Category: General

BRUSSELS, EU and African leaders meet for a two-day summit on Thursday, seeking to reboot ties with pledges of major investment in the face of competition from China and Russia.

Relations between the two continents have been hampered by a raft of problems: from disputes over coronavirus vaccines, to curbing illegal migration, a wave of coups in Africa, and the growing clout of Russian mercenaries on the continent.

“Our common ambition, Africans and Europeans, for this summit, is to achieve a renewed, modernised and more action-oriented partnership,” said Senegal’s President Macky Sall, who currently chairs the African Union.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, hopes the first joint summit since 2017 can burnish his grand ambition of forging an “economic and financial New Deal with Africa”.

The EU is aiming to convince the 40 African leaders in Brussels that Europe is their “most reliable partner” by fleshing out an investment initiative that aims to mobilise 150 billion euros ($170 billion) of public and private funds over the next seven years.

The scheme is the first regional part of the EU’s Global Gateway — a $300-billion-euro ($340-billion) worldwide investment blueprint meant to rival China’s Belt and Road initiative.

The EU is eyeing a dozen ambitious projects to bolster internet access, transport links and renewable energy as it seeks to provide an alternative to cheap loans from Beijing.

But details on funding remain vague, and the projects are still to be agreed on with the African side.

African leaders are instead pushing for a far more concrete step of getting EU nations to allow the International Monetary Fund to allocate tens of billions of dollars in further aid.

The summit — which will involve a series of roundtable discussions — comes at a worrying time for Africa after a wave of military coups and as regional powerhouse Ethiopia is wracked by conflict.

Burkina Faso last month joined Guinea, Mali and Sudan as the fourth country frozen out by the AU after disgruntled soldiers toppled the elected president.

Those four will not be represented in Brussels.

As Europe grapples with a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is also unsettled by the rising clout of Russian mercenaries in some of Africa’s most volatile hotspots. Shadowy paramilitary outfit Wagner, alleged to have close

ties to the Kremlin, is accused of bolstering Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions.

Western nations have condemned the reported arrival of its mercenaries in Mali’s capital Bamako to help protect a junta that seized power last year. Mali’s rulers deny hiring Wagner.

Macron is looking to redeploy France’s forces in Mali to elsewhere in the Sahel amid the breakdown in ties, ending a nine-year mission there battling jihadists.

European governments fear turmoil among the region’s rulers risks leaving a vacuum that movements tied to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group could exploit.

An EU official said the bloc would “remain engaged” in Mali, but there are still major questions over its military training mission there.

The official said that in a bid to bolster broader stability, the EU planned to increase funding for African Union peacekeeping missions across the continent.

The fight against the Covid-19 pandemic is also expected be a major topic.

Africa has been angered by what it sees as the unfair distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide that has left it lagging woefully behind.

South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa has accused the West of giving his continent only the “crumbs from their table” as the EU has rebuffed a push for a temporary patent waiver to allow the generic production of vaccines.

The EU — the world’s biggest vaccine exporter — points to over 400 million jabs it has contributed to the global Covax vaccine-sharing initiative and is promising to give Africa 450 million doses by mid-2022.

It says it will increase funding to help health systems on the continent get jabs into arms, and has pledged one billion euros (around $1 billion) to bolster future vaccine production in Africa.

Source: Nam News Network

Berlin, German vaccine maker BioNTech, which developed the first widely approved shot against COVID-19 together with Pfizer, unveiled plans Wednesday to establish manufacturing facilities in Africa that would boost the availability of much-needed medicines on the continent.

The modular design presented at a ceremony in Marburg, Germany, consists of shipping containers fitted with the equipment necessary to make the company’s mRNA-based vaccine, save for the final step of putting doses into bottles, a process known as fill and finish.

BioNTech has been criticized by some campaign groups for refusing to suspend its vaccine patents and let rivals manufacture the shots as part of an effort to make them more widely available, especially in poor countries.

The company argues that the process of making mRNA vaccines is difficult and it prefers to work with local partners to ensure consistent quality of the shots worldwide, reports AP..

The first turnkey facility will be shipped to either Senegal or Rwanda in the second half of this year, BioNTech said. It aims to start production of up to 50 million doses of vaccine a year within 12 months, pending approval from local regulators.

That’s a fraction of the 1.2 billion doses the company produced in Marburg last year. But the vaccines made in the target country would likely be for use there and other African Union states at a not-for-profit price, BioNTech said.

BioNTech said it would initially staff and operate the facilities but later transfer the know-how to local partners to enable independent operation.

The head of the World Health Organization, Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcomed BioNTech’s plan to increase vaccine production on the continent, saying it would complement the global body’s own effort to foster use of mRNA technology in South Africa and elsewhere.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

UNITED NATIONS, Madagascar braces for another tropical storm, only 10 days after Cyclone Batsirai killed at least 121 people, a UN spokesman said, yesterday.

Tropical Cyclone Dumako, is on track to hit the country’s north-east today, said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

Cyclone Batsirai hit Madagascar’s south-east the Feb 5 weekend, displacing 29,000 people and destroying, flooding or damaging almost 19,000 homes.

“Health teams have been deployed to affected areas, where they are working in collaboration with the government, to scale up the response,” Dujarric said. “Food partners are providing both cash assistance and in-kind food assistance.”

When food markets are not working, there is not enough local food available, or victims cannot access markets, in-kind food assistance frequently is distributed.

Dujarric said, the World Food Programme distributed unconditional cash transfers, to help impacted families for the next three months. The UNs’ health partners have also supported the resumption of health services and rehabilitate cyclone-damaged medical facilities.

“Our friends at UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund) have provided medicine for the treatment of nearly 50,000 cases of Malaria, and are also supporting the repair of cold chains for vaccines and essential medicine,” Dujarric said.

Source: Nam News Network

Tunis, Feb. 14 (BNA): In a photo posted in November, 18-year-old Sabee Saidi is shown wearing bright-pink lipstick as she leans from the side of a rickety wooden boat, a calm blue sea stretched out behind her. In a video, she smiles alongside a dozen other migrants, gesturing to a popular rap song.

A month later, Chaima Ben Mahmoude, 21, posted a similar video, waving as she made the crossing from Tunisia to Italy with her fiancé in a boat crowded with migrants.

The two Tunisian women have sparked controversy with their posts — which show them on seemingly carefree trips across the Mediterranean, landing in Lampedusa, Italy, and then traveling around European cities taking selfies next to landmarks as they sport popular fashion brands. Many criticized them for “normalizing” a journey that leaves thousands dead each year, AP reports.

According to the Missing Migrants Project, 2,048 people went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021, with 23,000 missing since 2014. Experts warn that Saidi and Ben Mahmoude – social media influencers in Tunisia, with nearly 2 million followers on TikTok and Instagram between them – could inspire others to make the dangerous crossing.

“Social media is putting out a vision of Europe that is not accurate,” said Matt Herbert, research manager at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

In the past, he said, the driver for migration was “the diaspora coming home for the summer. People would see their cousins wearing new, expensive clothes and aspire to be like that.”

“With social media, it’s much more in your face and more accessible to everybody,” Herbert said.

Tunisia is one of the main departure points for migrants setting off from North Africa to Europe, with thousands of Tunisians joining those making the journey from elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East each year.

While Tunisia was once a popular tourist destination with a burgeoning middle class, as the country’s economy deteriorated – with an 18% unemployment rate exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19 -, migration attempts have soared.

In 2021, authorities intercepted more than 23,000 migrants trying to leave Tunisian shores. This number is starkly higher than in 2019, when around 5,000 people were intercepted, and dwarfs numbers recorded over the last decade.

A report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime pins the surge on rising unemployment and pessimism about Tunisian leaders’ ability to improve the situation.

Last July, following nationwide anti-government protests, President Kais Saied suspended parliament and took on sweeping powers, raising fears of democratic backsliding.

The journey across the Mediterranean is known locally as the “harka” — a reference to the figurative “burning” of borders and the destruction of personal documents before undertaking the perilous crossing.

The clandestine intrigue once surrounding the harka has faded in recent years as more people have migrated, and it is widely discussed on social media, in music and on TV.

While Ben Mahmoude’s and Saidi’s posts sparked criticism, many also came to their defense, a reflection of how some see the harka as their only option to escape a country in crisis amid growing frustration over European Union visa restrictions. France recently slashed visas given to Tunisians by 30% – and to Algerians and Moroccans by half – accusing the countries of failing to cooperate over the return of their nationals who were in the country illegally.

“Shame on her? More like, it’s a shame for us!” posted one TikToker in response to criticism of Saidi’s video. “She managed to make it to Italy, while we’re all stuck here in Tunisia.”

As she underwent two weeks’ COVID-19 quarantine at a detention center in Italy, Ben Mahmoude told The Associated Press she understood the risks of the journey. But financial difficulties and her inability to get a visa had “forced” her to do the harka.

“I didn’t find anything for myself in Tunisia,” she said in the interview conducted through Zoom. “I have a diploma in hairdressing and I couldn’t get any work in this field. … When I did, the monthly salary was really hopeless – around 350 dinar ($120). You cannot do anything with that. You can just use public transport and buy your lunch – that’s it.”

Ben Mahmoude, who like Saidi grew up in a lower middle-class family in the coastal Tunisian city of Sfax, said all it took was a call to a friend of a friend. She paid 4,500 dinars ($1,560) for a place in the boat alongside 23 others.

Despite her smiles in the posts, Ben Mahmoude said the journey was terrifying. She described a moment when the boat rocked violently.

“I was so scared, I saw death right in front of me,” she said. “The fear was extraordinary, the sea was really agitated and there were lots of high waves. In the boat, we said a prayer and prepared ourselves for death. When they told us we had arrived in Italian waters, we couldn’t believe it.”

Still, Ben Mahmoude says she was prepared to risk death for the chance at a better life.

“I have lots of friends who did the harka and they found opportunities in Europe. They put hope in my heart that there is work, that there is a lot of money,” she said. “I want to change my life like they did.”

Wael Garnaoui, a psychologist researching the harka, says this hope is largely based on “the migration lie,” a phenomenon that he says has been intensified by social media.

According to Garnaoui, people see others go to Europe and observe their apparent success. They think that once in Europe, they can easily get papers, work and money. The reality is often very different: 2020 data from the European Commission showed that the unemployment rate for inhabitants from outside the EU was nearly 14%, compared to about 6% for the native-born population.

“So they go to the Eiffel Tower and take a selfie in a Lacoste T-shirt, take photos of expensive cars. .… They tell their family back home that everything is going well,” Garnaoui said. “If they say the opposite, everyone will mock them. They will point to other people and say: ‘If they did it, why can’t you?’”

“There is so much social pressure,” he said.

In the weeks since Ben Mahmoude and Saidi made it to Europe, they have documented their shopping sprees, rides in BMWs and picture-perfect lattes. A photo of Saidi riding an electric scooter in the historic French village of Le Puy-Notre-Dame got nearly 6,000 likes, while one of Ben Mahmoude beneath the Eiffel tower had 8,000. The photos and videos of their crossings garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.

Although both women secured sponsorships in Tunisia that paid them for their social media endorsements of beauty products and local businesses, it is unclear if they are making money from their posts in Italy and France.

But their posts do have influence in Tunisia, experts say.

Posts like theirs “demystify” a journey that might otherwise be too terrifying to undertake, said Herbert of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

“One of the bars to migration is the fear of stepping out on the journey. … It’s scary. What these videos do, especially the videos of men and women at sea describing their journey, it confronts their fear with a visual reality that people can replace it with,” he said. “It lowers the mental bar to leaving.”

Ayla Bonfligio, an expert on migration at the Mixed Migration Centre, said rather than focusing on the draw posed by glowing social media posts like Saidi’s and Ben Mahmoude’s, the real controversy should be “the fact that few legal pathways exist for youth to move.”

Citing France’s recent visa cuts, she said: “This use of migration as a political bargaining chip further limits legal pathways and it doesn’t reduce the demand for migration.”

As for Ben Mahmoude, she insists she is not trying to encourage others to do the harka.

“I posted those videos because I always document my life on Instagram. Whether it’s at my house, when I’m out, when I’m at a café,” she said. “For me it was totally normal to publish stuff when I was doing the harka.”

For many, however, the harka has spelled only tragedy.

Chamseddine Marzouk, a volunteer for the Red Crescent in Zarzis, a coastal Tunisian town, has been burying the bodies of those trying to reach Europe for years. By building a makeshift cemetery, Marzouk wanted to raise awareness about the dangers of migration.

Then last summer Marzouk woke to find a letter from his wife saying that after multiple failed attempts to get visas, she and their grandchildren had left by boat for Europe. “Forgive me, I’m going to Italy. I have no other solution but the sea,” read the note.

“I found myself living the same situation that I’d been fighting for years,” Marzouk said.

If an accident happened, “I could be burying my family without knowing whose bodies they were. I was in shock for two nights, and felt such relief when they called and told me they had arrived.”

Source: Bahrain News Agency

GAZA, A new field hospital, financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), treating COVID-19 patients, was inaugurated yesterday, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Yousef Abu al-Reesh, the undersecretary of the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza, told reporters that, the hospital was named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi of the UAE.

He added that, the field hospital, built on eight dunums (0.8 hectares), at the European Hospital in Khan Younis city, in the southern Gaza Strip, includes 216 beds, 56 of which are designated for critical and severe cases.

The opening of the hospital came, as officials warned that there are obstacles facing the health ministry in Gaza, to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

“Opening the hospital shows part of the ongoing UAE support,” Abu al-Reesh said, adding, the UAE had previously donated an oxygen station, ambulances, vaccines, and medicines to Gaza.

According to Jawad al-Tibi, director of the supervision committee to build the hospital, the Emirati field hospital comprises three Oxygen generation stations, electric generators, and medical equipment.

Yesterday, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported 13 fatalities and 1,871 new COVID-19 cases in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the last 24 hours, adding that, 5,979 recoveries were recorded.

Source: Nam News Network

WASHINGTON — As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of Africa, according to a new study.

Researchers used analysis of DNA from seized elephant tusks and evidence such as phone records, license plates, financial records and shipping documents to map trafficking operations across the continent and better understand who was behind the crimes. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

“When you have the genetic analysis and other data, you can finally begin to understand the illicit supply chain — that’s absolutely key to countering these networks,” said Louise Shelley, who researches illegal trade at George Mason University and was not involved in the research.

Conservation biologist Samuel Wasser, a study co-author, hopes the findings will help law enforcement officials target the leaders of these networks instead of low-level poachers who are easily replaced by criminal organizations.

“If you can stop the trade where the ivory is being consolidated and exported out of the country, those are really the key players,” said Wasser, who co-directs the Center for Environmental Forensic Science at the University of Washington.

Africa’s elephant population is fast dwindling. From around 5 million elephants a century ago to 1.3 million in 1979, the total number of elephants in Africa is now estimated to be around 415,000.

A 1989 ban on international commercial ivory trade hasn’t stopped the decline. Each year, an estimated 1.1 million pounds (500 metric tons) of poached elephant tusks are shipped from Africa, mostly to Asia.

For the past two decades, Wasser has fixated on a few key questions: “Where is most of the ivory being poached, who is moving it, and how many people are they?”

He works with wildlife authorities in Kenya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere, who contact him after they intercept ivory shipments. He flies to the countries to take small samples of tusks to analyze the DNA. He has now amassed samples from the tusks of more than 4,300 elephants trafficked out of Africa between 1995 and today.

“That’s an amazing, remarkable data set,” said Princeton University biologist Robert Pringle, who was not involved in the study. With such data, “it becomes possible to spot connections and make strong inferences,” he said.

In 2004, Wasser demonstrated that DNA from elephant tusks and dung could be used to pinpoint their home location to within a few hundred miles. In 2018, he recognized that finding identical DNA in tusks from two different ivory seizures meant they were harvested from the same animal – and likely trafficked by the same poaching network.

The new research expands that approach to identify DNA belonging to elephant parents and offspring, as well as siblings — and led to the discovery that only a very few criminal groups are behind most of the ivory trafficking in Africa.

Because female elephants remain in the same family group their whole life, and most males don’t travel too far from their family herd, the researchers hypothesize that tusks from close family members are likely to have been poached at the same time, or by the same operators.

Such genetic links can provide a blueprint for wildlife authorities seeking other evidence — cell phone records, license plates, shipping documents and financial statements — to link different ivory shipments.

Previously when an ivory shipment was intercepted, the one seizure wouldn’t allow authorities to identify the organization behind the crime, said Special Agent John Brown III of the Office of Homeland Security Investigations, who has worked on environmental crimes for 25 years.

But the scientists’ work identifying DNA links can “alert us to the connections between individual seizures,” said Brown, who is also a co-author. “This collaborative effort has definitely been the backbone of multiple multinational investigations that are still ongoing,” he said.

They identified several poaching hotspots, including regions of Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Gabon and Republic of Congo. Tusks are often moved to warehouses in another location to be combined with other contraband in shipping containers, then moved to ports. Current trafficking hubs exist in Kampala, Uganda; Mombasa, Kenya; and Lome, Togo.

Two suspects were recently arrested as a result of one such investigation, said Wasser.

Traffickers that smuggle ivory also often move other contraband, the researchers found. A quarter of large seizures of pangolin scales – a heavily-poached anteater-like animal – are co-mingled with ivory, for instance.

“Confronting these networks is a great example of how genetics can be used for conservation purposes,” said Brian Arnold, a Princeton University evolutionary biologist who was not involved in the research.

Source: Voice of America

CAPE TOWN, South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, said, the government is making efforts to address “deep” and “structural” problems in economy, including electricity crisis, inefficiency of railways and ports and reluctance to invest.

The government is accelerating the implementation of “far-reaching structural reforms,” to modernise and transform these industries, unlock investment, reduce costs and increase competitiveness and growth, Ramaphosa said, during his annual State of the Nation Address.

Several new energy generation projects will come online over the next few years, to offset the electricity supply shortfall of around 4,000 MW, he said, adding that, the country is implementing fundamental changes to the structure of the electricity sector.

Amendments to the Electricity Regulation Act have been approved on Wednesday, to enable a competitive market for electricity generation and the establishment of an independent state-owned transmission company, he said.

Efforts to deal with functioning of ports is currently focused on improving operational efficiencies, through procuring additional equipment and reducing congestion, he said.

The president also announced that, South Africa will unlock new spectrum for mobile telecommunications for the first time in over a decade, commencing the public auction of high frequency communications spectrum.

Other methods include, attracting skilled immigrants by streamlining and modernising the visa application process; prioritising institutional reforms in water sector, to ensure water security, investment and maintenance; unleashing the potential of small, micro and informal businesses; reducing red tape, to improve the business environment for companies of all sizes, among others.

Source: Nam News Network

Manama, His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa received today, at Al Safriya Palace, Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Personal Representative to the British PM, Minister for South and Central Asia, United Nations and the Commonwealth at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon conveyed to HM the King greetings and appreciation from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his wishes of further progress and prosperity for the Kingdom of Bahrain.

HM the King welcomed Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbeldon, extending greetings to the UK Prime Minister, wishing the British friendly people further progress and prosperity.

His Majesty praised the strong and distinguished historical relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the friendly United Kingdom, which extended for many years of fruitful coordination and close cooperation in various fields.

He stressed mutual keenness to strengthen and develop joint ties to serve common goals and aspirations, praising the tangible efforts undertaken by the United Kingdom to support the security and stability of the region and the fight against terrorism and extremist organizations.

HM the King highlighted Bahrain’s qualitative achievements in the field of promoting human rights and combating human trafficking.

He noted that Bahrain had become the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to be ranked for four years in a row in Tier 1 in the US Department of State Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Report, which cites the most successful countries in combating trafficking in persons.

He said that the landmark achievement reflects Bahrain’s full commitment to international standards, and its participation in the international community and support to efforts aimed aimed at combating trafficking in persons and promoting a culture of human rights.

HM the King highlighted Bahrain’s strides across all fields, hailing the role of role of Bahraini women and their active participation in decision-making, contributions to the development process, and their assumption of the highest positions and responsibilities,

He pointed out the Kingdom’s interest in promoting and empowering youth to achieve their aspirations and hopes and showcase their potential and r capabilities in all fields of creativity and innovation.

Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon expressed thanks to HM the King for the warm welcome and good hospitality as well as his keenness on further bolstering historical relations of friendship bing he two friendly countries.

Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon also commended steadily-growing relations across all fields between the two countries, expressing his delight at visiting the Kingdom of Bahrain and wishing its people further progress and prosperity.

Source: Bahrain News Agency