Tullow Oil said Thursday that the Likonde-1 well, onshore Tanzania, has encountered thick sands with hydrocarbon shows. The well, which is now being plugged and abandoned, is the first of a two-well program within the prospective Ruvuma delta region. The encouraging results will be followed up with detailed technical work prior to selecting the next drilling location.

Thus another Conradian journey into the Heart of Darkness commences.

Drink driving by an American who knows it would not happen back in civilization. An old white couple who have become Lifers. The kind of prisoners who have no chance of release. They are trapped, ‘That’s what happens when you stay too long. You become ‘unhinged, paranoid or just plain weird’.

Why are the inhabitants of the darkness like this? Pat Robertson said the Haitians were hit by the earthquake because of a pact they had made with the devil. This blogger, a certain Ms.  Lindsay Morgan who is a ‘communications consultant,’ quoting a New York Times columnist no less, puts out another theory. Culture. Not a lack of culture, but CULTURE.

‘Progress resistant cultural influences,’ the columnist calls it. And what are these? They sound vaguely familiar. We know we have them. We are African and Tanzanian. We recognize these things when we come across them. But what does our voyager think? Because it is the Culture that drives expats like her to become unhinged, paranoid and just plain weird in this here Heart of Darkness.

But what is ‘The Culture’? How does it manifest itself?

The lazy ignorant teller at the post office.

Bureaucrats and civil servants who don’t do their jobs at the Ministry.

Drivers who can’t keep time.

And then the zinger – ‘Corruption is part of the Culture’. Ouch.

But here’s the thing.

Are developing countries responsible for their own development? Well, not really. Not when its being paid for by someone else, like her governments. They don’t act responsible because they don’t feel responsible.

Why?

Because they are not blowing their own money.

Why?

Because they don’t need to when almost half of the budget is funded by her people! And however much of it disappears and goes unaccounted for, they keep bringing it. And now your partners in development are hooked. And everyone knows, you shouldn’t leave an addict alone in the pharmacy.

But there is no need to be too hard on oneself. Ms. Morgan blames herself for feeling arrogant and careless in those moments when her thoughts turn dark, she feels confounded by the darkness and begins to entertain ideas and theories that make you feel like a ….you know.

Which she most definitely is not! But these things just float into her headspace from time to time. And she wonders why these people are like this. And seeing as she can’t put it down to their…you know, then perhaps it’s their Culture?

But she is wrong. Because in truth she has a limited understanding of what the Culture is. She can’t be blamed for that. It’s not in any books she may have read, artworks she may have seen, theatre productions and films she may have watched. But it is there.

What she has experienced is not ‘Tanzanian Culture’. Tanzanian Culture has nothing to do with the intransigence, corruption, torpor, stupidity, laziness, arrogance and mediocrity. What she has experienced is commonly known in Kiswahili as Uzembe, Ujinga and Un’yoko.

She imagines that only her and her people are aware of the encroaching darkness that threatens to engulf this country, this continent that seems reluctant to better itself. But she is not alone. All those other faces standing in the queue behind her at the post office, the bored idle faces of the people sitting in the reception area at the Ministry, the thousands of commuters who stand waiting for the unscheduled, over crowded, dangerous dala dala to arrive at the stop next to her taxi rank, all those people are as pissed off and confounded as she is at what they are witnessing. The encroaching darkness.

And if she asked them,  they would tell her. They wouldn’t bite. They would nod in agreement with everything she thinks and says about her experiences of Tanzania.

Except the bit about Culture. Which sounds a little….you know.

(H/T Swahili Street)

Well, sort of.

On Sunday March 21st, the Nigerian newspaper NEXT featured the above cartoon by Tanzania’s very own Gado. It is quite exciting to see the glimmers of continental integration that this cartoon syndication shows – a Tanzanian cartoonist, working for a Kenyan media house being published in a Nigerian newspaper.

A less remarkable but equally satisfying report was published in two Nigerian newspapers on March 24, 2010. The article is about the growth of the equipment leasing business in Nigeria since 1996. Serengeti Advisers did the research that informed the article and witnessed the House Commerce Committee hearing on a Leasing Bill that quoted, approvingly, from the article.

(Credit: GADO. Source: Daily Nation – Nairobi, Kenya. Provider: CartoonArts International / The New York Times Syndicate)

One wonders whether other media houses will let us know who makes up their board of directors. Will IPP Media, home of The Guardian and Nipashe? Will Mwananchi Communications, owners of The Citizen and Mwananchi? How about Media Solutions, publishers of This Day and Kulikoni?

All these organisations love to harp on about how we need more openness from our government institutions. Well, may be they need to practice a little more transparency themselves.

And then along comes Alfonso. He is a military guy and right now with Yemen across the Indian ocean training Africans how to conceal bombs in their underwear, the entire coastline being patrolled by Somali pirates, some would say the US military has a right to be in the neighbourhood, patrolling the beat, swinging its truncheon. (Others have even suggested that his familiarity with handling high level security was a significant factor in his appointment with the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam still in the minds of American national security policy makers.)

Alfonso is a soldier playing the role of a diplomat. He has certainly been vocal and has weighed in on a host of issues, counterfeit drugs, women’s rights, corruption, but his most notable comments were on the peace process in Zanzibar which were  reprinted in various media outlets and publications in the country. But are we listening? Should we be? Tanzania continues to struggle with the fight against corruption. Zanzibar manages to go for 3 months with no electricity (and by the way not a single protest is heard about it from its peoples) yet the $770 million committed by Bush as part of the Millenium Challenge Corporation is safe. Alfonso has confirmed as much. So, no need for undue urgency then, is there?

President Kikwete has appointed Judge Mark Bomani, again, to be chairman of the (take a deep breath) Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives Multistakeholder Working Group.  Enough said.

So who are we to believe in the row between Sir Bob Geldolf and the BBC? The foul mouthed Irish campaigner has over the years had to endure the public casting aspersions on his efforts largely because of his associations with the less popular but more musically talented Bono. But Geldof is different, more committed and one would imagine, more likely to get into a physical altercation to defend his honour and word. The BBC on the other hand, especially the Africa service, appears to be driven by pushing as many bizarre and negative stories as they possibly can on a daily basis. If you don’t believe me, go to the BBC website and read the top stories. We here at Serengeti hope Geldof kicks the crap out of them. The ‘stud of Baghdad’, aka Rageh Omar, defends his former employers here. Mr. Geldof responds to his response is here.

• Blogging is more democratic- Journalists now have the alternative of working without having to endure the bureaucracy, whims and sometime incompetence of editors. Here is one example to demonstrate this point. Last year one of the biggest media stories in Dar es Salaam was the resignation of Sakina Datoo from her role as the Editorial Director of The Guardian Newspapers Ltd. However, the story went largely unreported by the mainstream press. But this news did not escape the attention of bloggers. And it is the freedom afforded by the internet that allowed that story to reach readers.

• ‘Blogs are not held to the same standards of integrity as traditional print media’- Actually, the opposite may be true. In the blogosphere, readers and other bloggers act as fact-checkers and watchdogs. And their reactions to sloppy journalism can be immediate and eviscerating. While newspapers have to wait for letters to the editors to arrive or print a correction the next day (something that rarely happens in Tanzania, if at all), a blogger has to contend with the swift response of his commenters and if a post is half-baked, his/her readers will let him know. So too will other bloggers. Therefore, what determines quality in this situation is not a number of hits, but rather the authority that comes from being respected by your readers and other bloggers who link to your site. 

• ‘Very few Tanzanians have internet access so it’s pointless to focus our journalism there’- Research suggests that as of June of last year, 520,000 people in this country were at some level connected to the internet. And this number is growing everyday. If a blogger can manage to attract just 10% of that number to regularly read his/her blog then that would mean a daily circulation figure of 52,000, a number that dwarfes any newspapers’ out there. So the potential is simply immense.

• ‘Most Tanzanians are too poor to afford computers’- This argument is rather ridicilous. It’s like saying Tanzanians shouldn’t read books because they are expensive. No, people can go to libraries to get the books they can’t afford to buy. Similarly, those who are unable to own computers can visit internet cafés and enjoy the benefits of this wonderful new world of online journalism.

• ‘Printed material has some longevity’- Really? What about all those trees that had to die so that a newspaper could be published? But anyway, today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s ‘makaratasi ya vitumbua.’ Meanwhile, a blog post once published into the ether is eternally available online for any Google search to discover. Furthermore, something written in Tanzania can be read everywhere, from the urban streets of New York to the rural villages of China, by a simple click of a button. How many Tanzanian newspapers can boast such a claim?

These are just some of the arguments in favor of online journalism and blogging in particular. For more on the subject do read this brilliant essay by the British-American blogger Andrew Sullivan where most of the above points are deputised from. Also this piece by the writer Matthew Klam profiling the pioneers of political blogging in the US is worth a read. This debate is always going to continue here. We would love to hear your thoughts on it too. What do you think?