Mamadou Ba, president and founder of Maison des Talibés, speaks to talibés in Saint-Louis, Senegal, at the opening ceremony of the organisation's centre on Jan. 1, 2026. Courtesy: Ramata Haidara

By Megan Fahrney
SAINT-LOUIS, Senegal, Feb 27 2026 (IPS)

When you walk through the streets of Senegal’s cities, you notice them almost immediately: young boys in worn clothes, clutching plastic cans or tin bowls, weaving between cars and pedestrians to ask for spare change or food. They are often barefoot, alone and hungry. These children are known as talibés.

Boys aged approximately 5-15, known as talibé children, reside in daaras, schools run by marabouts.

Human Rights Watch says many marabouts, “who serve as de facto guardians, conscientiously carry out the important tradition of providing young boys with a religious and moral education.”

However, many of the schools are unregulated.

“However, thousands of so-called teachers use religious education as a cover for economic exploitation of the children in their charge, with no fear of being investigated or prosecuted,” the report says. The talibés from these ‘schools’ spend much of their days begging for food on the streets and suffering a range of human rights abuses. They regularly experience beatings, inadequate food and medical care, and neglect.

Mamadou Ba, president and founder of Maison des Talibés, is striving to change the narrative. Ba created the organisation Maison des Talibés (“House of Talibés”) three years ago in Saint-Louis, Senegal, with the goal of empowering talibés, improving their living conditions, and teaching them skills to help them succeed in young adulthood.

“I want to improve talibés’ lives,” Ba said. “I’m trying to help them in the future when they grow up [to be] self-sufficient.”

Ba himself was a talibé as a child. A Senegal native, Ba was sent away to Daara at the age of seven in a city called Sokone. He said he remained there for eight years, enduring very tough conditions and was not fed by his marabout.

Once Ba aged out of the daara, he moved to Dakar and later Saint-Louis to be a marabout.

While in Saint-Louis, Ba began to devote his time to French and English study. He got involved with an international organisation that supported talibés but found their approach of simply donating food to the talibés was not going to cut it. Ba knew he needed to equip the children with skills to succeed in young adulthood after leaving the daara.

“They have one way out, which is becoming a marabout,” Ba said. “I don’t want them basically to have one choice, which is a Quranic teacher. I want them to have different choices, different options, [to become] whatever they want.”

Maison des Talibés began as a true grassroots effort. Ba formed relationships with local marabouts, gaining their trust and allowing him to enter the daaras to provide the talibés services. He reached out to his friend, Abib Fall, a doctor in the area, who agreed to provide medical care to talibés in his free time. Ba himself began teaching the children English, providing food and rehabilitating the daaras.

“It’s very fundamental to have a connection with the marabouts; otherwise, you cannot do this work,” Ba said. “I speak the language that they speak, so they listen to me more … I’m a former talibé, so I know them very well.”

Equipped with English language skills, Ba expanded the organisation by speaking with international visitors and businesses in Saint-Louis to request financial support and recruit volunteers.

“The objective is education and handcraft,” Ba said. “I know that if they have the education and the handcraft, they will be like me or better.”

“I know how you get them there, because I went through that and I experienced it,” Ba said.

A 2019 report by Human Rights Watch documented 16 talibé deaths from abuse and neglect and dozens of cases of beatings, neglect, sexual abuse and the chaining and imprisonment in daaras. An estimated 50,000 young boys live as talibés across Senegal, as of 2017.

Though families often send their children to live in daaras voluntarily, the system is widely considered to be trafficking. Many talibés in Senegal come from impoverished communities in Guinea-Bissau and other neighbouring countries.

Over the years, the daara system has evolved from what it once was. Historically, talibés resided predominantly in rural environments, where they worked on farms in exchange for food or received donations from villagers. With urbanisation, the system has transformed into exploitation and begging.

Ramata Haidara, an American Fulbright fellow in Saint-Louis, met Ba outside of a museum in the city. After learning about Maison des Talibés, Haidara immediately got involved as a volunteer English teacher.

Haidara said she has witnessed her students’ confidence grow over time.

“[We] show them that you deserve to have resources and an education and people who are kind to you,” Haidara said.

On January 1, 2026, Maison des Talibés unveiled its first physical building to support talibés by giving them a safe space outside of the daara to learn skills, attend classes, eat, shower and receive medical care.

The centre’s opening ceremony drew over 100 talibés. Ba said the organisation serves many more than that in total, and that he hopes to expand its reach in the future.

Cheikh Tidiane Diallo, a perfume and soap maker living in Morocco, was one of Maison des Talibés’ first students. Diallo said he credits Ba and the organisation with giving him the skills and connections to move to Morocco and pursue his career.

“He has a good heart,” Diallo said of Ba. “He has never given up. I really appreciate that passion from him.”

Ba said he sees his younger self in the talibés he serves and is inspired by them just as they are inspired by him.

“This is a place where they can laugh, a place where they can eat, a place where they can feel okay,” Ba said. “This is our home.”

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Winnie Wambui, co-founder of Harcourt Agri-Eco Farm in Kenya, speaks to IPS outside the Dealroom at the Africa Food Systems Forum 2025, held at the Centre International de Conférences Abdou Diouf (CICAD) in Dakar, Senegal, September 4, 2025. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

By Chemtai Kirui
DAKAR, Sep 15 2025 (IPS)

Winnie Wambui leans forward on the panel stage, microphone in hand, scanning the room until she spots a raised hand.

Everyone in the room wears headphones, each voice isolated so that discussions don’t clash with sessions in adjacent halls. A question cuts through: how did a student science project become a commercial business?

At 24, Wambui, a Kenyan agripreneur, runs Harcourt Agri-Eco Farm, which recycles organic waste into animal feed using black soldier flies.

“Back then, I didn’t know it would become a farm or a business,” she said to a room of agripreneurs, researchers, and investors, describing her first experiments in 2022 as an energy engineering student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).

Today, her eight-person team processes around 30 tonnes of waste each month and monitors the carbon emissions avoided.

The enterprise now generates at least USD 1,000 in monthly revenue, a modest but steady profit by Kenyan standards.

Inside the calm Knowledge Hub, on a panel organized by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Wambui tells her story to a dozen listeners in an intimate, almost subdued setting. But just outside, at the leafy Centre International de Conference’s Abdou Diouf (CICAD) in Dakar, Senegal, the atmosphere is charged.

Presidents, cabinet ministers, development banks, and agribusiness executives pace the halls at the annual Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) 2025, the continent’s flagship platform for agricultural policy and investment.

This year, the forum positioned youth at the center of Africa’s food security agenda.

Wambui is part of a new generation of innovative agripreneurs that governments and financiers promise to support.

For the first time, youth agripreneurs joined heads of state on the Forum’s opening stage, a symbolic gesture of recognition in a region where nearly 400 million people are under 35.

“Our median age is just 19. And by 2050, one in three young people in the world will be African,” said Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

He said that if given land, finance, technology and markets, the youths can feed not only Africa but also the world.

However, turning such vision into reality is where the continent struggles.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) often says that Africa holds roughly 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet poor infrastructure, limited financing, and climate shocks keep much of it idle.

With the continent collectively importing approximately USD50 billion worth of food annually, according to the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank), the stakes are high.

At the national level, countries like Kenya continue to face hunger crises at emergency levels.

At the start of the year, the World Food Programme estimated that around two million people were experiencing acute hunger—a recurring crisis in a country with relatively better infrastructure and higher investment flows than many of its East African neighbors.

Experts say that despite localized crises, structural issues in African agriculture worsen food insecurity across the continent.

“We have relied on grants and aid to keep agriculture afloat, and this has made the agriculture sector stuck in a risk perception trap,” said Adesuwa Ifedi, Vice President of Africa Programs at Heifer International.

Ifedi said that commercial banks and investors avoid the sector, leaving grants to fill the gap. But grant dependence can undermine ventures in the eyes of private financiers.

“Grants should leverage commercial capital so the ecosystem can thrive,” Ifedi said.

This year’s Forum coincided with the recent African Union’s rollout of its Kampala Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy & Action Plan (2026–2035), or CAADP 3.0.

The new 10-year plan aims to mobilize USD 100 billion in investment, raise farm output by 45 percent, cut post-harvest losses in half, triple intra-African agrifood trade by 2035, and place youth inclusion at the core of Africa’s food future under the AU’s Agenda 2063.

In Dakar, over 30 agriculture ministers gathered under the chairmanship of former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn Boshem, pledging to move beyond policy drafting toward delivering tangible results for agribusiness investment.

Their top priority, they said, was to shrink Africa’s food import bill by strengthening regional value chains.

Dr. Janet Edeme, head of the Rural Economy Division at the African Union Commission, told IPS that the Forum provides mechanisms to operationalize CAADP 3.0, aiming to empower at least 30 percent of youth in the agri-food sector while closing a USD 65–70 billion annual financing gap for agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises (agri-SMEs).

She said AFSF offers a rare opportunity for youthful agripreneurs to showcase bankable projects, access mentorship, and meet investors who would otherwise be out of reach.

“There are dedicated spaces—deal rooms, youth innovation competitions, investment roundtables—where these innovators can connect with governments, development finance institutions, and private investors,” said Edeme.

Organizers pointed to new spaces for youth to meet investors, but agripreneurs like Wambui said those opportunities felt distant.

She had never heard of the AU’s new flagship plan.

“I’m only hearing about that from you. If it’s meant to guide Africa’s food future, why aren’t there clear materials or programs I can see and use?” Wambui said. “Otherwise, we leave without knowing what strategies exist to support our work.”

By day two of the six-day forum, she had found her way into the deal room, the flagship space to connect entrepreneurs with investors, but instead of streamlined matchmaking, she found confusion.

“We are looking for the investors, and they’re looking for us—yet we don’t meet. Deals still depend on connections. That’s why I came to Dakar.”

Wambui, who co-founded Harcourt Agri-Eco Farm with two other partners, said the business has grown enough to cover wages, taxes, and debt repayments. Banks now extend her loans.

But that access to financing remains an exception in a system stacked against most, said Dr. Eklou Attiogbevi-Somado, the African Development Bank’s Regional Manager for Agriculture and Agro-Industry in West Africa.

He said that AfDB data shows commercial banks in Africa channel just 3–4 percent of their lending into agriculture.

Dr. David Amudavi, CEO of Biovision Africa Trust, said this capital drought is a huge concern in a sector that drives most livelihoods on the continent.

Amudavi, whose non-profit organization promotes ecological agriculture, said that the squeeze leaves farmers, and especially young agripreneurs, struggling to access credit for starting or scaling their agribusinesses, even though nearly 60 percent of Africa’s unemployed are under 25.

“Without finance, many youth-led ventures stay stuck at micro-scale or collapse,” Amudavi said.

Not far from the Youth Dome, at the deal room, Tanzanian agripreneur Nelson Joseph Kisanga, the co-founder of Get Aroma Spices, is also navigating the same maze.

Seven years ago, he left a banking career to try poultry farming, losing almost everything in his first three years.

Kisanga regrouped, merged his venture with that of his wife, Deborah, also a young agripreneur, and built Get Aroma Spices, now working with more than 50,000 farmers across southern Tanzania.

“Agriculture back home is seen as not for young people,” he said. “Even now, scaling means loans at high interest rates. There’s no other way.”

The family-run company exports turmeric, ginger, cardamom, and avocado oil while operating a youth- and women-led agro-processing hub through a public-private partnership.

His presence at the AFSF forum has already borne fruit.

“My intention coming here was to break into the West African market, and I’m happy to say I have clinched a supply deal in Ghana. All that’s left is for the lawyers to finalize the contract.” Kisanga said, before moving to the Youth Dome, a separate pavilion for young participants.

Inside, some groups chatted, others played basketball and table tennis, while others listened as young agri-food innovators pitched their ideas to a panel of investors.

Despite the fanfare, the forum ended without revealing how much capital reached youth-led ventures.

The most visible funding for youth at the summit came via the GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize, a pan-African initiative under the Generation Africa movement. The prize awarded USD 50,000 each to Egypt’s Naglaa Mohammad, who turns agricultural waste into natural products, and Uganda’s Samuel Muyita, who uses nanotechnology to reduce post-harvest fruit and vegetable losses.

An additional USD 60,000 impact award brought total prizes to roughly USD 160,000.

Other announcements included a USD 6.7 million trade programme from the United Kingdom (UK), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the African Union (AU).

Senegal also launched a USD 22.5 million pilot for Community Agricultural Cooperatives, with financing linked to the African Food Systems Resilience Fund.

Yet there was no breakdown showing how much, if any, flowed to youth-led ventures.

The opacity mirrors past patterns.

Public summaries from the 2023 deal room reported only USD 3.5 million in closed investments, with no traceable flows to youth-led enterprises.

With AFSF positioned as Africa’s premier delivery platform, observers measured the announcements against CAADP 3.0’s USD 100 billion mobilization target, saying the gap is stark.

“We have seen this pattern before: big pledges at the summit, but little clarity or follow-up on how much actually reaches youth and smallholder farmers—the backbone of African food production,” said Famara Diédhiou, a Senegal-based food systems program manager with a regional civil society network.

“Without such accountability and inclusion of all stakeholders, these forums risk becoming mere showcases rather than platforms that deliver,” he said.

For now, even with the youth-first theme, AFSF still leaves young founders stuck in the same cycle of chasing visibility, hustling for contacts, and stitching together their own contracts.

As Wambui found, Kisanga, who has attended three previous Forums, said that in AFSF access is everything: you need to know in advance who to meet and be in the right room at the right moment.

“All visibility is currency,” said Kisanga. “That’s how you survive.”

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Ramatoulaye Ba Faye, ambassador of Senegal in the Netherlands, gives testimony at the ICJ. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
THE HAGUE & NAIROBI, Dec 11 2024 (IPS)

The Seychelles consider the ongoing public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) both timely and critical “for the people of the small island developing state in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” Flavien Joubert, Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment of the Seychelles, told the court today.

With a population of only 100,000, a territory that is 99.99 percent ocean and 0.01 percent land. Seychelles was first settled by French colonists and African slaves in the 18th century.

“We are today a proud Creole people, with big aspirations gathered from the five corners of this earth We are considered one of the most successful examples of racial integration, living in one of the most exotic spots in the world, with majestic mountains, green forests, pristine beaches, and a clear blue sea. But we face special vulnerabilities to climate change.”

Joubert made Seychelle’s submissions at the ongoing ICJ public hearings, where climate-vulnerable nations continue to make statements to demonstrate violations of the right to self-determination, human rights and historical polluter States’ legal responsibilities. The public hearings started on December 2, 2024 and will conclude on Friday, December 13.

Unjust, Unfair Consequences of Massive Emissions—Seychelles 

He spoke of what was at stake in the Seychelles, home to 115 islands and two UNESCO World Heritage sites. He said the small island state was significantly impacted by the consequences of the massive anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, despite contributing less than 0.003 percent of the world’s cumulative emissions.

“This is unfair. This is unjust. We ask the Court to consider that the loss of ecosystems within the multiple island states scattered throughout our oceans will irreversibly and negatively impact the entire world’s ecosystem. Seychelles expects that this Court’s advisory opinion will ensure that states are reminded of their obligations and are held accountable for their actions and their inactions,” Joubert said.

“We pray the court to duly confirm that, as already clarified by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), States have a legal obligation to take urgent action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is essential for the very survival of small island states like the Seychelles.”

Precautionary Principal Crucial—Senegal

In her submissions today, Ramatoulaye Ba Faye, ambassador of Senegal in the Netherlands, highlighted the precautionary principle that enables decision-makers to adopt precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high.

“It may then lead states to not delay the adoption of measures to mitigate serious or irreversible damage to the environment,” she said, adding that the “principle is upgraded into a legally binding obligation incumbent on all states in a number of international conventions.”

Faye raised concerns that in some international courtrooms, the precautionary principle had not always been seen as a legal obligation.

“However, we feel the scope and urgency of the climate threat should help us overcome this reluctance. We feel we are indeed faced with a textbook example of a need to change the law to adapt to new circumstances fraught with danger.”

Marwan A. M. Khier, Chargé d’affaires, Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan in the Netherlands, told the ICJ that Sudan is among the nations most severely affected by the adverse consequences of climate change. The country had experienced several natural disasters, including unprecedented floods and torrential rains that have caused imminent damage to livelihoods, infrastructure, and lives.

“Date crops vital for local subsistence have been destroyed,” Khier said. He elaborated on the impact on the Nile, Red Sea, and Qasr which had been devastated by unusual flooding, turning parts of these regions into disaster zones with significant loss of lives and livelihoods.

“Furthermore, rising temperatures, droughts, land degradation, and water scarcity have worsened food shortages and forced widespread displacement,” Khier said.

Conflict Driven By Climate Change—Sudan

Stressing that the Darfur crisis in Sudan, which began in 2003, is closely linked to climate change. Prolonged droughts and reduced rainfall have made access to water and arable land increasingly scarce, leading to conflicts among communities competing for limited resources. The resulting food and income shortage has aggravated tensions, exacerbating the conflict. Many people have been forced to leave their homes and endure challenging conditions in camps.

“Aligning with the voice of the African continent and the least developed countries, Sudan calls for the urgent and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. However, ongoing economic and political sanctions that restrict access to bilateral climate finance—a critical source of funding for climate action in developing nations—have left Sudan increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Despite these challenges, Sudan remains actively engaged in global, regional and national efforts to fight climate change,” Khier emphasised.

He said Sudan holds great hope for the success of the Paris Agreement despite the significant challenges it faces and called for the necessary financial support to implement national climate-related projects. Moreover, Sudan has urged developed nations to fulfill their financial commitments and transfer technologies to enhance international cooperation in addressing climate change, particularly for the most vulnerable countries.

“My country co-sponsored General Assembly Resolution No. 77-276 and supported the request for the advisory opinion that led to these proceedings. We believe that the court’s opinion could significantly contribute to the legal perspective on addressing the global issue of climate change,” Khier said.

Cristelle Pratt, Assistant Secretary-General for Environment and Climate Action for the Organization of African Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), stressed in a statement that ongoing public hearings should be considered a landmark, as presentations from its members representing some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries across African, Caribbean and Pacific regions painted a picture of climate catastrophe and the violation of international laws.

Pratt lauded OACPS members, noting they were relatively new states and with many sharing “colonial histories with the major historical polluters.”

She continued that it was the first time for many to appear before the ICJ to advocate for their rights, with some members making very compelling arguments that this fight for climate justice was a fight “once again for their self-determination.”

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Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder and President of SOLA, speaks at the Women Deliver conference in Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Aug 1 2023 (IPS)

When providing education to her small group of Afghan girls, who had been studying at a boarding school back home, became tenuous, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, relocated them to Rwanda.

She had set up a pioneering school under the project SOLA, the Afghan word for peace, and a short form for School of Leadership Afghanistan. But as the Taliban swept to power in August 2021, she closed the doors of the school, destroyed any school records which could help identify the girls, and on August 25, relocated 250 members of the SOLA community, including the student body and graduates from the programme, totally more than 100 girls, to Rwanda.

Basij-Rasikh, co-founder and SOLA’s President said a major challenge had been the lack of resources and capacity to teach Afghan girls after the return of the Taliban deprived right to education of girls in secondary schools and above.

As the Taliban swept back into power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the founder of the nation’s only all-girls boarding school, initially ran the school out of a former principal’s living room. But that soon became untenable.

Speaking on the sidelines of The Women Deliver 2023 Conference (WD2023), which took place in Kigali from 17-20 July 2023, Basij-Rasikh, who completed her undergraduate studies in the United States, explained that when Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, she managed within a short time to evacuate the entire school community to Rwanda.

“Although we managed to move the school to a safe country, it is still embarrassing and shameful for me since Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls’ access to education has been suspended,” she said.

Initially, SOLA started as a scholarship program where Afghan youth would be identified and could access quality education abroad and, later on, go back to their home country as highly-skilled Afghans in whichever profession they chose.

“When the US announced that they were to withdraw their troops in Afghanistan, it created a lot of anxiety among young Afghans who were in the West hoping to return to the country.”

Basij-Rasikh regrets that some of her former students, who were able to leave Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return, are still struggling to continue their education overseas.

“We wish to see many Afghan girls return to schools,” she said, explaining that the migration status of the students in many countries restricted their access to education.

Since the school opened last year’s admissions season, Shabana Basij-Rasikh and her team have been inviting Afghan girls worldwide to apply and join the rest in Rwanda. Last year they enrolled 27 girls in their first intake.

“The major challenge is that there are several hundreds of thousands of girls who want to join our campus, but space is limited, and so places are being granted on merit and need,” Shabana told IPS.

Shabana argues investing in girls’ education is a smart investment; she is convinced that the current situation in Afghanistan must and should not be accepted or supported by any country around the world.

On September 18, 2021, a month after taking over the country, the Taliban ordered the reopening of only boys’ secondary schools. A few months later, in March 2022, according to human rights organizations, the Taliban again pledged to reopen all schools, but they officially closed girls’ secondary schools.

“These girls deserve the opportunity to realize their full potential, and the international community has an important role to play,” Shabana said.

UNESCO’s latest figures show that 2,5 million or 80 percent of school-aged Afghan girls and women are out of school.  The order suspending university education for women, announced in December last year, affects more than 100,000 students attending government and private institutions, according to the UN agency.

On the sidelines of the Women Deliver Conference 2023, Senegalese President Macky Sall pledged that his government would offer 100 scholarships for women who have seen their right to education decimated under Taliban rule in Afghanistan to pursue their university degrees in Senegal.

Rwanda is one of several African countries that agreed to temporarily host evacuated Afghans.

Sall, who was reacting to the concerns raised by Basij-Rasikhat, said his Government was ready to give chance to Afghan girls to pursue their studies.

So far, SOLA school has received 2,000 applications across 20 countries where some Afghans are living.

In 2022, it received 180 applications from Afghans living in 10 countries, but only 27 girls were admitted.

“That explains how families in Afghanistan are ready to support the girls in moving abroad to pursue their education,” Shabana said.

“Boarding schools that allow Afghan girls to study and live together are the best way to promote their education.”

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Small holder farmers in Senegal are embracing sustainable agriculture practises to boost their productivity and income. Credit: Caroline Mwongera/ Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jun 10 2022 (IPS)

Onions and rice are a conspicuous part of every meal in Senegal, including the famous Poulet Yassa. However, climate change makes it hard for smallholder farmers to grow enough staple food with extra to sell for income.

Senegal is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change from droughts, flooding, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and bush fires, according to the Climate Change Knowledge portal of the World Bank.

“For some time, we have been facing climatic risks such as the scarcity of rains that persist more and more, high heat and a decline in productivity leading to food insecurity,” says Coumba Diallo, a smallholder farmer from Gourel Baydi village in the Tambacounda region.

Diallo, 47, is the President of the Kawral Women’s Group of Gourel Baydi, whose members have been trained to farm sustainably to beat climate change while increasing productivity and profits.

A regional project is helping farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change which has made agricultural production a gamble. Under the Adaptation and Valorization of Entrepreneurship in Irrigated Agriculture (AVENIR) project led by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), in partnership with the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), smallholder farmers in Senegal are being trained in farming as a business in agroforestry, horticulture and rice.

The AVENIR project aims to improve the social and economic well-being and resilience of farming households in Senegal’s Sedhiou and Tambacounda regions. The two areas in the southwest and east of the country are vulnerable to climate change, experiencing drought spells, flooding, coastal erosion and soil salinity.

Commending the project, Diallo commented that demonstration activities had armed her with the tools to deal with climate change, such as using adapted seeds and learning new agricultural practices to increase her crop yields and income while being more resilient to the climate.

“Learning through practice has helped us to have a better knowledge of adapted varieties, a good mastery of fertility management practices, agroforestry and the drip system to make efficient production with good yields,” Diallo explained.

Another farmer, Clément Sambou, co-founder, and coordinator of Startup-sociale in the Sedhiou Region, says the water salinity, silting, loss of arable land and water erosion are major risks in his region. They are tackling these through the adoption of better agricultural practices.

The AVENIR project encourages women and young people to treat farming as a business by promoting climate-adapted irrigation and agricultural practices. It increases the profitability of agribusinesses in the production of baobab, mango, cashew, onion, okra, ditakh, madd, pepper and rice.

The project will benefit more than 10 000 women and youth from farming households and indirectly impact another estimated 35 000 individuals.

“We want to ensure that farmers have increased their ability to cope with the climate risks they face in the regions where they are producing food,” says Caroline Mwongera, a senior scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Mbene Diagne, a farmer from Thioro Bougou village in the Tambacounda region, has found practical training helpful. It’s boosted his knowledge of soil fertility management technologies, especially with moisture conservation techniques in an excessively hot area.

“There is a very big difference between our practices and those current conveyed through the demonstration sites,” said Diagne (29), vice-president of a group of young modern farmers in Tambacounda.

“With these new technologies, there is a reduction in workload for irrigation with better control of water and working time,” Diagne noted.

Farming is Good Business

The project has focused on adaptation and agribusiness after realizing that horticulture was an easy market entry option for women because of the high demand for horticulture products.

“We wanted to create opportunities for women and young people to engage and sell their produce in the local markets,” says Mwongera. “The varieties we selected for horticulture are locally demanded. For example, onion is a big part of the Senegalese diet,  tomatoes, pepper, and okra. In addition, horticulture is a good fit for women and youth with limited access to irrigated land,  which can measure as small as twenty square metres. ”

The project has promoted salinity and drought-tolerant rice varieties. The Senegalese research organization, ISRA and the Africa Rice Centre developed the rice. For agroforestry, quick maturing mango, cashew and baobab varieties have been introduced.

“If you have food and income, you can cope with climate risks. We want the food system to be diversified. That is why we are focusing on the three commodity groups: rice, agroforestry, and horticulture because that helps you to withstand risks better, says Mwongera. She adds that farmers are also trained to intensify their production to grow short-season crop varieties under irrigation.

Farmers get high-yielding and drought-tolerant seeds and are trained using climate-smart technologies and efficient, affordable irrigation techniques.

Increasing Incomes through Irrigation

Farmers have been introduced to affordable and labour efficient water technologies to save on scarce water resources.

“We are now training farmers to use drip irrigation, which is water efficient and has low labour demand, especially for women,” Mwongera told IPS, explaining that farmers have shifted from manual flood irrigation, sprinklers and watering cans which used a lot of water.

Rice and onions are part of every meal in Senegal, but smallholders often face food insecurity. Now a project helps farms adapt to the impact of climate change, Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

To encourage farmers to use water-efficient technologies, the project has introduced an incentive-based purchase programme (e-voucher) to provide discounts for farmers. Farmers get technologies at a fraction of the value with an option to pay the balance when they produce and sell their crops.

A multi-actor platform brings together local actors, producer organizations, local administration, and researchers to help farmers share information and experiences on climate information services and equitable water resource management to improve their productivity.

Mwongera noted that farmers had poor access to viable markets, which meant they could not increase their production if they had nowhere to sell their produce. There is a need for a market value chain that includes producers, processors, transport providers and the financial sector.

“We need market-led development to enhance resilience and profitability of farmers,” says Mwongera noting that the project was also teaching farmers about integrated soil management, proper composting and using climate information services.

“We also provide weather information using SMS and integrated voice through a service provider who gets weather forecasts from the National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Senegal (ANACIM). Farmers use this information to plan when to plant and what varieties to plant,” said Mwongera.

Climate change threatens Senegal’s social and economic development, which is vulnerable to droughts, floods, and high temperatures, which impact the agricultural sector. Agriculture employs 70 percent of the country’s workforce and contributes about 17 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.

Top climate scientists have warned of the urgency of reducing carbon emissions as human-induced climate change affects all development sectors, including agriculture. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather has reduced food and water security, hindering efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goals.

“Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security, with the largest impacts observed in many locations and/or communities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic Jointly,” scientists said. They noted that sudden food production losses and access to food compounded by decreased diet diversity had increased malnutrition in many communities, especially small-scale food producers and low-income households.

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11-year-old Fatoumata Binta (left) and her brother Iphrahima Tall (right) collect water from a dry river bed. This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

With Tabaski (Eid al-Adha) around the corner, 11-year-old Fatoumata Binta from Terrou Mballing district in M’Bour, western Senegal, wakes up early and joins her brothers Iphrahima Tall and Ismaila to fetch water from a river several miles from home.

This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water as city taps have often run dry. But because of the coronavirus, they need extra water for maintaining cleanliness and frequent handwashing.

But there is another reason why they need additional water.

In a few weeks time, Muslim families will sacrifice a livestock animal to mark Tabaski. Binta’s family have been raising goats to sell on the market ahead of the festival, but the animals need lots of water. 

“If they don’t drink enough, the goats will lose weight and sell for less,” Binta, who has not been to school since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, tells IPS.

Schools in Senegal, which closed on Mar. 15, were scheduled to reopen on Jun 2. However, the return was cancelled as several teachers tested positive for the coronavirus across the country, but mainly in Ziguinchor in the southern Casamence region. To date, the country has officially counted more than 8,985 coronavirus cases, including 174 deaths.

But when schools reopen in August-September, Binta might not return. The reason, she says, is that her community school doesn’t have enough water. Besides, there are no toilets for girls and Binta, who has just begun to menstruate, feels too shy to use a shared toilet.

Poor WASH Reflects Low Priority

According to the recently published United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report on global education, only one percent of schools in Senegal have separate toilets for girls. The dismal performance has actually put the country at the bottom of a list of 45 developing countries.

Experts say that the core reason behind this is the low priority attached to girls’ education. Although the government has been focusing on girls’ enrolment at elementary level, the focus on improving their water and sanitation needs has remained a neglected subject.

Fatou Gueye Seck, programme coordinator from the Coalition of Organisations in Energy for the Defence of Public Education (COSYDEP Senegal), shares an example. 

Since 2016, the number of people enrolled in Functional Literacy Centres (CAF) has fallen by more than half, with the number of learners decreasing from 34,373 to 15,435. This underperformance is explained by the insufficiency of the overall amount of funding for CAFs.

“The funding is supposed to be one percent of [public spending] but in reality that is not happening. Unless the funding is increased, in the middle and secondary cycles, gender parity in the country’s education sector cannot be reached until 2021,” Seck tells IPS.

Seck is also the president of the education theme of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, an evidence-based advocacy and communication platform that promotes the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women. The campaign is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver.

“In Senegal, the gender index is still against girls,” Seck told IPS in an earlier interview.

Girl students at a school in the Pikine suburb of Dakar, Senegal. A recent United Nations report says, only one percent of schools have a separate toilet for girls. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Growing water crisis in urban areas

In urban Senegal, water shortages have been frequent for several years, affecting thousands of households. 

But this summer, the shortage has been more acute, as most homes have seen their taps run dry or reduced to a trickle. 

In recent weeks during the  emergency coronavirus lockdown, protests have rocked both the streets of the capital Dakar and M’Bour, a city in western Senegal. Many citizens complained that water supply has worsened since this January when the government signed over the rights of water distribution and management, for 15-years, to a private company called Sen’eau.

As the protests grew, the company made a public statement, blaming the crisis on a storm that damaged some of its infrastructure and promised to normalise distribution by next year.

The government has also assured the public that a solution will be found. On Jun. 17, following a cabinet meeting, Senegalese President Macky Sall stressed  “the imperative to mobilise technical expertise and financial resources to ensure the optimal functioning of hydraulic infrastructures”.

But in the meantime, citizens are spending extra money on purchasing water. Although the rainy season arrived in July, urban Senegal is still struggling with supply shortages of daily water.

Fatima Faye, a 23-year-old health worker in M’Bour, tells IPS that she spends $10 every week on purchasing water: “The taps only give droplets, but the water bills are quite big.”

Unsafe water affecting education

According to Global Waters, an agency supported by the USAID Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene, 49 percent people in Senegal lack access to proper sanitation facilities while 20 percent of Senegalese don’t have access to safe drinking water.

For them the only source of water are open wells and rivulets. So they drink non-potable, unfiltered and untreated water.

Amina Diop, a fruit seller from Guediyawaye, a suburb in Dakar, has been using an open well for all her domestic water needs. Her entire family, including her two daughters, also drink from the same water source. 

Before the lockdown began, one of her girls, 10-year-old  Aminata, often missed school. “Her stomach ran, so I just let her be at home,” Diop tells IPS. Aminata was likely ill because of contaminants in the water source.

But a Women Deliver policy brief on access for girls and women to resources such as water and sanitation notes the benefits of “bringing sanitation options closer to or within the home is a critical improvement for women in the community”.

“It means they won’t have to walk long distances to find a site that is private, which decreases the risk of gender-based violence. It saves them time and energy, reduces their exposure to violence, and improves their nutritional status, which in turn has a positive impact on their reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes,” the brief notes.

It also notes a 2012 study in sub-Saharan Africa that showed a 15-minute decrease in time spent walking to a water source is associated with;

• 41 percent average reduction in diarrhoea prevalence, 
• 11 percent reduction in under-5 mortality, and
• improvements in the nutritional status of children.

Menstrual hygiene takes a hit

According to a 2017 survey done by Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) — the United Nations-hosted organisation dedicated to advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6 of providing clean water and sanitation for all people — 56 percent of girls students in Senegal miss school due to menstruation and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

Some Senegalese NGOs have started to fill the knowledge gap by holding informal classes and workshops with young female students. One of these is Apiafrique, a Dakar-based social enterprise that produces environment-friendly feminine hygiene products,

Marina Gning, the CEO of Apiafrique, has held several workshops for school-going students over the last two years where she teaches them the importance of maintaining menstrual hygiene and also trains them in making sanitary pads that can be reused.

“Throughout Africa, women and girls are often thought of as impure during menstrual cycles, and face societal exclusion, as well as a lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure in schools and homes,” Gning tells IPS.

Between the fight against pandemic, which requires extra water for frequent handwashing, and the country’s water-supply crisis, maintaining menstrual hygiene has become a challenge.

“The challenge now, is keeping the sanitary pads clean. Reusable pads means something that you need to wash. But if there is not enough water, how can you do any washing? So, what use can you make of the knowledge?” Amelie Ndecky, a college student who attended one of Gning’s workshops in 2018 in Ngaparou, a suburb of M’Bour, asks IPS.

Her questions remain unanswered.  

A woman farmer selling her produce at a local market in Casamence, southern Senegal. In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of those in informal employment, which is typically low-skilled with poor working conditions, are women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD , Jul 20 2020 (IPS)

Growing up in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, Siny Samba (28) watched with fascination as her grandmother made snacks for her family, using the fresh fruit from their garden. She would often help her grandma make these snacks to feed the neighbourhood children.

“One day, I am going to have snack parties for children like Granny does,” Samba would tell herself.

But years later, when she visited local stores to buy fruit preserves, she was disappointed to see only expensive, imported products on the shelves. They neither tasted as fresh as her Grandma’s ones, nor where they as high in nutritional value.

So in 2017, armed with a degree in food processing engineering from France, Samba launched Senegal’s first baby food startup – Le Lionceau (The Lion Cub). Her goal: to provide Senegalese mothers and infants with a choice of locally-processed food, made from organic, fresh farm produce.

Initially, she started with three types of fruit jams. But now, three years later, she has expanded to 15 products, including jam, jelly, marmalade, cereal and biscuits. Her company now employs nine people and also trains fruit and vegetable farmers across Senegal in safe harvesting techniques and safer storage methods as well as the organic certification process. 

“We have a very simple philosophy: make the best use of our country-grown fruits and vegetables and sell to people who love feeding their children healthy, nutritional products. So, we are building a business that sustains and improves the local food value chain and organic farmers while providing high quality food to Senegalese people,” Samba tells IPS.

Senegal – a fertile ground for startups

Samba’s Le Lionceau is one of the many startups that have mushroomed up across Senegal in recent years.

According to VC4A — an organisation that provides technical and financial support to startup ventures globally and in Senegal — there are 128 registered startups in the West African nation, over a dozen of which are owned by women.

However, it is often assumed that the number of women-owned startups are much higher as many women entrepreneurs hesitate to register their businesses due to high taxes, which include 18 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) and 30 percent company taxes.

The figures are not unusual for the continent.

“Participation in informal employment that is typically low-skilled and comes with poor working conditions is higher among women than men. In 2018, this was the case in more than 90 percent of sub-Saharan African countries,” states a policy document by the Deliver for Good campaign, which promotes 12 crucial investments in women and girls, including dramatically reducing gender-based violence; the respect, protection and fulfilment of sexual health and rights; ensuring equitable and quality education as well as boosting women’s economic empowerment.

However, the introduction of the Senegal Startup Act promises to provide support for startups, while easing their tax burden.

The law was passed in December 2019 after 19 months of intense consultation and discussions among 60 Senegalese innovation enthusiasts, 20 startup supporter organisations and government representatives, including the tax authority, and the education and economy and finance ministries.

The law aims to promote and provide tax breaks and other benefits to innovative new businesses in various fields, ranging from food and agriculture to health and mobile banking. Senegal is only the second African country after Tunisia to have such a law supporting startups.

Perhaps it will create an encouraging environment for women entrepreneurs, but the law itself has no special provisions for them. 

“The new law is really a big ball of hope for all of us who have started without any external help and were struggling to create everything from scratch, like consumer awareness, training of suppliers, creating a conducive market, building infrastructure etc,” says Samba.

Giving the information women need

• In Senegal, 49.9 percent of women of reproductive age have anaemia, says the global nutrition report which profiles the burden of malnutrition at the global, regional, sub-regional and country level.
• In children the rate of acute malnutrition is nine percent, which is higher than the developing country average of 8.5 percent, the report states.

Despite the high burden of challenges, resources are always inadequate, say many experts.

There is never enough credible information available to mothers on malnutrition, nor is there enough funding for those who are working to improve women’s and children’s health, says Fatou Ndiaye Turpin, the executive director of Réseau Siggil Jigéen (RSJ), a women’s rights organisation that aims to promote and protect women’s rights in Senegal.

RSJ is also one of the convenors of the Deliver for Good campaign coalition in Senegal, which is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver. 

Seynabou Thiam, a Dakar-based digital entrepreneur and mother of two young children, agrees with Turpin. In Senegal, there isn’t enough credible information in the public domain on issues that mothers need such as childcare, child nutrition, mothers’ health and well-being etc., Thiam tells IPS.

In 2013, Thiam founded Yaay.sn, a social networking group for mothers that aims to close this information gap. The network, Senegal’s first digital social community, has over 12,000 members.

Using blogs, posters, videos and photographs as resources, Yaay.sn offers Senegalese mothers the information they need about childcare, nutrition and health though a platform that allows them to connect, share their problems and seek support from each other.

Thiam  has won several awards for her startup, including the Female Digital Enterprise Award in 2015 and Africa Digital Communication Days Awards 2019.

“We currently have two major platforms – a group page on Facebook and a channel on Youtube. The construction of our website has already started, so technically, we are in a transition phase right now. But I am hopeful that our website will be completed and operational soon,” Thiam tells IPS.

In 2011, only 15 percent of Senegalese had access to the internet, according to World Bank data. But today, less than a decade later, the number has dramatically increased to 58 percent. The rapid digitisation is an encouraging factor for women who have the potential to become digital entrepreneurs, says Thiam.

“Women have a systemic approach to business. Sustainability is always at the back of their mind, even as they create wealth. They also constantly think of the welfare of those around them – including their families,” Thiam tells IPS.

Women sell farm produce in Casamence, southern Senegal. Evidence shows that women’s full participation in the economy drives better performing and more resilient businesses and supports economic growth and wider development goals for nations. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Joining the Fight Against COVID

Gaelle Tall is the co-founder and chief sales officer of Paps, an e-logistics start-up that provides delivery services across Senegal. When the COVID-19 crisis began to effect the country, which has no online grocery stores, Tall quickly added a new service to Pap’s offers: delivery of food, water and hygiene products to people living under lockdown restrictions.

Another health startup which has been quick to join the fight against COVID-19 is SenVitale, which created the Passeport Universelle de Santé.

Launched in 2017 and co-founded by 22-year-old Nafissatou Diouf, the Passeport Universelle de Santé is a QR scan of a patient’s medical data that is integrated on a card, bracelet, or a pendant. Doctors can instantly access patient medical data by scanning the QR code.

When the COVID-19 outbreak reached Senegal, SenVitale created a web platform where citizens can take a coronavirus self-assessment test before approaching a medical facility. So far, over 100,000 people have taken the test, thereby taking some burden off a stressed national health service. Senegal has over 8,000 cases reported. 

“I lost my aunt who died mainly because she couldn’t find enough information on her sickness. So, we wanted to find a system that would help our doctors and health practitioners act faster,” Diouf, who won Best Startup of the Year (Senegal) awards and also the Feminine Coup de Coeur awards in 2019, tells IPS.

Areas awaiting urgent interventions

Senegal’s population, currently 16.7 million, is expected to rise to 22.3 million by 2030.

“In such a context, reproductive health programmes for young and inactive populations are essential for Senegal to capture the demographic dividend and for the country’s economic and social situation to improve,” Turpin tells IPS.
She identified four crucial areas of women’s health that urgently need greater attention: maternal mortality, access to contraception, information on reproductive health and investment.

The current volume of investment and attention to all of these four areas remains inadequate, although some NGOs are providing services, Turpin says.

“The NGOs are closely linked to public health structures and most of the time operate as referral clinics for public sector clients. These NGOs also create digital platforms to facilitate access to information and products on sexual and reproductive health,” she adds, admitting that no start-up business has stepped into the reproductive health area with a bankable service.

Perhaps its time for a woman to take on the challenge. “Evidence shows that women’s full participation in the economy drives better performing and more resilient businesses and supports economic growth and wider development goals for nations,” Women Deliver notes in a policy brief.

Meanwhile, female entrepreneurs like Samba are trying to add value to their current services by making videos on health, food quality, nutrition, organic food and the need for building immunity through the consumption of fresh, healthy food.

The videos in Senegal’s main indigenous language, Wolof, are free and handed to women and girls who purchase her products.

“Working for health, nutrition and food is hard,” she says, explaining that remains a lack of funding and infrastructure, taxes are high and there are many cultural barriers.

“For example, when I go for a business appointment with my male co-founder, people speak to him and ignore me,” Samba says.

But she believes things are changing.

“But (there are) many organisations providing training to women entrepreneurs, there are networking facilities. There is a new law plus the opportunity to improve women and children’s health. So, it’s an exciting time to have a startup.”

Ndiabou Niang was able to get access to prenatal care after her town’s mayor decided to finance the health membership of nearly 300 women and children. Courtesy: Réseau Siggil Jigéen

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

Pregnant with her second child, 30-year-old Ndiabou Niang was enduring pelvic pain, but couldn’t afford to access prenatal care in Diabe Salla, a village on the outskirts of the small town of Thilogne in north-east Senegal. Her husband was unemployed and her earnings of under CFAF 10,000 (17 USD) from selling seasonal fruits in the local market were insufficient to make ends meet.

During her last prenatal visit, she was prescribed some tests, an ultrasound and medicines that would cost CFAF 39,000 (USD 67). An astronomical amount for her meagre income. So she didn’t follow through with the treatment, opting to suffer in silence instead.

Many pregnant rural women, living below the poverty line, don’t follow through on their prescriptions and delay their prenatal visits till they are in their third trimester, which puts them at greater risk of pregnancy-related complications.

Senegal has integrated the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into its national policies and plans, but socio-economic, cultural and religious norms and attitudes impede women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights, especially in remote and rural areas. The challenges include early marriage, unmet contraceptive needs, early pregnancy, unsafe abortions and female genital mutilation.

The country’s version of Universal Health Coverage is Maladie Universelle (CMU) rests on mutual health organisations (MHOs) that provide health insurance wherein each person contributes a yearly enrolment fee that is matched by the government. The annual member contribution to the mutual health insurance is CFAF 3,500 (USD 6).

People in remote and rural areas choose not to join the mutual health insurance because Health Posts, local facilities that dot the country, have limited drugs and treatment options. Consultations at these posts cost CFAF 1,000 (USD 1.70), but they are not equipped to provide advanced obstetric care – like caesarean sections or blood transfusions. So the distances from local health posts to a district or regional hospital, poor road infrastructure, and cost and shortage of ambulances are some of the other challenges rural women face in accessing healthcare.

Aware of this, Réseau Siggil Jigéen (RSJ), an NGO that aims to promote and protect women’s rights in Senegal, through the IntraHealth International-led Neema project, a consortium of seven health organisations working to extend reproductive health services to last-mile recipients, began extensive advocacy to mobilise the community and local authorities to promote MHO membership.

After several sustained advocacy meetings, the mayor of Thilogne decided to finance the MHO membership for nearly 300 women and children. Niang, was one of them.

“It helped me to get X-rays, prescription drugs and have a caesarian delivery at the Regional Hospital Center of Ourossogui. The cost was CFAF 75,000 (USD 129), but as a MHO member, I only had to pay CFAF 15,000 (USD 25). I am now committed to do everything for my own health and my children’s health, who are 3 months and 18 months old,” she told the local RSJ member. She is also making her family and friends aware of the benefits and urging them to join the MHO.

RSJ and IntraHealth International have been working together for a decade to reposition family planning in Senegal and in the sub-region.

“Together, we introduced the fight against gender-based violence and early pregnancies in schools, and we help health workers improve care in their communities. Now we’re advocating to local governments to mobilise more domestic resources, which make reproductive health services accessible for pregnant women and teenagers who otherwise couldn’t afford them,” IntraHealth International’s Senegal Country Director Dr Babacar Gueye told IPS.

Several other mayors have also followed suit and made financial commitments to reduce maternal and infant mortality in their communities.

In Senegal, a Least Developed Country with 16.7 million people and a fertility rate of 4.5 per woman (2020):

• maternal mortality ratio remains high at 315 deaths per 100,000 live births (2017);
• 74 percent births were attended by skilled health personnel during 2014-2019;
• and only seven percent of girls and women could make a decision on sexual and reproductive health and rights during 2007-2018 period, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) World Population Dashboard Senegal.
• (Data to be read in context with technical notes and sources in the link above)

“Senegal can only embark on the path of development when young people and women are in good health, educated, well trained and equipped to seize development opportunities. Creating these conditions is a social, economic and political necessity,” UNFPA’s assistant representative in Senegal, Moussa Faye, told IPS.

Fifteen years after Senegal passed the 2005 Reproductive Health Law, the decrees to implement it have still not been ratified. The Deliver for Good Senegal campaign’s advocacy objective for 2020 is to get the decree on Family Planning enacted. It is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver, a global advocacy organisation that champions gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women.

The Deliver for Good Senegal campaign’s steering committee, convened by RSJ and Energy 4 Impact, is working with other civil society organisations and ministers to roll out a roadmap to push the competent authority to sign the decree.

“The campaign is advocating at national and local level to reduce maternal and child mortality rates and mobilise financial resources to strengthen the access of women and young people to family planning services and information, whatever their purchasing power and their geographical location. The implementing decree on family planning would qualitatively strengthen the health of mothers and children and help Senegal achieve the SDGs related to women’s health and rights,” Fatou Ndiaye Turpin, executive director of RSJ and co-leader of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, told IPS.

An implementing decree is also needed to describe the modus operandi to allow non-medical workers to provide a wide range of family planning services to vulnerable rural, disadvantaged urban, poor and young people, in particular through community-based distribution.

To ensure women in disadvantaged areas have access to family planning services, there is a growing emphasis on primary health care. For example, the community-based health worker programme, the Bajenu Gox Initiative (which means paternal aunt or godmother in Wolof) to train women to be leaders in reproductive health. Local bajenu gox are enlisted by the government to provide support to women during prenatal, delivery and postpartum periods, and advice on caring for children under five years old in areas where trained medical professionals are not available. 

While family planning policies have been progressive, Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit’s Director, Marie Ba told IPS, “One needs to balance this progress with the prevalent socio-cultural barriers, misconceptions and misinformation around contraception, reproductive rights and health, relatively high unmet contraceptive needs, inequality in terms of gender and social norms, especially in rural areas. For example, only 20 percent of married women aged 15 to 19 report making decisions alone or jointly with their husbands regarding their own health care.”

Many women still need to get permission from their husband or mothers-in-law to use a contraceptive and many young girls are unsure whether they are allowed to use contraceptives before they turn 18. According to UNFPA, the contraceptive prevalence rate for all women aged between 15 and 49 using any method of birth control was 22 percent (2020); and and 16 percent of all women aged between 15 and 49 had their need for family planning unmet (2020). 

Family planning options – birth control pills, implants, intrauterine devices, easy-to-use self-injectable contraception – are now becoming more readily available in regional health posts.

“However, three challenges remain. Stockouts at national and regional level – the stockout rate for injectables varies between 25 and 45 percent in key cities; the same is true for implants, where stockouts can reach 80 percent in the public sector. Secondly, problems with the supply of products to service delivery points. Thirdly, product quality control which remains variable and insufficient,” Turpin told IPS.

Child marriage is still prevalent. As many as 29 percent girls were married by age 18, according to UNFPA. It exposes girls to harmful consequences – sexual and psychological abuse and violence; early pregnancy, which has the risk of medical complications and even death.

Abortion is illegal in Senegal except when three doctors agree that the procedure is required to save a mother’s life.  It is also prohibited in cases of rape or incest. These strict abortion laws have forced many young women to resort to unsafe, illegal abortion services, which often put their health and lives at risk. The adolescent birth rate for girls aged 15 to 19 years was 78 per 1,000 births, according to UNFPA. 

“Abortion is the fifth-leading cause of maternal death in Senegal. It strongly influences maternal mortality with eight percent of maternal deaths linked to unsafe abortions and 50 percent of the reasons for emergency admission to referral maternities,” Turpin told IPS.

The COVID-19 restrictions have led to closure of many reproductive health and family planning services, disruption in supply chains of contraceptives, which are posing a significant risk to women and girls’ health.

In Senegal, although gender parity has been achieved in favour of girls in primary education, the dropout rate at secondary school among female learners is high and few older girls remain at school and complete their education. Credit: Mikaila Issa/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

When Fatima* became pregnant in the middle of the school year and dropped out, she was disowned by her parents. Hers is a story that could have ended as another statistic of dropout rates among female learners in Senegal.

But Fatoumata Fall, a member of the Réseau Siggil Jigéen (RSJ), an NGO that promotes and protects women’s rights in Senegal, heard about Fatima’s story from health officers at the Keur Massar Health Post. She approached municipal authorities for assistance.

Moustapha Mbengue, the mayor of the Keur Massar Municipality, offered moral and financial support for Fatima, enabling her to receive prenatal care. And the combined efforts of Fall and Mbengue also convinced Fatima’s parents to welcome their daughter back home. Mbengue also undertook to assist Fatima in continuing with her studies after childbirth.

It was a happy ending for Fatima.

Though many other girls in the West African nation face different realities.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), although gender parity has been achieved in favour of girls in primary education, where for every 100 boys enrolled, there are about 104 girls, the dropout rate at secondary school among female learners is high.

“Dropping out of school is significantly common not only in the transition from primary to secondary but also within secondary education,” observed UNESCO in its 2011/12 Global Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education fact sheet.

Alongside economic challenges, UNESCO mentions teenage pregnancy and early marriage as some of the reasons why girls do not remain at school and complete their education.

Fatou Gueye Seck, from the Coalition of Organisations in Energy for the Defence of Public Education (COSYDEP Senegal), told IPS the 2016 Multidimensional Review attributes the limited access to education for women and girls to early marriage, among other reasons.

Quoting a 2017 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, Seck said 25 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 were married in 2014, compared to 4.6 percent of boys in the same age group.

• According to the U.N.Population Fund’s (UNFPA) report, “Against My Will: State of World Population 2020”, states the adolescent birth rate of girls aged 15 to 19 is 78 per 1,000 births.

“In Senegal, the gender index is still against girls,” Seck told IPS.

As a result, said Seck, the scale of illiteracy, especially among women in rural Senegal, is also symptomatic of the poor access to education. According to UNESCO, Senegal’s literacy rate for the population aged 15 years and above is 64.81 percent for males and 39.8 percent for females.

“This phenomenon remains very recurrent among women in rural areas where only 25.9 percent of them are literate,” Seck said.

Seck said a 2014 regional analysis of the phenomenon shows that the regions of Ziguinchor (62.3 percent) and Dakar (61.9 percent) have the best literacy rates. In contrast, the regions of Matam (24.9 percent), Tambacounda (26.6 percent), Diourbel (29.8 percent) and Kolda (33.1 percent) stand out with the lowest rates.

Quoting an OECD report, Seck said since 2016, enrolments in Functional Literacy Centres, which give dropouts a second chance at learning, have fallen by more than half. The number of learners – 92.5 percent of whom were women – dropped from 34,373 to 15,435.

The OECD attributed this underperformance to the inadequacy of the overall amount of funding towards the National Ministry of Education, Illiterate Youth and Adult Basic Education, which is below 1 percent of public spending on national education.

“In this regard, the 2007 Bamako conference [African Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy] on the financing of non-formal education recommended that States increase this ratio to 3 percent,” said Seck.

Seck is also the president of the education theme of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, an evidence-based advocacy and communication platform that promotes the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women.

Powered by Women Deliver and various partners, part of the campaign’s activities are to help the country achieve Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals – access to quality education for all. The campaign is calling for the increased funding for school-based reproductive health education to keep young people in school. 

According to Seck, since the launch of the Deliver for Good campaign, the authorities of targeted municipalities have been successful in addressing issues related to education and sexual and reproductive health.

“As an example, [Mbengue] has been proclaimed ‘Mayor Champion of Education’ by his peers. In fact, the mayor made a commitment to increase the budget allocated for the reproductive health of adolescents and young people and declared himself a spokesperson for this cause to his fellow deputies of the National Assembly,” she said.

Seck stressed the important role of women in the family and in society, in general, adding that the more educated she is, the more crucial her place is in the economic and social development of the community. She said a society in which the percentage of educated women is high has more opportunities to access knowledge, economic, health and cultural assets than one made up mainly of illiterate women.

“Within the family, the role of the mother in the educational success of children in the family has been the subject of numerous studies, which have shown that children whose mother has a certain level of education are more likely to have successful studies than those whose mother is illiterate,” she said. 

She said Senegal’s 10-year Education and Training Programme, which put in place an important strategy and resources for achieving parity within the deadlines of the Education For All goal, are beginning to pay off.

“Indicators have started to evolve in favour of girls even if the gains must be maintained in view of the cases of early pregnancies which constitute a real obstacle to the development of girls,” Seck said.

*Not her real name

Zigunchor in Senegal’s southern Casamence region has the highest literacy rate in the country but here gender-based violence such as such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still practiced. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Jul 7 2020 (IPS)

Growing up in Senegal’s southern Casamence region — a conflict zone —  Fatou Ndiaye, now 43, often heard gunfire and watched fearfully as she saw people flee their villages. But what she dreaded more than a flying bullet was Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

In her Wolof community, village grandmothers or professional circumcisers cut off the genitals of girls as young as 7 with a sharp blade. Ndiaye wanted to speak out against this but did not have the courage. But one day 13 years ago, she met Aissatou Sall, a fellow Senegalese woman who used storytelling to raise awareness against FGM.

“Connecting with her and hearing her stories taught me a lot about cutting. I learnt how women’s rights were often violated under the disguise of religious norms and traditions. And it gave me the courage to tell my family that I would speak against FGM and every harmful practice from now on, with or without their support,” Ndiaye, who has since become a professional storyteller herself, tells IPS. Occasionally, she also makes documentary videos in order to raise social awareness in her community.

Like Ndiaye, thousands of Senegalese women and girls are learning to take a stand against gender-based violence like FGM, child marriage, stoning and menstrual taboos through communication platforms that include storytelling, community counselling, mobile apps, art, poetry and videos.

GBV and girls’ education in Senegal

Statistically, when compared to its closest neighbours, Senegal has a much lower rate of gender-based violence (GBV), especially FGM. The average education rate is also much higher that its neighbours.

According to data published by the United Nations Children’s Fund, eight percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 15 and 29 percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 18. In addition, 24 percent of Senegalese girls and women aged 15 to 49 years have undergone FGM, while in Mali, Gambia, Mauritania and Guinea Bissau its 89, 76, 67 and 45 percent respectively for the same age group. 

However, within ethnic minority communities the numbers are almost as high as they are across the border, says Molly Melching, the founder of Tostan — one of the longest-running and most influential NGOs in Senegal working to curb FGM through community awareness and non-formal education. 

Based in Dakar, Tostan works across Francophone Africa and also in Somalia and Djibouti.

According to Melching, more and more Senegalese have been rejecting FGM thanks to a coordinated ground movement focused on community awareness raising, which is spearheaded by several civil society movements.

There are other forms of GBV, such as child marriage, which have a high prevalence in the country.

UNICEF data shows “eight percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 15, and 29 percent of women 20-24 years were married or in union before age 18”. 

“In Senegal, the national literacy average is 51 percent. But there is a disparity between boys and girls. 70.7 percent of boys go to school while for girls the number is 63 percent. Almost all the girls who drop out of school [do so] because of early marriage,” Fatou Gueye Seck, coordinator at Coalition des Organisations pour la Défense de l’éducation Publique (COSYDEP), a Dakar-based NGO promoting free and inclusive education, tells IPS.

Ending GBV with Non-formal Education

Melching, who has been working in Senegal for four decades, tells IPS that most families here have relatives across the border who share a common set of values and cultural practices. To address a contentious issue like FGM, which is embedded in the value system, it is important to educate the entire community so that the knowledge can also be shared.

Tostan has been educating communities, including smaller minority groups living in far-flung regions, using a rights-based approach and a diverse package of communication tools, including guidebooks in the local language and mobile-based learning modules.

“Let’s be honest: there is no social change unless the community is directly involved. Nobody likes it if you go to them and say ‘this is wrong about your culture and that is wrong about your tradition.’ So, you have to work in a way where the space is open for the community to freely involve and engage to think and act,” Melching tells IPS.

At Tostan’s human rights-based Community Empowerment Programme (CEP), community members attend classes on human rights. They also learn about their right to health and the right to be free from all forms of violence. They also discuss the responsibilities they share to protect these rights in their community.

In sessions on health, they learn about the potential, immediate, and long-term harmful consequences of the practice and discuss ways to prevent these health problems in the future.

Finally, instead of blaming or criticising, community members are encouraged to discuss practices like FGM that are harmful for them, which then leads to the decision to end the practice.

The impact has been impressive, reveals Melching. Over 8,000 communities from Senegal and seven other countries in sub-Saharan Africa have publicly declared to end FGM and child/forced marriage.

Micro credit to curb GBV

Queen Sheba Cisse was born in Alabama, United States, but returned to her roots in Senegal over a decade ago. For the past seven years, Cisse has been helping the women of M’bour, a town in the western Thies region, become financially independent.

Cisse’s NGO has set up a micro credit programme that assists women develop their own local businesses. Attendees are asked questions like “What do women want? What business will work? What will give them a higher say in the family? etc.”

“There is no denial that GBV, like cutting, is still a big challenge in our community. But instead of looking at it as an isolated issue, we took a holistic look and realised cutting is performed by women because they believe in the ritual.

“We also realised that where women were economically empowered, they had a voice and their voices were taken seriously. So, we decided to strengthen women’s voices and help them become financially independent, so they could decide on their own GBV,” Cisse tells IPS.

Continued investment – the need of the COVID hour

According to a recent report released by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), titled “Against My Will: State of World Population 2020”, an additional two million cases of FGM will occur globally by 2030. An additional 5.6 million child marriages can also be expected globally because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A new U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation report, “All means All”, shows that exclusion in education has deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic and about 40 percent of low and lower-middle income countries have not supported disadvantaged such as the poor, linguistic minorities and learners with disabilities during school shutdowns.

The list includes Senegal where only 13 percent of schools are equipped with internet and 28 percent of schools have computers, severely limiting online education.

To bridge the gaps, the report makes a series of recommendations that include more consultation with communities, greater participation by NGOs and providing targeted financing for those who are currently lagging behind.

A similar call for continuing support to Senegalese girls and women affected by the pandemic was given by the Deliver for Good global campaign. In April, the campaign published an open letter urging all governments to “apply a gender lens and put girls, women, and gender equality at the center of COVID-19 preparedness, response, and recovery”.

Powered by Women Deliver and various partners, the campaign aims to make the Sustainable Development Goals, including goal four of education work best for girls and women.

Seck of COSYDEP, which is one of the Deliver for Good campaign partners in Senegal, describes how the campaign has continued to support girls and women’s education across Senegal.

“We have been working in different municipalities across the country, organising local meetings and field visits and have seen a lot of these municipal councils achieving great success,” she says. 

For example, in the Keur Massar municipality, the mayor was declared “Mayor Champion of Education” by his peers after he pledged to increase the budget allocated to the reproductive health of teenagers and young people.

In Guinchor, Casamence, where Nadiaye lives with her two young children, the pandemic has brought life to a standstill.

However, instead of suspending her awareness-raising work, Ndiaye is now exploring new areas like internet talk shows to continue her storytelling.

“The beauty of non-formal education is that we teach and learn in every possible way. So, I am now planning to start an audio show. Because of the shutdown I can’t travel, but with this show I can cross the borders and educate people living on the other side too.”

Aïssata Ba is amongst several rural women selected by Energy 4 Impact to participate in an economic empowerment programme, which provides women entrepreneurs with access to renewable energy technologies. Courtesy: Energy 4 Impact Senegal

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jun 24 2020 (IPS)

Aïssata Ba, 45-year-old widow and mother of seven children, has been practising market gardening for the past 30 years in Lompoul Sur Mer village in the Niayes area of north-west Senegal. For many women in the village, endowed with fertile soil and favourable climate, it is the primary source of income throughout the year.

But lack of infrastructure, access to sustainable energy, financial support, equipment and knowledge of modern practices makes it a hard toil for these women engaged in market gardening, which is small-scale production of fruits, vegetables, flowers and cash crops during the local growing season and sold directly to consumers.

Aïssata had to manually prepare seedbeds, remove weeds and irrigate her 0.15 hectare plot by drawing water from the well, a bucket at a time, with the help of her two sons 17 and 23 years old.

“It was physically draining and time consuming. It limited our production capability,” Aïssata told IPS via Mariama Traore, Energy 4 Impact’s (E4I) Gender and Advocacy Officer and Co-Leader of Deliver for Good Senegal Campaign, powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver.

Energy 4 Impact, a non-profit organisation working with local businesses to extend access to energy in Africa, and Siggil Jigeen, an NGO that promotes and protects women’s rights in Senegal, are steering the Deliver for Good Senegal Campaign to invest in girls and women for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The focus priorities of the campaign, a coalition of local representatives of civil society organisations, government leaders, U.N. agencies, and the private sector, include increasing women’s access to resources – clean and renewable energy.

In 2018, only 42.3 percent of households in rural areas had access to electricity, according to Senegal Energy Ministry’s 2019-2023 Energy Sector Policy Paper. Most rural households, institutions and small businesses in Senegal currently rely on hazardous, traditional and inefficient energy sources, such as wood, for lighting, cooking and other energy needs.

“This low availability, adoption and use of welfare-enhancing electrical appliances, especially in poor and rural communities, specifically impacts the time women spend in poverty and the drudgery of labour-intensive activities,” Traore told IPS, adding that “Women’s paid and unpaid labour status and power relations, gendered social norms related to land and asset ownership and independent income, dramatically influence their ability and incentive to access modern energy services and appliances.”

Aïssata is amongst several rural women selected by Energy 4 Impact to participate in an economic empowerment programme, which provides women entrepreneurs involved in farming, dairy production, agriculture and shop owners access to renewable energy technologies, such as solar-powered pumps, freezers, solar systems, and equipment for drying, milling, and processing crops.

Since installing the solar pump, Aïssata’s production has increased from 900 kg to 1,428 kg of vegetables and her six-monthly turnover has shot up to $617 from $350. 

“It has not only improved my productivity and income, but also our living conditions. I also received technical knowledge to evaluate the profitability of crops, support with accessing finance for the pump and learning modern business skills,” she said.

“Last year, my onion crop was the first to arrive on the market, giving me a competitive edge to sell it at a premium price. Since then, I have had a good cycle of crops – tomatoes and cabbages, turnips and onion seeds. This phenomenal transformation in such a short time has inspired me to invest in more land and install a solar sprinkler system in the future,” Aïssata added.

Limited access to energy has been impeding the country’s socio-economic development. The campaign is ensuring that women are being locally recognised as key actors within the energy sector.

Earlier this year, 43-year-old Assy Ba was helped with a loan to buy a solar freezer for her restaurant in the small town of Manda in Tambacounda region, south-east of the national capital Dakar. This made it possible for her to sell cold food products in her off-grid electricity village. Her restaurant had a steady stream of customers stopping for refreshments as Manda is located at the crossroad of two main routes leading to the southern part of Senegal bordering Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. She also had regulars from the large weekly markets.

“My monthly turnover increased to around $400 from a mere $60 or 65 and I could also save food wastage. But since the COVID-19 travel lockdowns have been imposed, we only get very few local customers. I am eating into my savings. My husband is too old to work. Every day, I worry about feeding our eight children and repaying the business loan,” Assy told IPS via Traore.

Energy 4 Impact studied the impact of COVID-19 on 20 women entrepreneurs it supports.

• 95 percent said they were very worried about their financial future and the future of their businesses and how that will impact access to food and health.
• 70 percent of them said that their business was strongly impacted, mainly by the loss of customers and the supply of raw materials, and they had difficulty in repaying their loan.

“We believe it is crucial, more than ever before, to focus on expanding energy access to power economic activities, as this has a very tangible impact on women’s welfare and opportunities,” Energy 4 Impact’s West Africa director Mathieu Dalle told IPS.

• In Senegal, women comprise almost 50 percent of the population.
• 47 percent of the 15 million Senegalese live below the poverty line and half the population is food insecure, according to the National Agency of Statistics and Demography of Senegal.

For rural women, involved in agriculture, food security is a major challenge and that is the reason they need sustainable energy sources to improve and increase the production, preservation and processing of food.

With funding support from ENERGIA, an international network on gender and sustainable energy, and other development partners, Energy 4 Impact’s Foyré Rewbé2 – Empowering Women, Engendering Energy project is assisting women with solar energy. In its sixth phase (April 2019 to March 2022), the project aims to increase the number of rural women entrepreneurs – involved in cereals and peanut farming, fisheries and aquaculture, livestock production, light industry and agro-processing, trade and services – in sustainable Productive Uses of Energy (PUE).

“We are advocating that part of the revenue from oil and gas should fund the development of renewable energies, especially for women’s income generating activities,” Traore told IPS.

The solar resources in Senegal are characterised by 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, and average overall daily solar irradiation of 5.8 kWh / m2 / day. These resources have been harnessed through photovoltaic and thermal solar systems.

The campaign’s advocacy work has led to gender being integrated into national energy policies and programmes. “Women are the heart of society and any progress is only possible through their participation,” said Fatou Thiam Sow, gender focal point and coordinator of studies and planning unit at the Senegalese Ministry of Energy.

Women’s empowerment, including economic empowerment through expansion of renewable energies, has to be at the core of reducing carbon emissions and building climate-resilient societies.

Since the Deliver for Good Senegal Campaign began, many women organisations are today more aware of and they are defending their right to access clean and sustainable energy for their domestic and productive uses.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted women-led businesses across Africa. “Women are disproportionately represented in most of the economic sectors hit by the pandemic. Ensuring that stimulus packages and post COVID-19 policies are gender-sensitive will be critical to getting African women entrepreneurs back on their feet,” Esther Dassanou, coordinator of the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa programme, told IPS.

Masters of Laws student Khoudia Ndiaye is expected to qualify from Senegal’s University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in 2019. Ndiaye is a returnee migrant. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Mikaila Issa
DAKAR, Dec 17 2018 (IPS)

Masters of Laws student Khoudia Ndiaye will graduate from Senegal’s University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) next year. The 24-year-old, who specialised in notarial law and dreams of becoming a notary, wants to bring justice closer to local communities like those in her local district of Hann Bel-Air, in Senegal’s capital Dakar, where she rarely sees female lawyers.

While the young, intelligent and dedicated Ndiaye has a bright future ahead of her and speaks with enthusiasm about it, there was a time not too long ago that she never dreamt of becoming so successful. Instead she was living—in fear and subject to racism—in a foreign country.

Ndiaye is a returnee migrant. In 2012, while only 18, and after being enrolled at UCAD’s Faculty of Law for just four months, she was overwhelmed.

Now when she speaks about her reasons for wanting to leave Senegal, she lowers her head and laughs.
“In the first year of law at the university, we were 4,000 students and I underestimated myself because I did not think I had a chance to succeed in this world,” she tells IPS.

A journey into disillusionment 

She began to look for something else to do with her life. She always wanted to work at a call centre and had been told by her cousin Pape, who was living in Morocco, “that call centre employees are very well paid and well connected.”

Daro Thiam (left), a returnee migrant from Mauritania is being interviewed by Khoudia Ndiaye (centre) and and Ndeye Fatou Sall (right) in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Julia Burpee

Leaving one’s family and daring to go on an adventure without warning is a brave decision—surrealistic even—for a young girl in a deeply-religious society like Senegal. “It was not easy to make such a decision. I did not tell my parents because if they knew about my idea, they would not allow me to leave,” Ndiaye remembers.

Pape put her in contact with the people who would help her migrate without regular papers.
“I financed my trip with my scholarship up to 200.000FCFA which is the equivalent of 348 dollars.”
But on the day of the trip to the “promised land” she realised that she was deceived because she had believed she would fly to Morocco, but instead “ended up taking a bus by force”.

After journeying 3,000 kilometres in a minibus, Ndiaye, and the other young Africans who were her travelling companions, arrived in Marrakech, Morocco.

Very quickly, her dream of working in a call centre turned into disillusionment.
What she hadn’t been told, and perhaps what her cousin didn’t know, was that call agents in Morocco were required to have two years of university credits.

For a time she lived with her cousin and his wife and while she was well treated, things were not necessarily easy.
She was witness to her cousin’s mugging and attack in a public street and feared the same would happen to her one day. “Moroccans on a scooter tried to steal his phone. He wanted to defend himself, but young Moroccans stabbed him. I saw the blood flowed and this image traumatised me,” she says with trembling voice.

Home to try again

She decided to return home and her parents, who by then knew of her presence in Morocco, paid for her return flight. Once home, with the advice and support of her family and relatives, Ndiaye pursued her studies once again.
She re-enrolled in university, and it was her second attempt to obtain her Bachelor of Laws.

“At the university, it was a bit like home, I was ashamed of the eyes of people and my classmates because they were all aware that I had stopped my studies to go to Morocco,” Ndiaye regrets.

A new beginning
But on a cold winter’s morning in November, and in the midst of a crowd of young students jostling to register at the university, we manage to force our way through the crowd to reach the main entrance of the Faculty of Law. It is here that Ndiaye’s professors and other UCAD staff gave her a chance. It is here that Ndiaye tried again to obtain her degree, this time succeeding.

“I received support from my teachers, especially one of my teachers who cheered me up whenever I needed it. She now sits at the Dakar court,” Ndiaye says excitedly.

Migrants as Messengers

As Ndiaye thrived with her studies, she was contacted by a friend, also a returnee migrant, who gave her the phone number of Mohamadou Ba, who is in charge of managing a community of returnee migrant volunteers in Dakar.

Ba is part of the Migrants as Messengers (MaM) awareness-raising campaign, which was developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The peer-to-peer messaging campaign trains returnee migrants how to interview, film and document the stories of their fellow returnees. They share their experiences through Facebook and on other social media sites, providing a platform for others to do the same.

When Ndiaye heard about it, she joined. She met with other returnee migrants and heard of their experiences and stories, as she shared her own. Because MaM is structured as a peer-to-peer campaign, it allowed Ndiaye and other returning migrants to structure a message for young people that was based on their own first-hand experiences “… the best thing is to stay at home or if you decide to travel, do it by a normal way.”

Support that goes beyond financial aid

Ndiaye is also glad for the support she received from the network. “We have gained confidence and hope. And this is much more important than financial aid,” Ndiaye says.

It is not just Ndiaye who has benefited from the training.

Yaya Mballo and Ndèye Fatou Sall are also returnee migrants in Senegal. Thanks to the IOM training they have been able to re-integrate into society and even launched their own business—where they offer public speaking and videography services.

Julia Burpee, Media Development Specialist and trainer at MaM tells IPS how the project has helped its participants transform.
“When we started the videography and storytelling trainings, many of the migrants who returned home from Libya and other countries, were too timid and ashamed to share their stories of migration.
“The more they stood in front of—and behind—the camera and saw the benefits of using video as a tool for healing and advocacy, the more they started to speak up. They now all speak confidently and with conviction about their migration experiences, eager to help inform other West Africans about the risks they faced, and ultimately, save lives,” Burpee says.

Tomorrow, Dec. 18, marks International Migrants Day and many of the returnee migrants will be celebrating it through events held around Dakar.

But today, Ndiaye is keenly interested in gender rights. In fact her Master’s dissertation was on the gender balance in Muslim succession law here in this West African nation.

“Inheritance law fascinates me the most because it is the regulation of everyday life and also it is a fact of society that is heard constantly,” she tells IPS.

“Yes women can,” Ndiaye concludes.

• Additional reporting by Samuelle Paul Banga in Dakar.

At the Guédiawaye town hall in Dakar, Senegal's capital, the community attends a unique community event – a film screening and a debate about irregular migration. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

By Mikaila Issa
DAKAR, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

It is four o’clock in the afternoon in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, when pupils, students and workers begin to fill the municipal town halls of Grand Yoff and Sociocultural Centre Grand Médine to attend a unique community event – a film screening and a debate.

What they hear there surprises them.

Men and women, both in person and on video, relate stories of human suffering, exploitation and abuse they experienced on their journeys as irregular migrants.

“You are beaten, threatened with weapons, you lose all your rights as soon as you enter this country. You are sold by your own brothers.” It is one of the poignant testimonies heard in a 45-minute documentary made by returnee migrants and with the support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

IOM is running a unique Migrants as Messengers (MaM) programme in Senegal, Guinea Conakry and Nigeria. It is a peer to peer messaging campaign that shares information about the dangers of irregular migration as told through the stories of returnee migrants. IOM has trained 80 returnee migrants in these three countries on how to interview and collect the stories of fellow returnees. The campaign also uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

A young man at Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal, engages in a discussion about irregular migration. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

The town hall discussions

The town hall screenings are also part of the campaign. They offer the community and returnee migrants a platform to share their stories since a participatory approach is used and the film is followed by a debate in French and in the local language, Wolof.

Back at the town halls in Dakar, during both screenings, silence reigns supreme for 45 minutes.

Those who sit in attendance look clearly stunned by the depth of suffering explained through the testimonies of the returnee migrants.

“We have seen and survived,” Ndèye Fatou Sall, a MaM volunteer, tells IPS. She lived previously in Saudi Arabia where she was employed as a domestic worker.

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Many are driven and supported by their families, who have significant influence over their lives. In some cases, families use all of their savings to send their sons to Europe.

“Personally, I left because of my family. When I got my [Bachelor’s degree]…my mother saw that the sons of other families went abroad easily. So she used all her savings to finance my trip,” Issa Ngom says during the discussion at Grand Médine. After a few months amid harsh living conditions he decided to return to Senegal.

“I think we need to do a lot more outreach and show young people the opportunities [at home]. But we must go beyond because the reality is that most kids hang out on the streets, drinking tea all day instead of finding things to do,” Aminata Diop says during the session at Grand Yoff Dakar.

You can succeed at home

Seckouba Cissé agrees during the debate that, “It’s not the trip that will make you a successful man.”

“We are used to blaming just the youth for all, because we dismiss them as people without ambition. But we never implement a policy to encourage young people to generate local wealth,” Cissé says.

Babacar Gueye, a young graduate who is currently looking for a job, explains during the Grand Yoff session that the money used to travel irregularly to Europe could be better invested in creating work opportunities at home.

“I went to Europe and I came back. The money you spend to go there to suffer, you can invest it here in Senegal to find something to do. We refuse to stay [home] because the family puts pressure on us to ‘succeed’; we get tired of this word.”

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

The dangers behind irregular migration 

But the poignant testimonies in the film made Charle Diatta aware of the realities and the risks involved with irregular migration. He speaks up during the debate and says he wants the returnee migrants to warn his cousins about this.

“I have cousins ​​in Yarakh who want to go to Europe, and I want you to go there, if possible, in order to try to make them aware before it’s too late.”

The screening of the film and the resultant debate is part of IOM’s impact evaluation approach “to measure the dimension of community engagement, public interaction with returning migrants volunteers; as well as to touch the perception of indigenous peoples on the issues of irregular migration and migrant status,” Marilena Crosato, media engagement and advocacy at IOM Senegal, tells IPS.

A total of 16 screening and debate sessions are being held throughout Senegal. And returnee migrants are actively working as volunteers and stakeholders to raise awareness.

And many of them are using the MaM Facebook page to share their experiences. Though it is on social media where many feel they first saw distorted realities of what it was like to live as irregular migrants in Europe.

Participants at the Grand Yoff session say that social networks can be shimmering surreal things that belie the true facts of irregular migration.

“Because of the beautiful photos and videos about life in Europe that my friends sent me, I was about to leave so as to have such a good life too,” Djiby Sakho says.

But the town hall screening and debate has shown him the darker side of the journey.

• Additional reporting by Samuelle Paul Banga in Dakar.

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Communities in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, have been meeting across the city to watch a 45-minute documentary film made by returnee migrants, with support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM is running a unique Migrants as Messengers (MaM) programme in Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria. It is a peer to peer messaging campaign that shares the dangers of irregular migration as told through the stories of returnee migrants.

IOM has trained 80 returnee migrants in these three countries on how to interview and collect the stories of fellow returnee migrants. The campaign also uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

The town hall screenings are also part of the campaign. They offer the community and returnee migrants a unique platform to share their stories as a participatory approach is used and the film is followed by a debate, in French and the local language, Wolof.

Daro Thiam (left), a returnee migrant from Mauritania is being interviewed by Khoudia Ndiaye (centre) and and Ndeye Fatou Sall (right) in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

Khoudia Ndiaye and Ndeye Fatou Sall set up a smartphone on a tripod to begin recording a video interview with Daro Thiam in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Hann Bel-Air is the departure point for many of the migrants who leave the city and country on irregular routes – boats to Spain, crossing the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean Sea, or to countries nearby.

Thiam, a mother of four, has recently returned from Mauritania, where she was unable to find a job to support her children."If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.” -- Ndeye Fatou Sall returnee migrant.

The three Senegalese women on a sunny rooftop near the beach have something in common: they are all migrants. Each of them left their home country to better their lives and support their families. But this afternoon is about Thiam’s story.

Ndiaye and Fatou Sall clip a microphone on Thiam’s dress then stand behind the tripod, counting down to the first question. They ask Thiam, “Why did you decide to leave home and where were you travelling to?”

Thiam answers in their native language, Wolof. The women nod; a sense of shared understanding is tangible among them.

They continue, reading other questions off the mobile application created for interviewing migrants: “What family members or people were you trying to support?”

“How did your family react to your return?” they continue.

The women are getting to know one another. After the interview, they will share their own stories with Thiam, and that is the point. The Migrants as Messengers (MaM) awareness-raising campaign, developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

By capturing the migration experiences on-camera and sharing the videos on Facebook, the campaign aims to educate potential migrants and their families about the risks involved in irregular migration. It also presents alternatives to migrating on routes that run dangerously through the desert, on to the Mediterranean Sea, and often lead to indefinite detention in North African countries like Libya.

MaM, funded by the government of the Netherlands, is a regional project run in Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Nigeria. It trains migrants who return home, like Ndiaye and Fatou Sall, in videography, interviewing, migration reporting, and online advocacy, so they can volunteer as ‘citizen journalists,’ or more appropriately, ‘migrant messengers.’ So far, IOM has trained nearly 80 migrants, referred to as Volunteer Field Officers, across the three participating countries; about one-third of the volunteers in Senegal are women.

Migrant returnees as storytellers

Law student Ndiaye is a returnee from Morocco, and Fatou Sall is a mother of five who lived and worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia for nine years. Ndiaye and Fatou Sall returned to Senegal in 2013 and 2017, respectively. They were recently trained alongside four other women – Maty Sarr, Aissatou Senghor and Fatou Guet Ndiaye – and four young men to become migrant messengers.

Fatou Sall experienced a difficult nine years in Saudi Arabia and is prepared to be open with others about what life truly was like. There comes from her an honest and heartfelt sharing of her former life.

“Everything I’ll say comes from the heart because it is the experience that I lived and that I am willing to share with others. I tell them right away ‘don’t go without regular papers because it is not easy that side’.”

She is happy to be part of the MaM campaign “and satisfied to be participating in this training, which I put to good use to create awareness about travelling [irregularly] when my association’s activities kick off.”

Since her return in 2017 she founded an association for former female migrant workers to Saudi Arabia called ‘Association of Senegalese Women Former Residents of Saudi Arabia’.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/707358599616225/

Women as influencers

She says that while she was paid USD 700, as opposed to the USD 200 she could get as a domestic worker at home, migrating irregularly was not worth it. She says she was fortunate that when she was ill her employer would pay for her doctor’s bills, but this would come out of her own salary.

“If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.”

She says that as a woman who experienced a difficult life overseas she doesn’t want other women to go through the same thing.

“It’s a lonely life out there, and as a woman and mother, most of the time you think about your family, especially if things begin to fall apart. The employment agencies operating in Dakar sold us to those Arab bosses as slaves and we worked endlessly, 24 hours sometimes with no pay.”

“I’m not forcing people or women to stay in Senegal, but if they don’t have the necessary documents, and think that they will get everything there, they are deluded.”

Anti-black sentiments are rife in Saudi Arabia, where police raids on foreigners’ homes are frequent, Fatou Sall says.

Ndiaye, who travelled to Morocco with papers in the hope of finding a job at a call centre, recounts a terrible tale of racism.

“I witnessed many stabbing and beating incidents by Moroccans on blacks and I became very scared to go out. The Arabs provoke black people and beat them up, steal their phones in broad daylight, and sometimes stab them. Life is very hard in North Africa, especially if you don’t have papers,” the law student explains.

“It’s also heartbreaking to see pregnant women embarking on such a dangerous adventure and suffering there. In the end, I thought returning home was the best option. Women, especially mothers, should stay home with their children.”

Fatou Guet, another returnee from Mauritania, who attempted to reach Spain on a makeshift boat, pleaded against travelling irregularly to Europe.

“Our trip lasted 10 days and we failed somewhere in the Mauritanian waters, where some people drowned and I got very sick and also nearly died. It is not good at all,” she tells IPS emotionally.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/217535472195014/

The campaign’s performance

But the experiences of these women and others who have attempted irregular migration have not gone unnoticed.

To date the IOM has close to 23,000 followers on their MaM Facebook page, 90 percent of whom are from Nigeria, Guinea-Conakry and Senegal.

College student Aminata Fall (23), who has been following the MaM campaign on Facebook, describes it as “genius”.

“It’s an emotionally charged campaign where some shocking stories are being told by brave and courageous people. You must be a mad person to travel [irregularly] to North Africa after watching these videos. Ha, surely it’s hell on earth out there,” Fall tells IPS.

IOM digital officer Marshall Patzana explains to IPS that they post new videos daily to “flood the online space with first-hand testimonies of the journey so as to counter the narrative that the smugglers are peddling online.”

“Our videos are usually between 30 seconds to a minute in length and as of last week the videos on the page have been viewed for a total of 30,590 minutes. Our content has reached over 550,000 people online since we started the Facebook page in June,” he says.

Patzana says the Facebook page creates a hub for returnees to interact amongst each other and to share best practices on how to reach out to their communities and advocate for regular migration.

Content produced by returnee migrants is also uploaded here and creates an online library of testimonies for anyone who wants to learn more about the journey.

“There is [also] a closed group where returnees from the different countries share their own personal stories and provide each other with peer support,” Patzana explains.

The IOM plans to extend the project into 2019 and to expand to three or four additional West African countries.

While they plan to reach more people, the women who are currently sharing their stories with others have hopes and plans for the future too.

Fatou Sall hopes that her association, which is based in Rufisque, will get more funding and kick off with activities soon.

Ndiaye thinks that her life would not have progressed as it has if she had not returned home. The master’s degree student will qualify soon. “Five years down the line, here I am, I’m about to finish my master’s in law. Next year I’ll be done, something that would have been impossible if I was in Morocco waiting for a job.”

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof was speaking on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm, in Senegal, about his experience attempting irregular migration to Europe. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Sep 8 2018 (IPS)

El Adama Diallo left his home in Senegal on Oct. 28, 2016, with dreams of reaching Europe in his heart and a steely determination that made him take an alternative, dangerous route to get there despite the absence of regular migration papers in his pocket.

It was a journey that took him from West Africa—through Mali then to Agadez in Niger and across the Sahara desert—to a southern oasis town in Libya.“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses.” -- El Adama Diallo, returnee migrant.

It was a route populated with heavily-armed human traffickers, bandits and the still-alive bodies of migrants like him, emaciated and weak from lack of water and food who had been left behind to die under the blazing North African sun.

Diallo survived it. Barely.

“All the roads leading to Agadez, and eventually to Libya and Italy are dangerous,” he told IPS on the sidelines of a live broadcast on Radio Afia Fm on Monday, Sept. 3, from the station’s base in the bustling township of Grand Yoff, in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

For me, the dream of reaching Europe irregularly is over, and I call on all who are considering irregular migration to stop it now, 32-year-old Diallo said.

Diallo has much to say about his experience. He finally was able to return to Senegal on Dec. 5, 2017 with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been working in coordination with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Libyan government to assist migrants who want to return home.

He now wants to inform others about his experience. Diallo has become a volunteer in an innovative awareness-raising campaign by IOM called Migrants as Messengers (MaM). MaM is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign that trains returning migrants to share their stories of the danger, trauma and abuse that they experienced while attempting irregular migration. The stories are candid and emotional testimonials.

As is Diallo’s own story.

Kidnapped and inhumane detention conditions

Diallo arrived in Sabha, southwestern Libya and found “almost the whole of Africa was there; Malians, Gambians, Ivorians, Nigerians and others.” From there he hoped to go to Tripoli to catch a boat to Italy. But he was immediately kidnapped by gangs posing as human traffickers.

“They demanded a ransom of [about USD800] for my freedom, which was paid a week later by my family back in Senegal,” he said.

Being caught by human traffickers showed him that race or nationality did not mean solidarity when it came to making a profit.

“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses,” he said.

But after being released he spent about 10 months in Libya, still waiting to travel to Italy. He was eventually arrested by security forces and held, along with thousands others, in a detention centre in Tripoli in such inhumane conditions that eventually, he knew; all he wanted to do was to return home.

He stayed for two months in cells that were so overcrowded “we were piled on top of each other like fishes.”

“Some people slept standing and others spent the night in stinking toilets, and we only ate once a day. It was terrible,” Diallo explained.

He endured it until he was given the opportunity to return home with IOM.

Explaining the dangers to others

Mamoudou Keita, a reporter at Radio Afia, told IPS that community radio stations were the right platform to debate this issue.

“Community radio is close to people on the ground. I think it’s a good communication strategy. However, it must not be limited to the media. It must descend to the streets, mosques and churches to ensure that the message is understood everywhere,” Keita said.

“Besides, the marketplaces are also good places to spread the word because some mothers are funding their children’s [irregular] trips to Europe. They must be told that it’s morally wrong and dangerous.”

El Hadji Saidou Nourou Dia, IOM Senegal spokesperson, told IPS that his agency was working with 30 community radio stations affiliated to Association of Union des Radio Associatives and Communautaires du Senegal (URAC) or Community Radio Stations of Senegal. The stations are based in Dakar, Tambacounda, Kolda and Seidhou, which are regions most affected by irregular migration.

He said the stations were owned and managed by people who were leaders in their respective communities and that people listened to and considered their advice.

“Our partnership, which is expected to end in December 2018, consists among others of building capacity of radio journalists as how to best treat information related to migration,” he said.

“When a migrant speaks about his own experience, the things that he went through, that surely has the power to make the candidates to irregular migration think twice before they take that route,” Dia said.

It is possible to be successful at home

A radio programme similar to the one that Diallo was on this week was also hosted last week in Pikine, east Dakar, on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm.

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof–is himself a returnee migrant.

“It’s still possible to harvest success by staying at home,” the tall artist, who has a single called “Stop Irregular Immigration,” said.

“I saw with my own eyes people dying in the Sahara Desert, and women getting involved in prostitution to survive when they ran out of money. Also, human traffickers rape the same women they are supposed to help reach Europe,” he said during an emotionally-charged show hosted by Oxy Jeunes radio journalist Codou Loum.

Ndiaye spent two months in Libya in 2016 and paid about USD1,400 to human traffickers to help him get to Italy.

But he never made it.

Asked if he was aware that parents were funding their children’s trips to North Africa and eventually to Europe, he replied: “Stop putting pressure on your children to become rich quickly to support the family.”

“Paying for their irregular trip to Europe is not a good thing to do because if these children get killed, it will be a big loss for you.”

African governments need to do more for their youth

Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality, who was also on the show with Ndiaye, said migration was everyone’s right. However, she stressed it has be to done in a formal and legal way to avoid people falling into unpredictable traps.

Diene, while echoing the rapper’s sentiments that it was still possible to make it in Africa, appealed to African governments to create a youth-friendly environment that would persuade young Africans not to embark on such dangerous journeys.

“I think African governments have failed in their duties to help the youth thrive and improve their lives right here at home. They must support the youth through adequate youth employment programmes and legal migration policies.”

Diallo echoed the same sentiments when he spoke about the reasons for irregular migration.

•  Additional writing by Nalisha Adams.

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Sep 7 2018 (IPS)

Migrants as Messengers is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) where returning migrants share with their communities and families the dangers, trauma and abuse that many experienced while attempting irregular migration.

The stories are candid and emotional testimonials about the difficulties they faced.

Here is the discussion around irregular migration with Senegalese hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof and Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality.

Solar panels in Dakar, Senegal. Credit: Fratelli dell'Uomo Onlus, Elena Pisano

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 25 2018 (IPS)

When Senegalese president Macky Sall opened the 30MW Santhiou Mékhé solar plant last June, the country gained the title of having West Africa’s largest such plant. But the distinction was short lived.

Less than six months later, that November, the mantle was passed over to Burkina Faso as a 33MW solar power plant on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Ouagadougou, went online. But as in the case of Senegal, it is a title that Burkina Faso won’t hold for long as another West African nation, Mali, plans to open a 50MW solar plant by the end of this year.What may seem like increasing rising investment in renewables in West Africa is a combination of public-private partnerships and strong political will by countries to keep the commitments made in the Paris Agreement.

“It’s like a healthy competition…In Senegal in 2017 there have a been a number of solar plants that have quite a sizeable volume of production feeding into the electricity network. And this is turning out to be a common trend I think. Because it is one of the ways to actually fill the gap in terms of electricity, affordability and access,” says Mahamadou Tounkara, the country representative for the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in Senegal and Burkina Faso. The institute has a mandate to support emerging and developing countries develop rigorous green growth economic development strategies and works with both the public and private sector.

What may seem like increasing rising investment in renewables in West Africa is a combination of public-private partnerships and strong political will by countries to keep the commitments made in the Paris Agreement, a global agreement to tackle climate change. In the agreement countries declared their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are outlines of the actions they propose to undertake in order to limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2°C. According to an 2017 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report, 45 African countries have quantifiable renewable energy targets in their NDCs.

However, many African countries still rely heavily on fossil fuels as a main energy source.

And while the countries are showing good progress with the implementation of renewables, Dereje Senshaw, the principal energy specialist at GGGI, tells IPS that it is still not enough. He acknowledges though that the limitation for many countries “is the difficulty in how to attract international climate finance.”

In a 2017 interview with IPS, IRENA Policy and Finance expert, Henning Wuester, said that there was less than USD10 billion investment in renewables in Africa and that it needed to triple to fully exploit the continent’s potential.

Representatives from Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea and Senegal will meet in Ouagadougou from Jun. 26 to 28 at a first ever regional capacity development workshop on financing NDC implementation in the energy sector. One of the expected outcomes of the workshop, organised by GGGI, IRENA and the Green Climate Fund, is that these countries will increase their renewable energy target pledges and develop concrete action plans for prioritising their energy sectors in order to access climate funding.

Senshaw points out that these West African countries, and even those in sub-Saharan Africa where most of the energy source comes from hydropower and biomass, “can easily achieve 100% renewable energy.”

“Increasing their energy target means they are opening for climate finance. International climate finance is really willing to [provide] support when you have more ambitious targets,” he says.

IRENA estimates that Africa’s potential for renewables on the continent is around 310 GW by 2030, however, only 70 GW will be reached based on current NDCs.

While the opportunities for investment in renewables “is quite substantial,” African countries have lacked the capacity to access this, according to Tounkara.

“One reason is the quality of their portfolio of programs and projects. It is very difficult to attract investment if the bankability of the programmes and projects are not demonstrated,” Tounkara says.

Christophe Assicot, green investment specialist at GGGI, points out that existing barriers to investment in renewables in Africa include political, regulatory, technology, credit and capital market risks. “Other critical factors are insufficient or contradictory enabling policies, limited institutional capacity and experience, as well as immature financial systems.”

“Governments need to create an enabling environment for investments, which means abiding by strategies and objectives defined in NDCs, designing policy incentives, strengthening the country’s capacity and knowledge about clean technologies, engaging stakeholders, mobilizing the private sector, and facilitating access to international finance,” Assicot says.

Senshaw adds that private sector involvement will provide sustainability for the implementation of NDCs. “Private sector involvement is engineered to reach the forgotten grassroots people. Mostly access to energy is in the urban areas. Whereas in the rural areas  people are far away from the grid system. So how you reach this grid system is through collaborative works with the private sector.”

Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso have built their solar plants with public-private sector funding, with agreements in place that the energy created will be sent back to their country’s power grid. But, despite having the largest solar plant in West Africa, only about 20 percent of Burkina Faso’s 17 million people have access to electricity.

Toshiaki Nagata, senior programme officer for NDC implementation at IRENA, adds that public finance needs to be utilised in a way that leverages private finance.

“To this end, public finance would need to be used beyond direct financing, i.e., grants and loans, to focus on risk mitigation instruments and structured finance mechanisms, which can help address some of the risks and barriers faced by private investors.”

Mitigation instruments are staring to be used in Africa, with GGGI recently designing instruments for Rwanda and Ethiopia. In addition, Senegal’s Ministry of Finance requested GGGI and the African Development Bank design a financing mechanism for the country. It is called the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund (REEF).

“The REEF is a derisking mechanism that [Senegal] had to have in place so that the local banks are interested in financing renewable energy projects and energy-efficiency projects,” says Tounkara.

Senegal’s REEF will become operational in October, starting with 50 million dollars and reaching its optimum size of 200 million dollars in 24 months. Senegal will become the first country in the region to have an innovative financing mechanism.

“That is the kind of mechanism that we think is going to be needed in countries to make sure that we accelerate the access to climate finance,” Tounkara says, adding that GGGI will provide the technical assistance for capacity building needs of the banks as well as the projects developers and project promoters.

Senshaw adds that GGGI has also been supporting countries with financial modelling and  leveraging and submitting proposals for funding. “So we support in terms of business model analysis, in terms of supporting them in business model development, in terms of how they can leverage finance. If you see the experience of GGGI, last year we leveraged for member countries USD0.5 billion.”

Capacity building has been considered vital for African countries attempting to access investment for renewables, as a major area of concern for financing has been the quality of the projects and the capacity of banks to assess the quality of those projects.

“By filling that gap we actually increase the interest of the investors, particularly of the local banks and the local financing institutions, to get on board and then invest in renewable energy as well as supporting the private sector to have the necessary capacity,” Tounkara says.

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

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

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

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

Home sweet home

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

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

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

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

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

Sad tales

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

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

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

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

Assistance for voluntary return

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

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

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

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

Welcome back to society

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

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

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

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

Voluntary return: lasting solution?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving for economic reasons

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

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

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

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

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

Valuable lessons

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

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

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

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

A scene from the mission of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to Chad to inquire into crimes committed by the regime of Hissène Habré in 2001. Credit: FIDH/cc by 2.0

By a Global Information Network correspondent
DAKAR, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

After years awaiting justice by a court of law, Chadian citizens packed the Palais de Justice in Dakar, Senegal, to catch a glimpse of Hissene Habre, president of the central African nation from 1982-1990 during which time his iron fist rule took between 1,200 and 40,000 lives, according to evidence compiled by Chadian and international rights groups.

Members of victims’ groups, whose efforts to bring Habre to court spanned over two decades, now strained to view this now slight figure dressed in white robes and a traditional white turban to cover most of his face.

The 72-year-old former strongman appeared unrepentant. As the proceedings began, he shouted “Down with imperialism! [The trial] is a farce by rotten Senegalese politicians. African traitors. Valet of America,” setting off a struggle between his supporters and alleged victims. At least half a dozen guards rushed to remove him. A small group of supporters was also removed.

When Mr. Habre refused to return to the courtroom, presiding judge Gberdao Gustave Kam warned he would be forced to attend on Tuesday. Over 100 victims are due to testify at the trial.

“We want to show the Chadian people, and why not all Africans, that no, you cannot govern in terror and criminality,” Souleyman Guengueng, 66, a former accountant who spent more than two years in Habre’s prison, said to Diadie Ba, a Reuters journalist.

“After 25 years, to see him again – it was a very emotional experience,” said Clément Abaifouta, president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of Hissène Habré, who claims he was forced to dig graves for many of his fellow inmates. “But now I see that I am in the sun and he is in the shade. For us, the victims, this has been an important occasion.“

The tribunal is supported by the African Union but is part of Senegal’s justice system, making it the first time in modern history that one country’s domestic courts have prosecuted the former leader of another country on rights charges.

A successful trial would also make the case that African countries could try their own, rather than have the Western-led International Criminal Court (ICC) be the venue for trials of Africans.

The case against Habre turns on whether he personally ordered the killing and torture of political opponents and ethnic rivals. In 1992, the Chadian Truth Commission accused Habré’s government of up to 40,000 political murders, mostly by his intelligence police, the Documentation and Security Directorate. (DDS)

Human Rights Watch in 2001 unearthed thousands of documents in the abandoned DDS headquarters updating Habre on the status of detainees. A court handwriting expert concluded that margin notes on one document were Habre’s.

“Rarely do we find so much evidence of crimes,” said Reed Brody of HRW. “And these match the testimonies of the victims, day for day, word for word.”

“This is the end of a nightmare,” said Jacqueline Moudeina, the lead lawyer for the victims. “The fact that he is here and listens to victims speak of all the atrocities they suffered is already a great victory.”

Habré denies being responsible for hundreds of deaths.

The trial is expected to last several months.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Bakau fish market, The Gambia. The plight of Gambian and other West African artisan fishers could soon see a change for the better following an historic ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Photo credit: Ralfszn - Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons

By Saikou Jammeh
BANJUL, The Gambia, Apr 18 2015 (IPS)

It was five in the afternoon and Buba Badjie, a boat captain, had just brought his catch to the shore. He had spent twelve hours at sea off Bakau, a major fish landing site in The Gambia.

Inside the trays strewn on the floor bed of his wooden boat were bonga and catfish. Scores of women crowded around, looking to buy his catch.

“This is just enough to cover my expenses,” he tells IPS, indicating the squirming silvery creatures. “I went up to 20-something kilometres and all we could get was bonga.

“I spent more than 2,500 dalasis (60 dollars) on this one trip,” he confessed.

Badjie, 38, is not a native Gambian. Originally from neighbouring Senegal, he came here as a teenager looking for work. But the sea he has been fishing for almost two decades is no longer the same, he says somberly.

“This trade is about win and loss,” he added. “But nowadays, we have more losses. Recently, I went up to 50-something kilometres to another fishing ground but still no catch.

“The problem is the variations in the weather pattern. Also, we encounter huge commercial trawlers in the waters. Sometimes, they threaten to kill us when we confront them. When we spread our nets, they ruin them.”

But Badjie’s plight and that of thousands of other artisan fishers could soon see a change for the better.“The problem of oversized fleets using destructive fishing methods is a global one and the results are alarming and indisputable” – Greenpeace

In an historic ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea – the first of its kind by the full tribunal – the body affirmed that “flag States” have a duty of due diligence to ensure that fishing vessels flying their flag comply with relevant laws and regulations concerning marine resources to enable the conservation and management of these resources.

Flag States, ruled the tribunal, must take necessary measures to ensure that these vessels are not engaged in illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing activities in the waters of member countries of West Africa’s Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission (SFRC). Further, they can be held liable for breach of this duty. The ruling specifies that the European Union has the same duty as a state.

West African waters are believed to have the highest levels of IUU fishing in the world, representing up to 37 percent of the region’s catch.

“This is a very welcome ruling that could be a real game changer,” World Wildlife Fund International Marine Programme Director John Tanzer was reported as saying. “No longer will we have to try to combat illegal fishing and the ransacking of coastal fisheries globally on a boat by boat basis.”

The SRFC covers the West African countries of Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The need for an advisory opinion by the Tribunal emerged in 1993 when the SRFC reported an “over-exploitation of fisheries resources; and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of an ever more alarming magnitude.” Such illegal catches were nearly equal to allowable ones, it said.

Further, “the lost income to national economies caused by IUU fishing in Wet Africa is on the order of 500 million dollars per year.”

The apparent theft of West Africa’s fish stocks has been denounced by various environmental groups including Greenpeace, which described “monster boats” trawling in African waters on a webpage titled ‘Fish Fairly’.

“For decades,” Greenpeace wrote, “the European Union and its member states have allowed their industrial fishing fleet to swell to an unsustainable size… In 2008, the European Commission estimated that parts of the E.U. fishing fleet were able to harvest fish much faster than stocks were able to regenerate.’’

“The problem of oversized fleets using destructive fishing methods is a global one and the results are alarming and indisputable.”

Unofficial sources told IPS that there are forty-seven industrial-sized fishing vessels currently in The Gambia’s waters, thirty-five of which are from foreign fleets.

Meanwhile, artisanal fishers, on whom the population depends for supply, say they are finding it hard to feed the market. Prices have risen phenomenally and shortages in the market are no longer a rarity.

“Our waters are overfished,” said Ousman Bojang, 80, a veteran Gambian fisher.

Bojang learnt the fishing trade from his father when he was young, but later switched gears to become a police officer.

After 20 years, he retired and returned to fishing. Building his first fishing boat in 1978, he became the president of the first-ever association of fishers in the country.

“Fishing improved my livelihood,” he told IPS. “While I was in the service, I could not build a hut for myself. Now, I have built a compound. I’ve sent my children to school and all of them have graduated.

“I transferred my skills to them and they’ve joined me at sea. I have 25 children; 10 boys and 15 girls. All the boys are into fishing. Even the girls, some know how to do hook and line and to repair net.”

Other hopeful trends for the artisanal fishers include the recognition by the Africa Progress Panel, headed by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that illegal fishing is a priority that the continent must address.

Another is the endorsement by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations of guidelines which seek to improve conditions for small-scale fishers.

Nicole Franz, fishery planning analyst at FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture department in Rome, told IPS that the small-scale fisheries guidelines provide a framework change in small-scale fisheries. “It is an instrument that looks not only into traditional fisheries rights, such as fisheries management and user rights, but it also takes more integrated approach,” she said.

“It also looks into social conditions, decent employment conditions, climate change, disaster risks issues and a whole range of issues which go beyond what traditional fisheries institutions work with. Only if we have a human rights approach to small-scale fisheries, can we allow the sector to develop sustainably.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

UNIDO Director General LI Yong at the Second ISID Forum, Nov. 4-5, 2014. Credit: Courtesy of UNIDO

By Ramesh Jaura
VIENNA, Nov 6 2014 (IPS)

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has come a long way since 1997, when it faced the risk of closure in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War.

At that time, it was threatened with the withdrawal of Canada, the United States – its largest donor – as well as Australia on the grounds that the private sector was better suited to foster industrial development than an inter-governmental organisation.

Nearly one-and-a-half year after UNIDO’s 53-member Industrial Development Board appointed LI Jong – who had served as China’s Vice-Minister of Finance since 2003 – as Director General, the organisation is set to respond to post-2015 global development priorities by treading the path to inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID).

“We have a vision of a just world where resources are optimised for the good of people. Inclusive and sustainable industrial development can drive success" – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
It was not surprising therefore that some 450 participants from 92 countries, including Heads of State and government, ministers, representatives of bilateral and multilateral development partners, agencies of the United Nations system, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and academia, joined hands to interact at UNIDO’s Second ISID Forum on Nov. 4 and 5 at the United Nations headquarters in Vienna.

The first Forum was convened in June 2014, at which government officials and key policy-makers exchanged views on policies and ISID instruments and examined what had worked in one country and could inspire another.

“The promotion of inclusive and sustainable industrial development is a very clear mandate given by our Member States at the General Conference of UNIDO in Lima, Peru, last December,” LI told the Forum on Nov, 4.

“Since then, we have been implementing the new mandate in various ways … Today we send a strong statement: technical assistance cannot remain isolated from the main forces that shape the course of progress in your countries. We have to combine our efforts to enhance the developmental impact of our endeavours. Together we will grow; the partnership will make us stronger.”

The rationale behind the UNIDO Director General’s thinking is obvious. Strategic partnerships are the best response to increasingly complex development challenges because there is no single development strategy and no single actor that can address all the social, environmental and economic challenges the world faces today.

“Integrated and multi-actor responses are required to tackle problems like climate change, economic recovery, rising youth unemployment, conflict, and emerging problems such as global health pandemics,” argues Ll.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also believes that “the overarching imperative for our planet’s future is sustainable development.” In opening remarks to the Second Forum, Ban said:  “We have a vision of a just world where resources are optimised for the good of people. Inclusive and sustainable industrial development can drive success.”

Amid applause, Ban added that among the main area of action – climate change – presents an opening for inclusive and sustainable industrial development.

“Smart governments and investors are exploring innovative green technologies that can protect the environment and achieve economic growth. For industrial development to be sustainable it must abandon old models that pollute. Instead, we need sustainable approaches that help communities preserve their resources,” he said.

The UNIDO forum closely examined and endorsed new pilot programmes for country partnerships to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development in Ethiopia and Senegal.

The programmes are based on close analysis and insights gained by UNIDO experts during visits to the two countries in the course of the previous months. They have identified a number of strong partners, both local and international, and accordingly designed the two partnership programmes.

From left to right: Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, UNIDO Director General LI Yong and Senegal’s Prime Minister at UNIDO’s Second ISID Forum, Nov. 4-5, 2014. Credit: Courtesy of UNIDO

UNIDO’s work in the field of inclusive and sustainable industrialisation in Africa was lauded by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Senegalese Prime Minister Mahammed Dionne.

Commending the creation of the new partnership approach, Prime Minister Desalegn said that inclusive and sustainable industrialisation would help his country develop. He said Ethiopia was looking forward to enhancing its economic transformation and that such a partnership model will help implement this vision.

Prime Minister Dionne said economic growth must lead to the eradication of poverty and address the problem of unemployment, adding that inclusive and sustainable industrialisation would help implement Senegal’s development plan by providing the collective action needed to make it happen.

Director General Ll assured the two prime ministers that “UNIDO is fully committed to supporting the governments of Ethiopia and Senegal in implementing the two programmes.”

“These pilot programmes,” he said, “mark the beginning of a larger, more comprehensive and ambitious approach to how UNIDO undertakes technical cooperation with and for Member States to support their industrialisation agenda.”

“If we want to achieve the scale of development needed, we have to explore the full potential of inclusive and sustainable industrial development,” Ll added.

“We have to strengthen productive capacities. We must build enterprises. We must reach out to farmers and entrepreneurs, and promote economic diversification and structural transformation based on adding value to the natural resources of these countries.”

The need for moving away from activities that are low value-added and low-productivity to activities that add more value and boost productivity was explained by the U.N. Secretary-General at the high-level thematic roundtable of the United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) on Nov. 3 in Vienna.

There, Ban said: “Think of a coffee bean, just a simple coffee bean. All LLDCs can sell just a coffee bean as it is. But more developed creative countries … grind this coffee bean and sell as a manufactured product at a much higher price.

“The same with unprocessed minerals. Lots of developing countries … sell minerals just as they are. Many foreign companies come and bring all these minerals, and then they sell back with processed manufactures, [at a] much higher [price]. Then with their own mineral resources they have to buy, they have to pay a lot of money.”

ISID takes into account factors such as the structural and knowhow bottlenecks faced by developing countries by “the mobilisation of partners and their resources to synergise with UNIDO’s technical cooperation”, LI told the ISID Forum.

Commenting on the agreed cooperation with Ethiopia and Senegal, he said: “I would say that these two pilot programmes for country partnership mark the beginning of a larger, more comprehensive and more ambitious approach of how UNIDO undertakes technical cooperation with and for Member States to support their industrialisation agendas.”

“Together with our partners, we will finalise the planning of the partnership country programmes, based on the inputs we receive in this Forum.”

Those inputs included recognition that the concerns and development objectives of countries seeking international support must be taken into account and that there is no alternative to public-private partnerships.

These partnerships, participants agreed, must aim at eradication of poverty and not maximisation of the profits of the private corporations involved in such partnerships.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

With annual economic growth rates of over 10 percent and attractive investment conditions due to low infrastructural and labour costs, Ethiopia is eagerly trying to rise from the status of low-income to middle-income country in the next 10 years.

Ethiopia, with some 94 million inhabitants, is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria, but it remains a predominantly rural country. Only 17.5 percent of the population lives in urban areas, mainly Addis Ababa.

It is also one of the continent’s fastest growing economies. Between 2015 and 2018 growth is expected to average 7.3 percent, according to a recent study by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

While economic growth since 2006/2007 doubled per capita income to 550 dollars in 2012/13, and the percentage of people living below the national poverty line dropped from 38.9 in 2004 to 29.6 in 2011, government sources admit that eradication of poverty remains a compelling issue.“There is not a single country in the world which has reached a high state of economic and social development without having developed an advanced industrialised sector” – UNIDO Director General Li Yong

The official target of rising to a middle-income country is considered to be realistic, but an East Asian diplomat accredited to the African Union in Addis Ababa says there is reason to be sceptical, partly because although the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) rose from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 2 percent in 2013, investors continue to face trade constraints.

According to UNIDO, these are mainly related to border-logistics. Djibouti, the main import-export seaport used by Ethiopia, is situated 781 km from Addis Ababa, which makes the cost of land transportation a critical factor.

It is against this backdrop that UNIDO has chosen Ethiopia, along with Senegal, as a pilot country for its ambitious inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID) programme, which aims to achieve industrialisation in developing countries in order to eradicate poverty and create prosperity.

According to UNIDO Director General Li Yong, “there is not a single country in the world which has reached a high state of economic and social development without having developed an advanced industrialised sector”.

What distinguishes the ISID programme is that “current modes of industrialisation are neither fully inclusive nor properly sustainable”, he added. UNIDO is therefore not merely promoting industrialisation but trying to approach the needs and challenges of the globalised world that demand future-oriented concepts.

Promoting the sustainability that should be inherent to industrialisation, UNIDO says that the ISID programme takes into account environmental factors together with its partner countries and organisations.

It also fosters an industrialisation that is inclusive in sharing the benefits of the generated prosperity for all parties involved, thereby promoting social equality within populations as well as an equal distribution between men and women to ensure that nobody is excluded from the benefits of growth.

To show how these objectives can be met and to promote ISID, UNIDO organised the Second Forum on ISID from Nov. 4 to 5 in Vienna. In an opening statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “We have a vision of a just world where resources are optimised for the good of people. Inclusive and sustainable industrial development can drive success.”

The Secretary-General, who is a strong advocate of the sustainable development agenda, also said that in order to achieve this objective, “industrial development must abandon old models that pollute. Instead, we need sustainable approaches that help communities preserve their resources.”

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Mahammed Dionne of Senegal – representing the two pilot countries chosen for ISID – commended UNIDO for implementing a partnership programme, and Ethiopia’s State Minister of Industry, Mebrahtu Meles, emphasised that building industrial zones will accelerate industrialisation, as has been done by Asian countries such as China.

Forum participants expressed optimism about Ethiopia achieving economic growth through inclusive and industrial sustainable development provided that leadership and vision focused on the country’s comparative advantages while improving infrastructure.

They said that regional integration could be key for the development of the country, and called for further exploration of UNIDO’s role as a catalyst of transformational change.

In particular additional efforts were required to enhance the productivity in existing light industries such as agro-food processing, textiles and garments, leather and leather products. There was also a need to diversify by launching new industries such as heavy metal and chemicals and building up high-tech industries like packing, biotechnology, electronics, information and communications.

The ambassadors of China, Japan and Italy to Ethiopia – Xie Xiaoyan, Kazuhiro Suzuki and Giuseppe Mistretta respectively – as well as business stakeholders and development banks assured their continued support in helping Ethiopia take the path towards inclusive and sustainable industrial development, mainly through UNIDO.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Only 65 percent of Senegalese women give birth in the presence of a skilled attendant. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Doreen Akiyo Yomoah
DAKAR, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

Diouma Tine is a 50-year-old vegetable seller and a mother of six boys. In her native Senegal, she tells IPS, motherhood isn’t a choice. “If you’re married, then you must have children. If you don’t, then you don’t get to stay in your husband’s house, and no one will respect you.”

Despite this prevailing cultural outlook, becoming a mother here is neither easy, nor safe, with only 65 percent of Senegalese women giving birth in the presence of a skilled attendant.

According to available data, 54 percent of Senegal’s 13.7 million people live in rural areas. Of these, some 3.3 million are women of reproductive age, an estimated 85 percent of who live about 45 minutes from a health facility.

The country has a worryingly high maternal mortality rate (MMR). The last government survey taken in 2005 found that 41 women died per 1,000 live births, giving the country a ranking of 144 out of 181.

“In some regions, like the Kolda and Tamba Regions, you can find up to 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births [since] some women are denied the ability to make decisions about when to go to hospital, [and] sometimes when roads are bad it’s difficult for them to get to a health centre.” -- Gacko Ndèye Ndiaye, coordinator of the gender cell at the Ministère de la Santé et Action Sociale (Ministry of Health and Social Action)
Between 2005 and 2010, the MMR in Senegal fell from 401 to 392 deaths per 100,000 live births, representing some progress but hinting at the scale of unmet need around the country.

One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to achieve universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015, but it is increasingly clear to health workers and policy makers that Senegal will not reach this target.

This year’s State of the World’s Midwifery Report produced by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) projected that Senegal’s population was set to increase by 59 percent to 21.9 million by 2030.

“To achieve universal access to sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn care, midwifery services must respond to one million pregnancies per annum by 2030, 53 percent of these in rural settings,” the report stated, adding that the health system must be configured to cover some 66 million antenatal visits, 11.7 million births, and 46.7 million post-partum and postnatal visit from 2012 to 2030.

This past May, on the International Day of the Midwife, former Prime Minister Aminata Touré called attention to a gap of 1,336 midwives in the country, setting in motion a government-sponsored recruitment drive to rapidly increase the number of trained birth attendants.

The midwife shortage is felt most severely in rural areas: the Matam region in eastern Senegal, for instance, has only 14 midwives for a population of nearly 590,000, while Tambacounda, to the south of Matam, has only 38 for a population of about 670,000.

Senegal has both ‘sage-femmes’ (fully trained midwives), and ‘matrones’, direct-entry midwives who deliver the vast majority of babies in Senegal but lack proper education, and often learn their trade on site, sometimes spending less than six months in a clinical training setting before being taking up posts in rural areas.

“There is kind of a crisis in education,” Kaya Skye, executive director of the African Birth Collective, tells IPS.

“Matrones learn how to take blood pressure, but they don’t understand what that means. [With matrones] there is an urgency to get the baby out as soon as possible [and] an overuse of drugs, which is […] another cause of mortality,” she explained.

In fact, Touré stated during a speech on May 12 that 60 percent of maternal deaths in the country could have been avoided with “sufficient personnel, a suitable medical platform, [and] democratic access to women’s health services, notably the disadvantaged in remote areas.”

Gacko Ndèye Ndiaye, coordinator of the gender cell at the Ministère de la Santé et Action Sociale (Ministry of Health and Social Action), and a midwife by trade, tells IPS that numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.

“There are disparities between different areas,” she asserted. “In some regions, like the Kolda and Tamba Regions, you can find up to 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births [since] some women are denied the ability to make decisions about when to go to hospital, [and] sometimes when roads are bad it’s difficult for them to get to a health centre.”

The National Agency of Statistics and Demography’s 2011 health indicators report found that over 90 percent of urban births are assisted by a trained assistant, but that number falls to just half for rural births.

Skye’s African Birth Collective works to fill these gaps, and recently built the Kassoumai Birth Centre in the Kabar village of the southern Casamance region to meet the needs of mothers and midwives.

According to Skye, “Traditional midwives said they wanted their own place to practice; that they didn’t feel welcome in government clinics. There was nothing in Kabar for women – they were giving birth in the showers behind their houses.”

Although the government does provide training for midwives, building this centre was “about creating infrastructure that is outside of government protocols and facilitating that dialogue where the traditional midwives can say ‘We do it this way’,” Skye says.

A long colonial history and post-colonial education in Senegal has meant that the Western obstetric model has been dominant.

Grassroots efforts, including the work of ENDA Santé, the health division of an international NGO called Environmental Development Action in the Third World, are helping to foster a better balance between Westernised birthing techniques and traditional methods.

The African Birth Collective and ENDA Santé have translated the educational manual ‘A Book for Midwives’ into French, giving birth attendants in Francophone West Africa access to crucial information, such as the case for non-supine positions, and inverted resuscitation methods.

For women like Tine, the pride that comes from being a mother will always outweigh the dangers and complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

But if the government of Senegal scales up its efforts to improve health services, it can remove the fear factor altogether, and make a strong contribution towards global efforts to ensure the health and safety of every mother.

This story originally appeared in a special edition TerraViva, ‘ICPD@20: Tracking Progress, Exploring Potential for Post-2015’, published with the support of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. The contents are the independent work of reporters and authors.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Senegal has low HIV prevalence but high stigma, and children living with HIV suffer the consequences. Courtesy: Mercedes Sayagues

By Mathilde Cru
DAKAR, Aug 2 2014 (IPS)

Children living with HIV in Senegal suffer because of the taboo associated with this disease in a country which is, however, praised for its fight against the pandemic.

“I don’t want my son’s HIV status to be known, my family would not take it well,” explains Fanta (39), who is herself HIV positive.

“The word AIDS is too loaded,” says this mother of three children, one of whom was born HIV positive 14 years ago, and who fears that both she and her teenage son would be disowned by the family if the secret was revealed.

“My mother doesn’t know, she wouldn’t be able to keep it to herself, I am suspicious of everyone,” she told IPS, adding that her other two children do not know her and their brother’s HIV status.

According to a survey conducted on 626 HIV positive people in Senegal by the National Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS (RNP+), less than half of them have told their partners about their HIV status and only 28 percent have told at least one member of their family.

“I  had to talk about it [my HIV status] with my father, because if I die one day, I don’t want people to think it is because of voodoo,” Fanta told IPS, referring to the practice of witchcraft which, according to some, brings sudden death.

As a result of reacting swiftly to the first cases of AIDS, Senegal’s HIV prevalence rate is estimated at 0.7 percent of the population, compared to 4.7 percent in Ivory Coast and 3.2 percent in Nigeria, the worst hit West African countries according to the United Nations.

Left high and dry

The stigma attached to the disease, however, has an adverse effect on continuity of care for the child living with HIV.

Mbaye Mboye, programme head at Synergy for Childhood, an organisation which manages a paediatric AIDS unit in Guediwaye, in Dakar Region, explains that when the parent of an infected child dies or when the guardian remarries or moves, it is rare for anyone to take over responsibility for care.

“We have problems with guardians, sometimes they forget to give medication, sometimes they are preoccupied with other issues,” Mbaye Mboye told IPS.

“But we prefer the child’s HIV status to be disclosed to a very limited few to maintain confidentiality,” he adds.

This concern with confidentiality requires some creativity from both social workers and guardians, who may have to fabricate visits to imaginary relatives in order to go for appointments.

“Our social workers pretend to be family friends when they do home visits and they must verify that the person who answers the phone is the guardian on file at the hospital,” says Mbaye Mboye.

According to the National Council for the Fight against AIDS (CNLS), some 6,500 children under the age of 15 were living with HIV in Senegal in 2013 and almost 8,000 are orphans or vulnerable children because of AIDS.

One of the consequences of the silence weighing on these children is that their access to antiretroviral treatment is more limited than adults.  Despite free treatment since 1997, three quarters of adults in need benefited in 2011 in contrast to only one third of children, according to CNLS.

Since 2010, reimbursement of transport expenses for guardians taking children to medical appointments has reduced the number of children “falling off the radar,” says Mbaye Mboye.

“Children tend to be neglected compared with the global approach to caring for adults,” he laments.

HIV positive children have specific needs of school and nutrition support.  Absenteeism as a result of recurrent illness results in critical educational delays and malnourishment is higher among them.

Ibrahima Ba, secretary general of RNP+, points to the economic situation, the lack of co-ordination between health staff and social workers, and the absence of a national programme specifically for children.

“Children are left high and dry,” he says. “It is the mother’s responsibility to take the child to hospital, and she only goes when the child is ill.  If it is a minor problem, she downplays it.”

Senegal has only 59 paediatric units providing care for HIV positive children compared to 97 for adults.

“There is no follow up on children who do not come regularly to hospital, no one calls the guardian,” adds Ba. “The state needs to focus more on children living with HIV because they are becoming sexually active teenagers.”

The reduction in international funding for AIDS is of concern to the National Alliance against AIDS (ANCS).

“We are concerned that the state is no longer taking charge and we are afraid the gains achieved in 25 years of fighting AIDS may be reversed,” says Massogui Thiandoum, head of programmes at ANCS.

Edited by: Mercedes Sayagues

Translated by: Runyararo Bertha Faranisi 

The Dangote cement factory, set to be one of the largest on the continent, is now in Galene, Poute and Dangane, villages close to Thies, Senegal’s third-biggest city. Credit: Doreen Akiyo Yomoah/IPS

By Doreen Akiyo Yomoah
DAKAR, Jun 22 2014 (IPS)

While the cement factories in Senegal are at war, ostensibly over the environmental impact one company will have on this West African nation, experts have cautioned that as the government plans to radically develop and industrialise the country, striking a balance between environmental protection and development will be key.

“I don’t think we can want one thing, and also want its opposite. We need cement to help industry in Senegal. At the same token, it will have adverse effects on the environment and we have to try and minimise them,” Dr. Thomas Ibrahima, a researcher at the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research (ISRA), told IPS.

Sococim, the Senegalese subsidiary of Vicat, a French cement manufacturing company, is at loggerheads with the government of Senegal."Even ministers admit to not being able to follow all [the recommendations] in the environmental impact studies." -- Djim Nanasta, Environmental Development Action in the Third World

The French company began suing the state in November 2013, at Common Court of Justice and Arbitration (CCJA), a regional arbitration court in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for allowing Dangote Cement, a Nigerian cement conglomerate, to set up shop in Senegal.

Dangote reportedly paid the descendants of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a renowned Senegalese religious leader, a 12.6-million-dollar settlement to develop the factory on forest lands they inhabit. The factory, set to be one of the largest on the continent, is close to Thies, the country’s third-biggest city. The villages of Galene, Poute and Dangane are in close proximity to the site.

IPS was not allowed entry near the site, and was banned from entering the village of Galene. However, some villagers in Poute have expressed relief that the factory has come to the area.

Aboulaye Fall, a Dangote employee and Poute resident, told IPS: “Dangote is ready to help Poute. The company is going to provide electricity and roads for easier travel. The company is decreasing youth unemployment, and most of us are very happy to have the factory here in Poute.”

But Djim Nanasta, programme officer at Environmental Development Action in the Third World (ENDA), an international environmental and energy NGO based in Dakar, told IPS that due to cultural pressures, “people may have objections about the setting up of the factory, but they may not feel that they can openly express their complaints.”

According to Nanasta, when conflict arose between Sococim and Dangote, the youth in Poute formed a coalition in support of Dangote. However, he pointed out that one of the concerns of a cement factory, is that “they emit a lot of dust. This affects the population by causing respiratory problems.”

Boubacar Camara, the CEO of Sococim, said in an earlier interview: “This is the first time in the history of Senegal that we have seen a plant built in violation of all the rules.” Camara claimed that the requirements — acquiring permits, and conducting environmental impact studies, which are necessary steps for opening a cement factory in this West African nation — had been flouted by Dangote.

Abdoulaye Ndaw, a senior legal officer and the chief of knowledge and information management at CCJA, told IPS that the case was still pending with the court, and no ruling has been made on whether Dangote has violated any laws.

According to Ndaw: “Vicat, which made heavy investments to control the entire national cement [industry], does not want to see their business plunge into instability with the entry of a new cement [competitor].”

Cement manufacturing is not the only industrialisation taking place here. President Macky Sall went to Paris in February to solicit donations to fund Emerging Plan Senegal (PSE), the government’s plan to radically develop and industrialise the country.

PSE focuses heavily on industrialisation, and while cement manufacturing is hard on the environment, this type of activity will increase. Senegal already exports phosphate. Chemical Industries of Senegal, the country’s largest phosphate developer, is expected to begin providing two million tonnes of phosphate per annum, which will place a significant toll on the environment.

The president has also expressed a desire to make mining, which is notoriously destructive to the environment, one of the pillars of Senegal’s development, saying: “We’re committed to putting all the conditions in place to attract companies.”

However, Francis James, country director of the United Nations Development Programme, has said that two-thirds of Senegal’s soil, or 34 percent of the country’s surface, is affected by environmental degradation, and the country is losing 50,000 hectares of land per year.

Moustapha Ndiaye, an environmentalist at the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, told IPS that in the face of industrialisation: “There are many laws that exist to protect the environment. It’s absolutely necessary for companies to respect them.”

But Nanasta cautioned that although cement companies may comply with environmental regulations in order to be given the go-ahead to commence operations, there is hardly any follow-up. “Even ministers admit to not being able to  follow all [the recommendations] in the environmental impact studies,” Nanasta said.

Students on the Spanish island of Tenerife talk to youngsters from a school in the Sahrawi refugee camps outside of Tindouf in western Algeria. Credit: Courtesy Red Canaria de Escuelas Solidarias

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain , Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

Hundreds of students from Spain’s Canary Islands, Senegal and the Sahrawi refugee camps outside of Tindouf in western Algeria are meeting each other and breaking down cultural barriers thanks to the Red Educativa Sin Fronteras.

In the “Educational Network Without Borders”, students, teachers and parents build bridges between classrooms on both sides of the miles of Atlantic Ocean that separate them.

“Hi, my name is Ángel, I’m 13 years old and I go to school at the CEO (Centro de Educación Obligatoria) Mogán in the south of Gran Canaria Island. I would like to meet students from Senegal,” says one boy in a video taped by Ivanhoe Hernández, a teacher of literature from that school.

The CEO school arranges virtual and snail mail exchanges with the students of Mbake Gueye, who teaches Spanish in Louga in northwestern Senegal.

The RESF network is made up of volunteer teachers, parents and students from Senegal, Western Sahara and Gabon in West Africa, Haiti in the Caribbean, and the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa.

It emerged in 2004, at the initiative of the Puente Humano or Human Bridge association, based in Senegal and the Canary Islands, with the aim of tearing down day by day “the wall of ignorance that exists between our people,” Amadou Ba, who also teaches Spanish in Louga, told IPS in a videoconference.

“We are teachers from both sides [of the Atlantic] and we propose a cultural and educational change that makes it possible to form global citizens,” Rafael Blanco, a teacher of Latin and Greek who belongs to Puente Humano, told IPS. He is the coordinator of RESF in the Canary Islands, and is presently visiting Senegal.

Ba, a 33-year-old who has been a teacher since 2004, said the communication between students from Africa and Spain focuses on specific subjects prepared ahead of time, such as immigration, family life or the environment.

“Hearing about the need to care for the environment, for example, from Spanish students of the same age reaches them better and sensitises them more,” said Ba, who teaches in the Artillerie Nord school in Louga, which coordinates RESF in Senegal.

As part of RESF, students between the ages of 12 and 16 write short reports, tape video recordings, ask and answer questions, take photos and make drawings that travel back and forth across the Atlantic by email or through the postal service.

The direct communications are through video conferences or audio conferences, using cellphones connected to speakers.

Blanco mentioned the material and technical difficulties in Senegal, where some of the schools involved do not have Internet connection, and where power cuts are frequent. For that reason, much of the communication depends on postal delivery services.

Puente Humano covers the cost of establishing Internet connections in the schools in Louga.

Some 650 students in 13 schools in Senegal currently interact with students and teachers in the Canary Islands.

Blanco estimated that another 720 students are involved in the project in the Canary Islands and in three schools in the Tindouf refugee camps – where almost all of the roughly 250,000 Sahrawi people live today, 1,465 km southwest of Algiers.

A school in Ansé a Pitres, in southeast Haiti, also took part in the exchanges in 2012, but did not continue in 2013 due to technical difficulties.

“Our aim is to multiply real cooperation by means of communication,” says the Puente Humano website.

Blanco believes “you can’t cooperate with something you don’t know,” and paraphrased
Madou Ndeye, a Senegalese teacher and writer who died in March 2013, who said “we would be more advanced if the money that went to cooperation and aid was dedicated to getting to know each other and communicate with each other.”

Ba said participation in RESF would encourage his students to take photos and tape short videos of their day-to-day lives in Louga, to share with the students in the Canary Islands.

“We have values, customs, rich things to show,” said Ba, who believes development aid projects carried out by non-governmental organisations “should not only be based on giving, but also on receiving.”

He also lamented that the information that reaches Europe from Africa “is only trade-related, because the business community isn’t interested in us communicating with each other.”

The teachers involved in RESF incorporate the student exchanges in their daily coursework. For example, a math teacher on the Canary island of Tenerife suggested that her students analyse “the statistics of inequality,” comparing the cost of living and of the basic basket of essential items in Spain and Senegal.

“Awareness-raising is the most important thing we have managed to do, with our students,” said Cristóbal Mendoza, a teacher in the Mario Lhermet school on the Canary island of La Gomera, in an interview broadcast by the Irradia radio platform, taped in Senegal during a visit by several Canary Islands teachers to Louga.

During the 2010-2011 school year, the coordination of RESF was incorporated in the Red Canaria de Escuelas Solidarias (roughly, the Canary Network of Schools in Solidarity), which carries out projects for educational cooperation with Africa.

RESF’s blog presents the different subjects, activities and experiences of the teachers of different subjects. Blanco and his students at the Instituto Cabrera Pinto school in Tenerife investigated myths from Spain and West Africa in a course on classic culture.

“There are networks that bind and networks that bring people together. Never get tired of weaving those networks that bring people together,” wrote Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in a message of support to the RESF, which he applauded for its work of South-North educational cooperation.

The famous writer stressed that the initiative develops values, applies new technologies to cooperation, enriches educational subjects and courses, and develops knowledge of different cultures and realities.

“They are in Senegal, but they have the same worries, fears, emotions and goals as you do,” Ivanhoe Hernández, originally from the southern Spanish city of Málaga, explains to his students in the Canary Islands.

He said “educating and learning together helps break down prejudice and racism.”

Blanco said in a videoconference from Senegal, where he is working on coordination of the network thanks to a one-year sabbatical leave: “We are creating a culture of knowledge directly, without depending on the television, making use of communication tools and technology, and in a language that allows people to communicate and share.”

The network has made possible exchange trips to Senegal for students and teachers from the Canary Islands and vice versa, where they visit schools, stay in the homes of local families, and become familiar with the culture.

As the Spanish government cuts development aid funds, RESF is growing in the number of students involved. And although the project is moving ahead “without haste” and represents “a few drops of water, that is a lot,” Blanco said.

U.S. President Barack Obama's in Accra, Ghana in 2009. Credit: US Army Africa/CC by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 24 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are urging U.S. President Barack Obama to focus on more than just economic development during his upcoming trip to Africa.

They are also hoping that the state visits will be able to turn the tide on years of U.S. engagement with Africa only through the lens of security and counter-terrorism.

Starting Wednesday, Obama will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania on what will be his second trip to the continent as president. His advisors say he hopes to focus on increasing trade, investments and other economic opportunities.

“This shouldn’t be a light-hearted and easy trip,” Adotei Akwei, Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International, told IPS. “It shouldn’t just be about economics and investing, because there are some serious issues that need to be addressed.”

According to aides, Obama will also put significant emphasis on supporting growing democracies in each of the three countries, as well as on the African youth population."If the U.S. wants to be in step with the 21st century and the centuries to come...it needs to pay attention to Africa." -- Emira Woods

“Each of the countries that we’re visiting are strong democracies,” National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said in a White House briefing conference call. “The president has made it a priority to support the consolidation of democratic institutions in Africa so that Africans are focused not just on democratic elections, but institutions like parliaments, independent judiciaries and strengthening of the rule of law.”

In addition to bilateral meetings with political leaders in the three countries, Obama will participate in events with private sector leaders. Development issues will play a role, particularly regarding food security.

“Food security has been one of our key development priorities,” Rhodes said, “in which we’ve brought together the international community as well as the private sector behind approaches that strengthen African capacity in developing agricultural sectors that better feed the populations.”

Obama has been criticised for paying relatively little attention to Africa during his presidency. His first and only trip to the continent lasted less than 24 hours.

“If the U.S. wants to be in step with the 21st century and the centuries to come,” Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS, “it needs to pay attention to Africa.”

Security focus

Further, for many humanitarian advocates, what little focus Obama has paid to Africa has been largely security related.

“I am concerned that in recent years, the degree to which there is a focus in Africa has been aimed at counterterrorism initiatives,” John Hutson, director of communications at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “I hope this trip will create a sense of interest and actions that will help African development and thereby help the United States.”

The Institute for Policy Studies’ Woods concurred, “The U.S. has focused overwhelmingly on the security sector, at the expense of those other building blocks of a healthy society.”

Obama will not be visiting two of the continent’s most unstable countries, Somalia and Mali. Yet according to some observers, the instability in these parts of Africa is due in part to U.S. support of authoritarian regimes.

Independent policy analyst and activist Nii Akkuetteh applauded the Obama administration for not visiting countries that, at a panel discussion here Monday, he called “U.S.-friendly tyrants”.

“The criticism right now is, if you flood a country like Mali with arms and it goes wrong, we don’t think it’s right to turn your back on the problem,” said Akkuetteh. “It is in the U.S.’s best interest to help Mali rebuild since they were partners when Mali slipped into their problematic state.”

Meanwhile, others are pointing to climate change as a more pressing long-term security threat to Africa. On Tuesday, Obama is scheduled to unveil a major new U.S. policy push to combat climate change, but so far Washington has been a significant contributor to the inability of international negotiations to arrive at a comprehensive agreement on the issue.

“Clearly what we are calling for is for the Obama administration to look at the affects of its policies on climate change,” said Woods. According to Dev Kar, chief economist at the research and advocacy organisation Global Financial Integrity, scientists and security analysts are already forecasting a increase in the number of conflicts in Africa and beyond as a result of water shortage.

According to recently released World Bank data, such an uptick will likely be visible within decades.

Meanwhile, the cost of Obama’s trip, reportedly from 60 to 100 million dollars, has led to some furious criticism from within the United States, where austerity measures are continuing to upset long-running government programmes. But Amnesty International’s Akwei suggests this is not only a sideshow, but a problematic indication of the broader U.S. view of Africa.

“This criticism continues a sad trend of the perception of the continent, which is basically that it doesn’t matter and its irrelevant,” he said.

“In fact, it is relevant. It is a major front of the Pentagon and its work on terror, it is a major source of oil to this country, and it is a humanitarian focal point.”

Some 8,000 Talibés, which means students of an Islamic school, are still begging on Dakar’s street corners. Credit: Marc-Andre Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
DAKAR/BISSAU , Jun 11 2013 (IPS)

In Dakar, urban commuters are familiar with kids as young as five years old begging on street corners at all hours of the day or the night, with torn, dirty clothes, collecting donations in an empty tin can.

Here, these boys are called Talibés, which means students of an Islamic school, or daara. Traditionally, they were sent to neighbourhood houses to “learn modesty through begging,” while spending most of their day studying the Quran with their teacher, the marabout.

But times have changed, and now a number of Talibés face a harsh life as some marabouts make a living out of the exploitation of these boys.

Several daaras can be found in Yoff, a poor neighbourhood in this West African nation’s capital city.

In one, located in an unfinished building, about 20 boys are sleeping on the concrete floor. There is no need to enter; everything can be seen from the street.

A Talibé on the streets says he is 12 years old, but looks six. He spends his day repeating: “Give me alms.”

Later, he tells IPS: “I have to bring back (one dollar) to the daara or my marabout will lash me with an electrical cable.” He cannot recite a single verse of the Quran. In his tin box, he has some sugar and coins given to him by people.

“People give to these kids without realising what’s happening. These kids are invisible,” Isabelle de Guillebon, the director of Samusocial Sénégal, an NGO helping street kids, tells IPS. In a shelter in Ouakam, a booming middle-class neighbourhood of Dakar, she and her staff accumulate horror stories. On her desk is an iron cast used to restrain the wrists of the Talibés. She says many of them are victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

When nine Talibés died after a daara burned down Mar. 3 in Dakar’s Medina neighbourhood, people in Senegal were outraged. Authorities closed down the daara and returned the children to their families, including 10 from neighbouring Guinea-Bissau.

It is not the first time the government has tried to act. Several NGOs, notably Human Rights Watch, have pressured the authorities, often pointing to the crossroads of Islamic authorities and political power as a reason for inaction.

In 2005 the government passed stricter laws against begging, including stronger sentences for mistreating children.

But some 8,000 Talibés are still begging on Dakar’s street corners. And three months after the Medina tragedy, little progress has been made towards a real solution to the problem.

De Guillebon is sceptical about easy solutions as she sees that the issue is far more complex than religion and politics.

“They are not Talibés. They are street kids,” she says. For her, the so-called Talibés are just part of the 10,000 to 12,000 street children roaming the streets of Dakar.

Since 2003, Samusocial has had two mobile teams travelling the streets of the Senegalese capital to work with these children.

“These kids face a breakdown in family ties. Many of them come from regions far away. They experienced a harsh psychological and sociological shock: they pass from the middle age to the 21st century,” says de Guillebon.

De Guillebon says the children need psychological support in order to be successfully reunited with their families. “There is a need for family mediation. There is a reason why they are there. It is a sociological crisis. And they will come back if you do not take care of that.”

The core of the issue, she says, is to convince parents to not abandon their children.

In neighbouring Guinea-Bissau’s capital, Bissau, Laudolino Carlos Medina heads the Associao dos Amigos da Criança or Association of Children’s Friends, which provides family mediation to assist in the repatriation of the boys, and to prevent them from being lured into a life of begging for marabouts. They are now busy getting ready to receive the 10 boys from Dakar.

“A number of children are lured to Dakar. Marabouts come to villages and take advantage of the lack of education and opportunities.”

Medina knows about several tricks used by marabouts to convince parents. “They bring two or three talibés who they have trained to sing one of the Quran surahs. Parents see how good the boys are, and entrust their own children to the marabouts thinking they will also do well.”

In Guinea-Bissau, 55 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and about 50 percent of children have never enrolled in school, according to the World Bank.

Ousmane Baldé, from Guinea-Bissau, makes the 17-hour commute from his country to Dakar several times a month. His sister sent her son to a daara in the Senegalese capital.

“I told them what I saw in Dakar before they sent their boy. But they are sure he is in good hands, no matter what I tell them. The family believes that he is ensured a better future, and that they are not responsible anymore.”

Back in Dakar, Ousmane Ndiaye, a Senegalese taxi driver, screams at two Talibés fighting on the street corner. “Look at those kids. Poor behaviour. Delinquents!”

Ndiaye sends his two sons and his daughter to daaras.

“They need to learn the Quran, like I did. But during the weekdays they go to the state school. My marabout agrees with that. I think that traditional and modern schools can go hand in hand. Kids need to have both. In daaras, my children have learnt our Islamic values. It is important for the Senegalese.”

Looking back at the two boys fighting, he adds, “And those kids learned none of them. They learn how to become criminals. Shame on their parents!”

Senegalese President Macky Sall, with Wendy Benchley. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

By Christopher Pala
WASHINGTON, Apr 15 2013 (IPS)

Hours after President Macky Sall of Senegal met in Washington with President Barack Obama late last month, he stepped into a brightly lit hotel meeting room to accept the Peter Benchley Award for National Stewardship of the Ocean, the only prize for ocean conservation given to heads of state.

As he had promised during his campaign, Sall, upon his election a year ago, voided a series of unpopular contracts his predecessor had signed with foreign industrial vessels that catch huge amounts of sardinella, a depleted seagoing fish that is now West Africa’s main source of animal protein, and turn it into fishmeal for foreign aquaculture."It’s very hard to tell local fishermen to stop fishing to feed their country when foreign industrial trawlers are allowed to take away a big catch" -- UBC's Daniel Pauly

“President Sall is now moving forward with plans to assure a sustainable domestic fishery free of foreign exploitation, creating a model for West Africa and the world,” said Wendy Benchley, widow of “Jaws” author Peter Benchley, before handing him the award as representatives from Greenpeace and the World Bank applauded.

But in an interview just before the ceremony, Sall said the ban was not permanent and he was planning to bring back the foreign sardinella trawlers in six months. “We’re giving the stock a year and a half to recover,” he told IPS. “Now we need to find a responsible approach to managing this fishery sustainably so that our fishermen can fish and foreign trawlers can also fish in strictly controlled conditions.”

“That would be suicide,” says Philippe Cury, who heads a fisheries research institute in Sète, France, and has studied West African fisheries. “There’s already not enough sardinella as it is.”

The foreign sardinella vessels have significantly depleted the population, which travels between Senegal and Mauritania, fishing more than twice as much as they can sustain without shrinking, according to a scientific report by the Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic, he said.

The report, which came out last month, a year after the Russian trawlers left, said that even Senegal’s fleet of dugout canoes was taking too much fish and should be restrained.

“It’s very hard to tell local fishermen to stop fishing to feed their country when foreign industrial trawlers are allowed to take away a big catch,” said Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia, Canada, who studies developing world fisheries. “Now that that’s been done, Senegal can try to reduce its own take so the sardinella populations can recover.”

Didier Gascuel of the European University of Brittany in Rennes, France, who is one of the authors of the report, said that, “Even if the artisanal catch stays at that level, the sardinella have a chance to recover.”

Noting that the populations of sardinella grow and shrink naturally based on differences in currents and weather, he added, “But if they bring back the industrial trawlers, all it would take is one bad year for the stock to be wiped out.”

Northern West Africa, where nutrient-rich currents well up from the deep, boasts one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, historically affording a bountiful catch to its coastal population and providing tens of thousands of jobs. Senegal’s fishermen are among Africa’s most accomplished and the national dish, the Thiéboudienne, is based on a succulent grouper called the thiof. Other valuable fish as well as lobster and shrimp were also abundant.

But starting in the 1960s, European and Soviet trawlers moved in, scraping rakes fitted with nets along the bottom and destroying the habitat that fish and crustaceans depend on. They sold the fish abroad after paying governments a tiny percentage of its value for the right to catch it.

“Up until the 1980s, the catch was 80 percent bottom fish and 20 percent sardinella, which was known as the fish of the poor,” said Cury, the French scientist. “Now the proportions are reversed.”

“There’s no more bottom fish,” said Abdou Karim Sall, head of the main association of fishermen and no relation to the president. “The sardinella is all we have left.”

Most of the sardinella is soaked in brine and dried, which allows it to keep its nutritional value for long periods without refrigeration. It is sold throughout the arid Sahel region, where the growing season lasts only three months. It’s the main source of animal protein for tens of millions of poor Africans, according to Birane Samb, a Senegalese fisheries scientist.

In 1994, public indignation in Europe and demonstrations in Senegal led to the non-renewal of fishing permits to foreign-flagged trawler fleets. Other countries in Africa followed suit and today, Mauritania and Morocco are the last to have agreements with the EU, and these may not be renewed.

The much-reduced catch eliminated the livelihood of many fishermen, said Sall of the fishermen’s association. “Most Senegalese immigrants to Europe are fishermen,” he said.

But in a move repeated throughout Africa, the owners of many foreign vessels – more than 100 in Senegal alone – simply created joint ventures with locals, took up the local flag, continued bottom-trawling and sent their best catch to Europe. Meanwhile, prices there have increased far beyond what Senegalese can pay, so nearly all of the shrimp, grouper and octopus that the artisanal fishermen can catch is sold right on the beach to middlemen who pack them in ice and put them on planes for Europe a few hours later.

“Sardinella has become rare on our markets, and we have not had any big fish for many years,” President Sall said in his acceptance speech. “And if you can’t even get sardinella for the Thiéboudienne, that’s a problem.”

Ahmed Diame, a Senegalese Greenpeace ocean campaigner, said Sall, a geological engineer, understands science. “If the scientific community can prove to him that bringing back the foreign trawlers will deplete the stocks and the catch, I think he’ll hold off,” he said. “He’s kept his promises so far. The problem is that this is a coalition government and the fisheries minister, who is pushing for foreign permits, is from another party.”

Two Tuareg girls are playing at Goudebo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso. In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR , Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

Malian widow Mariama Sow, 30, and her three children are trying to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives in Dakar, Senegal, since they left the historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali last June to escape the Islamist occupation.

Sow and her children are now living in relative safety with her eldest sister in this West African nation, as she helps her sibling run her two tangana (informal township restaurants).

“The (Islamist) occupation was not good at all, it affected many lives and will continue to haunt many of us for years to come,” Sow tells IPS, refusing to explain further, except to say it was “hell”.

“Though I’ll never forget what happened, I decided to get over it and focus on the future of my three children who are now eating well thanks to my elder sister’s support,” she says emotionally, adding that the imposition of Sharia Law in northern Mali affected not only women, but everybody in the occupied territories.

As she speaks, a group of men who work at a nearby construction site each wait their turn to be served with a plate of tchep (fried rice and fish).

But Sow is still concerned about the future of her eldest child. Her eight-year-old son has not attended school since armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda occupied northern Mali back in April 2012. Her daughters, aged four and two, are yet to attend school.

“My son’s first year at school was disrupted by the occupation. It’s now a dilemma because he has not been attending school since, and next year he will be nine. And I’m not sure when real peace will return to Mali so that he can go back to school again,” she says.

While a French-led international intervention in January – requested by Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore – eventually pushed the Islamist fighters out of the north, real peace in the West African nation seems a long way off. Defeated Jihadists have now resorted to suicide bombings and other guerrilla attacks.

A report, “Mali in the Aftermath of the French Military Operation”, released in late February by the South African-based Institute for Security Studies, called for the north to be quickly stabilised and secured now that it has been liberated.

“In order to consolidate the military gains achieved and given France’s expressed desire to scale down its presence or, at least, to ‘multilateralise’ its commitment, the idea now is to deploy a United Nations operation that will take over from AFISMA (African-led International Mission in Mali),” the report, authored by Lori Anne Théroux-Bénoni, states.

The war in northern Mali has driven thousands of men, women and children away from their homes. To date, there are 167,370 Malian refugees scattered in five countries in West Africa, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says.

Mauritania has the highest number, 68,385 refugees, followed by 50,000 refugees in Niger, and 48,939 in Burkina Faso. There are 26 and 20 refugees in Guinea and Togo, respectively.

Awo Dede Cromwell, reporting officer for the situation in Mali at the UNHCR’s regional office for West Africa, tells IPS that there are 31 Malian asylum seekers in Senegal whose status has yet to be examined by the National Commission of Eligibility at the Interior Ministry. “They are seven females and 24 males. There are three children among the 31 asylum seekers,” Cromwell explains.

Sow, however, is one of a number of refugees in Senegal who have not registered with the UNHCR, as she was lucky to be taken in by a relative. Many Malians are not so lucky, as they have been forced to live in refugee camps in Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

But the situation her son faces with his schooling is the same as that of other Malian refugee children.

“In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. If they don’t get access to education quickly, they may even miss the entire school year and be at risk of dropping out of school when returning to Mali,” Laurent Duvillier, regional communication specialist at U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) West and Central Africa, explains to IPS.

“The future of these Malian schoolchildren shouldn’t be jeopardised because they are refugees. How can Mali rebuild after the conflict if thousands of its children are deprived from access to education?” he asks.

Duvillier says children who fled violence in Mali have been through a lot of suffering and that getting access to education also means getting back to a “normal life” – playing with other children, learning and smiling.

He says parents who are refugees have little time to look after their children. “If children are left alone, they can easily be at risk of all kinds of abuse and violence. It’s a great relief for parents if they know there is a safe place where their children can learn and play without being in danger.”

Duvillier says that together with the UNHCR, UNICEF is working to train volunteer teachers, distribute school supplies to refugee and displaced children from Mali, and set up tents where teaching can take place in Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali.

“But unfortunately, many Malian refugee children still have no access to education. We need more children in temporary learning spaces, we need more trained and equipped teachers, we need to make sure that what refugee children learn in the camps can be of great use once they go back to Mali.

“More resources are needed as requirements for education needs remain largely underfunded to date,” he concludes.

A group of men work a surface gold mine deep in the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Congolese small-scale miner Elizabeth Tshimanga has made a successful living from prospecting. But like many artisanal miners in Africa, hers has been a long and tough journey marred by harassment and disputes over her legal status as a miner.

The 50-year-old started working in Kasai region in central Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the age of 25, before moving to neighbouring Angola where she continued mining diamonds.

“I encountered my biggest challenges in Angola, where security forces and officials harassed miners and dealers, detained us, and forced many women to have sexual relations with them to avoid trouble – they even took women to the bush to gang-rape them if they refused their sexual advances,” she says.

“But life goes on. You just tell yourself it’s all part of life,” she tells IPS, before boarding a plane from Dakar to Brussels, where she was due to sign some business deals.

Tshimanga does not mine any longer. But she employs 10 small-scale miners – six in the DRC and four in Angola – and says the harassment and inability to obtain mining licences continues.

The incidents of rape continue too, she says, adding she witnessed one incident only a few years ago in Angola. But as long as governments refuse to recognise artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) as a job, she says, the problems and challenges will not go away.

According to the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), a non-governmental research institute, ASM activities in Africa engage over eight million workers, who in turn support about 45 million dependents.

The institute says that artisanal diamond miners in the Marange diamond fields of Zimbabwe increased from a handful in 2004 to an estimated 35,000 in 2007. In Ghana, ASM contributed nine percent of total gold production in 2000, but by 2010 this had risen to 23 percent, with over a million Ghanaians directly dependent on ASM for their livelihoods.

Cultural anthropologist Marieke Heemskerk, who has over 30 years of experience researching the ASM sector and working with artisanal gold miners in Latin America, Nigeria and Senegal, among others, says the biggest challenge facing small-scale miners is their legal status.

“It is difficult to invest in a proper mining business without a mining title because banks will not give out loans and the miner himself has no certainty that he will be allowed to stay at a certain place.

“In many countries, the licensing process is lengthy, bureaucratic, complex, not transparent and even corrupt. As a result, wealthy and powerful people may obtain mining titles, but poor people in the hinterlands without the necessary political connections cannot.”

It is an obstacle that Tshimanga still comes across. “The other problem is mining licences, it is too complex and complicated to get one. You have to be politically connected or, if you are a woman, you have to become a girlfriend of one of these high-ranking officials before you get one,” she says.

According to the SAIIA, artisanal and small-scale mining is a thorny issue for both governments and large-scale mining (LSM) companies because often the artisanal miners operate in remote, unregulated and environmentally sensitive areas, are difficult to tax and pose a security challenge as they operate on the verge of LSM sites.

Heemskerk, who is based in Suriname, in northern South America, adds: “In many places we see government actions against untitled miners, ranging from bombing them to burning their equipment to simply chasing them away with the military.”

Adama Dieng is an uneducated, small-scale miner from Senegal who made a small fortune in Angola. He owns a three-storey building, has opened three mini-supermarkets in Dakar and has business interests across West Africa. He has even sent four of his children to Europe and put five of them through school.

But his wealth has come the hard way, from small-scale mining in the midst of Angola’s civil war, which began in 1975 and continued on and off until 2002.

“We went through all sorts of dangers, including regular detention, beatings and extortion by the army and rebels, and we faced death.” It is no wonder that he says small-scale mining is “one of the most dangerous but lucrative sources of livelihoods.”

“I still have a lot of respect for the sector for providing jobs to millions and taking many people out of poverty globally, despite its risks,” he tells IPS.

But he criticises the negative attitude of African governments and large mining companies towards ASM.

“The soil of a country and all its resources belong to every citizen of that country, but politicians and big companies just want everything for themselves. Most people in Africa are poor, and these guys are doing nothing for us. We are suffering while the politicians and LSM bosses are living like kings and princes. Why don’t they give us a chance to try improving our lives?” he asks.

Sarah Best, a senior researcher at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit organisation promoting sustainable patterns of world development, tells IPS that instead of suppressing ASM activities, which often makes the situation worse, governments and big business should change their mindsets and recognise ASM as both highly productive and as a legitimate part of the mining sector.

“Governments have largely left small-scale mining on the margins. The first step to cooperation is building knowledge and a shared understanding of the sector,” Best says.

She also says IIED’s recent research on ASM has pointed to three major gaps in how knowledge shapes policy. “First, the knowledge that does exist is poorly shared. Second, the experience of small-scale miners and local communities is largely overlooked.

“Third, there is no multi-stakeholder space where committed individuals and organisations from different parts of the sector can come together to build trust, learn, innovate and find shared solutions,” she says.

Cultural anthropologist Heemskerk says that the legalisation and formalisation of small-scale gold miners would be a good first step to address many health, social, and environmental problems faced in the sector.

“You cannot regulate people who are considered illegal. We also must not forget that small-scale gold mining offers a job to millions of poor people, who may not have many alternative income-generating options.

“As such, it is an outlet for socio-economic problems. It reduced rural-urban migration (thus preventing the growth of huge shantytowns around the large cities) and increases consumption – as virtually all the money earned by local small-scale gold miners is spent in the country.”

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and give birth before reaching 15. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Feb 25 2013 (IPS)

When Abdoulaye Ba heard his local Imam in Dakar, Senegal, speaking out against child marriage, he found that the idea was not very palatable to him. As head of his family, he had intended to marry off his three teenage daughters.

Ba told IPS that he had had “big plans” for his daughters aged 12, 14 and 17. But now he is realising that it might not be the right thing for his children.

He talks about the issue with his Imam, Ibrahima Niasse, from time to time, he said. “I think the more we talk and he puts his arguments on the table, the more I begin to understand that whatever reasons we have for pushing our kids to wed at an early age, they are nothing but a myth.”

Marriage before the age of 18 is a common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and giving birth before reaching 15, according to a recent report by Senegal’s National Agency of Statistics and Demography.

A “2010 USAID-Senegal Gender Assessment” report, published in April 2012, states that the country ranks 27th out of 68 countries surveyed in terms of girls marrying before the age of 18.

But Niasse has decided to speak out against the practice. “I used to resist change, but now I’m convinced that this practice is indeed evil and has nothing to do with Islam,” Niasse told IPS. “My approach is easy and very friendly, it starts like a family visit and a simple chat, and later we start debating it.”

The Imam is among a growing number of people in this West African nation calling for the abandonment of early marriage, according to Tostan International, a human rights NGO operating in the country.

Asked how his message was being received, Niasse said, “So far, so good. Inshallah, one day they (people) will change (their minds about child marriage).”

By now, some 427 communities in southern Senegal have abandoned the practice, according to Tostan International. But more people like Niasse are needed to spread the message.

“Because Imams are already respected leaders in their communities, and are sought after for advice, they are already well placed to spark positive change in their community,” Amy Fairbairn, a spokesperson for the organisation told IPS.

“We find that when women, men, children, community- and religious leaders learn about human rights and the rights of all the members of their communities, they lead their own social change.”

In addition to being a human rights abuse, child marriage constitutes a grave threat to young girls’ lives, health and future prospects, according to the 2012 report “Marrying too Young – End Child Marriage” released by the United Nations Population Fund.

Leela* is a case in point. At only 18, she has been married for two years already and has a one-year-old child. Unable to go to school and forced into an early marriage by her family, she feels trapped.

“I don’t like this so-called marriage. But I have no choice, since my parents forced me to marry this older man, who happens to be the son of my aunt. I have no formal education and therefore no future.”

“I feel imprisoned,” she told IPS.

She said her husband prohibited her from befriending girls her age in their area, telling her that the city’s unmarried women are “prostitutes and devils who can easily poison her mind.”

But not everyone is convinced that early marriage is wrong. Aissatou Diakhate, 62, was 15 when she married her cousin.

“What’s the fuss about this so-called child marriage? This is our tradition and culture – something we inherited from our forefathers and which we are merely practicing,” Diakhate told IPS.

“Girls nowadays wear mini-skirts and run after boys, and the next thing, a girl will tell her mother that she is pregnant or infected by some odious disease. It’s better to give her in marriage to someone older who will take care of her and guide her to the way of religion before she shames her parents, and brings dishonour to the family. Is that a sin? We need to be left alone.”

Fairbairn said that consensus to abandon child marriage takes time to build across social networks and must be community-led. Tostan, for one, encourages community members to make a public declaration abandoning early marriage.

“In areas where the decision to abandon child-slash-forced marriage is met with resistance, communities organise outreach with all stakeholders until consensus is reached.”

Niasse is optimistic that more people will change their minds about early marriage, but he is realistic, too.

“This practice has been in our country for many decades, it won’t go away overnight. It will take time.”

*Name changed to protect identity.

Only 12 percent of women in Senegal use contraceptives, which has led to a “baby boom” in the country. Credit: karah24 /CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

A 25-year-old mother of five hailing from Senegal’s eastern Tambacounda province believes that contraceptives damage the womb and cause health problems in the long term, such as a rise in blood pressure and chronic headaches.

“This is what I heard some women saying in the bus I boarded to go to town,” the woman, now living in the capital city of Dakar after her tragic divorce, tells IPS.

She was only 16 when she was forced to marry her 35-year-old cousin. When she tried to discuss contraception with her former husband, “he beat me up and swore that he would kill me if I ever mentioned it again. So we kept having babies.”

As a result of misconceptions about children and family planning, religious dogma and a lack of reproductive health services, thousands of women across Senegal share her plight.

Breaking the stereotypes

Children are a symbol of wealth in this West African country of 12 million people, a perception that has led to a “baby boom”, experts here say.

“This ancient belief implies that more boys mean more manpower (for) a farm, or that you stand a chance of seeing (your son) become a rich man or even the president of the republic or a minister, while many girls bring their parents more money or livestock for dowry when they get married, ” marriage counsellor Fatoumata Sow tells IPS in Dakar.

“The moment (women) get married, they start making children as if a high-speed train has taken off late at a station, and is flying to catch up.

“And though I’m using Senegal as a case study, the trend is almost the same all over West Africa,” according to Sow, the mother of nine children.

She says family planning is taboo in many parts of West Africa, especially in rural communities where illiteracy is rife and awareness about family planning services – let alone access to contraception and birth control – is non-existent.

“Lack of effective family planning policies and (this perception) of children being a symbol of wealth has seriously damaged the social fabric of Senegal,” a doctor at one of the country’s public hospitals, who was afraid to give his real name for fear of persecution by the authorities, tells IPS.

“I always ask every pregnant woman who stands before me for consultation if she has ever used contraceptives, and the response I get every day is no.”

Only 12 percent of Senegalese women use contraceptives, Senegal’s Health and Social Action Minister Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck told a family planning conference in London last year.

Government intervention

Coll-Seck, who confessed that the country’s current contraceptive prevalence rate is one of the lowest in the world, says her government’s vision is to move the needle from 12 to 27 percent by 2015.

This will mean reaching five percent of users per year. “It is possible,” an optimistic Coll-Seck told the press in Dakar.

In a bid to create awareness and break down the stereotypes surrounding contraception, the government launched a national day of family planning action late last year.

The plan comes not a minute too soon: according to Coll-Seck, one woman out of two has expressed the desire to space births but does not have access to family planning products and services.

The national action day will also be used to sensitise men about the importance of spacing births, because family planning is a matter for the couple, not just for the woman.

The Senegalese government says it has set a target of reaching 350,000 women in the next three years.

In order to effectively reach its goals, the campaign has been divided into three phases, according to Dr Bocar Mamadou Daff, national director for reproductive health and child survival.

First of all, creating awareness through mass communication, which includes sending specific messages to selected targets and embarking on an advocacy campaign to get leaders to support family planning values.

The second phase involves a community-based distribution system to improve access to short-term contraceptives. Private actors will also be involved, Daff says, to help expand the supply of contraceptives.

The third and final phase is to ensure that contraceptives are readily available for those who need them.

According to Sow, better family planning could also help the government tackle two related problems that it has struggled for many years to address: malnutrition and homelessness.

This past December, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had distributed life-saving treatment to more than 850,000 severely malnourished children in the Sahel region, who were starving to death in 2012.

Senegal has one of the highest rates of acute malnutrition in the world; in the northern province of Matam the rate is as high as 19 percent, according to the World Food Progamme.

“When there are too many kids to feed, the head of the household must have plenty of (money) to take care of them, otherwise they will either get sick from hunger and die, or move to the streets to beg,” says Sow.

But not everyone is supportive of the new government initiative. Religious leaders like Al-Hajj Ibrahima Dieng (61) believes such practices “are anti-Islamic”.

“Allah is the one who gives (us) children and he’s in charge of providing everything for them, to enable them to grow healthy and strong,” an incensed Dieng, father of 15 children, tells IPS.

“And you want to stop that from happening? I swear by Allah that I will never be part of such nonsense. It’s haram.”

Though such opinions are widespread among the country’s conservative religious majority, not all religious leaders share Dieng’s anti-contraception sentiments.

Cheick Mouhamadou Mbara Segnane, a highly respected leader of the Tidjiane community in Senegal, is extremely concerned about the baby boom.

He told the press last year that the government needed to step in to eradicate the problem. The imam even suggested that the government impose a limit on the number of children per family.

Some experts like Sow believe change will only come slowly.

“I think as a society, we are not yet ready for such an evolution,” she tells IPS. “Traditions and cultural beliefs have affected our minds so much and brainwashed us so totally that we have become blind. But there is room for hope.”

(END)

In the southern Senegal village of Kael Bessel, female genital mutilation is no longer a taboo subject. Sexagenarian Fatoumata Sabaly speaks freely about female circumcision and girls’ rights with her friends.

“We’ve found it necessary to abandon cutting – abandoning the practice has advantages for women,” she told IPS. “Female circumcision has consequences such as haemorrhaging and it can even lead to death.”

In Senegal, like other West African countries, grandmothers like Sabaly are generally the ones who decide girls should be circumcised. A 2008 survey in Vélingara, also in the south of Senegal, found nearly 60 percent of older women supported female genital mutilation. But a 2011 survey carried out by the Grandmother Project found fully 93 percent of the same group are now against FGM.

The Grandmother Project, an international non-governmental organisation which promotes community dialogue about cultural issues, has helped organise regular meetings in thirty-odd villages around Vélingara, to enable people to discuss questions relating to local traditions and values, particularly “koyan” – the rite of passage associated with FGM.

Religious leaders, traditional chiefs, local officials, youth and elders all take part. The public debates allow people to talk openly about the pros and cons of their cultural practices.

“Since excision has more disadvantages than advantages, people are slowly abandoning the practice,” said Falilou Cissé, a community development advisor at the Grandmother Project in Vélingara.

“People have stopped the practice themselves. We have never asked people to stop it,” she stressed.

The meetings emphasise the educational role of grandmothers in African societies, but beyond that they help break the silence around taboo subjects like FGM.

“I was for excision, personally, like many people, but the public discussions have helped me to change my position, to accept that in our culture, there are some values to preserve and others to abandon,” Abdoulaye Baldé, the imam of a mosque in Vélingara, told IPS.

Today, thanks to Baldé’s participation in the meetings, people around Vélingara know that FGM is not a religious obligation for Muslims. The involvement of opinion leaders has had a huge impact on changing the outlook on excision among grandmothers.

Fatoumata Baldé, a nurse-midwife in Kandia, a village near Vélingara, told IPS that she couldn’t remember coming across a case of excision in the area since 2010.

“Previously, we were used to handling lots of cases of cutting gone bad at the clinic, because it’s done without medical assistance,” explained the nurse, also a regular participant in the debates.

Boubacar Bocoum, a Malian consultant who has studied FGM in several countries, sees in the Vélingara experience grounds for hope that the practice could be definitively abandoned across West Africa.

“The projects fighting against this practice generally target excisors, while it’s really a community problem,” he said. “If only one part of the community abandons it, the practice persists because the rest of the people are not engaged.”

According to a study published by the NGO Plan International in 2006, FGM is practiced throughout the West Africa region.

“In Guinea, in Sierra Leone and in Mali, practically all women are excised,” said the report. “In Niger and Ghana, the practice is limited to particular geographic areas and the national prevalence is less than 10 percent.”