Girl refugees from Niger now living in Benin, often end up as child brides. Graphic: IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU/BENIN , Apr 26 2024 (IPS)

A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou. They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Among them are Saida, 15, and Aminata, 16, who are already “married” to Abdou, 22, and Anwar, 25, two Niger youths who have been living in Benin for some time. The lessons are over and Saida heads outside the overcrowded compound where her husband, Abdou, came to pick up his wife on a rundown motorbike.

“She has not been feeling well lately and I think she might be pregnant,” Abdou says without embarrassment. Asked about the circumstances leading to the couple becoming husband and wife, he says: “If in Benin or where you come from, this seems strange, it is normal in Niger for a young girl to become someone’s wife as soon as she reaches 15.”

Niger has one of highest prevalence rates of child marriages in the world, where 76% of girls are married before their 18th birthday and 28% are married before the age of 15, according to Girls Not Brides figures.

Child marriage is most prevalent in Maradi (where 89% of women aged 20–24 were already married by age of 18), Zinder (87%), Diffa (82%) and Tahoua (76%). Girls as young as 10 years old in some regions are married, and after the age of 25, only a handful of young women are unmarried, according to the Girls Not Brides statistics.

Steady increase 

However, Abdou says there has been a steady increase in such cases since the military coup due to the social and economic meltdown triggered by regional and international sanctions, which left Niger’s economy hanging in balance. France, a former colonial power, suspended development and budget aid to Niger, vowing not to recognize the new military authorities. In 2021, The French Development Agency (AFD) committed €97 million to Niger.  Moreover, the World Bank recently warned that 700,000 more people will fall into extreme poverty this year in Niger. In addition, nearly two million children could be out of school, including 800,000 girls.

Multiple suspensions of development aid from several countries and organizations will result in a shortfall of nearly US$1.2 billion in 2024 (more than 6% of the country’s GDP).

“Life has become unlivable since the coup and the closure of borders. In addition, insecurity has risen, forcing farmers to stay away from their fields. In other parts, climate change has rendered farmland useless; it is a triple tragedy for Niger, but the authorities continue to talk nonsense on TV,” says a Benin-based Islamic teacher identified only as Oumarou, who fled to Cotonou in the aftermath of the coup.

“And as a result, many families are left penniless and dependent on humanitarian assistance. Consequently, some families are seeking help from their relatives and family friends living in Benin and Togo to take their daughters under their care. Niger’s people help each other a lot and prioritize community life over individual interests.

“The girls arrive in these two countries and are quickly dispatched to Niger’s households, where they work as domestic workers without pay. Yes, they don’t get paid because they eat and sleep there and are made to feel as if they are part of the family.”

However, Oumarou says that as time goes by, these people begin to feel that they can no longer carry the burden. That is where they pass a message through the elders to Niger youths who want a wife to come and discuss.

Suitors wanted 

“As soon as a suitor is found, we inform the girls’ parents, who, in most cases, do not hesitate to allow the marriage to proceed. As God-fearing people, we cannot let the youth take a girl without doing a formal religious ceremony.

Asked if he was aware that he was committing a crime by acting as an accomplice to child marriages, he became defensive and politicized the issue: “What’s criminal and illegal in that procedure? How can you describe our good gesture to help these poverty-stricken girls rebuild their lives as a crime?

“Okay, if it’s indeed a crime. How do you say about France, which has been stealing our natural resources, notably our uranium, for decades without giving us anything in return? And what about the crimes committed by the West during the colonial era in Africa? Did anyone investigate those crimes and bring the perpetrators to book or make reparations for what they did?” the man said, storming out of the room where the interview was taking place.

However, not everyone in Niger is God-fearing and therefore does not follow the religious procedure. Anwar says her wife told him that she owes him her life after rescuing her from the abusive family where she was working as a donkey.

“I have been taking care of her ever since as a wife and a little sister. I don’t need anyone’s permission or blessings to make her my wife. We have been living under the same roof since last year and that’s a sign of marriage,” he says with a wide smile.

Aminata describes the hell she went through while working for one of these families. “They make you work like a slave, right from Fajr [Islamic dawn prayer] up to Isha [evening prayer] and even beyond. It’s very stressful. Most of the time, you don’t even eat well. They keep yelling at you whenever you make a slight mistake. Anwar is a good man and a caring husband,” she says through a translator.

Anwar says most of these girls do not have a formal (western) education. “That’s why they cannot understand French. They only speak their vernacular language and some Arabic because they only attend Qur’anic school.”

Niger has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, and very few girls attend formal school, as priority is given to boys. The Niger literacy rate for 2021 was 37.34%, a 2.29% increase from 2018.

Factors that contribute to this, including high dropout rates, high illiteracy rates, insufficient resources and infrastructure, unqualified teachers, weak local governance structures, and high vulnerability to instability, have been blamed for the low level of educational attainment, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I want to ensure that she gets a good education now that she is in Benin, far away from that rotten country, where the system does not allow girls, especially in the rural areas, to attend school,” Anwar, who himself did not finish high school, says.

Niger girls no longer “God-fearing”? 

While child brides jostle for makeshift husbands to take care of them away from their impoverished and famine-hit country, in other parts of Benin, street life has become the way of survival for some Niger women. “Niger men used to mock us, saying that their women were God-fearing and not immoral like us. Now the trend has been reversed. Look at the way those two Niger girls out there are shoving for a wealthy client,” Susan, a Beninese sex worker, says.

She claims the girls arrive in the “workplace” every evening well covered from head to toe but take it off and put on some sexy clothes, only to wear them again after the end of the shift. “Now, who fears God the most? The hypocrites or the people like us who have nothing to hide?”

Prostitution is illegal but remains prevalent in big cities and near major mining and military sites. UNAIDS estimates there are 46,630 sex workers in the country. Some sources say poverty, forced marriages, rising insecurity, and climate change continue to push many girls into prostitution, sometimes with the complicity of their families and marabouts (witchdoctors).

A source close to Nigerian and Ivorian pimping syndicates says there is a huge appetite for Niger girls in several countries across the region, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Ghana. Asked why it is the case, the source says: “From what I heard, girls from other countries, including Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria, have been used many times and are big-headed, while Niger girls seem fresh, disciplined, respectful, and docile. That’s why they make good wives. The demand has been growing since the coup.”

The source says the three countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) desire to quit the regional bloc, Ecowas, will have a negative effect on the sex trafficking business as it will curtail the free movement of people and goods across the region. According to a 2022 report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), women and girls constitute 69% of victims and survivors of trafficking in Niger.

While Niger’s military authorities reinforce their grip on power and castigate the West’s neo-colonialist and imperialist attitude and Ecowas’ interference in Niger’s internal affairs, life seems to be getting harder in this uranium-producing West African nation, forcing thousands of underage girls and women to seek a better life elsewhere.

A researcher who recently returned to Benin from Niger says: “You must live in Niger right now to understand what is going on there. Forget what you see on state TV. If residents of the big cities, like the capital Niamey, are trying harder to stay alive, many people are hopeless in the countryside because the humanitarian situation is terrific.

“Those who say development aid does not work are lying because they have never been on the ground to see for themselves.”

Note: The names have been changed to protect their identities.

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Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey students stage a protest in support of Russia and the coup plotters. Credit: Abdoulaye Hali Aboubacar

By Promise Eze
SOKOTO, NIGERIA, Aug 7 2023 (IPS)

On July 26 2023 a man named Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, flanked by soldiers with military fatigues, appeared on Niger’s national television to announce the execution of a coup. It was the country’s fourth coup since it gained independence from France in 1960.

“The defence and security forces have decided to put an end to the regime you are familiar with. This follows the continuous deterioration of the security situation, the bad social and economic management,” he said.

The country’s president Mohamed Bazoum, who came to power in 2021 through Niger’s first democratic elections, was removed, and his government, including the constitution, was suspended.

Before the announcement of the coup, President Bazoum had been held captive in the presidential palace. This was unexpected, as earlier in the year, Bazoum had dismissed the possibility of a military coup during an interview. However, he was ultimately overthrown by the very people who were supposed to protect him—the Presidential Guard.

Two days later, the Presidential Guard commander General Abdourahamane Tchiani was proclaimed as the new leader of the country following the army’s support of the sudden military takeover.

The recent military takeover in Niger has reverberated through the international community, shocking those who regarded the country as a bulwark against the encroachment of democratic backsliding in the region.

Niger faced widespread international condemnation following the military coup. The European Union, the United States, France, and the West African regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), were among those who unequivocally condemned the coup. France issued a stern warning, threatening to respond firmly to any violence directed at its diplomatic mission in Niger or its citizens and interests.

While this may not be the first coup in Niger, and it certainly isn’t the first in the Sahel or West Africa. In recent years, the region has witnessed a series of coups where military officers have seized power from elected government officials, driven by their frustration with the increasing incidents of terrorism, corruption, and political instability in West Africa.

In January 2022, Burkina Faso witnessed two coups, which were triggered by the deteriorating security situation and the President’s perceived inability to effectively address challenges, notably the Islamist insurgency.

Similarly, Mali experienced coups in both 2020 and 2021, indicating the volatility of its political landscape. In 2021, President Alpha Condé of Guinea was overthrown in a coup d’état by the country’s armed forces following gunfire in the capital, Conakry.

These three nations share notable similarities: they are located in West Africa, have unstable political systems, face regular jihadist threats, and were once under French colonial rule.

Analysts argue that these coups represent direct threats to democracy in West Africa, undermining the principles of democratic governance in the region.

“The coup represents a significant setback for the small but crucial developmental strides made by West Africa and the entire African continent towards more people-oriented governance, even if not perfect. It’s disheartening to see these gains being nullified. This unsettling development raises concerns about the potential for more coups across Africa in the years to come, which is a distressing prospect. Moreover, it is likely to exacerbate insecurity, particularly terrorism, as violent non-state actors may seize the opportunity to emerge,” says Timothy Avele, a security expert, and Managing Director of Agent-X Security, based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Ibrahim Baba Shatambaya, a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, holds the view that the army’s actions in Niger were motivated by a desire to break free from France’s long-standing control and exploitation of its former colonial territories.

“The coup stands as evidence that democracy is facing challenges in Africa, and it reflects the inability of ECOWAS to ensure that leaders in the West African sub-region meet the expectations of their people,” he adds.

For the Love of Uranium

In French West Africa, there has been a significant rise in anti-French sentiments, which is considered a key factor driving the military coups in the region.

Many people hold France responsible for contributing to the region’s instability through military interventions.

Despite maintaining military bases and promising to combat Jihadism, violence and attacks persist, leading to suspicions that France might have a hand in terrorist activities.

Critics also argue that France has taken advantage of the region’s resources while failing to break colonial ties. For instance, Niger, the world’s fifth-largest uranium producer, supplies nearly a quarter of the European Union’s uranium, used for electricity production. However, despite its resource wealth, Niger remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with a poorly diversified economy heavily reliant on agriculture. More than 41% of the population lives in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank’s data from 2021.

Furthermore, Orano (formerly Areva), a French state-controlled nuclear fuel producer, faces accusations of leaving behind large amounts of radioactive waste in Niger, posing health risks to local communities. There are also concerns about insufficient protection for workers against radiation. Orano has also been embroiled in bribery allegations in Southern Africa.

The French-backed CFA currency, used by 14 nations in West and Central Africa, including Niger, has faced criticism for enabling France to maintain control over the economies of its former colonies. This currency system requires member countries to deposit 50% of their currency reserves with the Banque de France and is pegged to the euro.

French President Emmanuel Macron has made efforts to distance himself from France’s colonial past in Africa and advocate for a new approach based on partnership. However, deep-rooted suspicions and grievances persist.

Long Live Russia, Goodbye France 

About ten years ago, Mali sought military assistance from France when Islamic militants threatened the capital, Bamako. France’s arrival was initially hailed as heroic, but its presence in the West African nation did not yield long-term improvements. Instead, terrorist groups with ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara carried out devastating attacks. Mali even blamed the French for arming terrorists.

Diplomatic relations between Paris and Bamako began to deteriorate following a coup in May 2021 and resistance against democratic elections in January 2022. Consequently, Mali expelled the French and embraced the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organisation, which has gained influence in Africa.

The Wagner Group has gained notoriety for its involvement in the internal affairs of multiple African nations, offering military and security assistance to advance Moscow’s influence across the continent. Disturbingly, it has faced accusations of perpetrating massacres and acts of rape. However, despite these alleged atrocities, many discontented young Africans harbour a sense of indifference towards Wagner’s actions, as their grievances with France and the West take precedence in their perspective.

Burkina Faso also expelled the French, with thousands of people rallying in the capital, Ouagadougou, in support of a military takeover that ousted President Roch Kabore. Russian flags were displayed in the streets, and some demonstrators urged Moscow to replace France in the fight against jihadists.

Even in Niger, celebrations backing the coup plotters have swept across the country, gaining momentum despite calls for a return to democracy. There are also reports of the Niger junta meeting with the Wagner Group in Mali to seek military support.

“Nigeriens harbour deep grievances against France for various reasons, primarily due to the exploitation of our resources, which disproportionately benefits France. An evident illustration of this disparity is the supply of French electricity sourced from our uranium, while we remain 80% dependent on another country (Nigeria) for our energy needs.

“Another major concern is the issue of terrorism. Despite the presence of over a thousand French soldiers in the country with the stated objective of combating terrorists, they seem unable to effectively confront the threat. Instead, our population and soldiers bear the brunt of the attacks, leaving us vulnerable and disheartened.

“As an alternative, many Nigeriens view Russia as a potential saviour in the face of their escalating tensions with France and the rest of the world. Russia’s involvement in the terrorist conflict in Mali, particularly through the actions of the Wagner Group, has further fueled this perception,’’ Abdoulaye Hali Aboubacar, a student at the Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey, tells IPS.

ECOWAS Versus Niger

The growing presence of the Wagner group is clear evidence that ECOWAS has failed to do its homework. However, the new government of ECOWAS is poised to make a difference.

After taking over as the Chairman of ECOWAS on July 9, President Bola Tinubu made a firm statement, stating that the region would not accept any more successful coups, as it had experienced five of them since 2020.

A mere 15 days after Tinubu’s resolute speech, the government in Niger was overthrown by officers.

In response to the crisis, Tinubu took immediate action and presided over an emergency ECOWAS summit in Abuja. Several sanctions were implemented, and notably, for the first time in the bloc’s history, it demanded that the putschists restore constitutional order under the risk of facing the potential use of force.

However, there are apprehensions regarding ECOWAS, which has faced criticism for its limited ability to address coup regimes and its alleged neglect of crucial underlying issues like corruption and poverty. Some argue that ECOWAS’s response to the coup might be influenced by how the news of it was received in the Western world.

“It is advisable for Nigeria-led ECOWAS to introspect before escalating the already precarious situation in Niger. The current trajectory could turn Niger into a battleground for foreign powers to settle scores, leading to a dangerous quagmire if not handled carefully by the authorities, especially Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and his advisers,” Avele cautions.

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Humanitarian efforts in Niger are continuing despite the military coup. In Niger, Only 56% of the population has access to a source of drinking water, according to UNICEF. Photo credit: EU/ECHO/Jean de Lestrange

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2023 (IPS)

Nicole Kouassi, the UNDP resident representative in Niger, is constantly faced with the challenge of coordinating aid delivery to 4.3 million people in need. On Wednesday, Kouassi woke up and learned this must happen in a country where the president had just been overthrown. She said she did not see warning signs of a coup.

Kouassi told journalists that UN humanitarian, development, and peace programs continue in Niger because their support is still desperately needed. According to the World Bank, over 40% of Niger’s population was living in extreme poverty in 2021. Before the present political crisis, 3.3 million people were acutely food insecure, mostly women and children. However, the $583 million dollar appeal for aid has only been 32% funded.

“The humanitarian response continues on the ground and has never stopped,” Jean Noel Gentile, the World Food Bank representative, said.

Nevertheless, the military coup in Niger affects the flow of humanitarian aid to other neighboring countries while Niger airspace and borders are closed.

While aid programs are individual to a country, closed borders can interfere with supply chain logistics. Gentile explained that there is a crucial route through Niger that allows for the transport of aid from a logistics hub in Yemen to Mali and Burkina Faso. Aid deliveries for Niger to Chad for Sudanese refugees have also been temporarily suspended.

Gentile said it is unclear exactly how many people will be affected. He noted that there may be alternative aid routes through Cameroon and Nigeria.

When borders are open, migrants from Mali and Burkina Faso also travel to Niger. According to Emmanuel Gignac, UNHCR chief of mission, no movement has been detected across Niger’s borders since their closure.

Kouassi has not been in contact with the military leaders in power and does not yet have plans to discuss humanitarian aid delivery with them. She noted that her office does not have a political UN mandate but echoed concerns expressed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

Guterres has strongly condemned the “unconstitutional change of government in Niger.”

“Stop obstructing the democratic governance of the country and respect the rule of law,” Guterres said in a statement to those detaining the president.

Kouassi said that all UN staff were accounted for and that Niamey, the capital, seemed calm as civilians respected their new curfew.

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Fanta Mohamet, 14, writes on the blackboard at the school she attends in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for refugees in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

By IPS Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The day members of the armed extremist group Boko Haram came to their home in Nigeria to search for her father, a police officer, was the day everything changed.

The fate of her sister is unknown but each year thousands of girls are abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

There are 1,500 other displaced people who live in the settlement in Zamaï – more than three fifths of whom are children. And while life remains difficult, Fanta has something many other children of violence in the region do not, she is able to continue her education despite the prevailing insecurity.

According to new report released Aug. 23 by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), nearly two million children in West and Central Africa are being robbed of an education due to violence and insecurity in and around their schools.

“Ideological opposition to what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of the disputes that ravage the region. As a result, schoolchildren, teachers, administrators and the education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. And region-wide, such attacks are on the rise,” UNICEF noted.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are experiencing a surge in threats and attacks against students, teachers and schools.

Areas where schools are primarily affected by conflict. Courtesy: UNICEF

The report also noted:

• Nearly half of the schools closed across the region are located in northwest and southwest Cameroon; 4,437 schools there closed as of June 2019, pushing more than 609,000 children out of school.

• More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on schools globally in 2019 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.

• Between April 2017 and June 2019, the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures due to violence, from 512 to 3,005.

• And CAR saw a 21 percent increase in verified attacks on schools between 2017 and 2019.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Muzoon Almellehan travelled to Mali earlier this week and witnessed first hand the impact on children’s education.

“Deliberate attacks and unabating threats against education – the very foundation of peace and prosperity have cast a dark shadow on children, families, and communities across the region,” said Gornitzka. “I visited a displacement camp in Mopti, central Mali, where I met young children at a UNICEF-supported safe learning space. It was evident to me how vital education is for them and for their families.”

UNICEF has supported the setup of 169 community learning centres in Mali, which provide safe spaces for children to learn.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), a coalition of international human rights and education organisations from across the world, noted that in the past five years the coalition had documented more than 14,000 attacks in 34 countries and that there was a systematic pattern of attacks on education. “Armed forces and armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in educational settings, or along school routes, in at least 17 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the same period.”  

In May, GCPEA released a 76-page report on the effects that the 2016-2017 attacks by armed groups on hundreds of schools in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo had on children.

Based on over 55 interviews with female students, as well as principals, and teachers from schools that were attacked in the region, the report described how members of armed groups raped female students and school staff during the attacks or when girls were fleeing such attacks. Girls were also abducted from schools to “purportedly to join the militia, but instead raped or forced them to “marry” militia members”.

“Being out of school, even for relatively short periods, increases the risk of early marriage for girls,” GCPEA had said.

UNICEF raised this also as a concern for children affected by the conflict in West and Central Africa.

“Out-of-school children also face a present filled with dangers. Compared to their peers who are in school, they are at a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups. Girls face an elevated risk of gender-based violence and are forced into child marriage more often, with ensuing early pregnancies and childbirth that threaten their lives and health,” the UNICEF Child Alert titled Education Under Threat in West and Central Africa, noted.

Fanta Mohamet, 14, on her way home from school in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for displaced people in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UNICEF has long been sounding the alarm about the attacks on schools, students and educators, stating that these are attacks on children’s right to an education and on their futures.

The agency and its partners called on governments, armed forces, other parties to take action to stop attacks and threats against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central Africa – and to support quality learning in the region.

The U.N. body also called on States to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration. The declaration provides States the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict.

“With more than 40 million 6- to 14-year-old children missing out on their right to education in West and Central Africa, it is crucial that governments and their partners work to diversify available options for quality education,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa Marie-Pierre Poirier. “Culturally suitable models with innovative, inclusive and flexible approaches, which meet quality learning standards, can help reach many children, especially in situation of conflict.”

UNICEF is working with governments across West and Central Africa to offer alternative teaching and learning tools, which includes the first-of-its-kind Radio Education in Emergencies programme. Other interventions also include psychosocial support, the distribution of exercise books, pencils and pens to children to facilitate their learning.

“Education is important. If a girl marries young, it’s dangerous. If her husband doesn’t care for her, with an education she can take care of herself,” Fanta said.

New arrivals receive assistance in Senegal. Credit : IOM/Lucas Chandellier

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Mar 29 2018 (IPS)

Bouba Diop looks in delight at his uncle’s newly refurbished food canteen in the poor township of Keur Massar on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Since returning to Senegal from Algeria and Libya, where he was working in the construction sector, he has been wondering how to rebuild his life after spending two years in North Africa trying to get to Europe by sea. But now, his uncle has given him back his manager job.“We have to tackle the roots and ask ourselves the question: why are we ready to lose our lives to find work elsewhere?" --Florence Kim of IOM

Home sweet home

“I’m happy to be back after living in the North African hell, but I’m angry with myself for not making my dream come true. Well, it’s destiny. Now I must look forward to the future,” Diop, a 22-year-old man who attended a Darra (religious school), added.

While Diop reflected on what he called a shattered dream, at the same time in Kolda in southern Senegal, another returnee from Niger, Ibou, pondered his future, which he described as uncertain and complicated.

Unlike Diop, who has found solace in his uncle’s shop, Ibou is wondering what to do next after selling all his livestock to hit the road, crossing the Sahara desert on his way to the European El Dorado. But he never made it even to war-torn Libya.

“I was robbed in Niger of all my money (2,800 dollars) and belongings by people posing as smugglers who promised to take me to Tripoli, and finally to Italy,” the 25-year-old man said, adding that he was stranded for several months in Agadez (northern Niger, ‘door of the Sahara’), where he almost died of hunger and malaria.

“Somehow, I’m ashamed to return because I have become another burden on my family. I was born in a poor family. They all pinned their hopes on me, thinking that I would reach Europe and get a well-paying job to start sending them money,” he said emotionally.

Sad tales

Diop and Ibou’s stories are just the tip of the iceberg in Africa, where hopeless young sub-Saharan Africans, including unaccompanied children, leave their poverty-stricken or war-torn homelands to travel to North Africa in the hope of getting a job to fund their onward and dangerous journey to Europe.

While 150,982 ‘lucky’ migrants – from Africa and elsewhere – managed to reach Europe in 2017 by the Mediterranean Sea, more than 15,000 have died trying since 2014 (3,139 last year), according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

However, for those who, for whatever reasons, were stranded either in Niger or Libyan jails (20,000 last year) or sold as ‘modern slaves’ in Libyan markets, the only way to solve the crisis seems to be assistance for voluntary return to their home countries.

New arrivals receive assistance in Senegal. Credit : IOM/Lucas Chandellier

Assistance for voluntary return

IOM said that in 2017 it assisted 3,023 Senegalese migrants stranded in Libya and Niger to return thanks to the European Union Trust Funds.

Florence Kim, IOM regional media and communications officer for West and Central Africa, told IPS that in Senegal, assistance to returnees has been a major focus since the establishment of the office in 1998.

“In the absence of legal migration channels, assistance for voluntary return is one of the only options that can help migrants in distress whose fundamental rights are at risk of being violated,” she explained. “More than 23,000 people have since received return assistance and were assisted on their arrival.

“This assistance is part of the IOM assistance provided globally to return voluntarily. This assistance may take the form of direct assistance on arrival, educational or medical care, or individual, collective or community reintegration.”

Welcome back to society

“Returnees should no longer be perceived as a burden on communities but rather as an advantage,” Kim said, adding that one of the innovative approaches of the new EU Trust Funds project consisted of including communities of origin in the reintegration project.

“Whereas before we were going to work with the returnees, this time we are working to integrate those who have not left so that they can benefit from the activities that were initially offered to the returnees.”

IOM said in a report that most of the Senegalese returnees assisted in 2017 came from the region of Kolda (30%), Tambacounda (16%), Dakar (15%), Sédhiou (12%) and Kaolack (6%), while others (22%) came from other regions.

The report also said that only 2.5% of these assisted returnees in 2017 were women.

Voluntary return: lasting solution?

Kim, who noted that the EU gave an additional 95 million dollars to the IOM this month to complete the operations, said  voluntary return alone was not a lasting solution.

“If it is not accompanied by reintegration into the country of origin, and if nothing is offered on return, people will risk their lives again… We are on the right track. Our priority is to shelter thousands of stranded migrants and ensure that there is enough to ensure the sustainability of the solutions they are offered.”

It is widely believed that the UN migration agency has been offering a ‘stipend’ to help returnees resettle in their communities.

Kim clarified: “We only give pocket money that differs according to the countries of the region. However, this money – the only one given – is only used to cover immediate needs and transportation once they have arrived in their country from the airport to their homes.

“It is certainly not a salary or a larger sum of money. We do not want them to go home with money. If they come back and ask to be assisted, it is for other reasons than money. What helps them to reintegrate is the implementation of projects, and income-generating activities.

“All the work starts when they arrive in the country so no, we do not say they’re gone, they’re gone. Yes we have been monitoring and monitoring to make sure that what we put in place lasts.”

Leaving for economic reasons

Unlike sub-Saharan Africans from countries such as the DRC, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, to name only a few, who leave their homelands to escape conflict, war and massive human rights violations, Senegal’s Diop and Ibou could be classified as economic migrants.

William Assanvo, a West Africa-based expert for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), told IPS, “If economic considerations are at the origin of the phenomenon, the answers must be economic. These involve the implementation of regional development plans, which involve investments in the education, health, agriculture or livestock sectors. The development and support of private entrepreneurship is also to be strengthened.”

Assanvo said some programs have already been set up by international partners, notably the European Union or France, to “fix” young Senegalese by providing support for the implementation of projects.

However, he said the question remains whether these initiatives were successful in achieving the goal and whether the effects were sustainable.

“They (often) fail to take into account the thousands of young people in search of a better socio-economic being. So these programs, while useful, are limited in the impact they may have.”

Valuable lessons

As with all major and daring humanitarian operations, the IOM seems to have learned some valuable lessons.

Kim said: “We have to tackle the roots and ask ourselves the question: why are we ready to lose our lives to find work elsewhere? Also, if there were legal migration routes it would be less dangerous for people.

“They would not need to leave on fortune ships, be tortured, and so on. There are legal mechanisms, but the general atmosphere at the moment in so-called host countries is not conducive to openness. The rise of populism and the fear of the other are present and our work also involves raising awareness and changing perception.

“It must be remembered how much migration is needed for the economy of host countries in an aging Europe,” she concluded.

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, California, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.

Frederic Mousseau

Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands are well prepared against climate variations. The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.

People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts. Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.

Often building on such indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Kenya, the system of biointensive agriculture has been designed over the past thirty years to help smallholders grow the most food on the least land and with the least water. 200,000 Kenyan farmers, feeding over one million people, have now switched to biointensive agriculture, which allows them to use up to 90 per cent less water than in conventional agriculture and 50 to 100 per cent fewer purchased fertilizers, thanks to a set of agroecological practices that provide higher soil organic matter levels, near continuous crop soil coverage, and adequate fertility for root and plant health.

The Sahel region, bordering the Sahara Desert, is renowned for its harsh environment and the threat of desertification. What is less known is the tremendous success of the actions undertaken to curb desert encroachment, restore lands, and farmers’ livelihoods.

Started in the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger took some twenty years to restore ecological balance and drastically improve the agrarian economy of the area. During the period, 18 million trees were planted, the surface under woodlands increased by 300 per cent, whereas shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30 per cent. In the meantime, agricultural land was expanded by about 80 per cent.

All over the region, a multitude of projects have used agroecological solutions to restore degraded land and spare scarce water resources while at the same time increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has reached impressive results, with yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs. In Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation techniques, including a modernized version of traditional planting pits­zai­ have been highly successful to rehabilitate degraded soils and boost food production and incomes.

Southern African countries have been struggling with recurrent droughts resulting in major failures in corn crops, the main staple cereal in the region. Over the years, farmers and governments have developed a wide variety of agroecological solutions to prevent food crises and foster their resilience to climatic shocks. The common approach in all these responses has been to depart from the conventional monocropping of corn, which is highly vulnerable to climate shocks while it is also very costly and demanding in purchased inputs such as hybrid seeds and fertilizers. Successful sustainable and affordable solutions include managing and harvesting rain water, expanding conservation and regenerative farming, promoting the production and consumption of cassava and other tuber crops, diversifying production, and integrating crops with fertilizer trees and nitrogen fixating leguminous plants.

The enumeration could go on. The few examples cited above all come from a series of 33 case studies released recently by the Oakland Institute. The series sheds light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.

These success stories are just a sample of what Africans are already doing to adapt to climate variations while preserving their natural resources, improving their livelihoods and their food supply. One thing they have in common is that they have farmers, including many women farmers, in the driver’s seat of their own development. Millions of farmers who practice agroecology across the continent are local innovators who experiment to find the best solutions in relation to water availability, soil characteristics, landscapes, cultures, food habits, and biodiversity.

Another common feature is that they depart from the reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides, on which is based the so-called conventional agriculture. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and of course respect for and a sound use of natural resources.

Why are these success stories mostly untold, is a fair question to ask. They are largely buried under the rhetoric of a development discourse based on a destructive cocktail of ignorance, greed, and neocolonialism. Since the 2008 food price crisis, we have been told over and over that Africa needs foreign investors in agriculture to ‘develop’ the continent; that Africa needs a Green Revolution, more synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified crops in order to meet the challenges of hunger and poverty. The agroecology case studies debunk these myths.

Evidence is there, with irrefutable facts and figures, that millions of Africans have already designed their own solutions, for their own benefits. They have successfully adapted to both the unsustainable agricultural systems inherited from the colonial times, and to the present challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, a majority of African governments, with encouragement from donor countries, focus most of their efforts and resources to subsidize and encourage a model of agriculture, largely reliant on the expensive commercial agricultural inputs, in particular synthetic fertilizers mainly sold by a handful of Western corporations.

The good news is that an agroecological transition is affordable for African governments. They spend billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers. In Malawi, the government’s subsidies to agricultural inputs, mostly fertilizers, amount to close to 10 percent of the national budget every year. The evidence that exists, based on the experience of millions of farmers, should prompt African governments to make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food or all.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Jan 5 2016 (IPS)

2016 is the International Year of Pulses, and we at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture are proud to be organizing what promises to be the landmark event, the Joint World Cowpea and Pan-African Grain Legume Research Conference.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

The March event in Zambia should draw experts from around the continent and beyond and offer an opportunity to share ideas into the edible seeds – cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties – now enjoying their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame as nutritional superstars.

Pulses may look small, but they are a big deal.

Nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fiber content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes. And the protein they pack holds great potential to assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way, so that more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

First and foremost, we must make more pulses available. Global per capita availability of pulses declined by more than a third in the four decades following the 1960s. But production has been growing sharply since 2005, especially in developing countries. Cowpeas have been one of the specific leaders of this trend, which has been marked by very welcome increases in yield as well as more hectares being planted.

Importantly, almost a fifth of all pulses today are traded, up almost three-fold from the 1980s, a pace that vastly outstrips the growing trade in cereals. Moreover, while North America is an exporting powerhouse, so is East Africa and Myanmar; more than half of all pulses exports now come from developing countries.

There is a serious opportunity to scale up these protean protein sources.

The good news for the millions of small family farmers is that this may be more about reclaiming a traditional virtue than revolution. After all, the prolific Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote about Bambara nuts fried in shea oil while on a trip to Mali and the Sahel back in 1352. The cowpea fritters, known as akara in Nigeria and often seen at roadside stands around West Africa, are their direct descendants, and the elder siblings of acarajés, declared part of the cultural heritage of Brazil – where they are eaten with shrimp – and where their Yoruba name survived the dreadful middle passage of the slave trade.

We at IITA have been cowpea champions for decades. Just this month Swaziland’s Ministry of Agriculture released to local farmers five new cowpea varieties we developed – seeds that mature up to 20 percent faster and yield up to four times more. That latest success comes in great measure, thanks to IITA’s gene bank, which holds, for the world community, 15,112 unique samples of cowpea hailing from 88 countries.

Why so many cowpeas? Our question is why aren’t more being grown!

After all, cowpea contains 25 percent protein, is an excellent conveyor of vitamins and minerals, adapts to a broad range of soil types, tolerates drought as well as shade, grows fast to combat erosion, and as a legume pumps nitrogen back into the soil. We can eat its main product – sometimes known as black-eyed peas – and animals enjoy the residual stems and leaves.

So why don’t we hear more about it? Well, perhaps the world wasn’t listening, but it’s about to have another chance.

Seriously, though, cowpeas come with problems. First of all, the plant is subject to assault at every point in its life cycle, be it from aphids, mosaic virus, pod borers, rival weeds, or the dreaded weevils that fight with fungi and bacteria to consume the seeds while in storage. These are things IITA scientists try to combat, through seed breeding or spreading innovative technologies such as the PICS bags that keep the weevils out.

There is much more to learn, about the plant, how to grow it, and how to bolster its role in the food system. I’lll wager that in the Year of Pulses much will be learned about processing, a critical phase, and one that is already allowing many Nigerian businesses to prosper. Perhaps big global food manufacturers will find new ways to grind pulses into their grain products to produce healthier foods with more complete proteins.

As for farming cowpea, the plant can serve to reduce weeds and fertilizer for the cash crops. It is also harvested before the cereal crops, offering food security and also flexibility, as farmers can choose to let the plants grow, reducing bean yields but increasing that of fodder.

The plant’s epicenter – genetically and today – is West Africa. Nigeria is the big producer, but is also the main importer from neighboring countries. Niger is the world’s biggest exporter. But its ability to deal with dry weather and help combat soil erosion might be of interest elsewhere, such as in Central America’s dry corridor.

(End)

Excerpt:

Bienvienue Taguieke, now 15, who refused to be sold into marriage when she was 12 for the equivalent of 8.5 dollars. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Cameroon, Jun 10 2015 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Bienvienue Taguieke was expected to obey her parents and marry a man 40 years her senior, but an association of women in Cameroon’s Far North Region, where child marriages are rife, put a stop to it in a sign that women are starting to speaking out against the practice.

“I was a pupil at a government school in Guidimdaz, a village in the Mokolo area of the Far North Region when a man offered 5,000 CFA francs (around 8.50 dollars) to my mother for my hand in marriage. I refused and alerted some people including the headmistress of my school,” Bienvienue, now 15, told IPS.

Bienvienue believes her mother had considered the offer for economic reasons. “I think my mother wanted to sell me because of poverty. My father had died and there was nobody to pay my school fees and take care of us,” she says.“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies” – 15-year-old Nabila who succeeded in escaping from her marital home

However, the school’s headmistress, Asta Djarmi, begged Bienvienue’s mother not to give her daughter away to a much older man. “The headmistress stopped the marriage arrangement my mother had initiated, then the people of ALDEPA, a local civic group campaigning against child marriages, intervened and repaid the 5,000 CFA franc “dowry” to this man. They are also the ones paying my school fees today,” says the grateful schoolgirl.

The 15-year-old says she dreamt of becoming a teacher, and that getting married as a child could have ended that dream. Now that she not had to do so has revived that dream.

Hers is not an isolated case of resistance in the region. Across the Far North Region, teenage girls are resisting what they consider a hurtful culture.  In neighbouring Zilling village, for example, 15-year-old Nabila succeeded in escaping from her marital home.

“I was forced by my parents into marrying an elderly man two years ago when I was only 13. I lived in the man’s house for 14 painful days. I felt as if an evil spirit was haunting me and I decided to run away,” the young girl recalled.

But those 14 days left her pregnant, and the teenager now raises the child by herself. Ironically, the man she was coerced to marry has now filed a court case against her, demanding that Nabila return to her marital home.

“I can’t do that,” she insists. “Not for anything in the world.” The premature marriage spoiled her chances of becoming the nurse she had wanted to be and now Nabila insists that she will never let her daughter go through the same trauma.

“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies.”

ALDEPA is now providing legal assistance to the teenage mother, and a senior official of the association, Henri Adjini, told IPS that it is currently paying the school fees of 87 teenagers rescued from early marriages.

Adjini said that forced marriages were part of the culture of the local Mafa and the Kapsiki tribes, explaining that parents marry off their daughters in exchange for dowry payments in the form of money, livestock or goods.

“The wish to strengthen family ties and friendships is very important for people here and they believe marrying off their daughters could do just that. Some other parents simply use their daughters to pay off their debts … the young woman’s choice hardly counts here,” he told IPS.

Marrying daughters off is an income-generating strategy in Cameroon, where almost one-third of the country’s 22 million people are poor, according to the United Nations.

In fact, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), there is a relationship between early marriage and poverty in the Central African country, with 71 percent of child brides coming from poor households. Figures from the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for 2014 show that 31 percent of teenage girls in the Far North Region fall prey to early marriages.

Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie Therese Abena Ondoa has publicly condemned these marriages, saying that it is “immoral to sell out girls as if they were property.”

Child marriage is not unique to Cameroon, however. Many countries in the region and in the world face similar, or even worse case scenarios.

According to a 2013 UNFPA report, two out of five girls under the age of 18 are married in West and Central Africa. The worst culprit is Niger with 75 percent of child marriages – the highest rate in the world – followed by Chad with 72 percent and Guinea with 63 percent.

Like most governments in the region, Cameroon does little to protect these girls. The legal minimum age of marriage in Cameroon is only 15 years for girls, and 18 years for boys.  Even then, the legal requirement that marriage should only be contracted between two consenting partners is hardly enforced.

Minister Ondoua has helped launch advocacy campaigns and collaborated with NGOs, community and religious leaders in rural areas to educate the population, but she has not been able to convince government to raise the legal marriage age.

Nevertheless, the campaigns have been bearing fruit, with many girls saying “no” to family attempts to sell them off.

Girls like Abba Mairamou who resisted her father’s attempt to sell her off at the age of 12, are a living testimony to this success.

“I was only 12-years-old when my father pulled me out of primary school in 2004 to offer me to his friend as a wife. I refused and my father got angry and wanted to send me away from the house. I was desperate until I was, introduced to the association that fights against violence towards women in Maroua,” Abba says.

“Later, my father was invited to a meeting and he was persuaded to be opposed to early and involuntary marriage .This completely changed my father and me. I not only refused to be a victim of involuntary marriage, but today, I am a fighter against it.”

Abba formed the Association for the Autonomy and the Rights of Girls, known by its French acronym ‘APAD’, to sensitise teenage girls and parents in her Zokkok neighbourhood in Maroua against early marriages.

“We now offer shelter to many victims of forced marriages, and many girls are now standing up to that hurtful custom,” she beams.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris

Subsistence-oriented small-scale agriculture is often not the preferred choice of work for many young Africans. Photo credit: FAO

By Kwame Buist
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 27 2015 (IPS)

Over half of the African continent’s population is below the age of 25 and approximately 11 million young Africans are expected to enter the labour market every year for the next decade, say experts. 

Despite strong economic growth in many African countries, wage employment is limited and agriculture and agri-business continue to provide income and employment for over 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population.

However, laborious, subsistence-oriented small-scale agriculture is often not the preferred choice of work for many young people.

In an effort to reap this demographic dividend and attract young people into the agri-food sector, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have launched a four-year project to create decent employment opportunities for young women and men in rural areas.

The four million dollar project, funded by the African Solidarity Trust Fund, aims to develop rural enterprises in sustainable agriculture and agri-business along strategic value chains.

Speaking at the project signing ceremony on Mar. 25, NEPAD’s chief executive officer, Dr Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, said: “The collaboration between NEPAD and FAO will go a long way in ensuring that the youth, Africa’s future, are not forgotten.

“It is by creating an economic environment that stimulates initiatives – particularly by conducting transparent and foreseeable policies – and at the same time by regulating the market in order to deal with market failures that we will attain results and impact through the new thrust given to our farmers, entrepreneurs and youth.”

The project – which is expected to see over 100, 000 young men and women benefit in rural Benin, Cameroon, Malawi and Niger – is anchored in the Rural Futures Programme of NEPAD, which is centred on rural transformation in which equity and inclusiveness allow rural men and women to develop their potential.

FAO Assistant Director General for Africa Bukar Tijani said that the project “marks an important milestone in moving forward and upward in terms of empowering youth in these four countries – especially women, as 2015 is the African Union’s Year of Women’s Empowerment.”

The project is seen as part of a drive to stimulate the agriculture and agri-business sectors into becoming more modern, profitable and efficient, and capable of providing decent employment opportunities for Africa’s young labour force.

In 2012, the African Union Commission, NEPAD Agency, the Lula Institute and FAO formed a partnership aimed at ending hunger on the continent. A year later, the four partners organised a high-level meeting of ministers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leading to a declaration to end hunger and a road map for implementation.

This declaration was subsequently endorsed at the 2014 African Union summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, and incorporated into the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods as the “Commitment to Ending Hunger in Africa by 2025”.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Sub-Saharan migrant garbage collectors push their carts through the streets of Tripoli´s old town. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

It’s easy to spot Saani Bubakar in Tripoli´s old town: always dressed in the distinctive orange jumpsuit of the waste collectors, he pushes his cart through the narrow streets on a routine that has been his for the last three years of his life.

“I come from a very poor village in Niger where there is not even running water,” explains the 23-year-old during a break. “Our neighbours told us that one of their sons was working in Tripoli, so I decided to take the trip too.”

Of the 250 Libyan dinars [about 125 euro or 154 dollars] Bubakar is paid each month, he manages to send more than half to his family back home. Accommodation, he adds, is free.

“We are 50 in an apartment nearby,” says the migrant worker, who assures that he will be back in Niger “soon”. It is not the poor working conditions but the increasing instability in the country that makes him want to go back home.

Thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks” – Human Rights Watch
Three years after Libya´s former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments – one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital. The latter, set up after elections in June when only 10 percent of the census population took part, has international recognition.

Accordingly, several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

The population and, very especially, the foreign workers are seemingly caught in the crossfire. “I´m always afraid of working at night because the fighting in the city usually starts as soon as the sun hides,” explains Odar Yahub, one of Bubakar´s roommates.

At 22, Yahub says that will not go back to Niger until he has earned enough to get married – but that will probably take longer than expected:

“We haven´t been paid for the last four months, and no one has given us any explanation,” the young worker complains, as he empties his bucket in the garbage truck.

While most of the sweepers are of sub-Saharan origin, there are also many who arrived from Bangladesh. Aaqib, who prefers not to disclose his full name, has already spent four years cleaning the streets of Souk al Juma neighbourhood, east of the capital. He says he supports his family in Dhaka – the Bangladeshi capital – by sending home almost all the 450 Libyan dinars (225 euros) from his salary, which he has not received for the last four months either.

“Of course I’ve dreamed of going to Europe but I know many have died at sea,” explains Aaqib, 28. “I´d only travel by plane, and with a visa stamped on my passport,” he adds. For the time being, his passport is in the hands of his contractor. All the waste collectors interviewed by IPS said their documents had been confiscated.

Defenceless

From his office in east Tripoli, Mohamed Bilkhaire, who became Minister of Employment in the Tripoli Executive two months ago, claims that he is not surprised by the apparent contradiction between the country´s 35 percent unemployment rate – according to his sources – and the fact that all the garbage collectors are foreigners.

“Arabs do not sweep due to sociocultural factors, neither here nor in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq … We need foreigners to do the job,” says Bilkhaire, Asked about the garbage collectors´ salaries, he told IPS that they are paid Libya´s minimum income of 450 Libyan dinars, and that any smaller amount is due to “illegal subcontracting which should be prosecuted.”

Bilkhaire also admitted that passports were confiscated “temporarily” because most of the foreign workers “want to cross to Europe.”

According to data gathered and released by FRONTEX, the European Union´s border agency, among the more than 42,000 immigrants who arrived in Italy during the first four months of 2014, 27,000 came from Libya.

In a report released by Human Rights Watch in June, the NGO claimed that thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks.”

“Detainees have described to us how male guards strip-searched women and girls and brutally attacked men and boys,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher in the same report.

In the case of foreign workers under contract, Hanan Salah, HRW researcher for Libya, told IPS that “with the breakdown of the judicial system in many regions, abusive employers and those who do not comply with whatever contract was agreed upon, can hardly be held accountable in front of the law.”

Shokri Agmar, a lawyer from Tripoli, talks about “complete and utter helplessness”:

“The main problem for foreign workers in Libya is not merely the judicial neglect but rather that they lack a militia of their own to protect themselves,” Agmar told IPS from his office in Gargaresh, west of Tripoli.

That is precisely one of the districts where large numbers of migrants gather until somebody picks them up for a day of work, generally as construction workers.

Aghedo arrived from Nigeria three weeks ago. For this 25-year-old holding a shovel with his right hand, Tripoli is just a stopover between an endless odyssey across the Sahara Desert and a dangerous sea journey to Italy.

“There are days when they do not even pay us, but also others when we can make up to 100 dinars,” Aghedo tells IPS.

The young migrant hardly lowers his guard as he is forced to distinguish between two types of pick-up trucks: the ones which offer a job that is not always paid and those driven by the local militia – a false step and he will end up in one of the most feared detention centres.

“I know I could find a job as a sweeper but I cannot wait that long to raise the money for a passage in one of the boats bound for Europe,” explains the young migrant, without taking his eyes off the road.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Chief Yahya Louche of Bande, a village in Niger, addresses his constituents about maternal health and the importance of involving men. Credit: Joan Erakit/IPS

By Joan Erakit
BANDE, Niger, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

It is a long, 14-hour drive from Niger’s capital city Niamey to the village of Bande. And the ride is a dreary one as the roadside is bare. The occasional, lone goat herder is spotted every few kilometres and the sightings become a cause of both confusion and excitement since there aren’t any trees, or watering holes in sight.

Dry, hot and often plagued with sandstorms, Niger has a population of over 17.2 million, 80 percent of which live in rural areas. Insecurity, drought and trans-border issues contribute to this West African nation’s fragility where 50 percent of its citizens have access to health services.

IPS has travelled here with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to visit a school that — on a continent where male involvement in maternal health is not the norm and, in fact, men are oftentimes not present during the duration of the pregnancy or the birthing process due to cultural reasons — is pretty unique. It’s the School of Husbands.

Formed with support from UNFPA in 2011, the school has over 137 locations in Niger’s southern region of Zinder. Members are married men between the ages of 25 and 50, but young boys are now being recruited to come and sit in on meetings — to learn from their elders.

As IPS arrives at the village early one morning, a group of musicians approach the vehicle playing ceremonial music; they precede a traditional chief who is being escorted by his most trusted counsel and a throng of personal security who frantically chase away curious children with sticks.

Yahya Louche is the chief of Bande and he stops to talk to IPS about maternal health and the importance of involving men.

“I am a member of the School of Husbands,” Louche says of the informal institution that brings together married men to discuss the gains of reproductive health, family planning and empowerment.

“The School of Husbands is where there is no teacher and there is not student,” Louche continues, adding, “They are not getting paid, they are working for the well being of the population.”

The School of Husbands is a prime example of what can happen when men stand shoulder to shoulder with women, promoting safe births.

The Perils of No Care 

While visiting the health centre near the chief’s homestead, IPS spots a young woman making her way across the compound to the maternity room. She is weak and can barely make eye contact while two friends hold her up by each arm.

IPS is told that she delivered a baby at home and has walked kilometres to get help because she began bleeding profusely – it is an obstetrical emergency known as postpartum haemorrhage (PPH).

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), PPH is responsible for about 25 percent of maternal mortality. Without prenatal or antenatal visits during pregnancy, complications are more likely to arise — some often leading to death.

“Before the School of Husbands, women didn’t want to go for delivery at health centres, they would stay at home and have their babies,” Louche explains.

According to the World Bank, Niger has a Maternal Mortality Ration (MMR) of 630 to 100,000 live births.

Women in Niger suffer.

It is a very well-known custom in the country that women are not to show their pain or discomfort. When they give birth, it is often in silence.  The woman on the delivery table makes no sound though pain is very visible on her face.

Madame Doudou Aissatoo, a midwife in Konni, a town in Niger, tells IPS that it is important to have reproductive health and family planning services readily available because many women walk for miles to come to the health centres. If commodities and services, or even midwives are unavailable, the women will leave and not return for a very long time.

“The very critical thing is to integrate it in the package; when a woman comes to the health centre for whatever reason, she has to get the family planning right away, whether it is a routine health check-up or something serious. Even on Saturday or Sunday, if a woman comes to the health centre, she’ll get it,” Aissatoo says.

Returning Home to Promote Health

The ancient story is quite fascinating; when a young boy leaves his homestead to find greener pastures, a time will mostly likely come when the folks back home call upon the man to become chief.

Often leaving the diaspora to fulfil his duties, a request to become chief is one that cannot be refused for turning it down is the equivalent to shaming ones ancestors.

It is such that the chiefs in Niger today come from different professional backgrounds and many have been doctors, diplomats and professors.

Traditional chiefs in Niger are the most important leaders — even heads of state and presidents seek their council before making big decisions. Without their blessing, one can assume that the road ahead will be difficult.

The UNFPA country office has understood the role that traditional chiefs play and has built a partnership in favour of promoting the health and rights of women.

In 2012, the traditional chiefs of Niger signed an agreement with UNFPA furthering a commitment to improve the health conditions of women.

“When we gathered in 2012, we made a commitment as an organisation to work with UNFPA in order to reduce the demographic growth, be part of sensitisation activities and gear towards improving reproductive health,” Louche explains.

When asked if she feels good about her husband participating in the institution, Fassouma Manzo, a local woman replies ecstatically: “Very much!”

A round of applause follows Manzo’s declaration as she continues, “before the School of Husbands, men didn’t have discussions with their women; but now, there is an issue for which they are very interested. As a woman, you can now find a space where you can talk and share with your man.  It’s a great side effect!”

Louche, a charismatic chief who spends much time talking to his constituents truly believes that empowering men puts the focus put on women.

The School of Husbands doesn’t just highlight the importance of seeking professional medical care when pregnant, but it also works to promote understanding between men and women — a gain that will only foster harmony for both sexes.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted through Twitter on: @Erakit

Excerpt:

The government of Mali and Touareg rebels representing Azawad, a territory in northern Mali which declared unilateral independence in 2012 after a Touareg rebellion drove out the Malian army, resumed peace talks in Algiers last week, intended to end decades of conflict.

The talks, being held behind closed doors, are expected to end on July 24.

Negotiations between Bamako and representatives of six northern Mali armed groups, among which the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is the strongest, kicked off in Algiers on July 16. Diplomats from Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and other international bodies are also attending the discussions.

Moussa Ag Assarid, MNLA spokesperson. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

IPS spoke with writer and a journalist Moussa Ag Assarid, MNLA spokesperson in Europe.

You declared your independent state in April 2012 but no one has recognised it yet. Why is that?

We are not for a Touareg state but for a secular and democratic multi-ethnic model of country. We, Touaregs, may be a majority among Azawad population but there are also Arabs, Shongays and Peulas and we´re working in close coordination with them.

Since Mali´s independence in 1960, the people from Azawad have repeatedly stated that we don´t want to be part of that country. We do have the support of many people all around the globe but the states and the international organisations such as the United Nations prefer to tackle the issue without breaking the established order.

And this is why both the United Nations and Mali refer to “jihadism”, and not to the legitimate struggle for freedom of the Azawad people.

However, we are witnessing a reorganisation of the world order amid significant movements in northern Africa, the Middle East, and even Europe, as in the case of the Ukraine. It´s very much a clear proof of the failure of globalisation and the world´s management.“We [the people of Azawad] do have the support of many people all around the globe but the states and the international organisations such as the United Nations prefer to tackle the issue without breaking the established order” – Moussa Ag Assarid

The French intervention in the 2012 war was seemingly a key factor on your side. How do you asses the former colonial power´s role in the region?

The French have always been there, even after Mali´s independence, because they have huge strategic interests in the area as well as natural resources such as the uranium they rely on. In fact, you could say that our independence has been confiscated by both the international community and France.

The former Malian soldiers have been replaced by the U.N. ones but the Malian army keeps committing all sort of abuses against civilians, from arbitrary arrests to deportations or enforced disappearances, all of which take place without the French and the U.N. soldiers lifting a finger.

Meanwhile, Bamako calls on the French state to support them under the pretext they are fighting against Jihadism.

Another worrying issue is the media blackout imposed on us. Reporters are prevented from coming to Azawad so the information is filtered through Bamako-based reporters who talk about “Mali´s north”, who refuse to speak about our struggle and who become spokesmen and defenders of the Malian state.

So what is the real presence, if any, of the Malian state in Azawad?

Mali´s army and its administration fled in 2012 and the state is only present in the areas protected by the French army, in Gao and Tombouktou. Paris has around 1,000 soldiers deployed in the area, the United Nations has 8,000 blue helmets in the whole country, and there are between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters in the ranks of the MNLA.

We coordinate ourselves with the Arab Movement of Azawad and the High Council for the Unity of Azawad. Alongside these two groups we hold control of 90 percent of Azawad, but we are living under extremely difficult conditions.

We obviously don´t get any support from either Mali or Algeria and we have to cope with a terrible drought. We rely on the meat and the milk of our goats, like we´ve done from time immemorial and we fight with the weapons we confiscated from the Malian Army, the Jihadists, or those we once got from Libya.

You mention Libya. Many claim that the MNLA fighters fought on the side of Gaddafi during the Libyan war in 2011. Is that right?

Many media networks insist on distorting the facts. Gaddafi did grant Libyan citizenship to the Touaregs but he later used them to fight in Palestine, Lebanon or Chad. In 1990, they went back to Azawad to fight against the Malian army and, even if we had the chance, we did not make the mistake of fighting against the Libyan people in 2011.

Gaddafi gave Touaregs weapons to fight in Benghazi but the Touareg decided to go to Kidal and set up the MNLA. It´s completely false that the MNLA is formed by Touaregs who came from Libya. Many of our fighters have never been there, neither have I.

Do Islamic extremists still pose a major concern in Azawad?

In January 2013, AQMI (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), a splinter group of AQMI and Ansar Dine attacked the Malian army on the border between Mali and Azawad.

Mali´s president asked for help from Paris to oust them but it´s us, the MNLA, who have been fighting the Jihadists since June 2012. The United States, the United Kingdom and France claim to fight against Al Qaeda but it´s us who do it on the ground. Ansar Dine has given no sign of life for over a year but AQMI and MUJAO are still active.

One of the most outrageous issues is that Bamako had had strong links with AQMI in the past, or even backed Ansar Dine, whose leader is a Touareg but the people under his command are just a criminal gang. Today, the Jihadists backed by Bamako have become stronger than the Malian army itself.

Are you optimistic about the ongoing talks with Bamako?

So far we have signed all sorts of agreements but none of them has ever been respected. Accordingly, we have already discarded the stage in which we would accept autonomy, or even a federal state. At this point, we have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve this conflict is to achieve our independence and live in freedom and peace in our land.

Mali has never fulfilled its word so that´s why we call on the international community, France and the United Nations.

The bodies of 87 migrants were found in Niger’s northern desert after they died of thirst just a few kilometres from the border of Algeria, their planned destination, security officials said.

The corpses of the seven men, 32 women and 48 children were in addition to five bodies of women and girls found earlier, a security source said.

All died in early October after a failed attempt to reach Algeria that began in late September, the source added.

Almoustapha Alhacen, a spokesman for the local aid organisation Aghir In’man, confirmed the death toll and gave a graphic account of discovering the bodies.

“The corpses were decomposed; it was horrible,” he said. “We found them in different locations in a 20km radius and in small groups, often under trees, or under the sun. Sometimes a mother and children, but some lone children too,” Alhacen said.

The bodies were buried according to Muslim rites, “as and when they were found,” he added.

Desert tragedy

Nigerien officials said on Monday that dozens of migrants, most of them women and children, had died of thirst in the Sahara desert earlier this month. Two vehicles carrying the migrants broke down, one about 83km from the city of Arlit in northern Niger where they had set off from, and another at 158km, a security source said.

“The first vehicle broke down. The second returned to Arlit to get a spare part after getting all the migrants it was carrying to alight, but it too broke down,” said the source.

“We think that the migrants were in the desert for seven days and on the fifth day, they began to leave the broken-down vehicle in search of a well,” said the source.

However, 21 people had survived, the source said, including a man who walked to Arlit and a woman who was saved by a driver who came across her in the desert and took her to the same city.

Nineteen others reached the Algerian city of Tamanrasset but were sent back to Niger, the source added.

Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries and has been hit by successive food crises. Libya, rather than Algeria, is more frequently the favoured country of transit for West Africans making the journey across the continent, many of whom aim to travel on to Europe.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that at least 30,000 economic migrants passed through Agadez, northern Niger’s largest city, between March and August of this year.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

In Niger, 75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18. Credit: Etrenard/CC By 2.0

By Souleymane Maâzou
NIAMEY , Jul 30 2013 (IPS)

For El Hadji Souley Moussa, a 60-year-old retired bank employee in Niger, “marrying off a daughter when she is young is a source of great pride. This way, she is protected from pregnancy outside of marriage.”

It is no wonder that a population and health survey conducted in 2012 by the Ministry of Public Health, and released this July, revealed that 75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18 in this Sahelien country of 16 million in West Africa. According to the study, young girls aged between 15 and 19 years are the most vulnerable.

In 2011 the United Nations Children’s Fund State of the World’s Children report ranked Niger first on its list of countries with a high prevalence of early marriages.“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage.” -- sociologist Salissou Habou

Yahaya Issa, a guidance counsellor at the Ministry of National Education, told IPS that parents who marry off their young daughters usually cite their religion as the reason.

“For us Muslims, marriage holds an important place in our lives,” Aminatou Abdou, 53, a housewife in Niamey told IPS.  She married off her two daughters at the ages of 15 and 16. “It is unacceptable for Muslim daughters to have no husband after puberty.”

Not all Muslims share this view. “There is misinterpretation of the religion. Islam advocates social wellbeing. This is why I am against prematurely marrying off a daughter because this has bad implications for her health,” Malam Issa Dogo, a religious preacher, told IPS.

“Those who marry off their daughters early do so because of ignorance. Islam is a religion which is against lack of knowledge,” he added.

According to Abdou Sani, an anthropology doctorate student at the University of Abidjan, people use religion as a false pretext. The real reasons for these early marriages are ignorance and poverty, he said. “In most cases, these young girls are married off to older people who are financially well-off or have a high social status,” he told IPS.

Early marriages result in early pregancies, which compromises the girls’ future as many do not go to school once they are of marriageable age. Medical sources indicate that 40 percent of young brides fall pregnant a few months after marriage.

“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage,” Salissou Habou, a sociologist in Niamey, Niger’s capital, told IPS.

According to 2011 statistics from the Ministry of Public Health, teenagers make up 19 percent of women of reproductive age and contribute 14 percent to the total female fertility in this country.

“Less than 40 percent of teenagers go for antenatal care,” Hadjara Tinni, a midwife based in Niamey, told IPS.

According to Tinni, because young girls fall pregnant before their bodies are mature, they are twice as likely to die during childbirth than women who over the age of 20.

According to the Ministry of Public Health’s 2011 survey, the rate of maternal mortality in Niger is 554 deaths per 100,000 live births – among the highest in the world. Teenagers account for 13 percent of these deaths.

“Survivors often suffer from illnesses such as obstetric fistula,” Hassan Idrissa, another midwife in Niamey told IPS. In April 2013, out of 163 obstetric fistula victims counted in the country’s six healthcare centres, 80 percent were married before the age of 18, the Ministry of Public Health stated.

“We must educate and keep young girls at school in order to put an end to this situation,” urged Hadiza Issoufou, a teacher and member of the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights.

However, the draft law drawn up in 2002 setting the minimum age for marriage at 18 is still being opposed by religious associations.

“The situation of teenage girls is a major concern, but unfortunately a large segment of the population is ignorant about the problem,” declared Dr. Makibi Dandobi, Nigerien population minister on World Population Day on Jul. 11.

All eyes have turned to Libya since Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou’s statement claiming that recent attacks in north Niger were perpetrated by Malian terrorists based in south Libya.

While some security analysts have claimed that Islamist groups from Mali have set up camp in southern Libya, other experts told IPS that this was impossible.

The director of the Centre for African Studies in Tripoli, Faraj Najem, refuted the presence of Malian terrorists in Libya. He said that Mali did not share a border with Libya, which prevented the movement of fighters into south Libya.

“Tripoli could throw the accusation back on its Algerian and Nigerien neighbours’ doorsteps: if Malian terrorists are in Libya, they would have had to pass through neighbouring countries before arriving here,” Najem told IPS.

The Jihadist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks carried out on May 23 at the Agadez military base and the Arlit uranium mine in Niger. They said that the attacks were a punishment for Niger’s support of France’s intervention in Mali.

A coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda – composed of AQIM, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine – held northern Mali from early 2012 until a French intervention in January allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north.

And according to the Niger government, the attacks on the country were planned in Libya. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, however, refuted these allegations as “baseless”.

Najem supported Zeidan’s view.

“South-eastern Libya is controlled by the Toubous who do not have any links with Islamist movements. The Tuaregs from Azawad and from Ansar Dine in Mali are wanted in Libya because they fought with pro-Gaddafi troops, and so they can’t return,” Najem said.

Former President Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed in October 2011 after 42 years in power, and a newly elected government was sworn in in November 2012.

“I have no information about a terrorist presence in south Libya,” Hussein Hamed Al-Adsari, a Tuareg member of parliament in Oubari, south-east Libya, told IPS in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

Abu Azoum, a councillor in Fezzan in south Libya, said the case was not clear cut. “I do not believe that the terrorists come from here. At the same time, it is entirely possible that they are getting arms supplies in the south. They are prepared to pay high prices for arms, and there are many weapons in circulation in Libya,” he told IPS.

Agila Majou Ouled, a representative of the Slimane community in Sebha, south Libya, observed that although “the southern borders with Chad, Niger and Sudan have been officially closed” since December 2012, “everybody crosses over as if it’s business as usual.”

He, however, did not believe that there were fighter camps in the south.

“It is possible that terrorists have passed through Libya on their way to Niger from Mali to cover their tracks. But it is not possible that they are still here. Everybody knows everybody in the desert. Any new arrivals are immediately known about,” Majou Ouled told IPS.

A Tripoli-based security analyst believes otherwise. “It is true that the tribes in the south are in full control of their territory. And therefore they know perfectly well that AQIM is on the ground,” he said, speaking anonymously.

His opinion is shared by Samuel Laurent, author of the book “Sahelistan” on the Jihadist movements in the region. “The Tuaregs (who control south-east Libya) harbour Islamic militants. As a general rule the reasons are purely financial rather than ideological,” he wrote, pointing out that “Belmokhtar is a millionaire.”

According to Laurent, who is a security consultant, Malian Islamists set up base in Libya in November 2012, well before the French intervention. “The real core of AQIM have been regrouping in south-east Libya for months,” he told IPS.

In Laurent’s view, unlike the Malian government, Tripoli will never agree to western intervention. “What’s more, thanks to the Gaddafi regime’s former arms caches, weapons are in full circulation. Libya is therefore by far a more profitable haven for terrorists than Mali,” he concluded.

In early June, the government of France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offered support to the Libyan government against Al-Qaeda-linked fighters who had been pushed out of northern Mali. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had said that France was “ready” to help Libya “secure its borders” in the south.

On Jun. 4, NATO announced that it would send a team of experts to Libya, but the head of the organisation, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was categorical in stating that the mission was in no way a deployment of ground troops.

Although the Libyan government has requested assistance from NATO and western countries to secure its borders, some members of the government remain wary.

“Intervention by the Libyan army and police in the south is the preferred option,” Al-Adsari said. “Even if these institutions haven’t been fully formed, it is for Libyans to take charge of the situation.”

Majou Ouled added: “I am not comfortable with the idea of external intervention. If the West wants to help us, they should train our army, not come and enforce the law in our territory.”

Speaking at the press conference on Jun. 3, Zeidan announced measures to bolster the Libyan army’s presence. This included raising salaries and benefits to up to 1,200 dollars as an incentive to soldiers and former rebels to agree to work in the difficult southern region of the country.

Between 2001 and 2011, Niger’s overall rate of enrolment for girls rose from 29 to 63 percent, according to the Ministry of Education. Credit: Alessandro Vannucci/CC BY 2.0

By Souleymane Maâzou
NIAMEY , May 20 2013 (IPS)

A decade ago, less than a third of school-aged girls in Niger were in class. Today, though significant cultural and religious opposition remains, nearly two-thirds of girls are enrolled in school.

“Back in 2003, we had only 15 girls at my school, out of 150 students. Now, we have 103 girls out of a total of 175 students,” said Ibrahim Sani, who has taught for 17 years in the town of Agadez, in the northern part of this West African country.

This story is repeated in other parts of the country. Salouhou Adou teaches in a village on the outskirts of Tahoua, the capital of the central region with the same name: “When I came to Kollama in 2003, there were only 29 girls out of 113 students. Today, the number of girls has tripled, to 87 out of 137 students,” he told IPS.

The rate of enrolment for girls in Tahoua has more than doubled, from 21 percent in 2001 to 45 percent in 2011, according to the regional directorate for primary education.

Between 2001 and 2011, Niger’s overall rate of enrolment for girls rose from 29 to 63 percent, according to the Ministry of Education.

Concerted effort

The dramatic improvement is thanks to the combined efforts of administrative and traditional authorities, teachers, parents and civil society to raise popular awareness of the importance of giving girls an education.

“Our intervention has meant the gender imbalance in terms of school registration in our area has been reduced,” said Hadiza Moussa, a teacher in Téssaoua, in the south of the country where official statistics also show the enrolment of girls rising: girls made up 45 percent of students in 2012, compared to just 21 percent in 2001.

Weddings and baptism ceremonies are two occasions often used by campaigners to raise awareness of girls’ education. But some ordinary citizens have taken up the cause on their own.

“I have gone door to door to talk to families who were against education for their daughters,” Maman Zakari, a trader in his sixties in the town of Maradi, in the south of the country, told IPS. “I myself was against enrolling girls in school in the past. But I came to understand the importance of education for girls through public awareness campaigns and radio programmes.” He has enrolled two of his five daughters.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is also supporting various incentives.

“Teachers in rural areas who take part in these campaigns get some material support from UNICEF, in addition to their salaries,” Kadri Yacouba, director of primary schools in Maradi, told IPS. “And women who send their daughters to school get money to start small businesses.”

Despite the growth in enrolment of girls, there is still a large gap in school attendance between girls and boys. Between 2001 and 2011, enrolment for boys rose from 36 to 86 percent.

This gap is explained by the fact that in rural areas, many families don’t send their girls to school because of social and cultural beliefs.

“There are many parents who think that school is a destabilising factor for girls. For them, a girl’s destiny is to become a good wife to her husband and a good mother for her children,” retired school inspector Aboubabcar Amadou told IPS.

In both urban and rural areas, parents frequently withdraw their daughters from school to marry them off. “Even in families where the girls go to school, parents are more interested in boys’ education. Fetching water, doing laundry and cooking are still the daily lot of young girls,” said Nana Hadiza, a member of a cluster of civil society organisations working for universal access to education.

Setbacks

The campaign faced a setback in November 2012, when a draft law intended to keep young girls in school ran into strong opposition from the ulamas – Muslim clerics – and associations of Muslim women. These groups put pressure on legislators not to pass the law, instead sending it back for review.

The bone of contention was Article 14 of the draft law which stipulated that anyone agreeing to the marriage of a young girl in school without prior approval from a judge, would be liable to a prison sentence of between six months and two years, a fine of 500,000 to 1,000,000 CFA francs (between 1,000 and 2,000 dollars), or both.

According to the Muslim associations, this is not acceptable in a country like Niger where around 99 percent of the population is Muslim.

“Islam grants parents all rights and authority over their children. A father does not need a judge’s permission to give away his daughter in marriage,” said Malam Abdou Garba, a preacher in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

“The draft law needs to be modified, to remove everything that is not in line with Islam. These articles could lead young girls to insubordination and disobedience towards their parents, and it could also lead many parents to refuse to enrol their daughters in school,” Mamane Sani, from the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights, told IPS.

But Hadiza Saley, from the “We Can” campaign (a movement of women’s associations in Niger which fights violence and discrimination against women), called for even more far-reaching legislation. “We must go beyond thinking about girls in school here, to include all girls. In its present form, the draft law discriminates against young girls who are not in school.”

The Ténéré desert in northern Niger is fast encroaching on the salt pans in Bilma, a community that has been reliant on mining the mineral for centuries. Credit: Photomatt28/CC BY 2.0

By Ousseini Issa
BILMA, Niger, May 15 2013 (IPS)

The Bilma community has mined the salt pans in the massive Ténéré desert region in northern Niger for centuries. But the threat of the ever-encroaching desert has become a real concern as locals here struggle to cope with a decline in salt prices.

“If we don’t protect this site, salt mining will disappear under the sand,” Abdoulaye Soumana, Bilma’s departmental director for the environment, told IPS as he contemplated the vast sand dunes enclosing the Kalala salt pan, a mining site in Bilma.

The Ténéré is a region in the south-central Sahara desert consisting of a vast plain of sand that stretches from northeastern Niger into western Chad.

According to Soumana, an environmental technician, the desert stretches out across a bed of clay, containing hundreds of hectares of salt.

“Some salt pans are already submerged (by sand), but the local authorities haven’t quite understood the extent of the threat. They only care about the money generated from Bilma’s production,” he remarked.

According to Bilma’s mayor, Abba Marouma Elhadj Laouel, there are about 6,000 inhabitants here – all involved in salt mining. Many have mined the pits for years, digging into the earth to extract the salt.

Boulama Laouel, the chair of the Kalala salt miners cooperative, agreed. “Salt is the main livelihood for the people of Bilma. Even though it’s difficult to sell, every family has a salt pit that they mine,” he told IPS.

A 2011 study carried out by Soumana found that Bilma salt miners earn about 800 dollars a year, while their counterparts in the northern town of Siguidine bring in 1,842 dollars annually.

Fadji Boulama, a 35-year-old salt worker and mother of five, does not remember another way of life.

“Salt mining is an age-old activity here in Bilma. My grandparents were miners. My parents took over their trade and then passed the baton on to me. It’s our main livelihood,” she told IPS from the salt pit she mines.

“My husband migrated to Libya, so three of my children, ages nine, 12 and 14, help me when they are not in school. The sales from the salt cover my everyday household costs,” Boulama added.

Two types of salt are extracted from mines across the region – kitchen salt and salt for animal feed. Bilma produces 12,000 tonnes of kitchen salt and 20,700 tonnes of animal feed salt annually.

“Bilma’s animal salt contains a number of mineral nutrients crucial for the healthy growth of animals and the quality of their meat,” Oumarou Issaka, a veterinarian based in the country’s capital, Niamey, told IPS.

But locals have complained that they are unable to sell their salt at reasonable prices because of the lack of road infrastructure to and from this isolated northern region.

Yagana Arifa, who works on a salt pit next to Boulama, explained to IPS: “This work gives us enough to eat and meet some expenses, but without a road, it’s not easy to get a good price for our product.

“Our main clients are the caravan traders who currently pay 20 cents for a two-kilogramme block of salt and then sell it for a dollar in Agadez (the main town in the area to the north) or for more than 1.20 dollars in the south of the country.”

Salifou Laouel, the mayor of the Fachi rural municipality, which lies some 240 km west of Bilma, confirmed that producers from his area face similar problems.

“We are forced to sell at very low prices because of our isolated location. Ordinary trucks can’t cross the desert to carry our produce to more profitable markets in the south,” Laouel told IPS.

“Salt for animal feed is in highest demand. In Fachi, we produce about 450 tonnes a year, which earns us about 138,000 dollars,” he added.

Denise Brown, the resident representative of the United Nations World Food Programme, said the agency would support the salt miners by using their kitchen salt in its local school meal programmes.

“We are assessing how we can purchase a fixed quantity of their output to support marketing, so long as it meets iodine content requirements set by the World Health Organization,” she told IPS.

Residents of Clara Town, a low-income neighbourhood of Monrovia, Liberia, face sanitation challenges with the onset of the rainy season. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Ousseini Issa
NIAMEY , Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

About 20 communities in Tillabéri, west Niger, have been declared open defecation-free zones as across the country, very few people have access to proper sanitation.

The communities were part of a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project, launched in September 2010 in 32 villages in the region by the local office of the NGO Plan International.

Souley Hachimou, a sanitation technician in Niamey, the Niger capital, told IPS: “Open air defecation is a widespread hazard in Niger, especially in rural areas where people do not see the need for latrines, as they have the bush nearby to relieve themselves.”

But, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than 90 percent of the population in rural areas still practice open defecation.

Part of the reason could be Niger’s rapid population growth since 1990.

According to a study on sanitation in the five African countries of Niger, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda, published on Feb. 20 by the international NGO WaterAid, “between 1990 and 2013, Niger’s population increased by 7.7 million people, but only one million people had access to sanitation during the same period.”

Salmou Yacouba, a 62-year-old resident of Saga-Gorou, a village close to Niamey, told IPS that this was because many in the rural areas were not used to toilets. “The construction of latrines, even traditional ones, requires money to buy cement and steel reinforcements for the slab, never mind the labour. We are not used to toilets – they are for towns where there are no open spaces for people to relieve themselves,” she said.

Boulkassoum Hamadou, an inhabitant of Tillabéri, told IPS that it was difficult to maintain the deep pits needed for latrines in rural areas.

“They have to be emptied once they are full, otherwise the stench around the village is intolerable. Everyone needs to help maintain latrines, which is difficult enough in a household, never mind a village.

“This is why people continue to defecate outside.”

But Marietou Boubacar, a 31-year-old small-scale farmer in Saga-Gorou, conceded that open defecation was unhealthy. “When you learn that contagious diseases, especially cholera, are caused by a lack of sanitation and hygiene, you start to adopt good practices, and you stop defecating in the open because health is precious,” she told IPS.

The WaterAid report pointed out that “out of 15.5 million Nigeriens, 14.1 million do not currently have access to proper toilets; only six percent use latrines, while 79 percent resort to open air defecation.” The report, titled, “Keeping promises: Why African Leaders Need Now to Deliver on Past Water and Sanitation Commitments” attributes this to the government’s failure to honour previous financial commitments in the sanitation sector.

In all five countries covered by the study, the current levels of access to sanitation compared to the targets set out in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, eight development goals adopted by U.N. member states in 2000, leave much to be desired. The current overall level of access to sanitation in Niger is nine percent, though in rural areas it is only four percent.

Niger has also failed to meet the commitments of the African Union’s “eThekwini Declaration” signed in South Africa in 2008, where governments agreed to commit at least 0.5 percent of their GDP to sanitation.

According to the WaterAid report, 0.89 percent of GDP (39.4 million dollars) has been spent on water and sanitation combined between 2007 and 2010.

“There is no clear separation of budget items dedicated to water and sanitation to help make more accurate assessments of the efforts made by each government department, but investments are probably less in water and hygiene,” Hachimou said.

Soumaïla Hima, a health worker in Niamey, said that “a lack of access to sanitation and hygiene is the cause of the most recurrent diseases in our country, such as parasitic and diarrhoeal illnesses.”

“The cholera epidemic which spread across the whole country last year, causing several thousand infections, including 300 deaths, is mainly the result of this,” he told IPS.

The WaterAid report cites a World Bank calculation that “the lack of access to sanitation costs Niger the equivalent of 2.4 percent of its GDP, about 143.6 dollars per year (to treat diseases), which is two and a half times the annual amount spent on access to water and sanitation.”

In addition to the cost incurred for medical visits, hospitalisation and the purchase of medicines, Nigeriens also waste a huge amount of time looking for a place to relieve themselves — about 2.2 billion hours per year, Hamani Oumarou, the head of WaterAid in Niamey, told IPS.

Development partners are supporting the Niger government achieve its target to increase the number of people with access to sanitation from six percent in 2009 to 25 percent per year by 2015, according to the Nigerien Minister of Water and Environment.

Togota Sogoba, the head of water and sanitation at UNICEF in Niamey, told IPS that the organisation was also undertaking “projects along the lines of CLTS (Community Led Total Sanitation) in 225 villages, among which 140 have completely stopped open air defecation.”

A couple of burned cars and abandoned Malian tanks now remind visitors that violent fights occurred in Diabaly in central Mali. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Ousseini Issa
MANGAIZE, Niger , Mar 5 2013 (IPS)

Malian refugees in Mangaïze, northwest Niger, are keen to return home to start work and be able to support themselves once more.

“We do have food and water, even if the food is not varied. Our primary schoolchildren are back in class,” Aissa Hama, a 39-year-old mother of five, told IPS. “But it’s hard to be in exile, dependent on the help of others.”

She is one of thousands of Malians who spilled across the border into neighbouring countries in the months prior to and after the occupation of the country’s north by armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda back in April 2012. The Islamists held onto the country’s north until February, when a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the territory.

The Mangaïze camp was officially created in May 2012, following an influx of a large number of Malian families fleeing to Niger, said Idrissa Abou, a member of Niger’s National Commission for Refugees.

In addition to a monthly food ration, refugees have access to drinking water from three small boreholes, and primary health care. There are sanitation facilities with 250 showers and toilets respectively, and a household waste management system.

Refugees also have access to administrative services, a school and, with the opening of a police station, a security service.

“At the moment, there are 1,522 families, which amounts to a population of 6,037 mainly made up of Malian refugees, but there are also Nigerien returnees,” Abou told IPS, adding that an overwhelming majority of the refugees are from Ménaka, the closest Malian town to the Ouallam municipality in southwestern Niger.

He added that the numbers in the camp had increased in February after some 1,700 refugees from the nearby Bani Bangou camp were transferred to Mangaïze.

The transfer meant that Mangaïze camp had to be extended by 11 additional hectares from its original 52, according to Ibrahim Kebé, the local coordinator for Islamic Relief Worldwide and director of the camp.

“But with the continued support of the Niger government and the cooperation of other humanitarian agencies, we will be able to overcome the challenges,” he told IPS.

Access to enough food has been one of those challenges.

According to the latest statistics of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Niamey, the Niger capital, each refugee in Mangaïze receives on average of 1,849 kilocalories (kcal) per day, against the standard 2,100 kcal, and 10.8 litres of water, compared to the recommended 20.

For some, the rations have not been enough.

Aissata Yindou, a 36-year-old mother of four who has been living in the Mangaïze refugee camp since March 2012, told IPS that the food rations needed to be increased.

“We only get a 50-kg bag of rice for the family, and a 0.75-kg can of cooking oil per person. We don’t receive any spices to eat with this food. They have to increase the food ration,” she said.

She added that access to medication was also limited.

“This eye infection is so painful sometimes I can’t sleep. I can’t get it treated because the camp doesn’t have the medication and I don’t have the money to buy it,” said a distressed Yindou.

Hadiza Issaka Abdou, a nurse at the camp’s health centre, told IPS that they were doing their best to treat patients with what medication was available.

“We get many complaints, but we are doing the best we can in terms of on-site medical treatment. We don’t have medicines for every illness. The main diseases here are malaria, diarrhoea and skin diseases,” she said.

But Akiline Agbogoli, the vice president of the Malian Refugee Community at the camp, told IPS that they were being well treated.

“Being away from home, we can’t have everything we need, but in terms of food and basics, we have been well treated,” Agbogoli said.

However, for many here, it is not enough. Saddam Moussa worked as a butcher in Ménaka, in Gao Region, until the Azawad National Liberation Movement, the Malian Tuareg rebel group, captured the town.

“I am tired of doing nothing, waiting for others to take care of me. I want to work and live off the fruits of my labour,” he told IPS.

Mohammed Lamine Aghabass, an office worker at the Ménaka customs office, also wants to return home. “We welcome the military support from Mali’s allies to free our hometowns from the thugs who chased us away. We are in a hurry to get back to our normal lives, but we can’t go back without a go-ahead from the Niger government and the agencies that are helping us,” he told IPS.

According to the UNHCR, there were 53,135 refugees from Mali in Niger in January 2013.

Communities in northern Mali are in need of humanitarian intervention. Pictured here are civilians in Niono, northern Mali. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

When northern Malian refugees fled their country for Niger in 2012, they expected they would be able to return home shortly afterwards. But despite the armed intervention by the French army in the West African nation, few of the 50,000 Niger-based refugees are ready to leave for home just yet.

“Have you watched the news? Do you honestly think we can go home under these conditions?” asked Omar*, the vice-president of the Association for Malian Refugee Families in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

Omar and thousands of others spilled across the border into neighboring countries in the months following the occupation of the country’s north by armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda back in April 2012.

Comprising a mix of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine, the rebels were able to hold on the territory until a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north last month.

Omar’s hometown, Gao, however, continues to be a scene of heavy fighting and suicide bombings ever since French and Malian troops took back the town last month.

Safety is not the only issue that’s keeping Omar from returning. “I am a civil servant in Gao and have no job to return to until the public service is back on its feet,” he said.

Yearning for home

Seydou*, a physical science teacher who fled Ansongo in eastern Mali in May last year, does not think it foolhardy to return home.

“All of us are thinking about going back,” he told IPS in the Nouveau Marché suburb of Niamey. “To be honest, I am longing to see Gao again. In fact, it’s an obsession. What’s more, my close relatives call me each week to encourage me to come home.”

But like Omar, he is concerned about how he will earn a living.

“I can’t go back to my teaching job if the schools have not reopened. In any event, there has been no bus service from Niamey to Mali since the French army began its military campaign in January.”

But Moussa*, the owner of a clothing store in the centre of Gao, has no such concerns and plans to make his way back home soon. “I am getting ready to leave. I have already started sending merchandise ahead to Gao.”

He is undeterred by the threat of the mines along the road to Gao or attacks by gangs of robbers.

“Things will calm down,” he said, citing reports of the army making house-to-house searches for members of MUJWA (the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), one of the militant groups.

“The militants would rather hand themselves in than risk the safety of the families who have sheltered them,” he believed.

Aminata*, the president of the Association of Refugee Families, lives in a home sheltering six Malian families. But she does not plan to return home while MUJWA is still in Gao.

“The Islamists want women to be like furniture in the house, to stop us from going outside without a veil, from living. So we left.”

Many “light skinned” refugees, in particular, worry that they will be the target of reprisals, she said, if they are identified with Ansar Dine Islamists or Members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg group that led a rebellion in the north shortly before the Islamists moved in early last year.

Pastoralists caught in the crossfire

But Mali’s rural pastoralists will be most at risk when they return home, according to Dodo Boureïma, the general secretary of the Association for the Development of Livestock Breeders.

“In northern Mali, pastoralists are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, armed robbers prey on them. On the other, the army accuses them of being a cover for the rebels to cross the border,” Boureïma told IPS.

“I even heard recently that a herder was shot by soldiers and his herd was set loose.”

Unlike urban refugees, the pastoralists might be forced to leave Niger at the start of the rainy season, he said. The organisation now has to plan how pastoralist will return to Bankilaré, in the northeast of Tillabéri on the Malian border.

“When the rains come in May or June, Nigerien farmers are likely to want them to leave, because the livestock might damage their crops and compromise their food security.”

“The pastoralists know they must be ready to move back anytime, but for now, both the Nigerien authorities and citizens understand the difficulties facing the people of northern Mali,” Boureïma continued.

*The names of Malian refugees have been changed at their request for their safety.

Malian Defense soldiers learn logistics with U.S. Army Special Forces. Credit: US Army Africa/CC-BY-2.0

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Jan 23 2013 (IPS)

A column of Chadian soldiers – members of the region’s most battle-hardened army – moved north from Niger’s capital Niamey on Tuesday to join French and African forces battling to free northern Mali from the grip of armed Islamic groups.

For the past year, the north of Mali – nearly two-thirds of the country – has been occupied by armed groups belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine. These groups have committed abuses against people in the region while strictly applying Islamic law.

“The Chadian army is the best army in Africa at the moment,” said an enthusiastic Boubacar Tidjani, a young Nigerien international relations student, as the arrival of the Chadian troops in Niamey was announced on Jan. 18. “It’s simple: they have always known war and more, they are proud. I admire them for that.”

The Chadian government will eventually deploy a total of 2,000 soldiers to support French and Malian troops fighting against the militant groups in northern Mali, and more soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will eventually join the operation.

According to the Reuters news agency, Chad’s troops moved along the road to Ouallam, some 100 kilometres from the Malian border, on Tuesday, in order to enter the war zone without first passing through Mali’s capital Bamako.

Their participation has raised hopes of a quick end to the crisis in Mali, where the Chadians’ reputation as warriors precedes them.

The Chadian army has experience fighting in a desert climate, suppressing numerous internal rebellions in an arid environment identical to that of northern Mali. Chad also fought and won a border war with Libya between 1983 and 1987.

Its forces number 30,000 in total and have regularly taken part in stamping out insurgencies in neighbouring countries. The army’s most recent intervention was in December 2012, in support of the Central African Republic’s government against a threat by rebels from a coalition known as Seleka.

The Chadian armed forces could also potentially provide some air power, with six Sukhoi bombers and several Mi-17 and Mi-24 attack helicopters.

The deployment to Niamey was confirmed on Friday, Jan. 18, by a member of the Chadian army, who told Agence France Presse, “Our units left on three aircraft. Their tanks were transported by a C-130, their pickups in an Antonov and the troops flew in a Boeing belonging to the Toumai Air Tchad company.”

A new front?

During a Jan. 19 conference organised in Niamey by the civil society organisation Alternative Niger to consider the regional consequences of the military intervention in northern Mali, its secretary-general, Moussa Tchangari, raised the possibility of opening a second front in northern Niger, in order to trap the terrorist groups being hunted by the French and Malian armies.

Speaking at the conference, Olivier de Sardan, a researcher at the Niamey-based Laboratory for Studies and Research into Social Dynamics and Local Development (LASDEL), said that northern Mali and northern Niger are contiguous, “raising the fear that after Mali, the next country on the list of narco-terrorist groups will be Niger”.

The Nigerien army does not have the reputation or effectiveness of the Chadian army. Despite its frequent involvement in pushing fighters from AQIM and MUJWA back from its border with Mali, the Nigerien army expects to contribute only 500 soldiers to AFISMA, the African-led International Mission to Mali. The Chadian reinforcement will be welcome, analysts say.

Two concerns remain over Chadian participation. The first is linked to accusations, levelled against the armed forces, of abuses against civilians. Human Rights Watch has gathered testimony about such abuses committed during the Chadian intervention in the Central African Republic in 2008.

The second worry is over possible repercussions for Chad itself. Speaking to Germany’s Deutsche Welle Radio, political scientist Helga Dickow, from the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, said, “Boko Haram has already indirectly threatened President (Idriss) Déby with the destabilisation of Chad, if Chadian troops are sent to Mali.” Boko Haram is the terrorist Islamist group currently active in the north of Nigeria and which has links with AQIM.

(END)

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by heavy flooding along the Niger River over the last few weeks. Niger, Mali and Benin have been particularly hard hit, with dozens of deaths, tens of thousands of houses destroyed and vast areas of farmland submerged by rising waters.

In Niger alone, more than half a million people have been affected by floods. As of Sep. 12, 75 people had been killed, 37,000 homes submerged and crops destroyed in 150 of the country’s 366 communes, according to prime ministerial spokesman Oumarou Keïta, who also sits on Niger’s Inter-ministerial Committee for Prevention and Monitoring of Floods.

Flooding has been especially severe in Dosso, in the southwest, Tillabéri, in the west, and the capital, Niamey.

The scale of devastation in Niamey is such that Nigerien authorities have had to shelter displaced people in schools while preparing better sites for temporary housing.

“Since our house collapsed on Aug. 21, I’ve been living in this school with my husband and five children in very close quarters. There are three families sharing this single classroom with us,” said Fatouma Alzouma, 47, a resident of Saga, one of the Niamey neighbourhoods worst affected by the floods.

“We have had some assistance, but the food and other support they have given us is insufficient because people who haven’t lost their homes have fraudulently got their names onto the lists,” said Alzouma.

Koné Soungalo, a hydraulic modelling expert at the Niamey-based Niger Basin Authority, said the city is vulnerable to flooding because of the flat terrain.

Heavy rainfall throughout the two million square kilometre river basin has swollen the volume of water, he told IPS. Accelerated build-up of sand on the bed of the river – caused by degradation of land by human activity elsewhere in the river system – has aggravated the problem.

“The siltation obstructs the river’s flow, and causes a sharp rise in the water level over its banks here, as we saw a few days ago.”

The volumes of water are unprecedented, said Soungalo. “The water level climbed to 618 centimetres on Aug. 21, a peak higher than anything recorded in our database, which goes back to 1929.”

The Nigerien minister for agriculture, Oua Seydou, said 3,000 hectares of irrigated crops had been submerged, doing an estimated 5.8 million dollars of damage.

Further downstream, floodwaters killed seven people at Karimama and Malanville in northern Benin. In Nigeria, the National Emergency Management Agency said that water levels in two large reservoirs along the Niger River were at the highest level seen in 29 years, and ordered evacuation from low-lying areas in five states. The Nigerian Red Cross reported that 137 people had already been killed by flooding in that country since July, with 35,000 more displaced.

The threat is not limited to the 4,000 kilometre long Niger River. Heavy rains across West Africa are also causing other rivers to burst their banks.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than 400,000 people had been affected by floods In Chad, 255,000 hectares of crops were submerged and more than 73,000 houses destroyed. That country is preparing to spend two million dollars on emergency assistance and has asked for help from donors and humanitarian agencies amid fears of food insecurity.

An emergency release of water from a dam in Cameroon caused the Benue River to overflow, killing 30 people downstream in Nigeria.

In Senegal, 13 people have been reported killed by floods, with a lack of proper sanitation and drainage blamed.

Issoufou Maïgari, a hydrologist at the Agrhymet Regional Centre based in Niamey, said such rapid flows in the Bafing, a tributary of the Senegal River, have not been measured since 1961.

This year’s flooding in the Niger River basin only adds to the many challenges faced by governments in the region. The floods ironically follow several seasons of drought that have devastated farmers and herders in the Sahel.

Also worrying are various reports dating back to June and July that early rainfall in southern Algeria and northern parts of Niger, Mali and Chad created conditions for unusually large swarms of locusts that could threaten crops later this year.

Effective control of these pests, assistance to farmers, delivery of humanitarian aid – even a proper assessment of the various threats to agriculture and food security – are all complicated by armed rebellion in northern Mali and lower but worrisome levels of insecurity in Algeria, Libya, Niger and Chad.

The situation underscores the interdependence of people across borders. Averting a full-scale humanitarian crisis in the Sahel this year may require coordinated efforts throughout the region, experts say.

When her name is called, Rékia Djibo leaves the group of women gathered in front of the school in Toula, and takes a confident step towards the door. Djibo is one of the recipients of a cash transfer from the World Food Programme here on the outskirts of the southwestern Niger city of Tillabéri.

Each of the women here receives the equivalent of 60 dollars from WFP every month, intended to enable some of this drought-stricken country’s most vulnerable households to buy food.

“With this money, we’ll first of all buy staples and spices so that we can go to work in our fields,” Djibo told IPS.

The 42-year-old is the senior wife in a polygamous household. Though she was the one chosen to receive the transfer, she said she consults her husband and her co-wife to set priorities for spending the money to care for all of their six children.

Zalika Hado is another of the women waiting to receive the monthly grant in Toula.

“Since we started receiving the money,” the 39-year-old mother of two told IPS, “our priority has been to buy food as intended. If there’s anything left over, we spend it on basic necessities like soap, sugar and clothes for the children.”

The cash transfer programme is run by the WFP office in Niamey, the capital, supporting a wider emergency plan established by the Nigerien government in response to the severe food crisis that has hit the country after a poor harvest.

The 2010-2011 growing season left the country with a cereal deficit of some 600,000 tonnes, according to the National Food Crisis Prevention and Management System.

“The operation began in May and will continue until September,” Giorgi Dolidze, WFP programme officer in Niamey, told IPS.

“We pay a grant of 32,500 CFA francs – with no conditions attached – to extremely poor Nigerien families at the end of each month so they can afford to buy food in local markets,” he said.

“Traditionally, the WFP provides food, but we decided to diversify our interventions by providing money directly, in areas where markets are functioning well, to allow beneficiaries themselves to buy what they want to eat,” Dolidze added.

WFP is working in partnership with local and international non-governmental organisations, micro finance institutions and a mobile phone company to implement the initiative.

“We are one of the implementing agencies,” said Illo Mamoudou from the international charity Oxfam, “and in this capacity we create lists of beneficiaries nominated by a local committee in the areas covered by the operation. We also educate the beneficiaries regarding use of the money and supervise distribution at the end of each month.”

WFP staff member Midou Bawa Youssifi told IPS that money is being distributed in 21 of the country’s 36 counties. “In three urban areas –Agadez, Tahoua and Tillabéri – we transfer the money using mobile phones, but in rural communities, we work with micro finance institutions to send the money to beneficiaries,” he said.

“The operation reaches 158,000 households with a total of 1,166,000 people, to whom we distribute at the end of each month a total of 5,136,432,500 CFA (around 9.7 million dollars),” he added.

Dolidze said 99 percent of those chosen to receive money on behalf of their households are women. “A post-distribution study that we carried out revealed that up to 95 percent of the money is effectively spent on buying food,” he said.

“It’s manna from heaven,” said beneficiary Djoumassi Ali. “With the money that I’ve just received, I will go straight to the market to buy maize, millet and seasoning because our household ran out several days ago.”

Four figures bend intently over their work in one corner of the large vegetable garden near the western Niger village of Dioga. Months after the village’s main harvest has been brought in – and eaten up – the irrigated green of the garden is welcome relief in a part of the country where hunger never seems far away.

The three-hectare garden is managed by women from this village and surrounding settlements in the rural district of Torodi.

Lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage; onions and peppers, aubergine, okra, and squash – Aminata Douramane may be 60 years old, but she shows few signs of slowing down as she ticks off the list of vegetables she grows here. Oh: and mango, guava, lemon and orange trees.

“I’ve also been growing moringa for the past three years,” she said, showing off a plot of land adjacent to her lovingly-cared-for vegetables, where she has a stand of 80-odd Moringa oleifera trees.

“The three children that you saw helping me are my grandchildren. The eldest is 13, and the youngest is eight. They’re all going to school, so it’s only when they’re not in class that they come to lend a hand,” Douramane told IPS.

Elsewhere on the lushly green site, covering an area of three hectares, other women are also busy caring for their plants.

“I’m here to make sure the labourer who helps me waters the plants well,” said Zeïnabou Boureïma. “It’s very hot now, so it’s important to do it right because the plants need lots of water.”

The women all belong to an association called Cernafa, which means “cooperation” in the local language, Djerma. “We were about fifty women at the beginning in 2002, when we got started here on a plot the chief made available to us,” said Douramane, who is president of the group.

“It was very difficult at the start, because of a lack of water. People took us for fools,” she told IPS.

“But now the group has more than 100 women, and through this garden we have become the pride of the village and the Torodi district. Three years ago, we had saved enough to buy 4.2 hectares of land for about 400,000 CFA francs (around 772 dollars) to respond to requests and diversify our range of produce,” she added.

“What motivated the women of Dioga to start growing vegetables was food insecurity, which is chronic in this region,” said Salou Moumouni, principal of the village’s school and an informal advisor to the group.

“Immediately following the harvest each year, their husbands leave for cities in the region, often leaving the women and children without enough food,” he said.

“Now they look after their households with the income from selling vegetables while the men are away,” Moumouni told IPS.

“I decided to volunteer to support the group because I saw it was led by very courageous women, ready to overcome any obstacle to avoid being dependent,” he said.

Bibata Garba, another member of Cernafa, told IPS: “When the project started, I would earn 60,000 CFA (around 115 dollars) from the growing season between December and April. But this time around, I got more than 210,000 CFA (405 dollars) over the same period, thanks to a good harvest.”

The women’s efforts have attracted support from beyond their village.

“The determination by the women of Dioga to fight against hunger and poverty through their gardening scheme led us to begin assisting them in 2004, strengthening their capacity, particularly in agricultural techniques and organisational matters,” said Amadou Boubacar, president of Action for Sustainable Development (ADD), an NGO based in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

“We provided the group with four modern boreholes, a water tower for a drip-irrigation system which we installed on the site with support from ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics), and a motorised pump. We supplied them with seeds and fertiliser and we also taught some of the members to read,” he said.

Boubacar told IPS that ADD also helped the women get financial support from Crossroads International, a Canadian NGO working to reduce poverty with a particular emphasis on empowering women.

According to Aïssa Boukari, Cernafa’s treasurer, the Nigerien authorities and other partners, such as the international charity Oxfam and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, have also provided assistance in the form of watering cans, rakes, hoses, hoes, and seeds.

“It is difficult to give exact figures for the production of lettuce and vegetables which are sold before harvest, or harvested and taken directly to the market by producers; but we do know that the total return from sales from December 2011 to April 2012 was around five million CFA (more than 9,500 dollars),” Boukari told IPS.

“And the harvest’s not over, since for the past three years we’ve decided to spread production over the whole year.”

According to the government, irrigated farming, including market gardens, has this year allowed the country to produce the equivalent of 325,000 tonnes of grain, against an overall deficit of 600,000 tonnes recorded during the 2011-2012 agriculture campaign.

This shortfall is at the heart of the food crisis which is still affecting 8.3 million of the 15.7 million people in this West African nation.

The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years.

Itamaraty Palace (Brazil’s foreign ministry), homebase for the country’s South-South development aid strategy.

A project to extend financing for food purchases to five countries in Africa has helped confirm that Brazil, traditionally a recipient of aid, has taken its place among the group of foreign donor countries.

The United Nations announced in late February that Brazil would provide 2.37 million dollars for a local food purchasing programme, to benefit small farmers and vulnerable populations in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal.

The project, carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), will thus draw on the expertise accumulated by Brazil in its own food purchasing programme, known by its Portuguese acronym, PAA.

The PAA buys agricultural products from small farmers and distributes them to vulnerable groups, including children and adolescents through school feeding programmes. Besides fighting hunger, it is aimed at strengthening local food production.

The PAA is a cornerstone of the country’s Zero Hunger strategy, launched by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and continued by his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, both of whom are moderate leftists who belong to the Workers’ Party.

The programme, in conjunction with other anti-poverty policies, has helped reduce malnutrition by 25 percent and pulled 24 million people out of extreme poverty, according to Lula administration statistics.

“This is a way to help other governments develop policies of support for family farmers, who in this country are responsible for the production of 60 percent of the food consumed,” Marco Farani, director of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), told IPS.

The PAA “works very well, and keeps farmers in the countryside, caring for their small plots of land and making them their source of subsistence and livelihood,” said Farani, whose agency operates under the foreign ministry.

The project is based on cooperation between FAO and the WFP in the production and supply of seeds and fertiliser, and the organisation of the purchase and distribution of food, among other aspects.

Since January, FAO has been headed by José Graziano da Silva, from Brazil.

In an interview with IPS in December, Graziano said he would bring to the U.N. organisation his experience as one of the architects of the Zero Hunger programme, in areas like the strengthening of local markets to produce higher quality food, reduce food waste, and lower costs.

Now, in association with organisations like the United Nations or in bilateral aid, Brazil wants to extend throughout the developing South its own successful initiatives like the PAA.

This new cooperation and development aid strategy has been taking shape since 2005, when Brazil, now the world’s sixth largest economy, earmarked 158 million dollars for foreign aid. That amount rose to nearly 363 million dollars in 2009 and to an estimated 400 million dollars in 2010, according to preliminary figures from the ABC.

Meanwhile, Brazil plans to dedicate 125 million dollars to technical cooperation over the next three years, more than double what this country will itself receive in international aid in that period.

“Today we are active in more than 65 countries, while three or four years ago we were only active in the Portuguese-language countries of Africa. We currently have cooperation projects in 38 African nations, and in Latin America,” Farani said.

The countries of Latin America receive 45 percent of Brazil’s foreign aid. The rest is distributed among other areas of the developing South, mainly through bilateral channels, but also through the U.N., as in the case of the new local food purchasing fund for the five African countries.

Brazil is now one of the WFP’s 10 largest donor countries.

The difference, Farani said, is that “in our South-South cooperation, we do not impose closed models or solutions. We recognise the experience of the other countries, while sharing our own expertise.”

Brazil has thus established a kind of manual of principles to guide international aid.

“In first place, we are a developing country, which is why our attitude towards the challenge of development is one of humility, because development is still a challenge for Brazil,” Farani said.

“Besides, we have similar realities and challenges” as developing countries, and “we approach things from the idea that it is possible to overcome those challenges, while the attitude of a country from the industrialised North is ‘we are going to help to keep things from getting even worse’,” he said.

Mauricio Santoro, an analyst at the independent Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, mentioned political reasons as well for Brazil’s strategy of becoming a donor country.

Brazil hopes to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and wants greater decision-making power in multilateral bodies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation.

“The political objective is to increase Brazil’s influence in other developing countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. It’s part of the consolidation of Brazil’s international leadership vis-à-vis nations of the so-called global South,” he said.

But Santoro said there is a difference with respect to traditional donors that use aid as an instrument to establish a presence in new markets.

Brazilian companies, like the state-run oil company Petrobras and private construction and mining firms, are increasingly operating throughout Latin America and in other regions as well.

“The focus is more on politics than on the economy,” he told IPS. “Cooperation is not necessarily stronger with large commercial partners.”

“But it works as a kind of buffer for tension in countries like Bolivia, Paraguay or Mozambique, where there is a heavy presence of Brazilian companies,” he said.

Another difference, Santoro said, is that Brazil’s foreign aid does not come with strings attached, and generally promotes projects that put a priority on developing human resources, by means of training of public employees, for example.

It is the age-old concept of “teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish,” he summed up. (END)

The little village of Chinagoder, on the Niger-Mali border, has become a refugee camp, flooded with Malian families fleeing fighting between their regular army and Tuareg rebels known as the MNLA – the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.

Niger is already stressed by drought and poor harvests. Credit: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN

In the past month, more than 15,000 Malians have arrived across the border, entering a region of western Niger that is already stressed by drought and poor harvests. The districts of Ayourou, Koutoubou, Yassan Banibangou, Mangaïzé and Chinagoder – all in the western Tillabéri region of the country – have become the arrival point for refugees.

“Usually home to fewer than 1,700 residents, our village now holds more than 6,500 people, mostly Malian families from Ménaka and Aderaboukane who have arrived with no resources,” Zakari Djibo, younger brother of Chinagoder’s chief, told IPS.

“The influx of refugees began on Jan. 26 and grew, day by day, to the point where it overwhelmed our ability to house and care for them,” Djibo said. “Despite this, we are continuing to welcome these families in distress and give them hospitality.”

All around the village, clusters of shacks have sprung up to provide shelter for the refugees.

“Our situation is gradually improving,” Fatima Alhacen, a 39-year-old mother of six, told IPS. “We now have mats, blankets, cooking utensils and a bit more to eat, thanks to the food aid that the Nigerien government brought for us at the beginning of last week.”

Comforting a tearful 18-month-old baby, Alhacen added,”The first few days, we had to make do with millet bran that we were given by the people here – who are themselves facing problems finding food; but now we have millet flour for porridge, pâte and even rice in our daily menu.”

Clashes between Mali’s army and MNLA rebels have led to the displacement of 44,000 Malians into neighbouring countries, particularly Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger – which by itself has recorded the arrival of more than 15,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

The MNLA is demanding independence for Azawad, a region in the north of Mali – a move which has been rejected by the Malian government. At a Feb. 17 summit of the Economic Community of West African States, regional leaders also condemned the rebellion.

Humanitarian agencies have also noted the presence of a number of Malian soldiers amongst those seeking refuge in Mali. One such is Chief Warrant Officer Yaouchan Maïga, a medical orderly with Mali’s 143rd Nomad Military Company, normally based in the northern Malian town of Aderaboukane.

“We spent 11 days on alert,” Maïga told IPS,” waiting for reinforcements which never came, until our unit was attacked and destroyed.”

Along with 26 other members of his unit, he had crossed the border to Chinagoder. He said a first group of 24 soldiers – some traveling with their families – had already passed through the Nigerien village. Like them, Maïga’s group will be sent to Niamey, the capital of Niger, before returning to Mali.

Northern Mali’s armed conflict is being closely monitored by the Burkinabè authorities, who fear that their territory could become a safe haven for rebels; on its part, the government of Niger fears contagion, having experienced Tuareg rebellions of its own in the 1990s and more recently in 2007.

“Burkina Faso will not serve as a rear base for rebellion,” Djibril Bassolé, the Burkinabè Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Cooperation told a French radio station on Feb. 11.

This position was supported by Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré, who stressed that what is going on is “first, a problem between Malians”, and called for the initiation of “an inclusive dialogue” to restore peace. Compaoré met with his Malian counterpart, Amadou Toumani Touré, on the sidelines of a regional summit on education in Ouagadougou on Feb. 13.

In Niger, participants in earlier uprisings were warned against any thoughts of returning to arms by Rhissa Ag Boula, a prominent figure in the 1990s rebellion, as well as by Colonel Mahamadou Abou, the head of Niger’s High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace (a government body charged with dialogue, mediation and implementation of several peace accords) on the occasion of a Peace and Development Forum held in Arlit, northern Niger, at the end of January.

“The people will strongly resist any adventurers who might wish to take up arms again,” warned Colonel Abou.

“The recurrence of rebellion holds back development in the north of Mali,” said Bilal Ag Altinine, the representative of the Malian refugees at Chinagoder. “A country is not built by force of arms.”

He called on the Malian authorities to find a definitive solution to the problem.

“We are tired of rebellion,” said Binta Mohamed, a woman from Ménaka, the northern Mali town that the rebels first attacked on Jan. 17. “We want lasting peace so we can better fight against the poverty that surrounds us.”

(END/2012)