A small but growing number of women are heading up agribusinesses in Africa, some of which are producing innovative products to combat malnutrition. Credit: Jeff Haskins/IPS
By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)
Oluwaseun Sangoleye’s son developed rickets after rejecting baby formula. So she started a business to make natural baby cereal from locally-sourced ingredients in Nigeria.
“My personal experience opened me up to the dearth of nutrient dense, affordable meal solutions for infants and young children,” Sangoleye told IPS. Baby Grubz products are targeted at low and middle-income women with children aged six months to three years.
Sangoleye is one of a small but growing number of women who are heading up agribusinesses in Africa, some of which are producing innovative products to combat malnutrition.
While there are no conclusive figures on the number of women participating in agribusinesses across the continent, the African Women in Agribusiness Network (AWAN) states it works in 42 African countries, linking 1,600 women’s networks in different sectors.
Since opening Shais Foods in 2014, Mirriam Nalomba has sought to transform grain-based mono-diets in Zambia by offering baby cereals from millet, sorghum, cassava, soya bean and Vitamin A orange maize.
“We cannot use imported foods to combat malnutrition; locally-grown crops will produce nutritious foods,” Nalomba told IPS.
Nalomba’s business model of using locally-grown crops has proved foresightful as COVID-19 lockdowns have disrupted markets across the continent. But she lamented that COVID-19 restrictions have affected her plans of expanding her market. Nalomba has started selling her products online.
Sangoleye told IPS that while the COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult to access quality raw materials, she had gained more customers during the lockdown. It’s also led her to start innovating in other areas of packaging.
“One of our distributors shared an emotional story of how three women bought a jar of Grubz and shared it into three equal parts for their babies to augment their breast milk,” Sangoleye said.
“This has challenged us to start looking into the production of smaller packs that are more affordable and guarantees food safety for the children with compliance to physical distancing.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a 10 percent decrease in sales for Sanavita, a Tanzanian social enterprise, which supports more than 1,000 smallholder farmers growing Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP), pro vitamin A maize, and iron and zinc-fortified beans, which are processed into nutritious flours.
Sanavita sells about 1,000 kg of flour each month and estimates that it has about 10,000 customers.
“We are aiming to end hidden hunger in Tanzania and this means growth for us,” Sanavita founder Jolenta Joseph told IPS. In October, the FAO listed Tanzania as one of the African countries to be hardest-hit by adverse weather in the coming years. The low-income country is currently listed by the U.N. agency as not having achieved its hunger target of halving the proportion of the chronically undernourished with “lack of progress of deterioration”.
Vitamin A orange maize provides highly-nutritious food that combats malnutrition. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Malnutrition on the rise but COVID-19 will make it worseThe COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of current food systems and has amplified poverty, inequalities and food insecurity, according to the BCFN, which has outlined 10 bold interdisciplinary actions for the transformation of food systems.
In an earlier interview with IPS, Dr. Marta Antonelli, head of research at BCFN, and Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at BCFN, said the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the ability of those who are food insecure to buy food. As a result there is a risk in the decline of dietary quality as a result of compromise employment and the revocation of schemes such as school deeding programmes and shock as a result of the breakdown of food markets.
COVID-19 has impacted on food systems, increased food prices have a direct impact on the quality of diets, preventing access to fresh fruits and vegetables as well as dairy, meat and fish as a result of people failing to reach wholesale and retail markets, the researchers said.
Debisi Araba, a public policy and strategy specialist and managing director at the Alliance for a Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), told IPS humanity has been innovating for a long time to ensure people are nourished. It is important to promote agriculture innovation in technologies, processes, programmes and systems in private enterprise and public policy.
With the current COVID-19 crisis, health and nutrition is suffering from multiple shocks, Lawrence Haddad, executive director of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), told IPS.
“SMEs across Africa and Asia are vital in the pandemic response but their ability to operate is being put under increasing strain,” Haddad said, adding that SMEs need continued support and investment to adapt and innovate.
Investing in agriculture innovationBut COVID-19 has not been the only obstacle to the growth of these women-led agribusinesses.
Amandla Ooko-Ombaka, economist and associate partner at global management firm McKinsey, told IPS that women face a combination of challenges in starting and running an agribusiness because of their disproportionate access to information and technology to access agronomic advice and payments. She added that women consistently have less access to capital to increase their productivity and are 50 percent less likely than men to own their land.
In sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute the highest average agriculture labour force participation rate in the world of more than 50 percent in many countries, especially in West Africa, according to the FAO.
“Food systems worldwide are decades behind other sectors in adopting digital technology and innovation,” Ooko-Ombaka added.
“The growth of mobile access has been an important unlock for innovation in African agriculture for most of our countries 70-90 percent of land is held by smallholder farmers. If we cannot reach them, the impact in the sector is muted,” Ooko-Ombaka told IPS via e-mail.
Ooko-Ombaka said in sub-Saharan Africa about 400 digital agriculture solutions have come to market — 60 percent of which came to market only in the last two years — serving user needs, including financial services, market linkages, supply chain management, advisory and information and business intelligence.
An analysis by McKinsey notes that the COVID-19 crisis has disrupted food systems in Africa but continues to open the gap for innovation.
Ooko-Ombaka says the agriculture value chain can benefit from innovation, particularly in the COVID-19 era where profound shifts are projected around marketplaces, making it critical for farmers to have access to markets.
“With restrictions on movement, interacting with farmers and value-chain partners digitally may become more important,” Ooko-Ombaka said, predicting that food-distribution chains, particularly in urban areas, are very likely to become more digitised.
Farmers may increasingly seek e-advice, digital savings products, or access to government subsidies that might be offered through digital wallets, she said adding that agricultural players can explore digital services, including marketing, extension to farmers, financial products and supply chain tracking.
Determination and perseverance neededDespite the obstacles the women are positive and committed to their work.
“It is not easy running a woman-led business, but hard work, passion, commitment and the ability to plan and set priorities are keys for success,” Sanavita founder Joseph said.
Maame Akua Manful, founder of a Ghanaian social enterprise Fieldswhite Co. Ltd, which makes OFSP yoghurt, concurs that running a woman-led agribusiness comes with a lot of sacrifice and spontaneous decision-making.
“It is not easy learning how to manage a team of men and communicate in a way that they would understand, but I feel that with determination and perseverance every woman can bring out that entrepreneurial ability in her to make things work,” she told IPS.
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By Stuart Minchin
Aug 24 2020 (IPS-Partners)
Throughout my career, I have always championed the value of open data, especially geospatial and earth observation data for the social, environmental and economic growth that it brings. Access to timely and accurate data is critical to maximizing the efficiency of development programmes and is a critical economic as well as scientific imperative for our region.
When I took office as Director-General of the Pacific Community (SPC), one of the projects that immediately grabbed my attention was the Pacific Data Hub (PDH). The PDH is an ambitious catalyst for change in how we manage and extract value from open data in and for the Pacific region. It aims to consolidate the incredible volume of scientific data generated by the nine thematic divisions of SPC, as well as datasets from across the Pacific (SPC member states, development organizations, research institutes). The database already hosts almost 12,000 datasets and counting!
The PDH also delivers a sustainable and secure data infrastructure that will allow countries to protect their datasets, ensures that the data legacy of development and aid projects are stored securely, and most of all, provides data access to the region’s decision-makers and their key partners.
It is no secret that good public policies can improve the lives of millions, and that these policies must be fueled by solid evidence. In establishing PDH as the go-to hub for all data from and around the Pacific, it will be well-placed to support Pacific countries, and the international community, in making the right decisions, and effecting positive impact on development pathways in the region.
The Pacific Data Hub will be a game-changer for development programmes in the Pacific. Whether talking about climate change, geosciences, health, fisheries of aquaculture – we cannot afford to make bad policy decisions or to waste resources through using incomplete, outdated or inaccurate data.
The COVID-19 crisis has made the importance of the PDH greater than ever. We know that the travel and social restrictions that have been put in place will have an impact on our collective economic outlooks, and that the development sector, as we know it, will be deeply transformed. Pacific countries are currently preparing to respond to this challenge, and the sharing of open data will need to be a key component of that regional response. Robust data sharing systems will be instrumental in helping countries better collaborate with one another; regional organizations reshape and adapt the support they provide to their member states; and global organizations “hit the target” more precisely with funding development programmes in the region. We can not afford to be constantly reinventing the wheel in our region, and opening and sharing our data helps us to avoid this fate.
It is the right time for the Pacific to embrace the tremendous potential offered by open data. We want to support our members and partners to benefit from this initiative and to take advantage of its resources to anticipate, address and overcome upcoming economic, environmental and social challenges. Are you ready to be part of this collective effort? Our team at the Pacific Data Hub looks forward to hearing from you!
Stuart Minchin
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Excerpt:
Stuart Minchin, is Director-General Pacific Community (SPC)
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By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)
There is not much good news for President Donald Trump of the United States these days. If electoral polls have any credibility, he is staring at the face of almost certain defeat in the elections come November. So, when the so-called Abraham Accord between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was sealed in a telephone call between him and the leaders of Israel and the UAE, signalling a sliver of silver lining in the otherwise hovering dark clouds over him, Trump was ecstatic. A Trump twitter called it a “HUGE breakthrough among “three GREAT friends!”.
Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
How realistic was that claim? Not much. The deal was merely formalizing what has really been happening for years between Israel and the UAE under the table, away from public gaze, but not from public knowledge. Then why this fanfare of high-profile hullaballoo? The timing was important. Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner were brokering a strategy of “outside- in” to resolve this “core” Palestinian crisis in the Middle East. It entailed the strategy of getting Arabs further away from the “centre”, that is, Palestine to create greater pressure on the already besieged Palestinians. The pillar of the deal was that the West Bank would not be annexed. But the pillar began to crumble immediately when the Israelis let the cat out of the bag. Israel said the decision to annex was still on the agenda, but only temporarily suspended at US request so that the agreement may be signed. It seemed a pretty raw deal for the Palestinians, the people most concerned with the agreement, but without any wherewithal to influence it.
The first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country was the one signed in March 1979 between Cairo and Tel Aviv in 1979, for which the Egyptian President, Anwar Saadat, paid with his life. The second was between Israel and Jordan in 1994. But those were between Israel and two of its border states with whom there was a history of wars. The UAE shared no borders and had no military conflicts with Israel. This accord breached an Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) principle that Israel’s bordering (or front-line Arab States) could advance their interests vis-à-vis Israel in the manner they chose as for them the issue was existential. The distant OIC members would continue their non-recognition of Israel in support of the Palestinian cause. The UAE, was the third Arab country to reach such understanding with Israel, and the first from the Gulf. This indicated a success of pro-Israeli powers to salami-slice support away from the Palestinians from other Arab countries.
Broadly, the Abraham accord agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE, including the exchange of Ambassadors. Also, it would be followed by agreements on investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications and other issues. Then there was that dicey provision on the annexation of West Bank by Israel which was already unravelling. A massively significant concession was made to Israel by an Arab OIC state without any palpable benefit to the Palestinians. But then, why? Some analysts believe the idea was to give Trump a feather in his cap, where there was none, by his Israeli and Emirati friends. If that was the reason the Accord was a sacrifice of crucial Palestinian interest for a very marginal benefit even for Trump, because the US elections will be fought mainly on domestic issues. Foreign affairs will matter little, and the Middle East, not at all.
There are those who believe the UAE would not have taken this step without a nudge and a wink from Saudi Arabia. Both countries do nothing significant these days without consulting each other. Their Crown Princes, who call the shots in both capitals, are the best of chums. While an overt Saudi Peace treaty with Israel is unlikely to be imminent because the cost to its reputation as the custodian of two of Islam’s holiest shrines would take a big hit , their other Arab friends such as Bahrain and Oman might well be in the queue.
What has been the global reaction to this event? The United Nations and its Secretary General , Antonio Guterres, hardly in a position to, first ,give umbrage to the White House, its provider of financial sustenance, and second, to oppose any peace treaty anywhere, cleverly linked the ‘normalization’ to the hope for a two-State resolution of the Palestinian issue. But Abu Dhabi surely realized that the US was too divided to satisfy all sides, when Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, unable to offend Israel and at the same time unwilling to give Trump any credit, focused mainly on the key issue of annexation. He said: “Annexation would be a blow to the cause of peace, which is why I oppose it now, and will oppose it as President”.
Much of the rest of OIC, led by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was opposed. Abbas denounced the deal outright. The famed Palestinian negotiator, Hanan Ashrafi, called it a “sell out by friends”. Rejecting the Accord, Hamas saw it as serving the “Zionist narrative”. Iran, a vowed enemy of the Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms (except Qatar- such are the intricacies of the complex intramural Middle east policies), termed the UAE’s action as “a strategic stupidity”, and equated it with “stabbing the Palestinians in the back”. An equally livid Turkey stated that “history will not forget and never forgive the hypocritical behaviour of the UAE”. In South East Asia , close to my perch in Singapore, in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur officials have so far been tight-lipped, though former Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia called the accord “a step backward for peace “, and warned that it would “divide the Muslim world into warring factions” with Israelis adding “fuel to the fire”.
In South Asia, Pakistan, poor yet powerful, had to be, and was, more discreet. Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose voice carried weight in the OIC, but whose purse could be light without Saudi and Emirati support, has not spoken himself as at writing, but the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad has issued a carefully crafted and calibrated statement. It said that the deal “has far reaching implications” and that “Pakistan has an abiding commitment to the full realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of self-determination “, obviously bearing Kashmiris in mind. It added “Pakistan’s approach will be guided by our evaluation of how Palestinian rights and aspirations are upheld, and how regional peace, security and stability are preserved”. Like motherhood, no one could quarrel with that line of sentiment.
In the meantime the average Palestinian must be wondering if, for him or her, the Abraham Accord, close at the heels of the festival Eid -ul-Adha, would transform into an Abrahamic sacrifice!
Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg
This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.
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Credit: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)
By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)
The COVID 19 Pandemic continues relentlessly. Deaths approaching a million globally, 22 million infected and growing. Brazil, India, the US and Russia accounting for almost 50% of the total cases in the world.
Medically the promise of a vaccine is given as signs of hope; what surprises awaits us when such a vaccine is available, would be another story. Economically, to address the uncertainty and the grim future ahead, the UN, some governments and even Joe Biden the US Presidential hopeful, are waving “Build Back better” as ways to achieve ‘a new normal’ out of the current pandemic.
“Build Back Better” emerged out of the 3rd International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, in March 2015 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which had outlined seven clear targets and four priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks. (1) Understanding disaster risk; (2) Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (3) Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and; (4) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Other concepts such as Circular Economy (CE) are gaining more adherents. Professor Martin Charter in a recent edited book, “Designing for the Circular Economy’, published by Routledge (2019), says, “product circularity means taking an extended lifecycle perspective that focusses on maximising value in economic and social systems for the longest time”.
He offers ‘CE’ as a key part of achieving the SDGs, though he also cautions that CE is not a magic bullet and “achieving a more sustainable future will require integrated, systemic thinking, creativity, hard work and change”. The book is a very useful collection of contributions covering different industries and design specialists.
While we see young engineers and others, even in developing countries, applying concepts like CE and biomimicry to contribute to sustainability, CE also has its critics. ‘Low Tech Magazine’ (www.lowtech.org) is of the view that, “The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste.
However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics”. CE would need a movement from all sides, government, industry and consumers to be actually implemented in practice.
Talking of movements, one is represented in ideas around ‘Degrowth’. Provoked by a question, the famous French philosopher Andre Gorz, asked around 1972, “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system? ”, gave rise to the famous word “décroissance”, French for ‘degrowth.
After the COVID 19 Pandemic, ‘Degrowth’ is also gaining currency. In, ‘Degrowth – A Vocabulary for a New Era’ published by Routledge, three ecological economists, Giacomo D’Alisa, Frederico Demaria and Giorgis Kallis, bring 51 contributors to examine a wide range of topics and themes related to Degrowth. Published in 2015, it gains greater relevance now.
The Editors state in their Preface, “When the ordinary language in use is inadequate to articulate what begs to be articulated, then it is time for a new vocabulary”. They point to the deep ills plaguing the world such as growing inequalities, socio-ecological disasters, climate change and the continuous disaster of deaths by lack of access to land, water, and food.
To this we can add, the pandemic deaths, the Australian Bush fires, the Beirut explosion and the massive oil spill in the serene territorial waters off Mauritius endangering livelihoods and marine life. Apocalypse now? May be not! The quote at the beginning of this contribution, is from a must read chapter in the book by Serge Latouche titled, ‘Pedagogy of Disaster’.
Latouche says, “Worshippers of progress immediately accuse anyone who reflects on the dangers that threaten our civilization of pessimism”. He quotes Hans Jonas, philosopher and author of the much celebrated book, ‘The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age’ who had said, “it is better to lend an ear to the prophecy of misfortune than to that of happiness”.
In Latouche’s view, Hans Jonas, “does not masochistically hope for a taste of the apocalypse, but precisely to ward it off”. For Latouche, Jonas’ appeal is “an alternative to the suicidal optimism of a ‘politics of ostriches’. In a tone of melancholy, he says, “It is this latter blissful (and passive) optimism that will lead certainly to more disaster than an attitude of a crystalizing catastrophe”.
The ”worshippers of progress” in the world today are many. Among the powerful, Bolsinaro, Modi, Putin, Trump and Xi Ping represent the “progress fundamentalists” and the world of “business as usual”. In the context of the growing consciousness and awareness around climate change, these leaders also seem to represent thinking that goes back 50 years.
More than 28% of the Brazilian Rain Forest is burning, with little concern shown or actions taken to prevent it by Bolsinaro. Trump wants more fossil fuel driven “unlimited growth”; so too Narendra Modi whose government is busy dismantling environmental safeguards, built over decades and which however imperfect could in the past delay the destruction of ecology and provide defence to nature, biodiversity and forests in India.
Currently, while undermining India’s long term security, to immediately boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.
Increasing evidence shows, the link between forest destruction and increase in viruses and pandemics. We are losing more forests and disrupting nature, says Katarina Zimmer, writing in the National Geographic.
According to her, “Over the past two decades, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that deforestation, by triggering a complex cascade of events, creates the conditions for a range of deadly pathogens—such as Nipah and Lassa viruses, and the parasites that cause malaria and Lyme disease—to spread to people”.
(read full story at <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans).
In such a scenario, the UN seems powerless, with most of its economists especially in regions like Asia clinging on like religious fundamentalists to some outdated neoliberal economics much of which has brought us to where we are now. SDGs and “Build Back Better” are just labels applied by these economists “on old bottles” of wine that has almost become vinegar!.
There are no road maps nationally and globally for “sustainable futures” or “build back better”. The latter two are aspirational, what we need is more specific identification of normative pathways like Green Growth and a systems approach to achieve it by normative global public goods organization like the UN and those who work for it. Otherwise we may be back, metaphorically to, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo”.
In the 1950s, when the malaria epidemic was out of control in Sarawak and the adjoining state of North Borneo, now called Sabah, the WHO advised indoor spraying of DDT to control the spread of the malaria carrying mosquitoes. The indigenous people of Sarawak and Sabah live in each village in long houses with thatched roofing that could house as much as hundred families.
The spraying of DDT led to a chain of events such as deterioration of the thatched roofs and collapsing of the roofs which the locals complained about. A WHO team sent to investigate found out that the some of the moth larvae (caterpillars) living in the thatch were able to distinguish the presence of DDT and so avoided eating thatch sprayed with the chemical, whereas their parasites, small chalcid wasps that injected their larvae into the caterpillars, were highly susceptible to DDT, causing their decline and the subsequent increase in caterpillar numbers.
A 50% increase per roof area in caterpillar larvae led to deterioration of the thatch roofs and collapses. Accompanied by the death and decline of cats due to the DDT spraying and the boom in rat population resulted in a double crisis. The latter required new cats having to be parachuted into the area. The whole chain of events, captured in the metaphor, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo” demonstrates how one track thinking devoid of a systems approach could just lead us out of one disaster into another.
The same metaphor of ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo’ has been very cleverly and productively used by Alan Atkisson and Axel Klimek, two among the world’s leading systems thinking practitioners and trainers, and change management experts, to produce a book of the same title, ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo – And Other Lessons from the Change Café’.
Published by Chelsea Green Publishers, the book is offered as a ‘Toolkit of Proven Strategies and Practices for Building Capacity and Creating Transformation’. While the UN and some of their professional economists are advising member states ‘to look for a black cat in a dark room where there is no cat’ and till the UN decides that institutional reform is urgent and gets down to it, we may have to do our own homework for change and change management.
Axel Klimek and Alan Atkisson’s book, have much to contribute in these efforts towards fundamental transformations in thinking that can take us closer to sustainable futures.
* Views expressed are his own and do not represent organizations he has been affiliated or currently affiliated with.
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Excerpt:
Lawrence Surendra is a Chemical Engineer and Environmental Economist and a former staff member of UN-ESCAP and Council Member of Sustainability Platform Asia (TSP Asia)*
“I feel it coming, a series of disasters created through our diligent yet unconscious efforts.
If they’re big enough to wake up the world, but not enough to smash everything, I’d call
them learning experiences, the only ones able to overcome our inertia”.
Denis de Rougemont, 1977
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By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)
The Pacific Community (SPC) 7-week research expedition to monitor the health of world’s largest tuna fishery has departed from Honolulu on Saturday 15 August 2020 despite the significant challenges presented by COVID-19. With most research and fisheries observer programmes currently suspended, the importance of this cruise cannot be overstated. Half of the world’s tuna catch comes from the Western & Central Pacific, providing a critical source of protein and export revenue for Pacific Island Nations.
Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)
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By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)
Pandemic-related lockdowns, flight cancellations, and border closures may be putting a crimp on summer vacation plans. However, the precipitous drop in tourism will have an outsized impact on countries that rely on foreign travelers—with potentially large-scale effects on their economies’ national accounts.
Costa Rica, Greece, Morocco, Portugal, and Thailand could be among the hardest hit with losses in tourism proceeds exceeding 3 percent of GDP, according to the IMF’s recently released 2020 External Sector Report.
The chart calculates direct tourism impacts on imports, exports, and current account balances under a scenario that envisions gradual reopenings in September but a drop of about 70 percent in tourism receipts and international tourism arrivals in 2020.
A country’s current account balance is a measure of its total transactions—which includes but is not limited to trade in goods and services—with the rest of the world. For some economies, a drop in tourism (which is considered an export) could have an impact on overall current account balances.
For example, in Thailand, a decrease in tourism due to COVID-19 could bring the country’s overall exports down by 8 percentage points of GDP and have a direct net impact of about 6 percentage points of GDP on its current account balance in 2020. That could erode part of the 7 percent overall current account surplus the country had in 2019.
The outlook for smaller, tourism-dependent nations is even more stark. This chart and the External Sector Report focus on medium to large economies, but, under the same scenario, some smaller states especially reliant on tourism could see a dramatically larger direct impact on their trade and current account balances.
Still, the overall effect a decline in tourism will have on current account balances may be less than these projected direct impacts foretell. Smaller, tourism dependent countries and even larger economies with a large tourism industry may see offsetting indirect effects. For example, smaller nations with less domestic resources often rely on more imports to support their tourism industries. A drop in tourism exports and the economic activity that it drives, both directly and indirectly, will lead to a corresponding drop in imports—lessening the overall impact on the current account balance.
Much is still unknown about the pace of tourism recovery in 2020. Peoples’ desire and ability to travel abroad may continue to face headwinds going into 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic, leaving an uncertain outlook for tourism industries in economies both big and small.
Source: International Monetary Fund
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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the needs of the ageing population in various African countries were not adequately addressed. However, since the pandemic a recent survey has shown that the pandemic has further compounded the existing health challenges, further increasing neglect of older persons.Credit: Dolphin Emali/IPS
By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)
Nearly three quarters of respondents in a survey across 18 African countries have claimed that their countries’ COVID-19 responses are gravely lacking in addressing the ageing population.
The survey, conducted by the Stakeholder Group on Ageing (SGA) Africa, found that factors such as inadequate social protection, health care infrastructures and multi-sector engagement mechanisms on ageing on all levels are contributing to these countries’ woeful lack of policies geared towards the ageing population.
On Thursday, SGA organised its second webinar on the Rights of Older Persons in Africa with a focus on the “Inclusion of Older Persons in COVID-19 Policy Response and Development Agendas”.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the needs of older persons in various African countries were not adequately addressed,” Dr. Emem Omokaro, co-chair SGA Africa, told IPS after the webinar.
“Unfortunately, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has further compounded the existing health challenges due to the shift in government attention from those existing challenges to containment of the COVID-19 pandemic, which further increase neglect of older persons.”
Full excerpt of the interview below:
Inter Press Service (IPS): What did this webinar aim to address?
Dr. Emem Omokaro (EO): COVID -19 is a global health, social, economic and psychosocial pandemic. Its intense activity and the mortality toll among the geriatric population have been evidenced by disaggregated data. The SGA Africa survey on the impact of COVID-19 containment and mitigation initiatives exposed social injustices, deepening inequalities, inadequate — or in some countries — non-existing healthcare and social protection infrastructure.
In Africa, the impact is materially more intense, with a prolonged systemic tendency to leave older persons behind. For a COVID-19 recovery, we cannot afford to continue as usual. The fundamental question for SGA Africa then became, what can we do differently? How do we influence the approach of ministries, departments and agencies of governments, organisational and agencies in their intervention efforts? How can we bring compassion, passion, research and data, to influence political decisions? How can we influence African member states to deliberately set up multi-sector stakeholder platforms for collective and intersecting decisions, and to set up common structures of engagement for older persons centred policy actions?
IPS: How has the ageing population in the 18 African countries (as mentioned in your brief) been affected by COVID-19?
EO: When the question was asked, responses from the various participating countries showed clearly there were certain older person-specific issues that the strategies did not fully cover. Some of the issues include: access to medical care, abuse and violence, lack of social protection for older persons, lack of research/information about older persons, voices of older persons not [being] heard, access to nutritional intervention services, age discrimination, neglect in the distribution of palliatives, and inadequate sensitisation for older persons.
The health and economic impacts of the virus are borne disproportionately by poor people. For example, homeless people who lack safe shelters, and people without access to running water, among others.
Specifically, the impacts of COVID-19 on older persons include the following:
IPS: How does it affect the ageing population when they’re not included in policy responses to COVID-19?
EO: Older men and women can be perfectly healthy even though their metabolic rates may slow down and their strength declines. Some mental activities also slow or change completely. These changes and declines occur at different levels and at different rates. In favourable environments, the changes will hardly be apparent, and the benefits of old age may often mean that life improves and older persons are happier, and unsure of its veracity and essence.
COVID-19 is more than a health crisis, but a human, economic and social crisis; attacking the core of the human society–as it heightens inequality, exclusion, discrimination, xenophobia, vulnerabilities and global unemployment in the medium and long terms. It affects all segments of the population and it is particularly detrimental to those in the most vulnerable situations, including people living in poverty situations (especially women), older persons, and persons with disabilities, youth migrants, and refugees among others.
IPS: In what ways have the governments responded to specific needs of the ageing population in these countries under the current pandemic?
EO: There were varied responses. Some African countries, including Togo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Madagascar indicated that their countries had not made much progress in terms of older person-specific programmes.
Expectedly, the majority of African countries made tremendous progress in the implementation of containment and mitigation services to older persons. A few African countries that made outstanding progress in older person-specific containment and mitigation services are Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa.
The responses in these countries indicated that they’d accomplished measures such as sensitisation of social distancing, provision of food to older persons, food distributions to older persons, advocacy for older persons’ voices to be heard, building of older persons care homes, and access to medical insurance.
IPS: From the concept note, it’s clear that there’s a large focus on regional partnership to address this issue. Why is a partnership so crucial to addressing the issue? In what ways can it enhance the efforts to improve the situation?
EO: Establishment of partnership with national, regional and international agencies and bodies is very crucial in the fight against ageism and as well in the achievement of [Sustainable Development Goals] SDGs Agenda 2030 and [African Union] AU Agenda 2063. Older persons are diverse and ageing is multi-sectoral.
Partnerships are crucial for resource mobilisation, exchange of information and knowledge, new technology, and capacity building. It is necessary to have inter-agencies and multi sectoral -older persons centred interventions. Specifically, partnership will promote effective coordination efforts towards multi-sector and comprehensive response to ageing and older persons during and post COVID-19. SGA Africa is advocating for a policy directive on an intervention methodology which commands all United Nations Agencies with countries in Africa to build the multi-agency mechanisms on ageing.
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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)
You can shine your shoes and wear a suit
you can comb your hair and look quite cute
you can hide your face behind a smile
one thing you can’t hide
is when you’re crippled inside. John Lennon
COVID-19 made some of us aware of how dependent we are on one another, this is why so many of us become upset when confronted with the reckless behaviour of those who do not respect rules, like social distancing and the wearing of face masks. Lack of empathy appears to be spreading throughout our global society. ”Why do I have to care about others? The most important thing is my own well-being and success,” a way of reasoning that fosters contempt, misogyny and racism and worst of all – disdain for those who are old and weak, and/or for various reasons have been bodily incapacitated, making it hard for them to participate in the rat race for beauty and success.
It is becoming increasingly common to be transfixed by the idea that character is reflected by appearances and thus many individuals become obsessed with obtaining, or maintaining, an aesthetically pleasing appearance. An entire business has developed around our cult of bodily beauty, as well as the youth, glamour and success assumed to be connected to it. Beauty contests, fashion shows, cosmetic surgery, fitness studios, make-up products and a host of other phenomena profit from this craving for human beauty.
The United States of America even has a president who made a fortune from organizing beauty pageants and appeals to people´s desire for glamour and success. He even made his own name into a brand equivalent to his shallow ideals. However, that same man has through speech and actions made us aware of the abominable backside of the beauty cult — ”the ugly”, ”the fat”, ”the old and decrepit”, ”the deviants”, ”the others”, ”the aliens”, i.e. all those who do not correspond to an image of perfect beauty are by him labeled as ”losers”, or threats to ”our way of being”. One of the worst displays of the mindset of this powerful bigot was when he in public made fun of a disabled man and to the approving cheers of his followers imitated his difficulties to coordinate his body movements.
Among children, it is common to make fun of other kids with mental, or physical difficulties, happily ignoring the fact that victims of such jokes may become traumatized for life. What attract the mockery may even be quite insignificant and not even a disability – a limp, a birthmark, small stature, obesity, dark skin, big ears – you name it. Seldom have these ”pecularities” anything to do with the victim´s character.
The disdain of people with physical disabilities may result in a denial of their rights to live a decent life. On top of that comes the discomfort, or even revulsion, which several of us demonstrate while being confronted with severe ailment and disfigurement. One particularly painful stigma is facial disfigurement, something which is described in Kobo Abé´s novel The Face of Another and The Monster, a short story by Stephen Crane.
The Japanese novel describes how a man´s face is burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and how his wife becomes nauseated by his new appearance. He succeeds in undergoing a plastic surgery that alters his looks. After experiencing how his life was before his disfigurement, during it and after he had obtained a ”new” face, the main character becomes acutely aware of how his own personality is affected by how other people react to his appearance. In the end he becomes a stranger to himself.
Abé´s novel deals with several aspects of how we and others perceive us, based on our outer appearance. Among other examples he describes the awful experiences of men returning from wars with their faces disfigured from burns and head wounds and how the first question of severely wounded soldiers tend to be: ”What about my face? Is it intact?” a worry that often is greater than their concern for limbs and organs.
Crane´s short story was written in 1898 and is even more tragic. It deals with a black coachman in the southern states of the U.S., whose face became horribly disfigured when he saved the son of his employer from a fire. The boy´s father is a well-liked surgeon in a small town, and he feels obliged to take care of his son´s saviour. However, the coachman´s face looks so horrible that people become afraid of him, in spite of the fact that he remains a nice man and furthermore is a hero. That the doctor takes care of a man with such an awful complexion makes him a victim and pariah, forces him out of his practice and turns him into a wretch as well.
Apart from a deep-set aversion to other people´s disabilities we have a tendency to grade misery. For example, I once had a colleague who was severely hearing impaired. He told me: ”I often wish I had been blind instead of deaf. People feel sorry for blind people, but I am generally treated like an idiot, because I talk in a peculiar manner and people have to make an effort to make themselves understood by me. I am a nuisance to myself and everybody else.” This may be the reason for the English expression ”deaf and dumb” and the fact that not so long ago hearing impaired people were assumed to be mentally retarded and even ended up in asylums.
A slight problem might have huge consequences. A popular Swedish author and entertainer, Beppe Wolgers, suffered from stuttering. In his autobiography Wolgers described a life-long suffering from stuttering, which he at the same time acknowledged to be the reason for his success as a comedian and author – it made him aware of the extreme importance of language and to think carefully about every utterance he made. However, he did not deny that his stuttering had been an incapacitating affliction.
Late in life he met with other stutterers, who also happened to be authors and actors. Between themselves they could talk about stuttering, nervousness and fear, about finding different words and tricks to express themselves via detours, a need for finding synonyms, other verbal tools and useful gestures. ”An internal professional talk about stuttering, without inhibitions and lots of laughs.”
Wolgers realised that most of his suffering had evolved from the behaviour of ”well-meaning normal people.” Many of them had avoided talking to him about his problems and during his entire life he had been laughed at, openly or secretly. Words that he never had intended to say had been put in his mouth and made him feel stupid and isolated. In the company with other stutterers Wolgers had felt free to laugh at his problems, but when the ”outside world” laughed at him and imitated his stuttering he suffered from an ever-increasing paralysis and fear.
The current presidential candidate and former Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden has struggled with stutter throughout his life and declared that it is a handicap that people laugh and humiliate others about, often if they do not even mean to do it. Joe Biden is just one example of stutterers who while investing immense physical and mental energy to overcome their handicap have become entertainers, actors and politicians.
However, disabilities seldom lead to success, instead they might isolate you and loneliness devours your self-respect. The worst is when you have a visible physical ”disorder” that is impossible to hide from yourself and others. In spite of their good intentions ”outsiders” might judge physically disabled individuals based on their appearances. Attitudes tend to be embossed by prejudices towards the ”sick” and ”disabled” and thus our actions may be blemished by moralizing and superficial conventions. ”Non-affected” persons might carry with them a self-congratulating, vicarious suffering that prevent several victims of disabilities to be accepted as integrated parts of our society. Our awkwardness is great when it comes to spending time with afflicted indiviuals and we might thus make others ashamed of their illnesses and/or embarrassed about their disabilities. I once had a pupil who tried to explain her suffering to me:
– As you and everyone else can see I am dwarf. No one considers Eve (not her real name) as just Eve, I am always ”Eve the Dwarf”. I have found that the only way to be who I am is to accept that I am a dwarf. I have begun to admire dwarfs who work in circuses and show business. They make others laugh or cry, they make art out of their disabilities, they can even laugh at themselves. If people cannot see me as anything else than just a dwarf, so be it. Let me be a dwarf. I am a good actor, and when I act I feel free. I even applied to the Theatre School, but was not accepted. They told me: ”You´re a good actor and quite funny, but you must understand … your disability is tabú, you cannot laugh at a disabled person. We´re sorry.”
The only thing I was able to tell her was: ”OK, then you have to forget about making a living from acting. You are a good student. I assume you could go to the university and enter academia.”
She started to cry and told me: ”It´s easy for you to say.”
Instead of falling victims to a cult of bodily beauty stigmatizing those who do not meet the standards of what we assume to be ”normal and beautiful”, let us try to find the inner beauty of all those who are judged due to their appearance and realise that empathy and equal rights is something that benefit us all.
Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.
The post To Understand the ”Other”: How Disabilities Define Us appeared first on Inter Press Service.
A protest by UN staff in Geneva. Credit: United Nations
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)
As it continues to vociferously preach the virtues of equality—advocating equal rights for all, irrespective of race, sex, language or religion– the United Nations has been quick to condemn racism and racial discrimination worldwide.
But how hypocritical is it when racism raises its ugly head in its own backyard— particularly in Geneva which, ironically, is home to the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)?
A survey of over 688 UN staffers in Geneva has come up with some startling revelations re-affirming the fact, which has long remained under wraps, that “racism exists within the United Nations”.
The survey revealed that “more than 1 in 3 staff have personally experienced racial discrimination and/or have witnessed others facing racial discrimination in the workplace. And two-thirds of those who experienced racism did so on the basis of nationality”.
A separate survey by the UN Staff Union in New York was equally revealing.
According to the findings, 59% of the respondents said “they don’t feel the UN effectively addresses racial justice in the workplace, while every second respondent noted they don’t feel comfortable talking about racial discrimination at work”.
Meanwhile, the UN Secretariat in New York, faltered ingloriously, as it abruptly withdrew its own online survey on racism, in which it asked staffers to identify themselves either as “black, brown, white., mixed/multi-racial, and any other”.
But the most offensive of the categories listed in the survey was “yellow” – a longstanding Western racist description of Asians, including Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.
A non-apologetic message emailed to staffers on August 19 read: “The United Nations Survey on Racism has been taken offline and will be revised and reissued, taking into account the legitimate concerns expressed by staff.”
The findings of the Geneva survey also reveal:
UN staff in New York. Credit: United Nations
Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council at the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG), told IPS: “We belief, as a staff union, that it is high time for the organization to seriously combat pervasive racism and racial discrimination. This means greater accountability and a zero tolerance Policy towards any racial act.”
She said: “We are glad to see that the UN management is willing to address this issue, and as a staff union, we are ready to assist in coming up with serious measures that go beyond empty words and lead to a real change so that the UN shows it is capable of upholding the principles that it preaches to the overall world.”
“We are concerned that many cases of racism remain unreported due to the lack of trust of the staff in the existing recourse mechanisms ad well as fear of retaliation,” she declared.
“The findings of the survey confirm that racism exists within the United Nations, as earlier stated by the Secretary-General. They also show that supervisors and senior managers have an important role to play, as do all staff, in tackling this issue”.
She said the results of the survey “will guide our interactions with management at the duty station and globally. They will also be used to help the Council propose to senior management at UNOG a strategy to fight racism in the workplace”.
Patricia Nemeth, President, United Nations Staff Union, told IPS the UN Staff Union in New York, which has a strength of over 6,500 members– with the local staff in peacekeeping operations overseas estimated at approximately 20,000 plus– ran its own survey entitled “UNHQ-NY pulse survey on racial justice”.
She said the murder of (the African-American) George Floyd on 25 May, added to those of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Jerame Reid, Elijah McClain and so many more, “reopened the wounds of racial injustice that afflict our host country and the world as a whole”.
The United Nations, she pointed out, has a normative framework to address racial discrimination within the organisation, but work remains to be done, as recognised by the Secretary-General on June 4.
“In this spirit, the Staff Union is committed to serving as a platform for progress towards greater inclusion, diversity, dignity and social justice both within the UN and beyond,” declared Nemeth, who is also Vice President for Conditions of Service – the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA),
The New York survey was intended to provide the Staff Union with a better understanding of the current situation regarding racial injustice within the United Nations Secretariat and will help determine “how we as staff can contribute to making improvements and will also feed into broader policy discussions”.
The survey combined questions about racial discrimination in the workplace in all its forms; “questions about your own experience with racial discrimination; and specific questions about discrimination against individuals of African descent, which is a key focus of concern at our duty station right now.”
The responses received included:
Nemeth said the survey results will allow the staff union’s coordination group on racial justice to plan subsequent actions tailored to the specific needs of the UN staff community in New York.
“In order to frame the conversation, we have already initiated a series of expert talks that aim to provide historical context regarding the scale and gravity of the transatlantic slave trade, the meaning and persistence of systemic racism, but also the outstanding cultural richness and contribution of the African diaspora around the world”.
Despite the inherent difficulties caused by social distancing, she said, “we will continue to find creative ways to encourage colleagues to have the difficult conversations that enable us to overcome the challenge of racism in the workplace.”
Meanwhile, in a letter to UN staff, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last June: “The position of the United Nations on racism is crystal clear: this scourge violates the United Nations Charter and debases our core values.”
Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at UNCTAD in Geneva, told IPS: “The survey has shown a problem exists, and not just based on skin colour but mainly on nationality, which for an organization called the United Nations is worrying.”
Therefore, in fixing this, management needs to recognize that each country, culture and duty station experiences racism in different forms, whether linked to slavery, colonialism, immigration, national rivalries, or conflicts. And each of these needs its own treatment, he added
“We look forward to working with the Secretary-General to solve this problem,” declared Richards..
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