This year marks the 50th anniversary of the “Year of Africa,” when 16 African countries successfully achieved independence from their European colonizers.

Since then, the graduates of the 1960 decolonization movement have gone on to do some great—and some not-so-great—things. Below we highlight five of these countries and their current statuses.

SOMALIA
Most Depressing
This Horn of Africa country has not had a functioning government since 1991 and instead is run by warlords and terrorists. One of these groups, al-Shabab, maintains connections with al- Qaeda, making Somalia a place of interest in the United States’ War on Terror. Oxfam International has called Somalia Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis and no wonder: About three million of its residents depend on foreign food aid.

CONGO (KINSHASA)
Most Influential (but not in a good way)
Africa is in the grips of its own world war and this central African state was at the middle of it. For five years (from 1998-2003), Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe had been fighting against Uganda and Rwanda over the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its mineral wealth. Over 500,000 have been driven from their homes by soldiers, and about 5.5 million have died from war-related causes since 1998.

GABON
Most Stable (though not necessarily for the right reason)
Since it’s home to 40 ethnic groups, one might reasonably expect this West African state to have experienced some conflicts. But no, Gabon is stable and, thanks to oil reserves, relatively prosperous. But while stable, the country is anything but democratic: there have only been two presidential administrations since independence, a family dynasty of one leader followed by his son.

NIGERIA
Most Uncertain
This African powerhouse is both the diplomatic centre of West Africa and the continent’s leading oil producer. It’s also internationally recognized for its freedom of the press. However, economic inequality brought about by unequal access to the fruits of oil production is bringing Nigeria to the brink of division along ethnic lines. A corruption-prone government doesn’t help matters.

BENIN
Most Hopeful
First the bad news: Benin has the alarming title of the least developed country out of the 16 who gained independence in 1960. But on the positive side, this small West African nation has a fairly robust civil society and, unlike Gabon, boasts a number of established political parties the people can choose from.

The bill hasn’t seen as much press coverage as you might expect, but it has spawned some headlines I hope never to see again. The BBC wins the prize for most alarming, with “Should homosexuals be executed?” as if the prospect was merely thought-provoking and ripe for discussion.

The headline, from a post on the BBC website, actually turns out to be part of a show broadcast on the BBC World Service called Have Your Say. The episode—which aired on Wednesday and is still available online)—makes for powerful listening. A woman calls in from Zambia to say she can’t understand how a female can look at another female in a sexual way. When the host presses her on whether she would actually support the death penalty for doing so, she says, “Being executed for being something sinful, it’s okay.” From her tone of voice as she utters those final two words you could easily imagine she was talking about a vegetable she doesn’t like, but that she’d be willing to eat if it ended up on her plate.

The debate over this bill should be a warning to every casual homophobe the world over: this is where revulsion for your fellow man leads you. This is what happens when communities let their intolerance go unchecked, when governments refuse to step in to defend the rights of minorities. And let’s be clear: this bill would government-stamp the elimination of a group of people based on a particular attribute. We have a word for that: it’s genocide.

The bill’s sponsors get around the word by claiming that homosexuality is chosen rather than innate, that it is something you do rather than something you are. But I think it’s telling that the caller above says “for being something sinful.” I think that’s more than a slip of the tongue. Homophobes often claim that homosexuality is something you can “recruit” another person into, or that it’s something you can choose to indulge or ignore, but I think a lot of that genuine revulsion towards queer people has its roots in the opposite belief.

The death penalty is something you advocate for a person whom you believe cannot be saved. The kind of hatred that inspires a person to call a radio show and say, “Gay people don’t deserve to live” does not come from the mere belief that a single act of same-sex intimacy is immoral. It comes from a belief that committing that act transforms you into something irredeemably other and unfit for society.

The ex-gay ministries whose efforts in Uganda gave rise to this bill have denounced it because they believe that gay people can be saved. But the bill is only the ministries’ basic premise taken to its logical conclusion. If you preach that being gay is grievously sinful, but you fail to convince your listeners that rehabilitation is effective, or if those “rehabilitation” attempts fail, it’s not hard to see how we end up here. Several people who call into the show to support the bill justify their position by claiming that that being gay is not a necessary attribute. The ex-gay movement needs to take their share of the responsibility for that.

I try not to get too involved in the question of whether queerness is innate, because in asking it we generally assume that being gay is abnormal. But it clearly matters in this case. A reaction as extreme as the death penalty speaks to a belief on the part of its advocates that gay people are fundamentally unlike them, that they are a species apart. That is what makes it genocide. And all we can hope for at this point is that, when the bill is debated in the Ugandan parliament tomorrow, the members recognize it as such.

Cate Simpson is a freelance journalist and the web and reviews editor for Shameless magazine. She lives in Toronto.

Until 1999, Nigeria was a land of military rule, repression, and instability. Helon Habila’s novel, Waiting for an Angel, evokes the mental and social climate of the country during the military’s last few years of power in the late 90s.

Matching the chaos that rapid changes of power — mainly by military coups — must have created, the novel avoids taking a more conventional approach to its story. The narrative is non-linear, practically beginning at the end. And the point of view switches from that of one character to another and to an omniscient observer.

This fusion of the political and the personal — the sense that what we are and how we see our world is informed by our social and political situation — is expressed a little more explicitly in a scene where Lomba, a reporter who would become a political prisoner because he attended a demonstration, tells his editor that he does not want to write about politics — that is interested only in the arts. His editor reminds him that “In this country the very air we breathe is politics.” Later, the same editor reminds Lomba of the duty free and informed people have in times when the voices of others are being unjustly silenced: “You see, every oppressor knows that wherever one word is joined to another word to form a sentence, there’ll be revolt. That is our work, the media: to refuse to be silenced, to encourage legitimate criticism wherever we find it. Do you understand now?”

The novel convincingly expresses the longing for self-expression held by writers and other intellectuals in Nigeria during the period and never fails to remind us that their greatest responsibility is to act as tribunes, speaking in the name of the disposed and the disenfranchised.

In North America, text-messaging has a reputation for being frivolous, used to spread teenaged rumours, or the recent mania over “sexting.” But in developing countries like Africa, cell phones and text messages are the primary means of communication. And, not just for gossip.

Information and communication for development or ICT4D, isn’t just another fancy development acronym. Instead, it encompasses a booming cell phone industry which can be geared towards inclusive, empowering and cost-efficient development.

Frontline SMS is one of many ingenious programs that are helping non-governmental organizations connect with rural communities on a mass-scale. Basically, you plug your cell phone into a computer, power up the software, enter your recipients’ phone numbers and, with one click of the mouse, send out hundreds of text messages to the most rural of places. Returning text messages can be organized into databases like Ushahidi’s, essentially an abridged Google Map that visually traces events like Kenya’s post-election riots.

While Frontline SMS might seem basic—at least from the tech-saturated Western perspective—this quality makes it accessible and flexible. The human rights community was the first to put the software to test in 2005. Immediately successful, Frontline SMS first helped advocacy organizations like Kubatana track communities being abused by Mugabe’s henchmen. It was also used by the Nigerian Election Reporting Project to track voting in areas deemed too dangerous for election observers.

Over the past year, the software has become popular in other sectors. Here in Kenya, Frontline SMS is now being used in health and agriculture. Nelson Ojango, a young veterinary working with the Kenya Livestock Breeders Organization, uses the software to send out mass text messages to breeders across the country. They send text messages back detailing their current stock and breeding capacities. Health Action International‘s offices in Nairobi use the software to track medicine availabilities in rural clinics across four different African countries.

While computer access and skills are still limited in developing countries, Ken Banks, the creator of Frontline SMS, is developing a version that will run on a USB stick. Stroll into any Internet café and within a few minutes you’ve reached hundreds of people, hundreds of miles away.

Around the world, it’s looking like the revolution will be texted. As we see in the streets of Tehran, mobile phone technology, and software like Frontline SMS, have the power to threaten authoritarian governments, improve health and ensure fair elections.

Like all technologies, this one has its darker uses, too. While used to track violence in Kenya post-election, text messaging was also used to spread ethnic hate. Every communication technology has the means of spreading information—for both good and evil.