Source: Red pepper, September 2002 ?No 99
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/
The Shadow of Death
by Charlene Smith
Amidst the debate about the causes of the famine in southern Africa, a primary factor is evaded, that of AIDS/HIV.
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Noel Chikamba staggers across the red dust yard his wife swept only this morning, spittle forms at his lips as he raves loudly and incomprehensibly.
Aya, his wife, stops grinding corn and bites her lip watching him; he is skeletally thin, his eyes are glazed and protruding. The clothes that he refuses to allow her to wash are filthy. He is one of the 28 million people infected with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and so is she. Noel's disease has progressed to AIDS-related dementia; she knows he will soon die.
"In my mind, he has already gone," she says, "I am now worried about the children," she waves her hand at four children under the age of 12. Her daughter, the eldest, is staggering under the load of a container of water she walked three miles to collect. Her 10-year-old son is pulling weeds from spindly crops of butternut and wild spinach.
The family is among 15 million starving people in sub-Saharan Africa. They are luckier than most because they still have some food. It is not enough, but they have neighbours who have nothing. Many reasons have been given for the present famine in southern Africa -- bad governance, high foreign debt, the failure of International Monetary Fund structural adjustment, wars, all the usual recipes for disaster, but too little has been written about what is possibly the primary ingredient in this catastrophe: the impact of AIDS/HIV on workforces, agriculture and individuals and the gross failure of most southern African governments to act in time to provide treatment to their people.
Perhaps this famine is the first widespread indicator of precisely how HIV/AIDS destroys communities and nations. It is an indictment too of a global community that has become focused on the politics of greed and is methodically turning off the capacity for nations of high infection to reform, heal their nations and redevelop.
Lori Bollinger of The Futures Group International notes that although total world trade has tripled in the last two decades, reaching almost US$13 billion by 2000, sub-Saharan Africa total trade increased by only 10 percent in the same period. "This is the result of many factors including weakening economic performance, decreases in commodity prices, war, famine and drought, yet HIV/AIDS has played and will continue to play a role, as sub-Saharan African contains approximately three quarters of the world's HIV+ population."
Wherever HIV/AIDS has gained a foothold in, it has thrown up a flag in every area of human rights abuse found in that community or nation. AIDS is possibly the ultimate warrior for social justice. When it manifested in the USA in the early 1980s it showed up in gay communities and was probably the motivator homosexuality needed to loudly and proudly step out of the closet. It manifested among drug users, and until methadone and clean needles programmes became widely available it threatened to storm through Europe and the USA, in the way it is through Russia and Iran now.
It showed up in blood banks: the rights of haemophiliacs and those who needed regular blood supplies had been ignored, controls have improved but more work needs to be done as recent contaminated blood scares in the US and Denmark have shown. In China, the major agent in the spread of HIV has been programmes where peasants give blood in return for money, the dirty needles used has seen the virus spread fast.
In Africa where the rights of women are scorned, and male sexual entitlement rules, and where the rights of children are honoured in noble sayings -- "it takes a village to raise a child" or "every child is my child" -- but ignored in practice, 55 percent more women are HIV infected than men and six times more girl children than boys.
In Nepal, HIV is throwing up flags on child trafficking. In South Africa it has caused huge debate, but not much action, around sexual violence (a woman is raped every 26 seconds). Across continents it is raising questions about migrant labour, and the conditions afforded truckers and sex workers.
Jenny Brown, district health officer in Barkley East a breathtakingly beautiful part of eastern South Africa says, "we hate the harvest season, because within a month of the seasonal workers moving in sexually transmitted illnesses increase. Within a few months we begin picking up increased TB and with it, we know, is HIV." However, in most clinics surrounding that area there are too few nurses, very few have electricity or running water -- nurses go to polluted rivers to collect water, and Mike Agenbag, the environmental officer in the same community, reports that the main river running through that area, the Tsolo, which serves around 250 000 people, is more polluted than the sewage ponds in the main village of Cala. Few clinics have more medical supplies than gentian violet, crepe bandages and paracetamol.
Agriculture in the region is collapsing as migrant worker husbands come home, infect their wives who run small farms, and in time both die, leaving a growing number of child-headed households. Bernadette Chimosuro, a longtime AIDS worker in Masvingo, Zimbabwe describes what happens to the orphans (she has adopted 16 herself and teaches the running of small scale agricultural programmes because healthy eating is essential to stave off fullblown AIDS). "I'll give you a typical example of one child. Her parents died. The water was cut off because the bill had not been paid. They ran out of food. She left school and tried to find a job. She could not. An older man began paying for things in return for sex. She became infected, she died, now the next child is doing the same trying to care for her siblings."
South Africa's Kwa Zulu Natal province has a large peasant base in small agricultural communities, or large commercial farms. It has 300,000 orphans, very few of whom are cared for by government or communities. The Enhancing Care Initiative of the University of Natal was awarded a R720 million grant (? = R15) from the UN Global Fund in April. It had submitted a project proposal that would have given nevirapine to prevent HIV transmission to babies (MTCT) and would have put mothers, and later fathers on antiretroviral therapy to prolong their lives and reduce the orphan population. It would have extended triple therapy (HAART) to the 400,000 employed people in KZN who may have needed it to extend their lives and combat productivity and job losses due to death. Government blocked the grant and is presently attempting to ban nevirapine, the cheapest and most commonly used drug to prevent MTCT.
What is happening with so many parents dying is that fewer and fewer children, those that are not infected, attend school, which imperils the long term economic and stability prospects of nations. Alan Whiteside of Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of Natal reports that school enrolment is dropping. "By 2002 enrolment was about 275,000 well below the approximately 370,000 in 1998." He said lower enrolment was either a factor of children dying in infancy or not being born (SA experiences the death of 7,000 babies a month due to AIDS according to the SA Paediatricians Association) or, "they are alive and not attending school because their caregivers cannot afford the school fees, book fees and uniforms; the children's labour is needed at home; there is no-one to send them to school; or they feel stigmatised."
In Zimbabwe, commercial farmers funded and ran an extensive network of rural clinics, AIDS hospices and care for AIDS orphans. Those networks have collapsed as that government continues a three year campaign against white commercial farmers. On August 8, 2,900 white farmers were expelled from their farms by government -- despite an estimated 6 million Zimbabweans facing starvation. Sixteen farmers who continued planting and farming after June 24 were arrested.
In Swaziland where 230 000 people are starving, that government announced on August 2 that it was buying a R250 million luxury jet for Swaziland's King Mswati III. Prime Minister, Sibusiso Dlamini arranged to buy the plane at a price five times the country's national deficit. Dlamini said the jet was needed to help the king attract foreign investment and international aid. However, it is not just poor governance in parts of sub-Saharan Africa that is leading to unprecedented death.
UNAIDS, in its recent Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, says that:
"failure to control AIDS is an index of inequitable development and poor governance. Income inequality, gender inequality, labour migration, conflict and refugee movement all promote the spread of HIV.
More than a billion of the world's 6 billion people cannot fulfil their basic needs for food, water, sanitation, health care, housing and education ... Greater access to high-income countries' markets, debt relief and more development aid will go a long way towards enabling countries to reduce poverty. High-income countries spent more than US$300 billion in 2001 on agricultural subsidies -- roughly equivalent to the combined domestic product of all sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS represents a long and devastating tale of exclusion for millions of people, with or without HIV infection.
Despite the pious soundbites of world leaders, they are simply not interested in confronting an epidemic that is cutting a swathe through southern Africa now, but by next year will begin to see Asian nations take over as areas of highest HIV infection. UNAIDS estimates that 850,000 Chinese were living with HIV/AIDS in 2001, "with reported HIV infections having risen more than 67 percent in the first six months of 2001."
HIV is knocking on the door everywhere -- it is only the foolish that sleep on, hoping it will go away.
According to commitments made at the UN Special Assembly on HIV/AIDS last year, signatory nations have to have in place, by 2003, "strategies, policies and programmes that identify and begin to address those factors that make individuals particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, including underdevelopment, economic insecurity, poverty, lack of empowerment of women, lack of education, social exclusion, illiteracy, discrimination, lack of information and/or commodities for self-protection, all types of sexual exploitation of women, girls and boys including for commercial reasons." At the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona in July it became clear that most were nowhere near meeting these modest goals.
And the Global Fund to combat tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS which needs to spend $10 billion a year to effectively fight these international scourges, has thus far raised only $2.8 billion. It appears to have pathetically little chance of reaching its stated goals -- or controlling, never mind eradicating, these diseases.
The owner of a major racehorse stud farm asks: "Could you come and speak to my workers about HIV/AIDS, they're dying like flies." For the previous three months, she says, she and the owners of three neighbouring stud farms in the midlands of Kwa Zulu Natal have lost 180 workers. "My father-in-law has a farm in northern Kwa Zulu Natal and he says people are dying so fast that many families can no longer afford coffins and are wrapping and burying them."
She said she was being crippled by the high costs of training new workers and said the amount of death within their ranks was demoralising existing employees.
UNAIDS says that studies in Thailand and Tanzania show that the financial burden of death can be far greater than that of illness, and in Botswana "per capita household income for the poorest quarter of households is expect to fall by 13 per cent, while every income earner in this category can expect to take on four more dependants as a result of HIV/AIDS."
The editor of a major Sunday newspaper shakes his head over brunch, "my stepfather farms in the Northern province, and in the local village the butcher closed his shop and re-opened it as a mortuary, he says he makes more money."
On Saturdays and Sundays there are traffic jams outside Avalon Cemetery in Soweto as cars, buses and hearses queue to get in. By 2004 that cemetery will be full. Down the road in Ennerdale at the paupers' cemetery coffins are piled three deep in graves.
Research by Steven Forsythe of The Futures Group International says that in a sugar mill in South Africa, 26 per cent of all tested workers were infected with HIV. Infected workers incurred, on average, 55 additional days of sick leave during the last two years of their life. One study in Kenya on a sugar estate found that 25 per cent of the estate's workforce was infected with HIV.
UNAIDS notes that a study of three countries, Burkina Faso, Rwanda and Uganda has calculated that AIDS will not only reverse efforts to reduce poverty, but will increase the percentage of people living in extreme poverty from 45 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2015. In the Free State of South Africa, it says, households used up, "on average, 21 months of savings to pay for medical expenses and funerals."
Not only are people using up their savings, breadwinners are often the first to die and people aged 16 to 29 who would most often be relied on in Africa to take up the burden of care and work -- those young people in that age group are the most heavily infected, and are likely to be ill or dying too. Many elderly people have become HIV-infected washing the bodies of their ill children and grandchildren who lose control of their bowels in the late stages of the disease. The South African government has enacted laws to ban plastic supermarket bags in an environmentally friendly move that fails to acknowledge that the bags are coveted in poor communities to use instead of unaffordable gloves when handling final-stages AIDS patients who often lie covered in theire own faeces or menstrual blood unless washed.
The impact on food security is intense. Tanzanian research showed that food consumption dropped 15 per cent after the death of an adult. UNAIDS says:
"the prospect of widespread food shortages and hunger is real. Some 20 per cent of rural families in Burkina Faso are estimated to have reduced their agricultural work or even abandoned their farms because of HIV/AIDS. In Ethiopia, AIDS-affected households were found to spend between 11.6 and 16.4 hours per week performing agricultural work, compared with a mean of 33.6 hours for non-AIDS-affected households.
In Malawi, death rates among employees of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation have doubled, almost entirely due to HIV/AIDS. In Namibia studies have shown that agricultural extension workers spend one tenth of their time attending funerals. And because most farming in Africa is done by women while men seek better paying work in the cities, and because women are the most HIV infected people on the continent -- some antenatal clinics in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa pick up rates of 55 percent to 60 percent infection, sex workers in Carletonville near Johannesburg have 72 percent rates of infection, 31 percent of women in Lesotho are believed to be infected and rates of 40 per cent are monitored in Botswana ante-natal clinics -- it means that famine becomes an obvious and longlasting legacy of HIV/AIDS.
Statistics from Food Harvest last year showed that women produce 60 to 80 per cent of the food in most developing countries and this percentage is growing. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, women provide 80 per cent of staple foods, and in Asia they perform 90 per cent of the work in rice fields. The World Bank estimates that educating women could increase farm yields by 22 per cent. In Kenya, as an example, a national information campaign targeted at women increased maize yields 28 per cent, beans 80 per cent, and potatoes 84 per cent.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation warned in 2001 that AIDS had killed 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 and would kill an estimated further 16 million by 2020. It said then, "this is already severely affecting household food security," but about as much attention was paid to that as to the June, FAO summit on famine in Rome which was characterised by complete uninterest by the developed world. But it is not only farmers and labourers who are dying, people directing agricultural policy are succumbing. Kenya's Ministry of Agriculture reported last year that 58 percent of all staff deaths are due to AIDS and in Malawi's Ministry of Agriculture at least 16 per cent of the staff are living with HIV/AIDS.
What is needed are not donations of food other than temporary relief measures. UNAIDS calls for a more equitable global investment and trade flows system, as well as, higher levels of Official Development Assistance in support of poverty reduction strategies and improvement of social services. Since 1990, official development assistance provided to the 28 countries with the highest adult HIV prevalence rates (more than 4 per cent) have fallen by a third.
Tony Barnett of the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia writing in AIDS and Economics, July 2002, says that HIV/AIDS is a harbinger of the global public health crisis. "Epidemics such as HIV/AIDS ... need to be related to other events, changes in political regime, new ideas, global warming, the global distribution of power. We cannot deal with these events in isolation from one another."
But simple projects work too. There are too few small scale agricultural projects taking place in sub-Saharan Africa. In Ohrigstad in the north of South Africa I was shown a large community centre with adjacent weed-covered fields and empty pig and chicken runs. A while before a large grant was received from a European donor for an agricultural project, the chicken and pig runs were built and stocked, farms ploughed, seeds planted. But no advice was given on irrigation, no-one was tasked with ensuring the community would plant, reap, and plant again -- and so the chickens and pigs were eaten, the first crops eaten too and weeds allowed to take over. There is an assumption that if you give peasants land they will plough and sow, there is an assumption that farming is inherent in peasants -- it is a fallacious assumption.
With an excessive focus on antiretrovirals the world has forgotten that for HIV/AIDS to be effectively combated and full blown AIDS to be delayed nothing is more effective than good nutrition. In sub-Saharan Africa people are dying sooner than they should because they simply lack enough food to eat, and advice on nutrition. The continent is awash in latex condoms, but too little food. Those already malnourished contract the virus easier, too.
And home-based care which began in Zambia and is now in use around the world not only relieves the burden on hospitals but unites communities in caring for each other when people are ill or dying, it ensures that orphans are not rejected but are integrated into communities and it enables communal lifesaving and income generating projects, such as subsistence farming to be successfully undertaken.
Famine in southern Africa now is an early warning call of what can be expected globally as HIV/AIDS intensifies its spread -- at present 40 million people are infected, in 2004, 100 million people will be infected globally according to the World Health Organisation. And as the world gathers at the Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg it is worth reflecting again on our global interdependency. AIDS has no eyes, it doesn't just target the poor, it doesn't just target Africans, it is moving silently and quickly and demands new international thinking on poverty, human rights, access to food and healthcare, this virus is not just about health.
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Charlene Smith is a multi-award winning freelance journalist from Johannesburg. She is the author of six books -- on politics, human rights and HIV/AIDS and contributor to many others.
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BBC, 29 August, 2002, 12:46 GMT 13:46 UK
Politics clouds clean water debate
Many South Africans live in homes without taps or toilets
Developed countries may take it for granted, but the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Johannesburg finds that providing clean water in poorer countries is no easy task.
Water for the bath, water for the shower. water for the toilet. Each leaf of the toilet paper in my hotel is over-printed with a message: "Stand up for better sanitation. More than 2.4 billion people have no toilet."
"A lot of people will fight for water from the tap", Shamrock Miducka
Ten minutes down the road from the marble bathrooms of Johannesburg's big hotels is a squatter camp of thousands of rickety huts and shacks.
These makeshift houses have no taps or toilets. The taps are in muddy alleyways, shared by dozens of people.
Aida Matebone, whose home is 10 minutes walk from the nearest water supply told me: "It's difficult for me to come here to wash, and come here to pour water for drinking, because it's very far."
Demand high
Her friend Shamrock Miducka added that because demand for the water is high, a lot of people will fight for water from the tap.
"We're talking about 20% of the world's population without access to fresh water". Andy Atkins, Tear Fund
"There's not enough water so that you can wash all your clothes.
"You have to give some other people the chance: this week, they have to wash, then you next week. Which means the cleanliness of the people is so difficult and health is at risk."
Along the edge of the camp are worn-out plastic external toilets with chemical tanks that often fill long before they are changed.
Water campaigner, Andy Atkins, of Tear Fund says that places like this should galvanise everybody to take action.
"It's very hard to know that is going on, and not see this conference take serious action," he says.
"We're talking about 20% of the world's population without access to fresh water, 40% of the world's population without sanitation.
"What that translates into is, for example, a child dying every 15 seconds because of easily-preventable diseases borne in water.
"It should not be controversial to bring fresh water and sanitation to nearly half the world's population. Sadly, it is proving controversial to some governments."
Privatisation debate
The dissenters are the United States and Australia, who do not want sanitation targets. Privatisation is another controversy in the water debate.
Some South Africans have to use communal taps
"We must always acknowledge that water and sanitation are essential services, Simpiwe Nogiaisa of the charity WaterAid explained.
"They must be kept in the hands of government to ensure that everybody, regardless of their income, has access to water and sanitation."
Mr Nogiaisa believes that privatisation will globalise poverty.
"Those services will only be a privilege of those that they can afford, of those that have more dollars, more pounds and so on. The majority of the people that are poor in a number of countries will have no access to essential services," he says.
Free-market supporters
However another lobbyist, Richard Tren of the Sustainable Development Network, says that properly-regulated privatisation is better than centralised government water distribution.
"If you look at the 'privatisation is evil' group, they're largely made up of the unions," he says.
"In developing countries unionised labour is far wealthier than the people who live in shacks, that have no jobs and no access to clean water.
"[Union members] are very much an upper class. When you've got between 40-50% of the population unemployed, they're very much the upper class," he says.
"On the other hand, privatisation needs to be done very carefully. One doesn't want to give too much monopoly power to private suppliers of water, so that they can then use that power to lobby government for special favours."
At the squatter camp, I met a man who carries 40 litres of water in two containers, one and a half kilometres to his home every day.
I wouldn't dare tell him about the fountain of abundant water - going nowhere - outside my Johannesburg hotel.
BBC World Service
http://www.africapulse.com
Emerging technologies can work for Africa only if the climate is right
By: ECA
Date: 2002-08-26
ECA Press Release No. 12/2002 For Immediate Release
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES CAN WORK FOR AFRICA ONLY IF THE CLIMATE IS RIGHT
Addis Ababa, 23 August 2002 (ECA) -- If effectively harnessed, new and emerging technologies can help catalyze Africa's transition to sustainable development by lowering the incidence of disease, reducing food insecurity, and decreasing vulnerability to environmental damage by allowing more flexible crop management systems.
However, the expected benefits of both medical (red) and agricultural (green) biotechnology can only be realized if a number of key challenges are addressed, including the extent to which the technologies are relevant to Africa, are pro-poor and mitigate biosafety and related risks.
Biotechnology should be viewed as one part of a comprehensive, sustainable poverty reduction strategy, and not as a technological "quick fix" for Africa's hunger and poverty problems.
These are the key messages of a new policy research report entitled 'Harnessing Technologies for Sustainable Development', to be released by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to coincide with the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August - 4 September 2002.
The Report identifies red and green biotechnologies as important ingredients often overlooked as a basis for sustainable development. The recent advances in biotechnologies offer crops that have greater yields, resist pests and diseases, and offer other positive nutritional, health, and environmental attribute. The Report notes that Africa, which depends heavily on agriculture -- contributing 30% of Gross Domestic Product and 70% of employment -- stands to benefit from any technology that can increase the production of food, enhance its nutritional quality, and minimize the exploitation of forests and marginal lands. Illustrating the range and nature of current risks and opportunities inherent in the biotechnologies, the Report focuses on how to ensure that poor farmers in Africa stand to gain.
Similarly, the breakthroughs in medical biotechnologies are revolutionizing the prevention, diagnosis, management, treatment, and cure of diseases: diagnostic tests are being simplified; more accurate medicines are being produced through pharmacogenics; gene therapy brings the possibility of directly correcting genetic disorders before they appear; and vaccines are being produced that tackle a wider range of diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, and with greater efficiency. The Report notes that these new possibilities are especially needed in Africa at a time that the toll of the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics are reversing the health gains achieved over the past four decades.
The Report articulates the potential benefits of specific technologies and argues that the biggest risk for Africa would be to do nothing and let the biotechnology revolution bypass the continent. In doing so, it stresses that the new technologies are no panacea or silver bullet, and highlights a number of key challenges faced by Africa, among them:
- The current focus of biotechnology research on crops grown and disease strains that are prevalent in developed, rather than developing countries;
- The fact that in health, only 10% of research and development spending is directed to the health problems of 90% of the world's people;
- The reality that most African countries are not well equipped to address the potential risks of these technologies to human and animal health, and the environment;
Recognizing that poor people and poor countries lack resources, infrastructure, and the business environment to attract new technologies and related investments, the Report outlines key components for a technology-infused development strategy within these limitations. It includes lessons learned and best practice examples from across countries in the continent, about strategic partnerships that are successful, products and processes proven to work, and ways to encourage new ideas and initiatives.
Biotechnology, the Report emphasizes, is only one of a suite of technologies to be embedded in established breeding and selection programmes. It argues that reaping the full benefit of the technological revolution will require critical planning and strategic investments -- by regional and international organizations and governments, private sectors, and civil society.
African countries must exploit a range of options to ensure that future biotechnology initiatives reach their full potential for alleviating poverty, combating disease and securing food security. Specifically, and among other options, African countries should seek to:
- Promote African-focused biotechnology research in which emphasis is laid on: the diseases and their strains prevalent in Africa, particularly HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria; and "orphan crops", particularly cassava, millet sorghum, sweet potato and yams but also other cereals such as maize, rice and wheat;
- Develop African-owned biotechnology policies whereby all the relevant stakeholders, including civil society, private sector farmer organizations, are involved in the formulation of national plans;
- Establish national regulatory institutions for risk assessment and management since most African countries have inadequate human resource capacity to perform these functions;
- Increase investment in modern biotechnology research. The current levels in most African countries are very low (hardly 2% of the total agricultural research funds); and
- Promote public/private sector partnership in modern biotechnology research;
The experience of African countries that have deployed genetically modified (GM) crops shows that success depends on the extent to which countries have pursued these options. Countries cited as success stories include South Africa (maize and cotton), Kenya (sweet potato), and Egypt (maize, faba beans and cotton).
Beyond individual countries, the Report states that achieving sustainable development will require the production of regional and global public goods, services or resources whose benefits are shared among countries in a region or more broadly. These regional and global public goods include the knowledge, regimes, standards and rules required to address cross-border problems such as infectious disease control and use of GM crops; the institutions that monitor and enforce the rules and regimes; and the benefits that arise and are shared indiscriminately among countries.
To ensure the provision of these goods in sufficient quantity, international collective action will be critical, because no individual country has an incentive to pay for such things as the prevention of contagious diseases, the preservation of biodiversity, or research to develop new crops, vaccines, or drugs to treat tropical diseases.
The provision of these goods, stresses the Report, will require new and innovative financing at the regional level. Since development assistance remains anchored in country-based projects and programmes, greater flexibility will be needed to finance regional programmes for providing regional public goods.
Around billion is allocated annually to international resource transfers for global public goods in health, environment, and knowledge creation, states the Report. Roughly billion of this goes to support national infrastructure for public goods provision -- such as basic health care systems and environmental management -- leaving only a small share for regional and global public goods. Thus much more needs to be done at the regional level.
Additionally, the Report features innovative new indicators that track the progress of African countries towards sustainable development. These indicators combine 27 key economic, environmental, and institutional variables to track the performance of 38 African countries during the 1975-2000 period, summarizing reasonably the evolution of the current state of sustainable development. They also help identifying key factors that determine success and failures in achieving sustainable development, and priority areas for policy intervention.
The indicators reveal sobering challenges. While some countries have made good progress, many have slipped down the rankings. In fact, only three countries -- Mauritius, South Africa, and Botswana -- accounting for about 6.5% of the continent's population, recorded relatively high overall sustainability throughout the period. Even more telling is the fact that among the 38 countries studied, the proportion of the populations living in those with low sustainability rose from one-third in 1975-84 to half in 1995-2000.
Media materials in English are available at www.uneca.org/harnessing/kit
The Media Kit includes Backgrounders on the various chapters of the Report, as well as names and contact details of ECA spokespersons that can be contacted directly for quotable interviews on the subject matter of the Report.
The full report is available from the ECA website at www.uneca.org/harnessing
At WSSD in Johannesburg between 24 August and 4 September, please call Peter da Costa on +27-082-938-9675.
Issued by the ECA Communication Team
P.O. Box 3001, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: +251-1-51 58 26, Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
E-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org, Web: www.uneca.org
Copyright ?2001: SANGONeT
Mail&Guardian Online, August 29, 2002
Africa's search for energy
Jubie Matlou | Johannesburg
"Rural energising, as opposed to rural electrification, should be the route towards a new sustainable energy path for Africa's development," says Dr Abeeku Brew-Hammond during the launch of a book on the continent's search for sustainable energy solutions on Wednesday night.
The event, hosted by the University of Cape Town's Energy and Development Research Centre (EDRC) as part of the World Summit deliberations, also marked the launch of a research partnership which brings collaborations between 10 energy research institutes across Africa to exchange information on developing sustainable energy solutions.
Brew-Hammond says that rural electrification is about extending the grid to rural areas or using decentralisation methods such as solar or hydro panels.
"For rural villagers this is not sustainable. In many instances, the rural poor don't have the money to pay for access to such services. Such energy is used for lights and cooking in a household.
"Rural energising is about the use of energy for production and income generation. Many rural women in West Africa spent hours everyday extracting oil from ground nuts manually. Part of the capital investment used in extending the grid can be used to acquire a diesel generator, for example, to run a water pump or an oil press. All that rural Africa needs is a package of mechanical and electrical devices that would not only bring electricity but improve the living standards of the poor as well."
Brew-Hammond's comments come in the wake of Eskom, South Africa's energy utility, expanding its programmes into the rest of the continent.
"Eskom's efforts are welcome, and largely they have to do with bilateral arrangements between governments and energy utilities. All I am calling for is a combination of the two approaches to provide Africa with sustainable energy."
The tone of the book launch was set by the chairperson of the side event, Professor Ogunlade Davidson of EDRC.
Davidson said the irony of energy production and consumption is that Africa is rich in both renewable and non-renewable energy but it is the lowest consumer of these energies.
"Much of the energy produced in Africa is exported. Africa has 17% access to electricity compared to 80% access in other parts of the world. And its coal and gas reserves could last for the next 80 years or so," Davidson said in his introduction.
About six contributors to the book made presentations on the challenges facing Africa on sustainable energy. These range from the use of outdated technology, lack of infrastructure, low institutional support and a neglect of untapped resources.
When the debate shifted to liberalisation of energy, a European Parliament MP warned of the dangers of privatisation which may result in a few companies enjoying monopoly over the sector.
Davidson quipped: "Public utility monopolies are more welcome than private monopolies."
A member of the audience, who introduced himself as Uganda's ambassador to the United Nations, threw the cat among pigeons when he challenged European non-governmental organisations to stop using Africa's young people to oppose hydro-electric projects in Africa.
"England is generating only one percent of its energy requirements from wind power [which is in abundance in that country], for example," he said.
Davidson joined the fray to suggest that there is nothing wrong with hydro-generated power. "Who says dams cannot be renewed?" he asked.
The direction of the debate appeared to suggest that Africa's urgent task was to roll-out energy infrastructure as soon as possible, only then start to consider the "luxuries" of sustainable energy production and use. Hence the theme of the debate: "Think Bigger and Act Faster".
It was South Africa's Mineral and Energy Minister, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who had the last word.
"Africa must seek its own solutions and analysis to its problems. Investment in research and development is vital [if any headway is to be made]," she said.
She announced the recent formation of the Association of African Energy Regulators as a positive development in this direction. A new financial initiative, the Energy Fund -- is being proposed to fund capital investment of the continent's energy infrastructure.
Mail&Guardian Online
VOA, 29 Aug 2002 19:02 UTC
Africa Putting a Human Face on the World Summit on Sustainable Development
Rosanne Skirble, Washington
28 Aug 2002 18:16 UTC
Listen to Rosanne Skirble's report (RealAudio) (
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Their faces announce the World Summit on Sustainable Development that began August 26 in Johannesburg, South Africa. They welcome you from giant billboards and banners in the airport, on the road into town and around the convention center where delegates are meeting in one of the biggest United Nations conferences ever held.
The larger-than-life images portray 12 different grassroots development activists, each exemplifying the summit's theme of "People, Planet, Prosperity."
"Wes enriches the world." That's what the towering billboard across the street from a gasoline station in Johannesburg says about Wes Adell, a former county commissioner from Linsborg, Kansas.
The billboard bears a huge photograph of the smiling, bearded American, holding up a heaping handful of fresh compost from the enormous pile behind him. The photo was taken in Linsborg, which is where he first became troubled by the amount of yard waste being dumped in his community's landfill.
In 1991, Adell launched a project to turn all those branches, leaves and grass clippings into soil-enhancing compost. That project quickly grew into an ambitious program to save landfill space and reduce polluted runoff into local rivers and streams.
Wes Adell explained. "I had gotten it tested by the Ohio State Research Laboratory telling how good it was and we announced Saturday morning we were going to give some back to the community. There were 127 pickups and trucks that came to get the compost and it was gone in two hours." That program was such a success that the town started another project that used the nutrient rich compost to improve the soil in other parts of Kansas, a Midwestern state with few trees on its flat, dusty plains.
"And this has turned into a beautiful compost and tree station project, now seven years old, and we've given out more than 100,000 trees across Kansas," Adell said.
Wes Adell began receiving invitations to preach the gospel of composting around the world after the United Nations honored him in 1996 with its National Excellence Award for "best-practices innovation." The annual prize recognizes outstanding contributions to soil and water conservation.
Adell's innovations have included more than just composting systems. For example, a simple kit he designed converts a 20 liter bucket and 30 meters of tubing into a small-scale drip irrigation system that works under most growing conditions, even in very arid regions. He says adding compost to the irrigated soil can improve vegetable production by 50 to 100 percent the first year.
At the Johannesburg Summit, Adell is also promoting two new high-tech composting machines. One produces high quality compost in just three days, instead of the weeks or months normally required. Another pulverizes that compost by swirling it inside a chamber at tornado-like speeds.
"What happens when the materials go through that air [is that they] pound and pulverize each other so that we have some amazing new things develop that we've never had before," he explained. "For example, we don't have to pull glass out of the waste stream and compost it. That sounds really crazy, but what happens is that the power of the air breaks and pulverizes and pounds the glass into fine sand silica. So it is just like out in the soil. It [works] fine with the compost."
VOANEWS
Sustainable Gardens Are Source of Food and Business
Beth Schmidt
Mkhuhlu, South Africa
26 Aug 2002 19:38 UTC
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One of the likely issues for discussion at the World Summit on Sustainable Development is the subject of food security. Ensuring people at the greatest risk have a reliable source of food. One of the ways to reach that goal is to encourage even the poorest families to create self-sustainable vegetable gardens. One South African community has converted a barren plot of land into a thriving, sustainable food source and business.
Near the edge of a major roadway in Mkhuhlu, four women are busy at work in a series of small vegetable gardens. They talk about what to pick for their waiting customers.
They are part of a larger group of 25 women who, in the last seven years, have turned a desolate patch of earth into a prosperous vegetable garden and business.
Eunice Nyakana says the group started Bambanani Gardens as a way to feed their children.
She says she is happy today because she has food to give to her children. She says before they created the gardens she and the other mothers felt hopeless. They had no jobs and no money to buy food. Now, she says, even if they do not make money every day, at least they have food to take home.
Twice a week, Moses and Nancy Mathebula buy vegetables here to resell in their village, some 150 kilometers to the north.
As the women fill the bed of her small truck with vegetables, Mrs. Mathebula says she makes the long drive to Mkhuhlu because these women grow the best produce in the area.
"That is why I come here to buy here, because it is very better. And it is fresh. Fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh," said one customer.
Seven years ago, the women never envisioned getting paid to garden. When they asked EcoLink, a local environmental aid group, to teach them how to garden, they were simply trying to put food on the table.
For nearly two decades, EcoLink, with financial backing from Nestle South Africa, has worked with similar groups of women. They say this year, their community outreach projects, like Bambanani, will feed more than 100,000 impoverished South Africans.
EcoLink project manager Solly Mashego says now more than ever, it is important to teach people how to feed themselves. "Just because they cannot get employment somewhere, it does not mean they have to sit down and watch their children dying of starvation," he said.
Elsie Mpatlanyane, the team leader assigned to this project, says the example these women set is a powerful motivator in rural communities like Mkhuhlu. "I think it is important if everyone can copy from others and do the very same thing, maybe we will not suffer as we are suffering now."
The aid group EcoLink says as unemployment and HIV/AIDS continue to devastate South Africa's workforce, projects like Bambanani Gardens could mean the difference for many South African families between survival and starvation.
VOANEWS, 29 Aug 2002 19:18 UTC
Alexandra Township Samples New Sustainable Development Ideas
Challiss McDonough
Alexandra Township, South Africa
28 Aug 2002 18:31 UTC
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Delegates to the World Summit on Sustainable Development are meeting in a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg to talk about saving the planet and improving the lives of the poor. Less than three kilometers away is Alexandra Township, one of the poorest neighborhoods in South Africa. One group of delegates took a field trip to Alexandra to see how their ideas meet reality.
A woman sits outside her squatter shack at Alexandra, Johannesburg
"As we proceed, coming on the right-hand side, we are passing an area, which also had a lot of informal settlements. But some of the people, in fact most of the people have been moved out in the past few weeks," explains tour guide Abbey Sechoaro. He points out the highlights from atop a double-decker bus as it lumbers through the narrow streets of Alexandra Township, known to local people as Alex.
It is just three kilometers from the Sandton Convention Center, where delegates are meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. But the two areas are worlds apart.
Sandton is as well-developed as any city in Europe or North America. It has fancy shopping malls and shiny office buildings. Nearby, Alex is a crowded, crime-ridden slum where most of the 350,000 residents live in tin shacks without water, toilets, or electricity.
But that is slowly changing. South Africa's government and the city of Johannesburg have launched a major renewal project aimed at building homes, schools and clinics, and providing water and sanitation for the residents.
South African Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele admits it took a while to coordinate efforts between the different government departments.
"Finally as different departments, we are taking from our budgets, putting money into Alex in order to make an impact and push back the frontiers of poverty," she explains.
The housing minister invited her counterparts from Nigeria and Ghana, as well other delegates at the summit, to tour the township. The field trip was a chance to see first-hand a place where their theories of sustainable development are being tested in the real world.
Anna Tibaijuka heads U.N. Habitat, the U.N. agency responsible for housing.
"This really is an example of the challenges facing just about every city in the developing world - rapid urbanization, people coming to cities, conventional urban planning techniques simply overwhelmed," she says. " And you know, people have to live somewhere, so you have squatter settlements everywhere. And this is a very good example of the efforts of the public to partner with the people and try to improve their living conditions."
The improvements in Alex are clearly visible. Less than a year and a half ago, hundreds of shacks jammed the banks of the Jukskei River. Today, there are small, but solidly built brick homes, each with running water and electricity.
The trip was a revelation not just to the foreign visitors but to local guests as well.
Angela Makholwa is a public relations consultant working for the city of Johannesburg. She was born and raised in Johannesburg, but had not been to Alex in years. She was stunned at what she saw from the top of the windy, open top of the double-decker bus.
"It must have been about two years ago and none of this, none of these houses, especially big houses were here. I mean, I just knew Alexandra as a shantytown, basically a squatter camp, basically. And this is amazing! I think this is quite great," she said.
Residents say they hope the visiting delegates will come up with ideas to develop Alexandra even more, hopefully creating jobs for the 60 percent of Alex residents who are unemployed.
VOANEWS|
VOANEWS, 29 Aug 2002 19:22 UTC
Effort Launched to Increase Use of Soap in Africa
Luis Ramirez
Abidjan
24 Aug 2002 12:23 UTC
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World health experts say diarrhea kills hundreds of children in the world every day. World Bank officials say it results in the deaths of more than 800,000 African children each year. Many of the deaths are in West Africa, where intestinal illnesses claim more young lives than malaria or AIDS. Experts meeting at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa plan to present a program they hope will help save one million lives a year: Washing one's hands with soap.
The program, to be launched in Ghana next January, brings together the efforts of large western-based soap companies and local government officials in the West African country.
Through the partnership, which was brokered by the World Bank, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UNICEF, and others, organizers hope to slash diarrhea disease by more than 40 percent over the next three years in Ghana. The program will be carried out mainly through soap company advertisements and education campaigns.
The program will also be launched at the same time in India's Kerala state. It may be expanded to include other parts of the world, including Senegal, Peru, China, and Nepal.
Spearheading the project is Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is scheduled to address the Earth Summit in South Africa. Dr. Curtis tells VOA the hand washing program is a simple and cheap means to save children's lives. "Hand washing is probably at least as important as vaccination," she said. "Vaccination programs are reaching 80 to 90 percent of kids across the world, and we want a program as big as that. We think that the people who can help us the most with this are the soap companies, because they're the ones who are very good at getting people to buy soap. What's new in our program is to try and encourage the soap companies to work with governments to encourage everybody to wash their hands with soap. Obviously, it's in everybody's interest. If we can make it work, soap companies are going to sell more soap. Governments can get closer to their real targets, which are to halve deaths from diarrheal disease in 10 years' time."
A similar program in recent years, involving the U.S.-based Colgate-Palmolive company and Europe's Unilever, in Latin America yielded what officials say were positive results.
There is evidence that washing hands can cut infections in general. A 1996 study by the U.S. Naval Health Research Center found that recruits who were ordered to wash their hands five times a day experienced a 45 percent drop in respiratory diseases.
Program advocates are confident the idea may catch on in nations of largely Muslim West Africa, where the principle of washing is already a part of the culture.
As a rule, Muslims wash five times a day before prayers.
And, the program's organizers say, soap consumption is high in West Africa. Market experts say per-capita soap use in the region rivals that of industrialized nations. At Abidjan's bustling Treichville market, soap vendor Peter Joe lays out several varieties of soap at his stall. " We use soap for bathing," he said. "We depend so much on soap. We use it everyday in our lives. We use it to clean. We use it to bathe. We use it to wash our wares. We depend so much on soap to make us to look clean."
World Bank officials say surveys have shown only about 20 percent of people polled in Ghana wash their hands with soap after using the toilet or changing their babies' diapers.
Ghanaian officials hope the program will help people begin to value the use of soap for its hygienic, and not just its aesthetic value. The lead consultant for Ghana's Community Water and Sanitation Agency, Nana Garbrah-Aidoo, says results of a study this year indicate Ghanaians are likely to be receptive to the program. "What we found from the study is that hand-washing was a habit in Ghana, but soap use was not," she said. "Soap use for hand-washing was not. We know that Ghanaians use a lot of soap. What we are trying to do is to build on those uses, which are already [common] of soap. Everybody has soap. In 95 percent of the homes we visited, there was soap."
Advocates of the hand washing initiative program hope to drive home a message to policymakers present at the conference in South Africa that the solution to a major health problem does not have to be expensive and complicated. It may be as simple, they say, as a bar of soap and some water.
VOANEWS|
The World Bank Group.
Reducing Hunger Through Agricultural Science
Global consultative process looking at risks and opportunities launched
August 29, 2002—A new international consultative process on the risks and opportunities of using agricultural science to reduce hunger and improve rural livelihoods in the developing world was launched today at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The initiative, which is expected to last through mid-2003, aims to exchange ideas between consumers, farmers, scientists, NGOs, governments, and the private sector in an effort to produce an international assessment on agricultural science that would give decision-makers the tools and information they need to answer the tough questions surrounding the issue.
The new process will be co-chaired by World Bank Chief Scientist Robert T. Watson, who is also the former head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Claudia Martinez Zuleta, former Colombian deputy minister of environment; Rita Sharma, the joint secretary and land resources commissioner of India’s agriculture ministry; Louise Fresco, the FAO’s assistant director general for agriculture; and Seyfu Ketema, executive secretary of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa.
“Nearly 800 million people go to bed hungry every night and over the next 50 years, food production will have to double to meet growing demands,?said Ian Johnson, the World Bank’s vice-president for sustainable development.
“This will involve both productivity and environmental management challenges. As we move forward, the application of science to agriculture needs to be fully assessed in terms of its contribution to enabling farmers to be more productive. But equally, the environmental and social risks, as well as ethical issues, need to be discussed in an open and transparent manner. By discussing and examining the issues with everyone from farmers and consumers, to NGOs and governments, we can contribute to the informed dialogue among them,?said Johnson, who also chairs the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
The consultative process on agricultural science will look at the risks and opportunities of a broad range of issues, such as organic agriculture, traditional plant breeding techniques, new farming technologies, and biotechnology. The assessment will be modeled on similar assessments on climate change and ozone that have proven invaluable for guiding policy makers on pressing issues.
“My experience in chairing international assessments on climate change, biodiversity and ozone leads me to believe that it is possible to ensure that a professional assessment in which all voices are heard will be achieved,?said Watson. “Such agreements only work when they are inclusive and transparent. We must not shy away from the difficult challenge of discussing with a wide range of partners what exactly are the tradeoffs in using agricultural science to meet growing food needs.?
The consultative process will try to maximize input through a number of ways, including meetings in various parts of the world, videoconferences, and an interactive website at www.agassessment.org.
?2002 The World Bank Group.
?2002 The World Bank Group.
Sustaining Development; Our Opportunity in Johannesburg
President James D. Wolfensohn comments on the importance of the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development
August 23, 2002—Last spring, the UN summit in Monterrey spurred poor countries to commit to improve their policies and governance in exchange for promises by rich countries to deliver more aid, and open their markets to trade. The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg next week gives us the chance to put those words into action.
What should the world expect from Johannesburg? Perhaps the best way to answer that is to look ahead and imagine what kind of world we want, not just now, but for our children, and our children’s children. Are we going to leave as our legacy a poorer globe that has more hungry people, an erratic climate, fewer forests, less biodiversity, and is even more socially volatile than today?
According to the World Bank’s new World Development Report 2003, released today in Johannesburg, the next 50 years could see the global population swell by 50 percent to nine billion people, and the world’s gross domestic product increase fourfold to $140 trillion. Given current trends in production and consumption, social and environmental strains threaten to derail development efforts and erode living standards unless we design better policies and institutions.
Development policies will need to be even more closely focused on protecting our forests, fisheries and farms - and making them more productive—if the poor are to narrow the equality gap that has emerged in the past 50 years. Misguided policies and weak governance have contributed to environmental disasters, growing income inequality, and social upheaval in some countries, often resulting in deep deprivation, riots, or refugees fleeing famine or civil wars.
If we stay on the road we are on, the signs do not appear very encouraging. By 2050, the world’s annual output of carbon dioxide will have more than tripled while nine billion people—three billion more than we have today and mostly living in developing countries—will be tapping into the earth’s water, adding more stress on the world’s already-strained water supply. Meanwhile, food needs will more than double, a grim prospect for Africa where food production is currently falling behind the pace of population growth. All this in a world where extinction already threatens 12 percent of all bird species, and a quarter of its species of mammals.
Globally, 1.3 billion people already live on fragile lands—arid zones, wetlands, and forests—that cannot sustain them. By 2050, and for the first time in history, more people will be living in cities than in rural areas. Without better planning, the stresses from immigration and population shifts across the globe could create new social upheaval and desperate competition for already scare resources.
Yet these trends also offer windows of opportunity, if world leaders and policy makers meeting in Johannesburg muster the courage to pledge—and follow through on—bold actions over the next 10 to 15 years. Most of the capital stock and infrastructure—housing, shops, factories, roads, power and water services—that will be needed by the growing population in coming decades does not yet exist. Better standards, increased efficiency, and more inclusive means of decision-making could mean that these assets are built in ways that put fewer strains on society and the environment. Similarly, as population growth slows, economic growth will translate more readily into lower poverty and higher incomes per capita—provided that development over the next few decades has been handled in a way that does not destroy the natural resources that underpin growth or erode critical social values, such as trust.
We must strive for the Millennium Development Goals, which map out a world where poverty is cut in half by 2015, and in so doing we will lay the basis for a virtuous cycle of growth and human development in the poor nations of the world.
If individual incomes in the developing world grow by an average of 3.3 percent annually, they would reach $6,300 a year by 2050, nearly one-third more than that in current upper/middle income countries. And such growth is already viewed as a modest goal by some leaders in the developing world. Over the past two decades, we have seen growth in many East Asian countries at an annual average of nearly twice that rate.
What would this mean for ordinary people? Their basic human needs for shelter, food and clothing could be affordably met. Life expectancy would rise to 72 years in poor countries, compared with 58 today in those nations with the lowest incomes. The number of children who die before the age of five would drop dramatically, and the number of people who can read and write would rise to nearly 95 percent.
Of course, this dramatic economic growth would pose potentially enormous risks to the natural environment, and these risks are greatest in developing countries. Given rich nations are the greatest consumers of our common resources, they have a special responsibility to help the developing world address these risks.
We all must protect our forests and fisheries from overexploitation. We must halt soil degradation, and ensure our water supplies are used efficiently. We must protect biologically diverse ecosystems, as they underpin the flow of goods and services essential to our economies and societies. We must limit emissions from factories, cars and households. That is why the challenge of delivering sustainable development must be met locally, nationally, and globally.
Developing countries need to promote democracy, inclusiveness and transparency as they build the institutions needed to manage their resources. Rich countries should increase aid, support debt reduction, open their markets to developing country exporters, and help transfer technologies needed to prevent diseases, and especially to increase energy efficiency and bolster agricultural productivity.
Civil society, meanwhile, can act as a voice for dispersed interests, and provide independent oversight of public, private and nongovernmental performances. A socially responsible private sector, supported by good government, should create incentives for companies to pursue their interests while advancing environmental and social objectives. And the international community must work together on global issues, such as climate change and biodiversity.
If we wisely safeguard our vital resources, key among them the environment, and social stability, then we will attain the growth rates essential to reducing poverty in ways that will last. It would be reckless of us to successfully reach the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 only to be confronted by chaotic cities, dwindling water supplies, increased emissions, and even less cropland to sustain us than we have now.
--------------------------
The writer is the president of the World Bank. This piece appeared as an opinion-editorial in several newspapers around the world this week.
?2002 The World Bank Group, All Rights Reserved.
U.N. Summit Focuses on Women Farmers
Thu Aug 29, 8:13 AM ET
By DINA KRAFT, Associated Press Writer
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Planting potatoes in the highlands of South America, harvesting corn in Africa's valleys and working the rice paddies of Asia, women toil in most of the world's fields. Yet many do not own the land they work.
Without land ownership for rural women, experts warn, women farmers are doomed to remain impoverished, and the developing world's food supply precarious.
As part of their debate on the world's economic progress, Delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development are discussing how gender issues affect poverty. How bringing a water tap to a village could save women hours of daily walking to bring water home. How using solar energy to cook food could save them from having to collect firewood. How giving them access to education or title to land could help them prosper and focus on their families.
"Empowering women guarantees more of the desired results for children, and if you believe children are the future for sustainable development ... then this is an important thing," said Remi Paris, a poverty reduction expert for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Bisi Ogunleye, like her mother before her, is a farmer. Like her father, she is also a chief, an unusual honor for a Nigerian woman.
She laughs as she tells the story of her birth, on the side of the road as her mother returned from the corn fields.
"I'm a farmer from birth and I'm still a farmer," said Ogunleye. "But African women in Nigeria, we have no right to land, we can only access (land) through our husbands or sons."
In Nigeria, where she says up to 90 percent of agricultural work is done by women, she has formed an association of female farmers lobbying the government to reform traditional land laws.
As in many countries, land in Nigeria is inherited by men. And like in most agricultural societies, land is power.
"It means injustice because if women are the ones planting, working, and producing food and have no right to land (so) they have no right to work in their full capacity," said Ogunleye.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization ( news - web sites) is pushing for equal access to land at the summit, arguing that it is key to maintaining and expanding the world's food supply.
Getting credit and loans is virtually impossible for women who don't have title to their farms to use as collateral, said Eve Crowley, an expert on poverty alleviation and rural development for the FAO.
Without that access to funds, women cannot improve or invest in the land, she said. Often the land they farm is less productive and they are restricted to so-called "women's crops" that feed the family but do not provide cash income.
"When access is insecure ... you feel less reason to invest in it," Crowley said.
Most cash crops require long-term investment, such as the planting of fruit trees or coffee plants, Paris said. When people don't have land security they don't plan long term, he said, and they never make the money that can lead them to prosperity.
In many indigenous societies, women have long been the pillars of agricultural production because the men worked as warriors or hunters.
In recent years, women have been assuming a greater role in agriculture as men migrate to cities in search of work and AIDS ( news - web sites) rips apart many families.
About 80 percent of indigenous women now work as farmers, said Vicky Cali-Corpuz, who is representing the indigenous peoples of Asia at the summit.
But their livelihoods are threatened, she said, in part because of cheap produce imports by wealthier nations.
Traditional farming methods are also being undermined by governments pushing for more high-tech agriculture, said Cali-Corpuz.
Copyright ?2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
BBC, 28 August, 2002, 14:16 GMT 15:16 UK
Leaders urged to combat corruption
Corruption "should be addressed" at the summit
By William Horsley
BBC World Affairs correspondent
An annual survey of levels of corruption in countries all over the world says that bribery, and corruption in all its forms, is now a major cause of poverty and backwardness.
The organisation Transparency International has called on the world leaders at the United Nations summit in Johannesburg on Sustainable Development, to combat corruption as a matter of urgency.
This year Transparency International includes 102 countries, the highest number ever, in its survey of known or perceived levels of corruption around the world.
Bribery is a major cause of poverty
Countries in Africa, South America and Asia are judged to have the worst records.
Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Nigeria, Paraguay, Indonesia and Bangladesh all score less than two on an index of up to 10. Transparency International says growing corruption has damaged efforts to establish democratic rule, and is a direct cause of financial and social disasters.
Corruption is seen as having increased sharply in Argentina, which is now unable to pay its international debts.
Graft and misrule have undermined democratic structures in Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti.
Projects delayed
Official corruption has delayed and complicated vital decisions over projects like the Three Gorges Dam in China, which are meant to help provide clean water to large populations who lack it.
Some former communist countries, like Slovenia, are seen as improving their record. But despite recent efforts Russia remains seriously corrupt, as do other former soviet states such as Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Transparency International says that corrupt official and business people are trapping whole nations in poverty and hampering sustainable development.
It calls on leaders at the Johannesburg summit to tackle corruption urgently, and make pledges which they can keep.
BBC World Service
Landless and homeless give voice in the streets
Thousands ready to speak with their feet
John Vidal
Wednesday August 28, 2002
The Guardian
Muzi and his friend Nkwapa were forcibly evicted last year from their shanty homes in Mandelaville in Soweto.
Yesterday they were painting banners in a community centre in preparation for their march to the UN summit centre in Sandton on Saturday to express their frustration to world leaders.
They know they are likely to be arrested and jailed because yesterday the government declared the march of the Indaba Social Movement illegal.
It will go ahead anyway, say the organisers, who are calling on tens of thousands of people in the Johannesburg townships to join them, and have hired 80 buses to bring in 5,000 desperately poor people from squatter camps as far away as Transvaal.
"We will do what is right and not what is legal," Dale, a spokesman for Indaba, said yesterday.
"These people are excluded from events like the summit, even though the world leaders promise them prosperity. They have no voice. They face eviction, electricity price hikes and privatisation of their water.
"They have to use community toilets, their children play in human waste in the streets. Yet the government is paying them 70p a day to paint buildings so that world leaders will see a different Johannesburg.
"They have a human right to demonstrate."
Today Indaba's lawyers will try to get the government decision overruled, and Muzi and Nkwapa will join thousands at a mass rally at the Alex stadium to whip up more support for the march.
At the same time the separate Landless Peoples' Movement (LPM) will be preparing for its march on Saturday.
One of only four groups given permission to demonstrate at the summit, it expects at least 10,000 people from all over South Africa to join in demanding action.
The LPM is part of a growing network of international groups, subsidised in South Africa by the Ford Foundation, War on Want and others.
It includes giants, such as the Movimento Sem Terra in Brazil, which has occupied millions of hectares of under-used land and handed it to small farmers, and the Via Campesina network of farmers in Europe. The needs of the landless in South Africa, says War on Want, are some of the greatest in Africa.
"The government promised land redistribution but it hasn't happened. There is growing frustration. People have been evicted and others have no access to the land. If this issue is not resolved, then the government will solve nothing," a spokesman said.
The Global People's Forum will also be marching on Saturday, from Alexandra township, to show world leaders the the growing global frustration at poverty in Africa and environmental destruction.
It is expected to be the summit's biggest set piece. Between 20,000 and 50,000 people are expected: trade unionists, environmentalists, northern aid and development charities, poverty and human rights campaigners, religious and development groups, as well as thousands of the official summit delegates.
"Ordinary people can no longer tolerate the current neglect of the needs of the poor or the deterioration of the environment," one of the organisers said yesterday.
"This is not an anti-summit march, but a way to express the frustrations of civil society, and the lack of progress at eradicating poverty."
The forum's parallel conference meeting in Nasrec, 12 miles from Sandton, has so far attracted more than 20,000 people from 3,000 groups.
One of the features of the summit so far has been the explosion of intercontinental networks, coalitions and partnerships on almost every issue.
It is known as the globalisation of the opposition to the liberalising policies of most governments and institutions, and its growth suggests that a common agenda of opposition is developing.
The organisers of all three marches hope they will be peaceful, but many predict that confrontations with the police, who have been accused of using undue force since the summit began, are inevitable.
Two of the three small demonstrations held so far ended with the police using teargas or stunguns, and more than 100 people have been arrested.
"It is a right in a democratic society to give a voice to the townships. We do not want violence, but people are expecting it," an organiser of the Indaba march said.
"If the international community wants to understand why we will be marching, they are welcome to come and see us. We will show them how we live and perhaps they will understand."
?Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
The Guardian
Do the politicians care? Can they do anything? Will they find us work?" The speaker is Trace, an exuberant young Sowetan working for the next 10 days as a hostess for the world's largest gathering of heads of state, grassroots groups, business, churches and charities.
Worlds apart
In a glittering citadel where poverty seems to belong to another world
Sandton Conference centre a stone's throw from old township slum
John Vidal in Johannesburg
Monday August 26, 2002
The Guardian
Do the politicians care? Can they do anything? Will they find us work?" The speaker is Trace, an exuberant young Sowetan working for the next 10 days as a hostess for the world's largest gathering of heads of state, grassroots groups, business, churches and charities.
She greets the delegates with a wave as they file into the Sandton conference hall where governments today get down to the nitty-gritty of addressing ever starker global inequalities.
She sings an impromptu verse of the South African national anthem to entertain another group of the 60,000 delegates who are still flooding into the city and are having to be parcelled out up to 50 miles away. They do not notice her, but she says she is is proud that Johannesburg is hosting the earth summit, the Olympics of development.
But this conference centre feels about as close to the rest of Johannesburg as Mars. Sandton is a purpose-built business centre. Its hip restaurants, company HQs, international banks, silver BMWs, flash hotels, $300,000 flats and glass and brass architecture, all built in the decade since the earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, are surrounded by deep walls of of police, electrified fences and miles of concrete barriers. To reach the conference hall by 9am, Trace must get up at six, and pass five cordons and four security checks.
Sandton is five-star Globoville, a corporate ghetto and the richest, brassiest, smartest suburb in a city which was built on the excesses of mining and retains the gold rush mentality. Its anonymous glass towers and imitation frescoes of the Sistine Chapel could place it in Docklands, Boston, or anywhere international financiers and corporations work and play.
Flight
For the legions of grassroots groups, farmers, indigenous peoples and others in Johannesburg to try to give a voice to the the world's poor and concerned, Sandton is socially unconscious, unsustainable development at its worst. Its shops are from Paris, London and New York, its hotels trade only in dollars, and for most of Johannesburg it is unaffordable and elite.
Only the music of the townships and rural areas wafting from the shops and restaurants suggest this is Africa. One night in the Hilton or most of the other hotels here would keep Trace in university for a year and her family in food and shelter for three months.
Yet the billion-pound development built on the new globalisation of capital only exists because the business community has packed its bags and fled the terrible crime, impoverishment and physical degradation of the old city centre. Once the richest area in Africa's city of gold, the old business quarter has been taken over by the homeless and the street hawkers. It is a dangerous desert at night, and few people go out alone, even in a car.
A stone's throw from the conference hall, behind the barriers but in sight of Sandton's boardrooms and satellite dishes, is the old township of Alexandra. The global money found so easily to build Sandton in just a few years has not reached this sprawling slum with its rubble-strewn streets, and thousands of small businesses. The legacies of apartheid can be seen in the old watchtowers and single sex hostels.
"Yes, things are better now than 10 years ago, but here it is still survival. How can we think about tomorrow when we have nothing today?" says Tumi, a part-time driver who has lived in an Alexandra hostel for 30 years and only twice a year can visit his family in the north
The government is trying to address the air pollution, the shocking state of rivers, the urban deserts in the poorer areas, the nightmares of the old mine dumps, and above all the the deep poverty. South Africa has received more investment than any sub-Saharan country in the past 10 years, and is bursting with positive initiatives, yet to turn round a century of unsustainable development, colonial rule and apartheid requires gargantuan investment.
Hunger
Meanwhile, the rest of sub-Saharan Africa looks on in bewilderment as world leaders flock to Johannesburg. The region faces a poverty timebomb, says the World Bank, and has largely fallen off the economic map with 500 million of the poorest people in the world scratching an ever-harder living. Neighbouring Botswana may be financially better off, but Aids is crippling development. Angola and Mozambique are still recovering from civil war and are stymied by trade rules that bar them from exporting. Zimbabawe is imploding.
And across the vast region, preventable illnesses are taking their toll, and hunger stalks the land. Yesterday the UN World Food Programme predicted a catastrophe could occur later this year as the region's food supplies dwindle. Ten million of the poorest are already suffering malnutrition, and the international effort to bring them food will have to be herculean. More than a million tonnes of food must be imported, and the world community is reluctant to pledge the $500m needed.
Six hundred miles north of Sandton, 1 million of the poorest Malawian farmers are growing more desperate by the day. "The World Food programme wants to target 30% of the entire population from January to March", says Al Smith, the Usaid chief in charge of the relief operation. "We are getting to 5% of people, but it should already be 15%-25%."
Not one sack of grain has come to Gumbi village, says Joffrey, a local health worker. He says 25 people have died of food related causes so far in the emergency and he expects many more to die in the next six months.
Nelson Kwenje, Gumbi's only shopkeeper, says: "Tell the world leaders in Johannesburg from the people of Gumbi, that we are living in a crisis of poverty that never ends. Say that we want them to come and see for themselves. Tell them they are welcome, but we need work, we need food, and we need hope."
?Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Cows are better off than half the world
The growing chasm between rich and poor is threatening global security, writes Charlotte Denny
Thursday August 22, 2002
The Guardian
For half the world's population the brutal reality is this: you'd be better off as a cow. The average European cow receives $2.20 (?.40) a day from the taxpayer in subsidies and other aid. Meanwhile, 2.8 billion people in developing countries around the world live on less than $2 a day.
The facts of global inequality are truly staggering. The richest 25 million Americans have an income equal to that of almost 2 billion people, while the assets of the world's three richest men, even after the recent fall in the value of stock markets, is greater than the combined income of the world's least developed countries.
Or consider this: the living standards of Sierra Leone, ranked bottom of the United Nations' human development index, are roughly equivalent to those in the west 600 years ago. Average income per head stands at only $130 a year - less than the $1-a-day level that the World Bank regards as subsistence level.
The impact of such extreme poverty is devastating. The average Sierre Leonian can expect to live until age 37, a life expectancy level not witnessed in the west since the industrial revolution. Three in every 10 children die before their fifth birthday in Sierra Leone, while infant mortality rates are higher than in England in 1820.
Two centuries ago, income per head in Britain, the world's richest country at the time, was three times higher than that of Africa, then the planet's poorest region. Today, the world's richest country, Switzerland, enjoys per capita income nearly 80 times higher than the world's poorest region, south Asia.
One World Bank economist has warned that as television and cinema bring home to the poor the gap between their lives and the west, the rich may have to lock themselves in gated enclaves to keep out the dispossessed and angry masses.
Grinding poverty is propelling migration, driving the best and brightest from the developing world to seek better opportunities elsewhere. Borders in the west are being sealed to economic migrants, with the result that the trafficking of people has become a more lucrative trade than drug smuggling.
Two years ago at the UN millennium summit, world leaders set themselves the task of halving global poverty over the next 15 years. They promised to eradicate hunger, reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds and get every child of primary school age into a classroom.
The cost of meeting these goals is estimated at between $40bn and $60bn on top of current aid spending - about a sixth of what the west currently spends on subsidising its farmers.
In its most recent assessment of the progress towards the goals set at the summit, the UN warned that 33 countries, totalling a quarter of the world's population, are likely to miss half these targets. Most such countries are in Africa. If living standards in the poorest states continue to rise at the current snail's pace, the UN estimates that it will take 130 years to rid the world of hunger.
Extraordinary efforts will be needed to get sub-Saharan Africa back on track, the UN says. Even to achieve just the target of halving poverty would require growth of almost 4% in income per head over the next 15 years, a heroic task for many sub-Saharan countries where living standards are now lower than they were 30 years ago.
But the task, while difficult, is not impossible. The proportion of the world's poor living in absolute poverty has fallen from 24% in 1990 to 20% today, because of rapid growth in east Asia.
In 1960, Senegal and South Korea had a GDP per head of $230. By 2000, South Korea had a per capita GDP of $8,910, even after the setback of the Asian economic crisis. Living standards in Senegal, however, had barely improved, with GDP per head at $260.
Fifty years ago, South Korea's main export was human hair; today it is a hi-tech leader supplying components for America's computer industry. Massive state support for the silicon chip industry in the 1970s gave the country a competitive edge which paid dividends in the 1980s and 1990s when chips became the building blocks of the hi-tech revolution.
Africa faces a hard task following Asia's success. Blighted by debt, conflict and unfavourable geography, it faces an unequal struggle in the current world system. Moreover, while South Korea was allowed to protect its infant industries from being overwhelmed by more mature competitors, Africa is being required to open up its markets by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The chances of Senegal following in South Korea's footsteps seem increasingly slender as rich countries continue to pull the development ladder up behind them.
But as globalisation leads to greater interdependence, tackling poverty is becoming a political as well as a moral imperative. A more just world would also be a more stable one.
?Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Oxfam Policy Papers - August 02
Death on the Doorstep of the Summit
As thousands of delegates converge on Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, 13 million people face severe food shortages and famine in the neighbouring countries of southern Africa. This crisis has many causes. One cause is the failure of 15 years of agricultural reforms designed by the World Bank and IMF to deliver agricultural growth and food security. The international community must address the immediate food needs of the people of southern Africa. They should also embrace a new approach to agricultural policy-making that puts food security and poverty reduction first.
Download a PDF file (347K) of the full paper.(
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policy/papers/29doorstep/29doorstep.pdf )
Summary
As thousands of delegates converge on Johannesburg to discuss the future of sustainable development, almost 13 million people in Southern Africa face severe food shortages and famine [1].
The focus of the UN summit is 'people, planet and prosperity', yet at the same time Johannesburg is the staging post for millions of tonnes of UN food aid. It is difficult to imagine a starker example of failed development than this crisis on the doorstep of the summit.
The food crisis has many causes, which vary in magnitude from country to country. Climate, bad governance, HIV/AIDS, unsustainable debt [2], and collapsing public services have all contributed. However, one major cause of the food crisis is the failure of agricultural policies. This paper asks why, after years of World Bank and IMF designed agricultural sector reforms, do Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, face chronic food insecurity. The simple answer is that the international financial institutions designed agricultural reforms for these countries without first carrying out a serious assessment of their likely impact on poverty and food security. Far from improving food security, World Bank and IMF inspired policies have left poor farmers more vulnerable than ever.
The policies promoted by the World Bank and IMF aimed to rapidly replace inefficient and corrupt state intervention in agriculture with private sector provision. There is no doubt that agricultural reform was needed, or that the private sector and market should play a key role in generating agricultural growth. However, the 'one size fits all' liberalisation policies implemented have failed to lead to this growth. Instead, they have exacerbated the exclusion of the poorest from the market whilst further undermining their food security. Many of the world leaders meeting in Johannesburg share responsibility for these policies. They control the organisations that have recommended policies of rapid agricultural liberalisation. At the same time, they maintain massive subsidies to their own farmers, in a display of breathtaking double standards.
The ability of governments to tackle the crisis is further undermined by crippling debt repayments to the World Bank, IMF, and rich countries. In 2002, debt servicing will eat up 23 per cent of Zambian Government revenue. Malawi spends the same amount servicing its debt as it does on health.
A new approach to agriculture policy is required. Governments should take the lead in designing agricultural policies in the context of wider national development and poverty reduction strategies, and with the full participation of parliaments, small farmers' representatives and civil society groups. No structural reforms should be carried out without a prior analysis of the likely impact on food security and poverty. In giving future policy advice, the World Bank and IMF should start from a consideration of food security and the interests of poor people. Policy advice should be based on prior and ongoing assessment of the impact of policies on poverty and food security.
Recommendations
1. Mandatory impact assessments: Donors, particularly the World Bank and the IMF, should end all lending conditions that promote further liberalisation of agriculture in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, pending thorough Poverty and Social Impact Assessments (PSIA) of agricultural policy reform in these countries. These impact assessments should examine policies that have already been implemented and those that have been proposed, and make recommendations on the best policy choices to guarantee long-term food security and sustainable livelihoods for poor women and men. Donors should support governments in commissioning and carrying out impact assessments.
2. Ensure food security: Donors, particularly the World Bank and the IMF, should recognise and support Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia in developing transparent state-supported systems for ensuring food security and preventing future famine. These should include food reserves in Zambia and Malawi that are not commercially run, and that focus on food security.
A role for governments: Donors should acknowledge the need for governments to play an active role in developing market reforms that support rural development. Appropriate policies could include land reform, agricultural diversification, targeted farm input and credit supply, the development of marketing infrastructure, price stabilisation, and institutions that provide effective information and extension services.
3. Deliver food aid: Rich countries must deliver immediate food aid to avert the threat of starvation for millions of people across southern Africa. Donors have currently pledged less than one quarter of the food aid requested by the World Food Program.
4. Suspend debt repayments: Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia should be granted an immediate suspension of the debt repayments they are making under the HIPC initiative.
5. Support the 'Development Box': Industrialised countries should support the inclusion of a 'Development Box' in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, which will allow poor countries to protect, through tariffs and support through targeted subsidies, key staple crops with the objective of ensuring food security and protecting rural livelihoods.
6. End dumping: Northern governments, especially the EU and US, must end agricultural export dumping. In particular, they must immediately agree a clear timetable for phasing out export subsidies and export credits.
Footnotes
1. Figures are from USAID Southern Africa - Situation Report 9, 26 July 2002. The total for the region is 12.7 million people.
2. Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia are all HIPC countries and have received debt relief. However, Zambia still spends 30 per cent more on debt servicing than health, and Malawi spends equal amounts on health and debt servicing. In 2001, Mozambique paid $48m, Zambia $158m and Malawi $59m in debt service.
Copyright Oxfam GB . Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International