Sierra Leone’s women are now guaranteed 30 percent of all political positions in national and local government, the civil service and in private enterprises that employ more than 25 employees. Credit: Annie Spratt/Unsplash

By Francis Kokutse
FREETOWN, Feb 14 2023 (IPS)

Sierra Leone’s new gender equality law will benefit women with political aspirations – as well as stimulate development, say analysts.

The country’s President, Julius Maada Bio, signed the new Gender Equality and Women Empowerment into law in January 2023. It has shaken the foundations of previously held ideologies that restricted females’ involvement in various aspects of the country’s life.

Reacting to the enactment of the law, Janet Bangoura, a 35-year-old administrative worker in the capital, Freetown, said: “A year ago, I only nursed the dream of ever becoming a politician because the playing field has never been equal for women. This has changed with the signing of the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE Act 2022), which guarantees at least 30 percent of female participation in Parliament and at least 30 percent of all diplomatic appointments to be filled by women.”

In addition, the law stipulates that not less than 30 percent of all positions in Local Councils should be reserved for women, same with 30 percent of all jobs in the civil service and at least 30 percent of jobs in private institutions with 25 and more employees. It also extends maternal leave extended from 12 weeks to 14 weeks.

Sierra Leone’s President, Julius Maada Bio, signing the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Bill into law. Credit: Francis Kokutse/IPS

Bangoura sees this new law as “shaking the status quo because it has brought a change that women of my generation had not expected. Now, we do not have any excuse but to seek our dreams in the political field. I know things will not immediately change, but the foundation has been laid for those of us who want to break the political glass ceiling.”

It is not only the women who are happy that the country has achieved the “unthinkable”. With the coming into force by this law, Sierra Leoneans of all ages and sexes are glad their country has overtaken neighbouring countries in the West African region by taking the lead in giving equality to women. Though such a law has been talked about by the countries in the region, the head of the United Nations Women’s office in Sierra Leone, Setcheme Jeronime Mongbo, said the September 2022 data on women’s representation in English West Africa shows that Ghana has 14.8 percent of women in Parliament, Gambia, 11.6 percent, Liberia, 9.7 percent and Nigeria, 7,2 percent, adding that, “Sierra Leone is leading the way.”

Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, Manty Tarawalli welcomed the law, which she said has been late in coming but noted that it was better late than never. She attributed the lateness in enacting the law to the lack of political will that existed before. This changed with the current President’s role, adding that, “The climate wasn’t right in terms of women’s readiness and men not being accommodating for this sort of growth until now.”

Tarawalli said Sierra Leone was a “typical” African society. “We know the way things are, and to effect that sort of change that really needs a transformation and what shakes the status quo, it required time and understanding from both men and women for the change to happen.”

She said there were initial challenges in discussing the Bill. So, they had to cross massive hurdles to be able to change “the conversation from rights-based to economic growth, and it changed organically from our consultation,” adding that “those who were opposed became willing and ready to have the conversation.”

Tarawalli was of the view that the law was about economic growth meant to move Sierra Leone to a middle-income country, adding that “this cannot happen when 52 percent of the country’s population who are women are outside the economy and leadership position.”

She identified the unwillingness of men to accommodate women when they start getting into companies and institutions as a challenge they anticipate and said there was, therefore, the need to put in place structures to create a network to support females who will be in elective positions to know there is help for them.

Tarawalli said they would educate women to understand that “economic empowerment does not mean neglecting their duties as mothers and wives at home by abandoning the care of their children and other things that are expected of them. We will also make the men understand that economic empowerment contributes to the community and contributes to Sierra Leone.”

Speaking just before he appended his signature to the Bill,  Bio said the law has come to address the gender imbalances in the country comprehensively, and among other things, the provisions under the law provide for “inclusion, representation, participation, and a more responsive posture on gender.”

Bio said his signature on the law was to announce that a change has come to “our great country” and assured the country’s girls that it is a license for them to “get quality education, work hard and aspire beyond their wildest imagination to be the best at anything they do.”

“With this law, we break barriers to parliamentary representation and look forward to a more vibrant and diverse parliament with greater numbers of women and women’s voices. When compiling their proportional representation lists, I urge political parties to go beyond the legal minimum of the number of women,” he said.

Bio said his assent to the GEWE Bill has put the country on an irreversible path to achieving a more inclusive, equal, more just, more resilient, more sustainable, and more prosperous society for generations to come, adding that “with more women on the ballots, women voting, more women winning, and more women in Parliament, the country’s politics and the future of Sierra Leone will improve.”

It was his hope that the law would see more women in leadership and politics and more men supporting and acknowledging the central status of women as we work together for a vibrant, prosperous, inclusive, and democratic Sierra Leone. In addition, he believes the law ensures women equal access to credit and other financial services. To make it effective, those who discriminate on the basis of gender could face up to five years in prison as well as fines.

“Women dominate the informal economy, and data has shown that they are better at doing business, managing investments, and managing proceeds from those investments. Beyond that, as a government, we are eager to work with the private sector to create more jobs for women, harness business cultures that promote diversity and inclusion, and invest in training programmes tailored to create more job opportunities for women,” Bio said.

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Members assigned to U.S. Coast Guard Tactical Law Enforcement Detachment Pacific in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire, July 15, 2019. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ford Williams

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2020 (IPS)

While the United States is busy with foreign operations such as killing Qasem Soleimani, a key figure in Middle East Politics, behind the scenes it is reportedly considering a change that experts worry might be of grave concern: a potential withdrawal of troops from West Africa. 

A December report in the New York Times claimed the Pentagon was planning to reduce its military activities in West Africa or even pulling out entirely, which some say would make a significant change in U.S. foreign policies.

According to the Times report, this is part of a general overhaul in defence spending where the focus would be redirected to other concerns such as China and Russia. 

But there are nuances to be considered, says John Campbell, an Africa fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC who has served in Nigeria as political counsellor in the past. ons. 

“We have to be fairly nuanced about this,” Campbell told IPS. “The size of U.S. forces in Africa is extremely small; it’s only about 7,000 people and only half of them are in Djibouti; the orientation is towards the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.”

Campbell further cited a defence review from a year ago, and added that it “essentially said there would be a shift in the emphasis from countering terrorism that would require a redeployment of U.S. forces”. 

The troops, Campbell told IPS, have primarily been involved in training local militaries. 

If they are pulled out, there are general concerns about what it will mean for the local fights against terrorism and, according to the Times report, might even risk create a larger pool of refugees to Europe, the Times report claims. 

On the heels of this deliberation, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, United Nations Special Representative and Head of the U.N. Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), reminded the Security Council on Jan. 8 about the rising concerns of terrorism in the region. 

“The geographic focus of terrorist attacks has shifted eastwards from Mali to Burkina Faso and is increasingly threatening West African coastal States,” he said, adding that it was also increasing the number of displaced peoples. 

According to the Times report, Defence Secretary Mark T. Esper, who is at the heart of this decision to pull out, has said that it’s question of whether or not they’re being “efficient as possible with our forces”.

Meanwhile, other analyses question not only the efficiency of the forces but whether or not the presence of the force may have added further to the crises. 

An analysis by TRT World drew a direct increase of “terror-related incidents” that coincided with the presence of U.S. military in the region — they reportedly went up from 41 to 2,498 in less than two years. 

There were also countless abuses and human rights atrocities conducted by the U.S. military personnel themselves or by local military backed by the U.S.  

Meanwhile, it’s a relationship that locals don’t approve of either. In 2018, thousands protested in Ghana against their country’s military deal with the U.S. The U.S. has had a difficult time establishing trust in the region, the Reuters report claimed, and more so after President Donald Trump referred to the region as “shithole countries”.

But Campbell says the U.S. pulling out their military forces from the region would not create any significant difference. 

“We’re talking about a force that in some countries has been able to contribute to the training of local militaries,” he said. “We’re not talking about a force which is particularly transformative.” 

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in West Africa. Credit: CC by 2.0/Linda De Volder

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, May 3 2019 (IPS)

On a bus in Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, four Nigerian girls aged between 15 and 16 sit closely together as they are about to embark on the last part of their journey to Mali, where they are told that their new husbands, whom they never have met, await them.

They started off from their homes in Eastern Nigeria where their parents had reportedly agreed that they be “commissioned” to become the wives of Nigerian men living in Mali.

“Four compatriots asked me to bring them young wives because they want to get married. I’m sure they will be happy,” a human smuggler, who only identifies himself as Wiseman, tells IPS as the bus prepares to depart for Bamako, Mali’s capital. IPS is not allowed to speak to the young girls, who appear anxious.

When asked if the girls’ parents are aware they have to travel to Mali, Wiseman says: “I negotiated with them and gave them something as a down payment for their dowries, which will surely help them [the parents] start a small business or buy seeds for farming. These kids should count themselves lucky because they will work and perform wives’ duties, so their lives should improve big time.”

But nobody knows the real intentions of the men who ”commissioned” these girls. Or if they exist.

Pathfinders Justice Initiative, an international non-government organisation dedicated to the prevention of modern-day sex slavery, says Nigeria is a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking with Benin City, in Nigeria’s Edo State, being an internationally-recognised sex trafficking hub. 

Nigeria ranks 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves (1,38 million), according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index report. While Nigeria has the institutional framework and laws against trafficking, at least one million people are trafficked there every year, according to the country’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

NAPTIP, working in collaboration with Malian authorities, recently said that nearly 20,000 Nigerian girls were forced into prostitution in Mali. The girls were said to be working in hotels and nightclubs after being sold to prostitution rings by human traffickers.

Children the most vulnerable

In West Africa, children remain the most vulnerable to trafficking.

The latest Global Report On Trafficking In Persons by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that young boys and girls where among those most  trafficked in the region. 

At the end of April, Interpol announced that it rescued 216 trafficked victim—including 157 children—from Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Interpol is part of a global task force formed to address human trafficking.

Some of the trafficking victims were working as sex workers in Benin and Nigeria, while others worked all day in markets and at various eating places. Some were as young as 11 and had been beaten, subject to abuse, and told they would never see their families again.

Forty-seven people were arrested.

“Many of the children are shipped actually into these markets to carry out forced labour. These are organised crime groups who are motivated by making money. They don’t care about the children forced into prostitution, working in terrible conditions, living on the streets, they are all after the money,” Interpol’s Director of Organised and Emerging Crime Paul Stanfield said in a video.

Benin, the transit stop for traffickers

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to irregularly make their way to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and finally to Europe.

The city of Cotonou appears to be a huge transit route through which women and girls trafficked to North and West Africa pass as they are transported to various countries of their destination. While Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali have laws against child trafficking, nothing covers trafficking in persons above the age of 18, according to the UNODC report. Niger has no laws against trafficking.

The Economic Community of West African States’ policy of free movement of goods and people seems to make this easier as corrupt immigration officers at border posts look away in exchange for a few euros. When IPS asks Wiseman about border controls, he brushes aside the issue, saying he knows “how to handle them”.  

When asked if he is responsible for the girls’ welfare, Wiseman replies: “I’m not a social worker, I’m a businessman and a helper. I help people to get good wives and lift the girls’ families out of poverty in exchange for money. The rest is history.”

When the incident about the Nigerian girls is described to Hassan Badarou, a community-based caregiver and religious leader from Benin, he says “they could be used as sex slaves by those men or sold to crime syndicates to serve as prostitutes in Mali or even as far as in North Africa.”

“It’s a pity parents allow their children to just leave the country in exchange for a few dollars. All of this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t poor,” he says.

Poverty, culture and child labour

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in the region. But so too does culture.

In 2014, a female friend of Suzie’s family came to collect the then 12-year-old from her home in northern Benin.

“She promised to help me attend school after working at her home for one year, but she didn’t,” Suzie tells IPS in the local language, Fon, through a translator.

“Things started to go wrong when I started to remind her about that. She stopped paying me my salary and increased the workload and cut my meals down from two to one per day. And she started beating up me every time I protested,” the 16-year-old who lives in Cotonou tells IPS.

As time went by, the women’s male family members, who lived in the same house, started to make sexual advances towards Suzie. She refused the advances but eventually ran away because she could no longer bear the situation. 

No police please

When asked why she doesn’t report the incidents to the police, she says: “I can’t do that. The woman is like my aunt so I couldn’t do it as this would have brought a conflict between the women’s family and ours back home.”

Badarou, the religious leader, explains that he has mediated in cases like Suzie’s.

“If you see the way these women ill-treat these girls, it should make you cry. I have documented many cases of abuse and have tried to mediate between some of these women and the girls.”

But he’s never reported any of these cases, however abusive, to the police.

“The only thing you cannot do is to report these cases to the police. We are all brothers and sisters of this country and we believe in solving our problems in harmony and peace through dialogue. Besides, it’s not our culture to report everything to the police. I blame West African governments for allowing this thing to go on and on to the extent of becoming a cultural norm institutionalised deep in the fabric of society. It’s now hard to break it,” he says.

Badarou explains that the actions are cultural.

“In the face of this deeply-entrenched culture of ”helping each other” by ”handing over” your girls to someone well established who is living in the cities, even the United Nations and children’s organisations sometimes have no choice but to turn a blind eye. I’m not saying they are not doing anything about it, but you can’t break up someone’s culture, especially in a region such as this where grinding poverty rules,” he says.

Richard Dossou seems to agree. He tells IPS that his uncle’s friend, a father of 18 children, is looking for “Good Samaritans” from Benin to take in some of his girls as he is unable to provide for them. 

“I’m planning to travel to their village to negotiate with him with a view of taking even one, not as a wife, but as a maid. Then we will see how it will lead us. We help each other like this to fend off poverty and misery in this region,” Dossou says.

While Benin’s poverty hovers at about 40 percent, a report released in 2018  by the World Poverty Clock said in Nigeria a total of 86.9 million people are living in extreme poverty.

The fine line between cultural norms and child trafficking

Asked if this West African practice of “handing over” girls is a cultural norm of lifting families out of poverty, Jakub Sobik, communications manager for London-based Anti-Slavery International, tells IPS via email: “What you describe above are cases of child trafficking, when children are being recruited or harboured with a view of exploiting them.”

“Slavery doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is underpinned by many factors, including poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and decent job opportunities, the lack of rule of law, as well as practices that are culturally accepted in societies,” he explains.

He says that it is often the case that parents are “deceived about the conditions their children will be offered, and send them away in a genuine belief that they will get a better chance of education and life opportunities in surroundings of cities and perhaps better-off societal circles.” 

He adds that in some societies children working is culturally accepted, because it has been the norm for generations. “We have a lot to do to change that and offer children childhoods, education and opportunities in lives they deserve.”

As the bus continues on the final journey that is meant to lift the Nigerian girls out of ”poverty” to ‘’freedom”; back in Cotonou Suzie wanders the city’s dark streets hand in hand with a Zemidjan—a motorcycle taxi driver—who appears to be aged between 40 and 50 and whom she describes as her boyfriend.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

By Lahai J. Samboma
LONDON, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

When former footballer George Weah became president of Liberia in 2018, media practitioners felt they had in him a democrat who would champion media freedoms. “But we were mistaken,” journalist Henry Costa told IPS.

Any objective assessment of the relationship between West Africa governments and media organisations will conclude that, but for a few exceptions, the outlook for press freedom in the sub-region is a bleak one.

From Cameroon and Ghana, to Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal, journalists and media organisations are being attacked for simply doing their jobs. The fact that these attacks emanate from mostly state actors, who as a rule remain unpunished, points to a culture of impunity.

Liberia is a case in point.
“The president does not like criticism,” said Costa, owner of Roots FM and host of the station’s popular Costa Show. “And because we are critical of some policies, our offices have been attacked on two occasions by armed men and our equipment damaged and some stolen.”

Some would say Costa was lucky, for the corpse of another journalist, Tyron Brown, was dumped outside his home last year by a mysterious black jeep. A man has confessed to killing the journalist in self-defence but his colleagues are not convinced. They believe the murder was a message – mind your words or you could be next.

This climate of fear was heightened when Weah accused a BBC correspondent being against his government. Then Front Page Africa, a newspaper that has been critical of successive governments, was fined 1.8 million dollars in a civil defamation lawsuit brought by a friend of the president.

Mae Azango, a senior Front Page Africa reporter, said the government’s new tactic was to “strangulate the free press” by refusing to pay tens of thousands owed for media advertisements. “One minister said since the media does not write anything good about the government, it won’t pay debt owed, which will compel some media outlets to shut down,” she said. “Some media houses have not paid staff for up to eight months.”

In Ghana, once Africa’s top-ranked media-friendly country, things have deteriorated to the level where a sitting politician openly called on supporters to attack a journalist whose documentary on corruption in Ghanaian football exposed him. Ahmed Divela was subsequently shot dead last January. In 2015 another journalist, George Abanga, was also shot dead on assignment.

In March 2018 Latif Iddrisu, a young reporter, was covering a story when he was dragged into the Accra headquarters of the police and given a merciless beating which left him with a fractured skull.
Iddrisu told IPS by phone: “Journalists are being threatened with assault and death by politicians and people in power because they feel threatened by our exposés.” He doubts whether the passage of freedom of information (FOI) legislation will improve matters.

This position is borne out in Nigeria where the passing of FOI laws has not deterred officials from denying journalists access to information they need to carry out their jobs. According to Dapo Olorunyomi, the Central Bank and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (the NNPC) are the “most opaque institutions” in the country. Olorunyomi, editor-in-chief of Premium Times Newspaper, added: “So you are allowed to write what you want, but if you get it wrong you suffer the consequences.” He and journalists working for him have been arrested on several occasions to get them to reveal their sources.

The case of Jones Abiri is instructive. The journalist was incarcerated for two years without trial. And physical attacks on reporters have increased four-fold in recent times. Figures show that attacks on journalists and the press quadrupled in 2015-2019, compared to the preceding five year period.

Media academic Dr Chinenye Nwabueze maintains that the violence heightens during elections. “In the ‘season’ of elections, a journalist operates like a car parked – at owner’s risk,” he told IPS. “You could end up in the crossfire between opposing parties or thugs.”

The same story of violence and intimidation against journalists is replicated in francophone countries like Cameroon, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali. The most serious of them is Cameroon, where the government continues to prosecute media critics in military or special courts. As Angela Quintal, Africa Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS, “Cameroon is the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, and the second in the world for jailing journalists on false news charges.”

Sierra Leone and the Gambia are the two countries that emerge relatively blemish-free in our survey of the landscape of press freedom in West Africa. Both have relatively new governments that have promised repeal criminal libel laws that their predecessors had used to clamp down on the media. From Sierra Leone, reporter Amadu Lamrana Bah of AYV Media told IPS: “The president says he is committed to repealing [criminal libel laws] and the process is on.”

His statement echoes that of Sheriff Bojang Jr, president of the Gambia Press Union, who said: “We no longer work in a fearful or repressive environment, but our major problem is the lack of information coming out of government, the total lack of transparency. But the government have promised to make changes.”

This is a reference to the absence of FOI legislation in the country, which the government has promised to “deal with in due course”. But the Gambians only have to look to similarly “blemish-free” Sierra Leone, to realise that FOI will count for nought if the authorities are not prepared to honour its provisions – as this reporter discovered while researching a story on sexual violence against Sierra Leonean women and another on diamond mining.

The Ministries of Justice, Mines, and Information in Freetown refused to provide the information we requested, even though they had initially promised they would. That recent experience came to mind when, during his interview for this piece, Liberian reporter Henry Costa said the Weah government “were pretending to be tolerant” but “would go to their old tricks” when economic hardships trigger anti-government protests and the media begin to report on them.

Since Sierra Leone and the Gambia are currently implementing International Monetary Fund policies, it is only a matter of time before those policies begin to bite the people. If the “Costa equation” is correct, then it is likewise only a matter of time before we find out whether the “blemish-free” authorities in Freetown and Banjul are as toxic to press freedom as their counterparts in Cameroon and Ghana, or indeed, their immediate predecessors.

“Journalists do essential work to keep the public informed, often in difficult circumstances in West and Central Africa,” Sadibou Marong, the Regional Media Manager for Amnesty’s West and Central Africa Office, told IPS.  “They must be protected to do their work freely, and without fear of attacks or threats. Governments in the region should promote media freedom and protect media workers and organisations.”

Forested hills in Guinea’s Kintampo area. Barely a quarter of the population has access to electricity. Credit: CC by 3.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Jun 26 2018 (IPS)

The West African nation of Guinea may be a signatory of the Paris Agreement, a global undertaking by countries around the world to reduce climate change, but as it tries to provide electricity to some three quarters of its 12 million people who are without, the commitment is proving a struggle.

Mamadou Bangoura, head of planning and energy management at Guinea’s Ministry of Energy, told IPS that his country faced a major challenge implementing its programme for the development and provision of energy resources to all citizens at a lower cost. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, only 26 percent of the population has access to electricity. “Our main concern is to find a balance between the implementation of this programme and the protection of biodiversity." --Mamadou Bangoura of Guinea’s Ministry of Energy

“Our main concern is to find a balance between the implementation of this programme and the protection of biodiversity. This is further compounded by a requirement to take into rigorous account the environmental and social aspects in the framework of the realisation of any infrastructure project,” Bangoura explained.

According to conservation organisation Fauna and Flora International, Guinea’s wildlife is already under threat. “Conservation solutions need to be found that enable people to make a living while protecting their natural assets into the future,” the organisation reports.

Unlike other African nations that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels, only 43 percent of Guinea’s electricity is generated from this as more than half (55 percent) is produced by hydropower.

The country’s potential for hydropower is significant. Guinea is regarded as West Africa’s water tower because 22 of the region’s rivers originate there, including Africa’s third-longest river, the Niger.

Bangoura added that despite the challenges, his country was making progress and several hydropower projects were being constructed. The Kaléta project, which will produce 204MW, is already completed. However, the Souapiti (459MW) and Amaria (300MW) hydropower plants “are still work in progress.”

He said negotiations were also underway for the construction of a 40MW solar power and a 40MW power plant. “Concession and power purchase agreements are being finalised,” he added.

In the Gambia, challenges in implementing renewable energy exist also. The small West African nation of only 1.8 million people is considered to be rare in its ambitious commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — it pledged a 44 percent reduction below its business-as-usual emission level. It’s a big task as currently around 96 percent of all electricity produced in the country comes from fossil fuels.  

Sidat Yaffa, an agronomist with expertise in climate change at the University of The Gambia, told IPS there were barriers to renewable energy programmes because the sector was still new to the Gambia.

“Therefore, a better understanding of the technology is still a challenge, securing adequate funding for implementation is a gap, and availability of trained human resources using the technology is also a gap,” Yaffa said.

He added that the Gambia’s renewable energy programmes included a wind energy pilot project at Nema Kunku village in West Coast Region.

“The agriculture sector’s GHG could be drastically reduced in the next five years in the Gambia if adequate solar panel water irrigation technologies are implemented,” Yaffa added.

Cote d’Ivoire also has strong ambitions for the development of reliable and profitable renewable energies, a cabinet minister said last year, adding that the country is committed to produce 42 percent of its energy through renewable energy.

This week representatives from Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Guinea and Senegal will meet in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to discuss both the challenges and successes they have had in reaching their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). NDCs are blueprints or outlines by countries on how they plan to cut GHG emissions.

The regional workshop, the first of its kind, is hosted by the Global Green Growth Institute in association with the International Renewable Energy Agency and the Green Climate Fund.

It aims to enhance capacity for NDC implementation, share experiences and best practices, and discuss renewable energy opportunities and associated challenges in the region.

Rural electrification headache

This regional cooperation is a significant step forward as 60 percent of the West African population living in the rural areas continue to depend on firewood as their primary source of energy.

In the Gambia and Senegal a quarter of the rural population has access to electricity, while the number is slightly higher in Cote d’Ivoire with about 29 percent having access.

But in Guinea and Burkina Faso only three and one percent of the respective rural populations have electricity.

Last year, Smart Villages Initiatives (SVI) conducted energy workshops in West Africa and it attributes poor electricity access in the region to insufficient generation, high prices of petroleum, lack of financing and transmission and distribution losses.

The World Bank’s 2017 State of Electricity Access Report makes the link that energy is inextricably linked to every other critical sustainable development challenge, including health, education, food security, gender equality, poverty reduction, employment and climate change, among others.

The Agence Française de Développement acknowledged the benefits of rural electrification programmes, stating, “(they) have the opportunity to reach more poor households and have larger impacts in the lives of the rural poor by providing new opportunities and enhancing the synergies between the agricultural and non-agricultural sector,”

Bangoura has acknowledged his country’s challenge to electrify rural areas. He said his government has just created the Guinean Rural Electrification Agency and launched a couple of projects, including a collaboration with the Electricity of Guinea, that will pave the way for the electrification of rural areas.

However, SVI said while most governments had set up rural electrification agencies or funds, the impact of such organisations may be hampered by a lack of financial and technical expertise. Hence the need to turn to international institutions and experts for capacity building and green energy finance.

Bangoura agreed that one of the problems his country is struggling with is implementation. “The problems at this level lies in the adaptation of the texts of the country to those governing the Paris Agreement…Hence the importance of this workshop that is focusing on capacity building.”

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

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 25 2018 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(End)

Excerpt:

Africa's children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

“Poverty has become part of me,” says 13-year-old Aminata Kabangele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

Aminata, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, told IPS that she has had no option but to resign her fate to poverty.

Despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, African children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent.“Poverty has become part of me. I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me” – Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo

“In every country you may turn to here in Africa, children are at the receiving end of poverty, with high numbers of them becoming orphans,” Melody Nhemachena, an independent social worker in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Based on a 2013 UNICEF report, the World Bank has estimated that up to 400 million children under the age of 17 worldwide live in extreme poverty, the majority of them in Africa and Asia.

According to human rights activists, the growing poverty facing many African families is also directly responsible for the fate of 200,000 African children that the United Nations estimates are sold into slavery every year.

“Many families in Africa are living in abject poverty, forcing them to trade their children for a meal to persons purporting to employ or take care of them (the children), but it is often not the case as the children end up in forced labour, earning almost nothing at the end of the day,” Amukusana Kalenga, a child rights activist based in Zambia, told IPS.

West Africa is one of the continent’s regions where modern-day slavery has not spared children.

According to Mike Sheil, who was sent by British charity and lobby group Anti-Slavery International to West Africa to photograph the lives of children trafficked as slaves and forced into marriage, for many families in Benin – one of the world’s poorest countries – “if someone offers to take their child away … it is almost a relief.”

Global March Against Child Labour, a worldwide network of trade unions, teachers’ and civil society organisations working to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour, has reported that a 2010 study showed that “a staggering 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years worked in cocoa farms of Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of their physical, emotional, cognitive and moral well-being.”

“Trafficking in children is real. Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children,” Gabon’s Social Affairs Director-General Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga told a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire in 2012.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 human trafficking report.

In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, a study of child poverty showed that over 70 percent of children are not registered at birth while more than 30 percent experience severe educational deprivation. According to UNICEF Nigeria, about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

“These boys and girls, some as young as 13-years-old, serve in the ranks of terror groups like Boko Haram, often participating  in suicide operations, and act as spies,” Hillary Akingbade, a Nigerian independent conflict management expert, told IPS.

“Girls here are often forced into sexual slavery while many other African children are abducted or recruited by force, with others joining out of desperation, believing that armed groups offer their best chance for survival,” she added.

Akingbade’s remarks echo the reality of poverty which also faces children in the Central African Republic, where an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 boys and girls became members of armed groups following an outbreak of a bloody civil war in the central African nation in December 2012, according to Save the Children.

Violence plagued the Central African Republic when the country’s Muslim Seleka rebels seized control of the country’s capital Bangui in March 2013, prompting a backlash by the largely Christian militia.

A 2013 report by Save the Children stated that in the Central African Republic, children as young as eight were being recruited by the country’s warring parties, with some of the children forcibly conscripted while others were impelled by poverty.

Last year, the United Nations reported that the recruitment of children in South Sudan’s on-going civil war was “rampant”, estimating that there were 11,000 children serving in both rebel and government armies, some of who had volunteered but others forced by their parents to join armed groups with the hopes of changing their economic fortunes for the better.

Meanwhile, back in the Tongogara refugee camp, Aminata has resigned herself. “I have descended into worse poverty since I came here in the company of other fleeing Congolese and, for many children like me here at the camp, poverty remains the order of the day.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

“There is Strength in Unity” – public service message for the ‘Africa United’ campaign to prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa. Credit: African Press Organization (APO)

By Kwame Buist
MALABO, Equatorial Guinea, Dec 3 2014 (IPS)

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has joined a number of football stars, celebrities, international health organisations and corporations in the ‘Africa United’ global health communications campaign aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola in West Africa.

The campaign, which was launched on Dec. 3, is supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation and driven creatively by actor Idris Elba, is designed to recognise the vital role of front-line healthcare workers, as well as to provide critical education and resources for the people of West Africa.

Educational messages will be delivered on local and national radio and TV, billboards and by SMS to audiences in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and neighbouring countries.“Imagine having to sit down and tell your family that you were going to fight this disease. That conversation is happening across West Africa and around the world every day. I am in awe of the bravery of these health workers, who put their lives at risk day in and out to stop the spread of this terrible disease” – actor Idris Elba

In ”West Africa vs Ebola”, a video which has been prepared for the campaign, Elba stars as a soccer coach giving a rousing and educational team talk to a West Africa team in preparation for its “life or death” game against Ebola. Elba explains the symptoms of Ebola and tactics for how to beat the virus, which includes spreading the word and working as a team.

“I wanted to support this campaign for so many reasons. I could not sit back without doing something to help fight Ebola,” said Yaya Touré, Ivorian professional football (soccer) player. “It is important we don’t treat this as something we just discuss with work colleagues or simply follow on the news for updates – instead our focus should be to do something.”

“I also wanted to get involved with this campaign as it pays tribute to the many, many African heroes who are in the villages, towns and cities using their skills, resourcefulness and intelligence to battle Ebola. Those people on the front line are often forgotten. African mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are doing everything they can to fight Ebola – we have to support them.”

In a TV spot titled ”We’ve Got Your Back”, Elba and a group of football players committed to the fight against Ebola in West Africa, including Yaya Touré, Carlton Cole, Kei Kamara, Patrick Vieira, Fabrice Muamba and Andros Townsend, voice their solidarity with the healthcare workers who are risking their lives every day to fight Ebola.

In the video, the players acknowledge that, although fans regard them as heroes, healthcare workers tackling Ebola are the true heroes. Each player wears the name of a healthcare worker on his back as a symbol of respect for “the world’s most important team.”

“For me the battle against Ebola is a personal one,” said Elba, actor and the creative force behind the development of the campaign public service announcements. “To see those amazing countries in West Africa where my father grew up and my parents married being ravaged by this disease is painful and horrific.”

“Imagine having to sit down and tell your family that you were going to fight this disease. That conversation is happening across West Africa and around the world every day. I am in awe of the bravery of these health workers, who put their lives at risk day in and out to stop the spread of this terrible disease.”

“My hope,” Elba added, “is that, in some small way, through the development of these public service announcements and the creation of the Africa United campaign, we can ensure that these workers get the support they need and that health messages are delivered to people on the ground to help them in their fight.”

The video spots and other multimedia educational materials are being made available on the campaign website in English, French, Krio and additional local languages.

The educational materials are designed to be adapted and distributed by Africa United partners such as ministries of health, health clinics, government and non-governmental organisations, media and sports organisations.

These include the CDC Foundation and current partners Africa 24, SuperSport, ONE, UNICEF and Voice of America. CDC staff working in the affected countries contributed to the development and distribution of the health messages, and Africa United will continue to develop and provide messages to CDC and partners in real time based on changing needs.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history, infecting nearly 16,000 people with more than 5,600 deaths to date. While the spread of Ebola is a threat to people, health systems and economies around the globe, West African communities in particular are being crippled by the disease as a result of already-strained healthcare systems, mistrust of healthcare workers and fear and stigmatisation of those infected.

“Private and public partnerships like Africa United are critical to aligning organisations fighting Ebola and to ensuring quick, effective responses to changing circumstances and needs,” said Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation.

“The CDC Foundation remains committed to advancing response efforts in West Africa through public education and resources for use on the front lines of the Ebola battle.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A billboard in Freetown, Sierra Leone, urging people to go to hospital to be tested for HIV. Ebola has stopped people from doing that. Credit: Lansana Fofana/IPS

By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, Dec 1 2014 (IPS)

The outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone has dwarfed the campaign against HIV/AIDS, to the extent that patients no longer go to hospitals and treatment centres out of fear of contracting the Ebola virus.

“It is a big challenge for us. HIV/AIDS patients now fear going to hospitals for treatment and our workers, who are also government health officials, are also afraid of contacting patients for fear of being infected,” Abubakar Koroma, Director of Communications at the National AIDS Secretariat, told IPS.“HIV/AIDS patients now fear going to hospitals for treatment and our workers, who are also government health officials, are also afraid of contacting patients for fear of being infected” – Abubakar Koroma, Director of Communications, Sierra Leone’s National AIDS Secretariat

Sierra Leone records one of the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the West African region. For over five years, the country has managed to stabilise the figures at 1.5 percent, out of a population of 6 million, mainly because of massive countrywide awareness raising. The authorities also offer free medicines and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS.

But all this may be reversed if the Ebola crisis is not contained soon.

Before the outbreak of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone in April, one key area of success in the fight against HIV/AIDS had been in curtailing mother-to-child transmission. Today, however, there are concerns that it may surge again because pregnant women are now reluctant to go to hospitals for treatment.

In 2004, the prevalence rate among pregnant women was 4.9 percent but, just before the Ebola in April this year, the figure had dropped to 3.2 percent.

According to Koroma, “between January and now, that service [for pregnant women] has dropped by 80 percent. We are worried that the Ebola crisis may worsen the situation.” From the point of view of those already living with HIV/AIDS, this is already happening.

Idrissa Songo, Executive Director of the Network of HIV Positives in Sierra Leone (NETHIPS) advocacy group, says that its members fear going to hospitals for care and treatment and that they are constrained by what he described as a cut in the support they were receiving from donors and humanitarian organisations before the outbreak of Ebola.

“Donors and other philanthropists have turned their attention away from the fight against HIV/AIDS,” he said. “Now it’s all about Ebola. Most organisations have diverted their funding to the fight against Ebola and this is badly affecting our activities.”

Songo added that the core activities of NETHIPS, which include community awareness raising and training of members in care and prevention, have all come to a standstill because of the government’s ban on all public gatherings following the Ebola outbreak.

Given the current crisis, the National Aids Secretariat and the Ministry of Health have set up telephone hotlines to connect with people suffering from HIV/AIDS. The aim is to be able to trace and locate them and then get treatment to them. At the same time, HIV/AIDS patients are now receiving a quarterly supply of the drugs they need, compared with the monthly dosage they were receiving before Ebola struck.

According to Songo, these measures are working because “that way, our members, who fear going to hospitals and treatment centres, can stay at home and take their medication. We know it is risky to go to treatment centres nowadays because of the possibility of contracting Ebola, another killer disease,” Songo told IPS.

Notwithstanding the Ebola crisis, Ministry of Health officials say that they have not lost sight of the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Jonathan Abass Kamara, Public Relations Officer at the Ministry of Health, told IPS that attention is still focused on the fight against HIV/AIDS. “Even though Ebola has taken centre-stage, the Ministry is still very much focused on the fight against HIV/AIDS. We supply drugs to patients regularly and we try our best to give care and attention to them,” Kamara told IPS.

However, while Sierra Leone has made tremendous progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS and its success in this fight surpasses that of almost all countries in the West Africa region, it may well find it difficult to maintain its achievements in this sector if the Ebola epidemic is not brought under control.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A technician sets up an assay for Ebola within a containment laboratory. Samples are handled in negative-pressure biological safety cabinets to provide an additional layer of protection. Photo by Dr. Randal J. Schoepp/cc by 2.0

By Arturo Lopez-Levy
DENVER, Colorado, Nov 24 2014 (IPS)

When was the last time in recent memory a top U.S. official praised Cuba publicly? And since when has Cuba’s leadership offered to cooperate with Americans?

It’s rare for politicians from these two countries to stray from the narratives of suspicion and intransigence that have prevented productive collaboration for over half a century.Political leadership in the White House and the Palace of Revolution could transform a fight against a common threat into joint cooperation that would not only promote the national interests of the two countries, but also advance human rights—and the right to health is a human right—throughout the developing world.

Yet that’s just what has happened in the last few weeks, as Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power spoke favourably of Cuba’s medical intervention in West Africa, and Cuban President Raul Castro and former president Fidel Castro signaled their willingness to cooperate with U.S. efforts to stem the epidemic.

As it causes devastation in West Africa and strikes fear in the United States and around the world, Ebola has few upsides. But one of them may be the opportunity to change the nature of U.S.-Cuban relations, for the public good.

Don’t squander the opportunity

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel once famously said. “And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

President Barack Obama should heed his former chief of staff’s advice and not squander the opportunity presented by the Ebola crisis. Political leadership in the White House and the Palace of Revolution could transform a fight against a common threat into joint cooperation that would not only promote the national interests of the two countries, but also advance human rights—and the right to health is a human right—throughout the developing world.

Political conditions are ripe for such turn. Americans strongly support aggressive actions against Ebola and would applaud a president who placed more value on medical cooperation and saving lives than on ideology and resentment.

In the sixth in a series of editorials spelling out the need for a change in U.S. policy towards Cuba, for example, The New York Times called on Obama to discontinue the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program—which makes it relatively simple for Cuban doctors providing medical services abroad to defect to the United States—because of its hostile nature and its negative impact on the populations receiving Cuban doctors’ support and attention in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

“It is incongruous for the United States to value the contributions of Cuban doctors who are sent by their government to assist in international crises like the 2010 Haiti earthquake while working to subvert that government by making defection so easy,” the editorial board wrote. The emphasis should be on fostering Cuba’s medical contributions, not stymieing them.

As Cuba’s international health efforts become more widely known, it’s become increasingly clear how unreasonable it is for Washington to assume that all Cuban presence in the developing world is damaging to U.S. interests.

A consistent opening for bilateral cooperation with Cuba by governmental health institutions, the private sector, and foundations based in the United States can trigger positive synergies to update U.S. policy towards Havana. It will also send a friendlier signal for economic reform and political liberalisation in Cuba.

The whole world has something to gain

The potential for cooperation between Cuba and the United States goes far beyond preventing and defeating Ebola. New pandemics in the near future could endanger the national security, economy, and public health of other countries—killing thousands, preventing travel and trade, and choking the current open liberal order by encouraging xenophobic hysteria. At this dramatic time, the White House needs to think with clarity and creativity.

As the leading nation in the Western Hemisphere, the United States should propose the creation of a comprehensive continental health cooperation and crisis response strategy at the next Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Panama City in April 2015. As numerous Latin American countries have already asserted, Cuba must be included at the summit.

Havana has developed extensive medical expertise at home and abroad, with more than 50,000 doctors and health personnel serving in 66 countries. Preventive measures, early detection, strict infection controls, and natural disaster crisis response coordination are essential parts of the Cuban approach to nipping pandemics in the bud.

The lack of some of these components in already-collapsed health systems explains the failures of governance that inflamed the impact of Ebola in West Africa.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama was one of the loudest critics of looking at Cuba through the glasses of the Cold War. As president, it isn’t enough for him to just retune the same embargo policy implemented by his predecessors. He must adjust the U.S. official narrative about Post-Fidel Cuba: It is not a threat to the United States but a country in transition to a mixed economy, and a positive force for global health.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service. This article originally appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

The author can be contacted at Alopezca@du.edu or on Twitter at @turylevy.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

German aircraft arrives in Ghana to help deliver U.N. supplies for emergency Ebola response. Credit: UN Photo/UNMEER

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2014 (IPS)

The widespread outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, which has resulted in over 4,500 deaths so far, is also threatening to trigger a food crisis in the three countries already plagued by poverty and hunger.

Dr. Shenggen Fen, director-general of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told IPS the crisis is expected to be confined mostly to the countries directly affected by the spreading disease: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Asked whether the food shortages will also reach countries outside West Africa, he said Ebola is triggering a food crisis through a series of interrelated factors, including farmer deaths, labour shortages, rising transportation costs, and rising food prices.

“Within these countries, where undernourishment has long been a problem, the food crisis may persist for decades,” he warned.

And because Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia are all net food-importing countries, the Ebola-triggered food crisis is unlikely to spread to other countries in the region or beyond, Dr. Fan added.

Global food prices tend to have transmission effects on regional or national food prices, but for small markets (on a global scale) such as these three countries, the transmission effect of food prices is unlikely to pass beyond their own boundaries – so long as the disease itself is not transmitted, he said.

According to the latest figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are over 9,000 cases of Ebola, including 4,262 cases in Liberia, 3,410 in Sierra Leone and 1,519 in Guinea.

The death toll is highest in Liberia (2,484), followed by Sierra Leone (1,200) and Guinea (862).

U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday the WHO has officially declared Nigeria free of Ebola virus transmission, after 42 days without a single case.

WHO called it “a spectacular success story that shows that Ebola can be contained”.

“Such a story can help the many other developing countries that are deeply worried by the prospect of an imported Ebola case and are eager to improve their preparedness plans,” he said.

Dujarric said the announcement comes only a few days after Senegal was also declared Ebola-free.

He said the trust fund set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to battle the deadly disease now has about 8.8 million dollars in deposits and 5.0 million dollars in commitments.

In total, 43.5 million dollars have been pledged and the secretary-general continues to urge countries to turn these pledges into action as soon as possible.

He expressed regrets over the Ebola-related death of a UN-Women staff member in Sierra Leone. His spouse is currently receiving treatment.

“All measures to protect staff at the duty station in Sierra Leone are being taken as best as possible under the current circumstances,” Dujarric said.

This includes decontamination of the U.N. clinic, disposal of the isolation facility and contact tracing, he added.

In a statement released Tuesday, IFPRI painted a grim picture of the situation facing all three countries.

Schools in Sierra Leone have closed, shutting down critical feeding programmes for children. And restrictions on the consumption of bush meat, the suspected source of Ebola, have eliminated a traditional source of protein and nutrition from local diets.

“In addition, the costs of staple foods including rice and cassava are rising precipitously in the affected areas as crops are abandoned and as labor shortages grow,” the statement added.

Food that would be imported from these areas is not making its way to other regions, either.

“So, as we weigh the dangers of this dreaded disease, we must not forget the very real threats it poses to food security,” the group warned.

“The global community must come together to ensure that there are safety nets to protect not only those infected with the disease, but also those whose access to food is severely affected,” IFPRI added.

Asked to identify these safety nets, Dr. Fan told IPS social safety nets are needed to protect not only those infected with Ebola, but also those whose access to food is severely affected.

These safety nets, which could be in the form of cash or in-kind transfers (context-specificity is important here), should be accompanied with nutrition and health interventions.

For example, a conditional cash transfer programme linked to health can help improve access to nutritious foods, particularly when prices are high, while promoting health service use, he added. “This is important, because investing in the nutrition and health of vulnerable populations could lower the mortality rate of diseases like Ebola, as nutritional status and infection are intricately linked.”

In the post-Ebola era, Dr. Fan said, combined social protection and agricultural support interventions will be crucial to build resilience to future livelihood shocks.

Asked how many people will be affected by this impending food crisis, he said with Ebola claiming lives of thousands of people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, the mounting food crisis is impacting thousands more still.

Recent efforts by the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food assistance to around 1.3 million people in these three countries indicate an idea of the scope of the current crisis.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is also providing food assistance to nearly 90,000 farming households to abate the food security crisis, he pointed out.

As the harvest season is beginning, labour shortages are putting the food security of tens of thousands of people at risk in particularly affected areas, he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Children in the town of Gueckedou, the epicentre of the ebola outbreak in Guinea. Credit: ©afreecom/Idrissa Soumaré

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2014 (IPS)

President Barack Obama is under significant pressure to impose a range of restrictions on travellers coming to the United States from West African countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak.

Yet public health experts and development advocates warn that such restrictions would harm the already reeling economies of Ebola-hit countries in the region, and squeeze the international community’s ability to get health workers and goods into these countries.“If we get this wrong and just hunker down and hide, we will make this problem worse both in West Africa and in the United States.” -- Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development

“An accelerated mobilisation of personnel and resources is necessary to control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and care for patients, through the establishment of new Ebola management centres,” Tim Shenk, a press officer with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the humanitarian group that has been at the core of the international response to the epidemic, told IPS.

“For this reason, it is crucial that airlines continue flying to the affected region.”

Calls for halting flights and imposing visa restrictions have been floating around Washington since the virus’s spread caught the world’s attention over the summer. Yet these have strengthened substantially in recent days, following the confirmation of three cases of Ebola in the United States.

The first of those was unknowingly carried by a man from Liberia. He died last week after infecting two of the health workers attending to him, and the case has prompted an intense and at times vitriolic response.

“A temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries afflicted with the virus is something that the president should absolutely consider,” John Boehner, the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the most powerful figures in Washington, said Wednesday.

In fact there are no direct air connections between the United States and any of the three countries most affected by the current outbreak. Further, it would be extremely complex to impose such a ban in tertiary transit countries.

On the other hand, it would be possible to create additional hurdles for those applying for U.S. visas in West Africa. But this would do nothing to deal with, for instance, the many U.S. passport holders living in these countries, and would likewise be logistically complex.

Nonetheless, Boehner was echoing a clear tide of U.S. support for the imposition of travel restrictions. According to a poll released Tuesday, two-thirds of people in the United States would support “restricting entry” of incoming travellers from Ebola-afflicted countries.

The federal government’s response to Ebola has suddenly become a defining issue in the U.S. midterm elections, slated for next month.

Dangerous isolation

The current Ebola outbreak has now killed more than 4,000 people, almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the international community to make available a billion dollars to allow those combating the disease to meet a target of reducing the virus’s transmission rates by the beginning of December.

In the United States, meanwhile, the public support for travel restrictions has risen by six percentage points since just last week. And lawmakers, many of whom are currently in the last stages of political campaigns, are responding.

Though Congress is currently on recess, lawmakers held a rare hearing on Ebola Thursday. By Thursday evening, members of Congress who supported some sort of travel restrictions outnumbered those who didn’t by 56 to 13, according to a list compiled by a Washington newspaper.

While those who do not support a travel ban were all Democratic, the support for such restrictions stretches across both parties.

“I’ve been struck by just how intense this political pressure has become, and the pressure is bipartisan,” J. Stephen Morrison, the director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“While the arguments made against travel bans have been solid, they don’t win the day with the public. Further, if the base population carrying the virus continues to grow, the threat won’t ease and neither will this pressure.”

Even as lawmakers increasingly funnel – and perhaps fuel – concern over Ebola in this country, the Obama administration remains adamant that it is not considering any travel restrictions beyond health scans and interviews at international airports.

“Shutting down travel to that area of the world would prevent the expeditious flow of personnel and equipment into the region,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told journalists Wednesday. “And the only way for us to stop this outbreak and to eliminate any risk from Ebola to the American public is to stop this outbreak at the source.”

Earnest did not reject the possibility completely, however, noting that a travel ban is “not on the table at this point.”

Yet many of those closest to the Ebola response warn that travel restrictions would be not only unfeasible but outright dangerous, exacerbating the outbreak.

“You don’t want to do something that inadvertently accelerates the economic collapse of these countries or impedes the flow of health workers and critically needed commodities,” CSIS’s Morrison says. “Our ability to get ahead of this crisis necessitates the flow, back and forth, of thousands of health-care workers and commodities.”

Indeed, such concerns have already been borne out. African Union aid workers, for instance, were recently delayed for a week getting into Liberia due to travel restrictions imposed in a number of African countries.

“It has been quite challenging over the last several months, because there have been a reduction in commercial flights … a reduction in shipping that comes into the country,” Debra Malac, the U.S. ambassador to Liberia, told journalists Thursday. “[That’s made it] very difficult to get things like food as well as supplies in that are critically needed in order to help address this epidemic.”

Devastating economies

U.S. travel restrictions could also pose significant economic risks, both to Ebola-hit countries and Africa as a whole.

“There’s a lot of air traffic between Africa and the U.S. that’s very important for trade and investment, the tourism industry, for the diaspora,” CSIS’s Morrison says. “All of that is reliant on air links, so how do you make sure you’re not kicking the pins out of those economic processes?”

Already there are widespread fears over the financial impacts of Ebola on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation warned that the virus now threatens “potential state failure” in these countries. Last week, the World Bank estimated that the epidemic could cost West African countries some 33 billion dollars in gross domestic product.

“If we get this wrong and just hunker down and hide, we will make this problem worse both in West Africa and in the United States,” Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank here, told IPS.

“Imposing any kind of travel ban would tank the economy of these three countries, and that will have knock-on effects on dealing with the disease – increasing the suffering and the number of people with the disease.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

An Ebola victim is carried by health workers for burial on May 13, 2014. Credit: ©EC/ECHO/Jean-Louis Mosser

By Antonio Vigilante
MONROVIA, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

As the Ebola crisis continues to take a toll on people’s lives and livelihoods in West Africa, the focus is increasingly not just on the health aspects of the crisis, but also on its social and economic consequences.

Sure, the human and medical aspects of the crisis are still on the front burner, as they should be. Losing a spouse, a child or another close relative is devastating. The health sector is under tremendous pressure to cope with the sick, and even to protect its own workers from contagion.Fear and isolation can in the end take more lives than the Ebola virus itself if businesses are not operating, livelihoods disappear and public services are not delivered.

There are also health ramifications for those not affected by Ebola: access to regular health care is reduced due to closures of hospitals and clinics, loss of nurses and doctors and increased fees by private health care providers.

Vaccination coverage, for instance, had already declined by 50 percent by July. Women in labour struggle to obtain skilled maternity care — in some cases they are turned away from the few institutions still in operation.

People with HIV who are on antiretroviral drugs and people with chronic diseases on prolonged care have had their treatment interrupted as a result of the closure of health facilities. The public health care system has all but collapsed in parts of the areas hardest hit by Ebola.

Before the current crisis, Liberia’s economy experienced impressive growth rates of up to 8.7 per cent (2013). GDP growth was already projected to decline to 5.9 per cent this year, as mining production levelled off temporarily, coupled with the fall in international prices for rubber and iron ore, before rising to 6.8 per cent in 2015 and 7.2 per cent in 2016. Future growth figures will now have to be revised, as economic activities have slowed down dramatically in most sectors.

But there is also an underlying issue at hand: The impressive recent growth in Liberia has not been equitable or inclusive. About 57 per cent of the country’s approximately four million inhabitants live below the poverty line and 48 per cent live in conditions of extreme poverty.

The lack of equitable, inclusive development means that more than half of the country’s population—especially women and children–is particularly vulnerable to shocks and crises, ultimately making the whole country less robust and less able to handle a crisis of any magnitude.

Part of the challenge in restoring livelihoods is psychological in nature. Fear and isolation can in the end take more lives than the Ebola virus itself if businesses are not operating, livelihoods disappear and public services are not delivered.

Reduced tax revenues go hand in hand with a decrease in the government’s ability to respond to the crisis. A decline in revenues is expected as Ebola continues to claim the lives of Liberians and the government continues to enforce travel restrictions as part of the state of emergency.

Soon, this is likely to impact salary payments for public employees and could paralyze the country further. Trust in the government is also on the line as it becomes increasingly unable to protect its citizens and deliver the services they desperately need.

At the same time, prices of locally grown and imported foods are increasing as the state of emergency, military road blocks and restricted travel slow down trade. The trend is amplified by a vicious cycle of falling consumer demand and shrinking levels of income.

In this scenario, it is crucial to put in place adequate social protection mechanisms, as the fall in disposable income make families unable to afford food and health services. This would not only contribute to improving social stability and security, but would also make Liberian society as a whole more robust and resilient.

Indeed, a large portion of the population is in need of public assistance. The latest data indicate that about 78 percent of the labour force is in a situation of vulnerable employment. By contrast, formally paid employees (about 195,000 people) make up only about 5 per cent of the population.

About 13 percent of households do not have access to sufficient food and 28 per cent are vulnerable to food insecurity. If the poorest segments of the population get access to some form of social protection mechanism, it will enable them to better withstand the current crisis, as well as future ones.

In the remote parts of the country, far from the hustle and bustle of its capital, Monrovia, it is also necessary to strengthen local authorities’ ability to handle the crisis, for instance by improving monitoring mechanisms and making protection equipment available for those who are in direct contact with Ebola patients and corpses.

The resurgence of the Ebola crisis since July and its gradual escalation into a national emergency in Liberia has diverted the focus and resources available to the authorities to the containment of the virus. In this phase of the crisis, it is necessary to act on all fronts to meet the devastating health, social and economic challenges before Liberia and other affected countries see all their hard-won development gains dwindle to nothing.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouman Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
KANDOPLEU/ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 26 2014 (IPS)

The nurse carefully packs the body into a plastic bag and then leaves the isolation tent, rinsing his feet in a bucket of water that contains bleach. Then he carefully takes off his safety glasses, gloves and mask and burns them in a jerry can.

Behind a cordon, hundreds of people are watching, including Ivorian Health Minister Raymonde Goudou Coffie and several local media.

They face no risks even if the deadly virus kills up to 90 percent of the infected persons: there is no Ebola outbreak in Côte d’Ivoire. And the corpse is a mannequin. This is an Ebola simulation at the district hospital in Biankouma.

“We want to test our medical teams. And see what we can do to improve our reaction,” explains the health minister, a pharmacist by training who does not hesitate to provide her in-sights.

Schoolteacher Edinie Veh Gale is in the crowd watching the exercise. “It is not translated in Yacuba, the local language. So people around do not understand. But it is good though. At least, it piqued people’s curiosity and they will search for information,” she tells IPS in French.

While the attention on the epidemic that has now been declared “out-of-control” is focused on the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria, unaffected countries in the region, like Côte d’Ivoire, are struggling to understand what to do keep the disease away.

While strict epidemiological-control measures have been applied, including closing borders and banning people travelling into  Côte d’Ivoire from countries where the disease is prevalent, the current outbreak has highlighted huge gaps in prevention methods.

Especially since some citizens refuse to submit to restrictive measures.

Until now, the previous Ebola outbreaks were contained in villages in Central Africa where distance and isolation were important factors in stopping the disease.

But the current wave that resulted in over 1,135 deaths — making it the worst Ebola outbreak ever — has spread to several urban centres. In the cities restrictive measures have been met with reduced success.

Susan Shepler, an associate professor at American University and a specialist in education and conflict, is back from six weeks of research in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Despite several measures adopted by authorities, she noticed that while there have been some developments in the population’s awareness, most people in those countries have a deep mistrust for government assistance.

“It is not simply a mistrust of the state. It is a mistrust of the system. People don’t see the boundaries of the state,“ Shepler tells IPS. She explains that citizens believe politicians enter government to enrich themselves, and they therefore do not think that the state could help them.

She says that trust has yet to be built as many people, especially those who reside in opposition strongholds, see Ebola as a government plot or a religious curse.

In Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, government services and trained medical workers are barely available in regions infected by Ebola.

So when heavily-equipped medical teams, often backed by foreign experts, go to affected areas, it has been difficult for those local communities to instantly trust them.

“Western media tends to present the crisis with a focus on frontline work and chaotic scenes. But what is missing, [that needs to be] understood, is everyday life. There is a rationale for citizens’ actions,” says Shepler.

Building trust beforehand

It is difficult to discern what are good practices to fight Ebola.

Côte d’Ivoire may not have any cases, but it is uncertain if this is because the country took the right approach to the disease or if it was simply a matter of luck.

But what is clear is that Côte d’Ivoire fears being the next site of the outbreak.

Around the country, the government has multiplied preventative measures.

Last March, it banned bush meat. And since then the government has adopted several measures to contain the epidemic, including implementing screening for the disease at borders and banning direct flights to affected areas.

Now, the government has recommended that people stop hugging and shaking hands, insisting that they comply with strict hygiene rules.

The government has made also several efforts to build the trust of its people by getting local authorities and medical staff that are know to local communities involved in education campaigns.

And citizen’s initiatives are also multiplying.

In a bank in Abidjan’s commercial district, a security guard gives a shot of hand sanitiser to any client using the banking machine. “It’s for your own health,” he says.

In front of the same bank, street hawkers who help drivers park their cars refuse to shake hands.

Social media has exploded with various initiatives, notably the #MousserpourEbola (#FoamingAgainstEbola) challenge, which is used to raise money and public awareness about Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Launched by a young blogger, Edith Brou, videos of Ivorians throwing a bucket of soap water on themselves have became viral. When one is nominated for the challenge, you are required to throw a bucket of soap water on yourself and distribute three bottles of hand sanitiser. They you don’t agree to the soap shower, then you have to distribute nine bottles of hand sanitiser.

“Ivorians play down everything through humour. In spite of the funny aspect of it, the message is forwarded and listened to. There are many actions like mine. We cannot only stand by. We are responsible for our lives,” she tells IPS.

In the village of Pekanhouebli, in the west of the country and close the the Liberian border, there is no electricity and no internet access. But in this village that strongly supports the opposition, a citizen’s committee has been created to mobilise the community against Ebola.

“We did not believe that Ebola was true. We thought it was a white man’s disease from cities when authorities came to us,”senior resident Serge Tian tells IPS. “But when we heard it on the radio, we realised it was true. And we started listening to the nurse who would visit the village.”

Tian does not shake hands with IPS as we leave — it’s because he now understands a bit more about how the disease is spread. And he knows why he should comply to these restrictive measures.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Ayo Bello

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

Nigerians are beginning to adjust to the sad reality that they live in a country where suicide bombers and terrorists could be lurking around the next corner thanks to a ready supply of advanced weapons smuggled through the country’s porous borders. 

Last week, Ngupar Kemzy’s cousin, Andy Nepli, told him that he planned to spend the Easter holidays with him.

But two days later, on Apr. 14, 32-year-old Nepli was one of the 75 people killed in two powerful explosions at a crowded bus station in Nyanya, a suburb in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons.” -- Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development

Many of the victims were so badly wounded that it was difficult to identify them.

“We only knew it was him after checking his clothes and seeing his identity card,” Kemzy, who rushed to the scene, told IPS. “Human body parts were littered all over the place,” he said.

On the same night, Nigeria was forced to contend with yet another horror when 129 schoolgirls were abducted from their hostel in Chibok, Borno State in the country’s northeast.

Boko Haram, a group waging a violent campaign for the imposition of Islamic rule in this West African nation, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group is suspected to also be responsible for the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok.

Bombings, abductions and a scorched earth policy of burning down entire villages and killing the inhabitants are some of the violent techniques used by the extremist group.

Boko Haram, which is believed to have links with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Somali-based Al-Shabaab, is mainly active in northeastern Nigeria

Global human rights movement Amnesty International says 1,500 people were killed within the first three month of this year by Boko Haram and “uncontrolled reprisals by Nigeria’s security forces.”

A transformation to modern weaponry is said to have aided the escalation of the crisis in the country.

Besides Boko Haram, several other armed ethnic militia operate in Central Nigeria. And armed groups have moved from using crude weapons like sticks, machetes, cudgels, and dane guns to more lethal and advanced weapons like machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons,” Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, told IPS.

“With their modern weapons, armed groups have been able to gather the courage to attack even military barracks,” said Obodokwe.

There is a ready supply of weapons smuggled into Nigeria through its porous borders. Some weapons are believed to have entered the country following armed conflicts in countries like Libya and Mali.

Former Nigerian defence minister Olusola Obada says some of the smuggled weapons were those looted from Libyan armouries during the 2011 crisis to oust the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi (1942 – 2011).

It is also believed that some of the weapons, especially those being used by Boko Haram, entered Nigeria through Al-Qaeda’s network.

“It is not out of place to suggest that some of the weapons in Nigeria were supplied by Islamist groups in Somalia and Mali,” says Obodokwe.

With its links to Al-Qaeda and a good supply of arms, Boko Haram has successfully carried out several high-profile terrorist attacks in Nigeria. These include attacks on military bases and the 2011 bombing of both the national police and United Nations headquarters in Abuja.

“The consequences of these successful attacks is that Boko Haram has demystified Nigeria’s security agencies,” Ifeanyi Okechukwu, national coordinator of the West Africa Network for Peace Building, which works with international organisations to prevent armed conflict, told IPS.

He says the success of Boko Haram has encouraged other groups here to pick up arms against their opponents, knowing that security agencies are incapable of stopping them.

The great cost to Nigeria

The conflicts in Nigeria have come at great cost. The International Crisis Group, an independent organisation working to prevent deadly conflicts, says the Boko Haram’s insurgency alone has “displaced close to half a million people, destroyed hundreds of schools and government buildings and devastated an already ravaged economy in the northeast, one of Nigeria’s poorest regions.”

The organisation fears that with no end in sight, the insurgency could spill over “to other parts of the north and risks reaching Niger and Cameroon, weak countries poorly equipped to combat a radical Islamist armed group.”

Some Nigerians are beginning to lose faith in the ability of security agents to stop Boko Haram and other militant groups in the country. But the government has continued to assure the populace that it will win the war against terror.

“Terror will not stop Nigeria from moving. The terrorists and those who are sponsoring them will never stop this country from moving, we will continue to move from strength to strength,” President Goodluck Jonathan said at a political rally a day after the Abuja bus station bombings.

Nigeria is scheduled to hold general elections next year.

Here, the buildup to elections is usually characterised by politicians arming their supporters in their quest for power. But with so many armed groups and with so many illegal firearms already in circulation, the build-up to next year’s elections might just stretch Nigeria beyond its limits.

In 2012 recurring droughts destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. This year feeding chronically hungry people in the Sahel has been compromised by regional conflict that has created almost one million refugees. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Matthew Newsome
TUNIS, Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

Still not enough is being done to improve the food emergency in Africa’s Sahel Region as conflict and instability continue to exacerbate any response towards aiding a region where one in eight people suffer from food insecurity.

“The main problem we have is that food is not reaching conflict areas such as Central African Republic (CAR) because of insecurity. Until now, there has not been enough of a response from the international community, especially given the proportion of the disaster foreseen,” Jose Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), told IPS at the organisation’s regional conference being held in Tunisa from Mar. 24 to 28.

Last month, the U.N. appealed for more than two billion dollars to address the needs of 20 million “food insecure” people across Africa’s Sahel, a semi-arid area beset by persistent drought and chronic food insecurity stretching from the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south. It is described by the U.N. as “one of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable regions.”

Countries in the Sahel currently facing food shortages are Mali, Mauritania, the Gambia, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (CAR), Niger, Chad and Nigeria.

New research by international NGO Action Aid highlights how Nigeria and Senegal are alarmingly unprepared to cope with a worsening food crisis.

John Abuya, head of Action Aid’s international humanitarian action and resilience team, told IPS: “Disaster preparedness structures at regional and community levels are still weak and need to be strengthened so as to provide the necessary response and resilience in case of an emergency.”

“Based on early warning signs, it is likely that the Nigerian and Senegalese governments will be overwhelmed if their food crisis escalates. Although Nigeria has a National Emergency Management Authority, its response at state level has been weak and resources have been allocated inadequately by the central government,” Abuya said.

Food insecurity in the Sahel is set to increase in 2014 by 40 percent compared to 2013 when 11.3 million people had inadequate food and required around 1.7 billion dollars in donor assistance.

Feeding chronically hungry people in the Sahel has been compromised by regional conflict that has created approximately 724,000 refugees and 495,000 internally displaced persons.

According to the latest data from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Chad’s open-door policy has resulted in it receiving 419, 000 refugees (86,000 from CAR, and 333,000 from Darfur, Sudan).

Out of the 103,000 refugees residing in Mauritania, a majority are from Mali and Western Sahara, while Burkina Faso has received 43,000 refugees from Mali since the crisis there began in 2012.

Following Mali’s military coup in March 2012, terrorists and criminal organisations exploited the country’s power vacuum and occupied the northern territory creating a huge displacement of the population. It resulted in a refugee outflow into Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, and, to a lesser degree, Algeria and other countries.

Mali maintains it has the capacity to feed its people but is restricted by poor infrastructure and instability in the north.

Last year, it produced two million tonnes of cereal in addition to one million tonnes of rice.

“Mali’s problem is not agricultural, it is a logistical problem about transporting the food to people. The crisis and the instability in the north is not permitting us to use the roads safely. Therefore the food that farmers produce is restricted in its movement because of insecurity,” Issa Konda, head of Mali’s agricultural delegation attending the FAO conference, told IPS.

Despite efforts to stabilise Mali, including the deployment of a peacekeeping force and presidential elections in mid-2013, very few Malian refugees want to return due to the fragile humanitarian and security situation.

Niger’s severe food shortages due to recurrent drought have also been compounded by conflict in neighbouring countries. Half of the country’s 17 million people are without adequate food all year round, while one in 10 is unable to feed themselves for three months of the year.

Conflict in northern Mali, southern Libya, northern Nigeria and CAR has put pressure on Niger’s resources to deal with its food crisis as thousands of displaced civilians take refuge in the country due to its porous borders.

Since 2012, Malian refugees have regarded neighbouring Niger as a safe haven. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, over 51,000 refugees (47,000 from Mali and 4,000 from Nigeria) have entered the country as a result of regional conflict.

Last year’s rainy season in Niger, which lasted from July to October, was disappointing says the country’s Minister in the President’s office for the national strategy for food security and agriculture development, Amadou Diallo.

“The situation is dire and has not been improving for several years. We are unable to meet the food demand. The problem is that demand is growing from rising population numbers and incoming refugees, in addition to terrible drought our food supply is being compromised,” he told IPS.

Niger’s refugee crisis escalated last year after neighbouring Nigeria launched a military offensive against Islamist terror group, Boko Haram, causing 10,000 people to flee northern Nigeria into south-eastern Niger and Cameroon.

Of the 25 countries listed by the U.N. as being vulnerable to becoming failed states, 13 are in the Sahel. Breaking the cycle of recurrent food crises in the region is next to impossible while there is limited security says Gerda Verburg, chairperson of the Committee on World Food Security.

“In the Sahel we have the solutions. We have the capacity. We have the willingness.  However, as long there is insecurity then food production and access to food is at risk.  There is not enough reliability and stability for us to adequately address food insecurity in the Sahel,” she told IPS.

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

By Wade C. L. Williams
BOEGBOR, Liberia, May 29 2013 (IPS)

Sackie Qwemie works for Equatorial Palm Oil, the company that took his land in northwestern Liberia.

He has been working on the EPO plantation for three years because the land that he once farmed was given away in a lease to the concession company based in Grand Bassa County, one of this West African country’s 15 political subdivisions.

His job is not a pleasant one, there is a taste of bitterness, but working for the company that has his land is the only way for him to survive.“The people came, they destroyed our bush, our living. Even the creek, the water we drink – they damaged it.” -- Joe Bah, chief of Boegbor.

The farmer, in his early 50s, is among the many villagers and community dwellers who have seen their land taken over by the company, and their crops bulldozed under.

“In the place I used to make my garden they came and cleared my whole bitterballs (a small species of round eggplant), my whole pepper, cassava, everything was destroyed,” Qwemie tells IPS as he sits under a palava hut in Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County.

“I had the biggest farm here; I came from the hospital and heard the news that the machine had cleared my farm. Since then I’ve not been on my own farm.” Qwemie, however, does not know how much land he has lost.

The farmer looks weary and angry as he lays out his case, accusing the Liberian government of giving up the land to the company and ignoring the interests of the people it serves. He says this move has created serious hardship for them, as the money paid by EPO is small and cannot meet their families’ needs.

“Now before I eat pepper, I have to buy it. I don’t know what to say, I can’t fight this company because they say the government gave the land to the company,” says Qwemie.

EPO took over the Palm Bay concession area, clearing 34,398 hectares of land for the development of oil palms. The 50-year concession was negotiated and enacted into law in 2011 with the planting of the first new oil palms. It began expansion into district four in Grand Bassa County not so long ago.

This expansion has further upset the local community here, with many resisting any attempt at further expansion.

“The people came, they destroyed our bush, our living. Even the creek, the water we drink – they damaged it,” says an angry Joe Bah, chief of Boegbor.

Bah and his kinsmen maintain that they were not consulted in the leasing of their land to EPO. He says the company used bulldozers to clear the land, including ancestral land and sacred sites, without any remorse or respect for their local culture.

“All this bush here – that was our cassava farm … the people have destroyed it, even our rubber trees. There is no place here for us to make a farm, (to grow food) for us to eat,” he tells IPS.

Local people also accused the government of using the head of the National Traditional Council, chief Zanzan Kawar, the country’s most revered traditional elder, to scare them off from claiming their rights over the land.

“When Kawar is present in any community, all the Zoe people in Grand Bassa County and elsewhere in all the other counties can be present,” says Isaac Gartaryon, president of the youth in the district. The Zoes are traditional high priests who are believed to have supernatural powers and are feared by locals. People dare not speak against them for fear of the consequences.

“So they use that heavy influence … so nobody could talk,” he tells IPS.

Citizens of the land who have vehemently opposed the expansion of the company have come under strong criticism from community elders who hold positions in government and are close associates of company officials, alleges Gartaryon.

“The young people, the women and chiefs were not consulted (about the expansion), so we resisted. But the National Traditional Council still maintains its position and says that as far as they are concerned, the President of the Republic of Liberia has given this land to (EPO) … and anybody (who speaks out against it) will be arrested,” he says.

But EPO maintains that the land it currently occupies is the land that it was leased in negotiations with the government in 2008. The company says it is currently only operating on 13,000 hectares of the land, and has not even occupied the full territory because of the resistance by the local community.

With regard to allegations that the community was not consulted, Thomas Borshua Jr., senior accountant and administrator at EPO, said “I wouldn’t say that is true. We’ve had numerous meetings with the town chiefs, the surrounding villages and we’ve talked to them.

“We are not interacting with people on an individual basis; they have their leaders that were presented to the company to speak on their behalf and those are the people the company dealt with,” he explains to IPS.

Despite Borshua’s assertions that the company only occupies a portion of the land, tractors can be seen moving around the concession, and the sight of newly-felled trees in areas that villagers allege are not part of the company’s 34,000 hectares of land is commonplace. The local residents have vowed to fight on.

“We will resist them in the bushes and we are very serious about that,” says an angry Gartaryon.

Speaking in conversation with Reuters Insider on May 17, in the United States, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said the government was taking steps to address the current land crisis.

“There’s no doubt about it, that once we say the communities have rights to what’s on their land. Even if we decide to negotiate concessions because they don’t have the resources to put the land to use, that in effect will benefit them with housing and jobs and social benefits but they will be full participants,” she had said.

Rights organisations here, such as the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) Liberia, which works to raise awareness and increase public participation in natural resources sectors, believe the government should go beyond mere words and do the right thing.

“The issue of land in Liberia is more than just a legal issue; it is matter of livelihood especially for communities living in rural parts of the country,” Nora Bowier of SDI tells IPS.

“If the government is taking vast amounts of land from rural people and granting them to multinationals without ensuring or providing better livelihood alternatives, it is like taking away these people’s rights to live and increasing their poverty conditions.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kafoumba Koné sounds almost smug. “Our first rice harvest is in, and we’re getting ready to plant again,” he says, surveying his farm in southeastern Guinea. “Other farmers who have not yet tried NERICA are still preparing for their only harvest of the year.” Along with 24 younger associates, Koné harvested nearly 700 tonnes of an improved variety of rice from their 140-hectare plot in the Beyla prefecture in the southeastern corner of this West African country at the beginning of August.

The group earned 294,000 dollars from their crop of NERICA, the New Rice for Africa, an improved variety that’s proving to be well-matched to the low soil fertility in the region.

Roughly a third of their revenue has gone to pay off various creditors, but the balance, banked in their new account at a rural credit union, represents a handsome profit as they return to the fields.

Rice production in Guinea presently falls well short of the needs of its 10 million strong population. According to a report from the agriculture ministry, the country’s rice deficit is around 240,000 tonnes a year, forcing Guinea to import roughly a fifth of its annual consumption of 1.26 million tonnes from Thailand and Vietnam.

“It is time we begin to re-evaluate our dependence on imported rice. We need to increase our local output,” said Agriculture Minister Jean-Marc Telliano.

This year, Guinea’s National Agency for Rural Promotion and Agriculture Extension has made 500 tonnes of NERICA rice seed available to smallholders as part of a one million dollar project to increase output.

“This rice variety is a cross between African and Asian strains of rice. Rich in protein, it is prized by Guinean consumers, for whom rice is a staple,” said Ali Condé, director of the agency.

Farmers in Beyla and neighbouring Kérouané have enthusiastically adopted the improved variety.

IPS visited a farm in Kérouané at the end of August, where a group of 17 farmers are growing NERICA on 130 hectares of land. There is no shortage of arable land in this part of the country, and the local community readily granted the group access to cultivate this large area.

“We harvested around 645 tonnes of (unprocessed) paddy rice,” said Mohamed Dioubaté, head of the Kérouané collective. Some of the crop will go towards the farmers’ own use, but most will be sold to buyers from all over the country.

Dioubaté told IPS that a 100-kilo sack of rice sells for about 300,000 Guinean francs – 42 dollars – which means the group made a gross income of roughly 270,000 dollars from the past three months of work.

“The introduction of this variety of rice here in 2012 has been a blessing for us,” he said. “Now we can have two harvests a year which wasn’t possible before.”

“It’s even possible to get three harvests per year since the growing cycle for this rice is actually 90 days,” said Abdoulaye Sangaré, an agriculture extension worker in the region.

According to Sangaré, the new rice is perfectly adapted to conditions here, where farmers lack the resources to irrigate their fields or apply fertiliser and pesticides. NERICA is doing well despite low soil fertility and a dependence on rain for water.

The benefits of increased production are already being felt in the local marketplace.

“With the coming of NERICA, the price of rice has fallen in our region,” said Sarata Keita, a rice seller in Kérouané. “Now a kilo of rice costs between three and four thousand francs (less than a dollar) while the price was between five and six thousand in the past.”

However, the farmers complained about a lack of equipment and agricultural machinery that would let them work even more quickly and efficiently.

“We harvested the rice with sickles,” said local farmer Samouka Kourouma, “and threshed and cleaned the rice by hand. We would be happier if we had mechanical rice hullers and other equipment.”

A group of women in rural West Africa participate in a traditional ceremony to celebrate a polygamist marriage. Credit: Fatuma Camara/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Sep 12 2012 (IPS)

Fatou (40), Awa (32) and Aissatou Gaye (24) sit in a meditative mood on the tiled floor outside their matrimonial home in Keur Massar, a township in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

“These are my three wives and soon I’ll take a fourth to comply with Islamic law,” brags Ousmane Gaye (50), a businessman who has commercial interests in this West African nation and also in neighbouring Mali and the Gambia.

“As you can see, they love one another and live in harmony and peace like three sisters,” he says. But peace and harmony have a strange meaning in Ousmane Gaye’s vocabulary.

“Last night, Fatou and Awa beat Aissatou repeatedly and launched a litany of insults at her,” a family source tells IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“They accuse her of bewitching their husband to make him love her too much. In fact, as you came in, he was busy reprimanding them. Honestly speaking, since Ousmane brought in Aissatou three years ago, his home has not known peace and harmony.”

The women are prohibited to speak to strangers, including neighbours, women’s rights activists or marriage counsellors about their matrimonial problems. They also do not have the right to complain unnecessarily as long as they have “everything”, which includes food, clothes and sex.

“This is the way of life in Senegal,” says Adama Kouyate, an internet café owner in the middle-class suburb of Golf Sud. Two years ago, Kouyate “inherited” the wife and six children of his late brother. He has just had a baby with his late brother’s wife, bringing the number of children under his care to 14.

“This has nothing to do with Islam, but it’s our culture. And no woman has the right to oppose this because she will be harshly cursed for the rest of her life,” he says in Wolof, Dakar’s widely-spoken language.

Aminata* a Dakar woman who secretly counsels and advises wives in polygamist marriages, says: “Polygamy is a form of modern slavery, believe me it’s not easy as it sounds. Women involved in this form of marriage have no voice and no channels to complain.”

Rokhaya*, a 23-year-old university graduate who earlier this year was forced to marry a 48-year-old rich man, agrees: “Polygamy is hell and a pack of lies.”

“Look at me, I am young and supposed to be doing things most girls my age are doing. I had dreams and aspirations to own a small company and travel the continent. I’m trapped and feel I’m going crazy because this illiterate rich man won’t let me fulfil my dreams,” she says, sobbing.

Daya* says she wants to further her education but is afraid that her husband will not allow it. She stopped going to school in Grade 7, at the age of 15, when she was given in marriage to her cousin, a Muslim cleric. Now she is 30 and has seven children.

Aminata, a divorcee who was involved in an 18-year polygamist marriage, says that polygamy violates the principle of equality, promotes gender disparity and compromises women’s progress in society. “And it’s getting worse in Senegal,” she says.

“In virtually every sector of life here in Senegal – in issues of inheritance rights, involvement in business, and access to land and education – women still lag behind, despite our constitution asserting equality between men and women.”

According to the Global Gender Gap Index produced by the World Economic Forum since 2006, Senegal ranks 102nd out of 134 countries. The index measures the position of women relative to men in the areas of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.

A “2010 USAID-Senegal Gender Assessment” report, published in April 2012, also points to continued gender disparities in many areas in this country.

“It is widely noted that implementation of the various international and national laws on gender equality and women’s rights is weak and that the government lacks an adequate plan to enact its policies,” the USAID report says.

According to the report, 39 percent of girls in Senegal aged 20 to 24 have been married by the age of 18, while the country ranks 27th out of 68 countries surveyed in terms of girls marrying before the age of 18.

Most young men interviewed at the Place de l’Independance in the Dakar city centre say they would opt for polygamy when they are ready for marriage.

Lamine Camara, 22, a student at the Cheik Anta Diop University of Dakar, says he would rather be a polygamist and “officialise all my relationships instead of taking a string of girlfriends and risking diseases such as AIDS.”

Issa Diop, a 28-year-old polygamist truck driver, says young people like him become polygamists by choice.

“It’s like fashion, you follow the trend. Besides, women outnumber men in Senegal. Polygamy is helping a lot. Almost every man in my area, young or poor, is now a polygamist. So what?”

Slightly more than half of Senegal’s 12.9 million people are women. In the 15 to 64-year age bracket there are 3.6 million women compared to 3.2 million men, according to the country’s demographic profile for 2012.

“The practice, which in the past was widespread in rural areas, has reached urban areas with alarming proportions. And abuse is on the increase, mostly in Dakar, where polygamists are becoming younger and younger,” says Fanta Niang, a social worker and gender activist from Senegal’s third-largest city of Thies.

“There are no official statistics on polygamist marriages in Senegal that I know of. They used to say one out of four marriages in urban areas and one out of three in rural areas was polygamist, but these figures are flawed to downplay the gravity of the matter,” Niang says.

She adds that sadly most wives in polygamist marriages are illiterate and unaware of women’s rights and the right to equality.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization revealed in 2010 that approximately 61 percent lack basic literacy skills.

Senegal’s gender parity law of May 2010, enacted under the Abdoulaye Wade government amid criticism from traditionalists and Muslim hardliners, has paved the way for 64 women members of parliament of a total of 150 under the newly elected government of Macky Sall. The law requires political parties to ensure that half their candidates in local and national elections are women.

“There has been no progress regarding women’s emancipation in Senegal, and polygamy continues to play a big role in that respect,” Niang says. “Women’s empowerment should start on the ground, not at the top. These 64 MPs are just the tip of the iceberg. What about the 61 percent who cannot read and write.

“We interact with these women on a daily basis, and we see things you don’t even want to hear. That’s why I said there is no progress.”

Some argue that polygamy constitutes a threat to Senegal’s constitutional principles of gender equality and the National Strategy for Gender Equality and Equity which was developed in 2005. Moussa Kalombo, a gender analyst and religious expert, tells IPS that polygamy violates the constitutional principles of gender equality in every country.

*Names changed to protect identity.

“It was Ibrahima Sarr, a friend and fellow fisherman, who got me involved with smuggling people across the seas.” Senegalese fisherman Doudou Ndoye speaks with the bittersweet conviction of a man redeemed.

“Our clients paid between 200,000 and 300,000 CFA francs (400 to 600 dollars) per person, with 96 passengers on each boat,” he told IPS.

Sarr and Ndoye were “passeurs”, people-smugglers organising risky voyages from the coast of Mauritania across the open seas to the Spanish-owned Canary Islands in small fishing boats.

Those waters have claimed the lives of many hopeful migrants from Ndoye’s home, the Senegalese fishing community of Thiaroye-sur-mer. More than 150 young people from this small fishing village on the outskirts of Dakar have died in the crossing, according to COFLEC, the Women Against Clandestine Emigration Collective. They left behind 88 children. The collective says 374 minors from the village have been detained in Spain and 210 local youth repatriated to Senegal from Europe as well as Cape Verde and Morocco, where they were preparing to venture the passage.

“Seven of my own cousins have disappeared on the high seas,” Ndoye said. “From my neighbourhood alone, seven other young people have died at sea, two were repatriated after being caught by the Moroccan coast guard.”

Five years ago, at a funeral for a group of young Senegalese who died trying to emigrate, Yayi Bayam Diouf decided she had had enough. “I decided to organise women who had lost their husbands, sons or brothers crossing the sea, and create an association to fight against this curse.”

She set up COFLEC to work against clandestine migration, both through awareness campaigns that help people better understand the risks of trying to emigrate in this way, and by creating jobs that encourage young peopLe to stay and build their futures in Thiaroye-sur-mer.

Today, the collective has 375 members and a wide range of income-generating activities. There is food processing, making couscous from maize, millet and black-eyed peas. There is seafood – the collective brings three tonnes of smoked and dried fish and shrimp to market every year.

Members also make juice out of whatever is to hand, lemons, oranges and mangoes, hibiscus and ginger, as well as from the green pulp hidden inside the brown pods of the ditah (also known as sweet detar, a fruit popular across West Africa’s Sahel regions).

COFLEC also makes three tonnes of soap per year from local materials (palm oil, caustic soda, shea butter and neem oil), earning around 16,000 dollars.

All told, the collective produces 30 tonnes of various goods for sale in local markets, in neighbouring Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire, and even overseas in Europe and the United States. Receipts come to around 70,000 dollars a year.

Some of this income supports microcredit, with the group lending nearly 20,000 dollars a year to its members and to people trying to re-establish themselves after being repatriated from Europe. COFLEC has also spent nearly 100,000 dollars on two fishing boats with the aim of easing 50 former passeurs back into legitimate work on the seas, Diouf told IPS.

“We put the finance for this together thanks to our own contributions and a grant from the Beneteau Foundation, based in France. The Spanish overseas development programme also helped us with a loan,” she said.

These initiatives came too late for Ndoye’s close friend, Ibrahima Sarr: he was lost at sea after he took his place in one of the small boats sailing for El Dorado. But for the young residents of Thiaroye-sur-mer, the energy and initiative of COFLEC points to a golden future closer to home.

Painter Karim Traore, 40, puts the finishing touches on a gate at a newly refurbished university in Abidjan. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Sep 4 2012 (IPS)

Yacouba Coulibaly was pursuing a doctorate in education at Cocody University in Abidjan before Côte d’Ivoire’s post-election violence started in 2010. But his classes were routinely disrupted by armed members of a powerful student federation that wished to hold meetings instead.

Later, the country’s public universities were closed in 2011 at the end of the post-election violence and Coulibaly was unable to continue his studies.

But now he is one of an estimated 61,000 students who are expected to start classes soon in the new academic year, as the country’s five public universities reopened on Monday Sep. 3.

“I hope we will have a peaceful university, where people do not behave like we’ve seen in the past,” he told IPS.

“I don’t want my younger brothers and sisters to suffer this same way,” he said, referring to the West African nation’s future crop of students.

Coulibaly said that the reopening of the universities, marked by a ceremony on Monday at Cocody University (which has been renamed after the country’s founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny), would help the country develop.

“When you see a country without universities, there is something wrong. You cannot talk about development without universities,” he said.

Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara is also hoping that large-scale investment in the education sector can help his country’s universities shed a legacy of violence and corruption that contributed to recent turmoil. But concerns persist that higher education could again be corrupted by politics.

Speaking at Monday’s ceremony, Ouattara pledged to nurture a university system that would rival the best in the world, and also vowed to implement reforms at the primary and secondary levels.

“As an economist, I am convinced that investment in universities brings the highest yield in development,” he said.

The president lamented the role universities played in the nation’s 2010 to 2011 post-election crisis. He said they had become places “of violence and corruption” during the administration of former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Ouattara defeated Gbagbo in the November 2010 election, but the incumbent refused to cede office, sparking violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives. Gbagbo, who has since been transferred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, used to be a professor. He garnered strong support from university faculties and the Student Federation of Côte d’Ivoire (FESCI).

For years leading up to the violence, FESCI had become associated with extortion and racketeering, often resorting to violence. A 2008 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report implicated FESCI members in assault, extortion and rape, saying members targeted Gbagbo’s political opponents with impunity. HRW and other groups have also said FESCI members were involved in the 2010-2011 conflict.

Augustin Mian, FESCI’s secretary general, told IPS the group had been turned into a scapegoat for the country’s past problems, and claimed FESCI members have been targeted for abuse by pro-Ouattara forces since the conflict ended.

“We are protesting against the fact that people say we are militias,” he said. He added that the group would continue to advocate on behalf of students, and planned to protest a pending increase in registration fees.

Ouattara has defended the move to close the universities in the first place, which was unpopular with many Ivorians.

Rene Legre Houkou, president of the Ivorian Human Rights League, was among those who thought the decision wrong.

“For us, this decision stopped the normal process of teaching and training,” he told IPS.

“We thought that this violated the right to education, and we were worried that all of these students would be left doing nothing.”

Houkou said officials would face a number of challenges as the universities resumed classes, including finding replacements for the many professors who were allies of Gbagbo and are now in exile.

Meanwhile, students in Abidjan said they hoped the five university campuses – refurbished at a cost of roughly 210 million dollars – would be peaceful from now on.

Most students said they were just happy the existing universities were open again. Kone Pranhoro, a 30-year-old pursuing a PhD in economics, said it was “a good opportunity for the future generation.”

“We hope that politics will never be involved in the universities again,” he said.

The seeds were sown, and the harvest is beginning to come in. Burkina Faso farmers are reaping the benefits of their government’s programme to develop and popularise improved varieties of maize.

New, high-yielding varieties of the staple crop have been developed at the country’s Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA) as part of a drive to improve food security in this landlocked West African country.

“If we want to achieve food self-sufficiency, we need quality seeds and to strengthen the capacities of producers,” said André Bationo, an agriculture researcher at the University of Ouagadougou.

Fill the granaries

Mathieu Kabré is among the farmers who have adopted one new maize variety, known as Bondofa, meaning “fill the granary” in Dioula, one of the country’s indigenous languages. He is growing maize on ten hectares he farms with help from his cousins near the village of Nagréongo, in the central part of the country.

“When I abandoned the traditional varieties, I chose Bondofa based on advice from agricultural trainers,” Kabré told IPS.

“Bondofa can yield up to 12 tonnes per hectare instead of five to seven tonnes from traditional varieties,” said Inoussa Balboné, an agriculture expert.

“What’s more, traditional seeds have a growing cycle of over 90 days, while the improved seeds need, on average, 70 days from planting to harvest,” he told IPS.

Kabré harvested 90 tonnes of Bondofa maize from his farm in 2010. In 2011, he did even better, harvesting 100 tonnes from his ten hectares.

Issaka Kaboré, a 34-year-old migrant from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, rents six hectares of land near Loumbila, 12 kilometres east of the capital, Ouagadougou. He told IPS that his 2009 harvest from traditional seed varieties was just over thirty tonnes. But he also switched to Bondofa seed two years ago.

“In 2010, I harvested 50 tonnes and then I got 57 tonnes in 2011. This year, I’m hoping for 60,” said Kaboré.

Developing farmers

Both Kabré and Kaboré were introduced to Bondofa when they became members of Burkina Faso’s National Union of Seed Producers (UNPSB) two years ago. The UNPSB was established in 2006, and coordinates production and marketing activities as well as acting as an interface between its 4,000 members and the government.

The new seed is one of a dozen new varieties issuing from work being done at INERA. “Our ambition is to find ways to establish the country as an exporter of seeds in the sub-region,” said Robert Ouédraogo, from the agriculture ministry.

The ministry is playing an active role in supporting farmers as they adopt the new seed. The Ministry for Agriculture and Water buys maize from producers – trained and supported by extension workers – and resells it to consumers at a discounted price.

“In addition to giving us training in applying technological innovations, the government buys maize from us at 170,000 CFA francs (around 320 dollars) a tonne, while on the open market, the traditional variety sells for around 13,000 CFA per tonne (245 dollars),” said Kaboré.

And it’s paying off for farmers. In 2010, Kaboré spent about 5,700 dollars on fertiliser and on workers’ salaries during planting and harvesting. After covering costs, his 50 tonnes of maize earned him a profit of 7,500 dollars.

The following year, he said, he paid a retired agricultural extension worker 940 dollars to help improve his yield. The investment paid off, and Kaboré sold 55 tonnes of maize and cleared a profit of 9,000 dollars.

The growing profits have also allowed Kaboré to service a 7,500 dollar loan from a credit union. He has paid back around 2,800 dollars in each of the past three years.

Looking to the future

Kabré has also looked to invest his profits in expanding his operations. “I have built up savings of six million CFA (11,320 dollars) over the past two years. I’m going to set up my younger brother as a farmer as well,” he told IPS. To this end, he has purchased an additional five hectares of land for around 1,900 dollars.

He has also enrolled his son, Jacob, in an agriculture school in neighbouring Ghana. The farmer said he wants to make his son heir to a “future seed empire”.

Like many other farmers, Kabré and Kaboré want larger fields so they can produce more as well as diversify their crops. Both plan to buy more land in the southeast of the country and set up modern farms. Kabré wants to raise 75,000 dollars for his project; Kaboré’s even more ambitious plans call for over 94,000 dollars of capital.

“The earth doesn’t lie; if you have the means, it will never betray you,” said Kabré.

Mohamed Ceesay, a 20-year-old farmer from the Central River Region in the Gambia, is a high school dropout. But thanks to an initiative to discourage local youths from emigrating to Europe, he earns almost half the salary of a government minister from his rice harvest.

The Gambian government has provided farmers in 10 of the country’s most-vulnerable districts with inputs such as power tillers, tractors, rice threshers, seeders, sine hoes and bags of fertilisers. Credit: DW / Manuel Özcerkes/ CC by 2.0

“In July I harvested 20 hectares of rice fields on my own farm, and our association harvested 100 hectares across the Central River Region. We earn more than what our ministers are earning today,” he told IPS.

He earns 35,000 Gambian dalasi or 1,170 dollars every three months or so – half of what government ministers in this West African nation earn. Their monthly salaries are around 667 dollars, which amounts to almost 2,000 dollars over three months.

Ceesay is one of 50 young farmers from “Operation No Back Way to Europe”, an association founded in 2008 that aims to discourage youths from illegally emigrating.

Indeed, some of the young farmers in the organisation have attempted to enter Europe unlawfully, but they were deported back to the Gambia. Edrissa Sane, 23, is one of them.

“Before, I used to ask my family to help me go abroad in search of greener pastures. I have tried several times by voyaging by sea on a small boat to Spain. I did not succeed because we were arrested and deported back to the Gambia,” Sane said.

But since he joined “Operation No Back Way to Europe” he has no desire to make the dangerous and unlawful journey to Europe again.

“I earn more than 30,000 Gambia dalasi (about 1,000 dollars) in just a few months. That is enough for me, rather than voyaging across the sea to lose my life,” the rice farmer told IPS.

Edrissa said that he regretted not venturing into farming sooner as he now earned a good living.

The chairman of “Operation No Back Way to Europe”, Bubacarr Jabbi, told IPS that the association was working with the Immigration Department and the Gambia Police Force to reduce illegal emigration.

Over the years, more than 200 Gambian youths have died while crossing the seas to Europe. At one point, more than 600 youths a year were attempting to emigrate unlawfully. However, according to statistics from the Gambia Immigration Department, only 60 attempted the journey in 2010/2011.

“We believe in action and therefore urged other relevant stakeholders to come to the aid of the youth in order to inform them about the implications of illegal emigration,” Jabbi said.

One of their initiatives to keep young people in the Gambia has been youth farming. “Operation No Back Way to Europe” has young farmers across the country, in the Lower, Central and Upper River Regions.

On about 2,000 hectares of loaned government land, the 50 young farmers grow the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) variety known for its ability to grow in dry lands. An additional 1,000 hectares of government land has been loaned to other farmers across the country.

And as the 2012 harvest approaches this September, the organisation has promised that its farmers will have a bumper crop. It estimates that they will produce 4,500 tonnes of NERICA.

Currently, the country has only 100 registered rice farmers who produce between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of rice a year.

The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country in the Sahel zone, was in the midst of a food crisis last year when the government announced a national emergency in March after declaring the 2011 crop season a failure. At the time, about half the country’s 1.4 million people were affected by food insecurity.

According to a United Nations Development Programme report, the country experienced an almost 70 percent reduction in food production, with 19 of the country’s 39 rural districts being the most affected because of low rainfall. According to the report, rice production in the country fell by 74 percent.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization office in Banjul said that vulnerability to food insecurity would continue to rise in the country, especially among farmers who faced an early and protracted lean season because of decreased income and household food stocks.

In addition, the prices of basic food commodities have skyrocketed over the last year. Many here cannot afford to buy a 50-kilogramme bag of rice that now costs almost 33 dollars when it previously cost 20.

About 70 percent of the population in the Gambia rely on farming for their livelihoods. Agriculture, however, only contributes 32 percent of GDP. Although almost half the country’s 10,000 square kilometres is arable, only about one-fifth of the land, some 2,000 square kilometres, has been cultivated.

However, the government says that agriculture remains the prime sector with which to reduce poverty, generate investment and improve food security. And this is the reason why it wishes to see further investment in the sector.

According to the agricultural director of Central River Region, Ousman Jammeh, the success of young farmers from “Operation No Back Way to Europe” is thanks to the support of the Gambia Emergency Agricultural Production Project or GEAPP.

The European Commission-funded project, run by the Gambian government, has provided farmers in 10 of the country’s most-vulnerable districts with inputs such as power tillers, tractors, rice threshers, seeders, sine hoes and bags of fertilisers – all for free.

Jammeh told IPS that since some farmers in the Gambia had been supplied with proper farming inputs, their production levels for the 2012 harvest should increase. The GEAPP distributed 3,000 tonnes of fertilisers to 600 villages, 300 power tillers, 367 seeders, 367 sine hoes and 367 threshing machines, and 525 tonnes of seed.

“GEAPP has the objective, due to soaring food prices, to enhance agricultural production in the country’s most vulnerable villages by providing access to inputs and machinery, and through the rehabilitation of 35 village seed stores and 23 seed multiplication centres,” he said.

Ceesay, who only started farming last year, is one of the farmers expecting an increase in his crop yield. He estimated that he would have more than 300 50-kilogramme bags of rice from his harvest. Last year he produced 200.

“This year, we had all the farming materials and inputs in place ahead of time and used them. (Not having inputs) was our major problem that contributed to our poor season last year,” Ceesay said.

Farmer Adams Seidu has been struggling with his harvest in recent years. Courtesy: Albert Oppong-Ansah

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Ghana, Aug 15 2012 (IPS)

In order to ensure that he and his family survive this year’s failed harvest, Adams Seidu, like farmers in other rural communities in Ghana’s Northern Region, has implemented a strategy for survival. They are using what Seidu calls the “one-zero-one strategy” for children, and the “zero-zero-one strategy” for adults.

The equation represents the three meals of a day. One represents a meal, while a zero represents no meal. So Seidu’s four children are able to have breakfast in the morning, nothing at midday, and then a meal in the evening, while he and his wife eat only one meal a day, in the evening – as do many other families in this West African nation.

Food shortages are becoming a concern in the region. A survey on nutrition conducted in March by the Ghana Health Service showed that 32.2 percent of the 208,742 children under five in the Northern Region were malnourished and suffered from stunted growth.

Seidu’s family is surviving, but just barely.

This is because Seidu, who lives at Fuo, a suburb in the Northern Region’s capital, Tamale, has been struggling with his harvest in recent years.

Ghana’s Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions used to be the country’s breadbasket for production of cereals and tubers. But changing weather patterns in these regions, which constitute Ghana’s Savannah zone, have resulted in poor rainfall, small harvests and subsequent food insecurity.

“Last farming season was one of the most devastating periods and saw many farmers lose a great deal due to low rains, which caused the crop to wither before they could mature,” Seidu, who has a small maize, rice and yam farm, told IPS.

During the 2000 rainy season, the Nanumba North district in Northern Region recorded an average rainfall of 1,495 millimetres. But in 2010 over the same period the area recorded only 433 mm.

The reduced rainfall has had a dramatic effect on this region. According to the 2010 National Housing Population Census, the Northern Region is the third-most populated region in Ghana, with about 80 percent of the people engaged in farming. Now, half of the region’s farmers are struggling to survive as their crops continue to fail, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.

Of the two acres of land Seidu cultivated this year, he only harvested three 84-kilogramme bags. “Two years ago I harvested seven bags on the same land. Some of the plants did not flower, let alone bear fruit this year,” said the farmer, who has only one arm.

Statistics from the Northern Regional Office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture indicate that maize production in the region fell from 164,200 metric tonnes in 1991 to less than half that, 78,800 metric tonnes, in 2000. There are no more recent figures available.

Regional principal meteorological officer at the Ghana Meteorological Agency, Kafui Quashiga, told IPS that rainfall has reduced drastically due to climate change over the past 10 years. Statistics compiled by the agency indicate that there has been a decline below the long-term mean of 6,550 mm, which was the normal rainfall pattern at the beginning of the 2000s.

“When you compare the rainfall data from 1991 to 2010 for Wa in the Upper West, Tamale in the north, Navorongo in the Upper East and Krachie in the Volta Region, there is a sharp decline and it is likely that the trend will continue,” he said.

Poverty, illiteracy, disease and malnutrition have now become common features in these regions.

Seidu admitted that because of his low harvest he could no longer afford to pay the school fees for two of his children. “As a result of the poor yields that we have witnessed in recent years, I am able to send only two of my four children to school.”

Another farmer, 60-year-old Nindoo Salisu, told IPS that only three of his 10 children are able to go to school. “We were able to get enough from the land until the weather decided to fail us and made us poor.”

“The situation is very scary, and the earlier something is done about it the better, because it has negative repercussions on our existence as human beings,” Quashiga said.

And while there are some adaptation projects in the region, they have not proved completely successful.

Abubakar Sadique Haruna, a farmer in Ghana’s Northern Region, loans out his tractor as a ploughing service to local peasant farmers.

With the help of the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Programme (ADVANCE), Haruna provides his service to about 400 farmers.

ADVANCE, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, began to operate last year. Through it about 1,000 farmers have been supported with ploughing services, and educated in the use of improved seed, new technology and best farming practices.

Haruna explained that for every acre of land ploughed, the farmers either paid him four dollars – the equivalent of 4.5 litres of fuel – or in kind with an 84-kilogramme bag of maize at the end of the farming season.

Aside from his ploughing services, Haruna supplies farmers with improved quality seeds, agro chemicals and fertilisers. He also educates them on best farming practices to help increase their yields.

“The unfortunate thing is that some farmers, after paying for ploughing, are not able to afford these agro-chemicals (because of the bad harvests),” he told IPS.

Haruna said that 2011 was not a successful year for farmers, as about 200 of his clients could not afford to plough their fields.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s monitoring and evaluation officer, Festus Aaron Langkuu, told IPS that new methods of harvesting water were being tested in some areas.

He said that the Golinga and Bontanga dams in the country’s Northern Region, which were rehabilitated under the Millennium Development Authority Project in 2010, were supplying some farmers with water for their crops.

“Although the government is supporting some farmers with fertilisers, the bottom line is that if there are no rains, these farmers cannot grow their crops, and this will derail (progress towards) the objective of reducing poverty,” Langkuu said.

Fatoumata Yire Soro’s two-year-old daughter received treatment for malnourishment over the last two months. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
KORHOGO, Cote d’Ivoire, Aug 14 2012 (IPS)

Salimata Coulibaly, director of a medical centre in the town of Korhogo in the northern Cote d’Ivoire region of Savanes, stood before a chart displaying before-and-after photos of local children – one taken when each child arrived at the centre, and one after he or she responded to treatment for malnutrition.

In recent weeks she has had no shortage of photos to take. The number of children brought to the centre for weighing is on the rise, having ballooned from 162 in April to 674 in July.

“A crisis has begun. We’re in the lean season,” Coulibaly told IPS, referring to the period from June to August when food stocks in the part of this West African nation typically run low ahead of the next harvest.

Christina de Bruin, deputy representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Cote d’Ivoire, told IPS that her agency had noted a similar increase of malnourished children in feeding centres throughout the north.

Seasonal hunger is nothing new in northern Cote d’Ivoire, a region where families cope with high levels of poverty and poor soil. But this year new challenges have arisen that could compound the problem.

The region was hit hard by Cote d’Ivoire’s post-election crisis, a six-month civil conflict that claimed at least 3,000 lives, which erupted when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede office after losing the November 2010 election.

Hundreds of thousands of Ivoirians were displaced, with tens of thousands ending up in the northern Savanes region, where they were largely taken in by host families, according to the U.N. Although the crisis ended more than a year ago, allowing some displaced to return, the strain put on host families’ food stocks is still being felt.

The political unrest has since been replaced by the regional food crisis in the Sahel region of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad brought on by erratic rains and the resulting poor harvests and water shortages. Oxfam International says 18 million people are facing a food crisis this year in West and Central Africa, including in Burkina Faso and Mali, which border Cote d’Ivoire.

De Bruin said that the regional food shortage had, in effect, “drained a part of the local harvest” in Cote d’Ivoire by sharply increasing the cost of staple foods.

Lastly, erratic rains in Cote d’Ivoire last year made the harvest especially poor, meaning that the lean season has been tougher than usual for many families.

All of this has the potential to undo recent nutritional gains in the region. According to data cited by the U.N., global acute malnutrition had fallen from 17.5 percent in 2008 to 5.8 percent earlier this year.

However, a survey conducted in April by the U.N. World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Ministry of Agriculture estimated that some 110,000 people in the Savanes region could be at risk of food insecurity, and that “the most likely scenario in 2012 could be compared to the situation in 2008,” when the region was under rebel control and reeling from a decline in basic social services.

At the Korhogo medical centre, Coulibaly said she watched conditions gradually grow more dire. Not only are many families eating just one meal per day, she said, they are often so hard-pressed to work for that meal that they delay seeking medical care when the first signs of malnutrition appear.

“They only come to nutrition centres when it’s really becoming serious,” she said. “They tend to wait until it’s too late because they don’t want to waste time getting treatment.”

At a nutrition centre in a village outside of Korhogo called M’Benguebougou, Fatoumata Yire Soro, 22, described the pressure she faced before deciding to bring her two-year-old daughter in for treatment about two months ago.

“I was very concerned about the health of my child, who I could see was malnourished,” said Soro, who sells charcoal. “But at the same time, I have to deal with the pressure from home because I am not in the field (earning a living). In the end, the health of my child was the most important thing.”

Delaying medical treatment for children is just one adverse coping mechanism adopted by families struggling to feed themselves. Parents are also more likely to take their children out of school – something De Bruin said had been seen throughout the region in response to the Sahel food crisis.

“A lot of children have left the education system, unfortunately,” she said. “We are seeing that due to the Sahel crisis children are leaving school earlier.”

An entrenched problem

Thomas Bassett, professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-author of the 2010 book The Atlas of World Hunger, told IPS that it is important to be mindful of the structural factors contributing to hunger in Cote d’Ivoire.

More than 40 percent of children under the age of five here experience stunting, meaning they are not getting sufficient food for normal growth.

“We know that about 45 percent of the population lives on two dollars per day. So that’s almost half the population (of nearly 20 million people) which is vulnerable to falling into hunger,” said Bassett.

“If you’re living on two dollars per day, any kind of extreme event – it could be a drought, it could be political instability, it could be low prices for your cash crops – would put people over the edge.” Bassett has been conducting fieldwork in Korhogo and its surroundings for more than 30 years.

One of the main reasons for this poverty, he said, is that farmers are not receiving enough money for cash crops, namely cotton and cashews.

The prices for both are set by private umbrella organisations composed of producers and purchasers based in Abidjan. He said this problem could in part be addressed by greater mobilisation by farmers to demand the highest possible prices for their product. A secondary intervention, Bassett said, would be to increase access to agricultural inputs such as fertiliser.

Bassett added, however, that the government of Alassane Ouattara was not likely to take on the problem of hunger in the north with great energy, especially if the administration felt secure in retaining strong voter support from the region.

Following a coup attempt targeting former president Gbagbo in 2002, the north was partitioned off from the south and was administered by the rebel Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) until the 2010 election. Northerners voted overwhelmingly for Ouattara, who hails from the region.

“My view is that because there’s no famine, the government will tolerate chronic hunger,” Bassett said. “I don’t think this is an issue that the government will necessarily feel compelled to address, nor do I think the Ouattara government will necessarily lose any support in the area because of this issue.”

De Bruin said that the government was working with NGOs to provide some assistance, notably in helping to educate communities about the dangers of malnourishment for children, which are not fully appreciated.

“People are not aware of the risk of having severely malnourished children,” she said. “If you have a severely malnourished child who gets diarrhoea, their chances for survival become very, very low.”

But she said that people in the region were expecting significant gains under Ouattara, especially following the decade-long crisis, during which basic social services such as education and health care were dismantled.

“Definitely people are expecting improvement from Ouattara,” she said. “Ensuring children grow up healthy and that they have education – I think only that can break the cycle of poverty and the cycle of violence.”

Nearly 270,000 refugees have had to flee their homes since January, when conflict erupted in northern Mali. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Souleymane Faye
DAKAR, Aug 14 2012 (IPS)

Military action by West African states against the insurrection in northern Mali would be extremely risky without diplomatic support from neighbouring Algeria and Mauritania, according to International Crisis Group researcher Gilles Yabi.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said it is ready to deploy troops to help Mali’s interim government fight rebels who seized the northern part of the country in March. However, Yabi says it is essential that Mali’s non-ECOWAS neighbours, who have a degree of influence over the armed groups in Mali, offer diplomatic support.

Yabi, West Africa Project Director for the Brussels-based Crisis Group, also told IPS that reintegrating northern Mali with the rest of the country could not be accomplished in the short term. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: In a recent report, ICG said that an armed intervention by ECOWAS carries risks, including that of widening the crisis into other countries. What is the nature of this risk?

A: Our report warned that an external military intervention would have to be carried out jointly with the Malian army, which is presently not fully under control. An intervention risks seeing the conflict spill over into neighbouring countries, which all have links with armed groups or communities originally from northern Mali. The risk of triggering conflict between ethnic communities will be high, and this would have repercussions in neighbouring countries.

There are also major risks in abandoning large areas to Islamist groups linked to terrorism. These include an increase in brutal practices such as stoning as well as seeing fresh recruitment into the ranks of the jihadist armed groups.

But this doesn’t justify a rush to armed intervention by ECOWAS countries, which are themselves fragile in political and military terms.

Q: Do you think that the ECOWAS initiatives could lead to Mali’s government recovering control of the north of the country from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the Islamist group Ansar Dine? Will Mali get U.N. approval for a military intervention?

A: The north has largely passed into the control of the Islamist movements, particularly Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which are both linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The MNLA is no longer a significant military force on the ground.

I believe we must accept that the reintegration of the north into the Malian state will not happen in the short term.

Despite its willingness to act, ECOWAS does not have the means to help the Malian government – which is itself being restructured – to recover the territory captured by the Islamist forces. The political conditions in Bamako and the disarray of the Malian armed forces sharply limit the options. A military intervention in these conditions would be dangerous.

Once a new government is formed, the transitional institutions announced by interim president Dioncounda Traoré are put in place, and the real work of coordinating political, diplomatic and military actions between the Malian government, ECOWAS, and non-ECOWAS neighbours Algeria and Mauritania is accomplished… then we can expect a review of the issue of seeking authorisation from the U.N. Security Council for an external military deployment…

Mali can only have a clear position on this question when the battle for control of the transition in Bamako is finished.

Q: Do you think that a massive infiltration of Mali’s neighbours by elements of Ansar Dine and AQMI could take place?

A: That depends on what you mean by “massive”. That elements linked to Ansar Dine, MUJWA or AQMI could cross into Mali’s neighbours – or even that they already have – would not be surprising.

For Algeria and Mauritania, we can’t talk about infiltration. AQMI is originally a product of Algeria’s history and its principal leaders are still Algerians. And Mauritania has suffered several terrorist attacks in the last few years which were carried out by Islamists, directly linked to AQMI or not.

We can only talk about the risk of infiltration with regard to Mali’s neighbours in the south. There too, we can’t exclude the possibility, as it is easy to cross the borders in these areas. But the fear of an invasion of these southern neighbours by jihadists doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Still, a handful of motivated and trained operatives could be enough to destabilise a country with terror attacks. So we can’t underestimate the threat.

Q: What’s your overall assessment of diplomatic and political initiatives by ECOWAS to resolve the political crises in Mali and Guinea-Bissau?

A: You can’t accuse ECOWAS of being unresponsive or lacking initiative in either Mali or Guinea-Bissau. The organisation has held several summits of heads of state and adopted strong resolutions on paper.

In the case of Mali, it even called for strong economic, financial and diplomatic sanctions to force a return to formal constitutional order following the coup (in March). But the framework agreement that Burkinabè mediators signed with the junta on ECOWAS’s behalf also sent mixed, even contradictory, signals to the country’s military and political actors.

Here once again, ECOWAS has shown its limitations when it comes to moving from affirming its principles to making decisions. ECOWAS is partly responsible for the weaknesses of the framework agreement and the conditions of implementation for the transitional government that it is today trying to reconstitute.

With respect to Guinea-Bissau, ECOWAS was very firm and did not hesitate once it chose a course of action, even if this left it open to criticism. The organisation condemned the April coup and worked with the military junta to set up a transitional government that was not truly legitimate, but was judged acceptable by a wide spectrum of political and military actors united against the former prime minister and favoured candidate in the presidential election, Carlos Gomes Junior.

ECOWAS sent a military mission to Guinea-Bissau which we have heard very little about. The problem is that no one really knows just what this force’s mandate is and how military and diplomatic action by ECOWAS would help the country to finally address the crucial reforms which now seem indefinitely postponed, beginning with reform of the armed forces.

This will be an important test of the capacity of the organisation to show coherence between its positions and its actions over time.

Q: Would the contribution of non-ECOWAS members such as Algeria or Mauritania be effective in resolving the Mali crisis? Is the “wait-and-see” approach of Algeria realistic and positive when the Islamist groups actually originated there?

A: All the so-called “pays du champ” (Niger, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali) are affected by the Mali crisis. They can’t be indifferent. If ECOWAS takes the military route without significant diplomatic backing from Mali’s neighbours – who can potentially influence the armed groups – then the organisation will be taking a big risk.

Diplomatic efforts in the past few weeks, especially towards Algeria, show that no one actively engaged with the Mali crisis is ignoring the importance of ECOWAS’s neighbours. That includes France, whose foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, toured several capitals in the region recently.

Algeria knows what is expected of it in this crisis, given its status as the region’s military power, as intermediary or mediator in many previous crises in northern Mali, and as the original home of AQIM.

The country’s attitude is no longer necessarily to wait and see: Algeria has expressed its preference for a political situation in northern Mali. ECOWAS and Mali’s transitional authorities must ask Algiers to say more about what it can contribute to a negotiation process with the armed groups, particularly Ansar Dine, whose leader Iyad Ag Ghali is well known in Algeria.

Excerpt:

A record number of women were sworn in as legislators as Senegal’s new parliament was inaugurated on Monday. Sixty-four women now have seats in this West African country’s 150-member National Assembly, thanks to a law on gender parity.

But the breakthrough made by women candidates has relaunched a debate on the quality of their work in the legislature.

Elections to the National Assembly, the lower of two houses of parliament, took place on Jul 1, and were comfortably won by the Benno Bokk Yaakaar coalition (BBY), whose candidate – Macky Sall – won the presidential election in March.

But the poll also served as a test of a Parity Law passed in 2010 which required all 24 parties and coalitions to put forward equal numbers of men and women on their candidate lists.

Shortly before the legislative elections, the government and women’s organisations conducted a major awareness campaign about the law.

“Our objective was to see women take 40 to 45 percent of the seats,” said Fatou Kiné Diop, president of the National Parity Observatory (ONP), which was set up under the presidency in 2011.

The campaign would seem to have been a success, with the proportion of female legislators jumping from 22 percent in the previous parliament to 43 percent for the incoming session.

“The Parity Law has been decisive. It has been a big boost for women,” Diop told IPS.

“The critical mass of women elected – thanks to the Parity Law – should allow us to make some important changes in the National Assembly,” new MP Elène Tine told IPS.

But the breakthrough has already attracted criticism.

The lower house of parliament is often considered to be a rubber stamp for the president’s decisions. Sall’s BBY coalition took 119 of the 150 seats, but the new MPs – men and women alike – campaigned with a view to breaking with the past and restoring an independent role for the National Assembly in passing legislation and serving as a check on the executive.

Questions have been raised over the role that women will play in a newly assertive legislature.

“The quality of debate in the National Assembly is seen as relatively low, particularly since the passing of the Parity Law,” said Diop. “And the people who feel that way place the blame for this on women.”

But Georges Nesta Diop, political editor for the privately owned daily newspaper Walfadjri, disagreed. “The quality of women’s contribution to parliamentary debate can only be as good as the quality of the new legislature itself,” he said.

“Most of the newly-elected women have demonstrated a high intellectual level – even if that’s not necessarily the case for those from the BBY majority. They are nearly all of leadership calibre and have established profiles,” the journalist told IPS.

“A woman like Sokhna Dieng Mbacké (a journalist and former senator) will be on familiar ground in parliament. Mama Mbayame Guèye is a doctor. Fatou Thiam is a health worker. Elène Tine, trained as an archivist, was the long-time spokesperson for the Alliance of Progressive Forces (an opposition party),” said Nesta Diop.

“This group won’t want to just make up the numbers in the National Assembly. These women will want to take up the challenge of the quality of parliamentary debate at all costs,” he added.

Sociologist Fanta Diallo, a member of the Dakar City Council, also hoped for a strong performance by women members over the five-year term of the legislature. “Contrary to what many people think, for the most part the women who have been elected are strong candidates,” she told IPS.

The breakthrough in the legislature has sparked ambitions in Senegal, where women make up 52 percent of the population. The Parity Law needs to be applied to state-owned enterprises and several important economic sectors, such as agriculture and fisheries, said Diop, “to ensure that resources are allocated equitably between men and women.”

Unfortunately the law applies only to elected positions, said Khady Fall Tall, president of the West African Women’s Association.

Walfadjri’s Nesta Diop thinks that coming out of these legislative elections, women will be emboldened to press for equal access to decision-making. “Women have won a victory and will no longer back down or make concessions over their representation in institutions, whether they are elected or not.”

But he warned that parity will not be achieved based on simple mathematical calculations. “It’s not easy to find politically engaged women, yet this type of engagement is needed to challenge for elected positions,” he said. “But I believe that women are ready to lead this political fight.”

The presence of 64 women in the National Assembly will encourage women to enter politics, said Fall. But, she added, “It would be terrible if they enter politics only to keep their seats warm.”

For her part, Tine said: “The social roles assigned to Senegalese women should have a positive impact on the National Assembly in terms of our mandate; if not, this will be a failure.”

The death of President John Atta Mills will have a sobering effect on national politics in the months leading up to Ghana’s December 2012 election, according to the Executive Secretary of the West Africa Network for Peace, Emmanuel Bombandey.

He said the event will likely quell the inter-party aggression characteristic of Ghanaian politics, and will not lead to instability or violence.

That, according to some experts, is a success story in itself.

“In the last couple of years, transitions have been a problem in many African countries, and they still are,” the executive director of Ghana’s Institute for Democratic Governance, Emmanual Akwetey, told IPS.

He noted examples from Rwanda, Malawi, and Nigeria, where the deaths of political leaders have lead to violence.

“For a country that has a past in military interventions and political instability … there is nothing like a power vacuum, especially at the very top,” he said.

“Somebody might act – out of nervousness or opportunism.”

Flags fly at half-mast in Kumasi. President John Dramani Mahama has declared one week of mourning to commemorate the death of President John Atta Mills. Credit: Portia Crowe/IPS

In Ghana, however, Vice President John Dramani Mahama was sworn in as president within several hours of Mills’ passing on Jul. 24.  While some questions have been raised as to who will become the flag bearer of the ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and how the selection will be made, Professor Kwame Ninsin, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, said this would not create a power vacuum.

“I don’t think it’s insurmountable… This is a situation which I’m sure the leadership of the party is capable of handling effectively,” he said.

He added that the party’s success rests on more than the face of its leadership.

“Elections are made or unmade also by the organisational capacity of the party concerned, and I would like to believe that the NDC is adequately prepared to support its presidential candidate to win an election.”

Stability Rooted in Successful Institutions

For the most part, said WANEP’s Bombandey, Ghana’s transition has been considered a success story, attributable mainly to the strength of its institutions.

“I do not expect any form of instability and this should attest to the governance of the country and constitution – that it is working and working very well,” he told IPS

“We are going to go on to peaceful presidential elections,” he added.

According to Ninsin, even the military has been “professionalised” in the years since Ghana’s 1981 uprising, and poses no threat to the nation’s stability.

“If there were to be any security threat, that would have come up in the early hours of the announcement of the death of the president. But, the transition process occurred smoothly.”

Akwetey also attributed the relatively smooth political transition to the stability of the country’s emerging democratic institutions.

“We have matured out of our struggles – the military, the authoritarian governments, the political fights,” he said.

“Solemn and sad as the occasion was, it was also gratifying to know that we… know how to go forward and get on with life.”

He added: “We were able to demonstrate to the world that we take our constitution seriously.”

According to Akwetey, the importance of procedure and order is deeply rooted in Ghanaian culture.

“Even in traditional systems, we are a people who procedure is deeply engrained in. It’s like a genetic code,” he told IPS.

Kofi Owusu, an award-winning journalist and head of Kumasi’s Ultimate Radio station, said that such traditional institutions, as well as more recent democratic ones, could contribute to a peaceful transition period.

“By custom, Ghanaians respect the dead. They want to pay homage to the dead person and that’s why Akufo Addo, the opposition (New Patriotic Party) leader, suspended his campaign to mourn along with Ghanaians,” he told IPS.

He said this has created a “lull” in the usual squabbling, and added, “Ghanaians being who they are, they’re going to observe that out of respect.”

He was unsure how long the lull would last.

A Hiatus from Hostilities

Owusu described the state of political discourse in Ghana prior to Mill’s demise.

“The debate was just vicious,” he said. “The stakes were so high, people seemed to hang their entire livelihood on who emerged as president.”

But Bombandey said that the president’s passing will serve as a reminder to Ghanaians of their common identity, and deter political parties from resuming their hostile discourse after the period of mourning.

“As the elections get closer, we will fall back into intense political activity, once the president is laid to rest. But my assessment is that people will be reminded that we need not go back to the high level of political rhetoric that we were experiencing previously,” he told IPS.

Owusu also predicted a shift in the nature of political discourse in the months following Mills’ death.

“Now the man who was at the receiving end of the political criticism is gone,” he said.

“Suddenly you can’t attack him anymore, so what do you do? It’s believed that it will tone down the hot exchanges; the acerbic tone will be considerably reduced towards elections,” he added.

He also noted that some leaders have begun to view the tragedy as an occasion to strengthen national unity.

“Some are even calling it an opportunity to unite the country ahead of elections,” he said.

Bombandey said members of parliament have already demonstrated a considerable sense of unity. Each party has expressed solidarity with the government and with the grieving family, and, he predicted, this unity could persist in the days leading up to the national election.

“I think there will be a new sense of decency in the political discourse and more concretely, this will be good in the sense that we might see more issues being talked about, and less political insults and bickering,” he told IPS.

He said he would welcome such a change of focus.

Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, 40, stands outside Abidjan's main prison, where he was held for six months earlier this year. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

Eliane Negui knew just what to do when she got word that a group of inmates had escaped from Abidjan’s main prison, MACA, earlier this month. After all, the 24-year-old, who has lived across a dirt road from the facility for nine years, had witnessed the same scenario just two months before. 

“Whenever there is an escape we are always running into our rooms and closing the doors,” she said in a recent interview with IPS from her stand outside the prison’s main entrance where she sells fried bananas. “Whenever there is an escape the guards are shooting, so we enter our rooms so as not to be hurt or killed.

Twelve inmates escaped from the prison that day, eight of whom were soon caught. The total paled in comparison to the earlier escape, on May 4, when about 50 inmates broke free from the facility, prompting a statement of concern from Côte d’Ivoire’s United Nations mission.

This West African nation is still rebuilding after six months of post-election violence sparked by the November 2010 election, when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing to current President Alassane Ouattara. During the violence, the country’s 33 prisons were emptied, and infrastructure and equipment was largely destroyed.

Prisons began re-opening in August 2011, and 31 are now operational. But the recovery has been marred by a rash of prison breaks. Since August, there have been 17 separate escapes involving about 250 prisoners, according to Francoise Simard, chief of the U.N.’s rule of law section.

The problems dogging the country’s prisons mirror larger problems with the security sector — especially when it comes to personnel. Complaints about prison conditions also highlight room for improvement in the country’s post-conflict recovery.

Prior to the violence, which claimed some 3,000 lives, prison guards alone provided security at the country’s penitentiaries. These guards were armed, but there was a shortage of weapons and not all were functional, Simard told IPS.

When prisons began reopening in August, the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FRCI), the national army, was the only security force allowed to have weapons. Soldiers began to work alongside prison guards.

More than one year after the conflict ended, prison guards are still unarmed. “The current government is very reluctant to give weapons to prison guards,” Simard said.

This reluctance underscores the lack of trust among the different security forces. Because the number of prison guards nationwide nearly doubled during Gbagbo’s 10-year tenure, there is a perception — whether accurate or not — that most guards are loyal to the old regime.

“There is a suspicious atmosphere in the prison,” said Stephane Boko, a supervisor at MACA Prision in Abidjan, told IPS. “The power no longer rests with the prison guards because they are considered to be pro-Gbagbo.”

A similar division has been evident in the broader security sector. The FRCI is largely composed of forces loyal to Ouattara, including leaders of the Forces Nouvelles rebel group, which controlled northern Côte d’Ivoire when the country was partitioned from 2002 to 2010. The government has long been wary of police and gendarmes, and in some parts of the country — notably the volatile western region — the FRCI remains the only security force with access to weapons, meaning it has taken the lead on general policing.

Recently, though, police and gendarmes have been re-armed in some places, and they now have a permanent presence in the prisons. Under a policy established after the May escape, five police officers and five gendarmes are supposed to be posted in each facility, Simard told IPS.

The presence of multiple security forces in each facility can sometimes lead to a lack of coordination. Earlier this year, for instance, some 93 prisoners were able to escape from a facility in Agboville, a town located roughly 80 kilometres north of Abidjan. In the three days leading up to the escape, Simard said, no security forces showed up to guard the prison.

Boko and other staff at MACA said they believe responsibility for protecting Côte d’Ivoire’s prisons should be returned to the guards. But Serges Kouame, head of communications for the Justice Ministry, said after the prison break earlier this month that a central command center was being established to respond to prison escapes, and that it would involve the FRCI, guards, gendarmes and the police.

Conditions

Meanwhile, concerns persist about conditions facing Côte d’Ivoire’s inmates. The national prison system was dramatically overcrowded prior to the post-election violence, with more than 12,000 prisoners crammed into facilities that have a total capacity of about 5,500, according to the U.N.

The current prison population is much lower – 5,945 as of Jul. 20 — but it recently surpassed the total capacity and is rising by the week. Though Simard noted that “the situation is not as dramatic as it was before with overcrowding,” she said that certain aspects of detention conditions — among them access to food — remain problematic.

The U.S. State Department addressed poor prison conditions in its most recent Human Rights Report for Côte d’Ivoire. Though the report took note of some improvements under Ouattara, it said food provision remained “inadequate.”

This was the main complaint of Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, a 40-year-old who was held in MACA for six months since January after he sold a plot of land to two different people.

“The conditions were OK, but the quality of the food was very poor,” he told IPS. “There was nothing in the soup – no meat and no fish.”

Diffi also complained about the prison’s policy of feeding inmates just once a day at around 2pm, something Simard said that the U.N. was pushing the government to remedy.

Diffi said the general atmosphere inside the prison was tolerable. “We were living normally,” he said. “We could play football. Some of us were working as tailors. Most of us were spending a lot of our time praying.”

But he singled out one problem that highlights just how far Côte d’Ivoire has yet to go in getting its institutions back on track: prolonged pretrial detention, something the Ouattara government has previously blamed on “a lack of judicial capacity,” according to the U.S. State Department.

More than anything, Diffi said, this issue, and the impression it left of a system that was broken, was fueling desperation within MACA’s walls.

“Most of the people in there have not been prosecuted,” he told IPS. “Some are charged, but many are not. They want to go out. They want to be released. And so they are asking for judgment.”

Salou Bandé is proud to stand at the front of the only classroom in the village of Bénnogo, 90 kilometres north of the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, sharing his knowledge with his students. He is part of an initiative to improve education for nomadic children in the West African country.

Bandé’s slender build marks him out as a member of the nomadic Peul people, and he was one of the first teachers at the “School of the Shepherds”. This innovative educational institution takes in between 20 and 25 students each year, specifically targeting 12-year-olds who have never attended formal school.

“We start with a unit in Fulfulde (the local language) on malaria, then we continue with classes in history, geography, French language, and earth and life sciences – which covers livestock rearing, health, the environment and hygiene,” Bandé told IPS.

Bandé said he has 18 students in his class, including 11 girls. “They study as far as the Cours élémentaire 2ième année (the third year of primary school), then an exam administered by the Provincial Department of Basic Education allows the students to join formal school system. Our first cohort is now in its fifth year of high school.”

There are 300 students attending the unusual school in this region of the country.

According to Boubacar Barry, head of the education programme at the Association for the Promotion of Livestock Herding in the Sahel and the Savannah (APESS), putting children in formal school has a severe impact on a pastoral family’s livelihood.

Working alongside the Ministry of Education and Literacy in the north of the country where pastoralists make up 17 percent of the population, Andal et Pindal – a local association that has been instrumental in setting up the school for shepherds – conducted a study in 2003 which found that less than one percent of livestock herders’ children were enrolled in school.

The special school conducted its first classes that same year, welcoming students between nine and 15 years old in six counties of the northern province Sanmantenga. Of the 197 students in that first intake, 144 completed the four-year cycle and sat for a final exam.

This year, according to Mamadou Boly, a retired primary school inspector and president of “Andal et Pindal” (whose name means “knowledge and enlightenment” in Fulfulde), the shepherds’ school achieved an 85 percent success rate, and nearly two-thirds of students went directly into CM2, the final year of primary school. Several have gone on to secondary school and vocational training centres.

“We thought we were just training children from the cattle pens, but these children have left their settlements and are conquering the world,” said Boly.

Burkina Faso is attempting improve education for the nomadic Peul children by forming a “School of the Shepherds”. Credit: Julius Cruickshank/CC BY 2.0

He told IPS the school was born out of concern by individuals in pastoralist communities: “People who had been to school, and who realised that their community was not progressing.”

Moussa Diallo, president of the parent’s group at the school, registered both his son and daughter at Bénnogo. “We’ve realised that there is no longer enough space for livestock and agriculture. So to succeed in these sectors, knowledge is needed,” he said. “We can see the difference with those who have not gone to school.”

Boly agreed. “The kids say they don’t want to go to formal school, but it’s essential. So we have framed the standard curriculum with an accent on pastoralism, on earth and life sciences, health and hygiene,” he told IPS.

“It’s the management of time and space that’s different. It’s always the community itself that decides at what time each school opens and closes. When the students get out early, they can go water the animals and help their parents.”

In addition, the school is not in session at all from May to December, leaving students free to take part in the annual migration with the herds in search of pasture.

With the school in Bénnogo well established, further classrooms have been opened in six other villages in the region. With support from the Education Ministry and foreign partners, 15 more schools are expected to open in the 2012-2013 school year in the eastern and south-central regions (where rates of literacy and school attendance are lowest).

“The relevance of Andal et Pindal’s work lies in its focus on a very specific group which must be educated in its real context if we want to provide an adequate education which responds to the specific needs of its intended beneficiaries,” explained Rémy Abou, director general for basic education and non-formal education at the ministry for education. His department has helped the association design programmes and provided it with learning materials.

“We appreciate what this association is doing, because the government can’t do everything – especially when it comes to non-formal education where there is such a wide range of different needs,” said Abou.

“What the shepherd school has achieved is a precious safeguarding of the pursuit of education amongst people for whom education was not a priority,” said Barry from APESS.

Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO, Jul 23 2012 (IPS)

Millet has become the basic ingredient for an enriched flour at the heart of an effort to establish a local, sustainable response to malnutrition in Mali.

In the city of Kati, some 15 kilometres from the capital, Bamako, a dozen women are busy processing locally-grown grain into “Misola”.

The Misola initiative, created by a French association of the same name, is a public health project which aims to reduce infant malnutrition.

“We buy millet, the basic ingredient for the enriched flour we produce, from grain merchants here in the city,” said Ramata Traoré, who manages the Kati production facility.

The flour is made up of 60 percent millet, 20 percent soya, and 10 percent groundnuts. Vitamins and mineral salts are added to this to produce a balanced food which responds to known nutritional deficiencies.

Demand for the flour is growing in Mali, following a poor harvest from the last growing season. Malnutrition is a serious problem in this semi-arid West African country, where food security has been badly affected by drought in recent years – a situation that has only been aggravated by a rebellion in the north.

In December, the Ministry of Agriculture said the country harvested just over five million tonnes of grain, against forecasts of eight million.

“The ongoing food crisis increases the risk of malnutrition in several regions of Mali, including in Kayes (southwest), Koulikoro and Ségou (south),” said Aminata Sissoko, a nutrition specialist with the Malian Red Cross.

She added that the seizure of the three northern regions of Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao by Islamist groups and rebels from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has only aggravated the situation.

“At this point, we have not been able to go into the areas controlled by the armed groups to evaluate needs. But we are assisting people displaced by the war with Misola flour,” Sissoko told IPS.

One in five Malian children suffers from malnutrition, according to Abdoulaye Sangho, coordinator of the Mali chapter of Misola.

“We are an NGO which supports women producers of Misola flour,” Sangho told IPS. “Our objective is to improve the nutrition levels of the whole population, with a particular focus on children between the ages of six and 60 months, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.”

Mali’s first Misola production site was set up in 1993 at Diafarabé, in the central region of the country. The initiative expanded quickly, and today there are 19 small factories spread through all regions of the country except for Kidal, in the north.

The project extends far beyond the country’s borders. Production of the enriched flour actually began in Burkina Faso in 1982, and the nutrition supplement is now also made in Senegal, Niger and Benin.

A common charter links all the groups producing Misola. “The women working in each of the projects also promote best nutrition practices in their neighbourhoods. They organise demonstration sessions in health centres or in other public places,” said Sangho.

“When he was seven months old, my child was very sick, very thin. But I didn’t know the problem was malnutrition. It was only during a demonstration session for Misola at the market that I realised that,” said Assetou Traoré, a spice vendor.

By training women to make this flour – which is eaten as a porridge – as well as to promote its use in their communities, the Misola association is building both broader awareness of sound nutrition and the know-how needed to achieve this, based in the production facilities.

In the courtyard in Kati, Traoré and her colleagues have spread millet that they’ve carefully washed several times out to dry on a tarpaulin in the sun. “Since what we produce is meant for children’s food, we pay careful attention to hygiene,” said Traoré, explaining why no one is allowed to enter the grain store with their shoes on.

Chata Mariko, a nurse at a Bamako health centre told IPS that the recommended remedies for malnutrition are easily available. “A sachet of some of these foods costs no more than 500 CFA francs (around a dollar). But unfortunately, there are parents who don’t bring their children to health centres in time,” she said.