Tag: africa

Calls to Halt Construction of Massive Oilfield in One of Africa’s Last Wildernesses /+ video

   from Human Wrongs Watch and (IPS) By Ed Holt* Jul 8 2021

Wildlife and environmental campaigners have called for international action as concerns grow over a project to create a massive oilfield in one of Africa’s last wildernesses.

A large part of the oil exploration areas in both Botswana and Namibia falls within the Okavango River Basin which flows into the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Fracking is banned in some countries and has been blamed for serious water pollution, among others, and threats to the regional water supply are among environmentalists’ biggest concerns.Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

Okavango Delta under threat from oil, gas exploration ...

ReconAfrica, a Canadian oil and gas company, has licensed drilling areas in over 34,000sq km of land in parts of northern Namibia and Botswana that overlap with Africa’s Kavango-Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area (KAZA), which includes land in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

A large part of the exploration areas in both Botswana and Namibia falls within the Okavango River Basin which flows into the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which supports the world’s largest remaining population of endangered savanna elephants, as well as dozens of other endangered or vulnerable species such as rhinos, wild dogs, and pangolins. It is also home to 200,000 people.

Paradise is Closing Down: The Ghastly Spectre of Oil ...

Paradise is Closing Down: The Ghastly Spectre of Oil …

Continue reading “Calls to Halt Construction of Massive Oilfield in One of Africa’s Last Wildernesses /+ video”

18 African Feminists We Love and Celebrate

What is African Feminism? Many feminists from around the world have contested the idea of whether modern conceptions of feminism are African or un-African. Indeed, feminism has existed in Africa since the times of Queen Nzinga of what is now Mozambique and Yaa Asantewaa of Ghana.

These women have inspired contemporary African feminists, who have contributed significantly to feminism in various ways—whether it be through art, music, writing, policy. They have been committed to bringing the voices of African women into the spaces that they work within, and they are indeed change-makers—not only on the African continent, but also throughout the African Diaspora.

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we must take the time to celebrate the African Feminists you should know.

1. Theo Sowa – CEO of African Women’s Development Fund

Theo Sowa is Chief Executive Officer of the African Women’s Development Fund. She has previously worked as an independent advisor for a wide range of international and social development issues. Her work has covered advocacy, service delivery, evaluation, facilitation, policy, and organizational development with a range of international and intergovernmental organizations and grant-making foundations.

Follow her work at: http://www.awdf.org/our-work/staff/
Follow her on Twitter: @TheoSowa

2. Abena Busia – Writer, Poet & Professor

Professor Abena Busia is the current Chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is also co-director and co-editor of the groundbreaking Women Writing Africa Project, a multi-volume anthology published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York. As Professor Busia points out, “History is located in multiple places,” and the anthology is designed to recognize the complex cultural legacy and “cultural production” of African women. Busia has helped edit two volumes of the anthology—Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel (2005) and Women Writing Africa: Northern Africa (2009). Continue reading “18 African Feminists We Love and Celebrate”

Land Grabbers Loot Vanishing Forests

Africa’s Vanishing Forests

That palm oil listed in the ingredients of your favorite candy bar or lipstick? More and more of it comes from forest and farmland razed by multinational corporations a world away.

by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman

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Photos: Marco Di Lauro

You see that coconut tree?” said Daniel Krakue, gesturing out beyond the windshield. “That used to be a village.” Continue reading “Land Grabbers Loot Vanishing Forests”

Who’s to blame for 258,000 dying of hunger in Somalia?

f31_RTR2P7N2 Almost 260,000 people, half of them young children, died of hunger during the last famine in Somalia, according to a UN report, with the world body admitting it should have done more to prevent the tragedy. Senait Gebregziabher, director of the aid group Oxfam in Somalia, said “The world was too slow to respond to stark warnings of drought” and that “these deaths could and should have been prevented.”

SO WHY DID IT HAPPEN?

First we have racism, if this was a western country it would never have been let happen. Continue reading “Who’s to blame for 258,000 dying of hunger in Somalia?”

Making Magical Moringa sprout in Madagascar

Gerenette and her friend pick Moringa leaves. Image courtesy of Azafady.
Gerenette and her friend pick Moringa leaves. Image courtesy of Azafady.

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Getting to the root of the problem in Madagascar

February 26th, 2013   by Daniel Reeds

When Daniel Reeds visited Madagascar he was struck by the beauty of its ecosystems and people, but also by the appalling poverty. However, he found inspiration from a pioneering charity that works with humans and wildlife, to ensure a sustainable future for both.

check  out helping Azafady HERE  www.madagascar.co.uk

Madagascar is one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots, with approximately 4% of the Earth’s plant and animal species living there – within just 0.4% of the planet’s surface. Many species have yet to be named or even discovered. However, it is also one of the most impoverished and least developed countries in the world, ranking 151st out of 187 in the UNDP 2011 Human Development Index.

Additionally, it’s one of the top three countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change through factors including unsustainable agricultural practices. Continue reading “Making Magical Moringa sprout in Madagascar”

Eco Fuel Africa.. Biochar and Fuel from Crop Waste

December 2012

Eco-fuel Africa uses low-cost and tailor made technologies to create a new breed of clean energy entrepreneurs in Uganda and exploit mobile phone based technologies like SMS and Mobile Money to ensure that their entrepreneurs turn our technologies into viable businesses.

They plan to use their technology to create a new breed of clean energy micro-entrepreneurs in Africa through a micro-franchising model that they have successfully piloted in a town called Lugazi in Uganda.
80% of Sub-Saharan Africans depend on wood for fuel. This is a leading cause of deforestation in Africa. As forests disappear women and children (especially girls) walk arduous distances to gather wood for their families.

Therefore, many children are dropping out of school because they spend most of their time gathering wood;
Secondly, fuel-wood is very smoky and leads to indoor air pollution. Again in Africa, women and children are the most frequent victims; Also, in Sub-Saharan Africa, unemployment among youths and women is very high. In Uganda for example, unemployment among young people between 15 and 30 years of age is over 80%. Such young people turn to violence, prostitution and drug abuse. This increases the risk of armed conflict, worsens the problem of HIV/AIDS and leads to wastage of talent.
These are the problems that Eco-fuel Africa seeks to address using their low-cost, tailor-made technology and inclusive business model.
Kilns: Eco-fule Africa invented invented a low-cost kiln made out of old oil drums. These kilns are leased to rural farmers. They then teach these farmers to convert their agricultural waste into charcoal powder using these kilns. Farmers sell part of this charcoal powder to us while some is retained and used as organic fertilizers (biochar). These farmers use SMS messages to inform our local collection agents to collect this charcoal powder from their farms.

The amount of charcoal powder supplied by each farmer is recorded on our phone based data system called Carbon Keeper and these farmers are paid monthlyusing Mobile Money payment methods. We also have an SMS based training program through which they periodically send farmers tips on how to use our kilns and how to covert the charcoal powder they retain into organic fertilizers (biochar).

Eco-fuel Press Machine: Eco-fuel Africa also invented a low-cost briquetting machine called Eco-fuel Press which compresses charcoal powder bought from farmers into clean burning fuel briquettes. Eco-fuel Press doesn’t require electricity to operate and is so simple to use that it can easily be used by a 40 year old illiterate woman in rural Uganda or 17 year old former child soldier in DR Congo.

Women Distributors: To ensure that their clean burning fuel briquettes can easily be accessed, Eco-fuel Africa has created a network of women distributors. They train these women and empower them to become the local distributors in their local communities. Eco-fuel Africa teaches these women to make orders using SMS messages and to pay for new supplies using mobile money payment methods. These women therefore don’t have to come to the offices for new supplies.

Mentoring: To ensure that Eco-fuel Africa’s micro-entrepreneurs succeed, they currently use a phone based mentoring system that periodically sends business tips to the women distributors and other micro-entrepreneurs. Eco-fuel Africa also intends to develop an interactive, internet based mentoringplatform through which their micro-entrepreneurs will beable to ask questions, share experiences and learn from local and international business experts.

Success: 1,500 farmers in Uganda use Eco-fuel Africa kilns. On average, these farmers make an average
of $30/month from selling char to Eco-fuel Africa. This is triple what most farmers previously earned. These farmers have also been able to improve their soil fertility using biochar made by our kilns. Biochar has been scientifically proven to increase water retention in soils, improve soil fertility and sequester C02 by burying it in the soil where it belongs. This has enabled these farmers to increase their food harvests. Most of Eco-fuel Africa’s farmers now have enough food for their families and have some left to take to the market. This is increasing food security and improving incomes of farmers.

There are now 3,500 families in slums and rural towns in Uganda using Eco-fuel Africa green charcoal.For these families, cooking fuel no longer means smoky, expensive and inefficient wood. Green charcoal burns cleaner, burns longer and is 20% cheaper than charcoal from wood.Families that use Eco-fuel Africa green charcoal save an average of $200/year. They also don’t have toworry about indoor air pollution, their children stay in school and women have enough time toengage in productive activities like digging and doing business;

This project has also already created 100 new women entrepreneurs (distributors). Eco-fuel Africa works with poor local women to sell our green charcoal in energy poor communities. They go to slumsand villages, identify local women, train them and empower them to become distributors of green charcoal in their communities. Eco-fuel Africa’s women entrepreneurs earn an average of $5/day orabout $1825/year. Now, these are women that previously had no marketable skills and had no other source of income. This is changing lives and empowering communities.

Eco-fuel Africa also uses part of their proceeds to replant trees. They funded the formation of a club called “FOR TREES” which works with local schools and communities to replant trees. They make an annual tax deductible donation to this club to enable it keep planting trees. FOR TREES has already
planted 10,000 trees in Uganda and as Eco-fuel Africa expands and becomes more profitable, they will enable FOR TREES to plant even more trees.

Related articles

https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/campaign-to-de-invest-from-fossil-fuel-climate-criminals/

Spain: fortress Europe: immigrants storm fences, occupy islets


Paramilitary Spanish Civil Guards have evacuated this morning  83 immigrants who remained in the small island of land in the archipelago of Al Hoceima, and delivered to the Moroccan gendarmerie to most of them.

The eviction occurred this morning and concluded at 4:30, according to the sources, who have indicated that they are 73 persons transferred to Morocco, which is a few meters from shore islet of Spanish sovereignty.

Spain, meanwhile, has arrested 10 immigrants, according to the agreement reached last night between the two countries for the evacuation of Earth Island and the distribution of its occupants, in two groups arrived there last week.

The eight children and two mothers who were in the Earth Island this morning have been moved to Melilla, where they received medical care. It is expected that most leave the hospital today to begin the process marked in the Aliens Act, and from there, the Temporary Centre for Immigrants Prison (CETI) Melilla or a shelter, in the case of minors who traveling alone. Continue reading “Spain: fortress Europe: immigrants storm fences, occupy islets”

religion: Pope sentences women to slow death.

Why won’t the pope let women protect themselves from HIV?

From The Guardian UK:FULL ARTICLE HERE
papal representatives are putting doctrine before African women’s health Nancy Goldsteinguardian.co.uk

Who can forget Pope Benedict XVI‘s first tour of Africa as pontiff in spring 2009? He told the continent hardest hit by the global HIV/Aids crisis that more stringent moral attitudes toward sex would help fight the disease – indeed, that condom distribution “increases the problem”. There was no sign that his Holiness understood the depth of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for 75% of all HIV-related deaths that year, or had made any attempt to reconcile religious doctrine with compassionate public health policy.
Now, it’s June 2011, the 30th anniversary of the Aids pandemic, and the Holy See is at it again.

The Holy See has left no doubt about their stance.

For months now, their all-male team has been trying to strip all references to sexual and reproductive health and rights from the meeting’s declaration; gutting all mentions of education and prevention other than marriage and fidelity; and insisting that “families” be replaced with “the family”, as though that monolith even exists or that it provides some kind of magic shield against HIV.
Either the Holy See does not understand, or does not care that their hardline stance is not actually “pro-life” in any sense. They ask that paragraph 60 of the declaration, which addresses research and development for treating and curing HIV, delete all mention of “female-controlled prevention methods”. This despite the fact that female condoms and the very promising looking microbicides now being developed have no relation to abortion and represent the single greatest potential life saver for women worldwide.
Today marks the opening of a United Nations general assembly “high level meeting” on Aids in New York City that will evaluate the progress of that body’s response to the pandemic over the past five years and set the agenda for the next decade. Serra Sippel, president of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (Change), declares that “this meeting is where we decide how serious we are about beating HIV, and how serious we are about women’s equality.” If so,
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