Turning children into bombs

One in every five "suicide bombers" used by Boko Haram in the past two years has been a child, a report by UNICEF says.

"The use of children, especially girls, as so-called suicide bombers has become a defining and alarming feature of this conflict," Laurent Duvillier, regional spokesman for UNICEF said. "It's basically turning the children against their own communities by strapping bombs around their bodies."

Boko Haram child "suicide bombings" have surged ten-fold in West Africa in the last year, with children as young as eight, mostly girls, detonating bombs in schools and markets. Suicide bombings have spread beyond Nigeria's borders, with an increasing number of deadly attacks carried out by children with explosives hidden under their clothes or in baskets. Some young children probably did not know they were carrying explosives, which are often detonated remotely, Duvillier said. The tactic has proven effective in increasing the number of casualties as people do not usually see children as a threat.

There were 44 child "suicide bombings" in West Africa last year, up from four in 2014, UNICEF said, mostly in Cameroon and Nigeria. Three-quarters of the "suicide bombers" have been girls. Abducted boys are forced to attack their own families to demonstrate their loyalty to Boko Haram.

Almost one million Nigerian children are missing out on education as Boko Haram has destroyed more than 900 schools and killed more than 600 teachers, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

"Boko Haram is robbing an entire generation of children in northeast Nigeria of their education," Mausi Segun, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The sweet bitter truth on cocoa

Africa supplies 76 percent of world’s cocoa. West Africa alone cumulatively supplies two thirds of the global cocoa, as Ivory Coast leads the pack with 1.65 million tonnes. This is followed by Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo which altogether produce 1.55 million tonnes. Cocoa is also grown in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Tanzania, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and Sao Tome & Principe. while about 76 per cent of total cocoa produced is from Africa, less than five per cent of the wealth in the value chain is retained in the continent.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the crop’s by-products are consumed mainly in industrialised countries, with major buyers being the chocolate processing and confectionary industry. Exporters of raw cocoa get approximately $10 billion a year, but the total annual value of chocolates, all made from cocoa, is over $100 billion, according to Olusegun Aganga, Nigeria’s immediate past minister for industry, trade and investment. Aganga explained at the Nigerian Cocoa Value Addition Summit in 2014 that the total value of all finished goods made from cocoa is estimated to be as high as $200 billion a year. Africa is missing in this big market. Many African cocoa producers have failed to emulate Brazil and Malaysia, where the local processing industry absorbs most of the production.

Forbes conducted a search for the ten world’s biggest chocolate consumers. No African country is on the list. Countries on the list include Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Norway. Others are Sweden Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and France. It is instructive that the production plants of major candy and chocolate makers, which depend on cocoa from Africa for production, are all outside Africa. Amano Artisan, Askinosie, Biommer, Castronovo, Equal Exchange, Guittard, Mars, Mast Brothers, among many others are in the United States. Others such as Domori, Bonnat, Barry Callebaut, Hachez, Haigh’s, Royce, Thorntons, among hundreds of others, are scattered around Europe, Australia and Asia.

Is West Africa's Challenge Ebola Or Malaria?

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

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

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

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

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Statelessness = Invisibility

At least 750,000 people are stateless in West Africa, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which is calling for governments to do more to give or restore the nationality of stateless individuals, and improve national laws to prevent statelessness.

Many in the region are both stateless and refugees, said Emmanuelle Mitte, senior protection officer on statelessness with UNHCR in Dakar, but the overwhelming majority of stateless persons in West Africa are stateless within their own country, lacking proof of the criteria required to guarantee their nationality.

Statelessness can block people’s ability to access health care, education or any form of social security. In the case of children who are separated from their families during emergencies, the lack of official documentation makes it much harder to reunite them, says the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Lack of official identification documents can mean a child enters into marriage, the labour market, or is conscripted into the armed forces, before the legal age.

Statelessness can also render people void of protection from abuse. Denied the right to work or move, they risk moving into the invisible underclass, said UNHCR’s West Africa protection officer, Kavita Brahmbhatt, who gave the example of a group of stranded non-documented Sierra Leonean migrants living in the slums of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, selling charcoal as they were too poor to do anything else, and too scared to return home for fear of being punished. “They became a member of Monrovia’s underclass,” she said.

Fact Box

The 1954 Convention relating to the status of Stateless Persons aims to regulate their status and protect their human rights. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness outlines tools to avoid and resolve stateless cases.

Statelessness not only stops people travelling across borders but restricts movement within countries such as Côte d’Ivoire or Mauritania, which are heavily check-pointed.

“Nationality is not just a document; it affects all of your rights as a citizen. Without a nationality you’re invisible, you don’t exist,” said Mitte. According to her, the 750,000 figure is “just the tip of the iceberg” - no studies have been undertaken to document the number officially. But UNHCR estimates at least 10 million people are stateless worldwide.


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Democratising Food and Agricultural Research

Agricultural research for food sovereignty in West Africa

As part of the Democratising Food and Agricultural Research initiative
 (see www.excludedvoices.org), a series of citizens’ juries have been held in Mali over the last seven years. Their aim was to allow ordinary farmers and other food producers, both men and women, to make policy recommendations after cross examining expert witnesses from different backgrounds. Three citizens’ juries explored the following themes:

1. GMOs and the future of farming in Mali.
2. What kind of knowledge and agricultural research do small scale producers and food processors want?
3. How to democratise the governance of food and agricultural research?

The citizens’ juries were guided by an oversight panel to ensure that the entire process was broadly credible, representative, trust-worthy, fair and not captured by any interest group or perspective.
Altogether, the farmer jurors made over 100 recommendations on the priorities and governance of agricultural research for West Africa. Recommendations covered issues such as models of agricultural production, land tenure and property rights, and food and agriculture markets, as well as issues of research funding, organisation, practice and governance.

In the follow up to this unique deliberative process, West African farmers asked to have a Policy Dialogue with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and its main donors. Farmers wanted a face-to-face discussion on research priorities with AGRA because it is a key player in setting the agenda for agricultural research for development in West Africa. This policy dialogue took place in Accra (Ghana) on 1st to 3rd February 2012.
The three-day event was chaired by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, and was also attended by representatives of farming communities in Asia, East Africa and Latin America.

 A video link with London allowed participation by UK donors and members of parliament. Both farmers and AGRA presented their vision for agricultural
research in Africa. Overall, farmers analysis and policy recommendations significantly differed from those promoted by AGRA.
For example, West African farmers were clearly against research that leads to the privatisation of seeds and proprietary seed technologies which allow companies to control the seed sector. They also felt that AGRA wrongly views farmers’ local seeds as unimproved, - thereby denying the plant breeding and seed selection work done by wo/men farmers.
Most notably, AGRA and the African farmers framed their respective research agendas within radically different visions of food and farming. The wo/men farmers argued that a vision of farming that de-links and separates crop production from other sectors (livestock, fisheries, forestry) is not acceptable. By prioritising crop production alone, AGRA is inducing an imbalance which farmers want to avoid in West Africa. Farmers reject AGRA’s development model and type of agriculture which, they feel , encourages bigger farms and the disappearance of small family farms, as well as the poisoning of the earth, water, and people. Instead, West African farmers called for a research
agenda that supports family farming and food sovereignty.
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Corruption In West African Countries

Poor public services in many West African countries, with already dire human development indicators, are under constant pressure from pervasive corruption. Observers say graft is corroding proper governance and causing growing numbers of people to sink into poverty.

 More West African countries were perceived to be highly corrupt in 2013 than the previous year due to the effects of political instability in countries such as Mali, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, according to the corruption index compiled by the global watchdog, Transparency International

Bribery, rigged elections, shady contract deals with multinational businesses operating in the natural resources sector, and illicit cash transfers out of countries are some of the more common forms of graft. In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of countries are seen to be corrupt, the watchdog said.
 “There is no doubt that corruption affects pure and sustainable development in West Africa, and there is no doubt that it most often affects the poorest and weakest portions of society.”
As much as US$1.3 trillion has been illegally transferred out of Africa in the past three decades, said a report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based advocacy group monitoring illicit financial flows.

Nigeria’s oil industry has been plagued by graft allegations that gave rise to complaints of neglect and a rebellion by people in the oil-producing southern regions. A draft report released in May 2013 by Liberia’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative noted that nearly all resource contracts signed since 2009 had violated regulations.

 Many political campaigns in Africa are fraught with allegations of irregularities and malpractice. “Not only are elections prone to corruption in the form of vote-rigging and fraud-monitoring, but by the way in which our political elites become entrenched in power,” said Tendai Murisa, director of TrustAfrica’s Agriculture Advocacy and Financial Flows programme.

“Corruption creates a way to perpetuate the regime, and one of the ways they perpetuate the regime is to buy votes, so that really affects the quality of democracy,” said Murisa, noting that a government deemed corrupt inspires little trust in the people, whose voices are often silenced or ignored when they speak out against graft.

Because the poor rely more on public services, they spend the largest percentage of their income on bribes to officials and even school administrators, so corruption pushes the most vulnerable further into poverty. In Sierra Leone, 69 percent of people think the police are corrupt, and in Nigeria the figure rises to 78 percent, said UNODC’s Lapaque.

  “If we just got back 50 percent of what we are currently losing to corruption, it could mean things like advancements in education or better road systems. We could make sure our children are back at school, we could make sure we are maintaining social welfare systems, and we could make sure our healthcare delivery systems are working properly.”


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Over-fishing

Conservationists have repeatedly warned of dwindling stocks of fish off the West Africa coast, stretching from Mauritania to Guinea. Most point to over-fishing by European fishing fleets, which force small local fishing boats to concentrate their efforts in sensitive coastal areas. Six deep-water large fish species are steadily drifting towards extinction. Harvested specimens show declines in both weight and length.

Cameroon boasts 15,000 square kilometres of continental shelf and four million hectares of inland waters. Yet current local fish production remains around 157,000 tons per year, while demand is around 300,000 tons. As a result, Cameroon's fish imports rose to nearly 200,000 tons in 2011 (up from 150,000 tons the previous year). The Citizens' Association for the Defence of Collective Interests (ACDIC)  blames rampant malpractice by foreign trawlers in the face of stagnant fish supply, especially Chinese-flagged vessels. "They are still doing twin-trawling despite several government warnings, and are using small-mesh nets to fish even in off-limits waters reserved for local artisanal fishermen. And worse still, they dump the smaller fish in Cameroon and take the bigger ones to Europe," claims Albert Njonga, chair of ACDIC.

Sloans Chimatiro, Senior Fisheries Advisor at the New Partnership for Africa's Development explained: "The activities of foreign vessels must be closely monitored possibly with the use of satellites and high-speed patrol boats to check undeclared fishing; corruption by law enforcement officials must be severely punished; countries should set up large marine reserves; EU subsidies must be reconsidered, etc., [or] else the strains on fish stocks in this part of the world will run out of control."

 Along the Cameroon's 400-km coastline, artisanal fishermen and traders are stretching the limits of legality to stay in business. One current practice is the use of chemicals, including pesticides, to indiscriminately kill fish which are then scooped out of the waters. In Senegal, similar troubles have led industrial and artisanal fishing to slump. Experts blame overexploitation and a dramatic rise in habitat-destroying fishing techniques like the use of dynamite and twin-trawling. Foreign companies with fishing licenses bring in money and the sector constituted 13% of Senegalese exports and 1.7% of its GDP in 2009.

Source

cries for help - little hope

The people in the village of Goubeyday in Niger usually spend the vast majority of their meager incomes on food, so they don’t have enough money to compensate for the drastic increase in food prices at the market.

World Food Programme Niger Country Director Denise Brown said the World Food Programme has not yet been able to provide aid to the people of Goubeyday because of a lack of funding.

According to the United Nations, at least 15 million people in the Sahel region just south of the Sahara desert are affected.  Eight million are at serious risk of running out of food before the next harvest, and a million children’s lives could be threatened by severe malnutrition. Disaster declarations have been declared in seven of the eight affected countries.  Niger is the hardest-hit country, home to about half of the more than 8 million people WFP would like to help. The world’s largest aid agencies– including WFP, Oxfam, UNICEF, Save the Children, and World Vision– have seen this crisis coming for months.  By appealing for help early, they hoped to apply lessons learned from last year’s late response to the famine in the Horn of Africa to keep this crisis from becoming another catastrophe.  But few donors have responded, and most aid groups have raised less than half of the funds needed for their planned response.

Many in West Africa are pastoralists.  Many of them are nomads who roam to find pasture and water for their cattle.  Both are getting harder to find. “This is big, difficult situation.  Pastoralists must now sell many animals just to be able to buy a little cereal to survive,” said Hassane Baka of the AREN cattle breeders association based in the city of Maradi. “We are working too hard, walking too far,” said Amadou Damana as he worked with his family to draw water from a well in the district of Bermo. Damana said his cattle need water every day to stay healthy, but now he is barely able to give them water every other day because he has to walk them so far from the well to find land where they can graze.

At a nearby livestock market, extremely thin bulls and sheep are waiting to be sold. Trader Jodi Makau says the price for grain is so high, an animal sold this year can buy only half as much as last year.  He tells us it is a bad time for breeders to sell, but many are so desperate to buy food and animal feed they have no choice.

"I think we have to keep in mind these women, these mothers, they’re like you, they’re like me. There’s no difference. They have a child. They love that child. They will do what they can to protect that child,” said Brown. “These women, these children, they deserve our attention.”
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Stating the Obvious

If West African governments are serious about reducing migration from their countries they must invest in improving living conditions and reducing inequality, according to sociologists, economists and other experts .

"The distribution of economic gains is still largely inequitable, leaving the vast majority of the people below the poverty line," the UN's African Institute for Economic Development and Planning , Aloysius Ajab Amin told participants, blaming economic policies that are failing people in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Amin said youths across the continent lived in "misery" caused by soaring unemployment and inadequate basic infrastructure while seeing their peers who have migrated sending money back home. "What readily comes to their mind is how to join the migration train."

Abdoulaye Kane, of the University of Florida's Centre for African Studies, said he was concerned that in many societies in the Sahel region of West Africa where migration has become the norm, other options were dissolving. "If you go to the border area of Senegal, Mali and Mauritania now you have a whole social pressure on young people to move, to migrate, to go out, because it's seen as the only way to succeed socially speaking . People are now saying you don't need to go to school, because they compare those who went to school and those who have migrated in terms of their buying power."

Sociologist Ba said:-
"Migration is a reaction to scarcity..."

Cotton Prices

A newly issued report found that eliminating U.S. cotton subsidies would increase world prices by 6 to 14 percent. Eliminating U.S. cotton subsidies of $4 billion would mean an extra $46 to $114 per year for a typical cotton-producing household in West Africa , farmers' incomes could increase by about 5 percent . More than 10 million people in West Africa depend on cotton farming for their major source of income. A typical cotton-producing household in West Africa has about 10 family members. The average life expectancy is about 48 years, and fewer than one in four adults are literate. These households produce corn, cassava, and other cereals for home consumption, and they plant from two to seven acres(one to three hectares) of cotton. Farmers hand-pick their cotton, rely on rains for irrigation, and sell to only one cotton company. Cotton is often the only source of cash income for these families.

Education: In many countries in West Africa, school is not provided for free to children. Families mustpay school fees of $1 to $2 a month. Additional income from cotton sales could allow families to sendtwo to 10 additional children to school each year. Even when governments offer free primary education,families still have to pay for uniforms, books, supplies, and benches.
Health care: Households across West Africa spend about $12 per person a year on health care costs.9Higher incomes could pay for life-saving medicines, hospitalizations, and consultations for four to 10individuals for an entire year.
Fertilizer: This extra income could also cover the cost of fertilizer for 25 to 60 percent of a family’s cottonarea.10 And since inputs used for cotton tend to benefit other crops, too, this additional fertilizer couldhelp farmers produce more cotton to sell and more food crops to feed their families.

Socialists however does not counsel free-market price tinkering as a solution for the poverty of Africans but post to indicate the capitalist priority of American protectionism over humanitarianism . The only real solution will be the abolition of the market economy and the establishment of socialism .