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INSIDE AFRICA
President Bush Visits Africa
Aired February 23, 2008 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ISHA SESAY, HOST: Hello, I'm Isha Sesay, in for Femi Oke. Welcome to INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly window to the continent. On the program this week: The U.S. President Bush takes in the warmth of Africa during a five- nation visit. We'll find out why Mr. Bush is so popular around the continent compared to other parts of the world.
Also ahead, documenting Africa. A filmmaker shows us some scenes from her unfinished documentary in order to show the world what Kenya stands to lose if its political crisis drags on.
And FilmAid International gives some young refugees the chance to explore important social issues from behind the camera.
We begin with U.S. President Bush, who has just wrapped up a six-day, five- country tour of Africa, and may wish he could have stayed on a while longer. He received warm welcomes just about everywhere he went -- in Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia. White House correspondent Ed Henry traveled with Mr. Bush, and gave us his reflections in this reporter's notebook.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As a White House correspondent, these pictures of President Bush in Africa are images I don't usually see traveling with him around the globe. It's rare to see people declaring they like this American president, a man who is deeply unpopular in large parts of the world, and typically faces big protests.
Also unusual, the president enjoying himself on the road. But on this continent, people are grateful for his efforts to save the lives of literally millions of Africans with his battles against HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Mr. Bush is a stay-at-home kind of guy, so when he travels, he tends to speed through cultural events. But this time, he was engaged, especially when he visited the memorial center in Kigali, documenting the horrific genocide of 1994 that left about a million Rwandans slaughtered.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It can help but shake your emotions to the very foundation.
HENRY: Trying to blunt criticism the U.S. has not done enough to stop genocide right now in Sudan, the president came with a pledge to spend $100 million to beef up U.N. peacekeeping in Darfur. And he came bearing gifts, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid, including more nets to protect kids from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, as well as a promise of even more money for his global AIDS program, urging the U.S. Congress to double it to $30 billion.
BUSH: People say why would you want to come to Africa at this point in your presidency? Because I'm on a mission of mercy is why.
HENRY: To push back against claims the program could be more effective if it did not rely in part on abstinence, this conservative leader used a word he rarely if ever uses in America -- condoms.
BUSH: PEPFAR is working. It is a balanced program. It's an ABC program - - abstinence, be faithful, and condoms. It's a program that's been proven effective.
HENRY: A remarkable journey for Mr. Bush. As a candidate for president eight years ago, he was deeply skeptical of U.S. aid and involvement overseas.
BUSH: We can't be all things to all people in the world.
HENRY: Now, he has incentive to make the case the Iraq war alone should not define his legacy. While Mr. Bush refuses to use the L-word at home, insisting he's not focused on his place in history, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete dropped the L-word for him.
JAKAYA KIKWETE, TANZANIAN PRESIDENT: Different people may have different views about you and your administration and your legacy. But we in Tanzania, if we are to speak for ourselves and for Africa, we know for sure that you, Mr. President, and your administration have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa.
HENRY: The big question now is -- will the next U.S. president bang the drum for Africa? Mr. Bush said he would advise his successor to stay actively engaged, and treat leaders here as partners. With a little help, he said, people can solve their own problems.
Ed Henry, CNN, Accra, Ghana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: Up next, documenting Africa. A filmmaker tries to show to Kenya and the world the human cost of the country's political crisis.
Also ahead, young refugees go behind the camera to explore social issues they face every day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: Welcome back to INSIDE AFRICA. We turn now to Kenya, where diplomats continue to push President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to settle their differences. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Kenya to lend her support to the efforts of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The unrest that followed the country's disputed presidential election has left about 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
When the violence broke out, filmmaker Carol Pineau was in the middle of editing a documentary about a group of young Kenyans competing for a national entrepreneurial prize. Although the documentary is far from complete, Carol wanted to share their stories with us now, in order to show the world and Kenya what is at stake.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROL PINEAU, FILMMAKER: The Kenyan Youth Ministry was holding a business plan competition in Kenya, and 5,000 Kenyans had applied for this. And from that, 300 Kenyans were chosen to submit a business plan. From those, 100 were chosen to go to this compound near Nairobi, where they would all for a week get pitch training, and then pitch in front of a jury. So it was sort of an "Apprentice" meets "Big Brother" kind of story, of all of them together, having a great time, learning about business. Just the vitality of these Kenyan youths.
SESAY: The film features six individual characters, six finalists. Tell me about them, and what struck you about these men and women of Africa?
PINEAU: I wish I could have made a film about all 100. But these six people just had such character. You know, the woman who ended up winning the competition ...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My name is Jacqueline Machaka (ph).
PINEAU: If you forgive me for giving away the ending -- this is not the ending; the story is really how they built their businesses.
The woman who won is a woman who noticed the influence of China in Africa, and started a language school and translation services of Chinese in Kenya. It's a fantastic business idea. And it's doing -- has done very well. She came to the competition on Sunday. On Monday, she started feeling a little bit sick. Tuesday, had her appendix out. And Thursday came back, left the hospital that morning, and came back to give the winning pitch.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you had your appendix out yesterday?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you're here today?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (inaudible).
PINEAU: This is just such unbelievable determination. It's a great story.
Another one, there is a man, Oscar, who is just brimming with confidence, sort of over-confidence and brashness, you know. Who will win? Oscar will win! And he's just fabulous. He wants to start -- he has an IT business already...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'm practicing again and again and again and again.
Helping our clients reach their target market (inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, you're talking too fast.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too fast.
PINEAU: He wants to start a travel business online, and he ends up not one of the winners. He had been a regional winner; he didn't win in the final competition. But he tells me that he wants to go back and tell his parents. We go back with him to the Kibera slums of Nairobi, and he goes to his mother's little kiosk selling shoes. And she's hugging, kissing him, saying, you know, I'm so proud of you for having been in the 100. That's enough of an accomplishment.
Well, a couple of days after the election, his mother's shop was burned to the ground. These are just incredible stories that people need to know, and that's why we're putting them out now.
SESAY: And particularly in the case of Oscar, it really does highlight, really does underscore what people have lost, what -- what is at stake for the people of Kenya following that post-election violence.
PINEAU: Absolutely. You know, to me, these are the faces of hope that are about to be lost. The longer the conflict goes on, the more complex it becomes, the harder it is for people to get back to starting their lives. And that's really why I'm releasing these clips now.
The woman with the translation services, all international conferences have been cancelled. She's lost most of her clients for the next couple of months. Another woman who's doing travel services -- 90 percent of tourism is gone in Kenya now. A woman who wanted to do a youth hostel for all the university -- for the university students in Kisumu. She can't even go outside of her house to go and look for a building now. It's just not safe enough, and all the universities have been shut down. The man who wanted to do a dairy co-op; he says the farmers aren't trusting enough to sell milk to anybody right now. And he can't drive to Nairobi to go and get the equipment or the necessary licenses. He can't start his business.
The other one, which is such a fantastic business, a man, Paul, he designed a small vial for doing stool samples. He's a medical technician. This is a product that could be used -- it could be patented -- it could be used throughout China, throughout India, throughout Africa. It has huge upscale potential. He's not able to get to Nairobi to see anybody. He wasn't -- his entire distribution network was disrupted by this.
These are businesses that really need to be thriving. We need these businesses thriving; they need them to be thriving. And we really need Kenya to get back on track, and we need to help these people to be able to continue until it gets back on track.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: Carol Pineau is putting her money where her mouth is. She's already used Oscar's IT services, and she's also created a Web site where others can find out how to help these young people. Just go to Kenyastories.com.
Coming up on INSIDE AFRICA, young refugees living in Kenya explore social issues through the camera lens.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Making business news in Africa this week. Kenya's political crisis is taking a severe toll on the country's flight ship airline. Kenya Airways has suspended flights between Nairobi and Paris due to a sharp drop in bookings. The suspension will also disrupt travel to neighboring countries because Kenya serves as the main transit hub for East Africa. Tourism officials say arrivals to Kenya dropped by 90 percent last month, due to post-election violence that broke out in December.
In South Africa, state-owned energy company is getting some help from the government to deal with the country's energy emergency. The government plans to lend Escom about $7.7 billion over the next five years to expand capacity. South Africa has been plagued by rolling blackouts for weeks, and outages are expected to severely impact economic growth this year. President Thabo Mbeki has apologized for the energy crisis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: You're watching INSIDE AFRICA. Welcome back.
A non-governmental organization called FilmAid has created a program for young African refugees to tell stories with special relevance to their communities. It's called PVP, which stands for Participatory Video Program, and it provides them with filmmaking skills and equipment. Femi Oke spoke to FilmAid International's Caroline Avakian about how PVP and its accompanying film festival are working in Kenya.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROLINE AVAKIAN, FILMAID INTERNATIONAL: The PVP program -- what we do is we hire facilitators, and the PVP will supervise that (inaudible) FilmAid International team. And what we do is we put an opening out to any refugee that really wants to participate.
We go into three-week workshops with these facilitators and the refugees, in which we really teach them the process of participatory video, which is a really wonderful process that engages the communities that they're in to identify issues that are relevant to their lives in the refugee camps, such as HIV/AIDS, repatriation for many who are returning to their countries, conflict resolution, human rights, sexual and gender-based violence. So they're learning about the issues that are affecting their communities.
After that, they learn really editing skills, anything from scriptwriting to acting, to directing, to producing. They're learning great technical skills, because they have to edit them using special software. And then they disseminate those films into outdoor FilmAid evening screenings for the whole community to watch and to be entertained, and also to be educated, which is a really big portion of what the PVP does and what FilmAid achieves every day.
SESAY: Some of the issues are quite controversial. There's one film called "Choice Matters," where a schoolgirl is attempted to be given away by her father to an elderly friend. And the schoolgirl actually says, and I just thought this is going to create chaos when this is shown in the camp. She says, "I have no attention of getting married to her father."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not ready to marry a man who is the age of my grandfather. I have no intention of marrying him until I finish my studies.
AVAKIAN: Well, it's interesting, because it's certainly, you know, what we aim to do is to try to not cause conflict, but just to raise questions. And we do that in a medium that is very powerful, and that opens a lot of topics to discussion. Because at the same time, as effective as film is, you're watching something, so it almost becomes less personal and it engages people more to discuss what the issues are at hand.
But it really allows them to come up with their own script and storylines and plots. So what you're seeing is really a cross-section of what's really happening in the refugee camp, and of their very daily experiences.
So by no means do we participate in that aspect. We guide them along in terms of creating a decent plotline, in terms of plot points and things that should happen in a story to tell an effective story, perhaps, but it certainly -- it's certainly them who are coming up with these issues and designing the plot lines that they want to, and we're just supporting them in that process.
The audiences love it. They come out in droves. They really support the films. They clap when -- when the girl gets her way, when she doesn't have to marry a man she doesn't want to marry because she wants to pursue her education. They all rally and they get excited.
So we figured this year, why not do it again and do it in a more fuller way, which is what we wanted to do and achieve this year. And that all came from requests from the refugee youth who wanted to see their films being put in a festival format.
SESAY: You're giving these youngsters real filmmaking skills. Are any of them saying that I want to try to be a filmmaker, professionally?
AVAKIAN: Yes. Yes. They are, oftentimes -- and we've know this. Some of the PVP youth who have repatriated or resettled are now working at their new stations or -- as documentary makers, documenting what's going on. For instance, one of them is documenting the issues in Sudan and the crisis there in south Sudan, still, and up in Darfur. So, I'm happy to report that a lot of them want to go back and not only be actors, but really be agents of social change using the power of film.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: That was Caroline Avakian with FilmAid International.
After the break, a South Africa software developer knocks down a few language barriers. We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: Welcome back to INSIDE AFRICA. The United Nations marked International Mother Tongue Day on Thursday. And nowhere does it have more meaning than in South Africa, where appreciation for the native languages is actually built into the constitution. English dominates, but the country recognizes 11 official languages.
Now, a computer programmer has created an easy way to translate from one South African language to another. Femi Oke shows us how it works.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Get any group of South Africans around the dinner table, and you'll be impressed by how many languages they speak.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Translation -- just in case you don't speak northern and southern Sotho, Chiabanda (ph) and Afrikaans is "I love you."
This eloquent group of linguists are part of a language revolution introducing their mother tongues to the world of computers. The man who brought them together is Dwayne Bailey, the founder of Translate.org. It's a charity that makes multilingual software and the first South African language keyboard.
DWAYNE BAILEY, FOUNDER, TRANSLATE.ORG: These are characters that only occur in Venda (ph), and before we did our keyboard work, translators actually couldn't type these characters on the keyboard. So what they would do is they would type that sentence, all those characters, then print it out, and add them by hand. And that's kind of why we started doing this to say, well, computers are just tools.
OKE: The idea behind Translate.Org is that it's easier to teach a computer to speak a new language than a person to learn English. There is now Translate.Org computer software for all of South Africa's 11 official languages.
At the University of South Africa, Kholisa Podile teaches isiXhosa. Now let my try that pronunciation one more time.
KHOLISA PODILE, ISIXSOSA LECTURER: Yes. That's it.
OKE: I did it?
PODILE: Xhosa.
OKE: Xhosa.
PODILE: Good. IsiXhosa.
OKE: IsiXhosa.
PODILE: Fine!
OKE: Yes?
PODILE: But that is just one click (inaudible).
OKE: Kholisa obviously has patience. She turned 120,000 technical words into isiXhosa for Translate.Org.
Take a phrase like "compile P.O. files," for instance. This is how Kholisa worked through the translation.
PODILE: So I've gone back, ze (ph), which is a prefix of -- which comes from the noun efile (ph). It's in plural. Dual (ph) form, efile (ph)., It's (inaudible). That prefix shows possession.
OKE: It's hard!
In this painstaking way, 11 languages have been translated for search engines, spreadsheets, spell checkers, e-mail programs, word processors, and are continually being updated.
Accountant Hettie Dreyer uses the software so she could work in Afrikaans, but it took a little while getting out the habit of working in English.
HETTIE DREYER, ACCOUNTANT: I was so used to have all the -- the whole menu in English. And when I installed the Afrikaans menu, the Afrikaans programs and see the Afrikaans menu on it, I was quite struck by it. And I thought, oh, what does this word actually mean, like the word netzruk (ph)? And I thought, netzruk, netzruk, what is that? And that's tools.
OKE: The software Hettie is using is free, and it's designed to be passed around and copied.
Other African countries are now looking to Translate.Org for inspiration, but the charity's founder, Dwayne Bailey, is still looking for a little more validation.
BAILEY: I'll be happy when my president uses software in his mother tongue. For me, this is a demonstration that this is important.
OKE: Femi Oke, CNN, Pretoria, South Africa.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: Femi will be back next week for a special episode of INSIDE AFRICA. We'll devote the whole show to the explosion of mobile phone use around the continent.
Until then, take care.
END
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