Category: General

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who died Monday, is being remembered in Africa for peacemaking, supporting the fight against AIDS and sounding the alarm against war abuses.

Cameron Hudson, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center, recalled that Powell was the first U.S. official to declare genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur and was deeply involved in the peace agreement ending Sudan's longest-running civil war, which paved the way for South Sudan independence.

In 2004, Powell testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the violence in Darfur, an area plagued by deadly clashes for decades, and used the term, "genocide."

"That was the first time that word had been used in that conflict, and it really became a rallying cry around the world and certainly within U.S. activist communities. And you saw the United States get even deeper involved in the conflict there," Hudson told VOA on Monday.

Powell also played a leading role in negotiations that ended the civil war in Sudan that lasted more than two decades.

"You saw the creation of a Sudan office in the State Department under Colin Powell," Hudson said. "You saw his personal involvement in the negotiations culminating in the 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Nairobi (Kenya), which Colin Powell traveled to and bore witness to as guarantor of that."

And while Powell's legacy is often intertwined with his promotion of the war in Iraq, Hudson said he is remembered in Africa differently.

"I think that Colin Powell reflects that there was a very, very strong peacemaking element within, certainly, his State Department at the time," he said.

"If … you look at what happened with the Bush administration when they came to office, there were civil wars going on in Liberia, in Sierra Leone, in Congo, in Angola and in Sudan," Hudson said. "And by the end of that first term in government, all of those civil wars had some sort of peace agreement. That wasn't by accident."

Powell traveled to Africa in 2001 — stopping in Mali, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda — on a mission the State Department described as the "engagement of this administration and the secretary personally in Africa and Africa policy."

The visit drew media criticism accusing Powell of ceremoniously lecturing Africans on democracy and transparency.

But many African leaders had a different view.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the Nigerian newspaper Punch that Powell embodied Black culture across the Atlantic.

"He was not just an African American. He was an African American who understood Africa," Obasanjo said.

Under Powell, the Bush administration put into place several aid programs to fight diseases and help build economies. Many of those programs remain.

Since 2003, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has distributed more than $85 billion globally for HIV/AIDS assistance, with most of the aid distributed in Africa.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, created by the U.S. Congress in 2004, is an independent U.S. foreign assistance agency aimed at fighting global poverty. Much of its work is done in Africa.

Niger political analyst Moustapha Abdoulaye described Powell's death as a major loss, not just for the United States but for the world, because of his personal and professional qualities.

Brook Hailu Beshah, a former Ethiopian diplomat and currently a political science professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, recalled personal encounters with Powell.

Powell was a "person who put America before self, open and respectful to opinions of others, humble and reasonable," Beshah said.

Source: Voice of America

Authors of a new report on Africa’s climate warn the continent is heating up more and faster than other regions in the world, and they said Africa needs immediate financial and technological assistance to adapt to the warming environment.

The African continent is home to 17% of the global population but is responsible for less than 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, which are leading to climate change.

The report finds changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and extreme weather triggered by climate change are happening globally, but notes these events are occurring with greater frequency and intensity in Africa.

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas said there were 700 major disasters on the continent last year. He said more than half have been flooding events, and one-sixth have been storming and drought events, respectively.

“We have seen almost 100 million people who have suffered of food insecurity, and they needed humanitarian assistance … and the combined events of conflicts, climate hazards, and especially this COVID-19, they have been contributing to the increase of 40% of food insecurity,” Taalas said

This multi-agency report, entitled State of the Climate in Africa 2020, was coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, with the help of the African Union Commission and various U.N. agencies.

The report finds the warming trend over the last three decades in all African subregions was stronger than in the previous 30 years. During this period, it said Africa has warmed faster than the global average temperature over land and ocean combined.

It said higher-than-normal precipitation and flooding predominated in places such as the Sahel, the Rift Valley, and the Kalahari basin. At the same time, dry conditions prevailed in the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea and other locations, while drought in Madagascar triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Taalas said sea-level rise is threatening many coastal cities in Africa, like Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub and a major financial center in Africa. He said climate change also is having a devastating impact on the last remaining glaciers in East Africa.

“The three African glaciers, Mount Kenya, the Rwenzori, and Kilimanjaro —and you can see that there has been a major loss of the sea ice area and also sea ice mass," Taalas said. "And if the current trends continue, we will not see any glaciers in Africa in the 2040s.”

The African Union Commission reports adaptation costs in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated at $30 billion to $50 billion, equivalent to two to three percent of regional gross domestic product each year over the next decade.

However, it notes the cost of doing nothing will be much higher. By 2030, it said up to 118 million extremely poor people will be subject to devastating impacts of drought and intense heat. It adds subsequent displacement and migration consequently will lead to a further 3% decrease in GDP by 2050.

Source: Voice of America

The Ugandan government is known for cracking down on writers who express strong dissent to President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the African country for 35 years. Despite the risks, two writers recently composed deliberately provocative pieces criticizing the president.

Early this month, Ashaba Annah wrote an erotic poem on Facebook to Museveni, titled "I want to be Museveni's side chic."

The poem reads in part, "I want to be Museveni's side chick so that when after reading a poem for him, I tell him that censorship, arrest, torture and imprisonment of writers is inhumane, cowardly an act and violation of rights."

Speaking to VOA, Ashaba said she decided to write the poem after a long observation and listening to several of Museveni's addresses. She said it was clear the government's response to the concerns of citizens was relaxed.

"Someone needs to tell this person that we are tired," she said. "First of all, the education crisis; schools are closed. Teachers are not working. I said, 'If he asks me the kind of car I want, I will ask him to give me an ambulance, and I donate it to hospitals.'"

The Ugandan government has previously come down hard on writers who pen opinions on how the current regime is handling citizen's concerns. This has included arrests, imprisonment and torture.

Twenty-three-year-old Ashaba did not face any of these, but she, too, caught the eye of the authorities and was summoned by the deputy director of the Internal Security Organization.

"He called and said, 'I want to have a chat with you.' I was scared. And he said, 'We just want to have a chat.' So, they asked me this one important question: 'So, what do you want?' And I gave them the answer, that as a writer, I'd gotten what I wanted — the fact that the message had reached the powers that be," she said.

While officiating at the World Teachers Day, celebrated on October 12, Museveni, when asked by teachers to increase pay for all teachers, insisted only science teachers' pay should be increased and not the pay of those teaching arts.

"Don't mix up salary with authority," Museveni said. "Saying that if the administrators get less pay than the scientists that it will spoil administration. I am the president of Uganda. If you want to check my power, you try it."

'Someone tell the life President to shut up'

Danson Kahyana, a senior lecturer at Makerere University, said he was angered by Museveni's comments, and took to Facebook to express his disappointment. In a post titled "Someone tell the life President to shut up," he says, "Someone tell the life-president that it is okay to have the parliament and the judiciary and the army and the police safely in his armpit; but there is a species of people, the arts scholars, who know how smelly every armpit gets."

Kahyana said, "My Facebook post was a form of challenge to him to say, 'Well, I think if you don't have something to say about the arts and how important they are to the country, maybe you should just shut up and listen to people educate you about this. Being a president doesn't mean that you know everything.'"

In a text message to VOA, government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo said these writers are seeking a moment in the spotlight. He said Museveni does not need to be insulted to be heard.

Source: Voice of America

Forces in Ethiopia's Tigray region said Monday that the Ethiopian government launched airstrikes on the regional capital of Mekelle.

The bombing was also reported by residents and humanitarian workers in Tigray, but the Ethiopian government denied the claims.

The United Nations said it was looking into the reports of the strikes.

"We are deeply concerned about the potential impact on civilians," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was also looking into the reported attack. "We, broadly speaking, do remain gravely concerned by what has been escalating violence in Tigray for some time," he said.

Agence France-Presse reported that according to a hospital official in Mekelle, at least three people died in Monday's airstrikes.

Witnesses in the region say one of the airstrikes hit close to a market. It was not possible to confirm the accounts, because the region is under a communications blackout.

Legesse Tulu, an Ethiopian government spokesperson, denied that the government had launched any attacks on Mekelle.

Mekelle has not seen large-scale fighting since June, when Tigray forces retook control of most of the region and Ethiopian forces withdrew from the area. Following that, the conflict continued to spill into the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar.

Last week, Tigray forces said the Ethiopian military had launched a ground offensive to push them out of Amhara.

The Ethiopian federal government has been engaged in an armed conflict with fighters from the northern Tigray region for nearly a year.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray last November, saying it was a response to attacks on federal army camps by forces loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front.

The United Nations said the fighting has killed thousands of people and put hundreds of thousands of people in danger of famine.

Source: Voice of America

On Monday, as thousands of demonstrators aligned with the Sudan military remain outside the presidential palace for a third day, analysts warn that the civilian-led interim government is facing a growing crisis that could topple its rule.

With upheaval escalating nationwide, government leaders must find a way to "defuse the polarization" and "reach a compromise," said political analyst Hassan Haj Ali.

Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok should "make a partial reshuffle of his Cabinet and appoint new ministers" or expand the number of ministers in the transitional government, Ali said.

Sudan is facing its most trying political challenges since it formed an interim government among rival factions after the fall of ex-president Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

After a political coup attempt was thwarted in September, al-Bashir loyalists have upped their dissent and are demanding changes to the civilian Cabinet and the shaky coalition co-running the government.

"The essence of this crisis … is the inability to reach a consensus on a national project among the revolutionary and change forces," Hamdok said in a televised address last week.

People participating in the massive sit-in outside the presidential palace in Khartoum are demanding the government be dissolved and replaced with technocrats.

Sudan will never have a stable government if only a small group of people continue to make the decisions, said protester Ibrahim Ishaaq Yousif.

"The situation is deteriorating every day, people are unable to find bread, and life has become hard for everyone in this country," he told South Sudan in Focus. "The government has been dominated by only four political parties, and they are unable to do something to change the situation."

Interim government supporters say members of the military and security forces are driving the latest protests, which involve counterrevolutionary sympathizers of al-Bashir.

Some protesters accuse political parties within the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) alliance of excluding them from the country's political processes and say the government is not doing enough to achieve the objectives of Sudanese revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for the cause.

Hamdok should consider dissolving the Cabinet and expanding the political participation in the FFC coalition, said protester Omer Yousif.

Hamdok should "change this Cabinet not from the parties but from the professionals among the common people," he told South Sudan in Focus. "All the infrastructures will be damaged soon. That is why we focus on changing this regime for the better."

Khartoum-based analyst Ali said the government must quickly institute changes.

"Now the trend or the compromise probably is that the prime minister would perform a partial change in his government in order to please those who are demanding change and at the same time keep his own coalition intact by letting members stay in the council of ministers," Ali told South Sudan in Focus.

Ali also recommends setting a timetable for the composition of the legislative assembly and taking steps toward organizing a general election, which is tentatively slated for late 2023.

The protesters began the sit-in on Saturday by chanting "one people, one army" and setting up tents in front of the presidential palace. They say they will not leave until their demands are met.

"The country is striving, and the people are tired," said protester Muhiddeen Adam Juma, a member of the Sudan Liberation Movement faction. "People need to move to real democracy and prosperity.

"But few political forces want to drive the policy of this county by the same policies of the previous administration," Juma told South Sudan in Focus. "And these policies will never take us anywhere."

Hamdok, in his televised address, reiterated the government's commitment to dialogue and to seeking a solution to any political disputes. He also guaranteed the safety and security of people who take part in peaceful protests.

"We respect the right of our people for a peaceful democratic expression," he said. "They got this right through their continuous struggle, and we shall work to safeguard this right."

Source: Voice of America