‘Mfuko’: Tanzania Culture Trust Fund

By Mina Yirga
‘Mfuko’ is not a new word among the Swahili speaking people. Literally, the word signifies ‘a pocket’ or something like a bag which is used to carry valuables.
'Mfuko" also connotes an innovative structure with room for professionalism, national ownership, and sustainability that supports both organizations and individual actors within all cultural fields in Tanzania.
Godwin Z. Kaduma, Tanzanian playwright, poet, choreographer, actor, and theatre director was among the delegates that have come to Ethiopia to participate on the Swedish East African Music Network, SEAMN conference.
Kaduma is not new to the land, for he knows the taste of injera. Rich in proverbial expressions, Kaduma came to share his experience as to how cultural funding is important.
“In Tanzania, over a period of years, numerous groups, individuals and institutions were benefiting from grants and general funding that was provided by both national and international donors. Both the national and international donors got to a point where they were dealing with so many requests resulting in much deskwork. It happened that, at times, an institution or group would send the same request to more than one donor. Whether the applicants ended up getting funding for the same project from more than one donor or not, it became necessary to centralize funding for cultural activities. From the late 80s and early 90s, we will have come across grant application forms that required applicants to state whether they had applied for funding for the same projects from other donors.”
The Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, the Government of Sweden as was represented by the Swedish International Development Authority (Sida) and the Board of Trustees of Mfuko signed the Trust Deed for the establishment of the Trust Fund on 6th November 1998.
“There were six objectives listed for the establishment of the Mfuko but they add up to and I quote, "a need to cater for the urgent needs to promote and strengthen cultural activities in Tanzania in order to place culture in its appropriate role in the development of the country.”
“The Mfuko started making what I have called 'justified favoritism" as it deliberately looked into those who had been marginalized for too long. It enlarged its publicity and conducted orientation workshops for District Culture Officers who have helped with the dissemination of information and handing out of grant application forms to interested stakeholders. The District Culture Officers do also help collect and dispatch application forms to Mfuko.”
Since its inception, ‘Mfuko’ has so far provided grants for 302 cultural projects throughout Tanzania. One of Mfuko's visions is to extend its reach and coverage of cultural activities in East Africa by networking with similar institutions engaged in the promotion and strengthening of culture. By 2001, the Mfuko was proud to have received applications from almost every part of the country.
“The success of the Mfuko has inspired other countries and bodies to establish their own Culture Funds. These include the SADC region, Malawi and Zimbabwe. I will point out here that, of these, only the Malawi Culture Fund has been started and is running with Malawi Government funding only. In lobbying and advocacy, how much have we done to impress our societies so that they can at least find justification for giving us the patronage we badly need from them? Noise and brochures alone are not enough. We need to overwhelm our societies with action.”
Mfuko’s members have remained to be the two governments that established it but it has received funds from other countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland. It has also received funding from local donors. The Mfuko is also looking into how it can benefit from the various revenues made possible by various Acts of Parliament that allow such revenues to go into culture and cultural activities. These include such acts as those for the National Lotteries ,Copyright and Neighboring Rights, The National Arts Council,Tourist Agents, Hotels, National Archives, Local Government…
“I am sure we are all fantastic artists but I am also sure that we would also be rich artists if we gave ourselves that little extra time to look into the fact that we would be better off if we took care of our books. It is not enough for example to stand there and curse all those pirates out there when you have not bothered to register with your local copyright society. I do not know what the situation is like in other countries but I get flabbergasted when I hear today Tanzanian musicians complain that the government is not taking steps to protect artists’ works while there is a copyright society in the country since 1997. This tells you something about us artists. On top of this, and, as enabled by the Mfuko, the Copyright Society of Tanzania has over the last three years conducted sensitization workshops for artists, culture district officers and collecting agents in the whole country!”
What has made the Mfuko rather unique in the region is the manner in which its establishment was handled from the very beginning. Stakeholders were involved in determining its structure and governance as they were organized into culture sub-sector groupings to discuss and contribute to what they believed would make a good and transparent funding structure.
“Needless to say, cultural funding is a unique task. It is unique because it deals with very unique cultural characteristics and idiosyncrasies of a given society. It is not easy to effectively manage to bring about detectable change even in one cultural discipline unless a thorough study and understanding of the fabric that makes the culture of a society is done. For example, today there is a lot of talk on the necessity to eradicate poverty and take all measures to control the spread of HIV/AIDS in our societies. A lot of time I have heard people swear that cultural funding contributes to the reduction of poverty and diseases. I say cultural funding is a unique task needing unique sensitivity to make it useful. It is one thing to scratch your skin to calm an itch and it another to seek to know the cause of the itch. I think most times we are merely scratching the skin because we have believed we know enough. Cultural funding should seek to know the cause of the itch by using those with the experience of the itch.”

‘Queen Helina, give us a book’

By Tsion Aklilu

Queen Helina is like the other donkey’s that carry a load or pull a carriage. But there is some thing extraordinary about Helina; rather than pulling or bearing an encrusted loads, she is elected to lead her two fellow donkeys which pull the wagon of wisdom.
In Awassa, more than 600 kinds wait for the Queen to pay them a visit. It is the call of wisdom for the kids, books and readings are offered for the neighborhood children by the mobile library, Kids shout “Queen Helina, give us a book!”
More than 2,000 books rotate in the keble’s of Awassa with the help of Helina and her associates’. The arrogant Queen dressed in red with a matching crown is in the forefront to bring books of wisdom and to serve the thirsty children. The mobile library is where the kids check out children books or lie on the dusty ground to read-just for the day.
Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation (EBCEF) started the mobile library project in 2005, making then many children beneficiary of the offer. Ato Yohannes Gebregiorgis founded the EBCEF institution four year ago. He had once said, “The goal of the organization is promoting reading and literacy in Ethiopia.” It was a recent phenomenon that EBCEF celebrated ‘World Children’s Book Day’ for the fourth time on April 1, 2007 lasting for seven days.
The organization is working on different projects for the public good with an optimistic approach. Tent libraries in Dato, which currently is not functioning because of different problems in the area, and Shola Children’s Library in Addis are some of EBCEF’s generous deed to promote literacy. Besides providing books, the organization is devoting its goodwill in giving language, theater, and dance classes for those who use the library frequently and effectively.
Selam Negusae is the general manager of Shola Library. She gives a vast explanation and tour of the library about the projects of the organization. “We stand to promote reading and literacy. Besides building model libraries for schools and for rural areas, we also try our best publishing children’s book in local language.”
Shola is located around Temenja Yage. Every Saturday the library become a swarm for kids of every age under 18. Spent their Saturday watching movies, singing songs, discussing books, and taking shower or may be making their hair at the library. “About 40 kids are beneficiaries of our sanitation program. They come here every Saturday and take a shower, wash their cloths and give them a lesson about their cleanness with the aid of volunteer nurses and medical expertise.”
Since establishment, EBCEF has been celebrating world children’s book day every year.
Best readers also receive their praise on the end of the celebration week, the kids are accustomed to this so they compute to be the winner of the next year.
Queen Helina serves her book clients eight hours a day and four days a week with patience. Mobile libraries have been serving for the last 100 years internationally. Carriages, vehicles with extended wagons and so on are still are the favored transporters.
Helina might be just a donkey, but beyond that she brings hope to hundreds or more children who enthusiastic always wait her emergence.
In Addis excluding the dedicated and school libraries, there are about 83 others. The Addis Ababa Culture and Advertisement Bureau organizes and supports libraries, which are under the sub cities. According to Addis Ababa Municipality, each sub city has one big public library with other numbers of kebele level public libraries. Interested bodies might donate the books but most are acquire by the state; the libraries have between 150 to 20,000 books.

Africa  2000
Chad

Capital’s special page devoted to lending the new Ethiopian millennium an African perspective.

A huge African bearhug to the 210 readers who e-mailed, phoned in or posted responses to the Africa 2000 Readership Survey!
We are pleased to note from the survey that Africa 2000 has been warmly received by  Capital readers. Among the seven survey questions, by far our favorite and most significant were your special suggestions. We have listed 5 of the most enlightened and promise to include them in succeeding issues.

Facts and Figures
Location - Central North Africa, Sudan on East,Libya on North, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger on West, C.A.R on South.
Area - 1,284,000 sq km , African Ranking =5
Topography - Forested Savannah, steppe, desert in S. Sahara to north, marshland
Population - 9,445,912
Distribution -  24.9 % urban
Principal Ethnic Groups – Nearly 200, largest are Arabs in north and Sara in South
Principal Languages – French, Arabic (Both official), Sara, over 130 others
Principal Religions - Muslim 51%, Christian 35 %, animist 7%, others 7%
Capital City – N’ Djamena, 900,000
Major Cities - Abeche
Government Type – Republic
Head of State – President Idriss Deby, since 1990
Head of government – Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji, since 2005
Literacy – 25.7%
Life Expectancy – 45.9 male, 49.2 female
Aids Rate – 3.5%
Currency – CFA Franc (XAF) = 512.27= 1USD
Economy- Oi1, cotton, textiles, rice, meat packing, beer, cigarettes       
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -14.8 bln USD
Per Capita GDP - 1500 USD
Economic Growth Rate - 6%
Electricity Production -90 mln kwh
Vehicles -21,000 units
Airports – 7
Telephones – 13,000
Radios – 23 per 1000
TV sets –1 per 1,000
Daily Newspaper Circulation - 0.2. per 1000
Internet – 60,000 users

Facts and figures are the latest available at time of publication and may not necessarily be the most    accurate.

Chad and Ethiopia share some similarities. Both countries are large, land locked and of almost equal size. They are also among the poorest nations among the 50 least Developed countries (LDC), with Chad being one of the few countries with a lower  level of development than Ethiopia.
Chad is in the center of the environmental disaster zone stretching from the northern Sudan, Niger and Mali to Mauritania. This is the Sahel belt which has been creeping southwards inexorably as the Sahara expands southwards. Chad has been hit by successive droughts which have resulted in wide scale food insecurity.
The area now known as Chad was the site of successive African Kingdoms and later Arab rules who depended on the slave trade.
These sad events have affect relations between the north and the south ever since. The slave trade was abandoned after France took control in 1898.
Conflicts continued on during and after French rule which ended in 1960. Northern rebels routinely rise up against the Christian, animist and French supported south. Numerous accords, pacts and ceasefires have failed to take hold. Intra-Chadian violence lessened some what but Chad is being destabilized  by the genocidical policies of the Janjaweed –an Arab militia set up funded and co-ordinated in Sudan. Darfur borders on Chad and many of its people have tribal links inside Chad. The country can ill afford the estimated 1,000,000 Darfuri refugees – even with the expected windfall form newly discovered oil in the south.
Chadian political stability has been interfered with by not only Sudan  but at various times by a Libya which had laid claim to the uranium rich Aouzou strip. This claim was thrown out by the world court in 1984.
An oil preline snakes south wards from the Chadian desert and through lush Cameroon and the Atlantic –securing much needed export income for the landlocked country.

Kalass is lead by Chadian guitar player and composer, Ganga Clamoungou. Their sound is influenced by contemporary African and Caribbean rhythms as well as the rich funk, R & B and jazz traditions of America. Instrumentally unconventional, Kalass includes the steel drum and African balafon in an otherwise electric band.
Kalass is comfortable in clubs as well as private parties, conferences, fairs, festivals and wedding receptions. They can easily tailor the menu to suit the tone of your event. In addition to original material, they can include reggae, Afro-Caribbean and R & B standards.
Kalass can perform as a duo up to a sextet. Instrumentation can include guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, balafon, steel drum and percussion.
"Kalass brought our party to life after a long day of meetings. We hired them to get people dancing and laughing, and they delivered. A fantastic band with multi-cultural influences and hypnotizing rhythms from Africa, Brazil, Spain, and Jamaica, Kalass kicked our party into high gear."

7.    Your Special Suggestions
Maps should have more detail
Africa 2000 should be in color
A short interview with the respective ambassadors would be interesting
Please add language pointers such as greetings and solutions.
Information and news about A.U events.