( Clean Energy Wire ) – Kenya signaled its interest in becoming the first African nation in an international ‘climate club’ of countries agreeing on tighter climate action rules that was proposed by German chancellor Olaf Scholz. During a visit in early May by Scholz to the east African country, Kenya’s president William Ruto said his government is ready to consider participating in the ‘climate club’.

According to Germany’s economy and climate action ministry, Kenya would be a fitting addition to the group of countries, as it is among those most active in building up a sustainable energy system. “Kenya already sources 90 percent of its energy from renewables. By 2030, the share is supposed to be 100 percent. Kenya’s experiences in building up renewable power and the green economy are highly valuable for other countries as well,” the ministry said in a statement.

Developing and industrialised countries need to intensify cooperation to address the climate crisis, the ministry added.

In Kenya, part of a three-day trip to several African nations, chancellor Scholz also visited a geothermal power plant, a technology that Kenya is using extensively thanks to its availability in the volcanic African Rift Valley region.

Germany should take the African country as an inspiration to intensify its own geothermal power activities, which according to Scholz “is possible at more locations in Germany than many believe today,” public broadcaster ARD reported. The chancellor said Germany ought to reconsider the technology’s role in its own energy transition.

“With modern exploration technology, we can tell much better whether drilling will be successful,” Scholz argued.

Via Clean Energy Wire

Published under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .

The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean shore where the culture developed nearly two millennia ago.

Its ornate stone and coral towns hugged 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of the coast, and its merchants played a linchpin role in the lucrative trade between Africa and lands across the ocean: Arabia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and China.

By the turn of the second millennium, Swahili people embraced Islam, and some of their grand mosques still stand at the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Lamu in Kenya and Kilwa in Tanzania.

Self-governance ended following Portuguese colonization in the 1500s, with control later shifting to the Omanis (1730-1964), Germans in Tanganyika (1884-1918) and British in Kenya and Uganda (1884-1963). Following independence, coastal peoples were absorbed into the modern nation-states of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

So who were the Swahili people, and where did their ancestors originally come from?

Ironically, the story of Swahili origins has been molded almost entirely by non-Swahili people, a challenge shared with many other marginalized and colonized peoples who are the modern descendants of cultures of the past with extraordinary achievements.

Working with a team of 42 colleagues, including 17 African scholars and multiple members of the Swahili community, we’ve now published the first ancient DNA sequences from peoples of the Swahili civilization. Our results do not provide simple validation for the narratives previously advanced in archaeological, historical or political circles. Instead, they contradict and complicate all of them.

Colonization affected how the story was told

Western archaeologists in the mid-20th century emphasized the connections of the medieval Swahili to Persia and Arabia, sometimes suggesting that their impressive achievements could not have been attained by Africans.

Post-colonial scholars, including one of us (Kusimba), pushed back against that view. Earlier researchers had inflated the importance of non-African influences by focusing on imported objects at Swahili sites. They minimized the vast majority of locally made materials and what they revealed about African industry and innovation.

But viewing Swahili heritage as primarily African or non-African is too simplistic; In fact, both perspectives are byproducts of colonialist biases.

The truth is that colonization of the East African coast did not end with the departure of the British in the middle of the 20th century. Many colonial institutions were inherited and perpetuated by Africans. As modern nation-states formed, with governments controlled by inland peoples, Swahili people continued to be undermined politically and economically, in some cases as much as they had been under foreign rule.

Decades of archaeological research in consultation with local people aimed to address the marginalization of communities of Swahili descent. Our team consulted oral traditions and used ethnoarchaeology and systematic surveys, along with targeted excavations of residential, industrial and cemetery locations. Working with local scholars and elders, we unearthed materials such as pottery, metal and beads; food, house and industrial remains; and imported objects such as porcelain, glass, glass beads and more. Together they revealed the complexity of Swahili everyday life and the peoples’ cosmopolitan Indian Ocean heritage.

Ancient DNA analysis was always one of the most exciting prospects. It offered the hope of using scientific methods to obtain answers to the question of how medieval people are related to earlier groups and to people today, providing a counterweight to narratives imposed from outside. Until a few years ago, this kind of analysis was a dream. But because of a technological revolution in 2010, the number of ancient humans with published genome-scale data has risen from nothing to more than 10,000 today.

Surprises in the ancient DNA

We worked with local communities to determine the best practices for treating human remains in line with traditional Muslim religious sensitivities. Cemetery excavations, sampling and reburial of human remains were carried out in one season, rather than dragging on indefinitely.

Our team generated data from more than 80 people, mostly elite individuals buried in the rich centers of the stone towns. We will need to wait for future work to understand whether their genetic inheritance differed from people without their high status.

Contradicting what we had expected, the ancestry of the people we analyzed was not largely African or Asian. Instead, these backgrounds were intertwined, each contributing about half of the DNA of the people we analyzed.

We found that Asian ancestry in the medieval individuals came largely from Persia (modern-day Iran), and that Asians and African ancestors began mixing at least 1,000 years ago. This picture is almost a perfect match to the Kilwa Chronicle, the oldest narrative told by the Swahili people themselves, and one almost all earlier scholars had dismissed as a kind of fairy tale.

Another surprise was that, mixed in with the Persians, Indians were a significant proportion of the earliest migrants. Patterns in the DNA also suggest that, after the transition to Omani control in the 18th century, Asian immigrants became increasingly Arabian. Later, there was intermarriage with people whose DNA was similar to others in Africa. As a result, some modern people who identify as Swahili have inherited relatively little DNA from medieval peoples like those we analyzed, while others have more.

One of the most revealing patterns our genetic analysis identified was that the overwhelming majority of male-line ancestors came from Asia, while female-line ancestors came from Africa. This finding must reflect a history of Persian males traveling to the coast and having children with local women.

One of us (Reich) initially hypothesized that these patterns might reflect Asian men forcibly marrying African women because similar genetic signatures in other populations are known to reflect such violent histories. But this theory does not account for what is known about the culture, and there is a more likely explanation.

Traditional Swahili society is similar to many other East African Bantu cultures in being substantially matriarchal – it places much economic and social power in the hands of women. In traditional Swahili societies even today, ownership of stone houses often passes down the female line. And there is a long recorded history of female rulers, beginning with Mwana Mkisi, ruler of Mombasa, as recorded by the Portuguese as early as the 1500s, down to Sabani binti Ngumi, ruler of Mikindani in Tanzania as late as 1886.

Our best guess is that Persian men allied with and married into elite families and adopted local customs to enable them to be more successful traders. The fact that their children passed down the language of their mothers, and that encounters with traditionally patriarchal Persians and Arabians and conversion to Islam did not change the coast’s African matriarchal traditions, confirms that this was not a simple history of African women being exploited. African women retained critical aspects of their culture and passed it down for many generations.

How do these results gleaned from ancient DNA restore heritage for the Swahili? Objective knowledge about the past has great potential to help marginalized peoples. By making it possible to challenge and overturn narratives imposed from the outside for political or economic ends, scientific research provides a meaningful and underappreciated tool for righting colonial wrongs.

Chapurukha Kusimba, Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida and David Reich, Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Kenya is set to become the sixth largest producer of geothermal power in the world after it broke ground for the construction of the Olkaria 5 power plant. The new plant will add an additional 150 mw of power to the grid as well to ensure Kenya becomes less dependent on hydropower.”

KTN: “Kenya to become the sixth largest producer of geothermal power”

Wikipedia:

“Geothermal power is very cost-effective in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, East Africa. Kenya was the first African country to build geothermal energy sources. The Kenya Electricity Generating Company, which is 74% state-owned, has built three plants to exploit the Olkaria geothermal resource . . . Kenya currently has 636 MW of installed geothermal capacity . . . By 2030 Kenya aims to have 5,530 MW of geothermal power or 26% of total capacity.[1] This will make it Kenya’s largest source of electricity clean energy by 2030.”

“Al-Shabaab is a terrorist group that operates in Somalia and Kenya. Lately they have been attacking buses full of civilians, particularly non-Muslims. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down.

“Their M.O. is a tried and terrifying one: Launch a raid, single out Christians, and then spray them with bullets.

But when Al-Shabaab militants ambushed a bus Monday, things didn’t go according to plan.

A group of Kenyan Muslims shielded the Christian passengers and told the attackers they were prepared to die together.

The Muslim passengers, who were mostly women, told the Islamic militants to kill them all or leave them alone, witnesses said.”

The Young Turks: ” Muslims Shield Christians From Al-Shabaab”

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2015 (IPS) – U.S. President Barack Obama spoke in Nairobi at the end of a two-day visit Saturday, focusing on Kenya’s economy and the fight against terrorism, but also briefly touching on gay rights and discrimination.

‘“When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode, and bad things happen,” Obama said at a joint press conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“You can’t encourage change by staying silent.” — Charles Radcliffe”

Presidents Barack Obama and Uhuru Kenyatta wave to delegates at the Opening Plenary at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, in Nairobi, Kenya on July 25, 2015. Credit: U.S. Embassy Nairobi

But LGBTI Kenyans are not in agreement about whether Obama’s presence will help or hurt their struggle, according to the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Jessica Stern.

“The difference of views is a sign of the strength and diversity of the Kenyan LGBTI movement, but there’s no question that this is a potential minefield, and ultimately, those who stand to get hurt most are regular Kenyans,” she told IPS.

Some have argued that the U.S. president speaking out on LGBTQ human rights in Kenya was counterproductive in the past, and has made the people of Kenya, where same-sex relations are punishable by up to 14 years in prison, more homophobic and unsupportive of the LGBTQ community.

Anti-gay organisations like the Kenya Christian Professionals Forum claim that they gained more support due to President Obama’s comments in 2013, along with some American policies, likely because the protection of LGBTQ communities is widely viewed as an American value being imposed on African society.

After Obama’s comments Saturday, President Kenyatta stated that in Kenya, it is “very difficult to impose” gay rights because the culture is different from the United States, and the societies do not accept it – which makes it a “non-issue” to the government of Kenya.

“There’s been a deliberate attempt to portray homosexuality as a Western import, which it isn’t,” the U.N. adviser on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity, Charles Radcliffe, told IPS. “The only Western imports in this context are the homophobic laws used to punish and silence gay people,” these laws mostly originating from 19th century British colonialism.

By speaking on LGBTQ human rights abuses, Obama is “imposing human values, not Western ones,” says Radcliffe. “It’s possible to respect tradition, while at the same time insisting that everyone — gay people included — deserve to be protected from prejudice, violence, and unfair punishment and discrimination.”

Radcliffe said he believes Obama and other leaders should speak out, as it will “open people’s eyes to the existence of gay Kenyans and the legitimacy of their claim to respect and recognition.”

Radcliffe advises prominent individuals to take their lead from members of the local LGBT community – who are best placed to advise on what interventions are likely to help, and which ones risk making things more difficult.

“LGBT activists are too often isolated in their own countries; they need the support of fellow human rights activists, women’s rights activists and others campaigning for social justice. Public opinion tends to change when individual members of the public get to know LGBT individuals and realise they are people too. The government should hasten that process, not obstruct it. ”

Radcliffe notes that “you can’t encourage change by staying silent.”

According to Stern, “LGBTI Kenyans have been fighting their own heroic struggle for years, but the extremists have seized upon this opportunity to undermine their credibility as Kenyans. All Kenyans, gay and straight, lose when there’s this kind of media spin doctoring.”

Stern urged leaders like Obama and the media not to undermine an opportunity to address a spectrum of human rights abuses Kenyans are living with. Instead, she says there should be a focus on concerns which are being left by the wayside, such as the lack of police accountability, abuse by government security forces, abuse of Somali and Muslim communities, and a crackdown on NGOs, among many others.

“If the mechanisms for government accountability are weak, human rights of all stripes will suffer,” says Stern. “Kenyan activists of all stripes, including those working on LGBTI rights, are protesting corruption in government. They’ve continued calling for accountability for violence in 2007/2008 after elections.

“They’re defending people who’ve been arbitrarily arrested and charged, such as two men in Kwale County being tried under the ‘unnatural offenses law’. They’ve documented hundreds of extrajudicial killings by police in recent years, and they’ve called for police guilty of violence and theft to be disciplined and prosecuted.”

According to Human Rights Watch, Kenya continues to be plagued by corruption at all levels of government with limited accountability.

For example, although both presidents Kenyatta and Ruto campaigned for elected office on pledges to continue their cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has charged both presidents with crimes against humanity in the past, their campaigns later painted the ICC as a tool of Western imperialism, and encouraged other African leaders to undermine the ICC.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Licensed from Inter Press Service
—
Related video added by Juan Cole:

KTN News Kenya: “US President Barack Obama cautions on gay rights in Kenya”

President Obama’s visit to Kenya is of course personal, though he has been there before both as a civilian and as a senator. But it does also have a geopolitical and economic dimension.

Kenya is a country of roughly 46 million people, about the same as Spain. But its nominal gross domestic product is only $70 billion a year (Spain’s is 1.4 trillion). But its economy has been growing impressively, with 6% growth expected this year despite a downturn in coastal tourism because of terrorist incidents and a drought that has hurt agriculture.

It mainly produces agricultural products such as vegetables, fruits, tea and coffee, as well as some minerals. The US and Kenya only do a little over $1 billion in trade with one another annually, with the US selling a bit more than it imports. (It mainly sells machinery to Kenya, including everything from aircraft to medical equipment).

Kenya’s strategic position derives in part from its abutting the Horn of Africa to the north, off the coast of which is one of the world’s most important trade routes, linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and thence the Mediterranean and Europe through the Suez Canal.

On land, Kenya is a player in Somalia, which has been wracked by decades of internal instability and is still under threat by the al-Shabab terrorist group, despite successful presidential elections and steps back toward normality. In 2012-2013 Kenya partnered with the Somali government in operations against al-Shabab. Al-Shabab has hit Kenya twice with big attacks as part of its struggle to come back to power in Somalia, a prospect Kenya’s opposition makes unlikely. One of these left 147 dead at Garissa University College in early April of this year. The al-Shabab attacks led CNN unfairly to call Kenya a “hotbed of terrorism.” (This is not true and it is perfectly safe to visit).

The entire region stretching north from Kenya is mixed Christian and Muslim (Kenya is 11 percent Muslim) and a site of religious tension. Of course, this is an arena of the US “war on terrorism,” and al-Qaeda hit US embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Africa is also increasingly an arena of competition between the United States and China. China invested $5 billion in infrastructure projects in Kenya, and has twice the volume of trade with Africa as the United States does.

Kenya is moving to provide the other 80% of its population with electricity that does not now have it, and likely Chinese solar panels will be important to this endeavor. The opportunity costs of American business’s antipathy to solar technology mean that China is able to get the bids to provide solar panels and even panel factories for local production. China is building a 50 megawatt solar plant in Kenya.

Kenya has a mixed record on elections and human rights. On the one hand, its parliamentary elections are generally thought aboveboard. Political violence in 2007 and suspicions of stirring it up for political gain have resulted in cases against the current president and vice president by the International Criminal Court, though the case against President Uhuru Kenyatta did not go forward.

Obama is the first president to visit Kenya and Ethiopia, attesting how neglected this part of the world has been in the United States. For the geopolitical reasons mentioned above, that neglect is unwise. Africa’s population will quadruple in this century at a time when countries like Germany and Japan are thought likely to shrink in population; Africa will be the world.

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Related video:

Obama’s all smiles as he catches up with long-lost family on official visit to Kenya

“Terror On Campus Interview with MP for Bala Mbala, Abdikadir Aden & Deputy Secretary General of the Kenya Red Cross, James Kisia discuss the Garissa Attack with Smriti Vidyarthi.”

NTV Kenya: “Interview Bala Mbala MP & Kenya Red Cross Deputy Sec.Gen on the Garissa attack”

Nairobi, April 2014 – Kenya’s transition to a green economy could produce major economic benefits – equivalent to an estimated USD 45 billion by 2030 – as well as greater food security, a cleaner environment and higher productivity of natural resources, according to a new study launched Tuesday by the Government of Kenya and the UN Environment Programme.

Under a green economy scenario, with an investment of two percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), national GDP would exceed a business-as-usual scenario by about 12 per cent, or KES 3.6 trillion (equivalent to USD 45 billion), by 2030. Per capita national income would nearly double from KES 39,897 (USD 498.70) to KES 69,702 (USD 871.30). Under a business-as-usual investment scenario and a two per cent investment, GDP would only increase to KES 53,146 (USD 664.30) over the same period of time.

As green economy measures mitigate the impact of climate change, the report finds the country’s aggregated Green House Gas Emissions measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent would be 9 per cent lower by 2030 under a green economy scenario with an investment of two per cent of GDP compared to a business-as-usual scenario and a two per cent investment.

In the agriculture sector, the report finds that green economy investments would increase the average agriculture yield by about 15 per cent from its current baseline. Agriculture accounts for approximately one quarter of Kenya’s national GDP annually and up to 65 per cent of its exports.

Kenya is already implementing policies and initiatives to move towards a green economy, and this approach is recognized in the country’s long-term development blueprint and in the government’s Second Medium Term Plan (2013-2017).

The report finds that further green energy investments could lead to about a two per cent reduction in energy consumption and an expanded supply of electricity from renewable sources compared to business-as-usual. For example, under a green economy scenario, renewable energy would double geothermal capacity by 2030, compared to business-as-usual, and other renewable energy resources would also grow during this period, contributing to 20 per cent of the total power supply.

To accelerate these efforts, the report urges the government to consider adopting targeted clean energy solutions for households and institutions, such as energy efficient lighting and appliances; and, making additional investments in renewable energy, such as geothermal, solar, wind and biofuel energy.

While Kenya’s manufacturing sector has continued to contribute about 10 per cent to the country’s GDP for over many years, it is still one of the largest in Sub-Sahara Africa and considered a key pillar for the country’s future growth. However, the report finds that to green this sector, more public policies are needed to encourage and incentivize investment in resource-efficient and clean production processes, recycling and eco-labelling, among other transformative strategies.

The country’s transport sector is also critical to its green economy goals. This sector is expected to triple between 2010 and 2030, and vehicles on the road have already doubled during the last decade. To better regulate this sector and reduce emission of harmful gaseous pollutants, the report suggests that the government needs to create incentives to lower the age of its passenger and freight fleet, as well as promote more mass transit and non-motorized transport.

UNEP supported a consortium of Kenyan institutions that formed the “Inter-Ministerial Committee on green economy” to lead the green economy in the country. The Committee comprised members from various government ministries and the private sector organizations.

The report, which examines the economy-wide impacts of green investments under different scenarios, reveals that positive returns could be realized within seven to ten years.

It confirms that an overall green economy, resources efficiency and recycling policy framework is fundamental to underpin the success of these sector initiatives. Several areas where further government action is needed are identified, from improving regulatory compliance and developing national standards, resources efficiency and resource productivity targets ; to securing financial resources and introducing fiscal instruments like tax rebates on environment friendly technologies and innovations

Quotes:

Cabinet Secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, Judi Wakhungu, said:
“Green Economy driven by resource efficiency is the basis for sustainable development and poverty eradication. A green economy revolution is already taking place in Kenya, where the harvesting of geothermal energy from the East African Rift is just one of the many renewable energy projects underway across the country. By learning to more accurately value our own natural resources, Kenya will be able to better harness these strategies as it moves towards a holistic, inclusive green economy in the future.”

UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said:
“The next wave of investment and innovation in Kenya will be driven by the need for new energy sources, wealth generation and job creation. Kenya is already demonstrating leadership by pioneering green economy approaches in the energy, urban and natural resources sectors as a vehicle to deliver its national development goals. This report confirms that the country can achieve even greater prosperity and well-being by scaling up its green investments in key sectors, while also factoring the conservation and efficient use of its natural capital into future decisions related to infrastructure, investment in the development of the energy, transport, agriculture and industry sectors.”

Notes to editors:

UNEP is grateful for the financial support provided by the European Commission and the Government of the Netherlands. Stakeholder consultations organized for communities in the coastal region were funded by WWF.
To download the report, visit: this site.

For more information, please contact:

Mulei Muia, Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, Tel. +254 722 516610, Email: muleimuia09@gmail.com

Shereen Zorba, UNEP Head of News and Media, Tel. +254 788 526000, Email: Shereen.Zorba@unep.org

Waiganjo Njoroge, UNEP Public Information Officer, Tel. +254 723 857 270, Email: waiganjo.njoroge@unep.org

Mirrored from UNEP

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

NTV Kenya: “Women And Power: Renewable energy entrepreneur”

“As the Kenyan economy continues to expand and the need for energy grows, geothermal, wind and other forms of renewable energy might come in very hand in terms of dealing with the energy demand we currently face. And it is for this exact reason that 30 year old Charlene Maina, an electronics and software engineer came back to the country to try support availing this source of energy to the Kenyan people.

The former Technical Product Manager at Research in Motion, makers of Blackberry, who was based in Canada now runs Plexus Plexus Energy Limited.
NTV’s Lizz Ntonjira spoke to her.”