An interesting interview on Der Spiegel with Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, author of "Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa," and "How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly -- and the Stark Choices Ahead."
Dambisa Moyo: ... Africa is the only continent on which there continues to be famines again and again. Between 400 and 500 million people don't have enough to eat even though the continent has more fertile arable land than any other. Something's wrong about that.
SPIEGEL: Catastrophes like the one in Somalia are one thing. But don't you think Africa needs long-term aid programs to get its problems under control?
Moyo: I'm opposed to continuing to automatically pump billions into Africa each year in the form of cheap loans and budgetary assistance. This money has bred dependence and inflation; it doesn't allow people to ever really become productive. The West has been reliably supplying aid for 40 years. But, even so, Africa continues to have poor infrastructure, bad education and a lousy health-care system. Poverty has actually increased since development aid started being supplied. In 1970, 10 percent of Africans lived in poverty. Since then, that figure has grown to roughly 50 percent.
SPIEGEL: Why haven't African governments been able to put to good use the roughly $2 trillion (€1.45 trillion) that has flowed into their coffers over the last 50 years?
Moyo: Because this aid has hardly ever been tied to conditions. Donor countries allow African leaders to put this money in Switzerland, only to go shopping with it later on the Champs-Élysée.
SPIEGEL: Why doesn't anybody rebel against the corrupt rulers in Africa?
Moyo: Why should we normal Africans call our elites to account when people keep coming from the West and saying: "Don't worry. We'll keep paying no matter what you do with the money." An African president once said to me: "You can do what you want. You can swindle. You can kill your own countrymen. As long as there is hunger and disease where you are, the West will take care of you." That's why African governments steal and swindle.
Socialist Banner however finds it disappointing that Moyo can only call for more capitalist investment, particularly from China, as a solution. Africans, as she argues, indeed "need to finally take responsibility for themselves."
Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
gold dust deaths
Former gold miners in South Africa are suing industry giant Anglo American in the London High Court for allegedly damaging their health. The ex-workers contracted lung diseases because of bad ventilation in the UK-based company's South African mines. The 450 ex-miners allegedly suffered from silicosis - an incurable lung disease - because of high dust levels in mines.
"Black miners at South African mines undertook the dustiest jobs, unprotected by respirators or - unlike their white counterparts - with access to on-site showers" the firm said, in a statement. "Dust levels were high and they suffered massive rates of silicosis, a known hazard of gold mining for the last century."
Monday, September 19, 2011
Zambia: The seeking of political alternatives
Zambia goes to the polls on the 20th September and Socialist Banner posts a background article by its regular Zambian contributer
The demise of the second republican president Fredrick Chiluba has robbed the MMD of one of its outstanding founder members.
Chiluba will be remembered for his political charisma other than for his economic policies. He died an innocent man after having been acquitted of money laundering crimes levelled against him by the lat president Levy Mwanawasa. Chiluba was given a full state funeral which lasted for seven days. When the MMD came to power in 1991 Chiluba started to dismantling the state capitalist economy then existing under the UWIP government of Kenneth Kaunda.
The MMD introduced economic liberation characterised by the liquidation of state-owned parastatal firms. Economic liberation led to the privatisation of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, United Bus Company of Zambia, Zambia Railways and Zambia Airways. The demise of these prestigious firms led to massive unemployment and social misery. It was only when Mwanawasa came into power in 2001-2008 that Zambia experienced some form of economic revolution.
But after having been in power for twenty years, ordinary Zambian voters are vying for a change in government – it is time for the MMD to retire. But to contemplate political change in conditions where a viable political alternative does not exist is a dangerous option.
Zambian voters are going to vote in a presidential election on 20 September this year. This year’s general election must be reckoned in terms of a political duel between the ruling MMD and the PF. Indeed the Patriotic Front has become the second largest political party in Zambia today. Thus for those who support the PF – it is now or never. In the 2008 presidential election the PF lost on a bare margin of 3690 votes against the ruling MMD.
The PF president Michael Sata is a controversial politician. He was notable when he was appointed Minister of Decentralisation in the UNIP government of Kaunda in 1980. And when the MMD came to power – Sata was able to win the confidence of Chiluba – and was appointed as Minister without Portfolio.
Thus it was a lamentable surprise when Chiluba appointed Levy Mwanawasa to be the successor in 2001. Fearing vengeance Sata resigned from the MMD and formed a new political party, the Patriotic Front. But Sata is a political nuisance – his failure to attend Chiluba’s funeral is a case in point. It completely portrayed his lack of sympathy and political virtues.
There exists a rumour that Zambia – especially Lusaka and the Copper Belt mining towns will be plunged into political uprising when the PF fails to win the election. The move by the MMD to have ballot papers printed in South Africa has been received with suspicion by the political fraternity.
But it was the presence of Kaunda of the first-ever PF political convention that sent shivers among the MMD. Kaunda himself has failed to give a public statement. The presence of Canadian and British ambassadors at the PF convention helped to boost the political profile of the Patriotic Front president Michael Sata.
The MMD president Rupiah Banda is confident of winning the election on the strength of the economic developments taking place in Zambia today. Indeed the MMD government is building roads in and sending mobile hospitals to every corner of Zambia. But the dismissal of high-ranking MMD political stalwarts (Silvia Masebo, Ngandu Magande, George Mpombo and Gabriel Namulambe) does not augur well for Banda. The PF is strongly encouraged by the Catholic clergy through Radio Icengelo and its literary periodicals.
Ethnic considerations apart – the PF has managed to penetrate Western and North-western provinces in terms of parliamentary seats.
The third and only other viable political party comes from the UPWD. Hakainde Hichilema, its president is a corporate accountant – at 44 he is the youngest and least experienced presidential aspirant. He is the adopted leader of the UPWD – he is the nephew of the late UPWD president Anderson Mazoka (disputed winner of the 2001 general election). The upped is a tribal party in the sense that it is mostly comprised of Tonga-speaking politicians. The untimely collapse of the PF-upped political pact has only helped to distance the upped.
There exists deep suspicions concerning the conduct and announcement of elections. The Environmental Council of Zambia is a state-controlled institution and therefore cannot be trusted or expected to be impartial.
We may surmise that Zambia will be plunged into a political and economic nightmare if the PF win the general election. Zambia will forfeit its short-lived economic growth gained under the leadership of Mwanawasa. Given the controversial of Michael Sata, critics of the PF will be detained or dismissed from government. Foremost among those to be intimidated will be the Chinese investors. We in the World Socialist Movement do not seek political alternatives to capitalism – apart from socialism and we urge our fellow workers in Zambia to abstain from voting for capitalism.
KEPHUS MULENGA, Zambia
The demise of the second republican president Fredrick Chiluba has robbed the MMD of one of its outstanding founder members.
Chiluba will be remembered for his political charisma other than for his economic policies. He died an innocent man after having been acquitted of money laundering crimes levelled against him by the lat president Levy Mwanawasa. Chiluba was given a full state funeral which lasted for seven days. When the MMD came to power in 1991 Chiluba started to dismantling the state capitalist economy then existing under the UWIP government of Kenneth Kaunda.
The MMD introduced economic liberation characterised by the liquidation of state-owned parastatal firms. Economic liberation led to the privatisation of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, United Bus Company of Zambia, Zambia Railways and Zambia Airways. The demise of these prestigious firms led to massive unemployment and social misery. It was only when Mwanawasa came into power in 2001-2008 that Zambia experienced some form of economic revolution.
But after having been in power for twenty years, ordinary Zambian voters are vying for a change in government – it is time for the MMD to retire. But to contemplate political change in conditions where a viable political alternative does not exist is a dangerous option.
Zambian voters are going to vote in a presidential election on 20 September this year. This year’s general election must be reckoned in terms of a political duel between the ruling MMD and the PF. Indeed the Patriotic Front has become the second largest political party in Zambia today. Thus for those who support the PF – it is now or never. In the 2008 presidential election the PF lost on a bare margin of 3690 votes against the ruling MMD.
The PF president Michael Sata is a controversial politician. He was notable when he was appointed Minister of Decentralisation in the UNIP government of Kaunda in 1980. And when the MMD came to power – Sata was able to win the confidence of Chiluba – and was appointed as Minister without Portfolio.
Thus it was a lamentable surprise when Chiluba appointed Levy Mwanawasa to be the successor in 2001. Fearing vengeance Sata resigned from the MMD and formed a new political party, the Patriotic Front. But Sata is a political nuisance – his failure to attend Chiluba’s funeral is a case in point. It completely portrayed his lack of sympathy and political virtues.
There exists a rumour that Zambia – especially Lusaka and the Copper Belt mining towns will be plunged into political uprising when the PF fails to win the election. The move by the MMD to have ballot papers printed in South Africa has been received with suspicion by the political fraternity.
But it was the presence of Kaunda of the first-ever PF political convention that sent shivers among the MMD. Kaunda himself has failed to give a public statement. The presence of Canadian and British ambassadors at the PF convention helped to boost the political profile of the Patriotic Front president Michael Sata.
The MMD president Rupiah Banda is confident of winning the election on the strength of the economic developments taking place in Zambia today. Indeed the MMD government is building roads in and sending mobile hospitals to every corner of Zambia. But the dismissal of high-ranking MMD political stalwarts (Silvia Masebo, Ngandu Magande, George Mpombo and Gabriel Namulambe) does not augur well for Banda. The PF is strongly encouraged by the Catholic clergy through Radio Icengelo and its literary periodicals.
Ethnic considerations apart – the PF has managed to penetrate Western and North-western provinces in terms of parliamentary seats.
The third and only other viable political party comes from the UPWD. Hakainde Hichilema, its president is a corporate accountant – at 44 he is the youngest and least experienced presidential aspirant. He is the adopted leader of the UPWD – he is the nephew of the late UPWD president Anderson Mazoka (disputed winner of the 2001 general election). The upped is a tribal party in the sense that it is mostly comprised of Tonga-speaking politicians. The untimely collapse of the PF-upped political pact has only helped to distance the upped.
There exists deep suspicions concerning the conduct and announcement of elections. The Environmental Council of Zambia is a state-controlled institution and therefore cannot be trusted or expected to be impartial.
We may surmise that Zambia will be plunged into a political and economic nightmare if the PF win the general election. Zambia will forfeit its short-lived economic growth gained under the leadership of Mwanawasa. Given the controversial of Michael Sata, critics of the PF will be detained or dismissed from government. Foremost among those to be intimidated will be the Chinese investors. We in the World Socialist Movement do not seek political alternatives to capitalism – apart from socialism and we urge our fellow workers in Zambia to abstain from voting for capitalism.
KEPHUS MULENGA, Zambia
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The colonialists paid better!
Uganda was governed by British colonialists for almost a century. Casual wisdom would suppose that the colonialists had more income inequality than Museveni. Sorry; look again: Just before independence in 1962, the office cleaner, the porter – the lowest government employee – was earning Shs150. Excluding the governor, the highest-paid employee got around Shs6,000. Professors, medical consultants, ministers, permanent secretaries, district commissioners, boarding secondary school headmasters; all those senior people (Ugandans or white expatriates) were in the relatively narrow bracket between Shs2,500 and Shs6,000. Full primary (P6) school teachers got about Shs400. University graduates in teaching and most other government jobs started at around Sh1,300. A doctor got Sh1,700. All annual increments were predictable.
Let us compute: The highest official (Shs6,000) got only 40 times as much as the porter (Sh150), and less than five times as much as a fresh university graduate (Sh1,300).
Under Museveni, the lowest office attendant gets about Shs150,000. A primary school teacher gets Shs260,000, and a fresh university graduate in teaching or mainstream civil service gets about Shs450,000. A fresh doctor gets about Shs600,000. Up to that point, the ratios are close to the colonial model. But above Shs2 million, salaries have become wildly arbitrary. With Shs30 or 40 million per month, each of the best-paid government officials hauls away 200 times as much as the lowly officer gets in his slave pay packet. This has far-reaching socio-political implications; because, however packaged or disguised, the wealth being dished out comes from the collective effort of our people. Glancing at the colonial salary ratio of fourty-to-one, the departed British governors must be smiling in their graves.
Allan Tacca
From here
Let us compute: The highest official (Shs6,000) got only 40 times as much as the porter (Sh150), and less than five times as much as a fresh university graduate (Sh1,300).
Under Museveni, the lowest office attendant gets about Shs150,000. A primary school teacher gets Shs260,000, and a fresh university graduate in teaching or mainstream civil service gets about Shs450,000. A fresh doctor gets about Shs600,000. Up to that point, the ratios are close to the colonial model. But above Shs2 million, salaries have become wildly arbitrary. With Shs30 or 40 million per month, each of the best-paid government officials hauls away 200 times as much as the lowly officer gets in his slave pay packet. This has far-reaching socio-political implications; because, however packaged or disguised, the wealth being dished out comes from the collective effort of our people. Glancing at the colonial salary ratio of fourty-to-one, the departed British governors must be smiling in their graves.
Allan Tacca
From here
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Palm Oil Fuels Land Grab
By next year palm oil is forecast to be the world's most produced and internationally traded edible oil. India and China are the world's biggest palm oil users. Apart from its use as a cooking oil, it's also found in a of processed foods and cosmetics. One in ten supermarket products contains palm oil. Government targets for the use of agrofuels in Europe, China and North America are making palm oil, which can be used to produce biodiesel, an even hotter commodity.
In Liberia, a country that was ravaged for years by war, an estimated 5.6 per cent of the total land mass has been leased out to foreign investors for palm oil production. Sime Darby has a 63-year lease for 220,000 hectares of land for oil palm plantations in the country. Singapore-listed Golden Agri Resources has another 220,000 hectares for palm oil estates, and Equatorial Palm Oil, a UK-listed palm oil developer has another 170,000 hectares. This, in a country that still has to import 60 percent of its staple rice needs.
In Sierra Leone European and Asian firms are securing long-term (50 year) leases on at least half a million hectares of farmland, almost 10 percent of the country's arable land. Of that amount, close to 300,000 hectares have been acquired for oil palm plantations by corporate investors from Europe and Southeast Asia.
In Cameroon, foreign investors from Asia, the US and Europe are rapidly securing enormous land banks, often in fragile forested areas, for palm oil estates. The same is true in Benin, Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a Chinese company is reportedly working to secure 2.8 million hectares for oil palm for biodiesel production.
African governments that are endorsing and enabling this wave of large land acquisitions. They are not just allowing but actively encouraging the foreign industrialists and speculators to repeat the same grave injuries committed by colonists and capitalists of yesteryear. Governments and traditional rulers seem indoctrinated by the myth that allocating large tracts of land to foreign investors will lead to 'modernised' agriculture. They and others promoting the land deals as a form of agricultural investment would have us believe that anyone who defends smallholder production is succumbing to 'romanticism'. They appear equally oblivious, wilfully so, to the enormous risks these land deals incurs for their people and their nations. When foreign corporations and nations descend on Africa to get at the continent's oil, they tend to cause massive environmental, social and political disruption, and also conflict. But when they descend on the continent to get hold of massive amounts of arable land to produce palm oil for the world market, they are doing something even more egregious. They are taking control of the land and water on which the local people depend for their food production, livelihoods - their very survival.
Local growers and consumers in Africa do not refine, bleach and deodorise the oil into the commodity that industry produces for the world market.
In West and Central Africa the indigenous oil palm is invaluable in the region. Oil palm is often grown by rural people in 'tree-crop plantations' just one or two hectares in area, in diverse stands of other important trees in and around their farmland and at forest edges. The tree flourishes in natural association with other key food crops such as cassava and yam. It grows well in forest fallows and in agroforestry stands that include kolanut, citrus, indigenous fruit and timber trees, banana and plantains, and cocoa and coffee. The rich red oil that is extracted manually from the palm fruit is a staple in diets, second in importance only to rice or other staple grains or cereals. It is used in soups and sauces, for frying, and in dough made from customary foods such as cassava, rice, plantains, yams and beans. The fruit can even be boiled and roasted with a bit of sugar, tasting very much like a delicious date. It is an excellent source of Vitamins E and K and full of carotenes, which can be converted in the body to Vitamin A. It is also medicinal. Wild and cultivated stands of oil palm in West and Central Africa are also the source of one of the region's great delicacies - palm wine. The clear oil that is extracted, mostly manually, from the palm kernel is used to make soap. The pressed cake left after extraction can be used for fodder. Palm fronds are used for thatch.
Grown and used the way it traditionally has been in Africa, the oil palm also performs environmental services. It can help reclaim degraded lands, as a valuable shade tree in biodiverse cocoa and coffee tree-crop plots, and the residue left in boilers after oil extraction can be used to fertilise soils. But all of this relates to oil palm only as smallholders grow and use it. Once the foreign industrialists got their hands on it and took it away, the oil palm became something very different. In the hands of corporations, palm oil was transformed into a highly profitable commodity for the world market and its industrial production has caused immeasurable environmental damage in Southeast Asia. It appears poised to do the same in Africa. Prevailing economic dogma emphasises economies of scale and increased profitability through sheer size of oil palm estates. It does not take into consideration what is lost from the land when it is transformed into endless rows of oil palm clones, or the environmental damage caused by heavy pesticide and fertiliser use required in monoculture plantations. Massive amounts of productive smallholder farmland and precious woodlands, forest fallows and biodiversity reserves are being taken over by Asian, European and North American investors. They're keen to capitalise on the latest oil boom - one involving the humble African oil palm that is, sadly, threatened by the push to cultivate its 'improved' varieties on millions of hectares of precious African farmland.
The burgeoning demand for palm oil is fuelling a new scramble for land in Africa.
Adapted from here , an article by Joan Baxter
In Liberia, a country that was ravaged for years by war, an estimated 5.6 per cent of the total land mass has been leased out to foreign investors for palm oil production. Sime Darby has a 63-year lease for 220,000 hectares of land for oil palm plantations in the country. Singapore-listed Golden Agri Resources has another 220,000 hectares for palm oil estates, and Equatorial Palm Oil, a UK-listed palm oil developer has another 170,000 hectares. This, in a country that still has to import 60 percent of its staple rice needs.
In Sierra Leone European and Asian firms are securing long-term (50 year) leases on at least half a million hectares of farmland, almost 10 percent of the country's arable land. Of that amount, close to 300,000 hectares have been acquired for oil palm plantations by corporate investors from Europe and Southeast Asia.
In Cameroon, foreign investors from Asia, the US and Europe are rapidly securing enormous land banks, often in fragile forested areas, for palm oil estates. The same is true in Benin, Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a Chinese company is reportedly working to secure 2.8 million hectares for oil palm for biodiesel production.
African governments that are endorsing and enabling this wave of large land acquisitions. They are not just allowing but actively encouraging the foreign industrialists and speculators to repeat the same grave injuries committed by colonists and capitalists of yesteryear. Governments and traditional rulers seem indoctrinated by the myth that allocating large tracts of land to foreign investors will lead to 'modernised' agriculture. They and others promoting the land deals as a form of agricultural investment would have us believe that anyone who defends smallholder production is succumbing to 'romanticism'. They appear equally oblivious, wilfully so, to the enormous risks these land deals incurs for their people and their nations. When foreign corporations and nations descend on Africa to get at the continent's oil, they tend to cause massive environmental, social and political disruption, and also conflict. But when they descend on the continent to get hold of massive amounts of arable land to produce palm oil for the world market, they are doing something even more egregious. They are taking control of the land and water on which the local people depend for their food production, livelihoods - their very survival.
Local growers and consumers in Africa do not refine, bleach and deodorise the oil into the commodity that industry produces for the world market.
In West and Central Africa the indigenous oil palm is invaluable in the region. Oil palm is often grown by rural people in 'tree-crop plantations' just one or two hectares in area, in diverse stands of other important trees in and around their farmland and at forest edges. The tree flourishes in natural association with other key food crops such as cassava and yam. It grows well in forest fallows and in agroforestry stands that include kolanut, citrus, indigenous fruit and timber trees, banana and plantains, and cocoa and coffee. The rich red oil that is extracted manually from the palm fruit is a staple in diets, second in importance only to rice or other staple grains or cereals. It is used in soups and sauces, for frying, and in dough made from customary foods such as cassava, rice, plantains, yams and beans. The fruit can even be boiled and roasted with a bit of sugar, tasting very much like a delicious date. It is an excellent source of Vitamins E and K and full of carotenes, which can be converted in the body to Vitamin A. It is also medicinal. Wild and cultivated stands of oil palm in West and Central Africa are also the source of one of the region's great delicacies - palm wine. The clear oil that is extracted, mostly manually, from the palm kernel is used to make soap. The pressed cake left after extraction can be used for fodder. Palm fronds are used for thatch.
Grown and used the way it traditionally has been in Africa, the oil palm also performs environmental services. It can help reclaim degraded lands, as a valuable shade tree in biodiverse cocoa and coffee tree-crop plots, and the residue left in boilers after oil extraction can be used to fertilise soils. But all of this relates to oil palm only as smallholders grow and use it. Once the foreign industrialists got their hands on it and took it away, the oil palm became something very different. In the hands of corporations, palm oil was transformed into a highly profitable commodity for the world market and its industrial production has caused immeasurable environmental damage in Southeast Asia. It appears poised to do the same in Africa. Prevailing economic dogma emphasises economies of scale and increased profitability through sheer size of oil palm estates. It does not take into consideration what is lost from the land when it is transformed into endless rows of oil palm clones, or the environmental damage caused by heavy pesticide and fertiliser use required in monoculture plantations. Massive amounts of productive smallholder farmland and precious woodlands, forest fallows and biodiversity reserves are being taken over by Asian, European and North American investors. They're keen to capitalise on the latest oil boom - one involving the humble African oil palm that is, sadly, threatened by the push to cultivate its 'improved' varieties on millions of hectares of precious African farmland.
The burgeoning demand for palm oil is fuelling a new scramble for land in Africa.
Adapted from here , an article by Joan Baxter
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Union Lessons
More than 200,000 Kenyan teachers went on strike Tuesday to protest the diversion of government funds meant to hire more teachers and ease classroom overcrowding. The money has instead gone to the ministry of defense, whose spending is not publicly scrutinized.
"Children of this country are not enjoying equal opportunities," Wilson Sossion, who heads the Kenya National Union of Teachers said. "This is the struggle. We are not doing it this time around for a salary increment. We are doing it for the poor child of this country and for the poor parent of this country."
The union wants the government to give full-time jobs to 18,000 teachers hired on temporary contracts and hire an additional 9,040 teachers. Some 79,000 teachers are needed to reach the internationally recommended teacher to student ratio of one teacher to 35 students. Kenya's public schools see an average of 50 students for every teacher, though some classes have only one teacher for 100 pupils. The union projects a shortfall of 115,000 teachers in the next couple of years as the population increases.
Nearly 10 percent of 13-year-old Kenyan students cannot complete a math problem meant for 7-year-olds, according to research done earlier this year by Uwezo, a pressure group that aims to improve literacy among children in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Britain suspended payments to the Kenyan government intended to help poor schoolchildren after $45 million in international donor money went missing.
"Children of this country are not enjoying equal opportunities," Wilson Sossion, who heads the Kenya National Union of Teachers said. "This is the struggle. We are not doing it this time around for a salary increment. We are doing it for the poor child of this country and for the poor parent of this country."
The union wants the government to give full-time jobs to 18,000 teachers hired on temporary contracts and hire an additional 9,040 teachers. Some 79,000 teachers are needed to reach the internationally recommended teacher to student ratio of one teacher to 35 students. Kenya's public schools see an average of 50 students for every teacher, though some classes have only one teacher for 100 pupils. The union projects a shortfall of 115,000 teachers in the next couple of years as the population increases.
Nearly 10 percent of 13-year-old Kenyan students cannot complete a math problem meant for 7-year-olds, according to research done earlier this year by Uwezo, a pressure group that aims to improve literacy among children in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Britain suspended payments to the Kenyan government intended to help poor schoolchildren after $45 million in international donor money went missing.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Literacy day
International Literacy Day was celebrated on 8 September.
According to data from UNESCO's Institute for Statistics, 793 million adults – most of them girls and women - are illiterate. A further 67 million children of primary school age are not in primary school and 72 million adolescents of lower secondary school age are also missing out their right to an education.
More than half the adult population of the following 11 countries are illiterate: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.
According to data from UNESCO's Institute for Statistics, 793 million adults – most of them girls and women - are illiterate. A further 67 million children of primary school age are not in primary school and 72 million adolescents of lower secondary school age are also missing out their right to an education.
More than half the adult population of the following 11 countries are illiterate: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.
Praying for health and death
The newly appointed health minister, Dr Christine Ondoa Dradidi, since her appointment has promoted the claim advanced by Oyet’s Life Line Ministries, that HIV/AIDS can be cured through prayer. She told The Observer that prayer heals HIV/AIDS, and that she knows three people who were once positive but turned negative after prayer for deliverance.
“I am sure and I have evidence that someone who was positive turned negative after prayers,” Ondoa told The Observer , promising to ask colleagues in Arua hospital, where she once worked, to find the relevant documentation. She spoke of her time as a doctor in West Nile when she handled cases of people who claimed to be negative after ARV treatment and prayers “While there [West Nile], we did thorough testing and saw all documentation of three people who were once positive. We tested them in different laboratories and the results were negative,” .
Dr. Christine Ondoa as the new head of Uganda’s Ministry of Health. The position will give Ondoa authority over a significant portion of Uganda’s foreign HIV/AIDS mitigation funding, which in the year 2010 included over $270 million dollars from the United States. Along with her role as a medical professional, Christine Ondoa also serves as pastor in the Life Line Ministries of apostle Julius Peter Oyet, one of the most powerful clerics leading Uganda’s ongoing crusade against gay rights. Apostle Julius Oyet has stated that “even animals are wiser than homosexuals”, forthrightly declared that homosexuality should be a capital crime, and claimed to have co-authored the internationally condemned, so-called “kill the gays” bill–submitted in 2009 by a member of Oyet’s elite “College of Prayer” group in Parliament.
“I am sure and I have evidence that someone who was positive turned negative after prayers,” Ondoa told The Observer , promising to ask colleagues in Arua hospital, where she once worked, to find the relevant documentation. She spoke of her time as a doctor in West Nile when she handled cases of people who claimed to be negative after ARV treatment and prayers “While there [West Nile], we did thorough testing and saw all documentation of three people who were once positive. We tested them in different laboratories and the results were negative,” .
Dr. Christine Ondoa as the new head of Uganda’s Ministry of Health. The position will give Ondoa authority over a significant portion of Uganda’s foreign HIV/AIDS mitigation funding, which in the year 2010 included over $270 million dollars from the United States. Along with her role as a medical professional, Christine Ondoa also serves as pastor in the Life Line Ministries of apostle Julius Peter Oyet, one of the most powerful clerics leading Uganda’s ongoing crusade against gay rights. Apostle Julius Oyet has stated that “even animals are wiser than homosexuals”, forthrightly declared that homosexuality should be a capital crime, and claimed to have co-authored the internationally condemned, so-called “kill the gays” bill–submitted in 2009 by a member of Oyet’s elite “College of Prayer” group in Parliament.
Monday, September 05, 2011
The Hope Peddlers
God is good....business. Nigeria's religious pastors run multi-million dollar businesses which rival that of oil tycoons. The joint wealth of five pastors was at least $200m (£121m).
Mfonobong Nsehe, who blogs for Forbes business magazine, says pastors own businesses from hotels to fast-food chains. Pastors are no longer solely interested in getting people to Heaven; they’ve devised ways to make good money while reaching out to souls.
"Preaching is big business. It's almost as profitable as the oil business," he said.
The richest pastor, Bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith World Outreach Ministry, was worth about $150m. Oyedepo owned a publishing company, university, an elite private school, four jets and homes in London and the United States.
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of the Believers' Loveworld Ministries was worth between $30 and $50m. Oyakhilome's interests include newspapers, magazines, a local television station, a record label, satellite TV, hotels and extensive real estate. He is the founder and lead pastor of the Christ Embassy, a thriving congregation with branches in Nigeria, South Africa, London, Canada and the United States. His publishing company, Loveworld Publications, publishes ‘Rhapsody of Realities,’ a monthly devotional he co-authors with his wife. It sells over 2 million copies every month at $1 apiece.
Others are Temitope Joshua Matthew of the Synagogue Church Of All Nations worth between $10m and $15m; Matthew Ashimolowo of Kingsway International Christian Centre worth between $6 million and $10 million) and Chris Okotie of the Household of God Church worth between $3 million and $10 million.
"We have Nigerians who are desperate, looking for solutions to their problems. They go to church for salvation, redemption and healing and pastors sometimes take advantage of them," Mr Nsehe said.
Millions of Nigerians search for miracles, signs and wonders. They have continued to attend religious crusades to seek miracles to their numerous problems such as barrenness, unemployment, financial difficulties, deliverance from ancestral curses, sickness and more. In Nigeria today, there are more than 50 of such powerful pastors in whose areas of speciality are miracles, prophecy, healing, teaching, preaching, marriage counselling, and are attracting people with such problems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13763339
http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/adv.asp?blurb=110
Sunday, September 04, 2011
From bad to worse
The famine in Somalia has spread to new regions, the UN will announce. Some four million people – more than 50 per cent of the population – are now in crisis, and the famine is expected to spread further in the coming months. In Somalia fewer than one in five in the south are getting help.
After a visit to southern Somalia last week, UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said that the peak of the crisis had not yet been reached. "From the point of view of the food security of the people, obviously, as time goes by, until the next harvest is possible, the situation will become worse and worse," he said.
The international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Dr Unni Karunakara, returned from Somalia last week and said that, even though there was chronic malnutrition and drought across east Africa, hardly any agencies were able to work inside war-torn Somalia, where the picture was "profoundly distressing". He condemned other organisations and the media for "glossing over" the reality in order to convince people that simply giving money for food was the answer. According to Karunakara "We may have to live with the reality that we may never be able to reach the communities most in need of help"
Karunakara said that the use of phrases such as "famine in the Horn of Africa" or "worst drought in 60 years" obscured the man-made factors that had created the crisis and wrongly implied that the solution was simply to find the money to ship enough food to the region. "...glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the great difficulties in addressing them will not help resolve the crisis."
He said charities needed to start treating the public "like adults". He went on: "There is a con, there is an unrealistic expectation being peddled that you give your £50 and suddenly those people are going to have food to eat. Well, no. We need that £50, yes; we will spend it with integrity. But people need to understand the reality of the challenges in delivering that aid. We don't have the right to hide it from people; we have a responsibility to engage the public with the truth."
Chronic malnutrition, said Karunakara, is not new in east Africa and needs long-term action. "The Somali people have been living in a country at war, with no government, for 20 years, with several long periods of hardship, of famine and drought. This harvest failure is just what has tipped them over the edge this time, a catastrophe made worse," he said.
After a visit to southern Somalia last week, UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said that the peak of the crisis had not yet been reached. "From the point of view of the food security of the people, obviously, as time goes by, until the next harvest is possible, the situation will become worse and worse," he said.
The international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Dr Unni Karunakara, returned from Somalia last week and said that, even though there was chronic malnutrition and drought across east Africa, hardly any agencies were able to work inside war-torn Somalia, where the picture was "profoundly distressing". He condemned other organisations and the media for "glossing over" the reality in order to convince people that simply giving money for food was the answer. According to Karunakara "We may have to live with the reality that we may never be able to reach the communities most in need of help"
Karunakara said that the use of phrases such as "famine in the Horn of Africa" or "worst drought in 60 years" obscured the man-made factors that had created the crisis and wrongly implied that the solution was simply to find the money to ship enough food to the region. "...glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the great difficulties in addressing them will not help resolve the crisis."
He said charities needed to start treating the public "like adults". He went on: "There is a con, there is an unrealistic expectation being peddled that you give your £50 and suddenly those people are going to have food to eat. Well, no. We need that £50, yes; we will spend it with integrity. But people need to understand the reality of the challenges in delivering that aid. We don't have the right to hide it from people; we have a responsibility to engage the public with the truth."
Chronic malnutrition, said Karunakara, is not new in east Africa and needs long-term action. "The Somali people have been living in a country at war, with no government, for 20 years, with several long periods of hardship, of famine and drought. This harvest failure is just what has tipped them over the edge this time, a catastrophe made worse," he said.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Eighty per cent of South African produce still comes from 15 per cent of its farms, most of them large-scale and white-owned. Although whites make up less than 10 per cent of South Africa's population of 50 million, they own about 90 per cent of the country's agricultural land. 40,000 white commercial farmers own 224 million acres of agricultural land. There are about 200,000 small farmers, nearly all black, 2 million to 2.5 million subsistence farmers, and more than half a million farm workers.
Ever since the founding of the African National Congress in 1912, the land question has been at the core of the South African liberation struggle. After the first all-race elections in 1994 to redress the imbalances in land ownership in South Africa the ANC established a target of redistributing 30 per cent of farmland to black farmers by 2014, a total of about 60.79 million acres. Instead, Nkwinti indicated the government has bought only about 14.82 million acres to date, of which nearly 4.94 million have been resold. After several big resettlement failures it then stopped handing out any acquired land in 2008.
Gugile Nkwinti, the minister of land reform, said black farmers have resold nearly 30 percent of the white farmland bought for them by the government, often selling back to the previous white owners.
Advocates for reform argue that the massive inequality in land ownership is a direct result of the colonisation of South Africa by Europeans and the consequent forcing of indigenous people of their land. Activist Andile Mngxitama said "The heart of the issue is that the land was taken by force and must be redistributed. It is a matter of ending apartheid,"
Ever since the founding of the African National Congress in 1912, the land question has been at the core of the South African liberation struggle. After the first all-race elections in 1994 to redress the imbalances in land ownership in South Africa the ANC established a target of redistributing 30 per cent of farmland to black farmers by 2014, a total of about 60.79 million acres. Instead, Nkwinti indicated the government has bought only about 14.82 million acres to date, of which nearly 4.94 million have been resold. After several big resettlement failures it then stopped handing out any acquired land in 2008.
Gugile Nkwinti, the minister of land reform, said black farmers have resold nearly 30 percent of the white farmland bought for them by the government, often selling back to the previous white owners.
Advocates for reform argue that the massive inequality in land ownership is a direct result of the colonisation of South Africa by Europeans and the consequent forcing of indigenous people of their land. Activist Andile Mngxitama said "The heart of the issue is that the land was taken by force and must be redistributed. It is a matter of ending apartheid,"
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The struggle after the war
Abeja is one of the many women struggling to survive the horrors of war. Her home is a few kilometres from Barlonyo, where the LRA massacred over 200 people in a single attack in February 2004. Abeja was captured in 2002. She was a wife and a mother of six children. She was captured along with a daughter and a son by Uganda's feared rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and was forced to join them. But not before the soldiers made her kill her one-year- old baby girl, by smashing her skull in, and then gang raped her. Abeja can’t remember how many men they were; she says there could have been 10 to 15. She doesn’t know what happened to her son or if he’s still alive. Like many abductees, Abeja had to kill or be killed. In her four years with the LRA she tells IPS she can’t recollect the number of people she was forced to kill, but she puts the number at more than 40.
The LRA fought in the north and north eastern parts of Uganda for 23 years. The war, which forced close to two million people into internally displaced persons camps for decades. Thousands of people died as a result and the war was characterised by its use of child soldiers and the conscription of civilians into the rebel group. The LRA were forced out of the country in 2006 and are currently operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and western South Sudan.
Since the war ended in 2006, people went back to their original homes and depended on emergency aid. A recovery and development plan was put in place in 2009 by the Ugandan government but this has not covered the emergency medical needs of the population. Most of the money went into building new blocks of health units and rehabilitating the destroyed ones.
In Ogur, Lira in northern Uganda, Abeja has come to a temporary medical camp run by Isis-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), a women’s organisation working with women in conflict and post-conflict settings. The camp is specifically for women with reproductive health complications, which they have mostly sustained from being raped during the almost two decades of war. For most of the women here it is the first time they have been offered special medical attention since the war ended in 2006, and for many it is the first time they have been treated by a doctor. It is also the first time that many of these women have ever spoken out about the violence they had to endure. Dr. Tom Charles Otim, a lead gynaecologist at the camp, says Abeja has lived with a prolapsed uterus for years now. Uterine prolapse – the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond – is one of the long-term complications associated with sexual violence. In Abeja’s case, her uterus is hanging out. She will need surgery, which costs about 200 dollars, to remove her uterus. She and 39 other women are referred for treatment to a regional hospital many kilometres away. A majority of the women seeking medical treatment at the camp have chronic pelvic pain as a result of pelvic inflammatory infections. "The infections are high here; because of the war, the women were not able to access medical care early," says Otim. This has had an effect on the women’s sexual lives and the majority of them have painful sex. Many women who have come to the camp have fertility problems.
Abeja not only has to live with the physical scars of the rapes but the psychological effects as well. She and women like her have to endure intense stigma from the community. Her husband rejected her after she returned, and left her to raise their four surviving children and her child from the war. Fighting back the tears she wonders: "Do they think I wanted to be abducted and raped by the rebels? Do they think I wanted to kill my own child?" Women like Abeja need more support than just surgery.
The district health officer in Lira, Nelson Opio, says that "When war ends, there’s a silent war that has to be fought.Politicians here think they will just put up structures so they can say ‘This is what I did during my time’ and ignore people’s real needs." .
The LRA fought in the north and north eastern parts of Uganda for 23 years. The war, which forced close to two million people into internally displaced persons camps for decades. Thousands of people died as a result and the war was characterised by its use of child soldiers and the conscription of civilians into the rebel group. The LRA were forced out of the country in 2006 and are currently operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and western South Sudan.
Since the war ended in 2006, people went back to their original homes and depended on emergency aid. A recovery and development plan was put in place in 2009 by the Ugandan government but this has not covered the emergency medical needs of the population. Most of the money went into building new blocks of health units and rehabilitating the destroyed ones.
In Ogur, Lira in northern Uganda, Abeja has come to a temporary medical camp run by Isis-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), a women’s organisation working with women in conflict and post-conflict settings. The camp is specifically for women with reproductive health complications, which they have mostly sustained from being raped during the almost two decades of war. For most of the women here it is the first time they have been offered special medical attention since the war ended in 2006, and for many it is the first time they have been treated by a doctor. It is also the first time that many of these women have ever spoken out about the violence they had to endure. Dr. Tom Charles Otim, a lead gynaecologist at the camp, says Abeja has lived with a prolapsed uterus for years now. Uterine prolapse – the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond – is one of the long-term complications associated with sexual violence. In Abeja’s case, her uterus is hanging out. She will need surgery, which costs about 200 dollars, to remove her uterus. She and 39 other women are referred for treatment to a regional hospital many kilometres away. A majority of the women seeking medical treatment at the camp have chronic pelvic pain as a result of pelvic inflammatory infections. "The infections are high here; because of the war, the women were not able to access medical care early," says Otim. This has had an effect on the women’s sexual lives and the majority of them have painful sex. Many women who have come to the camp have fertility problems.
Abeja not only has to live with the physical scars of the rapes but the psychological effects as well. She and women like her have to endure intense stigma from the community. Her husband rejected her after she returned, and left her to raise their four surviving children and her child from the war. Fighting back the tears she wonders: "Do they think I wanted to be abducted and raped by the rebels? Do they think I wanted to kill my own child?" Women like Abeja need more support than just surgery.
The district health officer in Lira, Nelson Opio, says that "When war ends, there’s a silent war that has to be fought.Politicians here think they will just put up structures so they can say ‘This is what I did during my time’ and ignore people’s real needs." .
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Wasting Away
A survey around Kampala's urban markets, retialers and restaurants unveiled the stack reality that while food prices are soaring and many people are dropping dead or are going to bed hungry every night, unimaginable huge quantities of food are thrown away.
Food wastage is not unique to Uganda. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says one-third of all food produced worldwide for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to some 1.3 billion tonnes per year. In Italy alone, one of the countries with the highest levels of wastage, food worth $53 million is thrown away every year. This would translate into 753 million meals enough to feed the entire East Africa for two years.
Kalerwe is Kampala's largest food market. Located three kilometers north of the city, the place is where many urbanites both rich and poor gather to buy affordable food items. Many city dwellers from the adjoining slums walk up to two kilometers to buy cheap and yet quality food. Even residents from upscale Kololo, Ntinda and Nakasero drive to this market mostly on weekends to buy food. Yet despite the huge turnout of shoppers, some food remains and is either sold cheaply or thrown onto garbage skips.
"Carrots, potatoes and cassava have a short shelf life and so we increase the quantities sold to attract customers" Mr Simon Mukasa who operates a stall at Kalerwe. "If you fail to sell cassava by evening then you can only throw it onto garbage skips." Yet cassava is one food item that easily be dried and processed into flour.
East African Business Week witnessed a lady throwing away tomatoes she said were rotten. "Nobody can buy these," she lamented as the reject joined a pile of ripe bananas, cabbages and stale cassava. In the city, many households especially in the slums keep some cattle and goats and one would think they would struggle to get grass and other feed supplements.
Ironically in the urban townships, many cattle farmers in the neighbouring Wakiso District that surrounds Kmapala city buy a sack of banana peelings at UGshs 3000 ($1.2). This is so because there are many cattle in the villages competing for feeds while in the city, they are just thrown away on skips.
It is estimated that about 80% of restaurants in Kampala throw away at least five kgs of food everyday. "It is easier to just throw it food away in the dustbin than to store it" said Miss Jackie Achieng who runs Palms Restaurant in Nankulabye, 3 km north west of Kampala city. She admitted that she throws away food almost every day.
The problem of postharvest losses is very crucial especially in rural areas. This is due to lack of proper storage facilities and better processing methods to prolong the shelf value. Until serious efforts are made to ensure that global food production is matched with adequate storage, transportation and processing, this life-giving resource will continue to be wasted. Amid such situation it is inevitable to conclude that worldwide hunger is simply a figurative creation rather than a reality. What is at stake is the failure to manage and equitably distribute our food resources.
In the words of Shakespeare: "Distribution should undo excess and each man have enough."
from here
Food wastage is not unique to Uganda. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says one-third of all food produced worldwide for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to some 1.3 billion tonnes per year. In Italy alone, one of the countries with the highest levels of wastage, food worth $53 million is thrown away every year. This would translate into 753 million meals enough to feed the entire East Africa for two years.
Kalerwe is Kampala's largest food market. Located three kilometers north of the city, the place is where many urbanites both rich and poor gather to buy affordable food items. Many city dwellers from the adjoining slums walk up to two kilometers to buy cheap and yet quality food. Even residents from upscale Kololo, Ntinda and Nakasero drive to this market mostly on weekends to buy food. Yet despite the huge turnout of shoppers, some food remains and is either sold cheaply or thrown onto garbage skips.
"Carrots, potatoes and cassava have a short shelf life and so we increase the quantities sold to attract customers" Mr Simon Mukasa who operates a stall at Kalerwe. "If you fail to sell cassava by evening then you can only throw it onto garbage skips." Yet cassava is one food item that easily be dried and processed into flour.
East African Business Week witnessed a lady throwing away tomatoes she said were rotten. "Nobody can buy these," she lamented as the reject joined a pile of ripe bananas, cabbages and stale cassava. In the city, many households especially in the slums keep some cattle and goats and one would think they would struggle to get grass and other feed supplements.
Ironically in the urban townships, many cattle farmers in the neighbouring Wakiso District that surrounds Kmapala city buy a sack of banana peelings at UGshs 3000 ($1.2). This is so because there are many cattle in the villages competing for feeds while in the city, they are just thrown away on skips.
It is estimated that about 80% of restaurants in Kampala throw away at least five kgs of food everyday. "It is easier to just throw it food away in the dustbin than to store it" said Miss Jackie Achieng who runs Palms Restaurant in Nankulabye, 3 km north west of Kampala city. She admitted that she throws away food almost every day.
The problem of postharvest losses is very crucial especially in rural areas. This is due to lack of proper storage facilities and better processing methods to prolong the shelf value. Until serious efforts are made to ensure that global food production is matched with adequate storage, transportation and processing, this life-giving resource will continue to be wasted. Amid such situation it is inevitable to conclude that worldwide hunger is simply a figurative creation rather than a reality. What is at stake is the failure to manage and equitably distribute our food resources.
In the words of Shakespeare: "Distribution should undo excess and each man have enough."
from here
Poor Jo'
Nearly half of the people in major townships across Johannesburg do not have access to proper food, an agricultural expert told a conference in Johannesburg.
“A recent survey showed that 42% of the population in Alexandra, Soweto, and Orange Farm were food insecure,” Florian Kroll, a food security researcher, said at a Health and Poverty Indaba. He also revealed that 97% of those who did not have proper nutrition were TB patients: “That’s a concern because we depend on food to be healthy.”
Another expert, Prof Laetitia Rispel, a professor at the centre for health policy at the school of public health at Wits University, said research also showed that HIV prevalence was almost double in urban informal settlements compared to urban formal areas in Johannesburg. Other statistics are that Joburg has a still-birth rate of 18 per 1 000 births and a tuberculosis cure rate of between 70 and 79 percent, which is below the target of 85 percent. Life expectancy in South Africa is 45 and, according to Rispel, “it doesn’t compare well to other countries of similar income, such as Brazil”. Maternal and infant mortality rates are alarmingly high, and the maternal mortality rate increased between 2000 and 2005 from 230 to 400 per 1 000 births. Health and poverty went hand-in-hand. The head of social development in Gauteng, Bheki Sibeko explained poverty is the key cause of ill health and the people most affected by poverty are society’s most vulnerable: women, children, people with disabilities, the elderly and the youth. “Poverty is highest in women-headed, single-parent households,” he added.
“A recent survey showed that 42% of the population in Alexandra, Soweto, and Orange Farm were food insecure,” Florian Kroll, a food security researcher, said at a Health and Poverty Indaba. He also revealed that 97% of those who did not have proper nutrition were TB patients: “That’s a concern because we depend on food to be healthy.”
Another expert, Prof Laetitia Rispel, a professor at the centre for health policy at the school of public health at Wits University, said research also showed that HIV prevalence was almost double in urban informal settlements compared to urban formal areas in Johannesburg. Other statistics are that Joburg has a still-birth rate of 18 per 1 000 births and a tuberculosis cure rate of between 70 and 79 percent, which is below the target of 85 percent. Life expectancy in South Africa is 45 and, according to Rispel, “it doesn’t compare well to other countries of similar income, such as Brazil”. Maternal and infant mortality rates are alarmingly high, and the maternal mortality rate increased between 2000 and 2005 from 230 to 400 per 1 000 births. Health and poverty went hand-in-hand. The head of social development in Gauteng, Bheki Sibeko explained poverty is the key cause of ill health and the people most affected by poverty are society’s most vulnerable: women, children, people with disabilities, the elderly and the youth. “Poverty is highest in women-headed, single-parent households,” he added.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Poverty in The Gambia
Former Permanent Secretary at the Gambian Ministry of Finance, Abdou Touray, said over half of the population in the country still live in abject poverty.
He remarked, “The objective of Vision 2020 is to get out of this, but it is getting late. We have achieved 6% growth rate, but growth is not sufficient to reduce poverty. The growth levels are not impacting on poverty."
He remarked, “The objective of Vision 2020 is to get out of this, but it is getting late. We have achieved 6% growth rate, but growth is not sufficient to reduce poverty. The growth levels are not impacting on poverty."
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Another Land-grab Report
Indian agribusiness companies are ready to spend $2.5bn buying, or renting for decades, several million hectares of cheap land in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda in what could be some of the largest farming deals struck in Africa in the last 50 years, according to a Guardian report.
A delegation of 35 Indian investors, including food conglomerates McLeod Russel, Kaveri Seeds, and Karuturi Global, has been touring Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda for the last week to seek land to grow palm oil, maize, cotton, rice and vegetables, largely for the burgeoning Indian market. The deals, if concluded, would swell growing concerns for the "land grab" phenomenon now taking place. There has been growing alarm at some of the handouts and tax exemptions in favour of the companies, potentially at the expense of local communities. Many of the projects have barely started producing food, but tens of thousands of people are expected to be evicted, and land traditionally used by pastoralist farmers is being fenced off. In addition, many companies are being allowed to grow food primarily for export despite increasingly hungry home markets.
Karuturi said in Dar es Salaam that it was ready to spend $500m acquiring and developing 200,000 hectares of land for palm oil, 150,000 for cereals and 20,000 for sugarcane. This is in addition to $400m the company is spending to develop 100,000 hectares in Gambella province in Ethiopia. The investors have said they are each ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on what is some of the cheapest land in the world, being offered on decades-long leases for as little as $1.50 per hectare per year.
"There is huge potential for the agriculture sector in east Africa," said Karuturi's managing director, Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi. "The region has 120m hectares of arable land, the same size of arable land India has."
According to the UN, at least 60m hectares of land, mostly in Africa , have been bought or leased for up to 100 years as western hedge and pension funds have moved to buy land as an alternative investment to property, and wealthy Middle East countries have sought land to grow food after food riots and droughts. China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as many smaller Middle East countries have led the deals.
"No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia. "These agreements – many of which could be in place for 99 years – do not mean progress for local people and will not lead to food in their stomachs. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors."
Meanwhile, the same situation has manifested itself in South America where the US-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, has concluded that much of Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia has been acquired by foreign companies to farm."In Paraguay, Argentine firms and individuals own about 60% of the 3m hectares of land used to cultivate soy. Foreigners own 19.4% of all Paraguayan land and Argentines own almost all of the 500,000 hectares of Uruguayan soil designated for soy cultivation, while foreigners own 25% of the country's total arable land," say the authors. Foreign agribusiness investors own or rent over 1m hectares of Bolivia, according to the report.
A delegation of 35 Indian investors, including food conglomerates McLeod Russel, Kaveri Seeds, and Karuturi Global, has been touring Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda for the last week to seek land to grow palm oil, maize, cotton, rice and vegetables, largely for the burgeoning Indian market. The deals, if concluded, would swell growing concerns for the "land grab" phenomenon now taking place. There has been growing alarm at some of the handouts and tax exemptions in favour of the companies, potentially at the expense of local communities. Many of the projects have barely started producing food, but tens of thousands of people are expected to be evicted, and land traditionally used by pastoralist farmers is being fenced off. In addition, many companies are being allowed to grow food primarily for export despite increasingly hungry home markets.
Karuturi said in Dar es Salaam that it was ready to spend $500m acquiring and developing 200,000 hectares of land for palm oil, 150,000 for cereals and 20,000 for sugarcane. This is in addition to $400m the company is spending to develop 100,000 hectares in Gambella province in Ethiopia. The investors have said they are each ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on what is some of the cheapest land in the world, being offered on decades-long leases for as little as $1.50 per hectare per year.
"There is huge potential for the agriculture sector in east Africa," said Karuturi's managing director, Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi. "The region has 120m hectares of arable land, the same size of arable land India has."
According to the UN, at least 60m hectares of land, mostly in Africa , have been bought or leased for up to 100 years as western hedge and pension funds have moved to buy land as an alternative investment to property, and wealthy Middle East countries have sought land to grow food after food riots and droughts. China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as many smaller Middle East countries have led the deals.
"No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia. "These agreements – many of which could be in place for 99 years – do not mean progress for local people and will not lead to food in their stomachs. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors."
Meanwhile, the same situation has manifested itself in South America where the US-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, has concluded that much of Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia has been acquired by foreign companies to farm."In Paraguay, Argentine firms and individuals own about 60% of the 3m hectares of land used to cultivate soy. Foreigners own 19.4% of all Paraguayan land and Argentines own almost all of the 500,000 hectares of Uruguayan soil designated for soy cultivation, while foreigners own 25% of the country's total arable land," say the authors. Foreign agribusiness investors own or rent over 1m hectares of Bolivia, according to the report.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Kenyan hunger
The food crisis that is devastating lives and killing children throughout the Horn of Africa is not restricted to the arid lands. Over the past five months, Concern Worldwide has recorded a 62 percent increase in cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) at clinics it supports in Nairobi slum areas. Part of the reason malnutrition in slums is paid relatively scant attention is that it rarely reaches the emergency level. In Turkana, 15 percent GAM would translate to 13,000 children. But in Nairobi district, 13,000 malnourished children would reflect just a 3.45 percent GAM rate.“Emergency thresholds for malnutrition applied in rural areas are not applicable in poor settlements where population density overrides the health indicators used in rural areas,” said Thandie Mwape, a humanitarian affairs officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “This is not as visible as cattle and goats dying,” said Amina Abdulla, programme manager for urban livelihoods and social protection at Concern. “But the crisis is as severe".
“They live in a fixed crisis, day to day,” said communications manager Elizabeth Wright. “Because there’s poverty all the time, it’s hard to know when they reach a tipping point."
"Malnutrition in the urban areas of Kenya is there all of the time, it doesn’t get the attention it should, and some of the background causes of malnutrition rising in the north are the same in the urban areas,” said Peter Hailey from the UN Children’s Fund.
In Korogocho, a Nairobi slum, Rabaha Mohammad is responsible for feeding herself and 10 other people who share her rented room. “There are days when we don’t have anything to eat, but we might borrow some money or buy food on credit to have something for that day,” she said. Mohammad owes her creditors KSh5,000 - more than US$50. She and her children subsist on one meal a day - some rice with cabbage and tomatoes, and sometimes tea and bread. “They don’t complain of hunger much,” she said of her children. “They only cry about it once in a while.”
Alice said “many more” women have turned to sex work since the drought started and food prices went up. With the KSh50 ($0.90) she makes most days, Alice can buy a little rice for herself and her three children, and maybe some water. She has not paid rent in two months. Her children were chased away from school a month ago when the money ran out to pay the fees. Alice said the baby she held in her arms was crying because she had not been fed all day. Alice has so little food to eat she can no longer produce breast milk.
People living in slums are especially vulnerable to food price changes because so much of their income goes on food, and the lack of regular employment makes planning and saving difficult. To survive the “alarmingly volatile” increases in food prices, said Wright, people have reduced their food intake and turned to negative coping strategies such as engaging in sex work, taking children out of school, or selling assets.While international assistance is focused on the swelling numbers of refugees and devastated pastoralists, slum conditions often fall far short of the minimum shelter and sanitation standards established for responses to humanitarian crises.
Pauline Wangoi Mungai came to Korogocho 30 years ago, when the place was still being built. She sells vegetables in a small shop on the roadside. “People used to come and buy a bucket of potatoes,” she said. “Now they come with KSh10 [1 cent] and buy one potato.” Mungai said she would probably have to raise the price of her vegetables even more to make a profit. In her 30 years in the slum, she had never seen things so bad. “This is the worst. This is the big one.”
From here
“They live in a fixed crisis, day to day,” said communications manager Elizabeth Wright. “Because there’s poverty all the time, it’s hard to know when they reach a tipping point."
"Malnutrition in the urban areas of Kenya is there all of the time, it doesn’t get the attention it should, and some of the background causes of malnutrition rising in the north are the same in the urban areas,” said Peter Hailey from the UN Children’s Fund.
In Korogocho, a Nairobi slum, Rabaha Mohammad is responsible for feeding herself and 10 other people who share her rented room. “There are days when we don’t have anything to eat, but we might borrow some money or buy food on credit to have something for that day,” she said. Mohammad owes her creditors KSh5,000 - more than US$50. She and her children subsist on one meal a day - some rice with cabbage and tomatoes, and sometimes tea and bread. “They don’t complain of hunger much,” she said of her children. “They only cry about it once in a while.”
Alice said “many more” women have turned to sex work since the drought started and food prices went up. With the KSh50 ($0.90) she makes most days, Alice can buy a little rice for herself and her three children, and maybe some water. She has not paid rent in two months. Her children were chased away from school a month ago when the money ran out to pay the fees. Alice said the baby she held in her arms was crying because she had not been fed all day. Alice has so little food to eat she can no longer produce breast milk.
People living in slums are especially vulnerable to food price changes because so much of their income goes on food, and the lack of regular employment makes planning and saving difficult. To survive the “alarmingly volatile” increases in food prices, said Wright, people have reduced their food intake and turned to negative coping strategies such as engaging in sex work, taking children out of school, or selling assets.While international assistance is focused on the swelling numbers of refugees and devastated pastoralists, slum conditions often fall far short of the minimum shelter and sanitation standards established for responses to humanitarian crises.
Pauline Wangoi Mungai came to Korogocho 30 years ago, when the place was still being built. She sells vegetables in a small shop on the roadside. “People used to come and buy a bucket of potatoes,” she said. “Now they come with KSh10 [1 cent] and buy one potato.” Mungai said she would probably have to raise the price of her vegetables even more to make a profit. In her 30 years in the slum, she had never seen things so bad. “This is the worst. This is the big one.”
From here
Its not bad luck , its the system
Nigeria is one of the most unequal nations in Africa and the world. And like many other resource-rich nations, 'growth’ has not led to sustainable job opportunities. The so-called economic growth only benefits a narrow band of Nigerians – whether under dictatorships or democratic rule.
Nigeria’s population is three times that of South Africa, its economy is second to theirs in Africa. Nigeria are the 37th largest economy in the world, and 11th in terms of labour force (about 48 million, according to 2010 estimates). So how come its one of the most impoverished countries in Africa and the 25th poorest in the world? Global average income is about $25 per person per day. In Nigeria, about half live under $2 a day – on the threshold of poverty. Two-thirds of the population lives under or around $1.25 a day – in extreme poverty. Twenty centuries after the development of scripts and the numeric systems, about 44% of the population still lack basic literacy and numeracy skills.
While the economy grew, the incomes of the poor have not, even with the new minimum wage. This is especially true of the rural and urban poor who together, account for much of Nigerian poverty. At current rates, it is estimated that by 2015, Nigeria will have more poor people than India and China who have more than a billion people each. In fact, the World Bank includes Nigeria in the list of top 15 places with the highest incidence of poverty. Of our 162 million people, 90 million live below the poverty level of $2 a day, despite billions of dollars in oil revenues. Of that 90 million poor people, 60 million are dependants.
In 1980 only an estimated 27 percent of Nigerians lived in poverty. By 1990, it had grown to 70 percent. In 2010, over 58 percent of the population lived under the new poverty threshold of $1.25 a day.
Nigeria’s poor are in two distinct groups: the working and non-working population. Poverty is prevalent in both rural and urban areas, though large numbers of rural folk constantly migrate to urban areas in search of work. This is not unconnected to the fact that typical households in rural areas only cultivate 1 hectare of land annually which is only capable of producing about N80, 000 worth of food crops. From this, the household may earn N80, 000 ($500) or N219 per day, for a family of 6-7 people. Each member of that family lives on approximately N32-37 per day. Supplementary income from cattle, fishing or other wage labour, does not amount to much. There are few activities in the rural areas that create jobs apart from labour intensive agriculture; even this is seasonal. The landless farm labourers have little to do in the off-season, unless they seek work in the urban areas.
The urban poor – mostly uneducated and unskilled migrants from rural poverty – only have their physical bodies as capital. Urban wages may be higher than the rural, (for the same kind of work, urban wage rate can be 50–100% higher), but workers sometimes end up poorer because most of their meager earnings is consumed by the higher costs of living. With the new minimum wage, the typical urban poor earns between N18,000-20,000 (or N240,000 annually). This translates to approximately N658 per day and in the smaller urban household of 4 would amount to N164 per person per day - less than the poverty line of N200 a day.
Charity, welfare and aid initiatives are not enough, nor do they work. Even if poverty alleviation funds were collected through taxation or voluntary contributions, it is highly doubtful if they can be efficiently delivered. Reliance on luck will not take us any further than where we are.
Adapted from an article by Nasir El-Rufai, a former federal minister, in the Daily Independent
Nigeria’s population is three times that of South Africa, its economy is second to theirs in Africa. Nigeria are the 37th largest economy in the world, and 11th in terms of labour force (about 48 million, according to 2010 estimates). So how come its one of the most impoverished countries in Africa and the 25th poorest in the world? Global average income is about $25 per person per day. In Nigeria, about half live under $2 a day – on the threshold of poverty. Two-thirds of the population lives under or around $1.25 a day – in extreme poverty. Twenty centuries after the development of scripts and the numeric systems, about 44% of the population still lack basic literacy and numeracy skills.
While the economy grew, the incomes of the poor have not, even with the new minimum wage. This is especially true of the rural and urban poor who together, account for much of Nigerian poverty. At current rates, it is estimated that by 2015, Nigeria will have more poor people than India and China who have more than a billion people each. In fact, the World Bank includes Nigeria in the list of top 15 places with the highest incidence of poverty. Of our 162 million people, 90 million live below the poverty level of $2 a day, despite billions of dollars in oil revenues. Of that 90 million poor people, 60 million are dependants.
In 1980 only an estimated 27 percent of Nigerians lived in poverty. By 1990, it had grown to 70 percent. In 2010, over 58 percent of the population lived under the new poverty threshold of $1.25 a day.
Nigeria’s poor are in two distinct groups: the working and non-working population. Poverty is prevalent in both rural and urban areas, though large numbers of rural folk constantly migrate to urban areas in search of work. This is not unconnected to the fact that typical households in rural areas only cultivate 1 hectare of land annually which is only capable of producing about N80, 000 worth of food crops. From this, the household may earn N80, 000 ($500) or N219 per day, for a family of 6-7 people. Each member of that family lives on approximately N32-37 per day. Supplementary income from cattle, fishing or other wage labour, does not amount to much. There are few activities in the rural areas that create jobs apart from labour intensive agriculture; even this is seasonal. The landless farm labourers have little to do in the off-season, unless they seek work in the urban areas.
The urban poor – mostly uneducated and unskilled migrants from rural poverty – only have their physical bodies as capital. Urban wages may be higher than the rural, (for the same kind of work, urban wage rate can be 50–100% higher), but workers sometimes end up poorer because most of their meager earnings is consumed by the higher costs of living. With the new minimum wage, the typical urban poor earns between N18,000-20,000 (or N240,000 annually). This translates to approximately N658 per day and in the smaller urban household of 4 would amount to N164 per person per day - less than the poverty line of N200 a day.
Charity, welfare and aid initiatives are not enough, nor do they work. Even if poverty alleviation funds were collected through taxation or voluntary contributions, it is highly doubtful if they can be efficiently delivered. Reliance on luck will not take us any further than where we are.
Adapted from an article by Nasir El-Rufai, a former federal minister, in the Daily Independent
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Dependence Syndrome
In the past, it was said and often repeated that Africa was inflicted by three crippling scourges, namely poverty, hunger and disease. Unfortunately, the three severely handicapping scourges are still prevalent.
Most African leaders have steered their governments into the unpredictable and costly dependence syndrome. Many of these leaders and their bureaucrats continue to be seen in the capitals of the developed and developing worlds with begging cups in hand. On their return home, they jubilate and exhibit their triumphs in having convinced their counterparts in the former worlds to part with crumbs under their rich tables, in exchange for the surrender of local raw materials which consist of wealth.
Today, the dependence syndrome in Africa has come to mean the surrender of valuable national assets in return for cheap trinkets and poorly designed and manufactured transient goods and equipment. The African continent continue to rely heavily on expatriate experts and money with their programmes of participation, personnel and paraphernalia, sometimes alien models of development have been thrust upon Africa while implementing international or bilateral agreements. These are agreements that invariably favour the donor rather than the receiving host country.
Consequently, the dependence syndrome exacerbates instead of reducing the three scourges of poverty, ignorance and disease.
EXTRACTED AND re-EDITED FROM HERE
Most African leaders have steered their governments into the unpredictable and costly dependence syndrome. Many of these leaders and their bureaucrats continue to be seen in the capitals of the developed and developing worlds with begging cups in hand. On their return home, they jubilate and exhibit their triumphs in having convinced their counterparts in the former worlds to part with crumbs under their rich tables, in exchange for the surrender of local raw materials which consist of wealth.
Today, the dependence syndrome in Africa has come to mean the surrender of valuable national assets in return for cheap trinkets and poorly designed and manufactured transient goods and equipment. The African continent continue to rely heavily on expatriate experts and money with their programmes of participation, personnel and paraphernalia, sometimes alien models of development have been thrust upon Africa while implementing international or bilateral agreements. These are agreements that invariably favour the donor rather than the receiving host country.
Consequently, the dependence syndrome exacerbates instead of reducing the three scourges of poverty, ignorance and disease.
EXTRACTED AND re-EDITED FROM HERE
Friday, August 19, 2011
EARLY WARNINGS AGAIN
Eastern and northern Uganda could be staring at famine. The worst hit districts are Bulambuli and the region of Karamoja where 1.2 million people are facing food shortage. Following the persistent drought that reduced pasture and food production, Karimojong cattle keepers are selling their few remaining cows and goats in order to survive. Others who lost their animals to cattle rustlers have resorted to breaking stones and selling them to Tororo Cement Industries while some gather wild fruits to survive. As food scarcity worsens in many districts of northern Uganda, many households have resorted to rationing the available foodstuffs they have in their family stores. To survive, some families have resorted to borrowing food from friends, hunting, selling their land and animals.
"We are just selling off our animals to survive but traditionally cows in Karamoja are only meant for marriage," said Timothy Koryang, an elder in Moroto.
Ms Anastasia Among, a 40 year-old widow in Ocorai village in Serere and her family, depend on farming for survival but for the last three months, there has been no rain in her area and the crops have withered. "I depend on growing crops for sale and consumption at home. This year the harvest is very poor and we fear there is going to be a serious food shortage," Ms Among said.
In West Nile region, families have one meal a day as a result of food shortage that has pushed prices up. Mr Clement Adrabo, a resident of Ediofe, said: "We now take one meal per day because food is expensive and there is no money. I have even stopped drinking alcohol and the money should rather be used for feeding my family," the father of four said.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201108190282.html
"We are just selling off our animals to survive but traditionally cows in Karamoja are only meant for marriage," said Timothy Koryang, an elder in Moroto.
Ms Anastasia Among, a 40 year-old widow in Ocorai village in Serere and her family, depend on farming for survival but for the last three months, there has been no rain in her area and the crops have withered. "I depend on growing crops for sale and consumption at home. This year the harvest is very poor and we fear there is going to be a serious food shortage," Ms Among said.
In West Nile region, families have one meal a day as a result of food shortage that has pushed prices up. Mr Clement Adrabo, a resident of Ediofe, said: "We now take one meal per day because food is expensive and there is no money. I have even stopped drinking alcohol and the money should rather be used for feeding my family," the father of four said.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201108190282.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)