The Distribution Forum is our unique event to bring together African and UK-based filmmakers from the diaspora with leading UK-based film distributors. It is an open workshop, free to the public where practical advice on different methods of distributing films (mainstream, arthouse, film festival, online and self-distribution) will be discussed, with advice offered from experts in the field.

Speakers include

- Moses Babatope – Special Projects Manager, Odeon Cinemas: UK theatrical releases for Nollywood movies
- Nadia Denton – Author of Black British Filmmaker’s Guide to Success (2011); former director of BFM festival
- Ailsa Ferrier - Head of Acquisitions, Artificial Eye
- Afolabi Kuti – Acquisitions Manager, The Salt Company
- Rungano Nyoni – Zambian/British filmmaker, Director of The Festival Office
- Jezz Vernon – Head of Distribution, Metrodome Distribution
- Dominique Young - Senior Producer, Al Jazeera

Film aficionados, please be sure to check out Film Africa 2011, taking place 3rd – 13th November at various London cinemas and co-organised by SOAS Senior Lecturer Lindiwe Dovey.

Film Africa boasts:

10 days of more than fifty of the best African fiction and documentary films from across the continent.

Lively Q&As and panel discussions featuring leading African filmmakers, and a dynamic programme of cultural events.

Highlights include:

• A special focus on African women filmmakers
• Twenty filmmakers and actors in attendance
• The Distribution Forum and The Silver Baobab Award for Best Short African Film
• Film Africa LIVE! with performances from some of London’s most exciting musicians and DJs

For more information visit http://www.filmafrica.org.uk/

Click here to view the embedded video.

President Yoweri Museveni rap with Lyrics – Do you want another rap Official video

Ugandan President Museveni’s rap song on You Tube is doing the rounds in Uganda, bringing him much needed positive publicity. But what is this kind of social media viral cum political communication event doing to Uganda’s democratic process?

Does it help an African president identify with young voters? Or is it airbrushing Museveni’s increasingly despotic tendencies away from the public spotlight?

'RaceCourse Station' Kumasi, Tamale Branch

Trucking the dream.

Hello all, i thought I’d bore you with some tails of the road and why trucks are cool.

The theoretical blurb, come waffle;

Recently I’ve been doing some work in Ghana, a tricky situation after life at SOAS as anyone whose tried to grasp the length of time needed to operate according to the practical application of Hobart’s method. I think the rigour he expected probably initially produces such a sense of claustrophobia when faced with the need to affect your own reincarnation as the object of study before successfully regressing to the state of your previous life as an anthropologist. Then having a group of illiterate children act out the thesis in a cave. Exaggerated perhaps, and I would say vastly profitable. Once the rigour of academia is a little dimmer in the minds eye, you are left with a sense of the danger of simply being in conversation with someone.

I wouldn’t like to slight the development department because I know they’re a bang on bunch but certainly they seemed (only seemed to me I swear!) that there was a less rigorous approach to the interrogation of knowing. Still being as that’s what I fancied doing I thought that the best notion would be just mucking around a little bit with the way information is held and moved. This seemed to be more concerned with connectivity rather than actually having to decide stuff about people and thus hopefully less intrusive although I’d happily accept its hardly a safe option and Hobart’s dismantling of a mobile phone based chap in our first methods talk over the inherent consumerism attached to it still brings on the sweats. Still the pick-up rate was I think higher than that of China in the last few years so in some respects, bugger it, horse has bolted.

So, trucks. The area that I’ve been working in has, as in my last post (Comrade Chief), been in the area of communication between groups involved around the agricultural economy. Whereas chieftaincy was an exploration of those forms of control, social motivation and a raft of everything that comes along with life, the trucks was much more concerned with information exchange, the actions carried out and the logic of where trucks go.

The brief;

The Boss and the Vice; happy to run the biggest game in town

There are a group of people in Accra called ‘esoko’, they have a Market Information System (MIS) and they’ve had it up and running for around four years. It works over mobiles in both 2G and 3G and provides price data for just about every market in Ghana. It also provides the ability for people to upload offers to buy and sell. Most of the data that comes onto the sites (as they involve mobile to PC link-up) are provided by Ministry Of Food and Agriculture (MOFA). They have people who go around the market every week to try and find out what costs what. At Techiman, the largest food market in Ghana, this seemingly innocent activity has lead to mob’s burning down offices, concerned about too much transparency. But in most other cases things are less antagonistic.
Esoko had in the beginning hoped that people would use the service to trade over. This may have seriously reduced the cost of trading and provided greater access allowing the richer south to more direct trade with the agricultural North without such a cut going to the various middle men and women that move goods across the country.
One of the success stories of the trading scheme was a groundnut (peanut) seller from Accra that exported large quantities overseas and made use of the system to buy direct from sellers in the North allowing him to make a lot more money. Although it also allowed the farmers to ask for a better rate they were finding that small scale traders were not using the trading platform. A classic example of this would be illustrated with the farmer holding 25 bags of corn speaking with the trader in the south about releasing the goods. Who releases first and under what assurances? With no weights and measures to provide insurance and little possibility of assuring the quality of the goods neither was willing to risk the relatively small capital they held on a system to which there was only the word of a stranger in terms of guarantee.

The hope;

When we in the UK purchase goods over the internet across a site such as ebay, user ratings give us a sense of the probability of the other actually posting the goods. This is where we have to make a decision concerning the risk our goods will not be posted. What we don’t really consider as risk is that once posted they may still not arrive. Both paypal and the postal service are largely trusted as being honest in-so-far-as if they prove not to be we have recourse to systems of law and state to seek redress.

In Ghana numerous systems of control exist that provide structure and certainty in the case of state run systems and those that exist in social relations. In the delivery business there are three major unions that operate most of the trucks in Ghana, these are the Ghana Private Road Transporters Union (GPRTU) and the Ghana National Cargo Transporters Association (GNCTA). There is also the Ghana Haulage Transport Drivers Association (GHTDA) that deals exclusively with the articulated lorries. The GPRTU is by the largest organisation, the GNCTA representing a breakaway faction that left in outrage to comments from the chairman that he did not deal with cargo trucks, following criticism from the government over malpractice. They do however retain a good relationship with some union members sharing office space.
The hope then was to use these organisations to produce the level of certitude users might require to begin to use the trading platform.

The truckers;

When I begun the project for me the trading platform was the big excitement, the team at esoko were however less positive on that front. They’d survived a great big car crash of a project that had tried to roll out a MIS over 15 ECOWAS states; MISTOWA. They were more interested in doing something simpler like a ‘load-finder’ application for the drivers. Obviously I turned aside from such a poverty of dreams, I at the very least wanted a stock and flow application with the possibility of bandit alerts and goods checking capacities.

A study;

The esoko people agreed that they’d give me half of what I needed to survive now, and half later, if I made it back to collect, they realised I was enthusiastic and would do it anyway. I’d pegged out a rolling anthropological model that sought to be influenced by the flows of goods and thus follow the natural ebbs and flows around the country. I was hoping to take in the long cross country trips in the articulators, the overnight groaning shamble of a cargo truck and the shorter mad dashes from the regional markets to the local districts for more produce. I’d asked them for four months of immersive trucking with breaks at the major market places to explore differences in the traders and their relationship to the unions. They gave me a month and a half and said not too be so academic.

The union stations are found all over the country, there are probably close to a thousand or more although there are 10 major regional stations and the majority of the stations will be very small affairs as each village that has some sort market place and is serviced by a tro-tro (mini bus), Benz or taxi will have some form of shelter, a representative that collects a fee from the driver and provides tickets for travel.

What was of particular interest to me was the amount of integration that existed between the traders and the station reps. Traders that visit the markets are always at the behest of these reps when it comes to the successful transportation of goods. Traders that are unable to find transportation for perishable goods will risk loosing a full load if they are waylaid for long. Stories of waiting sometimes a fortnight at the farm gate with progressively damaged goods makes the ability to quantify profit difficult, this goes on to effect credit worthiness and financial planning.
Station representatives in busy stations might have to organise the loading of 60 trucks in a day while a busy maize traders association in Techiman can count 212 traders under them with each employing as many as 10 porters all belonging to their own union.

What you are left with then are layers upon layers of relation and formalised control that if plugged into a centralised store of dynamic information offers the chance for a plethora of differing applications. In all there are around 2 million members of the transporters unions. In terms of the numbers working in and around agriculture there are thought to be over half the population working in the agricultural sector (10 million+).

A preliminary conclusion;

There are very few station bosses that are calling for ways in that they might make the journeys they make more efficient through having data concerning the movement of trucks. They have the information on paper, and they have it in their head. The stationmaster if he gets into trouble has a heap of people they’ll call to find out whether there are trucks at another truck stop, or whether anyone has heard of any attacks. They were consistently demonstrated to be well-respected and capable individuals that were always deeply rooted in the relationships of the market. They are however also human beings that are generally unable to know what is unknowable to them, there is no particular reason that a stationmaster will phone ahead to let another station know of a trucks arrival, information travels in many cases at the speed of the truck. A stationmaster if they are approached for a load will be from that point seeking to find a truck for a load that is from the moment of being ready and without vehicle, wasting resources or heightening the chances of the products spoiling.

The price of the transportation is high, a sack of rice will cost perhaps a third again once the transportation has been paid. The cost of transport is perhaps half for the fuel and the other half for bribes and risk such as failing to find a load to return with.
Unions take a 10% cut from the driver’s fee and this is obviously a barrier to their reduction as 10% of less, is less. They are however sitting on the edge of a free market and all the excitement that provides. Trucking companies are moving into Ghana and in certain key industries like the Coco they have the business. Wherever they are able to talk to a centralised authority they are able to take the market. They have no problems competing on cost, it is only the dispersed and strongly traditional market system that resists their advances by the sheer complexity of its operation.

For a operation like this there needs to be a decentralized network style tool that operates according to the micro decisions made through-out its maw, building a site that allows that data to interact and ultimately provide clear sign-posts to where there are shortages and thus higher premiums, or gluts and so accessible quantities of reasonably priced foodstuffs.
Ultimately the promises of reaching an internal market that routinely imports 70% of the rice that it eats in relation to growing 98% of its annual consumption 20 years ago are tempting. Food in West Africa continues to be some of the most expensive on the continent due to the associated coats. The push to export high cost items to niche markets is an expensive waste of air freight, the icing but not the cake, internal markets will ultimately make the difference to wages and food security.

My friend and translator Ifrahim searches for beer at the market

So…

Well, its all a bit patchy but I had fun, this was an off-the-top-of-my-head production of a much larger piece of work that I would stress is ongoing. Currently there is not a system in-place, we pegged a very simple set-up at around 100k and probably a couple of years work.

At the moment in Ghana there is a pretty widespread availability for knock-off smart phones, this is allowing people for whom a laptop is unlikely access to the internet anywhere, with GPS and directional bits and stuff on its way in. I’m quite sure that the re-spatialisation of the digital arena will be in many ways more exciting in Ghana where current systems are often paper based, the influx of technologies that are both geographically relevant as well as digital could be really interesting. So any ideas…

If you want more info or to chat give me a contact …. mr.tom.n@gmail.com

This map has made the rounds on Twitter over the last week or so. Really does make you think.

And according to Boing Boing, it’s accurate too.

Credit: Information is Beautiful credits Kai Kruse, so I’ll do that too.

The ideas I’m putting down in this post are not quite complete and I would like to hear your views on them. Please comment.

Recently I’ve been having quite a few conversations about social media where people are expressing quite a high level of scepticism. A common view is that we should be careful when promoting social media because not everyone has access to the necessary technology to use it.

For example, someone recently said that the internet is a bad thing because it creates inequality. Another view I often hear is that social media is only relevant in a Western context.

In this I sense a high level of technological determinism that I think that we need to question as much as  the Western,  social media ‘hyper-optimism’ of, for example, Clay Shirky.

The digital divides are clearly real, however. As Pippa Norris says:

A global divide has become strikingly evident in the chasm between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent in the access of rich and poor in each nation. And within the online community, a democratic divide is emerging between those who do, and do not, use
Internet resources to engage, mobilize and participate in public life.

But by focusing only on the technology itself as the cause of these problems is, in my view, a case of gross technological determinism. Norris puts it this way:

Cyber-optimists hope that the development of the Internet has the capacity to reduce, although not wholly eradicate, traditional inequalities between information-rich and poor both between, and within, societies. In contrast, cyberpessimists believe that the digital technologies will reinforce and exacerbate existing disparities.

I believe that we need to move away from both these extremes. We need to see the benefits that new technology can bring, while at the same time working (perhaps with the help of social tools) towards bringing about the kind of social change needed to ensure that everyone can make use of the benefits that social technology brings.

In their study on the use of mobile phones in Khartoum, Brinkman, De Bruijn and Bilal argue that most studies on the use of information technology in Africa focus only on how society is transformed by new  technology, not how new technology and its use is also transformed by society:

The concept of appropriation points to a multi-directional approach: transformations do not only take place in the societies into which the new technologies are launched, the technologies are also transformed under the influence of local creative usages and the processes of becoming embedded in a historical, cultural context.

The also identify these two extreme views – one in favour of and one against – technology:

Views range from interpretating new ICTs as Western hegemony and capitalist exploitation ruinous to African traditions to automatically lauding new technologies as beneficial for the development and progress of the African continent

Both of these views are equally technologically determinist, in my view.

As Francis Nyamnjoh has said:  “for way too long the focus has been on what ICTs do to to Africans. It’s time to focus on what Africans do with technology.”

I think that the use of technology needs to be looked at from a holistic perspective. The fact that everyone does not have access is not something that  should be blamed on the technology itself.

What we need to look at are the socio-economic factors that create inequality and oppression.

That is what we need to fight. Not the internet.

Photo credit:  CharlesFred on Flickr

There is a presumption held by many that a pluralist media system enables an open and free debate on political and social issues and a flow of  accurate news reporting. In countries that have recently lived under repressive governments the public sphere doesn’t automatically thrive from the lifting of censorship and undoing of government monopoly on  broadcasting. The case of Kenya stands as an example of the problem, which I have researched on the basis of  field study in Nairobi 2009. Here follows the abstract of my dissertation. Feel free to pose questions or place comments regarding this subject.

Pluralist Media in Kenya: A critical view

This paper sheds light on the practice of journalism and its relation to the structure of the media system in a “transitional democracy”. Kenyans have seen an expansion in broadcasting with new independent channels, and some growth in the press during the past decade. Is the new pluralistic media providing a source for reliable information and a forum for open political debate? For the purpose of this paper I have chosen to focus on how political reporting is perceived by the Kenyan media practitioners themselves. By thematically analysing 15 interviews conducted with various journalists in Nairobi, it is possible to uncover the difficulties they face and the weaknesses of the media system.
After the eruption of violent political clashes following the last election in Kenya, a commission set out to investigate the causes behind it. The commission lead by judge Phillip Waki produced a report, which puts some portion of the blame for the political violence on Kenyan media (Waki P., 2008). This stirred debate among Kenya’s media practitioners and caused some self-criticism by journalists, which is echoed in the responses that were given in my research. However, the question of ethnic tension is only given marginal space in this dissertation, as part of the problem of a partisan media, which impacts the practice of journalism. The structure of the Kenyan media system appears to result in many media outlets turning in to direct political instruments in election campaigns, during which politicians use ethnicity to win votes. By interviewing ordinary journalists and editors the focus here is on how they perceive their own practice within the structure. Theories surrounding the political economy of the media and theories of libertarian media is explored in the literary review and applied to the case study.
©Elisabet Helander, London

Somewhere deep in the northern savannah there is an ideological clash that will affect the lives of the 5,000 inhabitants of Binaba for decades to come. Leninist collectivization meets autocracy in a system perhaps harking of the early communist era before the purges and realities of the system crushed the soviet dream beyond the imaginings of the populace.
The chiefs bookshelf is well stacked with major Marxist works, the thought of Lenin sits somewhat disconcerted by ‘The Teaching of Don Juan’, where hallucinatory experience mixes with the ancient structures of New Mexico. The chief himself is descended from a powerful medicine man the death of whom was heralded by the appearance of a lion that tore at the grave, said later to be the spirit of the aged hunter.
In the North of Ghana literacy rates are optimistically set at around 12% of the population, in a nearby village the elders used paintings to educate their children in other areas there are only the stories. The spirits that determine the land rights, the rain and sacred right of local crocodiles to snag the odd fisherman are real and intractable.
The town of Binaba is rural, the major source of livelihood is agriculture, the young men tend to leave during the dry season because there is no work, most people live in mud built compounds and witchcraft is popular although illegal when designed to bring harm. Having said this, a complex number of ontology’s jostle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the largely uneducated population.
The notion of a duality of experience is perhaps nothing new, traditionally each community has had their own ancestors and belief systems based on their own particular doctrines and fetishes. The arrival of the Islamist tribes brought the monotheist conception of being but this even among those who whole-heartily ascribe to Allah does not always bring about the extinction of the local deities.
A bus conversation with an avowed Muslim was enlightening on this point, the great god Allah was in his dominance unsurpassed, was clearly immutable. The power of the earthly spirits and gods was also impeachable. When asked about this perceived duality, or rather claims by strict Muslims about the misplaced belief of idolaters he replied that they had not entered far enough into the bush.
The later advent of Christianity added a new level of complication to the metaphysical universe however interestingly not one that was problematic in the sense of clashing forces. Perhaps the already populated and layered belief systems were in Ghana more able to sustain the inclusion of yet another monotheist god.

In the villages and communities near to the Binaba town there is excitement about the new chief, he brought the vast majority of the roads to the area during his time as the District Chief Executive. The form of decentralization that was settled upon in Ghana is based in the District and Municipal Assemblies these are two thirds elected and then one third appointed by the central government. Obviously those that are appointed are almost exclusively party supporters so that those that are elected are banned from party membership. Assembles work in cycles of 5 yearly plans that are subject to a dynamic schedule of revisal. The content of these plans will be partially decided by central government but mostly through consultations however the actual functioning of this is described in opaque terms that do not necessarily allow for description.
The governments here are vindictive toward their rivals, upon the election of a new government the encumbering party is often found sacking the office to ensure that useful data does not fall into unfriendly hands. The necessity of removing the information from these politically charged silos is then of relevance to all.
Using the chieftaincy network as the structure for the information to pass through there are some interesting effects to be explored in trying to open up the institutions of government to greater scrutiny through information exchange. The assemblies are driven by a need for greater knowledge of their own activities; these are often carried out far from their ability to ensure that the project is necessarily operating in an acceptable manner. Or that contractors involved in the project are actually carrying out the work they are paid for.
On the chiefs’ side are the necessities of gathering information at a local level; this too often might be an expensive and deeply imprecise exercise open to abuse. Recently the government wanted to increase the amount of maize grown so offered incentives in the form of cash for seed and chemicals. Some farmers took advantage of this by simply turning up, claiming to have planted ‘x’ number of acres, the later inspections went so far as asking the farmers where they were going to plant. Responses were favorable, as the farmer waved their arms at a suitably large package of land the money was paid in cash. The more unscrupulous then pocketed the money selling any seeds or chemicals that they may have received.
For the government these sort of exercises are common with many of the programs frustrated by the inadequate systems of accountability. This is partially why the possibility of using the local system of governance may find credence with funders, but conversely it is also a potential stumbling block as politicians are well aware of the impact chiefs have at the local level. Most communities will support the party of the chief, as they are aware that the political patronage of the chief is the most effective means of harnessing funds.
For the chief, politics is potential poison, he knows only to well the tides of political support or abandonment. There can be organized a successful delivery program and also greater movement of information between the various structures. Through this we may plum the possibility of ‘doing politics’ without ‘doing politics’, involving ourselves as a reflexive switching point for the needs and concerns of the community.
More on this later, the related readings are: Richard Chambers ‘Rural Development, Putting the last first’, Chantel Mouffe, ‘On Democracy’, and Delanda’s ‘A new Philosophy of Society’ (which I have leant to the chief to soften those Marxist edges)

(UPDATE!  The continuing discussion in NYT has made me edit my post a bit.  Please note that I have specially erased references to the comment that I referred to as I know now a bit more about who wrote it)

As it has now been profiled by the New York Times, I guess it is not that clandestine anymore so will add here a few words about my recent work.  Basically, I have been doing media strategy for an environmental project in Ethiopia that aims to use mobile phones to connect carbon trading funds to small-scale farmers in rural Ethiopia.  Nothing that flashy technically: just using text messages as the interface to the Internet for calculating how much carbon is tied to the biomass of trees and how much money this accounts for on the current carbon exchange, that is, in a way downsourcing the climate debates away from top-down centralized projects to most people in the world – ie small-scale farmers etc. Perhaps develop a more general mobile application based on this with funding in the upcoming months and so on and so on …

Check the article out below to get quite a decent overview of what has been going on – link HERE:

Selling Offsets By Mobile Phone in Ethiopia

By Jeffrey Marlow

One of the most daunting hurdles for the trade in carbon offsets is the logistical challenge of connecting customers — typically carbon dioxide emitting companies based in America or Europe — with offset producers in places like South America, Asia, and Africa.With the help of an innovative new program developed by Veli Pohjonen and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, however, this global interaction may soon become as easy as sending a text message.

Many carbon trading efforts have struggled because of their cumbersome administration and multiple middle men, Mr. Pohjonen said — adding that they have “not led to anything remarkable in the combat against climate change.”

Under Mr. Pohjonen’s system, small Ethiopian farmers, for example, would measure the diameters of trees on their land twice a year and put the information into a text message, which, along with each farmer’s unique identification code, is then sent to the regional Watershed Users’ Association office.

Software computes the amount of carbon stored on each farm as well as the change from the previous measurement; any increase in stored carbon dioxide is converted into cash using the going rate of CO2 on international markets, and farmers are paid by their local association.

Major challenges remain, of course. Not least: keeping farmers honest and verifying the data they report, a hurdle that would almost certainly demand at least some of the administrative overhead that Mr. Pohjonen aims to avoid.

And the computer modeling used to calculate the amount of CO2 absorbed by stands of trees — a blunt tool at the moment — would need to be calibrated to account for the idiosyncrasies of Ethiopian ecology, and later, to those of other regions that might use the tool.

But finding more efficient ways to connect remote carbon offset projects to a faraway industrial world increasingly hungry for them is, to Mr. Pohjonen, the first hurdle. “Transaction costs can be minimized in another manner,” he said, “rather than just making projects bigger.”

Mr. Pohjonen’s son Matti, a Fellow in Digital Culture at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, has been overseeing the technology end of the project.

“The standard function of a mobile phone is talking and texting,” the younger Mr. Pohjonen said. But it can also be used, he added, to access the Internet and run queries regarding carbon prices or exchange rates.

The Pohjonens have been testing the system on eight farms in the country’s central highlands, where the average farmer is earning approximately 1000 Birr, or $80, every six months from their carbon offsets.

“In the Ethiopian context it is considerable money,” says Mr. Pohjonen. “It would give an added value of 10 to 20 percent compared to what he would get selling the trees as poles.”

While this article itself is not that much about media, I found there was two interesting things dealing with more general themes that we have been touching upon:

The first is how Ethiopia seems to be still being talked about and/or represented.  As we know, Ethiopia is known in the collective Western imagination as a symbol for starvation and poverty in the world (ever since especially the famine of 1984).  Probably we all still remember these images that have been burned into our collective imagination:

With this in mind, I found this comment following the NYT the article especially enlightening.

I often see a certain arrogance of people who talk about the developing world claiming to know what, in fact, is in the better interests of the people who live there – speaking in their name.  This person even claims to know the specific farmers in question (I wonder if he has actually even been to these farms we measured and talked to and have their names like we do?)  It seems to me that the rhetoric mediation here goes somewhat as follows:

1) He claims to know what the farmers want because he has been in Ethiopia more than the journalist;

2) Because of the signification of Ethiopia as a country of famine and food shortages, he therefore claims to know what all the farmers needs are (ie not some fancy mobile project dealing with complex local politics around agroforestry that would provide meager additional funding for planting of trees).

3) What the farmers therefore need is food aid (probably provided from the outside) rather than supporting their own bottom-up activities and the work they have started without outside mediation.

I quote:

I know this area of Ethiopia and the farmers the article is talking about. It is simply amazing to note how much disconnect exists between our Western journalists and their subjects. Which Ethiopian farmer will agree to text you the diameter of hundreds of trees twice a year? Do you know that the most basic question of the moment is the looming food shortage disaster. These farmers are worried about getting their next meal even in 2009!!! I think our friends in Finland are just being out of touch and simply addressing the wrong urgent problem.

I always wonder where this ‘discourse’ comes from? While there are no doubts food security is an issue in Ethiopia and there is, once again, a looming famine in the country, this, actually, does not affect the particular part of Ethiopia around Debre Tabor and Bahir Dar.  But I think the more interesting question here is to notice the way how agency is represented when a country like Ethiopia is talked about, often accompanied by a certain kind of self-righteous moral indignation about the ills of the world by people claiming to represent other people because of some assumed superior knowledge of what their needs are.  I recall Deleuze once said of Foucault: “he taught us the indignity of speaking for others …” Perhaps as close to an ethical guideline we can ever get.

Anyways, for some reason this comment reminded me of some of the themes we will be touching about the representation of the Other </End of rant.>

Secondly, it was again interesting to observe how quickly this article was RT:d (retweeted) as it came out.  I did a quick search and found tens and tens of retweets of this almost immediately surfacing after it came out. I suppose this again demonstrated that Twitter has come the de facto way of spreading information today about things that have been published elsewhere and a good tool to find how news is being disseminated today.

So see Twitter search feed below:

On Monday 12 October a very strange article appeared on the front page of the Guardian. Apparently the paper had been prevented by a legal injunction from reporting a question that was going to be asked in the House of Commons later that week. In addition, not only was the paper not allowed to report on the question, but was also not allowed to report on why it wasn’t allowed to report.  As the article so eloquently put it:

Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

What the paper was able to say, however, was that it was the legal firm Carter-Ruck that had obtained the legal order. Carter-Ruck are notorious for defending large corporate clients with a dubious track record. In many cases they have been successful, but this time it wasn’t to be.

Why not? Well, the power of the social web.

As soon as I saw the article, I thought ‘I wonder if this has to do with that company that dumped that toxic waste in the Ivory Coast a few years back?’ And how was I going to find out? Well, I logged into Twitter, of course.

At least half the people in my Twitter stream were talking about it. And of course the case was about Trafigura.

You can read the full details about the case on Wikipedia, but in short, in 2006, the British oil trading firm Trafigura, dumped 500 tonnes of toxic waste – a mix of petrol, caustic soda and hydrogen sulfide – all around Abidjan, the capital city of the Ivory Coast, causing 17 people to die and causing serious injury to over 30,000 people. The waste was so strong smelling, that apperantly, had it been dumped in Central London, people would have been able to smell it outside of the M25.

Trafigura had created the waste when cleaning low-quality petrol using a method called caustic washing. The clean petrol was sold off, reportedly for a profit of $19 million, but the company thought it was too expensive to pay a Dutch company to properly clean the waste. Instead the tanker was sent from Rotterdam to the Ivory Coast, where Trafigura paid an unqualified local contractor to dump the waste all around the city.

All this was reported by Newsnight back in May. Carter-Ruck then immediately sued the programme on behalf of Trafigura. Finally, last month, the Guardian was able to prove Trafigura’s involvement by publishing a raft of internal emails discussing the case.

Anyway, back to this week. As soon as the story broke, the blogoshpere was full of it. By 9am, both #trafigura and #carter-ruck where top trending topics on Twitter, links to more blog posts than you could shake a stick at were passed around and the reports that the Guardian was not allowed to publish were up on Wikileaks.

The gagging order had totally turned on itself. The whole world was talking about it. As one commentator said (can’t remember where I saw it): ‘It was the equivalent of a public relations own-goal’.

So what happened? Well, soon enough the mainstream press (well, the Spectator) had also started reporting on the story, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Leader had tweeted about it and MPs were up in arms.

And it went on and on and on. There’s a really good complete account, from throughout the day, of what happened on the Online Journalism Blog.

By mid-day the gag was lifted and the Guardian was able to report what the original question tabled by Labour MP Paul Farrelly was:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.”

So, a happy ending? Yes, but perhaps no. As the Online Journalism Blog reports, blogger Alan Brookland points out the following:

However, before everyone gets too self-congratulatory, does any of this brief flirtation with online interest ever actually change anything? True, right now, lots of people who had probably never even heard of Trifigura will now be reading up on the dumping story, but, come tomorrow or next week, how many will still remember much about it? The bloggers will chalk up a victory and in this case the gagging order was actually lifted, but this is still an on-going case and nothing will have actually changed.

And I guess what we need to remember is that what caused the storm this time was the gagging, not the original event.

I have to ask – where were the bloggers when Newsnight originally reported the dumping story back in May?

Originally published on eatanicecream.com

Update: Shouldn’t have bothered writing this post. I should’ve just linked to this.