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

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

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

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

By Travis Lupick
FREETOWN, Dec 26 2012 (IPS)

A coastal city, Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is an area where people have relied on the ocean for food and employment for as long as they have lived there.

Despite the increasing threat of overfishing and depleted reserves, the waters remain relatively rich, and the source of income for tens of thousands. Large fish such as barracuda are the prize, but a bag of small shellfish dug from the sand of a low-tide can feed a family almost as well. Kelfala Wullarie, a fisherman from Freetown’s Aberdeen neighbourhood, emphasised the extent to which people rely on the water. “At times you catch small, at times you catch big,” he said. “You catch big, you eat.”

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

By Travis Lupick
MONROVIA, Jun 15 2012 (IPS)

Deep in the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia, a group of men working a surface gold mine are asked what will happen to the land when they are finished with it.

They laugh, and shoot each other confused glances.

Gbessay Musa, who says he left Sierra Leone in search of work three years ago, delivers a cheerful response.

“We will leave the place when there is nothing left,” he exclaims. “We will find another site where there is money. The land here, it will just be here.”

Happy for a break from digging under the day’s hot sun, the young men are in good spirits, and more laughter follows. Musa is asked if he cares about the land, or just his gold.

“The people down here, they are getting by,” he answers, not fully understanding the question; his only consideration is for the livelihoods of the men who work with him.

The miners’ indifference is understandable. After 14 years of civil conflict that only ended in 2003, opportunities for education and meaningful employment in Liberia remain limited. The war devastated this West African nation.

A March 2011 World Bank report  states that Liberia’s energy infrastructure was “completely demolished,” that piped water access fell from 15 percent in 1986 to less than three percent in 2008, and that the national road network was left in “a state of severe disrepair.”

To say that the government of Liberia has a number of competing priorities would be an understatement. It could easily share the attitude of the miners in Gbarpolu and forego concerns for the environment amid the rapid development of the country’s natural resources.

Yet ahead of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference for Sustainable Development scheduled for Jun. 20 to 22, the impoverished nation is leading a push out of Africa that calls for economic prosperity and environmental sensitivity, and asks that the two no longer be treated as mutually exclusive.

As executive director of the Liberia Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is Anyaa Vohiri’s job to ensure that Liberia’s natural resources are managed in a sustainable manner. The task can be a challenge, she tells IPS.

“You’re looking at immediate needs. So my role at the EPA is to say, ‘Okay, yes, we need all of the economic benefits, but not in a way that shoots our self in the foot,’ ” Vohiri says.

On May 25, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf gave Vohiri’s office a major show of support.

Delivering the plenary address at the Summit for Sustainability in Africa  in Gaborone, Botswana, Sirleaf said that striking a balance between immediate needs and long-term sustainable development is a top priority. She warned that the continent must ensure it does not deplete its natural resources while trying to meet short-term needs. She also stressed that in order to plan and implement a sustainable economic future, policymakers must take the future into account.

“How do we ensure that our watersheds, forests, fisheries and other ecosystems are protected from overuse and degradation because we need one more hospital or one more school?” Sirleaf asked. “Development and conservation can go hand in hand, provided we develop a framework for action around a shared vision.”

At the end of the two-day summit the Gaborone Declaration  was drafted. It states that “urgent, concerted actions be undertaken to restore and sustain the ability of the Earth to support human communities…and thereby contribute to the prosperity of future generations.”

Vohiri says that the Gaborone Declaration will be carried to Rio+20 and defended there.

“What we give the world right now is our biodiversity,” she emphasises. “So if we do not get support for sustainably managing our ecosystem, we are in trouble. The world is in trouble.”

According to data supplied by the EPA, Liberia’s mean annual temperate is projected to rise between two and four degrees Celsius by 2100. An EPA presentation on climate change dated May 2012 lists key climate hazards for Liberia as increases in temperature, changes in rainfall patterns, tropical storms, and rising sea levels and coastal flooding.

An August 2010 United Nations Development Programme report  states that Liberia has already started to experience the effects of climate change, “which include reduced soil moisture, shifts in temperature, erratic rainfall and heat waves.” The document emphasises that 70 percent of Liberia’s labour force is employed in agriculture, and that that sector is the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

“This desk study revealed that the increase in heat intensity and erratic rainfall patterns could be symptoms of climate change which have an adverse effect on crop yields and livestock production beyond the impacts expected,” the document continues.

One of Liberia’s most outspoken advocates for climate change mitigation is Sieane Abdul-Baki, a special assistant to the Minister of Gender and Development. She says that specific attention needs to be given to the disproportionate impact that climate change is expected to have on women and children.

Abdul-Baki says that her hope for Rio+20 is to see strategies for sustainable development incorporate considerations for gender sensitivity. She notes that in developing countries, household tasks such as food production and the procurement of water are largely the responsibilities of women, and those are areas where the effects of climate change can most acutely be felt.

“Women usually make decisions when it comes to what kind of fuel they will use for lighting their homes,” Abdul-Baki says. “So they may be driving deforestation. But when you have them informed about the impacts of climate change, they may be able to change their attitudes. So when it comes to adaptation and mitigation, we have to build women’s capacity.”

Abdul-Baki concedes that at an international summit as big as Rio+20, the priorities of developing countries can be overlooked.

“The smaller countries, we usually align ourselves into groups, or blocs,” she says.

“Because when we put ourselves into groupings, our voices become louder than when we negotiate on an individual basis.”

Abdul-Baki notes that at Rio+20, Liberia will be participating in negotiations and workshops as part of several coalitions, including the Africa Group, the Group of 77 and China, and the Least Developed Countries Group.

Vohiri says that such stakeholders have the opportunity to do development right and in a way that is sustainable. But the support of the rest of the world is needed.

“Smaller countries may not feel that they have the power to make change,” Vohiri says. “That is why we have to be there, that is why we have to speak.”

Junior Toe (right) discusses farming techniques with a graduate of the community youth network programme's agriculture school. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Travis Lupick
MONROVIA, Jun 11 2012 (IPS)

With his gold chain, baseball cap, and baggy denim shorts, Junior Toe wears the uniform of Liberia’s urban youth. Spend just a few minutes with the young man and it is evident that he possesses the street smarts to match the look.

However, Toe’s area of expertise lies outside the city and on the farm.

“Look at the pepper seed there,” he says while touring a community farm not far from downtown Monrovia. “Put it in the ground, water it a few times, and you will make some money.”

Toe is the founder and executive director of the Community Youth Network Program (CYNP), which trains young people in agriculture and livestock farming.

“Over there, we have a nursery for cabbages,” he continues. “If you try and grow cabbage in the ground now, the rains will give it a hard time. This is the kind of knowledge we share.”

Food security and meaningful employment for Liberia’s youth have long been major challenges for this West African nation. Now, a number of community-based programmes and government initiatives are working to address both. Officials say they are hopeful that this is the start of a major shift in how young Liberians participate in the agricultural sector.

According to a 2010 report by the United Nations Development Programme, 30 percent of Liberia’s land is arable and close to 90 percent of crop areas receive adequate rain. Yet according to the Liberia Food Security Outlook report for 2012, 60 percent of the population is classified as “food insecure”.

Liberia’s agricultural sector was devastated by decades of mismanagement and war. In 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe seized power in a coup and his rule, which ended 10 years later, was characterised by incompetent policies that hindered development.

In 1989, the country broke out in a civil war that continued sporadically until 2003. Those years saw warlord – and later, president – Charles Taylor plunder the country’s resources and fuel violence that killed 250,000 people. Even greater numbers fled Liberia or were repeatedly displaced.

According to a 2009 assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), between 1987 and 2005 the production of the country’s staple food, rice, fell by 76 percent.

“Agricultural production has increased in recent years as the sector slowly recovers, but yields are still well below the regional average and food insecurity is high,” the document states, adding that Liberia still only produces roughly 40 percent of the rice it needs to feed its almost four million people.

Also affected by the conflict were Liberia’s youth, tens of thousands of whom were coerced into joining rebel factions when they were just boys and girls. Rehabilitation projects run by the U.N. attempted to reintegrate ex-combatants and victims of the war, but those programmes are now widely criticised as failures.

“I went through the disarmament process, through the one week of training,” Toe says, chuckling.

“But many people really never took advantage of that….The men were traumatised; they were used to the gun, used to money, and used to getting what they wanted fast.”

Toe says that after seeing the shortcomings of the rehabilitation programmes, he set out to launch his own, one that would be better suited to Liberia. He reasoned that with fertile soil and a warm and wet climate, agriculture was the way to go. So he founded the CYNP in 2007.

The organisation now has a training centre in Bensonville, Montserrado County (roughly an hour’s drive northeast of Monrovia). In the county, land is divided into eight farms where former trainees and partners manage plots on either their own property or on community land. The Young Farmers Forum keeps participants connected and works to create awareness and attract new recruits.

Crucial to CYNP’s success, and what sets it apart from the U.N.’s past work with ex-combatants, is an emphasis on ownership. “We work with you to develop your own project in your community where you manage it,” Toe says.

According to Toe, there are currently around 100 youths enrolled in six-month long programmes at the Bensonville facility, and as many as 500 graduates are now farming in communities around Montserrado.

A number of those graduates can be found working a plot of unused government land in the Fiamah neighbourhood of Monrovia. Alfred Kapehe says that CYNP helped him progress from subsistence agriculture to smallholder commercial farming. Likewise, James Paylay says the small farm he keeps brings in enough money for him to rent a home, feed his family, and pay his children’s school fees.

“Everything comes from the garden,” Paylay says.

Liberian Deputy Minister for Youth Development Sam Hare acknowledged an often-cited USAID (the U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance) statistic indicating that just three percent of Liberian youths are interested in farming. But, in an interview with IPS, he maintains that the situation is changing.

“Agriculture has been identified as the key to breaking the youth unemployment challenge,” he says.

“We have been working with the Ministry of Agriculture and other stakeholders to make people see that agriculture, viewed in the right perspective, is a tool for wealth.”

Hare says that the challenge is to convince young people that they can take farming beyond a subsistence level and make a commercial enterprise of it.

“Our vocational training priorities now need to be redefined and restructured to meet the real needs of Liberia. And youth and agriculture should be the focus,” he adds.

Joseph Boiwu, a FAO programme officer for Liberia, says that another impediment slowing youths’ entry into agriculture is the labour-intensive nature of the work. To address this problem the FAO and partners distributed 24 power tillers to small groups of farmers in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties in 2010.

“We’re going to now reassess the interest of the youth,” Boiwu says. If the initiative is deemed a success, it could grow to include heavy machinery such as tractors.

Prince Sampson, head of Youth for Development and Progressive Action in Bong County in north-central Liberia, describes a programme his organisation runs that is similar to the CYNP’s. Like Toe, he says that he learned from the mistakes of post-war workshops that failed to make long-term investments in people.

“The ex-combatants had training in carpentry, masonry, and other skills,” Sampson says.

“And then after that, there wasn’t anything substantial for them to do. You had them trained, and then they didn’t have a source of income. So they went back to square one.”

Sampson, who has worked with war-affected youth since 1992, maintains that agriculture is different because there is an element of immediate responsibility.

“The guys…They eat the very rice they grow. The vegetables are sold, the proceeds are divided among them, and they have some cash for their pockets.”

Sampson describes the importance of involving the country’s former combatants in agriculture as a matter of food security.

“We make them understand the usefulness of the years still ahead, in spite of the years that were wasted during the war,” he says.

“We let them understand that the strength they had – their youthful exuberance – can still be harnessed.”

*Additional reporting from Al-Varney Rogers in Monrovia.

(END)

The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent.

Malawi President Joyce Banda (left) and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at a women's rights event in Liberia. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Both Sirleaf and Banda have long championed women’s rights. And on Apr. 29 in Monrovia, two years into what the African Union (AU) has declared the “Women’s Decade”, they pledged to work together to accelerate those efforts.

“Today is a day African women must rejoice,” Banda said as Sirleaf stood by her side. “This is our day. And this is our year. And this is our decade!” And Sirleaf affirmed her – and Liberia’s – commitment to empower women.

“The two of us have great strength,” Sirleaf said. “Together, we can do more to empower women and to ensure that women’s role in society is enhanced.” She added that her country would work with the new Malawian government to advance women’s empowerment.

To be sure, the challenges before them are great. Using the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a barometer, Liberia and Malawi generally score low in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, education for girls, and maternal health.

According to 2010 U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) reports on the two countries, Liberia is only likely to meet certain goals on equality and education, and Malawi remains unlikely to meet its targets for any of the three MDGs that focus on women.

But as Banda noted during her speech, there has never been a better time to advance women’s rights in Africa.

Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was elected as Africa’s first female president in 2005 and reelected in 2011. While her first term in office focused on reconstructing a country devastated by two civil wars, one from 1989 to 1996 and the second from 1999 to 2003, she has set out to use her second term as president to make women’s rights and health a national priority.

Banda succeeded former President Bingu wa Mutharika after his sudden passing on Apr. 5. After she was elected vice president in 2009, she had a falling out with Mutharika, and was subsequently expelled from the ruling Democratic People’s Party and essentially barred from participating in government.

However, she remained vice president, and in 2011 she formed the opposition People’s Party. Since Mutharika’s death a number of MPs have left the former ruling party to join her.

Both Sirleaf and Banda govern countries with significant development challenges. So devastating were Liberia’s civil wars that nearly a decade since the end of the conflict, the country is still in a state of reconciliation and reconstruction.

In Malawi, Mutharika’s last years in office were characterised by an economy crumbling under government mismanagement, which was compounded by the withdrawal of donor aid because of human rights abuses.

Yet despite the fact that Sirleaf has had to focus her efforts on reconstruction and Banda is barely one month into her time as president, there is concrete evidence indicating that both women have put the advancement of women at the top of their agendas.

At her office in Monrovia, Liberian Minister of Gender and Development Julia Duncan-Cassell described advances in women’s empowerment as observable through representation in government, as well as in ordinary women’s participation in the democratic process in Liberia.

“In 1997, market women didn’t know much about elections,” she told IPS. “In 2005, they tried, but they all voted with thumb prints. But in 2011, most of the market women were able to mark their names.”

On education, Duncan-Cassell pointed to figures indicating that the ratio of girls enrolled in school continued to climb towards parity with boys. The 2010 UNDP report on Liberia and the MDGs confirms this, noting that the ratio of girls to boys receiving a primary education stands at 0.88 to one, and for secondary education, 0.69 to one. The document states that Liberia is on track to achieve its targets on girls’ education.

With regard to women’s health, Liberia’s five-year “Road Map”, launched in March 2011, aims to “halve Liberia’s high rate of maternal and newborn death” and calls for “increasing the number of skilled birth attendants at all levels of the health care system by 50 per cent.” According to the country’s 2007 Demographic and Health Survey, Liberia’s maternal mortality rate is 994 deaths for every 100,000 live births – one of the highest in the world.

Banda too has already accomplished much for women since ascending to the presidency.

She has strengthened the voice of women in government through the appointment of eight women to senior cabinet positions. She has assigned women to the positions of deputy chief secretary to government and deputy director inspector general of police. And she has advanced women’s economic empowerment through the introduction of an agricultural programme and a market initiative.

And with the presidential initiative on maternal health and safe motherhood that is still to be launched, she admits she is following in the footsteps of Sirleaf. “This one, I learned from my big sister,” Banda said.

“Malawi’s maternal mortality rate is as high as 675 deaths per 100,000 (live births),” Banda noted. “As a woman president and a mother, I feel it is my obligation to stop the unnecessary deaths of women.”

Litha Musyimi-Ogana, head of the Women, Gender and Development Directorate for the AU, applauded the partnership she sees taking shape between Sirleaf and Banda.

“I fully embrace the pronouncement,” she said in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. “It is wonderful news to hear that President Banda and President Sirleaf have prioritised the African Women’s Decade and (have agreed) to work together to advance women’s rights.” Musyimi-Ogana added that on behalf of AU Commission head Jean Ping, the organisation pledged to make its top representatives and resources available to Sirleaf and Banda, to accomplish the goals of the AU Women’s Decade.

Meanwhile, Banda said that she believed her responsibility for ensuring women’s rights extended beyond Malawi.

“I know that women in Africa still face many challenges due to HIV and AIDS, poverty, conflict, and harmful cultural practices, among other issues,” Banda said as she looked over to Sirleaf. “However, I firmly believe that you and I will tirelessly work together to make sure that women’s rights on the continent get better.”

Duncan-Cassell also noted that challenges lie ahead. But she maintained that Banda’s rise to the presidency of Malawi was a cause for celebration.

“Now we have Joyce,” she said. “Like President Sirleaf said, she’s not going to be lonely among men anymore. She has a counterpart.”

*Additional reporting from Massa Kanneh in Monrovia.

“There were three people. One person was holding me down; one person was holding my hand; and the other person was doing the job. They lay me down, and…” Fatu said of the female genital mutilation she underwent as an eight- year-old in Liberia.

FGM is a taboo and complicated topic in Liberia and it is dangerous for women to speak out about it. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

According to the World Health Organization, Fatu endured what is classified as a type II female circumcision (on a scale of one to three), where her clitoris and labia minora were cut away.

Now 23 and a student at the University of Liberia, Fatu’s circumcision was part of her initiation into the secretive Sande Society, a pseudo-religious association to which most Liberian women – depending on which tribe and part of the country they are from – are members.

The Sande and its male counterpart, the Poro, shape many aspects of culture, tradition, and society as a whole in this West African nation. The Sande “bush” schools are where young Liberian women – some as young as two years old – are supposed to receive instruction on the traditions of respect, how to run a household, and how to prepare for marriage.

It is also where their circumcisions happen.

The Sande society believes this rite of passage makes a woman strong and prevents her from becoming promiscuous.

International organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund argue that FGM is a human rights violation that denies women “their physical and mental integrity, their right to freedom from violence and discrimination, and in the most extreme case, their life.”

FGM’s central position in the Sande makes it particularly difficult to curtail, explained Minister of Gender and Development Julia Duncan-Cassell. But through cooperative efforts with traditional leaders, the government of Liberia is quietly moving to shut down the Sande schools and bring an end to female genital cutting in Liberia.

“Government is saying, ‘This needs to stop’,” stated Duncan-Cassell. “I can’t tell you that it stopped completely, but the process is ongoing.”

In the past the Liberian government has been unwilling to comment on FGM and Duncan-Cassell outlined the clearest position on the practice to date. She affirmed her office’s commitment to putting an end to female circumcision in the country. FGM is a taboo and complicated topic here in Liberia.

While Fatu mostly spoke positively of her experiences with the Sande, many women interviewed by IPS refused to discuss the society or FGM.

“It hurt. Seriously, it hurt. And there was a lot of blood,” Fatu said, contorting her facial muscles as she recalled the experience. Yet Fatu maintains she does not regret the time she spent in the Sande bush school.

“From that time till now, I feel like a woman. I feel proud,” she said, her last word spoken slowly, drawn out, and punctuated with the same emphasis she used to describe the pain she felt during her initiation.

Duncan-Cassell conceded that eradicating FGM in Liberia will take time.

“There has been a statement put out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs asking all of our mothers, our aunts, our sisters, to desist from such practices,” Duncan-Cassell said. “Government wants to respect the beliefs of the people but, at the same time, is telling them not to infringe on the right of someone else.”

There are no reliable statistics on the number of Liberian women circumcised; however, it is estimated that as many as two-thirds of women in the country have undergone the procedure.

The cessation of Sande initiations and FGM remains a highly sensitive issue for the government, and officials interviewed maintained that it would take years to put an end to the practice. However, an alleged deal exists that could see the Sande sidelined sooner than most expect.

Assistant Minister of Culture at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Joseph Jangar said that a deal has been struck between the Sande and Poro societies, whereby the Sande would hand over land used for initiations to the Poro.

“The women agreed,” Jangar said. “With that understanding, the women cannot practice Sande. Because of that, we are not issuing permits (to operate Bush schools) to any Sande Society.”

Jangar said that an official letter, sent on Dec. 9, 2011 to district superintendents and heads of both the Sande and Poro societies, requested that all Sande groves be closed down by the end of that year. “They all received the letter,” he said. “If we find any zoes (traditional spiritual leaders) practicing Sande school, we will fine them.” Monitors are scheduled to go out into the counties by the start of April, he added.

However, Minister of Internal Affairs Blamo Nelson claimed that he was not aware of the letter, but said that he sees FGM slowly becoming a thing of the past.

“The advocacy calling for an end to FGM should continue,” he said. “And I’m sure that in time these practices, that more and more Liberians are beginning to find obnoxious, will go away.”

Mama Tormah, head of all the Sande’s female zoes, said the society is currently undergoing a number of changes, including placing an emphasis on more formalised studies into the culture. Another is addressing a criticism often levied at the Sande – that it enrolls and circumcises girls far too young to take part on their own free will. Tormah acknowledged that 17 or 18 years should be the minimum age for students of the “bush” schools.

She, however, denied that grove schools were ever involved in FGM and chastised Duncan-Cassell for speaking publicly about this taboo subject. “You’re not supposed to ask me that question under lights,” Tromah protested.

Meanwhile, Nelson cautioned that traditions and beliefs are difficult things to change and, when it comes to an issue as culturally sensitive as FGM, are complicated to even debate.

A conversation on genital cutting in Liberia has no doubt begun. But for some, it has arrived too late.

In December 2011, 17-year-old Lotopoe Yeamah underwent her Sande initiation in Nimba County. According to media reports, complications left her bleeding for a week. When Yeamah was finally taken to a clinic, she was pronounced dead on arrival.

By Travis Lupick
BLANTYRE, Dec 16 2011 (IPS)

On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi’s Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. But now decades later Banda is a likely contender for the country’s presidency in 2014, while Mtokoma lives in poverty.

Malawi's Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. Credit: Katie C. Lin/IPS

“She went to school in the village and I went to school in the town,” begins the highest-ranking woman in Malawi politics. “I would get home Friday evening and Chrissie would be waiting for me by the roadside.”

Banda tells parallel narratives contrasting her own upbringing with that of Mtokoma’s. “In the village school, Chrissie was first in her class, all the way to standard six (grade eight),” she tells IPS. “I was always number two or three, always fighting to beat her. But I couldn’t.”

Later, both girls were accepted into prestigious secondary schools. But after just three months, Mtokoma was forced to drop out.

“Chrissie’s uncle couldn’t pay for a second semester,” Banda says. “That was it for Chrissie. She went back to the village and into a vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, early marriage, and then early motherhood. By the time I finished school, she had maybe five children. And today, Chrissie is where I left her.”

Banda maintains she was only able to stay in school thanks to the middle-class income her father earned working as a policeman. “So I went on, finished, and now I am vice president of this land,” she tells IPS. “Chrissie, she is locked up in the village, in poverty. And that makes me angry. Why am I here and she is not?”

As Banda entered adulthood, these childhood memories drew her attention to the benefits of education, and especially economic empowerment, to which she has dedicated much of her life.

In recent years, Malawian women have made significant gains in their struggle for full gender equality. Women are increasingly represented in national politics, for example. Malawi’s May 2009 federal election saw the proportion of female Members of Parliament rise from 14 percent to 22. And though a minority, it is not difficult to find women’s names among the ranks of corporate board members.

Yet women in Malawi remain disproportionately affected by poverty. In 2004, the National Statistics Office found that while only 25 percent of the country’s households were headed by women, they accounted for 58.4 percent of the country’s poorest homes. Moreover, women in Malawi remain significantly under-represented in areas of economic decision-making.

Banda and other leading women argue that the key to addressing these problems is to put more of the country’s money in the hands of its mothers.

Seodi White, national coordinator for Women and Law in Southern Africa, recalls her involvement in the country’s first marches for women, which were held in the late 1990s. More than a decade later, she argues that there is still much work to be done.

Even small amounts of money can create life-changing opportunities for the country’s most disadvantaged women, White says. She describes the results of an experiment her organisation led in a village in Mangochi District. Women were given roughly 110 dollars and left to do with it as they wished.

“We found out that these are not idle hands,” White says.

One woman made sweets out of sugar and sold them to nearby schools. Another baked and sold small cakes. And a third invested in a tobacco operation. The women made enough to keep their small businesses going, and invested excess earnings in purchases that benefited their families; blankets for their children, iron sheets to improve a dwelling’s thatched roof, and household items such as salt and sugar that previously were only provided by their husbands.

“This kind of power can create a level of decision-making at the family and community level that can have cascading effects on the country,” White emphasises.

She points to studies by financial institutions such as Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, which, time and again, have shown that women are significantly more likely than men to invest in areas that alleviate poverty such as health, education, and business improvement.

“Women are trained to care for others,” she reasons. “Very few women would just use money for their own personal gain.”

At the side of the road in Blantyre, a group of women selling scraps of plastic discuss what they wish for their businesses. At the top of everyone’s list is an investment or small loan.

Cecelia Goba, 40, and Ellen Mawuwa, 35, say that they would use funds to import and resell goods from neighbouring countries such as Mozambique.

“I would buy clothes and shoes outside this country and sell them here,” Mawuwa says. “We have friends in such businesses and they are doing quite fine.”

A number of non-profit organisations are active in Malawi supplying the sort of micro-loans made famous by the Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. And the vice president’s newly-formed People’s Party recently launched an initiative called Orange Achievers, which aims to maximise the economic potential of Malawian women.

But supply cannot meet demand. And as Mary Malunga, executive director for the National Association of Business Women, explains, there are a host of other challenges Malawian women must overcome if they are to excel in the professional world.

“Women need to work 10 times harder than men to prove that any job that a man can do, a woman can do too,” she explains. “Women, due to perceived social and cultural roles, are not respected when they are in leadership positions.”

Malunga, a successful businesswomen herself, offered a few words of advice.

“To get to where I am today, it took what I call the three Ps: patience, perseverance, and prayer,” she says. “You need to persevere through all kinds of challenges and obstacles which, at times, will make you feel like you will never reach your intended destination.”

White echoes Malunga’s remarks. “Determination, determination, determination,” she emphasises, warning that this may mean sacrificing other aspects of one’s life, including having a boyfriend. Falling pregnant may end a young girl’s dreams.

“You might get pregnant, and that would be the end of it,” White explains. “Most girls don’t realise the kinds of difficult decisions that some of us had to make to reach where we are.”

And at the vice president’s compound in Blantyre, Banda reiterates that economic empowerment is the path to education and prosperity. But she stresses that this does not mean anybody should wait for a handout.

“My advice to younger women is that we have a moral obligation to make it,” Banda maintains. “Regardless of what we face, we need to forge ahead, we need to keep going. For us, it is a responsibility that we have in order to push our fellow women forward.”

Excerpt:

Charcoal production in Malawi is done inefficiently using traditional methods and tools that lead to large areas of land being felled. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Travis Lupick
BLANTYRE, Nov 28 2011 (IPS)

As Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu talk on the side of a dirt path in Makunje village, Malawi, a steady stream of bicycles loaded with charcoal passes by. The men stand at the halfway mark between Mwanza, a small city in the country’s southwest, and Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub.

Charcoal production in Malawi is done inefficiently using traditional methods and tools that lead to large areas of land being felled. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

The 50-kilometre-long road joining the two is a figurative energy highway; a constant stream of bicycles heavily laden with oversized bags of charcoal.

“We are forced to walk this distance,” Chakunkha said. “It’s not like we chose to go to (Mwanza) village, but it is the only place where some trees are left.” Informal charcoal makers like Chakunkha and Abu travel to Mwanza because of the easy availability of trees here. Here they use the trees to produce charcoal and then transport it back to Blantyre for sale.

Chakunkha and Abu have both worked as charcoal producers since the 1970s. They recounted how the industry has steadily consumed trees and pushed production sites further away from densely-populated urban areas.

Resource depletion and environmental degradation are serious problems in Malawi. This sub-Saharan nation is geographically small and relies heavily on natural resources to meet demands for both food and energy.

It is the fifth most-densely populated country in Africa, 80 percent of its 14.9 million people rely on subsistence agriculture, and 85 percent of households surveyed by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in 2007 reported using charcoal for cooking.

Michael Mmangisa, national project manager for the Poverty-Environment Initiative in Malawi, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme, described a whirlwind of forces currently working against a sustainable environment.

The two big ones are deforestation and rapid agricultural expansion, he explained.

“Excessive degradation is clearly attributable to poverty, population growth, infrastructural development, inappropriate management, poor policies (especially in the past), and limitations in governmental capacity in policy implementation and legislation enforcement,” Mmangisa said.

It is not something Malawians are unaware of. “We are well aware of the effects of deforestation on the environment but we are forced by circumstances,” Abu lamented.

“Yes, we are feeling the effect of these self-inflicted injuries,” Makunje interrupted. “When we had enough vegetative cover, the soil was very fertile and strong because of the leaves and roots. Nowadays, our farmland has become useless.”

Citing government figures, Mmangisa said that each year Malawi loses 2.6 percent of its forests and between 10 to 57 tonnes of soil per hectare across the entire country.

“There is a need to have well-detailed and enforced legislation in the management of the environment,” Mmangisa said.

His concerns were echoed by Bright Sibale, executive director for the Centre for Development Management, a research organisation that works with forestry stakeholders in Malawi.

“Charcoal production in Malawi is done inefficiently using traditional methods and tools that lead to large areas of land being felled to produce a limited amount of charcoal,” Sibale explained. “Deforestation increases the rate of soil erosion, which causes siltation of major water systems.”

One possible solution, he suggested, is the adoption of “community-managed forests.”

Sibale described the scheme as a “mechanism of empowering local communities to own and manage a forest under an agreement with some authority.”

He noted that most forest areas in Malawi are either publicly or customarily managed, which deprives communities of formal rights to access resources. “The end result is the feeling that each community would like to extract their piece, before the next person does so.”

Community-managed forests would encourage their sustainable management, Sibale said.

There are other similar efforts being made to safeguard Malawi’s natural resources. The Malawi Environmental Endowment Trust, Malawi Environmental Health Association, Rainwater Harvesting Association of Malawi, and a host of international non-governmental organisations are at work in the country.

There are also laws aimed at governing the country’s formal and informal charcoal industry which, according to an IIED report, employs upwards of 93,000 people.

However, there are complications with this. Section 81.1 of the Forestry Act states that charcoal can only be produced with a license issued by the Forestry Department. But, according to several stakeholders interviewed, the government has not issued licenses in years.

Furthermore, according to another IIED report: “The complexity of writing a forestry management plan, and the lack of clarity over who has the right and responsibility to produce (charcoal), has effectively criminalised all charcoal producers.”

Malawi’s Director of Environmental Affairs, Yanira Ntupanyama, maintained that efforts are being made to lessen the country’s reliance on charcoal. She said that biogas is being introduced as an alternative to charcoal, and that government is promoting income-generating activities that will hopefully act as incentives for people to leave the charcoal industry.

As governments and world experts meet in Durban, South Africa on Monday at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Ntupanyama went on to draw attention to the world’s changing climate, which has compounded Malawi’s problem of environmental degradation.

“Malawi’s total emissions (averaging 23,487 gigatonnes annually) are insignificant at the global level,” she noted. “Yet we do suffer from the consequential adverse effects of climate change that include intense rainfall, floods, droughts, dry spells, cold spells, strong winds, thunderstorms, landslides, hailstorms, mudslides and heat waves, among others.”

Ntupanyama described climate change as a direct threat to the country’s socio-economic development, and therefore a government priority. “We have set ambitious goals under the Green Belt Initiative,” she boasted.

Yet if Malawi’s illegal but booming charcoal industry is any indication, there is much work to be done. Furthermore, while deforestation and soil erosion may be the country’s most pressing concerns today, it is possible there are even greater threats on the horizon.

Lake Malawi plays home to more species of fish than any other freshwater body on the planet. It also provides a livelihood for tens of thousands of fishermen, and acts as a major tourist attraction. Yet in October, UK-based Surestream Petroleum was awared a license for oil exploration in the lake.

The possibility of oilrigs on one of Africa’s most celebrated natural resources has inevitably attracted the ire of environmentalists. But proponents of the project contend that Malawi is an impoverished nation in dire need of external revenue.

That argument that was echoed by charcoal producers in Makunje village.

“We feel the effects of deforestation,” Chakunkha said. “If you ask any charcoal producer, no one will try to justify it. We are only doing this out of desperation.”

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By Travis Lupick
BLANTYRE, Nov 4 2011 (IPS)

In Mbedza village, a remote rural community in southern Malawi, Fedson Feston beams an infant’s awkward smile and swings his tiny arms up towards the face of his mother. Four months old, Fedson is too young to know how lucky he is to be alive.

Manes Feston, flanked by her children, holds her four-month-old son Fedson. He was one of triplets but his siblings did not survive. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

One, a boy named Ezera, died in a hospital the next day. Shortly after, Fedson and his sister, Mandaliza, were discharged.

Premature and still weak, the newborns needed special care, Manes recalled the doctors telling her. “The children were always to be strapped to the belly and be in a warm place all the time,” she said.

But it was winter, and that proved difficult.

They are a desperately poor family, and Manes’s husband was always away looking for work. Moreover, the couple had five other young children to look after.

It was not long before Mandaliza passed away.

“The house that we live in is makeshift and does not provide enough warmth for premature children,” Manes said. “I think that contributed to our losing the other child.”

After Manes survived their difficult birth, the smallest semblance of a welfare state might have saved the second child.

A few hundred Malawi kwacha (roughly two dollars) could have bought the family extra blankets and kerosene, or even a meagre amount of unemployment insurance could have provided the family some financial security. (Manes’s husband was a seasonal worker and unemployed when the triplets were born.)

But in this small country in the Southern Africa region, such social safety nets largely do not exist.

“To me, this is the reason why women like me are suffering and reaching the extent where we (lose) children who should have otherwise lived,” Manes complained.

This family’s situation is not an isolated case. In Malawi, 74 percent of the population lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and nearly one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday.

Reflecting the fact that significant segments of the population are fundamentally excluded from society due to poverty and inequality, the 2010 Ibrahim Index of African Governance recently handed Malawi an abysmal score of two out of 10.

There is legislation aimed at protecting families from falling on hard times, such as the Employment Act and the recently amended Pension Bill.

However, according to a 2010 report by the International Labour Office in Geneva, 90 percent of Malawians – more than 13 million people – work outside the formal economy.

Minister of Labour Lucius Kanyumba argued that the government has attempted to bring such people under the protection of the law. Section 43 of the Employment Act refers to benefits for seasonal workers, he noted. And a 2010 amendment to the act reduced the qualifying period for the payment of long service benefits from 12 months to three.

“This is the drive that the government is making in an effort to address the imbalances for all workers in Malawi,” he said, “whether in formal or informal industries.”

But the evidence on the ground suggests that such efforts are failing to reach the most vulnerable people they are intended to help.

Jonathan Mbenje, 73, is a night guard. “For me, to be working at this old age is not out of choice,” he said. “Being a guard, especially at this age, is very dangerous.”

Mbenje claimed that when his employer and many others do pay out severance packages the amounts often fall far short of what the law requires.

“Most of the time, they give someone between (120 to 240 dollars),” he said, emphasising that that is a one-time severance payment. “With that kind of money, you cannot survive; hence I am still working at age 73.”

Enock Andaradi, 79, told a similar story. Found scavenging through a garbage dump in Blantyre, Andaradi explained that while he was also once a security guard, he is now forced to live off other people’s waste.

He said that he had never heard of any sort of social service that provides assistance to the elderly.

Chandiwira Chisi, Malawi campaign coordinator for Action Aid, a United Kingdom-based non- governmental organisation that focuses on poverty reduction, argued that such situations are the realities of a developing economy. “They (informal workers) are left out of the social support system,” he said.

Chisi argued that current labour laws in Malawi give little power to the average worker, and provide too many opportunities for employers to take advantage of staff.

Addressing concerns that people are falling through social safety nets, Kanyumba called attention to the Decent Work Country Programme, launched in August 2011.

He described the scheme as one that promotes meaningful work for those employed in the informal sector. It promotes business skills and awareness of labour rights, while providing start-up capital for small businesses, he explained.

Another initiative is the Malawi Social Support Policy.

“The ultra-poor and vulnerable have been inevitably excluded from benefiting and taking full advantage of the economic development process,” the document states. And so at the initiative’s core, said Minister of Gender, Child, and Community Development Reen Kachere, is a social cash transfer programme.

Eligible households are given an average of 12 dollars a month, plus additional allowances (roughly 1.20 to 2.40 dollars) for each child enrolled in school.

Piloted in a single district in 2006, there are now seven regions benefiting from the programme, delivering financial assistance to more than 30,400 households. Plans are in the works to expand into a further six districts next year, Kachere said. “And then after one more year, we want to apply it to even more of the country.”

The Social Support Policy is the exact sort of programme that might have saved Fedson’s brother and sister. Back in Mbedza village, Manes spoke of the pain she still bears.

“I fail to accept that I lost my children, who could have survived if somebody had done something,” she said. “When I was at the hospital, I met other women with similar problems. If only government could come in to assist vulnerable people who cannot assist themselves.”

Manes maintains that if she had had access to better social services, her two children would still be alive.

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By Travis Lupick and Binson Musongole
BLANTYRE, Malawi , Sep 20 2011 (IPS)

Soot and ash filled the air the day after a fire gutted Malawi’s Blantyre Market. Men and women merchants wore solemn expressions as they shovelled piles of debris from the site on Tuesday.

A suspicious fire gutted Malawi's Blantyre Market on Monday. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Dozens of merchants lost everything in the blaze, which some say was linked to Wednesday’s cancelled anti-government protests.

On Tuesday merchants worked carefully to clear the area, being careful to avoid the thick puddles of foul black slime. Many said that businesses they had spent years building were totally destroyed by Monday’s fire.

“My future is doomed, all of my dependants’ futures (are) doomed,” Himoni Amanu, president of the Blantyre Vendors Association, said. “May I plead with lending institutions in Malawi to lend us some money? We are capable people who will pay back in time. Let them wear a human face and come to our rescue.”

The loss of his stall and his goods has cost Amanu nearly two million kwacha (roughly 12,500 dollars).

The tragedy that befell Amanu and other vendors at Blantyre Market comes amidst a tumultuous time for Malawi. In July demonstrations against government left 20 dead.

This fire was one of three on Monday, all of which occurred just days ahead of the cancelled anti- government protests originally scheduled for Wednesday. (After weeks of build-up, on Tuesday civil society leaders called off plans to take to the streets, citing security concerns, and instead asked all Malawians to remain at home for three days.)

Also on Monday, a second blaze destroyed seven stalls at Lilongwe’s Tsoka Market before it was brought under control. And at a separate location in Lilongwe, a third fire destroyed the home of Salim Bagus, the national organising secretary for the People’s Party (a member of the political opposition).

Blantyre Market was rife with theories on who was responsible for the fires. “We feel it is politically motivated,” one merchant said. Others could not help but speculate that the fires were directly tied to Wednesday’s planned protests.

Rafik Hajat, a prominent human rights activist and staunch critic of the government, characterised the development as “simply part of our ongoing saga.”

Hajat was alluding to the fact that the fires came barely a month after petrol bombings on his office and the home of Reverend MacDonald Sembereka, another prominent opponent of President Bingu wa Mutharika and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Those incidents remain under investigation. However, in an interview conducted earlier this month, Hajat argued that the growing list of suspected incidents of arson constituted “attacks on anybody possessing an alternative view who dares to express it.”

On the market fires, police have stated that the cause of the blaze in Lilongwe is yet to be identified.

Meanwhile, officials in Blantyre are toting a couple of different explanations for the fire here. Speaking on local radio on Sept. 19, Information Minister Patricia Kaliata claimed that the DPP government suspected enemies of the state started the fires in an attempt to derail Malawi’s progress.

However, police spokesperson Davie Chingwalu announced that a 12-year-old boy was in custody and had admitted that he and four friends had accidentally started the blaze.

Representatives for the president’s office and the Ministry of Information could not be reached for comment. However, Wakuda Kamanga, secretary general for the DPP, said that he was sceptical of a connection between the fires and Wednesday’s planned protests.

“Fires like this have happened before when there were no demonstrations around them,” he explained. “So connecting them to the demonstrations is something I would be slow to comment on. I would wait to see how investigations go.”

Some have suggested that the fires are part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Mutharika’s DPP. Ahead of possible unrest expected for Wednesday’s protests, they claimed government was using the fires as a pretext with which to bring Malawi’s commercial sector in line with government. Many believe that because of the loss of their goods, the merchants would look to government for assistance and could not possibly protest against government as a result. (Government has already pledged assistance to the merchants affected by the fires.)

Some say that the fires were an excuse to beef up state security while simultaneously pacifying an important segment of the population.

But Kamanga loudly questioned why anybody would blame his party for the fires. “The DPP-led government is actually the one that was at the forefront of seeing that free markets were constructed,” he argued. “It was the DPP that was at the forefront of seeing that vendors had a good environment in which to do business. How could we destroy thing in which we invested so much?”

Back among the remains of Blantyre Market, Aminu said that it would be difficult to believe that two market fires, which occurred on the same night in two different cities, would not have some connection between them. “What type of accident is this?” he asked. “This should be a deliberate act perpetrated by some evil people for their own interests.”

But the men and women who lost their livelihoods are angry and want somebody to be held responsible for what has happened. It has been a difficult year for Malawi’s economy, and many Malawians have been left struggling to feed their families. Fuel is often scarce, and power blackouts and water shortages are all but a fact of daily life.

In Blantyre Market on Tuesday, Raphael Nameta, the owner of an electronics stall, held back tears as he recounted his ruined business.

“I have lost fridges, cookers, plasma screens, laptops, video and digital cameras, and cell phones,” complained Nameta as he cleared piles of ash from where his shop previously stood. “It pains me very much.”

The sole earner for an extended family of 12, Nameta said it was now uncertain how his family would go on.

“I do not know how we will survive,” he cried. “I just do not know.”

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