Day: May 21, 2022

BAMAKO, MALI — Armed men have kidnapped an Italian couple and their child as well as a Togolese national in southeastern Mali, a local official and a Malian security source told AFP on Friday.

They said the abductions occurred late Thursday about 100 kilometers from the border with Burkina Faso, part of a west African region hit by turmoil, kidnappings as well as conflict blamed on armed jihadists.

“Armed men in a vehicle kidnapped three Italians and a Togolese about 10 kilometers from Koutiala,” late Thursday, an official from the Koutiala region who asked not to be named said.

He said the victims were two Italian adults and their child as well as a Togolese, adding they were all Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A Malian security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said two Italian adults and their child, along with a Togolese, were kidnapped.

He described the abductees as “religious people.”

He said the abductions took place in the southeastern town of Sincina, around 100 kilometers from the Burkina Faso border.

“We are doing everything to obtain their release,” the person said, adding that diplomatic lines of communication were open.

The Italian foreign ministry later confirmed in a short statement “the kidnapping of three compatriots in Mali.”

It said it was making “every effort” to secure a positive outcome to the case, while emphasizing, “in agreement with family members, the need to maintain the utmost discretion.”

Earlier, it said that Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio was personally following the case.

Frequent kidnappings

Several foreigners have been kidnapped across the border in Burkina Faso in recent years.

Kidnappings are frequent in Mali, though motives span from criminal to political reasons.

In most cases, the conditions or circumstances of the release of kidnap victims is never clearly established.

Mali has since 2012 been wracked by a jihadist insurgency by groups linked to al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State. Vast swathes of the country are in thrall to myriad rebel groups and militias.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes amid violence that began in the north of the country and spread to the center, and then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Olivier Dubois, a 47-year-old French freelance journalist who has been living and working in Mali since 2015, was kidnapped more than a year ago.

He announced his abduction himself in a video posted on social networks on May 5, 2021. In it, he said he had been kidnapped in the northern city of Gao by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, which is linked to al-Qaida.

On March 13, a video circulated on social networks showing a man who appears to be the French journalist addressing his relatives and the French government.

Source: Voice of America

BERLIN — A storm that swept across parts of Germany generated three tornadoes, the country’s weather service said Saturday. One of them left a trail of destruction and more than 40 people injured in a western city.

Meteorologists had warned of heavy rainfall, hail and strong gusts of wind in western and central Germany on Friday, and people in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia were advised to stay home. Storms on Thursday had already disrupted traffic, uprooted trees that toppled onto rail tracks and roads, and flooded hundreds of basements in western Germany.

The German Weather Service confirmed three tornadoes in North Rhine-Westphalia — in Paderborn, in nearby Lippstadt, and on the edge of the town of Hoexter, news agency DPA reported.

Forty-three people were injured in Paderborn as the tornado tore across the city’s downtown area on Friday afternoon, 13 of them seriously, Mayor Michael Dreier said.

Trees in a park and stop lights “snapped like matches,” roofs were ripped off buildings and windows smashed, he told reporters on Saturday, and the storm left a roughly 300-meter-wide trail of destruction. A tree hit the windshield of a fire truck, but the occupants weren’t hurt.

Police urged people to stay home or stay out of the city on Saturday so as not to get in the way of recovery work. They said they still expected possible risks from high wind.

Further south, authorities in Bavaria said 14 people were injured Friday when the wooden hut they were trying to shelter in collapsed during a storm at Lake Brombach, south of Nuremberg.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spain was sweltering Saturday under unusually high temperatures for late spring, with a mass of hot, dry air carrying dust from North Africa.

The mercury rose to 42.3 degrees Celsius (108 Fahrenheit) on Friday afternoon in Andujar, in the southern Andalucia region, after reaching 39.5 degrees Thursday. Two of the region’s provincial capitals, Cordoba and Sevilla, also saw similar temperatures.

At least 13 regions were on alert Saturday due to heat, Spain’s State Meteorological Agency AEMET said, and the temperatures could provoke storms in five of them. The “unusual and extreme” temperatures are expected to peak Saturday.

Source: Voice of America

Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the opening ceremony of the Africa Trade and Investment Forum of the Africities Summit in Kisumu, Kenya, today:

Honourable Ministers and Mayors, dear participants,

I am pleased to join this opening session of the Africa Trade and Investment Forum.

Africa is facing unprecedented, irreversible and rapid urbanization. Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. Cities will receive 30 million new inhabitants per year by 2030, almost double the current rate. What’s more, intermediary cities — the focus of this edition of Africities — are experiencing the fastest rates of population growth. This trend accompanies other transitions affecting Africa’s development path, including on energy, digital and food systems.

African cities already produce about 60 per cent of the continent’s GDP [gross domestic product], currently valued at $700 billion and expected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2030. Still, Africa faces deepening inequalities and infrastructure gaps. These challenges are preventing African cities to unleash their full potential to foster sustainable development and respond with opportunities for young people and addressing the needs of women.

For African cities and territories to play their role as “heartbeats” of trade and investments, adequate infrastructure and facilities must be created to attract investors, including in the fields of energy, transport, housing, communications, industrial and agricultural production. And as we build this infrastructure, we cannot lose the opportunity of making them inclusive and green.

Dear friends,

This first African Trade and Investment Forum of UCLG [United Cities and Local Governments] Africa aims to become a matchmaking platform between local authorities in Africa and investors, to identify business opportunities and investment strategies. Local investment needs can be structured to match and attract national, regional, and international investments — through the definition of pipeline of projects.

We have successful examples to draw from. As Kenya has shown, decentralizing public administration provides county governments with the authority to raise endogenous resources. However, local governments in Africa still have a long way to go directly accessing capital markets. Challenges range from institutional constraints, limited capacities, and regulatory hurdles to looming debt burdens and repayments following the expiration of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative.

At the global level, the Secretary-General has been advocating for greater debt relief and liquidity to support countries across Africa. This includes re-channelling unused special drawing rights to countries most in need and better aligning public and private finance with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Today, I see four priorities.

First, local governments’ capacities need to be strengthened to fully play their role as catalysers in mobilizing public and private capital for growing cities.

Second, local policies should be implemented to create an enabling business environment to facilitate investments, including by providing targeted public investments and skilled human capital.

Third, we must accelerate the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) in African cities and territories. The AfCTA is the largest trade area in the world since the formation of the World Trade Organization and is expected to boost intra-African trades by 52 per cent in the coming five years. And business and trade will happen at the level of cities and territories.

And fourth, cities need to venture into national and international bond markets. At present, only a few African cities have done so.

Two centuries ago, the City of New York issued the first municipal bond to finance a new canal. Today, the global municipal bond market is worth $3.8 trillion, around 10 per cent of the entire US bonds market. In Africa, only South African and Nigerian cities have so far succeeded in developing a municipal bond market.

Dear participants,

The United Cities and Local Governments for Africa (UCLG-Africa) initiative has put forward a proposal to set up a financing facility that would improve subnational and local governments’ access to capital markets. This is certainly a step in the right direction, particularly if local governments are willing to work together and share risks. Furthermore, this proposal complements efforts by the United Nations System through the Cities Investment Facility launched by UN Habitat and UNCDF [United Nations Capital Development Fund] to support investment portfolios in 250 cities from least developed countries by the year 2025.

Last year, we launched the Local2030 Coalition, a United Nations system initiative to turbocharge innovative solutions that can accelerate SDG progress at the local level by harnessing urban dynamics. It aims to engage and empower every local actor, everywhere. This Africities Trade and Investment Forum is a great opportunity for us to build a coalition between the United Nations, UCLG Africa, and other partners to unleash the power of trade and investments on the continent’s cities and territories.

Together, we can ensure that African cities and territories gain access to capital markets and raise the financing they need to build a more prosperous and sustainable future for all. I wish you fruitful deliberations.

Thank you. Asanteni Sana.

Source: United Nations

A smattering of monkey pox cases in Britain has prompted authorities to offer a smallpox vaccine to some healthcare workers and others who may have been exposed, as a handful more cases were confirmed in parts of Europe.

Monkey pox is a usually mild viral illness, characterised by symptoms of fever as well as a distinctive bumpy rash.

There are two main strains: the Congo strain, which is more severe — with up to 10% mortality — and the West African strain, which has a fatality rate of about 1%.

First identified in monkeys, the viral disease typically spreads through close contact and largely occurs in west and central Africa. It has rarely spread elsewhere, so this fresh spate of cases outside the continent has triggered concern.

In the United Kingdom, nine cases of the West African strain have been reported so far.

There isn’t a specific vaccine for monkey pox, but a smallpox vaccine does offer some protection, a UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) spokesperson said.

Data shows that vaccines that were used to eradicate smallpox are up to 85% effective against monkey pox, according to the World Health Organisation.

“Those who have required the vaccine have been offered it,” the UKHSA spokesperson added, without disclosing specifics on how many people have been vaccinated so far.

Some countries have large stockpiles of the smallpox vaccine as part of pandemic preparedness, including the US.

Copenhagen-based drugmaker Bavarian Nordic on Thursday said it had secured a contract with an undisclosed European country to supply its smallpox vaccine, Imvanex, in response to the monkey pox outbreak.

Source: National News Agency

Canada’s public health agency on Thursday confirmed the first two cases of monkeypox virus infections in the country after authorities in Quebec province said they were investigating 17 suspected cases.

Several countries including Portugal and Spain have reported cases of monkeypox in recent weeks, with a U.S. case identified by Massachusetts public health officials on Wednesday in a man who had recently traveled to the Canadian province of Quebec.

“Tonight, the Province of Quebec was notified that two samples received by the NML (National Microbiology Laboratory) have tested positive for monkeypox. These are the first two cases confirmed in Canada,” the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said in a statement, adding Canada had never before seen monkeypox cases.

Monkeypox, which mostly occurs in west and central Africa, is a rare viral infection similar to human smallpox, though milder. It was first recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1970s. The number of cases in West Africa has increased in the last decade.

Symptoms include fever, headaches and skin rashes starting on the face and spreading to the rest of the body.

Health officials in Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, told reporters earlier on Thursday that there was a link between the U.S. case of monkeypox in Massachusetts and a few of the suspected cases in the Montreal region.

PHAC said the U.S. citizen who had recently traveled to Canada from the U.S. by private transportation “may have been infected before or during” his visit to Montreal.

Source: United Nations

The idea that China engages in so-called “Debt Trap Diplomacy” is almost apocryphal. There is a persistent media narrative that China makes big infrastructure investments oversees as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, and when countries cant replay those loans China seizes infrastructure.

My guest today, Deborah Brautigam, is the director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She has done extensive research on Chinese-financed infrastructure investment projects in Asia and Africa and has definitively shown that the narrative of Chinese Debt Trap diplomacy is not supported by facts.

We kick off discussion the origin of this myth, which stems from media commentary around Chinese investment in a port in Sri Lanka. We then discuss other examples of the perpetuation of this myth and have a broad conversation about how China (and other lenders) actually seek repayment of loans.

Source: United Dispatch

As 18 million people in Africa’s Sahel region teeter on the edge of severe hunger over the next three months, the UN released on Friday an additional $30 million from its emergency humanitarian fund, to boost the humanitarian response across four countries.

Food insecurity is set to reach its highest level since 2014, warned the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“Entire families in the Sahel are on the brink of starvation,” said Martin Griffiths, UN Humanitarian Affairs chief and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “If we don’t act now, people will perish”.

Sobering numbers

In the Sahel, 7.7 million children under five are expected to suffer from malnutrition, of which 1.8 million are severely malnourished.

And if aid operations are not scaled up, this number could reach 2.4 million by the year’s end.

“A combination of violence, insecurity, deep poverty and record-high food prices is exacerbating malnutrition and driving millions to the fringes of survival,” said the humanitarian affairs chief.

Staggering hunger

The situation has reached alarming levels in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger, where almost 1.7 million people will experience emergency levels of food insecurity during the lean season between June and August.

In the emergency level – technically referred to as IPC phase 4 – households experience “large gaps” in food consumption; high levels of acute malnutrition and associated deaths; and families sell off items needed for their lives and livelihoods, such as farm tools.

“The recent spike in food prices driven by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is threatening to turn a food security crisis into a humanitarian disaster,” said the Emergency Relief Coordinator.

‘No time to lose’

OCHA has released $30 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help meet most urgent food security and nutrition needs in the four States: $6 million for Burkina Faso and $8 million each for Chad, Mali, and Niger.

CERF is a mechanism through which donors pool their contributions in advance, allowing humanitarian agencies to provide initial, life-saving assistance when crises strike while awaiting additional funding.

“There is no time to lose,” said Mr. Griffiths. “Lives are at stake. This injection of cash will help agencies on the ground scale up the emergency response to help avoid a catastrophe”.

Cash infusions

This latest contribution brings to almost $95 million the funding amount channelled through CERF to the Sahel since the beginning of the year.

Other recent allocations were made for Mauritania, $4 million; and Nigeria, $15 million.

The humanitarian chief reminded that CERF is no substitute for “the more substantial donor contributions we need to maintain our response and help build resilient communities.”

Earlier this year, the humanitarian community launched six humanitarian appeals in the Sahel for a total of $3.8 billion to provide aid throughout the region for 2022.

However, halfway through the year, the appeals are less than 12 per cent funded.

Source: United Nations