Anna Mungara (seated, short hair), a midwife in training, who attends the midwifery school at Masvingo Provincial Hospital, Zimbabwe treats a newborn baby in the neonatal ward. Courtesy: Jordi Matas/UNICEF

By Kristin Palitza
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

A newborn baby lets out a feeble cry as midwife Anna Mungara tends to a small wound on its head, at the provincial hospital in Masvingo, a town in southeast Zimbabwe.

With utmost care, Mungara cleans the cut, wraps the baby in two sets of warm blankets and makes cooing sounds to soothe him. When the infant calms down, she gently places him into an incubator.

Mungara, a trainee at the hospital’s midwifery school in Masvingo Province, is part of a new intake of nurses receiving additional skills to bring down skyrocketing maternal and infant mortality rates in this southern African nation.

Every day, eight women and 100 children die from pregnancy- and delivery-related complications in Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Most of them die of easily preventable causes and illnesses.

Zimbabwe’s health sector, once among the best in sub-Saharan Africa, collapsed during the nation’s 2008 economic crisis, when hyperinflation of 231 million percent caused public hospitals to temporarily close down as they ran out of medicines, while skilled health workers left the country in droves to pursue better opportunities elsewhere.

The health system has been struggling to recover ever since, causing maternal mortality to shoot up to 790 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012, from 390 deaths in 1990. Mortality of children under five increased from 78 deaths per 1,000 live births to 94 deaths per 1,000 in the same timeframe.

A 435-million-dollar Health Transition Fund (HTF), sponsored by several European Union members and managed by UNICEF, hopes to reverse these figures by 2015. The money goes towards a retention and training scheme for health workers. It also goes to the supply of essential drugs and vaccines, the training of community health workers, and the planning and financing of health policy.“Donor funding is great, but we need our own financing as well to make programmes sustainable.” -- District medical officer Dr. Emmanuel Chagondah

UNICEF Zimbabwe’s chief of young child survival and development, Aboubacar Kampo, tells IPS that one of the fund’s goals is to have at least one midwife per 5,000 people and three doctors in each of Zimbabwe’s 62 districts. Another aim is to achieve a more equitable distribution of health professionals between urban and rural areas.

“When we started to roll out the fund, Zimbabwe had 76 doctors countrywide. Most of them were working in Harare and Bulawayo (the two main cities). Today, the number of doctors has increased to 116, with most of the new recruits working in rural areas,” says Kampo.

At Masvingo Provincial Hospital, senior tutor Catherine Sithole and her team train 60 new midwives per year. The midwifery school is one of several in the country, aimed at undoing the dramatic brain drain that the national health system suffered over the past years.

In 2001, about 80 percent of midwife posts were vacant, according to the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health and Child Welfare. Especially rural areas were drained of skilled staff.

A key component of the HTF is the payment of bonuses to health workers to encourage them to stay in the country and, most importantly, take up usually less sought-after positions in rural areas, which experience the most drastic shortfalls in service delivery.

Mungara knows from experience how tough it is to provide even the most basic health care in Zimbabwe’s rural areas. Before she joined the midwifery school, the 36-year-old was employed at a clinic in Zaka, a remote village 80 km south of Masvingo town.

“We have no resources to assist women during deliveries. It is difficult to get referrals for pregnant women with issues like hypertension, or even to get transport to the nearest hospital,” she tells IPS.

Since the HTF formed in 2011, the gap has been closing, but only slowly. Sithole tells IPS: “Having more trained midwives is really making a difference to the health of mothers and small children. The training enables them to make better decisions with regard to their patients.”

But external funding alone will not be enough to resolve Zimbabwe’s health crisis in the long run. The government will have to substantially increase its spending on health to help rebuild the health system and ensure sustainability beyond 2015. The current health budget of 380 million dollars will not be enough to achieve this, experts say.

“The government is only spending 26 dollars per person on health, less than half of what they should allocate,” says Kampo. “At the moment, the health system is 70 percent donor-funded.”

Given Zimbabwe’s dire economic situation – the cash-strapped country is 10.7 billion dollars in external debt – the health budget is unlikely to receive a substantial increase any time soon.

“We don’t have much money in the country and can’t get credit. Although long-term prospects of recovery are good, given the richness of natural resources, recovery hasn’t even started yet,” independent economist John Robertson, from Robertson Economic Information Services in Harare, tells IPS.

Health department officials admit that more needs to be done to give the national health system a sustainable boost. Dr. Robert Mudyiradima, the provincial medical director of Masvingo Province, tells IPS: “There is not enough budget support. Whatever finances come through the HTF have to fill a very big hole.

“There are still weaknesses in the general drug supply. Service delivery is not what it is supposed to be. Until the Zimbabwean government’s budget support for health services is adequate, the demand for services will be overwhelmed by the need,” Mudyiradima says.

A walk through the Chivi District Hospital, which services a population of 174,000 in Chivi, a small town in Masvingo province, illustrates Mudyiradima’s point. Most days there is no running water here, the hospital kitchen is out of order, washing machines and the incinerator are not operational, and power outages are frequent.

“We are often running out of basics, like surgical gloves,” district medical officer Dr. Emmanuel Chagondah tells IPS.

When Chagondah started working here 11 months ago, the facility had been without a doctor for more than four years. Due to the HTF retention scheme, two other doctors recently joined him, while numerous vacant nursing positions have been filled.

“The quality of services has improved a lot due to an increase in personnel, but drug supply and technical equipment remain big challenges,” the young doctor says.

He has set his hopes on the government keeping its promises to increase the national health budget.

“Donor funding is great, but we need our own financing as well to make programmes sustainable.”

Hlumelo Biko, the son of late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, wants to create a more equitable economy. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

In his new book, “The Great African Society – A Plan for a Nation Gone Astray”, Hlumelo Biko, the son of late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, says that if nothing changes in South Africa, the country will become engulfed by corruption, crime, social decay, hopelessness and anger.

Almost two decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa continues to struggle with massive poverty, high unemployment and crumbling education and health systems.

Biko told IPS that, from an economic point of view, South Africa’s society remains untransformed – and where there has been transformation, it has been politicised.

“Those who are in close relationship with the (ruling) party have been allowed to prosper. Those who aren’t, have not prospered,” he said. “We have to create a society that rewards hard work as opposed to who you know.”

Although Biko works as executive chair of private investment firm Spinnaker Growth Partners, politics has been a central part of his life since his childhood. His mother, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, is another well-known South African anti-apartheid activist and a former World Bank managing director.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: In your book, you analyse how South Africa got to where it is today – a nation ravaged by economic inequity. Would your father turn in his grave?

A: I don’t think he’d be happy. And I don’t think that people like my mother can sit by idly and watch. We ceded the space to a few politicians and allowed them to operate. And then we look back 10 years later and think, “Oh no, what happened?” South Africans need to go back to being very vocal about what their future should look like, so that we can all participate in effecting the future of this country.

Q: Your mother recently launched a new political party, Agang, in opposition to the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Are you a member?

A: No, I’m not. I will not join the party, but I am a supporter of my mother as her son. We share similar political views. I wrote this book to suggest policy in a way that both the current government and other political parties can use pieces of it to adapt to the policies they support. I hope that my mother is keen on using some of these mechanisms as part of her platform.

Q: One of your book’s main premises is that South Africa needs better governance. 

A: Effective regulation means you have to have competent people. It shouldn’t matter what you did before 1994 (the end of apartheid). Yet those records still give people a leg up over others. We need to go beyond that and focus on technical capability. If you look at economies like China, they are where they are because their government operatives are, like it or not, extremely qualified. They are able to put forward effective policies. That’s where we need to take it.

Q: You suggest a silent truth and reconciliation commission for corruption. Why silent?

A: Shaming and naming people discourages them to come out. You want to flush out bad civil servants who have stolen money. That is fairly easy if you give them amnesty. My proposal is that they don’t have to give the money back if they leave within a certain space of time. Trying to recover the money (they stole) through the criminal justice system is going to take so long, it’s better to give them an incentive to leave. After that, I propose we move into an environment that is very ruthless with how we prosecute corruption.

Q: You suggest the private sector should help solve some of the country’s biggest challenges. Do you think businesses are willing to take on that much social responsibility?

A: Maybe not in other countries, but in South Africa, because of the BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) legislation that businesses already had to function within for the last 20 years, they are used to it. They are keen to have a say over where their money goes. I estimate that there is another 500 billion Rand (56 billion dollars) worth of empowerment still to happen over the next few years. Instead of investing that money into BEE companies, I’m proposing that business be allowed to invest directly into communities, through initiatives like health, education, skills development. It’s also in the long-term interest of their shareholders, because with better quality of education and skills, the economy will improve and therefore stocks will go up.

Q: You criticise South African’s “complacent optimism” about their future. What do you mean?

A: For maybe five million people (out of a population of 50 million), South Africa is a great country to live. You have wonderful facilities and wonderful infrastructure. But if you ignore the other 45 million, at some point in time, life will become inconvenient. I give the examples of Venezuela or Zimbabwe, where the middleclass ignored the plight of the poor and thus provided the basis for dictators to take over those countries. If in South Africa, we do not deal with the reality today, at some point, it will become fertile ground for an opportunistic politician.

Q: In recent months, people have protested about a lack of basic services in many parts of the country. Have South Africans started to wake up?

A: I am surprised it’s not more. It’s a lot less than what I think it should be and will be. We are fortunate that poor people have been so patient. But I do not think that they will be patient for much longer. We have to start making changes now.

By Kristin Palitza and Travis Lupick
Dec 28 2012 (IPS)

Despite the rapid economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent has shown a poor capacity to commensurately boost jobs and reduce poverty, according to a report by the African Development Bank titled “Assessing Progress in Africa towards the Millennium Development Goals.”

“Contributing to this pattern is the dependence by several African countries on primary commodity exports and capital-intensive extractive industries, which have few or no linkages with other sectors of the economy.”

The report showed that while countries in sub-Saharan Africa were on track to meet the MDG goals of universal education, promoting gender equality and ensuring environmental sustainability, many nations were not likely to meet the other goals by 2015. These eight international development goals include ending poverty and promoting child and maternal health.

A mother waits for her baby to be vaccinated at the Bugurundi Clinic in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
DAR ES SALAAM, Dec 22 2012 (IPS)

A nurse working in a remote clinic in Mueda, a small town in northern Mozambique’s Makonde Plateau, receives a shipment of vaccines from the national health department. Using special software on her mobile phone, she sends out a mass text message to alert mothers in the area about the availability of immunisations.

She also uses the phone to schedule appointments, access patient records and order new vaccines when stock runs low.

It is – for now – a theoretical scenario on how mobile technology can help improve childhood immunisation in sub-Saharan Africa. But it will soon become a reality in Mozambique, a country the size of Turkey, where 135 out of 1,000 children die before their fifth birthday.

The southern African nation’s Department of Health has teamed up with the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership for immunisation, to launch a pilot project in about 100 clinics in early 2013 where health workers will test the effectiveness and cost benefits of using mobile phones to communicate with patients.

The yearlong three-million-dollar pilot project has been co-financed by British telecommunications giant Vodafone and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. At the end of the trial, vaccination levels in Mozambique should improve by five to 10 percent, the donors say.

“One thousand new mobile broadband connections are made every minute in the developing world, which means we have a tremendous opportunity to transform lives in an easily accessible way,” explains U.K. Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening.

Africa is the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market and the second largest after Asia, according to Groupe Speciale Mobile Association, a global industry body. There are about 700 million mobile connections on the continent and the number of mobile phone users increased by nearly 20 percent every year over the last five years.

Although not every mother in the poor nation of Mozambique, which according to United Nations statistics had a meagre gross national income per capita of 382 dollars in 2009, has a mobile phone, at least one family member or a neighbour usually does.

As part of the pilot project caregivers will be registered on a health ministry database and will be educated and alerted by text message about the availability of vaccines and their importance. They can reply via SMS to schedule clinic appointments and will receive notifications and reminders about their children’s past and future vaccinations to make sure each child receives a full immunisation schedule.

Mozambique’s health workers will receive smartphones with software to access records and schedule appointments and help clinics in remote locations monitor stocks to make sure vaccines are available when mothers arrive with their children.

“Mobile technology will help us identify children who until now have been missed and make sure they get a full set of vaccinations,” GAVI CEO Seth Berkley tells IPS. The ability to notify and remind mothers of vaccination appointments is expected to make a big dent in high drop-off rates, where a child receives only one out of two or three necessary injections to make a vaccine effective, he says.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), immunisation is the most cost-effective public health intervention after the provision of clean water. More than a million children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases, while every fifth child in Africa remains unimmunised, the organisation says.

A number of other African nations have started to use mobile technology in some areas of public health care, although the Mozambican pilot project will be the most comprehensive when it comes to immunisation and will use software specifically developed for national conditions and needs.

Tanzania, for example, uses mobile stock management technology to track malaria treatments in 5,000 clinics across the country. In South Africa, 1,800 remote community health workers use mobile phones to access and update patient records. And when Ghana rolled out rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines this April, a major local religious organisation helped notify mothers about the new immunisations by arranging for 1.5 million SMS messages to be sent out.

South Sudan, supported by the WHO, began to manage vaccine stocks through mobile technology in mid-2012 in its central and state stores, while Rwanda’s health ministry uses mobile phones to monitor maternal and child mortality.

“The cell phone has been revolutionising (African) healthcare more than any other technology,” Richard Sezibera, Rwanda’s former minister of health and current secretary-general of the East African Community, tells IPS.

Providing health workers with mobile devices “has really changed life in Rwanda,” he adds. The strategy has helped bring down Rwanda’s under-five mortality rate from 163 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 56 per 1,000 live births in 2011, according to U.N. Children’s Fund figures.

Sezibera also believes that using mobile technology can help health departments to better manage their usually meagre budgets. Since most African nations only spend an average of five percent of GDP on health, “how we finance health is becoming increasingly important,” he says. “Using mobile technology can help reduce supply chain and transaction costs.”

If Mozambique’s pilot project is successful, it will be expanded to 1,500 clinics across the country. If that works well, GAVI hopes to implement it in many other low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Berkley says.

Civil society organisations, which have been working to improve child health in those countries for years, believe the approach could make a huge difference to children’s lives.

“We know the children in remote areas are missing out (on being vaccinated), with 22 million around the world being left behind,” says Justin Forsyth, CEO of the international charity Save the Children. That is every fifth child. “Mobile technology, in the hands of front line health workers, could help close the gap.”

Anuary Saidi, who suffers from viral diarrhoea, with his mother Mariam. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
DAR ES SALAAM, Dec 13 2012 (IPS)

Half asleep, Anuary lies exhausted on his bed in Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. His mother, Mariam Saidi, sits on the edge of his mattress, staring blankly out of the window. Every now and then, she turns to wipe her 18-month-old son’s forehead.

When she brought Anuary to the hospital the day before, he had a high fever, was suffering from viral diarrhoea, was severely dehydrated and had lost consciousness by the time he was admitted. The doctors saved his life, but he faces a slow discovery.

“Viral diarrhoea and respiratory infections are very common in children here,” hospital director Dr. Meshack Schimwela tells IPS. “Both illnesses are leading causes of death of children under the age of five in Tanzania.”

Anuary’s hospitalisation puts Saidi, a single mother who works as a hairdresser in the slum of Buguruni on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, under severe economic strain. Each day that she spends next to her son’s bed is a day that she does not earn any money.

Already, she struggles to make ends meet with her meagre salary of four dollars a day, which, she says, affords her only one meal a day. “God knows how we will cope,” the 21-year-old tells IPS. “It’s very difficult.”

Anuary’s illness could have been easily prevented had he been immunised against the Rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhoea, commonly known as “stomach flu”. But the vaccine is currently not available through the public health system in this East African nation.

The situation is similar in many other countries on the continent. About 20 percent of Africa’s children – or every fifth child – are not immunised, according to the international children’s charity Save the Children.

“It’s always the poorest children who don’t get access to vaccination services,” says Kirsten Mathieson, health policy and research officer at Save the Children. “Much more needs to be done to reach the ‘fifth child’.”

In Tanzania, at least, this may soon change. Through co-financing from the GAVI Alliance – a global public-private partnership for vaccines and immunisation that negotiates lower vaccine prices for the world’s poorest countries – the government will be able to integrate Rotavirus as well as pneumococcal vaccines into its routine public immunisation programme from January 2013.

“Children in developing countries have an 18 percent higher chance of dying before their fifth birthday (than those living in developed countries). Vaccination could make a big difference,” GAVI deputy chief executive officer Helen Evans tells IPS.

Dr. Mtagi Kibatala, acting chief paediatrician at Amana Hospital, agrees: “A lot of the children in our paediatric wards would not be here had they access to Rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines.”

Vaccinating all of the children in this country of over 885,000 square kilometres, almost four times the size of the United Kingdom, will take time. Reaching nomadic families and those living in remote rural areas or on small islands will be especially tough, Kibatala tells IPS. She expects it will take “at least a year” to see an improvement in child health and a decrease in mortality rates.

Another hurdle is Tanzania’s severe health worker shortage. About 40 percent of positions in the country’s public health facilities are vacant, according to the Ministry of Health. Without sufficient personnel, it will be difficult to provide health care to every child, Schimwela says.

The impact vaccines can have on children’s health “is very clear”, explains Schimwela. Tanzania has seen a steady decline in child mortality since it started offering vaccines through its public health system that protect against polio, tetanus, tuberculosis and diphtheria.

As a result, mortality of children under the age of five decreased from 155 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 76 per 1,000 live births in 2010, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Although the introduction of the Rotavirus vaccine will come too late for Anuary – children have to be younger than 15 weeks for it to be effective – thousands of Tanzania’s children will not only be able to lead healthier, but also happier, lives.

One of those children will be six-week-old Rosemary Julius.

Her mother, Janet Julius, patiently sits on a blue plastic chair in front of the Buguruni health clinic, fanning herself against the stifling December heat, Rosemary snug on her lap.

Rosemary is one of seven infants who were chosen by the clinic staff to receive dual Rotavirus and pneumococcal immunisation. Although the vaccines will officially only be available from next month, the health department decided to immunise a small group of babies in celebration of the launch of the new vaccines.

Julius, a 22-year-old housewife who was told about this opportunity during a post-natal check-up, says she is extremely happy that Rosemary will now be protected against pneumonia and viral diarrhoea. She tells IPS: “I have seen babies get very sick and die. The vaccine will help my child to grow up well.”

Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War, visits Central African Republic and talks to released child soldiers in Akroussoulback. Courtesy: Brian Sokol/UNICEF

By Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

The protection of children remains critical in the Central African Republic, where parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services.

This is according to United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) ambassador Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, who spoke to IPS during his visit to South Africa.

Beah had just returned from a trip to CAR where he witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in the conflict-ridden, northeastern town of N’dele by the rebel group the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP).

The move comes after the CPJP signed a peace accord with the government on Aug. 25 – yet another small step towards ending years of violence in the country. The release of the children was the group’s show of commitment towards peace. However, more than 2,500 boys and girls are thought to still work for various armed groups in the Central African nation.

Seven years of civil war have led to food scarcity, a collapsed economy and limited access to healthcare and education. Despite its mineral wealth, CAR remains one of the world’s least-developed countries. In 2011, CAR ranked 179 out of 186 countries in the U.N. Human Development Index.

“In CAR, parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services, even though it’s against the children’s human rights. That makes it very difficult to negotiate the release of children,” Beah told IPS.

One of the armed groups operating in CAR is the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by internationally hunted Joseph Kony. Two LRA leaders under Kony, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo, who are sought by the International Criminal Court, are reportedly hiding in CAR.

The LRA has increased its attacks in the country since early 2012 and continues to abduct children as fighters.

Beah was himself forcibly recruited into Sierra Leone’s civil war, in which his parents and two brothers were killed, when he was 13. He fought alongside rebel groups for two years until he was removed from the army and placed in a rehabilitation home.

He now lives in New York, where he works as a human rights activist. His book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” has been translated into 35 languages and was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 50 weeks.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: You witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in CAR, one of the world’s poorest nations. What is life like there?

A: The government of CAR only has control over the capital city, Bangui. When you arrive in N’dele you understand how it is possible for an armed group to operate there; it is because the government is not providing social and economic services. Poverty is very stark, there are no resources or opportunities.

So it’s the armed group there, the CPJP, which provides some services. That’s why the group is very entrenched in the community. You see them walk around with weapons everywhere.

Q: Armed groups are part of the social fabric?

A: Yes, exactly. Still, the kids don’t want to fight. Once you take them away from the commanders, they tell you “I don’t want to do this.” But there are no alternatives beyond joining the armed group. The community relies on them. And the rebels have all the opportunities.

Q: How does a release operation happen?

A: The military doesn’t want to release the kids. They hide them. When you arrive at a military camp, the children who were identified are nowhere to be found. There are negotiations with the commanders until, slowly, they bring the kids out. After that, you have to leave immediately, because some of the children’s families live within the communities (and belong to the rebels).

The children are brought to a transit and rehabilitation centre in N’dele, where they receive psycho-social therapy as well as vocational training or are sent back to school.

Q: It sounds like a long, difficult process.

A: Yes. Added to that is that the rebels have weapons and ammunition, while you don’t have any protection. You rely on them keeping their promises. Everything about the situation is dangerous. When we landed in N’dele, the whole airport was surrounded by rebels with brand-new, sophisticated weapons, guarding the place. You are very exposed.

Q: What will happen to the rest of the estimated 2,500 child soldiers in CAR?

A: Right now, the rehabilitation centre takes care of 35 kids, and I witnessed the release of 10 more. Slowly, more and more are being released. All (three) rebel groups in the country have signed action plans to release children. But if nobody forces them, they will not do it.

Q: Visiting N’dele was to some degree a return to your past. How did that feel?

A: It brought up a lot of memories. I was driving in the car with the child soldiers who had just been released and could feel their uncertainty about being removed from what they know. I was in that same position (when I was a child soldier). I told them: “Things will be difficult, but you’re going to get through this.”

Once they understood that I had the same experience, there was a kinship that helped ease the situation a little. It’s such a daunting situation. You had this power of the weapon – some of them were lieutenants – and all of a sudden you’re just a child again, trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Q: How did they react when they heard your story?

A: They asked me questions repetitively. “Is it really possible to get through this? Can we actually have another life after this?” I was very honest with them. “It’s possible but it’s not easy. You’re going to be frustrated a lot. It’s not going to be as fast as you like.”

They are coming from an experience where they get things as fast as they like because they have a weapon. They understand these things when they come from someone like me.

Q: Are there viable alternatives for children in a poverty-stricken country like CAR?

A: There are viable alternatives, but they require long-term investment. If you want successful rehabilitation, you have to be willing to look beyond one year.

Q: What are the core demands of the CPJP and other armed groups?

A: During my visit, I talked to CPJP leader Abdoulaye Hissene. He said he started his group because of social-economic inequalities in the country. The official demand is for the government to provide services. Of course he is right, but he is using the argument to pursue his own, personal agenda. He is tapping into people’s needs, so they buy into his ideology. But then the only option he provides is armed struggle, which doesn’t solve people’s problems.

Q: What is Hissene’s hidden agenda?

A: He will not tell you, but from close observation you can tell that he wants to benefit from the natural resources in the area, the diamonds, the gold, and so on. In the end, all natural resource wealth goes to the armed groups or the government, but never reaches the people. That’s the problem.

Q: What presence does the LRA have in CAR?

A: The LRA is very strong in the southeast of the country. A lot of work needs to be done in that area to protect children. Since the beginning of this year, there have been frequent attacks and abductions (of children) by the LRA. Already, the government has no capacity to fight the armed groups in the country. Now there is this foreign group that has come in that is even stronger.

Q: Do you see any chance of the LRA agreeing to peace in CAR as well?

A: I am not sure. The LRA is very unpredictable. But what I do know is that many young people from this group would run away if they had a secure place to go to, instead of being arrested by authorities that try to get information out of them.

If there were a place that took them back as children and rehabilitated them, they would find a way to escape. You can’t just tell someone to put down a gun and then leave him out in the cold or throw him into prison. Structures need to be put into place for these children to leave. To get to the heart of the LRA or any other armed group you need to make sure that the candidates who can be recruited are not available.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa , May 8 2012 (IPS)

On a continent of over one billion people, where half the population have mobile phones, the use of mobile communication and internet technologies is crucial to boost development in Africa.

In Mauritania mobile phones are used in rural areas. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“We did not anticipate how rapid mobile broadband would be appropriated in Africa. There will be a computer in every pocket sooner than we think,” Gauthey told IPS. She added that Kenya has made rapid progress, having already rolled out 3rd generation mobile communications.

There are only two and a half years to go until African countries are expected to reach the MDGs, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) will help the continent achieve this. Through the eight MDGs, countries around the world have committed themselves to significantly curb poverty and hunger, improve education and health, and create environmental sustainability by 2015.

Gauthey, who is based at Alcatel’s Paris headquarters and involved in the firm’s expansion into Africa, argues that ICT will help the continent to achieve the economic growth it needs to end poverty.

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: How can ICT help Africa reach the MDGs?

A: I think ICT will be absolutely key, especially for countries that lag behind with other infrastructure development…In 2000, you had about five million mobile phones in Africa. Today, we have about 500 million. In 2015, we expect it to be 800 million. Already, 20 to 30 percent of these phones are internet enabled. In 2015, it will be 80 percent.

It’s proven that a 10 percent increase in broadband triggers a 1.5 percent GDP increase in a country. In developed countries, small and medium-sized enterprises are shown to have doubled their business once they are linked to the internet. In Africa, we will see a similar development, but largely through mobile broadband rather than fixed lines.

Q: Infrastructure remains a bottleneck to development throughout Africa. Can ICT circumvent that?

A: There is a false impression that ICT doesn’t need infrastructure. It does, unfortunately. It’s less capital intensive than transportation, such as roads and railways, but it does need investments, like cables, towers and so on.

There are ways to speed up ICT development, for example by governments obliging operators to share expensive infrastructure and thereby ensuring that they don’t duplicate investments. For instance, you can reduce costs by incentivising infrastructure-sharing models without preventing competition.

Q: Where on the continent do you see a strong push towards ICT?

A: Some countries, like Kenya, have leapfrogged. They have just rolled out 3G and already are thinking of rolling out 4th generation broadband, especially to rural areas, because they know it’s the only way for them to progress.

In the slums of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, 80 percent of people prefer to skip a lunch so that they can afford having a mobile phone. They are willing to make that trade-off because a mobile phone helps them to optimise their lives in the long term through better access to information and resources, including food. Access to information has become as vital as water and electricity.

We have also seen how cashew nut farmers in Ivory Coast access international market information and prices through their mobile phones to optimise their sales. It works, even if it’s just via text messages.

Q: Would you describe Kenya as the African leader in ICT?

A: Kenya is doing great things. Its government has a strong awareness of the importance of ICT and has started to foster public private partnerships with clear goals in the sector. Kenya is an innovative country that might even bring “reverse innovation”, which means innovation coming from a developing country that will later be taken up by the developed world. Such innovation could even come from the users of mobile technology, especially from the young generation.

Q: Is Africa ready for the mobile revolution you expect?

A: African countries need to build the infrastructure for those mobile services, because people will demand them. For that you need investment, first in submarine cables, then in terrestrial fibre cables, especially to reach out to the less densely populated areas.

Then you will get sufficient broadband spectrum to install next-generation wireless internet access. The submarine cables are largely in place. What is now most crucial in Africa is investment in terrestrial cables for distribution of spectrum countrywide. The World Bank, for instance, has funds to help reach out to those less developed areas.

Q: In what way should governments get involved?

A: You need good regulation for the allocation of spectrum, to encourage competition and to decrease prices. Then you need public-private partnership models, for example a public investment in partnership with private service providers that have expertise in building telecommunication networks, either to subsidise them in remote, less population-dense areas or to attract long-term funding for these networks.

Q: What should governments do to attract competition?

A: Governments need to have a broadband plan, with clear targets and ways to achieve these targets. For this, governments need a stable regulatory framework with rules that don’t change all the time, as well as an independent regulatory authority that doesn’t change with every government. A lot of African countries have set those targets already. Now they must implement them.

Q: Connectivity is one issue. Affordability is another. When will all Africans, not only the middle class, be able to afford mobile broadband?

A: Prices will drop once you have enough connectivity and enough competition, and once broadband services are less scarce. Scarcity makes it expensive. That will take some time. But a lot of measures of using ICT to help reach the MDGs don’t necessarily need mobile broadband. Sometimes simple text messaging can go a long way towards development.

Q: Can you give examples for where this has already worked?

A: Text messaging can, for instance, be used in the health sector to track an epidemic like malaria. There is also the possibility to have free “call me” services or free call numbers. Those are mobile experiences with reduced costs.

There are also examples of training community health workers through text messages in Kenya. You can have simple educational quizzes on mobile phones or exchange advice and help with diagnosis between doctors in health centres and community health workers in remote, rural areas. Mobile broadband access will of course bring many more possibilities, such as training of nurses and community health workers on mobile devices, like tablets.

Excerpt:

African countries need more support from the private sector in order to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, which include important development targets like poverty reduction, and improved health and education.

Encouraging business in Africa will help reach the MDGs. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Governments cannot do it alone, development and economic experts told delegates at the MDG Review Summit, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa, from May 3 to 4.

Businesses, experts explained, are ideally positioned to foster economic growth and create jobs, which are needed to reach the first goal to end extreme poverty and hunger.

“Achieving MDG1 can have a positive impact on all the other MDGs,” said Beejaye Kokil, manager of the African Development Bank’s statistics department. Other development goals include the reduction in in the under-five mortality rate, gender equality or environmental sustainability.

African countries have already made some progress in their development through improved economic governance and reforms, including dropping the cost of doing business on the continent, noted Kokil. As a result, Africa today belongs to one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, with average annual GDP growth of six percent. It follows hot on the heels of China and India, which each have a GDP of about nine percent each.

But the trickle-down effect from economic growth to large-scale poverty reduction has been slow. Almost 40 percent of Africans continue to live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, according to 2011 World Bank statistics.

“That’s because GDP growth in Africa is not linked to jobs for the poor,” Kokil explained, since high economic inequality and skills shortage mean that most of the poor remain unable to access newly created employment opportunities.

In addition, high population growth has been curtailing many of Africa’s economic gains. The continent also continues to face major challenges like insufficient agricultural production, lack of infrastructure, high youth unemployment, low human development, gender inequality, poor education and the negative impact of climate change.

“It’s not all rosy. MDG progress remains mixed. But the potential is there,” said Kokil.

He recommended that African countries move away from traditional donor aid and loan programmes towards an “aid for trade” model geared towards helping nations to develop trade-related skills and infrastructure to eventually become donor independent. This model places emphasis on making the private sector an integral part of a country’s development.

“The private sector has a huge role to play in Africa’s economic growth,” Kokil stressed.

Some of Africa’s key donors, like the United States, are already considering a shift away from providing unconditional financial aid to making investments that are bound to clear economic targets, said Terri Robl, minister counsellor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, had announced earlier this year that “making investments with tangible outcomes” would become part of the U.S. aid policy, said Robl.

It means that the private sector will start playing a major role in development and many businesses have started to recognise this opportunity. Despite the fact that a company’s main focus remains profitability, corporate social responsibility has become a key element of doing business in Africa, Robl said.

“Sustainability as become a valuable asset to companies in and of themselves,” explained Robl. She is convinced that “the private sector can help governments leapfrog some of the MDGs”, by making sure that economic growth filters down to social development.

Meeting the MDGs needs much more than public-private partnerships, however. “Cooperation between governments and companies solves only two thirds of the problem. The last third must be the involvement of communities,” argued Professor Gerhard Coetzee, director of the Centre for Inclusive Banking in Africa at the University of Pretoria and a general manager at ABSA bank in South Africa.

He said that most Africans remain excluded not only from jobs but from using financial services because of high banking fees and cumbersome regulation.

Currently, most financial institutions solely provide specialised services to poor populations, such as microfinance.

“That is helpful, but not good enough to eradicate poverty in the long term. Ultimately, we need to move from microfinance to financial inclusion,” said Coetzee. “I see a clear link between a population’s access to finance and a country’s ability to reach the MDGs. By giving the poor access to financial services, we improve their income, thereby decreasing poverty levels.”

Coetzee advised that there should be a reduction in the direct costs of banking, such as fees and transactions. He added that there should also be a reduction in the costs of the indirect financial price tag, including the cost of transport and the time that rural populations spent to reach services.

In South Africa, one of the continent’s strongest economies, only 63 percent of the those 16 years and older have a bank account, the most basic of all financial services, according to a 2011 survey by African financial research company FinScope.

“That shows that using banking to improve poverty and thereby the MDGs remains a major challenge,” said Coetzee. “We still have a long way to go.”

In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the “pillar of my family,” says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

Farmer Selinah Mncwango is proud of her traditional sorghum seeds. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sixty-five-year-old Mncwango comes from a family of smallholder farmers in the village of Ingwawuma in the east coast province. The crops she grows today are from seeds that have been handed down from generation to generation, over decades, she says. Other seeds come from exchanges with neighbouring farmers. “My seeds are very important to me. I hope the day will never come when I have to buy seeds from a shop,” says the farmer, whose five children and eight grandchildren largely depend on her harvest. She is keenly aware of the fact that seed saving, storing and exchanging promotes crop diversity, saves money and provides smallholder farmers with a safety net in case of harvest failures.

But the traditional farming methods of smallholder farmers – which, researchers say, also help to fight soil depletion, reduce irrigation needs and adapt to climate change – may soon disappear. They are being wiped out by governments focused on promoting commercial monocultures that they hope will bring fast, high yields in order to boost national agricultural sales on global markets.

“The sector is dominated by commercial seed companies and industrial agricultural production,” explains Rachel Wynberg, policy analyst at the Environmental Evaluation Unit of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Small-scale farmers have been systematically pushed out of the system by those who put profits before food security and biodiversity, she says.

“There is a poor understanding of small farmers’ rights. Traditional agricultural practices have thus been eroded over decades,” she adds.

In South Africa, and in most other countries on the continent, the rights of small-scale farmers are regularly violated by governments and commercial entities that push genetically modified (GM) and hybrid seeds – which have been cross-pollinated in controlled environments – on them.

This is common despite a 2006 United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (IT- PGRFA) that protects farmers’ indigenous knowledge, demands rewards for their contribution to maintaining crop diversity, ensures their participation in decision-making about genetic resources, and guarantees their rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds.

South Africa and many other African U.N. member states never signed the treaty, however.

“South Africa’s policy framework on farmers’ rights is fragmented and unclear,” says Wynberg. “Commercial programmes are promoted that contradict and undermine traditional farming practices.”

According to Wynberg, government support of small-scale farmers is incoherent and insufficiently funded, lacks capacity and often ignores the needs of farmers. “Government is unfortunately often not delivering,” she adds.

Smallholders agree. Mncwango, who has actively tried in cooperation with many rural farmers in her community to protect their traditional farming methods, says she is appalled at the South African government’s drive to sideline them.

“The Department of Agriculture regularly comes to give workshops. They hand out GM and hybrid seeds and tell us to throw away our traditional seeds. They also tell us to use pesticides and chemical fertilisers,” the farmer laments. “By corrupting our traditional seeds, they make us lose our seed banks and force us into dependency.”

According to Mncwango, farmers often realise too late that GM seeds cannot be saved for the next season, and that they contaminate traditional seeds. Farmers have had to learn the hard way that hybrid seeds are of inferior quality. “They don’t store well and they rot easily and have less nutritional value,” she says.

“The government keeps forcing seeds on us. Even though we tell them we don’t want seeds. We’d rather have support with fencing, farming equipment and better access to markets,” she explains. “But they just don’t listen.”

Researchers like Wynberg confirm the large disconnect between agricultural policies that are deemed “progressive” and farmers’ needs. “High yields are traded for long-term food security,” she says.

Lawrence Mkhaliphi, agro-ecology manager at Biowatch, a non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable agriculture, has been working with small-scale farmers in KwaZulu-Natal province for many years. He takes the argument a step further.

“Many agro-chemical companies offer governments incentives for pushing their products onto farmers,” Mkhaliphi claims. “They want farmers to buy seeds, not save them. It’s a huge business. Instead of serving the people, departments of agriculture have become the agents of agro-chemical companies.”

South Africa’s Department of Agriculture denies these accusations.

“Replacing traditional seeds with commercial varieties is not an official government policy,” says Julian Jaftha, the department’s director of genetic resources. “The government does not own shares in GM seeds.”

The Department of Agriculture supports both traditional and commercial farming methods, Jaftha says. It ran a national programme to reintroduce traditional seeds in rural areas and has a Plant Genetic Resources Centre in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, to conserve traditional seeds.

“GM (seeds) should never be a farmer’s only choice,” says Jaftha. “They should be another option made available to farmers who wish to use those seeds. We expect that there are democratic processes in place for farmers to voice their concerns and make choices.”

Jaftha acknowledges, however, that national policy has not always been implemented correctly. “Unfortunately, it does happen at provincial level that farmers are not given a choice,” he admits. “We know that there is still a lot of work that needs to be undertaken.”

By Kristin Palitza and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 17 2012 (IPS)

More than three years after the start of the global economic crisis, which has had a considerable impact on African trade, investments and gross domestic product, investment prospects on the continent are increasing.

Johannesburg Stock Exchange CEO Nicky Newton-King. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“There are a lot of interesting opportunities. Not only in mining, but also telecommunications, banking, mobile services and ICT (Information and Communications Technology). It is because those investments are able to traverse a huge space without needing infrastructure,” says Newton-King.

Four months into her appointment as head of the 123-year old stock exchange, the 44-year-old Cambridge and South African educated lawyer and financial services expert talks about her take on the latest African investment opportunities and risks.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Are there opportunities for African countries, especially commodity-heavy nations, to benefit from the financial crisis?

A: Emerging markets experienced a two-way effect. After initially withdrawing from emerging markets, investors realised that, ultimately, the returns they get from emerging markets are higher than those from their home markets. That made re-investments attractive.

Q: What level of political stability is necessary to attract foreign investment?

A: We are in a state of contested elections. That means policy directions are up for debate. From an investor perspective, that creates a huge degree of uncertainty. People are unsure if they want to make long-term investments until they know how certain a political environment is.

This is an issue for us in South Africa, in Africa, and for us as an exchange. We therefore spend a lot of time talking to government and the relevant policy makers to decide on core tenets of our policy direction, so everyone can relax into certainty mode.

On the other hand, there are investors who are quite tolerant of political environments. People will invest in Zimbabwe and in Kazakhstan, because ultimately, the money counts.

Q: In December 2010 South Africa was invited to join the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) group of emerging economies. Has this brought additional trade to the continent?

A: We definitely see a shift towards South-South and East-South, away from the West. BRICS and related opportunities are going to feature more in our lives than before. We expect to see larger portions of investment flows coming from the East and Brazil. Some big banks predict that by 2020, 40 percent of global wealth will be in BRICS countries.

Q: Does the JSE collaborate with other African exchanges?

A: There are 24 stock exchanges on the African continent, but some only trade 10 trades a day (while the JSE has at least 120,000 trades a day in its equities market). We are the elephant on the continent. Still, I would like to see a much deeper level of cooperation.

There is good communication between the different management teams of other African stock exchanges, for example with Nigeria and Kenya. There are a couple of things we are working on in terms of better cooperation, such as cross-linking products and sharing technology. But that does not translate into new business yet.

Q: Would it make sense to form a single African exchange?

A: It is not a goal we are pursuing. We have seen too many other attempts, big global mergers that have run into cross-border regulatory issues. We think we can achieve the same benefits if we work on cross routines and closer product diversity opportunities. That is where our efforts are going.

Q: In 2009, the JSE launched an Africa Board where the continent’s top companies can be traded, to promote African capital market growth. Has this been a successful strategy?

A: The Africa Board did not achieve what we wanted to achieve. We wanted to create a short-cut marketing segment to showcase African companies, but we have only 14 African companies listed today. We fully expect to get more, but it will happen over time.

Q: What is it like to be the first woman to head the JSE?

A: It is interesting. Sixteen years ago, when I joined the JSE, I would have been terrified to go close to the trading floor, because it was a pretty scary place for anyone in a skirt. Today, we have 500 people working at the JSE, and it is almost 50-50 female to male ratio, and my executive is seven to six, women to men. A diverse organisation attracts more diversity. There is a huge amount of strength in that.

Excerpt:

Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products.

Recycling cooperative member Andiswa Konco sorts garbage. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sotyantya belongs to the country’s first group of small business entrepreneurs who have benefited from the government’s move towards a green economy. It is a strategy aimed at creating environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic growth; the government wants to create 300,000 jobs within a decade in this sector.

For 48-year-old Sotyantya, who is a member of a local recycling cooperative and lives in Imizamo Yethu, a slum outside of Cape Town, the move towards a green economy has turned her life around. Previously unemployed and struggling to survive, she says she now earns an average of 250 dollars a month from her work – enough to care for herself and her four children.

“The more people become aware of the benefits of recycling, the more rubbish gets dropped off at the Hout Bay waste centre. For me, that translates into more money,” Sotyantya explains.

The Hout Bay Recycling Co-op to which she belongs is based at the municipal waste drop-off site in Hout Bay. Here Sotyantya and other members of the cooperative sort and sell the recycled material.

Her cooperative of six formerly jobless, poverty-stricken men and women currently recycles 25 tonnes of waste each month. And this number is slowly increasing.

The cooperative received a boost when Thrive, a social enterprise incubator that helps green start-ups to become viable, competitive businesses, decided to help the cooperative improve its business strategy and management expertise.

“We focus on creating jobs that help to minimise waste, increase renewable sources, protect and restore local biodiversity, reduce energy and water demands and create a local food network,” explains Thrive managing director Iming Lin.

It is much more than developing traditional business models, she adds; it is about incorporating social, environmental and economic benefits.

Although it has only been operating since July 2011, Thrive’s work has not gone unnoticed. The SEED Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledged the organisation’s work by selecting it for one of its 2011 sustainable development awards that are annually presented to 35 African grassroots entrepreneurs in the green economy.

“On this continent, companies and countries, from small communities to heads of state, are suddenly realising the importance of the green economy,” says UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall.

Economic development and environmental and social sustainability cannot operate in isolation, he says.

“Going green doesn’t mean it’s nice and fluffy. There are some hard economic figures behind it, too.”

Creating a green economy is no longer an option, but a requirement, Nuttall says. “We are living in a world of seven billion people increasing to over nine billion by 2050. If we don’t change the way we consume goods and services and think about the environmental limits, then we’re in trouble.”

“But it’s a world of opportunity too,” Nuttal says, adding, “there are more and more examples of small businesses solving big problems and creating livelihoods.”

It is an opportunity that the South African government wants to seize over the next few years. In November, it signed a Green Economic Accord that stipulates active national investment in the green economy.

“The green economy can create large numbers of jobs, provide a spur for industrialisation and help create a sustainable future for this and the next generations,” said Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel after the accord was announced.

The agreement is part of a plan to shift towards a lower carbon-intensity economy, while creating jobs and promoting industrial development.

But government alone cannot manage and fund South Africa’s transition to a green economy, says Patel. The business sector, trade unions and civil society organisations must also play a role.

That is why organisations like Thrive have started talking to and collaborating with different government departments, such as environmental affairs, trade and industry, solid waste or public works, to jointly develop ways of giving the local green economy a jolt.

“Social enterprises are a growing model. We want to develop donor-independent, viable, scalable business models that link the economy and the environment and that can be rolled out in multiple communities or even nationally,” says Lin. “Government has been very supportive of what we’re doing.”

Apart from supporting the recycling cooperative, Thrive is trying to get a number of other innovative green economy businesses off the ground.

One of them is TrashBack, a bicycle recycling collection scheme that picks up re-usable material from restaurants, businesses and residential housing complexes, which are currently not serviced by the municipality. For every eight clients – or 4,800 kilogrammes of garbage – TrashBack can create one full-time job, says Lin.

“We want to show people how it all links into each other: waste, water, food, jobs and better livelihoods for all,” says Lin. “We can’t afford not to have a green economy.”

Angola is celebrating 10 years of peace on Apr. 4. Since the end of its 27-year- long civil war in 2002, the country’s economy has prospered thanks to oil. But experts fear that parliamentary elections later this year could return the country to violence and instability.

Marcolino Moro, a member of Angola's ruling party, is concerned about the country’s stability. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“There has been economic growth, but in terms of democracy, human rights and social development, the country has gone backwards,” said Elias Isaac, Angola country director at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), at a media briefing in Cape Town on the eve of the peace anniversary.

Over the past decade, Angola has been one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies – its GDP is forecast to increase by an impressive 12 percent this year, according to the World Bank. That is mainly due to major export earnings from oil, since Angola has become Africa’s number two oil producer after Nigeria.

But only a tiny portion of these earnings has trickled down to the population. An estimated two-thirds of Angola’s 16.5 million people live on less than two dollars per day, according to the United Nations. The country was ranked 148 out of 187 on the 2011 U.N. human development index.

A recent boost in infrastructure development including roads, airports, schools and hospitals, as well as the promised construction of a million homes, are termed “window dressing” by the opposition, meant to distract from widespread self-enrichment of a small, opulent elite.

“Corruption, nepotism and disrespect of the law are Angola’s main problems,” admitted Marcolino Moco, a former prime minister and one of the few critical voices within the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola or MPLA, which has ruled Angola since 1975. “There is no consultation, but impunity and absolute power.”

A telling case in point is a whopping 32 billion dollar discrepancy in Angola’s treasury that the government cannot account for. U.S.-based financial watchdog Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) demanded this week that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) withhold a scheduled 130 million dollar loan disbursement until Angolan authorities fully and publicly justify how those billions have been spent.

“The IMF should insist that the government account for those funds before disbursing another 130 million dollars,” said RWI president Karin Lissakers, adding that Angola’s government urgently needed to combat corruption and mismanagement.

“There is total lack of accountability,” agreed Horácio Junjuvili, a member of the country’s main opposition party, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. “The president uses state funds as his private property,” he added, saying he believed that much of the 32 billion dollars had been transferred into private foreign bank accounts.

It is an open secret that President José Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter Isabel, who manages the family fortune, has made multi-million-dollar investments in Angola and Portugal in the past few years.

Angolans also feel let down by the international community, which they say is only interested in doing business with the southern African nation, but not in pressuring it to uphold good governance and human rights.

“Oil plays a major role in the country’s politics. International interests are driven by business, not by morals,” Isaac said.

Although the country is up for elections this year – parliamentary elections are expected to be scheduled for August or September – few believe they will bring change. “We doubt elections will be free and fair,” said Junjuvili.

With Dos Santos – Africa’s longest-serving ruler – at the helm since 1979, the country has become an autocracy, in which the ruling MPLA enjoys a parliamentary supra-majority with few constitutional checks and balances.

The president has already ignored a new electoral law, which stipulates that an independent judge needs to be made head of the country’s electoral commission, by re-appointing Susana Ingles, a lawyer close to the president. Opposition parties have appealed Ingles’ appointment and are currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision.

“It’s really a dictatorship. Almost all power is concentrated in the hands of one person, the president,” Isaac said. “If illegalities don’t stop, the opposition will mobilise nationwide and the country will descend into chaos.”

Despite these concerns, neither the European Union nor the Southern African Development Community has agreed to observe elections in Angola later this year.

Dos Santos is highly unlikely to make way for new leadership, if elections are held. The 69-year-old signalled in November his readiness to lead the party in a re-election bid, saying he was “always available”.

Angolans have started taking to the streets in the past three months, demanding not only economic and social rights but also democracy. “The risk of political instability is high,” warned Moco.

Authorities have reacted to anti-government protests with violent crackdowns. Since January, they have banned five anti-government rallies and arrested at least 46 protesters. Although freedom of speech is officially guaranteed, media freedom is non-existent, with almost every newspaper and radio and TV station owned by the presidential family.

The Angolan government should immediately end its use of unnecessary force against peaceful anti- government protesters, human rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians, international watchdog Human Rights Watch said this week.

“The increasing violence against protesters, observers and opposition politicians signals a deteriorating rights environment ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“Demonstrators are being tortured,” said Moco. “The situation is very bad. Angola’s future is dark.”

By Kristin Palitza and - -
ABIDJAN , Mar 20 2012 (IPS)

Political instability, civil strife and humanitarian crises in Africa have over the past decades reversed countless maternal health development gains on the continent, health experts warn.

Maternal health is not a priority in Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Natural resource-rich but conflict-ridden Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, continue to struggle with high maternal mortality rates of up to 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to 2011 World Health Organization (WHO) statistics. In war-torn countries like Somalia, maternal mortality is even higher, at more than 1,200 deaths per 100,000 live births.

“Regions like West and Central Africa, that experience a lot of political instability, have the lowest indicators for maternal health on the continent, despite the fact that most of them are rich in terms of natural resources,” Kouakou explained.

As a result, more than 550 women die in childbirth every day in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the WHO, compared to five deaths per day in high-income countries. The risk of a woman in a developing country dying from a pregnancy-related cause during her lifetime is 36 times higher compared to a woman living in an industrialised nation.

If a mother dies, the whole community feels the negative impact of the gap she leaves. “High maternal mortality has grave consequences not only for families but also for communities,” said Dr Edith Boni- Ouattara, deputy country representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ivory Coast.

Since mothers are usually the main caregivers, their health status, and especially their death, stands in direct correlation with the well-being of their immediate and extended family. “A mother’s death has a negative impact on all aspects of a child’s life, including nutrition, health and education,” the UNFPA representative noted.

Countries even experience national economic setbacks when mothers die, Boni-Ouattara further explained: “Worldwide, we lose 15 billion dollars in productivity per year due to maternal deaths.”

But despite these indicators, maternal health is far from being made a national priority in African nations. As soon as governments are faced with political threats or humanitarian emergencies, investments in maternal and infant health as well as family planning are the first to be cut, according to Kouakou.

More than a third of women in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to any pre-natal health services today, while 70 percent do not receive any post-natal care, according to UNFPA. In West and Central Africa, less than 15 percent of women have access to contraception and family planning.

Sadly, this was largely the case because available budgets were disproportionately targeted towards defence, noted Kouakou: “Most public hospitals struggle with health service provision and continuously run out of medicines, but if you visit a military camp in that same country, you’ll see the latest weapons.”

Second on the priority list of governments is usually the fight against poverty and hunger, which is also the first of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that nations have committed themselves to reach by 2015.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day has only decreased marginally in the past two decades, from 58 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2005, according to the latest World Bank statistics.

As long as African nations remain poor, investments in maternal, sexual and reproductive health will remain minimal, experts say. Many countries will therefore struggle to reach the three health-related goals – MDG 4 (the reduction of under-five child mortality by two-thirds), MDG 5 (reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters and achieving universal access to reproductive health) and MDG 6 (combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases) – within the next three years.

“Most countries focus on the eradication of poverty and hunger, while maternal health gets neglected. It’s a matter of priorities,” said United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ivory Coast MDG specialist, El Allassane Baguia.

Few governments are conscious enough of the tight link between maternal health and poverty, he said. It takes strong leadership at the country level to shift those priorities and spend more on maternal and child health, and more effective implementation of existing policies and international agreements, he added.

The right to family planning and thereby to sexual and reproductive rights has, for example, been included in the U.N. human rights framework since 1974. But such services have until today not been included in the public health care provision in many African countries.

“Yet, family planning services could reduce maternal and infant mortality by a fifth. Access to qualified medical care could reduce deaths during the birthing process by 75 percent,” Boni-Ouattara noted.

In the southern and eastern regions of the continent, the situation looks slightly different. Here, most nations have enjoyed relative political stability and been affected by fewer humanitarian disasters compared to their neighbours in West and Central Africa. As a result, maternal and infant mortality rates were on the decrease – until HIV and AIDS started to pose a threat to maternal health in those countries.

Consequently, politically stable countries with relatively low HIV-infection rates, like Botswana, have the lowest maternal mortality rates on the continent, at under 300 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the WHO.

But in countries like South Africa, HIV/AIDS has undermined efforts. Despite strong political and economic stability, its maternal mortality rate is at up to 549 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
ABIDJAN , Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

The group of children playing in a shaded courtyard in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital Abidjan seem carefree. But when a car exhaust blasts, they tremble. When a soldier walks past, they shudder. And they become anxious when an unknown adult approaches them.

Thousands of Ivorian children were separated from their parents during the post-election violence in 2011. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

It has been almost a year after the West African nation was shaken by six months of violence and terror when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara who won the November 2010 presidential elections. But Ivorian children are still trying to recover from the psychological and social trauma the unrest caused them.

“Children were major victims of the post-electoral violence. Many heard gunfire and shelling, saw people running, saw adults afraid and witnessed brutalities, fighting and killings,” says Désiré Koukoui, the director of the International Catholic Children’s Office (BICE) in Abidjan, an organisation protecting children’s rights.

Children had to fear for their lives, and deal with the death of family members, hunger and displacement during the country’s violent unrest, which lasted from December 2010 until May 2011. Thousands were separated from their parents during the chaos. Many found themselves suddenly alone in the metropolis of Abidjan, forced to sleep in the street, beg, steal, work or sell their bodies to survive.

“We are concerned that, if we don’t swiftly implement mechanisms to ‘repair’ the situation, to socialise children and families, we will be faced with a whole generation of problem cases in a few years from now, with a generation of young adults without a future,” warns Koukoui.

BICE opened a safe house for separated children after the violence had ebbed down in July 2011. By then the unrest had claimed the lives of 3,000 people and at least half a million were displaced. Its staff tries to reunite them with their families, with support from international children’s organisation Save the Children and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

According to official U.N. data, 3,700 children were reported separated from their parents during the crisis in Abidjan alone, a city of about five million citizens. But Koukoui believes “the actual number is much higher; at least 10 times as high because we haven’t been able to even locate the majority of lost children.”

Progress has been slow, because often, parents have been displaced as well, or children are too young or too traumatised to remember their parents’ or villages names. So far, BICE has only managed to trace the families of about 250 boys and girls. “We do our best to find families, place children in schools, give them psycho-social counselling, and if all fails, place them in foster care or orphanages,” Koukoui explains.

One of them is 12-year-old Judith* who arrived at the safe house about three months ago. The girl used to live with her aunt and uncle in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s neighbourhoods most heavily affected by the post-election violence, which has been labelled a pro-Gbagbo area.

Judith’s parents, who live in a small village in the country’s rural north, Benjué, had sent their daughter to the capital in the hope of giving her access to good schooling. But instead, the relatives exploited the girl, forcing her to labour as a domestic worker in their household. When the elections ended in violence, Judith’s uncle, a Gbagbo supporter, fled Abidjan out of fear for his safety.

“After he left, my situation got even worse. From the window, I saw people being killed in the streets. I was very scared. We had nothing to eat, and my aunt let her fear out on me. She beat me a lot,” says Judith who eventually ran away and arrived at the safe house with her face heavily bruised and cuts that will leave lifelong scars.

The girl has also been raped, but for now it remains unclear when the crime occurred and who the perpetrator is, safe house staff say.

“It’s unfortunately a typical story. We have observed a countrywide increase in domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse due to the conflict,” explains Dalié Privary, the safe house’s programme manager.

After several weeks, the safe house staff eventually managed to locate Judith’s parents but the reunification process is complex and takes time, as aid organisations need to ensure children will be sent back to a safe, healthy family environment.

“We counsel both parents and children before reuniting them, to give the child the best possible future,” explains Save the Children protection programme manager Monique Apie. “We want to be certain parents are sincere about taking their children back.”

Due to the conflict, which has equally led to trauma and hopelessness in adults, one out of five parents were reluctant to welcome their lost children back into the folds of the family, according to BICE statistics. “When there’s violent conflict, it’s everyone for themselves, even within families. It’s shocking, but it’s unfortunately true,” says Apie.

Moreover, many parents feel they are unable to take care of their children, since pre-existing high levels of poverty – almost half of Ivorians were living under the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day – were suddenly combined with large-scale loss of income as hundreds of thousands of families were forced to flee their homes for safety. As a result, the reunification process can take months, even after the parents have been located.

Apart from supporting the family reunification process, UNICEF is working on ensuring that maltreated and abused girls and boys have access to child justice. “We are working with both the justice department and police on child protection issues,” explains UNICEF Cote d’Ivoire deputy country representative Christina de Bruin.

At the moment, few children have the opportunity to access the justice system, which together with the police force came to a standstill during the post-election violence, when Cote d’Ivoire’s army and military opposition forces wreaked havoc throughout the country.

“President Ouattara and his government have now indicated their concern about children’s rights, but it will take time to implement new policy decisions,” says de Bruin. Until then, thousands of Ivorian children will remain vulnerable.

*Name changed to protect the identity of the child.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
ABIDJAN , Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

“I would like to use contraception, but my husband is against it,” says Bintou Moussa*. The 32-year-old mother has just given birth to her sixth child at the Abobo General Hospital in Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital Abidjan.

A health worker explains the sexual transmission of infections at the family planning clinic in Yopougon. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

The family barely survives from the money Ibrahim earns from odd jobs here and there. But despite their difficult economic situation, Ibrahim refuses to consider family planning.

“My husband does not want to use condoms. He says it’s against nature. And I don’t dare to take the birth control pill because I am afraid he might find out about it,” Moussa explains.

When asked if she knows about her rights to sexual and reproductive health, the woman shakes her head. “As head of the family, it’s my husband who makes decisions about the health of the family,” she explains. That includes her body, she says.

Moussa is not aware of the option of having a contraceptive injected once a month, if she so wishes, and that she can do so without her husband’s consent. She also does not know how to access such health services because there is no family planning service at the hospital or any public clinic in Abobo, Abidjan’s biggest slum with an estimated population of one million.

In fact, Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, which counts at least five million people, has only one clinic that offers family planning services free of charge. It is located within the premises of the public hospital in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s largest suburbs, which lies about 15 kilometres south-west of Abobo and is run by the non-governmental health organisation Ivorian Association for Family Well- Being (AIBEF).

Here, staff counsel about 80 patients a day on issues relating to sexual and reproductive rights, including contraception, safe sex, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, and maternal and infant health. The clinic also runs outreach programmes through a mobile clinic to raise awareness about the services it provides.

“Our main hurdle is to overcome the patriarchal and cultural perception that the man makes all the decisions at home. But at the same time, men say it’s the woman’s responsibility to take care of the children and their health, including their own pregnancy, birth and post-natal care,” explains Dr. Nathalie Yao-N’Dry, the clinic’s programme manager.

“When effectively women cannot make decisions about accessing health services without the permission of their husbands, that’s a dangerous contradiction.”

Many women share Moussa’s experience in Cote d’Ivoire, a West African country where family planning is widely regarded as a “women’s issue” that husbands do not have to concern themselves with. As a result, very few men use the small number of public services on offer, while women continue to struggle to realise their sexual and reproductive rights.

AIBEF is trying to slowly change this. “Whenever a man is ill and comes to access general health services in the hospital, we try to recommend family planning services as well. But it’s very difficult to get men interested,” says Yao-N’Dry.

The other hurdle is availability of services. While AIBEF struggles to get men to buy into the concept of family planning, most other public health facilities in the country do not even offer such services. One of the reasons is that government has not made any specific allocation for family planning in its already low national health budget.

Only 4.5 percent of the country’s budget goes towards health, despite the fact that Cote d’Ivoire is one of the African Union countries that committed itself through the Abuja Declaration of 2001 to spend at least 15 percent of its national budget on health services.

“Health facilities throughout the country lack funds, skilled health workers and resources,” laments Germaine Moket, the medical services director of the local branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, an international organisation assisting with reproductive health and family planning services in more than 180 countries worldwide.

“As a result, most public health centres in the country don’t have contraceptives in stock, at least not regularly,” she explains. “And even if they do, they sell them at prices that the general population cannot afford, since those drugs aren’t given out free of charge.”

In the 10 months since Cote d’Ivoire has been trying to recover from its violent post-electoral crisis, the country’s new government has put into place a number of measures to improve health services in the country.

When Ouattara was instated in May 2011, he implemented nationwide free health care services to help the population recover from the effects of the post-election violence. Since Mar. 1, the scheme has been limited to free services for pregnant women, children under five and malaria patients.

“Mother and infant health are a priority of the health ministry that needs to be addressed urgently,” said Professor Allou Assa, ministerial spokesperson for the national Department of Health. But sexual and reproductive health services, which are preventative rather than curative, are currently not part of the free package.

That means women like Bintou Moussa continue to be left with few options. In a few days, she will return with her newborn to her small shack, knowing fully well that she might soon fall pregnant again. “We hardly manage to bring through five children. Now we have another mouth to feed. I really don’t know how I could cope with another pregnancy,” Moussa says.

*Name changed to protect identity of interviewee

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
ABIDJAN , Mar 14 2012 (IPS)

One-year-old Angama Ouattara lies on a rusted hospital bed, a drip attached to her tiny, left foot. Her mother, Minata, sits on the edge of the mattress, smoothing out the sheets she had to bring from home.

Dr. Tenedia Soro-Coulibaly (right) with patient Angama Ouattara, and her mother Minata (left). Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Six days ago, Angama was admitted to the paediatric ward of Abobo General Hospital in Cote d’Ivoire’s economic capital Abidjan. The little girl suffers from a severe case of meningitis, a dangerous inflammation of the membranes around the brain and the spinal cord. She is too weak to sit up or to even hold up her head.

A new national health regulation, which came into effect on Mar. 1, that offers free health services to pregnant women, children under five years and people suffering from malaria has saved her life.

“I just make enough money to put food on the table for me and my two children. I don’t have money to pay for hospital fees,” says the 27-year-old mother, who works as a fish vendor in a market in Abobo, Abidjan’s biggest slum. She could have not brought her daughter to the hospital if it wasn’t for free.

Ten months after the West African country started to emerge from a presidential election crisis during which almost all hospitals and clinics had to shut down for a good six months because they had been vandalised, looted and occupied, the new government under President Alassane Ouattara is trying to make public health care a priority.

Ouattara came to power in May 2011, six months after the country’s presidential elections, which were followed by a violent struggle for power between him and his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo, during which 3,000 people were killed and at least half a million displaced, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

One of the new president’s first actions was to ensure hospitals reopen their doors by implementing an emergency health care plan, called the Gratuité, which offered free health care to all citizens for nine months. This policy has now been replaced with a more permanent regulation targeting solely mothers, small children and malaria patients.

But in a country recovering from 12 years of political instability since a military coup in December 1999 that was followed by 10 years of Gbagbo’s autocratic rule, rebuilding a crumbling public health care system takes time. Hospitals have been suffering from lack of skilled staff, basic equipment and technology for years.

Last year’s post-election crisis made health care provision even worse, as armed forces and citizens stole whatever they could carry: medications, laboratory equipment, computers, beds and mattresses. Even ambulances were stolen, says Dr. Mamadou Keita, the national health department’s director of Abobo district. The slum, home to an estimated one million people, has currently only one ambulance.

“We haven’t been able to replace all equipment yet because we had to rebuild from zero. It’s a process that will take time since it’s very expensive,” he explains. “At the moment, we can only provide minimum services. We still don’t have lab equipment and lack basics like needles and thermometers. We often run out of drugs.”

Little Angama is a case in point. Even though the hospital does not charge for medical services and the bed, her mother has to purchase the girl’s IV liquids and medicines from a nearby pharmacy – because the hospital is out of stock. This costs her 20 dollars a day, while her average daily income is about four dollars.

“My daughter has been here for six days already. I have to borrow money from different family members. And while Angama is in hospital, I don’t work, so I don’t have an income at all. It will take me a long time to repay this debt,” Ouattara sighs.

The population’s need for good health services is greater than ever. During the post-election crisis between November 2010 and May 2011, many Ivorians were injured during clashes, and thousands of displaced persons lacked access to clean water, sanitation and were exposed to malaria.

In 2011, four million children were hospitalised in Abobo General Hospital alone, almost twice as much as the year before, says Dr. Tenedia Soro-Coulibaly, the hospital’s paediatrician.

“About 90 percent of those children had malaria. That was remarkable,” she says, even for a country like Cote d’Ivoire where malaria is the number one cause of child mortality, with about half of all child deaths caused by the disease, according to the World Health Organisation.

To make matters worse, markets and banks had to close when the country fell into crisis, meaning that people could neither access money nor food. As a result, malnutrition rates shot up, especially among children, the most vulnerable. “We also saw an increase in cases of cholera, meningitis and measles as well as diarrhoea and respiratory infections,” adds Keita.

The combination of looting and increased illness placed a burden on an already struggling health system that will take many more months to fix. “We often don’t have urgently necessary equipment to save patients’ lives,” laments Soro-Coulibaly. The paediatric ward’s oxygen bottles stand empty, while broken generators prevent doctors from doing their job during frequent power outages, she says. The impact of the post-election violence on children’s health has in fact been so severe that U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is worried the situation might have lasting negative consequences for Ivorian children – especially if the government does not manage to rebuild the health system quickly throughout the country.

While health service provision in Abidjan, the country’s economic centre, is improving slowly but surely, access to services remains extremely limited in Cote d’Ivoire’s western and central regions, which until today continue to suffer from sporadic violence.

“We lobby government for bigger budgets, but also urge them to decentralise the system. Currently, the majority of funds go to three hospitals in Abidjan, while there is still very little health service provision in rural areas,” says UNICEF Cote d’Ivoire deputy representative Christina de Bruin.

“The coming months will be a critical period regarding the long-term impact of the crisis on children’s future and well-being,” she adds. “A quick return to providing health and other social services is a key step to stabilise the country.”

Excerpt:

Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south – have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.

Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“It’s a catastrophic year. The drought is severe. We need urgent intervention to prevent a famine,” warns Ahmed Weddady, national director in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation of Mauritania, the country with the world’s least amount of potable water, which suffered the worst harvest shortfall in the region. A third of its population already suffers severe food insecurity.

After a drought destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel late last year, rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food in early February. That’s a good six months before the next harvest is expected.

But the world’s rich nations, plagued by financial crises and having just spent millions of dollars in emergency aid during last year’s Somalia famine, have been slow to respond to the appeals. Barely half of the 650 million dollars needed by the United Nations (U.N.) alone have been pledged. Other aid agencies say they are equally short of funds.

The catch: the longer donors wait, the more lives will be lost and the more expensive it will be to help, says José Luis Fernandez, regional emergency coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO): “That’s the lesson we learnt in Somalia. We don’t have time to lose. We need to mobilise support now.”

It costs 10 to 20 times more to airlift food into an affected area than to ship it. Equally, it costs 80 dollars a day to treat a malnourished child, while it would cost only one dollar a day to prevent the child’s malnutrition if the money was invested in development programmes in advance.

The problem in the Sahel is that exactly such long-term development programmes are barely existent. The region suffers from cyclic droughts that have led to low resilience among the population. Even in a “normal” year, half of all children under five, the most vulnerable, suffer chronic malnutrition. That means the step to reaching a full-blown hunger crisis is small.

Climate change combined with population growth, acute poverty, poor access to basic services, changing migration patterns and weak governance, competition over scarce resources and conflict potential have intensified in a region where the majority is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and livestock for survival.

That is why development experts stress the fact that emergency aid can only help the Sahel in the short-term, while long-term, structural programmes are needed to assist the region in creating resilience to recurring droughts. “Such programmes should include investments in agricultural development, health and social protection services, water and sanitation as well as adaptation to climate change,” says Johannes Schoors, country director of international aid organisation CARE in Niger, where more and more people go hungry due to the drought.

Even if all the needed funds were pledged, providing humanitarian aid will be difficult and complex. The Sahel is a vast, sprawling region, with many villages in remote and inaccessible places, making it a logistical nightmare to distribute food and other supplies.

“Because people live very scattered, logistics are complicated and expensive. Distances to reach affected people are enormous, roads very bad and sometimes non-existent,” notes Schoors.

What makes the situation even worse is the recent upsurge of violence in the region. In January, fighting erupted between Mali’s army and nomadic Tuareg rebels seeking a sovereign homeland, while Nigeria experiences violence perpetrated by Islamist sect Boko Haram, combined with ongoing operations by a regional Al-Qaeda group, Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.

According to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which tries to get life-saving aid to severely malnourished children in the region, first supply trucks have been prevented from reaching food insecure areas in Niger, which borders on northern Nigeria.

“It is becoming more and more difficult to reach people in need. We face similar difficulties in northern Mali. We foresee a period of great instability in the region,” worries UNICEF regional nutrition advisor for West and Central Africa Felicité Tchibindat.

The conflicts have caused many to flee their homes. At least 22,000 refugees had flooded into Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Niger by early February, crossing the border into the most food insecure areas in those countries.

“Having to deal with displaced people in areas where residents already suffer causes additional difficulties in reaching them with aid, as well as social tensions and conflict potential,” says Fernandez.

The quadruple burden of drought, structural problems, violence and refugees begs for a swift response, he adds. But for now, many aid agencies cannot scale up their efforts until they receive the necessary funds.

Mariem Mint Ahmedou sits cross-legged on a worn-out carpet in a basic tent built with mud bricks and layers of sewn-together fabric. Her eight-month-old twins, Hussein and Hassan, lie weakly against her body. Both of them have been malnourished since birth, because Beydar, undernourished herself, cannot produce enough breast milk to feed them.

A nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“Because the rains didn’t come, we didn’t have any harvest. We bought some rice on credit, but there is no meat, hardly any milk. Sometimes we don’t eat for two nights,” explains Ahmedou of the dire situation not only her family but most of her village finds itself in.

The mother lives in Douerara, a small village about 800 kilometres east of Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott, in the midst of a parched landscape of sand and rocky soil, deep in the Sahel desert. A drought that destroyed the majority of the harvest in the region has ravaged the country for months, causing rural populations to start running out of food in early February, a good six months before the next rains – if they fall this year.

Apart from Mauritania, other countries in the Sahel, an arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south, are affected as well: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and the northern regions of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. Twelve million people will soon suffer severe food insecurity and hunger in this region, aid agencies warn.

Mauritania, which has the least amount of potable water in the world, is one of the worst hit nations, with a third of its population already at risk of hunger. “The situation is extremely severe, especially for small children,” says Khadijettou Jarboue, a nutritionist who works at a public health centre in Kiffa, a small town in the country’s South-East.

With every week, more and more families line up at the clinic in search for help. “I am very concerned about the quickly rising numbers of severely malnourished children we see,” says Jarboue, as she weighs and measures a 21-month-old girl, Khadjetm, who has been brought to the centre by her mother, M’Barka Mint Salem, who lives in the village of El-Majba, 45 kilometres outside of Kiffa.

When the nutritionist places a three-coloured plastic band around the child’s upper arm, the strip tightens to the red section. This means the girl is severely malnourished, while yellow means moderate and green that a child weighs enough.

Her mother looks concerned: “I am extremely worried. We have no milk, no food. With every week, we’re struggling more to survive. And we are not the only ones. There are many malnourished children in our village.”

Children, the most vulnerable, are usually the first victims of a hunger crisis. As many as 60 percent of malnourished children can die in a food crisis, but the death rate could be even higher this year because the region has still not recovered from a serious drought in 2010. “The Sahel is a region in permanent crisis, faced with chronic food insecurity,” explains Felicité Tchibindat, regional nutrition advisor in West and Central Africa for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Even in a “normal” year, half of all children under five suffer chronic malnutrition in the Sahel. Rates of acute malnutrition among children are consistently above the ten percent threshold that for UNICEF defines an emergency. This year, the fund expects the situation to be much worse. “Every additional shock will push the lives of hundreds of thousands over the edge,” Tchibindat warns.

This year’s drought has been labelled the “worst since decades” by the U.N. As a result, food prices have tripled in Mauritania and other Sahelian countries, while the price of livestock – the main currency in the region – have dropped rapidly when pastures started to dry out. Roads lined with carcasses of cows that died of thirst and hunger.

“This year will be exceptionally difficult,” agrees Cheik Abdahllahi Ewah, governor of Hodh el Gharbi, one of the most affected provinces in Mauritania. “Last season’s lack of rain was like a death sentence to our people. There is an urgent need for intervention.”

“It’s only February now, and people are already in dire need. I’m very worried about how bad the situation will be in June, the height of the dry season,” he adds.

In a grain storage room in Legaere village in Mauritania’s east, stock manager Jeddou Ould Abdallahi looks helplessly at the few remaining sacks of millet and wheat stacked against the whitewashed walls. There is no way they will feed hundreds of people in surrounding villages until the next harvest in September. “We are on the brink of a famine. People’s health is diminishing quickly,” he says.

Since 2000, harvests have shrunk continuously due to lessening and unpredictable rainfall, says Abdallahi, noting that the persistent lack of water makes it more and more difficult to survive. But this year’s crisis is worse than other droughts the man in his late 40s can remember. It has become a fight for bare survival.

A few kilometres further on, an entire village has walked out to the communal millet field, in a desperate attempt to protect the few crops they managed to grow this season from a flock of birds that is equally desperate to find food to survive. Women and children shout and rattle stones in tin cans, while others wrap pieces of fabric around each millet stalk, so the birds can’t get to the grains.

But the situation is futile. “The birds have already eaten most of the harvest. Yet this field is all we have. All our hard work was for nothing,” laments farmer Zeidan Ould Mohammed. “I worry about my families survival. In the end we can only wait for death.”

If there was no HIV/AIDS, South Africa would have 4.4 million more people than today, the size of a major city. This significant slow-down in population growth is causing a slow down in economic growth and resulting in social ills, researchers warn.

HIV/AIDS has caused a steady increase in the number of orphans in South Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

New data by research organisation South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) show that South Africa should theoretically count 55 million citizens this year. But it only has a population of 50.6 million.

By 2040, the country’s population would have been 77.5 million without AIDS – 24.1 million more people than is projected for that year.

“The decrease of population growth has a negative impact on South Africa, because the group most affected by HIV and AIDS is aged between 15 and 49 years, which is the most productive part of the population,” explains SAIRR researcher Thuthukani Ndebele of the date published on Jan. 23.

“If this age group continues to die early, we will see an acute social and economic impact throughout the country,” he warns. South Africa was quickly losing large chunks of its workforce and skills, which led to loss of productivity.

The institute’s analysis – which is based on statistics sourced from the Actuarial Society of South Africa and the South African Institute for Futures Research – shows that almost a third of all deaths in 2011 were AIDS- related. By 2025, this proportion is expected to rise to a whopping 121 percent more AIDS deaths than there were in 2000, according to SAIRR.

Economic experts have no doubt that this will slow down economic growth. “An epidemic like this one, that effects a large proportion of the population, has undeniably a negative economic impact,” confirms David Hornsby, a researcher of the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “It limits the amount of educated and skilled people who participate in production, entrepreneurism, innovation and development.”

SAIRR further predicts that the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS will reach six million in 2015, which is double the number recorded in 2000. “This should be a serious wake-up call for South Africa. It would be a serious crisis for the country’s economic and social development to reach such a high number of HIV infections and related deaths,” says Hornsby.

Not only does HIV/AIDS reduce life expectancy and increase mortality, but it is largely responsible for wider social ills such as orphanhood and child-headed households. In 2009, about two million South African children had lost one or both parents, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“Almost a third of South Africa’s population, or 31 percent, is under the age of 15 today,” highlights UNICEF chief of child survival and development Dr. Siobhan Crowley. “This signifies a serious population imbalance. And the South African government is struggling to provide the support those young people need, in terms of education, social welfare and health services.”

The large number of orphans in this age group as well as households led by grandparents have started to create an increased level of dependency on the social welfare system, which demands an ever bigger growing slice of the country’s national budget.

South African social welfare organisations confirm persistently increasing levels of destitution due to HIV/AIDS. “The numbers of families in need, people who are unable to meet their most basic needs, are growing continously,” cautions Bernice Roeland, director of Cape Town-based non-governmental organisation AIDS Response.

She worries that without a concerted effort to prevent new HIV infections and handle existing infections more effectively, the future burden on South Africa’s social welfare system will soon become unbearable.

“Issues like social welfare, health, food security, poverty and housing are all tightly interlinked,” says Roeland. “If the long-term investments in our people, especially in our children, are not thorough enough, the social system might eventually collapse.”

SAIRR researchers say they are particularly concerned about the increased burden HIV/AIDS will have on the public health system. According to the World Bank, South African spent almost nine percent of its GDP on health in 2009 – almost double the amount than most developed nations. This percentage might increase in the near future even further.

“Nine percent a significant amount. Health budgets might have to increase even further, if governments wants to prevent HIV/AIDS having an even more negative impact on the economy than it already has,” says Ndebele, pointing out that because HIV-positive people live longer due to live-saving treatment with antiretroviral (ARV) medication, they also incur large amounts of health care expenditure before their deaths. “AIDS deaths therefore cost government a lot of money. It’s not like dying in a car accident,” says Ndebele.

But there is also an upside: increased access to ARV treatment does help HIV-positive adults to stay economically active for longer, thus alleviating other costs to the social system.

Experts from research, economic and social sectors therefore all stressed the urgent need to make a bigger effort to prevent new HIV infections – as the only way to effectively reduce the costs of the illness places on society.

Says Ndebele: “South Africa has 0.7 percent of the world population but accounts for about 17 percent of all HIV cases globally. That correlation is worrying and needs to change.”

When a food crisis hits the continent, African countries tend to look to the international donor community to mobilise aid. But a fast-growing, drought- resistant tree with extremely nutritious leaves could help poor, arid nations to fight food insecurity and malnutrition on their own.

A Moringa tree in fruit, near Sprokieswoud in Namiba. Moringa leaves are dubbed a "super food". Credit: Hans Hillewaert/Wikkicommons

A 15-hectare plantation of the “miracle tree” with the botanical name Moringa oleifera has already started to make a positive change in the rural village of Tooseng, which is located in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, Limpopo.

Moringa leaves are dubbed a “super food” because scientists found that they contain the calcium equivalent of four glasses of milk, the vitamin C content of seven oranges, the potassium of three bananas, three times the amount of iron found in spinach, four times the amount of vitamin A found in a carrot and twice the amount of protein in milk. It is like a supermarket on a tree.

Mavis Mathabatha, a former school teacher from Tooseng, has been working hard to set up a Moringa farm over the past three years that will produce enough leaves to make a positive difference in her community and further afield. “I want to make an impact in my area, province and across the country through this project,” she explains.

In 2009, she started harvesting, drying und grinding Moringa leaves from the first few trees she had planted, to sprinkle them on the meals provided to about 400 poor children at the local Sedikong sa Lerato (meaning “Circle of Love” in Sesotho) drop-in centre.

The centre feeds children from households with a combined income of less than 250 dollars a month, which includes practically all boys and girls in Tooseng, a community suffering from high rates of unemployment, poverty, food insecurity and low diet-diversity, malnutrition and HIV-infection.

“The results were visible almost immediately. The health of the children improved in a short period of time,” says Elizabeth Serogole, the drop-in centre’s manager who works closely with Mathabatha. She says many children had been showing signs of malnutrition, like open sores on their skins, which started to heal soon after the children regularly ate the leaves.

Supplementing their meals with Moringa also notably increased children’s ability to ward off new illness and infection and boosted their mental development, Serogole adds: “Most can now better concentrate at school.” All it needed was one teaspoon of leaf powder a day.

Dr. Samson Tesfay, a postdoctoral scholar at the South African University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Horticultural Science Department, confirms that Moringa is truly a multi-purpose wonder.

“The Moringa plant is unique in that every part can be utilised for beneficial purposes. It has medicinal, therapeutic, nutritive and practical uses. It is extremely effective in combating malnutrition,” says Tesfay. In addition, Moringa’s immature pods were full of essential amino acids.

Moringa leaves can also be used for medicinal purposes, to treat skin infections, lower blood pressure and blood sugar, reduce swelling, heal gastric ulcers and to calm the nervous system, Tesfay further explains. The plant, which is native to northern India, has been used in Ayurveda medicine for centuries and is said to prevent 300 diseases.

Moreover, the seeds of the tree can be used to purify water in rural areas where access to clean drinking water is difficult and often a cause for disease. “The seeds are effective in removing about 98 percent of impurities and microbes from contaminated water,” says Tesfay.

The slender tree with drooping branches is non-invasive, needs little water and grows fast, reaching a height of three metres within a year. It even grows steadily in Tooseng, in South Africa’s northeast, an arid region that has been suffering from repeated lack of rainfall in recent years.

“The tree can survive in relatively unfavourable conditions and does not require sophisticated and expensive farming methods or inputs,” explains Tesfay.

Moringa could thus indeed become a widely used hunger prevention method, food experts say, as it can grow in all of the world’s subtropical areas, where droughts and malnutrition are prevalent – in most parts of Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia.

Since 2009, Mathabatha has built up her Moringa plantation little by little. After she heard about the multiple benefits of the tree, she applied for a grant from regional funding agency Southern Africa Trust, which help her to set up her own plantation. Today, she is the proud owner of 13,000 Moringa trees.

But Mathabatha did not stop here. She wanted to share her discovery of Moringa’s nutritious benefits with others and has therefore distributed more than 6,000 Moringa seedlings to poor families in various communities around Tooseng, together with a nutrition education campaign.

“Planting and distributing Moringa is a holistic approach to deal with the problem of food insecurity,” Ashley Green-Thompson, who managed the project grant, explains why the SAT decided to finance the project. “The level of household food insecurity is one of the key indicators of poverty, and it’s very high in this region.”

Today, Mathabatha’s farm produces and packages up to 10,000 tonnes a year of Moringa leaf powder, which is distributed not only within South Africa, but also exported to Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho. “I am hoping to further extend my market in the next few years. There is a lot of interest in my product,” Mathabatha says.

But it is the urge to help much more than the desire to make money that motivates Mathabatha to expand her business. At the cost 60 cents per 40 grams of leaf powder – which lasts one person for about a month – the 52-year-old business woman puts affordability clearly before profits.

By Kristin Palitza
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 9 2011 (IPS)

Despite the high risk, it remains difficult to convince politicians to take immediate action to prevent further climate change and make available the necessary funds to do so. Scientists have warned repeatedly of the effects of climate change – if governments do not act fast, they will cause an irreversible catastrophe.

WWF climate scientist Regina Guenther. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

IPS spoke to Regine Günther, climate protection and energy policy chief at the World Wide Fund for Nature, about the dangers climate change poses to security and livelihoods.

Q: What are the consequences if the 17th United Nations climate change summit in Durban ends without firm results and targets? A: There are several scenarios. If countries stick to the voluntary commitments to reduce carbon emissions they have made during the last two summits in Cancun and Copenhagen, we will see an increase in average temperatures by between three and four degrees Celsius. If they manage to start a process in Durban that will lead to higher emission reduction targets by 2020, we could succeed in not going above a two degree Celsius rise.

But at the moment, it doesn’t look good. If we continue like before and don’t even implement the voluntary pledges, we will reach a dangerous temperature rise of six or seven degree Celsius.

Q: What happens if average temperatures increase by more than two degrees Celsius? A: An increase of two degrees Celsius already has negative effects. If we go beyond it, climate change will become dangerous. Glaciers will melt, up to three billion people will suffer from severe water shortages, mainly in the developing world, we might lose up to 30 percent of our biodiversity, droughts will lead to food insecurity, large regions will be permanently flooded, including small islands, and so forth. That’s why climate change is not only an environmental problem. It’s a threat to livelihoods and economies.

Q: Everyone is talking about the drastic effects of climate change in developing countries. What will be the effects on the global North? A: Think back to the major heat wave in Europe in 2003. It was a very hot summer (with several people dying from heat strokes). If we don’t get climate change under control, the summer of 2003 will be regarded as a normal summer in 2040. By 2060 it will be regarded as a cool summer. The United States have also felt the impact of changing weather patterns this year, with an unusual number of hurricanes and storms. So yes, the industrialised world will also experience a lot of change and will have to adapt.

Q: Will masses of people in developing countries have to migrate, as some scientists predict? A: That is very possible. And this will effect the global North as well. If droughts and hunger increase in the South, people will be unable to continue living there. If there are thousands and thousands of climate migrants, the question is of course who will offer them refuge. Many will look expectantly to the North.

Q: When will it be too late to act? A: If you measure the dangers of climate change based on the two degree Celsius limit, we will have to reach the peak of global carbon emissions within this decade. Scientists say that a drastic reduction of CO2 emissions by 2020 would still be an option, but the very last one. I believe, by 2020 it will be too late. Nonetheless, we have to continue making every effort possible, because it makes a big difference if we live in a world that is two, five or six degrees hotter.

Q: Why do you believe emission reductions by 2020 will be too late? A: The later global carbon emissions peak, the steeper the necessary downward trend of reductions needs to be. Achieving this will not only become very expensive but also extremely difficult. There will be a point in time, when not enough can be done to keep climate change under the two degree Celsius limit. Once we have reached that limit, which means that a certain amount of greenhouse gases sit in the atmosphere, the process of trying to lower temperatures will take decades, because the atmosphere reacts to changes only slowly.

Q: Why does it remain so difficult to convince politicians to act, despite the horror scenarios? A: The biggest drivers for man-made climate change, the coal, oil and gas industries, are the biggest beneficiaries of our current industrialised economies. They work with major lobbies and large amounts of money against the trend to reduce their share of the economy.

It is also important to note that politicians are elected for four or five years, not until 2040. Within four years, the effects of climate change are not felt very heavily. The big changes lie in the future and happen slowly. As a result, there is a gap between today’s reality and the scientific knowledge of the effects of climate change if we don’t act.

Q: Do climate sceptics influence governments’ hesitant commitment? A: In the U.S., climate sceptics have massive influence in the debate. In Europe, science has the top hand. That climate change is largely man-made is widely accepted. People have understood that something can be done about it and are more willing to take action. In other countries in the world that’s unfortunately not the case.

Q: How expensive will it become to fight climate change if governments continue postponing mitigation and adaptation measures? A: According to British economist Nicholas Stern, taking no action will cost up to twenty times more than taking immediate action. Countries like Germany and U.S. have been able to mobilise billions of dollars last year to bail out their banks.

Now, they are trying to tell us that the international community is unable to mobilise 100 billion dollars within a decade to finance climate change adaptation in developing countries. If countries would make climate change as much a priority as the financial system, they would reduce other expenditures to drum up the needed funds. Exactly like they did during the economic crisis.

Excerpt:

The last hours of the 17th United Nations climate change summit in Durban have begun. Since the arrival of almost 150 ministers and heads of state on Tuesday, negotiations have moved to the political level. They are expected to debate the way forward until late Friday night, or even Saturday morning.

Almost nobody believes that a second, comprehensive commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is still possible. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

Hopes for a breakthrough, or at least tangible results, are slim. Almost nobody believes that a second, comprehensive commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international legally binding instrument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which includes all major emitters, is still possible.

For this to happen, emerging economies like China, India, Korea, Mexico and South Africa would have to come on board, as well as the United States, a country which has not even ratified the first period of the protocol. Other major emitters, like Canada, Russia and Japan have already proclaimed their disinterest in a second commitment period.

The initial commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, under which 37 industrialised nations have committed to an average of five percent carbon emission reductions compared to emission levels in 1990, will expire at the end of 2012.

Earlier this week, negotiations briefly looked somewhat promising, when China’s head negotiator Xie Zhenhua announced his country was open to internationally, legally binding agreements. But his statement soon turned out to be part of a strategic game. But Zhenhua did not say that China was willing to “be part of” those binding agreements as well.

Many climate experts believe the U.S. has played a particularly strong role in slowing down the progress of the negotiations.

“The Obama administration has apparently come to Durban not to be constructive, but to hold other countries back. Their excuses for inaction ebb and flow like the tide. Once one excuse is removed, another emerges,” lamented World Wide Fund for Nature spokesperson Caroline Behringer.

Even U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon dampened expectations during the opening of the high-level segment of the summit on Tuesday. A comprehensive, legally binding agreement “could be out of reach”, he said.

While negotiators try to come to a decision, the atmosphere in the corridors of the Durban conference centre, where the summit is taking place, remains tense. Ministers and heads of delegations have retreated to conference rooms to further debate the contents of the 131-page document, the basis for all negotiations. Outside of the closed doors, delegates talk with lowered voices. Until the official announcement of the end-result, everyone is holding their cards close to their chests.

The possibility of concluding with a roadmap for an agreement to negotiate emission reductions from 2015 that will include major emitters and emerging economies, also stands on shaky ground. Under the agreement, all major carbon emitters would agree to internationally legally binding reductions by 2020 at the latest.

“What we are seeing is a lack of political will by some major emitters to reach an outcome in Durban that is fair and ambitious and that saves the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor and vulnerable people who are affected by climate change today,” says Tonya Rawe, senior policy advocate of global humanitarian organisation CARE.

“Some parties are already talking about delaying decisions on a legally binding agreement until 2020. This is a disaster as it can create an entire decade of zero progress,” he added.

Delegates fear that only a non-binding declaration will be reached, through which countries will vaguely declare their willingness to agree to binding reduction goals at some point in the future.

So far, only the European Union (EU) and some other European countries, like Switzerland, have vouched to continue pushing for commitments from major carbon emitters that are currently not part of the Kyoto agreement over the remaining hours of the summit.

“All major economies need to commit, of course respecting common but differentiated responsibilities. If they will not commit to an agreement in the foreseeable future, they take on an unbearable responsibility,” warned Connie Hedegaard, commissioner for climate action at the European Commission who spoke on behalf of the EU.

The negotiations do not only revolve around an extension of the terms of the Kyoto Protocol. Another important subject is the adoption of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) through which financial support for climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts will be channelled to developing countries. By 2020, 100 billion dollars should be mobilised annually from public and private funds.

But the discussions around the GCF, too, have been staggering, after several countries, including the U.S., Bolivia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela announced they were dissatisfied with the draft document and would like to re-open the text for amendments.

In addition, the global financial crisis has slowed down progress on the fund: rich countries, that are supposed to partially finance the GCF, are hesitant to make budgetary commitments. As it looks, the fund is likely to be signed off in Durban, if at all, but as an “empty shell”, without tangible plans on how it will be financed.

“We don’t have any more time to lose to safe those who are most threatened by climate change,” urged Mizanur Rahman Bijoy, a researcher with the Network on Climate Change in Bangladesh. “But instead of taking action, governments are mainly concerned about their national economies. That way, no important and necessary decisions will be made.”

Carbon pricing will be the core mechanism to finance the Green Climate Fund and with it climate change adaptation projects in developing countries.

U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said there is a pool of possible financing options for the Green Climate Fund. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“If you can establish broader and more comprehensive carbon financing, we will attract more private funding,” explained Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who co-chairs the United Nations high-level advisory group on climate change financing.

Carbon finance puts a price on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

According to Stoltenberg, putting a price on carbon emissions would have three key benefits: it will encourage industry to reduce harmful emissions (to avoid being charged for them); it will contribute to the development of clean technologies to reduce emissions; and it will generate revenue, which can be used for government purposes but also to take climate action.

There are already a number of countries that have shown that carbon trading systems or taxes can help reducing emissions while promoting economic growth, said Stoltenberg: “The European Union has a comprehensive carbon trading system through an emission scheme. Australia just introduced a carbon tax. China is introducing carbon pricing, and South Africa also wants to develop a carbon tax.”

It was therefore plausible that carbon pricing could assist in providing urgently needed finance for the GCF as well.

“The beauty of carbon pricing is that you will get less pollution but more finance,” Stoltenberg added.

During the past 10 days of the 17th Conference of Parties, which currently takes place in Durban, South Africa, the question on how to generate funding for the GCF has taken centre stage. The global economic crisis and national austerity measures have reduced the willingness of rich countries to commit to filling the coffers of the fund with public monies.

“The financial and debt crisis, especially in Europe and the United States, have developed further. We therefore have to look for both public funding but also private sources,” stressed Stoltenberg who, as co-chair of the advisory group on climate change financing, recently submitted to the U.N. an analysis of how long-term financing should be generated.

“Our main conclusion is that it is challenging but feasible to mobilise 100 billion dollars annually,” he said, referring to an agreement from last year’s climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, that fast-track financing of 10 million dollars per year between 2010 and 2013 should be scaled up to 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.

“There is no sense in having a fund, if you don’t have money for it,” Stoltenberg said.

U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon agreed that short-term and long-term financing goals could only be reached through combination of public and private resources. This would not mean governments lose political control over the financing mechanism of the GCF, a point some countries said they were concerned about during the climate negotiations.

“There is a pool of possible financing options, such as carbon taxes, transport taxes, and so forth. It will be up to each country to decide which regulations it wants to adopt and implement nationally,” said Ban.

However, this did not release governments of rich nations off the hook.

“Industrial countries must show leadership by injecting sufficient capital immediately,” said Ban. “It’s true that governments struggle with austerity crisis, but climate change is not an option, it’s an imperative. Need unambiguous political commitment and transparency.”

There will be no forward movement in the fight against climate change without movement on climate finance, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi agreed.

“We need to create a price structure that will attract the private sector to invest in climate financing. Carbon pricing will send the signal to the private sector, that green technology will be profitable,” said Zenawi. “The technology of the future is green. There is a race. Who comes too late will be left behind.”

But right now, days of staggering negotiations about the operationalisation and financing of the GCF, have raised doubts among economic experts that governments of industrialised countries are truly willing to make available parts of the finance necessary to fund climate change adaptation in the global South.

“We don’t need any more reports, we need the political will,” said economist and British government advisor Lord Nicholas Stern.

The faster politicians acted, the cheaper it will cost them, agreed Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, trying to push for the GCF to be operationalised before the end of the climate change summit on Dec 9. “Low carbon economy doesn’t come cheap. It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depending on how fast we act. The sooner we act, the less it will cost us,” he said.

Caio Koch-Weser, the vice chair of Deutsche Bank, one of the biggest banking groups worldwide, expressed his concern about the slow progress of establishing the GCF. Industry was ready to invest in the green economy, he said.

“Give us a carbon price, give us a reliable policy, and the private sector will do most of the job. We have already seen great vibrancy from the side of the business community in interaction with governments,” he said. “Of course it’s not yet of the scale and the speed we need.”

Koch-Weser further noted that the current global economic crisis also presented an opportunity for governments and businesses to transform, to find new drivers of growth.

To be able to raise 100 billion dollars annually by 2020 to finance climate change adaptation, “we need new private-pubic partnerships that provide transparent, long-lived and certain frameworks. We hope that the GCF will have a strong private sector facility and will be professionally run,” Koch-Weser said.

The goal of a comprehensive and binding agreement may be beyond the reach of the 17th United Nations climate change negotiations, says the organisation’s secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres (l) and COP 17 President Maite Mkoana- Mashabane (r) spoke at the opening of the high-level talks. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

Ban was speaking at the official opening of the high-level talks on climate change in Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday.

He cautioned delegates not to set their hopes too high. “We must be realistic about expectations for a break through in Durban,” Ban said. The reasons for more cautious expectations were well known, he added, such as the global financial crisis, which has led to fiscal austerity with countries prioritising national budgets before international needs.

“But none of these uncertainties should prevent us from making real progress here in Durban,” Ban urged, noting that serious proposals and persistence were needed to proceed. “It’s like riding a bicycle. As long as you move forward you keep your momentum,” he explained.

“The future of our planet is at stake,” Ban warned. “Time is not on our side. We are reaching the point of no return and must walk away from the abyss.”

South African President Jacob Zuma stressed that climate change was a global challenge that required worldwide solutions. He said it was critical to find common ground to reach an agreement.

“Different positions still prevail on different points,” he concluded after more than a week of often staggering negotiations, reminding delegates “we all agreed that the earth is in danger and that we must do something about it.”

“We need to show the world that parties are willing to solve problems in a practical manner and forego national interests, at times, for the interests of humanity, no matter how difficult this may be,” Zuma added. He demanded that delegations rebuild trust in each other.

The South African president said that the 17th Conference of Parties is still a decisive moment for the multilateral system, which has evolved over many years under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.

“The first period of the Kyoto Protocol is about to come to an end. The question left unanswered is the second commitment period. It is clear that if this question is not resolved, the outcome on other matters will become extremely difficult,” Zuma said.

Industrialised nations needed to adopt a second period of the Kyoto Protocol, while developing countries needed to agree on voluntary pledges. “All parties will have to collectively do more, with common but differentiated responsibility,” explained Zuma.

With twelve heads of states and 130 ministers having arrived at the summit on Tuesday, the last three days of the climate change summit are expected to bring about important, far-reaching political decisions. “For the first week, negotiators have been hard at work, but the ministers will have to take leadership,” said Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation and the summit’s chair.

She noted that it was important for political leaders to consider the memorandums written by thousands of concerned citizens, which were handed to the conference leadership throughout the summit: “They expect leadership from us. We have a responsibility not to disappoint them.”

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said “good progress” had been achieved on a number of issues, which included headway on financial support to developing countries, particularly regarding adaptation projects, the Green Climate Fund and deforestation. She was also confident that the Durban conference would fully operationalise the Cancun agreements before it ended on Dec 9.

However, Figueres stressed that a number of issues still needed progress and further guidance on a ministerial level. “The time has come to address the thorny political issues before us, such as long-term funding, a second Kyoto Protocol and the framework under the Convention,” she said.

From today on, it was up to the government ministers to develop solutions to the issues at hand. “They need to ensure there is clarity on contours of a second Kyoto Protocol and that gaps are ruled out. We also need clarity on how to avoid an ambition gap and on how funds will be scaled up from now until 2020.”

Connie Hedegaard, commissioner for climate action at the European Commission who represented the European Union (EU) spoke about the need for a new, comprehensive, legally binding international framework. “Only then can we bring the actions to the scale we need, with the speed we need,” she noted. “We would like the D in Durban to be a D for decisions and a D for delivery.”

Hedegaard acknowledged that not all developing countries were ready to commit to legally binding agreements immediately. The EU had therefore made the “significant offer” of a roadmap, which suggests emerging economies come on board by 2020 at the latest.

“All major economies need to commit, of course respecting common but differentiated responsibilities. If they will not commit to an agreement in the foreseeable future, they take on an unbearable responsibility,” she warned.

Speaking on behalf of the African Union, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urged the EU not to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, no matter what commitments other countries were prepared to make: “The Kyoto Protocol is too important to be sacrificed for tactical advantages on negotiating table.”

Another “top priority” should be ensuring that the agreements reached at the previous climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, will be implemented, Zenawi added, because, for the African continent, funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes were of “utmost importance”. “We are deeply disappointed that fast-track funding promised to us in Copenhagen has largely failed to materialise,” he complained.

Argentina’s Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs Alberto Pedro D’Alotto agreed with Zenawi, while speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 plus China, a bloc of 131 developing countries. He said he was seriously concerned about the “key lack of financial resources” made available to developing countries.

Nauru’s President Sprent Dabwido, who spoke on behalf of the small pacific island states, brought home the urgency of tangible decisions being made at this year’s summit. “For us, climate change is a matter of life and death,” he said. “Unless action is taken, a large part of my region could be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetime of my grandchildren. The time for small incremental steps ended long ago. Great strides must be made.”

The high-level talks will be concluded on Dec 9.

Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany are the top countries to fight climate change, according to the 2012 Climate Change Performance Index, whose results were published at the United Nations climate change summit today.

Electric cars reduce urban air pollution. Credit: Tinus de Jager/IPS

Sweden, the country with the lowest emission levels of 50,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to the latest data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), and good emission trends worldwide, was ranked 4th.

Experts said they could not award any country with the top three rankings, as no nation was doing enough to prevent climate change.

The three lowest-ranking countries are Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Iran. The index is compiled each year by environmental lobby organisation Germanwatch and the Climate Action Network (CAN), which evaluate and compare the climate protection performance of the 58 countries worldwide which are together responsible for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2-emissions.

“This year’s results signify that although globally emissions are still growing, none of the big emitters make the real shifts that are needed,” said CAN Europe director Wendel Trio. “None of them is considered as doing enough.”

Sweden’s climate policy was not ambitious enough, while the UK, ranked 5th, had recently shown worrying signs. It had failed to tighten up its carbon budgets, while Germany’s emission levels remained too high for a placement higher than rank 6.

“The average grades for the national and international policies are weak,” said Germanwatch researcher Jan Burck, one of the authors of the report. “Most experts are not satisfied by far with the efforts of their governments with regard to the 2°C limit”, which refers to the rise in global temperatures that scientists have found may not be exceeded if they world wants to win the fight against climate change.

However, within Europe, countries such as Turkey (58), Poland (56) and Croatia (53) hold some of the lowest positions in the overall ranking. This is partly due to their policy evaluations. During its presidency of the European Council, Poland blocked the proposed European Union’s 30 percent reduction target until 2020, for example. Poor emissions trends and poor policy evaluations made the Netherlands (42) lose twelve ranks.

“It is especially worrying that global trend towards burning coal (and oil from tar sands) has not been stopped,” warned Burck. “This is the main reason why we see emissions per gross domestic product (GDP) increasing in many countries.”

Switzerland was ranked 9th, after Brazil and France. Brazil, which used to be among the role model countries, has lost its top ranking because of increasing carbon emissions as well as emissions from deforestation.

The United States has climbed up two ranks to 52, mainly due to its reduction in emissions as a result of the economic crisis. It remains, however, at the bottom end of the index because of poor policy evaluations and a very high emissions level.

Emerging economy India dropped 13 ranks because of a worse overall performance, especially in terms of its emissions trend.

“The index provides hard data and trends in the context of climate negotiations that often remain vague. We hope countries use the index as a motivation to increase their ambitions to fight climate change,” said Trio.

China’s climate performance is full of contradictions, the authors said. While China is the world’s largest CO2-emitter, producing 7.7 million tonnes of CO2 according to the EIA, and with dramatically growing emissions, its national emissions reduction policy is rapidly intensifying.

“China is installing about half of the global renewable energy capacity per year,” said Burck. He expects China’s ranking to “dramatically improve” as soon as these positive trends will influence its emissions trend.

China, Mexico, Korea and South Africa are the countries with the best policy evaluation. South Africa has been showing an improved performance in the field of national climate policy each year, but is only ranked 38 because their emissions are still relatively high and the country remains addicted to coal.

Australia has made encouraging steps towards improved climate policy and climbed ten ranks. The experts recognised its new carbon tax as especially positive. But due to its continuously high emissions, the country remains in the last quarter of emitters, on a poor rank 48.

Despite the low ranking, “Australia shows a very positive trend,” said Trio. “It only joined the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 but now adopted important new policies to reduce carbon emissions.”

The countries with the worst score in the indicator ‘emissions levels’ are Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Estonia.

Counting on responsible travellers who increasingly seek environmentally friendly alternatives for their holidays, South Africa’s tourism sector wants to conserve its biggest asset – nature – while fighting climate change at the same time.

Solar geysers are just one requirement for "green" accommodation. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa (FTTSA) has developed a green rating system for the tourism industry that certifies tourist accommodation, activities and attractions in South Africa against standard environmental criteria. It also considers fair trade labour, socio-economic and management practices as part of the assessment.

Tourists can also book entire tour packages that have a minimised carbon travel footprint – a first such offering in the world. “We hope the model will be adopted internationally,” says FTTSA certification manager Lisa Scriven, who helped to develop the concept, which was launched in November.

The green rating system promotes responsible tourism, including environmental management, low energy and water use, waste avoidance, recycling and green procurement, building design and construction, the minimal use of chemicals as well as a focus on biodiversity and gardens.

To be certified as environmentally friendly, a tourism business will undergo an assessment by a FTTSA team as well as by an independent review panel made up of South Africa’s top tourism experts.

Scriven says that there are 14 sections of standards and criteria, each with several sub- sections, according to what type of business is assessed. The FTTSA team will measure on-site investments in the environment such as solar geysers and off- site projects such as involvement in local schools. They make an in-kind as well as a financial assessment and compare it to the company’s turnover; to see what percentage they invest in the environment.

FTTSA also cooperates with the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) and the Tourism Grading Council. Every two years, the business’ credentials will be re-assessed to make sure it still fulfils all requirements.

“It’s about tourism that respects the environment and positively affects the economic and social development of local communities,” explains Scriven. Sustainable tourism has become a trend, she says: “I don’t think many people see sustainability as an option anymore. It has become an expectation.”

One of the FTTSA certified tour operators is Ocean Blue Adventures in Plettenberg Bay in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. It offers conservation-oriented whale and dolphin marine eco-tours and has set up the Orca Foundation, which finances conservation in tourism, poor communities around Plettenberg Bay and schools. Visitors are also asked to plant trees to offset the carbon footprint of their travel.

“Nobody was protecting our bay, the reef, the whales and dolphins who come to breed here. We realised we had to do something ourselves to keep it sustainable,” says Ocean Blue assistant general manager Natasha Lilford.

According to Lilford, more and more travellers inquire about fair trade and environmental criteria before they book accommodation or a tour. “People want to give back. They want to spend their money at a place where it goes to a good cause and they can see a difference.”

Through the certification scheme, South Africa wants to boost its share of the global tourism market, which in 2008 stood at just 1.3 percent, according to DEAT statistics. For the state, the tourism sector is an important income earner. It contributed 354 billion dollars, or 7.9 percent, to South Africa’s GDP in 2010, up from 2.7 percent the year before.

“Green tourism is a growing market where people say ‘I’m willing to pay a little bit more because I want to travel in a more environmentally friendly way’,” believes South African Tourism Minister Martinus van Schalkwyk.

“Responsible tourism is about creating better places for people to live in, and better places to visit. South Africa’s natural environment is one of its greatest tourism resources, and therefore the tourism industry needs to be actively involved in conserving and protecting it,” he added.

The FTTSA certification scheme wants to do exactly that, says Scriven. It promotes a more mindful approach to tourism that aims to sustain and improve land, water and air by lessening travellers’ impact on the environment. “Tourists are beginning to show a more responsible attitude towards their travel plans,” she notes.

Almost 70 hotels, bed and breakfasts, activities and tour companies have been FTTSA certified so far. It is only a start, as there are more than 40,000 places to stay in the country. “It’s just a small drop in the bucket,” admits Scriven. “We still have a long way to go, but we are on the right track.”

Perhaps one reason for the slow uptake has been the global economic crisis, which has reduced tourism numbers and forced tourism businesses to tighten their belts since 2008. Because in order to achieve a level of environmental friendliness that will get them certified, travel establishments have to make an initial investment: they have to change light bulbs, install solar water heaters, plant indigenous gardens, insulate windows, buy less toxic paints and so on.

“It is an investment, but in the long term, they will save money due to reduced running costs. They will eventually also gain preferential market access,” believes Scriven. “The environment and the economy have become inseparable.”

This holds true for another FTTSA certified business, the Bartholomeus Klip Farmhouse, a small hotel on a working wheat and sheep farm with an adjoining nature reserve in Wellington, an hour’s drive north of Cape Town. Apart from funding and managing the nature reserve, a national heritage site, the hotel management has turned the guesthouses and cottages into “green” buildings.

“We only use water from mountain springs, have installed solar geysers and bio-toilet systems, recycle and buy all food locally,” says manager Lesley Gillett. “In the long-term, it’s worth your while. We’re starting to see a return on our initial investment.”

If more and more tourism businesses follow this example, South Africa might soon become a global frontrunner in “green” tourism.

Emerging economies China, South Africa and Brazil have indicated their openness to legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets from 2020 during the United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South Africa.

Emerging economies face developmental challenges but are also significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

Climate experts say the three countries’ willingness to consider legally binding commitments, even if they will not take immediate effect, was potentially “a great step” to unlock one of the big political issues of this year’s climate change talks.

Only India continues to refuse to commit.

The European Union (EU) proposed a “roadmap” last week, which stipulates that all major economies, including emerging countries like South Africa, Brazil, India and China, generally called the BASIC group – and not only industrialised nations as currently under the Kyoto Protocol – will be subject to legally binding carbon emission targets.

BASIC countries all face developmental challenges but are at the same time significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Major emerging economies and other developing nations already emit more than half of current carbon emissions. Within the next 20 years, they are projected to account for two- thirds.

The 194-nation climate talks, which will wrap up on Dec. 9, are abuzz with speculation on the prospect of emerging economies agreeing on the proposed roadmap.

In a move that surprised many after a tough week of negotiations that brought to the fore deep rifts between different countries’ demands and expectations, China announced for the first time it would accept a legally-binding climate deal after 2020, when current voluntary pledges will run out. After first insisting the demands of the EU roadmap were “too much,” China now seems open to finding a middle ground, especially with Europe.

“But there are pre-conditions,” said China’s top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. “A second Kyoto commitment period is a must for rich nations. After (the second period has ended), we need to review what has been done. Based on this assessment can we start negotiating what we shall agree after 2020.”

China laid out five conditions under which it would consider a legally-binding carbon reduction deal. Apart from a second commitment period of carbon-reduction pledges by industrialised nations under the Kyoto Protocol, they include hundreds of billions of dollars in short- and long-term climate financing for developing countries.

China also wants to see the Green Climate Fund signed off during the summit and demands the implementation of a range of agreements outlined at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which were integrated into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at last year’s climate gathering in Cancun. These include initiatives for technology transfer, adaptation to climate change and new rules for verifying that carbon-cutting promises are kept.

South Africa and Brazil – two countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming, especially with regards to agriculture and biodiversity – have also shown interest in the roadmap.

South Africa’s Minister of Environment Edna Molewa said the EU roadmap was “seen favourably”, but noted that South Africa would, like China, want to place “conditionalities” on any binding agreements.

“We would like to work towards a legally binding outcome. As South Africa, we’re of the opinion that the seriousness with which we will deal with the level of contributions that South Africa can make in the global arena is understood in the context of articles 4.1 and 2 of the UNFCCC,” confirmed South Africa’s second negotiator Xolisa Ngwadla.

UNFCCC article 4.1 refers to “common and differentiated responsibilities” depending on the gross domestic product (GDP) of each country, while article 2 refers to the stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions at a level that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner – a point important for countries that heavily feel the effects of climate change.

“Our future commitments will also depend on finance, technology transfers and capacity building,” Ngwadla added.

Contrary to South Africa, Brazil said it is not placing any conditions on committing itself to an internationally legally binding instrument to reduce carbon emissions as long as such a treaty helped the fight against climate change based on scientific studies.

“We could agree already today on an internationally legally binding instrument, but not on any. It has to be robust, respond to what science is telling us is needed and therefore something that will make a difference in the fight against climate change,” explained Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, head of Brazil’s delegation. “We would not adapt a legally binding instrument for the sake of it.”

Currently, Brazil has set voluntary carbon reduction targets, which have been passed into national law. Figueiredo said he is aware this commitment will have to increase over time: “We understand that this regime will have to evolve over time. We think voluntary actions alone usually don’t add up to the level of international response that science tells us is needed. We are willing to play our part in the future evolution of the international fight against climate change.”

As part of the Group of 77 and China negotiating bloc, a group of 132 developing countries, Brazil is pushing for the adoption for a second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol before the end of the climate change summit on Dec 9. The country is also lobbying for a sign off of a fully functional Green Climate Fund, which will have short-term and long-term financing mechanisms so that developing nations can adapt to climate change.

Delegates from BASIC countries have repeatedly noted that South-South cooperation is important to them, not only economically but also with regards to decisions made during the climate change summit, and have indicated that they would support each other’s positions.

India, however, the fourth member of the BASIC group, does not seem to fall into line. It has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the EU roadmap, as it is not willing to consider signing a legally binding agreement to cut carbon emissions.

India said it felt implementing its voluntary target of reducing the emission intensity of its GDP growth by 20 percent to 25 percent by 2020, compared to 2005, was sufficient. Having one of the smallest per-capita-carbon footprints in the world, tougher targets weren’t necessary, said India’s lead negotiator J.M. Mauskar: “We are not a major emitter.”

India was only willing to negotiate “mutual reassurances”, he said. “In terms of the Cancun pledges, developing countries’ voluntary pledges by 2020 amount to more mitigation in absolute terms than that of developed countries,” Mauskar further explained, insisting that rich nations, not developing countries and emerging economies must ramp up their commitments.

India has criticised industrialised nations, especially the United States, for not making firm commitments to cutting green house gas emissions. “We are deeply concerned that there has been hardly any progress in achieving a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” said Mauskar.

Russia, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which belongs with South Africa, China, Brazil and India to the BRICS economic bloc, has blankly refused to consider a second commitment period.

Protesters said it was time for climate change negotiators to listen to the voices of ordinary people. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela

By Kristin Palitza and - -
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 4 2011 (IPS)

Chanting loudly, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets to the venue of the 17th United Nations Climate Change Conference to demand that their voices be heard for “immediate and drastic” carbon emission reductions to save the planet.

Protesters said it was time for climate change negotiators to listen to the voices of ordinary people. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela

“We are asking for 100 percent change. Today will be the beginning of a strong movement that is going to challenge the rich nations of the world,” said Global Day of Action subcommittee convenor Desmond D’Sa. “World leaders are discussing the fate of our planet, but they are far from reaching a solution to climate change.”

Protesters said it was time for climate change negotiators to listen to the voices of ordinary people. They marched holding banners which said: “Never trust COP 17“, “Unite against Climate Change”, “Climate Justice Now” and “Ensure the survival of coming generations”.

There was a general feeling that ordinary people remained largely excluded from important debates on important issues that directly affected their lives.

“We want to ensure that the one percent on the inside of the conference will hear what the 99 percent on the outside have to say,” explained Bobby Peek, one of the organisers of the protest and director of Friends of the Earth South Africa. “We demand immediate, drastic emission cuts by rich countries that have caused climate change.”

Widespread anger could be felt about the slow progress made during the first week of the climate change negotiations, mixed with fear that the summit will end without tangible results.

Peek said he was gravely disappointed about the outcomes of the first week of negotiations. “It was generally a disastrous first week. There is no evidence of moving forward on emission reduction targets.”

Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo agreed, lashing out at the United States for never having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the only global, legally binding instrument to cut carbon emissions.

“This is not a dress rehearsal. A week of belligerence, bickering and backstabbing needs to now give way to real deals about the future of our planet. Those who are not interested in saving lives, economies and environments, like the U.S., must now stand aside and let those with the political will move forward,” Naidoo said.

Chanting slogans and signing protest songs, a large throng of demonstrators walked from Durban’s city centre to the entrance of the International Convention Centre where the climate change summit is being held, to hand over a list of their demands to Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).


Civil society requested that governments meet various targets by the end of the conference on Dec. 9, including ensuring a peak in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, and that the Kyoto Protocol continues and provides a mandate for a comprehensive, legally binding instrument. 


Civil society also requested that governments deliver the necessary finance to tackle climate change; set up a framework for protecting forests in developing countries; ensure global cooperation on technology and energy finance.

They also wanted international transparency in assessing and monitoring country commitments and actions.


Activists criticised rich, industrialised nations for using the global financial crisis as an excuse to give national interests priority before international ones.

After a week of negotiations, it remained unclear how money to finance climate mitigation and adaptation projects – measures particularly important to developing nations – will be generated.

“So far we don’t even know where the money will come from. There is a real risk we walk away from Durban with empty pockets. And that failure will be measured in lives, economies and habitats,” warned Tove Ryding, Greenpeace co-ordinator for climate policy.

“If governments don’t move forward, the final agreement will be stripped of any possibility of protecting the climate.”

Demonstrators voiced strong concern about a lack of political commitment to put in place legally binding and comprehensive agreements. The protest march was therefore particularly meant as a message to the heads of state and ministers from around the globe, which are expected to arrive at the summit on Dec. 5.

“We demand urgent and strong action on climate change. We can’t just keep talking and keep wasting time,” said ActionAid international climate justice coordinator Harjeet Singh.

“We march today to show our outrage. We want to give the ministers, who will arrive next week, a clear message: You cannot continue to make excuses.”

Excerpt:

Burial ground ... Protesters from the Sierra Club declare carbon dead outside the United Nations climate change conference. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

By Kristin Palitza and - -
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 1 2011 (IPS)

Just a few days into the United Nations climate change negotiations, deep divides on the conference’s key issues have arisen. Serious doubts about the adoption of the Green Climate Fund have cropped up, while a second period of the Kyoto- Protocol looks more and more unlikely.

Burial ground ... Protesters from the Sierra Club declare carbon dead outside the United Nations climate change conference. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

“It should be possible to agree on the draft instrument as it stands. It is a good compromise. In its current form it would attract significant funding,” said EU negotiator Tomasz Chruszczow. “It would be counterproductive to undertake further technical discussions on the instrument.”

Non-governmental organisations and climate activists agree that reopening the negotiating text would seriously undermine the chances of finalising the GCF before the end of the 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) summit.

“This would mean that there is no instrument into which money could flow. We understand there are concerns from some parties, but this negotiating text represented a finely balanced political compromise and took months to finalise,” lamented World Wide Fund for Nature international climate strategy chief Tasneem Essop.

More than 190 countries at the global climate talks in Durban were expected to sign off on the GCF, which is meant to help developing countries with 100 billion dollar a year by 2020 to adapt to the effects of climate change.

In an attempt to create consensus, COP 17 president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said she would reach out to various countries through “transparent and informal discussions” over the next few days. There is, however, no definitive process or timeline for those talks. Supporters of the GCF now wait with baited breath for her report-back.

Some experts suggest that instead of reopening negotiations, there should be an additional text to the draft document that resolved some of the most pressing concerns, while other issues could be taken up by the GCF board, once elected.

Economics of adaptation

Immediate funding for adaptation and mitigation will not only help countries to confront climate change but also make sound economic sense. The World Bank and the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that economic losses worldwide from natural disasters in the 1990s could have been reduced by 280 billion dollars, if only 40 billion dollars had been invested in disaster prevention.

But two years after committing to mobilising 100 billion dollar per year for climate adaptation and mitigation, at COP 15 in Copenhagen, developed countries have yet to indicate where any of the promised public funds will come from. Instead they have focused on ways to mobilise the private sector.

“If the fund comes with an empty vault it will be meaningless,” warned Ilana Solomon, policy advisor at ActionAid USA. “We know financial aid times are tough and budgets are tight,” she said in reference to the Eurozone crisis, “but the truth is that rich countries can bring up the money.”

The difficulties to secure funding for the GCF are alarming, because even if countries eventually bring up the entire budget, it will not be enough. Recent estimates by the European Commission and World Bank show that at least double the amount that will be raised for the fund is needed for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. Other experts note the world will need 5.7 trillion dollars by 2035 to deal with the effects of climate change.

Climate change experts also stress that action is needed now, because it will cost seven times more to reverse negative impacts of climate change, than to invest in prevention.

“It sounds like we’re talking about a lot of money, but the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of action,” said Oxfam International – Australia climate change policy adviser Kelly Dent. “We need money to fill the fund. And we need it up and running quickly.”

Up until now, countries have not been able to agree on a single mechanism to draw public funds.

Kyoto – a cop out?

Amidst heated discussions about the climate fund, the chances of countries agreeing to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire at the end of 2012, have become slim as well.

Aside from the EU, no other industrial nation currently stands behind an extension. The U.S., Russia and Japan have clearly stated their disinterest, while Canada caused a public outcry this week when it became known it wants to abandon the protocol, probably to avoid fines for not reaching its emission reduction targets.

“We cannot let the distraction of Canada’s move take our focus away from very real progress that can be made with the EU and others, as a crucial pathway forward for a legally binding regime and emission reductions,” urged Dent.

Even the EU has been slightly changing tack. It now wants the world’s largest emitters to agree by 2015 to a binding pact to be enacted in 2020 at the latest and offers in exchange an extension to its carbon- reduction goals under the Kyoto Protocol. The EU said it hopes to break the deadlock in the talks and find “common ground” with China and other emerging economies.

But climate change experts believe waiting until 2020 to set firm emissions reduction targets is leaving it too late. “We need ambition to increase emission reduction targets from after 2012. 2020 is too late,” said Dent.

Developing countries, especially Africa where climate change will be felt most severely, keep their hopes pinned strongly on the EU being able to convince other industrialised nations to commit to Kyoto from 2013 onwards.

“For us, a lot is at stake,” said Raymond Lumbuenamo, central Africa regional coordinator of the World Wide Fund for Nature. “We already experience real impacts of climate change. We are the victims of a climate change that we didn’t cause. Africa does not want to be the burial ground of this treaty.”

Excerpt:

Rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
DURBAN, South Africa, Nov 30 2011 (IPS)

Global climate change can now be observed from space. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a new technology that can survey the world’s forests via satellites and provide a more accurate, global picture of common threats to the environment, such as deforestation, degradation or illegal logging.

Using a remote sensing surveying technology, FAO has taken and analysed more than 13,500 high-resolution satellite images in 102 countries. These images will help nations to accurately assess the state of their forests. Monitoring change in forests has important implications for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and human livelihoods.

The losses in forests all around the world can now be quantified for the first time, FAO announced at the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties climate change summit, which is taking place from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Durban, South Africa.

The rate of forest loss has increased from four million hectares in 1990s to six million hectares between 2000 and 2005 - We are losing vital carbon storage, biodiversity and other values forests provide
Adam Gerrand, FAO forest monitoring scientist

“It’s a very comprehensive study of the world’s forests. For the first time we have consistent and comparable global and regional long-term data on forest loss land use. Up until now, most available data has come in numbers, not maps (based on satellite images),” explained FAO forest monitoring scientist Adam Gerrand.

As a result, very few countries have been able to monitor the impact of climate change and human intervention on their forests consistently over time.

“We have been lacking good data on deforestation and urgently needed more details about the dynamics of forest loss. We didn’t get the whole story until now,” Gerrand added.

The initial findings from the high-resolution satellite data show that the world’s total forest area shrank by an average of 14.5 million hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. It largely occurred in the tropics, likely attributable to the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land.

“The rate of forest loss has increased from four million hectares in 1990s to six million hectares between 2000 and 2005,” said Gerrand. “We are losing vital carbon storage, biodiversity and other values forests provide.”

There is some good news, too, however. The survey shows that deforestation does not happen quite as fast as countries have been reporting. The new data showed a net loss of 73 million hectares between 1990 and 2005 compared to previous net loss estimate of 107 million hectares for the same time period.

During that time, the loss of forests was highest in the tropics, where just under half of the world’s forests are located, followed by Africa. Asia was the only region to show net gains in forest land-use area in both periods. Deforestation occurred here as well, but the extensive planting that has been reported by several countries in Asia, mainly China, exceeded the forest areas that were lost.

All satellite images are taken a hundred kilometres apart and comprise 10 square kilometres. They are classified, labelled and then passed on to the countries where they have been taken, so that governments can review and confirm the data.

“It’s a framework countries can use to improve forest resources,” explained Gerrand.

Some countries have already benefited from the new satellite technology. In Papua New Guinea, a small country in Oceania, for example, which is to 65 percent covered with forests, 41 satellite images were taken to establish the impact climate change had on its forest cover.

“Our country didn’t have the technology to assess forest degradation. The new satellite imagery improves the credibility of data,” said Dr. Joe Pokana, head of Papua New Guinea’s national climate change office. “We now plan to establish a robust national monitoring system that will help us to understand the level of degradation and inform policy.”

Similarly, Angola has started to survey the threat of deforestation via the photographic maps provided by the satellites. Forests currently make up 43.4 percent of the southern African country.

“We how have important information about how our forest resources are utilised, carbon stocks, environmental problems, causes of degradation and deforestation,” said Mateus Andre, the head of Angola’s forestry department. “For the first time, we have quality information on which we can base decisions.”

The new data are particularly important for developing regions like Africa, where existing information is often out-dated or of low quality due to lack of capacity. They differ from previous FAO findings in the Global Forest Resources Assessment of 2010, which were based on a compilation of country reports that used a wide variety of sources.

“Deforestation is depriving millions of people of forest goods and services that are crucial to rural livelihoods, economic well-being and environmental health,” said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, FAO assistant director-general for forestry. “The new, satellite-based figures give us a more consistent global picture. Together with the broad range of information supplied by the country reports, they offer decision- makers at every level more accurate information.”

Further remote sensing studies are expected to reveal changes occurring since 2005. “Eventually we will be able to assign biomass to each site for the estimation of forest carbon emissions,” explained Frederic Achard, a scientist from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission who helped to develop the new imaging system.

Until then lies a long way ahead. Currently, the satellite technology can provide some important data, but not all. Admitted Gerrand: “We still have several decades worth of development ahead.” (ENDS/AF/WD/DV/EN/SC/AB/DS/IJ/SU/KP/KP/PF/2011)

Rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil. Credit: Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Kristin Palitza and - -
DURBAN, South Africa , Nov 29 2011 (IPS)

Organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits.

Rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil. Credit: Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“It is a system where you pour a lot of money into forests that will attract powerful international investors who will make big profits,” warned Simone Lovera, managing director of the Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide network of more than 50 non-governmental organisations and Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She spoke during the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17), which is taking place in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9.

Lovera does not contest that deforestation and forest degradation are key climate change culprits. Caused by agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development or destructive logging, they account for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N., more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

REDD+ is supposed to turn this around. Since it was started in 2005, the programme enables industrialised countries in the North to reward reductions of carbon emissions to nations in the South. It is basically a system of performance-based payments that are financed through global carbon markets. The U.N. predicts that finance for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD+ could reach up to 30 billion dollars per year. The money is supposed to go towards pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services.

But indigenous communities say this is not so. It was big, international forestry businesses that ultimately benefited from the carbon deals, not the locals who have lived in and off the forests for many generations. Instead, locals are kicked off their land to make space for large monoculture plantations aimed at offsetting carbon emissions in the north.

Lovera said there are many risks inherent to REDD+ that indigenous communities are unable to address because they lack access to information and education, such as forced, non-transparent contracts and land grabbing. What forest-dependent communities need instead, she argued, are national public policies that support sustainable forest management.

Lovera said the U.N. promise of the scheme generating billions of dollars annually was “a big fairytale”, a way of green washing. “There won’t be big carbon financing for REDD+. Carbon markets are collapsing. It’s a very risky scheme that is creating havoc all over the world,” she cautioned.

Her prediction is likely to be correct. A World Bank draft report, written for a G20 meeting in November and leaked to the Britsh Guardian newspaper in September, confirmed the trouble global carbon markets are in. “The value of transactions in the primary CDM market declined sharply in 2009 and further in 2010 … amid chronic uncertainties about future mitigation targets and market mechanisms after 2012,” the World Bank stated.

In the meantime, the U.N. continues to pump large amounts of finance into REDD+. Last month, for example, Nigeria’s national REDD+ programme received four million dollars in funding, which the U.N. says brought total funding in 14 countries worldwide to nearly 60 million dollars. The funds are aimed at increasing the capacity of national governments to implement carbon-saving strategies together with local groups, such as indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.

“The U.N.-REDD programme’s support is invaluable because climate change is a global problem and the issues of REDD+, sustainable forest management and sustainable livelihoods cannot be handled by the country alone,” said Salisu Dahiru, national coordinator for REDD+ in Nigeria.

But organisations working with forest-dependent communities say the benefits for local people are minimal.

“We say very clearly ‘no’ to REDD+. Under it, people are being expelled from nature so that big industries can profit from carbon storage,” argued Winnie Overbeek, the international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement, a non-governmental organisation based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In Uganda, for example, a case was documented where 22,000 people were violently evicted from the Mubende and Kiboga districts earlier this year to make way for the United Kingdom-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell timber. Similar incidents happened to indigenous peoples all over the world, said Overbeek.

“REDD+ is about making more profit, continuing pollution and disrespecting the rights of forest people all over the world. It’s about land grabbing,” he warned. “It’s time to stop thinking about REDD+ and start protecting local populations and their land rights.”

Marlon Santi, a member of the Quichua indigenous community that lives in the Amazon Region of Ecuador, said he has experienced first-hand how REDD+ took away people’s livelihoods. The scheme has led to mega forestry projects that exist to the detriment of local people.

“Forests have become a negotiating space to make money. They are used as business opportunities. That’s unacceptable to us,” said Santi. “REDD+ projects are hypocritical. We need real political solutions that benefit everyone.”

He hoped the negotiators at this year’s COP 17 will grant an open ear to his people’s needs.

Excerpt:

Rooibos plants are severely threatened by climate change. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN , Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

South Africa’s Rooibos tea has become a popular drink all around the globe. But prices of the herbal brew could shoot up within the next decade, as the Rooibos plant can only grow in one small region in the world – which is severely affected by climate change.

Pieter Koopman stoops down to inspect a young Rooibos bush. The farmer, who owns an 850-hectare tea farm in the Suid Bokkeveld, in western South Africa, is greatly concerned about the upcoming harvesting season. Droughts and erratic rainfall have destroyed more than half of his crop over the past decade. But he has hope that this year will be a better one.

“The last 10 years have been very hard. We had to learn to adapt to new weather conditions, and we still do. We can’t sit back and wait,” says Koopman. Vital rain, which usually occurs in the South African winter between May and August, the traditional Rooibos planting season, has not been falling. “All our seedlings died. We made losses every season,” the farmer sighs.

In response, Koopman and other farmers in the area started to change their farming techniques. They planted windbreaks with indigenous plants to stop soil erosion, built water catchments and, perhaps most importantly, started to plant seeds instead of seedlings. “Seeds take longer to grow, but are less sensitive to lack of rain,” Koopman explains. “It was a tough lesson to learn.”

If Koopman and his peers manage to successfully adapt to climate change, Rooibos lovers all over the world can breathe a sigh of relief: because the entire global supply of the red bush tea comes from a single production area, the South African Suid Bokkeveld, which measures just 20,000 square kilometres.

Attempts to cultivate it outside of this region have failed, as the plant needs the harsh conditions of the region, where temperatures drop to zero degrees Celsius during winter and rise to a blistering 48 degrees Celsius at the height of summer.

The farmers’ concerns are justified. Experts predict that agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa will be severely affected by climate change. By 2050, changes in weather patterns will cause average rice, wheat and maize yields to decline by up to 14 percent, 22 percent and five percent, respectively, according to the Washington DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

“That’s why the long-term prosperity of Rooibos farmers will depend greatly upon their ability to change their farming practices to these new weather conditions,” says Noel Oettle, rural programme manager of the Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG), a non-governmental organisation helping Rooibos farmers increase their resilience to climate change through natural resource management, monitoring weather patterns, soil and water conservation as well as promoting agricultural biodiversity.

“Only if farmers include in their decision making the likelihood of extreme weather events and focus on sustainable production, can the rest of us continue to enjoy Rooibos tea,” reckons Oettle.

Rooibos tea has become a popular drink around the globe not only because of its sweetish nutty taste, but due to its many health benefits. Caffeine-free and rich in anti-oxidants, Rooibos contains a wealth of minerals, such as zinc, copper, calcium, magnesium and potassium and is known to act as a digestive aid as well as an anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-viral.

According to the South African Department of Agriculture, the country exports about eight tonnes of Rooibos tea per year to key foreign markets, such as Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan and the United States, but also to Chile, Poland and Russia.

Rooibos tea farming remains a small industry, with about 300 farmers, most of them smallholders who employ a handful of workers full-time, plus seasonal workers during harvest. The Suid-Bokkeveld is a poverty-stricken area that has seen slow economic improvement since Rooibos has become popular in foreign countries.

“Climate change is likely to have a negative impact on those exports because of the plant’s geographic limitation, but also because there exists only one species of Rooibos. If it gets wiped out, that’s it,” warns Rooibos expert Dr. Rhoda Malgas, a researcher at the Department of Conservation at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. By comparison, there are 25 species of Honeybush, another South African herbal tea of the fynbos variety.

One option to save South Africa’s Rooibos plant is to conserve the wild Rooibos plant, Malgas believes, which has been growing naturally in the Suid Bokkeveld for centuries. Wild Rooibos is hardier and more heat resistant than its cultivated cousin, with a more elaborate root system that can survive less rainfall.

“It would be wise to start building seed banks. If you conserve wild Rooibos, you can conserve the genetic material from which the cultivated Rooibos tea is derived,” the scientist suggests.

Some Rooibos farmers have already caught on to the idea. Laurenz Dworkin, who owns a 100-hectare tea field in the Suid Bokkeveld, says he has considered harvesting wild Rooibos in addition to the cultivated variety. He also plans to collect its seeds to be able to protect his farm from the effects of climate change. “Wild Rooibos has not become a commercially viable product yet, but it has potential,” he believes.

But Dworkin is concerned that the trend to commercialise the wild variety will ultimately do more harm than good. Because it grows more slowly, wild Rooibos cannot be harvested on the same scale as cultivated Rooibos – it can only be picked every two years. Yet, farmers desperate for quick profits might harvest the plant annually all the same, and ultimately destroy it.

“We desperately need responsible farmers who think long term and don’t kill the plants for fast profits,” says Dworkin. “Instead, we should work on the assumption that Rooibos prices will keep going up. The plant might become more valuable because yields will decrease due to changing weather patterns.”

Although EMG supports the farmers, it remains their own decision what farming practices they apply. Farmers are often reluctant to take the risk to try new approaches and Rooibos farming remains a small industry, without large amounts of research money behind it.

If Dworkin is right, a hot cup of Rooibos tea might soon cost consumers a premium.

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Orphans Moliehi (17), Lefa (9) and Ithabeleng (15) live by themselves in a small shack. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Kristin Palitza
MASERU , Nov 22 2011 (IPS)

Flagging economic fortunes and a persistent AIDS pandemic have devastated Lesotho, leaving little hope it will ever be able to pull itself out of its bleak poverty trap. Three out of five of the tiny southern African kingdom’s children are living in dismal poverty. Every fourth child is orphaned.

Orphans Moliehi (17), Lefa (9) and Ithabeleng (15) live by themselves in a small shack. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

The children live in a tiny, one-roomed shack, roughly hammered together from corrugated tin sheets. Dishes, a couple of pots, a kettle and plastic basin are stacked on a small, rickety table, while tattered suitcases, filled with old clothes and blankets, are stacked against the wall opposite. At night, the siblings squeeze onto a single worn-out mattress.

“I miss my mother. Playing her role is a burden. My brothers look at me to provide, but we have nothing,” explains Moliehi, while her brothers huddle next to her, somewhat at a loss. “I usually go door to door to beg for a cup of maize meal or some oil.”

But the people of Mohasoa, a village half an hour outside of Lesotho’s capital Maseru where Moliehi lives, are equally poor. “Nine out of 10 households here are poverty-stricken. Hardly anyone has employment,” says village chief Malipontso Mokasoa. “Since the beginning of the economic crisis our suffering has increased at an alarming rate.”

The situation of Lesotho’s children is dire. In the country of 1.8 million, a good 500,000 out of 825,000 boys and girls live under 1.25 dollars a day and without proper shelter, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Almost 40 percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition and are stunted. Both under-five and infant mortality have persistently gone up in the past decade.

“People just aspire to the most basic needs, like food, shelter and clothing. But they can’t even meet those any longer. Some only eat every second day,” knows national Department of Social Welfare child welfare officer Lineo Lephoto. “It’s about bare survival, and we can’t see hope for improvement soon.”

Lesotho has become one of the worst places in the world to be a child. The reason is the devastating impact the global economic crisis has had on this small country the size of Belgium, which is entirely enclosed by South Africa and strongly dependent on its economy.

Declining diamond prices and loss of textile exports leading have weakened Lesotho’s two main industries, while a 60 percent revenue decline from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) caused largely by the economic crisis dried up the constitutional monarchy’s main revenue stream. GDP growth slowed to 0.9 percent in 2009 from 6.5 percent in 2006, according to World Bank.

Simultaneously, in the countryside, where over 70 percent of Lesotho’s people fight over nine percent of arable land, subsistence farming has diminished. Alternate floods and droughts have reduced farmers’ yields to a bare minimum, leaving more than a quarter of the population food insecure. Lesotho ranks 141 out of 162 countries in the 2011 Human Development Index, behind Benin, Yemen and Bangladesh.

To make matters worse, Lesotho is one of the three countries in the world worst affected by HIV/Aids. Every fourth Basotho is infected with the virus, leaving a quarter of children orphaned. “Lesotho has one of the highest proportions of orphans in the world,” says UNICEF country representative Dr. Ahmed Magan. “The situation is drastic, and at the moment, the deprivation level increases instead of improves.”

The triple threat of HIV, poverty and food insecurity is increasingly exposing children to abuse, exploitation and other human rights violations. “If we don’t manage to reduce poverty in the next five years, we will see a major decrease in children’s survival and development,” warns Magan.

In an attempt to alleviate some of the drastic child poverty, UNICEF, with 29.6 million dollars backing from the European Union (EU), launched in 2008 a grant scheme for orphans and vulnerable children. The programme is implemented by Lesotho’s child welfare department, which allocates 14.8 dollars per month to the poorest homes. So far, the grant supplements the income of 10,200 households, reaching 28,000 children in five of the country’s ten districts.

By 2014, when the funding will be used up, 75,000 children – a fifth of Lesotho’s orphans and vulnerable children – would have benefitted from the grant. From 2015 onwards, government is expected to finance the scheme itself.

How this poverty-stricken country will be able to sustain such a scheme has met widespread scepticism, however. “Government has a long way to go,” admits UNICEF social policy chief Mohammad Farooq. “It tries to maintain its social expenditure, but with all the revenue shortfalls, we will have to see if they can take over in 2015.”

The only way to achieve this is with the help of international donors, like the EU, which already give Lesotho national budget support of more than 134.7 million dollars, he believes.

For children like Moliehe and her brothers, the continuity of the grant will decide their future. Although 14.8 dollars seems to be a rather small amount, the money allows the children to buy food and go to school. Says the teenager: “The grant is the only money we have. Already, it’s not easy for us to survive. I always worry.”

* Surname withheld to protect child’s identity.

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