Xenophobia Returns to South Africa

Poverty is the main driver of the tension as South African residents believe - whether rightly or wrongly - that foreigners are the cause of many of their difficulties.

Dudula is a word in the Zulu language which loosely means to "push back" or "drive back" 

Alexandra is one of the poorest areas of the country but from its shacks, residents can easily see the towering skyscrapers of Sandton, one of the richest commercial districts on the whole continent, just a few kilometres away. As a result people from across South Africa and neighbouring countries flock to the township to use it as a base to earn a living.

Two controversial groups - the Alexandra Dudula Movement and Operation Dudula - which are campaigning against undocumented foreign nationals have emerged recently and support seems toThough the two groups are separate, they have been inspired by the same cause - they both hope to drive out undocumented African migrants from their communities.

They believe by doing this they can ensure that jobs and business opportunities go to South Africans. be growing among South African communities who feel marginalised. 

There are concerns that their campaigns could lead to yet another outbreak of xenophobic violence in the country.

The Alexandra Dudula Movement was founded last year. The people behind it alleged that foreign nationals were illegally occupying government-issued housing in Alexandra, which is supposed to be for poor citizens. But the campaign has expanded to include a call for all undocumented African migrants to stop trading in Alexandra. Last month, the movement closed down all the stalls owned by foreign nationals who could not show the correct papers for running the business or a valid passport. They then assigned the stalls to South Africans.

Operation Dudula is based in Johannesburg's Soweto township - more than 25km (16 miles) away on the other side of the city. Founded by 33-year-old Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, it came to prominence last June when Soweto residents marched through the township on what was called a "clean-up" operation. It targeted suspected drug dealers and people who were alleged to be illegally occupying government property. But just as in Alexandra, the group's scope of interest has expanded. Members now want the many foreign shop owners in South Africa to shut down their businesses and leave the country. They also want small businesses, such as restaurants and shops, to only employ South African citizens. This is because campaigners believe these places overlook South Africans and hire undocumented migrants instead because they can pay them less than the minimum wage.

the newly formed Patriotic Alliance (PA) led by ex-prisoner Gayton McKenzie. The PA, which has some local council seats but has not yet run in a national vote, wants all undocumented migrants to leave the country.

Earlier this year, members of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters unexpectedly visited restaurants in Johannesburg to "inspect" the ratio of foreign workers employed and to put pressure on businesses to hire more South Africans.

Dudula: How South African anger has focused on foreigners - BBC News

One People One World

 A postage-stamp-sized camp for displaced people in 2018 in Ituri Province in the far east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has mushroomed from hundreds of people to more than 10,000, spilling beyond its borders and necessitating the creation of another sprawling encampment across town.  At the time, women, children, and men in Ituri were being butchered alive by militiamen armed with machetes. And the attacks have never fully abated. Three years later, the violence and displacement continues.

In the first 10 days of this month alone, militiamen carried out eight attacks in Ituri.  On February 1st, a massacre at a displaced persons camp there killed 62 people, injured 47, and displaced 25,000, adding to the already astronomical numbers in Congo.  Around 2.7 million Congolese were driven from their homes between January and November 2021, according to the United Nations, swelling the grand total of internally displaced people in that country to 5.6 million.

In 2020, a tiny landlocked nation in West Africa, there was an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Families were streaming down that road from Barsalogho about 100 miles north of the capital, Ouagadougou, toward Kaya, a market town whose population had almost doubled that year. They were victims of a war without a name, a lethal contest between Islamist terrorists who massacre without compunction and government forces that have killed more civilians than militants.

And the suffering there persists as that conflict continues to force people from their homes. The number of internally displaced Burkinabe jumped 50% last year to more than 1.5 million, while another 19,200 people fled to neighboring countries, a 50% increase over 2020. 

 This year, according to the Danish Refugee Council, an additional 400,000 Burkinabe will likely be displaced. And that's only part of a wider regional crisis that has engulfed neighboring Mali and Niger where another one million people have been rendered homeless.

Across the continent, the civil war in Ethiopia that began in November 2020 has left it with one of the world's largest internally displaced populations.  At the end of that year, 2.1 million people had already been put to flight within the country.  By the close of 2021, that number had doubled to 4.2 million.  As in Congo, violence and displacement has left some of the unluckiest doubly victimized.  Earlier this month, for example, Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia's Barahle refugee camp were attacked by armed men who killed five of them, kidnapped several women, and sent more than 14,000 refugees fleeing to other towns.

The Danish Refugee Council forecast, based on a sophisticated model utilizing more than 120 indicators related to conflict, as well as to governance and environmental, demographic, and economic factors, suggests that Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Sudan will all experience significant displacement in 2022 while Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Somalia are likely to see substantial increases in 2023.  All told, the Council predicts that the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa driven from their homes will jump by more than five million by the end of next year.

We live in a world where so many displaced  Burkinabe, Congolese, and others are bottled up inside their own borders or in neighboring nations that are ill-equipped to bear the burden. 

Taken from here

Opinion | Nationless in a War-Torn and Unforgiving World | Nick Turse (commondreams.org)

Africa and Climate Change

 

Although Africa has contributed relatively little to the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions, the continent has suffered some of the world’s heaviest impacts of climate change, from famine to flooding.

The reverberations of human-caused global warming will only get worse, according to a new United Nations report.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that Saharan flooding, heat and drought will increase, Africa’s rich array of wildlife and plants will decline and glaciers on its most iconic mountains will disappear in coming decades.

On a continent already grappling with high poverty levels and food insecurity, the panel warned that fishermen and farmers will feel the pain of future climate change on their lives and livelihoods.

Warming temperatures will weaken Africa’s food production system by leading to water scarcity and shorter growing seasons, the U.N. report said. Yields of olives, sorghum, coffee, tea and livestock production are expected to decline.

“Agricultural productivity growth has been reduced by 34% since 1961 due to climate change more than any other region.” the panel said.

Climate change, along with conflicts, instability and economic crises, has contributed to hunger. Since 2012, the undernourished population in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 45.6%, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. And in 2020, approximately 98 million people suffered from acute food insecurity and needed humanitarian assistance in Africa, said the Global Report on Food Crises by the World Food Programme.

If the world warms just another degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050, an additional 1.4 million African children will suffer severe stunting from malnutrition that limits growth and cognitive development, the IPCC said.

“The lack of food and under-nutrition are strongly linked with hot climates in the sub-Saharan area and less rainfall in West and Central Africa,” the panel said in a FAQ document. “Climate change can undermine children’s education attainment, thus reducing their chances for well-paid jobs or higher incomes later in life.”

Jean Paul Adam, who heads the climate change division at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, said, “Africa constitutes 17% of global population but only accounts for less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is the region of the world already being severely impacted of climate change plus having an extremely low adaptive capacity.”

Climate change has a major social injustice component, with the poor hit harder by pollution from the rich, said former Ireland President Mary Robinson, now with The Elders, a Nelson Mandela- founded group of senior statesmen. “All of the injustices are captured by looking at the region of Africa.”

Drought is a problem that hits the continent particularly hard. While only 7% of the world’s disasters were drought related, they caused slightly more than one-third of the disaster deaths, “mostly in Africa,” the IPCC report said.

Droughts have also reduced Africa’s hydropower by about 5% compared to the long-term average, hindering growth, the report said.

“When we look at impacts, it isn’t just that Africa is getting hit with the droughts and cyclones and the sea level rise and the disruption of rainfall patterns,” said Canadian climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “It’s that their vulnerability is so much higher than a lot of other places.”

Scientists say it is impossible to untangle Africa’s poverty and harm from climate change.

“Africa gets the short shrift because it’s in some ways more vulnerable to physical impacts, but also because there’s going to be a lot of people living on less than a dollar a day,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute.

The report warns of threats posed to livelihoods of 12.3 million people who depend on fisheries.

The report said global warming also will hit Africa’s famous wildlife and highest mountains.

It predicted glacier ice covers on the Ruwenzori Mountains and Mount Kenya would be gone by 2030 and that Mount Kilimanjaro would lose its around 2040.

By 2100, the report said, climate change is expected to lead to loss of more than half of African bird and mammal species — and a 20% to 25% decline in the productivity of Africa’s lakes and plant species. Increased damage to coral reefs from pollution and climate change is expected to harm fisheries and overall marine biodiversity.

In the coming decades, Africa’s mainland, islands and coastal cities will be exposed to climate change risks that can seriously undermine economic sectors such agriculture, tourism, transportation and energy.

The report predicts reduced frequency of Category 5 cyclones, although it says they are projected to be more intense with high impacts upon landfall.

By 2030, the report projects that 108 to 116 million people in Africa will be exposed to sea-level rise — and that without adaptation measures, 12 major coastal cities will suffer a total of $65 billion to $86.5 billion in damages.

Rapid African urbanization, inadequate infrastructure as well growth of informal settlements will expose more people to climate hazards, the report said.

It noted that sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that has recorded increasing rates of flood mortality since the 1990 — and that millions of people were displaced by weather-related causes in 2018 and 2019.

“A lot of cities are completely unprepared for the scale of the challenges ahead, or even actively making the situation worse,” said Kaisa Kosonen a senior policy advisor at Greenpeace Nordic. “Real action on climate change requires resilient urban development and justice.”

The Agony in Angola

 Southwest Angola has been experiencing its worst drought for the past 40 years.

It has forced thousands of people to flock to neighbouring Namibia after failed harvests and rising food prices worsened food shortages across the region.

The southwest provinces of Huila, Namibe and Cunene in Angola have been among the hardest hit by intermittent locust infestations and a drought which has put 1.58 million people at risk of severe hunger, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

Ever since Angola’s civil war ended in 2002, a large part of the communal grazing land on the southwest tip of the country has been taken over by commercial livestock farms. 

According to a report by Amnesty International, 67 percent of that land is now occupied by commercial cattle ranches. In the past, local pastoralists would have been able to use these grazing areas to feed their cattle during periods of drought.

Angola’s climate refugees on ‘a journey with no end’ | Climate Crisis | Al Jazeera

Somalia and its Hunger

 Severe drought risks pushing nearly half of Somali children under five into acute malnutrition this year, with hundreds of thousands needing life-saving treatment, according to the United Nations.

“Malnutrition has reached crisis levels,” Victor Chinyama, head of communications for the UN children’s agency UNICEF’s Somalia operations, said. “The time to act is now if you wait until things get worse, or until famine is declared, it may be too late.”

Chinyama said children were paying the highest price in the hunger crisis, with 1.4 million of them, or nearly half of all those under the age of five, expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

“Of these, 330,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition,” which can lead to death, he said.

 The Horn of Africa region grapples with its worst drought in decades.

 Somalia has been hardest hit, with the UN warning that 4.1 million people – a quarter of the Somali population – need urgent food aid.

The drought is also spurring a migration crisis. Around 500,000 people have left their homes in search of food, water and pasture since November, adding to the 2.9 million who were already displaced inside the country.

UN: Hunger crisis threatens half of Somalia’s young children | News | Al Jazeera

War over Phosphates

 In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Phosphates

By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.

In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”

Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).

Morocco Drives A War In Western Sahara For Its Phosphates| Countercurrents

The Wealth of Africa

 Why is the continent of Africa poverty-stricken and burdened by debt? 

Beneath the surface of Africa lies a wealth of mineral resources of enormous value. 

In 2019, the continent produced almost 1 billion tonnes of minerals worth $406bn.

Africa is home to about 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, 12 percent of the world’s oil and 8 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves.

Africa holds 40 percent of the world’s gold and up to 90 percent of its chromium and platinum.

Ghana is the continent’s largest producer of gold, followed by South Africa and Mali.

Cobalt is a key metal used to produce batteries. In 2019, 63 percent of the world’s cobalt production came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Tantalum is another vital metal used in electronic equipment. Tantalum capacitors are found in mobile phones, laptops and in a variety of automotive electronics. The DRC and Rwanda are the world’s largest producers of tantalum. Together they produce half of the world’s tantalum.

Petroleum and coal are among the most abundant minerals for 22 out of Africa’s 54 countries. 

As of 2019, Nigeria produced most of the continent’s petroleum (25 percent), followed by Angola (17 percent), and Algeria (16 percent).

Metals including gold, iron, titanium, zinc and copper are the top produced minerals for 11 countries.

Industrial minerals such as diamonds, gypsum, salt, sulphur and phosphates were the main commodity for 13 African countries. 

The DRC is Africa’s largest industrial diamond producer, followed by Botswana and South Africa. Botswana ranks number one in Africa for the production of gem-quality diamonds – used for jewellery.

At $125bn per year, South Africa generates the most money from its mineral resources. 

Nigeria comes in second with $53bn per year, followed by Algeria ($39bn) Angola ($32bn) and Libya ($27bn).

These five countries produced more than two-thirds of the continent’s mineral wealth.

DRC in Disarray

 DRC’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, announced a “state of siege” in Ituri and North Kivu in May 2021. Military authorities replaced civilian counterparts, and security personnel were given extra powers but violence continues. With its huge reserves of minerals vital for smartphones and electric car batteries, DRC should be a wealthy country, but the legacy of colonialism and endemic corruption keeps its people among the poorest in the world.

Uganda is now fighting alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s armed forces (FARDC) in efforts to root out the rebels. Reports suggest between 1,500 and 5,000 Ugandan troops could eventually be involved. For the past three months, Ugandan forces have been bombarding Islamist rebels in its border region with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The offensive, in the Rwenzori mountain range that straddles both countries, has forced many Congolese to leave their homes and move to the cities for shelter.

Van de Walle says Ugandan investment in DRC’s roads has raised suggestions of ulterior motives over better transport links. Improved security for oil companies is a priority for Kampala – Total and the Chinese-owned CNOOC have confirmed they will begin work on a controversial multibillion-dollar oil pipeline from western Uganda to Tanzania.

There are about 120 rebel groups operating in eastern DRC, but the Allied Democratic Force (ADF) has an estimated 1,500 fighters, is a particular threat. Formed by groups opposed to Uganda’s autocratic president, Yoweri Museveni, in the late 1990s, their camps are in dense forest from where they carry out brutal raids on villages, abducting recruits.

With dozens of overlapping armed groups operating in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, accurate figures are hard to come by, but the ADF is believed to have killed at least 2,238 people and abducted 896 people since April 2017, according to Kivu Security Tracker, which monitors violence in the region.

Désiré Kilongo, a community leader, says that since the joint operation the number of displaced people in Oicha has tripled to 21,300, putting pressure on locals. “You’ll now find two or three extra families staying with friends or relatives in a two-room family home.”

In surrounding villages, families sleep in schools overnight. In the day, pupils work with heaps of belongings stacked at the back of classrooms. Meals are cooked in playgrounds and teachers lament the poor hygiene in school toilets. When subsistence farmers have to flee, they are left with nothing, risking their lives to return to their farms to harvest what they can.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says 1,166,200 people have been displaced by armed groups around Oicha. It has built shelters for displaced Mbuti, formerly known as Pygmies, and given money to Bantu communities to rent small houses and start businesses.

“The proliferation of armies and armed groups is expected to escalate the conflict, leading to more displacement and hardship for civilians. These communities are already at breaking point, says Caitlin Brady, the charity’s DRC director.

DRC’s forces are supported by the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, Monusco. Although effective in targeting another rebel group, M23, in 2013, Monusco has faced criticism over its record of protecting people from ADF, despite $1bn (£740m) of annual funding. Last August saw anti-Monusco protests across eastern DRC.

“The FARDC starts operations, the ADF retaliates against the population and the angry population turns against Monusco for failing to protect them,” says Nelleke van de Walle at the International Crisis Group.

The DRC state’s failure to protect communities promotes self-defence militias, known as Mai-Mai.

A new militia, the Union of Patriots for the Liberation of Congo (UPLC), came to the village. But they did not leave, and ended up taking control of the village and collaborating with the ADF. 

Alphonse Kambale Mubalya, who runs a peacebuilding organisation AMIP, blames DRC’s neighbouring countries for the violence. “It’s not like other insurgencies,” he says. “We have farming communities and we wouldn’t need jobs or to take up arms if there was no insecurity. Rebel fighters from Uganda and Rwanda came here in the 1990s and that was the start of the problem.”

‘Anything to stop the massacres’: peace still eludes DRC as armed groups proliferate | Global development | The Guardian

Bangladesh Buys Africa

 Bangladesh has been striving to ensure food security at home by planning to shop farmland abroad. Recently, South Sudan, an African country, has expressed interest in leasing a vast area of its fallow land to Bangladesh in order to collaborate in agricultural production, processing, and marketing in the central African countries. This is not the first time Bangladesh is going to lease foreign land and earlier, two Bangladeshi companies leased 40,000 hectares of farmland in Tanzania and Uganda. This move of Dhaka in leasing foreign land is one of the various initiatives undertaken to increase food production in the wake of the growing population and decreasing arable land. 

South Sudan, a landlocked country of Central Africa, has a total 644,329 sq KM land area with a total population of 11.06 million. Most of the land of this country is fallow and not being used for cultivation or for any other productive purposes. Undoubtedly, there is a huge untapped possibility that can be accrued by utilizing these lands for agricultural production. The government of South Sudan has been discussing the issue of cultivating crops in their land with the Bangladesh government for a long time. Luckily, the issues have started seeing light as many Bangladeshi entrepreneurs have agreed in considering the proposal seriously to invest there.

There are several factors that attract a pointed direction towards why Bangladesh should accept the proposal of leasing land in South Sudan. First, we know that Bangladesh is one of those countries in the world that has one of the lowest rates of arable land per citizen. Leasing land from abroad will help the country to meet the growing food demand of 1.65 million people at home. Second, if Bangladesh can successfully start cultivating agricultural crops in South Sudan, it will bring economic gain for Bangladesh not only by selling the agricultural goods to the local market but also by exporting to 27 other Central African countries. Third, Bangladesh has sufficient expertise in agricultural sectors which can be optimally utilized, and possibly further be expanded, if Bangladesh can successfully start producing in the land leased from South Sudan. Fourth, there are many renowned agricultural scientists in Bangladesh who are doing excellent research work on the country’s agricultural sector. If Bangladesh leases land in South Sudan, these researchers can also contribute to boosting agricultural production in African countries. This is how Bangladesh can contribute, to some extent, to finding a sustainable solution to the prolonged food crisis in Africa.

Fifth, Bangladesh has huge labor, mostly notably farmers, who have expertise and experience in agricultural sectors. If Bangladeshi investors invest in the agricultural sector in South Sudan, it will create huge employment opportunities for Bangladeshi migrant labor, and ultimately contribute to increasing Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserve. Sixth, once Bangladesh leases land from South Sudan, it will increase Bangladesh’s brand image as it is a sign of the country’s capability and financial strength. Seventh, once successfully implemented, this project will open a new window of opportunities for Bangladesh in other African countries which can be further utilized for increasing financial return for Bangladesh. Eighth, both countries can jointly produce lentils, oil, cotton, and other crops on the leased land and share the products which will bring fortune for both of them by helping them to avoid future food shortages.

Should Bangladesh Lease Land From South Sudan?| Countercurrents

Living on the streets

Nairobi's Demolitions

  In Kenya, a mass government demolition campaign began in October. Bulldozers destroyed at least 13,000 homes, along with businesses and schools, and displaced some 76,000 people. Forced evictions in Nairobi’s informal settlements are common, but demolitions on this scale, causing a humanitarian crisis, are rare.

The demolitions and evictions have shined a bright light on the historical injustices and state corruption shaping Nairobi’s rapid urban development. While these projects have provided comfort and convenience to the city’s rich, they have unleashed extreme violence on the poor of the informal settlements, who make up the majority of Nairobi’s population.

Following independence, the population of the informal settlements exploded, tripling within two decades, as scores migrated from the villages to the city in search of work. Throughout the decades after independence, widespread political corruption passed these public lands, where the informal settlements are located, into the hands of private individuals from among Kenya’s political elite. These elites often used the acquired land as collateral to access loans from banks. When landowners failed to pay back the loans they had taken out, banks assumed ownership.

Seventy percent of Nairobi’s population live in the informal settlements that make up just 5 percent of the city’s residential area. These homes are often made of corrugated tin sheets and lack access to adequate sewage, electricity, or water systems. 

“No one here trusts this government,” says Frank Bett, vice chairman of the Mukuru Community Justice Center, "They have made several promises to us since the evictions, and not one of them has been fulfilled. It’s been three months since these evictions, and the government has done nothing. People are still sleeping in tents, and the police are still attacking us. We will believe what the government says when we see it. Until then, no one believes them."

Kenyan Police Have Committed Murder on Behalf of Property Developers (jacobinmag.com)

Farming Changes in Africa

 The challenges that smallholder farmers encounter in East Africa include controlling weeds that can choke their crops and looking for new ways to deal with pests or diseases that threaten their harvests.

The focus on smallholder agriculture is because most of the food in the region is generated by farms that are only a few acres or hectares in size. And, while African economies are diversifying, most Africans still depend on crops and livestock production for income.

Across the region, there is a strong link between fighting hunger, poverty and improving productivity and incomes on smallholder farms. But we must be careful to avoid pursuing solutions that damage the broader ecosystem.

 Farmers' innovations and local knowledge can contribute to maintaining crop varieties, livestock, pollinators, soil micro-organisms and other variables essential for a sustainable agriculture system. What scientists call agriculture biodiversity or agrobiodiversity.

 Socialists are firmly on the side of people who today advocate for an approach to food production that's called “ agroecology ” or “environmental conservation.” This means a focus on farming methods that protect natural resources and vulnerable ecosystems while respecting local knowledge and customs.

At the same time, however, in certain contexts, we support approaches that are viewed as “ wrong ” to many contemporary advocates of agroecology. These include the use of fertilisers, and genetically modified seeds and crops. Opposition by agroecologists is rooted in a mix of concerns. For fertilisers, the focus is on run-off caused by their excessive use in places like North America and Europe. Opposition to genetically modified crops involves unease with using genes from unrelated species to improve crops. In addition to this is the potentially higher price of modified varieties.

While this may seem contradictory to some, agroecology and advanced farming practices can co-exist in Africa. Indeed, to ensure African farmers and food markets can thrive while protecting local ecosystems – especially as climate change presents a host of new food-related challenges —- they must co-exist. Supporters of agroecology who strongly oppose new inventions are sincere in their beliefs that they are advocating for the interests of Africa's farmers and the preservation of vulnerable ecosystems. Unfortunately, if successful, such hardline positions will narrow the options available in ways that will be harmful to both.

The main concerns with fertilisers are related to their misguided and excessive application. In some places, this has contributed to the degradation of freshwater and saltwater ecosystems. However, rather than an absolute ban on using them, we should work towards strategies that consider their safe and, modest use. There are many situations on African farms today where modest amounts of synthetic fertilisers – applied in combination with other sustainable soil management strategies, such as crop rotation and intercropping – will do more to restore degraded landscapes than cow or sheep manure alone.  The manure from their livestock may be enough to fertilise the small garden outside their kitchen, but it won't be nearly enough to fertilise entire farms.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, focus on the traits they contain and the agroecological conditions where they are to be used. Again, context is critical. There are clearly contexts where genetically modified seeds —- once thoroughly tested to prove they are safe —- can be compatible with agroecology.

For example, varieties of maize , cotton and cowpea are now being developed for, and increasingly cultivated by, African farmers. The genetically modified traits are used to help address pests and other stresses, including drought. These crops undergo extensive trials and national regulatory reviews to assess their safety and consider their release to farmers for use.

New varieties of genetically modified maize and cowpea that can fight off destructive crop pests are especially attractive. They contain traits acquired from a safe, naturally occurring soil bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt. It has also been used for decades as an organic crop protection spray. Incorporating Bt traits directly into the crop itself reduces the need to treat fields with expensive and, in some instances, potentially toxic pesticides that may result in huge problems for people and the environment from inappropriate use. In this context, the genetically modified seeds could be the optimal choice from an agroecological perspective.

Bt cowpea was recently approved in Nigeria and Bt maize is being evaluated as an option for fighting destruction caused by the recent arrival of fall armyworm pests on the continent. Bt cotton is already grown in several countries in Africa where it offers higher yields and reduces the need for pesticides.

However, farmers in Burkina Faso are no longer growing Bt cotton due to concerns about the quality of the fibres produced by the variety available to them, though not its pest-fighting properties. These quality concerns point to the need to support local breeding efforts, as Nigeria is now doing with its Bt cotton varieties, as opposed to rejecting the technology itself. The difficult issues around Bt cotton production in Burkina Faso are evidence that there are no perfect solutions.

We know the results of a lack of choices – where African farmers plant only the seeds from varieties they have been cultivating for decades and have limited options for maintain soil health and dealing with crop pests. It has contributed to a situation where crop yields have stagnated, lands are degraded of basic nutrients, consumers' demands must be met with costly food imports. Those who depend on agriculture suffer high rates of poverty and hunger.

We also know from the experience of farmers in other countries about the pitfalls of an over-reliance on a small range of commercially produced crop varieties and unchecked use of fertilisers and pesticides.

But we will not overcome these challenges by narrowing the options for addressing them. Instead, we should be open to a wider range of practices and innovations. The core focus of agroecology – supporting environmentally sustainable food production that benefits local farmers, consumers and ecosystems – while avoiding the wholesale rejection of certain technologies that, in the right context, can be instrumental to achieving this critical goal.

adapted from here

No perfect solution: Africa's smallholder farmers must use both traditional and new practices (modernghana.com)

Sudanese Mercenaries in Libya

 Providing mercenaries in Libya's internal conflict has become the main source of revenue for armed groups from Sudan's own war-torn Darfur region, the United Nations said in a report Friday.

The report, drawn up by UN experts in charge of monitoring the arms embargo imposed on Sudan, said the guns-for-hire deals had been facilitated by the United Arab Emirates. 

Thousands of Sudanese mercenaries are in Libya in the service of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army controlled by Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

These mercenaries come from signatory and non-signatory movements of the Juba Peace Agreement, concluded in October 2020, the experts said, adding that they are not able to quantify the total number."Most Darfurian armed groups continued to work for the Libyan National Army in Libya during the reporting period, securing areas and manning checkpoints. In return for these tasks, the five main movements (SLA/MM, GSLF, SLA/TC, SLA/AW and SRAC) were receiving payments and logistical support," the UN experts said.

The report noted that "several sources in the movements said that the money and support were discussed and agreed upon in meetings between their military commanders and United Arab Emirates representatives in Libya."

"The payments were provided by the United Arab Emirates and channelled to the movements by the Libyan National Army, which took a cut," the report added.

Sending mercenaries to Libya main income source for Darfur armed groups: UN (yahoo.com)

Cain V Abel in Nigeria

 More than 1 million farmers in the Nigerian state of Benue state once called the “food basket of Nigeria, have been displaced because of the intercommunal violence between herders and farmers competing for water and land. 

Violence over the last several years has reduced crop harvests in the northcentral state of Africa’s most populous nation.

“We are heading to a food crisis,” Benue State Gov. Samuel Ortom told The Associated Press.

Across northern Nigeria, at least 13 million are now facing hunger amid a lean season, according to the U.N. World Food Program. The violence has also disrupted the sales of food as roads are too unsafe for farmers to transport crops and marketplaces have been razed by attackers. Rice production has dropped so much that its price has jumped more than 60% in Benue state as well as some other parts of the country.

“There is a very real risk of famine because both conflict and COVID-19 has made it harder to reach those most in need,” a spokesperson of the U.N. agency explained.

Thousands of Nigerians have been killed in the decades-long clashes between agrarian communities and nomadic cattle herders who are fighting over limited access to water and grazing land. The farmers often accuse the herders of encroaching in their fields while the herders, mostly from the Fulani ethnic group, claim the croplands are their traditional grazing routes.

Hunger crisis looms in Nigeria's 'food basket' amid conflict | AP News

The Fish Thieves

  In Sierra Leone, Joseph Fofana, a 36-year-old fisherman, earns about 50,000 leone (£3.30) for a brutal, 14-hour day at sea, crammed in with 20 men, all paying the owner for use of his vessel. “This is the only job we can do,” he says. “It’s not my choice. God carried me here. But we are suffering.”

Every day, about 13,000 small boats like Fofana’s cast off from Sierra Leone’s 314-mile (506km) coastline. Fisheries employ 500,000 of the West African nation’s nearly 8 million people, represent 12% of the economy and are the source of 80% of the population’s protein consumption.

Artisanal fishermen now say their catch is dwindling rapidly due to sustained overfishing on a large scale and put the blame squarely on foreign fleets. About 40% of industrial licences are owned by Chinese vessels; though legal, locals say they pay meagre fees for their permits, under-declare their catch and add little to the local economy.

 Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing is a huge problem, costing Sierra Leone $50m a year.

In addition to dominating licensed markets, China is consistently ranked as the worst offender for IUU fishing in a global index of 152 countries. Across west Africa, illegal trawling is devastating marine ecosystems and undermining local fisheries, which are a critical source of jobs and food security. A study in 2017 found that Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mauritania, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea lose $2.3bn (£1.7bn) a year due to IUU fishing, which amounts to 65% of the legal reported catch.

Amara Kalone, at the Environmental Justice Foundation, a charity that monitored foreign vessels in Sierra Leone until last year when funding for the project ran out, says fleets are adapting their tactics to evade restrictions brought against industrial fishing.

“Semi-industrial ships are coming closer to the estuaries, and they are in a legal grey area,” he says. “Other crews are using very fine, monofilament nets, which are illegal but hard to track.”

Experts warn that Sierra Leone’s coastal communities face devastating consequences of legal and illegal overfishing. “The Chinese fleet has been taking the profits of the fisheries for 30 years and the impact on fish stocks has been terrible,” says Stephen Akester, an adviser to Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources between 2009 and 2021. “The resources are disappearing, fishermen are suffering, families are starving. Many have just one meal a day.”

“Imagine working for weeks and not being able to catch food,” says Woody Backie Koroma of the Sierra Leone Artisanal Fishermen Union. “They are getting debts. They go to bed without food.”

Salieu Sankoh, coordinator of the West Africa Regional Fisheries Programme in Sierra Leone. “It’s a serious threat to the nutrition of the population,” he says. “Some local boats go to the sea and come back with nothing.”

Illegal overfishing by Chinese trawlers leaves Sierra Leone locals ‘starving’ | Fishing | The Guardian