Children dry fish in the sun at a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region. In countries including Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique, gas is extracted and exported to serve external markets, while domestic energy needs go unmet. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Jun 11 2026 (IPS)

A new report examining the economic impact of oil and gas production in Africa has found that fossil fuels have failed to deliver sustained or inclusive economic development, observing that the resources have contributed to economic vulnerability and inequality and have constrained growth through prohibitive commodity prices, inflation, and weak local currencies.

It reveals that oil- and gas-rich countries were running on economies that are ‘extractive’ in nature, while their other economic sectors remained weak and tended to have elevated levels of corruption, benefiting a few rich, thus perpetuating inequality. This is while delivering few job opportunities, and the sectors employ about 0.3% of the national workforce overall.

The document titled Pipe Dreams, based on evidence from 13 oil- and gas-producing countries, finds that the structure of the oil- and gas-producing economy concentrates on exporting wealth while leaving populations to bear the costs of producing it, ultimately fuelling poverty.

Observing that Africa is in the midst of a “fossil fuel crisis” where global energy prices have surged in the wake of the American-Israeli-Iranian war, exposing countries to expensive petroleum, the analysis by advocacy groups Power Shift Africa and Oil Change International note that producing countries have not been spared the price shocks.

Shanties serving as shops in a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region, where poverty remains high. A new report discloses that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid or late 2030s because contracts allocate most of the early revenues to foreign companies. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

This is because while many of them exported crude, they later imported costlier refined products refined abroad, including petrol and diesel. This happens as hundreds of millions of people across the continent still lack access to electricity and clean cooking energy.

“In some cases, such as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique, gas is extracted and exported to serve external markets, while domestic energy needs go unmet,” the analysis explains.

This happens against a backdrop of millions living in extreme poverty, Nigeria and Angola being two such countries where the report acknowledges that an estimated 40% of the population survive on less than USD 3 per day, decades of extracting oil notwithstanding.

“In fact, according to the African Import-Export Bank, Africa’s oil exporters have mostly had lower economic growth and higher inflation than their non-resource-intensive counterparts in recent years,” it explains.

Basing its conclusions on peer-reviewed literature, official data, and independent reports, it asserts that, among others, the fossils sector in Africa is ‘extractive’ in nature, with extraction occurring in ‘enclaves’.

Fishermen at a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region, where poverty remains high. The new Pipe Dreams report reveals that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid or late 2030s because contracts allocate most of the early revenues to foreign companies. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

By breeding an extractive economy where the commodities are mostly exported, the main economic function for producer countries is restricted to generating revenues and export earnings.

This is made worse by the fact that the natural wealth is dominated by multinationals, who often “take a disproportionate share of the revenues either through one-sided contractual terms or through lopsided accounting schemes”.

Citing the example of Mozambique’s Coral South gas project led by Italy’s Eni, which began producing gas in 2023, it discloses that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid- or late-2030s. The reason is that the contract terms usually allocate most of the “early revenues” to foreign companies to the exclusion of governments.

The report faults fossil sectors for having few links to other sectors in an economy, noting that related sectors, including services and supplies, are “generally imported, while the products and the profits are mostly exported”.

Released on 11 May to coincide with the Africa Forward 2026 summit sponsored by France and bringing together more than 40 African presidents and heads of government in Nairobi, Kenya, it asserts the fossil wealth was creating minimal employment opportunities, even when it constituted a large share of gross domestic product (GDP).

“The enclave effect is especially strong with floating offshore facilities, as companies can tow these facilities into place and load oil and gas onto tankers without ever setting foot in a country”,

For example, in Nigeria and Congo Brazzaville, the oil industry employs only 0.01% of the countries’ workforce and 0.3% in Angola, the document reveals.

Even worse, the extractive economy tended to harm other economic sectors, worsening poverty, a good example being the west African country suffering frequent oil spills that negatively impacted agriculture and food security.

Almost all African oil producers have suffered corruption scandals related to their oil and gas revenues, and between 1989 and 1993, senior executives of French company Elf, now part of TotalEnergies, allegedly paid bribes to politicians in Gabon, Angola, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville in a USD350 million scandal.

In other instances, the fossils are exposed and vulnerable to the dynamics of international markets, leaving countries heavily indebted during oil price collapses, a good example being 2014 when oil prices crashed, forcing Angola to cut its budget by 25%, with public employees and suppliers going unpaid for months.

The report makes a strong case for accelerated adoption of renewable energy across Africa as a more just and inclusive alternative, explaining that fossils are not a “viable foundation for equitable economic development”.

What Africa needs now is a green and more resilient energy system and rich countries should support the continent financially and technologically for the transition to happen, said Power Shift African head Mohamed Adow.

“What we need right now is an energy future built around people, not exports, because it is obvious that we cannot drill ourselves out of poverty,” he said.

It was a shame that as many as 600 million people had no access to electricity and around 900 million lacked clean cooking energy despite the abundance of renewable resources such as solar all over Africa, he said.

“It is also sad that African countries are locked up in fossil dependency while big countries like China are exporting technologies. Our presidents see oil and gas as shortcuts to wealth. We must adopt development that genuinely serves the people,” he told a media briefing on the report in Nairobi.

“Real prosperity” for Africa, he noted, will come from investing in renewables while ending the tradition of using the limited forex available to “import problems”, in the form of finished petroleum products.

For this reason, international facilities such as climate finance must be made to work and help prove that development and climate action can go together. “It is our duty to help challenge the notion that there is no development without fossils,” he added.

The continent must therefore adopt a development model that serves its people, rather than one that benefits external actors, including for key services such as finance and insurance, all of which take place overseas.

Extracting and shipping resources out of Africa amounted to shipping out value, including jobs, according to Amos Wemanya, Power Shift Africa’s Senior Advisor, Renewable Energy and Just Transition.

The notion that renewables cannot power development across the continent has been debunked, and what is needed is continued scaling up of tested and proven renewable models of development.

“The oil and gas era has failed our continent and the energy revolution is happening on our rooftops, not in the oilfields,” he stated in reference to growing uptake of solar for powering homes and institutions across Africa.

Currently the global financial system has left many countries in distress, with nearly 57% of the African population, or about 751 million people, living in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health and education, according to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

This has resulted in calls for debt restructuring and a review of credit ratings. Wemanya added, “Building resilience in African economies needs a fair international financial system.”

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Fishermen in the LNG rich Afungi Peninsula in the Palma District of Cabo Delgado Province, northern Mozambique. The area is the site of major LNG projects, including the Mozambique LNG project. Credit: Justica Ambential

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Aug 19 2025 (IPS)

Environmental campaign groups are confident that a suit filed in the United States, seeking to stop the country’s Export-Import Bank (EXIM) from the ‘unlawful’ lending of nearly USD 5 billion to the controversial Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, will succeed.

The groups, including Friends of the Earth U.S. and Justiça Ambiental/Friends of the Earth Mozambique, with representation from EarthRights International, filed a lawsuit and believe the financial transaction in March in a deal with the project owners, TotalEnergies, was rushed through to avoid going through requisite requirements.

It alleges that EXIM rushed through approval without conducting required “environmental reviews, economic assessments, and the required input by the public and US Congress.

“EXIM failed to follow its own Charter and federal law, setting a dangerous precedent for future decisions,” they said in papers filed on 14 July.

They allege that in February, President Donald Trump ‘illegally’ constituted EXIM’s acting Board of Directors without the US Senate’s consent, and weeks later, in March, EXIM’s improperly constituted “acting” board of directors announced final approval of the massive USD 4.7 billion loan.

The bank, they charged, entered the transaction despite the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Mozambique and the fact that the project operator, TotalEnergies, declared force majeure more than four years ago after a violent uprising.

The French oil giant has been unable to resume operations since.

“EXIM’s Board charged ahead with subsidizing the project, without considering the conflict and the harms the project will inflict on the environment and local communities, and despite multiple nations’ open investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations at the project site,” they added.

An EXIM spokesperson would not comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.

“The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is aware of recent reports, letters, and inquiries regarding ongoing legal proceedings. As a matter of longstanding policy, EXIM does not comment on pending litigation,” the spokesperson said in an email. “EXIM remains committed to its mission of supporting American jobs by facilitating the export of U.S. goods and services. The Bank continues to operate in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

According to Hallie Templeton, Legal Director of Friends of the Earth, EXIM is bound by a number of different federal laws that govern its actions and financing, including the Export-Import Bank Act, which is its charter.

“The US Congress placed a number of important limitations and procedural protections on EXIM’s activities, given the sensitive foreign policy, economic, and human rights issues that lending to foreign corporations for foreign projects can entail,” he explained.

“Among other things, this includes numerous notice and comment procedures, particular economic considerations to ensure EXIM isn’t harming the US economy, limitations on over-subsidization, the requirement that a quorum of Senate-confirmed members of the Board approve major transactions, and consideration of environmental and social impacts,” he told IPS News.

At the direction of Congress, EXIM also has put in place a number of important policies and procedures that govern the projects it finances and the conditions on which it does so. These include compliance with a number of important environmental and social standards and other safeguards.

“The acting board lacked legal authority to approve this loan. EXIM also failed to conduct mandated procedures and analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and overall acted contrary to multiple provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements on process and sound decision-making in the federal government,” Templeton explained.

Exim’s Act is clear as to how members of the Board are to be appointed. Those procedures weren’t followed in appointing the acting board, he said, adding that it was not clear whether President Trump’s intention for the appointments was so as to approve the loan.

“We cannot speak to the intent behind the way the President proceeded or the individuals he selected, but it was unlawful to bypass the Senate and appoint ‘acting’ members to the Board,” he noted.

He observed, “Likewise, rushing through the loan without federally mandated notice and comment or complying with the other legal requirements for final approval of a loan of this size was unlawful. EXIM should have taken these steps in any scenario.”

The financier’s “disregard of the law,” he said, is worsened by the ongoing conflict, allegations of grave human rights violations, and the numerous pending investigations, some of which specifically concern forces providing security to the project and the role of the project operator itself.

Friends of the Earth-US has the utmost confidence in the case’s success, especially given that EXIM has “violated multiple federal laws, with the board acting contrary to the ‘plain text’ of its Charter and other federal laws, ‘acting as if they are above the law.’”

“We are confident that they will be held accountable,” he added.

Through the US’s Freedom of Information Acts, it has been revealed that EXIM ignored the risks of Mozambique LNG when they approved the project in 2019/2020, and in 2025, they have not only ignored the risks but have also failed to follow the proper process, Kate DeAngelis, Economic Policy Deputy Director for Friends of the Earth US told IPS News.

Exim bank, she complained, did not want to provide the Congress or the public the time to comment because they know that this is a bad deal for American taxpayers.

“There are legal procedures and processes in place to ensure the U.S. Export-Import Bank does not waste taxpayer dollars on risky projects plagued by violent insurgencies.”

“Yet Exim—like the rest of the Trump administration—believes that it can operate outside the law. We will not stand by while it cuts health care and disaster aid so that it can give handouts to fossil fuel companies,” the official added.

“Exim’s Board’s illegal decision to subsidize this project, without even considering the risks to local people, let alone the serious allegations that project security committed a massacre at the project site, is beyond reckless. EXIM needs to do its job and actually consider the harms this project will inflict on local people,” said Richard Herz of EarthRights International

An Islamist insurgency in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique since 2017 has led to thousands of deaths and displacement of the civilian population in one of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa in the recent past.

While the Jihadist violence has diminished after intervention by regional forces, an attack was reported in the Meluco district of the gas region last March, indicating a province that is far from safe.

TotalEnergies suspended operations in the Mozambique LNG project in April 2021 due to the insecurity, leading to the withdrawal of personnel and a halt to construction, a decision directly linked to the escalating attacks by the militants in the province.

Last December, climate and environmental activists from Japan criticized the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) for financing the LNG project to the tune of USD 3 billion in a loan signed in July 2024.

The groups, in a report, revealed that the bank supports the Mozambique LNG project directly with a USD 3 billion loan and through a loan of USD 536 million to Mitsui, a Japanese corporate group that is involved in the development.

“The Mozambique LNG Project is linked to violent conflict, has resulted in social injustices among Mozambican citizens, and is a potential source of massive carbon emissions,” the report noted.

It concluded that if it proceeded, despite becoming the biggest gas project in Africa, it would deliver low revenues to its host country and place the country at risk of liability if it failed.

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Health workers getting ready for duty at an mpox treatment center in Lwiro in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, a hotspot for the pandemic that CD Africa handled in 2024. Credit: WHO

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Apr 24 2025 (IPS)

The majority of African countries are yet to commit 15 percent of their GDP to funding the health sector, despite the growing disease burden weighing down the continent and two decades after the coming into force of the Abuja declaration on health sector funding.

Only a few countries, including Rwanda, Botswana, and Cabo Verde, have consistently met the 15 percent target, with some countries allocating less than 10 percent of their budget to the crucial sector.

Under the Abuja Declaration of 2001, African Union (AU) member states made a commitment to end the continent’s health financing crisis, pledging to allocate at least 15 percent of national budgets to the sector. However, more than two decades later, only three countries—Rwanda, Botswana, and Cabo Verde—have consistently met or exceeded this target (WHO, 2023). In contrast, over 30 AU member states remain well below the 10 percent benchmark, with some allocating as little as 5–7 percent of their national budgets to health.

Countries including Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic are allocating as little as 5–7 percent to the sector, thanks to a myriad of political and economic challenges, including a high debt burden and narrow tax base, according to Director General of Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), Dr. Jean Kaseya.

Competing demands for security and infrastructure financing and limited coordination between ministries of health and finance, plus the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic “hit national budgets hard,” worsened by global economic instability, haven’t helped matters, he said, while commenting on the latest annual report of the continental health body and the 2025 concept paper on Africa’s Health Financing in a New Era, both released in April.

Wivine M’puranyi, a 30-year-old mother of six from the village of Karanda in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu, reflects on the distressing days when her two daughters were diagnosed with mpox, one of the pandemics that hit Africa in 2024. Credit: WHO

“It also exposes just how costly underinvesting in health can be. The real story here is political will, where leaders prioritize health, and budgets follow,” he noted.

The report finds that only 16-29 percent of African countries currently have updated versions of the National Health Development Plan (NHDP) supported by a National Health Financing Plan (NHFP), the two documents being critical in driving internal resource mobilization.

“Updating National Health Development Plans (NHDPs) and National Health Financing Plans (NHFPs) is not just a matter of paperwork—it’s a heavy lift. Countries need robust data, skilled teams, funding, and strong inter-ministerial coordination,” he said.

Low funding has a consequence: it has led to many health departments being understaffed and overstretched, partly because some governments ‘deprioritize’ updating the two documents because they fear the plans won’t be implemented or be funded. “But without current, credible plans, it’s nearly impossible to make a case for more domestic or external investment. These documents are not bureaucratic checkboxes—they’re investment blueprints,” the DG told IPS.

He noted that countries that have updated and actively used their NHDPs and NHFPs have seen tangible benefits, one such country being Burkina Faso, where an updated NHFP had helped streamline funding and implementation for free healthcare policy.

In Senegal, incorporating macroeconomic forecasting into the NHFP improved budget predictability and donor alignment. “These tools are powerful when they are costly, realistic, and regularly monitored. But let’s be clear; plans must be funded and used—not just filed away—to make a real difference,” Kaseya added.

According to the documents, Africa continues to carry a disproportionate share of the global disease burden—25 percent—but with only 3 percent of the global health workforce, resulting in a “dangerously overstretched workforce,” according to the documents. Should this shortage be prioritized over all other health needs and deficiencies, or what should be addressed first?

The shortage of health workers remains a fundamental challenge, with Africa carrying 25 percent of the global disease burden but a disproportionate 3 percent of the global health workforce—a challenge that cannot be addressed “in isolation.”

Likobiso Posholi, 35, from Ha Sechele village in Mohale’s Hoek in Lesotho, recovering from a recent cesarean section. Many countries in Africa are yet to commit 15 percent of the national budgets so that women like Posholi can access affordable maternity services. Credit: WHO

However, recruiting en masse without sustainable financing or strategic deployment can strain the system, and in some countries, trained professionals remain unemployed due to fiscal constraints or wage bill ceilings. “Kenya, for example, is piloting co-financing mechanisms between national and local governments to overcome this. The key is to tackle workforce gaps through integrated, context-specific reforms that link financing, recruitment, and health system needs,” Kaseya said.

The Africa CDC has drafted a three-pronged strategy and placed it at the forefront of a health financing revolution that could potentially represent a paradigm shift from dependency to self-determination. Some aspects of the strategy can be implemented immediately without being subjected to a lot of bureaucracy in view of the emergency brought about by cuts in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), he added.

Reductions in ODA went down by 70 percent between 2021 and 2025, exposing health systems to deep-rooted structural vulnerabilities and placing immense pressure on Africa’s already fragile health systems, with overseas financing being seen as the backbone of critical health programmes.

These include pandemic preparedness, maternal and child health services, and disease control initiatives, all of which are at risk, threatening Sustainable Development Goal 3 and Universal Health Coverage.

“Some components of our strategy can be rapidly deployed. Health taxes on products like tobacco, sugar, and alcohol are politically sensitive but technically straightforward and yield dual benefits, generating revenue and promoting healthier populations. Strengthening health financing units within ministries is a high-impact, low-cost intervention that can dramatically improve budget execution and efficiency,” Kaseya suggested.

Likewise, deploying digital tools—such as real-time dashboards to track financing flows—can happen quickly and with limited bureaucracy. Countries like Benin, South Africa, and Ethiopia are already implementing such reforms with measurable progress.

He pitched that digitization of the health sector is no longer a luxury, as it is foundational to the much-needed resilient, transparent, and efficient health systems.

On the other hand, the platforms improve decision-making, enable better resource tracking, and enhance service delivery. However, fragmentation of digital solutions remains a challenge, with many platforms developed in ‘silos,’ often “donor-driven and poorly integrated,” he commented.

He singled out Ghana, which offered a strong example of progress, having developed a national platform that integrates health and financing data. “The true value of digitization is realized when countries lead the process, ensure interoperability, and embed digital solutions into broader system reforms,” Kaseya said.

On the positive side, CDC Africa for the first time led an emergency response, putting in place a Joint Continental Incidence Management Support Team (IMST) co-led with the World Health Organization and bringing together over 28 partners to collaborate on the Mpox response. This work was done under the “One team with a One unified plan, One budget, and One monitoring framework.”

“This is a historic first that marked a significant milestone in Africa’s leadership of public health emergencies of continental significance,” the report observed.

It further supported national responses to “multiple major public health emergencies,” including the mpox outbreak in 20 AU member states and the Marburg virus disease outbreak in Rwanda. This was in declaring the former a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS) on August 13, 2024, in consultation with the affected countries and relevant stakeholders.

Also on the positive side, the continental health body was advancing a comprehensive three-pillar strategy centered on domestic resource mobilization, innovative financing, and blended finance.

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A village in the Afungi Peninsula in Palma District, Cabo Delgado Province. Credit: Justiça Ambiental

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Dec 22 2024 (IPS)

Climate and environmental activists from Japan have criticized the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) for financing the controversial Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project to the tune of USD 3 billion in a loan signed in July.

The project has been associated with the displacement of thousands of people and is in violation of Japan’s G7 commitment to end direct public support for overseas fossil fuel projects.

The bank’s action is also projected to have far-reaching effects on climate and the environment, further negatively impacting the livelihoods of communities in the restive Cabo Delgado province in the north of the county, a report says.

Conflict in the region has been linked to insurgency and human rights abuses by the country’s security forces.

In the report “Faces of Impact: How JBIC and Japan’s LNG Financing Harm Communities and the Planet” by Friends of Earth (FOE), Japan activists find that in Mozambique, at least 550 families were displaced for the Rovuma LNG project, exposing them to risk as it is situated in a conflict-torn region and has been linked to human rights abuses of civilians.

The project is further backed by the Japanese bank through a loan of U$536 million to Mitsui, a Japanese corporate group, also one of the owners of the project, and which describes the project as “one of the largest natural gas reserves discovered anywhere in the world in recent years.”

The money will finance the development and production of LNG in a region where thousands of civilians have been displaced by both violence and the gas development activities since 2012, some without compensation for their land.

The LNG project intends to extract 65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which will be done offshore in the Rovuma Basin and piped to an onshore LNG processing plant on the Afungi Peninsula.

“The project began its onshore construction activities in 2019 but was suspended in 2021 as a result of violent conflict. It has not officially resumed, but some of its activities have been restarted since 2023,” the report explains. The insurgency remains active, and human rights infringements resulting from the project activities remain unresolved, it further cautions.

“The Mozambique LNG project is linked to violent conflict, has resulted in social injustices on Mozambican citizens, and is a potential source of massive carbon emissions. It has already cost the country productive lands, local economies, and valuable natural areas,” it warns.

Should the project proceed as planned and despite becoming the biggest gas project in Africa, it will deliver low revenues to the host country and place the country at risk of liability if it fails, the report opines.

Owned by a consortium of seven companies, including the Mozambique state company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH). All except ENH control their shares through offshore companies, with TotalEnergies being the majority owner and operator.

It finds that there is a “pattern of harm and destruction” in JBIC-financed gas projects, and communities have conveyed to the bank that it is violating its own “Guidelines for Confirmation of Environmental and Social Considerations.”

According to Kete Fumo of the advocacy group Justiça Ambiental and Friends of Earth Mozambique, the project is indirectly contributing to the insurgency that has plagued the region for years.

“People in at least 17 districts are exposed to terrorist attacks. Some families in Palma district, for example, have been displaced but have not been offered any compensation yet. They had lots of extensive land, but not anymore; they have lost their only source of sustenance,” she said during a webinar to launch the report hosted by FOE Japan.

By 2018, when the census of affected communities in Palma was updated, some 616 families were identified, and another 1,847 families were found to be “economically affected” by the loss of their farmland handed over to the project, added Fumo.

“The environmental issues surrounding the project are already very visible, with accentuated erosion, increased weather events, and the fact that it is considered one of the six carbon bombs in the world, with Mozambique being one of the African countries most vulnerable to climate change,” she told IPS in an interview.

Failure to comply with compensation agreements entered between the affected and TotalEnergies posed a big problem for communities that, due to the lack of land for cultivation, now produce much less food than they did before the project arrived.

This has left them exposed to food insecurity, with fishing communities lacking access to fishing areas contributing to hunger in the villages.

“The insecurity scenario in Palma also makes accessibility to the district deficient, which makes the price of basic necessities more expensive in a community where families’ sources of income have been cut off by the project. People need to reinvent themselves to be able to support their families, but this is a scenario where not everyone has the capacity or conditions to do so,” the activist added.

She called for the abandonment of the project, saying that “not implementing the project and leaving people living in their homes with their livelihoods, culture, and traditions has been the call made by Justica Ambiental since the beginning of this process.”

“In the history of Mozambique and in our experience with mega projects, no resettlement has had positive results. The call continues to be that this project should not be implemented, since even before a drop of gas had been exploited, the impacts were already negatively affecting the communities,” Fumo appealed.

In one of the affected villages of Macala, 50 kilometres off the Indian Ocean coastline, residents claimed they had lost not less than 7,000 hectares of land alienated for LNG exploration and development, with no compensation so far.

One of the victims, Omar Amise, said, “We have received no compensation so far, and our lands have been destroyed by new infrastructure, including roads. Our children are starving because our lands have been taken by roads.”

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), by January 2024, over 582,000 were still displaced in Cabo Delgado province, due to recurring attacks on civilians and governmental forces by “Non-State Armed Groups” since 2017. The numbers grew to over one million at the height of the conflict in 2021 and 2022, adds the UN agency.

From the end of December 2023, over 8,000 people have also been newly displaced as a result of attacks by insurgents in the province’s Macomia, Mecufi, Metuge, Mocímboa da Praia, Muidumbe, and Quissanga districts, adds the UNHCR.

An article published in September 2024 by the magazine Politico alleged that a Mozambican army unit operating near the Mozambique LNG project site carried out a series of atrocities, including rape, torture, and the murder or disappearance of at least 97 people.

It claimed that TotalEnergies was aware of the atrocities by the army in the wider area, while it paid a Joint Task Force made up of army soldiers, commandos, and paramilitary police for its LNG site protection.

Back to the FOE report, it claims that since 2016, JBIC has provided a staggering UD18.6 billion to fossil gas expansion—four times more than Japan’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund.

The bank is also blamed for supporting similar fossils energy projects amounting to USD18.5 billion in the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Australia, Vietnam, and the United States

Our enquiries on the claims made by FOE were answered by either the French Energy multinational or JBIC.

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Joseph Loree, who lives in the oil-rich Lokichar area of Turkana in northern Kenya, keeps a few goats due to frequent droughts. Governments in the Global South are spending billions of dollars subsidising industries harming the climate, such as the one in Lokichar. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Sep 18 2024 (IPS)

A report examining corporate capture of public finance is accusing industries fueling the climate crisis, including fossil fuel ones, of draining public funds in the Global South, singling them out for squeezing out of governments USD 700 billion in public subsidies each year.

The report, How theFinance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the Global South, released on 17 September says that the climate-destructive sectors are benefiting from money that could go to paying for schooling for all Sub-Saharan African children 3.5 times over, even as Global South renewable energy projects remain starved of cash, receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuels sector.

While urging governments in the developing world to allocate more of their limited resources in ways that “truly serve their people’s needs” through climate solutions for food and energy, the analysis of financial flows by ActionAid reveals that the fossil fuel sector in the region received a staggering annual average of USD 438.6 billion a year in subsidies, between 2016 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2023.

The industrial agriculture sector alone benefited from the government subsidies equivalent to a whopping USD 238 billion a year on average between 2016 and 2021, even as it continued to contribute to the worsening of nature, it  reveals.

It further reveals that the industries causing the climate crisis are also draining the lion’s share of public funds, including in “climate-hit countries,” in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, even as initiatives providing climate solutions remain severely underfunded.

The report points to corporate capture of public finance, combined with a lack of international climate finance, as some of the factors holding back climate action in some of the “countries and communities that need it most”.

While also finding that climate finance grants from the Global North for climate-hit countries are still grossly insufficient to support climate action and the necessary transitions in the southern hemisphere, it gives examples of several countries in Africa where policies in place were in conflict with actual reality actions.

These include the fossil fuel-rich African countries of South Africa and Nigeria, which have been found to be heavily subsidizing the discredited sector.

The countries, including Bangladesh in South Asia, Action Aid says were providing fuel subsidies up to between 22 and 33 times the “per capita level of annual public investment in renewable energy” flow, for example.

As a result, in the hemisphere, renewable energy initiatives are receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossils sector, while climate finance grants amount to just a 20th of the Global South’s public finance going to fossils and industrial agriculture.

“While trillions of dollars in climate finance from the Global North to the Global South are necessary to adequately address the climate and development crises, Global South governments must allocate their limited resources in ways that truly serve their people’s needs through climate solutions for food and energy,” it says.

“Meanwhile, the failure of Global North countries to provide adequate climate finance for climate transitions means that Global South countries are locked into harmful development pathways that destroy ecosystems, grab lands and compound the injustice of climate change,” it adds.

Citing the example of Southern Africa’s Zambia, it says that the industrial agriculture sector in the country gobbled up 80 percent of the national agriculture budget in 2023, through subsidies for “climate-harming synthetic fertilizer’s and commercial seeds.”

“Meanwhile, only 6 percent of the Agriculture Ministry’s Agricultural Development and Productivity Programme was spent on supporting farmers to adopt agroecological, nature-friendly farming approaches, that naturally strengthen soil fertility and reduce dependency on agrochemical inputs,” it explains the contradiction.

Zambia’s neighbor Zimbabwe has made public policy statements in support of a shift towards agroecology, a shift evidenced by 34 percent of the country’s agriculture budget this year supporting farmers to adopt practices to move from climate-destructive agrochemicals.

Despite that, Zimbabwe is still using approximately 50 percent of its entire national agriculture budget towards subsidizing industrial agribusiness inputs such as fertilizers and hybrid seeds,” signaling the industry’s continued control over the sector and budget, as well as the potential to free up more public finances for public good’.

Two west African countries, the Gambia and Senegal, and South America’s Brazil were equally  found to be engaging in contradictory practices, making public investments in renewable energy, on a scale that is almost comparable to the per capita public subsidy provision for fossil fuels.

In the Gambia, the scale of public investment in renewable energy is more than four-fifths that of public finance provided to fossil fuels; while in Brazil and Senegal, the scale of renewables investment was found to be two-thirds that of fossil fuel subsidies.

“Kenya’s ambition to be a global leader in renewable energy is borne out by the finding that per capita investment in renewables in the country is outspending public subsidy provision to fossil fuels. However, recent protests in Kenya against the government’s reduction of fossil fuel subsidies underline the importance of feminist Just Transition principles,” the investigation found.

“Shifts in public financing must be carefully sequenced to protect the rights of people—especially women—living in poverty. Any reductions in fossil fuel subsidies should target the wealthy corporations first. Only once accessible and democratic alternatives and comprehensive social protections are available to people on low incomes, should progressive policies be shifted,” the analysis concluded.

The report further found that governments in the North continue to disproportionately fuel the climate crisis, and even though the developed world has just a quarter of the world’s population, their annual average fossil fuel subsidies amounted to USD 239.7 billion.

Action Aid laments that renewable energy public investment in the Global South comes to an annual average of USD 10.3 billion each year, noting that even worse, renewable energy investment in the South has been on a downward trend, more than halving from USD 15 billion in 2016 to USD 7 billion in 2021.

It calls on governments to speed up the transition to green, resilient, democratic and people-led climate solutions for food and energy, such as renewable energy and agroecology. “For Global South countries already experiencing the devastating consequences of climate change, the need for global transition is all the more urgent”.

According to Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International, the report further helps expose wealthy corporations’ ‘parasitic’ behavior.

“They are draining the life out of the Global South by siphoning public funds and fueling the climate crisis. Sadly, the promises of climate finance by the Global North are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades. It is time for this circus to end; we need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis,” he said.

The report also debunks the “false narrative” that fossil fuel and industrial agriculture expansion in the Global South is necessary to address food insecurity and energy poverty and to provide livelihoods and public revenue, said Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International and one of the report’s authors.

“It seems that money is the root of all climate upheaval. Climate-destructive industries are bleeding the Global South of the public funds they should be using to deal with the climate crisis. “The lack of public and climate finance for solutions means that in climate-vulnerable countries, renewable energy is receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuel sector,” she added.

The time had come for the poor to stand up to industries that are draining their finances and wrecking the climate.

Public resources, the report recommends, should be directed toward supporting just transition away from climate-destructive fossil fuels and industrial agriculture and in favor of “people-led climate solutions that safeguard people’s rights to food, energy and livelihoods.”

It should also go to scaling up decentralized renewable energy systems to provide energy access, and gender-responsive agricultural extension services that offer training in agro-ecology and adaptation.

It appeals to wealthy countries to provide “trillions of dollars in grant-based climate finance each year to Global South countries on the front lines of the climate crisis,” including by agreeing to an ambitious new climate finance goal at COP29.

Further, it calls for regulation of the banking and finance sectors to end destructive financing, including setting minimum standards for human rights, social and environmental frameworks, and transformation of the international financial institutions that are pushing climate-vulnerable countries into “spiraling debt.”

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Scientists screen the Indian wheat genetic resources collection in Jaipur, India.

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Aug 26 2024 (IPS)

Groundbreaking research indicates that the wild relatives of wheat could be turned into an all-time food security crop capable of cushioning vulnerable populations from starvation and hunger, thanks to its ability to withstand both climatic stress and diseases. Wheat is a staple for over 1.5 billion people in the Global South.

The review looked at two different studies and found that using the ancient genetic diversity of wild relatives of wheat, which provides 20 percent of the world’s calories and protein, could lead to weather- and disease-resistant varieties of the crop. This could ensure food security around the world.

The study led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre reveals that “long overlooked” wild wheat relatives have the potential to revolutionise wheat breeding, with new varieties capable of withstanding climate change and associated threats, including heat waves, droughts, flooding, and emerging and current pests and diseases.

Wild wheat relatives, which have endured environmental stresses for millions of years, possess genetic traits that modern varieties lack—traits that, when integrated into conventional varieties, could make wheat farming more possible in ever more hostile climates, the study published today (August 26, 2024) explains.

By farming the more resilient wheat, productivity could increase by an estimated USD 11 billion worth of extra grain every year, says the authors in the review paper titled ‘Wheat genetic resources have avoided disease pandemics, improved food security, and reduced environmental footprints: A review of historical impacts and future opportunities’ published by the journal Wiley Global Change Biology.

The review suggests that the use of plant genetic resources (PGR) helps against various diseases like wheat rust and defends against diseases that jump species barriers, like wheat blast. It gives nutrient-dense varieties and polygenic traits that create climate resilience.

The study points to a vast, largely untapped reservoir of nearly 800,000 wheat seed samples stored in 155 gene banks worldwide that include wild varieties and ancient farmer-developed ones that have withstood diverse environmental stresses over millennia. This is despite the fact that only a fraction of this genetic diversity has been utilised in modern crop breeding.

The findings, according to co-author Mathew Reynolds, will have major implications for food security, particularly in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, where the world’s most food-insecure populations live.

“The discoveries are very promising, as Africa has a lot of new environments in terms of potential wheat cultivation,” he told IPS.

Based on the research findings, significant environmental benefits have been realised thanks to various scientific efforts that have successfully integrated wild genes into modern species.

The study acknowledges that the use of PGR in wheat breeding has improved the nutrition and livelihoods of resource-constrained farmers and consumers in the Global South, where wheat is often the cereal of choice in parts of Asia and Africa

“We’re at a critical juncture,” says Reynolds. “Our current breeding strategies have served us well, but they must now address more complex challenges posed by climate change.”

He observes that breeding that helps in maintaining genetic resistance to a range of diseases improves “yield stability” and avoids epidemics of devastating crop diseases that ultimately threaten food security for millions.

“Furthermore, post-Green Revolution genetic yield gains are generally achieved with less (in the Global North) and often no fungicide in the Global South, and without necessarily increasing inputs of fertilizer or irrigation water, with the exception in some high-production environments,” the study contends.

As a result, there has been an increase in grain yield and millions of hectares of “natural ecosystems” have been saved from cultivation for grain production. These include millions of hectares of forests and other natural ecosystems, Reynolds and colleagues found.

Equally promising is the discovery in some experimental wheat lines incorporating wild traits that show up to 20 percent more growth under heat and drought conditions when compared to current varieties, and the development of the first crop ever bred to interact with soil microbes that has shown potential in reducing production of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. This enables the plants to use nitrogen more efficiently.

“The use of PGR wild relatives, landraces, and isolated breeding gene pools has had substantial impacts on wheat breeding for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses while increasing nutritional value, end-use quality, and grain yield,” the review further finds.

Without the use of PGR-derived disease resistance, fungicide use to fight fungal diseases, the main threat to the crop, would have easily doubled, massively increasing selection pressure that would come with the need to avoid fungicide resistance, the review finds.

Remarkably, it is estimated that in wheat, a billion litres of fungicide application have been avoided, saving farmers billions that would go into the purchase and application of the chemicals, it adds.

The authors note that as weather becomes more extreme, crop breeding gene pools will need to be further enriched with new adaptive traits coming from PGR to survive the vagaries of climate change.

These ‘definitely’ include stubborn diseases that have plagued wheat farming in the tropics, such as the Ug99, a devastating stem rust fungal disease that, at its worst, wipes out entire crops in Africa and parts of the Middle East, Reynolds said.

Modern crop breeding, it says, has largely focused on a relatively narrow pool of star athletes—elite crop varieties that are already high performers and that have known, predictable genetics.

The genetic diversity of wild wheat relatives, on the other hand, offers complex climate-resilient traits that have been harder to use because they take longer, cost more, and are riskier than the traditional breeding methods used for elite varieties.

“We have the tools to quickly explore genetic diversity that was previously inaccessible to breeders,” explains Benjamin Kilian, co-author of the review and coordinator of the Crop Trust’s Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development (BOLD) project, that supports conservation and use of crop diversity globally.

Among the tools are next-generation gene sequencing, big-data analytics, and remote sensing technologies, including satellite imagery. The latter allows researchers to routinely monitor traits like plant growth rate or disease resistance at unlimited numbers of sites globally.

While the collection and storage of PGR since early in the 20th century have played a key role, especially in breeding of disease-resistant plant varieties, the study concludes that a massive potential remains unexploited.

With wild relative varieties having survived millions of years of climate variance compared with our relatively recent crop species, more systematic screening is recommended to identify new and better sources of needed traits not just for wheat but for other crops as well, the study advises.

It calls for more investments in studying resilient wild varieties of common crops, taking advantage of widely available, proven and non-controversial technologies that present multiple impacts and a substantial return on investment.

“With new technologies emerging all the time to facilitate their use in plant breeding, PGR should be considered the best bet for achieving climate resilience, including its biotic and abiotic components,” the authors said.

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Girls at Dabaso Girls School in Malindi, Kenya, pose with a ball during break time. Universal secondary education could virtually end child marriage and reduce early childbearing by up to three-fourths, according to an African Union and UNESCO report. Credit: Courtesy of Stafford Ondego for the EDT PROJECT

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI & ADDIS ABABA, Jul 4 2024 (IPS)

Investing in teachers and school leaders in Africa is the most important factor in promoting educational opportunities for girls, keeping them in school and ending child marriage, ultimately reducing gender inequality through education.

Having more female teachers in schools and having more of them lead the institutions is even more important for keeping the girls in school beyond the primary level and providing them with role models to motivate them to continue learning.

While low educational attainment for girls and child marriage are profoundly detrimental for the girls, their families, communities, and societies, investments in teachers and school leaders are also key in ending lack of learning, identified as the single biggest cause of school dropout for girls, besides traditional factors including social and cultural ones.

Despite data showing that less than a fifth of teachers at the secondary level for example, are women in many African countries, and the proportion of female school leaders is even lower, the teachers have been proven to improve student learning and girls’ retention beyond primary and lower secondary school.

As a result, better opportunities must be given to women teachers and school leaders in order to bring additional benefits to girls’ education, as women often remain in teaching for a longer time, a report by the United Nations and the African Union says.

The absence of the above has led to high drop-outs, resulting in low educational attainment, a higher prevalence of child marriage, and higher risks of early childbearing for girls across Africa, according to the report, Educating Girls and Ending Child Marriage in Africa: Investment Case and the Role of Teachers and School Leaders.

“Increasing investments in girls’ education yields large economic benefits, apart from being the right thing to do. This requires interventions for adolescent girls, but it should also start with enhancing foundational learning through better teaching and school leadership,” the document tabled at the 1^st Pan-African Conference on Girls and Women’s Education taking place July 2–5 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The lack of foundational learning is a key cause leading to drop-out in primary and lower-secondary schools, it finds, further noting that while teachers and school leaders are key to it, new approaches are also needed for pedagogy and for training teachers and school heads.

“Targeted interventions for adolescent girls are needed, but they often reach only a small share of girls still in school at that age; by contrast, improving foundational learning would benefit a larger share of girls (and boys) and could also make sense from a cost-benefit point of view,” it adds.

Parents in 10 francophone countries who responded to household surveys cited the lack of learning in school—the absence of teaching despite children attending classes—for their children dropping out, accounting for over 40 percent of both girls and boys dropping out of primary school, it further reveals.

The lack of learning, blamed on teacher absence, accounts for more than a third of students dropping out at the lower secondary level, meaning that improving learning could automatically lead to significantly increased educational attainment for girls and boys alike.

“To improve learning, reviews from impact evaluations and analysis of student assessment data suggest that teachers and school leaders are key. Yet new approaches are needed for professional development, including through structured pedagogy and training emphasizing practice. Teachers must also be better educated; household surveys for 10 francophone countries suggest that only one-third of teachers in primary schools have a post-secondary diploma,” the survey carried out in 2023 laments.

It calls for “better opportunities” for female teachers and school principals, noting that this would bring additional benefits as women also tend to remain in teaching for a longer time compared to men.

Better professional standards and competency frameworks are also needed for teachers to make the profession more attractive and gender-sensitive, it finds, revealing that countries have not yet “treated teaching as a career” and lack a clear definition of competencies needed at different levels of the profession.

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, just over two-thirds of girls complete their primary education and four in ten complete lower secondary education explains the study authored by Quentin Wodon, Chata Male, and Adenike Onagoruwa for the African Union’s  International Centre for the Education of Girls and Women in Africa (AU/CIEFFA) and the UN agency for education, culture and science, UNESCO.

Quoting the latest data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, it reveals that while nine in ten girls complete their primary education and over three in four complete their lower secondary education globally, the proportions are much lower in Sub-Saharan Africa, where slightly over two-thirds of the girls—69 percent compared to 73 percent boys—complete their primary education, and four out of ten girls—43 percent compared to 46 percent boys—complete lower secondary education.

Providing girls and women with adequate opportunities for education could have large positive impacts on many development outcomes, including higher earnings and standards of living for families, ending child marriage and early childbearing, reducing fertility, on health and nutrition, and on well-being, among others.

It observes that gains made in earnings are substantial, especially with a secondary education, noting that women with primary education earn more than those with no education, “but women with secondary education earn more than twice as much, but gains with tertiary education are even larger.”

Each additional year of secondary education for a girl could reduce their risk of marrying as a child and having a child before the age of 18.

“Universal secondary education could virtually end child marriage and reduce early childbearing by up to three-fourths. By contrast, primary education in most countries does not lead to large reductions in child marriage and early childbearing,” it declares.

The organizations make a strong case for the importance of secondary education for girls, explaining that universal secondary education would also have health benefits, including increasing women’s knowledge of HIV/AIDS by one-tenth, increasing women’s decision-making for their own healthcare by a fourth, helping reduce under-five mortality by one-third, and potentially lowering under-five stunting in infants by up to 20 percent.

In addition, secondary education while ending child marriage could reduce fertility—the number of children women have over their lifetime nationally by a third on average—slowing population growth and enabling countries to benefit from the “demographic dividend.”

Other benefits include a reduction in “intimate partner” violence, an increase in women’s decision-making in the household by a fifth and the likelihood of registering children at birth by over 25 percent.

To remedy the crisis, there was a need to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession as one way of getting more females heading schools, Wodon, Director of UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA), said during the report’s launch at the conference.

“Virtually all teachers are dissatisfied with their job, meaning that there is a need to improve job satisfaction in the profession besides improving salaries,” he noted.

While retaining girls in school lowered fertility rates by up to a third in some countries, the study’s aim for advocating for more education for girls had nothing to do with the need for lower fertility but was in the interest of empowering girls and women in decision-making.

Empowering girls through education places them in a better position in society in terms of power relations between them and males, observed Lorato Modongo, an AU-CIEFFA official.

“It is a fact that we cannot educate girls without challenging power dynamics in patriarchal settings, where men make decisions for everyone,” she noted.

Overall, the report regrets that gender imbalances in education and beyond, including in occupational choices, result from deep-seated biases and discrimination against women, which percolate into education. It is therefore essential to reduce inequality both in and through education, acknowledging that education has a key role to play in reducing broader gender inequalities in societies.

“While educating girls and ending child marriage is the right thing to do, it is also a smart economic investment.”

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The WHO’s Africa office has published research in 25 peer-reviewed journals in attempt to address the imbalance of research as part of the 2030 SDG agenda, which is to ‘leave no-one behind,’ and a move toward universal health coverage. Credit: WHO

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Apr 29 2024 (IPS)

The World Health Organization’s African regional office and partners published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals in 2023 as part of efforts to address the imbalance in global research and ensure that Africa was better represented in the production of health research academic literature, a new report shows.

The office, through its Universal Health Coverage, Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases (UCN) Cluster, published on a range of health challenges and diseases, including the risk of zoonotic disease in countries ranging from Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana, and Nigeria, investigating infectious and non-infectious diseases, and public health approaches to ease Africa’s disease burden.

This research is critical to the continent, says Africa’s Regional Director, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti.

“The WHO African Region arguably bears one of the greatest burdens of disease globally. This has always been exacerbated by poverty, which, in the decade prior to COVID-19, was on the decline. Now, however, these gains have been reversed, not only by COVID-19 but by a series of severe shocks during the 2020–2022 period,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the Regional Director for Africa,” she told IPS.

“Major threats include climate change, global instability, slowing economic growth, and conflict. This makes it ever more important that we at the WHO Regional Office for Africa focus on the central promise of the 2030 SDG agenda, which is to ‘leave no one behind’, using a health systems strengthening approach to move towards universal health coverage.”

According to the Ending Disease in Africa: Responding to Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases 2023 report released in April, WHO scientists were able to publish their work in reputable journals, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Open, supporting Africa’s efforts to raise her scientific research production, estimated at only 2 percent of the world’s total.

The works also found homes in open access journals, including America’s Public Library of Science (PLOS), where they are accessible for free by the scientific community and the general public.

Besides Africa-based scientific publications such as the Nigerian Journal of Parasitology, highlighting the need to support the role local publications can play in elevating African science and, by extension, helping address imbalances in global research.

“A country’s ability to create, acquire, translate, and apply scientific and technological advancements is a major determinant of its socioeconomic and industrial development. Many of Africa’s current and future health challenges can only be addressed by conducting research on population-based approaches towards effective disease prevention and control, which are then translated into policy and practice,” the report noted in introducing the work.

“Despite Africa’s disproportionate burden of disease, the region produced 0.7 percent of global research in 2000, 1.3 percent in 2014 and an estimated 2 percent more recently. In response, the UCN Cluster and partners published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals in 2023 as part of efforts to address the imbalance in global research, and ensure regional representation in academic literature.”

According to the Ending Disease in Africa: Responding to Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases, WHO scientists were able to publish their work in reputable journals, supporting Africa’s efforts to raise her scientific research production, which is estimated at only 2 percent of the world’s total. Credit: WHO

In Ghana, the WHO team conducted a “community-based cross-sectional study” to investigate occurrences of skin ulcers, whose findings showed the importance of integrating multiple skin diseases on a common research platform in findings published by PLOS One, while in Tanzania, a “spatio-temporal modelling” of routine health facility data to better guide community-based malaria interventions on the mainland was done.

Some of the papers the WHO-Africa says were examples of “operational and implementation research,” conducted to identify and ensure the successful adoption and adaptation of evidence-based interventions in both clinical and public health on the continent.

They include findings from an impact assessment of a school-based preventive chemotherapy programme for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), schistosomiasis, and soil-transmitted helminth control in Angola, where used drugs were found to have little impact in controlling the diseases. These findings were published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

“This highlighted the need for a comprehensive understanding of individual, community, and environmental factors associated with transmission and consideration for a community-wide control programme,” it concluded.

The Springer Nature’s Malaria Journal published the team’s research on treatment-seeking behavior among parents of children with malaria-related fever in Malawi. It captured  the need for targeted health interventions among communities in low socioeconomic settings and those living far from health facilities.

In Nigeria, an article based on experiences in Nigeria using a novel schistosomiasis community data analysis tool, developed by the UCN Cluster, emphasized the usefulness of the tool for strategic planning purposes, allowing the tool to be deployed around Africa for the management of the disease. Blood flukes (trematode worms) from the genus Schistosoma are the primary cause of the acute and chronic parasitic disease schistosomiasis.

Research on health policy and systems, the aim being to better understand how “collective health goals” are reached. This was done through a range of disciplines, including economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, and public health.

One such journal article was published by  Elsevier’s Social Sciences and Humanities Open, looking at five decades of infectious disease outbreaks on the continent and recommending  that concerted public health action may help reduce outbreaks, as well as drawing important conclusions for disease preparedness and prevention activities.

Quite critically, the experts undertook “knowledge translation” work, the application of knowledge by various actors to deliver the benefits of global and local innovations in strengthening health systems and improving health.

“In the African context, knowledge translation generally includes an aspect of localization, considering local perspectives and approaches and the effects of the social, cultural, political, environmental, and health system context on an intervention’s impact,” the experts explain.

In 2023, the UCN Cluster translated and localized several global knowledge products for use in Africa, including one on oral diseases, a malady suffered by about 44 percent of the population in the region.

Africa, the document observes, has experienced the “steepest rise globally in oral diseases over the last three decades,”  even as spending on treatment costs remains “extremely low,” thus the need to share the newest information on their management.

Away from scientific research, the report reveals that Mauritius became the first country in Africa to fully implement WHO’s package of tobacco control measures, while at the same time WHO-Africa launched an initiative to support better access to breast and cervical cancer detection, treatment, and care services in Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

Equally important, WHO Africa, in collaboration with Nigerian authorities, introduced the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into routine immunization schedules, targeting more than 7 million girls, the largest number in a single round of HPV vaccination in Africa.

Success stories emerged in Algeria, which successfully ‘interrupted’ the transmission of schistosomiasis after reporting zero indigenous cases for the past three years, in January 2024, and in Cape Verde, which became the third country to be certified as malaria-free.

This article is brought to you by IPS Noram, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

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Children at a dried community borehole in Turkana, Kenya. Climate change, a subject of discussion at UNEA-6, has been blamed for droughts in the region. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

The  Sixth United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-6)  ended with delegates calling for firm actions to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss, and pollution.

The assembly also reaffirmed its call for “environmental multilateralism” in seeking solutions to the threats, noting that time was running out fast before the threats could besiege the planet and make life a bigger nightmare, especially for the underprivileged.

The concept has been part of the main messages amplified by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen and part of its clarion call as well.

Also topping their calls is the plea for countries to remain on course in implementing the principles of the Paris Agreement, with many noting that the pact provided an ambitious roadmap to boldly ‘tame the climate crisis” by cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

While delegates at the five-day assembly at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, which ended on Friday, March 1, 2024, observed with satisfaction that efforts at curbing plastic pollution could soon become a reality, some expressed concern that a Ministerial Declaration issued at the end of the event was not explicit on the urgency of actions needed to end the plastic crisis, nor did it mention the legally binding agreement on ending plastic pollution.

The agreement is currently under negotiation, and parties meet in Montreal, Canada, in April, where a deal could be reached.

“We emphasize the importance of advancing integrated, science-based approaches, informed by the best available science and the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples as well as local communities, in order to strengthen resilience to current, emerging, and future challenges and promote global solidarity.”

United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen. Credit: UNEP

“We recall General Assembly resolution 76/300 of July 28, 2022, on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,” the five-page ministerial statement read.

The 21-point document issued at the closing of the event was also emphatic on the need for effective, inclusive, and sustainable multilateral actions to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, reaffirming “all the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, as well as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals.”

The ministers of environment from 182 member states acknowledged the threats posed to sustainable development by global environmental challenges and crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, as well as desertification, land and soil degradation, drought, and deforestation.

The gathering passed a record 15 resolutions and two decisions, as proposed by various delegations, with some being hailed as very critical, while others were viewed as crucial and timely.

Raising the most curiosity is a resolution by Ukraine, calling for “environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflicts,” which was endorsed despite being introduced on Thursday. The country is involved in armed conflict with Russia, and has been exposed to risks, including nuclear accidents, by the fighting.

On its part, Saudi Arabia sponsored one calling for “strengthening international efforts to combat desertification and land degradation, restore degraded land, promote land conservation and sustainable land management, contribute to land degradation neutrality and enhance drought resilience.”

Others included resolutions on considering environmental aspects of minerals and metals, the call for circularity of a resilient and low-carbon sugar cane agro-industry, promoting sustainable lifestyles, an appeal for action on sound management of chemicals and waste, action on highly hazardous pesticides fronted by Ethiopia, and a call for action on combating sand and dust storms by Iran.

“I am proud to say this was a successful Assembly, where we advanced on our core mandate: the legitimate human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, everywhere,” said Leila Benali, UNEA-6 President and the Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development of Morocco. “As governments, we need to push for more partnerships with stakeholders to implement these mandates. We need to continue to partner with civil society, continue to guide and empower our creative youth, and also with the private sector and philanthropies,” the minister added.

UNEA-6 elected Abdullah Bin Ali Amri as president to preside over UNEA-7. Credit: UNEA

Decisions arrived at the assembly are “most often” followed by actions and UNEP and member states will initiate actions based on the resolutions, assured Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director.

At the same time, the assembly was told that more than a third of the world’s population is drowning in garbage, with over 2.7 billion people not having their waste collected, largely in the developing regions of the world.

Out of the number, 2 billion people are living in rural areas, while 700,000 of them are in urban areas, a new United Nations report launched at the assembly revealed.

The report, Turning rubbish into a resource: Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 (GWMO 2024)  revealed that an estimated 540 million metric tons of municipal solid waste, an equivalent of 27% of the global total waste, was not being collected, with only 36% and 37% of the refuse generated in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia regions, respectively, being collected.

This was in sharp contrast to the situation in developed and upper-middle-income countries, where almost all of the waste was collected, at admirable rates of between 83% for the Caribbean, and 99% for North America. This is against a global average waste collection rate of 75%, the report, further revealed.

It predicts that the waste generated is set to grow in volume from 2.3 billion metric tons in 2023, to 3.8 billion metric tons by 2050, worsening the burden of managing it.

“In 2020, the global direct cost of waste management was estimated at USD 252 billion. When factoring in the hidden costs of pollution, poor health, and climate change from poor waste disposal practices, the cost rises to USD 361  billion,” it notes.

“Without urgent action on waste management, by 2050, this global annual cost could almost double to a staggering USD 640.3 billion,” it adds.

So far, no country in the world, including the developed ones, has managed to ‘decouple’ development from waste generation, with the two going hand-in-hand as they always have, noted lead author Zoë Lenkiewicz.

“We recommend that the world needs to integrate the principles of just transition and circularity to better manage waste. Note with concern that many countries need to build their national expertise in waste management,” she said.

At the same time, the global production and consumption of material resources have grown more than three times over the last 50 years, growing at an average of more than 2.3 percent a year, despite the increase being the main driver of the triple planetary crisis.

The consumption and use of the resources are largely driven by demand in upper-income countries, with the extraction and processing of material resources including fossil fuels, minerals, non-metallic minerals, and biomass accounting for over 55 percent of GHC emissions, and 40  percent of particulate matter health poisoning in the environment.

Their extraction and processing, including that of agricultural crops and forestry products, accounts for 90 percent of land-related biodiversity loss and water stress, and for a third of GHC, while the extraction and processing of fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals, including sand, gravel, and clay, account for 35 percent of global emissions.

Despite this, resource exploitation could increase by almost 60% from 2020 levels by 2060-from 100 to 160 billion metric tons—far exceeding what is required to meet essential human needs, according to the UNEP report,  Global Resources Outlook 2024 – Bend the trend: Pathways to a Liveable Planet as Resource Use Spikes tabled at the event.

Meanwhile, UNEA-6 has elected a new president to preside over UNEA-7, Abdullah Bin Ali Amri, Chairman of the Environment Authority of Oman, who takes over from Benali.

Over 5,600 people from 190 countries participated in the proceedings held between February 26 and March 1.

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David Obwona at his seed rice farm in Katukatib village, Amoro district, northern Uganda. The farmer is part of a group that is now engaged in seed rice farming to climate-proof agriculture courtesy of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building Agriculture. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Nov 14 2023 (IPS)

Smallholder farmers from the Global South benefit from a grossly disproportionate 0.3% of international climate finance despite producing a third of the world’s food and despite holding the key to climate-proofing food systems.

The family farmers and rural communities received around USD 2 billion from both public and private international climate funds out of the USD 8.4 billion that went to the agriculture sector in 2021, even as over 2.5 billion people globally depended on the farms for their livelihoods.

The USD 8.4 billion was almost half of the USD 16 billion that was availed for the energy sector and is only a fraction of the estimated USD 300-350 billion needed annually to “create more sustainable and resilient food systems,” a new report has found.

The amount was also quite different from the USD 170 billion that smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa alone would require per year, the study on global public finance for climate mitigation and adaptation conducted by Dutch climate advisory company Climate Focus has found.

The low level of climate finance for agriculture, forestry, and fishing is of concern, given the impact of climate change on food production and the extent to which food and agriculture are fueling the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Agricultural productivity has declined by 21 percent due to climate change, while the food and agriculture sector as a whole is responsible for 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 80 percent of global deforestation, the study explains.

The farmers have been sidelined by global climate funders and locked out of decision-making processes on food and climate despite being the engines of rural economic growth. This is especially so in Sub-Saharan Africa, where up to 80 percent of agriculture is by smallholder farmers and where 23 percent of regional GDP is attributable to the sector.

It reveals that 80 percent of international public climate finance spent on the agri-food sector is channeled through governments and donor country NGOs, making it hard for smallholder farmers’ organizations to access it. This is because of complex eligibility rules and application processes and a lack of information on how and where to apply.

Many family farmers also lack the infrastructure, technology, and resources to adapt to climate impacts, with serious implications for global food security and rural economies as well, it notes.

The study ‘Untapped Potential: An analysis of international public climate finance flows to sustainable agriculture and family farmers,’ published on 14 November, laments that only a fifth of international public climate finance for food and agriculture supports sustainable practice. The money mainly goes to the Global North, even as agriculture becomes the third biggest source of global emissions. and the main driver of biodiversity loss.

“Climate change is hitting harvests and driving up food prices across the globe. It has helped push 122 million people into hunger since 2019. We need to create more sustainable and resilient food systems that can feed people in a changing climate, but we can’t do this without family farmers,” the report compiled on behalf of ten farmer organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific says.

“Family farmers are also key to climate adaptation. They are at the forefront of the shift to more diverse, nature-friendly food systems, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is needed to safeguard food security in a changing climate,” it further notes.

The groups are led by the World Rural Forum and include African groups—the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers Forum, the Regional Platform of Farmers’ Organisations in Central Africa, and the Network of West African Farmers’ and Producers’ Organisations. Also part of the group is Northern Africa’s Maghreb and North African Farmers Union.

The Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development, the Pacific Island Farmers Organization Network, the Confederation of Family Producers’ Organizations of Greater Mercosur, and the Regional Rural Dialogue Programme are also represented in the study.

Many of the farmers are already practicing climate-resilient agriculture, including approaches such as agroecology, which implies a wider variety of crops, including traditional ones, mixing crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries, while reducing agrochemical use, and building strong connections to local markets.

The study by the new alliance of farmer networks representing over 35 million smallholder producers ahead of COP28, which is set to agree on a Global Goal for Adaptation, is concerned that since 2012, overall, only 11% of international public climate finance has been targeted at agriculture, forestry, and fishing, which amounts to an average of USD 7 billion a year.

In 2021, the World Bank, Germany, the Green Climate Fund, and European Union institutions contributed around half—54 percent, amounting to USD 4 billion collectively, while Nigeria, India, and Ethiopia were the top recipients, receiving a combined USD 1.8 billion. Notably, some of the world’s most food insecure countries, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, each received less than USD 20 million, it discloses.

“As the climate crisis pushes the global food system ever closer to collapse, it is vital that governments recognize family farmers as powerful partners in the fight against climate change,” it warns.

Hakim Baliriane, Chair of the Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers Forum, observed: “Climate change has helped push 122 million people into hunger since 2019. Reversing this trend will not be possible if governments continue to tie the hands of millions of family farmers.”

The study defines small-scale family farms as those of less than two hectares, mainly in developing countries.

On the other hand, international climate finance broadly refers to finance channeled to “activities that have a stated objective to mitigate climate change or support adaptation. These include multilateral flows in and outside the (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, as well as bilateral flows at national and regional levels, including the Global Environment Facility, Adaptation Fund, and Green Climate Fund, and are usually disbursed as grants and concessional loans

The study finds that family farms are also the backbone of rural economies, supporting over 2.5 billion people globally who depend on family farms for their livelihoods. It says that in Sub-Saharan Africa, where up to 80 percent of farming is done by smallholder farmers, agriculture contributes 23 percent to regional Gross Domestic Product.

Family farmers are also key to climate adaptation in that they are at the forefront of the shift to more “diverse, nature-friendly food systems,” which, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are critical in safeguarding food security in a changing climate.

It finds that millions of smallholder farmers are already practicing climate-resilient agriculture, including approaches such as agroecology—growing a wider variety of crops, including traditional crops, mixing crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries, reducing agrochemicals use while building “strong connections to local markets.”

It concludes that governments must ensure that available climate finance for sustainable climate-resilient practices is increased, including that of agroecological approaches.

It explains: “This means funds to support diverse, nature-friendly approaches and to create community-based solutions that build on traditional expertise and experience.

It recommends that small-scale family farmers ought to have direct access to more climate finance and that financing mechanisms and funds should be developed with the participation of farmers’ organizations to meet their needs.

In addition, efforts should be made to ensure longer-term, flexible funding so that communities can determine their own priorities.

The role of the farmers as powerful catalysts for climate action, food system transformation, and the protection of biodiversity should be acknowledged and given a “real say” in decision-making on food and climate at the local, national, regional, and international levels. This should include decisions on land reform and agricultural subsidies.

The COP28 in Dubai later this month has food systems as a big part of the agenda.

An August report by the UK’s ActionAid has found that climate adaptation and green transition initiatives in the Global South received 20 times less financing when compared to main global emitters, fossil fuels, and intensive agriculture sectors in the last seven years.

It found that leading banking multinationals funded the emitters’ activities in the southern hemisphere to the tune of USD 3.2 trillion since 2015 when the Paris Agreement on Climate was adopted. German agrochemical giant Bayer was the biggest recipient of the financing, receiving an estimated USD 20.6 billion since 2016.

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Cattle carcass in Kenya's Kitengela Maasai rangelands in the great drought of 2009. A new report shows that major river basis in Africa have become sources of conflict due to drying up thanks to climate change and environmental degradation. Credit: ILRI

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Oct 24 2023 (IPS)

Almost all major river basins in Africa have become the epicentres for conflicts over the last 20 years, and agricultural yields on the continent could drop by up to 50 percent in the coming years owing to the drying up of ‘traditional’ water sources, thanks in part to effects climate change and degradation of the environment, the inaugural edition of the State of Africa’s Environment Report 2023 released in Nairobi finds.

At the same time, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity affect the continent the most, with a loss of 4 million hectares of forest cover each year, double the global average rate.

This, in part, has contributed to over 50 million people migrating from the degraded areas of sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe by 2020, according to the report compiled by India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released in Nairobi on October 13, 2023.

It finds that all the critical water basins on the continent were experiencing distress and turbulence due to, among other reasons, unsustainable use of resources besides climate, becoming hotspots for competition over water.

The basins include Lake Chad, shared by Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger, the river Nile shared by Egypt, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia; Lake Victoria, Shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; and the river Niger used by communities in Niger, Mali and Nigeria.

Also on the list is the river Congo basin, a joint resource used by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and the Lake Malawi basin shared by Tanzania and Malawi. Also on the list is the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Examples show that the Lake Chad basin disputes started in 1980, and the water body has diminished by 90 percent since the 1960s due to overuse and climate change effects.

“For years, the lake has supported drinking water, irrigation, fishing, livestock and economic activity for over 30 million people; it is vital for indigenous, pastoral and farming communities in one of the world’s poorest countries. However, climate change has fueled massive environmental and humanitarian crises in the region,” the report notes.

It notes that international actors and regional governments have long ignored the interplay between climate change, community violence and the forced displacement of civilians.

“Conflict between herders and farmers have become common as livelihoods are lost, and families dependent on the lake are migrating to other areas in search of water,” the report says.

“In the Congo basin, disputes started in 1960. The basin witnesses multifaceted crises, including forced displacement, violent conflicts, political instability, and climate change impacts,” it concludes.

On the other hand, it traces conflicts in the Niger basin to 1980, blaming climate change for disagreements over “damage to farmland and restricted access to water, while in the Nile, disagreements began around 2011 stemming from the construction of the Grand Renaissance dam by Ethiopia, which Egypt fears will impact water flow.

Conflicts over Lake Turkana resources are fairly recent, traced to 2016 when it was observed that with 90 percent of its water from the Omo River in Ethiopia, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have contributed to the lake’s ‘retreat’ into Kenya.

To survive, the Ethiopian herder tribes began following the water, resulting in inter-tribal conflict with their Kenyan counterparts. The construction of Ethiopia’s Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the river worsened matters.

It notes that in 2020, between 75 and 250 million people on the continent were projected to be “exposed to increased water stress” due to climate change, warning that in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could drop up to 50 percent due to drying up of traditional water sources including lakes, rivers, and wells.

“How Africa manages its water resources will define how water-secure the world would be. Africa’s aquifers hold 0.66 million KM³ of water. This is more than 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resources stored in dams and rivers.”

Take Ethiopia, for instance. Known as the continent’s water tower, the country is confronting huge challenges of disappearing lakes and rivers, it explains.

Africa, the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, hosts a quarter of the planet’s animal and plant species, but the species extinction and general biodiversity loss rate in the continent are higher than in the rest of the world.

As a result, total deaths from extreme weather, climate or water stress in the world in the last 50 years, 35 percent of them were in Africa. Predictably, Africa will account for 40 percent of the world’s migration due to climate change.

“While the Global South will bear the maximum burden of internal migration, the reasons might vary from region to region, depending on climate change-related issues like water scarcity or rising sea levels. However, water scarcity will be the main driving force of the total migration, the report explains.

Citing the example of chimpanzees, the SOE 2023 reports that there are only 1.050 million to 2.050 million of the species on the continent, limited to Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, with populations having disappeared in Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo.

On the brighter side, it says that African countries have some pioneering conservation models that, among other things, put communities at the centre of conservation efforts, noting that if Africa protects its biodiversity, the whole world will also gain.

Protected areas in Africa, if sustainably used, can eradicate poverty and bring peace, it asserts.

South Africa will be worst impacted by extreme weather events, making some areas inhospitable because of weather events, where already people are being forced to migrate within their own countries or regions in search of more hospitable and better living conditions, said Sunita Narain, CSE Director General.

Explaining the rationale behind the report, Narain said: “We can read and get the immediate story today, but often we do not get the big picture. The report will help us get that big picture. It will enable us to understand the different aspects of the environment by putting together a comprehensive picture that makes the links clearer between the environment and development. Environment and development are two sides of the same coin.”

She added that the report, produced with input from scientists and Africa-based journalists, also helped people appreciate the link between development and the environment.

According to Mamo Boru Mamo, director of Kenya’s National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the issues raised in the report are important and pertinent to the environment in Africa.

Among other things, the SOE 2023 had captured the plight of East Africa’s agro-pastoral communities whose migration from arid and semi-arid areas of Africa to urban centres and out of the continent has risen over the recent years, thanks in part to accelerated degradation of the environment.

“The continent has a collective responsibility to manage the environment sustainably while giving direction on the position Africa should take in the upcoming UN’s COP28 in Dubai,” he said.

Citing the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022”, it finds that in East Africa, rainfall has been below average for four consecutive wet seasons, the most extended sequence in 40 years.

The region recorded five consecutive deficit rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with the rainy season of March to May 2022 being the driest in over 70 years for Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, partly due to the destruction of the environment and climate change.

Overall, the report confirms that the climate crisis in Africa was an existential problem facing millions of people who have endured the wrath of nature for years.

Over 100 journalists, researchers and experts from across Africa have contributed to the preparation of this annual publication.

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Cattle quench their thirst at a drying river as worsening drought conditions continue in Isiolo County, Kenya. Credit: ILRI/Geoffrey Njenga

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Oct 17 2023 (IPS)

Women in pastoralist areas of East Africa are critical to the health of livestock in their communities, holding the key to effective animal vaccination campaigns meant to protect herds against deadly diseases.

They are, therefore, an important part of any vaccination strategies designed to guard the animals against killer outbreaks and need to be involved in such efforts for them to be successful.

Achieving the goals of such campaigns has become increasingly important as the effects of climate change introduce new diseases that threaten the sector and, by extension, household incomes.

It has become critically important to integrate females in such health campaigns, and one barrier to their success is the failure of authorities and development agencies to involve them. 

While women, due to cultural reasons, do not commonly own livestock, they act as caregivers when the animals are sick, and with incidents of disease outbreaks rising, involving them, in the end, ensures improved food and financial security for families.

Besides, an increasing number of households in the region where livestock keeping is the economic mainstay are being headed by women who also act as providers to their families.

Unsurprisingly, as many as 43 percent of livestock insurance policyholders in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, where the policies have been introduced in the recent past, are women, scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) say.

“Besides taking care of animals when they are sick, women influence the allocation of resources at the household level, determining things such as how money should go to buying vaccines, for example. Therefore, a strong gender strategy to allow women access to disease control is very important,” said Dr Bernard Bett, ILRI Senior Scientist, Animal and Human Health Program.

In its disease surveillance and response strategy, ILRI engaged “community disease reporters,” local leaders, and village women’s champions, including women heads of households, to gather information on outbreaks and to create awareness about vaccination campaigns, says Bett.

At times he noted, women got intimidated in queues by men during mass vaccination exercises, making them lose valuable time for other chores at home as they waited for their turn in the queue.

Authorities and organizations carrying out the missions have responded by enforcing a first–come–first–serve policy in the interest of fairness and increased animal health personnel staffing levels for orderly vaccinations, he explained.

Recognizing that conflict with household tasks was a permanent reality for women, ILRI practiced and advocated for early communication to enable better planning through community messaging while actively supporting females’ role in caring for livestock, he added.

Climate change, evidenced by frequent droughts and flood incidents in arid and semi-arid areas of East Africa that are the home of pastoralism in the region, Bett observed, presented a major disease burden with incidents of outbreaks of diseases such as Rift Valley Fever being a major threat.

“Highly climate-sensitive diseases causing pathogens attracted by changes in weather conditions, including those caused by vectors such as ticks and tsetse flies, become common. Efficient delivery of disease control measures, including vaccinations, is therefore important,” he told a recent media briefing in Nairobi.

Owing to the nomadic nature of pastoralists in search of pastures and water in times of shortage it is women are the ones who take care of households when the men are away with cattle and camels, while women are left behind caring for goats, calves, and vulnerable animals, making them also effectively in charge of their households.

Like their counterparts in the crop farming areas of the region, women pastoralists are faced with the challenge of providing food for their families, which is made worse by lack of income due to livestock deaths, noted Dr Rupsha Bernerjee, ILRI senior scientist attached to livestock and climate initiative.

“Whenever there are shocks such as droughts which in turn lead to food shortages, women skip meals to ensure their families are fed. It is therefore important to promote social inclusion in livestock health programs to ensure no one is left behind,” she said.

The impressive uptake of livestock insurance among women increases the resilience of herder communities, enabling them to cope with climate-induced risks, she added.

“Payments made to herders when droughts are very severe help in reducing distress sales of livestock guaranteeing that families are cushioned against possible malnutrition, thus the importance of women livestock health,” she told the briefing at the global body’s Nairobi headquarters.

In appreciating the important role in the health of livestock IDRC, Global Affairs Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation established the Livestock Vaccine Innovation Fund (LVIF), which supports the development and production of innovative vaccines to improve livestock health and the livelihoods of farmers.

The agency notes that worldwide, more than 750 million people keep livestock as a source of income, 400 million being women, but animal diseases, such as Newcastle disease in chickens and peste des petits ruminants (PPR) in goats, create widespread devastation, with women disproportionately affected because “they are less likely than men to be able to access vaccines to prevent such losses.”

“Millions of women livestock holders face financial and animal losses when diseases sweep through their farms. These infections are often highly preventable with a simple vaccination, so what is preventing women from taking measures to protect their assets?” the IDRC poses.

To answer find answers to the imbalance, the partners launched a regional livestock vaccine initiative called SheVax+ research project was launched in 2019, bringing together Cumming School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University-US, the Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN) together and implementing partners, Makerere University, University of Nairobi, and University of Rwanda.

Helen Amuguni, the SheVax+ principal investigator, identifies three primary barriers to livestock vaccine uptake among women smallholder livestock farmers in East Africa, including gender norms, which lead to women having less access to information on vaccinations, animal health, and livestock management practices.

Stereotypes, she says, affect the way women are viewed in relation to livestock ownership, leading to their exclusion during vaccination information campaigns. Power relations also mean some women require permission from the male household head to attend training or control livestock-related resources.

As a result, many women lack understanding of, among other things, the availability and importance of vaccines, while those who do have awareness may be prevented from acting upon it, she explains.

Besides carrying out disease control and management initiatives insuring livestock, as happens with the Index-Based Livestock Insurance pioneered by ILRI to ‘de-risk’ the sector, was a critical component of cushioning the sector’s well-being and incomes for households, according to Bernard Kimoro, head of climate change and livestock sustainability in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Kenya.

Operational in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, the insurance utilizes satellite data to determine and read the conditions of the vegetation, where herders get compensation when the vegetation turns brown/yellow to indicate drought or shortage of foliage.

Desperation in the pure livestock systems in the region due to frequent climate change-linked droughts in the region called for both new animal disease control and feeds and nutritional strategies, he said.

The droughts have led to keepers using unsustainable feeds with high methane gas levels owing as the owners tried to keep animals alive during the dry spells, the official regrets.

The Greater Horn of Africa region is predicted to experience El Nino weather conditions characterized by higher than usual rainfall beginning this October to early 2024.

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