Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: A Nuclear Kenya, Courtesy of Iran?

Thursday, February 26, 2009

A Nuclear Kenya, Courtesy of Iran?

Iranian state TV says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has returned home after visiting three African countries: Djibouti, Kenya and Comoros.

While all the stops were of interest, one element of his stop in Kenya was particularly eye-catching.

VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reported from Nairobi that Kenyan media reports raised the possibility that Iran may be poised to sign a deal to help Kenya build a nuclear power plant to generate electricity. An Iranian company has already been hired by the Kenyan government to construct a hydroelectric power plant north of Nairobi and a gas power plant near Mombasa.

She quoted Joshua Musyimi, who heads an energy development project at the Kenyan Ministry of Planning, as saying the government has made no secret that it is urgently looking for a partner, who can provide the technical know-how to develop a nuclear energy program for Kenya. He says soaring electricity demand, volatile oil prices, and limited natural resources are some of the reasons why Kenya is interested in nuclear energy.

"Given the situation, the government has decided to diversify power generation resources away from the very high-cost, oil-based power plants," Musyimi said. "So, for a start, it is proposed that the private sector be given an opportunity to develop a 300-1000 megawatt nuclear power plant over the next seven years."

Iran's nuclear ambitions have been a source of alarm for the West and Israel. They have repeatedly accused the Persian Gulf state of seeking not just to produce electricity but to produce the plutonium needed to build nuclear weapons.

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Thursday, February 26, 2009

A Nuclear Kenya, Courtesy of Iran?

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