Month: February 2023

“God has listened to our prayers and for the first time in 10 years we are seeing public health professionals supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) providing life-saving health services to our elderly, women and especially children suffering from multiple health problems,” said one of the village elders Hassan Sheikh Yusuf hailing from Warooky village of Jamame district in Jubaland state.

Jamame is an agrarian district situated 60 kilometres northeast of Kismayo. Locations west of Juba river in Jamame district are part of the newly liberated areas in Somalia where the population has not seen any regular medical help in years. The authorities recently reclaimed part of this district from non-state actors and requested the international organizations to extend humanitarian services to the population on an urgent basis. Working under an Integrated Response Framework (IRF), endorsed by the humanitarian country team in October 2022, WHO, UNICEF and the World Food Programme immediately started joint health, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and nutrition support in parts of Jamame district, primarily focusing on Baarka, Warkooy and Sanguuni towns and its nearby villages.

Residents of Jamame district confirmed that the medical teams supported by WHO are the first one to arrive in their district in more than a decade. “Provision of health services in these God-forsaken areas is critical and as soon as we could manage to get access to the area, we sat down with the elders, established our mobile camps and started providing life-saving consultative and referral health services to the locals. We believe that every single life saved is like saving the whole of humanity and we literally did that in the shortest span of a few months,” said Abdullahi Hussein, WHO Public Health Officer for Jubaland.

Soon after deployment of WHO-supported teams revealed that the district had no immunization coverage, no tuberculosis (TB) or maternal, newborn, child and adolescent programme and communities were living without any public health services. Drought seems to further complicate the situation for the locals as an estimated 70% of inhabitants of Jamame district are affected by drought following 4 consecutive seasons of below average rainfall.

WHO, in collaboration with the State Ministry of Health, deployed 3 mobile medical teams consisting of 5 medical professionals each in Warkooy, Baarka and Sanguuni villages. Initially the teams were deployed for 4 days a week for 6 weeks but owing to the severity of the situation and demand from the locals, WHO had to extend the mission for another 6 weeks and is likely to continue this because more nearby villages have started reaching out to Jamame for consultations and various available health services.

“The main goal was to assess and ensure the provision of medical services to the affected communities in these previously inaccessible areas. Circumstances were not ideal and residents, including women and children, were suffering from multiple diseases, including diarrhoea and measles, intestinal worms, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Our teams had to set up a temporary camp inside the district to immediately start outpatient consultations, vaccination of children and provision of various supplements to children and women. We also had to send our teams to run a door-to-door campaign to raise awareness on preventive measures against epidemic-prone diseases and for adopting a healthy lifestyle besides establishing their linkage with nearby health facilities,” said Munira Aden Saleh, one of the first medical professionals providing life-saving treatment to locals.

Since the deployment of the WHO-supported teams in the first week of October, medical teams have provided medical consultation to 3861 residents of Jamame, including 1955 children under 5. More than 8917 children were screened for malnutrition, of whom 1865 were diagnosed as severely malnourished and 826 were referred to an outpatient therapeutic feeding programme and stabilization centrers in Kismayo General Hospital. Another 2592 cases with diarrhoea were treated with oral rehydration salts, 4281 received supplements like vitamin A and deworming tablets while 5706 children were vaccinated against various childhood diseases, including polio.

Initial consultations with locals also resulted in referring patients with suspected pneumonia, severe cold, worms and infection, skin infection and scabies to Kismayo general hospital for further case management, including oxygen therapy. “We are trying to connect these recently accessible populations to nearby established health facilities to not only provide them much needed medical treatments but also to help restore their confidence in public health facilities and make them part of various health interventions initiated from these health facilities,” said the Director of Kismayo General Hospital Arab Ibrahim Yasin.

Source: World Health Organization

While others in her Zimbabwean village agonize over a maize crop seemingly headed for failure, Jestina Nyamukunguvengu picks up a hoe and slices through the soil of her fields that are lush green with a pearl millet crop in the African country’s arid Rushinga district.

“These crops don’t get affected by drought, they are quick to flower, and that’s the only way we can beat the drought,” the 59-year old said, smiling broadly. Millets, including sorghum, now take up over two hectares of her land — a patch where maize was once the crop of choice.

Farmers like Nyamukunguvengu in the developing world are on the front lines of a project proposed by India that has led the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization to christen 2023 as “The Year of Millets,” an effort to revive a hardy and healthy crop that has been cultivated for millennia — but was largely elbowed aside by European colonists who favored corn, wheat and other grains.

The designation is timely: Last year, drought swept across much of eastern Africa; war between Russia and Ukraine upended supplies and raised the prices of foodstuffs and fertilizer from Europe’s breadbasket; worries surged about environmental fallout of cross-globe shipments of farm products; many chefs and consumers are looking to diversify diets at a time of excessively standardized fare.

All that has given a new impetus to locally-grown and alternative grains and other staples like millets.

Millets come in multiple varieties, such as finger millet, fonio, sorghum, and teff, which is used in the spongy injera bread familiar to fans of Ethiopian cuisine. Proponents tout millets for their healthiness — they can be rich in proteins, potassium, and vitamin B — and most varieties are gluten-free. And they’re versatile: useful in everything from bread, cereal and couscous to pudding and even beer.

Over centuries, millets have been cultivated around the world — in places like Japan, Europe, the Americas and Australia — but their epicenters have traditionally been India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa, said Fen Beed, team leader at FAO for rural and urban crop and mechanization systems.

Many countries realized they “should go back and look at what’s indigenous to their agricultural heritage and what could be revisited as a potential substitute for what would otherwise be imported — which is at risk when we had the likes of pandemic, or when we have the likes of conflict,” said Beed.

Millets are more tolerant of poor soils, drought and harsh growing conditions, and can easily adapt to different environments without high levels of fertilizer and pesticide. They don’t need nearly as much water as other grains, making them ideal for places like Africa’s arid Sahel region, and their deep roots of varieties like fonio can help mitigate desertification, the process that transforms fertile soil into desert, often because of drought or deforestation.

“Fonio is nicknamed the Lazy Farmers crop. That’s how easy it is to grow,” says Pierre Thiam, executive chef and co-founder of New York-based fine-casual food chain Teranga, which features West African cuisine. “When the first rain comes, the farmers only have to go out and just like throw the seeds of fonio … They barely till the soil.”

“And it’s a fast growing crop, too: It can mature in two months,” he said, acknowledging it’s not all easy: “Processing fonio is very difficult. You have to remove the skin before it becomes edible.”

Millets account for less than 3% of the global grain trade, according to FAO. But cultivation is growing in some arid zones. In Rushinga district, land under millets almost tripled over the past decade. The U.N.’s World Food Programme deployed dozens of threshing machines and gave seed packs and training to 63,000 small-scale farmers in drought-prone areas in the previous season.

Low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years in part due to climate change, coupled with poor soils, have doused interest in water-guzzling maize.

“You’ll find the ones who grew maize are the ones who are seeking food assistance, those who have grown sorghum or pearl millet are still eating their small grains,” said Melody Tsoriyo, the district’s agronomist, alluding to small grains like millets, whose seeds can be as fine as sand. “We anticipate that in five years to come, small grains will overtake maize.”

Government teams in Zimbabwe have fanned out to remote rural regions, inspecting crops and providing expert assistance such as through WhatsApp groups to spread technical knowledge to farmers.

WFP spokesman Tatenda Macheka said millets “are helping us reduce food insecurity” in Zimbabwe, where about a quarter of people in the country of 15 million — long a breadbasket of southern Africa — are now food insecure, meaning that they’re not sure where their next meal will come from.

In urban areas of Zimbabwe and well beyond, restaurants and hotels are riding the newfound impression that a millet meal offers a tinge of class, and have made it pricier fare on their menus.

Thiam, the U.S.-based chef, recalled eating fonio as a kid in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, but fretted that it wasn’t often available in his hometown — the capital — let alone New York. He admitted once “naively” having dreams making what’s known in rural Senegal as “the grain of royalty” — served to honor visiting guests — into a “world class crop.”

He’s pared back those ambitions a bit, but still sees a future for the small grains.

“It’s really amazing that you can have a grain like this that’s been ignored for so long,” Thiam said in an interview from his home in El Cerrito, Calif., where he moved to be close to his wife and her family. “It’s about time that we integrate it into our diet.”

Source: Voice of America

Points forts

Violence linked to militant Islamist groups in Africa has risen sharply by 22% over the last twelve months, with 6,859 events. This represents a new record of extremist violence and a doubling of such occurrences since 2019.

Militant Islamist violence in Africa continues to focus on five theaters, namely the Sahel, Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, Mozambique and North Africa. Each of these theaters is defined by local actors and challenges specific to its context.

Violence by militant Islamists in the Sahel and Somalia accounts for 77% of violent events recorded in Africa in 2022.

Worryingly, deaths attributed to militant Islamist groups have increased by 48% this year.

The estimated 19,109 deaths attributable to militant Islamists surpass the last peak of 18,850 deaths reached in 2015 when Boko Haram was at its peak. It also represents a sharp turnaround from 2021 when a slight decrease in deaths, reaching 12,920, was recorded.

The escalation in deaths is entirely the result of increased violence in the Sahel and Somalia, where 74% of deaths have occurred. Indeed, deaths attributable to extremists have either plateaued or declined in the Lake Chad Basin, Mozambique and North Africa.

This spike in deaths linked to Islamist militants was characterized by a 68% increase in civilian deaths and violence from afar (the latter often targeting civilians). This highlights the heavy price paid by non-combatants.

Source: Africa Center for Strategic Studies

The Indian government’s plan to introduce African cheetahs into the wild in India after relocating them from the African continent has been criticized by many conservationists who call the idea “ecologically and scientifically flawed.”

Last month, South Africa signed an agreement to send dozens of African cheetahs to India over the next decade. The first batch of 12 cheetahs, seven males and five females, is expected this month, according to the agreement.

They will be released into India’s Kuno National Park (KNP) in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where eight African cheetahs are living.

“Following the import of the 12 cheetahs in February, the plan is to translocate a further 12 annually for the next eight to 10 years,” said a statement issued by the Indian government the last week of January.

The first batch of eight African cheetahs was airlifted from Namibia and released in the park in September 2022, marking the beginning of the Indian government’s ambitious Cheetah Introduction Project (CIP) to reintroduce the big cats to India.

Asiatic cheetahs in India became extinct over seven decades ago.

When the first group of African cheetahs arrived, S.P. Yadav, head of Project Tiger, said that the extinction of the cheetah in the country was a massive loss of biodiversity.

“It is our moral and ethical responsibility to bring back the cheetah to India,” he said.

‘Ecologically unsound project’

However, conservationists are divided over the Indian government’s current plan to introduce African cheetahs in India.

In an opinion piece published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in October, a group of wildlife scientists from India, South Africa and other countries said that India’s current Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India (APICI) — a plan prepared by CIP experts — was “ecologically unsound, costly and may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah and other science-based conservation efforts.”

The CIP of the Indian government estimates that a maximum of 21 cheetahs can reside in the 748-square-kilometer KNP.

Wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, one of the authors of the opinion piece, told VOA that the KNP is too small to host a viable population of the big cats.

“Average cheetah density in the best of the habitats in Africa is 1 per 100 square kilometers. Based on an extrapolation using the density data from Africa, science informs us that seven to eight cheetahs, to a maximum of 10 cheetahs can reside within the 748-square-kilometer KNP,” Chellam said.

“With an area of only 748 square kilometers, KNP is just too small to host a viable population — estimated at about 50 adults — of the introduced cheetahs.”

Echoing Chellam’s views, South Africa-based large carnivore expert Michael G.L. Mills said that the KNP is not suitable for India’s cheetah action plan.

“The range quality is also important for maintaining a viable cheetah population, with a need for open or semi-open habitat, with sufficient, suitable wild prey, free from anthropogenic (made by humans) pressure and free-ranging dogs,” Mills told VOA.

Mills said Kuno National Park, which is 748 square kilometers in area, is unfenced, harbors about 500 feral cattle and is surrounded by a forested landscape with 169 human settlements is not the size and quality to permit self-sustaining and genetically viable cheetah populations. Nor are other landscapes, he said.

“Adopting such a speculative and unscientific approach, as seems to be the case in this venture, will likely lead to human-cheetah conflicts, death of the introduced cheetahs or both, and will undermine other science-based species recovery efforts for the cheetah, both within India and globally,” Mills added.

‘Cheetahs will do very well’

However, experts involved in India’s cheetah program disagree.

Yadvendradev Jhala, dean of the Wildlife Institute of India and lead scientist of the CIP, said that he “totally disagrees” with those who are critical of the APICI action plan.

“The cheetah reintroduction project is about the restoration of functional ecosystems. I am amazed to see how learned wildlife biologists could be blind or, choose to be blind, to the conservation importance of this project,” Jhala told VOA, noting that the real challenge begins when cheetahs are released as free ranging.

Since they were translocated to India five months ago, all eight cheetahs are still in fenced enclosures at the KNP to help them acclimatize to their new home.

“Their survival will depend on how safe the national park and its surroundings are made from poachers and their snares,” Jhala said. “As a species, the cheetah from Africa will adapt and do very well in the Indian habitat, climate and with predators and prey.”

Conservationist M.K. Ranjitsinh, a member of a court-appointed committee advising the government on the cheetah introduction project, said that apart from the KNP, there are three other sites being readied where African cheetahs would be introduced.

“All the selected sites, including KNP, do have sufficient prey base, as of now, to support a certain number of cheetahs and what we hope to do is to conserve the areas so that the prey base goes up,” Ranjitsinh told VOA.

“Scientists have found that these sites have the potential presently and in the future. We are prepared to take a few losses, which are bound to happen in any translocation and any reintroduction of this kind.”

According to the estimate by the APICI, with the introduction of around 100 African cheetahs over the next decade, after 15 years, the KNP is expected to have an established population of 21 cheetahs.

Conservationist Chellam said, “Twenty-one cheetahs just doesn’t constitute a viable population. As a result, there is no question of the introduced African cheetahs playing any other larger conservation role in India.”

Source: Voice of America

South Africa hosted the world’s biggest mining investment conference this week, with industry experts in attendance saying the U.S. and China are in a race for the critical minerals — such as cobalt and lithium — that will likely power the projected transition to clean energy.

African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo have some of the largest deposits of these resources, but China currently dominates the supply chain as well as their refinement and the U.S. wants to reduce its reliance on the Asian giant.

In his remarks at the mining conference in Cape Town this week, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez hinted at this saying, “I don’t need to remind you of what happens when the supply chain breaks down or when we depend on a single supplier. We lived it during the COVID pandemic, and this is a vulnerability that we need to solve together.”

Fernandez — who did not mention China by name — noted that electric vehicles are expected to command half the global market by 2030 and that demand for lithium is expected to increase 42-fold by 2040. China is responsible for some 80 percent of the world’s lithium refining.

Tony Carroll, the director of Acorus Capital and an international adviser to the conference known as the Africa Mining Indaba, told VOA the session came at a critical time for the West.

The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt. The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since,” he said.

Rare earth minerals are essential for electric vehicle production and expanding the production of green technologies. However, their extraction can come at an environmental or social cost to African countries that have big deposits.

Fernandez echoed remarks made by Pope Francis on his recent trip to Congo denouncing “economic colonialism” in Africa, which could be seen as a swipe at Beijing. He also assured African countries the United States would respect “environmental, social, and governance standards.”

“While late to the game, the U.S. has awakened with more ambition in mining and processing and building alliances with like-minded partners,” said Carroll, who is also an adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

A first-time sponsor of the Mining Indaba this year was Chinese company Zijin, one of the largest mining groups in the world with interests in lithium, copper and other metals.

Asked for comment by VOA on whether China is now in a race for rare earth metals with the U.S., as well as other questions about Chinese mining interests in Africa, the PR manager of South Africa Zijin Platinum said the CEO was unable to respond before the deadline for this article.

African governments are now trying to get the best deals for their people. Namibia’s Mines Minister Tom Alweendo told Reuters at the Cape Town conference that his country is insisting that all lithium mined in Namibia has to be processed in the country.

Similarly, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who was one of the key speakers at the mining conference, has been demanding better terms from China for several years. China sources the majority of its cobalt from DRC, which produces some 70 percent of the world’s total.

Despite its vast mineral resources, Congo is one of the world’s least developed countries and Tshisekedi said in January it hadn’t benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China signed by his predecessor.

“The Chinese, they’ve made a lot of money and made a lot of profit from this contract,” Tshisekedi told Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The Democratic Republic of Congo has derived no benefit from it. There’s nothing tangible, no positive impact, I’d say, for our population.”

“Now our need is simply to re-balance things in a way that it becomes win-win,” he added.

There are signs Tshisekedi could be moving toward the West.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden organized the Minerals Security Partnership last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union. At its first meeting last year, the DRC was one of the non-partner nations in attendance.

Then at Biden’s U.S.-Africa Summit in December, the DRC and Zambia inked a deal with the U.S. to jointly develop the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.

“Dependency on China for rare earths is viewed with alarm,” said Jay Truesdale, CEO of the risk advisory firm Veracity Worldwide, and a speaker at the Indaba. “Given that Beijing has the means to severely restrict access to these minerals, in the event of a geopolitical crisis it could choose to use its market dominance to cripple non-Chinese manufacturers in such sectors as electronics, automotive manufacturing, aerospace, and renewable energy.”

Besides the rising tensions between China and the West in Africa, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will also force mining companies to make hard decisions, Truesdale said.

“The war in Ukraine has placed greater scrutiny on Russian mining activities across the continent. Russia benefits from a lack of transparency and weak governance where its mining companies operate. African governments are now more closely observing how Moscow trades promises of greater security for deeper access to mineral resources and the state capture that can result,” he told VOA.

Source: Voice of America