Archive for October, 2007
The Pastoralist Way of Life – A Fragile Future For Millions of Children
 Photo: Siegfried Modola/IRIN  |
| A Turkana girl waters cattle, Oropoi, northwestern Kenya |
IRIN – Pastoralist children in the Horn of Africa face some of the greatest challenges and are among the most vulnerable in the world, according to a new report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The region, which covers parts of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, has about 20 million pastoralists, including an estimated four million children.
They mostly live in water-scarce arid and semi-arid areas, characterised by poor road and communication infrastructure, few investments, limited educational opportunities and a lack of basic services.
“At least 90 percent of children below five years in Somalia [where 50-60 percent of the population are pastoralist] are not immunised against measles,” Per Engebak, UNICEF regional director, said at the launch of The Pastoralist Child in Nairobi on 29 October.
In some areas of Eritrea, Engebak added, just 22 percent of the children have received measles vaccinations, while in Ethiopia there is only one doctor per 300,000 people.
Access to healthcare is also a major problem in pastoralist Kenya, with people travelling an average of 40 to 80km to reach a health facility, said the report. In the Afar region of Ethiopia, two hospitals, nine health centres and 587 health workers serve a population of 1.4 million.
Only 20 percent of children in these areas go to school. Joseph Kelong, a student from Kacheliba in the pastoralist Pokot area in northwestern Kenya, said there are only two secondary schools in the district and very few skilled teachers.
“Our education is affected by cattle rustling, clashes, water scarcity, lack of electricity and poverty,” he said. “The children in Nairobi [the capital] and Lokichoggio [in northwestern Kenya] should have equal standards of education.”
Malnutrition rates in children surpassed the UN World Health Organization’s emergency threshold rate of 15 percent after successive droughts and flooding in 2005 and 2006.
The report said that malnutrition ranged from 11 to 20 percent in Eritrea, and about 30 percent in several areas in Kenya and Somalia. Overall, by early 2006, at least four million children, 1.5 million of them under five years old were in need of emergency nutrition and health interventions.
The pastoralist way of life has faced difficulties for many years, with fixed borders interrupting migratory routes, rainfall diminishing, and growing pressures on fewer areas of pasture and water sources.
According to Engebak, the most serious effects of climate change are also likely to impact fragile areas like those in the Horn of Africa.
In the pastoralist districts of northeastern Kenya, the average distances to the nearest water points are 25-40km, while below four percent of people in nomadic/pastoralist areas of Somalia have access to safe water sources, the report said.
Despite the inherent challenges, these communities have continued to contribute to the economies of the region, Engebak said.
 Photo: IRIN/Anthony Mitchell  |
| Pastoralists mostly live in water-scarce arid and semi-arid areas |
Ethiopia, which has the largest livestock population in Africa, relies on this as its second leading export earner after coffee. The camel population in Kenya is estimated to be worth 200 billion shillings (US$3 billion) with livestock production accounting for at least 10 percent of the gross domestic product.
The report recommends inclusive leadership, community involvement and budgetary reallocations, coordinated plans, policies and the role of nationl governments and international donors to improve the lives of pastoralists.
UNICEF’s report launch coincided with the start of Kenya Pastoralists’ Week (KPW) – an annual advocacy event aimed at influencing policies affecting pastoralist communities.
According to the acting director of the Centre for Minority Rights Development (CEMIRIDE), Yobo Rutin, the pastoralist way of life is often seen as archaic and has suffered years of neglect from mainstream development.
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Are Biofuels A Threat to Food Security?
AFRICA: Food to eat or to run your car ?
 Photo: FAO |
| Oil palms can yield crude oil for biofuel in three years |
(IRIN) – As oil prices soar and biofuel production becomes more attractive, especially to poor countries, a debate is raging over its possible impact on food security.
Biofuel production to earn revenue should go “hand-in-hand” with efforts to make countries food secure said Andre Croppenstedt, an economist with the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
He is involved in a three-year US$3.7 million project recently launched by the FAO to help policy-makers assess the potential effects of bioenergy production on food security in developing countries.
“Biofuel production need not compete with food production if biofuel demand generates increased incomes for farm households, and this in turn is invested in raising productivity of all farm activities, including food production,” said Croppenstedt.
“Assuming that households typically do not only grow one or the other, then biofuels could provide a stimulus to agricultural productivity, perhaps similar to the experience of cotton farmers in some Sahelian countries.”
Recent oil price increases have had devastating effects on many of the world’s poor countries: of the 50 poorest, 38 are net importers of petroleum and 25 import all their petroleum requirements; some now spend up to six times as much on fuel as they do on health, while others spend double the amount allocated to poverty reduction on fuels, according to Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers, released by the UN.
“Many of these poor countries lie in tropical zones where relatively low-cost biofuel crops, such as sugar cane and oil palm, already grow,” said the UN framework. Last year 13 African countries formed the Pan-African Non-Petroleum Producers Association, aimed in part at developing a biofuels industry in the continent.
 Biofuel production need not compete with food production if biofuel demand generates increased incomes for farm households, and this in turn is invested in raising productivity of all farm activities, including food production |
“The gradual move from oil has begun,” said Alexander Müller, Assistant Director-General of Sustainable Development at the FAO. “Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 percent of the world’s energy needs.” While the move is good for reducing greenhouse emissions, soaring oil prices have encouraged most countries to “go green” by switching to greater use of biofuels.
Global production of biofuels has doubled in the last five years and will likely double again in the next four, according to the UN framework. Among the countries that have enacted new pro-biofuel policies in recent years are Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia.
On the other hand, the demand for biofuels is already having an impact on the prices of the world’s two leading agricultural biofuel feedstocks: maize and sugar.
Competing for land
Another major concern is a growing competition for land use. “In the absence of comprehensive analyses and policies, commercial production of biofuels may target high-quality lands – due to better profit margins and high soil requirements of first-generation crops – such that biofuels, as the ‘next big cash crop’, will be grown on the best lands, leaving cereals and subsistence crops to the low-quality lands,” the UN framework noted.
This is one aspect the FAO project intends to monitor while it tries to mainstream food-security concerns as countries develop bioenergy policies. The Bioenergy and Food Security project has begun assessments in three countries: Tanzania in Africa, Peru in South America and Thailand in Southeast Asia.
Croppenstedt, who was involved in the assessment in Tanzania, said the priority at the moment was to ensure that any rural land acquired for biofuel production had not previously been used for growing food crops. “Obviously, it is key to get it right at this stage, i.e. to make sure farmers are not left landless.”
The Tanzanian government was concerned that sugar plantations should not displace or make subsistence farmers landless, and farmers who aimed to supply a biofuel feedstock should not monocrop, Croppenstedt said. “From what we have heard it would seem that some plantations use unused land, or rather, previous plantation land that has since been abandoned.”
At this stage all the investors the FAO had spoken to in Tanzania were keen not to comprise food security, and wanted to “promote intercropping or to advise setting aside only part of the land for biofuel feedstock production. Investors stressed that sustainability would imply easier access to land and finance in the future, implying that they had an incentive to get it right.”
Oil money not yet
Land acquisition is a complicated process in Tanzania and could delay biofuel production. “Most land in Tanzania is either owned by the villages or is designated as national land; land designated as national land is more easily leased,” said Croppenstedt.
“As I understand, the palm oil plantation would take 10 to 15 years before it is fully operational; the jatropha plantation is going to be planted in stages, and only if yields are high enough will they go ahead, and this should take 5 to 10 years before becoming fully operational; the sugar cane plantation we learned about plans to be fully operational by 2010,” he said.
Jatropha is a fast-growing perennial that can be planted in poor soil and extremely arid conditions without any need for irrigation and begins producing high yields of oil that can be used for biofuels in its second year of growth.
One of the investors planned to outsource biofuel crop production. “This type of approach will create jobs and allow smallholders to join the biofuel market,” Croppenstedt said.
Developmental aspect
Many African leaders have been inspired by the success of another developing country, Brazil, which started making biofuel 30 years ago and is now the world’s largest producer of bioethanol: about 1.5 million Brazilian farmers are involved in growing sugar cane for fuel.
A barrel of bioethanol is currently half the price of a barrel of oil, according to the FAO, and a million Brazilian cars run on fuel made from sugar cane. This is a cost saving that many countries – developing and developed – would like to emulate.
“As in Brazil, African countries should also develop a domestic market for biodiesel,” said Croppenstedt. Biofuel could also be used for small-scale rural electrification. “In Tanzania there are efforts being made to introduce generators that use SVO [straight vegetable oil] in rural areas. The feedstock is jatropha.”
| In the absence of comprehensive analyses and policies, commercial production of biofuels may target high-quality lands – due to better profit margins and high soil requirements of first-generation crops – such that biofuels, as the ‘next big cash crop’, will be grown on the best lands, leaving cereals and subsistence crops to the low-quality lands |
The generators, promoted by TaTEDO, a non-governmental development organisation, can provide power for machinery, recharge batteries and bring electricity to village shops, and to households for some hours at night. “The communities have passed by-laws to guarantee the supply of jatropha seed for the generators [run by a selected/trusted ‘entrepreneur’ and supervised by a community ‘bioenergy’ council],” said Croppenstedt.
“Although we do not know enough about jatropha, some of the agronomists we talked to say it does well being intercropped with beans,” he added. “At the moment farmers seem to grow the plant in hedges.”
Competing with the west
Not all African countries have the capacity to develop biofuel production. “There is much slack in terms of productivity in African agriculture – little irrigation, very limited use of fertiliser – and hence there must be much scope for improvements in productivity,” Croppenstedt commented.
But the stumbling block is infrastructure development. “Transaction costs are typically very high in African countries, and this is a hurdle for both biofuel development and stimulating food production,” he added. “How will they compete with biofuel prices elsewhere in the world?”
The US and Europe are already offering subsidies to benefit domestic farmers producing biofuel crops and have also imposed import tariffs to protect them. “This has led to the strange irony of virtually unimpeded trade in oil, while trade in biofuels is greatly restricted,” the UN framework document pointed out.
Most agricultural experts agree that opening international markets to biofuel would accelerate investment and ensure that production occurred in locations where costs were lower, such as poor countries in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )43.7 Million Took Part in Global UN Anti-poverty Event
Over 43.7 million people took part in last week’s record-breaking United Nations campaign to “Stand Up Against Poverty”.
Citing figures from organizers, Marie Okabe said the event set a Guinness World Record as people from around the globe participated in a bid to push international leaders to deliver on their pledge to end extreme poverty by 2015.
More than 6,000 events were held in 110 countries during the 24-hour period from 16 to 17 October as part of the global campaign, which was led by the UN Millennium Campaign, an inter-agency initiative, in partnership with the Global Call to Action and a range of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based groups and civil society.
During the 17 October event, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all people to join their voices in support of the cause. “Let us all stand up. Let us demonstrate the political will required to end the scourge of poverty once and for all,” he said.
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )African Farmers Need A Financial Umbrella Says World Bank
 Photo: IRIN |
| Small-scale farmers in Africa lead vulnerable lives |
IRIN – Helping small-scale farmers in Africa cope with risks such as natural disasters, extreme weather events and price fluctuations should be a priority, according to agricultural experts and the World Bank’s annual report, released last week.
Exposure to these “uninsured risks … has high efficiency and welfare costs for rural households” said the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, the bank’s first analysis of agriculture since 1982. “Selling assets to survive shocks can have high long-term costs … [distress sales of land and livestock] creates irreversibilities or slow recovery in the ownership of agricultural assets.”
The agricultural sector is essential to overall growth, poverty reduction and food security, particularly in agriculture-based countries, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the sector employs 65 percent of the labour force and generates 32 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
“For many [small-scale farmers], asset accumulation is like the game of snakes and ladders: a decade of additions to one’s assets can be eroded in a single storm or drought,” Harold Alderman, the World Bank’s Social Protection Advisor for Africa, told IRIN.
“Without programmes to reduce widespread risks, or to insure or otherwise respond to the remaining risks, farmers are often unable to accumulate enough capital to invest,” he noted.
“Many studies have confirmed this for Africa, including a number of studies that show the lasting effects of droughts on health (nutrition) and education, leading to an intergenerational transmittal of poverty. Similar studies have shown how conflict leaves the survivors stunted, as well as with fewer years of schooling.”
Lennart Båge, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), commented that “Increasing crop failures and livestock deaths are already imposing high economic losses and undermine food security in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and they will get far more severe as global warming continues.” More than 80 percent of the rural sub-Saharan population live in agriculture-based countries.
Call for investment
The World Bank report urges greater investment in agriculture, pointing out that GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in reducing poverty in Africa than growth in any other sector.
Yet public spending on farming constitutes only four percent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels. “But where is the investment going to come from?” asked James Breen, an agronomist based in Southern Africa.
He said small-scale farmers in Africa were trapped in a “vicious cycle of poverty … and they cannot raise the working capital as they don’t have collateral – they don’t even own the land they work on” to cope with risks such as natural disasters and the impact of climate change, which will halve food production by 2020, according to the latest projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Insurance against risk
The World Bank report acknowledged that, in spite of multiple initiatives, “little progress has been made in reducing uninsured risks in smallholder agriculture” and insurance schemes run by governments had proven “largely ineffective”.
“Index-based insurance for drought risk, now being scaled up by private initiatives in India and elsewhere, can reduce risks to borrowers and lenders and unlock agricultural finance. However, these initiatives are unlikely to reach a critical mass unless there is some element of subsidy, at the very least to cover start-up costs.”
Weather-based index insurance, for instance, links insurance to historical weather data on rainfall or temperature, with payouts triggered by the effects of a difference in these during the current growing season. It does not require on-farm inspections, loss assessments or collateral. The insurance could be sold like traveller’s cheques or lottery tickets, and presentation of the certificate would be sufficient to claim a payment when one is due.
IFAD is supporting one such project in China, implemented in partnership with the World Food Programme, to provide insurance to poor rural farmers in selected provinces. To ensure strong local ownership, all activities will be planned and implemented in close collaboration with government and donor partners at the country level.
“Any such step would be welcome, but it would still involve some investment,” Breen said. IFAD’s Båge called for greater investment from the international community to help “climate-proof” farming systems in developing countries.
The World Bank report noted that sharply increased investment was “especially urgent” in sub-Saharan Africa, “where food imports are predicted to more than double by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario, the impact of climate change is expected to be large with little capacity to cope, and progress continues to be slow in raising per capita food availability”.
Adaptation
Most experts agree that emphasis on adaptation is key at this stage. “Indeed, adaptation is at the heart of agricultural growth, even when climate change is not as rapid as projected; technology and institutions are continually adapting to changes in economic environments,” said Alderman, of the World Bank. “Similarly, even with no major changes in crop varieties, research is always responding to changes in the diseases that affect plants.”
| Small-scale farmers in Africa are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty … and they cannot raise the working capital as they don’t have collateral – they don’t even own the land they work on – to cope with risks such as natural disasters and the impact of climate change, which will halve food production by 2020 |
Henri Josserand, chief of the FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning Service, said, “If climate change induces greater volatility and unpredictability in weather patterns, African producers will need to rely on a wider and more adaptive range of both ‘regular’ and coping, or adaptive, strategies.
“This will require investment in new technologies, practices, or even productive assets. Given the low level of income of these producers, doing so under risky conditions will be almost impossible.” Risk-management instruments, including weather-indexed insurance, would still be needed to help to make the necessary investment in adjusting to change “less costly”, he said.
Other strategies could include, for example, better on-farm storage facilities, community cereal banks, community-based credit systems, public social safety nets for the most destitute, and facilities to better move or market livestock in times of drought.
“There is no single, simple answer to risk management,” Josserand said, but the problem was that African “producers have so far little knowledge of, and access to, such instruments”.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Land Feud Claims More Lives In Kenya’s Mt Elgon district
 Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN |
| Displaced people from Mt Elgon receive food aid |
(IRIN) – A simmering feud over land rights in western Kenya’s Mt Elgon district was blamed for several killings there in October, as disease spread among those displaced by the unrest.
“At least seven people have been killed in the month of October in the district,” Maurice Anyango, Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) relief officer, said on 26 October.
The dead include an area administrator (locally known as a ‘chief’), who was shot dead in his office on 16 October in Kapkaten, in Kopsiro division.
Anyango said the killing prompted several families to flee the area, adding that an estimated 45,000 people were currently displaced in Mt Elgon district.
Seven people were killed on 5 August and another three on 7 August in the Kopsiro area of the district.
The insecurity in the area forced many of the area’s secondary school students to sit their national examinations in neighbouring districts.
Meanwhile, KRCS and its partners have continued to deliver food and other aid to the displaced, Anyango said.
“In the last two weeks we were able to reach at least 9,058 people in Mt Elgon and Bungoma [a neighbouring district],” he said.
There were increased cases of typhoid, malaria, diarrhoea and skin infections among the people in the Cheptais, Kaptama and Chepkitale areas, a volunteer with the KRCS division of health and sanitation, Daniel Lagat, said.
At least 180 people have died in the area since fighting broke out in December 2006 following inter-clan disputes between the Soy and the Mosop communities over land allocation in the Chebyuk settlement scheme.
The first killings in the area took place in August 2006 with the Sabaot Land Defence Force – formed after claims of injustice over land allocation – being blamed for most of the violence.
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Water Problems in Somalia: a photo-essay
A thirsty child sucks futilely on a dry tap in Somalia’s Mudug province
***
In 2007 the climate has been particularly harsh in Somalia: first, the heavy rains in neighboring Ethiopia caused flooding in central Somalia. But the rainy season itself was a disappointment, and water shortages [1] made it impossible to replenish the reservoirs. Cereal production this year is at 30% of the average for the last decade.
Clashes between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces forced many Somalis to flee their homes. Between February and early October 2007, 12,000 inhabitants of Mogadishu displaced by the violence arrived in the Galkayo area 480 kilometres to the north, putting an extra strain on water supplies.
In a radius of 17 kilometres these taps are the only source of water. Everyday residents and nomads come here with their livestock. They don’t expect much – merely to fill the five-litre blue jerry-can, or if they have a larger family, a yellow jerry-can of 10 litres. This is roughly the equivalent of water needed to flush a toilet once or twice in an industrial nation.
This is the above-surface part of a borehole – a shaft 113 metres deep that was drilled by a Somali non-governmental organisation in 2001 and then rehabilitated in 2004 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC [2]). Now the water-table is much too low to assure steady supply, so the generator operates only for three minutes per hour – any longer and the pump would burn out.
To drill such a borehole costs some $70,000, so it is important to train a local team to maintain the generator and make all the necessary repairs.
This woman, having shown up at 6am, had not yet filled her blue five-litre jerry-can by midday. The borehole is owned collectively: the eight-member management committee imposes a charge for all water, whether it is used for humans or livestock.
The money pays for petrol to run the generator and the purchase or local fabrication of replacement parts. Now the water-table has dropped, and the output has fallen from 15,000 litres per hour to 400 litres per hour, barely enough for two grown-up camels.
The Mergaga camp for internally-displaced persons (IDPs), a few kilometres north of Galkayo in central Somalia [3], has several wells, but all of them are dry or almost dry. It takes many drops of the yellow jerry-can to pull up some water. Around 2,000 displaced people (from 400 families) live here, including those who fled recent unrest in Mogadishu and those displaced by conflicts many years ago.
Women walk to the neighbouring village of Bedwayen and wash clothes for local residents in what seems to be the only income-generating occupation, if a dollar for a day’s work can be called “income”.
Close to Washadda Geleyda, displaced persons camp on the border separating Galkayo north (home to the Darod clan) and Galkayo south (home to the Hawiye clan). A man is filling jerry-cans at a borehole; he will sell the water in Galkayo north at a charge of 10 cents for 20 litres. While the price may seem low, the average per-capita income in Somalia is $130 a year.
Although the administrative border is further south, it is really the clan border [4] that determines most things in this town of 80,000. There are two administrations, two local councils and hardly any movement of population between the two zones.
In Lasanod, Puntland, the most reliable source of water, aside from supply- trucks sent by some international non-governmental organisations is a system of gutters and rain-pipes. Water is so precious [5] that the reservoirs are often carefully locked.
Puntland is a relatively [6] safe part of Somalia occupying roughly a quarter of the northeastern horn of the country. Puntland is to Mogadishu, the capital suffering from unprecedented levels of violence, what Kurdistan is to Baghdad; and while the death-toll in Somali is not comparable to Iraq’s, the type of mayhem in the two countries is similar.
A water-pump is the social centre in the neighbourhood. Now word is out that it has been repaired and everyone is coming to fetch water. Because of the complicated maintenance that pumps require, it is sometimes thought preferable to have a simple bucket system that does not break down.
This pump in Lasanod, Puntland, is in fact a sign of a relatively good standard of living. In south-central Somalia, international humanitarian organisations have arranged water-trucking and chlorination, but the roadblocks where rogue elements extort money have seriously hampered humanitarian efforts, as has piracy offshore.
It is ironic that the main challenge for newly-arrived displaced [7] persons is to obtain water, while the only source of income for displaced women is washing clothes and doing the dishes for permanent residents. Here a woman who recently escaped from Mogadishu is using and reusing filthy water; on this day she is unable to afford clean water.
Some displaced persons in her camp are victims of the December 2004 tsunami who lost their fishing boats-and came to towns inland hoping for help. Their villages and communities were almost 5,000 kilometres from the epicentre of the earthquake that caused the tsunami, and yet they were not spared.
The boy from the village of Gal Gorum in northern Somalia is hoping that the hose will contain some water. Mortality statistics for children are a telling indication of a problem: lack of food affects children over 2 years old. Younger ones usually die because of a lack of hygiene and clean water, which is made more dangerous when their breast-feeding mothers are malnourished [8].
After spending a whole day watching desperate people with empty jerry-cans, exhausted camels and goats trailing behind and children wondering why their cries of thirst are not answered – one cannot take showers in the same way as before. Even if there are no connecting pipelines between one’s elegant plumbing amid white tiles and the dry taps in a dusty desert, one cannot help feeling a bit guilty.
Copyright © Anna Husarska . Published by openDemocracy Ltd.
‘Slum Survivors’ – New African Slum Film Released
 Photo: IRIN |
| Most slum dwellers never finish school and end up trapped in poverty |
(IRIN) – Worldwide, more than a billion people live in slums, with as many as one million in Kibera, Africa’s largest such settlement, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Slum Survivors, IRIN’s first full-length documentary, tells some of their stories.
Meet Carol
Meet Carol, a single mother of three, who walks miles each day in search of work washing other people’s clothes. It is a hand-to-mouth existence – sometimes she gets work and buys food, but most of the time she and her children go to bed hungry.
Carol’s situation is so desperate that on more than one occasion she has come close to suicide. With no-one to rely on for support, she’s left hoping for miracles.
“We hope that one day God will come down – we keep on saying that. One day God will come down and change our situations.”
 Watch video trailer (2:07 mins) |
 Slum Survivor (Window Media Player) |
 Slum Survivor (RealPlayer) |
 Slum Survivors (Flash Player) |
Dennis’ story
Dennis Onyango fell into poverty when his father left his mother for another woman. Forced out of school because of unpaid fees, he ended up in Mombasa where he found work as a DJ.
Life was good until inter-ethnic fighting forced Dennis back to the safety of Nairobi. But poverty and desperation pushed him into a life of crime.
“Many of my friends had guns. I had grown up in the hands of the police because my father was a policeman. He used to leave his gun on the table so I knew how to dismantle and reassemble guns, so my friends used to bring their guns to me for cleaning – that’s how I got started.”
But these days, Dennis is trying to change. He wants to turn his back on crime and start afresh.
 Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN |
| Located 7km southwest of Nairobi, Kibera is the largest and most densely populated informal settlement in sub-Saharan Africa, covering about 250 hectares and home to about one million people |
Patrick’s struggle
Patrick Mburu says he has lost many friends to crime and believes hard work is the only way out of poverty for him and his young family. His parents were both alcoholics and so he has had to fend for himself from a young age.
Patrick empties latrines for a living. Most toilets in Kibera are privately owned and residents must pay to use them. There are so few toilets that on average each one is shared by more than a thousand people.
Most slum dwellers never finish school and end up trapped in poverty, which is why Patrick is adamant his kids will get an education.
“In Kenya, no education means you can’t get a good job; that’s why I send my son to a good school, because I want him to know that the job that I do is only for people like me who didn’t go to school.
“So, I will struggle – I will carry a lot of shit, I will do anything but steal to keep him in school.”
Abdul’s school
Abdul Kassim also believes in the importance of education. He works as a telecoms engineer, but puts most of his income into a free secondary school for girls, which he started in January 2006.
“I saw that there was no gender equity between the boy child and the girl child here in Kibera, and so we started a girl’s soccer team. Then all the challenges, all the bad things that happen within Kibera saw some of them getting into early marriages, some of them got pregnant – there was a time when I lost the entire striking force of my team and it brought into question the starting of another alternative, which was nothing but education.”
Christina, 17, is just one of 48 pupils at Abdul’s school but her story is typical. She lives with her mother, father and five siblings in a one-room shack. Her parents’ relationship is fraught and Christina is often left alone in charge of the house.
When she finished primary school, her father refused to send her to secondary school, claiming that educating girls was a waste of money.
“My dad wants everyone to drop out of school. He complains that he has no money, or that he’s sick … I don’t know … I don’t know why he doesn’t want us to learn.”
Christina has a hole in her heart – a serious condition for which she should take daily medication but the cost – US$10 a day – is far beyond her family’s means. School, a job and then a salary might just save her life.
For Abdul, education is the key to solving the problems of the urban poor and that is why he started the school. He has lived here all his life and has seen Kibera change beyond recognition as more and more people flood into the city in search of a better life.
“I don’t see why people are living the way they are living in Kibera, or in any other slums, there is no reason – there is no justification.
“And in Kibera if this issue is not handled at some time this problem is going to come knocking at people’s doors – and those who think it’s not their problem might be surprised one day when this problem comes knocking at their door.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Are There Any Benefits of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Kenya?
Western NGOs’ desire to help Africans has led them into unhealthy relationships with host countries, donor governments, and media, says Michael Holman. The result is that they share responsibility for Africa’s development disasters. Here are some excerpts.
Whenever there is the Group of Eight (G8) summit, look out for another contingent of professionals: non-government organisations (NGOs). The aid agencies are there in strength, promoting their solutions for Africa’s ills, rallying their troops and rattling collection-boxes. And the boxes have to be big to contain billions of dollars in new aid money.
The aid business is booming. As Africa’s crisis has deepened and its problems have multiplied, so the number of foreign NGOs has risen. There were a few hundred in the 1960s. There are thought to be well over 25,000 today, their staff swelling the continent’s army of outsiders. They don’t come cheap. An estimated US$4 billion is spent annually on recruiting some 100,000 expatriates.
The result is that there are more foreigners working on development issues in Africa than there were in the 1950-1970s era of independence. They are helping to run everything from ministries to mines, working as behind-the-scenes policy-makers or performing heroics on the frontline in the battle against poverty.
This in itself need not be cause for concern, were it not for another fact: as foreigners go in to take up short-term contracts, skilled Africans are leaving, in their droves, to work abroad – some 70,000 a year.
Some of these revealing nuggets about the condition of Africa come from the 460-page report of the Commission for Africa set up by Tony Blair, published in March 2005. Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa is near-comprehensive in its coverage of Africa’s problems, and often innovative in its suggestions of how to resolve them, but there is one thing it does not do: ask whether this growing foreign presence – and the NGOs in particular – may be not just a symptom of Africa’s crisis, but part of the cause.
Why are there so many NGOs? How do they coordinate? Where do they get their money? What proportion of their funds comes from official aid agencies, who increasingly use the NGOs as a conduit? How effectively do the NGOs spend these funds? Are they adept at spinning the aid story at home, but lacking in professionalism in the field? In short, do the NGOs have power and influence without responsibility?
No one can feel anything but admiration for emergency humanitarian missions, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The NGO role, however, is different. It usually goes well beyond assistance to people in dire distress. NGOs have become players in the medium-to-long-term development of the country or region where they are based.
A Kenyan case-study
Few countries better illustrate the need for an independent assessment of the impact of NGOs in Africa than Kenya, once seen as one of the continent’s rare success stories.
Stand on any Nairobi street corner and count the passing four-wheel drive vehicles of the voluntary aid agencies. Their door panels proclaim their involvement in just about every social, economic and environmental issue under the sun, from the evils of female circumcision to solar energy.
Behind this myriad of NGOs stands a major patron: the United Nations. No less than twenty-five UN organisations are represented in Kenya, led by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), extolled by its resident representative as Kenya’s “lean but effective development partner”. Alongside the UN, in terms of influence rather than cash, is Britain’s department for international development (DfID), which administers the country’s official aid programmes.
It might seem a formidable combination. Yet Kenya is a development failure. More than four decades after independence in December 1963, the social indicators are pointing the wrong way. Life expectancy is falling, and the number of Kenyans subsisting on less than a dollar a day is rising. Nearly two-thirds of the population are in deep poverty.
Yet neither the NGOs nor the official agencies are prepared to admit a share of the blame for this failure – one which contributed to the resignation and exile of Kenya’s leading anti-corruption official, John Githongo, in February 2005.
Indeed, far from rocking the boat, many NGOs have become little more than an arm of official donor policy. Where governance is poor, says the Blair commission, “aid may best be paid into specific aid projects run by aid agencies or NGOs”. But there is no mention of the case for cutting aid altogether, to a country where corruption is endemic.
Is it really possible “to deliver benefits directly to poor Kenyans without releasing the resources to be misused elsewhere”, as DfID Nairobi claims? Or is this, as critics claim, a demonstration of naiveté?
The policy of aid via proxy goes some of the way towards explaining the growth of NGOs. It also fills the gap left by the reduction of foreign diplomatic missions in Africa over the past decade. But this process also entails a collapse of the institutional memory that was once a notable feature of, for example, Britain’s foreign office (which now plays a secondary role to DfID in overseeing the country’s aid policy).
Who now recalls the lost battles in Zambia in the 1970s, when NGOs struggled to create islands of sustainable development? They were overwhelmed by the failure of central government policies which left a rampant black market in currency and endemic corruption, of the kind echoed in countries like Nigeria.
In their enthusiasm to help, and their unawareness of such past experience, NGOs can do harm, say their critics. Their means – importing food to distribute to the interior, for instance – can often undermine their core objective. Aiding the running of a country’s railways for example, assists in the atrophy of the muscles of whoever is nominally in charge, whether the state or the private sector.
It has been calculated that the combined direct and indirect benefit of the UN agencies in Kenya amounts to more than $350m, or 19% of exports, second only to tea as a source of foreign exchange and equivalent to 3% of GNP. Add NGO spending and there is a level of investment that could give a UN-led initiative a powerful weapon to use when demanding the clean-up of one of Africa’s most corrupt governments.
Instead, the scale of these figures makes the international community nervous at the very thought of doing anything that might disturb a mutually convenient arrangement. Its agencies do not want to upset what they see as a reliable and comfortable regional base. They also do not want to jeopardise military agreements involving the United States and Kenya, which have assumed particular importance since the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998, now seen as precursors of the post-9/11 “war on terror”.
Britain in particular is anxious to protect its multi-billon dollar investments in Kenya, and has no wish to be forced to welcome the 30,000 British passport holders (mainly Asian) who live in the country. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that political expediency plays some part in Britain’s decision to increase aid, rather than cut it (as the evidence might suggest) – from £30 million in 2003-4 to £50 million in 2005-6.
Meanwhile the NGO relationship with the international media has become unhealthy. It is a tough world out there, competing for donor dollars. A mention (and thus promotion) in the media can be worth a million dollars if it reaches the heart of the donating public. So NGOs battle for space in the columns of the newspapers, for a minute on radio, and a few seconds on TV.
The media, serving a 24-hour audience, wants quick judgment and instant analysis; the NGO that cannot provide them risks losing the all-important media puff. Before they know it, the NGOs have become enmeshed in a complex network in which expediency and humanity are intertwined, and find themselves complicit in the really big decisions being taken in Whitehall and Washington.
Who monitors the NGOs?
There is a final, troubling concern. The growth in civil society has been one of the most encouraging developments in Africa in recent years. Two developments have been the catalyst: deregulation of the state-controlled TV and radio sector, and the privatisation of the telecommunication sector. The result is that more information is available to African citizens, and an explosion in mobile-phone ownership is transforming the practice and possibilities of communication (Ghana is a particularly interesting example).
Foreign NGOs’ stance towards this trend is problematic. Many are uneasy about the privatisation trend, fearing the impact on water and energy supplies especially. There is also a sense that they are locked in an ideological cast of mind, fighting battles on African soil that have long been lost in the countries where they are based.
All this makes the case for an independent inquiry to answer some critical questions: how successfully has the NGO movement performed in meeting its stated objectives? Does NGO aid work for the benefit of the African (and other) people it aims to help, and if so, how well?
And if it does not, should the people who will be rattling their collection-boxes in Gleneagles share part of the blame for Africa’s development disasters?
Further Links:
NGOs in Africa
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/
NGOwatch
http://www.ngowatch.org/
Michael Edwards, NGO Rights and Responsibilities
http://fpc.org.uk/publications/96
Aid Agencies “Waste Money On Poor Fleet Management”
 Photo: Ben Parker/IRIN |
| NGO vehicles travelling with armed escorts in Southern Sudan. Fleet Forum reckons millions are lost in inefficiencies |
(IRIN) – Four-by-fours with bull bars and long radio antennas have become emblematic of relief operations – and a target for critics. Humanitarian agencies operate an estimated 70,000 vehicles and could save millions annually with better management of cars and trucks.
Better acquisition, management and disposal of vehicles could save 12-17 percent (between US$120 million and $170 million a year) of an estimated $1 billion annual spend, according to the Fleet Forum.
The group’s three main areas of focus are in enhancing efficiency and effectiveness, improving road safety and minimising environmental impact. The annual meeting in Vienna this week will consider best practices and initiatives, including carbon offset proposals; the forum estimates humanitarian vehicles emit about 500,000 tonnes of carbon a year.
The quality of fleet management in the humanitarian world needs improvement, said Rob McConnell, the coordinator of Fleet Forum, a grouping of more than 40 UN agencies, NGOs, academic institutions, donors and corporations.
“It’s not the sexiest topic,” McConnell admits, and forum members are sometimes “struggling” to get through to senior managers of aid agencies, he said. The link between effective programme delivery and efficient use of cars and trucks “is not always made in people’s minds”, he added.
Esther Bosgra of commercial logistics giant TNT is involved with the Fleet Forum and regards aid agency fleet management as generally “poor”. “It doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” she said, but things are “improving slowly”.
In 2007, a collaboration between the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and TNT resulted in an interactive “clean fleets toolkit”, designed to help organisations assess and reduce their environmental impact.
While IT and finance procedures in aid agencies are usually tightly managed, with standards enforced from headquarters, they rarely have a central, corporate approach to their vehicles, which tend to be handled on a “project-by-project basis”, McConnell told IRIN. Some large agencies find it hard even to say how many vehicles they have worldwide at any time, and very few have a dedicated fleet manager.
| The link between effective programme delivery and efficient use of cars and trucks ‘ís not always made in people’s minds’ |
McConnell has a rich store of stories illustrating shortcomings in fleet management. An aid agency manager in Southern Sudan, for example, whose 12 motorbikes were constantly clogged up with mud, decided against buying a $200 pressure washer, despite advice from a mechanic. In the end, all the engines seized up and the bikes were “wrecked”. Each cost about $2,000.
Another telling statistic: research sponsored by the forum reveals that on average 30 percent of vehicle fleets on the books of humanitarian organisations are immobile.
Vehicle management usually comes under the catch-all department of “logistics”. An NGO field logistician is often expected to take care of everything from accommodation, IT, staff security, communications equipment, procurement and more. Those “468 hats”, according to Matthew Bader of Mozambique-based logistics NGO Jacana, are too many, and fleet management is one of the many roles of a logistician that “is not the core business” of a relief operation.
Professional and outsourced transport operations should have very specific targets; depending on the conditions, running light vehicles should cost between $0.65 and $1 per km driven, Bader said.
Savings can also be found in insurance. The Fleet Forum helped the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to develop a self-insurance policy. OSCE’s insurers dropped their premiums to match the estimated self-insurance costs, saving OSCE 150,000 Euros ($214,000) a year, according to a spokesperson.
The Fleet Forum was established in 2003 by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the UN World Food Programme and the NGO World Vision International.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Time For a Grand Re-think of Grand Aid Plans
Aid donors should re-think their self-appointed role as saviours of the poor, and try more modest and realistic approaches, argues William Easterly.
Over the past five decades, the West has donated US$2.3 trillion in foreign aid to poor countries. Most of this money has been funnelled into a series of grand plans to eradicate poverty — plans that have become increasingly high-profile in a bid to attract money from both public and private purses.
After being lobbied by rock stars to “make poverty history” in Africa, G8 countries doubled foreign aid to Africa from US$25 billion to $50 billion in 2005. But as advocacy for increased aid grows ever stronger, what do we have to show for it?
Value of piecemeal projects
African children are still dying of malaria for sleeping without a mosquito net and for lack of 12 US cent medicines that could treat them once infected. Of course, aid has helped, mainly through piecemeal efforts such as oral rehydration therapy to counteract the effects of diarrhoea, or with sanitation projects. It is this type of success that is more feasible than a grand plan aiming, for example, to provide everyone in the world with clean water by 2015.
Take bednets, for example: development economist Jeffrey Sachs, along with celebrities such as Bono and Bill Clinton, has often lobbied for free bednets to protect against malaria. But a study of a free-bednet programme in Zambia showed that 40 per cent of recipients didn’t use them. By contrast, a project to sell nets for 50 cents to mothers in Malawi by the non-profit organisation Population Services International increased the national average of the number of children under five using nets from eight per cent in 2000 to 55 per cent in 2004, and a comparable rise in use by pregnant women. The nets were bought by those who valued and needed them most.
Utopian mindset
Although the West’s ambitious plans to end poverty are well intended, they are doomed to failure by an apparent refusal to learn from previous mistakes, their unaccountability and because they try to solve everything at once. It’s time for a re-think.
Aid programmes must be driven by economic principles: find out what is in demand, rather than assuming what poor people need. Ensure that aid actually reaches the people it’s aimed at. Rather than planning what Western aid should do, we should find out what it can do.
Western aid has been plagued by a utopian mindset that poverty can be eradicated simply by money. This mentality has persisted since the 1950s, influencing the way the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund work, but has not yet solved the problem. ‘Big plans’ set admirable goals without taking full responsibility for implementing them. There are no real consequences to the planners for failure.
The eight Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty and promote good health by 2015 are beautiful. But they will almost certainly not be met. A 1990 UN summit planned for universal primary school enrolment by 2000 and a 1977 UN summit set a target of universal access to water and sanitation by 1990; both targets have now been pushed to 2015.
Grand-plan proponents argue that aiming high is motivational. But the more grandiose the plan, the harder it is for aid workers trying to realise its numerous targets. Small-scale, piecemeal plans are far more likely to succeed and be taken up by local communities.
Aid from the West also rallies support with the ‘poverty-trap’ myth — that the poor cannot save for the future and alleviate their own poverty. But between 1950 and 2001, the economic growth of poor countries did not stagnate, a fact not explained by foreign aid. Statistics indicate that when poor countries don’t grow, it’s because of bad governance rather than a poverty trap. But bad governance is not a useful tool for attracting aid.
Think small
The West can help countries create sustainable plans to save themselves, and forgo the big plans. Big plans may garner public support, but they can backfire as a cynical backlash if their promises are not kept. By contrast, public goodwill is generated when many poor people are seen to benefit through smaller, accountable initiatives.
Better accountability is crucial. Rather than several agencies working towards massive, unattainable goals for which no one agency holds responsibility, let aid agencies find their own methods for specific interventions (rather than having them dictated from the top) and let them be accountable for their results through independent evaluation.
One approach would be to use development vouchers for the extremely poor, which could be redeemed at any aid agency for benefits such as vaccinations, textbooks or seeds.
China, India and Japan have achieved staggering economic growth, largely under their own steam. Their example should surely convince the aid community to re-think their role as saviour of the poor.
William Easterly is Professor of Economics (Joint with Africa House), New York University, and Visiting Fellow, Global Economy and Development Program, The Brookings Institution.
Source: SciDev.net
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )UN Honours Kenyan Red Cross Chief
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| The UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, and the winner of the UN Person of the year in Kenya, Abbas Gullet of Kenya Red Cross Society |
NAIROBI, Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) Secretary-General Abbas Gullet the 2007 United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year. Mr. Gullet received the prestigious award at a special ceremony held at the UN Complex in Nairobi during UN Day on 24th October 2007 for his work in reforming the organisation into a successful and partly self-financing operation. UN resident coordinator and UNFPA representative Mustafa Kemal said Gullet was honoured for his personal commitment in making the KRCS a world-class humanitarian agency. “This award is for the thousands of dedicated and selfless staff and volunteers who have given their lives to serve Kenyans in need,” Gullet said. In 2001, when Gullet was appointed, the society was heavily in debt and had lost credibility among its membership. Today, the KRCS says it is a leading humanitarian agency, partly self-financing and operating through a network of 58 branches and 69,000 volunteers countrywide. Gullet attributes the revival to good governance and transparency and has challenged local and national NGOs to do the same. He becomes the sixth individual to receive the UN annual award for achievements and contributions towards the Millennium Development Goals.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Pioneering E-learning in Kenya To Boost Nurse Numbers
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| Photo: Keishamaza Rukikaire/IRINThe e-learning programme allows nurses wanting to upgrade their qualifications to continue working while they study. |
An ambitious new e-learning programme is aiming to mitigate the severe nursing shortfall in Kenya and boost the country’s ability to manage diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
“In Kenya, 85 percent of nurses are of the most basic cadre, and at the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) it ordinarily takes two and a half years to finish an upgrade, while with e-learning it only takes one year,” said Marsden Momanyi, media officer of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), a health development NGO facilitating the programme.
The project, which began in 2005, aims to upgrade the skills of 22,000 Kenyan nurses over a five-year period, a task that would take the KMTC 220 years at its current intake level of 100 students per year. “This training programme will have a fundamental impact on our nursing numbers,” said Momanyi.
AMREF and the health ministry’s Nursing Council of Kenya are running the project jointly, with funding from global consulting firm Accenture.
“So far, more than 100 learning centres have been established across the country, and more than 2,000 students have started the e-learning programme,” Momanyi said. The qualification takes the nurses from basic status to a more advanced ‘registered’ status.
Apart from a shortage of higher-cadre nurses, Kenya faces a general shortfall of nursing staff that is severely straining a health system already struggling to cope with the rise of epidemics like HIV and TB over the past two decades.
The East African country has lost more than 3,000 of its most experienced nurses in the past five years, with most leaving the continent for jobs in Europe and the United States, where they can earn considerably more than the less than US$300 per month they make at home.
It is estimated that at least another 10,000 nurses are needed, in addition to the 25,000 already employed in the public and private health sectors, to provide adequate care to Kenya’s 34 million citizens.
“By international nursing standards, for every eight-hour shift a nurse with a basic diploma should have 10 patients, while a nurse with an advanced certificate should have five patients under their care,” said Paul Kavoo, nursing officer-in-chief at Thika District Hospital, northeast of the capital, Nairobi, in Central Province.
“But in this country, the situation is such that a nurse with the most basic qualification cares for up to 40 patients per shift, while one with an advanced certificate cares for 16 to 18.”
Although Thika hospital has an official bed capacity of 265, there are often close to 400 in-patients, with many sharing beds. Kavoo said the hospital needed 350 nurses but was operating with just 234.
Two tiny rooms at Thika hospital, containing fewer than 10 computers, serve as one of the AMREF project’s e-learning centres; students are grateful even for such limited facilities.
“Both my wife and I are students in this programme, and if we had to go to KMTC then one of us would have had to quit work to go to school full-time,” said Joseph Warutere. “This way, although it is very time consuming, we can both carry on working while we get our qualifications.”
He got his basic training in 1986, and said the e-learning programme was giving him a much-needed update. “Although the basic tenets of nursing remain the same, this programme places a lot of emphasis on management of emerging diseases like HIV and TB, and because we are still working while we do it, we are able to put into direct practice what we are learning.”
Programme participants are guided by in-hospital mentors, with lectures by specialists a few times a month.
Kenya’s internet access is generally limited to urban areas, so the course uses software that can be downloaded onto a computer. A further 2,000 students who have no access to computers are using print versions of the programme, which take slightly longer to complete.
“Access to computers is a big issue and a challenge for us – at the moment we have provided over 400 computers, but this is still one computer to five nursing students; we need to do better,” Momanyi said.
Another hurdle is that many rural nurses are not computer literate and need lessons in how to operate a computer before they can start the course. According to Lucy Muhoro, an e-learning mentor at Thika hospital, “the mouse is like a miracle” to many students.
“It wasn’t easy for me, because I had to learn from scratch how to use the computer,” said George Arumba, also a student at Thika. “I did a short course before I started, and now I’m finding it easier.”
The cost of the course – about US$1,500 – has also prevented many potential students from signing up. “Many students get loans and others get support from their families; a few are on scholarships from various organisations, but for most it’s very tough,” said Adesuwa Akinboro, head of e-learning at AMREF. The organisation is working with its partners to advocate for institutional funding and subsidies for nurses in the programme.
The first batch of e-learning graduates received their certificates in October of this year, in Nairobi. AMREF is reviewing the possibility of replicating the programme in other countries in the region facing severe nursing shortages.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 11 so far )Asian Countries Learn Flood Defence
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The UN has announced a new training programme to help Asian countries better plan for and cope with flood damage.
The UN University launched their flood risk assessment programme on 15 October 2007 at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand.
Water experts and officials from China, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam will take part in a 14 week pilot programme to learn the tools and methodologies necessary to carry out realistic flood risk assessment.
The training will also cover risk assessment case studies in the participants’ countries: Beijing, Kathmandu, Pampanga River Basin in the Philippines, Colombo and Hanoi.
Srikantha Herath, senior academic programme officer at the UN University, said the training will cover the use of rainfall and hydrological models to simulate the flow of water over land and in rivers, as well as the interaction that occurs during flooding.
The training will also include economic risk assessment. Flood control measures can be extremely expensive, said Herath, so it is important to work out how to minimise losses, especially if floods turn out worse than expected.
The training programme is the result of a meeting in 2003 — which gathered water experts from around Asia and the Pacific, including China, Cambodia, Fiji, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam — to discuss water related threats and possible risk studies.
Last year Thailand experienced its biggest flood in 60 years, resulting in economic losses of over US$500 million.
Thai water management officials say the country cannot properly prevent and mitigate floods as it lacks integrated flood assessment strategies.
According to a senior official at Thailand’s water resources department, who did not wish to be named, several agencies have been working on methods to measure precipitation and water run-off, but they have not worked together, resulting in incompatible data and preventing proper planning for floods.
“If we receive training from the countries where integrated water management has been adopted, it may help us to think better,” said the official.
Source: SciDev.Net
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- Floods: Public Health Lessons for Kenya
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- Western Kenya Flood Menace is Back
‘Mama’ Changed Way Of Life in Kenya Village
Kesa Kishida, 64, who has been aiding the residents of Kenya for 30 years, has been awarded this year’s Yomiuri International Cooperation Prize.
In Kenya, many people are still struggling with poverty and infectious diseases. Kishida has helped improve people’s living conditions, including hygiene and health care in the areas she has worked, and also has striven for the provision of better education for orphans.
This is the first time a person engaged in activities in Africa has been awarded the annual prize, which has been conferred 14 times. Furthermore, Kishida is only the second woman to receive the prize, following in the footsteps of former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata–the prize’s first recipient–in 1994.
Kishida, who has a naturally cheerful disposition, has overcome many difficulties, including language barriers and differences in lifestyle in an environment far removed from Japan. Kishida has won the affection of the Kenyan people, as well as the admiration of the Japanese.
The village of Enzaro sits on the equator about 400 kilometers west of Nairobi. Village houses with clay walls dot both sides of paths running through reddish soil.
When Kishida revisited the mountain-based village to check on conditions there, women rushed forward to hug her, expressing their joy by shouting “Mama Kishida!”
The chief of the village, Ronald Oyando, 45, expressed the deep sense of gratitude he felt toward Kishida, who is known as “Mama” and loved by the village’s 2,000 residents. “Thanks to Mama’s efforts for many years, life in our community has changed dramatically. She’s just like a mother in our community,” he said.
Kishida first visited the village in 1991 as a volunteer attached to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which at the time, was promoting education for population control.
The village is located in the most impoverished region of Kenya. Infant deaths related to diarrhea and malaria, were common, so it was not unusual for women in the region to give birth to at least eight children to ensure some survived.
Kishida believed the country’s birthrate would not fall unless there was a drop in the child mortality rate.
Though Kishida urged villagers to boil their drinking water to help prevent diseases, collecting firewood was very demanding work for the women.
The conventional method of heating pots in the village was to place them on heated stones, which had a low thermal efficiency. For the women of the village, it was an extra burden to their already heavy workloads to collect enough firewood for their day-to-day cooking purposes.
Kishida devised the idea of using furnaces similar to those used by the people of her hometown in Tono, Iwate Prefecture.
She devised a furnace that could heat three pots simultaneously, with one of them being used to boil water.
A 70-year-old midwife in the village, who has been using a furnace in her house for 14 years, said children do not become sick anymore because they are drinking boiled water.
“I don’t get burned and I can save on firewood. Everything has gone well since I started using it,” she said.
In a village without electricity or tap water, the effect of the furnaces was revolutionary, spreading through the entire village in less than three months.
Through word of mouth, people in neighboring villages also began using furnaces.
In 2003, about 100,000 Kenyan households were using furnaces to cook and boil water.
In addition, Kishida used stones and sand to build facilities for purifying the village’s spring water.
Kishida also showed barefoot children to make sandals for themselves, established female groups to promote health and hygiene, and taught women to make dresses and raise chickens to earn extra money.
As a result, the number of people falling ill gradually declined and the infant mortality rate fell significantly.
Parents freed from the worry of losing children have become interested in family planning, resulting in each family having three to five children.
“People’s kitchens help give me ideas. I always look at the kitchen when I visit someone to point out areas that could be improved,” she said.
Kishida does not use English, which is spoken only by educated people in Kenya. She uses Swahili, a language widely spoken by local people, and this helps her integrate.
She always tries to use local solutions to improve people’s lives.
Kishida, who initially visited Kenya to study nutrition, has lived in Nairobi since 1975. She married a Japanese businessman living there and has a son and a daughter.
While raising her children, she continued her studies related to food and lifestyle in various parts of Kenya.
At the same time, she taught diabetics about nutrition and provided assistance to orphanages.
Kishida worked for JICA as a specialist until 2003, since when she has worked for the Friends Society for Kenyan Children, a nongovernmental organization established in 1985.
In present-day Kenya, an increasing number of children are losing parents to AIDS, which has caused social problems.
As providing assistance to orphanages alone cannot solve these problems, Kishida is trying to establish a system that can benefit the entire area.
On islands in Lake Victoria, where the HIV-infection rate is high, boats offering medical services visit the islands to teach people how to prevent infection.
In areas surrounding Kakamega Park, the only rain forest in Kenya, Kishida teaches people with AIDS about food and environmental conservation through the planting of medicinal herbs and trees.
Kishida visits every corner of the country, and is even active on Saturdays and Sundays, using her four-wheel-drive vehicle as transport along unpaved roads.
The teachings of Shiro Kawashima, an applied nutrition expert and Kishida’s mentor for 20 years, provide her with her energy and drive.
Kawashima used to say “nutritional knowledge has to be returned to the people,” a remark indicative of his efforts in trying to keep Japanese healthy during and after World War II.
With this remark imprinted on her mind, Kishida fully utilizes what she has learned from the rust-colored land, returning the kindness to Africans who accepted her warmly, even when she did not speak their language.
Kishida’s profile
— Born in Tono, Iwate Prefecture in 1943.
— Graduated from Sagami Women’s University.
— Engaged in nutrition research in more than 30 countries while working for a research institute for food-producing industries.
— Based in Kenya since 1975.
— As a JICA member, she currently educates local people to prevent AIDS/HIV infection in islands in Lake Victoria in western Kenya.
— Married to Nobutaka Kishida, the couple have a son and a daughter.
Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent Oct. 21, 2007
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )ZIMBABWE: The Politics Of Exclusion And National Survival
The author writes from first hand experience and with deep passion for her country where she has lived and worked nearly all her life. Her analysis and insights, historical and current, reveal an understanding of how people survive creatively, and hope that their lives may return to some form of normalcy – hopes that their nation may get the leadership it needs to give priority to the people and their personal, social, national, and international needs.Source: www.africafiles.org
INTRODUCTION
Almost eight years of political, economic and social turmoil has been both a curse and for some elites, a blessing for Zimbabweans. The tragic experience has revealed a resilient nation with a strong culture of self-reliance, pride and resourcefulness. From a nation of certainty and prosperity as recent as 10 years ago, daily the world’s media talks about a pariah state on the verge of collapse and focuses on what has, or is, going wrong in the landlocked southern African nation. I acknowledge that we have also been labeled docile, cowardly and afraid of change. The deterioration in living standards and the constant daily search for ways to survive is the major preoccupation of life. Less often are the stories about how Zimbabweans are coping and what lessons of survival can be applied elsewhere in the future.
BACKGROUND
In 1980, Zimbabwe won independence from British colonial rule and white supremacist Rhodesia. It inherited a nation rich in mineral resources, with a solid and highly profitable agricultural industry and a superb infrastructure. Led by Prime Minister Robert Gabriel Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the newly elected – by universal franchise – government’s policy of reconciliation not only allayed fears of persecution among the minority whites but became a symbol of a new Zimbabwe that could be emulated by other African countries. In addition, the country’s 92 percent literacy rate was the highest in Africa. The country was an attractive destination for direct foreign investment and tourism while its currency (the Zimbabwe dollar) was valued above the United States dollar in 1980 and business was booming.
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has been the dominant political party since independence. In 1987 a revised constitution made Mugabe Executive President holding powers as head of state and head of government. His ZANU-PF has won every election since 1980, with outside observers alleging massive irregularities every time. In particular, the elections of 1990 were nationally and internationally condemned with the now defunct Zimbabwe Unity Movement, winning only 20 percent of the vote. Presidential elections were last held in 2002 amid even greater allegations of vote-rigging, intimidation and fraud. The next presidential elections are due to be held in 2008.
Immediately after Independence, the new black majority government adopted the progressive policy of reconciliation, inclusivity, independence of thought and creativity – at least on paper. The country thrived and became a beacon of hope for much of the rest of Africa and the world’s liberal democracies like Canada pronounced themselves well satisfied. The mainline churches, long supporters of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, were elated.
Significant gains were made in the social and economic spheres and the country had sound institutions of governance that worked efficiently and effectively despite the fact that they had been designed and intended to serve the minority white population.
The government introduced a directive in 1980 to level the playing field in the public service and to allow as many highly qualified, but inexperienced, black Zimbabweans as possible to enter the public service. Before 1980, Africans could only enter the public service as clerks. White Zimbabweans started at the officer level. This differentiation in status and pay levels was not only confined to the public service. In the banking sector for instance, the top two grades were white only. No black person, regardless of academic and or professional background, could enter the bank at these levels In order to address these inequalities; the new government established the National Manpower Survey in 1982 and moved swiftly to ensure that all workers were paid equally for the same work regardless of race and gender. The Zimbabwe Public Service Commission visited countries like the United Kingdom and Canada to lure Zimbabweans back home to actively participate in building their country. Economic power, however especially in agriculture, manufacturing, mining and tourism, remained largely in the hands of the whites while blacks lagged behind even though they held the reins of power in government.
THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION
However, ZANU PF’s internal policies started to gradually practice what could be called “the politics of exclusion” in order to consolidate its political power and prevent the growth of an active political opposition. The culture of ZANU PF manifested itself in cronyism and patronage and currently, most institutions have ceased to serve the public while some have been systematically militarized. One either belonged or was regarded with suspicion People were in or out. Whites stayed out and controlled the economy. This has not changed in 27 years and, indeed has become the norm.
Exclusion has contributed immensely to Zimbabwe’s current problems and its imminent collapse as a functioning state. It is not a new phenomena. Historically, political, social and economic exclusion during the colonial era, white minority rule and, since 1980, through the policies of ZANU PF has created a people attuned to being ‘in’ or ‘out’ with all the benefits which accrue to insiders and the poverty of outsiders.
Political exclusion is more than simply denying basic citizenship rights, such as the right to vote and associate. When imposed on such a large scale, it prevents groups and categories of people from participating in political life, and inhibits democratization. Government response to citizen complaints is usually haphazard and misdirected thereby creating a society that is perpetually in crisis.
This is especially obvious in the past seven years. Zimbabweans are well-known survivors who create opportunities where they improvise creatively to manage the day-to-day demands of life. Every obstacle is met with resourcefulness and a deep resolve not to give up. The abnormal becomes normal.
Social exclusion in Zimbabwe has manifested itself in a weakened extended family support structure, chronic poverty, isolation and vulnerability especially amongst women, children and the elderly. Women need to over-extend their nurturing skills and community involvement in order to fill the vacuum left by government. They are forced to risk their lives by crossing into neighboring countries in search of ways to make a living. With 80 percent unemployment and raging inflation, there are not many prospects for formal employment in Zimbabwe. It is a desperate situation for the vast majority. Governments worldwide have responsibility for their citizens. By systematically employing the politics of exclusion, the Zimbabwe government reneges on all its obligations towards its peoples A combination of social and economic exclusion breeds distrust and anxiety.
Economic exclusion in Zimbabwe has occurred rapidly due to a number of factors. The gap between the tiny wealthy elite and the rest of the citizens continues to widen, as Zimbabwe has violated the most basic rules of economic theory and practice. Everything is so politicized that the only relief for ordinary citizens is to be as creative as possible in order to survive the daily challenges.
There were 19 documented and well-publicized corruption cases in Zimbabwe between 1987 and 2001 involving high-ranking politicians, some of whom still hold positions of authority. The Anti-Corruption Commission of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) was established in September 2005 and it is a signatory of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol as well as the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) Convention on Anti-Corruption. There have been a handful of prominent citizens like a former minister of finance that have been hauled before the courts and jailed only to be cleared of all charges by the courts.
A presidential decree of June 18 2007, ordered business to revert to prices that were current on that date and reduce them by 50 percent. What followed has been referred to as state-sanctioned looting as people grabbed as much as they could in the shops. Food items and various other goods quickly disappeared because of panic buying. The situation has since deteriorated because business cannot produce and sell goods at a loss. Some 7,000 business owners or operators were arrested for flouting the price controls and were subsequently accused of corruption and sabotage. The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange also suffered huge losses with some corporate listings losing up to 40 percent of their share value in a single day. Many companies are closing factories and have stopped importing goods and raw materials.
This economic exclusion could lead to rebellion and violence against the system that causes exclusion, ZANU PF and its securocratic system of oppression. The sporadic and persistent labor unrest in Zimbabwe could be the beginning of the end, had the government not acted so ruthlessly to stifle all forms of protest. By withholding their labor, workers – among them doctors, nurses, teachers and lawyers – are using the only weapon that they have to fight back.
Zimbabweans cannot openly hold peaceful demonstrations so they resort to passive resistance like the popular go-slow strategy, job-stayaways, absenteeism, and sabotage. Moonlighting is common as workers try to supplement their meager wages. The government would prefer that it controls every economic activity to its advantage but the ingenuity of Zimbabweans makes this an arduous task.
In practicing such politics of exclusion, the government has progressively walked the path of self-destruction and exposed its populace to extreme poverty. The people have responded by continuously perfecting the art of survival.
The Zimbabwe Central Statistical Office (CSO), reports that Zimbabwe’s rate of inflation surged to 3,731.9 percent in May 2007, driven by higher energy and food costs, and further amplified by a drop in its currency value. Rampant inflation is a sure sign of a deep economic crisis that requires hard policy decisions by the government. By July 2007 inflation had surged to 7,634 percent, the highest in the world, and continues to rise.
In July, 100, 000 Zimbabwe dollars could buy one four loaves of poor quality white bread at the government controlled price while take-out lunch for four comprising chicken burgers and small fries cost a whooping $1,9 million Zimbabwe dollars. In September 2007 the price of a loaf of bread had risen to $145,000 when available in the shops despite the official price of $30,000. Zimbabwe is a country full of poor millionaires and everyone carries wads of cash all the time in case they come across a queue for bread, fuel, cooking oil or sugar. These foodstuffs are all in short supply but in abundance on the parallel or black market at ten times the official controlled price. Waiting in endless queues with no guarantee of getting food or other items not only affects productivity but results in risen tempers and fatigue. Employers and employees alike in both the public and private sectors feel cornered and operate in an environment characterized by fear and uncertainty.
Furthermore, the constant power outages in Zimbabwe have created a nation of “night-shifters” Electricity goes off at dawn and again in the early afternoon so much cannot be done during these periods. The most productive hours are late at night and early morning especially for those fortunate enough to have access to computers and work from home. The work culture as we know it is fast-changing such that it is impossible for supervisors and managers to enforce workplace rules and regulations. Preparing meals over an open fire is the only alternative for most people but this has far-reaching environmental degradation due to the rampant cutting down of trees.
Apart from severe shortages of basic foodstuffs, many city dwellers also struggle with water, electricity and transport shortages. On days that water is available, drinking water is strictly rationed. For example, after bathing, the same bath water is re-cycled and used for flushing the toilet. It is a wonder why there has not been a serious cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe. During these extraordinary days that call for extraordinary response, Zimbabweans do not leave home without one or all of items like backpacks, plastic containers, plastic bags and lots of cash. The city is awash with residents on the move either searching for anything that they might come across in the queues or offering goods and services. The cell phone has become a treasured possession and a survival gadget. Throughout the day and night text messages are sent and received notifying friend, family and colleagues about where such and such is available. When the government ordered a reduction by 50 percent on the price of goods and services in June, the telecommunications industry was hardest hit. Time spent trying to get through on the phone meant many lost opportunities for an already weary nation. Zimbabwe has turned into a place where one quickly learns the techniques of improvising and compromising on quality and quantity.
City life in Zimbabwe is now worse than life in the rural areas for the 80 percent of urban poor. The definition of poverty has taken on new meaning in Zimbabwe. Whereas people in the West associate the black market with illegal activities, in Zimbabwe the black or parallel market is a lifeline for families that can afford paying for essential goods at an inflated price. It comes as no surprise that even when the officials, in a desperate attempt to crush the black market, offer cash incentives to whistle blowers, there are no takers because food in Zimbabwe has not only become politicized but a rare commodity. Moreover, Zimbabweans suffer one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world and as with everything else, all types of medicines are scarce. Zimbabweans now make regular trips to Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania to do grocery and other shopping. The irony is that in Malawi one can buy products made in Zimbabwe like fresh milk which has been in short supply for a long time in Zimbabwe, but is abundantly available in Malawi.
In May 2005, the implementation of Operation Murambatsvina or “Operation Drive Out Filth” was said to be an urban renewal exercise. The government claimed growing urban sprawl was contributing to crime and was a potential health hazard. The exercise involved the indiscriminate destruction of property for the urban poor rendering them destitute. The UN estimates that about 700,000 people became unemployed as a direct result of the operation, while government maintains that a total of 120,000 were actually affected.
There have been many theories about why Murambatsvina happened and the timing of the exercise. One such theory is that because of the government policy “Look East” Murambatsvina was intended to make way for Chinese small business by putting small street vendors out of existence. Others saw it as an attempt to destroy the opposition support base in the urban centers. Another theory was that by destroying urban slums, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe would kill off the lucrative illegal foreign exchange market. Contrary to this, in early September 2007 when government adjusted the official, as opposed to black market, exchange rate for the U.S dollar from $250 to 3,000 Zimbabwe dollars, the rates jumped from 200,000 to 280,000 Zimbabwe dollars. The perpetual demand for foreign currency by the population and its availability on the black market has kept most businesses and government afloat. It is the remittances from the Diaspora that fuel the black market and enable family and friends to buy medicine, food and fuel. Speculation in foreign currency and its exchange for local currency is a lucrative but dangerous occupation prone to random raids by the police because it is mostly conducted on the city streets.
Earlier this year the governor for the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe could only describe the economic meltdown and its devastating effects as “Economic HIV”. Even he has failed to eliminate the illegal foreign currency dealings with Zimbabweans referring to one location in the city limits notorious for these activities as “The World Bank.”
A repressive administration and ruling party formulates government policy in isolation and has no time to assess or evaluate both the advantages and disadvantages of such punitive laws and decrees.
SURVIVING and finding SOLUTIONS
Every single hour in Zimbabwe requires its own survival strategy. Each creative move or strategy is met with state interference contempt and violence. Zimbabweans respond yet again with ways to circumvent the latest onslaught on their livelihoods because they perceive themselves as a nation on high alert.
Varying contributors to the on-going debate about Zimbabwe argue over a wide range of solutions but few acknowledge that a stable, prosperous future requires diversity, inclusion and tolerance for all players in charting the way forward. Inclusion in the political arena should be a careful exercise that not only considers political or liberation war credentials but ability and selflessness. The “what-is-in-it-for me” syndrome must be avoided at all costs if we, as Zimbabweans, want to create a future that will be an example for Africa. There are numerous Zimbabweans all over the world and within the country who would be happy to contribute to the debate as long as their views are respected and taken seriously without fear of retribution, imprisonment, torture and even death.
An example of how ordinary Zimbabweans and government can work together to alleviate the current crisis is the recent launch of the Zimbabwe Health Access Trust (ZIHAT), a collaborative initiative involving local business, professionals and the Diaspora in restoring the country’s collapsed health-care system. Time will tell if this bold initiative will work and then perhaps other forms of think-tanks to tackle a variety of challenges can be modeled along ZIHAT. An economic think-tank would certainly be a priority to correct the inherent distortions that have been dogging the Zimbabwean economy for the past ten years. The formation of strategic alliances by Zimbabweans and for Zimbabweans could create the impetus needed to begin the slow but necessary process to re-build the once beautiful Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s rescue plan is unlikely to come from the efforts of either the ruling party, Zanu-PF or the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) but from simple civic organizations or pressure groups like the Combined Harare Resident’s Association (CHRA). This is so because they are capable of mobilizing masses of ratepayers around simple bread and butter issues like service delivery. They pick and focus on issues that anyone can easily identify with before calling on residents to demonstrate. Such organizations must be supported but they need to be cautioned against the temptation of turning into political parties. We need to exert a different kind but perhaps more effective pressure on the ruling elite. Moreover, there is urgent need to shift the power dynamics in order to include capable people in policy formulation and national debates. Finally, for survival, Zimbabweans improvise, preserve and use wisely the little that they have with zero tolerance for wastage. Neighbors share with those that do not have anything or lack support from relatives in the Diaspora. The current challenge is the chronic shortage of most basic food and other items on the formal market forcing many to resort to the black market.
OUTSIDE SUPPORT:
Zimbabweans in the Diaspora contribute tremendously to the survival of Zimbabwe through various creative means. For instance, families in Zimbabwe are able to receive groceries, medicine, fuel, school fees and a variety of other essentials through online supermarkets. One such England-based facility can be found at www.zimbuyer.com. There are several other such websites in the Diaspora making it possible for Zimbabweans fortunate enough to have family overseas survive.
While the international community continues to offer humanitarian support to the Southern African region, donors say the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is “man-made” so resources must be directed to other more “urgent and genuine disasters” around the globe. There is evidence of donor fatigue in every sector. According to the World Food Programme (WFP) more than 4 million Zimbabweans will at some point, require food aid and yet scarce resources are being channeled to purchasing luxury vehicles for the police, secret services and army. Government’s priorities are obviously not the nation’s priorities.
CONCLUSION
A respected friend of mine who holds a top executive position in the private sector told me that what is happening in Zimbabwe has compelled everyone to inadvertently resort to criminal activities because of the harsh economic, social and political environment. As the economy continues to slide, those in positions of power have accelerated the looting from state coffers as though in anticipation of total collapse.
A lethal cocktail of bad policies, intolerance, lack of a national vision and a propensity to view the country as the personal property of a few have contributed to the near destruction of Zimbabwe. Policies are enacted as a response to the whims of the ruling elite. It is a vicious cycle of reviewing bad policies through the formulation of even more damaging and ineffective rules. The common theme in all government policies has been the lack of acceptance and inclusion of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. In 2007, access to state resources and privileges still remains restricted to those with connections to the ruling party. The government continues to enact punitive policies to induce fear and uncertainty among ordinary Zimbabweans with no end in sight.
Clement Njoroge (Margaret Zondo)
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