Angola is now focusing on cash crops. This is a new sugarcane plantation in Malange, Angola. Credit: Louise Redvers

By Louise Redvers
JOHANNESBURG, May 11 2012 (IPS)

Millions of Angola’s poorest families are facing critical food insecurity as a prolonged dry spell across large parts of the country has destroyed harvests and killed off livestock.
Up to 500,000 children are now thought to be suffering from severe malnutrition triggered by the collapse in food production after a lengthy dry season in the first three months of this year. Currently emergency feeding centres are being set up in the worst-affected communities.

The provinces of Huambo, Bie, Benguela and Zaire in central and northern Angola are the hardest hit, but across the country both small-scale and commercial farmers are suffering. Crop yields are down by as much as 70 percent in some places.

There are reports of subsistence farmers abandoning their fields altogether in a bid to find other paid work in towns and cities so that they can feed their families, and large commercial farms are laying off workers because there is no harvest to gather.

Despite Angola’s enormous oil wealth and the International Monetary Fund’s forecast that GDP will swell by 9.7 percent in 2012, nearly two thirds of rural households live on less than 1.75 dollars a day.

More than four decades of war (1961-2002) left the country with one of the highest child mortality rates in the world, with 20 percent of youngsters dying before they reach their fifth birthday.

Poor diet is a major factor in the high death rates and according to the latest National Nutrition Survey, carried out in 2007, nearly 30 percent of children under five are stunted, more than eight percent are wasted, and close to 16 percent are underweight.

Koen Vanormelingen, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Angola, explained that this year’s weak harvest was already taken its toll on the most vulnerable children, who were showing elevated rates of malnutrition.

“These people were already living on the border line and were scraping by at the best of times,” he said.

“But where they were once eating a varied diet three times a day, now they are having just one meal a day, maybe two, and they are restricted to a very poor selection of cassava and bananas.

“It is a very serious situation and we are very concerned because we are seeing a significant increase in malnutrition and malnutrition-related mortality in children,” he added.

The government has allocated 43 million dollars to an emergency response campaign, which will include the distribution of food and water supplies, as well as seeds and other agricultural inputs to help farmers salvage their wasted crops.

In addition, a 40-tonne shipment of nutritionally-enhanced peanut-based paste used to treat malnutrition has been imported with support from the Clinton Foundation. It is ready to be sent to emergency feeding centres that are being set up around the country.

“This is not a famine, it is an issue of food insecurity,” Vanormelingen explained. “There is food available; the issue is that because people are not producing as much food, they must buy more.

“And because their production has gone down, their income has also gone down so they cannot afford to buy food, and as supply falls and demand increases, prices are going up – in some cases doubling.”

This collapse in crop production is a major setback for Angola, which has been trying desperately to re- launch its once buoyant agricultural sector that was destroyed by decades of war.

In a bid to help boost output, last year the government launched a high profile 150-million-dollar microcredit scheme giving small farmers loans to buy seeds and fertilisers.

But now with yields so low, many families are struggling to repay their debts.

The União Nacional das Associações de Camponeses Angolanos, the national union of farming cooperatives, has said that the government will help bridge the payment gap with the commercial banks, which made the loans.

But Belarmino Jelembi, director of Angola’s largest rural development organisation, Acção para o Desenvolvimento Rural e Ambiente, warned: “The government needs to be extremely careful how this is managed, because there is a risk that if it is not managed well, the whole programme could fail altogether.”

He added: “What this situation tells us is that we need to do more to support the small farmers with basic tools for irrigation, so people are not so dependent on the rain for their crops.

“We need to think about the basic things at local level, rather than investing huge amounts of money in big capital projects that often turn out to be white elephants.”

Abrantes Carlos, provincial director of the Agriculture Ministry in Benguela, where around 100,000 families – or well over half a million people – are now food insecure, agreed that “more sustainable systems” of irrigation were needed.

“Benguela is a province that often faces dry spells, so we need to have better irrigation so we can overcome this situation,” he told IPS.

“We have large rivers in the province but we are not managing our supplies, and we do not have accurate data about how much water is available.”

Carlos said the lack of water in the province, where many rivers have run dry, was the worst the area had seen for over 30 years, and that for the first time since the end of the war in 2002 there were plans to start giving out food aid to families.

“At this moment people still have some food, but the situation in the next three months will likely get worse,” he said. He explained that the government was assisting in the drilling of new boreholes to try to find water, and was also providing seeds for crops that could be grown in the cooler months, in a bid to boost the next harvest.

Jelembi welcomed the government’s commitment to provide assistance, but said: “We have seen a lot of announcements about what the government is going to do to help people affected, but in practice not much is happening yet.”

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 10 2012 (IPS)

While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.

Jane Karuku, the new AGRA boss, dreams of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa's quest for food security. Credit: Courtesy: AGRA

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women are the majority of the world’s agricultural producers, supplying more than 50 percent of the food that is grown globally. And in sub-Saharan Africa the number is higher, as women grow 80 to 90 percent of the food in the region.

FAO says that although across the globe women are responsible for providing the food for their families, they do this in the face of constraints and attitudes that conspire to undervalue their work and responsibilities and hinder their participation in decision and policy making.

But it is a situation that the new Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) boss, Jane Karuku, says must change in order for Africa to feed itself.

Karuku, a Kenyan business leader with a career spanning over 20 years, became the first female president of the organisation in April.

AGRA is a partnership that works on the African continent to improve food security and enhance the economic empowerment of millions of smallholder farmers and their families. It does this through nearly 100 programmes in 14 countries.

Karuku joins AGRA from Telkom Kenya, a subsidiary of France Telecom-Orange, where she was the deputy chief executive.

She told IPS about her dream of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa’s quest for food security. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: Do you see your appointment as a milestone for women farmers in Africa?

A: As AGRA’s first female president, it is a great honour to advocate on behalf of the tireless women who are sowing seeds and working in fields across Africa. They are the real heroines in this story, and I hope to highlight their important contributions for a food-secure future.

Q: Do food security policies recognise the role of women farmers in the production, processing and marketing of food in agriculture?

A: Across Africa there are great signs of progress when it comes to smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women who are building prosperous lives for themselves and their families.

Success for smallholders, however, has been lopsided. Women smallholders and rural entrepreneurs on the continent are neither participating fully nor deriving benefits in equal measure in the agri-economy owning to gender obstacles driven by cultural and societal norms. This must change if Africa is to transform the capacity to feed itself and realise the quality of life envisioned for rural households and communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Q: In your appointment speech you said: “Smallholder farming is a way of life in Africa, full of challenges and equally full of huge opportunities.” What will you do to strike a balance for food security?

A: My focus is to work to remove the obstacles that prevent smallholder farmers across Africa from significantly boosting productivity and income, while safeguarding the environment and promoting equity. I am committed to ensuring farmers have a full range of choices when it comes to approaching their work.

Q: Smallholder farmers hold the key to food security in Africa. What is your vision for improving their situation?

A: My vision is a food-secure and prosperous Africa achieved through rapid and sustainable agricultural growth that is based on smallholder farmers who produce staple food crops. AGRA’s mission is to trigger a uniquely “African Green Revolution” that transforms agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system to ensure food security and lift millions out of poverty.

Q: Where do you see the role of AGRA in advocating assistance for smallholder farmers to cope with the impact that climate change has on food security?

A: AGRA and its partners work together to determine the kinds of environmental safeguards farmers need to increase their yields and improve their livelihoods. By focusing on sustainable development practices, AGRA reduces environmental degradation and conserves biodiversity.

Rebuilding soil health and enabling Africa’s smallholder farmers to grow more on less land should reduce the pressure to clear and cultivate forests and savannahs, thus helping conserve the environment and biodiversity.

AGRA’s sustainable agricultural practices include improving soil health through integrated soil fertility management. We do this through using a combination of fertilisers and organic inputs, and techniques that are appropriate for local conditions and resources. Through advocating the use of agro- ecologically sound approaches to soil and crop management, such as fertiliser micro-dosing in arid areas, AGRA will guard against potential overuse of fertilisers that could harm the environment.

Q: Research is key to food security; what is your take on the current investment in agricultural research in Africa?

A: Research is critical to making the most of the full agricultural value chain – from seed to harvest. While food productivity has increased globally by 140 percent in recent decades, the figures for sub- Saharan Africa over the same period of time show a reduction. This is because farming across much of the continent has changed little in generations. The role of research is critically important.

Q: What major impact has AGRA had in Africa, and how do you plan to build on it?

A: AGRA takes a uniquely integrated approach to helping smallholder farmers overcome hunger and poverty. By focusing on seeds, soil, market access, policy and partnership and innovative financing, the programme is transforming subsistence farming into sustainable, viable commercial activities that will increase yields across the continent. I hope to continue to look for intersections and innovative opportunities to improve farmers’ lives.

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Additional reporting from Massa Kanneh in Monrovia.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
JOHANNESBURG, May 8 2012 (IPS)

The cost of maintaining and expanding water infrastructure in southern Africa is high. And while South Africa may be in a better economic position than the rest of the region, it also faces funding challenges that are similar to those of its neighbours.

Getting water is a daily chore for this woman in Swaziland. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

But the situation is no different elsewhere in the region, according to Phera Ramoeli, Senior Programme Officer at the Southern Africa Development Community Secretariat.

“Effectively the region needs to do a lot of work in terms of improving its infrastructure, because water supply and sanitation are dependent on the availability of water as a source. But sanitation also affects the usability and quality of water if it’s not properly dealt with,” Ramoeli said.

He added that infrastructure, especially in the water sector, is expensive. “We do not always find enough financial resources to build new infrastructure, to maintain existing infrastructure, and to operate them in a way that is efficient,” he said.

Excerpts from his interview with IPS follow:

Q: What challenges do countries in the region face in terms of providing safe and clean drinking water to their populations?

A: We do not have adequate infrastructure to handle water and treat it to make it available to all our people in the region. Even with the infrastructure that does exist, we have a problem of operation and maintenance. By and large the population in our region is not commensurate with the level of infrastructure development that is required to ensure that people get the adequate water and sanitation that they need.

Q: How much of a role has climate change played in the region’s water woes?

A: Climate change is making things worse in the southern African region because we are a region that is characterised by vulnerability and change. In other words, water varies in terms of its availability in time and space.

Some parts of the region do not have adequate water or have very little water. The countries in the southwestern parts of the region are more water-stressed than those in the northeastern and some central parts, like Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Climate change tends to exacerbate the water problems; so does population growth.

Q: How committed is the region to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to provide adequate water and sanitation to all by 2015?

A: Efforts are being made to meet the MDGs. Some of the countries in the region have already achieved that but for only 50 percent of the population. The population does not remain stagnant as you try to achieve the MDGs, so the population still grows and it becomes an unreachable target. But of course that means we need to make more of an effort.

Q: Can you name a few of the countries that are well on track to meeting the MDGs?

A: It has been said South Africa is on target to meet the MDGs and maybe other countries like Mauritius, which already has 99 percent access to water and sanitation. Of course you have to look at the quality of that access, but by and large there are countries in the region that are set to meet the MDGs.

Q: Which countries are struggling to provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all?

A: We have a number of countries that remain poor in the region. Madagascar is a country that has been facing difficulties, and the DRC and maybe Angola – because the country was involved in a war that made things even worse. In those countries the backlog that they have to erode is much greater than the ones in other countries in the region.

The region is really trying its best to achieve access to water for all people. Of course it is something that is going to take some time, but it needs to be addressed urgently.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa , May 8 2012 (IPS)

On a continent of over one billion people, where half the population have mobile phones, the use of mobile communication and internet technologies is crucial to boost development in Africa.

In Mauritania mobile phones are used in rural areas. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“We did not anticipate how rapid mobile broadband would be appropriated in Africa. There will be a computer in every pocket sooner than we think,” Gauthey told IPS. She added that Kenya has made rapid progress, having already rolled out 3rd generation mobile communications.

There are only two and a half years to go until African countries are expected to reach the MDGs, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) will help the continent achieve this. Through the eight MDGs, countries around the world have committed themselves to significantly curb poverty and hunger, improve education and health, and create environmental sustainability by 2015.

Gauthey, who is based at Alcatel’s Paris headquarters and involved in the firm’s expansion into Africa, argues that ICT will help the continent to achieve the economic growth it needs to end poverty.

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: How can ICT help Africa reach the MDGs?

A: I think ICT will be absolutely key, especially for countries that lag behind with other infrastructure development…In 2000, you had about five million mobile phones in Africa. Today, we have about 500 million. In 2015, we expect it to be 800 million. Already, 20 to 30 percent of these phones are internet enabled. In 2015, it will be 80 percent.

It’s proven that a 10 percent increase in broadband triggers a 1.5 percent GDP increase in a country. In developed countries, small and medium-sized enterprises are shown to have doubled their business once they are linked to the internet. In Africa, we will see a similar development, but largely through mobile broadband rather than fixed lines.

Q: Infrastructure remains a bottleneck to development throughout Africa. Can ICT circumvent that?

A: There is a false impression that ICT doesn’t need infrastructure. It does, unfortunately. It’s less capital intensive than transportation, such as roads and railways, but it does need investments, like cables, towers and so on.

There are ways to speed up ICT development, for example by governments obliging operators to share expensive infrastructure and thereby ensuring that they don’t duplicate investments. For instance, you can reduce costs by incentivising infrastructure-sharing models without preventing competition.

Q: Where on the continent do you see a strong push towards ICT?

A: Some countries, like Kenya, have leapfrogged. They have just rolled out 3G and already are thinking of rolling out 4th generation broadband, especially to rural areas, because they know it’s the only way for them to progress.

In the slums of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, 80 percent of people prefer to skip a lunch so that they can afford having a mobile phone. They are willing to make that trade-off because a mobile phone helps them to optimise their lives in the long term through better access to information and resources, including food. Access to information has become as vital as water and electricity.

We have also seen how cashew nut farmers in Ivory Coast access international market information and prices through their mobile phones to optimise their sales. It works, even if it’s just via text messages.

Q: Would you describe Kenya as the African leader in ICT?

A: Kenya is doing great things. Its government has a strong awareness of the importance of ICT and has started to foster public private partnerships with clear goals in the sector. Kenya is an innovative country that might even bring “reverse innovation”, which means innovation coming from a developing country that will later be taken up by the developed world. Such innovation could even come from the users of mobile technology, especially from the young generation.

Q: Is Africa ready for the mobile revolution you expect?

A: African countries need to build the infrastructure for those mobile services, because people will demand them. For that you need investment, first in submarine cables, then in terrestrial fibre cables, especially to reach out to the less densely populated areas.

Then you will get sufficient broadband spectrum to install next-generation wireless internet access. The submarine cables are largely in place. What is now most crucial in Africa is investment in terrestrial cables for distribution of spectrum countrywide. The World Bank, for instance, has funds to help reach out to those less developed areas.

Q: In what way should governments get involved?

A: You need good regulation for the allocation of spectrum, to encourage competition and to decrease prices. Then you need public-private partnership models, for example a public investment in partnership with private service providers that have expertise in building telecommunication networks, either to subsidise them in remote, less population-dense areas or to attract long-term funding for these networks.

Q: What should governments do to attract competition?

A: Governments need to have a broadband plan, with clear targets and ways to achieve these targets. For this, governments need a stable regulatory framework with rules that don’t change all the time, as well as an independent regulatory authority that doesn’t change with every government. A lot of African countries have set those targets already. Now they must implement them.

Q: Connectivity is one issue. Affordability is another. When will all Africans, not only the middle class, be able to afford mobile broadband?

A: Prices will drop once you have enough connectivity and enough competition, and once broadband services are less scarce. Scarcity makes it expensive. That will take some time. But a lot of measures of using ICT to help reach the MDGs don’t necessarily need mobile broadband. Sometimes simple text messaging can go a long way towards development.

Q: Can you give examples for where this has already worked?

A: Text messaging can, for instance, be used in the health sector to track an epidemic like malaria. There is also the possibility to have free “call me” services or free call numbers. Those are mobile experiences with reduced costs.

There are also examples of training community health workers through text messages in Kenya. You can have simple educational quizzes on mobile phones or exchange advice and help with diagnosis between doctors in health centres and community health workers in remote, rural areas. Mobile broadband access will of course bring many more possibilities, such as training of nurses and community health workers on mobile devices, like tablets.

Excerpt:

African countries need more support from the private sector in order to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, which include important development targets like poverty reduction, and improved health and education.

Encouraging business in Africa will help reach the MDGs. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Governments cannot do it alone, development and economic experts told delegates at the MDG Review Summit, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa, from May 3 to 4.

Businesses, experts explained, are ideally positioned to foster economic growth and create jobs, which are needed to reach the first goal to end extreme poverty and hunger.

“Achieving MDG1 can have a positive impact on all the other MDGs,” said Beejaye Kokil, manager of the African Development Bank’s statistics department. Other development goals include the reduction in in the under-five mortality rate, gender equality or environmental sustainability.

African countries have already made some progress in their development through improved economic governance and reforms, including dropping the cost of doing business on the continent, noted Kokil. As a result, Africa today belongs to one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, with average annual GDP growth of six percent. It follows hot on the heels of China and India, which each have a GDP of about nine percent each.

But the trickle-down effect from economic growth to large-scale poverty reduction has been slow. Almost 40 percent of Africans continue to live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, according to 2011 World Bank statistics.

“That’s because GDP growth in Africa is not linked to jobs for the poor,” Kokil explained, since high economic inequality and skills shortage mean that most of the poor remain unable to access newly created employment opportunities.

In addition, high population growth has been curtailing many of Africa’s economic gains. The continent also continues to face major challenges like insufficient agricultural production, lack of infrastructure, high youth unemployment, low human development, gender inequality, poor education and the negative impact of climate change.

“It’s not all rosy. MDG progress remains mixed. But the potential is there,” said Kokil.

He recommended that African countries move away from traditional donor aid and loan programmes towards an “aid for trade” model geared towards helping nations to develop trade-related skills and infrastructure to eventually become donor independent. This model places emphasis on making the private sector an integral part of a country’s development.

“The private sector has a huge role to play in Africa’s economic growth,” Kokil stressed.

Some of Africa’s key donors, like the United States, are already considering a shift away from providing unconditional financial aid to making investments that are bound to clear economic targets, said Terri Robl, minister counsellor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, had announced earlier this year that “making investments with tangible outcomes” would become part of the U.S. aid policy, said Robl.

It means that the private sector will start playing a major role in development and many businesses have started to recognise this opportunity. Despite the fact that a company’s main focus remains profitability, corporate social responsibility has become a key element of doing business in Africa, Robl said.

“Sustainability as become a valuable asset to companies in and of themselves,” explained Robl. She is convinced that “the private sector can help governments leapfrog some of the MDGs”, by making sure that economic growth filters down to social development.

Meeting the MDGs needs much more than public-private partnerships, however. “Cooperation between governments and companies solves only two thirds of the problem. The last third must be the involvement of communities,” argued Professor Gerhard Coetzee, director of the Centre for Inclusive Banking in Africa at the University of Pretoria and a general manager at ABSA bank in South Africa.

He said that most Africans remain excluded not only from jobs but from using financial services because of high banking fees and cumbersome regulation.

Currently, most financial institutions solely provide specialised services to poor populations, such as microfinance.

“That is helpful, but not good enough to eradicate poverty in the long term. Ultimately, we need to move from microfinance to financial inclusion,” said Coetzee. “I see a clear link between a population’s access to finance and a country’s ability to reach the MDGs. By giving the poor access to financial services, we improve their income, thereby decreasing poverty levels.”

Coetzee advised that there should be a reduction in the direct costs of banking, such as fees and transactions. He added that there should also be a reduction in the costs of the indirect financial price tag, including the cost of transport and the time that rural populations spent to reach services.

In South Africa, one of the continent’s strongest economies, only 63 percent of the those 16 years and older have a bank account, the most basic of all financial services, according to a 2011 survey by African financial research company FinScope.

“That shows that using banking to improve poverty and thereby the MDGs remains a major challenge,” said Coetzee. “We still have a long way to go.”

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava which, in combination with improved agricultural techniques, easily outperforms yields from other popular types of this important crop.

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava. Credit: Credit: André Thiel/Flickr

Cassava is a staple food in many parts of DRC, and farmers disappointed with harvests of the popular F100 variety, which has proved vulnerable to a plant disease called mosaic, have turned to a newer strain with great success.

“We produced 58 tonnes of TME 419 cassava from a two hectare field in 2011,” said 27-year-old Romain Twarita. “That’s a yield of 29 tonnes per hectare, compared to the 10 or 12 tonnes per hectare of F100 that we harvested in 2010.”

Twarita, the coordinator of Action Jeunes Pour le Développement de Nkara (AJDN), an association of 22 young farmers at Nkara, 90 kilometres from Kikwit, the capital of the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, says the 2011 crop brought in more than 25,000 dollars for AJDN, against 10,000 dollars the year before, and just 3,000 dollars in 2009, the year the association was established.

He said AJDN has also adopted “binage”, a new method of hoeing which maximises the benefits of irrigation –”worth two waterings”, as Twarita put it. Binage calls for the surface of the soil to be broken up, to allow more rain to soak into it. The young farmers also use compost and manure to enrich the soil with organic and mineral matter.

“The big problem is a shortage of farm implements, and the lack of understanding from landowners who ask so much money for a plot – 40 or 50 dollars for half a hectare, depending on location,” he told IPS.

“The cassava is bought from farms here by traders, then sent to the capital, Kinshasa, where it sells fast,” said Jacques Mitini, president of the provincial network of small farmers’ organisations in Bandundu, which includes 255 smallholder associations, nearly a third of these representing young farmers between the ages of 21 and 33.

In the west of DRC, in Bas-Congo province, the Comité de Développement de Kakongo (CDK) is planting trees to create windbreaks and maintain soil moisture, boosting production of other crops on a three-hectare plot.

“We are using intercropping, that’s why there are these wind-breaks of moringa trees which also fertilise the earth without us needing to use chemical fertilisers. Irrigation is also important,” said Espérance Nzuzi, president of Force Paysanne du Bas-Congo, a network of 264 smallholder farmers associations, including 87 created by youth.

“The 84 tonnes of TME 419 cassava harvested last year earned us 39,960 dollars, compared to just 6,160 dollars from 14 tonnes of F100 in 2010,” said Nzuzi.

On two hectares on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, another youth association, Jeunes Dynamiques de Malulku (JDM), has also found success with the adoption of new techniques.

“We’ve only been practicing binage since we started this venture in 2010. We produced 15 tonnes of TME 419 from a single hectare that year, but in 2011 we harvested 28 tonnes from a hectare and a half, applying a little bit of chemical fertiliser,” said Anne Mburabata, 32, president of the association.

“Before we started popularising TME 419 cassava, we tested it carefully,” said Didier Mboma, who heads the technical innovation service at the Impresa Servizi Coordinati (ISCO), an Italian NGO which is making free cuttings of the new cassava variety available to farmers.

“Since the tests in 2008, we have planted 3,000 cuttings, and we have harvested 30,000.”

Mboma said that young farmers are strongly establishing themselves as productive farmers, while contributing to the country’s food security.

“Young farmers must move towards professionalisation, and take control of the entire value chain from production, to processing, to marketing,” said Dr. Christophe Arthur Mampuya, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Livestock.

“The TME 419 variety is a high-yielding one. It’s also among the best varieties being promoted,” he said.

Mampuya said emerging young farmers must also plant woodlots, as adoption of the new cassava variety is scaled up.

“TME 419 is more popular in the west of DRC than in the east, but step by step, the variety could spread across the country,” said Paluku Mivimba, president of the National Confederation of Agricultural Producers of Congo.

Though the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has long held that trade between African countries is too low, experts at the South Centre, an inter-governmental think tank of developing countries, say intra-continental trade is already significant in manufactured goods and promises a new path to industrialisation.

Valentine Rugwabiza, deputy director-general of the WTO, says Africa needs to strengthen domestic markets and integrate into the world market Credit: World Trade Organisation

“Trade among African countries is very low. Last year, it stood at 10 percent of the continent’s overall trade,” Valentine Rugwabiza, deputy director general of the WTO, which seeks to reduce barriers and promote aid for trade, told IPS.

“Though Africa’s share in world trade is also very small – less than three percent in 2011 – it is growing very rapidly, particularly with emerging economies; while trade amongst African countries is stagnant.”

With a rigid division of labour inherited from the colonial era, Africa relies on a narrow range of exports and is over-dependent on primary products: in 2010, fuel extraction and mining represented 66 percent of its total merchandise exports.

According to Rugwabiza, lack of investment in infrastructure and non-tariff barriers of all kinds make trade between the 54 countries cumbersome.

“Whereas it takes 18 days to export products from Latin America and the Caribbean, it takes almost 33 days to do so from Africa,” she added, noting that it is also more expensive to ship a container from Africa than from any other part of the developing world.

For instance, shipping a container from South-east Asia costs 900 dollars, compared to 2,000 dollars from Africa; likewise, it costs 935 dollars to import a container from South-East Asia, and almost 2,500 dollars to do so from Africa. The Geneva-based South Centre, however, has a more optimistic view.

“In absolute terms, intra-African trade is low,” Aileen Kwa, trade policy officer with the South Centre, told IPS. “In terms of non-oil exports Africa’s internal trade is almost on par with its exports to the EU. Furthermore, the trade growth rate within Africa is the second highest after China and before the United States and the EU. Therefore, it is very promising, also in terms of the quality of exports.”

She explains that, with the exclusion of South Africa, only 10 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s exports to the EU are in manufactured goods, a figure that rises to 27 percent for intra-regional trade.

“Most of Africa’s manufactured goods go to Africa. So if the continent wants to industrialise, the market that provides the best opportunities is Africa, not China, the U.S., or the EU.”

For Rugwabiza, however, the industrialisation of Africa will require not only strengthening of the domestic market, but also integration into the world market.

“Today, components of the same piece are produced in different countries all over the world. This is a huge chance for Africa to specialise in single tasks and insert itself into global value chains,” she told IPS.

“Some countries already do so, but they are still an exception. Mauritius, for example, produces pieces for H&M, (a major global clothing store). Since it has a reliable logistics and service sector, the multinational knows that it will receive the orders on time and, thanks to a stable and predictable legal environment, that there will be no unexpected regulations coming up,” she said.

Kwa notes that the picture is uneven: in some parts of Africa, intra-regional trade is larger than in others. The total exports of the East African Community (EAC) to sub-Saharan Africa already surpassed their total exports to the EU in 2000. Other countries like Zambia and Senegal also export more to Africa than to Europe.

Still, other regions display a bleaker outlook.

Rugwabiza belives that Africa, with its high dependence on trade with the outside world, is highly vulnerable to external shocks. This is particularly true of the agricultural sector, as the food crisis has shown.

“In 2008, Africa imported cereals for 15 billion dollars, with only five percent coming from the continent. Agricultural subsidies in developed countries, insufficient investment and low productivity in (domestic) agriculture and non-trade barriers (between African countries) are still a huge obstacle,” she added.

Shoprite (Pty) Ltd, for example, a South African multinational, spends 20,000 a week on securing import permits to distribute meat, milk and plant-based goods to its stores in Zambia alone. For all the countries it operates in, about 100 ‘single entry’ import permits are required each week, but this can increase to 300 per week during busy periods.

As a result of this legal red tape, there could be up to 1,600 documents accompanying each loaded Shoprite truck that crosses a Southern African Development Community (SADC) border.

But things can change. For example, the EAC has managed to substantially reduce the number of control points, while Uganda and Rwanda have set up a common border post that is now open 24 hours a day.

Kwa says that African countries’ over-dependence on imports from world markets, particularly in food, is mainly due to their loss of productive capacities.

She believes there needs to be some balancing between short-term and long-term goals. While in the short run countries must be able to import food quickly and as cheaply as possible to meet their immediate needs, they must, in the long term, produce their own food without relying on imports from developed countries that have an extremely unfair competitive advantage due to the latter’s massive government subsidies.

Relying on imports undercuts domestic producers and undermines their future capacity to produce. Therefore, countries may need to use tariffs and other trade policy tools to stop some of the imports, even from their neighbours, at least for some time.

“First countries have to increase their productive capacities and then trade will follow. The WTO always thinks about increasing trade, but the main question for Africa is how to increase its productive capacities. Then trade will naturally follow,” Kwa told IPS.

In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the “pillar of my family,” says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

Farmer Selinah Mncwango is proud of her traditional sorghum seeds. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sixty-five-year-old Mncwango comes from a family of smallholder farmers in the village of Ingwawuma in the east coast province. The crops she grows today are from seeds that have been handed down from generation to generation, over decades, she says. Other seeds come from exchanges with neighbouring farmers. “My seeds are very important to me. I hope the day will never come when I have to buy seeds from a shop,” says the farmer, whose five children and eight grandchildren largely depend on her harvest. She is keenly aware of the fact that seed saving, storing and exchanging promotes crop diversity, saves money and provides smallholder farmers with a safety net in case of harvest failures.

But the traditional farming methods of smallholder farmers – which, researchers say, also help to fight soil depletion, reduce irrigation needs and adapt to climate change – may soon disappear. They are being wiped out by governments focused on promoting commercial monocultures that they hope will bring fast, high yields in order to boost national agricultural sales on global markets.

“The sector is dominated by commercial seed companies and industrial agricultural production,” explains Rachel Wynberg, policy analyst at the Environmental Evaluation Unit of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Small-scale farmers have been systematically pushed out of the system by those who put profits before food security and biodiversity, she says.

“There is a poor understanding of small farmers’ rights. Traditional agricultural practices have thus been eroded over decades,” she adds.

In South Africa, and in most other countries on the continent, the rights of small-scale farmers are regularly violated by governments and commercial entities that push genetically modified (GM) and hybrid seeds – which have been cross-pollinated in controlled environments – on them.

This is common despite a 2006 United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (IT- PGRFA) that protects farmers’ indigenous knowledge, demands rewards for their contribution to maintaining crop diversity, ensures their participation in decision-making about genetic resources, and guarantees their rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds.

South Africa and many other African U.N. member states never signed the treaty, however.

“South Africa’s policy framework on farmers’ rights is fragmented and unclear,” says Wynberg. “Commercial programmes are promoted that contradict and undermine traditional farming practices.”

According to Wynberg, government support of small-scale farmers is incoherent and insufficiently funded, lacks capacity and often ignores the needs of farmers. “Government is unfortunately often not delivering,” she adds.

Smallholders agree. Mncwango, who has actively tried in cooperation with many rural farmers in her community to protect their traditional farming methods, says she is appalled at the South African government’s drive to sideline them.

“The Department of Agriculture regularly comes to give workshops. They hand out GM and hybrid seeds and tell us to throw away our traditional seeds. They also tell us to use pesticides and chemical fertilisers,” the farmer laments. “By corrupting our traditional seeds, they make us lose our seed banks and force us into dependency.”

According to Mncwango, farmers often realise too late that GM seeds cannot be saved for the next season, and that they contaminate traditional seeds. Farmers have had to learn the hard way that hybrid seeds are of inferior quality. “They don’t store well and they rot easily and have less nutritional value,” she says.

“The government keeps forcing seeds on us. Even though we tell them we don’t want seeds. We’d rather have support with fencing, farming equipment and better access to markets,” she explains. “But they just don’t listen.”

Researchers like Wynberg confirm the large disconnect between agricultural policies that are deemed “progressive” and farmers’ needs. “High yields are traded for long-term food security,” she says.

Lawrence Mkhaliphi, agro-ecology manager at Biowatch, a non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable agriculture, has been working with small-scale farmers in KwaZulu-Natal province for many years. He takes the argument a step further.

“Many agro-chemical companies offer governments incentives for pushing their products onto farmers,” Mkhaliphi claims. “They want farmers to buy seeds, not save them. It’s a huge business. Instead of serving the people, departments of agriculture have become the agents of agro-chemical companies.”

South Africa’s Department of Agriculture denies these accusations.

“Replacing traditional seeds with commercial varieties is not an official government policy,” says Julian Jaftha, the department’s director of genetic resources. “The government does not own shares in GM seeds.”

The Department of Agriculture supports both traditional and commercial farming methods, Jaftha says. It ran a national programme to reintroduce traditional seeds in rural areas and has a Plant Genetic Resources Centre in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, to conserve traditional seeds.

“GM (seeds) should never be a farmer’s only choice,” says Jaftha. “They should be another option made available to farmers who wish to use those seeds. We expect that there are democratic processes in place for farmers to voice their concerns and make choices.”

Jaftha acknowledges, however, that national policy has not always been implemented correctly. “Unfortunately, it does happen at provincial level that farmers are not given a choice,” he admits. “We know that there is still a lot of work that needs to be undertaken.”

Thousands of residents in Diepsloot, a large township north of Johannesburg, South Africa, are queuing for hours to access clean, safe water a week after their supply was contaminated by sewage.

Hundreds of residents in Diepsloot queue for hours to access clean, safe water. Credit: Siphosethu Stuurman

The contamination occurred when a contractor working on a nearby sewer line broke the water pipe that supplies Diepsloot. Though the damage was repaired, it is believed that E. coli in sewage contaminated the water supply. Residents here were warned by Johannesburg Water authorities not to drink water from their taps on Apr. 13.

However, a week after the incident, residents say there are not enough temporary water tanks to provide potable water for everyone in the township of over 150,000 people.

“Everything possible is being done, we have 65 stationary tanks and 12 mobile tanks for residents to use in the interim,” says Johannesburg Water spokesperson Millicent Kabwe, adding that each of the stationary tanks has a capacity of 5,000 litres.

However, community leader Scelo Shezi says the temporary tanks do not hold nearly enough water for the township’s large population.

“We were told that there is not enough transport to bring more water to the community…but there is a need for more water tanks,” says Shezi.

He says residents are quickly running out of patience.

“We are worried that people have had to wait in the queue for a very long time. It’s really a challenge, and we hope that it will be fixed very soon,” he says.

While only one district, ward 113, in the township seems to have introduced the “one family, one bucket system” after fights broke out because people where unhappy about the number of buckets individuals brought to collect water in, women and children with multiple buckets are often seen in long queues waiting their turn.

A frustrated Duduzile Ngema says that she has been waiting in the queue for almost the entire day.

“We don’t bath, we don’t wash… we have a big problem here in Diepsloot. They say that the water will come back, but we have been waiting for a long time. They told us that we can die if we drink the contaminated water and it causes diseases,” says Ngema.

She says that the situation is degrading, as residents are forced to find alternative means to relieve themselves. Ngema was hesitant to go into details, but she says resident are using buckets and, only when the water tanks arrive, they flush the waste away.

“It’s very difficult because the toilets need water to flush, so we are not going to the toilets, we just use buckets,” says an embarrassed Ngema.

Another angry and desperate resident, Thami Dlodlo, says that the water crisis has brought life to a standstill in her community.

“We can’t cook, we can’t bath, and we can’t do anything. There is no life without water, we need water, clean water,” says Dlodlo.

She says residents have been forced to buy water, but most are unemployed and cannot afford it. Diepsloot is an informal settlement comprised of government-funded brick houses, with running water and electricity, and shacks – assembled from metal zinc and wood – which do not have running water.

Families in the government houses have water metres and pay a subsidised fee. However, the poorer residents here cannot afford to pay for water, and use communal taps that provide free water across the township.

“Now we buy the water, from people that have cars, for 1.25 dollars a bucket. We buy it so our children can go to school, and for drinking. But we are not working… we do not have much money to buy water. It’s so difficult for us because we don’t even have water to drink our medicines with,” says a dejected Dlodlo.

In some areas in the township safe water has been restored, but Johannesburg Water says it is not possible at this stage to indicate when the water will return to all of Diepsloot.

Johannesburg Water has been criticised by South Africa’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, for its slow progress in restoring safe drinking water to Diepsloot.

However, Professor Akpofure Taigbenu from the Water Engineering Department at the University of the Witwatersrand says it takes a few days to restore safe, clean water after it has been contaminated.

“It takes a couple of days to restore the system, but six days is on the high side in my view. The key thing is to have a good network of water tanks for example; there must be a limited walking distance between where individuals use water and those tanks. If the walking distance is large, it puts a great deal of stress on the inhabitants,” says Taigbenu.

Johannesburg Water says that restoring safe clean water is a lengthy process.

“The complexity of rectifying this situation and the magnitude of the network, the flushing process, and the related engineering and scientific processes do mean it takes a bit of time,” says Kabwe. “The interventions implemented that stem from these processes have shown significant improvement in terms of quality so far, but they are not complying with national standards as yet.”

Kabwe also attributed the city’s water woes to ailing water infrastructure.

“Ageing infrastructure is indeed a challenge. Johannesburg Water has an infrastructure upgrade programme where we are upgrading water and sewer lines across the city. This is not a challenge we can overcome all at once, but Johannesburg Water is making progress in addressing critical infrastructure,” says the spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Water Affairs Minister Edna Molewa says South Africa needs to invest 71 billion dollars in water infrastructure, services and demand management over the next decade. However the National Treasury has a budget for only 44 percent of the amount needed to upgrade South Africa’s water services.

Government and sanitation experts say Zimbabwe needs to increase efforts to promote good hygiene and invest in toilets and clean water provision, as the country grapples with a typhoid outbreak.

Zimbabwe’s challenge is to change people’s attitudes about sanitation and hygiene. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The country has reported more than 3,000 cases of typhoid since March. Typhoid is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Most of the cases are from the country’s capital, Harare, and there have been at least two reported deaths

However, the use of the “bush toilet” or open defecation is a much-used practice, which the Zimbabwe government is concerned about. Zimbabwe’s Minister of Water Resources Samuel Sipepa Nkomo said it reflects the ingrained attitudes about sanitation and hygiene among the people in this southern African nation.

“We have a big problem with regards to open defecation and we have to put our heads together to deal with it,” Nkomo told IPS.

Zimbabwe paid a high price for its limited investment in sanitation and water programmes between 2008 and 2009. More than 4,000 people died from cholera and over 100,000 were infected because of poor hygiene and a lack of toilet facilities. Cholera is also is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person.

“The spread of cholera said that our hygiene was poor and we were not washing our hands at regular intervals. Besides, typhoid is a disease of hygiene,” said Noma Neseni, executive director of the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development, a non-governmental organisation that is a regional centre for institutional capacity development in the water and sanitation sector.

Neseni said Zimbabwe’s challenge was to change people’s attitudes about sanitation and hygiene. “We are not focusing on hygiene promotion, but more on infrastructure, which should not be the case.”

Data compiled by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme shows that Zimbabwe’s national targets are 80 percent for rural sanitation, 100 percent for urban sanitation, and 100 percent for rural and urban water supply.

Based on the most recent estimates of sanitation coverage in 2010, Zimbabwe needs to increase coverage from 52 to 77 percent in urban areas and from 32 to 68 percent in rural areas to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the eight international anti-poverty and development goals that the United Nations member states agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

“If there is persistent hand washing, no one will succumb to diseases,” said Neseni. “We have more infrastructural development, but infrastructure without the requisite attitude will not achieve much. We need hygiene awareness. Part of the problem is that we take sanitation and water as the preserve of the government; we need the private sector to work in partnership with everyone.”

Neseni called for a coordinated public-private sector approach to tackling Zimbabwe’s challenges in sanitation, hygiene and water supply.

These key issues are the focus of the second High-Level Meeting of the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) partnership hosted by UNICEF in Washington D.C. on Friday Apr. 20.

The meeting has brought together more than 60 ministers responsible for water and sanitation and finance from over 30 developing countries. Also present are donors and civil society organisations committed to accelerating progress towards universal access to safe water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) through increased investment.

According to the SWA briefing note, the ministers are expected to come up with resolutions on how to address the WASH crisis.

Nkomo was quick to admit to Zimbabwe’s poor performance in this area.

“On sanitation, we are bad, though we are better on water provision,” Nkomo told IPS from Washington D.C. “The outbreak of cholera in 2008 and typhoid this year were loud warning bells about the consequences of not spending more money in sanitation and water infrastructure. But we are making efforts to improve the situation once and for all.”

Nkomo, who is accompanying Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti to the meeting, said the country was drafting a national sanitation and water strategy for presentation to stakeholders by the end of April.

“This will be a multi-sectorial approach to raise awareness about the dangers of open defecation, and we should not be found wanting when it comes to providing proper infrastructure.”

The strategy will guide investment and promotion of sanitation, and access to clean water in urban and rural areas. This week, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Welfare warned that waterborne cholera remained a threat.

Figures released this week by the Epidemiology and Disease Control Unit in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare show that cholera cases for the first quarter of 2012 doubled to 8,154 from the 4,000 cases reported during the same period last year. Half of these cases were for children under the age of five. The ministry said it is planning to introduce vaccines to curb the number of cholera cases in children.

By Kristin Palitza and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 17 2012 (IPS)

More than three years after the start of the global economic crisis, which has had a considerable impact on African trade, investments and gross domestic product, investment prospects on the continent are increasing.

Johannesburg Stock Exchange CEO Nicky Newton-King. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“There are a lot of interesting opportunities. Not only in mining, but also telecommunications, banking, mobile services and ICT (Information and Communications Technology). It is because those investments are able to traverse a huge space without needing infrastructure,” says Newton-King.

Four months into her appointment as head of the 123-year old stock exchange, the 44-year-old Cambridge and South African educated lawyer and financial services expert talks about her take on the latest African investment opportunities and risks.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Are there opportunities for African countries, especially commodity-heavy nations, to benefit from the financial crisis?

A: Emerging markets experienced a two-way effect. After initially withdrawing from emerging markets, investors realised that, ultimately, the returns they get from emerging markets are higher than those from their home markets. That made re-investments attractive.

Q: What level of political stability is necessary to attract foreign investment?

A: We are in a state of contested elections. That means policy directions are up for debate. From an investor perspective, that creates a huge degree of uncertainty. People are unsure if they want to make long-term investments until they know how certain a political environment is.

This is an issue for us in South Africa, in Africa, and for us as an exchange. We therefore spend a lot of time talking to government and the relevant policy makers to decide on core tenets of our policy direction, so everyone can relax into certainty mode.

On the other hand, there are investors who are quite tolerant of political environments. People will invest in Zimbabwe and in Kazakhstan, because ultimately, the money counts.

Q: In December 2010 South Africa was invited to join the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) group of emerging economies. Has this brought additional trade to the continent?

A: We definitely see a shift towards South-South and East-South, away from the West. BRICS and related opportunities are going to feature more in our lives than before. We expect to see larger portions of investment flows coming from the East and Brazil. Some big banks predict that by 2020, 40 percent of global wealth will be in BRICS countries.

Q: Does the JSE collaborate with other African exchanges?

A: There are 24 stock exchanges on the African continent, but some only trade 10 trades a day (while the JSE has at least 120,000 trades a day in its equities market). We are the elephant on the continent. Still, I would like to see a much deeper level of cooperation.

There is good communication between the different management teams of other African stock exchanges, for example with Nigeria and Kenya. There are a couple of things we are working on in terms of better cooperation, such as cross-linking products and sharing technology. But that does not translate into new business yet.

Q: Would it make sense to form a single African exchange?

A: It is not a goal we are pursuing. We have seen too many other attempts, big global mergers that have run into cross-border regulatory issues. We think we can achieve the same benefits if we work on cross routines and closer product diversity opportunities. That is where our efforts are going.

Q: In 2009, the JSE launched an Africa Board where the continent’s top companies can be traded, to promote African capital market growth. Has this been a successful strategy?

A: The Africa Board did not achieve what we wanted to achieve. We wanted to create a short-cut marketing segment to showcase African companies, but we have only 14 African companies listed today. We fully expect to get more, but it will happen over time.

Q: What is it like to be the first woman to head the JSE?

A: It is interesting. Sixteen years ago, when I joined the JSE, I would have been terrified to go close to the trading floor, because it was a pretty scary place for anyone in a skirt. Today, we have 500 people working at the JSE, and it is almost 50-50 female to male ratio, and my executive is seven to six, women to men. A diverse organisation attracts more diversity. There is a huge amount of strength in that.

Excerpt:

Residents of Zimbabwe’s water-scarce city, Bulawayo, are concerned about the government’s slow response to finding a permanent source of water to cover their needs.

Bulawayo only has a 20-month supply of water left if the seasonal rains do not come. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

In March the city announced that it would only have a 20-month supply of water left if the seasonal rains do not come. Zimbabwe has experienced poor rains over the past few years.

Though the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department had predicted rainfall would peak from October to December 2011 for some parts of the country, it forecast that Matebeleland, would receive below average rainfall. Bulawayo is the country’s second-largest city, and although it is located in the former Matebeleland province, it is now treated as a separate provincial area.

Four of the city’s five supply dams, which have a total capacity of 362 million litres, are half full. The fifth dam is not operational.

As a result, municipal authorities have implemented a water rationing programme. Currently Bulawayo’s daily water use is 145,000 cubic metres, which the city council says needs to be reduced to 120,000.

“Domestic consumers are being allocated 400 and 350 litres a day in the high and low income areas, respectively,” city director of Urban Planning Job Ndebele told IPS. “Water-based industries are being rationed to 80 percent of their average consumption, while other industries are being allocated 75 percent of their average consumption.”

But residents like Henry Sithole are worried that water rationing may become a permanent feature. Many feel that the government’s plans to revive a 100-year-old idea to draw water from the Zambezi River for Matabeleland South province, which includes Bulawayo, may take far too long to implement.

“Water rationing is serious and I think residents have experienced it for too long,” Sithole told IPS. “The Zambezi scheme should not be the only solution talked about because it will not end water rationing today or tomorrow, even though it is the major part of the solution.”

The Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project is a grand scheme, first suggested to ease Bulawayo’s water problems in 1912 through the construction of a pipeline from the Zambezi River to the city. The scheme has been postponed by successive governments because of the high cost of building the over 400- kilometre pipeline.

However, in March the government announced that 900 million dollars had been sourced from a Chinese bank for the building of the Gwayi-Shangani Dam, the first phase of the project. It is estimated to cost a total of 1.3 billion dollars.

But residents and civil society organisations want the government to declare Bulawayo a water crisis area, to speed up corrective action.

Civil society representatives drew up a petition in March. They aim to collect a million signatures to lobby the government to act on finding a secure water source for Bulawayo.

The regional chairman of the National Association for Non-Governmental Organisations, Goodwin Phiri, told IPS that a solution needed to be found soon.

“The government cannot ignore the issue of water because it is a national issue…we are saying it is time government proved its commitment because, without water, the region is as good as dead.”

Though the government is currently building a 42-km pipeline from Bulawayo to the Mtshabezi Dam, in Matabeleland South province, the project has faced resistance from local communities.

The Gwanda Municipality in Matabeleland South has complained that it was not consulted, and raised concerns that if implemented, the project would leave the town of Gwanda without water. Although the project is moving ahead for now, it remains uncertain whether it will be completed.

But water appears likely to become a political negotiating tool for votes as President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, one of the partners in the Government of National Unity, wishes to hold general elections later this year.

Civil society organisations see this as an opportunity to get political parties to act on the issue. However, no concrete date has been set for elections as the country battles to find common ground on a new constitution.

Economic analyst Eric Bloch, who was involved in the 1987 Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project, which has since become a national initiative, said that there was finally action on the project because it was aimed at drawing votes.

“Now with the awareness that we are likely to have the country’s most-contested elections, there is growing concern about acquiring votes within Matabeleland. Hence the government’s creation of the Distressed Industries and Marginalised Areas Fund (Dimaf) and the progress on the Zambezi water scheme are all a vote-catching exercise. But it will happen because the project will have commenced under its contract before the elections,” Bloch told IPS.

More than 87 companies closed in Bulawayo in 2011. This prompted government to set up the 40- million-dollar fund that year. Dimaf is to help companies that have faced viability problems, including those that have closed down. However, it is mired in controversy as no company has benefited from the initiative.

She has been in office for less than a week but Malawi’s, and the region’s, first female president, Joyce Banda, has given many people in this poor southern African country hope that its social and economic woes will soon end.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world: 74 percent of the population here lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

The former vice president, who took over the presidency on Apr. 7 following the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika two days earlier, has already axed key people who held influential positions in the previous government. Inspector General of Police Peter Mukhitho and Secretary to the Treasury Joseph Mwanamvekha, under whose reign the country suffered severe fuel and foreign exchange shortages, are some of those who have been fired.

Minister of Information Patricia Kaliati was also fired. Kaliati was the leader of attempts to bar Banda from taking over the presidency after Mutharika’s death, in favour of his brother, Peter. She is a fierce critic of Banda who, she frequently has said, is incapable of leading the country.

But Louda Kamwendo, a small-scale trader in Lilongwe, is hopeful about the changes. Kamwendo told IPS that just last week she was on the verge of closing down her business of importing furniture and building materials from China.

Since September 2010, Malawi has had erratic availability of both fuel and forex, and the impact on Kamwendo’s business had reached crisis point. But the news of Banda’s appointment as president has convinced her to wait in the hope that the economic situation improves.

“I have been waiting for two months now for forex from the bank and this made me miss my scheduled trip to China. I was contemplating closing down my business but I have decided to wait and see what President Banda will do to rescue the situation,” Kamwendo told IPS. She said this was the longest she has ever had to wait to access foreign exchange.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world: 74 percent of the population here lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and nearly one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday. The rising cost of basic commodities has added to these woes and the country is also experiencing shortages of necessities such as sugar and bread.

Under Mutharika, the country’s donor relations suffered greatly following accusations that Malawi failed to respect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and the right to freedom of the press. Donors had refused to release up to 400 million dollars and the United States suspended a 350 million dollar grant.

Unprecedented nationwide protests broke out Jul. 20-21, 2011 against Mutharika, who they blamed for the failing economy. Banda had been a vocal supporter of the protests.

On Apr. 10 Banda announced that donors had expressed a willingness to assist Malawi in its economic recovery efforts.

The new president said that she had already been in talks with the United Kingdom and the U.S. over the resumption of aid.

“I am personally committed to ensuring that the government of Malawi addresses issues that negatively affected our relations with donors,” Banda said. “My government is committed to restoring the rule of law, respect for human rights and freedoms and demonstrating good economic governance, starting with making sure Malawi has a programme with the International Monetary Fund.”

Banda’s political changes are given Malawi a new lease on life, according to Dalitso Kubalasa, the executive director of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, a coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations that promotes economic governance.

Kubalasa told IPS that the country has every reason to do better economically and socially if the political will shown by Banda is sustained.

“There has been a general acceptance of the new leadership by almost all stakeholders including the private sector, citizens and international donors. This is really a good sign,” said Kubalasa.

He said that expectations are high and Banda should accelerate her efforts.

“Actions speak louder. She should now put words into action. We are all turning over a new leaf and starting a new chapter,” said Kubalasa.

Prominent political analyst Mustapha Hussein told IPS that Malawians are hopeful they will no longer have to face human rights abuses as they did under Mutharika.

“The police, in the previous government, were being used as an organ of Mutharika’s political party,” the analyst said. “The police were used as an instrument of instilling fear in the citizens, and Banda’s move to dismiss the inspector general of police has given hope to many that this country has indeed changed for the better.”

Hussein told IPS that the initial steps taken by Banda suggest that her People’s Party has social democracy as its ideological base.

“The new government has demonstrated that it wants to move very fast in sorting out problems facing the people of Malawi. I think we have started on the right footing,” said Hussein.

On Apr. 12, Banda swore into office Moses Kunkuyu as the new minister of information.

“Government’s integrity is measured by what its minister of information says. Every government is judged by what comes out of its mouth,” Banda said at the ceremony.

Kaliati had lied on national radio about Mutharika’s death, claiming he was alive long after he had passed away.

Although Kunkuyu, a member of parliament, belongs to Mutharika’s Democratic People’s Party, he and five other MPs in the party openly opposed the late former president’s policies.

Banda also said at a press briefing on Apr. 11 that she would be firing and reshuffling a number of government officials.

“This is normal in a new government. I have to appoint the right people to befitting positions,” said Banda.

As Malawians celebrate Joyce Banda’s appointment as president on sites, like Facebook and Twitter, the increased use of social media in Malawi comes full circle as her new government takes office.

On Jul. 20, 2011, the peaceful country of Malawi broke out into nationwide anti-government protests. Credit: Katie Lin/IPS

For it was during the country’s civil society mobilisation against the former government that social media first gained popularity as a platform for airing grievances here.

Now, as Banda begins to purge the Malawian government of corrupt officials and woos international donors back in an attempt to ease the country’s economic woes, users on social media have increased.

The news of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s death began circulating as rumours on Facebook newsfeeds in Malawi two days before it was officially confirmed by government officials on Apr. 7.

The subsequent appointment of former Vice President Banda as the new head of state, and the first female president in southern Africa, only amplified the level of online activity as messages of support and optimism sprouted up all over Twitter and Facebook.

July protests stir up online community

But the country’s online community was first stirred to action during last year’s protests. On Jul. 20, 2011, the apparently peaceful country of Malawi broke out into nationwide anti-government protests in response to a deteriorating economy and political mismanagement. Persistent fuel and foreign exchange shortages added to the frustrations.

The protests lasted two days and resulted in 20 deaths.

So when the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) temporarily shut down private broadcasters and popular news websites were blocked, Malawians turned to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for the latest information.

“There’s a tendency among officials — especially government politicians — to control the flow of information,” explains Arnold Munthali, new media editor for Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL).

“However, social media has created a socially free and more politically aware population, which the government is helpless to control.”

According to the social media statistics portal, Socialbakers.com, there are currently 132,580 Facebook users in Malawi. While this represents less than one percent of the nation’s 15 million people, the number of Facebook users grew more than 50 percent between March 2011 and March 2012.

Such a remarkable surge in usage over a period of civil unrest indicates that social media has a place in Malawi, despite the country’s low internet penetration. In 2010, the International Telecommunications Union estimated that just 4.5 percent of Malawi’s population was using the internet, with access limited primarily by poor communications infrastructure.

As the days of protest unfolded, however, Malawians across the country took to cyberspace, posting photographs of wounded demonstrators and damaged property on Facebook; alerting protestors of volatile areas and describing the police presence at each location, through Twitter channels; and posting on Youtube cell phone videos documenting the chaos.

Some subscribed to pro-democracy Facebook groups. Others, like 28-year-old Rogers Siula, a media planner who participated in the July protests in Blantyre, took to the blogging sphere.

“We are in an environment where young people, who have incredible potential to flourish and steer Malawi into a dynamic, fresh and energetic country, are being oppressed left, right and centre,” says Siula.

“In this tense political atmosphere, platforms like Facebook, blogs, and Twitter are safe.”

It is this aspect of anonymity that social media offers which appeals to Malawians – but it is also that which affords government officials the ability to disguise their identity online and therefore more easily identify and monitor particularly outspoken individuals.

Online activism gains momentum amidst attacks and arrests

Malawi may have moved into a new year, but old tensions followed, giving rise to new controversies.

On Jan. 17, 2012, a group of market vendors in the country’s capital of Lilongwe stripped women wearing trousers and short skirts after the late Mutharika reportedly voiced concerns about how women were dressing.

Concerned citizens gathered online to condemn the vendors’ actions, including a group of women who launched the campaign, “Stop Violence Against Women in Malawi.”

They advertised in newspapers and on the radio, and also reached out to more than 5,000 people through Facebook – 1,413 of whom accepted an invitation to a peaceful sit-in, according to the group’s page.

More recently, the arbitrary arrest of prominent human rights lawyer, Ralph Kasambara, in February gained international attention through the emergence of support groups on Facebook, such as the “Free Ralph Kasambara” group, where supporters publicly deplored the persecution he faced.

Eight days after his arrest, Kasambara was released on bail. He credits social media with playing a pivotal role in his release.

“It brought the local problem into a global context, and as a result of that, our friends from the International Court of Justice were able to … get information as it was happening around here,” says Kasambara.

Social networking a source of support in the perpetual ‘hunt for fuel’

But social media is not just being used to fuel nationwide political action. On a smaller scale, it is also helping Malawi’s urban population tackle day-to-day battles, such as the ongoing struggle to locate fuel.

Frederick Bvalani is one of the co-founders of Malawi Fuel Watch (MFW), a Facebook group with over 7,400 members that shares information about the location and price of fuel in the country’s cities.

“The relatively low cost of communicating on the internet and the available audience on a forum like Facebook make it ideal for promoting change and connecting people that want to see a different and better Malawi,” says Bvalani.

For Billy Ngoma, 27, the benefits of MFW are obvious.

“You can spend six to eight hours in a long queue to get 25 litres of fuel,” he says. “The fuel watch group has helped those of us who use social networking so we know which gas station will have fuel.”

The future of social media in Malawi

From the online orchestration of the July protests to the buzz surrounding Mutharika’s death, it seems that social media is quickly gaining its bearings in Malawi.

However, the increased use of such speedy information-sharing platforms over the past year has also exposed some misuse of them.

Just as quickly as news of July protests and Mutharika’s death spread, so too did rumours and misinformation.

And on the part of the media, Munthali explains that BNL was simply unprepared to respond to the online community by the time the need to do so arose during the July protests.

“Our initiative was poorly marketed – apart from the feed from our reporters via text messages, we had few else to rely on as our Facebook and Twitter followers were not impressive.”

But such shortcomings are not enough to make the media shy away from embracing these widely used social platforms.

Nor is the threat of censorship.

“With the traditional media constantly hounded by unpopular laws enacted and enforced by the Malawi government, we intend to enhance our online presence by becoming more interactive with our audience,” he says.

And the means by which Malawians might engage with social media are improving. Since 2009, the MACRA has been rolling out Information and Communications Technology centres across the country. This initiative, alongside the installation of fibre optic cables in urban centres by Malawi Telecommunications Limited and the increased use of cell phones, will undoubtedly affect internet usage, and therefore, information access, in both rural and urban areas.

As President Banda transitions into her new role and the challenges that the country faces persist, it is still too early to know what effects this change will have – but Malawians will, no doubt, be talking about it online.

“There is something about the internet that gives people boldness to speak their mind – people are connecting, sharing stories and ideas,” Bvalani says. “Others who have suffered in silence speak out.”

“Social media has given Malawians a platform to have a voice.”

Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products.

Recycling cooperative member Andiswa Konco sorts garbage. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sotyantya belongs to the country’s first group of small business entrepreneurs who have benefited from the government’s move towards a green economy. It is a strategy aimed at creating environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic growth; the government wants to create 300,000 jobs within a decade in this sector.

For 48-year-old Sotyantya, who is a member of a local recycling cooperative and lives in Imizamo Yethu, a slum outside of Cape Town, the move towards a green economy has turned her life around. Previously unemployed and struggling to survive, she says she now earns an average of 250 dollars a month from her work – enough to care for herself and her four children.

“The more people become aware of the benefits of recycling, the more rubbish gets dropped off at the Hout Bay waste centre. For me, that translates into more money,” Sotyantya explains.

The Hout Bay Recycling Co-op to which she belongs is based at the municipal waste drop-off site in Hout Bay. Here Sotyantya and other members of the cooperative sort and sell the recycled material.

Her cooperative of six formerly jobless, poverty-stricken men and women currently recycles 25 tonnes of waste each month. And this number is slowly increasing.

The cooperative received a boost when Thrive, a social enterprise incubator that helps green start-ups to become viable, competitive businesses, decided to help the cooperative improve its business strategy and management expertise.

“We focus on creating jobs that help to minimise waste, increase renewable sources, protect and restore local biodiversity, reduce energy and water demands and create a local food network,” explains Thrive managing director Iming Lin.

It is much more than developing traditional business models, she adds; it is about incorporating social, environmental and economic benefits.

Although it has only been operating since July 2011, Thrive’s work has not gone unnoticed. The SEED Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledged the organisation’s work by selecting it for one of its 2011 sustainable development awards that are annually presented to 35 African grassroots entrepreneurs in the green economy.

“On this continent, companies and countries, from small communities to heads of state, are suddenly realising the importance of the green economy,” says UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall.

Economic development and environmental and social sustainability cannot operate in isolation, he says.

“Going green doesn’t mean it’s nice and fluffy. There are some hard economic figures behind it, too.”

Creating a green economy is no longer an option, but a requirement, Nuttall says. “We are living in a world of seven billion people increasing to over nine billion by 2050. If we don’t change the way we consume goods and services and think about the environmental limits, then we’re in trouble.”

“But it’s a world of opportunity too,” Nuttal says, adding, “there are more and more examples of small businesses solving big problems and creating livelihoods.”

It is an opportunity that the South African government wants to seize over the next few years. In November, it signed a Green Economic Accord that stipulates active national investment in the green economy.

“The green economy can create large numbers of jobs, provide a spur for industrialisation and help create a sustainable future for this and the next generations,” said Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel after the accord was announced.

The agreement is part of a plan to shift towards a lower carbon-intensity economy, while creating jobs and promoting industrial development.

But government alone cannot manage and fund South Africa’s transition to a green economy, says Patel. The business sector, trade unions and civil society organisations must also play a role.

That is why organisations like Thrive have started talking to and collaborating with different government departments, such as environmental affairs, trade and industry, solid waste or public works, to jointly develop ways of giving the local green economy a jolt.

“Social enterprises are a growing model. We want to develop donor-independent, viable, scalable business models that link the economy and the environment and that can be rolled out in multiple communities or even nationally,” says Lin. “Government has been very supportive of what we’re doing.”

Apart from supporting the recycling cooperative, Thrive is trying to get a number of other innovative green economy businesses off the ground.

One of them is TrashBack, a bicycle recycling collection scheme that picks up re-usable material from restaurants, businesses and residential housing complexes, which are currently not serviced by the municipality. For every eight clients – or 4,800 kilogrammes of garbage – TrashBack can create one full-time job, says Lin.

“We want to show people how it all links into each other: waste, water, food, jobs and better livelihoods for all,” says Lin. “We can’t afford not to have a green economy.”

It would be too simplistic to think that Malawi’s problems have ended with the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. But it is an opportunity for newly appointed President Joyce Banda, who is also leader of the opposition People’s Party, to step up and offer a new and more responsive style of leadership.

Malawi’s Army Commander General Henry Odillo hands over the presidential sword to President Joyce Banda at her swearing in ceremony. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

Mutharika, who assumed leadership in 2004 and was serving his second term of office, suffered a heart attack on Apr. 5 at his palace in Lilongwe. According to reports he was rushed to the country’s main referral medical facility, Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe. He was later airlifted to South Africa, the government said. Throughout Apr. 6 there had been unconfirmed rumours that he had died. But state radio only confirmed the following day that the 78-year-old president had died and declared 10 days of mourning.

Malawians danced in the streets and in marketplaces as a sense of jubilation swept across the country when the Office of the President and Cabinet finally confirmed the death. Hours later, Banda was sworn into office. She is southern Africa’s first female head of state and will fill the post until the country’s general elections in 2014.

She has dedicated much of her life to the economic empowerment of women and women’s rights. Banda, the daughter of a policeman, told IPS in an interview in December 2011 that women were significantly under represented in areas of economic decision making and the key to addressing the situation was to put more of the country’s money in the hands of its mothers.

Nelia Kagwa, the chairperson of the Women Traders Association in Lilongwe, told IPS that she hoped Banda would mend the country’s failing economy.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world as 74 percent of the population here lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and nearly one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday. The rising cost of basic commodities has added to these woes and the country is also experiencing shortages of necessities such as sugar and bread. The items have become even more difficult to afford since the government introduced a value-added tax of up to 16.5 percent on products such as bread, meat, milk and dairy in June 2011.

“Maize prices have almost doubled in the past year and many families can no longer afford a basic meal,” Kagwa said.

“She won a prestigious award on ending hunger in her community. She could end hunger for many Malawians if she is given chance.”

Banda was awarded the joint Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1997, together with Mozambique’s former President Joaquim Chissano.

James Kaliwo, a street vendor in Lilongwe, told IPS that “a new dawn has risen over Malawi” following Mutharika’s death.

“Things have been getting worse economically and socially. God has answered our prayers. Mutharika caused problems for all of us by failing to improve the economy,” said Kaliwo.

Prominent local political analyst Boniface Dulani told IPS that while it would be too simplistic to assume that Malawi’s problems have ended with Mutharika’s death, there is no doubt that it offers the country an opportunity for a fresh start.

Dulani told IPS that Banda should make the most of her appointment until the country’s general elections in 2014.

“Whilst previously Banda would have had to count on the sympathy vote of Malawians, she could earn the confidence of voters by demonstrating that she has the ability to take Malawi in a new and truly progressive direction. She could seize the opportunity and win over the trust of Malawians who have grown increasingly suspect of those in the corridors of power,” said Dulani.

He said that it is not certain whether ruling party legislators would try to frustrate her agenda as they hold a commanding parliamentary majority.

However, many are hopeful that the country’s economic woes will ease. Dulani said that with the appointment of a new administration, donor support to Malawi would resume.

“Most of Malawi’s recent challenges, including those rooted in a myopic foreign exchange policy and the loss of donor support because of poor governance, can be easily and quickly reversed,” said Dulani.

Malawi’s donor relations suffered greatly following accusations that the southern African country has failed to respect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and the right to freedom of the press. Donors had refused to release up to 400 million dollars and the United States suspended a 350 million dollar grant.

The country’s failing economy, and the fuel and foreign exchange shortages, saw unprecedented nationwide protests against Mutharika from Jul. 20 to 21, 2011. Twenty-one people were killed by the police and 275 were arrested. Banda was a vocal supporter of the protests.

Dorothy Ngoma, a prominent civil society leader who was among those leading the protests against Mutharika, said she has faith that Banda will rescue the country from its economic crisis.

“She is very capable. She is so reliable. I am so sure we will see change in this country very soon,” Ngoma told IPS.

Civil society leaders and some government officials also expressed their joy and support for Banda, who is also leader of the opposition People’s Party, as she addressed supporters and the media outside her home in Lilongwe hours before her inauguration.

“Malawi should adhere to the Constitution of the Republic in moving forward,” she said. At her swearing in ceremony she added: “this is no time for revenge; we need to move forward as country.”

Almost all the country’s cabinet ministers attended the signing in ceremony. One noticable exception was Peter Mutharika, the late president’s brother.

The two-day delay in the announcement of the presdient’s passing led to concerns that there would be a power struggle between Banda and the ruling party. Malawi’s Deputy Minister of Transport Catherine Gotani-Hara told IPS that Mutharika’s allies wanted his younger brother, Peter, to assume office.

It is an issue that Banda and Mutharika clashed on in the past. Mutharika expelled Banda, a former ally, from his Democratic People’s Party for insubordination when she refused to endorse Peter Mutharika as the ruling party’s candidate for the 2014 presidential elections.

Mutharika then excluded Banda from working as a part of his government. She launched the opposition People’s Party in September 2011 but remained vice president, as it is an elected and constitutional office.

Angola is celebrating 10 years of peace on Apr. 4. Since the end of its 27-year- long civil war in 2002, the country’s economy has prospered thanks to oil. But experts fear that parliamentary elections later this year could return the country to violence and instability.

Marcolino Moro, a member of Angola's ruling party, is concerned about the country’s stability. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“There has been economic growth, but in terms of democracy, human rights and social development, the country has gone backwards,” said Elias Isaac, Angola country director at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), at a media briefing in Cape Town on the eve of the peace anniversary.

Over the past decade, Angola has been one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies – its GDP is forecast to increase by an impressive 12 percent this year, according to the World Bank. That is mainly due to major export earnings from oil, since Angola has become Africa’s number two oil producer after Nigeria.

But only a tiny portion of these earnings has trickled down to the population. An estimated two-thirds of Angola’s 16.5 million people live on less than two dollars per day, according to the United Nations. The country was ranked 148 out of 187 on the 2011 U.N. human development index.

A recent boost in infrastructure development including roads, airports, schools and hospitals, as well as the promised construction of a million homes, are termed “window dressing” by the opposition, meant to distract from widespread self-enrichment of a small, opulent elite.

“Corruption, nepotism and disrespect of the law are Angola’s main problems,” admitted Marcolino Moco, a former prime minister and one of the few critical voices within the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola or MPLA, which has ruled Angola since 1975. “There is no consultation, but impunity and absolute power.”

A telling case in point is a whopping 32 billion dollar discrepancy in Angola’s treasury that the government cannot account for. U.S.-based financial watchdog Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) demanded this week that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) withhold a scheduled 130 million dollar loan disbursement until Angolan authorities fully and publicly justify how those billions have been spent.

“The IMF should insist that the government account for those funds before disbursing another 130 million dollars,” said RWI president Karin Lissakers, adding that Angola’s government urgently needed to combat corruption and mismanagement.

“There is total lack of accountability,” agreed Horácio Junjuvili, a member of the country’s main opposition party, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. “The president uses state funds as his private property,” he added, saying he believed that much of the 32 billion dollars had been transferred into private foreign bank accounts.

It is an open secret that President José Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter Isabel, who manages the family fortune, has made multi-million-dollar investments in Angola and Portugal in the past few years.

Angolans also feel let down by the international community, which they say is only interested in doing business with the southern African nation, but not in pressuring it to uphold good governance and human rights.

“Oil plays a major role in the country’s politics. International interests are driven by business, not by morals,” Isaac said.

Although the country is up for elections this year – parliamentary elections are expected to be scheduled for August or September – few believe they will bring change. “We doubt elections will be free and fair,” said Junjuvili.

With Dos Santos – Africa’s longest-serving ruler – at the helm since 1979, the country has become an autocracy, in which the ruling MPLA enjoys a parliamentary supra-majority with few constitutional checks and balances.

The president has already ignored a new electoral law, which stipulates that an independent judge needs to be made head of the country’s electoral commission, by re-appointing Susana Ingles, a lawyer close to the president. Opposition parties have appealed Ingles’ appointment and are currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision.

“It’s really a dictatorship. Almost all power is concentrated in the hands of one person, the president,” Isaac said. “If illegalities don’t stop, the opposition will mobilise nationwide and the country will descend into chaos.”

Despite these concerns, neither the European Union nor the Southern African Development Community has agreed to observe elections in Angola later this year.

Dos Santos is highly unlikely to make way for new leadership, if elections are held. The 69-year-old signalled in November his readiness to lead the party in a re-election bid, saying he was “always available”.

Angolans have started taking to the streets in the past three months, demanding not only economic and social rights but also democracy. “The risk of political instability is high,” warned Moco.

Authorities have reacted to anti-government protests with violent crackdowns. Since January, they have banned five anti-government rallies and arrested at least 46 protesters. Although freedom of speech is officially guaranteed, media freedom is non-existent, with almost every newspaper and radio and TV station owned by the presidential family.

The Angolan government should immediately end its use of unnecessary force against peaceful anti- government protesters, human rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians, international watchdog Human Rights Watch said this week.

“The increasing violence against protesters, observers and opposition politicians signals a deteriorating rights environment ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“Demonstrators are being tortured,” said Moco. “The situation is very bad. Angola’s future is dark.”

South Africa needs to stop agonising over whether it deserves to be in BRICS and start focusing on making the most of its membership to leverage better trade deals.

That is the message from business leaders and academics following last week’s BRICS summit in New Delhi, which brought together the heads of state and government of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

From the moment South Africa was asked to join the group there has been much discussion on whether the country really qualifies, and even the inventor of the BRIC acronym, Jim O’Neill, has made no secret of his doubts around the African country’s membership.

In a recent interview with South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper, the global chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management said: “It’s just wrong. South Africa doesn’t belong in BRICS. South Africa has too small an economy… and in fact, South Africa’s inclusion has somewhat weakened the group’s power.”

But Gus Mandigora, executive director for Trade Policy at Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), said the question over whether South Africa merited membership of BRICS was getting old, and what was important now was making the most of that membership.

“Our view is that we are members, so let’s get over that question of whether we deserve to be there or not,” he said.

“Yes, BRICS is still in its infancy and yes, it is still a work in progress, but I think the question we should be focusing on is, not should we be there, but how can we use this platform and its opportunities to our advantage.”

Mandigora, whose organisation led a delegation of more than 50 South African businesses to New Delhi – among them Africa Rainbow Minerals, the Development Bank South Africa and Standard Chartered – said he agreed that more needed to be done to “institutionalise” the role of business within BRICS.

“One criticism that is often made is that between summits nothing happens, so we need to ensure more work is done in between the summits to follow up on discussions,” he said.

“These are still early days and we are still refining how we do things, but we are confident that we can get advantage for South African businesses out of the country being in BRICS.”

Abdullah Verachia, a partner at South African emerging markets consultancy Frontier Advisory and the head of the India-Africa Business Network at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Johannesburg, agrees the question of South Africa’s eligibility is no longer relevant.

He told IPS: “We cannot keep lamenting whether we should be there or not, we know our economic profile pales in comparison with the other members and even with countries outside like Turkey and Mexico.

“I think we should focus more on how we can benefit by being at the table and engaging within this dynamic economic grouping, which by 2015 will make up 50 percent of global market capitalisation.”

Verachia said more engagement between business and government was crucial, in order to capitalise on South Africa’s membership of BRICS. He welcomed the announcement of a plan to create a BRICS development bank, which could open the door for more engagement among the five countries and reduce dependency on the dollar.

The idea for the bank, which would offer an alternative to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, has been largely supported by global analysts, although some say there is not enough political cohesion and there are too many conflicting interests among the member countries to make it work.

On a South African level Verachia said: “There may only be 56 kilometres between Johannesburg and Pretoria, but you’d think it was several thousand, seeing how little business and government seem to talk.”

South Africa’s parliament is located in Pretoria and its unofficial financial capital is Johannesburg.

“In India, there is a much closer engagement between government and private sector and I think that is something we can learn from. But I do feel this needs to come from business, it can’t be government that drives that side of the process,” he said.

Some sort of BRICS-CEO grouping, like the one India and South African already share, could, Verachia said, be a way of creating more tangible and measurable benefits for business within BRICS countries, which he felt were lacking now.

Lyal White, director of the Centre for Dynamic Markets at GIBS, agreed BRICS still lacked firm direction and targets and said more needed to be done to take the discussions out of the summit and turn them into relevant policy.

“I think the development bank is a good idea and there is a lot of potential for this,” he said. “But the idea needs to be backed up with functioning institutions like a secretariat at least to support it going forward.”

White believes that with South Africa due to host next year’s summit, the ball is in their court, to take the initiative and establish the working groups immediately in preparation for 2013.

He said: “If we get the ball rolling now it will make for a stronger summit next year, and it should prevent the agenda being hijacked by either the larger members or geopolitical developments, which to some extent it was this year.”

And he added: “BRICS was created on economic lines, not political, but since South Africa has joined, and perhaps it is just coincidence due to the changes in the global context, it seems the last few summits have been dominated by politics.

“I think we need to get the focus back to the economics and to go beyond the talk about united economic fronts and really start making it easier for businesses and companies in the member countries to engage.”

The BRIC bloc was formed in 2009 and last week’s summit was its fourth. The group became BRICS when South Africa joined in 2010.

The five members account for roughly 18 percent of the world’s GDP, 43 percent of its population and 15 percent of global trade, and hold 40 percent of global currency reserves.

A multi-pronged strategy to end female genital mutilation in Mauritania is making gradual progress, though campaigners acknowledge much remains to be done in a country where more than two-thirds of girls suffer excision.

A 2007 Demographic Health Survey found that 71 percent of women and girls in Mauritania have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), carried out by traditional birth attendants on girls before they reach the age of five.

The survey reported the reasons given in support of the practice were religion, aesthetics and the promotion of modesty. It also found that the practice was less common among better educated families.

Khatto Mint Jiddou, who heads the campaign against gender-based violence at Mauritania’s Ministry for Social Affairs, Childhood and the Family, told IPS that the initiative involves a wide range of people, including civil society activists, doctors and religious leaders.

The national programme, supported by several development partners, includes lobbying for the adoption of a law criminalising excision, raising awareness of a fatwa (a religious notice) forbidding excision, and the setting up of regional offices to monitor the practice.

In March, 35 excisors – including many from the central Tagant region, where an estimated 97 percent of girls suffer excision – publicly announced that they were voluntarily abandoning the procedure. Jiddou said the women had been convinced of the dangers of the practice by the explanations put forward by doctors and theologians.

Djeinaba Ba, a gynaecologist in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, told IPS that FGM causes pain and trauma, and often results in serious infections. Massive haemorrhaging, which can lead to death, also occurs frequently.

Aziza Mint Meslem, a midwife and civil society activist working against FGM, said that girls who survive the harmful procedure only have more difficulties ahead.

“Some infections create dysfunction in the external mucus membranes of the uterus, which prevents the passage of sperm to the uterus, thereby creating sterility,” she said. She added that the practice also provokes obstetric fistulas and haemorrhaging during childbirth.

Religious leaders have also lent their voices to the campaign.

Hademine Ould Saleck, the imam of the old mosque in Nouakchott, said that he and his colleagues issued a religious notice, or fatwa, forbidding FGM in 2010, based on the risks identified by doctors and taking into account the emphasis Islam places on the dignity of human beings.

“We consider this practice, in its usual form, to be forbidden because of the damage it causes, and call on civil and criminal authorities to act against perpetrators,” he told IPS.

Saleck said that the fatwa issued by the Mauritanian religious community in 2011 received support from colleagues in eight West African countries: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad.

There are additional incentives for birth attendants to renounce FGM: although those who give up the practice do not receive any compensation, they will be prioritised in the allocation of loans for income- generating activities and given preferential access to literacy classes.

But Meslem, who works with an NGO called the Mauritanian Association for the Health and Development of Women, says her experience in the field underlines the need for the adoption of laws specifically targeting FGM.

She told IPS that twice in the past two years, she has come across cases of young girls who have died due to haemorrhaging after FGM. In each case, it was her NGO rather than the girls’ parents who alerted police; both times, the woman responsible was arrested, held for questioning for several days, but then released with no further action taken.

The midwife lamented the lack of legal sanctions against excisors in the Mauritanian penal code. “It’s a flagrant violation of the rights of girls, because international human rights law stipulates that every person has the right to the integrity of her body,” said Meslem.

Gynaecologist Ba told IPS she has seen shifting attitudes recognising the harmful effects of FGM, early marriage and closely-spaced pregnancies. She observed, however, that the shift is noticeable among better-educated women living in cities and towns, and not among those who practice a nomadic lifestyle.

Meslem too sees reasons for guarded optimism. “We are seeing a positive trend, even if this phenomenon, rooted in socio-cultural considerations, is far from being brought under control.”

Trade ministers of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa – say that at the G20 trade ministerial summit later this month in Mexico they will try to ensure that attempts by industrialised countries to frame a new trade agenda do not drown development-led trade liberalisation and the World Trade Organization talks.

The G20 is not representative of the WTO because the poorest countries have no say in setting the trade agenda. Credit: Kim Cloete/IPS

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched by the WTO almost 11 years ago to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system. It was designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

“This is a most dangerous move by the industrialised countries which are determined to undermine the independence and multilateral character of the WTO, where a large majority of countries are asking for developmental flexibilities for implementing liberal trade commitments,” said a trade envoy, referring to the agenda for the meeting.

“The G20 is not representative of the WTO because the poorest countries and countries in Africa, except for South Africa, have no say in setting the trade agenda,” the envoy said.

The G20 bloc of major and emerging economies is made up of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union.

Clearly, the rich countries have overwhelming influence in setting the agenda at the G20 meetings, the envoy said.

“The draft agenda for the meeting is basically asking trade ministers to agree on creating a super-body headed by the chiefs of the WTO and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to oversee all the review and monitoring functions,” the envoy argued.

Therefore, the presence of the BRICS ministers is so essential and important, lest the trade agenda be radically altered for the next 10 years, said sources familiar with the BRICS ministers meeting.

During their meeting in New Delhi last week, the BRICS ministers discussed the draft G20 agenda issued by Mexico, and not yet made publicly available, the South African trade minister said.

Significantly, the draft agenda is silent on the Doha trade talks.

It aims to take decisions on core trade issues without first discussing them at the WTO, which is now grappling with new approaches to accelerate the DDA talks.

“We strongly believe that the process has to be multilateral and the central focus has to be on the Doha single undertaking,” said Davies, emphasising the importance of transparency and inclusiveness.

“Attempts to reshape the architecture without concluding the Doha talks are not correct,” Davies said, suggesting that the BRICS countries are ready to take small steps to reinvigorate the Doha trade negotiations. The minister insisted that agriculture is at the heart of the DDA and that precious little is done to address the continued trade-distorting subsidies of the industrialised countries.

It is important to accord primacy to the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by discussing issues first at the WTO, Davies argued.

The draft agenda for what is going to be the first G20 trade ministerial meeting of its kind – beginning on Apr. 19 – sets the stage for preparing a “New Trade Narrative.”

The five-page agenda obtained by IPS, which remains confidential, squarely addresses the trade interests of the rich countries, under subheadings such as “better understanding global value chains to better regulate trade” and “services, trade finance and trade facilitation are essential to oil global value chains.”

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, known as the rich-country think tank, and Pascal Lamy, the WTO director general, will provide the justification for pursuing this new agenda to the G20 trade ministers.

The heads of the OECD and the WTO have been working in tandem for some time now to change the manner in which global trade is measured and assessed in a neoliberal framework away from a development perspective, say analysts.

But developing countries and the least-developed countries have opposed the framework advanced by the OECD and WTO Secretariats on market-led trade reforms.

In addition, the G20 ministers will discuss “trade, growth, and jobs.” The themes for discussion include “trade as a source of growth,” “trade as a source of jobs,” and “the imperative to keep markets open and to keep opening markets.”

Up until now, trade negotiations, including the very setting of the trade agenda for any negotiations, have been based on a give-and-take framework. But for the first time, Mexico is asking ministers to move away “from this setting in which many trade discussions happen” to identify “the links between trade and job creation and (to improve) trade statistics that consider global chains and value addition.”

Mexico also wants ministers to focus on “the major forces and challenges facing their economies, including protectionist pressures, and what alternative policies are there to deal with them, other than trade instruments.”

“Reading the draft agenda, one gets the feeling that there is a hidden language, which shows basically the interest of developed countries and not of developing countries,” said Isabel Mazzei, a former Oxfam International trade policy advisor.

Speaking in her private capacity to IPS, she asked: “What does it really mean ‘to change the trade narrative’- does it mean to ‘move the goal posts’?”

“The Doha Round is about development, agriculture, elimination of subsidies, policy space….and now it looks like this narrative is obsolete as there is no mention of agriculture or subsidy elimination,” she said. “Many developing countries still have a big portion of their labour force coming from the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

“Clearly the G20 draft agenda is a concerted attempt to bring the issues and concerns of rich countries from the back door,” she concluded.

South Africa’s nine provinces will begin phasing out provision of free formula to HIV-positive mothers and implement a new policy on breast-feeding from Sunday. But despite the clarity of the policy and its supporting data, vocal critics, including respected individuals from leading medical and academic institutions, have decried the choice.

South Africa's nine provinces will begin phasing out provision of free formula to HIV-positive mothers and implement a new policy on breast-feeding. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

A simple two-page document, the declaration states unequivocal support for EBF for all infants up to six months, including HIV-exposed infants, who should receive antiretrovirals (ARVs) to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), as recommended in the 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

The declaration originated from concern over low exclusive breastfeeding rates – the lowest in the world at eight percent; unacceptably high child mortality rates – the rate for 2010 remained almost level with the 1990 figure, with 58,000 children dying before the age of five; and the fact that formula feeding increases the risk of death from diarrhoea and pneumonia, the biggest killers of infants and children in South Africa.

It also commits resources to promoting EBF, including developing legislation for maternity protection and support for workplace breastfeeding. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it removes provision of formula feeding at public health facilities except by prescription for medical conditions.

An Emotional Debate

“We can increase our EBF rate, but not to the extent that the Health Department believes is possible,” said Haroon Saloojee, a professor in the division of community pediatrics at the University of Witwatersrand, and a leading critic. Saloojee’s concerns focus on mothers’ ability to adhere to infant ARV regimens and the potential for nevirapine (the prophylaxis that HIV-exposed babies would take) shortages in the public health sector.

“The likely scenario is that clinics don’t have nevirapine, and mothers will not be able to give the babies their medication and will continue to breastfeed. The situation in the health service currently makes that a high-risk probability,” Saloojee said.

Supporters of the policy argue that adherence rates to ARVs in South Africa are generally excellent, and based on a recent national study in the March 2012 WHO Bulletin titled”Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV: Measuring the Effectiveness of National PMTCT Programmes”, presented at the International Aids Society meeting in Rome in 2011, mothers clearly are adhering. National mother-to- child transmission among infants from four to eight weeks old was 3.5 percent, the study found.

“There’s no way you can get those transmission rates unless you have good and reliable service delivery and good and reliable adherence to those drugs,” said Nigel Rollins of the WHO, referring to that study. “To level the argument that women aren’t going to be able to do it flies in the face of the data. I think most women will be prepared to do something good for their children if they have the knowledge… There will certainly be a learning curve, but there is every reason to believe it can be achieved,” Rollins added.

Learning Curves

Unfortunately, the learning needs to go beyond adherence to ARVs as infant prophylaxis. Convincing women to breastfeed exclusively will likely be the greater challenge.

“My mom says there’s not enough milk. I’ve heard from other women that they breast and bottle feed at the same time so the baby can get full,” said 21-year-old Nicola Daniels of Manenberg, a Cape township. A first-time mother, Daniels planned to breastfeed but remained unsure about whether to do so exclusively.

Ingrid Le Roux, medical director at Philani, a maternal and child health project, agreed that convincing women to commit to EBF poses a serious challenge. “There are a lot of underlying issues: mothers are alone, stressed, influenced in a big way by advertising. Some cannot believe that anything they have can be better than what they can buy in the shop,” Le Roux said.

“People don’t believe that it’s possible to breastfeed exclusively for six months. Even health workers… many don’t believe. So if you don’t believe as a health worker, than how can you motivate for it?” Le Roux added.

Despite the very real challenges, evidence from studies around the continent show that EBF is possible with proper support. In KwaZulu-Natal, EBF rates were improved to 76 percent at five months, and 40 percent at six months with home-based and clinic support, according to Anna Coutsoudis, a professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Prior to the Tshwane Declaration, KwaZulu-Natal ‘s Department of Health examined child mortality, EBF, problems with stocking formula and the 2010 WHO guidelines, and decided to promote EBF, in part by removing free formula from public health.

“Data showed that formula feeding was not helping in terms of infant survival, it was actually making it worse; and we had very low EBF rates. So we decided that we should follow the WHO guidelines… to follow one feeding option,” Coutsoudis said of the province’s decision.

“In the early days formula feeding was appropriate,” Coutsoudis added, referring to the previous era’s attempt to reduce mother-to-child transmission by discouraging breastfeeding in HIV-positive women. “But now we know that if we improve EBF and we have nevirapine, we can reduce the breastfeeding transmission to less than one percent.”

Rollins further pointed out that the WHO is promoting EBF not to reduce HIV transmission rates (transmission should neither increase nor decrease with EBF if prophylaxis is used), but because it is better. “EBF to HIV-impacted women is not recommended on the basis of ability to reduce transmission, it is there because it is the best thing for the child for every other reason we know about breastfeeding.”

Coutsoudis agreed that EBF is about child survival on the whole. “There’s no way we’re going to improve breastfeeding and therefore child survival in our country while we’ve got these mixed messages and free formula being given out,” she told IPS.

“If people keep running the policy down it undermines the public’s confidence. They need to look at the big picture, that is: if we can improve breastfeeding in this country the whole population will benefit,” Coutsoudis said.

Brazil and South Africa have experienced a widespread contraction of their manufacturing industries, with the latter suffering massive unemployment as well, thanks to the rampant volatility and misalignment of dominant global currencies like the dollar, trade experts from the two countries say.

South Africa's unstable exchange rate made exports uncompetitive. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

“Brazilian industry is at the receiving end of exchange rate appreciation and 2011 saw a negative growth in the manufacturing sector with textiles, leather, chemicals, rubber, and electrical industries, among others, having been adversely affected,” said Josue Gomes da Silva, the chief executive of the Brazilian company, Coteminas. He was speaking at a closed-door seminar at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Mar. 27.

“Four hundred thousand small businesses closed down in South Africa over the last three years, resulting in unemployment of about 23 to 34 percent due to the unstable exchange rate that made South African exports uncompetitive,” said Stewart Robert Jennings, chief executive of South Africa’s PG Group.

“The South African Rand has strengthened during the last three to four years and is now the most volatile currency,” he said, suggesting that the Brazilian Real and Rand are at their highest appreciation values against the greenback.

Da Silva and Jennings offered a detailed account of the creeping “deindustrialisation” in their respective countries at a closed-door seminar convened by the WTO’s Working Group on Trade, Debt, and Finance.

The two-day seminar, which concluded on Mar. 28, is an outcome of a sustained campaign by Brazil over the last year to persuade members of the WTO to discuss the role played by volatile exchange rates in international trade.

However, several industrialised countries, as well as China, were reluctant to address the issue of exchange rates at the WTO, saying it is part of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) agenda. “The seminar is an attempt to give shape to a reality, away from abstract concepts,” Brazil’s trade envoy Ambassador Roberto Azevedo told IPS.

While representatives from the private and public sectors and academia were invited to discuss the role exchange rates played in trade, journalists were barred from the seminar at the insistence of Canada and the United States.

Though there was no consensus on the factors influencing the misalignment of currencies, which imply that there is a gap between a country’s real exchange rate and its equilibrium level, there was general recognition that a problem exists and is playing an adverse role in different countries.

While currencies in big developing countries appreciated significantly over the last few years, in other countries, currencies depreciated or were maintained at a steady peg to the dollar despite favourable macro-economic fundamentals.

The Real is overvalued by 42 percent, while South Africa’s Rand has appreciated in double-digit percentage terms against the dollar. The Indian Rupee also initially appreciated by five percent against the dollar from 2008 to 2009. However, it has recently depreciated sharply due to the country’s burgeoning current account deficit.

Consequently, Brazil and South Africa witnessed a sharp drop in their exports of manufactured goods, while imports from other countries shot up alarmingly. “Brazil has dropped to 14th place in machinery and equipment exports, while imports doubled because of exchange rate overvaluation,” said da Silva.

Meanwhile, the policy flexibility of South Africa, Brazil and India, as reflected by the Wiggle Room Index constructed by The Economist, is not high. The three countries are ranked 65th, 79th and 82nd, respectively.

Against this backdrop, WTO director general Pascal Lamy issued a nuanced statement on Mar. 27 on the exchange rate volatility and its various effects on traders. He said international trade needs exchange rate stability.

“Trade measures cannot correct policy imbalances elsewhere, and be an answer to non-trade policy concerns…. Tit-for-tat measures would be a recipe for protectionist crossfire,” Lamy cautioned.

All these issues, Lamy said, “require a mix of cooperation in the macro-financial field and proper domestic policies which lie outside the remit of the WTO.”

The director general exhorted participants to make sure that the “WTO system does not crumble under the weight of excessive expectations.”

In contrast, a senior official of the U.S. administration, which is providing credit at close to zero percent to its banks and industry since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, complained that China had kept the Yuan nearly unchanged despite a growing current account surplus and bulging foreign exchange reserves.

“A strong consensus now exists on the importance of promoting market-determined exchange rate systems, enhancing flexibility to reflect underlying economic fundamentals, avoiding persistent exchange rate misalignments and refraining from competitive currency devaluation,” said Mark Sobel, the U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy.

China responded saying that those countries adopting unconventional monetary policy have contributed to the currency volatility and misalignment by adding liquidity to financial markets.

“Exchange rate volatility was intensified by the monetary policy of major currency issuers – the U.S.,” Ruogu Li, president of China’s Exim Bank, told the participants.

“Both developed and developing members have fallen victim to major currency issuers,” the Chinese banker said, according to sources present at the meeting. “For every iPhone sold in the U.S., Chinese workers and companies get less than two percent, while the rest of the profits go to the American companies.”

The seminar has underscored the need to acknowledge the problem.

“If countries agree that misalignments are a given in the current international economic and trade processes, it is important to discuss the trade-related aspects of the problem at the WTO,” said Azevedo.

By Servaas van den Bosch and - -
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

South Africa’s membership of the bloc of leading emerging economies and its unique position in Africa heralded the country’s role as a gateway into the African continent. However, trade experts question whether it can live up to this position as investors begin to increasingly look towards other African markets.

Rail networks in Africa remain underdeveloped only 10 percent of transport goes via rail. Here a train crossing the Namib Desert. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

And South Africa, as the most developed country in Africa, offers the infrastructure and services to unlock the region’s frontiers, they say.

With the International Monetary Fund forecasting 2012 growth figures averaging around six percent for sub-Saharan Africa – and with countries like Angola raking in GDP growth of almost double that – the continent is touted as the investment destination of the decade.

Africa’s population of just over one billion pales in comparison with Asia’s 3.8 billion, but the African market is largely untapped and most countries find themselves on a firm growth trajectory.

South Africa, therefore, should be the logical first port of call for investors. But regional trade experts gathered at a mid-March forum on South Africa’s Trade Policy, organised by the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), questioned the gateway concept.

“Yes, South Africa represents the continent in the G20 (bloc of developing nations), but that is not the point,” said Peter Draper, senior research fellow with SAIIA. “If a gateway is supposed to be a transmission belt between global and regional markets and production facilities, the question should be whether South Africa can use its physical and material infrastructure to fulfil a connecting function between Africa and the rest of the world.”

The answer to this question is not an unequivocal yes. “The need to get minerals down from the central African plateau to the ports, using South Africa’s good infrastructure, has boosted it as a transport hub,” said Draper. “But South Africa, geographically speaking, is not optimally located, and some of the traditional advantages are rapidly eroding.”

Places like South Africa’s economic province of Gauteng or its coastal city of Cape Town are no longer necessarily the preferred outposts from which multinationals conquer the continent.

The reason for this is not just because South Africa is relatively far from African markets.

Global player General Electric recently choose Nairobi as its sub-Saharan hub – following companies like Coca Cola, Nestle and Heineken – and it based its decision partly, say trade academics, on South Africa’s unpredictable policy environment.

“It raises the question: to what extent do foreign companies still use South Africa as a conduit into the continent?” said Draper, who said heavily populated centres of West Africa – and not South Africa – will drive future growth on the continent.

According to Dianna Games, chief executive officer of consulting firm Africa @ Work, South Africa used the gateway concept to position itself globally. “But this idea of South Africa as a single gateway into the continent is not necessarily shared by the rest of Africa.

“As foreign investors are disaggregating African regions and countries, South Africa is losing traction on a whole host of issues. This does not mean that other African countries are necessarily in a better position, but the reality is that these markets are moving up, while South Africa is sliding.”

She added that South Africa, situated at a remote tip of the continent, should deploy progressive strategies to keep attracting investment.

“Investors go directly to other African markets, because they can. The South African government is not as worried about the decline of this competitive edge as it should be,” she said.

Games said the South African port of Durban was one of the most expensive in the world. Though, with the rehabilitation of the East and West Coasts of Africa, some of it by resource companies needing to find more convenient export routes, trade patterns were starting to change in the region. In time, it is likely that Durban will be just one more port handling regional trade, rather than the main one.

“Investors are also worried about current government policies, including a decline in economic and press freedom. South Africa is losing its status as an exception in Africa, and is viewed by some to be on a downward trajectory, with some other economies rapidly improving. Meanwhile, the actions of petty bureaucrats have affected the relations between South Africa and other African countries, which generally are not managed well.”

In this vacuum, China and India have long since bolstered bilateral relations with most African countries. And Portuguese-speaking Africa, especially Angola, is Brazil’s well-established gateway into the continent.

“With 240 Australian listed mining companies, among others, and over 800 oil and gas outfits operating in Africa, the gateway concept is declining. Many of these companies operate from their host countries and go direct to the resources as required, rather than setting up headquarters in Africa…We focus heavily on BRICS and not on African countries. But BRICS might fizzle out,” Games said.

“We inherited the role of a gateway, it wasn’t necessarily a policy objective,” commented one South African trade official. “And we are certainly not a gatekeeper, which is the connotation that goes with the idea of a gateway.”

But according to the official, it is not really relevant whether South Africa is losing its gateway status. “We would welcome investments being routed directly to African countries. That way our collective growth trajectory is increasing. It means our policies are working. It means that the continent is growing and becoming more competitive. We need a growing Africa for South Africa’s own future.”

Excerpt:

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda and - -
GENEVA, Mar 24 2012 (IPS)

Trade envoys of India, Brazil, and South Africa have warned industrialised countries not to hijack the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by adopting the controversial plurilateral approach to liberalise trade in services.

A plurilateral agreement allows member countries to voluntarily agree to new rules. In contrast, in a multilateral agreement all members have to be in agreement.

This, they say, could ultimately undermine “the possibility of resuscitating the Doha Round.” The Doha Development Agenda was launched almost 11 years ago to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system and was designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

A closed-door Enchilada meeting was convened on Mar. 21 by the chair for Doha services trade negotiations, Ambassador Fernando de Mateo of Mexico. According to sources present at the meeting, the trading bloc known as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) stated that while they are willing to explore new approaches to advance the Doha trade negotiations towards an early outcome, they would oppose any attempt to weaken the multilateral negotiations.

Over the last three years, the industrialised countries have changed the terms of the Doha negotiations without addressing the central issues. They seem determined to extract a high price involving steep cuts on industrial goods and sweeping market access for services from the four developing countries – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – for meagre concessions to reduce their subsidies and market access for agriculture products.

The Enchilada provided the first encounter between industrialised countries and the IBSA countries in the face of sustained attempts by 16 industrialised and some developing countries to part with the Doha trade negotiations.

Thirty-three countries were invited to the Enchilada including: the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the European Union, India, and Singapore among others.

De Mateo said that it is important to fully explore different negotiating approaches based on the guidance provided by trade ministers at the eighth ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), while respecting the principles of transparency and inclusiveness. He said it is important to advance negotiations where progress can be made and asked the participants to suggest whether a plurilateral approach can be adopted to do this.

The three IBSA members warned that the existing methodology of negotiations, which involved inclusiveness and transparency, must not be replaced by an exclusive format of plurilateral negotiations involving select members.

“We are willing to explore new approaches to reinvigorate the Doha Round as directed by ministers at the WTO’s eighth ministerial meeting, but this has to take place within the framework of multilateralism, inclusiveness and full transparency based on the Doha mandate which has stipulated that negotiations to be conducted on the basis of Single Undertaking,” South Africa’s trade envoy Ambassador Faizel Ismail told IPS.

The Doha Round was launched on the basis of single undertaking in 2001 to enable the WTO members to address all the issues across- agriculture, industrial goods, services, rules, environment, and intellectual property rights – on a fair and balanced framework.

But the negotiations are facing a grave impasse due to untenable demands raised by some industrialised countries in market access for industrial goods. Trade ministers have repeatedly called for concluding the round based on a “fair and balanced” outcome that members could live without much pain.

However, powerful domestic lobbies in some major industrialised countries have raised the bar exceedingly high in areas like industrial goods and services beyond what is prescribed in the Doha mandate while turning their back on agriculture and movement of short-term services providers as demanded by developing countries.

At the WTO’s eighth ministerial meeting, ministers asked their envoys to explore new approaches to overcome the prolonged impasse in the Doha negotiations. But, the industrialised countries, along with some developing countries like Singapore, Colombia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Chile, are insisting on plurilateral negotiations that would exclude the participation of majority of countries.

The South African envoy argued that “the so-called plurilateral approached that has been proposed by some of the major developed countries is designed to raise the level of ambition beyond the capacity of the majority of developing countries and to change the existing methodology of negotiations of trade in serves as a stand-alone issue.”

“Any attempt to create new approaches would have the effect of undermining the Doha Round and further marginalising the smaller and poorer countries at the WTO,” he said.

Brazil’s trade envoy Ambassador Roberto Azevedo said, according to sources at the Enchilada meeting, that his country is ready to work on any multilateral approach in the context of the Doha Round that could make progress and help conclude the Round.

“Market access is an integral part of agriculture, industrial goods and services,” Azevedo told his counterparts. According to sources he was suggesting that some members are aiming at market access in services in total disregard to agriculture and industrial goods, which would be tantamount to a “business as usual approach” and which would not succeed.

According to sources, the Indian trade envoy Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta said his government is willing to discuss any issue in services under the Doha mandate at the special committee on trade in services.

Supporting the South African proposal for concluding the negotiations on a waiver for least-developed countries from undertaking any services commitments as well as duty-free and quota-free market access for the poorest countries, the Indian trade envoy cautioned against a plurilateral approach for services.

Even among the industrialised countries, there is no unanimity on a service plurilateral agreement outside the Doha. The European Union said at the Enchilada meeting that Brussels wants members to pursue an information and communications technology services agreement in parallel with the ongoing ITA- II (Information Technology Agreement) goods review.

But, the United States and Canada, two major drivers for the services plurilateral agreement among the 16 countries, kept mum at the Enchilada meeting. Significantly, the 16 countries – who call themselves the Real Good Friends of services liberalisation – hosted their own meeting on Wednesday and Friday to discuss how they must cobble their plurilateral agreement.

In a nutshell, the WTO is torn asunder by the two conflicting approaches. “The plurilateral approach will have the effect of excluding developing countries while undermining the possibility of resuscitating the Doha Round,” Ismail cautioned.

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

A report by the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office has slammed the government and security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, condemning electoral violence linked to the Nov. 30 elections which led to at least 33 deaths in the capital, Kinshasa.

The report, looking into serious rights violations committed by security forces in the capital alone at the end of last year, said a further 16 people had gone missing and that around 90 people were injured by live rounds fired by the police and army. All the presumed victims were civilians.

Published on Mar. 21, the report called on the government to “conduct an independent, credible and impartial investigation into all the cases of serious human rights violations committed in Kinshasa between Nov. 26 and Dec. 25, 2011, and to bring all the alleged perpetrators of the abuses to justice, whether they are members of the Republican Guard (the army unit closest to DRC president Joseph Kabila), other FARDC (national army) soldiers or PNC (national police) officers, irrespective of their rank.”

Addie Kitona, a mother of three, was personally caught up in violence that took place in Kinshasa’s Bandalungwa commune following the challenging of provisional results of the presidential elections.

“The police fired teargas at us, paying no attention to bystanders, who included children. As I was running away, I tripped and fell on top of my four-year-old. She broke her collarbone,” said Kitona. “After I fell, the police chasing after youth who had attacked them, trampled on me with their boots and struck me several times on the back and stomach.”

Annie Botendi, a law student at the University of Kinshasa, recalls seeing at least three bodies riddled with bullets lying on the ground along the road from Kimwenza, a neighbourhood in the Mont Ngafula commune where she lives.

“They were collected in the afternoon by people from the Red Cross to be buried… after having been identified by the municipal authorities,” she told IPS.

All efforts by IPS to get comment from the local authorities in the Kinshasa communes of Bandalungwa and Mong Ngafula failed.

Leila Zerrougui, the Deputy Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in DRC, responsible for human rights, said the numbers in the report should not be seen as final. “The figures presented in the report could yet be reviewed upwards, if one takes into account that there were many areas that were inaccessible due to the fear and paranoia that prevailed during this period as well as the fact that many medical facilities were ordered not to release information about victims they attended to.”

In response, the Congolese government said that it does not recognise the validity of the report, and noted several points of error. “This report is partisan, incomplete, and incoherent; it contains false numbers and it has not incorporated remarks from government, particularly regarding judicial processes that have already been opened in response to violations that are under investigation,” Minister for Justice and Human Rights Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa told IPS.

“There was a need for a joint inquiry involving the Congolese government, civil society, the judiciary and the United Nations in order to produce a credible report,” he added. “The United Nations did not do this.”

But Jean Claver Mudumbi, a human rights defender, disagreed. “The government is still making the mistake of rejecting all reports on violations of human rights. This is because it often does not have the same information as human rights defenders who are often on the ground, close to the people,” he said.

“There is no interaction between different local administrations, which themselves have neither the statistics for their own precincts, nor the means to document human rights violations committed there.”

Excerpt:

By Ignatius Banda and - -
PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe, Mar 22 2012 (IPS)

Job Mthombeni loves traditional food. One of his favourite culinary delights is Mopani worms, referred to locally as amacimbi, which means caterpillar in Ndebele. At an early age he understood the nutritional value of the worm, which is found in his rural hometown of Plumtree, in southwestern Zimbabwe.

The Mopani worm is the protein-rich caterpillar of the Emperor moth, which can supplement any diet. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

But as the lack of rain continues to cause havoc with the harvests in this southern African nation, it is now also affecting the supply of Mopani worms. And 49-year-old Mthombeni is a concerned man.

“There are no Mopani worms this year,” he complained. Already this year’s low harvest in Plumtree has meant that he has to live off the groceries sent to him by his children working in neighbouring Botswana.

“The Mopani worms I have tasted this year are not from my area. We always thought things like the Mopani worms would always be there, but look now…The poor rains have chased away our food,” he told IPS.

Zimbabwe has experienced poor rains over the past few years. Though the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department had predicted rainfall would peak from October to December 2011, only parts of the country experienced heavy rains, while southwestern Zimbabwe conversely had low rainfall during this time.

This past week, rain fell across the country. But it has come long after farmers planted their crop, and much of the maize harvest was destroyed as a result.

The situation in Zimbabwe is typical of the region, as countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been hit with wildly uneven rainfall patterns this rainy season. Madagascar and Mozambique have had a deluge of rain, thanks to Cyclone Giovanna, while countries like Mauritius and Zimbabwe have had low or no rainfall this season.

Bradwell Garanganga, from the SADC Climate Services Centre, explained that there is a finite amount of water available, and when it rains heavily in one area, the water is drawn from somewhere else.

“The amount of water that is available is virtually constant so, if it rains hard someplace, it means there is somewhere where the rain is not occurring. That, in summary, is what has been occurring in the SADC region in terms of rainfall,” he said.

“This particular year has not been too good … If you were to draw a line from Gwanda, in Zimbabwe, to Francistown, in Botswana, all the way back to the southern part of Zimbabwe, that area has been extremely dry,” he said.

Mopani worms thrive on fertile conditions and gorge themselves on lush green vegetation. But the disappearance of their environment could mean thousands of villagers in Plumtree, and other areas of the country that have seen poor rains, will be deprived of a vital source of nutrition in the years to come.

“It’s not only about the loss of vegetation, and the declining numbers of Mopani worms. It is also about the loss of a major source of protein in the diet of many rural and urban people as well as a loss of income,” said Sobona Mtisi, a climate change researcher with the Overseas Development Institute, which is also leading the Zimbabwean government’s climate change policy formulation with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

“This has adverse implications for people’s health and income. Are we going to see an increase of diseases linked to a low-protein diet?” Mtisi asked.

While the rainy season has always brought with it an abundance of culinary choices for rural communities, it also provides a boost for rural economies.

Wendy Zulu is one of the rural women traders who earn their living selling Mopani worms. She makes seasonal trips to the city of Bulawayo, where she sells a variety of wares. But it is the proceeds from her sales of Mopani worms that form a substantial part of her income.

“I am yet to make the trip since the rainy season was supposed to begin late last year,” Zulu said.

In the past, because of their economic value, when there was an abundance of Mopani worms, farmers and land owners would charge rural women traders like Zulu a fee to harvest them. Now, because of the lack of rainfall, there are hardly any to be seen.

“With poor rains, it has meant there is no green vegetation for these creatures. So I just have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks, even months,” Zulu told IPS. Many miles away in Bulawayo, consumers like Moffat Bancinyane, who over the years have enjoyed Mopani worms as an affordable culinary preference, can only wonder why they have become scarce.

“You can never understand why a thing like amacimbi can be out of stock. Come on, these things grow on trees,” Bancinyane said after being told by a vendor outside a municipal beer hall that Mopani worms were not available.

“It is true what they say about the rains, that they give life in the most unexpected forms,” Bancinyane said.

The scarcity of Mopani worms could just be an indication of a deeper crisis spurred by climate change, Mtisi said.

In 2005, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that climate change would result in increasing aridity in southern Africa, one of the most populous parts of the continent. It also predicted that food production in countries like Zimbabwe would halve by 2020.

Despite their scarcity, Mopani worms remain big business in other parts of southern African. In Botswana it is a multi-million dollar industry, and South Africa harvests up to 1.6 million kilogrammes of Mopani worms annually.

*Additional reporting by Zukiswa Zimela in Johannesburg.

Excerpt:

By Nasseem Ackbarally and - -
PORT-LOUIS , Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

Rani Murthy, a public officer who lives in Plaines Wilhems, central Mauritius, wakes at three every morning to wait for the water tanker from the Central Water Authority so that she can collect water for cooking and household chores.

Mauritius has been experiencing a water shortage for months as the anticipated summer rains are yet to arrive with the season close to its end. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

But scenes of people queuing for water are recurrent on several parts of the island. As local reservoirs run dry, running water has become a luxury here.

The shortage has had widespread implications across the island as farmers, particularly in the north, can now only cultivate a fraction of their land. Kreepallou Sunghoon, secretary of the Small Planters Association, says farmers who used to cultivate vegetables on 10 to 15 hectares pieces of land only use less than a third of that now.

“Agriculture is no longer profitable,” he laments.

Kritanand Beeharry, chairperson of the Mauritius Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Federation, says that many farmers have resorted to harvesting rainwater on the roofs of their houses, which they use to irrigate their plantations.

“Some are building basins on their land to collect rainwater, while others buy it from private trucks roaming their area that have collected the water from rivers,” he says.

Before the lack of rains Mauritius was already classified as a water-stressed country. According to United Nations standards a water-stressed country has a per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic metres. Mauritius only had a per capita consumption of 1,044 cubic metres.

The country has been experiencing a water shortage for months and it seems as if there are no signs of it abating, as the anticipated summer rains are yet to arrive with less than a month of the season left.

Normally, the whole island gets two-thirds of its usual rainfall or 1,344 mm from November to April.

“More than half of the summer period is gone and we got only 373 mm of rain over the whole island. It always rains a lot between January and March, but this year we got only 88 mm of the normal 261 mm in January,” says Rajen Mungra, director of the Mauritius Meteorological Services.

In the centre of the island where the Mare-aux-Vacoas reservoir, the biggest of the five on the island with a capacity of 27 million cubic metres, is located, the long-term rainfall mean is 2,173 mm. However, the area received only 549 mm this summer and the water level in this reservoir, which services the country’s main towns and almost half its population, stands at 29 percent.

Water production from the Mare-aux-Vacoas reservoir has decreased from 110,000 cubic metres to 40,000 cubic metres daily.

In other regions, production from reservoirs and boreholes has also fallen by more than 50 percent, according to the CWA. River levels have dropped by almost 70 percent on several parts of the island, according to the country’s Water Resources Unit.

“We are facing a severe hydrological drought. We are worried,” Prem Saddul, chairman of the CWA, told IPS.

The CWA is transferring water from reservoirs of higher capacity to ones of lower capacity and are identifying new boreholes to be put into operation. Five new filters have been installed on rivers that previously flowed into the sea to filter the water and redirect it to the reservoirs.

The government is also offering a grant of about 100 dollars to every household earning less than 330 dollars for the purchase of a water tank.

Meanwhile, the CWA is rationing the water supply in order to maintain the service to the population as long as possible.

“We ensure that every household receives a minimum amount of water daily,” says Jeet Munbahal, the chief engineer at the CWA.

The CWA has issued regulations restricting people from wasting water by using a hosepipe, sprinkler or any similar apparatus. Mauritians have even been warned against washing their vehicles, pavements, and buildings.

Those domestic consumers who contravene this regulation shall, on conviction, be liable for a fine not exceeding 1,800 dollars and a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years. For other consumers the fine is larger though it does not exceed 7,200 dollars.

Despite the efforts by the CWA to conserve water and a public campaign calling for Mauritians to save the precious commodity, Saddul says most of the population is not complying and water is still being wasted.

Saddul says CWA officers have been monitoring petrol stations to ensure that they stop washing vehicles.

“Our officers are checking on them regularly. We are seeking the collaboration of the public who can also inform us through our hotline about people wasting water. We are not punishing people, but discouraging them from wasting water,” he adds.

Even the country’s national Police Commissioner has instructed police officers to monitor water wastage during patrols.

Meanwhile, Kheswar Beeharry-Panray, director of the Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, believes the lack of rainfall in Mauritius is due to climate change.

“The water cycle has changed in the world and so Mauritius cannot expect to get the same rain pattern like 20/30 years back,” he says, further estimating that too many trees have been cut down in the country’s catchment areas.

“This explains the scarcity of rains. It is now better for us to increase our stocking capacity – on rooftops, in tanks, small dams, everywhere,” Beeharry-Panray says.

Excerpt:

By Mantoe Phakathi and - -
MBABANE , Mar 18 2012 (IPS)

Margaret Gamedze earns a living doing laundry for people in her community in Msunduza Township, which lies about a kilometre outside Swaziland’s capital city of Mbabane. But since the country’s fiscal crisis began, she no longer earns enough to pay the rent for her one-roomed mud shack, which she shares with her five children.

Margaret Gamedze earns a living doing laundry for people in her community in Msunduza, Swaziland. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

“Most people I approach for employment complain that they don’t have money because they have lost their jobs or the government has not paid those who are operating their own businesses,” said Gamedze.

A fiscal crisis hit the country in 2010 after revenue from the Southern African Customs Union was reduced by almost 60 percent. Gamedze’s income was radically reduced and four of her five children dropped out of school.

A United Nations Impact of the Fiscal Crisis in Swaziland survey released on Mar. 16 said that 21.9 percent of surveyed households have experienced reduced income. About seven percent of households surveyed admitted to having a member who lost a job.

Gamedze is not the only one affected by the financial crisis because many of her neighbours in Msunduza Township are idling at home after losing their jobs.

“I was retrenched from a construction company after the government ran out of funds to continue with capital projects last year,” said Mancoba Gama, 32, as he sat in the township drinking the local brew. He added that he and others have given up on finding a job because prospective employers have turned them down on too many occasions.

The financial crisis has added to the unemployment strain in the country, which stands at 52 percent among the youth.

According to the United Nations Development Programme’s economic advisor Zuzana Brixiova, almost half of the surveyed households depend on formal employment for their income and they were severely impacted during the fiscal crisis.

People, especially those in the private sector, were retrenched or had their wages reduced last year while some small business operators closed down. As a result, the main challenge that 23.9 percent of the surveyed households complained that they faced are the high food prices.

The inflation rate now stands at 9.43 percent and it has become even more difficult for the 63 percent of Swazis living below the poverty line of two dollars a day to put food on the table.

The price of commodities, including paraffin, and other basic foods such as oil, maize meal and bread, has increased. And this means that Gamedze can only afford one meal a day.

Clement Dlamini, a training consultant, said the dependency of most households on formal employment is an indication that the country was training jobseekers rather than entrepreneurs.

“This is a challenge to training institutions to come up with programmes to assist the youth with entrepreneurship skills and business management,” said Dlamini.

Dlamini also called upon government to address the issue of access to land. Many Swazi people do not own the traditional land on which they live and hence banks cannot consider it as collateral when people apply for loans.

However, deputy president of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland, Sibongile Mazibuko, challenged development partners to refrain from funding the government’s social expenditure while authorities continue to be wasteful.

She said it is unfair for the government to keep attempting to cut the country’s civil servant’s wage bill. However, the wage bill is the second largest in the region at 18 percent of GDP. The Swazi government is proposing a 4.5 percent salary cut for public servants as well as freezing annual salary increases in an effort to reduce the wage bill by five percent.

“What about the over-expenditure at the army and traditional events that do not benefit us such as the Marula Ceremony?” asked Mazibuko.

King Mswati III and the Queen Mother, Ntombi Thwala, join throngs of women in song and dance on two separate occasions in the month of February. This is to commemorate the marula season and government funds these events. However, the cost of the festivals are not publically known.

She said it does not help the country when cooperating partners like the European Union (EU) pay for basic national services without forcing government to exercise fiscal discipline. This year the EU will pay for first graders under the Free Primary Education Programme until 2014.

Only one of Gamedze’s five children continues to attend school, as he is a beneficiary of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children Fund, a government project. Last year, government ran out of money and could not pay the fees on time for beneficiaries of the fund and for those who benefit from the Free Primary Education Programme.

“On several occasions my son was sent back home from school because the principal said I should pay his fees because government had not honoured its obligations,” said Gamedze.

Government finally paid the fees after borrowing money from financial institutions, but that was just enough to pay public wages and social grants for the elderly.

Swaziland entered the crises with existing economic and social problems, including an unemployment rate of 29 percent of the labour force while 29 percent of the population is food insecure, according to the survey.

The country is also leading the world with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, at 26 percent of the productive age group according to the 2007 Swaziland Demographic Health Survey, showing an additional strain from the fiscal crisis to an already desperate situation.

Minister of Finance Majozi Sithole said poor people were neglected when the impact of the fiscal crisis was reported.

“Everyone concentrated on the impact on businesses, banks and even the lilangeni/rand parity, while not paying attention to poor households and how they were coping under the economic crisis,” said Sithole.

“Swaziland needs international assistance including the continued support of the international community, private sector, U.N. agencies and NGOs,” acting U.N. resident representative Dr. Jamab Gulaid said on Mar. 16.

Excerpt:

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda and - -
GENEVA, Mar 17 2012 (IPS)

India, Brazil, and South Africa, the international grouping for promoting international cooperation among the three countries known as IBSA, along with China and several other developing countries, have denounced the ongoing attempts to craft an exclusive, plurilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services without concluding the multilateral trade negotiations of the World Trade Organization.

IBSA has denounced the ongoing attempts to craft an exclusive, plurilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

In sharp contrast, the proposed plurilateral agreement for services, which aims to seek WTO commitments for the 16 countries part of the initiative, will turn the clock back for providing the much-promised developmental gains from the poorest and developing countries.

Ahead of the current turmoil in global trade negotiations, the IBSA trade ministers warned that that “plurilateral initiatives go against the fundamental principles of transparency, inclusiveness, and multilateralism.”

The 16 countries, the United States, countries from the European Union, Japan, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taipei, Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, call themselves the real good friends (RGF) of liberalisation of trade in services.

The RGF coalition will hold their third brainstorming session on Mar. 21 to prepare the ground for a plurilateral services agreement outside the WTO. Though the contours of the form and substance of the proposed agreement are not clear yet, the coalition appears determined to achieve an outcome based on the highest common denominator, say trade envoys from the coalition.

The IBSA countries have not adopted any formal position on the ongoing plurilateral initiative of the RGF coalition. But trade envoys from the respective countries spoke against the dangers it would pose to the multilateral negotiations in general, and the Doha trade negotiations in particular.

“We don’t think that plurilateral initiatives will comply with the requirement of transparency and inclusiveness, which is the basis for any multilateral process,” Brazil’s trade envoy to the WTO, Ambassador Roberto Azevedo, told IPS. “Brazil doesn’t believe it is a building block for the resumption of multilateral negotiations and on the contrary it would make that even more difficult.”

Brazil, said Azevedo, “is perfectly willing to negotiate multilateral market access in services as long as others are willing to negotiate market access in agriculture which is at the heart of the WTO’s Doha trade negotiations.”

The plurilateral route for an agreement on services will undermine the “balance” in the Doha trade negotiations, said Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta, India’s trade envoy. South Africa’s trade envoy Ambassador Faizel Ismail expressed concern that a plurilateral agreement will undermine the much- promised “developmental” outcome in the Doha trade negotiations.

Even the EU, which is taking an active part in the current RGF plurilateral initiative remains uncomfortable. “Our line is that we should not take initiatives that undermine the WTO because the WTO is very important for trade,” the EU’s trade commissioner Karel de Gucht said on Mar. 12.

Under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which governs global trade in services, any group of countries can strive for economic integration by seeking higher and deeper services commitments among themselves.

Until now, there was no attempt by any group of countries to craft an exclusive plurilateral services free trade agreement among a select group of countries within the WTO since its establishment in 1995.

In the past there were open-ended plurilateral agreements such as the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement involving liberalisation of trade in various electronic goods, and the telecom services agreement.

The ongoing exploratory talks among the 16 countries are taking place at a time when the WTO members have not been able to conclude the much-promised Doha negotiations, which were started in 2001.

A continued stalemate in negotiations between a large majority of countries seeking a palatable outcome and one major industrialised country making “maximalist” demands has put paid to an early conclusion, said trade diplomats.

As opposed to multilateral negotiations in which all members have an equal say, at least on the paper, the plurilateral process involves closed-door negotiations among select-members. The U.S. and other major industrialised countries, however, reckon that it is difficult to negotiate with 153 countries as it would involve a grand bargain of compromises.

“We live in a consensus based-organisation and what that means is that 153 members have to approve on everything and what that means in practice is the least common denominator,” the U.S. trade envoy to the WTO, Ambassador Michael Punke, told a seminar organised by the European Centre for Political Economy in Brussels.

He said “we should look at the services plurilateral as a different, fundamentally different way, of approaching the agreement.” Punke argued that the RGF group would provide the ideal ground for accomplishing an outcome based on “highest common denominator” since most of them are engaged in significant liberalisation of trade in services.

However, developing countries remain opposed to the assault on the multilateral framework. “The greater the number of participants, it would be difficult to reach a common agreement but it would provide greater benefits,” said Azevedo. “In short, a modest outcome with a larger number of participants should lead to more attractive and meaningful outcome.”

Excerpt:

By Louise Redvers and - -
LUANDA, Mar 13 2012 (IPS)

Rights groups and activists are warning of a rapidly deteriorating political climate in Angola following a police raid on a private newspaper and a violent crackdown on anti-government protests.

An anti-government demonstration photo. Credit: Louise Redvers

The effective shut-down of the paper and the questioning of its editor, William Tonet, whose mobile phone battery was also confiscated, comes just 48 hours after attempts by Angolan youths to stage demonstrations in the capital Luanda and southern coastal city of Benguela.

The marches had been convened to protest about irregularities in the electoral process including the appointment of a member of the ruling party to run the National Electoral Commission.

Although only a few dozen people gathered in each city, neither protest was allowed to go ahead.

In Benguela heavily armed police broke up the crowds making several arrests, while in Luanda, where in the days running up to the events there had been reports of house raids, threats against the organisers, an unidentified armed gang launched a violent street attack on the organisers leaving several people seriously injured.

Lisa Rimli, from New York-based lobby group Human Rights Watch, said: “We are especially concerned about what is happening in Angola because this is an election year when people should be allowed to express themselves freely.

“That people are not being allowed to stage public demonstrations, which is their right under the constitution, and that private newspapers are being targeted like this, it is very worrying,” she added.

Rimli said she was most concerned about the type of violence being pursued against the protestors.

“What we saw at the weekend was a step up from previous marches, the attackers were armed and they were aiming for people’s heads,” she said. Adding: “It is very lucky no-one was killed.”

Angola’s Policia Nacional or national police has denounced the violence, blaming the clashes on rival gangs and “hooligans”, and a spokesman pledged a full investigation into what happened.

A leaflet has started circulating in Luanda, claiming to be from a separate youth vigilante group, which says it carried out the attack to stop the protests out of “respect for the elections” and to preserve the peace.

But Luaty Beirão, a popular Angolan rapper who helped organise the march in Luanda, and who was himself struck on the head, said he and his friends had been deliberately targeted by a well-trained undercover security operation.

He told IPS: “As soon as we arrived at the arranged meeting place, we could see a group beating up random people and then they came towards us and tried to encourage us to fight back.

“When we refused to be provoked, they changed their tune and said if we went away and cancelled the demonstration, they would leave us alone.

“We refused again and then they just went for us. I just remember being hit on the head and falling to the ground and then hearing shot after shot being fired into the air.”

Beirão, 30, who needed stitches for his head wound, added: “The police were nowhere to be seen and you could tell just by the way those guys surrounded us, they knew what they were doing, they weren’t just ordinary thugs.”

A few kilometres away, 57-year-old Filomeno Vieira Lopes, the Secretary General of the small opposition party Bloco Democratico who was on his way to join the protest, was also attacked and had to be taken to hospital with a wounds to his head and arm.

Sizaltina Cutaia, from the Angolan office of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, said: “Considering that 2012 is an election year these events are indeed very concerning.

“It indicates to us the low status of political participation in Angola, where freedom of assembly and manifestation are systematically denied to citizens. It is a real threat to democracy.”

Until recently, political protests were rare in Angola where few have dared to criticise the authorities for fear of losing their job or the little stability they had found since the end of the country’s three-decade civil war in 2002.

But in response to what is seen as the government’s failure to share out a peace dividend to the majority, despite the country’s enormous oil wealth, and the weakness of the parliamentary opposition, since March last year youth movements have been taking to the streets.

As well as complaining about inequality and poor public services, the youth have been calling for Angola’s president of 32 years, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, to step down.

Beirão, whose stage names are Brigadeiro Mata Frakus and Ikonoklasta, said: “For us the big issue is Dos Santos, he must go. We want him to step down, 32 years is too long for one man to rule a country.

“The youth is fed up with what is happening here. People can pretend everything is alright but it is not, our country is not being run properly, there is no investment in health or education and many people are suffering.”

Angola is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies whose GDP is forecast to swell by 12 percent this year.

Half the population, however, remains in poverty with no access to drinking water and the country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world with one in five youngsters dying before their fifth birthday.

Hitting out at middle class silence and people’s general reluctance to confront government which controls the media and most private enterprise, Beirao, whose late father was a dedicated member of the ruling party, said: “People know things aren’t right, but they are too scared for their own jobs and families to stand up to what is happening.

“But for me, those who remain silent are merely being complicit and contributing to the injustices taking place here.”

Clearly sensitive to the growing tide of anti-government sentiment so close to the elections Dos Santos and his party, the Movement for Popular Liberation of Angola have been trying to turn on the charm offensive.

Dos Santos, for many years a recluse, has been making more regular public appearances, even switching his stiff suit for more casual shirts and caps.

In a string of recent speeches he had denied he is a dictator and has urged Angolans to be patient and recognise what his government has done for the country since the end of the war.

Last week the 69-year-old, whose own family is accused of mass acts of corruption, lashed out at what he called “dishonest propaganda” said people with foreign influences were trying to destabilise the country for their own ends.

Angolan journalist and anti-graft campaigner Rafael Marques, who has a website dedicated to outing corrupt government officials, said Dos Santos was clearly struggling to deal with the new generation who unlike their parents were not shaped by the fear of war or fooled by Soviet-style propaganda.

“Dos Santos is looking weaker by the day,” Marques said. “The fact that he is resorting to violence to suppress his own people shows he is losing his control.”

Beirão said he and fellow members of the protest movement Central 7311 (named after their first demonstration last year) had extensive film and photographic footage of the recent violence and planned to use social media to spread it to as many people as possible in order to raise awareness of their struggle.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

The outlook for people living with disabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains bleak, despite a variety of efforts to improve their lot and bring them in from the margins of society.

“There are roughly 9.1 million people with disabilities in Congo, 11 percent of the total population of 60 million,” said Patrick Pindu, coordinator of the National Federation of Associations of People Living with a Disability in Congo (FENAPHACO).

Pindu, who was speaking on the occasion of the first “Day of Sharing and Solidarity”, organised in Kikwit, in southwestern DRC in February, said, “Amongst people with disabilities, 90 percent are illiterate, 93 percent are jobless and 96 percent live in an unhealthy and inhumane environment.”

Godefroid Kiyaka gets around the N’djili neighbourhood of the capital, Kinshasa, on his hands and knees because of the extreme deformity of his legs.

“I don’t have a wheelchair to go longer distances,” he told IPS. “Many people turn away from me when I ask them for donations.”

In Kikwit, 22-year-old Alphonse Mumbaka relies on crutches for limited mobility. His father died when he was young, and left to his own devices, Mumbaka never went to school or learned to read. “No one educated me.”

Jolie Apelo is one of around 350 members of the Association des handicapés et personnes invalides de Kikwit – the Kikwit Association of Disabled Persons. “As you see me here, I don’t eat properly due to a lack of financial resources. I’m unable to buy clothes so I can present myself like a human being worthy of the name, even if I am a member of an association.”

Apelo’s association is one of 226 that are part of FENAPHACO, an umbrella group working for the defence, promotion and protection of the rights of the disabled.

FENAPHACO coordinator Pindu laments the fact that the DRC is yet to ratify the 1993 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, though the country’s 2006 constitution offers at least paper guarantees.

“Both the elderly and people with disabilities have the right to specific protections with regards to their physical, intellectual and moral needs,” says article 49 of the constitution.

“The government has a duty to promote the presence of people with disabilities in the heart of national, provincial and local institutions.”

There are several initiatives – both public and private – to try to address the challenges faced by this community.

“We set up the National Training Institute for People with Disabilities more than three years ago, where they can learn appropriate technology for the production of soap, perfume, improved bread and so on. This will help them to care for themselves,” said Jean Etienne Makila, the institute’s director general, who is himself disabled.

“In Bas-Congo Province (in the west of the country), the provincial government has, for the first time, released two million Congolese francs (around 2,180 dollars) to create micro-credit facilities dedicated to associations of people with disabilities,” he said.

“If I couldn’t fend for myself selling the bread I make at the market, I wouldn’t be able to provide food for my children,” Madeleine Murakupa, a disabled mother of two, told IPS. “It’s rare to find people with disabilities who are in business.”

According to Makila, there is also a “Women, Families and Children Living with Disabilities Unit” in Kinshasa, which provides training and support for women and young girls to strengthen their self- esteem and livelihood prospects.

The Catholic church also runs several projects. Five years ago, the Diocese of Kikwit set up two schools for the disabled. One, called “Bo ta mona” – meaning, “they will see” in the local language, Kikongo – teaches blind people to read and write Braille. The other, “Bo ta tuba” – “they will speak” – is a school for people with hearing or speech disabilities.

But observers feel that despite these efforts, the situation for people with disabilities remains very worrying given their large numbers across the country.

“It’s not acceptable that the government still doesn’t get involved in resolving the problems facing the disabled. These people must enjoy their full rights like everyone,” said Cyrile Mupasa, from the League for the Defence of the Rights of Children and Students in the Central Africa zone.

Kaseya Kibishi, secretary general for the Ministry for Social Affairs, said the newly-elected parliament will ratify the U.N. convention. The ministry, he added, “already supports many associations of people with disabilities in Kinshasa and in several provinces,” although he declined to give further details.

Excerpt:

The brightly painted old shipping container with solar panels on its roof and high-specification filtration devices inside looks out of place in this dusty Angolan village of Bom Jesus, 50 kilometres east of the capital Luanda.

Joaquina Xavier – who currently collects water from the river – in front of the new AQUAtap machine in her village. Credit: Louise Redvers/IPS

But it will soon be providing nearly 20,000 litres a day of clean, drinkable water to the area’s 500 residents who currently rely on dirty supplies from the nearby river.

Designed by Canadian technology company Quest Water Solutions, the stainless steel drinking station called “AQUAtap” is being globally piloted in this Southern African nation with a view, if it is successful, to start manufacturing the systems locally to roll out across the region.

Using solar energy stored in large batteries, water from the River Kwanza, 50 metres away, is processed through sand and other filters. Then UV is used to sterilise the water to World Health Organisation (WHO) drinking standards ready for it to be dispensed out of a stainless steel tap at the front.

“It is really very straightforward and simple,” explained Quest’s John Balanko as he gently pushed one of two taps at the front of the block to allow the water to come out into a bottle.

“Yes, it looks a little out of place and rather advanced for here, but it’s not, it’s really quite simple and the beauty is it is very low maintenance.

“The machine itself will only need a service once a month and we are training up some Angolans do be able to do that once we have gone back to Canada.”

The stainless steel taps – which dispense a fixed amount of just over one litre per push – and the aluminium platform, have been designed for easy cleaning and there are drains around the edges to collect any spilt water.

Balanko and his business partner Peter Miele, both from Vancouver, have a background in using technology to solve rural water supply issues in Canada.

A chance meeting four years ago with an Angolan resident in Canada, however, gave them a new African focus.

The AQUAtap has been designed specifically for a rural Angolan community where a lack of clean water and limited sanitation is a major contributor to the country’s high childhood mortality rate, which claims one in five youngsters before their fifth birthday.

Since the end of its three-decade civil war in 2002, the Angolan government has spent millions of dollars repairing infrastructure and providing basic services like water to its population of 19 million.

As part of the “Agua para Todas” (Water for All) scheme taps and boreholes have been installed in communities across the country, although according to the government’s own figures, around half the population is still without access to drinking water.

The village chosen by Quest Water Solutions, which was suggested by the municipal authorities, has one of those government-installed taps, but locals, most of whom are subsistence farmers without formal employment, told IPS it had not worked for over a year.

Carlos de Costa Gabriel, 25, welcomed the new machine and made no secret of the fact he wanted a job as its security guard to watch over it at night and prevent the theft of its solar panels.

He said: “We like this project very much. We have been using river water, which causes a lot of problems like vomiting and diarrhoea.

“I have two young girls aged three and five so I am very pleased that now we can get clean water because it will resolve the health problems.”

Mother-of-five Joaquina Xavier, 38, added: “We are very grateful for this. At the moment the water we use is so dirty and it is hard work bringing it from the river in buckets.

“The children get sick from the water, and some in my family have died because of this, but this machine, it’s really going to help.”

Balanko and Miele are working in conjunction with Angola’s Ministry of Industry, which is in charge of sourcing the equipment for the Agua Para Todas programme.

The device, one of two they shipped to Angola at no cost to the government, is being sold for a once- off fee of 150,000 dollars, which comes with a two-year maintenance guarantee.

“We can’t deny we are a for-profit company with a product to sell,” Balanko explained. “But I think you need to be able to make profit so that you can then give back.

“This is a one-off cost for the government, which they will absorb but the villagers will in return get clean, healthy water for at least the next 15 to 20 years.

“It is also very cost-effective in the long-run because our water works out at around 2.30 dollars for 1,000 litres, while at the moment people are paying as much as 30 dollars for 1,000 litres, which is more than 10 times more.”

The water from the AQUAtap will be free for the villagers, Balanko explained, a decision taken by the authorities.

The Canadians accept there are risks involved with the fact the water will be free, that the machine might be vandalised, or hijacked by people who want to sell the water commercially.

But they said they hoped the village would take pride in the new device to stop that happening. Balanko said: “Time will tell, but we believe it will be taken care of. We are going to have a security guard here and possibly flood lights for added security.

“We have told the villagers this is their machine and they must take care of it and we have engaged some elders and respected members of the community to help spread that message.”

By Lee Middleton and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

Tucked against the rolling hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, a small rural school has been turning its kitchen scraps, and agricultural and human waste into methane gas for cooking, and nutrient-rich fertiliser, and is even recycling its water.

Zothe, the school caretaker at Three Crowns Rural School in Lady Frere District oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. Credit: David Oldfield/IPS

According to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, if a business as usual approach is followed, South Africa’s freshwater resources will be fully depleted by 2030, unable to meet the needs of people or industry. “The problems will be made worse by more frequent incidents of water pollution and increased costs of water treatment,” said the 2010 CSIR report author, Peter Ashton.

With over 40 percent of South Africa’s dams affected by eutrophication (the process by which water becomes too nutrient-rich and prone to toxic algae blooms), acid mine drainage threatening to poison the water table around heavily populated Gauteng Province, and, according to the Department of Water Affair’s 2010/11 Green Drop report, 56 percent of the nation’s 821 sewage works either in a “critical state” or delivering a “very poor performance,” arid South Africa must develop economical ways of effectively recycling its naturally scarce water resources.

Funded by the Development Bank of South Africa, the Chris Hani District Municipality’s Environmental Management System Programme has been doing just that in its two-year-old pilot project at the Three Crowns Rural School.

The school’s zero-waste system feeds organic waste from the school’s kitchen, gardens, and toilets into an anaerobic “digester” (an oxygen-limiting, gas-tight enclosed pit) where microbial action breaks down the waste, creating methane “bio-gas” in the process.

The digested effluent is sent to a series of ponds, where first the remaining pollutants combine with oxygen and are transformed into a nutrient-rich “algal slurry” that makes excellent fertiliser. The water that emerges from the first pond shuttles to another, where fish like tilapia can feed on remaining algal content. The fishpond eco-system produces another algal fertiliser, and the pond water is irrigation- ready.

The final result is a system that transforms 100 percent of organic waste into biogas for cooking, pathogen-free algal fertiliser, and recycled pathogen-free water for irrigation of the school’s gardens. The project also provides an impressive life-science laboratory where learners daily witness and come to understand concepts like decomposition, aerobic and anaerobic biological action, and sustainability.

“It’s nothing new for the children to talk about digesters and bacteria and the algal pond and sterilisation. Hopefully these guys coming out of the school will help advance this type of thinking in the future,” said Mark Wells of People’s Power Africa (PPA), a consortium of environmental biotechnologies companies that was commissioned to install, manage, and monitor the system.

Francois Nel, head of environmental health and community services for Chris Hani District Municipality, emphasised the project’s ability to affect the way people think. “The first thing is the education of the children and changing the mindset in terms of energy, waste, and climate change. And the ownership – the children take ownership of the environment and the importance of protecting it.”

And it is not only the children who benefit. “This project is very, very important. First I can say to my own life, because I learned a lot of things about nature,” said Zothe, the school caretaker who oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. “We’ve learned how to use things that are connected to nature, like we have a solar cooker, bio-digester, wind power energy, so we don’t have to spend a lot of money, and we don’t waste.”

The Three Crowns project has been a great success, with four schools requesting installation of the same system, and the nearby communities of Intsikayethu and Engcobo planning to install the systems on a much larger scale.

It has also won numerous awards, including the 2011 Netherlands-sponsored Moolah for Amanzi award for best concept in water and sanitation projects, two Eskom ETA awards, and an Eastern Cape flagship project award.

Though adoption of the Three Crowns Project appears to be taking off, not far away in East London’s Buffalo City Municipality, another People’s Power Africa project is attempting to prove its worth to a sceptical municipality.

Like Three Crowns, PPA’s “eMonti Green Hub” is a one-stop shop to recover resources (e.g., nutrient- filled fertiliser, methane gas, and recycled water) from waste, but this time the “feed” includes municipal wastewater, sewage sludge, and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste including garden and abattoir refuse.

Currently 10 million litres of that “feed” in the form of raw sewage are dumped daily into the surf zone by Buffalo City’s defunct Second Creek Wastewater Treatment Works. The green hub proposes to use a large-scale anaerobic digester that is heated in continuously stirred reactors to more rapidly process that waste (woody garden refuse would fuel the heating).

Based on PPA’s feasibility study, the green hub is projected to produce methane biogas at a rate of 300 kilogrammes/hour (a head-high gas canister holds 40 kg), resulting in “green” methane gas, which can provide a sustainable source of income to run the hub. Mercedes Benz South Africa has already provided a letter of interest to purchase the biomethane for use in their paint shop air dryers and ovens.

Processing the daily “feedstock” (including eight million litres of industrial wastewater, eight million litres of domestic wastewater, two million litres of sewage sludge, 48 tonnes of food waste, 16 tonnes of abattoir waste, and 82 tonnes of garden refuse), the hub would yearly generate 5.8 billion litres of recycled water, 2,300 tonnes of biomethane gas, and 10,000 tons of bio-fertiliser, while diverting 30,000 tonnes of waste from landfills every year.

“That’s where it becomes so exciting,” Wells explained. “Especially when you look at what’s happening in the environment, the municipality needs to get its head around the huge amounts of bio-resources that they’re currently not using at all, that are just being thrown into landfill sites and into the sea. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Ultimately PPA wants the hub to benefit local communities, and so plans are for the plant to be held mostly in a joint community and municipal environmental trust, with additional private and public equity. Unfortunately getting the hub operational will involve cutting through extensive administrative red tape, which relies on changes in the attitudes of the city’s engineers and administrators.

“We know that everything is possible, but getting the city’s approval and endorsement has been a struggle. These projects are very difficult to put together because you’re talking about municipal resources and there’s all sorts of issues around that. Plus municipalities have to change the way they do things. We’re pushing the boundaries. We have the technical understanding, but now it’s the how to make it real,” Wells said.

Francois Nel agreed that PPA would face an uphill battle in getting the hub approved. “It’s a brilliant idea. The problem is that people don’t understand. They don’t understand the environment, and they don’t understand climate change,” Nel commented, recalling how even now he struggles to convince engineers to “come to the party,” despite the Three Crowns’ success.

Nonetheless, PPA and its partners anticipate that the hub’s environmental impact assessment will soon begin, and are working with the municipality on moving the public consultation process forward. They remain optimistic that by the end of 2013 the hub will begin producing the nutrients, energy, and recycled water.

“Essentially we see this as the people’s resources. Even if the municipality is in charge of it, they’re throwing it away, so we want to get the benefits from those resources back into community. Even if we don’t capitalise on it ourselves, the project will go forward. The main thing is to solve the problem and demonstrate these solutions,” said Wells.

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By Lewis Mwanangombe and - -
LUSAKA, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

Eight years ago when Mary Sitali’s husband divorced her, by sending a traditional letter to her parents saying that he no longer wanted her and they could “marry her to any man of your choice – be he a tall or a short man, the choice being entirely yours,” she returned to her village in rural Zambia with their two children and no way of supporting them.

The Barotse Flood Plain, about 190 kilometres long and 70 km wide, floods during the peak rainy season that starts in late January. Credit: Lewis Mwanangombe/IPS

The village is on the fringes of the Barotse Flood Plain, about 190 kilometres long and 70 km wide, which floods during the peak rainy season that starts in late January.

One of the pieces of land that Sitali’s father let her farm was near this flood plain and she was able to plant the traditional rice seed known locally as “Angola”.

The second offer of marriage never came. But through her efforts as a rice farmer Sitali was able to partially support her children, her mother, and even her late brother’s three children.

For this reason it has always been outside the basket of crops that receive farm subsidies from the government.

But Sitali is a member of the Nañoko Cooperative Association, which negotiates for farm support for its members from both the government and civil society. It is one of the more than 87 such cooperative associations in the country to which women farmers belong.

According to government statistics, more than 1.5 million women work in agriculture, either as paid employees or as small-scale farmers. Most are semi-illiterate or illiterate and have no formal training in farming practices.

However, NGOs like Concern Worldwide, Civil Society for Poverty Reduction, Pelum Association, Keepers Zambia Foundation, Action-Aid International, Oxfam International and many others support Zambia’s women farmers with training, seed, fertilisers, farm animals and implements. And now the government has started subsidising rice farmers.

“Under the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme we now give rice farmers two bags of subsidised chemical fertilisers – one basal, and a top dressing… They are also given a 10 kilogramme pocket of rice seed,” George Muleta, a field officer for the Ministry of Agriculture, said. On the open market fertilisers can sell for as much as 37 dollars for a 50 kg bag, but with the subsidy it only costs 10 dollars.

The Western Province is the poorest region in Zambia, according to the country’s 2000 national census. Here there are almost two million households, and women like Sitali, who are either divorced, widowed or unmarried, head up to 19 percent of these homes.

And 13,750 women in this province are currently engaged in rice farming, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Patrick Chibbamulilo, senior programme officer at the Japan International Cooperation Agency, said that between 1988 to 2008 Zambia’s national rice harvest grew from about 9,293 metric tonnes to about 24,023. But in only three years from 2007 to 2010 it jumped from 18,317 metric tonnes to 53,000 – a leap of about 288 percent.

Rice farming in Zambia is still rudimentary as the yield per hectare is only 1.44 metric tonnes, compared to the African average of 2.5 metric tonnes per hectare and the world average of 4.15 tonnes per hectare, according to records at the International Rice Research Institute.

For the women in Western Province, farming maize has not been a viable option because the soil here does not support its growth. While it can grow on the flood plain it will be washed away by the seasonal floodwaters from January to May before it matures.

But Sitali and other women here have now benefited from the introduction of a new seed variety of wheat, locally called Nduna.

“We used to go hungry in the lean months of September, October and November – before the mangoes ripen,” Sitali said. “But not anymore, and all thanks to Nduna.”

Nduna, in the local Silozi language of the province, is the title of a traditional leader but the Ministry of Agriculture introduced a wheat seed variety of the same name in 2010. And it was developed specifically for the wetlands of Western Zambia, Muleta explained.

“The introduction of wheat as a second crop has really helped us. Otherwise we would have died of hunger. It has really put money in our pockets,” Butete Biemba, a rice farmer from Ushaa village in Western Province, said. Like Sitali she is a single mother looking after a family of six, after her husband died of HIV/AIDS. She is also a member of the Nañoko Cooperative Association.

Now both Sitali and Biemba earn 60 cents per kg for their wheat. It is more than twice the amount they can sell their rice for, which goes for 25 cents per kg at harvest time.

“Unlike rice, wheat does not require so much water to grow. Just the wetness in the soil is good enough for the crop. And the great thing is that by September all the wheat would have been harvested, leaving the farmers time in which to prepare their fields for the next rice planting season,” Muleta said.

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