An Afghan soldier protects the palace of King Amanullah (1919-1929) that was partly destroyed in the 1992-1996 civil war. Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

Western fears of a civil war in Afghanistan are growing ahead of the scheduled pullout of international troops in 2014. However, experts here say the situation on the ground is not comparable to either 1988, when the Soviets withdrew from the country, or the mujahideen’s rise to power in 1992, which plunged the country into civil war.

Speaking to BBC’s Radio 4 last month, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond described the future of Afghanistan as uncertain, echoing a British Parliamentary Defence Committee warning that the country could descend into civil war within a few years.

But locals who have been watching the situation closely do not share this bleak prognosis of the country’s future.

Retired Colonel Mohammad Sarwar Niazai, a military observer, says the situation is different to what it was in the early 1990s when the Soviets pulled out, leaving the communist government of Mohammed Najibullah without support and presenting seven jihadi parties, armed and aided by the United States, with the perfect opportunity to seize power.

This time around, “no one can get the government out forcibly,” Niazai told IPS, referring to the fact that the U.S. and its coalition partners in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have promised to stand by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government for the foreseeable future.

Recently retired ISAF Commander General John Allen, speaking in Washington on Mar. 25, said the U.S. and its allies would retain a presence in Afghanistan big enough to bolster Afghan forces after the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014.

Still, Kabul Regional Chief of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) Shamasullah Ahmadzai warned that the roughly 336,000-strong Afghan National Army, though highly motivated, is in serious need of the weapons and arms promised by western allies during talks about the pullout.

Strategic interests

As international media reports of “impending” or “inevitable” conflict continue to proliferate, experts here contend that Western countries with a vested interest in maintaining their military presence have conjured the bogey of civil war to justify continued engagement.

“Their…goal is to create fear in Afghanistan,” Ghulam Jailani Zwak, head of the Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre, told IPS, adding that he sees “no substance” in the predictions of chaos after 2014.

“Over the last 11 years, Afghanistan has built up a functioning civil society and a strong parliament that has shown it can stand up to the executive,” he said referring to the fact that at the end of 2012, 11 ministers were issued summons to appear in parliament or face impeachment for failing to spend 50 percent of their annual budgets in the last financial year.

Abdul Ghafoor Lewal, head of the Regional Studies Centre, believes threats of civil war are a deliberate Western ploy to maintain a military presence here, particularly in the Bagram airfield, one of the largest U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, located in the Parwan province.

Western powers would like Afghans to believe that foreign troops are their “best bet for security,” Lewal told IPS. The government must be “wise, prudent and…protect itself from the machinations of the West,” he added.

Meanwhile, Major General Rahmatullah Raufi, former commander of Paktia Army Corps and erstwhile governor of the southern province of Kandahar, dismisses the fears of war, claiming Afghans are more united now than they were 11 years ago.

A clear example of this was seen at the third ministerial conference of the Istanbul Process, held in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, on Apr. 26.

Originally intended to foster regional cooperation in the so-called ‘heart of Asia’ – primarily between Afghanistan and its neighbours – this year’s high-level gathering delved into a host of social issues, from education to disaster management, to help strengthen the war-torn country’s economic stability.

The independent Afghanistan Analysts Network said the Afghan government’s participation made clear that it saw the regional initiative as crucial to securing its future after 2014.

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, who led the delegation, said Afghanistan was “determined to reclaim (its) rightful place” as an economic centre connecting South Asia, Central Asia, Euroasia and the Middle East.

Moreover, according to experts like Member of Parliament (MP) Habibullah Kalakani – a former jihadi commander who fought against the Soviets – Afghan civil society is no longer “pliant” to foreign interests.

Independent media and human rights organisations including the AIHRC, whose president Sima Samar won the Alternative Nobel Prize last year, are widely respected and have earned international recognition for their efforts to build a culture of peace here.

Kalakani also pointed to the increasing number of educated young Afghans who are perfectly positioned to help their country make a democratic transition.

According to the Institute of International Education (IIE), only 4,000 students submitted applications for university admission in 2004. In 2005 this number increased tenfold to 40,000, reached 52,000 in 2006 and finally passed the 120,000-mark in 2012.

Girls now occupy 25 percent of the seats in public universities, a numbers that is increasing annually, while 52 new private universities have popped up around the country.

Defence Ministry Deputy Spokesperson Siamak Herawi agreed that 2014 will be a “year of change” but insisted there was good reason to believe “the change will be positive not negative,” he told Killid, adding that, this time around, “Afghan hands” will help to build the country.

* Lal Aqa Shirin writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.

In the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia, a group of men work on a surface gold mine. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited.

“I don’t believe that African nations are even close to understanding the enormous wealth that is their natural resource endowment,” David Doepel, chair of the Africa Research Group at Australia’s Murdoch University, told IPS.

African countries preparing to cash in on mineral wealth in East Africa include Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia, based on recent discoveries of oil and gas.

In 2010, Guinea alone represented over eight percent of total world bauxite production, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have a combined share of 6.7 percent of the total world copper production, and Ghana and Mali together account for 5.8 percent of the total world gold production, while Ethiopia also accounts for one-sixth of the world’s tantalum production.

A World Bank report issued in October claimed consistent high commodity prices and strong export growth show that African countries need to value the economic importance of their unexploited natural resources.

Well-managed revenue from Africa’s resources could increase economic activity in the long term, create jobs, reduce poverty and improve access to health and education,said Doepel.

“It is vitally important for any resource-rich country to have a focus of maximising the total value of any of its natural resources over the lifetime of that resource – that is a combination of maximising returns and minimising negative consequences (both environmental and social). Opportunism and urgency to extract are not necessarily ingredients for maximising value,” warned Doepel.

African countries like Nigeria have been losing out to corruption and short-sightedness in pursuit of quick profits in the oil sector. Nigeria is Africa’s largest crude oil exporter, shipping more than two million barrels per day, and is also home to the world’s ninth-biggest gas reserves. An investigative report requested by Nigeria’s oil ministry released in October revealed that a lack of transparency in the West African nation’s oil sector led to a loss of revenue of 29 billion dollars between 2002 and 2012.

The Revenue Watch Institute is a non-profit policy institute that promotes the effective, transparent and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources for the public good. Alexandra Gillies, head of governance at the institute, told IPS that African countries need to be circumspect at every stage of exploiting their recently-discovered oil reserves.

“For new African producers, striking a good deal can be a real challenge. They often lack capacity and familiarity with the oil sector as compared with the oil companies, and political agendas can make leaders overly anxious to begin production quickly, sometimes at the expense of better, long-term deals.”

Current working models that ensure the private sector and the government are held to account are starting to succeed in countries like Ghana.

“Ghana has taken some promising steps with its young oil sector. They have created a citizen-led Public Interest and Accountability Commission to oversee the collection and allocation of oil revenues,” said Gillies.

Countries endowed with natural resources have a tendency to heavily depend on economic activity solely based around extracting and exporting the resource as a primary product. This approach limits economic opportunities for development and makes a country vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices and levels of demand, according to Doepel. For example, Nigeria possesses 2.9 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves and hazardously depends on oil and gas for 90 percent of its export revenue.

Focusing on maximising revenue by taking oil out of the ground and exporting it without any value addition could be seen as dangerous short termism and as a barrier to long-term inclusive development, he said. It is not just the resources that are a source of development but also the potential for local industry to be built around the extraction of resources.

Extraction industries offer huge opportunities for job creation and skill enhancement to improve the lives of ordinary Africans, said Doepel. He is convinced that many of the skills required by the extractive industries are transferable and could be utilised to help generate and expand economic activity in developing countries with an emerging industrial base.

“Mechanical engineers and civil engineers can work on building an open cut mine and just as easily work on water purification plants and roads and bridges,” he said.

Economic benefits can be achieved “as long as the extraction industry is deeply linked to the national and local economies and the ‘mining spend’ is captured rather than ‘exported’ along with the ore,” said Doepel.

There are many opportunities ahead for enterprising Africans to play a role in their country’s development based on the continent’s untapped resources, said Francis Steven George, CEO of Innovation Africa, an organisation that provides consulting to companies and institutions on how to exploit business opportunities for development and poverty reduction.

“Citizens can benefit by participating in the exploration of the resources. They can gain employment or can become suppliers or service providers to the industry. Governments need to help by creating an enabling environment. For example, investment in the education system to enable the relevant degree programmes to meet the needs of the industry, or by providing soft loans to local entrepreneurs who participate in the industry,” he told IPS.

Countries like Ethiopia, which has recently discovered vast mineral reserves such as gold, tantalum, oil and potash, are taking inspiration from countries like Botswana as they strive to maximise development opportunities. In early 2012 Botswana demanded that diamond company De Beers move much of its diamond-sorting operations from the United Kingdom to Botswana in an effort to localise value addition.

Citing this as a good example of how mining can enrich a country, the Ethiopian government seems determined to exercise maximum transparency and caution to ensure mining revenues benefit its population of over 90 million, which makes it Africa’s second-most populous nation.

“We want our country to benefit from our resources in the broadest sense. Development for all and not just a few is our goal,”  Ethiopia’s State Minister of Mines Tolesa Shagi told IPS.

British Nyota Minerals is set to be the first foreign company to receive a mining license to extract gold on the basis of its own exploration in western Ethiopia in the coming months.

Recent surveys indicate an estimated 500 tonnes of gold reserves in Ethiopia. According to mining experts, extraction of gold could rise to 40 tonnes a year from just over four tonnes last year, earning the country around 1.7 billion dollars based on current commodity prices.

Ethiopia is planning to sign up to Publish What You Pay, an international initiative subscribed to by over 70 countries, early next year. It holds governments of resource-rich nations accountable for the management of revenues from extraction industries.

Organisations like the Revenue Watch Institute are emphatic about the need for transparency from governments to ensure countries make the most of their resources and embark on a course of sustainable development that improves the lives of ordinary Africans.

“After the deals are signed, governments must regulate operations, maximise complex revenue streams like profit taxes, manage these revenues which are very volatile, and spend them on valuable development projects. Across all these functions there are risks of corruption, of decisions driven by patronate, favoritism and short-term political considerations,” said Gillies.

The message is clear – by having 30 percent of the world’s extractive resources, Africa has one of the greatest opportunities it will ever have to graduate its people out of poverty.

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Palestinian fishers could go out to sea without fear of being attacked, arrested or killed. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

Shortly after Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21, the Israeli navy abducted 30 Palestinian fishers from Gaza’s waters, destroyed and sank a Palestinian fishing vessel, and confiscated nine fishing boats in the space of four days.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that fourteen fishers from a single family, stationed just three nautical miles from the coast of the Gaza Strip, were all arrested on Dec. 1.

Some fishers were only two miles off Gaza’s coast when they were attacked with machine gun fire and arrested by the Israeli Navy. Ranging from the ages of 14 to 52, the majority in their late teens and early twenties, these fishers hail from some of Gaza’s poorest families.

According to Mifleh Abu Riyala, a representative of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, the ceasefire has made no difference to Palestinian fishers.

Palestinians are allowed, under the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “to fish six miles out”, he told IPS, “but the Israeli gunboats still attack us, whether we are six or three miles out.”

The Oslo accords granted Palestinian fishers the right to fish twenty nautical miles out at sea, a right the Israeli navy has unilaterally vetoed, downsizing the fishing “limits” since the 1990s to a mere three miles, until this past November’s ceasefire allowed a slight increase, to six nautical miles.

“But there are no fish at six miles, the sea floor is still sandy. It is only after seven miles out that the sea floor becomes rocky and the fish are plentiful,” Abu Riyala stressed.

“It is our sea, in order to live we must be able to access it.”

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Gaza’s sea was open to Palestinian fishers, and when there was no fear of being attacked, arrested or killed by the Israeli navy.

Two of his sons, Amar (34) and Omar (21), were among the 14 fishers attacked by Israeli gunboats on Dec 1. The Israeli navy has still not returned their “hassaka” (a small fishing boat).

Like many of Gaza City’s fishers, the Bakers live in the Beach Camp, one of the Strip’s most overcrowded refugee camps.

Amar, married with six children, was still being held by Israeli authorities on Dec. 5 when his father, Mohammed, recounted the events of that fateful day to IPS.

“Israeli gunboats and smaller zodiacs surrounded my sons’ hassaka and made them strip naked, jump into the sea, and swim to one of the Israeli boats,” Mohammed told IPS.

“They put a bag on Amar’s head and took him to Ashdod. Amar has asthma, I’m very worried about his health.” Mohammed has still not been able to speak with his son.

Four days after Amar’s abduction, Mohammed went to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose work includes visiting and monitoring Palestinian prisoners’ conditions in Israeli jails and detention centres.

“They told me Amar is forbidden from talking with anyone. He is under interrogation,” Mohammed said.

Amar now stands accused of “being part of the Palestinian resistance”, a charge based on his previous job of making coffee and tea for Hamas officers.

“My son was a ‘kitchen boy’. People who work for the government are still civilians,” Mohammed stressed, echoing the tenets of international humanitarian law.

Stripped of their only boat and a member of their family, the Bakers face even more dire circumstances than ever.

“There is no ceasefire for fishers. We’re ordinary people, we work to earn just 30 or 40 shekels (seven to 10 dollars) per day to feed our families,” Mohammed lamented.

Khadr Baker (20) was lucky that he was not killed during an encounter with the Israeli navy on Nov. 28, during which his boat was gunned down as punishment for fishing just over three miles from the Beach Camp coast.

His father, Jamal Baker (50), spoke to IPS about Khadr’s arrest, explaining that Israeli gunboats appeared without warning and began firing at close range on Khadr’s small motorboat.

“The Israelis ordered the four fishers on Khadr’s hassaka to strip and jump into the sea, which is extremely cold this time of year,” Jamal told IPS.

“They made Khadr tread water for half an hour, and kept machine gunning around him,” said Jamal. The hassaka eventually caught fire and exploded, sinking soon after.

“The Israelis took Khadr on their boat, handcuffed him naked, and beat and interrogated him for three hours, accusing him of working with the Palestinian resistance,” the boy’s father told IPS.

Without their boat, the family of ten has no income. “I sold my nets so that we can eat,” Jamal said simply.

PCHR reported other attacks on fishers that day: in one case, the navy attacked and abducted five fishers from the al-Hessi family, damaging – and eventually confiscating – the large fishing trawler they were on. The boat has not yet been returned.

In February 2009, Rafiq Abu Riyala, then 23, was shot in his back – by an Israeli soldier standing less than 20 metres away – with a dum-dum bullet, which explodes on impact.

The hassaka fisher was only two miles off Gaza’s coast when attacked. One of two breadwinners in his family, Rafiq Abu Riyala cannot now fish in cold weather. “The shrapnel bits in my back make it too painful when it is cold out,” he told IPS.

Mahar Abu Amia (40) has sixteen people to provide for. “My wife fishes also,” he told IPS. “But we have no chance: we reach six miles and they shoot, we go only three miles and they shoot. What is this ceasefire? It means nothing for us.”

(END)

The immigration detention centre of Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of the Polish capital Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

A recent hunger strike, involving over 70 migrants detained in heavily guarded centers across Poland, is forcing the country to face its new responsibilities as a migration hub within the European Union.

Poland currently has six detention centres, which host ‘irregular migrants’, or foreigners caught living illegally in Poland, awaiting deportation after their asylum claims have been rejected or after getting caught trying to cross the Polish border that leads deeper into the EU.

At the end of October, an estimated 375 migrants were being held in these centres. Among them were 33 children, including at least one year-old baby; three of the children were unaccompanied.

Georgians and Russians of Chechen nationality currently make up the bulk of migrants in Poland, though more recently Syrians, too, have had a significant presence in detention centers.

The hunger strikers, mostly Georgians and Chechens, were demanding better conditions in the camps, but also disputed the use of detention as a means of addressing the thorny issue of migration.

The protest was coordinated across four camps: Lesznowola, Bialystok, Biala Podlaska, and Przemysl. It lasted only a few days, ending when humanitarian organisations visited the camps and promised to work with the institutions’ management on improving living conditions.

The detention camps in Poland have functioned under the authority of the National Border Guards since 2008 and conditions inside vary widely.

Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Biala Podlaska, located in the eastern town by the same name, close to the border with Belarus, is a modern facility constructed in 2008 and funded almost entirely by the European Union.

At first glance, the two camps could not differ more. The narrow corridors at Lesznowola are replaced by shiny, freshly painted spaces in Biala Podlaska.

The non-English, non-Russian-speaking management staff at Lesznowola stand in stark contrast to a highly communicative management team – equipped with translators – at Biala Podlaska, where staff in perfectly pressed uniforms roam around the corridors wearing professional smiles.

Biala Podlaska is equipped with a green football field, while Lesznowola only has plans to eventually build one on part of its cemented courtyard surrounded by barbed-wire-topped walls.

But upon entering the halls of either institution, it quickly becomes clear that, for those living behind bars almost round the clock – with the exception of mealtimes, exercises and the occasional educational activity – the situation is exactly the same.

At the first sound of visitors approaching, adults and children stick their heads out of the cells that line the hallway, their hands and faces pushed against the bars, curious, waiting. Even a mundane visit becomes a noteworthy event in a place where nothing happens.

Kicked around “like a ball”

Thirty-six-year-old Iranian Leila Naeimi, who was released in early October after spending two months in Lesznowola, has harsh words about the conditions there.

“Everywhere you see only walls, everywhere the guards are with us, they treat us like animals,” she told IPS, adding that guards make daily inspections at 6 a.m., entering the rooms without even knocking on the door.

Naeimi, who she fled Iran fearing prosecution for her work as a women’s rights activist, says that she has often been the target of sexually abusive comments from border guards, both when entering Poland and also in the detention centre.

She claims basic hygiene products were never sufficient and that the food served in the centre was of poor quality.

Her greatest grievance, however, has to do with the EU’s attitude towards migrants in general.

“They can send you from country to country whenever they want, they think they can play with people’s lives…as if I was a ball they can just kick around.

“We need normal lives, we wouldn’t have left our countries if things had been good there. I’ve had too many problems just because I’m Iranian, just because of my nationality,” Naeimi lamented.

Osman Rafik, a 33-year-old Pakistani man who was detained in Bialystok at the time of this interview, has already spent eight months in the camp, but decided against joining the migrants’ hunger strike, claiming its goals were too “ambitious” and “diverse”.

While he did complain about conditions in the camp and even asked IPS for help with securing medicines, his primary concern was not with everyday life in the camp but with the arbitrary nature of migration policies.

“We keep being asked why we came to this country if we are from Pakistan, but they must understand that we are not criminals just because we crossed the borders into Europe.

“I would like to stay here in Poland if I (am) released,” he continued. “After all, it has been almost one year since I have been in this country and life is not so long, people live about 50 years on average. They (the immigration authorities) have already taken away one year of my life.

“We cannot go back to Pakistan, we have problems there, but authorities here do not understand that, they treat us all the same, whether we have problems back home or not,” he concluded.

*This story is the first of a two-part series on immigration in the European Union.

"War or no war, it is still a man's world out there,” says war widow Rajina Mary from Sri Lanka's northern Kilinochchi District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Sita Tamang’s husband went missing sometime in 2004, two years before Nepal’s civil war came to an end. A native of Dharan, a town about 600 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu, Tamang waited seven years after his disappearance before she tried to claim compensation offered by the government after a 2006 peace deal ended this country’s bloodshed.

When she finally managed to get hold of government officials in Dharan overseeing compensation procedures, she was met with the thorny request that she “prove” her marriage to the father of her three children, whom she had lived with for a decade and a half.

As was customary, Tamang and her husband had gone through the traditional marriage ceremony but had not obtained any civil documents.

In addition to taking care of her three children, including two daughters, Tamang was saddled with the added burden of seeking the required paperwork before even beginning the bureaucratic process of securing compensation.

“That is the way things are here,” she told IPS simply. “Women will always have it a bit hard.”

Thousands of miles away, in northern Sri Lanka, Rajina Mary, a 38-year-old war widow with four children, ran into similar hurdles when she began constructing a new house with assistance from the Sri Lanka Red Cross in late 2010, about a year and a half after this country’s civil war ended.

“The labourers would not take orders or instructions from me because I was a woman. They are used to taking orders from men,” Mary told IPS, standing in front her house in the village of Selvanagar in the northern Kilinochchi district, deep in the former war zone.

When the workmen refused to follow her instructions, Mary and her children were forced to take over the construction themselves, digging most of the foundation and carrying hundreds of bricks and cement sacks.

“It was cheaper for us. But that is the way things are here, it is a very male-dominated society,” Mary said, echoing Tamang’s words.

Aid workers, counsellors and experts working in post-conflict regions in the two South Asian countries say the patriarchal nature of rural societies makes them unenviable locations for widows or female heads of households.

A woman remains pensive during a support group meeting for families of missing persons in the southeastern Nepali town of Biratnagar Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

“There is a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. Most of these women live in isolation without anyone to talk to, even when they live among family,” Srijana Bhandari, a counsellor with the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) working in Dharan, told IPS.

After her husband disappeared in 2004, one woman struggled for seven years to send her son to school and seek assistance for her young daughter’s epileptic condition. It was only in November 2011, when WOREC began talking to her, that she finally opened up about the many challenges confronting women suddenly left to fend for themselves and their families.

Now, thanks to the advocacy group’s intervention, her son has a scholarship at the village school and she receives a monthly medical stipend for her daughter.

“Before we spoke with her, she was finding it really hard, there was no one to help her, some members of her family even looked at her as a burden,” Kamal Koirala, WOREC’s programme coordinator, told IPS.

Even on the rare occasions when women find new marriage prospects, they come under enormous pressure – ironically from their female in-laws – to reject the offer. As a result, many women end up eloping, leaving their children behind, WOREC officials said.

Koirala told IPS that women rarely, if ever, open up about pressure brought on them to turn to sex work, but said aid workers have strong suspicions that the practice is widespread.

The situation is not much different in Sri Lanka according to Saroja Sivachandran, who heads the Centre for Women and Development, a non-governmental organisation working on gender issues in the country’s northern Jaffna peninsula.

Despite a three-decade-long conflict in which many females fought alongside their male counterparts, especially among the ranks of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), northern Tamil society is still steeped in patriarchal values, Sivachandran told IPS.

“The problem is that now, single women or female heads of households – and there are thousands of them – have to compete with males for everything from jobs to housing assistance,” she said.

In both countries, scores of women were left to navigate the post-war landscape after the fighting ended.

The Nepali Red Cross lists 1401 persons as still missing, six years after the conflict ended. Officials say at least 90 percent of the families left behind are now headed by women, 80 percent of whom are mothers.

In Sri Lanka, the United Nations estimates that around 30,000 of the 110,000 families that have returned to the former war zone in the northern province are headed by women.

In 2010, the World Bank found that two-thirds of the participants in a cash for work programme worth 5.5 million dollars were women.

In fact, programme managers made special allowances for the women by offering more flexible working hours. The programme also paid elders who looked after children while their mothers or caregivers took part in the work scheme.

But the women who are faced with rebuilding their lives after decades of war, while also dealing with the suffocating customs and traditions of male dominance that date back generations, say there is very little chance of things changing.

“It was like this even during the fighting, why should it change when there is no fighting?” Mary asked.

(END)

The Desertec Industrial Initiative plans to install a network of solar thermal, photovoltaic, and wind plants across the Maghreb region. Credit: Green Prophet1/CC-BY-2.0

When the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII), an alliance of 21 major European corporations, first unveiled plans to install a network of solar thermal, photovoltaic, and wind plants across the North African Maghreb region to generate electricity, the project was greeted as a ‘green utopia’.

Expected to generate 100 gigawatts by 2050, the project demanded an investment of 400 billion euros.

In a study released last summer, Desertec predicted that an integrated power system for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa would allow Europe to meet its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction target of 95 percent in the power sector by importing up to 20 percent of its electricity from the Maghreb, thus saving 33 billion euros per year.

Meanwhile, the project would enable Middle Eastern and North African countries to meet their own energy needs using the abundant solar and wind resources in the region, and achieve 50 percent of CO2 reductions in the power sector despite a massive increase in demand.

The region would benefit from an export industry worth up to 63 billion euros per year.

Now, three years since the project was announced, the Desertec dream is yet to be realised, and euphoria has given way to harsh criticisms ranging from accusations of incompetence to shortfalls in corporate governance.

The project has been nicknamed “desperate tec” by internal staff members discontent with its trajectory.

Huge potential

In a so-called White Book on the project, the DII claimed, “The long-term economic potential of renewable energy in EUMENA (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) is much larger than present demand, and the potential of solar energy dwarfs them all.”

Based on figures by German research institutes and the Club of Rome, the report estimates, “From each square kilometre (km²) of desert land, up to 250 gigawatts of electricity can be harvested each year using the technology of concentrating solar thermal power.”

Indeed, every square kilometre of land in MENA “receives an amount of solar energy that is equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of crude oil. A concentrating solar collector field with the size of Lake Nasser in Egypt (Aswan), of some 6,000 square kilometres, could harvest energy equivalent to the present Middle East oil production”.

Morocco, which will host the pilot project, has been especially keen to see the venture come to fruition, since it will have a huge impact on the local economy, particularly with regard to job creation in the renewables sector.

Back in 2009, ‘green networks’ were created in several cities around the kingdom, including in Casablanca. Comprised of small firms run by young professionals, these networks were designed to create the necessary infrastructure for the project.

“We have created companies, received training, but in reality nothing has happened yet,” Abdellah Benjdi, one of the young company heads, told IPS.

Ordinary citizens suffering from astronomical electricity bills in Morocco are eagerly awaiting the so-called ‘green utopia’.

But by all indications, their patience is not about to be rewarded.

Endless obstacles

Experts first received confirmation of Desertec’s difficulties on Nov. 7 in Berlin, during the official presentation of the first solar thermal, photovoltaic and wind plants to be installed in the southern-central Moroccan province of Ouarzazate, which are scheduled to deliver electricity by 2014.

Although construction plans have technically been sealed, they still depend on Spanish approval – Spain being the primary partner in the project – to allow the electricity generated at the site to be transported to Europe.

The Spanish government, battered by a grave economic recession, has so far been unable to confirm its support for the project, a situation that is unlikely to change given that Spain is a net exporter of electricity to Morocco and would not like to see this trend reversed by successful implementation of the pilot project in Ouarzazate, experts say.

The DII alliance includes the leading German Deutsche Bank and the Spanish transmission agent and grid operator, TSO Red Eléctrica.

“The business case for a Desertec Reference Project, prepared by (us) and the Moroccan Solar Agency Masen, has been extensively discussed for the past two years with Spanish companies, the TSO Red Eléctrica and the European Commission, and declared feasible,” DII CEO Paul van Son said during the presentation in Berlin.

The first project in Morocco led by the German energy giant RWE would comprise an installed capacity of 100 megawatts of photovoltaic and wind power.

A second project, using solar thermal plants and overseen by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International, will have an installed capacity of 160 megawatts.

Both plants are expected to be functional by 2014.

Van Son confirmed, “Investors have been found, initial subsidies are available, and industry wants to get involved.” But Spain refused to send representatives to the presentation in Berlin, and has so far failed to undersign the Morocco project.

Van Son is convinced that “the other partners in this negotiation, from Morocco and the EU, will be able to convince Spain,” since the Spanish government, too, stands to benefit from the project.

Lack of coordination

But Spain’s refusal is just one example of the enormous political, technical and financial coordination hurdles the venture must overcome.

Another indication of these difficulties came in late October, when the German electronics giant Siemens announced its withdrawal from the alliance, despite being a founding member of the DII back in 2009.

This move has been widely interpreted as proof that Desertec is failing.

According to Friedrich Fuehr, founding member of the board of directors at the Desertec Foundation, the DII “has been following the wrong strategy”.

Fuehr told IPS that DII’s main responsibility since 2009 was to conceive a political roadmap that could overcome all international coordination difficulties and solve the pressing questions of how subsidies and taxes would be implemented.

Fuehr, a prestigious German lawyer and business consultant, said that “a coalition of such powerful and capable private companies such as the Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, RWE and SCHOTT Solar should be able to formulate within three years the political framework they need to make Desertec come true”.

“But we are still waiting for this framework,” Fuehr said. “Instead, the DII has concentrated all its action in launching one single model project (in Ouarzazate).”

Fuehr lamented that the energy revolution the world needs in order to confront the realities of global warming “is already happening. But Desertec is not involved in it”.

*Abderrahim El Ouali contributed to this report from Casablanca.

For many Japanese women, old age is becoming synonymous with poverty and loneliness. Credit: Isado/CC-BY-ND-2.0

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians.

“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS. Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.

Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less – barely enough to cover their living costs.

A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.

According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace – often as part-time workers – only when their children are older; this pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.

Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.

Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.

“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.

Aging in a patriarchal society

Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

If the present trends continue, experts predict that 40 percent of the senior population will be female: women are clocking 86.5 years, compared to 79.6 years for men.

Higuchi, who is also a prominent women’s rights activist, has lobbied the government long and hard to develop policies that meet the needs of elderly women.

Among the many issues that aging women face are loneliness, higher prospects of disability and growing poverty in a nation that is grappling with a huge public debt and threatening further cuts in social services and state welfare.

Official statistics from the Health and Welfare Ministry confirm this grim picture – government data shows that 80 percent of those over 65 years and living alone are women, mostly divorcees and widows.

Women also comprise 70 percent of the population in nursing homes, with poverty affecting 25 percent of the female population over 75 years compared to 20 percent among males.

The Ministry also reported that in 2011 there were almost 420,000 women over the age of 65 who depended on welfare handouts, compared to 324,000 men.

According to the prominent Japanese feminist Junko Fukazawa, who counsels women facing domestic violence – a risk she says is increasingly common for older women living with their husbands or sons – deep-rooted gender discrimination makes women even more vulnerable to the troubles of the sunset years.

Social traditions that have forced women to take care of the family while men worked outside “is the prime reason why women give up their jobs when they have children, (and end up with) lower paying jobs and financial instability in their old age”, Fukazawa told IPS.

“The situation is ironic,” she added, pointing out that those who have traditionally been the primary caregivers for young and old alike are now becoming a population that needs the most support.

The critical need to focus national aging policies on women is gaining traction around the world. A new report, ‘Aging in the Twenty-First Century’, released in September by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calls on governments and other stakeholders to take heed of the mounting body of evidence that women are living longer than men, and adjust their national plans accordingly.

The report documented figures around the world that showed that for every 100 women aged 80 years and over, there are only 61 men.

Aging in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, illustrates some of these pressing issues against the backdrop of a shrinking working population, which is expected to plummet from 80 to 52 million by 2050.

For the younger generation of Japanese women, who are coming of age during a time of government austerity and desperate attempts to reduce public spending, the forecast is alarming.

Already this generation of women is beginning to feel the crunch of poverty, with Labour Department statistics pointing to a rise in lower-paid part-time female employment, a trend that indicates an erosion of retirement stability for a large portion of the labour force.

For Higuchi, “The current aging picture clearly shows that Japan’s economic growth policies have eroded traditional family values that protected old people and have been particularly unfair to women.”

Meanwhile, women like Taguchi are moving cautiously down the road. “Acutely aware that I would face a lonely future, I have saved for decades and will continue to do so. At least I can avoid poverty – I hope so, anyway.”

(END)

About 30,000 ships pass by Berbera Port in Somaliand every year from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Credit: Nicholas J Parkinson/IPS

As Somalia starts to emerge from its quagmire of instability and chaos, 20 years of relative peace and stability are starting to pay dividends for its close neighbour Somaliland, as this November it struck its first major oil deal since seceding from Somalia in 1991.

Anglo-Turkish company Genel Energy received its licence from the Somaliland government in early November to explore and develop oil and gas reserves after pledging almost 40 million dollars for exploration activities. Genel told IPS “Somaliland provides an exciting geological opportunity, and we look forward to starting work in the region.”

The independent oil and gas exploration and production company has become the first foreign investor to commit a significant amount of capital to the country’s energy sector, after initial investigations demonstrated “numerous oil seeps” confirming “a working hydrocarbon system,” a statement from Genel said.

Genel Energy, headed by erstwhile BP CEO Tony Hayward, is due to start exploration before the end of the year.

The driving force of this Horn of Africa nation’s economy has traditionally been livestock. With a huge livestock population that triples the 3.5 million civilian population, the livestock trade generates up to 65 percent of the country’s GDP, Somaliland’s Minister of Planning Dr. Saad Shire told IPS.

Livestock triples Somaliland’s 3.5 million civilian population and generates up to 65 percent of the country’s GDP. Credit: Brett Keller/IPS

With a limited national budget of 120 million dollars, the Somaliland government is now starting to receive much-needed revenue from foreign private investors to support its development.

Somaliland’s oil and gas reserves attracted the attention of other giant energy companies such as South African-based Ophir Energy, Jacka Resources Ltd of Australia, and Petrosoma Ltd, a subsidiary of British-based Prime Resources – all of whom announced their readiness to invest.

Somaliland has suffered from not being internationally recognised for the last 21 years. Its unconfirmed legal identity has hindered its economic prospects – few insurance companies have been prepared to insure foreign investors here. Subsequently, investors have tended to regard Somaliland as an economic leper.

For these reasons the country has also been ineligible for financial support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

However, in 2012 Somaliland’s private sector started to progress against the odds.

At the beginning of the year, the first United Kingdom-Somaliland investment conference was held to stimulate bilateral trade recognition. And a 17-million-dollar Coca-Cola plant launched in May by a Djibouti conglomerate made it the largest private investment in Somaliland since 1991. Investors are seeing Coca-Cola’s decision to have an operation in the region as a positive statement about the country’s stable business climate.

Somaliland’s Berbera port is also expected to attract major investment in the coming years. It is considered the jewel in the country’s economic crown. Built originally by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the port currently serves as a major gateway for the country’s livestock exports. There is huge potential for it to be a juncture for oil and gas exports coming out of Africa’s landlocked countries like Ethiopia.

“We are strategically located – Berbera is located in a maritime lane – 30,000 ships pass by our port every year from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We can develop Berbera into a major port like Singapore – with container terminals, free zones, oil refineries, and services related to maritime business,” Shire said.

The port manager, Ali Omar Mohamed, is irrepressibly enthusiastic about the potential of expanding the port to make it a regional trading hub between Africa and the Middle East.

“This port can be as big and as successful as Djibouti. It is only a matter of time before it attracts investment to modernise and expand it so that we can have the increased capacity we need to realise its full economic potential,” he told IPS.

Shire is confident that if Somaliland produces a stronger commercial legal framework, with proper safety measures to increase private investor confidence, it will attract investment to transform the country into a prosperous flourishing democracy like Singapore. “We have stability and access to a port, we have what investors are looking for. If Singapore can do it, I think we can,” he said.

The lack of insurance available to investors is the biggest barrier to the country’s development according to J. Peter Pham of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, which was set up to help transform United States and European policy approaches to Africa.

“Without international recognition and the consequent access to international financial institutions, Somalilanders face serious obstacles to achieving the economic development which would ordinarily accrue to a state with their record of political stability and democratic governance,” he told IPS.

“It is not just a matter of accessing development assistance and international credit, but also of having a legal framework whereby potential private-sector partners could obtain insurance and otherwise secure their investments,” he said.

According to Pham, Somaliland will never be in a position to fully benefit from the natural resources it is endowed with as long as it is refused nationhood status.

“The potential natural resources of Somaliland – including hydrocarbons, minerals, and fisheries – cannot be really tapped in the absence of a resolution of the sovereignty question.”

The urgent need for foreign investment was highlighted in a 2012 to 2016 national development plan produced by the government in December 2011. It outlines the need for overdue investment in the country’s infrastructure such as road building and waste disposal. The total capital required to fund this plan is 1.19 billion dollars.

According to Shire, the bulk of the investment for this is expected to come from external sources like aid donors and foreign investors.

However, there is a danger that without prompt recognition from the international community, development will be too slow and may cause sections of the population to become disaffected and vulnerable to groups like Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab.

According to Pham, the international community’s inertia in responding to the issue of Somaliland’s nationhood is placing the country in clear and present danger and making it vulnerable to influence from the Islamist terrorist group.

“What the international community needs to understand is that unless something is done to spring Somaliland from the limbo to which it has been consigned, things may not remain all that smooth.

“A growing population of young people whose prospects are limited by the constraints on economic development may find themselves a receptive audience for voices very different from the farsighted leaders who built Somaliland from the ruins of the former Somalia,” he said.

Teenagers who are known to be HIV positive are treated like social pariahs, often due to lack of information among their peers. Credit: Letuka Mahe/IPS

It all started with a fight, one that would change his life forever.

It was in that moment of fighting with another teenage boy that Cedric Owino from the sprawling Mathare slum, one of Kenya’s biggest informal settlements, accidentally discovered that he was HIV positive.

Until then it had been a secret his grandmother had kept from him – for 15 years.

“While we were fighting, the mother of the other boy started shouting that I might scratch her son and infect him with HIV,” Owino, 15, tells IPS.

Consequently, a bitter argument ensued between Owino and his grandmother, who is his guardian, since he is an orphan. She confirmed that he has been HIV positive since he was a baby.

“Disclosure is not easy,” Mwema Omollo, Owino’s grandmother, tells IPS. “If you tell your child, you fear that it will change how they live. People are still very much afraid of HIV. My daughter refused to take antiretroviral (ARV) drugs when she discovered that she was HIV positive. I didn’t want this to become Cedric’s fate too.”

Her daughter was afraid that if she did take ARVs, people in her community who dispensed the medication would realise her status.

Since he found out, Owino has twice attempted suicide.

“My family knew I was infected, why tell me that the drugs I take are for asthma, while they know it’s because I am HIV positive?” he asks. He dropped out of grade eight at the Young Stars Academy soon after discovering his status.

Owino is not the only teenager struggling to come to terms with his status. Anthony Andega, another HIV positive 15-year-old, also tried to commit suicide when he found out two years ago.

He cut himself with a knife. But because of the stigma surrounding the virus, people refused to come to his aid. A friend of Andega’s later told him that even though he had been bleeding profusely, people refused to touch or help him.

“No one wants to touch where you have touched. You become isolated,” Andega tells IPS. Not only that, but the news of his status spread.

“In this neighbourhood, we go to the same schools. If people know you have HIV, this information is spread all over school,” he says.

The Kenya Population Data Sheet says stigma towards adolescents and teenagers living with HIV is high, with “55 percent of adolescents interviewed indicating that they preferred that the HIV status of their family members be kept secret.”

According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, of adults aged 15 to 64 years, an estimated 7.1 percent, or 1.4 million, are living with HIV in Kenya. Further, among youth aged 15 to 24 years, 3.8 percent are infected, rivalling older adults aged 50 to 64, whose prevalence is five percent.

Demonstrators against the suspension of Round 11 of Global Funding for Aids, TB and Malaria, earlier in the year. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Doctors Without Borders, which has worked in Mathare with caregivers to improve the rate of disclosure among families affected by HIV, reports that only two percent of family members disclose their status to each other.

It is an issue of concern. Ann Mburu, a nurse who works for Adolescents Count Today (ACT), a project targeting HIV positive teenagers or those who have been affected by HIV, says “the number of HIV positive adolescents is likely to increase as most adolescents practice sex with their peers without any knowledge of their status.”

“Since parents and guardians don’t easily disclose to older children who are infected, HIV/AIDS will remain a big blow to the community with increased stigmatisation and discrimination due to the secrecy,” she says

Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK) has rolled out ACT in Thika in Central Kenya, and in Eldoret and Nakuru in the Rift Valley region.

“Despite 22 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls having had sex by the age of 15, 60 percent of adolescents considered themselves not to be at risk of HIV infection,” explains Esther Muketo, programme manager at FHOK. National figures are unavailable.

Paediatrician Dr. Alice Muchemi has seen many teenagers grapple with their HIV status.

“Teenage years are often difficult, self-confidence is usually fragile. Rejection from the opposite sex is often viewed as a tragedy. Their bodies are also hungry to indulge in sex. But teenagers who are known to be HIV positive are treated like social pariahs, often due to lack of information among their peers,” Muchemi tells IPS.

Kenya’s National Guidelines for HIV Testing and Counselling permit health workers to inform children “who are pregnant, married, or sexually active” of their HIV status. But this does not always happen.

“Since sexually active children do not always disclose that they are having sex, and because it’s not expected that they are, they are also not told that they are HIV positive,” Muchemi explains.

Before discovering that he was HIV positive, Owino had been sexually active for a year and had only used a condom on one occasion.

“Just like most boys here, we have sex when an opportunity presents itself. I thought of HIV as a disease for grown-ups,” Owino justifies.

Now that he knows his status he has not attempted to contact his former partners. “Mathare is a big slum, I don’t know where these girls live now. Even if people know about my status, I am not going to talk about it,” he says.

According to Plan Kenya, which carried out a study among HIV positive adolescents aged 10 to 19 years in Nairobi and the Nyanza region, “most HIV positive adolescents are or intend to be involved in sexual relationships. More than four-fifths have been in a sexual relationship and more than two-thirds of these are still in a relationship.” Nyanza has the highest prevalence of HIV in Kenya, almost twice the national prevalence at 15.3 percent.

Paul Ndegwa, an HIV positive activist, says that while the government is succeeding in its fight against paediatric HIV, it is largely ignoring the needs of HIV positive teenagers. According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, there has been a 40 percent reduction in new infections among children in Kenya.

“The problem is in the transition into adolescence and teenage years. You are dealing with young people who are at an age where they don’t communicate well. The needs of HIV positive teenagers are real and they are ignored just the same way the sexual and reproductive health needs of teens in general are ignored,” he tells IPS.

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. “I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive,” he declared.

Musi, 57, a maize farmer in the Fun Valley area of Olifantsvlei, outside Johannesburg, and a beneficiary of South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development programme, has embraced the science of biotechnology with gusto.

“What have changed are my yields and my income.” He said that he earned about 225 dollars more per hectare for his GM maize crop than he did when farming ordinary maize.

He is also a member of The Truth About Trade, which describes itself on its official website as “a nonprofit advocacy group led by American farmers – narrowly focused, issue specific – as we support free trade and agricultural biotechnology.”

“For me it has largely been the exposure to biotechnology issues. They are not a seed company and the issue we are talking about here is GM seed so I do not see how that means I am influenced by them and in my views.”

He said that he was helping reduce food insecurity in South Africa by growing and selling GM maize.

“Biotechnology has a very big role in food security,” Musi told IPS. “The climate has changed and I know that with drought-tolerant seed I have a tool to fight climate change. I cannot guarantee that the rain will come and I if plant crops which are not drought tolerant, I could get into debt and lose my farm.”

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. Courtesy: Busani Bafana

A report in April 2012 by the Climate Emergency Institute titled “The Impact of Climate Change on South Africa” said the country is experiencing a gradual, yet steady, change in climate with temperatures showing a significant increase over the last 60 years. Temperatures in South Africa are predicted to rise in costal regions by one to two degrees Celsius by 2050.

But the ACB does not believe that GMOs can deliver food security on the continent, specifically in South Africa, a leading African producer of GMOs.

The organisation is behind an African Civil Society statement calling for a ban on GM maize in South Africa and on the continent, which it hopes to submit to African governments. To date 656 signatures have been collected on the online statement, including those of 160 African organisations.

“We have sent an open letter to our minister of agriculture in October to ban GM maize in South Africa,” Haidee Swanby, an officer with ACB, told IPS.

“We (South Africa) have been cultivating, importing and exporting GM crops for 14 years with absolutely no impact on food security whatsoever. In fact, a bag of mealie meal is 84 percent more expensive than it was four or five years ago due to international prices and the extensive use of maize for biofuel production.”

Swanby said there was a need to improve access to food, by addressing poverty, unemployment and issues around land tenure, service delivery, infrastructure, access to markets, and unfair global trade practices.

“Genetically modified food has never been labelled in South Africa so there is no way to know if it is causing health problems,” Swanby said, calling for a rigorous scientific study into the health implications of GM food.

“If someone is getting sick, how are they going to trace it back to GMOs when they don’t know they’re eating them? We want more science, not less!”

The ACB has a supporter in Friends of the Earth International, which is also lobbying for a GMO-free Africa.

The organisation’s coordinator Nnimmo Bassey told IPS that GMOs do not deliver on the promises made by the biotechnology industry. He argued that hunger in Africa is used as an excuse to contaminate and erode genetic diversity on the continent.

Bassey said that GM crops are neither more nutritious nor better yielding nor use fewer pesticides and herbicides. And he said they are unsafe for humans and for the environment.

“It is all about market colonisation,” Bassey told IPS. “GM crops would neither produce food security nor meet nutrition deficits. The way forward is food sovereignty – Africans must determine what crops are suitable culturally and environmentally. Up to 80 percent of our food needs are met by smallholder farmers. These people need support and inputs for integrated agro-ecological crop management. Africa should ideally be a GMO-free continent.”

Friends of the Earth International cites failed GMO experiments in Africa with Bt cotton (a strain of cotton that had the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium inserted into its genetic code) in Burkina Faso and South Africa where they had been touted as the crops to pull smallholder farmers out of poverty.

Global developer and supplier of plant genetics, including hybrid seed, DuPont Pioneer, said that the effect of switching from saved seed to hybrid seed is dramatic.

The company’s vice president responsible for Asia, Africa and China, Daniel Jacobi, told IPS that of the 24 million hectares of maize planted annually in sub-Saharan Africa, about a third was hybrid seed.

Furthermore, farmers get a fuller yield from hybrid seeds by using fertiliser and agronomic practices, reducing post-harvest losses and getting the crop to market, he maintained.

“We can spend a long time and gain a lot of productivity in sub-Saharan Africa by doing all those things without ever getting to the introduction of GMOs,” Jacobi said following a tour of the DuPont Pioneer facility in the Midwestern U.S. state of Iowa.

“I think we tend to get wrapped up in the debate about GMOs and how multinational companies are forcing GMOs down the throats of local farmers. I think we ought to be focused on helping farmers do the best job they can do today by using hybrid seed and let us not let those priorities get lost in the big philosophical debate about GMOs.”

AfricaBio, a biotechnology stakeholder association formed in 1999, says a vast majority of the South African population are struggling to meet their daily needs and GM products offer a proven solution.

“For 14 consecutive seasons, South Africans have planted and consumed foods and food products derived from approved GM crops as part of their diet and no confirmed cases of harm to consumers of GM foods have been reported,” AfricaBio chief executive officer Nompumelelo Obokoh told IPS.

Meanwhile, Musi remained unhappy about the call to ban GM maize. “Africans should come to a realisation that all this is happening in the name of contraceptive imperialism. Africa missed out during the Green Revolution – we must not miss the Gene Revolution. Let Africans decide for Africa,” he said.

(*Adds information that Musi is a member of The Truth About Trade. Story first moved on Nov. 23, 2012)