NOT the law-bomb lobbing Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

(Crossposted to the expats_in_africa community)
I've discovered that going through old Lonely Planet travel guides can be fun. Yes, I'm a total nerd. Today, the second edition of Lonely Planet's Africa guide ("Africa On The Cheap" by Geoff Crowther) from 1980 arrived. Some interesting points.. if you're interested in Africa. If you're not, you can just skip this post.

Many of the maps are hand-drawn. Several countries (Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, one or two others) have only two pages of detail, as they can't find anyone who's been there... though in the third edition (which finally gets the name "Africa On A Shoestring") Crowther talks about getting a tourist visa to visit Equatorial Guinea, and discovering that it's Tourist Visa #001.

All of the country chapters are fairly brief on detail. Occasionally you'll see editorial comments that would never make it into a modern LP book- in the section on getting visas for other countries in The Gambia, Crowther notes that "the Secretary at the Sierra Leone High Commission is a real bolshie bastard".

Crowther says Lagos, Nigeria is a hellhole, but that "if you are crazy, do not miss this place". Roads in Nigeria are "very good and most are sealed" and "journeys are relatively short". How much has changed.. There are details about taking trains around the country (try that now!), and even information about sleeper cars and first/second class seating.

In the third edition, things have changed a bit- Nigeria has hit its 1980s economic bust and has finished its mass expulsion of Ghanaians and other foreigners. All of its land borders are sealed, and the only way in or out of the country is by air. And that's not a very happy way to enter the country either- Crowther warns that you absolutely do not want to be the last person off of an arriving international flight, otherwise you're going to have to hand out bribes right and left.

I still haven't found the first edition for sale yet, but I'm looking....

If you're going to fire some of your most senior military leaders, make sure that the rest of the military's leadership is still in your corner. Early this morning, Mauritania's president didn't do that, and suffered the predictable result. So far, the AU/EU/USA have all condemned the coup, as have the presidents of several other countries in the region (Nigeria's president Yar'Adua said that they wouldn't recognize any non-elected leadership in Mauritania). The military is saying that there will be elections in a few months. I haven't seen any reports of how Mauritanians are reacting to the coup, but I wonder how this will turn out.

Nobody can design a get out the vote effort like Robert Mugabe. Unfortunately this time it looks like he forgot to send out his enthusiastic armed teams of thugs^H^H^H^H^Hparty workers to threaten^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hencourage Zimbabweans to vote for him and the ZANU-PF.

But it's not too early to get a head start on drumming up support for the next election.

There were rumors floating around last week that Mugabe was in private talks with the MDC to quietly leave office. Considering all the heat he's under, and his age, that would certainly seem to be a reasonable option. I was never completely convinced that he'd do such a thing, though. He's way too much of a firebrand to just quietly walk away. And now, with his supporters running amok again while the electoral commission continues to delay releasing any presidential vote results, any chances that he might be using this election as an opportunity to retire gracefully are fading very fast.

Also- late last week, there were reports that ZANU-PF "war veterans" were occupying white farms again. Are there actually very many white farmers left in Zimbabwe?

From the US Consulate in Lagos relating to kidnappings of foreign oil workers in Rivers State:

( Read more... )

This just shows how daring the kidnappers are getting. They're not just taking people from remote pumping stations- they're now coming into major cities like Port Harcourt- see the line about the Hotel Presidential? That's a major hotel right smack dab in town.

So far, kidnappers are releasing their hostages unharmed. I'm afraid that might change as things escalate..

AIT is a private Nigerian television and radio station (the radio station is actually called Ray Power). Here in the US, you can get AIT on Globecast World Satellite TV or on Comcast cable in some cities. However, Ray Power has been off the air on Globecast for the last few months, and AIT went dark about a month ago. I just spoke with a friend at their US office, and he tells me that they're in the process of moving from Globecast to Dish Networks. They're also in negotiations to provide pay-per-view Nollywood movies on Dish as well. The catch is that Dish is expecting their Nollywood movies to draw the same audience that Hollywood movies do. That might be a tough order.. I don't know if Dish is planning on adding any other English African channels to their service- they already have a French African bouquet, so it might make sense to add an English one too.

In the meantime, Globecast has added NTA2 as a free television channel. Maybe they'll add NTA radio as well.

On a continent with very little infrastructure, cell phones are the only way most people will ever get access to a telephone. The rollout of GSM phones in Nigeria five years ago was heralded as bringing on a new age of connectivity. Cell phones wouldn't just provide telephone service, they'd offer reliable access to the Internet as well. At the time, I thought this was more hype than reality. Many Nigerian newspapers wrote unrealistic articles about how "wireless broadband access" that was hundreds of times faster than dialup modems was just around the corner and would be brought to you by your mobile phone.

Evidence of the importance of cellphones for Internet access is slowly appearing. The BBC reports that 61% of people who read their website via mobile phone come from Nigeria. An additional 19% come from South Africa.

from the IIF calendar:

Thursday, August 17
7:30-9:00 PM
IIF Discussion: "The Presidential Election in the Democratic Republic of Congo"; this event is free and open to the public; Villa International library (2nd Floor), 1749 Clifton Road (0.4 miles from Briarcliff); parking available across the street.


I'll be there. Anyone else interested?

A while ago, I asked if anyone was interested in a group trip overseas. Since then, I've dropped the ball.

I'd like to make a suggestion: Festival au Desert in Essakane, Mali in early/mid January 2007. This is probably a trip for hardcore Africaphiles. Anyone else interested?

Brangelina have had their baby. In the process they took on an incredible amount of authority in Namibia. Are you a reporter coming into the country to report on their kid? Sorry, you're not allowed over the border. Want to fly an airplane near their hospital or their resort? Sorry, the Namibian air force is enforcing a no-fly zone there.

Aside from publicity, what in the world does Namibia get from this? And what is the publicity really worth to the country? Sure, a certain percentage of the world now knows that there are really nice resorts in Namibia. And decent hospitals. But they also know that the government of Namibia is so pitiful and desperate that they'll do whatever a couple of famous celebrities tell them to do in exchange for a fleeting moment in the world media. Of course, Angelina does a lot of work publicizing and drumming up support for African provlems. Does the Namibian government think that she's going help shower aid on them in exchange for them bending over backwards to her demands? If that's the case, I have a real problem with it.

A&L Daily links to an interesting piece on this: Brad, Angelina and the rise of 'celebrity colonialism': What gives two Hollywood actors the right to shut down an African nation so that they can have a special experience?