The Kenyan GM Debate

The debate over the pros and cons of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has polarized Kenyans from all walks of life and threatens huge investments in scientific research to re-invent food production in the country. A growing body of scientific research hails the potential of genetic engineering to revolutionize food production, yet an equally large population of skeptics from the Kenyan green movement warns of its potential dangers.

Richard Oduor, Chairman of Kenya University Biotechnology Consortium and head of biotechnology department at Kenyatta University, said condemnation of genetically modified organisms is not based on science but unjustified paranoia. “Science is clear that as a country, we cannot afford to employ old methods to produce food and meet huge demands from a growing population. No country has ever become food secure through traditional farming systems,” he said. Kenyan scientists have been lobbying the government to lift a ban on GMOs. Oduor said the ban was not based on scientific evidence, adding that Kenya risks becoming a perpetually food aid dependent nation unless the government fast-tracks the adoption of biotech crops.

Marion Mutugi, a Lecturer at Kabianga University, cautioned against introduction of biotech crops based on their potential threats to human health and indigenous biodiversity. “We need to address fundamental issues like food sovereignty, protection of natural capital and indigenous knowledge before adopting genetic engineering in agriculture,” Mutugi said. “There are moral, ethical and health concerns that should not be ignored. Scientists, regulators, industry and consumer groups should address those concerns.”

The Kenyan green movement has conducted nationwide campaign against the introduction of genetically modified organisms. Wanjiru Kamau, an official at Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), warned We require a precautionary approach to avert potential risks of biotech crops to our rich biodiversity. Smallholders will be at the mercy of multinational giants pushing for adoption of GMOs.”

http://www.coastweek.com/3750-agriculture-04.htm

Democracy or Benign Dictatorships

 Oby Ezekweseli, Vice President of the World Bank and former minister in President Obasanjo's government in Nigeria traced the lack of participation by the vast majority of Africans in their own development over the past 50 years which has left 70 - 80% of them absolutely poor. She blamed the "parasitic" African elites, not just for looting their countries, but for preventing any of the benefits of economic growth reaching their people. Her own country, Nigeria, is very rich but has some of the worst human development figures in the world.

She also pointed out that external actors, the aid donors, the World Bank and the IMF who drove the structural adjustment economic reforms of the 1990s and 2000s and left African citizens with no part to play in making the national choices for development. These reforms were necessary, she said, but “The ownership of the process by African citizens has been the missing link." The next stage of development, said Oby, can only be done with the participation of the people, "no external force can do that... The change you have been waiting for will not come from the elite class waking up and having an epiphany. The change has to be made by the people. They are the only ones who can."

Dismissing the current crop of African rulers, she expressed her pride in the people of Burkina Faso for the uprising that ejected President Blaise Compaoré, who ruled there for 27 years. The leaders "absolutely don't care" about their own citizens, she said, but spend their time among the global elite "all of whom have each other's' phone numbers".

She urged the African diaspora to return to Africa and lead the struggle.

Put aside the oil and mineral-rich countries in Africa, and, as Oby pointed out, you find that the fastest growers are those with stability and strong institutions such as effective ministries that deliver health and education to their people. In turn these attract aid and investment. These countries are Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania.

But what else do they have in common? Ethiopia and Rwanda are top-down dictatorships ruled by parties that fought their way to power and have ruled since 1991 and 1994 respectively. They deliver health and education to their people but they do not allow freedom of speech or association. Their media are tightly controlled. Uganda is a less powerful dictatorship but President Yoweri Museveni also came to power through the barrel of a gun in 1986 and his army has controlled the country ever since. The 'Walk to Work' mass movement in 2011, which complained about lack of services and high prices, was brutally suppressed.

Museveni was forced by aid donors to open up politics and he now has to put up with a rumbustious parliament and a moderately free press. A grumpy population, especially in the capital, might vote for someone else if they were sure that someone was allowed to run in a fair election. That is unlikely. At election times the state, including the police and the army, is an extension of the ruling party.

Mozambique and Tanzania are still run by the parties that led those countries at independence. Both will soon become exceedingly rich because of oil and gas; God-given resources that are profoundly anti-democratic.

Oil-rich countries do not need to raise taxes from their people, they mainline millions from oil companies straight into the treasury. So whoever is in power when those revenues begin to flow may stay there for decades. There is still some democratic space in these countries and there are real national debates with opposition parties in both of them, although it is unlikely that an opposition party could win without provoking violent reactions from the ruling parties.

So is benign dictatorship the best Africans can hope for?

http://allafrica.com/stories/201412120053.html

The Chinese influence

A recent study shows China’s development aid for Africa flows primarily to the home-lands of leading African politicians, when there was greater need for aid in another part of the same country. On average, 270% more financial contributions go to these locations rather than to other areas, the study reveals.

“Leading politicians in recipient countries spend a portion of Chinese aid on personal interests, which can restrict the effectiveness of the aid,” said Axel Dreher, from the Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics at the University of Heidelberg and was among the authors of the study Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China’s Foreign Assistance. The team, consisting of researchers from the United States, Switzerland, Australia and Germany, investigated around 2,000 Chinese development aid projects from 2010 to 2012. The study covered more than 3,500 locations and a total aid value of $90 billion.

China has repeatedly indicated that its foreign investments are not attached to any political agenda. But it is precisely this supposed neutrality that gives African elites the ability to use the funds to their own advantage, the researchers point out. “China’s position makes it possible for African politicians to transfer a substantial portion of Chinese funding to their constituencies,” Dreher indicated. The fact that leading African politicians use development funds to finance their own political agendas immensely undermines the effectiveness of Chinese development aid.

Economically the bilateral trade volume last year exceeded $ 200 billion. In the past, China invested mainly in Africa’s extractive industry. Now things are changing. Currently, Beijing’s investment in African energy accounts for just 20% of the total. China is investing more in infrastructure, manufacturing, and agricultural industries. Beijing’s primary interest is no longer African energy, rather in manufacturing industries. China’s position in the global production networks, by transferring its cost-effective industry to Africa. The previously destination for outsourcing are now the out-sourcers themselves.

AFSA Open Letter Opposing Human Feeding Trials Involving GM Banana

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), a Pan African platform comprising civil society networks and farmer organisations working towards food sovereignty, has submitted this Open Letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Wendy White from Iowa State University and the Human Institutional Review Board of Iowa State University expressing fierce opposition to the human feeding trials taking place at Iowa State University involving genetically modified (GM) bananas. The Letter is supported by more than 120 organizations from around the world.

To:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr Wendy S White, Iowa State University

The Director, Human-Institutional Review Board, Iowa State University

Dear Sirs/Madam

We, the undersigned, representing diverse constituencies from across Africa and the world, working towards food sovereignty, are strongly opposed to the human feeding trials taking place at the Iowa State University involving the so called genetically modified (GM) ‘super banana’ - GM Matooke, Sweet and Roasting bananas.

These trials funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are being carried out under the leadership of Dr. Wendy White of the Iowa State University, on 12 young students, with the intention of introducing the GM banana first in Uganda and later, to other countries in East Africa. The GM banana, currently undergoing field trials in Uganda, was developed by scientists at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, similarly also funded by the Gates Foundation.

Despite claims to the contrary from the promoters and developers of GM crops, and to reiterate what nearly three hundred global scientists have stated in an Open Letter in December 2013[i], there is no consensus that GM crops are safe for human consumption. Most of the research carried out by independent scientists on GM crops directly contradicts the results of biotech industry-sponsored studies that claim no evidence of risk or harm.

This so-called ‘Super-banana’, has been genetically modified to contain extra beta-carotene, a nutrient the human body uses to produce vitamin A. Unlike current GM crops in commercial production where agronomic traits have been altered, scientists have spliced genes into the GM banana to produce substances for humans to digest (extra beta carotene). The GM banana is a whole different ballgame, raising serious concerns about the risks to African communities who would be expected to consume it. Production of vitamin A in the body is complex and not fully understood. This raises important questions including inter alia, whether high levels of beta- carotene or vitamin A may carry risks and what the nature of those risks might be. While a risk assessment is a pre-requisite for GM foods under many national jurisdictions, the need for specific and additional food safety assessment for nutritionally enhanced GM crops such as the GM banana is acknowledged by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, as genetic modifications result in a composition that may be significantly different from their conventional counterparts[ii].

We question what firm conclusions can be drawn from feeding trials of young people residing in the United States for poor rural farmers and consumers in Africa, given all the differences in lifestyle and diets between these two populations?

What other foods will these students be eating with the GM bananas, and how will these be eaten? Will the participants in the USA be eating this in the same way? Will it have the same color and same levels of water composition? Would cooking the GM bananas result in a loss of beta-carotene? Will participants be given portions of fats and oils (such as butter) to supplement the banana, as was the case in feeding trials with Golden Rice to facilitate the absorption of beta-carotene? If so, then the GM banana feeding studies may be of little relevance to rural Ugandans and other East Africans who prepare the Matooke variety simply by steaming and mashing.

Great strides have been made in the Philippines, another target country for Vitamin enhanced GM crops, through government programs that supply supplements and improve access to vitamin A rich foods, to overcome Vitamin A deficiencies. This is done without the enormous costs or unknown long- term impacts on health, the environment and farming systems that are entailed by using GM crops. And it is more completely in control of the user society.

Africa, the USA, and indeed the rest of the world, do not need GM crops. These crops divert resources away from more locally appropriate and controlled agricultural solutions to nutritional concerns. If indeed the aim of those involved in the promotion of the project is truly to combat Vitamin A deficiency then surely they should be advocating for the consumption of more diverse fruits and foods, such as sweet potatoes that are rich in Vitamin A and that are in abundance in Africa. Ironically, the promotion of a GM food staple high in Vitamin A, risks perpetuating monolithic diets, the very causes of Vitamin A deficiency in the first place.

This letter is in solidarity with farmers and communities in Africa and around the world, which have resisted the genetic modification of their staple foods- from Ghana, Kenya and Zambia- to Mexico, India and the Philippines. We will not stand by idly as attempts are made to systematically genetically modify Africa’s staple foods and in the process gain a massive positive public relations coup by claiming to have conquered health problems at the unnecessary risk to Africans.

Finally, we demand that the full contents of this open letter are shared with the human subjects of these trials in the USA.


Bridget Mugambe
Policy Advocate
Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

from here with the list of 122 signee organisations

South Africa: Asylum Seekers Required To Present Documentation

Refugee advocates in South Africa have reacted with dismay and scepticism to a planned revamp of the asylum application process which the government says is designed to distinguish economic migrants from people with a bona fide case for refugee status.

"The granting of asylum should not be contingent on an applicant's skills, economic circumstances, employment history or number of dependants," said Roni Amit, a senior researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at Witwatersrand University, referring to a new 12-page asylum application form, which was published for comment in November.

The form includes detailed questions about education level, employment history and skills, including a request that applicants provide documentation in the form of testimonials and pay slips. There is also a new section on financial status that asks for details of bank accounts inside and outside South Africa and how much money the applicant has brought into the country.

The aim of such questions "is to separate economic migrants from people seeking asylum," said Mayihlome Tshwete, the department of home affairs spokesperson.

"Our refugee system is being heavily burdened by economic migrants," he told IRIN. "There are people who are genuinely in fear of their lives, and their applications are not getting the attention [they deserve]."

South Africa was the third most popular destination for asylum seekers in 2013 (Germany and the US took the two top spots) with 70,000 new asylum applications, according the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). This was down from previous years when it was the leading destination, but it has still left the department with a significant backlog. According to UNHCR, over 86,600 cases were yet to receive a first decision by the end of 2013, while a further 145,400 were awaiting appeal decisions at the end of 2012.

However, refugee rights groups have questioned whether the new form is the best way of addressing the backlog.

Amit pointed out that under both international and domestic refugee law, asylum determinations should be based solely on establishing whether individuals face a well-founded fear of persecution or general conditions of instability in their country of origin.

She added that asylum seekers fleeing for their lives were unlikely to have taken any documentation proving their previous employment with them.

UNHCR, in a submission it is preparing to send to Home Affairs, will call for the new form to be simplified. "A lot of the information that they've put there is not needed to take a decision on the merits of a refugee claim," said UNHCR spokesperson Tina Ghelli. "We feel that most asylum seekers wouldn't be able to provide that level of detail. We've offered our technical guidance to help them improve the form."


full article here

Women of Mozambique Fight Back

We will not let ProSavana to invade our land and colonize us!


Ana Paula Taucale, peasant in Nampula
Province and member of UNAC (União
Nacional de Camponeses), Mozam-
bique.

The government of my country has grant-
ed large portions of land for large-scale
agriculture for exports, in the Nacala Cor-
ridor, involving Brazil and Japan. We,
peasants of the area oppose this project
and see it as an invasion that will drive to
large land grabs.

There is already evidence of the effects
of land grabbing in that area (Northern
Mozambique) on the peasants communi-
ties, and particularly on women. In Nam-
pula province, were I live and have my
plot, women are being prevented from
passing in the areas where the foreign
companies operate. We cannot access
firewood, gather wild foods or harvest
roots to use as medicines for our fami-
lies. In itself this is a clear violation of the
Mozambique Law of the Land. The Law
requires that community be consulted
to grant lands to companies, thus giv-
ing communities the right to refuse, as in
cases where such land granting implies
the abuse of their rights.

We reject this land-grabbing and we re-
ject the model of agriculture the ProSa-
vana program represents. We will do ev-
erything we can to stop it.
We as UNAC, together with other organi-
zations in the country, have launched in
June the National Campaign STOP Pro-
Savana. We want to bring this campaign
at international level - civil society organ-
isations in Brazil and Japan have already
joined us - and we want to activate legal
mechanisms at national and United Na-
tions level, to give greater responsibility
to those operating the ProSavana pro-
gram, for the damage they might cause
to the peasants communities in Mozam-
bique.

from here

Africa's Climate Change Challenge

‘The origin of global warming lies in capitalism. If we could end capitalism—and this is something we should do at global level—we would have a solution.” Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales

Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian environmental activist, director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, and author of "To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa." Bassey says the carbon trading included in the draft agreement could increase deforestation, displace farmers and contribute to the food crisis in Africa. This is what he says :

“…with regard to the Conference of Parties on climate change, I believe that there was a big derailment right from Copenhagen at COP 15. So, there is no real reason to think there’s going to be something that we can say, yes, finally, the world is on track to tackle global warming. We’re still seeing situations where nations are haggling and debating over figures, nothing to show that there is an understanding that climate change is something that has been scientifically investigated and that there must be a way to evaluate aggregate actions by different countries that would add up to a result that will tackle the problem. Right from the arrival of the Copenhagen Accord, everything is moving in terms of the direction of voluntary commitments to reduce emissions…What is causing global warming? One of the major causes is the dependence on fossil fuels. And all the conservative organizations, like the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, have all indicated that unless up two 80 percent of known fossil fuel reserves are left under the ground, we are on track for catastrophic temperature increase. There’s no talk about leaving fossil fuels. Everything is about how to offset the pollution, so every mechanism is being developed that would help polluting industry and rich countries to continue with business as usual.

…the effect of climate change is real, already being experienced. It’s not something for the future. And Africa is so central in the whole of this because Africa experiences 50 percent more in terms of temperature rise than the global average. So if the global average temperature goes up by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in Africa the experience will be three degrees Celsius. If it goes to six degrees, that will be nine degrees. Africa is set to be roasted. We’re going to a scenario where we may have Africa without Africans. It’s really horrible.

The floods are getting more, the droughts, the desertification. Africa may well be the only continent where the desert is still spreading. And then, with the assault on land grabs and everything, we are really being squeezed. In 2012, we had floods across the continent. In my country, Nigeria, six million people were displaced by flooding in one year. Over 300 lost their lives. We had similar flooding replicated across the continent. We’re having also the challenge of sea level rise. Where I come from, the Niger Delta, the land is naturally subsiding. So when you have a combination of sea level rise and land subsidence, you’re having a heightened impact.

We are seeing a situation also, from research, that if the situation continues the way it’s going, by 2050 we may well have more than 50 percent increase in conflicts on the continent. I mean, this is something I don’t even want to think about, considering the level of resource conflict, political conflicts and other manifestation of violence on the continent…

….REDD is Reducing Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation. That’s what it’s meant to mean. That’s what it—I mean, it’s a concept that nobody will really oppose, but when you look at the practice on the ground, it’s just a carbon market mechanism, where polluting industries and rich nations, instead of stopping pollution at its source, will secure and buy up forests in Africa, in Latin America, somewhere else, and even some forests in the Global North, so as to permit them to pollute. REDD is a mechanism that permits the polluter to continue polluting….what they would do in Brazil is that the forests would be—the forest-dependent communities would now be more or less displaced from having access to the forest, forest resources and also their territories. If I take this back to Africa, right as we speak, the displacement of communities in the Sengwer—of the Sengwer people in Kenya, who have been displaced from their forests because the REDD project is about to set in there. We’ve had displacement of thousands in Uganda already. In Nigeria, my own country, the Cross River forests, part of it is being secured for REDD projects….People are being forced out with military power, military might, so as to secure carbon. Forest trees are being seen as carbon stocks, not as trees anymore. And the fearful thing is that with the discussions in REDD, this may move on to issues of not just carbon in trees, but carbon in agriculture. So farmers will be farming carbon rather than growing food for people to eat. And unfortunately also for the United Nations, a forest is—a plantation is accepted as a forest. So, REDD is set to kind of accelerate plantations across the tropical world. This would mean more displacement of communities, more displacement of farmers from farming land. And, of course, it’s going to compound the food crisis in the region….”

No money - no eating

Zimbabwe has a total population of just over 13 million people, according to the 2012 National Census – of these, 67 percent now live in rural areas while 33 percent live in urban areas. According to the 2013 Human Development Index of the U.N. Development Programmer (UNDP), Zimbabwe is a low-income, food-deficit country, ranked 156 out of 187 countries globally and UNDP says that currently 72 percent of Zimbabweans live below the national poverty line. As unemployment deepens across this Southern African nation and as the country battles to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ahead of the December 2015 deadline, thousands of urban Zimbabweans here are facing starvation.

According to the Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey report for 2011-2012 from the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency (ZIMSTAT), 30.4 percent of rural people in Zimbabwe are “extremely poor” – and are also people facing starvation – compared with 5.6 percent in urban areas.

For many Zimbabwean urban residents like unemployed 39-year-old qualified accountant Josphat Madyira from the Zimbabwean capital Harare, starvation has become order of the day. “Food stores are filled to the brim with groceries, but most of us here are jobless and therefore have no money to consistently buy very basic foodstuffs, resulting in us having mostly one meal per day.” 

Madyira lost his job at a local shoe manufacturing company after it shut down operations owing to the country’s deepening liquidity crunch, thanks to a failing economy here that has rendered millions of people jobless. Asked how city dwellers like him are surviving, Madyira said: “People who are jobless like me have resorted to vending on streets pavements, selling anything we can lay our hands on as we battle to put food on our tables.” For the many hunger-stricken Madyiras in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities, meeting the MDGS by the end of next year matters little. “Defeating starvation is far from me without decent and stable employment and whether or not my country fulfils the MDGs, it may be of no immediate result to many people like me,” Madyirasaid.

 “Remaining in towns and cities for many here is better than living in the countryside as every slightest job opportunity often starts in urban areas in spite of the expensive living conditions in towns and cities,” independent social worker Tracey Ngirazi told IPS.

According to Philip Bohwasi, chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Council of Social Workers, urban starvation is being caused by loss of jobs – the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates unemployment in Zimbabwe to be at 60 percent of the country’s total population. “The current inability of the economy to address people’s basic needs is leading to hunger in most urban households, with almost none of urban residents in Zimbabwe affording three meals a day nowadays”.

The donor community, which often extends food aid to impoverished rural households, has rarely done the same in towns and cities here despite hunger now taking its toll on the urban population, according to civil society activists. “Whether in cities or remote areas, hunger in Zimbabwe is equally ravaging ordinary people and most of the donor community has for long directed food aid to the countryside, rarely paying attention to towns and cities, which are also now succumbing to famine,” Catherine Mukwapati, director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network civil society organisation,said.

Economists and development experts here say that achieving the MDGs without food on people’s tables, especially in cities whose inhabitants are fast falling prey to growing hunger, is going to be a nightmare, if not highly impossible for Zimbabwe.

 “Be it in cities or rural areas, Zimbabwe still has a lot of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day, which is the global index measure of extreme poverty, a clear indication that as a country we are far from successfully combating hunger and poverty in line with the U.N. MDGs whose global deadline for world countries to achieve is next year,” independent development expert Obvious Sibanda explained.

More on land-grabbing again

In 1885, the great European powers met in Berlin to divide up the African continent into spheres of influence. There was a similar conference last week, in New York, but you did not read about it and it was held behind the closed doors of a corporate board room. And, the week before there was a similar conference in Amsterdam, and the week before that in London. Colonialism today is no longer conducted by nation-states but, instead, by multi-national corporations but the essence of the saga is unchanged: A poor continent is being raped by the powerful and wealthy.

Ghana has been a net importer of palm oil, which is like Saudi Arabia being a net importer of oil. Herakles Farms, a New York-based firm had come into the Volta region of Ghana region and did what land-grabbers do: They promised a lot of money, some of it up front, they promised they would drill wells for the people, build schools and clinics and roads, improve the standard of living, if only the farmers would sign a 99-year lease at $5 per hectare per year. A hectare is about two and one-half acres. Many Western companies initially put enormous pressure on local landowners to sign lease agreements without legal counsel or, in the case with Herakles Farms, the company “provided” the locals with a lawyer who happened to work at the same firm as the lawyer representing the company. Of course, the people of the Volta region did not get what they were promised. And, Herakles Farms, once they realized that the intrepid social justice advocates from Africa Faith & Justice Network were on the case and who had tangled previously with the company in neighboring Cameroon  sold the lease to a British company, Volta Red, which has set up a mill to process palm oil.

The land-grab problem is not unique to Ghana. In Liberia, 64% of usable land is held by foreign corporations. 64%. In Tanzania, forty thousand people are being evicted from land they have lived on for all their lives because the royal family of Dubai bought the land to set up a private game preserve. This will devastate the nomadic peoples in the region, placing the grazing lands they and their ancestors have used for centuries behind the walls of the preserve. Similar tales can be told about most of the countries in Africa.

In the 19th century the European powers were only taking resources. Now, more people are dividing Africa up, all motivated by greed, and they are taking the land. It is much worse now than before.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/fighting-injustice-land-grabs-africa

The MisLeaders of Africa

Until last year, Rwanda’s GDP averaged 8 per cent, and GDP per capita, when adjusted for purchasing power, grew from $575 in 1995 to $1,170 in 2012. The statistics have been so impressive that many in the West have called upon other African leaders to emulate President Paul Kagame’s and Rwanda’s approach. Kagame is loved and admired at home. His direct style of leadership has won him accolades, and he has got Rwanda out of the abyss.

But there is another side to this story. Under Kagame, Rwanda has become one of the most tightly controlled societies in Africa, where human rights and freedom of speech are severely curtailed. In 2010, when Kagame won 93 per cent of the vote, the main opposition parties were excluded from the ballot. Dissent from journalists, political opponents or even his own lieutenants has been fiercely dealt with. Former comrades who fell out with him have been assassinated, most recently Patrick Karegeya, a former intelligence chief, who was killed in January. Rwanda’s human rights record is so bad that it ranks alongside that of Syria and Eritrea. Yet this is a country that continues to be held up as a prime example of how donor support can work, and Kagame is hailed as a visionary.

President Kagame’s argument has always been that he saved Rwanda from oblivion when everyone else, including the international community, was hopelessly looking on. Granted, the genocide stopped after the RPF’s military victory, but the real question is whether putting an end to genocide was the RPF’s main objective. The memoirs of General Roméo Antonius Dallaire, the man in charge of the UN forces in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, for example, suggest that this was never the case. The Gersony Report detailed findings by experts contracted by the UN, who identified a pattern of massacres by the RPF during and after their military victory. The British and the Americans were instrumental in preventing the Gersony Report from being published, over fears its findings might rock the boat of a fragile new government.

From here

The Ogoni Oil Protests

Oil and gas makes up 14% of Nigeria's GDP and Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer. Nigeria's oil production hit 2.3 million barrels per day in August 2014, the most since January 2006. An estimated $400 billion has gone missing from oil revenues in Nigeria over the last 50 years. 84% of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day.

The Ogoni ethnic group occupies about 1,000 square kilometres in the eastern Niger Delta region in southern Nigeria. Shell-BP, as it was then known, started oil extraction in Ogoniland in 1957, a year after it sunk its first Nigerian well in Ijawland.

In 2010 the Nigerian government asked the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to carry out an independent assessment of the oil-polluted Ogoni environment. In August 2011 UNEP presented its devastating report, which detailed high levels of contamination throughout the area: ‘The Ogoni community is exposed to hydrocarbons every day through multiple routes. While the impact of individual contaminated land sites tends to be localized, air pollution related to oil-industry operations is all-pervasive and affecting the quality of life of close to one million people.’ After 50 years of oil pollution, UNEP called for ‘the world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken’. The $1-billion cost should be borne by the Nigerian government and the oil industry, UNEP declared. When the UNEP report was released in 2011 there was an international outcry. But the Ogoni people themselves were not surprised at its findings. As Rose Zaranen, an Ogoni leader, puts it: ‘The report only confirmed what we had always said. Now they have discovered for themselves that they have been poisoning our land and people. They should come and clean the land as UNEP has asked them to do. Since they don’t want to listen to us they should listen to UNEP.

 ‘Shell, in collusion with a succession of governments in Nigeria, is responsible for the human and environmental tragedy of the Ogoni people,’ says Bariara Kpalap, a leading Ogoni activist. “At the Human Rights Violation and Investigation Commission in 2000, Shell admitted that it was paying the military and sharing intelligence with them about Ogoniland and our people. With that false information, the military killed, maimed and raped in Ogoniland.”

A new wave of anger, manifesting in large protests, is sweeping through Nigeria’s Ogoni region over the refusal of the government to implement the UNEP report two years after it was released. The sense of frustration is articulated by Nnimmo Bassey, local NGO leader, prolific poet and writer, and former chair of Friends of the Earth International. ‘The UNEP report clearly attests to the decades of ecological aggression in Ogoniland. It is scandalous that no real action has been taken. Each passing day of delay places a death sentence on the people.’

‘The discovery that every part of Ogoni territory – water, land and air – is contaminated is terrifying,’ says Dr Nenibarini Zabbey, a hydro-biologist and co-ordinator of the local Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD). ‘It is alarming to have recorded levels that high of BTEX [benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes] in the groundwater people have been relying on over the years. The concentration is about 900 times above the permissible limit set by the World Health Organization.’ This may help explain why life expectancy in the Niger Delta is just 45 years.

In July 2012 the government half-heartedly responded, and set up the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project. Unfortunately, the project is part of the Petroleum Resources Ministry, not the Environment Ministry. Since its formation, its greatest achievement has been putting up warning billboards on polluted sites in Ogoniland, saying: ‘Public notice – prohibition! Contamination area – keep off.’

The clean-up is not just the government’s responsibility, however. Activists are also directing their calls for implementation at Shell, which is responsible for thousands of the spills that are still poisoning the Ogoni people’s land and water today. On 28 August 2008, a new tragedy struck. A fault in the pipeline resulted in a significant oil spill into Bodo Creek in Ogoniland. Shell – now known in Nigeria as Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) – repaired its facility the following November, but didn’t clean up the spill. Oil poured into the swamp and creek for weeks, covering the area in a thick slick and killing the fish that people depend on for their food and livelihood. 2009 saw a second spill. Faced with overwhelming evidence that the pipeline had not been adequately protected or repaired, Shell has been ruled liable for the impacts of the spill – a ground-breaking legal decision that could open the floodgates to other similar cases. The company has offered to pay $51 million to settle, which the Bodo lawyers described as ‘insulting’: it would not remotely cover the costs of what the community members have lost.

From here

Charity and Political Power

A trawl of charity and company documents shows how Tony Blair has attracted millions of pounds in donations from the super-rich, as well as from the US government and even the Swedish lottery, largely for foundations he has set up since leaving Downing Street. His remarkable ability to network and use contacts made in and out of office has helped him establish two major international organisations with wide-ranging influence: the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Paolo Pellegrini, an Italian-born banker and his third wife Henrietta, have given AGI $1.5 million (£1 million) in three payments each of $500,000 spread over three years. The Pellegrinis made the payments through their charitable foundation – the Paolo Pellegrini and Henrietta Jones Foundation. The money was used in part to fund AGI’s move to new offices overlooking Hyde Park in central London. AGI plans to expand its operations advising African leaders into half the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, giving Blair influence over hundreds of millions of people. AGI states its “longer-term, five-year vision of achieving a footprint that touches on 15-20 countries”. If AGI was successful that would see the charity operating in about half Sub-Saharan Africa, giving Blair and his charity — which offers governance and investment advice to presidents, prime ministers and ministers — enormous influence in the region.

In Guinea, the report highlights how AGI’s team of four persuaded the president Alpha Conde to change his management style. “When we began, the president had a very personalised style of management. He delegated very little, directly managed nearly all important ministers and most of the more than 30 advisers at the presidency, and scheduled most of his own meetings via his four cellular phones.”  AGI states it was able to introduce practical changes including the introduction of a morning meeting with “the president’s top team … and even the reduction in the number of the president’s phones from four to one.”

The Swedish lottery gave AGI more than £750,000. Part of that donation was spent on AGI’s team in South Sudan, a short-lived foray that ended when the country fell into civil war and AGI was forced to pull its team out.

Bill and Melinda Gates, the richest couple on the planet and good friends of Blair, gave AGI almost £500,000 last year.

Blair has also lobbied the UK Government for funding for AGI, but having been turned down on a number of occasions by the Department for International Development (DfID), has given up trying.

AGI has been more successful with the US taxpayer. Washington’s equivalent to DfID, called USAID, is committed to giving £4.5 million through three grants. At one stage Blair’s great friend Hillary Clinton was then US secretary of state in overall charge of USAID.  Blair has insisted his charity went through proper tendering processes before winning the contracts. Emails obtained by The Telegraph, whose existence has been reported by this newspaper, disclose how Blair and his charity lobbied USAID officials ahead of the award of sizeable grants.

Last month, the US branch of Save the Children gave Mr Blair its global legacy award for his and AGI’s efforts in alleviating poverty in Africa. But the prize caused a huge split inside Save the Children with a letter signed by its own staff demanding the award be revoked while an online petition has attracted 120,000 signatures demanding the same.

South Africa's Richest

The ten richest people in South Africa have a combined wealth of R205 billion – an 81.4% increase from 2013’s report. Despite two decades of empowerment deals, only 13 of the top 100 richest South Africans are black, with only two women listed in the top 100 as well – Aspen chair, Judy Dlamini (40th, with R1.05 billion) and lawyer, Sharon Wapnick (74th, worth R637 million).

New number one, Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, has a total wealth of R61.3 billion, knocking off former list-topper, Shoprite investor Christo Wiese, who is estimated to be worth R35.8 billion. Following the acquisition of Wiese’s Pepkor business by Steinhoff, the Shoprite head could see his fotunes bolstered by as much as R30 billion, which would put him squarely at the top of the list.

In terms of salaries, the Rich List tells a different story, featuring a completely different set of names. Anglo American CEO, Mark Cutifani ranks number one as South Africa’s top earner in 2013, having taken home R106 million for the year – up over 146% from 2012. This is followed by Old Mutual CEO, Julian Roberts, who took home R73 million for the year. Seven of the top 10 earners took home over R50 million in 2013, while none in the top 100 earned less than R14 million.

http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/75332/south-africas-richest-people-3/

The Military Muscle

As many remember Nelson Mandela on the anniversary of his death, his hopes seem as far away as ever. For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. Elections have now been held across the continent, but their credibility varies. In some countries, rulers deploy state security forces to marginalize opposition leaders. Less autocratic leaders foster loyalty by doling out state jobs and other perks that would raise eyebrows even in many developing nations. In 1990, just three of Africa’s 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify. In many African countries, soldiers have run the show since the earliest days of colonialism. In the late 1800s, Europeans recruited local men into new armies to help conquer a vast continent. Throughout the imperial century that followed, Europeans used those colonial brigades to repress the African lawyers, civil servants and journalists who were agitating for independence. Today, blue-chip companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co. are expanding into countries whose leaders have never faced a real electoral contest.

Two decades of elections and economic progress in Africa haven’t erased the vast power that militaries have long wielded in many countries, large and small. In much of Africa, in fact, the armed forces have gained influence in recent years as battling Islamist terrorists has become a priority. The military remains a swaggering presence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. On the surface, the country is a flourishing democracy. President Goodluck Jonathan, one of the first elected Nigerian leaders who didn’t come from the military. But Nigeria’s army—which led the country almost nonstop from 1966 to 1999—still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces. When Kashim Shettima, the governor of a state in Boko Haram’s heartland, complained that the army was being gutted by corruption, Mr. Jonathan threatened on television to remove the soldiers guarding Mr. Shettima’s house, exposing him to attack by Boko Haram.

The military has defended Mr. Jonathan, too. Soldiers have blocked opposition leaders from landing at airports during their campaigns, and in June, soldiers confiscated bundles of newspapers containing articles criticizing government corruption.

The U.S. trained some 52,000 African troops in 2013 alone, at a cost of $99 million. After Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003, the U.S. paid security contractor DynCorp International, based in McLean, Virginaa, to train the country’s new, 2,000-person army. Other institutions like the health ministry received scant attention.

“There are signs of the predatory nature of military rule” returning to Africa, said Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “This is a calamity for a number of these countries.”

Many African countries, such as Angola and Sudan, are resource-rich, single-party autocracies that have consolidated their grip on power. Angola’s president, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a military commander who has used his country’s vast oil wealth to build a police network that has helped to neutralize rivals for more than 30 years. In 2012, his party won more than two-thirds of the vote in elections that observers called deeply flawed. Nations that underwent the Arab Spring have regressed back to military dictatorship as in the case of Sisi’s Egypt or become militia civil war zones as in Libya. Africa has weathered more than 60 coups between 1960 and 1990, according to the African Development Bank. Some overturned election results that military leaders found unpalatable; others promised to stamp out political corruption, took over and became corrupt themselves. A whole generation of elected leaders is now angling for more time in power. Next year, both Faure Gnassingbé of Togo and Joseph Kabila of Congo are expected to seek third terms. (Mr. Kabila will have to change Congo’s constitution to do so; Togo has no term limits.) Both men inherited power from their fathers, who were ex-military leaders.

Robert Mugabe, 90, has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980. This week, he tightened his grip on power at a party conference by sidelining perceived rivals and backing his 49-year-old wife, Grace, for a senior party post. And former rebel commander Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000, is widely believed to be weighing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power beyond his second elected seven-year term, which is set to end in 2017.

Taken from here 

South African xenophobia

Cape Town is said to be one of the most unequal in the country with foreigners facing increasing discrimination. Its central business district has the least amount of street traders out of the country's four biggest cities, but it has the highest proportion of foreign African traders. Greenmarket Square, the Grand Parade, and Adderley Street are some of Cape Town's most celebrated historical sites. Yet, as more foreign hawkers populate the urban centre and turn to the informal economy under the threat of destitution, a bitterness has grown among some Cape Townians.

The informal economy has become a vital source of jobs for many in South Africa with the country's unemployment rate at 25.5 percent. Without the informal economy, that unemployment would jump to 45.7 percent. Alongside economic woes, these jobless figures have also contributed to a culture of xenophobia. Traders are known to get harassed by police and protesters, who sometimes loot their shops.

Solidarity or Loyalty?

 Numsa, the metalworkers’ union, South Africa’s biggest union has been expelled from the main trade union federation, Cosatu.  

Numsa, which has more than 320,000 members, has complained that the alliance has betrayed its leftist roots and failed to represent the interest of the workers, describing the battle in Cosatu as one between the forces of capitalism and forces of socialism. Ahead of May elections, Numsa refused to endorse the ruling party, which it has been highly critical of, and called on Mr Zuma to step down over a scandal involving R246m of taxpayers money spent on his private Nkandla homestead.

Numsa leaders have raised the spectre of the union forming its own political party and are planning to launch a workers’ movement, the United Front, which they say is needed to act as a “weapon for uniting the working class.” They have hinted that they could contest local government elections in 2016 when the ANC’s hold on key municipalities, including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, is expected to be severely tested.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) has grown rapidly to become the dominant union in the important platinum sector. Amcu is locked in a bitter rivalry with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the traditionally dominant union in the industry and a key Cosatu member, and is steadily increasing its representation at gold mines. It led an unprecedented five month strike at the world’s three top platinum producers – Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin – this year as workers have become increasingly frustrated with their salaries and poor living conditions.

Black migrant workers from the country side provided cheap labour to the mines for decades. The profits benefited mostly white South Africans and foreigners and recently also a handful of black South Africans. Poor miners have seen little of the benefits but suffered the most. The migrant culture ripped apart their family structures and caused various issues, HIV/AIDS being not the least.  Numsa is standing up for miners, although we cannot be sure if it’s done in the best way.

Maybe this is a sign of emerging normality in South African politics. It would be a shame if the ANC went more or less unchallenged for another 20 years (look how long it took post-independence India to lose its fealty to the Congress Party).

From here 

Ebola need not be a death sentence

Ebola patients are suffering the double whammy of poor quality care and lack of research

Basic medical interventions such as giving Ebola patients rehydration salts and fluids from bigger bags could cut the death toll in west Africa in the absence of a proven cure, experts in tropical diseases write in the Lancet. Doctors say it is “therapeutic nihilism” to assume there is no treatment for Ebola just because there are no drugs. It is likely, they say, that many patients die because of dehydration. Improving the basic care that Ebola patients are receiving will have an effect on people’s willingness to leave their homes and go into a treatment centre, which will in turn help to slow the spread of the disease, the paper argues.

“It is often stated that there are no proven therapies for Ebola virus disease but that potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies, and antiviral drugs, are being evaluated. This view is inaccurate,” say Dr Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr Anders Perner, intensive care specialist at the University of Copenhagen.

Ebola virus disease, they say, is “a febrile illness with severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea cause profound water and electrolyte depletion [the loss of salts that the body needs, such as sodium, potassium and calcium] leading to circulatory collapse and death.”

Some simple interventions could save lives. Intravenous fluids, for instance, are not given as standard in west Africa, Roberts said. Low levels of sodium in the blood, which can cause brain swelling, leading to coma and death, could be treated with salt injections. There are also proven treatments that can help patients overcome pain, agitation and secondary bacterial infections, as well as malaria.

There are not enough nurses to care for patients overnight, so fluid bags do not get replaced when they are finished. Staff are also under heat stress during the day, from wearing personal protective equipment in a hot climate. The simple solution, he said, is to supply treatment centres with five-litre bags in place of one-litre bags. The paper argues that a series of pragmatic clinical trials in the current epidemic should be launched to establish the best ways of managing patients, bringing down death rates and safeguarding health workers at the same time.

“In earlier outbreaks, the death rate was about 90% and, in this outbreak, it started out at about 70% and it’s come down but it could come right down again and we could see this largely fatal disease became a largely survivable disease. That is eminently possible,” Roberts said. “A stronger policy focus on providing effective care for patients with Ebola virus disease is not only a humanitarian imperative, but could also help to bring the epidemic under control. Patients cared for in Ebola treatment centres are less likely to infect other people than those cared for in the community. However, Ebola treatment centres must be more than a setting for quarantine. Patients will be reluctant to attend treatment centres unless the care they receive from them is superior to the care provided by family members.”

Soiled Africa

Neglecting the health of Africa's soil will lock the continent into a cycle of food insecurity for generations to come, a report by the Montpellier Panel has warned. The Montpellier Panel - made up of agricultural, trade and ecology experts from Europe and Africa - warned that land degradation reduced soil fertility, leading to lower crop yields and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

"In Africa, the impacts are substantial where 65% of arable land, 30% of grazing land and 20% of forests are already damaged," it observed. The report said the panel's members believed that soil was the "cornerstone of food security and agricultural development and its care, restoration, enhancement and conservation should intuitively become a major global priority".

Panel chairman Sir Prof Gordon Conway, from Imperial College London, told BBC News: "Serious land degradation accounts for about a quarter of land area of sub-Saharan Africa - it is a vast area," he said. "There are about 180 million people who are living on land that is in some way or another degraded. It is really very severe." The problem threatened food production in a region that was already experiencing very low crop yields, he explained. "The average yield in sub-Saharan Africa is about one tonne per hectare. In India, it is about two-and-a-half tonnes, while in China it is more than three tonnes per hectare. So in Africa, we have the combination of land degradation, poor yields and a growing population."

Prof. Conway described the issue as a "crisis of land degradation and soil management", adding: "We have got to do something about it…Africa already imports US $40bn worth of food each year, it is an enormous amount. If we do not produce more food in Africa, that will get worse and worse, and the continent will suffer as a result. "Secondly, if we do not pay attention to land degradation in Africa then the land itself will continue to degrade and that will further reduce the yields we are getting at the moment. We know what you have to do to improve the quality of soil, but the big challenge is providing the finds and making sure that there are incentives for farmers.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30277514

Kenya: Police Aid In Lamu Land Grabbing

Kenya: Police aid in Lamu land grabbing, says lobby

 By Cheti Praxides 

The police and public officers in Lamu have been accused of colluding with tycoons to frustrate a lobby group's efforts to get justice on land issues. 

Save Mokowe chairperson Ali Said Awadh said rich people, with the help of the police, are grabbing the land of indigenous residents. He also accused chiefs and DOs of grabbing community land and selling it to the tycoons. Awadh said the group's members have been harassed by police officers for fighting for the land rights of the people of Mokowe and the county. 

"We have no one else to fight for us. The tycoons have totally bought over our police and public officers. We are appealing to any willing NGOs out there join us and help us get our land from these people," he said. 

Awadh was speaking to the Star in Mokowe on Tuesday. He said land grabbing is on the rise because of the Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor.

 "Mokowe will be the hub of Lapsset and that's why everyone is racing to have a piece of it before the port is built. These people are willing to do almost anything just to get some of us out of our lands," Awadh said. 

The group accused Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu and National Land Commission chair Muhammad Swazuri of making false promises. 

"When Ngilu came, she said Mokowe and other lands would be surveyed and people given titles. The surveyors left the exercise halfway. The NLC also promised us titles but we have seen nothing so far. Tycoons have found it easy to do as they wish. Our local leaders don't support us. We have no faith in the government nor Ngilu, nor the NLC," said Abdulrahman Aden, a member. 

Maulidi Madobe, another member, said: "We can't even put up permanent residence here because the land has yet to be subdivided and people given title deeds. We appeal to the county government to step in and bring surveyors to finish up what Ngilu started since as it looks, she never coming back soon." 

from here

Caring about C.A.R.

The Central African Republic is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, ranked 180th of 187 countries on the 2013 U.N. Development Program human development index. Illiteracy and unemployment is high and perhaps higher in the north after years of neglect.

War in the Central African Republic is usually understood abroad as a grinding religious conflict. Of the 4.5 million people who live in the remote, landlocked country, only 15 percent are Muslim; the rest are either Christian or animist. These communities have lived together peacefully for centuries. The latest explosion of violence, though, has succeeded in pitting them against each other. Victims on both sides have suffered, but the minority Muslim population appears to have borne the brunt of it. Two years ago, there were nearly 700,000 Muslims in the country. Now, according to some counts, fewer than 90,000 remain. Like many wars around the world that are perceived as religious in nature, and where the narrative of communal strife is used by warring sides to fuel hatred, the sectarian aspect of the conflict may be a result of the fertile soil it grew from. A legacy of weak state institutions, the failure of multiple governments to implement promised reforms, competition over natural resources and the unadorned political opportunism of militia leaders gave rise to the fighting and fed it. Religion coils around these dynamics, increasing the pressure. Militia leaders on both sides use the narrative of religious war to mobilize fighters in the pursuit of their narrow political objectives.

“The crisis here is not at all a religious crisis. It’s military, and it’s political. Quite simply, people have their interests in the crisis, and this suits them to use this ideology, this idea that Muslims and Christians can’t get along,” said Beni Youkaté, a Guinean man who works in the country as an informal mediator between Séléka and anti-Balaka groups.

The country is now divided, de facto partitioned into zones where militias hold total sway. Anti-Balaka militias control the west. The Séléka have fled north and established a new headquarters in Bambari, 300 miles from the capital. International forces, meanwhile, back an interim government in Bangui that has little influence over the rest of the country. A cease-fire signed in July has had little effect on the ground. The Central African Republic remains flush with weapons, a tinderbox ready to reignite.

Experts say the rebellion in Darfur, beginning in 2003, spread seeds of revolt across the region, scattering notions of insurrection into areas that were fertile for revolution.“The rebellions in the north were basically something that came up because of the war in Darfur,” said Roland Marchal, a senior researcher at political science university L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. “People got ideas, contacts, weapons and ammunition from there. Even the discourse on marginalization came from Darfur.”

“They take up arms because it’s an easy solution,” said Kassara Aziza, the president of the Association of Central African Women.

When they took everything, I had nothing,” Adam said, speaking of the bike and fish confiscated by state police years earlier. But after fighting with the CPJP and the Séléka, he said, “I still have nothing.”

Full article cn be read at Al Jazeera