Focus on Africa
Have Chinese satellites benefitted Africa?
As African leaders gather in Beijing this week for the China-Africa summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping may have one thing under his belt to boast about - satellite TV rolled out in Africa. But have villagers really benefiited or not?
Also, an announcement asking to free members of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt's prisons is quickly withdrawn. Why?
And in Cape Town, artists from across the continent come together to perform challenging art for challenging times!
Presenter: Audrey Brown Producers: Bella Hassan and Stefania Okereke Technical Producer: Chris Ablakwa Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
- Duration:
- 35m
- Broadcast on:
- 03 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Hello, I'm Audrey Brown, and today in Focus on Africa, why was an announcement that imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood could be freed from Egyptian jails repudiated by the very organization that made the suggestion, and when is art not just entertainment? We're asking artists to extend their degree of innovation. This kind of work is not like going in and watching musical theatre, or watching a kind of a broad comedy show. These are artists connected to imperatives of social justice. That's the message from the African artist gathered in Cape Town to explore new ways of solving collective problems. It's Tuesday, the 3rd of September. First, we go to China. African leaders are gathered in Beijing for their regular summit. It's called the China-Africa Forum, and it happens every 3 years. The relationship has been subject to scrutiny and criticism, not least because of Chinese business practices on the continent, and its record on human rights for Chinese in China. Beijing addressed some of those criticisms by offering satellite TV to remote and rural villages in about 23 African countries. Starlink, a private Chinese company that already had a presence in some countries, rolled it out. Around 9,600 villages have since received satellite infrastructure, according to my colleague Sean Yuan from the Global China Unit here at the BBC. It was an opportunity for China to flex its soft power in a strategically important region. So, how has it gone? Sean has been to visit some of those villages in Kenya, so what did he find? We began our conversation with the thinking behind the project. President Xinjiang being first announced this project back in 2015 during the Forum on China-Africa Corporation, Johannesburg. And at that time, China and Africa relations were at its peak. A lot of talk about Chinese investment in Africa, but at the same time, there was a lot of criticism coming from both African nations and Western nations on the intention of China on the continent. So, at that time, I think what came behind President Xinjiang has been thinking, or a trans-government thinking, behind this whole project is to use this as sort of an ambassador of a goodwill project, saying that we're not here to exploit the African continent. We're here to give you, for example, the satellite dishes. A lot of them at that time did not have digital satellite access at all, a lot of them analog. So, ostensibly, it was an incredibly goodwill gesture, and for them to spell this sort of myth. And start times prior to this announcement was already a big company on the continent. For the trans-government, it also made sense to partner up with the Chinese company to tell the African people that, you know, even though this is a private company, it has sort of the endorsement from the trans-government. And it's all as a package as some sort of goodwill gesture. Now, of course, at the time, Chinese companies were accused of behaving really badly on the continent and China's policy itself. It seemed like it was all about China rather than Africans, and I remember us seeing videos of Chinese bosses of companies treating Africans really badly and so on. So, how was it received? Did it do what it intended to do? I think that's sort of the crux of this story, right, in terms of how it has been received. Just from the surface, of course, villages were quite welcoming of the project. If we just take a step back, not think as a journalist, just think as a villager who had no access to digital TV before, now, all of a sudden, at least for the first few months, you get free satellite dishes, you get to watch football matches, you get to watch Chinese content, which has never accessible before. But after a few months, they start to realize, "Oh, we actually have to pay for the subscription." And despite it being one of the cheapest packages on digital TV on African continent, it remains a huge financial burden to the villagers, the same villagers, the very villagers that the project was aimed to help. So, in a way, that has not been well received after that, and my conversation with some of the villagers sort of proved that point. So, it seemed like it was free, but it wasn't quite free. People had to pay for it. What I'm wondering is, how were the villagers chosen and the countries chosen for this project? I first, sort of some hypothesis we had was because we thought Chinese government had this direct role in selecting those villages or selecting the countries. But our conversation with both academics and village chiefs and even government officials pointed to a view that all the selections were actually quite random. At the same time, Chinese government did brand it as this kind of project that would bring satellite dishes to incredibly rural remotes and impoverished villages. But if you actually go on the ground, you can actually see a lot of villages were not as impoverished as you might imagine, not as remote as you might imagine. Some of them already had prior digital access already. Some of them had electricity. So, it would be a different story if China put everything from scratch. If you bring electricity, bring TV and everything. But for the most part, that's not the case. So, what was shown on these channels? I know football, one of them. And then, I mean, imagining Chinese opera? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So, talking about Chinese opera, I was talking to this woman from a village outside of Nairobi. Basically, here's what she said. Okay, I've watched her series. It was one of my favorite. Like, I could not sleep without watching it. It was called "entano love." I was not a fan of China. It was actually one of my last places I would choose to go. But after the start times, I actually admire going to China, seeing all the beautiful houses and the where the Chinese people dress. As you can hear, she was basically saying that she was watching the Chinese content, this show called "Eternal Love." It's quite cringey Chinese love shows, as you can imagine. I'm sure it's no less cringey than any of the others from everywhere else in the world. It's just thinking about Lin novellas and so on. Exactly. If you have love in the official title of the show, it might be cringey. But at the same time, all the Chinese shows have been dubbed into local languages, for example, Swahili. And they actually opened up dubbing centers in Beijing, for example, to train people, like, voiceover artists, to dub Chinese shows, Kung Fu movies into local languages. And it's one of the main areas where they are getting success. I came across Chinese TV content in Liberia, actually. I was doing a story in Liberia, and this was in the sort of late 2000s. There was a hotel. It was almost like this is for China, about China, and the Chinese. And all the content was Chinese on the television. The food as well, brilliant food. We have established that. But so these enclaves, because the same happened in Sudan, where you had these sort of Chinese enclaves with Chinese people would go. Is that still a feature of Chinese engagement right now? In my previous trips, I was in Zambia for a bit in Nigeria and Tanzania. And it's still very much like the case where you feel like, despite all the huge engagement we're hearing about between China and Africa, there remains a bubble in which Chinese businessmen or Chinese diaspora in general kind of feel comfortable in. And when I was in Nairobi, there was Chinatown, of course, and I went to this restaurant. The menus were in Chinese and the people who were eating there were Chinese, because still relatively overpriced for local population. I don't know how much of it came from the fact that a lot of them did not really speak really good English or local languages per se. It was very difficult for them to interact with locals. And at least from the outside, it kind of projects the image that Chinese people are really not engaging with locals. And sort of like we want to distance ourselves from you guys. But for the most part, I would say a lot of them did came from linguistic and cultural gap that was inevitable and very difficult bridge for them as well. I mean, it's understandable. What I'm wondering is, so this satellite TV initiative, what impact did you actually have on people's impressions of China and the experiences of China and Chinese culture? In terms of impact, I think it goes as far as how much people actually are consuming the content, right? If you're not paying for it and if you're not really listening or watching the content, it really doesn't matter what kind of image is being pushed, what kind of message is being pushed by startups or Chinese government. And I do want to mention one important thing, I think, whenever I talk about Chinese media influence, it's almost inevitable people talk about CGTN, which is the Chinese government control state media. A lot of them are saying because CGTN sits on one of the cheapest packages offered to subscribers in general. Start Times people say, "Oh, that's one of the ways that Chinese government is propagating or narrative and all that." But kind of just walking around talking to people, it becomes very clear that the content of CGTN is very dry, and a lot of people simply do not chew into the trans content as well. And that's one of the experts said as well, Dr. Dan Imadrim Morales, who's an lecturer at University of Sheffield, he's been studying Start Times Impact in Africa. And here's what he told me. If we examine the success of the 10,000 villages project on its own, I would say it's probably a massive fail. It's a massive fail because it didn't deliver the success that the challenge is going on, which was that villages would be able to tune into a Chinese content on a regular basis. For most people, that was just one of the many projects that foreign countries tried to implement across the continent, and then after that project is delivered, some pictures are taken, and some short-term goodwill is distributed. Those foreigners go back to where they came from, and the project is left, thought anybody attending to it. As we can see, there has been some change of views towards China amongst some villagers and some people, and not necessarily just from Start Times reports, but overwhelmingly, if we're just looking through the lens of how Start Times has changed the perception of China among villagers, it really hasn't changed all that much, to be honest. That's Sean Yuan from the BBC Global China Unit here in London. We're going to Egypt now, and reaching into the recent history of a country that is thousands of years old. And by recent, I mean the past decade or so. It's about an organization you may not have heard about. It's called the Muslim Brotherhood. Ten years ago, it was very much in the news, because there had been a revolution in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East, that revolution was called the Arab Spring. Governments were toppled, and people had high hopes for more accountable systems of government that placed us interests of their populations at the center of their policies. That didn't happen. And in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power on the strength of that promise, was itself toppled by the military. Thousands of its members were jailed, and its leader, the ousted President Mohammed Mursi, died in 2019, while standing trial for espionage. That's the background, now to the present. In the past few days, a TV station affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, announced an overture that seemed to suggest the possibility of a deal to release the Muslim Brotherhood members in jail, in exchange for them retreating from the political arena in Egypt. Now, here is where it gets interesting. Hardly had the idea been floated when it was withdrawn. So what had happened? Did the government shoot it down, or did one part of the Muslim Brotherhood propose it to test the waters within the organization, and for it to be then shot down? The BBC's reporter in Cairo is Abd al-Bassir Hassan. He takes up the story with a bit more detail about the Muslim Brotherhood. Before 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood was a leading power in society. It had a big part in the Egyptian parliament in 2005. But in 2010, in the election, parliamentary elections then, they were restricted and got very few seats. At that time, they were very, very basic part of society. They were sharing many assets, in terms of having dishes in hospitals, in schools, in factories, and they were widely accepted in society. But unfortunately, since changes after they came to power in 2012, and then they were overthrown in 2013. So tell us what changed. The change is some Egyptian forces, when the Muslim Brotherhood took over, found out that they would like to monopolize power. They excluded the civil movements, and the division became widening, because there were like an assumption within the group itself. They are the only power who can rule Egypt, and they can do it alone. Of course, the army leaders at that time didn't like that, and they were like calls for a unity in the whole society. Unfortunately, things culminated, and there were warnings from the army leaders, and from other civil societies who were one day supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, until masses went out on the end of June in 2013. And there were very big protests from both sides, from the Muslim Brotherhood, and from the civil movements or civil parts. The army supported the second, and issued two warnings before the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood regime by doubling down the regime and removing the Muhammad mercy. Since then, things totally changed, and the Muslim Brotherhood became like an enemy of the state. The reason why we're talking about the Muslim Brotherhood now and sketching that background is because there seems to be an initiative now to free the people and pardon them, who had been arrested, and those were mass arrests when Egyptian society seemed to be turned on its head, basically. Talk to us about the initiative, how it came about, how people got to know about it, and what the status of it is now. In fact, it's not the first time that we hear or get a plan or an offer or initiative, whatever the calling is, from Muslim Brotherhood or bro Muslim Brotherhood. There were, like, many in the past decade. The last of them was like a week ago. It was made by the TV presenter who said to be affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. Also, he says he's not. He told media through his own private YouTube channel that he was asked by the chief of the Muslim Brotherhood in London to direct a message to the state in Egypt asking for burden of the Muslim Brotherhood members, especially who are still in this bit with the state, and release the prisoners of them and those detains and return for leaving the political scene, not acting or not taking part in any political activities or competing for power for at least 15 years. This is the last offer, but two days later it was laid down by the same TV presenter who said I'm quoting him. I didn't hear well or I didn't think it well, the message. It was a private conversation and he said he misunderstood the message could be like a private speech and shouldn't have been into media or into the public because it was not right yet. This is specifically because there were like very huge criticism of the plan or the offer and one it was made, especially from members of the Muslim Brotherhood other factions and from Muslim Brotherhood senior figures. Right, so it seemed to be that somebody was flying a troweloon saying exactly this is what this is exactly the term used by an expert and he even wanted to say this is their way of doing it. They test the waters and the wind there were cases or refusal or rejection from the state. It was easy for them to withdraw or say we didn't say or do or declare that or announce it. Just to be clear, it seemed like the suggestion of a pardon in exchange for not doing political work from the TV host Magid Abdullah. That came from the Muslim Brotherhood, didn't it, or did it come from the government? From the top leader, according to the TV presenter from Helmi Al Jazeera, who is the second man in the group, the debut chief of the group or the general guide of the group. Right. Who is said to be based in London nowadays, but later on, Helmi Al Jazeera himself after the criticism wrote an ex that they are not competing on power, but will stay in the political scene. They will not withdraw from the political scene or from political activities. This is after what he said, stirred a lot of free actions, especially within the group. Right. So it seems like he had to take back his words. Exactly. Yes. He was told that the TV presenter said it was my own mistake and I do take responsibility, because seemingly, I didn't understand the message and it was a private, but he never said Helmi Al Jazeera didn't say. He said, I misunderstood, but in a way, it's taken as a withdrawal, a bullying back from what he said. What did the government say? Just before I go to the government, I have to quote some of the actions from the Muslim Brotherhood. Some of those criticizing the plan from within said it's a kind of surrender to the regime of Egypt. It's a kind of normalization with the Egyptian regime. It's a way of giving up the rights of those who are killed or those who are detained. The Egyptian government didn't comment at all officially. But some row Egyptian government journalists wrote on acts or on social media and talk show programs. One of them said it's a reflection of the division, deep division within the group. It reflects the loss to popularity. It reflects the fact that they are backtracking and they have no weight at all at the moment. It's a way of trying to come to the scene, but they will not be allowed. As the other said, there will be no reconciliation at all who's those who committed violence and still believe in violence. One expert told BBC that the state will not at all accept such a glance unless the group itself reviews its fundamentalities. Its principles renounce violence and try to separate between the political track, economic track, social track and the religious track. I have talked in two, three expats, two of them were ex Muslim Brotherhood. The three of them made the same comment. The group which was established during colonial Egypt should now and after 100 years rethink, review its fundamentalities. It's basics and try to cope with modern times. One expert said, no, it's not about the plans, not about the Muslim Brotherhood, the international and regional developments. Conditions are not favorable nowadays for democracy. Therefore, whatever the Muslim Brotherhood will offer will not be accepted because the regime in Egypt is making use of the international conditions and the regional conditions to keep things as it is. What I'm wondering is it had lasted for 100 years. It must have had support from people. What kind of support does it have now? You know, over the last decade, media worked against the group and so far still at the moment, while we are talking, the Egyptian media, state media is playing videos and documentaries showing the Muslim Brotherhood members and their acts of violence. Therefore, more or less, it really lost popularity in the Egyptian street. At least openly, it has no existence at all. No one can express the facts or make it out that he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He can never do this. And even those who are supporting the group can never say they are doing this at the moment. No one can talk as a supporter or even declare himself as a member of the Brotherhood. This is at least on the open sphere. But I think that there are some sort of undercover activities because the younger generation is still seemingly working by way or another, especially in the rural areas. They don't take the banner of the Muslim Brotherhood. They didn't introduce themselves as Muslim Brotherhood, but more or less, they are still giving or taking part in social activities, but not under the flag of the Muslim Brotherhood, generally as members of the local societies, member of the community. This is the most they can do and the other political activities cannot be seen and I can't judge them because this is, of course, this is done under cover and no one can guess who is doing what, especially as this is a trend within the group itself. So given that this seems like it was a trial balloon and very quickly withdrawn, why is it important to cover the story? Does it mean that the Muslim Brotherhood is far from finished? It's basically the Muslim Brotherhood is still, if it doesn't exist physically in Egypt, it is still some people classify it as one of, if not the biggest Islamist group ever. It still has some influence in some Arab countries and still plays a big role. Would you say that the Muslim Brotherhood is still a force to be reckoned with, not just in Egypt but in the region, and that is why it's important for us to cover the story? Yes. Yes. It is. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye. That's the BBC's Cairo Reporter, Abdul Basir Hassan. And to find out more on this intriguing political story and the ins and outs of what goes on in front of and behind the scenes, listen further on the Focus on Africa podcast. This is Focus on Africa from the BBC World Service. Hi, folks. This is Mark Bitman from Food with Mark Bitman, and I'm going to share some money saving tips when it comes to shopping at Whole Foods Market. It's great to be a prime member when you shop at Whole Foods Market because you get an extra 10% off all sales, excluding alcohol. On Tuesdays, take advantage of deals like buy one, get one 50% off on packaged soups, and $2 off of their no antibiotics ever wrote to Surrey Chicken. Huge Friday savings on ready to eat sushi rolls, 12 for 12, all live oysters, any hot one topping pizza for just $12, and there are even more deals. There are so many ways to save at Whole Foods Market, and now you know. Are you a professional pillow fighter or a 9 to 5 low-cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, however complex or intricate, monday.com can help you organize, work a straight, and make it more efficient. monday.com is the one centralized platform for everything work related, and with monday.com, work is just easier. monday.com, for whatever you run, go to monday.com to learn more. Let's talk about a live art festival taking place in Cape Town. Artists from several African countries as well as South Africa itself will be on formal, informal, and makeshift site-specific stages across the city to showcase their thinking on issues like climate, culture, corruption, and everything else in between. But those expecting to be entertained in the more traditional sense of the word may want to listen to my conversation with Cape Town University Professor Jay Partha, the convener of the festival. The festival is to find new, innovative, exciting ways to develop performance that is both colorful and funny, but also that taps into some of the more salient issues that are affecting as. And right now, there is a great need to find new ways to see how we grow as a democracy. And of course, as you know, our country has achieved transformation, but majority of the people of the country have not reclaimed land in its entirety or reclaimed the wealth of the country. And that was kind of a deal that the South African government had made. So this is all by way of saying that artists in our country are constantly talking through those kinds of issues and how do we become a fully fledged functioning country with a population now, many of them in their 20s, as we call them, the born freeze because they were born into the democracy. But they're also experiencing great economic financial challenges because essentially the economics of this country has not changed. And also to involve the audience in a kind of a fun and exciting way so that the audience is not also separated from the art. So this festival has a direct political point to make. Yes, the festival is not a political piece of festival because that's a very particular kind of agenda that one has. What we're acknowledging is that the politics of a country, the politics of who we are and how we live, influence art making, you know, and you could one could argue that even an artwork says it's not political that's a political statement because you're choosing not to make point and that in itself is political. I think artists growing up in South Africa right now, and as well as in the African continent and I would argue also in young people in various parts of the world, especially at this time, are beginning to appreciate the necessity to combine a political idea with creativity. These are ways to take our audience with us to better understand how we can make a difference to a world that is increasingly socially and politically unstable. Tell me about the artists that will be there because it's not just about South Africa. It does span the continent and also South America. How did you choose the people to participate? It's always difficult because we have such vivid, powerful artists throughout the continent. And so for this festival, we developed conversations with a range of artists and, you know, it had to go through a fairly rigorous selection and curatorial process in order to get to where it is. We've got people from Mozambique, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Senegal, and then also South Africa. Is there something that they have in common, all these people? I think a coverage of expression, a coverage of taking risks with the kind of work that they're doing, and an excellence in the way they're able to do that. So talk us through some of the things that people who will be there might see if they go to the festival. So the festival opens with a work by NSC with Carter, an artist who has been doing this kind of work for many years, and what she's doing a work called V rot. And she uses technology and projection and body against these projections to slowly invoke the idea of mold, bread or food that acquires mold. It's actually quite funny. It's like it's quite a funny work, and it's a funny work about a comment on how rot sets in. She is talking about corruption in governments, and she brings us into this visceral sense of what corruption is. So it isn't just like a political idea, but you feel it in your gut, and you feel it when a politician speaks on the telly, or something that you feel you have a sense of revulsion. And you don't quite know why, but you know that there are lies being spoken, or something's being covered up. Lili Atteku from Nigeria is an artist and an activist. Tell us about what he did, and how that related to the Benin Bronzes and the return of the Benin Bronzes, and what he would be doing at the festival. So Atteku is known as the father of performance arts or live arts on the African continent, and he's been doing it for many years. I think he joins a whole range of artists that talk about emptiness of a gesture of the return of statues. He deconstructs that idea and brings the focus to the institution itself, so he's doing it at a museum in the green market square in the middle of the city. These artifacts are part of life processes, they're part of rituals. They've been objectified in a very particular way as a result of the colonial hand. Just simply replaying or bringing back statues is one thing, but understanding that if we keep going with the colonial construct of the museum is a much larger problem. Would you say for artists, young artists especially, to identify who is or what is the enemy and the thing that they need to pitch themselves against to make the world a better place? They think there's been enough time in the world to experience the continued states of abnegation. I think it's not just in South Africa, I think in the rising discontent with young people in, for example, the United States. As a result of COVID and understanding other ways of working, there is a growing awareness of how simply subscribing to a particular kind of economy is not so invisible after all. It is quite visible and quite apparent, and indeed quite apparent in the way the levels of trauma, the levels of mental health issues. And in South Africa, of course, it's a lot more graphic because our land distribution has not shifted the very topography of this country remains the same. So, to answer your really wonderful question, what's not necessarily a white and a black issue, it is not apartheid in its original form, there's an increasing understanding of economics. Now, there are artists from different parts of Africa that are taking part in this, and of course, we can't not talk about the fact that in South Africa there's a great deal of hostility to people from other parts of the continent, African nationals from elsewhere. Is this one of the reasons why you have people from everywhere, and is this going to be addressed in any way in what you do during this festival? Absolutely. It's also woven around yet another structure called the Live Art Network Africa, and the ICA at the University of Cape Town launched that at the time of xenophobic attacks in our country. And mainly to work with artists and producers of artists throughout the continent is also being hosted by this network of African artists, writers, curators and producers. And that's why we have such a wide participation from all over the continent. I wish I were in Cape Town, I would have been there. It's a short flight. Well, yeah, only 12 hours or so. Thank you very much. Sure, it's a pleasure. Thank you. Bye-bye. Professor Jay Pather, Director of the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. Focus on Africa was compiled by Stefania Okereke and Bela Hassan here in London. Carney Sharp was the senior journalist in charge. Chris Ablagua was our technical producer. André Lombard and Alice Medengi are our editors. I'm Audrey Brown, and we'll talk again next time. Hey, I hear you think podcasts are all about true crime, huh? Well, wise guy, the iHeartRadio app's got all kinds of podcasts. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got Bobby Bones, Big Boy and Lou Lader. We got SpongeBob, binge pants and exotic erotic storytime. We got doe boys, two dudes in the kitchen, green eggs and Dan. Hey, we got Elf Quest. We got podcasts for everything on the iHeartRadio app for free. If you don't download that, well, that's not just a true crime, my friend. That's criminal. You