There is nothing that media in general loves more than a catchy, snappy title to an event. Thus, their calling the dissolution of Côte d'Ivoire's government, "The Valentine's Crisis" looked to be the defining term for the event, at least in the local media. Naturally, this was flawed from the start given that the announcement was made on February 12th and due to that being a Friday, there was assuredly going to be no resolution until at least Monday, the 15th. Still, they ever-so-badly wanted the Valentine's moniker to stick.
It may yet well stay, but it will depend on a great many things; namely a resolution to the current crisis at some time in the foreseeable future, which seems rather unlikely. Things are heating up and protests are growing around the country. I've found that the media blows these a bit out of proportion, but still, the fact is that to date, eight people have been killed in three different cities due to the police using live ammunition on the crowds when the go-to tear gas wouldn't disperse them as it did where I am in Abengourou last week.
The more alarming aspect in all of this is that the government's approach to the situation could be transposed on just about any time over the last 50 years. Violent repression of assembled crowds. Making state television avoid the issues. Suppression of outside voices. Repression of opposition newspapers. This is old stuff and it belies the fact that you're dealing with an old regime that has yet to really wake up to how Ivorians get their information. In doing what they're doing, they are only making people more angry and are not controlling the message. To do that, they would have to shut down the internet, television, and mobile networks. In doing that, they would make a great many enemies with those who matter most: foreign companies with deep pockets.
One of the prime sources of information through all of this has been Facebook. I didn't learn about the France24 blockage through their site, but actually through an update of a Ivorian friend on the site. Twitter is useful, but only insofar as the amount of users on it and this has been greatly stunted by the fact that if you are trying to SMS the system with a +225 number, you aren't allowed. I made a request to change this, but as you can see, I don't have much sway on that company.
Blogs are in a different state. I really wish that Ivoire Blog would pull together some kind of coverage section in regards to these events, but it has not yet come to pass. They have more Ivorian bloggers than anywhere else, so it would seem that they would be a good, direct source of information. Otherwise, I have seen few reactions to the state of affairs. I'm not sure if this isn't because there is a lack of political commentators in blogs (which are in much greater supply in other countries, African or not) or just because people don't really want to comment on it just yet due to their being no absolutes in the process and it being an ongoing issue with no solution in sight.
Whatever the case, this has been a sudden change of events in what has been a very long, ongoing process. To dub it a Valentine's anything is ridiculous. Like other crises that arise, there is no simplification of the process and it very well could end up taking the rest of the year for this to sort out.
Friday had been off to a weird start. We had gotten up at 5:30 (which I believe is illegal in some parts of the world) to get to down Abidjan before traffic got [more] bad. Once there and throughout the day, there were countless armed police escorts taking official cars with tinted windows and fluttering Ivorian flags across the city at a breakneck pace. But, overall, things were normal, traffic was full, and kids were selling everything under the sun through car windows. I would have loved to twit about what I was seeing that day, but Twitter has decided for some asinine reason to lock out international numbers completely and irrevocably, which I don't get as it cost them nothing; the international text cost is on us. Bring this back Twitter!
For most official channels, the day had been off to a normal start. I heard that morning briefings were light for friends at the sleepy ONUCI mission. No one had any idea as to how the day would end, least of all us, as we strived to coordinate meeting up with friends for dinner. But, when having a chat with the BBC correspondent in Abidjan at his office (more on that later) strange messages started popping up, which he then began tweeting.
In a country where official elections have been stalled for the last five years, rumors are quick to spread and at first, it seemed that this was going to be yet another about the president dissolving the government or a coup d'etat happening that evening. Turns out, it was all correct. Well the coup d'etat part only technically correct.
At 20:00, a special announcement from the president was broadcast in which has said that he was indeed dissolving the current government as well as the electoral commission (which has been accused of perpetrating a great deal of registration fraud lately.) The actual details in all of this were sparse and were left that way, only to see the news then pick up with their "regularly scheduled program" after the announcement.
Unfortunately, where there should have been 1,000+ bloggers writing about and commenting on this, there weren't. While there are a number of dedicated bloggers in Côte d'Ivoire (such as Theophile, Nadine, Edith, and others) blogging has not yet come about in a large enough degree in Côte d'Ivoire to create a citizen journalism counterpoint to what the larger media broadcasts. Traditional media felt no obligation to take the charge and have any kind of commentary on the announcement, which I might add was pre-recorded four hours prior to the actual broadcast, giving them plenty of time to prepare nothing.
Then on another point, SMS and mobile failed. Endlessly, I hear about how mobile phones are the driving force of information and data delivery in Africa. Do any of the people espousing this actually use SMS or the mobile internet in Africa on a regular basis? Every network I've used has always been overloaded and spotty at best. Sure, it's better than nothing, but as to it being something you can rely on in an emergency? You'd better have a backup plan to this backup plan, because the minute Gbagbo hit the airwaves all the mobile networks were too clogged to be of any use. The data connections were actually the savior in this as they remained able to handle traffic and had there been any violence breaking out, the news of which would have been carried via IP, not SMS.
Oddly enough, the town where I'm staying in Abengourou saw one of the only reported outbreaks of anything on Monday. A protest was staged that was officially against high fuel prices (and yes, they're high here) but was in theory much more against Gbagbo's announcement. According to the rather dry account in Reuters, you'd probably imagine it to be much bigger than what it was. I say this because we accidentally ended up driving through it in the morning, arriving back from Abidjan. There were a few people about and some trash fires lit in the middle of the road, but that was it. It was a small protest and it ended very quickly.
All of this news isn't as bad as it may seem given that the unity government is still functioning and in theory working towards elections that obviously aren't going to happen this year. People are a bit tired of the stalling, as they should be and we'll see if there is more of a citizen reaction to all of this on Wednesday. Stay tuned for larger news from Côte d'Ivoire and I encourage folks to add to this article and help to increase information dissemination of these events.
In talking with a number of the UN folks here in Abengourou (who in turn have talked to other folks/officials in the area and beyond) a larger picture of what is happening with d'Off d'10 emerges.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some rather large problems with the Azito power station in Abidjan. This actually wasn't news as the station has been under repair for some time now. The repairs took awhile to get going, not because of any issues at a local level, but because this station is owned by a French company who appeared to be a bit lax in getting around to making the repairs. They are indeed underway now and if all goes well, the station should be back up to full potential by mid-March. This is an optimistic estimate, albeit one tinged with a degree of sensibility as even if this station is back up to full potential, there will still be cuts, but only in the neighborhood of four hours a day or so. Personally, I'm hoping that however they end up being, there is at least power through the night as sleeping fanless is funless.
But this power station wasn't the only electrical issue in all of this and the power cuts should have started some time back. It just so happened that there was an event you might have heard of called the African Cup of Nations which finished last week, crowning Egypt as the champions. Once over, the cuts happened. Coincidence? Not at all. For those in the US, it is probably difficult to understand that much as Eddie Izzard proclaimed, "Cake or Death!" it is "Football or Death!" for the rest of the world when it comes to watching the game. If Côte d'Ivoire blacked out during those matches, there would have been riots. People can drink warm beer a lot happier than watching no football, so given this disposition, the authorities realized that more power needed to appear as it wasn't coming from Azito. They turned to their minority power production that exists in the form of hydroelectricity. The dams were opened fuller than they should have been to run the turbines higher and generate more power. While this worked, it has severely reduced the banked supply of energy which is why once Azito comes back online, there still won't be enough power. All the cost of a Football Now, Sweat Later platform in government. So Populist...
Eventually, the rains will come to the far North of the country and the dams will be refilled to produce all the power that is needed. Unfortunately, this happens in May. Until then, it is what it is and the soft, purring sound of diesel generators shall be heard lulling many an Ivorian to sleep.
As a footnote very much worth mentioning, the elections that were supposed to happen for the last five years, but were truly and like, so totally going to happen last November, probably won't even happen in 2010 now. Some estimates even put them at March of 2011. The reason for this being that the president of the Election Commission was found fraudulently adding 429,000 people to the rolls that didn't exist. Naturally, it makes sense that this fellow was a member of the opposition, but this doesn't do too much for the cause of the opposition as he is now going to jail and large chunks if not all of the electoral process need to be restarted, delaying this election; which the process of having is much like distilling molasses in the middle of January, in Canada, by a couple of moose, who are holidaying in Cuba, watching the Cup of Nations, with full air conditioning through the night.
Not really much of a surprise there, but apparently Equatorial Guinea's Teodor Obiang Nguema wants to do better than the 97% "win" he had in the last election. His perfectionism is a bit out of control. Those who don't suffer from attempting to do better are the BBC as they had their correspondent in Ghana chiming in about this election in Equatorial Guinea. Not only are these in two different countries in two different regions of Africa, but I'm curious if Caspar Leighton even speaks Spanish or just assumed that they speak English in Guinea after phoning in commentary he probably gleaned from Wikipedia.
Windows 7 - 10 African Languages
Rebecca talks about Microsoft's plans to have their latest operating system available in multiple local African languages. Pretty cool overall, but we'll have to pass judgment in awhile on this as it's not slated to happen until the year after next.
Programming Language Popularity
Jon breaks down what seem to be the most popular programming languages in Africa, according to some Google Insights stats. Thankfully he qualifies at the very beginning that these are just a starting place and not absolutely definitive. Good to state as Google stats for Africa are sketchy at best. It's really hard to tell who all those queries are and things could be skewed a great degree one way or another given that a lot of IPs for African users show up as somewhere in Europe due to where the VSAT connections touch down to terra firma.
