Jabiru Muhammed stands beside a tree planted as part of the Great Green Wall project in his village in Jigawa State. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

By Promise Eze
GARABADU VILLAGE, Nigeria, May 12 2026 (IPS)

In 2021, Gadeja Shehu and about a hundred farmers in Garbadu village, Zamfara State in northwestern Nigeria, were invited by officials of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall to plant trees across a large stretch of land in their community.

Shehu remembers how fierce, dust-laden winds from the Sahara Desert often tore off the roof of his home and damaged his farmland. For him, taking part in the tree-planting exercise was a way to confront this challenge, especially after seeing the impact of similar interventions in other northern states such as Kaduna, Bauchi, and Jigawa, where desertification has degraded once fertile land.

The Sahara is advancing relentlessly across the Sahel, expanding by nearly 10 per cent since the 1920s. In Nigeria, around 35,000 hectares of land are lost each year as the desert continues to encroach southwards.

Trees planted in Garbadu village, Zamfura State. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

Desertification is causing land degradation in the Sahel. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

In Garbadu, a community of roughly 6,000 people who rely on farming, many had abandoned their fields, resulting in falling incomes and growing food shortages. However, the tree-planting initiative is beginning to reverse this trend. It is part of the Great Green Wall Initiative, an ambitious plan to create an 8,000-kilometre-long and 15-kilometre-wide belt of vegetation across Africa.

Launched by the African Union in 2007, the initiative spans 11 countries in the Sahel, including Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. It aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, generate 10 million jobs, and capture 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.

Nigeria’s section stretches roughly 1,500 kilometres, focusing on a 15-kilometre-wide belt of drought-resistant trees across vulnerable northern states.

Initially conceived as a plant barrier, the initiative has since expanded its goals. It now focuses on restoring degraded lands, halting desert expansion, improving soil and water conservation, supporting agriculture and livestock, creating green jobs, and helping communities adapt to climate change.

“The project has been really impactful here. Previously strong winds would rip off our roofs, but now it is no longer frequent. Before the plantation, the soil of the areas where the trees are now barely held water, but now it does have moisture and I’m happy the area is slowly turning green again,” said Shehu, who added that he continues to care for the trees.

Senegalese villagers working in a tree nursery forming part of the Great Green Wall. Photo: FAO/Benedicte Kurzen/NOOR

Family of Funds

The Great Green Wall has attracted significant funding over the years. The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key partner, has provided more than $1 billion in grants. These funds have helped leverage an additional $6 billion from governments, development partners, and multilateral institutions. The investments have strengthened landscapes, improved livelihoods, reduced poverty, and enhanced food and water security.

Jonky Tenou, Africa Regional Coordinator at the GEF, said the GEF has supported the Great Green Wall Initiative through strategic, programmatic investments over successive replenishment cycles, leveraging its family of funds to build momentum and coherence.

These efforts include the GEF 4 Strategic Investment Program for Sustainable Land Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SIP), the GEF 5 Sahel and West Africa Program (SAWAP), the GEF 6 Integrated Approach Pilot on Food Security (IAP Food Security), the GEF 7 Food, Land-Use and Restoration Impact Program (FOLUR), and, under GEF 8, the Transformational Approach to Large-Scale Investment in Support of the Implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative (TALSISI GGWI).

Tela Jubrin, a farmer, planted trees for the Great Green Wall in Jigawa State, Nigeria. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

Shafi’u Ladan, one of the farmers who participated in the tree planting project in Garbadu, Zamfara state. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

Sustainable Impact

The TALSISI GGWI, Tenou explained, is designed as a truly programmatic, multi-country platform that builds on lessons learned over the past decade.

“Compared to earlier approaches, TALSISI places stronger emphasis on regional coordination, deeper integration across GEF focal areas, and a clear focus on scalability, learning, and adaptive management. Crucially, the programme also gives greater attention to the institutional, financial, and security constraints that have previously limited effectiveness, helping to create the conditions needed for sustained and transformative impact at scale,” he said.

Observers have noted that the Great Green Wall Initiative has often been criticised for being highly ambitious but slow in delivery — a concern acknowledged by the GEF and its partners. They stress, however, that the programme is not designed as a quick fix, but rather as a long-term intervention aimed at delivering sustained impact over time.

“Progress on the Great Green Wall is assessed through a transformational, system-level lens rather than through isolated output metrics. In Nigeria and across the Sahel, GEF investments have contributed to advancing land degradation neutrality objectives by strengthening sustainable land management practices, restoring ecosystem functionality, and improving livelihoods in highly vulnerable areas,” said Tenou.

Emmanuel Diagbouga, a natural resources planning and management expert based in Burkina Faso, said the effectiveness of the Great Green Wall Initiative depends on a clear and operational multi-level governance framework that connects regional coordination, national planning, and community-level implementation.

Community Ownership Drives Tree Protection

Murtala Bado, the village head of Garbadu, said one sign of the Great Green Wall Initiative’s progress is the behavioural change among community members in a region where deforestation is a serious problem.

He told IPS that people are now aware of the benefits of trees and no longer cut them in the Great Green Wall Initiative project sites. Defaulters who are caught are reported to village leaders and security agencies for disciplinary measures.

“The project has even provided employment opportunities for people here. Farmers who are part of it receive allowances from the government. This project cannot work if there are no people to take care of it. And for people to actually show up and take interest means that it is going to be sustainable in the long term,” he said.

Rising Above the Challenges

The Great Green Wall Initiative has achieved only 30 per cent of its planned execution in participating countries. In Nigeria, progress is higher, at about 50 per cent, but insecurity has slowed the project and remains one of its greatest challenges.

Insurgency in northern states such as Zamfara, Katsina, and Borno, where the project is implemented, has been a major obstacle. For decades, insurgents have imposed taxes, killed villagers, and kidnapped for ransom, targeting anything linked to the state, including environmental projects.

“Insecurity has emerged as one of the most critical risks to the long-term sustainability of the Great Green Wall, particularly in countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Direct operational constraints include armed conflict and the presence of non-state armed groups, which restrict access to restoration sites, force the suspension of field activities, and expose environmental staff and local partners to security threats. Several restored areas have been abandoned due to population displacement and the lack of institutional presence,” said Diagbouga, and the impact is that the budget is diverted toward defence spending.

Tenou said that despite the challenges, the GEF and its partners have responded by adopting flexible and adaptive implementation approaches, including working through local institutions, adjusting geographic focus when necessary, and integrating conflict-sensitive design.

“These approaches help sustain progress while safeguarding communities and ensure that investments remain aligned with GEF’s broader objectives on durability, inclusion, and risk-informed programming,” he said.

Addressing the Funding Gap

Another major challenge facing the initiative is financing. In 2021, $19 billion was pledged at the One Planet Summit to support the Great Green Wall. However, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification estimates that at least $33 billion is needed to meet its targets, leaving a significant funding gap. Experts say that even where funds exist, their impact has yet to be fully felt.

“The Great Green Wall project has been observed to be hindered by a massive gap between pledged and disbursed funds, with only a fraction of promised international funding, often less than 10% in some areas, reaching local implementers. It has also been observed that severe bureaucratic delays, lack of local capacity to manage funds, and high regional insecurity are some of the reasons stalling progress,” said Yusuf Maina-Bukar, a former Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall, which has been implementing the initiative in Nigeria since 2015.

The GEF acknowledged that coordination across diverse national contexts remains a central challenge of the Great Green Wall initiative but noted that this is addressed through regional frameworks, shared results architectures, and close collaboration with regional institutions such as the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall, while maintaining flexibility to accommodate country-specific priorities.

Maina-Bukar told IPS that collaborating effectively to ensure that funding for the initiative translates into lasting impact requires shifting from a top-down, tree-planting approach to a community-driven, integrated landscape management model. This, he said, should be supported by harmonised, multi-level funding, such as that promoted by the UNCCD, which allows partners to measure, report, and verify implementation using a common framework.

He added that other measures include empowering local ownership, establishing transparent monitoring systems, fostering public-private partnerships, and using tools such as the Regreening Africa App to track and evaluate restoration efforts on the ground.

Despite the challenges, Diagbouga believes that “the Great Green Wall has the potential to become one of the most impactful climate resilience and land restoration initiatives globally.”

Great Green Wall: Achievements

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Burkina Faso

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Ethiopia

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Nigeria

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Niger

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Senegal

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Mali

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Chad

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Sudan

Credit: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Mauritania

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Eritrea

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Djibouti

Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi/IPS

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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Uniformed marines hand over UN and Turkmenistan flags to UN special representative on LLCDs Rabab Fatima and Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov during a flag lowering ceremony in Awaza. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
AWAZA, Turkmenistan , Sep 16 2025 (IPS)

The theater of diplomacy can be more revealing than the speeches. Under a scorching Caspian sun in Awaza, two marines lowered their flags with the precision of a ballet. The green silk of Turkmenistan, folded into a neat bundle before the UN’s blue-and-gold standard, fluttered briefly and vanished into waiting hands.

Delegates squinted in the glare. A security guard, drained after days of marathon negotiations, whispered, “We made it.” The applause that followed carried an implicit bet that geography would no longer condemn 32 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) to economic stagnation.

“This is not the end,” Rabab Fatima, the UN’s top envoy for LLDCs, told the assembled diplomats. “It is the beginning of a new chapter for the LLDCs. LLDCs may be landlocked, but they are not opportunity-locked.”

Her words capped four days of bargaining that produced the Awaza Political Declaration and a ten-year Programme of Action—promising structural economic transformation, regional integration, resilient infrastructure, climate adaptation, and the mobilization of financing partnerships. But whether these ambitions become asphalt, fiber-optic cable, and trade corridors depends on what happens next—starting with the LLDC Ministerial meeting on September 26, on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly.

“For the first time, we have a programme of action for the LLDCs, which includes a dedicated priority area on climate action and disaster resilience,” Fatima said. “As we all know, digital technology is reshaping how the world learns, trades, governs and innovates. The Awaza Programme of Action puts digital transformation at its core through investment in science, technology and affordable infrastructure for e-learning, e-governance and e-commerce.”

The geography tax

Being landlocked remains one of development’s oldest handicaps. More than 600 million people live in LLDCs. Their exports must cross at least one international border—and often several—before reaching a port. Transport costs can be twice as high as those of coastal economies, eroding profit margins and discouraging investment.

Dean Mulozi, a delegate from Zambia, put it bluntly: “It’s not just that we’re far from the sea. It’s that the world’s arteries don’t reach us easily. We are always waiting—for fuel, fiber-optic cable, containers, investment.”

The Declaration seeks to unblock those arteries: freer transit, harmonized customs, integrated transport corridors, and digital transformation—policies designed to cut border delays, lower costs, and attract investors. For countries such as Rwanda and Burundi, this is not rhetoric. Rwandan coffee growers lose profits as trucks crawl over narrow mountain roads toward Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port. Burundian tea producers navigate customs regimes that can turn a week’s delay into financial ruin.

Ambition Versus Reality

The Awaza Programme includes a proposed Infrastructure Investment Finance Facility, with a headline USD 10 billion commitment from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In theory, this could carve reliable corridors linking East Africa’s heartlands to the African Continental Free Trade Area. In practice, similar pledges have evaporated in the past when political will or money ran dry.

Five priorities dominate the blueprint: doubling manufacturing output and services exports; deepening trade integration; building transport links; embedding climate resilience; and mobilizing partnerships with development banks and private investors. Fatima called it “a blueprint for action, not just words,” but the distance between the two is long.

Rwanda and Burundi: Land-Linked Potential

Consider Rwanda, which has embraced digital innovation and ranks among Africa’s top reformers in business climate. Yet moving a container from Kigali to Dar es Salaam costs more than shipping it from Dar es Salaam to Shanghai. Blockchain pilots between Rwanda and Uganda have already reduced border clearance times by 80 percent, but scaling such reforms requires regional cooperation—the very essence of Awaza’s call for “land-linked” thinking.

Burundi faces even starker challenges. Political instability has disrupted transit agreements with neighbors. Poor road maintenance and limited rail options mean Burundian manufacturers pay a hidden geography tax on every exported item. A coordinated East African transport corridor—funded under Awaza’s financing facility—could halve transit times and cut spoilage for perishable goods.

Testing the Promise Divine

The first test comes on September 26, when ministers meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. They are expected to name national coordinators, align budgets, and press for LLDC concerns at COP30 and UNCTAD XVI. As Turkmenistan’s foreign minister, Rashid Meredov, warned, the network of coordinators will make or break implementation.

The Climate Conundrum

LLDCs are among the most exposed to climate shocks: droughts paralyze Sahelian farmers, cyclones sever southern Africa’s trade routes, and glacial melt threatens Central Asia’s water supplies. Rwanda and Burundi, reliant on rain-fed crops, can see a single flood wipe out a season’s earnings. Awaza’s plan for an LLDC Climate Negotiating Group aims to amplify their voice at global talks. Shared hydropower grids and renewable energy corridors, if built, could stabilize supply chains and keep factories running.

Digital Detours

Physical infrastructure is not the only hurdle. Maria Fernanda, a Bolivian tech entrepreneur, captured the digital struggle: “Sometimes it feels like the internet is slower here because it has to climb mountains like we do.” Fiber-optic networks and regional data hubs—central to the Awaza agenda—could level the digital playing field. Rwanda’s ambition to be East Africa’s data hub and Burundi’s expansion of mobile banking are previews of what “land-linked” economies could look like.

The Politics of Pipelines

Awaza was also about geopolitics. Turkmenistan used its role as host to burnish its neutrality and to tout hydrogen energy schemes, circular economy frameworks, and Caspian environmental projects. Landlocked development, it signaled, is not merely a technical problem but a diplomatic one. Transit states and inland economies must cooperate, not compete, over corridors and pipelines.

As one UN development official observed, “Land-linked flips the narrative: inland countries become bridges, not barriers. With AfCFTA, LLDCs can turn geography into a competitive edge—moving goods, services, and data faster and more affordably across Africa and beyond.”

Bringing Civil Society and Youth to the Table

One innovation at LLDC3 was the deliberate inclusion of youth and grassroots activists “not outside the halls, but right here in the meeting rooms.” This multistakeholder approach could ensure that local voices—such as Rwandan farmers’ cooperatives or Burundian women traders—shape the policies affecting them. But inclusion must be sustained beyond Awaza’s photo ops.

From Awaza to Action

The Ministerial meeting will likely spotlight three urgent tasks:

Operationalizing the Finance Facility—Without timely disbursements, promised corridors and digital highways will remain on paper.

Integrating LLDC Priorities into Global Agendas—Ensuring COP30 and UNCTAD XVI address LLDC vulnerabilities.

Ensuring Accountability and Transparency—Regular progress reports, perhaps modeled on climate COP stocktakes, could keep momentum alive.

Fatima’s closing words resonate: “Let us make the promise of ‘land-linked’ not only a phrase but a new way of life.”

A Fragile Opportunity

For Mazhar Amanbek, the Kazakh trucker whose apples rot at customs, and for Burkinabe grain shipper Mohamad Oumar, Awaza’s words must become tarmac and telecoms. For Rwandan cooperatives betting on premium coffee exports, or Burundian entrepreneurs seeking markets beyond their borders, the declaration could mean the difference between subsistence and prosperity.

The UN will be pressed to broker the deals and financing that can make LLDCs competitive. These inland nations are not short of resources or ambition—minerals, fertile soils, and human talent abound. The challenge is converting potential into prosperity.

As the blue UN flag was folded under the Caspian sky, the marines’ boots clicked on the promenade, and the heat bent the air into shimmering waves. Awaza’s delegates boarded planes carrying a slender sheaf of paper with an outsized ambition: to turn geography’s oldest curse into an engine of shared growth.

The world’s attention will now shift to New York, where LLDC ministers must prove Awaza was not a mirage. If they seize the moment, the next decade could see East African trucks rolling on new highways, fiber cables humming under deserts, and landlocked nations from Bolivia to Burundi trading on equal terms. If not, the folded flags of Awaza will join the archive of fine promises that melted under a scorching sun.

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UNDP Resident Representative in Ethiopia, Samuel Doe, addressing the media in Awaza, Turkmenistan, about the land-linked roadmap for Africa. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
AWAZA, Turkmenistan, Aug 7 2025 (IPS)

Once relegated to the periphery of Africa’s economic map due to their lack of coastline, the continent’s landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are now reframing their geographic constraints as gateways to opportunity.

At the Third United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries held this week in Awaza, Turkmenistan, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) launched a bold positioning paper calling for a narrative shift—from “landlocked” to “land-linked”.

“Land-linked flips the narrative: inland countries become bridges, not barriers,” said Samuel Doe, UNDP’s Resident Representative in Ethiopia. “With the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) can turn geography into a competitive edge—moving goods, services, and data faster and more affordably across Africa and beyond.”

The strategy, which aligns with the Awaza Programme of Action (2024–2034) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063, advocates for transformative investments in connectivity, innovation, regional integration, and climate resilience—framing LLDCs as essential players in Africa’s socio-economic revival.

Turning Isolation into Centrality

Historically hampered by their remoteness from ports, Africa’s 16 LLDCs face high transportation costs, low trade volumes, and heavy reliance on primary commodity exports. However, that narrative is quickly evolving.

The UNDP report highlights key success stories:

• Rwanda’s Kigali Logistics Platform now acts as a regional trade hub, linking inland transport to ports in Kenya and Tanzania.
• Uganda’s Standard Gauge Railway and revamped Malaba–Kampala corridor are repositioning the country as East Africa’s inland logistics centre.
• Ethiopia, long without direct access to the sea, has capitalised on its modern air transport system and the Ethio-Djibouti Railway to cut freight times from 72 to just 12 hours.

“As we gather here in Awaza, we stand at a pivotal moment,” said Doe. “Africa’s LLDCs are becoming dynamic land-linked economies at the heart of the continent’s socio-economic resurgence.”

Between 2013 and 2024, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe led LLDC export performance with average annual exports of USD 9.3 billion, USD 6.4 billion, and USD 4.5 billion, respectively. Though LLDCs contribute only 1.1% to global trade, they are increasingly vital to Africa’s regional value chains, supplying copper, gold, coffee, sugar, and textiles across the continent.

Digital Leapfrogging and Innovation

Technology is helping LLDCs leapfrog logistical bottlenecks. The report notes that digital services, fintech, and e-commerce are boosting access to markets, especially for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

“Innovation is a key enabler of the land-linked transformation we are embarking on,” said Doe.

Countries like Rwanda have piloted blockchain systems to streamline customs and reduce border clearance times by up to 80 percent. In Ethiopia, blockchain is helping producers meet EU agricultural export standards, while Uganda is experimenting with AI-driven crop forecasting.

Still, digital gaps remain. Internet penetration in African LLDCs hovers at 20 percent, but UNDP sees this as “a growth opportunity” rather than a constraint.

Powering Trade Through Energy and Infrastructure

Energy access remains another stumbling block. In many LLDCs, especially in the Sahel, electricity coverage is under 20 percent. Yet with vast renewable potential—especially solar and hydro—countries are beginning to tap into cross-border energy markets.

Projects like the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the North Core Transmission Line, and the Southern African Power Pool are expected to transform regional energy trade, powering industries and reducing export costs.

“Many LLDCs are rich in solar and hydro resources,” noted Doe. “We must harness this to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and drive value-added exports.”

Physical connectivity is also central. While transport costs remain higher than in coastal states, they are being offset by strategic investments like intermodal corridors, dry ports, and rail-air hubs. These are designed not only to move goods but also to facilitate the integration of LLDCs into Global Value Chains (GVCs).

Opening Markets, Expanding Horizons

Perhaps the most significant development for Africa’s LLDCs is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The trade pact, which covers a market of 1.3 billion people, offers reduced tariffs and harmonised trade rules.

The UNDP paper projects a 10 percent rise in exports for countries like Rwanda by 2035, thanks to AfCFTA-driven investments in agro-processing, manufacturing, and green industries.

LLDCs such as Eswatini, Lesotho, Niger, and Malawi are already seeing over 30 percent of exports going to other African countries, a sign of deepening regional integration. Eswatini, in particular, sends 88% of its exports within the continent.

Climate Resilience as Economic Imperative

Amid this economic momentum, climate change remains a serious threat. From worsening droughts in Chad to flooding in Burkina Faso, African LLDCs are disproportionately affected.

The report urges countries to mainstream climate resilience into trade systems and infrastructure. This includes climate-proofed transport corridors, solar-powered cold chains, and sustainable irrigation.

“To unlock their full potential, we must mobilise diverse financing, shift from low-value sectors, and build climate-smart infrastructure,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, UNDP Regional Director for Africa.

To sustain momentum, the UNDP calls for the creation of an African LLDC Platform under the African Union. This would monitor progress, facilitate cross-country learning, and promote South-South cooperation, especially in infrastructure and digital trade.

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Submissions from Papua New Guinea laid bear the country's diversity and heightened vulnerability to climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
THE HAGUE & NAIROBI, Dec 6 2024 (IPS)

Kenya agrees with many UN member states testifying before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the law of international responsibility should hold countries legally responsible for major damage to the global climate system.

“Responsible states must cease wrongful acts or remedy any omissions harmful to the climate system as well as make reparations for all damage caused by their breach. Such reparation may take the form of compensation for loss and damage. Of course, the court need not definitively pronounce on compensation in the context of historical omissions,” said Phoebe Okowa, a Kenyan lawyer and Professor of Public International Law.

“However, this is a precious opportunity to integrate the corpus juris (body of law) of climate change treaty law and customary international law, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, in a way that will assist states in establishing workable frameworks for compensation.”

Okowa was speaking on behalf of Kenya at the ICJ, which is one of 98 countries and 12 organizations participating in ongoing public hearings, contributing to the UN top court’s advisory opinion on the obligation of states to prevent climate change and ensure the protection of the environment for present and future generations.

The ongoing landmark climate change case dates to September 2021, when the Pacific Island of Vanuatu announced its intention to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ. Vanuatu supported the efforts of a youth group—the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change—who were concerned about the vulnerability of small island developing states in the region to climate change.

Vanuatu then lobbied other countries to support this initiative and formed the core group of UN member states to take the initiative forward to the General Assembly.

In pursuit of this advisory, Ambassador Halima Mucheke on behalf of Kenya said the court “has had numerous participants stress the existential nature of the threat caused by climate change. In response, this court must bring clarity to the law, informed by the perspectives of developing states, particularly those in Africa, where temperatures are rising the fastest.”

“We believe that a clarification of the existing legal obligations will provide much-needed guidance to states, as well as the impetus for the next phase of political negotiations. Kenya specifically invites the court to draw on equitable principles reflected in climate change treaties, such as the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities,” she said.

Fred Sarufa, Permanent Representative of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea to the UN, said in the country’s nearly 50 years of nationhood, this was their first appearance before ICJ because climate change can no longer be ignored. He then proceeded to illustrate the significant issues at stake.

Prof. Phoebe Okowa invited the court to integrate the corpus juris of climate change treaty law towards a workable framework for compensation. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“Papua New Guinea is home to and the custodian of a diverse geophysical and geomorphic landscape, including 20,197 kilometres of coastline, 40,000 square kilometres of coral reefs, one of the highest known levels of marine biological diversity in the world, around 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity in less than 1 percent of the world’s total land area, and the world’s third largest expanse of pristine tropical rainforest, covering 77.8 percent of our total land area,” Sarufa told the court.

Stressing that Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity is directly linked to its unsurpassed linguistic diversity, with over 850 spoken languages, the most in the world. Pila Niningi, the Minister for Justice and Attorney General of Papua New Guinea, discussed the numerous ways that climate change is wreaking havoc.

These include “forcing people to abandon their ancestral lands and territories, altered landscapes and seascapes, disrupted livelihoods, and led to civil unrest among traditional landowners, fighting over increasingly limited land and space. It has also endangered food crops, water and security, and the collapse of traditional and cultural practices and indigenous systems of governance,” Niningi said.

Rising seas have forced the islanders from northeast Bougainville and the people of Veraibari in the Gulf province of Papua New Guinea to abandon their ancestral lands because it engulfed their homes and schools and inundated what remains of the arable land.

This led Papua New Guinea to join other Pacific nations in adopting, within the framework of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which affirms, among others, that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security, and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific.

On her part, Kenya invited the court to confirm that significant financial assistance and technology transfer are binding legal obligations and not matters of discretion.

Professor Dr. Makane Moïse Mbengue from the African Union told the Court the matter on hand was about climate justice, as “climate change is a phenomenon that has not been caused by all states equally, and nor will all states suffer its effects equally.”

He emphasized that science serves as the cornerstone of climate justice for states, peoples, and individuals affected by climate change, underscoring the necessity of protecting the climate system and demanding responsibility from states that have caused harm to it. In this context, he said the African Union welcomes the court’s engagement with experts from the IPCC prior to the commencement of the hearings.

“The African Union notes efforts of certain states, albeit a minority, to negate science and trivialize the ordinary meaning of the terms of the request (for an advisory opinion). Their repeated calls for undue caution now, and in their written submissions, are transparent attempts to dilute the very object of the present proceedings. The African Union respectfully urges the court to dismiss these unfounded arguments,” he observed.

Further inviting the court to “reject the flawed argument, which was repeated again this week, that the relevant obligations are reduced solely to the so-called specialists of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. The same arguments were tried, tested, and defeated before they lost. Nonetheless, they should find no fertile ground before the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, whose advisory opinions have consistently contributed to maintaining the systemic coherence of the international legal system.”

Mbengue said that if the court didn’t say who was responsible, it would be the same as a situation of non-liquet, which means there is no law that applies, and states would be free to keep damaging the climate system. Such an outcome could hardly have been the intention of the General Assembly in seeking this advisory opinion.”

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Excerpt:

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.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

A partnership between United Nations and African Union (AU) agencies will help African economies insure themselves against the droughts and other extreme weather events that plague the continent, organisers say.

The AU’s African Risk Capacity (ARC) and the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) stuck a deal in Bonn, Germany, this week to raise money for the safeguard scheme and advance policies that help countries adapt to weather threats.

Organisers say that 45 million people across Africa cannot put enough food on their tables, especially in the south and east of the continent, where punishing dry spells have cut harvest yields and pushed up prices of staples.

“Reducing the impacts of drought and other natural disasters by helping member states improve climate resilience through innovative mitigation and risk financing instruments are key to our mandate,” Mohamed Beavogui, ARC’s director general, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“The agreement signed today with UNCCD will create a functional synergy in our efforts to help countries better understand their risk profiles, improve knowledge and strengthen capacities for climate adaptation and food security.” 

Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, described a new financial vehicle called the eXtreme Climate Facility (XCF) that would raise money for AU members to access to alleviate their parched agricultural sectors.

The XCF will be “an important tool to help African countries to cope effectively with the impacts of drought”, said Thiaw, formerly a Mauritanian official and deputy chief of the U.N. Environment Programme.

Drought-ravaged countries can apply to the fund for help adapting to drought and other weather calamities, organisers said. Payouts will be corruption-proof and provided as “climate change catastrophe bonds”.

“The message is clear. We will see an increasing number of droughts with unprecedented severity, which are exacerbated by climate change. No country or region, rich or poor, is immune to the vagaries of drought,” said Thiaw.

“The UNCCD is helping 35 of Africa’s 57 countries to create the mechanisms they need to take early action to avert drought disasters. Today, Africa is ramping up pre-emptive actions as a unified front against future drought and climate-induced disasters in the region.”

The inking of an agreement between the two agencies came amid a week of growing concerns over harsh dry spells across Africa that are reducing harvests, killing wildlife and worsening security for millions of people.

On Wednesday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a study group, released a report saying that three decades of conflict in Somalia — together with crippling droughts and flooding — were strengthening the hands of militants and weakening the government’s power. 

In the Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe, at least 55 elephants have died from starvation since September, officials said on Monday. The locations of their carcasses — near water holes — suggested they had traveled long distances to drink.

On October 15, aid agency Concern Worldwide, which co-compiles the Global Hunger Index, said hunger levels in the turbulent Central African Republic were “extremely alarming”, while levels in Chad, Madagascar, and Zambia were “alarming”.

“Today marks the beginning of a unified front against drought and climate-induced disasters in the African region,” Thiaw said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Our key aims are to support the establishment and implementation of national drought plans and mobilise innovative financial instruments to better mitigate the risks of extreme climate situations.”

According to the UNCCD, droughts already bad and they are getting worse. By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two-thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”, the UNCCD says. 

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than other types of disasters, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

But there is hope. By managing water sources, forests, livestock and farming, soil erosion can be reduced and degraded land can be revived, a process that can also help tackle climate change. 

View of the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: UN Photo/Antonio Fiorente.

By Carine Kaneza Nantulya
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 18 2019 (IPS)

On June 6, the African Union (AU) suspended Sudan from the 55-member group with “immediate effect.” The move came in response to a deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters in Khartoum, in which government forces, led by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), tore through a sit-in in the capital killing at least 108 people, and wounding hundreds. The AU’s decisive action has been widely applauded, but suspending Sudan is not enough.

The crackdown came amid stalled negotiations between the Transitional Military Council  (TMC) and opposition groups over formation of a civilian-led government following the April 11 ousting of former president Omar al-Bashir.

The AU had earlier called for a swift transition to civilian rule and threatened the TMC with sanctions if it fails to hand power to a civilian-led government.

To avoid further deterioration of the Sudan crisis, and to mark a shift from the Burundi precedent, the AU should take further measures beyond the suspension of Sudan, including speedily setting up of a commission of inquiry into human rights violations against protesters by government security forces under the control of the military council

These statements underscore the AU’s role in promoting democratic transitions, citizens’ rights to freedom of expression, political participation, and other associated rights. The Transitional Military Council’s blatant disregard of the AU’s initial calls, and of Sudan’s human rights obligations, represent a direct challenge to the authority and influence of the regional body as a critical platform for promoting peace, security and human rights on the continent. It is thus imperative for the AU and its agencies to take further steps to hold the leadership of the TMC accountable.

Sudan, a  signatory to the African Union charter since 1956, is also a party to important regional human rights instruments — notably the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which guarantees the right to peaceful protest, among other things.

On June 7, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which monitors compliance with the human rights charter’s provisions, also called for prompt investigations into the attacks on protesters and urged redress for victims and their families.

But the crisis in Sudan is a stark reminder that the road to full respect for human rights requires much more than agreeing to uphold human rights standards.

The AU has struggled in the recent past to find solutions to human rights situations in member countries and to consistently enforce sanctions. In just one example, In 2015, the AU Peace and Security Council authorized the deployment of a 5,000-strong African Prevention and Protection Mission in Burundi to protect civilians.

The move came after an attack on military installations around the capital, Bujumbura, led security forces to kill scores of civilians. But the Assembly of Heads of State ignored the authorization and later overturned it, leaving the crisis in Burundi unresolved.

To avoid further deterioration of the Sudan crisis, and to mark a shift from the Burundi precedent, the AU should take further measures beyond the suspension of Sudan, including  speedily setting up of a commission of inquiry into human rights violations against protesters by government security forces under the control of the military council.

This could be done in collaboration with the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, as provided by Article 19 of the AU Protocol on the Peace and Security Council. It should also consider additional measures such as targeted sanctions against leaders of the military council  implicated in the attacks under Articles 23 and 30 of the Constitutive Act of the African Union.

The  African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the union’s flagship rights body, has previously carried out fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry in similar situations. Its decisions on these situations have built important principles that could be applied to Sudan.

As the search for a negotiated settlement continues in Sudan, the AU should make accountability for crimes and human rights violations, which underpin the crisis, front and center of its intervention. This would be an important signal of the AU’s increasing commitment to justice and accountability for violations of its norms and values.

Excerpt:

Rita Francke and another fisherwoman at the jetty, in front of the old crayfish factory at Witsands, South Africa. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

By Mahawa Kaba Wheeler
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 21 2018 (IPS)

The blue economy has quite rightly been described as the ‘New Frontier of the African Renaissance’. Its potential for a continent on which almost two thirds of its states have a coastline, whose trade is 90 percent sea-borne and whose lakes constitute the largest proportion of surface freshwater in the world, is enormous.

Indeed, its potential runs into the many trillions of dollars and promises to combine enormous economic growth with environmental conservation, if stewarded properly.

The Africa Union’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS 2050) provides a robust roadmap to fully exploit the potential of its oceans and seas and the first Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi next week offers African nations the opportunity to solidify this continental framework.

But one thing we can say with certainty now is that the full potential of Africa’s blue economy can only be reached if it is truly inclusive, allowing all people in society to reap the dividends on offer from the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers of the continent.

Women must be at the heart of this inclusivity. Gender equality and women’s empowerment is at the heart of all African Union (AU) policies and actions and the blue economy is fertile ground to further women’s role in this transformative field.

The AU at its 31st Ordinary Summit in Nouakchott adopted its first Continental Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (2017-2027) to accelerate translate Agenda 2063 into reality for the millions of women and girls across the continent.

The first pillar of this strategy is aimed at achieving economic autonomy for women through maximising outcomes and opportunities for them. The blue economy is one such target.

Women have not always been able to fully enjoy the rewards of the growth in Africa’s economies and the roles they have played in helping expand sectors across the continent are gaining greater recognition.

Mahawa Kaba Wheeler, Director for the Women, Gender and Development Directorate, at the African Union Commission, says that while the marine industry in Africa is male dominated, women are working collaboratively with men to find a voice within it. Courtesy: Mahawa Kaba Wheeler

The AU is committed to ensuring this is not the case with the blue economy and is advocating for women to be more involved in marine industries across Africa. The AU currently works with women’s networks in this field, including among others Women in Maritime Africa, Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association and Women in the Maritime Sector in Eastern and Southern Africa, and welcomes new initiatives.

As delegates will hear at the Nairobi conference, we are pushing several initiatives for women in the blue economy, for instance to help them become sea cadets, lead port operations, increase the number of women in the industry, become captains of ships, celebrate their accomplishments and leaders in the industry, to expand their roles in shipping, fishing and other sectors of the marine industry.

We want to make sure that the blue economy is an inclusive one for women. Agenda 2063 calls for inclusive economic growth and we want to make sure that women are included in that growth and within the blue economy.

At present, the marine industry in Africa is male dominated, but women are working collaboratively with men to find a voice within it. This conference will ensure women’s voices are more fully heard.

This is especially important now as we have seen women deciding to come together to play their part in the blue economy and take their dividend from it – across Africa they are joining groups to promote and support the role played, and which could yet be played, in the marine industry.

The AU welcomes and fully supports these and any similar activities as they can only be good for women, for the promotion of inclusivity, and the blue economy as a whole.

But it must not stop there.

The Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi offers an opportunity for all blue economy stakeholders, in Africa and from other countries, to not only hear about the key role women can play in the blue economy, but help suggest and support ways and means to expand those roles and to ensure that women are truly and fully included in Africa’s blue economy and able to reap its rewards. Several events will be held to promote women’s role in the blue economy and are anticipated to help leaders rally behind women’s initiatives in the industry.

Together, heads of state, ministers, policymakers, civil society groups and other stakeholders must come together to honour commitments we have all made to inclusivity in the blue economy and guarantee that women are not left behind as Africa’s ‘New Frontier’ is opened up. We must therefore create bold and transformative initiatives to accelerate women’s economic empowerment and leadership in this field.

It must also not be forgotten that this is not just about women’s roles in developing the potential of the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers around the world. It goes well beyond this.

By showing that women can succeed and thrive as entrepreneurs and independent active agents of change and growth in the blue economy, we can inspire women in all other sectors of society. If they can succeed in one economy, why not in another? If a woman can rise to the top in a sector of the marine industry, she can rise to the top in, for example, the finance or retail industry, to name just two.

The AU helps give women a voice in all industries, especially those which are non-traditional or male-dominated, and in Nairobi, we want to help them find their voice in the blue economy.

We say “women can sail Africa to the seas” and we believe the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference will give us the chance to succeed.

Excerpt:

Evidence shows that when women are empowered, farms are more productive, natural resources are better managed, nutrition is improved, and livelihoods are more secure. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2018 (IPS)

Despite women being key figures in agriculture and food security, gender inequality is holding back progress towards ending hunger, poverty, and creating sustainable food systems. 

During a high-level event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the African Union (AU) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) reviewed the persistent gender gaps in agri-food systems in Africa and highlighted the need for urgent action. “It is therefore economically rewarding to invest in women’s education and economic empowerment since women often use a large portion of their income on children and family welfare.” -- AU commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Josefa Leonel Correa Sacko.

“There is a strong momentum to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in agri-food systems because women constitute the majority of agricultural labour,” said AU commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Josefa Leonel Correa Sacko.

However, despite women’s crucial role in such systems, there are persistent gender gaps.

“We need to better recognise and harness the fundamental contribution of women to food security and nutrition. For that, we must close persisting gender gaps in agriculture in Africa,” said FAO’s Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva.

“Evidence shows that when women are empowered, farms are more productive, natural resources are better managed, nutrition is improved, and livelihoods are more secure,” he added.

While women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour, approximately 32 percent of women own agricultural lands across 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through either joint, sole ownership, or both.

Only 13 percent of women, compared to 40 percent of men, have sole ownership on all or part of the land they own, according to the Regional Outlook on Gender and Agrifood Systems, a joint report by the FAO and AU that was presented during the event.

In 2016, thousands of rural women across Africa gathered at Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro to protest and demand the right to land and natural resources.

Some even climbed to the peak of Africa’s highest mountain, showcasing their determination for change.

Even when women are able to own their own land, many still lack access to productive resources and technologies such as fertiliser, agricultural input, mechanical equipment, and finance.

This poses numerous challenges along the food value chain, including food loss.

Globally, approximately one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted. Food loss and waste is a major contributor to climate change and in Sub-Saharan Africa, the economic cost of such losses amount up to USD4 billion every year, FAO found.

Closing productivity gaps could increase food production and consumption by up to 10 percent and reduce poverty by up to 13 percent.

While women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour, approximately 32 percent of women own agricultural lands across 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through either joint, sole ownership, or both. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The FAO-AU assessment also estimated that agricultural output could more than triple if farmers had access to the finance needed to expand quality and quantity of their produce.

Panellists noted that addressing the agricultural gender gaps in Africa could additionally boost food security and nutrition in the region.

Globally, hunger is on the rise and it is worsening in most parts of Africa. Out of 821 million hungry people in the world in 2017, over 250 million are in Africa.

Many African nations are also seeing a rapid rise in obesity, which could soon become the continent’s biggest public health crisis.

“It is therefore economically rewarding to invest in women’s education and economic empowerment since women often use a large portion of their income on children and family welfare,” Sacko said.

Graziano da Silva noted that among the key issues is the lack of women in governance systems and decision-making processes. 

Between five and 30 percent of field officers from ministries and rural institutions are women while only 12 to 20 percent of staff in ministries of agriculture are female.

This coincides with the lack of gender targeting and analysis mechanisms, resulting in services that target male-dominated sectors.

If such trends continue, Africa will not be close to achieving many of the ambitious development goals including the Malabo Declaration, which aims to achieve inclusive growth, sustainable agriculture, and improved livelihoods.

There has been some positive trends as many African countries have started to recognise the importance of putting women at the heart of the transformation of rural food systems.

Botswana’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme provides grants to women, enabling them to start their own enterprises and advance their economic well-being.

First Lady of Botswana Neo Jane Massi attended the high-level event and stressed the “importance of inclusive growth in our national development agendas in order to ensure that no one is left behind.”

Similarly, the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Women, implemented by various U.N. agencies including FAO and U.N. Women, has provided more than 40,000 women with training on improved agricultural technologies and increased access to financial services and markets.

While women’s participation in decision making has increased from 17 to 30 percent, Graziano da Silva stressed the need for better and more balanced representation of women at all levels.

Presenting the recommendations from the AU-FAO outlook report, Sacko called for an “enabling environment,” reinforcement of accountability mechanisms for gender equality and women’s empowerment, and a “gender data revolution” to better inform gender-sensitive policies and programs.

“Let us be ambitious, and let us all put our wings together,” Massi concluded.

Adolf Ozor, a tomato farmer in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, is struggling to make ends meet after import surges. Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS

By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS, Nov 27 2017 (IPS)

In the run-up to the fifth EU-Africa summit in Côte d’Ivoire, the future of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between Europe and its former colonies looks bleaker than ever. While most of Europe’s trade partners around the world keep refusing to sign the deals, the African Union’s Commissioner for Trade will most likely announce a moratorium on all EPAs.

Ever since independence, Europe’s former colonies have enjoyed preferential (duty-free) access to the European market. In turn they didn’t need to open their own markets. When in 2000 the World Trade Organization deemed this one-sided market opening unlawful, Europe and 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) started negotiating reciprocal trade deals."Trade between neighbors is now more difficult than trade with the EU. We are creating borders within Africa." --Gunther Nooke

The resulting deals, coined Economic Partnership Agreements or EPAs, are not pure free trade deals. Under the agreements, ACP countries are allowed to keep protecting 20 percent of their products – mostly agricultural products – with import tariffs. The other 80 percent will be liberalized gradually over the course of 20 years after the signing and ratification of the deal. The deals were negotiated between the European Commission and seven regions of several countries engaged in economic integration processes.

Stalling the implementation

Seventeen years later only two of the seven negotiated deals have been signed, ratified and implemented, one with the South African Development Community (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) and one with the Caribbean. The EPA with West Africa is currently blocked by Nigeria, Gambia and Mauritania who refuse to sign, while in the East African region, last year Tanzania sued Kenya for signing while Uganda wants to address more concerns – President Museveni travelled to Brussels on a three-day work visit at the end of September for talks.

Almost all ACP countries fear the possible negative impact of the EPAs on their economies and therefore stall its implementation. “They already had the right to export to Europe duty-free,” said Joyce Naar, a lawyer and activist with the ACP Civil Society Forum. “Now they are expected to open up their markets to Europe without getting anything back.”

Especially in Africa, governments and analysts fear an encore of the tomato and chicken scenario. In Ghana, for instance, after IMF and World Bank-enforced tariff reductions, import surges caused the market share for domestic chicken to fall from 100 percent to a mere three percent today in less than three decades. The chicken industry, once the second largest employer in the country, has now been taken over by competing imports from Canada, Brazil, Europe and China.

As for tomatoes, after lowering tariffs Ghana became the second largest importer of tomatoes in the world and according to FAO data, market share for domestic produce dwindled from 92 to 57 percent in only five years.

Industrialization at risk

Aside from agricultural produce, NGOs also fear that entire industrialization of the continent is at risk. At a recent international trade union conference on the issue of EPAs in Togo, this point was repeatedly made. “To industrialize, we need to protect and develop the internal market until we’re ready for international competition, as has been demonstrated by China,” says Georgios Altintzis of he International Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

At the conference, Mariama Williams, senior program officer at the South Center in Geneva, also stressed that increased competition would lead to increasing feminization of work.

“Women do the worst jobs in the worst conditions,” she stated at the conference. According to Williams, EPAs will have the greatest impact on labour-intensive industries where women are disproportionately employed. An increase of competition would raise the pressure on these sectors while the internal standards and labour conditions remain unchanged.

“Diabolic” agreements or success story?

“There has always been a diabolic whiff about EPAs,” former EPA chief negotiator Sandra Gallina said a few weeks ago at a meeting of trade ministers from all ACP countries in Brussels. “There is nothing diabolic about them, they were just extremely badly communicated. For the last five years I have been fighting a misinformation campaign.”

On the first day of the Brussels meeting, the European Commission published numbers on its website meant to illustrate the benefits of EPAs. In 2012 an agreement entered into force between Madagascar and the EU. By 2016, exports to the EU had risen by 65 percent. The same for South Africa, which signed an agreement one year ago. The last year, exports of processed fish increased by 16 percent and flowers by 20 percent.

According to Marc Maes, trade policy officer at the Flemish North South Movement 11.11.11, the figures should be taken with a grain of salt. “Madagascar is recovering from a period of total chaos,” he said. “Do these numbers show the influence of the EPA or mere economic recovery? In the case of South Africa, the mentioned period consists of just one year. It’s a bit premature to talk about a steady, reliable impact.”

Migration crisis

The criticism isn’t limited to the content of the agreements. The way in which the European Commission concludes them is also widely condemned. As agreements with entire regions are stalled, the Commission now makes agreements with individual states. Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire signed and ratified such interim EPAs a year ago, fearing they would lose preferential access to the European market.

“That’s crazy,” says Gunther Nooke, personal representative in Africa of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and one of the staunchest critics of the EPAs. “Trade between neighbors is now more difficult than trade with the EU. We are creating borders within Africa. ”

According to Nooke, in the midst of a migration crisis the only things that benefits Europe and Africa is more employment in Africa. “This can only be done by protecting the entire African market with the creation of an African Customs Union led by the African Union. African products can be made here and be freely traded across the continent without having to compete with European goods. But now, because of differences in opinion about EPAs, African countries aren’t making any progress in forming a customs union.”

Moratorium

According to Merkel’s envoy, the African Union Commissioner for Trade has already announced that he will call for a moratorium on all EPAs. “And we must respect that,” says the advisor.

Germany is in the perfect position to make its opinion be heard. The country delivers the greatest contribution to the European Development Budget: just over 6.2 billion euros in the period 2014-2020, accounting for 20.6 percent of the total. It is doubtful whether Berlin and Brussels will be able to voice their opinions in unison at the Nov. 28-29 EU-Africa Summit in Abidjan.

Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes Implementation and Coordination, in Nairobi, Kenya during the Second Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance Forum. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
NAIROBI, Oct 14 2016 (IPS)

Two years ago at the 31st African Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, heads of state and government endorsed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) programme on agriculture and climate change with the bold vision of at least 25 million smallholder households practicing Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) by 2025.

This means sustainable food systems and broad-based social and environmental resilience from the household level up. CSA also supports the aspirations and goals in Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the AU Malabo Declaration as well as the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and COP21 Paris climate agreement.

As a result of farmers embracing Climate-Smart Agriculture, some fields are still green and alive even as drought rages in the south of Madagascar. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

IPS correspondent Charles Mkoka caught up with Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes Implementation and Coordination, at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya during the Second Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance Forum this week to shade more light on some of the initiatives her institution is implementing. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What does the CSA Alliance bring to agriculture and rural development on the African continent?

A: As you know, 2025 is the African Union decision to reach 25 million farmers that are practicing CSA on the continent in order that agriculture remains relevant to the changing weather and climate patterns.  NEPAD being the technical arm, it is part of our responsibility to translate all the decisions into practical actions on the ground. In that respect we have developed partnership and programmes that are targeted to bring support to farmers.

Q: NEPAD cannot do this mammoth task alone considering its footprint is invisible in some states. In terms of synergy, who are you working with on the ground?

A: In terms of partnership we entered in the NEPAD/International Non Governmental (INGOs) Alliance. This is an alliance between NEPAD and five INGO’s working through communities and community-based groups on the ground. As NEPAD, we cannot be present in every country but we realise the role of subsidiary organisations to work with others who have the first engagement with farmers. The alliance can structure their programmes into providing concentrated support to the farmers. This support would either be providing new technologies of farming, inputs that farmers need or availability of credit. But also to adopt practices that help them cope with weather patterns or adapt to innovations that reduce greenhouse gases.

The second area of partnership is the CSA forum. You have seen the last two days that there is a lot of knowledge but this knowledge is sitting on computers. It is not shared for others to utilize. This platform creates space to bring all those working on agriculture, climate change and climate smart agriculture to share experience and knowledge generated through research.

Q: Can you tell our readers what other programmes you’re involved in at the secretariat level as far as issues of building climate change resilience and rural development are concerned across the continent?

A: Resilience-building among farmers is one target coming out of the Malabo Declaration. The declaration reaffirmed the continent’s resolve towards ensuring, through deliberate and targeted public support, that all segments of our populations, particularly women, the youth, and other disadvantaged sectors of our societies, must participate and directly benefit from the growth and transformation opportunities to improve their lives and livelihoods.

So we are working with member states to review the Agricultural Investment Plans, so that issues of climate change can be mainstreamed in their lives. It is clear that we are not going to go far if we don’t ensure that climate change issues are mainstreamed in national development and sectoral policies.

Zambia, for instance, was an early adopter of conservation agriculture, which is an example of climate smart agriculture. According to reports, farmers – particularly women – appreciated the increase in yields as a result of CSA. Yields have translated into increased income, which has translated into improved social economic conditions for their families.

Peter Mcharo’s two children digging their father’s maize field in Kibaigwa village, Morogoro Region, some 350km from Dar es Salaam. Mcharo has benefitted greatly from conservation agriculture techniques. Credit: Orton Kiishweko/IPS

Q: Despite the experimentally proven results in the case of Zambia as you have stated, why is there low uptake of CSA across the continent?

A: The programmes we have try to address those obstacles. These include land ownership, particularly for smallholder farmers, access to finance, access to technologies to take up CSA techniques are some of the challenges.

So through our Gender Climate Change Agriculture Support Programme we hope to reach a significant number of households and women farmers to contribute to the target.  Furthermore, through our Climate Fund programme, we hope to continue to finance grassroots initiatives for the 2025 target. It is our belief that government themselves will put in place investments that will support farmers in their countries to ensure they take on board interventions on CSA so they withstand and cushion shocks brought  about by climate variability.

Q: More women are involved in food production on the continent. However, data shows that in terms of the policy framework embracing gender dimension little is being done by countries to provide an enabling environment for women participation especially when it comes to land ownership. What is your take on this?

A: I have always said that I think it will always be smart for any government to invest in women and make their condition better.

Even in the difficult conditions that they work, women contribute 80 percent of the food we consume in our households on the continent. True that they use these resources to support their families so that brings social cohesion in our communities and countries.

But also, we want to invest in women in terms of supporting their economic empowerment. They will also increase their political participation and empowerment. It is really important that countries give particular attention to policies that favour women, such as policies that make it easier to form women cooperatives. In some countries to register a women’s cooperative they have to pay more money than if it was a men’s cooperative. Why?

Why that kind of discrimination and inequality? The platform has to be equal for both men and women. So we need to develop policies that cut across the board for all stakeholders.

The issue of land is a big question and challenge. We can learn from other countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia. These countries have developed policies that allow for co-ownership of land, so that a woman who is married in a village will not be chased away not to farm when the husband dies, for instance.

Q: In your speech, you hinted at the need to utilise local indigenous knowledge in the face of climate change, together with scientific-backed data. Why is this crucial in resilience-building?

A: We tend to forget what we have been doing over the years and get good results from that. Much as it is important to embrace new knowledge from science, I think we have also good knowledge from what our ancestors have been doing over the years. Such kind of knowledge we should document and replicate.

We should believe that our farmers have knowledge. They have ideas that can be used to cope with climate change. In Cameroon, for instance, fishermen when I visited them described what they had noticed over the years in their area. They explained about the changes in the water level, changes in the seasonal patterns. As such we need to engage with farmers. They have rich information and knowledge that can help us as technocrats to make informed decisions as well.

Excerpt:

Olabisi Dare, Head of Humanitarian Affairs, Refugees, and Displaced Persons Division at the AU Commission.

By Baher Kamal
ISTANBUL, Turkey , May 22 2016 (IPS)

The African Union (AU) representing 54 countries and home to 1,2 billion inhabitants, will be in Istanbul to participate in the May 23-24, 2016, first-ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) with two key demands—that the international humanitarian system be redefined, and a strong, firm own commitment to itself, to the continent and its people, anchoring on the primacy of the states.

In an interview with IPS on the eve of the WHS, the Head of Humanitarian Affairs, Refugees, and Displaced Persons Division at the AU Commission, Olabisi Dare said “All the key concerns that the AU will be raising at the World Humanitarian Summit is that there is a need for the redefinition of the international humanitarian system; this redefinition should take the form of a reconfiguration of the system.”

The Nigerian career diplomat and international civil servant with over 27 years international field and desk experience in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, added that the requested redefinition “should take the form of a reconfiguration of the system, it being understood that the existing system which is predicated on the UN Resolution 46 182 is to say the least not being faithfully implemented.”

It is therefore in this context that the African Union is going to Istanbul with its own commitments to itself, that is its own commitment to the continent and its people and one of the key things of this commitment is to anchor on the primacy of the states itself, “the State has the primary responsibility to its own people to satisfy their needs and to take care of their vulnerabilities,” said Olabisi.

“We look at these in several forms:

1. The African Union feels the State has to play the primary role of coordinating any and all humanitarian action that may take place within its territory; the States have in their efforts to alleviate the needs of its people; the States have also to maintain humanitarian space and have a responsibility to guarantee the safety of both the humanitarian workers and humanitarian infrastructure.
2. We note that the State has the capability and capacity in key areas like use of military assets in assisting humanitarian action–a key  example is the use of military forces in Liberia and other acted countries the military was deployed to serve as the first line of defense to combat the spread of the disease.

That said, Olabisi remarked “We can’t over-emphasise the role of the State in ensuring that humanitarian action and relief is dispensed in an effective manner and we see that this in itself will effect humanitarian action more readily on the continent.”

“Africa however is resolved to begin addressing its own problems using African solutions to African problems.“ - Olabisi Dare, Head of Humanitarian Affairs, Refugees, and Displaced Persons Division at the AU Commission
Asked what are the African needed solutions that the AUC brings to the WHS, Olabisi, who was also senior Political/Humanitarian Affairs Officer at the African Union Mission in Liberia, with extensive experience in various aspects peace-building in a post conflict environment, including serving on the Technical Support Team to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, reaffirmed “The African Union will make proposals in terms of what it considers as the reconfiguration of the International Humanitarian systems.”

“Part of the solution is that there is a need for governments to play the primary role and a greater coordination role in order to fulfill the attributes of state in terms of its predictive and responsive nature and other attributes and this in itself is as part of what Africa has committed  to do and if this find its way to the Secretary General’s report as part of the recommendation, this would be very good.”

Olabisi, who was involved in the return and rehabilitation programme of over 300,000 Liberian refugees from across the West Africa sub-region, added “We are also going to call for the re-engineering of resolution 46182 Strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian emergency assistance of the United Nations to reflect  Africa’s views, to reflect the need to elevate the role of the state primarily to be to deliver to its people.”

The Resolution 46182 that Olabisi refers to, was adopted in 1991, setting as “Guiding Principles” that humanitarian assistance is of cardinal importance for the victims of natural disasters and other emergencies and must be provided in accordance with the principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality.

Guiding Principle 3 clearly states, “The sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of States must be fully respected in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. In this context, humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country and in principle on the basis of an appeal by the affected country.”

“Each State has the responsibility first and foremost to take care of the victims of natural disasters and other emergencies occurring on its territory. Hence, the affected State has the primary role in the initiation, organization, coordination, and implementation of humanitarian assistance within its territory,” states also the Guiding Principle 4.

And Guiding Principle 9 stresses, “There is a clear relationship between emergency, rehabilitation and development. In order to ensure a smooth transition from relief to rehabilitation and development, emergency assistance should be provided in ways that will be supportive of recovery and long-term development. Thus, emergency measures should be seen as a step towards long-term development.”

Common African Position (CAP). Courtsey of the African Union Commission

For its part, Guiding Principle 10 stresses, “Economic growth and sustainable development are essential for prevention of and preparedness against natural disasters and other emergencies. Many emergencies reflect the underlying crisis in development facing developing countries.

“Humanitarian assistance should therefore be accompanied by a renewal of commitment to economic growth and sustainable development of developing countries,” it adds. ”In this context, adequate resources must be made available to address their development problems.”

“Contributions for humanitarian assistance should be provided in a way which is not to the detriment of resources made available for international cooperation for development,” says Guiding Principle 11.

Obalisi then recalled “When you look at the Common African Position (CAP) [on the post 2015 development agenda], you find  that the first pillar speaks to the privacy of the state; all the other 9 pillar speak the same in one form or another.”

Africa will be calling on itself to be able to deliver more on resources and allocate more resources to humanitarian action, he added. “This is because it is mindful of the fact that the resource portals are dwindling from the north.”

Asked what are the outcomes that Africa would most expect from the WHS, Olabisi said that Africa expects the guarantee that international humanitarian system will be reconfigured to conform with new demands and address the issues faced by the humanitarian system at the moment – one of the main outcome the Summit will deliver.

“Africa is making these commitments to itself-due to the non-binding nature of the summit. The commitments Africa has made go beyond the WHS whether the summit is binding or not it will not affect what Africa is committed to, in its own self-interest and this is one of the key recommendations we will be taking to WHS.”

He stressed that Africa’s commitments are not to the WHS but the Summit “gives us an opportunity to discuss a paradigm shift in terms of the way we do things in the humanitarian field in Africa and also to see that we can positively add to the mitigation and alleviation of the sufferings of our people when disasters and displacements occur.”

“One of the key things to note is that Africa will go ahead with its own commitments, “our resolve to come up with something that is workable, pragmatic, and something that will make us see ourselves in a light that puts us in a position to help ourselves despite the grand bargain on Africa being shut out of the whole system,” Olabisi emphasised.

“Africa however is resolved to begin addressing its own problems using African solutions to African problems.“

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Mohammed Lere

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, May 25 2014 (IPS)

As the African Union is set to celebrate its 51st birthday on May 25, it does so as the continent remains caught up in a tide of terrorist conflicts, which many analysts feel the AU has done little to resolve.

“With unsolved conflicts dotted across our continent, really the efficiency of the AU is at stake and highly questionable. We don’t need a rocket scientist to tell us that the AU is wanting, considering the terror attacks in East and West Africa,” independent political analyst Evelyn Moyo tells IPS.

The Somali extremist group, Al-Shabaab, has waged a terror campaign in the Horn of Africa nation and across East Africa, with attacks spreading to neighbouring Kenya. The Sept. 21, 2013 attack on Kenya’s Westgate Shopping Mall claimed over 67 lives and left more than 175 people wounded. The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kenya’s port city and popular tourist destination of Mombasa also experienced a number of terrorist attacks from Al-Shabaab, with the United Kingdom, U.S. and French governments issuing warnings to their citizens not to travel there.

In West Africa, the region has been rocked by instability thanks to the Nigerian-based extremist group, Boko Haram. The group, which is also linked to Al-Qaeda, gained international attention after the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state on Apr. 14. The Nigerian government has struggled to contain Boko Haram’s attacks and the extremist group has attacked neighbouring countries, including Cameroon. There are also fears of instability in parts of neighbouring Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana and even Central African Republic.

Political analyst Malvern Tigere feels the AU has done little to contain the terrorism threat on the continent.

“We have had a situation where the AU has paid a deaf ear to the severity of spreading terrorist attacks across West Africa. On Sept. 21, 2013, Al-Shabaab killed 72 people in a popular Kenyan shopping mall, and what did AU do about that? Is it a trivial thing to have close to 100 people massacred at one go?

“There are terror attacks in Kenya, there are terror attacks in Nigeria, there are also terror attacks in Somalia and all these are mounted in countries with membership to the AU. [There has been] no clear solution from the organisation to thwart such acts, which truly renders the AU spineless,” Tigere tells IPS.

But Zambia’s independent political analyst, Michael Mwanza, disagrees.

“The AU, which was formerly the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), played a pivotal role in ending colonialism and minority rule in Africa. It was AU that gave weapons, training and military bases to colonised African nations fighting for independence,” Mwanza tells IPS.

Over half a century ago, the OAU was formed in Ethiopia on May 25, 1963 and was tasked with resolving colonial conflicts. It was replaced by the AU on May 26, 2001.

“The organisation played a major role in bringing sanity across Africa,” adds Mwanza.

A Tanzanian diplomat in Zimbabwe, speaking on the condition of anonymity for professional reasons, agrees with Mwanza.

“It’s not all doom and gloom in the AU. The organisation played a role to broker Zimbabwe’s Unity government in 2009, bringing peace and stability to a country that was almost sliding into anarchy. It was the AU that in 2011 helped to have Cote d’Ivoire opposition leader Alassane Ouattara recognised as president after then leader Laurent Gbagbo had refused to hand over power after losing at the polls,” the Tanzanian diplomat tells IPS.

Zimbabwean political observer Denis Nyikadzino points out that the AU “does not often resort to using force to bringing calm in conflict situations here, but it uses dialogue and I see nothing wrong in that.”

But Rwandan civil society activist, Otapiya Gundurama, feels that the AU has over the years become lax, leaving the developed world to play the rescue role in African conflicts.

“Over the years, the AU has folded its hands and has become used to having the super powers intervening in its conflicts. That is why instead of the AU creeping instantly to thwart Boko Haram insurgents, we have the U.S., Israel and France deploying military personnel at the border between Chad and Nigeria to help find the kidnapped girls,” Gundurama tells PS.

Observers, however, say that AU on its own cannot resolve all the conflicts brewing on the continent.

“Africa has the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and surely the AU is not the Holy Spirit to singlehandedly end African conflicts,” Harare-based political commentator Innocent Majawaya tells IPS.

Ernst Mudzengi, political analyst and director of Media Centre Zimbabwe, pinned the raging conflicts in Africa on unequal distribution of the continent’s natural resources.

“Despite the AU’s presence, Africa has continued to witness conflicts caused by ineffective governments with few people benefitting from the continent’s natural resources,” Mudzengi tells IPS.

But as the AU anniversary coincides with Africa Day, Catherine Mukwapati, director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network, a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, says there is little to celebrate.

“We have leadership crisis in Africa where certain leaders believe they have the mandate to rule ceaselessly and people therefore hunger for leadership renewal, resulting in many people finding no reasons for celebrating Africa Day,” she tells IPS.

Flee or die: refugees from CAR in Cameroon. Credit: European Commission/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2014 (IPS)

Budget constraints in Washington and obstinacy at the highest levels of the African Union (AU) have combined to dangerously delay a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to sources close to negotiations currently underway in New York.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was set to deliver his report on CAR to the Security Council this past Friday.“We agree with the principle of African solutions to African problems, but it should not come at the expense of African lives.” -- Philippe Bolopion

But the document, believed to contain a damning portrayal of ethnic cleansing and atrocities as well as a recommendation for an official mission, was held up at the last moment and delayed to this week, raising fears that its language could be toned down to accommodate the reservations of the U.S., AU and others.

Whatever the immediate outcome, the struggle illustrates an evolving and at times tense relationship between the Security Council, a more assertive AU and the U.N. over interventions on the continent.

“The reality is that a U.N. mission is absolutely essential to stabilising CAR, and the secretary-general’s reporting is spot-on as to the desperate situation on the ground,” said a high-ranking human rights officer in Bangui who spoke with IPS on the condition of anonymity.

But there is hope that this time Ban will not wilt in the face of pressure.

In December, with violence ratcheting up, the Security Council, after initially considering a French proposal for a full mission, chose instead to mandate and enlarge the existing AU mission in the country – thereafter called MISCA – and authorise the deployment of French “Sangari” troops, currently numbering 2,000.

The move saved hundreds of millions of dollars in the short term, but has proved a stop-gap measure.

Underpinning the tension between the AU and the U.N. is a push by the Africans and international partners to encouraged “African solutions to African Problems,” in this case, letting MISCA handle its mandate without calling in the U.N.

“We agree with the principle of African solutions to African problems, but it should not come at the expense of African lives,” said Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director of Human Rights Watch.

CAR “is not the time or the place for the AU to make a point,” Bolopion told IPS. “It’s pretty clear that the AU-French combination on the ground is not enough to protect civilians. A huge chunk of the Muslim population has had to flee under their watch.”

Smail Chergui, African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security, speaks to journalists following a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Central African Republic on Feb. 20, 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

In April, 700 EU troops are set to spell French troops stationed the Bangui airport, allowing the Sangaris to travel out into more rural areas where the peacekeeping presence is thin and small bands of lightly armed Christian anti-balaka militias can wipe out entire villages.

In an interview with African Arguments, Amnesty International’s senior investigator Donatella Rovera said neither the French nor AU forces, by now numbering 6,000, have been effective.

“The military efforts belonged to the AU and French and they have had huge coordination problems,” said Rovera. “They weren’t present where things were happening, when they could have made a difference, when they could have stopped some of the massacres. They did not seem to be very willing to confront the new actor.”

The small U.N. political mission already in place, BINUCA, is grossly underfunded and ineffective at fulfilling its basic mandate. At the time of the December vote, observers expressed concern to IPS that without a bona fide, well-funded intervention, though violence might be temporarily snuffed out, the inequities and development shortfalls that led to the crisis would kicked down the road.

At the time, logistical concerns were also raised: where would an already overextended Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) raise troops?

Money was an issue as well: in the U.S., which funds over one-quarter of peacekeeping operations, Congress would soon set a 2014 budget that left a 12-percent funding gap in their dues and allocates exactly zero to a recently announced mission in Mali. How could they afford another venture in CAR?

Yet later that month, the Security Council saw fit to increase the number of peacekeepers in an already in-place mission in South Sudan. Many wondered if CAR was being shortchanged.

U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, who has publicly pleaded the case of CAR before the Council, was put in an awkward position by budget considerations. In a workaround, the U.S. provided 100 million dollars of direct assistance to a trust fund set up for MISCA, thereby making themselves investors in their success alone.

But MISCA is in many ways a poster child for AU stubbornness.

“It is important to remember that the MISCA mission has been around in various forms since 1996, so this is a country where many of the officers have been posted often. Many even learned [the local language] Sango,” said the human rights official in Bangui.

“The AU itself is very much opposed to a U.N. mission because they want to claim success in CAR and want to keep the MISCA mission, which suits the U.S. as well,” said the official. “The AU has long misrepresented the reality on the ground.”

In December, the AU’s envoy to the U.N., Smaïl Chergui, brushed aside accusations that Chadian MISCA troops had repeatedly attacked civilians in CAR. But last week, Chadian troops were again charged by locals with killing three civilians in a Christian neighborhood of Bangui.

At a Jan. 14 meeting of the AU’s Defence Committee, Chergui told gathered ministers in Addis Ababa “we are hopeful that we will soon significantly improve the security situation and prove the prophets of doom wrong.”

Yet in February, the U.N.’s refugee agency and the human rights group Amnesty International identified rampant ethnic cleansing against the country’s Muslim minority.

After an initial bout of violence committed by predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels left a thousand dead in December, the French Sangaris set about disarming and arrested the group, who had held power in Bangui since taking the city in March.

At the time, observers, including U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, expressed concern over the potential for revenge killings against Muslims in areas vacated by the Seleka. Those fears proved disastrously correct and peacekeepers proved no match for containing disparate but potent attacks by Christian anti-balaka militias.

In Bangui, where upwards of 150,000 Muslims lived prior to the conflict, by some accounts fewer than 10,000 remain.  Palm fronds hanging outside houses in formerly diverse neighbourhoods indicate where Christian families have seized a home deserted by their former neighbours, either murdered or attempted to flee, likely to Cameroon or Chad.

At least 100,000 Muslims have left the country entirely and countless displaced persons have fled to the bush.

In December, members of the Security Council explained their piecemeal solution to the violence in CAR by pointing to the six-month time frame for implementing a full U.N. mission. But three months later the same reasons are given for dampening hopes of a mission now.

Though the French have publicly spoken in favour of an official mission, they remain in delicate negotiations with regional power-broker Chad over existing missions in Mali and their basing rights in the country.

And they, like the AU, have reason to want the current mission to be seen as a success. President Francois Hollande, who visited Bangui Friday, wants to impress a sceptical populace after he made interventions in former colonies a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Earlier this month, out of sight of peacekeepers, 70 Muslims were killed over the course of two days in the southwest town of Guen, made to lie down on the ground then shot one by one.

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 4 2014 (IPS)

There are growing concerns that the massive funding crisis for peacekeeping operations in the Central African Republic (CAR) will jeopardise any prospect of restoring stability to the country. 

“The resources being allocated to the crisis are so inadequate to the task. The notion that a few thousand troops – even if they were well-trained and equipped, which is true for the French and some, but certainly not all, of the African contingents – are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best,” Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council, a research institute for U.S. and European policy approaches to Africa, told IPS. “The notion that a few thousand troops ... are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best.” -- Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council

As peacekeepers in CAR recaptured the key town of Sibut from rebel fighters on Feb. 2, donor countries made a 315-million-dollar pledge to boost peacekeeping operations in the conflict-ridden country. But this response from the international community has been criticised for being tardy and insufficient to adequately equip the fledgling African Union (AU) mission and fill a security vacuum that has caused 2,000 deaths.

“That’s why the forces have largely limited their activities to Bangui, the country’s capital, and one or two other centres while the countryside has largely been left unsecured,” Pham said.

Last year, inter-religious violence gripped the Central African nation after Michael Djotodia, backed by the Islamist Seleka rebel group, seized power from elected Christian leader Francois Bozizé.

Vicious attacks and counter attacks between Seleka-aligned Muslims and Christian vigilante militias displaced a quarter of the country’s 4.6 million people and plunged the land-locked nation into bloody anarchy.

The new funds offer modest support to the cash-strapped International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) – an AU-led operation currently around 5,500-strong supported by 1,600 French troops. But Pham says a poverty of resources for overstretched peacekeeping troops will fail to de-escalate violence spreading throughout the lawless jungle countryside. The impact of the conflict goes beyond CAR as the violence threatens to destabilise the region.

To try and close the funding gap the international community, including Japan, Norway and Luxembourg, pledged 315 million dollars – which is just short of MISCA’s operational budget of 409 million dollars for 2014. The largest single donation came from the Central African Economic Community, which pledged 100 million dollars to the MISCA force.

In addition, the United Nations World Food Programme has requested 95 million dollars from donors to stem a spiralling humanitarian crisis and provide food assistance to the population.

The European Union (EU) donated 61 million dollars, half of which will support MISCA. The other half will be dedicated to the preparation of elections at the earliest date possible to hasten a return to constitutional order. The EU also plans to send 600 troops by March to support the AU force.

“The EU is committed to financially supporting the AU to find military equipment for the troops, MISCA is still establishing its modus operandi and is in urgent need of equipment to support the troops,” Nicholas Westcott, Africa director at the European Union, told IPS.

Although France has requested that the U.N. take over the peacekeeping operation, the AU maintains that MISCA should lead the mission for at least 12 months to allow the regional force to show its military mettle. MISCA comprises soldiers from the Central African countries of Burundi, Rwanda, Chad, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville.

The appointment of Catherine Samba-Panza, mayor of Bangui, as interim president of the transitional government, has also raised hopes that a return to political process might stem the blood-letting between Christian and Muslim groups. Her election follows the resignation of Djotodia and his prime minister on Jan. 10 due to international pressure.

“The new transitional government does not have more financial capacity than the previous one but, when it comes to the reconstitution of state security forces, it has three advantages. It has more competence within its ranks, it has more legitimacy in the eyes of the Bangui population and it has the backing of the African and French security forces and the Europeans,” Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

The newly-elected interim prime minister, Andre Nzapayeke, attended a donor event at the AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and said his country needed “a real Marshall plan” and that “in a period of international economic crisis these pledges have a special value.”

Pham says that if there is to be a lasting solution to the crisis, a non-military campaign for dialogue and reconciliation between sparring factions must be considered as being just as important in ending the orgy of violence as the need to buttress peacekeeping troops with funds and equipment.

“Uncoordinated, atavistic violence of the sort we are seeing in CAR cannot be stopped by military force alone since both the would-be killers and their victims are largely civilians. Rather, it requires massive police forces to prevent multiple small-scale atrocities over a sustained period and, then, an extended period of dialogue and peace building to restore peace in the community,” Pham said.

Over 900,000 people have so far been uprooted from their homes since the conflict in CAR escalated. Close to half a million are in the outskirts of the capital Bangui with 100,000 taking refuge at the airport. Credit: © EU/ECHO/Pierre-Yves Scotto/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

Reports of horrific revenge killing continued to emerge from the Central African Republic Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the Security Council voted to increase the international troop presence there and levy sanctions against those it suspects of war crimes.

Over 2,000 people have been killed and one million – a quarter of the population – displaced since a coalition of northern, predominantly Muslim rebels calling themselves Seleka (“alliance” in the local Sango language) seized power in March 2013.“Today, two men were killed in the street - one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits." -- Joanne Mariner

Following the deployment of peacekeepers and the resignation of president and former Seleka leader Michel Djotodia earlier this month, the group began a hasty but violent retreat from the capital and several contested rural towns.

Violence against the Christian community was highest in early December, when marauding ex-Seleka elements killed hundreds of civilians. But since then, the 1,600 French and 5,000 African Union peacekeepers have proved unable to fill the security vacuum left in the Seleka’s wake and civilians in areas where fighters had based themselves have come under increasingly vicious attacks from Christian anti-balaka militias seeking revenge.

“The Seleka are the worst thing that could have happened to Muslims in the Central African Republic,” said Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, who estimates over 100,000 Muslims have already fled.

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of Muslim civilians and almost every single one tells me that at this point they want to get out of the country,” she told IPS.

On Tuesday, interim president Catherine Samba-Panza told French radio she would request that an official U.N. peacekeeping mission take over from the joint French-African Union mission that the 15-member U.N. Security Council authorised in December, something human rights groups have called for since last year.

But the council again stopped short of sending such a “blue-helmet” mission, authorising only 500 additional European Union troops who will be expected to spell French “Sangari” soldiers guarding 100,000 displaced people camped at Bangui’s airport.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch emergency director Peter Bouckaert tweeted a photograph taken at the airport appearing to show a crowd mutilating the corpses of two Muslim men, just 15 yards, he said, from French troops.

Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned “the disarmament of ex-Seleka carried out by French forces appears to have left Muslim communities vulnerable to anti-balaka retaliatory attacks.” Other officials have warned of the potential for genocide in the country and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged for a peacekeeping mission with up to 9,000 soldiers. But the Security Council demurred.

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

In recent days, anti-balaka have made regular incursions into Bangui’s two remaining Muslim enclaves, known locally as PK5 and PK12, killing dozens of residents and driving out hundreds. PK12 is a main transit point and Muslims from villages surrounding Bangui have congregated there, awaiting passage to Chad and Cameroon.

Last Friday, 22 civilians were murdered in a convoy on the highway to Cameroon, many hacked to death with machetes.

“In PK5, when people leave that area there are lynchings,” Mariner told IPS from the northwest town of Bozoum. “Today, two men were killed in the street – one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits.”

She added, “Bangui used to be an enormously mixed city. That is completely over.”

In PK13, another traditionally Muslim neighbourhood now emptied of its residents, newcomers have already written their names on abandoned houses and made plans to turn the local mosque into a youth centre.

“You come back in a year and you’ll never know that there were Muslims there,” said Mariner. “Unless there’s real action taken, that’s where the country is going.”

Information is sparse outside of Bangui but the situation is believed to be dire north and northwest the capital, where the peacekeeping presence is light and where anti-balaka have actively pushed Muslims out of their towns.

In the western town of Baoro, the only Muslims left have taken refuge in a local church guarded by peacekeepers. But elsewhere, in towns like Bossembele, Yakole and Boyali, most have fled.

Until the Chadian-backed Seleka began fighting, sporadic violence in the country had never broken so deeply along religious lines.

Disorganised violence

Because the Christian militias are only loosely coordinated at best, negotiations have been impossible in many parts of the country.

“There’s no command and control structure, so even within a single region, they may have five anti-balaka groups vying for power,” said Mariner.

But unlike in the capital, where better organised gangs have access to automatic weapons and grenades, the lightly armed and often young anti-balaka in the countryside travel on foot and are seen fleeing from peacekeepers.

“Obviously you can’t have peacekeepers on every block, but you can have peacekeepers in every town. Even a few peacekeepers make a huge difference,” said Mariner.

“They mostly have hunting rifles, shotguns, you see a lot with bow and arrows, they are no match to real soldiers. And when there are real soldiers they get out of the way. There are attacks that almost certainly could have been avoided had there been peacekeepers in place.”

Mission confusion

The EU contingent will add a third element to an already piecemeal force that has at times appeared overwhelmed.

After the initial Security Council vote in December, observers expressed concern that a streamlined mission – of the kind that had seen moderate successes in Mali against an organised foe – would fail to prevent violence that had devolved into communal, tit-for-tat killings, nor would it address long-term development needs that fostered conflict.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud spoke this week of the need for a full U.N. mission replete with up to 10,000 peacekeepers. But Tuesday’s vote accomplished neither of those goals.

Ainsley Reidy, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch, says the international community has a responsibility to bolster the intervention.

“We see protection of the civilian population and accountability for crimes committed by all as the two priority responsibilities of the international community,” said Reidy. “For that reason we continue to remain convinced of the need for the quick deployment of a properly resourced U.N. peacekeeping mission to respond to the scale of the violence.”

Such a mission would augment BINUCA, the small, non-military “peace-building” office already in the country. Groups have for months criticised what they see as a lack of public human rights reporting coming from observers there, a problem they place in the generally disjointed nature of the intervention. Without a unified mandate for all observers and peacekeepers, human rights groups worry accountability and reconciliation will be waylaid.

“We think ultimately there needs to be a fully fledged U.N. mission that addresses both the security needs and can contribute to holding people accountable,” Reidy told IPS.

The December resolution left the door open for the possibility of a larger U.N. peacekeeping mission and would only require an additional vote to initiate a transition. At the time, there was speculation that Security Council members, in particular the United States, were hesitant to budget for another peacekeeping mission at a time when the U.N. has more troops deployed worldwide than ever before. That state of affairs appears unaltered.

In neighbouring South Sudan, where the Security Council voted earlier in December to increase the blue-helmet mission there by 5,000, the transfer of troops has been delayed and thousands have yet to arrive.

“We do know these deployments tend to be slow and can take up to six months,” said Reidy.

“If we take what has happened to civilians between mid-December and mid-January as an indication of how quickly things can happen on the ground in CAR, then six months is too long a time. The U.N. and others can’t afford to drag their feet on this.”

African Union Commission deputy chair Erastus Mwencha says that 90 percent of Africa's population live in countries in places which are peaceful, with only 10 percent of the continent living in strife-torn areas. Credit: World Economic Forum/CC By 2.0

By Jacey Fortin and Jason Warner
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 28 2014 (IPS)

The issue of peace and security, particularly in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, are expected to dominate the discussions at the African Union’s (AU) semi-annual summit being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week.

But AU Commission deputy chair Erastus Mwencha told IPS that this summit will be about much more than conflict. Sustainable development, economic integration and environmental concerns will also so be on the table, he said, and it would be a mistake to ignore the progress the AU has made over the past several years.

“It is instructive to note that 90 percent of Africa’s population lives in places which are peaceful. And we do have 10 percent of the continent still facing challenges of peace and security, but the 10 percent cannot define the continent,” he said. Mwencha added that governance has been embraced by the continent, “and so also democracy and human rights.”"We have places in Africa where there is conflict, there is war, there is famine – there are great challenges. But Africa has made tremendous progress in these areas." -- AU deputy chair Erastus Mwencha

“That’s not to say that we don’t have those challenges,” he added.

Q: For outsiders looking in, what is this AU summit about? What are the misconceptions about Africa that you hope to dispel?

As part of the AU’s 50th anniversary last year, we came up with a resolution that Africa must now try to tell its story: a story that should, first of all, acknowledge that we have places in Africa where there is conflict, there is war, there is famine – there are great challenges. But Africa has made tremendous progress in these areas too.

Secondly, Africa is a good home for investment and that the socio-economic conditions are getting better and better all the time.

Q: What do you anticipate will be the top three issues facing leaders during this summit?

A: Of course peace and security will continue to preoccupy our continent, because a determination that our leaders have made is that all guns must be silenced by 2020. That is being done within the framework of building an African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). The main concern is with regards to the current situations that remain in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

A second aspect is integration. This is a real raison d’etre for the AU, and in that regard we will be looking at programmes that bring African countries together, whether they are infrastructure, whether they are trade or other economic programmes.

And number three, we’ll specifically be looking at the sector of agriculture, which is the theme of the summit.

Q: Can you give concrete examples of what the AU has done to improve agriculture in the past, and what it will focus on during this summit?

A: Look at the sector of agriculture, and what the leaders have been doing in the last 10 years. When the leaders announced the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), one of the decisions they made was to see increased investment in agriculture. And what we have now, the record shows, is that 70 percent of the countries have increased their investment in agriculture.

When you compare the previous decade, before CAADP was launched, in fact investment was on the decline. Now there is a positive trend. Of course agriculture affects close to 70 percent of the population… These are really concrete actions that demonstrate, through actions that have been taken in the past, that they did have an impact on the ground through collective action.

Q: You mentioned the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), and one major component of that is the African Standby Force (ASF), meant to be capable of responding quickly to conflict. How is that progressing?

A: There was a recent stock-taking of the ASF in the context of assessing whether it will be ready come 2015… It clearly indicated that three out of five regional brigades are well under way towards meeting their target. But it also identified a number of elements that we need to address and that might also be informed by trying to look at how we can optimise the ASF to address the challenge of rapid mobilisation – whether they are going to be on hand to make sure that we reduce the impact that conflicts have on the population.

Q: Intra-continental trade is very low in Africa as opposed to other regions, and the AU has long acknowledged this problem. Will this summit try to address it in a new way?

A: Trade has continued to pose a challenge to the continent; we always emphasise the supply-side constraints. Africa needs technology; Africa needs infrastructure; Africa needs capital to transform the raw materials to equip the human resource factor, so that we have entrepreneurs able to transform these resources and produce goods that can reach the market. And this is a process.

You get into an egg and chicken situation: do you create a market first before you produce, or do you produce then go to the market? To address this, we are integrating our markets. There is also a need for investment to take advantage of the growing market on the continent. There is a lot of progress being made by regional economic communities who are also partners in moving us towards establishing a continental free-trade area.

Q: Africa’s population is growing very quickly – how is the AU responding to the threat of overstretched resources?

A: The huge youth bulge is an opportunity, but also presents challenges, and this is where action is focused. We have to make sure these youth can produce enough by endowing them with education and access. So if you look at the actions that have already been undertaken, whether it’s the Millennium Development Goals or whether it’s post-2015, we are looking at sustainable development, how to take care of the environment, and resource exploitation so that we can be able to sustain development into the future.

We have specific programmes like maternal health, which would be addressing the population; we have specific programmes on water sanitation; we have specific programmes on education… these are all looking at the population of the continent as a major resource for Africa, trying to see how we can benefit from the population dividends without getting into the challenge of resource scarcity.

Excerpt:

CAR refugees seek safety in a church. Credit: ©EU/ECHO/Ian Van Engelgem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

“We couldn’t stand the violence anymore,” said 27-year-old Baba Hamadou shortly after alighting from a chartered flight at the Douala International Airport earlier this week.

Hamadou is one of 202 Cameroonians repatriated from the Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday, bringing the total number of Cameroonians who have returned from the war-ravaged country to 896 in four days.“My neighbour was butchered like an animal.” -- David Nchami

As the sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims worsens, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya decided that it was time to evacuate Cameroonian citizens living there. Altogether, there are about 20,000 Cameroonians in the Central African Republic.

The new arrivals have been narrating gory tales of violence they witnessed.

“Four Cameroonians – a man, his wife and two children – were roasted to death in Bangui before my very eyes,” Hamadou told IPS.

“My neighbour was butchered like an animal,” added another Cameroonian, David Nchami, who worked as a builder in Bangui.

“A woman was raped and her genitals removed in the capital,” said yet another, Marie-Louise Tebah.

Divine Abada, a miner from southwest Cameroon, told the Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV that the scale of the violence was so terrible he decided to return home.

“These crazy Séléka rebels caught me in the bush, beat us very well, took everything away from us. The only thing that saved me was that they did not see my passport,” he said.

Identifying Abada’s nationality would likely have made things worse, given the apparent hatred the Séléka rebels have for Cameroonians since President François Bozize was ousted from power in March and sought refuge there. The transitional government that took his place has failed to quell the armed clashes and attacks on civilians.

Séléka has also targeted Cameroon for reprisals. In November, a group of suspected rebels crossed over from CAR and attacked military installations at Biti, a border village in Cameroon’s East Region.

A firefight between the rebels and Cameroon’s security forces led to the deaths of seven people, two of them Cameroonians.

The African Union is boosting its troop levels in CAR to 6,000 soldiers, who join 1,600 French soldiers already on the ground in the former French colony.

The governor of Cameroon’s East Region, Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, also says his own government has strengthened security along the border.

“We have deployed troops along the 800-km-long border line that divides the two countries,” he told IPS.  “We can’t afford to leave our compatriots at the mercy of evident death.”

Even as Cameroonians at the CAR border live in perpetual fear of attacks by Séléka rebels, thousands of Central Africans are flocking into Cameroon, escaping the violence and bloodshed in their own country.

In early November, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that Cameroon was already host to some 90,000 Central African refugees.

Thousands more fled last weekend by boat across the Oubangui River to Zongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), even though the border is officially closed and they risked being shot at.

According to U.N. figures, some 210,000 people have been forcibly displaced by violence in the last two weeks in the embattled capital, Bangui.

The rather large influx of CAR refugees into Cameroon has been causing a lot of unease among the local population.

In September, hundreds of the refugees abandoned their camp in Nadoungué, a small village in Cameroon’s East Region, and relocated to a nearby village in search of better services.

“All we are looking for is water, healthcare, food…these things are not found here,” Dominique Mendo, a CAR refugee, told IPS.

But the continued influx has brought them into conflict with the local population, sometimes necessitating the intervention of security forces.

The Cameroonian government has committed over 500 soldiers to join the AU peacekeeping force, according to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o.

In addition, the 1,600 French troops used Cameroon as a transit port, along with ammunition, bound for Central Africa.

Mebe Ngo’o said Cameroon cannot stay indifferent to the mayhem that is affecting millions of people in CAR.

According to the United Nations, over 500 people have been killed in the capital Bangui alone since Dec. 5.

The U.N. also says the conflict has affected the entire 4.6 million population, with one in 10 fleeing their homes and a quarter of the people going hungry.

Residents of Bossangoa, in Central African Republic, shelter from gunfire as Multinational Force of Central Africa (FOMAC) peacekeeping troops move to try to protect the population from anti-balaka attacks in the town. Dec. 5, 2013. Courtesy: Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

By Jacey Fortin
ADDIS ABABA , Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

The African Union is preparing to deploy thousands of troops in the Central African Republic as a deadly conflict there spirals further out of control.

On Monday, Dec. 9, African Union (AU) Deputy Chairperson Erastus Mwencha met with diplomats at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to work out the details of AU troops’ deployments, logistics and funding. After the meeting, he told IPS that Burundi is the only confirmed troop supplier so far, but several other countries including Rwanda and the Republic of the Congo are discussing sending forces as well.

French troops have already begun deployments in the capital city of Bangui, which was taken over by a rebel coalition called Seleka in March. Since beginning their advance across the country in December 2012, Seleka fighters have caused turmoil across the countryside, further destabilising areas already plagued by rampant poverty and food insecurity.

In Bangui the situation has been especially dire since Thursday, Dec. 5, Amy Martin, head of the Bangui branch of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told IPS. “Heavy arms were being fired, light weapons were being fired, and tensions remain very high in some neighbourhoods,” she said, adding that the problems are just as serious outside of the capital.“The population is fatigued – they have no food left for their families, and they've been looted so many times.” -- Amy Martin, head of the Bangui branch of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

“In the interior, Seleka units have taken control of territories, and whoever was the commander became the law in each town. Those people, having no support from the central government, are basically living off the population, partly through illegal taxation. So you end up with a bunch of warlords and criminal gangs.”

A U.N. resolution last week approved the deployment of up to 1,200 French and 3,500 African troops to help stabilise the country of 4.6 million. But following the recent surge in violence, which has already killed at least 400 people in Bangui since Thursday according to the Red Cross, African and European leaders agreed at a weekend summit in Paris to increase the number of French troops to 1,600, and the number of African troops to as much as 6,000.

Regarding funding, Mwencha noted that “we have been grateful that the U.S. and the European Union have already made some indication to support these operations, and so we are also trying to coordinate to see how their support can be channelled to support this mission.”

The International Support Mission to the Central African Republic, or MISCA, will be fully deployed as soon as possible. They will join the African forces that were already in CAR as part of the Mission for the consolidation of peace in Central African Republic (MICOPAX), a peacekeeping group first stationed there on the initiative of the Economic Community of Central African States.

“MISCA is going to be an African mission, so all troops [will] be under the command of the African forces, but there will of course be a transition,” Mwencha said. “There was MICOPAX and there are the French, but all those will converge with the African forces once we’re on the ground.”

Local Seleka forces exit the Multinational Force of Central Africa (FOMAC) compound after their commander, Colonel Saleh, met with Captain Wilson of the FOMAC peacekeepers at the FOMAC compound during a lull in the fighting between anti-balaka and Seleka forces. Dec. 7, 2013. Courtesy: Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

But the CAR crisis has raised some doubts of African troops’ abilities to quell violence on the continent, according to Thierry Vircoulon, the International Crisis Groups’ project director for Central Africa. “Unfortunately, the French are the only ones willing and able to do the job at this stage. The African peacekeeping force demonstrated its ineffectiveness to secure Bangui,” he said to IPS, noting that the French troop deployment was welcomed by CAR and its neighbours during the U.N. summit.

At the Paris summit, leaders discussed the prospects of setting up a permanent African force capable of intervening independently in times of crisis, rather than wading through the logistics of each individual deployment whenever crises occur.

“The African countries must now fulfil the 6,000 troops ceiling for MISCA, and everybody wonders whether they can do this, and how fast,” said Vircoulon. “The CAR crisis has reinforced the scepticism about the peace and security architecture to say the least.”

As African soldiers gear up for deployment, the humanitarian situation in CAR is worsening by the day. Hundreds of thousands of people – about 10 percent of the population – have been displaced and about 25 percent are in need of food aid, according to the U.N. Seleka rebels have been accused of committing severe human rights abuses against men, women and children over the past year.

Seleka first coalesced for political reasons – its leaders sought the ouster of former president Francois Bozize. Former Seleka commander Michel Djotodia has taken over as president of CAR and has promised to hold elections within 18 months. He formally dissolved his already-disintegrating rebel coalition in September but has failed to enforce law and order.

Many one-time Seleka members have turned to looting and banditry, spurring the rise of self-defence groups called “anti-balaka”. The worsening tensions between the mostly-Muslim rebels and the majority-Christian civilian population now threaten to turn the crisis into a religious conflict.

“The population is fatigued – they have no food left for their families, and they’ve been looted so many times,” said Martin. “And out of this evolved more organised armed groups, and that’s what we’ve seen since August: anti-balaka groups have been gaining strength and becoming more organised. But there’s no government; there’s no vision of leadership to put this country back on track. It’s anarchy.”

Now that the troops are rolling in, CAR citizens are waiting to see whether the escalating conflict can finally be subdued. AU Deputy Chair Mwencha gave no specific time frame for MISCA, saying it would be operational until CAR achieved a stable system of governance.

“First of all, there has to be peace and security to get the institutions up and running again, and to start organising elections,” he said. “But the ultimate game is to, as quickly as possible, organise an election so that they can have an a legitimate authority. Once Central Africans are in charge of the situation, there will be no need for us to continue to stay there.”

Patients wait at the Kaga Bandoro Hospital in Central CAR. An estimated 35 percent of the population is particularly vulnerable and in need of life-saving assistance. Credit: Gregoire Pourtier/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to authorise the deployment of thousands of French and African Union troops in the Central African Republic but stopped short of approving a full U.N. peacekeeping force in the country.

The French-backed resolution came amidst increased violence in the capital, Bangui, where Christian militias unexpectedly launched repeated attacks, reaching as far as the Presidential Palace.“The French were expecting to be asked to fight against Seleka, but now perhaps they will have to fight the anti-balaka as well.” -- Thierry Vircoulon

Medicins Sans Frontieres doctors in Bangui confirmed the presence of 50 bodies, bringing the number of casualties in the capital to at least 98. The BBC reported that a mosque in one of Bangui’s Muslim neighbourhoods was filled with victims of clashes.

And in Bossangoa, 300 kms north of Bangui, a standoff continued outside a Catholic church where an estimated 35,000 Christians have taken refuge. Local peacekeepers have attempted to head off attacks from Seleka units – the largely Muslim rebel group that ousted President François Bozizé in March – who claim armed elements are among the refugees.

France’s contingent of 600 troops already in the country is set to be doubled before the week is out and French President François Hollande announced from Paris that military operations would begin “immediately” to secure Bangui and major international roads that an estimated 400,000 refugees have used to flee the violence.

Yet with much of the violence taking place in rural areas, the peacekeeping force may not be able to reach all conflict zones.

At nightfall, Bangui was still nominally under the control of Seleka, but attacks throughout the day by “anti-balaka” Christian militias reportedly loyal to Bozizé caught residents and peacekeepers off guard.

Aware that French forces were expected to arrive shortly, the militias perhaps “wanted to take the opportunity to attack,” said Thierry Vircoulon, project director for Central Africa at the International Crisis Group.  “Now everyone is worried about night attacks by the anti-balaka.”

“The French were expecting to be asked to fight against Seleka, but now perhaps they will have to fight the anti-balaka as well,” Vircoulon told IPS.

Following their March victory, Seleka’s leader Michel Djotodia was installed as interim president.

But Djotodia’s September announcement that the rebel group would be disbanded set off a period of lawlessness and killings that culminated in Thursday’s Security Council vote.

The existing contingent of 2,500 regional peacekeepers in the country has been hamstrung by a lack of financing and disorganisation.

Since the capture of Bangui, the Seleka has been accused by international aid groups and the U.N. of deliberately targeting civilians.

Despite a post-independence history of conflict, the country has remained relatively free from the religious unrest that has plagued other Sahel nations.

But as Seleka reels from a concerted counterattack by militias, there are concerns that reprisals will mount against the country’s ever more defenceless Muslim minority.

After the vote, French Representative Gérard Araud told reporters the “conflict is increasingly taking a sectarian turn, with violence erupting between Christians and Muslims – in this context, history has taught us that the worst may happen, history has taught us that the Security Council needs to act.”

One source close to the Security Council told IPS that the decision to hold off on a full-fledged “blue-helmet” U.N. mission came in part as a result of U.S. mission-fatigue and  a reluctance to finance another prolonged presence on the continent. Instead, the U.N. will set up a trust fund for donor countries.

In July 2014, when the Security Council will review progress in the country, it will have the option to convert the African troops into a U.N. peacekeeping force if the security situation has not been resolved.

But unlike France’s intervention in Mali earlier this year, the military mission in the Central African Republic is expected to be brief. Stabilising the country could require a long-term development presence that France and neighbouring countries may not be prepared to offer.

But the decision was also seen as lending confidence to the African Union, which will take over control of the regional force, now called MISCA, and increase its numbers from 2,500 to 3,500.

“It fits into this recent trend of trying to find African solutions to African problems,” said Evan Cinq-Mars, a research analyst at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. “That’s certainly something the African Union wants and the Security Council is interested in.”

The intervention is reminiscent of a similar French-supported mission that stabilised the Central African Republic in 1997.  Like Thursday’s resolution, the Security Council sanctioned deployment under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, but when the French grew tired of a prolonged mission, they reduced their operations in the country and the U.N. had to scramble to come up with a peacekeeping mission to augment weaker local forces.

“CAR suffers from neglect until intervention is needed,” Cinq-Mars told IPS. “And that’s a strategy that just can’t continue. Because I’m certain that these last-minute interventions cost more than making a significant investment in the Central African Republic now to ensure this is the last time the council has to deal with such a serious situation.”

A cornerstone of Africa’s planned Free Trade Area will be improved production capacity. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Joan Erakit
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Bridging the gap between Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance has been a top priority for the African Union (AU).

But with a military coup in Egypt, instability in South Sudan and Mali, and even the ailing health of former South African President and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, solidifying its purpose and mission as the continent’s mouthpiece has been a bumpy road for the organisation.“Poverty is number one and should be number one when you want to put the African continent to another level." -- Robert Kayinamura of Rwanda's Mission to the U.N.

Founded in 1963 by African leaders including Julias Nyerere of Tanzania, Milton Obote of Uganda, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Nkwame Nkuruma of Ghana, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established to free countries from colonial rule.

The intention was to build a better, self-sustained league of democratic nations that would push the continent forward. But a recent panel discussion that took place at the U.N. seemed to have lost its original intent in a debate over whether the African continent should participate fully in the global economy as it is, or create its own financial systems and become an equal contender on a much larger scale.

“The problem with this conversation here is that it came from a perspective of Pan-Africanism, but old Pan-Africanism.  We need to get to the new Pan-Africanism,” Robert Kayinamura, a first counsellor for the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the U.N., told IPS.

Pan-Africanism is an ideology and movement that espouses unity and solidarity not only on the continent but within the diaspora.

As Africa continues its growth spurt, the world – primarily China – is beginning to focus on its wealth of natural resources.  And Africa’s respective leaders are utilising organisations such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and AU to bind together and formulate concrete economic, diplomatic and development plans.

Moderating tensions

According to Dr. Ali Mazrui, a professor of African studies at Cornell University, conflict prevention has not been the organisation’s strong point.  In the last 50 years, many countries have endured horrific civil wars while their neighbours looked on cautiously.

“[Ugandan President Yoweri] Museveni should have more readily intervened in Rwanda in April of 1994 the way Julius Nyerere intervened in Uganda,” Mazrui said, referring to the Rwandan genocide and the Tanzanian-led ouster of dictator ldi Amin’s regime in 1978-79.

Dr. Mazrui also added that when the OAU was founded, one of its agendas was to moderate tensions within states, but not to participate in tensions within states – and Nyerere did in fact catch backlash from the OAU during his intervention in Uganda.

This path may have led to the increasing dependence on international interventions during times of war, and surrender to institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) for justice thereafter.

Because development is directly related to conflict, which is then related to poverty, managing conflict and promoting peace would have been a sound way to sustain the continent during the first 50 years of the OAU.

Passing the baton

On Sep. 9, 1999, the OAU came together to establish the African Union (AU) as a means to aid the continent in its growth to becoming an equal player in the global economy.

Not having the proper resources or economic expertise to tackle issues of development, the OAU focused heavily on the eradication of colonialism and then passed the baton to the AU to further develop the economic infrastructure of Africa.

Beginning its revisions and strategising policies to incorporate economic change, the AU set forth a plan for a central banking system that would uplift Africa from its deepening financial woes and most importantly, and while doing so, focus on the source of all its problems: poverty.

“Poverty is number one and should be number one when you want to put the African continent to another level, because poverty is the source of conflict,” Kayinamura told IPS.

“Poverty is the source of envy, poverty is the source of listening to nonsense,” he added.

Indeed, it is an all-encompassing issue that includes education, health, political stability, financial independence, social welfare and inequality.

With projects to start an African Central Bank, an African Investment Bank and an African Monetary Fund in 2010 – 2011, the AU decided that by encouraging Africans to be self sustaining – less dependent on aid or any other outside handout – stronger, more democratic nations would be formed.

The idea was simple: eradicate poverty by creating a financial institutions that gave out manageable loans, and that in turn built the private sector.

“The private sector has been the engine of fighting poverty because it creates jobs. You get a job, I get a job, everybody gets a job, and my kids go to school.  It doesn’t have to be the vicious cycle: I come from the garden, so my kids go to the garden,” Kayinamura told IPS.

It is a vicious cycle that many Africans hope not to perpetuate, as the pressure on their leaders to assert change grows heavier.  But lack of political maturity and capacity-building continue to the slow the process of achievement. As the world turns its eyes once again to North Africa, the role of the OAU and AU will be brought back into the limelight.

And the question remains: What – and who – will move Africa forward?

A successful women’s farming project in Ethiopia is a model for training other urban farmer groups all over Africa on how to adapt to climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Ed McKenna
ADDIS ABABA, Jun 30 2013 (IPS)

Across Africa, smallholder farmers, who are some of the world’s most impoverished people, are slowly being introduced to innovative approaches, such as entrepreneurial loan schemes and conservation practices, to combat food insecurity.

Resource-constrained African smallholder farmers contribute to 80 percent of food production in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

But investment and support for agriculture in Africa must be innovative and aim for nothing less than the transformation of smallholder farming practices, according to Chris Henderson, a policy adviser at Practical Action, an organisation that champions agro-ecological approaches to increase global food sovereignty.

“Transformation of smallholder farming systems should be an important part of the solution to providing food security, improved nutrition and equitable growth in African countries,” Henderson told IPS.

He was speaking ahead of a two-day high-level international meeting on ending hunger in Africa, which is being held in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa from Jun. 30 to Jul. 1. It is organised by the African Union, FAO and Instituto Lula, a foundation with the backing of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Experts say that meeting the challenge of boosting food security in African countries requires pioneering solutions so that farmers can grow enough food to feed a population that is expected to reach two billion by 2050.

One Acre Fund is an ambitious NGO that calls itself a business for Africa’s farmers. By providing loans in the form of agricultural inputs and technical support to poor farmers, it aims to double their income per half hectare.

The fund uses an innovative business model where farmers apply for agricultural development and receive a loan of 80 dollars worth of seed and fertiliser. Each farmer signs a contract that binds them to repaying the loan, an added service fee, and a flat rate of 16 percent interest, in cash by the end of the agricultural season.

The One Acre Fund began in Kenya in 2006. It currently serves 125,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi. Within three years, it aims to represent Africa’s largest network of smallholder farmers.

The fund also has something called a market bundle, which is another approach to helping subsistence farmers to “grow” themselves out of poverty with a view to enhanced trade and market access. This consists of identifying existing local farmer groups, providing them with an education on how to improve their farming techniques, utilise farm inputs and budget to afford costly planting materials such as fertilisers.

“Smallholder farmers are marginalised from everything and have extremely limited access to inputs or market information. The farmer is successful in proportion to access to inputs and value chains. Farmers without access to seed and fertiliser will not succeed,” Stephanie Hanson, director of policy research at One Acre Fund, told IPS.

According to Hanson, 98 percent of clients pay their loans on time, which is a good indication that the majority of farmers are increasing their income per half hectare.

Traditional conservation approaches are also being reinvigorated by organisations like Farm Africa, a charity that works with small-scale farmers across the continent.

Smallholder farmers in Kitui, a semi-arid area in eastern Kenya, have received training in building earth structures that help capture as much rainwater as possible during a short downpour. These structures, or micro-catchments, come in the form of terraces and small pits or zai pits, which are filled with topsoil and manure to make a fertile, absorbent planting bed for crops.

“The project is designed to help smallholders improve their resilience to drought in arid and semi-arid areas, which are being increasingly hit by the effects of climate change. Areas like Kitui have become a priority and we are working to improve the ability of some 7,000 households in the region to cope with drought,” Matt Whitticase, the communications officer for Farm Africa, told IPS.

According to Whitticase, there has been a trebling in crop yields thanks to this training and new farming methods.

“Increased yields mean that families have an additional month of food from their harvests, meaning farmers have more money to spend on essentials such as buying animals and essentials for their farms,” he said.

Electronic cash transfers have been helping elevate subsistence farming to a profit-generating activity in Ethiopia under the country’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA). Last year, 10,000 of the poorest, food-insecure people in Ethiopia received electronic money transfers directly into their bank accounts for the first time. This is an intervention aimed at the country’s previously “unbanked” or “under-banked” farmers.

“A profit-generating business requires access to financial services. In order to grow, every small business needs credit and banking services, whether it’s to invest in necessary infrastructure, improved inputs, seeds and fertiliser, or to fund expansion efforts,” Khalid Bomba, chief executive officer of ATA, told IPS.

Electronic transfers are conditional on the recipient’s pledge to participate in public works that improve community assets, boost food security, and combat the effects of drought. The Ethiopia government’s cash transfer programme, which has been operating since 2005, aims to reduce food insecurity by providing transfers to over 7.5 million people.

However, Henderson warned, there is a risk that making Africa’s smallholder farmers dependent on value chains could skewer the impact of well-intentioned interventions as these chains are bound to market forces and could expose hungry communities to volatile global food prices and the rapacity of large multinational agricultural companies.

He was concerned that despite the range of support being offered to boost food security in Africa, insufficient support was being given to smallholder farmers.

“The dominant approach of international development organisations has been to incorporate Africa’s smallholders into large value chains and to encourage the private sector to develop large-scale, external input-based production systems in the belief that this will create agricultural growth and therefore reduce poverty.”

However, Henderson is concerned that “there is a risk that these private, investment-based agricultural development strategies will be supporting multinational companies in Africa at the expense of the rural poor.”

Years of war forced Passion, 13, to live on the street in Goma, eastern DRC. Experts on conflict say that the implementation of non-violent approaches to conflict needs to become a priority in Africa. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI , May 25 2013 (IPS)

“My husband and older son, unable to cope with the war, became mentally ill. Two of my sons became child soldiers and an eight-year-old daughter was abducted – they were never to be seen again,” Mariamu Dong says, referring to the 21-year civil war between north and south Sudan, which are now separate countries.

Her seven children grew up during those years of bloodshed, but only one made it through.

“I move around like one whose limbs have been cut off, having lost my husband and children to the war. Only my last child was able to survive and now lives in Kenya. All this time, the world watched from a distance,” she says.

The south became an independent nation on Jul. 9, 2011 and Dong lives in what is now South Sudan, in Torit, Eastern Equatoria state. But every day she is reminded of the war that the world and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which is now the African Union (AU), left to continue unabated.“People ask me about what I want for my future and I give them silence." -- Nisa Luambo, DRC rape survivor.

It was the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), that finally brokered the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the government of Sudan. It eventually led to the end of the civil war and paved the way for South Sudan’s independence. The IGAD currently consists of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

But experts on conflict say that as the continent celebrates Africa Day on May 25, along with the 50th anniversary since the formation of the OAU, which became the AU in 2001, the implementation of non-violent approaches to conflict needs to become a priority.

“The AU, and the OAU before that, slept through a substantive part of the conflict in Africa. The millions of lives lost across the continent are testament to the fact that the OAU/AU has failed Africans,” Lionel Ibaka, a Congolese expert on peace and security, tells IPS.

Ibaka says one such example is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict that the United Nations estimates claimed about five million lives since it began in 1998.

In March, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that called for the deployment of an intervention brigade in the central African nation to neutralise rebel forces in eastern DRC.

But the intervention may have come a little too late.

“The bloodshed and terror in DRC has been hailed as the deadliest and most destructive since World War II,” Ibaka says.

According to a 2010 report by the U.N. Refugee Agency titled: “DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003”, violence in the DRC has been “accompanied by the apparent systematic use of rape and sexual assault allegedly by all combatant forces.”

Rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena lives in Bukavu, eastern DR Congo. She is one of the 2.2 million people have been affected by the fighting in the country which started in early 2012. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

The report also states that 30,000 children were used as child soldiers and experienced “indescribable violence”.

Nisa Luambo, 27, from South Kivu province, eastern DRC, lived through this. And while she is alive, the violence she endured has killed a part of her. She was only 12 years old when the war broke out in 1998 and she became separated from her family.

“I have been sexually abused by both soldiers and civilians. I have had four miscarriages during this time, (and I had) no medical attention and little food,” she tells IPS.

“People ask me about what I want for my future and I give them silence.

“Where were they when we got raped and beaten to near death – if we were lucky – because many people died,” she says adding, that the country is still unstable and that there is no end in sight to the conflict.

“I feel no joy when I think about tomorrow. I know that there is no tomorrow for people living in conflict.”

Vincent Kimosop, chief executive officer of the International Institute for Legislative Affairs, an NGO that offers technical support to government departments, members of parliament and other stakeholders in the legislative process, says that poor governance is at the heart of conflict in Africa.

“The AU needs to do more when it comes to supporting the development of governance institutions on the continent since state institutions provide the bedrock for a country to function,” he tells IPS.

Javas Bigambo, an expert on governance, human rights and development in Africa, concurs.

“The AU must refuse to be blind to atrocities and ills committed by African presidents. Regrettably, the AU has rarely ever found any fault with an African leader, or even come up with remedies to Africa’s governance and economic challenges.”

Bigambo says that the continent’s history of violent conflict “points to Africa’s tattered social and political fabric…Africa is perpetually in turmoil.”

Bigambo says the Rwandan genocide, a mass slaughter that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives according to the U.N., and Kenya’s 2007 to 2008 post-election violence in which 1,000 people were killed and 600,000 internally displaced, are all part of the African narrative.

But Julius Mucunguzi, a Ugandan scholar of conflict reporting, tells IPS that things are improving.

“Africa is on a path of renewal. It is getting better. While the OAU was established 50 years ago, the AU is only slightly over a decade old and is already putting good structures in place to enhance peace and security in Africa.

“But, AU institutions such as its Peace and Security Council must invest in early-warning mechanisms to ensure that signs of possible conflict are picked up and actual conflict is averted,” he says.

Nyan Tuch in her temporary home in a camp outside of Aweil where she is living until the government provides her family with land. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

He adds that an independent, pluralistic and vibrant media is critical to Africa’s development and calls on the AU to create an environment that celebrates press freedom and the right to information.

Press freedom remains elusive in many parts of Africa, with Uganda and Somalia being two such examples. Last year, in Somalia 18 members of the media were killed across the country, according to figures from the National Union of Somali Journalists.

In Uganda, state intolerance of the media came to the fore on May 20 when the government shut down the Daily Monitor, the East African nation’s leading daily.

The paper’s printing press, website and two radio stations were also shuttered for reporting on an incriminating letter about President Yoweri Museveni, which stated that he was grooming his son to take over the presidency.

Mucunguzi says the ongoing instability and turmoil on the continent notwithstanding, “Africa is making significant strides.”

Bigambo says that going forward the AU must “strengthen economic blocks” such as the East African Community, IGAD and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

“Regional trade is a key building block for promoting an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa,” he says.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
May 24 2013 (IPS)

With its youthful population, fast growing economies and an expanding middle class, Africa has much to celebrate on 25^th May, Africa Day.

This year Africa Day also marks the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.

When IPS Africa spoke to a few health experts we found out that advances in health, especially treatment of HIV and Aids are some of the areas we can celebrate this Africa Day.

We also heard what needs to happen over the coming years to make greater progress in the area of healthcare.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/Africa_Leads_Fight_Against_HIV.mp3[/podcast]

South Africa is a country rich in culture and diversity but its Africa Day awareness seems to be lagging behind.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
May 22 2013 (IPS)

As the continent prepares to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on Africa Day, 25^th of May, IPS Africa speaks to ordinary South Africans to hear how they plan to celebrate this important day.

However the responses we received were rather disappointing.

Africa Day is an annual commemoration of the historic 1963 meeting of leaders of 32 independent African states to form the OAU, now simply known as African Union (AU).

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/SA_Africa_Day_Awareness_Lagging_Behind.mp3[/podcast]

South Africa has pledged to help Nigeria make the automotive sector the West African nation’s flagship industrial target. Currently German car manufacturer BMW has a plant at Rosslyn near Pretoria. About 80 percent of the BMWs produced there are for the international market. Credit: John Fraser/IPS

By John Fraser
JOHANNESBURG, May 22 2013 (IPS)

The lack of economic diversification throughout sub-Saharan Africa means that despite South Africa’s pledges to help Nigeria make the automotive sector the West African nation’s flagship industrial target, it may be difficult to do so, experts say.

Earlier this month, South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies announced the initiative during a visit here by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

It is a move that is seen as an important milestone in inter-African industrial cooperation. However, Peter Draper, a research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs, questioned whether this collaboration would develop into economic integration.

“The real question is whether such cooperation could ultimately evolve into meaningful, broader, economic integration rather than the network of mostly hollow shells that currently masquerade as free trade agreements,” he told IPS.

“I think that Nigeria and the Southern African Customs Union should negotiate a complementary Free Trade Area agreement to promote closer economic relations – as the complementarities are strong, and it would bring the two countries closer together politically.”

Draper said that the African Union (AU) has already developed a number of initiatives for specific sectors, but more needs to be done.

“Actually there are quite a few sectoral policies covering, inter alia, energy, communications, transport, and various other integration initiatives. The problem remains implementation, not a lack of plans,” he said.

He said that it seemed to be commonly accepted that the AU’s role was to develop and coordinate implementation of a continental “master plan” that integrates these various initiatives.

“I think there is a role for a broader continental perspective, but I prefer the notion of ‘subsidiarity’ – pioneered in the European Union – where implementation is left to the lowest possible level of government.”

Draper said that the cooperation between South Africa and Nigeria could be an important mentoring initiative for South Africa.

“South Africa has been (involved in) auto industry policy development since the mid-1920s and has a lot of experience to draw on and share,” he explained.

“It reminds me of cooperation in Latin America, which historically evolved through sectors, involving the auto industry particularly. The European Community (which became the EU) also started out through a network of sectoral collaboration – iron and steel in particular.”

Minister Davies told the Business Day newspaper that discussions on automotive cooperation with Nigeria were still at an early stage.

But while some manufacturers, such as Nissan, might be willing to set up plants in Nigeria, others are more cautious.

Bodo Donauer, the managing director of BMW South Africa, said that in his group “production follows the market” and he does not currently envisage a BMW plant being established in Nigeria.

“Local production plants make it easier to access and develop new markets with long-term growth potential. Having a local plant also makes the company a ‘local player’ and boosts acceptance of the products locally and underscores our good corporate citizen approach,” he said.

“The success of this strategy has been proven by positive sales trends since the ramp-up of production plants, for example in the Unites States, in China, in the United Kingdom and, of course, in South Africa.”

He said that around 20 percent of BMWs produced at the Rosslyn plant near Pretoria are sold on the local market in South Africa “with more than 80 percent exported to markets around the world, including one percent to certain markets in the rest of Africa.”

“Given the current size of the new premium car market in the rest of Africa, we believe the BMW Group is well-placed with its current global production network to meet any additional demand in markets like Nigeria without the necessity for additional production locations,” he said.

Peggy Droidskie, an advisor to the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the initiative between South Africa and Nigeria was very welcome, as regional integration in Africa remains high on the development agenda.

“Nigeria is a large market, and it is closer to Europe. This proximity to Europe implies that it would be logical for European connections to be used.

“The fact that South Africa is preferred (as a partner for Nigeria) indicates that South Africa is very competitive and can accommodate the requirements of Nigeria. It also provides South African manufacturers with an additional footprint in Africa,” she said.

Droidskie predicted that some manufacturers who currently operate in South Africa would become interested in setting up in Nigeria.

“Agreements of this nature are driven by politicians,” she noted. “The politicians believe that the agreements that they enter into benefit the private sector, which is often, but not always, the case.”

She said that South African vehicle manufacturers are already exporting a significant number of vehicles to Nigeria.

“Last year, the number was nearly 15,000. Nigeria is therefore currently a lucrative market for South African vehicle manufacturers. It is therefore very likely that the manufacturers will take advantage and come to the party.”

And she predicted that this cooperation could expand to other industrial sectors.

“If the profile of Nigeria’s imports is taken into account, there is considerable room for an increase in South African exports to Nigeria. For instance, there is room for greater trade in electrical and electronic equipment and machinery.

“With the development of the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement between the three regional economic blocs in sub-Saharan Africa, there is considerable potential for cooperation to expand to other countries and to other sectors.”

Dr Theresa Moyo says there are increasing signs that Africa is taking gender equity seriously.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
May 20 2013 (IPS)

History was made last year July when the African Union Commission elected Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as its chairperson, making her the first woman to lead the organisation.

Now as the continent gears-up to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 formation of the AU, then known as the Organisation of African Unity, IPS Africa spoke to a few leading women and gender activists to find out if women have equal status with men on the continent.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/Gender_equity_a_work_in_progress.mp3[/podcast]

The newly completed African Union building in downtown Addis Ababa. Credit: Mekonnen Teshome/IPS

By John Fraser
JOHANNESBURG, May 7 2013 (IPS)

As the African Union celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, it is still younger and less integrated than the 56-year-old body that is now the European Union, and, according to politicians and diplomats, has a big advantage over the Europeans as it charts its own path of integration.

Africa can see where Europe has tried to move too far, too fast.  But it can also see where the Europeans have succeeded, as it plans its own path towards greater integration.

“Africa in particular has a need to integrate to take advantage of its massive resource economies of South Africa, Angola, Ethiopia, the Sudans and probably the whole Sahel area – and growing populous economies such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” former South African Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin told IPS.

Erwin negotiated his country’s trade, cooperation and development accord with Brussels, and has extensive experience in dealing with the EU.

There can be no doubt that the EU is willing to share the lessons it has learnt, and there is a regular dialogue between the European and African Unions.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and six of his commissioners travelled to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa from Apr. 25 to 26 to meet their AU counterparts as part of the preparations for the EU-Africa Summit that will be held next year.

While the themes of cooperation and partnership will no doubt ring out, the recent crisis over the Euro, when Greece and some other members needed bailouts to keep their economies afloat, serves to highlight the way integration between sovereign nations can bring pitfalls as well as benefits.

However, while Europe has succeeded in many technical areas, the recent Euro crisis shows how political goals were pursued without the necessary backbone of economic and financial integration.

“The greatest caveat has emerged only recently and it came from the macro and monetary integration process,” Erwin said.

“Despite attempts to force a degree of harmonisation – with the Maastricht Treaty which established the European Union – it became clear that in fact the economies were too disparate in size, efficiency, and economic stability to survive a crisis.”

He said there is a clear lesson for Africa in that there has to be a systematic plan toward economic integration.

“We run the risk of running into problems with trade liberalisation,” he warned.

“Whilst this is important, it can backfire seriously if handled incorrectly. Trade liberalisation requires good trade facilitation between the economies and responsive economies.

“Both of these requirements essentially revolve around affordable and accessible energy, logistics and communications. In addition, there are a host of institutional trade facilitation reforms that have to be made.

“So like the EU at the outset we should be focusing on infrastructure and trade facilitation as key projects.”

Erwin said that in the past, Nigeria, Algeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa cooperated more closely, and big progress was made in African development.

“It is this cooperation that is now most glaringly absent,” he said. “It requires diplomacy and tact since no one likes to think that the African world is going to be ruled by its giants.”

EU Ambassador to South Africa Roeland van de Geer told IPS: “If there is anything to be learnt from European integration it is that the road to union is a bumpy one – integration does not take place in isolation, and internal as well as external factors will place obstacles along the path.”

Former South African Ambassador to the EU Professor Eltie Links echoed this message, telling IPS: “My caution to Africa is to not try and emulate the Europeans in every aspect of the integration path.

“We have the benefit of their experience over the last couple of years and especially the last few months in trying to understand fully the way to manage the vast, enlarged EU in all of its spheres.

“These clearly point us to be more cautious in our own need to integrate, especially with regard to the speed and the depth of integration that we as Africans talk so easily about.”

Links said that the levels of development were so different in Europe, let alone in Africa, that talking of lumping countries together in an economic or monetary union without the necessary and thorough preparation would be a grave mistake.

Former South African diplomat John Mare, who served in his country’s Brussels Embassy, suggested that a lot of the more detailed harmonisation of standards and rules, which the EU has undertaken, could serve as a model for Africa.

“The AU has much to learn from the EU in terms of various forms of technical integration – such as getting similar standards for educational qualifications, road signs, environmental standards, food safety standards, infrastructural roll-out and so on,” he told IPS.

“It can learn how to delegate coordinated activities aimed at improved regional integration to sub-regional entities that firstly produce improved results, and secondly cut out duplication.”

However, Links suggested that Africa could learn not just from the practices of the EU, but also from its values.

He said three had stood out during his dealings with Brussels, namely respect for human rights, respect for the rule of law, and good governance, with the latter basically referring to corruption.

“Living in South Africa today these principles of democracy have become very obvious and imperative in our struggle to achieve our full potential as a democracy,” he said.

“Sometimes the source from where the advice comes clouds our willingness to accept it as good for us. We can do a lot more for the people of Africa if we strive diligently towards respecting and practicing these fundamentals in our society.”

Mare suggested that the AU should focus on areas of cooperation which are realistic and which will bring benefits.

“A key lesson is for the AU not to waste too much time on regional topics such as coordinated foreign affairs for the AU, or on a common monetary union – just think of the Euro,” he concluded.

The writer has just confirmed he had recorded the interview and taken notes of the conference, but he incurred in a regrettable error confusing António Soares (Toni Tcheca) with Emílio Krafft Kosta. This is of course completely unprofessional, and we have erased both versions of the story, in Spanish and English. Please accept our sincere apologies.

South Sudanese people celebrate the first anniversary of their country’s independence at the John Garang Memorial on Jul. 9, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Staton Winter

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 27 2012 (IPS)

The international community is reacting triumphantly following an agreement on Thursday between Sudan and South Sudan to resume oil production and trade, despite the accord’s failure to address two of the situation’s most intractable issues, on border demarcation and control over lucrative oil-producing regions.

“This historic agreement … breaks new ground in support of the international vision of two viable states at peace with each other,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in response. “The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan have chosen to take another important step on the path away from conflict.”

President Obama extended particular congratulations to former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who led the African Union’s mediation efforts in attempting to defuse a range of disagreements that spiked in January, which almost led to full-blown war by April. Mbeki echoed President Obama’s appraisal, calling the agreement a “giant step”.

Sudan and South Sudan were facing significant international pressure to arrive at a deal prior to the current session of the United Nations General Assembly, failing even to come to terms by a Saturday deadline. A month and a half of talks – building on several previous rounds, facilitated by the international community – culminated in four days of direct negotiations in Addis Ababa between Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and South Sudan President Salva Kiir.

In addition to resuming trade and oil production, which builds on a previous agreement made in August, the two presidents agreed to the creation of a 20-km demilitarised buffer zone along the border.

Yet while negotiators suggest that the new agreement could allow oil production to resume by the end of the year, the agreement did not touch on some of the most sensitive points of contention between the two countries: delineation of the undemarcated border more generally and control over the oil-producing border region of Abyei specifically.

No dates have yet been set for another round of negotiations

Without coming to agreement on those points, says longtime Sudan expert Eric Reeves, the talks should be seen as having offered “no progress – the international community is so invested in the African Union and the peace process and self-congratulation, it is unsurprising that they are way overselling this achievement.”

Minimum necessary

Sudan and South Sudan have been locked in recrimination and rising tensions for much of the latter’s short existence. When the two split in July 2011, following a decades-long civil war, the south took two-thirds of Sudan’s oil fields with it, but Sudan retained much of the processing and transport infrastructure.

Disputes over transit fees subsequently led the south to halt production in January, despite the fact that oil remains of massive significance to both countries’ economies.

Yet nine months later, the latest round of talks need to be seen as having produced only “the minimum necessary for the international community to excitedly celebrate an agreement that really will not do much to ensure that true peace comes to Sudan,” Reeves, with Smith College, told IPS.

“Al Bashir went into this knowing that the really tough, hardline guys in Khartoum – those who are insisting on the humanitarian blockade in (southern Sudanese) Juba Mountains and Blue Nile – were setting the negotiating parametres, and that they were going to be very narrow.”

That’s certainly how the Sudanese negotiators acted, anyway, Reeves says: “Going after a minimalist deal to take the diplomatic heat off and get the oil they so desperately need. The north doesn’t want to talk about border negotiations, doesn’t want to talk about Abyei – because they don’t have a claim! And, as it turns out, they got exactly what they wanted.”

The real news of the recent negotiations may revolve around the African Union’s mediation efforts.

Before arriving at the new agreement, a relatively more far-reaching AU proposal was tabled. This would have included a resolution of the control of Abyei, giving a percentage of Abyei oil revenue to Sudan, for use in certain development projects.

But while South Sudan agreed to the proposal, Sudan rejected it, calling the formulation futile.

“The African Union was told no for another time – this should be very humiliating for the AU,” Reeves says. He suggests that diplomatic action could now only come about if the AU negotiators take their proposal to the AU Peace and Security Council – and, if Khartoum again refuses, on to the United Nations Security Council.

“In that case, each step of the way, if they don’t push Khartoum, the AU loses credibility as a negotiating force,” Reeves says. “Mbeki’s credibility is already on the line, so there would be powerful incentive for him.”

For the immediate future, the prospects of the current agreement seem relatively strong, at least insofar as both sides have overwhelming economic incentives to adhere to it. But with inflation above 50 percent in both countries and some analysts voicing scepticism at the prospect that oil could actually begin flowing by the end of the year, the threat of instability will continue regardless of the recent agreement.