Pambazuka News 455: Climate change and Africa's natural resources
Pambazuka News 455: Climate change and Africa's natural resources
Twenty-seven civil society groups, among them, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) rose from a brain-storming session in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, with a call on governments in Africa must initiate, implement and sustain policies that guarantee the protection of small scale farmers and provide them subsidies and needed inputs to ensure increased food production and general food sovereignty
When in 2008 the government of Madagascar agreed a deal with Korean Daewoo Logistics for the company to access 1.3 million hectares of agricultural land to grow maize and palm oil for export, protests, political crisis and ultimately the fall of the government and the cancellation of the deal followed. Madagascar’s citizens were not consulted.
It is projected that if the economy does not improve within the next two years, more than half a million mineworkers in the region will lose their jobs. It is estimated that more than 25% of mineworkers are HIV positive. Only two countries reviewed in the study have sufficient reserves to deal with a long-term recession.
The conference on contractual teachers, called Bamako +5, ended in the Malian capital, Bamako, with an appeal to African governments to mobilize more resources to ensure a better quality of their education systems and the training of contractual teachersThe conference in a declaration called on African governments to initiate political dialogue between stakeholders of their educational systems in order to find ways and means to build leadership in schools. They should also allocate at least 20% of their national budgets to education.
In a statement published in a local newspaper, Oyia, the Libyan general people's committee of justice urged citizens deprived of their freedom by security agencies or those who have been proved innocent after being jailed, to fill the reconciliation application forms. The invitation is also meant for Libyan men who have been arrested without trial and those who have been released and wish to participate in the national reconciliation process.
Finding 'an African solution to an African problem', the African Union (AU) has endorsed the establishment of a hybrid court to try all crimes committed in the Darfur crisis. The decision was reached by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), which met at the level of heads of state and government in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja Thursday to consider the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki Panel on the Darfur crisis.
Diplomats from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are mediating in the talks, the latest in a series the regional group has brokered to find a durable solution to Zimbabwe's long-running political instability. Tsvangirai, accusing Mugabe of violating a power-sharing agreement they signed last year, partially pulled out from government some two weeks ago, sparking the latest political crisis.
The Constitutional Court in Tunisia has validated the results of Sunday's presidential election, won by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali with more than 86.62% of the votes, official sources said. The 73-year-old Ben Ali, who was the candidate of the ruling party in power for 22 years, beat three opposition candidates to win his fifth, consecutive five-year term, which should be his last, since the constitution prescribes 75 years as the maximum age for presidential candidates.
Some 14,955 Mauritanian refugees, consisting of 3,888 families, have been repatriated from Senegal to Mauritania since the end of January 2008, under a tripartite agreement signed in November 2007 by both countries and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
An estimated 60,000 hungry refugees in the western Uganda settlement of Nakivale have staged a strike complaining of lack of food supplies for three months leading to deaths of mainly children.
The detained Campaign Manager of Gambia's main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), Femi Peters, appeared before Banjul Magistrates' Court charged with "organising an unlawful assembly". According to sources, Mr. Peters refused to enter into a plea when the charges were read out to him in court on Monday in the absence of a lawyer.
Germany has granted 23 million euros to the Organization coordinating the fight against Endemics in Central Africa (OCEAC) as part of its project for the fight against HIV/AIDS in Central Africa. An agreement to this effect signed Monday in Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, by a representative of the German Development Bank (KFW), Hubert Eisele, and the Secretary-General of OCEAC, Dr. Jean Jacques Moka.
United Nations torture expert Manfred Nowak said on Thursday he would recommend that the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) take action against Zimbabwe after his expulsion from the country. Zimbabwean officials denied him entry and forced him to board a South Africa-bound plane on Thursday after he was detained by security officials on arrival overnight.
As tensions worsen in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change says an armed gang tried to abduct its security administrator in central Harare on Tuesday. Zimbabwe’s unity government is on the verge of disintegration after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai pulled his ministers out of cabinet meetings.
An investigation by the government in Liberia has concluded that the Firestone Rubber Plantation Company has polluted local water sources. The three-month investigation found that a plant south-east of the capital Monrovia was responsible for high levels of orthophosphate in creeks.
Kenya is to carry out a census of its gay population in an effort to bolster the fight against HIV/Aids - despite homosexuality being against the law. Nicholas Muraguri, head of Kenya's Aids prevention programme Nascop, told the BBC it was vital that the government reached out to the gay community.
A Rwandan man convicted of war crimes has been jailed for life by a Canadian court, without the prospect of parole for 25 years. Desire Munyaneza, 42, was found guilty in May in the first court case brought under Canada's 2000 War Crimes Act.
A French appeals court has halted a lawsuit against three African leaders accused of embezzlement. Anti-corruption group Transparency International had accused the leaders of using African public funds to buy luxury homes and cars in France.
An in-depth investigation into the September 28, 2009 killings and rapes at a peaceful rally in Conakry, Guinea, has uncovered new evidence that the massacre and widespread sexual violence were organized and were committed largely by the elite Presidential Guard, commonly known as the “red berets,” Human Rights Watch has said.
What are the key strategies for closing the gender gap in agricultural production? This paper from the International Food Policy Research Institute reviews attempts to increase poor female farmers’ access to, and control of, productive resources in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
By hosting the next eLearning Africa, Zambia is confirming its commitment to placing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at the heart of its development projects and is highlighting the different plans and programmes in progress that incorporate ICT as an essential development factor.
Kenyan teenagers are having sex. And they appear to have no clue how to go about it. A report by the Nairobi-based Centre for the Study of Adolescents (CSA) reports that 40 percent of girls and 50 percent of boys reported having had sex before their 19th birthday, a significant minority reported having sex with more than one partner in the previous six months.
Women's football is being used in Zimbabwe to confront the stigma associated with HIV and Aids. A total of 16 women's teams now take part in competitions for players who have openly declared that they are HIV positive. But despite the courage of the women involved, there has been much resistance.
Flash floods caused by four days of torrential rains have displaced more than 15,000 people in the southwestern town of El-Waq near the Kenyan border and submerged most homes and businesses, say locals.
Senegal has admitted that it gave a "money gift" to an International Monetary Fund official earlier this month at the end of his three-year posting, citing an African tradition of offering goodbye presents. The gift, which the IMF said amounted to 100,000 euros and $50,000, was returned within days by IMF representative Alex Segura, who had been an outspoken critic of the West African nation's budget process during his posting.
ARTICLE 19 joins with the Africa Forum for Media Development, the African Media Initiative, the Global Forum for Media Development, the International Federation of Journalists and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in calling for stronger dedicated European Union support to media freedom in Africa.
The Security Council has extended the sanctions imposed on Côte d’Ivoire, warning that the situation in the divided West African nation continues to pose a threat to international peace and security for the region. In a unanimously adopted resolution, the 15-member Council voted to maintain for another year an arms embargo, restrictions for certain individuals on travel and financial movements, and the ban on any State importing rough diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire.
The total number of people forced from their homes in the past six months by persistent violent conflict in Central and Eastern Africa has topped 1 million, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. According to the data compiled by OCHA’s regional office, the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the region has now passed the 10 million mark.
Guinean youths have embarked on a hunger strike exactly one month after the massacre to demand justice and call for a political dialogue. The youths say the hunger strike will last for five days and they hope to draw their leaders' attention to engage in dialogue, and prevent any further violence.
The SADC Troika on Defence, Security and Politics began its fact finding mission in Harare on Thursday in an effort to narrow the differences between Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe. The ministerial mission is being led by Oldemiro Baloi, the Mozambican Foreign Affairs Minister, Zambia deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Fashion Phiri and Lutho Dhlamini from Swaziland.
India has offered Democratic Republic of Congo $263 million in loans to build hydroelectric plants and repair battered infrastructure in the war-ravaged central African nation, Congo's foreign minister said on Friday.
Mozambican President Armando Guebuza appeared headed for a resounding victory in an election on Thursday that would also see his ruling Frelimo party winning parliamentary and provincial polls. Partial results showed Guebuza, seen as welcoming of greater foreign investment, taking a commanding lead over his rivals, longtime opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama, and the head of a new party, Daviz Simango.
In what has been described as the final death of state sponsored AIDS denialism, President Jacob Zuma has delivered a historic speech in the National Council of Provinces acknowledging that the country was not winning the war against the disease and that extraordinary measures were needed.
Tanzania Telecommunication Company Ltd customers will from this month enjoy a 50 per cent cut in Internet charges, making Tanzania the first East African country to lower Internet charges. TTCL chief executive officer Said Amour Said, told The EastAfrican that the lowering of charges follows the firm's connecting to the Seacom submarine fibre optic cable.
The Institute for Human Security (IHS) will be hosting a multi-disciplinary and multi-genre colloquium on Cultures of Violence /War and Identity on the 3-4 November 2009. The title of the event this year is "Violent Cartographies: Mapping Colonial and Postcolonial Identities and Cultures of War"- a project that seeks to "unmap" the familiar world by raising questions and employing genres of expression that interrogate dominant ways of thinking about violence/ war , identities and the spaces of their occurrence.
A new report on Eritrea has been commissioned by the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. Contributions were also made by other NGOs, including Human Rights House Foundation. “The HR violations are extensive and systematic, and the oppression by the authorities is total”, says the president of the Oslo Center, Kjell Magne Bondevik.
Measures to reduce loss to follow-up in antiretroviral treatment programmes such as abolishing user fees, paying transportation costs, providing meals and improving staff training would be cost-effective even if they prevented less than half of patients from failing to return to the clinic, according to projections based on data from Côte d’Ivoire.
Nurses in Rwanda and Lesotho are successfully prescribing antiretroviral drugs and managing HIV treatment, two studies published this month show. Both Rwanda and Lesotho face a serious shortage of doctors, and in order to increase the capacity of the health system to treat people with HIV the World Health Organization recommends "task shifting"— the delegation of many medical tasks including ARV prescription and management to nurses and clinical officers.
Election observers from southern Africa have said Botswana’s elections were in conformity with regional standards and principles. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Election Observer Mission (SEOM) said the elections were conducted in compliance with the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections adopted by SADC Member States.
The appointment of Margaret Nasha as the first woman to occupy the post of Speaker of the National Assembly in Botswana signals another step towards gender equality in southern Africa. However, the low number of women who made it into Parliament in the recent elections is a setback in a region committed to reach 50 percent parity in decision-making by 2015, in six years time, following just one more election.
A recent round of talks has failed to achieve agreement between Morocco's unions and the government on several of organised labour's key demands. Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi began his annual "Social Dialogue" with leading Moroccan unions on Monday (October 26th) in Rabat.
Morocco is developing a new strategic framework to fight poverty, which will place top priority on addressing the vulnerabilities that lead families into destitution. "There was a need to bring all governmental and non-governmental initiatives together to fight poverty, given the necessity of coordinating all activities, both in terms of financial and human resources," said Minister of Social Development Nouzha Skelli, as her office unveiled the plan on October 22nd in Rabat.
Opposition parties made strong advances in legislative elections held on Sunday (October 25th), capturing an unprecedented 53 of Parliament's 214 seats. The ruling Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) of incumbent President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali obtained an expected majority, winning 161 seats, though only capturing 31% of the popular vote. Ben Ali himself was elected to his fifth five-year term with 89.62% of the votes in the presidential election held the same day.
To maintain sustained economic growth and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Sub-Saharan African countries have to invest up to US$ 50 billion annually in infrastructure, said Zemedeneh Negatu, the Managing Partner of Ernst & Young, LLP in Ethiopia. He made the comments at the Africa Investor “CEO Forum on Infrastructure, Energy and Clean Tech”, held at the Cape Town International Convention Center.
"Keep Your Chats Exactly That!" is a campaign by Women'sNet and Girls'Net that aims to empower young people in the use of the internet and cell phones. It looks at both strategies of prevention from harassment, bullying and violence, as well as strategies for using ICTs in affirmative ways to advocate for change on issues that concern them.
Concerns abound about a nine billion dollar Chinese investment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially around environmental consequences and transparency. And, on the Chinese side, investors complain not only about the lack of security in the DRC but about their own government not providing enough support.
More than half of Ugandan girls who enrol in grade one drop out before sitting for their primary school-leaving examinations. The fact that girls are dropping out between age 11 and 13 is being linked to the beginning of the menstruation cycle and its associated challenges.
The Ggaba landing site on Lake Victoria is the nearest wholesale fish market to the Ugandan capital, Kampala. More than 6,000 people live and work in this fishing community. The water looks green and dirty from the quay. It smells like - well, like fish, or an abandoned, stagnant water pond.
In recent weeks, the U.N. has bolstered a groundbreaking, but largely symbolic, resolution passed in 2000 that identified women's rights and roles during war. Recent public rapes in Guinea now pose a crucial test of their strength
On the eve of the climate change summit in Copenhagen this December, momentum for action still falls far short of that needed to avert catastrophe. Africa will suffer consequences out of all proportion to its contribution to global warming, which is primarily caused by greenhouse gas emissions from wealthy countries. But Africa can also make significant contributions to mitigating (i.e. limiting) climate change, by stopping tropical deforestation and ending gas flaring from oil production.
The IICD-supported Global Teenager Project (GTP) has launched a new virtual learning environment to support online classroom discussion on social issues with peers from all over the world. Founded in 1998, GTP offers collaborative global learning to over 10,000 students in 34 countries based on themes, or Learning Circles.
The last 400 of more than 200,000 Burundians who fled to Tanzania 37 years ago travelled home on Friday, ending one of the longest-running refugee sagas in the world, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday. The Burundians arrived in 1972, fleeing ethnic conflict at home. While many have returned under a U.N.-backed voluntary repatriation programme, some 29,000 were naturalised in Tanzania and 133,000 citizenship applications are still pending there.
Armed villagers have killed at least 47 policemen who were trying to intervene in ethnic clashes in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, reports say. A number of civilians were also killed in the violence which erupted in the village of Dongo in Equateur province early on Thursday, the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi said, citing local officials.
Arkadi Gaydamak, a Russian-born Israeli businessman and Pierre Falcone, his French associate, have been sentenced to six-year jail terms for organising the illegal trafficking of weapons to Angola.
Reporters Without Borders has noted the release from prison of Abdoulaye Tiémogo, editor of the independent weekly Le Canard déchaîné, after his sentence was reduced on appeal. The journalist, who is in poor health, had been held in custody since 1st August. He had been found guilty of “discrediting a judicial decision”.
Start local, then Africa, then the world. That’s the mantra app developers in Africa should be repeating to themselves as they build their game changing tools. That’s what Agosta Liko and his team at Verviant are doing with their new web and mobile payment platform: PesaPal.
Whatever else it is, information and communications technologies (ICTs) policy-making can often be symbolic, especially in poor countries. The vision is one of social upliftment, and a new golden age of possibilities brought on by technological roll-out. Sometimes these promises can feel like fantasy in contrast to the real spadework of laying cables, orbiting satellites, and securing billion-dollar investment deals that don’t exploit the poor.
The Ugandan Clergy have appealed to the government to scrape the death penalty in the Anti-homosexuality Bill 2009 currently being debated in parliament. The clergy said the government should rather opt life imprisonment. Earlier this month, the homosexual groups expressed rage over the tabling of the Anti-Homosexuality bill, saying it was in violation of their human rights.
Fifty-seven IFEX members and other rights organisations joined the Arab Network for Human Rights (ANHRI) to condemn the recent targeting of Moroccan journalists who have been hit with lawsuits, high fines and jail sentences, threatening media diversity. Orchestrated by the monarchy, newspapers have been shut down as the government ramps up its repression of independent journalism, report IFEX members.
Gibril Gottor, a reporter for Radio Kolenten, based in the Kambia district of northwestern Sierra Leone, was violently assaulted by a group of men on 10 October 2009 for allegedly "sabotaging" the government. The men are believed to be supporters of the ruling All People's Congress Party (APC).
In this week's emerging powers news roundup, Stephen Marks looks at preparations for the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation [FOCAC] ministerial meeting, the growing controversy over Chinese investments in Guinea and DRC, and criticism of China from the US for keeping its currency too low.
The International Budget Partnership has released “It's Our Money. Where's It Gone?”—a new documentary film on the work one of its partners, MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights), is doing to involve communities directly in monitoring the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya. The CDF allocates approximately one million dollars annually to each member of parliament to spend on development projects in his or her constituency but provides for no meaningful independent oversight. This is the story of ordinary Kenyans stepping in to do something about it.
Pambazuka News 454: Let us return to the source
Pambazuka News 454: Let us return to the source
More than 1,000 American and East African troops are to be deployed in northern Uganda next week as the United States carries out its biggest military exercise in Africa this year. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are each sending up to 150 soldiers to join 450 US military personnel in Kitgum for the October 16-25 exercise known as Natural Fire 10.
Barriers to migration should be reduced to enable migrants to play a positive role in both industrialised and developing countries, says a leading DFID-funded research group. The findings, produced by the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC), are published in a research brief launched in advance of the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2009.
In contrast to 1999 and 2004, with just 10 days to go before the election, the campaign is slowing down. The Bulletin’s 120 journalists spread across the country all report the same thing: “everything is calm”. In the first days the parties had caravans of cars racing around countryside, but this has dropped off considerably. And there has been a similar drop in public involvement in party parades and rallies.
With the ruling OPDO/EPDRF (Oromo People's Democratic Organization/Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) presiding over an extensive security and media network entirely in its own interests, Ethiopia's 2010 elections appear likely to be far from 'free and fair', writes Alemayehu G. Mariam in this week's Pambazuka News. Commenting on a recent report composed by Dr Negasso Gidada following a visit to Dembi Dollo in the Oromia region, Mariam stresses that while there is no reason why Ethiopia could not hold open elections, political realities on the ground will ensure the exact opposite is true.
With Nigeria's ruling elites seemingly intent on continuing to rob their country blind, Kola Ibrahim stresses the need for a nationalised economy rooted in a genuine workers' democracy.
While encouraging of speaker of the Nigerian House of Assembly Oladimeji Bankole's capacity to 'tell it as it is' with regard to the Niger Delta, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde finds the Nigerian government's lack of support for the area to be utterly deplorable. If the speaker, as a government representative, has in effect confessed to the 'long-suspected national crime' of the persistent exploitation of the Niger Delta, it is incumbent upon the state to usher in a genuine 'Marshall Plan' to begin to compensate the area's inhabitants, Abidde contends.
Henry Kyambalesa suggests potential initiatives for Zambia's President Rupiah Banda.
Adeyemi Demola stresses the importance of freedom of the press as a democratic right in Nigeria.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has issued a statement calling on the African Union to, among other things, intervene with immediate effect to ensure that H.E. President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh withdraws the threats made angainst human rights defenders, and to ensure that the Republic of The Gambia guarantees the safety and security of the members and staff of the African Commission, human rights defenders, including journalists in The Gambia, and all participants in the activities of the African Commission taking place in The Gambia.
Taking issue with suggestions that Uganda's 2009 riots can be compared with the country's 1966 constitutional crisis, Kintu Nyago argues that the two scenarios are like 'chalk and cheese'.
Governor Timipre Sylva of Nigeria's Bayelsa state is notable solely for his 'profligacy, perfidiousness, aloofness and incompetence', writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde in this week's Pambazuka News. With Sylva content to pursue an apparently never-ending programme of foolish and money-gulping schemes, Abidde stresses that Bayelsans and the Ijaw group as a whole need to demonstrate the same willingness to challenge their own elites as they do the federal government and exploitative oil companies.
Drawing on fascinating personal correspondence with a variety of individuals, Barbara Harlow looks back on the experiences of Ruth First during her short time as an economics lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam. First spent an autumn semester at the university in 1975, a time which coincided with the visits and debates of such prominent intellectuals as Walter Rodney, Mahmood Mamdani, Terence Ranger and Issa G. Shivji.
The Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Bisexual persons of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, has expressed support and solidarity with the LGBTIQ community of Uganda and Sexual Minorities Uganda as they face uncertainty following the tabling in Parliament of the Anti-Homosexuality bill no 18.on the 14th of October 2009.
In an interview with Pambazuka News, Yash Tandon discusses the problems of 'development aid', his differences with Dambisa Moyo's arguments in 'Dead Aid', the importance of Southern countries' right to autonomy and his own book,
Nigeria plans to offer inhabitants of its oil-producing Niger Delta region ten percent of oil and gas ventures in a bid to end a rebellion that has hampered output for years, a report said. The Financial Times said the initiative, if approved by parliament, would signal a new phase in the government's efforts to forge a lasting peace in the delta, the key production area in the world's eighth largest oil exporter.
Beijing's Foreign Ministry officials are energetically distancing themselves from a US$7 billion minerals deal announced on 9 October by the increasingly isolated military regime in Guinea with the Hong-Kong based China International Fund. Without some fast diplomatic footwork, China could again face excoriation for helping to finance a murderous regime, five years after an international campaign began pressuring Beijing over military and financial links to the Sudanese regime and massacres in Darfur.
The Guebuza campaign is making intensive use of four helicopters, and the Bulletin estimates that the cost will be nearly $1 million. This means that Frelimo is spending more just on helicopters than the total amount ($750,000) being given to it this year as state funding. (Total funding to all parties is $1.85 million). This shows that Frelimo has much more money to spend on this election than any other party.
Kareem is a young Egyptian blogger who was only 22 years old when he was sentenced to 4 years in prison by the Egyptian government for criticizing Islam and the President of Egypt on a personal blog. Kareem was threatened and harassed consistently for his writing, and was previously arrested prior to his sentence, all of which were attempts to silence his opinions which he should be free to express.