Godfrey Mwampembwa, is a renowned political cartoonist. Originally from Tanzania, Gado has lived and worked as an editorial cartoonist in Kenya for many years, and currently works for The East African Standard in Nairobi. His cartoons have also been published in Daily Nation (Kenya), Le Monde and Courrier International (France), Deutsc he Welle (Germany), and The Guardian (UK) among others. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Buni Media, an independent multi-media company based in Nairobi, where he produces the weekly satirical puppet show, The XYZ SHOW. Gado is a recipient of many awards including the Kenya National Human Rights Commission Award in Journalism in 2005 and 2007 and the prestigious Cartoon for Peace 2016 International Editorial Cartoon award. In 2011 Gado was among 12 extraordinary leaders to receive a Visionaries Award from Ford Foundation for their innovative efforts on the frontlines of key social issues. In 2014, Gado was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Africa by the New African.

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham. In addition to numerous book chapters, he is the author of Democracy in Africa: Successes, failures and the struggle for political reform (CUP, 2015) and over twenty journal articles including “Rethinking the ‘presidentialism debate’: Conceptualizing coalitional politics in cross-regional perspective” (Democratization, 2014), which won the inaugural GIGA prize for the best article published in Comparative Area Studies. Professor Cheeseman is also the editor of the collections Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya Since 1950 (2010), The Handbook of African Politics (2013), and African Politics: Major Works (2016), and two special issues of the Journal of Eastern African Studies on the Kenyan elections of 2007 and 2013. As well as being the former editor of the journal African Affairs, the #1 ranked journal in Area Studies, Professor Cheeseman is the founding editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics, the Oxford Dictionary of African Politics, and the co-editor of the Handbook of Kenyan Politics (forthcoming). These days, he spends much of his time writing about contemporary events in Africa in a bi-weekly column for Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Chip Duncan, protagonist Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, photojournalist/producer Patrick Muiruri and photojournalist/producer Salim Amin. Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.

The Sound Man tells the story of Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, a 62-year-old professional soundman who has lived in Nairobi’s Kibera slum since he was born. For the past 35 years, Abdul has worked side-by-side with the best photojournalists from Kenya, recording sound for news reports featuring crisis, war, famine and genocide.

The Sound Man uses extraordinary archival footage from Nairobi-based production company Camerapix to tell Abdul‘s gripping story – a story that explores the risks to frontline journalists and includes coverage of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, the civil war in Sudan, the revolution in Ethiopia and post-election tribal conflicts in Kenya.

Abdul was also an eyewitness to the genocide in Rwanda, having spent spent weeks working from the so-called “Hotel Rwanda”, and his firsthand recollection of the genocide provides extraordinary insight into the human condition.

The Sound Man was written, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist Chip Duncan.

Director/Producer: Chip Duncan
Year: 2015
Runtime: 27′
www.duncanentertainment.com/soundman.php

By Nicole Hunt

All eyes will be on newly-elected French President François Hollande and the euro zone this week, kicking off with a meeting of euro group finance ministers in Brussels on Monday ahead of a wider ECOFIN meeting on Tuesday. Hollande has previously talked about renegotiating the EU stability treaty, but with his government not quite officially in office yet, the mood at the meetings is likely to be somewhat uncertain.

Gulf leaders gather in Riyadh for the annual Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Monday, with Syria and Iran likely to feature prominently on the agenda. The leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also expected to discuss proposals for a political federation that would see the group share foreign and defence policies, according to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal.

In Vienna, Iran begins two days of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The talks follow IAEA visits to Iran in January and February this year, and come ahead of the resumption of P5+1 discussions in Baghdad on 23 May.

Tuesday is the big day! Hollande is sworn in as President at the Elysée Palace in Paris in the morning, and one of his first orders of business will be to fly to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Meanwhile, France’s national statistics institute releases preliminary figures for quarterly growth, job creation and labour activity, which will give the new president a better idea of the current state of the economy. On top of that, Greek, German and euro zone first quarter GDP figures are also out.

If anyone doesn’t feel like discussing European economic prospects, they might be interested to know that Germany’s other favourite subject is also in the news, as the Kiev Court of Appeal holds a hearing for jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of abuse of power in October; she also faces a separate trial for embezzlement, which resumes in Kharkiv on 21 May. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, meanwhile, is expected to be in Moscow to attend an informal meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, hosted by new President Vladimir Putin.

In Nairobi, United Nations Development Programme administrator Helen Clark launches the first African Human Development Report, which focuses on food security on the continent.

Wednesday’s Hollande-story-of-the-day: the new President chairs his first cabinet meeting, at which he’s expected to announce a cut in his own salary, as well as those of his ministers. The cabinet won’t be the only ones earning less money in France, as Hollande is expected to work quickly to introduce one of his most popular election pledges: a 75% tax on earnings over €1 million.

Aside from that, there’s a lot happening in Dutch courts. The Assen District Court is due to rule on a petition filed by the public prosecutor to dissolve and ban the Martijn organisation, which lobbies for the social acceptance of sexual relationships between adults and children.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, former Bosnian Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic goes on trial facing 11 counts of criminal responsibility and superior criminal responsibility for genocide, complicity in genocide, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, inflicting terror upon civilians, cruel treatment, attacks on civilians and taking hostages.

Over at The Hague’s special trial chamber for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (which otherwise sits in Freetown), a sentencing hearing takes place for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was convicted of crimes against humanity on 26 April. Following submissions from both sides, Taylor will be sentenced on 30 May.

Thursday is looking relatively quiet, so far. The official Handover Ceremony for the Olympic Torch takes place at the Panatheanic Stadium in Athens, following an eight-day torch relay around Greece, with Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Princess Anne among those in attendance.

In Chicago, NATO spokesman James Appathurai is due to participate in a debate with Andy Thayer of the Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda. The debate is part of NATO’s efforts to ‘reach out’ and ‘exchange views’ with activists, who have planned a week of protest events ahead of the weekend summit.

The two-day G8 Summit begins at Camp David on Friday, with US President Barack Obama playing host. The meeting is Hollande’s big international debut, but one person he won’t be meeting there is Putin, who has opted to skip the summit and send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

Facebook is widely expected to launch its stock flotation on Friday, following a cross-country roadshow to drum up interest – which has been either weaker or stronger than expected, according to various sources. The company has been valued at up to $100 billion, and is reportedly making around $11 billion in shares available in its first offering.

The Queen is hosting a jubilee lunch for other sovereign monarchs, which normally wouldn’t be notable to anyone besides royal-watchers, but the potential guest list has come under scrutiny as of late. King Hamad of Bahrain is rumoured to be among the invitees, despite ongoing human rights and security issues in the country, which have been criticised by the Foreign Office.

The G8 Summit continues on Saturday, when we can expect the final communiqué to be released , but otherwise it’s looking like another quiet day. Baby Milk Action holds its annual Boycott Nestlé demonstration at the company’s Croydon headquarters, protesting against ‘aggressive’ and ‘unethical’ marketing of baby milk formula in developing countries.

Most of the G8 leaders will make their way from Camp David to Chicago on Sunday for another two days of meetings, this time to discuss NATO.  Since the G8 Summit was moved from Chicago, preventing any large protests from getting near the meeting, the biggest demonstrations are also scheduled for Sunday.

Three elections taking place on Sunday:  a presidential vote in the Dominican Republic, where Danilo Medina and Hipolito Meja are vying to replace Leonel Fernandez Reyna, who is stepping down; a runoff in the Serbian presidential election, which saw incumbent Boris Tadic narrowly beat his main challenger Tomislav Nikolic on 6 May; and the runoff votes for the municipal elections in Italy, following the first round of voting on 6-7 May.

Finally, Google’s annual top-secret Zeitgeist Conference takes place in London. According to a leaked schedule obtained by Forbes in April, speakers include former US President Bill Clinton, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Independent chairman Evgeny Lebedev, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, BBC’s Paul Mason, and, er, Annie Lennox and Arsène Wenger.

Over the course of the last three days I have been to five hospitals. Given the local and international media coverage of Mexico’s current flu outbreak, I was expecting to find lines of people, all of them coughing into their government-issued face masks, winding around the block. Not so. Read more on Deborah’s Mexico City blog.

Nairobi based Rob Crilly continues to wrestle with mortality statistics as he battles his way towards a November deadline for his first book on Darfur,

Why does any of this matter? A lot of people have died in Darfur so why get bogged down in numbers? Well, using the wrong number hands Khartoum another excuse to trot out its own underestimate and using inflated figures can push us towards the wrong solutions – overinflated numbers tending to increase the urgency of no fly zones and so on. Still, at least we can agree on the area of Darfur… about the same size as Turkmenistan, right? Read more on Rob’s blog from Kenya.

Meanwhile, please welcome the latest addition to the Frontline blogging stable, the London and Damascus based Sasa, who will be reporting on and from the Syrian capital,

American culture is everywhere in Damascus. This is not North Korea. Walk down any Syrian street and it won’t be long before you come across a shop filled from floor to ceiling with American DVDs – films, documentaries and TV series, all subtitled, all costing pennies, and many available here before they come out in the States.  Read more on Sasa’s Syria blog.

These are just three of the highlights from the blogs this past week. We’re adding new bloggers all the time; all journalists, all working in interesting places and all talking about interesting things, so please come and check them out. If you use the popular microblogging tool Twitter, here’s a list of Frontline bloggers who are active on Twitter. For all the latest news from the Frontline Club, the world of foreign correspondents, war reporters, life on the frontline and the job of journalism. Follow @frontlineblog on Twitter.

It is the most talked about book in Kenya – an explosive account exposing the greed and tribalism at the heart of President Mwai Kibaki’s government. it’s also the least read.

It’s all about self-censorship as Rice explained, and as Michela Wrong told me,

"It’s not banned, but the booksellers are scared of displaying it for fear of libel suits or worse…. loads of Kenyans are taking copies in from Dar Es Salaam, Joburg, and Kampala where the bookshops are doing a roaring trade."

While Wrong is pleased her book is having a real impact, she’s not happy about the pirating of it. Her publisher FOURTH ESTATE is trying to combat this by selling an e-book on the Harper Collins website for much less than the books’ retail price.

As for John Githongo, no one seems to know exactly what he’s up to but many here in Nairobi assume that he’s travelling around Kenya laying the political groundwork for a run for office. But maybe not. One thing for certain: he still needs security as was in evidence at a recent taping of a television programme.

If journalists or aspiring journalists out there want a little inspiration, they should look to Nairobi where reporters are on the streets challenging a newly passed communications bill.

The adjective used here in all the papers is “draconian” as in “draconian bill”because it gives the government the power to raid newsrooms and seize, that’s right, seize broadcasting equipment during a national emergency in the interests of “public safety and tranquility.”

It also says that the government can dictate what programmes the broadcasters should air. Not that this bill got overwhelming support. A gang of 30 MPs qualified as a quorum out of national assembly of 222 members and rammed this bill through.

Best guess here is that President Kibaki won’t sign it because the media all hate it, the polls show something like 90% opposition, and it’s not a good time to be projecting this image of Kenya to a world that sees this place as the land of Barack Obama.

Yet the reporters are taking no chances. They were on the streets last week to protest. The police used tear gas against them, and arrested six.

Back on the streets earlier today, several reporters told us that they weren’t going to protest again today but said it was time that their media owners got into the struggle and joined them on the streets.

They announced a joint march with “civil society” next Monday unless the President rejects the bill. These aren’t aggregators or websites in action: these are brave journalists not only reporting the story but putting themselves on the line on the streets of Nairobi.

Slideshow above of the Independence Day protests in Nairobi from mentalacrobatics’.

Journalist colleagues counsel caution; few travel to Somalia themselves these days, with a few notable exceptions (David Axe, Jeffrey Gettleman, and Scott Johnson come to mind). Even on paper, though, Somalia should have enough to commend attention – a home-grown insurgency problem entwined with a proxy conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea; food and water shortages to such a level that a UN head said last week Somalia was returning to a humanitarian crisis of a similar level to that of the 1990s; a massive IDP problem (particularly in and around Mogadishu itself from which over 70,000 have fled so far this year alone); all this coupled with general and pervasive insecurity…
So it’s goodbye to Nairobi for now. Time to put myself into the care of Daallo Airlines.

I leave you with the words of Kapuscinski, a legend amongst correspondents in Africa, musing on how Herodotus was the prototype foreign correspondent:

“But how could Herodotus, a Greek, known what the faraway Persians or Phoenicians are saying, or the inhabitants of Egypt or Libya? It was because he traveled to where they were, asked, observed, and collected his information from what he himself saw and what others told him. His first act, therefore, was the journey. But is that not the case for all reporters? Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the reporter feel like himself, at home.”