“We stand for cooperation and partnership – rather than competition – in our relations with Africa and the world” – Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation and chair of the African Union Peace and Security Council: Credit: Courtesy of Maite Nkoana-Mashabane

By Maite Nkoana-Mashabane
PRETORIA, Aug 3 2015 (IPS)

The Freedom Charter, which turned 60 this year, envisaged that a free and democratic South Africa would be guided in its relations with the rest of the African continent and the world by a desire to seek “peace and friendship”.

Twenty-one years after the attainment of our freedom and democracy, peace and friendship are still core objectives of our foreign policy.

The African continent remains central to our foreign policy, and this approach forms the basis for our friendship, cooperation and peace efforts all over the world. We stand for cooperation and partnership – rather than competition – in our relations with Africa and the world.

The African Union Summit, held in South Africa in June 2015,  set out measures for the rollout of Agenda 2063 as a continental vision for the “Africa We Want”, an Africa that is united, peaceful, prosperous, and which takes up its rightful place in world affairs.“It is vital that the continent identifies and addresses the root causes of conflicts, with the ultimate aim of achieving sustainable peace and development. Among these, democracy must be deepened to give our people a voice they deserve”

The Summit adopted a 10-year implementation plan for Agenda 2063, a sign that African leaders are committed to giving practical expression and commit their energies, talents and resources towards the realisation of the goals that are contained in Agenda 2063, working in partnership with various stakeholders, including business and other non-governmental sectors.

While there have been remarkable developments in some areas where the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region has experienced political and security challenges, the latest of which is the political and security situation in the Kingdom of Lesotho, there needs to be ongoing political and security engagement within the region.

South Africa will continue to forge closer political, economic and social relations through targeted high-level interactions in Africa.

The realisation of “The Africa We Want” requires peace, be it in the SADC, Great Lakes, the Horn of Africa or in North Africa.

Our continent, especially in East, West and North Africa, is also battling against a spate of dreadful and cowardly acts of terrorism, which we condemn and must be defeated.

We must silence the guns. To this end, the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC), the precursor to the African Standby Force (ASF), has to be operationalised as one of our tools for African solutions to African problems. This is a Force that should evolve into a critical element that helps us stabilise and keep the peace on the continent.

South Africa, in conjunction with ACIRC, will be hosting the AMANI Africa II Field Training Exercise this year to operationalise the African Standby Force. We are pleased to be part of strengthening our continent’s military response mechanisms. This further illustrates the continent’s commitment towards self-reliance and interventions led by African nations.

Under South Africa’s leadership of the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) for the month of July 2015, we sought to put critical issues that are at the core of the continent’s efforts to ensure peace and stability at the forefront of the PSC’s agenda, including strengthening the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), which comprise the PSC itself, early warning capacity, peace-making and post-conflict reconstruction and development.

We also brought into the spotlight the issue of peace, justice and reconciliation, which remains a very crucial matter for our continent in promoting nation-building and reconciliation in order to enable societies, especially in post-conflict settings, to heal, reconstruct and develop.

It is vital that the continent identifies and addresses the root causes of conflicts, with the ultimate aim of achieving sustainable peace and development. Among these, democracy must be deepened to give our people a voice they deserve. Our constitutions have to reign supreme to ensure accountability and political certainty.

Some of the fundamentals towards African unity are already in place. Our continental organisations are in existence and functional. What we need, however, is more effectiveness in programme delivery and in finding innovative sources of self-financing for budgetary self-reliance.

A united, peaceful and prosperous Africa is possible and within reach. And the prevailing environment is conducive for the realisation of the objectives of Agenda 2063.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The world’s first hospital to be built and run in a developing country under a public-private partnership is taking up more than half of the health budget in Lesotho, according to new estimates, diverting resources from populations outside of the capital.

The unique funding arrangement for the Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital, which opened in 2011 in the capital city of Maseru, came about under a deal brokered by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector arm.“It’s very concerning that the deal was structured to give a 25 percent return to a private company – that’s a phenomenally high rate." -- Anna Marriott of Oxfam

Yet while the Washington-based IFC was negotiating on behalf of the Lesotho government, the final agreement will see returns of around 25 percent for the private company running the hospital.

Now, critics from civil society and within the Lesotho government are warning that the contract, which lasts for 18 years, is already forcing officials to cut back on health and other services, particularly for the country’s rural areas – where 75 percent of the Lesotho population lives.

“The big promise was that the new hospital would cost exactly the same as the old hospital and bring better results, but that’s clearly not the case. Even at the point the contract was signed [in 2009], costs had already escalated beyond what was agreed to be affordable,” Anna Marriott, a health policy advisor with Oxfam Great Britain, a humanitarian and advocacy group, told IPS.

“It’s very concerning that the deal was structured to give a 25 percent return to a private company – that’s a phenomenally high rate – and the idea that the World Bank would advise on a deal of that type is truly surprising. It feels as though the IFC was negotiating on behalf of the company rather than the government.”

In a report released Monday, Marriott writes that the new hospital is costing around 67 million dollars a year, three times more than the old hospital. Further, it’s currently accounting for some 51 percent of the country’s health budget, even while rural services are being cut, including for agriculture and education.

“The [new] hospital has had a bad impact on how we’ve allocated resources over the last two years,” the report quotes an anonymous senior Ministry of Health official as stating. “There are less and less resources for primary health care and district services.”

Non-competitive bidding

While the Lesotho government has proposed a significant increase in its health budget for coming years, a large majority – some 84 percent – of this will be earmarked for the new hospital. Yet most people in Lesotho can’t easily make use of these facilities.

“For many people, travelling to urban areas or the capital can take two days or more,” Lehlohonolo Chefa, director of the Lesotho Consumers Protection Association (CPA), which co-authored the new report, told IPS.

“For a long time, the government has been relying on the Christian Health Association of Lesotho to provide most of the primary health-care services in rural areas. But with the advent of this project, the majority of funding goes to financing the federal hospital while sacrificing that primary health care.”

Chefa is in Washington ahead of semi-annual meetings between the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are taking place later this week.

Lesotho is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world. The new Queen ‘Mamohato Hospital replaces the country’s previous central health service provider, a century-old institution that nearly everyone agreed needed to be renovated or overhauled entirely.

Yet when the government of Lesotho went to the World Bank to request funding to do so, Oxfam’s Marriot says the bank’s window had already closed for the concessional assistance that would typically be used in such a situation. Instead, officials were pointed towards the IFC, which took over the main technical advisory role for the deal.

That process resulted in a contract between the government of Lesotho and Tsepong, a consortium headed by Netcare, a South African company that has long experience in the private health-care business.

Critics point to a host of problems with the negotiating process and structure of the eventual contract, however, including that only two companies engaged in the bidding process. In addition, the contract significantly underestimated the number of patients the hospital would see, while requiring the government to pay Tsepong for visits over that number.

Further, Tsepong’s priorities are at times at odds with those of the government. Lesotho, for instance, has the world’s third-highest rate of HIV/AIDS, yet CPA’s Chefa says the new hospital has scaled back these services.

“Most of the HIV/AIDS treatments are not provided in the new federal hospital, so people have to look elsewhere,” he says. “For the private sector, HIV/AIDS is not profitable – we’re seeing the same problem with mental health services.”

Landmark model

The deal was quickly lauded by the IFC, which continues to embrace the project’s broader aims.

“The World Bank Group shares Oxfam’s concern that the health network in Lesotho is being overburdened as it attempts to fulfil greater than anticipated public demand for basic health services,” Geoffrey Keele, an IFC spokesperson, told IPS in a statement.

“The World Bank Group is supporting the Government of Lesotho in strengthening the country’s health system so that everyone in Lesotho, especially the poorest, can access the essential health services they need.”

Keele notes that the project has improved the quality of care for around a quarter of the country’s population, while the overall mortality rate at the new hospital has fallen by 41 percent.

Indeed, the IFC started making plans to replicate the project in other countries almost immediately.

“The landmark deal might serve as a model for aging and overburdened health care systems across Africa,” the IFC said in a statement at the time. “The real potential of the Lesotho project becomes apparent if it could be scaled up across populous countries such as Nigeria, where there could conceivably be scope for 20 or more such hospitals.”

Currently, the IFC is advising on similar projects in Nigeria and Benin.

Oxfam is now urging the World Bank to investigate the IFC’s role in the project. Meanwhile, CPA’s Chefa says the Lesotho government will need to renegotiate the contract, but warns that the contract details remain under wraps.

“Renegotiating the contract is the only way out of this mess, and whether that’s possible is based on the government’s and the IFC’s willingness to change,” he says.

“For the moment, there is incredible secrecy around the project. But if this is a flagship project, how can they not be open about what’s in the contract?”

Oil storage facilities in Bentiu in South Sudan's Unity State. Japan is heavily reliant on oil and gas imports. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Acutely aware of China’s strong presence in resource-rich Africa, Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is beefing up its relations with the continent. Participants at a high-level donor conference hosted by Japan this week stressed the need for closer engagement, not through the traditional grants and assistance loans that have hitherto defined the relationship, but rather through trade and investment led by the Japanese private sector.

“Africa’s growth is registering, on average, more than six percent annually, and the continent represents a growing population and important regional market,” Mokoto Ito, spokesperson for African development at Japan’s foreign ministry, said at the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that concluded today in Yokohama, capital of the Kanagawa Prefecture.

“Japan can play an active role by investing in infrastructure and providing industrial technology to boost manufactured goods through capacity building,” Mokoto added.

His words clearly reflect Japan’s domestic interests – for instance, Africa’s natural resources are vital for Japan’s energy needs that are heavily dependent on gas and oil imports.

They also point to a sense of competition with neighbouring China, whose trade receipts with the African continent hit 138.6 billion dollars last year according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), far outstripping the 30-billion-dollar bilateral trade partnership between Japan and Africa.

TICAD, a two-decade old forum that seeks to create dialogue between African and Asian partners, supports initiatives that will simultaneously boost African ownership and partnership with key Asian economies. It enjoys the backing of major players like the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the African Union.

Addressing the leaders of some 40 countries who gathered here from Jun. 1-3, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that, in addition to Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) of 14 billion dollars, Japan would also offer up to “32 billion dollars in public and private investment in support of Africa’s growth.”

In what experts have identified as a jab at China’s controversial presence in Africa – where 127 billion dollars worth of investment in extractive and industrial projects has been labelled a “resource-grab”, without corresponding attention paid to human development indicators– Abe promised not to “explore and dig resources simply to bring them to Japan. We will support Africa so that African natural resources will lead to African economic growth,” he said.

Abe also urged greater transparency in business transactions and promised to do more to protect the rights and security of some 30,000 Africans living and working in Japan.

But despite these assurances and expressions of goodwill, some experts are disappointed that participants did not tackle the prospect of a closer relationship from a human rights perspective.

For Akio Shibata, head of the Natural Resource Research Institute, a think tank that focuses on agricultural development, TICAD’s message that growth can be achieved through private investment and trade spells danger for the vast rural populations that continue to grapple with abject poverty across the African continent; according to the World Bank, 48.8 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa still live below the poverty line.

“I was disappointed because TICAD has left out pressing issues like high levels of maternal mortality, environmental protection and equal wealth distribution, which are also keys to sustainable development,” he told IPS.

He believes that promises to extend Japan’s technological expertise to support structural reform will pave the way for commercialised mining and agricultural, which could negatively affect small-scale farmers, who comprise over 70 percent of the populations in most African countries.

“A focus on developing large-scale agricultural projects is a danger for the small-holder farmer who faces the risk of big companies entering rural agriculture and leaving them landless or without jobs,” he said.

The professor was speaking at a session led by rural farmers in Mozambique’s Tete province who are protesting the Triangular Cooperation Programme for the Agricultural Development of Tropical Savannahs in Mozambique, also known as ‘ProSavana’, that will convert swathes of the savannah, particularly along Mozambique’s northern Nacala Development Corridor, into a commercial agricultural enterprise that will produce soya beans for export.

Mozambique is currently recording gross national product (GNP) growth rates of seven percent, but is listed as one of the three worst performing African countries on the human development index, which tracks achievements in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including health and education equality.

Augusto Mafigo, a grain farmer who leads a union network in Mozambique, says farmers have stepped up protests against ProSavana out of fear that they will lose their small plots of farmland when companies start to acquire land for the project. Considering the fact that 80 percent of the labour force in this country of 23 million people is comprised of small-scale farmers, such a scenario would be disastrous for millions of peasants.

Still, African delegates welcomed the idea of a more active Japan, engaged in developing the continent. “Japan brings quality technology and can play an important balancing role to China’s heavy (hand) in African countries,” Tseliso Nteso, an official of Lesotho’s ministry of finance, told IPS.

Other country leaders expressed hope that TICAD’s message of increased public-private partnerships could signal the beginning of a new development paradigm, one that would be “kinder” to the continent’s vast marginalised populations, especially in the sub-Saharan region.

Zuzana Brixiova, economist at the African Development Bank, added that the new and improved relationship between Japan and Africa might also be able to meet pressing global issues like depleting natural resources, climate change and expanding inequality, by focusing on sustainable, rather than extractive, development.

She told IPS it was crucial to set up “stable standards in development that can ensure inclusive and structural reforms in order to produce value added goods.”

One of the students at the Gymnasia Herzliya School checks on the plastic bottles containing samples of a blue-green algae called Spirulina. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
TEL AVIV, May 12 2013 (IPS)

At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.

Under the guidance of their principal and biology teacher, these Israeli teenagers are attempting to breed a blue-green algae called spirulina, widely believed to contain a miraculous array of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Fourteen-year-old Miri Wolozhinski says her involvement in the experiment stems from a desire to help “those in need”, while her classmate, Anouk Savir-Carmon, rails against “the absurdity that in the 21^st century there are still hungry children.”

According to a United Nations report released last October, nearly 870 million people, or one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment between 2010 and 2012. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says malnutrition is caused by “inadequate or unbalanced food intake or … poor absorption of food consumed.”

The students here believe they can help rectify this bleak situation. Having studied the various properties of the microscopic algae, Savir-Carmon explains to IPS, “Sixty to 70 percent of its mass is protein; the rest contains carbohydrates, antioxidants, Omega-3 fats, vitamins, minerals – in short, everything needed for nourishment.”

A study published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2008, based on an experiment conducted in Mexico, showed that 10 grammes per day of powdered spirulina supplement were sufficient to combat child malnutrition.

The same study showed that severely malnourished infants admitted to a village health clinic in Togo recovered within weeks of taking 10 to 15-gramme doses of the dietary supplement mixed with millet, water and spices every day.

Known in the scientific community as multicellular photosynthetic Cyanophyceae, the algae is thought to have existed in salt water and some freshwater lakes for over three billion years.

It is considered a “complete protein”, containing all nine essential amino acids that human beings need to survive. Commonly dubbed a superfood, spirulina eclipses all other whole foods such as unpolished grains, beans, fruits and vegetables and non-homogenised dairy products.

Although the algae develops naturally in tropical lakes in Central and Eastern Africa, the derived dietary supplement – sold as flakes, pills or tablets – comes with a hefty price tag and is available only in select natural and health food stores.

Convinced that the prohibitive cost is a result of large-scale and ineffective breeding methods requiring expensive equipment, students at Gymnasia Herzliya are determined to find cheaper ways of growing the cyanobacteria.

They began by diluting a culture sample, obtained from the ‘Adama’ algae farm located in the Negev desert, with chemicals like sodium bicarbonate, potassium nitrate, sodium chloride, phosphate sulphate and magnesium sulphate “for optimal breeding and mandatory alkalinity,” explains a ninth grader named Fea Hadar.

Using the Internet as their guide, students taught themselves everything they could about the algae’s taxonomy, structure, nutritional benefits and growth conditions.

At first, each pupil was assigned the care of one recycled plastic bottle containing a sample of the culture. Since spirulina, like any other plant, needs carbon to photosynthesise, the students would simply “shake the solution every two hours,” recalls Savir-Carmon.

Four months ago, their algae advisor Boris Zlotnikov devised a more efficient system, arranging rows of bottles on a discarded wooden stand and hooking them up to an electric system of pumps, pipes and thin hoses that breathe air into the solution, stirring the algae constantly. “It now grows very fast,” notes tenth grader El’ad Dvash.

Last week, as the solution took on a dense emerald colour, they celebrated their first harvest, drying the biomass outdoors.

“With 650 litres of algae culture, we produced the equivalent of 65 kilos of dry matter,” boasts Dvash.

The class retained some algae in a makeshift reservoir in order to test more archaic breeding methods, without using electricity.

“We’re busy formulating a protocol for ultimate spirulina breeding – in pools, bottles, under various weather and economic conditions, with or without electricity, instruments or resources,” 15-year-old Ori Shemor tells IPS.

“We still have to conduct a series of experiments which will take into consideration light, temperature and humidity variations,” Shemor explains.

Already the project has generated a buzz, with researchers at the Bar-Ilan University’s Algae Biotechnology Centre volunteering to help the budding scientists devise a model to increase the algea’s protein concentration.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has offered to help the students circulate their protocol through its Associated Schools Project, a global network connecting nearly 10,000 education institutions in over 180 countries, while Rotary International has shown a willingness to partially fund the project.

Last month, an Ethiopian education official visited the breeding premises in Tel Aviv. The governments of South Africa and Lesotho have also expressed interest in the project, said Ze’ev Degani, the school’s principal and the brains behind the initiative.

He told IPS the pilot project has the potential to reach between 700 and 1,000 schools around the world. “Half a million children will be growing spirulina in pools and bottles for themselves within two years,” he predicted.

Though the students have registered their experiment under a start-up company entitled Algeed, they are determined to resist the laws of the free market.

Rather than sell the supplement, Savir-Carmon says he and his classmates will “transmit our knowledge to help other pupils around the world grow it for themselves.”

Some have criticised the experiment for having lofty goals, but Degani believes it has a clear rationale – to create a new kind of food chain based on solidarity, until food autonomy prevails and malnutrition becomes extinct.

A student of the renowned educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, Degani is of the firm opinion that teaching and learning must go beyond the walls of a classroom to touch the lives of those who struggle to survive war, poverty, and inequality.

“We’ll make protocols, not money,” he vows.