Subscribe via RSS
Browse by Date
What does the second decade hold for the Global Fund?
2 February 2012 -- At Davos last week, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria received an unexpected birthday gift from Bill Gates in the form of a $750m "promissory note" to help shore up its faltering finances.
Cholera outbreak in Kachin refugee camps
2 February 2012 -- More than 30 children have contracted cholera and one child has died of the disease at the Pajau Refugee Camp, Ranir said.
Weak land rights in Africa fuel potential for conflicts -experts
1 February 2012 -- The sell-off of prime land to buyers hungry for the developing world’s natural resources risks sparking civil unrest unless governments and investors recognise the customary rights of millions of people who have toiled these areas for centuries, land rights experts said on Wednesday.
Soaring investment in infrastructure, mining and agribusiness in Asia and Latin America is spreading to Africa, where a lack of legislation on land rights means local communities are regularly bypassed, fuelling anger and resentment.
“Controversial land acquisitions were a key factor triggering the civil wars in Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is every reason to be concerned that conditions are ripe for new conflicts to occur in many places,” Jeffrey Hatcher, director of global programmes at the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), said at a news conference held to release two reports into land rights.
Presenting the result of an analysis of tenure rights in 35 African countries, Hatcher said that customary land rights were being repeatedly ignored during what he called an “astonishing buying spree across Africa”.
Large land deals in developing countries have surged in the past decade, fuelled mostly by concerns about food shortages, a biofuels boom and the rising scarcity and financial value of agricultural land.
As foreign investment in Africa grows, experts say legal empowerment of rural communities is critical, including education about legal rights and information about the ramifications of land concessions.
“NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA”
Two thirds of lands being acquired are in Africa, suggesting a “new scramble” for the continent, according to an analysis for RRI by international land tenure expert Liz Alden Wily.
Like in the 19th-century colonial scramble for Africa, land is either acquired to channel commodities produced there into the investor country, or with the intention of not producing anything at all there but selling it on at a substantial profit.
The majority of 1.4 billion hectares of rural land in Africa, including forests, rangelands and marshlands, are claimed by governments while communities who have lived there for centuries say the land belongs to them.
This affects at least 428 million of the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Alden Wily’s analysis.
“Every corner of every state has a customary owner, “ Alden Wiley concluded in her study.
In Liberia, where land right issues also fuelled civil war in the past, the government has come under fire from campaigners for handing over huge tracts of land to foreign investors and dispossessing rural Liberians.
Between 2006 and 2011, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf granted more than a third of Liberia’s land to private investors to use for logging, mining and agro business, according to campaigners.
LAWS NOT RESPECTED
Even in African countries that have established a legal framework for land rights, for example South Sudan, these laws are not respected by their own governments.
Local communities are rarely included in negotiating the terms of a purchase or a lease, even in countries where laws recognize such lands as private property.
David Deng, research director at the South Sudan Law Society (SSLS), a civil society group dedicated to promoting the rule of law and respect for human rights, said the scope for conflict resulting from so-called “land grabs” in the region is "astronomical."
“I wouldn’t want to forecast the future but judging by history one can see (the potential) for conflict, talking about many of thousands of lives lost as a result of land-related conflict,” Deng told AlertNet.
“Investment was a complicating factor during many of these land disputes (during the civil war). So, the potential is astronomical for conflict.”
Sudan’s 21-year-long civil war that ended in 2005 was caused in part by local resentment of land-takings by the government in Khartoum for private commercial agriculture, including allocations to politicians, officials, foreign banks and enterprises.
These land issues still reverberate. In the Nuba Mountains, along the border between Sudan and South Sudan, there are reports of mass killings and hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of hunger because they cannot farm their lands due to violence, said Deng.
The government has expropriated community lands in the area and given them to foreign and domestic elites to establish large-scale mechanized farms, Deng explained.
South Sudan, which became independent last July, is a potentially attractive target for investors despite its political instability, with its considerable supplies of oil and minerals, fertile land and water.
Deng said that South Sudan is faced with a very real possibility of a return to war, with a government that is just getting on its feet, and it still manages to attract considerable amounts of interest from foreign investors.
Unfortunately, many investors in South Sudan are “cowboys” in search of a quick profit, Deng said.
By Astrid Zweynert (Additional reporting by Maria Caspani)
Opinion: The Truth About Foreign Aid
26 January 2012 -- Last week, Oxfam and Save the Children released a report saying that emergency relief in the Horn of Africa came months late, costing thousands of lives and millions of dollars. Oxfam and Save the Children conclude that humanitarian assistance should be done differently. The anti-foreign aid establishment is using the report to argue that aid doesn’t work and should be cut across the board.
The very fact that $2.1 billion has been donated to help the victims of the famine is a testament to human beings’ generosity. But that fact of our generosity also explains why I am so frustrated by the increasing opposition in many rich countries to foreign aid.
We know people care about the suffering of others. Not only that. They are willing to express their caring by making significant donations, even in very hard times. So what keeps them from supporting government investments to alleviate extreme suffering?
According to public opinion research, many people believe aid is either stolen by corrupt leaders or wasted on ineffective programs. Naturally, no one is eager to make investments they’re convinced won’t pay off.
There is also the argument that aid doesn’t work even when it gets to its intended recipients. This claim is not convincing either. In the past 50 years, the number of children who die every year has gone down from 20 million to fewer than 8 million. Meanwhile, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half. These massive improvements are due in large part to aid-funded programs to buy vaccines and boost farmers’ productivity.
I am confident that we can get the price of AIDS drugs down to $300 per person per year in the very near future. That will mean that every $300 a country gives to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria represents a person who will stay alive for another year. Every $300 that’s not forthcoming represents a human being who will almost certainly die. That is a stark but realistic way to think about the choices we’re making when we debate aid budgets.
My hope is that we can convert some of the generosity that goes into humanitarian relief into stronger support for foreign aid programs.
Many of those suffering in the Horn of Africa were going hungry before there was a recognized emergency in the region. In fact, more than 1 billion people in the world don’t have enough food to eat.
One of the most powerful solutions to this problem is to help poor farmers get more out of their tiny plots of land. In parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa especially, farmers plant low-yielding seeds, climate change is starting to shrink their harvests, and plant diseases are invading their fields.
New seeds and other tools can help farmers cope with these challenges. For example, my foundation helped fund the development of a variety of rice that can survive flooding and will feed an extra 30 million people every year in Bangladesh and India. That additional rice will not only prevent starvation but also help farmers earn more so they can take sick children to the doctor and pay school fees.
The question is, how do we continue to do the research needed to develop these new tools? Poor countries are investing more in their own agricultural sectors, but they don’t have the resources to lead on R&D. Aid is a key piece of the puzzle, and right now the entire research budget of the group responsible for agricultural science for the poorest is just $300 million per year. It’s a shame to see such a high-leverage opportunity generate such ambivalence.
I am proud to live in a world where a stranger’s suffering matters. Yet foreign aid, the best way to address that suffering, has a growing legion of critics. That is a contradiction we must remedy, and the best way to do it is to tell the truth about aid.
Neglecting the diseases of the poor
1 February 2012 -- What are known as "Neglected Tropical Diseases" (NTD) are no longer neglected.
On Tuesday, a number of global organisations, including 13 pharmaceutical companies, major charities and research groups including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an initiative to combat NTD.
It is being billed as the largest coordinated effort yet to fight some of the planet's most debilitating diseases - diseases that until now have largely been ignored.
Malaria's Defeat, Africa's Future
29 January 2012 -- Africa is taking command of its future by tackling an ancient plague: malaria.
Supported by the lessons learned from the decade to "roll back malaria," which produced a 33 percent decline in malaria deaths in Africa between 2000 and 2010, 41 African presidents have now signed on to end deaths from the disease in their home countries as part of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA).
ALMA is a great illustration of President Barack Obama's pronouncement, made before the parliament in Ghana in 2009, that "Africa's future is up to Africans." The world's support is indispensable, but Africa is getting the job done through mutual accountability, innovation, and collaborative problem solving.
Recently, I committed to weaning Liberia off foreign aid in the next decade. For other African countries, it will take a bit longer, but with sound policies, genuine leadership, and reliable partnership from the world, I believe Africa can be free of the need for development assistance in a generation.
Until that day, we must commit ourselves to ensuring that foreign aid dollars are well spent. That's why African nations have agreed to publish their progress (and setbacks) in the fight against malaria via the ALMA Scorecard for Accountability and Action (updated quarterly at ALMA2015.org).
This week in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, I will assume the Chairmanship of ALMA, and I want to begin by thanking my predecessor, the founding chairman of ALMA, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, for his vision, leadership, and service.
During his two year tenure -- and thanks to the generous support of the American people and institutions they help fund like the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria -- Africa has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the delivery and use of life-saving tools in the fight against malaria: insecticide-treated mosquito nets, targeted spraying, rapid diagnostic tests, and effective treatments, including preventative care during pregnancy.
Despite this encouraging progress, much work remains to be done. So I want to make the case for why Africa's future depends on winning this fight -- and why it is should matter to all of us.
If you care about the health of mothers and children, you must care about malaria.
Malaria is one of the top three killers of children under the age of five in Africa, claiming a young life every minute. It is a nightmare for parents: in the morning, your child can be laughing and playing, seemingly healthy. By nightfall, she can be fevered and comatose, fighting for her life.
In this age of modern medical advances, it is simply unacceptable for a child to die from a mosquito bite, but help is on the way. In clinical trials, a new malaria vaccine protected over half the children who received it. If, as expected, the vaccine is licensed for use in a few years, it won't replace the need for bed nets, but it will mean that more mothers will be spared the horror of watching their child die from a preventable disease.
If you care about education, you must care about malaria.
Malaria alone accounts for 50 percent of preventable absenteeism in African schools, causing up to 10 million missed days each year. Severe cases in childhood can inflict permanent neurological damage, and babies born to pregnant women who contract malaria are at risk of low birth weight and lasting learning disabilities. Simply put, we cannot train Africa's next generation effectively if we do not protect them from malaria.
If you care about peace -- and the prosperity of every woman, child and community -- you must care about malaria.
Just as deadly mosquitoes suck the blood from our children, malaria drains the lifeblood from our economies, and with it, hope and opportunity from our lives. Most adult cases of malaria don't end in death, but they do keep entrepreneurs from their businesses, farmers from their fields, and market traders from their stalls. The disease costs Africa an estimated $12 billion a year in lost productivity.
But to understand malaria's true impact, consider that the disease can rob individual families in poorer communities of as much as 25 percent of their disposable income. By controlling malaria we eliminate a major obstacle to sustainable economic development and stability in Africa.
Africa must demonstrate its own commitment to this outcome by expanding domestic funding of health. Innovative finance approaches -- such as pooled commodity procurement or airport surcharges -- will be a major topic of discussion at the ALMA meeting this week. We should also commit to using the resources in hand, including investments made in our countries by the World Bank, to fuel continued progress in the malaria fight.
Of course, Africa's challenges don't end with malaria. That's why I look forward to working with my fellow African leaders to broaden ALMA's mission to other issues that affect maternal and child health.
Although President Obama was speaking to Africa that day in Ghana two years ago, he was speaking about all of us. "Your prosperity can expand America's," he said. "Your health and security can contribute to the world's. And the strength of your democracy can help advance human rights for people everywhere."
Africa's future is up to Africans, yet our mission belongs to the world.
Opinion: Gates and innovation in agriculture – is money the issue?
26 January 2012 -- Bill Gates has spoken on the Today Programme about his recently published Annual Letter, in which he highlights the work that needs to be done in agriculture to improve the lives of poor farmers, particularly those in Africa and South Asia.
In his letter, Gates stresses the need to refocus on agriculture after years of neglect, where supply in the last decade has failed to keep pace with the expanding demand for food driven by population growth and increased incomes. In many countries, climate change is likely to put downward pressure on yields that will widen the gap between supply and demand still further.
Gates highlights the role of innovation in accelerating growth in agricultural production, drawing on the Green Revolution for inspiration. The main innovations that he refers to include more effective delivery of existing technologies and techniques, and the development of new approaches and tools. Improved crop varieties are a mainstay of this approach but soil management techniques and infrastructure (such as drip irrigation) are also mentioned. Farmer education and training to deliver technologies and techniques are also important in both Gates’ letter and in his radio interview.
So, what does he think holds back innovation in agriculture?
Two factors come through strongly: the lack of funds directed towards research in agriculture, and inadequate delivery of technology and techniques to farmers. In the case of the former, US$3 billion is spent every year on research into the world’s seven most important crops, of which only a fraction is directed at small farmers in Africa or South Asia. This is just 0.5% of the annual gross value of those seven crops.
Gates’ call for increased attention to agriculture is very welcome and the focus on agricultural research and innovation is well deserved: returns to agricultural research can be very high, and such research is relatively cheap when compared to the gross value of agricultural production.
However, technology is only part of agricultural development (as we at ODI have demonstrated through work commissioned by the Gates Foundation to understand what gets agriculture moving): governments must engage wholeheartedly in getting technology to farmers, and farmers need incentives to innovate and invest on their farms.
So, getting an adequate investment climate in rural areas matters — peace; a reasonably stable macro-economy; keeping taxes on farmers, both implicit as well as explicit, within bounds, etc. Complementary public investments are also needed for rural roads, clean water, public health, and schools — farmers who cannot get to the market, who are repeatedly ill, and who cannot read or carry out simple sums are unlikely to innovate.
The value of the an adequate investment climate and spending on rural public goods should be well understood by now: just look at what happened to Ghana’s agriculture, rural poverty rate, and child malnutrition from 1983 onwards after the government took these lessons to heart. Ghana not only has had one of the world’s top six best performing agricultures, but has also seen great reductions in rural poverty and hunger that make it one of the few countries in Africa that will achieve Millennium Development Goal 1.
So, while more needs to be spent on generating better technology for farmers in the developing world —and Gates is right to be excited about the prospects – efforts to implement new solutions must focus not only on constraints to delivery but also those to uptake. And this depends, crucially, on who is the target of new techniques and technology, their livelihood strategies and the role of agricultural production within that, households’ resource base and labour availability, and their attitude to risk.
The palpable frustration of scientists and philanthropists who can see technological and technical solutions to remedy desperate situations is perfectly understandable, and they are right to strive for changes that could improve those situations. Certainly, anything that puts a spotlight on the needs of poor farmers in developing countries is a positive thing, and additional funds are sorely needed. However, we must keep in mind the people on the receiving end of such ideas – namely the farmers on the ground – and try to understand why they sometimes seem indifferent to solutions that appear perfectly logical to researchers, policy-makers and donors.
Aid group halts work in Libya over 'torture'
26 January 2012 -- Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has halted its work in detention centres in a Libyan city because it said its medical staff were being asked to patch up detainees mid-way through torture sessions so they could go back for more abuse.
"Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for more interrogation," Christopher Stokes, MSF general director, said in a statement on Thursday.
Rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about torture being used against people, many of them sub-Saharan Africans, suspected of having fought for former dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces during Libya's nine-month civil war.
The agency said it was in Misrata, about 200km east of Tripoli, the capital, to treat war-wounded detainees but was instead asked to treat fresh wounds from torture.
"This is unacceptable. Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions," said Stokes. Read more
Gates pledges $750m for AIDS fund at Davos
26 January 2012 -- Bill Gates, the chairman of computer software giant Microsoft, has pledged $750m to the troubled global AIDS fund during an annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
Gates, who spoke at the forum on Thursday, urged governments to continue to support the fund and save lives, despite the current economic downturn.
"These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world's poorest," he said. "The Global Fund is one of the most effective ways we invest our money in every year."
The new commitment is in addition to the $650m that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Gates founded with his wife, has already contributed since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria was launched 10 years ago at Davos, according to a statement.
The public-private organisation, which has the backing of celebrities such as rock star Bono, accounts for about one quarter of international financing to fight HIV and AIDS, as well as the majority of funds to fight TB and malaria. But it has been forced to cut back and said last year it would make no new grants or funding until 2014. Read more
New base for Christian World Service...
25 January 2012 -- Christian World Service has leased a modern new national office in central Christchurch.
