From the left, Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jn with Mariann Bassey Olsson during the launch of the campaign in Cartagena, Colombia. Credit: AFSA.

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Apr 14 2026 (IPS)

Over 800 households in Ikolomani Constituency in Kakamega County, Western Kenya, fear eviction to pave the way for a British firm, Shanta Gold Limited, to begin extracting gold valued at Sh683 billion ($5.29 billion) on an estimated 337 acres of residential and agricultural land.

Efforts by residents to protest against the looming displacement during an attempt for a public participation session on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) by the government on 4 December 2025 were met with police brutality, leading to four deaths due to bullet wounds, arbitrary arrests and scores of injuries.

According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the incident is part of a disturbing and escalating pattern in Kenya’s extractive sector, where communities seeking accountability are met with brutal force, political threats, and procedural manipulation.

“Mining zones are increasingly becoming death traps rather than engines of community development,” reads part of a statement issued by the commission following the incident.

This trend mirrors what is happening in many other countries across Africa, where communities living in mineral-rich areas face forceful displacements, abuse of basic human rights, and environmental degradation linked to industrial mineral extraction, often perpetrated by foreign firms with full support of the political class.

According to Appolinaire Zagabe, a Congolese human rights activist and the Director for the DRC Climate Change Network (Reseau Sur le Changement Climatique RDC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), often, people he terms ‘greedy government officials’ sign contracts with extractive firms to legalise their activities, then use police machinery to forcefully and brutally evict communities without informed consent and proper compensation.

It is based on such injustices that civil society organisations, social movements, faith-based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant organisations from Africa under the umbrella of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launched a campaign calling for land policies that protect African smallholder farmers and communities against punitive extractive practices and land grabbing, which are currently a threat to human rights, livelihoods and sustainable food systems.

“Land is more than a resource; it is our heritage, our identity, and our future,” said Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr, the Executive Director at the Faith and Justice Network, during the launch of the campaign on the sidelines of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Cartagena, Colombia.

“Across Africa, our soils feed our families, sustain our economies, and connect generations, yet today, land degradation, industrial extractive practices by foreign enterprises, climate change, and land grabbing threaten the very foundation of our food systems,” he added.

In a joint declaration at the conference, the organisations observed that rural communities across the world continue to face dispossession, land concentration, and ecological destruction.

“Despite global commitments to end hunger and poverty, land and food systems are increasingly controlled by corporate and financial interests, while communities that produce food remain marginalised and insecure,” reads part of the declaration statement.

It was further observed that carbon offset projects, extractive industries, agribusiness expansions, and speculative land markets are accelerating dispossession, soil degradation, and social inequality, often excluding communities from territories they have governed collectively for generations.

The campaign, dubbed “Protect Our Land, Restore Our Soil”, is now calling on governments to strengthen land rights and protect smallholder farmers; communities to embrace sustainable farming practices that rebuild soil fertility; and youthful farmers to view agriculture not as a last resort but as a powerful pathway to innovation and resilience.

“When soil is degraded, food becomes scarce, and when land is taken or misused, communities lose dignity and security,” said Rev. Tolbert, who is also the sitting Chairperson at the AFSA’s Board of Directors.

Just like the looming evictions of residents of Ikolomani in Kenya, Amnesty International has also observed that people of the DRC also pay a high price to supply the world with copper and cobalt: forced evictions, illegal destruction of their homes, and physical violence – sometimes leading to deaths.

The DRC supplies 70 to 74 percent of the copper and cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries. These batteries power our smartphones, laptops, electric cars, and bicycles, and they play a major role in the energy transition away from fossil fuels. This transition is urgent and necessary.

However, according to Amnesty International, mineral-rich regions of the DRC are sacrificed to mining development, leading to a shocking series of abuses in the region. Thousands of people have lost their homes, schools, hospitals, and communities due to the expansion of copper and cobalt mines in the country, especially in Kolwezi, which sits above rich copper and cobalt deposits.

The AFSA-led campaign calls on governments and corporate organisations to guarantee meaningful participation of affected communities and free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples in land, agriculture and climate decision-making to avoid conflicts and abuse of basic human rights.

“The future lies not in further commodifying land and food systems, but in restoring community control over territories, securing pastoralist mobility and commons, and supporting agroecological transitions rooted in justice and ecological integrity,” observed Mariann Bassey Olsson, a Lawyer, and Director at Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria).

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Luther Bois Anukur, Regional Director of IUCN ESARO, interviewed at the IUCN Regional Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IP

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Mar 3 2026 (IPS)

As the global community marks 2026 World Wildlife Day today (March 3), this year’s focus is on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants: Conserving Health, Heritage and Livelihoods. However, beneath these celebrations, a difficult question emerges: who will bear the cost of conservation when traditional donor funding becomes uncertain and in the face of climate change?

With geopolitical shifts causing traditional funders to tighten their budgets, conservation across Africa has reached a critical juncture.

In an exclusive interview with Luther Bois Anukur, the Regional Director for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Eastern and Southern Africa, we explore how governments must now go further by creating space for community-led biodiversity conservation initiatives to evolve into sustainable enterprises. We discuss why protecting biodiversity matters as much as maintaining roads or power grids and why national budgets should consider it a priority.

IPS: With conservation donors tightening their budget, how serious is this funding shift for Africa, and what risks does it create for biodiversity protection?

Anukur: Overall, there has been a shrinking of financing for biodiversity conservation, especially with the closing of USAID, which was a big financier for biodiversity work in Africa. This came as a shock and certainly slowed down the work of biodiversity conservation in Africa because some organisations have gone under, and some projects have closed altogether.

However, having said that, there is a huge opportunity for Africa to relook at biodiversity financing models. Indeed, relying on donor funding is not the right way to finance biodiversity conservation. Biodiversity is not a charitable cause. It is actually part of the sovereign natural assets, and so we need to look at ways in which countries can link their economies to biodiversity conservation.

For example, you’ll find that what underpins our economies in Africa is fresh water, agriculture, tourism, and energy, and all these form the backbone of biodiversity conservation.

IPS: African communities often live with wildlife and bear the costs of conservation. How possibly can this be turned into community-led initiatives that can evolve into sustainable enterprises?

Anukur: First and foremost, people in Africa have lived alongside wildlife for many years. However, the cost of living with wildlife has been very high, because you find there’s crop loss, there’s loss of livestock, and even loss of lives. Yet, we have not seen benefits go to communities in a proportional manner.

To change this, there is certainly a need to rethink and redesign our conservation efforts so that communities can be right at the centre. We need to see benefits going to communities in an equitable manner that is commensurate to the services and the sacrifices they provide by living alongside wildlife.

We need to stop seeing communities as beneficiaries but as leaders of conservation efforts. And when we do that, then we will go a long way in conserving wildlife.

IPS: Why should finance ministries in Africa treat conservation as a core national investment rather than an environmental afterthought

Anukur: In many cases, ministers of finance look at risks, they look at assets, and they look at returns. That is what they usually understand. But very clearly, nature is Africa’s largest asset. And so investing in our environment basically means that we are supporting our water systems, our agriculture, our fisheries, and our ecosystems. That basically means that we are strengthening our economies.

The reverse is true. If we do not support that, we will face disasters. We are going to have a higher impact from climate change, and we are going to get into food imports. When you balance the books, investing in conservation makes sense, as it will ultimately affect national economies. So investing in natural assets will greatly support the GDPs of our countries and the livelihoods of our people.

IPS: Can you share examples of models that governments should be using to support protection of biodiversity as well as community-led conservation initiatives?

Anukur: There have been good examples in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, among other countries, which have been able to demonstrate that community-led conservation can generate not only ecological recoveries but also economic returns.

But the key thing with these models is that you need to secure the land rights, make sure that there is accountable governance, and that revenue flows directly to communities. There is also a need to have partnerships with multi-stakeholders, especially the ethical private sector.

IPS: Tools like the IUCN Red List and Green List provide data on species and protected areas. How can governments better use these frameworks to move beyond reactive conservation decisions toward long-term, evidence-based policies?

Anukur: IUCN has got quite a number of tools; we have the red list of species, which basically looks at extinction risk, but we also have the green list, which looks at how effectively we manage our ecosystems. Governments have extensively used these tools as reference documents.

However, we would want to see these tools being used to build evidence for planning. This is because when you plan well, then you are able to avert risks. For instance, you need these tools to plan roads, infrastructure, agriculture, and mining.

IPS: Many African governments face pressure to expand infrastructure, agriculture, and extractive industries. What strategies can realistically balance economic development with ecosystem protection, especially for communities living closest to nature?

Anukur: There has been a big debate for a very long time about whether Africa should prioritise development or whether it should be conservation. But that debate is now very old. What we are focusing on is moving from extractive growth to generative growth. We also need to balance everything. For example, you can do agriculture but ensure that you have healthy soils. You can do energy transition in a manner that is not degrading to the environment. Or even create infrastructure that avoids critical ecosystems.

The most important thing is that there should be cross-sectoral collaboration. We have seen environmental and conservation issues treated as an afterthought. We would want the environment to be right at the centre of budget projections, as well; communities should also be brought to the centre for people to benefit from natural assets.

IPS: As we celebrate World Wildlife Day, what message would you give to African governments regarding the conservation of biodiversity?

Anukur: This time is an opportune moment when the world is changing. At the moment we have a lot of geopolitical change. We also do have a lot of geo-economic change. If Africa is to look at itself, the biggest asset is already what we have. The continent is viewed as poor, but the truth is that Africa is not poor. All we need is to connect with our natural assets and use them for development.

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Ann Maina of BIBA addressing the media at the Africa Climate Summit. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 12 2025 (IPS)

African climate negotiators and civil society organizations at the second Africa Climate Summit (ACS 2) have called on governments to include sustainable farming approaches and other Africa-led solutions in their revised Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and National Adaptation Plans (NAP) ahead of COP 30, as the only way to have their priorities on the global climate negotiation agenda.

NDCs are climate action plans submitted to the UNFCCC by individual countries under the Paris Agreement, outlining their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, while NAPs outline how countries will adapt to climate change in the medium and long term.

“Most of the issues we discuss in the negotiation rooms carry political inclinations and economic implications,” said Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Lead of Ghana’s delegation at the UNFCCC climate negotiation conferences and the incoming Chair for the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN).

“If we fail to prioritize sustainable farming practices and other innovations through our NDCs and NAPs, the developed nations will happily keep the status quo because Africa remains an important market for their farm inputs, particularly fertilizers, pesticides, and fossil fuel-powered machinery, among other items,” said Amoah.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed backed this call, saying that Africa must lead in championing its solutions.

“We are not here to negotiate our survival; we are here to design the world’s next climate economy,” he told delegates at the ACS2, ahead of the 30^th round of climate negotiations (COP 30) later this year in Belem, Brazil.

According to Ann Maina of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association (BIBA), such solutions include advancing food sovereignty by rejecting exploitative industrial animal agriculture, rejecting high use of synthetic fertilizers, rejecting the grabbing of Africa’s resources in the name of greening projects, and rejecting carbon markets that come at the expense of communities while opening up polluting opportunities, especially for the Global North.

“Having Africa-led solutions will encourage just transition, which will lead to decentralized energy that should power agroecology, territorial markets, and resilient livelihoods, breaking (away from) dependence on imported fossil fuels and exploitative ‘green grabs,’” she said.

“If we make the right choices now, Africa can be the first continent to industrialize without destroying its ecosystems,” reiterated Ethiopia’s Prime Minister.

Evidence-based studies consistently show that the most viable and sustainable farming practice in Africa is the use of agroecological approaches, which emphasizeecological balance, social equity and cultural integration, thereby presenting viable strategic opportunities to address impacts of climate change while supporting sustainable development.

Yet, the progress has been very slow. A recent report by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) in all 53 African countries reveals that integration of agroecology into the NDCs and NAPS across the continent remains alarmingly low, with only 22 percent of NDCs explicitly mentioning agroecology.

“This study exposes a critical gap in policy integration and calls on all industry players to act with urgency,” said Dr. Million Belay, AFSA General Coordinator. “Agroecology is not just a farming method; it is a bold climate solution rooted in African realities, which governments should be promoting instead of working towards subsidizing harmful chemical farm inputs.”

Some of the inputs, particularly pesticides exported to Africa, are banned in countries of their origin due to their negative impact on human health, environment and important insects.

According to Amoah, recognizing agroecology at the UNFCCC level will require up to 50 countries to explicitly include it in their NDCs. “Without a deliberate and united push for sustainable farming approaches for Africa, I can foresee very serious resistance from developed countries because while such approaches benefit African economies and food systems, they are a threat to economic and political interests in the global north,” he said.

The AFSA report shows that incorporating agroecology into NDCs and NAPs, supports the dual goals of adaptation and mitigation by enhancing carbon sequestration, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and fostering climate-resilient farming systems.

So far, Africa has consistently faced a lack of adequate finance to meet the costs of adaptation. Less than two percent of global climate finance reaches small-scale actors in the entire food system.

According to the African negotiators, financing projects that foster business interests of developed countries will always be accepted in the negotiation rooms without much struggle, unlike approaches like agroecology, for which negotiators from the global north often demand evidence—just to frustrate the process.

“As followers of agroecology, we need to be very strategic because negotiations are about consensus building,” said Amoah. “It is one thing to talk about a subject and another thing to convince other parties to accept it.”

So far, African countries are in the process of updating their NDCs to be submitted to the UNFCCC probably ahead of COP 30. “AFSA is currently working with individual African countries towards integrating agroecology into their NDCs,” said Belay.

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Gilbert Korir, the farm Manager at the Kaptepeswet Farm, displays healthy leaves from tea bushes grown using organic farm inputs. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
KERICHO, Kenya, Mar 27 2025 (IPS)

On the outskirts of Kericho town within Kenya’s Rift Valley region, Kaptepeswet tea farm, an organic tea estate sprawling on a 50-acre piece of land, is a testament that organic fertilizers can be used on mature tea bushes and still produce the desired quantity and quality of premium leaves.

“We have always used the NPK fertilizers on our tea estate, but for the past three years, we have started trials with organic fertilizers and soil conditioners deliberately to convert our tea into an organic product to serve the constantly growing global demand for organic tea,” said Gilbert Korir, the farm Manager at the Kaptepeswet Farm.

According to the Data Bridge Market Research, the global organic tea market size was valued at USD 1.70 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 2.83 billion by 2031, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 6.60 percent during the forecast period of 2024 to 2031. This exponential growth is driven by increasing consumer awareness of health and environmental issues related to organic farming.

The NPK is an important synthetic fertilizer that contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, largely used in Kenya on different crops, including tea estates, to replenish nutrients lost through harvesting and sometimes leaching.

However, different studies have shown that the process of manufacturing such synthetic fertilizers emits so much greenhouse gases, and that excessive or long-term use of the same can significantly raise soil acidity levels, create macronutrient saturation, or change it to the point where the soil loses sensitivity and absorbency to various nutrients.

According to Korir, the shift to organic farm inputs is also in line with the global shift towards environmentally safe and economically viable alternatives for good production.

“The only setback is that unlike synthetic fertilizers, which deliver high yields promptly, organic inputs take a longer time for the crop to respond, and the beauty is that they keep the soil nourished for a longer period,” he said.

Dr. George Oduor, a Kenya-based soil health scientist, explains that fertilizers derived from organic sources stimulate important soil microorganisms to provide nutrients for the crop and also improve the structure of the soil.

On the contrary, synthetic fertilizers are water-soluble, and they avail nutrients directly to the plants without necessarily replenishing the soil; hence, the farmer must reapply the fertilizers regularly to keep the crops healthy.

“It may take a longer period to see the results of organic fertilizers, but once the nutrients are available, it will take a longer time in the soil, and the plants will continue benefiting from season to season,” said Oduor.

Moses Oburu, the General Manager at Vermipro Limited, a Uganda-based organic fertilizer-producing company, says that organic fertilizers used on a large scale are made through a process known as vermicomposting, where organic materials from plants, animal manure, and food waste are fed to earthworms, which in turn excrete nutrient-rich castings, which are the main raw material for making different liquid fertilizers and soil conditioners.

The vermi liquid is then cultured in order to isolate particular microbes (bacteria) that are needed for a particular purpose; thereafter, it is taken to the concentration stage where the selected microbes are grown through medium and non-chlorinated water before they are stabilized using non-sulfur molasses to give it a longer shelf life.

Studies have shown that such fertilizers aid in the fixation of soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “In many cases, most of these nutrients are always in the soil, but in forms that cannot make them available for the plant,” said Oburu. “So our final products help regenerate such nutrients and make them available to the plant,” he said.

Besides, there are other non-liquid organic fertilizers that can be used on large-scale farming, including ‘bokashi,’ which is made through fermentation of organic matter, and ‘biochar,’ which is a nutrient-rich soil amendment that improves soil fertility and crop yields. Others include compost manure, farmyard manure, and green manure, among many others.

Oburu says that the demand for organic farm inputs has been on the rise, particularly in Kenya and Uganda. “Last year, we had orders from about 15,000 farmers from Uganda, and we also have several orders from Kenya by farmers who also use the inputs on horticultural crops, legumes, rice, maize, and even Napier grass,” said Oburu.

So far, the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Organisation (KALRO), in collaboration with Ernestea Limited (a private tea processing company in Kericho), are contacting an experiment on the Kaptepeswet farm to assess the impact of organic fertilisers on tea estates through a study titled ‘Evaluation of bio-fertiliser products for optimising productivity of mature tea in Kenya.’

Kenya is rated as the third biggest tea producer in the world, delivering over 430,000 tons of tea leaves to the local and international market.

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Dr. Augustine Njamnshi of ACSEA addresses a group of civil society organizations ahead of the AUC Summit in Addis Ababa. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 27 2025 (IPS)

Renewable energy and climate change activists have challenged African heads of state to take a united stance to safeguard essential mineral resources, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other parts of the continent, which are selfishly exploited by foreign miners with disregard for poverty-stricken local communities.

“We call upon the Africa Union Commission (AUC) to convene a special summit on the DRC and come up with resolutions on how African countries, particularly the DRC, should determine the value of their essential minerals, how they should engage foreign miners, and how to protect fundamental human rights of communities living in the mining areas,” said Dr. Augustine Njamnshi, the Director, Africa Coalition on Sustainable Energy Access (ACSEA), at an event ahead of the election of the new AUC Chairperson in Addis Ababa.

So far, the DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and the third largest producer of copper, among other essential minerals that are used to manufacture state-of-the-art electric cars and buses, golf carts, pumps, and electric motorbikes, among other non-emitting but expensive gadgets like smart phones, tablets, laptops, drones, smart watches, and electric scooters, among other items.

As a result, the value and the growing demand of cobalt and other such essential minerals have led to a scramble for these rare metals, particularly by foreign miners.

Even as the activists make an appeal, the mineral wealth has become a pawn in the DRC’s war with Rwandan-backed M23.

According to Congolese president Felix Tseisekedi’s spokesperson, Tina Salama, on X, the United States was warned not to buy minerals from Rwanda, as this was tantamount to buying stolen goods. She said the proposal to buy directly from the DRC was also open to the European Union, with a warning that “receiving stolen goods will become increasingly complicated.”

“President Tshisekedi invites the USA, whose companies source strategic raw materials from Rwanda, materials that are looted from the DRC and smuggled to Rwanda while our populations are massacred, to purchase them directly from us, the rightful owners,” Salama said on X.

Appolinaire Zagabe, a Congolese human rights activist and the Director for the DRC Climate Change Network (Reseau Sur le Changement Climatique RDC), told IPS in an interview that the mineral exploitation was mired in corruption.

“The foreign miners sign contracts with the government to legalize their activities, and since they make so much money, they always bribe government officials and top-ranking police officers to protect them as they illegally expand their mining areas by forcefully evicting communities from their ancestral land,” Zagabe said.

“The current system of mineral exploitation activities in the DRC has almost no positive impact on the local communities. Community rights are not respected and the population is a victim of companies’ pollution,” Zagabe told IPS. “There are no community programs undertaken, no durable infrastructure is put in place, no health facilities, no schools, no roads. Hence, people in those areas remain the poorest in the world.”

Zagabe says that nearly all the hundreds of thousands of community members who suffer at the hands of foreign miners of cobalt and other essential minerals have never seen what an electric vehicle looks like, they have never owned a smart phone, and they don’t dream of using a tablet or even a computer in their lifetime, yet they interact on a daily basis with essential minerals that are at the center of manufacturing these items.

A report by Amnesty International in collaboration with the Initiative for Good Governance and Human Rights/Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains (IBGDH) paints a grim picture of what is happening in the DRC.

The minerals, which are apparently supposed to be a huge blessing, have turned out to be a curse for the communities.

“People are being forcibly evicted, or threatened or intimidated into leaving their homes, or misled into consenting to derisory settlements. Often there was no grievance mechanism, accountability, or access to justice,” said Donat Kambola, president of IBGDH, in a statement.

“It is total chaos,” said Zagabe. “Human rights activists are often harassed whenever they denounce violations of community rights in mining areas, and they risk being killed since most illegal mining companies have the backing of politicians or high-ranking soldiers,” he said.

The rush for essential minerals has also exposed artisanal/local miners to harsh working conditions where some of them have been buried alive within collapsed tunnels, children have been forced to child labor, and women, whose livelihoods have been taken away, have been forced to toil to extreme lengths to find minerals, which they sell to foreign mining companies for almost nothing.

According to a report by Friends of the Congo (FOTC), child labor is well documented in the cobalt supply chain, with children as young as seven (years old) working in mines under dangerous conditions, depriving them of education and a healthy childhood.

“Pit wall collapses are common when digging in larger open-air pits, with the result of all miners being buried alive; of the 10,000 to 15,000 tunnels dug by artisanal miners, none have supports, ventilation shafts, or other safety measures,” reads part of the report.

According to Njamnshi, whatever is happening in the DRC mining sector is replicated in nearly all other African countries. “The only difference is that in the DRC, the atrocities are on a large scale and therefore are more visible than what is happening, for example, in Kenya’s Nyatike goldmines in the western part of the country,” he said, noting that there is a need for a collective high-level resolution to protect all African countries from greedy foreign mineral-thirsty companies.

The alleged disrespect of human rights and signing of dubious contracts that oppress communities, denying them right to their resources, is not in line with the Dubai COP 28 resolution, which called for rapid decarbonization of the energy system to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.

The negotiators called for acceleration of the clean energy transition both from the demand and supply sides, but through a transformation that is orderly, just and equitable and also accounts for energy security.

“The world is changing very fast, and the geopolitical dynamics are becoming more unpredictable,” said Dr. Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

“President Donald Trump’s executive orders should be a wake-up call for the continent, and likewise, African countries should find the power to dictate terms on their natural resources, including essential minerals,” he said during a PACJA event ahead of the 2025 AUC Summit in Addis Ababa.

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Protesters at COP29 call for climate justice. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
BAKU, Nov 16 2024 (IPS)

African environmental activists at the ongoing climate summit (COP29) in Baku have called on climate financiers to stop suffocating poor countries with unbearable loans in the name of financing climate adaptation and mitigation on the continent.

Just a few months ago, a wave of protests by young people rocked the East and West African regions, protesting against exorbitant taxes that were being imposed on them for the governments to raise extra finances to service foreign loans.

“We reject loans or any type of debt instrument for a continent that had no role in warming this planet; we indeed refuse to borrow from the arsonists to put out fire they lit to burn our livelihoods,” said Dr. Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

According to PACJA, between 70 and 80 percent of all the finances from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to African countries come in the form of loans, through intermediaries, and by the end of the day, only some lucky climate-burdening communities can access the money—estimated at about 10 percent of the total funds disbursed.

Dr. Mithika Mwenda during Africa Day at COP29. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

“We demand these finances be directed first and foremost toward those who are most exposed to climate risks and least able to adapt, said Mwenda. “This means moving beyond fragmented and delayed funding and toward a reliable, affordable, accessible and timely flow of finance (in the form of grants) that reflects the actual scale of the crisis,” he said during Africa Day, an annual event organized by the African Development Bank on the sidelines of COP29.

Several examples mitigation and adaptation loans were touted during the event which would mean that African taxpayers would be required to repay loans of more than USD 1.6 billion.

“Some of these projects do not have footprints of the target communities in terms of prioritization,” said Charles Mwangi, a Nairobi-based climate activist.

“Communities need to take lead in decision-making and framing of these projects,” he said, noting that most of the finances are lost in expensive air tickets for consultants who are based abroad, hotel expenses and allowances.

On the contrary, Kenya is piloting a program known as ‘Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA).’ A 5-year initiative jointly supported by the Government of Kenya, the World Bank and other donors aimed at delivering locally led climate resilience actions and strengthening county and national governments’ capacity to manage climate risk.

“We are advocating for such policies that position adaptation at the forefront, not as an afterthought,” said Mwenda. “We amplify the voices of local organizations and grassroots leaders in these discussions, so global commitments reflect the priorities on the ground,” he said.

At COP29, discussions on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) offer a critical moment to reshape global financing in a way activists believe will truly address Africa’s needs.

“It is essential that adaptation finance be needs-based, mobilized from public finances in the Global North, and be grant-based, with resources that consider the private sector as a third or fourth solution and not the first solution,” said Mwenda.

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Farmers, traders and consumers at the Mbare Musika Territorial Market in Harare, Zimbabwe. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
HARARE, Oct 4 2024 (IPS)

African policymakers, local leaders and the private sector have been asked to create an enabling environment that will help African traders and farmer folks build reliable systems for food security and resilience through territorial markets.

During a week-long 2024 Africa Agroecological Entrepreneurship and Seed Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe, experts observed that persistent crises have shown the importance of resilient close-to-home ‘territorial’ markets that feed billions of people every day—from public markets and street vendors to cooperatives, from urban agriculture to online direct sales, and from food hubs to community kitchens. 

“For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global food prices spiked by 15 percent, forcing policymakers around the world to question how to reduce dependency on volatile global markets and strengthen food self-sufficiency,” said Dr. Million Belay, the General Coordinator at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). 

“Further, questions have been raised about how people are actually fed and by whom, prompting us to ask: in this century of crisis, what kinds of food supply chains and markets can build resilience and help fulfill the right to food—nourishing people around the world more sustainably and equitably?” asked Belay.

To answer the question, experts are calling for policies and a sound working environment that will empower territorial markets that promote dietary diversity and affordable nutritious foods for all, allow producers and food workers to retain control over their livelihoods, and produce food that is adaptable to climate change shocks and emerging crises.

These markets have been broadly defined as markets that are centered on small-scale agroecological food producers and business owners that produce and sell a variety of commodities, and often meet the preferences of the majority of farmers, traders and consumers.

Studies have shown that these markets play a crucial role in making food accessible and affordable, especially for low-income populations in the Global South, allowing for the purchase of small and flexible quantities of food, price bargaining, informal credit arrangements, and being located in or near low-income neighborhoods.

A new study launched on the sidelines of the Harare event that culminated into the fifth Biennial Africa Food Systems Conference, however, shows that profit-oriented corporate value chains are highly concentrated in Africa’s market places.

The report, titled ‘Food from Somewhere,’ by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES Food), finds that just seven grain traders control at least 50 percent of the global grain trade, six major corporations control 78 percent of the agrochemical market, the top eight carriers of freight account for more than 80 percent of the market for ocean freight capacity and globally, 1 percent of the world’s largest farms control 70 percent of the world’s farmland.

This, according to experts, amounts to a corporate capture of Africa’s food systems.

The report is therefore advocating for a paradigm shift, urging governments to reinvest in local and regional supply infrastructure, relocalize public purchasing and develop food security strategies for a more resilient and equitable approach to food security.

“The problem for smallholders is not of being connected to markets (most are already involved in markets) but rather the conditions of their access and the rules and logics by which markets operate—who determines prices and on what criteria, who controls the costs of production, who holds market power, among other issues,” said Mamadou Goïta, a member of IPES and the lead author.

A spot check at the Mbare Musika territorial market in Harare found a variety of foodstuffs sourced from all eight regions of Zimbabwe, among others from neighboring countries, such as apples and other fruits from South Africa, fish and ginger from Mozambique, groundnuts from Malawi, sorghum from Botswana, as well as grapes from Egypt and tamarind from Tanzania, among others.

“This is the central hub for smallholder farmers and traders, supporting over seven million people from all over Zimbabwe and other parts of the continent,” said Charles Dhewa, Chief Executive Officer, Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA), whose flagship known as eMkambo (eMarket) is to create a physical and web-based market for agriculture and rural development, integrating the use of mobile phones and the internet to create, adapt and share knowledge.

Mbare Musika Market, which is in the outskirts of Harare, is located next to the main bus-park, through which food is brought in using informal means such as passenger buses and vans from different parts of the country, in small and big quantities, and of different varieties and qualities.

“The evidence is clear—localized food systems are vital for feeding an increasingly hungry planet and preventing food insecurity and famine,” said Shalmali Guttal, the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South. “They provide nutritious, affordable food and are far more adaptable to global shocks and disruptions than industrial supply chains,” she added.

Jennifer Clapp, professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada, pointed out that during this time of rising hunger and ecological fragility, global industrial food chains will be catastrophically liable to break down under the strain of frequent crises.

“To have a chance of reaching the world’s zero hunger goal by 2030, we need to re-imagine our food systems, and we need to bolster the food markets that serve the poor,” she said.

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Activists at Bonn accuse developed countries of frustrating the process on climate finance. Pictured here are Danni Taaffe, Head of Communications at Climate Action Network (CAN), Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa and Sven Harmeling, Head of Climate at CAN. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
BONN, Jun 13 2024 (IPS)

As the technical session of the global climate negotiations enters the final stretch in Bonn, Germany, climate activists from Africa have expressed fears that negotiators from the developed world are dragging their feet in a way to avoid paying their fair share to tackle the climate crisis.

“I think we will be unfair to the snail if we say that the Bonn talks have all along moved at a snail pace,” quipped Mohammed Adow, the Director, Power Shift Africa.

“Ideally, there will be no climate action anywhere without climate finance. Yet what we have seen is that developed countries are frustrating the process, blocking the UAE annual dialogues, which were agreed upon last year in Dubai, to focus on the delivery of finance so as to give confidence to developing countries to implement climate actions,” said Adow.

According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dialogue was created to focus on climate finance in relation to implementing the first Global Stoke Take (GST-1) outcomes, with the rationale of serving as a follow up mechanism dedicated to climate finance, ensuring response to and/or monitoring of, as may be appropriate and necessary, all climate finance items under the GST

The two-week Bonn technical session of Subsidiary Bodies (SB60) was expected to develop an infrastructure for the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), a climate change funding mechanism to raise the floor of climate finance for developing countries above the current $100 billion annual target.

In 2009, during the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen, developed countries agreed that by 2020, they would collectively mobilize $100 billion per year to support priorities for developing countries in terms of adaptation to climate crisis, loss and damage, just energy transition and climate change mitigation.

When parties endorsed the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in 2015, they found it wise to set up the NCQG, which has to be implemented at the forthcoming COP 29, whose agenda has to be set at the SB60 in Bonn, providing scientific and technological advice, thereby shaping negotiations in Azerbaijan.

However, activists feel that the agenda being set in Bonn is likely to undermine key outcomes of previous negotiations, especially on climate finance.

“We came to Bonn with renewed hope that the NCQG discussions will be honest and frank with all parties committed to seeing that the finance mechanism will be based on the priorities and needs of developing countries and support country-driven strategies, with a focus on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs),” said Memory Zonde-Kachambwa, the Executive Director, FEMNET.

“Seeing the devastation climate change is causing in our countries in terms of floods, storms, and droughts, among other calamities, it was our hope that the rich countries would be eager and willing to indicate the Quantum as per Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement so as to allow developing countries to plan their climate action,” she said.

So far, negotiators from the North have been pushing for collective “mobilization of financial resources,” which African activists believe is merely the privatization of climate finance within NCQG, thus surrendering poor countries to climate-debt speculators and further impoverishing countries clutching onto debt.

Also in the spotlight was the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), where the activists feel that the means of implementation is being vehemently fought by the parties from developed countries.

“Adaptation must be funded from public resources and must not be seen as a business opportunity open to private sector players,” said Dr. Augustine Njamnshi, an environmental policy and governance law expert and the Executive Secretary of the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access. “Without clear indications on the means of implementation, GGA is an empty shell and it is not fit-for-purpose.”

According to Ambassador Ali Mohammed, the incoming Chair for the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), the SB60 is an opportunity to rebuild trust in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

“That trust can only be rebuilt if we come out of Bonn with a quantum that adequately covers the needs of the continent,” he said, noting that the figure Africa is asking for, which is to be part of the agenda for COP29, is USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2030.

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Allan Ligare from Mzuri Organics in Kakamega County showcasing how insects are used to make fertilizer. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, May 9 2024 (IPS)

As the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit convened in Nairobi to review the progress made in terms of increasing fertilizer use in line with the 2006 Abuja Declaration, experts, practitioners, activists, and even government officials pointed out that accelerated fertilizer use may not be the magic bullet for increased food production in Africa.

During the opening ceremony of the summit, Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary, Musalia Mudavadi, who was also the guest of honor, said that in Kenya, there are places where fertilizer has been used optimally, but maize yields have stagnated.

“Though fertilizers are estimated to contribute more than 30 percent of the crop yield, we have witnessed in our country that fertilizer alone cannot sustain increased agricultural productivity and production,” he said.

Studies have also shown that the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers has had a significant impact on soil acidity in many African countries, which is a major constraint on crop production and the sustainable intensification of smallholder farming systems.

According to an ongoing research project known as Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA), 15 percent of all agricultural soils in Africa are affected by acidity issues and this has led to land degradation, decreased availability of soil nutrients to plants, and decreased plant production and water use.

According to Dr George Oduor, a soil scientist and international research consultant, African farmers should now consider or scale up the use of the Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) approach with a focus on return on investment and consider the use of lime on acidic soils.

“There is a need for governments in Africa to develop locally responsive tools that can advise farmers on how to combine different organic and inorganic fertilizers, how and when to intercrop with legumes for nitrogen fixation, and what crops to prioritize in different agroecological zones,” said Oduor in an interview with IPS.

However, some activists feel that there is a need for a complete shift from synthetic fertilizers to organic methods of farming such as agroecology, the regenerative agriculture (RA) approach, and permaculture, among other sustainable farming techniques.

“The heavy financial burden placed on African nations to support the purchase of expensive, imported fertilizers drains local economies and diverts funds from more sustainable local agricultural investments,” said Bridget Mugambe, the Programme Coordinator at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).

She called on governments and policymakers at the summit and across Africa to recognize the enormous potential of agroecology to sustainably increase food security and food sovereignty, so as to reduce poverty and hunger while conserving biodiversity and respecting indigenous knowledge.

So far, Kenya is one of the African countries that is in the process of developing policies for agroecology. The country also launched the National Agriculture Soil Management Policy (NASMP) alongside the Nairobi AFSH summit. The policy will help facilitate the restoration and maintenance of agricultural soils in order to increase productivity, improve food security, and contribute to poverty reduction while conserving soil and water resources for future generations.

Within the local governments, Murang’a County in Central Kenya was the first to develop the legal framework for agroecology, through which the government can easily allocate resources for organic fertilizer and pesticide production.

“The main reason why we had to pioneer in this is that our region is highly impacted by climate change, and therefore agroecology became a priority as a way of adapting to the phenomenon,” said Daniel Gitahi, the Director for Agriculture Value Chains, Policy, and Strategy.

“The second reason is that, as a county government, we observed that our yields were going down despite optimal use of fertilizers, and after research, we discovered that our soils had become more acidic due to overuse of nitrogen based fertilizers,” he said.

Other solutions showcased at the summit include the use of ‘bokashi’ fermented organic fertilizer, which has transitioned from small-scale production to a commercial scale in a few African countries.

“I have been able to transform my tea plantation using bokashi; as well, I no longer use fertilizers on my maize farm in West Pokot County, and yet my yields have almost doubled,” said Esther Bett, the Executive Director at the Resources Oriented Development Initiative (RODI Kenya).

RODI Kenya is already packaging and selling bokashi fertilizers through agrovet shops across the country, and has the capacity to produce up to 10 tonnes per month.

Allan Ligare from Mzuri Organics in Kakamega County, working in collaboration with the International Centre for Insect Ecology (ICIPE), brought along organic fertilizer made using black soldier flies while in the process of making animal feeds. “This fertilizer contains all the important nutrients; it adds organic matter to the soil; and it helps in the retention of soil moisture,” he said.

A 2022 study published in the Nature scientific journal found that insect frass fertilizers made from all the insect species had adequate concentrations and contents of macronutrients, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K)], secondary nutrients (calcium, magnesium, and sulphur), and micronutrients (manganese, copper, iron, zinc, boron, and sodium).

The main objective of the 2024 AFSH Summit is to highlight the central role of soil health transformation in stimulating sustainable, pro-poor productivity growth in African agriculture and food systems and to adopt the 10-year Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.

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Dr Agnes Kalibata, the President of AGRA, and a member of COP 28 Presidency Advisory Committee. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
DUBAI, Dec 5 2023 (IPS)

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has announced the release of USD 100 million at the ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 28th Conference of Parties (COP 28) in Dubai, UAE, to support 10 African countries in adapting food loss reduction solutions.

The funds, which will be disbursed through AGRA, will be used to enhance African smallholders’ access to technologies, make food loss reduction solutions more accessible and affordable, and support the creation of enabling environments for food system transformation on the continent.

The GCF was created under the Paris Agreement and is currently the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries in raising and realizing their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways.

Isaiah Esipisu interviewed Dr Agnes Kalibata, the President of AGRA and a member of the COP 28 Presidency Advisory Committee.

IPS: Give a brief overview of the $100 million GCF investment in Africa’s food systems.

Kalibata: At the start of COP 28, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), AGRA, and a number of other partners announced an investment of USD 100 million in what we are calling Reducing Post-Harvest Losses in Agriculture. One of the challenges farmers in Africa have is that they produce a lot of food, but 40 percent of it goes to waste. This initiative will begin by investing in seven countries that AGRA works in to ensure that we can support farmers to reduce post-harvest losses.

As announced earlier this week, the GCF will inject USD 70 million into the initiative, and other partners such as the Rockefeller Foundation and USAID, among others, will contribute the remaining USD 30 million. Through this partnership, seven countries—Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia—have already expressed interest in being part of the project. The target is 10 African countries.

This is just the beginning. We do recognize that post-harvest losses are a very critical part of growing markets in these countries; it plays a critical role in improving food security for farmers, but it is also a critical part of reducing climate change because if we can save more, we do not need more land to produce more.

IPS: How exactly are the funds going to help smallholder farmers in the mentioned countries at the grassroots level?

Kalibata: The money will help farmers get access to technologies that will help them reduce losses during and after harvesting their produce. For example, when you are harvesting rice and putting it in the paddy water, you are compromising the quality because the grains will crack. So one of the things we will do is ensure that farmers are trained on how to harvest their produce, when to harvest, and the handling process.

For example, we will equip them with the right shelving and storage techniques. This will ensure that after harvest, commodities are dried and kept well in order to avoid things like aflatoxin contamination.

IPS: What factors were considered when selecting the countries to benefit from the USD 100 billion?

Kalibata: With GCF, countries have to express interest in participating in any particular initiative. In our case, the funds are for the purpose of unlocking post-harvest losses.

Our drive is therefore to support countries in implementing these programs as the primary partners in the initiative. Other partners include co-funders such as the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), among others.

IPS: What do food loss and waste mean in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?

Kalibata: It is clear from the science that Africa emits the least of the greenhouse gases. But in terms of food systems, food loss and waste emit 8 percent of greenhouse gases globally.

However, our emissions in Africa are very minimal, and therefore our main focus is on food systems. Just think about what will happen if we save 40 percent of the food we lose to waste! Every time we go to the farm, we are always looking towards increasing our yields. But then we end up losing more than our production increment.

It is also important to note that most of the food wasted ends up producing methane from organic matter, which is a dangerous greenhouse gas. Reducing losses will therefore mean reducing such emissions.

IPS: When are farmers likely going to start benefiting from the $100 million from the GCF?

Kalibata: Working with GCF takes some time. We need time to prepare the investments, and we also need time to make the programs and projects ready. So far, GCF has released what they call the preparatory facility for investment, which is usually the initial process.

However, it is not the only investment we work with as AGRA. There are others. But this particular investment is targeted at supporting the building of systems, strengthening the systems for better post-harvest management, and ensuring that farmers have access to the appropriate technologies.

IPS: When disbursing these funds, will AGRA work directly with governments, or will it be through community- and farmer-based organisations?

Kalibata: AGRA works in a number of ways. Where governments have the ability to work with us, we engage them. Where we have different partners to work with, we engage them. We also work with businesses to enable the private sector’s ecosystems.

We also work with governments to strengthen their capacity so that they can improve the way they engage the private sector. At some point, we work with NGOs whenever we find that it is the only system that we can work with to get the results we need.

IPS: In your role as the advisor to the COP Presidency, do you see the money committed at COP 28 for the Loss and Damage Fund coming in to salvage pastoralists and smallholders in ASALs who have always lost their livelihoods either to droughts or floods?

Kalibata: Let’s begin by celebrating the fact that the Loss and Damage Fund is now active at the World Bank, and it is going to be available for countries. One of the things we are trying to push for is for this money to become accessible to those who need it. It shouldn’t come in the form of expensive loans that are difficult to access. This is because we are dealing with losses and damages that have already happened.

What will be good in terms of managing the use of the Loss and Damage Fund to support the agricultural sector and food systems would be to strengthen the resilience of farmers. They need access to good-quality seeds; they need access to disease-, pest-, and drought-tolerant seeds, keeping in mind that flood-tolerant varieties are already on the market.

This is also an opportunity for us to strengthen the business ecosystem that supports agriculture.

The third point is that there is so much loss happening in the system. When people lose everything, then the impact is so great. If we can only start by managing that kind of impact, then people will have enough food to eat and enough ability to recover because, with climate change, farmers even lose the seeds for the next season. Yet the most important thing for many farmers is to save seed for the next season.

IPS: Why is the African continent not food secure despite its abundance of arable land?

Kalibata: It is because the issue with Africa’s food security is not about land. It is about being able to produce enough per unit area. Farmers who do not have access to good seeds cannot produce enough. Farmers with no access to appropriate fertilizers cannot produce enough. We are actually making efforts in those areas, but it is not enough.

But most importantly, there is a need for good leadership to ensure that all these things reach the smallholder farmers in good time. You have to create systems that reach out to them, and that is what AGRA is investing in.

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The land at St Denis Libolina primary, a school for physically challenged has been transformed into food forests and gardens using agroecology and feed the children, teachers. They have now sent a challenge to the community to do the same. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
DUBAI, Dec 2 2023 (IPS)

Students of St Denis Libolina Primary have used agroecology farming techniques to transform the entire school garden and any free space into food forests and gardens for different vegetable varieties, legumes, and herbs.

Now the students, who are physically challenged, have challenged their parents, villagers, and farmers in the outskirts of Myanga Township, in Kenya’s Bungoma County, in the Western region, to do the same.

“Barely one year ago, teachers had to contribute money to buy green vegetables to be used by staff members,” said Gladys Orlando, the school head teacher. She was speaking to IPS during a recent media visit. “But today, there are always more than enough vegetables, not just for the teachers but for all students in our boarding facility.”

With rainwater harvested from classroom rooftops, several trenches dug on the school garden, and the use of cover crops, the school has managed to sustainably trap water and soil moisture to support farming of diverse crops, not limited to vegetables, cereals, fruits, tuber crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, and arrowroots, among others.

“I have never known that this area can be this productive,” said Naomi Sitati, a parent at the school and a smallholder farmer who has always cultivated maize and beans. “I have since been coming here to learn alongside the pupils, and now I have established my own agroecology unit on a half-acre piece of land at home.”

According to experts at the ongoing climate negotiations (COP 28) in Dubai, UAE, such agroecological farming techniques are key to the continent’s food systems because they optimize the use of local resources such as manure and local water sources for irrigation, thereby minimizing the ecological footprint and enhancing the sustainability of agricultural practices.

“Techniques such as rainwater harvesting, use of cover crops, and drought-resistant crops help conserve water,” said Dr Million Belay, the General Coordinator for the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.

“This is especially vital as climate change is expected to make water sources more unpredictable and scarce,” he said during an event on the sidelines of the 28th round of climate negotiations in Dubai.

According to Xavier Emodo, the teacher in charge of the farming project at St Denis Libolina School, all organic waste in the school and rubbish collected under tree sheds are all used to make compost manure to keep the soils nourished.

“We have particular students who are always dedicated to the management of compost manure in this school; others are dedicated to pest control and crop management; and we even have a treasurer who takes record of any income generated from the surplus,” said Emondo. “These students are very passionate about whatever they are doing, given that our new teaching system, also known as competency-based curriculum, calls for such practical lessons as part of the syllabus.”

Each and every block at the school has small vegetable gardens in front of classes. Each garden is managed by learners from those particular classes. “Students from these classes are always competing to outdo each other,” said Emodo.

So far, the school has acquired two dairy cows, whose cow dung is instrumental in composting the manure, and they provide milk for the learners.

“We have found that by leveraging traditional knowledge and practices, agroecology empowers communities (such as St Denis Libolina School) to be stewards of their own land and resources, fostering local innovation and self-reliance in the face of climate change,” said Belay, who is now pushing for agroecology to be included in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) future negotiations agenda.

“We are calling for agroecology’s diversified cropping systems to be recommended for climate resilience because the techniques reduce the risk of total crop failure, providing a safety net for food production systems,” he said.

During last year’s climate negotiation (COP 27) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the “Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security” was adopted by all parties. The four-year joint work includes implementation of the outcomes of the Koronivia joint work on agriculture and previous activities addressing issues related to agriculture, as well as future topics, recognising that solutions are context-specific and take into account national circumstances.

One of the objectives for the joint work was to promote a holistic approach to addressing issues related to agriculture and food security, taking into consideration regional, national and local circumstances, in order to deliver a range of multiple benefits, where applicable, such as adaptation, adaptation co-benefits and mitigation, recognising that adaptation is a priority for vulnerable groups, including women, indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers

Evidence-based studies have demonstrated that diversification inherent in agroecology provides farmers with multiple income sources, such as different kinds of crops, livestock, and value-added products, thereby reducing economic vulnerability to climate-related shocks.

“It integrates food production’s ecological, economic, and social aspects, thereby promoting sustainable and equitable systems while also addressing farm-level production and socio-economic processes like markets and distribution,” said Belay.

So far, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly recommended the use of agroecological principles and practices, among other approaches that work with natural processes to support food security, nutrition, health and well-being, livelihoods and biodiversity, sustainability, and ecosystem services in adaptation to climate change.

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Experts are calling on countries to change their policies to protect locally produced products. For example, Nigeria is an exporter of rubber but imports tyres; Ghana exports cocoa, but Switzerland is known for chocolate. Here a worker in a factory in Abidjan holds a block of rubber meant for export for processing into finished products abroad.

By Isaiah Esipisu
DAR ES SALAAM, Sep 15 2023 (IPS)

Experts at the Africa Food Systems Forum (AGRF) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, have called on African governments to make and review existing policies to protect the processing and agro-industrialisation of locally produced agricultural products.

During the launch of the Deal Room, Mohammed Dewji, President of MeTL Group of Companies in Tanzania, observed that agriculture will remain meaningless without agri-processing. 

“Tanzania produces cotton, and it is perhaps the third largest producer. How come it has only three textile firms? We are farming the cotton, ginning it, and exporting the same to China, where the final product is produced, dyed, and printed, and then it is sent back to us. Because of taxes involved at the local manufacturing level, we cannot compete,” he said.

“Unless we put in place correct policies that will favour local manufacturing, we will continue talking about cocoa from Ghana and chocolate from Switzerland,” he told delegates at the Deal Room.

The Deal Room is a matchmaking platform hosted at the AGRF, aiming to drive new business deals and commitments, where companies in the agriculture and agribusiness sectors can access finance, mentorship, and market entry solutions to support their growth objectives.

According to Wanjohi Ndagu, the Partner and Investment Director at Pearl Capital Partners Ltd based in Uganda, many African governments have policies that favour importation even when farmers in those countries have bumper harvests of the same product.

“We need policies that are able to protect farmers and local production,” he said.

Other than cocoa in Ghana and chocolate from Switzerland, countries like Ivory Coast and Nigeria are net exporters of natural rubber, which is processed and brought back to them as car tyres, footwear, and rubber-based industrial goods.

Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ivory Coast are net exporters of cashew nuts but importers of roasted and processed cashew nuts, cashew butter, and other value-added cashew products.

Kenya is currently delving into the exportation of raw avocado, but the country has always imported particularly avocado cosmetic products.

However, all is not lost.

Rwanda was showcased as one of the success stories in Africa where, through favourable policies, the country has created a conducive environment attracting investment into the agro-processing sector.

“Our country’s Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation has enabled us to move the sector from subsistence to a knowledge-based, value-creating sector,” said Nelly Mukazayire, the Deputy CEO of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB).

To make work more accessible and attractive to investors, the country has created a one-stop-centre where investors in any given sector, including agro-processing, are given services right from the search for a business name, business registration, generation of unique identification of the registered business, the opening of the business bank account and issuance of relevant permits and licenses, and the entire process takes a maximum of eight hours for the business to become a legal entity.

In many other African countries, such processes can take more than four months and, in some cases, a year for a business to get proper registration, and this, according to the delegates at the AGRF, slows down the rate of investment.

“Investors in the agriculture sector in Rwanda also have an opportunity to get up to seven years of tax holiday and reduced corporate income taxes on exports,” said Mukazayire.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the country launched what is today known as the Manufacture and Build to Recover Programme (MBRP), aiming to boost economic recovery efforts with specific incentives for the manufacturing, agro-processing, construction and real estate development sectors.

Through MBRP, manufacturers with a capital of USD1 million and above are given import duty exemption and Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption for imported construction materials unavailable in East Africa, VAT exemption for machinery and raw materials sourced domestically and VAT exemption for construction materials sourced domestically.

However, the capital for agro-processing was capped at USD 100,000 to support the sector’s growth.

During the AGRF Deal Room event, Brent Malahay, the Chief Strategy Officer at the Equity Group, called on investors to take advantage of the bank’s ‘Africa recovery and resilience plan,’ whose aim is to capacitate, finance and connect East African Community value chains to global supply chains.

“Through this plan, Equity Group will leverage off a region that gives access to critical raw materials, supports industrial capacity needs and an entrepreneurial and innovative local workforce, and the one that provides a sizeable market that is increasingly becoming more integrated,” said Malahay.

During the event, Isobel Coleman, Deputy Administrator at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), announced an investment of USD4 million into VALUE4HER, AGRA’s Deal Room product, which is a continental initiative aimed at strengthening women’s agribusiness enterprises and enhancing voice and advocacy across Africa.

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While Africa has made a negligible contribution to climate change and is responsible for two to three percent of global emissions, it’s highly vulnerable. The debate on how to compensate and support Africa continues. Now there is a suggestion that the Loss and Damage fund may not be the route to go to ensure Africa and other vulnerable nations are compensated. This photo shows the flooded offices of the Kenya Wildlife Services following the swelling of Lake Baringo. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
BONN, Jun 7 2023 (IPS)

The Climate Change envoy to the President of Kenya has asked Kenya’s and, by extension Africa’s negotiators at the ongoing climate conference in Bonn, Germany, not to put much emphasis on financing the Loss and Damage kitty but instead calls for fairness and equity.

“Loss and damage remain an important issue; we hope it will be operationalized in Dubai, but whatever amount that may go to the kitty will not take us anywhere as a global community,” Ali Mohamed, who advises the President on matters climate change told Kenya’s delegation in Bonn, shortly after President William Ruto demanded that COP28 be the last round of global negotiations on climate change.

The Loss and Damage funding is an agreement reached during the 27th round of climate negotiations in Egypt to support vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters that include cyclones, floods, severe droughts, landslides, and heat waves, among others.

During the opening ceremony of the UN Habitat Assembly in Nairobi, Ruto said that it is possible to stop the conversation and the negotiation between North and the South because “climate change is not a North/South problem, it is not about fossil fuel versus green energy problem, it is a problem that we could sort out all of us if we came together,” he said. Ruto is the current Chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC).

According to Ruto, it is possible (for African negotiators) to agree on a framework that will bring everybody on board for the continent to go to COP28 with a clear mind on what should be done and how Africa and the global South can work with the global North, not as adversaries, but as partners to resolve the climate crisis and present an opportunity to have a win-win outcome that has no finger pointing.

In Bonn, Mohamed, who is also the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told Kenya’s negotiators that, as Africans, there is a need to raise voices and call for a new global architecture and a new way of doing things.

He gave an example of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) during the period of COVID-19, where Europe, which has a population of 500 million people, received over 40 percent, while the entire African continent, with a population of 1.2 billion people received a paltry five percent of the total funds.

“This kind of unfairness is what President Ruto wants to take forward and say it is no longer tenable in the new world order,” said Mohamed, who is vying to become the next Chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) for the next three years.

The SDR is an interest-bearing international reserve asset that supplements other reserve assets of member countries. Rather than a currency, it is a claim on the freely useable currencies of International Monetary Fund (IMF) members.

He also gave an example of the Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989, and suddenly in just six months, a new financial architecture was formed for Europe.

He pointed out that since the ratification of the Paris Agreement, the world has been meeting every year to talk about the $100 billion which developed countries committed to collectively mobilize per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, but the funds have remained a mirage.

“What Africa is pushing for is investment through available, accessible, and adequate financing at affordable costs. We borrow at an interest of 15 percent on a currency that is not ours, while other countries in the North borrow at 2 percent,” said Mohamed.

The AGN Chair, Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, declined to comment on Kenya’s new position, saying that it was beyond his powers to do so. “I am not in a position to comment on whatever has been said by a member of the CAHOSCC,” he told IPS in Bonn.

However, during the opening plenary, Shitima called on developed countries to deliver to restore trust in the UNFCCC process. “The Green Climate Fund replenishment is in October, and this is an opportunity for developed countries to show the world that they are willing to do their part to address climate change and support climate action in developing countries,” he told global delegates in Bonn.

He also welcomed the work program on just transition pathways. “We are of the view that it will advance the implementation of climate action and strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development. The Subsidiary conference here should agree on the work program’s elements, scope, and modalities to be adopted at COP28,” he said.

The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) conference, which is going down in Bonn, is the link between the scientific information provided by expert sources such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the one hand and the policy-oriented needs of the COP on the other hand. The outcome is therefore used to set the agenda for the subsequent COP based on scientific evidence.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Justus Kimeu on his farm in Kithiani village, Makueni County, Kenya. By using the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique this farmer produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season. Almost 900 farmers in Kenya's two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni are participating in a pilot project to see how regenerative agriculture can be used to improve food productivity. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MAKUENI, Kenya, May 11 2021 (IPS)

It is an uncommon occurrence to see farms with flourishing healthy crops in Kenya’s semi-arid Makueni County. But in Kithiani village, Justus Kimeu’s two-acre piece of land stands out from the rest. After embracing the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique, the 52-year-old farmer is looking forward to a bumper harvest of maize as all his neighbours count their losses following this year’s failed season.

“I have been a farmer for many years, but I have never seen such a healthy crop during such a dry season,” Kimeu told IPS. “All the road users who pass by this farm can hardly go away without stopping to have a second look at a crop that has defied the prevailing tough climatic conditions.”

Kimeu is one of 900 farmers in Kenya’s two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni who are participating in a pilot project to see how RA can be used to improve food productivity.

The technique, which is being piloted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is a dynamic and holistic way of farming that involves all the principals of permaculture and organic farming, such as minimum tillage, use of cover crops, crop rotation, terracing to reduce soil erosion, heavy mulching to keep the soils moist, use of basins to preserve soil moisture and the use of composted manure to give the topsoil the texture of a virgin fertile arable land.

“The main theory of this technique is actually to return the topsoil back to its original state,” Michael Mutua, an associate program officer in charge of RA at AGRA, told IPS. “Instead of feeding the crop, we concentrate on feeding the soil,” he said.

According the Food Sustainability Index created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, increased adoption of regenerative farm practices reduces carbon emissions during cultivation and sequesters carbon into the soil.

In a proposal of 10 interdisciplinary actions to finding ways to nourish both people and the planet post-COVID-19, one of the suggestions by BCFN was that the world develop internationally agreed-upon standards for RA practices and agroecology, as well as common definitions for healthy and sustainable food systems and food.

BCFN experts further acknowledged that regenerative and agroecological agricultural practices have the potential to boost soil health, preserve water resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To popularise the new farming technique in Kenya, AGRA collaborated with the two county governments of Makueni and Embu, and with the Cereal Growers Association (CGA) to identify lead farmers.

The farmers were then trained on RA practices and were supported to create plots known as ‘mother demos’.

“A mother demo is actually a place for farmers’ practical lessons,” said Mutua. “It consists of four plots, where one plot is done using all the recommended RA practices, the second one using farming methods commonly used in the area, the third one is by using part of the regenerative agriculture principles, and the fourth one is the control plot, where the same crop is planted without any agronomic practice,” he explained.

Each farmer then recruited up to 100 smallholder farmers from the neighbourhood to teach them from the mother demo. Once the farmers felt confident, they returned to their own farms to set up a baby demo, which is a single plot using all the principles of AR.

“Nearly all our farmers are at the baby demo stage,” said Mutua. “But a few bold ones like Kimeu went straight to implementation without doing a small demo for the learning purpose,” he said.

According to Kimeu, the lessons at the mother demo stage were sufficient, “and doing a baby demo for him, would amount to a wasted season,” he told IPS.

“When I decided to implement this technique, my farm was bare without much vegetation. So I started by making terraces and after it rained, different weeds sprouted. Together with my household members we manually uprooted all the weeds and left them on the farm to dry and decompose before making small basins in which we were going to plant the crop,” explained the farmer.

The basins were then filled with organic manure and some topsoil. And when it rained for the second time, hybrid drought tolerant maize variety seeds were planted inside the moist basins and any weed that sprouted was manually uprooted and left to dry and rot on the farm.

“We try as much as possible to avoid tillage or any form of disturbing the soil for it to regenerate naturally to its original form,” Kimeu said, noting that he also avoided use of conventional fertilisers.

With regenerative agriculture, weeds are used to form part of the soil. Farmer Justus Kimeu produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season using this farming technique. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Almost 900 farmers from the two counties are expected to graduate from the baby demo stage and implement RA during the 2021/2022 season. “If well implemented, it will more than double food security among the participating households,” said Mutua.

Bob Kisyula, the Makueni County Minister of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries, told IPS: “If our smallholder farmers could embrace these techniques and produce such healthy crops, then we will never need alms and food aid even in the toughest seasons.” 

Kisyula said that the County Government also invested in rippers, which are used to ensure that there is minimum disturbance of the soil as part of the RA approach.

Today, Kimeu has become a role model and a village hero.

“In this short period, I have been approached by hundreds of farmers from my village and other places who are seeking to understand how the technique works,” he said.

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Joseph Lowasa Baraka at his vegetable and fruit kiosk in Nairobi. During Kenya’s coronavirus lockdowns traders opted to stay away from congested market places and prioritised more secure digital platforms. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Apr 19 2021 (IPS)

After Joseph Mandu lost his job because of the country’s coronavirus lockdown, he would still wake every morning and leave his home in the City Carton slum in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. But instead of heading to the restaurant he worked at as a pool-table attendant, he would walk around City Carton searching for odd jobs to earn an income so he could pay for the food his family needed to survive.

“I tried to find something to do because my wife could not understand a fact that I was totally not able to provide for the family.

“With schools closed, all our five children were there in our single room and they needed food, water – which can only be bought – and soap, among other things, that were beyond my affordability,” Mandu told IPS, noting that he also owed his landlord Sh2000 ($18) in monthly rent.

Mandu is not alone in the need to provide for his family.

Blanket containment measures imposed by Kenya’s government to control the coronavirus pandemic have denied poor slum dwellers access to sufficient nutritious food and livelihoods, according to early findings from an ongoing evidence-based study to assess the impact of COVID-19 on dietary patterns among households in Nairobi’s informal settlements.

The study noted that urban slum and non-slum households are impacted differently by the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore differentiated policies and solutions are needed to address food security, nutrition and the livelihoods of these two consumer groups.

The researchers, led by scientists from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), are now calling on the Kenyan government to consider the unique challenges that people living in urban slums face before imposing blanket measures to curb the spread of the disease. 

“Through this study, we have seen that about 90 percent of households in the slums reported dire food insecurity situations, and are not able to eat the kinds of foods they prefer such as indigenous vegetables and animal sourced foods like milk and eggs, which had been more affordable and accessible before the pandemic,” Dr. Christine Chege, the lead researcher on the project, told IPS. The Alliance provides research-based solutions to harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives in a climate crisis.

The study found that more than 40 percent of slum households lack employment and their average monthly household income is $78.

• Scientists collected primary data from 2,465 households in the Kibera and Mathare slums, as well as from middle-income residents within Nairobi city.
• Household dietary diversity scores were calculated based on 7-day food consumption recalls.

The City Carton slum in Nairobi, Kenya. An ongoing study by scientists from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has found that more than 40 percent of slum households lack employment and their average monthly household income is $78. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

So far, the government has turned to policies such as curfews, social distancing and closure of eateries, bars, churches to contain the spread of the virus. As of today, Apr. 19, Kenya has reported over 151,000 COVID-19 cases.  

But the current measures to restrict spread of the virus has had a direct negative impact on livelihoods of tens of thousands of urban slum dwellers across the country.

Generally, slum dwellers live in crowded single-roomed, shanties where a number of households share bathrooms, sinks, and water points. There is little or no space for children to play and social distancing is impossible. 

They also do not have personal means of transport and so many have to use crowded public transport, which includes the use of motor bikes that sometimes carry up to three passengers on a single bike.

For these communities sanitisers remain a luxury. And some people use one disposable mask for more than a week — not for protection against COVID-19 infection, but to avoid the wrath of law enforcers who are reportedly using it as an excuse to distort money, particularly from the poor.

One respondent from Kibera slum told researchers that she was on antiretroviral therapy for HIV but she was not able to eat a balanced diet, as advised by her medic.

These are just some of the reasons why slum dwellers, according to the study, need differentiated containment measures that will not completely deny them access to food and livelihoods.

While the findings note that non-slum households may benefit from a decrease or cap on rising food prices to improve their food security and nutrition, for slum dwellers the solution is different and perhaps more complicated.

Researchers instead recommend strategies and interventions to assist slum dwellers in earning an income as a solution, first giving them economic empowerment in order to access nutritious foods.

“Once they are empowered economically, a second intervention would be towards lowering food prices,” said Chege.

According to Joram Kabach of Twiga Foods, a company that currently supplies fresh fruits and vegetables from over 20,800 farmers across this East African nation straight to more than 30,000 small-scale vendors via mobile technology, there is need for the government to partner with the private sector to bridge the gap between food and nutrition security for slum dwellers, and containment measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“During the pandemic period, we observed a sharp increase in our daily turnover from Sh13 million ($18,200) to Sh35 million ($318,200),” said Kabach.

“This means that in line with the government guidelines for social distancing, traders opted to stay away from congested market places and prioritised more secure digital platforms, where orders are made via mobile phones and products delivered at doorsteps with much reduced human interactions,” he told IPS.

In that regard, he observed that the government could cushion slum dwellers by offering them food vouchers, which can be redeemed from structured vendors who belong to structured platforms such as Twiga Foods. The company is also participating in the ongoing study.

Chege said she hoped that the research would influence policy design and implementation to include vulnerable poor consumers in the slums.

  

Halima Elias Mtwethe from Mtepa Village in southern Tanzania is one of the smallholder farmers who borrowed from the Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS). Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADABA/MAFINGA, Tanzania , Mar 31 2021 (IPS)

Small agricultural loans, disbursed through mobile phones and targeting specific farming activities at different phases of production, have more than doubled food productivity among thousands of smallholder farmers in southern and central parts of Tanzania over the past three years, improving their livelihoods.

IPS travelled the region this month and spoke to many farmers who attested to how the new form of controlled village-specific lending resulted in their successful harvest.

Peter Lulandala, a smallholder farmer from central Tanzania’s Iringa Province, is one of those farmers.

Lulandala is servicing a TZS one million ($312) loan he borrowed from a local community bank. The problem was that once the money had been paid out to him in a single instalment he was unable to keep aside the funds for the various farming phases.

“We could borrow money, which was usually given in a single batch mostly during the planting season. For most of us, it was extremely difficult to keep part of the money in our houses or on personal bank accounts just to wait for the weeding or harvesting season.

“As smallholder farmers in the villages, we have many urgent things that always require cash. For example, it will be very difficult to see my children go to bed for the second day in a row without food and yet I have cash under my pillow or in my personal account,” Lulandala told IPS.

That was until three years ago when an innovative new money lending product became available in his village. Through the new model, smallholder farmers who belong to particular groups (like farmer groups or reside in certain villages), are expected to save some money with a targeted financial institution before borrowing three times their savings.

“This is an innovative product introduced to us by the Alliance for as Green Revolution in Africa in collaboration with the Small Entrepreneurs Loan Facility (SELF) project to help smallholder farmers access agricultural finance, and to help them use the money for the intended purpose,” said Khassim Masengo, the manager of Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS) in Madaba District, Ruvuma Province, southern Tanzania.

Farmers are guaranteed by two signatures of fellow group members. What makes the SACCOS lending different is that once the loan is approved, the farmer can only access it in phases.

“We disburse it in three phases so that the farmers can only access what they need during the planting season, then the second disbursement can only be released at the right time for weeding and top-dressing, and finally the last payment is for harvesting and post-harvest handling,” Masengo told IPS.

Lulandala said the new lending structure has worked for him.

“But since this particular cash is kept by the bank and with an agreement on how it will be disbursed, I will always look for an alternative way to feed my children as the money waits for the intended purpose,” said the farmer who hails from Itengulinyi village, 15 kilometres off the main highway that connects Makambako and Iringa towns.

The farmers are expected to pay back the loans after harvest.

“Once they harvest, we encourage them to keep their produce with particular warehouses, and based on the warehouse receipts, we can give them personal loans worth half of their produce for immediate domestic use or further investment as they wait for better prices,” explained Masengo.

According to Hedwig Siewertsen, the head of Inclusive Finance at AGRA, many African smallholder farmers fail to achieve their full potential because they have no access to agricultural finance.

She said that unless farmers have collateral to show that they can pay back loans, banks would not loan to them. Siewertsen noted that there was need to come up with innovative means through which smallholder farmers can access agricultural finance without necessarily offering collateral. 

“Our main aim is to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness, access and impact of financial and agribusiness products and services for smallholder farmers in Africa,” said Siewertsen.

Farm produce at the Igodikafu Warehouse in Mbuyuni village, Pawaga Ward in central Tanzania. Based on the warehouse receipts, the Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS) can give farmers personal loans worth half their produce for immediate domestic use or further investment as they wait for better prices. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, increasing food productivity is vital, given the population growth and intensifying climate change. And this, according to the report, can only be achieved through new innovations.

It also notes that sustainable agriculture needs funding and this is particularly difficult in developing countries.

“It can be hard to funnel money in from investors, particularly for developing countries. In the FSI, the top ten countries most likely to attract investment in sustainable agriculture are all European, with the exception of the US and Israel. And while most countries in the index offer some form of public financing for agricultural innovation, 12 countries—nine of which are in sub- Saharan Africa—do not,” the report notes.  

Unlike MUCOBA Bank, which works with farmers in small groups of 10 to 15 members, Mahanje SACCOS works with villages. This means that SACCOS’s offerings are specific to members of these villages and it also allows for traceability and easy service provision.

It also gives SACCOS security because they are able to engage the borrowers in person and from their homes.

“For one to qualify for a farming loan from this SACCOS, the first requirement is that they must be descendants of one of the eight targeted villages, and that must be confirmed by the village elder of that particular village,” said Masengo.

“The main reason is that we need to work with farmers who are well known by the villagers, and whom we can access for extension services,” he said.

So far, 2,847 members of Mahanje SACCOS, among them 892 female farmers who hail from the neighbouring villages of Mahanje, Madaba, Lituta, Mtepa, Magingo, Mkongotema, Lukira and Kipingo in Madaba District, Ruvuma Province, Tanzania have become net producers of maize and beans over the past three years. They are now able to export their produce to neighbouring districts.

SACCOS has since been converted into a fully fledged bank registered by the Central Bank of Tanzania, and it is offering credit and savings services, but specifically for farmers from the eight target villages.

However, MUCOBA Bank, which is a community bank headquartered in Mafinga town in Central Tanzania, covers a larger area and targets smallholder farmers in far areas that do not have good infrastructural access to urban centres. It currently has some 50 farmer member groups.

“Our bank has agents who are also our agricultural extension officers on the ground whom we use to register farmers through farmer groups, then send us information via internet,” Philipo Raymond, the general manager for MUCOBA bank, told IPS.

With MUCOBA Bank, qualifying farmers are then given their money through mobile phones, and once they harvest, they can service their loans through the same digital channel.

With both institutions, farmers have been able to borrow as little as TZS200,000 ($87) or as much as TZS15 million ($6,520).

“Besides receiving the moneys in batches to serve specific needs, use of M-Pesa payment has made it easier for us because we do not have to travel all the way to town, and we have reduced the risk of carrying hard cash in our pockets,” Emanik Mgwiranga, the chair of the Nguvu Kazi Itengulinyi farmers group from Itengulinyi Village, 44 kilometres from the nearest town, Mafinga, told IPS.

The main crops grown are maize, beans and rice, but some farmers also include Irish potatoes.

In addition, the Mahanje SACCOS has introduced indigenous poultry farming to cushion farmers when farming seasons fail or when market prices for their produce are still low.

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Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), says environmental issues are development issues and therefore are everybody’s issues. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Feb 22 2021 (IPS)

Its time for the world to radically change our ways if we are to make peace with the planet and create the environmental conditions so that all of humanity can thrive, delegates attending the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) heard this morning.

The assembly, world’s top environmental decision-making body attended by government leaders, businesses, civil society and environmental activists, met virtually today under a theme “Strengthening Actions for Nature to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”. It concludes Feb. 23.

Ahead of the assembly, IPS interviewed Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), to find out what to expect from the two-day event.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What outcome should African countries expect from the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)?

Joyce Msuya (JM): UNEA is the highest international authority on environmental issues, and is focusing on nature and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

In terms of African countries, I will put three things on the table.  One is Action. Science has already spoken. Climate change is an issue, and biodiversity loss is happening at a faster rate than ever before, and lastly, pollution, especially plastic pollution is a big problem. So what we need is to bring the African voices and leadership to UNEA, to collectively see what African countries plan to do in terms of actions in delivering around these three planetary crises.

The second thing is partnerships. Environmental issues are development issues and they are everybody’s issues. Citizens can make little changes in their households, communities can make little changes for example on waste management, and those who live around the oceans can take care of the blue economy. So we need to see how the governments work together with the private sector, indigenous communities, with the youth and even children to address the environmental changes.

The third issue is the support to the UNEP. UNEP is the only United Nations largest entity located in the Southern Hemisphere. So this is the time it needs to be supported not just by the government of Kenya, but by African governments.

IPS: How is the COVID-19 situation going to affect these outcomes?

JM: COVID-19 has already impacted and is still going to impact the meeting in three ways. The pandemic has actually shown us the interconnectedness of environment as well as of human health. Last June for example, UNEP released a study on zoonotics to show the connection between nature and viruses.

In terms of the impact on the meeting, this is the first virtual meeting with over 100 countries participating online. This virtual connectivity was driven by COVID-19.

Thirdly, because of the virtual connectivity, countries and member states that are not represented in Nairobi will be able to join through internet connectivity. So the inclusive multilateralism will also be showcased as part of the meeting. 

IPS: What informed the choice of UNEA-5’s theme, ‘Strengthening Actions for Nature to achieve the 2020 agenda on SDGs’?

JM: The design and the agreement of the theme was grounded on a consultative process. For example in Africa, there was the African ministerial meeting looking at environmental issues. The theme was proposed for member states consideration and so they debated for its relevance, it’s implication for different countries and they collectively decided on this theme. It is a timely theme for the nature, but also for the SDGs. We are nine years away for the 2030 deadline for the SDGs.

As the UN Secretary General has already said, this is the UN decade for action when it comes to agenda 2030.

IPS: The UN Secretary General has also said that this is the year he is pushing for commitments from all member states for zero emissions by 2050, and the COP is the most appropriate forum where this should materialize. What does the UNEP want to see in terms of commitments?

JM: We work under various teams under the Secretary General and what he said is actually what has been guiding our work. We work very closely with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP) on climate change and we are providing science to help the discussions. As well, we should not forget about the COP on biodiversity, which will be hosted by China because nature and climate change go hand in hand.

In addition, we are providing science to inform for example businesses. Recently we launched the Global Environmental Outlook for Business to provide data and science to help businesses understand what role they can play in reducing the impact of climate change.

IPS: In many African countries, people have invaded wetlands with buildings being constructed in such areas especially in urban areas to accommodate the surging population. Is this a concern to you? If so, how can it be addressed?

JM: In UNEP we believe that wetlands are important in maintaining micro-climates in the areas where they occur, as well as releasing moisture into the atmosphere through evaporation.

At the global level we advocate for the preservation of the wetlands. We have worked with a number of countries in sharing experiences that are working very well on preservation of wetlands  from one country to another. Our science also helps inform how wetlands can be preserved and in Kenya here for example, we work with the government at their request to provide technical assistance and science to support their efforts in protecting the wetlands.

Overall in many African countries, we are starting a discussion with ministries of environment where we are advocating for the preservation of wetlands.

IPS: What kind of policies do we need to put in place to reverse the biodiversity loss across the world?

JM: One of the places where UNEP has been working with the Biodiversity Secretariat is on the post 2020 Biodiversity Framework. Parties, member states and the environment community have been looking at the lessons learned from previous studies. And now there is a new biodiversity framework that will be discussed at the COP.

So, one, is providing substantive support to the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The second, for example in Kenya, we are working with the Ministry of Interior on tree planting. The government has set out a goal of planting millions of trees over the next two years, and through our Africa department. We are supporting those efforts. We have had some of our staff members join hands with local communities to plant trees.

Then third area is on partnerships. Trees are important not only for the environment, but also for the agriculture sector. So we are joining hands with other parts of the UN to advocate and support tree planting.

IPS: How has COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns impacted on climate action globally?

JM: That is a very interesting question. From the time the pandemic came in place almost a year ago, a number of countries shut down including offices and economic activities. What anecdotal evidence seems to suggest is that air pollution has been addressed. This is because there were no many cars in the streets, and there was no much pollution into the air.

However, we should not forget that the pandemic is still a humanitarian problem and a crisis because people have lost jobs and many more have lost lives. We have been working with the World Health Organisation for example to try and understand the link between nature and health.

We are also mindful that this is also an economic problem, and we are seeing a number of countries now rebuilding their economies.

But the post COVID-19 era provides us with an opportunity for a green reconstruction of our economies. So the pandemic has been a reflecting time, but it has also shown that UNEP, member states and multilateralism can still function virtually.

  

Excerpt:

Dominic Kimara, the farm manager at an agri-food company, stands in a rice field grown using conservation agriculture technique. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
AMURU, Uganda/NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 23 2020 (IPS)

In Amuru district, 47 kilometres from Gulu town in northwestern Uganda, the Omer Farming Company has proven that it is possible to farm on thousands of acres of land using methods that conserve the environment and its biodiversity.

On a 5,000 acre piece of land, the company is growing upland rice with a yield of up to 3.5 metric tons per acre, using the conservation agriculture method.

“We do not plough the field, and we do not use fertilisers,” Dominic Kimara, the farm manager at the company, told IPS. “Instead, we grow a leguminous crop known as sunn hemp, and when it is 50 percent flowering, we roll it on the ground so that it can decompose and form green manure,” he explained.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, this type of farming technique has several advantages for the environment because it reduces the use of farm machineries (which often emit carbon), sequesters carbon, and is cost effective and beneficial to the soil.

According to the report ‘Fixing the Business of Food initiative‘ by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), agri-food companies must consider the environmental and social impacts of business operations, including their production processes and other internal processes, with a focus on issues such as resource use (land, water, energy) and emissions, respect for human rights, diversity and inclusion, and decent work conditions that improve livelihoods of employees and their families.

The report, which was released on Sept. 22 alongside the 75^th session of the U.N. General Assembly in partnership with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the Santa Chiara Lab (SCL) and the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (CCSI), identifies a four pillar framework for alignment of the food and agriculture sector with the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Indeed the four pillar framework is a sort of instruction manual to guide our efforts towards the active engagement of the private sector in the implementation of the 2030 agenda,” said Mariangela Zappia, ambassador and permanent representative of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the U.N. in New York.

However, the experts observed that despite a steady increase in investments in sustainable development and climate action, only eight percent of public climate finance is directed to the agri-food sector.

“There is one big risk: that a lot of our colleagues, a lot of other actors in the world of business feel the danger, but they do not have the courage to really take actions within their company to make these very difficult decisions,” said Guido Barilla, chair of Barilla Group and the BCFN Foundation, noting that the Barilla Group had to take a tough decision to stop the use of palm oil, which is the cheapest source of fat, but contributes to deforestation.

“We are late in the 2030 Agenda, we are losing time in completing the sustainability goals and to really rationalise the dangers and lower the dangers on climate change and on sustainability issues. It’s unaffordable. We need to make a call to action,” he said during a virtual launch of the report.

The report further points out that the shift towards more sustainable and healthier diets is a strong leverage to improve both planetary and human health.

This comes after a warning by another study about India that projects levels of undersupply and consequent malnutrition will significantly increase in 2030 and 2050 scenarios.

“Policy incentives in Indian agriculture since the Green Revolution have predominantly been focused on achieving caloric food security through increased production of cereals (wheat and rice),” wrote the researchers in a study titled ‘Sustainable food security in India—Domestic production and macronutrient availability’.

This, according to the scientists, has resulted in a heavy carbohydrate-based diet (65–70 percent of total energy intake) which may be significantly lacking in adequate diversity for the provision of other important nutrients.

The BCFN report points out that there is need for a radical transformation in order to cope with the environmental, social, and economic challenges of agri-food systems at global and local levels. “In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated global development challenges especially for the most vulnerable communities around the globe,” it reads in part.

So far, the European Union is already promoting such transformation through the European Green Deal and the ‘Farm to Fork’ Strategy, aiming to make European food ‘the global standard for sustainability’.

The authors explored the main gaps in aligning practices and strategies to sustainability principles through a deep qualitative analysis of sustainability reports for 2018 and 2019 published by 12 global companies with high reputations in terms of sustainability.

The other pillars include contribution to healthy and sustainable dietary patterns through its products and strategies, and the impact and influence of companies beyond the perimeter of their direct and outsourced operations. The report notes that in some contexts, companies have co-responsibility for enhanced sustainability throughout their supply chains, value chains and within the ecosystems in which they operate.

The last pillar considers companies’ external strategies and engagement: both with the communities where they operate and with the rules that govern them.

“We must generate partnerships between the private sector and the public sector so that everyone in the world has access to healthy diets that are produced sustainably,” said Rachel Kyte, the Dean, at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Africa’s rapidly-growing cities and food markets with a turnover of up to $250 billion per year offer the largest and fastest growing market opportunity to the continent’s 60 million farms. But getting the food to market from rural areas remains a challenge. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Kenya/TORIT STATE, South Sudan, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

In Torit State, southern South Sudan, Margaret Itto is one of the farmers in Africa’s youngest country who have invested heavily in agriculture. But she is not able to access the lucrative market for her produce in the capital Juba simply because of poor roads.

“Road infrastructure in this country is a big hindrance,” said Itto. “Getting the produce from the farms to the stores, then to the market is very challenging. Many times, my workers have had to sleep in the bush because their vehicle got stuck,” she told IPS.

Itto, who grows groundnuts, sunflower, maize, beans and sesame, among other crops, has had to endure huge post harvest losses, especially when it rains as this makes roads impassable.

Margaret Itto (right) on her groundnut farm in Torit, South Sudan. She has had to endure huge post harvest losses especially whenever it rains during the harvesting season because the inadequate roads means its difficult to get the food to market. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

In sub-Saharan Africa 40 precent of staple foods fail to reach markets because of poor roads and market access limitations, according to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).

To this end, importers have taken advantage of the demand by supplying low quality food products to Africa’s cities. “Given our high cost of production, many urban dwellers end up consuming imported low quality food because they are far cheaper than locally produced food,” observed Dr James Nyoro, the Governor for Kiambu County in Central Kenya.

Africa’s rapidly-growing cities and food markets with a turnover of up to $250 billion per year offer the largest and fastest-growing market opportunity to the continent’s 60 million farms, according to a new report released alongside the ongoing virtual Africa Green Revolution Forum. But for African farmers to take advantage of the huge market opportunity there is a need for investment in non-urban road infrastructure, small and intermediary cities, improved urban food systems governance, and food safety regulations and enforcement, among other things.

The Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR) — an annual findings of the state of agriculture on the continent which is authored by experts from the United Nations, various universities and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), among other institutions — highlights five key priority areas that must be taken care of.

“There will be need for improved urban food system governance, efficient urban wholesale markets, food safety regulation and enforcement, regional free trade and agricultural policy harmonisation, and agricultural research focused on high-growth, high-value food commodities,” said Prof. Rudy Rabbinge, a Professor Emeritus in Sustainable Development and Food Security at Wageningen University, and one of the lead authors of the report.

Rabbinge’s sentiments resonate with findings of an earlier report by the BCFN, that the most critical challenge are weak governance structures, insufficient or low resources and capacity, lack of professional training, and persistent conflict and lack of coherence between sectors, actors and jurisdictions.

These challenges, according to the BCFN report, are recognised in the new normative global sustainable development agendas agreed to by national governments, but they will have to be contextually relevant, locally adapted, better supported implementation efforts in food governance.

Daniele Fattibene, research scientist at the BCFN, told IPS that it is crucial to launch policies and initiatives to preserve food security in African urban areas. “COVID-19 has exposed many people in African urban areas to poverty and hunger. Most of them who were employed in casual labours lost their jobs during lockdown. While some have returned to rural areas where access to food was easier, others cannot go for this option, as they already escaped from violence or hunger,” he said.

According to Andrew Cox, the chief of staff and strategy at AGRA, a cohort of new, non-traditional actors – including city planners, mayors, district councils, trader organisations and public health professionals – are becoming key players in the implementation of agricultural policy at a time when Africa’s agri-food systems are shifting increasingly towards urban areas.

This was echoed by Fattibene, who believes that African mayors should invest in urban agriculture, as a way to shorten food chains and preserve them from sudden external shocks as a medium and long-term intervention.

“In this sense, local authorities should support smallholders producers and SMEs to form cooperatives and encourage supermarkets and other grocers to source their products locally instead of importing products,” he said, adding that they should develop tailored strategies to effectively map their food systems, taking as a reference other cities in the Global South such as Quito in Ecuador, which has developed effective urban food resilience plans.

“This may allow develop[ment] of early warning tools to avoid food emergencies in urban areas,” he told IPS.

The main road linking Magwi town to Lobone town at the border of South Sudan and Uganda. In sub-Saharan Africa 40 precent of staple food fails to reach markets because of transport infrastructure and market access limitations. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

The AASR report also gives an example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where access to markets is the weakest in Africa, raising farm production costs and reducing the scope for profitable trade and non-farm investments.

Another challenge is to do with cross border trade policies. This was heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, when countries across the globe decided to restrict food exports due to the pandemic, thereby exacerbating food insecurity, especially in Africa’s urban areas.

Locally, restrictions at the border between Kenya and Tanzania for example saw perishable foodstuff go to waste during the height of the pandemic as truck drivers waited to clear with authorities on both sides.

However, the AASR authors are optimistic that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is moving forward and could mark a milestone in improved policy that allows scaling of investment in production, processing, and trade and much lower costs of operation.

As cities continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, Fattibene says that authorities should launch measures to protect those employed in informal sectors such as street food vendors in open air markets, who were seriously affected by the crisis, and as well support those children who rely on school meals as their main daily source of safe and nutritious food as an immediate short term measure.

“To implement all these measures, additional funding for local authorities will be required,” he said.

72-year-old Ogiek community elder, Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga, inspects one of the trees felled by foreigners in 1976. Ogiek community protests put an end to government approved logging of the indigenous red cedar trees here. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
CHEPKITALE, Kenya , Jul 21 2020 (IPS)

The Ogiek community, indigenous peoples from Kenya’s Chepkitale National Reserve, are in the process of implementing a modern tool to inform and guide the conservation and management of the natural forest. The community has inhabited this area for many generations, long before Kenya was a republic. Through this process, they hope to get the government to formally recognise their customary tenure in line with the Community Land Act.

In collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), community elders, civil society members and representatives from the 32 clans that form the Chepkitale Ogiek community are mapping their ancestral territory using a methodology known as Participatory 3-Dimensional Modelling (P3DM).

Technically speaking, P3DM or 3D maps brings together three elements that were previously considered impossible to integrate – local spatial and natural resource knowledge, geographic information systems (GIS) and physical modelling.

“The mapping will support the spatial planning and management of the Chepkitale National Reserve by identifying actions required to address the various challenges affecting the management and conservation of the natural resources in the targeted area,” John Owino, Programme Officer for the Water and Wetlands Programme at IUCN, told IPS.

The process, which started in 2018, involves extensive dialogue with community members in order to document their history, indigenous knowledge of forest conservation and protection of natural resources using their traditional laws and geographical territories.

According to IUCN, which is providing both technical and financial support, the exercise was projected to be completed by the end of 2020. However, this target will be delayed as a result of the prevailing coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the Ogiek’s unique traditional community laws recorded in the participatory mapping exercise state that charcoal burning is totally prohibited, poaching is strictly forbidden and commercial farming is considered illicit.

“In this community, we relate with trees and nature the same way we relate with humans. Felling a mature tree in our culture is synonymous to killing a parental figure,” Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga, a 72-year-old community elder, told IPS. “Why should you cut down a tree when you can harvest its branches and use them for whatever purpose?” he posed.

Very famously, in 1976, the Ogiek community protests put an end to government-approved logging of the indigenous red cedar trees here.

The trees, felled some 44 years ago, still lie perfectly untouched on the ground in Loboot village.

The Ogiek indigenous community who live in Kenya’s Mount Elgon forest have conserved the forest’s natural ecosystem for centuries. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

While the Ogiek are an asset to the conservation of the forested area within the park, their dispute with the government over their rights to the forested land has been a long-running one.

• There have been several attempts by the government to evict the community from the forest, following the gazetting of the entire Ogiek community land as the ‘Chepkitale National Reserve in Mount Elgon,’ which made the land they live on a protected area from the year 2000.
• Since then, police officers invaded the Ogiek community land several times, torching their houses, destroying their property and forcefully driving them away from the forest.
• But in 2008, the community, through Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project (CIPDP) — a community based organisation that brings together all Ogiek community members — went to court for arbitration. The court issued orders to immediately halt the forceful evictions. However, the case is yet to be determined.

“In many indigenous communities, governments have always used an excuse of environmental destruction to evict residents, and that was the same thing they said about our community,” Peter Kitelo, co-founder of the CIPDP, told IPS.

“However, we have proved them wrong, and when the case is finally determined, we are very hopeful that we will emerge victorious,” he said.

The 3D mapping, according to Owino, is in line with the Whakatane Mechanism, an IUCN initiative that supports the implementation of “the new paradigm” of conservation. It focuses on situations where indigenous peoples and/or local communities are directly associated with protected areas and are involved in its development and conservation as a result of their land and resource rights, including tenure, access and use.

• The mechanism promotes and supports the respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and their free prior and informed consent in protected areas policy and practice, as required by IUCN resolutions, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

There are previous examples of P3DM mapping proving successful among another Ogiek communities — those in the Mau Forest.

• In 2006, a P3DM exercise involving 120 men and women from 21 Ogiek clans in the Mau Forest resulted in a 3D map of the Eastern Mau Forest Complex.
• According to the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), the 3D map was persuasive enough to convince the Kenyan Government of the Ogiek’s right to the land, and the need to protect the area from land grabbing and resource exploitation.

The CTA further reported that a rich P3DM portfolio of outputs, including reports, papers and maps, have been used at international forums to document the value of local/indigenous knowledge in sustainable natural resource management, conflict management and climate change adaptation, and in bridging the gap between scientific and traditional knowledge systems.

In addition to the 3D map, the Ogiek community is already working with the National Land Commission of Kenya, an independent body with several mandates. Among them is the mandate to initiate investigations, on its own initiative or based on a complaint, into present or historical land injustices and to recommend appropriate redress.

“Once completed, the 3D map will be a very important tool for this community because apart from effective management of the natural resources in Chepkitale, we will use it as an instrument to prove how we have sustainably coexisted with nature for generations,” said Kitelo.

The Ogiek community want their territory officially recognised as community land provided for by Kenya’s new constitution, particularly in relation to the Community Land Act, 2016, which provides for the “recognition, protection and registration of community land rights; management and administration of community land”.

According to elderly members of the Ogiek community, the forest is their main source of livelihood.

Inside the forest, the community keeps bees for honey production, which is a major part of their diet apart from milk, blood and meat. They also gather herbs from the indigenous trees, shrubs and forest vegetation, and feed on some species found in the forest. Their diet is not limited to bamboo shoots, wild mushrooms and wild vegetables such as stinging nettle.

“Since I was born 72 years ago, this forest has always been the main source of our livelihoods,” Chemwotei Muranga told IPS.

Now, armed with traditional knowledge of forest management and conservation of natural resources, community-based rules and regulations, and provisions within the country’s new constitution and the Community Land Act— they hope to be doing so for centuries to come.

“Living in such a place is the only lifestyle I understand,” Chemwotei Muranga said.

The inclusive approach of supporting indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation will be a major focus at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, next January. The topic falls under one of the main themes of the Congress, “Upholding rights, ensuring effective and equitable governance” with sessions aiming to discuss and provide recommendations for how the conservation community can support the existing stewardship of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Samson Tanui, from Kenya’s Eldoret town in the Rift Valley region, is practising agroecology and his permaculture unit has become the centre of attraction for farmers from near and afar amid food shortages during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Jun 15 2020 (IPS)

With just a quarter of an acre of land in Kesses near Kenya’s Eldoret town in the Rift Valley region, Samson Tanui is practising agroecology and his permaculture unit has become the centre of attraction for farmers from near and afar amid food shortages during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“Many people are impressed that even with the markets being closed to enable social distancing and the containment of COVID-19, my household had sufficient food and even more to sell to neighbours,” the 45-year-old farmer and a father of two told IPS.

On his plot, he grows different types of vegetables including kales, amaranth, vine spinach, ordinary spinach, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli and African nightshade. For the food crops, he grows maize, arrow roots and sweet potatoes in a homemade greenhouse. He also keeps chicken, has beehives for honey, rabbits, dairy goats, a dairy cow and pigeons.

As a result, Tanui’s household has been food secure since 2017 despite the small piece of land on which he farms. He’s also become an inspiration to several farmers who come every Saturday to learn about permaculture.

Tanui’s methods of agriculture are proven to be sustainable. In fact, the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), recognises that agroecology “taps into traditional agricultural knowledge and practices, plays an important role in sustainable farming by harnessing local ecosystems”.

“Tapping into local ecosystems, for example via using biomass and biodiversity, the traditional farming practices that make up agroecology can improve soil quality and achieve food yields that provide balanced nutrition and increase fair trade,” the Food Sustainability Index notes.

However, a new study by researchers from Biovision, International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored or disregarded by major donors.

The study titled ‘Money Flows: what is holding back investment in agroecological research for Africa?’ released on Jun. 10 focused mainly on; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, because it is the biggest philanthropic investor in agri-development; on Switzerland, a major bilateral donor; and Kenya, one of Africa’s leading recipients and implementers of agricultural research for development.

One of the major findings, according to Hans Herren, the President for Biovision, is that most governments, both in developing and developed countries, still favour “green revolution” approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food.

“These approaches have failed,” said Herren, winner of the 1995 World Food Prize and 2013 Right Livelihood Award. “They have failed ecosystems, farming communities, and an entire continent,” he said in a statement to the press.

Herren added, “With the compound challenges of climate change, pressure on land and water, food-induced health problems and pandemics such as COVID-19, we need change now. And this starts with money flowing into agroecology.”

However, Dr Lusike Wasilwa, a senior research scientist at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), believes that donors are investing more money in industrial agriculture not because it is the magic bullet for Kenya and other African countries, but because they have an agenda.

“Kenya needs to wake up and find its position in production of crops such as avocado and macadamia nuts, which are largely grown using sustainable and largely environment-friendly methods,” Wasilwa, who is also the director of Crops Systems at KALRO, told IPS. “No donor is willing to support such crops that could easily make Africa rich,” she said.

So far, Kenya is the number one country in avocado production in Africa and fourth in the world. It is also third in the world for macadamia nut production.

“We should not let donors set our research agenda because they are not going to fund research that [will help Africa] make money,” the scientist told IPS in an interview. She challenged the government to honour the Malabo declaration and invest at least 10 percent of the GDP in agriculture instead of waiting on donors for finance.

According to the new report, just like the case of Tanui in Eldoret, agroecology has the potential to build resilience and sustainability at all levels, by reducing vulnerability to future supply shocks and trade disruptions, reconnecting people with local food production, and making fresh, nutritious food accessible and affordable to all.

This, according to the scientists, will reduce the diet-related health conditions that make people susceptible to diseases, and provide fair wages and secure conditions to food and farm workers, thereby reducing their vulnerability to economic shocks and their risks of contracting and spreading illnesses.

However, the findings show that very little agricultural research funding in Africa is being used to transform such food and farming systems.

The scientists found that only 3 percent of Gates Foundation projects in Africa support sustainable, regenerative approaches or agroecology. 

Nonetheless, the report points out that support for agroecology is now growing across the agri-development community, particularly in light of climate change. But this hasn’t yet translated into a meaningful shift in funding flows.

“We need to change funding flows and unequal power relations. It’s clear that in Africa as elsewhere, vested interests are propping up agricultural practices based on an obsession with technological fixes that is damaging soils and livelihoods, and creating a dependency on the world’s biggest agri-businesses. Agroecology offers a way out of that vicious cycle,” Olivia Yambi, co-chair of IPES-Food said in a statement.

According to KALRO’s Wasilwa, Africa has huge population that can potentially provide manpower, sufficient land, good soil, and the sun, “but the only problem is that we do not support what is the best for the continent”.

Dunga Papyrus Boardwalk tour guide Edgar Ochieng shows a handbook documenting birds found at Dunga Beach. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
KISUMU, Kenya, Apr 6 2020 (IPS)

At around 11am on a Saturday, Luke Okomo arrives at Dunga Beach, on the outskirts of Kenya’s Kisumu City, and heads straight to what is known as the ‘Dunga Papyrus Boardwalk’.

He pays Sh200 ($2), the daily fee for local tourists and students, and then joins a group of five visitors already taking a tour of the boardwalk, which is elevated above a wetland swamp and surrounded by  papyrus reeds. He then takes a seat in an open café and orders a drink as he enjoys the view of Africa’s biggest fresh water body.

It’s a good spot for some bird watching.

It’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago, Dunga Beach, which is one of the most popular fish landing sites in Kisumu, used to be filthy and a source of pollution that spilled into Lake Victoria.

But two years ago the Dunga Eco Tourism and Environmental Youth Group, with financial support from the French Embassy in Kenya, came up with the idea to turn the marshland here, which extends into the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, into a tourist site.

“Our main aim was to generate extra income for the youth, apart from what we get from the fishing business, while at the same time conserving the aquatic environment,” Samuel Owino, the coordinator of the Dunga Eco Tourism and Environmental Youth Group, tells IPS.

Edgar Ochieng, a 28-year-old boardwalk tour guide, tells IPS that along the small museum onsite, the boardwalk has become a perfect tourism site for local and foreign visitors.

“Local visitors, most of them students from different parts of the country, come over the weekends during the day to learn from our small museum, which displays the traditional wares and crafts such as musical instruments, various functional artefacts, ornaments, costumes, all made by the local residents, most of them women groups,” Ochieng says.

The Dunga Beach Museum, which displays the traditional wares and crafts such as musical instruments, various functional artefacts, ornaments, costumes, all made by the local residents, is located on top of the boardwalk. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Owino points out though that many foreign visitors prefer visiting very early in the morning in the hope of catching site of the rare and threatened bird species that make their home here.

According to Birdlife International, the Winam Gulf is one of the most reliable sites in Kenya for viewing  the scarce and threatened bird species — the Papyrus yellow warbler (Chloropeta gracilirostris) — which is often seen along the lakeward side of the swamp.

One can also see the  white-winged swamp warbler (Bradypterus carpalis) and papyrus canary (Serinus koliensis) — all papyrus endemics.

Ochieng notes that the Dunga Eco Tourism and Environmental Youth Group has have identified 46 different bird species, which they have documented in a handbook called ‘Dunga Wetland Birds’.

There are also many snakes here too.

“During the early hours, there is an opportunity to see different types of snakes, but most importantly, many visitors are interested in seeing a huge python that lives in this swamp and the sitatunga antelopes,” says Owino.

Though the guides are quick to point out that the boardwalk, which extends about 50 metres, has been coated with waterproof material that also prevents reptiles from climbing it.

“This kind of innovation is a good thing for the lake ecosystem,” says Ken Jumba, a county environment officer at the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) in Kisumu.

“We encourage entrepreneurs from all other communities around the entire lake to learn from what is happening here in Dunga,”Jumba tells IPS.

The construction of the boardwalk in 2016 also resulted in establishing a protected area around the wetland. 

“When our proposal was approved for funding, we involved the county government who helped relocating the traders from the wetland, some of whom had erected pit latrines above the water so that the sludge drops directly in the lake,” recalls Owino.

Now small businesses, including food places run by local entrepreneurs, have moved away to the upper side of the beach, which has led to improvement of the lake’s biodiversity.

The boardwalk extends 50 metres into the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

About 100 metres away, there is a huge biogas plant that has been welcomed. The plant, which produces some 50,000 litres of ethanol gas daily, makes use of the invasive water hyacinth that grows wildly on the lake as a key ingredient. 

• Agricultural activities in the lake basin has meant that fertiliser and agricultural chemicals have found their way into Lake Victoria through the rivers that feed it. This has resulted in the flourishing of the water hyacinth and algae, both of which put the aquatic ecosystem around the lake at risk.
• Water hyacinth or Eichhornia crassipes has been responsible for decreasing numbers of fish species found on Lake Victoria. It grows so rapidly that in some areas the water beneath cannot even be seen and boats are unable to pass through it.

“We usually shred the water hyacinth, which is considered to be pollution on the lake, and then mix it with all the inedible waste material from the fish to generate the gas,” Daniel Owino, the technical operator of the biogas plant, tells IPS.

Meanwhile, industrial activities around Kisumu and other towns in neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania–Lake Victoria also extends to these countries–have turned the lake into a health hazard.

It will take much more commitment and cooperation to ensure that the lake is saved. Though the creation of the Dunga Papyrus Boardwalk and the cleaning up of Dunga Beach can be considered a good start. 

Tanzanian investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera has finally been released from jail after seven months in prison. Courtesy: Amnesty International

By Isaiah Esipisu
KAMPALA, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

After six months in prison, Tanzanian investigative journalist Erick Kabendera has finally been released at a cost of $118,000.

Kabendera was arrested in July 2019 after police claimed that his citizenship was in question.

“We are holding him (Erick Kabendera) for questioning because authorities are doubting his citizenship. We are communicating with the immigration department for further measures,” Regional police commissioner Lazaro Mambosasa told journalists soon after the arrest.

However, when he appeared in court a week later he was charged with leading an organised criminal gang, money laundering and failure to pay taxes.

According to the charge sheet, the journalist “knowingly furnished assistance in the conduct of affairs of a criminal racket, with intent either to reap profit or other benefit”.

In a twist of events, the charge against his citizenship was dropped, and he was later cleared of charges for leading a criminal gang. This left him with the charges of economic crimes which included money laundering and tax evasion.

After postponing his case a number of times, the Director of Public Prosecution on Monday Feb. 24 accepted Kabendera’s plea bargain application, which paved the way for the Kisutu Magistrate’s Court to begin hearing his case.

He pleaded guilty to the charge of money laundering and was fined TZS100 million ($43,000), which he paid, thereby securing his freedom.

However, according to reports, the court slapped him with another fine of 250,000 shillings ($108) for evading tax, and a further 173 million shillings ($75,000) in compensation for the tax evasion, bringing the total fine to about $118,000.

“We welcome his release, but we are deeply concerned about the hefty fines levied against him,” Muthoki Mumo, the sub-Saharan Africa representative to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS in an interview.

Amid speculations that Kabendera pleaded guilty to the crimes due to frustrations of being held indefinitely, Mumo said that she would leave that for the accused to say. “I am hesitant to speak on his behalf because I do not know the circumstances under which he pleaded guilty,” she told IPS.

Amnesty International also welcomed the news of Kabendera’s release, also criticising the fines levied against him.

“It is outrageous that he had to pay such a hefty fine to gain his freedom after having been unjustly jailed for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“Kabendera’s mother died while he was in custody shortly after she was filmed pleading with President John Magufuli to let her son free. He has already suffered so much simply for doing his job and should have been released unconditionally. There is absolutely no justice in what transpired in the Dar es Salaam court today,” Amnesty International Director for East and Southern Africa Deprose Muchena said in a statement.

Kabendera also reportedly suffered illness while in jail.

His detention became a concern for many individuals and organisations, including the United States Embassy and the British High Commission in Tanzania.

In a joint statement, they said, “The U.S. Embassy and the British High Commission are deeply concerned about the steady erosion of due process in Tanzania, as evidenced by the ever more frequent resort to lengthy pre-trial detentions and shifting charges by its justice system.”

“We are particularly concerned about a recent case — the irregular handling of the arrest, detention, and indictment of investigative journalist Erick Kabendera, including the fact that he was denied access to a lawyer in the early stages of his detention, contrary to the Criminal Procedures Act.”

Attempts to reach Kabendera’s family by IPS went unanswered today. But Kabendera reportedly said after the release, “Finally I’ve got my freedom, it’s quite unexpected that I would be out this soon. I’m really grateful to everybody who played their role.”

According to Reporters Without Borders, since Magufuli became president of Tanzania in 2015 the country has suffered an unprecedented decline in press freedom, as the president refuses to tolerate criticism of himself or his policies.

Kabendera has been one of his critics. Prior to his arrest, Kabendera, who also wrote for international news agencies such as the Guardian, the Independent and the local East African, had published an article in The Economist Intelligence Unit about the nation’s president entitled: ‘John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom’. 

It will be remembered that during Magufuli’s second year in office, the Media Services Act was passed. The law allows for harsh penalties for content deemed defamatory, seditious or illegal.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International, the Media Services Act, 2016, enhances censorship, violates the right to information and limits scrutiny of government policies and programmes.

“From 2016, the Tanzania government has used the Media Service Act to close, fine and suspend at least six media outlets for publishing reports on allegations of corruption and human rights violations and the state of Tanzania’s economy,” reads part of the report.

In 2018, the government approved another law to regulate content posted online. According to the new rule, Tanzanians operating online radio stations and video (TV) websites, including bloggers are required to apply for a licence, pay a licence fee upon registration as well as annual fees, totalling about $900 a year.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is urging Tanzania’s regional and international partners and human rights mechanisms to put pressure on the authorities to ensure that the human rights situation in the country does not deteriorate further, including by strongly and publicly condemning the growing human rights violations and abuses and raising individual cases with government officials.

Last year Amnesty International reported that Tanzania had “withdrawn the right of individuals and NGOs to directly file cases against it at the Arusha-based African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights” in a move said to block the ability for individuals and NGOs to seek redress for human rights violations.  

The arrest of Kabendera, according to analysts, could be a strategy by the government to instil fear in journalists who are critiques of the government and its policies.

COP25 ended in Madrid without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

Millions of people, particularly in Africa, who lose their property, homes, and even die due to climate-related disasters will have to wait at least another year for the international community to agree on a means of supporting them.

This became clear when the 25th round of negotiations on climate change came to an end in Madrid, Spain on Dec.15 without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries.

“We expected a review of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage for it to have a clear means of implementation, especially for emergency response in Africa,” Prof Seth Osafo, the Legal adviser of the President of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told IPS.

The Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts was established in 2013 during the 19^th round of climate negotiations in Warsaw, Poland under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“The common person in Africa is suffering and this is an urgent call for international support,” said Michael Arunga, the Emergency Communication Specialist for World Vision’s Mali Response office.

In Mali alone, says Arunga, 5.7 million people are in dire need of humanitarian support, among them 1.6 million children, given the climate crisis and political conflicts in the country.

Mali’s population mainly relies on agriculture as their main source of livelihood. But Arunga notes that the ever-expanding Sahara Desert, frequent droughts and floods have caused the displacement of thousands of families, especially in the northern parts of the West African nation.

Less than two months ago, 42 people died after they were buried alive by landslides in Western Cameroon following heavy rainfall in the Central African Nation.

• In East Africa, more than 130 people in Kenya lost their lives in the past two months as a result of flooding and landslides due to unexpected heavy rains pounding the region. Experts say that the heavy rains are caused by the warming up of the Indian Ocean.
• According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 330,000 people are in need of humanitarian support in the country, while at least 17,000 have been displaced in the past two months.
• “Children’s lives have been interrupted by the ongoing rains and floods in Kenya, with many of them losing their homes, schools and access to health care,” Maniza Zaman, the UNICEF Kenya Representative said in a statement released on Dec. 4.
• In Tizert Village, in the Taroudant region, southern Morocco, people are yet to forget a flash flood that swept across a soccer field on Aug.18, killing at least seven people who were watching a local match.
• Earlier this year, Southern Africa suffered Cyclone Idai and Kenneth, which led to losses of property and lives. A few months later, some countries in the region are currently experiencing extreme droughts, which experts say are as a result of climate change.

“It is evident everywhere that millions of people have been forced to migrate from their homes due to unfavourable climatic conditions and related disasters, people have lost property worth trillions of dollars, and millions more have died across Africa as a result of climate related disasters,” said Robert Muthami, a climate change expert from Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung based in Kenya.

Scientists have already warned that the situation can only worsen in the coming years, and therefore, there is need for urgent climate action.

Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists said progress was slow on getting developed nations to commit to scaling up finance for losses and damage associated with climate change impacts. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to the African negotiators, most negotiators from developed nations were non-committal on scaling up finance. “We have been discussing to very late hours, sometimes up to 3.00am in the morning, but the progress was very slow,” Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists on Friday.

According to Ambassador Seyni Nafo, the former AGN Chair, the team was forced to push some of the most important issues to the next Conference of Parties (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow in 2020.

“It is better to leave Madrid without having decisions on some key issues [rather] than having bad decisions,” said Nafo.

The negotiators said they were avoiding what they referred to as the ‘Kyoto Disease,’ where there is an agreement with rules and procedures, but without any benefit to Africa.

“It is unfortunate that industrialised countries chose to follow the unproductive path, focusing on nitty-gritty and postponing firm commitments,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Secretary for the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). “It was disappointing that they consistently avoided or sidelined any discussion related to providing support, notably finance,” he told IPS.

Studies have shown that Africa emits only four percent of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming, but the continent is the most impacted by climate change.

From left to right: Augustine Njamnshi an environmental legal expert, Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, a negotiator from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mohammed Nasr, the the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) Chair. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 11 2019 (IPS)

As the 25th session of climate negotiations draw to an end this week, the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) have been calling on the world to consider the continent as a special case in terms of implementation of the Paris Agreement and climate finance.

• The Paris Agreement is an agreement reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, France, where the world’s nations undertook a determined course to reduce climate change. Among the commitments was to reduce the increase in global temperatures.

“We have been pushing for Africa to be given special considerations given the climate-related calamities already bedevilling the continent vis-à-vis the negligible amount of greenhouse gases emitted,” Ambassador Mohamed Nasr, the AGN chair and the Head of Environmental Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, told journalists at COP25 in Madrid.

He said that that the Paris Agreement, which was passed in 2015, had little understanding or acknowledgement for Africa’s special circumstances.

• The argument is that the African continent emits a mere 4 percent of the total greenhouse gases emitted globally, yet climate-related impacts are enormous, and science has shown that the situation is only going to worsen in the near future.

“This discussion has taken some time from 2015 until last year when it became clear that the issue has to be taken forward in a more constructive approach,” said Nasr.

Natural disasters

• In 2011, for example, the Horn of Africa region experienced a severe drought that claimed over 260,000 lives, making it one of the worst mass atrocities ever experienced in the region, according to the United Nations Dispatch.
• Another drought followed five years later in 2017, and in the first six months of 2019 there was another devastating drought in the region affecting more than 15.3 million people according to the United Nations.

Immediately after the drought, the Horn of Africa region expected a short rainy season, which usually begins in April. But this didn’t occur and instead the entire region is currently experiencing heavy downpours, which meteorological experts say is due to the warming of the Indian Ocean.

• So far, the region has had more than 300 percent above average rainfall, and this has resulted in floods, mudslides, and the collapse of buildings – which has caused the deaths to hundreds of people, while displacing thousands of households in the region.
• And when the floods eventually end, the region is expected to become a hotspot of waterborne diseases and other climate-related diseases such as malaria.
• At the same time the southern part of the continent is experiencing what farmers say is the worst drought they can remember.
• And earlier this year, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, whose intensity and occurrence was attributed to  climate change, swept through Southern Africa affecting more than 2.2 million people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

According to Augustin Njamnshi, science has already warned that Africa was going to be the most impacted by climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

“Science has already warned that Africa was going to be the most impacted by climate change, and some of the disasters we are witnessing are just but a tip of the iceberg,” Augustine Njamnshi, a Cameroonian environmental legal expert, told IPS.

“We need funds to help our people develop resilience to these disasters, we need to give them appropriate technologies to enable them adapt, and we also need to consider that some of the problems they are experiencing are not their own making, and therefore it is injustice for them,” Njamnshi said.

A U.N. report indicates that African countries are paying between 2 to 9 percent of their GDP on adapting to climate change, a phenomenon caused by the developed world and Asian Tigers. And according to Dr James Murombedzi, a policy expert at the U.N., most of these expenditures are never budgeted for.

In 2017, there were no pastures in many parts of Kenya, leading to massive death of livestock. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Climate Science

According to Nasr, AGN recognises last year’s scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that on average Africa will be impacted at least 2° Celsius more than the rest of the world.

“This means that if the global temperatures rise by 1.5° Celsius, then Africa will experience 3.5, and this is a clear reason why the continent must never be treated the same way as the rest of the world,” said Nasr.

Africa Commitment to Paris Agreement

Nasr points out that despite the calamities, Africa has been at the forefront of combatting climate change, noting that African countries have submitted some of the most ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

• Under the Paris Agreement, all parties were supposed to submit their NDCs, which are a set of interventions prepared by countries to contribute to the reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

“We need special financial and technical support and motivation so as to implement the NDCs in a more sustainable manner,” he said.

Africa’s Natural Resources dilemma

The experts noted that Africa is endowed with natural resources in relation to oil, gas, coal among other minerals.

“We know that the mining is one of the highly emitting industries. But at the same time we know that oil and gas are very important resources for wealth. Yet, there is a call from the international community that we should not invest in such resources,” said Nasr.

“This puts Africa in a huge dilemma because as much as we are ambitious, the socio economic indicator on the continent is very low, hence the need for special supports so as to develop in a sustainable manner,” he said.

According to Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, a senior negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo, it becomes an emotional issue because the continent is suffering the impacts of climate change, which it has not contributed to, and yet it has natural resources which countries are being asked not to use.

“But it is important that we put our emotions aside and instead use objective tools, and those tools are what science says. All we need is to receive means of implementation such as financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building – which are contained in the convection,” said Mpanu Mpanu, the former AGN chair.

Recommendations from last week’s technical sessions are already being presented to high-level government decision makers. Once approved, they will form a basis for climate action for the continent.

Dr Mithika Mwenda of PACJA (right) and Professor Seth Osafo (left), one of the negotiators at the climate talks currently being held in Spain. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

African legislators have been challenged to come up with legal frameworks for climate change to enable countries avoid catastrophes and reactionary emergencies that eat up their budgets.

“African countries are spending up to 3.9 percent of their GDPs on climate emergencies, which in many cases have not been budgeted for,” said Dr. James Murombedzi, the head of the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

During an event on the sidelines of the ongoing 25th Conference Of The Parties (COP25), the U.N. climate negotiations in Madrid, Spain, climate experts, civil society organisations and U.N. representatives observed that legislators in African countries should mainstream climate change in all their national development plans as a way of adapting to the phenomena.

This comes at a time when the East African region is experiencing unprecedented floods due to the 300 percent above average, heavy downpour that is occurring during what is supposed to be a short rainy season. Over the past two weeks, floods have killed more than 100 people in Kenya alone, displacing hundreds of households, breaking river banks, dams and even houses.

• According to meteorological scientists, this is due to the irregular oscillation or variation of Sea Surface Temperatures – a climate-related phenomenon known as Indian Ocean Dipole.
• The floods in East Africa are occurring just months after Cyclones Idai and Kenneth swept through the Southern Africa region affecting more than 2.2 million people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
• In general, analysis from Save the Children show that in 2019 alone, over 1,200 people died as the result of cyclones, floods and landslides in Mozambique, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan and Malawi, leaving at least 33 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity or worse. This has had a huge financial implication on countries, humanitarian agencies and individual families running into millions of dollars.

“What are we going to tell our people?” asked Roger Nkodo Dang, the President for the Pan Africa Parliament during an event at COP25. “As African legislators, we need to play our role, and then speak with one voice to call for funding so as to develop resilience,” he said.

In Africa, climate change has caused drought, change in distribution of rainfall, the drying-up of rivers. Intense flooding causes landslides and in Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to Gareth Phillips, the manager for Climate and Environmental Finance at the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), African politicians can take advantage of low-hanging fruit in terms of climate action, but only if there are sound legislative frameworks in place.

“We can start by enacting legislation that; encourages renewable energy targets and non-fossil fuel obligations, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, while at the same time providing subsidies for renewable energy, and observes the energy efficiency standards, building standards and performance,” said Philips.

He urged them to focus on adaptation instead of mitigation, and take advantage of the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism – a new mechanism being developed by the AfDB that is designed to facilitate payments to project developers for the delivery of certified adaptation benefits.

The delegates were reviewing the role of African parliamentarians in implementing the Paris Agreement, with focus on challenges and prospects.

• Under the agreement, all parties were supposed to submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are a set of interventions prepared by countries to contribute to the reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

However, according to preliminary findings of an ongoing study commissioned by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) in eight selected countries — Botswana, Ethiopia, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia — there is still a long way to go for African countries to implement their suggested NDCs.

“It is clear that many countries do not have legal frameworks on climate change, which should be the main vehicle for implementation of the Paris Agreement,” Dr Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Secretary at PACJA, told IPS.

Countries like Kenya, which has its National Climate Change Framework Policy in place, were seen to be progressing better than those without.

“With this policy, we have been able to mainstream climate change in all national development plans, and this makes it easy to allocate budgetary funds to specific activities directly related to climate change,” Dr Charles Mutai, the Director of Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya, told IPS.

Based on national legislation, county governments have followed suit, where six of them have already enacted county-specific climate change legislations, and this has enabled them to directly allocate funds to adaptation and related activities.

However, according to the new U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) report, unless GHG emissions fall by 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and this is a pointer to even more devastating climate related disasters that what is being experienced at the moment.

In Africa, climate change has caused drought, change in distribution of rainfall, the drying-up of rivers. Intense flooding causes landslides and in Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 2 2019 (IPS)

During the 25th round of climate change negotiations starting today in Madrid, Spain, African civil society organisations will call on governments from both developing and developed nations to play their promised roles in combating climate change.

“We’re fatigued by COP [Conference of Parties] jamborees which have become a ritual every year,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda of the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) – an umbrella organisation that brings together over 1,000 African climate and environment civil society organisations.

“We know the science is clear about the level [in which] we need to act, yet we procrastinate and prevaricate while maintaining our profligate lifestyles,” he told IPS in an interview.

The 25th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP 25) comes a week after the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report warning that unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is an agreement reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, France, where the world’s nations undertook a determined course to reduce climate change. Among the commitments was to reduce the increase in global temperatures.

The annual Emissions Gap Report, which was released on Nov. 26 warns that even if all current unconditional commitments under the Paris Agreement are implemented, temperatures are expected to rise by 3.2°C, bringing even wider-ranging and more destructive climate impacts.

“Any slight change in global temperatures can have a devastating effect on millions of livelihoods, and could expose people to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding,” said Dr Mohammed Said, a climate change research scientist based in Kenya.

According to his research in Kenya’s Arid and Semi Arid regions, people in counties that experienced increased temperatures in the past 50 years have suffered significant loss of livelihoods with some having to change their lifestyles altogether.

“In Turkana County for example, the temperatures increased by 1.8°C, and as a result, the cattle population declined by 60 percent, and now residents have been forced to turn to more resilient camels, goats and sheep,” he told IPS.

It is the same situation all over the world. A study published in Nature Climate Change points out that if global warming causes a rise of 1.5°C or 2°C, then there will be extremely hot summers across Australia, more frequent drought conditions and more frequent heat leading to bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Another study by the United Kingdom’s Met Office reveals that the changing climate will make heat waves a common phenomena worldwide and even intense in the U.K..

In Africa, climate change has caused flooding, drought, change in the distribution of rainfall, and the drying up of rivers. It has affected agriculture, food security and human health. And it has also led to conflicts over resources, impacting national security in various countries.

In Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region.

According to the Kenya Meteorological Department, the above-normal rainfall has been caused by sea surface temperature anomalies in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans caused by global warming. Floods in the region, which have already displaced hundreds of households and have swept away bridges, roads and property, are expected to continue for the next three weeks, according to the meteorological focus.

However, Mwenda believes that all is not lost. He notes that though the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) are inadequate to lead to emission levels required by science and justice, there is still hope that momentum building on their implementation won’t be compromised.

“We will not be tired of telling our leaders that the future generations will judge them harshly as they have failed to rise to the occasion even when science is very clear that we have exceeded planetary boundaries,” he said.

In order to address climate change adequately, civil society is also calling for a dedicated financial mechanism to be established in Madrid to support Loss and Damage with a clear agreement on new sources of finance.

During the 19^th round of negotiations in Poland, the COP established the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (Loss and Damage Mechanism), to address loss and damage associated with impacts of climate change, including extreme events and slow onset events, in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“As we head to Madrid, we expect that all countries will endeavour to deliver on ambitious commitments in climate finance, especially in regard to loss and damage, strong national targets, and clear rules on trading emissions between countries,” said Robert Bakiika, the Executive Director of EMLI Bwaise Facility, a Ugandan NGO and one of the admitted observer organisations at the UNFCCC.

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 15 2019 (IPS)

“Special reports come to address issues that need deeper understanding and deeper research,” Dr James Kairo, one of the lead authors of the ‘Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,’ a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told IPS.

The report focused on what would happen to oceans and cryosphere (frozen parts of our world) which include the polar and high mountains if temperatures increase beyond 1°C above pre-industrial levels to 1.5°C, and beyond.

According to the conclusions, human beings have already affected the oceans and the cryosphere. We can see the impact from the increased temperatures. “If it goes like this unabated, then it will have a huge impact on oceans,” Kario said.

The islands in the oceans and the low-lying areas in East and West Africa are all under threat.

“From mountainous areas, if the temperatures increase by 1.5°C, then we will lose over 80 percent of the snow, and this will have consequences on livelihoods of those people who depend on hydroelectricity, lowland agriculture wildlife and the list is endless,” Kario explained.

Dr James Kairo, one of the lead authors of the ‘Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,’ a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) speaks to IPS from the Africa Climate Risk Conference that was held in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Excerpt:

Smallholder farmers in Isiolo, Kenya sorting beans before sending them to the market in Nairobi. the latest Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR) shows that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the main drivers of food economy on the African continent. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ACCRA, Ghana/ELDORET TOWN, Kenya, Sep 4 2019 (IPS)

Viola Kiptanui, a resident of Langas estate in the outskirts of Kenya’s Eldoret town, has discovered a new way of life – eating only what she knows the source – thanks to a new smallholder entrepreneurship venture.

“Given the many health problems that have emerged, there is need for one to know exactly what they are feeding their families,” said Kiptanui a mother of three children.

Within the Langas shopping centre, residents stream to a newly-established grocery called ‘iAgribizAfrica’ to buy fresh green vegetables and fruits that are grown by Uasin Gishu County’s smallholder farmers and sold directly to the grocery.

“Such entrepreneurships represent a profound turnaround from mere decades ago,” said Dr. Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University, a lead author of the latest Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR).

The report, released on Sept. 3 on the sidelines of the Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Accra, Ghana shows that entrepreneurs from small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the main drivers of the food economy on the African continent.

According to the 220-page document compiled by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), 64 percent of total food consumed on the continent is sourced from SMEs, with only 16 percent coming from larger enterprises, and the remaining 20 percent being grown and eaten by farming households.

“There has been a ‘Quiet Revolution’ in agrifood private sector value chains linking small farmers to burgeoning urban markets and growing towns in Africa. This has spurred farmers’ participation in food and farm input markets,” said Reardon during a media briefing prior to the launch of the report.

These SMEs, often women-led, include food processors, wholesalers, and retailers, and they provide a range of services, from transport and logistics to the sale of inputs such as fertilisers and seed to farmers – says the report.

According to Rodgers Kirwa, a 27-year-old farmer and founder of iAgribizAfrica, there is a growing demand for food whose origin can be traced. 

“I started this business in 2018 and so far, I have 40 smallholder farmers within my network,” he told IPS at the AGRF in Ghana.

The 40 farmers were all recruited and registered by the young entrepreneur, and at some point supported for farm inputs on credit in case of a pressing need.

“The idea is to have farmers we know very well, so that we can monitor what they are growing, advice them on farm inputs, and monitor how they are using them for the safety of our customers,” said Kirwa.

Besides the entrepreneurship, Kirwa is a member of another online platform known as ‘Mkulima Young’ (young farmer) which was started with 10 partners, among them three young agronomists, two marketers, and social media enthusiasts. The platform now has 30,000 subscribers from Kenya and Uganda, mostly seeking information about farming enterprises. It is from this platform that farmers get answers to all their questions.   

“SMEs are the biggest investors in building markets for farmers in Africa today, and will likely remain so for the next 10 to 20 years,” said Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President of AGRA in a statement. “They are not a ‘missing middle,’ as is thought, but the ‘hidden middle,’ ready for support and investment to thrive further. Today, we bring them out into the light.”

Contrary to common belief, the report shows that large enterprises play a relatively minor role in directly supporting small-scale farmers, and the food value chain in Africa.

“We live in a global market,” Kalibata said. “Our job today is to ensure that these SMEs are grounded enough to provide the right kind of support to family farms; and to be competitive so that they can survive and thrive in an increasingly interconnected and global market,” she said noting that the smallholder entrepreneurs’ success will determine the future of agriculture and food security on the African continent.

However, according to Reardon, there are challenges. “The journey has taken off, but not flying in its full potential,” said the lead researcher. “We need sound policies that will support these SMEs, good infrastructure and capacity building for them,” he said.

So far, governments that have invested in this have already registered a positive impact.

In Ghana, for example, the government has subsidised the cost of fertilisers by 50 percent, an intervention programme that has been in place since 2008 when the country ran into a food crisis due to poor yields, according to Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the country’s Minister of Food and Agriculture. “This has been a huge success, and farmers have more than enough produce from their farms at the moment,” he told journalists at the AGRF.

According to Vanessa Adams, Vice President of Country Support and Delivery at AGRA, there is need to use appropriate technologies and available food systems to ensure that what is produced is sold at the right time.

“Bumper harvests are fantastic, but not after market crushes,” she said.

Floods in Kenya's Turkana County, Lodwar town. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)

African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent.

This was the message conveyed by several speakers at the ongoing eighth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Our first urgent action is to build the Resilience and Adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change for the most vulnerable communities across Africa,” said Dr James Kinyangi, the Chief Climate Policy Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB), as he articulated commitments by the Bank on tackling climate change.

“The time is now, to translate the (2015 Paris) agreement into concrete action, to safeguard development gains and address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable,” he told the CCDA forum which brings together policy makers, civil society, youth, private sector, academia and development partners every year to discuss climate emerging issues and to review progress ahead of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP).

“We must challenge our leaders to walk the talk, and lead from the front in the spirit of the UN Secretary General, who recently pointed out that beautiful speeches are not enough to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Secretary General for the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) an umbrella organization of over 1000 Africa environment and climate civil society groups.

So far, 53 African countries have committed to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to slow down the impact of climate change, identifying the need for an estimated USD 3.5 – 4 trillion of investment by 2030.

According to Kinyangi, these commitments present an opportunity for the AfDB to contribute to policies and actions that mobilise the financial resources needed to support long-term investments in resilience and Africa’s transition to low carbon development.

In a recently published interview, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said: “Africa cannot adapt to climate change through words. It can only adapt to climate change through resources.”

“Africa has been shortchanged in terms of climate change because the continent accounts for only 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions but it suffers disproportionately from the negative impacts,” he declared.

He said AfDB is leading an effort to create an African Financial Alliance for climate, which will bring together financial institutions, stock exchanges, and central banks in Africa, to develop an endogenous financing model that would support Africa to adapt to climate change without depending on anybody else outside the continent.

Early this year, tropical cyclones, Idai and Kenneth ripped through five African countries – Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the Comoros both within a period of one month.

Kenneth is on record as the strongest storm ever to make landfall, while Idai, is the worst ever storm in terms of loss and damages to hit the African continent, where more than 1,000 lives were lost with damage of property worth 1 billion US dollars.

“In Sudan, we have just won a democratic struggle, but we are faced by another catastrophic ecological crisis of monumental proportion, which, last week alone, killed at least 62 people and destroyed 37,000 homes,” said Nisreen Eslaim, a climate activist from Sudan, referring to floods that recently swept through the city of Khartoum.

Since the threat of floods, droughts and heatwaves will be amplified with increasing climate variability, experts believe that the best response strategy is one that improves the resilience of economies, infrastructure, ecosystems and societies to climate variability and change.

“As much as we are trying to respond to climate related calamities, we need longer-term action for disaster risk management. Hence, a reason why we must do whatever it takes to implement the Paris Agreement,” Kinyangi told IPS.

To support African countries adapt to climate change, AfDB has committed to ensuring that at least 40 percent of its project approvals are tagged as climate finance by 2020, with equal proportions for adaptation and mitigation. The bank also seeks to mainstream climate change and green growth initiatives into all investments by next year.

“As much as we will be mobilizing significantly, more new and additional climate finance, to Africa by 2020, we will keep pushing the rich countries to deliver on the pledged 100 billion dollars each year,” said Kinyangi.

“As we know, our leaders’ focus is slowly but surely turning to other issues dominating international diplomatic interactions such as Iran/US tiff, Brexit, Terrorism and the emerging extreme right-wing movements, which constitute a risk of increased climate scepticism,” said Mwenda.

“Our only hope is unity of purpose, and the purpose which brings us here in Addis Ababa – to contribute to a process which will shape the future of humanity and health of the planet,” added the PACJA boss.

According to Ambassador Josefa Sacko, the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the Africa Union Commission, there is need for increased ambition in the fight against climate change.

“Without ambitious and urgent global commitments to tackle climate change, the ability of most African countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals and the ideals of Africa’s Agenda 2063 remain elusive,” she said.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has convened a Climate Action Summit September 23 at the United Nations in New York, and has called on all leaders to come to the summit with concrete, ambitious and realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050 as called for by the IPCC special report.