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| Newsletter
No.71 |
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March 2005
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"Sudan, the Current Situation and the Future"
Our room at the Nippon Press Club on February 22, was nearly a "full house" for our always popular AmbassadorÕs Lecture Series, with almost sixty persons in the audience. The speaker was Sudanese Ambassador, HE Musa M. OMER Saeed. An expert on Japan, Ambassador Musa is a graduate of Waseda University and an architect. Twice Ambassador to Japan, he has had a unique career and speaks excellent English and even better Japanese.
The largest country in Africa, SudanÕs land area is seven times that of Japan, more the size of a continent than a country, yet with a population of barely 37 million people. The majority of the land is flat and arable, with food self-sufficiency as high as 99%. There is plenty of water, and full-scale production of petroleum, while rich mineral resources remain as yet untapped. With over 100 million domestic livestock, it has a wealth of animal life and the potential to become AfricaÕs Ôbread basketÕ in the future. Despite a history that goes back 9,000 years, the country nonetheless lags behind in infrastructure due to its tragic past under British and Egyptian rulers, who instituted a divide-and-rule policy, resulting in all sorts of unsettled disputes among small tribal groupings. For example, transportation and distribution networks are undeveloped, so that agricultural crops and meat can be consumed only where they are produced. In the 1990Õs UN economic sanctions affected the domestic economy severely, but the Sudanese are working to rebuild and to shift from a planned economy to a market economy with the result that growth has shown double-digit increases.
Responding to the myriad questions from the audience, the Ambassador explained several issues. Sudan has more than twelve times the number of pyramids found in Egypt. They are not the monumental graves of the powerful, however, but rather structures for worship, rather like JapanÕs village shrines to local deities. The White Nile, arising from Lake Victoria, is an opaque, whitish river flowing slowly across the plain, while the Blue Nile, which has its source in Ethiopia, is blue, due to its fast current. The name "Sudan" originally meant "land of the black man" and once referred to the whole of central Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. The Darfur conflict is not one of Arabism against Africa as is often said but rather a conflict of interests of the farmers and the nomads. In Sudan, women have superior rights to men in many ways, working as teachers and nurses for the nomadic peoples so that children can study as they travel. Expectations of ODA from Japan are high. During the Q & A session, the Ambassador frequently broke into Japanese, to the delight of the audience.
English Club
English Club led by Mr Toshiyuki Inoue took place on February 15 at the Nikkei Main Building on the theme "Friendly Debate." Following a video clip from a 1999 TV Tokyo presentation of the ESUJ University Debate competition also from a debate held at New York's Columbia University, debate veterans Inoue-sensei and Koji Nouchi gave a model debate on the motion, "This House believes that debate instruction is necessary for elementary school." Using a shorter-than-usual speech format, they had to compress the main points of their speeches, resulting in an intense debate. The audience was asked to judge the debate based not on what their own opinion of the motion was but rather which side presented its case most persuasively. Next, it was the audience's turn to debate with each other, choosing as the motion either "MacDonald's should be popular in the world", or "English should be taught in elementary school". Even first-timers entered the fray fearlessly, appealing their case until time was almost up.
The next meeting of English club will take place
on Tuesday, March 15, from 6:30 to 8:30, at the Nikkei
Main Building, 11th floor conference room B. We
look forward to having as our guest speaker the Regional
General Manager of Air India, Ms. Geetha Menon.
Coming Events
April English Club (change of venue)
@Japan National Press Club (9th Floor, Large Conference Room)
April 19 (Tues.) ONLY. Please donÕt forget this
one-time change of venue.
AmbassadorÕs Lecture Series No. 8: Turkish Ambassador
April 26 (Tuesday) 6:30-8:30pm
@Kasumi Kaikan (Kasumigaseki Building, 34th Floor)
May Evening Gala 2005
May 24 (Tuesday) 6:30-8:30 @Meiji Kinenkan, Suehiro
Room
ESUJ Debate 2005 (AdultsÕ Debate Competition)
June 11 (Saturday, all day) @Nikkei Main Building
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For
further informaiton contact!
E-MAIL:esuj@esuj.gr.jp
Fujikage-Building
9th Floor, Motoakasaka 1-1-5
MInato-ku, Tokyo 107-0051
TEL: 03-3423-0970 FAX: 03-3423-0971
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