A riot against poverty – that is such a cool idea

So, I went looking for good news about Africa from ‘foreign’ media and all I came up with was killings, riots, floods and a president who holds cabinet meetings once in, well, many years.
From across the border in Kenya, BBC was reporting, heavy rains were raining havoc on Nairobi on Thursday. Residents were not impressed.

Apparently, the rains were forecast a while back, but no one who could do anything did anything to avoid flooding that left many stranded. On Twitter, complaints abound as to why Nairobi cannot even harvest all that water for the dry season when there are shortages. Good question.
In Kampala, we are used to floods with the first drop from up the open sky. And within a week the roads fall apart. Add Accra, and several others, to the two East African cities.

Meanwhile the national governments and city authorities never tire building, or aspiring to build, skyscrapers and flyovers. I like fancy interchanges, but please do also fix things that really, really matter to the vast majority of your residents. Besides, those show-off projects look terrible alongside flooded slums and cholera-treatment tents.
In Morocco, some poor people got tired of being poor and decided to do something about it: riot against (government-enabled) poverty.

According to Reuters, residents of Jerada in the remote northeast have been demanding government help to tackle poverty. With no meaningful government response, residents on Wednesday burnt police cars, wounding several officers. I suspect the big shots in government are now wiser about poverty not being a joking subject.
Morocco had no monopoly to riots in the week. In Guinea, two people were shot dead on Wednesday during riots in the capital Conakry, Reuters reported.

The matter was not poverty exactly, but pretty close to it. The opposition was simply demanding the publication of results from local elections held on February 4 that allies of president Alpha Conde say they won. For that demand, lives were lost. When floods are not killing us, there are plenty of bullets to do the job.

My story of the week, though, dropped from Cameroon, again, via Reuters. It started like this: “Cameroon’s octogenarian president Paul Biya, who has ruled the central African country with zero tolerance for dissent for a third of a century, will hold his first cabinet meeting since 2015 on Thursday, his office announced.”
Not much is expected out of the closed doors of Unity Palace. Over to Reuters to regale us: “If past cabinet meetings — often two or three years apart — are anything to go by, there could be just be one man talking. One in 2011 lasted 10 minutes in which Biya entered, read out a speech, then left.

“At the last council in October 2015, shortly after a sweeping reshuffle, local press reported that Biya had ordered ministers to ‘accelerate preparations for the important sports celebrations’ that Cameroon was to host, namely the women’s and men’s African Cup of Nations soccer matches scheduled, respectively, for 2016 and 2019.”
Now, this man, Paul Biya, why can’t he just go away? Elections are coming in October. Dude plans on running — and winning by nearly 100 per cent. He is 85 years old, by the way.

On cabinet meetings, if ministers convene weekly and produce no clear and rapid socio-economic transformation for decades, like it is in a country I live in, what is the point? They would rather not meet. Gramps Biya might be on to something. Except that the non-meetings have still not produced much of value for Cameroon.

The English-speaking part of the country is restive, and lousy oil and cocoa prices have cut down the country’s growth.
Oh, and it is not entirely accurate that Mr Biya doesn’t meet his ministers. According to Reuters, he “often meets [them] at the airport between private trips abroad with his wife Chantal, famed locally for her luxurious dresses and bouffant hairdo. Their favourite destination is Switzerland.”
This is when I ask, why do coups dodge some people?