Girl refugees from Niger now living in Benin, often end up as child brides. Graphic: IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU/BENIN , Apr 26 2024 (IPS)

A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou. They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Among them are Saida, 15, and Aminata, 16, who are already “married” to Abdou, 22, and Anwar, 25, two Niger youths who have been living in Benin for some time. The lessons are over and Saida heads outside the overcrowded compound where her husband, Abdou, came to pick up his wife on a rundown motorbike.

“She has not been feeling well lately and I think she might be pregnant,” Abdou says without embarrassment. Asked about the circumstances leading to the couple becoming husband and wife, he says: “If in Benin or where you come from, this seems strange, it is normal in Niger for a young girl to become someone’s wife as soon as she reaches 15.”

Niger has one of highest prevalence rates of child marriages in the world, where 76% of girls are married before their 18th birthday and 28% are married before the age of 15, according to Girls Not Brides figures.

Child marriage is most prevalent in Maradi (where 89% of women aged 20–24 were already married by age of 18), Zinder (87%), Diffa (82%) and Tahoua (76%). Girls as young as 10 years old in some regions are married, and after the age of 25, only a handful of young women are unmarried, according to the Girls Not Brides statistics.

Steady increase 

However, Abdou says there has been a steady increase in such cases since the military coup due to the social and economic meltdown triggered by regional and international sanctions, which left Niger’s economy hanging in balance. France, a former colonial power, suspended development and budget aid to Niger, vowing not to recognize the new military authorities. In 2021, The French Development Agency (AFD) committed €97 million to Niger.  Moreover, the World Bank recently warned that 700,000 more people will fall into extreme poverty this year in Niger. In addition, nearly two million children could be out of school, including 800,000 girls.

Multiple suspensions of development aid from several countries and organizations will result in a shortfall of nearly US$1.2 billion in 2024 (more than 6% of the country’s GDP).

“Life has become unlivable since the coup and the closure of borders. In addition, insecurity has risen, forcing farmers to stay away from their fields. In other parts, climate change has rendered farmland useless; it is a triple tragedy for Niger, but the authorities continue to talk nonsense on TV,” says a Benin-based Islamic teacher identified only as Oumarou, who fled to Cotonou in the aftermath of the coup.

“And as a result, many families are left penniless and dependent on humanitarian assistance. Consequently, some families are seeking help from their relatives and family friends living in Benin and Togo to take their daughters under their care. Niger’s people help each other a lot and prioritize community life over individual interests.

“The girls arrive in these two countries and are quickly dispatched to Niger’s households, where they work as domestic workers without pay. Yes, they don’t get paid because they eat and sleep there and are made to feel as if they are part of the family.”

However, Oumarou says that as time goes by, these people begin to feel that they can no longer carry the burden. That is where they pass a message through the elders to Niger youths who want a wife to come and discuss.

Suitors wanted 

“As soon as a suitor is found, we inform the girls’ parents, who, in most cases, do not hesitate to allow the marriage to proceed. As God-fearing people, we cannot let the youth take a girl without doing a formal religious ceremony.

Asked if he was aware that he was committing a crime by acting as an accomplice to child marriages, he became defensive and politicized the issue: “What’s criminal and illegal in that procedure? How can you describe our good gesture to help these poverty-stricken girls rebuild their lives as a crime?

“Okay, if it’s indeed a crime. How do you say about France, which has been stealing our natural resources, notably our uranium, for decades without giving us anything in return? And what about the crimes committed by the West during the colonial era in Africa? Did anyone investigate those crimes and bring the perpetrators to book or make reparations for what they did?” the man said, storming out of the room where the interview was taking place.

However, not everyone in Niger is God-fearing and therefore does not follow the religious procedure. Anwar says her wife told him that she owes him her life after rescuing her from the abusive family where she was working as a donkey.

“I have been taking care of her ever since as a wife and a little sister. I don’t need anyone’s permission or blessings to make her my wife. We have been living under the same roof since last year and that’s a sign of marriage,” he says with a wide smile.

Aminata describes the hell she went through while working for one of these families. “They make you work like a slave, right from Fajr [Islamic dawn prayer] up to Isha [evening prayer] and even beyond. It’s very stressful. Most of the time, you don’t even eat well. They keep yelling at you whenever you make a slight mistake. Anwar is a good man and a caring husband,” she says through a translator.

Anwar says most of these girls do not have a formal (western) education. “That’s why they cannot understand French. They only speak their vernacular language and some Arabic because they only attend Qur’anic school.”

Niger has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, and very few girls attend formal school, as priority is given to boys. The Niger literacy rate for 2021 was 37.34%, a 2.29% increase from 2018.

Factors that contribute to this, including high dropout rates, high illiteracy rates, insufficient resources and infrastructure, unqualified teachers, weak local governance structures, and high vulnerability to instability, have been blamed for the low level of educational attainment, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I want to ensure that she gets a good education now that she is in Benin, far away from that rotten country, where the system does not allow girls, especially in the rural areas, to attend school,” Anwar, who himself did not finish high school, says.

Niger girls no longer “God-fearing”? 

While child brides jostle for makeshift husbands to take care of them away from their impoverished and famine-hit country, in other parts of Benin, street life has become the way of survival for some Niger women. “Niger men used to mock us, saying that their women were God-fearing and not immoral like us. Now the trend has been reversed. Look at the way those two Niger girls out there are shoving for a wealthy client,” Susan, a Beninese sex worker, says.

She claims the girls arrive in the “workplace” every evening well covered from head to toe but take it off and put on some sexy clothes, only to wear them again after the end of the shift. “Now, who fears God the most? The hypocrites or the people like us who have nothing to hide?”

Prostitution is illegal but remains prevalent in big cities and near major mining and military sites. UNAIDS estimates there are 46,630 sex workers in the country. Some sources say poverty, forced marriages, rising insecurity, and climate change continue to push many girls into prostitution, sometimes with the complicity of their families and marabouts (witchdoctors).

A source close to Nigerian and Ivorian pimping syndicates says there is a huge appetite for Niger girls in several countries across the region, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Ghana. Asked why it is the case, the source says: “From what I heard, girls from other countries, including Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria, have been used many times and are big-headed, while Niger girls seem fresh, disciplined, respectful, and docile. That’s why they make good wives. The demand has been growing since the coup.”

The source says the three countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) desire to quit the regional bloc, Ecowas, will have a negative effect on the sex trafficking business as it will curtail the free movement of people and goods across the region. According to a 2022 report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), women and girls constitute 69% of victims and survivors of trafficking in Niger.

While Niger’s military authorities reinforce their grip on power and castigate the West’s neo-colonialist and imperialist attitude and Ecowas’ interference in Niger’s internal affairs, life seems to be getting harder in this uranium-producing West African nation, forcing thousands of underage girls and women to seek a better life elsewhere.

A researcher who recently returned to Benin from Niger says: “You must live in Niger right now to understand what is going on there. Forget what you see on state TV. If residents of the big cities, like the capital Niamey, are trying harder to stay alive, many people are hopeless in the countryside because the humanitarian situation is terrific.

“Those who say development aid does not work are lying because they have never been on the ground to see for themselves.”

Note: The names have been changed to protect their identities.

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Women’s financial exclusion in Kenya is not only a matter of having an ID or a chauvinist husband but is about financial institutions’ attitude to women.

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
Nairobi, Sep 27 2022 (IPS)

A two-year-old child cries hysterically as his mother attends to customers standing in front of her stall to buy vegetables on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The mother, 25-year-old Esther, who refuses to give her surname for fear her husband will know that she has spoken to strangers about family issues, sells spinach, onion, tomato, garlic, and green pepper at a street corner to supplement her husband’s “meager” construction wage. It has been four years since she started the business, and she says it is beginning to feel like an eternity.

“I might be a village girl, but I have big dreams and ambitions, which unfortunately are being hampered by my selfish husband,” the rural-born, uneducated woman tells IPS through a translator.

“I’m tired of selling on the streets, it’s very cold here, and sometimes it’s windy and hot. I need to rent a small shop and turn it into a convenience store that will sell anything from cigarettes and cold drinks to milk. But there are some important obstacles to overcome,” she explains.

Esther does not have an identity document (ID), which represents the first obstacle to her dream coming true. According to a FinAccess February 2022 report published by Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya, 87% of the people in this East African nation without ID in 2021 are between 18 and 25, compared to 69% in 2019. There is the highest incidence of lack of national identity cards in Kenya’s rural areas, mostly among women, and that has more than doubled since 2019, says the report.

It would appear that even if Esther had an ID, her husband would not allow her to get a loan due to Kenya’s misogynistic and patriarchal mentalities that put men in control of all household’s financial decisions.

“My husband says he is the boss of the family, and therefore he must manage all the money that comes in and advises how it is spent. All he knows is to count my money every evening, I don’t see his pay slip, and I totally ignore how much he earns, except to tell me that he earns very little and that my business is vital to support his income to help pay the bills,” Esther says emotionally, looking from left to right for signs of her husband’s return from work.

Many observers believe that women’s financial exclusion in Kenya is not only a matter of having an ID or a chauvinist husband, but it is also about financial institutions’ unfriendliness towards impoverished women like Esther and her neighbor Fridah.

“Who’s going to lend money to people like us? I knocked on all doors, but nobody helped me apparently because I’m not qualified for a loan. I’m stuck here for the rest of my life with this business of selling fried fish on this street corner. Men are moving fast forward, while women remain static. It’s complicated for us in this country,” Fridah, a widow of four children, says.

A man identified only as Rasta says: “The problem with today’s women is that when she starts making more money than you, she becomes rude, disrespectful, and arrogant. Then one day, when you wake up, she tells you she wants a divorce. That’s totally un-African.”

Another man sitting nearby intervenes, blaming the white people for brainwashing African women about gender equality. “There’s no such thing in our culture and traditions. Financial inclusion for women, or whatever you call it, it’s sheer nonsense. Not in my house. I’m in charge of everything, and it stays that way.”

The US-based Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) says without gender norm transformation, it is unlikely that women’s financial inclusion will lead to meaningful economic empowerment.

“It is time to move away from gender-blind or gender-aware approaches to financial services toward a gender-transformative approach that explicitly creates gender-equal financial systems by embedding pathways for engagement on equal terms,” it points out.

“Access to finance is one path to economic empowerment. Yet, women are disadvantaged in many ways, hindering their ability to access value-adding finance. For instance, on average, women are less educated than men, earn less income, and own fewer assets which makes them less likely to be considered or targeted in design of finance solutions,” state Wanza Mbole Namboya and Amrik Heyer, two financial inclusion specialists of FSD Kenya, in an analysis published in March 2022.

Approached for comment, a Washington-based spokesperson for the International Financial Corporation (IFC) said: “Gender equality and economic inclusion are essential for economic growth and development. No country, community, or economy can achieve its potential or meet the challenges of the 21st century without the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys.

“Advancing economic inclusion means creating an economy that works for everyone. An inclusive economy ensures that all parts of society, especially poor or socially disadvantaged groups, regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation, place of birth, family background, racial identity, age, ability, or other circumstances, over which they have no control, have full, fair, and equitable access to market opportunities as employees, leaders, consumers, business owners, and community members.”

The Gender Global Gap Index 2022 published in July, which ranks Sub-Saharan Africa sixth (67.9%) in terms of regions that have closed their gender gap, says it will take the region 98 years to fully close its gender gap. Kenya ranks a distant 57^th in the report, which puts Rwanda (6^th globally) and Namibia (8^th) top in Africa in closing the gender gap. South Africa emerged 20^th.

Furthermore, the report deplores the rise of gender gaps in the workforce, describing it as “an emerging crisis”.

As if cultural norms, identification issues, and lenders’ unfriendliness towards women were not enough to suppress women’s financial independence and economic participation in Africa, there seems to be a bunch of men who want to make sure that sexual favors become a sine qua non condition for women’s advancement in the workplace.

Claire, who learned it the hard way, recounts: “I worked for 10 years for this company but never got promoted, let alone get a pay increase. But my male colleagues, whom we have the same level of education and who joined the company after me kept moving forward in all aspects.

“My boss told me face to face over and over again that unless I start sleeping with him, I’ll stay in that same position forever. I was shocked but never gave in to his demands because I’m different from other women who sell themselves to indecent rich men for a pay rise or a higher position.”

She ended up quitting and got another job. Asked if it even crossed her mind to open a case of sexual harassment against her former boss, she replies: “Which judge is going to believe me? Where is the evidence? At some stage, I thought of taping our conversation, but I told myself it is no use.

“Besides, these people are rich and powerful and have political connections. Their lawyers will tear you apart in one minute; who is going to defend me? I just made the right decision to leave peacefully but empty-handed, forget everything and get on with my life.”

The Global Gender Gap Report 2022 says: “Gender gaps in the workforce are driven and affected by many factors, including long-standing structural barriers, socioeconomic and technological transformation, as well as economic shocks.

“Globally societal expectations, employer policies, the legal environment, and the availability of care continue to play an important role in the choice of educational tracks and career trajectories,” it says.

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Many NGOs suspended in 2021 remain in limbo. There have been allegations that the organisations’ suspension was because they were critical of President Yoweri Museveni’s government and policies. Graphic Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
Kampala, Jul 18 2022 (IPS)

Nearly a year after the Ugandan government suspended 54 NGOs for allegedly operating illegally and failing to file accounts, most civil society organisations (CSOs) remain shut.

Analysts say this is because President Yoweri Museveni sees them as a threat to his 36-year regime.

Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), told IPS: “The two court cases we filed against the NGO Bureau for illegal actions against AFIEGO are still ongoing in court. But we know that the NGO Bureau knows their actions toward the affected CSOs are wrong. This is why it has continued to make endless phone calls to AFIEGO and others for informal discussions. We have asked them to put their invitation in writing, but they haven’t done so perhaps to avoid implicating themselves.”

Before its suspension, AFIEGO was one of four Ugandan organisations involved in legal action to stop the $10 billion oil project by TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Its opposition is based on environmental concerns.

At a recent signing of the agreement between the government and the oil major, Museveni said that the “associations that criticise this project are people who don’t have a job. They have nothing to do, so let these idiots continue to wander aimlessly. They are only good at drinking tea and eating cookies”.

However, Kamugisha asked: “What’s wrong with fighting against anything that worsens the impacts of climate change, such as this risky oil project, the deforestation of the forests of Bugoma and Budongo, the safeguarding of Nile River and Lake Edward, of Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth NPs, and so on?”

Kamugisha said the government’s actions towards CSOs showed that the civic space in Uganda was not getting any better.

According to Amnesty International, in the run-up to the January 2021 elections, Museveni critics bore the brunt of the security forces.

“In 2020, dozens of people were killed in the context of electoral campaigning ahead of the January 2021 general election, most of them by police and other security forces…The rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association were severely restricted. The authorities targeted organisations working on human rights and shut down the internet,” the human rights organisation said.

Many observers believe Museveni deliberately targeted the organisations for challenging his policies and undermining his rule.

Justice climate activist Robert Agenonga told IPS from Germany that the government’s decision to suspend NGOs was retaliation for their critical role before, during, and after the elections.

“So many violations occurred during the electoral period, whereby people were detained, killed, and tortured. And organisations such as Chapter Four, for instance, provided legal support to opposition politicians, ordinary people and activists that were intimidated and prosecuted during and after the electoral period.”

Museveni believes NGOs act as agents of foreign governments and are supported by outsiders to undermine the government, Agenonga said, adding that this is done to reduce the capacity of CSOs and their ability to influence communities.

Another reason behind the suspension is that the Museveni administration has accused NGOs of replacing the state’s role by receiving money for state institutions.

“Over the years, donors were becoming increasingly unhappy with Museveni’s overstaying in power. So, they have resorted to channelling money they were giving to the state through NGOs. That’s what might have angered the government.”

Before the mass suspension of 54 NGOs, the government cracked down on the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF), a multi-million-dollar fund assisting local organisations that focus on democracy, human rights and good governance.

In 2019, the authorities banned the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU), an election monitoring coalition.

In January 2021, the authorities also banned the National Elections Watch – Uganda, a coalition of local organisations, from monitoring national elections.

Kamugisha categorically denied the government’s allegations that the suspended NGOs were operating illegally, stating that it was all about intimidating, harassing and instilling fear in the CSOs sector.

“You know that the Executive Director of Chapter Four spent weeks in prison, and later his case was dismissed due to lack of prosecution. The government lost interest in the case, and later the man left for the US apparently on study leave but heard on study leave, but his organisation is as good as closed,” he added.

“Even the AFIEGO issues with the police, the police do not have any evidence of criminal offences. We are legally registered, and the NGO Bureau knows it very well.”

Chapter Four Uganda applied to the High Court Civil Division to challenge its suspension.

In May 2022, High Court Judge Musa Ssekaana called the decision to indefinitely suspend Chapter Four “irregular”. This was because there was no timeframe for comprehensive investigations into the NGO’s operations to enable the bureau to determine whether or not to revoke its permit and cancel the registration.

In June, Chapter Four was allowed to resume operations.

Another affected the NGO Democratic Governance Facility (DGF), had its suspension lifted in late June. The NGO, funded by Denmark, Ireland, Austria, the UK, Sweden, Norway, and the European Union, was suspended in January 2021. It supports projects for poverty eradication, equitable growth, and the rule of law.

Gideon Chitanga, a political analyst with the Johannesburg-based Centre for Study of Democracy, told IPS that NGO suspensions were a  draconian violation of civil liberties and human rights by the Ugandan government.

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Traders transporting goods in Mali. Thanks to the African Development Bank (AfDB), infrastructure linking African nations has made cross-border transportation of goods easier. Courtesy: Mary Newcombe/ CC by 2.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Nov 8 2019 (IPS)

Buses carrying cross-border traders and goods from Cotonou in Benin to Bamako in Mali have recently been using the Lomé route — travelling through the capital of Togo and then getting onto the Ouagadougou corridor on their way to the Malian capital.

“The Lomé-Ouaga route is smooth and there are no potholes. It makes life easier for both drivers and passengers. Long distance travels needs good roads because it is very challenging for transporters and thousands of traders who depend on this business to survive,” Ali Oumarou, a transporter who travels the 950 km route, tells IPS in while in Benin’s commercial capital, Cotonou.

• The construction and rehabilitation of the Lomé-Ouagadougou corridor is 70 percent funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
• The AfDB is rehabilitating the Lomé-Ouagadougou corridor, repaving 300 km of road and training young people in road maintenance. The project has increased traffic volumes and reduced journey times, generating trade across the region, the AfDB, headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, said last week.
• The AfDB said that it has provided $238 million as a financial support for the project. 

“Bank investments in regional infrastructure are helping to improve connectivity across Africa, linking rural areas to towns and cities, linking producers and consumers across national boundaries, promoting trade and investment and building regional markets,” the AfDB pointed out.

Traders and those transporting goods and people across these routes have appreciated the new infrastructure. “This road has cut short our journeys and helped us a lot. Before we used to travel for six days to Ouaga from Lomé due to the bad state of the road, but since the road was rehabilitated, it only takes us two days, depending on the condition of the car,” Vincent, a long distance driver, told IPS.

• There is much more that the AfDB has done to link Africa’s cities.  
• The Addis-Mombasa highway is another example. “The 895 km highway corridor linking Kenya and Ethiopia has not only eased cross-border traffic between the two countries, it has also enhanced economic integration, resulting in jobs and improved livelihoods across the region,” the bank said.
• The AfDB, which has a AAA rating, supports numerous projects across that continent that contribute to growth, creating jobs and household income, and increasing government revenue, among others.

Reinvigorated by the successes harvested under the GCI-VI, during which it had a capital of $90 billion, the AfDB has embarked on the capital increase exercise to do much more to improve the citizens’  lives of its member states.

Last week, the Governors of the AfDB met in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan, approving a historic $115 billion increase to the bank’s authorised capital base to $208 billion.

According to AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina,  “We have achieved a lot, yet there is still a long way to go. Our responsibility is to very quickly help improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. This general capital increase represents a very strong commitment of all our shareholders to see better quality projects that will significantly have an impact on the lives of the people in Africa –  in cities, in rural communities, and for millions of youth and women.”

The funds are expected to improve the lives of:

• 105 million people who will have access to new or improved electricity connections;
• 244 million people who will benefit from improvements in agriculture;
• 15 million people who will benefit from investment projects;
• 252 million people who will benefit from improved access to transport;
• and 128 million people who will benefit from improved access to water and sanitation.

One of the key focuses of the bank going forward will be climate change. The bank currently invests in various climate change projects, such as the Desert to Power initiative, which will help supply electricity to 250 million people in 11 countries across the Sahel by tapping into the region’s abundant solar resources.

But going forward it will be doubling its investments, AfDB’s president said.

“We as a bank had said we are going to double our financing for climate change…so the shareholders strongly supported that direction…They are asking that we do a lot more on climate,” Adesina said.

Tumi Solange Akinloye, political and international relations commentator, told  IPS of the increase, “this simply means that there will be more money for African countries to loan, which will serve to continue carrying out their projects, for the betterment of their people.”

The general capital increase comes ahead of the AfDB’s Africa Investment Forum —  a platform to attract private sector finance.

The forum was launched last year by the Bank and its partners. This year it will take place from Nov. 11 to 13 in South Africa. The forum has been lauded by Africa’s CEOs as changing the investment narrative for Africa.

“I am an optimist on Africa. My optimism does not imply non-awareness of the challenges facing the continent, but stems from a conviction that the best of Africa lies ahead of us,” Adesina said at the North American launch of the forum last year.

A zone of Baobab reforestation in Burkina Faso. The Sahel is experiencing an overall decrease in rainfall, but also a depletion of soils due to agricultural overexploitation and progressive deforestation of the original savannahs. Courtesy: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
OUAGADOUGOU, Nov 6 2019 (IPS)

Ibrahim Harouna and his neighbours sit under a tree at his uncle’s house, playing chess and chatting amid the simmering heat of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

This is how he has been spending most of his time in the year and a half since he lost his job. Harouna worked as farm labourer. But the seasonal small-scale farmer he worked for in northern Burkina Faso let him and two other workers go because their services were no longer needed amid dwindling harvests.

Production had begun failing as desertification and drought took their toll on the land — which had become severely degraded, with half of the farmland soil turning to sand.

The economy in this Sahelian nation of 20.5 million people, located in the hinterland and within the confines of the Sahara, depends heavily on agriculture, forestry and livestock farming.

The sector is dominated by small-scale farms of less than five hectares and its main products are sorghum, millet and maize (the most produced in terms of volume), according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Cotton exports are still dominant and represent about 60 percent of total agricultural exports, according to the World Bank.

In “Dégradation des sols en agriculture minière au Burkina Faso”, S.B. Taonda, R. Bertrand, J. Dickey, J.L. Morel and K. Sanon explained that after five to 10 years of cultivation, the soil is no longer able to ensure the mineral and water supply of the main food crop (sorghum), leading to yields collapse.

A visibly stressed Harouna seems to agree, telling IPS: “We have been working on that land for nine years, doing the same thing year in and year out.”

Despite the country’s Sahelian zone in the north receiving less than 600mm average annual rainfall, Harouna says that the previous had been productive: sales were good, money was coming in, and wages were regularly paid.

But nothing lasts forever. Desertification became more prevalent and the honeymoon came to an abrupt end. He recounts: “As time went by, we noticed that temperatures kept unusually rising and the sun became harsher and the rain disappeared. The crops became stunted while others dried out, as the land started to turn into something like sand.”

Confines of the Sahara

Land degradation poses a serious threat to the sustainable development of Burkina Faso. One-third of its national territory, over nine million hectares of productive land, is degraded. This is estimated to expand at an average of 360,000 hectares per year, according to the FAO.

The Sahel is experiencing an overall decrease in rainfall, but also a depletion of soils due to agricultural overexploitation and progressive deforestation of the original savannahs by cutting firewood, bush fires and stray animals, the NGO SOS Enfants explains.

“Climate changes are evident throughout Burkina Faso. The eastern and southwestern parts of the country, which generally have more favourable weather, are increasingly hit by high temperatures and pockets of drought,” the U.N. Development Programme says on Adaptation-undp.org.

From employing 90 percent of the country’s almost 7-million strong workforce in 2012, as per FAO figures, the agriculture sector now provides 80 percent of all jobs, still accounting for a third of the country’s GDP. However, more than 3.5 million people are food insecure, according to a USAID report.

Farmers in Burkina Faso, and especially those living in the Sahelian areas of this country, are now facing a serious problem of food security and growing impoverishment, SOS Enfants has pointed out. Conflicts over land use and massive migrations are persistent.

Conflict lingers

Armed conflict and terrorism have exacerbated food insecurity, with regular attacks being perpetrated against security forces and civilians by unknown gunmen. Nearly 600 civilians have been killed, and scores wounded in recent years, according to independent figures.

Nearly half a million people were forced from their homes as increased insecurity resulted in a deepening and unprecedented humanitarian situation.

With an urbanisation rate of 5.29 percent – according to Index Mundi figures – Burkina Faso seems to be experiencing one of the highest urbanisation rates in Africa and in the world, as women, children and elderly people flock to the cities, fleeing from climate change challenges, lingering poverty and armed conflict.

“In Burkina, the problem is not the functioning of the democratic system. The crisis is the spread of jihadist violence. [Former President Blaise] Compaoré used to come to understandings with armed groups in Mali, and in return, they left Burkina alone. That did not help Mali, of course,” Paul Melly, Chatham House Africa consultant, tells IPS. The U.N. has stated that some 300,000 people have fled jihadist violence that spilled over from Mali.

“But the present Burkina administration does not cut these sorts of deals, and this leaves the country more exposed,” he points out.

“Moreover,” he says, “Burkina’s security systems used to be strongly oriented towards loyalty towards Compaoré, so his departure left these structures weakened and the current government now had to rebuild them in a way that is compatible with the democratic system. That is a slow and difficult process.”

Climate migrants

After Harouna and his colleagues lost their job, they headed to Ouaga (short for Ouagadougou) to stay with their respective families. With nothing much to do, they believe their only option is to leave the country, adding their names to a growing list of people pushed out of their homes by the devastating impacts of climate change.

“My former colleagues have already left the country, one is in Morocco as we speak, looking for a way to cross over to Spain and the other one is in Benin, where he intends to take the boat to get either to Equatorial Guinea or Gabon,” Harouna says.

More than 143 million people are set to become climate migrants by 2050 in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, escaping crop failure, water scarcity, and sea-level rise, according to the World Bank projections.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the main U.N. authority on climate science, has reiterated that the changes brought on by the climate crisis will influence migration patterns.

“As for me, God-willing next week I’m heading to Niger to try to reach Algeria where my friends live and work in the construction sector,” says Harouna.

Future degradation of land used for agriculture and farming, the disruption of fragile ecosystems and the depletion of precious natural resources like fresh water will directly impact people’s lives and homes, according to Dina Ionesco, head of Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division at the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Former FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva said back in February 2018 that the rehabilitation of degraded land was a priority for Burkina Faso.

The U.N. agency and other partners have been tasked to implement the Action Against Desertification (AAD), a programme meant to bring land restoration to scale.

• AAD supports local communities, governments and civil society in six African countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gambia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal – as well as in Fiji and Haiti, to sustainably manage and restore their drylands and fragile ecosystems affected by desertification, land degradation and drought.
• This initiative contributes to the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel (GGW), to U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) national action plans, and promotes south-south cooperation in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
• In Burkina Faso, AAD supports land restoration in the provinces of Soum and Séno in Sahel region, using the specialised Delfino plough for land preparation in a view to bring restoration to scale.

But all of these interventions have come just a little too late for young men like Harouna.

“Put yourself in these young men’s shoes,” Harouna’s uncle, who asked not to be named, contributes to the conversation for the first time since the interview started. “What would you do if something like this happens to you? There are no jobs in this country, no peace, no opportunity for the youth and not even good politicians.”

“Just look around us now, the climate is challenging our land, the only source of our livelihoods. Terrorists are ruining our lives and our children’s future, and the only way out of this mess is to go elsewhere to look for a better life,” the uncle, who is sponsoring Harouna’s irregular migration to Algeria, tells IPS.

An aerial view of settlements in the middle of the desert in the surrounding area of Timbuktu, North of Mali. Courtesy: UN Photo/Marco Domino

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
BAMAKO, Mali/COTONOU, Benin , Oct 18 2019 (IPS)

Abdoulaye Maiga proudly displays an album showing photos of him and his family during happier times when they all lived together in their home in northern Mali. Today, these memories seem distant and painful.

“We lived happily as a big family before the war and ate and drank as much as we could by growing crops and raising livestock,” he tells IPS.

“Then the war broke out and our lives changed forever, pushing us southwards, finally settling in the region of Mopti. Then we went back home in 2013 when the situation stabilised,” Abdoulaye explains.

In 2012, various groups of Tuareg rebels grouped together to form and administer a new northern state called Azawad. The civil strife that resulted drove many from their homes, with communities often fleeing with their livestock, only to compete for scarce natural resources in vulnerable host communities, according to the United Nations.

• In Mali, three-quarters of the population rely on agriculture for their food and income, and most are subsistence farmers, growing rainfed crops on small plots of land, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the U.N.

After the security situation began to improve in 2013, many returned home to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

But soon it was the turn of the expanding Sahara Desert, drought and land degradation that became the next driver of their displacement.

“As time went by, the land became useless and we found ourselves having no more land to work on. Nothing would come out that could feed us, and our livestock kept dying due the lack of water and grass to eat, ” Abdoulaye recalls.

“Drought across the Sahel region, followed by conflict in northern Mali, caused a major slump in the country’s agricultural production, reducing household assets and leaving many of Mali’s poor even more vulnerable,” FAO says.

“We used to move up and down with our livestock, looking for water and grass, but most of the times we found none. Life was unliveable. The Sahara is coming down, very fast,” Abdoulaye says emotionally.

In the end, the Maiga family had to leave their home and broke up; Abdoulaye and his brother Ousmane heading to Benin’s commercial capital Cotonou in 2015, after a brief stint in Burkina Faso, as the rest of their family headed for Mali’s capital, Bamako.

Malian girls stand in the shade in Kidal, North of Mali. Photo MINUSMA/Marco Dormino

Threatened with creeping desertification …

The U.N. says nearly 98 percent of Mali is threatened with creeping desertification, as a result of nature and human activity. Besides, the Sahara Desert keeps expanding southward at a rate of 48 km a year, further degrading the land and eradicating the already scarce livelihoods of populations, Reuters reported.

The Sahara, an area of 3.5 million square miles, is the largest ‘hot’ desert in the world and home to some 70 species of mammals, 90 species of resident birds and 100 species of reptiles, according to DesertUSA. And it is expanding, its size is registered at 10 percent larger than a century ago, LiveScience reported.

The Sahel, the area between The Sahara in the north and the Sudanian Savanna in the south, is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. 

The cost of land degradation is currently estimated at about $490bn per year, much higher than the cost of action to prevent it, according to UNCCD recent studies on the economics of land desertification, land degradation and drought.

Roughly 40 percent of the world’s degraded land is found in areas with the highest incidence of poverty and directly impacts the health and livelihoods of an estimated 1.5 billion people, according to the U.N.

In a country where six million tonnes of wood is used per year, reports say Malians are mercilessly smashing their already-fragile landscape, bringing down 4,000 square kilometres of tree cover each year in search for timber and fuel.

Lack of rain has also been making matters worse, especially for the cotton industry, of which the country remains the continent ’s largest producer, with 750,000 tonnes produced in the 2018 to 2019 agriculture season. Environmentalists believe Mali’s average rainfall has dropped by 30 percent since 1998 with droughts becoming longer and more frequent.

… and conflict for resources

Paul Melly, Chatham House Africa consultant, tells IPS that desertification reduces the scope for agriculture and pastoralism to remain viable.

“And of course, that may lead a few disenchanted members of the population, particularly young men, to be attracted by alternative livelihood options, including the money that can be offered by trafficking gangs or terrorist groups,” he says.

Ousmane echoes Melly’s sentiments, saying: “The temptation is too much when you live in desertification-hit areas because you don’t get enough food to hit and water to drink.

“That’s where the bad guys start showing up on your door[step] to tell you that if you join them, you will get plenty food, water and pocket money. The solution is to run away, as far as you can to avoid falling into that trap.”

Consequently, Ousmane and Abdoulaye sold the few remaining animals the family had so they could leave the country.

In Burkina Faso they hoped to find work in farming. 

However, they were not always welcomed.

“We could feel the resentment from locals, so I told my brother we should leave before it gets ugly because there were already some tensions between local communities over what appeared to be land resources,” he says.

Chatham House’s Melly confirms this: “There is no doubt that the overall context, of increasing pressure on fragile and sometimes degrading natural resources, is a contributory factor to the overall pressures in the region and, thus, potentially, to tension.”

 Like elsewhere on the continent, severe environmental degradation appears to be among the root causes of inter-ethnic conflicts.

Using the Darfur region as a case study, the Worldwatch Institute says: “To a considerable extent, the conflict is the result of a slow-onset disaster—creeping desertification and severe droughts that have led to food insecurity and sporadic famine, as well as growing competition for land and water.”

What is being done?

Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert. 

• Another large that aims to wrestle back the land swallowed by The Sahara is the Great Green Wall (GGW), an eight-billion-dollar project launched by the African Union (AU) with the blessing of the UNCCD, and the backing of organisations such as the World Bank, the European Union and FAO.
• Since its launch in 2007, major progress has been made in restoring the fertility of Sahelian lands.
• Nearly 120 communities in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have been involved in a green belt project that resulted in the restoration more than 2,500 hectares of degraded and drylands, according to the UNCCD.
• More than two million seeds and seedings have also been planted from 50 native species of trees.

Everyone, including terrorists are equal in the face of the expanding Sahara

But there remain gaps and many in Mali still remain affected. 

Community leader Hassan Badarou spent several years teaching Islam in rural Mali and Niger. He tells IPS Mali has a very complex situation.

“It is not easy to live in these areas. People there face double threats. It is double stress to flee from both armed conflict and desertification. And such people need to be welcomed and assisted, and not be seen as a threat to locals livelihoods.

“That is why we used to preach tolerance and solidarity wherever we went, to avoid a situation whereby local communities would feel that their meagre resources are under threat from newcomers. There should be a dialogue, an honest and frank dialogue when communities take on each other over land and water resources,” he advises.

Against the expanding Sahara, all are equal. Fadimata, an internally displaced person from northern Mali, tells IPS that climate change is affecting everyone in the Sahel, including terrorists.

“I saw with my own eyes how a group of heavily-armed young men came to a village, looking for food.

“They said they wanted to do no harm, but wanted something to eat. Of course we were very scared, but the villagers ended up putting something together for these poor young men. They sat down and ate, and drank plenty of water and left afterwards. I think it is better that way than to kill villagers and steal their food, livestock and water.”

Health workers inside a "CUBE" talk to an Ebola patient, while a nurse consults a chart outside. ALIMA Ebola Treatment Centre, Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two drugs have been found to successfully treat the Ebola virus. Aid agencies have welcomed the news saying it allows communities to access early treatment. Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

While people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are slowly being made aware that scientists have discovered two drugs that are effective in treating Ebola, letting go of the fear and anxiety that has prevailed across the country this year will require more work.

After several months of intense research, mAb114 and REGN-EB3, two out of four drugs tested, where found to have been effective in a clinical trial, according to a joint statement on Aug. 12 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) and Ministry of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

It is the first ever multi-drug trial for the deadly virus.

The deadly hemorrhagic fever has claimed the lives of 1,800 people since last August.

“This is very good news for patients,” Dr Esther Sterk, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Adviser for Tropical Diseases, told IPS. “It is good that these two drugs are recommended because not only do we expect them to improve their chances of survival, but they are also easier for medical staff to administer.”

The complexities of receiving treatment

But the latest outbreak of the deadly virus has resulted in fear among local communities. With the epicentres of the outbreak largely centred in conflict-ridden areas, communities there have been fearful and mistrustful of the virus and medical workers. Many also found the process of screening for the disease reportedly intimidating.

And on Aug. 13, residents in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and a city of two million people overlooking Gisenyi in neighbouring Rwanda, was overrun by protestors after the news spread that two Ebola patients were been healed and discharged from the treatment centres.

“People misunderstood it, and thought the government and white people were plotting to infect us all with Ebola by letting these patients go home. It is only later in the day that we were told that these people were free to go because they were treated with a new cure that has just been found,” Christian Kasereka, an informal trader, told IPS.

In July, Marixie Mercado, United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF) spokesperson told IPS that, “the Ebola outbreak is taking place in an extremely complex operational environment and the response must of course factor in political, security, and socio-cultural challenges”.

She said that UNICEF was leading the work on community engagement. “We work with a broad swathe of influential community and religious leaders, mass media, schools, and Ebola survivors, to bring crucial knowledge on symptoms, prevention and treatment, to the households and communities most at-risk.

“We are learning from intensive, ongoing research and analysis of community feedback to better understand local needs, fears and concerns, and to adapt the response in ways that are socially and culturally acceptable. There is growing community ownership over the response, but far more is needed,” Mercado said at the time.

Greater community ownership and understanding needed to stop the outbreak

The Goma protests offered truth to her words that more still needs to be done.

Other international health agencies have the same view.

Sterk did caution that while the drugs improved the chances of survival of patients, teams working on the ground could not relax as ways to reduce transmission needed to be found.

“While this is welcome news, it alone, won’t end the Ebola outbreak. We still urgently need to find a way to cut transmission, which requires placing affected communities at the centre of the response by prioritising their healthcare needs and rethinking the current failing response strategies,” Sterk told IPS.

“We expect that using the two most successful treatments will improve the outcome for patients, but the challenges remain there: to break the chain of transmission, to improve the follow-up of contacts, to encourage people to report to a health facility as early as possible when the symptoms appear, to support the healthcare infrastructure in the region so that access to general healthcare is preserved during this difficult time.”

The WHO had echoed these concerns in its statement last week stating that not enough people were being treated. Currently people take 5 to 6 days before seeking treatment.

Euloge Ishimwe, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) head of communications for Africa region, told IPS that people with symptoms often delay or avoid going to a health facility or an Ebola treatment centre, placing their families and communities at risk.

“This also has critical impacts on our work with communities. If communities are engaged and understand the treatment as well as see more people surviving from the disease, they are more likely to seek health care early,” Ishimwe said, adding that the findings were a pinnacle moment in the Ebola response, as it allowed communities to access early treatment.

MSF has worked alongside several partners under the supervision of the WHO and took part in the implementation of the trials while supporting the Ebola treatment centres in Katwa and Butembo between January and February this year.

The study is part of the emergency response in the DRC, in collaboration with a broad alliance of partners, including MSF, the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), the International Medical Corps (IMC), INRB and NIAID, which is part of the United States’ National Institutes of Health.

The study has since stopped and the successful drugs are being administered to all those affected.

“We must move forward to implement the outcomes of this research. We will continue to conduct rigorous research with our partners. We’ll incorporate those findings into the outbreak response through a variety of prevention and control strategies,” Dr Mike Ryan, WHO Executive Director for Emergencies Programme, had said in a statement.

What’s next? 

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), and a co-discoverer of Ebola in 1976, said that the city of Goma was now out of danger since about 200 contacts and suspected cases have been identified. “We are waiting for the latest results and monitoring as the points of entry to the city are being reinforced.”

IFRC Africa’s Ishimwe said the Ebola outbreak was far from over. “This news doesn’t mean it’s over – there is still a lot of work to do. We must stay the course until the last case is treated and the region is declared Ebola-free.”

But Anita Masudi, a resident from Butembo, North Kivu, one of the epicentres of the Ebola outbreak, is relieved.

She told IPS: “Oh yes, we are very happy about what’s happening out there though I’m not sure if  everyone can now relax hoping that it’s the end of Ebola in the North Kivu. Nevertheless, I’m not afraid any more.”

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in West Africa. Credit: CC by 2.0/Linda De Volder

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, May 3 2019 (IPS)

On a bus in Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, four Nigerian girls aged between 15 and 16 sit closely together as they are about to embark on the last part of their journey to Mali, where they are told that their new husbands, whom they never have met, await them.

They started off from their homes in Eastern Nigeria where their parents had reportedly agreed that they be “commissioned” to become the wives of Nigerian men living in Mali.

“Four compatriots asked me to bring them young wives because they want to get married. I’m sure they will be happy,” a human smuggler, who only identifies himself as Wiseman, tells IPS as the bus prepares to depart for Bamako, Mali’s capital. IPS is not allowed to speak to the young girls, who appear anxious.

When asked if the girls’ parents are aware they have to travel to Mali, Wiseman says: “I negotiated with them and gave them something as a down payment for their dowries, which will surely help them [the parents] start a small business or buy seeds for farming. These kids should count themselves lucky because they will work and perform wives’ duties, so their lives should improve big time.”

But nobody knows the real intentions of the men who ”commissioned” these girls. Or if they exist.

Pathfinders Justice Initiative, an international non-government organisation dedicated to the prevention of modern-day sex slavery, says Nigeria is a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking with Benin City, in Nigeria’s Edo State, being an internationally-recognised sex trafficking hub. 

Nigeria ranks 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves (1,38 million), according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index report. While Nigeria has the institutional framework and laws against trafficking, at least one million people are trafficked there every year, according to the country’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

NAPTIP, working in collaboration with Malian authorities, recently said that nearly 20,000 Nigerian girls were forced into prostitution in Mali. The girls were said to be working in hotels and nightclubs after being sold to prostitution rings by human traffickers.

Children the most vulnerable

In West Africa, children remain the most vulnerable to trafficking.

The latest Global Report On Trafficking In Persons by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that young boys and girls where among those most  trafficked in the region. 

At the end of April, Interpol announced that it rescued 216 trafficked victim—including 157 children—from Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Interpol is part of a global task force formed to address human trafficking.

Some of the trafficking victims were working as sex workers in Benin and Nigeria, while others worked all day in markets and at various eating places. Some were as young as 11 and had been beaten, subject to abuse, and told they would never see their families again.

Forty-seven people were arrested.

“Many of the children are shipped actually into these markets to carry out forced labour. These are organised crime groups who are motivated by making money. They don’t care about the children forced into prostitution, working in terrible conditions, living on the streets, they are all after the money,” Interpol’s Director of Organised and Emerging Crime Paul Stanfield said in a video.

Benin, the transit stop for traffickers

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to irregularly make their way to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and finally to Europe.

The city of Cotonou appears to be a huge transit route through which women and girls trafficked to North and West Africa pass as they are transported to various countries of their destination. While Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali have laws against child trafficking, nothing covers trafficking in persons above the age of 18, according to the UNODC report. Niger has no laws against trafficking.

The Economic Community of West African States’ policy of free movement of goods and people seems to make this easier as corrupt immigration officers at border posts look away in exchange for a few euros. When IPS asks Wiseman about border controls, he brushes aside the issue, saying he knows “how to handle them”.  

When asked if he is responsible for the girls’ welfare, Wiseman replies: “I’m not a social worker, I’m a businessman and a helper. I help people to get good wives and lift the girls’ families out of poverty in exchange for money. The rest is history.”

When the incident about the Nigerian girls is described to Hassan Badarou, a community-based caregiver and religious leader from Benin, he says “they could be used as sex slaves by those men or sold to crime syndicates to serve as prostitutes in Mali or even as far as in North Africa.”

“It’s a pity parents allow their children to just leave the country in exchange for a few dollars. All of this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t poor,” he says.

Poverty, culture and child labour

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in the region. But so too does culture.

In 2014, a female friend of Suzie’s family came to collect the then 12-year-old from her home in northern Benin.

“She promised to help me attend school after working at her home for one year, but she didn’t,” Suzie tells IPS in the local language, Fon, through a translator.

“Things started to go wrong when I started to remind her about that. She stopped paying me my salary and increased the workload and cut my meals down from two to one per day. And she started beating up me every time I protested,” the 16-year-old who lives in Cotonou tells IPS.

As time went by, the women’s male family members, who lived in the same house, started to make sexual advances towards Suzie. She refused the advances but eventually ran away because she could no longer bear the situation. 

No police please

When asked why she doesn’t report the incidents to the police, she says: “I can’t do that. The woman is like my aunt so I couldn’t do it as this would have brought a conflict between the women’s family and ours back home.”

Badarou, the religious leader, explains that he has mediated in cases like Suzie’s.

“If you see the way these women ill-treat these girls, it should make you cry. I have documented many cases of abuse and have tried to mediate between some of these women and the girls.”

But he’s never reported any of these cases, however abusive, to the police.

“The only thing you cannot do is to report these cases to the police. We are all brothers and sisters of this country and we believe in solving our problems in harmony and peace through dialogue. Besides, it’s not our culture to report everything to the police. I blame West African governments for allowing this thing to go on and on to the extent of becoming a cultural norm institutionalised deep in the fabric of society. It’s now hard to break it,” he says.

Badarou explains that the actions are cultural.

“In the face of this deeply-entrenched culture of ”helping each other” by ”handing over” your girls to someone well established who is living in the cities, even the United Nations and children’s organisations sometimes have no choice but to turn a blind eye. I’m not saying they are not doing anything about it, but you can’t break up someone’s culture, especially in a region such as this where grinding poverty rules,” he says.

Richard Dossou seems to agree. He tells IPS that his uncle’s friend, a father of 18 children, is looking for “Good Samaritans” from Benin to take in some of his girls as he is unable to provide for them. 

“I’m planning to travel to their village to negotiate with him with a view of taking even one, not as a wife, but as a maid. Then we will see how it will lead us. We help each other like this to fend off poverty and misery in this region,” Dossou says.

While Benin’s poverty hovers at about 40 percent, a report released in 2018  by the World Poverty Clock said in Nigeria a total of 86.9 million people are living in extreme poverty.

The fine line between cultural norms and child trafficking

Asked if this West African practice of “handing over” girls is a cultural norm of lifting families out of poverty, Jakub Sobik, communications manager for London-based Anti-Slavery International, tells IPS via email: “What you describe above are cases of child trafficking, when children are being recruited or harboured with a view of exploiting them.”

“Slavery doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is underpinned by many factors, including poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and decent job opportunities, the lack of rule of law, as well as practices that are culturally accepted in societies,” he explains.

He says that it is often the case that parents are “deceived about the conditions their children will be offered, and send them away in a genuine belief that they will get a better chance of education and life opportunities in surroundings of cities and perhaps better-off societal circles.” 

He adds that in some societies children working is culturally accepted, because it has been the norm for generations. “We have a lot to do to change that and offer children childhoods, education and opportunities in lives they deserve.”

As the bus continues on the final journey that is meant to lift the Nigerian girls out of ”poverty” to ‘’freedom”; back in Cotonou Suzie wanders the city’s dark streets hand in hand with a Zemidjan—a motorcycle taxi driver—who appears to be aged between 40 and 50 and whom she describes as her boyfriend.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Felicienne Soton is part of a women's group that produces gari (cassawa flour). She and her group in Adjegounle village have greatly benefited from Benin's national CDD project. (Photo: Arne Hoel).

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

Théophile Houssou, a maize farmer from Cotonou, has spent sleepless nights lying awake worrying about the various disasters that could befall any farmer, often wondering, “What if it rains heavily and all my crops are washed away?” or “What if the armyworms invade my farm and eat up all the crops and I’m left with nothing?”

Maize crops in Benin, like in at least 28 other African countries, are being threatened by the Fall Armyworm (FAW), an invasive crop pest that feeds on 80 different crop species. Houssou is thankful to have missed an infestation and gives thanks to “God for the good season, but it was not easy,” he tells IPS.

Maize production in Benin reached a record 1.6 million tons during the 2017-2018 season, compared to 1.2 million tons two years ago, according to the ministry of agriculture’s figures.

In downtown Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital, five men are busy loading pineapples onto a 10-ton truck, while four more heavy vehicles wait to be loaded. The produce will be taken to several countries in the region, including Nigeria, which receives 80 percent of all Benin’s exports. Benin is Africa’s fourth-largest pineapple exporter, producing between 400,000 and 450,000 tons of pineapple annually. Exports to the European Union (EU) increased from 500 tons to 4,000 tons between 2000 and 2014, according to official figures.

Further away, the famous Dantokpa Market is flooded with agricultural products, including red tomatoes, okra, soya beans, mangoes, orange, green pepper, lemon and all sorts of spinaches and fruits. Competition is fierce and the selling price is very low, amid an excellent agricultural season.

Room for improvement
While the agricultural sector here may look lively, it boasts several fault lines.

Despite being mostly a subsistence sector, agriculture contributes about 34 percent to this West African nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Almost 80 percent of Benin’s 11.2 million people earn a living from agriculture, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) says. FAO adds that the country’s farmers face challenges such as include poor infrastructure and flooding, which can wipe out harvests and seed stocks.

In a document titled “Strategic Plan for Agricultural Sector Development (PSDSA) 2025 and National Plan for Agricultural Investments and Food Security and Nutrition (PNIASAN) 2017 -2021”, the Benin government has admitted that the agriculture sector’s revenues and productivity are low, and the labour force is only partially rewarded, making agricultural products less competitive.

“Most farmers have very little use of improved inputs and engage in mining practices that accentuate the degradation of natural resources,” the document states.

“We can do better than this,” Marthe Dossou, a small scale farmer supervising the offloading of thousands of boxes of red tomatoes from a rundown truck, tells IPS. These tomatoes will be exported to Nigeria but Dossou feels that considering the high quality of the harvest, Benin can produce more for export. “If we can be given a helping hand like more resources, including loans, new farming methods and how to master water control techniques,” she says.

Dr Tamo Manuele, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Benin country representative, tells IPS that agricultural innovation “is key to eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition, mainly in rural areas where most of the world’s poorest live.”
“Innovation can, first of all, increase small-scale farmers’ productivity and income, and secondly diversify farmers’ income through value chain development; and lastly create more and better opportunities for the rural poor,” he says.

“Farmers or at least actors in agricultural value chains need support for conservation and processing of agricultural commodities. With e-agriculture, farmers can better manage their production and especially be informed of market opportunities. Innovations such as warrantage system [an inventory credit system where farmers instead of selling their produce use it as collateral to get credit from a bank] and group selling can help solving this problem. NGOs and specialised experts in agriculture have to strengthen and support closely farmers,” Manuele urges.

Headquartered in Ibadan, Nigeria, the IITA has been present in Benin since 1985 and it supports national agricultural research and extension services.

“Research is one of the main links leading to innovation. Many studies have reported that communities living near the research centre are more informed, exposed to the innovations and more supervised by scientists. Therefore, their willingness to adopt innovation is very significant. So IITA-Benin is more present on fields through several on-farm-innovation testing managed by scientists,” Manuele says.

IITA launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015 in Benin. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses. These women make soap from the jatropha tree. Courtesy: International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

Some farmers say they are aware of agricultural technologies, but complain about the lack of promotion of such innovations in the areas where they operate.
Koffi Akpovi Justin, a seasonal farmer, was introduced to the 4R method, where four scientific principles are used to ensure that the soil has the right levels of nutrients for planting.

“Everybody brags about how fertile the African land is…I used to be frustrated and almost gave up on farming because I strongly believed in the natural way of doing things. I would just labour the land, plant seeds (plenty of them) and start the painful process of watering it, and at the end I got mitigated results. But not anymore.”

But Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most expensive fertiliser market, where small scale farmers make up about 70 percent of the population. “If you will use it, use it carefully because not practicing the 4R method could see some of it spill all over the fields and pollute nearby water resources and groundwater. I experienced it many years ago, but now I’m wiser.”

He adds that many farmers who live in remote areas are unable to access information about agricultural innovation. “Many of them, who operate mostly in very remote places, always say ‘We know that these things exist and we would like to use it but where can we find it?’ Maybe the international organisations, like the UN and the IITA, could do more to make sure that as many farmers as possible get access to agricultural innovations to boost food production and fight hunger.”

Monique Soton is one such farmer. She lives in north-western Benin, about 500 km from Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital.

“We operate in remote areas and there our lives are concentrated only about leaving in the morning to work on the land and come back in the evening. There is no radio, no TV, no electricity. We may miss out on important information about new methods of farming or new developments going on in the sector, like if a census were to be held to determine the number of farmers who need financial support. It’s sad,” the tomato farmer tells IPS.

Another major obstacle facing small scale farmers in Benin is also the lack of market. “The only local market I use to sell my products is Dantokpa in Cotonou. Just imagine the distance from our area [about 500 km from Cotonou] to the commercial capital,” Soton says, adding that there aren’t adequate roads or vehicles to get the produce to the marketplace.
“There were many times the rundown vehicle we were using to transport our products broke down in the middle of a no man’s land at night and that’s very scary.”

Agricultural innovation
The IITA has been reaching out to various communities. In Benin it launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses.

“Specifically, it is consolidating the profitability and sustainability of jatropha value chains through a public-private partnership approach that creates jobs for young people, women and men. The project is set up according to the value chain approach including jatropha production, jatropha oil extraction, soap making, grain milling and rural electrification, among others,” Manuele explains.

Since the start of the project some 2,050 producers, including 538 women, have benefitted.

Apart from this jatropha project, the IITA said that it has implemented several other projects that contribute to the food and nutrition security and income improvement of many rural households.

Magic solution?
While innovations in agriculture have proved successful, Dr Jeroen Huising, a soil scientist based in Nigeria, cautions that this is not the ‘magic bullet’ for Benin. “I do not believe in magic solutions and agricultural (innovation) is certainly not magic. The question about the rural poor has little to do with the agricultural innovations. There are economic factors that determine that,” he tells IPS.

“Also, if the ‘innovations’ would increase yield for the smallholder farmers, it would not solve their problems. The production has to do primarily with use of inputs and even then the prices are often too low to make a decent living.”

Soton agrees that economic factors pay a huge role in being a successful smallholder, explaining that “the lack of financial support is a serious problem.”

She says that banks do even consider small holder farmers for loans “because we don’t fulfil not even one of their requirements needed to lend us money. So, we invest our money we get from the tontines [an investment plan] and from selling some of our properties.”

“We have the land but we lack everything from seeds to fertilisers and cash to hire labourers.”

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has launched a project called Migrants as Messengers (MaM), which aims to make future candidates aware of the dangers of irregular migration. In Guinea, migrants who have returned home are involved in awareness-raising activities with logistical support and training from IOM-Guinea. Courtesy: Amadou Kendessa Diallo

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin , Mar 21 2019 (IPS)

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo wants to make sure that others won’t experience what he has lived through. The former irregular migrant who has returned home to Guinea from a jail in North Africa is calling on his fellow returnee migrants to establish associations in their respective countries, which will serve as powerful platforms to combat irregular migration across the continent.

“If I had the resources, I would tour Africa to create awareness about irregular migration. But because I haven’t got [those resources], I am urging all the African returnees wherever they are to take this fight into their hands and do something to stop the people who want to travel that route from experiencing what we went through,” he tells IPS.

The resource-rich West African nation has a population of about 13 million, of which 60 percent are less than 25 years of age. But widespread corruption, poverty, the country’s low score on the Human Development Index (Guinea ranks 175 out of 189 countries on the index), coupled with political unrest, has seen hundreds of young people attempt irregular migration with the hope of finding peace and stability in Europe.

The journey is a harsh one and Diallo’s own experiences of irregular migration are traumatic. In Morocco he was attacked by five youth and seriously wounded in the face and back. It, however, didn’t deter him from trying to reach Europe through irregular means. And it was only after he had been held for the third time in a Libyan jail that he eventually returned home through the European Union (EU)-International Organisation of Migration (IOM) Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

The 31-year-old is one of the Guinea migrants assisted to return home by the IOM. A total of 12,609 Guinean migrants stranded in North Africa have been assisted by the EU-IOM initiative to return home from Niger, Libya, Mali and Morocco. According to IOM’s recent figures, four percent of the returnees to Guinea are women, with six percent being minors.

Thirty returning migrants, including Diallo, were selected to become volunteers as part of IOM’s Migrants as Messengers (MaM) campaign in Guinea, which kicked off in June 2018. MaM. It runs in Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria, and is a unique peer-to-peer “awareness-raising project about irregular migration which includes various campaigns targeting, among others, parents, returning migrants and candidates to irregular migration.”

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/2071252583186046/

“They are carried out by young migrants who returned from different North African countries with the support of IOM and its partners,” Mariama Bobo Sy, the spokesperson for IOM in Guinea, tells IPS about the project.

As part of the awareness campaign, returnee migrants in Guinea have participated in events at football games, music shows and even universities.

“They also organised focus groups with young people in different neighbourhoods of Conakry and outside of the capital, particularly in Mamou, a crossroads town located 275 km of Conakry. Also, they were time to time in touch with the media to discuss the issue of irregular migration in a view of reaching more people, and get the message across to various sections of the population,” Sy says.

The experience made Diablo realise there was a need for further action. He has gone on to found the Guinean Organisation for the Fight against Irregular Migration, known as Organisation Guinéene pour la Luttecontre la Migration Irregulière (OGLIM) in French.

Apart from its headquarters in the capital Conakry, OGLIM has five national branches, namely in Kindia, Mamou, Labe, Kankan and Nzerekore. The group has currently 550 members in Conakry and 250 outside the capital.

“The terrible things that we saw and experienced during our ordeal in North Africa should serve as a catalyst for teaching the young generations about the dangers of irregular migration,” Diablo explains.
“However, we have to do it in a united manner so that the message conveyed through concerted efforts and as a bloc reaches the communities effectively and makes a long-lasting impact in our society.”

Daro Thiam (left), a returnee migrant from Mauritania is being interviewed by Khoudia Ndiaye (centre) and and Ndeye Fatou Sall (right) in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

Khoudia Ndiaye and Ndeye Fatou Sall set up a smartphone on a tripod to begin recording a video interview with Daro Thiam in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Hann Bel-Air is the departure point for many of the migrants who leave the city and country on irregular routes – boats to Spain, crossing the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean Sea, or to countries nearby.

Thiam, a mother of four, has recently returned from Mauritania, where she was unable to find a job to support her children."If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.” -- Ndeye Fatou Sall returnee migrant.

The three Senegalese women on a sunny rooftop near the beach have something in common: they are all migrants. Each of them left their home country to better their lives and support their families. But this afternoon is about Thiam’s story.

Ndiaye and Fatou Sall clip a microphone on Thiam’s dress then stand behind the tripod, counting down to the first question. They ask Thiam, “Why did you decide to leave home and where were you travelling to?”

Thiam answers in their native language, Wolof. The women nod; a sense of shared understanding is tangible among them.

They continue, reading other questions off the mobile application created for interviewing migrants: “What family members or people were you trying to support?”

“How did your family react to your return?” they continue.

The women are getting to know one another. After the interview, they will share their own stories with Thiam, and that is the point. The Migrants as Messengers (MaM) awareness-raising campaign, developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

By capturing the migration experiences on-camera and sharing the videos on Facebook, the campaign aims to educate potential migrants and their families about the risks involved in irregular migration. It also presents alternatives to migrating on routes that run dangerously through the desert, on to the Mediterranean Sea, and often lead to indefinite detention in North African countries like Libya.

MaM, funded by the government of the Netherlands, is a regional project run in Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Nigeria. It trains migrants who return home, like Ndiaye and Fatou Sall, in videography, interviewing, migration reporting, and online advocacy, so they can volunteer as ‘citizen journalists,’ or more appropriately, ‘migrant messengers.’ So far, IOM has trained nearly 80 migrants, referred to as Volunteer Field Officers, across the three participating countries; about one-third of the volunteers in Senegal are women.

Migrant returnees as storytellers

Law student Ndiaye is a returnee from Morocco, and Fatou Sall is a mother of five who lived and worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia for nine years. Ndiaye and Fatou Sall returned to Senegal in 2013 and 2017, respectively. They were recently trained alongside four other women – Maty Sarr, Aissatou Senghor and Fatou Guet Ndiaye – and four young men to become migrant messengers.

Fatou Sall experienced a difficult nine years in Saudi Arabia and is prepared to be open with others about what life truly was like. There comes from her an honest and heartfelt sharing of her former life.

“Everything I’ll say comes from the heart because it is the experience that I lived and that I am willing to share with others. I tell them right away ‘don’t go without regular papers because it is not easy that side’.”

She is happy to be part of the MaM campaign “and satisfied to be participating in this training, which I put to good use to create awareness about travelling [irregularly] when my association’s activities kick off.”

Since her return in 2017 she founded an association for former female migrant workers to Saudi Arabia called ‘Association of Senegalese Women Former Residents of Saudi Arabia’.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/707358599616225/

Women as influencers

She says that while she was paid USD 700, as opposed to the USD 200 she could get as a domestic worker at home, migrating irregularly was not worth it. She says she was fortunate that when she was ill her employer would pay for her doctor’s bills, but this would come out of her own salary.

“If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.”

She says that as a woman who experienced a difficult life overseas she doesn’t want other women to go through the same thing.

“It’s a lonely life out there, and as a woman and mother, most of the time you think about your family, especially if things begin to fall apart. The employment agencies operating in Dakar sold us to those Arab bosses as slaves and we worked endlessly, 24 hours sometimes with no pay.”

“I’m not forcing people or women to stay in Senegal, but if they don’t have the necessary documents, and think that they will get everything there, they are deluded.”

Anti-black sentiments are rife in Saudi Arabia, where police raids on foreigners’ homes are frequent, Fatou Sall says.

Ndiaye, who travelled to Morocco with papers in the hope of finding a job at a call centre, recounts a terrible tale of racism.

“I witnessed many stabbing and beating incidents by Moroccans on blacks and I became very scared to go out. The Arabs provoke black people and beat them up, steal their phones in broad daylight, and sometimes stab them. Life is very hard in North Africa, especially if you don’t have papers,” the law student explains.

“It’s also heartbreaking to see pregnant women embarking on such a dangerous adventure and suffering there. In the end, I thought returning home was the best option. Women, especially mothers, should stay home with their children.”

Fatou Guet, another returnee from Mauritania, who attempted to reach Spain on a makeshift boat, pleaded against travelling irregularly to Europe.

“Our trip lasted 10 days and we failed somewhere in the Mauritanian waters, where some people drowned and I got very sick and also nearly died. It is not good at all,” she tells IPS emotionally.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/217535472195014/

The campaign’s performance

But the experiences of these women and others who have attempted irregular migration have not gone unnoticed.

To date the IOM has close to 23,000 followers on their MaM Facebook page, 90 percent of whom are from Nigeria, Guinea-Conakry and Senegal.

College student Aminata Fall (23), who has been following the MaM campaign on Facebook, describes it as “genius”.

“It’s an emotionally charged campaign where some shocking stories are being told by brave and courageous people. You must be a mad person to travel [irregularly] to North Africa after watching these videos. Ha, surely it’s hell on earth out there,” Fall tells IPS.

IOM digital officer Marshall Patzana explains to IPS that they post new videos daily to “flood the online space with first-hand testimonies of the journey so as to counter the narrative that the smugglers are peddling online.”

“Our videos are usually between 30 seconds to a minute in length and as of last week the videos on the page have been viewed for a total of 30,590 minutes. Our content has reached over 550,000 people online since we started the Facebook page in June,” he says.

Patzana says the Facebook page creates a hub for returnees to interact amongst each other and to share best practices on how to reach out to their communities and advocate for regular migration.

Content produced by returnee migrants is also uploaded here and creates an online library of testimonies for anyone who wants to learn more about the journey.

“There is [also] a closed group where returnees from the different countries share their own personal stories and provide each other with peer support,” Patzana explains.

The IOM plans to extend the project into 2019 and to expand to three or four additional West African countries.

While they plan to reach more people, the women who are currently sharing their stories with others have hopes and plans for the future too.

Fatou Sall hopes that her association, which is based in Rufisque, will get more funding and kick off with activities soon.

Ndiaye thinks that her life would not have progressed as it has if she had not returned home. The master’s degree student will qualify soon. “Five years down the line, here I am, I’m about to finish my master’s in law. Next year I’ll be done, something that would have been impossible if I was in Morocco waiting for a job.”

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof was speaking on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm, in Senegal, about his experience attempting irregular migration to Europe. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Sep 8 2018 (IPS)

El Adama Diallo left his home in Senegal on Oct. 28, 2016, with dreams of reaching Europe in his heart and a steely determination that made him take an alternative, dangerous route to get there despite the absence of regular migration papers in his pocket.

It was a journey that took him from West Africa—through Mali then to Agadez in Niger and across the Sahara desert—to a southern oasis town in Libya.“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses.” -- El Adama Diallo, returnee migrant.

It was a route populated with heavily-armed human traffickers, bandits and the still-alive bodies of migrants like him, emaciated and weak from lack of water and food who had been left behind to die under the blazing North African sun.

Diallo survived it. Barely.

“All the roads leading to Agadez, and eventually to Libya and Italy are dangerous,” he told IPS on the sidelines of a live broadcast on Radio Afia Fm on Monday, Sept. 3, from the station’s base in the bustling township of Grand Yoff, in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

For me, the dream of reaching Europe irregularly is over, and I call on all who are considering irregular migration to stop it now, 32-year-old Diallo said.

Diallo has much to say about his experience. He finally was able to return to Senegal on Dec. 5, 2017 with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been working in coordination with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Libyan government to assist migrants who want to return home.

He now wants to inform others about his experience. Diallo has become a volunteer in an innovative awareness-raising campaign by IOM called Migrants as Messengers (MaM). MaM is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign that trains returning migrants to share their stories of the danger, trauma and abuse that they experienced while attempting irregular migration. The stories are candid and emotional testimonials.

As is Diallo’s own story.

Kidnapped and inhumane detention conditions

Diallo arrived in Sabha, southwestern Libya and found “almost the whole of Africa was there; Malians, Gambians, Ivorians, Nigerians and others.” From there he hoped to go to Tripoli to catch a boat to Italy. But he was immediately kidnapped by gangs posing as human traffickers.

“They demanded a ransom of [about USD800] for my freedom, which was paid a week later by my family back in Senegal,” he said.

Being caught by human traffickers showed him that race or nationality did not mean solidarity when it came to making a profit.

“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses,” he said.

But after being released he spent about 10 months in Libya, still waiting to travel to Italy. He was eventually arrested by security forces and held, along with thousands others, in a detention centre in Tripoli in such inhumane conditions that eventually, he knew; all he wanted to do was to return home.

He stayed for two months in cells that were so overcrowded “we were piled on top of each other like fishes.”

“Some people slept standing and others spent the night in stinking toilets, and we only ate once a day. It was terrible,” Diallo explained.

He endured it until he was given the opportunity to return home with IOM.

Explaining the dangers to others

Mamoudou Keita, a reporter at Radio Afia, told IPS that community radio stations were the right platform to debate this issue.

“Community radio is close to people on the ground. I think it’s a good communication strategy. However, it must not be limited to the media. It must descend to the streets, mosques and churches to ensure that the message is understood everywhere,” Keita said.

“Besides, the marketplaces are also good places to spread the word because some mothers are funding their children’s [irregular] trips to Europe. They must be told that it’s morally wrong and dangerous.”

El Hadji Saidou Nourou Dia, IOM Senegal spokesperson, told IPS that his agency was working with 30 community radio stations affiliated to Association of Union des Radio Associatives and Communautaires du Senegal (URAC) or Community Radio Stations of Senegal. The stations are based in Dakar, Tambacounda, Kolda and Seidhou, which are regions most affected by irregular migration.

He said the stations were owned and managed by people who were leaders in their respective communities and that people listened to and considered their advice.

“Our partnership, which is expected to end in December 2018, consists among others of building capacity of radio journalists as how to best treat information related to migration,” he said.

“When a migrant speaks about his own experience, the things that he went through, that surely has the power to make the candidates to irregular migration think twice before they take that route,” Dia said.

It is possible to be successful at home

A radio programme similar to the one that Diallo was on this week was also hosted last week in Pikine, east Dakar, on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm.

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof–is himself a returnee migrant.

“It’s still possible to harvest success by staying at home,” the tall artist, who has a single called “Stop Irregular Immigration,” said.

“I saw with my own eyes people dying in the Sahara Desert, and women getting involved in prostitution to survive when they ran out of money. Also, human traffickers rape the same women they are supposed to help reach Europe,” he said during an emotionally-charged show hosted by Oxy Jeunes radio journalist Codou Loum.

Ndiaye spent two months in Libya in 2016 and paid about USD1,400 to human traffickers to help him get to Italy.

But he never made it.

Asked if he was aware that parents were funding their children’s trips to North Africa and eventually to Europe, he replied: “Stop putting pressure on your children to become rich quickly to support the family.”

“Paying for their irregular trip to Europe is not a good thing to do because if these children get killed, it will be a big loss for you.”

African governments need to do more for their youth

Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality, who was also on the show with Ndiaye, said migration was everyone’s right. However, she stressed it has be to done in a formal and legal way to avoid people falling into unpredictable traps.

Diene, while echoing the rapper’s sentiments that it was still possible to make it in Africa, appealed to African governments to create a youth-friendly environment that would persuade young Africans not to embark on such dangerous journeys.

“I think African governments have failed in their duties to help the youth thrive and improve their lives right here at home. They must support the youth through adequate youth employment programmes and legal migration policies.”

Diallo echoed the same sentiments when he spoke about the reasons for irregular migration.

•  Additional writing by Nalisha Adams.

The floating market at Ganvie village on Lake Nokoue near Cotonou, Benin. Many migrants use Benin as a launchpad before heading to North Africa or Europe. But some are choosing to remain. Credit: David Stanley/CC By 2.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Jul 26 2018 (IPS)

Last year, Mohamed Keita returned home to Mali after living and working in Libya for six years. Eighteen months ago he was arrested by security forces in Libya as he and other migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe via a makeshift boat. After spending a traumatising six months in jail, he was transported back to Mali.

But as soon as he arrived he immediately knew that it would be difficult for him to stay put.

Keita’s home is in the central poverty-stricken Mopti region where his entire village still does not have power.

While his parents now live in the country’s capital Bamako, “even in our family house in Bamako, running water and electricity are luxuries. And when it’s raining, flooding occurs and kills people. These kinds of things, including armed conflict and terrorism, force you to go far away to look for a better life and peace,” he says as he wipes the sweat that falls heavily from his face as he works on a construction site on the outskirts of Cotonou, a major city in Benin.“While we were waiting for the trip, we used to hear bad news of friends who had drowned at sea. Death stoked us while we waited for our turn... It was like waiting for Judgment Day.” Mohamed Keita.

Besides, he says, terrorism is still tearing the country apart, and peace and national reconciliation remain elusive.

The west African nation of Mali, which heads to the polls this Sunday Jul. 29, was caught in violent crisis in 2012 when a Tuareg group called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad began a fight for a separatist rule. However, AFP reported yesterday that despite recent attacks by jihadists and inter-ethnic violence, incumbent president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said there was “no war-mongering in Mali today.” He was elected in 2013 soon after French intervention to bring peace to the nation.

But as far as Keita was concerned, no real social or economic development has taken place since he left.

Had there been, the 26-year-old tells IPS, it would have enticed him to stay and plan his future. So instead he headed to Benin, another west African country. In Cotonou, a vibrant and thriving place, he shares a small room with six other sub-Saharan African migrants who are waiting to make the journey to North Africa and eventually to Europe.

Benin, new irregular migration hub?

The city is a far cry from his home village or even Bamako. Women from across the continent come here to buy local material that is highly sought after to make African dresses. Business is booming as the government doesn’t charge high taxes on small businesses.

Many also like it here because they consider xenophobia and police harassment to be non-existent. Last February, the government abolished short stay visas for 31 African countries in order to develop South-South cooperation.

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to make a fortune in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and Angola. It has also served as a stopping point for central African migrants looking to get to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and perhaps continue their journey to Europe.

According to a 2015 United Nations report on the country, 2.1 percent of the 11 million people here are migrants, the vast majority of who come from the neighbouring countries of Nigeria, Togo and Niger.

But this nation has always attracted sub-Saharan African traders looking for business opportunities. Its central market Dantokpa or Tokpa—which means market of snakes in the local language—is West Africa’s largest open-air business area.

“Cotonou is a good place to do business because you can earn up to 100 percent profit from selling everything you buy here,” Congolese trader Marthe Mavoungou tells IPS, as she is about to board a plane back to Brazzaville.

The country’s proximity to economic powerhouse Nigeria, also plays a role in the bustling business here as huge volumes of stock from Lagos port make their way to Benin. Items ranging from women’s bags, shoes and clothes, find their way onto local markets where they are sold cheaply.

Biggest mistake

Keita, a high school dropout, left Mali at 20 for Libya and worked as a menial labourer there. The experience was a difficult one.

“If you are black and living in North Africa…you get unfair treatment but you have nowhere to complain,” he explains.

Amid emotional abuse, exploitation and racial slurs proffered towards him almost on a daily basis, Keita kept telling himself that the experience  would come to an end once he boarded the boat to Europe.

But it was not to be.

“I was crying when we were arrested, and at the same time angry with myself for making what I thought was the biggest mistake of my life,” he says.

“The failed trip cost me 1,500 dollars, which represented all my savings from working in the Libyan construction sector,” he says, emotionally.

But his story is fortunate. While he may not have crossed to Europe as he wanted to, Keita, unlike thousands of others is still alive.

“While we were waiting for the trip, we used to hear bad news of friends who had drowned at sea. Death [stalked] us while we waited for our turn. Some migrants even began smoking drugs to kill the stress. It was like waiting for Judgment Day.”

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said this month that on just one weekend some 218 migrants lost their lives in two mass separate drownings. “I’ve just returned to Libya after a series of tragedies and the loss of hundreds of migrant lives including several babies,” IOM head William Lacy Swing reportedly said as he visited Libyan earlier this month. “My message is that all must focus on saving lives and protecting migrant rights.”

IOM states that this is the fifth year in a row that nearly 1,000 migrants have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean.

Nearly 48,000 asylum-seekers and migrants have reached Europe’s shores in the first six months of 2018, according to IOM figures.

Keita still thinks that those who make it to Europe are lucky. “But if you ask them about the things they endured before achieving their goal, they would tell you thousands of stories of misery, abuse and pain,” he says.

His own pain did not end after trying to leave Libya for Europe. He says he experienced terrible and painful things in jail, which he would rather not talk about.

“The TV images you see showing migrants crammed in one place under the scorching sun like sheep waiting to be taken to the abattoirs is only a tip of the iceberg,” he explains.

A report released in March by the U.N Human Rights Office estimates that 6,500 people are being held in official prisons while thousands more are in facilities run by the government or run by armed groups affiliated to the state. Earlier this year Doctors Without Borders said that some 800 migrants in Libya’s detention centres were living under worsening conditions.

Many migrants have, however, returned home thanks to IOM’s Voluntary Humanitarian Return (VHR) programme.

Some choose to stay

Ousmane Bangoura, who lived in Morocco for four years in a failed attempt to reach Spain, also lives in Cotonou where he sells used clothes in the city market Dantokpa.

His experience was a difficult one.

“Arabs hate blacks for no apparent reason and they call us derogatory names. Everybody is against you, including your neighbours. Besides, local media is also fuelling xenophobia through subjective and discriminatory reports,” Bangoura says.

But Bangoura, who is from Guinea-Conakry, tells IPS, that he will remain in Benin.

“I’m happy with what I’m currently doing, as I’m able to my life and send money home time to time to my ailing parents,” he says.

There seems to be a recent increase in the number of migrants flocking to Cotonou looking to get to North Africa, according to a local community leader.

Some observers firmly believe that the city could become another Agadez (the door of Sahara), a northern town of Niger, where the country’s security forces have been conducting an aggressive campaign to root out human smugglers and migrants waiting to go to Libya. The campaign, which has been welcomed by the European Union, has also seen stocks of weapons seized and a number of arms traders arrested.

Congolese migrant, Didier, and his friend Felix, from the Central African Republic, both recently arrived at Cotonou from Agadez. Didier tells IPS that human smugglers have descended on Cotonou.

“A man and a woman came to see us on Sunday, asking if we wanted to travel to Spain via Morocco,” Didier says.

“He said all the paperwork will be done here in Benin and that they will take us through Senegal and Mauritania. They were asking for USD700 for the trip to Morocco, and once you reach there, they will take you to their ‘agents’ who will charge you USD1,500 negotiable for the trip to Europe. I’m not yet ready, but I will go come or shine. Europe is every young African’s dream.”

But for Keita the dream of living and working in Europe hasn’t died. But he says he will do it formally, when the time is right. For now he is happy to remain in Benin and earn a living.

In this dated picture, a child collects bullets from the ground in Rounyn, a village in North Darfur, Sudan. Armed conflict on the African continent poses huge risk on any potential investments to address climate change. Credit: Albert Gonzalez Farran / UNAMID

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
KINSHASA, Jul 5 2018 (IPS)

Africa’s political instability, its armed conflicts and regulatory issues are placing at risk investment needed to tackle climate change and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the continent. 

“A renewable energy developer or investor faces increased risk that their returns and earnings could decline as a result of political change, such as terrorism, expropriation (dispossession of property for public use), and sovereign breach of contract,” Dereje Senshaw, the principal specialist at Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), told IPS. He added that credit, market and technological risks were also obstacles towards reducing GHG emissions.

According to International Monetary Fund and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development papers, green investment refers to the investment necessary to reduce GHG and air pollutant emissions without significantly reducing the production and consumption of non-energy goods. It covers both public and private investment.

Senshaw’s explanations come against the backdrop of several armed conflicts that are tearing the resource-rich continent apart. Millions of people have been uprooted from their homes and the instability has dealt a blow to development projects and poverty-eradication programmes.

This month, the Norwegian Refugee Council listed the world’s 10-most neglected crises. Six were from Africa. In the Central African Republic, conflict began in 2013 after a coup. The country held elections three years later but peace has been elusive. The Democratic Republic of Congo is listed as having the world’s second-most neglected crisis as the central African nation has experienced almost two decades of conflict. Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia are also on the list.

Tariffs too high

Apart from political risks, green investments could also be compromised by regulatory issues or tariffs, Senshaw said.

“Some African countries set tariffs at very high rates, making it very unattractive to investors as they may not have the chance to recover their incurred costs in the future,” he explained.

Another major risk is the delay of utility contracts. Circumstances could change during the lifetime of a project in many sub-Saharan Africa countries and even essential services, like the provision of electricity, may stop. In addition, risk arises when regulatory agencies start to interfere with the operations of private companies.

“Similarly, there is the risk of the nationalisation of utilities and policy changes. In addition there are various regulatory risks related to biddings, procurements and hiring, and contracts,” Senshaw said, explaining that bids are frequently cancelled, postponed or disputed. “This discourages interested private actors from spending time and money on these bids. Also, some African countries put in place bureaucratic procurements and hiring procedures that hamper operations of private energy companies,” he said.

He added that corruption was another risk.

“However, I think corruption has not been overlooked by investors, rather it is still considered as one of the potential investment risks,” he said.

Senshaw said African governments needed to establish an enabling environment for private investors in renewable projects, which he described as the main driver for accelerating the deployment of renewable energy in Africa.

USD225 billion by 2030

The search for money to fund these green projects continues unabated.

Toshiaki Nagata, an expert from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), said recently that Africa would need USD225 billion by 2030 to implement energy targets set out in national determined contributions (NDCs), of which 44 percent are for unconditional targets. In the Paris Agreement, a global agreement to tackle climate change, countries declared their NDCs, which are outlines of the actions they propose to undertake in order to limit the rise in average global temperatures to below 2°C.

Unconditional targets, Nagata explained, are the targets that countries are committed to meet without international support, while conditional targets are the ones that countries would only be able to meet with international support in areas of finance and technology, among others.

Nagata, who made the announcement in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, at a GGGI capacity building summit, told IPS that the amount applied to African countries that have quantified renewable energy targets.

Virtually all African countries mention renewables in their NDCs and 85 percent of them include quantified renewable energy targets, Nagata said. He said 23 countries in Africa have renewable energy action under adaptation, while 15 have targets with off-grid renewables.

USD470 billion to fund NDCs

Currently, USD470 billion is available to fund the implementation of NDCs globally, according to IRENA. However, the agency warned that barriers to investment could come in the form of insufficient or contradictory incentives, limited experience and institutional capacity and immature financial systems.

NDCs, Nagata pointed out, provided an opportunity to capture the benefits renewables offer for climate resilient infrastructure. 

“Some renewables, especially solar, can bring electricity in a cost-effective manner to those areas where electricity cannot be brought otherwise. This will enhance their resilience. In many cases, remote areas use diesel for power,” he said, adding that it was costly and therefore not environmentally sustainable.

While the commitment of African governments plays a role in countries reaching their NDCs, the major investment driver for establishing renewable energy projects remains the attractiveness of financial returns, says Senshaw.

Forested hills in Guinea’s Kintampo area. Barely a quarter of the population has access to electricity. Credit: CC by 3.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Jun 26 2018 (IPS)

The West African nation of Guinea may be a signatory of the Paris Agreement, a global undertaking by countries around the world to reduce climate change, but as it tries to provide electricity to some three quarters of its 12 million people who are without, the commitment is proving a struggle.

Mamadou Bangoura, head of planning and energy management at Guinea’s Ministry of Energy, told IPS that his country faced a major challenge implementing its programme for the development and provision of energy resources to all citizens at a lower cost. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, only 26 percent of the population has access to electricity. “Our main concern is to find a balance between the implementation of this programme and the protection of biodiversity." --Mamadou Bangoura of Guinea’s Ministry of Energy

“Our main concern is to find a balance between the implementation of this programme and the protection of biodiversity. This is further compounded by a requirement to take into rigorous account the environmental and social aspects in the framework of the realisation of any infrastructure project,” Bangoura explained.

According to conservation organisation Fauna and Flora International, Guinea’s wildlife is already under threat. “Conservation solutions need to be found that enable people to make a living while protecting their natural assets into the future,” the organisation reports.

Unlike other African nations that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels, only 43 percent of Guinea’s electricity is generated from this as more than half (55 percent) is produced by hydropower.

The country’s potential for hydropower is significant. Guinea is regarded as West Africa’s water tower because 22 of the region’s rivers originate there, including Africa’s third-longest river, the Niger.

Bangoura added that despite the challenges, his country was making progress and several hydropower projects were being constructed. The Kaléta project, which will produce 204MW, is already completed. However, the Souapiti (459MW) and Amaria (300MW) hydropower plants “are still work in progress.”

He said negotiations were also underway for the construction of a 40MW solar power and a 40MW power plant. “Concession and power purchase agreements are being finalised,” he added.

In the Gambia, challenges in implementing renewable energy exist also. The small West African nation of only 1.8 million people is considered to be rare in its ambitious commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — it pledged a 44 percent reduction below its business-as-usual emission level. It’s a big task as currently around 96 percent of all electricity produced in the country comes from fossil fuels.  

Sidat Yaffa, an agronomist with expertise in climate change at the University of The Gambia, told IPS there were barriers to renewable energy programmes because the sector was still new to the Gambia.

“Therefore, a better understanding of the technology is still a challenge, securing adequate funding for implementation is a gap, and availability of trained human resources using the technology is also a gap,” Yaffa said.

He added that the Gambia’s renewable energy programmes included a wind energy pilot project at Nema Kunku village in West Coast Region.

“The agriculture sector’s GHG could be drastically reduced in the next five years in the Gambia if adequate solar panel water irrigation technologies are implemented,” Yaffa added.

Cote d’Ivoire also has strong ambitions for the development of reliable and profitable renewable energies, a cabinet minister said last year, adding that the country is committed to produce 42 percent of its energy through renewable energy.

This week representatives from Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Guinea and Senegal will meet in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to discuss both the challenges and successes they have had in reaching their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). NDCs are blueprints or outlines by countries on how they plan to cut GHG emissions.

The regional workshop, the first of its kind, is hosted by the Global Green Growth Institute in association with the International Renewable Energy Agency and the Green Climate Fund.

It aims to enhance capacity for NDC implementation, share experiences and best practices, and discuss renewable energy opportunities and associated challenges in the region.

Rural electrification headache

This regional cooperation is a significant step forward as 60 percent of the West African population living in the rural areas continue to depend on firewood as their primary source of energy.

In the Gambia and Senegal a quarter of the rural population has access to electricity, while the number is slightly higher in Cote d’Ivoire with about 29 percent having access.

But in Guinea and Burkina Faso only three and one percent of the respective rural populations have electricity.

Last year, Smart Villages Initiatives (SVI) conducted energy workshops in West Africa and it attributes poor electricity access in the region to insufficient generation, high prices of petroleum, lack of financing and transmission and distribution losses.

The World Bank’s 2017 State of Electricity Access Report makes the link that energy is inextricably linked to every other critical sustainable development challenge, including health, education, food security, gender equality, poverty reduction, employment and climate change, among others.

The Agence Française de Développement acknowledged the benefits of rural electrification programmes, stating, “(they) have the opportunity to reach more poor households and have larger impacts in the lives of the rural poor by providing new opportunities and enhancing the synergies between the agricultural and non-agricultural sector,”

Bangoura has acknowledged his country’s challenge to electrify rural areas. He said his government has just created the Guinean Rural Electrification Agency and launched a couple of projects, including a collaboration with the Electricity of Guinea, that will pave the way for the electrification of rural areas.

However, SVI said while most governments had set up rural electrification agencies or funds, the impact of such organisations may be hampered by a lack of financial and technical expertise. Hence the need to turn to international institutions and experts for capacity building and green energy finance.

Bangoura agreed that one of the problems his country is struggling with is implementation. “The problems at this level lies in the adaptation of the texts of the country to those governing the Paris Agreement…Hence the importance of this workshop that is focusing on capacity building.”

By 2030 the ambition is to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land and sequester 250 million tons of carbon. Credit: Greatgreenwall.org

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Senegal, Jun 11 2018 (IPS)

Hope, smiles and new vitality seem to be returning slowly but surely in various parts of the Sahel region, where the mighty Sahara Desert has all but ‘eaten’ and degraded huge parts of landscapes, destroying livelihoods and subjecting many communities to extreme poverty.

The unexpected relief has come from the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI), an eight-billion-dollar project launched by the African Union (AU) with the blessing of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the backing of organizations such as the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Sahara, an area of 3.5 million square miles, is the largest ‘hot’ desert in the world and home to some 70 species of mammals, 90 species of resident birds and 100 species of reptiles, according to DesertUSA.

Restoring landscapes

The GGW aims to restore Africa’s degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions. This will be done by, among others, planting a wall of trees in more than 20 countries – westward from Gambia to eastward in Djibouti – over 7,600 km long and 15 km wide across the continent.

The countries include Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Senegal. There is also Algeria, Egypt, Gambia, Eritrea, Somalia, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo and Benin.

A girl learns about the project through a virtual reality headset. Credit: Greatgreenwall.org

Popularity

Elvis Paul Nfor Tangem, AU’s GGWSSI coordinator, told IPS that the project was doing well, gaining popularity and generating many other ideas as the implementation gains momentum.

Tangem also said that the AU had begun working with the Secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Namibian government for the extension of the GGWSSI concept to the dry lands of the Southern Africa region.

Namibia, which borders South Africa, is located between the Namib and Kalahari deserts. Namib, from which the country draws its name, is believed to be the world’s oldest desert.

Largest project ever

If the GGW is indeed extended to Southern Africa, it will take the number of countries drawn to the project to over 20, making it one of the world’s largest projects ever.

Fundraising for beneficiaries countries is being done through bilateral negotiations, as well as through national investments, the AU said.

International partners including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Sahara and Sahel Observatory (SSO), among others, are also playing a critical role to ensure that the project is being successfully implemented, and upon its completion by 2030 will become the world’s largest living structure and a new Wonder of the World.

The icon of GGW shows the path of the Great Green Wall. Credit: Greatgreenwall.org

Food security

The GGW is set to create thousands of jobs for those who live along its path and boost food security and resilience to climate change in the Sahel, one of the driest parts of the world, where the FAO said an estimated 29.2 million people are food insecure.

The project founders said that by 2030 the ambition is to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land and sequester 250 million tons of carbon.

Asked if the project is being implementing one country after the other, Elvis replied: “The implementation of the initiative is first and famous country-based, meaning all the countries are undertaking implementation at their levels.

“However, the common factor among all the countries is the fact that their activities are based on the Harmonized Regional Strategy and their National Action Plans (NAP). We are supporting the production of the NAP in Cameroon and Ghana and also working on the SADC region.”

Returning home?

In Senegal, a total of 75 direct jobs and 1,800 indirect jobs, including in the nurseries sector and multipurpose gardens, have already been created through the GGW in the last six years, according to official statistics.

Also in Senegal, where desertification has slashed 34% of its area, the GGW has since ‘recovered’ just over 40,000 hectares out of the 817,500 hectares planned for the project. This is good news for people like Ibrahima Ba and his family who left their homeland to move to Dakar in the quest of greener pastures.

Now, he is contemplating a return home. “I’m planning to go back towards the end of the year to rebuild my shattered life. The Sahara hasn’t done anybody any favor by taking away our livelihood,” Ba, a livestock farmer Peul from northern Senegal, told IPS.

An estimated 300,000 people live in the three provinces crossed by the GGW in Senegal.

Participatory approach

However, Marine Gauthier, an environmental expert for the Rights and Resources’ Initiative, (RRI) said a participatory approach was needed if the project was to be implemented successfully.

“In a conflictual region, where people depend on the land for their survival and where there are numerous transhumance activities from herders peoples (Peuls) potentially impacted by the project, a careful participatory approach is needed,” Gauthier said.

“Conflicts have already arisen a couple of years ago with Peuls (herders practicing transhumance, whose travels were to be restrained by the project). Just like any other environmental protection project, its capacity to engage with local communities, to make them first beneficiaries of the project, is the key to its success on the long term.

“Participatory mapping is a very successful tool that has been used within other projects and that could be of great help in defining and establishing the Great Green Wall,” Gauthier said.

Furthermore, Gauthier said empowering communities would be very interesting at the scale of the Great Green Wall. “It would take a lot of efforts, consultations, financial and human resources. It is however the only way to ensure that this project, which people are talking about for more than 10 years now, reaches its goal.

“Because when the communities are empowered and when their rights on the land are secured, it benefits directly to the environment and to preserving this land from more damage.”

Excerpt:

The DRC has the world’s second largest rainforest, about 135 million hectares, which is a powerful bulwark against climate change. Credit: Forest Service photo by Roni Ziade

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
INONGO, Democratic Republic of Congo, Apr 17 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of logs loaded into makeshift boats at the port of Inongo at Lake Mai-Ndombe stand ready to be transported to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Inongo is the provincial capital of the Mai-Ndombe Province, a 13-million-hectare area located some 650 km northeast of Kinshasa. The logs have been illegally cut from the Mai-Ndombe forest, an area of 10 million hectares, which has some trees measuring between 35 and 45 meters.“Evicting the guardians of the forest risks losing the forest." --Marine Gauthier

Destined for overseas export

“We witness this kind of spectacle every day, whereby tons and tons of logs and timber find their way to the capital either via the Congo River or by road, where they will eventually be shipped overseas, or just sold to the black market,” environment activist Prosper Ngobila told IPS.

Mbo, the truck driver who brought the load, confirmed: “This stock and others that are already gone to the capital are destined for overseas export. I’m only a transporter, but I understand that the owner of this business is a very powerful man, almost untouchable.”

Thousands of logs cut from trees 20 meters in height are currently lying in the Mai-Ndombe forest waiting to be hauled off, while thousands more have been left there to rot for years, Ngobila added.

“It’s shocking to say the least,” he said.

Rich in natural resources

The forests of Mai-Ndombe (“black water” in Lingala) are rich in rare and precious woods (red wood, black wood, blue wood, tola, kambala, lifake, among others). It is also home to about 7,500 bonobos, an endangered primate and the closest cousin to humans of all species, sharing 98 percent of our genes, according to the WWF.

The forests constitute a vital platform providing livelihoods for some 73,000 indigenous individuals, mostly Batwa (Pygmies), who live here alongside the province’s 1.8 million population, many of whom with no secure land rights.

Recent studies also have revealed that the province – and indeed the forests – boasts significant reserves of diamond, oil, nickel, copper and coal, and vast quantities of uranium lying deep inside the Lake Mai-Ndombe.

Efforts to save the forests

The WWF and many environmental experts, who deplore the gradual destruction and degradation of these forests for their precious wood and for the benefit of agriculture, continue to plead and lobby for their protection.

The DRC has the world’s second largest rainforest, about 135 million hectares, which is a powerful bulwark against climate change.

In an effort to save these precious forests, the World Bank in 2016 approved DRC’s REDD+ programmes aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fight forest’s deforestation and degradation, which it would fund to the tune of 90 million dollars annually.

The projects, which are currently estimated at 20, have since transformed the Mai-Ndombe Province into a testing ground for international climate schemes. And as part of the projects, indigenous and other local people caring for the forests and depending on them for their livelihoods were supposed to be rewarded for their efforts.

Flaws and fiasco

However, Marine Gauthier, a Paris-based expert who authored a report on the sorry state of the Mai-Ndombe forest, seems to have found serious flaws in these ambitious programmes.

The report, released a few days before the International Day of Forests on March 21 by the Rights and Resources’ Initiative (RRI)), cited weak recognition of communities’ land rights, and recommended that key prerequisites should be addressed before any other REDD+ funds are invested.

In the interim, it said, REDD+ investments should be put on hold.

Gauthier, who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to stop the funding from doing more damage to the people of the forest, told IPS in the aftermath of the report’s release, “In DRC and more specifically in the Mai-Ndombe, the history of natural resources management has always been done at the expense of local communities.

“Industrial logging concessions have been granted on their traditional lands without their consent and destroyed their environment without any form of compensation, and protected areas have been established on their lands prohibiting them to access to the forest where they hunt, gather, conduct traditional rituals, hence severing them from their livelihood and culture – again, without their consent.”

Struggle for landless peasants

Under the DRC’s 2014 Forest Code, indigenous people and local communities have the legal right to own forest covering an area of up to 50,000 hectares.

Thirteen communities in the territories of Mushie and Bolobo in the Mai-Ndombe province have since asked for formal title of a total of 65,308 hectares of land, reports said, adding that only 300 hectares have been legally recognised for each community – a total of only 3,900 hectares.

Alfred Mputu, a 56-year-old small scale forest farmer who is among the people still waiting for a formal title, told IPS: “I have been working and living in this land for decades, but as long as I don’t have a formal title that gives me the right to own it, I wouldn’t say it belongs to me.

“What if the government decides to sell it to foreign companies or to some rich and powerful people? Where will we go to live?”

The consequences of these communities living in and around these forests with no secured land rights could be dire, according to experts.

Zachary Donnenfeld, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) senior researcher for African futures and innovation, told IPS: “They could have their land sold out from under them by the government, likely to a private multinational company.

“Even if they are allowed to stay on their land, the environmental degradation caused by this industry could cause a noticeable deterioration in the quality of life for people in the area.”

Pretoria-based Donnenfeld added: “My guess is that the government is more interested in selling these resources to multinationals than it in seeing it benefit the community.

“To be fair, the government could be trying to sort out competing claims among the local groups. There could have been some overlap, for example communities bidding for the best land, and the government could be deciding what’s fair based on historical use or something. That said, my guess is that communities won’t get most of this land – at least in a secured land rights sense.”

Poverty and conflicts

Gauthier pointed out that these situations create poverty and conflicts between project implementers and communities, as well as between communities.

“Instead, when communities get secured land rights and are empowered to manage their lands themselves, studies show that it is the best way to protect the forest and even more efficient than government-managed protected areas.

“REDD+ opens the door to more land-grabbing by external stakeholders appealed by carbon benefits. Local communities’ land rights should be recognised through existing legal possibilities such as local community forest concessions so that they can keep protecting the forest, hence achieving REDD+ objectives.”

Gauthier said if their land rights are not secured, they can get evicted, as has already happened elsewhere in the country, such as South Kivu in the Kahuzi Biega National Park where 6,000 pygmies were expelled.

“Evicting the guardians of the forest risks losing the forest, when enabling them to live in and protect the forest as they have always done is the best way to keep these forests standing.”

Many observers say situations such as these impact negatively on the most vulnerable – women and children – who are already bearing the brunt of a country torn apart by dictatorship, economic mismanagement, corruption and two decades of armed conflict.

Chouchouna Losale, vice-coordinator of the Coalition of Women for the Environment and Sustainable Development in the DRC, told IPS that a humanitarian crisis has ensued in the Mai-Ndombe Province after the savannahs donated to women were ‘given’ to an industrial logging company.

“There are now cases of malnutrition in the area,” Losale said.

The Coalition of Women for the Environment and Sustainable Development advocates for the recognition of rights and competence of women in general, and aboriginal women in particular, in the Congolese provinces of Mai-Ndombe and Equateur.

“I urge the government to advance the process of land reform in order to provide the country with a clear land policy protecting forest-dependent communities,” Losale said, adding that proper consultation with communities should be done to avoid conflict.

New arrivals receive assistance in Senegal. Credit : IOM/Lucas Chandellier

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Mar 29 2018 (IPS)

Bouba Diop looks in delight at his uncle’s newly refurbished food canteen in the poor township of Keur Massar on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Since returning to Senegal from Algeria and Libya, where he was working in the construction sector, he has been wondering how to rebuild his life after spending two years in North Africa trying to get to Europe by sea. But now, his uncle has given him back his manager job.“We have to tackle the roots and ask ourselves the question: why are we ready to lose our lives to find work elsewhere?" --Florence Kim of IOM

Home sweet home

“I’m happy to be back after living in the North African hell, but I’m angry with myself for not making my dream come true. Well, it’s destiny. Now I must look forward to the future,” Diop, a 22-year-old man who attended a Darra (religious school), added.

While Diop reflected on what he called a shattered dream, at the same time in Kolda in southern Senegal, another returnee from Niger, Ibou, pondered his future, which he described as uncertain and complicated.

Unlike Diop, who has found solace in his uncle’s shop, Ibou is wondering what to do next after selling all his livestock to hit the road, crossing the Sahara desert on his way to the European El Dorado. But he never made it even to war-torn Libya.

“I was robbed in Niger of all my money (2,800 dollars) and belongings by people posing as smugglers who promised to take me to Tripoli, and finally to Italy,” the 25-year-old man said, adding that he was stranded for several months in Agadez (northern Niger, ‘door of the Sahara’), where he almost died of hunger and malaria.

“Somehow, I’m ashamed to return because I have become another burden on my family. I was born in a poor family. They all pinned their hopes on me, thinking that I would reach Europe and get a well-paying job to start sending them money,” he said emotionally.

Sad tales

Diop and Ibou’s stories are just the tip of the iceberg in Africa, where hopeless young sub-Saharan Africans, including unaccompanied children, leave their poverty-stricken or war-torn homelands to travel to North Africa in the hope of getting a job to fund their onward and dangerous journey to Europe.

While 150,982 ‘lucky’ migrants – from Africa and elsewhere – managed to reach Europe in 2017 by the Mediterranean Sea, more than 15,000 have died trying since 2014 (3,139 last year), according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

However, for those who, for whatever reasons, were stranded either in Niger or Libyan jails (20,000 last year) or sold as ‘modern slaves’ in Libyan markets, the only way to solve the crisis seems to be assistance for voluntary return to their home countries.

New arrivals receive assistance in Senegal. Credit : IOM/Lucas Chandellier

Assistance for voluntary return

IOM said that in 2017 it assisted 3,023 Senegalese migrants stranded in Libya and Niger to return thanks to the European Union Trust Funds.

Florence Kim, IOM regional media and communications officer for West and Central Africa, told IPS that in Senegal, assistance to returnees has been a major focus since the establishment of the office in 1998.

“In the absence of legal migration channels, assistance for voluntary return is one of the only options that can help migrants in distress whose fundamental rights are at risk of being violated,” she explained. “More than 23,000 people have since received return assistance and were assisted on their arrival.

“This assistance is part of the IOM assistance provided globally to return voluntarily. This assistance may take the form of direct assistance on arrival, educational or medical care, or individual, collective or community reintegration.”

Welcome back to society

“Returnees should no longer be perceived as a burden on communities but rather as an advantage,” Kim said, adding that one of the innovative approaches of the new EU Trust Funds project consisted of including communities of origin in the reintegration project.

“Whereas before we were going to work with the returnees, this time we are working to integrate those who have not left so that they can benefit from the activities that were initially offered to the returnees.”

IOM said in a report that most of the Senegalese returnees assisted in 2017 came from the region of Kolda (30%), Tambacounda (16%), Dakar (15%), Sédhiou (12%) and Kaolack (6%), while others (22%) came from other regions.

The report also said that only 2.5% of these assisted returnees in 2017 were women.

Voluntary return: lasting solution?

Kim, who noted that the EU gave an additional 95 million dollars to the IOM this month to complete the operations, said  voluntary return alone was not a lasting solution.

“If it is not accompanied by reintegration into the country of origin, and if nothing is offered on return, people will risk their lives again… We are on the right track. Our priority is to shelter thousands of stranded migrants and ensure that there is enough to ensure the sustainability of the solutions they are offered.”

It is widely believed that the UN migration agency has been offering a ‘stipend’ to help returnees resettle in their communities.

Kim clarified: “We only give pocket money that differs according to the countries of the region. However, this money – the only one given – is only used to cover immediate needs and transportation once they have arrived in their country from the airport to their homes.

“It is certainly not a salary or a larger sum of money. We do not want them to go home with money. If they come back and ask to be assisted, it is for other reasons than money. What helps them to reintegrate is the implementation of projects, and income-generating activities.

“All the work starts when they arrive in the country so no, we do not say they’re gone, they’re gone. Yes we have been monitoring and monitoring to make sure that what we put in place lasts.”

Leaving for economic reasons

Unlike sub-Saharan Africans from countries such as the DRC, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, to name only a few, who leave their homelands to escape conflict, war and massive human rights violations, Senegal’s Diop and Ibou could be classified as economic migrants.

William Assanvo, a West Africa-based expert for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), told IPS, “If economic considerations are at the origin of the phenomenon, the answers must be economic. These involve the implementation of regional development plans, which involve investments in the education, health, agriculture or livestock sectors. The development and support of private entrepreneurship is also to be strengthened.”

Assanvo said some programs have already been set up by international partners, notably the European Union or France, to “fix” young Senegalese by providing support for the implementation of projects.

However, he said the question remains whether these initiatives were successful in achieving the goal and whether the effects were sustainable.

“They (often) fail to take into account the thousands of young people in search of a better socio-economic being. So these programs, while useful, are limited in the impact they may have.”

Valuable lessons

As with all major and daring humanitarian operations, the IOM seems to have learned some valuable lessons.

Kim said: “We have to tackle the roots and ask ourselves the question: why are we ready to lose our lives to find work elsewhere? Also, if there were legal migration routes it would be less dangerous for people.

“They would not need to leave on fortune ships, be tortured, and so on. There are legal mechanisms, but the general atmosphere at the moment in so-called host countries is not conducive to openness. The rise of populism and the fear of the other are present and our work also involves raising awareness and changing perception.

“It must be remembered how much migration is needed for the economy of host countries in an aging Europe,” she concluded.

Two Tuareg girls are playing at Goudebo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso. In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR , Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

Malian widow Mariama Sow, 30, and her three children are trying to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives in Dakar, Senegal, since they left the historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali last June to escape the Islamist occupation.

Sow and her children are now living in relative safety with her eldest sister in this West African nation, as she helps her sibling run her two tangana (informal township restaurants).

“The (Islamist) occupation was not good at all, it affected many lives and will continue to haunt many of us for years to come,” Sow tells IPS, refusing to explain further, except to say it was “hell”.

“Though I’ll never forget what happened, I decided to get over it and focus on the future of my three children who are now eating well thanks to my elder sister’s support,” she says emotionally, adding that the imposition of Sharia Law in northern Mali affected not only women, but everybody in the occupied territories.

As she speaks, a group of men who work at a nearby construction site each wait their turn to be served with a plate of tchep (fried rice and fish).

But Sow is still concerned about the future of her eldest child. Her eight-year-old son has not attended school since armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda occupied northern Mali back in April 2012. Her daughters, aged four and two, are yet to attend school.

“My son’s first year at school was disrupted by the occupation. It’s now a dilemma because he has not been attending school since, and next year he will be nine. And I’m not sure when real peace will return to Mali so that he can go back to school again,” she says.

While a French-led international intervention in January – requested by Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore – eventually pushed the Islamist fighters out of the north, real peace in the West African nation seems a long way off. Defeated Jihadists have now resorted to suicide bombings and other guerrilla attacks.

A report, “Mali in the Aftermath of the French Military Operation”, released in late February by the South African-based Institute for Security Studies, called for the north to be quickly stabilised and secured now that it has been liberated.

“In order to consolidate the military gains achieved and given France’s expressed desire to scale down its presence or, at least, to ‘multilateralise’ its commitment, the idea now is to deploy a United Nations operation that will take over from AFISMA (African-led International Mission in Mali),” the report, authored by Lori Anne Théroux-Bénoni, states.

The war in northern Mali has driven thousands of men, women and children away from their homes. To date, there are 167,370 Malian refugees scattered in five countries in West Africa, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says.

Mauritania has the highest number, 68,385 refugees, followed by 50,000 refugees in Niger, and 48,939 in Burkina Faso. There are 26 and 20 refugees in Guinea and Togo, respectively.

Awo Dede Cromwell, reporting officer for the situation in Mali at the UNHCR’s regional office for West Africa, tells IPS that there are 31 Malian asylum seekers in Senegal whose status has yet to be examined by the National Commission of Eligibility at the Interior Ministry. “They are seven females and 24 males. There are three children among the 31 asylum seekers,” Cromwell explains.

Sow, however, is one of a number of refugees in Senegal who have not registered with the UNHCR, as she was lucky to be taken in by a relative. Many Malians are not so lucky, as they have been forced to live in refugee camps in Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

But the situation her son faces with his schooling is the same as that of other Malian refugee children.

“In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. If they don’t get access to education quickly, they may even miss the entire school year and be at risk of dropping out of school when returning to Mali,” Laurent Duvillier, regional communication specialist at U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) West and Central Africa, explains to IPS.

“The future of these Malian schoolchildren shouldn’t be jeopardised because they are refugees. How can Mali rebuild after the conflict if thousands of its children are deprived from access to education?” he asks.

Duvillier says children who fled violence in Mali have been through a lot of suffering and that getting access to education also means getting back to a “normal life” – playing with other children, learning and smiling.

He says parents who are refugees have little time to look after their children. “If children are left alone, they can easily be at risk of all kinds of abuse and violence. It’s a great relief for parents if they know there is a safe place where their children can learn and play without being in danger.”

Duvillier says that together with the UNHCR, UNICEF is working to train volunteer teachers, distribute school supplies to refugee and displaced children from Mali, and set up tents where teaching can take place in Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali.

“But unfortunately, many Malian refugee children still have no access to education. We need more children in temporary learning spaces, we need more trained and equipped teachers, we need to make sure that what refugee children learn in the camps can be of great use once they go back to Mali.

“More resources are needed as requirements for education needs remain largely underfunded to date,” he concludes.

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

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Congolese small-scale miner Elizabeth Tshimanga has made a successful living from prospecting. But like many artisanal miners in Africa, hers has been a long and tough journey marred by harassment and disputes over her legal status as a miner.

The 50-year-old started working in Kasai region in central Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the age of 25, before moving to neighbouring Angola where she continued mining diamonds.

“I encountered my biggest challenges in Angola, where security forces and officials harassed miners and dealers, detained us, and forced many women to have sexual relations with them to avoid trouble – they even took women to the bush to gang-rape them if they refused their sexual advances,” she says.

“But life goes on. You just tell yourself it’s all part of life,” she tells IPS, before boarding a plane from Dakar to Brussels, where she was due to sign some business deals.

Tshimanga does not mine any longer. But she employs 10 small-scale miners – six in the DRC and four in Angola – and says the harassment and inability to obtain mining licences continues.

The incidents of rape continue too, she says, adding she witnessed one incident only a few years ago in Angola. But as long as governments refuse to recognise artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) as a job, she says, the problems and challenges will not go away.

According to the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), a non-governmental research institute, ASM activities in Africa engage over eight million workers, who in turn support about 45 million dependents.

The institute says that artisanal diamond miners in the Marange diamond fields of Zimbabwe increased from a handful in 2004 to an estimated 35,000 in 2007. In Ghana, ASM contributed nine percent of total gold production in 2000, but by 2010 this had risen to 23 percent, with over a million Ghanaians directly dependent on ASM for their livelihoods.

Cultural anthropologist Marieke Heemskerk, who has over 30 years of experience researching the ASM sector and working with artisanal gold miners in Latin America, Nigeria and Senegal, among others, says the biggest challenge facing small-scale miners is their legal status.

“It is difficult to invest in a proper mining business without a mining title because banks will not give out loans and the miner himself has no certainty that he will be allowed to stay at a certain place.

“In many countries, the licensing process is lengthy, bureaucratic, complex, not transparent and even corrupt. As a result, wealthy and powerful people may obtain mining titles, but poor people in the hinterlands without the necessary political connections cannot.”

It is an obstacle that Tshimanga still comes across. “The other problem is mining licences, it is too complex and complicated to get one. You have to be politically connected or, if you are a woman, you have to become a girlfriend of one of these high-ranking officials before you get one,” she says.

According to the SAIIA, artisanal and small-scale mining is a thorny issue for both governments and large-scale mining (LSM) companies because often the artisanal miners operate in remote, unregulated and environmentally sensitive areas, are difficult to tax and pose a security challenge as they operate on the verge of LSM sites.

Heemskerk, who is based in Suriname, in northern South America, adds: “In many places we see government actions against untitled miners, ranging from bombing them to burning their equipment to simply chasing them away with the military.”

Adama Dieng is an uneducated, small-scale miner from Senegal who made a small fortune in Angola. He owns a three-storey building, has opened three mini-supermarkets in Dakar and has business interests across West Africa. He has even sent four of his children to Europe and put five of them through school.

But his wealth has come the hard way, from small-scale mining in the midst of Angola’s civil war, which began in 1975 and continued on and off until 2002.

“We went through all sorts of dangers, including regular detention, beatings and extortion by the army and rebels, and we faced death.” It is no wonder that he says small-scale mining is “one of the most dangerous but lucrative sources of livelihoods.”

“I still have a lot of respect for the sector for providing jobs to millions and taking many people out of poverty globally, despite its risks,” he tells IPS.

But he criticises the negative attitude of African governments and large mining companies towards ASM.

“The soil of a country and all its resources belong to every citizen of that country, but politicians and big companies just want everything for themselves. Most people in Africa are poor, and these guys are doing nothing for us. We are suffering while the politicians and LSM bosses are living like kings and princes. Why don’t they give us a chance to try improving our lives?” he asks.

Sarah Best, a senior researcher at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit organisation promoting sustainable patterns of world development, tells IPS that instead of suppressing ASM activities, which often makes the situation worse, governments and big business should change their mindsets and recognise ASM as both highly productive and as a legitimate part of the mining sector.

“Governments have largely left small-scale mining on the margins. The first step to cooperation is building knowledge and a shared understanding of the sector,” Best says.

She also says IIED’s recent research on ASM has pointed to three major gaps in how knowledge shapes policy. “First, the knowledge that does exist is poorly shared. Second, the experience of small-scale miners and local communities is largely overlooked.

“Third, there is no multi-stakeholder space where committed individuals and organisations from different parts of the sector can come together to build trust, learn, innovate and find shared solutions,” she says.

Cultural anthropologist Heemskerk says that the legalisation and formalisation of small-scale gold miners would be a good first step to address many health, social, and environmental problems faced in the sector.

“You cannot regulate people who are considered illegal. We also must not forget that small-scale gold mining offers a job to millions of poor people, who may not have many alternative income-generating options.

“As such, it is an outlet for socio-economic problems. It reduced rural-urban migration (thus preventing the growth of huge shantytowns around the large cities) and increases consumption – as virtually all the money earned by local small-scale gold miners is spent in the country.”

Malian children in the Abala refugee camp in Niger. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
BAMAKO , Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

One of Amina Diallo’s sons, 14-year-old Salif, has been missing since August last year. She thinks Islamists kidnapped him while he was on his way to the market in their hometown of Gao, in northern Mali, and recruited him as a child soldier.

“Wherever he is, he must know that I still pray for him to come back alive and well,” she tells IPS.

While a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north of the country in January – it had been held for more than a year by Islamist militants composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa – this West African nation still remains in turmoil with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, missing and abducted children and food shortages.

Diallo and her four other children now live at a relative’s home in Bamako after they left Gao last October. But despite Diallo’s hopes that Salif might return, chances are unlikely.

She tried to search for her missing son, only to be told by local authorities that they were sorry for her loss, and that the Malian army was doing its best to find out where the children were taken.

Media relations director of Christian relief agency World Vision, Laura Blank, tells IPS that children in Mali still remain at risk.

“Unsupervised children are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence, including the potential to be recruited as child soldiers by armed groups. This continues to be a concern for World Vision.”

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in February found that children as young as 11 were placed on the Islamist rebel frontline. Shocked residents told HRW researchers that they saw bodies of child soldiers lying in pools of blood after the fighting. The United Nations Children’s Fund reported at least 175 children were used as soldiers in the conflict last year.

Blank says that her organisation is working with volunteers to share valuable child-protection messages with local communities, which will hopefully empower parents to keep their children safe.

“Children and their families remain vulnerable. They have increasingly limited access to food, water, medicines, and safe shelter, and are prone to diseases,” Blank adds.

Not all children are reported to have taken part in active combat. Some were also used as porters, cooks and spies. Others were offered as sexual slaves to combatants.

Oumou Camara was forced to watch as heavily-armed gunmen, who conducted door-to-door operations in their area in Gao, snatched her 16-year-old daughter from her. They were looking for underage girls, widows and other unmarried women to “marry off” to the mujahidin (combatants of religion).

“They took my daughter away at gunpoint and threatened to shoot us if anyone in the house objected,” the mother of seven tells IPS. “I never saw her again.”

Camara has given up all hope of ever finding her daughter and has no faith in the authorities. “What can the authorities do if they couldn’t even fight their own war? I’m powerless and can only hope and pray.”

Getting comment from the Malian government is impossible. The state has barred independent reporters from entering the war zone, and threatened to detain and prosecute anyone who publishes “sensitive information” that could incite mutiny under the current state of emergency.

But as rights groups try to protect Mali’s vulnerable children, they are also concerned about the growing food crisis in the country.

Oxfam International says that food prices have rocketed, aggravated by a shortage of cereals on the market. Rice has gone up by more than 50 percent since October last year.

“Many traders in Gao region have moved and/or sold out their remaining stocks from Gao to villages and communes outside of the town,” Oxfam International campaign manager in Mali, Ilaria Allegrozzi, tells IPS.

Also, the population has very little cash available as banking systems were disrupted by the conflict.

“Most people in the Gao region don’t have any money left, are in debt, and have sold assets – exhausting their coping strategies,” she says.

Allegrozzi says Oxfam International aims to provide food aid to at least 70,000 people. And Blank says that as of December, World Vision reached nearly 130,000 people in Bamako, Segou and Sikasso, in southern Mali.

Against this backdrop, finding abducted or missing children will prove difficult, as the conflict here has displaced 260,665 people internally, according to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In addition, there are some 170,313 registered refugees in neighbouring countries such as Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

Many are reluctant to return to their former homes because of the food shortages. Diallo is one of them.

“I’m not in a hurry to go back because even if the war is over, what will we eat? What will I sell and buy in the market? Gao is thirsty, hungry and angry.”

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and give birth before reaching 15. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Feb 25 2013 (IPS)

When Abdoulaye Ba heard his local Imam in Dakar, Senegal, speaking out against child marriage, he found that the idea was not very palatable to him. As head of his family, he had intended to marry off his three teenage daughters.

Ba told IPS that he had had “big plans” for his daughters aged 12, 14 and 17. But now he is realising that it might not be the right thing for his children.

He talks about the issue with his Imam, Ibrahima Niasse, from time to time, he said. “I think the more we talk and he puts his arguments on the table, the more I begin to understand that whatever reasons we have for pushing our kids to wed at an early age, they are nothing but a myth.”

Marriage before the age of 18 is a common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and giving birth before reaching 15, according to a recent report by Senegal’s National Agency of Statistics and Demography.

A “2010 USAID-Senegal Gender Assessment” report, published in April 2012, states that the country ranks 27th out of 68 countries surveyed in terms of girls marrying before the age of 18.

But Niasse has decided to speak out against the practice. “I used to resist change, but now I’m convinced that this practice is indeed evil and has nothing to do with Islam,” Niasse told IPS. “My approach is easy and very friendly, it starts like a family visit and a simple chat, and later we start debating it.”

The Imam is among a growing number of people in this West African nation calling for the abandonment of early marriage, according to Tostan International, a human rights NGO operating in the country.

Asked how his message was being received, Niasse said, “So far, so good. Inshallah, one day they (people) will change (their minds about child marriage).”

By now, some 427 communities in southern Senegal have abandoned the practice, according to Tostan International. But more people like Niasse are needed to spread the message.

“Because Imams are already respected leaders in their communities, and are sought after for advice, they are already well placed to spark positive change in their community,” Amy Fairbairn, a spokesperson for the organisation told IPS.

“We find that when women, men, children, community- and religious leaders learn about human rights and the rights of all the members of their communities, they lead their own social change.”

In addition to being a human rights abuse, child marriage constitutes a grave threat to young girls’ lives, health and future prospects, according to the 2012 report “Marrying too Young – End Child Marriage” released by the United Nations Population Fund.

Leela* is a case in point. At only 18, she has been married for two years already and has a one-year-old child. Unable to go to school and forced into an early marriage by her family, she feels trapped.

“I don’t like this so-called marriage. But I have no choice, since my parents forced me to marry this older man, who happens to be the son of my aunt. I have no formal education and therefore no future.”

“I feel imprisoned,” she told IPS.

She said her husband prohibited her from befriending girls her age in their area, telling her that the city’s unmarried women are “prostitutes and devils who can easily poison her mind.”

But not everyone is convinced that early marriage is wrong. Aissatou Diakhate, 62, was 15 when she married her cousin.

“What’s the fuss about this so-called child marriage? This is our tradition and culture – something we inherited from our forefathers and which we are merely practicing,” Diakhate told IPS.

“Girls nowadays wear mini-skirts and run after boys, and the next thing, a girl will tell her mother that she is pregnant or infected by some odious disease. It’s better to give her in marriage to someone older who will take care of her and guide her to the way of religion before she shames her parents, and brings dishonour to the family. Is that a sin? We need to be left alone.”

Fairbairn said that consensus to abandon child marriage takes time to build across social networks and must be community-led. Tostan, for one, encourages community members to make a public declaration abandoning early marriage.

“In areas where the decision to abandon child-slash-forced marriage is met with resistance, communities organise outreach with all stakeholders until consensus is reached.”

Niasse is optimistic that more people will change their minds about early marriage, but he is realistic, too.

“This practice has been in our country for many decades, it won’t go away overnight. It will take time.”

*Name changed to protect identity.

Only 12 percent of women in Senegal use contraceptives, which has led to a “baby boom” in the country. Credit: karah24 /CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

A 25-year-old mother of five hailing from Senegal’s eastern Tambacounda province believes that contraceptives damage the womb and cause health problems in the long term, such as a rise in blood pressure and chronic headaches.

“This is what I heard some women saying in the bus I boarded to go to town,” the woman, now living in the capital city of Dakar after her tragic divorce, tells IPS.

She was only 16 when she was forced to marry her 35-year-old cousin. When she tried to discuss contraception with her former husband, “he beat me up and swore that he would kill me if I ever mentioned it again. So we kept having babies.”

As a result of misconceptions about children and family planning, religious dogma and a lack of reproductive health services, thousands of women across Senegal share her plight.

Breaking the stereotypes

Children are a symbol of wealth in this West African country of 12 million people, a perception that has led to a “baby boom”, experts here say.

“This ancient belief implies that more boys mean more manpower (for) a farm, or that you stand a chance of seeing (your son) become a rich man or even the president of the republic or a minister, while many girls bring their parents more money or livestock for dowry when they get married, ” marriage counsellor Fatoumata Sow tells IPS in Dakar.

“The moment (women) get married, they start making children as if a high-speed train has taken off late at a station, and is flying to catch up.

“And though I’m using Senegal as a case study, the trend is almost the same all over West Africa,” according to Sow, the mother of nine children.

She says family planning is taboo in many parts of West Africa, especially in rural communities where illiteracy is rife and awareness about family planning services – let alone access to contraception and birth control – is non-existent.

“Lack of effective family planning policies and (this perception) of children being a symbol of wealth has seriously damaged the social fabric of Senegal,” a doctor at one of the country’s public hospitals, who was afraid to give his real name for fear of persecution by the authorities, tells IPS.

“I always ask every pregnant woman who stands before me for consultation if she has ever used contraceptives, and the response I get every day is no.”

Only 12 percent of Senegalese women use contraceptives, Senegal’s Health and Social Action Minister Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck told a family planning conference in London last year.

Government intervention

Coll-Seck, who confessed that the country’s current contraceptive prevalence rate is one of the lowest in the world, says her government’s vision is to move the needle from 12 to 27 percent by 2015.

This will mean reaching five percent of users per year. “It is possible,” an optimistic Coll-Seck told the press in Dakar.

In a bid to create awareness and break down the stereotypes surrounding contraception, the government launched a national day of family planning action late last year.

The plan comes not a minute too soon: according to Coll-Seck, one woman out of two has expressed the desire to space births but does not have access to family planning products and services.

The national action day will also be used to sensitise men about the importance of spacing births, because family planning is a matter for the couple, not just for the woman.

The Senegalese government says it has set a target of reaching 350,000 women in the next three years.

In order to effectively reach its goals, the campaign has been divided into three phases, according to Dr Bocar Mamadou Daff, national director for reproductive health and child survival.

First of all, creating awareness through mass communication, which includes sending specific messages to selected targets and embarking on an advocacy campaign to get leaders to support family planning values.

The second phase involves a community-based distribution system to improve access to short-term contraceptives. Private actors will also be involved, Daff says, to help expand the supply of contraceptives.

The third and final phase is to ensure that contraceptives are readily available for those who need them.

According to Sow, better family planning could also help the government tackle two related problems that it has struggled for many years to address: malnutrition and homelessness.

This past December, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had distributed life-saving treatment to more than 850,000 severely malnourished children in the Sahel region, who were starving to death in 2012.

Senegal has one of the highest rates of acute malnutrition in the world; in the northern province of Matam the rate is as high as 19 percent, according to the World Food Progamme.

“When there are too many kids to feed, the head of the household must have plenty of (money) to take care of them, otherwise they will either get sick from hunger and die, or move to the streets to beg,” says Sow.

But not everyone is supportive of the new government initiative. Religious leaders like Al-Hajj Ibrahima Dieng (61) believes such practices “are anti-Islamic”.

“Allah is the one who gives (us) children and he’s in charge of providing everything for them, to enable them to grow healthy and strong,” an incensed Dieng, father of 15 children, tells IPS.

“And you want to stop that from happening? I swear by Allah that I will never be part of such nonsense. It’s haram.”

Though such opinions are widespread among the country’s conservative religious majority, not all religious leaders share Dieng’s anti-contraception sentiments.

Cheick Mouhamadou Mbara Segnane, a highly respected leader of the Tidjiane community in Senegal, is extremely concerned about the baby boom.

He told the press last year that the government needed to step in to eradicate the problem. The imam even suggested that the government impose a limit on the number of children per family.

Some experts like Sow believe change will only come slowly.

“I think as a society, we are not yet ready for such an evolution,” she tells IPS. “Traditions and cultural beliefs have affected our minds so much and brainwashed us so totally that we have become blind. But there is room for hope.”

(END)

A group of women in rural West Africa participate in a traditional ceremony to celebrate a polygamist marriage. Credit: Fatuma Camara/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Sep 12 2012 (IPS)

Fatou (40), Awa (32) and Aissatou Gaye (24) sit in a meditative mood on the tiled floor outside their matrimonial home in Keur Massar, a township in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

“These are my three wives and soon I’ll take a fourth to comply with Islamic law,” brags Ousmane Gaye (50), a businessman who has commercial interests in this West African nation and also in neighbouring Mali and the Gambia.

“As you can see, they love one another and live in harmony and peace like three sisters,” he says. But peace and harmony have a strange meaning in Ousmane Gaye’s vocabulary.

“Last night, Fatou and Awa beat Aissatou repeatedly and launched a litany of insults at her,” a family source tells IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“They accuse her of bewitching their husband to make him love her too much. In fact, as you came in, he was busy reprimanding them. Honestly speaking, since Ousmane brought in Aissatou three years ago, his home has not known peace and harmony.”

The women are prohibited to speak to strangers, including neighbours, women’s rights activists or marriage counsellors about their matrimonial problems. They also do not have the right to complain unnecessarily as long as they have “everything”, which includes food, clothes and sex.

“This is the way of life in Senegal,” says Adama Kouyate, an internet café owner in the middle-class suburb of Golf Sud. Two years ago, Kouyate “inherited” the wife and six children of his late brother. He has just had a baby with his late brother’s wife, bringing the number of children under his care to 14.

“This has nothing to do with Islam, but it’s our culture. And no woman has the right to oppose this because she will be harshly cursed for the rest of her life,” he says in Wolof, Dakar’s widely-spoken language.

Aminata* a Dakar woman who secretly counsels and advises wives in polygamist marriages, says: “Polygamy is a form of modern slavery, believe me it’s not easy as it sounds. Women involved in this form of marriage have no voice and no channels to complain.”

Rokhaya*, a 23-year-old university graduate who earlier this year was forced to marry a 48-year-old rich man, agrees: “Polygamy is hell and a pack of lies.”

“Look at me, I am young and supposed to be doing things most girls my age are doing. I had dreams and aspirations to own a small company and travel the continent. I’m trapped and feel I’m going crazy because this illiterate rich man won’t let me fulfil my dreams,” she says, sobbing.

Daya* says she wants to further her education but is afraid that her husband will not allow it. She stopped going to school in Grade 7, at the age of 15, when she was given in marriage to her cousin, a Muslim cleric. Now she is 30 and has seven children.

Aminata, a divorcee who was involved in an 18-year polygamist marriage, says that polygamy violates the principle of equality, promotes gender disparity and compromises women’s progress in society. “And it’s getting worse in Senegal,” she says.

“In virtually every sector of life here in Senegal – in issues of inheritance rights, involvement in business, and access to land and education – women still lag behind, despite our constitution asserting equality between men and women.”

According to the Global Gender Gap Index produced by the World Economic Forum since 2006, Senegal ranks 102nd out of 134 countries. The index measures the position of women relative to men in the areas of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.

A “2010 USAID-Senegal Gender Assessment” report, published in April 2012, also points to continued gender disparities in many areas in this country.

“It is widely noted that implementation of the various international and national laws on gender equality and women’s rights is weak and that the government lacks an adequate plan to enact its policies,” the USAID report says.

According to the report, 39 percent of girls in Senegal aged 20 to 24 have been married by the age of 18, while the country ranks 27th out of 68 countries surveyed in terms of girls marrying before the age of 18.

Most young men interviewed at the Place de l’Independance in the Dakar city centre say they would opt for polygamy when they are ready for marriage.

Lamine Camara, 22, a student at the Cheik Anta Diop University of Dakar, says he would rather be a polygamist and “officialise all my relationships instead of taking a string of girlfriends and risking diseases such as AIDS.”

Issa Diop, a 28-year-old polygamist truck driver, says young people like him become polygamists by choice.

“It’s like fashion, you follow the trend. Besides, women outnumber men in Senegal. Polygamy is helping a lot. Almost every man in my area, young or poor, is now a polygamist. So what?”

Slightly more than half of Senegal’s 12.9 million people are women. In the 15 to 64-year age bracket there are 3.6 million women compared to 3.2 million men, according to the country’s demographic profile for 2012.

“The practice, which in the past was widespread in rural areas, has reached urban areas with alarming proportions. And abuse is on the increase, mostly in Dakar, where polygamists are becoming younger and younger,” says Fanta Niang, a social worker and gender activist from Senegal’s third-largest city of Thies.

“There are no official statistics on polygamist marriages in Senegal that I know of. They used to say one out of four marriages in urban areas and one out of three in rural areas was polygamist, but these figures are flawed to downplay the gravity of the matter,” Niang says.

She adds that sadly most wives in polygamist marriages are illiterate and unaware of women’s rights and the right to equality.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization revealed in 2010 that approximately 61 percent lack basic literacy skills.

Senegal’s gender parity law of May 2010, enacted under the Abdoulaye Wade government amid criticism from traditionalists and Muslim hardliners, has paved the way for 64 women members of parliament of a total of 150 under the newly elected government of Macky Sall. The law requires political parties to ensure that half their candidates in local and national elections are women.

“There has been no progress regarding women’s emancipation in Senegal, and polygamy continues to play a big role in that respect,” Niang says. “Women’s empowerment should start on the ground, not at the top. These 64 MPs are just the tip of the iceberg. What about the 61 percent who cannot read and write.

“We interact with these women on a daily basis, and we see things you don’t even want to hear. That’s why I said there is no progress.”

Some argue that polygamy constitutes a threat to Senegal’s constitutional principles of gender equality and the National Strategy for Gender Equality and Equity which was developed in 2005. Moussa Kalombo, a gender analyst and religious expert, tells IPS that polygamy violates the constitutional principles of gender equality in every country.

*Names changed to protect identity.