01 July 2022
Child Marriage: There are 12 million marriages before the age of 18 world-wide every year. Most of them in Africa, South Asia and South America, but also in the US (more than 15,000 each year) and even in Germany (around 200 annually). Ultimately, raising the legal age of marriage does not address the root causes of child marriage. There are other effective interventions. In 44 of US-states, marriage for girls and boys under 18 remains legal – in Germany, it is forbidden. Outlawing child marriage resp. fixing 18 as the minimum age for marriage is important, but “(a) 2021 systematic review for the UN found that the most effective interventions to reduce the prevalence of child marriage helped girls to remain in school through cash or in-kind transfers.” Girls are, of course, much more concerned than boys and Covid has made things worse.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01241-7/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Tanzania: The 25 Maasai arrested when protests against the eviction of the community from its ancestral land in Loliondo (Ngorongoro district, north of the country) led to clashes with security forces have been charged with murder at a court in Arusha. Ngorongoro’s district chairman and ward councillors of the ruling party (CCM) are amongst the arrested.
BBC Africa Live 01 July 2022. 6:53
Make it 2/UK/Nigeria: After the deal with Rwanda, infamous Home Secretary Priti Patel has signed a deal with Nigeria. This time, Britain is to get rid of “dangerous foreign criminals”. Shortly before, 10 Nigerians or more had been deported for alleged immigration-related offences, amongst them at least one member of the LGTBI community.
BBC Africa Live 01 July 2022. 6:22
Sudan: On the 3rd anniversary of the huge demonstrations that finally overthrew Omar al-Bashir, the shutting down of internet and telephone services and the closing over the bridges over the Nile yesterday could not prevent the largest demonstrations yet since the October coup d’état. The security forces used tear gas, water cannons and live ammunition to try and control the protesters. 8 of them were killed, most of them shot, and many were injured.
BBC Africa Live 01 July 2022. 4:34
Kenya/Long-distance flowers: Climatic conditions for commercial flower growing are excellent and Kenya is the world’s fourth largest exporter of flowers. Air transport to European markets is now being replaced by ship transport – which takes about a month and necessitates special measures: Flowers are harvested in the cool mornings and taken to cold rooms, then dipped in chemicals to protect them from the fungus, then put into buckets for absorption of a hydration solution (for the month without water), then put in “a solution that curbs the growth hormone, ethylene, which causes the ageing of the flowers”, then put into cartons with holes that allow air circulation. During the whole journey, a temperature of 0.5°C, an oxygen level of 5% (instead of 20%), a CO2 level of 4% (instead of 0.4%) need to be maintained for the flowers to go into dormancy. The savings on transport are substantial and 20% of flowers exported from Kenya could in future travel by sea. In the meantime, breeders are trying to develop varieties that are better suited for sea transport.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61877762
Neglected Tropical Diseases: At the Kigali Summit on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) on 23rd of June, signatories of the WHO's 2021-30 road map for NTDs reiterated their commitment by signing the Kigali Declaration on NTDs – malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, trachoma, dracunculiasis/Guinea worm disease, snakebite envenoming, intestinal worms, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis/river blindness, schistosomiasis – 20 diseases and disease groups in all. Since the previous declaration on NTDs in London in 2012, substantial progress has been made with respect to trypanosomiasis/sleeping sickness (with number of cases globally reduced from over 7,000 in 2012 to less than 1,000 in 2019) and dracunculiasis/Guinea worm disease (now on the brink of extinction) while 31 countries eliminated one NTD or more. Covid has complicated the fight against NTDs. Unsurprisingly, access to people in conflict zones remains a problem for treatment and eradication efforts.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01237-5/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Marine fisheries: To keep up with population growth, Africa’s 7 million tonnes of marine fish today would have to grow to 13 million tonnes in 2030 and 19 million in 2050. Potentially, fisheries and aquaculture can manage to produce this quantity – but this needs interventions in three key areas: “restoring ecosystems to health; improving the sustainability of fisheries operations; improving harvest and post-harvest chains.” As fish do not respect national boundaries, foreign access agreements need to be concluded and the problem of illegal fishing needs to be dealt with. Fish-farming (mariculture) should be scaled up. Smoking or drying fish would reduce losses which presently account for 35% of harvests.
https://theconversation.com/how-marine-fisheries-can-add-millions-of-tonnes-to-africas-catch-184957
Nigeria/Germany: 1,130 Benin bronzes stolen in colonial times will be handed over by Germany to Nigeria according to an agreement signed by the two countries today Friday. Only 2 of them will be returned immediately, “many” before the end of 2022 “while some will remain on long-term loan at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.”
BBC Africa Live 01 July 2022. 16:18
Liberia: Enact Africa has yesterday Thursday published Gregory Coleman and Ben Spatz’s “Veneers of governance: lessons from Liberia’s growing vulnerability”. While peace reigns since 2003, “ternational community's efforts to strengthen Liberia's state institutions have created pathways for corruption”, governance is on a downward path and organised crime is thriving. Download the report on:
https://enactafrica.org/research/research-papers/veneers-of-governance-lessons-from-liberiaundefineds-growing-vulnerability?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=ENACT_Review&utm_medium=email
Congo-Kinshasa/EAC: The Allied Democratic Forces/ADF are involved in both terrorist activity and transnational organised crime. Originally from Uganda, then eastern Congo-Kinshasa, they have started recruiting in other East African countries. They are now part of the regional illicit border economy, with the resource-rich regions of Beni and Butembo, especially gold, providing them with income. In areas controlled by them, they also tax activities around timber. Future integration of the East African Community (EAC), of which Congo-Kinshasa is now part, risks to benefit ADF if nothing is done about it.
https://enactafrica.org/enact-observer/expansion-of-the-allied-democratic-forces-should-worry-east-africa?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=ENACT_Review&utm_medium=email
30 June 2022
The 23 African Languages currently included in Google Translate: Afrikaans, Amharic, Bambara, Chichewa, Hausa, Igbo, Jeje, Krio, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Oromo, Tigrinya, Sepedi, Sesotho, Shona, Somali, Swahili, Tsonga, Twi, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu
https://travelnoire.com/ten-african-languages-added-to-google-translate
https://www.dignited.com/56097/heres-a-list-of-african-languages-supported-on-google-translate/
South Africa/Reconstructed sound from over 2,000 years ago: A rock painting in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa’s Western Cape province depicts musical instruments known as !goin !goin, aerophones which produce sound by creating vibrations in the air when they are spun around their axes. Reconstructing the instruments depicted in the rock painting has made it possible to listen to the intriguing sounds from 2,000 years ago: https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2532/reconstructed-sounds.mp3. Sounds of honey bees that cause rain?
https://theconversation.com/how-the-music-of-an-ancient-rock-painting-was-brought-to-life-185475
South Africa/Xenophobia: Xenophobie in South Africa is getting more organised, as shown for example by the Operation Dudula, the #PutSouthAfricaFirst Movement and the Alexandra Dudula Movement. The government and the ANC have rather “contribute(d) to the escalation of tensions and proliferation of support for these groups”. Something substantial needs to be done quickly – socio-economic concerns and frustrations underlying xenophobia need to be addressed – or the situation could get out of hands with resulting multiple disruptions.
https://issafrica.org/iss-today/the-rise-of-xenophobia-the-road-to-ruin
South Africa & the right to die: On the occasion of the end of the three year-house arrest of the right to die activist Sean Davison, the article’s author sets out the arguments against and for the right to die. He believes that, on ethical grounds, assisted death should be legalised in South Africa.
https://theconversation.com/the-right-to-die-unpacking-an-ethical-dilemma-in-south-africa-185788
Tchad: The information minister has revealed a 20m USD embezzlement affair at the state-owned Société des Hydrocarbures du Tchad whose head and deputy had been arrested and replaced two days before. On Tuesday, the WFP “warned that one in 10 Chadian children suffer from malnutrition”. The head of the junta had “declared a food emergency in the country” before that, in June.
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 7:52
Sudan: 1 more dead at yesterday Wednesday’s protests brings the count to 103 demonstrators killed by security forces since the October putsch.
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 6:17
Nigeria/UK: London is deporting 38 Nigerians or more on a Home Office charter flight for “immigration-related offences”, amongst them “members of LGBTQ+ communities (…), mothers, grandmothers and people who had lived in the UK for decades.” Protests were held in Durham County (north-eastern UK) on Wednesday against the deportations.
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 5:45
Sahel & War in Ukraine: An overview which pays special attention to the France-Russia rivalry. Nothing new.
http://www.vidc.org/detail/the-ukraine-war-and-sahel
Cheap Labour in Southern Africa: A forthcoming ISS report looks into the working conditions and labour practices of Chinese companies in Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Lesotho, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The report is based on interviews – with workers first of all, and also with company and government representatives. Labour rights violations and precarious employment conditions have been noted. Wages (especially for the low-skilled) are low, at times even below the applicable minimum wages and sometimes, not all hours worked are paid. Especially but not only in mining, health and safety legislation is at times not complied with. Unfair dismissal and non-compliance with dismissal regulations are problem in all six countries studied. In this situation, trade union intervention is essential – but often, “relationships between employers, trade unions and governments are plagued by corruption and intimidation”.
https://issafrica.org/iss-today/labour-bears-the-brunt-of-chinese-investments-in-southern-africa
African Union: The AU Agenda 2063’s “Silencing the Guns by 2020” has not been achieved and was extended to 2030. But – in the face of terrorism, coup d’états, resource-linked instability, conflicts in the Great Lakes Region, intra-state conflicts in South Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia and Cameroon – is that realistic? Especially as the sovereignty of its member states limits the AU’s agency? A “new M&E framework divides the issues to be addressed by the Silencing the Guns roadmap”, making AU’s objectives more realistic and also more manageable, as indicators have been attached to the objectives. Whether the AU will be seen as successful will also be a question of how it presents itself and its actions.
https://issafrica.org/iss-today/can-africa-stay-on-target-to-silence-the-guns-by-2030
Mozambique: The north of the country has lost 95 health units to cyclones and a further 31 to jihadist attacks.
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 18:14
South Sudan: It does not really look like elections will be held by February 2023 as they should at the end of the transition period according to the 2018 peace deal. Can conditions be improved in the few remaining months?
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 17:46
Sudan: Six protesters have been shot dead and many have been injured today by security forces in Khartoum.
BBC Africa Live 30 June 2022. 15:21