Month: January 2023

DAKAR, The Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit ended with a $30 billion pledge by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and development partners to finance food and agribusiness on the continent in the next five years.

Of the amount announced at the summit held in the Senegalese capital, the AfDB pledged to mobilize $10 billion.

Leaders who attended the event called on the African Union Commission and the AfDB to help mobilize more funding to top up the amount announced and report on the overall investment at the February African Union Summit.

Some 34 African heads of state and government, leaders of international and bilateral development organizations, and the private sector attended the in Summit, whose theme was “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience”.

Concerned that rising food prices and disruption in global food supply due to Covid-19, climate change, and the war in Ukraine will worsen food insecurity in Africa, and noting that the continent has 65 percent of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land — with the potential to produce enough to feed its people and the rest of the world — the leaders mooted national food and agriculture delivery compacts to embed food targets in their development agenda.

Among the resolutions was the establishment of Presidential Delivery Councils to oversee the implementation of the country-specific compacts and promote accountability.

AfDB President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said that Africa’s agriculture sector will depend on strong political will and commitment of governments, development partners, and the private sector and the scaling up of highly impactful continental programs such as the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation.

He emphasized the place of infrastructure in transforming rural areas into agricultural production and processing zones.

“Infrastructure is very important and Africa has a deficit of $68 billion to $108 billion per year. The African Development Bank has in the past six years invested $44 billion in infrastructure: from power to roads, to water, to sanitation, to digital infrastructure, to transport corridors to one-stop border posts. But a lot of infrastructure in Africa concentrates in urban areas because the economic viability of infrastructure is low in the rural areas because they’re a source of livelihood — agriculture — is not viable. But we have special agro-industrial processing zones. These are going to change the density of infrastructure in rural areas around agriculture, power water, roads, irrigation storage, and logistics.

“It will make agricultural processing and value addition profitable, close to where the food is produced. So, you don’t need to move raw materials; you will move finished agricultural products,” Adesina said.

He said the bank has in the past two years invested $1 billion on 23 projects in special agro-industrial processing zones in 11 countries.

Participants sought support for agriculture-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs), burdened with an unmet financing need of about $100 billion annually.

The AfDB and the government of Canada announced the Agri-SME Catalytic Financing Mechanism, a blended finance facility that is expected to de-risk investment into small and medium agri-businesses and strengthen food systems across the continent.

With an initial contribution of $85 million from the Canadian government, the Mechanism will provide concessional finance and technical assistance to financial intermediaries, including agribusinesses, commercial banks, micro-finance institutions, and impact funds.

The summit also saw the launch of Mission 1 for 200, a joint program of the AfDB and the International Fund for Agricultural Development to help 40 million African farmers to produce 100 million tonnes of food for 200 million people.

Mission 1 for 200 is meant to build resilience by helping farmers adapt to climate change and reduce agriculture’s environmental impact and emissions.

Source: Nam News Network

Ahead of World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day Monday, the World Health Organization is calling for action to tackle these debilitating illnesses, which affect an estimated 1.65 billion people globally.

A diverse group of 20 parasitic and bacterial tropical diseases is categorized as neglected. This is because they disproportionally affect people who live in poor, remote communities and are not on the list of global health priorities.

Ibrahima Soce Fall is director of WHO’s Department of Neglected Tropical Diseases. He says these vector-borne diseases are transmitted by insects in areas that lack safe water, sanitation, and access to health care. He says they also are spread via contaminated food and water.

Fall says they cause immense suffering because of their disfiguring and disabling impact.

“If you take diseases like onchocerciasis, you know, so-called river blindness because it can lead to blindness. The same for trachoma. So, these are so many diseases that are fatal and very debilitating,” he said.

Trachoma is an eye disease that can cause permanent blindness.

Fall says these diseases do not attract the amount of investment needed to access health services or develop new tools for diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines.

He notes some of these ailments have been around for a very long time. For instance, the biblical disease, leprosy, still exists in 139 countries and dengue, which has been around for 800 years, remains prevalent in 129 nations.

Despite the many challenges, progress is being made in the elimination of the NTDs. WHO reports the number of people requiring NTD interventions fell by 80 million between 2020 and 2021. It finds 47 countries have eliminated at least one NTD and more countries are in the process of achieving this target.

According to the Carter Center, there were only 13 human cases of Guinea worm disease last year, pushing the illness closer to eradication. The Atlanta-based center was co-founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter. When it began leading the international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases in at least 21 countries in Africa and Asia.

WHO officials say the goal it has set to eliminate at least one neglected tropical disease in 100 countries by 2030 can be achieved. It says the scientific community has the tools and the know-how to save lives and prevent suffering. But WHO says nations need to act together and invest in helping get rid of this dreaded group of diseases.

Source: Voice of America

Environmentalists protested over the weekend at the building site of a new airport in Albania’s south meant to boost tourism but which they say will endanger sanctuaries for some 200 bird species including flamingos and pelicans.

The picturesque Vjose-Narte lagoon close to Albania’s Adriatic seaside is a crucial stop for flocks of birds in their annual migration between Europe and Africa.

The government is building the airport just 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the Adriatic coast with pristine sandy beaches which the poor Balkan nation hopes will attract more foreign tourists.

“For those who think this airport will bring development, in reality this airport will bring only destruction,” tourist guide Alben Kola told Reuters on Saturday as he and more than 100 environmentalists and ornithologists held their protest.

The European Union, which Albania aims to join one day, has said the airport project, launched in December 2021 and due for completion at the end of 2024, was undertaken in contradiction with national and international laws on protecting biodiversity.

The committee of the Bern Convention that works to protect European wildlife and natural habitats has said Albania should suspend the construction of the airport.

“This shows that this nature wealth belongs not only to us but to the whole of Europe and foreign governments are doing more to protect it than we do,” said Joni Vorpsi, from the NGO Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA) that has been fighting for years to protect the lagoon.

In November an Albanian court rejected a lawsuit filed by local NGOs against the construction of the airport but they plan to appeal.

Vorpsi said the airport, which would serve the southern coastal city of Vlore, not only would destroy avian habitats but raise the risk of aircraft collisions with big birds.

The Swiss firm leading the project, Mabetex, has said the take-off and landing paths of planes there would not affect bird routes. It said the runway would be 3.5 kilometres from the bird sanctuary and 5 km away from major bird migration routes.

Source: Voice of America

Coal-rich but energy-starved South Africa will not immediately abandon its fossil-fueled electricity generating plants as it transitions to cleaner forms of power, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday.

South Africa, one of the world’s largest polluters which generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal, is in the grip of an energy crisis.

It has been blamed on ageing power stations, sabotage and theft of coal and spare parts by organized gangs.

Since 2021, the country has secured several billions of dollars in international loans and grants to support a green transition.

But Ramaphosa cautioned against “the perception that we are called upon to make a trade-off between energy security and a just transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Addressing his African National Congress (ANC) party’s senior officials, he said it was not the case “that we must make a choice between coal and renewable energy.”

“Our energy architecture is 80-percent coal-powered, there is just no way we are going to close those power stations… just like that,” he said.

Two recently built plants, ranked among some of the biggest coal-powered stations in the world, are beset by design problems.

But they will remain operational until the end of their 40-year life span, he vowed.

“We have invested a lot of money into those power stations,” he told the ANC meeting.

Plants nearing the end of their shelf lives will be re-purposed for clean energy, he said.

South Africa’s energy crisis has forced scheduled outages, ranging from two-and-half hours to 12 hours in total in a day.

Source: Voice of America

A wave of attacks on villages in eastern DR Congo attributed to Islamic State-affiliated ADF rebels killed at least 15 people Sunday, local officials said.

These latest killings come a week after a similar attack left more than 20 dead.

“There were simultaneous attacks this Sunday between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on three villages,” said local official Dieudonne Malangai.

“In Manyala village we found seven bodies… at Ofay, there were eight dead, including seven women,” Malangai told AFP, and indicated that the final toll might be higher.

A humanitarian source confirmed seven fatalities in Manyala and “at least eight” in Ofay.

“These ADF rebels also attacked Bandibese village but ran into resistance from soldiers who intervened and so there were no civilian deaths,” Malangai said after the raids on three villages in the Ituri province bordering Rwanda.

“We are tired of giving the death toll day after day,” he added.

ADF fighters were also blamed for last week’s raids in the neighboring province of North Kivu which claimed at least 23 lives while in the same province at least 14 other people were killed in a bomb blast at a Pentecostal church.

Islamic State portrays the ADF, which has its roots in Rwanda, as its central African incarnation.

In an attempt to stem the violence, the government in May 2021 declared a state of alert in North Kivu and Ituri, replacing civil administrators with police and troops.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA — The U.N.’s main AIDS program says thousands of children are dying from HIV/AIDS because, unlike adults, they do not receive treatment for the deadly disease.

HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. People infected with the disease can live a normal lifespan, provided they receive treatment and care. Unfortunately, there is a glaring disparity between the way children and adults with HIV/AIDS are treated.

UNAIDS spokeswoman Charlotte Sector says 76 percent of adults have access to treatment but only half of children living with HIV are receiving lifesaving treatment. She says children account for 15 percent of all AIDS deaths, despite making up only four percent of all people living with the disease.

“Last year alone 160,000 children were infected with HIV,” Sector said. “So, what is happening is that 12 countries are coming together in Africa because six countries in sub-Saharan Africa represent 50 percent of those new infections.”

She says a global alliance led by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF has formed to close the huge gap. She says 12 African countries have joined the alliance. Sector says health ministers from eight countries will launch the initiative next week in Tanzania.

“So, not only is it getting children on treatment, but it is mostly trying to stop vertical transmission,” Sector said. “Now what is vertical transmission? It is the mother passing on HIV during pregnancy, during delivery or during breast feeding because most of those transmissions are taking place during breastfeeding.”

Spector says efforts to contain the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa mainly have been centered on getting adults on treatment, as the main transmitters of the virus. In the process, however, she says the needs of children have been overlooked.

“So, what happens is suddenly there is a realization that we have forgotten all these children, and there is a forgotten generation of children,” Sector said. “So now, there has been a scramble to kind of close that faucet, if I may say, of getting to the children before they are even born or after they are born.”

The global alliance will run for the next eight years until 2030. During that period, it aims to close the treatment gap for pregnant and breastfeeding adolescent girls and women living with HIV, prevent and detect new HIV infections, provide access to testing and treatment, and end the social barriers that hinder access to services.

Source: Voice of America