Month: January 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Responding to the killing of at least nine Palestinians by Israeli forces during a military raid on Jenin refugee camp this morning, Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty International, said:

“In the space of just a few hours this morning, Israeli forces killed at least nine people and injured 20 more; blocked ambulances from accessing the wounded; and fired tear gas at a hospital, reportedly causing suffocation injuries to sick children. Medics in Jenin say a child is one of those being treated for gunshot wounds, and Palestinian authorities have confirmed that a 61-year-old woman was among those shot dead.

“For almost a year, Jenin refugee camp has been at the centre of Israel’s escalating military crackdown. Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in the camp last May, and its residents continue to be subjected to relentless military raids which amount to collective punishment.

“Meanwhile, Israel continues to enjoy total impunity for the system of apartheid it imposes on Palestinians – a system which is partly maintained through violations like unlawful killings. While Palestinian deaths mount, the international response to Israel’s violations consists of little more than timid condemnation at best, and unconditional support at worst.

“Today’s bloodshed is a reminder of the cost of this shameful inaction – until there is accountability, deadly attacks against Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territories will continue.”

Source: Amnesty International

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Voice of America

GOMA, CONGO — When Pope Francis arrives in Congo and South Sudan next week, thousands of people will take special note of a gesture more grounded than the sign of the cross. Watching from their wheelchairs, they will relate to the way he uses his.

The pope, who began using a wheelchair last year, is visiting two countries where years of conflict have disabled many, and yet they are among the world’s most difficult places to find accessibility and understanding. His visit is heartening Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

“We know that it’s a suffering, but it also comforts us to see a grand personality like the pope using a wheelchair,” said Paul Mitemberezi, a market vendor in Goma, at the heart of the eastern Congo region threatened by dozens of armed groups. “Sometimes it gives us the courage to hope that this isn’t the end of the world and one can survive.”

Mitemberezi, a Catholic and a father, has been disabled since he was 3 because of polio. He works to support his family because he can’t imagine a life of begging. On the way to market, his three-wheeled chair crunches the stones of unpaved roads. Without a ramp at home, he must leave the brightly painted vehicle outdoors, at risk of theft.

Every morning, before he leaves for basketball practice, he makes sure the chair’s still there before crawling out his front door. “It is my legs, which helps me to live,” he said. He applies a bicycle pump to the wheels and is off, weaving through traffic of motorcycles and trucks.

Pope Francis is still adjusting to a life that Mitemberezi has long accepted. The pope was first seen publicly in a wheelchair in May, with an aide pushing it. The pope, at age 86, never propels himself. Sometimes he walks with a cane, but he uses the chair for longer distances and has a wheelchair lift to get on and off planes.

Francis has insisted that his mobility limitations don’t affect his ability to be pope, saying “You lead with your head, not your knee.” He has lamented how today’s “throwaway culture” wrongly marginalizes disabled people. He makes it a point to visit places serving the disabled during his foreign trips, and routinely spends time greeting wheelchair users at the end of his general audiences.

“No disability — temporary, acquired or permanent — can change the fact that we are all children of the one Father and enjoy the same dignity,” Francis wrote in his annual message for the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities in December. He said people with different abilities enrich the church and teach it to be more humane.

Such messages are warmly awaited by wheelchair users in South Sudan, where a five-year civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. As in Congo, data is lacking on just how many people are disabled by conflict or other means.

While the road leading to the Vatican’s embassy in the South Sudan capital, Juba, was paved by city authorities this month for ease of travel, residents who use wheelchairs said they have long gone without easy access to schools, health centers, toilets and other public facilities.

The Vatican’s ambassador to Congo, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, said he believed the sight of a wheelchair-using pope could be a powerful teaching moment in a culture where disabilities are often viewed with suspicion and superstition.

Families often abandon their disabled children, he said.

Seeing someone like the pope suffer should make Francis more approachable for people during his visit, Balestrero said. “They identify, in a way, even more with him.”

Source: Voice of America