Friday, January 31, 2014

ANC's Broken Promises

The hype around the ANC manifesto launch on the Sat 11th January had hardly died down when a mere two days later three protestors lay dead in the streets of Mothotlung

Mike Tshele and Osia Rahube were shot by the police while Lerato Seema was, it is alleged by residents, assaulted and pushed from a moving Nyala. Enoch Seimela died on the 19th January of wounds the police had inflicted on the 13th. The ANC Manifesto promised to fight corruption and crime, ‘to restrict public servants from doing business’ but again the echo of Marikana is being felt around the country.

Mothotlung is in the Madibeng municipality, which is home to the third biggest ferrochrome deposits in the world and the biggest platinum deposits. There is also the famous Hartebeespoort dam. Water is aplenty and the mines have never experienced water shortages or cut-offs, not so for the working class areas.

Residents of Mothotlung report that water shortages have been coming on a long time. In 2012 there were similar, long cut-offs and protests. Residents were injured then, too. The IPID promised then to look in to the police brutality, but have since then taken no action against the police. Rather upsurprisingly, residents do not trust the police nor the IPID nor the Minister of Police, when they say that they will look into the deaths of the 4 residents.

This time, water cut-offs have been ongoing since about August last year. When the latest round of cut-offs occurred on the 10th January, residents resolved to march to the municipal office on the 13th. The first thing they noticed was that the police were not from the area and they were insistent that no protestor should reach the municipal office.

Residents had long ago discovered that one of the ANC councillors was linked to the company that provides water in a tank, each time the water is cut off. Apparently the company receives R25 000 per tank delivered. A committee was formed to take the matter up. Mike Tshele was one of those who went to the water pumps and they apparently found that the pumps had been tampered with. Now Mike Tshele and Osia Rahube, who had been raising questions about this corruption, are dead and 6 others of the leadership are in hiding; the community report that the ANC has drafted a hitlist and the remaining leadership are under threat of being eliminated.

Despite claims by Minister Molewa that all the water has been restored, residents still report, as on the 19th, that some areas are still without a drop.

In 2011/12 water rates increased by 14% and in 2012/3 by 20% (even higher than the electricity increases at municipal level); the projected increases for the next 3 years is 18% annually. For the 2013/4 budget R58.6 million was allocated for water. What happened to this money? The municipality has been installing water meters. The ANC-linked BEE company Wiphold, has shares in the company that manufactures the water and electricity meters. The ANC has turned water into a commodity.

After the funerals of the 3 this weekend, the situation is still tense. Residents do not trust the parties who come for their votes, not even the EFF and their sacrificial cows. Residents face charges while the police who assaulted and killed their comrades, walk free, ready and able to act again and again.

Some activists in the area have appealed for Numsa to come to their assistance.

UPDATE ON 23RD JANUARY 2014

While residents were without water and now without electricity, the mayor has an uninterrupted supply. Residents continue to be billed even for the long periods when they do not have water or electricity.

In Oukasie phase 2 the electricity has been off for the past 4 days; residents have lost perishable goods and still the water supply is intermittent. Children go to school dirty. The housing shortage is as severe as many other areas- RDP houses have tin shacks in their backyards of their tiny stands. There are no toilets.

Residents are demanding reconnection of electricity and water, proper toilets and decent housing. On an international scale 85 capitalists earn the same as 3.5 billion people. In Madibeng the constrast is similar- Anglo American plunders the wealth while the masses live in destitution.

Another uprising is brewing.

* Shaheed Mahomed, Workers International Vanguard Party (formerly Workers International Vanguard League)

FROM HERE


China And Japan In Africa - In Whose Interest?

Africa was seen by Leopold II as a ‘magnificent African cake’ and still is considered as such by new foreign interests. Between the Chinese and the Japanese it seems the Japanese, like the West, seeks to ‘contain’ China’s influence in Africa. The Chinese aspire to a win-win-South-South cooperation and the restoration of Asia and Africa’s dignity.

The logic of foreign powers’ competing interests in Africa denotes a colonial mentality still prevailing toward Africa! What Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent visit to Africa uncovered is a clear plan that Japan and Western powers have: To “contain” China’s influence in Africa. Africa is talked about just as a “walk over”, a battleground for other people’s interests except African people’s interests! Africa has been in that position since the slavery, apartheid, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and now what I call “neo-multi-influencialism”, that is to say, after the Cold War, all major powers are seeking to maintain their influence in Africa to safeguard their strategic interests there (raw materials, geopolitical support at the UN Security Council) without taking the interests of Africans themselves into consideration (making other people rich while remaining poor yourself and being convinced by those you make rich that you are actually poor and you need help, help, help!).

It is the strategic interests of these major powers that drive their strategic policies toward Africa (they decide everything about Africa without African themselves). Congo’s natural and mineral resources have been systematically looted in the last 16 years by the same people who are coming to Congo as investors. What does the term “investor” mean in this case? If America and its NATO allies can go and bomb Iraq and Afghanistan back to the stone age and award contracts to American companies to “rebuild” these countries, is that what “globalization” is all about?

 African countries themselves may have their own policies toward these major powers, but they remain on paper. Africans do not have any means to implement their own policies. Nearly 90 percent of the African Union’s budget itself is financed from outside. So, Africans have only one policy: the bigger the donation, the happier they are!

Pandering to Western powers’ influence is exactly what Zimbabwean scholars Jonathan Moyo and Charity Manyeruke think has been happening. According to Jonathan Moyo, the one very clear and disappointing state of politics in Africa today is precisely the issue raised by President Mugabe in the interview on the occasion of his 88th birthday of not just cowardice of the so-called new breed of African leaders but also their treachery (Sydney Kawadza, “Some African leaders coward,” ‘The Herald,’ 20 February, 2012).

“It’s not only that they want budgetary support from Western powers or genuinely want to address anything in Africa. It’s simply that they are sellouts by definition. They don’t think about their people but themselves and their pockets.” (Herald Reporter, ‘Political analysts castigate puppet African leaders,’ ‘The Herald,’ 21 February, 2012).


Japan is an industrial state without natural resources wants to consolidate its interests in Africa to ensure a steady flow of African resources to feed its industries. China too needs natural resources to feed its growing economy. But there are differences between the two Asian countries, as far as their policies toward Africa are concerned.

 Japan boasts modern high-technology industries. But unlike China, Japan has never transferred its technology to Africa. Africa does not need big donations forever. Africa needs modern technologies so that it can transform its resources on the spot and create jobs and markets for its people at national, regional. continental and international levels. China has already transferred some of its technologies to Africa (the Hisense company in South Africa and oil extraction technology in Sudan). Indeed, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (Chinese proverb).

History has proven that we Africans can believe and trust China. We trust China when China says that it is ready to cooperate with any other major power in Africa provided that “we put African interests first”. As Chinese scholar Luo Jianbo writes, “of course, it is well known that a nation’s foreign policy always serves its national interests first. China is no exception. China never denies that its African policy aims to pursue its own strategic interests in Africa [nor that it has not made mistakes there]. However, one of the most outstanding features of China’s African policy from the very beginning is its aspiration to promote a win-win-South-South cooperation and the restoration of Asia and Africa’s dignity. China’s engagement in Africa provides Africa with new development opportunities and promotes Africa to integrate in the international system in a more favorable way, that is to say, as an equal partner (Luo Jianbo, “China-Africa relations and China’s international responsibility,” ‘World Economics and Politics,’ 2013, Vol.9, No.397, pp.52-70). Those who want to keep a kind of “master-slave” relationship with Africa are not happy about that.


Antoine Roger Lokongo from here



Tanzania's Land Wars

Tanzania has approximately 21 million head of cattle, the largest number in Africa after Ethiopia and Sudan. According to the ministry of livestock and fisheries development, livestock contributes to at least 30 percent of agricultural GDP.

Tanzania's ministry for agriculture, food security and cooperatives says that small-scale farmers produce more than 90 percent of the country's food. Of the country's 94.5 million hectares, only half - 44 million hectares - is arable land.

 Of Tanzania's 42 million people, only 0.02 percent have traditional land ownership titles.

The disputes over land and water have also caused food insecurity among farmers, many of whom have been unable to harvest crops for fear of reprisals from enraged pastoralists.

On January 12, 2014, ten people were killed in Kiteto district in central Tanzania when Maasai pastoralists allegedly invaded villages in the disputed Embroi Murtangosi forest reserve and set homes ablaze. in December 2000 in Kilosa district, in the Morogoro region, where 38 farmers were killed. Hostilities reignited in 2008 and eight people were killed, several houses set alight and livestock stolen.

Experts say that these resource-based conflicts are also fuelled by ethnic hatred, dwindling resources, poor land management and population growth.

Yefred Myenzi, a researcher from the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute known locally as HakiArdhi, said that most of the fighting over land was the indirect result of decisions and actions taken by the state through its various agencies. "We have seen the influx of investors who take swathes of land to start commercial farming ranching or mining activities, in the process triggering conflicts with local people who are evicted from their land without due process," he added. He blamed the existing land tenure system for sidelining pastoral communities, since no land has been set aside for them. "Although land laws require every village to have in place a land use plan, many villages are yet to implement this due to conflict," he said.

Henry Mahoo, professor of agricultural engineering at Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture, said that in order to resolve tensions between the two groups, a land use plan, which would clearly identify areas under pastoralists' ownership and those controlled by farmers, should be drawn up. "The problem [behind] these clashes is deeper than we think. All concerned parties must be involved in the negotiation process, and there must be a forum where farmers and pastoralists openly talk about their problems," he said.

Meshack Saidimu, a Maasai pastoralist in Mbalali, said that most of the disputes occurred because the government had not set aside areas for pastoralists. "I think we are being made scapegoats for all these problems. The Maasai are disciplined people, they don't just hurt somebody for the sake of it," he said.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Zimbabwe Government Failing To Pay Farmers For Food Produced

A Zimbabwe state mechanism designed to promote food security is being blamed for exacerbating the country’s chronic food shortages.
The failure by the 83-year-old state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to pay producers for their grain in recent years has short-circuited the ability of small-scale farmers to generate cash flow to fund agricultural inputs for the following season - a problem recognized by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, with a membership drawn from the government, the UN World Food Programme and other partners, estimates that 2.2 million people, or a quarter of the rural population, require food assistance during the 2014 “lean season” - the few months before the harvest in March.

Small-scale farmers are the backbone of the country’s food security and provide about 70 percent of its staple crop, maize, according to agricultural analysts and government estimates. Denford Gwara, 48, a small-scale farmer who used to produce wheat and maize on 40 hectares of land in Mazowe, Mashonaland Central province, told IRIN the GMB owed him US$9,000 for produce he had delivered in the past two harvests.
“I have visited GMB on numerous occasions but they keep telling me that government has not given them money to pay me. Last year, they offered to pay off part of the debt with fertilizer and maize seed, but only gave me a few bags, which were too little for me to make any meaningful farming,” he said.
As a result, he has had to reduce the area of land he tills to only five hectares, and had to sell his old truck to raise money for inputs.

 The GMB’s primary role is to ensure national food security by promoting crop production - mainly cereals - as well as the procurement, free distribution and sales of harvested grains, and managing the country’s strategic grain reserves. It also has a commercial department that processes and sells agricultural products such as oil seeds, rice, groundnuts, coffee and popcorn.

At a recent media briefing in the capital, Harare, minister of agriculture Joseph Made said, “At the moment, most farmers are using limited financial resources. They need the money that GMB owes them. Government cannot expect farmers to produce when it is failing to pay them for their produce.”
Made acknowledged that the GMB owed farmers more than US$6 million. He said his ministry was “battling with treasury” and hoped the finance ministry would “assist, so that farmers have the money they need to finance their operations”.

 Even before the land reform programme in 2000, when about 4,500 white-owned farms - accounting for about 39 percent of the country’s land - was redistributed to an estimated 245,000 black farmers, small-scale farmers were a central pillar in the nation’s food security.
After independence from Britain in 1980, price controls on maize increased the trend by white commercial farmers to resort to cash crops like tobacco, paprika, cut flowers and cotton, and growing yellow maize for stock feed, entrenching cereal production as largely the preserve of communal black farmers.
In the aftermath of the land reform programme, large-scale agro-businesses collapsed, as did the access of small-scale farmers to cheaper agricultural inputs facilitated by the large-scale demands of commercial farmers. The imposition of sanctions for human rights abuses further squeezed an already fragile economy.


Eddie Cross, a farmer, agricultural consultant and member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, told IRIN the failure by GMB to pay farmers timeously was “a serious issue that requires urgent government intervention”.
“In the old days, farmers would get their money within a week after delivering produce. The farmers would then start planning for the next farming season and know how much to set aside for personal consumption. They would be able to buy inputs on time and before prices shot up, unlike now,” Cross said.
He estimated the number of small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe - those on communal land as well as those resettled through land reform - at about 700,000, noting that about half of them had been “severely affected” by non-payment or delayed payment from the GMB.
“It is confusing that the government is prepared to annually hunt for money to import food, when it should be prioritizing raising money to allocate to GMB for farmers’ payments as a way to ensure that production improves,” he said.

Wonder Chabikwa, the ZCFU president, told IRIN, “Granted, drought and the delayed distribution of inputs are also behind poor agricultural production - particularly that of maize - over the years,” he said. “But one untold story is that GMB’s inability to pay farmers is a major factor that has affected their capacity to prepare and produce meaningful yields, leading to recurrent food insecurity.”


Whole article here

Schools Out

It will be more than 70 years before all children have access to primary school, says a report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  57 million remain without schools and at the current rate it will be 2086 before access is reached for poor, rural African girls.

In poor countries, one in four young people is unable to read a single sentence. There are 130 million children who remain illiterate and innumerate despite having been in school. Nigeria has the single greatest number of children without a primary school place - a higher figure now than when the pledges were made at the beginning of the century. In Tanzania, only 3.5% of children have textbooks and there are overcrowded class sizes of up to 130 pupils in Malawi.

 In west Africa, it warns of too many teachers who are on low pay, temporary contracts and with little training. The quantity of teachers would also need to be increased, with an extra 1.6 million needed to provide enough primary school places.

But aid to education has declined at a greater rate than overall aid budgets, says the report.
"One of the things that we found shocking was that low income countries faced the biggest losses in aid," says report author, Dr Rose.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25811704

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Measles Outbreak In Guinea - Socio-Political Instability

Health authorities in Guinea are scrambling to contain a measles outbreak that has killed one child, infected 37 others and spread to half of the country’s 33 districts.

More than 400 suspected cases, nearly all of them in children under 10 years old, have been registered. A vaccination campaign targeting over 1.6 million children is to be launched in the coming weeks.

“We have moved from three affected districts in Conakry before the end of last year to the whole city now being affected. Five more districts out of Conakry are also affected. It means that it could spread throughout the country,” said Felix Ackebo, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) deputy representative for Guinea.

“One of the causes is the nature of the disease. The other is the social/political instability. Many bilateral donors stopped support, awaiting the holding of legislative elections. The whole health system has been weakened. The government was restricted on what it could purchase, and this affected [availability of] vaccines and other important drugs. Many of the basic social services have suffered from this pause in investment,” Ackebo told IRIN. “In the past, we have been obliged to buy measles vaccines and others because the government could not.”

Only 37 percent of Guinean children are fully vaccinated, according to the 2012 Demographic Health Survey. The country’s last measles epidemic, in 2009, infected 4,755 people and killed 10.

Keita Sakoba, head of disease prevention at the Ministry of Health, said that the current stock of measles vaccine, meant for routine immunization, was insufficient for the vaccination drive. He explained that the outbreak was likely due to the accumulation of unvaccinated children.

“We will launch a vaccination campaign in the 15 affected districts and carry out targeted immunizations in districts neighbouring the affected ones,” Sakoba said.


From here



Tax Avoidance via Mauritius

Mauritius’s population is just 1.3 million, yet the island boasts 21 banks, including such global names as HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and South Africa’s own Investec and Standard Bank.

The world’s largest reinsurance company, Munich Re, has a presence in Port Louis, Munich Mauritius Reinsurance Company (MMRC), which is a separate subsidiary to Munich Re of Africa, based in Johannesburg.

Mauritius has 26, 096 global business companies and 905 global funds in the country. The financial services sector, which contributes 10.3% to a GDP of $10.49bn, employs 13 000 people. The sector accounts for the third highest number of active occupation permits held by foreign nationals (12%) behind the media industry (18%) and hospitality and airline industry (16%). About 15,000 Mauritian accountants, lawyers and other professionals work with offshore companies.

Mauritius is consistently ranked by the World Bank as the easiest country in which to do business in the region, Mauritius ranks 19th out of 189 global economies for starting a business, in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2014’. Mauritius offers one of the most advantageous offshore jurisdictions for tax structuring in Africa.

A Deloitte document, "Investing in Africa through Mauritius", passed on to the Observer, advises on investing in African companies via the island nation. A foreign company investing in Mozambique, where more than 50% of the population live below the poverty line and average life expectancy is 49 years. Normally, the foreign company could expect to pay a withholding tax on the dividends flowing back to it from Mozambique of 20%. A sale of its Mozambique investment would see the company liable for a capital gains tax bill of up to 32%.

However, the Deloitte document explains that, if the foreign company made its investment through a holding company in Mauritius, it could limit the withholding tax it would have to pay to just 8%, while capital gains tax would be reduced to zero. The potential value of capital gains tax to developing economies is considerable. An Italian oil company was recently required by the Mozambique government to pay $400m (£250m) in capital gains tax.

The document explains that Mauritius could tax the holding company's profits at 15%, but that this does not happen in practice. The firm explains that any tax liability in the island is wiped out by a foreign tax credit, issued because the company has been taxed in Mozambique.

Despite SABMiller, Africa's largest brewer and the second-largest in the world, making profits of more than £2bn ($3.1bn) a year, in 2010 the charity ActionAid found a woman who runs a shop just outside of its bottling plant in Ghana paid more tax than the multinational. United Kingdom-based SABMiller uses 65 tax haven companies: more than it has breweries and bottling plants in Africa. First it stores its 'local' brands – like Castle, Chibuku and Stone – in the Netherlands, where they collect royalties with a tax loss of £10m per annum. It pays management services fees to sister companies in Switzerland, avoiding a further £9.5m in tax in Africa and India. Then Mauritius comes in with a logistics role. The Accra brewery in Ghana sources raw materials from South Africa but routes them through Mauritius, losing Ghana about £670,000 in tax. Finally, using Mauritius in a 'thin cap' arrangement, the Accra brewery is kept artificially undercapitalised, in other words in debt to the Mauritian subsidiary MUBEX because interest payments can be offset against tax, losing Ghana a further £76,000 per year.

 Mauritius styles itself as a Cayman Islands to India, allowing investors to slash their tax bills by channeling money that is destined there. The result: 38% of all foreign direct investment in India, or $65.29 billion, traveled through the offshore center between 2000 and May 2012, including 6% that came directly from the U.S.  India loses $7 billion a year in taxes from offshore accounts, including many in Mauritius. A multinational company will typically set up a holding company in Mauritius that controls a particular investment in India. When the multinational later sells the investment, it benefits from the absence of a Mauritian capital-gains tax. And because it is based abroad, it pays no Indian capital-gains tax of up to 40%. The Mauritian holding company can also shield the multinational from India's tax on dividends, which is 15%, and its 20% tax on interest. Foreigners rushed to set up companies in Mauritius to benefit from a 1983 tax treaty with India that exempted Mauritius-based investors from capital-gains taxes. By the end of 2010, Mauritius hosted 27,500 holding companies controlling more than $400 billion in assets. Setting up a company there takes just two weeks and $10,000, and such companies as JP Morgan Chase JPM  Citigroup,  PepsiCo  and most private-equity possess a Mauritius subsidary. 

Colonial Armies

 U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM, has it headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany since no actual African nation would house it. Nevertheless,  U.S. troops in Africa will reach full brigade status this year (5,000 soldiers). They will also have a presence in 38 of Africa's 54 nations and could conduct as many as 100 separate missions on the continent, often supported by teams of U.S. State Department specialists and private contractors. An unstated strategic goal is to lay down markers again in an Africa increasingly being courted by China and other Asian nations.

France, too,  has become extraordinarily active in Africa over the past year. First it flew up to 4,000 soldiers, including special forces, to block the advancing al-Qaeda linked rebels in Mali; then, more recently, it sent another 1,000 troops to the Central African Republic to suppress Muslim-Christian violence following a coup there. In both conflicts, the U.S. offered extensive air transport plus other logistical and intelligence support to the French. According to The Associated Press, a French buildup would include basing 3,000 permanent French soldiers in the Sahel region, and pre-positioning Mirage and Rafale fighters at an air base in Chad, actions that the French hope will both stabilize the region and encourage even more U.S. support.
"I don't think we want Americans to lose interest in this very sensitive zone," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

 European foreign ministers have just agreed to send a rapid deployment force of up to 600 troops to bolster French and UN peace efforts in the Central African Republic. Separately, Germany and Britain are sending logistical support. Germany's new defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen,  said  her country should engage more strongly in Africa by sending additional military trainers to Mali and supporting the French intervention in Central African Republic.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Trachoma

Infectious trachoma, a bacterial infection, is the world's most common cause of preventable blindness.

The World Health Organization estimates that 21 million people are affected by trachoma, of whom about 2.2 million are visually impaired and 1.2 million blind.

"Trachoma is a disease of poverty," says Simon Bush, director of the Neglected Tropical Disease programme at Sightsavers. "It is endemic in areas which have poor access to water and sanitation."

"The pain and the devastation of trachoma can be stopped by 10 minutes of surgery," says Dr Alemayehu.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Rich Living

South Africa’s richest people (48,700) have seen their wealth grow by 14% over the past six years, accounting for almost a third of the country’s total wealth.

HNWIs are as individuals with a net worth above US$1 million (R10.9 million), with UHNWIs (ultra-high net worth individuals) having above US$30 million (R327 million).

 South Africa is home to 599 UHNWIs, with an average net worth of US$105 million (R1.14 billion) each.

These individuals have a combined wealth of US$200 billion (R2.18 trillion)  up 14% from US$168 billion (R1.83 trillion) in 2007 – and account for 31% of the country’s total individual wealth of US$650 billion (R7.1 trillion).

With South Africa’s population sitting just under 51.2 million (2012), this means that 0.1% of the population owns approximately 31% of the country’s total individual wealth.


According to Forbes, South Africa’s 14 richest have a combined net worth of $28.79 billion, and an average net worth of $2.06 billion. South African luxury goods tycoon, Johann Rupert added $2 billion to his fortune in 2013, according to Forbes, to steal the spot as second wealthiest man in Africa. ANC deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected to the position in late 2012, is worth $700 million.

Camps Bay in Cape Town is home to the most properties with a value exceeding US$2 million in South Africa, with 155 – followed by Knysna on the Garden Route, with 133 properties, and Sandhurt, in Johannesburg, with 127.

According to NW Wealth research, the price of prime property in Cape Town (Bantry Bay, Clifton) is valued at US$6,500 per square meter in 2013, whilst prime Johannesburg (Sandton) property in valued at US$2,400 per square meter.


The second-homes market in South Africa is concentrated in the Western Cape and in certain parts of the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu Natal, NWW points out.
For luxury second-home buyers, the garden route (between Cape Town and Plettenberg Bay) has become the top destination over the past decade. These top-end buyers generally come from abroad or from Johannesburg and Cape Town. Based on NW Wealth tracking estimates the top five luxury second-home locations in South Africa are Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, Hermanus, Stellenbosch and Umhlanga.
22% of South African High net-worth individuals had second homes abroad in 2013. 50% of the HNWIs with homes abroad are individuals who emigrated during the 1980s and 1990s but have since returned.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Nigeria's 'Eko Atlantic' Introduces Climate Apartheid

It’s a sight to behold. Just off Lagos, Nigeria’s coast, an artificial island is emerging from the sea. A foundation, built of sand dredged from the ocean floor, stretches over ten kilometres. Promotional videos depict what is to come: a city of soaring buildings, housing for 250,000 people, and a central boulevard to match Paris’ Champs-Élysées and New York’s Fifth Avenue. Privately constructed, it will also be privately administered and supplied with electricity, water, mass transit, sewage and security. It is the “future Hong Kong of Africa,” anticipates Nigeria’s World Bank director.

Welcome to Eko Atlantic, a city whose “whole purpose”, its developers say, is to “arrest the ocean’s encroachment.” Like many low-lying coastal African countries, Nigeria has been hit hard by a rising sea-level, which has regularly washed away thousands of peoples’ homes. To defend against the coastal erosion and flooding, the city is being surrounded by the “Great Wall of Lagos”, a sea defence barrier made of 100,000 five-ton concrete blocks. Eko Atlantic will be a “sustainable city, clean and energy efficient with minimal carbon emissions,” offer jobs, prosperity and new land for Nigerians, and serve as a bulwark in the fight against the impacts of climate change.

At least that’s the official story. Other facts suggest this gleaming city will be a menacing allure to most. In congested Lagos, Africa’s largest city, there is little employment and millions work and scavenge in a vast, desperate informal economy. Sixty percent of Nigeria’s population – almost 100 of 170 million people – live on less than a dollar a day. Preventable diseases are widespread; electricity and clean water hard to come by. A few kilometres down the Lagos shoreline, Nigerians eke out an existence in the aquatic slum of Makoko, built precariously on stilts over the ocean. Casting them as crime-ridden, the government regularly dismantles such slums, bulldozing homes and evicting thousands. These are hardly the people who will scoop up square footage in Eko Atlantic’s pricy new high-rises.

Those behind the project – a pair of politically connected Lebanese brothers who run a financial empire called the Chagoury Group, and a slew of African and international banks – give a picture of who will be catered to. Gilbert Chaougry was a close advisor to the notorious Nigerian dictatorship of the mid 1990s, helping the ultra-corrupt general Sani Abacha as he looted billions from public coffers. Abacha killed hundreds of demonstrators and executed environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who rose to fame protesting the despoiling of the country by Shell and other multinational oil corporations. Thus it’s fitting for whom the first 15-story office tower in Eko Atlantic is being built: a British oil and gas trading company. The city proposing to head off environmental devastation will be populated by those most responsible for it in the first place.

The real inspiration for Eko Atlantic comes not from these men but the dreamworlds of rampant capitalism, stoked by a successful, thirty year global campaign to claw back gains in social security and unchain corporations from regulation – what we now know as neoliberalism. In Nigeria, oil wealth plundered by a military elite spawned extreme inequalities and upended the economy. Under the IMF’s neoliberal dictates, the situation worsened: education and healthcare were gutted, industries privatized, and farmers ruined by western products dumped on their markets. The World Bank celebrated Nigeria; extreme poverty doubled. The most notorious application of the power of the Nigerian state for the interest of the rich came in 1990: an entire district of Lagos – 300,000 homes – was razed to clear the way for high-end real-estate development.

As elites in Nigeria and elsewhere have embraced such inequality as the very engine of growth, they have re-established some of the most severe forms of colonial segregation and gated leisure. Today, boutiques cannot open fast enough to serve the Nigerian millionaires buying luxury cars and yachts they’ll be able to dock in Eko Atlantic’s down-town marina. Meanwhile, thousands of people who live in communities along the coast expect the new city will bring displacement, not prosperity, says environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey. To get their way, the developers, backed by industry and politicians, have trampled over the country’s environmental assessment process. “Building Eko Atlantic is contrary to anything one would want to do if one took seriously climate change and resource depletion,” he says.

The wealthy and powerful may in fact take climate change seriously: not as a demand to modify their behaviour or question the fossil-fuel driven global economy that has made it possible, but as the biggest opportunity yet to realize their dreams of unfettered accumulation and consumption. The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic have seized on climate change to push through pro-corporate plans to build a city of their dreams, an architectural insult to the daily circumstances of ordinary Nigerians. The criminalized poor abandoned outside their walls may once have served as sufficient justification for their flight and fortification – but now they have the very real threat of climate change as well.

Eko Atlantic is where you can begin to see a possible future – a vision of privatized green enclaves for the ultra rich ringed by slums lacking water or electricity, in which a surplus population scramble for depleting resources and shelter to fend off the coming floods and storms. Protected by guards, guns, and an insurmountable gully – real estate prices – the rich will shield themselves from the rising tides of poverty and a sea that is literally rising. A world in which the rich and powerful exploit the global ecological crisis to widen and entrench already extreme inequalities and seal themselves off from its impacts – this is climate apartheid.

Prepare for the elite, like never before, to use climate change to transform neighbourhoods, cities, even entire nations into heavily fortified islands. Already, around the world, from Afghanistan to Arizona, China to Cairo, and in mushrooming mega-cities much like Lagos, those able are moving to areas where they can live better and often more greenly – with better transport and renewable technologies, green buildings and ecological services. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the super-rich – ferried above the congested city by a fleet of hundreds of helicopters – have disembedded themselves from urban life, attempting to escape from a common fate.
In places like Eko Atlantic the escape, a moral and social secession of the rich from those in their country, will be complete. This essentially utopian drive – to consume rapaciously and endlessly and to reject any semblance of collective impulse and concern – is simply incompatible with human survival. But at the moment when we must confront an economy and ideology pushing the planet’s life-support systems to breaking point, this is what the neoliberal imagination offers us: a grotesque monument to the ultra-rich flight from responsibility.

from here


Friday, January 24, 2014

South Sudan's Civil War - In Whose Interest?

If one asks the question “who benefits from the South Sudanese civil war?” the answer is clear. The USA is presently the ONLY beneficiary of the ongoing horrors in South Sudan for this latest round of conflict has once again shut down the Chinese run oil fields in the country.

The USA has determined that its in its “national interests” to deprive China of access to Africa’s oil fields and has succeeded in its goal of again shutting down Chinese oil production in Sudan, the only majority Chinese owned oil field in Africa.

What other evidence links the USA to the South Sudanese civil war? Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the USA via the CIA has been paying the salaries of the South Sudanese Army (SPLA) since 2009. In other words, both the soldiers (“rebels”) supporting Riek Machar and the soldier supporting President Salva Kiir are being paid by the USA, paid to kill each other? Don't take my word for it, go check Wikileaks.

Another question NOT being asked by the international media is how is Riek Machar funding his army? Where is he getting the funds to pay for his soldiers ammunition, the fuel to run their trucks and equipment, to pay for their food? Where is this money coming from in a country complete destroyed by the ongoing fighting? If its coming from funds stolen by Riek Machar while he was Vice President of South Sudan, where are the funds deposited and how is he accessing them?

The USA prefers proxies to do its dirty work so as to keep its self insulated from charges of foreign interference and to keep its “hands clean” so to speak. The fact that “rebels” supporting Riek Machar have been receiving weapons from Ethiopia is a matter of public record with reports from the past year exposing what is just the tip of the iceberg in the matter.

What is Ethiopia’s interest in this, isn't the Ethiopian regime a “neutral party” hosting “peace talks”? The fact that Ethiopia has some 10,000 soldiers/peacekeepers on the Sudan/South Sudanese border this past year including the oil fields is another matter being ignored by the media. Again, thanks to Wikileaks, we know that Ethiopia has an ongoing fuel crisis and spends up to 75% of its foreign currency earnings on fuel imports. The Sudanese oil fields are the only immediately available supply for Ethiopia’s problem and with Brazil promising to build a $1 billion railway from the South Sudanese border to Addis Ababa this would be the quickest solution to Ethiopia’s major headache.

I for one am really, really sick of Africans being portrayed as tribalistic animals murdering each other in never ending slaughters when the only real beneficiary of such are foreign powers, mainly the USA and its western vassals. If one does just a little research into these holocausts one begins to see who really benefits and when it comes to the civil war in South Sudan the only party presently benefiting from these crimes is the USA. How this will play out will be an omen of things to come for the USA and China are certain to be at odds in the future when it comes to exploiting Africa’s oil fields which today supply half of the USA’s oil imports.

by Thomas C Mountain from here

 

Radiation poisoning

In 1975 Anglo-Australian mining firm Rio Tinto set up its Rössing uranium mine. It needed a place to house its black workforce so it built Arandis in Namibia. Arandis is still the home of the workers, but has lost the financial support of the company. It looks like it is doomed to decay.

Many men who worked in the mine's early days claim to suffer from severe illnesses including cancers, hypertension and anaemia.  Hoseas Gaomab, worked in the mine's laboratory for 23 years. He knows many men who have died. But he doesn't know why.  Gaomab is sick, too. He suffers from a disease that has made his legs and hands numb for the much of the past 20 years. It simply didn't occur to Gaomab that his illness could be work-related. Then, in 1993, a medical student named Reinhard Zaire arrived, interviewing miners and taking blood samples. "He asked us how long we worked for Rössing and when we got sick. Then he called us together to tell us we were irradiated."

He concluded that there was an increased risk for uranium miners to develop malignant diseases such as cancer. Shortly after the report was published, Zaire was dismissed by the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services, his research permission was revoked, and he was accused of practising as a medical doctor illegally. Rio Tinto slammed Zaire's report.
 "To date, there have been no confirmed occupational illness related deaths," said Rio Tinto spokesperson
There are no records available from the company of what happens to workers once they leave Rössing. After their retirement, the men return to their homes in rural Namibia, where they rarely have access to proper healthcare facilities.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Scourge of Silicosis

According to the South African Department of Labour, there are currently as many as 2,000,000 former gold miners suffering from silicosis.  Tens of thousands of gold miners - many of them migrant workers - who have registered for what is thought to be South Africa's largest class action lawsuit in history. Three law firms - Richard Spoor Attorneys, Abrahams Kiewitz Attorneys and the Legal Resources Center - have filed affidavits against 31 mining companies accusing them of damaging their clients' health by exposing them to elevated levels of dust underground.

South Africa's gold industry was founded on the migrant labour system, a system that heavily linked to the apartheid era. Black men from poverty-stricken areas across the south of the continent were cheaper to employ than locals. Even now, more than half of the total workforce in the mining sector is recruited from neighbouring countries. Once they leave the mines, however, they disappear from the radar of the occupational health institutions and the mining houses.

In South Africa, one of the world's largest gold producers, silicosis was identified as an occupational lung disease in 1911. The implementation of the Miners' Phthisis Act of 1922 allowed white miners to receive compensation for diseases contracted in the mines. In 1930, the first conference dedicated to the illness was held in Johannesburg. The current health and safety legislation, however, excludes gold miners. For mine workers, there is a separate act, named the Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act (ODMWA), which for a long time "only served the white and coloured workers", explained Thuthula Balfour-Kaipa, the head of the health department at the Chamber of Mines, an institution funded by the mining companies.

The majority of the miners have been and still are black. Up until the 1990s, black men comprised some 90 percent of the mines' workforce, a statistic which has not changed significantly. The majority of those men traditionally came from countries other than South Africa.

According to Balfour-Kaipa, the compensation act has not been implemented properly, even after it was reformed following the fall of apartheid in 1994. "The men are getting less compensation than they should - if they get anything," she said. Balfour-Kaipa does not blame the mining companies, but the government. She says the lack of a functioning public health system in the provinces or countries of origin of the migrant workers is at fault. "The Eastern Cape is one of the most dysfunctional provinces in South Africa," she said. "For Lesotho and Mozambique, there isn't even legislation about occupational health."

Dr Thabiso Kolobe is a general practitioner from Maseru, Lesotho, who only learned about the disease last year. "Silicosis is not a common word here," he said. "Doctors don't think that way, they are not aware of this disease when they see an X-ray." Once a worker returns to his home, chances drop that he will ever be diagnosed with silicosis. "They just die outside in the villages," says Kolobe. "Because there is no organised service, no database of ex-miners, no screening system... Many of those men live in rural areas, so even if it's clearly indicated that they have to come for a screening every six months, they'd have to travel far."

East Africa's Food Security Under Threat From Climate Change

The report, East African Agriculture and Climate Change, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), looks at threats to food supplies in 11 countries in East and Central Africa – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Agriculture accounts for more than 40 percent of gross domestic product across the region. The report says soil deficiencies in many parts mean agricultural productivity is falling.
Ecosystems are depleted, infrastructure is poor and there’s a lack of reliable information and policy coordination. Meanwhile weather systems are becoming more erratic and violent.
“Climate change will have far-reaching consequences for the poor and marginalized groups, among which the majority depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and have a lower capacity to adapt…this situation is likely to become more desperate and to threaten the very survival of the most vulnerable farmers as global warming continues,” says the study.

Crop production across the region depends overwhelmingly on rainfall. Many areas are likely to see less rainfall in future and an increased incidence of droughts. In 2011 there were prolonged droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Rising temperatures in many areas are likely to result in reduced crop yields: harvests of wheat, soybean, sorghum and irrigated rice could decline by between 5 percent and 20 percent, with irrigated rice production being the hardest hit. However, output of rain-fed maize and rain-fed rice might increase slightly, due to increased rainfall in some areas.
Endemic poverty affects more than 50 percent of the region’s 360 million people. Overall – unless adaptation measures, including the introduction of new crop varieties, better land management and the advancing of planting dates to cope better with changes in climate are adopted – the outlook for the region is bleak, warns the report.
“Recent trends and the current performance of agriculture expose a region that is progressively less able to meet the needs of its burgeoning population.”

The countries of East Africa have among the highest population increases in the world: between 1988 and 2008 the region’s population – excluding that of the DRC – increased by “a staggering” 74 percent. By 2050, that population could double. While there’s growing urbanization across the region and more industrial development, agriculture will continue to dominate the countries’ economies.

The report says there’s a role for insurance schemes which would enable farmers to cope better with changes in climate. But persuading those working on the land – mainly smallholders – to invest in such schemes is hard, with no spare cash available to spend on even small premiums.

[The study is a collaboration between IFPRI, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and regional scientists. Previous studies have looked at the impact of climate change on agriculture in West Africa and southern Africa.] 

Taken from here


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The capitalist logic

Half a century after agricultural productivity surged in Asia, eastern Europe and Latin America, with cereal yields jumping from 1 tonne a hectare in 1960 to more than 3 tonnes last year, Africa has yet to see a serious increase in production. Cereal yields in sub-Saharan countries have risen to only 1.3 tonnes per hectare, up from 0.8 tonnes.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, productivity in African farming failed to keep pace with population growth. Any increases reflected bringing more land under cultivation rather than increasing yields. As a result, domestic food production per capita fell, forcing African countries to rely on imports, and spend billions of US dollars each year buying commodities such as wheat, sugar and rice from international trading houses.  The over-reliance on food imports put countries against the wall once wholesale prices surged. The 2007-08 food crisis – the first in three decades – which saw record prices for rice and wheat, triggered riots in several African countries, including protests in Nigeria and Senegal.

Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s agriculture minister, told an audience: “Nigeria was food self-sufficient in the 1960s and well-known for its global position in major agricultural commodities.” Then something changed. “We found oil and became too dependent on it. Nigeria soon became a net food importer, spending on average $11bn a year on wheat, rice, sugar and fish alone.”

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Fair Trade?

German eats nearly 19 kilograms of poultry per year. Breast of chicken is the most popular cut. It is not only beautifully white and tender and also has a low fat content. It is also what the heath conscious in Europe prefer. German farmers produce 25 percent more poultry than their consumers eat. Parts of the birds that can't be sold easily in Germany, such as the innards, are shipped to Africa. Africans are sold the "Chicken Back" which is the bony back part from which the white breast has been removed.

Ghanaian consumers can buy imported frozen chicken parts for the equivalent of two euros whereas the price of a whole chicken from the farmer next door is four euros.  The reason that the EU poultry parts can be so cheaply exported to Africa is because of the introduction of factory farming. Production costs are covered by European sales alone. Francisco Mari, who is an expert in agricultural trade at the German relief organization Brot für die Welt believes this makes a mockery of development aid projects that try to help poorer countries stand on their two feet and extricate themselves from poverty.

Back in 1980s and in 1990s Ghana was able to meet 80 percent of its national poultry demand with domestic production says Quame Kokroh, Executive Secretary of the National Poultry Association. "Since then, cheap imports turned the market upside down. But today our farmers have a share of only ten percent and we are afraid that we will lose that too," he said

In 2003, Ghana's Parliament tried to fight the cheap imports by increasing in import duties, but after a short time, the government overturned the law. "I think it was the pressure from the international community," says Quame Kokroh.
Francisco Mari agrees. "Ghana was negotiating with the World Bank for a debt relief loan at the same time. If the government had not backtracked, then the state would have lost a lot of money."

Monday, January 20, 2014

The Millions V The Billions

“While global direct investment has shown some decline, dropping by 18 percent in 2012, in Africa foreign direct investment rose by five percent,” Ken Ogwang, an economic expert affiliated with the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), which has a membership of over 60 businesses, told IPS. Ogwang predicts that these discoveries will soon see African countries dominating the list of the 15 fastest-growing economies in the world. “More African countries, Kenya being a model example in East Africa, now favour a market-based economy, which is highly competitive and the most liberal economic system. In this system, market trends are driven by supply and demand with very few restrictions on who the actors are. [It is] a favourable environment for foreign investors,” he said, referring to the local mobile phone industry, which has been dominated by foreign investors because of its favourable regulatory policies. As a result, growth in this sector is phenomenal. In the first 11 months of 2013, Kenya’s mobile phone money transactions were 19.5 billion dollars, which is more than the country’s current 18.4-billion-dollar national budget.”

Since 2012, Kenya has made a series of mineral discoveries, including unearthing 62.4 billion dollars worth of Niobium – a rare earth deposit. The discovery in Kenya’s Kwale County has made the area among the world’s top five rare earth deposits sites, and allows Kenya to enter a market that has long been dominated by China. In 2012, Kenya discovered 600 million barrels of oil reserves in Turkana county, one of the country’s poorest regions. It was announced on Jan. 15 that two more wells struck oil, increasing estimate reserves to one billion barrels of oil.

Last year, both Uganda and Mozambique discovered oil. In 2006, an estimated two billion barrels of oil reserves were discovered in western Uganda, but last year’s discovery brings Uganda’s total oil deposits to 3.5 billion barrels. Mozambique’s first oil discovery last year is estimated to be 200 million barrels. The recent boom in new mining discoveries in countries such as Niger, Sierra Leone and Zambia will attract billions in foreign direct investments. Other countries like Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda will similarly attract billions due to petroleum discoveries there,” Antony Mokaya of the Kenya Land Alliance, a local umbrella network of NGOs and individuals working on land reforms, told IPS.

Statistics by the Africa Economic Outlook, which provides comprehensive data on Africa economies, show that China is the largest destination for African exports, accounting for a quarter of all exports. Trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China – the economic bloc referred to as BRICs – now accounts for 36 percent or 144 billion dollars of Africa’s exports, up from only nine percent in 2002. In comparison, Africa’s trade with the European Union and the United States combined totals 148 billion dollars.

According to the World Bank, some of the world’s poorest people live in Africa, with one out of two Africans living in extreme poverty. Zimbabwe is one of the world’s top 10 diamond producers. But six out of every 10 households in Zimbabwe, a country of about 13 million people, are living in dire poverty. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is another African country rich in diamonds, with its mineral wealth estimated in the trillions of dollars. But according to the United Nations, about 75 percent of its people live below the poverty line. More than half of these have no access to drinking water or to basic healthcare. Three out of every 10 children are poorly nourished, with up to 20 percent of them predicted to die by the age of five.

Terry Mutsvanga, director of the Coalition Against Corruption, an anti-corruption lobby group in Zimbabwe, cautioned that Africa will first have to rein in its corrupt politicians before its resources can enrich its own people. “Without Africa dealing with the cancer of political corruption blighting the continent and robbing it of revenue from mineral resources through corrupt politicians receiving bribes from investors … the continent shall [continue to have] the worst poverty levels globally.”

Independent economic analyst Jameson Gatawa from Zimbabwe agreed. “Underhanded dealings in the mining of diamonds and other rich minerals here have fuelled poverty. The rich are getting richer with the poor becoming poorer,”

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The Rich Get Richer But Few Signs Of Trickle-Down

With its two-trillion-dollar economy, recent discoveries of billions of dollars worth of minerals and oil, and the number of investment opportunities it has to offer global players, Africa is slowly shedding its image as a development burden. "While global direct investment has shown some decline, dropping by 18 percent in 2012, in Africa foreign direct investment rose by five percent," Ken Ogwang, an economic expert affiliated with the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), which has a membership of over 60 businesses, told IPS.

"Underhand dealings in the mining of diamonds and other rich minerals here have fuelled poverty." -- economic analyst, Jameson Gatawa

Since 2012, Kenya has made a series of mineral discoveries, including unearthing 62.4 billion dollars worth of Niobium - a rare earth deposit. The discovery in Kenya's Kwale County has made the area among the world's top five rare earth deposits sites, and allows Kenya to enter a market that has long been dominated by China.
In 2012, Kenya discovered 600 million barrels of oil reserves in Turkana county, one of the country's poorest regions. It was announced on Jan. 15 that two more wells struck oil, increasing estimate reserves to one billion barrels of oil.
But Kenya, East Africa's economic powerhouse, is not the only African nation that has made fresh mineral discoveries.
"The recent boom in new mining discoveries in countries such as Niger, Sierra Leone and Zambia will attract billions in foreign direct investments. Other countries like Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda will similarly attract billions due to petroleum discoveries there," Antony Mokaya of the Kenya Land Alliance, a local umbrella network of NGOs and individuals working on land reforms, told IPS.

Last year, both Uganda and Mozambique discovered oil. In 2006, an estimated two billion barrels of oil reserves were discovered in western Uganda, but last year's discovery brings Uganda's total oil deposits to 3.5 billion barrels. Mozambique's first oil discovery last year is estimated to be 200 million barrels.
Ogwang predicts that these discoveries will soon see African countries dominating the list of the 15 fastest-growing economies in the world.
"More African countries, Kenya being a model example in East Africa, now favour a market-based economy, which is highly competitive and the most liberal economic system.
"In this system, market trends are driven by supply and demand with very few restrictions on who the actors are. [It is] a favourable environment for foreign investors," he said, referring to the local mobile phone industry, which has been dominated by foreign investors because of its favourable regulatory policies.
"As a result, growth in this sector is phenomenal. In the first 11 months of 2013, Kenya's mobile phone money transactions were 19.5 billion dollars, which is more than the country's current 18.4-billion-dollar national budget."

Ogwang says that even more importantly, African countries are increasingly strengthening their partnerships with the East.
Statistics by the Africa Economic Outlook, which provides comprehensive data on Africa economies, show that China is the largest destination for African exports, accounting for a quarter of all exports.
Trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China - the economic bloc referred to as BRICs - now accounts for 36 percent or 144 billion dollars of Africa's exports, up from only nine percent in 2002.
In comparison, Africa's trade with the European Union and the United States combined totals 148 billion dollars.

But Terry Mutsvanga, director of the Coalition Against Corruption, an anti-corruption lobby group in Zimbabwe, cautioned that Africa will first have to rein in its corrupt politicians before its resources can enrich its own people.
According to the World Bank, some of the world's poorest people live in Africa, with one out of two Africans living in extreme poverty.
"Without Africa dealing with the cancer of political corruption blighting the continent and robbing it of revenue from mineral resources through corrupt politicians receiving bribes from investors ... the continent shall [continue to have] the worst poverty levels globally," Mutsvanga told IPS.
Independent economic analyst Jameson Gatawa from Zimbabwe agreed.
"Underhanded dealings in the mining of diamonds and other rich minerals here have fuelled poverty. The rich are getting richer with the poor becoming poorer," Gatawa told IPS.

For 54-year-old Sarudzai Mutavara, a widow who lives in the midst of Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields, poverty remains a daily reality.
Zimbabwe is one of the world's top 10 diamond producers. But six out of every 10 households in Zimbabwe, a country of about 13 million people, are living in dire poverty. This is according to a 2013 poverty assessment report by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency.
"Here in Marange, the diamond wealth has not [helped] in any way to change our lives for the better, but rather for the worse as we have strayed further into poverty," Mutavara told IPS.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is another African country rich in diamonds, with its mineral wealth estimated in the trillions of dollars. But according to the United Nations, about 75 percent of its people live below the poverty line.
More than half of these have no access to drinking water or to basic healthcare. Three out of every 10 children are poorly nourished, with up to 20 percent of them predicted to die by the age of five.

While Ogwang says Africa's best economic years are yet to come, it remains to be seen if the billions of dollars Africa has in natural resources will trickle down to people like Mutavara.

From Here


AMCU's Strike


Next week the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union will move to strike at two of the world's top three platinum producers. Their members are demanding a "living wage," which would imply a doubling of salaries,12,500 rand ($1,200) minimum monthly wage.

"That 12,500 is nothing compared to these profits. Why do they invest this profit in London instead of investing back to where the workers are?" said AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa.

Last week, Thebe Maswabi, who chairs Amcu’s branch at Anglo American Platinum, rallied workers to break away from Amcu. Mr Maswabi was particularly scathing about Amcu’s leader, Joseph Mathunjwa, whom he accused of enriching himself at the expense of workers. Mathunjwa has managed through loans to exercise control over many people, even senior managers, according to people close to his dealings. Yet, they describe him as a capitalist at heart, who is forever seeking money-making opportunities. Critics say, for example, that he will sometimes drive an agenda — such as pension fund membership — because there are brokerage fees to be gained. Mathunjwa is described as a smooth talker who comes across as sincere and a supporter of capitalist practices. “In this manner, he normally wins the trust and support of managers, sometimes to their own detriment,” they said.

Amcu’s achilles tendon — its poor organisational ability — has opened the door for worker committees seeking to take advantage of the gaps. If Amcu is now not delivering as these workers expected, then the union will be rejected. And these workers are unlikely to want to revert to NUM, which would leave the gap open for a new union.

Said one labour analyst: “It would not be surprising if the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) takes advantage of this situation, and forms its own union in opposition to the Amcu and the NUM. The EFF is very active in the area, particularly among the unemployed and the youth,”

From here

Tony Blair, Malawi and Charity

 Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative rushed into Malawi soon after Joyce Banda's rise to the presidency. Tony Blair's presence at the Lilongwe state house was regarded as an important goodwill gesture. Malawi's first and Africa's second female president could only benefit from the governance expertise of Blair's organisation.

Eighteen months later as Malawians continue to suffer hardship in the wake of the biggest corruption and financial mismanagement scandal ever recorded, Blair has pulled out of Malawi amid allegations that Banda may have paid the former British PM millions of  taxpayer money for governance consultancy and advisory services. Three weeks ago, as pressure continued to mount on Banda's administration regarding her failure to deal effectively with the corruption scandal now christened "Cashgate", the former British PM announced he had severed all his ties with President Banda.

Newspaper reports published in Malawi allege that the payments made by Banda to Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative were made illegally as they were made outside the budget and without the approval of the parliament. In Malawi, Banda has come under fire from critics and civil society for not disclosing to Malawians the exact nature of Blair's presence in Malawi. Many are also worried that this impoverished southern African country's empty coffers may have paid the former British PM such huge sums of money, reported to be in excess of $5m when all along, Malawians have been made to believe that Blair's presence in the country was a charitable act.

 the Malawi government signed a contract with Tony Blair as an individual to be advising the Malawian leader on regular basis. The reports further claim that some of Blair's staff working under the AGI were placed in the Malawi president's office for regular monitoring of performance and evaluation of progress, and to play an advisory role in the absence of the former British PM. Additionally, it is alleged that Blair and the AGI staff, operating from the president's office in Lilongwe had access to the Malawian leader 24 hours through telephone and that face-to-face appointments with the president needed to be guaranteed to the Blair team at short notice.

According to the allegations, at least eight payments were made from the Malawi treasury at various points in 2012, just months after Banda took over the presidency. The Malawi government was paying Blair through various banks accounts in the names of  "the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (AGI)", "Tony Blair Associates", "Windrush Ventures" and "Firerush Ventures". All the payment details were referenced to Blair's operating office addresses: PO Box 60519, London W2 7JU (Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, Central London.)

Blair's office, as well as the official spokesperson for AGI, released separate statements categorically denying receiving any payments from the Malawi government and insisting that Blair's presence in Malawi was humanitarian, and the presence of the AGI in Malawi was only for charitable purposes.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

From AlJazeera

Saturday, January 18, 2014

In Peacetime - Prepare for War

It's projected that military spending among African nations will surpass $46 billion by 2018.

Nation-on-nation war among African countries has been on the decline, the report noted, and although conflicts between countries still flare up on occasion they rarely escalate to extreme levels. If the trend continues, decade-long sanctions and arms embargoes could be lifted and opportunities for global defense firms would expand, particularly in the area of internal security products and services, explained Forecast International said in a report titled The Military Market for Africa. "Key arms purchases will likely be state-of-the-art surveillance equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles and electronics. African nations have already experienced firsthand how the lack of proper military surveillance equipment can handicap their militaries and security forces.

Forecast International said. "A number of Western nations are therefore eager to help equip African militaries, which remain open to practically all weapons suppliers."

"As optimism about the continent's prospects increases, global defense firms have started to eye the African market more closely," said the report's author, Nicole Auger. "It has ignited an intense competition between non-African defense companies while opening up an array of possible joint ventures and technology transfer agreements with African defense firms."

From here

South Africa V Big Pharma

South Africa slammed global drug firms over a covert campaign against its planned overhaul of intellectual property laws to favor cheaper generic drugs. It is not the first time drugmakers have clashed with Pretoria. A decade ago the industry was forced to climb down in a bruising battle with South Africa over AIDS drugs patents and access to generics.

The latest fight reflects tension between an industry that wants to protect its intellectual property, even as it pushes further into emerging markets, and governments from India to Brazil that are determined to increase patients' access to life-saving treatments. South Africa is in the final stages of implementing a new law that would allow generic drugmakers to produce cut-price copies of patented medicines and make it harder for firms to register and roll over patents. The policy would close a loophole known as "ever-greening" that allows a drugmaker to make minor changes to an existing drug or discover a new use for it, and then register it as a totally new find. Under current South African IP law, pharmaceutical companies are able to register drugs as new without being checked.

Pharmaceutical giants have drawn up a $600,000 publicity campaign to mobilize local and overseas opposition to the intellectual property changes. Prepared by U.S. consultancy Public Affairs Engagement for industry lobby Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South Africa (IPASA)  it outlines a plan to delay the reform at least until after South Africa's elections in early May by suggesting the new law would be politically damaging. It threatens that the drug companies would “take action by reducing investment”. IPASA members include Sanofi, Baxter International, Pfizer and Novartis.

Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi said  "This document can sentence many South Africans to death. This is a plan for genocide."

Friday, January 17, 2014

Gays to be jailed in Nigeria

Hundreds of men arrested and tortured by police as legislation criminalising homosexuality takes effect. It is the new law against fundamental freedoms.  It will affect health-care services to 3.4 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS as they will now be afraid to seek treatment in case people think they are gay.

In Nigeria a gay man has been lashed 20 times - the first conviction for sodomy since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a law criminalising homosexuality earlier this week. It contains harsh penalties for homosexual activity and membership in gay rights groups. “Persons who enter into a same-sex marriage contract or civil union commit an offence and are each liable on conviction to a term of 14 years in prison,” the law says. “Any person who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organizations or directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years in prison.”

Dorothy Aken'Ova, with the Nigeria-based International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, told the BBC, "What this act is saying is that they gay people do not deserve to exist,"

European Union Managing Director for Africa, Dr. Nicholas Westcott, has said "We are concerned about the human rights and freedoms of all Nigerians as enshrined in Nigeria's own constitution and as enshrined in international conventions to which Nigeria is a party. And our concern is that this Act contravenes some of those provisions and puts at risk some of the fundamental freedoms that all Nigerian people should enjoy - the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, etc. That is our concern.”

The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the Commission, Catherine Ashton, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said "I am, therefore, particularly concerned that some provisions of the Act appear to be in contradiction with those fundamental rights, which are themselves guaranteed by Nigeria's 1999 Constitution, and to be inconsistent with the legal obligations enshrined in a number of international agreements to which Nigeria is a party,"

UK Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Jeremy Wright, said: “The UK opposes any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Bill also directly infringes on fundamental rights of expression and association, which are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution and by Nigeria's international treaty obligations. We are concerned by the prospect this raises of further action against an already marginalised section of society."

An Islamic court in Nigeria's northern state of Bauchi has put on trial 11 Muslim men accused of being homosexuals in violation of their religion, a religious leader has told the BBC. Under Islamic law, a person can be sentenced to death by stoning if convicted of homosexuality.

Malawi's Tobacco Child Labour

 Malawi has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low export tariffs, cheap labour and lack of regulations. Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every best-selling cigarette brand available in Europe, Asia and the US. But few of the smokers who buy the end product know much about the conditions the tobacco they consume is produced under.

Malawi is one of the least developed nations in the world (ranking 153 out of 169 countries in the Human Development Index) with around half the population living below the poverty line of $1.25 a day and one of the highest numbers of child labourers in Africa – around 1.5 million.

With tobacco sales making up 70 percent of the country's income and a significant part of its industrial activity, it is sadly inevitable that many of these children (aged between five and 15) are being forced by economic necessity to work with their families in the tobacco fields, risking their health, safety, and future. There they are subjected to hazardous manual labour, physical strain, dangerous environments, and long hours; often charged with strenuous tasks such as clearing the land, building tobacco drying sheds, weeding and plucking raw tobacco.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs such as SOS Children, Plan International and others, when the children cut and bundle the tobacco leaves they are put at risk of absorbing toxic quantities of nicotine through their skin. Many suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate. Some are even given the task of applying pesticides with their bare hands – chemicals when handled incorrectly can cause serious neurological problems.

It also affects their development and education - children working in the fields cannot be at school - and so their involvement in the industry inevitably perpetuates a cycle of exploitation, illiteracy, lack of opportunity and poverty that will one day force them back into the fields as adults.

The cigarette manufacturers all insist that they are firmly opposed to the use of children working in their supply chain and that in Malawi. But critics claim that these initiatives are little more than window dressing from a multi-billion dollar industry that ultimately benefits from the country's low production costs.

Over the past two years only 49 tobacco farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi for using child labour. Most received a $34 fine.

They are masquerading around the issue," says Mathias Burton of Malawi's Economic and Legal Social Services Centre. "To ease their consciences, that's why they have this kind of stuff. To say they are fighting child labour. And when they sell their own products ... the profits that they make, what they give out in social responsibility to these organisations is nothing at all compared to what they make."

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Dump the ANC !

Following on from the earlier call from NUMSA to disaffilate from the ANC, further developments have arisen.

In a speech to the eighth Pan African Congress at Wits University, suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said workers should consider how they were being represented in government.
“Workers around the world, not only in Africa, have always elected political elites that have implemented policies that do not serve their political and economic interests...Perhaps we need to think very hard about how we should politically organise workers to represent their own interests in the state”

Author and political commentator, William Gumede says “The ANC has unfortunately moved towards a leadership serving the elites and it is now difficult for ordinary rank and file workers to have a direct say in policy direction. Ordinary supporters are being excluded out of the economy while the elite live in a bubble. The social gap is becoming too wide.” He said the clash of classes was also playing out in the unions, which was why some of them, such as the National Union of Mineworkers, were under pressure. The conflict of different class interests could cause further fracturing in trade unions, in Cosatu and the ANC. Gumede estimates that about 40% of the ANC is deactivated at present – either through disillusionment, sidelining, factional battles or apathy.
 He said a strong Cosatu could have fought to take over the ANC from within. If that were not possible, the option was to move out of the alliance and lobby from outside. But, says Gumede, this is a “scary and difficult” consideration for anyone trying to chart a path away from the alliance. They would be cut off from patronage and resources from the state and state-owned enterprises, and would have to survive with no money for a while until they could establish themselves.


Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Trauma of being a Migrant

"In South Africa this situation of forced labour is typical," explains Marija Nikolovska, project manager of irregular migration programmes for International Organisation for Migration (IOM) South Africa. "Migrants are unaware of their rights and are afraid to go to the police because they don't want to be deported or are afraid the police will not act." The migrants who manage to secure work often face exploitation, Nikolovska adds. "Those who find employment are paid less than South African workers and sometimes have their salaries withheld for months. If they protest they risk losing their jobs or being reported to the authorities."

Recent figures released by the South African authorities show that of the 2,000 illegal migrants repatriated each week, up to 20% are unaccompanied children. About 350-400 Zimbabwean children cross the border each day without passing official checkpoints, according to Save the Children Zimbabwe.

 While some malaishas (taxi drivers/smugglers) operate solely as middlemen, many are part of a network who rob, sexually assault or enslave the migrants.  Girls are sometimes forced to work as prostitutes, says Natalia Perez, programme director of IOM Zimbabwe. "Beitbridge and Musina are busy transit routes, many young girls work in prostitution where the risk of being exposed to HIV is high." Boys are also vulnerable and can be found begging, sleeping rough or in low-paid jobs. They are sometimes targeted by magumagumas (gangs of robbers) and face mistreatment by the police.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical organisation, more than 75% of the 4,000-5,000 migrants they treat each month have been raped while crossing the border, with nearly 60% violated by more than one perpetrator.

From here

Self-less Interests?

Japan has become the latest nation to join the scramble for Africa’s booty of natural resources.  Japan has announced $20 billion to match China’s $14 billion, which is also driving many others to step in with substantial contributions themselves so as not to get edged out. Japan was falling behind a number of rising countries in Africa”, including the Europeans, India, Brazil, South Korea and Turkey.  Prime minister Shinzo Abe described Africa as “the frontier for Japanese diplomacy”, in comments made to reporters.

Abe  announce more than 60billionYen ($570m) in loans to Mozambique to help finance a transport network to transport coal to a new export terminal. Last year Tokyo promised more than $30bn in aid to African countries over the next five years.  Mozambique intends to build four LNG units with a total capacity of 20 million metric tonnes per year by 2018. Japan is the world’s largest importer of LNG. The visit is intended to shore up the world’s third largest economy’s access to fossil fuels at a time when the Fukushima tragedy has forced Japan to shut down 50 nuclear reactors that accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s energy needs.

Abe stopped off in Abidjan, capital of Cote d’Ivoire, where he met leaders of the ECOWAS regional grouping and promised $ 83.4 million for counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel region.

But what is missing is any sustained effort to address Africa’s long-term problems such as poverty alleviation, getting self-sufficient in food production and bringing wars to an end.That is quite different from doling out money to governments for trade deals and UN votes. Economists expect Africa to create 54 million new jobs by 2020, but 122 million Africans will enter the labour force during that timeframe. Adding to this shortfall are tens of millions currently unemployed or underemployed, making the human and economic consequences nearly too large to imagine.

 Abe is led the first visit by a Japanese prime minister to sub-Saharan Africa in eight years to support Japanese companies’ investments to secure important natural resources. The top Japanese trading houses, or sogo shosha, have already started to pour billions of dollars into projects including Mitsui’s project in Mozambique to produce liquefied natural gas. Sumitomo and Mitsubishi are also targeting the region.  Hiroyuki Takai, head of research at Sumitomo, the Tokyo-based trading house, said the Japanese push would trigger some “competition between Chinese and Japanese companies”.

Not to be outdone by Japan’s diplomatic visit, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi started his visit to Africa, “China fosters relations with African countries based on the principle of “sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith” and tries its best to make contributions to the cause of peace and development of African countries,”

China has invested billions of dollars in the region, on top of billions more in no-strings-attached soft loans that have financed railways, power plants and other infrastructure projects across Africa. Chinese trade with Africa is far larger too, rising in 2012 to nearly $180bn, compared with $25bn for Japan. China arrived in Africa has so far built a ‘befitting’ headquarters for the African Union in Addis Ababa and several presidential palaces for African presidents in exchange for privileged access to the continent’s natural resources and manufactured goods markets.

In 2014, India will be hosting  the Third India-Africa Forum Summit. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking  to expand its sphere of influence in the western Indian Ocean facing the coast of eastern Africa, said that "as we strive to realize our due place in the comity of nations..it goes without saying that the realization of our goal lies in widening, deepening and expanding our interaction with all our economic partners, with all our neighbours, with all major powers."

 Africans continue to obey the commands of other peoples and nations telling them what to do.  Colonial governments once spread hatred amongst peoples to ensure groups did not unite to topple the colonial order, and the embers of their voices are today fanned by corrupt politicians who need ethnic solidarity to fill their personal and party coffers. This is one of the reasons foreign powers can so easily enter Africa and exploit its people. The energy that Africans should be investing to build up the continent together is being spent tearing one another down. It makes Africans cheat themselves and their fellow workers through bribery and corruption.

The Top 10 Dangerous Countries in Africa

10. Ethiopia
Ethiopia comes up at number 10 on our list of 10 most dangerous places in Africa. Ethiopia has been involved in a conflict with Eritrea for more than ten years. Eritrea got her independence from Ethiopia about 30 years ago following a prolonged fight for freedom. The Border disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been going on ever since Eritrea broke free from Ethiopia in 1991. The International Court of Justice had clearly defined the borders between the 2 countries but there is still a tense relationship between the nations. The Ethiopia have not fully withdrawn from the region.
There is also a group known as Oromo Liberation Front which has been labeled as outlaw and a terrorist organisation by the Ethiopian government. The organisation was started in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to promote self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call “Abyssinian colonial rule”
9. Burundi
For the past 15 years, Burundi has known political conflict and for more than a decade, the local and regional peace talks have been initiated. The international community other peace loving organisations have tried to find a way out of the endless Burundian conflicts but the outcome seems to be a worsening state of political, economic and social violence and inequalities. The misaligned political interests have fuelled these instabilities over the years.
8. Zimbabwe
Following the country’s presidential election in 2008 between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, his main rival, both claimed victory in the first round of elections, Zimbabwe has regenerated a wave of renewed violence and instability. with the establishment of a system with two-heads: president as Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister in 2009, the situation has eased off a little bit.
Zimbabwe Peace Project reported a 15% increase in human rights violations that were “directly linked” to the new push for polls in 2012 and 2 years earlier, attempts by the Prime Minister to develop the Constitution have been sabotaged by the camp of Robert Mugabe. Public meetings were banned, arbitrary arrests, looting and ransacking, have pushed the country into violence. In general, Zimbabwean government has remained a troubled coalition characterised by bickering and stalemate. The political impasse has impacted negatively on the benefits of a good governance and stalled Zimbabwe from operating in its full capacity. It has generally constrained peaceful political participation as well as economic progress.
7. Chad
Chad has drastically improved it’s position by striking a more healthy relationship with her neighbouring countries. In the recent past, Chad was politically insecure and volatile. Ethnic clashes, banditry and fighting between government forces and rebel groups contributed to a worsening security situation in the region. It was reported that an estimated 180,000 Chadians were forced from their homes within three years while 285,000 refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Darfur region of Sudan have fled violence in their own countries and live in refugee camps in eastern Chad. The instability also impacted some 700,000 Chadians whose communities have been disrupted by fighting and strained by the presence of the displaced.
6. Nigeria
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to over 155 million people is in the midst of political, economic and social instability. The north, central and south eastern parts of Nigeria are the most affected parts. In the recent times, there has been a sharp increase in religious conflict at the north of the country where the killings of Muslims and Christians have sent nearly 20,000 to their death within the last decade. There has also been an increase in acts of terrorism and inhumanity against government and public structures including churches carried out by a sect called Boko Haram.
The Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) operates in the southern part of the country, attacking the facilities and personnel of oil companies. Kidnappings of expatriates and attacks on oil pipelines are their predilections. The Amnesty programme initiated by the Federal Government seem to have successfully reduced these attacks on government properties But the country is facing a rising wave of kidnapping and corruption.
5. Libya
The crisis in Libya seized the attention of the international community and has been labeled a clear case for when timely and decisive response to uphold response in the face of an imminent threat of mass atrocities should occur. The protests led to the downfall of the authority of Muammar Gaddafi in the east. Since then, international intervention under the authority of NATO has still not managed to completely restore calm in the country.
4. Central African Republic
Despite the signing of a peace agreement in 2008, some groups have not signed the agreement and are still active. The security situation in the Central African Republic is growing more precarious by the day as an insurgent coalition advances toward the capital city of Bangui. In south-east, the troops of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony, continue unabated. This group is part of the most violent in the world, has expanded internationally and is present in the DRC and southern Sudan, where he is engaged in looting and abductions of civilians.
The Central African Republic has recently joined the list. Central African Republic faces a devastating humanitarian crisis that threatens to plunge the population even deeper into misery.
3. Democratic Republic of Congo
A series of landmark and peer-reviewed studies by the IRC and some of the world’s leading epidemiologists conclude that an estimated 5.4 million people died from conflict-related causes in Congo since 1998.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has faced a lot of border insecurity and violence within. The massive influx of refugees after the Rwandan genocide.
To the east, the Allied Democratic Forces-National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), Ugandan rebel movement, is in conflict with the Congolese government. This group is related to the Shabab Somali fundamentalist Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.
2 – Sudan
Sudan is a country that has suffered internal conflicts with serious political, security and humanitarian consequences over the years and the situation in has worsened from the past 2 years. Violence has flared along the border since South Sudan became independent last year. Conflicts have erupted in two border states where communities traditionally allied to the south found themselves north of the border after independence. The conflict in Darfur has killed about 300,000 people, including those due to famine and disease, and 2.7 million people have been displaced since 2003. The peace agreement signed in 2006 between the government and the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the strongest rebel groups, is fragile because all factions did not sign.
In the South, thanks to self-determination referendum in 2011, the conflict in Southern Sudan is in the process of healing. However, the situation in Abyei, remains uncertain.
1 – Somalia
For over 20 years, Somalia has been in the face of a civil war. There has been constant conflict between the Transitional Federal Government which is supported by the United Nations and several groups of Islamist rebels, some of which are close to al-Qaida.
The government of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed seems to control part of the capital Mogadishu, which happens to be the scene of regular fighting between both sides to maintain control.
With Somalia’s stability still foggy, over 20 percent of Somalis under the Office of the United Nations for Refugees (UNHCR) have fled the country controlled by fear.