Africa

School meals have a host of benefits, including improving enrollments and preventing malnutrition. Now the School Meals Coalition plans to recruit local food producers to assist in the programme. Credit: Bill Wegener/Unsplash

By Naureen Hossain
United Nations, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

Meals at schools not only give each child a nutritious meal but increase enrolments, among other benefits.

This emerged at a recent launch of the School Meals Coalition, a new initiative that aims to give every child a nutritious meal by 2030 through bolstering health and nutrition programmes. The coalition comprises over 60 countries and 55 partners dedicated to restoring, improving and up-scaling meal programs and food systems. Among their partners are UN agencies UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP), UN Nutrition, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and UNESCO.

In the briefing, the speakers identified School Meals Coalition’s primary goals to restore school meal programmes to the status before the COVID-19 pandemic and reach children in vulnerable areas who have not accessed these plans before. The member countries’ political leaders have come together to support this “important initiative”, according to the permanent representative of Finland to the United Nations, Jukka Salovaara.

“School meals are so much more than just a plate of food. It’s really an opportunity to transform communities, improve education, and food systems globally,” he said.

School meal programmes are a significant safety net for children and their communities. As one of the primary means for children to get healthy meals, they help combat poverty and malnutrition. Their impact on education is seen in increased engagement from students. They also serve as incentives for families to send their children, especially girls, to schools, thus supporting children’s rights to education, nutrition and well-being.

“We see documented jumps of 9 to 12 per cent in enrollment increases just because the meals are present,” WFP Director of School-Based Programmes Carmen Burbano said. “So, these are really important instruments to bring [children] to school.”

The programmes would also provide opportunities for sustainable development practices and transformations in food systems. One key strategy is to promote and maintain home-grown school meal programmes, recruiting local farmers and markets to provide food supplies. Investing in school meal programmes, especially through domestic spending, has proven to increase coverage. In low-income countries, the number of children receiving school meals increased by 36 percent when their governments increased the budgets for these programs.

A WFP study found that at the beginning of 2020, over 380 million children globally received meals through school meal programmes. The closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic effectively disrupted those programmes, depriving 370 million children of what was effectively their main meal for the day. While there have been marked improvements since schools re-opened worldwide, with 238 million children accessing the school meals, there are still 150 million children that don’t have access.

The School Meals Coalition aims to close this gap through a system of collaboration between member countries and their partners. Among their initiatives will be a monitoring and accountability mechanism that is being developed by the WFP and its partners, which will be used to follow the coalition’s accomplishments, and a peer-to-peer information-sharing network, spearheaded by the German government, between members and partners that will use findings to influence their programme output.

Even before the pandemic, school meal programmes did not reach the most vulnerable children, 73 million, who could not access these programmes. Reaching children that have fallen through the cracks can be challenging, but it is significantly more difficult in countries affected by conflict or environmental disruptions.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and the World Food Programme (WFP) earlier signed a memorandum of understanding to feed children in protracted crises.

At the signing, WFP Assistant Executive Director, Valerie Guarnieri said: “Simply put, sick children cannot attend school and hungry children cannot learn. It is essential we invest more in the health and nutrition of young learners, particularly girls.”

ECW Director, Yasmine Sherif said a feeding scheme made a massive difference in children’s lives.

“For many children and youth in crisis-affected countries, a meal at school may be the only food they eat all day and can be an important incentive for families to send and keep girls and boys in school. It is also essential for a young person to actually focus and learn,” she said.

The coalition plans to find ways to break the barriers to enable children to reach school or look for alternative learning pathways to reach children who could not physically attend school.

The factors that can prevent children from fully attending schools, such as poverty, complexity in family lives, or conflict, have only been exacerbated over the last nearly two years, thanks mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic. As more schools open worldwide, the restoration of school meal programmes is expected to provide much-needed support for children and their communities in turn.

“This is a very urgent and timely priority,” said Head of the Sustainable Development Unit of the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations, Olivier Richard. “Because school meals are very important for the recovery of our societies from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

To learn more about the School Meal Coalitions, you can follow their page.

 

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Brazil has a "green future," announced Environment Minister Joaquim Leite and Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, in a videoconference presentation from Brasilia at the Glasgow climate summit, in an attempt to shore up Brazil’s credibility, damaged by Amazon deforestation. The two officials concealed the fact that deforestation in the Amazon rose by 21.9 percent last year. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil-Fotos Públicas

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

For three weeks, the Brazilian government concealed the fact that deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest increased by nearly 22 percent last year, accentuating a trend that threatens to derail efforts to curb global warming.

The report by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) based on the data for the year covering August 2020 to July 2021 is dated Oct. 27, but the government did not release it until Thursday, Nov. 18.

It thus prevented the disaster from further undermining the credibility of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government, already damaged by almost three years of anti-environmental policies and actions, ahead of and during the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the climate change convention, held in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13.Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

INPE’s Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon Project (Prodes) recorded 13,235 square kilometers of deforestation, 21.97 percent more than in the previous period and almost three times the 2012 total of 4,571 square kilometers.

The so-called Legal Amazon, a region covering 5.01 million square kilometers in Brazil, has already lost about 17 percent of its forest cover. In a similar sized area the forests were degraded, i.e. some species were cut down and biodiversity and biomass were reduced, according to the non-governmental Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (IMAZON).

Carlos Nobre, one of the country’s leading climatologists and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the world’s largest tropical forest is approaching irreversible degradation in a process of “savannization” (the gradual transition of tropical rainforest into savanna).

The point of no return is a 20 to 25 percent deforestation rate, estimates Nobre, a researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo and a member of the Brazilian and U.S. national academies of sciences.

Reaching that point would be a disaster for the planet. Amazon forests and soils store carbon equivalent to five years of global emissions, experts calculate. Forest collapse would release a large part of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

A similar risk comes from the permafrost, a layer of frozen subsoil beneath the Arctic and Greenland ice, for example, which is beginning to thaw in the face of global warming.

This is another gigantic carbon store that, if released, would seriously undermine the attempt to limit the increase in the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.

The Amazon rainforest, an immense biome spread over eight South American countries plus the territory of French Guiana, is therefore key in the search for solutions to the climate crisis.

Evolution of the deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon since 1988, with its ups and downs and an upward tendency in the last nine years. Policies to crack down on environmental crimes by strengthened public agencies were successful between 2004 and 2012. Graphic: INPE

Brazil, which accounts for 60 percent of the biome, plays a decisive role. And that is why it is the obvious target of the measure announced by the European Commission, which, with the expected approval of the European Parliament, aims to ban the import of agricultural products associated with deforestation or forest degradation.

The Commission, the executive body of the 27-nation European Union, does not distinguish between legal and illegal deforestation. It requires exporters to certify the exemption of their products by means of tracing suppliers.

Brazil is a leading agricultural exporter that is in the sights of environmentalists and leaders who, for commercial or environmental reasons, want to preserve the world’s remaining forests.

The 75 percent increase in Amazon deforestation in the nearly three years of the Bolsonaro administration exacerbates Brazil’s vulnerability to environmentally motivated trade restrictions.

This was the likely reason for a shift in the attitude of the governmental delegation in Glasgow during COP26.

Unexpectedly, Brazil adhered to the commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, a measure that affects cattle ranching, which accounts for 71.8 percent of the country’s emissions of this greenhouse gas.

As the world’s largest exporter of beef, which brought in 8.4 billion dollars for two million tons in 2020, Brazil had previously rejected proposals targeting methane, a gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in global warming.

Brazil also pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2028, two years ahead of the target, and stopped obstructing agreements such as the carbon market, in a totally different stance from the one it had taken in the previous two years.

The threat of trade barriers and the attempt to improve the government’s international reputation are behind the new attitude. The new ministers of Foreign Affairs, Carlos França, and Environment, Joaquim Leite, in office since April and June, respectively, are trying to mitigate the damage caused by their anti-diplomatic and anti-environmental predecessors.

But the new data on Amazon deforestation and the delay in its disclosure unleashed a new backlash.

President Jair Bolsonaro stated that the Amazon has kept its forests intact since 1500 and does not suffer from fires because it is humid, in a Nov. 15 speech during the Invest Brazil Forum, held in Dubai to attract capital to the country. He made this claim when he already knew that in the last year deforestation had grown by almost 22 percent. CREDIT: Alan Santos/PR-Fotos Públicas

Leite claimed not to have had prior knowledge of the INPE report, difficult to believe from a member of a government known for using fake news and disinformation. He announced that the government would take a “forceful” stance against environmental crimes in the Amazon, commenting on the “unacceptable” new deforestation figures.

Together with the Minister of Justice and Public Security Anderson Torres, who has the Federal Police under his administration, he promised to mobilize the necessary forces to combat illegal deforestation.

The reaction is tardy and of doubtful success, given the contrary stance taken by the president and the deactivation of the environmental bodies by the previous minister, Ricardo Salles, who defended illegal loggers against police action.

The former minister stripped the two institutes executing environmental policy, one for inspection and the other for biodiversity protection and management of conservation units, of resources and specialists. He also appointed unqualified people, such as military police, to command these bodies.

President Bolsonaro abolished councils and other mechanisms for public participation in environmental management, as in other sectors, and encouraged several illegal activities in the Amazon, such as “garimpo” (informal mining) and the invasion of indigenous areas and public lands.

The result could only be an increase in the deforestation and forest fires that spread the destruction in the last two years. The smoke from the “slash-and-burn” clearing technique polluted the air in cities more than 1,000 kilometers away.

Bolsonaro, however, declared on Nov. 15 in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, that fires do not occur in the Amazon due to the humidity of the rainforest and that 90 percent of the region remains “the same as in 1500,” when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil.

His vice-president, General Hamilton Mourão, acknowledged that “deforestation in the Amazon is real, the INPE data leave no doubt.” His unusual disagreement with the president arises from his experience in presiding over the National Council of the Legal Amazon, which proposes and coordinates actions in the region.

Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

 

Nations ban flights as health officials hold an urgent meeting over a new variant in southern Africa.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

While COVID 19 is keeping the world and news media in its constant grip and national politics often come to the forefront, it might be easy to forget urgent and nevertheless related matters. One is how global education has suffered and how children and youngsters have been forced to cope with a different reality. This aspect like so many other of human existence is gendered and while addressing education it is relevant to talk about changing gender roles as well.

Wonder Woman, DC Comics

The global plight of girls and young women has for several years been rightly emphasized. However, this focus may overshadow a phenomenon that increasingly is occurring in both developed and developing countries – boys are increasingly dropping out from schools, while young men to a higher degree than young women are not attracted by higher education. A recent article in the magazine The Atlantic pointed out that US colleges and universities currently enroll six women for every four men, a gender gap that is getting wider with every year.

The phenomenon is far from unique to USA. All over the world, more women than men are currently entering tertiary education. In all OECD countries with available data, women have a higher degree frequency than men. The average is currently 72 percent among women and 61 percent among men and everywhere the gap is widening. Several reasons have been put forward for this trend, most common is to emphasize that young men might value connections and contacts more than higher education, while female students usually view education as more than a means to make money. It has been found that more young women than men assume that education is an essential part of their development and personal independence, something that generally has been related to the clearing away of barriers to women’s education and an opening up for their access to professions requiring advanced higher education. Women are increasingly competing with men for advanced professions. Skills are becoming more crucial than gender. Still, the gender gap in remuneration continues to persist.

However, the connection between gender and education continues to be complicated. In several countries, the importance of gender roles is more pronounced in schooling at first – and secondary levels, than at the tertiary one. Economic concerns tend to be decisive for children’s schooling. Even if poor parents don’t pay school fees, money is spent on transportation, textbooks and clothing. Since schooling could mean that a girl will spend less time helping at home, a poor family might consider sending her to school as detrimental to its well-being. To a higher degree than boys, responsibilities like, cooking, cleaning and taking care of sick parents and babysitting siblings, still tend to fall on girls.

Furthermore, schools may be far from home and if lessons take place in the evenings, roads, schools and homes may have limited, or no electricity and light at all. All over the world, girls and boys are harassed and abused on their way to school and girls are disproportionately targeted. The school might also be a place of discomfort and danger, and not only fellow students but even teachers may behave like predators. A situation worsened in conflict and crisis-affected areas. Schools are often targeted by rebel groups; education suffers, schools stop functioning. During such, and other, emergencies, gender is an important factor. In several areas, schools providing education for girls are particularly targeted and refugee girls are half as likely to be in school as boys in the same situation.

Some poor parents may assume that it is not worth the effort and loss of earnings to educate their daughters – they might be married off to a man who will take responsibility for them. It is thus common that poor parents consent that their daughters marry before they reach the age of 18, explaining that this will protect them from harm and social stigma. However, an uneducated child bride is more likely to experience early pregnancy, undernourishment, domestic violence, and pregnancy complications. Furthermore, she will generally, due to dependency on her spouse’s whims and needs, as well as lack of education, be unable to gain financial independence. Girls’ lack of schooling is detrimental to national growth and general health. Providing efficient and free education to girls benefit the entire society, fomenting not only equality and general well-being – child marriage rates decline, but family health also improves, while child and maternal mortality rates fall, and child stunting drops.

In developing countries drop-outs from school tend to be most common among girls and early marriages and pregnancy are the main reasons for this. Teen mothers may find it impossible to continue their schooling due to lack of daycare, while other young women may decide that it is preferable to leave school and start a family early. If they lack a spouse and/or support of a family it is even harder for them to continue an education and survival becomes their main goal. If opportunities in the labour market, not the least in the “informal” sector, are attainable any desperate person may choose those earnings which in the short term are preferable to a continued investment in schooling.

More recently, it has to a higher degree than before been noticed that gender roles might also be detrimental for boys’ education. Social change affects them as well as it affects girls. For example, in Mongolia poor families depending on cattle herding tend to take their boys out of school and as farm lands and rural economy evolves, families find it more economically rewarding to keep boys in farming, rather than sending them to school. In Mongolia, 65 percent of those children not finishing secondary school are boys and the trend continues, while female domination is reported in the entire education system.

In many poor countries, opportunities for jobs after graduation are limited, making alternative lifestyles more attractive, even if they might go against accepted values and behaviour. There is always an allure of rapidly and easily gained money through unskilled work and illicit activities, instead of dreary and unpaid schooling, combined with the risk of not obtaining a job answering to skills developed through education. Just like girls might be needed for household chores, boys and young men may be expected to support poor, often single-headed households with work that cannot be obstructed by schooling. Such a situation might in poor districts with an inadequately supported school system be worsened by violence in and around schools, making it untenable for youth to continue attending, while illicit activities may offer more attractive alternatives than staying in school. Predators are lurking to abuse and exploit boys – criminal gangs and militia recruit youngsters, supported by prevalent myths about male superiority and temerity.

Marginalized areas in both wealthy and poor nations suffer from boys dropping out of school and ending up in illicit activities, which make them prone to violence. Jamaica is for example struggling with boys from poor families increasingly dropping out of school, ending up in unemployment, idleness, reckless behaviour and even worse – criminality. In Jamaica, boys’ participation in secondary schooling is rapidly declining. At all levels, girls are outperforming boys and young women are more than twice as likely as young men to enter tertiary education.

It is in higher education that differences between young men’s and women’s attendance is becoming even more apparent than at first – and secondary levels. The latest OECD report on education states that the gap between female and male attendance at tertiary levels of education is with every year increasing with at least one percentage point. In 2020, overall education levels combined, enrollment rates were on average 7 percentage points higher for 20-24 year-old women than for men. The largest gap in this age group was found in Slovenia (20 percentage points) and the gap was at least 15 percentage points in Argentina, Israel and Poland. On average across OECD countries with available data, boys are more likely to repeat a grade than girls and represent 61 percent of the number of repeaters in lower secondary education.

These ratios are even wider in the Gulf Emirates, where boys are dropping out of secondary school at a rate of up to 20 percent in a single year. This while girls and young women surpass their male counterparts in attendance and outperform them at all levels and across all subjects. In the Emirates this tendency may be explained by the fact that men are privileged and may to a higher degree than women count upon good connections and general support. Even in a country like Saudi Arabia, the only Islamic country (so far – Afghanistan is moving in the same direction) that has a separate system of female education and where women’s access to the labour market is restricted, more than 60 percent of higher education graduates are women.

These are just a few examples of how education, both positively and negatively, is affected by gender and socioeconomic change. Equality is beneficent for any social system and while addressing an area like education the entire spectrum of gender and access must be taken into consideration, meaning that different needs and prerequisites for boys and girls must be part of the equation. Society is constantly changing and education changes in close symbiosis with it. Nevertheless, for the benefit of us all we must strive for guaranteeing that this change fosters equal rights and general well-being, something that will not be achieved if gender aspects are ignored.

Sources: Thompson, Derek (2021), “Colleges Have a Guy Problem,” The Atlantic, 14 September. https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education and https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance_19991487

 

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Travellers at Cape Town airport respond to new UK quarantine measures over Covid variant.

Fears about the impact on vaccines mean travel from six African countries had to be restricted, he adds.

Brighton midfielder Enock Mwepu says his first-ever Premier League goal was inspired by his 'African idol' Yaya Toure.

Six southern African countries are put on the red list, amid "deep concern" over a new variant of the virus.

The launch of PAPSS will save $5 billion yearly and boost intra-African trade. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

When Fidelis Adele, the CEO of Freetown-based Solid Graphics, a printing and communications company, needed to order some printing equipment from Nigeria in September, he paid an extra $165 on top of a $10,000 bank transfer to the seller. Yet it took three days for the money transferred in Sierra Leone to be credited to the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria.

“I paid $30 as transfer fee, $35 as SWIFT charges and another $100 bank charges,” Adele told Africa Renewal. SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global network that processes international payments.

Adele did not attempt to use financial services companies such as Western Union or MoneyGram because the “exchange rate for those companies is just bad.”

The other option would have been to fly to Lagos, a three-hour journey, carrying the physical cash along. “I have done that a few times,” he said, “but it is not cost-effective unless it’s a huge amount, and it is risky.”

Traders across Africa experience similar ordeal paying for goods or services across borders. In the process they lose valuable time and money.

This cumbersome and time-consuming process “costs us [Africans] about $5 billion in [money transfer] charges each year,” according to Benedict Oramah, President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), who said, in an interview with Africa Renewal: “We are a poor continent. We shouldn’t waste money like that.”

Payment system launched

To address the situation, Afreximbank has partnered with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat to launch the Pan-African Payments and Settlement Systems (PAPSS), a platform that facilitates instant cross-border payments in local currencies between countries.

Kingsley Ighobor

The PAPSS has been piloted successfully in the six countries that make up the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ)—Nigeria, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Guinea. Because of its multi-currency and bi-lingual makeup, WAMZ is considered a microcosm of the continent.

On using WAMZ for the pilot, Prof. Oramah says: “The six WAMZ countries have different currencies. One of the countries is Francophone and the others are Anglophone. You have a big economy like Nigeria and then you have smaller economies. So, anything that can go wrong in other parts of Africa would have gone wrong in the WAMZ, and we will have been able to address it during the piloting phase.”

The operational rollout of PAPSS was announced at the end of September, meaning that countries’ central banks, which will be the clearing agents, can now coordinate with Afreximbank, which is the main clearing agent and provider of settlement guarantees and overdraft facilities.

Afreximbank doled out $500 million to service West Africa and intends to provide a further $3 billion for an Africa-wide PAPSS operation.

Analysts expect African traders, especially those in West Africa, to begin to take advantage of the platform by the end of 2021.

Oramah, who is based in Cairo, Egypt, explains the hurdles faced by African traders in personal terms: “I want to transfer money to Nigeria from Egypt. It goes through a corresponding bank in a country outside of Africa before it arrives in Nigeria. I pay charges before the person in Nigeria gets it.

“And it takes time. Sometimes it takes weeks. So, we [Afreximbank] calculated how much that costs the continent—forget about the time—it costs Africans $5 billion yearly.

“Also, if I am in Egypt, and I want to watch my favourite Nollywood movies, I probably have to remit in US dollars. But the PAPSS changes that for you. All you need do is pay the Nigerian producer in Nigerian Naira.”

The CEO of PAPSS Mike Ogbalu says that during the piloting phase in West Africa, bank accounts in different countries were debited and credited within 10 seconds. He has assured of a robust technology that can handle large transactions.

How PAPSS works

Sending money using the PAPSS is a five-step process:

• The first step is when an individual issues a payment instruction to their local bank or payment service provider.
• Second, the bank or the payment service provider sends the instructions to PAPSS.
• Third, PAPSS validates the payment instruction.
• Fourth, upon successful validation, PAPSS will forward the instruction to the beneficiary’s bank or payment service provider.
• Lastly, the bank or payment service provide pays the transferred funds, in local currency, to the beneficiary.

In announcing the rollout of PAPSS, Afreximbank says that by “simplifying cross-border transactions and reducing the dependency on hard currencies for these transactions, PAPSS is set to boost intra-African trade significantly.”

Intra-African trade is currently at a meager 17 per cent.

The PAPSS is also expected to lead to increases in value addition to products, jobs creation and more earnings for traders.

Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of AfCFTA Secretariat, said PAPSS will lead to efficient cross-border trade transactions and put Africa on a new economic trajectory.

“There are 42 currencies in Africa. We want to make sure that a trader in Ghana can transfer Ghanaian cedi to a counterpart in Kenya who will receive Kenyan shillings,” Mene told Africa Renewal in an earlier interview.

Adele agrees that PAPSS will help his business. “If I can take the Leones to a bank here [in Sierra Leone] and pay for printing products in Nigeria, and the money is instantly deposited in the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria, that would be extraordinary,” he says.

Until briefed by Africa Renewal, Adele was not aware of the PAPSS, underscoring the communication challenge of raising intra-African traders’ awareness about the platform.

Oramah notes, however, that a campaign is underway to market and promote the PAPSS, hoping that by the end of the year African traders will be informed enough to use the system.

Source: Africa Renewal, which reports on, and examines, the many different aspects of the UN’s involvement in Africa, especially within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

 

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A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.

The ancient walkway, connecting two of the Egyptian city's greatest temples, took decades to excavate.

Youth at the Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal has a large youth population, half of which is under the age of 18. By 2025, 376,000 youth are expected to enter the job market that offers only 30,000 jobs. And this number will rise to 411,000 in 2030, according to the Wilson Centre. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Johann Ivanov
ACCRA, Ghana, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

The Covid-19 pandemic aggravated Africa’s already severe employment crisis. The solution lies in a long-term political and economic transformation.

Africa is facing a severe employment crisis. But if nothing is done to find a solution, it could get much worse in the not-too-distant future, as World Bank projections from 2017 show: By 2035, Africa’s working age population will expand by 450 million.

At the same time, however, only 100 million jobs are expected be created in the same period. And that was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit: Africa was severely affected and its economies experienced a contraction by 2 per cent in 2020. UNECA estimates that almost 30 million Africans have been pushed below the extreme poverty line.

In the years prior to the pandemic, especially between 2016 and 2020, Africa had experienced solid economic growth. Yet, such growth was mainly driven by high commodity prices and has not translated into the creation of sustainable employment. That’s particularly concerning when looking at Africa’s demographics.

By the year 2050, Africa’s youth (15-35 years) is expected to double to 830 million people and the total population of the continent will reach about 2,5 billion people. Today, Africa is the world’s youngest continent – in 2020, it’s median age was 19,7 years. And Africa will remain the world’s youngest continent for decades to come.

Johann Ivanov

In this context, current estimates show that Africa needs to create between 10 to 18 million jobs annually solely to absorb the youth entering its labour markets. However, only around three million formal jobs are created at the moment and the majority of Africa’s youth is destined to remain in the informal economy, which comprises more than 80 per cent of the continent’s workforce.

A progressive approach to employment

It is a modern-day tragedy that millions of young Africans will not be able to find employment, have enough resources to support their families, or realise their full potential. And although there is a very active and informed international debate around generating employment, it does not seem to generate viable solutions that would lead to significant changes in the employment situation.

All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Africa’s employment crisis is so complex that it requires fundamental thinking about the direction of structural transformation on the continent. Do the approaches of gradual industrialisation that worked for East Asia also work in Africa?

To what extent is free trade part of the problem and not part of the solution to the employment crisis? How can there be real change if governments are undemocratic, corrupt, and forestalling reforms?

A progressive approach to tackling the employment crisis in Africa, which could inspire and inform both leaders in Africa and European policy-makers, is long overdue. This progressive approach is based on two interdependent sets of principles – political and economic. Here are some ideas.

First and foremost, the political side means putting in place solid democratic institutions to organise and oversee structural transformation and economic reforms. All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Without accountability, enforced through democratic institutions, the popular will won’t be reflected in the developmental model. Without the corrective function of democracy, development will lead to more inequality and benefit just the privileged few.

Political reforms also need to include a bold stance against corruption. Africans are fed up with governments that are primarily concerned with remaining in power to pocket the state’s resources.

State capture needs to be confronted by shifting power from the executive to a politically independent and efficient judiciary that is able to enforce accountability and democratic principles.

Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

Broad societal coalitions, including democratic trade unions, NGOs, activists, environmental groups, and progressive political leaders have to take the lead here and articulate their demands for a democratic turn towards more accountability. In particular, women have to play a key role in this process as they are disproportionately affected by the current employment scenario.

Together, these groups need to pile more pressure on governments to actively involve civil society, academia, labour representatives, and the private sector in building strategies to create employment and monitor the execution of employment programmes. This is not just an inconvenient exercise, but a crucial attempt to improve the quality of political decisions and outcomes.

The economic principles have to be pursued and demanded with the same energy as the political ones. Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

For that to succeed, systems of revenue mobilisation have to be improved. Firstly, the focus could be put on the commodities sector – a major source of income in many African countries. Many are exporting oil, gold, metals, cocoa but struggle to negotiate agreements that guarantee a fair share of these exports.

More funds could be extracted from multinationals operating in Africa. Moreover, some parts of the vast informal economy in Africa, remaining in the informal sector for tax evasion reasons – like some professionals in the urban economies –, could be another source of revenue. Loopholes in the tax system also have to be plugged proactively.

African states have to invest heavily into public goods such as education, healthcare, energy, and digitalisation. The basic infrastructure is key for the transformation of the economies.

The construction sector, for instance, could be one of the areas where significant employment can be generated. In public tender processes for large infrastructure projects, financed either by African countries or international financial institutions, African companies should get a preferential treatment.

Significant state investment is required into well-designed public works programmes across the continent. Those are both a strategy towards poverty reduction and generation of employment. A constant evaluation of public works programmes and reasonable exit strategies are necessary to keep costs under control.

Moreover, states have to roll out programmes for providing bank accounts to all citizens – the transfer of basic income could be an element for direct support.

A decades-long project

It is an illusion to believe that all of the employment challenges can be solved by states only. The main source of employment will remain the private sector and most employment will be created in urban areas, mainly in the services sector.

So called ‘industries without smokestacks’, namely tourism, agri-business, remote office services, creative industries, have some potential for employment creation. To generate long-term sustainable employment and decent jobs, however, will require significant transfer of knowledge and technology from developed countries to African ones.

Last but not least, trade among African countries – accelerated through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which has started its operations on 1 January 2021 – could lead to economic growth and employment effects. At the same time, free trade may have adverse effects on immature industries in Africa.

That’s why pockets of industries should rather be nurtured and protected against competition. Also, areas that are going to be affected by potential negative effects of AfCFTA, need to be compensated for their losses.

Tackling Africa’s employment crisis is a process that will take years, if not decades. Small steps are more realistic than leapfrogging fantasies. All too often, however, the political conversation is preoccupied with a shortsighted emphasis on how favourable economic factors may stimulate employment creation.

But it is key to understand that solid political and economic principles, overseen by the people primarily affected by the transformation, must walk hand in hand – as both are determining a progressive approach to economic growth and employment creation in Africa.

Johann Ivanov is the Resident Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Ghana Office and coordinator of the Economic Policy Competence Center (EPCC) for Sub-Saharan Africa operating from Ghana. Previously, he worked as Deputy Resident Director with FES India and desk officer at FES headoffice in Berlin. He holds a BA degree in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a MSc in International Political Theory from the University of Edinburgh.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

 

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Former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o is cleared to stand in elections to be the next president of the Cameroon Football Federation.

The UN's Zebib Kavuma answers some of the most frequently asked questions about gender-based violence.

By External Source
Nov 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November), UNESCO is raising awareness for the continued violence, threats and harassment that women journalists and female media workers face all around the world.

Their safety is put at risk by offline and online attacks, ranging from violence, stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape to even murder. In addition to being attacked on the basis of their work as journalists, they are the targets of gender-based violence. These attacks seek to silence the voices of women journalists and threaten freedom of speech by interrupting valuable investigative work. They distort the media landscape by threatening diversity and perpetuating inequalities both in newsrooms and in societies.

To improve the safety of women journalists and to address the threats they face, UNESCO and its partners take effective measures through research, capacity-building and awareness raising.

During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, please help raise attention for the safety of women journalists.

Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression publishes essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression, is publishing the essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”, which chronicles personal experiences of harassment by eleven journalists from ten countries. The publication is supported by UNESCO and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. The essays describe the many – often intersectional – threats women journalists face simply for doing their work. But they are not the stories of victims. Rather, they are testaments of courage, resilience, solidarity and the refusal to be silenced. As Irene Khan highlights, “It is unacceptable that women journalists are attacked and abused for doing their job. It is high time we listen to the voices of the women themselves”.

Online course on Safety of Women Journalists by UNESCO and partners available in self-directed format

To improve the safety of women journalists, UNESCO, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and the University of Texas at Austin’s Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), addressing the gender dimensions of journalists’ safety. Experienced instructor Alison Baskerville provides frameworks to mitigate and manage risks associated with reporting for women.

The course is available in English in a self-directed format and will soon be accessible in Spanish and French.

Access the course materials here

UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling” reveals orchestrated campaigns behind online violence against women journalists

The UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists” points to a sharp increase in online violence against women journalists and reveals how these attacks are inextricably bound up with disinformation, intersectional discrimination and populist politics. 73% of surveyed women journalists reported having experienced online attacks while 20% said they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with online violence. The study, conducted in cooperation with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), is unprecedented in its scope and methodology, with a global survey of 901 journalists from 125 countries. It also includes two big data case studies assessing over 2.5 million social media posts directed at prominent journalists Carole Cadwalladr from the United Kingdom and Maria Ressa – this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and winner of the 2021 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize – from the Philippines.

Read the full paper here

Online violence against women journalists harms everyone. Let’s end it!

When a women journalist is attacked online, she is not the only one that suffers. Online violence harms women’s right to speak and society’s right to know. To tackle this increasing trend, collective solutions are needed to protect women journalists from online violence. This includes strong responses from social media platforms, national authorities and media organizations.

During the 16 Days Against Gender-Based Violence, help us end online violence by sharing UNESCO’s campaign materials.

Find out more about UNESCO’s work on the Safety of Women Journalists

From the early days of UN peacekeeping to some of today’s most vital operations, Ethiopian men and women have played an important role in the UN’s efforts to advance peace in the world’s hot spots. The country’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations dates back to 1951, as part of the UN multinational force in the Korean War. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

In Hollywood movies, the legendary Wild West was routinely portrayed with gunslingers, lawmen and villains—resulting in the ultimate showdown between the “good guys and the bad guys”.

Linda Thomson-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council early this month that the warring parties in the devastating 12-month-long civil war in Ethiopia involve the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Eritrean Defense Forces, the Amhara Special Forces, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front.

And invoking a Hollywood metaphor, she remarked “there are no good guys here”.

The battle is perhaps best characterized as a showdown between one set of bad guys vs another set of bad guys –despite the fact that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who is currently leading the conflict, triggering accusations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

As in many ongoing conflicts and civil wars—whether in Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Syria, Palestine, Iraq or Ethiopia, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, China and Russia, are sharply divided and protective of their allies — and their prolific arms markets.

But the conflict in Ethiopia has also resulted in a “monumental humanitarian disaster” where UN agencies and relief organizations are being hindered by the Ethiopian government from delivering food and medical supplies for political reasons.

Still, who are the merchants of death in this vicious conflict which has “already claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced upwards of 2 million people,” and where rape is being increasingly used as a weapon of war.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is providing emergency food assistance to more than 800,000 people affected by conflict in the Afar and Amhara regions of northern Ethiopia. Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill

According to figures released by international aid organizations, tens of thousands of people are reportedly displaced in Amhara and Afar regions because of active fighting in multiple locations; about two million rendered homeless overall and about seven million urgently in need of humanitarian assistance.

Ambassador Thomson-Greenfield told delegates it is time for all parties to immediately halt hostilities and refrain from incitement to violence and divisiveness.

The bellicose rhetoric and inflammatory language on all sides of this conflict only aggravate intercommunal violence. It is time for the Government of Ethiopia, the TPLF, and all other groups to engage in immediate ceasefire negotiations without preconditions to find a sustainable path toward peace, she said.

And it is long past time for the Eritrean Defense Forces to withdraw from Ethiopian territory.

“It is time to put your weapons down. This war between angry, belligerent men – victimizing women and children – has to stop,” she declared.

But one lingering question remains: where are these weapons coming from?

China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been identified as the primary arms suppliers to Ethiopia.

“The time when the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) almost solely relied on aging Soviet armament, mixed in with some of their more modern Russian brethrens, is long gone.”

“Over the past decade, Ethiopia has diversified its arms imports to include a number of other sources that presently include nations such as China, Germany, Ukraine and Belarus”.

Arguably more surprising is the presence of countries like Israel and the UAE in this list, which have supplied Ethiopia with a number of specialised weapon systems, according to a Blog posting in Oryx.

Alexandra Kuimova, Researcher, Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS in terms of volume (measured in SIPRI’s TIVs), Russia and Ukraine were the largest supplies of major arms to Ethiopia over the last two decades, accounting for 50 per cent and 33 per cent of Ethiopia’s imports in 2001-2020, respectively.

Deliveries from Russia included an estimated 18 second-hand combat helicopters and combat aircraft transferred to Ethiopia between 2003-2004.

The most recent deliveries included an estimated four 96K9 Pantsyr-S1 mobile air defence systems imported by Ethiopia in 2019. Deliveries from Ukraine included an estimated 215 second-hand T-72B tanks received by Ethiopia between 2011-2015.

She said there are also European states transferring major arms to Ethiopia since 2001. For example, Hungary supplied 12 second-hand Mi-24V/Mi-35 combat helicopters to Ethiopia in 2013. French Bastion vehicles delivered to the state in 2016 were financed by the US. Deliveries from Germany included 6 trainer aircraft in 2019.

Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS: “The perception of such conflicts as being simply an African problem ignores the fact that much of the killing would not be possible were it not for Western arms sent to the combatants.”

In most civil wars, however, small arms and light weapons were critically important, and were often backed up by major conventional weapons.

Since 2011, China has emerged as one of the largest arms suppliers to Ethiopia. Some of the known deliveries from China included a single HQ-64 air defence system delivered in 2013 and 4 PHL-03 300mm self-propelled multiple rocket launchers received by Ethiopia in 2018-2019.

Ethiopia also imported about 30 armoured personnel carriers from China between 2012 and 2014, said Kuimova.

Other media reports have provided information on the presence of Chinese Wing Loong and Iranian Mohajer-6 drones in Ethiopia. In addition, several media outlets claim that Turkey is negotiating arms deals on selling an identified number of Bayraktar TB-2 armed drones to Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, in one of the world’s worse conflict zones, namely Yemen, the air attacks are mostly by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, equipped with arms primarily from the US and UK, two permanent members of the Security Council.

According to SIPRIs Kuimova, there is not much known about transfers of major arms to Eritrea. She said it appears that the country has not received any major weapons since 2009 when the UN arms embargo on Eritrea came into force. The embargo was lifted in 2018, however, no deliveries of major arms have been documented since then.

Between 2001-2007, Eritrea’s imports of major arms included two second-hand modernized S-125-2T air defence systems supplied by Belarus in 2005. Bulgaria supplied 120 second-hand T-55 tanks in 2005. Between 2001-2004 Russia delivered 4 combat aircraft to Eritrea, and an estimated 80 Kornet-E anti-tank missiles between 2001 and 2005. Deliveries from Ukraine included 2 second-hand combat aircraft.

“We are currently collecting, analyzing and verifying open-source information on deliveries of major arms to both Ethiopia and Eritrea over the last year,” she said.

But lack of transparency in armaments in the cases of both importer states and exporters make it difficult to determine the order and delivery dates and the exact numbers and types of weapons transferred over the last years.

For example, Ethiopia has not been submitting reports on its imports of arms to the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA), the main UN transparency instrument on conventional weapons, since 1997.

And China, one of the largest exporters to Ethiopia over the last decade, stopped submitting reports to UNROCA in 2018. In addition, China has not reported information on its arms transfers to Ethiopia in the previous years.

 

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By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Rising sea levels, extreme climate conditions such as severe storms faced by Bangladesh, one of the primary victims of anthropogenic climate change, the country is set to be the worst sufferer from climate change by 2025, far worse than any other country.

Bangladesh, with a population of over 166 million, is imperilled due to its position between two key rivers, the Brahmaputra and Ganges. Many regions in the country are also prone to drought. As a developing country Bangladesh does not have enough financial resources for protective or reparative measures.

The photo story ‘Wave’ by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, an award wining Bangladeshi photo journalist, captures images of people who face this crisis as a human problem. Bangladesh is a small, overpopulated country in Southeast Asia with primarily an agro-based economy. Besides, climatic hazards like cyclones, floods, drought, soil salinity, and river erosions are more frequent nowadays. These two facts contribute to the increasing number of climate refugees forced to migrate to the cities, worsening the socio-economic problems. The barrages [1] built across the rivers inside the border of India have resulted in both flooding and drying of the river beds in Bangladesh. Major rivers like Padma, Jamuna, Meghna, Brahmaputra, and smaller rivers in the coastal region erode when the water level rises. Due to prolonged droughts, the temperature is increasing every year at an alarming rate. Sadly, people can’t adapt to this rapidly changing climate and are on the brink of socio-economic insecurity. The waves, whether present or absent, don’t bring any hope for these people. When they hit, they take away the valuable land and lives. When the waves are gone, nothing is left but parched, cracked riverbeds.

[1] A report on the impact of Farakka barrage on the human fabric. Manisha Banerjee, on behalf of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP).
http://sandrp.in/dams/impct_frka_wcd.pdf

The two rivers Jamuna and Brahmaputra are surrounded by Islampur, a sub-district of Jamalpur, one of the most climate-vulnerable places in Bangladesh. The Jamuna River is the ferocious, devastating and eating village after village by eroding its banks. Islampur town is at risk; the protecting dam is not built sustainably. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Dohar, a sub-district of Dhaka, is bordered by Padma River. The mighty Padma during the summer behaves like a monster and eats its surrounded lands, and even changes the usual floating path. It creates enormous erosion and displaces inhabitants on both sides of the river. Due to the change in climate, floods cause environmental degradation. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are removing the remaining structures and belongings as the River Padma is about to swallow the area. River Padma at Mawa is aggressive in the summer and very often it erodes massively, displacing people and their belongings. Mawa, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Women, children and the elderlyare the most vulnerable due to the climate crisis. In Islampur, during floods, low-income households in the villages suffer the most. A woman is in search of food relief to feed her children. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The vast area outside Rajshahi City is flooded on both sides of the Padma River banks. People have been experiencing adverse calamities; the change in ecology affects adapting to the new norms of hot weather. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Many places of Dohar, Dhaka, are washed away and many people moved to other cities while many others still live there as they have nowhere to go except to move back slowly away from the river. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The frequent floods across Rajshahi division by the River Padma are causing massive economic loss, displacement, and health hazards. The whole ecology and biodiversity have changed, and even animals are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The River Jamuna has caused floods in the whole territory of Islampur, and villagers are waiting for flood relief. They had to shift their houses and belongings. Many of them were starving as relief was insufficient. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Climate Crisis is leading to school drop outs. The rivers swallow up many schools; children with their families had to move from place to place with no sustainable livelihoods near the big rivers. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Frequent changes of the riverscapes are problematic for the fishermen as they have to shift their homes. The village markets get moved too and the villagers go to different places to secure their livelihoods. Climate Crisis makes it harder for everyone in terms of its economic impact and other socio-geographical effects.
Mawa, Dhaka, Bangaldesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

 

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A minister has written a letter to the former boxer, who has invested in a cannabis farm in the US.

How can the "voice" of African diaspora help build relations between Germany and Africa?

Haile Gebrselassie and Feyisa Lilesa back the PM's call to go to the front line of the Tigray war.