Africa

Most people want their nation to make it to the World Cup, but this is not so for some Cameroonians.

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

If the desalination plants win the bet, Chile's water delivery trucks, with their unpredictable schedules and high operating costs, will become a thing of the past. The photo shows the small cove of Chigualoco, in northern Chile, with a few fishing boats and the ground covered with black seaweed (Lessonia spicata), macroalgae that the fishermen dry in the sun. The seaweed is not extracted from the small coastal rocks because it is the food for prized mollusks whose harvesting season ends in June. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
LOS VILOS, Chile , Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

The Pacific Ocean could quench the thirst caused by 10 years of drought in Chile, but the operation of desalination plants of various sizes has a long way to go to become sustainable and to serve society as a whole rather than just corporations.

Some twenty of these plants are already in operation providing desalinated water to small fishing communities, another three to the inhabitants of various municipalities and eight more to large mining companies, all but one of which are concentrated in Chile’s arid North.

The extensive development and availability of solar and wind energy has lowered the operating cost of desalinating and purifying seawater, which offers hope for a stable supply of water in this Southern Cone country with 4,270 kilometers of coastline.

This year, 184 municipalities are under a water shortage decree, 53 percent of the total, affecting 8.2 of the 19.4 million inhabitants of this long narrow country that runs along the western side of southern South America, between the Pacific coast and the Andes mountains.

Three years ago an analysis published in Radiografía del Agua: Brecha y Riesgo Hídrico de Chile (Radiography of Water: Water Gap and Risk in Chile) warned that “freshwater reserves in the basins are shrinking.”

“Seventy-two percent of the data shows that the water level in aquifers is decreasing at a statistically significant rate and all the glaciers studied so far, which are less than one percent of the existing ones, have reduced their areal and/or frontal surface from 2000 onwards, with only one exception (the El Rincón glacier, located on the outskirts of Santiago),” the report states.

Roberto Collao (left), president of the Chigualoco fishermen’s union, and Miguel Barraza, secretary of the organization, stand next to one of the drums that hold desalinated water and next to the plant’s operating hut, located in this small fishing village in the arid north of Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Relief for artisanal fishers

Roberto Collao, president of the fishermen’s union of Chigualoco, a small cove 240 km north of Santiago in the municipality of Los Vilos, told IPS how this technical data translates into reality and how a desalination plant came to their aid.

“We had no drinking water. We brought it from our homes in Los Vilos, 20 minutes from here. The water trucks came every 15 days and a lot of people come here in summer,” he explained in the fishermen’s cove, the local name given to the small inlets that abound along the Chilean coast.

Sitting next to the association’s boats, on a beach full of seaweed laid out to dry, he proudly said that “we are now taking 5,000 liters a day out of the sea and turning it into freshwater for consumption, for washing our diving suits and for cleaning our catch.”

In the recently concluded fishing season, the 30 artisanal fishermen of Chigualoco, who have three managed fishing areas, caught 100,000 Chilean abalones (Concholepas concholepas), a highly prized mollusk or large edible sea snail native to the coasts of Chile and its neighbor to the north, Peru.

Similar small desalination plants were installed in the northern region of Coquimbo where the town is located, financed with public funds.

One of them is in Maitencillo, across from Canela, the municipality with the highest poverty rate in Chile.

But it has not been working for four months because “the pump that extracted the salt water broke down, there were problems with the filters,” Herjan Torreblanca, president of the Caleta Maitencillo union, told IPS on a tour of towns with desalination plants in the region.

“The water we got was so fresh, like bottled water. It produced 8,000 liters a day,” he recalled with nostalgia, expressing hope that the plant would be fixed soon.

Photo of a pipe that carries seawater to the desalination plant installed in the Chigualoco cove, where an association of 30 fishermen operates. The plant’s annual operating cost is approximately 2,500 dollars. Located in the Chilean municipality of Los Vilos, the plant mainly runs on solar power and collects water through a small pipe connected to a pump. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Looking out to sea

The year 2021 was the driest in Chile’s history, and a recurrent water deficit is predicted for the future. As a result, the public and the country’s authorities are looking mainly to the sea to provide water in the future, as well as to the glaciers of their Andean peaks.

In his first press conference for foreign correspondents on his third day in office on Mar. 14, President Gabriel Boric referred to the water crisis and announced the aim to “move forward with desalination, while also taking charge of the externalities it generates. In particular, what to do with the brine.”

“One problem is drought and another is the poor use of water resources and water rights. We have to make progress in the modernization of the area and in better use of gray water,” he added.

In fact, only less than 30 percent of Chilean agriculture uses technified irrigation, in a country whose economy is based on export agribusiness, mining, particularly copper mining, and large-scale fishing. Meanwhile, family agriculture and artisanal fishing are the most affected by the water deficit, despite their importance in labor and social terms.

In Chile, water rights are in private hands. Now water, including sea water, is the focus of debate and would be given a new definition in the new constitution, the draft of which must be completed by Jul. 4 by the members of the constitutional convention and which will be approved or rejected by voters in a September or October referendum.

Minera Escondida, the world’s largest copper-producing mine owned by the Australian-British company BHP, located at 3,200 meters above sea level, uses water piped 180 kilometers from a desalination plant on the coast to the Antofagasta region where it is located.

In late 2019, the Escondida Water Supply Expansion (EWS) was installed, “which allowed us to stop drawing water from the well and to use 100 percent seawater, a unique milestone worldwide,” explained Hada Matrás, the mine´s production manager.

Mining companies in Chile plan to increase their eight desalination plants currently in operation to 15 by 2028.

Miguel Barraza, secretary of the Chigualoco fishermen’s union, which operates the desalination plant they use in that cove in the northern Chilean municipality of Los Vilos. Now that they have water, the fishermen plan to open a restaurant and build a multipurpose building. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Of the three plants designed to supply water to municipalities, the Nueva Atacama plant, operating since December, stands out. Built with a public investment of 250 million dollars and later transferred to a private consortium, it produces 450 liters per second (L/s) and supplies the municipalities of Tierra Amarilla, Caldera, Copiapó and Chañaral, which are located around 800 kilometers north of Santiago.

But desalination will not be confined to the North, where water is most urgently needed. For the first time, a desalination plant, Nuevosur, has also been installed in the south of Chile, in Iloca, 288 kilometers from Santiago.

The investment totaled 2.5 million dollars and the plant seeks to “increase the availability of water and cover the rising demand that occurs mainly in the (southern hemisphere) summer,” the company told IPS.

“The project will be executed in two stages: during the first phase – which has already been developed – the system will allow us to treat 15 L/s and in the second phase we will reach a treatment level of 26 L/s,” said the Nuevosur spokesman.

Pros and cons of desalination

Several associations created the Chilean Desalination Association and defend the process as “an excellent solution to address the water challenges of our country, as it does not depend on hydrology.”

“It is a proven, reliable and affordable technology. This combination of factors has boosted the incorporation of desalination in various production processes and has favored the growth of this industry,” the Association states.

One crucial question is what will be done with the brine left over from the process. Environmentalists fear that large blocks of salt will be dumped in the ocean, affecting the ecosystem and species living in coastal areas.

Small desalination plants produce almost no brine, so the focus is on mining companies and water distributors.

The Pelambres copper mine, with estimated reserves of 4.9 billion tons and owned by the Luksic group and a consortium of Japanese companies, has its storage and loading terminal in the northern part of the Chilean municipality of Los Vilos. From there it extracts water for desalination and use in its operations. There are already eight mines with desalination plants and by 2028 there will be 15. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Liesbeth Van der Meer, executive director of Oceana Chile, told IPS that “desalination is one of the solutions, but there is great concern that it is seen as the only alternative.

“They are really looking to Israel and Qatar for solutions. However, the first thing Europe always focused on was water efficiency and in Chile this has not been worked on,” said the representative of the world’s largest organization dedicated to the defense of the oceans.

Van der Meer explained that the desalination plants that damage the ecosystem “are the ones that range from 500 to more than 1000 L/s, because of the suction and all the salt they throw back into the sea.”

Desalination “has many socio-environmental costs that have not been considered. If the plant is very close to a cove, for example, the brine and substances used to prevent the accumulation of biological species in pipes produce environmental damage in the bays,” she explained.

“You can’t extrapolate from Israel to Chile because our sea has other qualities with the Humboldt Current that goes from south to north bringing nutrients. And getting beyond the Humboldt Current to deposit brine is quite costly,” she said.

As an example of the impacts, Van der Meer said: “We have seen places like Mejillones (a municipality in the northern region of Antofagasta), where there is a large desalination plant, and within a range of five kilometers there are no fish or any kind of life and the water is turquoise – not because it is clean but because there is no life there.”

The environmentalist demanded a national water plan to regulate the construction of desalination plants and called for the protection of the 10 miles of territorial waters “where a large part of the wealth of fishing resources is located.”

Ricardo Cabezas, an aerospace physicist and geomatician, agreed that “legislation is needed to oblige those companies that use seawater to have a monitoring system and oceanographic studies to understand the flow of currents.”

“Temperature differences are not high when desalinating because in the reverse osmosis process there is no thermal plant,” he said.

And with respect to brine, he explained to IPS that “there are experiences at the international level where many minerals are recovered from the salt.”

According to Cabezas, “20 percent of the waste can be optimally managed if you reuse part of the brine by reprocessing it to obtain rare earths, rhenium and other common minerals.

“You can add value to salt and it becomes a raw material rather than a waste material,” he stressed.

Cabezas said that: “If we manage to solve the brine problem, we will make a qualitative leap and the main beneficiary will be the Chilean population because the crucial water problem will be solved.”

The academic pointed out that the Nueva Atacama plant, for example, managed to “attenuate the effect on the sea with diffusers that do not produce a concentration of salt at the end of the pipeline’s route, but instead spurt it out over a stretch of one kilometer.”

Tanzanian opposition leader Freeman Mbowe says the treason charges against him were politically motivated.

The civil war has left millions in need of food aid and none has been delivered to Tigray for months.

Employment guarantees could be a way to combat insecurities associated with dynamic and piecemeal earnings | Picture courtesy: PixaHive

By Abhishek Sekharan
NEW DELHI, Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), the unemployment rate in urban India stood at 9.4 percent between January and March 2021, with an even higher proportion of youth unemployment (22.9 percent). In the same time period, more than 11 percent of the urban workforce reported working for less than 36 hours in a typical week.

During the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020, urban unemployment had reached unprecedented peaks (approximately 21 percent in April–June 2020). Moreover, employment in much of urban manufacturing and service industries tends to be highly seasonal and contractual, with greater casualisation being reported over the last decade.

Gig workers, or platform workers, are increasingly providing crucial services across urban areas as cab drivers and couriers delivering food, groceries, medicines, and other essentials. Therefore, it’s important that we include them in discussions around formulating UEG schemes

Given these facts, an urban employment guarantee (UEG) scheme is imperative to provide livelihood security for the urban poor. The parliamentary committee on labour had recently recommended instituting a scheme in line with the MGNREGA, which would offer income support during lockdowns, mandatory health insurance, and an increased number of maximum work days.

Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Odisha already experimented with versions of UEG during the 2020 lockdown, and Kerala has had one since 2010. Although varying in scope and design, each of these schemes at its core has a shared policy framework that guarantees minimum wage employment to all who demand work for a stipulated period. Reports suggest that this has benefitted a significant proportion of the urban poor.

Gig workers, or platform workers, are increasingly providing crucial services across urban areas as cab drivers and couriers delivering food, groceries, medicines, and other essentials. Therefore, it’s important that we include them in discussions around formulating UEG schemes.

 

Why should gig workers be included in UEG programmes?

Digital platforms such as Ola, Uber, Zomato, and Swiggy are credited with heralding a new age of entrepreneurship, autonomy, flexibility, and formalisation. Despite their booming expansion, the very people who make these platforms work have not been able to reap the benefits of their success. Public dialogue shaped by gig workers has highlighted the dark underbelly of the exploitation and vulnerability they’re subject to.

Due to low base pay, incentive-based payout structures, high commissions, and arbitrary surveillance systems that gauge work quality, these workers spend long hours under hazardous conditions, working or searching for work. Moreover, their status as ‘independent contractors’ forces them to bear several other costs associated with purchasing fixed assets and fuel, without any legal claims to social security benefits.

Even though workers such as delivery partners were deemed to be providing essential services during the pandemic, platforms reduced incentives and changed payment structures, causing many to earn less than minimum wage for 12–15 hour work days. Many also lacked access to insurance, safety equipment, and affordable healthcare.

Research on delivery and taxi-driving sectors has shown that platforms rely on a pool of migrant workers from historically dispossessed communities who already had severely limited claims to social security during the pandemic.

Despite these layers of precarity, platform workers remain ineligible to claim social security under existing schemes, even ones with the most significant coverage such as the PDS. In the case of the PDS, exclusion may have resulted from outdated definitions of urban poverty—households eligible for PHH ration cards under the National Food Security Act must not possess four-wheeler vehicles or internet-enabled laptops/computers. There are other restrictions on families that possess two-wheelers.

This immediately introduces barriers for delivery workers and taxi drivers, who have to self-invest in many of these assets, often by entering into long-term debts, to sustain their livelihoods. These workers, apart from ride-hailing drivers, also did not explicitly figure in any of the targeted relief packages offered by governments. Such conditions pushed many workers into chronic debt.

The Code on Social Security 2020, for the first time, recognised platform workers as eligible for social security benefits, albeit with many limitations. It fails to recognise these workers as employees, and also introduces several exclusionary eligibility criteria for social security benefits. More importantly, the code fails to uphold the accountability of gig platforms beyond a nominal mandatory contribution to the gig workers’ social security board.

Other labour codes, as already implemented, do not mention platform work/workers, thereby precluding their rights to minimum wage, occupational safety, and decent work. Even as gig workers’ organisations continue to struggle to achieve legally enforceable protection, their inclusion in UEG programmes could serve as a step towards short-term measures that safeguard rights. But how can this be done

 

Reimagining urban public works

Public policy responses during the pandemic have encapsulated an expanded imagination of ‘public works’. Urban infrastructure systems were expanded through state–platform partnerships to enhance access for under-serviced neighbourhoods and regions. For instance, the Delhi government partnered with Swiggy to deliver cooked meals to migrants living in temporary shelters during the lockdown. In another move, governments also tied up with Ola and Uber to provide free transportation facilities to frontline workers.

However, these works are rarely included within considerations of ‘public works’ under UEG proposals. Employment in UEG proposals is mainly prescribed under work commissioned by urban local bodies (ULBs); within this framing, platform workers would be forced to work in manual jobs such as building, repair, and renovation. Many are also attracted to ‘professional’ designations. Therefore, manual work as currently proposed under UEG schemes may be unattractive for many gig workers.

1. Addressing on-demand service needs of public institutions and recognised employers

Given the intention to universalise coverage to all who demand work, gig work—particularly in transportation and delivery sectors—should be explicitly covered within these proposals.

This can be achieved by experimenting with the experiences of public institutions such as hospitals and government offices, who relied on platforms for their service needs during the pandemic, ranging from logistics, last-mile delivery, and mobility.

Jean Drèze suggests that other publicly recognised employers such as schools and colleges could be involved in the governance and implementation of the UEG scheme. Many of these institutions have capacities to meet their service needs through engaging gig workers, including demand for services such as cleaning, disinfection, and repair and maintenance of assets.

2. Ensuring flexibility

The promise of flexibility in terms of determining one’s own work and working hours remains a central attraction of gig work. Despite this, research on platform labour has pointed out that this flexibility is seldom instrumentalised due to gamification of work through incentives, ratings, and algorithmic manipulation.

However, lessons from some of the current UEG models can be adopted to restore flexibility and control over work outcomes while expanding coverage to gig workers under UEG schemes. For instance, Drèze’s proposal to cover both part-time and full-time work to accommodate women’s unpaid care responsibilities may be applicable to gig workers. Furthermore, several existing measures under state programmes, such as Kerala’s AUEGS, which stipulates the provision of work within a five-kilometre radius, could be experimented with.

The provision of affordable, quality, and subsidised public transport facilities to UEG job stamp holders through partnerships between states and non-motorised ride-hailing workers is a way in which daily wage workers, such as rickshaw pullers and tuk-tuk drivers, can be covered under UEG schemes.

3. Anticipating benefits and challenges

Employment under UEG stipulates payment of daily minimum wages. But, like many informal sector workers, gig workers have been excluded from such legal assurances under the Code on Wages 2019. Employment guarantees could be a way to combat insecurities associated with dynamic and piecemeal earnings.

As proposed by Drèze’s model, allowing worker collectives to be engaged as placement agencies might offer a solution here. These collectives could set wage floors to ensure that invisibilised costs related to platform work are appropriately taken into account.

ULBs can also consider partnering with platforms in the form of placement agencies for job cards issued by them. This would mean that all workers registered with the platform immediately become eligible for UEG benefits. This must be done alongside setting wage floors and dissociating incentives and work availability from gamification tools such as ratings.

These measures will help tackle multiple challenges that gig workers routinely grapple with, such as information asymmetries, dynamic pricing, and insecurities related to earnings and long working hours, while ensuring availability of minimum wage work. Such ULB–platform partnerships have already emerged during the pandemic and prevented platforms from unilaterally reducing wages by stipulating base pay rates and limiting platform power to charge high commissions and supervise quality of service provision.

4. Ensuring minimum wage considerations

Currently there is no clarity on how gig workers’ wages are determined. Swiggy, for instance, has categorised wages for delivery workers under three heads: per order pay, surge pay, and incentives. Another major determinant of earnings is commissions, which most platforms charge for each task (delivery/trip/haircut), ranging from 10–35 percent.

To replicate the elasticity of minimum wage considerations according to states, development zones, industry, occupation, and skill levels, there is a need for comprehensive public data on earnings and payment structures, which is currently available only with platforms.

Worker unions have demanded that minimum wages be pegged to the number of hours worked in a day, where working time will be calculated by accounting for all time-rated factors, such as waiting time, commute, and total time taken to complete shifts.

While many of these considerations are complex, they are important to determine fair unemployment allowances in cases where such forms of employment guarantees become more feasible.

The inclusion of gig workers within UEG proposals cannot be a substitute for regulatory measures that enforce safeguards such as minimum wages, occupational health and safety, and decent work.

Nevertheless, as experiences from other countries have shown, enforcing such regulations is a long-term process, particularly against the global tide towards greater flexibility and labour precarity. In the interim, schemes such as UEG could be particularly rewarding for gig workers while paving the way for universal social protection.

As we continue to debate the shape that the UEG programme should take in India—whether it should be framed as an employment generation scheme or as a scheme that provides unemployment insurance—we must remember to include gig workers in these discussions.

Aditi Surie, Aayush Rathi, and Ambika Tandon provided critical inputs to this story.

Abhishek Sekharan is a researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a nonprofit research institute working on issues related to technology and its impact on our society

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

South Africa qualify for the semi-finals of the Women's Cricket World Cup despite their game against West Indies being abandoned due to rain.

A mother and her children fled conflict in Lashkargah and now live in a displaced persons camp in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF Afghanistan

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

Following 20 long years (2011-2021) of brutal war on Afghanistan by the US-led military coalition, which ended up in delivering the country to the Taliban in August 2021, 23 million Afghans now face severe and acute hunger, economic bankruptcy, healthcare system collapse, unbearable family indebtedness, and devastating humanitarian crisis.

People in Afghanistan are today facing a food insecurity and malnutrition crisis of “unparalleled proportions,” Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary General, reported on 15 March 2022.

“The rapid increase in those experiencing acute hunger – from 14 million in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022 – has forced households to resort to desperate measures such as skipping meals or taking on unprecedented debt to ensure there is some food on the table at the end of the day.”

“The rapid increase in those experiencing acute hunger – from 14 million in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022 – has forced households to resort to desperate measures such as skipping meals or taking on unprecedented debt to ensure there is some food on the table at the end of the day”

“These unacceptable trade-offs have caused untold suffering, reduced the quality, quantity, and diversity of food available, led to high levels of wasting in children, and other harmful impacts on the physical and mental wellbeing of women, men, and children,” the UN high official warned.

 

95% of Afghans not eating enough food

In Afghanistan, a staggering 95 per cent of the population is not eating enough food, with that percentage rising to almost 100 per cent for female-headed households. It is a figure so high that it is almost inconceivable. Yet, devastatingly, it is the harsh reality, added Ramiz Alakbarov.

Hospital wards are filled with children suffering from malnutrition: smaller than they should be, many weighing at one year what an infant of six months would weigh in a developed country, and some so weak they are unable to move.

 

80% of all Afghans facing debt

As Afghanistan continues to grapple with the effects of a terrible drought, the prospect of another bad harvest this year, a banking and financial crisis so severe that it has left more than 80 percent of the population facing debt, and an increase in food and fuel prices, we cannot ignore the reality facing communities. Enormous challenges lie ahead, also said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan.

 

Acute malnutrition

“Acute malnutrition rates in 28 out of 34 provinces are high with more than 3.5 million children in need of nutrition treatment support.”

 

Healthcare system on brink of collapse

“Afghanistan’s health system is on the brink of collapse. Unless urgent action is taken, the country faces an imminent humanitarian catastrophe, warned the UN top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths, last September, that’s just one month after the US-led military coalition abandoned the country in a sudden, chaotic withdrawal.

“Allowing Afghanistan’s health care delivery system to fall apart would be disastrous,” said Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“People across the country would be denied access to primary healthcare such as emergency caesarean sections and trauma care.”

 

Combined shocks

The combined shocks of drought, conflict, COVID-19 and an economic crisis in Afghanistan, have left more than half the population facing a record level of acute hunger, according to a UN assessment published at the end of last October.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report co-led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP), revealed by the end of last October that the lives, livelihoods and access to food for 22.8 million people will be severely impacted.

“It is urgent that we act efficiently and effectively to speed up and scale up our delivery in Afghanistan before winter cuts off a large part of the country, with millions of people – including farmers, women, young children and the elderly – going hungry in the freezing winter”, said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. “It is a matter of life or death”.

The IPC report found that more than one-in-two Afghans will face Phase 3 crisis or Phase 4 emergency levels of acute food insecurity from November through the March lean season, requiring an urgent international response to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

“We cannot wait and see humanitarian disasters unfolding in front of us – it is unacceptable”, he added.

 

Children are dying

This is the highest number of acutely food insecure people ever recorded by the UN, during 10 years of conducting IPC analyses in Afghanistan.

And globally, the country is home to one of the largest numbers of people facing acute hunger.

“Hunger is rising and children are dying”, said the WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “We can’t feed people on promises – funding commitments must turn into hard cash, and the international community must come together to address this crisis, which is fast spinning out of control”.

 

Demographic spread

The report revealed a 37 per cent surge in the number of Afghans facing acute hunger since its last assessment in April.

Among those at risk are 3.2 million children under five, who are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

Last month, WFP and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that without immediate life-saving treatment, one million children risked dying from severe acute malnutrition.

And for the first time, urban residents are suffering from food insecurity at similar rates to rural communities.

 

Rampant Unemployment

Meanwhile, rampant unemployment and a liquidity crisis are putting all major urban centres in danger of slipping into a Phase 4 emergency level of food insecurity, including formerly middle class populations.

In rural areas, the severe impact of a second drought in four years continues to affect the livelihoods of 7.3 million people who rely on agriculture and livestock to survive.

“Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst humanitarian crises – if not the worst – and food security has all but collapsed”, said the WFP chief.

“This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation unless we can step up our life-saving assistance, and unless the economy can be resuscitated”.

This has been the horrifying cost of another brutal war on unarmed human beings.

Women are empowered to take on roles formerly played by men after going through BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) in Egypt. Credit: Bobby Irven/BRAC

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

When Suhier Abed’s husband broke both legs after falling two floors while working in construction, the 32-year-old mother of five needed to support her family.

She joined the Bab Amal Graduation program hoping that she would replace the $100 her husband earned a month.

“I started my project with two sheep in the hopes of bettering my living situation, especially given my husband’s medical conditions. Indeed, I was successful in developing it, and within a year, the number of sheep had increased to five,” Abed told IPS.

Abed and her husband’s siblings share one house with three rooms. Each family lives in a room with two beds in the village of Al-Shamiya, Assiut Governorate, 440 km from Cairo.

The village between the Nile’s east bank and the desert is a typical upper Egyptian town, with high school dropout rates, unemployment, and high poverty levels.

BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) works to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty worldwide through the Graduation approach — a holistic, sequenced set of interventions developed 20 years ago designed to reach the most vulnerable people. Egypt is one area where BRAC UPGI is working, providing technical assistance on a Graduation program focused on empowering rural households in extreme poverty.

People living in extreme poverty in Egypt face significant challenges due to rising food prices, currency devaluation, and a lack of sustainable employment opportunities in a country where 32.5 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line.

In Upper Egypt, BRAC UPGI partnered with the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Egyptian Human Development Association (EHDA), and Giving Without Limits Association (GWLA) to launch the Bab Amal Graduation program, which works to develop sustainable livelihoods and socioeconomic resilience for the 2,400 participating households.

According to the World Bank’s household survey results for October 2019-March 2020, around 30% of the population lived below the national poverty line before the pandemic coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

COVID-19 is likely to have contributed to an increase in the poverty rate.

“During COVID, BRAC UPGI and its partners had to swiftly adapt their approach to meet participants’ evolving needs — like connecting participants to available public services,” Bobby Irven, Communications Manager for BRAC UPGI, told IPS.

The Bab Amal program started in late 2018 in the two poorest governorates of Egypt: Assiut and Sohag.

“As with any of our Graduation Programs, coaches and field staff are tasked with providing skills training in finance and savings, livelihood development, and ongoing coaching on health, nutrition, education, and more, to help participants carve a pathway out of extreme poverty — helping them meet their most basic needs and beyond,” Irven says.

“To ensure that participants, their families, and even entire communities can weather the storm and move onward and upward from this global crisis, program staff and coaches have put a renewed focus on ensuring that eligible program participants are connected to basic services like health clinics, schools, sanitation facilities, government social protection programs, identification cards and so on.”

BRAC UPGI is committed to combating global extreme poverty, which has increased due to the pandemic in the last two years.

“We believe that to eradicate extreme poverty, which is about so much more than a lack of income, we must invest more heavily in multifaceted approaches that address various challenges people in extreme poverty tend to face – including a lack of food, clean drinking water, regular income, savings and more. Evidence shows that BRAC’s holistic Graduation approach can enable those furthest behind to create a pathway out of the poverty trap,” Irven says.

Abed explains how her small investments grew with the help of this project.

“Following my success with the sheep fattening project, I embarked on my second personal project, handcrafting homemade household detergents and selling them to the women of my village,” Abed says.

Her husband began to recover and obtained a loan to purchase a motorcycle to help with household expenses. Her profits helped him repay a portion of the loan she took out as part of the program.

Women learn various skills including in finance and savings, livelihood development, and ongoing coaching on health, nutrition, education, and more. Through the BRAC UPGI programme women are able to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty. Credit: Bobby Irven/BRAC

Suhier aspires to buy a machine that produces household detergents to reduce manual labour and increase production. She also aspires to provide her five children with a good education, which she did not receive.

Another beneficiary, Ibtisam’s situation, was not much better. She began her project with three pregnant sheep in addition to the fodder. Only one sheep gave birth, and the lambs ended up dead in a few weeks, and it appeared that the project would collapse.

“Within a year, my capital declined from $700 to $500, and with the advice of my coach, I decided to sell the sheep and buy a small cow,” Ibtisam told IPS.

Before the program, she did not possess the skills or knowledge to save, especially since her husband did not bring in a steady income. “The coaches teach us to save, a culture we were completely unaware of at the time, but it has become critical in our lives, assisting us in managing our expenses and providing future savings for our children,” Ibtisam says.

Safaa Khalaf is one of the program facilitators who serves 64 families in Shamiya village, where Ibtisam and her family live.

“Once a month, I visit each family and conduct a savings session, as well as follow-up and recording of each woman’s savings and expenses. The second session concentrates on one of the life skills or topics that are important to them, such as female circumcision, early marriage, and family planning,” Safaa told IPS.

Coaches also play a critical role in building connections to financial services and savings for participants. The participants in Graduation programs are often under the assumption that, given their financial status, or lack thereof, they are ineligible to access formal, public financial services like bank accounts or loans, but it is a lack of financial literacy that is the actual roadblock.

“We assist these women in identifying the right project for them and providing the necessary information, training, and tools, such as sewing, handicrafts, and sheep fattening. We also assist their children who have dropped out of school in re-enrolling, paying for school expenses, and navigating government procedures,” Safaa says.

In the village of Al-Shamiya, dozens of successful female role models rebelled against their inherited poverty and neglect and began to turn difficult circumstances into successes. Innovation, like turning a tiny portion of their homes into a grocery store or repurposing a corner as a sewing or handicraft facility, means they can support their families and give their children the education they deserve.

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At a hand pump in Village Mata Devi, Rajasthan, India. Credit: UNICEF/Panjwan

By Aminata Touré
DAKAR, Senegal, Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

At the World Water Forum this week (March 21-26), the international community will raise awareness of the 2 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean water and sanitation. Among them are millions of women and girls, who walk hundreds of miles each year to find water for their families and are blocked from education and economic empowerment also due to poor sanitation services.

For years, we’ve talked about the costs to women and girls if we don’t solve water, sanitation and hygiene issues. But what of the costs to our communities if we fail to act?

Today the world is facing a triple crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate emergency, and struggling economies – all of which have reversed hard won gains on women’s rights.

Twelve years of quality education for women can meet the consequences of this triple crisis head on. Women’s empowerment, gender equality, and sustainability strategies go hand-in-hand. And it all starts with that most basic of human needs – water.

Poverty, gender bias and humanitarian crises are some of the more obvious barriers to ensuring that girls stay in school. However, one of the biggest obstacles is lack of access to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Every day, millions of children go to school in unsafe learning environments, with no drinking water, no proper toilets, and no soap for washing their hands. Nearly 584 million children worldwide lack basic drinking water services at their schools, while 698 million children lack basic sanitation services, and nearly 818 million children lack basic hygiene.

Sanitation facilities that are shared with other households and open defecation practices place women and girls at risk for sexual assault and impede their ability to manage menstruation with privacy and dignity.

Stigma and social exclusion around periods lead many girls to drop out of school. Without proper sanitation, one in three adolescent girls misses school each month due to lack of privacy and access to water to wash their hands after changing sanitary towels.

Simply ensuring that schools have safe water, toilets and soap for handwashing, increases the likelihood that girls will attend while on their periods.

Better and resilient access to clean water translates into immediate economic improvements. Reducing the time women and girls take to collect water and giving them more time for school and careers. Over the next two weeks alone, women will miss out on 2.5 million working days while fetching water.

A World Bank study estimates that limited educational opportunities for girls cost countries between US$15 and 30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings. That is the sort of avoidable economic car crash that any decent policy-makers should be rushing to solve.

But the benefits extend far beyond economic gain alone. Take for example, the rising climate crisis which is driving mass displacement, intensifying food insecurity and fueling violent competition over dwindling natural resources in many regions of the world.

Extreme weather patterns have immense impact on women and girls – increasing maternal mortality as pregnant women on the run from climate disasters lack access to vital health services and heightening the risk of human trafficking as women and girls flee to find shelter.

Our humanitarian sectors are desperate for more bright women leaders at the table, with solutions to the problems they face each and every day. And the research is proving that they are more than equal to the task.

A study in India discovered that the number of drinking water projects in areas with women-led councils was 62 per cent higher than in those with men-led councils. More than powerless victims, women are already spearheading transformative change. It is our duty as the international community to remove the barriers in their way.

Young female activists can also become powerful agents of change in their communities if they are given the chance to become educated and activated on environmental issues at school. Consider the power and influence of Greta Thunberg who has revolutionized the way we think about climate challenges.

Indeed, research suggests that girls’ education can strengthen climate strategies in three ways: by empowering girls and advancing their reproductive health and rights, fostering girls’ climate leadership and pro-environmental decision-making, and developing girls’ green skills for green jobs.

If we are truly going to tackle the triple threat of health, economy and climate change, the international community must prioritize the needs of women and girls. We must ensure access to proper water, sanitation and hygiene services, so that they are able to stay in school and focus on their futures.

It is economic common sense. It is a moral obligation. And more than that, it is a legal obligation too. Governments around the world have undertaken a pledge to uphold international human rights, for all people everywhere. It is time we kept our promises.

Looking at this year’s roll call for the Sector Ministers’ Meeting, organized by the Sanitation and Water for All partnership in Jakarta, there is reason for optimism.

For the first time it will bring together ministers of water, sanitation and hygiene with their counterparts responsible for climate, environment, health and economy. Without a genuinely integrated policy approach, we can’t hope to realize the overlapping benefits of something as important as girls’ education.

If we want to contain climate change, if we want economic progress, if we want to hold back the next pandemic, then we need to secure quality education, water, and sanitation for all women and girls, everywhere.

Our future depends on it.

Dr. Aminata Touré sits on the Global Leadership Council of Sanitation and Water for All – a global partnership to achieve universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation. She is a noted human rights activist and former Prime Minister of Senegal.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A host of by-elections present a key test for the new opposition and the country's democratic credentials.

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The judgement highlights how important compliance with standards is as clean air is confirmed as a constitutional right. Credit: Bigstock

By External Source
PRETORIA, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

A court in South Africa has confirmed the constitutional right of the country’s citizens to an environment that isn’t harmful to their health. This includes the right to clean air, as exposure to air pollution affects human health. Air pollution also affects land and water systems, and decreases agricultural yields.

The case, referred to as the “Deadly Air” case, was brought against the government by two environmental justice groups – groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action. They were represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights. The case concerned air pollution in the Highveld Priority Area. The area includes one of South Africa’s largest cities, Ekurhuleni, and a large portion of the Mpumalanga province.

Air pollution levels in the area are often over the legal thresholds specified in the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. These standards are set to protect health. Exceeding the threshold therefore indicates a health risk. There have been some small improvements in air quality in the area, but not enough to ensure that it’s in compliance with the established standards.

The fact that the standards were exceeded was a key aspect of the case and the judgement. The judgement declared that the poor air quality in this area:

is in breach of the residents’ section 24(a) constitutional rights to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being.

The case is important for a number of reasons. The first is that there was no penalty if air quality standards weren’t met even though the standards are set to protect health. The judgement highlights how important compliance with standards is as clean air is confirmed as a constitutional right.

The second is that the court’s finding that air quality is a constitutional right underscores the urgency with which South Africa needs to act. The hope is that the ruling will help unlock many of the challenges that have hindered improving air quality in this region and across the country.

 

Air pollution sources and solutions

The sources of air pollution in South Africa are diverse and complex. Managing them therefore requires a multi-sectoral approach.

When it come to pollution in the Highveld Priority Area, the focus is often placed on industrial emissions, especially from large emitters such as the state utility Eskom and chemical giant Sasol. But they aren’t the only sources of pollution in the area. And in many instances, the concentrations that South Africans breathe at ground-level are driven by other, closer sources. These include vehicles, veld fires, mining, waste burning, and burning of fuels such as wood or coal for cooking or heating.

The pollution levels are often highest in low-income settlements, urban areas, and areas close to large industries. Often, the highest levels of pollution are in vulnerable communities.

While it’s true that there are different sources of pollution across South Africa, most of the emissions are from the burning of fossil fuels. Approximately 86% of South Africa’s primary energy supply is from fossil fuels. In 2018, the total primary energy supply from renewable energy was 6%.

The contribution of fossil fuels to air pollution levels varies by place and time of year. But in many urban and industrialised areas, air pollution levels are dominated by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

The decarbonisation of South Africa’s energy system would therefore have large and rapid benefits to air quality.

A number of steps should be taken to get the process on the road.

 

What needs to be done

To improve air quality, the emissions of pollutants from a variety of sources must be decreased. This needs the involvement of different levels of government and coordination across numerous sectors and stakeholders.

Inadequate coordination among sectors has been a huge challenge in air quality management. This is due in part to the fact that improving air quality falls within the mandate of national as well as local government environment departments. But the sources of pollution and where policies and action are needed to decrease emissions, such as industry, mining, transport and energy, fall under other parts of the government to regulate.

To improve air quality, the active involvement of departments such as transport, mineral resources and energy, for example, are needed. In addition, local sources of pollution are often under the control of local government while regional sources such as large industries and pollution from highways are under provincial and national government.

Issues with local service delivery and waste management can lead to burning of waste that releases toxic pollutants right at ground level where people breathe. Thus effective air quality management stretches across sectors and levels of government.

This means that the various tiers of government need to be working in a co-ordinated way, which isn’t happening.

Another important step that needs to be taken is ensuring robust information on air pollution, especially the amount that is emitted, is available. This isn’t the case at the moment, which makes it difficult to track the trends of pollution.

For example, industrial emissions from regulated sources are collected by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment. But information on the amount emitted and the emission-reduction technologies that industries are using aren’t available. The importance of these data are highlighted in the court judgement.

This kind of information could make communities aware of the levels of pollution being emitted near them. In addition, scientists could use it to:

• better simulate current air quality levels
• assess the impacts of policies and interventions on air pollution
• interpret the long term trends in the concentration of pollutants.

Experiences from other countries have shown that improving air quality takes dedication, resources and time but has large health, environment and economic benefits.

I’m hopeful that this court decision can help improve coordination and dedication across sectors in the development, implementation and enforcement of policies to improve air quality. This is urgently needed as South Africa tries to forge a path towards a just energy transition, which involves moving away from its heavy dependence on fossil fuels in a way that manages the negative effects on jobs and communities.

South Africa has stated its commitment to a just transition through its domestic plans and international partnerships.

At the time of publishing, the government hadn’t indicated whether it would appeal this landmark decision. As the decision can act as a catalyst for improved air quality in South Africa, it would be a shame if the government did appeal.

Rebecca Garland, Associate Professor, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Access to clean, affordable and safe drinking water is far from universal across Africa. Credit: Joyce Chimbi

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

Joan Waweru was among villagers on their regular trek to the river to fetch water when they discovered a neighbour’s dead body, believed to have committed suicide by drowning in river Kamiti.

She was thirteen years old and recalls how even after the traumatizing incident, the village, and many others along river Kamiti, which runs along coffee plantations in Kiambu County of Kenya’s Central region, continued to rely on the river as their primary source of water for all domestic purposes.

Ten years on, she tells IPS that the river is still the primary water source for her family and many other households in Kiaibabu village.

“My mother still walks about three kilometres to the river and back, one trip in the morning and another in the evening. So, in total, she walks six kilometres every day to fetch 60 litres of water. She carries a 20-litre container on her back and two 5-litre containers on each hand,” she says.

“River Maing’oroti is about a kilometre away from our house, but over the years, the river has become a small stream, and it takes a lot of time to fill up a 20-litre container.”

The UN estimates show that just like Waweru’s mother, the average woman in rural Africa walks six kilometres every day to fetch 40 litres of water. Kenya is classified as a water-scarce country as only approximately 56 percent of the population has access to clean water.

As the global community marks World Water Day on March 22 under the theme ‘Groundwater: making the invisible visible’, UN research predicts water scarcity in Africa could reach dangerously high levels by 2025.

With one in three people in Africa facing water scarcity, access to clean, affordable, and safe drinking water is far from universal across the continent.

On average, people in sub-Saharan Africa travel 30 minutes daily to access water. According to UN estimates, the sub-Saharan Africa region loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water.

In the absence of clean and easily accessible water, research shows families and communities, particularly in rural Africa and informal urban settlements, will remain locked in generational poverty.

In August 2021, UNICEF revealed that “nearly nine of 10 children in North Africa live in areas of high or extremely high-water stresses with serious consequences on their health, nutrition, cognitive development and future livelihoods.”

Against this backdrop, the World Health Organization says that there is an economic gain or return of between three to 34 US dollars for every dollar invested in water sanitation.

The capital cost required to secure safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene for all people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates, is 35 billion US dollars per year.

Experts in natural resources such as Simon Peter Njuguna from Kenya’s Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation say securing safe drinking water for all requires exploring, protecting, and sustainably using groundwater.

Groundwater, he says, is critical to human survival and in adapting to climate change because it holds vast quantities of water and feeds springs, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and oceans.

Home to 677 lakes, Njuguna tells IPS that Africa has the largest volume of non-frozen water and that two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa rely on surface water from lakes, rivers, wetlands and even oceans.

Despite large volumes of surface water, WRI research shows 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to basic drinking water and that African countries face some of the highest water risks in the world.

Water scarcity in Africa, Njuguna tells IPS, is largely driven by a lack of investment in water infrastructure such as piping to bring water closer to the people.

In Kampala and Lagos, for instance, WRI estimates show only 15 percent of city residents have access to piped water.

“Water scarcity is also a consequence of changing weather patterns including unpredictable rainfall, low rainfall and rising temperatures,” he says.

Nairobi based food safety and security expert Evans Kori tells IPS that water drives Africa’s GDP and is central to food security.

WRI estimates show for 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population, agriculture is the primary source of income. Water stresses due to changing weather patterns spell doom for the region because more than 95 percent of farming in sub-Saharan Africa relies on rainfall.

Kori says water is a major and critical factor of agricultural production and stresses that escalating water insecurity is as much a health and nutrition issue as it is a development issue.

“Serious investment in water-related infrastructure is urgently needed to ensure all people, and more so the most vulnerable households, have access to clean water. In Kenya, for instance, despite rivers increasingly becoming crime scenes where murdered people are dumped, for many rural households, the river is the only option,” he says.

He references river Yala which rises from the Rift Valley region and flows for approximately 219 kilometres into Lake Victoria in Kisumu County.

In January 2022, more than 20 bodies in various states of decomposition were retrieved from the river Yala after locals saw bodies floating on the surface.

“Yala is not an isolated incident. In June 2021, for example, more than 15 bodies were found in rivers within Murang’a County, and for many locals, these rivers are a primary source of water. Urgent intervention is needed because this is a health disaster,” Kori observes.

Even though surface water is considered unfit for human consumption unless first filtered and disinfected, safety is not a priority for millions of poor and vulnerable households across the African continent.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

• A scathing new analysis of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) finds that the program is failing at its objective to increase food security on the continent, despite massive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US, UK, and German governments.

• On March 30, critics of AGRA will brief U.S. congressional aides about why they think it is doing more harm than good.

• As fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives that techniques like agroecology offer, a new opinion piece argues.

A critical new donor-funded evaluation of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has confirmed what African civil society and faith leaders have claimed: “AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders.”

The evaluation should be a wake up call, and not just for the private and bilateral donors that have bankrolled this 15-year-old effort to the tune of $1 billion. It should also rouse African governments to repurpose their agricultural subsidies from the Green Revolution package of commercial seeds and fertilizers to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input approaches. They have been providing as much as $1 billion per year for such input subsidies.

Failing Africa’s farmers

Carried out by consulting firm Mathematica, the evaluation confirms that the Green Revolution has failed to achieve AGRA’s stated goal to “catalyze a farming revolution in Africa.”

Wambui Mwihaki, a farmer from central Kenya, takes stock of her thriving maize crop following adoption of agroecology. Credit: David Njagi for Mongabay.

The assessment was funded by AGRA’s primary sponsor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on behalf of other lead donors in AGRA’s Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa (PIATA): the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; the Rockefeller Foundation; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The evaluation includes a summary of findings, a statistical appendix, and AGRA’s formal responses to the findings, all available publicly.

Such transparency is welcome. AGRA has been plagued by a lack of accountability since its founding in 2006. I undertook my own assessment of AGRA in 2020 when I could find no comprehensive analysis, from AGRA nor its donors, of its progress toward ambitious goals to double yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming families while halving food insecurity by 2020. Using national-level data, I found little evidence of progress, with meager productivity increases, little progress on poverty, and a 31% increase in the number of undernourished people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries.

The new evaluation is far from comprehensive. It covers only AGRA’s last five years of work, ignoring its first 10. It reports on results in just six of AGRA’s current 11 focus countries. Its data on yields is almost exclusively on maize and rice, to the exclusion of the many other staple food crops crucial to Africans’ sustenance. And it fails to incorporate or address the concerns raised publicly by African civil society and faith leaders in public letters to AGRA’s donors.

Agroforestry is a kind of agroecology where crops are grown in combination with trees, like this pumpkin that Eunice Manyi raised among fruit trees in Kenya. Credit: David Njagi for Mongabay.

Still, the findings about poor outcomes for farmers should raise concerns for private and bilateral donors to AGRA’s PIATA strategy and for the African governments that are active partners – and funders – in that effort.

Quoting from the evaluation:

• “PIATA improved maize yields in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, but not in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, or Kenya.” Maize is AGRA’s most heavily supported crop, so the failure to achieve yield growth in half the countries studied is alarming.
• “Across these six countries, only farmers in Burkina Faso experienced improved maize sales as a result of PIATA.” This raises serious questions about the Green Revolution “theory of change.” Even when yields rose, they failed to translate into rising incomes for farmers.
• “Farmers who adopted improved inputs and experienced yield increases were typically younger, male, and relatively wealthier…. productivity and income gains were also concentrated among these relatively high-resource farmers.” This finding directly contradicts the stated goals of USAID and other bilateral donors to ensure that their assistance programs benefit and empower women.
• “AGRA’s next strategy could formally recognize that agricultural technologies and practices—such as fertilizer use and rice cultivation—can negatively impact environmental conditions and greenhouse gas emissions.” Evaluators fault AGRA on a wide range of environmentally damaging impacts, including a lack of attention to helping farmers adapt to climate change.
• “AGRA surveys are currently not suited for rigorous impact analysis.” Evaluators offer many criticisms of the initiative’s poor monitoring and evaluation methods.

Time to rethink Green Revolution model

Evaluators gave AGRA credit for some of its work, saying it “was successful in developing key policy reforms, mobilizing flagships and partnerships, and reaching farmers with extension and seeds,” and it helped “incentivize private sector engagement in the production and delivery of improved seeds in some countries.”

But these intermediate objectives, carried out with substantial funding over 15 years, have thus far failed to further the goals of improving farmers’ productivity, incomes, and food security. When one’s development successes fail to produce the intended results, after 15 years and one billion dollars in donor funding, it is time to reconsider the efficacy of the initiative. It is time to rethink the Green Revolution model.

See related: Push-pull agroecology method debugs organic farming’s pest problem in Kenya

Farmers with seeds in West Africa. Image courtesy of Grassroots International.

AGRA’s management responded to the evaluation saying, “We must therefore rethink our models and focus our support, and that of our partners, on building resilience and adaptation specifically for smallholder farmers.” But there is little sign AGRA intends to pull back from its costly input-intensive Green Revolution model. AGRA president Agnes Kalibata recently defended the status quo in a Q&A with the East African.

Hopefully donors and African governments will take the new evaluation more seriously. African civil society and faith leaders have urged donors to shift their funding to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input systems, which were endorsed last year by the U.N. Committee on World Food Security as a key strategy for climate-resilient development. Such approaches have shown far better results, raising yields across a range of food crops, increasing productivity over time as soil fertility improves, increasing incomes and reducing risk for farmers by cutting input costs, and improving food security and nutrition from a diverse array of crops.

USAID was quick to reject any change in aid priorities. A spokesperson told US Right to Know, “USAID reviewed the findings and recommendations and is satisfied with the independence and rigor of the [Mathematica] evaluation. We appreciate AGRA’s response to the report conclusions and concur with their proposed next steps to improve performance outcomes.”

That will not satisfy African civil society and faith leaders, who were not consulted for the Mathematica evaluation. They plan to take their complaints to the U.S. Congress, which this year has to reauthorize funding for AGRA through its Feed the Future initiative. On March 30, they will brief congressional aides in a closed-door session to explain why the supposed beneficiaries think AGRA is doing more harm than good. As evaluators acknowledge, the main beneficiaries are wealthier male farmers, an outcome at odds with the stated goals of U.S. development policy.

As fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives agroecology offers. Kenyan farmers report today that the biofertilizers they make themselves from locally available materials cost one-quarter the price of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers.

African governments should recognize that continuing to subsidize increasingly expensive synthetic fertilizer is a losing proposition, especially when that and other Green Revolution inputs are producing such meager results.

It is time for private and bilateral donors – and African governments – to stop throwing good money after bad and recognize that their 15-year effort to “catalyze a farming revolution in Africa” through Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers has fallen short. Fortunately, more promising alternatives are proving their efficacy all over the world. They deserve support.

Timothy A. Wise is a Senior Research Fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. A detailed analysis of the recent evaluation of AGRA is available from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), where the author is a senior advisor.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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