Today is Eid al-Hajj, the Islamic festivity of pilgrimage, when millions of Muslims gather in Mecca and Medina. It’s also a public holiday in all Islamic countries, Tanzania among them with its roughly fifty-fifty share of people being Muslims or Christians. So today we have also had a break in the training and I have used the time to update the blog with comments from the participants’ blogs.
In this posting, I will list some of the fact-finding exercises we have done during the first two days of the training, starting with a warm-up of some more simple research in order to activate our brains and minds to the more challenging fact-finding exercises.
To find out the population of Iringa region, the phone number of the Media Council of Tanzania and the street address of the Embassy of Finland in Dar es Salaam were yet easy tasks. Populations, geographical and political details and such can usually be found in a Wikipedia article that you would reach just by searching for the name of the place or country. Links to contact information are usually found on the top of the website at the right end of the page, or in a column on the left side of the page, or at the bottom of the page.
The task to find out who is the president of Norway was a bit more difficult as the country is a monarchy and has a king – with no political power though. The prime minister is the head of the government.
Some other assignments were a bit more challenging for a warm-up, like what president Jakaya Kikwete exactly said about land investors during his last week’s visit to Kisarawe in Pwani region, not far from Dar es Salaam. The direct quotes of the president were found by narrowing the search to the last week only, by choosing search results in Swahili, and excluding from the search the local blogs, which are popular but usually publish just photos.
On Tuesday, the participants did three separate search assignments and finally took some more time to write and publish a short story about one of the topics. At the end of the exercise they also provided links to their original sources.
The first assignment was to find out what is Smart Kigali. It’s a new initiative by the capital of neighbouring Rwanda, which is now offering free wireless internet in public places and public transport all through the city. Part of the plan is to donate smart gadgets also to poor citizens to assist and encourage them to access the web.
The second search assignment had the code title “Chipolopolo vs. Samba”. Chipolopolo, or Copper Bullets, is the nickname of the Zambian national football team, referring to the fact that copper is the country’s main export, mostly trucked out to the world market via Tanzania and the harbour of Dar es Salaam. The participants were asked to find out against whom and where the Zambian team was playing a friendly match on that same day, actually at the same time as we were sitting in class. The right answer was Brazil, the five-time world champions and the hosts of the 2014 World Cup, who gained a 2–0 victory over the Zambians in the match that was played at Beijing National Stadium in China.
The third topic was to find out what exactly is Uhuru Kenyatta, the newly elected president of neighbouring Kenya, accused for at the International Criminal Court in Hague. Headlines during the previous days were saying that the African Union was demanding the court to postpone the trial as long as Kenyatta is a head of state.
The absolutely most popular topic was the football match. Here’s the match background report by Seif Jigge, radio producer at ORS FM, the Maasai community radio station based in Terrat, Manyara region. Here’s another football story by Imma Mbuguni, editor of Majira newspaper. Here’s the story by Sylvia Mwehozi, Radio Mlimani. And here’s the story by Joyce Shebe, Clouds FM.
For the Smart Kigali initiative on wireless web access, and also other IT investment plans in Kenya and Tanzania, see the story by Marc Nkwame of Daily News. And here you can find a news story on Uhuru Kenyatta by Basil Msongo, online editor of the newspaper Habari Leo.
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