hold that supply must always equal demand. The models that epitomise this synthesis—the sort used in many central banks—incorporate imperfections in labour markets (“sticky” wages, for instance, which allow unemployment to rise), but make no room for such blemishes in finance. By assuming that capital markets worked perfectly, macroeconomists were largely able to ignore the economy’s financial plumbing. But models that ignored finance had little chance of spotting a calamity that stemmed from it.

What about trying to fix it? Here the financial crisis has blown apart the fragile consensus between purists and Keynesians that monetary policy was the best way to smooth the business cycle. In many countries short-term interest rates are near zero and in a banking crisis monetary policy works less well. With their compromise tool useless, both sides have retreated to their roots, ignoring the other camp’s ideas. Keynesians, such as Mr Krugman, have become uncritical supporters of fiscal stimulus. Purists are vocal opponents. To outsiders, the cacophony underlines the profession’s uselessness.
Add these criticisms together and there is a clear case for reinvention, especially in macroeconomics. Just as the Depression spawned Keynesianism, and the 1970s stagflation fuelled a backlash, creative destruction is already under way. Central banks are busy bolting crude analyses of financial markets onto their workhorse models. Financial economists are studying the way that incentives can skew market efficiency. And today’s dilemmas are prompting new research: which form of fiscal stimulus is most effective? How do you best loosen monetary policy when interest rates are at zero? And so on.
But a broader change in mindset is still needed. Economists need to reach out from their specialised silos: macroeconomists must understand finance, and finance professors need to think harder about the context within which markets work. And everybody needs to work harder on understanding asset bubbles and what happens when they burst. For in the end economists are social scientists, trying to understand the real world. And the financial crisis has changed that world.

The state of economics

2009-08-07T10:30:00.001+03:00

The other-worldly philosophers

Although the crisis has exposed bitter divisions among economists, it could still be good for economics. Our first article looks at the turmoil among macroeconomists. Our second (see article) examines the foundations of financial economics

ROBERT LUCAS, one of the greatest macroeconomists of his generation, and his followers are “making ancient and basic analytical errors all over the place”. Harvard’s Robert Barro, another towering figure in the discipline, is “making truly boneheaded arguments”. The past 30 years of macroeconomics training at American and British universities were a “costly waste of time”.
To the uninitiated, economics has always been a dismal science. But all these attacks come from within the guild: from Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley; Paul Krugman of Princeton and the New York Times; and Willem Buiter of the London School of Economics (LSE), respectively. The macroeconomic crisis of the past two years is also provoking a crisis of confidence in macroeconomics. In the last of his Lionel Robbins lectures at the LSE on June 10th, Mr Krugman feared that most macroeconomics of the past 30 years was “spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst”.

These internal critics argue that economists missed the origins of the crisis; failed to appreciate its worst symptoms; and cannot now agree about the cure. In other words, economists misread the economy on the way up, misread it on the way down and now mistake the right way out.
On the way up, macroeconomists were not wholly complacent. Many of them thought the housing bubble would pop or the dollar would fall. But they did not expect the financial system to break. Even after the seizure in interbank markets in August 2007, macroeconomists misread the danger. Most were quite sanguine about the prospect of Lehman Brothers going bust in September 2008.
Nor can economists now agree on the best way to resolve the crisis. They mostly overestimated the power of routine monetary policy (ie, central-bank purchases of government bills) to restore prosperity. Some now dismiss the power of fiscal policy (ie, government sales of its securities) to do the same. Others advocate it with passionate intensity.
Among the passionate are Mr DeLong and Mr Krugman. They turn for inspiration to Depression-era texts, especially the writings of John Maynard Keynes, and forgotten mavericks, such as Hyman Minsky. In the humanities this would count as routine scholarship. But to many high-tech economists it is a bit undignified. Real scientists, after all, do not leaf through Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” to solve contemporary problems in physics.
They accuse economists like Mr DeLong and Mr Krugman of falling back on antiquated Keynesian doctrines—as if nothing had been learned in the past 70 years. Messrs DeLong and Krugman, in turn, accuse economists like Mr Lucas of not falling back on Keynesian economics—as if everything had been forgotten over the past 70 years. For Mr Krugman, we are living through a “Dark Age of macroeconomics”, in which the wisdom of the ancients has been lost.
What was this wisdom, and how was it forgotten? The history of macroeconomics begins in intellectual struggle. Keynes wrote the “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, which was published in 1936, in an “unnecessarily controversial tone”, according to some readers. But it was a controversy the author had waged in his own mind. He saw the book as a “struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought” he had inherited from his classical predecessors.
That classical mode of thought held that full employment would prevail, because supply created its own demand. In a classical economy, whatever people earn is either spent or saved; and whatever is saved is invested in capital projects. Nothing is hoarded, nothing lies idle.
Keynes appreciated the classical model’s elegance and consistency, virtues economists still crave. But that did not stop him demolishing it. In his scheme, investment was governed by the animal spirits of entrepreneurs, facing an imponderable future. The same uncertainty gave savers a reason to hoard their wealth in liquid assets, like money, rather than committing it to new capital projects. This liquidity-preference, as Keynes called it, governed the price of financial securities and hence the rate of interest. If animal spirits flagged or liquidity-preference surged, the pace of investment would falter, with no obvious market force to restore it. Demand would fall short of supply, leaving willing workers on the shelf. It fell to governments to revive demand, by cutting interest rates if possible or by public works if necessary.
The Keynesian task of “demand management” outlived the Depression, becoming a routine duty of governments. They were aided by economic advisers, who built working models of the economy, quantifying the key relationships. For almost three decades after the second world war these advisers seemed to know what they were doing, guided by an apparent trade-off between inflation and unemployment. But their credibility did not survive the oil-price shocks of the 1970s. These condemned Western economies to “stagflation”, a baffling combination of unemployment and inflation, which the Keynesian consensus grasped poorly and failed to prevent.
The Federal Reserve, led by Paul Volcker, eventually defeated American inflation in the early 1980s, albeit at a grievous cost to employment. But victory did not restore the intellectual peace. Macroeconomists split into two camps, drawing opposite lessons from the episode.
The purists, known as “freshwater” economists because of the lakeside universities where they happened to congregate, blamed stagflation on restless central bankers trying to do too much. They started from the classical assumption that markets cleared, leaving no unsold goods or unemployed workers. Efforts by policymakers to smooth the economy’s natural ups and downs did more harm than good.

America’s coastal universities housed most of the other lot, “saltwater” pragmatists. To them, the double-digit unemployment that accompanied Mr Volcker’s assault on inflation was proof enough that markets could malfunction. Wages might fail to adjust, and prices might stick. This grit in the economic machine justified some meddling by policymakers.
Mr Volcker’s recession bottomed out in 1982. Nothing like it was seen again until last year. In the intervening quarter-century of tranquillity, macroeconomics also recovered its composure. The opposing schools of thought converged. The freshwater economists accepted a saltier view of policymaking. Their opponents adopted a more freshwater style of modelmaking. You might call the new synthesis brackish macroeconomics.

Brackish macroeconomics flowed from universities into central banks. It underlay the doctrine of inflation-targeting embraced in New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Sweden and several emerging markets, such as Turkey. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed since 2006, is a renowned contributor to brackish economics.
For about a decade before the crisis, macroeconomists once again appeared to know what they were doing. Their thinking was embodied in a new genre of working models of the economy, called “dynamic stochastic general equilibrium” (DSGE) models. These helped guide deliberations at several central banks.
Mr Buiter, who helped set interest rates at the Bank of England from 1997 to 2000, believes the latest academic theories had a profound influence there. He now thinks this influence was baleful. On his blog, Mr Buiter argues that a training in modern macroeconomics was a “severe handicap” at the onset of the financial crisis, when the central bank had to “switch gears” from preserving price stability to safeguarding financial stability.
Modern macroeconomists worried about the prices of goods and services, but neglected the prices of assets. This was partly because they had too much faith in financial markets. If asset prices reflect economic fundamentals, why not just model the fundamentals, ignoring the shadow they cast on Wall Street?
It was also because they had too little interest in the inner workings of the financial system. “Philosophically speaking,” writes Perry Mehrling of Barnard College, Columbia University, economists are “materialists” for whom “bags of wheat are more important than stacks of bonds.” Finance is a veil, obscuring what really matters. As a poet once said, “promises of payment/Are neither food nor raiment”.
In many macroeconomic models, therefore, insolvencies cannot occur. Financial intermediaries, like banks, often don’t exist. And whether firms finance themselves with equity or debt is a matter of indifference. The Bank of England’s DSGE model, for example, does not even try to incorporate financial middlemen, such as banks. “The model is not, therefore, directly useful for issues where financial intermediation is of first-order importance,” its designers admit. The present crisis is, unfortunately, one of those issues.
The bank’s modellers go on to say that they prefer to study finance with specialised models designed for that purpose. One of the most prominent was, in fact, pioneered by Mr Bernanke, with Mark Gertler of New York University. Unfortunately, models that include such financial-market complications “can be very difficult to handle,” according to Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton, who has handled more of these difficulties than most. Convenience, not conviction, often dictates the choices economists make.
Convenience, however, is addictive. Economists can become seduced by their models, fooling themselves that what the model leaves out does not matter. It is, for example, often convenient to assume that markets are “complete”—that a price exists today, for every good, at every date, in every contingency. In this world, you can always borrow as much as you want at the going rate, and you can always sell as much as you want at the going rate.
Before the crisis, many banks and shadow banks made similar assumptions. They believed they could always roll over their short-term debts or sell their mortgage-backed securities, if the need arose. The financial crisis made a mockery of both assumptions. Funds dried up, and markets thinned out. In his anatomy of the crisis Mr Brunnermeier shows how both of these constraints fed on each other, producing a “liquidity spiral”.
What followed was a furious dash for cash, as investment banks sold whatever they could, commercial banks hoarded reserves and firms drew on lines of credit. Keynes would have interpreted this as an extreme outbreak of liquidity-preference, says Paul Davidson, whose biography of the master has just been republished with a new afterword. But contemporary economics had all but forgotten the term.

The mainstream macroeconomics embodied in DSGE models was a poor guide to the origins of the financial crisis, and left its followers unprepared for the symptoms. Does it offer any insight into the best means of recovery?
In the first months of the crisis, macroeconomists reposed great faith in the powers of the Fed and other central banks. In the summer of 2007, a few weeks after the August liquidity crisis began, Frederic Mishkin, a distinguished academic economist and then a governor of the Fed, gave a reassuring talk at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He presented the results of simulations from the Fed’s FRB/US model. Even if house prices fell by a fifth in the next two years, the slump would knock only 0.25% off GDP, according to his benchmark model, and add only a tenth of a percentage point to the unemployment rate. The reason was that the Fed would respond “aggressively”, by which he meant a cut in the federal funds rate of just one percentage point. He concluded that the central bank had the tools to contain the damage at a “manageable level”.
Since his presentation, the Fed has cut its key rate by five percentage points to a mere 0-0.25%. Its conventional weapons have proved insufficient to the task. This has shaken economists’ faith in monetary policy. Unfortunately, they are also horribly divided about what comes next.
Mr Krugman and others advocate a bold fiscal expansion, borrowing their logic from Keynes and his contemporary, Richard Kahn. Kahn pointed out that a dollar spent on public works might generate more than a dollar of output if the spending circulated repeatedly through the economy, stimulating resources that might otherwise have lain idle.
Today’s economists disagree over the size of this multiplier. Mr Barro thinks the estimates of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors are absurdly large. Mr Lucas calls them “schlock economics”, contrived to justify Mr Obama’s projections for the budget deficit. But economists are not exactly drowning in research on this question. Mr Krugman calculates that of the 7,000 or so papers published by the National Bureau of Economic Research between 1985 and 2000, only five mentioned fiscal policy in their title or abstract.
I
Do these public spats damage macroeconomics? Greg Mankiw, of Harvard, recalls the angry exchanges in the 1980s between Robert Solow and Mr Lucas—both eminent economists who could not take each other seriously. This vitriol, he writes, attracted attention, much like a bar-room fist-fight. But he thinks it also dismayed younger scholars, who gave these macroeconomic disputes a wide berth.
By this account, the period of intellectual peace that followed in the 1990s should have been a golden age for macroeconomics. But the brackish consensus also seems to leave students cold. According to David Colander, who has twice surveyed the opinions of economists in the best American PhD programmes, macroeconomics is often the least popular class. “What did you learn in macro?” Mr Colander asked a group of Chicago students. “Did you do the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model?” “We learned a lot of junk like that,” one replied.
It takes a model to beat a model
The benchmark macroeconomic model, though not junk, suffers from some obvious flaws, such as the assumption of complete markets or frictionless finance. Indeed, because these flaws are obvious, economists are well aware of them. Critics like Mr Buiter are not telling them anything new. Economists can and do depart from the benchmark. That, indeed, is how they get published. Thus a growing number of cutting-edge models incorporate one or two financial frictions. And economists like Mr Brunnermeier are trying to fit their small, “blackboard” models of the crisis into a larger macroeconomic frame.
But the benchmark still matters. It formalises economists’ gut instincts about where the best analytical cuts lie. It is the starting point to which the theorist returns after every ingenious excursion. Few economists really believe all its assumptions, but few would rather start anywhere else.
Unfortunately, it is these primitive models, rather than their sophisticated descendants, that often exert the most influence over the world of policy and practice. This is partly because these first principles endure long enough to find their way from academia into policymaking circles. As Keynes pointed out, the economists who most influence practical men of action are the defunct ones whose scribblings have had time to percolate from the seminar room to wider conversations.
These basic models are also influential because of their simplicity. Faced with the “blooming, buzzing confusion” of the real world, policymakers often fall back on the highest-order principles and the broadest presumptions. More specific, nuanced theories are often less versatile. They shed light on whatever they were designed to explain, but little beyond.
Would economists be better off starting from somewhere else? Some think so. They draw inspiration from neglected prophets, like Minsky, who recognised that the “real” economy was inseparable from the financial. Such prophets were neglected not for what they said, but for the way they said it. Today’s economists tend to be open-minded about content, but doctrinaire about form. They are more wedded to their techniques than to their theories. They will believe something when they can model it.
Mr Colander, therefore, thinks economics requires a revolution in technique. Instead of solving models “by hand”, using economists’ powers of deduction, he proposes simulating economies on the computer. In this line of research, the economist specifies simple rules of thumb by which agents interact with each other, and then lets the computer go to work, grinding out repeated simulations to reveal what kind of unforeseen patterns might emerge. If he is right, then macroeconomists, like zombie banks, must write off many of their past intellectual investments before they can make progress again.
Mr Krugman, by contrast, thinks reform is more likely to come from within. Keynes, he observes, was a “consummate insider”, who understood the theory he was demolishing precisely because he was once convinced by it. In the meantime, he says, macroeconomists should turn to patient empirical spadework, documenting crises past and present, in the hope that a fresh theory might later make sense of it all.
Macroeconomics began with Keynes, but the word did not appear in the journals until 1945, in an article by Jacob Marschak. He reviewed the profession’s growing understanding of the business cycle, making an analogy with other sciences. Seismology, for example, makes progress through better instruments, improved theories or more frequent earthquakes. In the case of economics, Marschak concluded, “the earthquakes did most of the job.”
Economists were deprived of earthquakes for a quarter of a century. The Great Moderation, as this period was called, was not conducive to great macroeconomics. Thanks to the seismic events of the past two years, the prestige of macroeconomists is low, but the potential of their subject is much greater. The furious rows that divide them are a blow to their credibility, but may prove to be a spur to creativity.

How viable is Kikwete's fiscal stimulus package?

2009-07-25T11:47:00.001+03:00

It has been accepted that the world financial crisis and economic downturn have affected various sectors of the economy, leading to the revision of projected GDP growth rates.

As observed by the President, the growth rate for 2009 has been reversed from expected 7.5 to 5-6 per cent. According to the economists, the growth rate will be 4 per cent while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects at only 3.5 per cent.

The sectors adversely affected are tourism, textile and leather, mining, horticulture, agricultural exports, foreign direct investment and decline in domestic revenue including various tax revenues like customs duty. VAT and excise duty.

The President announced a financial stimulus of Tsh1.7 trillion, which is not intended to replace the annual budget or other development programmes, but is intended to address transitional problems and emergencies, especially liquidity problems caused by the global financial crisis.

It is perceived to be a comprehensive plan to revive all the sectors affected by the global recession. The financial rescue program targets to protect jobs and income generating opportunities and enhance food security as well as sustain investment in the key sectors of the economy .

Due to the decrease in demand for commodities such as cotton, buyers including cooperatives and 24 private buyers in the cotton industry have suffered losses because of a fall in prices from 82 cents per kilo in 2008 to Tsh40 cents per kilo in 2009.

These buyers have fatten loans from commercial banks, which have not been repaid. This means the banks would be unwilling to extend loans for crop purchasing in the coming cotton buying season and farmers would not be able to sell their crops.

The measures taken include the commitment by the government to compensate the companies for losses incurred, amounting to Tsh21.9 billion. It also involves to guarantee some banks. Some of the other measures taken is to guarantee outstanding loans at a ratio of 1:5, meaning in case of possible default the government will pay 20 pc of the bad and doubtful debts owed to banks by cooperatives and other enterprises.

This will not involve debts incurred before the onset of the global economic recession. The amount guaranteed is Tsh270 billion, which means the loans will be repaid after two years during which compound interest will not be charged.

The Government is expected to pay Tsh45 billion for the guarantee of 70 per cent of the loans owed by the ailing enterprises to CRDB and other commercial banks.

The mining sector will, in the two years' period of the rescue package, get a tax holiday in repayment of royalties and this amounts to a loss of 500, 000 in lost royalties and the goal is to prevent them from closing their operations.

As a result of the global economic down turn to all sectors of the economy, 48,000 jobs have already been lost, especially in tourism, horticulture and mining industries as well as leather and textile sectors.

A few years ago credit guarantee schemes were started by the government and these include the SME Credit Guarantee Scheme and Export Credit Guarantee Scheme to enable banks to lend to SMEs and companies involved in export trade.

The SME Credit Guarantee Scheme has been increased to Tsh60 billion and Export Credit Guarantee Scheme to over Tsh250 billion. The export credit guarantee scheme lent to a maximum of Tsh161.5 billion while the SME Credit Guarantee Scheme lent to a maximum of Tsh6.5 billion. This involved the amounts contributed by the government and the banking sector to the schemes.

The scheme also targets to facilitate commercial banks, lending at lower and affordable interest rates to the companies so get cheaper working capital. The Government will lend Tsh80 billion to the banks at an interest rate of two per cent and the banks will be required to lend 1 ½ times of this amount for working capital of enterprises, which amounts to Tsh120 billion, bringing the total to Tsh200 billion.

This means commercial banks and financial institutions in Tanzania have lending rates of up 15-21 per cent to hedge against default to repay the bank loans. The central tenet of the proposed economic resume package is to ensure that there is increased production of food.

To ensure increased loans to farmers, the Tanzania Investment Bank will be recapitalized by Tsh20 billion. A further Tsh20 billion will be given to the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) for importation of tractors and other farm implements.

There will be a Tsh40 billion credit from India for importation of tractors. Subsidized fertilizers through use of the voucher system will be expanded to benefit more farmers with a proposed injection of Tsh46 billion by the Government. That amount will be increased to Tsh92 billion as the world bank is expected to contribute Tsh46 billion to Agricultural inputs funds.

The funds for the strategic grain reserves (SGR) will be increased in order to buy grains to stabilize food prices. Expert banks of ford have not worked because neighbouring countries are offering higher prices for maize and this will be an additional task for the SGR to ensure they buy market prices for farmers' crops equal to those offered by smugglers.

TASAF will get an increase of Tsh30 billion to implement its projects while the Agricultural Sector Development Programme will get a boost of Tsh30 billion. The Chinese Development Bank will cooperative with the Government of Tanzania to establish the proposed Agricultural Development Bank estimated to start with an estimated capital of US$500 million (Tsh660 billion).

The funding of infrastructure development is expected to be sourced domestically possibly through the issue of bonds, considering that there is a lot of money in the hands of the people considering the over subscription in the initial public offer of NMB, DCB and many other companies in the DSE.

The success of the Tsh1.7 trillion package depends on the fact that the recession will not last by more than two years and become bigger in impact. There is a need to re-examine past economic policies because some of these problems are not a result of global economic recession only.

The objective of the proposed fiscal stimulus is to boost production in various sectors of the economy. Other goals are to boost domestic revenue which has declined by ten per cent and create more jobs and income generating opportunities as well as to boost exports and foreign exchange earnings.

The upbringing of today's children in Tanzania

2009-07-25T11:43:00.000+03:00

THE heading above actually implies early training of our children. In other words, it is the way in which somebody has been brought up, or trained and educated early in life. Afterall, the background of an adult matters as far as he/she was brought up, reared or nurtured by his parents during childhood and enabled him to attend a good school and complete his basic education.Therefore, parents should be urged to take care of not only their own children, but also those children, who are not theirs. Being a good parent is not only a gift to your child, but also a gift to the whole society, particularly in Tanzania today.Parents must have the courage to say 'No' to their children who misbehave or drink alcohol, smoke hashish, cannabis or cigarettes, use drugs and so forth. In which case, a 'collective disapproval' should be a powerful tool in regulating behaviour. It is also important for parents to intervene when they see other people's children behave badly. This means that at least every parent has an obligation to say something if children he sees are misbehaving. Suppose we are met by a volley of abuse then other adults have a duty to intervene. We do not want to live in walk-on-by society. Most of our children have the most quality of life in this developing country. The authority or Parliament at large has to reform the law accordingly on child-maintenance so to compel the relevant parents to stand by their responsibilities including disciplining their children.It seems that some of the parents are completely incapable of getting to grips with the challenges today’s families are facing, both economically and socially because of poverty or joblessness.Of course, much more investment is needed in education for the sake of our children today, who need quality education to become good and law abiding citizens of tomorrow. In 2009 we were all excited by the government’s ditermination to eradicate children’s ignorance and the prevalent poverty.Tackling poverty generally should be the great promise of the government, but the world economic crisis today leaves the country with the pangs of poverty rising. The figures have gone up because of temporary blip in the income of self-employed and the impoverished society.Some people argue that many of this country’s problems can be traced back to the collapse of the relationship between parents and children and between adults or call them old men and young people or youths. In our society, we should not expect a kid punishing an adult person.The society has the duty to tackle malaises including binge drinking and the unacceptable rate of teenage pregnancies. How can we expect young people to act responsibly in this developing nation when so many of them are hopelessly drunk?Another appropriate example; how can girls - after only children themselves - be expected to bring up children effectively? This must be a problem for everyone of us! Not even for the feckless fathers and teenage single mothers.We ought to accept responsibility for our own children and for the way the young pleople are growing up now, who will be the future leaders and loyal citizens of this nation.Also, our respective religions should as well be responsible for teaching the society’s children good things and that wedlocks or marriages should be taken as that cement which can bind and hold society together.Parents of young children, who have been through a wedding ceremony to which we normally contribute financially and in kind, are hundred times more likely to stay together than those who have not.Consequently, if we observe the acceptable marriage systems properly, there is a possibility in future to deal with rising crimes. On top of that we shall create a better disciplined nation, which will be free from the current vices being perpatrated by existing evils dominated by prevalent joblessness and abject poverty.

Letter from Edinburgh:Here is solution for Tanzania’s power shortage

2009-07-25T11:40:00.001+03:00

As Tanzania faces perennial electricity shortage it is the responsibility of patriots to come up with new ideas for remedial action that can make power blues a thing of the past. Our ideas will help us make a collective action to confront this problem. We can’t defeat past failure with old tired ideas. We must come up with new ideas. Yes, new ideas are the weapons for success if we want to achieve adequate and reliable power supply for the long term.Tanzania’s energy sector has been in the hands of ruling elite for many years. Poor performance of Tanzania’s Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) has, of course, been a cause of heated controversy in the company and the political arena. But all of that doesn’t stop us to ask ourselves the two fundamental questions concerning our energy sector? One, what are the factors which will bring about the transition from one point to another? Two, who will provide the necessary leadership to take us from one point to another?The first question is important because it will help us to wake up from the relaxed state we are in; of waiting for help instead of generating new ideas to solve our energy problem. Developed countries are working hard to solve their energy problems. Recently Twelve European companies launched a 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) initiative to plant huge solar farms in Africa and the Middle East to produce energy for Europe (not for Africa). This is evident that though the project will take part in Africa, its intention is not to solve the energy problem of Africa. Thus this means Tanzania’s energy problem can be solved by Tanzanian initiatives.This takes us to the answer of the first question on how we can move forward. The main solution will be a need of collaboration between TANESCO and the Tanzanian public which is urgently needed. This collaboration will be a part of the solution towards significant investments which Tanzania needs to invest in and eventually cover the growing demand for energy. Such results can’t be achieved if we continue to rely on Aid or other financing methods which charges Tanzania (us) very expensive high interest rates.As a way forward we can take advantage of the Capital Market and Securities (Collective Investment Scheme) Regulations, 1997 by establishing a National Energy Public Investment Fund (NEPIF). The fund will aim to promote the development and use of renewable energy (Solar energy and wind power). Moreover, by investing in conjunction with TANESCO, the fund can achieve its aim without taking the whole business and technical risks involved.For example if we aim to issue 4 Million shares in three years of establishment of the fund, I am sure the shares will be oversubscribed before the end of the third year. And if each share will be priced at 100 USD, we will be able to raise 400 Million USD which will be used for development of renewable energy.To make sure this investment scheme gives a chance for all Tanzanian’s from all walks of life; the scheme can provide investors opportunity to buy shares through TANESCO pay points infrastructure or through mobile phone banking like M-PESA which can enable people who have no access to banking facilities to use their mobile phone to take advantage of this profitable and developmental scheme.We are very excited to join the East African Power Pool, but the question is, do we have enough electricity to export to other countries in the power pool? Or we are going to be the importers of electricity like the way we import most of the goods. The nature of our aspirations of Exporting power to other country is positive, but we can’t realize them by leaving this issue to TANESCO alone. Thus this provides the answering of the second question; who will provide the necessary leadership to take us from one point to another? I believe that me and you should provide that leadership because; the public interest requires men and women of intelligence and good will to do things that will transform the society of today and tomorrow. Moreover, an example of the above is seen in TANESCO’s Corporate Business Plan (2007-2011) which doesn’t provide clarity of our desired ends. When it says it wants to export electricity to Kenya by 2010 while at the same time saying we won’t have enough electricity for ourselves for the next two years, it depicts contradiction and it doesn’t make sense. Therefore we need more ideas which will provide knowledge of all the available alternatives and means to achieve these ends. To conclude, I return to the first question which this commentary has sought to answer. What are the factors which will bring about the transition from one point to another in the energy sector? It is a difficult, potentially threatening question, but it is obvious that the starting point if we are serious, as a nation, about wanting energy sector improvement, starts with a general sense of responsibility and the need of the Public to come up with new ideas one of which is the establishment of the National Energy Public Investment Fund (NEPIF).

East Africa gets high-speed web

2009-07-24T12:13:00.001+03:00

The first undersea cable to bring high-speed internet access to East Africa has gone live.
The fibre-optic cable, operated by African-owned firm Seacom, connects South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia.
The firm says the cable will help to boost the prospects of the region's industry and commerce.
The cable - which is 17,000km long - took two years to lay and cost more than $650m.
Seacom said in a statement the launch of the cable marked the "dawn of a new era for communications" between Africa and the rest of the world.
The services were unveiled in ceremonies in the Kenyan port of Mombasa and the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.
School benefits
The cable was due to be launched in June but was delayed by pirate activity off the coast of Somalia.
It's not good. It's hanging and keeps wasting time and frustrating me

The BBC's Ben Mwangunda in Dar es Salaam says five institutions are already benefiting from the faster speeds - national electricity company Tanesco, communications company, TTCL, Tanzania Railways and the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Dodoma.
The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says the internet revolution trumpeted by Seacom largely depends on how well the service is rolled out across the region.
To the disappointment of many consumers, our correspondent says some ISPs (internet service providers) are not planning to lower the cost of the internet, but instead will offer increased bandwidth.
But businesses, which have been paying around $3,000 a month for 1MB through a satellite link, will now pay considerably less - about $600 a month.
The Kenyan government has been laying a network of cables to all of the country's major towns and says the fibre-optic links will also enable schools nationwide to link into high quality educational resources.
But our correspondent says it is not clear whether the internet revolution will reach the villages, many of which still struggle to access reliable electricity.

Alarming Africa male gay HIV rate

2009-07-20T15:02:00.000+03:00

HIV rates among gay men in some African countries are 10 times higher than among the general male population, says research in medical journal the Lancet.
The report said prejudice towards gay people was leading to isolation and harassment, which in turn led to risky sexual practices among gay communities.
But the risks are not limited to gay men, as many of the infected also have female sexual partners.
The report called for greater education and resources in the fight against HIV.
The Oxford University researchers found that the prevalence of HIV/Aids among gay men in sub-Saharan African has been "driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept [gay men] as equal members of society".
Lead researcher Adrian Smith told the magessa blog there was "profound stigma and social hostility at every level of society concerning either same-sex behaviours amongst men, or homosexuality".
"This has the consequence that this group becomes extremely hard to reach," he said.
Mr Smith said that gay male sex had always been acknowledged as being particularly dangerous in terms of contracting HIV/Aids.
But gay men were also more likely to be involved in other high-risk behaviours, including sex work, having multiple partners and being in contact with intravenous drug use, he said.

George Kanuma, a gay rights activist in Burundi, told magessa blog many men "hide their sexual orientation" to get married and have children, but continue to have sex with men.
"Most of them know that you can contract HIV/Aids or any infection when you are making sex with women, but not when you are having sex with another man," he said.
Mr Smith said there was "a desperate need for delivering a basic package of prevention for HIV", including ensuring supplies of condoms.
"There is also a need to sensitise, educate and train those involved in HIV, the interface with men who have sex with men, to educate those involved in care and prevention activities," he said.
The United Nations Aids agency estimates that 33 million people in the world have HIV, of whom two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Neverland (Jacko) Vs Graceland (Elvis)

2009-07-02T13:18:00.005+03:00

NEVERLAND LUNCH OWNED BY THE LATE MICHAEL JACKSON WORTH 35M POUNDS

ELVIS PRESLEYS GRACELAND WORTH 250M POUNDS

Full of life, just 2 days from death

2009-06-30T16:17:00.004+03:00

Rehearsals....Michael Jackson performs on stage

HE looks in incredible form strutting his stuff on stage — but two days later Michael Jackson was dead.

These pictures are thought to be the last taken of the tragic superstar.
He was rehearsing for the gigs at London’s O2 starting next month.

This Is It lighting display is behind him as he pulls off an impressive high-energy routine.
A source who watched Jacko’s final rehearsal in LA said: “Michael was in better form than for years.
"He was preparing for what would have been an absolutely incredible show.
“He was laughing and joking with his dancers. He seemed to have so much energy — it’s hard to believe that 48 hours later he was dead.”
Photographer Kevin Mazur, who took the shots, said: “When he hit the stage I was thrilled that the magical Michael Jackson was back.”

Billion dollar beggar

2009-06-30T16:07:00.002+03:00

Michael Jackson

MICHAEL Jackson owed at least $300million when he died... and had been begging banks to lend him more money.
On paper, Jacko had assets worth $1.3billion - almost all tied up in his 50 per cent ownership of The Beatles' back catalogue with Sony Records.
But he was unable - or unwilling - to sell his share.
Financial papers seen by The Sun show Jacko was desperately seeking to borrow $43million in late 2007.
And we can reveal he signed his deal with O2 concert promoter AEG at that time in a bid to persuade the bankers he was good for the cash.

Black and White ... Jacko's assets and debts

Enlarge
Jacko had been having difficulty getting a loan because a series of defaults on previous lending had left him with a disastrous credit rating.
The King of Pop's score was 447 - among the worst two per cent of all Americans.
One expert said: "Below 500 is pretty disastrous."
Royalties
The documents reveal the 50-year-old's moneymen claimed his comeback gigs at London's O2 Arena would generate a "guaranteed" $38.5million.
But they added there was the potential for the star to earn another $300million.
A source said: "He signed up for the live comeback about 18 months ago and told lenders he could make $300million.
"But the pressure of knowing what it would take to fulfil his promise could have helped kill him."
The documents seen by The Sun were produced to support a loan application for his Neverland ranch.
He also had a mortgage on his parents' home in Encino.
The papers also reveal Jacko was pulling in $33million a year in royalties.
In 2006 he pocketed $9million from his own songs and a staggering $24million from the Beatles hits.
As well as the back catalogue - worth around $1.15billion - Jacko valued his personal collection of cars, antiques and other collectibles at $20million.

He also had $668,215 in cash, $10.6million held in reserve to pay interest on his loan on Neverland, other property assets of £73million, including the Neverland ranch and parents' home in Encino, archive material worth $20million, song rights worth $85,000,000 and professional equipment worth $1million.
But he owed almost $300million to a private New York hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group.
There was also an outstanding mortgage on Neverland of $23million, one on the Encino home of $4million and another loan of $4million.
It gave him a net worth - on paper - of just over $1billion.
Jacko's business expertise had been hailed back in 1985 when he picked up the back catalogue - along with thousands of other songs - for $46million.
But just a decade later Michael was forced to sell half to Sony as his lavish lifestyle - and litigation - caught up with him. In 1994 he had been forced to settle a child molestation suit for $20million.

Legendary
Jacko's spending was legendary - he was dubbed "a millionaire who lived like a billionaire".
He became famous for blowing millions on glitzy videos.
For his 1995 album HIStory he shot a video in Hungary that featured real Hungarian soldiers.
A 35-minute film called Ghosts cost a reported $15million. He spent $8million a year on plane charters and hired Hollywood star Marlon Brando for a video for $1million.
His personal expenses were put at an amazing $7million.
The deal with AEG was supposed to mark the comeback and leave Jacko back in the black.
But the promise proved too much - and contributed to the superstar's death.
Jackson's $1billion fortune will now be the subject of a bitter legal tug-of-war.

2009-06-30T15:49:00.000+03:00

Deforestation 'faster in Africa'

2009-05-27T12:38:00.001+03:00

Africa's forests are disappearing faster than those in other parts of the world because of a lack of land ownership, a report says.
Less than 2% of Africa's forests are under community control, compared to a third in Latin America and Asia, say the Rights and Resources Initiative.
The deforestation rate in Africa is four times the world's average.
At the current rate, it will take Congo Basin countries 260 years to reach the level of reform achieved in the Amazon.
Action on land tenure could help to halt deforestation, slow climate change and alleviate poverty, says the report, entitled Tropical Forest Tenure Assessment: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities.
The study was presented in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, at a meeting of forest community representatives from Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Slow progress
The authors compared the distribution of land ownership in 39 tropical countries, which represent 96% of global tropical forests.
The slowness of reform is suppressing opportunities to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods

They found that African citizens have far less control over the forests they inhabit than do the peoples of other tropical regions.
Several countries have introduced or amended laws to strengthen community land rights - including Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan and Tanzania.
However, the report calls for these nations to "quickly scale up" the process.
"Recognising local land rights alone doesn't solve all the problems," said Andy White, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative.
"Governments need to follow up by supporting local management and enterprises.
"There are some countries that have recognised local land rights, but the government still controls the forest, and hands out concessions to industrial loggers - leading to more degradation and corruption."
Failure to ensure land rights for indigenous peoples and particularly women, will impede efforts to stop deforestation and mitigate climate change, say the authors.
Clearing of land for agriculture, logging, and other extractive industries accounts for as much as one third of some countries' total carbon emissions.
Carbon payments
Payments for reducing deforestation could be a potential source of income in the region. But without tenure reform, the authors argue, these potential benefits will remain unreachable.

The rate of deforestation in Africa is four times the world's average
The conference aims to kickstart new initiatives to establish forest tenure rights in west and central Africa, building on recent steps to decentralise governance.
Cameroon has begun by negotiating a legally binding bilateral pact, known as a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), with the European Union.
The VPA will help ensure that wood products exported from Cameroon to the EU contain no illegally harvested timber and are derived from managed forests that benefit local communities.
"The slowness of reform is suppressing a whole range of opportunities to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods," said Emmanuel Ze Meka, Executive Director of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), co-authors of the report.
"Africa's forest communities already generate millions of jobs and dollars in domestic and regional trade, and in indigenous livelihoods, but current laws keep some of these activities illegal and also undermine opportunities to improve forest management."

Hunger threat forecast

2009-05-14T12:48:00.001+03:00

Urgent action is needed to prevent hundreds of millions more people slipping into hunger as a result of volatile food prices and increasing energy and water scarcity, claims international agency Oxfam.

Decades of underinvestment in agriculture coupled with the increasing threat of climate change mean that despite recent price falls, future food security is not guaranteed, and in fact the situation could get worse. The warning comes in two new reports, A Billion Hungry People and The Feeding of the Nine Billion, published by Oxfam and the UK think tank, Chatham House respectively .

Although global food prices have fallen in the last few months, they are not back to previous levels, and are likely to rise sharply again in the future. Furthermore, price volatility itself is a problem, and more needs to be done to address the underlying structural issues that cause the chronic hunger affecting one in six people in the world today, says Oxfam.

“This should be a wake-up call for all those who believe that the food crisis is over,” said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam Chief Executive. “World leaders have a window of opportunity to prevent a worse situation resulting from the triple crunch of the economic crisis, climate change, and energy and water scarcity. They must act urgently to turn their plans into coordinated action that addresses immediate needs and begins to implement long-term reforms. Failure to act will see millions more people falling into hunger.”
Oxfam said current severe food shortages in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are evidence that the global food crisis is far from over. Even before recent price rises, there were over 850 million people classified as undernourished. Now, there are nearly a billion, as a result of the price rises, alongside other factors such as political instability and conflict.
The Feeding of the Nine Billion predicts demand for food will increase as the world’s population grows by 2.5 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. It also notes a UN forecast that climate change will increase the number of undernourished people worldwide by between 40 million and 170 million.
The report includes recommendations for reform of the humanitarian aid system and makes a strident call to poor countries to do their bit by investing more in agriculture, targeting women and small-scale producers. Developing countries must increase social protection measures for vulnerable populations – including cash payments and employment creation schemes for those at risk of hunger. Rich countries must ensure long-term predictable funding to developing countries for investment in agriculture and climate change adaptation.

The food crisis in figures
One in six of the world’s population is hungry, almost a billion people.
Between 50% and 60% of all childhood deaths in the developing world are hunger related.
The death risk is 2.5 times higher for children with only mild malnutrition than it is for children who are adequately nourished.
The proportion of overseas development assistance spent on agriculture has fallen from almost 25% in 1980 to just 3% today.
Poor people are particularly vulnerable to changes in food prices with many spending up to 80% of their income on food.
This should be a wake-up call for all those who believe that the food crisis is over.

IT IS ALL ABOUT DECORATIONS!

2009-05-14T12:35:00.003+03:00

They are professionals in decorations visit their blog www.decorplaces.blogspot.com

JAKAYA KIKWETE WITH THE CABINET

2009-05-14T12:16:00.002+03:00

President Kikwete with the cabinet at the state house yesterday(13/05/2009)

Study: Pollution helps plants absorb C02

2009-05-14T11:47:00.001+03:00

Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under polluted skies than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature magazine.

Smoggy skies, green leaves: Pollution has helped plant growth, according to a new study.

The results of the study have important implications for efforts to combat future climate change which are likely to take place alongside attempts to lower air pollution levels.
The research team included scientists from the Center for Ecology & Hydrology, the Met Office Hadley Centre, ETH Zurich and the University of Exeter.
"Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. This resulted in a net 10 percent increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land once other effects were taken into account," said lead author Dr Lina Mercado, from the Center for Ecology & Hydrology in a press statement.
Reductions in sunlight reduce photosynthesis, but clouds and atmospheric particles scatter sunlight, meaning plants are then able to convert more of the available sunlight into growth because fewer leaves are in the shade.
An increase in microscopic particles released into the atmosphere, known as aerosols, by human activities and changes in cloud cover, caused a decline in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface from the 1950's up to the 1980's -- a phenomenon known as "global dimming."
Scientists have known for a long time that aerosols cool climate by reflecting sunlight and making clouds brighter, but the new study is the first to use a global model to estimate the net effects on plant carbon intake resulting from this type of atmospheric pollution.

"Although many people believe that well-watered plants grow best on a bright sunny day, the reverse is true. Plants often thrive in hazy conditions such as those that exist during periods of increased atmospheric pollution," co-author Dr. Stephen Sitch from the University of Leeds said to the press.
The research team also considered the implications of these findings for efforts to avoid dangerous climate change.

"As we continue to clean up the air in the lower atmosphere, which we must do for the sake of human health, the challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change through reductions in CO2 emissions will be even harder," said co-author Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter in a press statement.
Under an environmentally friendly scenario in which sulphate aerosols decline rapidly in the 21st century, the researchers found that by cleaning up the atmosphere, even steeper cuts in global CO2 emissions would be required to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 parts per million by volume.
"Different climate changing pollutants have very different direct effects on plants, and these need to be taken into account if we are to make good decisions about how to deal with climate change," said Cox.

RIPOTI YA HAKI ZA BINADAMU YA 2008: TANZANIA

2009-05-12T12:13:00.001+03:00

OFISI YA DEMOKRASIA, HAKI ZA BINADAMU NA KAZI

Ripoti za Nchi za mwaka 2008 kuhusu Mwenendo wa Haki za Binadamu

25 Februari, 2009

Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania yenye idadi ya watu takriban milioni 40, ni jamhuri inayofuata mfumo wa vyama vingi inayojumuisha bara na mkusanyiko wa visiwa vya Zanzibar; ambayo visiwa vyake vikuu ni Unguja na Pemba. Muungano unaongozwa na Rais ambaye pia ni mkuu wa serikali; chombo chake kimoja cha kutunga sheria ni Bunge la Taifa (Bunge). Pamoja na kwamba Zanzibar imeunganishwa kwenye mfumo wa serikali na chama wa nchi, ina Rais wake, mfumo wa mahakama na baraza la kutunga sheria na inaendelea kufanya mambo yake kwa uhuru. Kwenye uchaguzi wa mwaka 2005 wa Rais na wabunge, Jakaya Kikwete alichaguliwa kuwa Rais, na chama tawala cha Mapinduzi (CCM) kilipata viti vingi bungeni. Waandalizi waliuona uchaguzi wa Muungano katika pande zote mbili za bara na Zanzibar kuwa ulikuwa huru na wa haki kabisa. Hata hivyo, uchaguzi wa 2005 wa Rais kwa upande wa Zanzibar ulikuwa na ubishani, wenye dosari kubwa na vurugu zilizochochewa kisiasa. Wakati viongozi wa kiraia kwa ujumla walidhibiti majeshi ya usalama, kulikuwa na matukio kadhaa ambapo askari wa majeshi ya usalama walifanya kazi peke yao bila ya uongozi wa serikali.
Kulikuwa na matukio kadhaa ya matatizo ya haki za binadamu yaliyokuwa yakiendelea. Polisi na walinzi wa magereza walitumia nguvu kubwa dhidi ya wafungwa au watuhumiwa, na wakati mwingine kufikia kusababisha vifo, na suala la polisi kutochukuliwa hatua limebaki kuwa ni tatizo; mazingira ya magereza yalikuwa mabaya na ya kutishia maisha; rushwa ilienea kwa kiasi kikubwa miongoni mwa polisi, na uvunjaji wa taratibu za kisheria; idara ya mahakama ilikabiliwa na rushwa na kukosa ufanisi hususan katika mahakama za mwanzo; uhuru wa kuzungumza na uhuru wa vyombo vya habari ulikuwa mdogo; tatizo la rushwa liliendelea kuwepo serikalini; mamlaka ziliwazuia wakimbizi kutembea; utumiaji nguvu dhidi ya wanawake katika jamii ulizidi; na biashara ya watu na ajira ya watoto yalikuwa ni matatizo.

Kwa habari zaidi tembelea http://tanzania.usembassy.gov/uploads/nt/d4/ntd46z8s_-4TmOq6VoxlTQ/ripoti_haki_za_binadamu_2008.pdf

DOES AID WORK IN TANZANIA?

2009-05-12T11:28:00.003+03:00

U4ISSUE
Anti-Corruption Resource Centre
www.U4.no

Does aid work?

Reflections on a natural resources programme in Tanzania

Eirik G. Jansen

Does aid work?
Reflections on a natural resources programme in Tanzania
By Eirik G. Jansen

U4 Issue 2009:2

U4 Issue
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Chr. Michelsen Institute
P.O. Box 6033 Postterminalen,
N-5892 Bergen, Norway
Tel: + 47 55 57 40 00
Fax: + 47 55 57 41 66
E-mail: U4@U4.no
www.U4.no

1. Introduction
Does aid work? The question is posed by the Director of Norad in the introduction to Norad’s final report of 2007 (Norad 2007). The conclusion is clear: Yes, aid does work, but not well enough. The Director invites the readers of the report to participate in a public debate about Norwegian development aid, and invitation also extended by the Minister of International Development and Environment. In this article, I take on their challenge by sharing my experience as a programme officer for the Management of Natural Resources Programme (MNRP) in Tanzania.
Very briefly about my own background for presenting the following reflections: Since 1970 I have worked full time with development aid and development issues. For nearly half of the time since 1970 I have worked in various countries in Africa and Asia where the results of our development efforts can be observed. Many of the reflections I present are related to work I have carried out as a researcher and participant in development projects in the rural areas of various countries in Asia and Africa.Other reflections are based on the experiences I gained by working for many years at the Norwegian embassies in Bangladesh and Tanzania. However, in this article my focus will be on one particular development programme which Norway funded for many years in Tanzania. This programme confirms many of my experiences and reflections from work in other countries.
The question of whether development aid works can be addressed at several levels. Economists who assess the aggregated effects of aid will often discuss the effects of aid on economic growth
(Ridell 2007). Although this article will focus on one particular development programme, there will nevertheless be many general lessons to be learned about important factors influencing the
effectiveness and impact of aid.The information presented in this article is directly related to the MNRP, which Norway financed from 1994 to 2006 with about US$ 60 million, about US$ 5 million per year. I was programme officer for MNRP at the Norwegian Embassy in Dar es Salaam from 2003 to 2007. During this time, I had regular meetings with the Government of Tanzania regarding MNRP and travelled widely throughout Tanzania to assess the progress of the programme. MNRP was for many years regarded as a successful environment and natural resources programme. Information that has emerged during the last few years has shed new light on the programme. A final evaluation of the programme in 2006 has raised serious doubts about the programme, concerning its results as well as its financial management (Cooksey 2006). Two subsequent reports from a Danish audit firm in 2007 exposed extensive mismanagement of money and corruption2 in the programme (Andresen & Bhattbhatt 2007a, 2007b). According to the Danish auditor, as much as half of the money allocated for MNRP, US$ 30 million, may have been misused or lost through corrupt practices. It was the Norwegian Embassy in Dar es
Salaam that became suspicious and initiated an investigation into the financial management of the
programme. This article will focus on why and how so many millions of dollars were mismanaged. It will not address the results and achievements of the programme in any detail. In order to discuss this issue, it will be necessary to assess the wider economic and political context in which the programme has been implemented. Many of these issues also constitute the framework within which other development programmes take place in Tanzania and other African countries. A main conclusion of this article is that we were not sufficiently aware of this context when planning and implementing MNRP.
A main comment from those who evaluated MNRP in 2006 was that the governments in both
Tanzania and Norway dealt with MNRP as if it operated in a vacuum. MNRP was not assessed in the light of how the Government of Tanzania in general managed its natural resources nor in the light of key features of the administration of the Government of Tanzania. The following sections of this
[2 The World Bank’s definition of corruption will be used in this article: “Abuse of public office for private gain”.U4 ISSUE 2009:2 Does aid work? WWW.U4.NO ]
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article will address these issues and argue that the implementation of MNRP was clearly influenced by this context.
This article will describe MNRP and present the results from the Danish audit reports. There are few Norwegian development programmes where the flow of financial resources has been documented in so much detail and where the financial management system has been assessed so closely. Based on my four years of experience as a programme officer for MNRP, I will subsequently present my own observations which I believe will help explain the mismanagement of money in MNRP.
The Government of Tanzania was not the only actor in MNRP. The Government of Norway has also played a major role in the development of the programme. Why did Norway not discover the extensive mismanagement of resources at an earlier stage? This article will discuss certain aspects of the Norwegian Government’s policies concerning management of development aid in general and how this has affected the programme.
The article will also show what Norway has done in connection with the mismanagement of MNRP resources and how Norway will address these issues in relation to the new natural resources programme that is currently in the planning stage in Tanzania. In the last section of this article I will discuss to what extent the experiences from MNRP are relevant for other development programmes.

2. The importance of natural resources in Tanzania
Renewable natural resources in Tanzania play an important role both for the population in rural areas of the country and for the economy as a whole. Of Tanzania’s total population of 40 million people, 75 percent live in rural areas. Most of the rural population has access to forestry, fish and/or wildlife resources. It is estimated that on average 40 percent of the income in rural households comes from one of these three natural resources. Agriculture is the main economic sector in the rural areas, but most people who live off the land use simple technology and the productivity of land is very low. Efforts to improve the agricultural sector are slow, and income and food from the forests, fisheries, and wildlife will for many years continue to play an important role for the rural population.
Natural resources are important at the national level too. Timber from the forests is important for economic activities in the country and it is also a major source of foreign exchange. Tanzania also receives substantial foreign exchange from the export of Nile perch from Lake Victoria and shellfish from the coastal areas. The wildlife of Tanzania brings income from tourism and hunting licences. Traditionally, local people have used their own rules of management for the various natural resources that have been of interest to the local people. During the last decades this has changed. A new set of actors, very often foreign investors, have discovered the value of Tanzania’s natural resources. The competition for scarce natural resources has changed the constellation among the actors. “The lake is no longer ours”, lament tens of thousands of fishermen and fisherwomen around Lake Victoria after foreign investors, the national elite and the Government have gained control over the fish resources
(Jansen et al 200).

3. Corruption in the management of natural resources
Those who have control over the natural resources are in a powerful position and usually have easy access to money. There are major conflicts about natural resources, and such conflicts take place on several levels. Each natural resource leads to its own type of conflict. Many researchers talk about the natural resources curse, which is a highly relevant concept for Africa, including Tanzania
(Collier 2007). Tanzania has not been successful in managing its natural resources in a sustainable and equitable manner, nor has the country been able to achieve significant economic growth in its utilisation of these resources. It is Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism – hereafter referred to as the Ministry – which is in charge of managing the forestry, fisheries, and wildlife

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resources. The Ministry had three separate divisions, each dealing with one of these resources. MNRP had projects in the forestry, fisheries, and wildlife sectors that were closely connected to these three divisions of the Ministry. The Ministry issues licences for harvesting the resources and is responsible for managing the resources in a sustainable manner. Each of the three divisions in the Ministry employs hundreds of people at central, regional, and district levels.
In all of the three sectors there has been pervasive corruption during the last decades. Management and staff in the Ministry, together with politicians and people from the local population, have plundered the resources and exploited the resources in a way that is not sustainable. Often this has been in collaboration with foreign investors. With assistance from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development,3 the OPEC Fund for International Development,4 and the Saudi Fund for Development,5 one of the largest bridges in Africa was built over the Rufiji River in southern Tanzania in 2003. The bridge led straight into a natural forest of about 20,000 square kilometres that had remained fairly unexploited until then. A comprehensive study conducted after the completion of the bridge showed xtensive illegal exploitation of the forest. Logs worth tens of million of US$ were exported illegally to China and other countries in Asia. Taxes and royalties were paid for only four percent of the forests that were harvested. The study estimated that Tanzania annually lost US$ 52 million of its potential revenue, due to illegal logging (Milledge 2007).6 Reports from the fisheries and wildlife sectors also show that politicians and representatives of the Government allow these resources to be plundered by national and international companies, provided they themselves obtain a share of the profit made by the companies. Both in the fisheries and wildlife sectors, licenses are allocated to investors at a price that is only a fraction of the market price. Corrupt representatives of the Government earn huge amounts of money that should have gone into the Treasury. The development partners in Dar es Salaam recently notified the Government that the fees which the Government received from the wildlife sector were minimal. The Government only charged US$ 8,000 for hunting blocks that had a much higher market value. The Government accepted the complaint by the development partners and increased the fees to US$ 40,000 for each block. However,
many of the politicians and ministers who controlled these hunting blocks complained that the increased fees would lower their profit and therefore demanded that fees should remain at the old levels (British High Commission, Dar es Salaam 2007). The trawlers (about 150 coming from the EU countries and the Far East) that operate within the Exclusive Economic Zone in the Indian Ocean only pay US$ 18,000 annually to obtain a licence. On a good day of fishing, the trawlers are able to catch fish of the same value as the annual fee. It has been estimated that if the Government had charged market value for these licences, the Treasury could have collected US$ 20 million annually for the trawlers’ licences (Development Partner Group, Dar es Salaam 2005). It is also well known that the export of Nile perch from Lake Victoria has been underreported for many years in order to avoid taxation.7 There is much money to be earned by government officials and politicians who contribute to increased export of natural resources without it being taxed.
The Ministry is in a special position in the Government administration of Tanzania because of its opportunity to generate its own resources from taxes, fees, and royalties. It also receives allocations from the Ministry of Finance. It is difficult to estimate how much money the Ministry transfers to the Treasury and how much disappears due to corruption. With all the potential income from natural resources

6 The Norwegian Embassy in Dar es Salaam took the initiative for this study in 2004. It was supported by 15 bilateral and multilateral organisations in Tanzania and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. The Norwegian Embassy administrated and funded the study during the period 2005 - 2007. The study was discussed in the Parliament, among the development partners, and NGOs. Many NGOs have jointly made a plan to assess the follow-up of the report recommendations.

7 The African, October 7, 2004.
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resources, the Government of Tanzania should have been able to manage its own natural resources without depending on funds from development partners.
A report from the World Bank summarises these issues:
Because of policy failures, Tanzania’s natural resource endowments are not harnessed in
an optimal way to achieve both economic growth and poverty reduction. On the contrary,
owing to weak governance regimes in revenue-generating sectors, resources are offered
below market price to the benefit of a few powerful winners and the loss of the majority
of the rural population. Yet these natural resources provide substantive potential for
income to communities in the rural areas. The weakness in governance regimes in
forestry, wildlife and fisheries include primarily (a) the lack of transparency and
accountability in issuing rights to extract resources and accrue revenues from them, (b)
inequitable sharing of benefits with communities, and (c) monitoring and surveillance of
stocks. In all four principal sectors providing natural capital in the growth equation –
forestry, wildlife, fisheries, and mining – royalties are set arbitrarily and do not reflect
scarcity. Royalties are hence not used as a policy instrument of intertemporal resource
pricing and sustained yield management (Pfliegner 2008).
The Government of Tanzania has a complicated relationship to its task of managing the natural resources. On the one hand the government has, with the support of its development partners, spent much time and resources in developing legal acts, policies, strategies, national plans, and sector strategies for its forestry, fisheries, and wildlife resources which are compatible with those of the international community. No doubt many government officials in Tanzania do their utmost to comply with and follow up these adopted plans and strategies. On the other hand, there are also many government officials and politicians who undermine the policies they themselves have been central in having Parliament adopt. Many of these politicians and government officials have held high positions in the Ministry. These leaders can force honest government officials to adopt corrupt practices. It is therefore not a lack of legal acts and instruments, policies, strategies, and plans that explains the mismanagement and corruption in the field of natural resources, but the political will to follow up on the adopted instruments.

FOR MORE OF THIS REPORT VISIT www.u4.no/document/publications.cfm

How to be your own (very good) management consultant

2009-04-07T09:30:00.000+03:00

Dear fellow manager,
You can make a good case for using business management consultants. They are not committed either emotionally or intellectually to the status quo.

Not only can they see what changes are needed for business development, but have acquired expertise - which their hosts have not - in structuring a change programme, selling it to the participants (willing and unwilling), and easing the strains and pains the change is bound to bring.
But the consultant is, of course, tied to the people who pay the fees. If the executive managers can't make a clean break from the past, all the management consultants in the world can't help to achieve radical change in business strategy.
But supposing we give you the ammunition, the logic and procedures to introduce 'best practice' techniques into your work practices? As an insider, could you make change happen?

First, let me explain where we get our information: Via two of the world's greatest management thinkers, you can learn from the world's most successful business leaders and management gurus - such as Tom Peters, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Peter Drucker and Andrew Grove.
What if two of the world's greatest management thinkers were invited into hundreds of businesses, talked to Chief Executive Officers and their executives about business theory, took an analytical look at how their management processes work, and then sent you a monthly briefing on what techniques are working and where?

Could you use that personal information to improve your own business management skills, performance and prospects? Could it help you achieve quality management? Could it boost creativity in managers you employ? Could it help you improve business strategy and put an effective business plan into place?

The Letter to Thinking Managers provides solutions to hundreds of common management problems. I'd like you to try it, at no risk, over the next two months.
Most managers are far too busy to do our kind of investigative business management analysis. And we are the best, by far, at doing it.

Our two editors are Robert Heller and Edward de Bono, two of the leading creative thinkers in management today. Both are highly critical of many business management practices.
They give examples of bad practice so you'll avoid making the same mistakes as others. Then they offer guidelines for a way forward to help you achieve quality management. We are currently offering a two-month free trial. If you decide to subscribe, you'll build a substantial workbook of best practice procedures for every important aspect regarding the management and development of a successful business

Tanzania Business Forecast Report Q2 2009

2009-03-24T13:40:00.000+03:00

Financing problems are expected to loom large in 2009. With government revenues forecast todisappoint in this year and the next, Tanzania’s authorities now have to either cut expenditure- with attendant risks to political stability - or find new means of financing the deficit. Meanwhile,despite a forecast narrowing of Tanzania’s current account deficit, the likelihood that foreign directinvestment and international development assistance will fall short in 2009 means we expect adecline in the capital and financial account surplus. This, in turn, leads us to project both a drop inTanzania’s foreign reserves and a depreciation of the shilling.

Finally, we examine the prospectsfor a longer-term deterioration of foreign capital availability in the form of a partial withdrawal ofChinese investment from the continent.With donor countries now beginning to cut their aid budgets (Ireland is the first to officially do so)and the authorities beginning to revise down real GDP growth forecasts, the Tanzanian authoritiesare beginning to closely examine their options with regard to a looming budget deficit. Internationalborrowing has been ruled out, and we believe a combination of domestic borrowing, expenditurecuts and tax hikes will be deployed to finance the budget. We do not forecast a significant backlashon the mainland as the government cuts spending, but there is risk of regional instability on theislands of Zanzibar, which look set to face a particularly difficult year, in economic terms.Real GDP growth is set to slow sharply to 2.7% in 2009, from 7.5% in 2008, as all components ofGDP by expenditure suffer slowdowns. As the government finances its budget with a greater relianceon domestic borrowing, it will partially crowd out the private sector, compounding slowdownsin foreign direct investment and the tightening of international credit. The drop in investment-drivenimport demand, coupled with plummeting oil prices and a weaker shilling will lead to an improvementof the current account. These benefits will be partially mitigated, though, by falling tourismreceipts, donor aid and food exports.
Weaknesses in Tanzania’s physical infrastructure remain serious.
The country’s ports remainexpensive and inefficient, necessitating a presidential order to clear a major backlog. Meanwhilethe national airline required a government bailout and a railway run jointly by Tanzania and Zambiamay be privatised, following poor performance. Numerous other shortcomings still need addressing;property rights remain weak, skilled labour is in short supply and labour regulations remainhigh. Nonetheless, the country still manages to attract relatively high levels of FDI (at least duringbetter global economic climates) on the back of the high growth opportunities, efficient commercialcourts, long-standing political stability and a fairly competitive tax regime.

Tanzania economy up 7.5 pct last year - BoT

2009-03-24T13:14:00.001+03:00

Tanzania`s economy probably grew by some 7.5 per cent last year, below a previous forecast of 7.7 per cent, the central bank said on Monday. ``Real economic growth of 7.5 per cent is likely to be achieved in line with a good performance in agriculture, as well as the strong performance ... in manufacturing, construction, and communication,`` the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) said in a Monetary Policy Statement for February.
The economy had earlier been projected to grow by 7.7 per cent in 2008, before the onset of the global credit crunch that forced a downward revision at the end of last year. But the bank said the country had still weathered the financial crisis in the first half of its current (July 2008-June 2009) fiscal year relatively well. ``Despite the turbulent global environment, the Tanzanian economy continued to maintain solid growth during the first half of 2008/09,`` noted the bank.

Tanzania, a nation of an estimated 40 million people that is reputed for its relative stability in a volatile region, saw its economy grow by 7.1 per cent in 2007. A June 2008 projection was that this would accelerate to 9.2 per cent in 2011. Tanzania`s economy depends largely on mining, agriculture and tourists visiting its wildlife parks and beach resorts, which combine to make the country one of the more appealing frontier markets. BoT said its biggest task for the rest of the fiscal year would be controlling any speculation on the fate of the country`s currency due to the prevailing global market turmoil.
The exchange rate of the national currency, the shilling, is market-driven but the central bank says it is ready to intervene to stop speculation. It adds that, so far, no commercial banks in Tanzania had suffered a direct loss due to the global credit crunch. According to BoT, food-driven inflation would pose a problem: Food inflation stood at 18.6 per cent in December compared with 13.6 per cent the previous month.
Food accounts for 55.9 per cent of the basket of goods used to measure annual inflation. Overall inflation stood at 13.5 per cent in December compared with November`s 12.3 per cent, while the government targets inflation of 6.8 per cent by June this year.

JESUS COMPLEX:

2009-03-19T11:09:00.002+03:00

Is Jesus God?

Have you ever met somebody with such personal magnetism that he/she is always the center of attention? Possibly his/her personality or intelligence---but something about him/her is enigmatic. Well, that’s the way it was two thousand years ago with Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ greatness was obvious to all those who saw and heard him. But, whereas most great people simply fade into history books, Jesus of Nazareth is still the focus of numerous books and media controversy. And much of that controversy revolves around the radical claims Jesus made about himself.
As an unheralded carpenter from an obscure Galilean village in Israel, Jesus made claims that, if true, have profound implications on our lives. According to Jesus, you and I are special, part of a grand cosmic scheme, with him as the center of it all. This and other claims like it stunned everyone who heard them uttered.
It was primarily Jesus’ outrageous claims that caused him to be viewed as a crackpot by both the Roman authorities and the Jewish hierarchy. Although he was an outsider with no credentials or political powerbase, within three years, Jesus changed the world for the next 20 centuries. Other moral and religious leaders have left an impact---but nothing like that unknown carpenter from Nazareth.What was it about Jesus Christ that made the difference? Was he merely a great man, or something more?
These questions get to the heart of who Jesus really was. Some believe he was merely a great moral teacher; others believe he was simply the leader of the world’s greatest religion. But many believe something far more. Christians believe that God has actually visited us in human form. And they believe the evidence backs that up. So who is the real Jesus? Let’s take a closer look.
As we take a deeper look at the world’s most controversial person, we begin by asking: could Jesus have been merely a great moral teacher?

Great Moral Teacher?
Almost all scholars acknowledge that Jesus was a great moral teacher. In fact, his brilliant insight into human morality is an accomplishment recognized even by those of other religions. In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner wrote, “It is universally admitted … that Christ taught the purest and sublimest ethics … which throws the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade.”1Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has been called the most superlative teaching of human ethics ever uttered by an individual. In fact, much of what we know today as “equal rights” actually is the result of Jesus’ teaching. Historian Will Durant said of Jesus that “he lived and struggled unremittingly for ‘equal rights’; in modern times he would have been sent to Siberia. ‘He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant’—this is the inversion of all political wisdom, of all sanity.”2 Some have tried to separate Jesus’ teaching on ethics from his claims about himself, believing that he was simply a great man who taught lofty moral principles. This was the approach of one of America’s Founding Fathers.
President Thomas Jefferson, ever the enlightened rationalist, sat down in the White House with two identical copies of the New Testament, a straight-edge razor, and a sheaf of octavo-size paper. Over the course of a few nights, he made quick work of cutting and pasting his own Bible, a slim volume he called “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.” After slicing away every passage that suggested Jesus’ divine nature, Jefferson had a Jesus who was no more and no less than a good, ethical guide.3
Ironically, Jefferson’s memorable words in the Declaration of Independence were rooted in Jesus’ teaching that each person is of immense and equal importance to God, regardless of sex, race, or social status. The famous document sets forth, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …” But the question Jefferson never addressed is: how could Jesus have been a great moral leader if he lied about being God? So perhaps he wasn’t really moral after all, but his motive was to begin a great religion. Let’s see if that explains Jesus’ greatness.

Great Religious Leader?
Did Jesus deserve the title of “great religious leader”? Surprisingly, Jesus never claimed to be a religious leader. He never got into religious politics or pushed an ambitious agenda, and he ministered almost entirely outside the established religious framework.
When one compares Jesus with the other great religious leaders, a remarkable distinction emerges. Ravi Zacharias, who grew up in a Hindu culture, has studied world religions and observed a fundamental distinction between other religious founders and Jesus Christ.
"Whatever we may make of their claims, one reality is inescapable. They are teachers who point to their teaching or show some particular way. In all of these, there emerges an instruction, a way of living. It is not Zoroaster to whom you turn; it is Zoroaster to whom you listen. It is not Buddha who delivers you; it is his Noble Truths that instruct you. It is not Mohammad who transforms you; it is the beauty of the Koran that woos you. By contrast, Jesus did not only teach or expound His message. He was identical with His message."4
The truth of Zacharias’s point is underscored by the number of times in the Gospels that Jesus’ teaching message was simply “Come to me” or “Follow me” or “Obey me.” Also, Jesus made it clear that his primary mission was to forgive sins, something only God could do.No other major religious leader ever claimed the power to forgive sins. But that is not the only claim Jesus made that separated him from the others. In The World’s Great Religions, Huston Smith observed, “Only two people ever astounded their contemporaries so much that the question they evoked was not ‘Who is he?’ but ‘What is he?’ They were Jesus and Buddha. The answers these two gave were exactly the opposite. Buddha said unequivocally that he was a mere man, not a god—almost as if he foresaw later attempts to worship him. Jesus, on the other hand, claimed … to be divine.”

Did Jesus Claim to be God?
Clearly, from the earliest years of the church, Jesus was called Lord and regarded by most Christians as God. Yet his divinity was a doctrine that was subjected to great debate . So the question—and it is the question—is this: Did Jesus really claim to be God (the Creator), or was his divinity something invented or assumed by the New Testament authors? (See “Did Jesus Claim to be God?”)
Some scholars believe Jesus was such a powerful teacher and compelling personality that his disciples just assumed he was God. Or maybe they just wanted to think he was God. John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar (a fringe group skeptical of scholars with presuppositions against miracles) are among those who believe Jesus was deified in error.
Although books like The Da Vinci Code argue that Jesus’ divinity was a later doctrine of the church, evidence shows otherwise (See “Was there a Da Vinci Conspiracy?”). Most Christians who accept the gospels as reliable insist that Jesus did claim deity. And that belief can be traced all the way back to Jesus’ immediate followers.
But there are those who accept Jesus as a great teacher, but are unwilling to call him God. As a deist, Thomas Jefferson had no problem accepting Jesus’ teachings on morals and ethics while denying his deity.6 But as we’ve said, and will explore further, if Jesus was not who he claimed to be, then we must examine some other alternatives, none of which would make him a great moral teacher.
Even a superficial reading of the Gospels reveals that Jesus claimed to be someone more than a prophet like Moses or Daniel. But it is the nature of those claims that concern us. Two questions are worthy of attention.
Did Jesus actually claim to be God?
When he said “God,” did Jesus really mean he was the Creator of the universe spoken of in the Hebrew Bible?
To address these questions, let's consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:18: “I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth.” What does it mean that Jesus has been “given” authority?
Prior to Jesus taking on human form, we are told that he eternally coexisted with his Father, and as God he had all authority. But Philippians 2:6-11 tells us that even though Jesus had existed in the form of God, he “stripped himself” of God’s powers to be born a human being. Yet the same passage tells us that after his resurrection Jesus was restored to his former glory, and someday “every knee will bow to him as Lord.”
So, what did Jesus mean when he claimed to have complete authority in heaven and on earth? Authority” was a well-understood term in Roman-occupied Israel. At that time, Caesar was the supreme authority in the entire Roman world. His edict could instantly launch legions for war, condemn or exonerate criminals, and establish laws and rules of government. In fact, Caesar’s authority was such that he himself claimed divinity. So, at the very least Jesus was claiming authority on a par with Caesar himself. But He didn’t just say he had more authority than the Jewish leaders or Roman rulers; Jesus was claiming to be the supreme authority in the universe. To those he spoke to, it meant that he was God. Not a god—but the God. Both their words and actions testify to the fact that they truly believed Jesus is God. (See "Did the Apostles Believe Jesus is God?")

World Development Report 2010

2009-03-18T13:56:00.001+03:00

THE CONTEXT: DEVELOPMENT IN A CHANGING CLIMATE
The physical impacts of climate change—such as sea-level rise, worsening hurricanes, and droughts—threaten the livelihoods and safety of millions of people in the developing world. To reduce their vulnerability to these impacts, all countries will need to adapt strategically to changing environmental conditions.
With a one-meter rise in sea level—now considered possible within our lifetimes—Egypt, already struggling with rising food prices, could lose 13 percent of its agricultural land. Vietnam could lose 28 percent of the wetlands that currently buffer coastal cities from storms and sustain the fisheries.

Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide that are released into the atmosphere, primarily by burning fossil fuels and by deforestation. Global GHG emissions must be reduced in order to mitigate further warming.
Many scientists say global temperatures should not be allowed to rise by more than 2 to 2.5ºC above pre-industrial levels to prevent catastrophic harm to people through channels such as health, agricultural productivity, and ecosystem services. However, without dramatic cuts in global emissions, the world is heading toward a rise of as much as 11ºC this century.
At the same time, the primary concern of developing countries remains economic growth and poverty reduction.

The developing world is on track to achieve the first MDG to halve the poverty rate from its 1990 levels by 2015. But nearly a quarter of the world’s people – 1.6 billion – don’t have access to electricity and one in six people don’t have access to clean water. Large inequalities remain within countries: in developing countries, a poor child is typically twice or even three times as likely to die before reaching adulthood, compared to a child from a wealthy family.
WDR 2010: APPROACH AND OBJECTIVESLooking at both the challenges and the opportunities presented by climate change, the WDR 2010 will tackle three questions:
1. What does climate change mean for development?2. What does development mean for climate change?3. What does all this mean for policy?

Climate change is one of many challenges facing developing countries – but unless it is tackled soon, it will reverse development gains. Developing countries simply cannot afford to ignore climate change; nor can they focus on adaptation alone. One objective of the WDR is to inform development policy: climate change does represent a changing climate for development.
Climate-smart development, which incorporates adaptation and mitigation objectives, is needed and can be achieved. A rethinking of development policy can help to meet these challenges and to exploit the new competitive landscape created by climate change. A second objective of the WDR is to take a politically realistic, how-to approach, and contribute to emerging knowledge: how should development policy be designed in a greenhouse world?
But reaching a solution to climate change that is adequate, achievable and acceptable will also require reworking climate policy, especially as it relates to finance and innovation, so as to address the substantial concerns of developing countries. Further, rich countries will need to take the lead on mitigation efforts. A third objective of the WDR is to inform climate policy: the integration of development realities into climate change agreements will be essential to their success.

NEW GROUND THIS REPORT WILL COVER…

In the crowded field of climate change reports, the WDR will uniquely:
prioritize development;
examine the trade-offs, co-benefits, and physical and policy intersections of adaptation and mitigation;
present evidence that the elements of a global deal exist;
highlight development opportunities in the changing competitive landscape – and how to seize them;
propose policy solutions carefully grounded in analytic work and in realistic understanding of the political economy of reform.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

2009-03-18T13:36:00.003+03:00

By magessa,b.m.

Every person on our earth has the right to social security. They have the right to the protection of the family, an appropriate standard of living and sufficient health care. These basic rights are not guaranteed by our moral framework alone. In December 1966, the majority of the international community of states passed the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). It has since been ratified by a total of 156 countries worldwide. Some of the rights explicitly named in the UN social pact include the right of every human being to social security, education and health care. Since the UN World Social Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, the international community has recognised that social and economic development are equally important. The Millennium Development Goals confirm this mindset. If we are to structurally improve basic living conditions for impoverished people, we need to ensure universal access to education and health care, and equality between men and women, plus the basic tenets of human rights. The 189 United Nations member states addressed this need for basic social security in six of the eight Millennium Development Goals passed in 2001. This is to ensure social development in all corners of the globe. The economies of many developing and transition countries are growing. Average life expectancy is increasing, and even infant mortality is sinking. But a comparison of social indicators reveals that there is still a considerable need for development and qualifications in order to create a secure foundation for social systems. Differences between the industrialised countries one the one hand and the developing and transition countries on the other are still enormous. In Bangladesh, for example, on average 60 of every 1,000 newborns die. In Somalia the figure is 116, over ten percent. In Scandinavian countries the rates are even lower. The number of illiterate people also differs widely. In India, with its rapidly growing economy, 38 percent of those over age 14 cannot read or write. In the emerging nations of Brazil and South Africa it is around 12 percent, while the rate of illiteracy in industrialised countries tends to fall below one percent.

More children face family separation

2009-03-18T13:25:00.002+03:00

Picture: An unhopeful child

Global recession and armed conflict will cause a big increase in the number of children in orphanages and on the street over the next decade, warns an international children’s charity. These children, separated from their families, are more likely to suffer abuse, be exposed to HIV infection, experience mental health problems and later abandon their own children.
Children’s charity EveryChild issued the warning through a briefing paper, Why do separated children matter?, which explores child separation as a global development issue. No accurate figures exist for the total number of separated children world-wide but the charity estimates between 100 and 150 million children already live or work on the streets, 8 million live in residential institutions and over 1 million are in detention. It predicts a jump in the number of ‘invisible’ children caused by global recession, military conflicts such as in the Congo, failure to tackle violence and abuse against children, and increasing reliance on institutional care in poor countries.
“With current trends like the global recession set to signifi cantly increase the number of children separated from their families and communities,” said Anna Feuchtwang of EveryChild, “policy makers must do more to address the underlying causes of separation such as family disintegration due to violence, abuse and exploitation.”

RAFI GOLDMAN IS COMING TO TANZANIA

2009-03-18T12:56:00.003+03:00

Dear NISPED graduates,
I have a pleasure to tell you that the Director of ICECOS and Chief Trainer of NISPED is coming on 29th March 2009. He will be the guest of ILO Tanzania office.For this message,may I take this opportunity to invite you to give out your suggestions and opinions,and i will be presenting them when i meet him on 30th March 2009.Due to his schedule being tight,he has already set the date and time to meet with those booked earlier.It is being supervised by ILO Offices,Dar Es Salaam.

HERE IS HIS BIO
Rafi Goldman is an economic and strategic consultant. He is Director and chief trainer of ICECOS. Mr. Goldman is a graduate of the London School of Economics with an MA in History and he holds an MBA with honors from Ben Gurion University in Israel.Rafi Goldman has nearly 30 years of experience as a senior business manager and CEO of various cooperative enterprises in Israel. In addition, he serves as a consultant for the Kibbutz Movement on the promotion and development of cooperatives as well as serving on the board of directors of a number of cooperative enterprises.Rafi Goldman is involved in the development and implementation of projects in several countries in Asia and Africa.

Female MPs in Rwanda make history

2009-03-18T12:52:00.006+03:00

Rwanda’s women MPs have made history by becoming the first in the world to out number their male counterparts.
They now make up 56% of seats in the Rwandan parliament – compared to 19.3% of female members in the UK parliament. And they’ve now come together behind a campaign to reduce the number of mothers dying in childbirth. In a bid to improve health support for women across Rwanda, female parliamentarians, together with the First Lady, Jeanette Kagame, and development partners, including DFID have backed the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood Rwanda.
The Alliance aims to increase awareness about safe pregnancy and childbirth in Rwanda and unite the many existing initiatives aimed at improving motherhood in the country. The country’s rate of women dying during childbirth is among the world’s highest. Around 2,770 mothers die each year while giving birth – close to one death every three hours, every day of the year. “Rwandan women are key players of our national development, starting with the wellbeing of Rwandan families,” said Jeanette Kagame. “It is ironic that in the process of giving life, mothers are losing theirs. But I am certain that the Rwanda Ribbon Alliance will be able to improve the livelihoods of pregnant mothers and babies in Rwanda.”
Women’s rights have gradually improved since the genocide in 1994. A steady increase of female parliamentarians over the last 10 years has seen laws passed allowing women the rights to inherit land, work without the permission of their husband and make rape and physical violence illegal.
“The remarkable increase in female representation in parliament will give women across Rwanda a far greater voice in the decisions that affect their lives,” said the UK’s International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander. “It is shocking that so many mothers die while giving birth, and that is why the UK is committed to improving health care across Africa.”

RAFI GOLDMAN IS COMING TO TANZANIA

2009-03-16T15:09:00.003+03:00

Dear NISPED graduates,

I have a pleasure to tell you that the Director of ICECOS and Chief Trainer of NISPED is coming on 29th March 2009. He will be the guest of ILO Tanzania office.For this message,may I take this opportunity to invite you to give out your suggestions and opinions,and i will be presenting them when i meet him on 30th March 2009.Due to his schedule being tight,he has already set the date and time to meet with those booked earlier.It is being supervised by ILO Offices,Dar Es Salaam.

HERE IS HIS BIO

Rafi Goldman is an economic and strategic consultant. He is Director and chief trainer of ICECOS. Mr. Goldman is a graduate of the London School of Economics with an MA in History and he holds an MBA with honors from Ben Gurion University in Israel.

Rafi Goldman has nearly 30 years of experience as a senior business manager and CEO of various cooperative enterprises in Israel. In addition, he serves as a consultant for the Kibbutz Movement on the promotion and development of cooperatives as well as serving on the board of directors of a number of cooperative enterprises.

Rafi Goldman is involved in the development and implementation of projects in several countries in Asia and Africa.

From rhinos to ecosystems: The evolution of charity campaigns

2009-03-11T13:21:00.002+03:00

Most of us have grown used to conservation charities putting charismatic animals front and center of their fundraising campaigns.

The "Save the Rhino" charity uses funds to promote the protection of communities and habitat where rhinos live.

But do NGOs separate the endangered species they campaign to protect from the ecosystems they live in? And, in an increasingly crowded world, how do they factor in human populations or global threats, like climate change?
"An ecosystem approach is critical to achieving sustainable conservation solutions," says Diane Walkington, Head of Species at the World Wildlife Fund.

Despite the organization's iconic links with large mammals such as the panda, their efforts now encompass much more.
"Certainly our roots started in specific species conservation projects," says Walkington. "But today we have a much wider portfolio of work."
The WWF's experience is typical, and in many ways, the two approaches of singles species and ecosystem work seem to have merged.
"I think that people sometimes make too much of the distinction," says Clive Hambler, lecturer in zoology at the University of Oxford. "In many cases you have to do both."

Hambler believes that is often hard to separate elements within an ecosystem and singling one out for conservation over another can sometimes have counter productive results.
However, in some cases it may be possible to isolate issues affecting a particular species.
The Californian Condor, for example, faces one set of threats, including crashing into power lines, while the landscape it inhabits is under different pressures. But, despite this apparent distinction, dealing with the birds in isolation is still difficult.

"There are legal complexities," says Hambler. "At one stage, all the world's California Condors were taken into captivity for protection and breeding, but it was feared this might expose the habitat to destruction -- for example by grazing -- if it no longer had a protected species in it, thus making future reintroduction to the wild problematic."

Underlying all this is the fact that ecosystems are enormously complex and unpicking them can be problematic. Even comparatively rare organisms, such as woodpeckers, may have a disproportionate effect on their environment, for example creating insect habitats by pecking holes in trees.
In response to this increasing awareness of the interrelated nature of the natural world, campaigning groups now work to balance a web of factors that all exert an influence on endangered species.
"Our approach has certainly matured and changed over the decades as scientific knowledge has grown," says the WWF's Walkington. "As well as the fact that threats themselves are growing and changing."
"For example, when we started our conservation efforts in 1961, it wasn't envisaged that, less than 50 years later, we would have reached such an unsustainable consumption level of natural resources such as forests and water, or such a high threat from other factors such as climate change," says Walkington.

"Increasingly conservation needs to include both the traditional species work, along with more widespread campaigns to reduce pollution, the unsustainable consumption of resources and climate change."
Even groups focusing on specific populations take a wider view.

"Of course we recognize the importance of ecosystem work," says Mark Simmonds, Director of Science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

"But we also focus on individuals. We are in essence a protectionist organization and believe that every cetacean is precious. We see the two aspects as inseparable; two sides of one coin."
Because of the way humans interact with whales and dolphins, animal welfare is a specific concern. But there are other, global factors affecting the seas, such as climate change, pollution, ozone depletion and acidification, which are also important, and the group works to address them.
"When you look at a relatively enclosed system such as the Black Sea, you can really see what happens when the level of inputs -- pollution, overfishing -- reach a high enough level," says Simmonds.
"There has been an ecosystem 'flip', where comb jellies, also known as sea gooseberries, have replaced fish. This obviously has a huge effect on marine life, particularly cetaceans as top-level predators."

A similar lattice of interrelating factors also affects conservationists working on land, and untangling it can be a challenge.

In order to protect Africa's rhinos, the NGO Save the Rhino has found it essential to work with and engage local human communities. They are, after all, part of the ecosystem.
"It's actually a misconception that we spend money on rhinos -- we're not taking them for a makeover or anything," says Cathy Dean, Director of save the Rhino. "We spend on the groups that can protect them."

Save the Rhino believe that targeted anti-poaching work is essential. But so too is environmental education, outreach and building alternative economic activity, such as eco tourism, that will benefit both rhinos and the humans that live near them.
One area where this approach is already yielding good results is Laikipia, Kenya, home to half the country's black rhinos -- and 350,000 people.

According to Dean, Save the Rhino funds "tons of practical initiatives in the area", including wildlife management, security, tourism development, community conservation and environmental education programs.

"They achieve a tremendous amount," she says. "You can't just look at the rhino in isolation. You have to look at the area it lives in and the people that live there as well."
The ultimate goal is to create a self-sustaining system independent of external funding where humans and rhinos can thrive together. In turn there can be benefits for wider ecosystems from focusing on some single species.

According to Hambler, by saving certain "umbrella' species," which may migrate long distances or roam large territories, many smaller species can benefit. Focusing on iconic species may also help NGOs raise money to save the ecosystems they inhabit, which may be a far less appealing prospect -- if still critical for preserving bio diversity.

"The RSPB in Britain have managed quite a good balance of using flagship bird species such as the avocet and bittern, but taking a wide interest in habitats such as estuaries and reed beds," says Hambler. "Which might not have turned many people on!"

In the end, taking species out of their ecosystems may only be a useful exercise when carried out for marketing purposes.
"If we are looking at fundraising with the general public, then charismatic species conservation is important," says the WWF's Diane Walkington.

"We can legitimately hook this aspect into the overall ecosystem approach to give a wider picture of what we do."
Ultimately, in the wild, it's the holistic, ecosystem approach that will work.
Says Hambler: "If you want to save the bulk of the world's bio-diversity you have to save ecosystems."

Surveyed scientists agree global warming is real

2009-03-11T13:16:00.004+03:00

Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists. However there remains divisions between climatologists and scientists from other areas of earth sciences as to the extent of human responsibility.

A survey of more than 3,000 scientists found that the vast majority believe humans cause global warming.

Against a backdrop of harsh winter weather across much of North America and Europe, the concept of rising global temperatures might seem incongruous.
However the results of the investigation conducted at the end of 2008 reveal that vast majority of the Earth scientists surveyed agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

The study released today was conducted by academics from the University of Illinois, who used an online questionnaire of nine questions. The scientists approached were listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Departments.
Two questions were key: Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.
The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

"The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising, but the meteorologists' is very interesting," said Peter Doran associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and one of the survey's authors.
"Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon."

However, Doran was not surprised by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists.
"They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it.

"The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes," said Doran.

Japan launches satellite to eye greenhouse gases

2009-03-11T13:07:00.002+03:00

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- The Japanese space agency launched a satellite Friday that will measure greenhouse gases from the earth's orbit.
The IBUKI satellite is designed "to observe the concentration distribution of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and to help reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions covered by the 'Kyoto Protocol,'" the agency's Web site said.

In 1997, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change passed the Kyoto Protocol with the goal of limiting greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. The United States was the only one among 175 parties to reject it.
The rocket carrying the satellite lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan early Friday afternoon, following a one-day weather delay.
"The satellite is expected to play an important role in monitoring global environmental changes and look out for any small warning signs that could affect our future," according to the agency.

Trees provide 'free subsidy' for nature, study finds

2009-03-11T13:02:00.002+03:00

Undisturbed tropical forests are absorbing nearly one-fifth of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels, a new study has found.

Trees in undisturbed tropical forests are soaking up more CO2 than people realized.

The scientific report published in "Nature" magazine suggests that the world's remaining tropical forests remove 4.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere each year. This includes a previously unknown carbon sink in Africa, which annually absorbs 1.2 billion tons of CO2.
The study was based on taken data on African tropical forests from the past 40 years and has shown that for at least the past few decades each hectare of intact African forest has trapped an extra 0.6 tonnes of carbon per year.
The scientists then analyzed the new African data together with South American and Asian findings to assess the total sink in tropical forests.
Analysis of these 250,000 tree records reveals that, on average, remaining undisturbed forests are trapping carbon, showing that they are a globally significant carbon sink.
"We are receiving a free subsidy from nature," said Dr. Simon Lewis from the University of Leeds, and the lead author of the paper, in a press statement.
"Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18 percent of the CO2 added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of climate change."
The study also found that trees of comparable age are gaining girth, though the reasons are unclear. For example, a 20-year-old tree is on average bigger than a 20-year-old tree measured a decade ago. A leading suspect is the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, which may act as a fertilizer..
However, Lewis warns, "Whatever the cause, we cannot rely on this sink forever. Even if we preserve all remaining tropical forest, these trees will not continue getting bigger indefinitely."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that each year human activity emits 32 billion tons of CO2, but only 15 billion tons actually remain in the atmosphere adding to climate change.
The new research suggests just where some of the "missing" 17 billion tons per year is going.
"It's well known that about half of the 'missing' carbon is being dissolved in to the oceans, and that the other half is going somewhere on land in vegetation and soils, but we were not sure precisely where. According to our study about half the total carbon 'land sink' is in tropical forest trees," Lewis said.
The protection of tropical forests is likely to become a key theme at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in November in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Co-author on the study, Dr. Lee White, Gabon's chief climate change scientist said, "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a ton of carbon, should be valued at around £13 billion ($18.5 billion) per year. This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests."
Dr. Lewis added, "Predominantly rich polluting countries should be transferring substantial resources to countries with tropical forests to reduce deforestation rates and promote alternative development pathways."

THE KILLING OF ALBINO IN TANZANIA IS NOW SEVERE!!

2009-02-19T14:04:00.002+03:00

The remainders of Albino killed recently in Sengerema,Mwanza.The killers chopped all the legs and hands!!!

Doubling up

2009-02-19T12:24:00.002+03:00

The IMF is sharply increasing its lending capacity. It expects that more countries may need its help

THE International Monetary Fund usually draws attention when it doles out cash. As notable, however, was the news last week of a deal with the Japanese government, allowing the fund to add an extra $100 billion to its kitty. The loan will augment the fund’s existing lending capacity by about half, but it is not stopping there: it plans to raise still more money (perhaps another $200 billion) from other governments. If it succeeds, it would have roughly doubled its lending capacity compared with the start of September 2008, when the global financial crisis broke in earnest.
It is not immediately obvious why the IMF, already flush with cash, needs to raise so much more money now. In September last year it had roughly $250 billion available for loans in uncommitted funds. Since then it has committed roughly $48 billion to a variety of battered emerging economies, including Belarus, Latvia, Pakistan, Iceland, Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia. A burst of activity at the end of last year has, however, been followed by a period of calm. No more loans have been agreed upon this year, except a precautionary arrangement with El Salvador, under which the country is entitled to draw $800m in case of balance-of-payments difficulties. That should leave the fund with some $200 billion lying about, even before the injection of Japanese funds.

Evidently the fund is worried that emerging economies face a large shortfall in external financing, and in turn is concerned that it might suddenly lack the means to plug the gap, if asked. Such concerns are not misplaced. Private capital, which flooded into emerging countries in the boom years, is now rushing out just as fast. According to the Institute for International Finance (IIF), net inflows of such capital to these economies peaked at nearly $929 billion in 2007, but then almost halved to $466 billion last year. Worse is to come. The IIF expects that flows will dwindle to a paltry $165 billion this year. Bank lending to emerging economies, in particular, has dried up. Western banks have hunkered down in their home markets; the IIF predicts a net outflow of $61 billion this year, a dramatic reversal of the net inflow of $410 billion in 2007. As private capital dries up, therefore, emerging markets may have to turn elsewhere: the fund is an obvious, if usually unpalatable, choice.

The worry is that if several large emerging economies needed to turn to the IMF at once, the latter’s resources could prove inadequate. Also, the fund has been adding facilities to its arsenal. In October it launched a new short-term liquidity facility to help countries with otherwise sound macroeconomic policies facing sudden capital flight. Although no loans have been made under this facility so far, these would only be credible if they were backed up by enough resources.
Signs suggest that more countries may soon have to turn to the IMF for money, over and above loans that have already been approved. Pakistan’s government is considering a request for a $4.5 billion loan to top up the $7.6 billion the IMF agreed to lend in November. Romania’s prime minister says that his government will decide in the next two weeks whether it will seek money from the IMF. More generally eastern Europe has been hit hard by the reversal of private capital flows. Turkey is negotiating the terms of a possible loan with the fund.

Some economists, including former IMF economist Arvind Subramanian, even estimate that $500 billion may not be enough to allay worries about the fund’s capacity to commit, credibly, to rescuing countries in trouble. Mr Subramanian reckons the fund may need to have as much as $1 trillion on hand. But where such additional funds would come from is far from clear. The fund is not yet considering turning to private markets. Tapping additional resources from reserve-rich emerging countries such as China is a possibility. But this may require the fund to reform its governance structure radically to give these countries significantly more voice in its running than they have at present. In a hopeful sign, reforming the IMF figures prominently on the agenda of the meeting of G20 leaders in April. Movement on this vexed issue would hugely help the effectiveness of the IMF.

INAUGURATION OF THE NEW NATIONAL STADIUM

2009-02-16T11:51:00.005+03:00

President Jakaya Kikwete(left),Vice President Dr.Shein,Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda and the former President Benjamin Mkapa during inauguration of the new National stadium, Dar Es Slaam.

President Hujintao and President Kikwete clapping hands during inauguration

The inauguration was done by the President of Tanzania and China respectively

Decision making for managers

2009-02-16T11:33:00.001+03:00

Decision making in management is an important skill - and making the right decisions is essential. Every manager should be looking to improve their decision making skills.

The process of corporate decision making is of the utmost importance for effective management. Your decision making process in management must be informed by expert knowledge and experience.

Decision making for managers is comprehensively covered in the articles below and within them you will find decision making tips and advice and examples of the different types of decision making needed in business.
visit http://thinkingmanagers.com/business-management

THE COOPERATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP WORKSHOP on the way....

2009-02-13T12:18:00.002+03:00

This April,there would be a workshop coordinated by Programme Office of TAF aiming at discussing cooperative entrepreneurship in Tanzania.
The main theme “ALTENATIVE CHALLENGES TO THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT DEVELOPMENT IN TANZANIA “

Proposed topics:

1. Promotion of school age youth cooperative entrepreneurship..............Dr.Donath Olomi of UDEC (University of Dar Es Salaam Entrepreneurship Centre)

2. Capacity building for Cooperative leaders..............................................Prof.Chambo of MUCCoBS.

3. Challenges to cooperative rural development........................................Rafi Goldman, Director, NISPED Israel

4. Women participation in cooperative entrepreneurship development....Dr. Nchimbi of UDEC

5. Leadership and entrepreneurship in cooperative context.......................Rafi Goldman, NISPED-Israel

6. Review definition of cooperative............................................................Dr. Yehudah Paz, NISPED-Israel

7. Application of Cooperative principles and values....................................Rafi Goldman, NISPED-Israel

8. The link between entrepreneurship and Cooperatives............................Marwa, Shirati, CEO Graduates Synergy/Vision SACCOS Ltd

9. Cooperatives situation in Tanzania.........................................................Chairman, Tanzania Cooperative Federation

9. TAF-SCC experience in ILVAP Projects .....................................................Prof.Hamza Kiko, TAF-President

10. Access to Coop Investment, Finance and Credit.....................................Esther Mukono, Kenya Cooperative Bank
(KCB)/Charles Kimei of CRDB
11. Empowerment and poverty reduction...................................................Reginald Mengi, Tanzania Entrepreneur

10. Tanzania`s experience............................................................................Dr.Kashuliza, D/RC in MoAC

12. ISRAEL experience..................................................................................Dr.Yehudah Paz, NISPED

13. The way forward....................................................................................Prof.Chambo, Principal MUCCoBS

Proposed invitees:
1. The Director of Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Commerce and Industries
2. Executive Director,MVIWATA/MVIWAMO
3. Managing Director, Kilimanjaro Cooperative Bank
4. Managing Director,CRDB Bank
5. Executive Director, Tanzania Association of Coffee producers
6. Executive Director, Tanzania Association of Cotton producers
7. Executive Secretary, Tanzania Farmers Association/Federation
8. Executive Officer, Tanzania Association of Foresters(TAF)
9. Executive Secretary ,Tanzania Association of Fisheries
10. ILO Representative in Tanzania.
11. Senior Programme Officer,SCC-Nairobi
12. Executive Director, Confederation of Tanzania Industries(CTI)
13. Director of Community Development, Ministry of Social Development
14. Executive Director,SCCULT
15. Executive Director, Tanzania Cooperative Federation
16. Director, Poverty Reduction, Ministry of Vice-President`s Office(VPO)
17. Director of information, Ministry of Information
18. Director of Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives

You are all welcome!

Biofuels cause land scramble in TZ

2009-02-13T12:14:00.000+03:00

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA
A new scramble for arable land in Tanzania has started - the coastline and the fertile land in Northern and Southern Tanzania being the prime targets.This scramble which has seen thousands of acres of fertile arable land falling into the hands of foreign companies has been engineered by the quest for bio fuels.
At least for now five regions have been at the centre of this scramble. Dar es Salaam, Coast, Tanga, Mbeya and Arusha regions have been cited as the first victims of land grabbing engineered by foreign companies in Tanzania.
Already the coastline of more than 1,000 kilometres stretching from Tanga to Mtwara has been taken either directly by foreign companies or by local well-to-do Tanzanians who pose and act on behalf of multinational corporations. Most of these companies pose as strategic investors.
The EABW has discovered that in Bagamoyo district, Coast region the situation is alarming. The district, which is about 40 kilometres from Dar es salaam city centre has been the focus of these land grabbers. Recently, thousands of acres of land were given to an 'investor' for sugar cane farming.
The land was given to the investor despite technical advice by agricultural experts from the ministry of agriculture and food security who had turned down the proposal. Like many other places, the land is needed for cultivation of sugar cane to produce bio fuels.
In the same region in Mkuranga district, a Swedish company, Sekab is seeking to be given two million acres of land for the cultivation of bio fuel plants.
EABW was told by the locals and the district authorities that the company is expected to invest over US$400 million for the project.
Another company, British Sun Biofuels is also scrambling to acquire at least 8,000 acres of land in Mkuranga for a bio fuel project.
In Kisarawe district in Coast region the story is the same. One company has been given about 8,000 acres of land to plant jathropa. Kisarawe district authorities have already sanctioned the deal.
In Arusha, thousands of acres of land have been given to 'investors' in flower farming, coffee and aloe vera, leaving the locals without land. The locals are now forced to be labourers on their own land.
In Rufiji district, also in Coast region the story is the same. Thousands of acres have been given to foreign companies who have promised the Tanzanian government to cultivate food crops.
What the approval of these projects means is that thousands of villagers if not millions will have to be removed from their land.
Some of the land was taken during the privatization of public corporations through the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC).
A case in point is in Mbeya region where one Asian business tycoon is controlling more than 7,500 hectares of fertile paddy fields in the Kapunga area where he cultivates rice.
He purchased the once government owned paddy fields from the PSRC in 2006 promising the authorities that he would engage in large scale farming.
What the government expected from the 'investor' was creation of jobs and an increase in food production for both local market and export. This has never happened.
Instead what the investor is doing is to lease the land for a fee under conditions similar to feudalism.. Before the land was privatized, it was a source of livelihood for more than 30,000 villagers in the area.

MICHAEL JACKSON is suffering from an acute MRSA-type skin infection

2009-02-12T11:57:00.005+03:00

On the way to the clinic,he greeted some fans

On the way to the doctor

Jackson`s nose in 2002

Inflamed....the star`s skin shows off signs of infection

MICHAEL JACKSON is suffering from an acute MRSA-type skin infection which threatens to EAT his flesh.
The singer has been receiving antibiotics via a drip in a bid to beat the superbug, which sources say has spread throughout his body.

Jacko, 50, revealed painfully-inflamed skin on his face and hands as he visited a Beverly Hills clinic where he is being treated.
The stricken pop legend may have contracted the infection following plastic surgery on his NOSE, it was feared last night.
The 50-year-old Billie Jean singer is said to have a severe “staph” infection, resistant to conventional antibiotics.
Experts warned it threatened to develop into a terrifying flesh-eating disorder which could kill off areas of the superstar’s skin and leave him in need of major reconstructive surgery.
Jacko has been receiving antibiotics via an IV drip in a bid to beat the condition.

But the skin on his face and hands looked inflamed when he was snapped on his way to a Beverly Hills clinic during another week of intense treatment.
A source revealed last night: “Michael Jackson has a severe staph infection that he contracted during work to reconstruct his nose.
“The disease is an MRSA-style infection because it is resistant to conventional antibiotics, so he has been visiting a clinic to get antibiotics via an IV drip.
“The infection has spread throughout his face and body and is being aggressively treated by doctors.
“There’s a chance it could turn into a flesh-eating disorder where it begins to kill off his skin so he’s being very carefully monitored.”
Swollen
Jackson was seen twice visiting the same clinic within a week.
He emerged with his face covered by dark sunglasses and a surgical mask — and with his hair hidden behind a surgical cap.
The usually-pale skin on his hands and face appeared visibly inflamed with red and purple blotches and he appeared to have a severely swollen cheek.

US celebrity plastic surgeon Dr Anthony Youn, who has not treated Jacko but has viewed the shocking photos of the star, said: “It is possible that Mr Jackson has a staph infection or MRSA.
“This is called a ‘super-infection’ because it is resistant to conventional antibiotics. It does look like his skin is red and inflamed and has become infected.
“Staph infection or MRSA is extremely worrying because it is an aggressive infection that is resistant to most conventional antibiotics.
“In some worse cases surgeons will have to remove the infected tissue if it dies — leaving the patient needing major reconstructive surgery. It is particularly worrying if it is on the face.”
Dr Youn, who runs The Hills Plastic Surgery and Laser Centre and is a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, said: “Many people in the health-care system can contract this disease via cuts to the skin.
“But it is possible Mr Jackson contracted it through surgery on his nose. There are occasions where patients contract the infection during plastic surgery procedures.
“Doctors try to treat the infection early with antibiotics administered via IV drip — and in many cases the patient can make a good recovery if it is caught early enough.”
Jackson’s increasingly frail appearance has prompted speculation about the state of his health.
Last month Ian Halperin, author of a Jackson biography, claimed the singer was suffering from potentially fatal lung disease. But Jackson’s spokesman dismissed this as a “total fabrication”.
He added: “Mr Jackson is in fine health, and finalising negotiations with a major entertainment company and television network for both a world tour and a series of specials and appearances.”
The spokesman refused to return calls last night.

Masked ... Jackson greets fans on his way to the clinic for treatment
Jackson has always insisted he suffers from a skin condition called vitiligo, a chronic skin disease which causes loss of pigment.
Despite the dramatic changes to his appearance, he admits only to having two minor cosmetic procedures. He has admitted to minor work on his nose to help him breathe.
Last summer, the star was seen being pushed in a wheelchair as he approached his 50th birthday. The gaunt singer was clad in pyjamas and slippers.
Witnesses described the skin on his hands peeling off — almost like that of a snake.

Free management intelligence

2009-02-10T11:51:00.000+03:00

The Motivation for Creativity
Why should anyone seek to be creative? Creativity is full of risks and uncertainties. There is the risk of failure. There is the need to persuade others. There is a need for political skills. It is much better to sit quietly and do what you are supposed to do.
If things are going well, who needs creativity? If things are going badly, then there is no time for the uncertainties of creativity.
If you set out to be creative - and even if you use the powerful tools of lateral thinking - you cannot be sure of a result.
There is a further problem. Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight - otherwise it would have no value. So it is assumed that logic could have reached the idea in the first place.
This is totally untrue in an asymmetric patterning system like the human brain. But how many people know about asymmetric systems? So executives expect only 'blue sky ideas' from creativity and these are then deemed impractical.
If we regard creativity as an inborn talent which some people have and others do not have, then we just look for creative people.
If we regard creativity as the 'skill' of using information in a patterning system like the brain, then everyone can develop the skill of creativity. To be sure, some people will achieve a higher degree of skill than others - as with any skill - but this is not the same as being naturally creative. People who are not naturally creative might develop a higher degree of skill than those who are naturally creative.
Confidence is a key factor in creative effort. Those who have succeeded in having creative ideas in the past are much more willing to make a creative effort. They know from experience that new ideas are possible. They have experienced the joy and achievement of having a new idea.
How do you build up confidence if school does not encourage creativity, and the workplace does not expect it?
Most people do what is expected of them. The rebellious few do not. That is why we usually associate creativity with a rebellious nature. But it does not have to be like that.
To get creativity into an organisation you must make it an 'expectation'. At the end of every meeting, the chair person must allocate the last fifteen minutes to 'anyone who is exploring a new idea'. If no one has anything to say, they are told they are not doing their job.
A creative 'Hit List' of areas which need new thinking is produced and made visible to everyone. Executives are expected to work on items from this list - either as individuals or as assigned teams.
The effort to have ideas is key. If new ideas are an expectation, then people will make an effort to have new ideas. Their confidence will grow and eventually there will be a creative organisation.
It is also important to learn how to be creative. There is a need to learn the formal skills of lateral thinking which make creativity available to everyone.

Rihanna to wed soulmate Chris?

2009-02-09T14:18:00.003+03:00

Picture...rihanna

UMBRELLA singer RIHANNA fuels speculation she is engaged to soul star CHRIS BROWN as she sports this huge diamond ring on her wedding finger.

Pals said Chris, 19, popped the question over the New Year.
Rihanna, 20, showed off the bling after performing with her fella at the O2 in London.
Despite the cold, she wore fingerless gloves and held her hand to her chest so people could clock the rock.
A source said: “Rihanna was wearing the biggest diamond you can imagine.”

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: is top Dog

2009-02-09T13:32:00.008+03:00

Pleasure Cruz...Penelope`s back in black

Missing out....both BRANGELINA failed to win gongs

Best Actress...Kate Winslet

Winner.......Danny Boyle

SLUMDOG Millionaire swept the board at the Baftas last night, scooping seven gongs including Best Film and Best Director for Brit DANNY BOYLE.
In an incredible night for British talent, English rose KATE WINSLET also stole the show, winning Best Actress for her role in The Reader.
In the men’s category Hollywood hellraiser MICKEY ROURKE claimed Best Actor for his part in The Wrestler.
While a posthumous gong for Best Supporting Actor went to HEATH LEDGER for his dramatic role as Dark Knight villain The Joker.
And stunning PENELOPE CRUZ was named Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

There was disappointment for the makers of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which only took three awards from a possible 11.

A stellar cast of movie A-listers sashayed up the red carpet in drizzling rain for the glitzy 62nd British Academy Film Awards at the grand setting of the Royal Opera House in central London.
In a brilliant night for British film it was Slumdog Millionaire which led the way with seven awards.
The story of a boy from the Mumbai slums getting to the final round of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? gameshow captured the hearts of Bafta nominators, also winning the Adapted Screenplay, Music, Cinematography, Editing and Sound categories.
More home-grown success came through an Original Screenplay gong for In Bruges and Costume Design for The Duchess.

Kate Winslet, who has already won two Golden Globes this year for The Reader and Revolutionary Road, was handed her gong by 007 star DANIEL CRAIG.
She was overcome with emotion as she took hold of the coveted award for the first time since winning Best Supporting Actress for Sense and Sensibility in 1995.
The show was opened with a live performance from pop princess KYLIE MINOGUE, and was presented by JONATHAN ROSS – just back from suspension for his lewd on-air comments.
Danny Boyle accepted his award for Best Director from SIR IAN MCKELLEN and PATRICK STEWART, while legendary rocker SIR MICK JAGGER handed out the prize for Best Film.
I’ve Loved You So Long took away the Best Film Not in the English Language award.
Director STEVE MCQUEEN got the The Carl Foreman Award for Special Achievement by a British Director, Writer or Producer for their First Feature Film for movie Hunger.
TERRY GILLIAM was handed the Academy Fellowship gong for his lifetime’s contribution to film.
The 68-year-old former Python said: “This is a great honour for someone who needs so many other people to do his job."

In his career spanning five decades he has had Bafta, Oscar and Golden Globe success, and has been praised for his screenwriting on Life of Brian (1979) and Brazil (1985).
Pinewood and Shepperton Studios grabbed an award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
The Orange Rising Star Award was presented to NOEL CLARKE, director and star of Adulthood.
The party atmosphere at Britain’s biggest film awards was not dampened by the rain as glamorous stars took to the red carpet in expensive designer dresses.
Double nominated Kate Winslet snubbed fans desperate for her autograph as she was whisked into the Opera House. Some section of the crowd booed her as she went passed without stopping.
Hollywood will be looking closely at the 62nd Orange British Academy Film Awards, as it is often seen as an early indication of who will win the coveted Oscars.
The crowds surrounding the red carpet went wild when showbiz royalty BRAD PITT and ANGELINA JOLIE – nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress – stopped to give autographs.

Mickey Rourke wooed the crowd as he stopped to sign autographs wearing dark glasses and smoking a cigarette.
Other stars included Daniel Craig, SHIA LABEOEUF and SHARON STONE, who looked aghast when an umbrella was moved from her head allowing the rain to spoil her perfectly coiffed hairdo.
Mamma Mia! heartthrob DOMINIC COOPER signed autographs for adoring female fans.
But FRANK LANGELLA and SEAN PENN, nominated for Best Actor in Frost/Nixon and MIlk, respectively, didn’t turn up for the awards.
MICHAEL SHEEN, who played DAVID FROST in Frost/Nixon, said on the red carpet: “It’s a great atmosphere but it needs a bit of work because people generally shout at you and I could stay at home for that.”
Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle said on the red carpet: “It feels pretty nice to be here. I’ve been directing a long time. It’s a real honour for the film and I’m delighted for everyone, especially the actors.
“I thought I would never want to do a film about a gameshow.
“I’m not really a big time director. I try to concentrate on projects I can keep control on. So it’s extraordinary when something like this takes off.”

HASSANALI NA MAVAZI YA HARUSI

2009-02-09T13:10:00.002+03:00

Mbunifu wa mitindo maarufu nchini Mustafa Hassanali akipita na warembo wakiwa kwenye mavazi ya harusi katika shoo iliyojulikana kama Bridal collection katika ukumbi wa Little Theatre Dar Es Salaam wikendi hii

Leadership is about more than charisma

2009-01-29T13:38:00.002+03:00

Health fears surrounding Steve Jobs led to a fall in the price of Apple shares and have
highlighted the value of charismatic leaders to their companies

If there is a cult of the chief executive, then Steve Jobs must stand at its head. Many business leaders have been closely associated with their brands, but none more so than the chief executive of Apple. Mr Jobs, with his understated black polo necks and round glasses, has come to personify his company, a fact highlighted when recent news of his medical leave of absence caused Apple's share price to tumble.

“Apple is surprisingly dependent on Steve Jobs,” Tim Morris, director of the high performance leadership programme at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, said. “He has the magic combination of a fantastic technical insight and an ability to understand the market. He's also a master communicator.”

And he is an archetype, in his case the model of a charismatic leader - and that, in turn, is both a towering strength and a potential devastating weakness.
“Charismatic leaders can gather people behind them,” Jo Hennessy, director of research at the Roffey Park Institute, said. “They're inspiring and strong and, if they're able to engage staff, the results will follow.”

Maria Yapp, chief executive of Xancam, a business psychology company, said that “a big magnetic personality” can launch and revitalise brands, products and companies. “Tony Blair was great for new Labour to kick-start it,” she said, “and Steve Jobs has revitalised the Apple brand.”
But, Ms Hennessey said, “they're like the central pole in a big top: take the pole out and the tent will collapse.”

Rob Goffee, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and co-author of Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?, said that strong leaders were good at developing disciples, but not successors. “The people that make leaders charismatic are their followers. Barack Obama, for example, is clearly charismatic, but he's also enigmatic. You can't pin him down and so he allows us to project our dreams and hopes on to him.”

Ms Hennessy said: “A charismatic leader who likes fame and glory may be more concerned about results today than a long-term legacy. When we coach chief executives to develop their own succession plans, we say: ‘Does it always have to be you? Can you spread the leadership around more?'”
Gareth Jones, visiting professor at Insead, the international business school, said that people were fascinated by how leaders got results. “We're interested in those who excite others to exceptional performance. For instance, when Martin Johnson led England to victory in the Rugby World Cup, people were saying: ‘How the hell did he do that?'”

Johnson's successors might have wondered the same thing and, perhaps, if some of his magic might rub off on them. Sadly, in Professor Jones's words: “You can't borrow someone else's charisma. The task for leaders is to work out what it is about themselves that is compelling. We're all looking for the next Richard Branson or Steve Jobs and we're not looking at the different ways people are leading.”
Professor Goffee said that figures such as John Major, the former prime minister, used their very ordinariness to lead: “I get worried about the use of the word ‘charisma', as people think that these are extraordinary qualities that ordinary mortals haven't got.”

Moreoever, the tide of popularity can turn quickly. Ms Yapp warned: “If you're known on the strength of your personality, it's much easier to fail. People in the City tend to panic and see Steve Jobs as being Apple, in the same way that they see Richard Branson as being Virgin.”
There are several things that companies can do to ensure that they do not fall victim to the cult of the chief executive. They can build the loss of a leader into disaster recovery plans, Barry Spence, chairman and chief executive of Cubiks, an HR consultancy, said. They should ensure that they have a strong organisational structure and management team underpinning the leader and that all those in that team get a chance to shine. Crucially, companies should build the product's reputation as strongly as they build personalities. “While James Dyson is regarded as an innovator, the product has been developed in parallel. So if Dyson went under a bus tomorrow, people would still buy Dyson vacuum cleaners,” Mr Spence said.

And while we may love inspirational but fallible leaders, only one thing matters to the markets: results. Last week Apple posted record revenue of $10.17billion (£7.19billion). As Mr Spence said: “The numbers will always win out.”

Famous Four

Henry Ford

The founder of the Ford motor company revolutionised mass production and brought car ownership to middle-class Americans. An avowed anti-Semite, he was admired by Adolf Hitler

Sir Richard Branson

The self-made entrepreneur launched the “world’s first spaceline”, Virgin Galactic, in 2004 and was ranked the 236th richest person in the world by Forbes magazine last year

Jack Welch

The former chairman and chief executive of General Electric increased its value from $13 billion to several hundred billion. Dubbed “Neutron Jack”, it was joked that he eliminated employees but left the building standing

Dame Anita Roddick

Founder of ethical cosmetics group the Body Shop, she was a high-profile environmental campaigner before her death in 2007

How to be your own (very good) management consultant

2009-01-29T12:32:00.000+03:00

Dear fellow manager,

You can make a good case for using business management consultants. They are not committed either emotionally or intellectually to the status quo.

Not only can they see what changes are needed for business development, but have acquired expertise - which their hosts have not - in structuring a change programme, selling it to the participants (willing and unwilling), and easing the strains and pains the change is bound to bring.
But the consultant is, of course, tied to the people who pay the fees. If the executive managers can't make a clean break from the past, all the management consultants in the world can't help to achieve radical change in business strategy.
But supposing we give you the ammunition, the logic and procedures to introduce 'best practice' techniques into your work practices? As an insider, could you make change happen?

First, let me explain where we get our information: Via two of the world's greatest management thinkers, you can learn from the world's most successful business leaders and management gurus - such as Tom Peters, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Peter Drucker and Andrew Grove.

What if two of the world's greatest management thinkers were invited into hundreds of businesses, talked to Chief Executive Officers and their executives about business theory, took an analytical look at how their management processes work, and then sent you a monthly briefing on what techniques are working and where?

Could you use that personal information to improve your own business management skills, performance and prospects? Could it help you achieve quality management? Could it boost creativity in managers you employ? Could it help you improve business strategy and put an effective business plan into place?

The Letter to Thinking Managers provides solutions to hundreds of common management problems. I'd like you to try it, at no risk, over the next two months.
Most managers are far too busy to do our kind of investigative business management analysis. And we are the best, by far, at doing it.

ZUMA AND KIKWETE

2009-01-29T10:15:00.003+03:00

President Jakaya Kikwete,who is also the African Union Chairman speak to the head of ANC-SA Mr.Jacob Zuma at Sandton Sun SA soon after attending the heads of states of SADC on Zimbabwe issues

BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SPOTTING BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

2009-01-29T10:01:00.000+03:00

These columns provide an enlightening perspective on the business of being an entrepreneur. For a start, that's the real business of the businessman and woman - being enterprising, spotting and seizing opportunities.
Opportunity abounds. There's nothing else in common between running conference centers for other businesses, making fabrics for office furniture, providing stock-taking services, forecasting the business future, etc, etc. Each provided an opening that non-entrepreneurs would have ignored or rejected.
Everybody has probably had one or several business ideas of a similar nature: a product or service which (like puncture-proof, environmentally friendly bicycle tyres) is either not being provided, or not being provided well. But there's a huge jump between seeing the possibility of a unique business and creating it.
For virtually all the entrepreneurs featured, that giant leap was hazardous, with a grave threat of falling short. The despair felt by the founders of the Harrogate Management Centre in their first, money-losing months has been experienced by many others. Persistence in the face of adversity is indispensable.
Persistence beyond adversity is equally vital. These entrepreneurs are perfectionists. Good is never good enough. Camborne Fabrics, with its costly efforts to improve on a 97% next-day delivery record, is only one example of the continuous entrepreneurial drive to create a better business with even more satisfied customers.
That emphasis on customers wouldn't have figured anything like so prominently a decade ago. Customer-first policies have been preached to big companies by management gurus, but small entrepreneurs reached the same conclusion through practical necessity. Like being good, just having customers isn't enough today.
The only sure defense against the competition, to which the dissatisfied modern buyer will turn in a flash, is to make good customer service into excellent. It's the toughest task in business, because no two customers are the same, and because no system will ever generate perfect service. Only people can - and they often fail.
That's why people have moved into the forefront of business thinking, along with the customer. If you don't satisfy and train the men and women who work with and for you, they're most unlikely to satisfy the customer, still less to produce excellence. Big companies agonize over this fact - but here smaller firms have the edge.
The proprietor can get to know everybody, not just by name, but as real people with a real contribution to make. Talk to employees in any large company, and you'll be struck by two things: the depth of their knowledge of the business and how it can be improved: and management's lack of interest in that profitable know-how.
The large company concentrates too much on profit, too little on the non-financial elements that create that bottom line. In contrast, the entrepreneur, however good at the basic business, often lacks a sound grip on the business basics - among them, stringent cash control, earning a goodly return on capital and minimizing debt.
Return on capital is an equation. Earning a decent profit is only half the battle. Keeping the capital employed as low as possible is the other half. Achieving rapid growth carries risks: growing revenues fast while restraining overheads and maintaining effective controls is the demanding, but perfectly feasible task.
It's become much more feasible because of developments like the personal computer, business information services of all kinds, advanced telecommunications, and fragmenting markets - all of which mean that the smaller business can go for growth with far fewer of its traditional disadvantages.
As a London Business School survey showed, however, many small companies aren't keen on expansion. Even among those who were, a quarter of the study lived by the philosophy: 'I am very keen to expand the business and then find a buyer to buy me out' (which happened to the conference centre company, Style).
Though others say that 'I am very keen to expand the business and continue to run it myself' takeover may still be the end-result. That's no tragedy. Even if the entrepreneur doesn't stay on, making one small fortune provides the wherewithal to start on the road to another - and there's always another road.

CAN YOUR BUSINESS AVOID THE ERRORS OF THE US AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY?

2009-01-29T09:52:00.001+03:00

The woes of Detroit are examined in an article by Umair Haque on Harvard Business Online, as he highlights the six crucial mistakes made by the US automobile industry and advises on how to avoid them.

Haque argues that Detroit followed old rules in business where new, 21st century rules need to be established. These new rules, he says, can be used by managers everywhere to start preconceiving, reinventing, and revolutionizing their own organizations.

The first mistake of the automobile industry was to 'choose evil'. "Detroit chose lobbying, marketing wars, and low-cost hardball - to always and everywhere try to socialize costs and privatize benefits," explains Haque. However, in the 21st century, moral imperatives are also strategic imperatives: "doing good - for customers, employees, suppliers, or society - is a radical strategic choice that unlocks new pathways to innovation and growth".

The next mistake was 'selfishness' to serve self-interest, where, for instance, Detroit lobbied to oppose stricter fuel efficiency standards. This should be replaced in the 21st century by 'purpose' for self-interest. What's needed is "a more enlightened self-interest: one factoring in a longer timescale, fuller contingencies, and an honest and broad consideration of hidden and unintended consequences to people, society and the environment".

The third mistake was to 'maximize destructiveness', destroying the ability of others to imitate or commodities others. But now businesses should 'get constructive', letting demand spark and fuel co-creation, co-producing from a pool of shared resources and allowing value activities to be co-managed.

The fourth mistake on the list is 'seeking differentiation'. "Why pay a steep premium for a Buick if it's just a Chevy with slightly nicer trim?" asks Haque. Instead, real 'difference' should be sought so the distinction and demarcation is one of reality and not just perception.

The fifth lesson from Detroit is to seek 'crisis' rather than 'agility'. "Industrial-era corporations seek agility... by insulating themselves from real-world economic pressures," explains the author. But, he adds, this leads to the dilution and sapping of incentives for innovation and renewal.

The final mistake of Detroit was to seek "a nakedly competitive advantage - against suppliers, dealers, consumers, and society alike". In the 21st century advantage should be sought 'for' and not 'against': "far more radical, potent, and disruptive are corporations who can use market power to create an authentic advantage for buyers, suppliers, customers, consumers, and society, not against them," concludes Haque.

CREATIVE RISK: DON`T BE AFRAID TO REALISE YOUR ORGANISATION`S POTENTIAL THROUGH CREATIVITY

2009-01-29T09:46:00.002+03:00

You can sometimes be sure about the past. You can observe and measure. You can know what has happened. That is what history and science are all about.

It is not often that you can be sure about the future. If you explode a bomb you can be sure there will be some destruction. This is because we are following the routine of the past. A doctor who treats a streptococcal infection with penicillin can be reasonably sure that it will effect a cure. Again, this is repeating a routine that has worked in the past.

But if you are doing something new, something creative, or something different, you cannot be sure about what will happen. You can reasonably hope that putting together ingredients with known actions will produce a certain effect. This is what a cook would do when creating a new dish.
If a City Council decreed that people could only use their cars one day a week, could they fully predict what would happen? Traffic in the city might be reduced. Policing the system might be difficult, expensive, or even impossible. Citizens might be so upset that they voted out the Council at the next election. There might be vigorous protests. Businesses might start to move out of the city. Retailers might be very upset, etc. There would be a multitude of effects - both direct and indirect.

In addition to the difficulty of forecasting the effects, there is the even bigger difficulty of forecasting the extent or strength of the effect. How strong would protests be? Would people remember this at the next election? How many businesses would move out of the city? How long would it take people to get used to the idea?

In London there is a ‘congestion charge’ for driving into the centre of the city. This is currently £8. If this charge is low, then people accept it, take it for granted and still drive into the city centre. If the charge is raised and is perceived to be too high, then there are protests and a negative effect at election time. How do you estimate the right level of charge to reduce traffic and yet not upset car drivers too much?

Consider an alternative idea. Suppose everyone who lived within a certain radius of London were to be given a free permit to drive into the city centre. But to drive in you would need to display four permits. So four friends or neighbors could agree to share a car. Or, you could rent or buy permits from other people. This would mean that some people were now being paid for leaving their cars at home, and taking public transport into the city. The overall effect would be a definite reduction to one quarter of existing car traffic into the city. There would not be the uncertainty of the congestion charge level (though the city would not make money if the permits were free).
In China there is said to be a deficit of 100 million women. This is the result of the ‘one child’ policy. Baby girls are not much valued because they are not so helpful in the fields or in your business. Girls get married and then look after the ageing parents of their husbands. So who is going to look after you when you get old? So, somehow, the girl babies disappear. The result is a deficit of 100 million women - and even wife kidnapping.

Now it may well be that this outcome was actually foreseen right from the beginning. The deficit of 100 million women would cause a significant decline in the population. Was the deficit deliberately planned, or an unforeseen consequence of the one child policy? Risk means that things do not turn out quite as planned. Consider an alternative idea for China’s large population.
Each family is allowed to have one boy and must then have more children. This is the ‘one boy’ policy. The result is equal boys and girls. At the moment of conception there is an equal chance of the embryo being a boy or a girl. Since no one is being killed, this equal chance continues. On average each family has two children. This is less than is required for population replacement, which needs about 2.3 children. So there is a declining population of equal boys and girls and everyone gets the chance to have a boy. No babies are ‘lost’ or killed.

PILOT SCHEMES
There are pilot schemes, test-marketing and other ways of exploring the impact of a new idea or new product. These are valuable, but may not be as simple as they seem. Many years ago, McDonalds had the idea of serving breakfasts in their restaurants. They had the image. They had the locations. They had the staff. Why not open up this new source of revenue?
For four years the company lost money on this new venture. People were not in the habit of eating breakfast outside their homes. Any time in that four years, the new venture could have been scrapped and treated as a ‘failure’. They did not give up. After four years, serving breakfasts became the most profitable part of McDonalds’ operations.
How long is long enough for a pilot scheme? That is an impossible question to answer. Changing culture and changing habits takes a long time. To get people used to the idea of having breakfast outside the home was a change in both culture and habit. So the test could be expected to take a long time. But how long is a long time? Three years? Four years? Five years? Etc.
There may also be background factors. In times of inflation some cultures spend more money - but other cultures save money. The particular circumstances in which a pilot scheme is carried out will affect the results.

THE DESIGN OF IDEAS
Many toll bridges and toll roads operate with radio-sensed cards that allow a driver to go through the gate without paying any money on the spot. This seems to work very well. Could the same system be applied to car parks? So a driver would just show his card (which could be attached to the windscreen), and the gate would open.
If the car park was full, the driver would be rather upset at having bought a card and not being able to use it to park. How long would the card be priced? Someone who needed to park every day would be willing to pay quite a high fee, but someone who only parked occasionally would not.

How could the idea be designed to take these difficulties into account? A mixture of card and normal payment might work if the car park was big enough. Another possibility would be to make it time-dependent. Before 10am your card would work, but not after that time (to allow parking for work, but not for shopping).

Risks need to be foreseen. Creative ideas need to be designed to minimise the risks. It is not enough just to have a basic creative idea and then set out to use it. Many excellent creative ideas are lost because there has been insufficient attention to the design stage. The creative idea is tried in its original and crude form. It does not work, so the original idea is shelved. Yet with some design effort, the idea might have been very successful.

POLICY
We should not assume that creative ideas are always going to be high-risk. The result of such an assumption is that we avoid creative ideas as a matter of policy. The result of such a policy is that our organization or enterprise is operating considerably below potential. The more efficient an organization, the greater the need for creativity. Why?
Because every efficiency will extract the maximum benefit from a new idea. Inefficient organizations will be inefficient with new ideas. Efficiency and creativity are complementary - not opposites.

Will the recession inspire innovation in 2009?

2009-01-28T14:26:00.001+03:00

While admitting that 2009 would seem to be a tough a year for innovation as consumers and corporations continue to tighten their belts, Scott Anthony uses Forbes.com to remind us that a surprising number of great companies such as General Electric, IBM, McDonald's and Walt Disney were formed through innovation in times of recession.

Anthony explains that in his forthcoming book The Silver Lining (due to be published in the spring by Harvard Business Press) he argues that the challenging economic climate could be good news for innovation.
In fact, the author believes that abundance is at the heart of many corporate struggles with innovation. He writes: "Companies with overly deep pockets can flood a bad idea with money. Overly patient companies can let bad ideas linger for years."
But during times of scarcity, says Adams, organisations are forced to focus on creativity and innovation in order to deliver customer value. He adds: "Innovators can draw on high-quality, low-cost tools to develop, test and begin to commercialise ideas without tens of millions of dollars of investment."
Adams believes 2009 could be the year that innovation loses its reputation for being random and unpredictable. He asserts that academic and field work over the last 20 years have taken away much of the randomness and companies can now approach innovation in a more confident and disciplined manner.
The author concludes: "As long as there are problems to be solved, there will be innovators to solve them. Companies that use the current tough times as an excuse to de-emphasize innovation are going to severely regret it."
Innovation During The Great Disruption
Scott Anthony,
Forbes.com,
16/01/09.

When do leadership strengths become weaknesses?

2009-01-28T14:08:00.001+03:00

Leadership strengths are discussed by Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser in the February issue of Harvard Business Review. However, contrary to the traditional advice that managers should concentrate on their strengths, the authors warn that you can take strengths too far - to the point, in fact, where they become weaknesses.

For instance, take the leadership strengths of forcefulness (driving the team hard). If you are extremely forceful, the productivity within your team might improve in the short term but morale could suffer, proving detrimental to productivity in the long term.
Now take the leadership strength of consensus-building (obtaining agreement from everybody on decisions). Contrating too much on consensus-building could improve morale but productivity could suffer, with the decision-making process taking too long - this could be detrimental to morale in the long term.
To strike a balance, Kaplan and Kaiser suggest seeking evidence that your strengths are being overused - very high ratings on a 360-degree feedback, for instance - and then seek to redirect them. You can ask co-workers what they think you should do more, what you should do less and what should continue unchanged.
The authors also recommend asking yourself, “Do I privately pride myself on being superior to other leaders in any way?” If this is the case, this could be precisely the attribute you’re at risk of overdoing.

Once you have identified the strengths you are overplaying, you can redress the balance by doing more of the opposite. The HBR article offers the example of a manager whose preference for consensus-building resulted in overly long meetings, much to the chagrin of her team. To counter this, an 80% majority consensus was accepted instead of 100% and meetings became much more productive.
Stop Overdoing Your Strengths Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser, Harvard Business Review, February 2009

"The Quick, Easy, And Automatic Way to Invest just like Warren Buffett"

2009-01-28T13:44:00.003+03:00

"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult." - Warren Buffett

Stop wasting so much time and energy trying to find the perfect stock. Discover...
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Dear Investor,
Let's face it, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people out there trying to invest just like Warren Buffett and only a very rare few are actually getting Buffett results. Of course, it's no wonder why so many people want to invest like Buffett.
After all, Warren Buffett is, unequivocally, the greatest stock market investor of all time.
But have you tried to invest like Buffett? Have you read the books on Buffett? Have you scoured through his annual letters? Have you watched his interviews? Have you taken the advice of the latest "Buffett experts" on TV?
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"Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing." - Warren Buffett
"If Calculus or Algebra were required to be a great investor, I'd have to go back to delivering newspapers." - Warren Buffett
"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult." - Warren Buffett
Buffett himself has stated time and time again that the mistakes most investors make come from over-complicating the simple process of sound investing.
How The Buffett System Works
The ultimate goal of The Buffett System is to be the next-best-thing to asking Warren Buffett himself if you're making a good investment decision.
Let's assume you're thinking about investing in a particular stock. And, let's say that to help you make your decision, you want to see it through the eyes of the most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett.
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How The Buffett System Was Created
Before jumping in, you probably want to know more about how The Buffett System was created. The Buffett System was created by meticulously retracing the footsteps of history's most successful investor: Warren Buffett.
Multi-billionaire Eddie Lampert followed a similar path:

Eddie Lampert has invested his way to a net worth of $3.5 billion while still in his 40s. How did he do it? He says he carefully studied Buffett for years. He read and re-read Buffett's writings and spent countless hours analyzing Buffett's past investments. He says he "reverse engineered" Buffett's investment decisions: "Putting myself in his shoes at that time, could I understand why he made the investments? That was part of my learning process."
The Buffett System was created by first uncovering and analyzing Buffett's writings dating all the way back to 1951. Special attention was paid to the specific reasons Buffett gave for each of his buy and sell decisions.
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You already know Buffett demands that any company he invests in must have a well-established "moat" to protect it from competitors. But how exactly do you determine if your stock has a strong enough moat? Discover the four simple questions that determine whether or not your stock has an acceptable moat.
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Buffett tells us that we shouldn't think about investing in a company for 10 minutes if we wouldn't be happy investing in it for 10 years. Fair enough - so how do we figure out what a company will be like 10 years from now? With The Buffett System, you'll learn the three questions that absolutely must be answered in order to determine the potential longevity of a company.
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You'll learn exactly when to sell your investment. Sell decisions shouldn't be based on vague theories and opinions, they should be based on cold, hard facts and The Buffett System tells you precisely when a stock should be sold.
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As you can see, this isn't another 600-page Buffett biography or an academic examination of Buffett's investments. This is a step-by-step guide to actually investing like Warren Buffett.
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Leadership and Transforming an Organisation

2009-01-28T13:30:00.002+03:00

by Patrick Cescau, Group Chief Executive, Unilever

I am delighted to have this opportunity to talk to you about the transformation of Unilever. I know that Unilever will be well known to many of you, but it is worth noting that the company is today the world's third largest consumer goods business, turning over €40 billion a year.
Our brands help people look good, feel good and get more out of life - 150 million times a day, in 150 countries. Twelve of those brands now have sales revenues in excess of one billion euros a year. To avoid disappointment, let me say straight away that this is a story that does not yet have an ending. Unlike other companies, we in Unilever are in the middle of a transformation, not at the end of one.
For while transformation may be a modern word, the reality is that successful businesses have been transforming themselves since commerce began. Companies that do not embrace this need, die. That is why the average life of a Fortune 500 company is 40-50 years.
Unilever knows this better than most. Way back to its origins in the nineteenth century, the company has been constantly evolving and adapting to meet changing circumstances. It was one of the first, for example, to seize the opportunities presented by new and expanding markets across the world - from its roots in the nineteenth century it became a genuinely multinational business long before the term multinational was even in use.
Indeed, the company was the product of one of the first ever cross-border mergers. This was followed by a period of unprecedented diversification - vertically through the supply chain and horizontally into a range of new business areas. Hardly surprising perhaps that by the middle of the last century Unilever was commonly referred to as a "global concern". Vertical integration made less sense by the 1970s and 1980s, and our business refocused dramatically back to its core heartland. So by the 1990s, the company had already experienced at least three major transformations - first becoming a vertically integrated multinational, then diversifying, then refocusing on the core. Each was much more than evolutionary change; it was almost a re-invention of the business. Each was borne out of a sea change in the industrial environment. Each was essential for survival. And each was accomplished successfully. To return to my point about the Fortune 500, only sixteen of the companies that were in the top 100 in 1957 are still there today, fifty years later. Unilever, of course, is one of them. So, we know a thing or two about transformation. And we know - and I know personally - that the role of leadership in a time of transformation is to make the case for change and to set out the direction of the journey.
Latest transformation
In our industry today, the case for change is overwhelming. Consider just some of the factors which are driving change: We face pervasive price pressure - on input costs, from our consumers and as always from our customers. The nature of competition is changing, dramatically. Our industry is consolidating.
Traditional competitors are becoming more global. And new, low cost competitors are entering the market everywhere. At the same time, indirect competitors - companies like Apple or Vodafone - are targeting the wallets of the same consumers.
And those consumers are getting more and more difficult to reach as media fragments and proliferates. And then there is the changing nature of retailing. Our retail partners rightly ask for more innovation, supported by great brand mixes, rolled out across the world, available at minimum cost. Business has become a battle for organic growth: a battle in which only the fittest survive.
Looking back to 2004, we were struggling to deliver on this. In fact, we decided that we could not deliver unless we transformed the company once again. I will put it more strongly - we concluded that without a major change to the business, we would eventually become less relevant to our consumers and less relevant to our retail partners. That is the challenge we faced.
So what are we doing? We are making changes in four major areas.
To our portfolio.
To our capabilities.
To the organisation and our ways of working.
And to our culture and behaviours.
Let me say something about each, and let me start with our portfolio.
1. Portfolio
The days when a leader could set a direction that would be interpreted by a hundred individual managers are long gone. In today's world, one hundred different strategies adds up to no strategy at all. So now we set much clearer priorities, and we do so on the basis of strategic choices. Our objective is to build a portfolio weighted to market leadership positions and playing in higher growth spaces. Hence our emphasis on personal care, on our businesses in D&E markets, and on realising the company's Vitality mission - our response to consumers' increased attention on health, nutrition and their wellbeing. We are competing to win in these defined areas of focus and are investing disproportionately - and over the long term - to support this objective, whether in R&D, people, trade spend, A&P. Where businesses do not fit with this strategy, we are taking the decision to exit - starting with our cosmetics business, and most recently with much of our frozen food business in Europe.
2. Capabilities
A key part of any business transformation is to upgrade skills, not across the board but in those areas that are mission critical. We refer to these as our capabilities and it is the second of the four areas of change that I want to talk about this morning. In a world where the strategies of the major players are steadily converging, it is the quality of execution that will distinguish the winners from the losers. So you have to decide which capabilities will give you excellence in execution. The most valued capability in Unilever used to be general management. Today, we recognise that we need to put much more emphasis on ensuring we are world class in each of our core processes - everything from innovation to shopper marketing; from customer management to supply chain.
We have always been good in these areas, but not consistently enough. Our performance needs now to be good everywhere, all of the time. Our initial priority has been on customer management. We are running a major programme of change to strengthen our capabilities here and to give it the importance it deserves - right at the heart of the business. We call this programme, Winning with Customers. It has been pioneered successfully in the United States and the Netherlands, and is now being extended to other major markets around the world. On the other hand, where it makes sense for some capabilities and activities to be handled by others, we are outsourcing those functions, whether in IT, HR transactions or in areas of finance. This is leading to lower cost and better service, but also providing more scope and flexibility for us to focus on core priorities.
3. Organisation
The third area of change is to the organisation itself. Here, we are doing all of the things you would expect us to do: delayering the organisation, simplifying the structure, increasing the speed of decision taking. But the critical change we have made is in our decision to move to a more integrated and globally co-ordinated business model. And, paradoxical though it may sound, we have moved the two big pillars of our company in different directions. On the one hand, we have set up global category organisations to be our experts in the needs of shoppers and consumers in all of the markets in which we operate. They are responsible - across geographies - for leveraging all of the things that have to be global. Excellent brand mixes, R&D, innovation, advertising, the allocation of resources, the building of world-class marketing capabilities across the globe. And on the other hand, we have established regional go-to-market organisations to meet the needs of shoppers and retail customers - market by market. In effect, I have asked our country leaders to undergo their own personal transformations; To change from being general managers to being - at least first and foremost - chief customer officers in each of our markets. To refocus their time from being 80 per cent on consumers, to 80 per cent on customers. To view customers, not as a channel through which to sell brands, but as partners in revitalising our categories.
4. Culture and behaviours
The fourth element of our transformation is in our culture and behaviours. This was essential if we were going to make all the other aspects of the transformation fit together - our new strategic priorities, new capabilities and the new organisation. In particular, we needed our people to be more accountable for delivery and more willing to work together at the same time. So managers in the go-to-market part of the organisation cannot succeed unless they work together with their colleagues in the global categories. And vice versa. Behavioural change is never easy. Our history has left us with a legacy of fiercely independent entrepreneurial general managers in 106 countries around the world, wherever possible led by indigenous managers. In many cases they are so successfully integrated into their local cultures that the population would be shocked to learn that Unilever Brazil or Unilever India are anything other than a wholly Brazilian or wholly Indian company.
In a globalising world of intense competition and specialist skills, such independence is an asset but one that needs to be tempered and directed. We all understand that. We have all bought the rational argument. We know that the incredible talent we have in Unilever can adapt. But that does not instantly change how everyone feels. It does not change their mindset overnight. It is hard for a senior leader to change the very behaviour that made him or her so successful in the first place. So we are doing all the things necessary to help facilitate the new behaviours. We have changed our incentive systems. Regrettably, we have had to change some of our people - in fact almost half of our most senior leaders have left the business in the last year because they did not fit. We have changed a lot of the language we use internally. And the new senior leaders in Unilever are acting as role models for the new behaviours. We are making real progress. But you will not be surprised when I tell you we are only part way through. The challenge here has been to move with a combination of pace and sensitivity.
Impact on the business
So how are we doing? Let me give you a quick snapshot of where Unilever's latest transformation - the latest in a long line - has got to. First, growth. The transformation is beginning to show through where it matters - in our results. Unilever's organic growth fell to almost zero in 2004. Last year, we improved that to around 3 per cent, the growth rate for our markets, and we maintained it - as you will see from this slide - into the first quarter of this year.
Some of this growth has been fuelled by our Vitality-driven innovation programme, which is helping to revitalise whole categories. Spreads, for example - a category we effectively invented more than a hundred years ago with margarine but which by the 1990s - was moribund with virtually no growth. The pro Activ/Becel brand, with its cholesterol reducing properties, has helped to restore growth - impressive growth at that - and at premium prices.
By responding both to a consumer desire and a public anxiety over heart health, this brand is at the frontier of functional foods, to the point that it even qualifies now for reimbursement under some French and Dutch healthcare systems. And we are already reaping the benefit of a global category organisation, brilliantly illustrated through the roll-out of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Highly innovative and commercially successful, it is helping to drive growth in a very vibrant category - skin. The product of an Anglo-US collaboration, it is now being rolled out across the world. Equally ground-breaking, and also being rolled out globally, is the laundry category's "Dirt is Good" campaign, which was originally developed in Brazil. We are also getting the benefit of our increased focus on high growth areas, like our personal care business and our businesses in D&E markets. The results speak for themselves.
And finally, raising our capabilities in our relations with both customers and consumers is also bearing fruit. Customers themselves tell us that they see the difference, exemplified by last year's Cannondale Power Ranking Survey in the USA, which many of you will be familiar with, and which shows Unilever improving - in some cases significantly - in all of the main areas of the survey.
And we are developing some phenomenally successful brand mixes based on brilliant consumer marketing and advertising. Take Axe, for example, our men's grooming brand, which goes from strength to strength on the back of some unconventional advertising that really connects our consumers to the "Axe effect". Little wonder therefore, perhaps, that Unilever was one of the big winners at last year's Cannes Advertising Awards, winning 17 of the coveted "Lions" - twice as many as our leading competitors. Just take a look at some of these...
What is not changing? A vital task for the leader in transforming an organisation is to be crystal clear about what NOT to change. As the English would say, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Every organisation has a unique set of values. The role for leaders is to reassure people that while the business may be transforming our values remain the same.
For us at Unilever, the values that will not change are:
our commitment to responsible and sustainable trading;
playing an active and positive role in the communities in which we operate;
behaving with integrity and sensitivity in all our dealings, whether with customers. employees, suppliers or with our many other stakeholders;
and living out our commitment to diversity.
These values have always provided the glue that helps to bind Unilever together but their adhesive qualities become even more critical in a time of change and transformation.

Acknowledgement
This article is based on a speech Patrick Cescau delivered at the CIES 50th World Food Business Summit in Paris on 22 June 2006.

Biography
Patrick Cescau is Group Chief Executive of Unilever. He began his career in 1973 when he joined Unilever France as an organisation officer. Since then his career has taken him to many countries across the world. He has held senior positions with Unilever in Germany, The Netherlands, Indonesia, Portugal, and in the US. In 2005 Mr Cecsau was appointed Group Chief Executive of the combined Unilever PLC and Unilever N.V. and is the first person to hold this new position in the company's history.
Mr Cescau is also a non-executive director of Pearson PLC and a Conseiller du Commerce Exterieur de la France in Holland. He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in January 2005.

AN OBAMA LOOK-LIKE

2009-01-22T15:33:00.006+03:00

WHO IS A REAL OBAMA, LEFT OR RIGHT?

A combination photo shows U.S. president-elect Barack Obama (L), taken January 17, 2009 as he speaks during a ceremony in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Indonesian photographer Ilham Anas, taken January 20, 2009 in Jakarta. Anas, 34, who from some angles bears a resemblance to the new U.S. president, shot to fame in Jakarta after Obama, 47, won the election in November.

Obama look-alike Ilham Anas, a 34-year-old magazine photographer, receives a phone call during an interview at his office in Jakarta, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. Ilham Anas has won media attention in recent weeks as a U.S. President-elect Barack Obama look-alike, appearing in a television commercial for heartburn medication in the Philippines

BUSINESS IDEAS & BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

2009-01-22T13:36:00.001+03:00

Entrepreneurial businesses come in all shapes and sizes. With only a few exceptions, if a big company can do it, so can a small one. Come explore the wide world of possibilities, including retail, direct sales, and a wide range of service businesses.
The traditional approach to entrepreneurship is to research the market, identify a need, and create a business to fill it. In recent years, "Do what you love and the money will follow," has become increasingly popular. But there's an approach that combines the best of both.
Whether you're employed and starting a business on the side, a student or homemaker looking for extra income, or unemployed and exploring your options, there are plenty of opportunities to start a business inexpensively. They may not make you a living right away, but all have the potential to grow into full-time work. Take a look at 10 such opportunities and learn what to do with the Tshs 5000!

Best Business Opportunities 2009: 2008's hot trends become 2009's hot opportunities. If you're thinking about starting a business this year, here are some of the best new business ideas you may want to consider.
Business Opportunities? Average People Are Making A Fortune Social Networking Can Make You Richweb2members.com
Business Blogs in Africa Read top rated business and corporate blogs in Africaafrigator.com/blogs/business

They think it's your Oval ... it is now!

2009-01-22T13:24:00.004+03:00

Getting down to business ... Obama with Rahm Emanuel

For your eyes only ... note from Bush to Obama, President No44

Obama...In oval office

BARACK Obama laid down the law on his first day in the Oval Office yesterday.
The new President snatched just a few hours sleep after his euphoric inauguration celebrations — then faced up to a daunting array of problems.
He had promised “swift action”. And in a series of meetings with advisers and generals, he began to tackle America’s crippled economy, the Iraq war, Guantanamo Bay and the Middle East crisis. He also:
SUSPENDED all orders issued to federal departments and agencies by his predecessor George Bush, pending review.
FROZE the pay of presidential staff earning more than £75,000, and BANNED them from accepting gifts from lobbyists.

The moves were aimed at making his administration more “transparent”. And Obama declared: “Families are tightening their belts — and so should Washington.”
The President began his first working day at a prayer service in Washington’s National Cathedral.
He sat with First Lady Michelle, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary was later rubber-stamped as US Secretary of State by the Senate despite Republican questions over potential conflicts of interest created by foreign payments to her husband’s foundation.

Once in the Oval Office, Obama had a brief moment of solitude in which he read a note left on his desk by Mr Bush.
It was addressed “to No44 from No43” — a reference to the pair being the 43rd and 44th Presidents. But its contents were not revealed.

Then it was straight into a summit with advisers, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, to discuss plans to revive the US economy with a £600billion injection.
Turning to Iraq, Obama was due to meet Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command.
Joining the discussion via tele-conference from Iraq were America’s ambassador to the strife-torn nation, Ryan Crocker, and General Ray Odierno, the top ranking US soldier in the battlezone.
Obama was expected to command the team to draw up plans to pull all US combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months.
On the Middle East, Obama called leaders including Jordan’s King Abdullah, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The President also ordered a suspension of trials at Guantanamo Bay while a four-month probe is carried out into the whole purpose of the detention camp in Cuba. The move even halted the case of 11 men charged in connection with the 9/11 atrocities.

It was applauded by human rights activists. But guards at the camp — holding 250 terror suspects — were unimpressed.
Though elated at Obama’s inauguration, black officer Patrick Thomas, 43, disagreed with the President’s intention to close it down.
He said: “If you let these detainees go from here they will pop up somewhere else.”
Late yesterday Obama was due to host an “Open White House” for friends and relatives. Meanwhile his staff were rushing to set up offices and computers. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said: “I just have to figure out how to log in.”
AN explosion of Obama-related goodies has appeared on web auction site eBay, including a “My Mama is for Obama” babygrow

BUSH AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS: IS IT THE RIGHT TIME TO SEND HIM THE HAGUE?

2009-01-21T14:06:00.002+03:00

Bush executes Sadam:Is the killing of human being lies in the hands of God or human being?

I think it the time for Bush to face the reality.

OBAMA`S PRESIDENCY

2009-01-21T12:49:00.003+03:00

HOW IS THE PRESIDENCY OF BARACK OBAMA MEAN TO YOU?

BARACK OBAMA-THE WORLD`S INAUGURATION

2009-01-21T11:20:00.021+03:00

OBAMA`S INAUGURATION SPEECH...

"A MAN WHOSE FATHER,LESS THAN 60 YEARS AGO,MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN SERVED AT A LOCAL RESTAURANT CAN NOW STAND BEFORE YOU TO TAKE A MOST SACRED OATH"

Practice ... stand-ins at inauguration rehearsal PRACTICE......STAND-INS INAUGURATION REHEARSAL

2009-01-20T14:32:00.003+03:00

REHEARSAL....................

Barack: Let's get U.S. back on track

2009-01-20T14:16:00.002+03:00

On a roller ... Barack Obama helps out at a shelter for Martin Luther King Day

BARACK Obama will today call on every American to do their bit to get the country “back on track”.
Mr Obama is set to give the speech of his life when he makes history by being sworn in as the first black President of the United States.
See history in the making
WITNESS history in the making — by following the inauguration live here on our website.
And he will echo the famous 1960 inauguration address by John F Kennedy, who told Americans: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Mr Obama will ask citizens to reject the “culture of anything goes” and instead demand a culture of individual responsibility to help lift the nation out of crisis.
Click below to see more snaps of the historic celebrations.

Yesterday the incoming President warned there must be no “idle hands” and “everybody must act” to tackle the challenges.
He spent Martin Luther King Day — a national holiday in honour of the murdered civil rights leader — visiting wounded troops and an emergency shelter for homeless teens.
Mr Obama, 47 — casually dressed in jeans and shirt — grabbed a roller to help paint the shelter’s walls.
He said: “It’s not a day just to pause and reflect — it’s a day to act.
“I ask the American people to turn today’s efforts into an ongoing commitment to enriching the lives of others.

Supporter ... star Ben Affleck
“We can’t allow any idle hands. Everybody’s got to be involved.
“I think the American people are ready to do that.”
Historic
Writing in the Washington Times, Mr Obama evoked the words of both Dr King and Thomas Jefferson, the third US President.
He wrote: “Let us unite with one heart and one mind. Our nation is at war. Our economy is in turmoil.
“And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is the same perseverance and idealism that our Founders displayed.

Practice ... stand-ins at inauguration rehearsal
“What is also required is that we break free from rigid ideology and small thinking, and together grab hold of this opportunity to bridge partisan divides and deliver change for the American people.
“The challenges demand that we move beyond the old debates and stale arguments.
“We must focus not on the dogmas of left and right, but on practical answers to the difficult problems.”
Click on the numbers above to read about the key events of Mr Obama's big day.
He added: “As we go forward in the work of renewing the promise of this nation, let’s remember King’s lesson — that our separate dreams are really one.”
Millions of people all over the world will tune in to watch the inauguration on TV.
Mr Obama is renowned as a brilliant orator, but even he admitted he is under pressure — from his own daughter.
Sasha, seven, asked him if he would be giving a speech like Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address — then added: “First African-American president — it better be good.”

WHO IS THE BEST(HEAD TO HEAD): RONALDO v MESSI

2009-01-19T15:00:00.002+03:00

Most football fans do not really appreciating Ronaldo`s being the world footballer of the year 2008.If you were you,who would you casted the vote?

OBAMA WITH KIDS

2009-01-19T12:19:00.002+03:00

Obama enjoying with his children Sasha and Maria

Djimon Hounsou and Kimora Lee Simmons Expecting Their First Child

2009-01-19T11:49:00.002+03:00

US Weekly claimed in an exclusive report, made public Friday, January 16, that model and fashion designer Kimora Lee Simmons is pregnant with actor boyfriend Djimon Hounsou's baby. The baby will be the first for the couple should the report prove true. Djimon and Kimora began dating in 2007. They initially sparked pregnancy rumors August last year after they were seen paying a visit into a New York obstetrician's office. Neither of them has commented on the US Weekly's report, and a representative for Kimora also refuses to comment, telling WENN, "No comment at this time." Prior to dating Djimon Hounsou, Kimora Lee Simmons was married to music mogul Russell Simmons, with whom she has two daughters; Ming Lee and Aoki Lee. Filing for divorce from Russell in 2007 after nearly 10 years of marriage, Kimora had her divorce being finalized in 2008

P Diddy hails Sinatra as idol

2009-01-19T11:45:00.001+03:00

FIRST SNOOP DOGG unveiled his unlikely love for JOHNNY CASH - and now P DIDDY has hailed FRANK SINATRA as his style icon.
The name-changing star, born SEAN COMBS, admits he models his wardrobe on the late singer.
He said: "I strive to resemble Frank Sinatra.
"He was effortlessly cool, always looking refined and maintaining complete class.
"He knew how to make a statement without being loud."
Not that silver suits, mountains of bling and diamond-encrusted iPods are subtle.
Diddy also confessed to taking longer than most women while getting ready for a night on the tiles, saying: "It takes me two hours to get ready. Worse than any woman I've ever been with.
"I take a long bath and then moisturise with oils when I'm still wet so that it all seeps into my pores."

This film is going to be B.I.G

2009-01-19T11:35:00.001+03:00

HIS dramatic life almost sounds fictitious, so it makes sense the NOTORIOUS B.I.G.'s story comes to life on the big screen.

The US rapper dabbled in drugs, violence, guns and street wars - but his talent for music always triumphed.
A New Yorker, born the slightly less glamorous Christopher George Latore Wallace, was shot in1997 by an unknown killer in a drive-by shooting.
Unknown star JAMAL WOOLARD plays the title role, while Lions for Lambs actor DEREK LUKE portrays
SEAN 'PUFFY' COMBS.
Notorious hits screens on February 13

Becks lollipops out with Armani

2009-01-19T11:23:00.002+03:00

SO this is how DAVID BECKHAM stays at the cutting edge of fashion.
With GIORGIO ARMANI’s niece ROBERTA for a pal – not forgetting the influence of his designer wife VICTORIA – it’s little wonder the footie ace is so stylish.
Though we’re not convinced the lollipop-sucking look will catch on.

Sugar rush ... Becks gives in to his lollipop craving

Sweet-toothed David kissed and embraced his fashionista friend before joining her on a wander round the Emporio Armani store in Milan.
As he perused the shop’s stock, he slyly popped his sugary treat - possibly bought for one of his three kids - into his mouth.
The sports icon – in Italy for the duration of his loan move to AC Milan – was in suitably trendy form for the evening, donning his staple tea cosy hat and showing off much of his underwear courtesy of intentionally ill-fitting jeans.

Mugabe now names interim Government

2009-01-19T10:41:00.003+03:00

Picture:Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has appointed an interim cabinet, a few days after he fired nine ministers for failing to secure parliamentary seats for his ruling Zanu PF in last year's elections.

Mr Mugabe who has taken a month long vacation amid mounting concerns over delays in the formation of a unity government with the opposition last weekend relieved nine ministers and three deputy ministers of their duties.

The state media reported on Wednesday that he had replaced them with Zanu PF Senators and MPs pending the formation of the new government now expected at the end of next month. The appointment of Zanu PF ministers on an acting capacity might be the clearest sign yet that Mr Mugabe may act on his threat to form a new government without the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations.

There are reports that a meeting between Mr Mugabe and his opposition rivals was likely in the next few days after both MDC leaders Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and Professor Arthur Mutambara insisted on it in what could be the last push to form the power sharing government.

The two rejected an invitation by the 84-year-old leader to be sworn in as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively saying the parties still needed to "iron out outstanding matters." Mr Mugabe's spokesman has said the veteran leader who traditionally spends his vacation in Asia would be in Zimbabwe most of the time working on the formation of a new government. "This is more of a retreat than actual leave," Mr George Charamba, his spokesman said. "The President is very busy working on structures of an inclusive government which must come too soon." Mr Mugabe and the two MDC leaders signed a power-sharing pact on September 15 but it has been held up over a row over cabinet posts.

Under the deal, the long time ruler would remain head of state while Mr Tsvangirai would be in charge of government business. But Mr Tsvangirai MDC says a new government cannot be formed because the ruling Zanu PF allocated itself powerful ministries and relegated the opposition to a junior partner.

Zimbabwe has been without a substantive government since March 29 after the ruling Zanu PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence. Mr Mugabe in power since 1980 agreed to share power after a disputed June 27 presidential run-off election where he ran alone was rejected by a host of African leaders as a fraud.

Dead pirate found with Sh180 million

2009-01-19T10:33:00.001+03:00

The body of a Somali pirate who drowned last week soon after receiving a huge ransom has been washed ashore with $153,000 (about Tsh180 million) still in his pockets, agencies reported on Tuesday. The pirate was among five others who drowned last Friday when their boat capsized after they received $3 million (Tsh3.6 billion) ransom for the release of mv Sirius Star, a super oil tanker seized late last year. Photographs taken by the US Navy last week showed a package at the end of a parachute floating gently down onto the deck of the ship. This package is believed to have contained the money.

The pirates released the tanker after receiving the money but their boat capsized as they headed for the mainland. Reports by the Associated Press in Mogadishu indicated that one of the bodies had been found on a beach near Harard with the money in a plastic bag in his pocket. The mv Sirius Star had been held near the Ukrainian cargo ship mv Faina, carrying 33 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks and crates of small arms headed for Mombasa.

The same day the oil tanker was released, family members of the mv Faina crew appealed for help, saying they were being kept in the dark. AP also reported that a pirate spokesman said yesterday that the 20 crew members on the mv Faina were doing well. "Once the negotiations end in mutual understanding, the ship, its crew and cargo will be released," the pirate said.

On Monday, Kenya's Foreign minister Moses Wetang'ula criticised the payment of the ransom for mv Sirius Star and insisted that Kenya would not pay for the release of mv Faina. "I wish to register our displeasure on the payment of ransom for the release of the oil tanker. Paying encourages criminal acts and we do not support such initiatives," he said. He said Kenya would never pay ransom. "It is not perishable cargo, those guys can keep those tanks and weapons as long as they wish. But we will eventually get them. That I have no doubt," he said.

Dead pirate found with Sh180 million

2009-01-19T10:33:00.000+03:00

Tarime orphans drive American doctor to tears

2009-01-19T10:22:00.000+03:00

Deep emotion after witnessing the hard life facing orphans in Tarime district made Dr Lisa Alvetro from US cry when she met some orphans in Tarime town late last week. This happened at a ceremony which was also attended by senior Government medical officers at the Gold Land Hotel. A number of orphans and invited guests also cried after witnessing Dr Lisa, who has been on the frontline to support the Tarime-based Methodist Angle House Orphanage Home Trust (MAHHOT), crying for them.
The center has over 40 orphans and provides them with human essentials, including both primary and secondary education support through US-based institutions. "I also cried after seeing an American woman cry for Tanzanian orphans? we have rich people who do not bother to help orphans," a driver with Tarime district Government hospital told reporters who attended the function. The number of orphans in Tarime district has been increasing at an alarming rate in recent years due to the HIV/Aids scourge. Last week Dr Lisa led a team of 20 dentists from Ohio State in the US to offer free dental services to hundreds of Tarime residents. They also distributed various prizes to orphans during the function one of whose attendees was Mr Ryoba Kangoye, the MAHHOT founder.

Dr Lisa told his audience: "I have been deeply touched by these orphans. There are many people with problems we have met in remote areas. I remember the case of a young boy who had been suffering for a long time. I wish we could come back again so that we can also help him.? Dr Lisa is the Co-coordinator of the Ohio State Dental Mission Project whose visit to Tarime was the third. The management of Tarime district government hospital praised Dr Lisa for her services and dedication to the poor.

"It is encouraging to note that though you are living very far, you have been touched by the plight of orphans in Tarime," Dr Placidia Rweyemanu said on behalf of the district medical officer (DMO).

ATAKIWA APANDE MAHAKAMA YA THE HAGUE

2009-01-19T10:05:00.003+03:00

Kifanano:Rais mstaafu Benjamin Mkapa

RAIS wa serikali ya awamu ya tatu, Benjamin Mkapa, ambaye amekuwa akisakamwa kwa tuhuma za matumizi mabaya ya ofisi, huku akitakiwa kuvuliwa kinga na kupandishwa kizimbani, sasa anakabiliwa na tuhuma nyingine nzito; anatakiwa afikishwe Mahakama ya The Hague baada ya Wapemba kuuawa Januari 27, 2001.

Mauaji ya Wapemba hao yalitokea mara baada ya kutangazwa kwa matokeo ya urais wa Zanzibar wakati Amaan Abeid Karume alipotangazwa mshindi na kusababisha wapinzani kuandamana kupinga ushindi huo. Serikali inasema ni watu wasiozidi 27 ambao waliuawa, lakini wapinzani wanasema ni zaidi ya 100.

Na wazee wa Pemba walioshiriki kuandaa barua ya kuuomba Umoja wa Mataifa uwasaidie kupatikana kwa serikali huru ya kisiwa hicho, ndio walioibua hoja hiyo wakisema wanakusudia kumfikisha rais wa awamu ya tatu, Benjamin Mkapa Mahakama ya The Hague kutokana na mauaji waliyoyaita ya kikatili ya Wapemba yaliyotokea Januari 27 mwaka 2001.
Akizungumza na Mwananchi jijini Dar es Salaam jana, katibu mtendaji wa wazee hao, Hamad Ali Musa, alisema tayari walishafikisha suala hilo kwenye ofisi za Umoja wa Mataifa kwani mauaji hayo yalitokea wakati viongozi hao wakiwa madarakani.

Idadi ya watu waliouawa baada ya kutangazwa kwa matokeo iliibua mjadala na katika mahojaino na Shirika la Utangazaji la Uingereza (BBC), Mkapa alionekana kupata hasira baada ya mtangazaji kumweleza kuwa idadi ya waliouawa ni zaidi ya 100.
Mkapa alisema katika kipindi hicho cha Hard Talk kuwa, anashangaa waandishi kuokota habari wakati mtoaji rasmi wa taarifa kama hizo ni serikali.

Musa pia alisema wanakusudia kumfikisha katika mahakama hiyo aliyekuwa mkuu wa Jeshi la Polisi, Omary Mahita wakidai kuwa, damu iliyomwagika bila hatia katika kipindi hicho haiwezi kufumbiwa macho na hivyo ni muhimu haki itendeke na sheria kuchukua mkondo wake.
Kiongozi huyo alisema, hivi sasa wapo katika mchakato wa mwisho wa kutafuta mawakili watakaosimamia kesi yao ipasavyo wakati itakapoanza kusikilizwa.
Katika suala la kumfikisha Waziri Seif Khatib mahakamani, Musa alisema kuwa, mapema mwishoni mwa mwezi huu mchakato huo utakuwa umekamilika, kwani mawakili wa kusimamia kesi hiyo tayari wameshapatikana.

"Ni vema viongozi wetu wakaelewa kuwa hakuna haja ya kuwafumba midomo watu wanapotafuta haki zao za msingi. Waziri Khatib alitufumba midomo kwa kutumia nguvu za dola na ndiyo maana tukawekwa ndani," alisema Musa.

Katika hatua nyingine, mjumbe wa kikundi cha wazee hao, Ally Makame alisema bado wanaendelea kuzitaka jumuiya za kimataifa kushughulikia suala la kisiwa hicho kujitenga na kuwa na dola yake kwani hatua iliyopo hivi sasa inaonyesha dhahiri kuwa watu wake wameendelea kudhalilishwa kila siku.

Alisema mapema mwezi uliopita walipeleka maombi yao ya kutaka kujitenga katika ofisi za Umoja wa Mataifa, lakini walijibiwa kuwa Pemba haina sababu za kujitenga kutokana na ukweli wa mambo kwamba, Rais Jakaya Kikwete anashughulikia mpasuko uliopo ndani ya Zanzibar.
"Jambo hili ni uongo kwani suala letu halihusiani kabisa na masuala ya siasa, katika suala la kutaka Pemba iwe na dola yake si suala la CUF, ni suala letu wananchi, hivyo ni vema viongozi wakafahamu jambo hili," alisema Makame.
Alisema baada ya kupokea majibu hayo ya awali ya barua yao kutoka UN, tayari wameshaandika barua nyingine wakieleza hisia zao kuwa, kama suala la mpasuko lisiposhughulikiwa mapema, hali itakuwa mbaya tena kwenye uchaguzi wa mwaka 2010.
"Wapemba hawatakubali kuendelea kufedheheshwa kama wakimbizi, hivyo ni vema mashirika ya UN yakaanza kujiandaa mapema kupokea wakimbizi nchini Kenya wakati wa uchaguzi," alisema Makame.

Baada ya vurugu hizo za mwaka, watu kadhaa kutoka Pemba walikimbilia Shimoni, Mombasa wakisaka hifadhi ya kisiasa.
Juni mwaka jana kikundi cha wazee 12 wa Kisiwa cha Pemba waliibuka na kuzua hoja ya kutaka kujitenga kwa kisiwa chao kwa madai kuwa, serikali ya CCM inawabagua kimaendeleo.

Steve Jobs of Apple steps down

2009-01-19T09:53:00.003+03:00

Picture: Steve Jobs

ON JANUARY 5th Steve Jobs, the revered and controversial boss of Apple, disclosed that “a hormone imbalance” had been “robbing” him of proteins all last year, which was why he has appeared so gaunt. He insisted that the cure would be “simple and straightforward” and declared defiantly that this was “all that I am going to say about this.”

But on January 14th he had to say more: “I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” He announced that he was taking medical leave until June, during which time his number two, Tim Cook, would run Apple. “I look forward to seeing all of you this summer,” Mr Jobs ended his latest letter to his firm’s employees. But there is a real possibility that Mr Jobs, who had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, will not come back.

And so the era of Steve Jobs at Apple may already have ended. Investors, customers, employees and fans have barely begun to absorb the consequences. No boss today embodies and defines his company as completely as Steve Jobs. “I don’t see an Apple, the way we would define the company, without Steve,” says Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service, a technology think-tank.

Two separate dramas will now begin playing out. One is the unfolding of Mr Jobs’s personal story. He founded the company with a friend in the 1970s. He pioneered the era of the personal computer in the 1980s. He was thrown out of the company in a boardroom coup in 1985. He spent 12 years remaking himself, then returned to lead the then-struggling firm to its greatest triumphs: the iMac, which reinvigorated its computer business; the iPod, which has transformed music; and the iPhone, which has shaken up the mobile-phone industry.
The other drama is the unfolding of Apple’s story. The closest to a successor that the company has is Mr Cook, who is chief operating officer and briefly ran Apple while Mr Jobs was having his cancer surgery. Mr Cook keeps a very low profile, as Mr Jobs prefers his staff to do. He is single and a workaholic. He has a southern drawl and is as cool as Mr Jobs runs hot. He is the master of Apple’s operational minutiae. But not a single gesture by him or Mr Jobs has ever suggested that he might become the permanent chief executive.

To take his own place on a stage this month, Mr Jobs instead chose Apple’s marketing boss, Philip Schiller. Mr Schiller put on a gamely performance, but in subtle ways the absence of Mr Jobs, a consummate showman, was felt throughout. Mr Jobs likes to tease audiences toward the end of speeches with “one more thing”; Mr Schiller, as though emphasising that he was not trying to replace Mr Jobs, turned it into “one last thing”.

It is unknown whether Apple has a pipeline of innovative new products on the scale of the iPod or iPhone. A tablet-like device to contest Amazon in electronic-book readers, or an internet-capable television set, is possible. A new line of laptops has just been announced.
But the real question for Apple is whether the person of Mr Jobs is the glue that holds the talent underneath him together. Apple’s magic is part design, part engineering, part logistics and part vision. Design is the domain of Jonathan Ive, a shy Briton; engineering is split into hardware and software; logistics is run by Mr Cook. And the vision thing belongs entirely to Mr Job. Without him, will all the other pieces, and the magic, come unglued?

COST OF BUSH ERA: $11.5 TRILLION

2009-01-19T09:43:00.001+03:00

The outgoing administration has presided over 8 years of disasters and crises with some of the biggest price tags the nation has ever seen.
George W. Bush's presidency cost the country about $11.5 trillion, if we estimate liberally.
Of course, it's debatable how much blame the president should bear.

$150 billion surplus disappears

Over the past eight years, we've suffered calamities that were bound to damage the nation deeply: two recessions, the most lethal terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil, the invasion of Iraq on dubious grounds, the near destruction of one of our most storied cities and, finally, the Wall Street meltdown.

Quiz: What cost the most?

Because the median U.S. household income is about $50,000, readers may have trouble grasping the concept of spending trillions.
For context, let's compare two cases of extraordinary spending under Bush.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington pledged $22 billion to help rebuild in lower Manhattan. At the time, that sum sounded enormous. It was more than one-fourth of the $80 billion budget that New York state had adopted a month before. Though some called for even more aid, the country at large was satisfied that this response was adequate to cope with calamity on a colossal scale.
Oh, how far we've come.
In early October of 2008, Congress appropriated $700 billion to rescue Wall Street's financial institutions. Once that was done, the sky was the limit, and the numbers became dizzying.
And the spending won't stop after Bush leaves office Jan. 20.

Debt for future generations

In hopes of "breaking the momentum" of the current recession, President-elect Barack Obama is reportedly drafting a stimulus package that would cost the government as much $850 billion. If past is precedent, it's unlikely Obama will stop there.

Talk back: Where should the future U.S. spending be cut?

The new administration is already expected to inherit a $1.2 trillion deficit from Bush. The stimulus package would add to that record-breaking number.

What should Obama do?

Picture an avalanche of cash disappearing into the Potomac.
Where has all the money gone? Here are five areas where Bush has approved massive outlays of taxpayer money.

CORPORATE FINANCE: The great dilusion

2009-01-19T09:33:00.003+03:00

Companies may be forced to follow banks’ lead and tap their shareholders

IN 2008 battered banks scurried to raise fresh capital. As the recession bites, they will have to come back for more. Jostling with them for limited funds will be a fast-growing number of cash-strapped non-financial firms. Pain is spreading fast across the corporate world: analysts estimate that fourth-quarter profits across the S&P 500 fell by 15% year-on-year, the sixth decline in a row—the worst run on record. Days after laying off 13,500 and cutting production, Alcoa, a bellwether for earnings, announced a crushing $1.2 billion loss. Even traditionally defensive industries, such as pharmaceuticals, are suffering: Pfizer plans to lay off up to 8% of its researchers.

With banks loth to lend and credit markets still in turmoil, a tsunami of defaults seems imminent, despite the fact that credit has thawed a little in recent weeks: junk-bond spreads have fallen from their dizzying peak of 22 percentage points over government debt, and firms are paying less to issue commercial paper, widely used to finance working capital. But they will still struggle to roll over much of the $518 billion of corporate bonds and more than $1 trillion in loan facilities that, according to Citigroup, must be refinanced this year—especially given increased competition from sovereign borrowers seeking to plug deficits. Worse, a growing band of investors is using a mix of short-selling and credit-default swaps (CDSs) to bet against firms with heavy refinancing exposures. As their CDS spreads widen, those companies find it ever harder to sell fresh debt.

This could leave a lot of companies having to cough up big chunks of principal on top of their regular interest payments when bonds mature, just as revenues plummet. The debt-service coverage ratios (free cashflow divided by repayment obligations) of highly geared firms are falling below the critical level of one at a pace that seems to be unprecedented, says Barrie Wilkinson of Oliver Wyman, a consultancy. Cutting interest rates to the bone does little for firms that suddenly find themselves having to repay principal.

CDS spreads imply that around 10% of American firms will be forced into default. To avoid this, those that have trouble rolling over their debt have two main options. The first is to sell assets and use the proceeds to pay down debt. But losses booked from selling at fire-sale prices could quickly wipe through thin layers of equity. The second route is to raise capital, either through a debt-for-equity swap—as GMAC, a troubled vehicle-finance and mortgage lender, has done—or a discounted offering, such as a rights issue.

Some have already taken this last route to get lenders off their backs. Britain’s Premier Foods, for instance, is planning a rights issue in exchange for banks loosening the terms of its debt covenants. Others are likely to follow. Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co, a research firm, expects American companies to swing from being net buyers of their own equity (through buybacks) to net sellers. Mr Wilkinson predicts a “great dilution” of existing shareholders in 2009. This could drive another round of selling in stockmarkets, he argues, which have hitherto focused only on falling profits. Fear over the need for further capital-raising contributed to the decline of banks’ shares.

Cash-poor firms would do well to move quickly. Banks that needed equity but dithered last year discovered to their cost that the pool of available capital was not limitless; they had to pay far more for it later, if they could get it at all. And stronger firms are drinking at the pool, too: Scottish & Southern, a British energy group, has just raised £479m ($704m), in part to bolster its ammunition for opportunistic deals.

As the problem grows, governments in America, Britain and Germany are starting to step in. But all this woe has a silver lining—at least for the investment bankers who have already been through it. The wave of corporate capital-raising will bring in underwriting fees that will help offset the slump in mergers and flotations. If they can find willing takers, that is.

ACCELERATING DOWNHILL

2009-01-19T09:20:00.002+03:00

Why China and Germany need to do more to boost demand

EVERYONE knows that the financial system took a downward dive in mid-September. The failure of Lehman Brothers turned the rich world’s credit crunch into a global calamity, as the international banking system came close to collapse and even the most basic functions of finance, such as trade credit, seized up. To stop this financial breakdown sending the world economy into a tailspin, politicians scrambled with bank-rescue packages and promises of fiscal stimulus. Unfortunately, it seems increasingly clear that they failed. Just as the financial crisis went global at the end of 2008, so large chunks of the world economy went into free-fall.
Industry is in grave trouble. Around the world factory output is plunging at its fastest pace in decades as the consequences of slumping demand have rattled along the supply chain. In the three months to November American industrial production fell at an annualised rate of 16% compared with the three months before. Over the same period Japan’s fell by 21% and Germany’s by 15%. Some emerging economies have done even worse. South Korea’s factory output fell at an annualised rate of 25% in the three months to November, about as fast as in its financial crisis a decade ago.

Deep and dark

On the basis of these figures and the gloomy state of manufacturers’ order books, economists at JPMorgan reckon that global manufacturing production is likely to have fallen at an annualised rate of almost 20% in the last three months of 2008. The car industry is seeing the most savage drop in sales in its history (see article), but the collapse in demand is widespread. From computer chips to sophisticated machine tools, the production of goods is plunging. As a result trade flows, which had grown faster than output for decades, have recently shifted into reverse. Germany’s exports are falling at their fastest pace in many years. Taiwan’s exports fell by 42% in the year to December. After years of double-digit growth, China’s exports are now falling too, though by less than those in the rest of East Asia (see article).

Manufacturing is highly cyclical, falling first and fast in a downturn. Firms are quick to scale back capital spending and consumers skip new cars rather than scrimp on food or healthcare. A rapid rundown in inventories and temporary distortions in credit markets (see article) have not helped. The collapse of trade finance made it all but impossible for many producers to shift their goods abroad. The plunge in trade flows is partly a result of tumbling commodity prices.

Stumble or slump?

Trade finance is beginning to flow. Firms cannot run down stocks for ever: eventually, they will empty their warehouses. But the damage is done: those temporary factors triggered a collapse in global demand that has now spread way beyond the Anglo-Saxon economies at the heart of the credit crisis.
Output in the euro area probably fell as fast as in Britain and America in the last three months of 2008, even as Japan’s GDP sagged still more dramatically (see article). The drop in industrial output has hammered export-dependent economies, from Germany to Taiwan, and there is little sign that domestic demand in these countries is stepping in to compensate. In some countries with big external surpluses, notably China, the opposite may be true. China’s imports have been falling faster than its exports and in recent months its trade surplus has risen.

Add these factors together and the outlook seems grim. This sharp global drop in industrial production will itself lead to more weakness, as unemployment rises around the world and demand therefore falls. And in America, too, the outlook has grown darker. Around three-quarters of output growth over the past two years came from net exports. That prop will go. And while domestic demand in surplus economies flags, the imbalances that have contributed to the current crisis will not right themselves, and will encourage protectionism. When rich-country economies were growing, China’s surplus was a political lightning-rod; how much more

dangerous will it be when unemployment is rising?

To mitigate these risks policymakers need to do more to prop up demand, especially in countries that have external surpluses. Fiscal stimulus packages that seemed sufficient two months ago may be too small, and too slow to take effect. Much of the infrastructure spending in the package that China announced in November will not kick in until later this year. This week’s decision by Germany’s government to add a second €50 billion ($66 billion) stimulus package is a step forward, though at barely more than 1% of GDP it is still far too small (see article). For the time being, the biggest and quickest fiscal boost is likely to come from America, as the Obama team seeks speedy passage of an $800 billion package of tax cuts and spending. That sort of money may put a brake on the global industrial collapse, but it will not set the world economy on course for a sustainable recovery. Others still need to do far more.