Africa

Eronildes da Silva proudly stands next to a bunch of bananas on his farm, whose large size is the result, he says, of the effective fertilizer of reusing waste water. In addition to farming, he drives a school bus and builds rainwater tanks in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil's semiarid Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
AFOGADOS DA INGAZEIRA, Brasil, Jun 30 2023 (IPS)

“The rainwater tanks are the best invention in the world for us,” said Maria de Lourdes Feitosa, 46, who recalls the deadly droughts of the past in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region.

“There has been a reduction of many diseases” that came from the so-called “barreros”, puddles and small ponds that are the result of the accumulation of water in muddy holes in the ground that people shared with animals, Feitosa, a farmer from a rural community in Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 inhabitants, told IPS.

Feitosa owns a six-hectare farm and is less dependent on water than some of her neighbors because she produces agroecological cotton, which requires less water than horticultural and fruit crops.

Nearly 1.2 million tanks that collect 16,000 liters of potable rainwater from the roofs of homes now form part of the rural landscape of the semiarid ecoregion, an area that covers 1.1 million square kilometers and is home to 28 million of Brazil’s 214 million people, which extends throughout the interior of the Northeast and into the northern fringe of Brazil’s Southeast region.

The water tanks are a symbol of the transformation that the Northeast, the country’s poorest region, has been undergoing since the beginning of this century. During the longest drought in its history, from 2011 to 2018, there was no repeat of previous tragedies of deaths, mass exodus of people to the south and the looting of businesses by desperate people, as seen in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that created the program, adopted as public policy by the government in 2003, some 350,000 families are still in need of water tanks.

This 16,000-liter concrete slab tank stores rainwater collected on the roof and uses pipes to provide drinking water for Josaída Nunes and Eronildes Silva, in the Sertão de Pajeú, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Another battle is to increase fourfold the more than 200,000 “technologies” for collecting water for production, or “second water”, which already benefit family farming and are decisive for food security and poverty reduction in the region.

Reusing household water

Josaida Nunes da Silva, 38, and her husband Eronildes da Silva, 41, resort to reusing water from the bathroom and kitchen in their home, faced with shortages aggravated by the altitude of the hill they live on in Carnaiba, a municipality of 20,000 people bordering Afogados da Ingazeira.

A complex of pipes carries the wastewater to the so-called “fat box” and then to the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor and a tank for “polishing”, exposed to the sun, and another for the water ready for irrigation.

This system filters contaminating components, such as fecal coliforms (bacteria), and prepares the water with fertilizers for irrigation of the fields and fruit trees. “We grow lettuce, onions, cilantro and other vegetables, as well as bananas, corn, cassava, papaya, guava, passion fruit and even dragon fruit,” said Nunes.

Dragon fruit comes from the cactus family, of Mexican and Central American origin, and has recently become popular in Brazil.

The large size of the banana bunch is “proof” of the fertilizer’s effectiveness, said Nunes’ husband, who adds cow dung. “The treated water is a blessing. Besides providing us with water, it gives us good fertilizer,” Nunes said.

A “stone tank” that takes advantage of holes in the rocks to store rainwater is one of the technologies used to coexist with the scarcity of rainfall in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast ecoregion. In the background can be seen the mountainous landscape of the Sertão de Pajeú, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Her husband Silva is also a bricklayer and has built many water tanks in the region. He also drives school children from the rural area in an old van and keeps fodder for his ten cows in hermetically sealed plastic bags.

“The drought hit us hard. We had to bring water from the ‘barrero’ on the plain, up the mountain in the ox cart. We bought a cow, when she was still a calf, for 2500 reais and had to sell it for 500 reais (104 dollars),” lamented his wife.

The couple owns 8.5 hectares of land, a large property in the region where most farms are only a few hectares in size, the result of the frequent divisions between heirs of the large families of the past. But since the terrain is mountainous and rocky, the cultivable area is limited.

Nunes and Silva have three children, although only the youngest, 17, still lives with them.

Farmer Aluisio Braz (L) dries and threshes beans, accompanied by his wife, Joselita Ramos, on the terrace of their house that collects rainwater to fill the 52,000-liter tank at the back for agricultural irrigation on their farm in Carnaiba, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Coexisting with semiarid conditions

The techniques that benefit family farmers so that they can “coexist with the semiarid conditions” and prosper have been disseminated in the municipalities of the Sertão de Pajeú by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches.

Pajeú is the name of the river that crosses 17 municipalities, whose basin is home to 360,000 people. The mountains surrounding the territory include the headwaters of several streams and creeks, which dry up in the dry season, but ensure greater humidity compared to other areas of the semiarid Northeast.

Agroecology practices are one of the focuses of Diaconia, whose agricultural technician Adilson Viana has dedicated 20 of his 49 years to supporting farmers and who accompanied IPS on visits to families involved in the program.

A tank that collects 52,000 liters of rainwater for production is the treasure of Joselita Ramos, 49, and her husband Aluisio Braz, 55, on their two-hectare farm, also located in Carnaiba.

The UASB reactor is an important component in the system for reusing bath and kitchen water for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

The rainwater falls on a concrete terrace on the ground that is about 200 square meters in size and is slightly inclined to fill the water tank. Braz uses it to dry and thresh string beans, which are typical of the Northeastern diet.

The couple grows fruit trees that Ramos uses to make pulp using mango, guava, acerola cherry (Malpighia emarginata) and a fruit native to the semiarid region, the umbu or Brazil plum (Spondias tuberosa), that comes from a small tree native to Northeast Brazil.

Ramos is taking a break from the activity “because it is not fruit season in the region and the energy to run the refrigerator is very expensive.” Another difficulty is that the city government’s payments for the pulp supplied to the schools have been delayed. “I only received a payment in November for sales from early last year,” she complained.

To boost the production of grains, such as beans and corn, as well as cassava, Braz grows them on his father’s four-hectare farm, about six kilometers from his own farm.

Ivan Lopes, an enterprising family farmer, shows a soursop plant that is highly productive thanks to irrigation with reused water and natural fertilizers, on his farm in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Agroecological productivity

An exceptional case of entrepreneurial vocation and availability of water is that of Ivan Lopes, 43, who together with his brother grows fruit, including bananas, pineapple, mango, grapes, avocado, passion fruit and many more, on nine hectares of land.

Water is pumped from a lagoon on the property to four reservoirs located at the higher elevations, which make gravity irrigation possible. That is why electricity is one of the farm’s biggest expenses. “I plan to install a solar power plant to save money,” Lopes told IPS.

Honey is another product they make. “The last harvest totaled 40 liters,” from dozens of hives distributed throughout the orchard. Sugarcane is grown for the sale of sugarcane juice in the cities.

The farm is also a kind of laboratory for the dissemination of organic tomato cultivation in greenhouses. “At the agroecological market in São José do Egito (a neighboring city of 34,000 people) people line up to buy my tomatoes, because they are known to be clean, pest-free and tasty,” Lopes said.

Based on their experience, there are now 10 projects for tomato production in the Pajeú Agroecological Association.

To achieve his high level of productivity, the farmer makes his own fertilizer from earthworm humus. The success he has experienced in farming prompted him to get rid of his 10 cows in order to focus on crops and beekeeping.

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People relocated to the Nakadanga Trust in Machinga District, Malawi, bemoan the lack of opportunities and schooling in the area they were relocated to live in. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jun 30 2023 (IPS)

Located between two heavily-deforested mountains, Nakadanga Trust in Machinga District in southern Malawi looks lifeless.

It is isolated away from all other original communities. Here, the houses are made of mud bricks and they are grass thatched. There is no source of potable water in the area. There is no school nearby, no health centre and no shops for groceries.

When the members of the trust gathered to speak with IPS last month, one of the outstanding features among them was that there were more babies and children than could be expected.

“Early marriages are rampant here,” said one of the women, Merika Kapachika.

“There is nowhere our children can learn about the dangers of early marriages and early pregnancies. In the homes, there is nothing much to do.”

Kapachika is among the people that relocated to the area in 2006 under a government land resettlement programme.

Between 2004 and 2011, the Ministry of Lands implemented the Community-Based Rural Land Development Project with financial support from the World Bank.

The project involved moving what it described as “poor, land-poor and food insecure families” from the tea-growing districts of Thyolo and Mulanje in the south to Mangochi, Machinga, Balaka and Ntcheu districts in the eastern region.

There, people were resettled on land which the government had acquired from estate owners. The beneficiaries were organised into settlement communities called trusts.

At the time the project ended in 2011, over 15,000 families had been moved.

The World Bank’s Implementation Completion and Results Report Project, dated March 30, 2012, says the programme “fully” achieved its development objectives.

It says the programme succeeded in increasing both incomes and agricultural productivity of the rural families that moved.

According to the report, the incomes of the relocated families had multiplied by six; yields for maize and tobacco reached an average level of 50 to 60 percent higher as compared to communities in the surrounding areas; average maize and tobacco yields multiplied by 4 and 2.6 respectively as compared to the previous situation of the relocated households.

“Based on the promising results of this pilot experience of land acquisition and redistribution for smallholders, the Government of Malawi is willing to scale up the approach to the entire country with an objective of resettling at least 100,000 households,” reads the report in part.

However, alternative assessments expose the social and economic hardships the beneficiaries have suffered.

For example, a study of the project published in the South African Journal of Agriculture Extension in 2015 found that the relocated communities faced greater difficulties to access agricultural inputs, credit, markets and extension services to support their agricultural production and access to social services.

“As a consequence, household food and income security deteriorated after phase out of the project in 2011,” the study says.

In the six trusts which IPS visited in Machinga and Mangochi districts, where 90 percent of the 15,000 families were resettled, stories of regret are prevalent.

Mary Yalale moved from Mulanje District in 2007 and resettled in Mangochi. Initially, it looked promising. The people finally had enough land on which to grow crops. They realised a good harvest in the first few years.

“However, we did not have markets to sell part of our produce for money for us to meet other needs. Vendors took advantage. They would invade the area, buy our produce at exploitative prices, knowing that we were unable to take it to proper markets ourselves where we could earn better prices,” said Yalale of Kuma Trust.

Today, she said, they are poor such that some of them survive on piecework in the homes of the original communities.

“Our land has degraded because we are now turning to forests to produce charcoal and firewood, which our husbands take to town to make money.

“Up to now, we still do not have good relations with the original communities. They say we grabbed the land that should have gone to them. We are outcasts. The government does not give us cheap fertiliser like it does with the others. It makes us feel foolish that we agreed to come,” she said.

In Bweya Trust in Machinga District, there stands a relatively new primary school block.

Chairperson of the trust, Sowani Saidi, who is also chairperson of all the trusts of relocated people in the two districts, said it was not by the design of the government that they have a school in the area.

“We moved here in 2007. It has taken us more than 10 years of fighting with the district council for us to have this school here. We moulded bricks and collected sand for our children to have a school,” he said.

They may have the school now, but they are struggling to have the government build teachers’ houses. To date, there are no teachers’ houses at the school.

Many teachers for the school are based at the trading centre about 10 kilometres away.

“So most of them don’t come most of the time. They can’t walk, or they spend a lot hiring motorbikes to report for duties. When it’s the rainy season, there are no classes on many days because teachers don’t come. We have been asking the government to build the houses; nothing is happening,” he said.

IPS reached out to the Ministry of Lands, which implemented the programme, for its comment on these concerns. Its spokesperson, Enock Chingoni, did not respond.

However, senior officials at Mangochi and Machinga district councils, speaking on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak on behalf of the government on the project, said the project did not have any integrated social and economic development activities.

The design was that once people resettled, another government programme, the Malawi Social Action Fund (Masaf), which was also financed by the World Bank, would bring public services.

“However, Masaf failed to deliver,” said one official who was part of the implementation of the programme in 2010 in Mangochi District.

Masaf, a product of the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy, was meant to ensure poverty reduction through activities implemented by local councils under the decentralisation policy. But decentralisation itself is generally considered as failed thus far.

“Up to now, the central government still controls much of the work of the government. We are on the receiving end of most of its decisions,” he said.

Asked if the council has any specific interventions in the resettled communities, he said there is none.

“Yes, we have development plans as a council; but we treat those people like anyone else. There is not going to be any development specific to them. At least not from the government,” said the official.

Gift Trapence, the chairperson of the Human Right Defenders Coalition (HRDC), a local organisation, faulted the project for not considering social services as a core component in its implementation.

“Such projects should not be breeding grounds for poverty. Rather they should empower citizens socially and economically,” Trapence said.

He urged the government to assess the settlements and come up with an actionable plan to address the public service access challenges they are facing.

For Kapachika of Nakadanga Trust they are no longer interested in such interventions.

“We have been here for more than 10 years now. All along, the government has known that we are suffering; it has done nothing.

“What we want now is it should take us back to where it uprooted us. There we had health centres. We had good roads and markets. We did not have to wait for our children to reach 8 years for them to start primary school. We were delivering our babies in hospitals, not in the bush. Government should take us back to our villages,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Chef Fatmata Binta. The United Nations has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets to promote their cultivation. Credit: ©FAO/Chef Binta

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jun 30 2023 (IPS)

Get yourself a nice big pot full of water, dice some onions and throw in the meat of your fancy, followed by chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, dried okra powder, garden eggs and chilli peppers.

Leave the pot to boil and, when simmering, add some fish and locust-bean-and-chilli mix, grind in some fresh okra and give it another stir.

Toast some fonio in a saucepan until it’s warm, add some water, put on a lid and cook on a low heat for 20 minutes.

Leave the fonio to rest so it comes out nice and fluffy and serve with your stew.

Delicious and easy-peasy!

This recipe for soupu kanja with fonio was recently presented by celebrity chef Fatmata Binta to launch the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Chefs Challenge.

Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs, they are resistant to drought and tolerant to crop diseases and pests, making them resilient to changes in climate. Their ability to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity

The aim of the online challenge is to show the multitude of ways fonio and the other cereals belonging to the millet family can be used in order to encourage people to put them back on the menu.

Millets, a diverse group of small-grained, dryland cereals, are an excellent source of fibre, antioxidants, proteins and minerals, including iron.

They are diverse in taste and gluten free, meaning they are safe for sufferers of celiac disease, and the residues from their harvests can be used as livestock feed.

Despite these virtues, demand for millets has declined in recent decades, with a knock-on effect for production, as other cereals have become widespread and dietary preferences have shifted.

Millets, which were among the first plants to be domesticated, currently account for less than 3% of the global grains trade.

The FAO is trying to reverse this trend as it sees millets as an ideal way for countries to increase food self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported cereal grains.

Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs, they are resistant to drought and tolerant to crop diseases and pests, making them resilient to changes in climate.

Their ability to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity.

So as agrifood systems face big challenges to feed an ever-growing global population, these cereals provide an affordable and nutritious option and a potentially precious resource to help small-scale farmers to adapt to the climate emergency.

The United Nations has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets to promote their cultivation.

Naturally, people do not base their eating habits solely in the recommendations of agronomists or UN agencies.

So the FAO has enlisted Binta and other celebrity chefs to help people appreciate what these hardly cereals have to offer.

“Fonio is not only nutritious and delicious, it can grow in tough climates and could help to end world hunger” said Binta.

“So enjoy my fonio recipe and I challenge you to share your millet recipe!”

A native of Sierra Leone, in 2022 Binta became the first African to win the Basque Culinary World Prize for chefs who improve society through gastronomy.

Now based in Accra, Ghana, she received the prize for her ‘Dine on a Mat’ pop-up restaurant initiative showcasing the culinary traditions of the Fulani people of West Africa.

“If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know that I’m very passionate about African gastronomy, highlighting underutilized ingredients, and most importantly, taking inspiration from women in rural areas,” said Binta, whose Fulani Kitchen Foundation helps women farmers grow fonio as a crop.

“I collaborated on a recipe with some beautiful women from a town called Kolda, in Senegal.

“I encourage you all to try millets, to try fonio, add it to your diet, and let’s keep this challenge going”.

Anyone can join the chefs in taking part in the challenge.

All you have to do is make a video of yourself preparing a millet dish, explaining the recipe, the type of millet being used and the nutritional benefits.

Then put the video on social media using @FAO and the hashtags #IYM2023 and #YearofMillets in the post.

The potential of millets to save livelihoods and lives is demonstrated by story of Pudi Soren, a 27-year-old woman from the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

Pudi recently started growing finger millet after initially receiving seeds from a project administered by the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and implemented by an NGO called Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights and Values in India.

This has proved vital as it is a crop that she can plant near her home when rain from monsoon season is insufficient.

“We have forgotten about some crops,” said Soren.

“When we were children, we saw crops such as finger millets too, but people stopped their cultivation for many years.

“My husband and I have a small piece of land, but we did not grow much previously, because we lacked the necessary resources.

“Three years ago, the project gave us seeds and encouraged us to do farming. Now I am proud to be a farmer.

“We can grow finger millet in the rice fallow season and summer, and they do not need fertilizers; some cow dung is sufficient.

“It is a good source of protein in our meals, and my children like the biscuits that I make with the flour.

“In the past, we bought oil, wheat and pulses from the market and spent 500 to 600 rupees every month.

“Our expenses have been halved since we started cultivating these crops. I use the money for the education of my children.

“There are problems that we face as smallholder farmers.

“Rainfall is reducing. And when there is little rainfall, like this year, irrigation becomes expensive. Thankfully, finger millets can be grown with less water.

“What I grow sustains my family, but in the future, I want to sell my surplus on the market”.

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By Esther Nantana
WINDHOEK, Namibia, Jun 30 2023 (IPS)

In almost every conversation I’ve had about gender-based violence (GBV), the question “why don’t they leave?” inevitably comes up.

After many years of working in this space, I have learned that the answer is not as simple as we think. The nature of GBV is quite complex. Numerous layers and factors affect individuals both internally and externally.

These can include the nature of the relationship, the sense of responsibility, the sporadic nature of violence, fears and uncertainty.

A significant part of the complexity of GBV lies in the fact that it is committed by someone with whom the victim is in a relationship and thus someone they deeply love and care about.

Trying to reconcile how someone you love can hurt you in that way is usually only the initial shock. But it keeps victims trying to figure out what went wrong in the relationship.

BLAME-SHIFTING

Victims have been known to take on a sense of responsibility for the violence they face. Some tend to believe they provoked or caused the problem.

This is usually a result of blame-shifting by the abuser. Society also contributes to this when they subject victims to questions like “what did you do to aggravate him?”

Esther Nantana

This engenders a sense of guilt and an accompanying sense of responsibility to prevent further violence.

This is wrongfully placed on victims when the abusers are at fault. Also, no level of “instigation” warrants physical aggression or abuse. Physical violence is unacceptable even when it only occurs once in a relationship.

And in most cases, when it happens once, it is often likely to reoccur. It may not even happen frequently, but it will.

And those moments when it’s not happening pull the victim back into the relationship – thinking the last time it happened was the last time it would happen.

ASSUMPTIONS

When we try and picture an abusive relationship, we tend to assume it’s violent all the time. This is not always the case.

Abusive relationships are usually filled with other moments. Even happy moments. The abuser who gets upset and violent is the same person making grand gestures and declaring their love daily.

Abusers beg and cry, showing remorse and regret, just to try prove they are still “good people”. They tend to play on the emotions of the victims because of the close nature of intimate relationships. This eventually makes it easy for the abuse to reoccur in cycles.

It takes the victim quite a few times before they can confidently say they want to break out of the cycle. Regrettably, even after deciding to leave, issues of safety are paramount.

Statistics show the most dangerous time is when victims attempt to leave the relationship. In some cases, it can end fatally.

As abusive partners try to maintain power and control, they can become more violent, threatening to end the lives of their partners and even threatening the lives of other loved ones involved.

CHALLENGES

Victims wanting to leave abusive relationships face enormous challenges. Where do they get adequate support? Do they know where to go? How do they survive economically? Where will they live?

Then there are fears of not being believed or supported. Or having their reports and accounts invalidated. They are also pressured by family and friends to remain in relationships for the sake of the children and to maintain the facade of a good family image.

These are only some of the issues involved with trying to leave. It’s difficult, and it is challenging, and it cannot happen overnight.

So next time you hear about a person who stayed in an abusive relationship, treat them and the situation with grace and understanding. It takes a lot of courage to report abuse the first time and even more courage to keep reporting it and trying to get out.

Our loved ones in these situations need empathy, support, and love. This gives them the strength to leave eventually.

Esther Nantana is currently a project coordinator for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Namibia. Previously, Esther co-led the Women and Youth Development/Capacity Building cluster at the African Union. She graduated from the Indrani Fellowship in May 2023. She is also a public health and gender advocate and a blogger; website esthernantana.com

Source: The Namibian

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A selection of the best photos from across Africa and beyond this week.

Recent trends show that African women are abandoning traditional ways of engaging in agribusiness and adopting an intellectual property approach to transform food systems on the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

Adeline Umukunzi, a 28-year-old woman mushroom farmer in Musanze, a district located about 100 km north of the capital Kigali, said women have often been the unseen faces of agribusiness in Rwanda.

“Women have always played a vital role in agriculture, but behind the scenes. We are starting to see more and more female faces in agribusiness,” she told IPS.

While she developed high potential and locally-adapted innovations in mushroom farming, the young cultivator was unaware of how much her produce was worth to the market. Little did she know that one local food company had purchased most of her produce to process mushroom-based biscuits and nuggets.

As part of Rwanda’s agriculture transformation efforts to enhance agribusiness competitiveness, a growing number of women are now engaged in agribusiness, where many have been able to generate business benefits throughout the value chain.

Official estimates show that in Rwanda, more women than men are primarily engaged in agriculture, yet female farmers face more challenges in starting successful agribusinesses than their male counterparts.

Despite these challenges, the latest official trends show that African women are abandoning traditional ways of engaging in agribusiness and adopting intellectual property (IP) approach to transform food systems on the continent.

According to experts, adopting IP in agribusiness aims to protect goods or services produced in the sector. It mainly deals with trade secrets, described as an essential component for businesses to protect confidential information that provides them a competitive edge.

According to Olivier Kamana, Permanent Secretary in Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, adopting IP rights allows innovators to generate good profits.

Kamana told IPS that key women agripreneurs in Africa could develop commercially viable products, so there needs to be some IP protection to incentivize the innovator.

In many African countries like Rwanda, where agriculture is the backbone of their national economy, experts stress the need to embrace talent, problem-solving ability, and innovation for women.

Official estimates by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that around 62 percent of women in Africa are involved in farming and do the bulk of the work to produce, process, and market food.

According to agriculture experts, business competitiveness in the regional intra-African trading space offered by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement requires agribusiness actors to operate more efficiently, which requires investments in new technologies, new ways of fertilizing and watering crops, and new ways of connecting to the global market.

For Kamana, African women agripreneurs have access to the type of innovations they need to overcome the unique challenges they face.

During the first Africa Regional Intellectual Property (IP) Conference for Women in Agribusiness, which took place in Kigali in May 2023, delegates expressed the desire to promote innovations in women-led agribusinesses in Africa by helping them understand and use IP to bring their ideas to the world.

Bemanya Twebaze, Director General of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), is convinced that Intellectual property (IPR) can be a powerful tool in empowering women and guaranteeing that they benefit from their innovations and creations in the agricultural industry.

“Policymakers should encourage and facilitate IP rights for women in agriculture while providing legal and technical aid to maximize their prospects of prosperity,” he said.

Agriculture scientists have made breakthroughs in identifying the actors that can be considered innovators to bring agricultural development and increase food production in Africa by examining how intellectual property rights could be largely promoted on the continent.

Estimates show that small farmers, with the majority of women, constitute Africa’s most important and most capable innovators, yet this category of the workforce is still struggling to aggregate their produce to supply foreign markets.

Supporters of IPRs argue that though the exclusive monopoly on the invention could impact agriculture in Africa, farming communities across the continent still have difficulty innovating by incorporating new technologies or varieties coming from outside into their production systems.

After graduating from university a few years ago, Rosine Mwiseneza, a young woman agripreneur and manager of BeeGulf company based in Kigali, started beekeeping with only five hives in the Rwamagana district from Eastern Rwanda. Soon after, the number of hives increased to 15 and later to 25.

Mwiseneza told IPS that there had been plenty of opportunity for honey production in Rwanda with the possibility to generate various products across the value chain without intermediaries.

Currently, Mwiseneza’s company is producing soaps, candles, and glass containers made from raw beeswax with a target to make appropriate use of IP rights in the stage of this innovation process.

“We are looking to apply for a valid invention patent, and we are confident to get substantial profits from these innovations in the near future,” she told IPS.

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Investment requirements for adaptation are huge, and they are growing every day as rising emissions are increasing adaptation needs. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Philippe Benoit and Gareth Phillips
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

In the climate change discourse, “mitigation” (namely, reducing greenhouse gas emissions) often dominates. This is particularly true when the discussion turns to the mobilization of the massive amounts of private capital needed to achieve our climate objections. But “adaptation” — namely, action to respond to the impacts of climate change that are already happening, as well as prepare for future impacts — also faces large funding needs.

To meet this challenge, large amounts of private capital are once again needed — and this will require climate finance innovation targeted at adaptation, specifically.

The journey from this month’s Paris climate finance summit to COP 28  hosted later this year by the United Arab Emirates – and where financing is likely to be a prominent subject — provides opportunities to raise the profile of this often overlooked need to fund adaptation.  While there is relatively little discussion of this topic, it is nonetheless a key to achieving the dual climate goals of reducing emissions while also preparing for the impacts of climate change that are now unavoidable and projected to increase.

Annual funding needs for mitigation have been estimated at around $600 billion by 2030 in emerging economies for energy alone, with private capital providing three-quarters of the required amounts. The reported needs for adaptation are relatively smaller, albeit still only partially identified. For example, annual adaptation needs for developing countries have been estimated at $160-$340 billion by 2030, including more than $50 billion for Africa. These adaptation amounts are beyond any reasonable estimate of the funding capacity of their governments, especially when added to the requirements for mitigation.

There have been various innovative financing mechanisms developed to mobilize private capital for climate but they tend to be focused on mitigation. The best known is probably the carbon markets in which investors are compensated for funding projects that reduce or otherwise avoid emissions.  Article 6 of the 2015 Paris climate agreement establishes a resource mobilization mechanism, but once again, expressly for mitigation action. Similarly, the Energy Transition Accelerator presented by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at COP 27, targets private capital to fund clean power sources.

When it comes to adaptation, the discussion is often focused on public sector funds. For example, the Green Climate Fund, a multi-government facility, looks to provide funding for adaptation at levels that match mitigation. Generally, adaptation projects have been seen as providing public goods and, accordingly, have looked to funding approaches reliant on public sector resources, frequently in the form of grants. This greatly limits financing options and amounts.

Yet, the investment requirements for adaptation are huge, and they are growing every day as rising emissions are increasing adaptation needs. This will require more than just public sources; private capital is needed. But in order to unlock this capital, more attention and creativity must be directed to developing new mechanisms for adaptation.

In considering private funding for adaptation, there are three distinct but interrelated major groups of actors.

• The first are companies exposed to climate-related risks in their operations. This includes a variety of agri-businesses, electricity network enterprises, port operators, tourism industry actors and construction companies. The issue here is largely encouraging these companies to spend more on adapting their businesses to climate change.
• A second potential source is the producers and consumers of fossil fuel products whose previous activities have fueled climate change we must adapt to. For example, just as companies have customer programs to raise finance to offset their emissions (e.g., airlines), consumers might also be motivated to support investments to address the impacts of their emissions.
• The third and critical source is third-party private capital, including commercial banks and private equity investors. This constitutes a massive potential source of funding (the bond market totals in the trillions), and it is the focus of the discussion that follows.

The existing mitigation carbon markets provide a potentially fertile precedent for raising third-party private capital. It is important to recognize that the genesis of carbon markets was governments creating regulatory frameworks that gave value to emissions reductions — governments set targets and created mechanisms that offered both financial incentives and flexibility to meet those targets through capital spending.

This also helped lay the groundwork for the parallel non-governmental voluntary markets. Under these types of structures, investors are incentivized to pay for carbon avoidance which makes projects financially attractive — thereby providing project sponsors with access to capital for investments in activities, sectors and regions that were otherwise unbankable.

A similar approach could be taken for adaptation; namely, the creation of a regulatory or voluntary framework in which payments to projects that provide genuine adaptation benefits are recognized and valued.

Eligible adaptation actions might include climate-resilient agriculture goods and services, investments in cold storage, improved treatment and reuse of wastewater, coastal protection, conservation of biodiversity to protect nature’s ability to adapt and actions to mitigate forest fires, a topic that has received increased attention recently. Importantly, this isn’t just a musing.

The African Development Bank, where one of us is the manager of climate and environment finance, has been developing such a facility: the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism. The ABM mechanism creates a financial product for third-party investors (private capital, donors, consumers) to fund project developers in return for Certified Adaptation Benefits, which attribute a value to lowering or avoiding the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture, people’s health, biodiversity, buildings, businesses and other assets.

The ABM product is designed to be priced at a level that enables the developer to fund what would otherwise be an unbankable adaptation investment. Significantly, it provides these developers with access to new capital sources that can make more adaptation projects a reality.

Other mechanisms are being explored and deployed, such as adaptation impact bonds. Many of these programs are designed to attract third-party private capital to adaptation activities, while additional ones address other barriers and constraints to private investment.

Notwithstanding these efforts, there remains a general shortage of instruments and proposals to attract more private capital to adaptation. Overcoming this lack will require putting more intellectual and creative resources into adaptation finance, including by the world’s leading financial centers. The private sector has more to contribute to this area, but unleashing its power will require financial innovation.

With this month’s Paris climate finance summit now completed, the current lead-up to COP 28 to be held later this year is an opportunity not to be missed to advance the effort to raise more private capital for adaptation.

(First published in The Hill on June 14, 2023).

 

Philippe Benoit is research director for Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050 and has over 20 years of experience in international finance and sustainability, including management positions at the World Bank. He is also adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Gareth Phillips is the manager of climate and environment finance at the African Development Bank Group.

Analysts have questioned what happened to the youth vote in Nigeria. Credit: Commonwealth Observer Group, Nigeria

By Abdullahi Jimoh
ABUJA, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

As Nigeria’s newly-elected president Bola Tinabu seems to be making his mark by undoing many of his predecessor’s policies – another battle is being waged in the courts between him and one of his rivals Peter Gregory Obi.

Obi has alleged the election was rigged in favor of Tinabu and is in court trying to prove this. Whether he succeeds or not, his ‘non-election’ remains controversial, with many asking what happened to that ‘influential’ youth vote he seemed to inspire confidence in during a poll with the lowest voter turnout since the country returned to democracy.

When Obi, the former governor of Anambra State, got a presidential ticket under the platform of the Labour Party, a political party with a poor track record, in May 2022, he attracted 1.2 million new followers on the giant social media network Twitter.

He had left the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – a party considered to be a serious presidential challenge, and his followership on Twitter is 3.5 million and growing.

It was the under-30 youth population that makes up about 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, drummed-up support for him, despite his party’s lack of political following.

The pre-election narrative was that the youth were tired of the old politicians, who they believe have nothing new to offer.

They saw Obi as a credible alternative, and his followers ran social media campaigns like #take back Naija on Twitter and tagged themselves “Obi-dients.”

“The run-up saw increased youth participation in the discourse and campaigns. Socioeconomic problems, including incessant university strikes and high youth unemployment, apparently contributed to their engagement. Young people made up around 76 percent of newly registered voters, with 40 percent of that number identifying as students,” says Teniola Tayo, Consultant, ISS and Principal Advisor, Aloinett Advisors on the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) website.

However, the official election turnout tells a different story – the election had the lowest voter turnout in the country’s history of democracy, and youth turnout, despite a spirited run-up to the election, was abysmal, also the lowest since Nigeria’s independence. In 36 states, less than half of the eligible population voted, and no state had a turnout above 40 percent.

In the three largest states based on voter registration — Lagos, Kano, and Rivers — less than a third of the eligible population voted. Rivers State turnout was 15.6 percent, the lowest in the country.

Overall, the national turnout was 29 percent. Of the 93.4 million registered voters, 87.2 million people collected their Permanent Voters Card, but the total number of actual voters on election day was 24.9 million.

So What Went Wrong?

Dada Emmanuel, 20, a university student, is an Obi supporter. He trekked more than 18 kilometers to his polling unit on February 25, 2023, to exercise his vote.

“I saw Peter Obi as the best of the three major candidates because he seemed to have more realistic aspirations for Nigeria, the ruling party failed us, and I think a change of government would have been nice for a better Nigeria,” said Emmanuel.

When Obi lost the election to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was considered aged and feeble, he felt disillusioned.

Obi was among the top 15 presidential contenders under the umbrella of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he left the party in May 2022,  less than three days before the party’s primary on account of the internal imbroglio within the party, making Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the flag bearer.

The Emergence of the Labour Party or Should That Be the Emergence of Obi Party?

The Labour Party was formed in 2002 and registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC.

Compared with the All Progressive Congress (APC) and PDP, it was considered unpopular and, in the 2019 elections, recorded a dismal performance.

Samuel Ayomide, 18, knew this but still threw his weight behind Obi.

“Peter Obi was the only presidential aspirant without any corruption links. He is the only ex-governor that receives no pension from his state. Compare that with Tinubu, who collects (a pension) from Lagos every month,” he says.

Whatever the results, it is clear that Obi’s presence in the LP made a massive difference, and the party garnered 6,101,533, ranking third.

Obi and PDP’s Abubaker are among several petitioners who are being heard in the courts disputing the election, but the judgments will only be known months after Tinubu’s inauguration as president.

Obi has asked urged the court to nullify Tinubu’s victory and order a fresh poll.

Joseph Owan, a political analyst and Oyo State coordinator for World Largest Lesson, Nigeria, says he believes Nigerian youth are on the verge of changing the narrative because they followed the person and not the party.

“In everything involving elections, we all know that in the past, the election is always between the two top political parties (PDP & APC). With so little time, Obi came on board, (and) we all saw how he made waves based on the numbers of States he won during the presidential election.”

Owan maintained that there is a bright future for Obi in the next presidential election if he doesn’t win the case in court.

“By then, he will have established himself in terms of awareness, orientation, and advocacy in some key places like the Northern and Southwestern states,” he says, adding that his popularity will increase with time.

Nevertheless, the road to success is not an easy one in Nigeria, as there are many conflicting agendas at play.

Professor Pius Abioje of the Department of Religions at the University of Ilorin says Nigeria is not structured for equity, which resulted in the “survival of the fittest” among the politicians.

“There is a prevailing jungle law of survival of the fittest. Politicians use ethnicity, religion, and money to get patronage,” he told IPS.

Abioje further says that a detachment of religion from politics could be a solution – but there was a long way to go – with political support often divided along religious lines.

“These dwindling numbers highlight how Nigeria’s politics and state institutions continue to exclude rather than include,” an associate fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House London, Leena Hoffmann, was quoted as saying in Dataphyte.

Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), quoted in the Premium Times, called on INEC to improve its election management and embark on a voter register audit. “Nigeria doesn’t have a voter register audit, an audit that takes out those who have died and all other ineligible voters from the system.”

“The fact that a significant percentage of Nigerians fail to engage in elections is a concern and perhaps points to growing disillusionment with their ability to shape a more democratic society,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Caura Hospital, in the east of Trinidad, was designated an acute care facility for patients with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Often developing countries are forced to wait for vaccines leaving their populations vulnerable. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
Port of Spain, Trinidad, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

The reasons that led to inequitable distribution of COVID vaccines during the pandemic have been inherent in the global pharmaceutical supply chain for decades and contributed to serious adverse consequences for global south countries, as was evident with HIV and Ebola. Further, those issues will likely contribute to inequities with regard to vital medicines in the future. This story by IPS Correspondent and IWMF Fellow Jewel Fraser highlights that the inequity issue is definitely not due just to the pandemic but an ongoing one.

Music for this podcast courtesy of Fesliyan Studios.

This report was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Global Health Reporting Initiative: Vaccines and Immunization in the Caribbean.

 

 

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A young girl holds a child as she makes her way to a mobile health clinic after their village was devasted by the floods in Pakistan. Credit: UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani

By Silvia Baur-Yazbeck
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

There is a significant funding gap for climate adaptation – especially for women. Public financing will not be sufficient to close this gap, but it will be crucial for supporting the most vulnerable and facilitating private sector investments where funding and support is needed most.

Inclusive financial systems play an important role in channeling finance to the most vulnerable, including payment systems and last mile agent networks that enable access to social safety net payments, climate risk insurance products, savings for emergencies or affordable credit for investments in climate-resilient assets and more resilient livelihoods.

Development funders are thirsty for guidance and good practices to identify where they can be catalytic and crowd in the private sector for greater investment in climate adaptation.

Funding to support inclusive financial systems may be an entry point for funders with significant potential for climate adaptation impact and a clear role for private sector investment.

Where and how funders allocate funding is determined by their organizational strategies and priorities. Over the past two to three years, development funders and many impact investors have adopted strategies focused on addressing climate change and its impacts.

Women build barriers in Nepal to prevent the river from overflowing and flooding nearby villages. Credit: UNDP/Azza Aishath

More recently, especially after COP26, funders are seeking ways to allocate more funding toward climate adaptation goals. To better understand what funders are doing and whether financial inclusion is leveraged to achieve and accelerate progress toward those goals, CGAP conducted desk research and interviews over the last year (2022-2023).

Given the importance of gender equity goals and growing evidence that climate change and public and private sector responses to it are impacting women disproportionally, the research also examined how gender outcomes are embedded into climate strategies and projects.

This work covered a range of public and private development funders supporting financial inclusion and/or climate goals. For climate funding at large, the past decade has seen an exponential increase in climate finance from both public and private sources. Yet far too little of this funding has been dedicated to supporting climate adaptation and resilience.

Of the estimated USD 632 billion in climate finance that was committed in 2020, only about 7% was linked to adaptation benefits. And only around USD 83 billion was provided for climate action in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), meaning that those with the greatest need and fewest resources to adapt are excluded from global climate finance flows.

Public funders have made commitments to fill the financing gap and mobilize private finance by testing and de-risking investments in new business models, technologies, and climate-vulnerable sectors.

However, our research showed that many of these funders are still developing strategies and in the early stages of implementing projects and investments that support climate adaptation at scale.

We learned that an important barrier funders face in to putting to work their climate adaptation funding commitments is limited knowledge about impact pathways and effective leverage points for advancing climate adaptation and resilience for the most vulnerable.

There are four reasons why funders should consider inclusive finance as an opportunity for supporting climate adaptation:

We believe that inclusive finance can be an entry point for funders to fulfill their climate ambitions and support climate adaptation for the most vulnerable.

Below are four reasons why funders should consider inclusive finance as an opportunity for increasing public and private investments in climate adaptation.

Inclusive finance can enable the autonomous adaptation of households

Most climate adaptation projects and investments support planned adaptation strategies at the national level, such as climate-resilient infrastructure and technologies. While important, these programs fall short in supporting households that are already feeling the impact of climate change in reduced crop yields, damaged assets, reduced access to basic services and health-related issues.

These households need affordable credit and savings products to access new technologies and skills that enable them to grow more resilient to climate change. In addition, they need risk transfer solutions that protect their investments in case of damage or loss.

Inclusive finance can support women’s climate adaptation and resilience

Low-income women are significantly more vulnerable to climate change impacts and therefore in great need to access solutions that help them adapt and build resilience. Research shows that women who can access and use financial services are more likely to be resilient to shocks and stresses, access basic services and run successful businesses.

Funders are already including a gender lens in their climate strategies but seem to lack clarity around how they can address both goals simultaneously. Investments in women’s financial inclusion alongside programs for transfer of skills and technologies offer an opportunity for funders to achieve both objectives by empowering women to choose and lead their own adaptation strategies.

There is also good experience in the financial inclusion sector about the role of social norms and how to address them, which will be important to consider when designing financial and non-financial solutions for climate adaptation.

Inclusive finance can crowd in private sector finance

In 2021, private investors were the primary drivers of financial inclusion funding growth. There is huge interest among private investors in the financial sector and experience among public funders in crowding in more private capital. This opens an opportunity to facilitate existing financial sector investments toward climate adaptation projects.

However, this will require public funders to shift their focus (and that of their private peers) away from mitigation-linked projects, to instead demonstrate where there are viable business models and reduce the risk for private investments. Public funders can also help by sharing their data, risk modeling approaches, and learnings that demonstrate the financial and social benefits of investing in climate adaptation.

A focus on inclusive finance can enable an inclusive and just transition

There is a risk that the increased focus on greening the financial sector by introducing exclusion lists and requiring green credentials will exclude the most vulnerable from accessing affordable finance.

Poor households are in the greatest need to adopt more climate-friendly and resilient practices to maintain and improve their livelihoods. Imposing reporting or certification requirements or excluding them because they are risky clients will prevent them from accessing financial services and limit their ability to adapt and participate in the transition to a more climate-friendly economy.

To enable a just transition, there needs to be more awareness and caution to avoid potential financial and economic exclusion of the most vulnerable.

For funders to seize these opportunities and link financial inclusion, climate, and gender goals in their funding practices, they must adopt new processes and shift their internal incentives to take on more risk and work across sectors

Our interviews confirmed that funders are working hard to build their internal capacity and develop targets and metrics to track climate adaptation. However, they were also cognizant that these efforts do not translate into increased projects and funding for climate adaptation unless there are incentives, more concessional and risk-tolerant financial instruments, and an increased exchange of knowledge and good practices.

Many funders said that funding mitigation is much easier – there are many sample projects, lessons learned and clear metrics to measure their success against. Funding adaptation is less attractive for funders because it requires them to develop new results chains and metrics, take on risky endeavors that haven’t been tested and invest more in data collection and impact measurement as results are less visible and take time to realize.

An encouraging first step, though, is an increased focus on climate adaptation targets which will set milestones and can create incentives to invest more in adaptation projects. Some funders are also integrating climate focal points or creating working groups, including specifically for climate adaptation.

Over the next three years, CGAP will work with investors and financial service providers to identify and test successful approaches to providing financial services that support climate adaptation and resilience.

The objective is to share examples, lessons learned and practical guidance for financial services providers, funders and other important sector actors to provide the poor and vulnerable access to financial and non-financial services that support their climate adaptation and resilience.

We will convene funders for peer exchange and to jointly develop recommendations as to where public versus private funders may play a more critical role and what financing instruments are most effective in supporting climate adaptation.

To achieve our objectives for this work, we rely on our members and partners to engage and share their experiences. We hope you will join us in this effort. Please reach out or leave a comment below with reactions and suggestions.

Silvia Baur-Yazbeck is Financial Sector Specialist, CGAP

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a global partnership of more than 30 leading development organizations that works to advance the lives of poor people, especially women, through financial inclusion.

 

 
IPS UN Bureau

 

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Inspired by seeing a bagpipe player in his youth, Chukwu Oba Kalu wanted more Nigerians to play.

Although both sides announced a ceasefire, fighting continues on one of Islam's holiest days.

Ayan (25) with her daughter Mushtaq (15 months) in the waiting area of the WFP funded Kabasa MAM Health Center. Credit: WFP/Samantha Reinders.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

Four months pregnant, Ayan was close to dying of starvation when she arrived at the Kabasa camp in Dolow, on the border between Somalia and Ethiopia.

Her 18-month-old daughter, Mushtaq, was so severely malnourished that she weighed just 6.7 kilos.

Drought had forced the family to flee their home in Somalia.

Three years of drought have left more than 23 million people across parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger, the WFP says. When the region’s long-awaited rains finally arrived in March, instead of bringing relief, the downpours were so extreme they caused flash floods that inundated homes and farmland and washed away livestock

Ayan’s husband died shortly after their arrival.

“We came here as we heard we would get some help,” Ayan said at a health centre funded by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

“We left our home because there was no water and our livestock had died.”

Thanks to nutritional therapy and fortified cereals provided by the WFP, Ayan and Mushtaq are still alive.

Many others do not make it.

Three years of drought have left more than 23 million people across parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger, the WFP says.

When the region’s long-awaited rains finally arrived in March, instead of bringing relief, the downpours were so extreme they caused flash floods that inundated homes and farmland and washed away livestock.

Consecutive failed harvests and high transport costs have pushed food prices far beyond the reach of millions in the region, the WFP says, with a food basket in Eastern Africa costing 40% more in March 2023 than it did 12 months previously

The limited humanitarian resources are being further stretched by the conflict in Sudan, which has sent over 250,000 people fleeing into neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and South Sudan, where food insecurity is already desperately high.

“Conflict and drought are devastating millions of Somalis. Children are paying the highest price of all,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain during a visit to Somalia in May. “Nearly 500,000 children are at risk of dying”.

The Horn of Africa is on the front line of the climate crisis.

A study released in April by World Weather Attribution (WWA) said that the drought in the Horn of Africa would probably not have happened without human-caused climate change.

“Climate change has made events like the current drought much stronger and more likely,” WWA said.

“A conservative estimate is that such droughts have become about 100 times more likely”.

The tragedy is also a massive injustice as poor countries like these are responsible for only a tiny part of the global emissions that have caused the climate crisis.

But they are feeling its effects most severely.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said the region is facing an “unprecedented disaster”.

“Many farming households have experienced several consecutive poor harvests and up to 100% losses, especially in the arid and semi-arid areas,” said Cyril Ferrand, the FAO’s Resilience Team Leader for East Africa.

“Some agropastoral communities lost all sources of food and income.

“In addition, 2.3 million people have been displaced across the region in search of basic services, water and food.

“And we know very well that when people are on the move, it is also an issue of security, violence, and gender-based violence, in particular.

“In short, the drought triggered a livelihood crisis that has grown into a multifaceted humanitarian disaster including displacement, health issues, malnutrition and security crisis that has long-term effects on people’s lives and livelihoods”

Ferrand said that pastoralists across the region lost over 13 million livestock between late 2020 and the end of 2022 due to lack of water and feed.

This is important because livestock are not only the main source of income for pastoralist households, but they are also a source of milk, which is vital for healthy diets, especially for children under five.

The loss of animals and the related deficit in milk production, therefore, is a big factor in the region’s high rate of malnutrition.

The WFP, meanwhile, says that it urgently needs US 810 million dollars over the next six months to fill a funding shortfall in order to keep life-saving assistance going and invest in long-term resilience in the Horn of Africa.

The UN agency was distributing food assistance to a record 4.7 million people a month in Somalia at the end of 2022.

But it was forced to reduce this to three million people in April and may have to further reduce the emergency food assistance caseload in Somalia to just 1.8 million by July.

This means almost three million people in need will not receive support.

“WFP’s rapid expansion of life-saving assistance helped prevent famine in Somalia in 2022,” said Michael Dunford, the WFP Regional Director for Eastern Africa.

“But despite the emergency being far from over, funding shortfalls are already forcing us to reduce assistance to those who still desperately need it.

“Without sustainable funding for both emergency and climate adaptation solutions, the next climate crisis could bring the region back to the brink of famine.”

 

Artificial intelligence is developing at a rapid rate and is transforming many aspects of life in Africa.

Zimbabwean women's informal savings clubs have been hit by high inflation and the low value of the country's currency. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

For years, self-employed and unemployed women in Zimbabwe formed neighbourhood “clubs” where they pooled money together for everything from buying bulk groceries to be shared at the end of the year to meeting funeral expenses.

But as inflation renders the local currency virtually worthless, with, for example, the price of a loaf of bread reaching ZWD4,000, women rights advocates say this has thrown local saving initiatives into a mind-numbing tailspin.

In recent weeks, the local dollar has been on a frenzied free fall against the greenback, and in one week alone, the parallel market rate went from USD1:ZWD2,000 to anything between USD1:ZWD3,000 and ZWD4,000.  Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency put Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rates at triple digits, with inflation rising 175.8% in June from 86.5% the previous month.

“We cannot buy foreign currency on the street to keep our savings club operating. You can’t plan anything with such an ever-changing exchange rate,” said Juliet Mbewe, a Bulawayo homemaker who sells snacks, sweets and other small items on a roadside not far from her township home.

“It was better when the country was using the USD as the official currency,” she said, referring to the period of the country’s government of national unity between 2009 and 2013.

That period is widely credited with taming  Zimbabwe’s economic turmoil and also helped make savings possible for women such as Mbewe.

Women’s savings clubs contributed monthly instalments of anything from as little as USD5, and from this pool, the club operated as an informal bank or microfinance lender where they issued loans at a small interest.

The accumulated savings were shared at the end of the year, while other such clubs bought groceries in bulk to be shared in time for Christmas.

And this was also a time when local banks encouraged women’s clubs to partner with registered financial institutions to incubate their savings and earn interest at the end of the year.

But with banks not being spared the decades-old economic turmoil, which has seen even banks close shop, financial institutions that remain are not known to offer ordinary account holders interest on their savings.

However, the return of rampant inflation is making the operation of women’s savings clubs increasingly difficult, says Mavis Dube, who formerly led a group of women’s clubs as their treasurer.

“It’s no longer easy because of the unstable currency. It now means having to raise more local dollars in order to buy foreign currency,” Dube said; as the authorities struggle to put breaks on a currency on free fall, these have been upended by inflation and an unsteady local currency.

For those who can afford that, the women are cushioning themselves from this by buying livestock which they say is guaranteed to store value.

International NGOs such as World Vision are assisting rural women navigate increasingly tough economic circumstances, supporting projects such as raising and selling poultry.

However, such projects have not been made available to more women in a country where self-help efforts face incredible odds as inflation gnaws into small enterprises.

While the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development has made efforts to encourage women’s participation in the country’s economic development agenda, it has struggled to keep up with the increasing number of women seeking assistance to start their own businesses.

The ministry recently launched what it says are “Women Empowerment Clubs” with the aim to assist women access funding, but concerns remain that the red tape involved in accessing the loans only enables a cycle of poverty for women.

Rights advocates say the high unemployment rate among women has meant that women have no access to the formal banking sector, where they access loans.

“Most banks and lending institutions require collateral for them to release loans which most women do not have. Profits from the informal sector are so meagre and only allow women to feed from hand to mouth,” said Sithabile Dewa, executive director of the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Excellence.

“In order to address these challenges, the Government must put in place laws and policies that protect women in small businesses, such as discouraging lending institutions from putting too much interest or demanding collateral on women, something they know they do not have,” Dewa told IPS.

While women have attempted to keep up with the volatile exchange rate, it has exposed their vulnerability to poverty at a time when agencies such as UN Women lament that women’s economic empowerment in Zimbabwe has been “impeded by their dominance in the informal sector and vulnerable employment.”

While saving clubs served as a bulwark against such uncertainties, Dewa says contemporary economic circumstances have made it near impossible to run such schemes that hedged against poverty.

“The savings clubs are still there though they have been modernised to meet the changing times,” Dewa said.

“The problems facing these clubs are hyper-inflation, an unstable and unpredictable economy. Those which are still viable are the ones being done using USD, but how many women have access to the foreign currency,” she added.

For now, women such as Mbewe and Dune continue to live hand to mouth, their ambitions to save for a rainy day effectively on pause.

“It’s harder now than ever, and the pain is that there is no sign this will end anytime soon,” Mbewe said, the little she makes selling sweets barely enough to meet her daily needs.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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