Several Southern African countries have or are in the process of enacting legislation that limits the civil society space, with implications for human rights. Credit: CIVICUS Monitor

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jul 31 2023 (IPS)

Freedom of expression is under threat as governments in Southern Africa have enacted laws restricting civil society organizations, says global rights advocacy organisation, CIVICUS, warning that human rights violations are on the increase globally.

“The state of civil society is unfortunately not improving; civil restrictions continue across the world,” said David Kode, the advocacy Lead at CIVICUS.

“More than 2 billion people live in countries that are rated as closed, which is the worst rating any country can have – this means that 28 percent of the world’s population are not able to speak out when there is corruption or human rights violations restrictions or cannot write articles as journalists without facing appraisals,” Kode told IPS in an interview, noting that the organization’s human rights tool is indicating growing suppression of civil space across the world.

The CIVICUS Monitor, a tool accessing the state of civic space in more than 190 countries, provides evidence of restrictions on human rights by governments. The CIVICUS Monitor rates the state of civil space ‘open, ‘repressed’, and ‘closed’ according to each country.

Kode notes that human rights violations are increasing globally with more restrictions on civil society in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The picture is not different in the Southern Africa region where restrictions on civil space have been continuing, and these have included censorship, violent response to protests, and restrictive laws as seen in Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe

Closing Civil Society Space

Zimbabwe remains on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist as attacks on civic space continue ahead of the scheduled 2023 national elections.

Last November, Zimbabwe approved the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Amendment Bill, 2022, known as the Patriotic Act. The law seeks to create the offence of “wilfully damaging the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe” and will essentially criminalise the lobbying of foreign governments to extend or implement sanctions against Zimbabwe or its officials.

Furthermore, the Zimbabwe government gazetted the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill in November 2021, amending the Private Voluntary Organisations Act, which governs non-profit organizations. The main aim of the Bill is to comply with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations to strengthen the country’s legal framework to combat money laundering, financing terrorism and proliferation.

Civil society organizations warn that the Bill could hinder their activities and financing with potential adverse impacts on economic development. Besides, NGOs argue that they are a low-risk sector with no precedence of financing terrorism and money laundering.

Musa Kika, Executive Director of Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, says the PVO will affect the operations of NGOs, including deterring donors from funding PVOs, fearing the money could end up under the grip of the government. Besides, the Bill has a provision giving the Minister of Justice unfettered powers to place under supervision or surveillance, using subjective discretion, those PVOs the Minister deems to be high risk.

“Continued hostility and harassment on the part of the government towards the work of CSOs in the country will thus only result in a hugely detrimental effect on their efforts in advancing the protection of and respect for the basic human rights and freedoms of ordinary Zimbabwean civilians as espoused under Zimbabwe’s Constitution,” Kika said. He noted that civil society organisations were operating in a tough environment in Zimbabwe where the government does not trust them, especially those working in the fields of governance and human rights.

“We have a government that does not want to account,” said Kika. “We have had many human rights activists who have been arrested on flimsy charges…Terrorism finance is being used as a cover, but the motive is to close the democratic space because the government and accountability in human rights and governance are sworn enemies.”

In Zimbabwe, NGOs have, in partnership with the government, supported development, providing a range of services in health, education, social protection, humanitarian assistance, environmental management, emergency response and democracy building.  A research report commissioned by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum in collaboration with the Southern Defenders and Accountability Lab has warned of huge job and financial losses if the Bill is passed into law.

United Nations experts have urged Zimbabwe’s President Emerson Mnangagwa to reject enacting a bill that would severely restrict civic space and the right to freedom of association in the country.

However, President Mnangagwa has defended the passage of the PVO Bill, vowing to speedily “sign it into law once it reaches my desk”. In a commentary in his weekly column published by the government-owned Sunday Mail, Mnangagwa said signing the bill into law will usher Zimbabwe into a “new era of genuine philanthropic and advocacy work, unsullied by ulterior political or financial motives.”

Mnangagwa said the law was meant to defend the country from foreign infiltration.

Engendering Patriotism but Endangering Democracy

Zimbabwe has also recently approved another repressive law known as the ‘Patriot Act’.

“The Patriotic Act is an extremely repressive and unconstitutional piece of legislation that has serious ramifications for citizens’ rights, particularly the rights of freedom of expression in the lead up to the elections,” human rights lawyer, Dough Coltart, tells IPS in an interview.

“There is a very real need to educate the citizens on what the ramifications of this Act are for people’s lives because the Act has far-reaching consequences for the entire country and will essentially stifle any public dialogue around the challenges we are facing as a country.”

“The Patriot law is a bad piece of legislation which is an affront to the practice of ethical journalism in Zimbabwe,” Njabulo Ncube, Coordinator of the Zimbabwe National Editors’ Forum (ZINEF), told IPS. “It stinks to the highest skies as it criminalizes the practice of good journalism. It is anti-media freedom and free expression…civil society organisations have also been caught in the mix; they cannot effectively make government account for its actions.”

Democracy Dimming

The situation in Zimbabwe is echoed in some countries across Southern Africa, where governments are cracking down on CSOs in the name of protecting national sovereignty and the threats of money laundering and terrorism financing.

In Angola, the country’s National Assembly, on May 25 2023, passed a draft NGO Statute, which CSOs have criticized for limiting freedom of association by giving the state excessive powers to interfere with civil society activities.

According to the Movimento de Defensores de Direitos Humanos de Angola (Movement of Human Rights Defenders of Angola, KUTAKESA), the government has targeted civil society with legislation that is meant for terrorists and money launderers, though it has never been proven in any court that a CSO has committed an act of terrorism in Angola.

On the contrary, the rationale of this legislation constitutes institutional terrorism, the target of which are CSOs, said Godinho Cristóvão, a jurist, human rights defender and executive director of KUTEKA in an interview with the CIVICUS Monitor.

“The Angolan authorities should have aligned themselves with the democratic rule of law and respected the work of CSOs and HRDs,” Cristóvão is quoted as saying.

“Instead, there has been an increase in threats, harassment and illegal arrests of human rights defenders who denounce or hold peaceful demonstrations against acts of bad governance and violations of citizens’ rights and freedoms. There have been clear setbacks with regard to the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution, as well as the rights set out in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other human rights treaties Angola has ratified.”

In Mozambique, a new NGO on Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act, which overregulates CSOs, is seen as the death knell for the civic movement in the country. The Act was approved in October 2022 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. It has further curtailed freedoms of expression, information, press, assembly and public participation.

Paula Monjane, Executive Director of the Civil Society Learning and Capacity Building Centre (CESC), a Mozambican non-profit civil society organisation, said currently, the legislation was being proposed to silence dissenting voices and people fighting for better governance of public affairs and the protection of human rights in the country.

The draft Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act law establishes a legal regime for the creation, organisation and functioning of CSOs, and Monjane highlighted that it contains several norms that violate freedom of association despite this right being safeguarded by the constitution and international human rights treaties.

“It gives the government absolute and discretionary powers to ‘create’, control the functioning of, suspend and extinguish CSOs,” said Monjane, adding, “If the bill is approved, it will legitimise already existing practices restricting civic space, allowing the persecution of dissenting voices and organisations critical of the government, up to banning them from continuing to operate.”

Monjane said if the bill is passed into law CSOs in Mozambique will push for it to be declared unconstitutional and will ask the African Union, through the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the United Nations, through the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association to urgently condemn it.

On actions to foster human rights and human rights defenders, Kode said civil society organisations must be supported to hold governments accountable for upholding national and international human rights conventions that they have subscribed to.

The Universal Periodic Review, an assessment of the state of civic and human rights of a country over a four-year period, provides recommendations to governments enabling them to open civic space and remove restrictive laws.

“Governments need to implement the recommendations of the UPR and not treat them as a formality for them to be seen by the international community as respecting human rights when they are not,” said Kode, adding that encouraging governments to implement the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development was also a way of getting them to see development alongside human rights.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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There are calls to include migrants and other vulnerable groups in the vaccine rollout programmes in the Southern Africa region. Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

By Kevin Humphrey
Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug 23 2021 (IPS)

Migrants across the Southern Africa region are massively disadvantaged as they find themselves excluded from vaccine programmes – even when the global vaccine initiative COVAX often funds these programmes.

This is the latest in a long list of struggles migrants have experienced since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Migrant is a catch-all word that includes a diverse set of people, including non-citizens, asylum seekers, refugees and those who have acquired permission to dwell in the country they have settled.

However, vaccines are just one of the issues faced by migrants. Border shutdowns, travel restrictions and lockdowns have severely restricted large swathes of the region’s economic activities. Relationships between friends, family and social, religious, and other groups have also suffered.

Experts believe that ending the pandemic can only be achieved if vaccines are available in all countries – to all populations, including refugees and displaced people fleeing conflict and other crises – but this regional cooperation is not yet on the region’s agenda.

“In terms of the Southern African region, we are currently not seeing a conversation in place around a regional response,” Public health researcher and Associate Professor and Director of the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Jo Vearey told IPS.

“In a region of such high levels of population mobility, we need to ensure that our response to COVID-19, in access to vaccinations and testing and other related issues, can reflect the forms of movement that people undertake in the region.”

The Southern African Nationality Network (“SANN”) has called on governments in the South African Development Community (SADC) region to ensure all have access to vaccines. The group advocates for equitable treatment for vulnerable groups such as refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaces persons, undocumented persons, and stateless persons. They also asked authorities to “enable irregular migrants, undocumented persons and stateless persons to access health care without fear and risk of arrest or detention”.

Vearey agrees, saying that “if a person is in a location other than their normal place of residence, we need to ensure that they can access vaccines easily and safely regardless of documentation status. We need firewalls to be in place – where the firewall acts as a legal provision so that undocumented people have no fear of penalty should they be accessing COVID services”.

She says extraordinary measures were needed. National departments of health, home affairs, foreign affairs, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) should ensure a smooth and inclusive rollout.

“There are, however, questions about the capacity of the SADC structures,” Vearey says.

“There are also issues around how we respond appropriately to the myths and assumptions around the movement of people. We know foreign nationals tend to be scapegoated and blamed for various issues. There is also the issue of giving out numbers of foreign nationals in a given country, particularly South Africa, often inflated. We know that immigration, in particular, is a heavily politicised issue. Some political leaders make use of rhetoric to blame foreign nationals for failures in delivery by the state.”

It was time to set aside differences, and there was no place in this pandemic for xenophobia.

“This is a pandemic, it affects everyone, and obviously, a pandemic by definition doesn’t respect borders, doesn’t care who someone is. It works by moving from person to person. Unless we effectively break that train of transmission, we won’t get a grip on the pandemic and will probably see more variants emerge, which will lead to more ill-health and fatalities,” Vearey says.

“It will also mean a further impact on people’s livelihoods because of more lockdowns and restrictions. Migrant labour is so important in the region through various forms of employment, both formal and informal. Particularly in the sectors of mining, agriculture and construction work. The sooner we can get everyone vaccinated, the sooner we will return to some semblance of normality.”

Traditional forms of migrant labour in the region were established during the minerals super boom in South Africa during the colonial era. Kicked off by the discovery of diamonds (1867), a handful of mining magnates accumulated enough capital to develop deep level gold mining on the Witwatersrand (1886) which is now part of modern-day Gauteng province. This history still exerts massive influence and attracts people with expectations of jobs and business opportunities.

Covid 19 has interfered significantly with these economic crosscurrents.

Senior economist at Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), Dr Neva Makgetla, former lead economist for the Development Planning and Implementation Division at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, among many other roles, told IPS significant impacts of the pandemic were on tourism and mining.

“International and regional tourism has collapsed, and mining has seen a run-up in prices. According to the World Bank, tourism accounted for 9% of South African export revenues in 2018, which is a real blow.

Mira Gaspar outside her studio in Kempton Park, South Africa talks about the devastating impact of COVID-19 on her and her business. Credit: Kevin Humphrey

“The recovery will depend above all on the rollout of vaccinations, which has made good progress but is expected to reach the majority of adults only toward the end of 2021,” Makgetla said.

“The loss of tourism revenues has, however, to date been offset by mining prices, which rose to 2011 levels this year. The question, of course, is how long they will remain so high; the answer depends in part on monetary policy in the global North, and in part on Chinese growth prospects.”

Down at street level, Mira Gaspar, a single mother (originally from Mozambique but now, after many years of struggle, has a South African permanent resident status), tells of her earth-shattering experiences since the COVID-19 Tsunami hit the world and her neck of the woods.

“I had managed to open up a hair salon in a part of Kempton Park where I did not have too much competition. I basically had a reasonably sized area where I was the nearest salon. It was not easy to establish the business, but I did manage to build a steady clientele of women and girls and even went into men’s hair. I added to my income by working with a close friend to import and export items between Johannesburg and Maputo,” Gaspar said.

She sold hair extensions – and even prawns from Mozambique to make a living.

“It was hard, but it worked. COVID wrecked it. The big lockdown took my salon. The border closures took my import-export business. Now I am slowly trying to pick up the pieces, but I have used any money I had for my daughter and me to survive during this time. It is hard, but God will help us through this time.”

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Many Zimbabweans are turning to raising small livestock like goats which survive dry conditions to avert climate change impacts that have claimed their cattle over the years. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Jul 22 2015 (IPS)

With unusually hot and dry weather beating down on this Southern African nation, climate change and the accompanying drought have cost farmers much of their cattle herds. In response, many ranchers are turning to goats to preserve their livestock assets.

Climate change experts agree that breeding drought-tolerant animals like goats, which survive on shrubs and need less manpower to tend, is a better choice than high-maintenance cattle.

This is happening at a time the United Nations is urging nations the world over to take urgent action to combat climate change and manage its impact as part of the United Nations’ new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs are a universal set of 17 goals, targets and indicators that U.N. member states are expected to use as development benchmarks in framing their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years.“With rainfall patterns fluctuating in Zimbabwe, rearing cattle is becoming unsustainable. But breeding goats, which are drought-tolerant, can be much more rewarding” – Happison Chikova, an independent Zimbabwean environment and climate change expert

“With rainfall patterns fluctuating in Zimbabwe, rearing cattle is becoming unsustainable.  But breeding goats, which are drought-tolerant, can be much more rewarding,” Happison Chikova, an independent environment and climate change expert, who holds a degree in geography and environmental studies from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University, told IPS.

“Plans are imminent to boost production of goats in Zimbabwe’s dry regions where small livestock like goats thrive and we have identified meat export markets in countries like South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria and the Middle East, where goat meat is a delicacy,” Chrispen Kadiramwando,  president of the Goat Breeders Association of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Official statistics from the country’s Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development show that there are approximately 136,000 goat breeders countrywide, ranging from ordinary communal goat breeders to peri-urban goat breeders.

Livias Ncube, from the country’s Region 5, the hottest part of the country in Mwenezi district, is one of the Zimbabweans who have shifted to goat-breeding, raising and selling.

“There are hardly adequate rains in this part of the country, which is the driest area here in Zimbabwe, but I don’t use any stock feeds to nourish my goats as they adapt to the conditions, and they are even fatter,” Ncube told IPS.

Besides selling the goats locally, Ncube told IPS that he has now become an exporter of goat meat to neighbouring countries like South Africa and Mozambique.

“Although I maintain a sizeable herd of cattle after a series of droughts here which killed many cows, I now have a flock of 130 goats and I’m also earning money through selling these goats,” Ncube told IPS.

Ncube said he earns an estimated 1600 dollars each month through goat selling, with each goat trading at around 70 dollars.  His goats multiply at a faster pace than cows in spite of the dry conditions in this region.

Through the Zimbabwe Livestock for Accelerated Recovery and Improved Resiliency (ZRR) programme, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ncube learned how to manage and market his goats to improve their livelihoods.

ZRR is a programme that provides farmers with training in goat husbandry and health management, and trains community livestock workers on preventative and curative animal health techniques.

According to a research paper by the Matobo Research station on goat breeding and development activities in Zimbabwe, there are already more than two million goats in Zimbabwe, with nearly all goats (about 98 percent) reared in communal areas.

However, agricultural experts fear that indigenous goat breeders are not realising the monetary value vested in their small livestock.

“Thousands of farmers are into goat breeding here, but few have been able to ascertain the value in their animals due to lack of adequate information flow between the goat producers and the market, resulting in rural farmers ending up engaging in barter trade thereby stifling the commercialisation of goats,” Leonard Vazungu, a government agricultural extension officer, told IPS.

At the beginning of this year, the Zimbabwean government distributed 10,000 goats for breeding stock and aims to increase the number to 44 million by 2018.

This comes at a time when this Southern African nation’s cattle population has declined from 6.8 million in 2000 to the current 5.2 million.

“Investing in small livestock like goats, which have higher chances of survival in drought-prone areas, cautions the country against livestock loss,” Barnabas Mawire, country director for Environment Africa, told journalists a climate change workshop held this month in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

But this may not be easy without a national climate change policy.

Earlier this year, citing Zimbabwe’s growing climate change effects, non-constituency parliamentarian Annastancia Ndlovu pushed a motion for the formulation of a national climate change policy in the National Assembly.

Ndlovu is chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Environment, Water, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Parliamentary Portfolio Committee.

For Zimbabwe, financial shortfalls have not made the war against climate change any easier.

“The drop in government funding for climate change means we must work with other partners to move the climate change agenda forward and we are currently developing the national climate policy – the country’s first for which we need as many resources as we can get,” Veronica Gundu, principal environment officer for Zimbabwe’s Environment, Water and Climate ministry, told IPS.

However, with or without the national climate change policy, many Zimbabwean goat breeders like Ncube say they have moved single-handedly to address climate change impacts.

“We have moved on with our lives in the face of deepening climate change impacts and through goat breeding.  For us life goes on although climate change effects have claimed most of our cattle,” said Ncube.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The Dube AgriZone facility currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa. Credit: FAO

By Kwame Buist
DURBAN, South Africa, Mar 22 2015 (IPS)

Agriculture is the major employer and a backbone of the economies of Southern Africa.

However, the rural areas that support an agriculture-based livelihood system for the majority of the nearly 270 million people living in the region are typically fragile and there is wide variability in the development challenges facing the countries of the region.

The agricultural sector is dominated by crop production, although the share of livestock production and other agriculture practices have been increasing.Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely small holder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world

Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely smallholder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world.

These and other challenges facing the sector were the focus of a three-day meeting (Mar. 10-12) in Durban of management and experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which ended with a call to prioritise broad-based partnerships and build synergies to provide countries with effective and efficient support in the agriculture sector.

In an annual event designed to provide a platform for discussion and exchange of information on best practices and the general performance of FAO programmes in the region, David Phiri, FAO Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, reiterated the importance of different sectors working together.

“Achieving food and nutrition security in Southern Africa is a challenge far too great for any government or FAO to overcome alone,” he said. “As well as the governments of developing and developed countries, the civil society, private sector and international development agencies must be involved. Above all, the people themselves need to be empowered to manage their own development.”

Building on what works

As one example of the best practices under the scrutiny of the meeting, participants took part in a field visit to the Dube AgriZone facility – a high-tech agricultural development initiative pioneered by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government.

The facility aims to stimulate the growth of KwaZulu-Natal’s perishables sector and aims to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistent quality, year-round production and improved management of disease and pests.

The facility – strategically located 30 km north of the important coastal city of Durban – currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa.

Its primary focus is on the production of short shelf-life vegetables and cut flowers which require immediate post-harvest airlifting and supply to both domestic and export markets.

In addition to its greenhouses, the facility offers dedicated post-harvest packing houses, a central packing and distribution centre, a nursery and the Dube AgriLab, a sophisticated plant tissue culture laboratory.

Dube AgriZone is an eco-friendly facility, adopting a range of ‘green’ initiatives to offset its environmental impact, including rainwater harvesting, use of solar energy, on-site waste management, and the growth of indigenous plants for rehabilitation efforts.

Dube AgriZone provides growers with the potential to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistency of produce quality, close management of disease and pest infestation and year-round crop production with a view to improved sustainability and enhanced agricultural competitiveness.

“I could never have been able put up such a facility and produce at the current scale were it not for this innovative AgriZone,” said Derrick Baird, owner of Qutom Farms, which currently produces 150,000 cucumbers in the glass greenhouse leased from Dube AgriZone.

“This high-tech facility with all the necessary facilities – including transportation and freight – has allowed us to concentrate on producing cucumbers at much lower costs than in other locations where we had previously tried.”

The partnership between the provincial government and the private sector behind the facility was hailed as an example of a success story that could offer valuable lessons to others across Southern Africa.

“There is plenty we can learn from this facility and perhaps one of the more important ones is on forming partnerships and alliances,” said Tobias Takavarasha, FAO Representative in South Africa.

“We need to build on what is working by adopting and adapting technologies to the local situation, and then scaling them upwards and outwards to achieve even better results,” he added.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Wood market in Chitungwiza. Twenty percent of the urban households in Zimbabwe do not have access to electricity, and rely mainly on firewood for their energy needs. Credit: Tonderayi Mukeredzi/IPS

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

Janet Mutoriti (30), a mother of three from St Mary’s suburb in Chitungwiza, 25 kilometres outside Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, frequently risks arrest for straying into the nearby urban forests to fetch wood for cooking.

Despite living in the city, Janet’s is among the 20 percent of the urban households which do not have access to electricity, and rely mainly on firewood for their energy needs.

Worldwide, energy access has become a key determinant in improving people’s lives, mainly in rural communities where basic needs are met with difficulty.

In Zimbabwe, access to modern energy is very low, casting doubts on the country’s efforts at sustainable development, which energy experts say is not possible without sustainable energy.

In an interim national energy efficiency audit report for Zimbabwe issued in December, the Sustainable African Energy Consortium (SAEC) revealed that of the country’s slightly more than three million households, 44 percent are electrified.“In rural Zimbabwe, the economic driver is agriculture, both dry land and irrigated. The need for energy to improve productivity in rural areas cannot be over-emphasised but current power generated is not sufficient to support all the energy-demanding activities in the country” – Chiedza Mazaiwana, Practical Action Southern Africa

They consumed a total of 2.7 million GWh in 2012 and 2.8 million GWh in 2013, representing 34 percent of total electrical energy sales by the Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Transmission Company.

According to SAEC, of the un-electrified households, 62% percent use wood as the main source of energy for cooking, especially in rural areas where 90 percent live without access to energy.

A significant chasm exists between urban and rural areas in their access to electricity. According to the 2012 National Energy Policy, 83 percent of households in urban areas have access to electricity compared with 13 percent in rural areas.

Rural communities meet 94 percent of their cooking energy requirements from traditional fuels, mainly firewood, while 20 percent of urban households use wood as the main cooking fuel. Coal, charcoal and liquefied petroleum gas are used by less than one percent.

Engineer Joshua Mashamba, chief executive of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) which is crusading the country’s rural electrification programme, told IPS that the rate of electrification of rural communities was a mere 10 percent.

“As of now, in the rural areas, there is energy poverty,” he said. “As the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), we have electrified 1,103 villages or group schemes and if we combine that with what other players have done, we are estimating that the rate of rural electrification is at 10 percent. It means that 90 percent remain un-electrified and do not have access to modern energy.”

Since the rural electrification programme started in the early 1980s, Mashamba says that 3,256 schools, 774 rural centres, 323 government extension offices, 266 chief’s homesteads and 98 business centres have also been electrified.

Zimbabwe Energy Council executive director Panganayi Sithole told IPS that modern energy services were crucial to human welfare, yet over 70 percent of the population remain trapped in energy poverty.

“The prevalence of energy of poverty in Zimbabwe cuts across both urban and rural areas. The situation is very dire in peri-urban areas due to deforestation and the non-availability of modern energy services,” said Sithole.

“Take Epworth [a poor suburb in Harare] for example. There are no forests to talk about and at the same time you cannot talk of the use of liquefied petrol gas (LPG) there due to costs and lack of knowledge. People there are using grass, plastics and animal dung to cook. It’s very sad,” he noted.

Sithole said there was a need to recognise energy poverty as a national challenge and priority, which all past and present ministers of energy have failed to do.

Zimbabwe currently faces a shortage of electrical energy owing to internal generation shortfalls and imports much its petroleum fuel and power at great cost to close the gap.

Demand continues to exceed supply, necessitating load shedding, and even those that have access to electricity regularly experience debilitating power outages, says Chiedza Mazaiwana, an energy project officer with Practical Action Southern Africa.

“In rural Zimbabwe, the economic driver is agriculture, both dry land and irrigated. The need for energy to improve productivity in rural areas cannot be over-emphasised but current power generated is not sufficient to support all the energy-demanding activities in the country. The percentage of people relying entirely on biomass for their energy is 70 percent,” she adds.

According to the World Bank, access to electricity in Southern Africa is around 28 percent – below the continental average of 31 percent. The bank says that inadequate electricity access poses a major constraint to the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in the region.

To end the dearth of power, Zimbabwe has joined the global effort to eliminate energy poverty by 2030 under the United Nation’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative.

The country has abundant renewable energy sources, most of which are yet to be fully utilised, and energy experts say that exploiting the critical sources of energy is key in closing the existing supply and demand gap while also accelerating access to green energy.

By 2018, Zimbabwe hopes to increase renewable energy capacity by 300 MW.

Mashamba noted that REA has installed 402 mini-grid solar systems at rural schools and health centres, 437 mobile solar systems and 19 biogas digesters at public institutions as a way to promote modern forms of energy.

A coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) led by Zero Regional Environment Organisation and Practical Action Southern Africa is calling for a rapid increase in investment in energy access, with government leading the way but supported in equal measure by official development assistance and private investors.

Though the current output from independent power producers (IPPs) is still minimal, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) says that contribution from IPPs will be significant once the big thermal producers come on stream by 2018.

At the end of 2013, the country had 25 power generation licensees and some of them have already started implementing power projects that are benefitting the national grid.

Notwithstanding the obvious financial and technical hitches, REA remains optimistic that it will deliver universal access to modern energy by 2030.

“By 2018, we intend to provide rural public institutions with at least one form of modern energy services,” said Mashamba. “In doing this, we hope to extend the electricity grid network to institutions which are currently within a 20 km radius of the existing grid network. Once we have electrified all public institutions our focus will shift towards rural homesteads.”

For CSOs, achieving universal access to energy by 2030 will require recognising the full range of people’s energy needs, not just at household level but also enterprise and community service levels.

“Currently there is a lot of effort put in to increasing our generation capacity through projects such as Kariba South Extension and Hwange extension which is good and highly commended but for us to reach out to the rural population (most affected by energy poverty, according to our statistics, we should also increase efforts around implementing off grid clean energy solutions to make a balance in our energy mix,” says Joseph Hwani, project manager for energy with Practical Action Southern Africa.

Practical Action says that on current trends, 1.5 billion people globally will still lack electricity in 2030, of whom 650 million will be in Africa.

This is some fifteen years after the target date for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which cannot be met without sustainable, affordable, accessible and reliable energy services.

Edited by Phil Harris  

Pregnant women at an antenatal clinic in Malawi. Credit: Pilirani Tambala

By Pilirani Tambala
Blantyre, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

Malawi, which has a population of 14 million, has an HIV prevalence of 10 percent. Almost a third of the infected are aged below 30. This is in part the result of early sexual debut for young girls, a practice encouraged in parts of the country where girls participate in traditional initiation ceremonies. Pilirani Tambala looks at why young Malawian girls are engaging in sex too early and what is being done to discourage the practice.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipslatamradio07/malawi.mp3[/podcast]

Eighteen-year-old Maureen Phiri from Malawi knows first-hand about the loneliness of HIV. At age 12, she discovered her HIV status but did not tell her mother. Courtesy: Martina Schwikowski

By Martina Schwikowski
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

Maureen Phiri, 18, has a soft voice and a strong message about HIV and young people in her country. “In Malawi, people are still in denial because of cultural beliefs. Traditional leaders and churches are denying the disease. Let us gather those leaders and hear from young people what is really happening.”

Phiri, an activist who lives with HIV, belongs to the Baylor Teen Club in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The club is part of a programme that provides medical care and psycho-social support to HIV-positive adolescents, of whom Malawi has 91,000.

Phiri works hard to overcome the stigma still attached to HIV among her peers. “Only then we will be able to have an AIDS-free generation,” she told IPS.

Phiri was speaking at a forum held in Johannesburg last week, where the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) presented its Sixth Stocktaking Report about Children and AIDS, entitled “Towards an AIDS-free generation”.

It reveals alarming trends: worldwide, AIDS-related deaths among youth aged 10-19 increased by 50 percent between 2005 and 2012, from 71,000 to 110,000.

This is the only group where AIDS-related deaths have increased, in stark contrast to progress made in preventing mother-to-child transmission, with more than 850,000 new childhood infections averted in low- and middle-income countries in 2012.

The rise in AIDS-related deaths among youth shows that they are falling through the cracks of HIV programmes mainly designed for adults or children. Many adolescents do not know they are HIV-positive, others lack family support to disclose and start treatment, and some start treatment but quit and die.

An alarming trend

In 2012, some 2.1 million adolescents were living with HIV. Of these, 80 percent live in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report. Worryingly, one-third of new infections occur among youth aged 15-24.

“How did we get here? We became complacent,” said Dr. Gabriel Anabwani, executive director at the Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence in Gaborone, Botswana.

With an HIV prevalence of 23 percent among a population of two million, Botswana has 7,800 HIV positive adolescents aged 10-19.

The centre reaches teenagers by taking their services to the communities. “HIV is a family disease, so we have to reach out to the families and educate them at home,” Anabwani told IPS.

Disclosure within the family is key and the burden should not be left to the mother alone, who is often “scared to be stigmatised or to be divorced.”

In Lilongwe, Phiri knows first-hand about the loneliness of HIV. At age 12, she discovered her HIV status after she tested with her sister. But Phiri did not tell her mother, who was in denial of being HIV-positive. Phiri had never had sex so she figured she had been born with HIV – yet the daughter was afraid to tell the mother.

She looked for help at her church and was told to trust God. “I relied on God, did not take my pills, and became so sick that I had to go to hospital,” she told IPS.

Later, a boyfriend told her neighbours she was HIV-positive, and she experienced rejection in her community.

Phiri then sought help at the Baylor clinic in Lilongwe. Its staff helped her family learn about HIV and deal with disclosure.

Missing links

Now a strong, confident young woman, Phiri told IPS, “There are no condoms at school and no health centres where we can go for testing.”

Rick Olson, senior HIV prevention specialist for UNICEF in East and southern Africa, agrees: “We are denying that young people are sexually active.”

What is needed, he added, is “a redefinition of services specifically for adolescents:  more condom distribution, more counselling, more clinics and more advice on male circumcision.”

Uganda earned world praise for successfully implementing the ABC policy – abstain, be faithful, use condoms – that brought the country’s HIV infection rate down from a two-digit rate in the 1990s to today’s seven percent.

“But we missed to drive it further into the new generation,” Specioza Wandira-Kazibwe, the Uganda-born U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told IPS. Infection rates in Uganda are slowly rising after the dramatic drop a decade ago.

UNICEF warns of a shocking gender disparity in HIV infection: in 2012, two-thirds of all new infections among teens aged 15-19 were among girls. In South Africa, Gabon and Sierra Leone, eight out of 10 new infections among teens aged 15-19 are girls.

Social and economic inequalities drive girls’ vulnerability to HIV – among them poverty, violence, transactional sex, early marriage, poor information and low risk perception.

“It is a challenge for leadership to move and do the right thing,” said Steven Allen, UNICEF’s regional director for central and East Africa. “We are speaking a language this generation does not understand.”

The dream of an AIDS-free generation will remain a slogan unless ways are found to reduce HIV infection among young people, especially among girls.

By Jinty Jackson
Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

Carolina Poalo strikes the dry earth over and over with her hoe, her frail body bent almost double. She is determined to begin planting. During the long, dry season in Mozambique, she and her two young grandchildren have eaten little but cassava leaves.

In a country where the average life expectancy is 50, the 65-year-old is considered very old, but her golden years are far from restful.

Instead, life is a constant battle for the many elderly living in the semi-rural outskirts of the capital, Maputo.

Violence and abuse against the elderly – ranging from rape to psychological abuse and neglect – are on the rise, say authorities. Often this is linked to witchcraft accusations, although no official statistics exist about the phenomenon. Perpetrators are often family members.

Carolina Paolo’s sister, Amelia Paolo, fled her home when her sons accused her of witchcraft. “They threw me out, calling me a witch,” she tells IPS. “I only survived thanks to my plot of land.”

It was a bit unclear how she got access to land where she lives now, but she has a plot of land next door to her sister’s in Bilalwane, on the outskirts of Maputo.

“I don’t get any help from my children. Sometimes they dump their kids here when they get pregnant,” Carolina Paolo tells IPS of her two daughters.

The women survive by earning extra cash when they can, working in nearby fields. The five dollars a month state elderly grant, the lowest in Southern Africa, is enough to buy them a one-kilogramme bag of salt. With no access to running water, the money also comes in handy when filling up at a nearby tap – one barrel of water costs them three cents.

Mozambique’s social welfare office is notoriously corrupt and inefficient. Only one in three people interviewed by IPS said they received the grant despite all three having applied for it.

Her body shrunken and her eyes grown over with cataracts, Maria Chambale (70) admits she is frightened of what might happen when she can no longer work, “I must go on fighting,” she says and shrugs. “What else can I do?”

She, like the other elderly in Mozambique, works on her own small plot of land to grow vegetables to feed herself. She also accepts “piece jobs” or day jobs in nearby fields owned by richer neighbours who have land but do not have the time to farm it.

Despite the heady pace of Mozambique’s economic growth – the World Bank expects the economy to expand by 7.5 percent in 2012 – little benefit is trickling down to the poor, many of whom are elderly people.

“Sixty-eight percent of the elderly live below the poverty line in Mozambique,” says Janet Duffield, the director of the aid agency HelpAge International in this country.

For the elderly in the city who cannot grow food to feed themselves, conditions are even worse.

Sixty-year-old Armando Mattheus is amongst the many elderly people who now find themselves begging on the streets of the capital, unable to cope with the high cost of living. “Before I could buy something with the little I have but today I can’t buy anything,” says Mattheus, who spends his days outside a popular Maputo restaurant, begging tourists for handouts.

It is a situation experts say Mozambique’s government needs to address urgently. Eighty percent of people work well into old age in Mozambique – one of the highest rates in the world.

“The population in Mozambique works until they die because there aren’t alternatives,” says the director of Mozambique’s Institute of Social and Economic Studies, António Francisco.

With half its population of 23 million under 18 years old, Mozambique is often referred to as a country of young people. Those who can remember the devastating civil war that ended two decades ago are now in the minority.

Newly discovered natural gas and coal deposits promise untold riches for a lucky few and will soon fuel what is already one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

The aged make up a tiny fraction of the population – just five percent.  However, by the time a child born today reaches 60, that number will be nearly three times as high, according to Francisco’s research. This represents, he says, “an unprecedented demographic transformation in the history of Mozambique.”

Nearby countries – South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho – all spend between 0.3 and two percent of GDP on grants for the elderly. Like Mozambique, they have a young population structure but such an approach can pay dividends.

Japan, which in 2010 registered 38 percent of its population over the age of 65 – the world’s largest proportion – spends over 10 percent of GDP on pensions, according to the International Monetary Fund. And the United Kingdom spends five percent of GDP on pensions, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Studies show that providing state pensions can reduce hunger and poverty because elderly people share resources with the family.

A 2003 study by HelpAge International found that “social pensions increase the income of the poorest five percent of the population by 100 percent in Brazil and 50 percent in South Africa.” And a 2005 study by the University of Manchester in the U.K. found that people living in households receiving a pension were 18 percent less likely to be poor in Brazil and 12.5 percent less likely in South Africa.

One fifth of all families in Mozambique include an elderly person. This is one reason why aid agencies are pushing the government to fall into step with other countries in the region. Another is that 43 percent of orphans are cared for by grandparents in Mozambique. The country has an HIV prevalence rate of 16.2 percent, one of the highest rates in the world.

“Of the 10 African countries with the highest HIV prevalence, eight have introduced some form of social pension or cash transfer directed at older people,” says Duffield.

The government would need to provide citizens over 60 with a minimum of 26 dollars a month to have an impact, estimates Francisco. The figure represents three percent of the country’s 12.8-billion-dollar GDP.

But universal social pensions would be too costly, argues Felix Matusse, who heads the government’s Department for the Elderly. “We still depend on external aid,” he explains, pointing out that foreign donors contribute over 30 percent of the entire state budget.

But the government cannot go on pleading poverty for long. By some estimates, Mozambique stands to collect over five billion dollars a year in the long term from its natural gas alone.

Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, financed its universal pension scheme or “Dignity Pension” in 2007 through a direct hydrocarbon tax. Could Mozambique do the same?

“Improved revenue collection from new-found mineral resources could free up fiscal space more than adequate to provide a cash transfer for all older people,” suggests Duffield.

Others argue that caring for the elderly should not have to depend on hydrocarbon windfalls. “What kind of state do we have that cannot look after five percent of its population?” asks Francisco, adding that nearby Lesotho finances a pension scheme but has no natural resources to speak of.

Few expect a major shift in government policy on pensions before the next national elections in 2014. But in the run-up, the government is showing greater willingness to tackle its elderly problem.

A draft bill, due to go to parliament before the end of the year, aims to protect the aged from abuse, meting out specific tough penalties for violence related to witchcraft accusations. However, there is no mention of universal old age pensions.

Matusse points out that Mozambique will not begin to reap the benefits of hydrocarbons for at least another five years. “Then we will see what is going to happen in terms of social security,” he says.

A health worker weighs malnourished children at the Chikhwawa District Hospital in Malawi. The country reduced its under-five child mortality rate by 64 percent in the last 10 years. Courtesy: UNICEF/ Eldson Chagara

By Charity Chimungu Phiri
CHIKHWAWA, Malawi, Sep 15 2012 (IPS)

Three-month-old Simplicious Gift lives in Mafunga village in Malawi’s southern rural district of Chikhwawa, 48 kilometres from the commercial capital, Blantyre. His is a poor farming village of about 1,200 people who live off their harvests and the produce from their livestock of goats, pigs and cows.

While a large portion of the population in this region may be facing food insecurity this year because of poor harvests, whatever the situation, Simplicious will not go wanting for health care.

Whenever her young son is in need of medical treatment, Margaret Gift has only to walk 300 metres to her nearest medical clinic.

“I come here whenever my child has a fever, diarrhoea or a cough. I also come for family planning methods,” she told IPS as she waited at the local village clinic.

In this southern African nation, where 90 percent of the population are impoverished rural subsistence farmers with limited access to transport, the average distance to a district hospital is 21 kilometres, according to a December 2011 report on the country’s medical facilities in the East and Central African Journal of Surgery. In Tanzania the average distance is 31 kms, while the average in sub-Saharan Africa is eight, according to Every Mother Counts, a platform that links grassroots mobilisation campaigns with the steps of “engagement, education, and advocacy.”

But the growing presence of rural health centres and the introduction of community health workers in Malawi over the last 30 years has resulted in a 64 percent reduction of under-five mortality rates in the country over the last 10 years, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In 1990 the country recorded 227 deaths per 1,000 live births. The number was reduced to 83 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2011.

A UNICEF report released on Sep. 13 “Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed”, says the number of children under the age of five dying in sub-Saharan Africa has been reduced by 39 percent, while globally it has been reduced from nearly 12 million in 1992 to 6.9 million in 2011.

The report noted that Malawi is only one of nine low-income countries worldwide to have reduced their under-five mortality rate by more than 60 percent.

In the Chikwawa district there are 12 health centres that serve the region’s approximate 350,000 people. Makhwira Health Centre provides health services to about 58,755 people.

Kennedy Thala, a senior Health Surveillance Assistant (HSA) or community health worker at the centre, told IPS that the introduction of Early Infant Diagnosis in 2010 has reduced the number of child deaths here.

“When it was first launched we had 229 infants, of which only three died between the months of July and September 2010 while waiting for their HIV and malnutrition results from the Central Lab in Blantyre. Before that, children were dying at a much higher rate. But unfortunately we don’t have the data because there were no records,” she said.

She added that the introduction of the UNICEF Rapid SMS programme in 2010 also reduced the under-five mortality rate.

“We get text messages with the results of children who were tested for HIV, usually after three to four weeks,” she said. Previously it would take months for the health centre to receive the results.

Babies here are also enrolled in the Growth Monitoring Programme, a project that runs together with the Out-Patient Therapeutic Programme, where babies with moderate malnutrition are given ready-to-use therapeutic food such as plumpy’nut (fortified peanut butter) and corn-blend soy flour mixed with cooking oil, medication and vitamins.

In this region, as across the rest of the country, HSAs conduct clinics in local villages daily. In addition, the community health care workers visit health centres twice a week to assist with child immunisations, antenatal care, and HIV counselling and testing services.

“We believe that through these programmes mothers are receiving first-hand information on what is expected of them in as far as the reduction of malnutrition amongst under fives is concerned,” said UNICEF Malawi Chief of Communications, Victor Chinyama.

UNICEF officials say it has been very important to take health care services closer to where people live, thereby significantly reducing the distance that people have to travel to access medical treatment in Malawi.

“In Malawi, many district hospitals are very far from most villages, which previously forced many mothers to walk very long distances. But now people can get medical care right where they are, and mothers seeking child healthcare can access it right away,” said Chinyama.

Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Henry Chimbali, told IPS that the reduction in under-five mortality rates was “a remarkable achievement for us because it shows that what we are doing is working.”

“We are mainly attributing this success to the Safe Motherhood project, the village clinics and also to the HSAs who are directly working with mothers right in their communities to help prevent deaths that could be avoided amongst children,” he said.

Dr. Queen Dube, a paediatrician at the Queen Elizabeth Central hospital in Blantyre – a 950-bed facility with patients mostly from rural areas or townships, told IPS that the reduction of deaths in children under five due to malnourishment could also be attributed to the improved access to food supply in the country since 2005.

“I was here when there were over one hundred children in the Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit. But now you go there it’s not even full – there are only 16 children there – to us that’s amazing!

“Things have to improved after the introduction of the Out-Patient Therapeutic care (which started in community clinics almost 30 years ago) and community clinics, because health workers are no longer waiting for mothers to bring in very sick children.” Instead, health workers are going to mothers and educating them on how to prevent their children from falling ill.

Dube also said that the introduction of the Extended Programme of Immunization for children under five, which started in the early 1960s countrywide, helped reduce mortality rates.

“At the moment our coverage nationwide is at 90 percent. Though there is still more to be done in the area of pneumonia, but since last year babies are now being vaccinated against the disease. In addition, many pregnant women are now attending antenatal care at least once – at the moment countrywide attendance is at 91 percent,” she said.

Dube, however, told IPS that neonatal mortality remains a big challenge for Malawi as it contributes to nearly a third of all under-five deaths. Current statistics indicate that 79 infants under 12 months of age die each year out of every 1, 000 live births. The current global neonatal rate, according to the UNICEF report, is 22 deaths per 1,000 live births.

“Basically, neonates get sick within the first 72 hours of life and they mostly die due to low-birth weight. Such deaths remain unchanged in Malawi, the numbers are still high,” she said.

Angola’s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been in power for 33 years, and will serve another five-year term of office after his party’s landslide victory, which the opposition claims is fraudulent. Credit: Louise Redvers/IPS

By Louise Redvers
LUANDA, Sep 4 2012 (IPS)

Question marks hang over the legitimacy of Angola’s general election as Africa’s second-longest serving leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos has won a five-year term in office following his party’s landslide victory.

The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) – which has ruled Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975 – secured a parliamentary majority of just under 72 percent.

Its former civil war enemy, the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), is second with nearly 19 percent, almost doubling its 2008 tally. Third is the newly-formed Salvation–Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE) which won six percent of the vote, according to provisional results released by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) on Monday, Sep. 4.

But while the MPLA – whose lavish campaign is reported to have cost over 70 million dollars – is celebrating its win, UNITA, CASA-CE and civil society groups are understood to be working on legal challenges to contest the results.

Once the final results are in, there is a 48-hour window available for a party to lodge a legal challenge with the southern African nation’s constitutional court.

In a statement issued on Sep. 3, UNITA said it was running its own parallel counting and was following the provisional results being presented by the CNE.

UNITA accused the CNE of using government security staff to run polling stations, questioned its processes for transmission of data, and complained about how many party delegates and observers had not been able to get accreditation to monitor proceedings.

The party has been critical of the CNE and its preparation for the election for some months, alleging fraudulent manipulation on the part of the MPLA. Complaints have centred around voter lists, the way they were compiled, audited and shared.

UNITA claims thousands of “ghost voters” have been added to the rolls and that the delay in publishing the final list would prevent many people from voting.

“We will not allow a brand of fraud to take place and we will not recognise the legitimacy of any government resulting from elections held outside of the law,” UNITA leader Isaías Samakuva said a week before the vote was due to take place.

On Aug. 31, the day of the elections, many people – exact numbers are unknown – were unable to vote due because they were unable to find their names on the voters’ list. Some were told that they were actually registered to vote several hundred kilometres away in another province.

The provisional results from the CNE indicate turnout was down significantly from 80 percent in 2008 to 60 percent this year. Turnout was significantly lower in the capital Luanda at around 50 percent.

However, teams from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU) and the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries praised Angola’s CNE for the way it organised the election.

The AU mission chief, Cape Verde’s former President Pedro Pires, noted some issues with delayed accreditation of party delegations and observers, unfair access to public media space and a failure to allow diaspora voting. However, Pires said overall the election was “free, fair, transparent and credible”.

Bernand Membe, Tanzania’s Foreign Affairs Minister who headed the SADC mission, acknowledged some of the claims made by opposition parties but said: “We are of the opinion that while some of the issues raised were pertinent, they were nevertheless not of such magnitude as to have affected the credibility of the overall electoral process.”

Angolan musician and activist Luaty Beirao, who has been involved in various anti-government street protests and has helped set up a website that has been publishing complaints from the public about the election, told IPS that he was very disappointed in the observation missions’ standpoint.

“How can these elections be considered fair?” he asked.

“How can you say that thing went well just because there were no fights and people were not throwing stuff at cars or burning tyres in the street?

“Peaceful is not the only the way we analyse if an election was fair and free. We must analyse the high numbers of people who were not able to vote.”

Beirao, who has been jailed several times for his activism, added: “This election was rigged and this government is not legitimate.”

The CNE has denied any wrongdoing and the MPLA has accused the opposition of making up allegations of fraud to distract from their poor results.

The MPLA, however, has already claimed victory and many ordinary Angolans seemed oblivious of UNITA’s claims.

Avelino Pacheco, 22, from Luanda, told IPS: “In my opinion these elections went very well and we were free to chose who we wanted. The people have chosen the MPLA and President dos Santos.

“There was no fraud, we must respect the choice of the people,” the statistics student said.

A woman, waiting in a taxi queue who did not want to give her name, told IPS: “It doesn’t really matter about the result though, the MPLA is in power and will be for a long time. We should just accept it.”

Six other parties and coalitions, including the historic National Front for the Liberation of Angola and the Party of Social Renovation, shared the remaining three percent.

The country’s 27-year civil war only ended in 2002 and since independence in 1975 Angola has only had two previous elections.

The 2008 poll passed peacefully despite widespread allegations of vote-rigging, but the election in 1992 was abandoned midway and triggered a second phase of the civil war that lasted until 2002. The first civil war began after independence in 1975 until 1991.

Under the terms of the country’s 2010 constitution, the head of the party that wins the most parliamentary votes becomes president – thus Dos Santos is returned automatically to power.

This will be the 70-year’s first official mandate, Russian-trained engineer never having previously been formally elected, despite having ruling Angola since 1979.

While the oil-rich country has enjoyed stellar growth since the end of its three-decade civil war in 2002, and is forecast to see a GDP hike of 12 percent in 2012, only a few of its people have shared in the peace dividend.

According to the United Nation’s 2011 Human Development Index, Angola ranks 148 out of 187 countries and more than half of the population lives below the poverty line without access to basic services.

By Moses Magadza
WINDHOEK, Aug 29 2012 (IPS)

Legendary and controversial Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera, who once famously told people to let him write and drink his beer, has been dead for 25 years. However, interest in the life and work of the author, who has become a cult icon to aspiring young writers in Zimbabwe and abroad, will not die.

His work continues to inspire authors and readers alike.

Emmanuel Sigauke, a Zimbabwean poet and English teacher at Cosumnes River College in the United States, is a student of Marechera’s work. He tells IPS that many people are drawn to the famous author because of the way he exercised his art, the risks he took, and his total commitment to writing.

Indeed, critics hail Marechera as a genius. His most famous book, House of Hunger, won the prestigious Guardian First Book Award in 1979, making Marechera the first and only African to win the award.

After being expelled in the early 1970s from the University of Rhodesia, now known as the University of Zimbabwe, Marechera was admitted to the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. But he was expelled from there too for unruly behaviour.

He died in Zimbabwe at the age of 35 after spending most of the last five years of his life living in the streets, writing furiously but publishing just one more book, Mindblasts.

Now a book on his life, soon to be released in Zimbabwe, provides new and interesting insights into Marechera’s personal and professional relationships.

Dr. Dobrota Pucherova and Julie Cairnie co-edited the book titled “Moving Spirit: The Legacy of Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century”. The book, published in Germany in May, is a compilation of essays by various writers that focus on how Marechera continues to inspire others.

“I believe it provides many new insights into Marechera’s relationships with his contemporaries, with other authors, and with his fans and inspirees. For example, Carolyn Hart’s essay explores Marechera’s relationship with African-American postmodern writers, while Katja Kellerer’s piece examines the intertextualities between House of Hunger and Ignatius Mabasa’s Mapenzi,” Pucherova says.

She holds a PhD on southern African writing and studied Marechera’s writing as part of her thesis. She also lectures on his work.

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: What drew you to the Marechera phenomenon?

A: Marechera’s writing expresses very well the desire for mental freedom that concerned me when studying southern African authors. He believed that overcoming oppositional identity discourses and freeing the imagination to create space for individual reinvention could achieve true liberation from oppression.

At the same time, Marechera’s vision of the political as sexual and the sexual as political provided new insights into power relationships in colonial and post-colonial conditions. Last, but not least, his flair for language and his infectious humour make his books very pleasurable to read.

Q: What inspired this book?

A: When I was writing my thesis chapter on Marechera, alongside I wrote a play based mainly on (his novel) Black Sunlight. To me, this novel is immensely comical and at the same time sophisticated. I felt that it has been misunderstood due to Marechera’s unwillingness to edit his work, as (leading academic publisher on Africa) James Currey has documented.

In adapting the novel for the stage, I wanted to bring forth its audacity and deeply sophisticated comedy. And so, when I decided to produce the play at Oxford, I felt: ‘Why not organise an entire festival on Marechera?’

The festival, which took place from May 15 to 17, 2009, was an international multi-media event that included film, theatre, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, memoirs and scholarly essays – all inspired by Marechera’s work and life.

The book is the proceedings of the festival, with a few additional pieces. Julie Cairnie, who has co-edited the book with me, was a participant at the Oxford Celebration.

Dr. Dobrota Pucherova and Julie Cairnie co-edited the book titled “Moving Spirit: The Legacy of Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century”. Courtesy: Dr. Dobrota Pucherova.

Q: Essays by Marechera’s contemporaries like Musaemura Zimunya, Stanley Nyamfukudza and Charles Mungoshi are conspicuously absent from your compilation. How do you explain this?

A: The majority of contributions in the book were presented at the Oxford Celebration. The people you mention did not respond to the call for papers, which was widely distributed.

Q: Some people think this is the chink in this book’s armour. What impact do these omissions have on it?

A: No book on Marechera can possibly be complete. There are other famous contemporaries of Marechera who are not included in the book.

Q: This new book comes with rare, archival materials that include audiovisuals such as Marechera’s address at the Berlin Conference in 1979, and the speech on African writing that he gave in Harare in 1986. How important is it?

A: This material shows Marechera in various periods in his life. For me, seeing Marechera interviewed by (veteran journalist) Ray Mawerera in Harare in 1984 was a completely different experience than watching him drunk and deeply depressed in the London squat as he appears in Chris Austin’s film (based on House of Hunger). In the Mawerera interview, Marechera is an entirely different person – calm, communicative and composed.

Q: After this book – which is complete with archival material, footnotes, references as well as German scholar and Marechera’s former partner, Flora Wild’s, contribution – what else remains to be learnt about Marechera?

A: I believe no book on Marechera can be complete and I am sure there will be other books on (him). Helon Habila’s biography of Marechera is due to be published next year, and I look forward to reading it.

Q: What, in your view, sets Marechera distinctly apart from his contemporaries and today’s writers?

A: Marechera reacted to the Marxist and nationalist tradition in African writing with cosmopolitanism and post-racialism at a time in Zimbabwean history when it was most controversial to do so.

He described the violence of the colony and post colony with a liberating laughter and dared to laugh even at the power presumptions of the anti-colonial struggle. Identifying language’s key role in upholding systems of power, he explodes language to create new meanings and paradigms.

Moreover, Marechera dared to go to those places in the human psyche where no other black African writer before him had gone.

Others have done so after Marechera – of these, I would mention Yvonne Vera and Kabelo Sello Duiker, who similarly explore the dark spaces of the mind and whose highly poetic but authentic language sets them apart from other African writers. It is very sad that both of these writers have died young, just like Marechera.

Excerpt:

Malawi’s Lake Chilwa could dry up completely by next year if the low rainfall in the area continued. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Claire Ngozo
LAKE CHILWA, Malawi, Aug 17 2012 (IPS)

Fisherfolk and farmers living near Malawi’s second-largest water body, Lake Chilwa, are relocating en masse and scrambling for space around its shores as the lake has dried to dangerously low levels.

Professor Sosten Chiotha, an expert with the Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme (LCBCCAP), said that it could dry up completely by next year if the low rainfall in the area continued.

The lake dried up completely in 1995 following a drought, which saw a resultant rainfall of 775 mm and 748 mm over two consecutive years.

According to the Malawi Meteorological Services, for the past two years Lake Chilwa’s catchment area has recorded less than 1,000 millimetres of rain. In 2011 and 2012 the total annual rainfall was 1,048 mm and 655 mm respectively, said Chiotha.

And this is not sufficient to sustain the lake.

“In March it appeared as if the situation was not too bad, but gradually the water levels started falling rapidly, particularly by the Mposa and Namanja Beaches. In July, we were able to drive 10 kilometres into the lake from Namanja Beach to an area that had water in March, and we still did not reach open waters,” Chiotha told IPS.

People living on these main beaches have already started relocating to the Swangoma, Chisi and Kachulu beaches in search of new fishing grounds and good farmland, Chiotha told IPS. However, he was unable to estimate how many people have relocated to date.

Chiotha, who is also the regional director of the Leadership of Environment and Development in Southern and Eastern Africa, a global environmental and developmental think tank, cautioned that things could get worse if the lake continued to dry up.

“The movement is also causing congestion and potential conflict,” said Chiotha.

Up to 1.5 million inhabitants from southern Malawi’s Machinga, Phalombe and Zomba districts benefit directly from the 60 by 40 km lake through agriculture and natural resource goods and services, which generate an estimated 21 million dollars per year.

Of that, 18.7 million dollars is generated from fishing, with the remainder coming from farming, bird hunting, and the use of grasslands, vegetation and clay for producing building materials, stated a LCBCCAP brief released in August.

About 17,000 tonnes of fish, or 20 percent of all the fish caught in this southern African nation, comes from the lake.

Godwin Mussa, 41, who was born on Namanja Beach and lived there his entire life, was forced to move to Chisi Beach in July in search of fishing grounds.

“Fishing has been getting harder and harder as the water moved further away from my beach. I just had to move to Chisi so that I can take care of my wife and six children,” Mussa told IPS.

He said that his catch had dwindled to an average of 100 fish per week compared to 600 a week last year.

“Fishing is my only livelihood and that’s why I just had to relocate. I just hope we will get good rain this year so that I can go back home. The fishermen here are getting wary of those of us who are moving into their territory. We are scrambling for fishing grounds,” said Mussa.

Farmers around the lake are also struggling.

Debra Chalichi from Phalombe District has been practising irrigation farming within the lake basin since 2007. But this year she had to wait for the rains in order to irrigate her crop.

“Since last year, the lake has been moving away from where my garden is. I cannot direct the water channels for irrigating into my garden from the lake anymore because it keeps withdrawing,” Chalichi told IPS.

She said that she used to grow rice twice a year, but only managed to grow it once this year as she had to wait for the rainy season.

“Rice farming has been my livelihood and I am getting poorer now. I used to make up to 2,000 dollars in sales. But I have only been able to produce rice worth 800 dollars this year,” said Chalichi.

Rice is one of Malawi’s staple crops, and is second only to maize. Fifty percent of the estimated 100,000 tonnes of rice harvested in Malawi comes from the Lake Chilwa wetlands, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture. There are no estimates available on this year’s rice production.

Chiotha told IPS that the low rainfall was negatively affecting the livelihoods and nutrition of those living around the lake.

The situation could force some to leave the area.

John Kabango, 51, from Zomba District, has been fishing on Lake Chilwa since 1981.

He said that in 2005, the last time the water level in the lake started receding, he relocated to the country’s commercial capital, Blantyre. He worked there as a night guard at a factory until conditions around the lake improved and he returned home.

“I never liked the job in Blantyre. I grew up as a fisherman and that is the type of livelihood I am used to. I never managed to make as much money working as a guard anyway and I don’t want to go back to that life,” Kabango told IPS.

He said that he earned up to 800 dollars a week from fishing, but was only paid 100 dollars a week to work as a guard. “It was very difficult to take care of my family when I worked as a guard,” said Kabango, who has a wife and six children.

But his catch has been dwindling drastically since 2011 when the lake first began drying up.

“I used to catch up to 500 fish a night, but I am lucky if I catch 150 now. I am not making as much money and I don’t know if I will manage to take care of my family if the lake dries up,” Kabango told IPS.

So he is doing all he can to ensure that he does not have to leave the area. Kabango has joined a LCBCCAP community initiative that is implementing adaptation measures to help locals cope with the low rainfall and the drying lake.

“We are digging pools around the lake to allow fish to seek shelter and breed in there as the lake dries up,” said Kabango.

He said that farmers were adopting modern methods of irrigation and started using treadle pumps to source water from the lake. While it will not prevent the lake from drying up, it will conserve some of the much-needed water.

“My wife farms and she is now involved in a rainwater harvesting project so that the water collected is used for irrigation when it is the dry season and the lake has receded further,” said Kabango.

All Chinese-run businesses outside Malawi’s four major cities have to close down after a new law barring foreigners from trading in outlying and rural areas. This store, in Lilongwe, will have to apply for a new licence to trade. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE, Aug 4 2012 (IPS)

The move in Malawi to close down Chinese businesses outside of the four major cities has been condemned as xenophobic by rights organisations. A new law enforced Jul. 31 barred foreigners from carrying out trade in Malawi’s outlying and rural areas.

The Investment and Export Promotion Bill required traders to move to the southern African nation’s major cities Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba. The law is an attempt to protect local small-scale businesses from competition from foreign traders.

Two prominent civil rights organisations, the Centre for Development of People and the Centre for Human Rights Rehabilitation (CHRR), have warned the Malawian government against encouraging the victimisation of foreign traders.

“We are worried about the increasing xenophobia sentiments and attacks on foreign nationals who are doing legal business across the country,” the executive director of CHRR, Undule Mwakasungula, told IPS. He argued that the way Chinese traders were being treated was in violation of their human rights.

“Malawi should not be perpetrating xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals under the pretext of protecting the interests of local businesses.”

The new legislation comes immediately after Malawian traders in some rural areas grouped together in May and convinced local government authorities to force out Chinese traders. The protests first began in Karonga, a bustling town in the north of Malawi, which borders Tanzania, and later spread to all 28 districts in the country.

While there are no official figures yet as to how many foreign traders have complied with the new law, IPS confirmed that in seven of the country’s 28 districts, Chinese traders closed down their businesses.

They now have to apply for new licences to trade in the specified four cities. But many may not qualify, as the new legislation requires investors to deposit a minimum of 250,000 dollars in Malawi’s central bank as start-up capital.

Malawi’s Minister of Trade John Bande said that the new legislation was intended to regulate foreign investment.

“The new law clearly outlines what kind of businesses foreign investors will be allowed to get involved in. We will not accept foreigners to come all the way from places like China and open small businesses and shops in the rural areas of this country and compete with local traders,” Bande told IPS.

But Mwakasungula said that the main challenge faced by local businesses was that they lacked the financial and technical muscle to compete favourably with the Chinese. He said that it was unreasonable for the government to resort to such a “drastic decision”.

“It is unrealistic for the government to think that stopping foreign traders from doing business will automatically boost businesses run by locals,” he said.

There are no official figures on the number of Chinese or foreign traders there are in Malawi. However, Chinese-run shops, restaurants and lodges have sprouted across the country since 2007, when Malawi established diplomatic relations with China. The country had just abandoned its 41-year-old ties with Taiwan in favour of the economic giant.

China has become Malawi’s major economic partner since then. According to statistics from Malawi’s Ministry of Trade, the country’s trade volumes jumped to a record high of 100 million dollars in 2011 – a 400 percent increase from 2010.

The two countries have a 2008 memorandum of understanding about issues of industry, trade and investment. It commits China to increasing Malawi’s productive capacity in tobacco, cotton, mining, forestry, and fertiliser production, among other things.

China has also given Malawi 260 million dollars in concessionary loans, grants and development support. This year, the country’s first five-star hotel opened. It includes 14 opulent presidential suites and a state-of-the-art conference centre, and was built by the Chinese government.

In April 2012, China’s direct investment in Africa surpassed 15.4 billion dollars, according to statistics from the Chinese embassy in Malawi.

But ordinary Malawians are not happy with the influence that the Chinese have on the country’s economy.

Ellen Mwagomba, who has been at the forefront of the protests against Chinese traders in Karonga, has had a grocery store there since 2003. She told IPS that sales in her shop plummeted in 2008 when the Chinese started trading in the area.

“This place is a hive of activity since it is a border area. Business used to be good until the Chinese invaded us, bringing cheap goods and taking away our customers,” Mwagomba said.

She said that her grocery store lost business to Chinese traders as they charged as little as a quarter of the price that local traders asked for their goods.

“The goods I stock are from the local industry and from South Africa and are of good quality, they are not very cheap. But people would rather go for the cheap Chinese goods, which are also of cheap quality,” said Mwagomba.

She said that consumers preferred to purchase Chinese goods, to maximise their spending power. Up to 74 percent of the population in Malawi lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

But Mwagomba and other like-minded locals convinced the local assembly to remove Chinese traders from their district.

“They started leaving in June and business is now picking up for us, even before the new law became effective. I am now making up to 500 dollars a day in sales. I could barely make 100 dollars a day when the Chinese traders were here in full force,” Mwagomba told IPS.

But many Chinese feel they have been treated unfairly. Fu-han Chao used to run a restaurant in Mzimba district, in northern Malawi. But he was forced to close it down on Jun. 30, before the new law came into effect, following an order by local government authorities after Malawian traders complained about the cheap goods sold at low prices by their Chinese counterparts.

“The local traders don’t work as hard as we do. We open our shops much earlier and close them much later. We even open on Sundays when most businesses are closed, and we are hated for that. We have been treated very unfairly and I feel really angry about this. I felt threatened most times, and scared,” Chao told IPS.

He added that business was meant to be about competition. He said that until he was forced to close his restaurant, he had a number of customers and was making up to 800 dollars a day.

“We are contributing a lot to the economy of this country. I am yet to decide on what to do next. Maybe I will go back to China, but it is also tough to run a business back there because the population is high and the competition is also high,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has not supported its traders on this issue.

“It is up to the Malawi government to thoroughly screen the Chinese nationals willing to invest in the country. These are small vendors and why should the Malawi government allow them to do business? They are capitalising on government’s failure to screen foreign traders,” China’s Ambassador to Malawi Pan Hejun said at a press briefing on Jul. 23.

“Rules should be respected and we don’t encourage these traders to go into rural areas. We encourage real investors,” Hejun said.

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jul 31 2012 (IPS)

Swazis should not see the ongoing nationwide one-month teachers’ strike as a movement capable of overthrowing the political regime here, despite the fact that civil servants and nurses have joined the action, according to political analyst Dr. Sikelela Dlamini.

Since Jun. 21, teachers in this southern African monarchy have engaged in an indefinite strike demanding a 4.5 percent cost of living increase, which has left thousands of pupils in about 30 to 50 percent of the country’s 179 secondary schools and 153 primary schools without teachers.

The country’s National Association of Public Servants and Allied Workers Union has also since joined the strike, although over 70 percent of its members are at work, and the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union is engaged in a go-slow after the government won an interdict in the country’s Industrial Court against full-blown strike action on Jul. 19.

While strikers have mainly protested against the government’s move to freeze all public servant salaries, on numerous occasions the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) president Sibongile Mazibuko warned that if the government refused to give workers the 4.5 percent cost of living adjustment, which is below the inflation rate, “the government might end up losing the country.”

The inflation rate currently stands at 9.43 percent, which has made it difficult for the 63 percent of Swazis living below the poverty line of two dollars a day to put food on the table.

But Dlamini and other analysts feel that the struggle for democracy in Swaziland lacks clear political alliances between labour and political organisations.

Dlamini told IPS that Swazis should not read too much into the teachers’ strike because workers have not yet declared their regime-change agenda at the negotiating table. In addition, only just over half of SNAT’s 9,000 members are on strike.

“No amount of all-out protest and defiance on the part of labour alone is sufficient to topple the status quo without a clear political direction,” Dlamini told IPS.

While workers are in a strategic position to challenge King Mswati III’s regime because they can withhold the labour that fuels the economy, Dlamini said that the country needs political organisations to negotiate and contest power.

Political parties have been banned in Swaziland for almost four decades and King Mswati III’s government continues to use security forces to quash any political dissent spearheaded by trade unions.

Following the fiscal crisis that has hit the country since 2009, after a 60 percent decrease from Southern African Customs Union income, workers began to call for political change, better working conditions, and below-inflation salary increases.

A United Nations Impact of the Fiscal Crisis in Swaziland survey released on Mar. 16 said that 21.9 percent of surveyed households have experienced reduced income since the crisis hit in 2009. And about seven percent of households surveyed admitted to having a member who lost a job as many families here survive on a meal a day.

The government has said that there is no money to pay public workers, whose salaries constitute a significant 52 percent of the national budget. Last year, the cash-strapped country took out a 320-million-dollar loan with neighbour South Africa. And at the time, the International Monetary Fund advised the Swazi government to reduce public servants’ salaries by 4.5 percent and politicians’ salaries by 10 percent, to save the government 24 million dollars a year.

However, the government has refused to adhere to calls demanding the cancellation of the controversial Circular No. 1, a government gazette that awards politicians, including the prime minister, cabinet ministers and members of parliament, lucrative perks. The government also continues to spend, and has plans to purchase 800 new cars over five years.

In addition, Mswati, Africa’s last absolute monarch, who has 13 wives, has also been criticised for his lavish lifestyle. The South African Mail & Guardian newspaper reported on Jul. 25 that three of the monarch’s wives are to soon go on holiday to Las Vegas, in the United States, with a 66-member retinue.

“We want a competitive government that will care about ordinary people instead of only those in power,” Mazibuko told IPS.

The government has responded to the strike by cutting the striking teachers’ July salaries by a third. It said that this was done because the strike is illegal as the Industrial Court recently ruled against it. However, teachers remain on strike.

But South African-based socio-economic analyst Thembinkosi Dlamini told IPS that civil society organisations in Swaziland, particularly labour unions, are weak and not very well coordinated to challenge the regime.

“The state has also made frantic efforts to dismantle any form of collective effort that could bring pressure to bear on the system,” said Dlamini.

For instance, in March the government registered the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), only to deregister it in April after stating that there is no legislation governing the merger of trade union federations here.

Trade unions felt that the government was trying to weaken the labour movement by deregistering TUCOSWA so that there could be no unity among workers, which could lead to them protesting against the government.

Meanwhile parents and public school pupils, who are supposed to be sitting for their mid-year examinations, are the ones most affected by the labour action, said human rights activist Doo Aphane. Some children do not even attend class currently, which exposes them to all sorts of risks, including sexual abuse and drug use, Aphane told IPS.

“Our government lacks a human rights-based approach because it is clear that the government has not taken into consideration the plight of the many ordinary people who are suffering because of this strike,” said Aphane.

Prime Minister Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini has threatened to fire striking teachers and close down schools if the strike continues. He has maintained that public servants will not receive a salary increase for the next three years.

“This does not guarantee lessons for the children who have been idling for weeks now,” the director of Save the Children Swaziland, Dumisani Mnisi, told IPS. “I wish that the government and teachers could sit down and sort out their differences so that children do not suffer the consequences of the action.”

A director of one of the country’s civil society organisations, who asked for anonymity, said that the prime minister was not handling the matter well and was “very arrogant because he is the King’s appointee and he has nothing to lose even when the public complains about his conduct.”

“Since the strike started we’ve been trying to get an appointment to engage the prime minister, but he’s been refusing to see us,” he said. “He seems to be only interested in fixing up the teachers and not ensuring that the children receive an education.”

He said that the government’s decision to buy cars to the value of 2.4 million dollars when it claimed that there was no money for workers showed how insensitive those in power were.

“That’s why people are now calling for a system that will ensure that those serving in the government take the citizens seriously,” he said.

Analysts insist though that it will take more than a group of aggrieved workers and empty threats to bring about political change in Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy.

Namibia’s Omaruru River runs dry for much of the year, but along with the aquifers it feeds is a vital source of water for a wide area. Credit:Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

By Absalom Shigwedha
WINDHOEK, Jun 7 2012 (IPS)

A transboundary initiative aimed at providing clean drinking water and proper sanitation between Angola and Namibia is making steady progress.

The Kunene Transboundary Water Supply Project is a good model of trans-boundary cooperation in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). The KTWSP will improve the water supply for around 700,000 residents of southern Angola and northern Namibia, providing for domestic consumption, irrigation, and industry.

The project includes the rehabilitation of the Calueqe Dam in southern Angola, which suffered extensive damage during the country’s 27 years of civil war. So far, some 35 million dollars have been invested in the project, which is being funded by the Namibian and Angola governments and contributions from the UK, the German Development Bank and Australia.

Dr Kuiri Tjipangandjara, an engineer at the Namibia Water Corporation (NamWater) and co-Chair of the KTWSP, told IPS that construction of a new pipeline between the southern Angola towns of Xangongo and Ondjiva has already begun. This link will supply treated water to various towns and villages along its route, such as Namacunde, Santa-Clara and Chiedi.

Designs for the network to distribute water within and around Ondjiva are in progress, as are plans for another bulk water pipeline linking Santa Clara to the Namibian town of Oshakati.

Tjipangandjara said Angola has also begun setting up a water utility for the Kunene region.

“There was nothing in place before, and it takes time to set up such a utility and other facilities of the project,” he said.

Numerous design and feasibility studies must be conducted and approved by all involved parties: Angola, Namibia, SADC and the German Development Bank.

“Of course it will be a state-owned utility,” he said, but he did not venture to predict if it would eventually operate on a cost-recovery basis like NamWater, explaining that each country designs its own policies – dictated by the reality on the ground and by history.

The next phase of the project will look at replacing the open canal that runs for 150 kilometres between Calueqe and the Namibian town of Oshakati with a pipeline.

The open canal currently faces a number of challenges. During the rainy season, it is frequently damaged by floods and Tjipangandjara said people living along the canal not only freely draw water without permission – the occasional drowning has been reported – but some locals have also vandalised it. He explained that repairing this damage costs NamWater dearly in terms of maintenance.

He said replacing the canal with a pipeline will also eliminate losses through evaporation. “Seventy-six percent of the water that we pump from Calueqe into the canal is lost to evaporation,” Tjipangandjara told IPS.

Modestus Amutse is the councillor for Oshikuku constituency in the Omusati region through which the canal runs.

He told IPS that the KTWSP is a good initiative, but warned that replacing the open waterway with a pipeline could deny villagers access to water for irrigation and for their livestock. “This project will only be good if it is responsive to the needs of the people,” he said.

While he agreed that the canal lost water through evaporation, he stressed that many of his constituents were unemployed and could not afford to pay for water at communal access points. But, he said, they needed access to water for their gardens and livestock.

Tjipangandjara disagreed. “The current off-take of water from the canal is not approved by NamWater and is not managed.”

He suggested water should only be drawn at designated points. “It should be regulated and properly managed. The current practice is not correct.”

Tjipangandjara said that undertaking the KTWSP has improved understanding of the water supply in Namibia and Angola, and strengthened management of the Kunene River basin, including providing access to badly needed funds for infrastructure.

(END)

The mighty Victoria Falls. The water sector is critical in helping build regional integration in Southern Africa. / Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

By Thabani Okwenjani
HARARE, Jun 5 2012 (IPS)

The Southern African Development Community’s protocol on shared watercourses is recognised as one of the world’s best. But sound agreements on the sustainable and equitable management of joint water resources require effective means to implement them.

Water officials from across Southern Africa are meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Jun 5-6 to develop a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the regional agreement.

SADC’s 2003 Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses stresses a basin-wide approach to managing transboundary waters, rather than an emphasis on territorial sovereignty. It spells out the objectives of sound management as including coordinated management, sustainable use, and environmental protection.

The river basin organisations that are holding their fifth meeting in Harare are charged with promoting equitable use, setting out strategies for the development of shared rivers and lakes, and developing a policy for monitoring shared watercourses.

Armed conflict over water has long been predicted; most recently the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence said such wars would break out within the next decade. But although many parts of the region are already facing water stress, SADC expects its numerous transboundary watercourses to be the basis of closer cooperation rather than conflict.

“They say the next wars will be fought over water,” Dr Kenneth Msibi told IPS in Harare, ” but with these agreements, we are making sure that water will instead be an instrument of peace.”

Msibi, a water policy and strategy expert at the SADC Secretariat, said the water sector is critical in helping build regional integration. “Cooperation will also lead to further integration and water is an engine for development and this means a tool for poverty reduction. This means protocols for shared water are critical for regional integration.”

Msibi believes managing shared river basins in line with integrated water resource management principles – recognising that water management encompasses both social and economic goals, and should involve policy-makers, managers and users – contributes to SADC’s three key objectives: regional integration, peace and stability, and poverty reduction.

Sipho Nkambule, the chief executive officer of the Komati Basin Authority, which coordinates management of a river system that extends across South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique, said he would use the Harare meeting as a chance to compare notes on how other river basin authorities were monitoring implementation.

He said the main challenge was explaining management of a shared river to people living along its banks.

“People are struggling to understand why they should share the resource with others,” Nkambule said. “Those upstream are not happy to be told to allow water to pass, when they want to trap it for their own needs.”

Sergio Sitoe, the Interim Executive Secretary of LIMCOM, the Limpopo Watercourse Commission, said he hoped the new monitoring tool would emphasise communication among member states sharing a river basin.

“Member states should notify each other on development projects along the basin, as notification is crucial and failure to do so may create problems downstream and might impact negatively on other members,” he said.

As an example, Sitoe mentioned a recent complaint in which the Botswana government felt their South African counterparts should have officially informed them before beginning a development in the river basin.

The LIMCOM head said that while regional agreements allowed for disputes to be taken to the SADC Tribunal, there were a number of conflicts in the region that were being discussed behind closed doors.

“It’s good that we are trying to prevent these conflicts,” Sitoe said, “and we are building trust so that everything runs smoothly.”

Officials from across the region are agreed that implementation of the 2003 Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses will promote peace and stability in the region.

Msibi said the river basin organisation meeting – which welcomed its latest full member, the Zambezi Watercourse Commission, whose founding agreement was ratified in September last year – was meant to provide guidelines and reach a consensus on what indicators would be used and how these could be applied in each of the region’s transboundary river systems.

“We are taking input from all the stakeholders, we will discuss the tool and indicators to monitor progress,” Msibi said.

“This agreement can unlock potential for member states, and it creates an opportunity for member states to work together to beat economies of scale,” he said.

When you board Mozambique’s national carrier, Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, you will most likely be given small blue packets of peanuts to munch as the jet whisks you from the country’s capital, Maputo, to as far afield as Europe. Sugar, salt or chilli flavour. Take your pick.

Mozambican entrepreneur Lucia Bebane has a budding peanut business despite the challenges for small businesspeople. / Johannes Myburgh/IPS

The snack, also available in bright orange packaging, is called Ndoiiim, a shortened version of the Portuguese amendoim, which simply means peanuts. And it is the brainchild of Lucia Bebane, an entrepreneur who is carving out a place for her small company in this southern African country despite the harsh conditions for businesspeople here.

Bebane’s story is unique in Mozambique, where small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute up to 70 percent of GDP. But despite this, SMEs here do not produce much or make significant profits.

The National Statistics Institute estimates that the country’s per capita GDP was just 423 dollars in 2010. In contrast, per capita GDP in neighbouring South Africa was almost 25 times more, at 10,700 dollars, in 2010.

It is an economic climate in which many companies fail.

“To start something is hard. There are some entrepreneurs in this country, but Mozambicans have a tendency to imitate what others do,” says Bebane.

For example, the traders who roam Maputo’s streets all sell the same peanuts in the same bags.

Three years ago the 54-year-old former secretary saw the traders and had an idea to process the locally-grown peanut into a product that can compete with the best on the market.

“It was almost impossible … because no one had done it here before,” she explains as a peanut toaster whines loudly in the small factory outside her office.

Bebane is the first Mozambican to roast and package peanuts on an industrial scale here. Whereas peanut sellers manually roast the nuts and pack them by hand, she was the first to import roasting and packaging machines and thereby mechanise the entire process.

Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries: over 54 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, according to the country’s Millennium Development Goals report to the United Nations in 2010.

It also lacks the industries and infrastructure which are taken for granted elsewhere. There are no roads linking factories to markets, the electricity supply is often unstable, and there are no machinery manufacturers, forcing Bebane to import the machines she needed for her business.

But a few years after her company started “in a timid manner,” production is now almost completely mechanised. Raw peanuts are trucked in from the northern city of Nampula, which is about 1,400 kilometres from Maputo.

When the peanuts arrive, Bebane’s three permanent employees sort the best from the rest. One machine roasts and flavours the peanuts, and another packages them in the bright orange plastic bags that have become part of her now-visible brand.

But despite selling her peanuts to the country’s national airline, Bebane says that she still barely manages to pay the bills and is waiting to make a profit.

Economist João Mosca from the country’s Pedagogical University says that this is typical of the country’s small businesses.

“Mozambique’s economy is growing, which means there are more and better business opportunities. However, there isn’t an entrepreneurial tradition in modern-day formal companies.”

Mozambique’s economy grew by a whopping 7.3 percent in 2011, but companies have not grown with it.

“Companies are generally not very modernised and aren’t used to working in competitive environments. That’s why they are not competitive themselves,” Mosca tells IPS.

Throughout Mozambique’s modern history small businesses have had it rough. During colonialism under Portugal, Mozambican traders could not develop. The country adopted socialism after independence in 1975 and actively suppressed free enterprise, explains Mosca.

Entrepreneurship only emerged in the late 1980s to a limited extent, but then politicians grabbed the opportunity to monopolise the economy, he says.

“This emergence was politicised so that politicians had privileged access to privatised companies, many of them sold at symbolic prices. These businesspeople formed economic interest groups with sweeping protection against public policy, access to credit and selective law enforcement,” he says.

So in order to get as far as she has, Bebane has had to avoid the pitfalls of a corrupt and nepotistic system and raise her own capital.

The report “Corruption Assessment: Mozambique” commissioned in 2005 by USAID, the U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance, pointed to “favouritism and nepotism in public appointments and procurements, conflicts of interest and insider dealing that benefit friends, relatives and political allies, and political party and electoral decisions that reduce democratic choices and citizen participation.”

So entrepreneurs like Bebane, who are less well connected, struggle to find the money to breathe life into their companies.

“Another problem is not the lack of ideas, but the risk of entering the market. You have no family to guarantee loans, you have to borrow from the bank,” says Bebane. “I had to put up my house as collateral.”

More needs to be done before the country’s smaller businesses start making money and raise people from below the poverty line, says Mosca.

But the task is daunting.

“We need to improve the business environment – especially access to credit and the cost of borrowing money – reduce corruption and institutional disorder, and create a more open and competitive market. We need to train human resources, with specific attention to quality,” he says.

Teaming up with companies from outside Mozambique could be healthy for the business sector, Mosca says.

“Partnerships with foreign business can be a way to speed up the birth of entrepreneurial and competitive capitalism,” he tells IPS.

Bebane is not merely waiting for her business to improve. She is searching outside Mozambique’s borders for security and a business partner who will hopefully help propel her towards success.

“I am running from one end to the other, looking at China, looking at Brazil, looking for a permanent partner.”

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

By Louise Redvers
JOHANNESBURG, May 11 2012 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 10 2012 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Additional reporting from Massa Kanneh in Monrovia.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
JOHANNESBURG, May 8 2012 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts from his interview with IPS follow:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: How can ICT help Africa reach the MDGs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: In what way should governments get involved?

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

Q: What should governments do to attract competition?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, other regions display a bleaker outlook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

South Africa’s Department of Agriculture denies these accusations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He says residents are quickly running out of patience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indonesia’s keen interest in becoming the newest member of BRICS – a bloc of emerging-market nations comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – has sparked off a round of debate on the future and efficacy of South-South groupings.

István Tarrósy, assistant professor of political science at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Pécs and managing director of the Africa Research Centre in Pécs, Hungary, said that Indonesia’s development statistics make the country a shoe-in for membership: it is the largest economy in southeast Asia and is a demographic giant with a population of 248 million people, making it the fourth most populous country in the world, ahead of even Brazil and Russia.

It also has an active labour force of 117 million people, as of 2011.

Indonesia has long been recognised as a leading actor in the developing world, most notably for its active role within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ever since it hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955.

“Its voice has always been decisive in any issue connected with the then Third World, today, the Global South. In terms of South-South cooperation, and in light of a redefined system of North-South dialogue within a gradually more multi-polar world, Indonesia has its place among the top categories of states influencing how our transnational global world develops,” Tarrósy told IPS.

Furthermore, given the country’s “pragmatic foreign policy practices and long-term cooperation with countries of the region and beyond, Indonesia could strengthen the common voice of emerging economies via BRICS. With the potential entrance of Indonesia, BRICS would then need to redefine, or rather refine its status as (possibly) one of the most important inter-regional groupings of countries of the global South,” he added.

Another significant issue is the investment sector, on which developing or emerging economies rely heavily. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Indonesia, and Indonesian FDI flown into other, less strong economies across southeast Asia and beyond, could be further encouraged by BRICS membership, which would facilitate better trans-regional cooperation.

For instance, it could pave the way for increased “South-South cooperation in Africa, with a more substantial Indonesian role in project generation and financing. In addition to China’s and India’s growing presence and involvement in the African continent, Indonesia could play (a bigger role), particularly if we (acknowledge) the growing amount of official development assistance (ODA) emerging economies have granted Africa,” according to Tarrósy.

Indonesia is one of Asia’s leading economic powerhouses; with last year’s economic growth recorded at 6.5 percent, the country is poised to overtake Russia in the regional economic race, said John Mashaka, financial analyst at Wells Fargo Capital Markets.

He told IPS that Indonesia recorded exports worth 204 billion dollars in 2011. Compared to its European counterparts like Greece, Italy and Spain, which are still floundering in the economic slush of the 2008 crash, Indonesia’s credit ratings shot up and the country’s economic outlook remains favorable.

Its domestic market is huge and the current economic boom can be attributed to its political stability and sound economic and monetary policies, which have attracted consistent FDI.

“In short, Indonesia is an economic power to be (reckoned) with and its decision to join the BRICS could have a huge impact in terms of the body’s credibility. Indonesian membership will definitely solidify BRICS’ capital composition, and also bring on board extraordinary fiscal capability,” Mashaka told IPS.

BRICS versus IBSA?

Thomas Lawo, executive director of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) in Bonn, Germany, doubts that BRICS will be a major game-changer in global geopolitics in an increasingly multi-polar world, mostly because of its members’ divergent economic trends and political interests.

On the one hand, Russia is set to re-emerge as a strong global power with a dominant role in central and western Asia, along with India and China.

“But India needs to sort out its internal rifts and neighbourhood problems first, while China is becoming a strong force to reckon with in Asia, Africa and Europe. China is definitely the (primary) growth-engine of Asia and is stepping up its influence in the global economy (armed) with military strength to match its ambitions,” Lawo said.

Indonesia, on the other hand, is more comfortably clustered with South Africa and Brazil as a regional power and an economic anchor-country for the southeast Asian region, but lesser on a wider global scale.

Another possibility is the re-emergence of a politically stronger ASEAN, now that Burma (Myanmar) is opening up to its neighbours. In this context, the MIST countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand – will become more relevant, if they can overcome their internal problems and play the regional integration card.

Alexandra A. Arkhangelskaya, head of the Centre for Information and International Relations at the Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to IPS that after the admission of South Africa, BRICS will likely be expanded to include Indonesia, Turkey, Australia, Nigeria and Mexico.

If this happens, she stressed, BRICS will be pushed to clearly articulate its specific identity in the international arena.

The rise of BRICS as regional bloc also raises the question of whether its role is very different from that of IBSA, the same group minus China and Russia.

BRICS has certainly attracted a lot of attention and it is widely accepted that the bloc will try to achieve certain broad economic reforms as well as attempt to restructure the Western-dominated global financial architecture.

Still, Arkhangelskaya believes that the extent to which IBSA will be forced to live in the former’s shadow will very much depend on South Africa, which is currently “sitting on two chairs”, as well as China’s role in BRICS and the world economy.

Experts fear that IBSA will be forced to dissolve in the light of BRICS’ expansion.

Some analysts still argue that IBSA and BRICS represent the old clash of India versus China; others believe it is more likely that the groups will find themselves on very different tiers of the South-South multilateral cake.

Although there is some overlap in core issues, the fact remains that the BRICS countries are more focused on economy, while IBSA is concerned with promoting democratic values and other causes common to the three countries, and has a distinct personality of its own.

Thus, IBSA can remain an instrumental and practical mechanism of the three countries representing three different continents, sharing their interests and strengthening their economic cooperation to further the interests of the South.

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts from the interview follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Does the JSE collaborate with other African exchanges?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July protests stir up online community

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

The protests lasted two days and resulted in 20 deaths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Online activism gains momentum amidst attacks and arrests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future of social media in Malawi

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nor is the threat of censorship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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