Wednesday, December 31, 2014

IMF Austerity Helped Fuel Ebola Crisis


In a report published online last week in The Lancet Global Health the four researchers, professors from three British universities, accuse the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through its strict lending policies of contributing to the Ebola crisis. "A major reason why the Ebola outbreak spread so rapidly was the weakness of healthcare systems in the region, and it would be unfortunate if underlying causes were overlooked," said lead author Alexander Kentikelenis. "Policies advocated by the IMF have contributed to under-funded, insufficiently staffed, and poorly prepared health systems in the countries with Ebola outbreaks."

Kentikelenis and co-authors explain that IMF's economic reform programs forced reduced government spending, IMF may put caps on funds for government wages, including healthcare professionals, and it pushes for decentralization of healthcare systems, which "can make it difficult to mobilize coordinated, central responses to disease outbreaks. All these effects are cumulative, contributing to the lack of preparedness of health systems to cope with infectious disease outbreaks and other emergencies," they write.

Other observers have also made a connection between such economic policies and the deadly outbreak. Emira Woods, a Liberian director at ThoughtWorks, a technology firm committed to social and economic justice, in an interview with Common Dreams explained "A crisis of the proportion we've seen since the beginning of the Ebola catastrophe shows this model has failed." While years of war played a role in weakening public systems, it is the "war against people, driven by international financial institutions" that is largely responsible for decimating the public health care system, eroding wages and conditions for health care workers, and fueling the crisis sweeping West Africa today, said Woods.

Even the World Health Organization, which is tasked by the United Nations with directing international responses to epidemics, acknowledges the detrimental impact these policies have had on public health systems. "In health, [structural adjustment programs] affect both the supply of health services (by insisting on cuts in health spending) and the demand for health services (by reducing household income, thus leaving people with less money for health)," states the organization. "Studies have shown that SAPs policies have slowed down improvements in, or worsened, the health status of people in countries implementing them. The results reported include worse nutritional status of children, increased incidence of infectious diseases, and higher infant and maternal mortality rates. Depressing peoples' access to healthcare greatly increases their susceptibility to all diseases and pathologies.


The important thing to remember is that the destruction of the healthcare systems in these countries has not been accidental; it has been deliberate. This epidemic was as much a man-made disaster as a natural one. Austerity kills. Capitalism kills 

Rape - Weapon of Mass Destuction

Rape, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, like many war-ravaged countries, is strategy, an implement to seize power – control, not only over entire communities and regions but, crucially, in this immense country, over the great mineral wealth. The trauma – physical, psychological – disables. And it is free. The cheapest weapon of mass destruction. It is no secret why and how this happens. Rape emblemises Congo's history – an area brutalised for 500 years by leaders and nations crazed with greed in a rush for natural resources: rubber, oil, diamonds, copper, uranium, cobalt and coltan. The last of these is used liberally in mobile phones, cameras, printers and laptops. First came the Portuguese, in the 1480s, enslaving and destablising as British ships arrived taking captives. In the late 19th century, as demand for rubber spiked, Belgium's King Leopold II claimed the country, ordering further gargantuan enslavements, commanding torture and murder on an unfathomable scale: more than 10 million died. By 1960, when independence was declared, the traumatised nation was ripped asunder, fractured, drained not only of minerals but of human resources: an insufficiently educated nation left to stagger on unaided. The former army officer and police sergeant Joseph-Desire Mobutu exploited the power vacuum, seized control and bled the resources further. When Rwanda invaded in 1996 (the First Congo War), helping other neighbouring countries topple Mobutu – who had been backed by Western governments – little improved. A year later, when the Second Congo War erupted, drawing in nine nations, the turmoil was anarchic, dozens of rival militia groups, rebels and army factions killing and enslaving to gain control of the mines – a dire cacophony of child soldiers and mass starvation, collapsing infrastructure and, all along, rape.

Dr Denis Mukwege tries to help all who arrive at Panzi Hospital, the clinic he set up 15 years ago in the hills above Bukavu, eastern Congo. After training in France to become a gynaecologist, he was hoping to devote his career to treating women in pregnancy and labour. Instead, the results of the Second Congo War arrived – wave after wave of rape victims, girls as young as two, women in their eighties. Entire villages of women come. Dr Mukwege specialises in repairing vaginal fistulas – holes created either between the vagina and rectum, or vagina and bladder – a common occurrence after violent rape. "Women who have been severely violated are completely destroyed – some we simply cannot cure," he says. "And unfortunately, these are often young girls aged 14, 15, 16, 17. They have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives." Without medical intervention, urine, blood and faeces trickle down, causing burns, infections, ulcerations, abscesses and dehydration. The smell from infections ensures everyone in the village knows what has happened. Many are shunned. Isolation engulfs. Fistulas can also lead to nerve damage called "foot drop" in which the lower limbs become paralysed. Women are left unable to walk.

Dr Mukwege treats 10 women a day in theatre. He has, in total, tended to more than 30,000 survivors. In what psychological state are patients when they arrive? "They are dehumanised," he says. "Most are shamed by what happened to them. Most are excluded from their own community. They feel life has no sense." He cites the plentiful research into the psychological trauma that survivors carry, often forever. By the time women are in Mukwege's care, the trauma has fanned out in all directions. "If a child has seen his mother being raped he will never be the same again," he says. "And if husbands stood by during attacks, unable to help their wife, it completely changes their relationship. This problem destroys families as a whole."

There is another important consequence, which, for Mukwege is a "time bomb": the babies. "They are often not loved when they arrive because they are the result of rape. People sometimes blame the children. Often families say, 'This is a horrible child; he does not belong to us.' We are raising a crisis." He continues  "There is one lady. She was raped and taken into the bush and kept as a slave for three years. She was also, as a result of the rapes, contaminated with Aids. When she came home she found that while she was gone all her family – her husband, father, mother and four children – were killed." The woman eventually returned to her village but with a baby, born from the innumerable rapes she endured. "It was very hard for her…" says Mukwege, his voice unsteady "to keep this child, to know, 'She is the child of the one who raped me, killed all my family and contaminated me with Aids'." He stops again, frowning, wincing. "How can all this happen in the life of someone?" Yet he carries on to say "Today she not only supports her child but also other patients living with Aids. She's really strong. She built her own house. She built her own business. She is a leader in her community."

In 2011, Mukwege compared the international reaction to that of Bosnia in the 1990s. "Since Bosnia was on Europe's doorstep, and Europe was ashamed, it didn't last so long," he said. "When it happens in Africa, people say, 'It's cultural. It's African. It's far away'." A year later, in an address at the UN he spoke of the "deafening silence and the lack of courage of the international community". Some see such silence as deliberate, in order that the coltan keeps coming. "The West has a responsibility because it knows how coltan is produced," says Mukwege. "They can get this without destroying women."

Dr Mukwege is the recipient of the Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought, the highest human-rights award bestowed by the European Parliament.
"This prize is not really for me," he says softly. "It belongs to the women who have been fighting for 15 years for their rights, for their dignity, for their freedom. But I am very happy this prize came now because the world does not understand what it means to be raped with extreme violence. We need to highlight what is going on in this region. It is a terrible disease, women destroyed in a way that denies their humanity."

He describes the "four pillars" of his approach. "We treat them medically – surgically; psychologically – the trauma; legally – to teach them their rights and help them go to court, if they want to," he says. "The fourth way is to support them economically so they can be strong and fight for their own rights."


Feeding the Dragon

China is ramping up investment in Sub Saharan Africa as it searches for natural resources. Its foreign direct investment (FDI) in particular has played a prominent role in economic interactions with many developing countries. It's now one of the largest 'emerging' investors, especially in Sub Saharan Africa countries, it has investments being in Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa and Angola among others, but whether the benefits are mutually beneficial is questionable. What remains unclear is whether China's foray Africa has any real intention in helping to promote economic growth and development in these countries. Recently, the Bilateral Sino-African partnership has not yielded much competitiveness to Africa. There was no significant skill set development, nor adequate technological transfer or any measurable upgrade to the productivity levels in Africa.

China is in pursuit of oil, gas, precious metals and mining to diversify its energy resource import's pool; it requires other resources to sustain its manufacturing capabilities. Africa can offer all of these things to the world's second largest economy: about 40 percent of global reserves of natural resources, 60 percent of uncultivated agricultural land, a billion people with rising purchasing power and a potential army of low-wage workers. China has undertaken multiple investments in Sub Saharan Africa that most people believe are due its search for natural resources to feed its industrial output.

African countries are one of the fastest growing markets and profitable outlets for exported manufactured goods. In the past, the U.K. and France were the prime trade partners for Africa, however, today, China is Africa top bi-lateral trading partner with trade volume exceeding $166 billion. Between years 2003 and 2011, its FDI in the continent has increased thirty fold from $491 million to $14.7 billion. Not a long time ago, China eyed areas in Africa where resources were abundant and easy to extract. It focused on resource-rich countries such as Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan and Zambia. Today, Sino-African investment focus has become broader. China is branching out into non-resource-rich investments, focusing on countries such as Ethiopia and Congo. Higher margins have attracted many state-owned enterprises and private companies to compete on gaining dominion in the vast continent. Oil, gas, metals and minerals constitute three-quarters of African-exports to China. Chinese Imports to Africa are more diverse, mostly comprised of manufactured goods. China has made considerable investments in the fields of infrastructure targeting key sectors including ports refurbishments, telecommunications, transport, construction and water disposal categorically. Geographically speaking, China has become an important partner of East Africa with some of its biggest projects in Uganda with an estimated total investment of $596 million in 2012 alone. China's increased presence in East Africa has gradually raised concerns about the economic development of these countries as well as the environmental and social sustainability of their natural resources.

The Chinese entry to the African market has collapsed the already frail and small and medium enterprises under increasing pressure from cheap Chinese Imports. According to one recent study, the Chinese growing presence in Africa has accrued a cost to the South Africa's economy in the range of 75,000 jobs in the years 2000-2011. China's relationship with Africa has often been described as "colonial", in which most of the benefits are far from mutual and often accrued to China. China has seemingly created a dependency for the African countries, without providing real structural help to show integration in the local communities. Exploitation of labor, protectionism of technologies and distance from the interests of a real wish for inclusion, the current activities of China in Africa, raise pressing doubts about supposed mutual benefits.




Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Bank wealth before people's health

"Debt, corruption and tax evasion are part of why people die in West Africa," stated Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA, a religious development coalition. "The money was there to contain Ebola and save more people from preventable diseases." 

Guinea, where the outbreak began, spent more on debt payments in 2012 than it spent on public health. Guinea spent $207 million on debt payments in 2013 and 2012.

The Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone lose an average of $1.4 billion each year to corruption, debt payments and tax evasion. New World Bank data indicates the countries spent over $80 million on debt payments in 2013, the year the outbreak began. According to the World Bank, the countries spent a total of $270 million on public health in 2012.

According to the Financial Times, the three countries owe the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nearly $480 million. Sierra Leone spent $2.3 million paying off debts since the IMF announced a debt relief plan in November and will spend nearly $2 million more before the end of the year. The three countries accrued much of their current debt burden during civil wars, dictatorships and one-party rule.

Developing countries lose nearly $1 trillion each year to illicit flows. From 2003 - 2012, Liberia lost more than $900 million annually on average, while Guinea lost more than $300 million.

Warring Africa


This article on Africa’s many wars makes pessimistic unsettling reading when it predicts that they will probably continue through 2015.

South Sudan’s civil war is one year old and still going strong. Neither Salva Kiir nor his challenger Riek Machar have any incentive to stop fighting, at least not until the next rainy season makes military maneuvers impractical—five months from now.

In Sudan, the civil war in Darfur, has slipped from the headlines in recent years, but in fact it’s as bad as ever. The same goes for the genocidal campaign that the regime in Khartoum is perpetrating against the people of the Nuba Mountains. President Omar Al Bashir’s grip on power looks with major demonstrations challenging his rule in the capital. As now-former heads of states from Tunisia’s Ben Ali to Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré can attest, its hard hanging on to power indefinitely.

Central African Republic lost some of its media attention. Peacekeeping forces have regained a measure of control in parts of the country, although the caretaker government of Catherine Samba-Panza is still powerless. Rebels and militias still in control of much of the countryside—as well as parts of the capital—the country is looking at an uneasy stalemate.

 Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency has seen more people die in the conflict in 2014 than in any previous year despite the Nigerian government throwing more and more troops and money at the problem. The crisis is unlikely to ease any time soon. Boko Haram has fractured and evolved beyond the control of the political masterminds who nurtured its growth.

Al Qaeda-affiliated groups are still active in the Sahel, especially in northern Mali. While the conflict between secessionist Tuareg rebels and the Malian government likewise continues.

Meanwhile in Libya, there’s little doubt that the violence will continue between secular forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar and Islamist militias.

All these conflicts have one thing in common—they’re all well underway. But what new conflicts which may possibly emerge in 2015?

Many conflict-prone countries have important elections in 2015.

 Ivory Coast, where the last presidential election reignited a dormant civil war.

Togo has already seen huge demonstrations against the continued rule of long-time president Faure Gnassingbé, who is running for re-election in 2015. Togo could potentially go the way of Burkina Faso, where an attempt by Blaise Compaoré to abolish constitutional term limits led to his violent ousting.

But war may escalate in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Cameroon, Egypt’s and Tunisia’s fight with domestic terrorist groups or the Western Sahara conflict in Morocco. Plus the situations in Somalia and northeastern Kenya. There exists a potential for war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Somali piracy has been reduced to a shadow of its former glory in the face of a well-established international naval presence. Not a single large vessel was successfully captured off the Somali coast, although there were still regular attacks. The case is a bit different now in West Africa. Piracy is a growing problem along the continent’s western coast.

Lastly but not least, America’s war against terror and its use of drones attacks does little to calm explosive political situations.





Demand A Clean Water System

Africa has now 19 cities with populations of more than one million inhabitants. Because of slow economic growth, lack of effective development policies and limited resources, the development of infrastructure has not kept up with the increasing needs for shelter and services in growing urban populations.

Poor hygiene, inadequate management of waste and lack of sanitation facilities are contributing factors in the death of millions of people in the developing world due to diseases that are easily preventable. For example, lack of sanitation and inadequate disposal or storage of waste near houses can provide habitats for vectors responsible for several infectious diseases such as amebiasis, typhoid fever and diarrhea. Uncontrolled and inadequate landfills are a danger to the environment and a health risk to the population since they may lead to contamination of water and soil. The health risks associated with poor sanitation tend to be higher in densely populated low-income urban areas. At a global level, more than 5 million people die each year from diseases related to inadequate waste disposal systems. Contamination of water leads to a whole range of diarrheal diseases such as cholera that kills 1.8 million people worldwide. An estimated 90 percent among them are children below five, mainly from developing countries. Most of the burden can be attributed to unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene practices. According to UNICEF, Infant Mortality Rates (IMRs) are almost always higher in poor urban areas than the national average and than those in rural areas. A great proportion of the high mortality among the children of the urban poor can be attributed to diseases common in urban areas such as diarrhea, tuberculosis and parasitic diseases (intestinal worms) that are frequently associated with lack of safe water and sanitation.

Africa has the lowest water supply and sanitation coverage of any other region in the world. It is estimated that one in three Africans has no access to improved water or to sanitation facilities and the number of people lacking those basic services is increasing. The majority of those lacking basic services live in informal or suburban areas and rural communities. Unless actions are taken now, the absolute number of people lacking basic services will increase from 200 million in 2000 to 400 million in 2020.

Many Sub-Saharan countries will find it difficult to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set for 2015, particularly the MDG 7 which stipulates to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.


Monday, December 29, 2014

Is West Africa's Challenge Ebola Or Malaria?

West Africa’s fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.
In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea’s tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

Guinea’s drop in reported malaria cases this year by as much as 40 percent is not good news, said Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. He said the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.
“It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic,” he said in a telephone interview. “I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children.”

Figures are always estimates in Guinea, where half the 12 million people have no access to health centers and die uncounted.
Some 15,000 Guineans died from malaria last year, 14,000 of them children under five, according to Nets for Life Africa, a New York-based charity dedicated to providing insecticide-treated mosquito nets to put over beds. In comparison, about 1,600 people in Guinea have died from Ebola, according to statistics from the World Health Organization.

Malaria is the leading cause of death in children under five in Guinea and, after AIDS, the leading cause of adult deaths, according to Nets for Life.

read whole article here

Saving Africa

Western “solutions” to African’s problems don’t solve anything except Western NGO workers’ need for a regular salary.

Since 2005 LifeStraws proclaimed as a “cheap, portable personal water purifier,” has been picking up awards; Esquire said it was an innovation of the year in 2005, Time called it the “best invention of the year,” Gizmag, without any contrition, called it the “invention of the century” and Forbes called it “one of the 10 things that will change the world” in 2006. The “straw” is a long blue tube that “provides access to safe drinking water by converting microbiologically contaminated water into safe drinking water.” Publicity images of it show black Africans, sometimes half naked, bending over to drink purified water through it. Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for WaterAid in the UK, claimed “it is something that may well have very useful applications in an emergency scenario. But it’s not a development tool, it doesn’t really solve the problem of getting water to people.” Innovative devices like LifeStraw aren’t created with malicious intent, nor are they necessarily ineffective; many work perfectly fine.

But let’s look at the images again; young, half-naked Africans hip deep in a pool of water, stooping to drink the water through one of these devices. When Europeans travel to countries with sub-standard water, they sometimes bring water filtration systems, tablets or other means to purify water. We don’t see pictures of them bending over streams, cow-like, drinking water through LifeStraws. High-tech straws are not suggested as a means to solving filtration problems for white people, say, in parts of rural Russia or Romania, where there might be contaminated water, so why are they “good enough” for Africans? And it isn’t just about straws: the device is emblematic of an entire industry of suddenly popular, quickly forgotten programs and devices that will “save” Africans or “solve” Africa’s problems.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is the problem. Almost a billion people worldwide are estimated to not have access to safe water; and supposedly around 35 percent of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Basically that means most of Africa doesn’t have access to decent water. That’s a problem. It was also a problem for Europe and the West well into the 20th century. So why is it that all the processes that led to safe drinking water in Europe are not seen as workable for Africa? Why is it the “answer” to African problems is always some charity with portable toilets or stoves or some other device – even cardboard bicycles – that no one would ever expect poverty-stricken Europeans to use? Google “solve Africa’s drinking water problems” and you come across “a giant basket that uses condensation to gather drinking water.” Looks pretty, next to some grass huts. But they won’t be using that in Nevada. Nope. Just for Africans.

Another website claims to have “15 concepts for providing clean drinking water,” which include a photo of African children who “pump while playing” and another that proposes transforming “sewage to drinking water.” Sounds wonderful. No one expects people in America to drink sewage, but in Malawi it’s a great idea. Another system made by SunDwater uses a “green...low-cost, low maintenance system that converts dirty or salty water into potable water.” It involves a four-square-meter photovoltaic dish (like a satellite dish) and the water is condensed on it. It sounds nice, but it isn’t a real solution; after all, no one is going to be using it in Portugal, so why expect it to be used widely in Uganda?

A story in 2013 tells of a school in Tel Aviv where ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition.” In plastic bottles they had bred a blue-green algae called spirulina, that looked like green slime, and the theory was this would be good for Africa. I have a better idea: serve this in the cafeteria of schools in the wealthy communities of Israel, and if the kids there agree to eat it for a year, then export this idea to Africa. Because if a bunch of nice kids in your community don’t want to eat green algae, don’t expect “Africans” to want to.

“Watering the grassroots” was a project to train African women to solve water problems.” Using a “rainwater harvesting system” Oddly, that wasn’t the solution to China’s drinking- water issues. Just Africa. In China the Ministry of Water Resources estimated that as of 2005 three-hundred million people were unable to access safe drinking water. Almost 200 million people in rural areas were still exposed to harmful substances. To combat these problems the government was investing in a massive “11th five year plan” which envisioned plowing $5 billion into safe drinking water. By contrast 334 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were estimated in 2010 to not have access to clean drinking water. That’s roughly the same as in China, yet in China they are digging up rivers, laying pipe and building massive infrastructure projects worth twice the GDP of Malawi to combat this scourge; they are not handing out straws, solar panels and baskets.

Solutions to problems in Africa tend to involve handing out 21st century high-tech gadgets to infrastructure-poor countries that require massive 20th century reforms and solutions. All of the problems Africa faces, whether it is the supposed need for “smokeless stoves” or clean water, are ones every other country in the world faces or has faced. Yet the solution for Africa almost always does not take into account incremental changes that people want; rather they envision some miracle device that “solves all these problems, and would help reach the Millennium Development Goals,” or some foreign imposed solution. The Western concept of “saving” and “solving” Africa’s problems too often derives from a sub-conscious racist “white man’s burden” mentality, wherein the “starving African” is “saved” by the white man from abroad. The solutions offered are manifestly inadequate and ridiculous, but serve industries of charity and self-promotion. The legions of nonsensical awards for these inventions are part of this “salvation” culture. If you want to save Africa, demand that the technology be exported there to bring it up to Western standards. Don’t expect people there to live a life drinking out of straws like cattle and eating algae slime.
“Saving” Africa, or “building schools in Africa” has nothing really to do with Africa.



Sunday, December 28, 2014

Imagine World Socialism

Oil addicts withdrawal symptoms

Falling oil prices are threatening several countries on the African continent.

 “The high debt overhang and the heavy reliance on raw materials (such as oil) and minerals for exports, makes African economies susceptible to shock and systematic risks,” Dr. Kwame Akonor, from the African Development Institute said. According to Akonor, the heaviest toll will be paid by Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, which depends on oil for about 80 percent of its total revenues.

Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon will also suffer significantly from the plummeting oil prices, as these economies are also heavily dependent on oil revenues.

Ghana's president announced earlier this week that infrastructure plans could be scaled down due to the budgetary price of oil and the current fall. An article published by the Brookings Institutions shows that countries like Cameroon, South Sudan and Chad had drafted their budgets assuming record-high prices of over US$100 per barrel.

According to the Financial Times, conflict-stricken South Sudan is now receiving the lowest oil price in the world at US$20-25 a barrel because of the combination of falling prices and unfavorable pipeline contracts.

Several Western oil giants are halting ambitious exploration and exploitation projects throughout the region until oil prices recover.



Saturday, December 27, 2014

Outflows Dwarf Money in Health Care and Prevention Budgets


New reports show that the Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone lose an average of $1.4 billion each year to corruption, debt payments and tax evasion. Global Financial Integrity (GFI) calculates the three countries lost about $1.3 billion per year to corruption and tax evasion in the decade leading up to the Ebola outbreak. New World Bank data indicates the countries spent over $80 million on debt payments in 2013, the year the outbreak began. According to the World Bank, the countries spent a total of $270 million on public health in 2012.

"Debt, corruption and tax evasion are part of why people die in West Africa," stated Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA, a religious development coalition. "The money was there to contain Ebola and save more people from preventable diseases."

Guinea, where the outbreak began, spent more on debt payments in 2012 than it spent on public health. Guinea spent $207 million on debt payments in 2013 and 2012. According to the Financial Times, the three countries owe the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nearly $480 million.

Sierra Leone spent $2.3 million paying off debts since the IMF announced a debt relief plan in November and will spend nearly $2 million more before the end of the year.
The three countries accrued much of their current debt burden during civil wars, dictatorships and one-party rule. US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew brought Jubilee USA's plan for debt relief to the November G20 meetings held in Brisbane, Australia. The G20 made a financing commitment to the three Ebola affected countries of 300 million dollars in debt relief, grants and new loans. The IMF could announce the financing plan as early as January.

"Winning debt relief and stopping tax evasion provide long term monies for healthcare and development," said LeCompte, who serves on United Nations Expert Groups that address debt and illicit finance. "More people die from preventable diseases annually in these countries than from Ebola."

According to GFI, developing countries lose nearly $1 trillion each year to illicit flows. From 2003 - 2012, Liberia lost more than $900 million annually on average, while Guinea lost more than $300 million. In 2013, the G8 signed a joint declaration calling on the international community to curb corruption and corporate tax avoidance. This past August, during the White House Africa Summit, the Obama Administration announced a committee to make recommendations to address these outflows.

"There's broad consensus that we need to keep money from flowing out of developing economies," added LeCompte. "There's so much the international community can do."

Read more about Ebola debt relief.
Read GFI's report on illicit financial flows.
Read the World Bank's new debt statistics.

from here

Angola's anti-migrant campaign

During the last few days Angolan security forces have arrested and arbitrarily detained several African nationals who they also subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment in serious violations of migrants’ human rights, according to several human rights organisations

The Angolan authorities have embarked upon a new fight against clandestine immigration that is becoming more like a migrants ‘manhunt’. In the last ten days, 3,000 people have been rounded up in the streets of Luanda. Non-Angolan Africans are violently arrested in the streets, in their homes and at work and taken to the detention centre in Trinita, 30 km from Luanda. Some are forcibly repatriated. They are kept in cruel, inhumane, humiliating, and degrading conditions. They are crammed into tiny cells and deprived of both water and food. Some pregnant women (two of whom are from Mali and Guinea) had to give birth in these deplorable conditions. Acts of torture and extortion of money have also been reported.

Immigrants in Angola, especially people from West Africa, have been subject to repeated attacks, stigmatization and violations of their human rights. The arrests may be linked to ethnic and religious discrimination, since the main group targeted is largely composed of Muslims from Guinea, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Witnesses reported that mosques were surrounded by the Immigration Services on Friday, 19 December 2014.

Socialist Banner condemns all xenophobic practices and attitudes.

Friday, December 26, 2014

The tragedy at Ceuta and Melilla

Every week, hundreds of Africans try to scramble over the high fences that encircle Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish-ruled enclaves on the northern tip of Morocco. Countless migrants are injured as the Moroccan military, on one side, and a few hundred Spanish police on the other, block Africans seeking to cross into the two tiny territories -- barely 12 square miles (30 square kilometres) of land between them. Nearly 4,700 undocumented migrants have infiltrated Melilla thus far this year, the interior ministry said -- up from 3,000 in 2013. The Spanish government says nearly 20,000 migrants have tried to storm the six-metre (23-foot), triple layer fence at Melilla this year alone.


Ceuta sits in a strategic spot 15 miles from Gibraltar across the mouth of the Mediterranean, with Melilla 140 miles to the east. To guard their fences, 600 Civil Guards are stationed in each of the territories. "You have to be strong and very fit. You have to be a lion!" said AbouDiarrisso, a lean 22-year-old from Ivory Coast who clambered over into Melilla. "There were 200 of us to start with. I was the only one to get over the fences." Some migrants sit atop the fence for hours before falling off exhausted, getting dragged down by Spanish guards or knocked off by blows from their batons. A video filmed by rights group Prodein in October showed Spanish guards beating a migrant on the fence and carrying him apparently unconscious back to the Moroccan side. The Spanish government has since announced a reform that would formally authorise border guards to drive migrants off who try to climb the fence. Commissioner Nils Muiznieks of the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights authority, branded that plan "unjust and illegal under international law".

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Aid?

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicate that net overseas development aid to Sub-Saharan Africa was USD$39 billion in 2008, USD$42 billion in 2009, USD$43 billion in 2010, USD$45 billion in 2011, and USD$44 billion in 2012. That is a total of USD$213 billion of aid donations in five years. Which then begs the question -- where did all this money go, given the fact that the population remains desperately poor? Six-hundred-million people, 70 per cent of population, are currently without access to electricity. 


The short answer is that aid is largely "lost in transition." Donated by political elites of donor nations to fund projects, programs or recipient's budgets, aid funds and programs are executed by two sets of officialdom -- donor and recipient bureaucrats. The same bureaucrats, together with thousands of consultants from mainly donor nations that consume billions of aid dollars, monitor and evaluate themselves. The aid machine keeps running not matter what. Dambisa Moyo argued that aid has trapped Africa in a vicious circle of dependency, corruption, market distortion, and grinding poverty. This leaves the continent "with nothing but the 'need' for more aid." 

Moyo’s solution in her book ‘Dead Aid’ of free market capitalism is also a dead-end. 

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Chinese Troops for Africa


China is to send 700 combat troops to South Sudan in what analysts describe as a significant shift from its stated policy of non-interference in African conflicts. The first Chinese infantry battalion to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission will be equipped with drones, armoured carriers, antitank missiles, mortars and other weapons.

Richard Poplak, an author and journalist studying Beijing’s influence on the continent, said: “This does seem to announce a new era in the way China is engaging with Africa. It runs contrary to China’s foreign policy of, ‘We don’t interfere’. It’s an enormous renunciation of that.” He  added: “It comes down to interest. The Chinese have poured billions and billions into South Sudan, so many resources that it’s almost baffling. This is a shift in realpolitik: you can’t just talk all the time and not carry a big stick. The Chinese have realised that. It’s not possible for anyone here or anyone in Beijing to say where this ends. It’s a precedent and any precedent is a dangerous precedent.”

A 2011 report by the NGO Saferworld found that, despite its stated neutrality, China is gradually using diplomatic means to push for the resolution of certain conflicts. It also said the Asian power is becoming a major supplier of conventional arms to African states and has increased its contributions to UN peacekeeping missions twentyfold since 2000, with the majority based in Africa.


The state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) said last Sunday it had signed a deal with the South Sudan government in Juba to increase production. The CNPC said it would use heavy oil recovery technologies in “stabilising and increasing crude output”.

The Oil Price

The world price for crude oil has declined from 107 dollars per barrel last June to less than 70 dollars last week.

There are multiple reasons for the decline, including an increase in oil production, specifically in the United States; a fall in the global demand for oil due to a slow down of the world economy; and a positive fallout from conservation efforts. As the New York Times pointed out: “We simply don’t burn as much energy as we did a few years ago to achieve the same amount of mileage, heat or manufacturing production.” There are also geopolitical reasons for the continued decline in oil prices because Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest producers, has refused to take any action to stop the fall.


The heaviest toll will be on Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa which depends on crude oil for about 80 percent of its revenues, according to the Wall Street Journal. The country’s currency, the naira, has declined about 15 percent since the beginning of the fall in oil prices.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The African Vampire Class

Before the colonialists came, Africa not only fed itself, but exported food as well. Famine was rare. Timbuktu, Kano, .etc flourished as great market home towns. Timbuktu was a world renowned center of learning with a university. There were many industries as well: metal ware, pottery glass, iron-working, gold, silver-mining, basketry, leatherworks, woodworks and clothing. The Kwari textile market in Kano was once the largest in West Africa. In 1982, 500 factories churned out textile products in Kano. Today, fewer than 100 remain. There are more beggars and other visible signs of poverty in Kano than ever before.

Textile factories in Lesotho closed in 2003 and 2004, thereby throwing 5,000 workers out of their jobs. In Ghana, there were more than 20 textile firms that employed more than 20,000 people in 1995. In 2012, the industry had just 4 textile factories employing less than 3,000 Ghanians.

Africa is ruled vampires.

They destroyed their own educational system and then send their children to foreign schools.
They destroyed their own health-care system and then, go seek medical treatment or even, go and die abroad.
They stifle or prosecute their own domestic investors and then roll out red carpets to attract or welcome foreign investors.
They arrest, brutalize, jail or ignore their own domestic experts and then spend $10bn yearly on foreign experts.
They destroy their own currency and then seek to import and use foreign currency.
They destroy their own banking system and then go on to deposit their loot in foreign banks.
They shun their own domestic economy and then go on to invest their loot in snapping up real estates in foreign countries.
They destroy their own indigenous markets and then go shop in foreign markets.
They denigrated and castigated their own indigenous form of participatory democracy based on consensus and then copied foreign systems.
They rejected their own indigenous African constitution and then copied and blended foreign constitution theydidn’t understand to impose on their people.
They impede domestic trade with bad roads, check-points, etc. And then do everything to promote foreign trade.
Each time a crisis erupt, they never seek African solutions, they rush off cup in hand to beg for foreign solutions.
They spurned their own religions, imposing foreign religion on their people. Neither Islam nor Christianity is indigenous to Africa. Why are Africans slaughtering themselves over foreign religions?




Gambia's Homophobia

Gambian authorities arrested three men and accused them of committing homosexual acts, which are punishable with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment under a law signed in October, state television has said. The arrests followed a security operation and the men have confessed that they are gay. The country's National Intelligence Agency appealed to the public, especially parents and landlords, to help them stamp out homosexuality.


Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh faces global condemnation over the country's human rights record, in part because of the law, which introduced "aggravated homosexuality" as a crime. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/12/gambia-arrests-three-men-homosexuality-2014122303811692265.html

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Ebola: Big Pharma "Indifferent To Collateral Damage"


Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization, nailed it when she blasted the pharmaceutical industry's failure to develop an Ebola vaccine. "A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay," Chan said at a press conference last month.

Since it first surfaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1976, there have been 22 outbreaks, all of them in western and central Africa. Incidentally, viruses like Ebola and HIV first jumped from animals to humans in the DRC during a period of rapid deforestation at the hands of rapacious multinational timber and mining companies. Habitat loss pushed chimpanzees and bats into closer contact with humans and, eventually, became vectors for HIV and Ebola, respectively. From the perspective of free market capitalists, ecological devastation and disease epidemics are simply collateral damage with no impact on the bottom line.

A number of commentators have speculated that, had Ebola landed on US shores sooner, a vaccine would already be available. Big Pharma executives, driven by fear of contagion, would have invested in vaccine research even if it wouldn't be profitable. After a handful of domestic Ebola cases, we now see a rush to start human trials of a vaccine that was created 10 years ago, tested successfully on monkeys, then shelved for lack of a profitable market.
Clinical trials are finally on the fast track not simply owning to fear. The industry's decision to move forward was a response to intense public pressure, and, notably, financial sponsorship of clinical trials courtesy of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Now that Ebola has crossed the Atlantic, Big Pharma surely sees dollar signs; in the event of an epidemic, 316 million petrified Americans will promptly roll up their sleeves. It's a great deal for Big Pharma - government foots the bill for clinical trials, and Big Pharma pockets the profits.

In short, the lack of an Ebola vaccine - and the wildfire spread of the virus - are a direct result of private-sector control over vaccine development and the absence of public health infrastructure that could have contained the outbreak.
Western Africa, like much of the developing world, has little by way of public services to compensate for the looting of its forests and mountains by multinational corporations. Those same corporations, along with Big Pharma, are indifferent to the public health catastrophe (aka "collateral damage") now unfolding.

Ebola makes for a tragic case study in the perils of profit-driven medicine, but there are other more ordinary diseases that Big Pharma has chosen to write off. For example, I have an uncommon, stubborn gastrointestinal infection that requires several rounds of a drug called Yodoxin to cure. After one course of Yodoxin, my little friends are still in residence, and I require additional rounds to permanently evict them. Alas, the drug has been discontinued for unspecified "business reasons." That leaves thousands of us to make do with less effective medications and/or cope with lifelong nausea, abdominal pain and fatigue.
The FDA explains: "FDA can't require a firm to keep making a drug it wants to discontinue. Sometimes these older drugs are discontinued by companies in favor of newer, more profitable drugs . . . FDA works to . . . mitigate drug shortages; however, there are a number of factors that can cause or contribute to drug shortages that are outside of the control of FDA." 

What's outside of the FDA's control is the same things that's outside of all of our control: capitalism.
There is no vaccine for Ebola because our economic system vests virtually all decision making in the private sector. We do so knowing that for-profit companies exist to maximize profits. It doesn't matter if they're selling medicine, gasoline, soda pop or credit default swaps - the corporations that make these products do so for one and the same reason.

Big Pharma's greed isn't some kind of aberration; it's an inherent feature of free-market capitalism: A capitalist system, by design, puts profits over people. The handful of sectors that remain under government control, such as water, highways and public schools, anticipate and deliver services that meet the public's needs (or, at least, used to). Not just wealthy people's needs or white people's needs or able-bodied people's needs but, assuming the government has not been crippled by austerity measures, everybody's needs.

On the other hand, sectors controlled by the free market serve only certain people (i.e. those who can pay) and only under certain circumstances. If market research projects insufficient demand for a product or service to meet corporate profit goals, that product or service doesn't come to be, regardless of the fact that it's vital for the health of people or the environment.

Capitalism is inimical to human health and well-being because it rolls like this: If you fit into the right market demographic and can afford to pay, you get the goods. If not, tough luck. Tough luck for you, tough luck for your community, tough luck for the planet.

from here

Still not caring about CAR

 UNICEF, the children's agency, warned on Friday of a "critical funding shortfall" for its programmes in Central African Republic, where more than two million children are in need following a months-long sectarian bloodbath. UNICEF received less than half the funding it required this year, some $42.7 million out of the $81 million requested.

UNICEF said it failed to help 620,000 people with basic healthcare, 250,000 children with access to clean water, 33,000 children with measles vaccines and 5,000 severely malnourished children under five with treatment.

"Two out of five children in urgent need of UNICEF's support are without access to health, water, education or protection due to a critical funding shortfall and insecurity," spokesperson Christophe Boulierac told AFP.

More than 1.5 million people in CAR are suffering from food insecurity, about one third of the population, the World Food Programme said. Due to repeated military raids and the displacement of farming communities, food reserves are now about 40 to 50 percent lower than average levels.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Stateless in Africa

According to United Nations Human Rights for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates, statelessness affected up to 10 million people worldwide leaving them with no identity. Statelessness refers to the condition whereby an individual is not considered as a national by any State under the operations of its law and is, therefore, not entitled to any right or privileges enjoyed by the nationals.


Statistics indicates that about one million people living in West Africa are Stateless. This was disclosed by Madam Emmanuelle Mitte, Senior Regional Protection Officer, UNHCR Country Representation in Senegal.  She said about 60 percent of stateless people were children because the States in which they were born did not register them as their parents were not recognized as citizens by the laws of those States. According to her, statelessness in West Africa occurred for a variety of reasons, including discrimination against specific groups in a country, discrepancies in nationality laws and administrative practices obstructing access to documentation. “Others include the failure to include all residents in the body of citizens when a state becomes independent, or when a part of a territory is annexed to a new state,” she added. 

Friday, December 19, 2014

Africa needs to change

Africa accounts for a large share of the world’s people living in absolute poverty. The number of impoverished people has doubled since 1981. Africa’s share of the world’s poor rose from just below 20% to close to 25%. Nearly 50% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa live on less than US$ 1 a day today: the world’s highest rate of extreme poverty. In Liberia, nearly 60% of the population live on less than US$ 2 a day. In the Central African Republic, the figure is 50%. In contrast, North Africa has only 2.2% of the population living on less than US$ 1 a day, and 23% on less than US$2.

Africa is also the world’s second most inequitable region after Latin America. Inequalities have not diminished over time. In 2010, six out of the 10 most unequal countries worldwide were in Sub-Saharan Africa, and more specifically in Southern Africa. Africa's  economic growth is not inclusive or equitable.

Moreover, Africa's growth has largely been an urban phenomenon. Most Africans have low levels of education and limited skills. They often live in remote villages and depend on subsistence agriculture. These Africans lack access to water, electricity and health services. Maternal and child mortality is often high. The debilitating effects of hunger and malnutrition stalk the children that survive. Two-thirds of the under-five deaths in Africa are due to preventable causes, most of which are exacerbated by malnutrition. Undernourished children under five have an increased risk of death, anaemia, fever, respiratory infections and stunting. Research shows that children who are stunted before the age of five will have cognitive impairment and are highly likely to underachieve in school; repeat grades and drop out of school. The number of stunted children in Africa has increased from 45.7 million to 56.3 million between 1990 and 2011. A recent UN report, 'Cost of Hunger in Africa', reveals that child under-nutrition costs the Uganda government $899 million, equivalent to 5.6 per cent of GDP. This includes costs to the healthcare system, to education and losses in labour productivity.

It is very unlikely that the vast majority of Africans will experience the tangible benefits of the so-called “Africa Rising” phenomenon. Under a business-as-usual growth scenario, the gulf between the rich and the poor will only widen. What is more disconcerting is that the horrifying health, nutrition and education outcomes will persist.


Thursday, December 18, 2014

Ethiopia: Large Scale Killing and Deportation of Somali-Issa People

 During the recent weeks, the Ethiopian government is perpetrating a crime against humanity against the Somali-Issa people living in the following towns: Gadmaytu, Undufo and Cadaytu, located near the Awash River. More than 300,000 people were asked to clear an area the size of Belgium (30 000 square kilometers), to pave the way for a program designed few years ago, with the prime purpose of leasing or selling lands to foreign investors. 

International institutions such as the World Bank or the African Bank for Development are repeating these past few years that Ethiopia has an annual growth between 8 to 10%; but on the ground, in spite of the few foreign investments in the hospitality industry, or infrastructure projects like the “grand renaissance dam” which damaged the environment, 70% of the 80 million Ethiopians are still living with less than 1 dollar a day. Ethiopia is also well-known with having a very poor record regarding Human rights. Political opponents and journalists are routinely jailed, if not killed. 

According to Reporters Without Borders, a leading NGO in the field, the government has created a climate of fear within the press ahead of the parliamentarian elections in May next year “At least six publications had to close in recent months; and around 30 journalists have fled abroad since the start of the year, as a result of the biggest crackdown on the privately-owned press since 2005”. Prominent journalists like Mr. Temesgen Desalegn, the editor of “Fact” magazine, are jailed with vague charge of “terrorism”. According to another press watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists: “Ethiopia has one of the most restricted media in the world and the highest number of journalists living in exile”

The general elections in May 2005 were marred with frauds and violence, leaving more than three hundred deaths and thousands wounded. Several well-known opponents including blogger Eskinder Nega and opposition leader Andualem Arage paid a huge price for their search of freedom: Mr. Nega was jailed for 18 years while Mr. Arage was sentenced for life. As a result, the current Parliament elected in 2010 comprised only 1 opponent out of 547 Parliamentarians!!! 

During the last five years, the authoritarian Ethiopian government has put in place an ambitious GTP (Growth and Transformation Plan) aimed at attracting international investments. Unfortunately, this Plan is based on the forced eviction of 1.5 million people in the Gambela, Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. In the Regional Somali State alone, 500,000 people have to be deported. This process is well-known as “land-grabbing”, consisting of selling or leasing large pieces of land in developing countries to international firms, governments (Brazil, India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Republic of Korea, etc.) or wealthy individuals. According to activists monitoring the issue worldwide, who published their findings in “Farmlandgrab.org” and “Survivalinternational.org”; or works undertaken by researchers like Jon Abbink, an anthropologist specializing in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is deeply engaged in this process in a very bad way: « In Africa, Ethiopia is at the forefront of handing out land ». 

Of course the amount paid by foreigners to acquire land is never released and it is very unlikely that this money will ever reach the poor Ethiopians. Several NGO working in the field of Human Rights have reported and documented how the Ethiopian government has removed at gunpoint thousands of indigenous people from their ancestor lands in the OMO River and the Gambela region since 2010. Killing, rapes, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and beating have been used during the deportation process, according to Human Right Watch, Survivalinternational and the Oakland Institute. 

Those last weeks, the Ethiopian government sent its military forces into the Regional Somali State, besieging the towns and villages of Cadaytu, Undufo, Gadmaytu, and the surrounding area inhabited by Somali-Issa pastoralists and farmers. The violence deployed against the indigenous tribes living in Gambela and around the OMO River is again underway there. Demonstrations have been staged by the Somali-Issa inhabitants. The response was a fierce repression with the army firing indiscriminately. Dozens of people lost their lives, while hundreds have been wounded. All this happened in silence as not one single media – be it national or international- is reporting this slow onslaught on Somali-Issa pastoralists in Ethiopia.

read more here


Ethiopia: Large scale killing and deportation of Somali-Issa people in the Awash River by Galan Waddour During the recent weeks, the Ethiopian government is perpetrating a crime against humanity against the Somali-Issa people living in the following towns: Gadmaytu, Undufo and Cadaytu, located near the Awash River. More than 300,000 people were asked to clear an area the size of Belgium (30 000 square kilometers), to pave the way for a program designed few years ago, with the prime purpose of leasing or selling lands to foreign investors. International institutions such as the World Bank or the African Bank for Development are repeating these past few years that Ethiopia has an annual growth between 8 to 10%; but on the ground, in spite of the few foreign investments in the hospitality industry, or infrastructure projects like the “grand renaissance dam” which damaged the environment, 70% of the 80 million Ethiopians are still living with less than 1 dollar a day. Ethiopia is also well-known with having a very poor record regarding Human rights. Political opponents and journalists are routinely jailed, if not killed. According to Reporters Without Borders, a leading NGO in the field, the government has created a climate of fear within the press ahead of the parliamentarian elections in May next year “At least six publications had to close in recent months; and around 30 journalists have fled abroad since the start of the year, as a result of the biggest crackdown on the privately-owned press since 2005”. Prominent journalists like Mr. Temesgen Desalegn, the editor of “Fact” magazine, are jailed with vague charge of “terrorism”. According to another press watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists: “Ethiopia has one of the most restricted media in the world and the highest number of journalists living in exile”. The general elections in May 2005 were marred with frauds and violence, leaving more than three hundred deaths and thousands wounded. Several well-known opponents including blogger Eskinder Nega and opposition leader Andualem Arage paid a huge price for their search of freedom: Mr. Nega was jailed for 18 years while Mr. Arage was sentenced for life. As a result, the current Parliament elected in 2010 comprised only 1 opponent out of 547 Parliamentarians!!! During the last five years, the authoritarian Ethiopian government has put in place an ambitious GTP (Growth and Transformation Plan) aimed at attracting international investments. Unfortunately, this Plan is based on the forced eviction of 1.5 million people in the Gambela, Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. In the Regional Somali State alone, 500,000 people have to be deported. This process is well-known as “land-grabbing”, consisting of selling or leasing large pieces of land in developing countries to international firms, governments (Brazil, India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Republic of Korea, etc.) or wealthy individuals. According to activists monitoring the issue worldwide, who published their findings in “Farmlandgrab.org” and “Survivalinternational.org”; or works undertaken by researchers like Jon Abbink, an anthropologist specializing in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is deeply engaged in this process in a very bad way: « In Africa, Ethiopia is at the forefront of handing out land ». Of course the amount paid by foreigners to acquire land is never released and it is very unlikely that this money will ever reach the poor Ethiopians. Several NGO working in the field of Human Rights have reported and documented how the Ethiopian government has removed at gunpoint thousands of indigenous people from their ancestor lands in the OMO River and the Gambela region since 2010. Killing, rapes, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and beating have been used during the deportation process, according to Human Right Watch, Survivalinternational and the Oakland Institute. Those last weeks, the Ethiopian government sent its military forces into the Regional Somali State, besieging the towns and villages of Cadaytu, Undufo, Gadmaytu, and the surrounding area inhabited by Somali-Issa pastoralists and farmers. The violence deployed against the indigenous tribes living in Gambela and around the OMO River is again underway there. Demonstrations have been staged by the Somali-Issa inhabitants. The response was a fierce repression with the army firing indiscriminately. Dozens of people lost their lives, while hundreds have been wounded. All this happened in silenced as not one single media – be it national or international- is reporting this slow onslaught on Somali-Issa pastoralists in Ethiopia. - See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/24339#sthash.r2TpUpjr.dpuf

Problems never end

Half a million people in three West African nations rocked by Ebola are going hungry and that number could double by March if food supplies do not improve, two UN agencies warned. In Guinea, 230,000 people are estimated to be facing sever food shortages because of the impact of Ebola. By March 2015, the number is expected to rise to more than 470,000. Nearly 300,000 Liberians are expected to face severe food problems by March, up from 170,000 today.

In Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries at the heart of the worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, workers have been staying away from markets and fields for fear of spreading the virus that has killed more than 6,800 people since March. This fear has caused labour shortages on farms for planting and weeding and cut household incomes, compounding an economic slowdown in these three countries. Border closures and quarantines are disrupting supply chains, hindering market access and exacerbating shortages, raising fears that one million people from a combined population of 20 million could be going hungry by March.

"The outbreak has revealed the vulnerability of current food production systems and value chains in the worst Ebola-affected countries," Bukar Tijani, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) representative for Africa said in a statement. The FAO said more food needs to be imported into these countries which are facing a financial crunch because exports have dropped and recommended cash transfers or vouchers for affected people to buy food and help stimulate markets.

Denise Brown, a relief coordinator for the World Food Programme, said the situation regarding food supplies could get worse before improvements are seen from international efforts.


Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Morocco V The Western Sahara

The Western Sahara is a country on the Atlantic Ocean coast of North Africa with the dubious distinction of being the “Last Colony” in Africa. Morocco invaded Western Sahara in 1975 following the withdrawal of the then colonial ruler, Spain. That military invasion was followed by Morocco’s sending of hundreds of thousands of settlers into the country.

The Saharawi people, the indigenous population of the Western Sahara, want an independent nation, while Morocco has offered the Saharawi only autonomy under Moroccan control. It sparked a war with the Saharawi which wound down to a stalemate with Morocco controlling 80 percent of the country, including its fishing rich coast line, vast mineral deposits and major cities. The remainder of the country has been controlled by the Polisario Front, the main political force in the struggle for independence.

“Morocco confiscated our land. Built a wall dividing our country. It violates human rights while plundering our natural resources,” Mohammed Abdelaziz, the President of the Western Sahara.

The United Nations approved a referendum on the future status of the Western Sahara in the early 1990s but Morocco has balked, refusing to permit the U.N. to conduct a vote. Morocco’s occupation is strongly backed by France, and has the tacit support of the United States. While the U.S. does not formally recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over what Morocco calls it’s “Southern Provinces,” it has not forcefully demanded that its ally comply with international law. Morocco enjoys support on Capitol Hill, ranging from conservatives to members of the liberal-leaning Black Congressional Caucus. American human rights activist Susan Scholte, who has worked on the Western Sahara issue since 1993, said most American supporters of Morocco’s position on the Western Sahara either don’t know the facts or are getting paid by Morocco. Morocco spent $3.5-million on lobbying inside the U.S., in 2013 alone.  Morocco contends its claim on the Western Sahara predates Spanish colonization, a position rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1975, months before Morocco’s invasion.


Morocco officially denies brutality in the Western Sahara but a U.S. State Department human rights report released in February 2014 listed violations including “physical/verbal abuses” of Saharawi people “during arrest and imprisonment.” That report also listed a lack of democracy, corruption and “widespread disregard of the rule of law” by Moroccan security forces — violations that report stated also occur inside Morocco — a monarchy ruled by a king. Saharawi people described arbitrary beatings, arrests and torture suffered while they were imprisoned for terms ranging from few months to years.

Monday, December 15, 2014

African middle class: myth or fact?


The modern definition of middle class says Africa is joining the world’s consumers of dishwashers, refrigerators and automobiles. Its emerging middle class is now the subject of optimistic chatter. Several reports on the middle class in Africa paint a picture of an African golden age full of possibilities for driving growth through middle-class consumption. They have unleashed a glee among corporates who are salivating over the opportunity of selling to more than 300-plus million middle-class Africans they had not noticed before. If 327 million middle-class Africans really existed, investors would consider the continent a potentially lucrative market for making deals in real estate, retail, wholesale and communications.

But are there 300 million middle-class Africans? It all depends on how you define the middle class.

The McKinsey Global Institute, a consulting firm, defines middle-class households as those with incomes of $20,000 (about R230,000) a year or more, and says Africa’s middle class outstrips India’s (as few as 15.7 million households). Standard Bank defines the middle class as households that spend between $8,500 and $42,000 a year,

The African Development Bank definition is broader. It says Africa’s middle class ranges from earning $520 to $5,200 (or $2 to $20 a day.) Unlike McKinsey, it ranks those earning more than $20 000 a year as rich. It claims the size of the African middle class, those earning between $2 to $20 a day, nearly tripled to 313million people in 2010, or 34.3 percent of the continent’s population. The continent according to its statistics has moved from stagnation in individual prosperity before 2000 to impressive gains in the numbers of people with middle-class levels of income. Except that the African Development Bank middle class of these projections is not the same as the anecdotal middle class that purchases dishwashers and weekend holidays. For investment banks, multinational corporations, real estate developers and traders, the middle class is defined by purchasing power and signifies a potentially untapped market. For this reason, a more accurate definition of the middle class requires a higher purchasing-power bracket that shows that households are living beyond subsistence

The bank’s category is an amalgamation of a “floating middle class” whose daily consumption levels range from $2 to $4 a day and a stable middle class whose consumption levels lie between $4 and $20 a day. This is a very broad definition and not a conventional middle class. At a maximum of $4 a day, you are unlikely to participate in higher education, live in the suburbs or fulfil the same political and economic role in the life of a nation that the middle classes of developed countries do. Put simply, members of this floating middle class are different politically and economically from the wealthier class.

What about removing the floating middle class ($2 to $4 a day) from the equation and examining instead the gains made by combining the stable $4 to $20 class? Have they grown? When comparing the proportions of this stable $4 to $20 middle class, not much has changed. Although it nearly doubled from 62million in 1980 to 123million in 2010, its share of the continent’s population has decreased slightly from 14.6 percent in 1980 to 13.4 percent in 2010. In terms of proportions, the stable middle class ($4 to $20) appears to have shrunk a bit, while the proportion of the floating class has increased.

Earning a maximum of $4 a day, this floating middle class has little disposable income to spend and is unlikely to be capable of fulfilling the middle-class promise of economic and political stability and remain vulnerable to external food and fuel price spikes, inflation and the spectre of sliding back to sub-$2 levels of poverty. Their share of the population has increased from 14.7 percent in 2000 to 20.9 percent in 2010, according to the African Development Bank. They account for about 200million of the bank’s misleading middle-class definition. They remain barely above the poverty line and have trouble making the transition into the more stable middle-class category of $4 to $20 a day. Just as the floating class may migrate upwards towards becoming a more traditional middle class, so too may it fall back below the $2 a day line in the face of sudden shocks like rises in food and fuel prices, which this group cannot absorb as easily as the richer classes are able to do. The mass mobilisations in Nigeria in January 2012 that brought Lagos to a standstill over the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy, Uganda’s walk-to-work protests in April 2011 and the rioting in Mozambique in September 2010 over an increase in the price of bread are warnings of how volatile an urban floating middle class can be when such shocks occur. The floating middle class amounts to more than a third of the population in 19 countries (a fifth in 26 countries). In Africa’s three most populous countries, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt, more than half the middle class is in the floating category, living on less than $4 a day.

The African Development Bank’s misdefined middle class. Reports on the size of Africa’s middle class highlight presumptions and miscalculations. The African Development Bank’s 2011 report conceded that about 60 percent of Africa’s middle class, about 199 million people, were barely out of poverty. Does Africa’s population really have more spending power? Are fewer Africans hungry? The debate on what constitutes "middle class" turns “philosophical” at times. Some definitions include concepts such as professional status, education, and the variety of cultural and consumption habits. The banks seem to think it is all about dubious income levels. Socialists defines class based on who owns or does not own the means of production. All men and women who because of their lack of property are forced to seek work for a wage or a salary are members of the working class. Whether you work in a factory or an office whether you push a barrow or a pen if you have to seek a wage or a salary in order to live you are a member of the working class.




Sunday, December 14, 2014

News Headlines Deliberately Hide Real Events


Foreign companies buying Africa's fertile land 

According to an ORDAF (The Association of Researchers in Middle East and Africa), political events and terror news are deliberately kept in the headlines to hide African land grabs by Western countries. According to the ORDAF report, terrorist and policital events are at the forefront of African nations while millions of hectares of land are in the hands of foreign governments. More than 60 million hectares of land that belongs to 80% of Africa are quietly being exchanged hands through sales and rentals under the smokescene of political instability and terror crises. In recent years powerful nations' have kept Africa in the headlines with the incidences of Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda, hiding behind these events while trading in international deals. 

Going back to the 19th century, fertile lands was taken away from the indigenous people of Africa and given to poor white farmers and that today modern methods are now being applied on those lands. In particular this exchange of lands between Europe, the US and Asia have been far more widespread in the last 15 years. These mostly have been covered up by keeping the issues of the Christian Sudanese, the activities of Al-Qaeda's Maghreb activites, the Libyan-Egyptian political crisis and the As-Shabab in Somalia in the headlines, distracting from the secret deals and negotiations. As a result, by keeping these news at the front and hiding behind these news, it has been hoped that the purchase of the lands will be completed as soon as possible. 

In the report, very little countries with the exception of North African Saharan countries of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco but not including Mauritania were the few countries that did not rent out land over 10,000 hectares. The report says, “In some countries, the sales were so high, that there were now groups of observers researching the movement of land sales. At the top of the list was Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, Cameroon, Guinea, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique were being watched carefully. What was even more striking was that with lands exchanging ownership, Western countries imposed that the land that uses traditional agricultural methods by the local people must be removed from all state authority. 
It was also stated in the report that in recent years China had usage rights of billions of hectares of African land. Whether through rental or sales, China has - irrespective of the price it had to pay – with land in its hand has strongly increased its opposition. China had expressed interest in Ethiopia, Congo, Zimbabwe and Cameroon which had closed off the land.


from here



The Ancient History of the Khoisan

The Khoisan, an indigenous population in Namibia may once have comprised the majority of living humans on the planet, for much of the past 150,000 years. The Khoisan population declined about 22,000 years ago and again during the 17th century's European colonialists' incursions into Africa.

the Khoisan, now numbering about 100,000, are a genetically diverse group because of a large ancestral population in the distant past.  The name ‘Khoisan’ generally refers to the hunters and herders of a number of ethnic groups that speak a distinctive click language, although it is not the name that the population use for themselves. Historically, there were two groups of peoples in the Khoisan language family, the Khoi Khoi pastoralists or herders, and the San, who were hunters and gatherers. Today, they are known collectively as the Khoisan or the Bushmen.

Khoisan-speaking people were decimated by European colonialists, their lands stolen and cultures suppressed. In 2012, South African President Jacob Zuma said the Khoisan suffered the most of any group under European colonialism. "It is important to remember that the Khoisan people were the most brutalized by colonialists who tried to make them extinct, and undermined their language and identity. As a free and democratic South Africa today, we cannot ignore to correct the past," he said.

Khoisan populations were wiped out by war and smallpox. European settlers stole much of their land. As herders and hunters, the Khoisan needed large areas to graze their animals, hunt and gather food. Their population was further decimated by loss of livelihood due to land theft. Though much historical Khoisan territory is now farmed, some Khoisan still live their traditional lives of hunting and gathering or herding.